Chance Read Online Free Page A

they seemed nearly transparent. Looking at them, Chance thought achingly of Halimeda.
    He sat off to one side in the starlight and firefly glimmer of dusk, watching the swirling and strutting of the dance with a quiet half-smile, listening to the wild skirling of reed pipes and squirrelgut strings. If the small folk had taken a fancy to invite him to their vernal revels, it was hardly his place to refuse, but he would not be drawn into that ring of yellow mushrooms. Knowing the Wirral Denizens better day by day, nevertheless he knew only that they were changeable, as likely to mock him as greet him. Or as likely to harm him as help, he deemed. If Blake had bespoken them fair, perhaps he would be alive and Roddarc dead. Perhaps they would have aided him instead of Chance. None of this would Roddarc have believed had Chance told him, so Chance told him nothing of it, though he disliked having even so small a secret from his lifelong friend.
    Halimeda’s secret was the heavier one.… She was pale and silent whenever he saw her, and there were whispers among the people; what ailed her? But her secret would not keep much longer. It was blossoming in her, as spring blossomed into summer.
    When the dancers in the starlit ring began to pair off into couples and slip away amongst the ferns, Chance rose and took his leave. He smiled wryly, walking back to his lodge. No lover awaited him there, but the Wirral would grow lush this year.
    Roddarc sat waiting in the lodge when Chance came in.
    â€œAre you a werewolf,” he asked tartly, “that you have taken to roving under the moon?”
    â€œHave I bitten you?” Chance retorted. He lighted a lantern and looked at Roddarc, then sat down with him by the cold hearth.
    â€œWhat is it?” he asked.
    â€œWhat is what?” Roddarc snapped.
    It was the chilling anger in him that Chance meant, anger such as he had never seen in his friend. But he did not say so. “What you came to tell me,” he said instead.
    â€œHalimeda.” Roddarc hurled the name out as if it were a curse. “She is with child.”
    Chance stared. Perhaps Roddarc took the stare for shock. It was shock indeed, but at the lord’s rage, not at the tidings.
    â€œI looked at her today,” Roddarc went on with a terrible fury, terrible because so cold and controlled, “and I saw the swelling of her belly. It is just beginning, but I knew. So I made her tell me the truth of it, and name a name, and I did not take tears for an answer.”
    So there had been shouting, ugliness. And Halimeda was disgraced. Chance felt ill at the thought.
    â€œYou must have guessed some of it before now,” he said stupidly.
    â€œOf course I guessed. What sort of fool does she take me for? She goes about all ribbons and smiles before Gallowstree Lea, and then she turns into a wraith afterwards; how am I not to guess? I knew she was lured there. And who would her lover be but that calf-faced, honey-tongued Blake.”
    â€œWhom she tried to kill for your sake.”
    â€œShe tried to kill him because he had betrayed her,” Roddarc said coldly, “using her as bait to bring me to him. If he had confided in her, belike she would as readily have killed me.”
    â€œRod! You cannot believe that!” Chance spoke with a force that gave Roddarc a moment’s pause.
    â€œWhat am I to believe?”
    â€œAll good. She is ardent, innocent, betrayed. She has suffered. She came to your aid, and stood by you bravely while you exacted a lord’s vengeance on a traitor.”
    â€œIf she is so brave,” said the lord in cutting tones, “then why did she not brave my ears and my presence with some words of truth?”
    â€œShe was afraid of hurting you. I’ll warrant she thought to spare you pain as long as she could.”
    â€œSpare me pain?” Roddarc laughed harshly. “As if it were no pain to wonder! I guessed from the first, and my heart went