The 19th Bladesman

by S J Hartland

  She searched his face. Behind that smile, his blue eyes shadowed with disquiet. He held his body stiffly as though on the edge of surrendering secrets he wasn’t ready to reveal.

  Azenor pressed her mouth against his. His lips yielded. She loosened the laces of his tunic. Her caress slipped inside to bare skin. Beneath her fingertips, his heart slammed.

  Roaran pulled away. “This is happening too quickly.”

  “If you’re worried about children, don’t be,” she whispered in his ear. “I’ve silphium.”

  “It only grows in Quisnaf.”

  “My friend Ethne’s a sorceress. She knows how to get every strange herb.”

  “Nevertheless, we have a ways to go, you and I.”

  “You speak in riddles. It makes my head spin when all I want is a hundred kisses like that last one.”

  “We need to talk about that.” Roaran broke off, moaning as she dropped a hand to his thigh, then to the thickening bulge beneath tunic and cloth. “Slow. Slow. The gods may frown on this.”

  “Why? Are you my cousin, abducted at birth and now returned?”

  “No. But I’m—no matter.” Roaran pulled her against him and fiercely kissed her mouth, his soft, wet tongue plundering and exploring. Fire shot through her. He tasted wild, of enchantment and mystery. Like in the dream.

  Murmuring with pleasure through his kiss, she tangled her fingers in his curling, damp hair and flung a leg about his hip.

  Their beating breaths drowned the fire’s crackle. Beneath her strokes, his erection strained. “The gods be gone. Do with me what you will,” he groaned.

  “Oh, I will.” One last exciting conquest before she wed Sherrin.

  Laughing softly, Roaran lifted her and carried her to the bed. He laid her down and eased her shirt off.

  Azenor reached up to draw his tunic over dark hair. She groped at the cloth then leaned back, drinking in the sight of him, every muscle, every hollow formed by elegant, perfectly sculptured bone. Naked, aroused, he was magnificent.

  With a soft hiss of air through bared teeth, she pulled him down onto her, felt his shudder as damp skin slid against damp skin. A lustful heat flared, the strength of her desire shocking and exciting. Azenor did not want a tender, slow mating. She must have him now.

  Her hand slid down his hard belly, rubbing, stoking his arousal. Roaran flung his head back. A long moan escaped his flushed lips.

  Azenor caught his hair in a fist, drew his mouth to hers. Her tongue teased. Her hand’s rhythm matched his harsh, quick breaths.

  “Witch,” Roaran whispered through her kisses. “Who taught you that?”

  “Enough talking.” Azenor circled legs about his waist, fingers gliding around him, hips tilted, guiding him until he plunged into her.

  As he thrust, his shoulders flexed. The strength of his body, the warm, clean scent of him, the strain of muscles beneath her fingers blurred into simple joy. Roaran pushed deeper, holding her against him, his skin moist and hot.

  Sensation after sensation flooded, fractured. His full weight on her, his tongue, his breath in her mouth.

  For the briefest moment, a distant echo of alarm brushed down her bare back as though an ancient power cried out through her.

  But the velvet touch of his hands, his lips, the feel of the slick length of him sheathed inside her, the delicious irritation of skin, overwhelmed.

  She closed her eyes, lost in their rhythm, hearing the soft sounds he made and surrendering with a cry of pleasure.

  His body tightened, then shuddered. He collapsed against her, straining for breath.

  They lay entwined, limbs, hands, lips. Roaran was in no hurry to end their joining, but stayed deep within her, watching her face with those curiously blue eyes.

  What was he thinking about? The idle thought fast retreated. A delicious weariness stole the need for words or questions.

  When he finally broke apart from her, Azenor curled her knees to her belly. An otherworldly scent swirled as thick as smoke, faintly disturbing. Roaran folded her in an embrace.

  “This was always to be,” he whispered. “Even so, I thought I’d need patience to win you.”

  “I’m an Isles woman,” Azenor said sleepily. “I take what I want.”

  Roaran slept, his breaths slow and even.

  Azenor rose, threw on her drying clothes and thought about his words. Always to be? This was lust, nothing more. Just like her other conquests. Isles women did not hold back, did not deny their desires.

  Her close brush with breath also aroused her hunger for pleasure. Ethne explained once how those stalked by death—warriors after battle—sought life.

  She took a last look at his pleasing face. Asleep, Roaran looked younger; his raven hair dishevelled, his palm curled, dark lashes fanning a sun-bronzed cheek.

  He stretched on his back, the ridges of old scars from the nicks and cuts of swords pale against his skin. No surprises there. She had traced Pairas’ wounds often enough.

  Yet one mark puzzled her. A raw, angry blemish. Just above his heart.

  That uncomfortable chill tore into her again. She shook it off. A wound that healed poorly. Probably not as deep as it looked.

  Azenor rounded the dying fire. Dawn broke outside, grey and silent, the raucous whistling and chittering of birds absent. She shivered, pulled Aric’s cloak tight, stepped outside the cave … and found herself back inside.

  What just happened? She rubbed her eyes, spluttering a laugh. Foolish girl. You’re still half asleep. Again she circled the fire—surely she did that before—and walked into the light. And once more was inside the cave.

  Walls closed. Panic stripped her breath. Gasping, she fell to her knees.

  Roaran dropped beside her. “Azenor, it’s all right.”

  “I’ve lost my wits.” She clutched at him.

  “It’s all right.” He guided her to the bed and draped fur over her trembling shoulders.

  “I tried to leave and could not. Why can’t I leave?”

  “It’s a gateway, Azenor. I was about to explain but you,” his smile wavered, “distracted me.”

  Gateway. No. She didn’t want to think about that.

  “I have to leave.” Azenor tried to rise on wobbling legs, her breath quickening again to panic. “I have to leave. I have to leave. I have to leave.”

  Roaran drew her to his breast. “I know you don’t want to hear, but you must.”

  “No.” She pulled away.

  “Azenor, it’s a gateway to the Enarae. I brought you here because—”

  “No!” If only he’d shut up. The odour of smoke lingered. Rain pattered outside. That would make her journey home harder. Aric is looking for me. He’ll be worried.

  “Azenor.”

  “No, no, no. I know what the Enarae is.” Fear coiled about her ribs. She surged to her feet, faced him, threw at him: “I’m dead. Is that what you want to tell me? I don’t believe you. I can’t be. I feel so alive.”

  “Azenor—”

  She flung away from him, her eyes stinging. Disjointed thoughts rushed at her. It wasn’t possible. She could not be dead. But that blow. The nauseating, shattering pain as the Venivan’s knife drove through her breastbone.

  Crouching at Roaran’s feet, she grasped his hands and held them against her cheek. “Tell me, can the dead feel the way we felt just now?”

  His sigh weighed with regret. “My first kiss strengthened you for a time. But you died in my arms. I carried you through this gateway, then went after you into the lands of the dead. My second kiss brought you back.”

  The dream. Her mother, long dead. Weeping for her children. No. It made no sense.

  “Your kiss brought me back? This is madness. Who or what can do that?”

  Roaran did not speak.

  “Answer me, curse you.”

  His dark-flecked blue gaze hardened. He dragged hands down his face. Beneath the pelt of stubble, his skin looked paler.

  “What?” Azenor demanded.

 
Roaran pressed his palms together, his reluctance tangible. He said, “A death rider.”

  “No. You lie. They don’t exist. Not anymore. Maybe never. They’re just a story so people fear disobeying the gods.”

  “What did you see, Azenor Caelan, when I killed those raiders?”

  “I don’t know. Something. Nothing. My eyes played tricks.”

  Roaran laughed mirthlessly. “You don’t believe that.”

  Azenor rested her head on his lap. She was dizzy with the strangeness of it all, her thoughts detached.

  Words of a nursery rhyme from her childhood snapped into her mind. She whispered:

  “The death rider’s blade cuts swift and deep.

  “But his kiss wakes even the dead from sleep.”

  “It’s just an old rhyme, just an old rhyme.” She sobbed.

  Roaran slid to the floor beside her. He held her, stroked her hair. “There’s more to that old rhyme, Azenor.” Softly, he recited:

  “Kiss so sweet from one so cold,

  But now your life is his to hold.”

  Azenor sought to focus only on his curious lilt—an Isles lilt—but the half-forgotten words repeated in her mind. The meaning hammered and hammered. Dread then anger flushed heat through her veins.

  “Curse you.” She shoved him away. “What did you do to me? I asked for none of this. How dare you? My life belongs to you? Well, I won’t have it. I won’t.”

  Roaran sprang up, shoulders rigid, his jaw tightening. “I give it back to you, Azenor Caelan. I’ll take your hand and lead you to the gates of Tide’s End. If that’s what you want.”

  “That’s what I want.” She gulped in a torn breath. “Yes. That’s what I want.” Wasn’t it? She met his fierce gaze. He looked dangerously wild and dangerously beautiful.

  Confined by stone, his presence was overpowering, overwhelming. Azenor turned her head aside, trying to hold on to that anger so she did not cry.

  “What have you done to me?” Her voice splintered. “I have to leave. I have—” She laughed bitterly. Isobel would like this. “Responsibilities.”

  Roaran pulled her into his arms, his kiss this time firm and demanding.

  “Stay with me,” he whispered when he drew back his head. “We’ll have an eternity together. Duty will wait. I mean that, Azenor. If I take you with me into the Enarae, time will mean nothing. I’ll bring you back to this very day.”

  Azenor clung to him. “You said this was always to be. Do you mean you saw what would happen? Did I say yes?”

  “Not like this. Not so soon. But yes, I saw this.”

  “How? Only a seer glimpses the future. Who are you, Roaran? Who are you really?”

  She was close enough to glimpse the tiny lines about his eyes. His face, partly shadowed, seemed only stark cheekbones and hollows.

  I was wrong. Not a swaggerer at all. Much more.

  “I think you know who I am.” He held out his hand. Azenor took it.

  He took her to cities of golden stone that once thrived beside sapphire seas, to shores empty of all but cawing birds where the wind stung her eyes with grains of sand.

  To the desert city of Seithin before it fell so she could walk barefoot on cool marble in the temples and trail her hand through fountains beneath shady jacaranda trees, their purple flowers bobbing in crystal water or carpeting cobbled stone.

  To vast deserts of red earth, rich with pungent aromas, to sun-bleached lands beneath endless skies sprinkled with diamonds, to white-tipped mountains capped with pine trees.

  And when she tired of wondrous places, of markets and palaces and taverns, Roaran Caelan brought her back to the cave.

  There they lived simply, loved with a desperate fierceness that came of knowing time fast ran out or sat together about the fire, dreaming and talking softly. Wondering what it might be like to be together always.

  There was always so much to talk about. The past, her brothers and father, Pairas, of gossiping in the courtyard with Ethne, of the war with the false king. The cave city of Quisnaf where a sorceress trained him, a prisoner, to harness the Enarae.

  Thoughts. Feelings. Everything shared. How a sunset moved him. How the aroma of soap always reminded Azenor of her grandmother.

  In summer, the cave was cool. Beyond its gaping mouth butterflies danced in honeyed warmth. Jasmine sprawled in vines and bushes, its scents perfuming the night.

  In winter it was damp and dark, but the thundering winds whipped past as they clung to each other, naked beneath the furs.

  Regardless of the season, Roaran often ventured outside to hunt or forage for mushrooms and firewood. Every time he returned, she would run to him as if they had been long parted and he would enfold her in his arms.

  When did she love him? That first year together? Longer? She could not say. One day it was just there. Yet her awe at the seer part of him never changed.

  Azenor remembered nights when she woke to find Roaran staring glassy-eyed at the fire, the aroma of dream grass in its smoke. And a breath warmed her neck as if something unseen brushed by into the dawn.

  Only then did Roaran gasp and blink, freed from whatever spell held him. Shaking and weak, he could only crawl into their bed and fall into a soundless sleep.

  One night, exhausted by a vision, he said, “How long has it been?”

  “How long have we been together, here, in the Enarae? Years and years. Why?”

  He did not answer at once. He sighed, then said, “Long enough so you trust me? Do you trust me, Azenor?”

  She nuzzled closer. “How can you even ask? Of course I trust you.”

  “Enough so you won’t doubt, even if it seems I do terrible things?”

  “I trust you.”

  “Enough so when we’re apart your feelings for others won’t sway you?”

  She rose to one elbow to study his face. “What is this about?”

  He closed his eyes. His grip on her shoulders tightened. It was as though he wanted to hold her close because she was about to slip away and he would forget her.

  “And if I do something that hurts you? What then, Azenor?”

  “You will never hurt me,” she said, pushing an unruly lock of hair from his eyebrows. The dawn clouded to a sickly grey at their backs. When he opened his eyes, his expression was as bleak as that light. Haunted.

  “It’s time then,” she said, aware of his sadness. “We’re going back.”

  Roaran turned his head, his cheek denting the pillow. “It’s been a decade. But when I take you beyond the Enarae, when we walk outside this cave, no time will have passed. It will be that day I found you in that snake valley.”

  She slapped his arm. “That’s not how I remember it. I think I found you.”

  “You’ll be the same. We’ve lived outside time and neither of us has aged. They won’t have had time to miss you. Do you understand?”

  She drew away. “I don’t want us to part. It must happen, I know. But I don’t want it to.”

  “We’ll be together again. I swear it. Have I ever lied to you?”

  No. But there were things he hadn’t said. About the past. A part of him lingered there with a queen who died centuries ago. Foolish to be jealous of a dead woman but there it was.

  “You’ll hear things,” Roaran said. “Doubt me. Doubt what I’ve told you. Perhaps my intent will no longer make sense. Or you’ll doubt yourself. Question if you can do this.”

  “I can,” Azenor said, her voice cold. “I am an Isles princess. I understand duty.”

  Roaran shook his head. “No. I don’t want you to trust me from duty. I want you to trust me from love.”

  “For me they are the same.”

  “A storm blows in.” Roaran’s fingers choked the rein.

  Azenor peered at a cloudless sky above Tide’s End’s stone walls. Its deep blue curved to cage a jewelled sea against the horizon, unbroken but for a flock of languid birds.

  It promised heat, more flies, but no storm, unless a wind-whipped tempest of dust.
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  “A storm of blood? That brings Archanin down?”

  The scales of chain mail jangled as she leaned back against his hard body, the curve of shoulder to breast beneath her head achingly familiar. “What are you thinking?”

  Roaran stared at the castle, his face clouding. He did not speak.

  “The past snares you again, my love,” she said.

  “I think about what’s ahead, how it will stain and perhaps destroy us both.”

  “Liar. You’re not here. You’re there, in Tide’s End.”

  Thinking of men and battles long forgotten. Or remembering hot Isles nights when he slept beside her and the sea breeze drifted over their bare skin.

  “Enough,” Roaran broke in angrily. “Azenor, enough. I’m drowning in sorrow. And not because of the past. Because of you.”

  “They’ve seen us.” Azenor pointed at the walls with a wavering finger. She shook, sick with grief. I long for him already. How do I do this? The answer: Do it quickly. Walk away from him and don’t glance back.

  She slipped from the horse. “Don’t come closer. There will be questions as it is.”

  “They hardly had time to miss you, girl. Do you remember what you did a decade ago?”

  Argue with some silly girl. What was her name? Isobel. Argue with Aric. Over nothing.

  “I remember, yes. And I remember what I have to do. All of it.”

  Would her courage fail? A curse to know what must happen, all of it—the ambush, the monster who would imprison her.

  The boy.

  Of him, Roaran said least. “Kaell’s story is not yours,” her lover whispered one night as they lay arms and legs entangled, drowsy with spent passion.

  “How can you say that? I’m his doom.”

  Roaran stroked her hair. “The fate of one man, young I know, can’t outweigh the fate of so many. I pity him too. But I’ve waited centuries. I can’t let pity stop me.”

  Too cruel, her mother whispered in that shadow land where painted serpents spat, and shapes writhed in a castle that looked like her home but wasn’t. Too cruel.

  Shivering, Azenor shoved away the past. The portcullis rose in the gatehouse.