‘You are awake,’ a masculine voice said close by and Ellega felt her calm evaporate. She struggled to open her eyes. ‘My Lady,’ the man said and stepped forward, extending a hand to take her own, and at first this was all Ellega saw: a hand of similar toning to her own, not dark-skinned like Be’uccdha, or copper like the skin of the hateful Northmen, but a pale gold with long elegant fingers and a single stone-set ring. Beyond the hand was a sleeve of darkly woven cloth shot with shimmering thread, then further again she saw a face framed by thick burnished hair, a striking face with darkly compelling eyes that glowed as though with an inner light. ‘I am honoured to have rescued you from your fate,’ he said.
Ellega frowned, trying to discern the detail around him but the room they were in was deeply shadowed.
‘You are not fully awake.’ He dropped his hand but remained where he was, gazing down at her with compassion in his eyes.
‘I am … thirsty,’ she said, her voice croaking over the words. She had meant to say ‘frightened’ or ‘lost’ but the necessities of the body had come first.
‘Of course,’ he said solicitously and reached for a jewel-encrusted decanter at her side.
Ellega tilted her head and found that it was propped by many soft cushions and that she rested on a gilded couch. From this position of comfort she watched her host pour golden liquid from the decanter into a matching bejewelled goblet. ‘Is it wine?’ she asked, knowing she had no head for such, yet was so parched she would drink ort ale if it were all she could find.
‘A medicinal libation that calms the mind.’ He handed it to her and Ellega propped herself up on the cushions and took it from his hand, even offering him a shy smile as he sat on a stool beside her.
‘I thank you for your kindness,’ she said. ‘I had feared for my life…’
‘You are safe here,’ he said smoothly. ‘Please, drink.’
Ellega smiled again and took a sip of the wine, then another. ‘How strange,’ she said, ‘it cools the throat and yet warms the stomach.’
‘Miraculous indeed,’ he replied, and waited until she had drained the goblet before taking it from her.
Ellega gazed at him, knowing there were questions she must ask but feeling unsure how to begin. He waited patiently until at last she said, ‘You found me in the presence of Northmen …’ She faltered, remembering her fear, her dread. ‘They said … they would take me to Kraal.’
The man smiled, ‘And instead you are with me. I have given you cause for disappointment.’
Ellega tried to smile at this jest. ‘Cause for relief, good sir,’ she argued. ‘Yet … disappointment does dwell in my heart,’ she admitted. ‘That and grief.’
The man glanced pointedly at her gown. ‘You prepared for a celebration, but were captured instead.’ His eye lingered on her throat before returning to her face and Ellega felt an odd disquiet.
‘My betrothed was killed,’ she said, ‘I travel now to the house of my brother, Barrion of Verdan. Will you aid me?’
‘My Lady,’ the man said, his eyes glowing in the darkness of the room, ‘I will do all that you ask and more.’
‘More?’ Ellega said, her voice breathless, her heart beginning to pound faster, although she knew not why.
‘Tell me of your betrothed,’ he said and reached out to take her hand,‘it may ease your grief to speak of him.’ Ellega was unsure of the propriety of such a gesture yet he appeared to offer her no insult and she assured herself it was merely an act of comfort. ‘Close your eyes and tell me what manner of man this was whom you have so recently lost.’
‘Why, the greatest man in all the land,’ Ellega said, ‘Our Lord and King Mihale.’
‘You are a queen?’ the man asked, and Ellega thought to hear pleasure in his voice, as though he felt honour at having rescued a maiden of great import.
‘Please, kind sir, I am no queen, nor ever will be now.’ Sadness came with this thought and yet strangely it was a hollow sadness, as though viewed from a great distance. ‘I am the Lady Ellega of Verdan, and though I know not your parentage, my brother who heads our house will reward you handsomely for your kindness to me.’
It was a courteous reminder that he had not introduced himself to her, yet he chose to ignore it. ‘Your company and wellbeing is reward enough for my humble services,’ he said, and as Ellega looked into his eyes she struggled to remember the questions she should ask. ‘Are you comfortable?’ he asked her.
The couch beneath Ellega was softer than her bed in the Volcastle and seemed to accommodate her form like … a lover’s arms.
‘My Lady Ellega,’ he said, ‘I see a gentle blush on your cheek. Is the room too hot?’
Ellega shook her head. Though he could not hear her thoughts, she felt she did not know herself, thinking such a thing about lover’s arms … she a virgin and so recently bereaved. It was not fitting. It was obscene.
‘You have not spoken to me of your beloved,’ he said and smiled to encourage her. The skin stretched taut over his cheeks and Ellega realised his was not a handsome face, yet it was striking, the eyes unforgettable. ‘Can you not recall him to me?’
‘You have never seen our king?” Ellega asked, a flicker of disquiet intruding on their companionable discourse.
‘I have been lost to the Southlands for many years,’ he said. ‘Captured by the Northmen in the war and taken to be a slave in their quarries, mining stone for their temples.’
‘Your family?’
‘All dead. I alone survived,’ he said, then squeezed her hand gently in acknowledgment of her compassionate expression. A moment later his own brightened. ‘Yet had I not, we would not now be so happily met,’ he said.
‘And I would be food for Kraal.’ She shuddered at this thought and closed her eyes, trying to still the visions that filled her mind.
‘Would you rest?’ the man asked, and Ellega shook her head, though she found she could scarcely open her eyes again now that they had closed. ‘The libation you took eases the mind and relaxes a tired body also,’ he advised her.
‘I don’t feel tired,’ Ellega said, and this much was true. Her body was rested, and indeed tingled with a strange excitement as though a fermentation was occurring within her, awaiting only a word or deed to bubble to the surface. Her hand still rested warmly within his own and though this seemed inappropriate, Ellega could think of no way to retrieve it without causing her rescuer embarrassment.
‘Will you speak to me of your king?’ he said softly, perhaps in deference to her grief or her apparent fatigue, but to Ellega in her strange state of excitement, the timbre of his voice touched her ear like a verbal caress. ‘I would hear of the man who won your heart yet did not live to lay claim to your beauty.’
Ellega blushed anew at this, yet he did not move his fingers on her own and committed no impropriety that could give her cause to rebuke him. Indeed he had done nothing untoward, and it was only she who could not quell illicit thoughts. ‘My Lord and King was young,’ she said, hoping that mention of her beloved would steer her mind from where it should not venture. ‘Yet he was wise in the ways of men. A good swordsman, though he could not better Kert Sh’hale, nor any can,’ she said, pleased to have her thoughts back into their correct avenue. ‘Yet though my beloved was not as accomplished as some, to me he was so perfect that to look upon his gentle face was to … to know all the happiness that a woman could possess.’ A small tear slid from beneath Ellega’s eyelid and she found her lips trembling, her heart aching to know that she could now only touch that gentle face in her dreams.
‘I cannot see him from your words,’ her rescuer said, ‘and I would do that. Can you not form him in your mind? He would have pale features, the mark of his ancestry. And did he not have royal-hued eyes?’
‘Indeed he did, as did his twin sister, Khatrene who is The Light. Mihale was taller than I,’ she said, remembering how she had looked longingly up into his eyes. She saw them now in her mind, gazing at her with gentle humour, his pale snow hair fa
lling straight to his shoulders and tucked behind his ears, freckles sprinkled across his nose. How she had dreamt of the day when she would have leave to place a tender kiss on each of those pale freckles.
‘I see him now,’ her rescuer said from beside her and his voice drew Ellega from her happy past to the present where her love was dead and her safety unsecured.
She shuddered and her hand moved in the man’s. At last he released it.
‘I will leave you to slumber,’ he said and she forced her eyes open. The room appeared darker than it had before and she could scarcely make out his form rising from the stool. ‘There is much here for me to do before I take you to your brother. The forests of Verdan are days away and the Northmen near at hand.’
Ellega made as though to rise but he shook his head. ‘I promise you we are in no immediate danger, yet should I linger in your beauteous presence instead of seeing to the dispensation of my men …’ He smiled, as though to mock himself. ‘I leave you to your rest.’
Ellega nodded awkwardly and then lay back on the couch, closing her eyes and feigning to rest. Beauteous presence. The words seemed to glow inside her mind as had his strangely compelling eyes. Not a handsome man, she reminded herself. Not as perfect as her beloved Mihale, but striking, and oddly familiar. She realised now that his colouring was similar to her own and wished that she had asked him which noble house he had been stolen from. Could it be Verdan? There were many hundreds who resided around the loch which housed their submerged hold, forest-dwellers who gave allegiance to her brother and fought with him in the last war against the Northmen. Was this man one of those?
This man. She had not even asked his name.
Ellega opened her eyes again, thinking she would inspect her quarters and perhaps risk a peek outside. Not that she distrusted her rescuer. She merely wanted to assure herself —
‘Ellega.’
The breath she had meant to expel locked in her breast. She pressed her lips together to form the word but it would not emerge. Mihale.
‘Did you think me dead?’ he asked, and smiled.
Ellega could not breathe for looking at that smile. At those beloved eyes, which now gazed upon her with love. But, ‘Your voice, Majesty,’ she whispered.
He touched his throat. ‘They had thought to strangle me,’ he said, and when his hand came away Ellega saw the marks of it, wondered how she had not noticed at first. ‘Yet I live, and so does my wife.’
She nodded, did not even notice the tears that ran down her cheeks. ‘I will be your wife, Majesty,’ she said humbly, ‘at your earliest hour.’
He sat beside her on the couch and took a kerchief from his vest to wipe her face. ‘Cry no more, for I am come to be your husband this very day.’
She noticed then that he was dressed in finery to match her own, just as she had imagined he would be on their wedding day.
He took her hand. ‘We cannot speak the rites in this place, yet we may take the pleasures which follow, and once returned to the Volcastle can make the necessary noises of ritual.’
His hand reached down to grasp the hem of her dress and Ellega stiffened. ‘Majesty,’ she said breathlessly, forgetting her joy as modesty overtook her. ‘You are not yourself,’ and the soft tone of her reproach raised his head, his royal-hued eyes meeting her own, the strange light of the room making them glow, as had her rescuer’s minutes before.
‘Who am I then?’ he asked. ‘A stranger? The stranger whose hand you held so lovingly while you thought me freshly dead?’
Ellega looked down and closed her eyes to hide the shame that washed over her. She had held the man’s hand, yet how was her beloved privy to this? Had he been standing in the shadows, listening to their discourse? Blood pounded in Ellega’s brain and she could not think for the guilt, unwarranted though it was, which clutched at her heart. How was she to explain that which was innocent yet appeared lewd?
‘Do you love me, Ellega?’ Mihale said, and the tenderness in his voice raised her eyes.
‘Majesty, with all my heart,’ she whispered, relieved to have this opportunity to state her case so plainly. ‘My life is to love you, and when I thought you dead —’
‘Think me now alive.’ he said, and the smile she knew so well rested comfortably on his regal lips. ‘Yet do not be complacent, for we know not what tomorrow may bring. Love me now as though there were no tomorrow on which we may be parted.’
‘Mihale,’ she whispered, and emboldened by his words, she cupped his dear face in her hands and brought her lips to his in a tender kiss.
Kai, standing behind the couch in the deep shadows of his master’s pavilion, watched Kraal’s seduction with a growing feeling of unrest. The Southwoman was of no concern to him. Indeed, had he come upon her in battle he would have killed her without a second thought. Yet listening to her speak of her love had brought memories of his sisters with their longings and dreams. He had been young when his father had sacrificed them to Kraal, and Kai had accepted the necessity, just as he would accept the fate of this Southwoman who would surely also die when her usefulness was spent.
As would Kai.
There was glory in serving a God’s will. Yet what if you suspected it was not will but whim that you served? Where was the glory in that duty?
And why did his thoughts follow this path now? Was it because his master had assumed a man’s shape? Had this made him less a God in Kai’s eyes? In truth, his imitation of the boy king with his youthful features and pale hair and eyes was all softness to Kai’s Northman sensibilities — Kraal could have taken the girl without this elaborate pretence. Had this affected his thoughts of duty? Kai would do well to remember the serpent who dwelt within that shape and to picture him thus.
Yet though he wished his master success in the test of his new manhood, Kai found no joy in the seduction of this noblewoman with her soft voice and tearful eyes. He would rather see her dead than watch her deceived.
‘Lie beneath me,’ Kraal said and pushed her gently back on the couch, the boy king’s pale hair falling forward as he leant over her, hiding the eyes which Kai knew would be glowing in anticipation of his triumph. ‘Give to me that which all men want,’ he said. ‘Give me a child.’
The noblewoman stilled and looked up into his eyes, the innocence in her own shaming Kai for watching. ‘Majesty,’ she whispered, so softly Kai could barely hear her. ‘I thought … I had heard …’ She swallowed, and the sound was louder in the quiet pavilion than her words had been. ‘The servant woman said she carried your child.’ This was uttered in trepidation, as though she feared anger from her king.
Kraal, who had pulled up her skirts and fumbled with his laced breeches, now paused, his eyes closed a moment before he opened them to gaze upon her and say, ‘Do I have the look of one who is practised in this act?’
The noblewoman gazed back at him and presently her tightly pressed lips curved. A moment later, though Kai was sure she did not mean to, she could not help but laugh.
Kraal, in his guise as the king, smiled back.
‘Majesty,’ she said, struggling to suppress her mirth, ‘I own that I was surprised … by your …’ She glanced away, struggling for words.
‘Fumbling?’ he asked. ‘Ineptitude?’
The noblewoman’s smile returned and she looked up at him, her eyes shining. ‘I am a fool,’ she said, ‘and yet such a happy fool that I would not wish it otherwise.’ She reached up to cup his face again and Kraal kissed her, sweetly at first, and then with an ardour that could not help but lead to their joining. Yet he did not thrust into her as eager virgins often do when the opportunity is ripe, but instead saw to her readiness with slow caresses as Kai had instructed — and odd that had been, to instruct his God in the ways of men.
All was according to plan and Kai felt his disquiet fade as he settled himself to watch with interest his master procreating for the first time, though the thought came to him to wonder why his master chose to do so. The rumbling authoritative God the Northmen had w
orshipped for so long turned out to be a voracious seeker of experiences, jumping from one appetite to another, acting as though his time among them would be brief. Yet though Kai’s life was necessarily short, surely for his master time was endless.
‘Cleave only to me,’ Kraal told her as he reached the time of the trembling breath and forged an entry through her virginal pass. ‘This … is … rich …’ The words vibrated in the quiet pavilion. Kraal’s serpent voice.
Kai’s eyes snapped open in horror and he saw that his master’s eyes were closed. Not so his paramour, who, like Kai, gazed in shock at the man whose body jerked above her own. Her hands, which had rested on his shoulders, fell away.
The snow hair that Kraal had so carefully copied was turned to scaled tendrils that twisted with each other in an obscene dance, and when his lips parted, the gritted teeth revealed within were sharp and pointed. His face had begun to change, to darken.
‘Master!’ Kai shouted, but such was her shock, the Southwoman made no recognition of his hidden presence but continued to stare in horror at that which had penetrated her body.
Then her eyes widened, her mouth falling open as though the part of him that had stolen her maidenhood was also transformed.
‘Rich!’ Kraal bellowed, driving forward to glory. His eyes opened, the black glowing eyes that inspired terror in his enemies — the serpent’s eyes — and he looked down at the Southwoman beneath him who cowered, her face now so pale that Kai feared she would not survive the experience. Kraal did not seem to see her, but gazed around blindly, his thrusting body changing, his face lengthening. He looked down at the woman again and his long dark tongue emerged, flicking at her face, her breasts. Her body went limp and Kai found he could release the breath he had been holding.
‘Rich. Rich. RICH!’ Kraal bellowed, and with a final trembling thrust he ceased his assault and became still upon her, his head lowered, saliva drooling down from his jagged teeth onto her hair, his huffing breath sending clouds of glittering fire-flakes into the air, all thankfully blinking out before they landed on the Southwoman.
Daughter of the Dark: Shadow Through Time 2 Page 17