by Tara Janzen
He loosened her braies and slid his hand inside, his fingers finding the sweet, soft flower of her desire. She’d shown him how to pleasure her, whispered to him of what she would have him do, how to move and where to touch. The thrill of it was still wondrously new, that she was his to touch, to slide his fingers into; that with a gentle rubbing he could fill his world with the scent of her arousal and have her as needy as he.
She gasped his name, and skraelings were forgotten along with danger and any semblance of common sense. Only the uncommon senses remained acute: the hot, silky wetness that welcomed his touch, the intensifying redolence of flowers that told him of her readiness, the primal need to join his body to hers.
He removed her braies and, guided by her hand, pushed into her. A groan escaped him, released in a flood of exquisite sensation. Truly, only God could have created an act of such intense gratification that to move inside a woman’s body was to take a man into divine madness.
He thrust upward, and a verdant scent flowed over him, a scent beyond the smell of even the deepest forests. Dark and rich and green, it wound around him in intoxicating tendrils of pleasure, like an extension of her touch. A warning sounded somewhere in the back of his mind, but went unheeded, for the urge to continue to move with her was far more powerful than the caution to resist. ’Twas a need, like breath.
He pushed up again, holding her to him with his hands on her hips, arching against her, and for an achingly sweet moment he wondered if in truth some new madness had found him in the act of love. The verdant scent spilled into his mouth in a rush of greenness, washing through him. It pumped into his veins, cooling his blood, but not the heat of wanting her. He tried to resist, but she wouldn’t accept resistance.
“Shh, shh,” she crooned, lowering her mouth to the side of his head. She blew softly into his right ear and nipped his lobe, then did the same to his left ear, marking him each time with her breath and a quick flick of her tongue. She licked him from the middle of his chin to his mouth and then lingered to kiss him deep. He thrust upward with his hips, rooting himself to her as her tongue explored his mouth and sucked on his. The taste of lavender suffused his senses.
Christe. ’Twas not madness, but some bewitchment she spun to consume him.
“Come, Mychael. Come with me,” she whispered.
He gave in with a groan of pure delight. She was binding him not with ivy, but with her enchantments. The resistance flowed out of him as he fell willingly into her spell. Whatever she would have of him, he would give, the green sorceress.
She continued her journey with her tongue, marking him on either side of his nose, on each temple, mapping his face with honeyed moisture and her breath. Lastly, she kissed him in the center of his brow.
His awareness heightened and spread outward from where her breath blew against his skin, outward to every part of his body, to the tips of his fingers and toes, as if his climax would start there and implode. ’Twould be the death of him, sweet demise.
“Jesu,” he murmured, praying to another God even as he was saved by the god of Her.
He came into her again and found life, coursing, growing—her life, female to the core, taking him in and transforming him, making him into Her image. This was the magic she worked in the womb of the earth, that he would be reborn in an act of lust and love. His body was rigid with the need to climax, to release his seed in a rush of fierce pleasure, to be the dragon taking the mate that was his.
But if he was the dragon, she was the dragonmaster. She held him suspended, though he felt the quivering readiness of her body. She held him suspended over the abyss of final release, until he feared madness would truly come.
Then, moving down to his mouth and taking him with a soft, slow, wet, deep kiss, she let him fall.
He jerked against her, his breath stolen. Again, and the rush surged through him anew. Again, and he saw the edge of his consciousness meld into hers along a thin green line. Her pleasure washed into his all along the line, a great wave that picked him up and dragged him under, taking everything he had.
Llynya broke the kiss and watched his face as he climaxed, absorbing every beautiful, stark line. He was hers, bound by ecstasy, a willing thrall to her enchantment. A smile curved her lips. Aye, the Druid boy was hers, and with the surety of the knowledge, she gave herself over to his enchantment.
Mychael awoke to a soft rain of kisses. He felt as if he’d slept for days, a long and dreamless sleep.
“ ’Tis time to leave,” her voice said next to him. Her.
A smile broke across his face, and he took her in his arms, rolling her over and bearing her down as he’d been borne. She glowed beneath him, her dreamy smile echoing his own blessed state.
“Don’t ever,” he said between soft kisses pressed to her lips, “do that to me again without warning me first.”
Her answer was another smile, then she reached up and drew her finger down the middle of his face to the tip of his nose, traced the curve of his eyebrow, temple, and cheek to his chin, and lastly, smoothed her thumb across his lips from one side to the other, telling him what he already knew—you... are... mine.
“Aye, sprite.” He kissed her again. “I am thine.”
Delectable female, he was hers aright. The taste of her was still in his mouth, the greenness still soothing him. Whether to bind or heal had been her intent, she’d done both. His vow to her was no less binding. To his last breath, he would fight that she might live. How many skraelings had already fallen under his knife? Yet with her beside him, he’d not become the ravening beast he’d feared. Not yet, but neither were they safe.
She had everything packed and ready to go, making him wonder if she’d gotten any sleep. If not, she was no worse for the wear. Indeed, she set a stronger pace than they had taken before.
Working their way back from the ledge, into the corridors and tunnels behind them, they searched the labyrinth for hours, switching off the lead. No skraelings came to light in the passages, but neither did a way up into Riverwood.
So what was it to be? he asked himself. Back to the Wall to fight the skraelings or the salamander?
Llynya had cooled the dragonfire in him with her tea and her verdant loving, but the power of it was still skittering beneath his skin. Would it come forth if they needed it? he wondered. And a fine twist-about that was—for him to be looking for his nightmare.
He had let it overtake him in Dripshank Well. For the first time, he’d willingly given himself over to the licking-flames that ran along his scars. The heat had not been less because of it. He’d felt the wild blood all but roaring in his veins, but with acceptance there had been no delirium. He had used the dragonfire, instead of letting it use him, and aye, he’d left a river of blood in his wake. But he’d freed Llynya, and he would kill a thousand times more to do the same.
So what was it to be? They couldn’t wander forever. There was no fresh water anywhere along the Magia Wall, and their stores would not last long.
They came to another fork in the trail and looked to each other at the same time.
“Do you feel that?” he asked, holding his hand out toward the western tunnel.
“Aye.” Her brow was furrowed.
Heat was coming out of the passage, and in the few seconds that they stood there, it increased in intensity. When a stream of tua raced out, darting along the walls and scattering in two directions, they both swore.
“She’s coming this way,” Mychael said.
“And she’s on fire.” Llynya pointed down the tunnel. It wasn’t just the mother lizard approaching, but an inferno. At the farthest point that they could see, the rock was taking on a red glow and growing brighter. The tip of the salamander’s carnelian tongue flickered into view, and Llynya and Mychael both backed away.
“The Wall,” he said. With luck, the giant tua would follow them, and in the terror mayhaps the skraelings would not be so quick to cut them down.
“Nay.” Llynya shook her head, a determined expres
sion on her face. “There is another way out of here, and neither skraelings nor the fire lizard will follow us.”
Mychael didn’t miss the implication. If the skraelings wouldn’t go there, ’twas beholden of some danger. That the fire lizard wouldn’t follow them either, bespoke a danger that bore considering.
“It sounds an ominous salvation, Llynya.”
“Aye, ’tis, but it’s better than dying on the Wall.”
She ran from one of the tunnels open to them to the other, sniffing each.
“Come,” she said, beckoning him to the southernmost trail. “We’re to the Dangoes.”
~ ~ ~
Rhuddlan returned to Merioneth and a litany of disasters and doom: Madron and Naas hied off with a weir traveler; Inishwrath torn asunder; two dead in Tryfan and Shay captured; eight dead at the Dangoes; skraelings and Dockalfar attacking in Riverwood, leaving Lien near death and taking Llynya; Nia left at the gates of time, suffering from her descent; and Tabor returned from Lanbarrdein alone, without Mychael.
Damn the boy, and damn Madron. He would clip both their wings. Aye, he could bring Druids to heel quick enough. He was paying the price for not having done it before.
To the good, Merioneth was filling up with tylwyth teg.
The Kings Wood elves had arrived the day after the Riverwood battle, the Ebiurrane the next. The Red-leaf had come up from the south. The highlander Wydden had caught up with Wei on his solemn return from Tryfan, the last tribe to arrive overland.
The Daur-clan had come by sea, their sleek-sailed drakars and kharrs riding the waves like ocean mist. Painted in blue and silver with cloudy gray sails, the ships were one with the water and sky and were sorely needed for the task he would set them.
Tages had brought tidings that the old men of Anglesey were sworn to write the truth of the coming battle, to record it for posterity and the unfolding ages.
Dark Ages they would be, if the dragons could not be called. Naas had chosen unwisely to leave when he most needed her. If Mychael ab Arawn did not survive his descent, ’twould be up to Rhuddlan himself, and he would need Naas’s fire.
Trig had gone after Madron and Naas, but to no avail. Damn wily Naas was not to be tracked, not even by a Liosalfar captain. Trig had known well enough, though, where the threesome were heading, and he’d sent a cadre of Ebiurrane Liosalfar to stop them at the Weir Gate. Rhuddlan had seen the troop there himself, when he and his band had left Nia there to heal.
Wei had confirmed the brands on the skraelings that had attacked his band in Tryfan, identifying them as Slott’s. Rastaban was open, as Varga had told him, and Rhuddlan feared the worst for Shay. Moira had paled at the boy’s capture, a sore loss.
As Llynya had been, a sore and dangerous loss to the Quicken-tree, verily to all the tylwyth teg, until the pair of Kings Wood trackers Trig had sent after her and the pair he had sent after Mychael had returned together. The four had come in at dawn, bearing a tale of carnage and grim happenings. Yet there was hope still for the sprite and the Druid boy.
“ ’Twas here.” The Kings Wood elf named Kenric pointed on the map Rhuddlan had drawn on a square of linen. They were next to the hearthfire, elfin captains and their lords from every clan. Varga walked the ramparts alone, watching the sea. The Sha-shakrieg was given a wide berth by all the tylwyth teg, the ancient enemy in their midst.
“Dripshank Well,” Rhuddlan said. “They met there?”
A glance passed between Kenric and the other trackers. “ ’Twas no meeting, Rhuddlan. ’Twas where the deaths began. No other tracks but the boy’s were to be found. He was on his own, he was, and killed five in the tunnel, seven more in the small cavern here”—he pointed again to the map—“and three here, one a Dockalfar, his carcass showing the marks of iron stars.”
“And the bloody granite behind him as well,” muttered Mael, another of the trackers. “Pinned him to the bloody wall, the Druid did, with a bloody iron star.”
“Three bloody iron stars,” one of the other trackers corrected.
“Aye, three.” Mael nodded.
“That’s where he took up with the aetheling,” Kenric said. “We followed them down the south tunnel to the chimney of rock that opens onto the Wall. Found sign of a fire lizard.” He looked up from the map. “Haven’t seen one of those since before the Wars, but she’s down there all right, which explains why they went the way they did. No fire lizard is going into the Dangoes, no matter the prize.” He bent back to the map. “The Wall is manned by skraelpacks from here north. The fire lizard had a few for supper back here by the chimney, but some of that pack escaped. This one didn’t, though.” He held up a bent triangle of silver. “Kynor says he was the Dark-elf who captured Llynya. ’Twas his nose, Kynor says.”
Rhuddlan took the piece of metal and turned it over in his hand. That any Dockalfar had survived Caerlon’s mad potion was surprising. That they’d been deformed by the brew was not. He’d noted the same during the causeway battle. Those few Dark-elves driving the skraelings had all been scarred in some bizarre way. ’Twould be fitting, if Caerlon’s treachery had been turned back on the Dockalfar. ’Twas he who had first conjured a skraeling. Such had been the parting of ways between the brightest of the Dark-elves and his teacher, Ailfinn Mapp.
With all the tylwyth teg gathered, Rhuddlan feared the worst for the mage. No one had seen her since the winter solstice ceremony at Anglesey. That she’d not come to Deri for Beltaine was not unusual. She’d known he was going to open the weir, but as she’d said, he’d closed it without her, he could just as well open it without her. Fifteen years of an ether seal was as naught to Ailfinn, and she’d left him to his own devices. The aftermath, though, the continued wildness of the pryf, the breaking of the damson shafts, the disaster in Kryscaven Crater—the mage could not yet breathe and not have felt that tearing of the earth, or the unleashing of destruction.
For the first time, Rhuddlan was forced to acknowledge that the direst circumstances had befallen Ailfinn, that indeed, if not captured by the dark army forming in the earth, she was dead, the last of the Prydion Magi, and her acolyte still no more than a green sprite and in danger as grave as any.
“Harek,” he called to a captain of the Daur. “Take a drakar and two kharrs under full sail to stand guard at the Dangoes. If Mychael and Llynya come out of the ice, carry them to the Weir Gate.” Whatever else happened, whether the Dark-elves would rule again or nay, Dharkkum must be stopped, and for that, Mychael would have to call the dragons home to their nest—if he survived the Dangoes.
“Half of the remaining fleet will be moored on Mor Sarff at the headlands of the weir,” he continued. “The others in Merion Bay on the Irish Sea.” ’Twas a small inlet south of the Dragon’s Mouth. In the Wars of Enchantment, the Dockalfar had used long-ships to make strikes along the coast of the Irish Sea as well as Mor Sarff. He would be prepared this time.
Rhuddlan had reached terms with Varga at the Weir Gate and sent a messenger to make the run to Deseillign. If the Lady Queen would have a dread warrior to wield a druaight blade, the Edge of Sorrow would be brought to the shores of Mor Sarff. Llyr, head of the Ebiurrane Liosalfar who he’d sent after Madron and Naas, had orders to hold the women when they reached the dark sea. They would help Mychael as they could, their traveler be damned.
For himself, with the Troll King reigning in Rastaban, all his paths led first to the Eye of the Dragon and to the nameless foe who had dared to break Dharkkum’s crystal seals.
Chapter 23
The trail into the Dangoes had grown ever longer and colder, and still Llynya kept on. The dry corridors beyond the Magia Wall had given way to a single wide tunnel running with water. It seeped out of the walls and gathered into small cold streams. They stopped to refill their gourds and for Llynya to put on her cloak.
“The deep ice is not far now.” Her breath formed vaporous clouds when she spoke.
The fire lizard’s screeching cries had reached them for a long time after they’d chosen
their path, but the giant tua had not followed them beyond the first stretch of frost-shattered scree. There was no going back, though, and no alternate tunnels or byways to the one they were taking. Mychael welcomed the drop in temperature. He pressed his hand to the thickening hoarfrost on the passageway walls, and water ran from beneath his palm.
“No one comes this way?” he asked.
“Not by choice.” Llynya’s voice was muffled by a swath of the hood she was wrapping around her head and the lower half of her face.
“What else would bring them?”
“Necessity and death. ’Tis a place of ghosts and the half-dead.”
“Half-dead what?” he asked warily, taking a closer look around them as he slipped his pack off. ’Twas food he was after, not his cloak. He doubted if he would ever be cold again.
She shrugged. “Whatever was not ready to die when death came.”
“Most of mankind is not ready when death comes.”
“ ’Tis death’s choice to come here, not man’s,” she said, glancing at him from over the top of the mask she’d made out of the tail of her hood. “Much can be revealed in the Dangoes of dying and such. The journey through is different for every traveler, but Men, it seems, are particularly susceptible to the despairs of the ice. If you’ll let me blindfold you and bind your ears, I can spare you some of the grief that might await you in the caverns.”
“I’ll not do you much good blindfolded,” he chided, handing her a strip of murrey.
She took the dried fruit and adjusted the mask below her mouth so she could eat. “You can’t fight despair with the strength of your body, Mychael, nor with strength of mind.”
“Have you been here before? Do you know what lies ahead?”
“Nay.” She shook her head, chewing the murrey and rummaging in one of her pouches. “Not for me, nor for you. I only know what I learned from Ailfinn.”
The mention of the Prydion’s name gave him pause. “The mage Rhuddlan has summoned to Carn Merioneth, you know her?”