by Tara Janzen
Taking her hand in his, he kissed her fingers. His mouth was soft and partly open, suffusing her skin with warmth—and she knew he’d fared no better than she with their half-day separation.
Outside, the battle still raged. The Bridge of Knells had fallen, and the north wall was under attack, but the priestesses had only begun to prepare for the coming of the time worms, and Avallyn would spend what time there was with him. The battle outside was not hers to fight, not on this day.
Without releasing her hand, he rose to his feet, his gaze meeting hers with a fierce ardor ameliorated only by the gentleness of his touch.
“Are you well?” he asked, and Avallyn knew ’twas no simple question.
“Aye,” she answered. “With you by my side, I am well.”
Relief softened his gaze, and he shifted his attention to her mother.
“Lady Palinor.” He addressed her with a short bow. “I believe this is yours.” He loosed the leather bag at his belt and offered it with an open hand.
Palinor gestured for the nearest acolyte to come forward and take the bag. The girl did, and at the priestess’s next command, she loosened the ties. When she’d finished with the knot, the softly cuffed leather fell back and revealed the dragon statue in all its golden glory.
“Ddrei Goch,” Palinor breathed, reaching out to take hold of the statue, obviously surprised.
She turned the dragon in her hand, letting the sunlight that streamed through the window glance off its gleaming reddish gold curves.
“ ’Tis indeed Claerwen’s,” Palinor said after a thorough examination of the statue. “Taken from us months past and, after many months more, resurfacing in Sonnpur-Dzon Monastery.” She lifted a mocking gaze to Morgan’s face. “We thank you for its return... prince.” The word fell like lead from her mouth.
’Twas no more gracious an acknowledgment than Avallyn would have expected from Palinor.
An easy smile curved Morgan’s mouth. “ ’Tis a small price to pay for all I’ve taken that I cannot, and will not, return,” he said, meeting her mother’s eyes with his unflinching gaze, and holding it until a rose-shaded hint of color washed into the older woman’s face.
“Prince,” Palinor said in a less haughty tone, lowering her eyes with the slightest bow of her head. Her hands tightened on the statue as she shifted her attention to Avallyn. For a moment, it looked as if she would say more, but then she signaled for her acolytes and, with another brief bow, swept from the hall.
Morgan dismissed the Sept riders and Aja with a glance. The riders obeyed without question, Aja after a moment’s hesitation, leaving only the two of them and a dozen servants in the hall.
Avallyn felt her heart beating in her chest. He took her hand again and lifted it to his lips for a fervent kiss and a taste of her skin.
“I must be alone with you,” he murmured. “Where are your quarters?”
“These are my quarters,” she told him. “All of Severn Hall.”
Drawing her closer, he glanced at the high timbered ceilings and the white stone walls, carved columns, and vaulted arches.
“It’s very nice, milady,” he assured her with a smile, “but does it have a bedroom? Preferably one not crawling with servants?”
“Aye.” A blush blossomed on her cheeks, and his smile broadened.
“ ’Tis my fondest wish, cariad, to make you blush like that all over. Take me to your private chamber.”
With his hand in hers, she led the way to a timbered staircase that curved upward to an intricately carved wooden balcony, the whole of it overlooking the hall. The door at the top was open, until they crossed the threshold, whereupon Morgan closed it behind them, threw the lock, and took her into his arms.
His mouth came down on her hers, sweetly insistent, teasing her lips with soft breaths and gentle bites, while his body pressed fully against her, urging her back against the door and letting her feel the hard ridge of his arousal. The heat and weight of him sent a wave of longing crashing through her. She opened her mouth wider beneath his, and he deepened the kiss, the sweetness dissipating into a devouring need.
She arched against him, wanting to be closer, loving the taste of him, letting it suffuse her senses and swirl through her on the twining tendrils of his past. He’d been kissed before, thousands of times. Ancient impressions of his pleasure seeped into her, heightening her own arousal, which she gave back to heighten his.
“Gods,” he said on a sharply indrawn breath, breaking their kiss. “You’re doing something again. I can feel it.”
“Women have loved kissing you.” The words were whispered across his skin.
“A few,” he admitted, running his hands down and around her hips and pulling her tighter against him.
“They have loved touching you... everywhere.”
Aye, he’d have to agree with that, but truly she was light-years ahead of him. He didn’t want to think beyond the one woman in his arms and how good she felt.
“Are you deep-scenting me again?” he asked, concerned enough to ask, but truly too distracted to care overly much.
“Nay, just skimming the surface of your kiss, tracing your pleasures back to their source and stealing them for myself.”
“Ahh,” he murmured. She was welcome to the pleasures of his past, all of them, for they paled in comparison to the pleasures of his present. He bunched her white priestess gown up around her waist and slid his hands beneath it. A low groan escaped him. “You’re naked again.”
“Aye,” she said and laid a damp path of kisses from his chin to his ear, her teeth grazing his jaw. In a matching move, she slid her hand down the front of his pants and slowly, inexorably set him on fire.
His breathing grew rougher. One-handed, he released the buckle on his belt, letting it clatter to the floor as he tore open the zipseam of his fly. She found him with her hand and made her palm a hot, silken-skinned sheath for him to pump into, but even that delight could not assuage his greater need to bury himself so deep inside her he was lost.
“Wrap your legs around me,” he ground out, lifting her higher on the door and fitting himself to the slick, magical place between her legs. He held himself there, only pushed partway inside, and let her set the pace. She went so agonizingly slowly, he had to grit his teeth to keep from pushing into her harder, faster.
“Morgan,” she sighed, when he was hardly more than halfway inside. Her head fell back, exposing the long, elegant line of her throat, every part of her body telling him what she wanted, what she needed. Her hands gripped his shoulders. Her mouth was open, her breath coming in short gasps.
Women were the loveliest, most exquisitely sensitive creatures God ever put on the earth, and Morgan was most exquisitely in tune with the one on the verge of coming in his arms. Though he was surprised with how little of him she’d taken, he wanted nothing more than to give her exactly what she needed. He slowly ground his hips against hers, giving her the gentle, sweet loving she was primed to take, and he watched her face, taking note when her lashes fluttered, when her teeth bit down on her lower lip.
A moan was dragged up from deep in her chest, and he began the same moves again... and again... and again, until she was whimpering and he was sizzling with gut-wrenching need.
Despite the release he craved, he let her take her time and only as much of him as she wanted. His reward was worth the strain. When she came, she came so sweetly, her soft cry echoing in his ears, a rosy blush flashing across her skin, and all those wondrously rippling contractions cascading down his shaft, making him harder than granite.
When she would have gone bonelessly limp in his arms, he thrust into her deeper, keeping her back against the door and her weight on him, letting her know there was more, that there was someplace else he wanted to take her. Her gasp this time was more of surprise than pleasure, and mayhaps a bordering edge of discomfort, but he knew enough not to hurt her, and he knew how to take her where he wanted to go.
He began with long, even strokes, feeling h
er lush softness envelop him on every thrust. He kept his mouth and hands on her, moving over her, breathing her in and kissing her every place his lips touched. ’Twas a madness of the most wondrous kind, the sweet fire she ignited in his loins. He pumped into her again and again, until he was mindless, his body running on pure instinct and need, her soft cries urging him on. When he felt the first tense pressure of his orgasm, he locked his mouth over hers and probed her deeply with his tongue, mimicking the carnal rhythm he set with his hips, pushing her higher with each thrust, and pushing himself closer to the edge. She tightened around him and went wild in his arms, bucking against him, her low groan giving him the fiercest satisfaction.
Holding her in the vise of his arms, he plunged into her, forcing her one step higher, then another, claiming her with every pulsing second of her release, until he could take no more and came in his own fierce hot rush, pouring himself inside her, giving her everything he had. By the time he finished, he was shaking. His mind was cloudy with the erotic haze of the aftermath, making it impossible to think. All he could do was kiss her face and whisper her name, over and over.
It took a tremendous amount of effort to make it to her green bower of a bed, but when they’d collapsed together onto it and cocooned themselves amidst her blankets and pillows, Morgan felt the results were worth the price. They were warm and safe. He was wearily sated down to the depths of his soul, and she was in his arms.
The bed itself fascinated him, partly because it was hers, partly because of how it had been made. ’Twas oak carved with runic inscriptions and plants of every kind. Sheathed leaves of grass twined upward from clusters of flowers cut into the bed’s feet. Pinecone finials graced its high posts, which were in turn draped with gossamer lengths of sheer green silk embroidered with leaves, each one different. ’Twas a bed fit for a half-faerie princess, and the thief who loved her.
Chapter 21
“And here is where the mark of Ammon lies, one of the runes of refuge,” Avallyn said, putting her finger on a three-dimensional map laid out in the anteroom of Severn Hall. The map was a good five feet square, built to scale, and an exact depiction of Wales as Morgan had known it. Beside Morgan, Aja leaned closer to get a better look.
“In the Dragon’s Mouth,” he said, looking down at her upturned face, intrigued. “The runes have actual places of refuge?” He might need refuge in the past. In fact, he could nigh well guarantee it.
“Aye,” she said. “Bes is much farther into the deep dark, past the gates of time and the Magia Wall, in a small cavern northeast of the cave where Stept Agah was born.” Her finger moved across the map. “It’s a crystal cavern. Here.” Her finger stopped on an area of land surrounded on three sides by Mor Sarff, the Serpent Sea.
The words “deep dark” had an ominous sound to them, more so because Morgan had a difficult time imagining being someplace even deeper and darker than where he’d already been. The caverns down through the Canolbarth and past Lanbarrdein into the pryf nest had seemed endless, and yet according to her map, they were only the beginning.
“And Ceiul?”
“Closer to Kryscaven Crater.” Her finger moved again, crossing the Serpent Sea and stopping at a small cavern northwest of the much larger crater marked by a chunk of amethyst—just as in his dream.
“There are no trails into Kryscaven,” he pointed out.
“In each of the rune caverns, there is a marker, and on each marker a lock for which dreamstone crystals are the key. We will unlock the path to Kryscaven Crater with crystal, as we will unlock Nemeton’s celestial sphere with the orbs.”
“More blood?” Morgan asked, disturbed by the prospect.
“Nay.” She shook her head. “Not for the path into Kryscaven. The crystal rods will suffice and are plentiful in the past. Every Quicken-tree Liosalfar warrior has a dreamstone crystal dagger, and crystal by its nature is geometrically consistent. If there are Liosalfar to help us place the keys, all the better. If not, I know the way to each rune marker.”
Which wasn’t going to do him much good.
“Is there a smaller map, a cartographic chart?” he asked. Even if he was going to take her, he’d still want a map. Planning for every contingency had saved him more than once.
“The priestesses will have one in our weir kit.”
Ferrar had a weir kit. Morgan had seen it many times. It always hung from a pouch on her belt: a small stash of chrystaalt and a juice-jacked carbo-bar with enough calories to feed her and Jons for a week. The third component was the encrypted star chart of the galaxy tattooed down Jons’s back, from the base of his skull to his heels. Despite Jons’s size, to Morgan it had never seemed like quite enough to go off traversing time and space with, but then he’d managed with far less.
“How do you know we’ll end up in the right place at the right time?” he asked.
“You left a trail. Once we’re in the wormhole, we’ll catch it and follow it down.”
What could be simpler? he thought, hiding a pained grin. They would just drop down the equivalent of a cosmic cyclone and find the trail he’d left. The only problem was that he didn’t remember leaving any trail, or seeing any the last time he’d been swallowed by a worm.
“What makes you so sure we’ll find this trail?” He didn’t like being skeptical of her meager plan, but he’d put more effort into mapping a crosstown route from Pan-shei to the Southern Quarter.
“Every cell in your body is fine-tuned to the path you left the first time you came through the weir. You are the guide, Morgan.”
So they were back to his cells.
“Milord? Milady?” One of Claerwen’s acolytes paused in the doorway leading into the anteroom. No more than sixteen years old, she had plump curves, a sweet smile, and her eye on his captain, if Morgan wasn’t mistaking the sideways glances he’d seen passing between the two of them all day.
Mayhaps ’twas time for Morgan to have a talk with the boy. Not about the facts of life—Aja was well familiar with those—but priestesses were a different breed, and for certes naught but trouble and frustration when considering what the boy’s expression said he had in mind.
“Yes, Sachi?” Avallyn addressed the girl.
“The High Priestess will see you in her quarters now, milady,” Sachi said with a short bow. “The preparations on the weir platform are nearing completion.”
And so it begins, Morgan thought.
~ ~ ~
The Hall of the High Priestess of Claerwen was a towering edifice of architectural femora. Millions of leg bones had been packed into the mortar of the walls. Thousands more had been cemented together to form the twisting pillars flanking the dais and spiraling up over four stories to a ribbed vault. Desert sunlight fell into the great chamber from the hall’s hundred Gothic windows.
Morgan felt as if he were trapped inside some giant’s bleached skeleton. Everything in the hall was bone white, except for the faces of the fifty or so priestesses waiting for them in formation on the raised dais.
All but one, an ancient crone standing in front of a bone throne, wore white battle uniforms and carried lasguns. The old one stood apart from the rest and wore yellow, a richly embroidered gown of purest saffron. A ragged group of wild boys stood to the priestesses’ right. A small cadre of Night Watchers in black robes stood on the left. All of them knelt when Avallyn stepped up on the dais, all except the old woman.
“Daughter,” the High Priestess said, extending her gnarled, age-spotted hand for Avallyn’s kiss. Her face, like Tamisk’s, was tattooed on one side with blue swirls and runes. Unlike Tamisk’s tattoo, the High Priestess’s was nearly lost in the thin folds of her wrinkles. She was wiry, the bones showing beneath the ancient sack of her skin. Her eyes were a piercing, all-seeing, glacial blue. Even without the identifying robes, Morgan would have known her for what she was—queen of the death-witches.
“Mother,” Avallyn replied, kneeling and pressing her lips to the woman’s ring.
The crone shifted her
gaze to Morgan in the barest acknowledgment of his existence, yet he felt her icy glance like a touch, a rather unpleasant touch.
“The prince?” she asked, returning her attention to Avallyn.
“Aye, Mother.”
“From Stept Agah’s line,” she said, and Morgan realized he’d just been deep-scented again. Tamisk could learn a thing or two from the old woman.
“Aye.”
“The Fata Ranc Le did not tell all, then.”
“Not all, Mother.”
“Rhayne.” The High Priestess uttered the name with obvious dissatisfaction. “She would ever have her surprises. Or do you think she has forgotten what she once knew?”
“Nothing is forgotten in Claerwen,” Avallyn replied.
“No,” the High Priestess confirmed. “But we cannot remember what Ysaia never wrote down, or what her shape-shifting selves have never bothered to tell us. And who is this?” Her gaze moved to Aja, and the boy’s eyes widened, his eyebrows rising nigh into the top of his forehead; Morgan knew he’d just had his first taste of deep-scenting.
Morgan started to answer her question, but she waved him off, obviously having found out all she needed.
“Where is the dragon from Sonnpur-Dzon?” she asked.
“With Palinor,” Morgan said, not particularly caring for the tone of the conversation or her imperious manner. He’d met his share of haughty women, but the crone had an edge to her he didn’t quite trust. He decided to ask a few questions of his own. He was, after all, the Prince of Time, and like every other woman in the room, the High Priestess of Claerwen had waited her whole life for him. He tried not to let the fact go to his head, certain she’d have that very head on a pike if it so suited her, Prince of Time or nay. “What’s in it that’s worth destroying half the Waste for?”
“The Warmonger’s salvation, or so he believed up until Pan-shei,” she replied. “He thought the statue would lead him to real dragons, but ’tis too late for Ddrei Goch and Ddrei Glas to save him.”