The nymph laughed. “No self-respecting nymph shares her name so easily, champion. There is power in a name, power I do not wish to give.”
The nymph would offer her body but not her name. She was a magical creature not much different from the reptile he had just killed. Did she have a soul? A heart?
“We must be on guard for the witch,” he said.
Again, the nymph laughed. “She is surely long gone by now. She cannot face the three of us and win. Together we have the power to stop her, and so she will hide like the coward she truly is.”
“Perhaps.”
When they reached the shore where Rayne waited, he placed the nymph on her feet. Here, in front of another woman, she would likely be more circumspect.
The nymph walked toward Rayne and offered a hand, as if to assist her from her saddle. “Come,” she said. “I have offered our champion my body as thanks, but he hesitates. Perhaps if you join us, he will agree.” She closed her eyes and breathed deep. “I smell him in you, as I smell you on him. With the nastiness of the witch’s creature behind us, we should enjoy the remainder of the night as men and women were meant to do.”
“I... I...” Rayne said, ignoring the offered hand.
“Come now, you must share,” the nymph said. “What are you, lady, that you can move water aside?”
A ribbon of warning crawled up Lyr’s spine. This creature would not even reveal her name, and yet she asked prying questions.
Rayne opened her mouth but did not have time to speak before Lyr said, “Her father was a wizard. He taught her many tricks.”
The nymph turned away from Rayne and looked at him hard. For the first time, he saw something he did not like in her blue eyes. “Moving water is not a trick, my lord, it is magic. Real, powerful magic.” She forgot Rayne and walked to him, her bare feet getting muddy on the sloppy banks of the swamp, her nipples tightening as she grinned at him. She pressed her body to his. “Come and take your lover from me, if you dare,” she called. “None can resist a forest nymph, not even one as staunch and determined as this one. One touch and he is mine. You can watch, lady, or you can join us, but you cannot stop me from taking that which I want.”
Lyr tried to set the nymph away, but she was as slippery as the reptilian creature he had killed and her arms snaked around him as she ground her body against his. She was unnaturally strong, her grip was solid, and she was as much a creature as the thing he had just killed. “Come, lover,” she whispered. “Let us show your timid woman what sex can be when passion is unleashed.”
He would freeze time and step away, but his arms were pinned down, and as long as the nymph was touching him, she would be unaffected by his magic. He had learned early on that whatever or whoever he touched when he called upon his gift moved with him as others were frozen in time. As he began to work free of the nymph’s grasp, she slithered down his body and placed her open mouth against his penis. He wanted nothing to do with this unnatural creature, but his baser instincts responded. Beneath his trousers he grew hard, and she laughed with her mouth opening against the telling swell. A rush of lust, uncontrolled, leapt in his body, and in his mind he could see the nymph beneath him, he could feel himself inside her.
The vision in his mind was not his own, he realized, but was one she had somehow planted there.
The thing who was on her knees in the mud clasped one of his hands with her own, and her lips moved against him, but her grip was not as strong as it had once been. The nymph thought he was in her grasp in yet another way, that he would not dare move away. Lyr pushed away the visions she tried to force upon him, he stepped back quickly and waved his hand over her golden head, and everything stopped.
Rayne had dismounted, and she stood near the horses with an expression of dismay and petulance etched onto her face. Muddy and disheveled, she still managed to look like a proper lady, and all he could think of was how she’d wrapped her body around his last night. She was a real woman, with a fine soul and a big heart, and she was mightily annoyed with him.
The nymph remained on her knees in the muck, and he left her in that position as he fetched a bit of rope from his saddlebag and quickly bound her hands and ankles. He’d felt her strength and knew that she’d eventually be able to free herself, but by that time he and Rayne would be far away from this place. Maybe the witch would find her before then, but that was no longer his concern. She was not an innocent to be saved but a magical creature who would have to fend for herself for survival.
When the nymph was snuggly bound, Lyr waved his hand to set time into motion once again.
Rayne knew what he could do, she understood what had happened, and yet she still looked startled when time moved forward and the scene before her had changed.
“We should go before the witch decides to strike,” Lyr said, moving toward Rayne and the horses.
Rayne snorted. Again, her expression was one of disgust.
The nymph screamed. “What have you done? Release me!”
He ignored the naked and bound woman and gave Rayne his attention. “This episode has cost us much time,” he explained. “If the witch is nearby...”
“You are a dolt.”
No doubt she was speaking of his brief encounter with the nymph. Perhaps she had seen his physical response and misinterpreted what it meant. “I stopped time and walked away,” he said indignantly. “I don’t know many men who would’ve done the same.”
“Only anyone with a brain,” she retorted.
“We had to save the nymph from the witch. There’s no reason to be angry. In her own way she was only trying to...”
The nymph, still struggling, began to laugh harshly. He glanced at her to see that she was using her unnatural fire to burn away the rope he’d used to bind her.
“She is the witch,” Rayne said sharply, “and the fact that you can’t see that for yourself means you are a simpleton or else she somehow blinded you to the obvious with a spell.”
“Yet you can see,” he said, angry with himself for not even suspecting the possibility.
“I suspect a good portion of her magic only works on men.” She followed that statement with a snort. “Those ropes won’t hold her for very long, I suspect.”
“Mind your own business,” the nymph whispered as she tried to ignite a small flame on the knotted rope at her wrists.
“They’ll hold her a while longer,” Lyr said. “Time enough for us to move on.”
Rayne apparently did not trust his word, not where the witch was concerned. She glanced up, and with her newly discovered powers she called down the branches of a nearby willow tree. This time she did not need to thrust her hands into the mud or sing. She concentrated on the tree, and Lyr watched as those supple limbs wrapped tightly around Beatrisa’s naked body.
“What magic is this?” the witch screamed. “How dare you turn my swamp against me?”
“Just in case,” Rayne said as she turned away and climbed swiftly into the saddle.
Lyr remounted. Like Rayne, he ignored the curses and pleas of the witch Beatrisa. Only a few hours more, and they would be out of the swamp entirely. Taking this route had saved them many days so he could not be sorry for the choice, but he could not wait to drop his boots onto truly solid ground again.
They reentered the water, which was tough to travel through but less treacherous than the sloping, slippery bank. The creatures, all of them no doubt at Beatrisa’s command, had gone silent and still. Maybe they were called to her to help. Maybe she had her mind on other matters, like freeing herself. Whatever the reason, he was glad for the respite, such as it was.
As they slogged forward, he said to Rayne, “It seems no one can be trusted.” Not Segyn, not a beautiful woman seemingly in distress... no one.
“I trust you,” Rayne said simply and honestly. “Perhaps I can rely on no one else, not until this war is over but I do trust you, Lyr.”
His heart sank, and he felt more a traitor than he had when he’d gone hard with Beatris
a’s mouth over his cock and her visions of lust in his head. “Don’t,” he said softly. “Don’t trust even me.” In the distance the howl which had haunted this night came again.
Chapter Thirteen
Phelan came upon the witch when the sky was touched with gray. He was close behind his prey, but the fact that they were horsed and he was not did not work in his favor. No matter how hard he tried, he could not catch them. Seeing the witch, bound unnaturally as she was, only angered him. He’d been running most of the night, splashing in muddy waters, fed and protected by the unnatural energy of the Isen Demon. And still, he had not caught them.
For hours he’d been oddly optimistic that at any moment he might come across the witch Beatrisa and two unconscious victims, but instead he found the witch trapped much as he had been, caught up in the limbs of a tree which served Ciro’s bride.
Beatrisa had attempted to burn away the limbs and had been successful in some cases, but she’d also scorched herself here and there during the inexact process. The beautiful witch was clearly frustrated when Phelan found her caught in twisted limbs, covered with mud and spots of burned flesh and cursing more loudly and vividly than any Circle Warrior he had ever heard.
The witch instantly recognized Phelan as one of the demon’s servants. “Release me,” she commanded confidently.
Phelan stood a few feet away and studied her. “You worthless bitch, you’ve failed miserably at the one task you were given. Why should I waste my precious time freeing you?”
Her answer was to send a weak spit of fire his way, a bit of flame he easily sidestepped. The spark fell to damp ground and sputtered before extinguishing with a gentle pop.
“How long have they been gone?”
“I don’t know,” she said as she struggled. “I almost had the man where I wanted him, and then the next thing I know, I am tightly bound and separated from him by several feet.”
“He stopped time,” Phelan explained. “You should’ve seen that trick coming, you pitiful hag.”
“He should’ve been mine,” she whispered.
“Perhaps you overestimated your charms,” Phelan said as he examined her naked body beneath the twist of limbs.
Beatrisa’s cold glare made clear what she thought of his statement, but then she ignored it and continued on. “It was the woman who called my own tree down to bind me with its limbs. I would’ve been free hours ago if not for that bit of magic. She parted the water with her breath, and called upon these limbs to bind me. What manner of witch is she?”
“I’m not sure,” Phelan responded. A powerful one, one the Isen Demon wished to use for himself.
Beatrisa lifted her pretty blue eyes to him, beautiful eyes which concealed her age and her hate and her dark magic. Perhaps she didn’t realize that through the demon which connected them, he knew her well. She’d used those eyes and her fine body to seduce many a man to his death, and she was foolish enough to think they would work on him. “Free me, and I will reward you well.”
Phelan laughed loudly. “I have no need of your reward.” He remembered Gwyneth and for a moment wished that he had not killed her. When he had his own army, he’d need women, too. He should’ve made her his slave instead of strangling her. He should’ve kept her for a while.
Beatrisa closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I smell my sister on you. You should’ve waited for me, if your aging body only allows for one hard cock a month. I’m much more desirable than she. I’m prettier, I’m smoother, and I know tricks that would make poor Gwyneth blush to her toes.”
She was trying to get a rise out of him, one way or another. “I killed your sister when I was done with her.”
Beatrisa smiled. “All the more reason to free me and take me with you.”
He didn’t have time to worry about this pathetic, useless creature. He walked past the witch, following the path Lyr and the woman had taken. Eventually Beatrisa would manage to free herself. If not, she’d tire and the crocs would get her. “I haven’t the time to waste on a miserable failure such as you.”
She screamed as he walked away. He found her reaction amusing. Phelan plodded through the swamp for a while and then he ran, splashing through the shallow water, his eyes focused straight ahead. He had been entrusted with a very important task, and unlike the witch he’d left behind, he would not fail.
Even the snakes kept their distance, as if they sensed that he was more dangerous than any of them.
***
Rayne had never been so happy to see sunlight as she was when the sun rose over the last of the swamplands. With the sun came hope. With light came promise. With this day came welcome solid ground.
She still had not forgiven Lyr, not entirely. He hadn’t succumbed to the nymph’s blatant attentions, but for a moment, a very long moment, there had been an expression on his face that she wished to be reserved only for her. It was an expression that spoke of need and promised pleasure, of burning desire and uncontrollable yearning. Of lust. She had seen that expression in his eyes before, and foolishly she had thought it meant more than a man’s easy arousal.
If she had not been there, watching as the witch tried to seduce him, would he have succumbed to her wicked spell? Would he have lain with the nymph in the mud and muck, amid the decay of the swamp?
She could not answer that question with any authority, and that concerned her. Lyr said she could not trust even him. Was he right in that statement? Was she more alone than she imagined?
Rayne tried to push the disappointment out of her mind. With everything that had happened in the world of late, her apparent poor choice in love was of little consequence. It wasn’t as if Lyr had promised her anything, it wasn’t as if he’d sworn undying love to get what he wanted from her. Quite the opposite. He seemed determined to make her accept the fact that he did not care for her in any way other than the physical. Even more so since he’d been forced to kill Segyn.
His tense features seemed to ease a bit as they moved onto drier land. She suspected he would never know true ease again, that he had indeed been burned by the betrayal of his friend, but she was glad to see the hardness of his jaw diminish a bit, she was glad to see his fine mouth not so firmly set, at least for a while. She wanted to take his face in her hands and tell him again that she loved him, to see the expression of longing that was hers, and hers alone.
She longed, so desperately, to know him in a time when there was no war, no mission, no duty to drive him forward. She longed to hold him without feeling as if every moment they shared was stolen. She suspected that what she longed for was desperately and irrevocably out of her reach.
By midmorning they were leading their mounts across tall grasses, not sloppy marshlands or endless puddles of muddy water. No reptilian creatures would be hiding beneath the grass, not the way they hid in the water of the swamplands. Yes, she much preferred solid ground. The skirt Gwyneth had given her was muddy at the hem, but still in better condition than the blue traveling dress she’d stuffed into one saddle bag.
When Lyr indicated with a rise of his hand that it was time to stop to rest the horses, Rayne dismounted smoothly, dropped to her knees, bent forward, and kissed the ground. It was an impulse she gave into without question, and when the soft grass tickled her cheeks and the scent of dirt filled her nose, she was not sorry. She remained there, face against the ground. She didn’t care how she might look to Lyr.
Earth Goddess, Gwyneth had said. She still didn’t believe that could be true. Perhaps she did possess some magic, inherited through her father and perhaps even through her mother. She did have a special connection with the land and things which grew upon it. Maybe she would even admit that it was possible she was a natural born witch of sorts, but Goddess? Goddesses were not of this earth, she was certain, so how was it possible?
A voice whispered to her, and though it had been years since she’d heard that voice, she knew it was her mother who spoke to her as she pressed her face to the ground.
“Yo
u are a keeper of the land, and very much of this earth.”
Rayne held her breath and listened closely for more amid the long grass and sweetly scented soil. She needed sleep, her mind was spinning, and yet she knew that what she’d heard had not been her imagination or an illusion. After all these years, her mother spoke to her.
“You are his keeper, too,” the voice whispered, and at that, Rayne lifted her head to watch as Lyr gave his attention to the horses. She had no doubt about the subject of her mother’s insistence, but the Prince of Swords was a man who did not need or want a keeper.
“His heart needs a keeper, a healer.”
She sat up and watched Lyr, who gave the horses his full attention. He stroked their necks, checked their limbs, whispered to the animals words of thanks for leading them through the swamp. None could match him in battle, but there was more to life than swords and war. Even in war, life continued on. Perhaps he did need a keeper of sorts. Perhaps that keeper was her.
She knew the precise moment her mother’s spirit left her. It was as if a physical presence departed. How many times over the years had her mother attempted to speak to her? Why had she never learned to listen? The dark energy of her father’s house had interfered, perhaps, because here in the meadow so far away, wearing another woman’s clothes and more than a little covered in mud, she heard very well.
Her fingers touched the gem at her chest, her mother’s gem. If her father’s pieces of gold jewelry held on to darkness, as Lyr had suggested, maybe this piece contained light.
Rayne sat on the soft ground, happy to be connected to the solid soil and glad to be surrounded by tall, soft grasses. A yellow butterfly lighted on her hand, and she smiled. Another followed, this one smaller and a bit brighter in color than the first. In spite of all that was happening, she couldn’t help but smile. Yes, life went on even in the midst of war.
Lyr spun around quickly, drawing his sword smoothly and moving toward her with haste. A heartbeat later than he, Rayne heard what had alarmed him. A footstep and a labored breath.
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