Bloodstone

by Johannes, Helen C.

  His body stirred at the thought of her scent warm and slick on his fingers. Hardened at the thought of dark, honey-colored woman’s hair moist against his palm. Stirred and hardened even though he knew why she came, and what visions of paradise she would offer him before she vanished—and he awoke throbbing with need. If only he could wake now, before...but he had no more will this time than he’d had a hundred times before.

  Skin the color of milky quartz, hair as luminous and golden brown as polished lion-eye, eyes the twin blue stars in Kiros’s belt, she glided toward him. A shimmering white gown flowed sensuously with the movements of her hips and thighs. Each step parted the gown over a length of alabaster thigh. His mouth went dry, and heat pooled in his groin as she closed the space between them. All the while she looked at him, and there was nothing between his eyes and hers, nothing but a hand’s breadth of air.

  He groaned, riven with an ache both pleasure and pain. Her breath drifted across his collarbone and the slowly closing space between their bodies. Then, somehow, his world cart-wheeled and, when he opened his eyes again, she was lying beneath him on a bed of golden furs, her arms stretched above her head, the white under-skin incandescent against the wild array of her hair. Her thighs, long, cool, and as smooth as polished limestone, twined themselves around the leg he’d parted them with. Her eyes, molten blue, fixed on his while she slowly rotated her hips. His breath caught in his throat. Blood hummed in his ears. He leaned into her, pressed himself hard against the bone cradling her femininity, yearning to hold her a moment longer, to hang onto the dream before it dissipated—again—and he was left with nothing but the memory. And the pain.

  By Koronolan and Kiros, stay with me...please!

  As if in answer to his unspoken plea, her gown parted at the touch of his fingers and, like water, slid from her breasts.

  Desire rocked through him like a hammer’s blow, stealing his breath at the sudden and unexpected gift. One part of his consciousness knew the dream had changed, and wondered why. The rest merely stared, drunk with the vision of breasts round and white and as delicately veined as marble. Their crowning aureoles and firm mauve peaks seemed to beg for the caress of his fingers. Stretching out a hand, he reverently touched a fingertip to first one nipple, then the other.

  Instantly, a shudder convulsed her body. A look as of pain pulled her lips from her teeth. Her body arched upward and her breasts grazed his chest. Dizzy, he reached for her, hungry for her nakedness, hungry for the touch of skin to skin. His arms closed on nothing.

  The man blinked toward the late afternoon sun, seeing it without comprehending. The sensual fog filling his brain left him stuporous, heavy with the blood engorging his groin and flushing his skin. He looked down, saw his boots and realized he’d dozed where he sat. The flat stone beneath him gnawed at the base of his spine. He told himself to concentrate on the dull ache, hoping if he kept his focus, it might ease the desolation already coiling like a viper around his heart.

  The despair broad-sided him anyway, like a sword he should have seen but didn’t, even though he knew it was raised against him. Every time she came to him—and vanished—it was the same. Except this time.

  He bit back a groan. This time it was worse. Much worse, because she’d offered him more, and then stolen it all away.

  He caught his lower lip between his teeth and hunched over folded arms, trying to hold the pain, his agony—everything—within. He tasted iron, and knew the warmth trickling down his chin wasn’t sweat. The realization, and the blood, made him gag. His hands balled into fists, fists of leather and flesh.

  Flesh that will never see the light of day!

  A snarl curled his lips from his teeth. His jaws ground together, and the cords of his neck stood out.

  There will be no woman—ever—who will look at you the way a woman looks at a man. You aren’t a man. You’re nothing but a shadow. A denizen of the night, doomed to kill her if she ever sees you...unveiled.

  He stood and gasped for air. His chest seemed constricted, as if bound by too tight armor, and he could draw nothing in. Lightheaded, he wavered at the edge of the sandstone outcrop.

  A subtle movement to his left brought his vision instantly into focus. Twenty strides away, where the level patch on which he stood tapered to a point, the she-cat lounged on a sun-drenched, lichen-covered rock and stared at him.

  Chapter Ten

  Sweat bloomed on the man’s chest and broke out in beads on his upper lip. His lungs still burned, but he dared not fill them with more than shallow breaths. The lion was too close. Even though it seemed relaxed, lying with ankles crossed as daintily as any highborn lady, the feline’s powerful hindquarters could propel it with such speed the animal would be on him before he could run ten steps.

  The she-cat rolled slightly onto her shoulders, raising one huge forepaw. The action revealed a breast patch of snow-white fur, the color a startling contrast to the tawny of the animal’s outer coat. Eyes still fixed on the man, she lowered her head, angled her chin against her chest, and began to groom herself.

  The rasp of her tongue, dragging leisurely across her fur, sounded overloud in the man’s ears. He stared, mesmerized by the slow, steady strokes and the unwavering gaze of hooded, yellow-green eyes. With difficulty, his thoughts formed the questions that had lingered like brooding embryos at the back of his mind since he’d first seen the cat.

  Who are you? What do you want with me?

  As if in response, the she-cat paused, a tip of tongue showing dark pink against the black line of her lip. Her mouth opened, the tongue curled, and she yawned, exposing all of her teeth. Lowering her head again, she returned to her grooming. The luminescent yellow-green eyes, though, maintained their unblinking regard.

  A frisson of awareness traveled the length of the man’s spine. The look, the actions, though catlike, gnawed at the edges of his memory. I know you, don’t I?

  The lion paused again. One black-tipped ear twitched a fly away. The luminescent gaze remained unwavering.

  Under its steady bombardment, he wondered if the animal was staring not at him but somehow through him, through the protective layers of his clothing, through the web of his thoughts, through everything he had become...to something buried...

  “—Do you know me? Or do you only think that you do?—”

  The reply rooted the man’s feet to the ground. The quivering had gone out of his legs, and his lungs no longer burned. Although a corner of his mind screamed warning, his muscles refused to mount any defense. A kind of languor had stolen into them, rendering him powerless to pull away, powerless to do anything but remember...

  He was howling like an enraged beast, and crashing forward as the spell broke, falling and cutting his hands on the stone, feeling nothing, not the searing heat or the jagged edges. He was howling for Errek, for big, loyal, lovesick Errek who trusted him—killed by his hand. By his own bloody hand!

  He stared at it, at the rivulets of dark, glossy red oozing from his fingers and palm and dripping, ever so slowly, into his tunic cuff.

  Somewhere nearby, the mage chortled. “You dragon keepers are such a foolish lot.”

  Jaw clenched, his lips curled into a snarl. “I’ll kill you, Syryk! By all the sons of Koronolan, I swear I’ll kill you!” His knife was gone, but he still had his dagger and his shield. And, not far away, lay the ancient Sword of Drakkonwehr, the stone in the crosspiece shimmering blood red in the waves of heat rising around it.

  With one lunge, he scooped it up.

  His scream was involuntary, a reaction to the metal’s scorching imprint on his raw flesh.

  The Sword clattered to the floor, and the mage laughed again. “You really are amusing, Drakkonwehr, but so pathetically predictable.”

  His vision hazed. The pit took on an orange glow as the cords of his neck tightened. His hand burned, and the heat inside the pit seemed to intensify. He could barely breathe, barely think, barely feel anything except heat.

  And hate.


  He ripped off the right sleeve of his tunic and wound the cloth about his hand. Stooping, he seized the Sword of Drakkonwehr. He straightened while his hand shook with pain at the grip, and the cloth wrapped around it smoked.

  Across the pit, the mage stood with arms widespread over the onyx table. He swayed gently, eyes closed, and chanted words never meant to be said aloud, words written only on a scroll stored deep in the bowels of Drakkonwehr, words that should have remained buried forever:

  “Beggeth beggedon tyrannor mott.

  Ominoth peurinon cauldor keth.

  Beggeth rappanon drakkonnor tor.

  Tyrannoth drakkon ominor et!”

  The mage’s voice reverberated from the surrounding stone, its sound low, hypnotic, inviting.

  Comforting, he thought with a vague sense of surprise as tendrils of spell wove themselves around his consciousness. Gossamer thin, like spider web, they laid down a layer of...nothing...so quickly, he wondered why he was standing in this pit watching a man with outstretched arms and closed eyes murmur sounds that made no sense.

  He wondered, too, why he should be watching an amber-haired woman beside the table until, with graceful movements, she slid the white cloak from her shoulders and let it fall into a shimmering heap about her ankles.

  Awareness slammed into him like an axe blow, shattering the mind spell. Ayliss! his mind messaged.

  Her emerald eyes locked with his. I’m going to ride the dragon. The look on her face was hard, determined. And nothing you can do will stop me because I’ve already given Syryk the Chant.

  All around him the Chant echoed, weaving the Dragon Spell, keeping his body in thrall, suspended where he stood.

  Ayliss, why?

  You’re not the only Drakkonwehr.

  I’m the male heir.

  And I’m the female heir. She drew his mind to the necklace she wore, to the glowing black-red stone suspended between her breasts. You were given the Sword, but that’s not enough now, is it? You need these. And this. She gestured to the multiple stones decorating her wrists and forehead, and to the crystal column, pulsing with red, black and green.

  She raised her chin, holding it high while her eyes flashed green fire. Koronolan couldn’t ride the Dragon. No Drakkonwehr since has dared to try. But I will. I will!

  The Dragon Chant vibrated around him, the volume building, each syllable a physical force that lapped like a rising tide against his body, his mind. He was drowning, suffocating, dying—along with the world he knew, the world Koronolan and every son after him had been charged to protect by guarding the one thing that could destroy it, the beast entombed in Drakkonwehr.

  —Illusion, remember? Don’t believe everything you see. Or hear—

  He started, his mind flying to Ayliss. Her eyes glanced from him to the chanting mage and back again. Something flickered in the emerald depths. Fear? Uncertainty? A moment of doubt? Don’t believe everything you see! echoed in his mind.

  He wanted to believe she was an illusion, that none of this was true—her thievery, betrayal, greed—but his second sight told him she was flesh and blood this time, and his heart—well, his heart was a fool!

  Liar! Traitor!

  Her eyes closed as a wave of what seemed like pain contorted her features. When her lids lifted, her face had altered. The look she fixed on him was infinitely sad. And every line of it spoke of parting.

  —I still trust you, Durren. Help me...if you can—

  Her hand, cradling the stone between her breasts, closed on it. The knuckles whitened and, as he watched, transfixed, blood squirted between her clenched fingers. In unison, the stones about her forehead and wrists melted. Streaks of black-red blood trickled down her face and arms. With a ghost of a smile gracing her lips, her eyelids drifted shut and she slid, as delicately as her cloak had, to the stone floor...

  “Ayliss,” the man whispered as the vision faded. Emotions roiled in his chest like waves in a storm, threatening to swamp him. He clenched his eyes shut and held his jaw firm against their surges. Even so, a glimmer of something squeezed between his defenses and nudged at him until, oddly dry-mouthed, he opened his eyes and looked toward the lion.

  “Are you—?”

  The lichen-covered rock was vacant.

  The man spun, raking with wild, frantic glances the ledge, the trees above, the campsite below, the entire rock-studded clearing...but the lion had vanished.

  Sweat drenched his tunic. The breeze, active in the lengthening shadows, crawled up his back. Shivers racked his body, long, violent shivers that started with the clack of his teeth and ended with spasms in his thighs. He stumbled to the rock and flung himself down beside it, pawing through the moss, lichen, gravel for some sign the vision had been real, that the lion was only that—a lion.

  Near his knee, he spied a bit of cream-colored fuzz. He pounced on it, held it up to the lowering sun and rolled it through his gloved fingers. Tiny kernels within revealed it as the seed cotton of a meadow weed.

  Fresh sweat oozed from his pores. Black dots danced on the fringes of his vision while he told himself the lack of fur wasn’t a true sign. The ground was too rocky to leave prints, and a lion didn’t shed every time it cleaned itself. Still, a sense of dread settled like a rock into the pit of his stomach.

  If it isn’t a lion, then it’s magic, said the Voice in his head.

  The man closed his eyes. Not magic. The mages are dead. The last one died at Drakkonwehr.

  Errek was dead, too. And Ayliss. This...beast wasn’t Ayliss, no matter how much he might wish she hadn’t died, no matter how much he might wish she hadn’t betrayed her Drakkonwehr heritage. These occurrences were only dreams, the consequences of refusing to sate the needs of his—no, he amended with a deliberate shiver—the needs of Durren Drakkonwehr’s flesh at Ar-Deneth. The last Drakkonwehr was as good as dead, too. Destroyed along with the Stone Dam at Herrok-Eneth.

  The man stared at his gloved hands and fabric-covered arms. This body was only Durren’s shell, black-wrapped and hollow. Void of everything that made a man...a man. With a shudder, he curled his hands into fists. Void of everything—everything but the damned memories!

  That was YOUR choice, the Voice in his head said.

  And it’s a choice I’ll make again! Shaking off another chill, the man strode off the ledge and clambered down the hillside toward Ghost and the pack horses.

  That might explain the untimely visit of your lovely fantasy woman, but what about the lion?

  The man froze, his hand stretched toward the pack mare’s lame leg. Sweat cooled along his spine, raising the fine hairs there. The beast was far from ordinary, even for the Wehrland where strangeness abounded. What if—what if it were...magic?

  No. Too many years had passed. The destruction had been complete. True, he’d survived, but that had been due to—his mouth twisted—Syryk’s foresight. Still, if the mage had ‘saved’ him, couldn’t the mage have saved...something else?

  The question impelled the man to turn toward Ghost, to slide his fingers through the stallion’s mane, walk past the gray muzzle that lipped his tunic sleeve, and continue to his saddle where it lay on the ground. Bending, he ripped open a pouch fastened to the back and thrust his hand inside.

  A piece of metal presented itself to his palm, and his fingers curled automatically around its scrolled length. Ah, yes. Sparks dotted his vision, and he remembered to breathe. Chagrinned by his fear, he waited for the giddiness to pass, then withdrew the object from his saddlebag.

  Late afternoon sunlight glowed golden from the curved metal shielding his thumb on one side and his knuckles on the other. Sunshine gleamed like water from a broad, flat pillar rising two hands’ span from curving hand guards, and glinted once from the raw edge of the broken summit.

  He sat back on his haunches, marveling at the balance of a sword that, even broken, still fit his hand like an extension of his arm and moved as though mere thought propelled it. It turned now, angling itself so the dull, black-red stone emb
edded in the crosspiece was fully exposed to his gaze.

  As if compelled, he lifted his thumb and rubbed the pad of it across the stone. “Bluet drakkenoth, ominor ay rhoenon pek,” slid from his tongue like a long forgotten childhood rhyme.

  A chill raised the hairs on his body as he recognized the ancient sounds of Shadowspeech, the tongue of Kiros. Another chill prickled through him as the meaning of the words echoed in his mind: Drop of dragon’s blood, show me what there is to fear.

  He had only seconds to marvel at how the words, so long buried, came so easily to his tongue. Only seconds, before he heard the sounds of...whistling? He spun to his feet, taking in the whole of the campsite in the motion, observing now with panic what he should have noted before, the vacant space amid the sacks of grain. “Gareth,” he breathed, pivoting once more, this time toward the sound.

  He spotted the boy, his sandy head and rust-colored tunic bobbing along a deer path cut through the meadow below. Whistling, the boy tapped the way with his staff, two full water sacks weighing down one bony shoulder.

  The man frowned. It wasn’t the boy he had to fear, was it? No, it had to be the lion.

  Sweat oozed from his temples and trickled down his face, gluing his hood to it. He licked his upper lip and searched the edge of the rocky clearing for telltale signs of movement.

  “Bluet drakkenoth, ominor ay rhoenon pek,” he repeated, flexing his fingers on the broken sword’s hilt. A force he hadn’t felt in years drew his gaze inexorably back toward the boy—and fastened it on a patch of briars twenty strides below the path. There, in the center, a branch moved languorously to and fro, its rhythm entirely unrelated to that of the breeze.

  “Gareth!” The man hurdled his saddle and charged down the slope.

  He was running, sliding, falling when he saw the feline burst from a honeysuckle bush to his left. Ears laid back, body a tawny blur of limbs, the she-cat streaked toward the boy.

  “No!” The man flailed out, fell, rolled over broken rock that gouged into his shoulder. The pain bit the edge off his panic. He rolled again, twisting this time so his boot soles rammed into a hummock. He shoved against the impact, catapulting himself upright and forward.