My queen. The woman I was born to serve. To protect. To love.
I awaited my role in the wings. I’d be called in after she heard the Prophecy. I wasn’t allowed to be there while the Oracle recited it. The ceremony was shrouded in centuries of tradition, the message meant only for the reigning monarch.
Of course the Oracle had violated that rule, as she did so many others. I knew much of what it foretold. She’d told me. Sometimes she acted as if she herself was the Goddess, or at the very least one of the minor deities. She’d been the dominant presence in my life since the night I first shifted. I both hated and loved her, for the two are simply flip sides of the same coin. The opposite of love is not hate but indifference. That’s what the old lady taught me.
She taught me other things, too, including how to please a woman. Oh, not by any personally administered lessons, thank the gods. Instead, she talked to me about sex, at times shockingly frank. She explained how the female body works, what a woman needs and wants, and more important, the difference between the two. It was far better training for bedding a maiden than most lads in my station received, listening to randy stable boys with their exaggerated tales of conquest.
And I practiced, every chance I got. I became fabled as a passionate lover. Upstairs maids cornered me at the homes of my acquaintances, pulled me into linen closets for a quick fuck. Wealthy matrons who’d been given in marriage years ago to men far too old to satisfy them invited me to weekend-long house parties, with the excuse of introducing me to eligible young ladies. Then they’d sneak into my room at night. I made certain they always left my bed before dawn with smiles on their faces.
I knew my role in this epic drama, one written and produced by the gods for their amusement. For is that not what we all are, simply pieces in a giant game between the powers of good and evil in the Universe? We live and die at their whim.
As for my queen, I’d see her tonight. Soon I’d lie with her. Be her lover. The Oracle told me so. That’s why she’d been teaching me.
I’d play my part. Claim my queen. And thereby claim my destiny.
Chapter Four
Melisandre
Soon the rutted path narrowed. We left the two royal guards who had taken turns driving the carriage behind and continued on foot.
I followed Antonius with my eyes cast downward for fear I’d turn an ankle on the rock-strewn ground. When he stopped, I nearly walked right into him.
“You must go alone from here.”
The path curved out of sight between two enormous boulders, wide enough for only one person at a time. It was growing dark, but my way ahead was lit with a dull reddish glow. I glanced around nervously, remembering all too well how the place of my dreams spouted geysers of fire, how the earth cracked open and oozed molten rock.
Antonius knew me well enough to sense my fear. He patted my shoulder. “I will be waiting for you. Courage, my child. Remember – you are queen of the World of the Seven Stars.”
Surely the earth wouldn’t split apart and consume me with fire. That was only a dream. A horrid nightmare. I took a deep breath, straightened my shoulders, and headed toward the dull red glow.
I rounded the corner and stopped dead in my tracks.
Before me in the distance stood an enormous structure. An ancient stone temple atop a long flight of steps. The glow I’d seen came from massive cauldrons of fire. Two at the base of the steps, two midway up on a wide landing, and two more at the top. They illuminated a row of columns holding up the roof, each one so big around three grown men wouldn’t be able to join hands and circle it.
A pair of bronze doors easily twenty feet tall stood ajar. As I climbed the steps, I saw the doors were decorated with symbols. I recognized the one for our world, a sphere surrounded by seven stars.
Flickering torches on either side of the doors threw the other symbols into shadow, but I thought I saw depictions of strange beasts and winged creatures. I shivered. One of them looked like a dragon.
I stepped through the doorway. The space inside was cavernous. More torches set along the walls at regular intervals barely penetrated the darkness. Huge columns like the ones outside ran the length of the building in a double row about twenty feet from the walls, leaving a main area large enough to hold a huge crowd. I stared around in shock. Someone in the dim recesses of the past had mounted a massive effort, bringing together thousands and thousands of people in this desolate place to create such a magnificent building. It far exceeded anything in the capital in terms of scale and grandeur, yet I’d never heard of this temple.
The roof was a giant dome, open in the center. I glanced up at the heavens. There they were, shining in the night sky. Our beacons. Our protectors. The Seven Stars. Though I could only see one or two from where I stood, it was a comfort to know they were there. To know the world as I knew it had not disappeared.
The building was completely empty except for one thing. In the center of the temple, directly under the opening in the dome, sat an ornate carved wooden throne on a raised dais. The dais, too, was surrounded by fire, in the form of glowing chunks of incense in bronze bowls. They rested on waist-high stone pedestals carved in the likenesses of more strange beasts. The haze from the incense gave a dreamy, smoky feel to the scene.
A tiny figure, no bigger than a child, sat in the center of the throne. I couldn’t see her clearly in the gloom, but I assumed it was the Oracle. As I drew nearer, I realized she wasn’t as small as I’d thought. The size of the throne would have dwarfed a grown man. Like everything else in this place, it was huge, though because of the scale of the building, I didn’t appreciate how big it was until I started toward it.
Pale moonlight shone down on her from the opening in the dome. At first I thought it was a trick of the light, but as I drew closer I realized her hair shimmered. It flowed over her shoulders and down her back, long wavy locks of silver shot through with iridescent strands of violet and amethyst and deep purple, shades of blue from dark sapphire to turquoise. The colors moved in sparkling waves, lighting up and then flowing from the top of her head to the wisps curling around her breasts. It was pure magic. Mesmerizing.
Instead of dressing in regal golden robes or vibrant silk, she wore a shapeless full-length garment in a hue somewhere between gray and dull beige. But then, if I had a headdress as spectacular as hers, I wouldn’t want my gown to detract from the show. I wondered how she’d pulled off the illusion.
As I drew nearer, I was able to see her face. It was impossible to tell her age. She could have been forty. Sixty. Eighty. Her skin was creamy white, nearly translucent. Her brow was unlined, but I thought I saw tiny wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. She’d pulled off another trick there. As she turned her head to watch me approach, her eyes changed color just as her hair did. First deep purple, followed by warm lilac, then morphing through every shades of blue.
I refused to be dazzled by parlor tricks and looked closer. Her eyelids were dusted with silver. Perhaps that was how she did it. The powder must have reflected the lights in her hair onto her eyes, giving the illusion of colors that shifted through a spectrum. Still, from a purely feminine point of view, I was impressed. She’d be the star of any royal ball she attended.
She stretched her hand out, beckoning me closer. Something about the gesture seemed familiar. I took another look. Surely this iridescent figure and the old crone in my dreams weren’t one and the same.
“Melisandre.”
Her voice was low. Almost husky. As though she hadn’t used it in a long time.
“You carry yourself like your father did. Shoulders set, jaw clenched. Hiding your terror behind a wall of bravado.” She laughed. A shrill cackle that had me revise my estimate of her age. At least eighty.
I ignored the poorly-veiled insult. “You knew my father?”
She let out another thin laugh. “Knew him? Hardly. We had only one meeting. The same as I did with his father and his father before him….and his father
before him.”
That would put her at nearly 150 years old, assuming she’d started as a child. I shook my head. Impossible. She took me for a fool if she thought I believed that. In this gloom, with the dazzling display of the headdress drawing all the attention, half a dozen women could have played the role of Oracle over the last century and a half with no one the wiser.
“You have the advantage. You know my name, but I don’t know yours. To whom am I speaking?” I thought I sounded confident. Assured. Whoever this woman was, she lived in the World of the Seven Stars. That made me her queen. She might be sitting on a throne, but it was time to let her know who was in charge.
She let out a snort. “Don’t waste my time. Goddess knows, I’ve seen your kind come and go. Full of yourself, now that you’ve been crowned. That will change soon enough – when you find out what you’re up against.
“My name is not important,” she went on. “My message is. Come here.” Her voice changed to a lower, almost hypnotic tone. “Come closer. That’s right. Stand below the dome, so the moonlight falls on you. I want to look upon the one the Goddess has chosen to fulfill the Prophecy.”
I didn’t want to obey her but I found myself walking through the haze toward the throne. Despite the heat rising from the glowing braziers all around me, I shivered. According to Antonius, I was about to hear the prophecy that foretold my father’s death. And perhaps my own as well.
Chapter Five
Melisandre
The Oracle fixed her eyes on me. Then the brilliantly colored irises rolled back in her head. She lifted her hands to the heavens, brought them down, and began swirling them through the clouds of incense. I blinked. I could have sworn I saw figures taking shape in the haze, as though she’d conjured them up out of the smoke.
She threw her head back and chanted in a language I couldn’t understand. It must have been a trick of the acoustics in the building, echoes off the stone walls, perhaps, because it sounded as though her voice was joined by others, one after another, until the temple was filled with a choir of rhythmic melodious song.
The music seemed to vibrate throughout the room, into my very soul. I didn’t recognize the melody or the words, but I felt as if the primeval part of my brain knew the chant. As if some remnant of ancestral memory had heard it before.
Gradually, beneath the song, I made out other sounds. Bare whispers at first, like the faint voices you swear you hear coming from the next room when you’re all alone on a dark night. The air was filled with smoke and with every breath I took, I felt as if I was falling under a spell. One part of my mind wondered if she’d put some sort of mind-altering drug into the braziers to burn along with the incense, while the other part tried to make out what they were saying.
The voices got louder. all talking at once. A babble of noise. The volume rose, and I heard shouts and wild cries. Figures emerged from the haze all around me. First faceless warriors then dark beings. They swirled together, and I heard the clang of sword against sword, the screams of dying men.
Suddenly, all sound ceased. Flames shot up out of the braziers. The Oracle stood, and in a deep sonorous voice she began speaking my language once again.
“It has begun. The Lord of Darkness has awakened. A thousand years he has slumbered, chained in his cave by a magic spell cast by the Woman Clothed in the Sun and her valiant mates. But the spell grows weak. His time of rest has only made him more determined to seek revenge. Even now his followers are uniting to break the chains that bind him.”
“The king will die before his time, no human hand raised against him. He leaves behind the Woman Who Commands the Seven Stars.
“Great evil will be unleashed upon his death. His followers will declare war on our world. Pain and misery descend upon the land. The Lord of Darkness will rule our World – unless the One who has been chosen by the Goddess discovers the secret to defeating the evil Lord.”
The Oracle turned her sightless eyes on me, pointing a gnarled finger. “You!” Her voice boomed out. “You are the One. The Woman Who Commands the Seven Stars. Your fate is sealed. You must take up the quest. Find the key. Only you can defeat the Lord of Darkness and send him back to his lair for all eternity.”
She walked to the edge of the dais, her hand still outstretched.
“In her mercy, the Goddess grants you five valiant souls to join you on your Quest. Five brave and loyal mates who will unite with you to battle the Lord of Darkness. Each one has a gift to aid in your battle – but each one bears a crushing burden. Only when you lift his burden can he come to your aid.”
The Oracle started down the stairs, the luminous strands of her hair flowing behind her. One step at a time, stopping on each to utter another line.
“First will come the Fire Born. The dragon lord. He who is both a beautiful young man and a terrible beast. It is his gift and his burden. For only when he masters the dragon within can he save you.”
The Fire Born. As she spoke, a male figure appeared out of the mist on her right then morphed into a fierce dragon. I knew him. I’d seen him. Stared at his naked body with unvirginal lust. Felt a dark erotic thrill, then horror as I watched him consumed by the flames. The thought of meeting him in his human form sent a blast of savage hunger rocketing through me.
She came down another step. “Next is the Chaos Born. The warrior. The powers of darkness seek to defeat him. They bring him to his knees, whispering, “You cannot withstand the storm.” Yet he fights on. Struggles to his feet, declaring, “I am the storm.” Honor is his creed – and valor his weakness.”
As she spoke, a masculine figure took shape in the mist behind her. Powerful. Strong. He fixed his deep blue eyes on me, and I knew in that moment that no matter what shape his body took, what chiseled plains and hollows made up his face, I would recognize him in an instant. By those eyes.
“Third is the Tempest Born. The wizard. He will harness his magic to aid in the cause. But beware. The Lord of Darkness casts his own potent spell and even a powerful wizard can fall under its influence. At the darkest time, remember – the Woman Who Commands the Seven Stars has magic of her own.”
The temple disappeared, and I was cast into the sea in the middle of a storm. Waves crashed over my head. I thrashed and spluttered, certain I would drown. Suddenly a whirlwind appeared, hovering over the water. A disembodied hand reached out for me from the center. I grabbed it, hanging on for dear life, and a tall man with eyes as dark as the night sky pulled me out of the water and into his arms. He bent his head and captured my lips in a kiss as fierce as the storm. Before I could catch my breath, the whirlwind tore him away, and I found myself back on the stone floor of the temple.
“Fourth is the mystic. The Holy One.” The Oracle’s voice boomed out, bringing me back to my senses. “He has dedicated himself to the gods but dark desires fill him. When he claims you, he will learn the Goddess herself created those desires. And through him, you will discover the fourth secret.”
Male voices coming from the shadows took up a low chant as a figure cloaked in a long purple robe, the hood concealing his face, came down the stairs. He picked me up as easily as if I was a child. The voices rose as he carried me to an altar, laid me on it like an offering, then slipped off his robe. He was naked underneath, and his cock sprang free, long and thick and hard. The chant reached a crescendo. He reached out to touch me – then disappeared in the mist.
I blinked and found myself back at the foot of the stairs, the Oracle standing above me.
My head was reeling. I could no longer tell what was real and what illusion. Her eyes focused on me, brilliant blue this time, and to my surprise, her voice softened.
“And last is the Rogue. He is charming, intelligent, wickedly handsome…” The eyes changed color again, this time dark as midnight, and her tone grew harsh. “Also a liar and a thief. He lives by his wits and to him truth is but a tool he’ll use, twisting and bending it to serve his purpose. Beware – for he will try to steal y
our heart.”
A cocky, self-assured figure, younger than all the others, strolled down the stairs and stopped beside the Oracle. He wore a sleeveless vest, open to show off a sleek, well-muscled body with impressive abs. He had short wavy hair, brilliant green eyes, and the devilish grin of a choir boy caught sneaking a bottle of holy wine out of the temple under his robes. He bowed his head to the Oracle then raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. “As you have stolen mine, beautiful lady.” To my astonishment, the Oracle gave a tinkling laugh, like a coquettish young girl.
He glanced my way and winked, as though we shared a special secret. Then he and the Oracle headed back up the stairs hand in hand. When they reached the top of the dais, he disappeared, drifting away into formless mist as had all the others.
Except for one. The dragon lord, the Fire Born, took on substance. Came down the steps of the dais in his human form, naked once again. I ran my eyes over him, stopping at his cock, thick and hard and heavy.
I glanced at the Oracle, but she was no longer visible. Smoke from the braziers had billowed out, hiding her from our view..
He came closer. Smiled wickedly.
I couldn’t help myself. I reached out, stroked the silky-smooth flesh of his manhood. Oh Goddess! My handmaidens were right. It did have a steel core.
Wordlessly, he put out his hand and touched my gown. It disappeared. Faded away, as though it was as unsubstantial as the mist around us, leaving me naked.
Though I’d never been unclothed in front of a man before, I felt no shame. No embarrassment. He ran his hand up my arm, caressed my breast. My nipple puckered, hardening into a dark red peak. He ran a thumb over it then cupped my breast in his palm and brought his fingers together, squeezing and rolling my nipple between them.
Fire Born_a Reverse Harem Fantasy Romance Page 3
