by Lisa Cach
“And do I matter?” The question came out before I could stop it. I heard the thread of need in my voice, childish and vulnerable, and my cheeks heated with shame.
“You know about a cauldron. That makes you immensely valuable.”
His words were like a blade to my unprotected gut. I’d expected a soothing lie, not the raw, heartless truth. He was immensely valuable to me, because he was the first person I’d met in more than ten years who knew exactly what it felt like to have Phanne powers. The first person of my tribe, the first who could share stories with me of his experiences, the first who could possibly understand that sex was never just sex to those such as us—something I was only beginning to learn. He understood me, because he was like me.
To me, that made him infinitely precious. I had thought I sensed the same appreciation for me in him.
But to him, I was only a means to an end. Just as I was to Clovis.
The blade in my gut twisted, and my eyes burned with unshed tears.
His brow scrunched in puzzlement. “I’ve upset you somehow, haven’t I?”
I gave him a narrow look. It was beyond me how some men could be so intelligent in general and yet so stupid when it came to women. It was as if words had no nuance to them, no meaning in the empty spaces between them, as if a statement had no implications beyond the brief factual sentence itself.
“You must trust me, Nimia,” he said suddenly, his eyes locking fiercely with mine. “Whatever happens, you have to trust me.”
I grunted out a noise of disbelief. “Why should I? And I’ll tell you right now, I don’t like the sound of ‘whatever happens.’ ”
“We are Phanne. You must trust me. No matter what.” His eyes were beginning to glow.
“I’ve had enough of trusting men for no reason but their word,” I said, my voice rising an octave and getting screechy with angry tears. “It’s usually an excuse to do terrible—”
He cut off my rant with his lips, his hand going behind my head to hold me still as he devastated me with his kiss.
It was a kiss unlike any other.
At first, it was surprise and his hand that held me motionless. The cool pleasure of his touch invaded my mouth along with his tongue, thrusting inside without permission, lapping against my own tongue like a thirsty cat at a pool of water. The strange coolness of his touch spread outward, through the roof of my mouth and down my throat, making me feel like I’d gone from the hot room of a Roman bath to the frigidarium; the cold was painful and pleasurable at once, making my skin shiver and my nipples tighten.
I tried to pull away.
And couldn’t.
Eyes widening in alarm, I raised weak hands to push him back, and that’s when I heard . . . His voice. In my head.
Trust me, Nimia. Open to me.
No! No, no! My thoughts and feelings were my own; inside my skin there could be only me.
And me. Ah . . . this feels so . . . different from the others. So much richer.
Out! Get out!
Shhh.
He pushed me back, and I could do nothing but fall where he wanted, one of his hands on my breast, gently squeezing it, then pinching the tip sharply, sending a shot of arousal to my sex. The delicious chill had spread down over my shoulders, my arms, and was moving down my torso. My hands fell to my sides, beyond my control.
Let me see you. Yes . . . there you are. This is so new to you; you have no defenses at all, do you?
Why are you doing this to me?
You didn’t even know this was possible. This, and so much more.
Let me go. Please!
I can’t. Not yet. I need to know . . .
I didn’t know what he was seeing, how much he could see. Could he see the chalice? I struggled not to think of it, but not thinking about it only seemed to make it glow brighter in my imagination.
Now, that is interesting. Where did you see it?
His hand moved down my body, and his knee parted my thighs. I felt the cold air of the day on my legs—or was it just the effect of him?—and then his slender, dexterous fingers plucked my folds like the strings of a cithara. Gods, what was he doing? It was as if he could sense how his touch felt to me and knew exactly when he was touching me in the way I liked best.
Not that he would give it to me. He seemed to sense, too, how much better I liked it when I didn’t get what I wanted, when his touch wasn’t quite hard or fast enough.
My gates pulsed, wanting. Stroking wasn’t enough; I needed him, needed his staff, needed the thick press of stretching penetration.
I felt my golden swarm descending, heard the roar of its thousand wings, a hundred times louder than ever before. Some shred of sanity had me telling myself, no matter what, I should not think of how the chalice was hidden in my things.
It was my last coherent thought, for the golden swarm swept me up, filling my frozen body with its hum of power. I felt myself dissolving into it, my consciousness going elsewhere.
And then the buzzing abruptly lessened. The golden glow became less brilliant.
I didn’t know . . . this. This is what it’s meant to be! All those years, all those others, it was like sucking on empty snail shells. They had nothing to give me.
What was he doing? What was happening? My golden wings sounded a mile distant, ten miles, a hundred. They were fading away.
No, they were being drained away, taken from me.
On top of me, Maerlin was fumbling with his clothing, trying to pull down his breeches. His eyes glowed brilliant green, shedding their own light. He was emptying me. I felt as if I was disappearing, and my body lay helpless beneath him.
If he pierced me, I feared I’d disappear entirely.
“Get off her!”
Fenwig!
A hand on Maerlin’s shoulder and then a blur of movement. My body released from the pressure of his. A cry of pain. Thuds.
I turned my head and saw Maerlin spin on one foot, moving too quickly to see. Then Fenwig was tumbling down the terraces of the amphitheater.
Maerlin watched him roll and then turned his glowing eyes back to me.
Drink this,” Daella said in Latin, pressing a warm wooden cup into my hand.
The steam rising from it smelled abominable. I wrinkled my nose and started to put it down.
“Drink it,” she said, and put her hand under mine, raising the cup to my lips again. Her face was pinched with concern. “It calms you.”
I choked down the foul brew, though I doubted any herb could fix what Maerlin had done. It was as if he’d been feeding on me, devouring my soul. I’d once seen a wasp, caught helpless in a web, get wrapped up tight in a cocoon of silk. When the spider fed on it, it didn’t eat the wasp piece by piece but instead sucked it dry.
I’d felt like that wasp.
The worst part was that Maerlin had made it pleasurable, my body yearning for him while he took what he wanted. It made him terrifying, for all he had to do was touch me to make me helpless, my mind open to him, my powers draining away, my very sense of my self disappearing. I didn’t know how to defend myself against him.
No wonder women only whispered of him with horror in their eyes. No pleasure was worth that.
After knocking Fenwig down the amphitheater terraces, Maerlin had returned to me. Something in what he saw when he looked at me must have stopped him from continuing; maybe it was the tears I’d felt seeping silently down my temples.
He’d scooped me up into his arms and carried me down to the amphitheater floor, then sat cross-legged with me in his lap, rocking me, mumbling soothing words in Phannic, as Fenwig slowly came to. I hadn’t struggled to get away, being both too weak and too frightened. It was like being rocked in the arms of a wild animal, who might turn on you at any moment and rip out your neck.
When it was clear that Fenwig had no broken bones, Ma
erlin had hoisted me to my feet and forced me to stumble beside him back into the town. He’d deposited me in the great hall with Terix, whose eyes had gone round when he saw how disoriented I was. Maerlin hadn’t explained or apologized, had only said, “She’s not herself.”
I’d clung to Terix, barely able to describe what had happened, knowing only that I never wanted to be alone with Maerlin again. I’d had Terix move the chalice to a better hiding spot, underneath the floorboards.
Daella, seeing the state I was in, had muttered dark Brittonic curses and narrowed her eyes at Maerlin, who had by then retreated across the hall to Arthur.
Daella’s potion began to have an effect. My jittery fear smoothed out, but I retained the memory of what he’d done, the feeling of him inside my head, inside my body, aware of my every reaction in a way no other human being should ever be. And then that taking, that draining away of my powers, my self.
I sat staring into nothing for I knew not how long, as the afternoon shifted to evening and the rhythm of life in the hall changed. People came indoors, food was prepared, the fire burned higher, voices grew louder as they tried to be heard over one another. The air grew close, the smoke thicker. I retreated to the wall, where the meager stream of fresh air seeped in.
As the evening wore on, Mordred and his men mixed more with the Saxons, drinking and gaming, and they called on Terix to tell his stories. Not long after he left my side, I became aware of someone looking down at me. I raised my gaze and saw Arthur, and I felt a flood of longing and relief.
“May I join you?”
Daella dashed into place in front of me, standing with her feet spread and arms crossed, as if a sturdy girl of fourteen could bar a full-grown warrior from taking another step. “Go away.”
“If Nimia so wishes, my brave girl,” Arthur said.
“Let him sit,” I said from the shadows, my voice just above a whisper. “He’s not like his brother.”
Daella eyed Arthur for a long moment before nodding and stepping aside.
At the other end of the hall, men and women roared with laughter. Terix, as usual, was a success.
Arthur eased his long frame down beside me on the bench, sending a nervous shiver of awareness through me. He lifted his nose. “By the light of Apollo,” he said in mock amazement, “is that fresh air I smell? I thought you were hiding back here; I didn’t know you’d found the one place you can breathe.”
A smile tugged at my lips, and I brushed my hair back behind one ear. “Maybe I’m here for both.”
“Smart of you, if so.” He settled back against the wall and lifted an ankle to his other knee, in that thighs-splayed position that only men ever took. His upper foot bounced idly as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “You look in no shape to be leaping over fires.”
I dampened my lips and looked at him, trying to guess his purpose in coming to me. His relaxed, good-humored presence was so unlike Maerlin’s sharp, intense one it was hard to believe they were brothers. “That’s a statement intended to make me ask a question.”
“I’m glad you asked!” His expression brightened comically, daring me to contradict him. “It’s Samhain tonight. That’s not a festival of the Saxons, of course, but of us Britons. Horsa is celebrating with us as a gesture of goodwill; he’s having so much fun I think it might even become a regular festival here in Calleva. It makes a good start to their Blood Month, after all.”
I knew a little of Blood Month. The Franks had a similar name for November, the month when animals were slaughtered before winter set in. I’d seen little of their Blood Month celebrations, though, as we’d been living in a villa in Soissons, me pregnant, among men and women who were more Romanized than they’d like to admit. The Saxons were a more primitive lot than the Franks, holding closer to their roots in the dark forests of Germany.
Samhain, however, I knew nothing of. I asked him what it was.
“It’s the night between summer and winter, when the dead walk free upon the land.” He made his eyes big as if frightened. “You’d best not find yourself alone on a misty moor, unless you wish to see them for yourself.”
“I fear the living far more than the dead.”
“Ah, but that was in Gaul. Our ghosts are more scary.”
I chuckled. “And the leaping over fires?”
“To make sure the bad luck of the old year doesn’t follow you into the new. Keeps the ghosts off your tail, too.”
“I shouldn’t think ghosts would mind fire,” I said.
“They mind all sorts of things: three-quarter moons, salt cellars, the smell of flowers. Except roses, of course. Ghosts love roses.”
“You’re making this up.”
“Not at all. These are the ghosts of Britons, remember. They have opinions on everything, and they stick to them whether they make sense or no.”
“That’s not unique to Britons.”
He smiled at me, and even with my back pressed to a cold draft, I felt the warmth of his smile, the sincerity. The corners of his eyes crinkled, the blue sparkled. I was charmed by him.
Being charmed by him, I realized. On purpose.
Why?
“Maerlin’s turn,” Arthur said, and inclined his head toward the other end of the hall, where Horsa, Wynnetha, Mordred, and other higher-ranking people were gathered closest for the entertainment.
“Shouldn’t you be over there with them?” I asked, and hoped he’d stay.
His response was lightly, carefully spoken: “I’ve seen Maerlin’s act too many times.”
I tried to read his expression in the semidarkness. Did he mean me to take that statement more than one way? Had Maerlin told him what had happened at the amphitheater? “You don’t like it?”
“He’s a brilliant man. Clever, inventive, curious. He never forgets a thing he learns; he can speak a dozen languages, predict the motions of the stars. He understands things a simple soldier like me could never hope to. But . . .”
Maerlin was chanting something I couldn’t make out, and the fire turned from yellow-orange to brilliant blue-green and then purple. The audience let out a satisfied, “Ooooooh.” A moment later, there was a noise like cracking wood, and something shot out of the flames. A loud bang, like a lightning strike, and about ten feet above the flames, a huge, glowing red dragon appeared, its mouth gaping wide.
Women screamed. Men cursed and drew blades.
The dragon hovered in the air, then slowly dimmed and fell downward, extinguishing itself and disappearing.
The only sound remaining in the hall was the wailing of frightened children.
“But he makes mistakes with people.”
So Arthur knew what had happened this afternoon, between Maerlin and me, the same thing that had happened with countless women, apparently. “Are you here to excuse him?” I asked, incredulous.
He winced. “I came to see how you fared. He told me what happened. Or some of it, anyway; he wasn’t making a lot of sense.”
My lip curled. “Do you always clean up his messes?”
Arthur didn’t say anything for endless moments, then slowly reached over and took my hand in his and gently stroked the backs of my fingers with his thumb. “Never.”
I was confused; I couldn’t understand what he wanted. My voice softened. “Then why with me?”
He gave me a look that was helplessly apologetic, as if he couldn’t quite understand it himself. “Have you ever felt a certainty that someone is going to be part of your future? That in some way, you are tied to them? You don’t know how, you don’t know what it means, you just know?”
It was what I’d felt when I’d first seen Clovis. I nodded slowly.
“When I came to the surface of that old Roman bath and saw you standing at the edge . . . that’s what I felt about you.”
I was saved from having to answer by the arrival of Terix. Arthur droppe
d my hand but not before Terix noticed. His brow twitched, and he gave me the hint of an eye roll. “Are you feeling better, then?”
I nodded. Having a man as good-looking as Arthur hold your hand and say he knew you would be an essential part of his future had a way of reviving the spirits, far more than any cup of steeped herbs.
“Mordred wants you to play the cithara. Are you up to it?”
I nodded again. Terix uncovered it from its wrappings and, still not trusting my strength, carried it for me to the other end of the great hall. Arthur came with us, settling in near Horsa. Maerlin had retreated to the edge of the group. I spared him only a glance, enough to see that he was watching me much as a cat might watch a sparrow on a branch. The audience was all that kept me from making a rude hand gesture at him.
Terix placed a stool for me, and I sat, my back to the fire. Wynnetha had her arms crossed, flaring her nostrils at me. Her father was chewing on a hangnail. Mordred, as usual, was flicking his scheming eyes back and forth among the others, gauging moods.
“Play something that honors the beauty of Wynnetha,” Mordred said, and then slid a self-satisfied look at Arthur, as if to say, Ha! You should have thought of that.
Wynnetha lowered her lids and tried to blush modestly but was given away when she flicked a strand of hair over her shoulder and smirked at me. Maybe she and Mordred wouldn’t be such a bad fit after all, I thought—and then scolded myself for being mean. There was plenty to like about Wynnetha; she couldn’t help it that she’d fallen for the wrong man. I, of all people, should have more sympathy.
If Mordred wanted flattery for his lady love, I would give him kettles full. I decided to play a Roman song about Venus, changing the goddess’s name to Wynnetha’s. I cleared my throat, checked that the instrument was in tune, and set my fingers to playing.
The first few verses were, to my ears, plodding and emotionless. I was concentrating too hard on what my fingers were doing and on changing the words to better fit Wynnetha. Gradually, though, the music began to take over. My fingers found their rhythm and needed nothing from me. The words flowed as I pictured the love story a half verse in advance and was able to change the image to fit Wynnetha.
