by Lisa Cach
“Maerlin must be inside the walls with them,” I whispered.
Una nodded.
We waited, the time stretching out and our muscles growing stiff. We lay down in the forest must and tried not to fall asleep, while wishing that the men’s eyes would grow heavy. As the men at last settled down, Una got to her feet and disappeared into the night to take stock of the encampment.
I lay breathless, awaiting her return. I’d convinced myself of her power, but was it real? And even if real, if she doubted it herself or questioned how she did it, it might fail her. There was music I could play on the cithara only as long as I didn’t think about what my hands were doing. The moment I did, my fingers fumbled, I lost the sense of the song, and I had to go back to the beginning.
Then she was back, emerging like a moonbeam from behind a cloud. “One man watching the hobbled horses in a meadow, on the far side of the way station,” she said. “Two men watching my father, trussed in a corner with a sack over his head. The rest are either snoring, or trying to.”
“Not such bad odds.”
Una’s white teeth showed in a feral grin.
She hunkered down beside me, and I reached out to Pyrs and listened again to his mind, this time picking up the memories of last night. He was lying wrapped in his cloak, his mentula growing hard as he remembered what it had felt like to sink it into me; he was wondering if he could reach down and pull on it without anyone noticing.
He fell asleep before he felt safe enough to try.
We were well into the middle of the night, the warriors’ snores echoing as far as our hiding place, before we dared risk our plan. Una surveyed the campsite once again, and then with silent nods to each other we moved together to the way station. I heard her breathing quicken, and touched her arm in reassurance. We’d talked about her power, and she called it up. It came down to her wishing, very hard, not to be seen. “Don’t look at me, don’t look at me, please don’t look at me,” she’d silently chant to herself, and everyone’s eyes would start to slide over her as if she were no more than a bump in the stonework.
She did it now, and my eyes felt strange; though I was looking directly at her, I couldn’t stay focused and my gaze moved to the side. When I tried to draw it back, she wasn’t there.
I crouched down low and waited. I caught a glimpse through the open doorway—the door long since gone, burned or rotted, who knew—of the humped forms of sleeping men, their saddles used as pillows. The fire still burned, but lower now, more coals than flames. I couldn’t see Maerlin, but I saw one of his wakeful guards, his gaze shifting from the fire to the man sleeping closest to the doorway, who had rolled over and muttered as his horse’s bridle slid out from under him with a soft clink of metal.
I held my breath.
The sleeping man farted, sighed, and settled back into his rasping rhythm of snores.
The guard’s gaze went back to the fire.
Then Una was beside me, pressing the bridle into my hands, careful not to let the metal bit clank. Together we slunk through the darkness to the meadow, Una moving with the silent grace of an owl, while I stumbled like a lame goat with a bucket on its head.
The horses stirred and nickered when we came near, and one soft nose whuffled, taking in my scent and seeking a treat with nibbling lips. The man on watch leaned against the outer wall of the way station, his body a dark shape against the stone; though he stood with arms crossed, his chin was against his chest.
As quick as we could, we unhobbled the horses. They kept grazing, unconcerned with freedom. I found Maerlin’s mare and put the bridle on her, cursing softly as I had to adjust it to fit. With worried glances at the dozing guard, I led the horse to the edge of the meadow. Una appeared beside me and gave me a boost onto its back, then dipped into the woods and came back to hand me a long stick.
Then she was gone, and I was counting silently to three hundred: one hive of busy bees, two hives of busy bees, three hives of busy bees . . . Una was doing the same. At first I thought it could not possibly be enough time, and then as I saw the guard shift and lift his chin, his arms falling to his sides and his hand going to the hilt of his sword, I thought it far, far too much time. I bent low over the neck of the horse, trying to blend in with it and hoping his eyesight was poor.
Two hundred one busy bees (I dropped the hives in my haste), two hundred two busy bees . . .
I felt him looking at me, uncertain of what he saw. I was beneath a tree; perhaps I looked like a pattern of shadows on the mare’s back, not a person.
Two hundred eighteen busy bees . . .
He set off toward me, his head tilted, still not certain if he saw anything amiss. The horse was grazing, more concerned with soggy grass than with the girl lying plastered on its back.
Two hundred twenty-five busy bees . . .
The horse shook its head, the bridle jingling.
The guard started to run, drawing his sword and shouting out a warning—to me? To the camp? It didn’t matter. He startled the mare, which bolted; I screeched and clung to the reins and a hank of mane, the stick clamped under my arm. The horse shot toward the woods, then when I pulled on the reins it tossed its head and agreed that the meadow was the place to be, amid its brethren.
The guard was yelling now, raising the alarm. I raised my own, taking a deep breath and howling like a wolf—it was the best I could come up with—as I took hold of the stick and lashed it at the other horses, striking startled flesh wherever I could reach.
Whinnies and the sound of hooves, the swoosh of the long stick and the slap of it meeting hide. I howled, I ululated, I was the great wolf of the world chasing my dinner. The horses scattered, galloping for the woods, bucking and kicking up their hind legs as if to kill a real wolf at their heels.
Shouts and hollers from the camp, pounding footsteps, the glint of blades in the dark. I put my heels to my mount and held on as tight as a hawk with a mouse in its talons. Away we went toward the road, dashing alongside it, hooves throwing up clods of soft earth, until the sounds of pursuit faded away.
When I was sure I was safely away, I urged the mare up over the road to the other side and doubled back. The way station was distantly in sight when I dismounted and led the mare back to where Una and I had left the other horse, my ears perked for hints of pursuit, my whole body flinching at the merest snap of a twig under my feet. My heart was pounding in my ears, my breath coming in gasps, my eyes so wide-open it felt like they’d never be able to close again.
There was no one waiting for me, just the horse standing patiently, one hind leg cocked as it rested its weight on the other. It sighed and shifted when it saw me and the mare.
I started counting again, telling myself that when I got to ten, Maerlin and Una would appear. One hive of busy bees, two hives of busy bees . . .
All right then, at twenty they’d appear.
Thirty.
My ears started ringing with panic. They had to have gotten away, they had to. The plan was that Una would sneak into the camp, cut Maerlin’s bonds, and tell him not to move until the alarm was raised about the horses and the men went after them. Even if his two guards stayed, Maerlin should be able to handle them . . .
. . . Assuming he hadn’t been hurt during his kidnapping. Assuming he’d woken from the poppy juice. Assuming no one had seen Una, and she’d had time to cut his bonds. Assuming the guards didn’t immediately suspect the horses to be a distraction, and that Maerlin was the real goal.
Forty hives of busy bees.
Fifty.
At sixty, Una stepped out of the darkness.
At sixty-one, Maerlin followed.
He saw me, and his lips twisted. “Arthur is never going to let me live this down.”
And here I was expecting thanks.
We rode through the remainder of the night and well past the dawn, pushing ourselves and the horses, wa
nting to be well away from Druce’s territory. Watling Street was too great a risk, so we moved across country, Maerlin somehow knowing which way to go even when the stars were hidden behind Britannia’s ever-present blanket of clouds.
At midday we came upon a small village—just a few damp houses, with woodsmoke seeping from the thatched roofs and pigs grunting in their pen. Maerlin called out, offered greetings to the man and wife who emerged from a doorway, and then bought us food and a place to rest in exchange for the silver hair forks Tanwen had given me, and I’d given to Una. She handed them over with a gleam of satisfaction in her eyes, as if ridding herself of a taint. We were overpaying, but she wanted to be rid of the things.
The wife’s fingertips fluttered over the forks as if they had come from a mystical world, where goddesses frolicked, the food was so plentiful that tables bent under its weight, and no one ever grew old. I imagined her putting them away in a chest, to be taken out and gazed upon on special occasions, and passed down from mother to daughter through the generations. I hoped that one of those daughters would wear them, perhaps for a wedding; something happy, to replace the wickedness of Tanwen, with which I would always associate the shimmering leaves of the silver forks.
Warm, fed, and nearly dry, we slept for a bit and then prepared to leave; we didn’t want to waste what was left of the daylight. I had told Maerlin about Tanwen’s plans to leave Mona, and now he spoke to Una, though he couldn’t meet her eyes.
“As soon as we reach Corinium, I’ll send you back to your mother with an escort. You should be able to join up with her before she leaves.”
“I’m not going back to her,” Una said.
“It’s where you belong.”
“I belong with the Phanne. The true Phanne. And you owe me tattoos on my face.”
That made him look at her. “What?!”
Una put her hands over her eyes like a mask. “I am she who cannot be seen.”
Maerlin looked helplessly at me, so I explained Una’s power and the promise of the tattoos, ending with, “You’re in her debt, you know. I would do as she wishes.”
Maerlin set his jaw, but didn’t protest. Una narrowed her eyes in catlike triumph. She might hate him only a little less than she hated her mother, but she was choosing to be with him rather than Tanwen. He’d earned her admiration during the escape from Druce, when he’d taken out his guards and another man with his bare hands, and I guessed she’d soon be begging him to teach her how to fight without weapons. She might even grow fond of him, if he showed her how to properly kill someone.
We stepped out of the farmhouse and into a world transformed. Snow had begun to fall, silent and slow, coating the landscape with a thin layer of brilliant white. Una gave a joyful cry and ran out into it, leaving a trail of footprints.
Maerlin took the chance to pull me aside, his face drawn and unhappy. He took a breath, his lips set in a grim line. “I should have said this to you earlier, Nimia,” he said, while a growing sense of alarm ran up my spine over what he was about to say. Then he said, “I’m sorry.”
I blinked at him. “For what?”
“Don’t pretend, thinking to spare my feelings.”
“It’s usually the man who doesn’t know what he’s done wrong, not the woman to whom he’s apologizing.”
“For not protecting you. The ‘banquet.’ Tanwen. Druce. You put your safety in my hands, and I wasn’t there for you.”
“It wasn’t your fault. Tanwen drugged—”
He slashed his hand through the crisp air, cutting me off. “It doesn’t matter what she did to me. What matters is that I let it happen, and I wasn’t there to protect you.”
I nodded, just once: an acknowledgment of his apology, though not of the need for it. There was a voice inside me that I’d buried deep and not allowed air, that wanted to shout, That’s right, you weren’t there! You wanted me to trust you, and you failed me!
I shoved a cork in that voice’s mouth. I was the one who wanted to take part in the banquet. I was the one who forced Maerlin to come to Mona. If there was any blame left to pass around after Tanwen took her heaping serving, it belonged on my plate. Not Maerlin’s.
Not that he’d ever see it that way. He’d thought his role was to protect me, and he’d been unable to do so. He was typical enough of the human male in that regard, if not in any other.
We got the horses ready and Maerlin helped me mount, and he was about to boost Una up behind me when she suddenly stepped back, her mouth falling open. “I forgot! The stone you were seeking.”
I shook my head and reached down for her hand, to help her mount. “It’s not worth going back for. We’ll get it some other way.”
“No, I mean . . .” She reached inside her clothing, her face scrunched as she dug into some hidden spot. Snowflakes were landing on her white hair and eyebrows, and refusing to melt. She looked carved from ice. “Ligeia gave it to me,” she said, “to keep for you. She said you’d come someday, looking for it. I was going to give it to you before, but then I wasn’t sure. You and my mother were growing so close . . .” She shrugged.
Her hand came out of her clothes, wrapped around something large. She held out her closed fist and her fingers opened like the petals of a flower, revealing in its center the clear green stone of the visions.
The stone that would adorn the hilt of Arthur’s sword.
The falling snow whispered its name to me with each downy flake, as if to make certain I would not forget, as if to make certain the world itself would always remember this blade that had yet to be forged:
Skalibur.
Don't miss the final book in the sexy 1,001 Erotic Nights series from Lisa Cach!
Temptress Unbound
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About the Author
Photograph by Karla Thomas
LISA CACH is the national bestselling, award-winning author of more than twenty books, including Great-Aunt Sophia’s Lessons for Bombshells, available from Gallery Books. She has taught creative writing aboard the ship MV Explorer from the Amazon River, to Morocco, to St. Petersburg, Russia. When not sailing the high seas she can be found digging for clams in the sandy mud of the Puget Sound or dealing cruelly with weeds and snails in her garden. She’s a two-time finalist for the prestigious RITA Award from the Romance Writers of America, which doesn’t make it any easier to explain to her neighbors that she writes erotica. Visit her online at LisaCach.com.
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Also by Lisa Cach
Have Glass Slippers, Will Travel
Babe in Ghostland
Erotic Secrets of a French Maid
Great-Aunt Sophia's Lessons for Bombshells
The 1,001 Erotic Nights Series
Slave Girl
Barbarian's Concubine
Siren of Gaul
Warlord's Captive
Pleasure's Apprentice
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Slave Girl copyright
© 2014 by Lisa Cach
Barbarian's Concubine copyright © 2014 by Lisa Cach
Siren of Gaul copyright © 2014 by Lisa Cach
Warlord's Captive copyright © 2015 by Lisa Cach
Pleasure's Apprentice copyright © 2015 by Lisa Cach
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ISBN 978-1-5011-2923-0
