“Up!” the centaur charged him. “Hurry, there isn’t much time.”
For one long suspended moment, running alongside the creature, Gar hesitated, before fisting his hands in the centaur’s shaggy coat and swinging himself up on the creature’s back. Of course the centaur would know where the selkie’s cage was. He had locked her in it, after all, hadn’t he?
“Good!” Yan said, streaking on at a gallop. “Now hold tight. She thinks I am running you to ground for her. She will not be far behind.”
“Aren’t you?” Gar blurted.
“No,” Yan returned. “You do not love her, I know that, but I do. You do not understand our Otherworldly ways. You are learning, elsewise I would have made an end of you to keep Analee for myself. You must trust me now. You seek the selkie. I will take you to her, but dawn is breaking, and once the sun has cleared the horizon, I am a two-legged creature once more and of precious little help to you.”
“She said she would kill the selkie!” Gar said, gripping the centaur tighter.
“Analee cannot kill her,” Yan said. “The gods would never allow it. It would be like killing herself. But she can ruin her. Analee can cause her great suffering and bodily harm.”
“I do not understand.”
“I know. I told you, you do not understand our ways. The selkie is Analee’s alter ego, her better half, if you will—the innocent part of her that she relinquished to become the goddess. The personification of her lost innocence transferred to the body of the selkie was a sacrifice the higher gods imposed upon her. They demand much for privilege; this was the price of Analee’s becoming the Goddess of the Dream Well.”
It was almost beyond Gar’s comprehension. “So, they are one entity?” he said, trying to imagine it.
“No,” Yan returned. “They were one entity when what you know as time began. They are two entirely separate beings now. They are like what you mortals perceive as sisters.”
“But why a selkie?” Gar said, thinking out loud.
“Because that is what Analee was in the beginning,” the centaur said. “A selkie can exist in the mortal world as a mortal. The only way Anya, that is the selkie’s name, will ever be safe is to leave the Otherworld and live among the mortals, where Analee cannot touch her; Analee has no dominion there anymore. That privilege ended when she made the sacrifice and became the goddess.”
“Analee told Anya to go to my world. I heard her myself, and Anya did as Analee bade her. What I do not understand is if she would have been safe there, why did she return?”
“Because of you,” Yan told him. “She is enamored of you, foolish mortal! If you can cross Anya over and take her sealskin, she will never return. She will be safe and content with you in your world, and I will be safe and content with Analee in mine. That is why I help you, Gar Trivelyan, but it still remains to be accomplished and the rest of this maze is difficult for me to travel in my current incarnation. Now hold fast!
7
T he centaur was right. Gar did not understand the ways of the Otherworld, but he could hardly contain his euphoria. For the first time since he’d dragged himself out of the sea and collapsed upon the shore of the Celtic Otherworld, he had hope of returning home, and of taking the little selkie with him.
The centaur sped through the maze at a pace Gar would have thought impossible for such a hulking creature. Yan was a ruggedly handsome entity, his long hair bound in vines, his face a brooding mask all angles and planes. He wore his centaur guise well, as Gar imagined he would his human-like incarnation. Somehow, he trusted the creature. The centaur had much to gain from Gar’s happy outcome. That, and that alone, filled the young knight with hope where all else smacked of doom, and he prayed to whatever deity would listen that he hadn’t put his trust in yet another fay deceiver.
The centaur slowed his pace when an almost invisible break in the hedge loomed before them. The openings had grown progressively narrower the deeper they traveled into the maze. It was a tight squeeze for the hulking beast, but Yan forced his way through the virtual wall of privet into a long unkempt lane steeped in shadow. It was darker there, the walls of the hedge so close together they scraped Gar’s legs as the centaur carried him toward an alcove, where the selkie’s cage came into view. This time, it wasn’t an illusion, and Gar jumped down from the creature’s back and ran to the cage, examining the lock. Inside, the little seal was making the saddest sound Gar had ever heard, a trembling wail, like hiccups, as though she had cried her heart dry. At sight of him, she flopped close to the latch, reaching her flipper toward him through the bars.
“Gods on their thrones! How do I get this open?” Gar thundered, rattling the heart-shaped lock. How inappropriate was that? The Goddess of the Dream Well didn’t have a heart. She couldn’t have to have penned the poor little harmless creature up like a wild beast.
“Stand aside!” the centaur commanded from behind, his voice booming like thunder.
Gar spun around. Yan had loaded his longbow and taken dead aim on the cage. Even from where he stood, Gar could see the centaur’s jaw muscles ticcing. The creature’s eyes had receded beneath the ledge of his brow as he squinted down the arrow shaft. For one terrible moment, Gar thought that arrow was aimed at him, or the little seal. She evidently thought so, too, for she shrieked and cowered and began to tremble, trying to shrink back against the bars in the corner, as far from the centaur’s line of fire as she could. The poor thing was terrified, and Gar’s eyes snapped between her terror and the centaur’s steely dead aim as he tried to comfort her.
“Shh!” he murmured. “I will not let you come to harm!” Sliding his arm between the bars, he thrust it in front of her. It was an empty promise, but she snuggled against him, hiding her eyes. She was trembling so violently it was all he could do to ease her quaking enough to hold her out of range of what seemed to be Yan’s dead-center aim.
“Keep her still!” the centaur shouted. “And keep the cage from shaking! There is time for only one shot! Analee will be here any second. You must trust me, for all our sakes!”
Gar could not read the centaur’s expression. Did he dare trust the creature who only a short time ago had aimed that bow at his manhood with deadly intent? There was no time to consider it. Praying that the centaur was in earnest, he froze spellbound as the twang of the bowstring and the whirr of the arrow in flight whizzing past so close he felt the wind it created all but stopped his heart. The missile struck the keyhole in the lock dead center, springing it, and the lock spiraled off as the cage door fell open and hit the ground with a rasping clang that echoed through the unnatural quiet that had fallen over the labyrinth like a pall.
In the blink of an eye, the little selkie flopped out of the cage and waddled off into the maze at a speed Gar would have thought impossible for a seal, her terror-struck wails echoing after her.
“You are on your own, fellow consort!” the centaur shouted. Spinning on his hooves in the close confines of the narrow lane, he staved in the hedge and scattered privet in all directions. “I will keep Analee occupied as best I can, but that will not be for long. Do not lose sight of the seal. You will never find your way out of the maze if you do. She knows the way.”
“Hail and farewell!” Gar called after the creature, for the centaur was already in motion, galloping back the way he had come.
Gar regretted not having trusted the creature at the last, but that couldn’t be helped. If he’d learned nothing else from his experience in the Otherworld it was that the fay could not be trusted. That knowledge was all he did trust any more.
It didn’t matter now. The little seal was free, and he never would have found her if it weren’t for Yan. He turned back just in time to see her enter another break in the maze. Darting after her, he called her name, but her fright was such that she kept on waddling into the labyrinth, her frantic snorts and wails siphoned off on the dawn breeze.
“Anya, wait!” he called. “It is I, little friend. I mean you no harm.”
But the little seal lumbered on, then made a turn and disappeared altogether into one of the multiple breaks in the hedge that presented themselves in that sector. Her vocal fright was so acute Gar was certain she hadn’t even heard him. What torments had she suffered in that wretched cage to cause such a fright? He could only imagine.
Gar spun in circles, poking his head first through one break in the hedge and then another, calling the little seal’s name until his voice broke, but no answer came. All was quiet behind. Evidently Yan was keeping his word and occupying Analee. But that couldn’t last, and Gar plunged headlong into the alternate avenues in the maze one by one.
He’d barely begun the search when a cyclone formed in his path, a tall whirling funnel from which Analee emerged, her gossamer mantle billowed wide. For all its yardage, it did not hide her nakedness. It was as transparent as the spiderwebs clinging stubbornly to the hedges and ground-creeping vines spangled with the morning dew. He had never seen anything so beautiful, or so deadly. Her eyes were burning toward him like live coals, and her hair was fanned out about her on a wind that didn’t exist anywhere else. It was a fearsome sight, but her body was as tempting as ever, and she flaunted it, spreading her mantle open, thrusting her perfect breasts and hairless slit as she sauntered closer.
“You may as well give it over,” she said. “You will never escape me. You don’t really want to. I can see the lust in your eyes, knight of the realm. You are my creature, and you will remain so until I tire of your company.”
The pull of her lure was great, but the pull of another was greater now. The little selkie needed him, and every second counted. He had to find her before it was too late, before she disappeared in her fright and he’d lost her forever.
“I took you at your word,” he said, “and I expected you to keep your part of the bargain—you imposed it, after all. You cannot keep me here against my will. It will serve you not!”
Analee burst into riotous laughter. “I can do whatever I will,” she assured him. “This is my world. I make the conditions here.”
“You can make all the conditions you like, but you cannot make me abide by them. Our time is over. Let me go!”
“Never!” she purred, running her hands over his hard-muscled chest and torso as she crowded closer. “I can make you forget…everything…”
Her hands were cool as they played his body the way a musician plays a fine instrument, her warm breath intoxicating, puffing against the sweat glistening on his hot skin. Gar had no doubt she could make a man forget everything; hadn’t she done just that to him until now? But as he steeled himself against her advances, against those skilled hands roaming over his buttocks and his hardening cock, he sensed that she had something in her arsenal of seductions that he hadn’t seen before, and time—the time that did not exist in the Otherworld—did exist in his mind. It was running out for him, and for the little selkie.
The goddess stepped back and spread her gossamer mantle wide. “You have only to come into my arms, Gar Trivelyan,” she said. “Embrace me. Let me fold you in the gauze of forgetfulness, and your eternity with me will be a paradise beyond your wildest imagining.”
The mantle! What was she saying, that to let her cloak him in it with her would wipe his memory clean? His mind reeled back to when she’d first donned that garment. It was in the tournament tent, when he’d first arrived. Why hadn’t she used it then? Could it be because she’d thought she could seduce him to her will without resorting to that tactic? And there was something else…for a time she wore no mantle, but then, she suddenly appeared wearing it again. He remembered questioning when she’d put it on. He remembered now, that was when she led him to the banquet she’d prepared to trick him into eating while they awaited the dawn. Of course! No doubt she would have used it then if the centaur hadn’t interrupted them. What had he heard of such mantles…that the victim must succumb willingly?
Gar backed away from her. “You will not entrap me with that!” he said. “I will never come to you of my own free will. I command you to set me free!”
The words were scarcely out, when a shaft of blinding white light speared down alongside them, a column of snake lightning that rent a tear in the labyrinth floor and shook the hedges all around.
Gar staggered back from it, though it was not aimed at him but, to his surprise, at Analee, who cowered from it, as another lightning strike streaked down, and with it the ethereal shadow shape of a woman robed in silver gauze. Could it be Annis herself? Had Analee finally brought the wrath of the goddess of all wells down upon her own head? The way Analee cowered in this strange deity’s presence, Gar was certain of it.
The specter, for that is how the entity appeared, spoke not a word. Instead, she spread her arm wide, swirling the lightning over Analee, and in a blink they both were gone, vanished before Gar’s very eyes.
“Go!” said a disembodied voice. “I have done what needs must to see you and the selkie to safety. It is in the hands of Mother Annis now. She will mete out Analee’s chastisement. It is not the first time. But you two must be gone before her justice is accomplished, for none of us is safe from Annis’s wrath here now. She is most displeased. The balance has been disturbed, and so has she, from her repose. You have been spared for the moment, my fellow consort. Such things are rare. Take the gift and go!”
Gar spun in all directions, but there was no sign of Yan, though it was indeed the centaur’s voice he’d heard. It didn’t matter. Spinning on his heels, he streaked down the lane with only one thought to drive him. He had to find the little selkie, and take her home.
Three passages came to dead ends, but the fourth led into a mist that somehow seemed familiar. Yes, wherever this was, he’d been here before. He remembered the willows. The well! Had he come full circle? There, at the edge of the grove, alongside a whitethorn tree bedecked with many strips of colored cloth, stood the low stacked-stone well with its satiny black spring rippling gently inside. The little seal was perched on the edge, poised to dive into the water.
Her eyes wide with fright, she loosed a bloodcurdling moan and dove, but so did Gar, grabbing fast to her tail as she plunged headlong into the well. “There! I’ve got you!” he cried triumphant, only to freeze in horror, for he didn’t have her. All he clutched in his hands was her soft, sleek sealskin. The rest of her had disappeared beneath the dark, misty water in the well.
8
G ar tied the sealskin tightly around his waist, stepped up upon the rim of the well, and dove in after Anya. Down, down he plummeted through blackness that rivaled the fabled outer darkness. A sane man would have been terrified, but Gar considered that he’d run mad or died long since. Convinced that he could not die twice, he swam on, expecting to meet the gods head on at any moment.
He was a skilled swimmer, but his breath was coming short, and he had no idea where he was going. It was an enchanted well, after all, and Analee did preside over it. The legendary goddess of the well, or Annis herself, who ruled all the wells and had let him go, could change her mind and block his path at any moment. Anything was possible with the fickle fay, but all he could think of then was finding Anya, the gentle little selkie who had given him back his life. He had to believe, no matter what else he believed, that the gods weren’t so cruel as to take that life away from him again now, after all he’d been through.
All at once, the water brightened overhead, but only slightly. His lungs felt as if they were going to burst as he broke through the surface of choppy water that was roiling and swelling and crashing toward shore beneath leaden skies and lightning snaking down. Flotsam and jetsam floated all around him. Crates and spars, lines and sheets and timbers struck him glancing blows as the waves carried them where they would. Even bits of bedding and clothing washed over him. The shipwreck! He had come back to the midst of the shipwreck?
All at once soft, slender arms slipped around his neck, and a rippling cloud of coppery hair fanned out about his shoulders. It smelled of ambergris. Supple female curves,
petal-soft and smooth as satin, leaned against his naked skin, arousing him, and he blinked the salty water from his narrowed eyes and stared. The last thing he saw before consciousness evaporated was the largest pair of dreamy limpid eyes he’d ever seen, gazing into his with something akin to worship.
Gar awoke to the gentle touch of a woman’s hand flitting over his body much as the little seal had done. At first, he thought he was dreaming, but then, he glanced down into the same extraordinary eyes he had seen before he’d lost consciousness. She was lying beside him, her head resting upon his shoulder, her exquisite body pressed so close against him it was as if their skins had become one.
For a moment, he thought it was the goddess; she was so like her, even to the little mole above her perfectly bowed lips. But there was something different in the eyes, something soft and serene, a wide-eyed, childlike innocence that had so melted his heart when he looked into the limpid gaze of the curious little seal.
“Anya?” he murmured.
She nodded against his shoulder as she nuzzled it. She was making a contented purring sound that thrilled him. Throaty and primeval, it was a mystery of her species, something feral, deeply rooted in nature, as erotic and ancient as the pulse beat of the earth itself. He could feel it through his skin, humming in every pore, the sensual vibration echoing in his very soul. Moving her naked body contentedly against his side, she had aroused him, and his cock began to rise through the gap in the sealskin still tied about his waist. She could have taken it back while he lay unconscious. Why hadn’t she?
“Why did you run from me?” he said, slipping his arm around her. Her skin was warm, and as soft as silk against his raw male roughness. “Surely you knew I wouldn’t harm you?”
She gave a start. “I was not running from you—never from you,” she said. “I was running from the centaur. He is Analee’s consort, you know. He is the one who put me in that cage. He is well skilled with bow and arrow, a deadly shot. When he raised his longbow and took aim, I feared he would kill me! That is what she wanted. It would have been sacrilege for her to do it herself. I feared she’d convinced the centaur to do it for her.”
Eros Island Page 13
