by Janzen, Tara
“Dear friend,” he said softly, reaching up to caress her chin. “There can be no darkness on your soul that I have not seen even blacker in another, probably my own.”
Still she denied him, laying her hand on his when he would have brought the mirror between them. Reluctantly, he settled back against the wall and resigned himself to watching her in the shifting light of candle flame and hearth fire. A breeze was blowing around the tower, swirling up bits of rihadin ash. There would be rain before dawn; he could smell it on the wind.
The mirror was no more magic than he, yet she’d seen true. ’Twas Madron’s fault for peering around in his mind with her damned Druid’s sleep. The witch had stirred things up.
“I did not mean for the gift to make you sad,” he said.
“’Tis not the mirror that saddens me, but that you suffered.”
“And now you are suffering. Should we both be sad together?”
She looked up at him, and the candlelight revealed silent tears coursing down her cheeks.
Pure instinct compelled him to move toward her, his back coming off the wall, his arm gathering her close, his other hand cupping her cheek, and everything inside his heart welling up and spilling over like a wave washing over a dam, flowing toward her. “Ceri, do not cry,” he murmured. “Do not cry for me.”
She paid him no heed, her tears running beneath his fingers and down the center of his palm. He wiped the dampness off her cheek with his thumb and was struck anew by the childlike softness of her skin.
“Hush, min koerlighed.” He called her his love, comforting her and kissing her on the brow, indulging himself despite the caution sounding in his head. He kissed her temple and the side of her nose, consoling her, and listened to the cry of caution grow ever fainter. Of their own volition, his lips slid down to the corner of her mouth, seeking contact, and ’twas there that comfort and consolation gave way to desire, in the place where breath and tears pooled in a delicate, wine-scented curve. He paused in the sudden stillness and felt her do the same.
“Dain...” His name was the barest of sighs falling from her lips. Her eyes were closed, her mouth partially open, her body warm and alive in his arms.
He could have stopped and taken no more. Verily the thought crossed his mind, yet he turned his mouth more fully onto hers, savoring the taste of her, like nectar and the sea. He bit her gently, so gently, along the fullness of her lower lip and at the corners of her mouth, one side and then the other, and soothed with his tongue, until his message became clear and her instincts responded.
With the opening of her mouth, he did not hesitate. He opened his own mouth wider and slid his tongue down the length of hers. A groan was released from deep in her throat, filling him with the echoes of her pleasure. There was nothing sweet about the sound. It had been born in the surprise of lust and dragged up from the core of her being. She clung to him, and he kissed her, again and again. His mouth roamed at will over the curves of her face, over her cheeks and brow and jaw, returning as often to her lips as she did to his, but he went no farther. He did not dally at her ear or let his teeth graze the side of her neck. He did not fill his palm with her breast, and he licked nothing beyond the inside of her mouth—for a kiss was a kiss and not more.
In the way of such things, the desperation between them weakened its hold, transforming itself into the delight of mutual exploration; a dangerous turn, Dain knew, for he would allow himself far more leeway in the pursuit of delight than he ever would under the influence of desperation. Yet if kept within strict limits, he assured himself, kissing alone could not fail to reach a natural end, and despite the allure of delight and the seductive forays of her mouth, he would find the end of their kiss in time. In time.
The moon coursed across midnight in the sky, trailing clouds and stars. Beltaine Eve had begun. All of Nemeton’s cosmic map circled over their heads, the zodiacal beasts strung out in slowly swirling chaos: Aldebaran, Eye of the Bull in Taurus, followed by Fomalhaut, the beginning of the Water in Aquarius; Ram passing through Fish in a lazy circumference.
Ceridwen had not known there could be so much gentleness in strength, that one touch upon her mouth could make her whole body soar as if on wings, that the taste of a man would be like honey upon her tongue, making her want more, always more. She could not get close enough, yet she was closer to him than she’d ever been to anyone, her breasts crushed against his chest, her fingers winding through his hair, her mouth everywhere upon his face. The touch, scent, taste, and feel of him conjured a miracle with every breath; his kiss solved a thousand mysteries of life. Man was magic to woman.
Dain knew not how long the whole of it lasted before he lifted his mouth from hers, but he knew ’twas a kiss he would not forget. His body thrummed with the aliveness of it. His mind rejoiced in the pure wonder of it. The kiss had been perfect.
He wanted more. Much more. Not getting it was going to be the price he paid for his indulgence. In her own fashion, Edmee had proved him still a man in his desires. Ceridwen had proved him a man in his needs.
Holding her close, he forced a calming breath into his lungs and looked up at the stars. Vindemiatrix, the bright star of the Virgin, floated by on its rod overhead, dipping low with the breeze and coming alongside the Lion’s Heart in Leo. He almost smiled. Fate was truly guided by an ironic hand. His birth under the Red Fire Star put him firmly in Leo, and just as firmly, the virgin was in his heart. Her head rested in the curve of his shoulder, her breath soft and hot on his neck, inviting disaster. The kiss was over, only the fire in his loins remained. He needed to be alone.
“You must go to bed,” he said, attempting a light tone. There was no reason for her to know of the new suffering he’d brought on himself. “’Tis time for sleep.”
“I do not want to sleep.” She nestled closer, and he immediately began extricating himself from their embrace, rising to his feet.
“To bed with you,” he said.
She rose with him, and in the midst of it, took his hand in hers. He wished she had not done so, for even her innocent touch made him yearn. Worse still, she stood too close, her eyes downcast, her clothing brushing against his, her thumb caressing the back of his hand, keeping him from his escape.
She did not speak, but she did not need to speak. What she wanted was very clear.
“I cannot,” he said, his voice soft with regret, his fingers wrapping around hers.
“Was the kiss so poor?” She had turned shy on him again. He could see naught but the top of her head shining golden in the yellow light from the fire.
He dared not tell her the truth, and when he said nothing, she withdrew her hand from his and stepped away.
“Mayhaps the Boar will not want me either.”
“Ceri...” He grasped her arm without thinking, and found himself still with nothing he could say—except the truth. “If I kiss you again, it will not be sleep that whiles away the hours of the night.”
“I know, yet I still would ask.”
Someday she would surprise the life out of him.
“And I say you do not know.” His voice was harsh with frustration. “Your virgin dreams would not last a moment in my bed.” One touch from her would have given her what she professed to want, but she had not known enough to put her hand between his legs.
“Virgin dreams are not meant to last.”
Truth rang in her words, and too much hope. And wasn’t that what he wanted? For her to hope and not give up and finally to push him over the edge of reason with her sweet explorations? He had played the innocent for Jalal, and he knew what a powerful seduction innocence was, especially to a consummate seducer.
The realization gave him immediate pause. A chill ran through his blood. Was he to become like his teacher then? Would that be Jalal’s final triumph?
“I cannot,” he repeated with conviction, though he still held her arm.
“And I cannot sleep,” she told him honestly. “Not like this. You have... I want...” She stumbled
over the words, trying to explain what did not need explaining.
He watched her growing shame and frustration change into anger, and knew himself to be a low bastard. He should not have done such to her. She might be virgin, but she was still human, and she was young. Her emotions were all tangled up with her arousal.
“Do you not know how to please yourself?” he asked, striving for gentleness in the question.
“Please myself?”
“Masturbari, Ceri.” He spoke the Latin softly. “It will help.”
She blushed, proving herself not completely innocent, which only made his body harder. What a pretty picture she would make: her hands, his mouth. His chest tightened with the thought of it.
“I do not want that,” she said, jerking her arm free, her voice controlled but trembling. “I wanted you, and you are killing me.”
“Then we will die together.” He gave her what he could, knowing it was not enough for either of them.
“Bastard,” she accused him. “Heartless, heartless bastard.”
She gathered her skirts and fled, her slippered feet making nary a sound on the tower stairs. He watched her disappear and heard the door to his solar slam shut with the weight of her anger.
A mere fortnight past, he would have agreed with her, but the words were no longer true. He had a heart. He could tell by the damned stupid breaking of it.
Chapter 17
Dawn had not yet broken the darkness of the night when Ceridwen heard Dain come down from the upper chamber. She had slept fitfully at best, and had known she slept only from the innumerable times she’d awakened. Each time she’d found Numa, her one true friend, loyally by her side.
She hated Wydehaw’s mage. He was cruel beyond measure, rivaling the Boar, mayhaps surpassing him. Caradoc only wanted her blood to make his wicked sacrifice and call up his fiendish dragons. With luck, the Boar could be eluded; and if she proved to have no luck, the beast could be faced and fought. But love, she didn’t know how to fight love.
Dain had kissed her and taken her heart and filled it with more hurt than she could bear. Her pillow was damp with the tears she’d shed. ’Twas the pain of love squeezing the breath from her lungs in heavy sobs. She didn’t want to love him, yet she could find no escape. She’d searched her mind the night long, trying to find respite from the crushing emptiness he’d inflicted on her soul, and she’d found none. She loved the bastard Lavrans and had been forsaken.
Glass crashed somewhere in the room on the other side of the bed curtains. Dain swore, knocked into something, and swore again. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, holding herself still, listening. Another crash followed the first, then came the scent of incense.
“Numa!” he hollered. “Elixir! Kom!”
Belly to bedsheets, the albino slunk onto the floor and beneath the curtains without giving Ceridwen so much as a backward glance.
A torrent of Danish followed the hound’s appearance in the chamber, a diatribe punctuated by heavy, erratically paced footfalls. Dain was crossing the room, his voice too loud for the space enclosed within the curved walls. The dogs began to whimper and whine, sounding so forlorn, their misery sent a shiver up her spine.
Fighting a cowardly impulse to hide, Ceridwen tossed the fur coverlets aside. No good could come from this madness. She would not allow him to hurt Numa in her stead. A loud banging thud brought her to a quick stop, the sheets gripped in her fist, the sable in a pile by her hip. She cocked her head and held her breath.
Could only have been his fist slamming into the Druid Door, she thought. Nothing else in the tower with the solidness of oak had the resonance of iron behind it.
“Nej!” he roared, hitting the door again and making her flinch. “Kvinde, nej!”
The command reverberated throughout the solar in a strange manner she could not comprehend, as if he spoke from two places at once, and within its dying echoes she heard a new sound—metal sliding and clacking against metal. There was an ominous timbre to the noise, reminding her of the scrape and glide of swordplay or of knives being sharpened. Her hands tightened on the sheets, and she found herself praying he would not come for her.
~ ~ ~
Dain locked the Druid Door down to the seventh level, shoving home bolts and half chanting, half cursing a litany of luminaries. He called each series of mechanisms by its planetary name, added its earthly counterpart and its element, and a curse torn from his frustration. From within the words he threw his voice to the dogs, bringing them to heel with a dire warning of what would come to pass if they failed in their task.
There was magic here, he swore to himself. He had not come this far only to be denied, not when the sacrifices had become so great. If he could not have Ceridwen, he would have the secrets of the Hart Tower. He would forge the marriage of Sol and Luna and conceive the hermaphroditic corpse from which resurrection became possible, the one spirit with mastery over the Philosopher’s Stone. Pure gold could impregnate pure silver, the red stone into the white. The mix of the two, the hermaphrodite, had to die, the corpse in a tomb, and arise again with the blessing of the celestial influence.
“Sweet Jesus,” he swore between his teeth. The way of it was written so even in the Bible:
Senseless man, that which thou sowest is not quickened unless it die first. And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not the body that shall be: but bare grain, as of wheat, or of some of the rest. But God giveth it a body as he will: and to every seed a proper body.
(I Cor. 15:36-8)
“God giveth it a body as he will.” There is only one God, she’d said. He locked down Mercury with a hard twist of his hand and stepped back. Only one God to beseech, yet tonight he would beseech a pantheon of gods for the Quicken-tree, the very same who allowed him access to Nemeton’s tower of cosmic mysteries to search for the transforming One. More swiving irony. He would die from it and be damned, if he could not understand it.
“Religion,” he whispered as if the word were yet another curse. He reached out and touched the tips of his fingers to the Druid Door. He’d fought for his faith and been consigned to the depths of hell for his fervor. He’d murdered and slain in the name of his God, and his God had forsaken him.
And now this. He curled his fingers into his palm and turned his face toward the eastern window. ’Twas more than the maid eating away at him. The sun of Beltaine Eve had not yet risen into the sky and already he felt the pull of the grove, felt Deri calling to him. There were seven other festivals of the year, but ’twas Calin Gaef with the magic of death and Beltaine with the magic of blossom that affected him most, this year to his detriment. The whole of it was coming upon him too strongly, the quickening of the earth and his blood, the ripeness of the season and his loins. The Quicken-tree would get more than they had bargained for this night.
He turned away from the door, looking once more toward the eastern window. A dawn wind breached the embrasures, its touch falling lightly upon his cheeks. ’Twould not be long before the horizon ran red with the first streak of day, and there was more work to be done. Yet he took the moment, lifting his face into the fading darkness of the night and letting the wind caress his lips with a sweet kiss from the coming morn.
~ ~ ~
Ceridwen listened to the silence, and her courage grew. Assuring herself that Dain would not kill her outright, she crept to the side of the bed and opened the curtains a bare slit.
All was quiet. Dain stood in the middle of the solar with a soft wind ruffling the sleeves and hem of his tunic. His hair was wild about him, long and tangled, proof of hands that had run through it over and over again in distraction—or despair. One torch burned bright in a cresset next to the hearth, its flame rippling in the breeze, its light glancing off the heavy, bronze-studded leather belt around Dain’s waist.
The gentling wind died down, and the chaos returned. Dain began pacing the breadth of the chamber, his strides uneven, roaming to some unseen will, until a destination seemed to present itself and h
e was once more on a true course.
“Kvinde, nej!” His hand came down hard on the door leading to the eyrie. The dogs wound themselves around his legs in abject subjugation, sleek white flowing against pitch-black, the two twining bodies lit by flickering torchlight. He issued his command again at each of the embrasures, then one final time over the hatch leading to the alchemy chamber. His voice shifted strangely, from here to there, even when he stayed in one place, making her uneasy, but the dogs responded without hesitation, following him step by step, fawning and cajoling, all but licking his boots in their eagerness to please.
With a sinking heart, she realized he had spoken true. She should not have put her trust where in the end it must be betrayed; the bitch was his. Totally. There was but one master in the Hart Tower.
From the hatch, he moved to the rows of shelves holding his simples and chose a small earthenware vessel. When he turned to the table, she got her first clear look at his face and drew back with an emotion she could not name, though the force of it raced through her. The chaos of his movements had invaded every aspect of his being. His eyes were fiercely intense, his breath coming short, the very bones of his face etched more strongly beneath his skin. With one broad sweep of his hand, he cleared the table of its contents, sending ampoules, pots, and cruets crashing onto the floor, their once fine forms reduced to thousands of shards and potsherds. Naught was left but the small brazier releasing fragrant fume-terres, the smoke of the earth.
Releasing a ragged moan, he dropped into his great chair, covering his face with one hand while he clutched the small pot within the other. For long moments, the only sound filling the air between them was his breath.
“I know you are awake,” he said at last, his voice dark with an edge of bitterness. “I can feel you watching me.” She blanched and drew back deeper into the bed.
“Hear this, Ceridwen ab Arawn. You will not leave this chamber until dawn breaks the sky again. If you try, the hounds will restrain you, doing whatever they must. Do not count on Numa’s loyalty to aid in your escape, for the bitch would as soon tear you limb from limb than go against my will in this.”
