Tranorva moaned as he slapped her thighs with the whip, harder this time, though still soft enough not to leave permanent marks. Reason began to soak through his befuddled brain. Tranorva was not fighting her bonds. She was trying to reach him. The woman who was always in control wanted him to control her. He slipped his fingers into her wet, waiting sheath. Her body shook with the force of a small explosion. The force of her lust nearly overwhelmed him.
"Please," she whimpered.
"Please what?"
"I want to feel you inside me."
His throat was dry, almost too dry to manage the words. "I want you to beg."
"Please," she sobbed, writhing against the restraints. "Please…"
* * * * *
Where was a whore when you needed one, damn it?
The vision had left him hard and aching with need. Ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. Tranorva. Waiting on an altar for him, wanting him to overpower her. Ridiculous. He needed to take some time off. He needed to take a trip to the nearest town and find himself a whore. Maybe two. After a vision like that, he could use two. He wasn't the type to visit their dens, but a man could make an exception, especially after a night like this.
Perhaps there were camp followers in the lower halls of the castle. Where there was an army, there were always camp followers. Yes. That was it. He'd head back to the Orc King's Castle. He'd find that dwarven wench who had eyed him with such evident approval. He'd….
Unfortunately things he had not paid attention to in the vision began to fall into place. The cold stone floors. The Dark Priestesses. The damp smell of the walls. Élahandara. Bastion of the Élandra Priestesses under the mountain, Élahandara was a catacomb of maze-like tunnels that stretched for miles beneath the solid stone of the mountains. Back at the Orc King's castles the other acolytes had spoken of the impending arrival of their High Priestess.
Only a High Priestess could command the magic necessary to wipe the traces of an entire army from the face of the Tundra. Only a Géndalaine herself could have stolen Tranorva from under the noses of her guards and a thousand devoted troops in the dead of night without a sound.
The whores would have to wait. There was only one way to find out whether Tranorva truly waited for him. He would go to Élahandara. His journey might yet find another meaning to the cryptic message sealed in the gods' promise to him. For in truth he no longer feared death as much as he feared the loss of the woman who had found her way into his soul…
* * * * *
Escape. You must escape.
Tranorva woke with a start.
The reality of the stone altar was cold. Stripped naked as she was, she was chilled to the bone. She wasn't one to let adversity get the better of her, but she'd had no choice in this. Whatever spells the Dark Ones had put her under, she'd had no way to fight them. They should have killed her, swiftly, ended it there. This was no way for a soldier to die. Naked. Helpless. Strapped to an altar.
She had to escape. But she was so tired…
Footsteps echoed down the long stone corridor. Tranorva whispered a prayer to the gods for strength and courage. "Let me die well, that is all I ask," she assured them.
"You pray, and yet your gods do not answer you."
The voice was deep and powerful and–female. Not the voice of her dream.
"Perhaps you pray to the wrong gods."
She couldn't see the face. Not yet. But she could feel the power. She whispered a short prayer of protection. This one radiated power the way her own mother did.
"What have your gods done for you, Tranorva? Where have they gotten you? Your gods only take from you. Your prayers go unanswered."
"My gods give me my strength. The strength to endure whatever ye intend to do to me. Save thy breath. Kill me now. Swiftly. It is a Warrior's right."
The woman moved closer, into Tranorva's line of sight. Her skin was dark blue- black, the color of deepest midnight. Her hair hung in long waves down her back, shimmering like fine strands of obsidian. Her face–her face was perfect. Small and heart shaped lovely. Her eyes, though, were what held Tranorva's attention. Lavender eyes that glowed with intensity. Surely this was not the face in her dreams. Surely…
"Kill you? Why would I kill you, my love? I have gone to so much work to bring you here safely. If I wanted you dead, I would have seen to it on the battlefield. In truth, it was not I who brought you here, but you, yourself."
Tranorva glanced around the rudely carved stone room, trying to keep the disdain noteworthy in her voice. "I? I think not. I remember marching not into thy city of stone, M'Lady. I would sooner have braved the depths of the hells themselves."
"Think you not? Think again. What prayer did you ask when your mother relayed the news that you would be called to serve in her place?"
Tranorva blinked slowly. Prayer? All those months ago… she had prayed, right after Shammall had left her. "I asked to be spared such a fate…"
A note of triumph sung in the Priestess's voice. "And I have been sent as an instrument of the gods to deliver your reprieve."
The answer was temptingly simple. Of course the best lies were the simplest ones. Twist a fact just a little here and the lines between truth and lies began to blur… "I asked only to die in battle," Tranorva countered.
"You asked first to be spared your fate. You know I speak the truth. The gods have sent me as an answer to your prayers. I offer you another choice, Tranorva. Think you that all of my kind were born to their power? No. It is a gift of the gods. Become one with us, and the gods will gift you as well. You will have power greater than you have ever dreamed of. You will have acolytes to serve you. Our young men will worship at your feet, and anywhere else you desire them. You are young, and strong, and you have what we seek. Join us, Tranorva. We are your destiny…"
The Priestess ran her hands over Tranorva's body as she spoke, touching, stroking, stopping here to bring a nipple to peak, caressing a shoulder, brushing back the hair from Tranorva's face. She ended her invitation with a kiss that Tranorva was too stunned to fight. She didn't want–she wasn't–this was wrong! This was against everything she had been taught! She did not worship their gods, would never worship their gods, would…
The woman sat astride her now, her heat only inches from Tranorva's as she leaned over, her breasts dangling against Tranorva's nipples as she deepened the kiss. She was a fine kisser. The Dark One's tongue stroked Tranorva's lips, twisting around her own tongue, teasing her to respond. Tranorva's traitorous body trembled with need. Her sheath was already aching and drenched. This was not the way it was supposed to be. She had to escape. This was not…
The Dark Priestess slid down Tranorva's body, licking and sucking, devoting her attentions first to those traitorous, aching breasts, then lower. This was not the way the dream went! This was not right…
The Dark Priestess spread her open like a feast to be devoured. Tranorva screamed as the first stroke of that tongue against soft, sensitive flesh shattered her world. She would not respond, not to a woman. Not to this woman. This was wrong! She would not be used so. She had to escape. She twisted and fought, succeeding only in throwing herself harder against the probing tongue. She felt herself peaking and screamed out again, whether in rage or ecstasy she no longer knew…
* * * * *
"Tranorva's fate shall be your own. You will live as she lives. You will die as she dies."
Élandine swallowed hard as he stared at the mountain that was not a mountain.
Élahandara.
If his life was as Tranorva's life, would he still be able to shift? Could he be who he needed to be next? Or would he be trapped in the body of the ageless Dark Elf, forever lost to the races he desired most? For he would be killed on sight in most cities were he to appear as a Dark Elf…
Perhaps the cryptic message meant only that his fate was irrevocably entwined with Tranorva's. Be that as it may. It had always been so. Whatever his fate, whatever awaited him within the dark recesses of Élahandara, it ma
ttered not. He had no future without Tranorva. She was his. She was the one he had been waiting for all his life. He had known that from the first time he held her.
He'd thought it duty, devotion, fealty that bound him to her, and it was all those things, for the child and her protector. But she was no more a child, and he could never go back to the innocent he had been before Yarwyn's touch. The wound she had opened over his heart would never fully heal. She had let in too much of what she was in that single knife thrust. He knew now what he had denied in himself for years. What he had felt for Evalayna's child was nothing to what he felt for the woman. The pity of it was, he was in love with a woman who despised him.
* * * * *
No light found its way into the cold, damp cell. By the gods she was tired. Tranorva huddled under the blanket, repeatedly flexing her muscles. The guard would be here soon. By now she knew the rhythm of the place. The Sun must have just slipped behind the shadows. The inhabitants of Élahandara were beginning to stir.
The cart with its wobbly wheel turned the corner, creaking slowly down the corridor. The footsteps halted often enough as the guard stopped to shove food to some other poor victim locked away in this grim stone fortress. Tranorva tensed as the footsteps drew closer. Two cells away. Another ten footsteps. Another bowl of parched grain shoved through a door. Another ten footsteps.
"Hey."
Tranorva held her breath, laying perfectly still under the blanket. She knew that to the Dark Elves, the cells were moderately well lit.
"Hey. Come get your food."
Thirty seconds. Forty. How long would he wait?
"What the…" Keys rattled against the lock. "Hey! This one's not breathing!"
She had learned to swim under water almost before she could walk, in the arctic waters of The Northland… Seventy seconds. Eighty.
The door burst open. The guard sprang across the small room, yanking the blanket off of her body. One hundred seconds. Tired as she was, she still could have managed another half minute or more. Tranorva filed the thought away as she sprang from the pallet, ramming the top of her head into the nearest guard's abdomen. That one went down even as the second one lunged at her, his dagger drawn now and ready.
He was small. Much too small to have come after her with nothing more than a wee little knife. Tranorva laughed in triumph as he buried the tiny blade into her arm. Moments later his neck snapped beneath her hands. She held the body before her, and effective shield against the third one who now came charging through the door. The knife was slippery with her own blood. She wiped it on the dead one's tunic. The third one went down, mortally wounded she could tell from the wheeze in his throat, before the whoosh of air at the back of her head warned her too late that she'd underestimated the length of time it would take the first guard to regain his footing.
Damn. She sighed as the guard's weapon impacted with her skull. Next time she would have to make sure the first one stayed down…
* * * * *
Tranorva stretched carefully, trying to determine the extent of her injuries. Nothing felt broken or out of place. Someone had thought her worth expending the energy to heal her arm of that blasted knife wound. Those could be irritating.
Unfortunately, stretching, or trying to, confirmed her fears. She couldn't move. She'd been brought out of her cell and strapped to the altar again. She concentrated on long, slow, steady breathing. There was no need for panic. True enough, she was immobilized and helpless should anyone try for retribution over the guard's deaths, but if they were going to kill her as punishment they'd have done so already.
She was so tired… she would have let her eyes slip shut once again, but she had to think. She needed a plan. There was a way out of this. As long as you were alive, there was always a way to escape.
Instinct told her the Priestess wanted her alive. At least for now. As long as that one thought there was some hope that Tranorva might embrace the Dark gods, she was safe. Except for their torture–or whatever the Dark Priestess's seduction might be called. In truth Tranorva might have been swayed with the strength of their attitude toward sexual pleasures alone, had she not her mother's words still firmly branded in her mind.
"Chaos and Destruction must never win."
As a child she had known that her father would give his life to protect his family from the forces of Chaos and Destruction. Her childhood had ended the night Shammall came to take them to Grandmother's. Father would come for them here, on the mountain. If they left how would he know where to find them? They were to wait for him at the camp. Alone, Mother would have waited there for him forever. If she was willing to leave with Shammall, that could mean only one thing.
Tranorva had screamed out her rage in the night.
Father was dead.
Three decades later, little had dimmed the rage in her heart. As a woman she had faces to go with the gods. Destruction, that was the face of the Orcs. They looted and pillaged and destroyed everything in their paths, leaving nothing of value behind, doing nothing with what they had taken, except the captives. The captives they set to break, slowly, painfully, for no other reason than that they could.
These people, the Dark Elves, they were the ones with a plan. They were Chaos. They would seek to strip her of everything that she valued–her courage, her devotion to duty, her loyalty to her own kind, even her status as a Warrior–slowly, systematically, until they reduced her to clay, to mold to their shape. But she had still one defense against them. She still had her rage.
She had been young, but not so young as to have forgotten. The Dark Elves had attacked in the night, Orcs with them to do their bidding. Father and the other warriors had been roused from their sleep even as the first sentries spread the alarm with their death screams. She still heard their cries in her sleep. Then Mother came and Father had kissed her before he slit the back of the tent with his sword. He had vanished from her world as the hides fell soundlessly back in place in the wake of their passing.
Tranorva flinched despite herself as the shadow on the wall told her the Dark Priestess was here, though without the usual heavy tread of her feet she liked to use to make her presence anticipated. A cunningly evil smile lit the face that might otherwise have been beautiful. The eyes remained focused and shrewd, assessing their victim thoughtfully. Tranorva sensed that today's torture would be of a different sort. Today the Dark One would start on her mind.
How long could she hold out against such power? She was so tired… if she was going to escape she'd have to do it soon. They were wearing her down.
"Your father was a victim of war, child." The voice was soft and reasonable–and laced with sympathetic understanding. "You are a Warrior. Surely you understand. How many have you slain in battle? How many life's bloods have you let fall to the ground? Think you not that those who died at your blade had mothers, wives, children who might miss them? Such is the lot of a Warrior, to leave these broken lives behind."
Tranorva worked carefully to seal off her mind as her mother had taught her. She had not known these Priestesses had the power to read her thoughts. Or perhaps she had not such a gift. This was where Tranorva herself would have started. Shared sorrow. Establish a common ground. "Those that I killed, I killed in battle. I came no' in the night like a thief to take the lives of innocent women and children."
"You came and you slaughtered. You had your orders, and you followed them. You were your mother's right arm, aimed where ever she pointed you. There must have been times when you wondered. Why would she send an army against a few hundred men trying to scrape an existence out of the wilderness? There were women and children amongst the Élandra farms she sent you to loot and destroy. What was their crime? That they were different from you? They were peaceful farmers! There were women and children with the Tundra Rangers she sent you to execute. You followed orders. Surely their deaths have been on your conscience. What would you say to those children who watched their fathers die that day had you the chance?"
Tranorv
a felt her breath hit an uneven note. The Élandra farms had been nothing but aggressive attempts to occupy Northland territories. The Outlawed Rangers, however, had been a hard thing for her and her men. The Rangers families had fought by their sides… "We fought as we had to fight. Those who died took up arms against us. They had the chance to lay down their weapons. Their victims had no' that chance."
"And so you slaughtered the children, because you had to. Can you not see that we are the same? I follow orders as you must. You lay the blame for other's decisions at my feet. What choice does a soldier ever have? We follow orders. It has always been so."
"I am not a machine. I am a Warrior. I follow orders that are fair and just. I have not willingly laid the edge of my blade on the throats of innocent unarmed civilians. This has never been the way of my people."
"What if I told you your precious father yet lives? That he serves by choice within these very walls? Let me show you our ways. You will come to understand us, even as I understand you. You can do now what you could not as a child. I will give him to you as your initiation gift."
Tranorva yanked against her restraints with all the power of a maddened Northland Warrior. "Ye lie! Thy gods are the authors of all lies! My father died in battle three decades past! Ye blaspheme his name to mention it here in this foul place!"
The Dark One's face broke into an icy smile as Tranorva fought against her restraints. "Roahr VinDall yet lives. Roahr VinDall serves by my side. Your people hid his existence from you that he might not be an embarrassment to them. Would you not do all within your power to protect him? Turn my invitation down and I will kill him while you watch."
Way of The WOlf: The Northlanders Book I Page 19
