His rhythm grew faster. She felt his huge tail thrashing. She felt powerless and helpless beneath his power, gripped in his gigantic talons, with his huge, snake-like member piercing her, penetrating her, sliding and rubbing inside her. The pleasure was a madness, a craving and lust and she yielded to it, arching to him. She saw his huge, brutal, serpentine form rising over her and she longed for him.
The, the friction of his sliding, thrusting member became unendurable and the orgasm welled up and overwhelmed her, searing through her skin in a spasms of ecstasy. She clenched, gritting her teeth, holding her breath, seizing his member, intensifying the rub and with it the pleasure. A second wave of orgasm hit her and then he was roaring, driving through her contractions, and they were thrashing together, tangled, grappling at each other’s bodies like two serpents fighting to the death, until they collapsed, exhausted, kissing each other’s skin, tasting the salt of each other’s perspiration.
Seven
When she awoke he was not there.
She lay, stunned for a while, remembering the exquisite feelings of the night before, coupled with the horrific images and wondering if she had gone completely insane. Whether she was or not, the madness had to stop. That, at least, was clear.
She rose, bathed and dressed, and then went down stairs. She found him in the library. He was standing, gazing out of the window at the street outside.
She said, “Good morning.”
He turned and smiled at her. His expression was sad. He had lost his boyish glee and enthusiasm. It was replaced by an odd expression she could not at first place. Then she thought it might be kindness, even compassion.
He said, “Emma!” Almost as though he had been surprised to see her. “Have you broken your fast? Are you hungry?”
“No, I am not hungry, thank you, Sigurd.”
He gestured at a chair, “Will you sit? Did you sleep well?”
She frowned, disconcerted by this change in his manner. She sat and said, “I slept as though I were exhausted after a great physical exertion.” He looked embarrassed. She said, “What is it, Sigured?”
He returned to the window. Gazed out at the street, biting his lip. She repeated, “Sigurd…?”
He gave a small shrug, spread his hands and looked at her. His expression was both frank and deeply sad.
“I changed,” he said.
She hesitated. “I… I wished you to.”
He nodded. He took a couple of steps to a chair and sat opposite her.
“You see, my lady, I know that I love you. There is no doubt in my heart about this.”
His meaning dawned on her.
“You deduce then, that if you changed this must mean that I do not love you.”
He didn’t answer, but held her eye.
“Sigurd, two days ago I had never heard of you. I am completely bewildered. I have been kidnapped – by a dragon!...I barely know who I am, let alone what I am feeling…”
“I understand, Emma.” He smiled. “Believe me, I am confused myself by the feelings…” He seemed momentarily distracted by his own thoughts. “…by the changes which I myself have experienced in the last two days. The thing is,” he studied her face for a while and then repeated, “The thing is I would rather spend a thousand eternities as a prisoner of the people of the mist, than have you an unhappy prisoner for one day. You must go.”
She gave a sharp intake of breath. “Sigurd! No…”
He nodded. “Yes. I must return to…to the Nibeland Valley. You cannot come with me unless it is as a slave. And as long as I live, Emma, you shall never be a slave.”
She rushed to him and dropped to her knees in front of him.
“But I do love you, Sigurd! I felt it last night. You must see that. There is something wrong, some mistake… Sigurd, I do love you!”
He smiled kindly and stroked her face.
“Are you sure, dear Emma? I believe you love the dragon, and not the man.”
With a terrible sinking feeling she realized that there was some horrible truth in his words. She stood and looked down on him. His eyes were so sad. Was she then infatuated with the beast, and unable to love this good, noble man? Who then, in fact, was the beast? Who was the dragon, keeping the treasure hidden, imprisoned in the cave in the land of mists? Was it not, after all, her?
She took a step back and tears flooded her eyes. She covered her mouth with her hand and ran from the house, stumbling down the steps into that bright, tragic spring day. She half ran, half stumbled, hardly knowing where she was going, until at last she came to Pardoner’s Square and rang on the bell.
Smythe opened the door and his eyes went like saucers. He reached for her and cried out, “My Lady! Upon my word!”
He summoned the maids and, like a clutch of mother hens, they fussed about her and took her to the morning room, where Smythe immediately provided her with a stiff glass of brandy. She refused to see a doctor, but accepted a pot of tea and spent the rest of the day weeping and haranguing herself for her weakness, her stupidity and her vileness as a person.
She slept badly that night, sobbing and praying that Sigurd would visit her as a dragon and take her once again to those heights of insanity and passion that she had known with him. At almost four in the morning she finally collapsed into a profound, exhausted slumber.
The next morning she arose as though she had been in the clutches of a fever. She was weak, drawn and pale. She ate little throughout the day, save some soup and chicken broth.
By the third day her mood was one of desolation such as she had not known since the death of her father. Though in some ways this was worse, because she knew that she had lost the man she loved through her own blind stupidity, her own inability to see through the mist of her vanity and lust, to the man who loved her, and whom she loved, had she but known it.
She began, as of the third day, to be kinder and less aloof with her staff. She inquired after their wellbeing, gave them more time for themselves, to pursue their own interests and lives. At first, she acknowledged to herself, this was a conscious effort that she made, but with time it became natural, second nature. And as a result her staff grew to love her, and as they grew to love her, so she grew truly to love them back.
She did not see Richard. She was not sure why. She thought of him often and she missed him. But some unarticulated, half unconscious fear made her procrastinate, and avoid lingering on any thought of him.
He could, she told herself, always contact her if he wished to see her. He had not, so no doubt he had at last met some young society woman and fallen in love. No doubt they would get engaged. No doubt they would marry. Though she had decided, and he had agreed, that if she ever married she would marry him.
Was he in love with her? Was that the thought that she so assiduously attempted to avoid? Had she been cruel to Richard all these years? Had she ignored the good, noble man because she lusted after a beast.?
She dismissed the thought from her mind over and again, seeking solitude but never able to escape from her own thoughts.
Three months passed in this manner, and during that time she thought deeply, meditated upon the nature of her feelings and her behaviour, and finally reached a decision. On a bright morning in early June she sat at her bureau and penned a note. She then addressed it to Lord Pastern, Wormholt Square, Mayfair and rang the bell for Smythe.
“You rang, M’Lady.”
“Have this note sent round to Lord pastern, Smythe. I shall require an immediate reply, so have the boy wait, would you?”
* * *
“Richard, I have absolutely no right to ask you what I am going to ask, and I shall fully understand if you tell me to go and saw my timber. But I have nobody else to ask, and I am in desperate need. So I must ask you.”
“My dear Emma, I can’t imagine any circumstance in which I would be likely to tell you to amputate your mahogany. If you are in such dire need, I am only sorry you have not come to me sooner.”
“I’m afraid your kindne
ss makes this no easier. In fact it only makes it harder.”
“Would you like me to be mean to you, instead, and tell you to go to blazes?”
She smiled at him and realized it was the first time she had smiled with genuine pleasure in a very long time. She gave a small, pretty laugh and said, “I believe I would, dear Richard!”
He stared at her, dumbfounded, an uncertain smile on his face.
“What is this, Emmy? Are you ailing or feverish? Shall I call the doctor?”
“You are right to tease me. I deserve it. I have not been kind to you, and you deserved better.”
He frowned.
“Now this is getting a little serious and if you continue in this vane I shall begin to get worried.”
She clasped her hands on her lap and looked at him steadily. “Richard, I can’t tell you everything that has happened, but I want you to trust me. Something very peculiar happened to me after that night that we went to the talk at the Victoria and Albert. Do you remember?”
“Perfectly. You were besotted with that Norwegian bounder.”
“Be that as it may, the thing is I have come to realize that I have not been a very nice person. I have been self-righteous, ungenerous and unkind. And I need to make amends.”
“Good lord! What has come over you?”
“And as part of that making amends, I need to go to Norway, to in the Jotunheimen mountains, to find a cave in the Nibeland Valley. I can’t do it alone. I need the help of somebody whom I can trust.”
Richard’s face became very serious.
“You’re looking for this damned Sigurd Dreki, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
He was silent for a long time, staring at her face until she looked away. Finally he said, with no trace of factiousness or humour, “You do know, don’t you, Emma, why I never call on you uninvited, and why I never send you invitations?” She didn’t answer. He continued, “You do know, I am sure that you do, that I am in love with you. That I have been in love with you for the last seven years.”
She stared at her feet and nodded. “Yes.”
“Then you are quite correct. You have no damned right to ask me to help you go and find this man. But nevertheless I will go. Because, as the Bard says, ‘Love doth make fools of us all.’” He stood. “I hade better take my leave, Emma, before I make an even bigger fool of my self. When do we leave?”
She looked up at him. He saw in her face a torture of guilt and sadness and helplessness. And she in turn saw in his, only compassion and love. She attempted a smile of gratitude and said, “As soon as you are able.”
Eight
A frozen wind cut down out of the mountains, which stood vast, ancient and white against the blue sky in the west. They had docked in Oslo a week earlier and driven to Lillehammer. There they had purchased two horses and a pack mule and ridden first west and then northwest towards Beitostølen, where, two days later, they had taken rooms at a small inn and begun their exploration of the area.
Emma spoke ancient Norse, which she had learnt from a private tutor while studying the Icelandic and Norwegian sagas of the 12th century; and she was somewhat crestfallen when her attempts at conversation and inquiry were met with either confused frowns or gales of hilarity. “My dear Emma,” Richard said to her finally, “It’s as though I were to step into my local watering hole and say to the publican,” and here he adopted the tone and manner of a mediaeval knight, “Greetings, bar-lord, hast thou perchance a pint of goodly ale? For I would verily slack mine thirst this day. Zounds! Mine journey hence from Wormholt Square hath bestowed upon my a mighty weariness.” At this they had both burst out laughing and Richard had astonished her by revealing that he had in fact a passable command of modern Norwegian. “Where on Earth did you learn Norwegian, Richard? I had no idea!” He had smiled at her. “Dearest Emma, there is a great deal you do not know about me.” He had paused then, looking at her with great affection, and added, “You have been so busy on you quests, various, wild and wonderful, you have never seen what was under your pretty nose.” With that, and before she could answer, he had gone off to charm the innkeeper, a statuesque widow in her forties, and elicited from her, among much laughter, that there was no such valley as Nibeland that she had ever heard of, but there was a legend that said there was a cave about five or six miles to the north, as the crow flies, in the mountains above lake Vinstre. The valley was known locally as Tåke Dal: Mist valley. Now, two days after their arrival in Beitostølen, they sat upon their mounts at the crest of a hill and gazed down into a deep basin at the bottom of which a sparkling river opened out into a deep lake upon which still surface the sun shattered its light into a million diamonds, each one a fleeting, transitory gem.
Beyond, the far flank of the rose steeply into a broad band of dense pine forest, and above that the frozen peak of mount Tåke rose, shrouded, as it apparently always was, in cloud. Beyond that, Mount Galdhøpiggen, where the river had its source, rose magnificent against the sky.
“Well, here we are, the Misty Valley, at the foot of the Misty Mountain. What say you? Shall we descend, allow the beasts to drink and pasture, have some grub and head back?”
She nodded and they started their descent towards the sparkling river. As they rode down he turned to her and addressed a question which they had not discussed since that day in Mayfair, when she had asked for his help.
“Emma, what do you hope to find here?”
She sighed, aware of not wanting to hurt him, aware also of a growing fondness and tenderness towards him. Was this feeling new, she wondered, or had it always been there, and she had been to arrogant and blind to see it?
“I am not sure,” she said, somewhat evasively.
He smiled at her.
“You don’t need to mollycoddle me, my dear. I know you hope to find Sigurd Dreki. But that was not really what I meant.”
She frowned.
“What then?”
His horse drew a little closer to hers, so that their legs were almost touching. He was thoughtful, gazing at the forest across the water.
“I mean, even if we were to find this man, which I have to say, at the moment, does not seem all that likely, what then?” He turned to face her. “You are not actually looking for him, are you? You are hoping that he will give you an answer. I wonder if you even know what the question is.”
She stared at him, overwhelmed of a sudden by a flood of conflicting emotions. She was astonished at Richard’s insight, astonished that he had seen so clearly what she herself had failed to see, and at the same time infuriated by what she saw then as his impertinence.
They halted by the side of the lake. He took a roll of blankets from his saddle and laid them out while Emma unpacked their luncheon in silence. Richard tethered the horses and gave them their nosebags, then dropped onto the blanket beside Emma.
She handed him a cheese and ham sandwich and studied his face a moment as he took it.
“Richard, I fell very much in love with Sigurd.”
He nodded. “I know.”
“How did you know? You never saw us together.”
He shrugged and glanced at her. “I could see it in your eyes. Call it male intuition.”
She frowned. “Anyway, I had some strange experiences. It is very hard to explain and I doubt you would understand even if I did…”
He interrupted her and there was an edge of irritation to his voice.
“Emma, my dear, you make all these assumptions about me and you jump to all these conclusions, just as you always have. I was hoping that on this voyage of discovery we have undertaken together, you might begin to see that the vast majority of them were mistaken.” He put down his sandwich and turned to stare at her, allowing his annoyance to show on his face. “Has it ever once occurred to you, that perhaps I do understand, and it is you, in your stubbornness and your – let’s face it – arrogance, who neither sees not understands?”
Had she not been eating, her jaw would have dropped. But be
fore she could swallow to answer, he pointed past her head at where the ground rose from the river bank towards the hills.
“You were looking for a cave to explore. There you have one.” He made no effort to hide the irony in his voice. “Do you think it is the Tåke cave, the cave of impenetrable mists?”
She turned and looked. There, half way up the slope, above a rocky outcrop, was the jagged mouth of a dark cave. A sharp stab of fear and excitement pierced her belly. She had thoroughly scanned the area on their arrival and there had been no cave there. This then was Sigurd’s cave. He was here. She knew it. She could feel him.
“Richard, you need not come…”
He stood. “I am sorry, Emma, I know you would like to meet this chap alone, and once we find him, if we do, I shall leave you alone to talk. But I am not letting you go into a dark cave in the middle of the Norwegian wilderness on your own. I simply won’t do it.”
They left the horses where they were and scrambled up the bank to the mouth of the cave.
Nine
It was about ten foot across and some twelve foot in height. It was a tunnel that plunged into the hillside, and into an impenetrable gloom. Richard pulled his flashlight from his canvass bag and they began their descent into the cavern.
Soon they began to hear the damp, hollow echo of dripping water, and shortly after that the sigh and splash of a stream.
Emma heard Richard’s voice ahead of her.
“That must be the river that feeds the lake. You all right, Emma?”
She nodded, realized he could not see her and said, “Yes.”
The light from his torch began to take on a strange, hazy quality and she heard his voice, now a little muffled, saying, “Hallo, what’s this now? We seem to be running into some mist… Stay close old girl.”
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