A surprised expression crossed the king’s features. “Which one?”
“I…I…” Suddenly I was faced with a decision I hadn’t bargained for. I had to make a choice between my son and Kafir—an impossible task.
Hreidmar waited, a little smile playing around his lips. He knew he had me. My mind floundered. If I chose Kafir he would help me find Rifak. That is, if the king let him. If I chose the sorceress, Kafir might die while we were away. “It has to be Kafir,” I finally answered.
Hreidmar nodded. “You do care for the man. I will do as you ask but then you must honor your promise. There will be no more bargaining. When that commitment is met we will search for your son.”
Again his eyes sought mine and I was drawn into his charisma, my body tingling in anticipation of what was to come. At the same time I could feel my mind, like a captured animal, struggling to regain control. He allowed me my privacy that night, telling me to lock my doors. In the morning he would release Kafir and tomorrow night we would share a bed. I did as he told me, locking my doors before undressing and crawling under the covers. But his magic worked inside me and my dreams were filled with him and when I woke in the morning I knew I was lost.
***
“Kafir is a free man,” Hreidmar told me at the breakfast table. “He has gone to his boat and I expect him to seek you out once he has eaten and taken care of Gypsy.”
I watched the king pick up his cup and take a sip of the hot tea. My mind whirled with the possibility of tracking down my son but I also felt a strange languor as though it didn’t matter much one way or the other. “I think I’ll bathe after breakfast,” I said, stretching and yawning.
“Do whatever you wish but remember your promise to me tonight. If Kafir seeks you out, what should I tell him?”
“Oh, tell him I’m busy,” I answered, my gaze on Hreidmar’s handsome face. I anticipated washing my hair and adding some sweet-smelling oil from the little bottle I had found next to the pool. Oddly eough I’d found several elegant dresses in my size in the closet. I wondered idly if they might have belonged to Ella. No matter, all I knew was that I wanted to be beautiful for him tonight.
I was basking in the warm water when I heard someone whisper my name. And then the door opened and Kafir appeared. I was shocked to see his haggard face. “Gertrude, what has he done to you?”
“Nothing. I’m fine,” I answered, puzzled by his worried expression.
“You’ve been bewitched and I’m not sure how to undo the magic.”
“I have not—don’t be silly.” I shifted in the pool, reaching behind me for the towel I’d left hanging over the edge. “If he finds you here…”
“Yes, I know. You’re his property now. Have you shared a bed or is that still to come?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but no, not yet. Tonight is the night and I’m very much looking forward to it.”
Kafir paced and stared out the window. “I have to find a way to get you out of here…” he mumbled.
I stood, wrapping the towel around me before I stepped out of the tub. Right now I wished Kafir would go away and leave me to my preparations. I had been lost in a delightful reverie when he came in and now his nervous energy was ruining everything. When he suddenly grabbed me, I tried to scream but before it sounded he had covered my mouth with his hand. “I’m getting you out of here.”
I struggled against him but he was a big man and after a minute or so I gave up, waiting to see what he would say. Hreidmar would punish him for this.
In the bedroom he sat me down on the edge of the bed. “I’m doing this for your own good. If you go through with this I may not ever get you back. Look what he’s done already--you’re as limp as a ragdoll with no will of your own.”
I tried to make sense of what he was saying but I did feel rather limp. And I couldn’t seem to think. My mind was like a blank sheet of paper. And in that moment I recalled the letter I had found—Kafir’s letter to his wife--and I remembered my feelings for him. “Kafir.” When I reached for him he took hold of me around the waist, slinging me over his shoulder like a sack before making his way out of the bedroom and down the hall toward the stairs.
“If you value either of our lives you’ll be quiet,” he whispered. At the top of the staircase he paused to listen. “I saw Hreidmar leave before I came up here. Hopefully he’s not back yet.”
I was astounded at how quietly Kafir managed to get down those stairs. As for me I was holding my breath. When we came into the main hall I heard footsteps behind us and when I looked back I saw it was Dormand. I waved stupidly, trying to smile from my ignoble position. The towel made for much shorter people barely covered me, and I knew there were parts exposed. Dormand took one look and then turned quickly away, his hand going up to signal Kafir the all clear. We ran through the open door, heading down the stairs. We were across the garden when I heard voices. “Kafir,” I whispered, “there’s someone coming.”
Kafir froze and then moved behind a tree. The voices grew louder and then I had a clear view of the king and several of his men. They seemed to be coming back from a hunting party, bows and arrows slung across their broad shoulders. “Yes, this is the night,” I heard Hreidmar say and then crude laughter.
“Does she know what she’s getting into?” someone asked. And then Hreidmar’s response: “She will soon enough. Once the deed is done she will be mine forever, until death takes her.”
“Let’s hope you don’t kill her tonight,” another man said, and then everyone laughed again, including the king.
“Not like Ella, this one?” someone asked.
“Ella. . . now there’s a woman who spoke her mind. Her fate was sealed when she refused me, not that it did her any good. No, Gertrude is a willing participant and I expect great pleasure to come from our coupling, that is if she can take it.” This bawdy statement was followed by lewd laughter from all the men and several muttered obscene remarks having to do with size.
By now their voices were fading into the distance. I could feel the tension in Kafir’s muscles like live wires. He put me down and crumpled to the ground, his hands over his face. “I knew it. I had a feeling she was gone. That bastard killed her.” He looked up at me with a fierce expression. “He would do the same to you.”
I stared at him, my mind clicking back into place. “He didn’t say she was dead, Kafir.” I looked down at his bleak expression, the tears in the corners of his eyes. “We have to get out of here before he discovers me missing.” I flung the towel aside, sprinting across the garden and up the stairs into the passageway leading away from the castle. Behind me I could hear the thud of Kafir’s feet, his breath coming in gasps. “Keep going,” he called. “I’m right behind you.”
Chapter Nine
Far Isle-2451
Kafir didn’t say much once we got back to the boat, only hurrying around to stow things to prepare Gypsy and shouting orders at me. As Nidavellar grew smaller in the distance I breathed a sigh of relief, coming to stand next to him in the cockpit. I had found a warm sweater of his, pulling it down over my hastily pulled on wool skirt, but I still felt the effects of my naked run through the cold. The boat lifted and fell as waves rolled by and it seemed for a moment that she was sending me a message of hope.
“That was cutting things too close,” Kafir said, slinging his arm around my shoulders. When I looked up he shook his head with a half grimace. “Thank all the gods that I was released when I was. Was that your doing?”
I nodded, snuggling into his warmth as a cold gust of wind filled with ice crystals blasted by us. “Now all we have to do is find Adair and Rifak—on our own without any help from Dormand, Hreidmar or the dwarves.”
Kafir sighed, running his fingers through his hair. “Better to be on our own than dead. I’m telling you, Gertrude, he would have killed you--maybe not today or tomorrow, but very soon. He uses his women up, discarding them like garbage. I can’t believe I ever trusted him. That bastard back there deserves t
o die and I swear I will accomplish this.”
“So Ella didn’t fall under his spell the way I did? I still feel weird, as though I’m waking up from some strange hallucinatory drug.”
“Ella was a witch. She had her own spells and knew if someone was trying to control her. I doubt he got anywhere with her, which I’m sure enraged him and led to her death.”
“I can understand now why you knifed him. To bring Ella up like that in front of everyone. I still can’t believe it.” I put an arm around Kafir and buried my head in his sweater. “I’m so sorry.”
We were on the open sea now, Gypsy skimming along like a feather. Nidavellir was no longer visible and I was glad of it. The farther away we got the better I felt, as though the place itself had infected me. I looked out at the dark water, the shadows deepening around us. There was nothing in the distance, nothing to indicate the direction we were headed, no land in sight. “Where are we going?” I finally asked.
“That is a question for Gypsy.”
“Are you telling me you have no control of this boat?”
Kafir shrugged and cocked his head.
“Are we still looking for Rifak or does Gypsy have something else in mind?”
“The boat will take us where we need to go. Gypsy is keenly aware of our mission so I would guess wherever we end up is one step closer.”
“If this is true then why didn’t you leave it up to Gypsy in the first place?”
“We had a destination in mind, one given us by a reliable source. Gypsy didn’t argue about it, so…”
“Gypsy argues?”
Kafir nodded. “There have been times when I tried to steer her in one direction and found her going in another.” Kafir laughed. “She’s quite opinionated, much like other women I’ve encountered. You’d better go below now, we’re coming into a squall.”
“But can’t Gypsy…”
“No more questions. Just do as I ask,” he interrupted. “Stow anything that’s loose, it could be a rough one.”
I made it down the stairs despite the boat heeling so far to starboard that I feared water would slosh over the deck. Belowdecks cups and plates slid from the counters, charts unfurled on the floor. I staggered around picking things up and placing them behind wooden partitions. My stomach lurched when the boat shifted, wondering if I was going to be seasick. I stumbled to the cabin and closed the door before sitting on the bunk, my arms around my knees. The open porthole was dark now and rain poured in before I was able to stand long enough to close it. When a streak of lightning nearly blinded me I crawled under the covers, hearing the roll of thunder a moment later. I felt like a trapped animal in a tiny cage. If Gypsy was self-aware, why was she taking us through this storm?
Chapter Ten
Far Isle-2451
We sailed far into the night, only stopping when the sea grew calm and Kafir could no longer keep his eyes open. After that he bedded down in the main saloon, leaving me in the cabin.
“Did you sleep?” he asked, appearing in the doorway the following morning.
I pushed myself up to a seated position my mind going to Rifak, hollowness settling into my middle. “A little.” Now I knew the true extent of Hreidmar’s charms. He had bewitched me, taken away my one desire, which was to find my son.
When Kafir’s eyes fixed on mine I read the bleak expression pleading for comfort. Along with finding out his wife was dead, the imprisonment had taken a toll. I held out my arms and he came toward me, burying his face in my neck. I felt the heat of him, smelled the salt air on his sweater and hair. His warm lips brushed against my skin, his fingers working through my loose hair.
“But what about the boat? Does she sail herself, too?”
Kafir chuckled, his hot breath on my neck making me shiver. “I wouldn’t go that far. But at this moment the sea is like glass, with very little wind. I left her in the capable hands of the steering vane.”
My laugh was stopped as his mouth met mine, his arms tight around my body. The way he held me felt familiar as though we had been lovers before. But there was nothing automatic about what was happening between us, our mutual desire obvious and intense. This was nothing like Tamar, my deep feelings for Kafir rising to the surface and filled with the ache of need. My vision blurred as my feelings for him took over.
“Don’t cry,” he entreated, his worried eyes on mine.
“It’s just that…”
“I know. It’s the same for me.”
As his fingers worked at the laces of my chemise images flew through my mind, some that seemed like dreams from the past. At first it was Rifak’s birth and then sailing with Kafir under that star-filled sky the night before my life changed forever, and then moving backward in time to my trip across the sea when I was seventeen. All of it combined as we came together, our breath in rhythm. “I love you,” he murmured. “I always have.” But before I could puzzle out what he meant by this he was kissing me again, his fingers tracing patterns across my bare skin.
We slept then, curled into each other like contented cats. When I awoke I could feel the little boat rocking on the waves. Kafir shifted to look out the porthole.
“There’s another storm on the horizon—we’d best get underway.” He kissed me and then extricated himself, sitting up to pull on his trousers and sweater. His footsteps receded up the ladder and it wasn’t long before the boat was moving on the wind.
I wasn’t sure what I thought of this new development coming so quickly on the heels of my near disaster with Hreidmar. Possibly I had been primed for it to happen. I smiled as I found my crumpled chemise, remembering his haste to get it off. But in the next moment a surge of urgency made me dizzy. I pulled on my skirt and sweater before leaving the cabin, and then hurried up the companionway.
Kafir’s eyes met mine briefly before he turned back to watch the ocean. It had turned choppy, fast moving clouds scudding across the pewter sky. “There’s still some bread and cheese for breakfast. I think both of us could use something in our stomachs after the night’s activities.”
He smiled but I couldn’t return it, anxiety filling my throat. All I could do was nod before heading to the cabin to prepare a plate. “Any new clue as to where we’re headed?” I asked him when I returned a few minutes later.
Kafir pointed into the distance. “Gypsy seems to be taking us toward the Temple of the Moon.”
I squinted, barely able to make out the dark peninsula in the distance. “I thought you told me the temple was protected.”
“Adair won’t be at the temple, but she may be hiding out in the old ruins. It’s the perfect place for her.”
“And then what? I doubt Adair will give up Rifak willingly. How can the two of us fight her off?” My voice was shrill and hysterical but Kafir didn’t react, his gaze coming to rest on my face.
“I have friends in the area from the time Ella and I were there.”
I thought of the letter I had found that he’d never sent. “Kafir, a lot has happened—we need to communicate. . .”
Kafir grinned. “Didn’t we just do that? Words are over-rated.” He pulled me against him, but I couldn’t join his mood. “You’re shivering,” he noticed, his gaze concerned, “you’d best go below and warm yourself. We’ll talk once we get to our destination, unless you’d rather have another non-verbal discussion.”
My feelings for him rose up but a moment later I could hear Rifak’s gurgling chortle, and everything else fell away. Finding my baby was all I could think about right now. If there was any chance of my psychic senses returning I had to keep myself clear and focused on that and that alone.
Belowdecks my thoughts went to the sorceress and my son. There would be news of Adair in the community. It didn’t seem her style to stay hidden, and according to Foy she preyed on young women to keep herself young. We would have to trick her to get Rifak away, if he was even still alive. When my eyes filled I wiped the tears away, determination replacing the hopelessness. Our escape from Nidavellir, the passionate en
counter between us, and the possibility of finding my baby had strengthened my resolve.
***
“We’re coming to the inlet,” Kafir shouted. “I could use some help up here!”
Hurrying up the ladder I was surprised by the change in weather. Gusty wind had produced quite a chop, spray coming over the side of the boat. “Pull that sheet,” Kafir called, pointing toward the jib sheet on the starboard side. “Pull it as taut as you can, I need to bring her closer to the wind!”
When the boat heeled suddenly I was thrown off balance nearly falling overboard.
“Be careful!” he screamed. “Use the cleat!”
Before I could secure the rope it slipped through my hand, rubbing my palm raw. In the next second Kafir was beside me, using his strength to trim the jib. We were nearly through the narrow passage, calm water tantalizing in the distance. The boat had slowed now, and I let out my held breath. The wind dropped as we sailed into the lagoon, sun appearing from behind the clouds to sparkle across the turquoise surface.
“This little bay is protected.” Kafir smiled reassuringly as he guided the boat closer to shore. “Can you stand here and hold the tiller exactly so while I drop the anchor?” I came by him taking hold of the length of wood, watching nervously as he headed forward. He threw the heavy iron over the side, the chain sliding noisily against the wood as it disappeared. A moment later he headed back. “Let’s get the sails down. You did well, but I think a refresher course might be in order.” He grinned, softening the criticism.
A refresher course?
Belowdecks Kafir smoked his pipe, his eyes on me. “I have something to show you before we head out.”
I followed him into the forward cabin but instead of the cramped quarters where we had made love, our limbs tangled together in the tiny bunk, it was a spacious room filled with light. A large porthole was open, sunlight pouring in and coming to rest on the cabin floor, turning the dark-stained planks into polished gold. A large bed occupied the back wall, covered in an orange and purple striped quilt reminiscent of the Arabian Nights. Shelves filled with books lined the walls and a table with two chairs sat in the middle of the room. On top were two cut crystal goblets and a decanter of an amber liquid. There was a feeling in the room that I couldn’t put my finger on, as though it was breathing. Something in me recognized this room with all its finery.
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