Lord of the Forest (18 page)

Hella struggled silently, placing her slender blue hands on Vane’s chest and pushing at him.

Simeon seemed visibly upset by what he was seeing. “Don’t manhandle her, Vane—”

“When Hella is jealous, she takes it out on me—and she is lying to both of us.”

“Leave me out of it.”

Vane didn’t let go. “You saw that she drew blood when she bit me. And it happened the second she heard Linnea’s name. As I said, she can hide nothing.”

“Even so.” Simeon felt sorry for her but he always felt an instinctive wariness around fire spirits. They in turn stayed away from selkies.

“She knows something.” Vane’s grip on her hair tightened.

Simeon was shocked into shouting, “Don’t!”

Vane looked at him with surprise. “She is only a sprite and I will handle her however I please.”

Simeon’s hand shot out and he forced the lord of fire to relinquish his grip, brushing against Hella’s arm as he did. At the contact of his damp skin, Hella diminished and shrank.

“You’ll put her out, you soggy bastard,” Vane growled. “Don’t touch her.”

Hella edged away from him and looked pleadingly at Simeon. Again he fought the feeling that her expression held a measure of guilt. “Very well.”

“By the way, she can fly,” Vane said. “She doesn’t stay unless she wants to or I have a tight grip on her.”

Simeon gave her a sympathetic look and Hella, drying out, grew to her full size again. With a movement supple and quick, she crossed one leg over the other and returned his look with a demure glance. Demure but…scorchingly hot.

“Don’t be taken in by that shy smile,” Vane warned him. “She is not to be trusted.”

Hella drew back her hand to slap him and Vane caught her by the wrist. “You’re not getting away this time,” he said. “I don’t care what he says.”

With unashamed fury, the fire spirit gave in to her temper again and lived up to her hellish reputation. But Lord Vane prevailed. His eyes were glittering with excitement when he had nearly subdued her.

Hella howled silently. Simeon stared into the inside of her open mouth and the flicking tongue of flame inside it. Her adversary seemed unimpressed, but it took all of his great strength to hang onto her.

Biting, scratching, kicking Hella grabbed a hank of his long black hair and hung on until it burned in her hand, throwing the singed hair on the floor and going back for more.

Lord Vane didn’t seem to care but the smell of burnt hair made Simeon feel sick. So the lord of fire thought nothing of brawling with a blue harlot. He, Simeon, very much doubted that Hella would give in, although she seemed to share Vane’s love of fighting.

“Tell me where you went that night when Gideon came here,” Vane panted. “You left me asleep on the bed and out the window you flew. He’d talked about Marius and Linnea—” Again there was a white flash in her eyes. “There it is! For the third time you have given yourself away. You found Linnea—where is she now?”

Hella kicked at his groin but missed when he dodged her. She was so angry and overheated that Simeon was able to hear her silent voice.

Nowhere!

“You are lying, Hella,” Vane growled. He got one supple arm behind her back. “Tell the truth or I will force you to lie between me and my friend. Two of us. I will make you hot and he will make you wet!”

For a fraction of a second, the bawdy suggestion stopped her and then the struggle began all over again.

“For the love of the God of All, stop, both of you!” Simeon shouted. But the fight intensified. He stared at the two of them, transfixed by what he saw. It was as if they had become transparent, physically and emotionally. They were utterly without self-consciousness, their heated intimacy a mind-altering mix of love and hate and unbridled sexuality.

Vane’s clothes fell off his body in smoking shreds and Hella, who had been naked to begin with, glowed fiery red all over. Then Vane’s hands began to move all over her, caressing and squeezing, making her his own, using pleasure to bend her to his will just as he had tried to dominate her by force.

Her lips parted and she sighed submissively. Pleasure seemed more effective.

“Tell me what happened,” Vane said again. “You must. You crave this and you will have more, but I will have the truth from your beautiful red lips. Did you find Linnea on that fateful night?”

Yes…by chance…

Vane caressed her ardently, standing behind her. The lord of fire looked over her shoulder at Simeon. “Do you think she is telling the truth?”

“You have a hell of a way of forcing a confession from her, Vane! Must I watch?”

“I think she likes it when you do,” he purred.

Simeon looked away all the same, loyal to his Megaleen and furiously angry with Vane. But in time he had the whole story from Hella—interspersed with distracting little moans. That she had been jealous. Had followed them. Had conjured a sleeping mist so she could look at her rival, then accidentally sparked a fire in grass that had ensnared her. She’d sparked more to free herself and then that brute Marius came running.

After that she didn’t know what had happened. She entwined her lithe blue arms around Vane’s neck and begged him to love her.

I gave you what you wanted. Now it is my turn.

Simeon excused himself and went outside the room to wait. The finale was swift and glorious. Not more than a few moments later, Lord Vane stepped outside, carelessly dressed and waving away the hot smoke that drifted out from the chamber after the lovemaking.

He clapped Simeon on the shoulder. “I am ready to leave.”

“And Hella?”

Vane smirked. “She is no more than a gleam in my eye again. When she is satisfied, she is much less trouble. And infinitesimally tiny.”

“Do you believe what she said?”

“I do. It is not easy to lie with such brevity and ingenuity simultaneously. Her actions fit her impulsive nature.”

“But we know very little more than we did before, Vane.”

The lord of fire did not seem dismayed by that fact. “Then we will find out more. I told Gideon I would help him.”

Simeon looked at him with disgust. “For what it is worth. We have work to do and battles to fight. You are a randy bastard who thinks of nothing but sex.”

“True enough. But do not underestimate me.”

L
innea opened her eyes but could not focus them. The details of her strange surroundings eluded her.

She vaguely remembered falling asleep on the grass Marius had crushed to make them a bed, remembered waiting for him to return in the night, and then…nothing. Her hands touched something soft beneath her. Leaves by their shape, fur by their feel.

Had Marius made her another bower in the woods, gathering all this soft stuff together and brought to it? If only she could lift her head.

No. There was no sky above with drifting clouds or stars, but a ceiling of some thick, craggy wood. The sounds she heard were muted, though certainly there were birds about. Not far away. Not in here.

It came to her slowly that she was inside a tree. But what sort of tree it was and the reason why she was in it eluded her foggy brain. Linnea closed her eyes and thought backward into the dream she’d been having before her eyes opened.

That too eluded her, the odd images of the dream seeming to vanish down twisted paths of an altered awareness. She tried to chase them mentally, seeing herself in the shape of an antelope and a dream lover in the guise of a centaur mounting her, fulfilling a nameless animal desire with human tenderness.

A poignant sadness filled her and twin tears trickled down her cheeks from under her closed lids.

Then a hideous being with spiraling horns shattered that image by stepping through it and his own replaced it. Leering. Bestial. A satyr of infinite power and evil. Seeming so close that she wanted to open her eyes and make it vanish, but she could not. The demon’s glowing red eyes enspelled her again.

Linnea opened her mouth, gasping for breath. The pure air inside the tree she slept within filled her lungs and somehow it dissolved the frightening vision of the satyr.

Weakly, she brought a limp hand up to her chest and placed it over her racing heart. Her eyes opened slowly and this time she could see more clearly.

She was in an alcove off a main room inside a—yes, she was in a tree. Someone just out of sight was humming faintly. There was an odd, papery sound and then a thunk, as of a scroll being unrolled too rapidly, the spindle at its center hitting the floor.

Linnea thought and thought without wanting to move.

The last few days began to come back to her in bits and pieces—but were they only a few? She had no way of telling how long she had been sleeping and she felt too weak to get up.

But wherever she was now felt safe. It was almost as if the great tree breathed too—she had a sense of air flowing in a rhythm as deep and old as time. Then she heard footsteps, small footsteps that were quiet, as if the being who made them was walking on a forest floor.

Bright eyes in a deeply wrinkled face that seemed to be covered with bark peered in at her.

“So, Linnea. You have awakened at last.”

She did remember who was greeting her. Vaguely. He certainly seemed to know her. She’d heard that it was possible to lose all memory of oneself, but she had not. “Good morning,” she answered politely, hoping he would keep on talking and help her understand the particulars of her situation.

“I am Quercus, in case you do not remember me.” He paused, letting that sink in. “Marius brought you here when you were overcome by a mist in the woods.”

“Ah.” She studied him, but not as calmly as he studied her. A rush of memories coursed through her mind. A journey. On foot. On horseback. On…Marius. Through woods. It seemed like a dream until all of it came back at once. Her body shook as if something taken violently from her had been instantly restored and not gently.

She had woken alone when Marius had left her in the night, feeling somewhat frightened, yet the lingering warmth of his massive body was still comforting her. And then—she frowned at the recollection—a blue flame had bedeviled her—and then…nothing.

That must have been the mist. It still was making her confused. But what had happened before that, including her first meeting with this strange but kind little being, had been preserved in memory. She reached up to touch the scar on her chest where Quercus had drawn out the demon’s poison from the scratch.

The pouches under his eyes drew up as he looked at her narrowly. “That scratch does not hurt you, I hope.”

“No.”

“How do you feel?”

Linnea rubbed at her eyes. “Not very strong. But I think I will be, with more rest. Thank you for taking care of me again, Quercus.”

He harrumphed. Had his skin not been made of bark, he would have blushed. “It was nothing.”

“Not to me.” Linnea looked and listened, perceiving no sigh of Marius. “Where is Marius?”

“Not here,” Quercus said, a thread of annoyance in his voice. “He had too much to drink and galloped off into the night, vowing vengeance on Ravelle and all his kind.”

Linnea struggled to sit up and managed it with the healer’s swift assistance. He plumped up the pillows on the bower. “By himself?”

“There was no stopping him, alas. He was convinced that you would not recover by the time he finished the third bottle, and roaring for blood by the fourth.” Quercus looked a little shamefaced. “It was my fault. I thought if he were tipsy from my elderflower wine I could persuade him to be cautious.”

“It is his nature to take chances. And he loathes Ravelle.”

The healer nodded. “With good reason. He was beside himself, thinking that he had put you in danger. You were limp in his arms, Linnea—he brought you up the stairs and plowed up my garden to make you the bower in which you lie.”

Linnea shook her head upon the pillow. “I have no memory of it. Just the blue flame…and then the mist, drifting.”

“Marius told me of the flame and I examined the burns, which are healing well. I have reason to believe the blue flame is a fire spirit, although I do not understand why one would seek to injure you.”

“Could it have been Ravelle’s imp?” She ran her fingertips over one of the burns on her shoulder. “They are not so strong as he and that has also healed.”

“Possibly. I cannot be sure,” Quercus sighed. “But Marius is obsessed with destroying Ravelle personally. I wanted to explain that there is more than one way to fight a demon, even a supreme one, but Marius would not listen.”

Linnea nodded.

“For one thing, his malevolence can be turned back upon him, given the right spell. There is no reason for Marius to risk hide and hoof—” He stopped when he saw the tears brimming in Linnea’s eyes.

“No, and I never asked him to. The other lords of Arcan were preparing to help,” she whispered. “Is there no way to bring him back, Quercus?” She pushed off the covers and swung her legs out, standing on unsteady feet as if she was prepared to run after him herself.

“We might see him in my scrying pool. Although I would rather not use it—I still think that Ravelle has the power to spy on us all through it, though we are otherwise safe from demons here. However—” Quercus hesitated, moved by the beseeching look on her face. He stretched out a hand to her. “I may be able to keep him at bay. Come along. Perhaps I worry too much.”

Linnea let herself be guided to the next room where the scrying pool was. Quercus seated her by it and waved his hand over the small pool, muttering a spell. All Linnea understood of it was Marius’s name.

She watched in wonder as the surface of the water trembled within the stone basin that held it. After a while the pool became still and glassy. In it she could see only moving shadows.

“He is in a dark place,” Quercus said, “a place of evil.”

Linnea made out firelight in the background of a scene and saw it gleam on a length of heavy chain. Then a shadow moved in front of that as well.

“Is that Marius?” she whispered.

“I don’t know.” The image in the scrying pool shifted as Quercus waved his hand over it again.

Then she saw the sweeping curve of the centaur’s back and someone’s hand resting in the hollow where she’d ridden him.

A hideously familiar hand, with long claws.

“Ravelle,” they said at the same time.

Quercus’s face crumpled into sad lines. “So he has been captured. But where is he?”

The firelight she’d seen flew up into showers of sparks and a massive figure moved into view, demonlike but not Ravelle. Quercus waved his hand over the water again and suddenly the entire scene became clear. The centaur was in a smithy.

He wore chains and shackles of crude make that were being struck off one by one as new ones were put on. Linnea wanted to weep when she saw Marius humbly bow his head as an iron collar was fitted around his neck. It was scrolled and bedizened as if made for show, but its cruel strength was clear enough when the blacksmith gave it a yank and made his captive stumble forward a few steps.

“What are they doing to him?” she asked.

“I suspect he will be paraded through the streets,” Quercus said, a note of anger in his voice. He straightened as the image in the pool went entirely dark. “I have lost him.”

“Is he in the land of men?” Linnea asked. “How came he there?”

Quercus shuddered. “By sea, I would guess. For one as rooted as I am, the thought is frightening.”

“Not to me,” she said. “I will go to him if I can—”

“He made me promise to keep you here, Linnea,” Quercus replied. “Would you go against his will?” Quercus told the lie with a clear conscience. No, that promise had never been asked of him, but with what Quercus had learned in his hours of vigil over the unconscious woman in the leafy bower since Marius’s thundering exit into the night, it was best if Linnea did stay.

“Yes. He is not here to gainsay me,” she said with spirit.

“Well, no,” Quercus said, a bit nonplussed. How difficult would it be to persuade her to say? He had not expected her to recover to this degree so soon. Still, the healer had new reason to insist that she remain safely within the branches of the old oak, though he was in doubt as to when and how to inform her of that reason. “But you are not strong enough to go a-journeying. Especially not over the seas that divide the Arcan Isles from the land of men.”

“Who will help him if I do not?” Her tone was as passionate as it was determined.

“There is always a way,” Quercus soothed.

“Then you must tell me of it. I will not rest until you do. And, Quercus—”

He gazed at her mildly, as if hoping to calm her down with a look alone. “Yes?”

“How long was I asleep, if that is what it was?”

“It was like sleep,” he assured her. “You lay upon your bower for several days.”

An anguished look flashed in her eyes. “So he has been gone that long?”

“Yes, my dear. I could not leave you nor would I follow him. I assumed somewhat foolishly that he was bashing around the island and would return.”

“Did you not worry when he did not?”

Quercus considered his next words before saying them. “I was more worried for you. Marius has the strength of a horse and of a man combined, with a touch of the divine in him also.”

“He is not indestructible, Quercus.”

“No. And he puts himself in harm’s way, as big and bold as he is. There is no telling what ordeal he has undergone or how Ravelle entrapped him.”

“Yet he has survived,” Linnea said softly.

Quercus frowned. “At what price? He hoped to slay the demon and he has failed. The Marius I know might wish he had died instead.”

Linnea’s eyes flashed. “Do not speak so!”

The healer seemed abashed. “Forgive me. I am thinking of when last I saw him. Before you awoke, well before. We quarreled, unfortunately.”

“You did not tell me that.”

“One thing at a time—” He broke off, looking at her worriedly. “He did what he did for love of you, Linnea.”

“Oh?” she asked as if she very much wanted to believe it. Then, with a hint of womanly self-doubt, she added, “And not for his own glory? He is proud to a fault.”

“More than that, impetuous. If only I had been able to stop him from rushing away!”

Linnea looked into the scrying pool. “Even his image is gone. Waiting here will be unbearable. I cannot live, not knowing what has happened to him.”

“It is not only for ourselves that we live, Linnea,” the healer began.

“Who else do I have without Marius?” she burst out. “My human mother is gone from this earth and my father, the Great White Stag, is distant, as was always his way.” She dashed away her tears, looking fiercely at him.

Quercus hesitated. He was not at all sure he should tell her of his guess, though it was an informed one, on the subject of
who else
. “If you and Marius are destined to be together, then you will be,” was all he said.

He indicated that she should come away from the blank pool, lest her tears fall into it and tempt the demon.

Weakness was Ravelle’s wine.

Too distraught to talk, Linnea paced the floor of the room next to the one where Quercus kept his scrolls. He was in there now, patiently rerolling the one that had fallen to the floor earlier. It was concerned with fertility, gestation, and childbirth, judging from the illustrations she’d glanced at disappearing around the spindle.