The Weaver's Lament (15 page)

“I know.” He finally looked back at her. “What was the last thing you wanted to say?”

A glorious smile broke over her face. She leaned closer and brought her lips as near to his as she could without touching them, filling his nose with her scent and causing his hands to tremble.

“It's actually a question, but I don't need words to ask it,” she said.

She let her lips, light and dry, brush his, then sat back abruptly on her heels, seeing the longing come into his eyes. She slowly untied the laces of his shirt as he leaned back, lost in her eyes, and opened it, exposing his chest, muscled still in spite of his age in the trim of a mature man that had in his youth been a strapping soldier, the skin slackened but still fit, and ran her lips down that chest to his belt.

Ashe leaned back in the sweet green moss that grew along the banks on his elbows and closed his eyes against the sunlight again.

“Words or no, you never need ask,” he said quietly. “Never.”

“I know,” she whispered, echoing his own words of a moment before as she addressed his belt and what lay beneath it, exposed momentarily to the wind but comforted by the warmth of her mouth a moment later, the silky locks of her hair spread like a sunlit meadow across his chest.

He lay back completely on the moss as she pushed him gently down on it, pulling his shirt wider as she climbed atop him and kissed up his abdomen to his neck, leaving him shivering as her lips caressed his throat, his jaw and ear. As the sky began to turn different colors behind his eyes and his body to tremble, he reached up under her skirt and explored her with his shaking fingers, making her sigh.

Something about the sigh struck a nerve.

Lying in the soft green grass, amid the scent of sweet woodruff and lavender, Ashe grasped her thighs, pulling himself suddenly and roughly within her, rocking her urgently from below.

And, overwhelmed utterly with passion and without any other choice, he loosed the dragon that was panting beneath the surface of his consciousness.

The gentle lovemaking she had initiated in the green moss intensified into something harsher, something possessive and greedy, roaring past even the most athletic movements they had often made use of in their intimacy, and turning wanton.

Fire roared through Ashe's body as he seized his wife, his treasure, more insistently and began to thrust himself angrily into her, pulling her down hard onto his enraged tarse, filling her with himself.

He gripped her thigh even harder as he loosed one hand and ran it roughly up her torso, still mostly clothed, and tore aside her shirt, grasping at the breasts he had always addressed gently and in wonder in the past, losing every element of love as what he was making to her turned to a demanding expression of possession.

Mine,
he thought as he panted and plunged wildly, clutching the hard muscles of her leg and the soft firmness of her breast.
Mine! Mine!

The earth below him echoed his thoughts—
Mine! Mine!

As he raised himself up and applied his mouth roughly, carnally to her chest, his teeth bared, Rhapsody took hold of his hair, interlacing her fingers through his curls, and put her mouth next to his ear.

Yours,
she said in between breaths.
Yours. Only yours.

Ashe stopped short.

She was speaking the words in the language of the Wyrmril.

Though she could not approximate all the pronunciation, being born without the draconic aperture of the throat, her linguistic intention was unmistakable.

She continued to whisper soft phrases of comfort in the language that spoke to the dragon in his blood as her husband lay motionless beneath her, gasping for breath. She removed his hand that was clutching her breast and took it in her own, kissing it.

You do not frighten me,
she whispered in his ear, interlacing her fingers through his and pressing him gently onto his back again with her chest.
You may be stronger than me, and twice my size, but you have always been so. You swore not to hurt me on our first nights as lovers, both times, and you never have. You do not frighten me. I love you.

Ashe blinked, his eyes teary.

I am not made of glass,
Rhapsody said, nuzzling his ear.
Do not be afraid. Make love with me—I want you.

She began to move again, gently but firmly, gripping him from within as well as without, building him up to a towering climax again, which she joined him in, riding him as he held her with a more reasonable grip until their cries and gasps of laughter were drowning in and dancing over the noise of the waterfall, warmed by the sun shining down on them, cooled by the breath of the wind, making love as they had so many times before over a thousand years of happy married life.

The heat of the dragon's possessive rage dissipated as the human being returned, sheltered beneath the leafy branches of the birch and crabapple trees, rustling in time with their dance.

When that dance was over, she stretched out on top of him, lying motionless for a long time, listening to his heart race and then begin to slow, brushing away his tears and hers, caressing his shoulders and chest, guiding his free hand to hold her backside, until she felt that the dragon rage was long past.

The man beneath her was left on the brink of either joy or despair, waiting for her to push him over onto one side or the other.

She raised her face to him, shining, and smiled as warmly as she knew how.

I love you, I am yours,
she said again in the language of the dragon, then switched to the Orlandan tongue. “Always.”

The despair in his eyes tempered a little, but Ashe could not bring himself to smile in return.

“I am so terribly sorry—”

“No,” she interrupted decisively, her hand still entwined in his. “Do not insult what we have made together, this day, and over the last thousand years. I have given myself to you in all that time in trust, and I do now, still. Do you not think that I was aware the first night you came to me in Elysian, declaring your love and your desire to be my lover, that you could have crushed my throat in bed in passion, or in my sleep, had you wanted to? Our swords hung, side by side, on the sword rack downstairs as we slept together for the first time, a sign of a willingness to embrace a mutual trust in days when there was none of that to be sensibly had, anywhere on the continent. You are the same man now that you were then; the dragon is closer to the surface, certainly, and harder to keep in control, but, as you can see, I can handle it.”

“At the cost of bruised thighs, and—”

“I can heal myself, another happy benefit of being a Namer.”

Ashe fell silent.
Until the day you cannot,
he thought,
because I have, in fact, crushed your throat.

She kissed him one last time, then rose and disrobed, walking toward the falls.

“Come,” she beckoned. “The pool you dammed for the laundry has had all the suds washed out. We can bathe before we return to Highmeadow.”

Ashe followed her, wishing for all the world that she were beyond his ability to hurt her.

And knowing she would never be.

HIGHMEADOW, NAVARNE

In three days' time, the Lord and Lady Cymrian arrived at the doors of the main dwellings where the family had gathered. The word of their arrival had spread quickly, and as they cantered into the compound, a great cheer went up.

Rhapsody rode before Ashe on his horse, leading hers, and the sovereigns both broke into grins at seeing the beautiful group gathered in the courtyard, the young children waving and dancing in excitement.

It had never ceased to amaze Ashe how many people now comprised his family, each one beloved and counted and obsessed over by both the dragon and the man. He brought the horse to a halt amid much joyful noise and buried his face in his wife's hair, kissing her repeatedly and nuzzling her neck.

“The greatest celebrations in all the world are the simple domestic gatherings of our clan,” he said, his mood jovial and excited again. “Put up to comparison with all the ponderous, formal nonsense that was undertaken to officially celebrate our thousand years of reign and marriage a few years ago, I would always prefer to make mud pies and thumb-wrestle with my Grands and Greats any day.”

Rhapsody laughed. “It helps that they are better at both those things than you are.”

He dismounted slowly and took her down from the saddle as well, then turned with her to greet the swell of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, some of whom looked older than both of them.

“I am glad to see that this housing complex, so long a fortress and military garrison, is finally now a place where our family gathers and lives,” he said to Rhapsody as four of his Greats tried to climb him simultaneously.

“Both of those aspects were things you gave me to make me safe and happy,” she said, bending and embracing another wave of little ones. “I can never thank you enough for all this, Sam.”

“All right, then,” the Lord Cymrian declared aloud, “the Cymrian House of Manosse o Serendair is well met! Let there be much singing, love, laughter, and delight in the children.”

“And food?” suggested Leonin, one of the younger great-grandsons. “I do hope there will be some food.”

The family laughed and followed the Lord and Lady into the hall.

 

PROPHECY OF THE CHILD OF TIME

Brought forth in blood from fire and air

Sired of Earth

A child of two worlds

Born free of the bonds of Time

Eyes will watch him from upon the earth and within it

And the Earth itself will burn beneath him

To the song of screams and wails of the dying

He shall undo the inevitable

And in so doing

Even he himself shall be undone

This unnatural child born of an unnatural act

The mother shall die, but the child shall live

Until all that has gone before is wiped away

Like a tear from the eye of Time

 

13

HIGHMEADOW, A SENNIGHT LATER

Ashe looked on regretfully as Rhapsody and their adult children gathered the youngest Grands and the Greats and passed out lanterns for the traditional walk in the dark to the family quarters in the adjacent buildings.

Before the extended family retired for the night, they would escort Laurelyn and Syril with song to the guest suite across the glen that was reserved for visiting dignitaries, which many of the family members, young and old, had spent the early part of the morning decorating with rose petals, candles, muslin love knots, and wind chimes in the trees for the newly married couple's wedding night.

The laughter at the end of the sunlit day, compounding that which had rung through Highmeadow for the previous week, had warmed every bit of his body and soul, enough to have pacified the dragon into blissful dormancy.

He watched, content with his world, as Rhapsody moved about in the center of the circle of family groups, helping with buttoning a cape, or pulling on a small pair of boots, tucking burgeoning hair into a hood followed by a kiss, just as she had done with their own children at the time of the year when the summer night wind was taking on a colder feel. He recalled her words to a Namer's song she had once written about autumn, her favorite time of year.

Whatever your hopes are, catch them fast, the Earth seems to say as it dresses in its glorious funereal finery. Time grows short; winter is coming.

He smiled as Stephen lifted his own youngest grandson onto his shoulders, as Joseph and his wife Caryssa gathered a passel of Grands and Greats into a wiggling line, as Allegra clapped her hands and signaled to the door, followed immediately by the excited voices of her brood. Meridion began the caroling of the songs that would escort the bride and groom to their wedding-night bower, surrounded by the rising and falling of the tides on the sea of love that was his family.

The noise coming from them, laughter, gasping, good-natured argument, the teasing and the guffawing, the whispering and intellectual discourse, the squeals of delight and the sounds of young children's joy, all one glorious symphony of life that had started long ago on the other side of Time in a windy meadow beneath a willow tree.

Ashe's attention was drawn to the door.

The girl who had lain with him beneath that tree in the meadow, whom he had seen in the moonlight of just such a night as this, was watching him, smiling as she had on the other side of Time.

“Well, are you coming, Papa?” she asked.

Marigrace, Elienne's youngest grandchild, reached up to him, her cheeks rosy with excitement. Ashe scooped her up, feeling the age of his joints, and rushed forward through the sea of laughing children and adults, toward the door.

“Light the way!” he shouted.

Lanterns in hands followed him out the door, winking like fireflies in the dark of the compound.

*   *   *

Later they stood together, the Lord and Lady Cymrian, on the doorstep of the main residence, watching the lights wink out in the family quarters, six individual houses that sheltered the families of each of their children.

Rhapsody looked up at him and smiled.

“Beautiful work with the wedding ceremony this afternoon, m'lord,” she said, leaning her head on his shoulder. “Laurelyn and Syril are well begun. The perfect day.”

Ashe kissed her brow. “Indeed. The music was lovely.”

“Thank you. I think I will go get ready for bed, unless you need my assistance with anything.”

“No, indeed. I have a few small items that need a moment's attention, and then I will be up forthwith.”

“Good. See you upstairs.” Rhapsody kissed him slowly, then made her way up the winding staircase and across the open balcony beyond it, disappearing around the corner to the hallway that led to their bedchamber.