WYVERN (9 page)

She squeaked in protest when Alaric crushed her to him. His brows lowered in a scowl, though he loosened his grip. "Never. You flow through my blood like the magic I wield. I came back to Ney, Beth, three years later, but you and Angus were gone. Daldan, the blacksmith, said you'd moved south. I searched but never found you. Too many villages and none knew of a redheaded fiddle player."

He'd returned for her! Made the journey to Ney once more to seek her out. How strange that it was when her faith in his professed love for her had been at its lowest. She kept that to herself. "I rarely played then, only for my grandfather when he asked. I hadn't the desire at the time."

"And how is the old dragon slayer?"

The post coital languor had vanished with Alaric's telling of the wyvern plague. But Elsbeth had only wanted to hold him closer, grateful he had not succumbed to the disease, grateful she'd been given this blessing of a chance to reunite with him. His inquiry after Angus served to remind her that this joy was on someone else's borrowed time.

Alaric's eyes narrowed at her silence. "Beth?"

"He's dying, Alaric. It will be a blessing of merciful gods if he's still alive when I return to Byderside."

He went rigid against her, every muscle tense. Elsbeth stared at him, shocked by the sudden change. His mouth thinned to a tight line. He stared at the cave's ceiling for several minutes, and it was she who puzzled over his silence this time. "Alaric?"

She took a startled breath when he suddenly rolled onto her and kissed her senseless. She sank into him, opening her mouth to welcome his tongue, stroking his in return.

Alaric slowly lightened the kiss, nibbled the corners of her mouth before raising his head. "Why didn't you tell me before this?"

Elsbeth ran her fingers through his silky hair. "Because you were a wyvern before this, and I knew you as nothing else. What interest would you take in my life beyond my music and what inspires it?" She smiled. "Besides, were you me, wouldn't you be cautious about singing the exploits and praises of someone who wears the hide of a relative, distant though it may be?"

He didn't return her smile, only gazed at her with a troubled expression. Her smile faded as well. "What's wrong?"

Alaric sighed before rolling off her and rising to his feet. Elsbeth gasped. Gods, what a beautiful man. She shook her head. Or wyvern.

He held out a hand to help her up. "Come. We'll dress. I want to show you something, proof of merciful gods."

He took her back to the open cavern. Night had fallen since they'd made love in Alaric's lair, and the cavern was doused in shadows. Above them, the roof of bright stars glimmered, reminding her of Maldoza itself, with its sparkling of tiny rocks imbedded in its pocked façade.

Alaric raised his hands and breathed on his fingertips. Captured moonlight, silvery and cold, spread from his hands. It passed along the floor, trickling along the rocks like the underground spring. Shadows fled to the corners of the chambers, leaving the high silhouettes of birds sleeping in crevices in their wake.

Elsbeth sucked in a small breath. Here in the blue glaze of mage-light and stars, Alaric's sculpted profile was ethereal, peaceful. He turned at her soft exclamation.

"What?"

She smiled. "You've the look of a man well satisfied and content with his world."

He smiled in return, traced a meandering line down her throat with a gentle finger. "And you're a woman well-loved." The smile faded, and his eyes darkened. "I put all my faith in your silence, Beth. You must tell no one of this."

Tell no one of what? Elsbeth blinked, confused. She'd assumed he wanted this cavern kept secret and had no intention of remarking on it when she returned to Byderside. Angus had often accused her being more close-mouthed than a hermit monk under a vow of silence. He didn't exaggerate. She touched Alaric's arm. "I would never betray you."

He nodded, took her hand and led her across the cavern's rocky floor to a sliver of darkness wedged between two walls of jagged rock. From one angle, it looked like nothing more than a long shadow cast by the play of illumination on the cavern walls, but when Alaric brought her around to the second wall, she saw it was a tunnel.

Too small for him to enter as a wyvern, it was large enough to accommodate several people with ease. She peered into its darkness. Alaric sent more of the pale mage-light into the tunnel, and Elsbeth gasped at what it revealed.

"An egg!" She didn't wait for his permission to enter, but stepped onto the raised ledge and hoisted herself into the tunnel for a closer look at Alaric's newest secret. The egg was massive, nearly twice the height of Alaric in his human form. Save for its size, it looked like any bird's egg, with a pale blue shell mottled with brown spots. It lay in a nesting of black rocks and flushed a lavender shade at intermittent moments, as if keeping time with a silent heartbeat.

The nesting place was hot. Where Elsbeth had shivered in the cavern's main space, she now broke out in a sweat. She looked at Alaric, eyes wide. "Is this...?"

His expression was cautious, as if he was unsure of her reaction to his revelation. "Wyverns mate every other spring. The females bear a single egg, and it is the males who hatch them. A female's fire isn't hot enough to keep the egg warm. When she hatches, I'll return her to her dam."

"She?"

Seeing that Elsbeth was more fascinated than put off, he climbed into the tunnel with her. His hand stroked the air just above the egg's surface. "See the color of the shell? The blue cast marks it as female. Were it browner, it would be a male." He waved a hand to the main cavern. "This cavern offers not only protection, but space. When she hatches, she will have the room to practice her flight in preparation for her journey to her dam's territory."

Elsbeth walked slowly around the egg, admiring the miracle of a life in the making before her. Alaric's child. Offspring through the mating with a female wyvern. She smiled to herself. Somehow, she could find no jealousy within her. It was hard to see a creature a thousand times larger than her and possessed of scales and wings as competition. "What will you name her?"

He followed her as she continued her perusal of the egg. His face was soft, approval and admiration for her shining in his eyes. "I won't. Wyvern council will. The wyvern matriarchs always name the offspring. Only then are they recognized as members of the wyvern tribe."

Hearing Alaric's explanation of wyvern culture made her pause. She stared at him, seeing a tall, broad-shouldered man, finely made with a handsome face any human female would admire. Yet it was only an illusion--one that went deep to blood and bone, but still an illusion worked by powerful magic. Yet the heart and the spirit were the same, and it was these with whom she fell in love.

"Did the matriarchs name you as well?"

Alaric gave her a formal bow, one meant for monarchs. "I am Alaric out of Goetia by Caratacus."

Elsbeth laughed and curtsied in return. "And your name means kingly."

"Yes."

"How very fitting." She reached out, gliding her hand just over the egg's surface as he'd done. "May I touch her?"

He pulled her hand away. "It's too hot. You'll burn your hand. And it will get even hotter in a few moments. Would you like to see me warm the egg?"

"Yes, I would," she said, delighted.

Alaric hesitated. "I will be wyvern again, Beth.

There was something poignant about his uncertainty, as if he still found it hard to believe she accepted his shape shifting so easily. She shrugged. "You never stopped being wyvern, Alaric." She eyed him with a scowl. "You have little faith in me. How is it that you, a wyvern, can love a human woman and yet doubt this same woman can love the wyvern in return?" His arms encircled her, pulling her close. Elsbeth rested her arms on his shoulders and tilted her head back. "I prefer this form because I can embrace you, love you, and make love with you. However, if I could turn wyvern myself for you I would. But I have no magic. So you only get this puny human."

She pulled him down to her then, opening his mouth with her lips and sliding her tongue inside for a brief caress. He groaned at her touch, fingers massaging the muscles in her back.

"It is all I want," he said against her lips. "You are all I want."

They kissed again, and he filled her mouth with his tongue, stroking, sucking, intimating with leisurely thrusts what he would do to her when they returned to his lair. Elsbeth opened to him, wrapped her legs around his waist when he cupped her bottom and hoisted her higher against him. She rubbed against his cock, swollen and straining against his trousers. She wanted him again, craved the feel of him in her cunus, her mouth, the warm, wet slide of his seed trickling down her thighs or pulsing against her throat in a salty stream.

"Mine," he murmured against her throat and gently suckled the skin there.

Elsbeth moaned. She tilted her head back to encourage more of his nibbling and caught sight of the wyvern egg in the corner of her eye. "Alaric," she whispered, brought back to earth.

"Hmmm?" Alaric continued kissing her neck.

"The egg, remember? You're supposed to warm it."

He halted his worship of her skin abruptly and lowered her to the ground. Elsbeth clutched him for a moment, trying to steady legs gone more wobbly than an old loom.

"You are a dangerous distraction," he said, his expression caught between a frown and a smile.

"And you are no less guilty of that than I am."

He bowed once more before nudging her toward a large boulder at one side of the cavern. "Stand there. It's protected."

"Against what?"

"A very large fire."

He stripped where he stood, much to her admiring eyes and gave her his clothing for safekeeping. As when he'd first revealed himself to her, Alaric invoked a silent magic, shape shifting from man to wyvern. The roofless cavern, with its canopy of stars, burst into movement as frightened birds took flight and circled the opening, protesting the wyvern's presence with loud whistles and chirps.

Alaric arched one of the bony ridges above his eyes and favored Elsbeth with one of his odd smiles. "I'm not so welcomed here in this shape."

Elsbeth watched as the displaced aviary settled slowly back to Maldoza, perching along the cave's jagged top. "If they only knew they are in more danger of me shooting and eating them than of you feasting on them."

A huff of laughter was his response. "Indeed. I haven't much use or appetite for something no bigger than a fly is to you."

He approached the cave housing the nest, and Elsbeth marveled at the grace of a creature so massive. Alaric checked to make certain she was still safely behind the rock. Satisfied with her position, he faced the smaller cave, took a deep breath and blew hard.

"Gods' mercy!" Elsbeth yelped as scarlet and orange fire shot out of Alaric's mouth. Her first instinct was to scream for him to stop, that he'd literally cook his own offspring amidst the gouts of flame jettisoning from him. But she remembered a comment he'd made about wyverns. Only the male's fire was hot enough to keep the egg warm.

He blew on it twice more, sending back drafts of scorching air into the main cavern. Elsbeth huddled behind the rock, grateful for the shelter and happy not to have her eyebrows singed off.

When he finished, his chest heaved like great bellows, and residual smoke poured out of his nostrils. His voice, always resonant but also smooth, was now hoarse. "That will be enough for another day or two." He arched his long neck, peering at her from his far height. "Are you well, Beth?"

She came out slowly from behind the rock, clutching his clothes. "I'm fine." She shook her head. "What madness makes men challenge creatures like you? We stand no chance against you in a fight."

Alaric shrugged his wings and recited the spell that changed him to human form. Elsbeth handed him his trousers and shirt wordlessly.

"It is because you fight us that you lose." He slid the trousers over his legs, pausing to leer at her as she watched him dress. "There is a recent legend amongst both dragon and wyvern kind of a dragon who took a human woman, a singer renowned among her people for her wondrous voice, as his favorite. He was killed in a territorial battle by a rival--a firedrake even larger than the greatest wyvern. In revenge, the dragon's human lover seduced the drake with song and slew him in his sleep. We call her Irenya Firekiller.

Elsbeth almost forgot to hand him his shirt. "What was her name?"

Alaric pried it out of her fingers. His voice was muffled as he pulled the shirt over his head. "Irenya. She'd be an old woman now. The knights who came here to challenge might have learned a thing or two from her on how to battle a draconus and win."

"I know a little about dragons."

Ireni's face, care worn and etched by the numerous lines of more than sixty years of living, rose in her mind's eye. Elsbeth had thought her statement strange, but hadn't dwelled on it, too caught up in the heat of her own crisis. Now, when she thought back on it, the elder had said that with a secretive smile and a distant sorrow in her gaze. Was Ireni the Elder also the Irenya Firekiller dragons and wyverns spoke of with admiration?

"Beth?"

Alaric's still rough voice brought her out of her musings. He was fully dressed and shod. He held a hand out to her. "Are you ready? We should leave now. It's late."

Elsbeth gripped his hand and let him lead her past the nesting cave. They halted briefly so she could take another look at the egg. The cave was too hot to enter now, and the egg glowed like an amethyst on its bed of heated rock. "May we come back tomorrow so I can see her?"

His gray eyes lit with a combination of delight and desire. "If you wish."

They picked their way across the rock floor to the tunnel leading back to Alaric's lair. Behind them, the cavern darkened until all that remained was a crimson patch of smoldering rock nestled in a cleft of cliff wall and the rush of wings as birds returned to their nests.

They made love twice, and Elsbeth was reminded of her two days with Alaric in Ney. There had been an aura of desperation cast over their time, and it was here again. She didn't fall asleep until very late and stirred restlessly against Alaric.