The fifth sorceress, p.39
The Fifth Sorceress, page 39
‘I have a better idea.’ She laughed. ‘This afternoon I saw a deeper pool of water a little downstream. Let’s swim.’
Before he could find a reason to protest, she was gone, running up the bank of the river and diving into the moonlit pool about fifty yards from where he stood.
Two can play at this game, he thought happily, quickly disrobing and chasing after her. He dove headfirst into the water, wondering where she had gone, and got his bearings. The night was clear and warm, and the light of the full moons ran across the pool in a shimmering translucent path, broken only by the ripples he had made when he entered the water. Still he did not see her.
Suddenly, she surfaced noisily right next to him, laughing, and put her arms around him. Her mouth came down on his, and he could feel her wet, supple body against him. He immediately became aroused. He held her to him for some time, taking the wet ropes of her thick hair in his hands, bending her gently over backward under him, never wanting to let her go. Laughing again, she pushed herself away and was gone, and the game continued. For a long time their naked bodies flirted with each other in the warm, wet darkness of the pool, and Tristan found it intoxicating. His need for her grew even more.
They finally emerged from the water and walked arm in arm back up the bank of the river to where they had dropped their clothes. Tristan bent over to pick her dress up for her, but she stopped him and put two fingers against his lips to indicate silence. She took her dress from him and then picked up his clothes, as well. Laying them down in the dewy night’s grass of the riverbank, she looked at him in a way that he had not seen from her before. As if seeming to have made up her mind, she gave him another long, slow kiss. But the moonlight on her beautiful face showed some of the fear that still lingered there as she released his lips and began to speak. She stepped even closer, putting her arms around him.
‘I have never been with a man,’ she said quietly, as though not knowing how to begin. ‘I was scared to death that the awful innkeeper was going to rape me, and then you and Wigg came along. I know that we must leave each other tomorrow, and I am saddened because of that. I hope that you will never forget me.’
He was about to speak again when she reached out hesitantly to touch his groin, and Tristan felt a searing heat go through him that he had never experienced before. He suddenly wanted this woman more than any other he had ever known.
‘I want you to be my first,’ she said, lowering her eyes as if in shame. With her face still lowered, she said, ‘You are handsome and strong, and I know in my heart that you will not hurt me. Please be my first, Tristan, and give me something to remember you by always.’
She placed her hand upon his bare chest and gently pushed him down onto his back on the ragged, rather sad little pile of clothes. Slowly, lovingly, she lowered herself down upon him as lightly as a butterfly.
‘Close your eyes, my love,’ she said gently as she began to undulate her body over his.
Tristan did as she asked, and just let it happen. The warm night air seemed somehow to gather around them, as if they were the only two people in the world. This must be what it’s like, he thought, to be with someone that you truly love.
His eyes still closed, he felt her lower her face down to his, and she reached out tenderly to put her arms around him, still moving her hips on him erotically.
‘By the way,’ he heard a female voice say from somewhere, ‘this isn’t my first time. And if our child is a girl, I will teach her everything I know. But if the bastard is a boy, my sweet prince, I will kill him with my own hands.’
The voice was no longer Lillith’s, but still somehow familiar. He snapped his eyes open. Lillith’s face was gone.
He was looking directly into the eyes of Natasha, duchess of Ephyra.
Mistress of the Coven.
Instinctively he recoiled, desire replaced with sheer hatred. He tried to move his arms and legs to throw her off him, but he couldn’t.
He was frozen to the ground beneath her as she looked down at him with a wicked, hungry grin.
‘What have you done with Lillith?’ he demanded, still not understanding. He tried to turn his head away from her face, but he could not move.
She smiled viciously. ‘There never was a Lillith, you fool.’ She laughed. ‘Although I suppose I could let you see her one last time before you die.’
Tristan looked into her eyes as waves began to swim across his vision. Natasha’s face actually looked as if it were beginning to melt, to decompose. And then, as soon as it had blended itself away into nothingness, the waves came back again, and the smiling, loving face of Lillith, complete with green eyes and long, red hair, began to appear. This can’t be happening, he thought. I must be going mad.
And then he remembered. What was it Wigg had called Natasha? A Visage Caster. Able to change her appearance at will. He simply stared, speechless, up into the face of Lillith, the one he had once thought he could come to love, as the brown hair and eyes of the mistress of the Coven once again slowly began to reappear. She continued the slow act of coitus with him, keeping him aroused, somehow controlling that part of his anatomy, as well. She smiled.
‘You bitch!’ he screamed at the top of his lungs. ‘What have you done with my sister?’
Natasha reached out and backhanded him hard across the face, and then lifted her hand to her eyes. ‘Now look what you’ve made me do,’ she whimpered sarcastically. ‘I’ve broken a nail.’ She narrowed her eyes to stare at the finger, and Tristan watched as the long, painted nail repaired itself. She struck him viciously again across the face, all the while her hips moving back and forth suggestively.
‘Don’t concern yourself with your sister,’ she said coyly, looking into his eyes. ‘You will never be seeing her again, anyway. She is one of us, now, and is probably already halfway across the Sea of Whispers. Don’t worry – she will receive the best of care. By the way, that was a very good trick the Lead Wizard pulled that day on the dais. We looked everywhere for you, and you were simply gone. But we know where you are now, don’t we? And don’t bother screaming for the old wizard. I’ve arranged it so that we can’t be heard by anyone, even him.’
‘You have been with us since that first day at the inn,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘You have been with us for the last two days!’
‘Ah, you’re finally catching on,’ she said nastily. ‘We knew that the two of you would probably head immediately for Shadowood. It was the only logical assumption, given the fact that the Lead Wizard had been told of the continued existence of his old friend, my dear father. So I simply hurried to the inn ahead of you while you took your time visiting the corpses of your family and friends, as we knew you would do.’ She looked down at him, her eyes narrowing with pleasure. ‘By the way, how did you manage to kill a wiktor?’ she asked curiously. ‘I do believe that you’re the first one ever to do so. But it doesn’t actually matter. It really isn’t dead, you know.’
‘I enjoyed killing it,’ he snarled, ‘just as I am going to enjoy killing all of you.’
‘You overestimate yourself, my prince,’ she said, drawing her fingers across his face and down to one of his nipples. She began to make little circles around it with the long, red nail. ‘And, by the way, I want to thank you for your gallantry back at the inn, but it wasn’t really necessary. I didn’t need a hero. I could have killed every one of those ignorant, unendowed bastards with a single thought.’ She bent down and licked the side of his face lasciviously. ‘And your bringing me with you was more than I could have hoped for.’
In addition to the rage he felt, a new emotion had begun to creep into Tristan’s mind: shame. Wigg told me repeatedly not to become involved in the things that I saw, he thought. Now my brashness has killed us both.
‘If you’re going to kill me, then why don’t you just do it and get it over with?’ he said sarcastically. ‘All I ever hear out of you and Succiu is a lot of talk.’
She closed the distance slightly between their faces, and he could see the endowed anger flashing in her lustrous brown eyes. He thought of that day back at the castle when she had spoken with him, and then licked her lips and walked away. She has more in mind than just my death, he thought, and somehow I know what it is. And even if she kills me, I have to fight to keep her from getting it.
‘Oh, die you shall,’ she said. ‘Make no mistake of it. And the old wizard, too. But not before you and I finish our business. I shall take three prizes from here with me today. The head of the crown prince of Eutracia, and also that of the Lead Wizard of the Directorate. I shall dip them in wax to preserve them for the trip to my new home, across the sea.’
‘And the third prize?’ Tristan asked. In his heart he already knew what it was. But something inside him wanted to hear her say it.
‘Our child, of course,’ she said, her eyes glistening. ‘The child that you are about to give me, the one that will grow in my womb as I travel back across the sea, my work here finally complete. Just imagine: your blood mingled with my own, in the firstborn child of the Chosen One. And I shall be the one to carry it.’
Without speaking further, she shuddered, as if she had now been consumed by the act of merely saying the words. She closed her eyes and began to rape him in earnest.
Tristan tried as hard as he could to escape, but he was still frozen in place, with the earth at his back. Natasha began to groan, as if slowly starting to build to her own climax. Her mouth was open, and her tongue was beginning to lick the area around her lips in ecstasy.
I have to fight this, he screamed silently. Fight it as hard as I can. Even if she kills me, I cannot allow her to bear a child of my blood and do as they will with it.
Natasha began to move even harder over him now, and Tristan knew he was losing himself to her. Somehow she had control over his sexuality, and he knew that it was only a matter of time before he gave her what she wanted. He tried to fight back the waves of desire as best he could, but every time she moved and shuddered and groaned it sent another bolt of ecstasy coursing through him and he could feel his endowed blood screaming through his veins, as if telling him that it was all right, to let go. Her groans had turned to wanton screaming now, and he knew he was in the grip of something he couldn’t control.
He began to feel the familiar, needful waves of inevitability begin in his groin as she looked into his eyes. It would only be seconds now.
And then he saw it.
At first it looked like some kind of blue blur in the night sky, but then it began to coalesce and take a more distinct form. A flowing, moving line of azure light had silently snaked its way around behind the mistress, and one end of it seemed to dance and play in the night air behind her and just over her head, the other end continuing away and out of his line of vision. At first Tristan thought that it must have been the work of Natasha. But as he continued to watch it take its final shape, he realized that she was oblivious to its presence.
It was a rope: a rope of blue azure light that danced on its own in the night air. And it was made of pure energy. Tristan watched, speechless, as the free end of the floating rope began to curl around into a knot and move closer to Natasha.
It was a hangman’s noose, and it quietly slipped itself around the mistress’s throat.
But by now Tristan’s own time had come, and just as he could hold himself back no longer and the inevitable began, the noose tightened itself around Natasha’s neck. With a single, savage yank, it pulled her off the prince and over onto her back, near the river’s edge.
Natasha’s scream was cut off. Her eyes opened in terror and she tried to put her hands around the rope to free herself, but the azure energy was too strong, and she was beginning to weaken from lack of oxygen.
As she struggled in the wet grass of the riverbank, the glowing azure hangman’s noose began to pull her toward the river.
Tristan found that he was able to move again. He immediately reached back to his pile of clothes and picked up one of his dirks. He didn’t know anything about the azure rope or how it worked, but he was determined to help kill the monster that had murdered his family. He ran naked and screaming, his dirk held high, toward the mistress as the rope of energy dragged her, headfirst, into the river.
The water all around Natasha began to roil and steam as the mistress thrashed around in the river. Tristan finally reached her and, with a quick slash of his knife, cut her throat from ear to ear, just above the line of the rope. He grabbed her head and pushed her under the water with all his might, holding her there until the bubbles stopped and there was no longer any movement.
The azure rope of energy and the hangman’s noose that it had created emerged from the river and vanished into the night as quickly as they had come.
Panting, Tristan grabbed the mistress’s corpse by the hair and dragged it up onto the edge of the riverbank. Her eyes were still open, and in the moonlight he could see the bluish cast coming to her skin. Then he turned and scrambled up the riverbank, to kneel before his belongings. He unwrapped the dreggan and took it back down to where the corpse lay.
Natasha looked almost peaceful, almost innocent, as she lay there in the dim light. Tristan pulled the dreggan from its scabbard and listened to the sword’s song fade away on the night breeze. Holding the dreggan in his right hand, he pushed the lever in the hilt, and with a resounding clang of highly tempered steel, the blade shot out an extra foot.
With both hands he raised the dreggan high over his head and stared down at the corpse of the one who had just tried to kill him – kill him and take his firstborn child. The blade glinted in the moonlight.
‘As I have sworn to do,’ he declared. He brought the blade down with all his might, severing the head from the body.
Immediately the thunder and lightning started. The lightning tore across the night sky in patterns he had never seen before and continued unabated with such rapidity that the entire landscape was illuminated as if it were daytime. And the thunder, the loudest he had ever heard, was deafening, rolling across the landscape as if it had the power to mow down everything in its path. The wind blew and howled, picking up leaves and twigs from all over the area, blowing them around in a maelstrom of dirt and debris. He stood there, naked before it all, holding his sword in one hand as it finally dissipated, and then ended.
Tristan reached down and threw the severed head, and then the body itself, into the river. He watched in the moonlight as the rapids carried them away.
Exhausted, he walked back up the riverbank, but very suddenly brought his dreggan up once again. There was a shadowy figure a little higher up, sitting on the ground before him. He approached carefully, without speaking, and then calmly lowered his sword.
It was Wigg.
Tristan dressed quickly and went to the old one. Wigg didn’t look up. The prince sat in the grass of the riverbank next to the Lead Wizard for some time, both of them looking at the river as it passed by in the moonlight.
‘The azure rope was yours, wasn’t it?’ Tristan asked finally, already knowing the answer. He did not turn to look the wizard in the face. ‘Thank you, once again, for saving my life.’
‘You’re welcome,’ the old one said simply. ‘I had my suspicions about her from the first time she approached our table, as Lillith, back at the inn,’ he said casually.
‘You knew?’
‘Not for a certainty,’ Wigg said as he picked at the hem of his robe. ‘When she first came to our table I could detect a faint aura about her, but there was no way of telling whether she was Natasha, or simply an innocent of endowed blood. As you may remember, Natasha had been taught by the Coven to disguise her endowed blood, but it is a terrible strain on one’s powers to do so for as prolonged a period as she did, and I could occasionally detect brief evidences of it. Still, I couldn’t be sure. That’s why I took each of the night watches. So that I could be there for you, if need be.’
Tristan thought to himself for a few moments, and then said, ‘That’s why she didn’t kill me right away, isn’t it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She wanted my firstborn child, just like they want Shailiha and her unborn. She almost got it.’
‘Yes,’ Wigg said slowly. ‘Do you remember when I told you about the history of Eutracia, that for some reason near the end of the war the Coven spent a great deal of time trying to produce a special girl child of endowed blood? Sorceresses can control their conception, Tristan. It was obvious that Natasha had plans for your firstborn, provided it was a girl.’
‘If that is so important to them, then why didn’t one of them take me that day up on the dais, when everyone was killed? Instead, they were willing to let Kluge butcher me.’
Wigg thought for a moment. ‘Probably because they were under orders from Failee to return as soon as possible with the stone, and to make sure that we both were dead. But once we had escaped, things were different and they were free to indulge themselves. But I cannot be absolutely sure.’
His training in the craft must begin soon, the old one thought. But first we must find Shailiha and the stone, and we will probably die doing it. And even if we do accomplish the impossible, the Chosen One must still first read the Prophecies before his training begins.
Tristan sat next to the old one for a long time without speaking. Despite the fact that Natasha was dead, there had been much more to her presence than he understood. It was about Lillith. He knew in his heart that she had never existed, but it was the possibility of such a woman that now consumed his mind. Lillith had given the appearance of a woman who could care about him without knowing who he was or what he could give her because of his station in life, and he had never known that before. And he had, despite the short time he had been in her presence, thought that he might have felt the beginnings of true love.
But Lillith had only been a phantom. And now she was gone forever.
‘Despite the brief time in which I “knew” her, I thought she might be the one,’ Tristan said sadly, to no one in particular. The night breeze came again to them from off the river. No man can cross the same river twice, he mused.
