Lord of the Dark Read online

  Below, lightning danced between the watchers; a deadly ring of crackling death they must pass through to reach sanctuary with Marius. It did not bode well until missiles of a different kind began zipping past them, so close they disturbed Gideon’s feathers, and in one case, tore two loose.

  Arrows! Marius was firing on the watchers from the strand. The creatures’ lightning bolts turned toward the centaur then. Marius had drawn their fire just long enough for Gideon to soar through the winged circle of arcing, snapping snakes of blinding light.

  Gideon heard the shriek of a watcher who had taken one of Marius’s arrows. He watched the creature soar off with the aid of another, while the third still hurled down snake lightning until the twang of the forest lord’s longbow string released an arrow that came too close for comfort, sending that watcher off as well.

  Losing consciousness, Gideon aimed for the protection of the trees that edged the strand, and fell from the sky with Rhiannon clinging to him into the open arms of oak and rowan, ash and pine that cushioned their fall and cocooned them in their lush foliage.

  Gideon’s vision blurred and he groaned, as from the back of his mind a voice said, What say we take him now? He has nowhere else to go.

  No, said the other all too familiar voice, his trial has just begun.

  He’ll never last, the first speaker said.

  Did someone laugh? Gideon strained his ears to overhear more, but all he heard was the joyful sighing of the Ancient Ones’ foliage as they cradled him to sleep.

  10

  “Are you sure he is all right?” Rhiannon pleaded, giving the centaur a wide berth, “He doesn’t look all right. He is so very pale, and his lips are blue. Why are they stroking his wings like that? They shouldn’t be stroking his wings. I like this not!”

  “Come away, my lady,” the centaur said. A centaur! Whatever next? She’d heard of the lecherous beasts, half man, half horse in legends, but never thought them real.

  “I’m not a lady,” she corrected him. “Well, yes, I am a lady, but not a lady, you know, a society lady.”

  “That matters not,” he replied, nudging her toward a clearing and a rambling lodge, with a barn and paddock behind. “I address the lady who is not a lady, yet is. It is perfectly acceptable for me to call you ‘my lady.’ You see, we have no class distinctions here.”

  “I can see that,” Rhiannon said, casting a backward glance toward the forest, and the trees that had all but swallowed Gideon whole. She could scarcely see him at all now. “Forgive me, but are all the prince guardians…cursed?” she asked him.

  “Not all,” he returned. “Simeon, Lord of the Deep, is the only true prince. He rules the water for the sea god, Mer. The rest of us are princes appointed by the gods; a token served with our curse, and because they needed guardians for these godforsaken spits of land formed in the great cataclysm, and couldn’t get them any other way but by coercion. We live out our sentences here as it were, you see. All things come at a price with the gods, my lady. They are a jealous lot, demanding much. I much prefer the Ancient Ones, like those who cradle your beloved. Their justice is swift and pure.”

  “How many…guardians are there?” Rhiannon queried.

  “One more, aside from Gideon and myself,” said the centaur. “Lord Vane, guardian of the Isle of Fire. But there are more who occupy other hemispheres.” He stopped in his tracks, prancing in place, his feathered hooves clopping on the forest floor. How ruggedly handsome his human half was, with his dreamy amber-colored eyes and wavy mane of shoulder-length chestnut hair kissed by the sun. His face was all angles and planes, a study in light and shadow. His was a raw, primeval beauty, a true creature of the wild. The other half of him was frightening to view, like a horse that couldn’t be broken, a hulking feral beast. It seemed to be under control, they were one entity after all, but she gave it a wide berth nonetheless.

  “Look here,” he said. “I am called Marius, and since Gideon is indisposed at the moment and cannot give us a proper introduction, mightn’t you do the honors?”

  “My name is Rhiannon,” she murmured.

  The centaur clouded. “Named for a goddess of Otherworld legend,” he reflected. “A lovely name, ’tis true, but it will not serve you here. The wood nymphs will be jealous.”

  “I can hardly do anything about my name!” Rhiannon said in a huff. What sort of fellow was this centaur to speak to her thus?

  Marius threw up his hands in a gesture meant to unruffle her feathers. “You take me wrongly,” he said, “’twas meant as a word of warning. Wood nymphs are jealous creatures by nature. When mortals take on the names of gods and goddesses—even, and especially, Otherworldly deities of myth—the nymphs are envious, because such privilege is forbidden them. Your name is known throughout all the kingdoms, and revered. I mention it to put you on your guard.”

  “I thank you for the warning, then,” Rhiannon said.

  “Eh…there is just one more thing,” Marius continued.

  “Yes?”

  “The nymphs are quite smitten with Gideon. They have been since time out of mind. Oh, there’s nothing to it…nothing serious. Again, I mention it only to give you fair warning. You are very beautiful, and as I say…they are very jealous creatures. But I rule here, so all is well, eh? Just keep your distance from them. It would be best.”

  Rhiannon nodded. “Forgive me,” she said. “Have you always been…thus?” She was still finding it difficult to believe she was conversing with a centaur.

  Marius laughed, causing handsome lines to form on his angular face. “Since I was cursed by the gods,” he said. “Oh, but I am not always the four-legged beast you see before you now, only at certain phases of the moon. I’ll be quite myself tomorrow, with the rising of the new moon.”

  Rhiannon was dying to ask him how he came to be cursed, but thought better of it. That would hardly be polite. Besides, she was worried over Gideon, and that odd business about the wood nymphs didn’t sit too well either.

  “What is wrong with Gideon?” she insisted. “He isn’t going to…?” She couldn’t form the words.

  “No, my lady,” the centaur said. “The watchers haven’t killed him. He has been lightning struck. It isn’t the first time, believe me, and if I know Gideon, it shan’t be the last.”

  “But his wings…they are very…sensitive, and the trees…Are they enchanted? I have never seen trees move like that.”

  Marius nodded. “They are the Ancient Ones. Spirits have inhabited trees since the beginning of time. They will not harm your Gideon. There task is to nurture, to heal, and to protect. The oaks will give him strength; the ash will give him continuance. The rowans will boost his faith, for it is threatened, and the pines are perhaps the greatest healers of all. Pinesap will soothe his singed feathers and set him to rights. Let the ancient ones minister to him. All will be well. “

  “My Gideon?” she said, having heard little past that. How good it sounded. She needed to hear more.

  Again, Marius smiled. “He loves you,” he said flatly. “Oh, he may not know it yet, but he does. I know him for eons, my lady. What’s needed now is rest, for both of you. Let me make you comfortable out of the watcher’s view. I shall keep vigil. No harm will come to either of you in my keeping. Then once you’ve both had your rest we shall see what is to be done.”

  “What do you mean?” Rhiannon asked him.

  “You cannot return to the Dark Isle,” Marius said. “I saw the flames, the clouds of dust and smoke. The cave is gone. There is no more shelter there, no place for you to hide. It is a barren wasteland; it always was. The cave was his last refuge, and when the aftershocks come, it will likely sink into the bay altogether. You are left without shelter, and as long as you are together, you are fugitives from the watchers who enforce the curses of the gods.”

  Rhiannon accepted the Lord of the Green’s hospitality, which included a delicious cup of sassafras root tea beside the hearth in the centaur’s cottage kitchen, prepared by Marius’s mute
faun, Sy, since Marius could not enter himself in his present form. On such occasions, he told her, he either kept to the forest or availed himself of accommodations in the barn in dirty weather. Sy was an engaging creature, well-mannered and eager to please, though he wasn’t the cleverest entity she’d ever met, and it was no great feat slipping away from him after a time. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Marius. There was no question that he had saved their lives, but something untoward was going on in the forest with Gideon—something the forest lord didn’t want her to see—and she meant to find out what that something was.

  Marius was absent most of the day making his rounds, for the isle was quite large, and he was a skilled hunter no matter what the quarry. This time, watchers were on the agenda, and he wouldn’t return until he was certain none lurked about. It was a small matter to send Sy off on an errand to pick her some wildflowers, for he was a simple sort, and she had totally beguiled him. The minute he was out of sight, she went back to the wood in search of Gideon.

  The sun was sliding low, and it was cool and dark in the forest. The mingled scents of bark and fern, pine and mulch, with overtones of mushroom and herb, and rich, fertile soil rushed at her as she padded deeply in. The very air was like an aphrodisiac, with a pulse all its own, tantalizing the core of her sexuality, binding her to Nature and the sultry wood. She breathed it in deeply.

  Rustling among the trees stopped her in her tracks. Straining her ears, she listened for the author of the noise, but there was only silence. She resumed her cautious pace, and a tittering stopped her again. She hadn’t imagined it. Disembodied voices, buzzing like bees and giggling musically, drifted toward her from all directions. Again, the sound ceased the minute she stopped and continued the minute she moved on, padding deeper into the wood.

  All at once, the tree trunks gave up different sorts of watchers, as from behind each one close by, pine and oak, rowan and ash, a wood nymph emerged, trailing yards of filmy spider silk spangled with the evening dew. Their leader reeled to the fore, her every motion seeming a dance step, a voluptuous, though lithe creature with diaphanous chestnut hair, and eyes the color of mercury that had a way of changing color. Meanwhile, the others gathered around, but kept their distance as their obvious leader whirled and spun and danced around Rhiannon, who had stopped in her tracks. So these were the wood nymphs who were so “smitten” with her Gideon. They were exquisite. Rhiannon couldn’t imagine any male resisting any one of them, least of all a fallen angel cursed with ravenous lust. The pang of jealousy those thoughts sired was far worse than the glancing blow she’d taken from the watcher’s lightning bolt earlier.

  “So, you are his new love, then?” the dancing nymph said. “A mite thin for his taste, but then, considering his situation, I imagine he settles often.”

  Her sugar-sweet voice dripping venom made the wounding crueler. “Let me pass,” Rhiannon said.

  “I am called Vina,” the nymph said, sweeping her arm wide. “These are my sisters…figuratively speaking, of course. We shan’t hinder you. We only want to have a look. Gideon won’t mind. He sleeps. What are you called?”

  Rhiannon was clever enough not to answer that question so readily. This was a dangerous enough situation without inciting a gaggle of wood nymphs to jealous rage. She was hopelessly outnumbered. Where was Marius? Even the faun, Sy, would have been a comfort then, neither were anywhere about. She knew where Gideon was, but she needed to pass the nymphs to reach him.

  She kept walking. “I really need to pass,” she said. “Excuse me…”

  Vina seized Rhiannon’s long, loosely braided hair and fingered its texture. “Lovely, this,” she purred, “and so long! Wouldn’t the lower forms have a grand time snarling this! That’s what they do, you know, the lower fay…snarl hair. We nymphs, on the other hand, do not sink to such childish levels for our…amusements.” She twirled around Rhiannon, wrapping the tresses around her like a rope. “See what a fine cocoon it makes,” she tittered on. “Or a blanket even”—she gave the braid a sharp tug—“or a leash!” she triumphed, jerking Rhiannon to a standstill.

  “Let me go!” Rhiannon cried, trying to loosen the braid that the nymph had cinched in tightly around her neck. “I cannot breathe!”

  “Oh, be still!” Vina said, giving the braid another sharp jerk that all but closed Rhiannon’s throat. “We shan’t kill you, foolish chit. But we are what we are, and we will have our bit of fun!”

  One by one, the nymphs took their turn swinging Rhiannon about by the tether they’d made of her long hair. Her arms were bound to her sides by the rest of the braid, and twice they’d brought her to her knees before she was able to work her forearms and hands free, and take hold of the hair rope that was choking her. It was no use. It was cinched so tightly she couldn’t budge it.

  “Let me go, I say!” she got out through clenched teeth.

  But the wood nymph danced on, while her sister nymphs followed, twirling Rhiannon about until her head reeled dizzily. Familiar hands groped her body. Rhiannon beat them away as best she could with her motion curtailed, but they groped her still as the nymphs led her off in the opposite direction. The undergrowth was thicker there. A tangled snarl of briar, thorn, and woodbine carpeted the forest floor. Sharp nettles snagged the hem of her sleeping shift rending tears that left her nearly naked, openings for the groping hands to enter and finger her pubic mound and turgid nipples. They knew exactly where to stroke and what to seize, these she-wolves of the wood. In spite of the nagging concern that they were taking her farther away from Gideon, and in spite of the anger and fear roiling in her, Rhiannon could not stay the waves of scorching fire that spread through her belly and thighs. What enchantment was this?

  When the nymphs closed the circle they’d formed around her and their caresses became more urgent, Rhiannon groaned, straining against the tether her own hair had become. Everything seemed so far away, as if the fringes of her peripheral vision were closing in on her. She saw nothing but a foglike swirl obscuring Vina and the others. Their tittering voices ringing in her ears seemed to be coming from an echo chamber. It was a coarse, mocking sound that raised wave upon wave of cold chills along her spine. At the same time, pulsating heat rushed though the epicenter of her sex as the nymphs stroked and laved and probed and fondled.

  They had taken her to a little clearing and backed her up to an ancestral oak that stood in the center of it. There, they circled her again and again, taking sexual liberties with her in their turn, and with each other. Each outcry Rhiannon made in protest caused the noose around her neck to tighten, for indeed it was a noose, and she’d begun to fear that it would soon cut off what scant breath still remained in her lungs.

  “P-please,” she choked, pushing them away. “Why are you doing this? I beg you…let me go!” But it was no use, they were too many, and when Vina spread her legs and probed her nether lips feeling for the hardened bud of her clitoris, Rhiannon’s breath caught in her throat in spite of herself.

  The nymphs had slipped her shift down over her shoulders exposing her breasts to their collective touch. Rhiannon had freed her arms, but the gauze now tethered them, and she uttered a dry sob, trying to twist away as two of Vina’s deft fingers penetrated her.

  “Hmm, still sore from your deflowering,” the nymph observed. “I shouldn’t wonder. His sex is enormous. We have all known its magnificence, and we will again.” She shrugged, plunging her fingers deeper into Rhiannon’s vagina. “You have nothing we do not have,” she said. “You are a curiosity for him now, but we will have him again. He is one of us. No human female can outshine the fay when it comes to the sexual arts.”

  Rhiannon shut her eyes. Vina knew what she was doing. There was no way Rhiannon could beat back the orgasm. Vina’s rhythmic thrusts inside her had brought her to the brink. When one of the others began to lave and suck her nipple, Rhiannon was undone. She couldn’t see which nymph had taken her breast. The circle of swirling fog had nearly closed completely, blocking her vision as wave
upon wave of orgasmic fire ripped through her sex with the release. Everything seemed so far away all of a sudden. The hands fell away from her body, and the tether Vina had made of her braid slipped away from her neck. Her hair, come loose of it plaits, fell about her near nakedness like a silken waterfall. Rhiannon was grateful for the warmth of it, for cold rushed at her from all directions with the nymphs’ body heat removed.

  Their constant tittering now seemed like disembodied voices sharing secrets. It had grown distant, and Rhiannon took a deep breath as she sagged against the tree at her back. She had just begun to relax when Vina’s sultry voice assailed her at closer range. Though she couldn’t see the nymph for the fog, Vina’s warm breath, earthy sweet with the scent of herbs, puffed hot against her moist cheek.

  “Foolish chit,” the wood nymph whispered. At the sound of her voice, Rhiannon cried out and vaulted away from the tree trunk as if she’d been shot from a catapult. “He wants you so badly?” the nymph went on. “Let him see if he can find you!”

  “Wait!” Rhiannon cried out as Vina’s voice began to fade. “What do you mean if he can find me?”

  But there was no reply except for the distant titter of the nymph’s triumphant laughter that soon faded to nothingness.

  “He won’t have to find me!” Rhiannon called out after the vanished nymphs. “I shall find him! I took notice of the way we came to this place, and I will find him, I say!”