House of Dark Delights (31 page)

The wives took their turns with Elic in a more orderly, one-at-a-time manner than had their husbands—not that there was anything particularly civilized about the couplings. Elic was like a rutting beast, shoving the women into positions Bran had never imagined and taking them with wild, carnal ferocity.

In an agony of arousal now, Bran braced his back against one of the old oaks and relieved his terrible lust with his fist, gritting his teeth to keep from groaning as his seed spurted in long arcs onto the forest floor.

As he tucked himself back into his trousers, panting and shaking, he heard the battery of drumbeats that marked an end to the fertility rite—the first of many, he reminded himself, wondering how he was going to get through them.

Five

The Cold Time

W
HERE'S ADIEGA
?” Bran asked Paullia as she dumped a sack of apples and another of onions into the back of the cart sitting outside the cooking hut, alongside a cageful of chickens. “I've been looking for her all morning.”

Paullia blew on her hands and rubbed them together as she strode back into the hut. “I don't know, but if you see her, would you tell her to come give me a hand?” Lifting the big iron cauldron off its hook, she started dragging it outside, her breath smoking in the icy air.

Bran grabbed the handle and helped her to heft it into the cart alongside various other possessions of Vlatucia's that she had earmarked as being critical for a long journey. All over the village, families were packing up their household belongings for their lives away from Vernem, for they'd received word that morning from one of Vlatucia's scouts that a Roman cohort was marching in their direction and would be there by nightfall. The only villagers not scurrying about in frantic preparation were those few individuals, including the two gifted children and their mothers, who would be staying behind with Bran.

One who anticipated staying was Briaga, who was spending the day getting dressed and groomed for the wedding rites she expected to participate in this afternoon. This despite the fact that Bran had never actually asked her to marry him; in fact, he'd barely ever spoken to her. The arrangements had been made by Vlatucia in concert with Briaga's mother. From what Bran had been told, Briaga was torn about her impending nuptials and future life in Roman-occupied Vernem. On the one hand, she would be a slave married to a cripple who had to keep his leadership status a secret. On the other, she'd be living in close proximity to Romans, whom she viewed as paragons of sophistication. Surely they would recognize her as a kindred being and treat her like a free woman.

“I've been asking all over the village for Adiega,” Bran said, “but no one's seen her.”

“She's in the storehouse.”

Bran turned to find his mother standing behind him. Despite the weather, she wore no cloak or wrap, but she looked as unperturbed as if it were a balmy summer's day.

“What is she doing in the storehouse?” Bran asked, suddenly much more worried than he'd been before. Vlatucia's storehouse at the edge of the woods, her stronghold for valuable crops, among other things, was thick-walled and windowless, with a heavy oaken door fitted with an iron lock. By far the most secure building in Vernem, it had been pressed into service on more than one occasion to detain miscreants pending judgment by the elders.

From the corner of his eye he saw Paullia move around to the other side of the cart, where she could eavesdrop unobtrusively.

“After I learned this morning that the Romans are on their way,” Vlatucia said, “I went to Artaros to tell him he needed to get ready to marry you to Briaga this afternoon. He told me he would make the necessary preparations, but that he didn't know if you'd go along with it. He said your reluctance to wed Briaga wasn't so much a matter of immaturity as the fact that you were in love with someone else.”

“He…he
told
you?”

Vlatucia shook her head. “He told me you'd given him the girl's name in confidence, and that there was nothing I could do to force him to reveal it. So I just sat down and thought about it. I was bewildered at first, because you've never courted any woman, nor shown any interest in doing so. But then I realized that there was one woman in whose company you've spent a great deal of time for years, because she's lived under our very roof since she was orphaned. I would have thought of Adiega right off—in fact, I would have realized it long ago—but it had never occurred to me that you would shame our family by seducing a
vassa.
”

“I didn't seduce her,” Bran said hotly. “We've never even—”

“Good, then I don't need to worry that you might have gotten her with child. She's a virgin?”

“Of course.”

“All the better. The gods smile on virgin sacrifices.”

Bran had been cold all morning, but now he felt as if every nerve in his body were crackling with frost. Shaking in dread and disbelief, he said, “You can't be serious.”

Circling around the cart to stand face-to-face with Vlatucia, Paullia said, “You evil, shriveled-up sack of puke. By the gods, if you hurt my sister, I'll take my meat knife and tie you up and start cutting bits off. First your nose, then your tongue, then your fingers, one by one, then—”

“Yes, yes,” Vlatucia drawled, rolling her eyes. “A most terrifying threat. I do hope you realize you're never welcome under my roof again.”

“You won't have a roof after today,” reminded Paullia. “And anyway, I've decided I'm better off staying here and taking my chances with the Romans than fetching and cooking for the likes of you.”

“Mother, have you lost your wits entirely?” Bran asked. “We don't do human sacrifices anymore, we haven't in decades.”

“Because of your father's softheartedness,” she said. “And see where it got us? We've lost our homes, our lives, everything. We need to burn a virgin to ensure our safe travels through—”

“Burn?”

“My Germani are constructing a wicker effigy in the wheat field. She's to be burned at noon.”

Nodding in understanding, Bran said, “And I'm to be wed to Briaga shortly thereafter, your reasoning being that, with Adiega gone, there will be nothing to stop me from doing my duty by the clan. Well, it won't work, Mother. I will marry Adiega or no one.”

It was only when Bran saw Paullia giving him a look of pride and respect—underscored with shock—that he grasped how fearlessly he'd spoken to this woman who'd kept him so firmly under her thumb for nineteen years.

“Then you will marry no one,” said Vlatucia with studied calm, “for Adiega
will
burn, and there is not a thing you can do about it.”

Paullia opened her mouth for another dressing-down, but Bran caught her eye and gave her a surreptitious little
not now
look.

Adopting his most solemn demeanor, Bran said, “I won't attempt to argue you out of it. After nineteen years as your son, I know full well the futility of that. But I beg you, if you've a whit of human compassion, let me say good-bye to her. At least then, I'll be able to live with…whatever happens.”

“Only if you promise me you'll consider marrying Briaga.”

“I promise,” he said gravely. He could
consider
flying to the moon, but that didn't mean it would ever happen.

After a moment's pinch-faced thought, Vlatucia said, “I can't let you visit her unaccompanied. Someone will have to go with you, either me or someone I can trust to keep you from getting any clever ideas.”

“Artaros can come with me. He feels exactly as you do about Briaga. He's forever pressuring me to marry her.”

“Send him to me. I'll give him the keys to the storehouse.”

                  

“
Marry
you?” exclaimed Artaros as he stood outside the storehouse, sorting with some difficulty through the keys on Vlatucia's big iron ring. “To
Adiega
?” He stroked his long beard as he contemplated the request. “Well, I suppose, if she's condemned to die anyway…I mean, what harm could it really do? And if it will give you some comfort…You'd be a widower after she's gone, so you could still wed Briaga this afternoon if you decide to accept your duty and do the right thing. Yes, all right. I'll do it.”

“One other thing, Grandfather,” said Bran as the old man chose a key and struggled with the task of fitting it into the lock. “Another favor, a big one. After you marry me to Adiega, I'd like you to take those keys to the
Cella,
free Elic from his neck chain, and bring him here. Then leave, and don't tell anyone what you've done.”

Artaros stilled, his frown softening into a smile as he thought it through. “I always knew you were a clever boy.”

                  

“Powder of Tongues,” Elic said in the Gallitunga when Bran produced the little purple leather pouch after locking the door from inside. It looked to be a storehouse he'd found himself in, along with Bran and the young Adiega, who sat on a blanket on the floor with her arms banded around her, refusing to meet his gaze.

It was warm in the round stone building, and dark save for the light from a small brazier in the middle of the room and the smoke hole in the roof, the perimeter of which was piled high with sacks, crates, and barrels. Bran upended the pouch over the brazier and shook it, emptying its few remaining grains of black powder upon the coals as he recited the words that generated the magic. Green flames with purple tips leapt up from the spots the grains had struck.

“We don't have long,” Bran said as he put away the pouch. “My mother intends to have Adiega burned at noon as a sacrifice—but really as a way of pressuring me to marry someone I don't want to marry before they all leave.”

“Bikkja,”
Elic muttered under his breath.

Crouching next to Adiega to put an arm around her shoulder, Bran said, “Artaros married us to each other a little while ago, in secret.”

Elic smiled and bowed to Adiega. “It is a wonderful thing to find the mate of your heart. I am truly happy for you.”

She looked up a little shyly to return his smile. Strange…Though she'd struck him as more reserved than her sister Paullia that time in the
Cella,
she wasn't what he'd call shy.

The reason for her bashfulness became apparent when Bran said, “We want you to…do for us what you do for the others, the
uxelli
husbands and wives.”

Elic looked from Bran to the blushing Adiega and back.

“Adiega doesn't share my gifts,” Bran said, “so the only way for us to have druidic children is if you help us. And it will protect Adiega from my mother, too, if she can be with child after we…well, afterward.”

“You're absolutely sure you want this?” Elic asked Adiega.

“Yes.” Looking at Elic for the first time, she said, “But I know that Vlatucia has threatened to have
you
burned to death if you…have relations with people other than those she's chosen for you.”

“I'm sick of Vlatucia,” Elic said, “sick of fearing her, of being her obedient sex slave. Of course I'll help you.”

Adiega said, “We…we'd want to be together when you…when we…”

“Certainly,” Elic said.

“And no potions or herbs,” said Bran. “Just us. Just…the three of us.” He said something else, then, but although Elic could hear the Gallitunga words, he could not understand them.

He looked at the brazier to find it filled with ordinary, glowing coals. The Powder of Tongues had worn off.

                  

Elina knelt with her back to Bran and Adiega until The Change was complete, her green cloak wrapped tightly around her so as not to make them witness the transformation from male to female, which humans tended to find nauseating.

She rose and stretched, shaking out her legs, craning her neck this way and that. Turning and peering across the dark storeroom, she saw the young couple lying together on the blanket, their arms wrapped tightly around each other. They were both barefooted, but otherwise still fully dressed. Bran was whispering something earnestly into Adiega's ear. He kissed her forehead, searched her eyes, and asked her something. She nodded, and then her gaze shifted to Elina coming toward them.

Bran glanced at Elina as she lowered herself to the blanket next to him, then he took Adiega's face in his hands and kissed her again, on the mouth this time, lingeringly and with deep passion. He stroked her breasts through her dress, drew her toward him and rubbed against her.

Elina untied Bran's trousers, took Adiega's hand, and closed it around his erection. He thrust into her hand, moaning something that made Adiega smile. She stroked him with an expression of wonderment at her ability to bring him such pleasure, until finally he removed her hand and kissed it, saying something in a hoarse, breathless voice; he was close.

Elina rolled him onto his back and straddled him. Wanting to spare Adiega's feelings, she arranged her cloak so as to conceal the juncture of their bodies as she positioned Bran to enter her. He sucked in a breath, squeezing Adiega's hand.

To Elina's surprise, Adiega pulled the cloak aside to watch as Elina lowered herself onto Bran's straining erection. Elina unpinned the cloak and tossed it aside, whereupon Bran said something to Adiega, tugging impatiently at her dress. The young woman hesitated, then pulled the garment off over her head, leaving herself as naked as Elina. She was pale and lissome, with sweet, high little breasts. Bran looked at her the way every female dreamed of being looked at, with both awe and desire.

Bran embraced Adiega, kissing and caressing her as Elina rocked atop him in a steady, languid rhythm. Adiega pulled his tunic up to kiss his chest. He shucked the garment off and gathered her in his arms, his breath coming in harsh gasps, his body bucking to meet Elina's quickening thrusts. She contracted her internal muscles, released and contracted again, and again, like a fist pumping, squeezing…

Bran groaned helplessly, his back arched, arms tightening around Adiega. Elina felt the hot bursts of his seed as her own pleasure erupted, wave after wave of it, the spasms drawing Bran's seed deep, deep into her body.

                  

Elic, wrapped once more in the green cloak, felt the same relief he always felt upon returning to his masculine form. He felt the presence, low in his belly, of Bran's seed, the pressure of it making him hard and ready. Rising, he saw Bran and Adiega, both now completely unclothed, lying on the blanket with their arms and legs entwined as they whispered and kissed.