Temptress Unbound (13 page)

11

I
was still floundering in a raging sea of emotions when I stepped out from under the peristyle gallery into the courtyard garden of the villa. The noon sun diffused its light through a flat layer of white-gray, giving the sky an eerie, formless look, as if we had stepped out of time and into some Otherworld. In the center of the courtyard full of Roman gods rose a great timber, the trunk of an oak tree hastily chopped down, peeled of its bark, and set upright in the earth. An iron ring had been set into its top, through which had been threaded a long rope. Against that uncanny sky, it looked as ominous in purpose as it was.

People had begun to gather: soldiers, servants, the Britons of the other tribes. All of Corinium would pack itself into this garden if it could, to witness what was to come.

I didn't know what was going on outside the villa, what order had or had not been brought, what political discussions were being held, nor what prisoners had been taken. None of that mattered to me. All that mattered was saving Arthur.

“Everything's almost ready,” Maerlin said, coming over to me.

“Not quite,” I said, my new perspective on him making his look of open innocence an infuriating taunt.

Maerlin ran a visual inspection of the items on the table that had been dragged outdoors, and then ran his eyes over me. I'd changed into the dark blue silk gown that Tanwen had given me, and let my hair flow loose. He smiled, a gleam of appreciation in his eyes. “I see nothing amiss,” he said, reaching out to touch me.

I sidled away from his hand, and spoke in Phannic, for his ears only. “I don't want you taking part.”

His smile faltered. “It's more certain to work if we use both our powers, together.”

“I'm convinced it will fail, with you involved.”

“Because I'm male?”

I led him back into the gallery, down to a quiet, shadowed corner between statues of Mars and Venus. When we were hidden from observing eyes I turned to him. “You might sabotage it.”

He gaped at me. “Are you
mad
?”

“Not on purpose; not with any awareness of what you did.”

“I would never! Why would I? What insanity is this?”

“Love,” I said. “The most noble insanity of them all.”

“I don't understand. My love for Arthur would have me lay down my life for him, not take his from him.”

“But would you give me up, to save him?”

“You and I, that has nothing to do with saving his life,” he said.

“You're a man of logic: what does that mean, when you look at saving Arthur's life? If Arthur lives, he is free from Wynnetha, and you know that he and I will be together. If he dies, then I might stay with you.”

“I would
never
harm Arthur, for any reason.”

“You told me yourself that you didn't know your own feelings until your actions showed them to you. I know you told Arthur to watch us call the wind. You wanted him to give me up, so you could have me.”

His face flushed and he turned his gaze out to the courtyard, avoiding mine. “It was for both your goods. He would never understand your need to touch other men, and you would smother your gifts for fear of hurting him.”

“It was for
your
good, not ours. You did it because you wanted me for yourself.”

“No! Arthur would never understand infidelity, and you would be helpless to resist it.”

“How do you know that I
need
other men? Might not one, if he's the right man, be enough?”

“Fresh lust, novelty, the seed of strange men—” he said.

“Do you
know
those to be necessary? You don't. You can't.”

“I know what it is to be Phanne.”

“So your vision of a future with me is to have as many serving girls and farm wenches and foreign ladies as it pleases you.”

“But that's just it!
We're
different, you and I,” he said, turning to me and grasping my shoulders, his pale green eyes burning bright. “We can have a bond unlike with any other. We'll heal Arthur, leave him here with Skalibur to be a figurehead for the Britons, and then together we can explore this world, find the labyrinth, learn all the lost secrets of our tribe. We can reestablish the Isle of Mona as it was meant to be: a source of sacred knowledge. We can renew the Phanne tribe, Nimia. We can gather our lost people from the scattered corners where the wind has blown them, and save both them and their knowledge.”

I stood helpless in his hold, stunned by the immense plan he laid before me. Gather our lost tribe, find the labyrinth, reestablish Mona—only not on Mona, I instantly thought. Somewhere new, and warmer. I felt his words shift something within me, bringing forth a purpose that had been hidden inside me, awaiting discovery.

Yes, a sacred island of learning, only . . . I thought of Daella, so wise and gifted, and remembered her grandmother Mari telling me there was nowhere for one such as her. Daella was not Phanne, and yet she was as deserving of a place to learn and grow as any woman of my tribe. Let this mythical island be a place to which any woman of intelligence and good heart could flee, and make a better life for herself—whether she stayed a lifetime, or left to live a life she chose, with skills to give her value.

“You can see it, too, can't you?” Maerlin said.

I blinked myself back to the present. “It's a glorious vision, beautiful in all its aspects except for one: I would have no love, in such a place. I'm not ready to retreat to an island, and give up hope of a more domestic happiness. I want a man to love, and who will love me. I want to raise my own children. I want a
home
.”

“
I'm
the man who can give you that. Can you still not see it?” he cried.

“I don't love you.”

“You'll see that you do, in time. Once you're free of Arthur's spell—”

“You've said it yourself, you want me free of him! What better way than to be sure he does not survive?”

“I don't need him dead to have you, I just need
time
—which you swore to give me. Everyone loves Arthur, because he's so easy to love. He has everyone's hearts, but I won't let him have
yours
,
not when you were meant to be mine. Mine, Nimia. Not his.”

“You can't force someone to love you.”

“I don't need to. I know you feel it, only you don't recognize it yet because you're still blinded by Arthur. You want me as much as I want you.”

I shook my head. “I don't. What I feel for you is different—”

“It's more true.”

“You don't know my heart!”

“
You
don't know your heart!” And so saying he grasped my face in his hands and kissed me.

With the laying of his lips upon mine, he pushed his way into my mind. I threw up the defenses he'd taught me, but he went through them as easily as if I'd opened the gates of my mind for him. As the cool rush of physical contact filled my head and I felt him holding me still with his mind, I had just enough sense to think that of course he who had taught me my defenses would know how to breach them.

I felt him moving through me, searching my memories and emotions, pawing open secret places I would rather leave hidden. Each time he touched upon such a spot it would flare to life in my mind, brought to the edge of my awareness until he tossed it aside and moved on. He was searching for himself in me, I realized, as he caught at the threads of memory and lust and friendship all linked to him, and began following them to what he must hope would be a well of love.

If there had been such a well within me, this invasion was draining it. To have my self rifled through, the ultimate refuge of my private thoughts laid bare to his eyes, was more than I could bear.

You promised never to do this to me again,
I said, and even in my mind I could hear the pain in my voice, the weeping that my body could not do while he held me locked in his control.

You want to be forced to see how much you care for me. You've hidden it from yourself, but it's here. I'll find it for you.

He wasn't going to stop until he'd found that which he sought. He was going to peer through every last memory, thought, and emotion until he found an image of himself as my ideal mate. He would disembowel my mind, dressing it like a deer at the end of a hunt . . . And he would not find it.

The languid lust sank down through my chest, filling my breasts and tightening my nipples. I heard the first hum of my swarm as it gathered to join me.

I would not let him do this to me.

As he searched so frantically through me, I dropped my defenses and allowed him fully in. I let him feel the lust I could not help, and opened myself to the flow of his lust in return.

His arm slid around my waist, his other hand to the back of my head; his mouth opened against mine and his tongue plunged within. And still he rampaged through all that was most tender and private, exposing and discarding the first time I'd held my son; the loss of my virginity on the pressing room floor with Clovis; the fragment of an image I still held of my mother's face; Terix's hands on my body, healing me of my endless need for human touch . . .

I formed an image in my mind of Maerlin, and tied my lust to it. He snapped at it like a fish to a baited hook. Even now the lust was real, and I let it grow, fed by the steady stream of his own desire.

As he chewed at the bait on the hook, my swarm gathered. I held them back as Tanwen had taught me, and as the force of Maerlin's desire flooded through me, the gold walls as of a great hive reappeared around my inner self, as near completion as they had been that night on Mona.

Maerlin had been right: taking power from a fellow Phanne was worlds different from draining a normal man. It was wine compared to water, a rich stew to gruel. It was the feast my bees hungered for, a vat of nectar they could drink until they burst.

Maerlin paused in his searching, an awareness that something was not right filtering through his frenzy.
Nimia? What are you doing?

The dome above me had one last space to be filled.

I need you,
I said.
All of you.
I imagined him taking me against the wall, one leg hiked up to his waist.

He responded with a surge of desire.

Above me, the final gold brick began to form, preparing to seal out the false sky of my inner mind. The swarm vibrated with power in the hive walls, awaiting the final brick, and my direction.

Nimia? Nimia! Don't let it form, stop!

He tried to pull back, tried to detach his mind and lift his lips from mine. I clung tight, using what power was not bound into the hive walls to keep him tied to me. I only needed a moment more . . .

Give me all you have, Maerlin. This is what you wanted, isn't it? To belong to each other. If I'm yours, then you're mine.

Be careful, Nimia, you're taking too much; you don't know what's going to happen.

I know what will happen to
you.

The final brick settled into place.

Power surged through me, and I grabbed the back of Maerlin's head and held his mouth against mine while I pulled every last drop of Phanne strength from him. I drank until there was nothing left to drink, until his thoughts faded, until he lost command of his body and sank to the ground in my embrace.

I stood and wiped my mouth, looking down on his crumpled, beautiful form. He was not dead; he'd recover, eventually. But it would be weeks before he could use his powers to predict so much as a rain shower.

My inner self stood within a silent, golden hive, sealed off from the world of men. The hum of bees was gone, but not their power. They had flown into the world around me, and everything they touched, I could touch. They were my eyes and ears and skin, and through them I looked back at myself, and saw my figure from the outside. Small, pale from the winter, my eyes glowing like molten copper. I raised my hand to brush my hair back from my face, and saw the action from both inside and outside my body.

The flown bees would do my bidding; they were my hands, my tools. The earth itself would reshape should I wish it. The skies would darken. Fruit would form upon barren branches.

If I wished it.

I stepped out into the courtyard.

Wynnetha stood with hands bound, in front of the peeled oak trunk with its dangling rope.

I smiled.

12

“W
here's Maerlin?” Eowan, one of the men-at-arms, asked me as I approached the table and Wynnetha.

“Unwell,” I said, raising my glowing eyes to him. With my strange sense of being both inside and outside my body, I saw the fearsome appearance I gave and felt his superstitious dread. “We'll proceed without him.”

“I'm not sure . . . Maerlin's the one who told us what had to be set up, and—”

I held up my hand and pressed my thumb to my fingertips in a
hush
gesture; I felt my silent swarm obey, and close his jaw. Eowan's eyes went round and he stepped back.

“Maerlin took his directions from me,” I said without emotion: my feelings seemed as divorced from my awareness as was my body. Everything felt distant from me, and yet I saw and thought with piercing clarity. “As will you, if you wish Arthur to live.”

Eowan looked unnerved, but not convinced; I could see the protest in his eyes, though his jaw still would not move.

Terix came up to us, my name and a question on his lips, but the words died when he saw my face. “Uh-oh. Nimia, are you in there?”

“He and the others must do as I bid, if Arthur is to live.”

“Right,” he said, unfazed by my strangeness. “Where's Maer­lin?”

“Unwell. I need two men to help me hoist Wynnetha.” I reached out my hand and opened my fingers, allowing Eowan to speak.

Terix put his hand on the man's arm before he could open his mouth. “She's in a trance,” he said in a low voice. “It's like this when the power is upon her. Best to do what she says.”

“I don't like it. Maerlin's bad enough, but we can trust him, and we know his magic. What can
she
do?”

I had no interest in the argument. I turned away, my gaze drifting over the thick crowd that had gathered. I saw them all, each person and emotion, every hope and fear on their angry, grieving faces. I saw it, and was apart from it. The walls of the golden hive held me separate from their world. All that mattered was the power, and directing its flow through what was to come.

I drifted over to Wynnetha. Her hands were bound behind her back, her gown was torn and smeared with dirt and blood, and her long blond hair was loose, snarled upon twigs and leaves. She had one small scratch on her fair cheek, but other than that her face was untouched, and if not for the fury, terror, and derangement in her eyes, would have been as beautiful as the first day I saw her.

“
You
,” Wynnetha spat, and then laughed, high and brittle. “Did Mordred tire of you so quickly?”

“You're acquainted with the
irminsul
,” I said, nodding my head at the tree trunk. Mordred had once gifted Terix to Wynnetha's father, as a sacrifice to such a thing.

“You made it especially for me, did you?” She laughed again. “A Saxon idol for a Saxon execution.”

I inclined my head in agreement. “We each have our own gods, our own methods to reach them, but we know they're all the same underneath; even the Romans understood that. Our languages differ, yet the power we seek flows from one source. This will help you release
your
power to flow where it must.”

“My blood, you mean! You mean to sacrifice me, don't you? As if that will bring back Arthur! Good luck to you! It won't, but that doesn't matter to you.”

As she ranted, I spoke to the soldier who had come to stand behind Wynnetha. “Tie the end of the rope around one of her ankles.”

“You've wanted me out of the way since you first learned that Mordred wanted
me
for his wife,” Wynnetha went on. “You couldn't stand that he chose
me,
not you. You used your spells to keep him from fleeing from here with me, but he broke free, didn't he?”

The soldier tested his knot and stepped back.

“Killing me won't get him for you,” Wynnetha said. “Mordred is mine, and being rid of me will get you nothing. Nothing!”

I leaned in close to Wynnetha so she and only she could hear me as I ran the backs of my fingers gently down her perfect cheek. Her breath came rough, the stench of fear rising off her skin. “It's Arthur I love, so killing you will get me absolutely everything. Be certain that Mordred can keep your heart, for I will set it in a box and send it to him myself.”

“Animal! Demon!”

I knelt down and tied the hem of her skirt in a knot between her legs. “I won't have you shamed or hurt,” I said as I stood. “A sacrifice deserves more respect than that.”

I nodded, and one of the men began to haul on the rope that went through the loop atop the trunk. As it drew up its slack it tugged on Wynnetha's ankle and she hopped.

“Support her,” I ordered, and a man cradled her in his arms, lifting her off the ground as she was hoisted upward by her foot.

As her world turned upside down, Wynnetha struggled and cursed, vile Saxon words flowing from her snarling lips. Her head thrashed, her hair a mad tangle. The soldier released his hold on her and she threw herself about like an animal in a snare.

All around us, a noise that was as much a sensation as a sound rose from the gathered throng. It was a sigh and a moan of satisfaction, of hatred, of eagerness. I could feel in them all the deep need to see Wynnetha suffer for that which she had helped to wreak upon them. If I had not claimed her for this, they would have torn her to pieces before the sun had set.

Wynnetha was several feet off the ground now, her skirts falling in a balloon around her thighs, her elbows out behind her. She kicked at her bound foot with the free one, but soon tired, her free leg sagging downward, her foot tucked between her other knee and the trunk. She cast a vile look at me, her eyes vivid in her red face, and then her features twisted and she started to cry.

“You'll pass out soon,” I said. “You won't feel it when your throat is cut.”

I turned to the table, where the chalice waited. I poured honey into it, and dragged my fingertip through it and along the carved labyrinthine path, words I could not understand rising to my lips. I chanted as I traced the etched lines, and behind me Wynnetha sobbed and screamed and cursed, her noises gradually growing softer and less frequent, her breathing more labored. Soon it was only the chant that could be heard.

I finished the lines and poured a bit of wine into the chalice, aware as I did so that Una had materialized beside me, her small face intent, her eyes glowing. She had her knife in her hand.

I picked up the chalice and turned to face Wynnetha, whose eyes had rolled back into her head, her face slack and distorted, and dark red.

“Can I do it?” Una asked.

“Do you hear the words to say?”

Una squinted, her lips parted in concentration, and then she slowly nodded and began to speak the ancient words that came to her. She didn't need me to show her where to press the tip of her blade, carefully puncturing Wynnetha's artery to let the blood arc out in a narrow stream, and into the waiting chalice.

Who does the chalice serve?
That had been the question asked in my vision. The answer:
She who feeds it.

I
fed the chalice with Wynnetha's blood. The chalice served
me.

When I had what I needed I nodded, and Una plunged the blade fully in and dragged it across Wynnetha's neck. Her blood poured down her head and into her hair, turning it from yellow to crimson, and began to pool at the foot of the trunk.

The people jeered and shouted, and I left them to it, carrying the chalice before me. Everyone stepped out of my way, clearing a path as I carried the blood, the honey, and the wine into the villa and down the corridor to Arthur's room. Men and servants rushed ahead, opening doors and clearing the way. I could feel their frenzied hope and bloodlust, and the jittering threat of a world about to tip out of control.

They crowded as near as they dared as I entered Arthur's room and started to take the chalice to him. The physician stopped me, stepping in my path with his hands clasped and shaking his head. Tears stained his cheeks. “Too late.”

“No!”

My swarm focused, surrounding Arthur, pressing inward to read what it might.

It found a morass of decay, an infection that had consumed all but the last faint pinprick of life. There was no awareness, no sense of himself; only emptiness, a body turning over to rot, and that one dying spark.

I pushed past the physician and slung my arm under Arthur's head, lifting it so that he might drink. “Drink, Arthur. And return to us.” I tipped the chalice to his lips, and the thick red liquid poured in. “You shall be born anew. You and Skalibur shall be one, and immortal.”

I chanted the ancient words, and massaged his neck and jaw, coaxing the fluid into him. Again and again, I poured the blood mixture; it overflowed his mouth and covered my hands, turning the chalice slick in my grasp.

Come back to me,
I said into the void that was his body.
You are needed. You are loved. Come back.

The pinpoint grew dimmer, as if receding.

I closed my eyes and summoned all my powers, all the force of the hive, and every drop of the strength I'd drawn from Maer­lin. I pursued that fleeting spark, chased it until I could lay hold of it, wrapping my arms around it and refusing to let go.
You shall
not
disappear into Death. You shall live again.

I held his spark of life and chanted the ancient spell, and found within myself the essence of Arthur, left there when we'd lain together that once. I brought up the feel of who he was, and tied the spark to it.
Remember who you are. Remember all who need you. You cannot leave us alone.

In the depth of my womb, I felt a quick, sharp stab of pain, and for a brief moment I saw Arthur's face, alive in wonder.

The chalice shattered.

I opened my eyes to find the bed surrounded by anxious faces, Terix among them. Pink shards of bloodied crystal lay scattered over me and Arthur. In my arms, his body lolled, his stained mouth sagging open in death.

“Did it work?” Terix said, asking the question hanging from all their hearts.

I laid my hand over my belly, and sensed the life that had attached itself there, forming a new body to bring it back into this world of sorrow. “Yes.”