“Just cast your runes, old one,” said Gideon. “I want none of your riddles.”
The woman sank to the floor cross-legged and emptied the bag of small carved pebbles on the floor in front of her. “I knew you would come,” she said. “I saw it here. I have been waiting for you. You have met another…”
Gideon nodded. “I have met one I would keep…if I can. Is it possible?”
The crone studied the runes. “It is possible,” she said at last, “but not the way you wish.”
“And what does that mean?”
“Another question, dark one?” She asked. “You only have two left….”
“No, damn you!”
“You haven’t the power to damn me, dark one. Take care. You can ill afford to evoke my wrath. You do not know what you deal with in me.”
“I have precious little left to lose,” Gideon said. “Do your worst!”
“You have your
soul
!” she shot back, rising to her feet. “Come!”
Gideon followed the woman out into the prevailing mist, for he had never seen the islet other than as it was now, cloaked in white. They climbed upward to a pinnacle that gave a panoramic view of the vista beyond through rocky shoals. There, a gateway was marked by phallic stones rising from the rockbound ledges. The standing stones were joined by a capstone that bridged the span. Some said the gods had fashioned the arch, and that it led to Outer Darkness. Others said the shamans of old raised it to hold sway over the Arcan Isles. There was no way to know, since the shamans were no more. Custody of the key to whatever lay beyond the gateway had fallen to the rune caster.
“The gateway?” Gideon queried. “Passage to the Netherworld, or shamans’ folly, eh? I fear it not. After the way the gods have cursed me, I have no fear of Outer Darkness, old woman. I carry
inner
darkness with me waking and sleeping. I am
Lord of the Dark
, remember?”
“You are a fool, Gideon. You have much to fear. Please the gods you see it soon enough. I keep the gate, dark one. Those whom I send through it never return. The gods cursed you, yes, but spared you
this.
Take care how you anger them now.”
“I have two more questions,” Gideon reminded her, changing the subject. “I’ve left her alone too long. I must get back before she grows impatient.”
“Oh, it is far too late for that,” the woman tittered.
Gideon’s scalp drew taut, and cold chills riddled him until he nearly lost his footing. Something in her coal-black eyes and odious cackle smacked of catastrophe, and his heart began to pound.
“Why did you come?” she queried. “What made you risk leaving her to come here now?”
“I heard a voice,” Gideon said. “I’ve heard voices before, when I’m drifting off usually, but what they say makes no sense…”
“What did it say, your voice?”
“It said ‘the runes have been cast…the fates decreed…’”
The woman’s posture clenched. “You must get back,” she said. “That much I tell you for free.”
“Your price?” he urged.
“Three feathers from those magnificent wings of yours, dark one,” she said. “They hold great magic for one such as I, and you shan’t miss a one.”
“Have them, then!”
The rune caster approached and plucked three feathers from the soft underside of Gideon’s wings. A thrill coursed through his body as she pulled them out, and the places she’d plucked them from remembered their presence for some time after, punishing him with stinging, pulsating waves of orgasmic fire. He shrugged the feeling off as best he could, though it called his hand to his burgeoning cock. No one had ever pulled his feathers out before. It was not a comfortable thing.
“You will have them back one day…when needs must,” the woman said, tucking the feathers beneath her seaweed garment.
“What of my other two questions?” he asked her.
“Another time,” she said. “I’ll not cheat you, dark one. Now, get thee gone, lest you have your answers before you can ask your precious questions!”
G
ideon reached the Dark Isle in the wee hours and burst into the cave, the rune caster’s words ringing in his ears, and went straight to Rhiannon’s chamber. To his great relief, she lay curled on her side sound asleep. One rush candle flickering in its bracket cast a golden aura about her pale face and shone in the long, ginger-colored hair fanned out about her from a loose plait. How beautiful she was lying there so peacefully—so still. The rune caster must have been mistaken. Everything seemed as it should be.
Her mulberry kirtle was neatly folded on the bench alongside, and he raised it to his nose and inhaled her deeply…sweet clover and her own natural essence, sultry and mysterious, yet innocent, just as she was. He held it for some time, staring down at her nestled in the feather quilts, and it wasn’t until he started to fold it up again that something rolled from the pocket; something round and iridescent that had once been shimmering blue caught his eye and held it.
He recognized it at once, one of the medallions from the stained glass windows that used to adorn the keep before the watchers destroyed it. “Mica’s beard!” he seethed. She had left the cave.
Gideon began to pace, his mind was racing. Should he wake her? No, not yet. Raking his hair back damp with the evening mist, he groaned in spite of himself. He should have known the rune caster hadn’t been mistaken; Lavilia, keeper of the Gateway to Outer Darkness, was never mistaken.
Folding the kirtle as he’d found it, he stalked out into the corridor and went to the pool chamber, where he struggled into the eel skin he’d left there. Then returning to Rhiannon, he waited, pacing again, until a shift in the rhythm of her breathing called him to her bedside. The sight of her alone aroused him. It must be love, if he could stand there bulging at the seam, meanwhile roiling in anger that she had disobeyed one of the conditions—very possibly the most important one. He should have told her why, but he feared frightening her. Evidently, that is just what was needed. It didn’t matter now. Mesmerized by the look of her, he couldn’t help but reach out and stroke the silken length of plaited hair tumbling over the counterpane.
Her tremulous breathing drew his eyes. Could she be dreaming? Were the dreams that moved her so of him? The rapid rise and fall of her upturned breasts stretched the gauze tightly over them, showing him the tall, tawny nipples beneath. The wide areola had puckered, bringing one hardened bud dangerously close to escaping the neck of the night shift with each deep, shuddering breath she drew. The tall, hard nipple teased him unmercifully, catching on the lace that edged the shift as those exquisite breasts rose and fell, almost, but not quite, exposing it to his eyes, hooded with desire.
Gideon licked his lips in anticipation, fighting a primeval instinct to swoop down and take that nipple in his mouth, to lave it with his tongue until she arched herself against his sucking, tugging lips. His wings began to unfurl, the pain in his cock pressed so tightly against the eel skin called his hand to relieve it. He tore open the crotch and exposed himself, gazing down at the hard, veined shaft and ridged, slick mushroom tip, and stifled a groan. What had the gods done to him? A moment ago, he was ready to throttle her, and now…
Evidently, the lace scraping her nipple had aroused her, for she writhed there momentarily, but it still wasn’t enough to free the tawny bud. Gideon could bear no more. He had to feast his eyes upon it naked in the golden lamplight. Deftly, he flicked the fabric as she moved and freed the trapped nipple to his hungry eyes. It was enough. Sight of the dark, hard puckered bud, which he fantasized had come to life because of dreams of him, sent waves of drenching fire coursing through his loins.
Wave upon wave washed over him, they would not stop. No matter how he prayed to stay the lava flow of his seed, it came still. He seized his shaft and turned away as the orgasm struck him like cannon fire, spewing his thick, hot come over the hard-packed dirt floor with each involuntary jerk of his pelvis.
Staring down, he watched his life spew from him, seed of his body spurting out of the ridged mushroom tip of his cock from the look of her alone. It wasn’t the gods. Not this time. It was this breathtaking creature so innocently asleep in the bed alongside. What had she done to him? Even in her sleep she had the power to seduce him. No one touched his damnable wings this time. They fluttered on their own at the mere sight of her laying thus, her breast half exposed to torment him.
Enough! He must stop trying to make sense of it, or it would happen again! Seizing a towel from the nightstand, he cleaned his penis and stuffed it back inside his eel skin none too gently. Maybe that would curtail his passions. Such a notion was myth! He would be hard against the seam as long as Rhiannon was in sight.
Anger was returning now, at the gods, for he truly believed they were enjoying his punishment; at himself, for the blame because the damnable curse always came back to haunt him; and at Rhiannon, for breaking their bargain and making him angry in the first place! He was going mad. He had to be, and when she moved and he called her name in a voice he scarcely recognized as his own, he was certain of it.
“Rhiannon!”
he gritted out through clenched teeth. “Wake! We need to talk.”
She woke with a start, then lurched erect covering her naked breast. Dazed, she sought him with sleep-glazed eyes. For a moment, he thought he saw fear in them, but mercifully that passed. He could have borne anything but her terror of him.
He whipped the glass medallion from an inside pocket in the eel skin and brandished it. “What is
this
?” he seethed. “Where did you get it—when? Answer me, Rhiannon.”
She paled as gray as a ghost before his eyes, and his heart sank like a lead weight in his breast. She
had
been out of the cave. He’d been hoping against hope that she’d unearthed it from some hidden crevice he’d overlooked in the cave itself, since the explosion the gods performed on the keep so long ago had scattered debris for miles in all directions. It had killed what foliage still lived back then, blackened heather and tree, creature and grass to petrified char, slag, and death, and had given the
Isle of Darkness
its name.
“You left the cave?” he said to her silence.
“O-only for a little,” she murmured. “It was such a beautiful day, and there was no harm done. You were worried that I would do myself a mischief, but I could see the pitfalls, and—”
“There were conditions!” he interrupted. “We struck a bargain. I told you I have valid reasons for my directives!”
“But you didn’t say
what
reasons, Gideon. Your ‘directive’ made no sense to me.”
“It wasn’t supposed to make sense. It was supposed to be honored. There are dangers here for both of us. This wretched place has been my home for eons. I ought to know where dangers lie. I trusted you to keep the bargain!”
Rhiannon swung her feet over the side of the bed and stood to face him. “Why are you just getting around to chastising me for it now?” she asked him. “I would have thought you would have done it the minute you returned. Why wake me out of a sound sleep now to rail at me over it?”
“I didn’t know about it until this!” he said, brandishing the glass medallion again.
“What do you mean you didn’t know about it? You
saw
me out there. I know you did. You couldn’t possibly have missed seeing me in the open as I was.”
“Saw you? What are you talking about?” he asked her, nonplussed.
“I walked to the ruins, where I found that bauble. It is a pretty thing, and I saw no harm in keeping it…as a relic of this place…and of you…”
“Go on,” he murmured, his voice like gravel.
“Walking over the open hills returning, I saw you circling overhead, very high in the clouds. For a moment, I thought you were about to swoop down and confront me then and there, but you soared off instead, and I came back here straightaway…”
“Ye
gods
! You don’t know what you’ve done!” he thundered. His wings snapped open wide, as they always did when he was in the throes of any form of passion. Anger moved him now, and he took a step toward her, fists clenched at his sides. “You foolish, foolish child!” he groaned.
“That wasn’t me!”
“What do you mean?” she shrilled, padding down from the platform. “Of course it was you. There are no other ‘fallen’ on the isle. You told me so yourself! Maybe you didn’t see me after all, but I know what I saw, and it
was
you!”
“I never should have trusted you!” he raved. “I should have told you, but I didn’t want to frighten you away, and now you’ve damned us both!”
Her eyes were wild and wide-flung at his outburst. His words reverberated from the vaulted ceiling, ringing back in his ears as if they were coming from an echo chamber. He hadn’t meant to frighten her, but he had. She stood staring up at him, like a startled doe caught in a hunter’s sights. He could not think beyond that he had put that terrible look in those haunting eyes that had always viewed him with such awe and adoration.
Bolting like that very doe, she ran then, into the corridor and out through the double doors at the end of it, leaving them flung wide behind her, the diaphanous night shift billowed about her like a ship’s sail in the starry darkness before dawn. There were pitfalls now, and all he could think of was having her back before she hurt herself running barefoot over the slag and rock and sharp black heather carpeting the hills.
“
Rhiannon, wait
!” he called after her, running over the uneven ground on long, sturdy legs. There was no need of wings. Those legs would carry him well enough, or so he thought until she missed a rut and tumbled down a little incline into the belly of a hillock. That took him aloft, for the wind to seduce ruffling his feathers unmercifully until he touched down alongside her and gathered her into his arms. But it was too late. He was aroused, and she was prostrate beneath him, the hem of her night shift hiked up about her waist caught on a stalk of petrified heathe.
“Don’t ever run from me again!” he said huskily, crushing her close.
Her arms flew around him then and he was undone, as intoxicated by her closeness, by the very feel of her satiny skin, as a drunkard in his cups. In that moment, there was no one in the world but the two of them, nothing mattered but filling her with his hard shaft and coming inside her just as he had in the pool. Raising her hips, he thrust into her, feeding upon her throaty moan as he filled her, spiraling deep. He swallowed the sound with a hungry mouth, tasting her deeply, his skilled tongue dancing with hers, releasing her honey-sweet essence, until his lips came away from hers trembling.
“Never…run…from…me…again,” he panted against her eager mouth. “Touch my wings, Rhiannon. If I must bear them being touched, let it be your touch—no other. Stroke them…do it…Make me come.”
The words were scarcely out, when the lightning bolt struck him hard, wrenching him out of her, pitching him into the sharp black heather, where he doubled over and rolled as a second bolt drove him down again.
Rhiannon screamed. The sound ran him through like a javelin, but it kept him from losing consciousness. He was grateful for that, for he feared what might happen to her if he did. Dazed, he saw and heard through a haze. His singed wings were smoking. The smell of burnt feathers rushed up his nose, and the pain in his cock was almost more than he could bear.
“What is happening?” Rhiannon shrilled, crawling to his side, but another lightning strike snaked down between them, stopping her.
“
No
, stay back!” he charged. “Come no closer.
Run
! Get back to the cave. Do not stop until you are safely inside.”
“But what
is
this?” she pleaded. “What is happening?”
“This, my love, is the reason for the third ‘condition’ of our bargain…that you not leave the cave. It is my curse. I
told
you…what you saw in the sky on your outing…was
not
me! Go!”
Screaming uncontrollably, Rhiannon scrambled to her feet and started to run back toward the cave, when the watchers hurled down lightning bolts in her path preventing her. She screamed again. The sound nearly stopped Gideon’s heart. All at once a rumbling in the ground beneath them shook the hills and caused a split that stretched before them to the cave.
Clutching his groin in pain, Gideon staggered to his feet and seized Rhiannon as the fissure widened underneath their feet. “Hold on to me!” he commanded. “We cannot stay here. The cave is gone, and I cannot fight the three of them as I am.”
“Gone? How, gone?” Rhiannon shrilled. “Who are these creatures? What is happening here?”
She was terrified, and he couldn’t still her fears while great flashing bolts of lightning streaked across their path. The watchers seemed to be sparing her their missiles, unlike what they hurled at him. Instead, their volleys aimed at her seemed cast down more to warn than strike her, but he dared not place his trust in supposition, since this had never happened before.
More lightning bolts widened the fissure as they danced about trying not to become caught in the cracks and swallowed up by the gaping holes forming around them. More lightning bolts touched down, and the crack in the ground rushed straight for the cave, widening as it went as if it were alive. As if it were a ravenous monster with a will of its own, it gobbled up all the black heather, rock, and dead scrub in its path.