“If you think it is safe…” she said.
“One cannot live in fear. Philonous taught me that.”
Marius had not talked of his beloved old friend since the moment of his death. Linnea brushed away a sudden tear and he frowned.
“I did not mean to make you sad.”
“Never mind, Marius. Philonous was right.”
“He is never far from my mind, Linnea,” Marius said softly. “He is the one who brought us together on the sly. Did you not know that?”
“You never told me.”
He shook his head. “There was never time. He was too rooted and too old to take many chances, but he thought I should. He knew me for so long, almost as long as—ah. He is here. I have summoned a friend of yours to join us.”
“Who?”
Marius looked ahead, scanning the mangroves. “The magpie. There is a pomegranate in this basket just for him.”
Linnea jumped when the bird flew out right in front of them in a flash of black-and-white, startling her. “Esau!”
The bird landed on her shoulder, making a noisy fuss.
“If only he could speak a little and tell us what he sees as he flies.” Esau clucked in her ear and then at Marius. “What is he saying?”
“I don’t know. Telling jokes, perhaps. Hush, Esau.”
The bird quieted down, although it seemed nervous. Linnea soothed it and scratched it gently under the chin, cooing at him. “Where have you been, Esau?”
Marius lugged the basket up a rough trail cut into the back of the beach. “Not where we are going, I don’t think.”
Linnea followed, hoisting her kirtle. “And where is that?”
“A hidden meadow in the oldest forest on the island. My old stomping grounds, if you must know.”
“I see.”
“You can weave chains of flowers and tie me up and do wicked things to my naked body.”
Linnea giggled, making her strides longer to catch up with him. “I suppose there is no harm in that.”
He took her hand and in time they came to the place via a maze of trails that she would never remember. The branches closed after them and over them. They could not even be seen from the air as they made their way.
Here, the ancient forest still protected its own, she thought. As did her father, the Great White Stag. As infrequently as she had seen him, she felt honored to have sprung from his loins.
In this secluded place, the trees remained as they once were: uncorrupted. Here, she was sure, were no betrayers, no trees whose souls could be captured by demons or men. All around her were trees of the old stock, ancient and young. But all were true to the wisdom of their forebears.
Walking on, following Marius, Linnea felt as she had in the home of Quercus: safe. And very far from the danger they still had to face.
The meadow they came into was so idyllic she half expected to see gods and goddesses taking their leisure there. Exquisite flowers, unknown to her, nodded their heads, blooming in bursts of color in the sun. Walking through them made her dizzy—the blooms seemed to float above the thick green they rose from.
She raised her eyes. The magpie had flown from her shoulder and selected a likely tree. He hopped from twig to branch, squawking. He seemed, if not less nervous, at least resigned to an afternoon in a pleasant place. A few more hops and he disappeared into a thicket.
“He has recovered from the imps’ assault very well,” Linnea murmured to Marius. Just in case the bird did understand, she didn’t want to remind him of it. Not on such an otherwise perfect day.
“Yes, so it seems. The dye is wearing off and new feathers are coming in where he was plucked.”
He set the basket down in a place that was half in sunshine and half in shade, pulling out a woven cloth that was large enough for two to lie upon.
If they lay as one.
She guessed his intent from the ardent look in his eyes. “Are you sure no one comes here?”
He nodded. There was something in the heaviness of his head and the contrasting gracefulness of his very masculine neck that reminded her of his centaur self. She gazed into his eyes, surrendering to the passion in them for the moment.
“Not hungry?” she asked him. She wasn’t.
“Only for you.”
She bent to lift the hem of her kirtle, intending to draw it over her head, and found that he was kneeling worshipfully before her when she was done. Linnea flung it aside, as naked as he was.
The warm sunshine bathed them both, making her languorous, filled with a slow joy as he caressed her hips and brought her lower body closer to his sensual mouth. She ran her fingers through his hair at the first touch of his tongue to her labia, sighing with pleasure. “Will you not let me lie down?” she asked softly.
“In time.” He teased her clitoris with little flicks, then slid a hand between her legs to move them apart.
Linnea looked up into the arching trees above at the exact moment his tongue thrust up into her. A supple birch reached down and held her hands in its tender branches, like a maid assisting her mistress during coitus. Another reached teasing twigs to her nipples, playing with them.
Marius spread her labia open and added a finger, then another, to her pleasuring. Stronger branches from bigger birches reached around her waist, supporting her. Linnea swayed with the trees.
He lifted his head. “Trust them. Lean into them.”
She obeyed, letting the branches take her weight, feeling no more substantial than a butterfly. Her bare feet were cooled by the moist grasses beneath them, and rustling leaves stroked the sensitive skin of her bottom.
Marius gently probed and tongued her innermost folds. Linnea fell into a sexual rapture, crying out inarticulately as the trees lifted her. More strong branches encircled her thighs and held them open. The birch bark was mostly smooth, with rough bits that were stimulating to her skin as well.
Marius got to his feet, wiping his mouth, and stood between her thighs. His erection jutted out. Her cunt was swollen, well-licked, ready for him, held at precisely the right height by the trees. One push and he would glide into her.
But the birches had other ideas.
They swung Linnea back and forth, only letting her have the tip of his cock each time. Marius stood still, holding himself in position. The head had the softness of a ripe plum…delicious but she longed for the sleek hardness of the thick shaft it topped thrusting into her.
“Give me all of it,” she whispered, “all, all.”
“And I thought I was the impatient one.”
He too was made to wait while the playful trees gave her bottom a sensual brushing with their delicate leaves. Others joined in, mere saplings, curious about her breasts, fondling and tickling them.
A mischievous one found two acorn caps and covered her nipples with them.
Marius laughed with joy but his huge erection did not diminish in the least. He plucked the caps off and scolded the tree. “But I want to suck her breasts!” He tossed them away and made good on his words.
Swinging easily, her wrists gently bound, Linnea experienced the sensation of being suckled in midair. Her sense of being weightless increased. Excited in their own way, the trees holding her grew a little less careful and she bumped his hard body.
Still, to her pleasurable frustration, she could not connect with the rigid member straining forward from his groin.
He lifted his head and covered her lips with his, slipping his tongue between them to give her silky-hot kisses that probed her mouth as he had probed her cunt.
Lips together. Bodies apart. The trees held them away from each other for a few moments more.
Marius looked up at the birches bending over them. “Please,” he begged them, “give her to me. I cannot blame you for wanting to keep her to yourselves—I know how good it feels to hold her. You don’t have to let her go. But give her to me.”
A rustling sigh came from the trees. Once more Linnea’s body was touched all over by their eager leaves. They made her swing again and Marius’s cock went all the way in on the first stroke.
Linnea cried out, wrapping her thighs around his waist and her arms around his shoulders. He brushed the more inquisitive branches away and cupped her buttocks himself, not pulling back, staying rammed up inside her. He nuzzled her face, pushing away the hair from it with his own, leaning down to nip at her neck.
A stallion with a mare, she thought dreamily, then corrected herself. No. A centaur with his lady. Even as a man, he was longer and thicker than all others. Again she marveled at the combination of strength and gracefulness that Marius embodied.
The trees held her where she was, waiting for a cue from the Lord of the Forest. He nodded and they again began to swing Linnea, only as far as his cock was long. The mushroom tip never came out, but its engorged rim, slightly thicker than the shaft, stimulated and spread her labia as she was moved away from it.
In and out. In and out.
The deep inward thrusts excited her most hidden flesh. Her labia enfolded him, squeezed the moving shaft in plump folds, made him moan as she moaned. Moving in air, becoming one with her lover in a meadow that might well have been visited by trysting gods and goddesses, Linnea knew what sexual bliss was.
He was beginning to lose control, taking over from the trees, which rustled louder with jubilation at the sight of two such happy humans. Deeper and deeper he thrust each time, holding her buttocks tightly, working her softness to slake his passionate desire.
His balls were drawn too tight to swing, but the sensitive skin at the very bottom of her bottom could feel them at the base of his slick, pounding shaft. The trees were moving as if a storm was coming on but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
One final ram and Marius began to shake all over. She could feel the hot pulses fill her cunt and drip down as he tensed his buttocks and held steady. “Linnea!”
The sound of her name cried with such lusty joy brought her to climax. Not just one. It multiplied into several, a cascade of sensation that made her cling to him, incredibly alive and thinking of nothing but this moment. And this man.
It was then that he knew that he loved her.
M
arius tossed a piece of pomegranate, a chunk of cream-colored inner flesh studded with seeds, in the magpie’s general direction and lolled back on the soft cloth under the birches. The bird flew down to peck at it.
“Enjoy it, Esau. We appreciate your discretion.”
Linnea, lying next to him, stroked his chest. “He does seem to know when to fly away and when to come back.”
Marius split off another chunk and popped a few ruby-red pips into her mouth. She bit into them, enjoying the tangy spurt of their juice. Starving after several hours of incredible sex in every position they or the trees could think of, they had gone through everything else in the basket and he had just finished the wine.
The sky was still clear, but the afternoon shadows were deep gold and getting longer. The trees rustled overhead, feeling calmer themselves. Or at least tired.
Marius, big and strong and masculine as he was, had wanted a turn in their branches too and they had hoisted him, spread his thighs, and swung him with great care into Linnea’s open mouth as she kneeled to suck him. Without being asked, they had also rubbed his balls with their softest leaves as he swung. When he and Linnea collapsed happily into each other’s arms he’d gasped that all of their wanton attentions felt good, but they were nothing compared to her touch and her sweet body.
His final orgasm had been given to the meadow. His seed arced out over it in long, healthy spurts when she pulled away just in time and let him swing out over the green. They had remembered and fulfilled the fertility rituals of the solstice revelry. How long ago it seemed.
Those three days had come and gone a while ago, along with the revelers themselves and, she supposed, the traveling circus and strolling players and all the rest of it. Her sense of time seemed to have evaporated. She looked up into the cloudless sky and thought of Ravelle. She and Marius had enjoyed their stolen bliss, miraculously untroubled by man or beast or bird or demon, but now, in the afterglow, she felt a prickle of nervous tension.
Bliss was fleeting. Somewhere on this island lurked a creature that hated them both. Marius’s kick had not killed it; the lords of Arcan were at odds over it; it lay in wait for them all.
He rose halfway and gave her a kiss before heading off into the bushes. She heard a faint rushing, pattering sound coming from there in another minute, and strove to sound cheerful when she called out to him, “You piss like a horse, Marius!”
“Does that surprise you?” he called back.
Then, nothing. She supposed he was washing himself in the brook a little further off. He had brought water from it to wash her. Drowsy from the wine she’d consumed as well and the heat of the afternoon, she dozed for a little while.
The sound of Marius crashing back through the bushes made her wake up. He stood over her in centaur form. Unless she was still dreaming. The blue sky had softened to a deeper shade and twilight was just beginning. She had slept for a while, evidently.
“You have changed shape. Why?”
He seemed disinclined to answer. “Something came over me.”
Perhaps the lateness of the day had saddened him. The glow was gone. “Oh. Well, then I will not have to walk all the way home—but where will that be tonight? Where are we sleeping?”
“Not at Simeon’s stronghold. But we must go,” he said.
Linnea sat up, looking for her kirtle and shaking her head to clear it. “All right, my love.” She looked at him again. He was smiling down at her, pleased by her words of endearment.
She pulled the kirtle over her head but kept the hem of it lifted, ready to mount him and ride.
Marius bent down to pick her up without his usual grace. They were both tired, certainly. She straddled him, her hands in the mane that went halfway up his back, vanishing to a thin line of hair between his shoulder blades.
She pressed her thighs against his sides. His centaur hide was a little rough on the soft inside skin but like everything else that happened with him, pleasurable to her. Linnea leaned into him.
Marius took a few steps backward as if he was not sure of which way to go and then trotted out of the meadow. Either the wine had gotten to him or the ground was uneven, because his gait seemed somewhat unsure.
“Wait,” she said into his ear. “What about Esau?”
“He can fly, Linnea,” he chided her. “He will follow, like as not.”
She could not argue with that.
The twilight sky deepened to indigo and thousands of stars came out in the vault above. Marius’s pace had picked up and she had to hold tightly to his mane.
He no longer spoke to her, concentrating, she thought, on getting them to where they going.
Gideon turned to Simeon with a look of concern. “They have not returned.”
Simeon’s face was grave. “It is well after moonrise. Marius told me he was coming back with Linnea. He wanted her to remain here, not on the Forest Isle. Not at night.”
“Understandable. A bower of twigs and leaves is unsafe, unlike this fortress, though it may be home to him,” Gideon said.
“I never should have allowed him to leave in the first place. But a centaur gets restless indoors.”
“He was in man form,” Gideon pointed out.
“No matter what, Marius is impetuous. He would have escaped if I had gainsaid him or had the men-at-arms stop him.”
“At least he would have left Linnea behind. She is most at risk.”
Simeon gave a curt nod. “Unfortunately, you are right. But I don’t know what to do.”
“Search for them. What else?”
“In the dark, Gideon? By torchlight?” Simeon asked. “We will be picked out immediately by Ravelle and his henchmen. Remember, demons are strongest by night. It is their natural element.”
Gideon threw up his hands. “What else can we do? Rhiannon will go out herself if I do not.”
“And she will take my Megaleen with her,” Simeon said gloomily. “Their sail around the island did not tire them out, alas. Pio pulled them for most of the voyage. They are upstairs talking. Probably about us.”
Gideon scowled. “I fear, Simeon, that we sat and talked for too long when time was of the essence.”
“Vane certainly thought so. He was all for waving swords and chopping off heads.”
“He was raving drunk.”
Simeon nodded. “The steward of my cellars said the kelp brandy is all gone. No wonder Vane slunk away before morning. But he was right in a way. I have a feeling that our enemy has gained on us.”
“There is no way we can confirm that or find them until daybreak.”
Gideon folded his arms across his chest and flexed his massive wings. The movement made a rush of air move through the hall. “I have flown in the dark before. I might see them, or their signal fire, if Marius makes one in a clearing.”
“Then go. I am no use in that regard.”
Gideon clapped the Lord of the Deep on the shoulder. “Your stronghold has served us well. I hope to return with both of them. If I have to carry them by the scruffs of their foolish necks, I will.”
Simeon laughed. “You might be able to carry Linnea. Marius will have to run home himself.”
A little later, without telling Rhiannon, Gideon launched himself from the highest tower, the one where Linnea and Marius had spent the night. He soared out over the archipelago of Arcan.
He would search from above, island by island. The waning moon afforded some light.
Beyond the Arcan islands stretched the infinite sea. From far above the enormous, endless waves were no more than minute wrinkles on its silver surface, breaking white upon the isolated beaches.
He swooped and dove down through the air. He would fly low over the beaches of the forest island first, because that was where Marius had gone. Simeon’s men-at-arms had found the fellow whose boat had been commandeered and extracted that much information.
From the air, the islands seemed closer together. But the ocean that separated them was rough and very deep, and going from one to other was rarely easy.
Marius, rash as usual, had taken a risk by going out upon it with only Linnea. The lords sometimes availed themselves of the subterranean tunnels. Because of her, Marius could not.
He must have been desperate to get away from Simeon’s stronghold, if only for a day.
The feeling of the wind rushing through his wings energized Gideon. No longer were there watchers on high, waiting to hurl lightning bolts at him for his transgressions.
Life was precious to him now, not a torment to be endured.
He zoomed down to the first beach, flying low. There was nothing. Not a wisp of smoke or anyone upon it.
Up he flew again, over the headlands that separated this beach from the next, longer one.
He made several passes over the second one, in case he missed something. But it was as empty as the first. It took less than an hour to survey all the others and soon he was back where he started.
Gideon rose on a column of warm air above the island’s center, startling a circling hawk as he went high up.
From this vantage point the forest seemed impenetrably black, as if it were made of black stone like Lord Vane’s desolate foundry of an island and not thickly carpeted by green, living things. Not a pinprick of light illuminated it. Gideon reminded himself, flying a little lower, that the solstice revels had ended. There were few fires in the forest at other times because Marius did not allow them as a rule—a law that his mysterious younger brother Darius enforced in his peregrinations.
Gideon let out a gusty sigh and spiraled down, going for a closer look. The hawk was gone. He’d seen it plummet through the air like a stone after it sighted game, a running rabbit, perhaps. The birds of prey were blessed with eyesight that was unimaginably keen. Gideon wished he could say the same.
Marius and Linnea most likely were still on the forest island, but he could not find them. His diligent searching from the air had tired him, but he had no wish to return to Simeon just yet.
A distant rumble from Lord Vane’s island came to his ears, and a plume of sparks shot skyward from the volcano.
Fireworks, he thought. Only fireworks. The cataclysm that had created Vane’s island was not likely to repeat itself, according to the soothsayers who read the signs and portents of inner earth. The most learned among them told stories of another island that had vanished when the Isle of Fire was born, roaring upward from the sea. That one had been inhabited by a race of men who built vast temples and lived in peace with one another.
They and their city had been swallowed by the hungry sea in an instant. As he would be if he did not find somewhere to rest. He changed course and swooped off to see Vane.
He found him in front of the fireplace in his private chambers. Still aloft, Gideon had taken the liberty of looking in at the higher window and bypassing the servants altogether.
Vane was alone. Gideon hovered outside the window, not wanting to startle the fiery lord, and hallooed.
Vane didn’t look up. “Is that you, Gideon? I thought I heard flapping. Come in.”
He seemed to be recovered from his drunken binge, Gideon thought. “Thank you.” The window was narrow for him, but he managed to get through by folding his wings tightly. Gideon jumped down from the stone sill and went to Vane.
He’d hoped to toast his wings after his long flight in the high air, but the fireplace was cold, littered with gray ash and black bits of wood.
The man who sat in front of it seemed to lack warmth as well.
“No fire tonight?” Gideon asked him.
Vane shook his head. “Too much trouble.”
“Have the servants run away?” It was entirely possible, given Lord Vane’s famously bad temper.
“I sent them away. What brings you here, Gideon?”
“I went out from Simeon’s stronghold to look for Marius and Linnea. They went to the Forest Isle and have not yet returned.”
Vane raised a thick black eyebrow and shot Gideon a quizzical look. It was the first time he had looked at him. “Marius is not a prisoner, is he? Can he not go where he pleases?”
“Of course. And he always does.”
“Well, then. What do you want me to do? Send over the hounds?”
“No. Not yet.” The great lord’s pack of hunting hounds were a legend in their own right. They could go for days without tiring and always ran down their quarry in the end. But they were noisy and half-wild.
Until the four of them had hit upon the best way to vanquish Ravelle and keep him in the Outer Darkness where he belonged, it was best to operate in secrecy when possible.
“Let me know, then,” Lord Vane said, adding, “I suppose I made an ass of myself at Simeon’s table. He can be a stickler for ceremony and protocol. What a bore. How angry is he?”
Gideon chose to be tactful. “He is more concerned about Marius’s disappearance.”
Lord Vane ceased staring into the emptiness of his hearth, and got up, stretching as if he had been sitting there for some time, brooding. “Marius can take care of himself. A centaur acts first and thinks later. He is not one to dither like you two.”