Wizard of the Grove (18 page)

Eventually, the exertions of the day overcame her grief and she drifted into an uneasy sleep.

Gradually, Crystal became aware of green. A soft springtime green, very peaceful, very nice, very soothing. She could move around and there seemed to be a solid surface beneath her feet but the green never changed. She knew she was asleep and somewhere deep within her own subconscious. The centaurs had promised to teach her ways of manipulating the dreamworld but there hadn't, in the end, been time.

“Not a very interesting place for a dream,” she sighed, spinning about so that the white gown she wore flared about her ankles. She liked the way the silky fabric clung, the way it whispered across her skin, although she wondered why she'd dreamed so little material above the waist. And then she saw the man approaching and knew she wasn't dreaming; not quite. She tried to raise a wall of power between them and found she had no power to spare.

His hair shone red-gold, like sunlight on fire, and clustered about his face in loose curls. His eyes were the clear, merciless blue of a hot summer day. Above tight sapphire breeches and high black boots, he wore no shirt and the muscles of his chest and arms rolled smoothly beneath golden skin as he closed the distance between them.

Grace and power, Crystal realized. And something more.

His hand, when it took hers, was cool and dry. His lips, touched to the skin of her wrist, soft and warm. “At last,” he murmured. “Face to face.”

Crystal snatched free her hand, more frightened than she'd ever
been in her life. That he could reach this far into her mind without even waking her . . . “Get out of my mind!” She kept her voice below a scream but only barely.

Kraydak smiled. “I had hoped that we might be friends.”

Gathering up her courage, and holding dignity before her like a shield, she managed a tight smile in return and retreated a step. “I hardly think so.”

“No? You wound me.” He lay long fingers against his bare chest. “We have so much in common.”

“We have nothing in common! You're a . . . a . . .” She searched for a word that would sum up the disgust and loathing she felt as anger rose to take the place of fear. “. . . an abomination. You destroy anything you touch.” She turned her back on him and found he still stood in front of her. And still smiled.

One red-gold eyebrow arched. “Abomination? Child, you are hardly one to point an accusatory finger.”

“I am not like you.”

“No,” Kraydak agreed smoothly, his smile twisting strangely, “you aren't.”

“You use people.”

“Yes,” he agreed again, “I do. I assume you specifically refer to the late, lamented Lapus? A useful tool; your grief at his betrayal gave me access to your mind. I needed a surety to enter through, you see, so I built my own.”

She remembered the red spreading into the pattern of the rug and felt sick. “You set him up, you set all of them up, just to get at me?”

He reached out and pinched her chin. “And she's clever, too. Yes, child, I did it all for you.” A couch, the couch from Crystal's tent, appeared behind him and he sat, gracefully crossing one booted leg over the other. He shook his head in mock sympathy. “Oh, my poor child, if you insist on caring for creatures so far beneath you, you can only expect to be hurt. Humankind should be your plaything, not your partner.” His voice became caressing and held a possessive note that ran like soft fingers down Crystal's back. “We are the last two of our kind.
The last two. No mere mortal could ever hope to understand us.” The blue of his eyes deepened. “Come to me, Crystal.”

To Crystal's horror she took a step toward him, under no compulsion save that of his voice and his presence. Red with shame, she stopped, determined at least to move no closer, no matter what he said.

He said nothing. He laughed low in his throat and held out his hand, his gaze fierce and compelling.

Well aware of the dangers of a wizard's eyes, Crystal dropped her own to avoid being trapped by his gaze. Red-gold hair curled in an inverted triangle on his chest, the lowest point trailing down the ridges of his stomach until it dipped beneath the blue of his breeches.

Her shins hit the edge of the couch.

“You needn't even try,” Kraydak told her gently as she struggled to move away. “This may be your mind, but you'll find I'm in total control. Oh, and one more thing.” He reached out and took her hand, pulling her down beside him. “These bodies are illusions, but they react like flesh.”

He drew a finger down her cheek and her eyes widened at the responses such a simple touch caused. He manipulated reactions she didn't know she possessed and, not knowing, she had no way to defend herself. She dug her hands into the cushions of the couch, fighting the urge to touch him in return. Independent movement was possible it seemed, as long as it was not away from him. Cautiously she began to slide her essence, the core of her that was Crystal, deeper within this representation of her physical body.

Kraydak, one arm clasped lightly around her waist, pushed her back against the cushions. He felt her essence retreat and he let it go. She could not escape him, after all, and if she thought this warm bundle of flesh he held would resist his assault for long . . .

When he kissed her, she leaned into it and she heard herself cry out in disappointment when he stopped. Her thoughts and her feelings almost seemed as if they belonged to two separate people. And the sensations of her body, under Kraydak's skilled caresses, were rapidly overwhelming her mind.

“Patience,” the older wizard chided, slipping the gown off her shoulders, “we have plenty of time.”

He ran his fingers lightly over her breasts and she barely managed to hold her essence in place as her body arched under his touch. She became very much afraid that she would soon give in to the sensations now setting her body alight, and then she would be lost, his creature entirely.

“Someone has certainly prepared the way,” he murmured into the soft skin of her throat. “I hope I get the chance to thank him.”

Bryon. Crystal grabbed that thought and held on tightly. She closed her eyes and built his image on the inside of the lids. She remembered every time he'd ever touched her, the feel and the scent of him, and built of it a barricade between her skin and Kraydak's hands.

It wasn't quite enough.

Kraydak's hands dropped lower and began to tug at the silky cloth that draped her hips, twisting her about so that he straddled her. His mouth moved to her breasts.

When she remembered to breathe at all, it was in great shuddering gasps over which she seemed to have no control. With the small part of her mind still her own she knew she couldn't hold out much longer. The fires that Kraydak had lit would consume all she was.

Bryon,
she cried, feeling the heat licking at her refuge,
help me!
And from the time before the centaurs, rose one more memory. A very young Bryon rolled in the dirt of the training yard, hands clasped between his legs; a very young Crystal stared in puzzlement at the quarterstaff in her hands while their fathers almost split themselves laughing. Child, this wizard called her; she would use a child's blow. She bit down on her tongue, hard. As the pain jolted her free from the pleasure, she gathered the remnants of her strength and slammed her knee up between Kraydak's legs.

The illusion did indeed react like flesh and Crystal possessed the strength of the tree. It was fortunate for Kraydak that he had already depleted most of it.

Kraydak's eyes widened, he made an incoherent noise, and sank
slowly to the ground. The surrounding green turned yellow, then orange, then red, then black and Crystal woke up in her own bed, her heart beating so fast she was afraid it would escape.

She lay staring at the ceiling, hands clenched at her sides, and forced herself to consider what had almost happened. His touch still lingered on her body and she flushed with embarrassment when she realized that the fires he'd lit still burned. Not with the same intensity as they had in the dream world, but a definite heat radiated out from the places he had . . . She shuddered. Kraydak had defeated himself when he reminded her of Bryon; she wouldn't be that lucky another time. And Kraydak's power frightened her less than her own lack of resistance.

“The trouble is,” she mused, chewing on her lower lip in a most unwizardlike way, “I can't fight what I don't understand.”

What if he came again? There was one rather obvious solution and the enemy himself had given it to her. She unclenched her fingers, wiped her sweaty palms on the sheets, and noticed with some surprise that she was still breathing heavily. . . .

Bryon woke up to the peculiar sensation of being in a different bed than the one he'd gone to sleep in. It was softer, slightly larger, and it smelled good. He was still in a tent and, from the sounds filtering through the canvas, still in the center of the Ardhan army, but where . . . and then he became aware of a warm body in the bed beside him, and he recognized the scent. . . .

“Bryon,” said Crystal earnestly, “I need your help.”

“Is this a dream?” Bryon asked of no one in particular.

“Don't be ridiculous.” Crystal poked at him and wondered if he was going to be difficult. “You can't be dreaming, you're awake.”

“I am?”

“Yes, and I want you to make love to me.”

“I'm dreaming,” he said with conviction. “I've had this dream before.”

“Bryon!” Her voice was sharp, this wasn't how she'd imagined things at all. She should have been in his arms by now. He should have
been swept away by passion the moment he found himself in bed with her. Wasn't that the way it worked? “Kraydak attacked me tonight and you're the only one who can stop it from happening again.”

“What!” He sat up in the bed, reaching for the sword that wasn't there. “Kraydak came here?”

“Not exactly, he was in my mind and he . . . uh . . .” To her astonishment, Crystal felt herself blushing. “He, uh, stimulated me.”

Bryon sat back against the pillows, the corners of his mouth twitching. He appeared to have his passion well under control. “He
stimulated
you? Perhaps you'd better tell me just what happened and what you think I can do about it.”

Slowly, and with long pauses while she struggled to put the experience into words, Crystal told Bryon of Kraydak's attack. She left out nothing, not the fear, not the . . . other. She finished with her plan to build a defense with Bryon's help.

“After all, as Mikhail says, the best defense is a strong offense.”

Bryon considered what Mikhail's reaction would be if he knew his beloved daughter was sitting naked in bed with a man he'd been heard to refer to as “having more gonads than sense,” but all he said was: “I don't think this was the kind of situation he had in mind.”

“Never mind him,” Crystal dismissed her stepfather with a wave of her hand. “Will you help me or not?”

Bryon took a long, appreciative look and said, “No.”

“No?” It had never occurred to her he would refuse. Wasn't this what he'd been leading up to all along?

It came as a bit of a shock to Bryon as well and with an altruism he hadn't known he possessed, he tried to explain.

“If this was truly your idea, I'd be honored to make love to you. But it isn't. Kraydak took advantage of your innocence to try to gain control over you and I won't finish the job.”

“But it isn't like that!”

“Isn't it?” Bryon's voice was gentle but his eyes were hard. “As much as you care for me, would I be here if Kraydak hadn't attacked you?”

“No, but . . .”

“No buts. When we make love,” he picked up her hand and planted a kiss in her palm, “and we will, it won't be as an act of war.”

Crystal wrapped her fingers protectively around the kiss and looked at him with glowing eyes, eyes that had nothing to do with being a wizard. “Bryon,” she began.

“No, not tonight.” His voice was beginning to sound strained. “Now you'd better send me back to my own tent.”

She studied him for a moment and then smiled. She was still smiling seconds later as she watched the indentation of his body smooth out of the mattress. “Were you concerned because it wasn't my idea,” she asked it, “or because it wasn't yours?”

“Well, one thing's for sure,” she said to the darkness as she blew out the lamp and settled down for sleep, “he won't get a chance like that again.” But whether she referred to Kraydak or Bryon was not entirely clear.

*   *   *

Hanna stood on the battlements and looked out over the valley kingdom of Halda. She shivered and pulled the heavy traveling cloak tighter around her although it wasn't the night wind that caused the chill. She'd lived in Halda for seventeen years now, ruled over it as queen for ten; its fall, its death, tore open a wound she would always carry.

“Majesty?”

She turned and the young guard, dark circles visible beneath his eyes even in the uncertain torchlight, bowed.

“They are ready?”

“Yes, Majesty.”

He stepped aside to let her pass, every movement a fight against exhaustion. It had been three days since anyone in Halda had really rested. It had been three days since the defenders at the pass had fallen and the army of the Melacian Empire had swarmed into the valley. Three days of slaughter. Men, women, and children put to the sword; and worse, if the hysterical accounts of the few fleeing survivors could be believed.

Hanna moved sure-footedly through the castle's dark halls, the guard following silently behind. Next to the great Palace of Ardhan, the dwelling of Halda's royal family was a paltry thing, but it had been a home to her, which was infinitely more than the other ever had. She stopped on the threshold of the throne room to let her eyes adjust to the sudden light.