Thirty-One

Because of the darkness, they didn’t look to the sun to tell them when to rest. They wouldn’t have needed to in any case—full dark simply made colors look less vivid to the dragon-blooded—but Erik had become used to war and making camp before his men’s sight became unreliable, and to the hours of the human world as a matter of course. Toinette, he suspected, was even more attuned to those than him.

None of that mattered in the depths of the forest. With only the two of them in the midst of deformed trees and wildlife, it was as though they’d left all the mortal world behind them. The structure ahead didn’t count. Whoever had built it had power enough not to be mortal in spirit, whatever his origins might be.

With nothing outside to tell time, Erik could only attend to his body, marking the growth of weariness and hunger—and so, he reflected, mortality came into play again. Or not, perchance. Even God had rested.

He could still hear the stream behind them when they came to a wide spot on the trail. It was nothing so spacious as a clearing, but there was enough room for the two of them to sit and for one to stretch out at a time. None of the blood-drinking vines grew within sight, and the trees were no more warped than ordinary.

“That place,” he added to Toinette when she stopped to see why he’d done so, “doesn’t look very far away now. Half the morning’s walk, or so. We could try to get closer, but…”

“No,” she said, anticipating the end of his sentence. “I don’t want to sleep too near it either.”

The ground rose and dipped, making distance difficult to judge and unpredictable to view, but they could see the overhang of a roof above the pillars and the beginnings of steps below. They made Erik think of Rome and the ruins of the ancient world.

Time moved on and took all with it. The past was darkness and savagery, and yet it stared them in the face a morning’s walk away.

Erik averted his gaze, which inevitably led him to Toinette. She blinked. “Yes?”

“You’re all I wish to look at,” he said, and made a face at the way it sounded.

Understanding, she laughed. “I’d be more flattered…oh, anywhere else in the world.” As if to illustrate, Toinette looked around too, and grimaced. “I’d as soon not build a fire. I know it’s cold.”

“We’ll not die of it,” Erik agreed. The cold was enough to be uncomfortable, even for them, but they’d take no lasting harm. The attention a fire might draw would likely be worse; even the idea of burning wood from such trees, of looking into the flames or breathing the smoke, held no appeal.

It wasn’t as though they had any need to cook either. Their food was dried bread and meat. If using the wood for a fire was an unsettling notion, hunting anything they’d seen was a repulsive one.

They ate sitting on the ground. The meat was greasy, and the bread stale. It would serve. It might have been best. Erik couldn’t imagine taking any joy from food in such surroundings. The cold, slimy smell was in his nostrils all the time. Even a king’s feast would have tasted of ooze and mud; better to have food not worth ruining.

Toinette ate with her knees drawn up against her chest. When she was finished, she wrapped her arms around her legs, heedless of modesty—though she did pull her skirt down as far as she could. Erik doubted that had much to do with the view. “Come here,” he said and held out an arm. “We’ll be warmer if we’re close.”

She needed no more encouragement to curl against his chest, wrapping her own arms around him. The dragon-blooded usually gave off more heat than mortals to the touch, but Erik could feel the chill of Toinette’s hands through his shirt, and he suspected the same was true of his. “I thought I’d done with cold places,” she said into his neck. “England was bad and Scotland worse.”

“What about Muscovy?”

“I only went in the summer. It was hot enough then.”

“Ah,” he said. “My home’s colder than Loch Arach, so I never minded much.”

“Ugh. As cold as this?”

“Not really.” In truth, it was colder in winter, and so were Scotland and England. But there he’d had fires and thick walls, and the cold itself had been different. Winter was winter. The forest was…emptiness.

Toinette was warmer against him, though, and Erik felt warmer as well. He buried his face in her hair. The scent of her, mingled with the pine needles she’d put back behind one ear, drowned out the smell around them for the first time since they’d entered the darkness. Against his side, her breasts were full and firm, and the long muscles of her waist taut beneath his hand. His cock stirred, proving that joy, or at least desire, was yet possible in one or two areas of man’s life.

“Mmm,” she said as Erik idly stroked the length of her back. The sound vibrated against his neck, and when she spoke, it was with small puffs of hot air. “This your idea from the start?”

He laughed. “Would that I were that brilliant,” he said, and then, reluctantly, for the sound of her pleasure and the slight rocking of her hips were rousing him further, “or that we had another to keep watch. Though that itself might not help matters.”

“Bah,” said Toinette, “we’d just have him keep his back turned and hum. You don’t have much solitude on a ship, and I was wed.”

She didn’t argue the main point, though. Theoretical guards might or might not have let them take matters further, but their lack was a very definite obstacle.

For a time, they settled into a balance between desire and alertness. Neither moved away; neither moved faster or toward more intensity. Erik caressed Toinette’s back and sides in a slow, steady rhythm, never truly approaching breasts or arse. For her part, she kissed his neck, stretched against him, and ran her hands over his chest, but kept it all light, not surrendering to urgency—nor even to the idea of a struggle.

It was what it was. Erik’s cock pulsed, aching, but there was pleasure in the ache, and the moment would have been most certainly worth any pain.

They lasted like that until the light began.

It was the same unnatural light that Erik had seen from the beach and grown used to there. In the forest, it was far brighter, spreading out in rings of green witch fire from, of course, the temple. No pain accompanied it, but with every flash he felt a vague pressure on… He didn’t know what, precisely, but supposed it was the part of him that was kin to beasts, that bled and breathed and ate just as a dog or a horse did.

The light grasped that and pulled. In replacement, it offered…other things. Itself, or the shadow it cast.

No, Erik said inwardly. For him that was all it took. For a man without dragon’s blood, he thought rejection might be harder; for an animal, the offer would be no offer at all.

Against his chest, Toinette swore in what sounded like Muscovite. He still welcomed the touch of her breath, still wanted his arms tight around her, but the feeling of pleasant, lazy lust was gone. Neither of them moved.

“Should have expected this, I suppose,” said Toinette. “Would have, if I’d thought about it. Where else would the light come from?”

“It explains why part of the island is normal. This power doesn’t stay this strong very far out.” Erik peered off into the forest as the flares of green radiance washed over him. The oddness of the forest went beyond the darkness, and the power in the temple clearly could reach further, or they would have long since been at sea, but the worst of the changes seemed to be where the light fell. “And what happened to the elk. The female and her young went too close. Poor souls. They’d never have understood what went wrong with them.”

“That might be better than the other way,” said Toinette. “To know what you lost.”

“Mmm,” he said, neither agreeing nor disputing.

They watched the light. After Erik had refused it once, it had no further pull on him, he found. It was only a change in the sky. “I think,” he said, “that it’s safe enough to sleep. In watches, of course. And minding each other as well as the woods.”

“I’ll go first. Let you know if you start looking demonic.” Toinette clearly made an effort to speak lightly. When she went on, after a time of silence, Erik first thought she was trying to change the subject, distracting them both from the possibility of transformation—and what the one who remained unaltered would have to do. “How long do women live, if they breed with us?”

“Pure mortals? Two hundred years or thereabouts. So I’ve heard. I’ve not seen it firsthand, though Cathal’s wife doesn’t look past thirty, and she can’t be younger than fifty.”

“Oh,” Toinette said. “My mother may yet live. I’d wondered.”

“Likely,” Erik replied, choosing his words with care. This was unsteady ground. “When did you last see her?”

Toinette laughed shortly. “When I was almost thirteen. I believe I was one of the last few. She took the veil shortly after I left, became an anchorite. Walled up in Somerset. I made inquiries fifty years back, and she lived then, though the abbot was loath to speak of her. There are those who think she’s a saint, for having lived so long, or a prophet.” She wound her words out like thread on a spindle, one long unstoppable strand that then came to an abrupt halt: “She’s quite lost her wits.”

As with the light, Erik had known what was coming, or should have, and yet it left him frozen and staring. “I’m sorry,” he managed.

The shoulder beneath his arm moved in a quick shrug. “I didn’t know if that happened always.”

“No,” he said. “No, my cousin took a mortal wife.”

“And she’s not mad? Well. It was…” She sighed. “I didn’t think so, really.”

“Did your father cause it?”

“Not to know. She went to his bed willing enough, from what little I did hear, she came out whole, and in the first few years I remember she was…” Toinette searched for a word, shrugged again, and let her hand fall back to her thigh. “Fine. Sad, of course, and ashamed, as an unwed girl with a babe might well be, and even then I think she was jumpy, but we got along.”

Erik kept his hands steady on her back, not presuming to hold her closely but not wanting to let her go either. After a little while, she spoke again.

“People see too much. And eight years isn’t such a long time—a woman of twenty-five who looks like a maid of eighteen might pass as merely well preserved. We both know that. When that woman never gets a fever or a cough, never has a bad tooth or a cut that festers…people notice. She notices. When she’s no better than she should be, to start…”

“There were rumors,” Erik said.

“There were rumors. She listened. And then there was me. Too strong, too healthy, strange eyes. By the time I was ten, Mam…she went to mass a great deal, and when she wasn’t there, even when she was home, she was often…gone. Sitting, staring at the wall, not moving. For hours. The priests would come and feed her, when one of them was feeling kind. I did it otherwise.” She stopped and swallowed. The green light washed over them again, making sharp lines out of every shadow. “When I transformed the first time, she stabbed me.”

“God have mercy.” Erik pulled her closer, and Toinette leaned her head against his chest.

“I can’t blame her now,” she said. “Her child vanished. There was a monster in its place. She probably thought I’d kidnapped her daughter. It was brave, considering. And she was sorry for it when I turned back. But that’s when I thought I’d better leave. I left word with the priests to look in on her.”

“And you came to Loch Arach.”

“I did. After a while.”

He could imagine, and couldn’t imagine, what a while would have held for a girl of twelve, one without the knowledge to control her own transformations, without a known ally in all the world. Erik lifted one hand and stroked Toinette’s hair, half expecting the touch of it to burn him, as though he’d lain his fingers on a holy relic. “I’m glad you found us,” he said, because he thought she might hit him if he said again that he was sorry or called attention to the wetness on her face.

“Me too.” Toinette cleared her throat. “I never thought I’d tell that. I never met the person who needed to hear it. But I wanted to say it before we went in there.” A jerk of her head indicated the temple. “I wanted to tell you. I hope the knowledge isn’t too great a burden.”

“An honor, rather,” he said.

For once, she didn’t make an irreverent reply or try to shrug off the moment. Her embrace tightened, and then she leaned up to kiss him lightly. “Go to sleep,” she said. “I won’t let this place have you.”