Thrones of Desire Page 3

Turo, Emlhi’s cousin, peered through a crack in the shutter. “They look like knights,” he said. “Lots of armor. There’s something on their shields….”

  “Damn your craven asses!”

  “Yellow sun on a blue field,” Turo muttered. “That means…”

  “Where’s your priest, when a man stands at death’s door?”

  “Helion?” Emlhi finished for Turo. “They’re Knights of Helion?” She sprang up and heaved back the door-bolt. Voices were raised all around her in protest, but she took no notice. Blinking, she stepped out. There were horsemen gathered toward the seaward end of the square and one circling his mount in the center. She stood anxiously as he turned toward her. The knights looked barely human under their layers of plate and scale armor, with even their horses rendered unfamiliar by their heavy barding.

  “You’re Knights of Helion?”

  “You’re the priest?” the foremost horseman answered. His voice was hoarse from shouting and his surcoat was rusty with blood. She couldn’t see his face because of his heavy helm. The other knights, equally faceless, sat at slumped, painful angles in armor that was dinted and filthy.

  “His daughter,” Emlhi replied. “Does that mean—?”

  His voice cut across hers. “I need the priest, girl!”

  She took a deep breath, the pain still raw enough to make her voice tremble. “There’s no priest in Yeldersholme. My father was taken away by the Raptors last year and staked upon the—”

  “Spare me. Have you any herb-lore from him, girl? Any healing?”

  Emlhi swallowed. “Some.”

  “You’ll do then.” He swung his horse side-on to her and Emlhi suddenly realized that there was a second knight behind him leaning so hard on his back that their two sets of armor seemed one mass of steel plates. “Come here. Take him down.”

  Emlhi took one step, then halted.

  “Blast you, girl!” he barked, but there was exhaustion in his voice now. “We routed the Raptors at the Stone Gate. This man was wounded. We have to take ship across the sound, but he’s fevered from the injury and there’s little chance for him unless he’s tended. Do you understand? Gareth, we’re leaving you here. These villagers will look after you. Take him down, girl!”

  Gareth was a full-grown man in heavy armor and showed no sign of consciousness; Emlhi stood about as much chance of holding his weight up as she would have the horse’s. When the knight loosed the belt tying his wounded companion to him, all Emlhi could do was help him slither in a controlled rush to the hard-packed earth. He didn’t fall flat though—he ended up on his spread knees, slumped against her braced legs—so under all the plating there must have been some spark of life.

  “Does that mean the Raptors are gone?” Turo called. He’d come out with some of the other villagers, though they were hanging back at a distance. “Are we free?”

  “For the moment,” said the knight grimly. “They’re regrouping on Far Vinchor and we go to face them. Our vessel will be here with the high tide.”

  “That’s this hour, my Lord Knight.”

  “Then we’re just in time.”

  Emlhi was appalled that these battered men should be about to do battle again. The one at her feet stank of old blood.

  “Girl,” snapped the knight, wheeling his horse: “If he lives you’ll be well rewarded by the Knights of the Helionic Order. Tell him where we went and that it will be too late to follow. Gareth!” He bent from the saddle. “Gareth, the gods go with you.”

  The wounded man raised one hand in feeble imitation of his salute.

  Then the riders gathered themselves into motion and poured away down the street toward the harbor. The rest of the villagers came streaming out of the houses to follow, their eyes wide, the first grins showing. The Raptors were gone, and now, for the first time in years, they knew hope.

  When the square had emptied, Emlhi crouched down to her knight and worked the helmet off his head. His neck sagged. Emlhi grimaced—he was as gray as a corpse already. His hair was an unruly black mop and his beard was no longer neatly trimmed, but what caught her eye were the veins on his neck, slate-blue and clearly visible against his skin. Blood-poisoning, she thought. He’ll be dead within the day. “Sir Knight. Where does it hurt?” she asked, without real hope of a reply.

  “My shoulder.” He waved a mailed fist at his left side. “One of their lizard-mounts got over the top of my shield. Their teeth are poisonous.” She was surprised how lucid he was. There was a staining of blood around his shoulder, but it was impossible to see the wound under the complex welter of stiffened leather and beaten steel plates.

  “Right, then,” she said, starting to uncinch his breastplate. It was a fancy piece of work, inlaid with brass. “Let’s get this off.”

  For a moment he didn’t react. Then as she pulled the breastplate from him, he groaned and looked up at her. His eyes were gray, but so bloodshot it made her own water to look at him. “My armor,” he protested through clenched teeth.

  “If you live,” she said curtly, dumping the sun-etched masterpiece on the ground, “you’ll get it back.” She found the strapping for a shoulder-piece and worked it loose.

  “No,” he muttered.

  “You can’t even stand up in this lot,” she snapped. “Do you think I’m going to carry you to my house? You’re going to have to walk for me. And it’s uphill.”

  The breath hissed between his teeth. It took a moment for her to realize he was laughing. He made no further protest as she managed to strip him down to his padded leather under-armor. Several bloody punctures described a wide semicircle across his shoulder. Realizing the size of the thing that had bitten him, Emlhi tried not to shudder. “Can you stand?”

  With her help he managed, though he grunted with pain. She had to get under his good arm to brace him, and he swayed against her. She grabbed his wrist and found his skin was hot—really hot—and when she looked up at his face she could see sweat starting to run down his temple. The fever’s already on him, she thought.

  “Come on, Sir Knight. This way.”

  They staggered across the square. As they passed the plane tree at the first junction he reeled sideways, and she helped him turn and rest against a wall while she got her breath back.

  Gareth looked down at her in surprise. “Perlanna?” he said. “What are you doing here?” Then he pulled her against him with a sweep of his arm and kissed her. Emlhi was so shocked that she didn’t resist. His lips were burning hot. He kissed hungrily, without restraint, and his mouth tasted metallic. When he let her go she was gasping. Then the fire in his eyes guttered. “You’re not Perlanna,” he said, troubled. “She’s dead.” His eyes rolled up behind their lids until only the sclera showed, and then he slipped slowly down the wall, unconscious at last.

  She remembered how she had misused him.

  It was an unending struggle to keep him alive. The venom in his blood seemed to have destroyed his body’s sense of equilibrium and threw him between burning fever and frigid tremors every few hours. Emlhi cleaned and bandaged the deep puncture wounds in his shoulder, but after that she simply tried to keep his temperature on an even keel—stopping the fever boiling his brains at one moment, piling blankets over him to maintain some vestiges of warmth the next. She fed and watered him, cut fresh bracken every morning for his mattress and, when she was not watching over him, tried to keep up the work of her smallholding. She snatched her own sleep during his chills, dozing in her father’s old room.

  Between fire and ice, the knight would have passages where he seemed to be lucid but completely exhausted. Then as the fever flared up afresh he’d begin to talk and sometimes try to rise from his bed. He stared at the ceiling and spoke to people who weren’t there. He raved about battles and campaigns and the horrors he’d witnessed until Emlhi wanted to stop her ears for sorrow. Sometimes his hallucinations grew worse and in terror or fury he would lash out at her. If he hadn’t been so weakened by his illness, he might have been really dangerous.
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br />   It went on for days, and there were times she couldn’t understand why he did not die. She might have called in an older female relative to share the labor of care, but she guarded her sole right to Gareth possessively. Exhausted, she took strength from his stubbornness.

  And she took more than strength.

  The first time it wasn’t her doing. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, tending him as he burned. She’d been wiping his face and chest with a damp cloth, dipping it in fresh water every few minutes and waving it about to cool it. He was twisting in discomfort, tossing in a delirious dream, his hands scrabbling convulsively across his belly. When she touched his cheek with the cloth he would turn his face toward it, like a baby seeking the teat. She ran it down the midline of his torso and he grabbed her hand, knotting his fingers around hers. Gently she freed the cloth with her other hand and continued to bathe him. He kept his grip on her. His head was thrown back, his larynx working. Then he pushed her hand into his crotch.

  Until now she’d kept his hose on, unwilling to steal the last shreds of his dignity. It was a mistake, she realized; the fabric was sodden with sweat—and beneath it his cock was engorged, as hot and solid as the rest of him. He wrapped her hand around the thick length and squeezed hard, and, as Emlhi felt a blush flood her face, a great sigh of relief escaped his taut throat. Then he began to rub her hand up and down. She squirmed with shame but she didn’t pull away. His cock grew harder beneath her imprisoned grasp, lengthening as it filled. She was clumsy, passive, too inexperienced to know what to do. He masturbated with her hand until he spasmed—and then he relaxed, falling almost instantly into a dreamless sleep.

  Emlhi, trembling, pulled her cramped fingers away and plunged them into the bowl of water.

  That was the first time; it wasn’t the last. She began coming to him when he burned, the sheets thrown aside and his body—fully naked now, and cleaner and cooler for it—sprawled out across her bed. Then she would take his cock in her hand and stroke its velvet length, squeezing him gently at first and then with more firmness, her face rapt, her breath shallow in her throat, her pulse pounding in her breast and her groin. She thrilled at the catch in his breath and the wet kisses of his foreskin and the noises of his pleasure. She delighted to see him stretch and shudder at her touch, to see his balls tighten and jettison their burden in spurts across his belly. She loved the peace that came across his features when it was done. She would sit and watch him even when he slept, enchanted by the simple rise and fall of his chest.

  Because, if she could make herself overlook his suffering, he was beautiful. The heat had melted any fat from his body, stripping him down to muscle. His shoulders were broad, his hips tight, his thighs long and slab-hard. His nipples responded to the cold cloth by turning into little brown berries. Emlhi loved to touch him.

  She knew what she did was shameful, but she couldn’t stop herself. She was young, and she ached with loneliness.

  All her life her irascible father had guarded her jealously. A widower with no other children, he’d had no desire to lose his housekeeper to another man. But when he’d been the only one to dare speak out against the occupying Raptors, they had come for him. No one, not even the other members of his family, had dared fight in his defense. Emlhi had been the only one to try and she’d been held back, weeping and raging, by Turo. She’d never forgiven them. Since that day she’d turned away from the village and her relatives, and turned in on herself. Her natural instinct for love had curdled and set like mortar.

  Gareth—deaf and dumb and blind, the knightly embodiment of courage and completely at her mercy—was the man that, entirely without his knowing, opened her up anew.

  She remembered the night she’d checked on him and found him curled in a fetal ball on the bed, with the blankets piled like fallen enemies on the floorboards. She put the candle down and touched his shoulder, finding his skin icy. He shook beneath her hand.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she gasped and grabbed up the blankets. He didn’t seem to notice; he was whimpering very softly under his breath, like a dog in pain. Quickly Emlhi slid into the bed at his back. She was wearing only her shift, because she’d been ready for bed herself. She pressed her warm belly to his spine and felt the chill of his flesh soak into her own. She ran her hand down his ribs and hips and rubbed the rough hair of his thigh.

  “Hush,” she whispered, kneading the knotted muscles of his neck with her other hand, pressing her face to his shoulder blade. “You’re all right. You’re all right.” She rubbed her thighs against his, willing the warmth into him. By tiny increments he relaxed, the shuddering soothed away as the covers trapped the heat. His limbs unknotted enough to allow her to slip her hand around his waist right into the pit of his belly where his pubic hair tickled her fingers. It took a long time though, and she was tired by the day’s work. Gradually she fell into a doze.

  Emlhi awoke when Gareth pulled the blanket aside. Sleepily she protested at the draft then realized that the man in her bed was no longer cold. He’d stretched out and turned to press against her and he was hot, his skin burning on hers. He put his hand on her thigh, and even through the rucked linen of her shift it felt like he was branding her. Emlhi surged into wakefulness. He wasn’t just uncoiled—he boasted an erection that was pressed into her hip.

  He’s sick, she thought. And weak as a kitten. If I want to stop him, I can.

  Moonlight through the window revealed little, only his bare calf, his knee pushing between hers. Higher up, their bodies were drowned in shadow. The guttering stub of the candle outlined only the peak of his shoulder. His head was on her pillow and he was panting. Emlhi put her hand up and felt his face; the rasp of stubble, the smear of sweat from his temple, the loose locks of his hair. His breathing was faster than any healthy man’s and he was leaving a wet patch on her throat.

  “Sir Knight,” she whispered. The pulse in her belly began to beat. He can’t make me, she told herself. He can only do what I let him.

  Pulling up the last span of her skirt, he ran his hand up the inside of her thigh and pressed it into her delta. “Hsgood,” he slurred. Emlhi juddered beneath him. His fingers probed deep into her slit, seeking her moisture. She whimpered, feeling his heat catch in her sex, flaring up through her belly. He parted her folds and dabbled his fingertips within, while his palm and thumb stirred her mound and caressed the rough hair. Her wetness was growing more marked by the heartbeat. She felt completely helpless, suffused by the ancient imperative to yield, to melt, to submit to him. She parted her thighs and he slid his hand up and down the length of her slot, drawing the juices up to the bud of her clit. She moved under him, pushing up to meet him, her shallow little gasps drowned by his fevered panting. The shadows shook against the wall. His thigh was growing heavier and heavier on hers. She slid her own hand across her belly, under his arm, and took hold of his shaft. It jerked in her hand.

  Then without warning, just as she was rising to her crisis, he pulled from her grasp and shifted his weight, heaving on top of her. The black silhouette of his head and shoulders loomed over her. Bereft, she caught her breath but spread her thighs willingly, thinking that she knew what must happen next—but she was completely unprepared. Pressure and slippery motion suddenly became a stabbing pain, an unbearable rending. She arched under him, expecting it to be over in a flash. It grew worse.

  “No!” she cried. “You’re too big!”

  He swooped to mash his face into her throat. His entire weight was on her now, pressing her flat, grinding into her belly, crushing her ribs. She could hardly breathe. At that moment she realized with a sick jolt that she no longer had any power to deny him what he wanted. She had far underestimated his strength. And still the pain grew.

  “Please, no!” she cried. “Stop!”

  He took no notice. The burning heat in his flesh erupted into an agonizing fire as he thrust into her. She bucked beneath him and he grabbed her wrists and pinned her. Then suddenly, miraculously, the pain slackened and
she was through to the other side, blinded by tears, pummeled beneath his thrusts, the breath forced out of her with every surge of his hips. He was groaning, too feverish to censor himself, his aching muscles driven into the territory of pain. His deep cries mingled with her sharper ones, and she felt like she was drowning in his sweat and his strength and his mindless need as their cries and their bodies fused.

  She remembered the day he’d finally come out into the sunshine, wearing clothes she’d had to beat so hard on the river boulders to clean of his blood that the fabric was worn thin. He looked almost translucent himself, his eyes sunk in dark hollows and his garments hanging loose upon him. Above the neck of his shirt his collarbone stood out sharply. He had a blanket wrapped about his shoulders.

  She motioned him to a place upon the porch. He sat slowly, like an old man, but when he smiled at her the sunshine seemed to grow warmer. “You look so much better,” she said.

  “I feel like a flag worn ragged by the wind.” His voice was softer and deeper than his thin frame would predict; dark like his hair. He looked around at the little yard in front of her house and at the trees beyond their fence. Chickens were scratching in the dirt. “It’s a beautiful day. How are you, Emlhi?”

  “I’m just sorting the last of the winter apples.” She indicated the flat baskets around her feet. “Would you like a small cup of beer, Sir Knight?”

  “Gareth,” he reminded her gently. “Beer would be good.”

  She fetched him a mug full from the crock behind the front door and he took it from her hand carefully, using both of his. She sat herself nearby, but he took her by surprise when he stretched forward and brushed the corner of her mouth with his fingertip. “What happened there?”

  She touched the deep scab and blushed. “You were… When you had the fever you used to think you were fighting your enemies. You managed to smack me one with your elbow. It’s nothing.” It was kinder to say that, she thought, than tell him the truth: You punched me, Sir Knight, thinking I was a Raptor sorcerer. He looked upset enough by the bowdlerized version.