Лорел Гамильтон - Seduced by Moonlight

There was hardly room for me to stand with a foot on either side of the dry pebbled basin. Adair's back took up almost all the opening, save for a small space above his head. Barinthus would have been too tall to stand inside the stone arch.

The light was pulling back from Adair's body, leaving a wash of red, as if the sun were setting across his lower back and buttocks. The white in my own skin was fading as well, but it was merely the dying of the light. Adair's body held a wash of colors, like the sky itself.

Adair moved out of the alcove, only a step. He was still close enough for me to touch his lower back. The moment I did, the color flushed deep crimson under his skin, and he let out a strangled cry. That one touch seemed to stagger him, because he groped for the stone wall.

He looked back at me, his eyes swimming down to three golden circles of color, still brighter than they had begun, but they no longer shone like small individual suns. He managed to gasp out, «What did you do to me?»

I could feel his power on my fingertips where I'd traced his skin. Could feel it, heavy and thick upon my fingers, like the heavy blood of trees, but there was nothing to see on my hand, only that sensation of thick liquid. I didn't know what I'd done to him, so what could I say?

I started to reach out to him, to offer the power on my fingers back to him, but something stopped me. Suddenly I knew what I needed to do. I moved to the front of the alcove and knelt inside it, in front of the dry spring bed. There, to the side, hidden in the dry leaves, was a small wooden cup. It was cracked on one side. Cracked with age and disuse.

«Come, Meredith, let us see the queen.» It was Barinthus's voice.

Doyle said, «Not yet, Barinthus, wait a moment.»

«You opened the door while I was distracted,» Adair said, and his voice held anger again. «It was a trick!»

I held the dirty cup in my two hands, for it had no handle, and my hands were too small to hold it comfortably one-handed. I held it toward the place in the rock where the water had once bubbled forth. I knew exactly where the water should have flowed from. I knew it even though I had never seen it. I touched the cup to the rock, just below the opening.

«There is no water to be had from this place, Princess,» Adair said.

I ignored him and held the cup against the rock. I sent the power on my fingers into that small dark opening, spread it on the crack like invisible jam, so thick, so rich. I knew in that instant that it had been meant for another more real liquid to be spread upon it. But this would do; this, too, was part of Adair's essence. Part of his power, his maleness. Male energy to touch the opening in the rock, like the opening of a woman. Male and female to bring forth life.

I called my power, let my skin dance with silver and white light, and the moment my power touched his where it lay against the rock, water trickled from the opening, filling the cracked cup.

Someone said, «The queen is coming.»

Adair touched my arm, grabbed it. «You have tricked me!» He jerked me to my feet, spun me around to face him, and as he did water spilled out of the cup, into his surprised face, across his naked chest. The water dripped down his body in clear, shining lines. He let go of me, eyes wide.

The cup in my hands was formed of white wood, polished until it gleamed. Images of fruit and flowers covered the wood, and peeking out of that lovely tangle of vines and leaves were the faces of men. Not just one green man, but many, like hidden images in a children's puzzle. A woman's image graced the other side of the cup, hair flowing like a cloak down her body. There was a dog on one side of her, and a tree heavy with fruit on the other. She smiled at me from the wooden cup. It was a knowing smile, as if she knew everything I would ever want to know.

Doyle said, voice uncertain, «The queen awaits us inside, Meredith. Are you ready?»

I knelt back at the alcove and found the water trickling clear and sweet into the basin. The dried leaves and debris of years that had filled it were gone. The basin was a roughly round depression full of water-smoothed pebbles and rocks. I held the cup underneath the water, and it gave a small gurgle, flowing faster, as if eager to fill the cup. When the water overflowed the cup, running down my hands, in cool fingers, only then did I stand.

I stood with the cup filled to the brim, more water overflowing down my arms, trailing underneath the sleeves of my jacket. There was energy in the water, a quiet, humming power. With that inner eye, I could see the glow of power in that water, and the wooden cup was like a white star inside my head.

«Who is the cup for?» Doyle asked.

«One who needs healing, though she knows it not.» My voice held an echo of the glow in the cup.

«I ask you again, who is the cup for?»

I didn't answer him, because he knew. They all knew. The cup was meant for the Queen of Air and Darkness. The cup would cleanse her, heal her, change her. I knew the cup was meant for her, but I did not know if she would drink it.

Andais stood in the center of the chamber carved of moonlight and darkness. Her white skin shone as if she'd captured the full moon inside her skin and all its soft radiance spilled out of her. Her hair was a fall of blackest night, except that if I looked at her from the corner of my eye there were pale points of light in her hair, like scattered stars, but when I turned to face her directly, there was only a shimmering blackness, unrelieved by any light, the heart of deepest, emptiest space. The kind of empty darkness that held no warmth, no life.

The triple grey of her eyes glowed, but it was subdued as if lit only by reflected light. Her eyes were light grey storm clouds lit by distant lighting, with no light of their own. That last thick ring of charcoal was like the sky before it fell upon the earth and poured its rage upon us all.

The look in her eyes alone would have stopped me at the door. Her power filled her like some stroke of fate waiting for its victim, making me want to turn around and run. I was still touched by the magic that had revived the spring. The magic that Adair and I, merely touching, had awoken. But that bright, healing spell faded to ashes in my heart with a look from Andais's power-mad eyes. There was nothing sane in them.

I stood barely inside the door, afraid to move, afraid to attract her attention. All the new power, all the new self-discovery, all the newfound joy and love; and I was suddenly back to being a child again. A frightened rabbit huddling in the grass hoping the fox will pass me by. When I swallowed, it hurt, as if my fear meant to choke me. But I wasn't the rabbit that this particular fox was hunting.

Eamon stood on the small platform at the end of the room, the one that was usually curtained off. He was tall and pale, with his fall of ankle-length black hair the only thing that shielded his body from our view. Eamon was one of those who did casual nudity around the court. I'd seen him nude before and, if he survived the night, would again. No, it wasn't Eamon's beauty that sped my pulse. It wasn't even the implements of torture and death that hung on the wall behind him, framing his body like a collage. It was the queen's words, and his answer to them.

«Do you defy me, Eamon, my consort?» Her voice was calm when she asked it, too calm. It matched nothing in the room, not even the expression on her face.

«I do not defy you, my queen, my love, but I beg you. You will kill him if you do not stop this.»

A voice called from behind Eamon, «Don't stop, please, don't stop.»

«He does not wish to stop,» Andais said, and she moved one hand, negligently, bringing my attention to the whip in it. It had been lost against the blackness of her long skirt, so that until she moved it, I had seen nothing. It was like some well-camouflaged snake, hidden until it would strike. The whip made a heavy slithering sound against the floor, as she moved it back and forth. An idle gesture that raised the hair on the back of my neck.