Jack Whyte - The Sorcer part 1 - The Fort at River's Bend

I shook my head again, smiling ruefully at her tenacity. "Of course. What is it?"

She sat silent for several moments, hesitating at the boldness of her words, then blurted out her question.

"When you ... when you dream of me like that ... what do you recall?"

We were staring at each other, our faces close, each of us tight with the fluttery tension of discovery, yet lacking, somehow, any sense of sexual urgency or imperative. When I answered her, my voice was husky and my words slow and deliberate.

"Everything about you, from the feel of your breasts to the clinging depth of you."

"But you've never touched me."

I moved slightly away from her. "I am aware of that, my dear, believe it or not, and looking at your legs and thighs today, I saw more of you than I have ever seen."

"No. I was practically naked that day when Julia died. You saw me then, wearing only that ridiculous flimsy mantle."

"Damnation! So I did. D'you know, I've never even thought of that since then? I had completely forgotten!"

She started to smile, but then her face grew somber. "That would have been an awful thing, Merlyn, to have found physical attraction in that place and at that time."

"Aye, it would. I suppose that's why I was unaware of it."*

"Hmm." Her face cleared slowly, the troubled frown giving way to a look of concentration. "So, when you ... lie with me, in dreams, the dreams seem real? I find that really difficult to comprehend."

"No more than I do, Shelagh, but I thank God, from time to time, that they seem as real as they do, because they bring no guilt, and no disloyalty to Donuil, or to you."

'To me? How could they bring disloyalty to me?"

"Because of how you truly are, a faithful wife. But they could not—they are merely dreams. Purely involuntary. Even Luke says so."

. Her eyebrows shot up on her forehead. "You've told Lucanus?"

I laughed aloud. "No, not about you! What do you think of me? We've talked of celibacy, that's all, and nocturnal emissions, as he calls them."

"'Nocturnal emissions ... ' That sounds very grand."

"They can be grand, sometimes, but they don't approximate the real thing."

"Why not? They sound like it, to me."

"Yes, my dear, except for the absence of one important, crucial element: the actual woman, with her delicious, lubricated friction."

We had been speaking in Latin, which she had picked up with wondrous speed, but now she raised one hand to her lips like a little girl, her eyes dancing, and suddenly her Erse speech was more pronounced. "Crucial? You mean spread out like a cross? 'Loo-oobricated friction ... ' Latin's a wondrous language. You couldn't say things like that in Erse. 'Delicious, lubricated friction ... Oh, listen to me! The gods would scream, could they hear us! I never even talk like this with Donuil. Can you imagine the face of him, sitting over there, listening to us?" She fell silent, thinking, then laughed in a girlish way. "So you're sound asleep when this happens? Dead to the world, with no idea at all of what's going on?"

"None at all, consciously. Of course, there's much going on inside your head."

"Aye, and other parts of you."

"Hmm."

She made another tiny sound of mirthful excitement, hitching herself more upright and lapsing back into her native tongue. "Wouldn't I love to see that, though? Wouldn't that be something to behold, the bright seed just springing from it like a ribbon, with no warning at all?"

"Aye," I said, more of a grunt than a word, and began to rise to my feet. "And if we don't leave now, it's going to happen here, in the brightness of the afternoon. Come on, let's go."

I held out my hand to help her rise, but she remained where she was, her eyes fixed on the erection that thrust beneath my clothing at the level of her eyes, which had turned suddenly solemn.

"Merlyn, forgive me. I didn't think. That was stupid of me and unforgivable to taunt you like that."

"Come on, get up. Here, take my hand. It wasn't unforgivable at all. I enjoyed it thoroughly. It simply means I'll do it twice this week." I pulled her to her feet then stepped away, literally turning my back on the temptation to gather her into my arms and kiss her. She would have come to me, I knew. I stood there, staring at the closest tree until her voice came from behind me, small and tentative.

"Merlyn? Is that the truth? You're not angry?"

I turned back to her, smiling. "No, Shelagh, I'm not angry. I swear it."

She was silent for a spell, and then, "Twice this week?" She was smiling again. "Does that mean—"

"Aye, four nights ago, aboard the galley, and it wasn't you."

"The faceless, wanton spectre ... Will it be me tonight?"

"Aye, it will, and for several nights to come, I think. But don't expect me to thank you for stirring me up this way."

"I won't, but ... "

"But what?"

She smiled. "I want you to know, though I shouldn't say it. But I'm just as stirred up now as you are ... It was you saying 'twice this week' that did it."

I stared at her for the space of several heartbeats, aware that we were both in grave danger, then began to turn away. "Good fortune for Donuil."

She caught me by the wrist, stopping me. "Don't think of it like that, Merlyn. It's not Donuil who has me swimming, here, and he won't benefit from it. I may not lie with you, but tonight, for you, I won't lie with my husband." She stared at me, eye to eye, but I could only shake my head.

"This is insane. We'd better go."

On the way back down we talked of other things, and by the time we came to the town she had taught me the first lines of the melody she had sung in her enchantment.

SIX

The walls of the main gateway tower reared up above my head to the height of four tall men, and the heavy double doors were made from massive, layered slabs of dense- grained oak, shrunken and dried and cracked with age but serviceable still. These were framed, around and between, by heavy, solid, mason-dressed blocks of red sandstone brought down, Derek had told me, from the quarries to the north, along the coast. I craned my neck to decipher the faded, weather-beaten words on the plaque that had been mounted there on the plinth above the double doors.

"What does it say, Merlyn?"

Young Arthur stood beside me, holding his pony's reins and gazing up at the densely packed lettering of the inscription. "You're the scholar, young man. You tell me."

His brow wrinkled in concentration. "I've been trying to read it, but there are too many words I don't know. They're all at the beginning, there. What do they mean?"

I smiled. "They're names, lad. Names you've never heard before, but in their day, when their owners were alive, the whole world knew and feared them. It says: 'For the Emperor Caesar Trajan Hadrian Augustus, son of the divine Trajan, conqueror of Parthia, grandson of the divine Nerva, Pontifex Maximus and three times Consul, the Fourth Cohort of Dalmatians set this here in the presence of the Emperor's propraetorian governor.'"

He turned to me, his eyes growing round. "Caesar Augustus?"

"Aye, but not the one you're thinking of. This one was a Caesar, but the 'Augustus' in this instance is simply a way of calling him the Great Caesar. His real name was Hadrian, just as mine is Merlyn. My full name is Caius Merlyn Britannicus, but Caius Britannicus was my grandfather."

"Hadrian's Wall? Was that his?"

"Aye. It was built during his reign."

"It says his father and his grandfather were divine. Were they truly gods?"

I grinned at him and tousled his hair. "No, but they were emperors. The Romans have always liked to turn their emperors into gods, to show that they were greater than ordinary men."

"Were they?"

"No, they were much like the rest of us, and many of them were lesser men. But as emperors they held so much more power than we could ever dream of that it appeared that they must be gods."