Crown of Gold and Ruin, page 36
“I can understand that,” he replied. “We’ve all sort of … stagnated in brooding and grieving. It is to be expected, yes, but it will not help us once we reach Faneia, for we will need sharp, alert wits about us then.”
She hummed in agreement, and after testing the mossy ground with her boot, she sank down into it. Jaime followed, his legs almost tangling with hers, and she leaned back to rest against the rockface behind and recoiled. “Ach,” she breathed, running fingers through her hair that had grown full of slime the moment it came into contact with the rock. “Disgusting,” she exclaimed, and Jaime laughed, saying, “We are in a troll-cave, Princess.”
She sighed with weary revulsion, and in an action that surprised even her, leaned instead against Jaime’s solid warm body beside her. Immediately, as if he too acted involuntarily, his arms came to ring her, settling around her soothingly, one hand easing her head to lay on his shoulder. He smelled like grass after rain, like soft sun-warmed skin—after long, weary days of mourning lost realities and murdered beloveds, tired legs, and pensive thoughts, he smelled like comfort. And some part of her surfaced that regretted backing away from him beneath the Menhuthracreya; some part of her that recalled the summer she had spent imagining the curl of his lips and the salt of his skin brushing her own, and the vivid detail still present in her memory of their bodies pressed together in her chambers before the world had fallen apart at the seams. Those parts surged together in a flood—and all Diana wanted to do was to forget.
So she raised her head from the pillow of Jaime’s shoulder, and found him staring down her with a strange, faraway gaze, and guessed that perhaps he too thought similar things. She traced a finger down his freckled cheekbone, and he turned his face and kissed her hand softly. A moment later, he was drawing her into his lap, her legs winging them, and their mouths were drowning in each other. A tide that had been inevitable. Jaime’s teeth scraped hers as their tongues tangled, and a soft sound escaped him, and his hands were everywhere, her thighs and back and breasts. Di shivered as his lips drew lazy lines down her jaw and suckled on her throat, and she drove her fingers under his tunic to learn the lines of his wiry chest and muscled stomach.
He picked her up a few moments later and lay her down softly in the moss. Their hands interlocked, hovering above her, Jaime whispered, “Are you certain, Diana?” His breath warmed her face, and she arched her back, wanting, wanting him, wanting to forget, wanting to leave this world for at least the small time that jealous pleasure would grant them.
She kissed him, hard and deep, and he sank down with a sigh onto her body till the weight and heat of him finally, finally, after long empty days, awoke something vital in her, reignited the embers of life in her that had shriveled and cowered. And it wasn’t related only to the pleasure as she whispered, “Yes,” and he eagerly caught her lips again, and his fingers began unlacing her dress.
“Yes,” she moaned again as his mouth dipped down to her breasts, and she felt something unlocking inside, like a key to a door that had slammed shut the night of Saturnalia.
Di and Jaime kissed and nibbled and their clothes peeled away until they lay entwined nearly bare on the flowering moss, and Jaime chuckled with longing and affection as she shuddered under his fingers entering her secret heat. She opened her eyes, Jaime’s face buried in her neck in his desire, and found the ceiling of the troll-cave covered with willow-the-wisps dancing in the grip of the Malakim’s lavender wrists.
* * *
Some hours later, Jaden drifted awake from a hazy dream about lyre music. He had fallen asleep admonishing himself. Diana and Trystan were right, he had realized with a sinking feeling. Jaden was brooding like a sick old mule, refusing to accept what had happened, refusing to actively engage in bearing the mantle of king and acting as such. All he had done so far was make the decision to head for Mount Faneia instead of Carthage and tell the rest not to make a fire. He needed to learn how to lead them, he realized, without allowing Scythe to plot out their every move like a governess arranging the activities of a group of rowdy children. He needed to forget the past. But then again, if he could not forget Lyra and her glass ring and her huge gray eyes from nearly four years back, how could he forget Elenon in ashes, and Flavian’s blood staining his clothes?
Now, as he emerged into true vigilance from slumber’s clutch, he noticed that the shadows were thinner, and that dawn was probably lightening the world beyond the waterfall. He also noticed that orange firelight painted the rough walls, and that he could hear the merry fizzing of flames. Rage and unease overlapped when he rolled over to see Trystan roasting fish, presumably caught from the green pool outside, over a fire, and Jaime watching with anguished protest. On his lap, his arm draped over her protectively, Diana’s head was pillowed.
“Jaden said …” Jaime trailed off as he noticed Jaden staring angrily at them, on the verge of exploding.
“WHY DID YOU LIGHT THE FIRE?” he ground out, rushing over to stamp it out.
Trystan watched with amused consternation. “Really, brother, what madness …”
The girls were both still asleep, and his voice seemed to echo through the cave, which suddenly seemed threatening to Jaden. The waterfall rumbled like a caged beast.
The temperature in the cave dropped, as, from the shadows, came a sinister laugh. Jaden froze, as did the others, Scythe having jolted awake. Diana’s disturbed breathing seemed to stretch on and on after that, until the voice that had laughed spoke. It was a female voice, cold and rich, like honey pouring, edged with the shriek of steel against steel. It was also heavily, beautifully accented.
“You are quite right, golden king. Your handsome brother should certainly not have lit that betraying fire. You see, we are drawn to it as moths to swinging lanterns.”
Shadow-pale creatures were emerging from the gloom, adorned only with dark swirls of tattoos, their beauty twisted into something frightening. The night folded in upon itself as the speaker removed herself from the rest, stepping out, her bare feet making no sound upon the uneven stones.
Jaden’s breath caught in his throat. She was a creature of shadows, and where her brethren bore black tattoos, her night-ink skin was touched with delicate whorls of white that accentuated all her sensuous curves, all the black perfection of her body; her eyes were two glowing promises. He had to wrench his eyes away from dropping below the dark hollow of her neck, because she wore nothing but ink.
“My name is Sarikin,” she said in her dusky voice. “Around me stand my beautiful, loyal brothers and sisters.”
Jaden felt the dark magic wrapping around him and his friends, rendering them frozen statues able only to listen to Sarikin’s seductive words. Diana had awoken and she took in the scene around her with a tiny shriek of terror. Jaime’s arms wrapped around her, but they were both immediately made subject to Sarikin as well.
The creature edged closer to Jaden, who stood rigid beside Trystan, the smoking ruins of the fire behind them. When she was close enough to touch, she stopped. She reached out a slim dark hand, letting unpleasantly cold fingers trace Jaden’s cheek, caress his jaw, and the rough stubble on it. Jaden, though he flinched, was unable to pull away.
“Has anyone ever told you how delicious you look?” she asked him, fingernails digging into his flesh.
“What do you want?” Jaden managed.
Sarikin laughed again. “You, Lord of Eria. My master will provide great reward for your pretty head. Though he will allow me, I am sure, to toy with your body.” Her fingers brushed his chest, which had hitched with a gasp. Not because of what she had said or her infectious touch, but because two of the other creatures had extended pale, tattooed arms around Diana and Scythe.
Jaden’s hand forced itself to his sword-belt, but only managed to touch Goldfire’s bejeweled hilt. Sarikin’s eyes moved toward it, and the blade shot out of its scabbard and rocketed backwards, nearly decapitated Scythe, and then clanged onto the floor what seemed a million miles away. Scythe staggered back, blood running from a cut on her cheek, and stumbled to the ground. Jaime and Diana slammed into the ground too, as a green-scaled serpent tail, huge and flickering, wrapped around them and pulled them off their feet. Belatedly, Jaden realized that most of Sarikin’s creatures had morphed silently, the lower parts of their bodies changing into huge snakes. Naga. The word shuddered through Jaden’s mind, borne upon memories of countless horror stories about the monstrous snake-people.
Sarikin edged closer, and Jaden realized that she did not breathe. Her chest, the ink edged with faint greenish scales, never moved as air entered it. He felt Trystan stiffen as Sarikin turned to him with a slight frown, as if annoyed he was still there. This certainly seemed the case when she touched him lightly on the shoulder, and suddenly, Trystan too, was sprawled on the floor. Scythe cried out. Now they were all helpless, and Jaden found himself grasping for weapons, his hand reaching into the pocket of his breeches, unseen by Sarikin, who seemed to have eyes only for his face.
Jaden decided to grasp at the most ridiculous idea that came into his floundering mind. He was aware of the rest of them creeping closer to him and Sarikin. “What are you?” he asked, though he knew very well, the tips of their serpentine bodies now flicking hungrily in every corner of the cave.
Sarikin laughed; she seemed to find his every utterance a source of pure delight. “A night creature. A naga,” she answered. “Some say we lie with and breed with serpents, some call us blood phantoms. These creative, awe-inspiring names add horror to the stories told about how we spawn at night. But it serves to inspire fear, and, you tell me, what else matters, Jaden Blacknett?” Her accent was so thick, some of the words became fluid music that meant nothing.
“And your master?” He hoped it was not obvious he was buying time for his hand to smoothly twist from his pocket, bearing their last hope.
Sarikin seemed to consider answering this, her head cocked to one side in thought. She even scratched her braided raven-black hair. “Since I am about to kill you …” she mused. “Well, for some time now, the allegiance of most naga has been to the Winter King, Thrain Arthorn. You may have heard of him.”
Jaden had not forgotten the Winter King, but surprise still colored his vision.
“Of course, I didn’t say my allegiance is to him, but…”
Sarikin rolled her eyes at his silence as he digested her ambiguous words, seemed to grow bored, and flicked her wrist—the naga leaped forward to murder. Sarikin’s mouth seemed to contract, the full lips ripping apart to become a maw. Two huge fangs erupted, her lower body sprang into a contorting serpent, and suddenly, any vestiges of the seductive woman were gone, and it was a monster that stood leering in front of Jaden.
Jaden held up his clenched fist, and in the split second before they all pounced, and the approaching bedlam began, he uttered the mantra Gwyn Gendelson had told him what seemed years ago in the dungeons of the royal palace, knowing very well it could be the last thing he uttered.
“Sil ilth drustar!” he roared. “Makhael drustar!”
He knew suddenly that the words were not in Banelorian as he had thought, but instead in an ancient, lyrical language of Rhona, the first spoken by those fabled conquerors. He also knew that they meant “cursed shadow, begone shadow!” How all of this poured into Jaden’s brain at that moment, he did not know, nor did he care to.
The runestone flared up like a white-hot furnace, brilliant light blazing forth, blinding Jaden, making him drop the stone and crumple to the ground to shield his eyes. All he knew after that in the surge of white brilliance was the rattling screeches of the naga.
Vapor, purple like twilight, misted Jaden’s vision as he stumbled to his feet, one hand reaching out to grab the runestone. The others were gazing at him in shocked awe. No trace remained of the naga other than a dusting of black ash upon the stone floor. However, scorched dark footsteps, small and feminine, led out of the cave into the waterfall, and he knew Sarikin had escaped.
Scythe and Diana both had red welts on their arms where the naga had touched them, but as Jaden tried to examine Diana’s she pulled away, and Scythe claimed all was well, so he gave up.
Dawn shot rays of light into the cave, made greenish by the curtain of ivy. There was a hushed silence as they stamped out the remains of the fire and wandered out of the cave’s rear through a curtain of cobwebs, entering into a gnarled, dry part of the Whisperwood. The trees were thinning, Jaden noticed, as they came closer to where the Hornvale Mountains rose into the sky. They left the troll cave and the waterfall behind, and as the sun shimmered down, they angled for Mount Faneia.
* * *
Another weary week passed. The trees dispersed, their leaves going from dangling jewels to crisp dead things. Battles had been fought in these lands, Trystan Blacknett saw, noting the darker earth in places where once the ground had been churned by horses and watered with blood. Scythe showed him a fragment of a shield she found netted in moss, the wood decayed and the coat of arms now just a blur of color. Her moss-green eyes gleamed in the thin sunlight as she smiled at him, warming his blood, making it course faster through his veins.
Trystan had accepted long ago that he was in love with Scythe. It was inescapable, natural, beautiful, and aching. It was all that prevented the bitter complaints about everything else spilling off his tongue in a torrent, all that prevented him finding the nearest tree—or enemy—and hacking it to bits with his sword. He and Scythe had met nearly eight years ago, at the age of twelve, in the shadow of the Healing Hall. He had had one of his fights with Jaden, and his arrogant little twit of a brother had managed to cut Trystan’s shoulder, deeply. Bloodstained, he had been searching for Drast to give him a healing salve when a slender dark-skinned girl had appeared, claiming she was the mage’s apprentice. Trystan had seen her before, flitting around feast halls, and had always dismissed her as some serving girl, though her beauty meant that even at twelve, she was attracting desirous stares from men much older than she.
Scythe had cleaned his wound and applied a soothing balm that dulled the pain, both of them sitting upon one of the starched white beds of the Hall. Trystan had made one of his jokes, and Scythe had laughed. When he had confessed her fingers on the wound hurt, she told him to shut up and suck it up. After that, their connection was inevitable. Though their time together was limited, as Scythe was often very busy with her training to be a healer, as well as the fact that Drast always had errands ready for her, they managed to snatch time together, however irregularly. They would talk whenever they could, and laugh and joke, and when they felt like it, they would flirt so much, so ridiculously. But never had it become anything serious, and when she had left for Olderfleet nearly two years ago, Trystan had felt empty and alone, though the palace was overflowing with girls imploring to dance with him, at the royal balls and the monthly feasts, as well as privately in more adult practices. But though he had toyed with a few of the prettiest, Scythe was the only one he truly wanted, and her absence was part of the reason he had been so erratic and angry the past year, so filled with bruising bitterness that he had willingly gone to the Velazaan meetings.
And then he had finally seen her again that night before Saturnalia, fending off a river-wraith with her two tiny daggers that he often teased her about. She had been covered in wraith-filth, and wore torn clothes, but she was the most stunning thing he had ever seen. When he had Scythe in his arms during the Saturnalia dance—after months of pretending at a scheming royal court that mistrusted him, despised him, whispered behind his back—his smile had finally been real. He knew he would kill for that feeling.
The memories tumbled through his mind that day, a week after the terrifying episode with the naga, as they hiked through a slowly dispersing forest scarred by the Empire War. By night, they set up camp on the shores of the Darkwash River, now little more than a stream. Trystan was grudgingly grateful to Jaden, His oh-so-mighty Highness, for allowing them to light a small fire, as even he had noticed the night was freezing. But Trystan saw Jaden was still tense, still on the lookout for naga and the other various terrifying beasties that had assailed them in the past few weeks and was staring out sullenly into the gloom.
Jaime was kindling the fire with Diana’s help—Trystan had amusedly noticed them stealing into the woods together every night the past week and coming back with crumpled clothes and disheveled hair.
He sat against an oak tree splintered by lightening, hugged his long legs to his chest for warmth. To his delight, a moment later, Scythe joined him.
“People say they spin,” Trystan said, gesturing with his chin to the thick dusting of stars in the sky, “but I don’t see it.”
Scythe leaned her head on the tree, her long graceful neck bared. Minerva had come to sniff at Trystan, and he stroked her soft fur. The wildcat smelled like old blood.
“They don’t spin,” Scythe said after a while. “It’s the world that does, very slowly. And as the planet rotates to bring about another dawn, the view we have of the stars changes as the world’s position in the void changes, ever so fractionally.”
Trystan scratched his head. “That I certainly do not recall seeing in my old astronomy books. Tutor Lucan just used to tell us that Valandil ordered his servants to bind the heavenly horses to the chariots that contain the stars, and they pull, and then these chariots would apparently race across the night sky, spinning.”
“Well, I suppose it depends upon whether one chooses to believe science or religion.” Her braided hair spilled across her shoulder when she turned her head to look at Jaden and Diana having another heated argument. Trystan watched the moonlight angle across Scythe’s high cheekbones, the curve of her lips. He wondered if he kissed her, whether she would taste sweet or bitter, honeyed or spiced. He should have kissed her years ago.
