Charlotte Boyett-Compo- WIND VERSE- Pleasure's Foehn (18 page)

He stepped back from her and reached for the buckle of his sword-belt, slipping the intricately tooled leather strap from his lean waist and wrapped it around the scabbard to set it aside.

Davan stayed his hand, and reached out to touch the elaborate cage at the hilt and fingered the thick braid of emerald green silk hanging from the pommel. She traced the engraving and asked him to translate it for she saw the phrase ended with a question mark.

“
An gnu pears anta no oifigiuil e?
” Cair replied. “Is it personal or official?”

Her quizzical look led him to explain the reason for the inscription.

“A Deathwielder never draws his sword unless he intends to slay his opponent. There is no wounding of your enemy, only death. So when he pulls the sword free of its scabbard, he must ask himself if it is for personal or official reasons. If it is official, there is no question. You do what is expected of you and take your opponent down. But if it for personal reasons, you must decide if the taking of a life warrants the offense you are avenging. The inscription is a reminder to think before you act for once drawn, a Deathwielder’s blade must mete out death.”

Davan watched him place the ceremonial broadsword on the table. “Have you ever drawn that blade?”

He shook his head. “Not this one, but the one I carry into battle has been blooded many times over.”

Shivering at his words, at the cavalier way he discussed dealing death as though dealing cards, she knew there would always be a part of this man she could never fully know and truly did not wish to be intimate with that element of his persona. He shrugged out of his jacket and flicked the buttons of his silk shirt open, drew it from the waistband of his uniform trousers then walked to her. “Turn around and let me see how long it will take me to unhook all those damned little buttons.”

Davan grinned for it had taken her sister Eadan a good long while to work her way through the tiny pearl buttons. She hoped her husband would have as much patience for should the dress be torn, she feared they’d have his mother on them but good. As Cair began to fumble his way through the buttons, he sighed constantly, barely able to hang onto his temper. “What in the name of the Goddess do you women need all these buttons for anyway?” he snapped, his lips peeled back from clenched teeth. 101

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“To annoy our husbands?” she countered.

“I believe it!”

The last button came free of the fabric and Cair reached up to gently push the bodice from her shoulders, helping her free her arms from the tight sleeves.

“I think this dress was designed to test the mettle of the bridegroom,” he grumbled. Her arms bare, Davan gently wriggled the heirloom gown over her hips and stepped carefully out of it. She would have stooped down to pick it up but Cair beat her to it, snagging it with his hand, and tossing it as carelessly to the settee as she had cautiously removed it.

“Cair!” she complained.

He scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the bed. Dipping one knee on the mattress, he straddled her hips before she could move over to give him room.

“This you don’t need, either,” he said and took hold of the front of her dainty lace corset and ran his fingers down the hook and eye closures, popping them open efficiently.

“You’re too good at that by far, milord,” she complained.

“Practice has made perfect,” he chuckled, laying aside the white lace panels to gaze down at her breasts. He slid his hand down to the matching lace panties but she grabbed his wrist.

“Take off your clothes and then we’ll discuss going further,” she challenged him before tossing off her veil.

Cair’s left eyebrow crooked upward but he was accustomed to taking orders. He got off the bed and began unbuttoning the jet studs of his fly. When he was finished, he sat down heavily on the bed to pull off his boots and socks and toss them aside. Davan had propped herself up her elbows and was watching his every move. As he stripped the trousers from his long legs, she lay back and stretched. Cair froze as his lady’s body writhed on the bed while she stretched like an agile little kitten removing her lace panties. His eyes grew hot, smoldering with passion, and he longed to throw himself on her and ravage her. The peaks of her breasts thrust upward—beckoning his mouth to claim them—and her shapely legs parted just enough for him to get a glimpse of the dewy moisture gathering at her thighs.

“Oh, wench,” he said. “You shouldn’t tempt a man like that!”

He was over her and in her before she could make a sound. His cock slid into her so deliciously he worried he would shame himself and come before her. He could feel her throbbing around him—the heat of her, the scent of her—making him desperate to begin the thrusting that would relieve them both.

Davan held onto his back with greedy hands and gripped his waist with imprisoning legs wrapped around him. His mouth was covering hers, their tongues dueling, their lips nipping gently as he began to drive into her with hard, purposeful strokes.

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Cair thought it was the buzzing in his head, the singing of his blood, he heard as she climaxed around his rigid length. His eyes were squeezed tightly together but the flash of light that rippled through the room was blinding even behind closed eyelids and he jerked, flinching at the pain that rocketed through his brain. He was thrown from the bed so violently he hit the far wall and put a good-sized dent in the plaster. A piercing shriek made him clap his hands over his ears as he lay there—half-stunned and blinded by the bright light, writhing beneath the onslaught of the agonizing sound. The floor beneath him trembled for a long moment then there was no sound at all. The overpowering stench of ozone made him nauseous and it was all he could do to open his eyes and try to push himself up from the floor. The afterimage of the intense light made it impossible for him to see anything save the zigzag bolt of wavering luminosity seemingly burned on his retina.

“Davan?” he called out, trying to crawl on all fours to the bed but he was disoriented and his stomach roiled with every movement. “Davan?”

He could hear nothing and feared his eardrums had been ruptured by the powerful screech that had enveloped his chamber for something warm dripped down by sides of his face. If his lady was calling to him, if she was hurt, he could not hear her, could not see her and his heart was thudding painfully in his chest as he felt his way toward the bed.

Fighting hands that were suddenly on his arms, he struggled against his captors, shouting as loudly as he could though he could not hear his own cries. He fought like a madman—kicking and trying to bite—twisting within the strong hold that kept him from breaking free. How long he struggled to get loose he would never know but it seemed like an eternity as he yelled Davan’s name over and over again and wildly tried to get away from the fierce hands gripping him. He could see nothing, hear nothing, and when a sharp sting drove deep into his arm, he threw back his head and howled. 103

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Chapter Thirteen

“Temporarily blind,” Seamus told Prince Bennick. “They don’t know for how long.”

“And he can’t hear, either?” Bennick inquired, his face worried.

“They say the hearing will return, too, but they don’t know when.”

The two men were speaking to one another through the barrier of the high wrought iron gate that separated the Brotherhood of Síocháin from those of the outside world. Only males were allowed on Mount Ciúin and special dispensation had been granted the prince to speak to his family’s emissary.

“But he will be all right?”

“As all right as the present circumstances will allow,” Seamus answered. “He keeps calling for his lady and we have no way to let him know she’s been taken.”

“There’s a way to get around that. Who took his wife? The Aduaidh?”

“We presume as much. Possibly their High Commander B’reith Avatás. We know his ship was in the sector a few days before.”

Bennick winced. “By the Goddess that isn’t good news, Seamus.” He wrapped his work-roughened hands around the bars of the gate. “Has there been a ransom demand?”

Seamus shook his head. “No, Your Grace. There hasn’t. The fact that we have received no ransom demand from The Burgon or his High Council concerns us. If it was just Avatás behind this and he didn’t have The Burgon’s permission, I hope to the Goddess the Aduaidh fries his ass.”

“What reason would Avatás have to snatch Cair’s woman? If he was right there in the room with her, why didn’t that lizard bastard take him?”

“My guess is either they miscalculated with the transporter beam or it was never their intention of taking him in the first place.”

“The Net wasn’t working?”

Seamus’ face turned hard. “It was working just fine but they managed to override the program and in that second or two before the auxiliary lock kicked in, they managed to get past security and fasten onto her.”

“Who knew how to shut it down other than you?” Bennick asked.

“Your brother,” Seamus replied. “My guess is he did some talking out of school, if you will, and if that was the way of it, I’ll give you one guess who it was he told.”

“That whore from the
Foehn
,” Bennick said with a sigh. 104

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“I’ll lay you odds he told her during one of those times he was deep in his cups and she was taking notes,” Seamus complained. “Hell, she could have been working with the Aduaidh all along!”

“Where is she now?”

“That’s why I think it was her,” Seamus replied. “She was with Avatás.”

Bennick lowered his head to the bars. “What is it Mother thinks I can do from here, Seamus?” he asked. “I will never be allowed to leave the monastery.”

“You said there was a way of getting around us not being able to communicate with Prince Cair.”

“Remember the code he and I used to tap out to one another through the walls when Mother was punishing one or the other of us? The one you taught us when we were boys?”

“The one I found in that old textbook from
na Stáit
?”

“That’s the one.”

Seamus’ eyes lit up. “Do you think he will remember that after all these years?”

“I would bet on it if I were still a betting man.”

The light dimmed in the old man’s gaze. “But he can’t hear, Your Grace. How can we—”

“Give me your hand,” Bennick said.

Seamus extended his hand and the prince began tapping out a rhythm in the aged warrior’s palm. He tapped out the dots and dashes that said, “This is the way you talk to him.”

“It might work!” Seamus said. “It just might work!”

The Prior was calling to Bennick and the prince glanced around. He sighed deeply then looked back at the old warrior. “My time is up, Seamus. I doubt they will allow you to come again so give everyone my love and tell Cair I will be praying for his lady’s safe return.”

“Blessings on you, Your Grace,” Seamus said, tears gathering in his rheumy eyes.

“We’ll be saying a prayer every morning and night for you, too.”

As he walked back down the path to where he had tethered his horse, Seamus felt more lighthearted than when he had arrived on Mount Ciúin. Climbing painfully onto his mount—for his aged bones were beginning to feel the long ride from Amhantar Keep—he went over and over in his mind the code he had taught the young princes. Some of it he couldn’t seem to remember for time was slowly eroding his memories, but he knew right where the
na Stáit
book
was that held the code alphabet. He prayed young Cair had not forgotten what he had learned so long ago. In the prince’s present state, he wasn’t so sure he would.

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

* * * * *

Locked in a silent world of darkness, Cair Ghrian lay immobile in his bed, straps across his wrists and ankles to keep him still and the powerful narcotic tenerse rampaging through his body to keep him manageable. Though he cursed viciously from time to time—mumbling to himself much of the rest of the time—what he said made little sense for the tenerse had effectively befuddled his mind and warped his perceptions.

His mother sat at his bedside, stroking his hand though she could tell it irritated him. She needed the contact, the reassurance that her child was still safe. Every half hour she had the computer programmers checking The Net to make sure the security force was engaged. The room in which Cair lay was doubly protected with a special apparatus that would make it impossible for him to be snatched up as Davan had been. The healers made hourly visits but they never had anything encouraging to tell their queen.

“It will take time for him to heal, Your Majesty,” became a phrase she hated to hear while at the same time finding comfort in those ten little words. She was impatient for Seamus’ return and would pace the distance from her son’s bed to the window many times over the three-day period he was gone. That they had had no word from those who had taken Davan was not a good sign and the longer the silence, the deeper the grief was driven into Margaret Ghrian’s heart.

“The Sualannach ambassador has sent word to Aduaidh asking after the Princess, Your Majesty, but the sons of bitches are ignoring him,” her court chancellor informed her. “We are trying every avenue at our disposal to make contact with the enemy. You must hold to the faith, Madame. Hold to the faith.”

Listening to her son babbling once again—his words garbled as though he was retarded—fear reached up to squeeze the queen’s heart in a brutal grip. She was terrified that Cair had been mentally unhinged by what had happened and would never recover. The longer he lay unresponsive, the deeper his own demons might carry him.

“He’s back, Your Majesty!” one of the healers came in to say. “Lord Seamus is on his way up.”

Her hand trembling, the queen closed her eyes and said a quick prayer to the Goddess that Seamus had been able to learn something from Bennick that would help his brother. Why else, she thought, had the vision come to her bidding her send Seamus to Mount
Ciúin?

“You hold on, Cairnan,” she said, patting her son’s hand. That strong hand flexed, trying to escape the touch.