Cleopatra's Secret: Keepers of the LIght (6 page)

With a surge of explosive light the God entered him. Antony was wild with the power, brimming over with a joy beyond joy. The animation of all living things rushed through his veins, the power of the earth and heavens coursing through him, and again he was running hard, running in a blur of ecstasy, free and untamed as the wind. There were no longer any divisions between himself, or the raving Bacchantes who dashed alongside him, or the earth, or moon filtering through the whispering pines.

Suddenly he was alive to something else too. Fear mingled with his adrenaline and sent him charging swiftly ahead of the women, sprinting on four legs. Easily, he bounded over the woodland bracken. Dionysus, God of Animals, had joined him with the soul of a deer and left his own body behind somewhere in the forest.

The cries of the Bacchantes at his heels drove him faster. His heart raced as he darted through the trees as naturally as if he had never lived anywhere other than these woods. He was pure instinct, but he was growing tired. He could not escape the women who rabidly pursued him.

He reached a grove surrounded by tall pine trees, the crescent moon shedding her pale light throughout the clearing. Collapsing on his front legs, he felt the cool earth beneath him. He was the earth, was the collective spirit that drove the maddened women to throw themselves on the exhausted deer and rip it apart with their hands and teeth in a euphoric frenzy, smearing the animal’s rich blood across their breasts and faces, bathing in its life force, drinking in the hot liquid from its dying body.

He felt the ripping of his flesh. The mind-numbing pain and draining of his energies mixed with the renewal which the flesh and blood brought the Bacchantes.

Somewhere out of the deep well of his mind he heard:
All of this has taken place before and all of it will take place again, into eternity, into eternity, into eternity
….

He came to in his own body. He was freezing and his limbs tingled, still half asleep. The savage scene of the Bacchantes blurred with the gently swaying trees and the song of the cicadas. He barely noticed as the blood-spattered women raised him up in their moon-pale arms. They chanted a discordant hymn as they wound their way through the pine groves, past the village, to the harbor at the bottom of the hill.

Raising his head, he saw more women dressed in shimmering translucent gowns of silver tissue. They reminded him of naiads and sea nymphs, Priestesses of Isis.

They were here for him
.

A fabulous golden barge bearing silken lilac sails rose up from the water, the gold's hue reflected by the tranquil sea. From inside, he could hear the lulling sound of harps. The heavy smell of incense wafted up from the vessel, swirling around his head, and he inhaled the musky odor of lotus blossoms.

Surely this was a vision of the Gods
.

The naiads and sea nymphs bowed.

The Priestess of Dionysus returned their reverence. “Dionysus brings you greetings from his sacred groves on the hills of Tarsus.”

A girl with a wreath of white roses crowning her pale locks came forward. “The Great God is welcomed here to the womb of Isis––to the Mystery of Love.”

The girl leaned forward and pressed a chaste kiss to his lips, then removing her crown of roses, placed it solemnly over Antony’s dark hair.

Like a bewitched sleepwalker, he found himself on his feet again as he made his way up the gangplank into the golden barge.

The scent of Syrian incense and moonflowers mingled with the sea air to create an intoxicating perfume which lulled Antony’s senses as he stepped into the banquet hall of Cleopatra’s barge. Candles lit the chamber with a warm glow, the light sparkling off the precious gems of the elegantly dressed courtiers.

Still half-hallucinatory with the power of the God, he took in the wall paintings. Every inch was covered in the spare Egyptian style depicting the erotic joining of one soul with another, but before Antony had a chance to examine the scene closely, the nymph-like creatures who had welcomed him aboard this floating temple of love silently took his hands and led him to a couch at the head of a large banquet table.

The solemn beating of drums sounded as a mummy, carried by two priests wearing masks of the dark Jackal God, Anubis, appeared.

“Anubis, Guide of the Dead and Opener of the Way!” called out one of the priests in a gloomy voice. “Drink and be merry, for someday you will die!”

For a moment the stillness of death hung over the room. Antony sat in the quiet of its powerful grip, but the spell was broken by the delighted laughter of one of the young naiads, like tinkling bells pealing through the banquet hall.

Antony realized he was surrounded by the Bacchantes who had been with him in the hills, and judging by their dress, the priests and priestesses of Isis. There was goodwill and merriment throughout the hall as the people feasted. He looked down at the delicacies before him on the table but his lips had gone numb and his head seemed to float, making him too disoriented to eat.

Two attendants, dressed in gowns light as sea foam, placed a goblet of wine in his hands. Their words echoed vaguely through his hazy consciousness.

“Drink this, my lord, which comes from the Temple of Isis at Alexandria. It was prepared that you may enjoy the rites of the Sacred Marriage.”

In his dream state, he put the wine to his numb lips. Its fire burned down his throat and rushed through his veins, restoring energy and vigor to him.

As he became more alert, and some clarity of thought returned, a part of his brain rebelled. This was Cleopatra’s ship. All of it was an elaborate charade, with Antony serving as a pawn, in a game orchestrated by the Egyptian Queen. He wanted her and her gold, but not if meant falling like a fool into her snare. An urge to march off the vessel and never look back brought him to his feet.

Where was she, anyway?

He searched the crowd of revelers, but Cleopatra was nowhere in sight. Yet surely this was her ship? Her game?

A tray of fragrant saffron-infuse oysters was placed before him and he found himself seated again. The wine had restored his hunger and he attacked the dish, washing it down with more of the vital libations.

As the feast continued, the fair-haired girl who had greeted him earlier took up a lyre and began to sing. Her fingers danced along the strings, plucking magic from the air and a hush fell over the crowd. She incanted the song of the dead God, Osiris, his body torn to pieces by his jealous brother, and at last discovered by his mourning wife, Isis. For a moment the barge, and all its revelers, fell away as the music carried Antony to the Land of the Gods. He saw, in his mind’s eye, the Goddess kneeling in the Nile mud weeping over her dead lover.

A shudder ran up his spine.
He
was this God who had been ripped apart, torn sinew from sinew in a fury of exquisite pain.

His head spun.

The swirl of obscuring mist hid the path of the murky Nile but Antony could make out a slender rowboat gliding silently through wispy tufts of fog. The dark Jackal God was its oarsman. Anubis turned his bottomless black eyes on Antony and a jolt of fear surged through him, but he found himself powerless to turn away from the Jackal’s hypnotic gaze which drew him deeper and deeper, into the darkness of the blackest void….

But as the last strum of the lyre vibrated through the hall, his mind snapped back to his present surroundings. The room seemed overflowing with revelers, more lively and full of laughter then before, yet the most important guest at the banquet had yet to appear.

Where was Cleopatra?

He stood again, determined to search the vessel top to bottom until he found her, when the music changed. The drone of a horn and the slow erotic beat of a single drum filled the room.

A fever crept into his blood at the sound of the music. The crimson curtains separating the hall from the deeper recesses of the floating temple slowly parted to reveal Cleopatra in all her glory, shining with the light of the Goddess from every pore of her body. Her magnetism radiated across the room. For a moment Antony forgot to breathe.

Her distant eyes, so bright and clear in the darkness of her face, sizzled with intensity beneath the veil of her trance. Slowly, with the grace of an uncoiling serpent, she danced to the low droning music, her body swaying with the tide of notes. Moved by the call of the Goddess, she began to turn, gyrating her full hips in a sensuous rhythm, her golden veils one moment hiding, the next revealing the luscious curve of her bare belly, a gleaming pearl adorning her navel, her inviting round arms and thighs, the circle of her taut nipples pushing against the fabric of her shimmering tunic.

The music grew faster and more violent as she danced in time with the increasing beat, bowing and arching, twirling and skipping to fan the blaze that had erupted in Antony. The room began to sway with her movements, with each twist of her hips, each flash of her burning eyes, but he did not feel weak. Desire forced him to take a few halting steps forward as the tempting Goddess drew closer, her hips grinding, her hands grasping swollen, flushed breasts.

He reached out to her, but she moved with the quickness of a playful cat from his grasp. The drums beat more frantically and the other men and women began to take up the amatory dance, twisting their bodies around each other as the Goddess of Desire inflamed them. Antony pushed his way through the sensual masses like a charging bull.

He would have this woman.

After the endless teasing and frustration he had endured at the hands of the Bacchantes, he could stand no more. He caught a glimpse of her, moving in a trance to the sound of the pounding drums, her honey skin gleamed with sweat. She was caught in the primitive urges of the dance, giving herself up to it completely, her head thrown back, black hair streaming to her hips.

She saw him approaching through the sea of people, his eyes blazing with sexual hunger. She darted through the red curtains, casting a quick feverish glance behind her. Their eyes locked for one moment before she disappeared down a shadowy stairway into the belly of the ship.

Antony tore through the curtains and down the stairs after her. He paused for a moment at the bottom, his eyes adjusting to the dim light. The chamber was a small torchlit temple. Amber incense, smoldering in a brazier, cast a heavy narcotic haze at the foot of Isis’s golden statue. Beneath the Goddess, Cleopatra lay draped across a silken pallet sprinkled with crushed night-blooming jasmine. Her jade eyes were glazed over in a heated trance of desire, her head thrown back in surrender, unbound hair falling in loose waves to the floor. Her full breasts strained against the fabric of her tunic with every panting breath of need that escaped her parted lips. She rested before him in all her sensual glory, her inviting ripe body an offering on the altar of the God.

Tonight he was the God.

Antony met her yearning eyes and the heat between them washed over him like a wave as his sword clattered to the ground and he went to her. Never releasing his gaze, the Egyptian Queen slowly drew the gold tissue from her shoulders, inching it down to reveal the soft swell of her naked breasts. She leaned back against the cushions and opened her arms, welcoming him into her embrace.

Antony tore off his cloak, savagely pulling her into his grasp. His hand wound into her black hair as his lips burned across Cleopatra’s throat. He was intoxicated by the musky scent of her deep rose perfume, the weight of her breasts under his palms, the warm melody of her sighs in his ear. He was deranged with desire, drunk with the energy of the God, and somewhere deep inside, Antony the man was desperate to possess Cleopatra the woman, whom he had lusted after for so many years.

A low moan escaped her lips as his hot breath on her breasts made her flesh rise up, begging for the touch of his warm tongue on nipples as dark and sweet as wine, but he pulled back and held her by the shoulders for a moment, just drinking in the beauty of her dusky face, hot flushed cheeks and the soft ripe mouth he had yearned to kiss since the moment he first set eyes on her.

She was his––at last. He brushed his lips against hers, reveling in the molten burst of passion the feel of her mouth on his sent through his hungry body.

Drugged with desire, and the power of the Gods, she clung to his broad shoulders, pressing her ripe body against him so his hard flesh rubbed against the damp warm silk of her tunic. “Please, please take me,” she begged in a throaty whisper.

He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her into a kiss that blotted out all thought, all awareness of anything but the sweet warmth of her, Cleopatra, Isis––this divine black void of melting passion binding them together.

All rational thought dissolved, like pearls melting in the wine goblets of Cleopatra’s fabled banquet table. Everything was instinct as a power took them over, moving through him, through her. He could hardly tell where he ended and she began. He felt the primal divinity of the Goddess in her touch, the strength of the fertile earth in her hands as they pulled him closer and caressed his bare back. The call of the sea rushed through his ears as he closed his eyes and worshipped her full body with his lips, pressing her thighs open to nuzzle her damp sex, lapping her up like the waves against the perfect pink shell of her, his tongue unleashing soft moans of pleasure from Cleopatra’s lips as her head fell back against the silk cushions in a haze of pleasure.