Daughter of Fire (42 page)

“Can you see my thoughts?” he asked.

She confessed, “Unlike others, your thoughts are closed to me.”

“And it disturbs you.”

“It is only that I have always been able to know another’ true thoughts and emotions.” She remembered Merlin’s warning, that she would only truly know him if he allowed it.

“Then you have reason to doubt me. You may even believe that I am a creature of the Darkness?”

“Nay,” she said with a growing huskiness of voice as his hand wandered lower and stroked over a breast. “I would know it. The creature of my vision—the phoenix rising from the flames—is a creature of fire and light, not a creature of Darkness.”

“And yet, you cannot be certain.”

“There is a way.”

He nodded. “Say it and I will prove myself.”

“It is not that simple. In order for me to truly know your heart, you must open your thoughts to me.”

He shrugged. “’Tis not a great thing you ask.” With a crooked smile he took another drink of wine. “I have been told that my head is full of hay. Perhaps you will find only grazing for horses when you look inside.”

“ ’Tis not a matter to be taken lightly,” she protested. “It is not just your thoughts I will know, but your hopes, memories, and emotions. Your very soul will be laid bare to me.”

“I would bare it to no one else, mistress. You may steal my thoughts, in truth you already have my heart. I knew it when I discovered you gone.” Though he made a jest, the gentle  restraint of in his hand as it stroked through her hair to clasp the back of her head spoke of deadly earnest.

“I feared that I had lost you, and then relived it twice over when I saw that creature attack you. You drew it away from me,” realizing it for the first time. It explained the reason the beast had wavered.

“To give you time,” she answered softly. “A chance, perhaps, that you might live.”

“With no thought to your own life?”

“The creature would have destroyed you and then returned for me. That was its purpose all along. I was weakened from my passage through the portal, I had no strength to fight it a second time.”

“A second time?”

She nodded. “The first was in the portal.” She closed her eyes, recalling the image. “It was as if he was blocking the opening to the other side. He kept trying to push me back, to prevent my return.”

“A man? What did he look like?”

She slipped from his lap, moving with a restlessness of  the fear she still felt. “It was only an image. The Darkness had taken a form to strike at me. It is part of the deceit and trickery that it uses.”

He leaned forward in the chair. “Can you sense its thoughts?”

She shook her head. “It is very careful to keep its thoughts protected from me. For then I might find a way to destroy it.”

“Just as my thoughts are closed to you. I will do this thing that you ask so that you may know I tell the truth.”

“No!”

“I do not fear it, Vivian. Indeed, I welcome it, for I grow weary of the burden.”

“I fear it!” Vivian cried out. “It is dangerous. If a person is not strong he may be destroyed.”

“Do you think me not strong enough to endure it?”

“ ’Tis not that. You are more than strong.” She felt color burn wildly across her skin at the remembered strength of his body joining hers.

“The pain is intense. Every part of you will be laid open to me, like a wound. Your natural instinct will be to fight it and in the fighting there will be a pain so intense that you may not survive it. I will not risk you in that way. I could not bear to be the cause of your death.”

“You will not risk it?” Rorke rose from the chair, the fur mantle swirling about the powerful naked body beneath, like skin, making him seem even more a feral, untamed creature framed by the fire at the hearth.

He was angry. She needed no gift to understand that. It was there in the hard lines etched on his fierce, handsome features, in the ridges of veins that patterned his heavily muscled forearm as he made a fist, in the fire and ice in that gray gaze.

“I must accept all that you have told me. For I have seen your power with my own eyes and there is no other explanation. I have seen the portal in the mist. I have seen your healing ways unlike any in the mortal world. And I have known your fire until I was certain I would perish from it, and it would not have mattered to me.

“Now you tell me of a great Darkness that seeks to sweep away everything before it with but one hope. That it may be vanquished. You have said that in this learning of me you will know all about me and my true heart. But is it not true that I will also learn of you. And in the learning might there not be something to be gained to vanquish this Darkness?”

He walked toward her, each movement was like that of a powerful beast, lean, perfectly formed, barely restrained. He did not return to the chair but knelt beside her at the floor strewn with furs, all of his virile, naked glory displayed with as much ease of confidence as though he wore battle armor.

“You fear for my soul, mistress. But in truth you have already laid claim to it,” he said, laying a hand alongside her cheek. “And my heart, my every thought, every breath I take. I would die for you on any field of battle. It is not for you to say yea or nay. ’Tis for me to risk it if I am willing.” He lowered his mouth to hers and lightly brushed his lips across hers.

“It must be done, my lovely Jehara. There is no other way.”

She nodded sadly, her eyes closing as she breathed in the passionate heat of him, drawing it deep inside her and feeling his power become one with hers.

“Aye,” she whispered.” Then taking another deep breath, she moved away from him. “I must draw on the powers of the Light. The fire must be built high. Every candle and torch must be lit.”

He nodded. When it was done, he returned to stand before her.

“You must be completely relaxed,” she told him, drawing him back to the chair before the hearth. When he sat reclined in the chair, the fur robe draped about him, she encouraged him to drink more of the wine.

“I have blended an herbal powder in the wine. You must not fight what you will feel.”

He gave the goblet a long look, as if contemplating the true nature of what she might have placed there. Then, abruptly, he downed the entire contents. He set the goblet aside, his lips curving a smile.

“I can think of other ways to relax me, for you have a power beyond any wine or potions, mistress.” He reached out to her, taking a silken tendril of her hair between his fingers and stroking it. With a shudder, she felt that simple contact and knew it was a trick of her own mind, recalling the pleasure of his touch on her body.

“Perhaps for you, milord. But I must have my wits about me, and in truth I have little control over them when you touch me.”

“A witch bewitched?” he suggested, the expression behind his gray eyes filled with myriad possibilities.

“By God, mistress, you threaten to undo me with no more than words.”

“I would not undo you at all, milord,” she said gravely, thinking of what was to come.

His hand gently twisted in her hair, wrapping it about his hand as he slowly drew her close. The warmth of his breath mingled with hers. His mouth brushed hers in an agony of tenderness. But the words were hardly tender.

They were filled with the raw, naked power as he whispered against her lips, “I surrender to you, mistress of fire.”

Please,
she thought, whispering a silent prayer.
Let his heart be true. For I could not bear to be the cause of his death.

She brought a candle from the table closer and held it between them.

“Look into the flame,” she instructed, deliberately lowering her voice so that the words were wrapped in soft tones as she began the bonding spell that would bring their thoughts together.

“Concentrate on the flame, and nothing else. See its shape, the way it gently breathes and moves, all the colors—pale yellow at the tip so that you can almost see through it,” the words became rhythmic, “then bright yellow, soft gold, and finally blue at the heart of the flame.

“Look into the flame,” she repeated, concentrating her own gaze into the heart of it. “See the colors. Feel its warmth. Hear the sound it makes.

“Think only of the flame, close your eyes and see it still—bright yellow, soft gold, deepest blue, and hear the words it whispers.”

He did as she bade, sitting before her with eyes closed, head bent slightly forward, arms resting on the arms of the chair. His warrior’s body was completely relaxed, the powerful muscles at ease on his long frame. His features were in repose, eased of their fierce emotions and the equally fierce mask he kept over them.

He had surrendered his will to her, but she felt no satisfaction in it. She felt only uncertainty at the outcome, at the truth that might be learned. And for the first time in her life, she hated the gifts she had been born with that she now realized with a certainty was both gift and curse.

She could end it now, bring him back from the place of gentle repose where his thoughts now lay. But he would demand the truth. And she would be forced to tell it. There was no other choice but to find the greater truth that lay within his heart and soul.

Still holding the candle between them, the fragile bond of the flame now their connection to one another, she passed the fingers of her right hand through the tip of the flame, strengthening the bond, reaching out, opening a portal to his soul.

She felt the strength of the flame burning through her veins, reaching out, seeking and finding the flame of life that dwelt within her. Turning back to Rorke, the fire burning within her, she laid one hand along side his head, fingers gently pressing in until she felt the sharp ridge of bones beneath her fingertips. The other she laid over his heart, then closed her eyes, and whispered the ancient words.

“Element of fire, spirit of light, essence of life, awaken the night. Fire of the soul, flame of life, as light reveals truth, burn golden bright.”

Her consciousness joined with his in a burst of fiery color. She felt the struggle within him to push her away, as layers like a shield over his heart and soul, burned away. She sent him a thought—a memory of their shared moments recently past, the image of their bodies joining; his tender assault of her body as she now tenderly assaulted the barrier that surrounded his heart; opening herself physically to him as she now persuaded him to open to her; the fiery power of their bodies meeting as one as her thoughts sought to join with his.

Then word by enchanted word, as the power flowed from her through him with gentle persuasion, layer upon layer was stripped away. She felt the last of his struggle as his powerful body ceased the physical struggle, and the complete surrender as his soul opened to hers.

It was like being thrown into a vortex of sight, sound, and color of every experience, thought, and emotion he had ever possessed. It was overwhelming, the images sweeping past her consciousness in a blinding blur that was out of control with the torment of emotion at surrendering himself to her.

The colors were brilliant, multihued rainbows that were as chaotic as his emotions. Images of faces flashed before her. Tarek al Sharif, Duke William, Stephen of Valois, Queen Matilda, the count, and more she barely recognized, countless more that she did not.

Then the images slowed their chaotic bombardment and settled into some vague order, passing from his lower consciousness of memory to her own. She saw images of a fierce battle and knew that it was the Battle of Hastings, and in experiencing it as he had she also experienced his emotions during the battle—methodical, cold calculation, exhilaration as the battle was met, a moment of uncertainty followed by the fierceness of spirit that allowed nothing but victory.

She saw everything as he had seen it that day, including the bloody aftermath and his own aftermath of grief and senseless waste. Then she was catapulted back through his memory of his own past to Normandy; the council of the nobility as William made his decision to seize the throne of England; countless encounters with his men, his feelings for Stephen of Valois like that of a brother, his lack of feeling for Judith de Marque as he took her to his bed.

Farther back through countless military campaigns; his long friendship with William; the military campaign across the Byzantine Empire; his unique friendship with Tarek al Sharif and the encounter that had brought them together—a life spared for a life saved and a blood oath of loyalty.

Then back farther still past the events of his early knighthood, bloody encounters and deaths as a young man proved his warrior’s prowess; back to the shadowy days of his youth and it was here that she felt such a devastating ache of loss and pain.

She saw a man she knew to be his father, the Count de Anjou; saw a young man she knew to be his younger brother, Philip, experienced his shame and pain at his bastard birth to the count’s mistress, his longing to be loved as his younger half-brother was loved, and his undying devotion for Philip in spite of it all.

She felt his joy at the gift of a mongrel pup, the only thing in this world that he might love. Then felt the sting of tears at her own eyes at his pain when his father had the animal taken from him.

There were countless other childhood experiences—the bastard child who could never be claimed by his father, who grew strong and tall in his father’s own image, stronger and taller than his brother, quicker of mind with the regal bearing of his royal forebears while Philip languished and was sickly. She felt his unconditional love that never wavered or turned to bitterness for the cruelties of fate that had him born a bastard.

Then she experienced the wrenching pain of separation as Rorke was sent from the only home he had ever known, fostered out to a soldier’s life, the black shield he carried that heralded his bastardy, the years that followed, the countless campaigns as he grew in stature and prowess. Then, the pivotal battle at Antioch, where brother was reunited with brother on the battlefield.

She experienced his joy and genuine pleasure at being with Philip once more, the camaraderie as brother fought alongside brother, the protection Rorke gave his brother who was ill suited to the rigors of war. The horrors of a battle met against overwhelming numbers, their position overrun, the fierce fighting as Rorke reacted like a man possessed, striking down all those about him until the battlefield around him was littered with bodies piled upon bodies, and the earth ran red with their blood as he fought to reach his brother. But he was too late. In shame, Philip had plunged his own knife deep, taking his own life.