Lord of the Forest Read online

  The reflection on the water inched closer to the apex of her thighs. She reached out her arms as if she would embrace the mighty moon and hold it to her heart. That heavenly orb seemed to loom lower, to his amazement.

  He could not blame the moon. He himself was so aroused that he forgot to take his cock in hand. Vane wanted to watch.

  The advancing moonlight touched the plump under curves of her behind, pressed into the rock. She gave a little moan and moved her hands down, leaving her nipples in an astonishing state of erection. Had another naiad wantonly straddled her and positioned her own private parts over one of those full, soft breasts—Vane had also heard that they played with each other in every way imaginable, man or no man—the nipple would have felt like a tiny cock.

  Never mind that. This naiad’s hands gently stretched her labia open. The moonlight touched her there a moment later. It seemed to pour down from the sky, into her, filling her—the beautiful naiad raised her legs high and clasped her ankles, offering her tender, most secret parts with shameless abandon and crying out with joy as the moon lit her up from the inside out.

  The moon moved higher, caressing all of her and bathing her voluptuous body in white light. The naiad was brightness itself, helpless with pleasure, lost in a rapturous dream that he wished he could share.

  Vane stayed where he was until the last of her whimpering cries died away on the evening breeze. He was a lucky man indeed to have witnessed her intimacy with the moon, and she would never know she had been watched.

  He waited, expecting her to rise from the rock and scamper off to sleep with the others. But the naiad stayed exactly where she was…if not exactly in the same shape. Her body seemed to diminish as the moon began to move on, beginning the downward phase of its night’s journey.

  He was on fire again but with curiosity this time. Slowly, with utmost stealth, Vane moved through the water toward the rock. He stopped several feet away, studying the white apparition once more. The gorgeous naiad had vanished utterly. The top of the rock where she had lain sparkled silver, outlining the shape of her voluptuous body, a shape filled with a celestial light that would come and go with the phases of the moon but never fade. That was all that was left of her.

  Full of wonder and a little regret, Lord Vane sank slowly into the water and went back home through the subterranean passageways, vowing to ease his cock with Hella. If he could find her.

  The stairs of his stone castle were warm underfoot—the walls radiated heat, as usual. Usually he found it pleasant but not now. His body retained the coolness of the flowing water he’d swum through but his damned mind was on fire again. It was going to be a long, long night.

  Finding a towel, he scrubbed at his damp skin, feeling out of sorts, willing away the memory of the moon-drunk naiad. Was there wine in the ewer his manservant had left? He poked his nose into it—the fire in his bedchamber had gone out and he could not see whether the liquid it held was water or wine.

  A whiff of grapes reassured him. Excellent. He would have a little wine—no, a lot—and look for Hella in the scrying pool again. He would not, however, tell her about watching the voluptuous naiad, so white and so cool and so very different from the slender fire nymph. He tipped the ewer up over his head, expertly filling his mouth with the thin stream that poured from it like a peasant imbibing from a leather wine sack. The rich and powerful Lord Vane knew exactly how to get stinking drunk.

  An hour later, he sat staring into the pool of volatile oil. The serenity of the night had been troubled by events he could not understand.

  To begin with, Marius had appeared on the scrying surface, tears running down his handsome face. He was saying something about fire…and an ancient tree…Yes, yes, get on with it, Lord Vane said mentally. When did lightning not strike lonely, sea-girt realms and did it not always aim for the highest point?

  Vane had picked up the astral projection with a reverse turn of the calendrical adjuster, an invention of his own. The other Arcan lords relied on mumbled spells and that bitch of bitches, luck, to scry. But he was a practical man. And at the moment, a very, very frustrated one. He had finished the wine in the ewer a while ago and rung for more. He was deep in his cups and irritable. No Hella. He could swear that the lava in his balls was backing up into his brain.

  He reached out and turned the calendrical adjuster the other way.

  “Vane? Is that you?”

  He belched with surprise. The damn thing worked better than he’d thought.

  “Yesh.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  Vane’s reply was obscene and to the point.

  “Ravelle has returned.”

  That bit of news brightened his mood. Let the others dodge the demon. Lord Vane wanted to fight him.

  “I can take him.”

  “Together, we will be stronger, Vane.”

  The Lord of the Fire belched again, pure sulfur this time. “Hand him over if you have him. What kind of trouble is he making now?”

  Marius swiped a hand over his face and mixed dirt with the drying tears on his face. “He torched Philonous. I came in time to save him, but he might not live. I was hoping that you—that there is an antidote to fire.”

  “There isn’t. It burns and it kills. Powerful stuff. Why I like to play with it.” Foggy as he was, Lord Vane had a feeling he was supposed to be sympathetic. “Philo—who? I don’t remember that name.”

  “The most ancient tree of all. He’s watched out for me since I was cast down to the Forest Isle.”

  “Oh, that Philonous,” Vane said with a notable lack of conviction. He did feel sorry for Marius in his drunken way.

  “Can you get here quickly? Isn’t there anything you could bring to help heal him?”

  “I have a salve for scorches. But I just came from there.” He touched a finger to the surface of the oil, wishing he could make the Lord of the Forest go away.

  Marius’s pleading look changed to one of suspicion. “You did? Where were you?”

  “I came up in a pool I’d never seen. Nothing going on,” he lied, just in case Marius knew the moon-loving naiad. “I came back and started to drink. I was looking for a fuck, but a fight will do.”

  Marius shook his head. “The Arcan lords must meet as soon as possible. I signaled Gideon with bonfires on the beach—”

  “Saw them,” Vane said indifferently.

  “And someone got a message to Simeon underwater using Pio.”

  “That swordfish? One of these days I’m going to have him for dinner.”

  Marius shook his head. “Vane, listen to me. Ravelle will not stay in the Outer Darkness and the islands and their inhabitants are in danger.”

  “I can take Ravelle with no help from you three. Stupid horned bastard. High time someone put him in his place.” Marius hesitated before he spoke again, and the Lord of Fire gave in to a mad, wine-fueled impulse. “All right, green man. I’m coming. How many subterranean turns before I get to where you are?”

  “Eleven. Hurry.”

  For the second time that night Lord Vane hoped that cold water would calm him down and sober him up. He looked for the jar of salve that he kept by the fireplace, tied on a half-assed breechcloth, and came up in the right pool with a banging headache.

  Gideon, Lord of the Dark, was already there, but then he could fly, Vane thought sourly. And Simeon had evidently just come—he was talking to Marius. The Lord of Fire spat out the water he’d swallowed, and went to join the other three Arcans. To his surprise, Rhiannon was with them.

  He pulled up his breechcloth and smoothed down his drenched, tangled hair. Whatever they were kneeled around had been badly burned. He could smell it from here.

  He looked down at the tree spirit on the damask cloth—from Gideon’s banquet table, by his guess. Vane brought out the jar of salve and tapped Marius on the shoulder with it. “It won’t do him much good, but here it is.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” Rhiannon said softly. She soothed Philonous’s narrow le
aves—there weren’t many left—and took one of his branches in her hand.

  Vane felt ashamed of himself and kneeled beside her. “Can he hear us?”

  “Yes,” Marius replied. “When he’s conscious.”

  Vane winced when he saw the tree spirit struggle to open its burned eyelids, moaning with pain. He gave the jar to Rhiannon. “You put it on. A fingertip’s worth on each lid. And give him water to drink. A drop at a time.”

  She glanced at him, forgiveness in her gaze, and Vane stood up again. He had caught a whiff of something that he recognized—something sulfurous and nasty. Hella would have attributed it to him, but he knew it wasn’t him because he’d bathed twice in one night.

  Marius rose and joined him a little ways off. “I smell Ravelle,” Vane said immediately, keeping his voice low.

  “I told you that he—”

  “He’s right here, very near. We can kill him now!”

  “I cannot leave Philonous,” was all Marius said. “But Ravelle is not long for this world or any world. Not if I can help it.”

  Philonous lived through the night, even though they had to move him a very great distance for fear of the demon’s return. His eyelids fluttered open when the first soft rays of dawn sprang from the sun hidden below the horizon. Rhiannon leaned over the bed.

  “Can you see me, Philonous?” she asked anxiously.

  The tree spirit took a long time to answer, working parched lips and breathing with difficulty. He rasped out a yes. The single word took enormous effort.

  “Good. That’s one good thing.”

  Philonous was silent. His leaves plucked feebly at the soft blanket that covered him. He asked his next question just by looking at her.

  She understood. “You are in Gideon’s pavilion—our pavilion, I mean. You will be safe here. You can rest and begin to heal.”

  His old, old eyes filled with tears. He blinked them away. It would hurt too much to cry. But he had to tell them which way the demon had flown and what he’d threatened to do to Marius and his new love, Linnea. He opened his mouth but no sound came out. Philonous died at the moment the sun appeared in glory over the horizon. They buried him the next day.

  7

  Linnea awaited Marius at the base of the great oak inside the door, which was ajar. He’d told her to stay on with Quercus as soon as both of them knew what had happened, and that he would come as soon as he was able. Philonous’s terrible injuries meant that his swift death had been a mercy of sorts.

  Her own demon-wound had healed when the poison was fully drawn but the scratch had left a ridged scar. A memento of Ravelle that she would carry for life. At least she still had a life to live, unlike the poor willow tree that Marius had loved so much. If only she could fly to Marius instead of waiting, take him in her arms, and comfort him as he had comforted her.

  Her strange encounter with the demon had been only the beginning.

  Ravelle’s malice was indeed a force to be reckoned with. He had brought her to her knees as his sexual servitor by his foul trickery and he had burned a helpless willow tree too ancient to pull up its deep roots and struggle away. Yet he would let her live. Marius was the ultimate object of his insane wrath, because she, Linnea, had chosen the centaur to be her lover. The demon’s bizarre mind had taken that as an insult to be avenged.

  I want you, Linnea. The insinuating horror of Ravelle’s voice echoed in her mind even now.

  She heard the sound of trampling hooves and a vigorous crashing in the undergrowth. They’d sent Esau with a message for him when Quercus explained that a demon as powerful as Ravelle could conjure up the scrying pools of good folk in a shallow bowl of water and spy to his heart’s content. The magpie’s distinctive black-and-white plumage had been dyed by her with a brush to make him less noticeable, and he’d flown far and wide until he returned with a tiny scroll secured around his neck with a red thread.

  Marius wrote back that he would travel in centaur form to reach her more quickly and carry her away to a place that was safer still, no matter the stage of the moon. Then he burst out of the woods, wheeling, rearing, looking for her, until he saw her step out of the door in the tree.

  She picked up the skirts of her soft kirtle and ran to him. “Marius!”

  His hooves slammed into the earth with a thunderous noise and his muscular arms enfolded her. She was unimaginably happy to see him. He kissed her over and over, the top of her head, the lips she turned up to him, her cheeks, as if she was more dear to him than life.

  Quercus, biding his time until the centaur calmed down, came out at last from the tree.

  “Thank you, my friend, for keeping her safe,” Marius said, deep feeling in his voice. “For all we know, Linnea might have met the fate of Philonous.”

  The wise, wrinkled face showed both grief and understanding, but Quercus said nothing except something that sounded like a blessing on them both in Treeish.

  Marius turned to her again. “Are you ready, Linnea?”

  She nodded and he swept her up, nearly throwing her bodily over his shoulder in his haste to depart. He flipped his healing tail as he wheeled toward the woods and Linnea managed to right herself and find her seat on the broad back, leaning forward to grasp his mane.

  “Good-bye, Quercus! And thank you!”

  The little old spirit watched them go with a look of sad resignation, then ducked when Esau, black as coal, swooped out of the door in the tree and flew after them.

  The Arcan lords gathered once more, in Simeon’s stronghold by the sea this time. Ravelle, filthy beast that he was, was known to be finicky about getting his cloven hooves wet.

  A raw wind from the east, sent their way by prior arrangement with Quercus. He liked to meddle with the weather from his nice, dry tree and had whipped the waves between the isles to high, dangerous peaks after all had arrived. They were safe enough.

  “I say we kill him as soon as possible by fair means or foul,” Gideon began. His wings were folded about his shoulders against the cold draft, as his eelskin suit was insufficient protection from the damp, which he hated. “What think you, Simeon?”

  The selkie lord’s answer was far more thoughtful. “How will we be sure that it is him?”

  “We stick a knife into him,” said Lord Vane. “If it is Ravelle, he will turn back into his real self.”

  “And if it isn’t, we have harmed an innocent,” Megaleen said.

  Vane scowled. “Who cares?”

  “Philonous would not ask us to take a life for his,” Marius said. “We would dishonor his memory if we did, even by accident.”

  “Ravelle has gone too far,” the Lord of Fire spat out. “He will not stop at the life of one old tree.” The discussion seemed to bore him. His long black hair spilled over his shoulders and he pushed it back irritably.

  Linnea studied him from where she sat with Rhiannon across the great hall of the stronghold. They had risen from the table to oversee the sea-maids preparing the sleeping chambers for them and had just returned.

  That look in his eyes—for all his gruffness, she had the oddest feeling that he was missing someone. It would be going too far to say that the lord of the Fire Isle might be in love—he seemed too fierce and too selfish for that tender emotion. But she sensed an essential loneliness that seemed to weigh on him. He sprawled in his seat, tapping his fingers on the table, his long legs wide apart, and she immediately looked elsewhere.

  Rhiannon smiled at her. “What do you think of him?”

  Linnea paused to consider Vane once more. “I think the lord of fire is as wild as he is wily.”

  The other woman gave a low laugh. “It is hard to believe that you have only just met him. Precisely right. But he may be our best hope against the demon, if he is not distracted by his, ah, urges.”

  “Urges. I see.” Linnea glanced his way again, feeling disloyal to her impulsive, hard-charging, good-hearted Marius. But Vane had sexual magnetism that seemed hard for him to contain.

  Perhaps he saw no
need to.

  Responding instinctively to feminine scrutiny, Lord Vane returned it in an extremely bold way, as if he were imagining a threesome. Annoyed by his behavior, Linnea rose from her seat and extended a hand to Rhiannon. “Let us sit with our men,” she said in a low voice. “I do not care to be stared at like that.”

  Rhiannon nodded and came with her. “Do not take it personally. He is who he is. He has been in a bad temper of late, but that is nothing new.”

  “Reason will not save the day,” Linnea pointed out. “The demon is not going to negotiate.”

  “I think you should bring that up when we rejoin the others.”