The Black Raven - Katharine Kerr [122]
Lilli obligingly reached out and laid her fingers just on the edge of the lead strip. She frowned in concentration while the candlelight danced around her. All at once she began to speak in a hollow voice, dark enough for a young man.
“Bind him round. He must die slowly.” Her head tilted back, and her eyes rolled up. “Burcan’s child to bind him. Burcan’s death brings his. As this so that.”
Nevyn leapt up so fast that he nearly knocked over the candles. He used his whole arm to scribe a pentagram in the air and thrust the banishing forward to envelop her like a net.
“Lilli! Come back!”
With a sob Lilli straightened up in her chair. Nevyn rushed around the table and grabbed her hands, pulled her to her feet, and flung an arm around her shoulders.
“Forgive me!” he said. “I’d forgotten how fast the trance takes you over.”
“What did I say? I can’t remember.”
“Some very grim things. Here, sit down and rest while I seal this loathsome thing up again.”
Once the tablet was sealed and bound, he put it back in its box, then hid it deep within one of his herbman’s packs. He wanted to ensure that no casual visitor or careless servant would pick it up by mistake or out of curiosity. Lilli sat exhausted in the chair, slumped back, with one arm dangling over the side.
“I’ll walk you back to your chamber,” Nevyn said. “You need to sleep.”
“I do, truly. But I do wish you’d tell me what I said.”
“In the morning, when it’s light.”
That night Nevyn walked for long hours outside in the silent fortress. Overhead the wheel of the stars hung close to earth in the crisp fall air, yet dark towers broke and bounded his view. Merodda’s nasty little sorcerer had been a clever man, all right, who knew enough lore to turn his curse into a trap. He had used Burcan’s son, that pitiful child buried with the curse, as surrogate to link Prince Maryn to Burcan. If Burcan died, Maryn’s death would follow—if, of course, this dark dweomerman had the actual power to back up his lore. He had certainly managed to energize the tablet to some degree, or Lilli would not have felt the link so strongly.
And Burcan was already dead.
In dark night Lilli woke at the sound of her door closing. She could make out a figure standing by her bed, a dark shadow against the grey. She sat up, stifling a scream.
“It’s just me,” Maryn said.
“Oh, good! You startled me, that’s all.”
“Were you having one of your bad dreams?” He sat down on the edge of the bed and began to pull off his boots.
“I was. I’m so glad you’re here.”
When he held out his arms she nestled close to him. His mouth brushed her cheek, then found her lips. His kisses were familiar, now—it always amazed her, that she would know his body so well, when once she’d thought him beyond her. He let her go, then stood up to pull back the blankets. She lay down, stretching with a little sigh of anticipated pleasure. He laughed and lay down next to her.
“I trust, my lady,” he said, “that this isn’t just a grim duty you perform for your prince?”
Laughing she rolled into his arms. He kissed her again, letting his mouth linger on hers while his hand lingered on her breast. She loved the way he touched her, forceful but slow, loved the way he took control of her, catching her hands, moving them where he wished her to touch him. She could lie back in a warm sea of trust and let his strange magnetism envelop her. That night she had never been more aware of the force that seemed to pour from him; in the dark room she could see it, a golden cloud that gushed from his body to wrap around them both.
His hand slid between her legs, and she whimpered, shutting her eyes, but still it seemed she was aware of that spiral of gold, wrapping her around more and more tightly. He moved, knelt between her legs, and entered her at last. She cried out as the pleasure of it swept over her, but in some small part of her mind she knew that this time was different, that his raw male force had found her too open, dangerously