enter— and he only with the queen's permission.'
Blade smothered his grin. Poor Sylvo. He was going to stick his ugly nose into a bear's den. And so was Blade.
Chapter Seven
Blade lay in shadow, on soft sward in an open glen, cushioned and half concealed by bracken and pink-tipped heather. The glen was bathed in a greenish cathedral light, save where a single ray of sun struck downward through the trees.
She stood in the golden beam, clad all in white, scarlet girdled and deep cowled, and she carried the golden sword before her as if in offering. Blade could not see her eyes, yet knew they regarded him with a strange and burning intensity that set his blood to coursing. He was conscious of a tremendous sexual stirring in himself.
It was the Dru High Priestess, she who had sacrificed the girl in the oak glade, and Blade spoke her name as though he had always known it.
'Drusilla! Come to me.'
She nodded slowly, thrust the golden sword into earth and threw back her cowl. Blade could not breathe. Slowly, her hands outstretched to him, she approached and the beam of sun moved with her. Her hair floated in argent tendrils around a cream-skinned, heart-shaped face with a scarlet glistening mouth and eyes as lambent gold as the sword itself. The white robe did not mask, but revealed, and as she rippled toward him Blade saw her breasts dance, each to a separate tune, and her thighs and buttocks moved in a liquid flow.
She halted before him, one hand plucking at the front of her robe. A single loop and button held the garment in place.
'How know you my name?' Her voice held the chime of faery bells, yet with a deeper and mocking note.
Ravished by desire, lusting for her, Blade held out a hand and blurted, 'I do not know how— I just knew it. But this is not a time for talk. Come lie with me, Drusilla.'
Her amber eyes devoured him, and her hand toyed with the fastening of her robe, yet she shook her head and said, 'Not so, Blade. Here is not a time or place. Yet I will not altogether deny you. Do you desire a taste of Paradise, Blade, a view of treasures you may one day win? Speak and it shall be so.'
Blade groaned. 'I thirst and you offer me promises. You are cruel, Drusilla!'
Her smile was edged with mockery and he thought her teeth suddenly grown long, and while she was still lovely it was now the beauty of the beast. She knelt beside him, unfastening her robe, and gave him sight and touch of the blue-veined breasts, brown tipped and wide of aureole, white as milk and firm as marble, and as cold to his touch.
The line came unbidden into his mind— la belle dame sans merci— and both words and language were familiar, yet he did not grasp their meaning. He caressed her breasts with his fingers, wondering why they were so cold, and she leaned closer to him. The golden eyes were half closed and she moaned as she said: 'Suckle me, Blade. My breasts are heavy with milk of bloody sin. Suckle me, drink my milk, and half my sins are yours. It will make a lighter burden for both of us.'
Her teat was in his mouth, cold and firm, yet he did not suckle. A great fear was on him, and at the same time a great lust, and his loins betrayed him and he groaned and writhed in spasm—
'Master! Master— wake up! Your cursed moaning is like a beacon— they will be on us within the hour. Wake up, master. And shut up— if you value our skins.'
Richard Blade rolled over and stared up at Sylvo. Here was no verdant grotto, no succubus High Priestess. Here was a hideaway in the fens, a narrow ledge of mud above water, screened by high growing reeds and capped by a gray and sunless sky. Marsh birds made dun arrows overhead and nearby the three horses cropped discontentedly at rank sedge and salt grass.
Blade rubbed sleep from his eyes and combed back his hair with fingers that were uncommonly dirty. Things had gone well enough, the diversion had worked and he had snatched Taleen from the queen's house without hindrance, yet what followed had been such a hurly-burly and helter-skelter of frantic improvisation that he had very nearly despaired.
Yet they won free of Sarum Vil— Blade killed two men of arms in the doing, with Sylvo leaving his best knife in the belly of a third— and the man had somehow followed marsh paths in the dark and fog to get them this far. It was a miracle for which Blade was duly grateful.
He fingered his curling dark stubble and stood up. 'I was having a nightmare,' Blade said a bit sheepishly. 'I was loud?'
Sylvo, squatting on his haunches, squinted and twisted his harelip into a grimace. 'Loud enough to wake the dead, master. Which we shall soon be if there are searchers nearby. Ar, had there been a moon I would have thought you struck by it! Who is Drusilla, master? It has a familiar ring, yet I cannot place it.'
Blade waded off into the ankle deep water to relieve himself. Here a screen of rushes hid him from the still sleeping Princess Taleen.
'I do not know,' he said sternly. 'A phantom in a dream, no more, no less. Who can know of dreams? And who cares! How is the Princess? Not yet awakened?'
Sylvo shook his head. 'Nothing changed, master. She sleeps like a babe, and yet no healthy babe ever slept so deep. We must wake her, master, or I fear she will never wake this side of Frigga's domain.'
Blade went to where Taleen slept beneath the scarlet cloak that had been Horsa's. Her long auburn hair was all in knots and tangles, her face was pinched and wan, and there were crescent purple bruises beneath her eyes. Sweat glinted on her brow. Blade, kneeling used a corner of the cloak to wipe it away. He damned the Lady Alwyth and himself for his need for sleep. Had he only noted this earlier—
Sylvo, testing the edge of his second best dirk with a thumb, said: 'I could make her a posset, master.' He gazed around him at the desolate fens. 'There is no lack of noxious matter for the making of it. It will make her vomit, ar, how it will make her vomit, and so will she rid her belly of the sleeping poison. There is naught to lose, for I think she is dying now.'
Blade glared at him. 'You are a physician, then? How do I know you will not poison her further?'
