She did claw at him, thrusting her loins up to meet him.
"We should get away from here," she panted. "Nareyera knows where we are; she could hurl spells! Our wards are down; that priest could turn the trees against us again, or the beasts of the Raurklor come a-sniffing, to see what meals the fire served them up…"
"Let them," Belard growled. "The danger makes me all the hungrier!" He bent his head and bit at her breasts.
Talyss moaned. Cupping them in her hands, she offered them to him, to bite all the harder.
"Yes! It does!" she hissed. "Take me-and may the Falcon take Nareyera!"
"Oh, it will," Belard snarled, sweat running down his face as he rammed into her. "The way she's going, it undoubtedly will!"
Chapter Thirty
Amteira came awake shivering. Small wonder; she was lying curled up on her side on the great mossy boulder, still wearing nothing at all. Falcon, how long had she been here?
She didn't remember falling asleep, didn't remember anything at all after starting into her prayer…
Knuckling her eyes awake, she sat up-only to have her arm fail her, so she almost fell back to greet the rock with her face.
Wincing, she rolled over on her back, rubbing one arm with the other, flexing both of them, and wiggling her fingers. They were stiff-all of her was stiff-and she found herself shivering. Stars were glimmering overhead through the dark cloak of leaves, and the night air was damp as well as cold. As she rolled over again, Amteira could see her breath for the most fleeting of moments, as a fading, drifting mist caught in the moonlight.
The moon was low, and around her the Raurklor was alive with rustlings and faint, distant hootings and calls. It was full night.
She sat up. Well, so much for her blood and prayer and all. Either there was no Forestmother and Jaklar was a hedge-wizard lying about his holy beliefs and deeds, or the goddess of the Raurklor wasn't disposed to listen to the entreaties of Amteira Hammerhand.
Most likely Jaklar was lying. "Lord Leaf," indeed. He wasn't a priest at all, but a clever fox who knew who to taint with his berries and ground roots, and when and how to sway or slay folk that way, with a few spells to back up his claims of serving a mighty goddess. Leaving Amteira Hammerhand as just one more fool who'd believed him.
There was her war-harness, just where she'd dropped it. She'd best get dressed before something with fangs came along and decided-hold!
What was that?
Where she'd shifted herself off the great mossy boulder, there was a faint glow.
It was coming from a spot smaller than the palm of her hand, amid the old fissures in the stone. It was the moss she'd wet with her blood, fallen from her skin to the rock, shining in moon-silver silence. A small radiance, but a steady one.
She reached out to touch it but drew back before her fingers reached it, and couldn't stop herself from turning about to shoot swift glances out into the dark forest all around her. Glances that saw no skulking men or beasts, nothing but trees and their leaves.
She looked back at the glow, half expecting it to rear up and lash out at her.
So was this some trick of Jaklar's, or is there a Forestmother after all?
The moss hadn't moved or changed. Staring down at it, Amteira decided she should pray again to the Forestmother. Just a few words this time, no more moss and blood. Just to ward off the disfavor of the goddess, if there was a Forestmother.
Considering what she'd just been thinking, it was only prudent. And would take her but a moment, before she'd get her armor back on and think about what she should do next.
"Holy Forestmother," she murmured, thrusting out her hand to put her fingers firmly on the moss.
She caught her breath and almost pulled them back again; the moss was warm where it should have been cold, dry where it should have been damp with dew. The doing of the goddess, or-ah. The heat of her own body. She'd been lying on it, of course, warming it with herself.
Smiling at her apprehension, the last of the Hammerhands sat up straight, looked to the stars and then down at the deepest, darkest trees around her, and firmly began a simple, respectful prayer.
"Forgive me what I have done in harm to the Raurklor and all forests," she whispered. "Guide me in what I should do henceforth. Show me some sign, to make me believe and heed."
The world exploded.
Amteira's ears rang and seemed to split under a great cracking sound, even as the darkness was lost in a blinding white flood of light.
In the whirling silence, she found herself on her back on the rock, staring up at what was crackling down out of the clear and starry night sky.
A lightning bolt as thick as an ancient tree, that was stabbing down into the boulder. The great rock that was shaking under her, a great numbing shuddering that-
Ended in a great shriek of riven stone.
I can hear.
As Amteira thought that, she was hurtling through the air, tumbling over and over amid dark shards of rock.
All of us, being hurled into-what had Jaklar so often said? Oh, yes: oblivion.
In the blinding light rose darkness. Dimly Amteira Hammerhand clung to one fading thought.
So there is a Forestmother.
Velduke Darendarr Deldragon strode along his high battlements, restless and not knowing why. Spread out below him, Bowrock stood tranquil in the moonlight, a light glimmering here and there among its roofs and towers. Modest when considered by an eye that could at the same time gaze upon his castle, yet far more prosperous than most places in Galath-or even the Stormar cities, with their reeking backstreets and grasping, desperate rib-daggers. Gaunt and starved and glaring out at the world with no hope.
"There's none of that here," he told the night aloud, in almost fierce satisfaction, his words startling one of his sentinels into stepping out of his embrasure to peer along the wall to see who'd spoken.
Deldragon gave the man a nod and smile, pausing in his striding where the moonlight would fall full on his face and front, so he'd be recognized. And so he was; the man gave him a hasty salute and stepped back again.
Deldragon felt his smile widening; he strode forward again, heading for the corner, still far ahead, where this great keep ended and the wall-walk turned down its end wall for a few paces, ere sloping down to a lower, newer hall that ran on to the two turrets all Bowrock liked to gaze upon of nights like this one, when they stood awash in moonlight. He-
Faltered and almost stumbled. Why had his mind been suddenly full of blue skin with scales, skin covering an arm that might have been his own?
What could possibly bring such a scene into his mind, and so vividly? A spell, sent from afar? A whim of the Falcon, or some malicious Stormar god he'd never heard of? A wizard nearby, dreaming?
He knew of no wizards in Bowrock right now, mind, but that stood as nothing beside such a vivid mind-seeing, aye? Most hedge-wizards strode through life grandly proclaiming their magic to all, to make themselves seem mighty where the truth was far feebler, but real wizards-not just the fabled Dooms, but all their apprentices, and the sorcerer-lords across the Sea of Storms, too-could hide what they were, if they cared to.
All contentment gone, Velduke Deldragon stood in the moonlight frowning, wondering what to do. What could he do?
Was this a deliberate warning, or the Falcon's way of alerting him to a hidden menace? Blue scaled skin should tell him something, remind him of someone, but he couldn't-couldn't-had never known, his mind told him coldly.