Some dull premonition spurrred the ogre to spin with remarkable dexterity. Ariakas snapped a curse as his blade merely gouged the flab rolls around the hefty neck. Eyes widening in surprise, the ogre drew its own weapon — a huge, bronze-tipped hammer.
Once again Ariakas struck, desperate to slay this last obstacle. This time the sword plowed deep into the bulging abdomen, and the ogre grunted as a jet of blood spurted from the wound.
The great jaws gaped, and the hammer flailed out shy;ward. A glancing blow to the man's broken arm brought a cry of pain from Ariakas. Gasping in agony, he pulled his blade back slightly, and then drove it forward, again aiming for that fat-protected neck.
"Unghhh!" The monster uttered the beginning of a word, but then the cold steel sliced through his larynx, his jugular, and finally his spine. Collapsing like a sack of potatoes, the beast crashed to the floor at the top of the stairs. The hammer clattered to the flagstones, poised at the rim of the steps, and then bounced downward, clanging and ringing toward the landing below.
His mind a fog of pain, Ariakas instinctively turned down the corridor toward that bright room, that ephemeral beauty. Before he made it halfway, however, the wave of sickness swept upward again, seizing him and swirling a cloak of unconsciousness around his brain.
Then she was there, appearing to him in sudden clar shy;ity. She was strong, this lady, and she knew more about him than he dared to believe about himself. In that instant of understanding, he knew that the ogre had spoken the truth.
He was not aware of the impact as his body went sud shy;denly limp and crashed to the floor.
Chapter 8
Ariakas opened his eyes, but immediately closed them again as the full brightness of the sun seared his vision. He didn't know where he was, though his body felt as though it floated upon a mattress of air, or drifted in bathwater of perfect warmth. He tried to see again, this time cau shy;tiously parting his eyelids a bare slit, recoiling slightly from the intense glow that washed over him. Only slowly did he realize that the light did not come from the sun after all.
Instead, it was the lady herself who glowed. She ex shy;tended a bright hand to his leg, and he felt her fingers probe the edges of the near mortal sword wound. Mirac shy;ulously, there was no pain in her touch. Then, even more astonishingly, the pain from his wound ceased entirely.
With wonder, he reached a hand downward, touching his skin through the long tear in his leggings. Every shy;where he touched, his flesh was firm. There was no hint of the cut, no lingering sensation of the wound-it was as if the ogre had never struck him. Beside him he felt the edges of a cushion, and guessed that he lay upon the mattress in the lady's room. How had he gotten here? Surely she hadn't carried him.
Yet, when he turned his head, Ariakas saw a trail of blood leading to this place. The wound had not been a fantasy, a trick of his fevered imagination. It had been real, and nearly fatal-yet now it was gone.
He raised his hands to touch her, and only then noticed that the bones in his left arm were whole and strong, as if they had never been broken.
Her hands rested on his, and he opened his mouth to speak, feeling the dry skin of his scarred lip crack from the effort.
She silenced him with a kiss, and he allowed himself to collapse against the mattress, warm and secure in her embrace. When finally she raised her lips from his, he touched his hand to his mouth.
With a profound sense of wonder, he found that his split lip, his brutally scarred chin, had become whole.
Finally, as if he were watching the scene from some shy;where very far away, he began to recall their dangerous circumstance. The ogres might be gone for now, chasing after the diversion of Ferros Windchisel, but whether they caught him or not they would be back before long! But wait… his mind struggled with a vague recollection. there was the thing the ogre had told him. Did she mock him, now, with this kindness and caring?
He could not believe that she did.
Ariakas struggled to sit, and though his muscles were fit and his body free of pain, he fought against a languorous ease that threatened to hold him as firmly as any paralysis. It took him a full minute to muster the words to speak.
"The ogres, Lady … we must flee before they return!" The warning seemed to take all of the energy he pos shy;sessed, yet he felt profound satisfaction in having spoken the words. Again he relaxed, bathing in the warmth of her smile.
"We're safe," she whispered to him. "There's no need for you to worry."
"Did you … did you order them away from here?" he asked, his voice sounding very far away.
She pulled her head back from his and regarded him with a shrewd narrowing of her eyes. "Yes," she said after a pause. "I did."
"Oberon…?"
"There is no Oberon," she replied quietly. "Or, if you prefer, I am he."
He was able to digest this answer with a minimum of surprise. "Why, Lady-why did you have me fight the ogres?"
"It was a necessary thing … a test," she said quietly. He detected a trace of sadness in her voice, but he sensed that the glow he saw in her eyes came from desire.
"A test for what?"
"To see if you were the one.. the one whom I have been placed here to welcome."
"The 'one'? What one is that?"
"Hush, now," she whispered, as if he were a small child. Oddly, he didn't feel like arguing. "You have to stop asking questions…. Some things you must accept as they are."
She leaned over and kissed him again, and all trace of suspicion left him.
"I accept!" Ariakas pledged solemnly, unaware of any irony in her smile.
"Now, warrior, you must tell me your name."
It seemed to him that she had become suddenly grave, and he responded with equal seriousness. "I am Duulket Ariakas, scion of Kortel." The thought continued to its logical conclusion. "And how, Lady, are you called?" he asked.
Again he thought he detected a hint of sadness in her deep eyes. "My name is … unimportant," she explained after a pause. "It would please me if you should still call me 'Lady'." He did not view her request as strange, but her next words brought him a sense of discomfort. "Come, Lord Ariakas," she said. "Allow me to bathe you."
For the first time, he noticed that the air in the room was moist, filled with steam that billowed from a grand, tile-lined tub on the other side of the chamber. How she had heated the water, he couldn't imagine, but the thought of easing his muscles in the bath overcame his initial modesty.
Somehow, she had removed his leather overshirt while he pondered the question. His breeches and blouse followed, and then he blissfully immersed himself in the nearly scalding water.
For a time he floated at the edge of dreaming, his body suffused with health and vitality, his mind wondering at the splendor of … splendor of what? The feelings were somehow greater than he had ever known before, yet at the same time distant, remote. It was as though he had left his weary flesh behind.
Then, when finally he emerged from the bath and the lady took him to her bed, the dream transcended rapture and carried him to an ethereal height. Still there seemed a gap between his body and his surroundings, as if he looked down upon himself from a lofty perch. Yet when the mysterious lady welcomed him with her arms, all thought of that distance vanished, and the immediacy, the ecstasy, of the moment seized him full in its impla shy;cable grasp.