Firebrand (26 page)

“You play with fire, Amber,” David said in a voice more like a groan.

Her hand slid beneath the water to measure the length of him. “We both do.”

“Why are you doing this?” David asked, the last word coming in a sharp intake of breath as Amber ran her hand over him.

“Because if this is the last time I can ever look into your eyes, I want to see them full of love. Put your hands on me, David. I want to feel you inside me.”

“Then that’s what you shall have.”

Scooping her up in his arms, he stepped out of the bath and lay her down on the floor among the flower petals. He followed her down to the ground, his mouth hungry on hers. Through rapacious kisses, he felt her need more than match his own.

His mouth trailed a path of moisture down her neck to her breasts. Suckling first one then the other, he sent fire to her core. As Amber moved against him, his urgency grew.

Wanting more, he released her reddened nipple and trailed kisses and tiny bites down her stomach until he reached the auburn triangle he sought. At his touch, her legs parted. He eased her open with his fingers and dipped one inside. She was hot, wet and ready for him but he was unhurried.

Lowering his mouth, his tongue flicked at the swollen bud of her center. Her nectar was sweet and as his mouth explored and tasted, she arched, offering herself freely.

“David, my love,” she whispered, her head thrashing from side to side. “Now, please.”

“Soon.” He agreed, easing himself up her length, kissing each curve his mouth met. Then balancing his weight on his arms on either side of her head, he looked into the eyes of his soul mate. He was not worthy of her. She was purity, love and selflessness. As he looked on her face, alive with passion and love for him, with every beat of his heart, he vowed he would suffer any pain, face any danger to keep her and their child safe.

Amber met his eyes and lifted her hips to receive him, her smile more dazzling than any sun in any world.

“I love you, Amber,” he rasped as he slid into her dewy sheath.

She cried out his name as he drove fully into her.

“By everything sacred, I will not let you leave me,” he rasped. A sheen of glistening sweat covered him as he held still inside her, the feel of her around him nearly pushing him to the end.

“I will be with you forever,” she promised, rolling her hips and wrapping her legs around him. She pulled him down to her, his head dropping to her shoulder, and moved her hips in the primal dance of love.

Slowly he joined her, sliding in and out of her in the ancient rhythm. He felt her strain against his penetration, her back arching, her fingers digging into his flesh. Their hearts beat as one, faster and faster, throbbing and pulsating until the pleasure built and then exploded. His body strained and then jerked with release, sending a searing rain of passion from him to her, filling her to overflowing.

In response, air burst from Amber’s lungs as she cried out, her body pushing against his. Her spasms captured him in a hot embrace, causing him to roll his hips in pleasure with each one.

After a time his heart steadied and he rose up so he could once again see her face. He knew that the tears that rolled down her cheeks were not for him.

* * * * *

Amber stood on the parapet overlooking the fairydom of Gisparry. Uncommon silence and eerie stillness assaulted her senses. Every living thing had left Everwood to take their places for the Triad. Only the flat dull emptiness of a coming evil pervaded the air.

Her breath came in short gasps as her heartbeat rose. Only moments before she had lain in her lover’s arms, encased in a loving embrace for what she knew would the last time. She closed her eyes. Could she really do this?

“It’s time,” David said standing in the doorway naked to the waist, his muscles tensed with concern and apprehension.

. “I know,” she said turning to him. He stepped aside and let her pass back inside.

She walked to the gilded chair in the corner of the room where a shapeless pile of blue material lay shimmering with an almost unearthly glow. She picked it up, the delicate material feeling like mercury spilling though her fingers and she inhaled sharply. Ordinarily, such a beautiful thing would bring her joy but this was her death shroud.

Driving the dark thought aside with sheer force of will, she pulled the diaphanous cloth over her head. Instantly it began to conform and mold itself to fit her like a second skin.

She smiled as the dress hugged her body, yet allowed her freedom of movement. Much like the amulet she wore, it seemed more alive than inert. She smiled. Her fairy people were a creative lot.

She felt David’s gaze on her back as she sat at the dressing table. She reached for a brush and began to tame her love-tossed tresses. Then, taking a slim gold ribbon, she slowly began to intertwine it with her burnished curls as she braided her hair into a long thick plait, which she placed over her left shoulder.

From a small cask of black ink, she used the delicate brush beside it to paint the circle of three, the symbol of the Triad, onto her left cheek. When she was done, she let the brush drop from her hand and stared at her reflection in the mirror.

She was the Keeper of the Triad. She alone possessed the power to save three different yet related worlds. She fingered the amulet hanging from her neck. Only now did she truly understand. It had been right that it not be allowed to exist so easily among those who would use it for their own evil. With her it had been safe, protected.

David walked over watching her with sad intensity. He outlined the mark gently with his forefinger. “The circle of three.” He put his hand on her shoulder and kneaded her skin. “My father said when I saw it on the face of the Keeper, the end of all things would be at hand.”

“And now it’s here and it’s time,” she acknowledged, her voice a whisper. She rested her cheek on his hand and stared at his reflection in the mirror.

Still shirtless, he had donned a dark cape that fastened with the same dragon pin she had seen in her dreams. He looked the warrior he was — strong, handsome. But his eyes held a sadness that could not be denied. If there was a forever for her, she would remember this moment and take his love with her to whatever place she would have to go to.

She got up took his hand. “Strangely David, I think I am at peace with all this now. My only regret is leaving you.”

“Mine is much more,” He said, splaying his fingers across her still flat stomach.

Amber covered his hand with hers. “Believe, David.”

She barely had the words out when the Medallion around her neck began to throb, a thin stream of light beaming out and shooting forward, striking the tall ornate door across the room. It opened noiselessly as if by unseen hands and a light too bright for ordinary eyes filled the aperture.

“Together!” David said, looking deep into Amber’s eyes.

“Together,” she replied, squeezing his hand.

“Forever,” he said as the stepped into the light, into Trytia, the place of the Triad.

Chapter Twenty-Five

To most of the people of the three worlds, the valley of Trytia didn’t exist. A crack in the void of time inside the Dolmen Megalith Tombs, this was the place where the worlds of the fae, the trolls and the humans met in a cusp, separated only by a glowing rock with three slits. From each space a different color emanated. It was here the swords of power were to be placed in the Triad Altar stone.

Built by the descents of those cast down as a three-dimensional map to find the way to the place of the Final Time, the Dolmens fringed the Irish Sea. Centered beneath the large bluff atop the two slabs of stone forming a portal lay a burial chamber. Stepping on the cairn covering it meant instant death. Only those who held to the old ways would be able to pass through the portals and come safely to the other side. But even knowing this did not ensure safe passage.

Once through the main forecourt of the first dolmen tomb, similar structures lay scattered as far as the eye could see. Craggy cairns of large stones in ring-shaped patterns lay between, meant to confuse and mislead any not worthy of the quest. Some of the rings were merely monumental, others were purely mystical and it was up to the voyager to choose the correct path in which to pass in order to reach the site of the Triad altar.

Amber and David walked to the first portal tomb and stopped. “This could take days,” David said, dropping to one kneed and running his hand over the ground. A shower of rocks fell from the top stone on to his hand. “One wrong move and we become like them,” he said rising. “Murks.”

“I was told of them. We may have one ally,” Amber said.

“Who?”

“My grandmother. She is a murk by her own hand.” Amber raised her hands. “Grandmother. If you can hear my voice, I need your help.”

As soon as the words were uttered, a gray shadow eddied in front of her. Inside it, the face of a woman appeared. “Only the Chosen One could breech the barrier and summon she who does not exist.”

“Grandmother?”

“
I am Turi
.
Ask what you need to know
.”

“There has to be another way besides guessing to find the way. We’re not meant to die here.”

Turi’s essence swirled around Amber, a gray hand reached from inside the charcoal mist and covered the amulet with its palm. “
Show the way
,” Turi’s muddy voice commanded.

Almost before she had gotten out the words, light fell from the amulet in silvery sparkles, settling on the ground like bread crumbs left on a path. A distinct line, it snake and twisted leading them forward, sometimes in arching curves, sometimes in angles and straight lines.

“Thank you, grandmother,” Amber said as the vapor vanished and Turi returned to her place in limbo. “Tolhram will know you helped us survive.”

Amber and David followed the glowing line exactly as it lay, knowing the correct path was part of the quest itself. A chill air followed them, rising occasionally to a bitter wind that seemed to be trying to protect the secrets ahead by blowing them back to the darkness behind them. The deep gray shadows of murks loomed above them and around them, occasionally swirling around their legs. The ground under their feet crunched as they walked over the bones left behind by of those who had taken a wrong turn and were spirited away.

The going was slow and cautious, seeming like hours since they began the journey. The ground grew more broken and dangerous, the path bending and twisting as they traversed the maze, passing through portal after portal of jagged stones with crevices and fissures of endless black with the amulet as their guide.

After what seemed like hours more, Amber put a hand on David’s chest to stop him. “Look,” she said pointing to a dull white light that flickered in the distance. “We are close.”

He nodded.

She took his hand and pressed on knowing she inched closer to her end. Shaking off the feeling of ice that encased her, she concentrated on getting through the dolmen maze with David. If she could get through this test, then somehow she would do the impossible and perhaps save herself along with the worlds.

They emerged from the last portal into a clearing. The sky above them seemed more like a great roof of smoke instead of the darkness of deep night. A gray blurring of shadows shrouded the world around them.

There were no sounds, no wind. The only light came up from the ground, illuminating what had to be the Triad mound, the sacred area, older than the pyramids of Egypt and predating the Stonehenge megaliths by thousands of years.

David and Amber stopped for a moment and looked at what no other eye had seen for a hundred millennia. Believed to have been built as a tomb for the first humans on Earth, the mound was imposing. They would have to enter it and walk to the cruciform chamber in order to get to the basin protecting the Great United and raise the Triad Altar from beneath the ground. With a uniform breath, they took each other’s hand and walked toward it.

At the entrance, a thousand ancient sentries once stood, banded together around the perimeter, their gray beards hanging to their feet. Their milky eyes had stared straight ahead as though blind for a thousand ages but still they had seen all. These were the defenders of the gate, beings whose only purpose had been to ward off anyone or anything that, by accident or fate’s intervention, happened upon the place.

But as the time of the end approached, one by one their corporeal form dissipated into a mist before scattering into the heavens, their guardianship over. Now only four remained at the gateway, the most stalwart and brave, each holding a different and imposing weapon, each determined to continue the watch. Nothing and no one would get past these remaining knights protecting the entrance into destiny unless they allowed it.

Until now, the place was as quiet as a tomb and for centuries the place had held its strong, secure stability and its unusual quiet with only an ethereal hiss emanating from inside the rock. But as David and Amber approached, the grounds shuddered and boiled underneath as the earth above struggled to hold it in place. Here time began to fold into itself and roll toward the Armageddon of the three worlds, the ground trembling, calling for the swords.

When David and Amber were a few feet from the ghostly guards, the sentry closest to them struggled to square his shoulders, the dust of the ages falling from him onto the ground. He held his weapon out, blocking the path.

“Are you the one foretold?” he asked, his arms clearly straining with the weight of his years.

Amber first turned her head toward David and released his hand. She stepped forward. “I am,” she said, lifting the amulet from her chest. “I am the Keeper of the Key.”

She raised the amulet, the light from it pulsing ever brighter.

The milk-white eyes of the sentry cleared. “We have been waiting for you.” Raising a trembling hand, he stepped aside. “Enter, Keeper our watch is ended.”

As his hand fell to his side, the sentry exploded in a flash of white light. One by one, the three remaining guards also vanished leaving David and Amber alone in the murky gray mist.

* * * * *

There was heaviness in the air as if a great storm was moving in from the West. Summoned by a call older than time itself to war, the legions had gathered at the high place.

His daughter, Alara, beside him, the Mage, hands clasped behind his back, looked out over the clearing and stared resolutely at the arching patrols of the tens of thousands of trolls in their dirty, dull brown pelts.

On his left Kubla and Teezal, leading the legions of the nation of the fae, a stalwart representation of themselves, stood ready. Their human counterparts, Sean McTavish, Marcus Drake and Brian McKenna, soon joined them, their eyes burning with the harsh, acrid low-lying vapor expelled from the breaths of the evil horde rolled slowly over their human army of believers and toward them.

“Highness, tell me, what do you see?” Teezal asked, her eyes narrowing against the stinging assault of the fog.

“They come. In the miasma more of the dark army moves toward us, menacing shapes from far and wide,” he replied.

“Our forces are in place. Humans, the fae, Brunhild and her Valkyries from the north, the Myan nymphs from the south and all those who wish see the light prevail have gathered as foretold,” she replied.

She looked into the distance. “Whatever comes out from the mist, we will defeat.”

“It is not the mist or cloud that betrays my eyes, it is a veiling shadow that Gorash lies on the land.” He turned his head toward her. “It is like an endless twilight is coming upon us and behind it are his forces.”

Kubla drew next to them, offering his
hookra
to the Mage. “Command me,” he said, conviction in his voice, “And I will ride out to meet whatever threat the troll king offers.”

Tolhram declined with a wave of his hand. “No, great warrior. This is a vast, evil thing that threatens us. If we must engage it, we will have to press forward with all our forces. I will need you to lead them and hold off the horde as long as you can.”

He turned back and looked over the mass of troops behind him as far as his eye could see. “Daughter,” he said to Alara, “Bring forth the one who gave life and the one who nurtured. If our salvation is at hand, we will know it soon enough.”

He closed his eyes, his mind searching the opus of the universe itself. Amber, my granddaughter, if you are coming, it must be now.

* * * * *

Drawing a deep breath, David and Amber passed inside the Triad mound. In a few steps they were inside what appeared to be a cave. There was air moving and echoes and a sense of space but the air was stagnant and heavy.

Light entered the tunnel from a roof box centered directly above them. Spiral and lozenge patterns were carved from floor to ceiling on the face of the walls on either side of the tunnel leading to the center. Stones crunched under their feet as they moved toward it.

As they get closer, a rectangular shell rose. Set atop what looked like a podium, stairs made of stone wound around the base. Carefully they began the climb.

They exited onto the floor of the room on top. Heat arose from terra-cotta lamps in each of the corners, allowing light to filter up from them. Mosaics in geometric designs ran along the walls and then burst inward to meet in the center of the room.

“Look at the pattern on the floor,” Amber whispered.

“The same as my birthmark,” David returned, dropping to one knee. “There something here in the center.” With his palm, he brushed the dust of ages long past from a disc embedded in the ceramic tile.

Amber crouched next to him. She ran her fingers across the disc. “It feels like a grid with a depression in the center.” Her gaze locked with his. “I think I may know what it means.”

Taking a deep breath, Amber took hold of the amulet around her neck. With a quick tug, she broke the chain. For the first time in twenty-five years, she and the amulet were separated. Slowly she lowered it to the indentation in the grid. The amulet seemed to shift and mold itself until finally it dropped with a clang into the pattern. She looked at David. His smile was wan but purposeful.

She hesitated. “There’s so much more I want to say, to do.”

Lowering his mouth to hers, he kissed her for what he hoped would not be the last time. “Go on, my love, turn it,” he whispered onto her lips as he placed his hand over hers.

A tear formed by both strength and regret rolled down her cheek. “I love you David. Whatever happens, remember that.”

Then she turned the amulet.

The floor beneath them shook and the walls shimmered and fell away. From below them a circle of stones rose absorbing everything in its upward path. In its center blue flames danced like undulating snakes. From above a hollowing wind descended and blew around them like a snow devil as the Cairn of gray stones rumbled ever closer to them.

“Amber!” David cried as they teetered with the violently shifting floor. She had slid to the edge of the mosaic stone, balancing precariously on her toes.

“David!” she shouted in return, thrusting out a hand toward him.

He grabbed her and pulled her back. Once firmly in the center of the altar, they dropped to their knees and held on tightly to each other.

The din of the rising stones ripped into David’s mind with a pain he had had never known before. He fought the urge to release Amber and cover his ears against the sound, fearing that if he let her go he would lose her forever. From the center of the mosaic, a shaft of light sprang upward, the force of its power almost tearing her from his arms as it tried to split them apart. Still he held on.

The blue flame soon engulfed them but it did not burn. Their skin began to tingle and their bodies seemed to liquefy and then gel again, as if they were caught in some type of dimensional shift.

“Hold on,” David shouted above the force of the howling wind as they disappeared from the cave of light and entered the Triad.

The light was gone and so was Amber.

David felt the sharp edge of a rock sting his back but his right leg hung down, dangling in open air. Rolling to his left, he repositioned himself so he lay flat on his stomach. Leveling his gaze, he discovered he was on a stone ledge overlooking a deep precipice. He rose to one knee and rested his arm on his thigh as he tried to grasp some measure of reason.

He looked out over the barren landscape. Mountains of rock rose and fell before his eyes as the ground shook, the tremors rocking him from side to side. He held out his arms for balance until the shaking stopped. Below him fissures sliced the ground, the earth bleeding great rivers of molten rock running in lava streams in all directions.

Where was he and where was Amber?

Above him, he could hear men shouting and horses snorting in response to the sharp crack of splitting rock. “Here,” he shouted. “Down here!”

From overhead, a rope snaked its way toward him. “Grab on,” a voice called out in response to his cries.

David looped the end around his wrist. “Ready!” he called out. A moment later he dangled above the crag as his ally pulled him upward. At the top, a strong arm reached out and grabbed him, dragging him out of the air and across the edge of the pit. Once on solid ground he rolled onto his back and looked up into the face of his rescuer. “Father!” he cried, springing to his feet.