THE TATTOOED WOMAN - Chapter 48
Well, I survived my triple heart bypass, and the recovery goes apace. With luck my writing schedule, which has been all to Hell in a handbasket these last few months, can get back to something a bit more regular. Anyway, I hope you are all very well and having a great day. Welcome to the next chapter of this yarn. Once again, thanks to Sandra (and others) for the editing and input. Their help is really invaluable.
Also, many thanks to all of you who have taken the time to leave some very kind comments, both about my story, and my health. I really do appreciate them, and so often they just make my day.
All the best.
The Tattooed Woman Volume 3 - Chapter 48: It Dawned in Fire
She passed across the sky like a blazing comet, her furious rage leaving a trail of brilliant fire in her wake. Stormclouds gathered around her, and thunder was her herald.
Adair stood alone in the field and watched her come. Dark of eye and dark of mane, she held her mother's purloined spear in her hand, and its point gleamed hungrily in the growing gloom.
Trees bowed and shook as the tempest descended, and several of the nearest burst into orange flame. Shalidar did not so much land, as slam into the ground like a burning javelin. The impact shook the earth, and its echo reverberated about the forest.
She rose from the smoking crater and her searing gaze fixed instantly upon the woman before her. A low menacing hiss escaped her throat, sibilant and unnerving.
Adair's breath almost caught in her chest as she met those golden eyes. Furious they were, burning bright, savage, and wild. Slitted pupils focused upon her, unblinking and radiant, like the eyes of the largest cat that ever lived. She knew those eyes well, for long, long ago their fearful symmetry had been framed by her own mother's immortal hand. They were inhumanly brilliant, and inhumanly beautiful.
She bowed, "Lady Shalidar, Mistress of the Southern Skies, I bid thee welcome."
The response was not entirely unpredictable.
"DECEIVER!!!"
The morsel before her doffed her head with an enigmatic smile that was as insouciant as it was galling, "True."
The Dragon gathered herself, looming over this vile usurper that had offended her so, and she felt the very blood in her veins burning with a primal need to rend and sear its flesh. But even as her shadow fell upon the thing, the fel spear in its hand gleamed all the brighter. And when the woman looked up at her, she could sense no fear in those cold eyes. Instead, her lips curled in a wicked smile, and she halted the Dragon with a mere whisper, "And Ellén?"
That name! It pierced even her rage, and for a moment she faltered. Licking her lips there came a rumbling, "What of her?"
"If we do battle here, then, regardless of outcome, she loses. For if you fail, if you fall, what becomes of her? Would not your death condemn her to a lifetime of loneliness and utter despair? And should you prevail? What then? Does she fly home with such news that would break the heart of her beloved and thus drive a wedge, like some hateful spike between her heart and yours? It seems you leave yourself with only poor choices here, Shalidar."
"RELEASE HER!"
"Why should I?"
Adair sniffed and raised her head to look up at the Dragon, and her eyes were hard, "Ever have you measured me against the deeds of my kin, which, to be fair, serve as a dark enough indictment. But if it is so that they and I are indeed such kindred spirits, then surely, I must ask myself, if I granted you this boon and released Ellén, how would such a magnanimous gesture benefit me?"
"Benefit?"
"Aye! Tell me, wyrm. What is her freedom worth to you? And what would you offer me in exchange?"
Shalidar licked her lips. Fear for Ellén set her heart to pounding in her chest. The Danu were wicked to the core, ancient and immortal creatures who could not be trusted. Not now, not ever! But even they held to a bargain once struck, and she swallowed, "Everything and anything."
The creature before her had the dark mien of her mother... She held her head proudly aloft and her expression was one of cold command. Her long hair, now blacker than a raven's wing, fell down her back, her eyes were as dark and fathomless as the abyss, her skin was as pale as moonlight, and had Cassie seen how she had changed, she would have wept.
The Danu tilted her head and raised an arched brow, eyeing the Dragon as a cat might eye a mouse, "And should I refuse your generous offer?"
Dreadful talons bit furrows from the earth, and a hungry shudder ran down the Dragons spine as it drew a breath and snarled, "Then you best heft your mother's glaive and set to with a vengeance, monster, for if that is the case only one of us shall leave this field alive!"
...
It was one of the hardest things she had ever done; leaving the camp in defiance of Adairs command.
The words the woman had spoken seemed to echo like a pernicious whisper about her mind, and her leaden feet felt like they had been spiked to the ground. Yet, as the growing nameless fear gnawed at her, she found herself drifting ever further from the light and warmth of the campfires, and ever closer to the darkness and shadows that had begun to ring the encampment as the twilight descended.
She looked to the dark elves and saw the firelight reflecting off Ashunara's cat-like eyes as the woman watched her intently. But if the Captain had any words of wisdom or thoughts to share with her this night, she chose to keep them to herself.
The enigmatic swordswoman blinked. Turning away, she casually tossed a flask across the campfire into the startled hands of her newest recruit, and the spell was broken. The flask began to make its rounds of her Company, and when she looked back to where Ellén had been standing, only the shadows remained.
Ashunara sighed wearily, and Nyx gave her a troubled look, even as she deftly plucked the nearly drained flask from Elsadore's grasp, ignoring the big veteran's half-hearted cry of protest. Taking a thoughtful swig of the fiery draught she passed it back to the Captain with a quiet murmur, "Best we stay out of it, lass."
"Think you so?"
Nyx stared off through the trees towards the faint burning glow in the distance, and shivered, "Oh yes," she cast her gaze back to the campfire and shook her head, "any old soldier could tell you; those who the Gods love dearest, die the youngest, and they already know you too well. Wiser to let them be."
...
The umbral forest was dark, gloom-haunted and filled with unquiet shadows, but the eyes of a Dragon are not so easily blinded and no ghost or banshee dared bar her way, while wolves and other night-prowling creatures scattered before her. The breeze that stirred the branches about her filled the night air with the creaking song of swaying bough and rustling leaves, but she had no time for such distractions.
Ahead of her, drawing ever nearer, the flickering of orange flame could be seen through the trees, while the smell of smoke and burning pine wood grew all the stronger. The air carried a redolence of hot iron or brass, and it was a scent she knew well.
Bursting from the edge of the woods Ellén saw a great clearing ahead of her. The grassy space was ringed by a thick barrier of trees, a few of which looked to have been inadvertently set alight and still burned. But even without the orange glow of such flames, she would not have mistaken the two figures who stood opposed in the centre of the glade, for at that moment the clouds rolled back, and the moon goddess Rhiannon bathed the scene in a silver radiance. Across the clearing it reflected like starlight off the wings of the mighty Dragon and caused the blade of the deadly spear in Adair's hand to glitter like hoarfrost.
Trembling, she made to step forward, not knowing what she could possibly say to appease these two mighty entities, but grimly determined to somehow come between them, nonetheless.
Before she could take even a single pace, a strong hand wrapped itself about her arm, and a grip like cold iron halted her in her tracks.
