Blood Moon: Prologue

PROLOGUE

He walked through silence, but not darkness. The moon, full, pendant, stained with a kiss of red about its periphery illuminated the snow. There was no need for the lantern he carried so he left it beside a tree and walked on unencumbered. The bare branches of the forest cast grotesque shadows around his feet, conjuring images of the Nagahman and his death hounds. He shivered, but not entirely from fear. The thrill of anticipation thrummed through his veins, heating his body and pooling with heavy languor between his legs. An eerik shrieked nearby and he started, glancing around at the subtle menace of the naked trees as they pressed against him.

Would she come?

One particular tree, its trunk shattered by lightning at some distant time in the past, bent its twisted body beside a stone obelisk. The stone, lichen and moss crawling across its carved face, did not lean. It rose out of the white earth like an accusing finger, pointing to the sky. He halted, his heart beating fast in his throat, throbbing in his groin. Here. Here.

The night seemed to draw back a little, the moon dimming, as though they acknowledged the presence of a more potent power. She came, stepping lightly over the snow, her bare feet leaving no trace of her passage. Her unbound hair, eldritch black, swirled about her hips. He feasted his eyes on her face, the lips that already appeared kiss swollen, full and red. Her eyes, dark as memory, eyes that drifted over him like the touch of winter, igniting the hunger in him to a pitch of unbearable wanting.

He thought he moaned something. Her name?

Ysabara.

She smiled and held out her hand and he stumbled towards her. He took hold of it and the jolt that shot through his body caused him to gasp, to fight furiously against the urge to spend himself there on the snow. He dropped her hand and stood before her, breathing harshly, gaining control of his body. She smiled at him, knowing the effect she had on him. Raising a hand to trace the line of his jaw, the first faint evidence of approaching manhood that dusted it. He whispered her name again.

Ysabara.

“So, my Lord.” Her voice was low. “You know what you are offering? You are willing?”

He was almost beyond speech, his entire body focussed upon one desperate need. To bury himself in her body. To pound and thrust until he found the release he craved. To unleash the pleasure he knew he would find once he joined his flesh to hers. Pleasure beyond anything he had ever found from his own fumbling touch, the furtive guilty pleasures of a fifteen year old boy as he stroked and rubbed himself in the dark. He would have agreed to anything, everything, to have her.

“I am willing,” he moaned as she kissed him again. And then, because it was true and needed to be said. “I love you.”

She stood back, studying him. There was a look in her black eyes that he couldn’t understand. Another smile flickered across her narrow, pointed face. “Indeed? And I love you.”

She pressed against him and his body ignited even though he couldn’t imagine being any hotter. Any harder. He moaned again, a low keening sound and bent his head to the soft white skin of her neck, sucking desperately at the hollow of her throat. She placed her hands on either side of his face and forced his head back, holding him still as she stared deep into his dazed eyes.

“There is a promise to fulfil my Lord. Remember?”

“Yes. Yes,” he gasped. “I promise. Please…” His hands fumbled at the neck of her gown.

“You must say it, Brasis. Say it. Promise it.”

“I promise. I promise.” Was that his voice? That harsh croak?

She lifted his hand from her bodice, pushed back the sleeve of his shirt.

“Let us seal our bargain.”

She lowered her lips to the soft underskin of his forearm. Opened her mouth and kissed him there. At the searing pain that her kiss engendered he screamed and jerked in her grip. Her fingers dug into his arm, holding him still against the agony of her mouth. When she raised her head and released him he dropped to his knees, panting, his eyes streaming. Burnt into the flesh of his arm was a circle of raised flesh. Within the circle a sigil. Her fingers traced the symbol, tenderly stroking the red, scarred skin.

“This marks you as mine, Brasis. Bound to me by the promise you have made and the flesh you will share with me. When the Blood Moon rises you will come to me and my will shall be yours. No tie shall be stronger. No love deeper. When I call you, you will answer and the world will fall.”

For a moment the pain in his arm had overridden the fierce desire of his body. Now, as she knelt on the snow beside him and pulled open her gown, baring her high, firm breasts to his eyes, the pain was forgotten. All was forgotten. The warnings he had heard since he was old enough to understand. Never make a promise to the Glyhm. The price they ask is ever too high. What then the price of a promise made to the Glyhm queen?

As she untied him and freed his hot, throbbing flesh from the prison of his breeches, as she drew him down upon the snow to lie atop her body, he didn’t care. The Blood Moon was a thing of legend. It would not rise as he had risen, hard and demanding against her belly. He was fifteen years old. He loved. Nothing bad could ever come of love. She took him in her hand, guided him as he entered her. It was more than he had ever dreamed, a pleasure so intense he felt he might die from it. At the end, as his body bowed backwards and he screamed his climax to the watching forest he caught sight of her face. There was a cold calculation to her features that might have caused him unease had he the wit or the strength left to question it. Whilst he lay across her gasping and shuddering she lay still as stone beneath him. When he finally slipped free, his flesh limp and sated against his thigh, she rose and gathered her gown about her. Her hair fell around her shoulders like a mantle of black fur. He lay on his back gazing up at her in dazed adoration and even as he watched her he felt himself stir, hungry for more of her. He sat up, reaching for her but she slipped away.

“With your seed you have sealed our covenant,” she said. He studied her in confusion. Her voice was cold, her expression remote as though his existence was no longer an entity of which she was aware. His arm began to throb again. Turning away she began to glide back over the snow.

“Ysabara! Wait!” He struggled to his feet, tripping over his loosened breeches and falling to his knees. “I love you! When will I see you again? Don’t go. Don’t go.”

She halted and turned her head. Her black eyes raked him coldly. Then she smiled. Soft, tender, her smile tore his heart from his chest and cast it bloody at her feet.

“Ysabara,” he moaned.

“You will see me again.”

His pulse leapt. When? When? He must have spoken out loud for her smiled widened. She threw back her head and laughed.

“Why my lord. When the Blood Moon rises.”

The snow rose in a flurry about her body, obscuring her from his vision. He blinked, shielded his eyes from the sting of snowflakes as they blew into his face. When his vision cleared she was gone and his head and his body ached with her loss.

He staggered up, adjusting his clothing, cold now and weary and trying to make sense of why he was out here in the forest on a winter’s night. He had a vague memory of a woman, of pleasure and pain both. His cock ached as though he had immersed it in a bucket of ice water, a chill, insistent throb. His arm...He looked down at the scarred, puckered flesh on his forearm, touched it with trembling fingers. How? Something picked at the edge of his memory. A girl, beautiful beyond belief. An assignation. A promise.

He stared up at the red tinged moon. The Blood Moon. Had he been touched by the faery folk, the Glyhm? He stared back towards the dark heart of the forest, his body racked by shivers. Then shrugging deeper into his coat he turned back towards Illios, towards home. He would go to the God speaker at the temple. Cleanse himself. Absolve himself of any obligation. He was the heir of Illios and no promise made to a faery witch could bind him.

As he trudged back to the castle he was shocked to discover that he was weeping, the tears freezing on his face even as they were shed. He was fifteen years old, his whole life stretching before him.

Why then did he feel as though it was ending?