His thrusts came faster, then he thrust once more and held, a low groan rising from his throat.

In her mind's eye, she saw his seed spill out of him and into her, the rich, creamy fluid flowing up against the opening of her womb. He was the river; her body was the yielding earth. She followed the life-giving stream deeper, into a sanctuary hidden in a soft, warm cave, the core of her being-and a voice whispered to her in the dark...Kael.

Madron woke with a start. She had not meant to sleep. She swept a few straying strands of hair off her face and blinked. Time had passed. How much?

She pushed out of the maple chair and walked quickly to the cottage window, where her nimble fingers made swift work of opening the shutters. She bent forward over the sill, looking out and up at the sky.

The Eve of Beltaine was over, thank the gods, the ruby wash of morn breaking on the eastern horizon, but daylight alone was no balm for the strange and disagreeable night she'd spent. Something was gravely-amiss. The woods were still silent.

The trees had stopped talking to her at dusk-Rhuddlan's doing, without a doubt-and her mind would find no ease until they spoke to her again. 'Twas as nothing for the elf-man to close her out of the forest's scented murmurings. She'd always known his skills far surpassed those of the other Quicken-tree. Truly, she had once believed that the trees spoke only on his command-a smitten girl's fallacy, she'd later learned. The trees acknowledged no earthly lord. Yet the rowans did his bidding; they'd carried Quicken-tree messages to her since the time of Edmee's conception, and always during the fire festivals such as Beltaine, his intent on those nights to lure her back into the fold.

A small drop of morning rain fell through the trees and plopped onto the sill. Madron caught it up with the pad of her finger and brought it to her mouth. There was taste, fresh and dear, but no hint of anything more.

Rhuddlan was keeping something from her.

Chapter 20.

Dain held Ceridwen in his arms as dawn breached the night, his body half covering hers. Her gown and kirtle were haphazardly tossed over them for warmth; her chemise was tangled about them both. Silk ribands trailed down the pale, creamy contours of her body, looping onto her breast and coming back up, dipping into the curve of her waist and rising again over her hip like a meandering silver stream. She had drifted into a light sleep-trusting soul. Her faith might redeem him yet. Or mayhaps she had felt ittoo, his total surrender.

He wanted her again. Her hand was soft on his hip, her fingers delicate in their unconscious caress. He kissed the corner of her mouth, and she stirred, but did not waken. Just as well. He had not been so gentle. There was blood between her thighs and on her belly where his half-aroused penis rested, and blood on him as well. Such was to be expected, and despite the evidence of pain, her desire had been clear. She had wanted him and welcomed him.

The color of the sky changed while he held her, from velvet-black to midnight-blue to a chatoyant pearl-gray, the last sending rich, lustrous light running down through the trees, glazing branches and picking up an edge of gold from the east before reaching the forest floor. Birds began their morning songs with the dawn,tee-yairingandchir-ruppingtheir calls.

Being careful not to disturb her, he eased out of their grass nest and went to clean himself in the small freshets of hot water flowing from fissures in the stone and gathering in rock basins at the bottom of the limestone wall. They were offshoots from the grotto pool that steamed and bubbled inside the cavern.

When he was finished, he wadded together a handful of spongy moss and soaked it in the water, getting it hot and wet.

Back at her side, he cleaned her and pressed the warm moss between her legs and against her mons, knowing the heat would soothe.

Her lashes fluttered open on a sigh and closed on another. "Dain," she murmured.

He lay down beside her and kissed her again, letting his mouth linger on hers and warm her lips. Her response was to tease him with her tongue. He smiled and felt her do the same.

"Are you god or demon this day?" she asked when he raised his head. Her hand came up to trace the blue band painted across his face.

"Only a man." She was beautiful beneath him, her smile not so innocent, her body the loveliest haven, so essentially female. "And you? Goddess or demoness?"

"Whatever you wish... for another kiss." Her smile took a sultry turn as she tunneled her fingers through his hair and pulled his head back down. She plundered his mouth, her tongue deliciously sensual, tasting and exploring.

Her blatant seduction tantalized him, going straight to his groin and bringing him fully erect. So she would play the demoness for him? Mayhaps he would teach her how. For now, though, it would not take much to have her again as the angel-woman. 'Twas no more than the length of his cock from where he was to where he wanted to be. Yet he held back, losing himself in her kiss, but taking no more.

"Dain?" She pulled away and looked up at him, her question clear.

" 'Tis too soon after your first time, Ceri." He smoothed her hair back from her brow. The long silvery-gold tresses were spread out around her in every direction, a brilliant, mussed pillow strewn with leaves. "Your body is tender, and I would not hurt you again."

"And what of you?" She glanced down to where they touched.

A grin teased his mouth. There was no shyness in her question. 'Twas as if she, too, realized that whatwas now between them went beyond the tangent boundaries of skin and bone, beyond the ever-shifting surfaces of emotion. She was his, and he would have no other. He had not known that love, that the act of love with her, would bind him so greatly or grant such a heady sense of freedom.

He brushed his thumb across her cheek and watched her eyes drift closed. Her hand trailed up his ribs and under his arm, before coming across his shoulder. They were tangled together as surely as her clothes, their legs intertwined, strands of her hair intermingled with his and flowed over their chests and arms. His gaze wandered down to her breasts and hips. Every curve enchanted him, so very pale against his darkness, so rounded against his much larger, more angular frame. Her allure was incarnate, needing no conscious effort. She simply was, and he wanted her.

"Lying this close to you, it would take little more than your hand to please me," he told her. Desire was in him, fed by lust into a heavy need, and he would have it assuaged.

"My hand?" Her lashes rose in a leisurely sweep.

"Aye." He interlaced his fingers with hers and brought them to his mouth, pressing his suit. She was willing and curious, and it was for her that his loins ached.

Ceridwen watched in fascination as he opened their clasped hands and laved her palm, then her fingers, one by one. His tongue was soft and wet and moved over her hand with the ardency of a hungry cat licking cream; a big cat, like a rampant lion with his mane of wild hair falling over the two of them and snaking across their torsos. His eyebrows were drawn toward each other with the depth of his concentration; his lashes were lowered into dark crescents on blue pagan cheeks.

She had not thought one's hand capable of being seduced, that there was so much sensitivity in her fingers and in the skin between her fingers. He proved her wrong with every caress. She was entranced, and she wanted more. She wanted to touch him, to discover the part of him that had been inside her.

Dain felt the same need-to have her touch him. Thus when her skin was warm and moist, he slipped her hand down his chest and closed it around his phallus. Heat... luscious, erotic heat. He groaned, showing her the way of it, the varying rhythms of stimulation and the one that created the most intense pleasure for him. She kissed his face as she stroked him, proving herself adept at divining his desires, the silky pressure of her hand and lips giving him a glimpse of heaven. Even with his guidance, her touch was so very different from his own, delightfully, profoundly different, marking him with a deep rush of feeling, adding an element of tender care where for too long there had been only animal need.

With an ease born of empathy, he moved his hand from around hers and into the triangle of curls between her legs; and he bent his head to her breast, bringing her into the same swirling chaos consuming him. Her nipple was incredibly soft in his mouth, a lure for his tongue, just as her lush folds were a lure for his fingers. She was gratifyingly wet, the moisture he slid into like nectar, no different, for he remembered the wondrous, womanly taste of her vagina. He had thought to never know such again, to never again have the deepest scent of a woman infusing his pores. Then Ceri had come to him.

He moved his mouth up her body, kissing her and whispering to her of the fire running through his blood and of where virgin dreams ended and lover's dreams began. Words created passion in the darkest corridors of the mind, and he wanted her to experience passion in all its shades. To that end, he closed his teeth upon her neck, gently, gently, until he could feel her pulse beating against his tongue and echoing in his throat.

Here was life. Small sounds of distress and arousal escaped her, revealing the naked needs he had nurtured to fruition.

With a move he had anticipated, she had him slipping inside her, guided by her hand. He knew a thousand ways to give and take pleasure without that invasion-but he had not the strength to deny her or himself. He wanted to sink into her, to feel her slick, velvety sheath close around him.

He groaned, holding back from going too far, too soon, but she was whispering his name over and over, and his last good intention went for naught. He began his thrusts, shallow at first, then deeper...

deliciously deeper.

The pressure built and built inside him, centering his awareness between their legs where they met and came together, so hot and sweet. He felt her impending climax in the inexorable tightening of her body, he saw it in the tautness of her face, and when her low cry came, he was with her. Her intense contractions pulsed through him, along the full length of his shaft, along the full length of his body and down to the bottom of his soul. He bared his teeth, burying himself to the hilt inside her, coming as deeply as he could.

He forgot to breathe. There was no thought or sight or sound, only exquisite sensations jerking through him, one after the other into oblivion. There was no dream, only the purest essence of the woman stealing him away.

At the end, he collapsed next to her, wanting nothing more than to never move from her side. Long moments passed as he held her to him and labored to catch his breath.

"So help me God, you are a witch."

"Whose God?" she asked, her own breath shallow with the same latent thrills he felt coursing through his body. "Your God? My God?"

"It matters not." Without withdrawing, he pressed himself closer to her, deeper, wanting to feel her, all of her, and know she was a part of him. "By any God, you are the fairest witch of all."

Far, far above them, in the crowning branches of an oak, Llynya lay stretched out on a limb, peering over its side with her chin in her hands, watching her charges. Not that there was much to see. Dain and Ceridwen had been rolling around in the grass all night, like everyone else in Wroneu Wood, and they were still at it.

With a quietly grumbled complaint, she turned over onto her back to better continue her skywatching.

She'd done what she'd been told. She'd followed them to the Mid-Crevasse glade, so named because it was midway between the Great Western Crevasse and... and someplace else she couldn't quite remember at the moment. She'd kept anyone else from stumbling into the glade, weaving a dab of bramble here and there, and she'd left Dain's clothes and cloak in a pile on the path. Wouldn't do for the O Great One's butt to get cold on the long walk back to Deri. Oh, no.

No one seemed concerned about her butt getting cold sitting up in a tree all night.

"Hmmph." She dug a honey-stick out of her pouch and stuck it in her mouth.

The morning star had disappeared with the first flash of the sun, and the other stars had long since been chased into the west, but the moon remained. 'Twas a wondrous thing, the moon, rich in elfin lore and woman's magic, a perfect, white orb hanging in a sky that was turning blue with day. Unlike the sun,which one could not look upon even if she squinted her eyes into teensy-weensy slits, the moon was made for gazing, for long hours of contemplation. Its presence never failed to soothe. Llynya liked nothing better than running through its light at night. Though of late, Rhuddlan had been clipping her wings.

A green finch flittered in to share her leafy perch, a welcome bit of company. Llynya whistled at her, and the bird sang back, hopping closer.

"Hallo, peach," she crooned, putting out her finger. The finch hopped up, and Llynya smiled. "Malashm."

She rummaged through her pouch and came up with a seed, which the finch ate, and a bit of thistledown fluff the bird took into her beak.

"Nesting, hmm?"

Spring had been hard-won this year, making the laying with the Goddess of utmost importance. By Llynya's count, Dain had lain with Ceri twice. Rhuddlan would be pleased.

The finch flew off, toward daybreak. There had been a promise of rain in the night that had not come to pass except in a few stray drops. But the changing color of the sky hinted at more moisture yet to be shed, and not long coming by Llynya's reckoning.

Sure enough, within a short passing of time, rain began to fall, swept up from the south by the wind.

Llynya closed her eyes and caught a few droplets on her tongue, and was startled to find a warning in the taste. She had smelled nothing, but rain had the quality of intensifying whatever message was in the trees and spreading it over a greater distance, and what she tasted was undeniable. Danger was coming.

She quickly clambered higher into the oak. At the top, she pushed aside smaller limbs and peered through the leaves, looking across the rest of the forest to the downs beyond. Riders were moving on the southern horizon, but she was too far away to see them clearly. She watched the shadowy line wind its way north and west, and tested the rain again. 'Twas worse than danger coming. 'Twas evil. But whose?

Curious, she swung down onto a lower branch, to a place where she could make her way to the next tree. Rhuddlan would have already sent out scouts. If she had been in Deri, she might have been chosen.

Shay was among them, no doubt.

"Sticks," she swore, and leaped into the neighboring oak. She landed lightly on a sturdy limb, catching herself with one hand on a higher branch. Thus she left the Mid-Crevasse glade behind, one tree at a time, quite forgetting what she was about.

Ceridwen stood in the gently falling rain, fiddling with her laces. Her fingers were awkward, her eyes downcast. Dain had seen the phenomenon before: The return of clothing brought a return of shyness. He stood close in front of her, tying the leather strings of the loincloth around his waist. When he was finished, he reached out and caressed her breast with the back of his fingers, one brief downward stroke.

Her head came up, a blush full-blown on her cheeks.

He teased her with a smile. "Even with your clothes on, I can still see every curve and remember every taste." Her blush deepened.

"Shall I tell you what you taste like?"

Flustered, she lowered her gaze. "You are without shame."

"Aye," he agreed softly, and bent his head to give her a kiss. "And you are beautiful. Come. The quicker we are away, the better. Madron has put a price upon your virginity I would rather not pay." He reached around her and pulled Ayas out of the overhanging branch.

"Oh?" Her gaze came back up, and her fingers stilled.

" 'Tis not marks or riches she wants, Ceri," he reassured her, "but my soul." She had no reason to doubt him. He would give for her all that he had, and pray she did not suffer too greatly for lack of what he'd lost long ago.

"Then she and Caradoc deal in the same coin."

"And they both shall be denied." He sheathed Ayas in the loincloth and looked around for her pack and the Damascene. What he spied was a neatly folded pile of clothes getting rained on in the middle of the trail. He touched Ceri's arm and pointed to them. "Llynya." A miniature garland of violets crowned the garments.

"The little bugger," she swore, her shyness forgotten. They both looked up into the trees.

"She's gone."

"But she was here."

"Aye, she was here. I wondered where she was hiding all night."

"Llynya was not here all night," she said, her voice tight with irritation. " 'Twas she who freed me from the tower, enchanting the dogs with her song."

"So the hounds did not prove completely worthless," he murmured, his gaze raking the treetops. The sprite was gone, but mayhaps there was another. He got some satisfaction out of knowing what had happened in the Hart. The hounds had never before disobeyed him, but he would not have expected them to ignore the calling of the Quicken-tree.

"They were charmed senseless, as was I," she admitted, clearly not happy with her gullibility. "I thought we were going to Strata Florida, but she led me into Wroneu to be captured by those men."

"Liosalfar," he said. "Quicken-tree warriors." He checked the trees once more, assuring himself they were not being watched. "Come. We should not tarry, for we have both too easily played into Rhuddlan's hand."

"To what end?"

"I don't know. Madron counts him as an ally, but she would not have sanctioned what happened here.

Whatever he needs of you, 'tis not that you go to Caradoc as Madron wants. That alone makes me less wary, but we should be to Wydehaw, the better to make our bargain when the time comes." "Wydehaw?" she questioned. "I have nothing with which to bargain. Despite what I... we... have done, I must be gone from here."

He brought his hand up to cup her chin. "Because of what we've done,kaereste, we shall leave together, but we need supplies and the Cypriot." He brushed his lips across hers. "Caradoc is not due for a sennight, and by her own admission Madron is no tracker." They would need gold for their journey, and food, and they had to get it before Madron could close him out of the tower.

"And Rhuddlan?"

"Rhuddlan's price is my magic, and I will pay, but in my own time," He let his fingers glide across her cheek. The first glistening light of dawn had given way to a watery morning that served to underscore her exhaustion. He had run her to ground and made love to her half the night, and now had her on the march.

He could have gone on alone and come back for her, but he dared not leave her unprotected. "There is nothing left for you to fear, Ceri. Last night, before the ceremony, I met your dragons. 'Twas as written in the red book, but without blood. Just as wine is the blood of Christ in the holy sacrament, 'tis wine, not true blood, that calls them."

"Where did you find them?" Her eyes widened with surprise and mayhaps a bit of horror.

"In a grotto north of Deri," he told her. "Neither Rhuddlan nor Trig were frightened of them in any way and called them also by the other name in the book,pryf."

"Pryfis not dragon. Of this I'm sure."

"Mayhaps. Mayhaps not. Madron didn't make a distinction between the two. I did not see them. 'Twas too dark, but I could feel them, and they seemed more curious than dangerous."

"My mother told stories of dragons," she said, "and there were pictures of them drawn on the rocks at Carn Merioneth. They had huge teeth."

"If they still do, they did not use them on me." He smiled. "I have seen many strange beasts, creatures called elephants that are bigger than any dragon I ever saw imagined, and the man who owned them used no more than a stick and his voice to order them about. Camels, tigers, wild horses with black and white stripes-They are all out there in the world, Ceri, frightening only to the people who have never seen them, and seeming as mundane as a cow to the people who live with them. I think 'tis the same with the dragons of the red book. A rare and shy creature, not seen by many, can become a dragon in people's minds."

"Aye, they are rare. My mother said there are never more than two, but I don't think they are shy. The abbess at Usk called them and all my mother's stories heresies made up to confound the ignorant and children." A troubled frown marred her brow. "It has been hard to figure out what to believe."