from her sex in a bid to stop herself from falling.
Alvar caught her with one hand.
She stared at him, surprised to find him holding her wrist.
‘Here,’ he said, helping her to stand. ‘Thank you for pleasuring me so efficiently, Tavia of Blackheath.’
He raised her wrist to his lips and kissed her hand.
It was the hand she had just used to finger herself to climax. His kiss lingered on the wet knuckles. His eyes studied her as his lips continued to caress the oily flesh of her fingers. Slowly, once she was safely standing up, he lowered himself on one knee. At no point did he ever let his lips leave her hand.
‘I pledge my fealty to Tavia of Blackheath and her quest for the dragon horn,’ he declared. ‘Is that what you wanted to hear?’
She allowed him to continue kissing her knuckles, excited by the way he seemed to be lapping the flavour of her sex from her fingers.
‘Your pledge of fealty will do for the moment,’ she allowed. ‘Although I’d appreciate it if you could also tell me how I shall find the source of the dragon horn.’
‘Petition for my release,’ he insisted. ‘Once I’m free from these dungeons then you can put me on the birlinn that the castellan will have waiting in the west harbour. That vessel will transport us both to the source of the dragon horn. But I won’t say any more until you’ve petitioned for my release.’
He climbed up from his knee and kissed her on the lips.
His tongue explored her mouth and she knew he was tasting the remnants of his own ejaculate from her kiss. She was not surprised to feel a stiffness return to his loins as their tongues intertwined and he drank his own flavour. She wondered if he was more excited by the passion of their kiss or his narcissistic delight in tasting himself. It was a cruel and uncharitable thought, she supposed, but that did not mean it was any less accurate.
‘Will we find the source of the dragon horn?’ she demanded. ‘Is it really within our power? How long will it take? And will we be able to get dragon horn into the North Ridings without upsetting my father the castellan?’
Alvar, son of Erland, patted Tavia gently on the rear. He bent down and pulled up his braies, cinching the drawstring tight around his waist.
‘Go and petition for my release,’ he told her. ‘Once I’m a free man I’ll give you all the answers you want.’ His smile was broad with lewd meaning as he added, ‘I’ll give you all the answers you want, and anything else you desire.’
She said nothing.
Although she knew he was a seer, and bound to tell the truth by virtue of his vocation, Tavia was suddenly struck by the worry that it might be unwise to place all her trust in Alvar, son of Erland.
Chapter Two – Caitrin the Dark
Caitrin stole into the mage’s private offices with the stealth of a noble Greek hero on a bold and daring quest. She was Jason retrieving the Golden Fleece from Colchis; she was Odysseus plundering the harbour of the Laestrygonian’s island; she was Theseus venturing into the labyrinth at Crete. Caitrin quivered with the excitement of what she might achieve.
She had slipped past the mead-asleep guard at the base of the stairs and tiptoed up the stone steps of the tower. She had kept to the shadows of the unsconced stairwell, wary that her errand would be hard to explain if she met the wrong pair of eyes. Softly, she whispered to the gods that protected Blackheath with a prayer that her actions would be fruitful but unnoticed.
And it was as easy as sunset.
The lock on the thick oak door was no trouble. She used the pin from the brooch on the breast of her kirtles to force the tumblers into an easy acquiescence. The brooch showed three maids carrying water: gold on an enamelled crimson background.
The tumblers clicked noisily as she worked them into submission.
Accompanied by the sigh of the age-old hinge as it complained about the door’s movement, Caitrin crept cautiously into the mage’s lair.
It was a room she had visited many times before, but never alone. The air was sweetened by scents of cinnamon and spent candles. A brass spyglass stood in one window. She saw a crystal ball, an astrological chart and the paraphernalia of divination tools cluttering a central counter. Wooden shelves lined the walls. All of them were filled to the brink of catastrophe with jars, books and ancient scrolls.
Her heartbeat quickened.
Not for the first time that month, she was touched by the thrill of knowing she was engaged in a forbidden act. The blood rushed more quickly through her veins. A heated longing surged in her loins. The sultry wetness of need blossomed in her sex and its insistence forced her to hold her breath. But now was not the time to suffer arousal, she told herself. Now was not the time to be distracted by the siren call of her constant sexual excitement.
For this moment she had to remain focused.
There was enough twilight lingering in the sky to keep the room well-lit. She guessed that the windows in the east and west walls kept the tower room bright from dawn until dusk. Through the east window she could see the oncoming night sky as sable as the cloaks worn by the castellan’s Order of Dark Knights. The tower room’s formidable height allowed her to see the glow and flicker of torches lighting cottage windows up to the fiefdom’s walls and beyond. If there had been a glimpse of Jack-o’-Lantern or Jenny-Burnt-Tale in the Howling Forest to the east of the fiefdom, Caitrin knew she would have seen both of those spectres from this vantage point.
The west window stared out to the silvered waves that rippled on the Last Sea. The day’s sinking sun sizzled into the horizon beyond. She could see the silhouette masts and sails of knörr, cogs and hulc idling in the harbour. She could see a faraway crew were working on furling the sail of a large birlinn that dominated the port this evening. The west window showed the taverns and trading square of Blackheath’s commercial streets. But it was the distant harbour with the glittering seas and the lazily pitching and yawing boats where her gaze lingered.
The sky through this window was a blaze of brilliant yellows, fading up through a spectrum of darkening peaches and lowering reds. Caitrin was struck by a sudden and stinging certainty that her destiny lay in the direction of the harbour.
The idea caused a prickle of icy foreboding to tickle down her spine.
Shaking her head, knowing there was no time to be wasted admiring the view from the mage’s offices and speculating on the uncertainties of tomorrow, Caitrin hurried to the shelves on the north wall and studied the jars that were kept there.
A faraway noise made her hesitate.
It was a heavy clatter that sounded like boots on stone steps.
She swallowed down the rising taste of panic and told herself that the guard had not woken and he was not making a patrol of the rooms under his charge. Even if such a catastrophic situation was occurring, Caitrin knew the guard would not enter the mage’s offices. It was only her dread of discovery that was causing her to tremble with apprehension.
Inwardly she cursed
