Darkwitch Rising by Sara Douglass

All this meant but one thing: I was no longer prepared to accept without question the future that the Troy Game had mapped out for me.

I was becoming…independent. A strange state, for me.

Partly this was because of the Troy Game’s—Catling’s—unnecessary deception. The utter cruelty of that deception had cost the Game dearly in terms of unquestioning loyalty.

And, partly, my new independence of thought and my questioning of old loyalties was because of Weyland Orr.

Asterion.

Each afternoon after I’d been to the Tower (perhaps twice a week), Weyland would kiss me, taste the growing power in my mouth, and smile at both myself and Jane.

Each night he and I repaired to the Idyll. Each night we talked, then we went to that sumptuous bed.

Each night, invariably, we made love.

And we talked, far into each night. There were a few nights where neither of us slept, and then in the morning we would be irritable and cross with each other and with Jane. Oddly enough, our bickering on these mornings tended to set her suspicions to rest for a while, because she could not believe such a squabbling couple could be involved in any matter of the heart.

Any matter of the heart.

This was not what I meant to achieve that night I first lay with Weyland. I had convinced myself (in the heat of the moment when possibly I was grasping for any excuse) that this was a matter of healing of an ancient wound. But the sex was not the healing. No, the healing of Asterion’s wounds was something infinitely more dangerous.

Those wounds needed true companionship. Those wounds needed trust. Those wounds needed love.

Over three thousand years I’d had a pitiful handful of lovers—Brutus and Coel (and then Coel again, as Harold), then Asterion, once, in his glamour of Silvius, and finally John Thornton—but Weyland made me forget them all. There was no pining for Brutus whenever I was with Weyland.

There was only Weyland.

One night we lay, sweaty, slightly out of breath, recovering from the heat of our passion. Weyland’s hand was slowly tracing its way up and down my back, sending delicious little thrills of pleasure through my body. Then, on one downward sweep, his hand went much lower than it had previously, and it rubbed and bumped over the ridged scars left after that hateful imp had eaten its way out.

His hand jerked away, and he went very still.

“Why?” I said. “Why be so malicious? You didn’t need to cause us so much agony. You didn’t need to tear Jane and myself apart in order to impress Charles.”

Weyland kept his hand still for a long time, and did not move it again until he finally spoke. “I was fed hatred from the time of my birth. My mother, leaning over my cradle, spitting at me. King Minos devising the worst possible means to keep me caged. The population of Knossos, of all Crete, invoking my name to frighten their children.”

His hand was now running from the nape of my neck, down my back, over my scars, over my buttocks, slowly, caressingly, and then up again, travelling as leisurely on its return journey as it had on its journey thither. I was trembling, partly at what Weyland was saying, mostly at his hand.

“Hate became for me not merely a means of existence, but the very nature of existence. It became more than that. It became a vehicle, a means of achieving my ambitions, and it became a safe place to hide.”

A glib enough explanation on the face of it, but there was something about Weyland’s voice and the way his eyes wouldn’t meet mine, that made me realise he was telling me the way that it truly had been for him. For a man such as Weyland, this opening and sharing was painful and dangerous, and so I kissed his mouth, and stroked his face, and after a moment or two he continued.

“It is no excuse, not to such as you, but it was who I was.” He paused, and finally allowed his eyes to meet with mine. “Hate is something too easy to fall into, Noah. It is…addictive. Safe. It demands nothing save that it be fed.”

“Do you still hate, Weyland?”

“Not here, not with you.”

I gave a soft, somewhat breathless laugh. “I am so very afraid of you, Weyland. Of what we are doing.”

Weyland, Weyland, what are we doing? How can we stop? How can we stop?

“On some days,” he whispered, “I am nauseous with fear. All I want is to force you to get those bands for me, to force you to my will…and yet…”

“What is different about this life, Weyland? Why these doubts and hesitations now?”

“You,” he said. “I had no thought for Cornelia, she was merely a piece to be moved on the chessboard. I despised Caela. But you—”

“I have grown a little.”

“You have grown a great deal. But…” His thumb traced about the borders of my face, over my forehead, down my cheekbone, around my jaw. “Ah, Noah, I have never encountered such a jewel as you. Not in any life. Not in any place I have travelled.” His voice changed, became full of laughter. “You are still my concubine…but freely now. Not forced. That has been a strange lesson for me to learn—that I can achieve more through granting freedom than through forcing with fear.”

Aye, still his concubine. And more dangerously trapped now, than ever I was with his imp inside me.

We were quiet for a while after that, touching and stroking, kissing now and again, moving closer to lovemaking once more, but as yet too indolent to be bothered.

I eventually spoke, thinking to use the intimacy of this moment to ask something about one of my deepest fears. “Weyland, talk to me of the darkcraft. I had thought you might try to apportion some of the blame for your actions on that. ‘See, I am consumed with dark power. I am its slave’.”

He laughed, rolling over on his back. “I wish I had thought of using it as an excuse. Would you have accepted it?”

“No. I would have loathed you for it.”

His smile died. “The darkcraft is but power, Noah. It imparts no moral values, and has no destination or objective of its own. What I have done, in all my lives, is my own burden to bear. Not that of the darkcraft.”

“So…darkcraft does not corrupt?” I held my breath, waiting for that response.

His mouth twisted slightly. “Not unless he who wields it is corruptible.”

I relaxed. I had the darkcraft quiescent within me. It would not corrupt me…not unless I was myself corruptible.

So, did I trust myself? Was I true?

And true to what?

Weyland was now watching me quizzically. “Why these questions? And why these emotions I see rolling over your face?”

I tried to distract him with humour. “I merely wanted to know precisely what I shared a bed with.”

Something in his face changed. “Well, my lady Noah, perhaps you should experience precisely what it is you share a bed with.”

Weyland’s hand touched me again, but this time it was as if a different man had touched me…no, as if a different world had touched me.

“Weyland!”

“You want to know what the darkcraft is, Noah? Then let it love you, let it lie with you, let it inside you.” His body was resting full-length and firm against mine now, his hands were at my back, my shoulders, my breasts. “Let all of me make love to you, Noah.”

Thus began a journey, an experience, from which it took me days to recover and to regain my equilibrium. Weyland took me down the paths of the darkcraft, allowing it to envelop me, consume me, wash through my very soul.

It was the most frightening, exhilarating, joyous, dangerous, unbelievable encounter of all of my lives.

Initially I was terrified, for power such as I had never imagined swept through me.

Worse, I could feel that untried and unopened potential deep within myself respond to it, wanting to join with it. I dared not allow it, because then Weyland would realise I had kept critical knowledge from him and he would never trust me again (and why was that so important, eh?), but also because I knew instinctively that if I did allow it, Weyland and I would be joined by forces so powerful that I would never be able to break free from him again.

But as the moment passed, and I became a little more used to Weyland’s darkcraft washing through me, I realised that, first, I could keep my own potential quiescent without too much trouble, and that, second, I was enjoying this experience so much that, frankly, I did not want to put a halt to it. Ariadne was right, this was the greatest lover imaginable.