She halted before him, one hand plucking at the front of her robe. A single loop and button held the garment in place.
"How know you my name?" Her voice held the chime of faery bells, yet with a deeper and mocking note.
Ravished by desire, lusting for her, Blade held out a hand and blurted, "I do not know how I just knew it. But this is not a time for talk. Come lie with me, Drusilla."
Her amber eyes devoured him, and her hand toyed with the fastening of her robe, yet she shook her head and said, "Not so, Blade. Here is not a time or place. Yet I will not altogether deny you. Do you desire a taste of Paradise, Blade, a view of treasures you may one day win? Speak and it shall be so."
Blade groaned. "I thirst and you offer me promises. You are cruel, Drusilla!"
Her smile was edged with mockery and he thought her teeth suddenly grown long, and while she was still lovely it was now the beauty of the beast. She knelt beside him, unfastening her robe, and gave him sight and touch of the blue-veined breasts, brown tipped and wide of aureole, white as milk and firm as marble, and as cold to his touch.
The line came unbidden into his mind la belle dame sans merci and both words and language were familiar, yet he did not grasp their meaning. He caressed her breasts with his fingers, wondering why they were so cold, and she leaned closer to him. The golden eyes were half closed and she moaned as she said: "Suckle me, Blade. My breasts are heavy with milk of bloody sin. Suckle me, drink my milk, and half my sins are yours. It will make a lighter burden for both of us."
Her teat was in his mouth, cold and firm, yet he did not suckle. A great fear was on him, and at the same time a great lust, and his loins betrayed him and he groaned and writhed in spasm
"Master! Master wake up! Your cursed moaning is like a beacon they will be on us within the hour. Wake up, master. And shut up if you value our skins."
Richard Blade rolled over and stared up at Sylvo. Here was no verdant grotto, no succubus High Priestess. Here was a hideaway in the fens, a narrow ledge of mud above water, screened by high growing reeds and capped by a gray and sunless sky. Marsh birds made dun arrows overhead and nearby the three horses cropped discontentedly at rank sedge and salt grass.
Blade rubbed sleep from his eyes and combed back his hair with fingers that were uncommonly dirty. Things had gone well enough, the diversion had worked and he had snatched Taleen from the queen's house without hindrance, yet what followed had been such a hurly-burly and helter-skelter of frantic improvisation that he had very nearly despaired.
Yet they won free of Sarum Vil Blade killed two men of arms in the doing, with Sylvo leaving his best knife in the belly of a third and the man had somehow followed marsh paths in the dark and fog to get them this far. It was a miracle for which Blade was duly grateful.
He fingered his curling dark stubble and stood up. "I was having a nightmare," Blade said a bit sheepishly. "I was loud?"
Sylvo, squatting on his haunches, squinted and twisted his harelip into a grimace. "Loud enough to wake the dead, master. Which we shall soon be if there are searchers nearby. Ar, had there been a moon I would have thought you struck by it! Who is Drusilla, master? It has a familiar ring, yet I cannot place it."
Blade waded off into the ankle deep water to relieve himself. Here a screen of rushes hid him from the still sleeping Princess Taleen.
"I do not know," he said sternly. "A phantom in a dream, no more, no less. Who can know of dreams? And who cares! How is the Princess? Not yet awakened?"
Sylvo shook his head. "Nothing changed, master. She sleeps like a babe, and yet no healthy babe ever slept so deep. We must wake her, master, or I fear she will never wake this side of Frigga's domain."
Blade went to where Taleen slept beneath the scarlet cloak that had been Horsa's. Her long auburn hair was all in knots and tangles, her face was pinched and wan, and there were crescent purple bruises beneath her eyes. Sweat glinted on her brow. Blade, kneeling used a corner of the cloak to wipe it away. He damned the Lady Alwyth and himself for his need for sleep. Had he only noted this earlier
Sylvo, testing the edge of his second best dirk with a thumb, said: "I could make her a posset, master." He gazed around him at the desolate fens. "There is no lack of noxious matter for the making of it. It will make her vomit, ar, how it will make her vomit, and so will she rid her belly of the sleeping poison. There is naught to lose, for I think she is dying now."
Blade glared at him. "You are a physician, then? How do I know you will not poison her further?"
Sylvo was already busy. He went to the horses and came back with a small bronze pot. Without looking at Blade he said, "When I was sure you were winning, master, I made a swift trip to Horsa's house to collect a few things. It was not thieving, as Thunor knows, because I knew it would soon belong to you. And as your man I had right to it."
"I know," Blade said dryly. "In the few minutes I spent in the house I could see it had been looted. More of that later. What of this posset?"
Sylvo dipped water into the pot and added a small quantity of mud. Into this he shredded some rotting leaves and sprinkled them with a brown powder that he produced from a fine new purse on his belt. Then he began to search the ground and rank foliage about them, dirk in hand. Blade watched with the faint beginnings of nausea.
"Aha," cried Sylvo. He jabbed with his dirk at the ground and came up with a toad wriggling on the point. He tossed it into the pot and cut it to shreds. To this he added a few worms, well slashed, and then stirred the whole vigorously.
Sylvo grinned at Blade. "I am famous for this posset, master. In all of Alb none can make worse. I swear it would make a horse empty itself."
"I have a good mind," Blade said, "to try it on you first."
He thought Sylvo paled beneath the grime that caked him. "Nay, master! Do not waste it. There is not much, and anyway I am not the one who lies dying of the swooning sickness. Come, master, hold the lady's mouth open while I pour it down her."
Blade wiped sweat from her again, then cradled her head in his lap as Sylvo tipped the pot. Taleen choked, strangled, swallowed and then choked again.
"A moment," Blade commanded. "Let her breathe."
Sylvo objected, frowning. "She must have it all, master, to make her sicker. Hold her up a bit, so it goes easier down her gullet."
They got the last drop of the horrible concoction down Taleen's throat. She had been pale before, now her complexion grew more livid and was tinged with green. She rolled over suddenly and began to retch.
Sylvo leaped back. "It works, master! I told you it would. In a moment now there will be such a puking as you have never seen."
It was true. Blade held her while she vomited, with great moans and many cries for death, her slim body twisting and writhing in his arms. When at last she opened her eyes it was to stare at him in wonderment and fear.
"You? Blade! How are you come here, and I? What is this "
He stood her upright and let her hang limp over his arm while he pressed her belly gently. "You have been sick, Taken. Now you are going to be well that's it! Throw it all up. Everything. Get it all out of you."
She dangled, her arms hanging, her hair about her face, in a great torture of gasping and retching. "I die, Blade! Let me do so, then. Frigga take me this minute! I am sick to my death! Frigga curse you, Blade, if you do not let me die this instant."