Lord of the Dark Read Online Free PDF Page A

corridor and let the strange warmth embrace her. The air smelled of honey and sweet flag; the rich, pungent aroma, like incense, rushed at her nostrils, and she breathed it in deeply.
    She called out again, but still no answer came. She ventured deeper into a labyrinth off which rooms were carved in the rock, strangely well appointed with furniture, most likely gifts of the sea from wrecks like her own. This was not the natural cave she’d hoped. It was someone’s home, but whose? She’d seen no sign of life since she crawled out of the sea on the black volcanic strand below.
    Rhiannon shuddered. Everyone knew the archipelago was enchanted. What creature lived in this strange primeval place? She should run and never look back. She would do just that, after the storm, when the dawn cancelled fearsome shadows and made all things real again. But now, no one seemed to be at home, and that played to her sense of curiosity. That such had always been her undoing never crossed her mind. She was safe and warm in a place that smelled of honey and sweet herbs. After what she’d just been through, it felt safe enough…at least to explore.
    One room she entered boasted a fine elevated bed so neatly made it was as if it had never been slept in and a fine teakwood wardrobe. Rhiannon peeked inside. A whiff of the sweet wood ghosted past her nostrils, mingled with the stale sent of disuse. She opened the door wider. Clothes were hung inside, men’s clothes and women’s. Rhiannon walked her fingers through them. Some were very costly, especially the women’s togs. Many were even embellished with threads of gold and silver.
    She glanced down at the remains of her shift barely hanging on her body. The skirt was in tatters, and the bodice barely held together by an inch or two of braid at the neckline. Her breasts were practically bare. She fingered a mulberry shift of the finest homespun, and after a moment, snatched it from the wardrobe. Even the most hard-hearted creature couldn’t deny a woman the decency of covering her nakedness, she reasoned. She couldn’t very well go about as she was, with her sex exposed, and her nipples peeking through the threadbare gauze. But it would be a shame to slip such a fine kirtle on over sand and mud splatter from the marshes; perhaps if she could find some water to wash with first…
    Looping the kirtle over her arm, she stepped back over the threshold and continued along the corridor that took her deeper into the cave. Another, larger chamber caught her attention on the opposite side of the hallway and she looked inside. It, too, was well appointed, a sleeping chamber surely, but there was no bed. A strange heart-shaped niche was carved in the rocky wall, with great hollowed-out sections at the top and sides that almost looked like wings. She padded nearer, running her hand along the curious indentations, but try as she would, she could make no sense of it, and left the chamber with a shrug.
    Continuing on, a sudden rush of herb-scented warmth enveloped her. It was drifting along the corridor from deeper in the cave. Drawn to it, Rhiannon followed the wraithlike ribbon of steam obscuring what lay beyond, for the torches set in their rocky brackets stopped here. She was too short to reach one to carry with her, and she almost turned back, fearing to do herself a mischief blundering about in the dark, and would have done just that if the welcoming sound of rippling water music hadn’t changed her mind. Had she found a means to wash the filth of her ordeal from her body? Inching her way along, her hand groping the slimy wall bleeding with dampness, Rhiannon moved with the stealth of a cat, mindful of every cautious step where the corridor spilled into what looked like the perimeter of a sunken pool.
    Once her eyes became accustomed to the dark and rising steam, she found that there was enough reflected light filtering in from the last torch along the corridor for her to define the pool quite well.