The Last Light of the Sun Read Online Free PDF

bed.
    “Lie down,” she said, watching him. “On your back.”
    He did what she told him. He had left the world where things were as they … ought to be. He had left it when he took the dead man’s horse. She walked about the room and pinched shut or blew out the candles and lamps, so only the firelight glowed, red on the farthest wall. In the near-dark it was easier. She came back, stood over against her bed where he lay—an outline against the fire, looking down upon him. She reached out, slowly—he saw her hand moving—and touched his manhood.
    Bern closed his eyes again. He’d thought her touch would be cold, like age, like death, but it wasn’t. She moved her fingers, down and back up, and then slowly down again. He felt himself, even amid fear and a kind of horror, becoming aroused. A roaring in his blood. The drink? This wasn’t like a romp with Elli or Anrida in the stubbled fields after harvesting, in the straw of their barn by moonlight.
    This wasn’t like anything.
    “Good,” whispered the volur, and repeated it, her hand moving. “It needs your seed to be done, you see. You have a gift for me.”
    Her voice had changed again, deepened. She withdrew her hand. Bern trembled, kept his eyes tightly closed, heard a rustling as she shed her own robe. He wondered suddenly where the serpent was; pushed that thought away. The bed shifted, he felt her hands on his shoulders,a knee by one hip, and then the other, smelled her scent—and then she mounted him from above without hesitation and sheathed him within her, hard.
    Bern gasped, heard a sound torn from her. And with that, he understood—without warning or expectation—that he had a power here, after all. Even in this place of magic. She needed what was his to give. And it was that awareness, a kind of surging, that took him over, more than any other shape desire might wear, as the woman—the witch, volur, wise woman, seer, whatever she would be named—began rocking upon him, breathing harder. Crying a name then (not his), her hips moving as in a spasm. He made himself open his eyes, saw her head thrown back, her mouth wide open, her own eyes closed now upon need as she rode him wildly like a night horse of her own dark dreaming and claimed for herself-— now, with his own harsh, torn spasm—the seed she said she needed to work magic in the night.
    “ GET DRESSED“ .“
    She swung off his body and up from the bed. No lingering, no aftermath. The voice brittle and cold again. She put on her robe and went to the near wall of the cabin, rapped three times on it, hard. She looked back at him, her glance bleak as before, as if the woman upon him moments ago, with her closed eyes and shuddering breath, had never existed in the world. “Unless you’d prefer the others see you like this when they come in?”
    Bern moved. As he hurried into clothing and boots, she crossed to the fire, took a taper, and began lighting the lamps again. Before they were all lit, before he had his overshirt on, the outside door opened and four women came in, moving quickly. He had a sense they’d been trying to catch him before he was dressed. Which meant they had …
    He took a breath. He didn’t know what it meant. He was lost here, in this cabin, in the night.
    One of the women carried a dark blue cloak, he saw. She took this to the volur and draped it about her, fastening it at one shoulder with a silver torque. Three of the others, none of them young, took over dealing with the lamps. The last one began preparing another mixture at the table, using a different bowl. No one said a word. Bern didn’t see the young girl who’d spoken to him outside.
    After their entrance and quick glances at him, none of the women even seemed to acknowledge his presence here. A man, meaningless. He hadn’t been, just before, though, had he? A part of him wanted to say that. Bern slipped his head and arms into his shirt and stood near the rumpled bed. He felt oddly awake now,