The Forests Of Gleor

Chapter 19

Blade's first instinct was to go on crouching in the bushes, waiting for the warriors lying in wait in the forest to make their move or for Queen Sanaya to laugh herself into a fit. She was barefoot and wore a flowing blue robe held by an emerald clasp at the throat. Her laughter was low and bubbling, but it somehow echoed around the clearing, and it had a note in it that was not altogether sane.

But Queen Sanaya appeared to know that he-or someone-was close at hand. It would be dangerous to lie here until the queen's unreliable temper broke. It would be less dangerous to rise to his feet and confront her.

Blade thrust his sword back into its sheath and slowly rose to his feet. He kept his arms well out from his side and his fingers spread, to avoid alarming either the queen or some nervous archer or spearman.

Queen Sanaya turned as Blade rose. Her laughter cut off as abruptly as if someone had gripped her by the throat. Her eyes widened. She might have seemed surprised or even frightened, except that her mouth curved into a broad, almost smugly triumphant smile.

«So, Prince Blade,» she said. «You came forth into the woods.»

«I came forth to where I thought I was needed,» said Blade, correcting her in a carefully neutral tone of voice.

«You are a sentimental man.»

«There are two opinions about that, here as in most lands-my Lady Queen.» Blade was tempted to leave out her title, but that would be too crude and deliberate a slight. He wanted her to go on talking.

Sanaya shrugged. «What does one more or less of those dirty mountain men matter to you?»

«It is enough to say that he does matter,» said Blade. «I would rather not spend further time arguing the point with you, if there is a man who needs aid.»

Queen Sanaya laughed again. It was actually more of a low chuckle, and once again Blade had the sense of something not quite sane lurking behind Sanaya's beauty and smiles.

«Then I take it that there is indeed no one who was bitten by a snake?»

«Take what you will, Prince Blade. You seem to be that sort of man.»

Blade looked around the clearing, seeking any signs of either wounded men or lurking warriors. He found no sign of the first, but there were six or seven of the latter. The warriors of Gleor were good woodsmen and skilled at concealing themselves. Blade's eyes were even more skilled at picking men out of any sort of concealment.

Queen Sanaya's presence was still a mystery. From all that Blade knew of her, she was fond of her comforts. She would not be tramping about the forests like this merely to act as bait in an ambush by Blade's enemies. It was a mystery he needed to solve.

«Well, I see no man bitten by a snake,» he said. «But I think I see a snake here in the clearing.»

Queen Sanaya's face hardened. «That may be so.»

«It is so. And I think it is a snake that has bitten a good many men so badly that no Kaireen's skill could hope to save them.»

«You have strange fancies, Blade.»

«Is it certain that they are stranger than yours? You come forth from a perfumed bed in the warm house of the king to these cold damp forests. You draw me into the forests by a lie. You have indeed strange fancies, if you expect to accomplish anything at all by this.»

«Indeed?»

«Yes. And do not pull out that toy dagger from your belt and wave it at me. That will accomplish least of all.»

«You might be surprised, Blade. There may be no serpent here, but there is the power of a serpent's tooth.»

Blade took that to mean that the dagger was poisoned. Well, that was about what he might expect of Queen Sanaya.

«Besides,» she went on, «you have doubtless noticed those who keep watch. They could do even more than my dagger.»

«Perhaps,» said Blade. «And again, perhaps not.» In a split second he shifted position. Now he stood only inches from the queen, on the side away from her dagger. He was also between her and most of the warriors. «Neither spearmen nor archers can easily strike at me without hitting you. If I were to seize you, what could they do?»

Sanaya's dark eyebrows rose. «Indeed, they will probably not attack. They are good men, among the best I could find. Instead they will watch whatever you do, while some of them run to tell the tale to King Embor and the clan chiefs. What do you imagine they will say and do, when they learn that Prince Blade has attacked the Queen of Draad?»

Blade was perfectly able to imagine what might happen in that case. He had no intention of admitting that to the queen, though.

«Things would be interesting, I am sure.»

The queen smiled thinly. «You play your game well, Blade. Your wits are not the dullest of your weapons.» She seemed to hesitate for a moment, then licked her lips and said, «Would you like to know how to keep things from becoming-'interesting'?»

«I think, my lady Queen, you will tell me or show me that way, whether I want to learn it or not.»

That sharp reply silenced the queen entirely for a moment. Apparently she'd expected a more elegant answer. Elegance be damned! thought Blade. Unless it helped him find out what her game was, he was not going to be particularly polite to this royal bitch.

Instead of speaking, Queen Sanaya stepped backward, away from Blade. Then she beckoned him forward. When he was only a couple of feet from her, the queen looked quickly to either side, scanning the bushes and trees around the clearing. Then one hand went to her throat. Her fingers worked at the copper and emerald clasp of her robe, and with a faint click it opened..

Slowly, as though it was caressing her skin as it fell, Sanaya's robe slid down off her shoulders. She let it fall as far as her waist and then caught it with both hands. She stood there, full breasts bare and the nipples already crinkling and hardening as the chill air blew against them. Her eyes were fixed on Blade's face, trying to read his expression.

Blade kept his face expressionless. He wasn't surprised at what the queen had done, even if he hadn't exactly seen it coming. So that was the first part of her plan, was it?

Other parts of his body weren't quite so expressionless. If Sanaya had been able to read them- But she couldn't, at least not yet.

«Well?» said Blade, his voice as cool as he could make it. He suspected the queen was planning to say that word herself, which was why he had used it.

Sanaya was silent for another long moment. Apparently Blade's cool tone was bothering her. Slowly she tied her robe around her waist. Then she brought her hands slowly upward, fingers spread and palms against the smooth, coffee-hued skin of her flat stomach. Her hands rose to cup her breasts. Blade's mind held a moment's vision of his own hands doing the same. The queen's voice was not quite steady when she spoke again.

«Have you hopes, Blade?»

Blade still kept his face straight, although this was becoming more and more of an effort. «Any man has hopes, my Lady Queen.»

«Yes, that I know. I also have hopes, though I am but a woman. Help me reach out and grasp those hopes, Prince Blade. Help me.» The raw, bubbling desire in her voice was only just under control.

«And if I do not help you?»

Her voice steadied, and for a moment the cold, calculating intriguer looked out of her large dark eyes at Blade.

«Then I will run out into the clearing as I am, crying that you have tried to rape me. Many in Draad will not be happy to hear of your lack of control over your desires.»

That was a grim certainty. King Embor might or might not forgive Blade for trying to rape his queen and wife. The king was a man of vast patience, but that vast?

Neena would have a fit. Although she might not be driven to violence, she would never let Blade hear the end of the matter. He would no longer be able to rely on her help, advice, and influence.

The clan chiefs and principal warriors would be the worst problem. Too many of them were jealous of Blade's arrival, his new influence, his marriage to Neena. Now they would have a plausible cause. Now they would turn their jealousy into action, and that action against Blade. If he refused Queen Sanaya, he might be dead within a week, and all that he might have done for Draad dead along with him.

What the devil! It was a dilemma he had met before. He had survived and even conquered in spite of the worst wiles of lustful and treacherous women. He would see if he could do the same here again in Draad.

«So be it,» he said quietly. «My lady queen, I think your hopes are good ones. Let us step into the but and talk further of them.»

Sanaya's eyes seemed to light up from within with a phosphorescent glow. She swallowed again. «Yes, Blade, let us step into the hut.» She turned her back on him and pulled her robe back up to her shoulders with one hand. With the other she pushed aside the curtain across the entrance to the hut. Blade followed her.

Sanaya's robe did not stay on her body very long after the curtain closed behind them. In the mold-scented dark chill of the but she faced Blade, then let her robe fall again. This time she let it fall all the way to the floor, until it made a crumpled shimmering blue pool around her ankles. Lifting her superb legs, she stepped out of the pool and stood in front of Blade. Except for a small triangle of linen no larger than a handkerchief, she was naked.

Blade was already stripping off his tunic. Sanaya knelt to help him unlace his boots. Her breasts did not sag, but quivered and flowed into new and enticing shapes as she knelt.

Blade kicked off his boots and threw his tunic into a corner of the hut. Before he could do anything else the queen crawled forward on her knees and threw her arms around his waist. Her hair and her lips both brushed lightly, tantalizingly, exquisitely against Blade's skin. He bent slightly and buried his hands in Sanaya's long hair, stroking her temples and the back of her neck as he did so. She nuzzled him harder and moved her lips down his body, to the waist of his trousers.

Then swiftly her hands were at work, unbuckling his belt and unlacing the thongs of the trousers. She pushed the trousers down to his knees and ripped off the breechclout he wore under them. Blade's aroused and erect maleness greeted her. In turn, she greeted it, her mouth opening wide to take it in, then closing to wrap it in warm, supple lips.

Blade fought back a groan as the warmth and the wetness and the skilled, subtle movements surrounded him. The first moment told him that Sanaya was an unmatched expert at fellatio. The next moment told him that she was determined to match her skill against his endurance, to try driving him to the edge and right over it if she could. He made up his mind that he would use all his own skill and strength to hold back, until Sanaya gave up the struggle and admitted defeat.

So Richard Blade and Sanaya Queen of Draad fought their duel in the dim, damp, chill but in the forests of Gleor. Sanaya worked her mouth up and down, closed her lips and opened them, licked with her long supple tongue, blew little puffs of air, brought her hands up to stroke and caress what her mouth could not reach. After a while Blade could no longer separate the places where Sanaya was touching him from the places where she wasn't. All his senses seemed focused in his groin, that groin was turning into a white-hot pool, and every nerve in his body seemed to vibrate in time to Sanaya's stroking and sucking.

Yet somehow Blade's mind mastered the body that Sanaya was torturing so exquisitely. Somehow he shut away what Sanaya was doing to him in one corner of his awareness. Somehow he held on, until Sanaya's lips began to twist more in a grimace of frustration than anything else. Somehow he held on, until he noticed that Sanaya herself was beginning to sigh and twist from side to side. Her efforts to work Blade up to the point of an erotic explosion were working nearly as well on her.

Blade let Sanaya's mouth take him in once more, deeper than ever, then clamped his hands in her hair again. He held her face against his groin for a moment, then slowly pulled her head back until her eyes were raised to meet his. They did not speak. Blade's throat was too dry and his breath was coming too fast for him to have found words. Sanaya was in much the same shape.

Sanaya nodded, clamped both arms around Blade's waist again, and pulled herself to her feet. Blade pulled his trousers off. Sanaya ripped the small triangle of linen from her body. The hair nestling between her thighs formed a perfect dark triangle, already glistening. She put both hands on Blade's shoulders, and let his hands on her hips draw her hard against him.

They stood pressed hard together for a moment. Blade felt that sweat had already made Sanaya's skin as slick as his own. He could feel the hard solid points of her nipples pressed against his chest as Sanaya's quick breathing thrust her breasts forward.

Then Sanaya let herself sag backward, still holding onto Blade's shoulders with a viselike grip. He had to bend forward to let her keep his grip upon him. She sagged and he bent until she lay back against the floor and he lay down on top of her. She twisted herself into position, raised her legs, bent them double, then clamped one hand in his hair and the other on the back of his neck as he entered her.

In that position she could take him in even more deeply than Blade could have expected. Once again there was warmth and wetness all around him, moving around him, taking him in and sending flames soaring up in his groin. This time he knew he would not be able to last, but it didn't matter now because neither would Sanaya. The duel was over. What they were doing now was more of a duet.

He sensed that the queen felt the same way. At each of Blade's thrusts she would twist and heave herself against him, pressing hard. Less often she would groan, her mouth now open and slack. There was not much tenderness between Blade and Sanaya as they joined. But there was a great deal of passion, and both sensed that passion was rising steadily higher and higher, like water in a well.

It overflowed first in the queen. She gave a terrible cry, as though she were being impaled on something much sharper and more deadly than Blade's erection. The cry seemed loud enough to shake the flimsy but down on the heads of the couple inside.

Sanaya cried out again, even louder. Her nails dug into Blade's back just below the shoulders and her legs flailed wildly in the air. He could feel her feet slamming against his hips and buttocks as he in turn slammed himself against her writhing body. Her arms locked about him tightly enough to make him gasp, and he felt an explosion of liquid warmth deep inside her and around him.

Somehow Blade came through Sanaya's climax and kept on thrusting. Now, though, he felt himself rising steadily toward his own peak, and he did not hold himself back. He swept upward, feeling like a bird borne upward by the wind. He swept upward toward his peak, and reached it.

Again a terrible cry filled the hut. Blade pressed downward, burying his face between Sanaya's breasts, clamping his hands tightly on her hips. He felt like sinking into her, dissolving away in the hot release of desire. He clung to her and she clung to him for a long moment. In that single moment there was almost tenderness.

Blade raised himself on his hands and kissed each of Sanaya's swollen nipples. Then he looked into her face, its frame of hair damp and straggly with sweat and matted with leaves from the floor. The queen's eyes were closed and her nostrils were wide as her starved lungs tried desperately to suck in air. But her lips were moving, repeating a pattern as she murmured the same words over and over again.

Blade listened. At first he heard only a meaningless noise. Then gradually the noise sorted itself into words he could understand.

Over and over again, Sanaya was murmuring, «King Blade, King Blade, King Blade, King Blade, King Blade.»

King Blade! He had come to her out of desire, but also in the hope of finding out what games she might be playing. Desire was satisfied-Blade could not imagine feeling it again for hours, perhaps days. Now he had learned what he needed to know.

So he was «King Blade» to Sanaya, was he? So she wanted to see him beside her on the throne of Draad, and Embor and Neena cast down?

So what would she say and do when she found that he would not help her?