Free The Iron Tempest by Ron Miller

should cleave so to my palate? What is she to me that I feel a fist clenching in my groin? Why do my calves tighten and my fingers dig into moist palms and my back arch like the ecstatic cat’s? Who is she to me that my own body should coil and uncoil in rhythmic sympathy, like a courting seahorse? Or that it should vibrate like the rocks beneath a cataract? Why do my eyes fail to see, or stinging tears well up from them? Why do I taste blood on my lips? What is this galvanic current that runs through me, as though I’ve been threaded onto a white-hot wire? Why do my ears ring and buzz and whisper as they listen to the cry of my flesh as it becomes proud, as it passes beyond this world where some immense desire that my intellect cannot understand mixes with the desire for another body’s warmth and softness?
    Lost, compassless, storm-ravaged, guided by the guttering pole star of a lonely candle, she drifted into the oceanic bed like a ship abandoned to the hurricane, sinking into its vast billows, relinquished to the welcoming arms of Neptune and the weightless, lightless, dreamless oblivion of the vasty abyss.
    * * * * *
    Bradamant and her guide eventually emerged into a woody ravine, passing through a vine-masked cleft in the rock. When she turned to look, she could find no sign of an opening.
    All that day the women climbed through a wild landscape, rugged and broken, crossing hills and streams without stopping for rest. The conversation, such as it was, was for the most part one-sided, consisting of Melissa’s detailed lectures on the techniques that Bradamant would need to release the imprisoned hero. Bradamant had a thousand questions for the sorceress, but Melissa would not allow herself to be distracted. None of the questions, however, were about the strange dreams of the previous night, of which Bradamant had no memory.
    “It wouldn’t matter if you were Athena or Pentesilea or Dido,” Melissa said, “or had all the armies of Karl the Great behind you, you still would have no hope of besting Atalante, the magician who has kidnapped Rashid—to say nothing of a great many others. Not only is his steel castle impregnable, not only does he possess his flying horse, but he also has a shield that shines with a brilliance that stuns—whoever gazes on it, however briefly, falls to the ground as though dead.”
    “So I heard. I could shut my eyes or blindfold myself,” suggested Bradamant.
    “Really? And how could you tell where Atalante was? How could you tell whether or not he was about to lop off your head? How could you parry his strokes or strike him? No. I’ll show you something that’ll get around Atalante and his magic.”
    “And what’s that?”
    “Agramant, the king of the Saracens, has given a ring to one of his barons, a horrible brute named Brunello. This ring was a prize brought from heathen India and has the property, among others no less remarkable, of rendering its wearer immune to any magic or spells.”
    “Sounds useful.”
    “It is.”
    “So I only need to get this ring from Brunello, wherever he is?”
    “Yes; he’s at an inn not very far from here.”
    “No problem, then.”
    “We’ll see about that. Brunello, you must know, is a most unchivalrous knight. He’s as expert in cunning, thievery and duplicity as Atalante is in sorcery. He is, like you, on a mission to retrieve Rashid from captivity and return him to Agramant and, typically, his methods are guile and treachery against which, all too often, honesty and openness are helpless. As you surely know, Agramant loves Rashid above all his other paladins and would do anything to get him back safely. Unlike you, Brunello has the advantage of the magic ring. With it, he will succeed. Without it, you will fail.”
    “And Rashid’s gratitude would go to this Brunello and not to me.”
    “You grasp the problem perfectly. In addition, Rashid would be lost forever to Karl and without him on the Christian side, the emperor will have