Chapter Ten
Temptation
By day I stayed in the ruined cities and towns of the Eastern Kingdom and at night I traveled northward. I didn’t see anyone or anything of note worthiness.
It was a depressing ride traveling through the empty ruined cities and vacant fields of the once vibrantly thriving kingdom. Hopefully one day, after the battle was won and balance was restored to these lands, these cities would become occupied and prosperous once again.
The morning of the third day I reached the trees at the base of the mountains and I kept riding up through them not stopping.
It was like being home only different. It was with relief that I welcomed the cooler temperatures of the mountain atmosphere. Other than the mountain demons my only worries were slipping past the Blue Castle unnoticed as well as the city of Unasa.
It wasn’t populated by the Western Kingdom, but rather by the private forces of the sorcerer. It was from these troops that the assassins that had killed Zalisha’s family had come from.
They were to be avoided, which meant I had to go farther up into the mountains in order to avoid any possible contact with them.
I passed the city far off and to the right in the moonlit darkness. It was a beautiful looking city. Too bad that it had to be populated with the Sorcerer’s assassins and strong arm men.
I made camp later that night without a fire. It was early when I broke camp to leave and continue experiencing the scenic wonder of these mountains. I saddled Relentless and went for my saddle bags that lay on the ground a couple of feet away and froze.
In the soft ground there was an unclearly defined footprint. One of the straps on the bags had not been retied right either. Looking around but seeing nothing amiss I cautiously approached the bags and opened them expecting a snake to come striking out at me or a poison dart of some kind.
Nothing appeared to have been taken however, but the contents were slightly rearranged. I caught a whiff of something sweet smelling and I lifted the bags up to smell them, but I smelled nothing more than the natural leather smell of the saddle bags.
A chill coursed through me as I considered that whoever had done this had been within six feet of me while I had slept.
How had I not heard whoever it had been who had been rummaging through my pack?
Why hadn’t Relentless alerted me to someone’s presence?
The involuntary thought went through me and I swallowed looking around me. Mountain demons?
I got up and walked over to Relentless. “What’s going on here big boy?”
I noticed something in the corner of Relentless’s mouth out by his gums and I picked it off and looked at it. It was part of an apple skin!
Relentless loved apples, what horse didn’t, but this! What kind of a mountain demon sneaks into a warrior’s camp in the dark of the night to feed the warrior’s warhorse apples and engage on rifling through the warrior’s saddlebags without taking anything from them?
Relentless held his head low, as if he knew he had been bad. As mad as I was at him I couldn’t get over the fact that Relentless wouldn’t have allowed himself to be bribed by apples and put his master in danger unless…… unless it had been a woman!
Relentless was putty in a woman’s hands. It was a secret I tried to avoid getting out.
“Still you think you could have snorted or something!”
Relentless looked away holding his head low and I smacked his shoulder a little harder than I should have.
I was disappointed in both of us, as it was I was lucky to still be alive. I expected I’d only have a couple more nights in the mountains and they were shaping up to be interesting ones, especially if my nighttime visitor came once again.
The coming night was all I could think of throughout the day. I had never been surprised before like I had been last night and it really bothered me.
I set up camp and this time I had a fire, but I let it go out in the early morning hours. My bedroll was back from the fire’s edge a good ten feet or so only I wasn’t in it.
The night had been a quiet one, and I was just getting the feeling that I had wasted a whole night’s sleep for nothing, when something changed.
The atmosphere of the night was different. There was someone or something there that hadn’t been there before and as certain as I was of that I was also sure that it knew that I wasn’t in my bedroll and in fact was probably looking straight at me this very moment.
Chills went up and down my spine at the prospect of being seen in my concealment and yet unable to see my opponent. I at least thought I knew where the ‘it’ was, but I wasn’t sure.
Deciding to end the pretense of hiding, when it was clear to me that the game was up I stepped out from the dense thicket I had been standing motionless in for hours and drew my sword. The sword immediately brightened, as if it sensed my need for light.
A wispy ray of blue light peeled off into the darkness away from me in search of the something that I had sensed was there. The wispy ray of colored light seemed to run into something in the blackness of the night and it stopped only to then encircle around the object it had encountered until a narrow dark column was illuminated in the dark.
I saw a hand come out of the pitch black column. I watched as a finger played with the strands of light encircling it wonderingly. Something in the darkness moved and I realized its head had been bent forward.
The head lifted even as two hands lifted back the hood of a black cape. I swallowed hard as I stared at my first mountain demon.
Chills coursed up and down my spine. It was like nothing I had ever seen before and yet it was as beautiful as any woman I had ever seen and more.
‘This is not good Zevin’ I said to myself inwardly.
‘Not good to be infatuated with a demoness! Get a grip on yourself!’
But all I could do was stare helplessly like a moth flying into a burning flame. It was definitely female or at least I hoped it was. I had to admit that I didn’t know much about demons.
She was taller than the overall height of a woman of Assoria by several inches. Her facial features were mostly similar to the people of Assoria, but they were different slightly and she looked of a bigger build overall, but it was hard to tell because of the cape she wore.
Her eyes though!
Zalisha had been right about these mountain demons. Their eyes glowed!
They glowed so much that they castoff considerable light. It wasn’t just the eyes, but individual strands of her black long hair glowed softly too. She for all her odd exotic appearance was utterly bewitching.
“Who are you?” I managed to get out as her full lips parted in a sensual smile that revealed sharp teeth that looked like silver and glinted like polished knives in the reflected light given off by my sword.
In a wicked tone of voice she said, “You mean what am I? That would be a better question.”
Her face displayed the haughty demeanor common of evilness, but all I could think was that it made her look sort of cute.
Okay I’d play along, “Okay then what are you?”
“Your worst nightmare if I so choose to be!” She said assuredly.
I didn’t doubt her. But what she didn’t know was that she was already better than any fantasy I’d ever had.
“What business do you have in trespassing across our lands uninvited?” She said directly, with a hint of the savagery I instinctively knew she possessed creeping out into her tone.
Trespassing?
“I wasn’t aware that I was! Tell me do demons claim territory?”
She looked uncertain for only a moment and then she drew herself up as regally as any queen would, “We possess these mountains and we don’t like outsiders traipsing through them disturbing our solitude!”
I had to bite back a smile, ‘Disturbing their solitude’ yeah right! It seemed to me that she had sought out my company on two separate occasions already.
“I’m sorry to have imposed on your solitude. I’ll be out of the mountains soon.”
She nodded her head solemnly, “See that you are or else!” She left the rest unsaid and turned away and started to fade away into the darkness.
Quickly I followed after her, but it was next to impossible to keep sight of her. All I had to go by was the deeper darkness of her cape in comparison to the dark grayness of the early morning light just before sunrise.
I lost sight of her.
Suddenly a void of blackness opened up before me in the mountainous terrain and I desperately flung myself backwards grabbing at the rocks to keep myself from falling over into the chasm I’d started to step into.
Pulling myself up I heard the sound of soft taunting laughter behind me. The sound grated on my nerves and I turned back angrily to view its source.
There she was on the other side of the chasm still laughing softly her eyes glowing with merriment. The little witch had almost let me kill myself!
How had she crossed the chasm in front of me?
It had to be over twenty feet in distance side to side! I couldn’t jump that on my best day, had she?
As if in answer to my unasked question she smiled her sharp teeth glinting. I was about to say something, when she threw something at me and I had to reach out and catch it before it smacked me in the head.
Looking at what I had caught I saw that it was an apple. I looked back across at her, but she was gone. Looking down at the apple I pondered on the mystery of her. What kind of a she demon runs around the mountains at night feeding horses apples and watching men sleep?
A dangerous one was the answer as I remembered how close I’d come to falling into the chasm. Getting up I stumbled through the early morning darkness back to my camp. I walked up to Relentless and cutting the apple into pieces I handed him some as I said to him.
“You’re forgiven old boy. She is quite bewitching! I can see why you fell for her. You shouldn’t drop your guard around a female like that all the same though. Their smiles of welcome conceal hidden dangers!”
Relentless shook his head and seemed to snort derisively at me.
“That’s right! Take it from one who almost found it out the hard way!”
I decided to lay down and get a couple of hours of sleep at least.
The twill of a songbird awoke me. From the brightness of the morning I gauged that I had slept for more than just a couple of hours. My senses caught the smell of something familiar.
Something sweet!
I sat bolt upright grabbing my sword up and looking all around for the sweet smell’s mysterious owner. I saw nothing and then my eyes drifted downward. On a rock less than two feet away from where my head had been while I had slept sat a big red apple on a rock.
Unbelievably I glanced toward Relentless and saw him busy nosing through the grass in search of the remains of what must have been a veritable feast of apples, if the empty sack on the ground was any indicator.
I hit the ground hard with my fist. She’d done it to me again!
My anger dissipated slightly when I considered on a somewhat more positive high note that she must not want me dead. Goodness knows she could have done it if she’d wanted to. Still I didn’t like being played around with like a helpless mouse caught in the sharp talons of a playful cat.
The next time we met things were going to be different!
It was interesting that I had already subconsciously decided that there would be a next time.