Dragonlord Tarot the Sun Read online

  Dragonlord

  Tarot — The Sun

  By

  Viola Grace

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Dragonlord — Tarot Series — The Sun

  Copyright © 2006 Viola Grace

  SERIES ISBN: 1-55410-748-2

  Cover art by Martine Jardin

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by eXtasy Books

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  www.extasybooks.com

  Tarot Definition: The Sun

  Upright:

  Joy and happiness are around the corner. The Sun is one of the most positive cards in the tarot. Happiness and success will come to the questioner. Efforts will be rewarded, trials will be overcome, good friends comfort and more happiness surround you.

  Marriage will be happy and successful filled with unselfish love. Fun and romantic frolic will abound.

  Children are in the cards. The Sun frequently precedes the birth of a child or grandchild. Even neighborhood children can be indicated full of youthful exuberance.

  This is an amazing and uplifting card in any reading.

  Reversed:

  It is a sun covered by a cloud, shadowed possibilities.

  It shows the potential for happiness, which may be clouded.

  It can also indicate illness in the questioner’s family, or difficulty or deliberate action to avoid having children.

  In reference to a marriage, it can show that the questioner is not appreciated.

  To my first lab patients. They held still for the greater good.

  Chapter 1

  Marcus eyed the little village cautiously. It did not seem the likely place for him to find a dragon, but then, it was the perfect place for one to hide. He straightened his shoulders and walked down the hill and into the dragon’s territory.

  “Do you know where I could find the family who lived in the hut on the hill?” He stopped to question the first passerby in the marketplace.

  “Ask the smith.” Through eyes unfocussed by age she glared at him. With that, the toothless old woman turned and shuffled away, stopping before she turned a corner to shoot him another unfriendly look.

  “Smith, huh?” Marcus began to make his way to the sounds of metal against metal that rang out of the far corner of the marketplace. He had come to this tiny village in search of his old friend Antoine, a famed healer and one of the only truly good men that Marcus had ever met, only to be met by the sight of Antoine’s home scorched and abandoned.

  Drawing close to the smithy, he noticed a large crowd gathered outside watching the smith at work. Wondering what everyone was looking at, he began to ease his way to the front of the crowd. When he was able to look inside the dark enclosure, glowing as if the fires of hell were contained within, he stopped and stared just like the village folk all around him. He had never seen a smith that looked like this.

  The steady ringing of metal on metal was rhythmic, with every blow her arms and shoulders rippled in response to the impact. Her breasts were contained by a leather top, which tied behind her neck and low on her back. Leather boots on her feet kept them from being burned by the sparks coming from her strikes. A leather skirt split up either side of her thighs completed her covering and left her open to the breeze that blew occasionally from the open front of the smithy.

  Her skin was a pearly white, her breasts full, the hair on her head cropped close to her skull. Her height was taller than that of the average men standing and gawking at her.

  With a supple twist of her upper body, she took the glowing steel and quenched it in a bucket. The hiss of steam and a cloud of vapor filled the interior of the forge.

  “Show is over, folks. Go about your business. Thomas, here is that fitting for your wagon. Same deal as last time, alright?” With those bald statements and a glare, she effectively cleared the area in front of the shop.

  “What do you want? If you need metal work done, I am busy for the next moon.” She turned her gaze to Marcus, and he drew in his breath sharply when he met her eyes. They were a bright gold with slit pupils.

  “I am not here for metal work; I need to ask a few questions of you.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “Why is Antoine’s daughter working as a smith, would be my first one.”

  “Making a living, and how did you know my father?”

  “He and I went way back, to the days he could fly actually.” With that statement he watched a dozen emotions cross her face.

  “I think we need to talk somewhere less public, give me a moment to clean off this sweat, and I will meet you at the Prancing Goose Tavern, third doorway on your left.” She then left him standing in the front of the workshop as she walked to a curtain in the back of the shop. Her hands fell to the lower tie of her top, working at the knot as she rounded the curtain.

  As soon as she was out of sight, he sighed deeply, and proceeded to the aforementioned tavern. Unless he was mistaken, one of the emotions that crossed her face was grief, and it pained him to think of his friend dying without the comfort of his own kind. Dragons had never been a prolific breed, but every one was precious. The loss of a gifted healer and warrior hurt more than words could say.

  One hour later she sauntered into the tavern and waved greetings to the barmaids and the innkeeper.

  She had obviously bathed; her short hair was damp and plastered to her skull. Her skin gleamed even more brightly now that the layer of sweat and grime had been removed from it, and she was clothed in a clean version of her earlier garb. The green leather made her eyes glow in the lamplight of the tavern.

  She swung gracefully into the seat across from him. “I have been thinking on it, and you look very familiar. You are Marcus, are you not?”

  “Yes, and your name is …Lia? I believe that is what your father called you when I last visited.” He smiled slightly, remembering the aggrieved sigh and shaken head that had accompanied her name whenever her father had spoken of her.

  “Why are you here?”

  “I came to offer your father a place in my court, as high healer. I had no idea that he was no longer with us. His loss grieves me deeply. How did it happen?”

  She took a deep breath and with a lift of one very beautifully arched brow, she summoned a wench with two pints of ale. A short nod and they were left alone again.

  “Six years ago, there was an attack by the henchmen of the local dragonlord. They had orders to take my father with them, and to kill his family. I guess it was to remove his attachment to the village…I don’t know.” She stopped to take a long drink of the ale mug in front of her, and then continued.

  “I was married to the blacksmith, and had been for six months. The orders of the raiders were restricted to capturing my father, the rest of the village was theirs to pillage.

  “I was awoken by the screams, fire was everywhere, my husband and I bolted out of bed, grabbed what clothing we could, armed ourselves, and left the house. We attempted to orga
nize the villagers in a defiance of the main portion of the town, but they were like stampeding sheep. To make a long story short, my husband was killed, and I was captured.

  “My mother was herded into the holding area with the rest of the women, and my father was brought before us in dwarf-forged chains, he had transformed into his warrior form for maximum strength and still they caught him.

  “He was told to identify his wife and child. He would not comply, so they began to cut him, telling him that the torture would stop only when he had told them which ones we were. My mother broke, she flung herself forward and begged them to do anything they wanted to her, just spare her husband. They pinned her to the ground with the blade they had been using on my father. He went berserk and they were forced to kill him too.”

  She stopped and had another long gulp of the ale. “After that night, I took over for my beloved, John, and became the smith. And so you find me today.” A small smile played about her full lips. “I am sorry that you wasted a trip.”

  “With your father and husband dead, there is nothing to keep you here. Why don’t you return with me, and take the place of healer I would have offered to your father? I know that he trained you, I still have the letters he wrote to me, despairing of teaching you the seriousness of your lessons.” He returned her small smile.

  “At the very least, let me help you, consider it a pilgrimage. If you don’t like my home and the people there, feel free to return to this village. But at least come with me and see what the world has to offer one with your training. Consider it. Please.”

  This was the nearest he had ever come to begging a woman for anything, but something told him that she must accompany him to his home, and he was not one to question his instincts.

  “I will consider your generous offer. Maybe I do need a break from the forge. Father was always after me to travel with him.” Lia’s voice drifted off into memory, another small smile playing at her lips.

  His eyes focused on those lips and an image of them on his body caused him to stifle a groan. “I will stay here overnight, I expect to have an answer tomorrow after you have slept on it. Is there somewhere I can get a room?” His dark eyes asked her to trust him, and he gave her a little boy grin. “Unless you would care to have me as a guest in your house?”

  She looked vaguely startled, and then responded with an answering grin. “The tavern rents rooms above the stairs; I will make the arrangements for you as a good host should. Until tomorrow.”

  She rose from the small table, gave him a small bow from the waist, which gave him an unobstructed view of her cleavage. She turned and walked to the counter with her swaying gait, and spoke with the wench who had served them earlier. They both looked over at him, and the wench pursed her lips. Lia laughed, then headed out of the tavern as if the fires of hell were at her skirt.

  The wench sidled over to him, hips swinging, “Is a room all ye be wantin’?” She bent forward slightly, and took a deep breath that nearly caused her breasts to make a break for it.

  “No, actually, if you sit here on my lap, I will tell you what else I need.” He patted the top of his muscled thighs invitingly.

  “Were you in this village six years ago when the raiders came for Lia’s father?” He asked in a gentle voice, bringing his hand up under her breast to rest on her ribcage. The other hand teased the bottom of her skirt, slowly dragging the fabric upward.

  “Aye m’lord, t’was a terrible night. Me own pa died with two of my brothers. If it hadn’t been for her, we all would ha’ been done for.” Her breath hitched slightly as his hand found its way between her thighs to find the wetness within.

  “What do you mean, if it hadn’t been for Lia?” His left hand moved higher and closed over her breast, massaging lightly.

  “She’s the one that killed them all, all claws and wings she was. Damned if she didn’t tear one man in two after he and the others killed her Da.” Her speech became erratic, and her pulse was thundering through her veins.

  A small frown crossed his face. He lightened his touch between her thighs and kept a gentle rhythm on her clit. One finger dipped lightly into her heat. Just enough to keep her aroused, but not enough to send her over the edge.

  “I want you to tell me everything, from the time you saw them with her father in chains. If you tell me truthfully, I will bring you to the release you are straining for, if you lie—and I will know if you lie to me—I will leave you this way. Do you understand me?”

  She nodded frantically. “We had been herded into a market square and were under guard. She didn’t look as scared as the rest of us, she had just seen ‘er husband killed and I think ‘er mind was on that. Then they threw her Ma into the group wi’ the rest of us, and the two held hands and stood real quiet- like. It was always kind of a funny thing tha’ those two women looked like sisters. Mala hadn’t aged a day since she wed her Antoine.”

  His hands stilled and he met her eyes, she quickly got back to the topic. As his hands began their slow stimulation of her again she picked up the speed of her story. “They brought Mister Antoine to the paddock in chains with his broken wings just hangin’ there and all seven feet of him mad as hell. They told him to pick out his womenfolk. He wouldn’t do it. They started to cut him up. Mala went mad and threw herself at the feet of her husband, beggin’ the men to stop the torture. They laughed and ran her through with the sword they were using on Antoine. She died righ’ quick. He went mad then, pulling at the chains, but he couldn’t break ‘em. “

  “Tha’s when Lia changed. Right in front of our eyes, she looked at her ma, lying there in her own blood, and started to scream. She raised her fists to the sky and screamed, then she began to grow. Now, m’lord, she has always been really tall, but she just kept goin’. She was nigh onto seven feet tall when the wings sprouted from her back, then the tail. Her fingers turned into talons, and her eyes changed from brown to the gold they are now.”

  She drew a ragged breath, his gentle ministrations having their desired effect. “Scared us something fierce, m’lord, I can tell you. Jus’ little bit harder please, sir.” She whimpered and squirmed against him.

  “Continue, wench.”

  “Righ’, as I was sayin’, she changed like her pa sometimes did. She jumped forward to the man who had killed her ma and tore him in two. Jus’ like that. Her pa took out four more before he got a sword in the gullet and went down. She jus’ kept goin’ until there weren’t no one left in the village of the raiders. Everyone hid from her for a couple of weeks, and then she calmed down enough to change back to full human shape, ‘cept for her eyes. You may have noticed them.” She was gasping now, her body surging against Marcus’ hand.

  “Thank you for the information, and now the reward as promised.”

  His fingers found the heart of her and began to thrust deep, while his thumb on her clit rotated and kept up a constant rhythm. His other hand continued to knead her breast, pulling at the nipple and then caressing the whole mound. Her gasping cries took on an intensity which meant she was close to her release, and he sent a small pulse of energy through both hands that catapulted her over the edge. Her shriek of surprise and relief rent the air.

  He stood up when she had ceased her tremors and helped her steady herself. The other inn patrons were laughing and shaking their heads at the display.

  “I would go to my room now and not be disturbed until morning, wench.” His tone brooked no argument.

  “But, m’lord, can’t I return the favor?” She asked hopefully, looking up to meet his eyes with residual lust in hers.

  He looked her in the eyes and changed his own to his dragon green with the vertical pupils. “You’re not equipped to, dear.”

  Chapter 2

  It was a surprisingly easy decision to leave the small village where she had grown up. Too many bad memories overrode the good ones. She had sent a message to Marcus at the tavern, and he had replied that she be ready to leave within the hour.

  So this was it, he a
pproached the smithy and took a look at the small bundle of clothing that she had to bring with her.

  “Is that it, all that you want to bring after a lifetime spent here?”

  “Everything that I loved was destroyed six years ago. I need only to clothe myself. I can work for my keep wherever I go.”

  “Fair enough. Well, this way, over that hill there and then I can tell you where my home is.” He began to walk at a brisk pace. She shrugged and followed him, her small bag of possessions slung over her shoulder.

  Over the rise of the hill he stopped and looked about. With only some stray sheep in the vicinity, he turned to face her.

  “My home is several days away; we will have to travel using the fastest means available to us. Do you agree?”

  “Of course, but shouldn’t we have gotten horses before we left the village? It seems a little silly to go back now.”

  “I am afraid that horses would be a hindrance to me. Please stand back.”

  With that he stretched his arms to the sky and began to grow, getting larger and shifting his form, growing wings, a tail, and his face elongating into a lizard-like snout. In a few moments she was confronted with a fully-grown dragon, fourty-five feet long, nose to tail.

  And that was the fastest she had ever seen the local sheep move.

  He shook out his wings and dropped to the ground. He maneuvered his foreleg into a step, and rotated his wing back so she could climb up onto his neck.

  After she closed her mouth, she gave a rueful grin, and stepped forward to mount him. She positioned herself on his neck, on a collapsed spinal ridge, and draped one leg on each side while grasping the large spinal ridge in front of her.

  When she had settled herself, she stroked his warm neck and announced that she was ready. He took several long strides, and launched them into the air. With every powerful down stroke of his wings the spinal ridge rubbed against her most sensitive flesh, and she realized that no matter how fast they reached their destination, it was going to be a long trip.