Druids by Morgan Llywelyn Page A

hold out my hands, and he bound each wrist separately with a leather strip tied so tightly my fingers grew cold at once. Then he repeated the procedure with my ankles.
    Sulis stepped out of the circle and took off her robe. Beneath it she was naked.
    Her skin gave off a scent like warm bread. I had seen naked girls before, but Sulis was a woman.
    “Lie down,” she said to me.
    I did, feeling awkward-The druids and the trees watched, expecting me to participate in something I did not understand.
    There are many kinds of fear.
    Sulis knelt beside me and arranged my body, head to the north, arms extended east and west. She began stroking me, slipping her warm hands under my tunic. This time hers was not a healing touch. Wherever she touched me, I burned.
    The chanting began again.
    Sulis smoothed her palms along my rib cage. She pulled up my tunic, working it off my body, and I squirmed to help her. My skin was unbearably hot, I longed for the cool air.
    When I lay back down, she gently pressed the balls of her thumbs into the base of my throat. My pulse beat against the pressure. Her thumbs moved along my body, pressing at various points. All my awareness of self followed her thumbs. I could hardly breathe, I could only feel.
    Feel feel feel.
    Feel the pounding excitement building in me like floodwater behind a log jam, desperate for release, trapped by the thongs strangling my wrists and ankles.
    54 Morgan Liywelyn
    Sulis’s hands stroked down the centerline of my body, her fingers trailing fire. I felt as if ants were swarming over me. When her hands reached my belly, my penis stirred and rose like a creature with a will of its own, so achingly sensitive I was afraid I would scream if she touched it.
    She separated my legs and knelt between them. Using her thumbs again, she caressed the insides of my thighs. My fingers flexed and my toes curled in spite of the tight thongs. Leaning forward. Suits breathed on me. Her warm breath stirred the hair of my groin. I shuddered.
    Sulis began to sing.
    Her song had no words. It was pure melody, a skein of sound spun round us, becoming part of the chanting as I became part of the chanting, and my penis became part of the chanting, all creation expressed in vibrant sound, heard in my soul as I had heard the music of the night.
    The energy Menua had described pulsed through me, and Sulis sang. and touched me, until pleasure became excess became ag-ony.
    I would die without release of the force building in me. I would burst like an overripe fruit.
    But there was no release. There was only Sulis caressing me and singing to me, using her fingernails and her teeth on my flesh in patterns of torture, dragging her unbound hair over my body until the force in me grew to an intensity beyond bearing. Without my head’s permission, my body began to writhe. Instantly four druids seized my hands and feet, holding me in place. Menua had my left hand; when I twisted around to look at him his hood was thrown back and his eyes were closed in the torchlight, but his lips were moving, chanting, part of the power, power, flowing through me now, scalding through me now, thundering with the rhythm of the chant and the gorgeously insistent hands on my body, the power gathering itself …
    … the power in the grove, gathering itself…
    and exploding out of me in great aching spasms that arched my spine and made me cry out as Sulis gasped and the trees spun around us and the strength sped from me, the magic released like a spear to go singing invisibly through the air to our distant warriors, to strengthen their arms, to add vigor to their bodies, to bring them home alive and safe.
    And free.
    DRUIDS 55
    They returned victorious. The Senones had been routed and driven back to their own land, northeast of ours. Our warriors abandoned the pursuit and came home to celebrate.
    Tarvos sought me out to tell me about the battle. In spite of victory he had not avoided pain. A spear had thrust through the fleshy