Dark Tracks Read online

  “Ishraq?” he whispered. “Can you breathe? Love, my love, can you breathe?”

  He was certain that she was a little less chill; her cheek against his was no longer icy, as if he had warmed her. He pulled back and looked down at her still face. Was there the slightest hint of color in her face? Was there a tiny pulse at the base of her neck? Could it be that his body heat was somehow bringing life back into her lifeless, cold being?

  Without knowing what he was doing, or what miracle was taking place, Luca spread himself on and around her, stretching on top of her so that they were belly to belly and chest to chest and face to face. He pulled up the rough covers of the bed over them both so that they were cocooned together, hidden by the warm wool bedding. He was so close to her, so intent on her that now he found he was breathing in rhythm with her, breathing together, that he was forcing the breath in and out of her dying body, and, in his passionate longing that she should live, he dropped his mouth to hers, gathering her into the crook of his shoulder, rocking her slightly from side to side with each breath. He believed he could feel the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed his air, as his mouth met hers.

  “Don’t go,” he said in her cool ear. “Don’t leave me. I love you.”

  He felt her quiver in response, a shudder that went all down her body, and he pulled back to see her dark eyelashes fluttering on her cheek as if she were trying to open her eyes but was still held by sleep.

  “I do,” he breathed. “I love you. I never knew it till this night, but I love you with all my heart and soul. You are mine; you are my love. I am yours.”

  He saw her lips move, as if she were trying to speak, like a swimmer choking in deep water. “Take them out,” she croaked.

  “What?”

  Her whisper was no louder than a labored breath. “Take them out.”

  He realized at once that she meant the earrings, and he carefully unhooked one and then another from her pierced ears. He thought that there might be some poison on the shaft and nuzzled into her neck to take the lobe of her right ear in his mouth, sucked a bitter taste, and spat it on the floor, and then held her close so he could suck her left earlobe and spit. He knew it was to save her, but at the same time it was an act of intimacy that gave him a deep pulse of desire. He rubbed his mouth on the sheet of her bed as she gave a little sigh, as if some poison had been drawn from her. Her dark eyes opened and slowly she smiled at him.

  “Kiss me.”

  Though his mouth had already been on hers, and his body pressed against her, Luca felt overwhelmed with desire. “Ishraq . . .”

  “Kiss me.”

  He rubbed his mouth clean of the poison and held her; he kissed her, feeling desire for her flood through him, and she felt her lust for life and her longing for Luca come together in a rising, unstoppable wave of pleasure.

  “I love you,” he repeated. “My God, Ishraq, I love you.”

  Her dark eyes smiled, hazy with desire, back from the very threshold of death but still with a will as hard as rock: “Never, ever say that to me again,” she said.

  Freize felt as if his feet had mastered him. His scuffed brown riding boots were jigging along as if he were dancing for joy. Against his will they danced out of the safe cover of the bushes at the side of the road and into the middle of the track where the growing daylight exposed him to the dancers who were coming along behind him.

  He heard an ironic cheer as they spotted him and then their breathless laughter as they saw he was dancing, dancing like them, with a sort of weary stagger and an irresistible hop every time the fiddler tore the tune out of the strings. The drummer kept them to time with the little tambourine: a steady, fast beat that nobody could resist.

  They looked like a mad circus of wild people, trailing down the road with Freize at their head, followed by the fiddler and the drummer, who were swiftly gaining on him, then the landlady, laboring along with the other dancers from the town. In a few minutes, Freize knew they would catch up with him and then, he was certain, he would join them and never be able to get away. His determination to save Isolde would drain from him, he would be like them: without love, without loyalty, bound only to the dance. He would jig and reel and follow them wherever they went, to the next aghast town, to the next horrified village, to the next murderous lord, until he too was tipped over the parapet of a bridge, slammed with a metaled fist, or simply left to die of thirst and exhaustion on a hard road outside a strange town, and Isolde would dance past him, unknowing.

  Something in the triumphant skirl of the song alerted Isolde that the fiddler was victorious. She was still torn between dancing and running, keeping ahead of the straggling trailing dancers with the Being’s hand pulling her forward, his big palm pushing her in the small of the back, forcing her onward, faster and faster, away from the dancers. But she turned and then she paused as she saw Freize.

  The round face of the Being looked back too, and Freize saw Isolde say his name, and something else. Then the two of them stopped in their tracks and turned toward him as if they would come back for him.

  Freize wove across the road in a jaunty side step and then stopped and twirled. “No! No! Go!” he said, as he realized that he could not break free from the dance. “Go as fast as you can. Run! Save yourself, Isolde! Don’t come back for me! You go on! You go on!”

  They did not run. Isolde, white-faced, her feet still betraying her in the bright red shoes, urged the Being and they came back down the road toward him.

  “Go! Go!” Freize shouted at her, and now it was like a race, the blond girl with the strange giant of a companion, hurrying back to reach Freize and, farther down along the road, the whirling dancers, laughing as they closed on him. Freize himself danced as if he were wading through a mire, fighting to get away from the dancers toward Isolde.

  She got to him first, reached out her hands and grabbed him. “Freize! You’re dancing!”

  “I can’t help myself. I was trying to come for you. You go now, you get away from them.”

  “He’s taking me from them.” She nodded upward to the Being who towered above them and now took each of their hands. “He’ll help you too.”

  Freize flinched at the damp chill of his grip, as if the Being had just come from the cold waters of the canal at Venice; but still his feet pounded the road to the rhythm of the drum.

  “Where’s he taking us?” he demanded, as he felt the Being take his hand in an overwhelming grip and start to drag him forward.

  “Who cares? Away from them!” Isolde gasped.

  The Being drew them on. Freize tried to make his wandering feet go straight forward, but he could not prevent a little hop every third pace. “You’ve grown to a powerful height,” he said to the Being, gasping out the words.

  The Being hauled them both onward and Freize felt his extraordinary strength.

  “I think this fellow could carry us both if needs be,” he whispered to Isolde across the massive girth. “But where is he taking us?”

  “It doesn’t matter, as long as we get away!” she panted. “I know you can’t stop dancing, but see if you can dance forward.” She cried out as her wayward feet made a little drumming step on the spot. “We have to hurry, we have to get away.”

  Anxiously, she glanced over her shoulder. The fiddler and the drummer leading the dancers were only the length of a field behind them. “Come on, Freize, we have to go faster.”

  Freize scowled with concentration, trying to master his feet.

  Isolde glanced behind again. “They’re slowing down—there’s something wrong with the drummer,” she said.

  Freize broke into a couple of dance steps and felt the Being’s arm come round his shoulders and scoop him onward. It was like being pushed by a big horse—the arm had the strength of three men. Freize stumbled under the weight of it.

  Isolde gave a cry of delight. “It’s the landlady! Oh, she’s wonderful. Look! She’s laid hold of the drummer; she’s stopping him playing.”

  “Come