Dream Captive Read online

  Title Page

  DREAM CAPTIVE

  By Reese Gabriel

  Publisher Information

  Dream Captive first published in 2004 by Chimera Books Ltd. Published as an eBook in 2011 by Chimera Books Ltd

  www.chimerabooks.co.uk

  Chimera a creation of the imagination, a wild fantasy

  Digital Edition Converted and Published by

  Andrews UK Limited

  www.andrewsuk.com

  This eBook is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. The characters and situations in this eBook are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.

  Copyright Reese Gabriel. The right of Reese Gabriel to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This novel is fiction - in real life practice safe sex

  Chapter 1

  Tesra slipped gracefully through the pale blue waters, her slender body arcing its way towards the surface of the rock encrusted pool. Eyes closed, she invoked Persistrata, goddess of inner dawn, mother of all who see what is yet to be. What the golden-haired nymph could not see, however, was the presence of another form, large and powerful beneath her, closing fast to intercept.

  They met at the waterline. Intending to scream, Tesra opened her mouth, but a hand quickly clamped over it.

  ‘Do not resist,’ said the deep-voiced creature, holding her from behind in a grip of iron. ‘There is no escape. If you understand me, nod.’

  Tesra bobbed her head, eyes wide in fear and shock.

  ‘You must draw a deep breath,’ said her captor. ‘Enough to carry you to the bottom and beyond. If you obey me we shall both live, if not, we shall both die. Nod if this, too, you understand.’

  Again Tesra acknowledged, though in truth she understood nothing. What sort of being was this - strong like a beast and yet able to speak as a human? Could this be a member of the other half of her own species, the ones she had never before seen but whom she knew from her teachers were called men? If so, it had no place on the Isle of Dreams - none at all. And what was his intention, this mad beast-man, in dragging her down to the bottom of the sharp-edged Pool of Reflection - and beyond? It was suicide!

  Treading water to keep them afloat, the talking beast wrapped her midsection tightly with a cord, the other end of which was attached to his own. ‘This is our lifeline,’ he told her. ‘As you see it is relatively thin. If you have deities to whom you pray, I suggest you do so now. We dive at the count of three.’

  ‘Wise Persistrata,’ she called in voice unspoken. ‘Spare me. Descend from your high clouds and give me rescue.’

  ‘One,’ pronounced the insane man-creature with utter calm. ‘Two. And three.’

  Tesra was pulled like a toy doll, her lithe body sucked down as if by a stone. Her first instinct was to resist, but she saw quickly what he meant about their fates being tied, for if she were to pull upward against him they would drown somewhere between the top and bottom.

  But where could he be taking her, except to certain death?

  The man was a fast swimmer and Tesra added the motions of her own arms and legs, conveying them knife-like at a steep angle of descent towards the far edge, where the rock floor met the wall. The reds and blues and greens of the jagged crystal surface loomed ever closer and Tesra was certain they would be cut to ribbons. At the last possible second, however, nearly in the teeth of the deadly shards, the man held out his fist, upon which was a single ruby ring. The light from this ring reflected onto a long crystal of equally brilliant red. There was at once a shaking of the entire pool and a loud rumbling sound. Impossibly, the rocks along the wall began to slide aside, as though they were not a fixed barrier but some doorway.

  The opening was just large enough to allow them through. There was water in the tunnel and Tesra was terrified because she did not know how she could hold her breath much longer. The man pulled her as she lagged, dragging her onward, just in time as the rocks crashed closed once more behind them. The tunnel was rounded and very narrow. The rock was a dark color, decorated with various tiny jewel-like stones of many different colors. There was also writing, the ancient hieroglyphics of the First People, who came in the Time Before Time.

  Tesra had never dreamed of the existence of such a tunnel beneath her island. Had her teachers kept the knowledge from her and the other initiates into the sisterhood? Or was it possible even they did not know? Doubling her effort, desperate to convey them forward, Tesra wriggled her body in the cold water, like a dolphin or one of the other sea creatures she loved. Time was running out. She saw no end ahead and she was already feeling the build up of dead, poisonous air in her lungs. By the goddess she must make it - she must!

  The world was going black. So, tired. Let me rest, she thought. Let me sleep, if only for a moment.

  Then, in the midst of the agonizing silence came a rushing roar, like an underwater wind pulling them upward into the light. Tesra opened her starved lungs and tasted precious oxygen. Waters were circling about them, as if to greet the weary travelers. They had surfaced! Again the man took her by the waist, pulling her forward, this time onto the sandy shore of what looked to be an underground river.

  Tesra clawed at the gritty surface, gasping on hands and knees.

  ‘There is no time to rest,’ he informed her, already on his feet, seemingly unaffected by the ordeal. ‘We must make haste to my ships.’

  Tesra beheld him, climbing behind an outcropping, seeking to pull something large from behind the jagged, red and blue stones. The man was at least six foot tall, with powerful arms and shoulders and an iron chest, far larger and harder looking than her own. His biceps were massive; the heavy muscles marked with inked designs, creatures whose names she did not know. His legs were equally imposing, like those of a horse or verr-beast. Most curious of all was the animal skin covering his midsection, very short and concealing his groin area. There appeared to be something beneath it, protruding. From the little that she knew there were certain physical differences in the male and female of the species, but that they were of no import to higher developed beings such as the sisterhood.

  She herself had a depression between her own legs, through which she eliminated liquid waste. Among lower creatures this was an entry point for seminal fluid, to pollinate the feminine womb. Such fluid came from the projecting organs of the male through an action of thrusting, or rutting. It was said to be pleasurable, though Tesra had no interest, having been born parthenogenically, like all the seers, through the power of the goddess.

  ‘Your ships?’ Tesra rose to her feet, the impact of his words sinking in. ‘You intend to take me from here?’

  ‘You are my captive,’ he confirmed, pausing to shake out his mane of hair, long and dark and wet. ‘What else would you expect?’

  Tesra took a step backward, bare heels pressing into the sand. Could she make a run for it?

  ‘No person may take another captive,’ she informed him. ‘That is the law.’

  The man’s back was turned now, the awesome muscles fully engaged in the overwhelming task of pulling a concealed wooden boat down to the water. ‘Women’s law,’ he grunted in response. ‘Not men’s law.’

  ‘There is only one law.’ Tesra took another step backward. Was she fast enough to outrun him? ‘Pray to the godd
ess if you are in doubt.’

  ‘I have no goddess,’ he said. ‘And if I were you, I would stand still from this point forward.’

  Tesra raised her head haughtily. ‘I will not be commanded by anyone, let alone a man-creature.’

  She watched him push the boat to the very edge of the gurgling, foamy white water. ‘Get in,’ he told her.

  ‘No,’ she defied. ‘I will not.’

  The man-beast drew from his waist a leather binding strip. ‘Get in the boat,’ he repeated.

  ‘What do you intend to do with that?’ she wanted to know.

  His answer came in graphic form. Quick as lightning he seized her wrist and forced her down. Positioning himself on one knee he drew her across his knotted thigh.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she cried, squirming fiercely against him. ‘How dare you?’

  ‘I am Marcellus, King of Pirates,’ the man-beast introduced himself, the belt doubled in his fist, his arm poised high overhead. ‘As my captive you are compelled to obey me under threat of punishment.’

  Tesra screamed as hot leather seared the unblemished cheeks of her soft pink bottom.

  ‘Remove your hands,’ ordered Marcellus as she tried to cover her exposed skin. ‘Or it shall go worse for you.’

  She lowered her arms and he struck her again, even more viciously than before.

  ‘Please,’ she begged. ‘You are hurting me.’ Tesra had never known pain, not like this. Once she had cut her leg on the rocks and another time she burned herself, but this was persistent and deliberate.

  ‘That is the point,’ Marcellus replied, letting loose the strap yet again. Fire radiated through the young woman’s body. She wept and wailed, but he did not seem to care, either for her suffering or the noise she was making. This fact caused her to fear even more, that perhaps they were in a place so remote that already she was too far from her people to be helped by them.

  ‘No more,’ she cried. ‘I will obey you.’

  Thrice more for good measure he struck her. ‘Get in the boat,’ he said simply, releasing her.

  Tesra, sniffling, choked back fresh tears as she scurried across the sand, and it was only as she stood in the boat that she saw a new problem. ‘I cannot sit; it will hurt too badly.’

  ‘That is not my problem,’ said Marcellus, King of Pirates, thrusting the boat completely into the river. ‘I am not the one who disobeyed.’

  Tesra shrieked as the momentum upended her, landing her flat on her inflamed buttocks on one of the two weathered boards that served as seats. ‘You are a monster,’ she protested as he jumped in after her, taking the other seat, his body facing hers.

  ‘No more or less than any man.’ He seized the oars, one in each hand, propelling the small craft forward down the snakelike waterway.

  Tesra studied his powerful muscles, smoothly expanding and contracting with each stroke. He was like some force of nature, some instrument of the divine.

  ‘They will come after me,’ she promised. ‘I will be rescued.’

  Marcellus’ breathing was steady and deep. ‘Very soon you will not wish to be rescued,’ he predicted.

  Tesra contemplated the meaning of these words. Could it be he himself was a seer of some kind? If only she could read his mind; if only she had been taught to use her powers in the dark and dreaded world of men.

  All at once the sunlight streamed in from behind her back. Turning she saw the mouth of the cave, a great maw, spilling out into the ocean; that vast blue carpet which, until this very day, she’d thought a perfect and invincible protection against all forms of invasion.

  Who was this barbarian to break through the defenses of the Isle of Dreams, to escape the notice of the Mother Seers?

  ‘Nephisos,’ murmured her captor, with a tone and solemnity clearly not directed to her, ‘convey me safely. Grant your blessing for this journey.’

  A god of the sea. So this is what he worshipped. Did Persistrata know of this deity?

  ‘Have you a name?’ he asked her, as it if were some mere afterthought.

  Tesra squared her chin with all the confidence of her heritage. ‘I am called Tesra Bel-ahn Tes-ya Shin-dara Meala-sirea,’ she informed the uncouth barbarian, scarcely human. ‘Daughter of Neyria, granddaughter of Tera-Nyeria, direct descendent of the goddess Persistrata herself.’

  His laughter, ripe and bawdy, caught her off guard. ‘So long a name for such a slip of a wench.’

  Tesra’s pride burned deeply as her inflamed buttocks. ‘I will see you defeated and destroyed,’ she vowed. ‘If it takes the last breath from my body.’

  Marcellus inclined his head, directing her to turn. ‘I would advise you to learn the extent of my power before declaring yourself my enemy,’ he advised. ‘Oh, nymph of many names.’

  Tesra’s breath was taken away. There were a dozen of the massive vessels; tall, elegant masts, billowing white sails, curved bows, fiercely painted with dragon’s teeth and decorated shields upon the sides. For the first time the unthinkable occurred - that her people and even the goddess might not be able to free her from her newfound captivity.

  ‘I am Marcellus,’ he completed his introduction of before, when he had beaten her over his knee. ‘Pirate king of all the sea, from this to the next horizon. Scourge of the deep, thorn in the side of mighty Talassia, lord of men and master of women.’

  It was this last epithet that set her heart racing. ‘Do you intend to kill me?’ she enquired.

  ‘No,’ he reassured her. ‘Only to use you. Mercilessly.’

  The pirate king conveyed them to the side of the tallest vessel. Pulling a blanket from beneath the seat he commanded her to wrap herself.

  ‘Why would I so cover my body?’ she wished to know.

  ‘In my world a naked woman can be only one thing. And you are not that thing.’

  Tesra studied the expression on his face. There was something he was not telling her, something important and profound, but which she did not yet understand. And yet understand it she must, along with everything else about this man and his self-professed kingdom, for like it or not her fate, her very life now lay in his hands.

  A rope ladder was lowered from the deck. Marcellus helped her up, his body pressed close behind hers, warm and strong. The proximity of the man was creating a strange tingling in her own body, at the tips of her breasts and also in the open place between her legs. It was his arrogant power that seemed to intoxicate her as well as her own sense of vulnerability; to his belt, his hand, and maybe even to the sex between his legs.

  ‘Ahoy, captain!’ bellowed a short, yellow-bearded man, his dirty crow’s nest head appearing over the edge. ‘What booty do you bring? Is there more where that came from?’

  The captain thrust Tesra into his waiting arms, bidding him deposit her on the deck. The smell of the little man made her want to retch, so too the spaces between his teeth.

  ‘No,’ said Marcellus, planting his leathered bare feet upon the worn and sun-blistered deck. ‘There is nothing more to be had on the island. Neither in treasure nor women. Prepare to weigh anchor. We set sail at once.’

  The craggy-faced man, his yellowed hair dry as broom straw, eyed the captain, uncertain. Two other men, in red bandannas, bare chests and ragged knee-length pants flanked him, looking equally dismayed. Tesra did not like the look of them, particularly the sharp metal blades hooked at their waists. If they were able to see through the captain’s lie, there was no telling what might happen next.

  ‘What’s this, captain? You say we take no booty?’

  The company turned towards the rugged, bald-headed man, both ears pierced with gold bands, his mouth and chin ringed with a layer of shaggy black hair. He was an inch or so shorter than the captain and slighter of build, but his dark eyes were fierce and he had about him the look of a seasoned predator.


  Marcellus stood his ground. ‘Am I required to repeat myself, Rodrigo?’

  The one called Rodrigo approached the captain so the two were eye to eye. Tesra sensed the tension between the two, the hawk-eyed Rodrigo ready to square off against the stalwart, blue-eyed Marcellus.

  ‘I do not ask you to repeat, majesty, only to explain. You have taken but one woman - surely she has sisters, aunts, cousins, someone besides herself out there? And where has she lived all these years? In a tree? Is there not at least one small, measly palace to ransack? Or do you stand here now and tell us that this one scrawny female is all we have to show for this journey of six months?’

  Marcellus neither flinched nor blinked. ‘Actually, Rodrigo, “we” have nothing; the wench is mine alone.’ Grumbles passed through the growing assembly of fierce men, most of them bearded and bare-chested. Clearly Rodrigo was not the only one left unsatisfied. ‘If you wish to take issue,’ Marcellus went on, ‘we may finish with steel what cannot be resolved in words.’

  Rodrigo’s gaze narrowed, his hand at the hilt of the long blade at his waist, the name for which came to Tesra’s mind now as a sword.

  ‘Go on, Rodrigo,’ he taunted, making no move to reach for a weapon of his own, ‘come at me. See if you are ready for the kingship.’

  The eyes of the bald, goateed man flashed. For long moments he considered, then at the last moment he faltered.

  ‘You are king,’ Rodrigo conceded, lowering his eyes.

  Marcellus, gracious in victory, clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Come, my brother, let us not quibble over a mere female. Let us sit and drink and talk of the things of men. Give me ear, my noble lieutenant and I will tell you what plans lay ahead for our stalwart company. Montrego,’ he called to the yellow-bearded man, ‘lock this wench below with the slaves and fetch us rum. The good stock we liberated from that Talassian governor’s shipment last spring. The rest of you - prepare to sail. I wish to be back in Talassian shipping channels in time to fish gold for tomorrow’s supper.’