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Cover art (c) Eliza Black 2006
ISBN 1-58608-936-6
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In the dark realm of Shroudskull, the Summoners live for the ecstasy of pain. To know else is to know death....

They are the ultimate warriors. Trained from birth, they find pleasure only in pain. Even their gift, wrought on their bodies, is a testament to the limits of their endurance.

Lady Angeline Delgado craves freedom, but the only way to gain it is to seduce her summoner guard, Shadowclaw, with something he has never known ... pleasure.

Rating: Contains graphic sex, violence, explicit language, bondage, domination, submission, and material which could be offensive to sensitive readers.

SUMMONER

By

Nicole Delonpre

© copyright August 2006, Nicole Delonpre

Cover art by Eliza Black, © copyright August 2006

ISBN 1-58608-936-6

New Concepts Publishing

Lake Park, GA 31636

www.newconceptspublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

Chapter One

The keening cry of a bird of prey, or perhaps a feline echoed eerily through the pass guarded by the dark hulk of Castle Bloodsbane just as a weak sun breached the eastern peaks and spilled blinding streams of light along the valley floor. Muffled by the fog and snow that habitually cloaked the upper slopes of the range of mountains that formed the boundary between Morelock and Avator, bounced from tree to rocky slope and back again, it was impossible to tell whether rage or terror had inspired the cry by the time it raked along the ears of the men on watch on the castle bulwarks, lifting the fine hair along their necks.

It was equally impossible to identify the throat the scream had emerged from with any certainty and visions of horrible, unnatural creatures quickly dispelled the first impression of a less threatening, more mundane beast of natural origins.

The men shifted uneasily. Those close enough to do so exchanged questioning glances to see if the man next to them was as unnerved by the sound as they had been.

That momentary inattentiveness vanished in the next instant, however. They stiffened, tensing even more when Shadowclaw, moving as swiftly and silently as a wraith, abruptly appeared on the bulwarks. The dark cape he’d slung about his shoulders, the only concession he’d made to the bone chilling early morning mountain air, flapped around him like the wings of some dreaded creature of the dark side as he moved to the crenellated wall and lifted his head, almost with the air of a beast catching the scent of fresh prey.

The man closest to him felt his throat close as if an invisible hand had gripped it. For several terrifying moments, he thought perhaps it had, but as he struggled with the panic clawing at his mind, he realized that Shadowclaw’s familiars lay dormant on his flesh, unthreatening for the moment beyond the reminder that the intricate images carved on his chest, his arms, and torso were far more than mere drawings of fanciful, nightmarish beasts.

He was a Summoner and he had only to call them forth to bring nightmare into the world.

His panic receded as Shadowclaw stood away from the wall, strode down the walk a few paces, paused, and then turned and moved toward him once more, his head still lifted with the air of one listening to something no one else could hear.

Caught by the sudden certainty that Shadowclaw was listening, he pricked his own ears, trying to detect the sounds that his lord heard. Dimly then, he heard a rhythmic, distant pounding. His mind took a moment more to decipher what he’d heard. Men fighting! The clash of sword on sword and shield.

He hadn’t imagined that the beasts had stirred, he realized. Shadowclaw had summoned the keen hearing of one of his beasts.

Shadowclaw moved to the bulwarks again, ignoring the bloodlust that had risen to sing in his veins as he summoned the sight of his familiar and scanned the wooded slopes of the mountain that fell away to the valley below them. Abruptly, his diligence was rewarded as the sunlight flashed briefly among the trees.

“There! Below the tree line, the southwestern leg of the pass,” he ground out, pointing to the spot near the narrow passage road where he’d seen the glint of metal. “Gamon--take half the men--and ride swiftly. I will peel the hide from your body one piece at the time if they have bounced back across the border before you reach them.”

Gamon, pinned briefly by his lord’s penetrating gaze, whirled abruptly, stumbling in his haste and nearly rolling to the bottom of the narrow stone stairs that reached upward from the bailey to the guard walk. “To arms!” he bellowed at the men below as he pounded down the stairs. “Bring the horses!”

Within moments, the men were mounted and spurring their horses to a gallop. The pounding of racing hooves on the thick timbers that formed the drawbridge echoed through the mountains like thunder.

Shadowclaw watched them through narrowed eyes, calculating their speed and the distance that separated them from the battle. Gamon would have to ride like the wind to save his precious hide, for the battle was well underway now and one side or the other could break and run at any time.

The terror in Gamon’s eyes at the threat he’d made reassured him. Gamon knew he was a man of his word. He would reach the battle if he had to run his horse into the ground.

He examined that terror curiously for several moments, wondering why it took no more than the threat of pain to goad Gamon--any of his men--to do their utmost to avoid it, or to shorten it with a swift death if they saw they could not avoid it entirely. They were not cowards. They were seasoned fighting men. The scars on their bodies were testament enough to the fact that they’d faced death more than once.

Had he ever felt such stomach churning fear of pain, he wondered? Delving briefly into a past that he had rarely examined, he uncovered nothing to indicate that he had.

Perhaps he had, but if he had, he could not recall it, he realized after only a few moments. Pain was life, life was pain. He did not fear it any more than he feared life--or death. And he still could not fathom why the others did, but it was as well they did, he decided. Terror inspired loyalty. Fear inspired men to strive beyond what they might ordinarily be capable of.

His overlord had entrusted him to secure one of the most remote, treacherous, and impossible stretches of his borders. So long as he did not fail Lord Ysuroth’s trust, he could continue to breathe, and so long as he could trust in the loyalty of his men, he would not fail his overlord. It was as simple as that.

He liked keeping things simple--sleeping, eating, whoring on those rare occasions when a female could be found, slaughtering any who dared trespass on the lands of his overlord.

And it enraged him to realize that the Overlord Sangrey’s men had so far forgotten themselves as to breach the border within his care. What, he wondered, could have inspired them to such rash stupidity as to think they could do so with impunity?

* * * *

Lady Angeline Delgado’s skull throbbed with the deafening sounds of battle that surrounded her. Her scalp, as well, since the pig, Darkraider, had caught her and dragged her by her hair to the base of the great tree where she now crouched.

She sent a dagger glare at his back where he stood over her, wishing she had a blade in truth so that she could bury it beneath his shoulder blade and cut his black heart out.

As bad as the others had been, the men Lord Sangrey had sent to collect the ‘prize’ her father had offered his overlord, his virgin daughter, they hadn’t dared to violate her. No one had dared to so much as think it, let alone consider, deflowering the virgin bride-to-be promised to the dread Lord Sangrey.

Darkraider had less fear or less brains than the others, however, for, beyond her maidenhead, he had left no part of her untouched, unsullied by his loathsome touch, innocent of a man’s touch. He had not been so foolhardy as to take that which was meant for his own overlord, Ysuroth, but he’d raped her all the same, over and over in the days since she’d taken her until sitting a horse was agony in and of itself.

Innocent that she had been, she’d had no inkling that a maid could remain a maid and endure what he had forced upon her, done to her, forced her to do.

As fearful as she’d been of the dread Lord Sangrey, becoming bride to that monster had almost begun to seem preferable to the alternative.

And then, for a few moments, it seemed fate had taken pity on her. They had scarcely crossed the border into Morelock when Lord Sangrey’s soldiers had caught up to them. Freedom had beckoned with the first clash of the rival soldiers. Life had seemed almost within her grasp as her horse had gone down and she had rolled free, unharmed, not even greatly stunned. Fortune, she had thought, had finally favored her, had delivered her from the nightmare her life had become.

They were scarcely four days ride from the realm of Viridan. If she could only escape while the men of the rival lords fought over her, she could make her way there and disappear from the world, escape the fate planned for her.

She didn’t think beyond escaping. She had no plans in her mind of how she was to manage it, or how she would live if she did. She didn’t care if she lived in a sty and subsisted on dung, it would be better than being at the mercy of men such as these.

Even as she dashed toward the trees, however, she heard a shout behind her, heard the hooves of Darkraider’s monster steed bearing down on her. He leaned low as he neared her, grabbing for her. She swerved away at the last moment, but not quickly enough to escape totally unscathed. His hand caught at the veils at her shoulder, twisted as she veered away. The fragile fabric gave at the opposing tugs against it, bruising and chafing her tender skin as it tore away.

Ignoring the burn, she raced for the trees again, still hopeful, still determined, but feeling defeat pounding inside of her to the rhythm of the running steps behind her as Darkraider leapt from his horse and charged after her. He leapt at her just before she reached the safety she’d sought, slamming into her back, driving her into the ground and crushing the air, and the fight, out of her. By the time she’d recovered from the stunning blow enough even to drag in a breath to fight darkness, he’d tangled his fingers in her hair and began to drag her.

She screamed then, with rage, with terror, with pain, the sound tearing its way along her throat and leaving it raw. She was too battered and breathless to attempt to flee again by the time he slammed her into the trunk of the tree and released her. For many moments she battled a great, heavy darkness, insulated from the full brunt of the battle by the enveloping fog. When she finally managed to roll over and open her eyes, she saw the dead and dying littering the ground. Blood surged or spewed from wounds, trickled onto the ground, formed dark streams and then pools. Men and horses screamed. The steady keen ringing of sword against sword and the duller metallic thud of swords striking shields, the meaty thuds of flesh encountering blades rang through the clearing, less deafening than before, for more than half the men lay on the ground, but still painful to her ears.

Shielding them from the uproar, it was several moments before Angeline realized the pounding against her temples wasn’t the blood surging in her veins but the thunder of approaching riders. Sangrey’s men seemed to realize it at almost the same moment, for those who could broke off their private battles, dispatched their current opponent, or were struck down as they tried to whirl away and race to capture their mounts.

Mounted men raced into view, moving so swiftly they had to rein their horses sharply to keep from simply plowing into the milling men and horses from the battle. Rearing, screaming, the horses flailed the air with hooves, slashing at the men dashing about the ground beneath them.

Within moments a deafening silence fell over the mountainside as the last of Sangrey’s men met his death.

Blood, Angeline saw as she pushed herself to her feet shakily, was the color of the day, for it was impossible to sort the dead of Morelock from the dead of Avator.

Hearing her movements, Darkraider whirled on her. Seizing her hair as before, he dragged her toward the mounted men. “I am Darkraider of Shroudskull, sent by Lord Ysuroth to claim his blushing bride,” he said sneeringly. “Are you of Bloodsbane?”

“Aye. I am known as Gamon, captain of Shadowclaw’s guard.”

Darkraider snorted. “It took you long enough to get here,” he snarled. Ignoring the men lying on the ground, he looked around for a horse and dragged Angeline over to one that stood docilely grazing among the dead. Releasing his grip on her hair when they reached the horse, he grabbed her waist and lifted her onto the saddle and nearly off the other side as he grasped an ankle and shoved her leg upward and across the saddle until she was seated astride the beast. Stunned, she was still trying to grasp the fact that he seemed to expect her to ride with her thighs splayed on either side of the horse when he caught the veils that formed her skirt and tossed them into her face.

He grabbed the ring then, the disgraceful, humiliating, painful thing that Sangrey’s men had pierced her woman’s flesh with. She felt his thick fingers fumbling with her fleshy nether lips moments before the painful tug at the keenly sensitive flesh. By the time she’d fought her way free of the veils obstructing her view, she discovered that he had clipped a chain to the ring, looping it around the pommel.

He leered up at her expression of horror. “You’ll not run now, will you?” he purred smugly as he caught hold of the pommel and swung himself up onto the horse behind her. “But just in case the thought crosses your mind ….”

Grabbing her wrists, he twisted her arms behind her back and secured them with a leather strip.

Too stunned to think for several moments, Angeline stared down at the shredded veils that had barely sustained her modesty when they had been whole. Darkraider had torn the bodice when they had struggled and one breast was completely exposed, displaying yet another of the hated rings they had pierced her body with to mark her as Sangrey’s woman. The veils of her skirt had settled, but it took little more than a harsh breath to stir them. With her hands bound behind her back she could not wrest the fragile fabric from the wind and keep herself decently covered and it would not be merely her thighs exposed to interested gazes.

“At least allow me the dignity of covering myself,” Angeline hissed, knowing it would do no good to beg, might possibly inspire him to worse, but unable to keep her tongue between her teeth when she noticed the sly glances of the soldiers who surrounded them. “Do not bind my wrists.”

He snorted. “What? And deprive these fine fellows of the delightful view when they were so kind as to rescue you?”

Flushing with both anger and embarrassment, she subsided, realizing that it was just as she’d feared. She had only played into his hands. He’d hoped to frighten and humiliate her and she’d allowed him to know how well he’d succeeded.

Fury and fear washed over her as he nudged the horse around and the party headed back toward the keep that had expelled her latest tormentors.