Corruption of the Rose

by S. J. Sanders

  Rose’s mouth thinned. She shoved her doubts away and began.

  Her energy whirled around her like the touch of a lover, rising in waves as it lapped over in whirling eddies as she chanted the invocation. When at last she arrived at the final words, she threw open the gates, feeding her magic to draw a familiar aid. He sparked, his luminous body twisting in the air in a way that was sinuous, and yet… there was something wrong. He was not fully entering into the world. He twisted continuously upon himself as if caught in a dance.

  She moved forward in concern, but something from the corner of her eye drew her attention as droplets began to rise from the water jug. First just a few, and then more and more drifted into the air. Rose turned back to her sea serpent ally just in time to see a vortex of aqua rush at her, sweeping over her in an enormous cyclone in a funnel of grays, blues, and greens that sparked with electric energy. Fear rose sharp within her, and she opened her mouth to scream, but the sound was lost with everything else as the waterspout swallowed her and everything else in its path.

  Chapter 14

  Saris returned to the workroom late the next morning. He had been reluctant to see the mage again while anger still churned in his belly. Although it would have been impossible for her to kill him—and she acknowledged as much—the fact that she used her power to strike out at them, and him especially, made him lust for vengeance, to draw pain and pleasure through her until she pleaded for her own release.

  That wasn’t the only issue. He knew that a good portion of his anger was due to being on edge. The outright challenge from one the vulpi disturbed him as much as the missing human. That wasn’t even counting the sudden discovery of manticores and other dangerous creatures entering in from the Fire Kingdom. It created an enormous burden of uncertainty weighing him down that was only aggravated further by Rose’s mischief.

  His tail stiffened, rising as he stepped into the workroom. A muffled curse met his ears, accompanied by a loud clatter that had him speeding forward with alarm. Rounding the side of the long worktable, he drew to a surprised stop.

  Of all the things he had thought to find, he had not expected to come across the mage on her knees, wrestling with a blade. She was attempting to wedge it between the delicate skin of her neck and the iron band of the collar with the obvious aim of breaking the lock. A loud snarl left him as he lunged forward and knocked the dagger from her hand with such strength that it spun across the floor, far outside of her reach.

  She drew in a sharp breath, her face skewing to an expression of anger as she jerked back in an attempt to evade his hand. He didn’t allow her to get far before he pinned her in place with a firm grip on the back of her neck. She continued to thrash, attempting to loose his hold on her, but he ignored it as he leaned, fury blazing through him.

  “What in the dark abysses did you think you were doing?” he shouted, his teeth flashing as he snapped them within inches of her face.

  Rose immediately abandoned her efforts, her arms dropping to side as she leveled him with a poisonous glare.

  “What does it look like I am doing?” she snarled in return. “I am getting this damned thing off my neck. Just look what happened? I can’t do anything with this thing on!”

  As she swiped her hand toward the worktable, he focused in on it, seeing the mess made of it for the first time. A jug of water that had been left on the table for her to refresh herself was completely empty, yet the table looked as if it had been flooded with ten times the amount of liquid than the container could possibly carry. Water puddled on the table and drizzled from the sides. It was even dripping from the ceiling directly above the altar as if a leak had sprung somewhere. Yet a current of power sent through the stones told him that there were no gaps or weak spots to allow water in from elsewhere above the workroom.

  Letting his gaze to drift back to the mage on the floor, he noted that she too was soaked as if she’d been dropped into a pool.

  “What happened here?”

  Rose snorted mirthlessly. “What do you think happened? You pinioned my power, and now I cannot even do a basic summon, much less work on more advanced magic. When I tried to draw in a sea serpent, this is what happened.”

  She slapped at her drenched clothes as she struggled to her feet. Instinctively, Saris reached out to help her stand, moved by an unexpected tenderness that pushed through his hardened, disciplined focus. The feeling was so alien and unexpected that he fumbled, not certain if he should take offense or how to feel about the matter when she brushed him off.

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “You have yet to refine your discipline. That is why it did not work.”

  Rose threw her hands into the air in a gesture of consternation as she spun around on him. “What was all that talk of the necessity of breaking my control then if you’re going to come back and say that I lack control?”

  “Being controlled by the way that you have been groomed to act and react to things is not control over your own power,” he replied sharply. “You need to break those qualities down, separate yourself from them, recombine them, and then refine them so you can grow. Calcination, dissolution, separation, fermentation, distillation and conjunction. These are the seven stages of the inner spiritual alchemy. This should be something that you would have been familiar with in your education.”

  His mage thinned her lips and looked down at her hands, her anger fading slowly as she let out a breath. The look she gave him bore a hint of something wry.

  “I may not have paid much attention to those lessons,” she admitted. “It seemed like a foolish series of lessons that insisted everything that I am and my every desire is wrong and that I should seek austerities in order to focus myself. I don’t mind fasting every now and then to purify myself sufficiently, but I have no interest in sacrificing myself on some spiritual altar in the name of self-improvement when it does nothing but make me lead a life of discomfort and self-denial. I would rather not, thanks, if that is what you have in mind for me.”

  Saris stared at her in bewilderment before a loud laugh burst from him. “Who is to say what your truest self is? Do you not find it strange that many Masters were drunks, chased females, or engaged in other actions not considered socially acceptable?”

  Her lovely brow furrowed. “I don’t understand.”

  “The process unveils the truth of your nature and lets there be nothing else. Even as you grow in your spiritual alchemy, who you are at the core, once dissolved from the impurities that have been used to temper your spirit, will remain and be the base for transformation as you continue to strengthen yourself.” He trailed a claw thoughtfully along her collarbone. “We are all unique and need different things. Yet sometimes we are fortunate to come across those that we work with.”

  “Like you and the rest of the lupi?” she challenged with an arched brow.

  Her words surprised another laugh from him. “Yes. Exactly so. We were already a unit in so many ways, our natures melding together harmoniously when Darthar found us. Darthar in turn found something of himself reflected back at him in the savage men that we had been.”

  His smile faded. “We have not been the same since he left us. A vital part of us is missing, and it has been my responsibility to fill that void. And I have failed repeatedly at my duty.” He cast a longing look at her, a tremor running through him. “It is tempting to want to retreat into the familiar, but once going forward, I cannot go back into deception, nor wrap myself up in delusion and ignorance.”

  “So you would rather be a monster ravaging the mountainside?” she asked.

  There was no censure in her voice, only curiosity, and yet it pricked at him all the same that she saw him that way even as it made him feel recognized. According to the societies of men, he was a monster, and yet being that monster was what kept the world of men safe.

  “It is my purpose,” he growled softly. “It takes a terrible monster to protect your world from the things that would consume it. I celebrate what I am.”

&nb
sp; “But you were once a man… Don’t you miss it?” she asked, her voice falling to gentle tones as she leaned forward, curiosity burning brightly in her gaze.

  His eyes raked over her slowly. “There have been few things that I have missed, and some things that I would wish to taste again,” he murmured.

  He paused and drew a deep breath, facing the turmoil within him, peering at the truth within it unflinchingly as he acknowledged the desires within him. The weak need for a tender touch that had always resided within him, a counterweight with his own ruthlessness. A touch that had not been available to nor offered to him. One that he could not, would not demand and so reduce its value.

  He met the cool blue pools of her eyes as he shared his truth. “I yearn for it, but it is nothing that I would sacrifice my true self to acquire again.”

  She licked her lips. “What is it that you yearn for?”

  He shook his head, refusing to speak any further of it, turning from her to the mess left by the uncontrolled release of water from the Water Kingdom. Most things had been swept off the table, littering the space behind it in small piles. He stepped forward and began to pick up the books, grateful to find that, other than being on the floor and a hint of dampness to the covers and the edges of the pages, they remained relatively untouched. The wards against damage had held up well against the flooding.

  He was aware of Rose standing at his side, stooping to help pick up the supplies. Many bottles were broken into tiny shards of glass winking in the firelight from the hearth and the torches in the wall sconces. She carefully picked up all that was salvageable from among the debris and stacked her findings on the table. She set the last of her armload down and looked over at him thoughtfully.

  “I will be honest—I do not know who I am anymore. It feels like I’ve been playing a part for much of my adult life. Echoing the reactions that the world around me expects to see. I don’t know if I am going to even like that person that is beneath all of that. What if, beneath all of that, I am a monster too?”

  Saris tilted his ears toward her, compassion filling him. He had admired her strength since she arrived. Even when she drove him to madness, he loved how dauntless she appeared in the face of any adversary. Now his heart ached for her as she faced the unknown within herself. It was part of confronting the monsters of calcination—the monsters that the mage would face in entering beyond the two stones of the mountain to approach the underworld, the fear that they would find the same monster within themselves as they saw within their foes.

  He understood this fear.

  Saris brushed the back of one hand against her cheek, startling her with the tenderness of his touch. He didn’t withdraw it. Instead, he watched her, something within him settling and warming as she leaned into his touch, her beautiful eyes staring deep into his own gaze, touching the part of his soul he kept hidden.

  “Then we will seek her out and embrace her, for this will be where you are meant to be,” he murmured.

  A tiny smile pulled at her lips.

  “I wanted you know… what I did with the other lupi… it is nothing I haven’t done with other beings. You should know that.” She hesitated but pushed on courageously. “It would be considered a perversion among my peers that I have such desires for nonhuman males. But since we are speaking of truth, I wanted you to know.”

  Saris felt his mouth curve in an answering smile. “This I have already seen, but I thank you for clarifying and elaborating on it further.”

  Her throaty laughter burst from her. “Yes. I suppose it is not much of a surprise when you have me mewling from the straps like an animal in heat.” Her teeth tugged at her bottom lip, worrying it. “I must ask, however. I sent a friend of sorts here to gather the rose we were seeking. Although he is the entrepreneurial sort who is happy to twist situations to his advantage, it wouldn’t have taken much to scare him from the mountain. Did you order the lupi to kill him?”

  He frowned at the question. There had been another human on the mountain? One he had not received word of? This disturbed him more than he wanted to admit in front of his female. But he would not try to lessen the truth for her. He shook his head regretfully.

  “I did not. I had no knowledge of another human prior to your arrival. As far as I was aware, there were no others for a great many years. I did not give any command for a human to be killed,” he assured her.

  An uncertainty and a flicker of fear flared briefly in her eyes. She swallowed, the fear rising as she met his gaze. “Whatever it was that killed him did so far too intelligently. It was no mere brutal attack of an animal, regardless of what I tried to tell myself when I saw his remains with my own eyes. Alexi was torn apart and completely ravaged. Do you think it could have been the vulpi?”

  “I don’t know,” he muttered honestly. “But even still, I should have been aware of something.”

  The matter of this Alexi concerned him greatly.

  Chapter 15

  Saris wanted to do something unexpected for his captive apprentice. Rose was an eager and enthusiastic, if not entirely willful and headstrong, apprentice. She didn’t shy away from much of what was asked of her. Over the last several days, despite the gnawing concerns he had over the peculiar occurrences on his mountain, the idea had grown that she deserved to be rewarded in some small way. But what?

  He thought back to women he had known as a man. He grimaced. He hadn’t been much of a gift-giver outside of odd flashy tokens he gave to a lover to satisfy her. Even if he had the means of acquiring the fineries that the women of his day enjoyed, he was not sure how customs might have changed over the centuries. There was also the matter that Rose was not a casual lover but a mage of exceptional ability. It seemed uncomfortably close to an insult to give her meaningless tokens when he wished to show his esteem and recognition of work.

  He tugged his hands through his mane impatiently as he tried to think of anything that might bring a smile to her face outside of fucking her silly. Whirling around with an irritated snarl, his eyes fell on the small goblin assigned to bringing Rose food and tending to her rooms while she was resting.

  “You! Wilia! Come here,” he directed with a sharp twitch of one claw, beckoning the petite female.

  She grinned, not at all deterred by his brusque attitude—for goblin manners were considerably more wretched, as he had learned over the centuries—and bounded over to his side in excitement.

  “What is it you want to know about your mage?” she asked bluntly.

  He flinched at her bluntness, but then he blinked at her but inclined his head in acknowledgment, earning him a broad, needle-toothed grin.

  “As you accurately surmised, I wish to know more about my human,” he rumbled. “You have been moving around her room, spying as well if I know Equiim. What have you heard her speak of with longing?”

  The goblin’s face screwed up in thought, and she shrugged. “She doesn’t talk to herself much. She broods a lot and is silent, but she does seem to take pleasure in smells… and in the growing things. The other day, I got tangled in the Rose of Sharon that grows wild outside my dwelling. It overtook my home and made something of a mess that I had to fight my way through. The plants in the Earth Kingdom do that,” she informed him soberly. “They will just up and grow through the night, and it makes quite a chore. It made me a bit late bringing her a tray before she woke, and in my haste, I had failed to remove all the flowers and greenery from me. Some of that mess dropped onto her tray, and I didn’t not notice at all until she picked it up. And… well, she smiled at that weed and smelled it.”

  The goblin scratched her head as if the concept was unfamiliar. “The flowers are good eating, but she didn’t even taste it. Instead, she tucked it beneath her ear.” She squinted up at him. “Why would she wear it? There are only certain trees and flowers we goblins wear in festive crowns—certainly not a tangly weed like that,” she muttered.

  “So she enjoyed the smell of the flower?” he murmured.

  The gob
lin shrugged again in an infuriating fashion that had him gnashing his teeth. “Well, she smells everything she can reach. She removes the old oils and smells them. She dumped out a fair number of them, muttering about them being rancid or not properly sealed and stored, and that she will need to redo them. But I don’t have understanding of, or interest in, all the complicated mage talk,” she muttered, scratching beneath one arm.

  “Thank you, Wilia,” he muttered, his claws scraping his chin thoughtfully, “you have been most helpful.”

  The goblin nodded cheerfully and bounded away in her strange hopping-walk as she went about whatever other duties or interests that occupied her attention, leaving Saris to ponder over the information he had been given.

  A fragrant flower or plant seemed to be the obvious answer… but what? There were many plants that grew in the hidden gardens, but nothing struck him as unique enough to be a gift for the peculiar mage. Mages were an odd group of humans, but Rose’s hungers both carnally and intellectually set her apart beyond anyone he had ever met.

  Not even Darthar, who had seemed almost godlike to Saris during the course of the mage’s occupancy of the mountain, had that ravenous insatiability. The male, when not battling, was mild in temperament and was generally disquieted by the appetites of the lupi. Rose was neither of those things. If she brooded when alone, she didn’t hesitate to share her thoughts or speak her mind on any number of things.

  No, this mage set apart from all others required something that was also exceptionally unique. A flower as rare as herself.

  An idea sparking in his mind, Saris departed the castle secretly. The others wouldn’t understand his interest in gifting Rose something precious, but they did not see her the way he did. They did not know her as he was coming to know her.