He walked to the centre of the large enclosure. Once again he surveyed everything, but this time his eyes fixed on a tall covered object.
That! That was something important. He moved closer and pulled the blanket away, to then gawp at the surface in amazement. It was a mirror, but it wasn’t. He did not see himself on the surface. Instead he viewed what looked to be a tower. There were two people within. One was a tall, very muscular man with an unattractive face. The other was a pretty, somewhat plump woman.
They were both naked. The man was using her violently from the rear, and from the ecstatic expression on her face, she was enjoying the abuse very much. They coupled on a thin mattress that rested on the bare stone floor. So far they hadn’t noticed him, too preoccupied with their pleasure.
Kehfrey touched the surface. It rippled strangely. He watched in fascination his hand sink inward. Without thinking about it, he stepped through. He heard Marun’s voice cry out in alarm just after he appeared on the other side.
“Kehfrey!”
The woman looked up and gasped. Her face filled with terror. The tall man rose to his feet and towered threateningly over him. Kehfrey glanced at him without much interest. His attention fixed on the woman.
“I know you, don’t I?”
The warrior attacked. His fist shot toward the slighter man. Kehfrey avoided the assault easily. He used the warrior’s own momentum to send him to the ground. He stomped the attacker’s head down with a booted foot. His victim went still.
“Oh! No!” the woman cried. “No! Brother Herfod! Please!”
“Herfod!” Kehfrey breathed. His eyes widened. “Herfod! Brother Herfod!”
“Kehfrey!” Marun called. He had stepped through the mirror. “Kehfrey! Come back through with me! You shouldn’t be here!”
“Who is this woman?” Kehfrey demanded. He had switched to Ulmeniran the moment she had spoken.
“A whore. An unimportant whore,” Marun said in the same language. His accent was mild.
“A whore? Yes,” Kehfrey said. “Unimportant? That was a lie.” He stepped closer to the cowering woman and crouched on his toes. “What’s your name?” he demanded.
“Eshaia,” she said. She looked at Marun fearfully. Her gaze darted back to Kehfrey. “You don’t remember me?”
“No.” He caressed her cheek and lifted her face by the chin. She shivered at his touch. “You’re very afraid of me. Why is that?”
“You will tell my husband.” She looked at the fallen warrior. “I can’t stop it! I have to have him! He treats me like a whore!” Suddenly, she collapsed and writhed on the mattress.
She was having an orgasm. Kehfrey stared at her, repulsed, fascinated. “Fear excites you,” he whispered.
She smiled deliriously. Her hand crept over her body and between her legs. “Take me! Take me like you took my husband!”
He rose to his feet, the repulsion becoming an avalanche that washed him cold. “Your husband?”
She laughed at him. “Useless roach! You can’t get it up for a woman! You should have been born without your balls! You aren’t a man at all!”
Marun’s boot lashed out and kicked her in the head. Without a sound, her body went still. Kehfrey squatted and began a healing chant over her. Marun pulled him off before he finished.
“Leave her! She’s not dead, more’s the pity.”
“She’s with child!” Kehfrey protested. “I can’t leave her like that!”
“With child?” Marun repeated. He laughed. “Heal her, then. Let her have this bastard.”
He released him. Kehfrey knelt and repeated the chant. A faint wash of blue sank into Eshaia. Her eyes opened. She stared at Kehfrey in alarm and then at Marun.
“Be careful of your words!” the Shadow Master snarled. Mute with fright, she lay motionless on the palette.
Behind them, the Stohar warrior groaned and shifted. He rolled over. Marun looked back at him curiously. A brawny, very tall man, he had still managed poorly against the slighter Pek-trained assassin. There was an immense lump on the Stohar’s forehead. He lifted himself to a stand and teetered precariously.
“I believe you have damaged my favourite warrior,” Marun commented lightly.
Kehfrey rose and whirled. “Favourite?” he snarled.
He leapt forward. The warrior flung his hands up and grappled with the attacker. Kehfrey twisted and rolled. The warrior flew up and back.
Marun reached out in shock. “Kehfrey! Stop! I need him for—!”
Kehfrey jumped on the downed man and struck him on the sternum with his knuckles. The Stohar screamed and curled in agony. His cry choked off as his lungs filled with blood. Kehfrey had crushed his heart inside his ribcage.
“No!” Eshaia cried. “No! Don’t kill him! He was a gift! He’s mine!”
Kehfrey looked back at her. “A gift?” He gaze shot to Marun. “A gift or a favourite?”
“A gift,” Marun said, face white.
Kehfrey’s eyes almost glowed with malevolence. “Liar!” he said. “You bent for him!” He reached down and snapped the man’s neck. In the shocked silence that followed, he rose and stalked toward Eshaia. “Use your gift if you like, bitch! He’s got it up one last time.” He stepped over her, shoved through the mirror and moved out of sight.
“No!” she sobbed. “No!”
Marun shut his eyes in dismay. “I’ll get you another,” he said.
“He takes everything away from me. He takes everything!”
“You shouldn’t have mocked his manhood! You stupid whore!”
Marun cast blackness from his dim shadow and raised the warrior. The cadaver stood, the head dangling horribly. There was a deep indentation in the chest. This injury would have killed the warrior more slowly. He would have suffered horribly. In his way, and despite his rage, Kehfrey had given his victim mercy.
As the ghoul stepped toward the mirror, Eshaia screamed her grief and rushed toward the walking corpse. “No! Leave him with me! He’s mine!”
“He’s dead!” Marun roared. “Go be a queen for a change, you silly bitch!” He grabbed her hair and pulled her off the dead man. She wept hopelessly. He cast her away and forced the ghoul over to the Omeran side. He hastened after it and snatched up the mirror’s concealing blanket.
“Be here tonight as usual,” he said.
“You promised another one!” she screamed from the other side. “You promised!”
“I’ll get one!” He threw the blanket over the disgusting sight of her.
He looked around quickly. Kehfrey wasn’t in the pavilion. Marun sent the warrior out of it and followed after him. Silence spread outward as the soldiers perceived the naked dead man. King Quei stalked up.
“You killed another one!” he shouted.
“Not I!” Marun snapped.
“Who, then?” Quei demanded.
“I did it!”
Quei whirled. The slight one stood to the side of the pavilion. “You?” Quei said. Curiosity replaced outrage. “Did you blast him?”
“No! I broke his neck.” Kehfrey stepped forward, his glare directed at Marun. “Drop the false life from it.”
“I need—”
“Drop it!”
The ghoul tumbled to the earth, completely lifeless.
“Back in the tent!” Kehfrey ordered the sorcerer.
“I—!”Marun began.
“In!” Kehfrey roared.
Quei, the servants, the soldiers standing nearby, they watched in amazement as the Shadow Master backed himself into the pavilion. Kehfrey thrust inward after him.
Quei let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “That is a very dangerous man,” he said. He signalled his soldiers forward. “Bury him,” he said. “Make sure the monks in hiding chant over him. I don’t want to see him again.”
They hurried to obey. Quei stayed by the pavilion and listened. He thought he heard a muffled cry of pain. A shiver ran down his spine. He backed off and walked quickly away.
***<
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“Kehfrey!” Marun pleaded. “You were gone! You can’t expect me to have taken no interest in anyone.”
Kehfrey ignored this reasonable justification and struck him. Marun fell to the canvas flooring. “That son of a bitch was more than just anyone to you! Wasn’t he?” he snarled.
Marun attacked him with a spiteful accusation. “Do you want to punish me? What about you? What about you and the lover you took? Shouldn’t I punish you?”
Kehfrey whirled away. Hands creeping over his head as if he were in pain, he uttered his anguish. “I can’t remember! Why can’t I remember? Why should I feel guilty for something I don’t remember doing?”
Marun dared not answer. He rose, pulled Kehfrey about and kissed him passionately. He groaned against his lover’s lips. The violence he had witnessed, the violence to which he had been subjected, his erection was hard enough to hurt. The sensation was exquisite. “Punish me, Kehfrey,” he said. “Punish me! Use me! I need you! I love you!”
Kehfrey sobbed once and crushed up against him. Fingers wound in Marun’s dark hair and twisted. Marun cried out. The pain! The pain was beautiful. He shuddered with need. He ached with it.
“You!” Kehfrey whispered against his mouth. “Fear excites you as well. You’re afraid of me. You always have been.”
Marun pulled back. “No!”
Kehfrey smothered the sorcerer’s lips and forced him down to his knees. “Yes! You are,” he said after. “You love me and you fear me. Why is that?”
“I don’t know,” Marun whispered. Kehfrey undid the laces of his trousers. Marun watched expectantly. When Kehfrey forced his head forward, he submitted. He opened his mouth and took Kehfrey in.
A soft nimbus of blue leapt outward from Kehfrey’s skin. Marun groaned and shifted his legs around. He locked an arm around Kehfrey’s buttocks, supported his weight on his other arm and ground his pubis against a hard shin. Kehfrey inhaled sharply and caught at the table for balance. Despite the haze of pleasure, Marun realized this wasn’t how he’d imagined their reunion. He’d thought himself the master. He knew better now. Kehfrey was the master. Kehfrey was everything. He always had been.
Chapter Nine
Through a spyglass, the sorcerer scanned the disposition of the enemy fortifications. His adversary had dug in. The entirety of Forge Mount had been readied for siege and battle, days, perhaps weeks before the arrival of the invading army. The village below had been razed to the ground, and the fields had been picked or torched.
On the flank of the mount, walls had been constructed of fieldstones. The ancient castle showed itself in use. Smoke billowed up from its centre. Giant crossbows waited to be fired from there and from fortified positions elsewhere on the hillside. Soldiers, monks and women stood behind the enemy walls, silent and unmoving, many of the men bearing longbows. Above, the temple crown had been destroyed at the highest point. The ancient monoliths were rubble.
Marun wasn’t particularly worried about the giant crossbows. His forces had encamped too far for them to be of use, too far for longbows as well. They’d be a nuisance when his soldiers attacked, but he’d send the ghoul army forward first to act as a shield for the living.
The shattered temple was of concern to him. Though the goddess’s power rose for him anywhere on solid land, it rose better in a temple. But if the monks had sufficiently gouged the earth up there, the well of souls within the standing stones had been crippled. If such was the case, his link to the goddess on Forge Mount wouldn’t be nearly as strong as he’d like. His bastion between Ulmenir and Omera would effectively be as ruined as the temple itself.
Marun lowered the spyglass and scrutinized the mount until he located what might be the black standard of the golden gryphon. He raised the glass again, aiming it at this new target. Yes, there. King Ugoth’s banner. He searched the area. His ocular fixed on a figure. Surprised, he lowered the glass.
Ugoth was looking at him. It had to be him. There could be no other with that tawny hair. Ufrid had separated from his brother and lurked in Forge Canyon to the southeast. The Ulmeniran king spied down the mount with his telescope pointed directly at his nemesis. Realising this, Marun smiled.
“Kehfrey?”
“Hmm?” came the absent response.
“Come to me.”
“Bugger off. I’m busy working out the strategies with Quei.”
“Come here!” Marun snarled.
Kehfrey stomped over. “What the hells do you want?”
Marun grabbed and kissed him. Kehfrey tensed with anger. He detested when his lover pretended a dominance that wasn’t factual. Well aware of it, Marun shifted and kissed the flesh near his ear. “Don’t push me off. Not yet. Kiss me! Just once!”
He slid his lips over Kehfrey’s bearded cheek and back to his mouth. Kehfrey kissed him briefly, but then lost his patience and pushed Marun off. Shaking his head in mystification, Kehfrey stomped back to the Stohar king, who stared at the sorcerer and then glanced up the mount as if understanding what his purpose had been. Hardly caring that Quei did, Marun sneered and lifted the glass.
King Ugoth had lowered his. Marun stopped breathing.
Oh! He was beautiful! And predatory. Exceptional, almost inhumanly blue eyes glared down at their position, filled with a determination that brooked no failure. Chilled, the Shadow Master lowered the glass and faced about. Oh, gods! Had it been any wonder Kehfrey had loved him, that he still loved him?
Marun glanced to the side. Kehfrey was deep in discussion with Quei, but the Stohar king had his own spyglass and lifted it even now. Dismay soured the sorcerer’s earlier confidence. He’d quietly given orders not to permit Kehfrey access to the telescopes. So far, the young man had been successfully distracted every time he’d asked to use one. So far.
“Show him!” a raspy voice uttered.
Marun whirled. The water witch stood next to him.
“Show him! If he is under control, we will know it now, before it is too late.”
“No!”
“What does she want?” Marun heard, and the spelled captive halted at his side. “Hag!” Kehfrey spat at the crone.
“Pervert!” she spat back, but her expression was soft, loving. Astounded, Marun thought he saw her eyes blacken with shadows for a second. His trepidation multiplied tenfold.
“Look up the hill at the enemy king,” the hag suggested to Kehfrey. “Tell me what you think of him.”
Marun felt Kehfrey grab the spyglass out of his hand, and he could only observe, frozen to his marrow as his worst nightmare commenced. She was interfering. She was betraying him. His own mistress betrayed him!
Kehfrey scanned the hilltop, quickly located the black standard and then lowered his sight. He paused, frozen as motionless as the apprehensive lover next to him. Marun watched his face whiten. “I know that man!” Kehfrey said.
“It is King Ugoth,” the possessed hag said. “He is our enemy. He has the traitors with him, the witches who have turned their backs on the mother goddess.” She stepped forward. “What do you think of him, boy?” she hissed close to his ear. Her eyes washed with the absolute black of full possession a second time.
“He’s magnificent,” Kehfrey said clearly. He lowered the glass. “Why does he look down at us like that? He’s so … sorrowful.”
“He loves you,” she said. “He wants you back.”
“What?” Kehfrey looked at her, startled, dismayed, disbelieving. And yet he knew she hadn’t lied.
“He took you away from Marun,” the hag told him. “And Marun took you back.”
Kehfrey turned slowly and looked at Marun. “Is that true? Was that man my lover?”
“Yes,” Marun answered.
“I … don’t remember,” Kehfrey said.
“Because the Shadow Master spelled you,” the hag said.
Marun snarled and lifted his hand to strike her. The bitch! The fiendish, primeval bitch! After all he had done for her, she betrayed him!
Kehfrey blocked the bl
ow and shoved him off. “Speak!” he commanded the hag. “Tell me!”
“Marun spelled you to forget. He spelled you so that your love would revert back to him. He spelled you to make you see where you belonged. The gryphon king is not the one your soul rests with. His beauty blinded you. He is meant for other things.”
“What other things?” Kehfrey gazed up the hill at the distant standard.
“There will be an angel,” the hag said. “An angel for him. I have seen it in the waters.”
“An angel,” he repeated. Stunned, he walked away. The spyglass fell from his hands and rolled off. Marun followed and grabbed his arm roughly.
“Get away from me!” Kehfrey snarled. He shook him off and ducked into their pavilion.
Marun whirled and started after the water witch. Power lifted with each step he took, but she stood her ground. Feet away from her, he halted. Her eyes bled shadow openly.
You will not hurt my daughter, the Ancient Power said coldly.
“You told him!” he said. “You told him about Ugoth! You betrayed me!”
It was necessary, the entity responded. His mind has all but escaped the bond you laid on it. He will refuse us.
Marun shut his eyes against the pain. “You have ruined everything,” he whispered. “You have ruined me.”
He would have seen the gryphon king in time. He would have flown. Use me! Use me to trap him properly!
And he was that desperate that he pleaded for her succour. “What must I do?”
Let me in, Tehlm Sevet, she whispered. He cannot resist us both at once.
“Bitch! You will drain him!”
No. Do this and I will leave him with you. Do this! He is despairing even now, my servant. Act quickly! This is the only way.
“Swear it! Swear that he is mine forever!”
She hesitated. Nothing can hold him forever.
“Then swear he is mine before he is ever yours again!”
The hag scowled, and her eyes bled great drips of blackness down her cheeks.
“Swear it!” he snarled. “I would rather lose him to Ugoth than you! From Ugoth I can get him back!” He dared to step closer. “If you want to win this war, then swear it!”
Bound in Stone 3 Page 35
