by Dante King
That was why she set the bells of recollection to ringing in my head. It had been her who we had spied sitting on top of the dune. This gorgeous woman was the mysterious disappearing catmancer.
I wondered how she had managed to avoid our detection and, now that I came to think about it, how she had managed to get back here almost at the same time we had. Surely, she could not have outrun us. We would have seen her.
There were a few riddles that would need untangling here, that was for sure.
We made a round of introductions, and the Shaykh listened to our names attentively. I could practically see him storing them away for later.
“I know little about your homelands,” the Shaykh said. “But I know that we should wait until after the meal to discuss why you are here. In the meantime, let us eat and drink and talk about little things.”
So we did. We made the sort of idle, polite chat that diplomats must spend half their lives making. It was the sort of pointless natter that I couldn’t really stand, and I was glad when everyone had eaten as much as they could and we pushed our golden plates away.
“Now, for coffee and talk,” Shaykh Antizah said amiably.
The guy had been all sunbeams and honey blossom thus far, but there was something about him that I didn’t trust. What it was I couldn’t say exactly, but I thought it might be that there was something missing in the depths of his eyes. Or, perhaps, something was moving around down there that shouldn’t have been there at all.
“Now,” said the Shaykh as his attending servants poured us small cups of coffee, “as strangers to this land, please let me explain the customs of Akrit to you as regards coffee.”
“You don’t just drink the stuff?” Hana asked in her lilting voice, eyeing her steaming cup.
The Shaykh smiled a mirthless smile.
“No,” he said. “If a guest visits another Akritite for coffee, it can often be more than a social visit, you see. If after receiving his coffee, the guest does not sip from it, but rather places it in front of him, it would indicate that he has something to discuss. The host will then allow the guest to ask what it is he came for.”
Seeing this as my cue, I made a point of not sipping from my cup.
“Ah, Dragonmancer… Noctis, was it?” Shaykh Antizah asked.
“That’s right,” I said.
“What is it you wish to speak of, my friend?” Shaykh Antizah said in his unctuous voice.
“Are you a mancer yourself, Shaykh?” I asked.
A flicker of what I thought was probably annoyance passed over Shaykh Antizah’s face. He gave a little delicate cough and said, “No. No, I am not. I have catmancers in my service, in my harem, like the woman you see standing behind me, but I am not a mancer, no.”
“Your whole harem is made up of catmancers?” I asked.
The Shaykh Antizah licked his lips. It was clear that he was cognizant of every little bit of information about himself that he drip-fed to me. He was a sly dog, this man.
“That is right, my friend,” he said. “My particular tastes run to beauty and power, I admit.”
A sly dog who had his own harem of catmancer women. Not bad.
My fellow dragonmancers drank their coffee, content with letting me do the talking.
“You have yourself a harem too, I see,” Shaykh Antizah said.
“I don’t know if I’d have the, ah, nuggets to say that,” I said before I could stop myself.
Hana chuckled, and a faint line appeared in Shaykh Antizah’s forehead.
“Anyway,” he said, “how can I be of service to you, Dragonmancer Noctis? Clearly, you came all this way for a reason.”
“To cut to the chase, Shaykh,” I said, “we are here because we wish—we would very much appreciate, I should say—to make use of your access to the Subterranean Realm.”
Shaykh Antizah sipped his coffee. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tamsin down her whole beverage and hold her cup out for a refill.
“May you excuse my temerity when I ask why?” Shaykh Antizah said.
“To be honest, Shaykh, I only know that my Empress requires access to the Subterranean Realms via your Kingdom’s entrance because she believes there is something of vital importance down there,” I said. “Vital to defeating a foe that our two countries share.”
It was a little clumsy, but I wasn’t a diplomat, and it is a hard thing to ask a man for his help while simultaneously telling him to mind his damned business. I had no idea whether the Shaykh even knew about the Shadow Nations. He might do. He might be in league with the douchebags for all I knew.
“You know nothing else?” Shaykh Antizah asked slyly.
I thought of mentioning the Fateseeker’s Cavern. The guess of General Shiloh, the Overseer, and Queen Frami that there might be something that could either help us or hinder the Shadow Nations in our building war.
“I can tell you nothing else, Shaykh,” I said.
Shaykh Antizah considered my request for a long time.
“You know,” he said eventually, “the rules of hospitality in Akrit are very strict. In my father’s day, a man came to him and begged his help, just as you are asking mine now. He pushed his cup toward my father and asked for a horse so that he might escape some men that were after him. My father asked him why these men were persecuting him. His guest replied that he had killed a man in cold blood, a man they knew and loved. My father asked the name of the man that his guest had murdered. The guest responded with the name of one of my father’s own brothers.”
“Did your father carve his heart out of chest with a spoon right there and then?” Tamsin asked.
“No,” Shaykh Antizah replied, still looking at me. “No, he gave the guest his best horse from his stable and bade him ride for the horizon. He said he would give him three days before he set out after him. The man took the offer. Four days later, my father had his former guest flayed. His torture lasted six days.”
I nodded slowly. “I think I see what you’re saying. The Akritites are not people to betray or lie to?”
Shaykh Antizah smiled a smile that would have looked better on something that habitually sunned itself on riverbanks.
“I will allow you to use our entrance into the Subterranean Realm, Dragonmancer Noctis.”
“That’s very generous of you, Shaykh—” I began to say.
“But, in return I want an evening with one of your women,” Shaykh Antizah said.
I gave the man a long, cool look. It wasn’t that cool look I sometimes gave someone before I stomped a mudhole in their ass, but it was pretty close to it.
“I’m sorry,” I said to the most powerful man in the land of Akrit, “but that’s not going to happen.”
There was a heavy silence. The girls drank their coffees and had their cups refilled.
The Shaykh, to his credit, held my eye. Then he chortled, as if we were simply pulling each other’s legs.
“Of course, of course. A simple miscommunication,” he said easily, after the silence had passed its use by date.
“Not a problem,” I said.
Under the table, one of my knuckles popped, I was balling my fist so hard.
“I was merely testing your resolve. And I see it is strong. In that case, why don’t you simply fight in our arena? One battle, against our best. I have officials visiting from other principalities under my dominion, and an entertaining show would do well for my relationship with them. Do this, and I will grant your request.”
There was more to it than that, I was sure. I cast an eye at the gorgeous robed catmancer bodyguard standing over Shaykh Antizah’s shoulder. She had shifted, and that simple movement had set my Spidey senses to tingling.
If I hadn’t known any better, I would have said old Shaykh Antizah was lying to me.
Still, I had no other options just then, and that was as plain as the nose on my face.
“Agreed,” I said.
Tamsin’s hand shot out, and she waggled her cup angrily for more coffee.
&
nbsp; “Ah, one quick piece of advice, my friends,” the Shaykh said pleasantly, turning his attention to the hobgoblin and her tiny coffee cup. “An Akritite will seldom ask for more than three cups, as without words, it would indicate they are requesting help with settling a score.”
Tamsin looked thoughtfully at the Shaykh and then lowered her cup.
Shaykh Antizah nodded and stood, shaking out his pristine white robes.
“I will have my men escort you to your suite,” he said graciously.
He turned to me, and the rattlesnake eyes glittered coldly, though his words were warm.
“Dragonmancer Noctis, I look forward to seeing your prowess in combat,” he said.
A moment later, his slippers pattered along the marble corridor as he strode away.
Chapter 7
We were escorted through the palace by two armed men dressed as servants but had ‘professional soldier’ written on them in foot-high letters if only you had the eyes to read it. When we arrived at our rooms, the four of us poured generous goblets of the sweet, fragrant wine that was apparently a regional specialty of the Akrit.
The chambers we been assigned would have been labeled as luxurious by all except those born into the families of Russian oligarchs. Shaykh Antizah might or might not have heard the saying ‘money can’t buy taste’, but even if he had, he hadn’t let that stop him in his interior decorating. The place was practically furnished in gold, silk, ivory, and all the other trappings that those people with very big wallets and very little originality seem to think are key when prettifying their homes.
There were soft couches all over the place, bowls of fruit and buckets of ice, magically kept from melting I supposed, with jugs of wine set in them. A giant harp sat in one corner and a stuffed hippogriff in another. There were jewels and precious stones embedded into most of the walls and a stunning mosaic of a river scene running across the ceiling. One side of the room was completely open to the elements and only shut in by a series of semi-transparent white curtains. Through this partition, which swayed in the soft river breeze, I could see the flickering of flames coming from braziers set along a capacious balcony.
“Pretty nice layout,” I said in a casual voice. “Comfy.”
Hana snorted softly. Her eyes were wide, and I was sure that for one coming from a land like Vetrusca, where necessity and practicality was first and foremost when building anything, all this blatant wealth must have been particularly overwhelming and jarring.
There was a truly enormous bed sunken into the floor near the center of the room. It was covered in an assortment of silks, throws, and cushions that would have had an avid seamstress or tailor creaming in their pants.
For a while, we simply kicked back and enjoyed not being in the desert, or being painfully diplomatic and polite with that slimeball, Shaykh Antizah.
First and foremost, dragonmancers were trained how to win battles, fights, scraps, and sorties—not the hearts of unscrupulous and Janus-faced shaykhs. The coffee ceremony and the meal that had followed it had, on paper, been casual and polite affairs. Except all four of us elite warriors had been aware that it would only take a slip of the tongue for us to land the Mystocean Empire in the brown and sticky stuff.
The fires in the braziers outside died down to a comfortable glow, and the beeswax tapers burned southward. Hana and Renji had slumped onto a couch together, slurping wine and chatting sleepily. Tamsin and I were on another couch across the large room.
I was meaning to explain to her the idea of video games, but the hobgoblin just couldn’t seem to grasp the idea of fighting monsters or killing zombies on some sort of man-made device when there were real zombies and monsters out there for the killing. My explanation that on Earth we actually had no such fabulous creatures or dangerous undead to fight didn’t seem to be shedding any light on the issue.
I craned my neck to ask the other two women if they were able to follow my explanation. However, my question died on my lips when I saw that Hana and Renji had fallen asleep, their empty wine goblets in their hands and an empty wine jug set on the side table in front of them.
Tamsin saw where I was looking, and a sly smile spread across her sultry, red-skinned face. Her yellow eyes were slightly narrowed when she turned them on me.
“So, it would appear that you and I are the last two standing, Mike,” she said.
“Looks that way,” I agreed in a low voice. “Do you reckon we should wake them up and get them into that big ass bed?”
Tamsin made a show of considering this for a second or two. She was dressed in a plain black shift now, having changed out of her battle garb along with the rest of us when we had been shown to our room. I guessed it was the one item of clothing that she wore under her leather and armor. It was tight and short. I had not realized just how short until the soft hiss of her fingers gliding across her own thighs drew my attention to the fact.
“Let them sleep a little while,” she said in her quiet, seductive voice. “We have come far in a short time. Let them rest.”
“And us?” I asked, though judging by the stirring in my breeches, there was at least a part of me that thought it could guess the answer.
“Ah, alas, there is no rest for the wicked,” Tamsin said softly.
She leaned in and kissed me. I was enveloped in her warm, musky scent; a smell which sent my brain packing to the Caribbean, despite the fact that the closest I had ever gotten to the Caribbean was a bottle of Mount Gay rum and a stolen Romeo y Julieta cigar one New Year’s Eve.
I kissed the hobgoblin back, my desire for her rising and stretching like a Bengal tiger that had been dozing in front of the fire but had just spotted a gazelle wandering past. Grunting a little, I pushed my tongue forward into her mouth and lapped at her forked tongue, then gave her a little bite on the bottom lip as I broke apart.
“You are a demon, aren’t you?” Tamsin hissed in my ear. “I knew there was a reason I felt such an affinity for you. Hobgoblins are, by nature, devious and clever and skilled—and not just on the battlefield, Mike.”
I glanced over at Renji and Hana, who were still sleeping on the couch.
“We should try and be quiet,” I murmured. “No point disturbing their esteemed repose.”
“I fucking concur, Earthling,” Tamsin said.
There was not much room to maneuver on the couch. As luck would have it, though, Tamsin’s tiny, short shift negated any reason to remove clothes on her part. This was just as well, because I was in need of instant carnal gratification. I wanted the red-skinned warrior there, and I wanted her as soon as possible.
As Hana sleepily adjusted her position on the sofa she was sharing with the blue-skinned djinn, Tamsin began tugging at my belt. The shuffling of Hana and Renji disguised the soft clinking and scraping of my belt buckle coming undone in Tamsin’s hands. While the hobgoblin was undertaking this delicate operation, I slipped my hand down between her velvety thighs and moved it up to the heat that I could feel emanating from her crotch.
Tamsin hissed softly again and sank her sharp white teeth gently into my muscular shoulder, just hard enough to muffle her groan of pleasure as I began massaging the front of her soaking wet panties. Already, she was grinding her pelvis into my hand, even as she was freeing my cock from my loosened breeches and beginning to rub it to full hardness.
Tamsin reached up and unbound her hair out of the warrior’s tail. She shook her mass of shadowy dark locks out, and they cascaded over her shoulders. Then, she gave a little shrug and peeled her sable black shift down from her shoulders to just below her breasts.
“Oh my—” I began to say loudly, but Tamsin covered my mouth with her warm hand and motioned with her eyes to the two sleeping women across the room.
“Shhhh, Mike,” she said. “I want you all to myself.”
I ran my eyes eagerly over the hobgoblin’s lithe frame, while she checked me out too with those lambent yellow eyes of hers.
Her red body gleamed like Indian ruby in the ru
ddy, diffused light coming through the gauzy white curtains from the portable braziers out on the balcony. To my libido-filled eyes, she looked like the very epitome of a triple F-rated chick: fine, fit, and fuckable.
My gaze moved from the mane of wild sable hair that surrounded her bright yellow, predatory eyes down to her delicious, rounded, pert tits with their perfect dark red nipples. Southward, her stomach was all flat perfection—not muscular and defined like Saya’s but toned and without a spare ounce of fat. Her long torso drew my eye irresistibly downward to the glistening crimson slit of her sex.
Just as I felt, Tamsin looked ready to rumble.
“You really know what you’re doing,” I whispered into her ear as my fellow dragonmancer squeezed and tugged at my cock.
“The benefits of a wild and misspent youth, Mike Noctis,” Tamsin moaned in my ear.
I pulled the soaking triangle of her panties aside and began fingering her wet and eager sex. Tamsin started muttering words that I didn’t understand.
My cock was throbbing so hard it almost hurt. My balls were tight against the base, tingling with anticipation.
It seemed that the two of us had made some sort of unspoken agreement where we wouldn’t leave the shelter of the couch—not that the other two women would have cared that we were getting it on even if they had woken up and found us fucking.
With some difficulty, Tamsin hooked my breeches with her dexterous foot and dragged them down, using only her toes, until they were around my ankles. Then she pulled up that poor excuse of a skirt of hers and quietly rolled onto her side, so that her bare red butt was pressed up against my exposed crotch. She spat into her hand, baring her long canines at me over her shoulder, and reached between her legs. She found my cock ready and waiting for her, and guided me into her warm slot.
Tamsin rubbed herself, teasing her clit as I moved a little inside of her. To my surprise, the hobgoblin actually slipped a finger inside her pussy, then another. She was stretching herself, seeing how many fingers she could put in even with my thick shaft impaling her. She moaned.
