I shut the book and stood, and then circled the desk carefully to peer over Barbas' shoulder at the notes he was working on. He had drawn several lines, connecting several of the phonetic phrases, periodically circling the ones he found important. I leaned against his chair as he looked up, bending down to wrap my arms around his neck. My head pressed against his and my mouth was at about the level of his ear. The heady scent of him filled my nose and made me think of sawdust, cinnamon, and campfire smoke. He was an illusion; I knew that. This was a dream, an induced hallucination. I was really lying propped up against the base of my tower, motionless, encased in a shell of armor, dreaming the library, the books, my wonderful dress, the cascading waves of my hair spilling down about my face. It wasn't real- or was it? What was real, anyway? The smell of his hair was real. And but for him, but for this sweet illusion, I was alone.
Barbas reached up and ran his fingertips down my face gently, turning his head and murmuring, “Are you alright?”
“Just,” I hesitated. “I… I was just thinking about what really matters.”
Barbas pushed away from the desk, moving his chair back a half meter and turning so that he could pull me down to sit across his lap. “And what really matters?”
I thought about it for a minute, staring out at nothing, before I finally turned and met his eyes. They reflected the stolid light of the desk lamp back out at me as little twin candles burning copper oxide green. His face was dark, angular, and handsome as ever, but he seemed different tonight. His skin, usually the color of dark coffee, now seemed cut whole cloth from the shadows. What's more, he seemed blurry around the edges, like I was seeing him at a great distance through a heavy fog- rather than sitting on his lap, my face mere inches from his. As I watched, the green seemed to leak out of his eyes, swallowed up in the burning coals now smoldering in their place. I put a hand to his face, amazed, and felt it warm to the touch, hot as a fever. I smiled as I understood. He was choosing to appear as a djinni, ‘made from smokeless fire.' His suit was unaffected by the growing heat emanating from his skin, but the tie changed from bright green to a burnt orange, and the cufflinks at his wrists stopped being emeralds, winking to life as hot embers from the center of a fire.
“What matters, my qarin,” I whispered, “is that we’re here. It matters that we do what we came here to do, and make this world ready for the people coming after us.”
Barbas grinned, and his teeth stood out white-hot in the shimmering heat spilling from his mouth. “And what happens if we can’t? What if this tower we built does nothing and this place stays a frozen hell?”
“Then we make the best of what we have,” I replied immediately. “Our visitor and his people live here somehow. We’ll find a way, and no matter what, we’ve got this, the dream, each other.”
Barbas laughed, surging forward in his chair and taking me up in his arms, standing and lifting me up with him in the same motion. In the blink of an eye, he had dropped the burning semblance of the djinni, once more the handsome man with the viridian eyes and russet hair. His skin once more cool and smooth as cappuccino. I wrapped my legs around his waist, and for a moment we stayed that way, content in each other’s lips, in the flickering dance of our tongues. But then the hunger overtook us at the same time, and everything became urgent. A frantic stripping away of Barbas’ clothes, the tie of my dress coming untied from around my neck. One of his hands gripped my back while the other ran rampant, caressing my breasts with fingers dancing from one nipple to the other. He set me down on the edge of the desk so that he leaned into me where he stood, and together we swept notes and books aside in heedless abandon. There were more pressing things to attend to.
So distracted was I in the flurry of kisses, touching, and teasing, that Barbas almost took me by surprise when he slipped my dress up away from my hips and pushed into me, driving the breath out of me in a sharp cry. I circled my arms around his neck and kissed his lips, his face, his forehead; all thoughts were driven out of my mind with each push of his hips, each rock and circle of mine. My breathing came faster and faster, changing from the cycle of gasps and sighs to one of moan and cry. I bent forward and bit him, hard on the shoulder, delighting in the sudden ripple of tension that shot through him. "Come on ‘Bas," I hissed in his ear, "come and take me."
A growl was the only response I got, and this time, when Barbas pulled his hips back, he drew out of me completely, surprising me again. I let out a frustrated growl of my own and opened my mouth to goad him again. But before I could speak, Barbas gripped my shoulder in one strong hand and turned me, then bent me over the desk, pressing my breasts against the cool old wood. A moment later, one of his hands took a fistful of my hair and pulled- not too hard, just enough to make me arch my back, and then he was inside me again, driving into me with feral intensity. I gasped and gripped the edge of the desk like it was my only lifeline, the change in angle sent new, sharper spears of sensation burning into me from below. He thrust with metronomic rhythm, hard and powerful, not even slowing down when the orgasm wracked my body, lifting me back up off the desk so that I was standing with him, my back pressed against his chest. He gripped my breasts and continued his relentless conquest as I screamed with ecstasy. Time ceased to have any meaning at that moment. The sensation was overwhelming, all encompassing, and I was swept along before it like a leaf in a storm. Finally, the storm broke, and all the strength seemed to go out of Barbas at once. He sagged against my back and groaned as he spent himself inside me.
Suddenly, smoothly, with no discernible transition, we were stumbling back and falling into the soft, luxurious expanse of our bed in the cottage by the lake, the library gone as though it had never been. We lay tangled together, slick with sweat and panting, for what must have been ages. Then I rolled and curled up against Barbas’ broad chest, and sighed, ready for true sleep, my rest before what would be another hard day of work tomorrow. Just as my mind began to drift into the fuzziness of sleep, Barbas’ voice brought me back to consciousness. “I could almost believe this was real,” he murmured. “You make me feel real, Jo. I could almost believe…” His voice trailed off, and a moment later, I spiraled down into the dark, into true sleep. I dreamed of darkness and cold, the howl of a great storm, and of great, warm eyes staring into mine with fevered intensity. It wasn’t until the next day, when I woke up, that I realized that the eyes in my dream had not been the green eyes of my djinni.
...
Chapter Six: The Fall of Babel
Volistad
I stayed with the god, Joanna, for twenty-seven days. They weren't luxurious, or easy days, but they were fascinating. She was determined that we should learn each other's languages, and it seemed that each day when I woke, she had mastered everything I had tried to explain to her the day before. She was ravenous for my knowledge, and as we became capable of basic communication beyond useless hand-sign, I started to teach her what I could about the Erin-Vulur. She was beyond fascinated in our village, how we lived atop a mountain frozen in the ice, and after I had told her that, she had begun sending down little metal drilling creatures. They would dig deep into the ice, so far down I would be unable to see or hear them, and much later they would return with containers of whatever they had been set to collect.
At first, during all of this, Joanna would speak, rapidly and excitedly, in her language, saying things I could not possibly understand with my rudimentary grasp of the basics of her tongue. At first, I thought she was talking to me, or to herself, but watching her face in the crystal window of her helm, it became clear that she was receiving some answer that I couldn't hear. The Elders had spoken of the spirits of Ravanur, the winds, the cold, and the dark ones trapped beneath the glacial skin of the world- but I had never seen or heard any of the spirits speak. As far as I knew, neither had anyone I knew, not even the Stormcallers- though my sister told me that there were secrets they simply were forbidden to share with the rest of us. I found a new respect, and a sense of awe, growing within me the l
onger I stayed within the storm wall of Joanna, the fallen god from the Firmament. She could so easily pierce the barrier between flesh and spirit, that she could speak with the elusive hidden powers of Ravanur as easily as she spoke to me- this was surely a god I was speaking to, one both great and powerful.
I tried to maintain the stoicism expected of a ranger, to observe and gather knowledge that I could report to the Elder without getting personally involved in this. After all, if Elder Lot was right, this god had slain a Stormcaller. I hadn’t seen any trace of the body, but that was hardly surprising. I had been watching her raise small buildings from nowhere for many days, and it was not hard to imagine that she could just as easily have commanded the ice to swallow the fallen mage, leaving nothing behind. When I finally began to be able to speak a rude act of her language, Joanna explained to me the purpose of her fall- the knowledge I had been waiting for this whole time. Having ascertained what I thought she was, she gently explained to me, in the tongue of my people, that she was not a god. Instead, she said, she was a person from another world out in the Firmament, and she had been sent to make Ravanur ready for the coming of many of her people. She explained how she was to make the air kinder, calm many of the storms, and make Ravanur warm enough to melt her glacial skin. All of these things were impossible, of course, so though she told me she wasn’t a god, I remained convinced that she was divine. After all, what mortal could shape the world with a wave of her hand? What simple person could best a Stormcaller in their own element? And who but a god could hope to make Ravanur, our Frozen Mother, warm again?
On the night of the twenty-seventh day, I received a message from my people. The air was at its coldest, and the Great Father's shadowed face was slightly smaller in the sky, the way it was in the middle of every night. My low, narrow wind-tent had been set up near the center of the camp, not close enough to the tower to touch it, but still a safe distance from the whirling chaos of the storm wall. I sat in the mouth of the hide and fur shelter, running a sharpening stone over my climbing axes when I suddenly realized that I wasn't alone. I sprang to my feet, stepping into a defensive stance, one axe held up above my head, the other waiting low. When I saw what had startled me, I sighed. It was shaped like a burug, scaled down so that its back didn't rise higher than my knee. And it was made entirely of ice. It was a Stormcaller construct, and it wasn't the first one that my sister had used to communicate with me. And I had no doubt that this message was from my sister because the little ice monster was doing somersaults to get my attention. Doubtless, she considered the relatively simple magick she was doing to be tremendously boring. She probably wasn't even trying to show off. I growled at the insect as it began to pirouette around me, clicking its crystalline mandibles loudly. "What, Nissi," I hissed at the thing. "Just give me the message already!"
The ice sculpture burug folded up, settling itself on the ice with its legs tucked up underneath its belly. Then, its mandibles spread open, and Nissikul’s bored, somewhat petulant voice came out of its mouth. It was as if a miniature version of my sister were living in the false creature’s mouth, and speaking for it in her voice. The whole experience was very strange. “Volistad,” she intoned, trying and failing to make her voice as imposing and regal as she could, like she was some kind of prophet from Palamun. “Volistad, ranger of the Erin-Vulur, you are hereby commanded to return to the nearest outpost of the Perimeter, where you will report on all you have seen to the Elder Stormcaller’s chosen agent.”
I frowned at the burug construct. “I assume you will be the Elder Stormcaller’s envoy?”
“Your assumptions are irrelevant!” Nissi drew out her words to mimic the affected speech of Elder Lot. “You willllll do assss you are toooooold!”
I snickered. “Please inform the master that I will meet his agent at Pyrinta Outpost in but a day and a half.
“Veeeerrrrry wellllll!” Nissi laughed, and then said something indistinct, and the burug collapsed into formless shards of ice. It was time. Time for me to return to my people and share all that I had learned of Joanna, the reluctant god who would change our world into a paradise. Time to show Vassa to be the fool he was. I looked over at where the god was sleeping, perfectly still in a sitting position, her back against the marvelous tower she had constructed. She would change everything for the Erin-Vulur. I crawled into my tent and fastened the flaps closed against the howling wind. I curled up into my sleeping furs, lying on my back to keep the Deepseeker’s blessing from digging into my side. I slept and dreamt of the new world to come, a world of warmth and ease, of food growing from the ground with ease, of fat prey to hunt, and a whole world without ice for me to explore.
…
When I woke up the next day, Joanna was already hard at work at her unfathomable tasks, carrying on an animated conversation with her attendant spirit. As usual, she was speaking far too quickly in her unfamiliar tongue for me to understand what she was saying, so I busied myself with rolling up my tent and repacking my gear, while I snacked on some dried dukkar jerky. Soon enough, the god noticed my preparations and stomped over, her strange, magickal armor giving off little insect buzzing sounds as she moved. “You are leaving?” She asked, in the tongue of the Erin-Vulur.
“I am,” I responded, checking my bowstring to ensure it was still strong despite the many days of disuse. I hadn’t had much time for practice. Satisfied, I slipped the string back out of its notch in the bow’s upper stave, leaving it attached and half strung, but slack. “My elder calls for me. He wants to know about you. He wants to know why you are here.” I was careful to speak my words clearly- there were still sounds I made that she could not quite differentiate.
Joanna made a forward rolling motion with her shoulders that it had taken days for me to recognize as some kind of shoulder-shrugging gesture that equated to my people's own "I don't care gesture" of twisting our hands from side to side. "I understand," she continued. "I hope you will come back. There is still much I wish to learn from you about your world." She halfway showed me her teeth, caught herself, and instead narrowed her eyes to mimic the way my people smiled. "Maybe your elders will let me come and see your village?"
"I hope so." In truth, I had no idea how the elders would respond. They had already tried to kill her once, and it hadn't worked. Finding out that she planned to change the face of Ravanur so completely might scare them, and I knew that Vassa, in particular, would be quick to leap upon the fact that Joanna denied her godhood. If my tribe reacted in fear, things might go very badly, both for the Erin-Vulur and for the reluctant god. Joanna had shown me a weapon attached to her tower that she called a "goss reyfel". Though the words meant nothing to me, I had seen the terrible power it commanded. One day, she had detected a burug moving under the ice toward her encampment, drawn perhaps by the storm, or the tower it protected. After briefly speaking to her unseen spirit, the god had dismissed the storm surrounding her tower, sending away the howling walls as if they had never been there. Then, before I could ask what was happening, the “goss reyfel” had made a loud barking sound, and nearby an entire mound of ice had shattered into powder. I heard the burug’s roar a moment later, and when I went with her to examine it, I was shocked to see that her weapon had ripped a hole large enough for me to crawl through yawning wide in the creature's back, exposing its steaming organs to Ravanur's ravenous cold. I imagined that weapon firing its deadly shot at one of my people and shuddered. Would there be anything left?
But my people were not an insignificant threat to the god, regardless of her weapon’s power. The Erin-Vulur were not so numerous as we once were, but we were still many, and our warriors were all the most formidable hunters on Ravanur. We had survived where so many other tribes had dwindled and died. We hunted and ate even the mighty burug, and we had laid low rival peoples of all kinds. We had even brought low false gods that had come down from the firmament, beings of unspeakable power that had sought the extermination of our entire tribe. We had strong blessings wrought by our Dee
pseeker and many Stormcallers who could shape the very winds of the world. If my tribe leveled its wrath at the god, many would die, but they would bring her down. I didn't want to imagine Joanna's armor shattered and that beautiful face crushed beneath a hammer any more than I wanted to imagine Nissikul split in half by a single shot of the god's divine weapon. It was my job to keep that horrible future from happening.
I reached out and placed a hand against her armored arm, aware even through the blessing that kept me warm enough to live, that the metal that protected the god was incredibly cold to the touch. It left my skin tingling where I had touched her and left steam hissing up in a handprint where I had made contact. "We… meet… again," I said, haltingly, in her language. "I… happy that… you… friend… mine." Then I shaped my mouth into one of her smiles, trying to ignore how strange and aggressive it felt on my face.
She smiled back, the expression much more natural to her. "Good luck, Volistad," she said in my language as I shouldered my pack and walked slowly towards the storm wall. A mere spear's length before the winds would have started pushing around me, the seething wall tore itself apart in a random gale, spewing fragmented ice in all directions. With the storm wall down, I could see that its passage had worn a wide, circular track into the ice all around the encampment, a trench at least two spears deep, and three wide. Such power, at the command of someone who claimed she wasn't a god. There was no way that could be right. Not even a Stormcaller was quite that strong, and they were somewhere between mortal and divine themselves. I set off at an easy, loping run over the ice, gathering my strength and leaping over the trench in a single long leap. I took the landing smoothly and fell back into the rhythm, one leg stretching out after another and carrying me away from the home of Ravanur's newest god. Before long, I heard a telltale whine and felt the winds shift around me. I turned back to see that the storm had whirled back to life from nowhere, Joanna's campsite obscured in a column of roiling, angry clouds and seething, crackling lightning. I shook my head in amazement and turned back to the path ahead of me. Just a day to the border of my people's territory, and then the moment of truth.
Alien Romance Box Set: Alien Former: Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Books 1-5) Page 9
