The Sacrifice

by Nhys Glover

  "But you did what you did out of love. You were a kid standing up to bullies for someone you loved. That's not a bad thing, in my opinion."

  I appreciated his honesty and his perspective. "For what it is worth, I think of you as a man. A brave and loyal man, who would do anything to protect the ones he cares about."

  Jaron sighed and his hand came back to squeeze my arm in the darkness again. "It's worth a lot. Especially coming from you."

  Chapter Twelve

  The next day I sewed all morning while Jaron explored the tunnel and the area around the entrance to our cavern, assuring himself of our safety. The midsummer sun made the cavern steamy, and the water beckoned. When my fingers grew sore, I put down my work and dangled them in the pool, soothing them and testing how cold the water actually was.

  Jaron was nowhere to be seen so I decided to bathe. I would be safe enough, if I kept hold of the side of the pool, I decided.

  Quickly, I stripped off my dirty clothes and slid into the pool. The chill took my breath away. I had no sooner acclimated, than Jaron appeared, a big grin on his face.

  "I knew you would be beautiful under those boy's clothes."

  I splashed water at his impudent grin as I accused, "You watched me!"

  He shrugged. "I was just coming in as you were taking off your sandals. What else would I do? I'm a man, after all."

  "A man who has gone too long without a woman, I know," I said with exasperation.

  He sobered. "I don't think that's it. I thought my attraction to you was just that when you first arrived, but by the time you danced for us, no, danced in my arms, I knew it was something different. It feels like love. Like I felt for Careen. But different. More."

  He had my attention. "Careen?"

  He nodded and sat on the edge of the pool, dangling his feet in the water. "When I was fifteen I fell in love with the daughter of a whore. She was just reaching her first blood and her mother had plans to sell her virginity. You know how we feel about whoring. If a woman wants to sell herself, that's her right. But no woman should be forced into that life. Like our mother was. So I was desperate to get Careen away from her mother. I wanted to marry her and have her live with me in the married troopers' quarters."

  He stayed silent for a long time, swishing his feet around in the water.

  "What happened?" I asked, gently coaxing him to continue.

  "At first she seemed to like the idea of being my wife. But then her mother got in her ear, tempting her with a better life than she could have with a penniless trooper like me. Did she want to be dirt poor her whole life, popping out baby after baby until my wage wouldn't cover their upkeep and her beauty was gone? If she made the most of her youth while she had it she could retire a wealthy woman. Because she was beautiful, and beautiful women could ask their own price."

  "And she chose the promise of wealth over love?" I made it a question but I knew from his tone what the answer was.

  "Yes. A suncycle later I was visiting a whorehouse and there she was. I paid no more for her than for any other, so her mother had lied. It hurt to see how much she'd changed. Hardened. Her kisses had been innocent before. Just as mine had, I suppose. Our clumsy exploration of each other's bodies had seemed magical to me back then. But the girl who spread her legs for me that night was someone different. She told me how much her mother had sold her virginity for. Her pride at the price it went for was a brittle thing. She told me how much she had saved since then. More than I could've made in several suncycles as a trooper, she said. And as she faked excitement at my touch, I felt sick to my stomach. I never went back again."

  I didn't know what to say to make it better so I simply nodded and splashed water at him. "I thought you were going to teach me to swim."

  He stared at me in surprise. "But you're naked."

  "You cannot see anything under the water. The pool is too dark."

  "But I'll feel you. I have to, if I'm to teach you."

  I considered the situation. If I put on a tunic the wet material would cling to my body the way it had when I showed myself to Rama. Was that only two days ago? Time had taken on a strange elongation.

  Would wet fabric over my body protect my modesty? Did I even care about my modesty anymore? After what I had done with Calun yesterday I didn't think so.

  "Can you control your urges?" I demanded cheekily.

  He stared at me seriously for several long moments, as if thinking it through. Finally he nodded. "I think so. I've never had to test myself before, though."

  "Not even when you were with Careen?"

  He shrugged. "I was lusty but I was also ignorant. I think that saved us both."

  "So ignorance no longer stands in your way?"

  "Hardly. I've enticed more than my share of whores into giving me twice my money's worth, when I had money. Even managed a few tumbles when I didn't. A pretty face," he pointed at his cheeks and batted his eyelashes, "a willingness to learn, and lots of practice, can make the lack of coins an inconvenience, not a barrier to what I want." He smirked at me, the old Jaron back.

  "I imagine the Gambler does not see it that way."

  He was taking off his clothes now, and when his head reappeared from under his tunic, his hair delightfully mussed, he smirked at me again. "That's what Darkin was getting at when he said I'd talked my way out of a beating a time or two."

  I laughed. "You are incorrigible."

  He stood up, naked as the day he was born, his cock rampant, and dived into the water behind me. When he surfaced it was beside me, and the suddenness of his arrival had me releasing my hold on the edge of the pool.

  I dropped like a stone and gasped in a mouthful of water. Panic had me beating at the water with my arms and legs. I was surrounded by darkness, swallowing down water instead of air. The pain was intense, the fear even worse.

  A strong hand clamped over my arm and dragged me upward. I broke the surface, coughing and spluttering and still splashing violently. Jaron was my rock, my safety and I grabbed onto him, wrapping my arms tightly around his neck, clinging for all I was worth, as I continued to choke up water.

  "Loosen your grip, Sweetling, or you'll strangle me. Then where'll you be?" he said on a laugh, gently disentangling me.

  I reluctantly let him, though I wouldn't let go completely. His strong, hard body was too tempting. Too safe.

  "You all right now, Sweetling?" he asked me when I was breathing normally again. My head was resting on his shoulder, my arms around him. I was increasingly aware of the hard presence between us.

  I nodded, but didn't move. I wasn't sure what would happen if I did move. Feeling his heat in the cool water was too good.

  He slowly drew me away from him and stared down into my face. "If you keep clinging like that I know I'll fail. And my brothers will kill me."

  I knew that would likely be the truth, so I let him go. I did not want to drive a wedge between the brothers. What I had done with Calun may already have done so, if they found out.

  For a full sandglass turn Jaron taught me to swim, holding me on top of the water while I moved my arms and legs. When he finally let me go, I sank for only a moment before powering across the pool as if I had been swimming all my life.

  Jaron laughed and clapped, the sound echoing loudly around the cavern. "You're a fast study. Nearly drowning was quite an incentive to learn."

  I laughed too, even as I felt guilty for having so much pleasure while the other brothers might be suffering because of me.

  I swam back to his side and used him to hold me up once more.

  "Would kissing you be disrespectful?" he asked, grinning at me like a lunatic.

  "I am not sure. Do you think I am a whore you can charm a free tumble from?" I used his words on him.

  He grimaced and his face lost its smile. "You're no whore. Even if you gave yourself to all of us, that wouldn't make you a whore."

  That was reassuring, but I was still unsure what was happening to me. "I... I feel out of control. I wa
s taught that magic was intensified by sexual need and pleasure. And a woman was dangerous when she was allowed to have magic. I think that it might be true. I keep inviting such pleasure, such need, and my magic builds and builds until it feels like it is ready to explode out of me at times. I... nearly blew the roof off your home that first day. What other terrible things might I do if I cannot tame this unleashed beastling?"

  "How do boys control their magic?" he asked me seriously, all flirtation gone.

  I shook my head. "I do not know. When a youth begins to display magic he is taken into training away from others. Mayhap because he will be dangerous at first. I do not know. It is not something that is spoken of. We just know that women must not be allowed to have magic, but men with magic men are precious. They are everything to the kinglunds."

  "I can't see why a woman shouldn't be able to learn to control her powers if a boy can," Jaron said thoughtfully, stroking wet hair back from my face without seeming to notice what he was doing. "I can say that, from personal experience, boys on the verge of manhood are pretty out of control. If we could have sexual pleasure every 'turn in the day we would. Until our cock fell off from overuse."

  I laughed at this, as I was meant to.

  "I feel like that."

  "Like your cock might fall off?"

  I punched his muscular shoulder. "Nay, you dolt. Like I could have sexual pleasure every sandglass turn of the day." Then I thought of yesterday and how I had reached my limit fairly quickly. "Well, mayhap not that much. But I am..." I swallowed, unsure if I should confess my guilty secret or not. Would it make things between us easier or harder?

  "Am what?" he coaxed, dark amber eyes fully focused on me now. Waiting.

  "Aroused by all of you. Is that normal? Does that not make me a whore?"

  "Have you lost your virginity to one of my brothers?" he growled, body tensing. His sudden change of mood shocked me and I drew back a little.

  I shook my head. "If you mean have I taken a cock into my core and bled, then nay."

  He relaxed against me.

  "Would it make me terrible if I had?"

  This troubled me greatly. I didn't know what I should or shouldn't feel. What was right to do. A good woman only had one husband, and shared her body only with him. A powerful man might have as many wives as he could afford to protect. That was what I was taught to believe. But I had questioned it, even when I knew no other way.

  Why was a man respected for having many wives, for finding pleasure with all of them, sometimes with more than one at a time. There had been twin sisters who married my father when he was young. He would take both of them to his bed at the same time. One died in childbirth, though, and he did not do it with anyone else. I am not sure why. It was not because he could not, if he wanted to. Mayhap he thought it created friction in his harem. Friction and jealousy was common in the harem. Mayhap he worried that one twin had somehow killed the other out of jealousy.

  I was digressing as my mind tried to come up with answers to questions that had plagued me for as long as I could remember. Why was a woman only respected if she had only one husband. Found pleasure only with one man? But it wasn't necessarily the case for a man.

  "No, of course it wouldn't make you terrible. It's just... I want you for myself. If you were with one of my brothers I... would feel jealous that he had what I couldn't have. It makes no sense, because in a way I've already accepted that you're ours, that you belong to all of us. But if you chose one over the rest of us − over me − I wouldn't like it. But it wouldn't make you a bad woman. Not like Careen."

  "Do I have to choose one over the rest of you?" I asked, still trying to find my way through this warren of emotional and sexual entanglements.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean... I am aroused by all of you in different ways. You lighten me. Calun connects to my soul. Rama feeds my inner beastling as I feed his. And Darkin... Darkin points the way. My magic keeps urging me to take my pleasure from you all. But I do not know what it is I want. I know in theory what men and women do together. I have glimpsed some of it. Felt some of it. But what if giving in to my magic is precisely why magic was taken from women in the first place. Mayhap it is a bad thing to let it have its way."

  Jaron ran a wrinkled finger down the side of my face. I was shivering with cold but had been unaware of it until that moment.

  "I can't speak for the others... All I know is that you can take what you want from me. I give it freely. And, if you were to take from my brothers, too, then I'd find a way to be all right with that. Because I don't think your magic is a bad thing. A powerful thing that Godslunders want to restrict and deny, aye, but not a bad thing in and of itself. It's what you do with it that'll matter most. Right now your power is growing, after being locked away since your first blood, am I right?"

  "Yes," I agreed tentatively.

  "So a growing thing needs to be fed. Your sexual needs and pleasure feed it?"

  I nodded again.

  "Then feed it and see what it becomes. Maybe it'll be a little wild, at first, but then it may mature and be tamed. What might you do with that kind of controlled power? It's hard to imagine."

  "So you do not think it is wrong to give in to it?"

  "I think you should find out what you want. If it's the same as what your magic wants, then it isn't wrong. Don't let other people tell you what's right or wrong for you."

  I kissed his cold cheek. "You are wise beyond your years, my friend. Now I have to get out of this water before I turn into a raisin like you."

  I pushed off and swam to the edge of the pool. Jaron came up behind me and placed a hand on my butt to give me a push up and out of the pool. Laughing, I sprang free of the water, gathered up my clothes and dashed into the darkness of the nearest tunnel. It was one thing to be naked in the dark water with him, quite another to let him see me parading about in the sunlight for his pleasure.

  Or was it my pleasure, my magic prodded. I ignored it resolutely. Jaron was right. I had to decide what was right for me. Not what the harem expected of me, not what my magic expected of me. Not even what these four brothers expected of me. But what I wanted.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The summer solstice came and went and still there was no sign of the airlings. No message about the safety or otherwise of the brothers. The longer we idled our time away, the more anxious and irritable I became. And the more my magic chaffed to be fed.

  Jaron was faring no better. The very sight of me seemed to pain him. He disappeared outside for longer and longer periods of time, to escape me. I'd finished all my sewing and even managed to make up three tunics from the fabric I brought with us. The tunics were not well made, but Jaron grudgingly complimented me on them when he accepted the one I made for him.

  We took to swimming separately and I would prowl the tunnels, resenting him for taking too long in the water.

  As the third day of our confinement came to an end, the situation reached boiling point.

  I was at fault. It was my fury that caused it. But Jaron seemed to be intentionally spending too much time in the pool, keeping me from doing something constructive, though I had no idea what I would be doing. There was no more sewing. I had exhausted my experiments in meal preparation with our limited supplies. Most of my results had not been good. Which was one of Jaron's pet peeves.

  But I would be gods damned if I was going to be forced to stay out of Jaron's way a moment longer.

  Stomping back into the cavern, I found him sitting on the edge of the pool, stark naked. The sight of his muscular back and butt nearly had me swallowing my tongue. He was beautiful! The sunlight and water made his skin shine like polished alabaster. His wet hair hung in dark tendrils to his wide shoulders. I marvelled at the way his body narrowed so swiftly from shoulders to narrow hips and firm butt. A life of hard work had honed him into a being of immense appeal. And in that moment I hated him for it.

  My magic prodded me to go to him, touch him, and feed my
need. Furious, I pushed it down and directed my anger at Jaron, who was intentionally tempting me with his body.

  "So much for being the wise one! You are trying to make me give in to my magic, are you not!" I yelled at him, stomping over and giving him a solid push so he fell into the pool.

  He came up coughing and spluttering, his amber eyes dark as night. "Me tempting you? That's a laugh! I've had to watch you swaying those hips of yours every time you walk. I've had to put up with the sound of your voice enticing me to do things my brothers will kill me for. I've been going crazy doing everything in my power not to tempt you or be tempted by you! So leave off!"

  I began walking backward and forward across the cavern floor, swaying my hips in an exaggerated fashion. "Is that what you think I am doing? I do not walk like this! I walk like anyone else. If you find that a problem, well... well, just get over it!"

  "Get over it? How'm I supposed to get over it when you're in my face all day and all night? I keep remembering what you looked like when you took off your clothes and let me teach you to swim. Do you know how many hours of sleep I've been denied remembering the sight and feel of you?"

  "Another man who blames me for his sleepless nights! Well, we cannot have that now, can we." I was beyond furious yet, oddly, the air did not stir. I tore at my chaffing tunic and breeches. They had been washed and worn too often. I wanted pretty silks and soft satins. I hated my boys clothes!

  Before I realised it, I was naked. My hair had somehow fallen out of the knot I still preferred, even if having the nape of my neck visible was a temptation to Jaron. Gods! Everything about me was a temptation, as far as he was concerned. Mayhap I should just sit in a corner, covered from head to toe, and keep silent.

  "Is this better?" I demanded, looking down at my surprisingly naked flesh. "Maybe if you get another viewing you will be able to sleep."