by Aaron Crash
Then, oh then, what delicious things he would do to her.
He’d last had sex two months prior. The innkeeper’s daughter in Winterhome had been so wanton, such a nasty little thing, begging him to yank on her hair while he took her from behind. Tits swinging, she’d matched his thrusts with her own. With their sweaty skin smacking, she’d tried to get him as deep as possible in her until he hadn’t been able to hold back any longer. Then he’d filled her. He’d loved how she’d wiggled her thick ass against him.
He pushed the memory aside. Thinking about sex would not help him drift off, and he hoped for a peaceful night.
That wasn’t meant to be. He woke up a dozen feet off the ground. His spine felt like it was made of ice. With a growl, he fell to the hard earth.
He had to get rid of this magic. He had to destroy the dusza inside him before it killed him, or he floated away into the sky forever.
Chapter Four
THE HONORED PRINCEPT Della Pennez considered the day’s events and the result of the Open Exam.
The beginning of the school year always brought back so many memories, especially at Old Ironbound. She loved the school more than life itself. She’d spent a century there and didn’t regret, not one moment, that she’d left Four Roads.
She hadn’t been able to get a job at the Majestrial at first, and so she’d been forced to teach at Kifu Yun Lirum University in Four Roads. Those had been some long, nearly unbearable decades.
The minute a job opened at Old Ironbound, she’d made the dangerous journey to the Sorrow Coast Kingdom. After five decades of teaching, she worked her way up to Studia Dux, the head of the college, Sunfire in this case. Not a month later, the old Princept, Anklyn Bower, retired. She took her place as Princept. Della remembered fondly spending the summer moving from the faculty housing in the Imperial Palace to the Princept’s Chamber near the top of the Librarium Citadel.
It felt like coming home.
She touched the Focus ring on her right hand. Two hundred years ago, when she’d been an imprudens at the Majestrial, she’d focused on the Sunfire Studies, comfortable in the fire and in the violence. She was better at magic, though she enjoyed the sword more. What would she have thought of this barbarian back then?
She would have thought plenty of him, both during the day and at night, with Olivea Dolene and the fantasies they would have spun about him. Her old classmate was dead. As a human, she’d only lived for so long.
Della Pennez was different.
She stood at the window in the Princept’s Chamber. Through the glass, the white moon glowed on the wave-swept ocean. The Weeping Sea. She remembered being a child in Four Roads, the daughter of a magistrate in the Undergem Guild, when she first heard those words: the Weeping Sea. She’d felt both sad and excited. To think, a place called that—it spoke of tragedy and adventure. Now it seemed so prosaic, just one more aspect of living a hundred years in the same place. She’d had lovers, friends, and more come through her life. No husband. She didn’t have the time, and she’d be damned if she’d end up a second or third wife. At her age, with who she was, that was all she’d get.
Her father was an old man, and he’d picked up another wife; he had the money for it. May the Tree of Life bless him for that.
The Princept’s Chamber followed the circle of the Librarium Citadel, the fortress at the heart of Old Ironbound. Her room lay above the Coruscation Shelves and below the Illuminates Spire, the special collections at the top of the citadel. The only way up there was through her room, a wrought iron staircase that spiraled to the top of the tower. Well, you could use Moons magic to fly to the top of the citadel perhaps, if you thought you could dispel the warding magic, you had the courage, and you loved books.
Only, there weren’t just books in the Illuminates Spire, no. That was where they kept any number of magic items deemed too powerful for the world of Raxid to bear. There had been a few over the years. Some of the grimoires had instructions on summoning demons, and that wasn’t something Thera needed. Others could create powerful rings that might shatter all of reality. And there were other items, created by Moons sorcerers who took things too far. Their creations were captured, and the sorcerers were killed before they could wreak havoc.
Keeping things static, for Old Ironbound as well as for all of Thera, was a part of being Princept.
Thera was her concern, not Reytah, the continent to the south, nor the Frozen Land, to the north. As for mysterious land to the west? Merchants brought back tales of vast plains and jungles and mountains that brushed the sky to the far west...in the strange realm of Ethra.
There might be more trade between the continents if not for the merfolk and other dangers of the stormy sea. In the end, that wasn’t her problem.
Della knew that the peace her land had enjoyed for centuries was something to treasure. This clansman could shatter that peace. Ymir, son of someone, of the something wolf clan. Those barbarians did enjoy their animal fetishes. Her knowledge of their religion was murky. It had something to do with the Ax and its sacred mysteries, the Axman, and the Shieldmaiden. Add in some ancestor worship, and there you go. The clans hadn’t been important for ages, if ever. Why should they be now?
“If he has a dusza?” That was the question. She’d told him she wanted an audience, but she couldn’t seem too interested in him. Not yet.
He must have something inside of him. After he’d passed the Open Exam, he’d talked about destroying his magic. That was shocking, but not so surprising.
The bell to the Princept’s Chamber rang, and she walked through the Sunfire candlelight and down the iron staircase. She checked the peephole, saw it was Siteev Ckins and her golem, and opened the door.
“The barbarian?” Della asked.
Siteev nodded. “The barbarian.” She snapped her fingers. Her coral golem would stay in the flickering light of the Coruscation Shelves. Lightning arced from shelf to shelf, from book to book, descending down as far as the eye could see. Every floor in the entire central tower had been dismantled and shelves installed with a wide array of ladders and stairs. Reading nooks and ledges dotted the walls.
Della took the Moons professor up to her room, sat her on a chair, and gave her wine. “Let me guess,” the Princept said. “You don’t want him in Moons.”
The woman laughed. Siteev, with her salted dark hair and green eyes, looked older than Della, though the professor was far, far younger. “That is not the question here, Della. The real question is, how hard do we want to make this on him?”
“If he has no dusza, he won’t stay.” Della sat and sipped from a crystal goblet. The vintage was excellent. “Then his unique performance at the Open Exam, and this little conversation, will mean nothing.”
Siteev lightly tapped her wine glass with the Focus ring on her right hand. “His eyes change color, and I don’t mean in the light. It is not normal pigmentation. There is something abnormal about him, clearly.”
The Princept didn’t ask how Siteev got that information. “Clearly. A barbarian with magic is unprecedented. I’ve done some reading, and I’ve sent sand letters, and the replies are all the same. There is no record of this.”
“Perhaps he’s not a clansman.” Siteev voiced the hopeful thought with a certain amount of irony.
Della smiled indulgently. “You saw the deer on his shoulder. And I watched him in the Open Exam. He came down from the Frozen Land.”
“Then do we make it difficult for him?” Siteev asked.
The Princept pondered the question, swirling the wine in her glass. “Gharam wants him for the Sunfire field. The barbarian will have to do the work study program since he can’t pay. Putting him in Sunfire would make sense...if we wanted to ease him into his education.” Della laughed. “Can he even read and write?”
“Pidgin and nothing else,” Siteev said. “Or so my sources tell me.”
Her sources. The Moons professor was very smart, ambitious, and not a little dangerous. She was the daughter of Sorrow Co
ast merchants, though pirates was a more accurate description of her family. To come this far, Siteev Ckins had probably done a great many unsavory things. In the end, she’d done well for herself. She was the Studia Dux of the Moons College at Old Ironbound. Many would kill, literally, for such a position.
“He’ll have to learn Homme at least, if not Ohlyrran,” the Princept said.
Most of the scrolls, books, and Illuminates were written in those two languages, human and elven. The dwarves kept their knowledge secret. The orcs didn’t exactly value the written word. The fairies were too silly, and the merfolk too damp. More and more, the important texts were being translated into Pidgin, the common tongue, to accommodate the other races.
“Would you like me to speak plainly?” the Moons professor asked.
Della gestured for her to do so.
“We give him terrible work away from Gharam. We stick in him the sea cells of the Flow, and we watch him. In a couple months, he’ll have to pass the First Exam. By that time, either he’ll throw a fit and leave on his own, or he’ll give us some clue about his true power. My sources will continue to gather information, and I will report to you.” Siteev widened her eyes. “Isn’t such subterfuge exciting?”
“I have enough to worry about without subterfuge.” The Princept sighed. “I think you’re right. Putting him in Flow College isn’t kind, though that is better than forcing Moons on him since he has no training.”
“Is what I heard true?” Siteev asked. “Did he pass the Open Exam without using magic?”
“He pushed the damn wall down.” The Princept laughed. The wine was getting to her. She considered the woman in front of her, the streaks of white in her dark hair, the lines around her eyes. She had a question for the ambitious professor, but she had to be careful.
Della started with a well-planned lie. “One of the sand letters, from Four Roads and the university there, mentioned the Midnight Guild. Of course, there have been rumors for centuries about such a thing. I find it interesting they would tie the barbarian to idle gossip. Thoughts?”
Siteev regarded her wine. A bit too long? Not long enough? She raised her eyes to take Della in. “Maybe considering them together isn’t too far of a stretch. Dragons, spellcasting clansmen, and the Midnight Guild...all come from stories. Didn’t the Axman supposedly cut down the Tree of Life? Isn’t there a story about a clansman who hacked the head off the vempor?”
“And thus ended the Akkridor Empire. Those Age of Discord historians do like their drama.” Della faked a laugh. It came off real enough. “You are right. We’ll watch. We’ll gather information. And we will play at subterfuge. This barbarian situation will probably end without much consternation. If not, we will talk again and discuss our next steps.”
The pair chatted more about faculty, class schedules, and the merfolk, who had managed to gather enough pearls to send some mermaids into the incoming imprudens class. They hadn’t had mermaids in a couple of years, and it was interesting. Both agreed the fairies were difficult to deal with but a necessity since they gave so much money to the Majestrial.
Della escorted Siteev down and watched her walk down the steps of the Coruscation Shelves with her coral golem. The monster was a nice piece of magic. Sure, it might be a tad irregular, but Siteev had grown up with cutthroats. That had to leave a mark on a woman. If the Moons professor felt safe with her creation, then far be it from Della to deny her. The spellwork was powerful—the golem didn’t leave water or scratches on any of the hardwood flooring found throughout Old Ironbound’s halls.
Della washed, blew out the candles, and lay down in bed. She slipped a hand down her body, felt the taut muscles of her stomach covered with a little fat. She’d been spending too much time sitting at conferences with the faculty and staff. They always had treats—puff corn and milky kaif sweetened with beet sprinkles. She’d have to put an end to that.
In the tufts of her pubic hair, she found her clit, which was soft and a little sleepy at the moment. She’d take care of that. She wanted to let her imagination run wild. Ever since she first laid eyes on the clansman, she’d wanted to fantasize about him.
Faculty members sleeping with scholars was frowned upon, though it happened frequently enough. It wasn’t an issue if everyone kept the affair discreet. As for the scholars themselves, they were all of age, fully grown and mature. For humans, that meant at least two decades, if not more. The age requirements for the other races varied since all had varying lifespans.
Having sex with scholars was problematic, but fantasizing about them? The Princept wasn’t naïve. She figured it was a harmless pastime among the more open-minded faculty who were so inclined. For others, especially the non-humans, their sexual appetites were as different as their life expectancies.
For Della, it was harmless. There were lines she’d never cross. If her needs got too keen, she still had friends in Four Roads, old lovers who would be more than willing to visit. She could bring them up to her school for a special consultation. Sometimes, she needed a great deal of consultation.
She thought of the clansman and recalled his devil’s dimple when he smiled. His face was one thing, his body another. She remembered the barbarian’s flexing muscles when he stripped off his shirt. Such arms, such shoulders. She imagined running her fingers through the hair on his chest, finding a nipple, sucking on it, and making him gasp. He would take control of her, overpower her, and thrust himself into her, over and over while holding her down with his raw, savage strength.
Such thoughts got her sex wet and swollen. She slid two fingers inside her tight hole while she rubbed her pearl with her other hand. It wasn’t long before the blissful contractions overtook her senses.
The orgasm, one of the more powerful ones she’d had recently, left her happy and relaxed. Drifting off to sleep was easy. She didn’t dream, and that was a good thing. Sometimes, the things in the Illuminates Spire gave her nightmares, and she’d wake, sweating and clutching her sheets. And sometimes, the Flow dreams showed her truths she’d rather not know. With knowledge, especially forbidden knowledge, came great responsibility.
That night, the entire Majestrial Collegium Universitas slept peacefully. All of that would be gone once the scholars arrived in two short weeks.
She wondered if the barbarian would be gone by then. He simply might be too wild for Old Ironbound. They’d know soon enough.
Chapter Five
A WEEK AFTER THE OPEN Exam, Ymir woke in his cell. His understanding of the word “cell” always brought up visions of prisons, things the Therans used for their criminals. Law among the clans was more immediate and more humane. If you broke the law, you paid with pain. If you did it more than once? You paid with your life.
His room was at the bottom of the cliffs on the west side of the college. It was a thousand steps from his narrow chamber to the Flow Tower just outside the Librarium Citadel. A thousand steps he had to climb several times a day.
He’d thought he’d be given work with Gharam Ssornap in the Sunfire field. Instead, he spent his hours cleaning, sweeping, and mopping, mostly in the Flow College, though he also worked at Moons and the other colleges. He wasn’t a stranger to cleaning, but it was children’s work. He wasn’t a child, but a battle-marked warrior.
This was a test. He knew it was a test...to break him. These people didn’t understand who they were dealing with.
“I probably shouldn’t have called them assholes,” he said to himself.
Ymir lay in his bed and looked up at the glass covering his window. The old glass, marked by the ocean, gave him a milky view of the clouds. Every so often, a wave would hit just right, and the spray would hit the glass and drip water down the wall. It happened enough to stain the bare rock black. The floor was recessed and ended in a drain in the corner. Though it was early September, the air was already so chill. Winter would test him further.
A week of waking early, cleaning, and learning the tangle of streets, buildings, cells, classrooms, towers, a
nd fields. He worked under the watchful eye of a mean she-orc named Gurla, the Janistra Dux of the entire university...all four colleges.
“Seven days of this,” he told himself. And he had another week to go before classes started. He didn’t have the wood to start an ancestor fire on Sunday, but he did manage to scrounge a candle. He lit it with a matchstick, a bit of truly useful Theran magic. With the candle flickering, he said the names of his dead sister, his grandparents, and as many ancestors as he could recall. The ritual made him sad, but his pain didn’t matter. Keeping the names of his ancestors on his lips did.
The nights had been the worst. He’d wake up floating three feet off the thin straw mattress covered by rough spun blankets and his bear skin. He’d yelp, flail, and come tumbling down. He always seemed to land on his hurt shoulder, which would’ve healed by now if he’d been home. The puncture wound in his side had scabbed over and was doing fine, most likely due to the magic the elf doctor had cast on him.
Fucking magic.
It hadn’t helped the wound in his heart any. As long as he didn’t ruminate too long on his father’s single tear or on Ilhelda’s sweaty face, he was fine. The problem was, the memories came to him unbidden, along with a lifetime of skiing with his battle brothers across the frozen snow of the tundra, or riding their otelkir in the mad lust of a hunt, or skirmishes with the other clans. Slaying night bears, hunting sea cows, so many damn memories.
The nights were also insufferable because the darkness made him think of the Lonely Man in his strange cave. His final words to Ymir had risen from the shadow and flame, from the darkness and destruction. I curse you. I curse you forever. Let the sleeper wake from the dream!
Ymir tore himself out of the bed, shivered, and washed his face in a basin. The only other piece of furniture in his cell was a little scratched desk, one of the legs rotting. He hated spending any amount of time in his room. He was a man of the tundra, and now he was living like a field mouse in a cramped, wet hole.
