Bethany danced herself into sleepiness, and after Dormael spied her curled up alone in a corner fast asleep, he picked up the tiny girl and carried her up the stairs to put her to bed. His mother had set aside a room for the little one, and as Dormael laid her down and pulled the covers up to Bethany’s chin, she woke briefly and gave him a light little hug around the neck. He kissed her forehead and tucked her in, then closed the door quietly as he left the room and turned to go back down the stairs.
He came face to face with Shawna at the end of the hall.
“Saw you going up the stairs,” she said, slurring and weaving the slightest bit on her feet, “Thought I’d come see what you were up to.” Dormael suddenly found that his heart was beating in his ears, pumping tense excitement through his veins along with the copious amount of alcohol he had drank. He felt a tingling just below his belt buckle.
“That so?” he replied, leaning against the wall and smiling one-sidedly at her, running his eyes over her openly. Shawna saw him do it, and though she grew a little red in the face, she smiled back with heavy-lidded eyes and leaned a little closer to him. Dormael could smell a hint of soap and something vaguely spicy in her hair, and it excited him as he took a deep breath of it. “I think you just wanted an excuse to get me alone.”
Shawna laughed in her throat and ran a finger idly along the wall near him. For some reason the gesture set him aflame inside, and he bit his lip to hold it in check a bit. “You think an awful lot of yourself, don’t you Dormael?” she purred, “Maybe I just came up here to drag you back downstairs to play another song.” Dormael noticed that the laces of her shirt were undone a bit, and there were tiny beads of sweat just below her neck.
“Maybe,” he said, moving a little closer to her, “or maybe there was something else you wanted me to do with my hands.” He reached out as he said it, and ran a finger lightly across her stomach. Her skin was warm beneath the white linen shirt, and he could feel it swell a bit as she gasped at his touch.
She kissed him. Dormael was a little surprised at the bold move, but the conscious thought only formed vaguely at the back of his mind amid a flood of excitement and a rush of tingling lust. She leaned her supple body against him, and Dormael let out a breath through his nose as he put his arms around her and pulled her against him, feeling the soft curves of her body pressed to his own. Her mouth was hot and it tasted like the apple firewine she’d been drinking, spicy fruit with undertones of sharp liquor. She kissed him hard and made little moaning sounds in her throat, her lips finding purchase anywhere they could and her tongue running deliciously against his.
Damn what D’Jenn had said; he was going to drag her to his room and have his way.
The two of them made the clumsy dance of lust along the hallway, blind steps in the right direction interspersed with breathy kisses and groping hands. He kicked his door open and pushed her lightly inside, and she giggled as she stepped back from him and pulled the laces of her shirt open, baring more of her pale chest. There were little patches of pink there from all the excitement and she stepped back coquettishly as he pursued her towards the bed, the two of them giggling like a pair of children at mischief.
He tore his own shirt off and tossed it aside before he pulled her against him again. She leaned up and found his mouth with her own, and he reached blindly for the seams of her clothing, unbuckling and unlacing as much as he could without looking. Eventually they fell onto the bed, and Dormael pulled her shirt up over her expanse of red-golden hair. Her hands grasped at his hair and pulled longingly at the skin of his neck and back as he kissed up and down her torso, running his own hands over her stomach and grasping at her breasts. She was sweating and breathing hard, and her skin tasted a little salty on his tongue. Rising up quickly, he leaned over and opened the window, letting a bit of moonlight and a rush of cold air into the room. He bent and began to kiss her again, and she made little moaning sounds and giggles as he did.
He rose again breathlessly, and tugged one of her boots a couple of times before it came quickly off and he discarded it somewhere on the floor. Her leg thumped drunkenly back onto the bed, and he ran his hand tightly up her leg and reached for the laces of her leather pants. She wasn’t moving.
“Shawna?”
She didn’t answer him. Dormael prodded her side and shook her a little. Her head wobbled on the pillow, but her eyes didn’t open.
“Shawna,” he said, a little more forcefully.
“Hmm,” was all she replied, and she settled back into a drunken sleep, her mouth parted slightly open.
Dormael leaned back and sighed loudly, frustrated and a little irritated at her. His heart was still pumping, and he entertained the thought of shaking the girl until she woke up, but quickly realized that it wasn’t a good idea. She was out cold, and he was out of luck.
Dormael tucked her in, pulling the covers up over her bare chest after he’d tugged her other boot off. He pulled his own shirt back on, huffing irascibly as he did and closed the door after him as he left the room. He shuffled around in his pants before he went back downstairs, trying to cover the evidence of his excitement and thinking non-sexual thoughts to clear his head. If D’Jenn or Allen found out about this, there would be no end to the jokes made at his expense, or Shawna’s. He decided to keep it to himself, if not for his sake, then for the girl’s. Gods be damned, Shawna was scrambling his thoughts up a lot lately.
Sighing, Dormael went back downstairs to get more ale. The sounds of merrymaking washed over him as he got back to the ground floor, and everyone seemed to be having fun just as before. He waded into the party and took up his guitar again, breaking into another song with his cousin and Kendall, and trying very hard to banish the thoughts about the half naked woman in his bed.
****
Chapter Sixteen
Waking the Fire
Painful spears of sunlight stabbed into Dormael’s eyes. He drew his brows down in a vain attempt to block the glow of morning from penetrating his eyelids and rolled over to put his back to the window. Suddenly he felt weightless for an instant, then the floor smacked into his ribs as he rolled completely off of the soft cushioned couch he’d been laying on and onto the hard wooden floor. He groaned in pain and protest, but neither the floor nor the window paid him any mind.
The embarrassing maneuver earned him a pair of sore ribs and a fresh wave of dizziness. His head was a burning globe of pain, and his stomach wanted to empty itself onto the floor beside him, but he took a few deep breaths and pushed the sickness to the back of his mind as he turned onto his back and opened his eyes. He had to rub them a few times to clear them of the haze that formed in the wake of long nights of drinking. He blinked and looked around him.
D’Jenn laid upon the floor a few hands from him, shirtless and tangled with a young brunette who would have been pretty if she weren’t lying on his bare chest with her cheek squished against him and her mouth hanging open. The both of them were passed out cold. Dormael smiled and gave a short coughing laugh, rising up to a sitting position.
The view from this new angle afforded him the sight of the girl’s bare ass, pale with little blotches of pink on it. D’Jenn’s hand rested lightly on one soft cheek, the fabric of the girl’s dress bunched underneath his wrist where Dormael assumed he’d pulled her dress up. Dormael smiled again and rubbed his hands over his face, attempting to wipe the hangover away. It didn’t work.
He wanted nothing more than to turn over and go back to sleep, but he knew he’d only lie there awake, squinting his eyes against the painful sunrise. Sighing, he threw the small blanket that covered him to the floor and stood up.
He was naked.
Hastily he covered himself and looked around, but besides himself, D’Jenn, and the girl on top of him, there was no one in the room. He squinted around in the gray light of morning and found his pants, almost fell on top of the sleeping girl as he tugged them on, and made his way to his mother’s kitchen.
The air was cool in the h
ouse, and Dormael abruptly felt it seeping into his skin. He hugged himself and rubbed his arms, attempting to dislodge the goosebumps that were taking up residence there, and shuffled barefoot into the kitchen. The floor in the kitchen was different than the rest of the house, laid out in expensive tile, and it was a lot colder than the wooden floor in the common room. Dormael tried to step lightly, only putting his feet down as much as he could stand it, but the attempt was again in vain. His toes grew even colder.
Pots and pans and spoons in every variety hung from hooks along the walls and from a beam running down the long axis of the room. If there was one thing that Yanette Harlun took seriously, it was her cooking, and she’d spared no expense on her kitchen. The room held two full ovens, both of them with multiple racks for baking, and a spit over a fireplace that was filled with gray ashes and cold, black coals. In the back of the room was the door to the pantry, directly next to the door that led outside, and as Dormael glanced through the window at the rows of grapes outside, he saw thick mist laying atop the ground like a wispy, white blanket. He shivered.
Opening the pantry door, he ducked into the dark room and found what he was looking for: the third keg of his father’s ale they’d cracked the night before, and the only one they hadn’t finished.
He found a mug that had been discarded on a shelf next to the keg, and dipped out a portion of the dark ale. It tasted sweet and bitter in his mouth as he gulped it down, not pausing for air. As every man who enjoys long nights of drinking knew, having another ale in the morning was the absolute best cure for a hangover. Dormael thought that the secret was actually to have two mugs: one for the hangover, and one for oneself. He finished the mug and dipped out another, then shuffled back towards the kitchen.
He came face to face with Shawna at the doorway.
Her hair was a disheveled mess. It was tangled and almost standing up in some places, and it fell in a wild tussle over her face, almost covering her puffy, red-rimmed eyes. She was also hugging herself against the cold, and her shirt appeared to have been thrown on hastily, because it was sort of twisted and settled wrongly over her frame, and Dormael caught sight of the better part of one of her breasts through the neck opening. Her pants were riding low on her hips, and she looked like she’d been sleeping for days. Despite her wild state, Dormael still felt a hot attraction to her awaken as she peered at him with one eye barely open and the other squeezed shut. He remembered the taste of her skin, and almost came forward and tried his luck again.
“How can you drink that?” she grumbled, sighing and looking at the mug in his hand. For some reason the comment stopped his advance cold.
“It’s the best way to get rid of the hangover,” he said, and offered the mug toher. She waved it away, making a disgusted sound from the back of her throat. Dormael shrugged and started drinking it.
Shawna shuffled around the kitchen, looking at this or that. She kept her arms hugged tight to her body and bent at the waist to look at things, as if touching anything would make her colder. Dormael watched her for a minute, smiling to himself at the thought of the usually proper and prim noblewoman in a state of complete post-drunkenness. He also used the opportunity that her turned back gave him to gaze unhindered at her rear end.
The silence between them seethed with tension and what seemed like embarrassment, and Dormael thought for a second that he should say something. Perhaps a few words could burst the bubble of confusion between them, but something stayed his tongue. He leaned back against a counter and waited for Shawna to breach the subject.
She gave him a weak smile and shuffled silently past him from the room.
Dormael felt her absence tangibly, as if he’d missed some important opportunity to set things between them on the right path. He let out a sigh and took another drink from the mug in his hands, draining it to the bottom. He sat it aside and opted for water instead, feeling the cool liquid rush down his throat, bringing satisfaction and comfort along with it.
He slaked his thirst and moved back into the common room, brooding on the problem of Shawna. He thought for a second that it may be a good idea to go upstairs and talk to the girl, it was his room she was sleeping in, after all, but upon thinking it through he decided to stay where he was. She’d air the subject out when she was ready, and all he had to do was to wait for her to do so. He lay back down on the couch he’d slept on, and pulled the thick blanket back over his head, trying to close his eyes against the morning.
****
Only a few hours after dawn, Dormael awoke again to the sounds of a vineyard homestead in bustling motion. Feet shuffled by in each direction, voices called out sporadically, pots clanged against counters and boxes banged against the floor. The sugary smell of sweetpenny tea floated to his noise, blended deliciously with the scent of what Dormael thought were cinnamon rolls. It was the aromas drifting to his nose from the kitchens more than the bustle that eventually drew him from slumber.
He looked for his mother in the kitchen but she wasn’t there. Dormael thought she was probably out in the fields seeing to the cold weather grapes for ice wine, so he nabbed a piping-hot roll or two and dipped out a cup of the sweetpenny tea. D’Jenn wasn’t lying in the floor any longer, as usual he’d risen and started his day before Dormael, and so Dormael decided to try and clean up a bit.
Harlun homestead was built in the old fashion of his people, and so there was one community bath on the top floor of the house. It was constructed onto the side of the house, a large wooden circle fed by a nearby stream in the hills. Copper pipes tapped the stream and sent the water downhill to the homestead. Gravity kept the water coming in, and grates kept out the odd water critter. It was an expensive build, but the homestead was a sprawling complex, and his family had the money to build it. His mother had insisted on it, in fact. The water drained back out into the same stream by a different length of pipe that was buried underground.
The only downside of the bathhouse was that the water was seasonally temperate. A brick furnace beneath the floor of the house was stoked when one decided to bathe, but it only helped to take the sting out of the cold in the wintertime. The water never actually became warm. Luckily, Dormael had a distinct advantage in the fact that he was a wizard. Cold and hot could change with a simple effort of magic.
Dormael entered the circular pool and found his brother soaping up quickly in the cold water of the bathhouse, trying to spend as little time as possible submerged under the cold, clear water.
“A little cold, is it?” Dormael asked, disrobing along the walking space around the pool and setting his clothing aside.
“Hells, yes it is. You want to help with that?” Allen sputtered, shivering a little and breathing hard with the effort of trying to stay warm. Dormael opened his Kai and fed some heat into the water until it was steaming. The entire room heated in response to the magic, and he heard his brother breathe out a long sigh of relief. “Thanks. Thought I was going to get frostbitten for a second.”
“Nothing of it, brother. That’s one good thing about being a wizard – never a cold bath for the rest of your life.” The two brothers shared a laugh and Dormael settled into the hot water and soaked up for a little while. They washed up and both laid back in the large pool of water, enjoying the warmth and letting it seep into their muscles. Dormael finally took a deep breath and addressed his brother.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you, Al.”
“Let me guess, you’d like to know how it is that I’m so talented and good-looking. Really, it’s just an accident of birth, Dormael. I think the Gods just smiled on me when I was in the womb.”
“More like they laughed at you, and took pity. You know you were born with webbed feet, right? Took dad three years to cut away your toes,” Dormael jabbed back, laughing at his brother’s joke.
“Damn, I wish he’d have just left them. Then I could add ‘amazingly fast swimmer’ to my long list of talents and achievements.” The brothers both laughed at that and settled back into the
water. “Really, though,” Al went on, “what is it you wanted to discuss?”
“Well, I’d like you to come along with us.”
“To Ishamael, you mean?”
“Yes. We could use your spear.”
Allen blew out a long breath as he lay back and thought it over. “Well,” he said finally, “I was going to sit out the tournament this year anyway and take a trip down to Tasha-Mal.”
“Hunting the savannah?”
“I wish. A friend of mine is doing a tour down at the Southern Bastion. Thought I’d head down there and help the boys out for a few months, and learn some new tactics. Fighting in a group isn’t the same as fighting in a tourney, you know.”
“Killing Rashardians, eh? I spent a few months there myself a few years back.”
“Yes, but you wizards aren’t allowed to do anything. You just stand around making ugly faces at the raiders and warning the defenders of the wall when attacks are coming.”
What Allen was saying was true; the Conclave outlawed the use of magic in war. The problem was that Rashardia had their own brand of wizards, and they had no such regulations holding them back. What they also didn’t have was Conclave training, though, and were ill-fitted to tangle with a Wizard of the Conclave. They were shamans and mystics, mostly, but some of them threw around a good deal of magic. So, to keep the Rashardian mystics from engaging the Sevenlander soldiers, the Conclave kept one or two wizards stationed at the Bastion at all times. Their presence ensured that the mystics kept their magic out of the fight, and if they did try their hand at war magic, a Conclave wizard would be there to neutralize them.
Dormael had only heard of it happening twice, though, and during his own stay at the Bastion he’d did exactly what Allen had said. He’d stood atop the walls, or ranged out from them in Mind Flight on scouting missions. It had been boring, but necessary.
The Sentient Fire (The Seven Signs) Page 50
