It was everything he had imagined, and more. Their undine bloodlines were clear now. Their bodies were so pale, so nearly hairless—only a few silver wisps under their arms and between their legs. Their breasts were high and firm with pink nipples that pointed right at him. He reached out, cupping one on each side of him. Perfection.
They closed with him, pressing their bodies against his. Ariel’s breath was coming in short gasps. She was shaking gently. Astrid pressed her face against his neck. He stood there holding them for long moments.
He kissed one, then the other, deeply, back and forth, as their hands roamed over each other’s bodies. He felt Ariel, then Astrid, take his hardness in their hands, one for each of them.
“It is so hot,” Astrid said.
“Will it hurt? When you are in us?” Ariel asked.
“It may.”
“Poen yn bleser,” Astrid said suddenly.
“What?” he asked.
“It is a spell,” Ariel said. “From Mother’s book. It turns pain into pleasure. We have not tried it. Perhaps we should.”
“I leave that to you,” he replied.
Ariel found the book, and they cast the spell. Nothing appeared to happen, though things felt subtly different between them.
Erich led them to the bed. He spent long minutes stoking their arousal, feeling and kissing the secret places in their bodies, becoming familiar with them, their smells, their tastes.
He was concerned that making his new anatomy work with both of them at once might be difficult, but they found that if Ariel and Astrid lay very close, it was possible.
He took their innocence together with a single thrust. As he did so, the spell Ariel and Astrid had cast surged through their conjoined bodies, and both of them climaxed at the same moment.
♦ ♦
The first time was quick and intense, and over sooner than Erich would have liked. But the sensations of being inside both of his wives at the same time had been too much to keep control of himself.
They lay together, two heads on his shoulders. Ariel had reached down, and was feeling his softened organs.
“So we must stop for a while, after each time?”
“Yes. But not for long.”
“Now I understand that spell,” Astrid said.
“Corn y Ddraig,” Ariel replied. “Yes.”
“Another one?” Erich asked, somewhat wearily. “What is this one?”
“It’s called Horn of the Dragon,” Ariel said.
He did not need it explained. “I see.”
“The incantation is very amusing. Would you like to hear what it means, translated?”
“Go ahead.”
“Stiff as a horn, strong as a dragon, all through the night, you will fill the flagon.”
Both of them giggled. “I would like you to fill my flagon again, husband,” Ariel said. Astrid laughed.
She reached over toward Ariel, who put her hand up, touching fingertips. They began the incantation, and a blue luminesce sparkled where their fingers touched. Then they reached down and touched his organs.
Almost at once, he was ready again. And not just ready—as ready as if they had done nothing that night.
He swallowed roughly. “I think I can see the potential in this one.”
♦ ♦
The spell lasted the night as it promised, and they slept very late the next morning. He gradually came awake to the feel of Ariel and Astrid on either side of him, limbs entangled, a cloud of silver-gold hair over his face.
He reached out, caressing a firm breast on each side. Ariel was awake, and Astrid began to wake as well.
The feel of them was so, so lovely. Better than he had imagined, that night Ariel had come to his room.
“Do they please you, husband?” Ariel asked.
“Aye,” he said, not opening his eyes. “For years, I have travelled the world seeking the most perfect breasts in creation. My quest is at an end.”
She laughed, rolling onto him. Astrid joined her.
“Make love to us again,” Astrid said. “I don’t ever want to get out of this bed.”
29.
When they finally emerged past noon, Erich found Walther working at the table, surrounded by papers and little automata. He looked up and chuckled.
“I was about to send the watch in there after you.”
“’Twas a long night, I am afraid.”
As Ariel and Astrid came out from the bedroom, Walther smiled. “Well, daughters. How does married life suit you so far?”
“Very well, Father,” Ariel said.
“I see your husband has put some color in those pale cheeks.”
The flush they had emerged with intensified, and both girls put their hands up on their faces in embarrassment. Erich laughed, but Astrid scowled at them.
“Father!”
They ate, saying little, though both of his wives repeatedly tickled his legs with their naked feet. When Shadow came up looking for scraps, Erich realized something was different about her. A moment later, he saw it.
“Look at her eyes.”
Both of them looked over. Shadow’s eyes, once yellow, were now blue. The same blue as Ariel and Astrid’s.
“This is increasingly curious,” Astrid said. “Why would that happen?”
“Why would she run into our marriage spell at all?” Ariel asked.
Erich had a sudden thought.
“I think she has found her pack.”
♦ ♦
When Walther left for his meeting with Johannes, his daughters had disappeared back into the bedroom with their husband. The way the first night had gone, he did not expect to see them again for a while. Which was fine with him, as he had other things to worry about.
Johannes was at his desk. Walther had decided to get any lingering unpleasantness out of the way up front.
“Pity about the girls and Franz, but one never knows how these things will go.”
Johannes straightened the papers on his desk for a moment before answering.
“No, one does not.”
“I honestly have no clue what happened with Erich. You would think one spell would not wreak such havoc.”
Johannes waved off the implied apologies. “The fact that such an unlikely match happened at all suggests to me that was going to find a way to happen somehow. Given all the components involved, Ariel and Astrid’s strangely conjoined flows, his lack of a talent, it could not have happened unless they were perfectly matched. In such situations, it takes only the smallest of nudges to create the bond. I have seen it happen before, though only between mages.”
“Still, I know you had hopes for Franz. I think he would have been a good mentor for them.”
“I have many hopes for Franz, but at some point, he is going to have to make those happen himself.” He paused. “I assume they have completed the bond?”
“Last night. In the garden.”
“I wish them well. Now, tell me what you have been working on.”
Walther sketched out the paper on automata crystals and their lifespans he had been working on. The teachers at the university had a long custom of presenting their research to their colleagues—the reason Walther came to Köln every year or two—but Johannes had had an idea for something grander. Rather than having a single mage speaking to a few people for an hour, then having everyone go back to their business, he wanted to bring together as many mages as possible for an entire day—or more, if they had enough interest—to listen to a selected group of papers and then socialize afterward. His theory was this would encourage more interest and discussion than presenting one paper at a time, and would thereby advance scholarly magery in ways that were not possible otherwise.
Johannes’ model was the ancient Greek symposium, where learned men, poets, and rhetoricians would meet to drink and debate matters of interest. He had been working on the idea for over a year, and had convinced Walther to come and present his research.
“It is good work,” Johannes s
aid when Walther finished. “You know this is not my strength, but it is enough to pique my interest, and that is what I am hoping to accomplish with our symposium.”
“Have you decided on a date yet?”
“Not yet. Most likely next spring. The winter is too close to expect people to travel here.”
“How many mages have committed to present their work?” Walther asked.
“Counting you and me, we have twelve. That is unfortunately too many for one day but not enough for two.”
“Have you convinced Emmerich?” Emmerich von Weyler was the head of the school of artificers, who had built the musicians at the ball.
“He persists in telling me he has nothing left to learn and has no interest in, as he put it, ‘prostituting my skills for a group of drunken mages.’”
“Unfortunate.”
“We have you, and another artificer. That may be enough. I want a good balance of disciplines.”
“Who?”
“Manfred Treckermann. I am not sure if you know him. He is in Leipzig.”
“I know the name, no more.”
“His field is flying automata, so there should be no overlap with yours.”
Walther collected his papers and automata and returned them to his bag.
“Well, I wish you luck with the planning. We must return home soon.”
“The planning itself is not that challenging. I am sure we will find enough mages to present their work. What is becoming a challenge is the Church.”
Walther stopped packing up his things. “Oh?”
“Yes. The Archbishop of Köln is again attempting to exert his influence over the city, and has apparently seized on my idea as a pretext to accuse the council of heresy.”
“But he is in Bonn, is he not?”
“Yes. As I assume you know, he is barred from Köln and would like to change that fact.”
“But what threat can we possibly present?”
“It is that Augustinian friar in Wittenberg, Luther, who has them all in an uproar. Because of him, they are terrified of anything they perceive to be potentially subversive, and the pope is supposedly ready to excommunicate him. That has nothing to do with us, of course, but the Archbishop would be happy to use us as an excuse to return to Köln. He reportedly does not like the idea of a congress of mages coming together to discuss new ideas.”
Walther frowned.
“There are far worse things a congress of mages could be doing.”
“Yes. I have pondered making him aware of this fact. Still, if we want this symposium to happen, I need to keep people like the archbishop happy.”
“I do not envy you that.”
“Nor should you. But such burdens come with a chancellor’s regalia.”
♦ ♦
Astrid lay across her husband’s chest, feeling him running his fingers through her hair. Ariel was lying on her stomach, head down by the end of the bed, reading their mother’s book.
She could not recall ever feeling this content.
Astrid had not entered her marriage with the same depth of feeling for Erich that Ariel had. I think I would love him, she had said to Ariel, once we were married. She had become quite fond of him, to be sure, and had no reluctance about marrying him, but she had expected it to take weeks, perhaps months, before she felt she truly loved him.
Instead, her love had blossomed like a flower on their wedding night.
So much about it had taken her by surprise. She had studied the book as Ariel had, if perhaps not with the same obsessiveness. She was curious, that was all. The book had talked repeatedly about something it called a paroxysm, without ever explaining what it actually was. She had imagined it as some burst of magical energy. Well, the magic had been there, but the reality was so much more physical than she had expected. The first one had almost frightened her, but she had since come to understand that was the point of it all, in addition to making children. Feeling such things with another person was almost overwhelming.
Erich was idly caressing Ariel’s bare bottom as she read. This made Astrid think of Stefan.
Stefan had liked her bottom, but Erich loved every bit of her. He liked to explore her entire body, caressing and kissing every little spot. Astrid especially liked it when he kissed her between her legs. The book talked about this: what to do and how to enhance it with a particular—if somewhat odd—spell. She hadn’t understood it at all before, but she did now. He had caused quite a few paroxysms in her, by doing it.
She wanted him to do it again.
“I don’t understand this at all,” Ariel said.
“Let me see,” Erich replied. Ariel turned round and handed him the book. He looked at the drawings on the page for a few moments, then turned it sideways, wrinkling his forehead.
“I am not sure we could manage this. I do not think a man is meant to be bent in such a fashion.”
“Let’s try it and see,” Ariel said.
Astrid reached for the book. “I think this might hurt,” she said.
“Pain into pleasure,” Ariel replied.
“I’m sick of that spell. I want to do Tafod y Sarff again.”
Tafod y Sarff—Tongue of the Serpent—was the spell in Astrid’s new favorite section of the book. They had found that it temporarily made Erich’s tongue a great deal larger.
Ariel smirked. “We could do both.”
Astrid rolled over and grinned at her husband. “Can we do both?”
Erich smiled.
“As long as you two can restrain your reactions. It is late, and I do not wish to wake your father.”
30.
It took four days with his new wives before Erich began to remember his predicament.
“We need to leave Köln,” he said one morning. “One way or another. I cannot hide out in here forever, however pleasant the imprisonment may be.”
“I am ready to return home when you are,” Walther said.
“We should get as far from here as we can,” Astrid said. “Let it be our wedding trip. Wherever we go.”
“Those sellswords are surely here by now,” Erich said. “And I suspect they are watching the university. If they found their way back here, it was surely because they knew where you and Walther were going. We will need to slip out as carefully as we can.”
“Johannes told me the guards have seen nothing suspicious.”
“That may mean they are not here. It may also mean these men are too subtle to betray their presence. If they have tracked us here, they know we cannot remain in here forever.”
“What should we do?” Ariel asked.
“Could we sneak out, late at night?” Astrid asked.
“We could. But that is likely the very thing they expect us to do. And with the streets deserted in the dark of night, there would be little to prevent them from attacking us.”
“But if we left during the day, they would be sure to see us.”
Erich thought for a few moments. “They are waiting for me. Not you. If you were to leave without me, it might throw them off my trail.”
Ariel and Astrid immediately objected. “We will not leave you behind,” Astrid said.
“Bear with me. We would regroup. But if you departed on your own, it would make it easier for me to slip out.”
“I do not like this idea,” Ariel said.
“At best, these men know I came here with you as your hireling. Only Johannes and Franz know the full truth of what has happened. If you leave without me, they have no reason to bother you. They will simply assume I have found other work here, or taken service with someone else.”
“I think Erich is right,” Walther said after a few moments. “They should have no concern with us, if Erich is not with us. News that you have matched has gotten out, but no one here knows Erich, and it is difficult for me to see how anyone could make that connection. Almost no one would believe it in any case.”
“Once you leave, they should stop watching the university so closely,” Erich said.
/> No one said anything.
“I can see no alternative,” Erich said. “They are surely watching for the obvious tactics such as trying to disguise me or hide me in the wagon somehow. I am open to other suggestions if you can offer them.”
Walther looked back and forth between Ariel and Astrid.
“I would prefer it if you left the university very soon after we do,” Astrid said. “Perhaps our departure will distract them enough.”
Erich nodded. “I think that should work.”
♦ ♦
Walther, Ariel, and Astrid rode out the university gate the next morning. As Erich had suggested, they had packed the wagon such that it would present no suggestions anyone was hiding in it. The cover was down and their one large chest was left open.
To further allay suspicion, all of them did their best not to look around for anyone watching them, though it was difficult. Astrid sat in the back, facing behind, with Shadow next to her. She saw no one following them through the city that she could tell.
In a few minutes, they reached the south gate and passed through the city walls. The road led along the Rhine. They had debated whether to cross the river at the city or further south, with Erich finally deciding he preferred to remain in open country until they were well away from Köln, rather than risk a potential trap.
“I don’t see anyone,” Astrid finally said.
Gehard turned around. “Let’s hope this is working. With luck, we should see your husband again shortly.”
♦ ♦
Erich had actually left well before the others, just before dawn. He took up a position in one of the university towers so he could watch them leave. When they rolled out the gate, he slipped around to the rear of the university walls, where he had scouted out a window that did not drop very far to the ground outside. He had no intention of riding out the front gate if he could help it.
He saw no one watching the street below and climbed out onto the sill, then reversed himself to hang from it before he let go. The fall was about twelve feet, and he had to tuck and roll when he hit the ground, but he had made larger jumps and completed this one safely.
A few blocks down, he reached the inn where Astrid had stabled his horse the night before. He hadn’t liked sending her out alone, but she had insisted, and nothing unusual happened.
The Wizard's Daughters: Twin Magic: Book 1 Page 16
