Ashtadukht felt Tirdad shift his weight, and she was certain he was exercising all his discipline simply to refrain from grunting his disapproval. The king noticed this, and he didn’t seem to disagree.
“Shameful, I know. Sacrilegious, even. And as you’d expect, being a sower of discord, he twisted my request. My city lives on, but its inhabitants have been replaced with his agents. It has become a hidden refuge for divs. More than that, it is the breeding ground for the fiendish creatures that Eshm installed. Horrible, horrible things. Why do you think we yawn?”
“Because we’re sleepy?” Ashtadukht ventured, aware that whatever she conjectured would be shot down.
The king shook his head dismally. “No, we’re sleepy because we yawn. See, the fiends reach its . . . well, appendages into you and—”
She yawned.
“Ashta.”
“Huh.” Not only was the speaker peculiarly familiar, but he’d left her wondering where the daughter in her name had run off to. That nickname hadn’t been used since . . .
“Ashta.”
There it was again. Like her past had caught up to her—well, if she’d ever been able to leave it there to begin with. Then it hit her like an onager’s dusty hoof.
“Gushnasp,” she whispered, as if the name had to be eased out of disuse. She tore her gaze from her sleeve, where it had fallen unbeknownst to her, and brought it toward the voice.
Toward Gushnasp. Her brother. Her husband.
A sob racked her frame. He stood there in his sleek vermillion tunic, tall and noble and wearing that gentle, barely perceptible yet mesmerizing smile he’d reserved specially for her. She basked in it. He’d often wear it right before he rebuked her, but she basked in it all the same.
So many thoughts careened through her mind that groping for any one in particular left her empty-handed. It was a flurry.
“I’m so, so sorry,” she finally managed as one thought deemed to hurtle through the rest like a rampaging war elephant. She frantically wiped the tears from her eyes, her face drawn up in the grimace of someone doing her utmost to fight back the years of pain that threatened to break free all at once. “So, so sorry. I would’ve, would’ve loved to see you on Nowruz. I know your spirit waits every year. But I’m so afraid of what you’ll say.
“You must hate me,” she rambled pathetically. “You must. I couldn’t, I couldn’t stop it. I—”
Gushnasp grazed his fingers over the contours of her cheek and down her jaw, inciting goosebumps wherever they touched. Ashtadukht hummed. He cradled her chin, and she looked longingly up into his stare.
Sometimes when you lose a person, you stride counter to reality. You don’t believe it’s true: that maybe, just maybe, that loved one is still out there. Sometimes you emerge triumphant. Sometimes it consumes you. It had consumed Ashtadukht, once. It had taken drugs so potent they numbed her to the point of losing sentience to get past it. But she never truly had. She had never conquered her irrational desire for things to be as they were.
She did not belong to the healthy group of widows and widowers who, after mourning, would nurture the seed of their grief into growing from loss—perhaps continuing the dreams of the lost, or learning to cherish alone the things they’d cherished together.
She belonged instead to the sad lot who clung to grief, who nurtured it by never moving beyond it. They’d shelter it deep inside where the years padded it in saudade layers like some malignant pearl.
Ashtadukht grinned widely, and that rotten core crackled and unfurled.
“I love you, my dearest husband,” she said, genuinely beaming for the first time since the terrible day that, as far as she was concerned, never happened.
He parted his arms in invitation, and she gladly accepted, rising to her feet and embracing him with all her strength. Happiness flowed through her, invigorated her as it hadn’t in far too long. She sucked in his scent with ravenous breaths, no longer aware of why she was so positively desperate to appreciate his presence. Only that she must.
He smelled of home. Not of any place in particular, but of having a home in life. Of companionship. Of contentedness. Of belonging. And every such breath held the tiny, struggling voice in the back of her mind underwater until the last of its complaints ended and it fell silent.
“We should finish where we left off,” he said, clutching her closely and delighting her nape with small circuits of his index.
“Where we left off?” she mumbled through a purr. That tiny voice gurgled briefly before being shoved back underwater. “Oh, you were called to your post. Right. We were . . .” Her cheeks flushed as she recalled the wild, unfettered pleasure they’d been sharing. “Right. We should. I’d like that very much.”
He hoisted her like she was nothing, and everything. His thick, curly beard tickled her face, and she giggled elatedly, burrowing in. She felt happy as a lark. Exuberant.
When she finally pried herself from his beard, he was on top of her. His flesh was hot against hers, and dizzyingly so. Her chest, her abdomen, her thighs—which were locked around his back—were slick with sweat. His lips were like a passionate brand pressing lust into her neck.
Gushnasp had both arms hooked under her, taking firm purchase on her shoulders while he rocked his hips against her with abandon. She craned her neck back and dug her head into her pillow as a long, euphoric moan spilled over her lips.
She was delirious. Ashtadukht braced herself by sinking her fingers into his hair. He filled her so absolutely, so relentlessly, so rhythmically that the moan went on until she ran out of breath—so caught up in the way he’d wait until the very end of a thrust to really give it to her that focusing on anything else was impossible. And when she did run out of breath, her moan petered to a prurient whine. She arched into him and urged him over with her hips. She wanted control.
“Gushnasp,” she exhaled after a sharp inhalation. “Let me on. Let me on.”
He answered by rolling her on top of him, and she reared up, dragging her touch appreciatively down his torso as she did. His palms found and stroked her thighs, which encouraged her already rocking hips to work more feverishly.
Ashtadukht’s body screamed. She ground enthusiastically—desperately, even—and every movement cried out in her bones. But the intense pleasure pushed her on, jerked her hips as if her muscles did not object and her lungs did not burn. She posted her palms on his toned abdomen, closed her eyes, and sucked in great gulps of air.
Then the tiny voice objected.
It had been around for all of her life. In doing so it’d been drowned, skewered, immolated, ejected, and on better days, ignored. And just now it wasn’t about to be any of those things. It laid affairs out quite vividly by reminding her that this was precisely how the events of her memories had transpired. That soon—right about now, actually—her beloved Gushnasp would breathe his last, and that there would be nothing she could do about it. She’d be powerless.
Her eyes opened wide. “No,” she muttered. “No, no, no, no, no.”
She reached up to cup his cheeks and gave a dismal shake of her head. He felt so real. She’d been utterly outplayed.
“Try harder,” she growled, pressing her forehead to his. She knew the horror that would soon wash over his features. She’d replayed it enough to see the minutest detail. She just wanted to feel his proximity.
“Don’t lose to me,” she said, appealing to whatever manner of man or beast had her in its grasp. “Fight me. Make this real. Make me believe.”
The tiny voice told her it had won. That there was no going back. That she had failed herself, her brother, and the family who loved him.
Darkness stole her vision and her consciousness and returned her to reality. The first sensation that came to her was something long and foreign wriggling so far down her throat that it must have been dipped in stomach acid. Her eyes shot open.
The revulsion of what was on top of her was only surpassed by the proboscis-like appendages it had wormed down her thro
at. It looked like a pig had an affair with an ant, and somehow a butterfly had thrown its tongue into the licentious depravity.
Figuring the grotesquely fleshy mass with a snout for its head, Ashtadukht clocked it with everything she had—right between the mandibles. She put all her rage at its failure to enthrall her into that blow, and was rewarded with a satisfying crunch much like squashing an insect underfoot. It collapsed on her, and she disgustedly extracted the slimy tubes from her throat, gagging all the while.
When she finished, and with a surprisingly settled stomach, she shoved it off and sat up straight.
“I had a feeling you wouldn’t fall so easily,” said the king, who was huddled behind his throne immediately in front of her. “A good feeling. I thought you’d have a better chance back here than in the fray.” He gave her an apologetic smile. “Don’t move too quickly. Those intrusive tortures take a lot out of you. Although I hear they’re pretty pleasant. Until you’re dead that is.”
Ashtadukht couldn’t argue with the sentiment. She would have gladly remained in that dream until the creature sucked her dry. She registered a chorus of grunts and buoyant cackling that belonged to a blur of movement beyond the throne, but couldn’t quite make out the shapes.
“I told you it’d be dangerous,” said the king. “But you’re the first human here since, well . . . you are the first human here besides myself. I am severely limited in allies.”
Ashtadukht leaned on her left arm and, with some effort, brought the nearby movements into focus.
Waray swung into view. Which is to say she came around bent over backwards and pivoting on one heel as if a div had her by the other leg and was primed to—it let her go. After a brief flight, Waray tumbled head over heels into the nearest wall.
“She’s been holding off my guard, if you want to call them that, since the two of you succumbed.” He whistled. “Some fighter, that one. Definitely Eshm’s stock. And I’ve never seen one of those soul sappers retreat so hastily from a meal. Never seen them retreat from one at all now that I think of it.”
Waray cackled merrily as she sprung, not entirely effortlessly, to her feet. She had some half dozen wounds, which were little more than scratches when dampened by her battle rage. A bloody, lopsided grin stuck to her cheeks. She hefted her broken spear and dashed back into the mob.
“You two?” asked Ashtadukht, now aware that she hadn’t accounted for Tirdad.
The king inclined his head toward her side. “I wouldn’t pull them out prematurely if I were you. Tried that with my ma.” He diverted his gaze. “Didn’t have the desired effect. Let him overcome it . . . if he can.”
She grimaced at the sight of Tirdad, supine with one of those implausibly assembled beasts above him, its tube-like phalanges down his throat.
An unsteady stream of lurching cackles spilled from the fight. Waray was having a grand time, though she obviously did not have the faintest idea how to use a spear beyond stabbing with the pointy ends. But she was fierce, and that ferocity took her a long way.
She collided mid-leap with the upraised shield of a royal guard that’d retained its human form, brought her spear down to skewer its head as her momentum knocked it over, and rolled forward like a raving ocelot.
A behemoth of a div stalked in where its companion had fallen; presumably the one that had launched her. It bared its gnarly incisors and wasted no time charging. Waray nimbly sidestepped its rush, embedding her spear in its flank as it lumbered by and into the same wall it’d tossed her into. She instinctively ducked a flying battle axe, and shot a hand back to catch it by the haft.
Meanwhile, Ashtadukht had crawled over to ease Tirdad’s sword free and was now deliberating whether to behead the soul sapper that hovered over him while at the same time keeping a watchful eye on the fray.
Waray drew the battle axe forward, brandishing it as if she’d known it all her life, yet giving it a clouded stare. To say it had a steadying effect would be a massive understatement. She had always fought like a crazed and crackling storm that lashed out aimlessly; the axe might as well have been a lightning rod. Her body seemed to recognize it as more than a weapon. All of her diffuse fury and chaos was concentrated through that haft.
The group of mixed abominations set upon her, and her riposte was the opening step to a beautifully savage dance. She turned away an incoming spear, and in the next stroke chopped off the claw of the vaguely tortoise-like div that had thrust it. The limb flailed, spraying blood on her face, which had the effect of heightening her trance.
She whirled, winding down to a crouch as she did, and several spears jabbed just over her head. Her axe came around to cleave into the wiry knee of a div that was at least half peacock. Waray unwound immediately after, bringing her axe across to gut the div as it toppled.
She pivoted as she rose, coming around to deflect a lunge and rise with the spear on her shoulder. She exploded as she did, teeth bared madly, and slammed into the div—which looked like a failed attempt at making frogs salacious, and had a face like boiling stew. It stumbled backward, but Waray whipped around to catch it in the crown with the blade of her axe. She tittered enthusiastically.
This freed her from the more immediate divs just long enough for the behemoth to barrel into her. Hard. The impact would have sent her careening if the thing hadn’t snatched her mid-air.
She hissed a mix of anger and pain, and retaliated by wildly hacking at the hairy hand it had wrapped around her torso. Five frenzied chops later and the div had to release her or risk losing its hand.
Waray flexed her legs the instant her boots hit the ground, intending to leap straightaway, when an incoming thrust registered at the boundary of her vision. She deflected the tip of the spear just past her chest and lashed out with her axe. Her ribs screamed when her strike was blunted by a shield; this only infuriated her more.
She hissed, snatched the shaft of the spear, and furiously slammed her axe into the shield until it got lodged in the wedge it had created. The shield-bearer finally had the presence of mind to bash her with it, which knocked her back a few steps and tore the axe from her hand.
This released Waray from the axe’s stabilizing influence. The abrupt departure must have been jarring to the div, whose shield she leapt and scrambled over before biting off chunk after chunk of scaled flesh from its throat. The div succumbed, and she hopped on its shield, tugging at the axe.
The behemoth had been clutching its mangled wrist and entertaining the idea of running for the first time in its life. Until now, it hadn’t the slightest clue what fleeing even meant. Sure, it had run plenty of times—typically into creatures or trees or anything that’d gotten in its way. But that was running at things. Away from them, though? Yesterday, that would have been a completely foreign concept. Not anymore.
It leered at the vicious little half-div. The fundamental concept at the core of its being had been that it would squash things that were smaller. Sometimes larger, but always smaller. That was what behemoths did. It nodded to itself, and the speck of intelligence it had just gained fell to the folly of even the best minds: it was ignored. The div conceded that it should run, then it decided not to. It had never run before, and it wasn’t about to start today.
Waray sensed its renewed movement, and glanced up from labouring over the shield to cock her head in its direction. It had backed against the wall in preparation for a charge. Her fingers slid up the haft of the axe almost wistfully as she rose to her full, unimpressive height.
Her heels began a subtle bounce, and her always-crooked grin an almost imperceptible twitch. She’d begun to feel the impact of her wounds while tugging at the axe, but adrenaline returned full force. She wanted it to charge. She clenched and unclenched her fists while several captive cackles buzzed in her throat. She leaned forward as if drawn toward the allure of an imminent stampede.
The behemoth fulfilled her desire. It stomped forward, and while there weren’t many between them, every thundering stride came with a speed tha
t belied the div’s size and spoke volumes for its aim to make this the best charge anyone had ever seen.
Waray snatched up the dead guard’s spear and charged in kind, meaning to meet it head-on. Her relatively small stature might have stacked the odds against her, were it not for her skillful display.
Her stride could have been considered casual if not for her beaming glower, and the feral notes she issued in challenge to the behemoth’s stomps.
She would have been thrilled by the thought of colliding at maximum velocity with a lumbering giant; it’d be glorious and thrilling and šo-dynamic. But a recent discovery maintained that getting swiped by large divs sometimes engendered broken ribs. So she erred on the side of, well, never caution, but avoiding more broken ribs. A different approach to hurly burly.
She waited until the last possible heartbeat—and hers was fluttering madly—to surge forward and through its outstretched arms and plant her spear square into its sternum. She did collide with its torso, but it wasn’t quite the same type of collision; it lacked gusto.
The div roared in agony, and she swung into a squat on the spear’s shaft, avoiding its grasping paws in doing so, then scaled its shoulder. She paused there briefly to swipe her fingertips along the ceiling, and indulge a heretofore itching curiosity. It swatted at her, which forced her to abort the swipe and scramble to the other shoulder. She evaded another swat by hopping on its head, at which point she leaned over and plunged both arms elbow-deep into its eye socket.
Waray took hold on the fibres at the back and pushed off with her feet, flipping over and letting gravity do the rest. The eye snagged for an instant before popping free. A short fall deposited her on the spear once more, where she gave the eye a discerning stare before tossing it away.
The behemoth fell to its knees, howling and clutching her handiwork. She smiled, about-faced, and patiently waited, knees flexed.
Once it’d finished howling, it very deliberately pulled its hands aside. There was no mistaking how finished it was with her, the fight, the king, charging—everything. If it did mean to run, Waray didn’t give it the chance. The moment the breach was revealed, she bounded straight for it.
A Star-Reckoner's Lot (A Star-Reckoner's Legacy Book 1) Page 17
