by R. Lee Smith
“In exchange for what?”
“To show thee, I must hold thee in mine arms.” His voice dropped to a smoky purr. “Where thou dost yearn to be also.”
“Dream on.”
“I dream not,” he replied. “Thou dreamest of me.”
Something tickled at her cheeks. She realized she was blushing. Mara threw the crust of her breakfast bread out over the mountain and stared straight ahead. A mystery. In his arms.
“I have sworn an oath to press thee not for the pleasures of thy body,” he reminded her. “Though I would savor well whatsoever I am offered.”
She could think of nothing she had often pondered, apart from Connie, and she knew he wouldn’t be taking her there. On the other hand, she had nothing else to do with herself today. She put out her hand without thinking, and his enveloped it at once, before she could pull it back again. He drew her up gently, purring under his breath, and put his arms around her.
To feel him again, pressing close, his heat searing through her clothes, was enough to stir the stubborn ghost of purely physical desire. She didn’t dare look up at him. Her eyes belonged to him all too often. But he felt good. He always felt so damned good.
“Wither?” he rumbled, flexing his claws lightly at her hips. “To my mystery, or to my bed?”
“That’s suspiciously close to making a demand.”
“Nay, for I wait upon thy will.”
“Show me what you have to show me,” Mara said, and then, unwillingly, she felt herself embracing him, her hands scraping over his rough skin to bring her even closer. She could feel the swell of his essential maleness solid at her belly and she wanted to feel it hard against her, hard inside her. Even his scent, as mild and mineral-rich as the mountain itself, stirred her to some kind of longing. “Show me,” she said again, not meeting his eyes. “After that, we’ll see.”
He lifted her, nuzzled briefly and with tense passion at her throat, and then snapped away out of his candlelit lair into full dark and sudden, icy winds. She gasped, and the frozen air stole the breath right out of her again. Mara clutched at his shoulders, choking on cold, then shoved away from him once she realized what she was doing.
Kazuul released her, chuckling, only to catch her again when she stumbled over the ice-crusted snow and loose rock that lay beneath. **Hold,** he warned her. **The moon is not yet risen and thy eyes will yet be weak. Hold.**
“It’s freezing!” she shouted, and doubled over choking again.
**Use the silent voice.** He watched her hop from foot to burning foot with an expression of close interest, then grunted, and pulled her back to him.
She stepped on his foot by accident, slapping at him and shivering almost too hard to see, but his foot was broad and hot under hers, melting the snow and ice away in great craters. She looked sharply up at him. He smiled invitingly. She scowled and stepped on the other foot too, grappling at his spikes for balance as he wrapped one arm around her to shield her from the worst of the wind. He was fantastically warm. She’d known that every time she ever touched him, but here, now, right in the frozen eye of winter, it was even more startling.
**Is this an art?** she asked grudgingly, trying to touch him as little as possible while warming herself against his body. **I’d like to learn how, if it is.**
**Thou surely wilt, with my guidance,** he answered after a moment. **And to Correspond. I suspect thou wilt have some skill at it.**
**I’d rather walk than risk ending up halfway through a wall.**
**Thou hast Sight. I’ll teach thee its employ in all ways.**
**I won’t be here that long.** She squinted into the stinging wind and saw, in silhouettes only a shade darker than the night sky, a forest of bare branches stabbing up from the rock, but the everpresent shadow of the mountainside was nowhere to be seen. They were at the top, in a shallow valley with rock raised up in blunt peaks all around them. **What is this place?**
**Canst thou not guess?**
**I hate guessing games,** she sent irritably, but looked again. There was still no moon, but her eyes must be adjusting to the faint starlight, for she could see the trunks of trees now, dozens of them, and the mounds of other shrubs between them. **Is…Is it a garden?**
**Aye.**
**But everything is dead.**
**Nay, ‘tis sleeping only, as all things do in their season.** He shrugged her up into the crook of his arm and carried her to the first tree. He touched it, running a slender twig through his fingers to its tip, where green leaves suddenly sprouted, pale blossoms opened, dried, and fell away. He cupped the golden fruit that grew and plucked it just as the wind fell enough to bring its fragrance to Mara’s senses. It was warm in her hand when he gave it to her, warm with life, even with ice in a shell around its stem. **Yet a Master’s touch doth awaken,** Kazuul sent, watching her bite into it, **so many things.**
An apricot, sweeter than anything she’d ever tasted from a grocery store. She devoured it in just a few bites, forgetting all about the breakfast she’d only just eaten. Mara looked out over the garden again as she sucked frozen juice from her fingers, and saw movement. Kazuul followed her gaze, grunted, and set her back on his feet.
**What was that?** she asked, trying to find it again.
**One of the reavers.** He must have summoned it, because it came out of the dark on its belly, bristling and snarling, its face pressed to the snowy ground. Kazuul looked down upon it, his arm moving to wrap her more securely against him. **And well out of its hunting grounds it be.**
**Is it…a nephalim?**
**Aye.** He showed no surprise that she knew the word. **Reach not thy hand to touch. My control is limited.**
It was not a hound, but not a man either. Mara was considerably taller, but it had twice her weight, and even in this servile crouch and moonless dark, she could see nothing but the strength and power of its muscular form. Its skin, thick and grey and covered in grotesque growths of bone, camouflaged it perfectly against the stone slopes. If it wasn’t for the hard shudders of its snarls, it would have blended to invisibility right before her eyes.
**They can be dangerous, even to us, and this breed more than most,** Kazuul sent, studying the thing that crouched at his feet with a deceptively detached air. **Wretched, mindless creatures made in mocking image of their immortal blood, cursed with every human hunger, suffering life upon a world that cannot sustain them. They thirst and never quench, lust with seed that rooteth not, consume all and yet starve.**
He crooked his claw. The monster raised its eyeless head, pouring drool to freeze off its jaws like another row of teeth. It slouched away, still snarling, and was lost to the night.
**Adam’s blood doth thin their own, yet to perish taketh a cruel age, and so we use the nephalim in whatever small way they can be used. The reavers, we set low upon the mountain’s crust to devour freely those Men they may encounter, save only those few hours when we welcome approach.** Kazuul’s mind was quiet for a minute or two as the wind howled, but through his touch, she shared the shadow of every dark thought which he kept hidden. **But they are born to starve, and no sooner are their jaws whetted than they are shitting out the blood of their victims upon the rock and howling their hungry rage to heaven.**
**How many are yours?** she asked, knowing it was an offensive question.
**None living,** Kazuul replied, unbothered. **Yet I have sired many in my time.** He grunted to himself and added, **I shall sire no more.**
**Is that why you stopped teaching?**
It wasn’t the first time she’d asked that question. She no longer expected an answer, but to her surprise, he shrugged. **T’was one consideration, if not the most paramount.**
**What was the—**
**Solomon.** The word was a curse in Kazuul’s mind. He bared his teeth, then gathered her up and swept her away through the mountain and into his lair. Just being out of the wind was almost as good as a roaring fire, but Kazuul released her at once and stalked over to the aerie, wh
ere he began to pull rock up to close it away.
“Do you mean King Solomon? What did he do?”
“Then thou hast heard his legend.”
“I know a little. I know he came here. Horuseps showed me his cup.”
“Did he.” Kazuul laughed once, blackly and without humor, then looked at her. “The Cup of Solomon. A very pretty prison, was it not? Yet when first Solomon came to me, t’was a harmless vessel for a beardless boy to spin lies over. T’was here, in my school, in mine own theater, that Solomon learned the art of Dominion. Here, with books unknown to human understanding and magics unpracticed in the human world, Solomon summoned one of the great race of djinn. Here, he bound its body into the crowning jewel of his harmless cup and bound its will to be his slave. Thus did Solomon achieve his ambition and depart us.”
Kazuul shook his head slowly, ponderously, as a bull might before it charges. His fangs were bared as he spoke, so that he bit off each word, and his anger, undimmed by millennia, put a dangerous growl in his throat. She could see his clawed hands flexing on empty air, the muscles of his powerful body coiling and tensing.
“The race of djinn was not born of Earth, yet they dwelled many ages among the sons and daughters of Adam. They dwelled,” he spat, “in the kingdom of Solomon, who saw them, coveted their power, and by cruel trickery, summoned all there were and set each one into a mortal prison to be his treasure during his life, to be scattered to the winds and forgotten after his death. They were an ancient race; their fires, the spark of life over countless worlds. Now they are made mad, lost to time and memory, destroyed. Ha. This is what Man does with magic.” He swung around very suddenly, coming towards her with his eyes blazing light, the Mindstorm hot with his rage. “Hath not Man done harm enough, powerless, that I must put weapons into his hands? How many cups did he forge, Solomon the Betrayer, set with the souls of my race, my fire?”
Mara stepped back, watchful, and instantly he turned away, his fury bleeding out of the air.
“Nay,” Kazuul said, staring into the wall where the aerie had been. “I’ll sire no more nephalim. I’ll make no more Solomons. I am done with Man.”
She waited until the last strain of anger was gone before saying, “I’m still here.”
He glanced at her, thought, then smiled thinly. “Thou art woman.”
“You could still get a nephalim off me.”
“Not as thou hast played the game,” he answered archly, but then came back to her wearing his most smoldering gaze. “But if that be your fear, my Mara, fear not. My matings shall set no half-breed stock in thee.”
“You promised—”
“I make no demands, beloved one.” His powerful hands took her in, holding her close against his rough hide, just as if they were at the mercy of the icy Romanian winds once more. His tongue flicked unerringly at the tender skin above the vein in her neck, and he pressed his teeth there playfully, but only for a moment. “Yet well would we both be served by the weakening of thy will. Thou art come alive only in mine arms.”
“I was alive long before I ever met you,” said Mara, refusing to acknowledge the tightening of her skin under his lips or the eager heat leaping to life in her womb. “I’ll be alive long after I leave. I’ll replace you, Kazuul.”
“Nay.” His hand covered her breast, his thumbclaw scraping lightly back and forth over her nipple until it hardened for him. “I have ruined all other men for thee. Thou shalt never clasp one ‘twixt thy hungry thighs save that thou thinkest of me.”
His mind stroked hers, as gentle and as sure as his hand, giving her no words but only little promises of pleasure like kisses on her naked soul. She shivered, but did not move away. “You taught Dominion,” she murmured.
“Aye.” Kazuul tugged at the neck of her gown, growled under his breath at her locket, and then scoured his teeth along the full, firm swell of her breast. “The art of will and its many manipulations.”
“And yet, you’ve never used it against me.”
“Nay, nor ever shall.” He went to one knee, biting at her hip through her long skirts.
“Are you afraid I’ll learn it if you do?”
“I fear nothing that comes of thee.” He mouthed her with growing aggression, his claws beginning to prick through the heavy fabric, and shifted suddenly to draw a deep breath from her concealed sex. He smiled. “I shall teach thee whatsoever thou desirest to learn. Nothing would please me better than to see thee master of mine art.”
“Nothing?”
He looked up at her, stroking her thigh. “There are pleasures of the heart, my Mara, and pleasures of the flesh. And if ‘tis true that the latter be more brilliant in its making, so ‘tis also truth that the former endures. When?” he asked, quietly and with a broad timbre of dark frustration.
“When what?”
“Again, I warn thee to mock me not. When shalt thou come again to my bed?”
“After last-bell, to sleep.”
“I hear the racing of thy heart at mine every touch.” He passed his hand low over her belly as if to prove it, and her womb cramped with traitorous, insistent need. “I smell the perfumes of thy ready cunt. Thou makest a torture for thyself as much as for me.”
“But it is still torturing you,” she said, and shrugged him off. “Call it a pleasure of the heart.”
He growled to himself, still comfortably on one knee, watching her walk away from him.
She made it all the way to the curtain at the foot of his stair before her resolve weakened. Why was she doing this? What did it matter if she couldn’t get anything else out of him but the protection he’d already given her? It was still good sex! Three nights, she’d slept beside him, expecting each time to wake up under him, his prisoner now in every way, but so far, his promise was holding him. She’d almost rather he took what he wanted than be the one who broke first, but it was a hard thing to lie beside him and only sleep. Kimara Warner had very little use for simple human companionship, but she was used to getting sex whenever she wanted it.
“Give her back to me,” said Mara finally, decisively. “Give Connie back to me—”
“I know her not,” Kazuul said, all warmth gone from his tone.
“—and I’ll let you do what you want with me before we leave.”
“I have never seen thy calf.”
“As often as you want, for one night.”
“I know nothing of her whereabouts.”
“I’ll let you cum in me.”
“Enough!” His anger stabbed the Mindstorm and slowly faded. She heard him pace away, growling heavily at each breath.
Mara waited, rubbing restlessly at her stomach while her loins burned and burned.
**I would give thee my blood, my bones, my very breath, and whatsoever thou wouldst ask, so I would give thee,** he sent, his thoughts furious and unwavering, **but I know the bitch not!**
He could lie to her easily enough, even here, but she didn’t think he was somehow.
“I am not built to long withstand temptation,” he snarled aloud. “I have pledged thee an oath and I mean to keep it, but thou art no tickbird, and I, no tolerant dragon to stay my jaws as thou dost pick and pick at me! Think well what thou dost, lest I snap!”
“All right,” said Mara softly. “Then I guess we’re done talking.”
Still, she lingered. It was a good line to storm out on, but she felt no sense of victory. What she did feel, she didn’t know how to name, but she didn’t want to leave him yet.
His hand brushed at her back, then came up to caress the curve of her throat, briefly amplifying his bitterness and desire. “My Mara…”
“No.”
“Aye. Deny it how thou wilt, thou art mine. I, thine.” He growled softly against her skin, then brushed his lips across her cheek, and murmured, “Make use of what is thine, beloved.”
“Stop calling me that.”
He spat a curse in her ear and stalked away. Back and forth, he paced across his chambers, kicking at chunks of stone and sl
ashing at drapes, swearing in and out of understanding the entire time.
“I’ll be back,” Mara said, faintly disgusted with herself.
He laughed reproachfully. “Aye, to sleep.”
“With you,” she reminded him.
He quieted, running his claws abrasively along the left bat-wing at the head of his empty bed. “Aye,” he said. “With the fool who giveth thee lead.”
“Yes, but that isn’t why I keep coming back.” She gave him a shrug and half a tired smile. “At least, it isn’t the only reason.”
“Pretty bird,” he grumbled, and waved her off. “Fly then.”
She went.
* * *
“Honestly,” said Horuseps, stacking books on the shelves behind his dais. “One of these nights, he’s going to split you up the middle cock-first, and you, o my delightful child, are going to have the temerity to be surprised.”
His was not the first theater she’d invaded today, but it was there that she’d stayed, and in spite of the fact that she’d mastered his art, he let her. Indeed, after he’d reached the end of his lecture on the energies of life surrounding them on the unseen planes, he’d dismissed his class and called her down to him, alone.
She knew his casual remarks were aimed at prying information out of her, but she talked anyway. It was pleasant to be with Horuseps, she realized. Pleasant to watch his graceful movements as he put his teaching aids in order, pleasant to listen to the easy roll and rise of his androgynous voice, pleasant to feel the knife-edged humor and secret shadows of his vulnerable mind. It was almost like having a friend, which was a nice way to feel, particularly so soon after she’d had a spike run through him three times.
“What are you hoping to achieve?” he asked now, inspecting each of a series of stone discs as he arranged them carefully in a chest.
“I don’t know,” Mara admitted. “Sometimes I think I hate him, not because I don’t know what he’s doing, but because he makes me not know what I’m doing.”
“And sometimes…?”
Mara blew a sigh through her bared teeth and shook her head. “Sometimes I don’t even hate him.”
