The Far Realm Chronicles Anthology

by Annette Archer

  He couldn’t help himself. “Well. You’d be worth every copper.”

  “Copper?” she repeated in pretended indignation. “I’m worth at least silver, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Don’t sell yourself short. A few gold coins, at least.”

  She batted at his shoulder, but the expression on her face showed how she appreciated his remark.

  Thanus continued, “So. You’re not here to set up a brothel. What did bring you to Damiste?”

  “My Kingdom is in dire trouble,” she said to him. She didn’t elaborate.

  “You know, there isn’t a whole lot that anyone knows about your Kingdom.” Thanus let his hand rest on her flat stomach, and as his fingers pet her there, she made contented noises deep in her throat. “Your Kingdom has always been a mystery.”

  “We prefer it that way,” she said after a moment, her eyes closed and a small smile on her lips. “You may have noticed there are certain differences that we Crelthians have from the rest of the Far Realm.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Thanus mused. “The Crystal Elves have pointed ears. The Ice Maidens, so I’m told, have fire for blood and some of their men can control the wind. I’ve heard of a race of flying humans down along the coast. I think the Far Realm has more differences to offer us than we realize.”

  Her eyes opened and turned to him, something deep within their stunning liquid white color. Her hand came down to take hold of his on her belly. “Thank you.”

  He was confused. “I will say you’re welcome, but I’m not sure what you’re thanking me for.”

  “For understanding.”

  He wasn’t sure he did, actually. This woman, this Ethelia, was cryptic. She was exotic and strange and entirely wonderful. He had been lucky to have a few hours with her. He knew that if the Maker could bless him with a day or two, he would forever cherish that time as some of the best moments in his life.

  “Well,” he thought out loud to himself, “I’m still unsure what I can do to help you, but first things first. You need new clothes. You can’t keep wearing that dress. It’s ruined.”

  “Ruined by Luciro and his goons,” she sneered. Her hand tightened on his.

  “Well. I plan on replacing it. There must be a decent dress maker in this town.”

  She eyed him, as if taking his measure. “You’re a good man, Thanus of Sargenia.”

  “I’ve been called that. I’ve also been called ruthless, clueless, and dense.”

  Her hand had started to move, gently pulling his hand along down her body. “I don’t find you to be any of those things.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, “you just need to stay around me longer.”

  She guided his fingers into her still-wet cleft, put him where she wanted him, encouraged him to play with her clit, her own fingers joining in. It was hard to say which one of them was more enthusiastic.

  “Why did your people send you?” he asked her as her back arched and her knees bent wide. “If your Kingdom is in trouble, why not one of the royal house?”

  She gasped and he felt the twinge that jolted through her. “They sent me,” she said, her muscles tensing around their hands, “because I am the royal house. I am Princess Ethelia of Crelth.”

  She orgasmed, but wouldn’t let him stop moving in her. Her second one came tight on the heels of the first, and he could feel his body start to react to the noises she made. Maybe he could let her take him again, after all.

  Just as he was thinking that, a loud and insistent knocking sounded at his door. They both froze in midstroke, Ethelia’s body not understanding the need for silence and fluttering hard in a brief pre-orgasm.

  The knock came again, and he withdrew from her reluctantly. “We’ll pick this up later,” he whispered to her, putting his face close to hers.

  She kissed the line of his eyebrow. “You’d better.”

  “A moment,” he called out to whoever was banging, again, at the door.

  “I was hoping to speak to you, Thanus of Sargenia,” the voice said through the door. Luciro’s voice.

  A fumbling sound behind him made him turn back to the bed in time to see Ethelia rolling under it. Her arm reached out to snag her dress and pull it in with her. He could hear her, quietly swearing, trying to pull her dress on. Thanus didn’t know exactly what Luciro held against Ethelia, but he knew that the man showing up at his door could not be a good thing.

  Thanus hurriedly untangled his smallclothes and put those and his pants back on. He was reaching for his boots when the door burst inward with the cracking of the thick wooden frame.

  “Knock, knock,” Luciro said sarcastically.

  “I beg your pardon, sir.” Thanus was more than annoyed. The Temporalists might run this town, but they had no right to enter his room uninvited. “You had better have the Maker’s own reason for breaking in here like this.”

  Luciro stood tall and unmoved by Thanus’s indignation. To either side of him, Thanus could see two other purple robed figures, Temporalists much shorter than Luciro, their hoods pulled forward til all Thanus could see was their hateful smiles.

  “I wish to speak to you,” Luciro said to him as he stalked into the room, ducking his head under the door mantel. His gaze swept around the room, obviously looking for signs the girl was here. “I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot.”

  “You mean when you were going to stone that girl,” Thanus asked, “or when I almost clipped your nose with my blade?”

  Luciro’s smile slipped at that, his bony hand subconsciously lifting to wipe at his nose. The man reminded him of something. Thanus just couldn’t figure out what.

  “Yes. Quite.” Luciro walked past Thanus, glaring down at him. “But you haven’t got your blades on now, do you, Prince?”

  Thanus suddenly became very aware of his situation. Even more so, when Luciro sat down on the edge of the bed, right next to where Thanus had left his weapons belts. Ethelia was under that bed. He was unarmed. And these men were crazy.

  The other two came into the room now, flanking him. This could be very bad.

  “What I’d like to talk to you about,” Luciro said in a mild tone, “is why you need to stay away from that girl.”

  His hands smoothed along the mattress over and over, skittering back and forth, and Thanus again had that notion that Luciro reminded him of something. What was it…?

  “The woman you saw us trying to discipline—” Thanus gaped at that description “—was trying to solicit men to her bed. To a Temporalist, all women are evil, but most have learned their place here in Damiste. This one was inciting evil thoughts and evil ways. She had to be dealt with.”

  “And that’s why I need to keep away from her?” Thanus asked, figuring if he played along they might just leave.

  “That,” Thanus agreed with a nod of his head, “and because she will trap your immortal soul if you don’t.”

  He had no idea what to say to that.

  “The woman is no ordinary woman. She is from a small area of the Far Realm where women have the power to…” He trailed off, his eyes suddenly getting wider, his nostrils flaring. “But you already know that, don’t you?”

  He stood now, and stepped closer to Thanus, his hands drawing his robes in close. “Do you know what I smell in this room?” he asked, his face very close. Thanus panicked, but managed to keep his face calm as Luciro answered his own question.

  “I smell sex.”

  Ethelia

  Chapter 5

  Thanus was at a loss. “Where I come from, Luciro, men have enough sense not to mention such things.”

  “Where I come from, Prince, men have enough sense not to be sexed by a harlot!”

  He rose up over Thanus, towering even more, and as his mouth gaped, the dark teeth resembled not so much rotten stubs, but pointed little spikes. Thanus took an involuntary step back.

  “She has lain with you!” Luciro screamed. “She has lain with you in sin and now you will be forever trapped within her! You will both
be destroyed for this!”

  Reflexively, Thanus struck out, throwing a hard fist against Luciro’s jaw, having to swing up to connect the blow. Luciro’s head rocked back.

  And then swung around again, his eyes flashing.

  “That was a mistake.”

  Something in his voice was…wrong. Thanus didn’t know what he was hearing, but it wasn’t good. He stepped back again, arms up defensively, only to have the other two Temporalists grab hold of him and hold him as Luciro stood up taller. And taller. His face elongated, stretching and pulling like clay, his robe billowed out as Luciro seemed to swell, grow, expand out.

  Then the robe fell away.

  What was beneath was a chitinous, bony thing with two segmented hind legs, and four arms, a neck that bent and twisted and coiled, and a heaving chest of sinewy muscle. It was a thing that was vaguely human, and mostly insect.

  No. Not insect. Spider.

  Luciro was a bizarre creature that reached for Thanus with hooked fingers and gnashing teeth, and he was so frozen with fear he could do nothing but watch as the harbinger of death itself came closer and closer yet.

  “Hey, Luciro!” a voice shouted from behind the thing.

  Luciro twisted his segmented body around to face Ethelia, standing small and strong behind him, Thanus’s sword in hand.

  She rammed the sword forward, the finely sharpened blade tearing through Luciro’s side. The monster screeched and curled around itself, pulling away from the blade. Black ichor poured down its pale flesh. Ethelia had hurt him.

  In a blink, reality rushed back in on Thanus. He shoved sideways against the one Temporalist, taking advantage of the shock that had rendered both men immobile. That one stumbled, allowing him to free his right arm. Now he was able to beat down the one on his left, raining punch after punch against his face and head and stomach. The man went down in a heap. He did not get up.

  The other one tried to grab hold of him again, but a slash from the flat of his hand to the guy’s throat dropped him next to his friend.

  Ethelia screamed.

  Thanus turned and made one step toward where Ethelia was crouching. Luciro’s one hand grabbed him around his neck. He was lifted up off his feet.

  The monster’s face reached down to his. “You will both die tonight.”

  Thanus couldn’t pull in air, couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything. In a flash, he knew that Luciro spoke the truth. He was a dead man.

  His vision dimmed as Luciro squeezed harder. Through the gathering darkness he saw Ethelia stand up. The monster’s attention was on him, giving her the perfect opportunity to draw his long knife from the belt still on the floor by the bed.

  He smiled.

  Luciro sneered at him and shook him like a child’s doll. “What causes you to smile, Prince? Is it the thought of your impending death?”

  Thanus didn’t have to answer him. Ethelia delivered the answer in the form of a slashing cut that took off Luciro’s arm at the elbow, the arm that had been holding Thanus in a death’s grip.

  Air rushed into his burning lungs again and he gasped in deep lungfuls of it. The monster stumbled back, screaming, threatening, waving its severed limb and spraying dark blood everywhere.

  Before Thanus could form a coherent thought, Ethelia had grabbed up the rest of his clothes and, with his knife still held in her hands, she pulled him toward the door. Out in the hall, Thanus stumbled into the wall and nearly went down, his knees weak, his throat throbbing and the blood rushing in his ears.

  “Come on!” Ethelia demanded. “We don’t have time to do anything but run. Come on!”

  So down the stairs they went. In the dining hall, the Inn keeper stood, cowering behind his bar, the place empty of any patrons who might have been inside before the struggle upstairs had begun.

  “Wait, wait.” Thanus used the back of a chair to keep himself standing. “Ethelia, wait.”

  “No!” the Inn keeper called out to them, still behind his bar. “You can’t stay here! You need to go. Now!”

  Ethelia leveled the blade in the Inn keeper’s direction. He shrank down behind the bar with a yelp.

  “All right,” Thanus said to her with a smile. He took his shirt from her, struggled into it, took another deep breath. “I’m ready. Just let me put my boots—”

  With a crash and a loud scream, Luciro let them know he was still alive, and coming for them.

  “Boots later.” Ethelia grabbed his hand and they were off again. “Running now.”

  In the street, people gathered and stared at the Flying Hog, knowing something was going on but not knowing what. When they saw Ethelia run out with Thanus close behind, not even completely dressed, many of them pointed and shouted. A few were some of the same who had been set to stone Ethelia earlier. The gathering made to stop the pair’s progress, until Ethelia slashed the air with the long knife in her hand, and then they all wisely moved aside.

  And then Luciro came crashing through the door to the establishment, taking it off its hinges, tumbling into the midst of the crowd, who screamed and scattered. Some seemed to recognize Luciro, and for those few the shock was written on their faces.

  All this time, they had been following a monster. Literally.

  The bastard was fast, Thanus would give him that much. Looking over his shoulder, Thanus saw how the monster was gaining on them with each step.

  “To the stables,” he said to Ethelia. “I have a horse. We can outrun him.”

  “There is no outrunning his kind,” she responded, in a voice that told him she knew exactly what she was talking about. But she made for the stables anyway.

  By the time they made the entry to the stables, Luciro was close enough that Thanus could see his pointed teeth snapping for them. It wouldn’t work. They would just get to Hurricane and the monster would tear into them. Hurricane would die, too. They would all be dead and frankly, having cheated death once today, Thanus wasn’t in any hurry to risk his life again. If he could help it.

  “Change of plans,” he said to her, dragging her past the stables as a dozen horses and more all went wild, jumping and crying out and spooking at the sound and sight of the horror that was Luciro.

  “Plan? We have a plan?” she said, her voice rushed, her breath short.

  “We do now. Come with me.”

  He had to get her somewhere safe, and he had to do it fast. She was a strong woman, and she’d proven that several times already, but she was getting tired from the fighting and the running just like he was.

  He took several quick turns down streets lined with surprised people that moved out of their way or screamed or called for the Temporalists to come and save them. Luciro scrabbled after them, His bulk and awkward build causing him to slow at every turn, and thus they gained a little distance.

  “Where are you heading us, oh Prince of Plans?” Ethelia said to him at one point after they had made a turn and Luciro had gone sailing past, three remaining hands grasping at the side of a corner apothecary to stop his momentum.

  “Do you trust me?” he asked back.

  “I let you lay with me,” she said by way of answer, her hand squeezing his a little harder.

  “I take it that isn’t something you do often?”

  The dark skin of her face reddened. “You are the second man to know me in that way.”

  He stumbled as surprise swept him. His feet were still bare, and the stones of the street were cutting into him, and the little trip up cut his flesh open. Still, he couldn’t help it. He was the second man to make love with her? She had been so…sure of herself. So confident and forceful.

  He blinked himself back to the moment. “I am honored, Princess Ethelia. I hope to live up to that honor.”

  “I hope to just live, you fool.” She conjured up a smile for him but it was short lived. Luciro was still behind them, hollering for their blood. “Now tell me where we’re going.”

  “The center of town.”

  And so he led them on, a monster born from
nightmares chasing after.

  Ethelia

  Chapter 6

  What was in the center of town was the spire.

  A monolith so tall it could be seen for miles in every direction, it was a sliver of rock that had stood in that spot since before Damiste existed. No one knew how the tall black stone had come to be here, but it had withstood every effort to move it. Square at the base and wider across than two men standing side by side with their arms outstretched, it rose up to the heavens in the middle of a grassy circle. Some time ago, wooden stairs had been added that climbed halfway up the spire by wrapping around the sides.

  Every ten steps had a small statue of the Temporalist’s symbol set upon it, a pyramid with a circle balanced on top.

  “We’re going up that?” Ethelia’s voice broke.

  “You said you trusted me.” Thanus made straight for the spire, ignoring the angry shouts and scared outcries of those they pushed past.

  “I said I trusted you enough to let you bed me,” she countered.

  “Then when we get through this, I’ll let you do that again.”

  He didn’t see another choice. They needed the high ground. He had enough formal military training to know that was there only one hope here. There was no other high ground in Damiste than the spire.

  They reached the stairs and started up.

  Thanus pushed Ethelia up ahead of him, taking the knife from her hands. “Go,” he told her. “I’m right behind you.”

  He turned then and swung down with the knife, just as Luciro made the bottom of the stairs. The monster reared back, and the strike missed, and Thanus backpedalled up a few steps.

  “You have nowhere to go, little Prince,” Luciro said with a leering grin. “I will make a deal with you. Give me the girl, and I will let you go.”

  “Will you?” Thanus did not want to talk to this thing. But if he did, it would give him and Ethelia both a few more moments of life, and a few seconds to rest and regain their strength. “What happened to all of that talk about my eternal soul being trapped by her? About me being irrevocably damned, or whatever it was you blathered about?”