Krysta couldn’t help another small orgasm, and she took Elise with her. The raw pleasure her brothers felt with their mates suffused Krysta with more and more joy. Georgia’s thoughts bordered on madness, and then Fari’s.
Oh God! Elise shouted as Fari at last drove himself deep into Georgia’s quim.
Yes. Please, fuck me like that! Georgia’s psi-signature went ragged. Krysta had a sense of motion and knew Fari’s ship had started flying slowly toward Camford. Cunning bastard. He would take her to safety while she was distracted!
It was all Krysta could do not to spill the secret. She kept her eyes clamped tight and rode the hand control, bucking and moaning as Georgia and Elise burned and groaned right along with her. The hand control actually rattled, she worked it so hard.
The pounding clank echoed through the speeder’s small cabin as the rhythm of Georgia’s psi-gasps caught them all in its swell. Krysta moved up and back, up and back. Her toes curled against the speeder’s burnished floor. She fell forward, hands on her instrument panel, and her nipples brushed its cold surface.
Georgia’s orgasm was building—and oh gods, Elise. Elise!
Elise came with a rocking, all-encompassing cry, pulling Ki to the summit with her. The force of their explosion made Krysta’s quim contract, and as Georgia’s powerful orgasm blew through the psi-link, Krysta joined her with deep, wracking screams of her own.
When her body stopped shuddering, Krysta lifted her head, keeping the hand-control in her core. Tears formed in her eyes and slid down her sweat-coated cheeks, hissing as they struck and crossed her pa-mark. Now was when she felt that empty loneliness most acutely, as her brothers and their soul’s mates gradually dropped out of link with her, when she had nothing but a makeshift toy in her quim instead of a real, warm cock. No arms cradled her in the afterglow. No deep voice whispered love in her ear.
These were the things Krysta wanted most—after a round of wild, hard sex. In that raw unguarded moment, as she leaned back and let the control slide free, she admitted what she wanted most: that warrior’s warrior she had dreamed of in that beyond-sizzling fantasy. A man powerful enough to master her, yet respect her. She wanted to feel his strength, his domination. She wanted to be taken to places she hadn’t dared to go with her casual lovers.
“When is it my turn?” she whispered, wiping a tear as she reached down to gather her clothes.
And then, almost instantly, the battle was on.
Krysta barely had time to free herself from the hand-control and lift off, much less zip up her jumpsuit.
Almost two stellar hours later, after an unexpected pounding and a brilliantly-executed pincer maneuver, the Guard and Fari’s Lorelei had the Outlanders on the run. Ki and the Royal Fleet were almost in orbit, and Krysta set her speeder down hard and fast on the edge of the forest surrounding Camford.
She had to get to the castle, because during the battle, she and Fari had thought they heard Georgia give a call of mental distress. All Krysta could think about now was getting to her new sisters.
They had to be safe. They just had to be.
She shut down the speeder’s engines. Before the companel lights changed to indicate full energy discharge, she whirled about and hurried to the hatch. Three quick punches of the safety code, and the hatch opened wide—to bring her face to face with two warriors of almost unreal proportion blocking her path out of the portal.
They stepped through fast, forcing her back into the ship. One of them actually had to keep his chin on his chest to fit. The other’s head touched the speeder’s ceiling. Both had dark hair, shoulder-length, like Ardani fighters. They wore only breeches made of tanned animal skin—and they had no pa marks. Krysta made out dull black ovals centered in their chests, and realized they were stones.
Tanna Kon’pa—The People—and these two looked oddly familiar. The one on the left had a bandaged sword hand and healing scratches all across his chest. The one on the right looked like he had been trampled by an angry fergilla—all fading bruises and barely-knit cuts.
These two had tangled with something recently.
Krysta slowly realized where she had seen them. In Georgia’s mind, and in Fari’s. These two bastards had attacked Georgia only days ago and tried to kidnap her. She had given them a proper fight, and then they had met an angry fergilla—her brother, in full rage, protecting his shanna.
“Darkyn Weil’s personal guard,” Krysta said, shocked at how thin and small her voice sounded.
Both men nodded.
“We do not wish to harm you,” said the Outlander with the wounded hand. His speech sounded stilted, and Krysta knew he was trying hard to speak in the modern tongue instead of the old high speech.
“To the deepest pit with you,” she answered in flawless ancient Ardani, and felt some small triumph when both intruders looked surprised. Akad had taught her. The priest had insisted at least one of the Tul’Mars be able to speak Arda’s first language without difficulty.
Fortunate, perhaps, that she chose to learn it. Ki and Fari knew a passing amount, but they had been lazy in their lessons.
Krysta’s fingers itched to wrap around her blasters, which were stowed beneath the chair she had just left in her frenzy to get to Camford.
Knador!
“Why have you come?” she asked, again in the high speech, stalling as she tried to broadcast her distress.
Kolot’s mental signature lit up in her mind just as something like a dark, wet curtain settled over her brain. Krysta shook her head, shocked, but the curtain didn’t move. Her psi-signal was being blocked! But how was that possible? And how was it possible that the two warriors had penetrated the protective pa-coating on her speeder?
“No,” said the monster on the right, tapping the side of his head. “Come with us peacefully. Please.”
Both smiled, but their eyes were nothing but flat black ice.
“May your joys have been many, so you miss them in the afterlife.” Krysta returned their hollow politeness with an archaic curse she knew they would understand.
They started forward.
She whirled, dove for the inertial chair, thrust her hands beneath it, and pulled out her blasters.
At that moment, Kolot exploded through her speeder’s half-open hatch, weapons holstered, arms outstretched in a no-combat gesture.
Krysta jumped to her feet while her attackers were distracted, raised her weapons, and thumbed the primer, ready to fire if needed.
Nothing happened.
The blasters were as dead as her psi-sendings.
Everything happened so fast Krysta’s mind could barely comprehend it. Monster the Bruised grabbed her and wrapped an arm around her neck. Then, horribly, oh so horribly, Monster the Bandaged drew a dagger from his belt and felled Kolot before he could even ready for attack.
No! He had his hands raised!
Krysta let out a cry like the black falcon from her visions as her second in command dropped to the speeder’s floor. She could tell by the way he landed that his wound was mortal.
“Fergilla!” she shrieked at the bandaged Outlander. “He had his hands raised! He hadn’t even drawn his weapons!”
The one holding her tightened his grip and cut off her air.
Black spots danced in front of her eyes as she screamed in her mind, punching against the blanket over her thoughts. She elbowed her attacker and kicked out at the second one, the murderer, as he grabbed her legs.
“Do not kill her,” the murderer cautioned his companion—but Krysta barely heard the bastard’s words. A roar started in one ear and spread to the other. She clawed against the arm pinning her throat, heard swearing as she tore into flesh—and then her consciousness switched off like a smashed sensor panel.
Chapter 2
Darkyn Weil clenched his teeth as he positioned his refitted cargo ship in orbit around Arda’s most distant moon. Behind him, on her carved wooden perch, his black falcon shifted restlessly. He didn’t have Guardian jessed or hooded, relyin
g on her training and loyalty to keep her in place. He wouldn’t insult so fine and sharp-eyed a lady by binding her, even with the velvety fabrics and leathers of his homeland.
Modern Ardani citizens called the moon in his viewscreen Arda-yi, but to Tanna Kon’pa, The People, it was Uhr, a sensor-shielded and hallowed place of safety, worship, and the work of thousands of busy hands. It was also a place of watching and waiting, and a place where doom hung like a smothering cloud over otherwise unimaginable beauty.
Darkyn’s broad orbit brought his ship momentarily closer to Arda’s twin suns, one hot and yellow, the other smaller and white. Guardian ruffled her feathers in the sudden flash of light, then settled as they once more wheeled toward home.
Uhr was the stuff of dreams and romantic ballads. From the unforgiving and parched eastern drylands to the jungles of the west, the little moon had so much to offer. Too bad it would be the first to go when the Barung reached them.
Whatever, in truth, the Barung was. The People had only the sacred scroll to help them interpret as best they could. Darkyn could already see the thing, but it seemed to be made of light or energy. How it could threaten them so totally, he didn’t know—but it did. He felt that truth in each muscle and sinew.
Darkyn clenched his teeth again, the pain in his jaws slim comfort as he stopped the ship’s forward progress and lowered it toward the ground, rocking it back and forth as swirls of shining indigo dust covered his touch-down on Uhr’s main landing strip. Guardian made a popping noise deep in her feathered throat, expressing relief at being under the power of only her own wings once more. She flapped twice, taking herself from her perch to Darkyn’s left shoulder, settling with a firm squeeze of talons.
No servants or sycophants ran to meet Darkyn and Guardian as they climbed out of the ship. Such was not the way of The People. Each man, each woman, and every child approaching the age of reason was completely self-sufficient. Uhr itself was also self-sufficient. They traded with no one and asked nothing of any world—except Arda, and what they wanted from Arda had nothing to do with material goods.
The People had settled everywhere on Uhr but the drylands, some living in the western jungles in small primitive groups while many warriors, guild workers, and clans chose to stay in Gese, the Blessed City.
Uhr’s only organized village, Gese covered fully half of the moon’s surface, extending between the desert and tropical regions. It had been constructed thousands of years ago, after the Great Migration—an event lost to Ardani historians but well-recorded and remembered by The People. The village was arranged in the old way, with a community building large enough to accommodate the moon’s population in the center. In concentric outward circles came huts and cabins of craftspeople, healers, and priests, followed by the joined homes of clans. Some joined homes had many wings while others had only a few. To each their own.
On the fringes of Gese lived the sand-scratchers on the east, tenders of orchards in the center, and to the west, the vinemasters—those hearty souls who dared to tame jungles and bring forth such food-plants as the greenwild would yield. These farmers supplied Uhr with nourishment almost as precious as the frothing blue waters of the Steaming River.
As was custom, Darkyn lived among his people and worked side by side with farmers in the sandfields, orchards, and greenwild to feed his people and the sacred Chimera—when his time wasn’t claimed by settling conflicts or preparing for the Barung.
He and Guardian headed down the night-quiet dirt path leading from the landing strip to the orchards, and Darkyn rubbed a palm across the stock of the two-bladed axe at his waist. Almost unwilling, he glanced at the sky. Far off on the horizon, by the outer stars, his enhanced vision showed him what Arda and most of the universe did not want to see.
A great black space, slowly swallowing stars, slowly moving toward them, emanating the darkest aura Darkyn had ever seen.
It was more than blackness.
More than nothingness and empty space.
Somehow, it was evil. Evil in its simplest, most elemental form.
The past was returning to claim them all, and time was running out. At any stellar minute, on any stellar day, the blackness would cross the corona and slide into the edge of the known universes like a cancerous rot. Darkyn figured it would enter at the edge of the Ardani system, as it seemed on a direct course for them. On a direct course for Uhr and Arda itself.
And so he had to do what none of his ancestors had succeeded in doing: convince the Tul’Mar clan that The People were right, that time could and would end if they didn’t join with him to defeat the steadily approaching Barung.
Somehow.
Because the evil was almost upon them. The stress had been eating at him, eroding his typical reserve and single-minded confidence. His hair had even started to streak white-blond, like an older man. The Barung was consuming him.
Like his forefathers back through time, Darkyn had studied the ancient scroll to guide him in the upcoming battle with something he didn’t understand.
When Barung returns,
Six shall lead him home,
Blended from the triangle,
Joined by the stone.
Let loose the gentle innocents,
For music soothes the shield,
Feed him on The People’s blood,
And drive him to the field.
With the wisdom of those who had gone before, he thought The People had worked out some key pieces of the rhyme—the innocents, the music, even the field, if their calculations about space and energy were correct.
Feeding the Barung on The People’s blood was all too clear, terribly clear. That much, at least, Darkyn didn’t have to guess about or calculate.
“The six, though,” he said aloud. “’Blended from the triangle, joined by the stone.’”
He touched the smooth black stone in his chest.
Legend had it that in the old days, The People had stones of many different colors. Now, though, they were all black—including his, even though he was Ta. The only way it would transform, take on the golden hue of the leaders of old, was if he found his soul’s mate. Met her face to face and claimed her. This, of course, could never happen.
Darkyn knew his had to be the stone that would join the six. He knew that at some deeper, more primal level than he knew most things. And yet, who were the other five?
His brother, his two annoying cousins—that would make four of the purest Ardani stock, which his forefathers held to be of utmost importance in this conflict.
But the fifth? The sixth?
It had to be the Tul’Mar brothers, didn’t it? On all of Arda, they likely had the strongest blood, the most powerful connection to pa.
But to convince the stubborn Ki or the impossible Fari—men he had seen and known only from a distance—of this reality, that would be near impossible. If he showed them the scroll, gave them what he could of the ancient wisdom, used his strength of psi to help them “see” the Barung, surely that would make a difference? And so he had taken his forces to Arda in an attempt to bring Fari or Ki back to Uhr.
Instead he found both men missing from their stronghold at Camford, ended up delivering the Tul’Mar heir, saved the life of the Sailmaster’s woman, nearly took a sword in the gut from the Sailkeeper’s bride-to-be, and fought his own men to leave the two women and the babe in peace.
Darkyn snorted.
At least he had freed a few more Chimera, and given them safe passage to Uhr on the early-leaving cargo ships. They could live out their last days in freedom, and maybe, just maybe, their songs would be of benefit.
Guardian shifted, restless from his frustration. With a short, sharp whistle, he encouraged her to take flight and feed herself, and she obliged him by pushing off his shoulder and sailing into the moody sky of Uhr.
Darkyn watched her go, feeling a true sense of connection and the briefest of fears as he always did—that she would meet with harm, that she wouldn’t return. Perhaps it was this connection wi
th Guardian that made him unwilling to take the Tul’Mar women or the newborn child. He felt loathe to leave any man with the gut-tearing reality of finding his nest decimated.
Whatever the reason, Darkyn knew he wouldn’t use helpless bait to lure the Tul’Mars to Uhr without their armies, ready to listen. No matter his legendary sharp tongue and sharper justice, he couldn’t bring himself to do something so dishonorable. Though both women were surely fighters, they were not warriors. Only warriors would be brought to this battle, unless or until he had no other choice.
Keeping his eyes on the heavily laden fruit trees in front of him, Darkyn stalked forward and refused to look back to search for Guardian, or to gaze at the giant glowing orb that was Arda. The planet bathed Uhr in almost constant reflective light from big sun and little sister, so that it never became truly dark on the moon. Deep gray, yes, but except in the caves of the greenwild, never fully dark.
Sometimes, Darkyn wanted the dark. Sometimes he wanted to shed the responsibility he had shouldered almost since birth—but he had no time and no room for weak will or wavering intentions. Because of the Barung, he could not take a wife or have children. He could form no ties past those he had as Ta’Tanna Kon’pa, leader of The People. Not that he had any desire to do so. Most intimate contact left him dry or feeling faintly ill. Sometimes, he even felt repulsed or violently sick from the simplest of touches.
The strength of his unusual psi gifts was the culprit, according to his brother. Darkyn wasn’t certain. He thought it more likely that he knew his own future, and thus could not bear to involve anyone in his limited destiny. When the time came, if his calculations proved sound, he had to be free to go. To sacrifice himself to save his beloved kin and even the dung-cursed Tul’Mars and all of Arda, and probably the galaxy as he knew it.
For now, though, he had failed his mission so completely he wanted to tear off the first fifty heads he encountered. Unfortunately for him, for The People, for Arda, and for the universe, that would accomplish nothing. He just needed to get to the private rooms in his cabin, sleep, restore himself, and wake on the morn with fresh purpose.
Arda: The Captain's Fancy Page 3
