by Holly Lisle
Velyn thought this was going to extremes for an afternoon of amusement. Had he told her how far they would have to travel, that they would be so tired and sweaty by the end of their journey—or that some portion of it would be through a tunnel that she wouldn’t enter alone for double shares of her father’s fortune—she would have said she could be hot and sweaty in her little room and entirely bypass the entertainment value of fear.
Instead, she let him lead her through the darkness, and she wondered how he navigated. Could he see in darkness, as cats could? Did he have some marks cut into the path that he could follow with his feet alone? She didn’t know. She knew only that the sense she got of the place they traveled through was that the tunnel walls were very far away—and that if she pulled free of Farsee, she could become lost in the darkness and never find her way to light.
And then, after interminable creeping along, Farsee asked, “See up ahead?”
She squinted in the darkness, not seeing anything. Then she realized that the little spot up ahead that she thought she’d imagined was in fact real—green and light and growing closer with each step.
“Wonderful,” she said, and now she pulled him forward, eager to be free of the tunnel’s unending reign of night.
He reined her in with an arm around her waist. “Careful,” he told her. “It wouldn’t pay to hurry. You step off the path here and I’d have the demons’ own time finding you again, assuming I ever could. The tunnel, I suspect, tested the faithful. But it weeded out a lot of the faithless at the same time.”
She shivered—the cool and damp of the tunnel would give her an excuse if he should ask her what bothered her, but she felt her fear and a sense of ghostly presences much more.
“I can’t imagine anything being worth this sort of a trek,” she said.
A moment later, he led them free of the tunnel, and she took back the words. On this side of the tunnel, fruit trees and flowering trees grew in rampant, unchecked, glorious profusion. Here, light filtered through a low, sparse canopy and dappled the richly green, grassy ground. Off to her left, she could see a domed building, its windows long gone but the gracefully curving lines of its ancient architecture still as stunning as they had been the day it was built. And behind and to the right of it, perfectly framed by the mouth of the tunnel in a manner that could only have been planned, the waterfall tumbled from high black cliffs—a thin, twisting ribbon of rainbow-tinted living art.
“Oh,” Velyn whispered.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“I’ve never seen anything more flawlessly created, or more soothing to the eye.”
Farsee laughed. “You will. We’re going to the chapel now.”
To the chapel? Yes, she’d been in the mood to be entertained, amused, and, if she was lucky, driven out of her body for a short while by a talented lover—but that had been back at the house into which the bastards of the Order had installed her before going on their way, abandoning her in this steaming hellhole. The mood had passed. Now she felt the urge to eat, then maybe sleep—and then she thought she might give some thought to sex.
But Farsee, pulling her forward like an excited child dragging a reluctant parent, managed to impart some of his enthusiasm to her. And when he ushered her beneath the moss-edged arch and into the chapel itself, she stopped and gasped.
A combination of art and nature had turned what had once been a lovely chapel into what could only be considered a bower for romance. Enough of the roof had caved in to permit light for growing things—and the flowering vines that covered the beautiful stone walls filled the still air with a sweet, heady scent as compelling as the musk of sex itself. At the back of the chapel, what might have once been a sacrificial fount or a baptismal font or even a sacred spring bubbled from the wall into a clear, moss-edged round pond. Water poured from the pond into a stream carved into the floor; the stream split into two waterfalls at the steps leading down to the main portion of the chapel, and then ran out in two pretty, softly burbling little rivulets in which tiny, jewel-colored fish darted and flashed. Iridescent birds spun in and out of the vines above, their wings so quick Velyn could only see the blur of them; they darted from flower to flower and hung in the air as if suspended by their own magic before shooting out of the open roof at last, like tiny, fiery festival rockets.
And at the juncture just beneath the twinned waterfalls sat an enormous ivory basin—and in the basin rested cushions and comforters of silk and linen. Right in the falls beside the basin, a bottle of golden wine was chilling. Bread and seppe fruit and taratale pastries, legendary for their aphrodisiac properties, sat on an altar. A lutelle stood on its own little stand, and a gold-bound book lay amid the cushions, an invitation to read. Velyn thought she recognized it simply by its exquisite binding— Carmathi Toruri’s Poetry of Lovers.
“But for the food, I would think you had this little lovenest ready-prepared for any woman you could lure here.”
“And you would be mistaken. When I saw you walking across the compound your first day there, I thought that never had I seen a woman I so wanted—and never had I seen one I was so unlikely to get.” Farsee leaned close to her and brushed his lips along the side of her neck, and she shivered, wonderfully. “And yet, here you are, and all my preparations these last few days are suddenly made worthwhile.”
She turned into his embrace and whispered, “And yet you could have shared sport with me in my little room.”
He nodded solemnly. “And chanced the interruptions of villagers curious about you, and suffered the heat of that tiny enclosed space, where here we have air cooled by waterfalls and the wings of lovely birds, and we have food, and music, and poetry.”
She slid a hand down his chest, down his belly, and down—and stroked him through his coarse clothing, and felt him respond. He was all over her then, food and music and poetry forgotten as they shed clothes and inhibitions with equal speed. Their mating, like the rough coupling of lions, had as much of fight to it as of lust. He held her down, bit the back of her neck, and she cried out in the shock of pain become pleasure; she turned and pivoted a hip into him, caught him off balance and threw him into the basin of cushions, and dove on top of him, forcing his hands above his head, riding him hard. They tangled, untangled, crashed together again and again, in configurations new to one or both of them, and at endless last when they lay sodden and spent across the cool linen and warmer silk, he laughed, reached across her, and pulled the wine from the tiny, murmuring waterfall.
“Drink?” he asked.
“I could drink it dry by myself.”
“But I won’t let you do that, greedy girl.” He poured her a glass, handed it to her, and poured one for himself. Then, the effort more than he had energy for, he flopped back into the cushions and said, “My gods-all, what a gloriously beddable bitch you are, woman. You have thighs like pythons; I thought my ribs would break from the strain.”
Velyn didn’t inhale her wine, but it was a near thing. She coughed a little and said, “Nor have I ever experienced a talent quite like yours. Could we just stay here? At least a day or a week or maybe a month or two? I don’t relish the walk back—and you did things I didn’t even know were possible.”
He sighed. “Well, we don’t have to walk back. I hid an aircar here— that was how I got all the cushions and the food here ahead of time and still managed to have them fresh. We can stay awhile longer, but not overnight.” He brushed her breast with his lips. “Sadly. Wondrous as this place is during the daylight hours, I would not wish to be here once darkness falls. The jungle has no respect for humans then.”
Velyn sighed her disappointment, then brightened. “No matter. You have the aircar. We can fly to civilization and continue our entertainment there.”
He smiled and said, “Perhaps we can, at that.” She sipped the last of her wine and held out her glass, and he reached over and refilled it for her. He fed her one of the pastries. She had a bit more of the wine. And then she slept.
; She woke to find herself still naked, but now bound. The last rays of the sun illuminated the broken edge of the roof; inside the chapel, night had already come. Farsee had gone, and had taken the food, her clothing, the book of poetry, the musical instrument, and even all the cushions upon which she had been lying; instead, she found herself stretched out in the smooth ivory basin like a sacrifice chained and awaiting the knife-wielding priest. She wondered if she had become just that.
Her heart thudded as something big moved outside the chapel. She tried the bindings at her wrists, working to free her hands. But they fit to her as if they were a part of her. She struggled to her feet, and found that, though Farsee—or someone else, if not Farsee—had bound both her hands and feet, she had not been tethered to the basin or anything else that might keep her within the chapel. She could flee. Hobbled, naked, nearly blind in the darkness, and with a headache and a foul taste in her mouth that suggested Farsee had poured more than wine into her glass, she did not, however, think she would get far. If Farsee feared for his own life in the jungle at night, she doubted she would have any chance at all.
She had to find shelter—something she could barricade. She would have to go through that hellish dark passageway to get away from the chapel; would have to find one of the complete, regularly visited buildings on the other side. If she could hold out this one night, maybe one of the villagers would find her in the ruins in the morning.
The last curve of light slid away from the broken roof. She shuddered. Should she cast a light spell? Or would that summon the jungle hunters? Would she perhaps be better off working her way to a corner and hiding, still and silent, until dawn? Or should she seek better shelter?
And then a cheery voice from the arch at the back of the chapel: “Well, you’re awake just in time. I have the aircar packed with all my things, and I thought for sure I was going to have to carry you out.” He snapped his fingers, and a handful of little lights spun to life around his head. He grinned at her and said, “I swear, I’d have another go at you if we had the time.”
“You could take the damned bindings off first,” she said, and then she noticed that he had changed. He no longer wore the khebarr of an island villager. Now he wore green and black—and something about the formality of the robes, and the way he wore them, chilled her blood more than any thought of being abandoned alone in the jungle ever could have.
Velyn had thought herself terrified at the thought of a night alone in the jungle. Now the jungle seemed friendly by comparison. “You bastard.”
He laughed. “We could have just gone straight back to the city. But I thought that would be such a waste; I’d heard rumors of what a talent you were, and when the Inquest is finished with you … ah, never mind. You’ll get the bad news soon enough, and why ruin a lovely day by thinking about it now? And all I can say is, the rumors don’t begin to do justice to the truth. I’d keep you if I could—really. If the Inquest didn’t already know I’d found you, I’d have you tucked away in a private little love nest somewhere.” He shrugged. “But they know I have you, so …” He sauntered over to her and she took a swing at him. This time he had a mission, and she didn’t catch him off guard as she had during their sex play. With an efficiency that shocked her, he caught the binding that held her arms and whipped a second binding around her waist and attached it. As quickly as that, she couldn’t move her arms at all.
He smiled at her—a cold, calculating smile—and said, “If you want to walk out to the aircar under your own power, behave right now. If you force me to carry you out, I’m sure I’ll find your soft, naked body too much to resist, and I’ll simply have to act out my worst and most aggressive lusts on you.”
She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry as sun-broiled sand. She nodded acquiescence. When he pointed toward the door, she walked. When he gestured at the backseat of the aircar, she got in without fight or question. She might find an opportunity to escape from him. If she was lucky, she’d make an opportunity to kill him. When she sat, he threw a blanket over her. She used the cover to begin working at her restraints; she felt certain she could find some way to win her freedom.
As a last resort, perhaps she could buy it.
Chapter 19
Wraith woke to a soft click at his cell door. He sat up, expecting to see Solander, but it was too early. Stotts now sang his maddening babble—three notes, all off-key, all grating. Two guards waited for him, with the cell door open. One of them smiled at him, amused. “You could sleep through that, Gellas? Very, very impressive.”
“I spend days and nights listening to actors practicing their lines, all at the same time, over and over and over,” Wraith said. “What’s one more babbling idiot to me?”
The other guard studied him, eyes curious. “You didn’t find him wearing?”
Wraith shrugged. “I find them all wearing. I’ve learned over the years not to hear them.”
“Well, you would have had a—ha, a bit of a reprieve anyway,” the first guard said. “You’re to be moved.”
“Moved?” That wasn’t in the plan. Wraith glanced at Solander, who sat in opposite cell, as still as if he’d been frozen, his eyes closed, his hands folded on his lap. “So soon?”
“The Masters have had a breakthrough in finding Vincalis. Some confessions, apparently. We’re to have public executions, from what we hear, and the guilty are being separated from the innocent.”
Wraith studied him. “Oh? You’re separating the innocent, but not freeing them? That’s an interesting way to treat innocent people.”
“Orders.” Both guards shrugged.
They had their attention on Wraith. Behind them, Solander stood silently, and opened his eyes, and clasped his hands together tightly. Light began to curl away from his skin, almost like the fog that curled across the surfaces of warm lakes on cool mornings.
Wraith stood with his head just a little down while the guards stepped into his cell and reached for his hands and bound them in heavy metal manacles. Which, he supposed, answered any question he might care to ask about whether he was presumed to be innocent or guilty. With his head angled down, though, he could see what Solander was doing—and as long as he kept his body angled as it was, both guards kept their backs to Solander.
“… leaf bread … bones meat … stick … hot-bang-god … dog train … flee … big fly fall spot spank. Leaf bread. Bones meat. Stick hot. Bang. God dog train flee. Fly. Fall—”
“Shut up, will you!” the younger guard bellowed. “At least for a few minutes!”
“Spot,” Stotts whispered. “Spank leaf bread. Bones. Meat-stick. Hot bang.”
The whispering, Wraith thought, was actually worse. Except, of course, that it created one final distraction that Solander could use.
The light grew very bright for just an instant—bright enough that both guards turned. Solander glowed like a small sun in the center of his cell, illuminated both from the outside and from within—he was, in that single instant, beautiful beyond anything that Wraith had ever seen. Then he vanished, and the light with him, and for a moment Wraith could see nothing but the blazing light that had burned its shape into his eyes. When his vision cleared, the guards were both racing for Solander’s cell. Wraith waited where he was—as long as he stayed still, he could hope that he would not draw either of them back to himself.
He hoped that Solander had a plan that included both of them. He hoped. He trusted. And he waited, because if he ran, one of them would be sure to run after him, and …
They unlocked Solander’s cell. Threw open the cell door and raced in. The door closed behind them with a clang, and a blue fire exploded along the edges, fusing it into an inescapable mass of molten whitestone.
As quickly as that, Solander reappeared. “Let’s go. This isn’t ideal, but we’re out of options.”
Velyn fought Farsee and the handful of other Masters who dragged her into the Gold Building; on the way back, Farsee had regaled her with tales of the multitudes who had vanished inside a
gainst their will and never came back out.
But, determined though she was, she couldn’t hope to win a fight in which she was both bound and hopelessly outnumbered. She satisfied herself that she managed to hurt a few of them, and that if nothing else they would have bruises to show for their meeting with her.
They dragged her into a room where banks of chairs rose up to a high ceiling, and a brilliant—even painful—light blazed down on a clear half circle of floor to the front; and they hauled her into the light and strapped her—still bound, naked, and chilled—into a chair. On the way in, she’d been able to see that the room was mostly empty, but now, caught in that merciless light, her eyes could make out nothing but blackness beyond.
In the darkness before her, silence. They would say something soon, she thought. Ask her questions. Demand whatever truths she might know. She wouldn’t answer; she’d already decided that. When they spelled her—and they would—she would tell them what they wanted to know. But she wouldn’t volunteer anything. She wouldn’t betray herself by choice.
But they didn’t ask her anything. She knew they were there. She could feel them staring at her. She could sense them all around her, even though she couldn’t see them. She might as well have been alone in that huge room, though. Alone beneath that merciless light. Her heart raced madly, and her mouth went dry. The silence stretched.
Maybe, once they brought her into the room and tied her to the chair, they’d left. Maybe she was simply imagining them sitting above her, staring down at her. Maybe they intended to leave her here. She fought against her bonds, but they’d been applied by someone who knew what he was doing, and who didn’t intend to have any mistakes. She couldn’t even loosen the straps a little.
Alone? Or silently observed?
