“No!” He sounded strangled. “It is a curse in the blood! My grandsire had the skill to wield it as a defense, but I had not known it was in me until…”
“Until what?” she challenged. A final lurch brought the iron hook tearing from the wall, and Nyal ducked as it shot past just over his head. I darted forward to cut the belt still bound around my lady’s wrists, but neither of them paid me any heed.
A slow smile lit Nyal’s face. Only then, I think, did the last of the stone leave his system. “Until I was tormented past bearing by a rival and comrade who seemed untouched by the fire she lit in me.”
“Did you think me so untouched?” Rage abruptly gone, she let the whisper of a smile curve her lips. “Try me.”
Her wrestling stance would have horrified Hecanthe, who had wanted me to teach her “a woman’s proper weapons,” but the two gleaming bodies testing and striving against each other understood far better than I the erotic tension of strength on strength.
They began with classic wrestling moves, scarcely stirring for long moments as flesh strained against taut flesh. Nyal’s shoulders were broader, but Domande’s lithe dexterity countered his strength so that they were evenly matched.
He was instantly, magnificently aroused, despite his recent release. This might have given my lady the advantage, but her own tasting of her body’s hungers had served only to increase them. She put her mouth to sweaty muscles straining to break her hold, brushed hard-swollen nipples against his heaving chest, then swiveled to clasp his probing shaft between tensed buttocks before a thrust of her hip sent him to his knees.
Any resemblance to formal wrestling crumbled. He grasped her hips and pressed his mouth into her belly, and she pushed his head downward toward the dark-honey curls between her thighs, and though my link to her was fading I knew by her gasps just where his tongue and hands caressed her.
When he pulled her off balance and pinned her shoulders to the floor she resisted only enough to savor the friction. His hardness stroked and probed her until she raised her hips for him to plunge in all the deeper, and gripped his thrusting buttocks with her long, strong legs.
Her moans grew rougher, more demanding. Suddenly, with a great heave, she flipped him to his back, covered his mouth with her own, then raised upright until she was riding him hard astride. His groans came between clenched teeth as he fought to hold on until at last her head went back and a cry of triumph tore from her throat.
My link was broken. The sight and sound of them made me wild with longing. I could not have told which of them I would rather hold, which I would rather be, but there was no one to ease me now. I did not know how to bear it. Slavery had never been such agony.
I retrieved my cloak and slipped out past the horses and into the night. With no clear goal I made my way along the overgrown road as quickly as moonlight would allow, mind and body in such turmoil that I nearly stumbled into a horse and rider coming toward me.
“Riette!” Eyes wide with shock stared down at me from a bearded face. I turned and ran. The deep voice rumbled again, cracking in pain, “Riette, come back!”
I burst into the lodge just ahead of him. “Mistress! Someone comes!”
Nyal leapt to his feet and grabbed my lady’s sword, but she stayed him with a gesture. The giant figure looming in the doorway fixed his eyes on me as though I were a ghost, until the firelight revealed that mine was not quite the face in his dreams. His great head bowed for a moment; then he shook off past sorrow and turned to my mistress.
“You are looking very fit, Domande.” His tone was dry as he glanced from her naked flesh to Nyal’s.
“Never better, Father.” She grinned like an urchin, and his answering smile was a mirror of hers. His hair was a darker, grizzled version of her bronze curls, and his eyes beneath heavy brows glinted with the same green-amber flame.
He moved as though to embrace her but drew back and lowered himself to his knees. “Lady Domande.” His tone was now measured and formal. “Your father the King is dead. The Council entreats you to return to lead your people.”
Her face turned pale and set. “Do you think I would renounce my father the General?”
He rose wearily to his feet, leather armor creaking over massive shoulders. “No need of that. The people are not deceived, but they judge that your blood-claim through Queen Riette is sufficient. Your strength is needed to resist the encroachment of the Empire; backed, of course, by my strength and the loyalty of my troops.”
“And mine.” Nyal laid his arm across her shoulders; when she did not shake him off it tightened into an embrace. The General cocked an inquiring brow.
“Then so it shall be.” Domande’s face was serene with assurance and fulfillment. “Shebbah.” She turned to me. I felt the General’s weary eyes on me as well. “There are no slaves in my country, and there are none here. But it would be good of you to help the General to remove his armor and bathe away the dust of travel. Will you give him ease while Nyal and I go to view the river by moonlight?”
“I will, Lady.” It was hard not to call her mistress.
As I took the older man’s calloused hand it jerked, then tightened on mine, and the link took hold. I knew, now, who would give me ease, whose great strong body would press mine into submission, who would demand all I could give and fill me with all I desired.
Or almost all. I let one lingering glance caress Domande’s smoothly muscled form as she went through the door, then turned my full heart and mind toward the master whose need was greatest.
SAINTS AND HEROES
M. H. Crane
A genuine Singer-clan earthwitch!” Taking two steps for each of tall Borsa Eld’s, the guide rubbed his hands together. “You could charge gold telling fortunes at the Sleeper’s Temple tonight.”
“I’m here to pray for guidance, not make money,” said Borsa.
The guide looked at Borsa’s worn clothing. “Consider it.”
Borsa blinked at the noon sun pouring down into the narrow, banner-festooned street. He tugged the hood of his gray linen coat deeper over his face and tall, whisker-fringed ears. His pale gold beard, perfect for warmth in the cold south, felt sticky from the tropical heat.
A scream sounded from the maze of alleys.
“What was that?” Borsa couldn’t track the sound through the hood.
“Someone celebrating early. The best courtesan houses are on this hill, and every wealthy merchant and noble is in Ajara City today.”
“Market day?”
The guide laughed. “They await the Northwarden and his Lady Consort, the new Saint.” He turned when he realized Borsa had stopped. “You didn’t know about the Consorts’ Progress?”
“Oh,” said Borsa, feeling stupid. “I’ve been away in the glacier-lands. Consorts? I knew about the man, from twelve years ago.”
“The Lord Consort never shows himself. Shy or not, he has to share now. The Northwarden’s courted a Jade Coast princess for five years, and finally won her.”
“What bargain did she drive, I wonder?”
“Whatever she wants. He’s the Lord of Sorcery, awake and rutting again, after leaving us Sirrithani all alone for six thousand years. The richest man in the world, and immortal,” said the guide. “And she’s his latest ordained bride.”
Borsa fought the urge to run for the nearest city gate. “So he’ll visit the Sleeper’s Temple. Lead me to Maker’s fane, instead.”
The guide edged away. “A place of ill repute.”
“With so many crafters in Ajara, I thought she would be well loved.”
“Ah,” said the guide, visibly choosing words. “It’s said that Maker abandoned her temple. Do you still wish to go?”
“More than ever,” said Borsa, eyeing the banners and ribbons again. Red for weddings. Amber for the Sleeping Goddess who contained the world’s inner fires. Green for the Northwarden, her emissary among mortals. And vivid night-sky blue for the lilies sacred to clever Biha-Arra, the Maker who crafted the Sirrithani r
ace.
He saw one blue ribbon, fallen into an alley mouth, swirl in a fitful whirlwind. A stag-drawn wagon waited by a discreet trade entrance fifty paces down the alley. Three mercenaries stood guard. A fourth had opened the wagon’s door and unfolded its wooden steps.
“What is down that way?”
“The Fountain of Roses,” said the guide, urging Borsa out of sight. “I can show you cheaper courtesan houses.”
Borsa looked back around the corner. Down the wagon stairs came a hard-faced woman in dark gray robes. She held a limp, barefoot child dressed in dark red and purple rags. Steel manacles glittered around the child’s ankles.
“A youngling, sold to the flesh trade?”
“No child,” said the guide, unable to pull Borsa back again. “A full-grown Dana. There’s an Enclave of them in southern Ajara. They sell themselves sometimes to those craving, er, a little body.” He trailed off as Borsa glared down at him.
“Doesn’t look like a willing sale to me.” Borsa knew of the Smallfolk, but he’d never seen one. He thought of why a Sirr man or woman would crave a short, fine-boned whore, and swallowed sour bile.
The victim’s head lifted. Borsa saw a young man with honey-gold skin and a long brown braid. Seeing Borsa, the Dana-man shrieked: “Help me, by any gods you honor! I’m a traveler with Enclave safe passage papers! Help! Mmmph!” The duenna laid her hand over his nose and mouth, and he sagged witless.
The guide cursed as he ran, “You’re on your own, Maker’s witch!”
Borsa ducked back, praying silently: Biha-Arra, since you brought me to this, a little help?
The whirlwind kicked up thick dust at the alley mouth. Borsa lost the sound of coughing soldiers two streets away.
Half an hour and some wrong turns later, he rang a gold-washed bell hanging by a wrought-iron gate. Inside the courtyard, vivid green rosebushes and their scarlet flowers contrasted with the native teal and blue trees shading them. A fountain gurgled in a shallow red marble basin.
A Round-Ear girl swayed into view beyond the bars. Used to Sirrithani spans, Borsa thought her barely a century old. He remembered her folk died of old age before a hundred, and lowered his estimate to twenty. A shapely child in a tight, red silk dress. Gold-netted rubies lay at her throat, wrists and ankles. Her ears glimmered like pale pink shells under her dark braids. Her fingers and toes were tipped with small pink-white scales, not semi-retractable Sirrithani claws. To downplay her small irises and shock-pale sclera, the girl looked at Borsa through lowered eyelashes.
She tallied his worn clothing, boots and unkempt beard. “I’m sorry, my lord earthwitch. We’re closed.” She had no fangs, only squarish little white teeth.
“I am expected,” Borsa said, not knowing what urge of his goddess’s left his lips. “From Maker’s fane.”
“Ah,” said the girl, opening the gate. “Welcome to the Fountain of Roses, my lord—”
“On Maker’s errands, I have no name.”
“A pity,” the girl purred, but led him to a door hidden behind turquoise vines. Once out of the light, Borsa pushed up his hood. The girl’s eyes widened at the sight of his: large-irised, blue as the Maker’s lilies. “You have Singer-clan eyes, my lord earthwitch! How fair.”
“On my grandmother’s side.” Borsa kept his voice low to match her hushed tone as they walked down a dimly lit spiral staircase. The red gems in her necklace pulsed with tiny fires at his every word.
“Are you here for the Progress?”
He weighed lies and chose a kind of truth. “My husband and wife are.”
“Turn here. You married, and remained in your Order?”
“I had Maker’s dispensation,” said Borsa, playing along. “But my wife is more my husband’s wife than mine. Oh, she would be the splendor of any family. Her gift with numbers and letters will put my husband’s business to rights. She will give us strong and brilliant heirs.”
“Yet you miss how it was.” The stair ended in a door of silvery-blue gir-wood, expensive and strong. “I return to my post,” she whispered close by his ear, her lithe tongue caressing his sensitive fringe. “Knock thrice, then once, and say you’re from the fane.”
Borsa wondered how deep his goddess would keep him mired in her new plots. He took a step backward and felt pain lash along his nerves. That far, he thought. Five years ago, he’d run from destiny and begged Biha to hide him. Of course, she’d ask a price.
When he knocked and repeated his errand through a tiny slot, he heard several bolts withdrawn from the other side.
“You took your time,” said the tall, voluptuous Sirrithani woman dressed in the establishment’s scarlet silks. She pulled him into a dry cellar smelling faintly of sex and incense. On the floor newly packed traveling gear and saddles hinted at a future journey. Getting a better look, she said, “You’re not Aduano.”
“I’m one of the Nameless.” Borsa hoped he remembered his Order’s signs and countersigns.
She didn’t demand them. “I see no weapon but a staff.”
“My will is my weapon,” said Borsa. “Maker listens to me. Through her I can speak into the world’s hot black heart where the Sleeper dreams. What is my task?”
She urged him toward another gir-wood door set in the other wall. “Our training in runecraft is limited. We needed an ally from Maker’s Order as appalled at her Temple’s decay as we are.”
She turned the handle. Borsa heard a muffled scream.
There were a thousand poisons in the world. It was said Biha-Arra had invented most of them. Out of habit, Borsa still carried several of the less deadly in quartz vials and rubber spray bulbs inside his coat pockets. He uncapped one bulb as he followed the housemistress.
His Singer-clan nose smelled ink, herbs, grain vinegar, water spilled on dusty clay, a man’s spent pleasure and a woman’s honey-salt arousal.
The Dana-man, stripped and gagged, hung with his chest supported by an openwork gir-wood frame angled against a wall. His thighs were strapped to the frame, immobilizing his hips. His short, pointed ears, bare of Sirr whiskers, lifted through his loose brown hair. Cream-white semen dotted a shallow red stoneware basin in front of the prisoner. Herbed vinegar water waited in another basin on the floor between his legs. An older Sirrithani man in faded lily-blue robes held aside the Dana’s hair. He painted runes on the Dana’s back and legs with dark blue ink.
Borsa sprayed the housemistress full in the face. She slumped to the floor. The man looked up, eyes widening, his cry stopped unvoiced by the rest of the bulb. Both still breathed. Borsa barred the door again. He tied and gagged the two Sirr with the silken red ropes he found on the floor.
Easing the leather gag from the Dana-man’s mouth, he said: “I heard you in the alley. I am Borsa Eld, a priest of Biha-Arra, among other things. I’ve come to free you. Thirsty? Here is clean water.” He tipped his blue porcelain traveling flask to the Dana’s chapped lips.
“I thought you a drug dream,” whispered the Dana-man. “Thank Kemurra’s Ghost you aren’t. I am Lai Kendoshil.”
“Do you know what they were doing?”
“Preparing me for that perverted old man up at the Blue Temple,” said Lai. “He hungers for children. He can’t have them. So he buys Dana slaves.”
Borsa looked over the runes. The rebel priest had copied from a gir-paper grimoire bound in indigo blue leather. The spell on the page nauseated him. “Did they say what they were painting on you?”
“Lust-spells, to make me pliant,” hissed the Dana.
“They lied. We caught them before they finished the spell, but I can’t wash it off.”
“What does it really do?”
Borsa’s fingers trailed along Lai’s narrow spine, following the spell. “You’re sealed as a sacrifice to one of the worst aspects of the Sleeping Goddess: Deathgold, who sleeps and wakes within volcanoes. This could destroy Ajara City.” And though not the Northwarden, Borsa thought, certainly his new wife and countless other mortals!
“Good,”
said Lai. “I curse this country, its Queen and its priests. I curse the Northwarden for shunning my people as criminals. I may be the priest of a dead goddess, but in her name I curse this whole brutal world.”
“I’d drink to that, some days,” said Borsa. “But there are innocents among every race. Your folk are so rare that only a few Sirr have ever seen you. You should be as protected as the Round-Ears.” When he said it, he felt Biha-Arra’s attention sharpen within his mind. Her goal?
“As whores? Toys? Pets?” snarled Lai, his slim body wrenching at his bonds. “Twelve thousand years past, my people came here in ships faring between the stars. Look at us now.”
“The ink won’t vanish until the spell is set,” said Borsa. “If I freed you now, you’d spend the rest of your life with a half-finished prayer to Deathgold written on your back. If anyone touched you in love or lust, the ground under your feet would become a volcanic pit.”
“Then kill me! If you free me to die later, Borsa Eld, I’ll pick the biggest Sirrithani city I can find, and sell myself to some fool at its very center—”
“I can change the spell.” Borsa tapped the partial runes at the small of Lai’s back. “Here. Seal you to Biha-Arra, not Deathgold. Maker is a gentler mistress. You’d be alive.”
“Perhaps I want to die,” said the Dana-man fiercely.
Borsa wrapped his big hand over the back of Lai’s neck. “I cannot leave you thus. You will be dead, or Biha’s. Choose.”
He knew Lai’s choice when the Dana’s body relaxed. “Change the spell. I will live. Whatever life an exiled exile can have.”
Borsa traced the remaining runes of the spell. When he was silent too long, Lai asked, “What now?”
“It’s set and triggered by rape. They meant to take away your memory so you couldn’t warn the High Priest. When he claimed you, the spell would wake.”
Lai laughed bitterly. “Finish the spell and do what you must. My purity was sworn to Kemurra’s Ghost. They’ve robbed me of what little worth I had.” His narrow buttocks wriggled, his thigh-length hair twitching aside to reveal the red glazed porcelain plug filling his channel. “They—opened me with some drugged oil. I fought, but the woman was very skilled.”
Thrones of Desire Page 13
