I raged against myself. There had to be something I could do.
Then it came to me.
All that energy had healed me. Could it heal her? I fought to calm myself, to focus. I took everything inside me and tried to reverse the flow.
It was hard. I didn’t know how I had drawn the energy in the first place, and I had no idea how to send it back. But there had to be some way to do it.
I focused on Narilora, on the dwindling ember of her life under me. I tried to hold it, to embrace it. To pull it back. But it kept falling away from me.
I screamed.
I went deeper into my head, trying to see the energy, what it was and what it did. I found myself falling into a gray fog not unlike the kiralabar-sleep. The cloud began coalescing around me. Down below, I saw the last dying spark of Narilora’s life.
And I saw something else.
Human DNA.
She was part human. Not just inter-fertile. The people of Taitala were descended from humans. And that was the link.
I followed it down, catching the last tiny spark as it began to fade. I poured the energy into her, all of it. The spark flared back into life. It flowed outward through her, into the wound. I could see it knitting the sundered flesh back together.
Narilora gasped again, suddenly rising up against me. I held her tightly.
Then I felt for her neck. The cut aJia’jara had opened was closed. There was blood everywhere.
But she was going to live.
“What did you do?” she whispered. “Will? What did you do? I saw –”
“Shh, pussy-cat. I love you, but I’ll explain later.”
I helped her to her feet. I yanked the stick from aJia’jara’s eye. He was dead. I reached down to grab his arm and dragged him into the hallway.
I found a crowd of linyang guards, wives, and servants flowing toward me. They saw aJia’jara’s body, and fell back, regarding me with a mix of awe and terror.
I tossed his body in front of me like a sack of potatoes.
“I am Will Hawthorne! I am the makalang! I have slain your tsulygoi, and I claim what is his.”
One by one, the guards dropped their weapons. The wives fell to their knees, and the servants did likewise.
I let out a loud breath.
“Excellent. Now someone please get me some pants.”
Chapter 18
When the dust settled, we reassembled in aJia’jara’s sitting room on the third floor. Narilora went down to get Ayarala, Kisarat, and Eladra, who were waiting outside. The three of them came running into the room, though Eladra stopped short as I embraced Ayarala and Kisarat, who hugged me tightly for several moments.
Then Ayarala pushed back a bit, whispering into my ear.
“It’s time, Will. Ask her.”
I looked at Eladra.
“Bunny-girl. Come here.”
She did, hugging me.
“I want to claim you, but I know you have mixed feelings about mating.”
“I will be your wife, Will. I wish to serve you. I want to mate with you.”
For a moment, I felt that same cringe, but suddenly I thought, fuck it. None of them were anything like Jacqueline, and what was going on here was nothing like my marriage had been. Whatever you wanted to call it, I wanted to be with them.
“Then we’re good.” I kissed her. “We can mate tonight.”
I held the four of them a few moments longer. Then I saw Yisaraq standing behind us. To say she looked confused and conflicted would have been an enormous understatement.
“Wi . . . tsulygoi. There are decisions you need to make now.”
“Which are?”
“Come. I will show you.”
I followed her out into the hallway. In the center of the third floor, where the four hallways came together, were nine linyang on their knees. All of them were bruised and unsteady. When they saw me, they fell forward onto their hands.
“What –?”
“These are the guards you defeated during your escape.”
Oh.
I didn’t need more females just yet. I still had to deal with aJia’jara’s. And I wanted no more death.
“There is no shame in being defeated by the makalang,” I finally said. “You still have worth as warriors. You have worth to me. Serve me and live.”
One by one, they rose up from their hands, looking around at each other.
“Are you our tsulygoi?” one of them asked. She was older than the others and appeared to be one of the leaders.
“What is your name?”
“Meridrian.”
“Meridrian, I need your loyalty and allegiance. But I don’t need to mate with you.”
“I will serve you, Will of Hawthorne,” she said. The others murmured agreement.
“Then retrieve your weapons and return to your posts.”
They rose and went slowly back down the hallway together.
“Where are aJia’jara’s wives?” I asked Yisaraq.
“Do you wish to speak to them?”
“Yes. Bring all of them into the sitting room.”
“What of the five females from the clans, the ones you mated with?”
“Bring them as well.”
Over the next ten minutes, they all filed into the room. The five girls I’d mated with still looked weak and dizzy. aJia’jara’s wives spread out around the upper level, while the other five remained together in a clump. There were about thirty wives total, a fairly even mix of ages and races, though dwenda seemed to make up the largest group.
“I won’t command any of you to remain here,” I said. “I need aJia’jara’s compound and resources. I don’t necessarily need all his wives. I want only those who wish to stay.”
“What of us?” Merindra asked.
“That’s up to you as well. You weren’t sent here as wives. Stay, or go, whatever you want.”
I turned back to the group.
“I will assume any of you remaining at sundown want to be claimed.” Then I motioned for them to go. Yisaraq started to go with them, but I stopped her.
“I need you to take me to aJia’jara’s private quarters.”
She nodded. “They are on the fourth floor.”
◆◆◆
aJia’jara’s quarters took up the entire floor, comprising several different rooms, but there was something specific I was looking for, and I found it in what was clearly his office. There was a desk with stacks of crystal tablets, and around the desk was something I hadn’t seen on Taitala until now: bookcases stacked with a lot of very old books. But they were clearly things of Taitala, marked with the same pictograms that I didn’t understand but was beginning to recognize.
What I was looking for was in the corner of the room at the center of the building: a crystal block like iXa’aliq’s safe, only much larger.
“Go get aJia’jara’s body,” I said to Narilora. She and Kisarat returned with it in a few minutes, carrying it with a pair of guards.
It took me a few minutes of trial and error in pressing his dead hands against the safe, but eventually it opened.
The hoard of pikala plates inside made iXa’aliq’s stash look like a child’s piggy bank. As impressive as that was, something else seized my immediate attention: a stack of five leather-bound books that looked distinctly Earth-like in their binding and markings. I picked one up.
The leather was cracked and dried out, and the cover came off in my hands. But the aroma was the first familiar thing I’d smelled since arriving here. This book had come from Earth.
But it wasn’t a printed book. It was a handwritten journal. The writing was faded but still legible despite its archaic script.
The Journal of Capt. Silas Jeroboam Johnson, late of Boston, Mass.,
Being an Account of his Transport to a strange World, his Travels therein,
his many Wives, and his final Disposition
Vol. 1 - 1781 to 1783
“What is it, Will?” Kisarat asked.
I st
ood there trying to absorb the full truth of what this was, and what it meant.
“It’s the diary of the last makalang.”
They all gasped. I explained what aJia’jara had told me about his ancestry.
“You mean it’s all true?” Eladra asked.
“I don’t know yet what’s true and not. But it would seem that the answers are here.”
It was too soon to dive into this. I found aJia’jara’s master tablet and used it to reset the safe as we’d done with iXa’aliq’s. Once I’d confirmed it worked, I closed it all back up.
◆◆◆
I called everyone back to the sitting room at dusk. About half of aJia’jara’s wives had slipped away during the afternoon. Those that remained were all the younger ones. I looked for Yisaraq, smiling at her when I saw she was still here. Something then occurred to me.
“How many of you have mated?”
Only Yisaraq’s hand went up.
“All the ones who had mated left?” I asked her. “Besides you?”
“Yes.”
That made a certain sense. Eleven were left: four dwenda, three linyang and sorai, but only one talalong and cunelo. All of them were beautiful, and they wore skimpier clothing than what I’d seen on other females elsewhere. It looked like a lineup at a bikini contest, or maybe a fancy Vegas strip bar.
“Those of you who remain, consider yourselves claimed. You may return to your rooms.”
Thanking me and promising to serve me, they left. Yisaraq lingered at the end of the line, but I wasn’t ready to talk to her just yet. Finally she departed with them.
When they were gone, I was a bit surprised to see that only one of the clan girls had stayed. It was Merindra, the fox-girl.
“Where are the others?”
“They fear the makalang.”
“You do not?”
“I do . . .” Her vulpine eyes looked up at me as a shiny lock of ruby hair fell across her face. “But I also desire him.”
The three sorai among aJia’jara’s wives who remained with me were certainly very pretty, but Merindra was on another level. She was one of the most beautiful girls I’d ever seen in my life, even with the lush tail and the furry ears protruding from her head. Physically, she resembled a taller, curvier version of Ayarala: fit, defined, and athletic, with high, firm breasts. Back on Earth, she’d likely make a good living as a lingerie model.
I introduced her to the other four, and an idea occurred to me. She seemed to fit right in, but there was something else about it.
“However many females I claim, this group is special. All of you have been part of what I’ve done to get here.”
Merindra’s ruby eyebrows went up slightly.
“What did I do?”
I explained briefly about the energy flow I had with them, and how I had used it to defeat aJia’jara. I had never explained this to the others, and all of them fought back amazement.
But I didn’t tell them about healing Narilora. She asked me right after the fight not to tell anyone how it had gone. She was still unhappy about how aJia’jara had used her against me.
“There are five of you,” I went on. “One from each clan. I’m going to need your help to navigate what’s coming.”
Merindra looked at me, smiling slyly.
“You have not yet claimed me as wife, Will of Hawthorne. Do you mean to do so now?”
“I do.”
“I was once intended to be aJia’jara’s wife, when I came of age. That would have meant not mating for talons, if ever. I would have idled away my time here like those others you just dismissed so casually. I reached my tenth talon a few sampars ago, and I was preparing for my audience with aJia’jara. Then my grandmother arrived to tell me the makalang was here, and I had been chosen to mate with him. It was . . . a bit of a shock, you can imagine.”
“I’m sure.”
“Normally, you would need to defeat me in combat.” She stepped a bit closer to me, and reached up to touch my chin. “But after what you did to me today, I will consider myself defeated.”
She smiled again. This close, she made me a little dizzy.
“I am happy to serve the makalang, my tsulygoi. My body is yours.”
She looked at Ayarala, Kisarat, Narilora, and Eladra. After a moment, the five of them came together in a group hug.
“Welcome, awasa-late,” Ayarala said.
◆◆◆
After having the servants sterilize it, I took aJia’jara’s bedroom. The bed was easily large enough for the six of us.
I mated with Eladra that night as I promised. After holding myself off for so long with the clan girls, I was in no mood to go easy on her. I poured everything I had into her lush body, and when I was finally sated, I had reduced her to a quivering, barely conscious wreck. Then I cuddled with her, pulling her head against my chest and stroking her long ears.
“Makalang,” she whispered weakly. “I love you.”
I kissed her ears. “Go to sleep, bunny-girl.”
I lay there with her and the rest of them, bathing in the love and affection that flowed in from around me.
My wives.
And for the first time since I arrived on Taitala, that word felt right.
◆◆◆
There remained the question of what to do about the clans, and aJia’jara’s plan to revitalize their world.
I still wanted to get home, but I was little closer to that goal now than I had been before. The answers might be in Silas’s journals, and they might not.
I’d gone from having no one in my life to having five beautiful girls I was rapidly falling for. Girls who loved me and wanted me to stay.
And I had begun to realize that I might well have been brought here for a reason, by whatever force had pulled the first humans here eons ago. If I left, there might not be another makalang for centuries. I had seen enough to know Taitala would not survive that delay.
Cassie and Hunter needed me. But they had a family. They would survive without me, whatever the emotional fallout would be. I didn’t like it at all, but until I found a way home, I didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter.
aJia’jara’s idea of serving as a stud horse, mating in an endless, soulless assembly line, was a non-starter. Fathering legions of children I would never see or even know about? I was just not going to do something like that.
If not that, then what?
If I stayed here, just collected wives, and had children, that would help, but it would be too little to make a difference. I recalled what aJia’jara said about Silas’s children not making up for the losses in that war, likely because he had fled with his wives into the wilderness.
The clans would not agree to that idea, and that disagreement would be a fertile breeding ground for conflict. Were they to all turn against me, I would almost certainly lose any ability to decide what I did.
I needed to find a middle ground. And maybe there was a way to do it.
◆◆◆
I sent word to the clan leaders, explaining the new situation and requesting another meeting. It took several days before they could all return, which I spent exploring my new home and assessing what I had to work with.
The building was five stories plus the basement. The lowest level was comprised of storerooms and the battery room; they had apparently converted a storeroom into my cell. The large first floor was mostly guard and servant quarters, plus the kitchen. The second floor was the eating and meeting areas, plus a few rooms for the wives, though these were now unoccupied. The three quadrants of the third floor were wife quarters, with the fourth quadrant being the large sitting area. The fourth floor comprised my rooms, and the fifth was the garden and sun room. All the floors above the first had balconies extending over the floor below, and the third and fourth levels also had long rectangular pools for swimming and wading on the balconies outside. Solar crystals covered most of the exterior.
aJia’jara had clearly been one of the wealthiest residents of Phan-garad.
As unfamiliar as the furnishings and other items around the house were to me, it was obvious they were of top-tier workmanship and materials.
I asked Yisaraq if she knew where aJia’jara had gotten all of his money. She blithely informed me that his father spent nearly his entire life selling his mating services to the prominent females of Phan-garad, and aJia’jara continued to do so occasionally now that such services were in greater demand. That was when I learned that Phan-garad had banks, and aJia’jara had even more money on deposit with one of them. The impressive hoard I found in his safe was little more than his household petty cash supply.
“When were you planning to tell me this?” I asked.
“Forgive me, my tsulygoi. It did not occur to me until just now. I forget how little you know of our world.”
I sent Kisarat and Ayarala over to the bank to inquire what was going to happen. They returned an hour later with an older talalong female carrying a crystal tablet. I met with them in the office.
“So it is true,” the talalong said to me. “The makalang has returned.”
“Yes, it would appear so,” I replied.
She put the tablet on the desk in front of me.
“If you will place your hand here, I will transfer the account to you.”
“That’s it?”
“When one tsulygoi defeats another, all assets pass to the victor. It has always been thus.”
I pressed my hand on the tablet, and she tapped at it a few times.
“Thank you. We look forward to your business, Will of Hawthorne.”
◆◆◆
The clan leaders arrived for the meeting the next day. I wore clothes this time.
I started by informing them that while aJia’jara’s arrangement no longer held, I fully appreciated their predicament. I would work with them to repopulate this world, but on my terms.
“And what are your terms?” the linyang leader asked.
“I’ll mate only with my wives. aJia’jara’s idea of my serving in an assembly line of mating will not happen. I’ll choose from amongst those you send, so choose carefully. I may well send some of them back. The first group you sent was satisfactory, even if all but the sorai chose to leave.”
The Scarlet Cavern Page 17
