Lest did not respond. She did not dare risk his discovering that this information was already known to her. Rather, she preferred that her husband chew a bit longer on the hard gristle of his thoughts.
Her patience was rewarded.
“And if you were no longer in need of distraction, Wife?”
Her reply was cool and carefully measured.
“Do you mean to say if my brother should be brought back to us … unharmed?”
“Yes. That is what I mean.”
Lest sighed.
“Then I suppose I would have no more need for playthings. Rather, I think I would know peace with Mesrin safely at home. I might, even, find again the path that leads to our own bedchamber, dear Husband, given the circumstances.”
“Then I shall set my most elite to the task at once.”
Her breath caught.
“No, Raffiran. They cannot be trusted to not maltreat him should he resist.”
“But Lest, I have always said that I would prefer death than to dirty myself with the least touch of the human realm.”
“Nevertheless …” the High General’s wife replied, then left the room without waiting to hear anything more from her husband. Her humanlike hips swayed like a sensual pendulum as she stepped through the doorway, and it was only after she turned the next corner that Lest allowed herself to smile.
***
All that he had heard was like listening to people speak from far away, their voices muffled in thick woolen scarves, the things they said of as little importance as the murmurings of the mad.
Silas barely felt his own body as the sound of a woman’s voice finally struck a chord within him, and it was only as he was heaved again into the air by rough hands did he find the strength to call out her name.
Not because he had understood what was about to happen.
But simply because she was his only hope.
His feet skidded along a stone corridor as he could not find the strength to bear his own weight. Blurred visions of grim soldiers carrying him penetrated the confused haze of his thoughts.
Then he screamed. He screamed as his inner focus came upon the all too recent memory of being roasted alive. The memory of what it meant to be engulfed by flames and the despair that came just after when death refused to deliver him into its cold arms.
Someone close by laughed, then he was shaken hard and told to be quiet.
Silas blinked his eyes as they continued to drag him further away from Lest and whatever solace she might have offered him.
It hurt him to do so, but he shook his head and laughed weakly.
She had nothing to offer him.
Because of her, he was now being hauled away like a sack of potatoes and as to what end it would mean for him, Silas did not doubt it would likely go on for a very long time.
I don’t deserve this, he thought.
I’m alive, but I might as well have been condemned to Hell.
It did not matter to him that the pace of the soldiers carrying him slowed then came to a halt.
The soft voices of women barely registered as he was loosed to fall in a slump upon the hard stone floor.
It was as though his bones had been burned away while the rest of him had somehow resisted the infernal anger of an Estril lord.
Now. You fool, he thought to himself. This is your chance to escape.
The four soldiers that had carried him this far had stepped past him and beyond the silhouettes of their legs, Silas made out the blurred forms of women dancing, bright colors shifting like banners blown in the wind.
He blinked furiously, trying to clear his vision.
The Estril females were wearing masks, and he saw that there were at least twice as many as the soldiers then standing rigidly before him.
Silas searched desperately for the strength he so sorely lacked to pull himself together enough to slip away, but his limbs continued to refuse him.
It took all the strength he had to crane his head back and focus his eyes on the scene unfolding before him.
There were indeed two women for each soldier, and they did not take long to pirouette in pairs that encircled each of the male Estril.
The women wore masks and Silas imagined it might have been like that when his father had seen such things in faraway lands, where the coming of spring signaled the debut of great festivals in the cities. Where rich and poor alike donned clothing and elaborate masks that hid their true identities and where, for a short time, one could be anything — to anyone.
His father had spoken of it as a time of drink and debauchery, of trysts less clandestine than at any other time of the year. He had described it as being beautiful for the myriad colors one found in celebrations that ran the length of all the streets of the cities and that the crowd flowed and ebbed while raucous music played with wild abandon. His father had also said it was a bewildering time and that he soon tired of the reckless manner that the participants joined one another in carnal pleasures that lasted only briefly before passing on to the next and the next.
He had said it was a splendor unlike any other he had ever seen in his travels and that it was a thing as hollow and soulless as a rotted gourd, its brightly colored exterior betraying nothing of its putrid heart.
The women wasted no time as they brought their bodies closer to the soldiers, and soon the furtive touch became flagrant invitations to the carnal dance they proposed.
One of the soldiers glanced back at Silas, then grinned a humorless smile seeing him lying there prostate, helpless.
Then flame blossomed as bodies came together, bright color licking up and down inhuman bodies that broke into sweat while long smooth legs encircled the hard torsos of warriors who gave themselves fully to the unlooked-for boon before them.
Silas tried again to at least prop himself up on his arms, thinking if he could manage that much, perhaps his legs would follow.
He strained against the lassitude that weighed him down when, suddenly, a warm hand wrapped itself over his mouth, stifling whatever sound of surprise he might have made.
Then a mask just like those worn by the women before him slipped into view. It was a shimmering rose color, and the eyes looking back him from the mask’s cutouts were intense and earnest as she brought her free hand up to her exposed lips and pressed a single finger to them.
Silas nodded at her with what little strength he had, then the hand covering his mouth was gone.
The corridor slid by him in reverse as she dragged him backward quickly and in silence.
Then they turned a corner and she set his shoulders gently to the floor before stepping over his body to straddle him.
He felt her weight as she sank down to him, then both of her hands pressed hard against his chest and she arched her neck back.
Bright flame burst before his eyes like a silent star, then power flooded through his abused body.
It erupted in his core then flooded down and through him. His legs spasmed and kicked. His arms flew outward and his hands balled into white-knuckled fists.
Silas could no longer see the woman, and he realized it was because his own neck was arched back, the very tendons creaking as his muscles were forced alive by a power that felt like it would either save him or destroy him from one instant to the next.
Then her hands were gone and the blinding flame went out.
She bent over him, her face descended until he was sure their lips were about to collide, then she slipped to one side trailing along his jaw and up to his ear, so close that he could feel her lips move while she spoke.
“It will not last long. We must go at once.”
Silas nodded once again, not trusting himself to speak.
Just as he was about to get to his feet, the masked woman brought out a pair of sandals and set them to his feet.
At his unasked question, she whispered, “They are from your world and will break the trail you would otherwise leave behind you.”
“And you?” he said, his voice a g
rating sound.
She smiled and her full, upturned lips were a lovely sight to a man who had been so recently through more than one kind of trial by fire.
“Follow me,“ she said as she stood.
Her feet rose off the floor, then her body appeared to evaporate as flames flickered into being before tightening down into a glowing sphere that coursed away from him.
Silas sprung to his feet, marveling at the feel of wearing something real, something of true substance, then he was off, running as silently as he could after his veiled benefactor.
They flew down endless corridors, zigzagging from one to another until Silas had no idea of where they might be, where they had come from, to say nothing of where they were going.
All he could say with some certainty was that they were descending steadily in the vast edifice he found himself in, until, finally, the light sifting through high placed windows faded into a shadow world illuminated only by the glowing sphere that led him ever onward.
It felt to him that at least an hour had passed, even if it might have only been half that, when he began to feel fatigue seeping back into his bones.
He stumbled as the sphere brought him up short before a dark door set into a white stone wall rendered grey by the lack of natural light.
The Estril female coalesced before him and from somewhere on her person, she produced a key that she introduced into a lock that Silas had not seen until then. The door groaned as she heaved it backward, then they were through and she closed it after them again.
The chase began again, and it endured until Silas grew to hate the form of the glowing sphere the woman had assumed once more.
It went on and downward through black hallways, sometimes traversing great, empty halls, before they entered yet another corridor after another.
His legs grew leaden and he understood that she had not lied to him. The strength she had lent him was just that … ephemeral and quickly waning as he lumbered after her.
It was with a great sigh of relief that he saw the sphere halt its incessant forward flight, then lengthen into flames running over the human-like form of a highly desirable woman.
The flames subsided and her mask was still in place, but Silas made out that she hesitated.
The Estril searched along the black, roughly cut stone wall, then she murmured something that he did not understand.
Again, the key made its appearance, and once again it slipped into a keyhole that had not been there an instant earlier.
This time there was no door. Rather, the wall itself simply turned to a grey mist through which she did not hesitate to walk while signaling to him that he should do the same.
With the strength that had animated him until then ebbing to the last, Silas lurched into the room only to fall to the floor. It took all that he had left to remain sitting up.
A deathly silence reigned in that place. The tiny sounds, those one hears without hearing, the drop of moisture that had taken days to accumulate on a rocky ceiling only to fall with the slight stir of air at someone’s passing. The barely perceptible echo of a tiny beast scratching unseen and falling silent then resuming when all danger had passed.
Not one of these sounds dared enter where he now found himself. Nothing and no one was there, other than himself and the inhuman being now staring at him from behind her inscrutable mask.
“Your strength will return in its own time,” she said finally.
Then she walked to a corner of the relatively large space. Silas followed her with his eyes to see that she took up a basin that had blended with the dim coloring of the room so thoroughly that it looked to be made of the same material as the walls and floor.
She dipped it into the depression where it had been placed and he heard the unmistakable sound of water.
The masked woman came to set the receptacle on the floor beside him, then, using the hem of her own robe, she washed him gently but thoroughly, beginning at his face and working her way down his body.
Periodically she would rinse the black soot of what might have been the topmost layer of his own skin in the basin from the bit of loose robe she cleaned him with, and when the water grew too darkened she would empty it out on the floor next to where she had found it in the first place before refilling it and resuming her ministrations on the man who found himself lapsing into an ever-deepening torpor.
She continued working down his torso and across his abdomen when despite the all too oppressive fatigue weighing upon him, Silas felt himself stir to life down below.
She stopped, watching, the eyes behind her mask growing wide.
“I admit …” she said, then licked her lips before continuing, “… that I am overcome with curiosity to know the mystery of you, human. To understand why someone so important would risk so much over one such as you.”
Silas did not answer. He had no answer. All that had happened to him since being swept into the Estril world had been a mystery.
But now I know that this isn’t Lest in disguise, he thought.
He felt her fingers wrap around him. The heat of her touch was like violence and he groaned before finding his voice at last.
“Stop,” he whispered, then more strongly, “Please. Don’t.”
It was as if he had said nothing at all, for the Estril simply tightened her grip and then began to slide her hand up and down his length.
“No.”
Silas tried to lift an arm, desiring nothing more than to push her away while his own cock betrayed him, finding a force to stand rigid while the rest of him remained powerless to resist.
The female laughed.
“You see. Your strength returns, but not quickly enough for you, I suppose.”
The look in her eyes grew even more intense as she did not break her gaze, locked to his own.
“What makes you people think you have the right?” he said, then despite everything, Silas groaned at the hot touch of the hand holding him so tightly.
The woman in the mask simply shrugged, then she stood up to set one foot down on either side of him before sinking back down again.
She smiled as she reached back to guide him where he had asked not to go.
“I think we do it because we can,” she said with a voice that purred like that of a great cat.
“Now let me show you that you have not yet known all there is to know when one of us is as motivated in her duties as I am.”
Without waiting for his reply, or his refusal, she sank down over him, his member sliding deeply into the confines of her body.
Silas gritted his teeth, unwilling to betray himself with the pleasure he felt then. The masked woman was an extraordinarily tight fit — almost to the point of it being painful.
Then, suddenly, the pressure that felt like it would break him disappeared.
The Estril woman laughed.
Then he was seized in a grip that clamped down like a vise.
“Now you begin to understand,” she said, laughing as she threw her head back, then loosened her hold as she drew herself up only to come down hard against him.
Silas shut his eyes. He did what he could to think of something else, anything else.
But the masked woman was stronger than he was. He could not resist when his body refused to aid him. The only response left to him was one of reflex and instinct.
As weak as he was, he simply let his mind drift while the masked woman thrashed and pounded against him.
He searched for the calm eye of the storm that beset him and in failing that, at the last, he gave the inhuman creature what she sought.
Together they froze, muscles shivering, pleasure carrying them both up to an unseen pinnacle to leave them poised upon its brink.
Then, together, they tumbled down the precipice as wave after wave of sated desire rippled through them both, one of them with a wide smile, the other in a thin-lipped grimace.
Silas waited a moment to catch his breath, then he spoke.
“Get off me. Now.”
“So, you haven’t the least bit of gratitude for what I have done?”
He shook his head as much as he was able before answering her.
“You said it yourself. You did this as a service for someone else, someone important.”
Silas smiled a humorless smile before continuing.
“At first it seemed to be otherwise as you washed me, but it became clear very after that. No need to pretend that this was anything more than a task performed at the command of your superior.”
Her eyes darkened and flashed at the same time as she stepped over him then.
She walked briskly to the doorway of misted stone, then turned back to look at Silas from afar.
“Such a pity, really. You are but a sad little man after all.”
She turned away again and Silas raised his voice with a supreme effort.
“Wait. Where am I? How long do I have to stay here?”
When is Lest coming for me?
The masked woman laughed at his questions.
“The irony is that you are exactly where the General’s soldiers had meant to take you. The beauty is that they will never think to look here as they search for you.”
Fear rose in Silas’ throat then.
“Are you saying you’ve helped me escape into a prison cell?”
“Of course I did. But do keep in mind that what matters most is which jailer holds the key.”
“Stop,” Silas shouted with as much force as he could muster. “Tell Lest I must see her. Tell her that, please.”
“Oh. You still haven’t yet guessed, have you? I’m afraid that you will never see the High General’s wife again. Far too risky for either of you.”
And then she was gone. The door was closed, the mist become solid rock once more.
Silas was left alone with not even the least sound of anything — anything at all to keep him company.
Chapter Three — Melisse
The Marechal Chronicles: Volume VI, The Crucible: A Dark Fantasy Tale Page 4