Kalea closed her eyes and awaited the first lash…
Whack!
She gasped and her eyes sprang open again. The sting burst across her lower back and ran through all four limbs. A few seconds elapsed before the next one.
Pain roared through her like waves of evil spirits invading her body. By about the fifth lash, she forgot about thanking the Creator and cried instead. Thoughts of the elf dissipated too. She cried louder between each progressive crack of the switch.
Ten hits. She shrank away, attempting to tug one of her hands out of the loop.
“Stand your ground!”
Kalea planted her feet in a wide stance. Her body became heavy, and her knees buckled. She returned to slouching as the lashes continued. Soon she’d be hanging from the ropes. All her senses were smothered under a blanket of shredding waves. She whimpered between shrieks and her arms trembled, desperate to keep herself upright because her legs would soon give out. Tickling blood ran down the back of one of them. At the seventeenth lash, Kalea wailed, “Please stop!”
Sister Scupley delivered the eighteenth.
She sobbed. “I did it for the Creator!”
Nineteen.
“Keep standing!” the sister shouted.
The air stopped moving into Kalea’s lungs. Her head lolled. Her vision darkened.
Twenty.
A familiar ceiling with huge, bowing cruck beams hovered over her. Everything between now and the twentieth lash blurred in the pulsing rage of pain dominating her memory. Bandages had been wrapped around her torso. Someone had tucked her into bed. Her eyes focused on the serene, enveloping darkness in the big dorm room where all the novices slept. The usual rhythm of many girls breathing filled the air. A sting ripped through her back as she attempted to move; she accomplished only a whimper.
She had done it. A smile spread on her face. She had saved a life and paid the price. Fighting to move her heavy arms, she wiped her eyes and put her hands together.
My dear, dear Creator. Thank You, thank You, for granting me the opportunity to save the life of an elf today. Or perhaps You wanted to test my bravery. If so, I accept Your test and any other challenge You want to send me. And I want the elves to have Your blessing, because I know they’re Your children too. Thank You for setting me on my path—the path I’m meant to walk.
When she pictured Dorhen’s face, sincere and smiling, her smile broadened. Her eyes fell closed of their own accord. Her thoughts drifted beyond her control. She had to recite seventy Sovereign Creators before falling asleep. Drowsiness pressed upon her eyelids, but she tried to say her prayers anyway.
Our Sovereign Creator, it is You who…almighty…in our lives… Your blessings…and in Your name…may there be… And please, I want to…see that elf again…
Chapter 2
A Crown for the Deserved
Twenty-two years ago…
With a gasp, Lambelhen yanked back on the reins. His horse, Daerbeth, shrieked and reared, nearly throwing him off its back. He dismounted, planting his expensive boots into the clammy mud. Throwing his cloak open, he reached for Hathrohjilh, the sword, and his hand found instead a cold shaft wrapped in a dingy rag. Lambelhen ran his eyes over a fireplace poker, the one Daghahen had used to stoke the fire. He gawked.
“How did that prick manage—?”
“Lam!” A red hood, flashing through the tall bramble, bobbed toward him. “Where’ve you been? The master is calling. We have to get to Carridax before the priest dies!”
Lambelhen gripped the poker tight and shoved it back into Hathrohjilh’s sheath.
Lambelhen’s fists and jaw squeezed tighter every time he had to lower himself to the floor for that stale-cocked old kingsorcerer, and now his bones might’ve reached their breaking point. The same old rocky smell of the Ilbith tower’s stones wafted up his nose once again, cold and hard as always.
“My lord, please understand,” he said to the old piss’s pointed boots. “Hathrohjilh, the sword. You’ve no idea what I—what we’ve—lost.”
One of those boots stepped on his hand and applied gradual pressure.
“You’ve no idea, pretty thing,” the hard voice above him responded. Being the only elf in the entire faction had earned him that nickname, especially with Daghahen gone.
Lambelhen had worked hard with Dag for many years to get to this position in the Ilbith faction, but huddling on the floor and worrying about keeping other people happy or fearing punishment wasn’t exactly the way he wanted to live his life. The spells he’d accumulated nearly fixed all his ailments, or at least kept them in check. He still had to work off his carnal lust every day, often multiple times, to stay level, and this place’s free-sex policy with the servants allowed him his release whenever necessary. He couldn’t leave like Daghahen had; he needed Ilbith. He needed to own Ilbith.
“My lord, I could raise this tower higher—I could make it soar, if only I could be allowed to go back for my sword.”
“Didn’t you hear me? I said no.” The boot crunched down on his hand. His teeth ground together and squeaked in his skull. He held his growling voice in. “We’re awfully busy, and I need you here, pretty boy.”
“My lord…” Lambelhen paused to clear his throat. “My lord, the sword has powers I can’t hope to unlock alone. If we can go back and—ahhh!” The boot ground down on his fingers, and a large, meaty fist grabbed his hair and jerked his face to meet a thick bearded one with the cold, empty eyes any kingsorcerer would have.
“Some lusty elf here doesn’t respect the kingsorcerer’s orders. I think he’ll be alone in confinement, romancing himself tonight.”
“No.” He might’ve followed up with please, but Lambelhen had stopped begging long ago.
“Yes.” The kingsorcerer ground the heel of his boot atop Lambelhen’s hand. “Keep defying me, and your hands will be too broken to rub anything.”
Lambelhen’s forehead went cold, as it did when his anger peaked. His thoughts washed away, and a strange and dour consciousness he couldn’t fathom replaced it. The pain in his hand also fled.
“Oh look, fellas, he’s giving me the snake eyes now. We’re all scared when you do that, pretty boy.” He released Lambelhen’s hair and his hand. “The hole.”
Strong hands lifted both of Lambelhen’s arms and carried him, feet dragging across the throne room toward the lower wing. Lost in a state of non-thought, his eyes lingered on the kingsorcerer until a wall passed between them.
Distant coughs echoed throughout the system of caves found under the Ilbith tower they referred to as “the hole.” Iron doors were affixed to each little nook in the cave tunnels. The guilty waited out their time here, or waited to be beaten or gutted—whichever they had earned. Most people down here were servants who couldn’t behave themselves. A few were prisoners from enemy factions, now resting between questioning sessions, while even fewer were Ilbith members.
Lambelhen had only visited this place from the other side of the door. Until now, he had played the perfect faction member and worked his way up the ranks using his practiced act. Losing his sword threw things off, and now he’d have to recover somehow. He’d have to recover the sword somehow.
His thoughts had returned to normal, and his hand throbbed. None of his fingers were broken, he found after testing each of them. His sore hand became the least of his concerns when his misty sweat and anxious jitters returned to greet him for a nice, long, miserable night like the days of his youth.
He rested the hand on his chest and leaned against the stone wall, beginning a chant he’d learned from sorcery practice to numb his body. Despite what the kingsorcerer had said, he couldn’t simply masturbate the episode away; only real sex provided the relief he needed. Somehow, through keen skill and persistent meditation practice, he fell asleep…
And found himself underneath a soft, sleek body with draping mahogany hair dancing over his face, tickling here and there and obscuring the world around him. His clothes had vanished, and the cave tu
nnel struggled to keep its shape. The walls waved and changed colors, struggling to morph into wooden logs fused together with earth. A light pulsed as if fighting with the darkness, and even the floor beneath him half-shifted into a furry pelt or a woven rug from the cold rough surface it used to be.
His hands trailed up her narrow sides, running over jutting ribs and pale, delicate breasts toward her face. “Welcome back,” he groaned, pulling her onto his penis, hiding it away in a fleshy, foreign land.
She bowed over him, teasing his mouth before seizing and sucking his bottom lip. She reared back, and the muscles around his cock clutched and pulled. She managed to coax a grunt out of him.
He panted and groped at any flesh his hands found in the confusion of exuberant movement. Finding and grasping her bucking hips, he helped her to move faster atop him, pushing in a few hard thrusts of his own.
She bent down again and pecked kisses all over his face. Loving kisses. Like she always did.
Wait…
He grasped her face. She moaned and tried to pull away, arching backward and jutting her breasts forward, but he held firm. He brushed her hair aside, focusing his eyes as best he could after their surroundings shifted back into the dark cave-prison cell. Her eyes were glazed and her mouth opened for a gasp simultaneous to a throbbing clench around his penis.
“Let go,” she said through the hot, panting breath tickling his misty skin.
He ejaculated, but ignored the ecstatic pleasure. He leaned forward, practically sitting upright, squinting at her. “I know who you are now!”
Lambelhen jerked awake when a hand squeezed his shoulder. He lurched away. He hadn’t noticed the hole in the wall the hand now stuck through before falling asleep.
“Calm down, my friend,” a voice whispered.
“Whoever you are, I’m going to stick my thumbs into your eyes until I find your brain when I get out of here.”
The hand retracted and the man talked through the opening, releasing the stench of his alcohol-laden breath into Lambelhen’s cell. “It’s me, Talekas. You’re the elf, aren’t you?”
“You stupid prick, do you have any idea what you’ve interrupted?” He wiped his forehead on his sleeve. Aside from the residual moisture, his sweating had stopped and his energy had replenished. The sexual urgency had dissolved already, even though it should’ve remained and taken him to levels of illness long into the morning after they let him out of here. One of those dreams had graced him again, one of those too-realistic dreams he had enjoyed several times in the past year.
“Good dream, huh? Sorry about that.”
Beyond good. It was a healing kind of dream, and it always featured that same woman…
“Why did you wake me up?”
“Why else? I want to talk.”
“I’m not interested.” He rolled over and curled on the floor, ready to get a restful night now, thanks to the dream.
“I want to kill the kingsorcerer.” Lambelhen raised his head. “That lumbering jackass has been asking for it for a long time. Lambelhen is your name, isn’t it?” Lambelhen sat up again and pointed an ear at the hole. “I’ve had my eye on you. You’re special, Lambelhen. Like a leader before he becomes a leader, ya know? I can sense these things. I know a lot, but I don’t know it all. I need someone as savvy as me. With our combined efforts, I think we could do it.”
“I don’t share power.”
“I didn’t say anything about sharing. This is about you, my friend. I’ve got a disturbing notion that the jackass up there is going to run us into the ground. I mean, look at the place. It needs someone quick and intelligent to whip everyone into shape. We’re the ruling faction, for crying out loud. You’d think we wouldn’t have such money and resource trouble.”
“Who are you?”
“I told you, I’m Talekas.”
“No, what do you do, idiot?”
“I keep the books. I do lots of calculating. And we’re not doing so well, Lam. I’m concerned. And my ‘insolence’ got me thrown in here. What are you in for?”
“I don’t like hearing the word ‘no.’ I can’t live in this place much longer.”
“You’re on the same leaf as me then. You and me is all it’ll take.”
Lambelhen rolled his eyes. “We’ll need to win some allies.”
“Allies? How long have you been in this faction, man? We don’t need allies. We need our two cunning minds, the Ingnet’s Tome, and some spell practice. If you want to be the next kingsorcerer, and I sure as hell would like you to be, you have to beat his protection spells and carry out a specific ritual. That’s all. It’s not even a magic ritual, it’s symbolic. If done to a tee, no one will be able to deny you.”
“How do you know this?”
“I keep books, lots and lots of books. This ritual is how it’s done. We’re not a ragtag group of practitioners who decided to form a faction, we’re a unit written into the fabric of the netherworld and known by all of its dignitaries. It’s not us who decides who is kingsorcerer, it’s them. Are you with me, Lambelhen?”
He looked at his hands, soiled and still throbbing from the kingsorcerer’s abuse. “Better yet,” Lambelhen began, “call me Lamrhath.”
Today…
“Send me,” Chandran said, kneeling on the floor in the center of a blossom of star-patterned slates, an immaculate new addition to the room.
Kingsorcerer Lamrhath crossed his arms under his heavy robe, which was draped in gold chains with diamonds and rubies. “Are you sure?” His crown of many gold chains and gems glistened with fiery light. Two huge fangs from a long-extinct breed of scouel affixed to the crown stood tall like horns on his head.
“I want to prove myself to you. I’ll do whatever you require.”
“You’ve never met Daghahen. He’s a greased viper and knows he’s being followed.”
“I’ll go with your guidance, my lord.”
Talekas, the Second, stood next to the kingsorcerer with his lists and his sharpened piece of charcoal. The office of the third-highest sorcerer stood empty after its previous occupant had gotten himself killed by blowing himself to pieces with a miscast spell while trying to destroy Daghahen. How could such an idiot get that office in the first place? Now it waited for Chandran to take it, so long as he could please the kingsorcerer. He’d worked many years to climb the ladder this far.
“Well,” Lamrhath said, stepping forward. “You know the initiation protocol. You want to be the third?” He snapped his fingers, and a high-level red robe stepped forward with a small wooden box. “No one advances to an office without eating the heart of the fool stupid enough to lose the office. We all had to do it, myself included.”
Chandran bowed his forehead to the stones. “I know the rules, my lord. Give me the heart.”
The red robe placed the box on the floor before him. He opened it, and the thick stink of rotten flesh wafted out and taunted his nose. It must’ve been easy to retrieve the man’s heart after such an explosion. It had been days since the accident, and now the heart’s bright red had faded to grey. He lifted the slimy thing out. The bottom had gone soft and now wore a dusting of mold. Hints of blue were sprouting here and there under the meat’s surface.
Lamrhath raised his arms horizontally to the sides. “Like the children of our beloved Thaxyl, we eat the hearts of our enemies. Begin, Chandran.”
Chandran bit into the sour meat, which fell apart easily and stuck to his teeth. A chalky texture grated against his tongue, and the skunky mush slid down his throat after an eternity of reluctant chewing. Swallowing back a heave, he bit off another wad. Forcing swallow after thick swallow, he finished the thing, leaving his stomach churning and gurgling afterward.
Hugging his stomach, Chandran grunted out a few gags, tensed his jaw, closed his throat, and swallowed until the gagging reflex stopped. Lamrhath’s arms stayed crossed, his mouth held straight. He didn’t smile for anything.
“You’ll do, Chandran. Go prepare your supplies.”
&
nbsp; He rose, bowed to a ninety-degree angle, and strode out, keeping his back straight. “Rayna!” he yelled to his thrall as she waited in the proper kneeling position. She jumped up and scurried behind him.
“Here, master,” Rayna said, back in his humble chamber. She approached him with a waste bucket. “You can puke into this. I’ll get rid of the evidence in secret.”
He pushed the bucket away. “This is serious, bitch. I’m in the Third office now. I might become kingsorcerer if the two above me die. I don’t fake my devotion to Thaxyl.” He grabbed his heavy leather travel pack off the wall and threw it on the bed. “After this mission, my new rank will move us to a loftier chamber in the Chimera Tower.”
She fell to her knees and kissed his boot. “I’m so lucky to have a master as capable as you.”
“Get up.” He rushed to the desk and scribbled a list onto a scrap of paper. “Go to the greenhouse and get these herbs.”
“Yes, master.” Pocketing the list, she ran out with her dark, wavy hair bouncing behind her.
Chandran opened his trunk to pack all the necessary weapons. He knew the small assassination tools best because he used to make a good living as a mercenary before sorcery entered his life.
“S’cuse, Chandran,” a man’s voice called. Rufus poked his head into the room. “Sorry to bother, but I just won a big shiny gold coin playing cards. Can I borrow Rayna again?”
Chandran unsheathed his lightest sword and doused a rag with polishing oil. “Find someone else to get you off. Rayna’s going with me.”
“You’re taking her?”
“Yes. How many times would you like to hear it?”
“To the Lightlands?” Chandran sprang and swung the sword at him. Rufus reared back. “What’s your problem?”
“Rayna is too talented to bother with you anymore. I’ve trained her well. She’s not a whore for hire. She’s going with me.” Chandran sat on the stool and continued his polishing. “Maybe if you got off your fat ass and went out there, you could catch your own attractive thrall.”
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