Beyond the Dark

by Angela Knight

  Owen rose and marched around the table.

  Emma’s hand froze on the teapot.

  He snapped to attention before her grandfather. “Sir, may I have your permission to speak?”

  The General frowned at him, set his plate down extremely carefully, and attained a remarkably formal stance in his chair. “You may, sir.”

  Owen dropped to one knee.

  Emma gasped.

  “Sir, your granddaughter, Mrs. Sinclair, is a lady of unparalleled beauty and intelligence. She captured my heart from the moment we first met. While I have no significant personal fortune at this time, I can safely promise that she will never know want.”

  “Young man, are you asking for my granddaughter’s hand after only five days’ acquaintance?” Her grandfather’s tone would have sent an artillery regiment and their guns running.

  Owen didn’t flinch.

  “Yes, sir. Additionally, Mrs. Sinclair has unique talents which are vital to the realm in these dangerous times. She needs schooling so they can best be used.”

  “Not only do you want to marry her—you mean to carry her off immediately. I say, sir, you have a great deal of effrontery asking for her hand in this fashion!”

  “But you see, sir, I love her with all my heart—and I believe she loves me, too.” Owen’s eyes met hers across the table.

  Emma flew out of her chair and ran to him. She dropped to her knees beside her dear, stubborn mage, sliding her arm around his waist. Her throat was tight with tears of joy.

  He hugged her close, a reassurance which somehow turned into a passionate kiss.

  The General coughed very loudly.

  They broke apart, blushing, and held hands.

  “You have my permission, not that you need it.” He sniffed, but his expression was amused. “But in exchange for my politeness, I want a church wedding for my best girl, not some Brehon Law entanglement, d’you hear, young man? She brought you back to land, and you’re to stay ashore with her now.”

  Emma stiffened, a little nervously. Her courier of a King’s Mage would stay ashore with her?

  “I’ll do that, sir, and gladly. For the rest of my life, I’ll only go where she walks with me.” Owen lifted her hand and kissed it.

  His brilliant sapphire eyes met hers—and she believed him. He’d come ashore to stay, for love of her.

  Queen of All She Surveys

  Emma Holly

  The Yama are an ancient civilization, their

  origins lost in the mists before recorded history.

  No one knows how much of their early technology has

  been lost—or where it ended up…

  CHAPTER ONE

  The sound of clashing metal and grunting men rang out from the practice yard behind King Ravna’s palace. Three bouts were in progress, each man striving against his partner with the traditional hand-to-hand fighting tools of short sword, dagger, and small bronze shield. Sweat gleamed on their hard-hewn bodies, streaked with dust where they’d dropped to the ground to escape blows. None of the men wore more than an oxhide loin protector, the heat of the seventh month being too oppressive for armor.

  Given the house guards’ scanty dress, it was no accident that the female servants wandered to the nearby gardens every chance they got. Their gazes turned most often to King Ravna’s son, though he was far from the most beautiful of the men.

  But perhaps this was not surprising. Prince Memnon impressed by other means than comeliness. He was taller than his companions by at least a hand span, his body an amazing union of thick and lean muscle. His thirty odd years rested lightly on his warrior’s frame, and more than one gaze lingered on the fit of his thick loin guard. Everyone had heard the stories of his prodigious sexual appetite, now as legendary as his god-king father’s.

  Unlike his father, who rarely met a female he didn’t fuck, Memnon’s restraint was honed. Rather than engaging in nightly orgies, once a month the prince would seduce a woman and seclude her in his chamber for the day upon day it took to sate his desires. Usually his partner was a soldier’s widow or a village girl. As a result, few among his father’s servants had tasted him—which only whetted their interest in watching him. The smiles his exhausted lovers wore on emerging from his chambers were the stuff of myth. What would it be like, the female servants wondered, to bed a god-touched male who actually cared that they were pleasured?

  They had plenty of time to speculate today. As captain of the household guard, Memnon was fighting his twelfth match of the morning. The prince liked to train new recruits himself, but even with his extraordinary strength—another legacy from his father—the strain had begun to tell in the shortening of his temper.

  “Watch your eyes,” he snapped at his opponent, a young man named Ashok. The boy was strong, but as inexperienced a fighter as Memnon had ever seen. “You’re warning me where you’re going to strike before you do.”

  Ashok’s jaw clenched as he tried to use his peripheral vision instead.

  “Better,” Memnon said, easily countering another wild windmill of blows. “Now stop attacking me straight on like you’ve been doing. Queen Tou’s troops are street fighters. They’re as liable to roll between your legs and slice off your prick as come at you on two feet.”

  Ashok promptly dropped his weapons and lowered his head like a charging bull. The move showed courage but no sense at all. Memnon had only to sidestep and stick out his foot to have the boy face first in the dust. Another breath and Ashok’s spine was under Memnon’s knee, with his arm bent and twisted painfully behind his back. When Ashok cursed, Memnon gave his head a sharp and ringing rap with his small bronze shield.

  “No,” he said. “Not like that.” He removed his weight from the boy, sighing. “I’m sending you back to basic training. I don’t want to see you again until I’m convinced you’d last past the sounding of the horn in a real battle. And, no, I don’t give a damn how much your father paid to get you in the guards.”

  Ashok pushed up, spitting dust as a prelude to protest, but Memnon was already striding away. His father’s favorite eunuch advisor stood behind the low stone wall that circled the practice yard. A large man with skin the color of oiled teak, Paneb was someone Memnon respected warily. Despite his secretive nature, Paneb was one of very few who could steady the king’s volatile passions. As he waited for the prince, his round, solemn face gave nothing of his aims away.

  Memnon found himself thinking the eunuch had more self-possession than many of the guards and was probably as handy with a blade. Secure in his position, Paneb inclined his head the minimum required for deference to Memnon’s status as prince and heir.

  “Forgive me for interrupting your practice,” he said in his smooth light voice. “Your father wishes to see you immediately.”

  Memnon looked down at the sweat and grime that covered him. In addition to an impulsive temper, his father had an obsession with cleanliness. One of Paneb’s duties, and probably not his favorite, was scrubbing down the king’s nightly partners. One dirty fingernail could stir a towering rage. That being so, he wasn’t going to welcome how Memnon smelled.

  “Yes,” Paneb agreed, reading his expression, “but it can’t be helped. News has come from Kemet.”

  Not good news, apparently.

  Dread clenched Memnon’s belly as he fell into step beside the eunuch. His father’s grounds were lush: soft, Memnon sometimes thought, with avenues of towering palms and water gardens brimming with fish and birds. The clamor of fighting struck up again behind them, as Memnon’s second-in-command took over the guards’ training. Even when the sound diminished, Memnon didn’t ask Paneb to explain. The eunuch would only evade Memnon’s questions—and probably enjoy doing it.

  It didn’t matter anyway. Memnon could guess what the problem was.

  From east to west, the Indypt River cut Southland in two, with the small town of Kemet at its strategic heart. Above Kemet, the Indypt was a silver snake, its floodwaters feeding a rich green stripe between seas of sa
nd. Below Kemet, the sacred river split into a thousand arms that turned the delta emerald. The king who controlled Kemet could, theoretically, unite Upper and Lower Southland under his crown. Consequently, kings had been trying to launch campaigns from and for it for centuries.

  Memnon could hardly blame his father for the ambition, though it was, as yet, unfulfilled. Kemet might be his, but Queen Tou gripped Upper Southland in a fist as unrelenting as the desert sun. Her troops were as hard as she was and more loyal than his father’s. King Ravna’s men fought for plunder and prestige. Hers fought for love. Memnon might not have much experience with that emotion, but on the battlefield he knew how powerful it was.

  Fortunately, none of this showed on his face when he and Paneb reached his father’s audience chamber.

  The king was pacing between the huge lotus-headed columns, his strides as vigorous as his son’s. His features were more refined than Memnon’s, but their bodies could have passed for brothers—one draped in fine gold and linen, the other in little more than his sweaty skin. Both were stronger and more vital than other men, enough that Ravna liked to boast a god’s blood ran in their veins.

  Apart from the sexual madness Memnon suffered from once a month, he rarely felt divine himself. Still, he could not deny his father was unique. The Bull of the Delta had ruled for four decades, with no apparent dimming of his powers. Those who’d been with him from the beginning claimed that he had not aged. They were old men now, ready to retire. Not so King Ravna. While no one could predict how long the king would live, Memnon’s friends liked to tease that he’d be too decrepit to govern by the time his father loosed his grip on the crook and flail.

  Some of his friends weren’t teasing, of course. Some would have been happy to see their king step down at dagger point.

  “There you are,” Ravna said now, his pacing having taken him toward his son. His lip curled briefly at his sweaty state, but for once he pushed off his distaste. He raked one hand through his thick black hair, the other clenching a papyrus scroll tightly enough to strangle it. “I suppose Paneb shared the news.”

  “Only that there is trouble at Kemet Fort.”

  “Trouble.” His father barked out a laugh. “Kemet has fallen to the witch-whore’s army, with half our men dead or captive.”

  “Half.” The news struck him nearly breathless. “That isn’t good.”

  “No, not good at all. Especially since our mercenaries have switched sides. I don’t know how they expect she’ll pay the fortune they were bleeding me for. Her treasury isn’t half as flush as mine. But maybe they don’t like gold anymore. Maybe they’d rather kiss the witch-whore’s ass.”

  King Ravna sank into his throne, his knuckles whitening with fury on the gilded arms. The wood beneath the fancy surface began to crack. Memnon had never seen his father this angry, though if there was anyone he hated it was the so-called Witch of Hhamoun.

  Taking what might be his only chance to plead his case, Memnon fell to one knee.

  “Send me to Kemet,” he begged in his humblest tone. “With a hundred hand-picked men, I can at least win back the mercenaries. Maybe even pry Queen Tou from the fort. We can’t let her get a foothold. Before you know it, we’ll be paying tribute to her, too.”

  Memnon knew his father would be reluctant. His son was a bit too popular for comfort. The army had as good as raised him after his mother’s death, and following the prince was like following one of their own. To allow Memnon even the chance of such an important victory would, in some quarters, invite a coup.

  Despite this, he didn’t expect to be greeted with quite so leaden a silence.

  “By my mother’s eternal soul!” Memnon burst out, surrendering caution in his impatience. “I have never given you cause to doubt my loyalty. I serve you, Father, and the throne. I wish only to see Lower Southland regain her own.”

  Memnon had forgotten Paneb watched this little drama; the eunuch was as silent as a cat when he wished to be. Now he cleared his throat delicately. “My prince, you mistake your father’s hesitation. The queen is already demanding tribute, and you will indeed be traveling to Kemet.”

  Ravna had the decency to look embarrassed. “I’m sorry, son. It’s too late for heroics, much as I appreciate your willingness. The best we can hope for now is time to lick our wounds.”

  “But—”

  “I told you it is too late!” The throne’s heavy arms splintered like kindling at the smack of his father’s palms. “Tou has proposed an alliance, and I’m accepting it. The bitch may refuse to take a king as any proper woman would, but you are going to be her next husband.”

  For a moment, Memnon could not catch his breath. “Don’t you mean her next harem slave? By the gods, Father, whatever you think of me, I am the son of six generations of rulers!”

  His father simply shook the scroll he’d been strangling. “Do you want to hear what she says?” He unrolled the message with an angry snap. “‘Kemet is mine,’ she has the gall to tell me. ‘By right of the blood I shed there when I was young. If you wish even one of your soldiers returned alive, you will pay for my blood with your own. Gods willing, the self-styled Bull of the Delta’s son is not as bereft of honor as his sire.’”

  “That is a childish insult, not a reason to—”

  His father leaned into his face and hissed. “You will ransom these soldiers’ lives, Memnon. And, who knows, maybe you will get the barren bitch with child. One way or another, our blood will sit on both thrones.”

  Memnon felt his spine stiffen. “It is not my nature to fight our people’s battles from a bed.”

  “Your pride is overscrupulous, my son. Just fuck her senseless and make her yours. Better women than she have softened beneath the labors of a good hard cock.”

  Memnon could see a number of problems with this approach, the primary being that Tou was no breathless maid to swoon at a prince’s kiss. His own partners, appreciative though they were of his sexual powers, had shown no signs of giving up their will.

  “Tou is nearing her sixth decade,” he objected, with little hope of success. However lowering he regarded serving the queen in bed, he couldn’t deny the value of getting back their troops. “Surely no one expects her to have children now.”

  King Ravna’s handsome features darkened, his eyes sparking with a rancor Memnon didn’t understand. “You will find the witch-whore younger than you think, and as pleasing to your eyes as to that hungry cock you inherited from me. You may have to pray for strength, my son, or she will make you her slave in truth.”

  You know her, Memnon thought but had just enough control not to say out loud. You call her witch because she seduced you.

  The encounter must have happened long ago. King Ravna had not been in Kemet since he’d served as the area’s governor for his own father. It had been a sleepy outpost then, held but not exploited by a king who valued creature comforts above conquest.

  That flaw, at least, could not be laid at his father’s door.

  Memnon rocked his weight off his knee and stood, uncomfortable with the knowledge that his father’s hatred for his rival might have no nobler basis than being spurned.

  “I will do as you ask,” he said. “To save our men.”

  His father waved his hand in vague acknowledgment, accepting his capitulation as if it were nothing. “The men are everything, of course. Tou has agreed to allow you an honor guard for the trip. Paneb’s man, Zahi, can stay on to serve you there. At least you’ll have someone to watch your back in that nest of asps.”

  Zahi was the last man Memnon would have chosen to watch his back. Paneb’s protégé was no coward, but he was as sly as the snakes he’d be protecting Memnon from.

  Lords of Sky and Darkness, Memnon swore to himself, knowing there was no point in arguing. His father had made up his mind. While Memnon shared his unusual physical strength, he did not share his ruthlessness. Short of turning to patricide and tearing their realm apart, he did not see a way out of this.

  And maybe
the king was right. Maybe an alliance with the witch-whore was the best solution. He doubted the common people were his father’s priority, but they didn’t care how many thrones his father sat on; they only wanted peace.

  Wanting peace himself, for as long as it could be his, Memnon bowed and withdrew. He didn’t expect the words that echoed through his mind: not of asps or ransomed soldiers, but a promise that his cock would find the queen pleasing.

  In spite of all he wished would never come to be, a man with needs like his could not help but be stirred by that.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Queen Tou stood before the narrow window in her private office, watching the sun god’s disk sink like beaten copper into the sand. A woman with needs like hers could only rejoice at the approach of darkness, but a mysterious restlessness held her where she was. Her harem would be waiting, hard already in anticipation of the pleasure she would bring.

  How many of those beautiful men would it take to sate her desires tonight?

  Her body heated at the question, a flush riding up her skin from thigh to brow. The little slave girls who sat on the floor behind her quickened their fanning.

  Over the years, she’d discovered her body slaves had to be female. Boys grew into men too fast and began to want her. As slowly as Tou was aging, she didn’t always notice when that happened—and it could be awkward. She was like a cat in heat, she sometimes thought, drawing all the toms to her door.

  She rolled her eyes to herself. The gods had blessed her strangely on that long-ago fateful day, shaping who she was as much as what had come before.

  She’d been a fifteen-year-old orphan before those divinities intervened: friendless, hopeless, cast out from her village for stealing bread. The exalted elders of her tribe had raped her first, just to make sure she understood how wrong her attempt at avoiding starvation was. Escaping into the desert had been her only choice, and she’d done it with every expectation that she would die. Instead, she’d found a chamber beneath the burning sand: the secret temple of her personal gods.