by Lisa Cach
I flicked another glance at Maerlin, and got nothing in response. I stepped through the curtain.
And into a world of gleaming gold and jewel tones.
It brought me to a stop, gaping at the hall. Small windows high overhead let in cool winter light, enough to see past the shadows to the couches covered in layers of rich fabrics, furs, and embroidered cushions, scattered about as if awaiting revelers at a Roman banquet. A young woman dressed in dull workaday clothes was setting out silver goblets on ornate brass tables, making ready for the first pour of wine or ale. Other women fluffed pillows, washed stains off furs with rags, and swept. From the beams overhead hung great lengths of diaphanous silks, shimmering like water in sunlight. I reached out to touch one and saw that they were dotted with small bits of bright tin. The silks partially sectioned off groups of couches from one another as if to give an illusion of privacy. Down the center of the hall, great copper braziers smoldered with spice-scented smoke, their glowing coals taking the sharp edge off the cold but failing to hide the lingering smells of spilled ale, gamey meat, sweating bodies, and sex.
This was not how I had imagined a mystical college to be. I’d vaguely expected racks of scrolls and long tables for studying and eating; shelves of jars and herbs hanging overhead, and mysterious brass tools for studying the passage of the stars. The only thing that fit my vision was the beaten clay floor and the rough, damp stone walls devoid of plaster, which formed an impoverished, scholarly backdrop for the luxurious furnishings on display.
Tanwen led us through the length of the hall and past the low dais at the far end, with its one large couch piled deep with pillows. Curtains hid the back wall of the hall, and we went through them to find doorways leading off in other directions. From one hallway I heard the distant sounds of kitchen work and conversation. Tanwen took us down another, past what looked to be dormitories with a few dozing women, and finally to a carved door at the end, its wood black with age and banded with scrolls of aged brass. The oak leaves, mistletoe, and wild animals adorning it spoke of its origins with the druids.
Tanwen rapped once with a knuckle and pushed open the door. “They’re here, Mother.”
The room was the hall in miniature, only more richly done. Here there were clay tiles on the floor, and the walls had been plastered and painted a deep earthy red. The air was close, fuggy with human breath and the smoke of the brazier, and the unique sour stench of illness. Akantha was a pale face amid a sea of pillows upon a bed. She did not rise.
Something white flicked by the corner of my eye, and I saw Una take a sentinel position in the shadows near the head of Akantha’s bed. She moved with the silence of a ghost. Given the little heed her mother and grandmother paid her presence, she might have been one.
“Maerlin,” Akantha wheezed, and raised one weak arm, her pale hand beckoning. “At last.”
Maerlin stayed where he was just inside the door, his nostrils flaring and his hands clenched.
“I feared I would not see you before I was gone.”
“You knew we were coming,” he said.
“What one knows and what one fears are not always the same. Come closer.” The white fingers curled, demanding. “Let me see my only son.”
“She’s dying,” Tanwen said under her breath to her brother. “She does not toy with you.”
“She doesn’t know how not to play games,” he said.
“And yet, she dies. Choose for yourself how you wish to part from her.”
Maerlin turned furious eyes on his sister, his body straightening with sudden energy. “I will.” He spun around, caught my eye for one moment in which I saw the green pierced with bewildered pain, and fled.
Akantha’s hand dropped. Silence filled the room, tangible and uncomfortable. We could all feel the space where Maerlin had been.
“He’s only here because I made him come,” I said, and felt the insensitivity of my words too late to bring them back.
“Maerlin,” Akantha sighed, and in the sound I heard a lifetime’s frustration.
Tanwen touched my back and urged me forward, coming with me to the bed. Una watched from her shadows, caught my gaze on her, and frowned. I turned my attention to Akantha.
Her thin, unwashed hair was sandy white, her skin rough, her nose a pink lump atop a dry, sunken face. She still had a glow of young green to her eyes, though; the only thing about her that seemed alive. I did not know what ailed her, but could sense the presence of death.
Akantha tapped the side of her bed, inviting me to sit. I did, trying to take in this, my first meeting with women of the Phanne since I had been separated from my mother at the age of nine; the two of us had separated from our tribe long before that. Maerlin’s tales of evil fell aside, my only thoughts, Is this who I am? Do I see myself here?
Is she like my mother?
Akantha’s hand landed on my thigh, and from it I felt a warm comfort seeping through my flesh—the touch of both her and Tanwen was a mild, heated variation of what happened when Maerlin and I touched, and I wondered if they did it on purpose, or if it was beyond either their or my control. “You have so many questions,” Akantha said. “Know that you will find their answers here.”
I felt her seeking for my mind, and kept my shield in place. “My mother, Ligeia. You got my message about her?” I asked, and felt her mental touch retreat.
“We knew you would get here before we could reply; and it’s better this way. We are grateful, always, to find a lost daughter of the Phanne. When we pool our powers together, we become capable of so much more than when we are alone.”
I leaned forward, excitement blooming anew. “There are other Phanne here?”
“At this moment . . . no.” She took a rasping breath and shifted under the covers, her face betraying discomfort. Tanwen took a vial from a table and held it to her mother’s lips, holding her head up so she could drink.
“It’s for the pain; she’ll sleep soon,” Tanwen said.
Akantha rolled her head back toward me, and her eyes traced my face, and then began to close. “You have much of your mother in you,” she said.
I grasped Akantha’s hand in both of my own, not willing to let her escape into sleep just yet. “You know her! When did you last see her? Did she come here?”
Her eyes opened again. “She came to us four years ago, seeking.”
“Seeking what?”
“Refuge. Recovery. And answers to mysteries as old as our blood.”
I pressed Akantha’s hand, willing her to stay awake. “Where did she go?”
“Into the wind, as must we all,” Akantha said on a fading sigh.
“What does that mean?”
Tanwen put her hand on my shoulder. “She died, Nimia. Your mother died.”
I stumbled where Tanwen led me, and collapsed onto a bed in a small private room. She and two girls whispered and fussed, lighting a brazier and lamp, bringing a tray of food and drink, but they may as well have been figures in a dream, forgotten from one moment to the next. I found myself alone and did not know when they’d gone.
A tide of grief was rising inside me, held back only by my unwillingness to believe. All this time, all this searching: to have it end like this? And me with no sense that she was gone? Had been gone, for four years?
The unfamiliar walls around me, the cold damp of the room, the stale smells in the bedding from bodies, old perfume, and mildew; it all combined with the news of my mother’s death and uprooted me from reality. I was trapped in a gray nightmare, alone, with no warm stability to cling to.
A wisp of smoke moved across the room—no, not smoke. Una. She stopped at the foot of the bed, hovering, looking ready to vanish if I should move too quickly. She stared at me intently enough to stir me from my welter of emotions.
“What is it?”
“She said you’d come.”
“Who?�
� Though I knew, without her saying: my mother.
Una grasped one of the long, thin braids beside her face and wove it back and forth between her fingers, her gaze dropping to watch her handiwork. “I liked her,” she said softly.
I reached out a hand, wanting human contact. I suddenly missed Terix fiercely. I wanted his familiar arms around me, his voice murmuring soothing sounds in my ear, his hand stroking my hair. In even the darkest moments he could find words to bring a moment of light and humor, reminding me that the world had not yet come to an end.
Una came to the side of the bed, looking warily at my hand. With the tip of one finger she touched it, then quickly drew back; it was like being hit by a drop of rain.
“What else did she say?” I asked. “Did she leave a message for me?”
Una backed away, toward the door.
“Please,” I said.
She turned and floated through the doorway.
I rose onto my elbow. “Una, please.”
An uncertain glance over her shoulder; a hand on the door frame, and a guilty apology in her voice. “I have to go.”
“Find Maerlin—can you do that for me? I know you hate him, but please. If you cared at all for my mother, please, send him to me.”
Her face pinched—eyes narrowing, mouth puckering—and then she was gone.
I flopped back into the musty bedding, buried my face in my arms, and let disbelief and grief use me for their battlefield. I was deep in the timeless chaos of it when I felt the bed shift, an arm across my back, and then a long body pressed against my own.
Maerlin’s lips hovered near my ear, his breath warm as he whispered, “Nimia, they lied to you.”
My head jerked up, and I snuffled back the slop of tears and wiped my nose with the back of my hand. “What?”
He gently pressed on the back of my head, lowering my face to my crossed arms. “Shh. Someone might be listening.” He pressed himself closer, lying on his side, blocking my view of the doorway—or the view of anyone at the door, of me. He wrapped his hand around the back of my neck, the skin-on-skin contact sending that cool, languid feeling through me. “Pretend I’m consoling you.”
“They have no reason to lie,” I whispered, afraid to hope.
“We’ve only just arrived; we don’t know their reasons. We don’t know what they want. They did lie to you, though.”
I unfolded one of my arms and pressed my palm against the base of his throat, my fingers reaching round so I could feel the beat of his pulse. Here was human contact, here was an unexpected rescue from the void inside my heart. “Did someone tell you so?”
“You did. You said your mother came to you when you were dying after childbirth, and that was less than a year ago. You know she’s alive.”
“It could have been my imagination.”
“Your imagination can’t tell you things you have no way of knowing. The chant, the chalice; you couldn’t know how to do that.”
“It could have been the voice of the dead that I heard.”
“The dead don’t speak,” he said.
“You can’t know that.”
His arm tightened around me. “Why are you arguing so hard against her being alive?”
I pressed my face into the hollow of his throat, shutting out everything except the warm scent of his skin. “Because I want her to be alive so badly.”
He brushed his lips against my brow, a soothing touch that shifted something between us. I could feel the change in us, our hunger rousing. His muscles tensed, his body growing hard, while mine softened. Maerlin wrapped his hand in my hair and pulled my head back, lifting my face from the shelter of his throat. His eyes gleamed.
I raised my chin, my lips parting. The cool languor had pooled in my breasts and loins, making them feel heavy and ready. I could feel slick wetness at my gates, and my mind filled with visions of Maerlin’s cock sliding slowly inside me. My passage pulsed. A small whimper of mingled reluctance and desire sounded in my throat.
Maerlin’s hand tightened in my hair and he leaned away from me, his face pained as he tried to create space between us. “I won’t,” he said. “Not here, not under their roof.”
I rolled onto my side, facing him, and slid my hand off his throat and down to the safety of his clothed chest. I pushed, just enough to keep myself from pressing up against him as my throbbing body insisted I should. “Why does this happen with us?” I asked, bewildered. “I’m halfway in love with your brother, not with you.”
“I don’t think this power cares who we love. By Apollo’s glowing rod, all I can think of is parting your folds with my fingers and sinking myself inside you.” His eyelids closed and he took a ragged breath.
Desire surged through me, twisting my thoughts. Why not do it? Desire said. He wants it, you want it, you’re going to do it anyway, for the furnace. Why not now?
Because drawing up a storm to fire the furnace was a different thing from parting my thighs for the pleasure of it. Because I wanted to hold on to the hope of a future with Arthur, and having sex with his brother for the fun of it would put an end to that before it could even begin.
Arthur shouldn’t ever know, Desire said, and made me imagine Maerlin’s deft fingers on my sex; made me feel him parting my gates, easing them open; the blunt head of his mentula filling my entrance, dipping within in a short, circling motion to slick itself with my wetness; and then the hard, thick push of full entry. This is about being Phanne. This is not sex as humans know it; it’s something more. It’s separate from what you feel for Arthur, or any other man. They would never understand, never accept; better to keep it between you and Maerlin.
“Nimia!” Maerlin hissed, and gripped my wrist.
Without my knowing it, my hand had wandered down his torso and under the hem of his tunic. He’d stopped me at the waist of his breeches, my fingers eagerly seeking entry to the wealth of flesh beneath. “Just let me feel it. I’ll stop there, I promise,” I pleaded.
He laughed under his breath. “But I won’t be able to.”
“Then you touch me.” I rolled onto my back and raised one knee, and with my free hand dragged my skirts upward.
“That will be worse,” he said, and swallowed as the fabric came up, and up, revealing bare tattooed thigh and then the hairless petals of my sex, with their intricate black markings of the path of a labyrinth.
“I need . . .” I said, and stroked my fingertips down over my eager, swollen sex, sending shimmers of sensation through it. In the distance, I heard the hum of bees. “Please, Maerlin.”
“Not here. Never here.”
The edge in his voice got through to me. I didn’t want to force him to do anything. “No, you’re right, you shouldn’t.” My bees buzzed in protest. Desire had become an ache in me that could not fade without release. I met Maerlin’s glowing green gaze. “I have to do this. Don’t watch,” I said, and flicked my fingertips against my hard little stamen. My golden swarm rose up, glimmering around my vision.
“I won’t,” he said, even as his attention shifted to my loins.
His gaze was like a touch, and I stroked harder, faster, feeling my peak quickly approaching. I kept my eyes on his face—me, watching him, watching me pleasure myself. I wanted him to watch, wanted him to feel what I did, as a way to share without his having to touch me.
Soon all I could see was the green of his eyes, surrounded by gold. The green transformed into the green stone of my other vision, shining before me.
The desire for the firm, thick length of a man’s rod inside me swelled. Maerlin must have felt it; he still held my other wrist, and through that contact our desires flowed back and forth upon each other. Could he feel my golden swarm? I opened myself mentally to him, my lust overriding all caution as I sought deeper connection. I strummed my stamen, my hip muscles straining, my thighs flexing.
The buzzing increas
ed a hundredfold, and then went quiet. In its place, I felt Maerlin beside me in the nonspace where the visions came. You see it? I asked silently.
The green stone, in a sea of gold—no, it’s changing. Falling snow. A lake of blue ice.
The snow grew dense behind the hovering stone, and solidified into a figure. A woman, made of snow. Her hand wrapped around the green stone, which shrank in her grasp until it was no longer than her thumb. She turned and threw the stone at the frozen lake.
Maerlin touched me then. The blunt, sure tip of his finger laid itself against my entrance, which welcomed it with gentle sucking kisses, inviting him in. We were both present in our bodies, and present in the other-realm, our awareness split between the two. I continued to stroke myself as he turned to look at me, watching my face as he slowly pressed the length of his long, agile finger inside me. Deep in my depths he curled his finger upward and rubbed.
In the vision, the stone hit the lake and a crack like thunder split the ice, shards flying upward and out, spinning in the air. A great blade of ice flew at us, aiming for our hearts.
A second finger joined Maerlin’s first and he thrust hard, rocking my hips.
The wave of cresting passion broke over me, and then another, and another.
The sword of ice struck the ground in front of us, its tip buried in the snow. In its pommel, the green stone glistened. “Skalibur,” a voice whispered on the frozen air.
My body pulsed, my passage clenching around Maerlin’s fingers, my own touch moving rougher and surer for one last moment before subsiding, my hand pressing against my sex, my thighs squeezing closed on Maerlin’s hand.
The release was rich and drenching, and not nearly enough. I grasped his hand and pressed the heel of his palm against my folds. The vision and the sense of entwined watching were fading, but I wasn’t ready for his hand to leave. I’d never had an experience like this, and I wanted it to last.
Maerlin swore and pulled himself away, dragging his hand free of my body despite my protest. He lurched off the bed and took a few short steps away, his back to me, gasping out bursts of soft curses. He was silhouetted by the brazier as he made frantic, jerking motions that I thought were the heaves of sobs.