She’s asleep, he reminded himself. Sound asleep, totally unaware, and he was sitting there, staring at her and practically pawing her. It took a monumental effort to drag his gaze away as he loosened the thick belt that cinched her pants tight. He stripped the baggy material off and kept his eyes locked on the ceiling.
It wasn’t that big a help. Even though he stared at the ceiling, his peripheral vision showed him the lacy triangle of the undergarment she wore, the smooth flare of her hips, the shadowed cleft between her thighs. He wanted to push her thighs apart and lie between them. Press his face against her. Taste her there—push her to orgasm and listen to her scream, then do it all over again.
Instead, he just finished stripping her pants away. “Being a bloody gentleman will be the death of me,” he grumbled. He tossed the pants into a pile of dirty clothes and then flipped a light, worn blanket over her.
She was still dirty, with smudges on her face and her hair in a tangle on the pillow. And beautiful. So damned beautiful. Lee was just going to have to sleep dirty. There was no way in hell he could do anything else. Better that she sleep dirty than to have him fall on her like a beast in rut as his control snapped. It was dangerously close already.
His cock throbbed in the tight confines of the skin-skimming shorts he wore under his combat pants, and his muscles were tensed and ready. His hands felt too empty, his skin felt too tight, and he was dying for another taste of her. A bigger taste, a deeper one.
No, he wasn’t going to do another thing while she lay sleeping like that. Aching and frustrated, he turned away from her. He grabbed his bedroll and threw it on the floor. He could ignore the sleeping woman. He had to.
Dawn would be here all too soon. And you never knew when an attack would come. Rest while you can, eat when you can, always be ready.
It had become a way of life.
He didn’t have the luxury of curling up beside a soft, warm woman and holding her close. Didn’t have the luxury of cuddling her against him . . . pushing her thighs apart and rocking against the warmth he knew was waiting there.
“You’re into self-inflicted torture,” he muttered, driving a hand through his hair as he kicked off his boots and shucked his shirt. Dropping down onto the bedroll, he closed his eyes and willed himself to sleep.
Tomorrow wasn’t going to be any easier for her.
Or for him.
FIVE
Doddering, stupid, arrogant fool—
There were other words that could be used to describe High Lord Taise. Crazy. Paranoid. Canny. Lucky.
But Raichar Taise had been serving his uncle for the past fifty years, and he had watched the man’s descent into madness. Maybe he had sped him down the path a time or two. Planted false evidence to make the High Lord believe his advisors were out to get him. An ambush or two. Paranoid people were so ridiculously easy to manipulate. Char had his own agenda, but right now, it suited him to go along with the old fool’s delusions, and add to them, on occasion.
Taking over a world, what had the man been thinking? It had been decades since Taise had upped the aggression against the other world. What had pushed his uncle over, Char didn’t know. No longer was he content just to take the females needed for the warriors and Sirvani coming of age—no, he didn’t want just enough, he wanted an excess.
Wanted them all. Perhaps Taise’s inability to produce a son of his own had been what pushed the old man over into the realm of insanity. And Taise truly was insane.
Char had known it from the very beginning. A lucid man would have seen the effects of the continued raids on Ishtan. Considering that they needed the offworld females to breed, a rational man would have shown more caution. Char knew well enough why the other Warlords had yet to question the High Lord. It simply wasn’t done, but then again, none of them had been living with Taise’s madness. From their safe distance, Taise’s mad decisions may well have seemed to be calculated risks.
Certainly the Sirvani that were bound to the High Lord weren’t going to do anything. Bound to the High Lord through blood and oath, their very lives would be at risk should they ever say anything against him. That bond also likely colored how they saw things—they would see things as their ruler saw them, unless they were powerful enough to resist the bond taking them over in such a way.
Taise’s insanity they would see as sheer genius, just as Taise saw it. His foolish, arrogant risks would be seen as confident and thorough planning. If this campaign wasn’t so bloody stupid, so bloody dangerous, even Char could have ignored much of it.
But it was stupidity. It had gone beyond the realm of arrogance into madness decades ago. And time was running out for them. Char had known it for a while, and it was only a matter of time before others began to see it as well.
Arrogance was a trait common among the Warlords, but their arrogance wouldn’t continue to blind them. It was a waiting game and one he was truly tired of. How much longer before the other Warlords realized that Shonar Taise’s sly war tactics were actually the machinations of a lunatic?
Char had his own plans, and if he wasn’t cautious, the lunatic could ruin them.
If the old man would just die—
Char cut that train of thought off before it could go any further. Taise’s psy abilities were all but gone, thanks to age and madness, but he was surrounded by loyal men. And more, men who were like Char, loyal only to themselves, who wouldn’t hesitate to use Char’s thoughts against him.
“What of the last contingent we sent through the Veil? How much ground have they gained?” Taise would have said something else, but a deep, wracking cough robbed him of his breath.
It was a deep, phlegmy sound, and altogether disgusting. When he looked up at his second in command, Taise had bits of yellow-brown mucus in his grizzled, matted beard. Char hid his revulsion and at the same time found himself somewhat cheered. That cough sounded worse today. It seemed to slowly worsen on a daily basis, and Taise would allow no healer near him. Could be pneumonia. Or the lungrot. Taise had a taste for the disease-causing shaf. Shaf addiction had killed more than its fair share in Anqar.
Perhaps fate would smile on Char and eliminate the old fool before Char had to act.
“Char? Damn you, boy, I asked you a question.”
Char hadn’t been a boy for many decades. At eighty-five years old, Char was in his prime. The Warlords were a long-lived race. The commoners in Anqar lived to perhaps a hundred, but Warlords usually saw three or four centuries, or more. Taise had been ancient for as long as Char could remember. The High Lord’s exact age was unknown. Taise wouldn’t give it up, and he had a nasty habit of killing his rivals, or anybody in the vicinity when he was on a tirade. Eventually most of the people who could have made an educated guess were either cold in the ground or had long since left the High Lord’s lands. By now, many of them were probably dead. Power was life in Anqar, and the weaker people died earlier in life, either by another person’s hand or because their bodies simply wore out on them.
Taise was a powerful bastard, but even his power had limits. Char had watched him carefully over the past few years and he knew the High Lord’s strength was dwindling. Of course, his mind, though crazed, still functioned. Char could all but hear his uncle gritting his teeth. He looked at Taise and answered, “We’ve brought back eighteen small families. Thirty-eight females near or at breeding age.”
“Thirty-eight females?” Taise snapped. “We sent a hundred and fifty men. We should have brought back three times that.”
“There were—circumstances.” Taise hadn’t planned on elaborating or explaining how a couple of plasma charges had brought down the side of a mountain, killing sixty-three of his men—and twenty-two families that they had grabbed on their sojourn. But Taise obviously wasn’t going to let it go. Just another sign of his madness.
A hundred fifty men was nothing to the High Lord. Even the families meant little. The men and boys would be castrated and put into use at High Keep. Women and girls became body slaves
, mated to as many as five warriors. The man that impregnated her could keep her. But they had thousands of body slaves living in High Keep or in the surrounding warrior camps.
In truth, if the raids weren’t a way of life for them, they could have stopped the raids a hundred years ago, two hundred. Perhaps even longer. They had enough breedable offworld females, but very few chose to even consider that it was time to slow down, or completely cease the offworld raids.
Thousands and thousands of years ago, Anqar had been an insular world, relying on nothing and nobody. But then, for some reason, fewer and fewer females were born to the Warlord bloodlines. Commoners still bred easily, but their blood diluted and weakened the Warlord blood. Children often didn’t survive childhood and too many were born without talent.
Power was life in Anqar—and the Warlords had to pass their power on. Eventually, they realized that if they didn’t find a way to get more females, they would die off completely. According to the ancient texts that all Sirvani studied, even in those times long past, there had been those among them who could see through the Veil.
Char imagined it had been pure torture to stare upon Ishtan—the inhabitants would have seemed as primitive to Char’s ancestors as Ishtan seemed to him now. But, primitive or not, it would have been a ripe world. Char could remember his first raid and staring into that amazingly green world, so different from the arid climes of Anqar and so ripe with women—women of power. Unlike among the commoners of Anqar and within the Warlord bloodlines, power flowed freely in Ishtan. It didn’t mark every soul born in that world; it hit each generation in an equally random way, so that for every untalented child, there was also one born with talent.
Looking through the Veil and seeing that, Char wondered how the idea first came to be, the idea that perhaps they could pierce the Veil and take some of those gifted women for their own. The idea took root, and within a few generations, the Warlords of old had perfected the skills of raising a gate, and crossing the gate for the first time became a rite of passage.
But all things must come to an end. Char had tried bringing the idea up rationally to the Warlords after he’d learned that the women they had taken from offworld would be enough to sustain them indefinitely, provided they exercised thought and caution. They could bring female blood back into the Warlord bloodline, but none wanted to listen.
Time had taught Char that, eventually, they would have no choice. Each passing year, the gates became more unstable. But Char had long since learned to hold his peace. Several of the advisors that served Taise had attempted to tell the High Lord all of this, only to die before they’d uttered more than a few words on the subject.
The High Lord wouldn’t listen to reason. But Char didn’t need him to—all he needed was for the High Lord to die. As the High Lord’s second in command and his closest blood relative, the mantle of High Lord would be passed to Char upon Taise’s death and then he would begin anew. The old ways would change.
“Circumstances,” Taise spat, drawing Char’s attention back to the less than successful raid. “How many dead?”
“Sixty of our men, forty offworlders,” Char said, keeping his voice neutral. The loss of his men mattered little to Taise, Char knew. It was the loss of the slaves that had the High Lord so enraged. His mottled face had gone a bizarre reddish purple, and Char amused himself with images of the Lord having a brainstorm, collapsing to the floor dead. Or better yet, alive, but trapped in the prison of his own body. Char liked to think of that.
By the time he had finished explaining, it wasn’t a stretch to think Taise might have that stroke. His breath wheezed in and out of his lungs and spittle foamed around his mouth. His wrinkled face had gone from that mottled purplish red to true purple, as though the High Lord had forgotten how to breathe.
Disgusting old man.
“You lost my body slaves.” Taise’s hands clenched into fists and he glared at Char with black, angry eyes.
Not like you can get any use out of them, Char mused. Of course, that didn’t stop Taise from trying. He killed a body slave on a regular basis, or had her beaten. Useless whores—can’t even ride a man right. That was Taise’s reasoning. Of course, Taise wasn’t much of a man anymore. Char could even feel pity for the girl put in front of that and expected to do anything useful with him. It was a waste. Taise always wanted the pretty, young ones, and more often than not, he killed them when they couldn’t arouse him.
“We lost a few, yes, High Lord.” Then his tone turned cajoling and he gave Taise a charming smile. “But you should see the young ones we did manage to bring through the Veil.”
For a moment, Taise’s rheumy eyes brightened, and then his face darkened once more. He tugged at his lip and started mumbling under his breath about the Veil. As delusional as Taise had become, the Veil was one thing he was right to distrust. The High Lord was in direct control of the Veil itself, but each subordinate Warlord had his own territory, a province he controlled. Stronger Warlords sometimes received a gated province.
There’d been a time when nearly all Warlords had a gate of their own, but the number of functioning gates had dwindled. The last generation saw a rapid decline in the gates, ending with the spectacular collapse of their second largest gate along the Surachi Province. Gorin, the Warlord who controlled that territory, as well as his protectorate were gone. Eighteen thousand lives, gone in an instant, and more injuries than their healers could handle. Another four thousand died in the days following as the healers and their workers struggled to keep up with the injured.
Twenty-two thousand gone and nearly double that displaced. The Surachi Province was a wasteland now. No crops grew, no wildlife would live there, and the few who tried to return to their homes either committed suicide, went mad or ran screaming back to the safety of the nearest province. It was as though the gate’s destruction had damaged something in the very earth, poisoned it, and it bled out into the land, affecting any that tried to live there.
It was unclear exactly what had happened, and Char suspected they’d never know the full story. What little they knew was scattered, and he wasn’t sure how reliable any of the information was. Reports came in slowly, but apparently there was a huge disruption in the Veil right about the time disaster hit the Surachi Province. There was a power surge in the Veil, but most of the gates were down and the only outlet for that power surge was the lone open gate.
The Surachi Gate.
The fall of that gate decimated all of the smaller gates for miles around, and now the Roinan Gate, located in the heart of High Keep, was the only gate strong enough to trigger the smaller gates that still remained.
For the time being, at least. Char knew they were on borrowed time with the Roinan Gate as well. Weaker Warlords had to settle for serving under another, stronger Warlord. On occasion, there were assassinations when a subordinate tried to overthrow his superior. If he was strong enough, he just might succeed. If he did, he had the province—and the gate.
All Warlords had the magick inside them that gave them control over a gate. The power took time to develop, and sometimes it never did. Until it developed, they were Sirvani,formally serving under a Warlord, earning their place in the hierarchy and completing their training.
For some, that would be their life. Not all Sirvani would become Warlords. The power passed through the blood, but with some, it would never fully manifest. While many high-level Sirvani would master the ability to maintain a gate, the ability to control a gate, to raise and lower it at will, was the mark of a Warlord. That power was what set the Warlords apart. The Warlords were the only ones in known history who could open the gates. It was also that power that gave them their physical strength and longevity.
Char didn’t know the why and the how of it, why the power manifested in one generation and then skipped the next two. Why twins were born and one would have the ability to raise the gate and another would never be able to do more than look through the Veil. No, he didn’t understand it; nor did he care
to. All that mattered to him was that he was born into the bloodline and his powers manifested before he finished the rudimentary education all children received.
He was placed into the formal Sirvani training at twelve, and before he turned eighteen, he was placed into Warlord training. He was by far the youngest Warlord, and more important, he was a Warlord born into the royal bloodline.
Power was his due. When the old man finally returned to the earth, Char would rule this land, and the gates. And he’d damned well not make a fool of himself the way Taise had. Paranoid and obsessed with his lost youth, his waning power and the gates. The damned gates.
Char knew he only had a finite amount of time to finish the job he had set for himself all those years ago. Finding what was stolen from him. After he had obtained that objective, then the damned gates could close forever and he wouldn’t give a damn. Char would be the next High Lord and he was prepared to lead Anqar into a new age.
It baffled him to think that he was the only one in the royal bloodline to see how shortsighted it was to keep depending on the slave trade to keep his people flourishing. The offworld slaves could breed well. In recent generations their matches had produced offspring with the same powers common in their native land. More, they steadily produced female offspring, thereby securing future mates for his men.
It would take time to get his men accustomed to the new way of life, to the end of the raids. When making the transformation from Sirvani to Warlord, a Warlord’s first successful raid was cause for celebration. Weeklong celebrations where the wine and ale flowed like water and the female slaves were introduced to their new lives.
Yes, changing their old ways would take time. However, it was only a matter of time before it was forced on them by fate. Char wasn’t fond of fate’s surprises. For years, ever since he realized how unstable Taise had become and the strain the High Lord was putting on the gatemagicks, and the inevitable faltering of that magick, Char had been working on this solution, and he had been working in this direction for decades. He had already been putting his theories into practice in his personal household with much success. The slaves still produced talented female offspring—provided that at least one-half of each mated couple had psy or mage abilities.
Through the Veil Page 11