by Bunch, Chris
It overhung a frozen lake, with porches all around. There were eight bedrooms, half branching off a hall on one side of the main rooms, four on the other side. The center room was low-ceilinged, but huge. I could’ve almost stood in the river-stone fireplace, and the firewood racks on either side reached the ceiling. Around it were thick fur rugs of various animals. Everything was rough-worked wood, including the furniture. The chairs and couches looked as if they’d swallow you if you got near them, and the nap you’d be forced into might last an eternity.
To one side was a dining room and next to it the kitchen, the larder of which was filled with every sort of bottled or preserved viand imaginable. Heating was by wood, each bedroom having its own fireplace. A hot spring rose on the hill above the house, and the water was diverted into the plumbing system, the cold water for which came from a creek.
Two trees rose through the house, each in one hallway. They were supposedly trees of luck and had been blessed when the lodge was built. The place was utterly unpretentious, utterly charming, and a world of its own.
Exactly what I had hoped.
“Well?” Alegria asked. In the minutes I’d been gone, she’d lit two lamps, found kindling, and started it burning with crumpled paper. Three small logs were set in a pyramid over the crackling flames and were smoking into fire.
“Well what?”
“Aren’t you surprised a woman, especially a Dalriada, can build a fire out here in the suebi, amid the wolves and dragons?”
“Not at all. You already told me Dalriada can do anything.”
“I may have oversold the proposition. Come, Damastes. Admire me.”
“I always do.”
“Do you?” She rose from where she’d been sitting, cross-legged on a white bearskin in front of the fire. She’d taken off her furs and wore a soft, loose pair of pants, with a robe top that dipped low and tied at the side in matching leopard-skin-like material. She turned, letting the firelight silhouette her body, and once again murmured “Do you?” She unfastened the tie and slipped out of the top. Her body was firm, nipples hard.
She came to me, and I tried to take her in my arms. “No,” she said softly. “There is no hurry, no haste.”
I lowered my arms, and slowly she unbuttoned my heavy fur coat, undid the ties of my fur pants, and let them drop around my ankles. I kicked off my boots and stepped out of my pants, wearing only a loincloth.
“You’re very pretty,” she said.
“Not as pretty as you.”
She bent and kissed my nipples. I ran my fingers down her sleekness.
“I would like to kiss you,” she said, and her lips parted as she spoke. Our tongues wove together, and my arms came around her, pulling her against me. She pulled away, breathing hard.
“I was taught … the first time should be done slowly,” she said. “But I swear I cannot stand it for long.”
“Nor I,” I said hoarsely, and picked her up in my arms. Her knees folded as if she’d lost all strength, and I laid her down on the rug.
“I want you to love me now, please love me now,” she whispered. “All my places want you, Damastes. Do not stop until they’re satisfied.”
I kissed her tiny navel, ran my tongue inside it, and her fingers fumbled with the ties to her pants. She raised her hips and I slipped her pants off, and she lifted one leg and let it fall to the side. She had but a tiny tuft of hair around her sex, and I kissed it, then moved between her legs, and let my tongue move back and forth down there, caressing the small hardness between her lips.
Her hands moved in my hair as I loved her with my mouth, and her breathing grew faster, harsher. She gasped, jerked against me, groaned, but I didn’t stop. “Come to me now, please now,” she said, and I obeyed, moving up between her legs, rubbing her sex with my cock, back and forth. She was wet with her own juices, wet with my saliva. I pushed slowly, firmly against resistance, and it broke, and she cried out. I didn’t push farther, but moved gently back and forth, fractions of an inch, and then she moved with me, moaning. I moved deeper within her, and her legs came up around me, and she pulled at me. I kissed her, and her tongue searched my mouth frantically. I moved back, almost out of her, then thrust deeply and she cried out again, this time in joy, and I repeated the motion and paid for my long months of stupidity and denial — I gushed inside her.
“Hells,” I muttered.
“Hush,” she ordered, and her fingers moved down, around the back of her thighs, touching my balls, the base of my cock, here, there, and suddenly I grew firm again. Now we moved together, first lovers, but it was as if we’d done it time and again, partners in a long-rehearsed dance, and then she shouted aloud, her head rolling, and her muscles spasmed around me, and I came for the second time. Her face was contorted, eyes closed, and I stroked her wet body for long moments until her eyes opened.
“I was right those long months ago when I said I was lucky.”
“No,” I said. “I am the one who’s lucky.”
“In time, that may be true,” she whispered, and rolled me over onto my back.
“That was once,” she said, and rose to her knees. She knelt and caressed my cock. “Ah, little one, you have not been doing your exercises, or you’d not be tired. You need some encouragement.” She used her tongue on the tip of my cock, then pulled my foreskin back and slid her teeth back and forth on the head. Her tongue touched me here, there, while her fingers stroked my balls, my ass, my abdomen. I was firm once more, and she moved back and forth, taking my entire cock into her mouth, her tongue flat underneath it, and once more the world spun. It was my turn to cry out. She lifted her head and swallowed.
“The real thing tastes better than any of the compounds they gave us,” she said. “Or at least yours does.”
I pulled her up beside me and kissed her.
“Twice,” she said.
We lay contentedly together, caressing each other, feeling the warmth of the fire, and the greater warmth of another, invisible fire about us.
“Would I sound like a fool if I said I love you?” I said.
Her eyes snapped open in surprise. “N-no. Of course not. But …”
“But what?”
“I … This isn’t supposed to … Oh, hells, I’m confused!” Tears started, but she rubbed them away.
“I’m sorry,” I joked badly. “I’ll never say that again.”
“Don’t be an ass.”
She took a deep breath. “I love you, Damastes.”
“Nice that we agree on things.”
We kissed.
“Do you know when I fell for you?” I shook my head. “It was that very first night, when you threw that tablet off the balcony.”
“Now, wait a moment,” I protested. “That doesn’t make any sense. I said no chains, so — ”
“So I put them on. But who said love is a chain?”
I made a face, didn’t answer.
“Forget about her,” Alegria said. “That’s gone. That’s over. Think about something else.”
“All right,” I said slowly, a bit embarrassed, but still curious. “I’ve got a question, but you don’t have to answer it. That first night, you cut yourself, so that people wouldn’t talk about what didn’t happen.”
“Yes?”
“And tonight it seemed, it felt, like the first time you’d made love.”
“I thought you said you were a country boy.”
“I am,” I said. “You’re confusing me.”
“Haven’t you heard any of the old jokes about the poor girl who’s been known to like the haystacks and the bumpkins she finds there, and then some old rich farmer decides he’s got to marry her? But only if she’s a virgin?”
I did remember those ancient jests that invariably finished with some young lad ending up in a place the old farmer thought exclusively his. “I do.” This could have been embarrassing, as Alegria said. But suddenly it struck me as funny. “So as part of your graduation ceremony, when you became a full-fledged Dalriada,
you stood in line while a midwife put a certain stitch somewhere?”
“No, you idiot! It was done sorcerously.”
“Ah-ha. Now it’s explained, for certainly you have certain talents I’ve never known in a virgin before.”
“That was part of my training,” Alegria admitted, blushing a bit. “I saw you peep into that room with the … what we called hobby horses. At a certain age, we were introduced to them and required to memorize many positions. As many positions as you lecherous men have been able to devise, and two more.”
It was my turn to turn red.
“Yes,” she went on. “They were used exactly as you thought. And there were other simulacra we were required to be familiar with, some large, some small. The small ones we called lij’s, princes, since we learned the older and more powerful the man, the tinier the toy.”
“That sounds sort of mechanical, and pretty damned unromantic. Not to mention a little painful.”
“Oh, the sisters of the Dalriada aren’t brutal,” she said. “First we learned to pleasure ourselves, when we were little more than babes. Then we were skillfully taught other techniques. Some of this was done in dreams. I remember one sequence well. I would’ve been thirteen, I suppose. He was tall, with a wonderful black beard that tickled when he lay atop me. He gave me great pleasure, and when I awoke, almost as damp between my legs as if I’d really known a man, and realized there was no one there, my heart broke, and wasn’t repaired until the next night, when the wizards of Dalriada sent him to me again.
“I was foolish enough to be shocked and even jealous when I told one of my friends about him, and she started laughing and said she, too, had been loved by him that night. The dreams were sent in cycles, so all of us learned the same things at the same time. There were other men in other dreams. Men and women. Sometimes more than one.
“Most of us had real lovers from time to time. The older women, or our friends. There is a tradition with the Dalriada that older girls take younger ones to teach. For a few weeks that woman you met, Zelen, and I were lovers. I didn’t and don’t feel it was bad, because I read most people will find pleasure where they can. Prisoners slake their lusts on each other, don’t they?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t been one yet.”
“And I’ve read that soldiers, when they don’t have any virgins to despoil or whores, will secretly turn to their brothers, paying no heed to the punishment they could face.”
“They do,” I said. “But in Numantia there’s no need to be secretive about it. I can’t imagine anyone making something natural against the law.”
“It is here in Maisir,” Alegria said. “Although it’s not enforced unless it’s the only way someone can destroy his foe.
“To change the subject,” she went on, “you realize I’m not supposed to tell you any of this.”
“Why not?”
“Remember, I am — I was a virgin, and that’s an important part of being a Dalriada.”
“You mean the man a Dalriada is … given to,” and the words still came hard, “is supposed to think all her talents, all the things she can do with her body, have been a gift of the gods?”
“Exactly. Specifically from Jaen.”
“By my monkey god Vachan, men are dumb,” I said.
“Maybe, but I think they’re sweet. And worth taking care of.”
• • •
Alegria was almost perfect, I thought, as I fell more deeply in love each day. Her biggest flaw was that she simply could not cook. Not because she didn’t understand the nature of foods — she’d been well taught by the Dalriada, but because she simply didn’t think it was necessary to be precise. A bit too much salt, a bit too few spices, a bit too long in the oven, a bit less kneading than specified — these didn’t seem to matter at the time.
“But after all,” she told me, “cooking isn’t important to a Dalriada. The noblemen we’re with have cooks and bakers and stewards and servants to bring us our meals in bed. Only barbarians would take a delicate flower like myself into the suebi by herself and require her to commit truly unnatural acts such as washing pots!”
“My humblest apologies,” I said, bowing low. “For I am truly a barbarian, Woizera Alegria, and a foreign one at that. Perhaps this task would be more to your taste. Would you be so kind as to attempt to fit your ankles into my ears?”
She mock-saluted and lay back on the bed. “You order me, sir.”
Not that it mattered — she had, as a dutiful student, memorized many recipes, and would recite them to me as I cheerily banged pots and kettles about. I can’t say I was or am a good cook. But I was better than Alegria. Not that we spent all that much time eating, however. At least not in the strict sense of the word.
I wished it had been five weeks instead of five days, but the time ended, and we returned to Jarrah. There was an invitation waiting, one for that very night, one I couldn’t have refused.
I showed it to Alegria, and she shivered, and her face paled with fear.
“What does he want?”
“I don’t know. But I’m sure he’ll tell me.”
“Be careful, my love. Be very, very careful.”
• • •
“You may call me azaz, my title,” the small man said softly. “For I permit no one my name. I’m sure you appreciate that knowledge of a sorcerer’s name can give power over that wizard, and even though I fear no one, I cannot see the reason to ever grant the slightest advantage.”
The azaz was the mysterious master of ceremonies, the Maisirian chief sorcerer and most powerful magician. No one in the embassy knew anything about the man who held the post, other than that he was utterly feared. No Numantian, including Ambassador Boconnoc, had ever met him. The azaz, like his predecessor, preferred the isolation of his castle, a five-sided black stone monolith at the very end of Moriton, next to the high wall that held out the Belaya Forest.
When he attended court, he sat in an anteroom or cubicle with a heavy curtain across it. And when he called someone to his presence, he or she always came, even though there might well be no return.
The azaz was a small man, in his early forties, I guessed, balding and clean-shaven. He was sharp-featured and reminded me of another retiring man to be feared, Kutulu, the Serpent Who Never Sleeps. But where Kutulu’s eyes were careful recorders of all they saw, the azaz’s were ice-blue, nearly colorless lances of power and authority.
It might sound as if they had the same blaze as the emperor’s. The emperor’s eyes drew you in, held you, and commanded obedience. The azaz’s glare was almost that of a madman’s. He didn’t need to give you orders, for his power was so much mightier he’d simply crush you if you stood in his way — or if the azaz thought for one moment you might.
He wore pants and shirt of a heavy, rich, dark brown silk, and held a wonderfully carved wand of ivory in one hand, that he toyed with as he spoke.
He met me just inside the anteroom of the castle. It was bare stone, with no decoration except a black banner hanging on one wall, with a symbol on it in red I didn’t recognize. I bowed, introduced myself. Then he said, without niceties:
“I do not like you, Damastes á Cimabue,” and his tone was as casual as if he’d mentioned the weather.
I blinked, recovered. “Why? Because I am a Numantian?”
“I have little love for your people, true, but my dislike is more personal. Do you recollect a man you would have known as Mikael of the Spirits?”
Mikael Yanthlus, Chardin Sher’s supreme magician. I’d gone into the castle he and his master were sheltering in, and laid the Seer Tenedos’s spell, then fled moments before some great demon rose from the earth and destroyed the castle and the rebels it sheltered. Here was yet another link to the past.
“Of course.”
“Mikael and I were friends, or as much as any wizard permits himself friends, when we were boys. He decided he could learn more, faster, by wandering. He did gain much, but was hurled back to the Wheel by yo
u and your emperor. I’ve tried to reach his spirit, or to find where he was reborn, but none of the demons I’ve summoned have knowledge of him. Perhaps he’s still with the gods. Or perhaps he was destroyed unutterably. So I love you but little, Numantian.”
Honesty, I think, requires its mate. “He was assisting a rebel in a foreign land against that man’s rightful rulers,” I said coldly. “He met the fate he deserved, as did the traitor he served.”
“I see your bluntness, which I witnessed at your first meeting with my king, extends to all things,” the azaz said, with a bleak smile. I remembered that curtained alcove behind the king.
“As for Mikael, I can’t say I agree that he got what he deserved, but I won’t argue that his doom was unjust. He was always more ambitious than I. If he’d lived, by the way, I don’t doubt that he would have overthrown Chardin Sher, and then there would have been a contest of wizards to make the gods gape in astonishment.”
I didn’t reply.
“But that didn’t happen. So I’ll have to be the one who tests your great Seer Tenedos,” the azaz said. “If for no other reason than to see if your emperor was able to steal Mikael’s powers when he died. Myself and the War Magicians against Tenedos and his Chare Brethren.”
“I can’t see how this contest can happen, if there’s to be peace between our kingdoms,” I said. “Which there will be. Or are you going to ruin the negotiations?”
“Not at all,” the azaz said. “My king does want peace, and I serve him precisely. As I said, I’m not as ambitious as Mikael was. In fact, I’m a bit suspicious of those who reach toward the stars. I refer to both you and your emperor. I mean no disrespect, but, what, ten years ago or so, he was a disgraced magician sent into exile, and you were the youngest cavalry legate in the army.”
“You know a great deal about both of us,” I replied. “And while I have nothing to say about my emperor’s goals, I can truthfully say that all of my achievements came as a surprise. They still do, to be frank.”
The azaz looked skeptical.
“And,” I went on, feeling a bit angry, “for a man who says he means no disrespect, you’ve certainly gone a very long ways in that direction for my comfort. If all you wanted was to have me here for a slanging match, then may I request your permission to leave?”