by Dora Machado
She looked him over quickly. He was slippery with a combination of sweat, fragrant oils, and Orgos's emissions, but she couldn't find any major wounds on him. She tried to unravel the chains from the bedposts, but it was useless. If she was going to get him out, she needed to find the key to the manacles. It was a small key, she could tell by the lock, slim and blunt at the ends.
“Kael, make an effort. Tell me. Where is the key? The key for the irons.”
His brows knotted in concentration. “The key?”
What was wrong with him? Sariah examined his face again, the rolling eyes, the ashen pallor, the mouth, bright red. “Rotting pits. Did he give you something? What did he give you? Kael, listen to me. I need to know what he gave you.”
His words slurred, but he gestured to one side with his head, indicating some level of comprehension. Sariah looked at the table beside the bed, and gasped, horrified.
Hepa. She recognized the nuts littering the table, shaped like her fist, hard like a rock, deeply grooved and coated with coarse curly fibers. There was a jug of strongly brewed canundro on the table as well, and a cup reeking with the scent of the hepa's treacherous milk. The canundro had turned red, the same deep color staining Kael's lips. There were several cracked shells on the table and floor, far too many. The bastard had fed Kael hepa.
Sariah fought the panic overtaking her. Delusions, disorientation, confusion, weakness, extreme sensitivity, these were the side effects of ingesting hepa. How was she going to get a hepa-stricken Kael out of Alabara?
One problem at a time. The chains. She had to get him free and off the bed. She searched around the room, on the pegs by the door, in trunks and drawers, and through Orgos's discarded clothing. Nothing.
“Kael, I understand Orgos fed you hepa.” Sariah pressed a cup of water to his lips. “I need you to listen to me. I know it's a great effort right now, but I need your help to get us out of here. Where's the key?”
He couldn't keep his quivering pupils steady on her, but his brows were knotted again and his mouth was trying to speak. “Ate… it.”
“He ate the key?”
What kind of vile beast swallowed the key to his prisoner's manacles? The kind that intended to consume his prey alive and on site. The type that began by destroying hope from the start. The kind that indulged his horrid fantasies from beginning to end.
“Meliahs curse you, Orgos, you miserable dung of a polecat.”
No key. The realization hit Sariah like an icy gust. She had a vision of herself kneeling by Orgos's gutted carcass, arms dripping to her elbows with gore and blood as she rummaged through the mangled mess of his entrails looking for the key. What were the chances such a search would yield it?
Wait. She could pick the locks. She had done it at the keep many times. She could do it again. With what? She looked around the room. A stylus? Too thick. A needle? Too weak. A tooth from Orgos's ivory comb? Long, slick, sturdy. It might work. She broke the tooth from the comb, climbed on the bed and tackled the left hand manacle.
“Let go.” She tried to peel Kael's four-fingered clutch from the chain, but he wasn't budging. She worked around it. The lock was shallow but sturdy, a little slippery inside. Or was that her hand, shaking? There, she found the bolt. A twist, a jiggle, a push at the right time. Click.
The hand was free, bruised but intact. She didn't think that Kael could completely understand what was happening, but he brought the hand to his chest and flexed his fingers, staring at them groggily as if they were separate from his body and unexpected. Sariah fed him more water. She thought he looked a bit more alert.
Next. Left foot. Same procedure. Hurry. She dared a quick look at the door. It was barred from the inside and safe for the moment. For how long? Damn this iron, it had decided to be difficult.
Hepa. It was a secret of the wealthy and the powerful. Sariah knew about it because of an incident at the keep years before, when she witnessed Ilian, the worst of her mistresses, experimenting with the drug over the course of a few weeks. It had been particularly trying on Sariah. The results had been disastrous. By the time she recovered, her mistress had been close to expulsion from the Guild.
The hepa milk was the most insidious and potent of all stimulants, the drug of choice for those seeking experiences well beyond the ordinary. Combined with canundro, it was even more formidable. It played havoc with the mind and destroyed the stomach and bowels. It was highly addictive. It was also the most powerful aphrodisiac known to the generations, no doubt the main reason why Orgos had resorted to it.
Done. The left foot was free. She fed Kael more water, two cups, one after the other. She splashed his face with the water as well, and poured a few ladlefuls over his neck, chest and belly as much to refresh him as to rinse off Orgos's filth.
His eyes seemed to focus briefly. “Sariah?”
“Present and accounted for.”
“You came?”
“Of course.”
“Orgos said…” The black and green gaze wandered away again.
“And you believed him?”
He blinked, closed one eye, and gazed at her with the green eye only. “Nay. I knew. If you could.”
“Hold on to those senses, can you?” Sariah placed the cup of water in his trembling hand. “We're going to need them to get out of here.”
No time to waste. On to the right foot. The right ankle was bleeding a bit. Kael had been pulling at it hard. “We have to hurry. If Orgos's men find us here—”
Kael squinted. “Dead?”
Sariah didn't want to look at the man. “I think so. And we'll die too, if I can't get these chains off you.”
“Won't come. He. Told. Them.” His eyes drifted lazily to the back of his head.
“Orgos told his men what?”
“Who?”
“Orgos, the man who put you here, remember him? What did he tell his men?”
A spark of forced lucidity flashed in his gaze. “Don't bother. Him. It could be… days.”
Sariah could have kicked Orgos's corpse to pieces.
“The room's spinning,” Kael murmured.
“No, it's not. It's the hepa.”
“The red juice?”
“The red juice.”
“I can't… think.”
“You're thinking now, at least some, but yes, that's why you can't think very clearly.” Damn. The bolt was stuck. The ivory tooth cracked. She shook the broken fragments out of the lock and broke another tooth from the comb.
“Who are you?”
Meliahs grant her patience. “Sariah. Remember?”
“Sariah. Yes.” He spilled the water all over himself. “I think I love you.”
“Oh, yes you do. Try not to forget that.”
“Can't see you very well.” He squinted, cross-eyed. “Why did you come?”
“To save your arse. Literally.”
The lock clicked and the right foot was free. She rubbed the maimed foot, restoring circulation to the limb. He bent and stretched the leg several times before bringing his knees closer to his chest and leaning his head in the crook of his chained arm's elbow. He looked somewhat more comfortable. He closed his eyes. Sariah thought he was asleep.
“It wasn't going to work,” he mumbled. “Your plan.”
“Well, it was better than yours, and it didn't entail chains. Meliahs help us, Kael, what have you done to your hand?” The cuff had dug to the bone and was encrusted in his flesh.
“I was getting it loose.”
“Loose? You were planning to leave your hand behind to escape Orgos?”
“Just a bit of it.”
“Hold tight, this is going to hurt.” Sariah jiggled the lock as gently as she could, but the chain shifted against the wound all the same.
“One hand.” He wiggled his fingers weakly. “To kill him.”
He wasn't boasting, not even in his present state. He was sharing the plan he'd had in his head all along.
“I needed you gone. And the others. Are there o
thers?” Confusion brimmed in his eyes.
“Delis, Malord, Mia.”
“Pile of dung.” That was the old Kael speaking. “He kills. You. Them.”
Click. Sariah slid the cuff off his wrist carefully, but still a spurt of fresh blood stained the bed linens. She ripped a pillowcase and wrapped it as a makeshift bandage around his wrist and over his thumb. She fed him more water and helped him to sit up on the bed.
His bones creaked like rusted hinges. His face went suddenly white. “I'm going to—”
Sariah caught most of the vomit in one of Orgos's fake gold basins. “It's quite normal. You'll be doing a lot of that in the next few days.”
He wiped his mouth with the fouled bed sheet. “Is it… normal too?”
He stared at his groin, looking very young and vulnerable. The startled expression on his face was almost comical, until Sariah saw the object of his concern.
Dear Meliahs. It hadn't eased. She had been too busy to notice, a good measure of her single-minded focus, because his erection was simply impossible to miss. His red-streaked sex stood out like a bloodied horn, longer, thicker and harder than any Sariah had seen.
“Are you doing this?” He eyed her with deep suspicion.
“Me? No, nay, no, not me. It's you. I mean, your body. The hepa.”
“He was doing this.” It was an outright accusation.
“Aye, but he stopped. He's gone, you see?”
“But it is not gone.”
Obviously.
“Shall we try some water?” Sariah poured several cups of water on his lap, directing the flow to wash the tincture away. Kael growled like a snarling beast. It was as if some exotic reptile was cornered at his groin, a frill-necked lizard unfurled in full threat, ill-tempered, and ready to strike.
Sariah dared a whiff at the tincture's beaker. Hepa, this time mixed with some sort of aromatic oil. Her problems, like his, were growing rapidly.
“Are you he?” He was hallucinating. His pupils contracted and expanded in quick succession. His eyelids had gone stiff. He wasn't seeing her, but rather Orgos, and who knows what else.
“The hepa is doing this to you,” Sariah explained. “Do you remember?”
He struck without warning. An avalanche of muscle and bone launched from the bed and flattened her on the ground. The weight of his body squashed her against the floor. His hand landed on her neck, a block of cold marble. Her throat's fragile cartilage crumpled under the clawed fingers, but his grip was slippery and fumbling. Time seemed to slow down to match the tiny dribble of air trickling into her lungs. She had the presence of mind to manage a sarcastic thought or two.
Perfect. She was going to die from his hepa-induced delirium, strangled, smothered, or worse, bludgeoned to death or punctured through the gut by the force of his godless erection. She tried to talk to him, but his knuckles cracked around her neck and her larynx buckled. The chamber dimmed. Black dots speckled her vision.
“Ka—Ka-el—lin. No!”
“Sariah?”
He was looking down on her as if she was attacking him!
The pressure was suddenly gone. The air was flowing. The weight was off her. Kael was gasping beside her as loudly as she was. Spraddled on the floor like a trampled toad, Sariah breathed great quantities of air. She thought for sure every bone in her body was crushed, but she managed to sit up. They had to get out of Alabara. It was the only coherent thought sticking in her mind. She managed to grasp the table and heaved herself up. He looked lost, sitting dejectedly on the floor with his swollen sex curling toward his belly like a deadly blade.
“Did I… hurt you?”
Sariah's hand went to the bruises on her neck. “No, nay, no.” She fumbled for his clothes, and found them by the bed. “Let's get you dressed. We have a long night ahead.”
He snatched the shirt from her. “Don't touch me.”
Oh, please. Not again.
“You make it worse.”
“Me?”
“Go away.”
Damn. They were not getting out of Alabara, not alive, not with Kael like this. She considered the man at her feet. He had been aroused for hours and she gathered he had managed to hold back all that time, despite Orgos's tortuous efforts. It was just like Kael, defiant in submission, compliant of his oath yet utterly disobedient. He had found his own way to fight the unequal battle, to triumph over Orgos, even in defeat.
The persistent state of arousal would only get worse, because the hepa caused not only delusion and confusion, but intense arousal and sensitivity so keen that she had seen a grown woman cry from the agony caused by the casual brush of linen against her nipples. Sariah realized he wasn't going to be able to escape in such conditions. What to do?
The only thing she could.
She hoped with all her heart that Kael had heard right and the guards had heeded Orgos's orders to stay away. She was about to borrow the marcher's quarters for her own unholy purposes. She stripped her weave and her leggings, but kept her boots on, just in case she had to run. When she looked up again, Kael had backed himself into a corner. With his muscles corded and the veins of his neck bulging like rising magma, every part of him seemed primed for destruction.
“I don't want to hurt you,” he said. “I may.”
The genuine, non-delusional statement made Sariah smile. That was him speaking, not the hepa. “You won't hurt me, but we have to solve your problem. Will you let me help you?”
He was as edgy as a spooked stallion. “I don't think I can stand you. Not you. I won't stop. Not with you.”
“That's precisely the point. You don't need to stop with me. I don't want you to. I can't say these are the best of conditions, but I can be practical about this, if you can be quick.”
“Practical?” Hepa induced or not, his bewilderment was about to kill him.
Sariah untied her tunic and parted it to brandish her breasts. She shook off modesty for the sake of expedience. Not that she liked being naked and vulnerable in such circumstances, but her breasts had always had a good effect on Kael. How had it come to this? She was baiting a hepa-stricken man. Did she have a death wish or had she gone stone mad?
It was taking too long.
“Please, Kaelin?” She placed his hand on her breast. “Please?”
A groan erupted from his throat, shaking Sariah's fortitude. Then all semblance of control was gone from his face and he fell on her like a rabid wolf. In a flash, she was on her hands and knees, lanced and skewered by his brutal rigidity, smarting from the battering and quaking with the force of his strokes. Bursts of hot breath gushed over her neck. Primal grunts matched his blows. Her back strained under his weight and her hips ached from his fingers’ ruthless clutch. But if she had managed to endure her Guild masters and mistresses, she should be able to withstand Kael for just a little longer. She would help him through this, even if her bones were clattering like a nest of rattlesnakes.
Just when Sariah thought he was going to finish, curse her luck, he stopped. He turned her over and forced her to face him.
He frowned. “I've never used you like this? Have I?”
“Nay,” she said. “Not like this.”
“Is it really you?”
Sariah understood. He feared she was another one of his delusions, that his mind, feeble and clouded as it was, was failing him. He dreaded the possibility that in the haze, he was yielding to Orgos. It was more than dread, fear of the one defeat he couldn't endure. She didn't hesitate. She embraced him, pressing her palms against his back, infusing him with a flood of her affection.
“It is you.” The dullness in his eyes lifted, and the smile birthing on his lips took to his bloodshot eyes as well. He caressed her face, brushing the spot on her jaw where the rot drops had blistered her, softly outlining the raised redness burning under her arm. “Are you hurting?”
“It's nothing. Shall we finish this?”
“It won't go away?”
She couldn't give him any hope. “We really have
to go.”
Draping her legs over his thighs, he brought her close to him, pressed his hand on her lower back, and entered her, struggling to suppress his urgency. The intensity of his strain was evident in his labored breath, in the blustery hisses that blew so close to her ear. She didn't know why he reached up to the table and swiped his finger in the beaker, but she noticed acutely when his thumb anointed her with the slightest touch of the red tincture.
A rush of need shot through her, igniting her body into pure lust. “Meliahs help us,” she gasped. “What have you done?”
The intensity was extraordinary, the need overwhelming, and this was only one drop of hepa, nothing compared to what he suffered. Sariah had never felt so alive. She fathomed she could feel his every shift, his every change with exquisite detail. Her flesh had transformed into a finely tuned collector of even the tiniest sensations. This time, when he moved, there was no enduring the malady. She understood why people would risk life and health to feel like this. Then, she stopped understanding, because she couldn't think anymore.
They lasted nothing, a mere three or four strokes, and yet the sensations were overpowering, the pleasure incomparable. Their eyes met, mirrors upon mirrors where each other's reflections continued forever. That's how they came, in the grips of the infinite shared, in the tortured trust of each other's arms.
Eighteen
SARIAH DUMPED THE contents of Leandro's little game sack on the floor. She counted a complete set, forty-eight snakes and scorpions slightly iridescent against the colorful blanket. On the pallet beside her, Kael stirred and groaned in his sleep.
“Hush,” she whispered. “You're safe.” She petted his tousled hair and wiped the sweat off his forehead with a wet cloth. Then, pressing her palm against his temple, she infused him with a trickle of solace and a deep sense of slumber. He needed the rest. And she had work to do.
Wising Leandro's game pieces had been the first thing she had done after escaping from Alabara and pulling the divided decks into the safety of the Barren Flats’ expanse. True, she'd had to pause several times to reassemble the deck and to tend to Kael's urgent needs. But the good news was that she had managed to wise all the game pieces already. On the other hand, tracking Leandro and going to Alabara had taken too long. Worse, she had recently discovered her bracelet had a very accurate if mysterious way of tracking that precious commodity they didn't have—time.