by David Hair
Hajya laughed a little shrilly, a single crack in her armour. ‘No. They are my sisters of the Sfera, here to ensure that you can uphold your part of the bargain.’
He looked at her and saw that she intended him to crack or crumble. Will everything be a battle between us? he wondered. ‘Very well. When we have freed Mollachia, we will marry again, with Kore rites, and you will see how such ceremonies are done among civilised people. For now, this will do.’ He unbuttoned his fur cloak and tossed it aside, facing her naked, sweating rivers.
The girls tittered, somewhat appreciatively, somewhat mockingly. He decided they were under orders from Hajya: he knew he was nothing to laugh at physically.
Hajya cast off her bloodied white robe and faced him. Her body was heavy, voluptuous, the scars of her pregnancies clear on her belly and in the small roll of waist fat around her muscled torso. Her breasts were large, her pubis thick with black hair: a lived-in body – but when she turned and swayed towards the pile of furs, her muscle tone was obvious.
‘Come then,’ she said, turning to face him. ‘What do you have, Mollach?’
The watching women, now silent, leaned forward, avid. Outside, the drums hammered on.
He let his temper feed his energies. With a little training and concentration, a mage could control his bodily reactions. There was nothing about Hajya that he found unattractive, and in truth, the challenge she presented was far more interesting and enticing than some statuesque court beauty. He barely needed to feed in energy, already feeling his blood pounding in his loins, his member stiffening and swelling. The girls made throaty noises, still giggling, but no longer with mockery.
Hajya sniffed as if unimpressed, then dropped to her knees, facing away. ‘Let me know when you’re done.’
Anger made him harder. He knelt, gripped her hips, flipped her onto her back and pulled her legs open as she struggled, scratched and hissed. But instead of taking her then, he gripped her buttocks and kissed her belly, then slid lower, licking the lips of her cleft. She stiffened in surprise, and then in understanding: the battle-lines had been redrawn. The girls sucked in their breath and bent closer.
I’ll make you want me, his angry side snarled, even as he bent to teasing her into submission. It took time, but having the women here worked against her: alone, she might have resisted, but she too had her role: the bride was expected to show her own inner heat. If she was unreasonably unresponsive, it was she who would lose face.
And he did know what he was doing.
His tongue probed her, followed her, left her nowhere to flee, and she began to gyrate her hips as she wept fluids rich with her musk. He worked her harder, until she began to pant and stiffen, until she moaned and her back arched, quivering.
While she was still in the throes of that moment, he raised himself over her and drove in, her eyes opened wide as fear and defiance blended with lust and she cried out, convulsing again as he pushed himself all the way in and lowered himself fully onto her, panting in her ear as she moaned into his.
He waited until she was moving against him, then he began to thrust rhythmically, withholding his own climax until he forced another from her, then finally releasing himself in a series of powerful thrusts as she clung to him, hips rising to meet him, her breasts pressed to his chest and her mouth wide open.
He stayed inside her, propped himself above her face and waited until her face relaxed and her eyes met his. ‘Are you now my wife?’ he asked her.
‘I am your wife,’ she said grudgingly. She jerked her heads at the masked girls, and they left. Outside, the cheers renewed and the drums roared.
He stayed on her, and in her, murmuring, ‘Thank you.’
She looked up at him quizzically. ‘You don’t need to thank a possession for performing its function.’
‘Equals, remember.’ He bent his face to hers. ‘Kiss me.’
She scowled, then reluctantly closed her eyes, and pushed out her lips. Her hesitation didn’t surprise him; a kiss was far more intimate than what they’d done. Sex was a bodily function, but a kiss could be made something spiritual.
He took his time, learning her taste and texture, and didn’t let up until their tongues were slithering against each other and her eyes had opened again. At last he pulled himself out of her and rolled away to pour drinks. When he rolled back onto his side, she matched his posture, facing him, a measure of interest in her face that hadn’t been there before. She sipped her liquor and admitted, ‘I’ve underestimated you.’
He wrinkled his nose. ‘Why? Because we had good sex?’
She chuckled throatily. ‘There’s nothing wrong with good sex, Husband.’ She pulled a face. ‘And it was good, ysh. No, I meant, I didn’t think you had the balls or the brains to make your mad idea work. But you convinced Thraan, and he’s no fool. You bargained well. Your plans for the migration are . . . plausible, realistic. I can’t fault them, as yet. You make me believe it can be done.’
‘And yet?’ he asked, raising an eyebrow.
‘And yet . . . the problems are multitude, and may be insurmountable. To migrate a whole people into a kingdom and defeat a Rondian occupier? Most would call that impossible. But sometimes belief must come before reason, and be raised higher. Sometimes, the heart must lead the head. We, the Vlpa clan, have taken irrevocable steps. We are committed now – I recognise that. For the head of the Sfera to now express doubts would be to undermine my own people’s safety.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘That whatever doubts I harbour will not be seen by my people. I will tell them to you, and you will hear me and we will resolve them. But what my people will see is a man and a woman moving forward together.’
He put his drink down and took a deep breath, then looked up, admiration swelling in his chest. ‘Then I’ve underestimated you too. That’s more than I had hoped.’ He met her dark gaze. ‘And so are you.’
She loosed another deep, throaty laugh. ‘You’re not so bad either, Kyrik Sarkany. But it takes more than one good tumble to win me over entirely. In my life I have had my free pick of men. More than a hundred, I think. Does that intimidate you?’
Kyrik thought about the breeding-house and shook his head. ‘How about two good tumbles?’
She laughed again and crawled towards him, shoved him on his back, spilled liquor on his chest and straddled him. ‘More than two. I’m thinking a higher number. I’m difficult to please.’
*
In the two days after the wedding, the Vlpa warriors Kyrik would be taking into Mollachia completed their preparations. Thraan and Missef would be leading the migration, while Brazko, Thraan’s eldest son, would be joining Kyrik in the vanguard entrusted with defeating the Rondians and clearing the way for the tribe’s arrival. Kyrik was trying to insist that Hajya stay with the clan, but that argument was still raging on.
The Sydians had no concept of honeymoon; the morning after his wedding, Kyrik washed himself in the river, nursing a heavy hangover – just like the other men, who started coming up to him to give their names and explain their kinship. He was Vlpa now, though his status was still uncertain: he was husband to their Sfera-leader, not a king – Thraan was their nacelnik, and his sons after him. Here, that wasn’t a problem, not to him, but it would be something to worry about when they were in Mollachia.
By day, Hajya was as good as her word: supportive, constructive, and clever. By night they mated hungrily, both caught up in the novelty of learning a new body. He found the element of contest lifting him to fresh exertions – not just at night, but in preparing for the trek as well. When they argued, they did so privately, and then made up. His body was battered, his manhood ached and his pubic bone was bruised, but it felt good to have such a lover: a true mother of earth and sky, an equal, in his eyes at least, even if she remained sceptical.
He was beside the river when Paruq’s voice broke through his reverie and he looked up gladly. ‘Paruq – Sal’Ahm. I keep worrying I’ll not get to say farewell.’
‘I’d not let you leave without my blessing, my friend.’ The Godspeaker sat beside him, and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘How’s married life?’
‘It’s war – no, that’s unfair. It’s an arm-wrestle.’ Kyrik ran his fingers through his hair. ‘You know, I like her. I like her a lot. I didn’t expect that.’
Paruq smiled broadly. ‘This is very good: a happy marriage is the strong, resilient sole of a man’s feet. Great journeys require such a thing.’ He clapped Kyrik on the shoulder. ‘I rejoice for you.’
‘Sal’Ahm, Paruq – and thank you for everything. You took a broken young man and set him back on his feet. And I don’t think she would’ve agreed to this alliance without your timely involvement in the debate.’
Paruq stood, and Kyrik rose with him. ‘You’ll face many problems, friend Kyrik. The road; the battle; settling the Vlpa in Mollachia – but no one is more capable of defeating these obstacles than you.’
Kyrik fought tears as they embraced. ‘May we meet again.’
‘As Ahm wills,’ Paruq replied. ‘All is unto Him.’
The next morning, Kyrik left for Mollachia with five thousand warriors and half the Sfera, including Hajya, who insisted on accompanying him. She cited something called ‘equality’, to clinch the argument.
25
The Knowledge Trade
Sorcery: Divination
People misunderstand divination. It does not read the future: it predicts it. But it does so using the knowledge of the spirits, who see the vast patterns that we, with our singular perspectives, can only guess at.
GILDEROY VARDIUS, SORCERER, PALLAS, 846
Sagostabad, Kesh, Ahmedhassa
Jumada (Maicin) 935
Tarita Alhani sat in a half-barrel tub in her room, enjoying the blissful touch of hot water while using healing-gnosis to smooth the ugly boils from her face and body. It felt glorious to be clean, wonderful to be soaking up the rose-scented oils, and bliss to be able to stop hiding her true self behind stinks and sores.
Paradise will involve a lot of bathing, she decided, assuming Ahm is merciful and I get so far. She rather feared that Ahm would have to be a lot more relaxed about sin than the Kalistham suggested for her to make it, though.
Her body betrayed her history: scars pitted the entire line of her spine where healers had opened up her back to reach the spinal cord in a bid to heal her paralysis. They’d failed, and the scars would never fade – but other means had been found to restore her movement.
The door opened, and Emilio of the curly black hair and mincing walk sauntered in with a plate of steaming spice-cakes and a glass of wine. ‘Are you clean yet, darling?’ he asked, in Rondian. ‘Dear Gods, you stank!’
‘The perfect disguise,’ she replied in his tongue, grinning. She stretched luxuriantly; knowing even shapely breasts like hers held no sway with Emilio, an unabashed frocio, a lover of other men. A shame, because she’d not had a man for a long time and he was very pretty. ‘It even drove off Prince Waqar, sadly.’
‘A handsome boy,’ Emilio recalled appreciatively. ‘Too good for a stinking dirt-caste girl like you.’
‘Go rukk yourself,’ she laughed, ‘—just leave the tray behind!’
Emilio left with a disdainful sniff to go back to his cooking. He was replaced by ‘Qasr’, whose real name was Capolio, once a mercenary battle-mage from southern Estellayne, now a senior member of Javon’s royal intelligence-gatherers. He stole a cake as he sat beside her tub, no more interested in her body than Emilio. He was her master, mentor and guide in what he called ‘the Knowledge Trade’.
‘I may have a clue to the man you seek,’ Capolio said. ‘You were right: a part-Gatti mage is a rarity, but an Ordo Costruo source tells me one of their men went exploring in Gatioch twenty years before the First Crusade. He impregnated a Gatti noblewoman, but never stayed. It’s possible our man is descended of her.’
‘How does this help?’
‘Because since the Third Crusade, the records of various breeding-houses have been traded on the black market and the Ordo Costruo have been gobbling them up – naturally, as so many of their people were captured and forced to breed. Many wish to trace and reclaim their progeny. I’ve requested access and they’ve agreed. Tomorrow you fly to Hebusalim.’
‘Me?’
‘Why not? I have matters to deal with here. And Emilio is a better cook than you.’
‘And more to your taste in the bedroom. I wish I had a handler who liked handling me,’ she grumbled. ‘Anyway, Hebusalim is hundreds of miles away—’
‘And good practise. Flying is about experience. You can’t get that in a bathtub.’
‘I’ve had all sorts of experiences in a bathtub.’ She finished her wine, gobbled down the last spice-cake and stood. ‘A towel, slave!’
Capolio laughed and handed her a drying-cloth. As he picked up the tray, he added, ‘Join me in my study. I’ve got something to show you.’
Twenty minutes later, clad in blissfully clean clothing, her long hair oiled and combed and her feet in slippers, she padded into Capolio’s austere office.
‘Behold!’ he said, holding up his hand. A sparrow was perched on it. ‘Meet Scevalux.’
‘Fancy name for a sparrow,’ she commented.
‘Rukka-te,’ the sparrow chirruped.
Her eyebrows lifted. ‘Nasty mouth on it, too.’
The bird went to speak again and Capolio shushed it with a gesture. It pecked at him viciously, but a globe of pale light appeared, confining it. Capolio placed the sparrow on the table beside a small saucer of silvery fluid. The sparrow looked at the liquid and tried to back away.
‘Is that a minor daemon?’ Tarita asked. She’d been a mage for only five years: she had power to burn, but her education into the esoterica of the gnosis was limited.
‘Yes: just intelligent enough to possess a name and little else.’
‘I heard that,’ the sparrow trilled irritably.
‘And that liquid – it’s what Sakita Mubarak had me brewing?’ Tarita guessed.
‘Exactly: allium, argentum and bismuth, basically. A puzzling mix – it’s essentially inert – but watch.’ He turned to the table and waved a hand. ‘Scevalux, I command you to bathe in the fluid in the saucer.’
‘Don’t want,’ Scevalux answered, trying to hop away from the saucer, but the ball of light encasing it rolled it back towards the saucer, taking the increasingly frantic sparrow with it. ‘No! No! Don’t want! Please – no!’
Tarita stared as the ball of light with the sparrow floating in it was deposited in the fluid. Capolio dissipated the globe, the bird fell into the fluid and vented an almost human shriek. It tried to launch itself into the air, but as it did, a shadow burst from its mouth, swirled about, then vanished. The bird’s wings gave out and it struck the floor and rolled about, dazed.
‘What just happened?’ Tarita asked, staring.
‘The potion banished the daemon is what happened,’ Capolio said. ‘This isn’t altogether surprising – we know argentum can disrupt certain spirit-based gnosis. Bismuth is added to certain inks for marking out magic circles. Allium is, well, garlic: it stinks, and more, it has some place in folklore concerning banishment of spirits.’ He picked up the dazed sparrow and soothed it, then released it out of the window.
‘Are you saying Sakita was possessed?’ Tarita asked.
‘She certainly thought so, perhaps by the snake-bite you described, perhaps by another means. Realising what she was fighting but not knowing the specifics, she sought a general “cure-all”. Given the toxic properties of the argentum and bismuth, it was both bizarre and dangerous, but perhaps she was unable to banish it with wizardry.’ He produced another vial. ‘I’ve brewed more. Take this, and if you have the chance, get it further analysed. There may be other properties I’ve not detected.’
Tarita spent the day preparing for her journey, then joined Capolio and Emilio for the evening meal; there were just the three of them tonight, as the f
our other agents on their mission were embedded in the royal household. She enjoyed their company; there was a wonderful freedom to speaking as an equal with such worldly, amiable people and she was learning so much, every day.
There were three ways to gain the gnosis. First, and most common, one could be born to it if one or both parents were magi. Second, a woman bearing a child to a mage could gain the power, generally half the strength of her child. The most unusual way was by drinking ambrosia, the secret potion that bequeathed what the Rondians called ‘Ascendancy’: raw gnostic power greater than even a pure-blood mage.
Tarita had been a maid and just sixteen years old when she was left paralysed and facing a brief future of pain and misery. But her mistress, Elena Anborn, had somehow contrived to get Tarita the ambrosia. She’d survived the dose, then she’d had to learn healing-gnosis to repair her own spine – only someone inside the damaged body could sense exactly what was needed. No one had expected her to take to the gnosis so swiftly – she quickly outstripped all expectations, even as she relearned how to walk and move. She’d overheard words like ‘prodigy’ spoken when they thought she slept. Within two years she was better than any other ordinary mage of her age, in skill and power. Then Elena sent her to the Merozain monks, and her life had changed again.
She’d not been required to become Zain herself – thankfully, because all that calmness and virtue really wasn’t her way – but she’d been granted the opportunity to learn the gnosis their way: instead of finding her affinities, the areas of the gnosis which would normally come naturally to her, she was young enough and new enough to the gnosis to follow the Merozain process, giving her access to all sixteen Gnostic Studies. Even the Merozains had been surprised at her swift success.
She was barely two months out of the monastery and this was her first assignment for Capolio – the Convocation had created the necessity, so she hadn’t had the luxury of being eased in. But after all she’d survived, she couldn’t conceive of failure.