Conjuring Dreams or Learning to Write by Writing

by Stephanie Barr

  Soulshifter

  The girl knelt before the Captain's prancing horse, arms up in supplication. The sun shone on her gilded hair as the harsh desert wind pulled it back from her face. "Please spare my brother," Marill said softly as the dusty breeze pressed tears back across her cheeks. "He is so young. He is all my mother and I have. Please!" The words were spoken quietly but with an urgency that carried over the wind.

  They made no impression on the horsemen. The Captain, a rough man in stained leathers, just laughed and pointed to the patch of purple and silver on his arm. "This is the woman I take orders from, the only one. She will like this boy and her gratitude, she shows with silver. What would your gratitude gain me?"

  Ramill, seventeen, lifted his head weakly, blood dripping from his temple. He was draped over the Captains saddlebow, an uncomfortable position for anyone, but he still managed to smile faintly at his twin who knelt in the dust. She stared blindly into his face, into eyes the same blue-white as her own, and then forced another tear from each eye. "Please!" she begged, burying her face in her skirt so it would not betray her. "He can't be what she wants!"

  The Captain leaned down and, with his looped whip, pulled her face back up. He stared into her eyes, her face and honey-gold curls so like Ramill's. Marill held her breath. "You're a pretty thing," the Captain said, at last. He leaned over further and sank rancid fingers into her lustrous long hair and pulled her to her feet. His unshaved face was inches away from her own as he devoured her face and then the rest of her with his hungry eyes. He smiled, which, with three teeth missing, was hardly appealing, and added, "If Lavis wasn't so hot to get a boy in her clutches, I'd take the time to teach you how to please a man." He wavered, but Lavis had been insistent. Lavis was dangerous if crossed. He released his hold on Marill's hair and she slid back to her knees. "Eh, but I'll be back when he's delivered."

  Ramill grimaced at this and struggled slightly, but Marill only turned away to hide her laughter. The Captain didn't recognize the resemblance and that was the important thing. Let him think she hid her face for modesty's sake.

  The Captain laughed and spurred his horse, his men following closely behind him. Marill didn't move as they galloped around and past her, kicking up a huge cloud of dust that settled on her as she knelt.

  Her mother, Loran, came to the front step of their house and stared after the galloping horses that took her son to Lavis' castle, to her. "They've taken him," she whispered, her slight voice carrying over the breeze. "She's stolen my son away."

  "As she stole Father," Marill said expressionlessly. "As she stole Father before we were born."

  Loran said nothing.

  "It is done, Mother. You could do nothing to save Father. You could not have stopped them from taking Ramill. It had to be done this way."

  Still, Loran said nothing.

  Marill finally looked up and saw her mother standing there, hair grizzled and face lined beyond her years, aged by hardship and loss. When her husband had been taken, she had stayed living only for her unborn children and her brother. Marill need only look in those tortured blue-white eyes to know her father. Now, Lavis had taken Loran's son as well. Loran's eyes looked past Marill to the trail of dust left by those who had stolen her son, then flickered back to her daughter's kneeling form. "I could lose you both," she said at last.

  "We knew it would happen." Marill took a deep breath. "Ask Uncle what we should do." Marill knew already as it had been planned, but she couldn't stand to look at the desolation in her mother's eyes any longer.

  There was a slight shimmer and her uncle's voice boomed from the porch, his deep rich voice a startling contrast to his sister's gentle whisper. "You know what to do, Marill. It must be done for your father, for your brother and for a thousand young men Lavis has stolen." Rolan stared at his niece with one cold blue-white eye, fingering his empty eye socket with a three-fingered hand. They were the blemishes that had saved him from such a fate as his sister's mate and had, thus, made it impossible to exact revenge for the man his sister loved. "For the thousand young men she has yet to steal."

  Marill nodded her head and pulled out her knife to cut her hair.

  Ramill stood, naked, before a beautiful woman dressed in purple satin. She was tall with long blue-black hair and large violet eyes. She studied Ramill carefully then leaned forward to run a long purple fingernail down the smooth skin of his chest, then lower. There was nothing beautiful about the look in her eyes.

  "Yesss," she purred. "This one will do nicely. You have done well, Crotor. I haven't seen a specimen like this in years." She caught her captive's face between two long fingers and stared into his furious eyes. "He has fire, this one. All the better for me." She dropped the chin and gestured the prisoner away. "Have him prepared and waiting in my room."

  Ramill was left on Lavis' bed an hour later, only the briefest of purple loincloths hiding his manhood. When the servants left, he turned onto his stomach on the rich silk sheets and closed his eyes.

  Lavis faded in through the wall. Her eyes glittered as they looked on her prey. They had shaved him all over, she saw, and was pleased to see he looked as good as she remembered. Perfect white skin covered his lean frame. His legs and buttocks were shapely and well-defined. He was lying face down, but had lifted his head to glare at her. His face was of breathtaking beauty. A man like this one might keep her young for two months instead of one.

  "Pity," she murmured silkily as she approached, unfastening her purple robe. "Pity I will have to kill you once you have pleasured me." She stroked her long-fingered hand up his smooth leg, watching the muscles contract. "But I have to keep my youth, you know, and I need you for that. The Dark God I serve is very," and she bent to place her lips where her hand had been, "very bloodthirsty. His greed for young male blood is almost unquenchable. He'll like you." She bent again and her breath was warm on his thigh. "But I'll like you first."

  He turned his face back to the sheets. "I know the terms of the spell you use to keep your youth. You must steal the youth of a young man between your legs then give your God his beating heart. How many good hearts have you torn from men's chests, Lavis the Witch?"

  She climbed over him, straddling him between her legs, but he didn't turn over, even when she slid her full-breasted body against his back. "Don't take it so hard," she breathed onto the back of his neck. "I'll make certain you die happy."

  Her fingers reached around for his face and twisted it to fasten her lips greedily against his—hungry, voracious and ruthless. Her hand slid along his side, downward, downward to slip inside his loincloth.

  It was empty.

  Lavis rolled from the body below her and stood by the side of the bed, staring in horror. Her prisoner sat up and turned to face her. Lavis' horrified eyes took in the heavy breasts that had not been there before, the limp loincloth that had once been full. "Shapeshifter," she hissed. "You cannot be a true woman."

  Her prisoner shook a golden head. "Soulshifter," she corrected. "You stole my brother but it is his sister you touched with lust." She stared coldly at Lavis who had turned deathly pale. "If you touch a mortal woman, the spell is broken. It is the price you pay for your youth, absolute obedience to your God. And he has his own revenge."

  Lavis shook her head, disbelieving, her hands held before her as if for protection. The long fingernails fell from her fingers as the skin on her hands and face shriveled with the centuries she had just regained. Her long black hair whitened and then fell out in rancid clumps. The face that, minutes before, had been classically perfect, puckered and collapsed until her faded violet eyes looked out from a seamed and desiccated landscape. Her entire body shrank, drying up to a shrunken husk and then crumbling abruptly into a glittering grey dust. Such was the vengeance of an angry God.

  Marill took up Lavis' discarded robe and wrapped it around herself, staring out the window at a farm hidden in the distance. Crotor is riding to take me, she thought, smiling. The Captain of Lavis' guard was in for a surpris
e himself.