Lavanyia sighed. “Blood magic,” she whispered. “There is no place for it among the Celestial Ones.”
Sungui offered a half-smile. “Apparently there is.”
Lavanyia’s dark eyes turned to Sungui. She caressed his face with her soft palm. “Be wary of them, Sungui. When they are no longer of use to His Holiness, we will rid ourselves of them.”
“With the Almighty’s permission,” said Sungui.
“Of course,” said Lavanyia. She kissed his cheek and floated beyond the railing, winds tearing at her silver vestment. He watched her glide gentle as a seabird past the Serpentine and the Steel Heart, alighting finally on the deck of the Flametongue. He lost sight of her among the armored figures pacing there.
The armada flew directly toward the setting sun. Shades of scarlet, pink, and gold bled from the clouds into the sea. Sungui watched the last of the sun’s disc sink beyond the horizon, and the first stars blinked to life in the purpled sky. Darkness covered the ocean and a yellow half-moon emerged from a bank of clouds. Lamps and braziers came to life across the top decks. The Trill Knights brought their screeching mounts back to the stables of their assigned ships, driving them home with prodding spears and vocal commands. Slaves came forth with hocks of raw meat to feed the lizards. The familiar odor of Trill dung filled the middle deck, and the sound of snapping beaks shod in bronze.
Sungui took a last look at the armada trailing behind the Daystar before going below. In the darkness the Almighty’s great fleet resembled nothing less than a constellation of stars rushing across the darkness. Sungui descended the middle stair and entered his cabin, where slaves brought a meal of roasted fowl, seasoned rice, and assorted fruits. When the remains of his repast were removed, Sungui hung his silver robe on a peg near the cabin door and practiced evening meditation by the light of a tallow candle. In the morning he must travel across half the armada to deliver the Almighty’s instructions. Tonight a calm mind and deep sleep would serve him best. He lay upon the pillowed cot and closed his eyes, denying himself the opportunity to yearn for his comfortable bed and spacious apartments in the Holy Mountain.
As he hung upon the edge of sleep, an image of poor, salt-doomed Mahaavar leaped into his mind. The specter followed Sungui into a dark dream where she wore her female aspect and lay with Mahaavar again in the Garden of Twenty-Seven Delights. In waking life Sungui had to choose either male or female form, but the sleeping mind was both at once. The emotions of both aspects mingled and merged in a way they rarely did during conscious moments.
The Almighty had taken no notice of Mahaavar’s disappearance. He was not the first of the High Seraphim to be found unworthy, sent to salt, and consumed by his kind. It was likely that he would not be the last. The High Lord Celestial had more weighty matters on his mind, and a thousand other High Seraphim to serve him.
In the dream Sungui the woman made love to Mahaavar on a bed of crumpled flowers. Yet at the moment of climax, Mahaavar turned to salt. Sungui cried out and woke abruptly in the dark cabin, still entirely male. He blinked into the darkness and realized that he was not alone. He might have been startled by this realization, but he was strangely unmoved for some reason. Warm hands moved across his chest. The scents of jasmine, rose, and lavender. A lithe, pale form lingered next to him on the edge of the cot.
Sungui whispered a word of flame and the candle on his bedside table ignited itself. A woman’s round, heavy breasts hung before his face. Above them Ianthe’s white tresses framed her exquisite face. Ruby lips smiled at him as her palms explored the muscles beneath his taught skin. Her eyes were black diamonds reflecting the candlelight.
“Sungui…” She whispered his name like a spell. “I want you.”
Sungui sat up, taking her wrists in his strong hands. She did not struggle or resist him.
“You wish to drink my blood.”
Ianthe laughed. “The wine of your veins is far too rich a vintage for me,” she said. “I do not drink the blood of allies… only enemies.”
And slaves.
Her breath was honey-sweet in his face. He had expected the breath of a carnivore. Suddenly he became fully conscious of her nudity and his own. Already his body was responding to her presence. Her hips were wide, her legs long and slim. She was pale perfection.
“We cannot do this,” he told her. His words contradicted the promise of his ready loins.
“Why not?” she asked. “Gammir is not my lover. He is my… heir.”
She is of the Old Breed, like us.
Yet, unlike most of us, she is not fully Diminished by the will of the Almighty.
She is ageless and full of mysterious power.
“I am told the Seraphim often take lovers among their own kind,” she said. “And that your last paramour is no longer among us.” Her lips hovered close to his. Her hot breath quickened his pulse.
“I am not…” A rushing flood of lust washed away his words and thoughts.
His hands fell to the softness of her breasts.
His eyes closed tightly, as if he were staring at the sun.
“Do I please you?” she asked. Her lips smothered his before he could answer. Heat surged to the limits of his body. He grabbed her narrow waist and pulled her close. The world and all its powers were lost as he fell into a red dream.
When their lovemaking was finished, the candle guttered low. She lay wrapped in his arms, cheek resting against his chest. Had she worked a spell to enchant him? Or was it only that ancient enchantment that all women possessed? He could not be sure. The pantherish aspect of her nature had shone through in her savage mating. He lay spent and exhausted. Sleep stole his awareness, despite a growing sense of alarm.
She woke him with kisses before the sweat had dried on their bodies. Starlight through the porthole of his cabin told him it was still deep night outside. Where he had been exhausted, he was aroused once again. Her taloned fingers worked a tender magic on his flesh.
“You were marvelous,” she said. “A most glorious lover.”
He returned the praise. Yet he did not tell her the whole truth, that her skills had eclipsed all of his previous lovers. Through ten thousand years of carnal delights, he had experienced nothing like her. Already he craved more.
“Is it true that you alone among the Seraphim,” she asked, “assume both male and female forms to suit your moods?”
His hand lingered on the warm curve of her waist. Her snowy tresses smelled of lilac and rosewater. “I possess both aspects,” he said. “But in truth my moods are most often determined by which aspect I wear. Temperament follows form, as form follows function.”
She cooed into his ear and wiggled in his arms. “Never have I found such an enticing lover,” she breathed. “Show me!”
Sungui shook his head. None who shared his body had ever made such a request. As a male he took female lovers, just as his female aspect enjoyed a variety of male lovers. The idea of mingling the two for a single paramour seemed strange. Perhaps forbidden. The Almighty would not allow it, of that he was certain.
“Please,” she begged, touching him in places he could not resist. “I wish to make love to all of you, Sungui. I can find this thrill nowhere else in the world. I have loved women before. You will see that I know how to please both your aspects equally well. Let me do it.”
Why should it be such a strange thing? He was a being of double aspect. Why not share it with her? Why should his intimates not experience the fullness of his being? Already the female aspect slumbering within him leaped at the idea. The female Sungui was rebellious, defiant, and adventurous. To do this thing that had never been done before was a quiet rebellion against the established order. Zyung’s order. The thought excited him, grew in his chest and loins until he could no longer contain it.
Ianthe glided away to watch him change. The hard planes of his body softened to supple curves. His cheekbones and chin receded, growing smaller and more feminine. His neck lengthened and smoothed, as did his legs and arms. A pair of
firm breasts sprouted from his chest, smaller than those of Ianthe but no less beautiful. The hair upon his body vanished except for the tangled black mane that grew soft as silk, and the matching eyebrows. Soon the female aspect had banished all manly elements from the body.
Sungui lay bare and splendid in the candlelight. She blinked her heavy-lidded eyes at the amazed and curious Ianthe. Wordless, their bodies joined together in a wholly different yet strikingly similar passion. The Pale Panther taught Sungui the secret arts of pleasing a woman, something only her male aspect had considered until this moment. If this was some arcane spell the pale sorceress had woven, then Sungui was entirely lost in its grip. She no longer cared. They spent the remainder of the night wrapped in an urgent bliss as fresh as new-fallen snow, yet hot as dancing flame.
When the first rays of a gray dawn crept through the porthole, Sungui rose to wash herself in a basin filled by mute slaves. Ianthe lay propped on one elbow, watching her every move. In the corner of Sungui’s vision the Khyrein seemed once again to be a great, white cat staring at her. Sungui accepted a platter of cheese and mangoes from her body-slave, and brought it to the cot. Ianthe’s ebony eyes haunted her with memories of the night’s splendors.
They fed one another slices of yellow fruit and shared juicy kisses as the morning light grew bolder, filling the cabin with a golden glow.
“Why do you serve Zyung?” Sungui asked, sitting on the cot’s edge.
Ianthe smiled. “Because I must,” she replied.
Her feline eyes whispered another message: I am using him to get what I want.
“The Seraphim resent you and Gammir,” Sungui said. She reached for a comb to run through her rumpled locks. “They feel you do not belong. You do not believe.”
“Do you believe?” Ianthe asked.
“I remember,” said Sungui.
“What do you remember?”
Sungui lowered her lips to her new lover’s ear. She whispered what she could not say aloud. “Freedom. And power.”
Ianthe placed a hand on her thigh, tracing invisible patterns with a black talon. “These things can be yours again.”
Sungui shook her head. “A few of the High Seraphim remember their true power, but still they fear Zyung. We are all Diminished in his presence. This will happen to you as well.”
Ianthe laughed. “I serve him, this is true,” she said. “Yet I refuse to be Diminished.”
Sungui touched the pale oval of Ianthe’s face. “So did we all, until we no longer could resist. I have tried to stir them, to restore their greatness, yet I alone retain this independence of thought. Perhaps it is because of my dual nature. I serve, yet I defy. I am a perfect union of opposites.”
Ianthe kissed Sungui’s lips, one last ember of the fires that had blazed between them.
“What do you truly want?”
Sungui’s eyes were bound to Ianthe’s black diamonds. She hesitated.
“To be as I once was,” Sungui said. Her body trembled. “To be free of this Diminished state. To rule, to roam, to build my own empire. To love and slay and tear down mountains if they offend me. To walk this world as he walks it. Fearless and invincible.”
“I sensed this the moment I saw you,” said Ianthe. “These dreams are your birthright. You will have them, Sungui.”
“How?”
“I will aid you. We will both aid the Almighty in taking his new lands, then we will steal them away from him. He is no greater than you or I. You will see…”
Sungui did not believe this. But she wanted to. She yearned for it to be true. It had haunted her dreams for centuries. Longer. Yet none of Those Who Listened would truly hear. She had been alone in this private turmoil for so long, it had become an invisible chain that constricted her body in both its aspects, dragging her down with the weight of ages.
Now, for the first time, she might break that chain. She was no longer alone.
She would steal back the power that was rightly hers, and the world would no longer be slave to Zyung’s peace and order.
“What of Gammir?” Sungui asked.
Ianthe grinned, stroking Sungui’s chin. “Your beauty is unsurpassed,” said the Panther. “I am sure you can persuade Gammir to join our plans. Go to him tonight, as I came to you. Be sure to wear your female aspect.”
Ianthe stood to pull on her silver robe.
“What of the Almighty?” Sungui said. Her heart beat faster, as it had done during the night. “What if he should discover us?”
“Zyung cannot hear our words or taste our minds,” said Ianthe. “My own power prevents it. Speak to no one of this save Gammir.” She gave Sungui a lingering kiss before departing.
Sungui pulled away, wiping blood from her lower lip. Ianthe had bitten it.
Ianthe licked her own lips. Her eyes said: You may have me again, in both your aspects. Then she was gone, leaving Sungui alone in the cabin, a coppery tang on her tongue and drop of red staining the breast of her silver vestment.
Blood magic.
She changed her robe and decided to remain female as she toured the dreadnoughts to deliver the pronouncements of Zyung. Memories of Ianthe’s body and the phantom sensations of her touch lingered throughout the day.
In the early afternoon Damodar returned to the Daystar from Ongthaia. Wrapped in a luminous sphere of power, he emerged from a bank of dark clouds. Sungui had just returned from her own duties, so she came to the middle deck to greet him.
Damodar’s lean face was troubled; the remnants of rage still simmered about his eyes.
“Has the Jade King surrendered?” Sungui asked.
Damodar ignored her, but she knew the answer.
“I must speak with His Holiness.” Damodar stalked toward the Almighty’s cabin. When the great doors closed behind him, a peal of thunder shook the sky. The captain was barking orders to his crew. Men rushed to secure lines and masts while Trill Knights brought their flapping beasts in early. This was no weather for the winged lizards and their riders to brave.
Ahead of the flagship, the horizon was a mass of dark, churning clouds split by jagged veins of lightning. A wall of cold rain engulfed the decks, and the wind grew fierce. It moaned in Sungui’s ears like the howling of conjured devils. Thunder rattled the sails and drowned men’s voices.
“Hurricane!” called the captain from his high seat.
The Daystar sailed into the rising storm.
6
The Dreaming Ones
North we fly, in the shapes of white eagles.
We do not pause for sleep, or food, or rest. We do not speak, although there are many questions Sharadza would like to ask me. There are many things I would like to tell her.
Now is not the time.
“Our first ally lies deep in the Frozen North,” I told her before we left New Khyrei. She had turned a puzzled face toward me. Her emerald eyes sparkled, so like those of her mother.
“Is there a member of the Old Breed among the Udvorg?” she had asked. The blue-skinned Giants roamed the high plateaus of the Icelands. A great force of them had followed her brother south in his campaign against Ianthe the Claw. Yet many Udvorg tribes still roamed the tundra, or held the icy palace of Angrid that now belonged to Vireon.
“Not the Udvorg,” I told her. “Far beyond their hunting grounds we must go. To the shores of the Frozen Sea at the top of the world.”
She knew the urgency of our need and she asked no more questions. She had already delivered my message to Vireon and Tyro. The northern armies prepared to march along the Golden Sea coast to set up defenses in the Sharrian valley. Before they reached the shattered remains of Shar Dni, we must enter the white realm where even the Udvorg did not go.
Never had we flown so fast, or so far. I feared her strength might not be great enough for the long flight, and that she might slow me down. I would not leave her in any case. Yet I need not have worried. The tips of her wings were never far behind my own.
On the second day of flight we soared over the
Stormlands. A continent of shifting clouds hid the fields and rivers from our eagle eyes. We flew higher than the storms so the angry winds would not impede our progress. On the third day we crossed over the Grim Mountains, sailing past frosty peaks and dark valleys where shadows danced. The bones of Serpents moldered in deep gorges. Beyond the mountains we passed over the City of Men and Giants. How long had it been since Sharadza had visited the city of her birth, seat of her brother’s power? No doubt she wished to dip between its ebony towers and walk its bustling streets again. Perhaps she longed to visit Vod’s tomb and lay a wreath of flowers at its door. Yet she said nothing of these desires. The time for returning to Udurum would be later, when the fate of the continent and all its peoples did not lie upon our shoulders.
As the mighty towers dwindled behind us and the colossal forests of Uyga and pine covered the world below, I recalled the tavern in Udurum where Sharadza’s word–and her deep green eyes–had awakened me from a cynical slumber. She had stirred me to action, demanded that I help her stop a war before it started, and would not accept my protests of futility. I had worn the shape of a disheveled old winesop for so long, walked the cities telling stories for handfuls of coins, that I had nearly forgotten my true self. Her father had condemned me twenty years earlier for manipulating his life to suit the needs of the world. Vod’s harsh words and his anger had haunted me. I no longer wanted to be the Shaper. So I became Old Fellow, a spinner of yarns, and a drunk. Yet that was not me at all.
How ironic that Vod’s own daughter was the source of my rebirth. She had come to me begging to be taught the rudiments of sorcery. In this I had complied at last, although hiding my true identity from her. She saw through my disguises. In that squalid drinking house, she roused more than my true self from its dark dream of shame and regret. She returned me to life as surely as the warm sun brings forth the first blossom of spring.
Seven Sorcerers: Book Three of the Books of the Shaper Page 10