“That was wonderful,” she breathed, and rolled over, leaning her head against his shoulder while she traced a hand along his chest. “You were fantastic.”
Jasar frowned, not wanting her touching him now that he was done. He shoved her off and stood, reaching for his robe. Only women wanted this hugging stuff. Once he got what he wanted, he didn’t want anything to do with them.
“I need a bath,” he told her. “You can go now.”
Alica didn’t get the hint, as most women would have. She sat upright, pouting. “But I want more. Don’t you?” She shook her chest at him.
Jasar sneered. “I think not. Perhaps later.” Much later. There were many other women on his list, and a half-dozen bastards already running around with his eyes. He didn’t acknowledge any of them, though. There was no reason.
“Are you sure I can’t make it worth your while?” Alica purred, leaning back with her spine arched.
He wasn’t—not entirely. Which gave him an idea, something that had occurred to him during the council meeting. He hadn’t had the opportunity to try it out, and perhaps he should now.
“Would you like to play a game, my dear?” he asked with a smile.
She beamed. “Of course!”
Jasar laughed, wondering if she’d still think the same in a minute. Not that it mattered. She was just a minor courtier. She wouldn’t have any way to protest.
“Mace!” he called. “Come!”
The door opened, the huge gray battler stepping inside. His footsteps echoed on the stone floor and Alica went white. Mace looked at Jasar, and the familiar hatred flowed.
Jasar was so used to it that he barely noticed anymore. Mace couldn’t do anything to him. “Mace,” he cooed. “The Lady Alica would like you to make love to her. Do it.”
Mace stopped, his hatred shuddering to a halt with surprise, and Jasar laughed out loud. The shocked battler turned his helmed head to the woman, and he started toward the bed.
“No,” Alica gasped, scrambling backward. “Please! No!”
“You may as well settle back and enjoy it,” Jasar told her, sitting in a chair near the bed. “He’s going to do it anyway.”
Mace climbed onto the bed, and his master licked his lips as the battler crawled over the woman, his glowing eyes never leaving her face. She stared up at the sylph in frozen horror as he adjusted himself. Jasar leaned over, observing the details with interest. Mace moved and Alica wailed.
“At least you’re anatomically correct,” Jasar commented after a moment. “I must say, I thought you’d be bigger. How disappointing.”
Mace ignored him, his hate barely present as he focused on the woman, the bed shaking with his movements. Jasar watched Alica’s eyes widen, and laughed again as her head snapped back. Her expression had changed to a sudden grimace.
He thought it was pain—expected it to be, with something that big inside her—but then she started to pant and cried out, her entire body arching. He realized she wasn’t feeling pain at all. That was even more exciting, and he reached down to grasp himself as Mace rose up, lifting the woman’s hips off the bed. The sylph thrust faster, making Alica’s breasts shake.
Minutes passed. However, instead of his excitement increasing, Jasar felt his ardor start to cool. Alica was screaming out of control now, shuddering and writhing on the bed, reaching up for the battler and howling, her pleasure obvious. She bucked continuously, orgasming over and over, bowing her back nearly into a C as Mace settled on his knees, pulling her against him repeatedly.
Jasar had never made a woman react like that. “Damn it,” he growled, letting go of himself and rising from his chair. “You goddamned whore.”
Mace looked at him, and suddenly the sylph was finishing, buried deep inside the overwhelmed woman. That just pushed her further over the edge, and she screamed until her voice broke. The battler set her back on the bed with uncharacteristic gentleness.
“Get out!” Jasar snarled. “Get out now!”
Mace pulled free of the woman and stood, leaving the room with the same heavy footfalls as when he’d entered, his hatred returned and unrelenting.
Jasar didn’t care. He stood over his bed, staring down at the exhausted Alica. A tiny smile played over her face, and she lay wantonly, her legs splayed and her thighs soaked.
“My,” she breathed. “Oh, my.” A truly slaked desire was in that voice, and Jasar’s rage grew out of control.
“You whore,” he growled, and punched her. “You filthy whore!” She screamed, but he kept hitting her, shouting curses and almost crying as he beat her, grabbing a heavy silver candlestick from beside the bed and striking her with that. He continued until there was nothing left of her face and head, and he felt ill, sickened—not at what had happened to her, but at what Mace had done.
“How dare he,” he gasped, wiping his chin with a bloody hand. “How dare he!” He went on to smash the room, wanting no reminder of what had happened, or of how his own slave had outshone him.
Outside, Mace stood in his alcove. The only outward sign of what he felt was his hand slowly tightening into a fist.
Devon and Solie both screamed as they tumbled through the air, falling repeatedly as Airi tried to juggle them and run at the same time. Afraid a battler would tear her apart at any moment, the air sylph swept up the hill and down the other side, skimming above pine trees before dropping down to a river where she couldn’t be seen so easily. Her passengers shrieked and vomited, but she wasn’t strong enough for them to be comfortable. She could barely hold them both as it was, and she was tiring. An older sylph could have run with them easily. An ancient sylph such as Tempest could have lifted the entire town and run with it, but Airi was still a youngster by her kind’s standards, even though she’d been passed down through three generations.
The river ran away from the village, angling up and twisting toward the northern forests. Airi fled along it, able to feel the fighting end behind her, and she was afraid this meant a battler would be after them. She couldn’t imagine the younger one not following his master, not unless he’d lost, and then the other one would give chase. Airi whimpered, but she knew her master’s mind and couldn’t imagine him asking anything less of her. Save the girl. Save them all.
When she couldn’t go any farther, she dropped them gently down into a moss-filled meadow. She had nothing left.
“Airi!” Devon gasped, rolling to his feet and reaching for her. His hand passed through where she shimmered on the ground, and he cursed before he fumbled inside his tunic, coming out with a small, thin flute. Airi shuddered as he put it to his lips and started to play. He’d been playing the instrument since he was a toddler, learning the music style she liked and the tunes she loved, trained by his father as his father had been trained by his grandfather. He performed for her. This was the promise made to her when she first crossed the gate, and Devon had always been careful to fulfill it.
His music was healing to Airi, giving her something to focus on as she fed from his living energy, drawing it into herself. This world was both alien and poisonous to her kind, but after the binding she could feed from Devon, and his music only made him taste sweeter. She drank deeply, and the girl she’d rescued stared at both her and her master as he played, at the man and at the shimmer of air, her fear fading in the face of what she saw. Devon closed his eyes and kept playing, the high, sweet tones filling the entire meadow as the sun finished setting and the stars came out. Grasshoppers started to sound from the bushes, a counterpart to Devon’s playing.
Airi started to feel better, singing along. That battler could be coming, but it wasn’t important. Her master played for her alone, and even the girl they’d rescued didn’t matter. At last Airi felt strong enough to take on the most corporeal of the several forms she used so rarely: a translucent female child, thin enough almost to be made of twigs—and a shape illegal enough that Devon could be put to death for allowing it. In this guise she sat on the ground, her knees drawn up and wrapped by her arms,
while her master put down his flute. His expression was relieved.
The human female sat a few feet away, shivering in her old, battered clothes and watching them both warily. She was terrified, Airi could feel it, and there was no sign of her battler. By this time, Airi knew, he was either dead or defeated. Airi grieved for the girl.
“I know you, don’t I?” the redhead asked, looking at Devon.
He nodded, pocketing the flute and crawling forward to put a hand against Airi’s cheek. “Are you all right?” he asked in an undertone, his concern palpable.
She smiled at him. His care wasn’t what held her here, but it made her happy. I’ll be fine, she breathed into his mind. Thank you.
He nodded, stroking her cheek again, and turned to the girl they’d saved, his face whitening once more as he stared at her. “Yes,” he told her. “I’m Devon Chole. I saw you in the town a lot when I was growing up there. You’re the baker’s niece, aren’t you?”
She nodded. “Solie. Do you know what happened?”
She didn’t? Airi supposed the human didn’t have any way to know. Not coming from being a sacrifice to having a battler. Airi remembered how confused she herself had been when she first crossed the gate, and she hadn’t been cheated of her prize as the battlers always were. Long ago she had communicated to a few of them about it, using the wordless language they’d developed to counter their masters’ rules against speaking, and she knew how horrible it was for them. All of those battlers were gone now. Unlike other sylphs, battlers weren’t handed down through generations, and so they vanished once their masters died. From what Airi knew, they were probably glad of it, for they never recovered from what had been done to them: they were forced to watch their females die before they had a chance to make them into queens, forced to serve their killers…Solie’s battler had been spared that, but that wouldn’t help him understand what was going on here, or just how lucky he’d been.
“You know that you bound a battler?” Devon asked her. When the girl nodded he said, “That’s never happened before. I didn’t see it, but I can’t imagine the king was happy.” He sighed. “He sent a man named Leon Petrule and his battler, Ril, after you. That’s who attacked you in the village.” He took a deep breath. “While Ril was distracting your battler, Leon went after you. You’d be dead now if Airi hadn’t grabbed you.”
The girl turned white, her lower lip trembling as she raised a hand to her mouth. A moment later she was sobbing, bent over double to press her forehead against the ground. Devon looked at Airi in desperate confusion, but Airi didn’t know what to tell him. He was the master. Finally, he crawled over and put an arm around the girl. She leaned against him, still crying, and he held her while she wept herself out.
It took a while, and Airi again faded incorporeal. She climbed wearily into the air and sensed outward as far as she could. Smoke was lifting from the village in the distance, darker than even the night sky, but she could see nothing more. There was no sign of either battler. She wasn’t sure if that was good or not, but she wasn’t going to go check without Devon’s express order. She was no fighter, and she was too tired to run. Even having just fed, she didn’t have the strength to try and hide. She needed rest.
Below, Solie spoke softly to Devon, telling him what had happened: how she’d ended up with the battler and what they’d gone through, how she’d come to feel about him. Airi didn’t bother to listen. The girl was bound to the battler fully, her soul patterned inside him as his was in hers. She’d always want the feel of that bond and would suffer for being away from him, just as Devon would if Airi left. Airi couldn’t deal at all with that. It was up to Devon to decide what they needed to do, and it was up to her to do it. She would wait for his order.
Wearily, she stayed on watch and swirled in memory of his music, dancing a dance that no one with human eyes could see.
Solie clung to a man she didn’t really know at all and wept, trying to understand how she could be so upset about someone she’d only just met. She was, though. She missed Heyou, missed him terribly, and neither of the two who’d saved her could say if he was still alive. From the sound of it, the answer was no.
The thought of Heyou’s death hurt more than she could have imagined. He’d protected her. It didn’t matter how basically crazy he was, growling at any man who came near her, or how much he tried to get into her skirts. Even then he’d made her feel safe, and when she spoke, he listened. Solie wasn’t too used to that, not in her family. From her aunt, sure, but the older woman still gave advice and direction. Heyou didn’t try to tell her how to think at all. He might edge with giddy skill around what she directed, but he still listened, and he’d wormed his way into her soul somehow. Without him there, she felt empty.
She sniffled and wiped her eyes on Devon’s shirt. It seemed impossible not to blame herself for Heyou, the town, and everything. She could imagine what her aunt would say to that. If you take the blame on yourself, you let the real culprit get away. But she still felt responsible.
She should have realized that the king would be after her, and she should have taken Heyou so far away they never would have been found. It wasn’t as though it would have been hard for him to carry her. Instead, she’d run to the town closest to the castle and let him announce himself to the world by trying to defend her. How could she have been so stupid? Now she didn’t even have Heyou at all, and she couldn’t go home. Her father would never accept her, the townspeople would blame her, and she wasn’t so idiotic anymore as to think the king would just let her go now that her battler was gone. He’d want revenge for his son at the very least. He’d also want her dead for being proof that a woman could bind a battler just like a man. She’d have to run, find somewhere that the king’s hunter wouldn’t find her…and now Devon would have to go with her, for having committed the crime of saving her life. He was in just as much danger as she was, he and Airi both.
“I’m so sorry,” she sobbed. “I got you involved with this!”
Devon stroked her hair. “I’m pretty sure I got myself involved with no help from you,” he disagreed. “Don’t blame yourself.”
“But you can never go home! And that man will be after you!”
“Yeah.” She heard him sigh. “I’m trying not to think about that. Sometimes you just have to stand up, though.” He pushed her back and wiped her eyes with a handkerchief, leaving Solie to wonder what Heyou would think about him touching her. That brought on an urge to laugh and cry at the same time.
Devon smiled, though his mouth was tight and he had lines between his eyes she didn’t remember from before. She’d never known him very well, but he’d always struck her as a peaceful sort.
“We should try to get some sleep and get moving in the morning,” he told her, “once we can see where we’re going and decide where we’re going to go.”
“Where can we go?” she asked, still gulping air, if mostly sobbed out. She didn’t know the land very well—not past the hamlet in which she was born or her aunt’s town.
“I’m not sure. I think north. If we skirt along the Shale Plains and cross the mountains, we can go to the kingdom of Para Dubh. It’ll be hard, but they won’t look for us there.” I hope, she could almost hear him adding.
“Okay,” she agreed, not knowing what else to suggest. He had a cloak, boots, a flute, and an air sylph who couldn’t carry them very far. She had a worn-out dress and no shoes. Still, she pushed herself to her feet and took a deep breath. “I guess we should find shelter under the trees for now. Let’s go.”
Chapter Nine
Twenty-eight men were dead, all of their sylphs destroyed. The harvest was lost and they’d only been able to recover a third of their livestock. At least they had enough gear for everyone to camp in, and they still had the ability to bind more sylphs as well. They could rebuild everything, provided they were left alone long enough and they survived the winter.
Morgal stood at the edge of the bluff on which they’d made their camp, staring over
his supposed domain. It wasn’t much. A collection of tents and fires, built on the back slope of the cliff. They had close to fifty tents, and two hundred men, women, and children, along with ten fire sylphs, eight air sylphs, seven earth sylphs, four water sylphs, and even a single healer sylph. Back in the valley, all of them together had been a wondrous thing—an invigorating thing. Now it just looked like a dirty camp filled with desperate men.
They’d had battle sylphs sent after them, two battle sylphs that tore into their tiny community, ripping their people apart and scattering them out into the Shale Plains. It had taken them days to regroup here, and cost them half their sylphs and far too many friends for Morgal to want to count, including all of their former leaders. He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the icy wind on his face and trying not to get discouraged. He was a thin man, his face gaunt and pitted, and the shortened rations they were all on hadn’t helped. His long hair was thinning on top and graying as well. His left arm was bandaged and it hurt to breathe, but the healer sylph was exhausted. They would have lost far more if it hadn’t been for her, and she still had work to do. He’d have to recover on his own for a while.
Behind him a light flickered, a fire in the shape of a girl staring out over the barren plain. She looked to be made entirely out of burning embers, and was appropriately named Ash. Looking at her, Morgal abruptly tensed. “Are they coming back?” he asked.
The fire sylph shrugged. “No,” she said aloud, and he relaxed. All of the sylphs were watching for attack now. They could sense each other when they were close enough, and they’d feel the battlers before anyone else. Sylphs could hide their energy, but battlers never had a reason. Morgal just hoped that “close enough” wouldn’t turn out to be too close.
He turned and went back across the top of the bluff, Ash at his side, trying not to jar his injuries as he returned to the camp. Survivors looked at him and nodded as he passed, before returning to their own work. There were a lot of men left, but with their casualties they were outnumbered by the women, attached and widowed both. And there were children as well, playing among the tents as though two thirds of them weren’t orphans.
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