by Brandon Fox
Leif began sliding in and out with slow glides. Sorel coordinated his sucking, bringing his lips to the base of Ander’s cock as Leif pulled out. They moved in perfect unison, each responding to the flexing of Ander’s body.
Ander panted, inflamed by Nicolai’s sweaty scent and muscular embrace. The sensation of helpless captivity made Leif’s slow fucking feel deeper than ever. He felt like an appendage of the other youths, like a cock being carefully stroked by its attentive owner.
He growled and surged against Nicolai’s weight, delirious. The acrobat’s thick cock throbbed in his right hand. His palm and wrist were coated with slippery fluid. Nicolai thrust into the grasping hand, caught up in the rutting frenzy.
Leif’s slow fucking made him feel like he floated in a surging tide. Waves of pleasure swept through him. His vision blurred, everything tinged with golden haze. Nicolai’s thick hair fell in shimmering glory around his face like a curtain of sunlight as he gazed into Ander’s eyes. “Remember the kei,” he whispered. “Remember Lucian.”
Then Sorel’s lips slipped back over Ander’s cock, and he caressed the glans with the tip of his tongue.
Ander’s flesh clenched at Leif’s probing shaft. His toes curled, and his head pressed back into the bed. Sensation tore through him like lightning. His muscles convulsed, and the first jet of his release spewed into Sorel’s mouth. He shook, his body jerking as the orgasm raged like a storm, held captive by the three strong youths making love to him.
Leif slid his cock in to the hilt and jerked as he released a fountain of semen. At the same moment, Nicolai flooded Ander’s hand with slippery come.
In a searing instant of overwhelming awareness, Ander felt the minds of his three friends. His mouth watered at the taste of his own come, and he felt the keen intensity of Sorel’s orgasm as their minds touched and pleasure surged through his friend’s body. The burst of Sorel’s anima pushed him over the boundary between ordinary reality and something else, a realm beyond.
Even before his orgasm subsided, Ander’s mind soared free of his body’s bonds. For a moment he looked down from above and glimpsed four young males tangled together, their flesh and pleasure joined in a new and beautiful combination. Then a geyser of shared sensation propelled him into ethereal light.
He floated, naked and nearly unconscious, on a warm tide of golden light. His body buzzed with energy, though a distant murmur kept him anchored. The whisper took on Nicolai’s voice. Then he remembered. Lucian.
The air around him filled with motes as his awareness focused. They sparkled brightly in thousands of colors and began to swirl as he formed an image of Lucian in his mind.
As Thane had taught him, he let the shape of his thoughts guide his movement through the kei. Thane believed that thoughts and the kei were part of the same thing, somehow connected. Ander didn’t understand, but the techniques worked nonetheless. A sense of direction and movement grew stronger. The motes of light coalesced into billowing clouds. Like a hawk, he gathered speed and plummeted through the clouds toward his target.
He emerged in the sky above a sunny hillside. Wildflowers followed a meandering stream between boulders. On one of the largest rocks, a mottled gray slab shot through with quartz veins, lay a nude youth.
Ander blinked, then found himself standing beside the slab. The sleeping figure was Lucian. His long black hair glistened in the sun, and his eyes remained closed. Ander shook him by the shoulder. The flesh was warm, and Lucian’s smooth chest rose and fell with slow breaths, but he didn’t wake.
He shook again, more forcefully. There was still no response. He was at a loss. Every other time he had encountered Lucian, it had been the shade’s doing. He had no idea how to rouse a shade.
He climbed onto the stone and knelt beside the sleeping youth. “Can you hear me? It’s Ander.” He shook Lucian again, then cradled his head. “Wake up! We need your help. Thane needs you!”
Lucian’s eyelids fluttered, and he took a shuddering breath. He grimaced, then opened his eyes with agonizing slowness. Only when he focused on Ander did he seem to become aware of his surroundings.
“Lucian! What happened? What’s wrong?” Ander slipped an arm around his back and lifted him up. Lucian slumped against him. His breath came in shallow gasps. Ander held him tightly, fear filling his heart. At last Lucian lifted his head and took a deeper breath. He put an arm around Ander’s shoulders and sat straighter.
“The zamindar’s sorcerers are draining the kei,” Lucian said. “I don’t know how. They understand it a different way than we do. Like a victim to be ravaged.”
Ander brushed hair from Lucian’s face. “We need your help. Nobody knows the kei as well as you. We need to find Thane.”
The mention of Thane’s name sent a tremor through Lucian’s body. “Find him? He’s not with you?”
How much more can he endure? Ander put both arms around the shade, amazed at his warmth and solidity. Meeting a ghost in the kei was totally unlike meeting one in the physical world. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish I could spare you from this. But Thane was captured by the zamindar. He’s been put to torture. You… you know better than I what that means.”
Lucian pressed his cheek against Ander’s, and his body quaked. Hot tears wet Ander’s skin. He shared the grief but couldn’t avoid what had to be done.
A shuddering breath soon signaled the shade’s recovery. He knuckled tears from his eyes with a determined swipe. It was easy to see why Thane had loved him so intensely.
“I’m sure I can find him,” Lucian said softly. “He’s the fire that keeps what’s left of me warm.” He nodded, eyes half-shut as if his mind was already searching. “Yes, I’ll find him.”
“You have my thanks, for as long as I live. But we need even more. We need to free him from a spell that overpowered him.”
Lucian’s confident expression dissolved. “The zamindar’s sorcerers have him?”
“Yes, though it hasn’t been long.” Ander grimaced with remembered pain. “My bond with him is mostly blocked by a spell, but I could still feel some of what they were doing to him.”
“If the sorcerers have him, we’ve lost.” Lucian’s voice was a whisper. “So much struggle. All for ashes and blood.”
“No! We can find a way to help him.”
Lucian shook his head, bitter defeat bringing new tears to his eyes. “You don’t understand. The kei is being poisoned, me along with it. I lack the strength to overcome any spells.”
Ander paused, remembering the time he had helped Nicolai defeat a cantrip that guarded a doorway in Fochelis. The energy required for the effort had left the northerner weak and drenched with sweat, even though he was an athlete in peak condition.
“Perhaps we don’t have to overcome the spell,” Ander said. “We might find a way to slip through without undoing the wards.”
“I tell you, I don’t have the power to defeat a spell. Or even to subvert it.”
“I’ll give you whatever anima I have. Take it all, if you must. But we can’t leave Thane to die on a torturer’s hooks.”
Lucian regarded him with sad calm. “I was right about you, at least. You love him as much as I. But it can’t be done. I have no body to hold your anima. I’m little more than a remnant of the real Lucian’s anima, fragments left over….” His voice trailed off. A thoughtful furrow creased his brow, and he gazed into the distance.
Ander held his breath, not wanting to interrupt whatever thought had stopped the ghost’s denials. Finally Lucian took a deep breath and met his gaze. “You can’t share your anima with me. But I could give you whatever I have left. It might be enough to let you see the kei as I see it. Perhaps you could find Thane and have the strength to break through to him.”
“But… what would happen to you?”
Lucian looked down, his noble features enigmatic. “Nothing would be left, at least not in any part of the kei that’s known to me. My anima would be yours, mingled with your spirit. Perhaps I could even touch Than
e again, through your hand.” His voice ached with yearning.
Ander touched Lucian’s cheek, brushing away a tear. It was clear the shade wanted no delay. “What should I do?”
Lucian slid off the rock. His lithe body glowed in the sun like bronze, and his black hair glistened. He extended a hand. “We’ll share anima as if we were working a spell. But I have no body to sustain and will hold nothing back.”
He stood and took Lucian in his arms. The body felt warm as real flesh, hard yet supple. Its masculine curves slid against him, irresistibly erotic and demanding. They kissed tenderly, their spirits uniting in a single desire.
Their breath came faster as they hugged. Lucian’s skin tingled beneath his hands. They pushed against each other like lovers, and their hearts began to beat as one. A wave of strangeness passed through Ander, disorienting. He gasped and broke their kiss. Both their bodies shimmered with traceries of silvery light.
Lucian met his gaze. “Now I’m yours. Together, we might succeed. We must succeed!” He closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, they were filled with desperate hope. “Love him for me. Make him whole again.” He held Ander’s right hand between his own. A final squeeze accompanied by a whiff of fragrance like rare spices carried on a sea breeze, and he vanished in a pulse of golden light.
Ander staggered, momentarily unbalanced by the loss of Lucian’s presence. He sat on the stone slab and took a deep breath. He felt stronger than before. The lush vegetation covering the hillside seemed more vibrant, and he sensed an elusive connection between everything—the rock, the earth and plants, the sun overhead, his own being. Even Lucian, the indomitable spirit that refused to leave his lover, was still part of the matrix. Everything is connected, if you just know where to look. Marvel filled him. “I won’t fail you,” he murmured. A whisper of affirmation brushed his mind, a resolve carrying the flavor of Lucian.
He lay on the warm rock, facing the sun and spreading his arms like wings. Closing his eyes, he felt for the linkages submerged in a deeper level of reality. Sunlight warmed his skin, and a gentle breeze caressed him. He trembled as he caught flashes of towering mountains the wind had touched, vast distances where the light had traveled. The beauty, intricacy, and mystery of the kei nearly overwhelmed him. Then a point of white light flickered into his mind’s eye. He focused on it, anchoring himself. The light seemed alive, purposeful. It expanded to the size of an orange, then began to drift away.
Instinctively, he tried to follow. Awareness of his body faded. Incomprehensible sounds filled his ears: speech in unknown patterns, growls of animals that formed nearly human words, music seemingly formed from the sound of dry leaves skittering in the street. Visions of comets and bizarre landscapes streamed past his eyes. Subtle pressures buffeted him, and the sense of speed increased. But the white light still glowed before him. His body left behind, he soared after the sphere of light.
As he dove after the light, he began to notice a foul odor, like rancid blood in an abattoir. It grew stronger as the scenes around him darkened. Without warning, he burst from the maelstrom of images into clear night sky. The walls of Pella spread before him, and the smell of blood choked the air like a battlefield after a massacre. The source of the stench was immediately clear. Near the center of the city, on a hill containing the oldest buildings, stood the hulking Ziggurat of Baalik. The first three levels, receding tiers of limestone blocks darkened by moss and age, looked as they always had. But the fourth tier, crowned by Baalik’s shrine, radiated an angry ocher light.
He began to feel a burning in his bones as he neared the vast pile of stones, a faint echo of the pain he had felt in the alley while talking to Sorel. He stopped, seeming to hover in the still air above the temple. The small white light that had guided him flickered and disappeared.
He had expected the light to lead him into the zamindar’s encampment, but there was no mistaking the powerful magical energies radiating from the ancient ziggurat. He moved closer, tensing against expected agony, but found that he was now able to bend the kei in a way that deflected the pain. His new perceptions vibrated to the thrum of power coming from Baalik’s shrine.
He reached out with his mind, cautiously exploring the web of energy. A spell of fearsome complexity tied the strands together. His excitement mounted as he looked further into the web. Deep within it, nearly buried beneath suffocating bonds, he felt a desperate fight taking place. Thane! This is the spell that torments him!
Eagerly, he bent his will to the first knot. Multicolored strands of power slowly parted. Exhilaration surged as the knot fell apart. He felt Thane’s pain more sharply, but the increased closeness only spurred him on. A sense of supremacy filled him as he grasped the subtle connections revealed in the kei. The way through the spell lay before him.
The second part of the spell fell even more quickly than the first. He plunged ahead, racing toward Thane’s release with nearly blinding anticipation. Curtains of energy surrounded him like sheets of rain. Another magical ward surged with force.
He extended his mind toward the knot, feeling for the points where the bonds were anchored. He was about to touch the knot when he noticed a tiny black thread looping around the intersection of two larger cords of force. It formed a circle, complete in itself, anchored in nothing except the knot that contained it.
An inner voice screamed. Ander froze. His excitement cooled as he remembered the power of the zamindar’s sorcerers. He examined the new ward closely, and realization dawned. A cantrip! Release the spell, the thread redirects the force. But to where? Delicately, using all the perception Lucian’s anima had brought him, he focused on the trap. Its workings fell open before his mind. Shock sickened him.
The trap was perfect in its simplicity. Releasing the magical bonds would also break the trigger thread. And the bonds were attuned to the trigger, so that removing the trigger would be detected. In either case, the force of the bonds would instantly be diverted in a new direction: into Thane.
He pulled away, reeling with disappointment and frustration. His concentration shattered into a thousand fragments. In the space of a single heartbeat, he found himself back in his physical body.
Sharp pleasure instantly pushed all thoughts from his mind. Nicolai’s powerful embrace held him pinned to the bed. Leif still stood between his widespread legs, his cock still thrusting deep, pulsing strongly. The head of Ander’s cock rested on Sorel’s tongue and was spitting semen onto the slippery flesh.
His body convulsed, overcome with pleasure, but his friends held him tight and coaxed the last measure of sensation from his flesh. His muscles contracted once more in a helpless spasm, and then he collapsed in exhaustion.
Leif pulled out, and then Nicolai pulled Ander fully onto the bed and cradled him.
He gasped for breath, his senses still swirling. He pushed hair from his eyes, forgetting the copious ejaculation Nicolai had released in his hand, smearing the seed across his face. Sorel and Leif joined them on the bed to create a tangle of sweaty limbs.
As his breathing slowed, Ander began to remember. His journey in the kei had been outside time, had the feel of a dream, but as it came back he realized that the elixir had done its job. Memory of his failure returned in a rush. He shuddered, his breath harsh.
“You’ve been away, haven’t you?” Sorel asked. He put a hand on Ander’s cheek, gently wiping away some of Nicolai’s come. “Were you able to contact Lucian?”
He took a shaky breath, then nodded. “Yes. And he showed me where Thane is. But they’re using a spell on him, and I couldn’t stop it. I failed!”
Sorel turned his head to the side and gazed into his eyes. “While he lives, there’s hope. But the elixir is potent, and you’ll soon pay the price for using it. Tell us what you learned.”
Ander tried to respond, convey the urgency he felt, but the elixir, the sex, and his efforts in the kei had left him too weak. His eyes closed, and unconsciousness claimed him.
Chapter 17
&nbs
p; INSISTENT voices drew Ander back from blackness. He tried to ignore them, but strong arms lifted him upright. A pungent mint odor made him snort. He opened his eyes, feeling disoriented.
“Drink this,” Nicolai said. He held a vial containing pale blue liquid to Ander’s lips and tilted it up. The liquid numbed his tongue and throat but cleared his head. “It should help counteract the first elixir you drank,” Nicolai said. “But you’ll still be weak. You’ve exerted yourself more than you know.”
Sorel sat beside him and offered a cup of water. “Can you tell us what happened?”
Ander took a small sip, which seemed to help. “It’s strange,” he said. “No time at all passed while I was gone? It felt like I was away a long time.”
“Time is different in the kei. Don’t worry. Just tell us what you learned.”
Sorel’s insistence reminded him of their task. Struggling against fatigue, he forced himself upright.
“They’re holding Thane at the Ziggurat of Baalik. I tried to dissolve a spell they’re using as part of their tortures, but couldn’t do it. It’s constructed so that releasing the bonds would kill him.”
Sorel looked startled. “You attempted such a feat? That was reckless, Ander. You’re not experienced with the kei.”
“No, I’m not. I had help. Lucian… he gave me his anima. It allowed me to see far more deeply into the kei than I could before. And it seems to shield me from Thane’s pain as well.”
“He gave you all his anima?” Sorel asked.
“Yes. Lucian’s gone now. I’m sorry.”
“But he helped you find Thane,” Leif said, rubbing the back of Ander’s neck. “It’s not your fault you couldn’t free him.”
Nicolai nodded. “If we can’t attack the spell directly, we’ll have to attack the sorcerers who weave it. Could you tell if the temple was heavily guarded?”