by R. Lee Smith
Caught in the eternal instant of a dead mind, Mara thrashed violently, tumbling free of the corpse first and his brain’s decay last. Her head hit the stone. Her vision swam inside and out, and came slowly to a true focus.
Kazuul, a thousand miles above her, looking down.
Then, nothing. Nothing but the black.
* * *
Comas, like sex, surgery, and so many other things, apparently got easier with repetition. Mara came around, lingered in the Panic Room until she’d recovered from the worst of it, and then made herself wake up. She saw the tattered curtains and broken columns of Kazuul’s bedchamber, but not the demon himself. She also saw that he’d chained her to the bed. The manacles at her wrist left her little slack for movement. A Word would free her, but she was too tired to muster the will for it, so she lay there, dozing and sore, waiting for him.
She was here after all. Connie was here. She was alive and she could be found. As soon as Mara was on her feet again, she would take this whole damn mountain apart until she found a way down to where she was. And God help anyone who tried to stop them from leaving.
But first, oh, everything hurt so much. It hurt her heart to beat, it hurt her lungs to breathe, it hurt her skin to stretch over her bones. Not as much as the last time, maybe, but it still hurt and Mara wasn’t good with pain.
Where was Kazuul? Speaking for her before a meeting of the Masters, no doubt, and lord or no, it was still going to take some hard talking. She’d hit Malavan. She’d killed the Scrivener. Sure, she’d killed some aspirants and students too, but she doubted anyone cared about that. Human lives were cheap.
She’d hadn’t meant to kill the librarian. She even felt a little bad about it, if only because he couldn’t have known it was coming and now it would be so difficult for next year’s batch of hopeful sorcerers to learn the language. She wondered if they’d still have a harrowing and if so, what it would be. She could imagine nothing as awful as the Scrivener’s library had been, but then, she wasn’t very imaginative and she knew it.
Connie. How was she going to get to Connie?
There had to be a door somewhere, a stair, some dark tunnel she hadn’t yet discovered. The fleeting impression she’d had from the Scrivener’s perspective had been of being above Connie, but then, everything had been skewed in the demon’s mind, his senses overlapped by everyone else’s.
It didn’t matter. She’d pull up the floors one handful at a time if that was what it took. She’d dig her way down. She’d do whatever it took, but she’d find her. Connie was here and she’d find her.
The sun was rising. Mara turned her head to watch the skies turn grey, bleeding light into Kazuul’s chambers. The curtains tossed in the wind. To Mara, half-asleep, it looked like mermaid’s hair, adrift in the ocean’s currents. She could remember lying on her back in her bathtub when she was very small, looking up through the clear water and watching her hair drift just like that above her, shining silver against the distant white tiles. She remembered swimming with Connie and her whole family down at the community pool, suffering the madhouse roar of all those summer swimmers because Connie was always so happy to go, and diving down with her friend, holding hands at the bottom, and how Connie’s dark hair drifted, drifted, just like a mermaid’s, just like torn curtains over the Carpathian mountains.
Kazuul’s heavy step on the stairs finally registered. He rumbled conversationally at her as he crossed the floor, but went to the opening and shut the sun away with a wave of his arm. The curtains flapped harder as the aerie shrank, then slowly hung down and were still.
“You killed the mermaid,” Mara croaked.
“Tis possible, I suppose. I have killed many people, of many tribes.” He came to the bed, gave her bonds an experimental tug, and smiled to see them as tight as he’d left them. “Art thou trapped then?”
“Just resting.”
“Ah.”
He was quiet. She could feel his gaze lying warm over her, feel his thoughts like gentle touches across her shuttered mind. In those touches, she felt nothing of the Scrivener, or Malavan, or anything at all except her and how she was here, she was beautiful, and she was his.
“Do you forgive me?” she asked sleepily.
“Aye,” he answered, and bent to press his hot mouth to her naked throat. “For thou art returned, and so do I readily forgive thee, aye, and even he.”
It took her several long seconds, fading in and out, before she understood him. She laughed a little, as much as that hurt. “Not for that.”
His drew back, confusion rippling through the Mindstorm. “What further offense hast thou?”
She laughed again and closed her eyes. He leaned against the bed beside her, gradually becoming lost again in the sight of her until his mind came back to enfold hers, caressing and consoling her. “But I guess I am back.”
“Aye.” Satisfaction added thunder to even this quiet voice. “To thy lord and master.”
“I want a bath,” she said, and looked up at him calmly. “Draw me a bath, Kazuul. We’ll make love in the water.”
His brows rose. “Make love?”
“You can pretend it’s fucking if you want,” she mumbled. “We both know better.”
His brows slowly lowered again. “Is this not confession that thou dost love me also?”
“I love,” said Mara, “the idea of love. Isn’t that what you said? But I’ll never have it and never truly understand it. I’ll only have heartless sex with you and slumber parties with dumb little girls who wish they were magic. Let me go, Kazuul. Draw me a bath. We can fuck in that nice warm water and both of us pretend that it’s still a game we’re playing and I’m never going to kill you.”
He was quiet. His hand continued to rest easy on the headboard. His thumbclaw stroked slowly up and down the skin below her bound wrist.
“It’s almost over,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”
“Aye,” he said quietly.
“Then let’s make a memory. It doesn’t have to be all bad, does it?” She looked at him. “It’s good to see you,” she said, and meant it so much it hurt. “It’s so good to see you. Draw us a bath.”
The green of his eyes could never be warm, but it could be calm. Mara lay quiet in that glow, not tense, not conspiring, but just quiet, inside and out. She wanted him to see her sincerity when he looked inside her mind, but he never did. He only touched the bed and pulled her bindings back into the headboard. He bent and kissed her—a strange, awkward sort of kiss, close-mouthed, almost chaste—then turned and walked away. He looked around at his chambers, heaved a toppled column out of the general debris, and began to knead it out of shape.
Mara rolled onto her side and shut her eyes. She remembered the effort of that little movement being devastating to her the first time she’d landed herself in Kazuul’s care. Now it gave her no more than a momentary dizziness, perhaps an extra-loud thump in her chest, and that was all. If she’d wanted to, she could get up and leave right now. She’d probably only need one rest on the way out, one more night of good sleep, and she’d be back to normal. The next time she killed someone, she probably wouldn’t even black out.
Kazuul worked, minutes or hours, she didn’t care. She heard him moving broken stone around, heard water trickling and then pouring down, heard his voice in low rumbles of arcane speech now and then, but eventually he returned to her side. He gathered her into his arms without bothering to see if she were even awake, and carried her across the room. She heard his feet splash into water. A moment later, warmth enclosed her. He eased his grip, setting her afloat in a hot pool. Her robe soaked up the heat and then lay heavy over her, clinging to her hips, breasts, and belly while exposing her legs more and more. Candlelight glittered in the water, reflected ripples up over Kazuul’s chest and onto the ceiling. It was very quiet.
Mara closed her eyes, relaxed, let her arms and legs do what they wanted. It had been a long time since she’d done this: just been in her body. Every sound seemed
overloud, clarified. Every small sensation—the chill of wet cloth over her nipples, the lapping of water at her sides, the tickle of the fine hairs along her brow—all of it, so perfect, so fundamentally necessary. She was not unaware of Kazuul sharing her bath, but he, like every other minute detail of this moment, contributed to its perfection.
Her head tapped up against the side of the bath. Mara reached back her arms and anchored herself, then stretched out a foot, seeking Kazuul. She found his thigh, hard and budding with bone, and followed it up over wet layers of leather and metal to the solid slab of his stomach. He cupped her heel, let her flex her clawless toes against his skin, then moved it aside and stepped between her legs, spreading them wider as he pushed her robe up around her hips. He bent, holding her lightly in the weightless space of the bath, to suckle at her breast, drinking from her waterlogged robe.
It struck her like lightning, overwhelmingly erotic for no obvious reason. Certainly, he’d mouthed her before, and while pleasant, it had never been like this. But now, adrift in the dark womb he’d made for her, seeing his mouth work and hearing his strong, steady swallows, Mara let herself go to electric arousal.
Her back arched, pushing her breast into his mouth. Her knees bent, not locking around his hips, but cradling him between her thighs. The water skinned between them, intensifying each touch, amplifying each sound. It was good and it was gentle. It was almost like real love.
Kazuul began to move, rubbing hip to hip in long, slow strokes, miming the act of sex in every way save the most essential. The rough leather and shaped metal of his loincloth, made slick and warm in the bath, became her lover. She moved with him, welcomed every shiver and bloom, and thought of nothing but what was here and now.
He moved down, kissing and tonguing at the curve of her ribs, the cup of her navel. Down, into the water, submerging without a sound and only a brief dance of waves. She opened her eyes, but saw only candlelight. There wasn’t even a shadow to suggest him, nothing but the tangible truth of his mouth pressing at her sex, his tongue flicking at her clit before sliding deeply into her. And oh, it was good, it was so good.
Her legs rested on his shoulders. Her bare feet stayed flat and gentle upon his back. She could feel his muscles bunch and coil as he toyed with her. She left her eyes open, watching light play water-games over the ceiling, and came without artifice or sound. Again. Again. He didn’t need air if he didn’t want it; he breathed only her and breathed deep. She kept her hands on the rock behind her, made no demands, gave no guidance, and came for him.
**Am welcome?** he sent to her, kissing her inner thigh.
**This once,** she sent back, stroking her foot down his back. **Just this once, make love to me.**
Last-bell rang, resonating in the water like whalesong. Kazuul rose up, kissing and biting his way back to her breasts as he worked himself free of his sparse clothing. She heard the subdued clank as his heavy belt fell to the bottom of the bath and then his hands were sliding under her hips, tilting her up to receive him in one long, powerful thrust. Water splashed in a hot tide over her chest, falling in streams over her throat. He growled once, contented, and set a slow, purposeful rhythm. Each stroke rocked her up against the side of the bath, but the abrasion was not entirely unpleasant. She let go to reach for him and he shifted her fully against it, pinning her, suspending her. She wrapped her arms around him; he mirrored her. Scarcely moving at all, he ground into her, shaking the water around them in tiny, furtive laps. Now and then, he stole a nip from her jaw or her neck, but mostly, he just rested his chin on the crown of her head and rumbled his growling sounds of pleasure. The thumb-sized growths of bone budding along his sides perfectly cradled her. The small horns curving down from his jaw fit easily around her head.
Mara snaked a tendril of will out between them and sank it into him, unnoticed. His mind, even now not entirely unguarded, was as still and peaceful as her own. He thought of nothing on the surface, remembered nothing, and intended nothing but to be here, to savor this, to have what love his kind were allowed, now, and pour himself into her womb at last, completing them.
Mara came again, sighing. She turned her face into the hollow of his throat and hugged him just a little tighter. He growled her name. She nodded, an acknowledgement he could feel, and kissed the skin above his pulsing vein. Then she ripped her way into his mind, paralyzing his will, and took his body for her own.
For an instant, she was him, deep inside her, and she was her, wrapped fast around him. She moved together, and the sensation was dizzying in its beauty, the poetry of its perfect unity. Then she pulled out, gripped his/her cock and came in a short splash into the bathwater. She let go then—too tired to hold on anyway—and fell back into only her body as Kazuul retook his with a roar and leapt free of the bath, water boiling to vapor in the air as it fell from his body.
She sagged back, looking up at him, at the light dancing in ripples over his body, at the fury and the fire in his eyes. “I know what you want,” she told him wearily. “And you know what I want. But it was almost like real love. Thank you.”
Then she let go of the stone lip and sank down into the water. Her hair floated up like beds of kelp, like mermaid hair, like torn curtains in a demon’s lair. The water was warm and deep and quiet. She dozed, thinking of Connie. He left her alone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
She stayed with him longer than she had to and neither of them talked about it. It had taken days to recover from the attack in the ephebeum, and she could remember spending much of it falling in and struggling out of the empty blackness of coma. This time was easier. Once awake, she never entirely lost herself again. She could watch the sun move across the sky when Kazuul had the aerie open and count the days as they passed by. She ate the food he brought her (all but the meat), drank whatever was in her cup (all but the broth), and felt herself grow steadily stronger. She could have left him on the third night, but she stayed, and when she sank down into the blankets to sleep on the fourth dawn, he came to the bed and lay down beside her.
“I’m leaving you,” said Mara, her eyes closed.
“Never,” he murmured, brushing the loose strands of her pale hair back from her brow.
“Tonight.”
“Thou art as much mine as I am thine. Thou wouldst as soon sever from thine own limbs.”
She didn’t argue with him, but just withdrew to the Panic Room and watched her body succumb to sleep. It was going to be tonight. She’d had time enough to think about it as she pretended convalescence, and she thought she knew where to go. She thought she’d known for some time. She looked into the monitors and saw nothing but her sleeping self, free of pain or frailties. She was ready and it was going to be tonight.
There was no time in the Panic Room unless she counted it herself. She rested, watching dreams in the monitors and her own sleeping face in the Mindstorm as Kazuul watched her. His thoughts were, as always, completely closed to her, even when he brushed his hand across her skin, but suspicion had a way of bleeding through even his self-control and she sensed none of it now. As close as he ever came to peace, he was there. And she was ready.
Mara rolled her body over without waking it up, turning it into the hot mountain of Kazuul, lying beside her. He grunted when she brushed against him, but let her stay close. After a deliberate span of time had passed, she pulled herself away, and as predicted, he dropped an arm around her and brought her back, nipping gently at the high curve of her shoulder. She gave him a few minutes to watch her sleep, then used their shared touches to creep in through the cracks in the fortress of his mind, stabbing herself deep into his brain. His bellow of alarm came out as half a second’s gurgle, and then he sagged limp and heavy as a corpse, snoring.
Mara came conscious and heaved his arm off. She found her gown on the floor and dragged it on, testing at the sleeping demon without bothering to look at him. She wasn’t sure how long he’d stay out and she didn’t trust him to have a sense of humor about it when he finally
came around. It didn’t matter, really. She’d be gone by then, with any luck. Gone with Connie. Ten feet out of the mountain was probably further than he’d ever go to get her back. They’d be safe.
But she looked back from the stairs. She didn’t know why. It wasn’t like there was anything to see. Broken columns, tattered curtains, an empty bath, and a bed where Kazuul slept his unnatural sleep. Still, she lingered.
No amount of distance or nostalgia could ever make this place pleasant to recall, but even she had to admit it wasn’t all bad. The horrible parts vastly outweighed the rest of them, but here at least, there was a kind of acceptance for what she was. She didn’t have to hide it. She could, in fact, play with it, study it, push it to its limits. She’d never have that again and she supposed she’d miss it now and then.
She’d miss him.
The realization stirred her to another of those quasi-emotions, this one neither remorseful nor tender, but nearly so. Very nearly.
Slowly, with real reluctance, Mara returned to his bedside. She moved him onto his back and the snoring stopped. Her hand lingered on his side, almost but not quite caressing him. Then she reached up and touched his forehead, just below the row of short horns at his hairline. The skin there was smooth, surprisingly smooth, utterly free of the rough patches and bony nubs that pebbled so much of his hide. He could never be even almost human, but he was handsome in a way, and when he was relaxed like this, she could readily believe she’d miss him.
Of course, when he woke up, he was going to want to rip her spine out one knot at a time. She doubted he’d seem quite as endearing then.
But for now, Mara could afford to be pensive. She bent and pressed her lips to that smooth, young brow. She told him goodbye, down deep where he’d hear her and remember on waking. Then she left him.