In the distance, a few Chimera hummed in the night. Probably the newcomers, seeking relations and friends long unseen. That sound comforted him. The sight of his personal guard lurking at the mouth of the main orchard—between him and his waiting bed—did not.
Brand, the smaller of the two guards, tugged at the bandage on his hand, still nursing the wound he received when the Sailkeeper’s lover had bitten him. Served the bastard right, trying to kidnap the woman against his orders.
Only the men, Darkyn had instructed. Leave the families alone.
But Brand was of one thought only: bring back a Tul’Mar at all cost. He was impulsive to boot. Kadmyr, Brand’s older brother, wasn’t much better, though at least he had an even temperament.
As Darkyn approached them with increasingly long and impatient strides, both men dipped their heads in deference.
“Ta,” Kadmyr offered, and Darkyn could see in his eyes that the guard bore news he didn’t care to hear.
“What?” he growled, tempted to knock them both aside and keep walking.
“We know you did not find what you sought at Camford, Ta.” Brand’s voice was rich with emotion. Excitement? Fear? Darkyn couldn’t tell. His head began to ache from his sternly clamped jaws.
“But we met with more success,” Kadmyr finished, then quickly averted his eyes.
Darkyn felt a sinking in his gut. Anger competed with dread, and he realized he had drawn his eyes so close to shut that he was viewing the world through naught but slits of vision.
“What do you mean?” he asked through his teeth, clenching his fists.
“We could not get a Tul’Mar,” Brand admitted, “but we did capture a warrior of high rank.”
Before Darkyn could draw his two-headed axe and kill them both, Kadmyr added, “Like us, Arda values each life, each citizen. Perhaps they will bargain for this one, given that high-placed warriors are hard to replace. And because of certain other factors.”
Darkyn stood in the partial light of Uhr’s night, beneath the heavy branches of a sweetapple tree, and decided not to kill either man. He never killed if he could help it, no matter his thousand thoughts to the contrary. These two tempted him often, however. They were his kin, his cousins, and his banes. They wanted only to help him, to help The People, but he had trouble convincing Brand and Kadmyr that peace, persuasion, and even forceful manipulation brought better and faster results than outright war.
Mother, he thought, fully shutting his eyes then opening them again. Walk calmly in the afterlife, and feel the sand beneath your feet. Your sister’s sons are safe with me. Though if Father yet breathed, I doubt he would spare them.
“Where did you put this captive?” he asked, at last managing to unlock his jaws. The situation wasn’t optimal, but perhaps the wisdom of others, even these others, outmatched the will of the Ta. He had been taught all his life to respect and honor this possibility.
“In your cabin.” Brand beckoned him to follow and set off through the main orchard.
Kadmyr and Darkyn followed, walking side by side. Darkyn could tell by the way Kadmyr stared at his brother that some pieces of this tale were yet missing. What those pieces might be—
No. I don’t want to know yet, because I can’t kill them.
Endless minutes later, they left the orchard and walked down a long row of farmer’s cabins. Darkyn’s home lay at the very end of the rough-packed road, off to itself beside a pond, in a small field of delicate yellow bayflowers. He had a receiving yard outside his front door, with shade trees and benches in a circle, as would any Ta. Other than that, he had the pond and a modest sparring field for exercise and battle training. His cabin had eight rooms, with the front four for the sick or displaced, the grieving or the troubled. The back four rooms were his bedroom, his bath, a small kitchen, and the thinking space used by the village Ta across the centuries. This room was kept empty but for a small altar, a meditation post, a single chair with a writing table, a blank scroll, a quill, and an inkwell.
The idea was for the Ta to have one place completely uncluttered by the energy of others or the pressures of leading The People. The thinking space was to be used for relaxation, creativity, and quiet conversations with elders gone before.
It was there that Darkyn relaxed.
It was there that he spent endless hours pondering the nature of the Barung.
It was there that he found his greatest distress, his greatest peace, and his most private centering.
And it was, of course, to this room that Brand and Kadmyr took Darkyn, even though they well knew its purpose.
Darkyn was about to chastise them when Brand opened the door to reveal a blindfolded woman tied to his meditation post. Her head lolled on her chest, and her hands were secured behind her back, bound by yellow energy bonds. Her legs had been spread to either side of the post, probably to keep her from kicking her captors to death, and they were likewise secured to the post by energy bonds.
Speechless, Darkyn took in what stood before him, even as Guardian fluttered through the open door and took up her perch in the main room.
At least, his stunned brain informed him, she’s a warrior.
He hadn’t called on any psi-abilities to determine that. Using the powerful psi of The People—especially his—on those not initiated was unconscionable and likely to kill. Still, he knew she was a warrior. She looked achingly familiar, though he was certain he had never seen her before. He had never seen anything like this woman in his two hundred years on Uhr.
“A female?” he managed to growl, to which Brand nodded.
In the main room, Guardian tore into whatever small beast she had claimed as her dinner. Darkyn didn’t look, but he heard her message and took note. Females can be fierce, too.
“The other factors I mentioned,” Kadmyr added. “Like us, our Ardani cousins may feel more obligated to retrieve a woman, warrior or no. This one seems to have more pa than most. She is likely a weapon in and of herself, with her heightened perceptions.”
Indeed.
Darkyn thought of Guardian’s keen instincts and cold killing skills, and kept staring.
The woman wore naught but a black jumpsuit, zipper open to the waist, revealing the curve of her ample breasts. Her hair fairly shimmered with pa, almost hurting his exquisitely sensitive eyes. And her mark—by the ancients! It seemed to wend from her cheek, down her neck—across her entire body.
No Ardani had pa like that!
Except for the mates of the Tul’Mar brothers he had seen on his recent Camford incursion—but he had known them for mixed-bloods. An odd mix, yes. Older Ardani, some type of odd Earther, and something like the main-planet strain of Arda. Darkyn had figured their unusual composition had somehow protected them from whatever accident resulted in such a massive pa infusion.
This woman was a mixture as well, but no mixture Darkyn could easily decipher. She also seemed to have an atypical Earther strain within her veins, stronger than he had ever known. Newer Arda, too—and yet, yes, older Arda as well, and powerful, blended seamlessly. It surprised him that she had no stone in her chest.
She was built like The People, much more so than most Ardani females. Beneath the flicker of pa, his special vision detected the true color of her hair—black pearl, a shade found almost exclusively on Arda.
To Darkyn, colors were like the print of a finger or the mark of a tooth—no two exactly alike. He often could identify a person’s galactic lineage simply by the shade of their flesh, eyes, or hair. He could see so much more, if he kept looking. The shifting air around her contained the rainbow of her energy. Colors of fear, fatigue, defeat…and courage, and anger…and longing and loneliness so deep he could feel them in the pit of his own soul…
Darkyn startled as the stone in the center of his chest hummed against his skin, and something even more unusual happened. His cock swelled and pressed hard against the tanned hide of his breeches. The room went oddly quiet, and a wave of nausea nearly knocked him to the floor. Before
he could fully regain himself, a new flood of sensation gripped him, this one hot and maddening and near to setting his brain afire. He literally staggered from the sudden drunken sensation.
Guardian let out a hunting cry from behind him, taking to wing inside the cabin rooms—something the bird had never done before.
“Ta?” came Brand’s tentative inquiry.
“I’m fine,” Darkyn said gruffly, knowing his lie echoed in his tone. He would not—could not—show his unexpected and unfathomable interest in the captive.
Brand nodded.
Darkyn managed a half-smile, then gripped his guards by their shoulders, using them for support under the guise of steering them from the room. “Come, let us leave her to her dreams and discuss arrangements for the soon-coming pao. Our guests will no doubt be punctual.”
“Or early,” Kadmyr agreed as they lurched from the room like a three-headed drylands dragyn. The warrior launched into a briefing on the pao, the “big talk,” with representatives of planets who sensed and felt concerned about the Barung.
Guardian landed with another disgruntled cry, her hard, bright eyes tracking the trio so closely that Darkyn felt the discomfort of her stare.
Be at ease, he urged the bird through the primitive psi-link humans could share with animals close to the heart. One of us gone mad is plenty.
They reached the outer room at the moment Darkyn’s legs could no longer support him. He let go his guards and dropped heavily to his knees. The butt of his axe handle smacked loudly as it struck the floor, but his sheath didn’t give. Nearly helpless, he closed his eyes. Spots, circles, patterns—and the great black nothingness of the ever-approaching Barung.
“Get the priest,” he told Kadmyr and Brand in a voice so thick and distant he barely recognized it as his own. “Hurry.”
As he watched through distorted colors and shapes, Kadmyr and Brand nodded and hurried out of the cabin, leaving the front door wide ajar. Guardian flapped after them, clearly not trusting them to seek aid for her master on their own. And her master knew, even before the falcon left, that he needed aid. He needed more than aid.
Left alone for only a moment, all he wanted to do was gain his feet, stagger back to his thinking space, and ravage the woman tied to his meditation pole.
But that would be madness.
What if she were one of those who made him ill? He couldn’t afford being sick now, with the pao so close at hand. Still, his cock was a length of molten iron, throbbing miserably. His stone burned as hot as his blood. It took all of his formidable will to stay in his main room, on his knees, refusing the desires raging through every inch and corner of his being.
Darkyn was no virgin. He had known his share of females, warrior and clan alike—but always by plan, with care to check compatibility of touch, and with the express purpose of relieving his physical needs. He couldn’t allow entanglements or obligations, and he had rarely felt spontaneous attraction. In fact, he could say with certainty that he hadn’t felt such a strong pull toward a female before.
Images of taking the woman fast and rough and hard, taking her where she stood, bound against that pole, shook his mind. He imagined tightening her bonds, leaving her completely at his mercy but gaining her trust, convincing her he could fill the gaping emptiness in her heart. She would tremble as he slowly lowered that zipper, pushed aside the black jumpsuit to free her breasts, and bent to suck her sweet nipples.
What color were they? Pale pink or red like sweetapple wine? Some shade in between? Some shade completely other?
Against his judgment and better sense, he rose slowly and turned back toward the thinking space.
She is in there, growled some ancient part of his mind. Your woman.
“She is in there,” he repeated aloud in almost the same stiff growl. His eyes flew open of their own accord, and he squinted against the light of Uhr’s night. “My woman. My woman.”
A step, then two, then three—he wasn’t falling or crawling. In fact, he felt stronger. In seconds, he stood before her again, teeth clamped, fists clenched, cock straining at his breeches. The pa surrounding his stone felt like blue flames as he extended his hand and held it close to the intricate pa on the woman’s exposed belly.
Not touching, but almost.
And no sign of the telltale sickness or revulsion.
Compatible. Gods, she had to be, or he would die where he stood.
The woman stirred, moaning from the almost-contact.
Words of claiming, as old as time and just as irretrievable, rose to Darkyn’s lips. In his wits-drunken state, he almost spoke them, then jerked his hand away as if he’d been scalded. She wasn’t of the tribal groups he was allowed to join with, if indeed he ever joined. She wasn’t even of The People!
His senses spread out, not just his heightened vision, taking in the scent of her soft-hide jumpsuit, the hot musk of her quim, and something else—light and spicy like the bayflowers in his field. He heard the even rise and fall of her breath, could almost taste the salt of her skin and the fire of her pa on his tongue.
She would be infinitely soft if he touched her.
Just the sight of her many hues and colors threatened to blind him.
From somewhere that seemed a million galaxies away, Guardian let out a spine-freezing shriek. Someone stepped into the doorway of the room, casting a shadow across Darkyn’s sensitive visual field, and he couldn’t hold back a feral snarl.
He whirled, hand on the hilt of his axe, and faced the intruder.
“Get out,” he growled. “She’s mine!”
The figure in the door, falcon on his right shoulder, didn’t move.
This fact and this fact alone penetrated the red-black and wild haze gripping Darkyn Weil.
Not one of The People would dare to stand against him in such a temper.
Not one, except for his brother, the priest.
Darkyn swayed on his feet, fighting his urge to fall on the woman and rut until they both lay filled and sated in the bright, bright dawn of Uhr.
“Akad,” he said, his voice like the scrape of sand on rock. “Help me!”
Chapter 3
Krysta drifted, suspended between past and present, real and unreal. For a time she was young and running carefree through the lush fields around Camford. The air smelled unusually fresh, dry enough to sting her nose and make her eyes water. Her parents, always loving and supportive, stroked her shoulder before playing games of hiding and chase amongst the freely grazing Chimera. How the sweet, sweet songs of the beasts filled the air, rippling over her skin and pulling her heart into the melody.
Then she was sailing her speeder low and fast, skimming Arda’s fields and coasts, her stomach dipping with each near-miss. A great black nothingness pursued her, but she managed to stay just ahead of it. The Chimera song was gone. All she could hear was a relentless heartbeat. All she could smell was rot, and death, and decay.
Up and down, left and right—if only it would stop gaining on her! The noise it made threatened to crush her ears, even as it crushed all the light and air and earth in its path. Someone was shouting inside the abyss, above the awful blood-thrumming, and the voice was made of rage…
Heart hammering, Krysta woke and opened her eyes to absolute darkness. For a moment, the black void held sway over her, filled with indescribable hunger, a vengeance so wicked and dark it threatened to suck the life straight out of her.
She fought her thoughts into some semblance of order, rejecting the empty, hollow fury she felt all around.
Somewhere off in the distance, a few Chimera joined in song.
Chimera.
Am I still at home, on Arda?
The phantasm of her dream vanished, just like that, dispelled by the sweet notes of the creatures she had loved since birth. Relaxing despite her circumstance, Krysta realized she was sagging back against a pole. Something was covering her eyes—and somebody had tied a gag around her mouth! She started to reach for the pieces of cloth, to pull them off, but
her wrists remained locked in place behind her. The smooth, worn wood of the pole pressed into the backs of her wrists. Warm, humming sensations coursed over her fingers and hands—energy bonds?
OrTan technology? Knador!
She started to kick, but her ankles were bound, too.
Kolot…the two big Outlanders…Kolot is dead, and I am, I am…
Anger suffused with dread fueled Krysta’s struggle against her tethers. She was prisoner to a group of Outlander miscreants she had badly underestimated. They had attacked with some purpose as yet unknown and slain her second-in-command when he tried to save her.
Worse than that, The People clearly had trade with OrTa. Perhaps they were in league with Lord Gith and his lizard slavers—the same slavers Ki had to battle for Elise when he first claimed her. It was during a second battle with the reptile bastard that Krysta received her overdose of pa, which even now tortured her nipple and the lips of her quim with tongue-like flicks of fire and heightened sensation.
“Let me go,” she tried to say around her gag, to little gain. “Where am I?”
Her pa-mark sizzled with the force of her frustration, nearly igniting her breast and making her juices flow. She took a deep breath, coughed in the dry air, and gave a cloth-blocked scream of rage. Each time she twisted, her unzipped jumpsuit rubbed harder against her nipples. In seconds, both breasts were exposed to the warm, dry air, and her zipper, worked down by her thrashing, snagged painfully in her lower curls.
“Knador.”
Her psi-abilities were of no use to her. Her brain felt locked within her skull, like the invisible evil of her dream had severed her connection with the universe. As Krysta fought against the pole, sweating and panting, she tried to use her soldier’s instincts.
The wood she could feel had been rubbed smooth, but not by tool or rough-paper. It had a silken, oily feel, and seemingly an energy of its own.
Arda: The Captain's Fancy Page 4