by Brandon Barr
It screamed, entrails pouring to the ground. Savarah finished the creature, driving the knife through its rib cage into its heart. It was an enormous act of mercy, considering it had broken her precious bowstring.
In the sudden silence, she turned to Osiiun. He yanked his foot free of the horse, and raised himself off the ground, sword in hand. She had only her knife and three remaining arrows, but no working bow to shoot them. Osiiun snapped off the shafts of the two she had shot into his shoulders. He stared at her as he did it, his face showing no hint of the pain he must surely have felt.
He stepped toward her, scooping up the dying torch in his free hand. “What turned you from the master?” he asked, his voice low, but unnervingly warm. Unlike her, he had mastered the theater crafts.
She moved back, keeping pace with his footsteps, angling away from the cave to what she recalled to be open space.
“What turned you?” he asked again.
She switched her knife to her left hand, drew out an arrow and flung it at him with practiced accuracy. He blocked with his armguard and the head splintered harmlessly from the shaft. Without a working bow, she didn’t have the speed to slip an arrow past his guard.
“Tell me,” he said. “Have you found a more powerful master? Have you been promised some greater reward?”
She noticed the stain of blood running down his cloak. The farther he went, the less strength he would have. The wounds would wear on him, as would the poison. She’d used a different toxin for each arrow, hoping one or two were immune to Osiiun’s strange brew he drank to inoculate himself.
“I’ve imagined what it would be like, turning from the master,” said Osiiun. “Why won’t you tell me what you’ve found? Perhaps I can be made an ally.”
The back of her foot hit a rock, and she nearly lost her balance. She turned and quickly searched her path, but the torchlight suddenly disappeared and all she saw was darkness. She scrambled blindly into the dark, turning back toward Osiiun. He had hid the light behind his back. He edged it out from behind him, just enough to illuminate her, but not far enough that he couldn’t hide it again with a twitch of his wrist.
“I don’t want to do this,” he said. “Speak. Tell me what’s happened.”
Savarah noted he had closed some of the distance between them now. She continued stepping back into the unknown dark, a game she couldn’t keep up much longer. Two arrows and a knife versus one long sword in the hand of the most feared fighter she knew. He was a paradigm of flawlessness.
It was a good thing she’d landed two arrows and marred his perfection.
“How are your wounds?” asked Savarah.
With the torch behind him, she could only see a slight glow running the side of his face, but even then, she noted a tightening of the jaw.
“You’ve worked so faithfully for our master,” he said again warmly. “Why have you betrayed Aszelbor and I?”
She glanced behind her, to her right, before he could tuck the torch behind his back again. There was a grove of dwarfed trees. Piles of black rocks. Nothing sparked an idea. But then, in that void, it occurred to her exactly what she should do.
She angled her movements toward the stand of trees as if smelling opportunity there.
“You’ve lost a lot of blood,” she said, “Do you—”
Savarah stumbled backward and fell at just the angle she wanted, her knife hand bracing for the fall, the other hand, shadowed by the position of her body, moved to retrieve an arrow. She hit the ground and drew out the weapon. Osiiun was charging, sword held with purpose at his side, his expressionless face lit by the extended torch.
He was too close.
She threw the arrow. A deadly realization widened Osiiun’s eyes the moment before the tip pierced through his neck. Savarah raised her knife hand, but its movement was slowed by the tiger’s wound from earlier that week. The torch illuminating Osiiun’s bloody shoulder now reflected the flash of his well-aimed sword. Savarah’s knife met Osiiun’s blade, glancing the blow away from her heart, but the power and speed behind it drove the sword tip through her tender left shoulder.
She screamed as Osiiun came on top of her, pushing the sword deeper into the very place the tiger’s claw had gone through, his blade pinning her to the ground.
“I’ve always wanted to kill you,” whispered Osiiun through clenched teeth. His hand came up to her hair and gripped it painfully, but Savarah sensed his strength was fading, for if he’d had his full power, he would have snapped her neck with a yank of his arm. “You are inferior,” he said in a wheezing breath.
“Your math skills are poor,” said Savarah, keeping the excruciating pain of her shoulder from her voice. “I killed you. I get one of your Quahi. Simple addition and subtraction. You are the inferior one.”
His grip on her hair tightened and he began to stretch her neck down to her shoulder. Her muscles burned. Felt as if they would pull apart. Had he been feigning weakness? Was the neck wound not mortal?
She winced, willing herself to remain conscious until the end. Slowly, the searing agony eased. She could feel his muscles failing, unable to find the strength to finish their mission.
“You killed me only by surprise,” Osiiun rasped. “A coward’s kill.”
“A strategic kill,” said Savarah. “Our master would have been pleased, if it had been done in his service.”
For a long moment there was silence. Savarah thought him dead, when he finally whispered faintly, “Why?”
“Because,” Savarah whispered back, “love is a beautiful flaw. I find its weakness enchanting. I want to be near it, even if I can barely feel it. I want to protect it.” She turned her head slightly toward Osiiun’s ear. “I’m going to kill the master.”
He said no more words, and after a time, she felt his body had stiffened. Through her pain she tried to assess her situation. The blade was leaning now against Osiiun’s gloved hand, the slightest movement of his body, and his heavy hilt and handle might shift, causing the sharpened end inside her to twist and dig into her severed raw muscles. She had to remove the sword, but she knew as soon as she did, the blood would flow more freely.
She took the shaft of the sword in her hand then slowly released a breath, remembering her master’s arena and the many wounds she’d suffered there.
Only now she didn’t have access to his healing arts.
She tugged on the sword and screamed like a woman dying in childbirth.
_____
MELUSCIA
The scent of fresh picked roses was intoxicating, but the sight of them amazed Meluscia, for they were dark blue, like the ones said to have been created for Aurorah during the forging of their world. Jonakin had come home early from patrol, and brought the roses with him. “How did you find these? They were destroyed.”
“They are a sign from the Makers. Perhaps you are the last Luminary the Beast will live to see.”
Jonakin’s arms enfolded her. His lips, warm and soft, pressed into hers. Perfect. Her affection, her desires, she was a human avalanche. Jonakin’s green-ash eyes, pure and wise and sincere, looked deep into her soul and whisked a part of her away. But then they changed. They became the bluish grey of Mica’s eyes, close, tender. She pulled his being into hers through those mysterious eyes. The portal for the soul. A sacred exchange that passed through the sieve of the other, just as the Book of Intimacy described. The freedom. The vulnerability. The shamelessness of naked trust. Everything she’d longed for. His warm fingers filled with purpose caressing her neck, running through her hair, his breath on her face. She drew him into bed and their bodies fused into one. One soul. One rhythm. She pressed her hands against his back as Mica’s lovemaking brought out her voice like a melody, low and deep, like the ballad of the mountain in winter. But then, amidst her and Mica’s coronation song, a distant awareness tugged, and a cold crept in. The musical sighs and moans rumbling from their throats faded away. Silence grew, and so too the chill. Like a gust of midnight frost, biting like ice.
Meluscia opened her eyes. Darkness and the smell of cold stone greeted her. This was not the fragrant scent of her room, and Mica’s form had vanished like a dream from her arms. She was still in the tunnel.
She sat up and pulled at her blankets, drawing them around her.
Just a dream.
Something about the moment felt hideously cruel. Harsher than her father’s lack of faith in her. Nastier than the derision of Valcere seated on the throne she would never have. Even colder than the wind that had gnawed at her as she dreamt, snatching her from the bliss of being known and cared for. Cherished. Praised. Longed for. The worth she felt, only when she imagined being loved.
The cruelty was all of these things, but something else, also. Her fate. Her destiny. Having read of so many heroes. Having been certain that she—like all the Luminaries, all the kings and queens, warriors and rogues who were written of in history and scripture—would be able to be a part of that story. To be a vessel for good that would shape Hearth, even if slightly. Wasn’t that the call of the gods?
Wasn’t that the reason she had been born to a Luminary?
“Failure,” she whispered to herself. “Weak. Pathetic. What can you accomplish now? The Makers are against you!” A long silence answered.
“What do you want?” she said to herself, teeth clenched. “You’re so empty. What’s stopping you? You need it. So take it. Taste it.”
Black envy drizzled down through her veins, dark as the nothingness before her eyes. The dark was not unfamiliar living in the mountain, but those strange words spoken from her own lips awoke something new in her, a thought.
When the sun dropped and the lightless void of night crept in, it was not unlike a mask. Seeing eyes were made blind. The shadowless dark could swallow what was true and real; it could make possible that which never could be.
Take it. Taste it.
Just to lie beside him, to feel his warmth under a shared blanket. Just a taste of what it would be like to be his girl.
Where had those thoughts come from but some hidden chasm of her mind? Sitting like a seed, stirring within its shell, waiting. The moment was here.
She rose, clutching the blankets around her and hurried down the hall, navigating by touch and memory. When she arrived in her room, she lit a candle and went to her shelf of oils. She found the vial of her mother’s lilac. She needed only one drop.
A scent Mica knew well. The scent of Praseme.
CHAPTER 6
MELUSCIA
“I want ten dozen apple muffins made by morning,” said Meluscia, holding a single candle for light as she stood outside Mairena’s doorway.
The kitchen matron rubbed her eyes. “Yes, My Lady,” she said, then blinked a moment at the candle in Meluscia’s hand. “This is urgent, is it?”
“I want only you and Praseme making the muffins. Then deliver them to my quarters an hour after sunrise. Have Praseme bring them.”
“Ten dozen muffins by morning and only two cooks? We haven’t prepared any batter, and we’ve got no apples. They’ll have to be picked from the orchard. And the oven will need to be fired. And with only two, one of us will have to tend the fires the entire time.”
“Wake a third cook then, but no more,” said Meluscia firmly.
Mairena bowed her head. “Yes, My Lady.”
The kitchen matron threw a cloak around her nightgown and shuffled off down the servants’ tunnel with a candle in hand. Meluscia pinched out her own candle and followed at a distance. She watched as Mairena called an older kitchen boy named Prehn from his room. Finally, Mairena stopped at Praseme’s room. Praseme readied herself much faster than the boy, appearing with her hair up, donning a cloak.
Meluscia watched them leave, following slowly as the light receded further down the grey rock corridor. There was a small hollow in the wall across from the doorway which Praseme had just left…the door, behind which Mica lay alone in bed. Meluscia crouched down and squeezed inside the hollow nook. She sat, knees tucked against her chest and waited. In the long silence, she felt each beat of her heart. Fear seeped into the stillness. With it came a rational voice.
What was she doing? Sacred passages she’d read in the Scriptorium appeared in her mind like bright lights shining on eyes trying to hide in the dark, stinging and searing her.
But she was so close to something that had always been far away. Something she’d only felt for the briefest of moments.
The touch of another.
She centered her mind on her heart pulsing inside. That steady, quickened rhythm. It thrummed like a drum, relentless, primal.
It would only be a taste. An hour of real imagining. No one would know. No one would be hurt. She just wanted to lie there, beside him. Feel what it was like to be in his bed. To put her arm over him. Feel his heartbeat through her fingers. That’s all.
You’ll never be here again…if you don’t do this now—
She moved. Her heart pounding a triple count with the rhythm of each step.
She walked across the hall. Felt for the door and found the latch. Quietly she opened it and slipped inside, from one darkness to another.
The smell of the room was intoxicating. The hint of lilac from Praseme that was now on her, and then another smell. Mica’s. Strong and rich and powerfully male.
She visualized the room from the spy hole. The bed lay against the far wall. Gingerly she stepped across the open floor. Her foot touched the rug she knew lay at the room’s center. Slowly she moved forward and stretched out her hands.
Four more small steps and her fingertips touched something solid. She knew it to be the wooden baseboard of the bed. She moved to the right side, felt with her hands the blankets that Praseme had thrown off. She hesitated removing her outer garments, but decided they would be terribly uncomfortable. She kept on her soft silk undergown, then moved delicately to sit upon the bed. Carefully she brought her legs up, slipping them beneath the covers, then eased her head down, finding a soft pillow waiting for her. Relishing the warmth and smells, she drew the blanket over her chest and up to her neck. Her skin was unusually cold and the warmth of the bed tingled over her body.
She lay there, listening. Mica’s breathing was faint, but she strained to hear it. After a time, when her body had warmed, she lifted her torso and slid a handwidth closer to him, then turned her head and leaned in.
He was close now. His smell was stronger. She twisted her shoulders gently forward, allowing her head to move closer still. The warmth of his body was close enough that she could feel it on her face. She lay there in quiet, surprised at how unsatisfied she felt just being in bed beside him. Surprised at how badly she now wanted to touch him. She was so close now, and she could hear his breaths well enough to know he was facing away from her.
She drew her hands up and touched her face. They were warm now from being under the blankets.
Only a taste. I’ll be careful. Slow.
Ever so slowly, she moved her hands forward under the covers, until her fingertips touched skin and she glided her hand onto Mica’s bare side. Meluscia was surprised at how warm his skin was. Her hands like ice against his flesh.
The bed shook as Mica twisted.
Meluscia drew her hand back and turned away from him, tensed, ready to fly from bed through the door, but then his arm swung around her, wrapping under her right arm and pulling her back against his chest.
The need to push away and run nearly overpowered her, but when Mica held still, slowly her nerves eased and the urge to flee vanished. Mica had simply turned at her cold touch to hold her. But now she feared he was awake and fully conscious. That he might detect something strange in the woman he held, that somehow she’d used too little of the lilac oil and his awakened senses would smell something different about her. Or worse, that he’d try to talk to Praseme.
Silence finally slowed the pounding that shook inside her chest. The hand and arm that held her becoming warm and wanted. As her muscles relaxed, she released a long breath
.
Mica was holding her as she’d romanticized in her mind so many times. Jonakin, and Mica’s, imaginary arm around her was no match for reality. The scent of him in the air, his chest against her back, pelvis and legs formed against her own. Her silk gown crushed beneath their warm bodies. She could lie like this all night.
“Praseme,” came Mica’s voice, weak, as if in dream. His hand moved down to rest on her hip. Meluscia’s breath caught in her throat. She held it, until the words spoken beside her ear faded into the darkness and she could hold it in no longer. As quietly as she could, she released a shaky breath. The sound of Mica’s breathing deepened, as if drawn back into sleep.
The name whispered in her ear unwound something inside her. She tried to relax herself. To slip back into the warm pleasure of Mica holding her. What would it feel like for him to have whispered her own name. Meluscia. A girl with red hair and skin as white as quartz. But his lips had spoken of Praseme, and Meluscia felt an edge of guilt now. Where it came from was just as shadowy as the notion that brought her here, to Mica’s bed.
Just a taste. A momentary lapse. A small transgression. Why couldn’t she just enjoy this morsel of a moment without any shame? A thief haunted by the stolen fire warming her body.
The soothing grip of Mica’s hand on her hip tightened. His breathing shallowed. Some instinct in her warned her what was happening. She visualized the placement of the door in the room. Remembered her outer garments on the floor. Knew that if she were going to leave, the time was now.
She hesitated. Mica’s hand ran down her leg, began to slide up her gown. The sensation was scintillating.
Was it not too late? In hesitating, hadn’t she decided? In promising herself only a small taste, hadn’t she only deceived herself. Positioned herself. Was this not a secret hunger behind why she came there? That primordial pit in her mind twisting like a maze of tunnels in a mountain. Her lusts and principles had fought through ancient rooms and coiled passageways carved out by night after night of watching this man. Wanting this man. Her principles had been besieged from long ago, her hunger, well fed, had won this battle long before this night.