Kelrob slid down in his chair, his mind buzzing in a not unpleasant way. “I feel almost calm,” he said, “though the room does seem to be pulsing a bit.”
“Two tokes to a buzz, three to greater heights,” Jacobson advised sagely. “Depending on the strength of the herb, of course. Got this batch from old Kirleg. Meela grew a plot out in the woods, whereabouts nobody could ever figure.”
Kelrob closed his eyes and sat back, untroubled by the mention of the innkeeper and his wife. He found himself thinking of the herb as a communion with them, and with Jacobson, and strangely enough with Tamrel; absently he wondered how the bard reacted to vicarious intoxication. Drip drip drip: the water-clock marked insistent time, and he sat with Jacobson in companionable silence, waiting for the hour-gong to chime and the servants to come and spirit him away. His body felt fluid, slightly drunken; several times he broke into laughter for no discernible reason. When the gong finally shivered and the formal knock sounded at the door, he rose unhurriedly from his chair, clasped Jacobson by the hand on impulse, and crossing to the portal opened it smoothly. His stomach churned as light from the hallway bathed him, though surprisingly it felt more like hunger than dyspepsia.
Five servants stood in the passage. Four, Kelrob saw, were not the armed and heavily trained members of Azumana’s House-guard, but tall, obscured women who wore long jasmine-scented veils of a diaphanous material, their hands clasped in from of them, obscured by the fall of cloth. They were barefoot, golden gem-encrusted circlets adorning their ankles, and a reverent pall hung about them, as if they were members of a funereal train rather than a wedding escort.
The fifth servant was a huge, burly man that Kelrob knew well. His name was Rakisha Thalit, one of the many sons of Dalti Thalit, Azumana’s majordomo. His family, once destitute nithings, had sworn blood-service to the lord’s House a century past, receiving generational security in exchange for generational service. During his first visit to House Azumana Kelrob had been assigned Rakisha as his personal servant; the two boys had quickly developed an affection for each other, though the boundaries of class kept them from becoming firm friends.
Now Rakisha smiled at Kelrob, his broad tan features and jet-black eyes offsetting the glint of his teeth. “Good evening, lord magister Kelrob. It is good to see you again.”
Kelrob returned both smile and bow, craning his neck to look up into his former playmate’s face. “It’s good to see you too, Rak. Looks like you’ve grown a bit since I was here last.” In fact the transmogrification was incredible, in both height and broadness; Rakisha’s forearms were thick as ale-casks, his shoulders mountainous and rippling with muscle. He wore the red hawk-emblazoned tabard of House Azumana, and a heavy scimitar hung naked at his side, though he bore no pistol.
Rakisha looked down at his physique, raised his massive arms and flexed them. “Yes. Father chose me to train as his replacement, though there are three brothers before me! It is a great honor, but also a great responsibility. I’ve spent the last year building my strength.” He lowered his arms and his eyes grew shadowed, straying towards the window. “I’m glad for it now. The gracious lord is adamant that the shield will not be breached, but if it is I’m ready.” His jaw worked in a momentary tick, hand dropping down to grip his scimitar. “They will not take House Azumana, not so long as one Thalit heart remains beating.”
“I’m...sorry, for what’s happened,” Kelrob said with a blush. He wanted desperately to say more, could find nothing more to say.
Rakisha stood straight, his boots sliding together with military precision. “Have no fear of the barbarians without, my lord. We will protect you. After all, you’re a member of the family now.” He attempted a smile, managed a lopsided smirk. “That reminds me. Congratulations on your marriage. Or rather commiserations.”
Kelrob blinked in surprise. “A rather bleak blessing.”
“I mean nothing ill by it, my lord. It’s just that...you’re marrying Nuir. If it was any other woman I would be happy for you.”
A sense of crushing dread fell on Kelrob, making him feel even shorter. “Why? Who is this girl, anyway? You’ve never even mentioned her name.”
“Of course not. Nuir is the daughter of my lord and a shalqi woman, kept in seclusion from both sight and thought until her betrothal. I have never spoken of her to another, have only glimpsed her a few times myself, but I listen to the women of the house, and hear what they say.” Rakisha glanced over his shoulder at his veiled companions, who were beginning to sway with impatience, then leaned in to whisper in Kelrob’s ear. “She’s a hellion, my lord, untameable by the harshest rod. Smart, too, far too smart for her own good; spends most of her time reading, and keeps a garden on the estate where the strangest things grow. Of course,” he said, his voice taking on an affected masculine air, “you never know which woman will make a good wife and which a bad. Just watch yourself, my lord. I know I shouldn’t have said anything, but I think you deserve to know what you’re getting into.”
Kelrob nodded his thanks, certain that his face had turned pale as porcelain. “Thank you, Rakisha. You’re the first person involved in this business who’s told me a thing. I appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome, my lord.”
The veiled women were swaying more violently, their voices raising in a collective hum. Rakisha cast them an irritated glance. “It seems I’m holding up the ceremony. Go on, my lord, with all blessings. I’m to stay here and keep an eye on your man.”
Kelrob looked back at Jacobson, who waved him onwards casually. “I can assure you Jacobson needs no supervision.”
Rakisha bowed with apologetic respect, though his dark eyes grew colder. “I have my orders, my lord,” he said in a neutral tone.
“Go on, m’lord,” Jacobson called in his affected backwoods drawl. “I’ve no objection to being guarded, especially when the cell is so fine.”
Kelrob felt suddenly alone, untethered, laid bare. He looked to the shrouded women, their anklets jangling as they writhed in summons, then back to Jacobson, sprawled at false ease in a chair by the hearth. A decision formed in his mind, based on unreasoning need; looking up at Rakisha, the mage said, “I’m bringing my man with me.”
Rakisha’s face went stern. “I can’t allow that, my lord.”
“He is my bondsman, surely as you are Lord Azumana’s. It is my will as magister that he come.”
“But my lord -”
“Sounds like a lovely idea,” Jacobson said, rising from his chair and cracking his back noisily. “It’s been a while since I’ve been to a wedding; seen far more funerals in my time, to tell the truth. ‘Course all those folk getting butchered outside keep the scales balanced.” On some strange impulse he grabbed up Kelrob’s soiled robes, folded them, and tucked them against his chest, then approached the party with a wide grin.
Rakisha’s mouth worked soundlessly, absolute obeisance to his lord clashing with the will of a magister. “Well,” he said at last, hand tightening on the scimitar’s hilt, “I was only told to guard him, not keep him in one place. If he goes I go too.”
“Marvelous. A proper wedding march and everything. Wish I had some rice to throw.” Jacobson laughed as he came up beside Kelrob, running a thick hand through his hair. “Do I look all right, my lord? I must say all these high goings-on have me right fuddled. I feel like a cat out of water.”
Kelrob raised a hand and lowered it, hoping Jacobson would take the cue and tone down his bumpkin persona. “All right,” he said to the waiting women, who had begun edging closer and closer to the door. “I’m ready.”
His words were met with four soundless bows, the scent of jasmine billowing forth in a myopia-inducing cloud. Kelrob could feel the tingle of the imbibed herb at the base of his spine; he watched as one of the women produced a silver censor hung on a long, glittering chain. A flame was produced, the incense lit. Within moments a resinous stench flooded the
hallway, further enhancing Kelrob’s funerary impression. He looked up at Jacobson, received only the mask’s faint, mocking smile, then stepped into the hall and fell in behind his perfumed escort, Jacobson and Rakisha following silently behind.
18: Father to Son
The house of Lord Azumana was renowned for its vastness, a rival to the lesser manses of the Great Cities. When Kelrob had first visited as a youth, he had wandered off alone on an exploratory whim and gotten lost in the house’s colossal west wing, eventually sinking down on a disused bed in a lurid red-painted room and crying until a servant had happened by and discovered him. The house had three great dining halls, each designed to accommodate a different aspect of feasting: one for common revels amongst guests, one for strictly business-related gatherings, and the last for private affairs that demanded a certain ceremonial grandeur. As the women began to walk, their bare feet whispering over the cool wood of the floor, Kelrob quickly discerned they were bound for the ceremonial dining area, a modest-sized hall he had previously wandered through but never seen in use. The hall was deep in the manse’s labyrinthine heart, and the mage allowed himself only furtive glances at the successive wonder of rooms, passages, and small immaculate gardens through which they passed. There was the chamber patterned after the bleached deserts of the south, the room’s artificial environment mimicking the hot, blasted air and ambient sunlight of those nomad-haunted lands. The walls were of bleached stucco, with internal arches and patios that opened out on a simulated desert, a fantastic enchantment providing the illusion of tufted grasses, cacti, and rolling sand-dunes spilling out to a false horizon. The dry, gritty air of the room always made Kelrob sneeze, and he held his breath as he followed the women down a stuccoed walkway, forcing himself to match their shuffling, reverent pace. At last they passed through the far doorway, entering into a long, atmospherically neutral passage, and Kelrob sucked in a deep lungful of air. Behind him he heard Jacobson mutter something to Rakisha, who harshly chastised the big man to silence.
The women then made for the library, a needless detour; Kelrob realized he was being guided through the bounties of House Azumana, a tactic intended as both intimidation and bribe. As he stared down the endless rows of ancient, perfectly-preserved tomes, housed in teakwood bookshelves of titanic height, the mage found himself almost warming to the thought of his enforced union. He had spent precious few hours in the library of Lord Azumana, but knew it to contain a complete set of Herotalus’s A History of the Civilized Human Aspect, numerous alchemical texts of excessive rarity including Aoli’s Fundalis Transmutalis and the long-suppressed writings of Unlan Alekambar, as well as countless collations of travel narratives, poetry, histories, materialist philosophy, and runic philology. There were even a few texts of a highly uncommon and slightly dubious nature detailing the rites, sorceries, and venerative practices of the rural classes; these Kelrob had dared to spirit away and shelve in a remote corner, knowing that Lord Azumana kept his books very well dusted but very ill read. As the train left the library, a fume of pungent incense curling in their wake, Kelrob turned to imagining his bride’s disgust as, on their wedding night, he foreswore her company in favor of sequestering himself in her father’s library. The brief allure of submitting to the match dissipated, and by the time the veiled women guided him into the vast Hall of Portraiture, where Azumana kept his ever-expanding collection of paintings both ancient and modern, the mage had firmly re-set his mind against the arrangement.
On a day that had begun with bombings and rebellion, a day wherein Kelrob had struggled with an otherworldly presence and nearly drowned in a bathtub, the most difficult challenge, to his mind, still lay ahead. The women guided him down, down, through armories filled with glistening antique weapons, strange subterranean gardens of luminous fungi, and vaulted lounges stuffed to overflowing with rich, luxuriant furniture. Jacobson tried and failed to suppress his successive awes, and kept a low, constant stream of chatter directed at Rakisha, who alternated between terse answers and admonitions to silence. At length Kelrob realized he was completely lost, and imagined himself creeping back to that lurid room with the offensive crimson paint, sinking down into the bed, and weeping like the child he had once been, was no longer. The women maintained their ceremonial silence, the censor swaying lazily like a distended tear refusing to drop; when they had fully plumbed the bowels of the manse and come, at last, to the passage leading to the sacred hall, Rakisha called a halt.
“We wait here,” he said to Jacobson in an uncompromising voice.
Jacobson nodded, raised his free hand to salute Kelrob, the other holding tight to the sage-green bundle. “Knock ‘em dead, my lord.” He grinned behind the mask, and Rakisha grumbled something about base insubordination, his fingers clenching and unclenching around the hilt of his scimitar.
Kelrob bowed at the blessing, thinking it quite adroit. Turning his back on the pair, he followed his diaphanous guides down the long vaulted corridor. A hundred steps, and they reached the towering rosewood doors of the sacred hall. Kelrob was surprised to see Lord Azumana standing in an adjacent vestibule, the merchant-lord unaccompanied by his usual halo of bodyguards. He wore a bright silken tunic interwoven with gilded peacock feathers, a high stiff collar framing his regal face. The narrow ridges of his cheeks were heavily rouged and perfumed, sparkling with a liberal application of powdered diamond, and the long black fall of his hair glistened with oil and carefully interwoven gemstones. Over the tunic he wore a flowing knee-length jerkin of aggressive grandeur, each hexagonal button a polished ruby, the dew-retted linen embroidered with romanticized visions of the harvest. His baggy breeches were woven entirely from pliant metallic thread, gold and silver cord interspersed with rarer platinum fibers, and his shoes were polished and pointed, small soundless bells clinging to their tips. He smiled as Kelrob came into sight, and executed a bow, his ring-choked fingers crossing over his chest. The train of women halted at his oblation, the censor ceasing its clockwork swing. Kelrob also halted, though he did not return the bow, his fingers yearning for a few hidden pockets to plumb anxiously.
Lord Azumana stepped from the alcove, a wave of patchouli scent washing off his body and subduing the jasmine odor of the women, though not the censor’s ossuary belching. “Good evening, my dear boy. I hope you can forgive the winding path, but dinner isn’t quite ready. Hardly any servants to spare, you know. An oh! you did wear that lovely outfit, I was hoping and planning that you would. I dressed to match you.” The lord smiled sharply, fingers trailing down the priceless cloth of his garb. “I purchased this in the Seven Cities, from Madame Elithi’s Couturier. I normally would never resort to buying something in a shop — my tailors are the best in the land — but it caught my eye, and required only a few adjustments. The trousers are of my own design, of course, and the shoes a nod to my ancestors, who are surly watching over us this most auspicious evening.” He laughed at his own superstitious pronouncement, then raised his hand on high and snapped his fingers, manicured nails glistening a garish blood-red. The four veiled women bowed in response to his signal, and turning to Kelrob raised their bracelet-coated arms over his head. Each held a small amber vial of oil in her right hand; Kelrob closed his eyes and winced as four thick dollops dribbled onto his scalp, his nose flaring at the conflicting essences of olibanum, myrrh, lotus extract, and fo-ti root. His hair, already saturated with unguent, absorbed little of the oils; they trickled down his temples and the long bridge of his nose, flooding the hollows of his eye-sockets and gathering in a thick film at the borders of his lips. This glut of sensation, coupled with his smoking of the reality-warping herb, almost sent Kelrob into shock, but he stood firm with eyes screwed shut as the women began to circle him, the censor enveloping him in a ribbon of smoke. A song rose from their lips, a keening fertile cry, and as they revolved more swiftly Kelrob felt a faint stirring in his loins. He remembered the song they sang, recognizing it as a strand of the atomic euphony Tamrel had revealed to
him, and lowering his head allowed the voices of the women to permeate his mind and member. Never prone to the carnal demands of the flesh, Kelrob found himself suddenly craving the closeness of warm skin, the touch of yearning fingers, the act of penetration, the envelopment. By the time the women stilled their song and their circling, and fell deferentially at his feet with flutters of pale cloth, the mage had to reach down and shield his groin. The blush was inescapable.
Lord Azumana watched Kelrob with glittering eyes, a serpent’s smile slithering across his pigmented lips. Again he raised his hand and snapped, and the women rose in unison, their anklets jingling faintly as they turned and disappeared back down the corridor. The censor went with them, trailing an umbilicus of tomb-scented smoke.
Azumana lowered his hand. Smiling, he approached Kelrob and gripped the mage’s shivering shoulders. “My daughter’s handmaids,” he said, with a glance down the corridor. “They have kept her chastity these seventeen years, and have now passed her keeping to you.” Reaching down, he pried Kelrob’s hands free from their dignified hovering. “What you feel is what you possess. There is no shame in feeling what one possesses. Now come, follow me; there is one more ceremony to attend to.” Taking Kelrob by the arm, the lord guided him to the stone vestibule, where Kelrob saw a silver basin of water resting in a suggestively slit alcove. This the lord took in his hands, and kneeling at Kelrob’s feet began to unlace his boots.
Scott J Couturier - [The Magistricide 01] Page 25