The Five

by Nhys Glover

  Rama came in next with a twin on either hip. They looked tired and sulky and Airsha took one twin from him and planted a kiss on his or her small cheek. They were identical until they started talking, these twins, but at this moment neither seemed interested in talking.

  Airsha and her men were the picture of familial joy. I envied them that, I realised suddenly.

  Where had that come from? I’d never really envied them their closeness. It would have meant sex and babies and too much work. Now... Now I wanted the closeness, the happiness they all shared. Rama might have told Zem he felt like the least deserving of the brothers, but he was still happy. He couldn’t fake that kind of contentment.

  At that moment, Landor came in, looking tired and bedraggled, still in the clothes he was wearing last night. So he had found another woman’s bed had he? My muscles tensed, and I looked away. Airsha shot me a surprised glance but made no comment.

  “I didn’t know the party went on all night,” Darkin said to the newcomer.

  “It did not. I was asked to the bed of sisters. I felt obliged to accept.”

  “That’s not how a bond works...” Jaron started to say with censure.

  “There is no bond. I told him to do what he likes. He has that right, after being forced to bed his old aunt for the last ten or more suns!” I snapped out more fiercely than I intended.

  Landor gasped and looked as if I’d slapped him. The grimace made me want to wrap my arms around him and beg his forgiveness. Why did I have to be such a bitch?

  No one seemed to know what to say after my outburst.

  Landor excused himself quietly and went to his room, while I buried my head in Zem’s shoulder.

  “Why can’t I keep my big mouth shut? I shamed him.”

  “May I suggest you go and apologise?” Airsha said, looking annoyed and impatient with me. Sometimes I felt like she was far more than just two suns older than I was.

  I pulled out of Zem’s arms and headed for Landor’s door.

  Rama said, “Don’t.” I assumed he was stopping Zem from coming after me.

  I knocked on Landor’s door, and he told me to come in. I found him sitting on the edge of his still neatly made bed.

  When he saw who it was he made much of removing his boots. “It still feels strange for me to have the right to decline entry to my room.”

  “Would you prefer I go?” I asked, still standing in the doorway feeling very uncomfortable.

  “No. Of course not. Come in and shut the door. Unless you do not feel safe to be in here alone with me.”

  “I have no such fear.”

  I shut the door behind me and slowly walked across the large room that looked very like my own. I stopped a stride from him, staring fixedly down at my sandaled feet. I could see his booted ones in my periphery. It seemed he’d stopped taking them off.

  “I want to apologise for shaming you as I did. I speak before I think sometimes. My purpose was to defend your choices.”

  “It was not a choice. You told me to bed other women, so I did,” he snapped out more angrily than I’d ever heard him speak.

  I glanced up to find him looking taken aback by his own display of temper.

  “I didn’t tell you you had to. I just suggested you should. Before... If... well... you know why.”

  Landor flopped back onto his bed and stared up at the ceiling. “This is all far harder than I expected it to be. I thought that if I ever had a chance to be part of the world it would be wonderful. But most of the time I want to be back in my room where I knew what was expected of me, where I fitted in. All this... it’s too much to deal with. Too much is expected of me. I miss my mistress. I know you think I should be glad to be rid of her. But I miss her. She was all I had.”

  My heart turned over in my chest. It hurt. Slowly I made my way over to the side of the bed and reclined beside him. I took up one of his hands, stroking it gently. It was all I could think to do to ease his suffering. How was it possible that he’d prefer being a prisoner in the dark to being here with us? I couldn’t imagine it.

  Yet hadn’t there been times in the early days with the Airluds that I’d pined for life on the streets—for all its many discomforts and fears? It was what I’d known, and sometimes that was more important than comfort.

  I inched further up the bed until I could stroke his stubbled cheek. “This is overwhelming. I understand that. I may not have been locked in a dark room my whole life but I’ve had to go through some pretty sudden and marked changes at times. Many not for the better. All I can say is that you’re doing remarkably well. None of us could have done as well as you have. So give yourself time.

  “And don’t take every suggestion as an order. The last thing I’d want you to do is share your body with someone you didn’t want. You’ve had to do that all your life. I’d never expect you to do that. Not even with me, for the Goddess.”

  He turned his head to look at me with those strange, pale blue eyes. “I did it for you. Not because I had to, but because you seemed so determined I should know other women. But... every moment those women were prattling and giggling and batting their lashes at me, I wanted to be with you. There was no one as beautiful as you at that ball last night. When you were dancing with that scarred man... Rama, is it? I wanted to tear you from his arms. I wanted to be the one dancing with you. Though I have no idea how to dance.” He laughed at his own ridiculousness.

  I lay my head on his shoulder and tried to ignore the perfume belonging to another woman I could smell there.

  “I was jealous of those women. I wanted to drive them off with a stick. I hated that you spent the night with them,” I confessed.

  He shifted me so I was at eyelevel with him. For long moments he stared into my eyes as if trying to read the truth there.

  “What about Zem? I do not want to hurt him. He is a good man.”

  I grimaced. “Zem has his own issues, most of them around feeling inferior to you. He thinks you’re a good man, too.”

  Landor laughed humourlessly. “Inferior to me? The white freak? The monster brought out to entertain the nobility? How can he think himself inferior, when he has the most beautiful woman in the room?”

  “Because he knows he’s going to have to share me. And that makes him feel insecure. He wants so much to be perfect. For me to see him as perfect. And he doesn’t hear that I don’t want that. It’s too much work trying to be perfect, I keep telling him. And you never can be.”

  We fell silent for a few moments, each consumed with our own thoughts.

  “Being with those girls was worse than being with my mistress,” Landor finally admitted.

  That surprised me. He preferred an older woman?

  “No, not for the reason I can see in your eyes. It is a little like being in the dark. I never minded it as much as you all think I should have, because it was... what it was. When my mistress was all I knew I could enjoy the pleasure she gave me. But when I had someone to compare the experience with. No... that isn’t right. The point is that I knew what I really wanted. Having to accept something less was hard. Those girls giggled incessantly. Even when I was inside them. Even when they had my cock in their mouths. I could not get away fast enough.”

  I grimaced at the images of Landor’s cock in another girl’s mouth, his cock inside someone who wasn’t me.

  “Don’t do that again, all right? Don’t share pleasure with someone you don’t want.”

  “And what I do want?” His voice was barely a sound.

  “You still don’t know what you want. Not all women giggle. I don’t want you choosing me because I’m the best of a bad bunch.”

  “Flea,” he groaned. “You are not the best of a bad bunch. You are the best of any bunch. You are unique. Even I can tell that with as little experience as I have had. Those women made fun of you for your boyish ways. They felt sorry for me being stuck with you. That’s why they took me to their bed. Out of sympathy. To show me what I would be missing once I was bound to you.
>
  “But what makes you different from them is what draws me to you. Where will I find another woman who flings up her arms and yells with joy as she rides an airling through the skies? Where will I find someone who doesn’t care that her hair is falling out of its tortured hairdo and just dances for the joy of it? You are free and wild and unpredictable. Where would I find that again, if I spent my life searching the world for it?”

  “Airsha is like that. But she’s taken,” I admitted, feeling my cheeks burning.

  “You’re wilder than she is. And she’s too pale.” I could hear the humour in his voice as I burrowed my head into his neck.

  He went on, and I listened to the warm vibration his words made in his throat. “So, please don’t keep me from our bond for my own sake. If you are not ready... if you do not want me. Or if Zem is... If it will hurt him, then I will accept that. But do not keep me away to be fair to me.”

  I pressed into his shoulder a little more, finding my heart was beating too fast in my chest for comfort. What did I do? Was I ready? Would I ever be ready? I wanted him. Aye, I’d wanted him from the start. But there was a mighty step between wanting and taking.

  And there was Zem.

  “All right. I won’t keep you away to be fair. But I’m not ready. Zem isn’t ready. When we are... then I’ll happily accept you as part of my harem.”

  He kissed me then. A long and languid kiss that tempted me to accept him now. But I didn’t want it to be in the passion of the moment. I wanted to come to him when I felt ready. It had taken a long time for me to be ready to be with Zem. And because I had waited, and put my toe in first, it had worked. I wanted to put my toe in the water with Landor too.

  We broke apart breathlessly, and Landor smiled a broad happy grin. “You didn’t giggle once.”

  I laughed though, loud and happily. And he joined me, until we were rolling around on the bed in fits of it. There was a soft knock and Landor yelled come in. Zem poked his head in, looking decidedly uncomfortable.

  I motioned him forward, still laughing. “Come in. Join us. Did you know I am superior to other women because I don’t giggle?”

  Zem closed the door and sat down on the edge of the bed, still feeling his way uncomfortably.

  “I had noticed that.” he agreed cautiously.

  “But I do laugh. I may well laugh in bed. I wonder if you can laugh with a cock in your mouth.”

  Both men blushed then, which made me laugh all the louder. “I will have to try it one day.”

  I sat up and wrapped an arm around Zem’s shoulders. “We have come to an agreement. When you and I are both ready, Landor will join us. Because I don’t giggle in bed.”

  Zem started tickling me then, making me shriek with more laughter. I struggled to escape him but he was too strong. Landor joined in, and between them I was defeated. Gasping, tears coursing down my face, I surrendered and pleaded for them to stop. We collapsed into a heap of arms and legs, trying to get back our breaths.

  “This is what it would be like, wouldn’t it?” I said with a satisfied smirk. “Us sharing a bed.”

  The men looked at our tangled limbs.

  “Knowing you, probably,” Zem admitted.

  “I could live with that,” I said, wrapping an arm around each of them.

  “I might be able to live with it, too,” Zem admitted cautiously.

  Landor simply grinned.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Over the next few days Darkin and the Airluds took charge of the search for the Godling. Men, who had been part of the rebel army two suns ago and had gone back to their lives after the war, began filing back in in droves when they received word. It wasn’t the threat of the monster to be unleashed, because that was a carefully held secret, but the fact that the man himself was free of his punishment that brought them. For many who still grieved the loss of loved ones, less than two suns was not nearly enough time to recompense them for their loss.

  Prior had disappeared. No one knew where he’d gone; only that he’d taken his mount the night of the welcome ball and had not returned. I was partly insulted and partly bemused by this turn of events. Could it be enough to just say no to the Goddess? Clearly, Prior thought he wouldn’t get a choice if he hung around, so he’d slipped between the cracks again as he had done after the Ab secret army’s revolt.

  Who would replace him? And how were we to find these other two mages we needed to make up our five?

  Landor had taken to spending his time in the library with the clerics, pouring over every ancient tome he could lay his hands on, in an attempt to gain us more information on what we must do.

  And, even though all the whole world was searching for the ex-Godling and his generals, still there was no word on them. We even had spies in the Cliffling camps, where he was expected to go. Or so we’d been told by the soldier who’d been tortured for the truth. Who knew if that was true? A man would say anything under torture. I should have been there to read his mind. Maybe I still could.

  Zem and me joined the search each day with all the airling troopers and three of the Airluds. Only three of us—Airsha, Darkin and Landor—remained at the Capital. Before we did so though, we all made time for training at dawn.

  Rama insisted that Landor needed fighting skills. His body needed exercise, having been limited so greatly all his life. As he ate and his energy increased, he had to have a way to use up that energy. And though he maintained he was never going to fight beside us, as killing and causing harm was an anathema to him, he did see the sense in being stronger and fitter.

  I’d caught a wisp of a remembered conversation, which had taken place between Zem and Landor, when I wasn’t present. In it Zem had pointed out that he might not always be there to protect me, and Landor would have to step up and do it. That had convinced him, more than anything else, to learn to fight.

  He was a remarkably quick study. His natural grace lent itself to some of the hand-to-hand skills Airsha had taught us as airling recruits. They had to be adapted slightly for his height, but mostly they worked well. With only a few turns a day, in the yard where the youths-in-training once trained, Landor quickly improved his physical strength, stamina and fighting skills.

  All of this was made possible by an unguent provided by an earth mage, who specialised in herbal remedies. It allowed him to stay out in the sun for long stretches of time without burning.

  I found that those turns became the favourites of my day, because I often ended up in close quarter holds with Landor, practising those moves. Occasionally Zem would be called away and we would practise on. And I knew I wasn’t the only one who wanted to make the most of those one-on-one times.

  Though Airsha would have preferred to be out searching, she had been convinced that her job was keeping the council on side. They were unhappy that so many resources were being poured into this search. Many would have been content to let the ex-Godling disappear, and good riddance. It saved the cost of his imprisonment. But the people felt differently, and the Goddess was vocal on the matter.

  Few people knew of The Jayger. We didn’t need a panic in the general population. Even the mages had only been told the Godling was up to mischief and that the Goddess had chosen five of her mages to contain the magic he was releasing. Would it have made a difference if Prior had known just how important his task was? Maybe he did believe it was only a matter of walking away and another would replace him.

  Could it be that easy?

  On the fourth day, Landor found Zem and me after we’d returned from our day of searching. We were tired and defeated, not just because there was no sign of the royal prisoner but because we still had no clue where to look for the missing members of The Five.

  We were flopped on cushions on the floor of the living room eating food from the assortment available on the trestle table. Landor entered the room, his eyes bright with excitement. I felt an answering shiver run through me that had nothing to do with whatever he’d discovered and everything to do with sexual arous
al. In little ways he’d shown me his interest over the last few days, and more and more Zem made a space for the man in our lives. Lives that had previously been filled with only each other.

  “I have found something I think might be useful.” He dropped gracefully down beside us with a leather-bound tome.

  He opened the book to a colourfully illustrated image of a sea monster. “I was considering what we knew about The Five. Of the four that have been marked, two are earth mages, you and I, Zem. Flea is air and the missing Prior is fire. Now it makes sense that all the elements would be represented in our bond. Which implies the last would be water. But what if he is not water.”

  He looked at both of us expectantly. I shrugged my shoulders, feeling particularly stupid. But as Zem had the same vague expression, and I knew he was anything but stupid, I determined Landor had yet to make his point.

  “This is the story of The Jayger.” He pointed to the ancient handwritten script that went with the image. “In the beginning there was earth and water. Earth was the realm of the Goddess and water was the realm of her consort, The Jayger. It was from earth and water that all creatures were made.

  “When the Goddess used her life force to create tiny creatures in the water, The Jayger was at first amused by her antics. Then, as she became more adventurous, spending more and more of her time with her creations, he grew angered. So she removed many of her more advanced creatures from his domain and gave them the earth.

  “Rather than placating The Jayger, he took the move as rejection. And he created a huge wave to wash over all the land and kill most of the creatures the Goddess had created.

  “The Goddess took her elements, earth, air and fire, and had them formed into a circle. She placed it on the last remaining piece of land untouched by the flood and then taunted The Jayger about his failure. Land still remained and there were creatures on it, she crowed. He hadn’t destroyed all she’d made.