“So? That was rape, not love. You are not to blame. Now don’t move.”
The blue-black ink was mixed, the Singers’ fur brush waiting for another dip in the ink pot. Borsa finished the new invocation in three passes of flowing calligraphy. Softened, the spell no longer triggered from pain and domination, but only through willing pleasure. Even years away from his Order, Borsa’s letters were finer than the rebel’s. The ink dried almost instantly, sinking into Lai’s golden skin.
“Finished,” said Borsa, unlatching restraints and helping the Dana off the frame.
Gritting his flat little teeth, Lai said, “It’s not finished. I don’t know how you’re getting us away, but I can’t go outside in skin and blue scribbles.” He looked up at Borsa clearly for the first time, gray eyes widening in real fear. Borsa stood nearly three feet taller than the Dana-man. Lai stumbled over to another pile of pillows in the corner and got down on his hands and knees. “I won’t fight you,” he snarled.
“Only your pleasure will set it now.”
Lai dropped his forehead on the pillows. “That’s a problem.”
“You’ve never enjoyed yourself before?” Borsa asked, sitting beside him. He knotted Lai’s silky hair up, twisting it out of the way.
“I was one of Kemurra’s priests. We used drugs to keep such urges away unless the elders’ councils chose us to breed. And I’m sterile,” Lai admitted. “Will you, ah, find more of that oil? Your sex must be very large,” he finished in a lost tone.
Borsa found the drugged lubricant. As befitting a quality brothel, it was fresh and potent. No wonder the Dana-man had succumbed! The oil tingled on Borsa’s fingers. He kept his voice low and calm as he poured the oil along Lai’s back and cleft. “Never that! Lai, I’m a married man, a moral one, and you’re far too small. But I can pleasure you better than the housemistress in ways that won’t hurt you. Just relax. Push outward against the plug.”
Lai whimpered as the ridged plug came out and gasped when Borsa immediately replaced it with an oiled index finger. Borsa reached under Lai’s belly, loosely grasping the Dana-man’s phallus and testicles. As small as the rest of Lai, but as emphatically male. Mindful of his claw, Borsa curled his finger inside Lai’s still-tight channel, finding the nub that should—
“Oh!” Lai moaned, hips rocking to Borsa’s cadence. His phallus firmed, barely thicker than Borsa’s thumb.
“Only this,” Borsa coaxed. “Let the pleasure lift you. It’s nothing bad of itself.” The sight and scent of Lai’s arousal nearly intoxicated Borsa, though most of it was the oil’s fault. He felt himself swell to aching fullness. He wanted hours to relax and enflame the slender Dana, drive him to the brink again and again until that exquisite channel might accept more than a finger. Never Borsa’s erection. The tip alone would split him. Borsa comforted himself with memories of his husband’s pleasure: writhing, impaled, urging a pace so rough it would have damaged most men. He hoped his husband’s wife had an adventurous soul. She’d find the marriage bed a wilder place than she’d bargained for!
Muffled noises made him look up from Lai’s flexing hips. Two pairs of dazed eyes watched as well. Their owners reeked of fear and desperate arousal. Borsa grinned and lifted Lai to face his tormentors. “Look what you’ve done to them,” he whispered.
Lai was far gone or had an exhibitionist bent. He screamed, hips hammering into and away from Borsa’s hands. The runes on his back flared blue as night then vanished into his skin. Borsa felt Lai’s passage clench. Lai’s seed splattered along the pillows and tiled floor. He wondered about its taste and set the thought aside. He heard shouts and heavy objects banging on gir-wood.
He withdrew from Lai, cleansed his hands and the Dana’s nethers with some of the mild vinegar water. Lai flinched when the door boomed again. Borsa stood, shrugging out of the bright blue coat.
To the conspirators, he growled, “Be thankful I stopped you or you might not have a city by tomorrow’s dawn!” He thrust the grimoire into the pack slung over one shoulder, slipped his staff into his back-harness, and wrapped his coat around the trembling Dana. He lifted Lai in his arms. The weight of a ten-summer child, no more. No wonder Biha had abandoned her temple!
That thought withered his own lust and steadied his resolve. Time to stop running. Borsa whispered, “Think of your Enclave, Lai. Some place apart from it but easily reached, where folk might not gather today.”
“Why?”
“I must make a door,” said Borsa. He bent his forehead to Lai’s.
His goddess’s subtle guidance was still within him, but Borsa opened his mind to a name he hadn’t dared think in five years. He was answered in the same heartbeat by a magic already seeking him, worried and infuriated by years of Biha’s whimsical misdirection. A spot of darkness grew in the air in front of him, swelling to an eight-foot-high black oval bordered by brilliant green light.
For five years he’d used only an earthwitch’s powers, pulled up from the Sleeper’s domain. Once he stepped through this door, that magic and its two patron goddesses must abandon him forever.
“Earthwitches cannot gate, fly, cross deep water or even climb more than twenty feet from the ground,” the Dana whispered. “Or they die screaming, or at least lose their magic. What are you?”
Borsa gritted his teeth and stepped through.
The portal opened on a rust-red sandstone scarp above a valley glittering with waterways. Neat fields made patchworks of alien scarlet, red-brown and purple vegetation. Small mud-brick buildings clustered against the lower cliffs. The lavender-blue sky was clean of city dust and smoke, streaked with thin cirrus. Beyond rose the distant mountains of the Ajara Vang and the end of the civilized world. Borsa almost longed for the wilderness south of the range. He’d been born out there, reared among isolated Sirrithani villages, bandit camps and Singer-clan caves. Offered his first prayers to Biha, joined her Order and gave up his birth name, expecting to live out his five hundred years in her service.
Until one day she’d returned his name and shattered his world.
“The Enclave!” Lai shivered inside the overlarge coat. “They won’t welcome me back. Do you—would you suffer a companion on the road?”
“Lai, my wandering days are done,” said Borsa. The black gate did not close. Borsa had been awaiting the two other footsteps and turned when he heard them.
A brown-skinned woman with tumbling black curls stared at up him, drawing her dark-green mantle closer around her. Her full, perfect lips silently shaped his name.
“Hello, Tari,” Borsa said, unsure of his welcome.
She grinned.
“Where have you been?” asked the hooded man standing beside her. The sword-hilt at his back flashed with a poisonous green light, the same fire filling the eye sockets of his shadowed face. “And with what, a Dana whore?”
Borsa bowed to the Lady Consort. “Tari, will you hold Lai for me? This won’t take long.” She ignored her husband’s offended snort and hurried to Borsa with outstretched arms. Lai, still not quite grasping reality, whimpered and clung to her. She set her hips to take his slight weight and smiled down at him, her arms curled around Lai’s shoulders and knees.
“Borsa,” began the Northwarden, his voice gone deep and dangerously vibrant. “When you ran, I thought you hated me—”
“Not you. I hated what I became to slake your needs,” said Borsa, cupping that hidden face in his big hands. What would be killing cold to a normal mortal felt merely cool.
Against Borsa’s fingertips, the Northwarden’s lips moved. “You feared being my anchor, my companion, my conscience?”
“Your master. I was afraid I’d push you too far, and you’d kill me for it.”
“Borsa, you great idiot. I was only greedy. My first two Lord Consorts were gentler souls. With you, I thought—”
“Ssh. When you found her, our Lady Consort, I thought you’d forget me while you courted her.”
Tari laughed. “I only said ‘yes’ when he said he’d b
eg you to come home.”
“Oh,” said Borsa.
The Northwarden shook back his hood. Borsa stared at a mirror image wrought of black silk hair and pale opal skin, the misty green eyes paling to rainbow-flickering silver.
Biha bless, that’s not me, surely? Borsa wondered. This hard-muscled giant with a straight nose and trimmed beard, his strong jaw unmarred by old fighting scars? In another ten thousand years would Sirrithani say, “Oh, look, now the Northwarden wears the shape of the third Hero, the Lord Consort Borsa Eld”?
“My hunger drove you away. Why did you summon me with a sorcerer’s gate?” asked his lover, his hands sliding up Borsa’s arms.
Something Borsa hadn’t planned in five years of wandering, or half a day in Ajara. “The Sleeper chose us for you. I should trust her and Biha. And I’d rather die with you than without you,” he said, lightly pushing the other man backward against the cliff wall. Their mouths met in a soft click of fangs, a sinuous cool tongue warming to match Borsa’s heat. Hands unclenched to caress and cling. A moan nearly below hearing rumbled in the broad chest pressed to Borsa’s. “Olan,” Borsa whispered the private name he’d given the nameless immortal on their wedding night. “There’s been no one else.” The moan became a low sob.
Then the white hands clenched again on his shoulders. “What about that?” the demon nodded toward Tari and Lai. “Why do you stink of its issue?”
“Lai Kendoshil is a traveler from the Enclave below,” said Borsa. “As for why—Lai, show him your back.”
Tari looked down into the Dana’s face with a solemn nod. She let his feet slip to the floor, but kept the coat from falling below his hips. The Northwarden hissed, stalking closer, white fingers raised. The runes darkened into visibility. Tari took a step back, dragging Lai out of reach, and showed her fangs in a protective half-snarl. Borsa noted how his husband withdrew immediately.
“The last of it is in your script,” the Northwarden growled.
“He was meant as a rape-sacrifice to Deathgold in a spell triggered by a false priest’s twisted lust. I could only change it and give Lai to Maker. There are at least two traitors in the Fountain of Roses brothel in Ajara City, but I think they were misled by an enemy of Ajara itself. I have their grimoire. They didn’t know what would happen. Look for their master among the Nameless, calling himself Aduano.”
“Dana-man, why did you leave your Enclave?” the North-warden asked.
Lai turned, still holding the coat to his chest. He did not kneel. “We heard you and the Lady Consort came to Ajara on Progress. We’ve begged aid from the Queen of Ajara before, more water rights and more honest merchants’ fees. We get nothing. We cannot emigrate to another Enclave without her leave. And when we set foot beyond this valley—sometimes we vanish. We sought to plead to you directly, Steward of the Sleeping Goddess. Even though you shun us for what a few Dana did thousands of years ago.”
“South of the Ajara Vang, two craters gape where the first Sirr cities stood,” said the Northwarden. “Blasted by your folk.”
“Dana peace emissaries died there, too. You destroyed our ships and our greatest city in return, Lord Steward. Have we not paid enough? As a pure race, we’re dying. Should we pass in despair or dignity?”
“My Consorts?” asked the Northwarden after failing to stare down Lai.
“For the love of mercy, set them free,” said Borsa.
“Give them honor, freeholds in lands that welcome them, and a voice in the Great House councils,” said Tari, her hand still laid over Lai’s bare shoulder. “Not here in Ajara, I think.”
“My Saint and my Hero have spoken,” said the Northwarden with a wry grin. The sword slashed down, dragging a black, rainbow-edged wind in its wake. “A hundred sorcerer Adepts walk in Ajara City right now. They’ll soon unravel the plot. We are done here.”
Lai looked up at Borsa. “What about the rest of the spell? Summoning that goddess, Maker?”
“That is by your will alone, Lai,” said Borsa. “Turn around.”
Lai did, and gasped. Where the trail snaked down the cliff a tall white shape awaited him.
Biha-Arra appeared as a purebred woman of the Singer-clan, wedge-shaped head tipped with a short sharp horn above her muzzle, large black eyes set in a wide forehead. Her thick mane fluffed around neck and shoulders. She crouched on strong hindquarters, forelimbs and clever paws held close to her chest, her long tail swept back in a graceful arch. Borsa, reared among Singers, thought her lovely. She cocked her head at him and Lai, murmuring a greeting-song in her four chorded voices.
I would have known sooner about the plot among the Nameless , she said into Borsa’s thoughts. If I hadn’t been shielding you all these years.
He cringed from that gentle reproof.
“Biha-Arra,” said the Northwarden. “Will you stop hiding my husband from me?”
She snorted, becoming a naked Sirr-woman with cloud-white hair and skin as dark as Tari’s. “Now that he wants you again and knows his duty to the world,” she said in a single husky voice. She knelt before Lai. “Since my sister forced me to give up my favorite priest, I’ve looked for a new one. Would your kin follow a living goddess instead of a dead one’s ghost?” She held out her hand.
Lai took it, brought it up to his heart. “They’re very stubborn, my Lady. But I’ll try.” He released her, looking back with the first real smile Borsa had seen from him. “I owe you my life, my honor and my sanity. Thank you for seeing a person and not a toy. And for being kind.”
“It’s my job,” said Borsa, grinning back. “I’m the Hero.”
ESCAPE
Mitzi Szereto
Night after night, day after day I wait. I wait for what I cannot avoid: the inevitable.
I do not wish to marry him. He is old, and he is ugly. The flesh hangs from his neck and upper arms in mottled rolls; I dare not think of the rest of him! His teeth are the shade of rotting timber with holes riddled through by worms. His eyes rake over me with a familiarity that causes my body to flush with shame. It’s as if he has already tasted my flesh, smelled my scent. When I see him I want to curl up into a tight ball and hide. But hide I cannot. For Father has other plans.
It is considered acceptable for pretty young women whose bodies retain the flush of youth to marry ancient trolls, but this is a fate I’m unwilling to bear. Of course, I realize I am not as young as most of the others; my choices are not those that can be made with any great degree of pickiness. Were it not for the circumstances, it should be unlikely I’d secure a husband at all, since the men of my land seek out those that are as fruit on the bough rather than those ready to drop to the ground. Indeed, some of us are old enough to remember such rarities as fruit before the evil of our leaders caused the gods to forsake us.
Having managed to avoid my fate for this many changes of seasons is a miracle in itself. Yet even with my seniority of years, I have something that allows me to be worthy of consideration: I bleed every month. Well, that and the fact that I’m still comely in appearance. A bleeding womb, prized though it may be, is increased in value by the package in which it’s contained. I wonder if it is the same in other lands? Though I have never been to other lands. I have only been here.
Many years ago a terrible disease ravaged our already barren landscape, taking with it the majority of female children and girls and leaving yet more barrenness behind. Perhaps it was further punishment for the greed and wickedness of our rulers as they sought to acquire more and more of the territory surrounding us, annexing anything and everyone in their wake. The blood that has been spilled could fill rivers and probably has.
The lesson has not been learned, however, and the greed and wickedness continue to flourish. Our men grow worse with each passing day, becoming as cruel and ugly as the land upon which we live. The young ones learn from the old, since it is the old that seek out new wives after their current ones are no longer of use as bed or breeding partners. The discarded wives are either buried beneath stones in the
town center or cast out of the kingdom, where they’re left to wander toward the horizon until the elements accomplish the same thing as the stones. Our arid land is littered with the corpses of these women whose bodies could no longer provide their husbands with fruit.
There are no young men in our kingdom in possession of a wife. Rather they are forced to wait until the old have taken their pick of what little remains to be taken—and by then the young too, have grown old. And so the cycle begins anew when the female results of these unions attain womanhood and can produce future brood mares. I think it should be better if our race died out than to continue a life in this wretched place. But my opinion matters not.
Our women are kept imprisoned under lock and key from the onset of their menses until marriage; it’s the only way to guarantee they remain pure for the men to whom they’ve been promised. The pedigree of the children they bear their husbands must not be in any way suspect. Even servants attending to the needs of these prisoners—for we are, indeed, prisoners—are female. It is not unusual for couplings to take place between prisoner and servant, and a blind eye is turned to such transgressions. The men do not care what transpires in the stone cells of our bedchambers as long as no seed has reached our fertile wombs. The touch of another can be as valuable as gold to a body hungering for it. Women locked away until such time as they are to be married off to husbands that will only maul and misuse them are starved for tenderness and affection. Me? Hah! I am no different from my sisters-in-misery.
It is past nightfall when my servant comes to me. The sky turns black the tiny window of the cell that constitutes my bedchamber. Even the stars refuse to twinkle over our land, choosing instead to shine on the verdant horizon most of us covet and dream of. A shaft of light from a lantern cuts a wedge in the floor as the door opens carefully; despite our nocturnal activities being common knowledge, the women and their servants are discreet. I lie in my small bed, my heart pounding in expectation of the pleasure I know I’m to be given on this night—the pleasure that assures me I’m still alive. At first I feel a caress of lips against my cheek so light it’s barely discernible. A whisper of sweet breath against my ear follows, and it holds my name: Gwendolen.
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