In every way he was her opposite. Thickly muscled rather than wiry, pale rather than dark, unlined rather than mapped in vein. They shared height, and that was all, she being somewhat short for an elderwoman, he somewhat tall for a man.
Her right hand went to her womanhood.
He failed to react to her tentative caress, so she moved closer, running her palm and its tongue over his smooth scalp, the contours of his body. He tasted clean, like water or snow. She avoided the prominent bulge of his genitals for a time, but eventually temptation overcame her. She ran her hand down the ridges of his belly and cupped his testicles, allowing the tongue to lick along his confined length. She closed her eyes and moaned.
Here, if she had been truly remembering rather than fantasizing, Adrash would wake. The light of his eyes would blind her and his voice would roar in her mind, flooding her, pressing against the inside of her skull until the blood ran from her ears. Then, moving faster than sight could follow, his fingers would be around her neck...
She turned from such thoughts with practiced ease and continued. He became hard under her caresses, but could not break free from the skin of his armor. His length stayed pressed against his testicles under the smooth barrier. Like anyone, as a child Ebn had been educated about Adrash. Nothing is impossible for him, the tutors had told her. He can split the ocean and walk around the world. He can stop the moon in the sky. He could do all of these things, but in her fantasy he could not break free of embrace of the divine armor.
His entrapment excited her. He still had not opened his eyes, had not moved his arms or legs. Touching herself, she wrapped her legs around his, heels tight below his firm buttocks. She placed both hands on his chest and ground herself into his erection. She kissed the faint outline of his mouth, and slowly it responded—so slowly that at first she believed herself to be imagining it. His lips warmed, became hot. They parted and her tongue met his. He tasted of cinnamon and anise. His arms encircled her waist.
She opened her eyes.
Adrash had become Pol. He stared at her with two sets of pupils, and the corners of his mouth twitched. His hands fell to grip her hips. Her hearts beat off rhythm as she guided his length into her.
She screamed.
‡
For sixty years, two decades longer than most eldermen lived, Ebn had rented a closet-sized room in the southern wing of the Academy of Applied Magics library. Its single window looked out on three academy rooftops liberally covered in pigeon droppings. Beyond these, humble, single-story buildings carpeted the broad eastern valley floor. Not a river or lake in sight.
She preferred the office to her sumptuous apartment, just as she preferred oil lamps to alchemical candelabras. Here she had built shelves that covered the walls, filling them with every important book she owned. Cracked-spined novels and pornographic picture books mingled with esoteric texts on religion and the magics. Two shelves buckled under the weight of her most prized possession: the twenty-seven volume Historig Jerung, Ponmargel’s survey of mankind’s recorded and fabled antiquity. Twenty-four millennia of history, nearly two hundred pounds of text. She had read it through only once.
From the ceiling hung her favorite models. An airship she had built as a child, struts showing through a thin sheepskin gasbag. An elephant-drawn carriage. The twelve known planets, spinning lazily around an orange sun.
Knickknacks collected during a long career lined the windowsill. Presents from associates and mementoes from travel, mostly.
Papers littered her desk and gathered dust in piles. A half circle of clear area remained, though it too was busy with ink blotches and compass scratches.
She had built a hinged bed that secured against the wall under her desk. Seven days out of nine she slept here, even though it was a mere five-minute walk to her apartment. Certainly, she loved close spaces and the smell of books, but her preference was based more upon the position of the office than its interior. The Needle crossed the upper portion of the window for a mere nine days in the Month of Sawyers. The rest of the year it sailed clear over.
Experience proved that if she saw it too often her optimism failed her. It became impossible to deny the obvious any longer: A string of steel cages large enough to affect the tides was not an ornament. It was a threat of annihilation.
Of course, the inhabitants of the world knew this as well, but they had the luxury of ignorance, of self-deception. They prayed to Adrash for redemption and fought wars of faith, believing their efforts had an effect, all the while succored into a false sense of security by the Needle’s apparent immutability. Despite its fluctuations—and time had turned even the Cataclysm into a minor fluctuation, a myth—it had extended across the sky for fifty generations. It had become fact, passed down mankind’s generations. For all their words of doom, few believed in the threat of actual destruction.
Ebn knew better. She had experienced Adrash’s wrath firsthand, and only escaped it by a miracle. Allowed to approach him while he slept—a miracle in and of itself—she had been spared to do the work of proving the world’s worth.
This responsibility weighed upon her. She considered her weaknesses, and wondered if she might not be overcome by temptation a second time. Surely, she had lived life fearful that someone would repeat her mistake. For fear of bringing ruin upon them all, she had assured that no outbound mage ventured too close to Adrash.
For decades, this cautiousness had seemed a virtue, but age had brought with it doubt. Perhaps, she reasoned, she had hobbled her mages to keep them away from the god. Perhaps she had merely been biding her time, waiting for another opportunity.
At night, she dreamt of surviving the death of the world with Adrash at her side.
‡
Ebn allowed only one person to meet her regularly in the office. Qon et Gal, her second-in-command, had been her friend since the age of six. For forty years Ebn had shared her age-nullifying treatment, a unique alteration to the standard alchemical solution developed by her predecessor, with Qon alone.
Growing old, Ebn joked, would be awful without someone to share the indignity.
Qon rolled one of the clear pebbles Ebn’s spell had produced between her clawtips. She held it close to her nose and sniffed. Her eyes narrowed.
“No,” she said. “I have never seen one, but I have heard of it. Apparently, sex spells require a fine touch to produce the desired effect.” She eyed the full clay jar. “How long have you been working on these?”
Ebn shrugged, cheeks darkening almost imperceptibly as she blushed. “A year, approximately. I can only do it every couple of weeks, it tires me so much. Before beginning, I studied and practiced for several months.”
Qon’s eyebrows rose ever so slightly. “Poor you.”
“Shut up,” Ebn said good-naturedly. “I talked with Pol over breakfast.”
“Ah.” Qon’s expression did not change, though she knew of her friend’s attraction. She had voiced her low opinion of Pol many times, speaking honestly as a true friend should. “It was as you expected?”
“Yes.”
“And these?” Qon nodded at the jar. “You intend to seduce him, then sway him to your viewpoint?”
Ebn sighed. “You think that little of me? No. I have already talked with him. He does not see our perspective, but he understands my command: Adrash must not be approached by any one mage. Making our intention clear is dependent on everyone acting in concert.” A brief memory of her hands on the god’s flanks flashed through her mind. “Even then we do not know what may offend him.”
Qon nodded, silent. Ebn knew her lieutenant did not take the explanation at face value. She would not come out and ask if Ebn intended to seduce Pol, but undoubtedly she wondered. If Ebn did manage to seduce Pol—an act she had dreamt many times but could hardly conceive of doing—all speculation would cease. In fact, Qon would probably congratulate her.