The young man lifted his brother over his shoulder and walked out the door without a word. Undoubtedly, he would return with other members of his order. They would scold him for sneaking out of camp, but they would come nonetheless.
Churls sighed and dropped her chin onto her chest. Anger flared again as her thoughts touched upon Vedas.
In one evening, she had made a mess of everything.
“Barkeep,” she called. “You there?”
Nothing. He had probably exited out the back. Very likely, he was now gathering a few reinforcements.
Having been in similar situations more than a few times in her life, Churls considered which would be better: leaving, or pouring herself another drink for the wait.
EBN BON MARI
THE 26thOF THE MONTH OF ROYALTY, 12499 MD
THE CITY OF TANSOT, THE KINGDOM OF STOL
Ebn breathed in the heavily magicked air, the almond-and-bloodscent of elder semen and menstrual fluid mixed with her own juices. “You have been careless,” she told Pol.
He lay on his side, tangled in his bed sheets, unconscious. Naked, she sat cross-legged before him, caressing his cheek with the back of one finger, watching the last drop of the spell of compulsion disappear into his ear canal. Her eyes lingered over his form. She outlined the fists on his chest with a clawtip. A tingling moved into her thighs. Warmth spread throughout her torso, rose into her neck and filled her head.
A far more dizzying sensation than she had imagined, being in complete control of him.
This was not the night’s only surprise. She had not dared imagine overcoming him would be so easy. Picturing all the ways he might defend himself, she had planned meticulously. Never had a person walked the halls of the academy armed with so many spells. How could she have known a mere act of daring would be sufficient to the task?
Traditionally, a mage did not attack another mage in the confines of her home.
It shocked her to discover Pol had relied upon the force of tradition alone to insure his safety. History notwithstanding, a smart man would have warded his apartment against physical attacks. He would have painted alarm sigils on his bed frame. As it was, Pol’s lore had been laughably easy to neutralize. She had walked into his apartment as though it were her own, and ensorcelled him while he slept.
Undoubtedly, she would replay the moment for many years afterward. Finding him asleep, as vulnerable to her as a child. Setting the vitreous sphere of her spell in the center of his perfectly formed ear. Watching it collapse into a puddle and enter him.
Though there was no formal punishment for assaulting Pol in his sanctuary, she would hardly win friends with the action. Of course, she had no intention of anyone discovering it. And even if someone did, who would believe the claim? She had lost some of her clout in the encounter with Adrash, surely, but she was not yet discredited. The foundations sunk over decades of consistent leadership could not be uprooted easily.
No one would suspect anything so disgraceful from the outbound mages’ captain.
“You have been careless,” she repeated, and flipped the sheet from his hips, revealing the length of his erection. The tongues, which had until now remained in her wrists, emerged from her palms slowly, almost as if the thought of what lay ahead frightened them.
“Wake up,” she commanded.
His eyes snapped open, then widened as his doubled pupils focused on her. They lingered on her breasts, her lower stomach. Otherwise, he did not move. Only the muscles controlling eyes and respiration remained under his control. At the same time, her ensorcelment had heightened every sensation, forcing him to the most intense state of physical arousal.
To his credit, he did not panic or struggle against the spell. She could see this much in his gaze, in the controlled manner of his breathing. She knew him very well, indeed.
“You have destroyed your body,” she said, idly tracing the sigil tattooed on his shoulder. “And for what? If you had only lingered on your plans a bit longer, you would have seen the error of your thinking. If your mind were not so clouded with arrogance, you might have recognized your inferiority and stayed in your place. Maybe in time you could have become something.” She leaned forward and smiled with a mouth full of small, white teeth. “After all, I can only live so long.”
She held her hands up, palms forward. The tongues strained toward him.
Now, his eyes showed panic. His breaths came fast and shallow. Prone to mutations, eldermen nonetheless possessed a near-instinctive fear of deformity among their kind. Small deviations from the norm often signaled instability of character. The most extreme mutations revealed hidden talents—the ability to cast terrible, chaotic magic.
Some claimed the proof of such beliefs lay in elderman history. Here, some said. Look at this. We have never been a stable people. We have always been prone to destruction and dementia. Arrogance has always been our greatest sin.
But Ebn had learned much of human history. She had long ago realized both species held the capacity for good, for evil. Eldermen suffered with the knowledge that they were second best in the world—a sterile, complicated race that looked upon itself as inferior, when in fact the opposite proved true time and again. Even she had all but hidden this understanding from herself. She had held herself back for too long. Mankind and its talented hybrid children needed to change, to prove themselves worthy to Adrash, or Jeroun would be destroyed.
I can bear this message, Ebn told herself. I can be the leader of this movement. We eldermen must no longer search in the sky for redemption, but amongst ourselves. We must cleanse the world of its waste, beginning with our own household.
She let her forearms drop leisurely, observing Pol’s reaction.
“Does this feel wrong?” she asked as her tongues licked the skin of his shoulder and chest. His skin tasted of alchemical ink, copper and blood. “That I am here in your bed, touching you this way? Are you scared that I will rob you of these symbols that you have painted upon yourself? Are you scared that I will steal your power?” She shook her head. “No. No, I will not do that. They are yours. You will die with them. When your body is burning, they will erupt from your skin like fireworks, signaling to the world that a true sorcerer has died.”
She pressed the claws of her right hand into his hip and dug five gouges in his flesh.
Blood flowed. A tremor passed through his lungs. His indrawn breath faltered.
She laughed, and it was an ugly sound.
‡
Her mouth rose and fell on his erection. The head of his cock touched the back of her throat and she gagged, but kept at the task. She let him feel the rasp of her teeth. The tongue of her right palm slipped in and out of his rectum, and her left hand lay under his buttocks. She lifted his hips toward her mouth, simulating the thrusts of sex.
Twice, she thought she heard him moan, but it was only the ragged sound of his breathing. His eyes twitched under their lids. She bit his inner thighs hard enough to draw blood, exciting herself with the small reactions of his body. Fluid dripped from her in viscous strings, hardening into thin crystal spells that cracked under her knees as she maneuvered around the bed, searching for unbitten skin, new angles from which to admire his body.
She longed to have him inside her, but knew doing so prematurely would result in unsatisfactory release and the failure of her plan.
No, she needed to control herself. She had inserted the most important spell, the very same that now dripped from her womanhood, just before breaking into his apartment. A modification of her own spell of compulsion, it was designed to gradually turn her desire into a tool, providing her with the anger to overcome the love she still felt for him.