Ardor's Leveche (13 page)

“If you fall, you’ll be skewered so watch where you put your big feet,
chanto
.”

Breva opened his mouth to deny his feet were any larger than his brother’s but the Reaper was tripping down the stairs as though it was something he did every day—

which he most likely did, for his brother realized it was to La Caverna de la Muerte, the Cavern of Death, to which he had been invited.

“How did you find this place?” he asked.

“She brought me here.”

Breva stopped for he knew all too well whom his brother meant. The hair shifted on the back of his neck and he looked around him fearfully, half-expecting to see the demoness who had turned his brother from mortal to Reaper.

An eerie green glow began to shimmer along the walls further down the stone steps. It washed over the craggy rock walls—shifting and wavering like ghostlings at the Autumn Equinox.

“Is s-she here?” Breva asked, holding his breath for the answer.

“I doubt it.”

Breva swung the phospho light all along the remaining steps but could see nothing save the strange free glow that had now spread up the walls of the cavern to illuminate the ceiling from where wicked-looking stalactites dipped their mineral fingers. His brother had obviously left the rocky stairway and entered some as yet unseen cavern.

The roar grew in volume as Breva approached the bottom of the steps. No longer was he overly warm for a steady wind was blowing over him, carrying with it the unmistakable aroma of the sea. Yet even knowing he would find water when he cleared the last step and turned the corner into the soft green glow, he was unprepared for the sight which greeted him.

“Sweet Merciful Alel,” Breva whispered as he took in the magnificent view. His mouth was agape, his eyes like saucers and his heart thundering.

Extending out for two hundred feet or more was a silvery-blue expanse of still water—the surface so still it looked like a sheet of polished glass. Above it were jabbed clumps of aureate, helianthus and russet formations mushrooming along the low ceiling. Stalactites of pale brown and deep henna spread downward toward the water.

But it was the spiraling, twisting rays of light coming down from the ceiling that held Breva in thrall. The origins of the greenish glow came from sunlight pouring down in saffron rays that—when mixed with the pale blue of the water—turned the cavern walls to that delicate shade of celadon green. Dust motes in the rays flitting about like tiny butterflies. The hole soared hundreds of feet upward to let in sunlight unmarred by the violence of the storm lashing the planet.

72

Ardor’s Leveche

“How does it do that?” Breva breathed. “The solar storm—”

“Doesn’t seem to affect anything in this grotto or the chimney of rock that leads up to the surface,” the Reaper said quietly. “Each time I come here, it is the same, peaceful
cenoté
, devoid of the cares of the outside world.”

“But is that sea water I smell?”

“The lake seems to feed from salt water, aye. For the life of me, I have searched the planet over and cannot find any body of water from which it could have sprung. There are no oceans on R-9.”

“Then how…?”

“She created it, is my guess,” his brother answered. “If I had to explain it, I’d say she copied it from some other world and brought it here. It’s as likely an explanation as I can come up with.”

The startling beauty of the place, the wondrous waves of sweet ocean breeze that flowed gently over him made Breva perch upon a flat hunk of rock and stare at the pristine plane of the underground lake. Nothing moved either within or atop the sleek surface but the mirror-like finish echoed the blazing autumnal colors lying above it.

“Truly beautiful,” Breva said. “No wonder you come here so often.”

A wistful look entered the Reaper’s eyes. “If only I could dive into that sweet water,” he said. “I think I might find peace.”

“Do you…” Breva shook his head. “No, I couldn’t.” He looked wistfully at the water. “Do you think it is safe?”

“I believe so. Perhaps some other time,
chanto
,” Lord Savidos said. “For now, I’ve something I need you to do for me.”

“Name it and it will be done,” Breva assured him.

“First, I need to tell you things I have too-long avoided telling.”

Sensing no comment was necessary Breva sat still, his eyes glued to his brother.

“Do you remember when the old woman found me?”

Nodding warily, Breva replied, “It was on the battlefield on Idimmu Prime. I wasn’t there that day but I should have been.”

“No, you shouldn’t have. It was good that you weren’t,” the Reaper denied. “Hell opened up that day and seventy percent of our force was slaughtered by the Coalition.

Those who weren’t taken prisoner, who were too mangled to survive, were left to bleed to death on that overgrown world.”

Lord Savidos was staring up at the hole down which sunlight rained in wavering shafts of honey-colored beams. The sunbeams played along the water, seemingly to circle like a carousel.

“Mother had been dead less than a week when I went into that battle. I was still grieving for her, so angry with my father I had thoughts of slitting his throat as he slept.

My head wasn’t in the fighting and I was reckless that day. I did stupid, foolish things 73

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

knowing full well I might not walk off the battlefield—or even be carried off it alive. I just didn’t care.”

He looked down at the still water, his face lit by the glow of the sunlight.

“I had taken a sword to the belly and was lying on my back in a shallow stream that cut through the killing field. Rain was falling on my face and I remember thinking how cool it was, how peaceful despite the burning agony spreading in my gut.”

He hunkered down beside the placid underground lake and dug his hands into the fine sand that rimmed the water’s edge.

“I knew I was dying. Ravens were circling overhead, cawing to one another, no doubt pointing out the warriors who were unable to fend them off. One landed not far from me and I turned my head to look at it. Just that small effort nearly cost me my life for it took the last bit of my fading strength to accomplish it.”

He picked up a handful of sand and let it drift down through his fingers, studying the crystal grains as it flowed.

“I remember asking the raven to wait until I’d breathed my last before he went for my eyes. All around me scavengers were coming out of the veldt, drawn by the scent of blood. I could hear men screaming in agony, pleading to be allowed to die, begging for their mothers.” He glanced over at Breva. “When men are dying or in great pain, they become little boys again, needing the comfort of their mothers’ arms.”

Dusting his hands together, he sat down with his knees drawn up into the perimeter of his arms, his fingers laced and stared out across the water.

“I don’t know when I became conscious of the three women walking amongst the dead. It seemed such a strange sight—one very old, one my mother’s age and another who was but a young girl. The old one was Morrigunia.”

Never having heard the name of the old one who had rescued his brother from certain death, Breva rolled the name over his tongue, trying it out. He didn’t like it for it left a bad taste in his mouth.

“She came over to me and stood there staring down at me. Her face was so wrinkled I could barely make out her features, but it was her dark green eyes that held me spellbound as she knelt down beside me. She asked if I wanted to live.”

The Reaper laid his head on his knees. “I said yes.” His voice went deeper, the words coming from the very soul of him. “
‘Will ye give yourself to me, lad?’
she asked.
‘To
do with as I please? To become One with me? Your body to mine?’
”

Through the cross of Gabriel’s arms, Breva thought he saw a tear fall from his brother’s face.

“The gods help me but I answered
aye
for I wanted nothing more than to live. When she pressed, making me swear it, I pledged to her my word, never knowing what it was I was agreeing to until it was too late. I have often cursed that day and the evil bargain I made with the crone.”

74

Ardor’s Leveche

For nearly a year Gabriel Leveche had been among the missing from the battlefield on Idimmu Prime. Long after prayers for his soul had been chanted from the Tower of Memory, his grandmother had ceased her daily tears and his brothers had stopped speaking his name in sorrowful tones, he simply showed up one day at his grandfather’s keep at Stori—an unsmiling, non-talkative loner who gave only a cursory explanation of how he had survived and where he had been. His grandparents had hidden him away, careful that no mention of Gabriel being alive leaked out to his father. All Breva knew about his brother’s miraculous return to the land of the living was that an old woman had found him on the battlefield, taken him to her home and there nursed him back to health.

“I was astounded at her strength that day,” Lord Savidos recounted. “She picked me up in her arms as though I was a mere babe in swaddling. The wind was whipping around us and for a moment I thought a storm had descended upon the valley, but then I realized we were flying through the air, streaking through the clouds as if they were smoke from a campfire.”

“She brought you here,” Breva said. “All the way from Idimmu Prime.”

“I thought I was dead,” the Reaper said. “How else could I be flying through the air in the arms of a frail-looking old woman? I reasoned she was The Gatherer sent to bring me to paradise so I relaxed and even slept, thinking I’d soon see my beloved mother.”

Lord Savidos said nothing for a moment and when he resumed his tale, his voice was devoid of expression.

“When I woke, my clothes were gone and she was sitting beside me—as naked as the century she was born. Her too-white flesh was wrinkled like a prune, her wispy white hair fanning out from her head like tentacles on a jellyfish. Her breasts were two sagging cones that dragged against her chest and lay upon her potbelly, and when she smiled at me, all I saw were rotten teeth, yellow and cratered, her hot breath like the gas from an open sewer. How, I wondered, as bile wriggled its way up my throat, could I ever let something like that touch me?”

Breva shuddered at the image his brother was painting and glanced around them.

He seemed to be searching every nook and cranny, his eyes full of fear.

“She took me while I was still so weak I could not lift a hand to deny her. She gripped my cock and—curse that damned treacherous thing—it hardened to steel in her withered hand. The feel of that moist, ice-cold flesh circling me was nearly my undoing and I had to swallow back the puke threatening to spew forth at any moment. My heart was trip-hammering against my rib cage. The blood was pounding in my ears. I was trembling from head to toe, yet my cock was as rigid as the first time I’d ever poked it into a willing serving maid.”

Swallowing at the description, Breva looked as though he felt his own gorge rising.

“She swung her leg over my hips and straddled me, shoving me up into her foul-smelling cunt as she settled down upon me, her bony knees sticking into my rib cage.

Her breasts were bouncing up and down, swinging side to side as she rode me. She 75

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

grabbed my hands and forced them to her chest, upon those limp pieces of cold flesh.

Of their own accord my hands latched on and I began kneading those loathsome, elongated mounds as though they were the sweet breasts of a winsome young woman.”

“She had mesmerized you,” Breva said.

“It never occurred to me to wonder why my belly no longer hurt,” the Reaper explained. “She was bouncing on my stomach as she fucked me—twisting from side to side, raising and lowering her cunt on me in a frenzy of lust. I just lay there squeezing her disgusting tits for all I was worth, wringing them, twisting them as viciously as I could but she didn’t seem to notice. Her head was thrown back, those dry strands of wispy hair tickling my bare thighs as she bucked upon me. I felt my cock being squeezed as though it was in a vise and remember howling with the pain as she came, then I was watching her lowering her face to mine, squeezing my eyes shut to blot out her ugliness, opening my lips as she slanted her foul mouth across mine and feeling her hateful tongue thrusting inside.”

Lord Savidos brought his hands up to his face and covered it, shielding himself from his brother.

“I came while her tongue was impaling me. I came so hard I thought cum would shoot out the top of her head. Somehow my hands had found their way to her hips, anchoring her to me, and I thrust into her like a madman—over and over and over again—until I had emptied myself in her in a bright burst of the most god-awful pain I’d ever known. I felt as though my cock was being burned off at the root but as quickly as the heat enveloped it, it became ice-cold, and I thought it would break off if I so much as blinked.”

“Merciful Alel,” Breva said.

“I was sickened by what had happened. I lay there quivering, my arms fallen to my sides, my legs boneless. I was striving to get my racing heart under control. I was so disgusted at myself, at what I had let myself do, I couldn’t open my eyes. I couldn’t look up into that craggy face and see myself mirrored in her rheumy eyes.”

“I don’t blame you,
chanto
.”

“She was still sitting astride me, her warm cunt holding my cock hostage. Her hands were smoothing over my bare chest and belly and it was then I felt the pain in my gut. My eyes flew open and I lifted my head to see the bloody gash that pumped out my life’s blood even as I watched.”

“How long did she fuck you?” Breva asked.

The Reaper lowered his hands and glanced over at his brother as though he could not believe Breva had asked such a thing.

“I mean, if you were bleeding the entire time she was riding you…” Breva said, putting his hands up in question.

“I don’t know what she did to me, Raoul, and I doubt I ever will. All I know is that the woman atop me, whose body was impaled on mine, was the most beautiful, sensuous being I’d ever seen.”