Master of Crows (27 page)

He was endowed as any other man, but fit her mouth as perfectly as he fit within her cunnus, as if made for her and her alone.  Martise savored him, the tight skin of his shaft against her tongue, the sensitive ridge running its length.  His scent, of soap and musk, filled her nostrils as he thrust gently into her mouth.  The muscles in his long thighs quivered beneath her hands, their shaking escalating when she reached under him to caress his bollocks.

Deep groans poured from him.  Following the subtle pressure of his hands on her head, Martise sucked him harder, swirled her tongue faster over his shaft and the head of his cock.  She let him almost slip out of her mouth before taking him to the hilt over and over.  His throat worked with incoherent noises, and his hands gripped her hair. Two deep pulses along the length of his shaft and he filled her mouth.

Martise drank him, tasting salt on the back of her tongue.  She continued to suck, draining him until his softened cock slipped out of her mouth and his knees buckled.  He collapsed in front of her, head lowered, gasping harder than a winded horse.  He moved enough to rest his forehead on her shoulder.  Residual shudders shook him.  Martise ran her hands through his silky hair, dampened at the temples with sweat.

“Did I please you?”

Silhara raised his head slowly to stare at her.  High color flagged his cheekbones.  His pupils swallowed the lighter black of his eyes.  “Please me?  You’ve vanquished me.”

He staggered to his feet and pulled her with him to the bed.  They stretched out on the soft skins.  “You’ll keep me warm,” he said and brought her down on top of him.  Martise stretched over his body, running her toes along his calves and spreading her thighs to nestle his cock against her cunnus.  She wanted him.  Her thighs were slick with the want, but she could wait.  He was spent from her attentions, and it was a pleasure to lie with him, kissing the strong column of his throat and tasting his mouth on hers.  His tongue circled hers in languid play, teeth nipping gently at her bottom lip.

“You’re wet for me,” he murmured against her mouth.

“How can I not be?”  She flicked the corner of his mouth with her tongue.  “You are beautiful to touch and taste.”  She was undiminished by her honest passion for him.  He was her lover, and she desired him above all things.

A soft thrust against her cunnus let her know her words affected him.  He rolled her onto her back and crouched over her.  “I’ve a taste for you as well, and time enough to indulge.”

He took her as she’d taken him, using his lips and tongue to drive her to madness.  She came apart in his arms, keening his name as she clawed his shoulders and clamped her legs against his ribs.  The throbbing between her legs didn’t subside when he rose above her, turned her on her stomach and raised her to her hands and knees.  He said nothing, only spread her thighs with his knees and gripped the back of her neck with one hand.

Martise moaned, arching her back in encouragement.  He mounted her in silence, his stiff cock plunging into her until he was hard against her.  She reveled in the sensation—a fullness, a stretching as his cock pumped in and out of her.  Inner muscles gripped him, attempting to hold him within her, and Silhara growled.  His grip tightened on her neck, and he thrust faster within her, deeper until Martise thought she might feel him on the back of her throat.  Stripped of courtship and the rituals of men and women, this was a claiming, a male’s primal possession of a willing female.

A last thrust, and he groaned his triumph.  A stream of heat pulsed deep within her.  The hand holding the back of her neck loosened, slid over her shoulder in a slow caress.  Silhara maneuvered them carefully to their sides, maintaining the intimate connection as he curved against her.  His heart beat strong at her back.

“If we weren’t the guests of honor, we wouldn’t attend tonight’s festivities.”  His words were staccato while he caught his breath.

Martise, content to lie there and enjoy the feel of him in and around her, agreed.  “I’d be very happy to stay like this and let them celebrate without us.  But they will want us there.  Especially you.”

Silhara ran his hand over the curve of her hip to cup her breast.  He nuzzled the top of her head.  “There’ll be food and good company, ale thick enough to strain between your teeth and much dancing.  They’ll wonder why I can do nothing more than crawl on my hands and knees.  You’ve drained the life out of me.

Martise chuckled.  “As much noise as we both made, I doubt they’ll question why you won’t be leaping around the village fire.”

He laughed and patted her on the hip before rolling away.  A gush of wet warmth bathed her thighs when he slipped out of her, and she thanked him when he tossed her one of the dry cloths.  By the time one of the Kurman came to summon them for the celebration, they were dressed, and Martise had just finished braiding Silhara’s hair.

The village gathered around two large fires, the men at one, the women at another.  Silhara nodded once to her before being shepherded off by the men.  The women willingly took her into their fold.  Martise was glad she knew some Kurman and soon joined the conversations that inevitably centered on men, children and village gossip.  New to her was the talk of properties and the speculations of politics.  Because Kurman women owned land and housing and elected the village
sarsin
, such things were discussed amongst them.  Martise was fascinated and envious.

The night was clear and cold, and her breath swirled in front of her in a cloud, but the food was good, the ale thick as Silhara warned and the dancing wild.  She was dizzy from learning the steps and clasping hands with the women as they danced in a wide circle around the fire.  She caught glimpses of Silhara, graceful as always as he danced with the men.  He met her gaze across the fire, and his eyes smoldered with a look that promised more of their play later in the evening.  She wished the night might last forever.  Here, in the high mountains, surrounded by a foreign people, she was simply Martise.  Not of Asher, but of Neith.  The stigma of slavery didn’t exist, and Silhara’s kinsmen accepted her as a woman bound willingly to him.

By the time the celebration wound down, she was hot in her clothes and tipsy from too much ale.  Silhara came to her as she said goodnight to her companions.

“Karduk wants to talk to me again.  He may have something that will help us in defeating Corruption.”  His face was somber.  “Kurmans take forever to get through a conversation.  There’s usually a ritual pipe sharing, more ale, more smoking and even more ale.”  He smiled faintly.  “I’ll be lucky to see our bed by dawn.  You go back and get some sleep.  We leave tomorrow, and I want one of us rested.”

Martise wanted to touch him, but there were too many watching, and Kurmans didn’t show public affection except to their children.  She settled for bowing instead.  “I’ll be waiting.”

She watched him leave before finding her way to their house.  She banked the coals in the fire pit, shed her clothes and crawled beneath the blankets Silhara had tossed aside earlier.  She was asleep in moments.

A strong scent of tobacco roused her from a deep slumber.  Martise, groggy from sleep and the residual effects of too much ale, rolled to her side.  Silhara’s tall form was silhouetted in firelight as he sat near her, smoking a pipe.

“You’re back,” she said.  “What hour is it?”

Embers in the pipe crackled as he drew in a mouth full of smoke.  She made out only the sharp outline of his features, but his eyes gleamed bestial red in the fire’s glow.

“The darkest hour.  Go back to sleep.  I’ll join you soon.”

Martise frowned, wondering if the ale had truly addled her senses.  Silhara’s voice was an echo of Corruption’s, as hollow and cold as a crypt.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“You must be well into your cups.  What sober man sits outside in the cold dark while his woman sleeps alone in a warm house?”  Dercima stood over him, casting a long shadow across his feet.  With the bright moon behind her, Silhara couldn’t see her expression, but her tone was quizzical and faintly mocking.  “How much
shimiin
arkhi
have you had tonight?”

“Not nearly enough.”  He patted the ground beside him in invitation.  “Care to sit, aunt?  Share a pipe?”  He held up a skin pouch and a cup.  “There’s even enough
arkhi
here to numb us both.”  His voice was barely a rasp, hoarsened by too much smoke and the chaos raging within him.

Dercima accepted his invitation and plopped down next to him.  She nodded her thanks when Silhara passed her his pipe.  With the moonlight full on her strong-boned features, he could see the shrewd appraisal in her gaze, even through the haze of smoke she puffed from the pipe.  “What troubles you, nephew?  I’d expect you to be taking your pleasure between Martise’s thighs right now.  Did she bar you from your bed?”

He drained the
arkhi
in his cup, no longer wincing at the sour taste, and poured a refill from the skin pouch.  Fermented mare’s milk wasn’t Peleta’s Fire, but it would do.  “Martise has never denied me.”

“And if she did?”

Silhara grinned into his cup.  His formidable aunt would strangle him with his own braid if he gave the wrong answer.  “I’ve no interest in taking by force what I can purchase or have given to me freely.”

Smoke swirled in a turbid crown around her head.  “Then why are you out here?”

“I could ask the same of you.”

She shrugged.  “Karduk is currently occupied with his first consort, so I am free until dawn.”

He hid his amusement behind another swallow of
arkhi
.  She might be fourth consort to the
sarsin
, but Silhara suspected Dercima was the one who determined if and when Karduk enjoyed her favors.  He traded her the cup for the pipe.

“I don’t like regrets or remorse,” he said.

Dercima gave him an arch smile.  “And how does this make you different from the rest of us?”

Unused to his own brand of mockery leveled at him, Silhara’s eyebrows rose.  “Are you always so blunt?”

She chuckled and sipped from the cup.  “You didn’t get that trait from your father.” Her gaze held him in place.  “Now tell me, what are you doing here?  And don’t bother hiding it.  Karduk will tell me if I ask.”

No surprise there.  Silhara shrugged.  “Thinking of godhood, destruction and sacrifice.”

He patted her on the back when she choked on her drink.  She stared at him with watering eyes and swatted his arm away.  “Stop that.”

“My apologies.”  He puffed leisurely on the pipe and met her gaze.

“Most men ponder what pony they’ll sell, what bride they’ll take or what dice game they’ll join.”

Silhara tilted his head and stared at the star-filled sky.  Corruption’s star had followed him, hovering high above the trees in its halo of sullen light.  Above it, within the blanket of twinkling lights, the al Zafira constellation shone bright and mocked him from on high.  “I am not most men.”

“No, you’re not, though I’ve watched you dice with the best of them.”  Dercima winked.

Even when he was at his most melancholy, Dercima could still make him laugh.  “If there’s time tomorrow before I leave, I’ll play a game or two.  I’m always in need of coin.”

“You’re avoiding my question,
kurr
.”

Yes, he was, and for good reason.  The information Karduk had given rubbed a raw spot on his soul.  He had choices to make.  None of them good.  He puffed twice more on the pipe before answering.  “I thought Berdikhan was nothing more than a Kurmanji demon.”  Dercima sketched a protective sign at his mention of the name.

“By the time he died, he was.  Any Kurman who would sacrifice his wives and children to gain more magic is a demon.  The tribes didn’t exile him soon enough.  And truth be told, they should have killed him instead.”

Dercima reached for the pipe.  “Why does this bother you?  Berdikhan and his foul deeds are almost forgotten by the people.  Is this what has brought you outside?”

Silhara considered how much to tell his aunt.  Dercima was close-lipped.  And strong-willed.  Nothing short of torture would make her talk, and he wasn’t sure she’d do it then.  Still, another depended on his discretion, had placed her faith in his promise of secrecy.

“Martise and I recovered manuscripts from Iwehvenn.”

Her eyes rounded.  “Are you witless?  What were you doing in a lich’s hall?  And dragging that girl with you?”  Dercima stared down her nose in disapproval.

“Do you want to hear the rest or not?”

Her mouth thinned but she held her tongue.  Silhara watched as her jaw tightened around the pipe stem.  He’d be at the
sarsin’s
door at dawn demanding payment if his stubborn aunt broke his favorite pipe between her teeth.

“I took Martise with me so she could translate.  The manuscripts were written in ancient Helenese.  I don’t read it.  She does.”  He finished the cup of
arkhi
and set it aside.  His stomach churned, and he didn’t want what he’d imbibed to curdle anymore than it already had.  “We came across several passages describing the death of an ancient god named Amunsa.  He was trapped and destroyed by a gathering of northern mage-kings.  They were helped by a ‘king of the south.’  A man they called Birdixan.”  He used the Helenese pronunciation, elongating the word and putting emphasis on the first syllable.

“And you think this was Berdikhan?”  She sketched her ward in the air once more.

“I’m sure of it.  The far lands had no kings at that time, only chiefs and
sarsins
.  But a
sarsin
who ruled several tribes like Berdikhan would be seen as a king by the northern lords.  And the names are similar enough to note.”

“So Karduk told you nothing you didn’t already know?”  Dercima snorted.  “Old windbag.  He probably just wanted an excuse for you to visit.”

Silhara smiled.  Dercima might complain about her husband, but he heard affection for him in her voice.

“I may have discovered it with time and Martise’s help.  But time isn’t on our side.  Corruption grows stronger.  Conclave grows impatient.”  And the god breathed its avarice into his dreams almost nightly now.  “Karduk showed me I’d missed the obvious.”  He sketched the mysterious symbol that appeared next to Berdikhan’s name in the manuscripts.  “Zafira.”

Dercima looked to the sky, and Silhara followed her gaze.  They both stared at the constellation, etched in the night’s blackness in a maze pattern of stars bisected by two more paths of stars—a match to the symbol in the Helenese papers.

“Poor Zafira.”  She handed the pipe back to Silhara.  “Here.  You smoke the last.  I’ve had enough.”  Her skirt flapped as she dusted her hands on the folds of fabric.  “Now there’s a tragic tale.  I like to think she loved him and willingly gave him her power.  But the lot of a
bide jiana
has always been one of force, not consent.  I suspect Berdikhan sacrificed her the same way he sacrificed his other consorts.”

Pipe smoke filled his mouth, acrid now instead of spicy.  The
arkhi
bubbled threateningly in his belly.  Berdikhan had used his life-giver wife to try and harness a god and rule a world.  History might well repeat itself.

“What will you tell the priests when you return to Neith?”

Nothing if he could get away with it, but that was unlikely.  As much as both parties might detest the idea, he would need their help, and they his to defeat Corruption.  The question was whether he was willing to die for the effort or sacrifice another for the chance to live.  He imagined Martise sleeping peacefully in the house behind him, awaiting a lover who contemplated destroying her.

If Dercima could read his thoughts at the moment, she’d gut him with her eating knife.

“Your thoughts are grim.  This knowledge you have now troubles you greatly.  Is it not good to know of a way to defeat the fallen god?”

“It’s useful knowledge.  Now I have to decide what to do with the information.”

“Do you consider yourself an intelligent man?”  Dercima’s dark eyes reflected starlight.

“Yes.”

“Are you true?”

He chuckled at her question.  “That depends.  True to whom?”

“Yourself.”

“Always.”  He grew more curious at her line of questioning.

She rose, and he stood as well.  “A man with clear sight into his own soul will always make a wise decision.”

Silhara touched her arm briefly.  “I’m less concerned with wise than I am with beneficial—to me.”

She wrapped her fingers over his knuckles.  “And the woman you brought with you?  Is she merely a night’s pleasure or something more?”

Martise.  Spy and lover, servant and keeper of a vast, untapped power, she was once nothing more than a nuisance.  Now, she was the linchpin upon which his most fateful choices would be made.

“She’s more than that, and less.”

“That isn’t much of an answer, nephew.”

“And you ask too many questions, aunt.”

Dercima smiled.  “I’m off to bed.”  Her breath fogged in front of her.  “It’s cold, and I feel it more in my bones these days.”  She tapped him on the arm.  “Don’t stay out here too long.  Others may awaken and see you.  I don’t want people asking me why my nephew is an idiot.”

He smiled and bowed.  “Good night, aunt.”

Her soft chuckle faded as she made her way across the open common area and disappeared into the largest of the stone houses.  Silhara stared after her a few moments before returning to the house he shared with Martise.

She lay as he’d left her, sprawled on her back with one arm flung across the space where he’d sleep.  Her hair spread in waves over the fleece, a few strands drifting across her cheeks and down her neck.

He hadn’t meant to wake her earlier.  His conversation with Karduk had left him with trembling hands and a need to see her.  While he’d been silent, the scent of pipe smoke had awakened her.  Flushed from sleep and the heat of the fire, she’d turned to him with a dreamy gaze.  He’d almost looked away and was thankful when she turned over and fell back asleep.  He’d fled outside after that.

His thoughts whirled as he cleaned his pipe and undressed.  The fire burned low in the pit, and he stoked the coals enough to bring more warmth in the cooling room.  Birdixan of the Helenese chronicles had been no hero, only a man consumed by a need for power who saw a chance at attaining it, no matter the cost.  Berdikhan of the Kurmans had traveled north, not for the purpose of helping the mage-kings, but of taking Amunsa’s power for himself.  He’d brought one of his wives with him, a life-giver and a sacrifice to his all-consuming avarice.  He’d failed in his attempt to both control the god and turn on the kings.  And Amunsa had been destroyed.

Silhara dwelt hard on the last.  Berdikhan’s actions, self-seeking though they were, had been the key to the kings’ triumph.  A powerful mage, made even stronger by a
bide jiana
’s sacrifice, had trapped Amunsa long enough for the kings to destroy it.  The idea had worked once. It could work again.  But at the same price?

Naked and cold, he crouched next to Martise, admiring the way her usually pale cheeks were rosied by the heat of the nearby fire.  He’d once seen her as plain.  No longer.  In the red-rimmed shadows cast by the low flames, she was more beautiful than anything he’d ever beheld.

The memory of her voice when she’d summoned him back from the brink of death at Iwehvenn echoed in his mind. 
“Stay with me.”
  That plea had called to some inner need, promised a taste of something he’d never experienced.  She’d pulled him back from the abyss with the temptation of her affection.  He was tempted to repay her with betrayal.

He lifted a skein of her soft hair, letting it fall through his fingers in a cascade of russet waves.  “You should have let me die.”