Mrythdom: Game of Time (23 page)

“Get away from him!” a smooth, imperious voice said, slicing through the building tension like a knife.

Aurelius felt the women to either side of him drifting away, and he shook his head, his faculties slowly returning. “What?” he asked, staggering slightly. His head spun as he looked around the room to find the source of that cool, commanding voice. His eyes lit upon her distinctive, sharply-angled face and those glowing sapphire eyes. “Lashyla?” he asked.

She stopped before him with a smile and made a gesture to the pair of guards who had followed her into the room. With that hand signal the guards moved to escort both the blonde and the olive-skinned maidens from the room. He noticed the blonde sending Lashyla a look of outrage as she was forced to leave. “What gives you any more claim to him than us?” she asked as she was herded toward the exit.

Lashyla turned to give the woman a thin smile. “He and I have already begun courting. If you wish to challenge the courtship, you will have to take it up with the queen.”

The blonde sneered. “We shall see who he chooses!” she called out and then spun and stalked from the galley at a furious gait.

“I am sorry, Aurelius,” Lashyla said. “Some maidens simply cannot take no for an answer.”

He cleared his throat and nodded. “I see that.”

“Would you like to come and take a walk with me before dinner? I’d love to give you a tour of the city.”

Aurelius hesitated a moment before replying. Was Lashyla also trying to get him alone so that she could seduce him? If Cardale was right, he had to assume that all the maidens were after him. He looked around the room and noted how the men again hung their heads deferentially in Lashyla’s presence, as if afraid to even look upon her. Who was Lashyla that she could command such respect?

“Thank you,” Aurelius said at last, noting in his peripheral vision the look of barely-concealed awe and envy that Cardale was giving him. “Sounds better than cleaning fish,” he said with a smile.

Lashyla smiled back. “Come on then,” she said, holding out her hand to him.

He grimaced and held his fishy hands up for her to see. Her smile broadened and she grabbed his hand anyway, leading him quickly from the room. “We’ll visit the baths first.”

*   *   *

Lashyla led Aurelius down into a disused section of the city that lay ankle-deep in water. A pair of guards trailed slowly behind them, splashing through the stagnant water. Aurelius had washed his fishy hands in the water as soon as Lashyla had told him it was merely runoff from the various pinhole leaks in the city. She’d smiled and joined him as he’d scrubbed the filth from his hands. With that done, they'd continued on their way. Lashyla had said the deserted corridor was a shortcut to the baths. Aurelius suspected she just didn’t want them to encounter any other maidens—
competition
. They were walking hand-in-hand as they had been ever since she’d taken his hand and led him from the galley. Initially, Aurelius had privately objected and resolved to find a polite way to let go of her hand. After all, he didn’t want to give her the wrong impression.

But as time had worn on, he’d found himself less and less eager to let her go. Now it was all he could do not to take her in his arms and kiss her. Only the lurking sense that his mind and feelings were somehow being subtly influenced by the mermaid walking beside him gave him the strength to resist.

“Why are there so many vestals?” Aurelius asked, breaking the silence, and giving his mind something to focus on besides the seductive sway of Lashyla’s hips. “I had the impression that mermaids frequently take more than one mate, so if anything, I would think there’d be a shortage of men, not a surplus.”

“Most mermaids prefer to capture their mates. There are more to choose from on land.”

“Is that why you were in the marketplace at Telan?” Aurelius asked.

Lashyla gave him a startled look. “You remember me?”

“Of course. How could I forget?”

“Then . . . then why didn’t you follow me?”

“I did.”

“You did not. You turned around after but a few minutes.”

Aurelius frowned. “Well, yes, but only because Gabrian warned me that you could be a witch.”

Lashyla’s breath hissed out between her lips. “That wretched old man! I should have him thrown into the ring!”

“Hey, hold on, calm down! He was just being careful. Besides, you’d do that? Kill a man just because he got in your way?”

Lashyla blinked up at him, uncomprehending. Suddenly her expression turned to one of shame and she hung her head. “No, of course not . . . but you know . . . he will be sent to the ring soon anyway.”

Aurelius shook his head and now he stopped walking. “What is this practice of throwing men into the ring if they’re too old or undesirable to be chosen as a mate? It’s barbaric.”

“In our culture everyone must make themselves useful. Some are more useful for entertainment. Like this they earn their living. Is it not so in your culture, too?”

“No! Well, yes, but we don’t send the people to die for our amusement.”

“Do not lie to me, Aurelius. Rings like ours exist on the surface. In Telan and other cities, too. I have seen them.”

Aurelius frowned, and faltered for words. Could this barbarism somehow be an established practice in the future? “Well, there aren’t any
rings
where I come from.”

Lashyla turned to regard him speculatively. “And where
do
you come from?”

Aurelius hesitated, remembering Gabrian’s warning to be careful what he told her. “It is a place very far from here.” He remembered the forested woodland around the city where he’d actually grown up, and then the overgrown dark forest of monolithic trees in Nordom. He hoped that was far enough from Meria that she hadn’t been there. “It’s heavily forested, with very tall trees.”

“Oh . . .” she nodded slowly, as if she knew exactly where that was. “I think I have heard of such a place.”

Aurelius smiled. “It is very different from here.”

“Well, what do you do with the ugly ones where you come from if you don’t send them into the ring?”

“We don’t do anything with them. They go where they please and do what they please.”

Lashyla wrinkled her nose. “The ugly ones are free to mate? Do any of your women choose them?”

“Yes, but it’s more that they choose each other.”

“The man must be consenting in our culture, too, but how can this be? Why would a maiden choose an ugly man?”

“Where I come from, not all maidens are as beautiful as mermaids, and there are other virtues besides beauty.”

Lashyla nodded slowly, but with an expression of distaste written across her elegant features. “Yes, so my mother likes to tell me.”

“Don’t you believe it?”

“It is one thing to believe something, and another to practice it.”

Aurelius nodded, and they began walking again. “So how many mates do you have?”

Lashyla gave no reply for a long moment. At last she spoke in a small voice, “None yet.”

Aurelius sent her a disbelieving look. “A beautiful woman like you? How is that possible?”

Aurelius couldn’t be sure in the dim light, but he thought he saw a hint of color suffuse her cheeks. “It is not easy to find a worthy mate.”

Aurelius snorted. “You can say that again.”

“Then you have not managed to find a mate, either?” Lashyla asked.

Aurelius hesitated. “Well, I suppose that depends what you mean by
mate,
but as far as my culture is concerned, no, I haven’t.”

“Well,” Lashyla looked up at him with a reassuring smile, “it will not take you long here. Have you seen any maidens who've caught your eye?” she asked, her blue eyes wide and bright despite the darkness.

“Ah . . .” Aurelius hesitated. He didn’t want to encourage Lashyla further, but another more insistent part of him wanted nothing more than to do exactly that. “Actually, only one.”

“Oh? Might I know who?”

Aurelius stopped beneath the rosy light of a large cluster of coral and barnacles. Lashyla stopped with him and turned to regard him curiously. Almost without thinking, he took her hand. “You.”

She smiled and looked away suddenly.

Aurelius sought her eyes with his, but when she wouldn’t look at him, he reached up to her chin and gently turned her head. “How can such a beautiful woman be so shy?”

“I-I—” she stuttered adorably.

He put a finger to her lips and took a step toward her. Now their bodies were pressed close, their eyes locked. Feeling inescapably drawn, his lips hovered dangerously close to hers. He caught a compelling floral scent from her, and with that his fate was sealed.

He kissed her, stealing her breath in a rush. She inhaled sharply as if she couldn’t get enough of him, and suddenly her arms wrapped around his neck while his encircled her waist. She kissed him fiercely back, revealing that perhaps she wasn’t so shy after all.

It was the most wonderful sensation Aurelius had ever felt. Her lips were soft, her body warm and demanding. It was like kissing a rose without the sting of any thorns. Her passion quickly backed him against the wall of the corridor and he began to feel a trickle of alarm. They were moving too quickly. He felt his own needy response threatening to overwhelm him, but then he had a sudden mental image of himself old and tired and spent, facing Gral in a sandy arena with nothing but a spindly trident while Lashyla and a thousand other mermaids cheered from the stands.

Using that image to give him strength, Aurelius pushed weakly against Lashyla to get her off, but she wouldn’t take the hint. She just kept devouring him, and he felt his resistance weakening. Suddenly she leapt up and wrapped her legs around his waist. With that, he lost all the will to resist. She began tugging at the unyielding fabric of his flight suit, and he found himself reaching up with shaking hands to unfasten the seals for her. He was a goner, and he knew it, but he’d inexplicably forgotten why he should care. . . .

Looking on from a discreet distance of no more than three meters, the royal guard known as Martanel shuffled his wet feet in the ankle-deep water of the corridor. The guard beside him was watching the spectacle unfold before them with an eager grin, while Martanel watched with disgust. Even knowing what he did about mermaid society was nothing to blunt the shock of seeing it firsthand. That unwitting human had been lured down here for one reason and one reason alone. The mermaids might pay lip service to consensual mating, but a man’s consent was almost a given if he let a mermaid too close. Martanel considered that even he, old as he was, would have had trouble to resist one such as Lashyla without using magic.

Martanel might not have cared that this man, Aurelius, was about to have his will bound to a mermaid, to become another empty husk among the many hundreds of such mermates already crowding the city, but this man was no ordinary man, and his will could not—
should
not—be beholden to a mermaid. He had to return to his time if the world were to be set right, and that would never happen if he were hopelessly attached to Lashyla.

Yet the elder couldn't possibly resist her now. He would need a little help.

Martanel eyed the dim corridor, his gaze flickering down its length. Whatever he decided to do, it would have to be enough to interrupt the mermaid, not just Aurelius. He was too far gone for any amount of distraction to make a difference.

Martanel's eyes grazed over a distant viewport and he thought he had an idea. He directed a whispered command to that viewport and waited.

“What was that?” the guard beside him, Sophrin, asked.

“No, I was just talking to myself. It’s not every day you get to see the princess naked.”

Sophrin grinned back at him. “There are some perks to being in the royal guard.”

Just then there came a sharp screech of metal, a sudden
plink
, followed by the hiss of water misting into the room from a pinhole leak not twenty feet away.

Lashyla didn’t even notice.

Martanel frowned. “Is that a leak?” he asked the other guard.

“Ay, we better see to that after she finishes with him.”

“You think it will hold that long?”

“It better.”

Martanel frowned and whispered another few words.

Sophrin shot him a look. “Stop that muttering.”

“Shouldn’t we see to that leak before it gets any worse?”

“It’s holding.”

There came another
plink
and hiss of water jetting into the corridor.

“That’s the second leak,” Martanel said. “We better go.”

“But the princess—”

“Can pick up where she left off in her quarters. Come on,” Martanel said. He walked straight up to Lashyla and tapped her on the shoulder. She didn’t respond; she and Aurelius were too absorbed with one another’s lips. “Princess, we have to go. There are leaks springing in the corridor, and if we don’t fix them soon, the bulkheads will seal and we’ll be trapped down here.”

Lashyla sighed deeply and withdrew from Aurelius to send Martanel a deadly look. “How dare you interrupt us?”

Martanel bowed low. “A thousand apologies, oh most desirable maiden, but my first concern is your safety.”

Lashyla held his gaze for a long, icy moment before turning toward the sound of water hissing into the corridor. “I suppose we had better go. Come on, Aurelius,” she climbed off him and took his hand to lead him down the corridor. He followed mechanically, his eyes glazed and his gait unsteady. Martanel watched them leave with a frown. It was going to take more than a few leaks to stop them from pairing.

*   *   *

By the time they emerged from the damp lower levels of the city, Aurelius felt himself slowly surfacing from the deep, miry fog that had subsumed all his conscious thoughts. He thought back to what he’d been about to do with Lashyla in the corridor. Somehow he hadn’t noticed or cared that her guards were looking on, and he’d been willing to ignore that voice in the back of his head, shouting at him not to get himself in too deep.

He hadn’t known just how deep. Though he’d been overwhelmed and distracted by Lashyla’s advances, he hadn’t failed to notice when one of her guards had interrupted them and addressed her as
princess.
If he’d had sex with her, he would have been consenting to a pairing with the royal line. Whatever that entailed, he was sure it didn’t permit him his freedom. There’d be no way out and no way back. Not to the surface. Not to his time. He’d be trapped for however long he stayed handsome enough for the mermaids to want him, and then he’d be thrown into the ring to die in some bloody deathmatch.

No. Aurelius let out a long breath and shook his head. Now that he was thinking more clearly, he knew he had to do everything he could to resist Lashyla’s advances—and those of every other maiden in the city. But in order to successfully do that, he knew he had to find a way back to the surface—and
soon.

With his mind made up, Aurelius let go of Lashyla’s hand. She turned to look at him, curiosity burning in her fierce blue eyes. In those eyes he saw the truth of who she was—a viper, a stealthy predator just waiting to devour him. That shy, retiring girl who’d been unable to look him in the eye as he’d told her how beautiful she was,
that
girl didn’t exist. She was a fabrication, a lie told to get past his defenses. Aurelius offered a weak smile and said, “I need to get back to my companions now.”

Lashyla’s eyes narrowed fractionally. “There’s no rush. They’ll still be preparing the food.”

“I feel guilty leaving them to do all the work.”

She cocked her head slightly. “You are destined for greater things than cleaning fish, Aurelius. Do not trouble yourself with that and those which are beneath you.”

Aurelius shook his head. “I don’t consider anyone beneath me.”

“But that does not change the facts. You cannot change who you are.”

“Who I am has nothing to do with how I look, Lashyla.”

She offered only a frown for reply and looked away.

“I’m sorry, I have to go,” he said, backing away.

Lashyla took a quick step toward him, all seductive smiles and pouting lips as her hands roved up over his chest. “Come with me instead. I’ll have dinner sent to my quarters and we can eat in peace. It will be preferable to eating in the hall with the other vestals.”

Aurelius felt his mind swimming again, and he shook his head to clear it. “No.” He took a stumbling step backward. She followed him and pinned him against a wall, her taut body pressing firmly against his, her every curve molding to him. Aurelius felt need stirring within him again and he let out a long breath. As he tried to look anywhere but into Lashyla's seductive eyes, Aurelius caught a lurid grin from one of their guards, and he felt a sick, crawling sensation worming through his gut. He grimaced and looked Lashyla in the eye with all that remained of his rapidly vanishing self-control. “Stop that.”

“Stop what?” she asked, all innocence as she stroked his stubbly cheek.

“Whatever you’re doing. Stop it. You’re suffocating me.”

Lashyla withdrew sharply, and a look of outrage and then hurt flickered across her face. It was the second reaction that sent a sharp pang of regret lancing through him, but somehow he resisted the urge to comfort her. “I’m sorry,” she said, though her tone was sarcastic. “I didn’t realize you found me so repulsive.” With that she whirled away and snapped her fingers to her guards. “Take this vestal to the galley.” And before Aurelius could even explain himself, she’d turned her back to him and stalked off. He was tempted to follow her and apologize, but then her guard was taking him roughly by the arm and leading him in the opposite direction.

“Move along.”

It was probably just as well, Aurelius reflected. He’d only have had more trouble resisting her if he’d managed to assuage her hurt feelings.

As he was being shoved back to the galley, the guard surprised him with what he said next: “That took guts. Not many men can say no to a mermaid, let alone the princess.”

“Ah, thanks, I think. It wasn't easy. I don't know how I did it.”

“Sometimes we find a reserve of strength we didn't know we had, but the next time may not be so easy. Mermaids have a way of corrupting your feelings and binding your will. They take all that makes a man a man and strip it away. All that’s left is a pathetic lap dog, eager to please her every whim. No, it’s a good thing that you resisted her, but if you wish to keep your mind and heart your own, try to avoid contact with the maidens, and keep your distance.”

Aurelius frowned. “I have a feeling that won’t be easy.”

“You’re right. Mermaids are not used to rejection, particularly the princess. She’ll be back and twice as beguiling, but you don’t want to rush into anything down here. The princess may seem like your best option, but remember that commitments in Meria can be more than binding. You should know what you’re getting into before you leap. Go visit the royal harem and you’ll see. Before long the princess will tire of you, her appetites will move on, and you’ll live out your days there, rarely sought and rarely seen, by her or anyone. And if you think you might be won by another in a challenge, think again. Few would dare challenge the princess for her mate, not whilst the queen might call upon Thorin the Triumphant to answer that challenge.”

Aurelius snorted. “What choice do I have? We can’t leave the city, and I can’t resist the princess forever. I’ve seen how the vestals live, and however bad it might be to be a mermate, I’m sure it’s no worse than that.”

“True, it is worse to be a vestal, but tell me, have you never wondered how the mermaids get to and from their city?”

Aurelius’s face blanked. “I haven’t given it much thought. I suppose I assumed that they can swim well enough to do it.”

“Oh, they swim, and better than you might think, but how do they bring in new vestals? The city is too far below the surface for a human to swim down to it.”

“Then . . .”

They reached the galley and the guard turned to regard him solemnly. “There’s always a way, Aurelius. Search for it, and you might be surprised by what you find.”

Aurelius met that solemn look with one of suspicion. “How did you know my name?”

“I’ve been following you and the princess for the past hour. I have ears.”

“Right. I almost didn’t notice you were there.”

“It showed.”

The guard opened the door to the galley with a groan of rusty hinges. The fishy smell wafted out and hit Aurelius like a punch in the gut, knocking the breath from his lungs and leaving him gasping for air.

“Name’s Martanel, by the way. If you ever need anything, or just want someone to talk to, I’m your man. You can ask any guard and they should know where you can find me, if not, look for me in the royal suites. Wherever you find the queen or the princess, I won’t be far behind.”

Aurelius spent a moment studying the man suspiciously, wondering what hidden motives prompted his friendliness, but Martanel’s face was open and honest, and he could detect no deception lurking in those clear blue eyes.

“Thank you, I’ll do that.”

The guard nodded and closed the galley door with another rusty groan. Turning back to the room, Aurelius caught a bevy of icy glares and envious glances thrown his way, and he knew his dramatic exit from the room—following none other than the princess herself—had put him at the top of their individual hate lists. If he’d been a target before, he was doubly so now. He averted his eyes and wove back through the room, conspicuously skirting the other men as much as possible. He rounded a table of men shelling prawns, and saw too late that the man on the end was stepping out in front of him—a giant wall of a man, standing easily a head above Aurelius’s own height. He ran straight into the giant and bounced off.