The Sword (31 page)

“And I thought you could handle anything…
hot
in your mouth,” he murmured into her ear, sliding his fingers between her trousered thighs. Right up against the warmth of her core.
Much better than a skirt,
he decided then and there, since the folds of a skirt would not have given him such ready access.

She flushed again, and not from the spices in the stew. Setting her cup down, she dropped her hand straight to his lap and cupped him intimately in retaliation for that. “You mean, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen?”

“Do you two
mind
? I
don't
need to see that! Not while we're eating lunch,” Wolfer demanded, his spoon halfway to his mouth, his brow arching as he eyed the two of them. Wolfer, on Saber's right, could see past the edge of the cloth-draped table with his peripheral vision, seeing clearly what the two of them were doing. So could Dominor, for that matter, seated on Kelly's left.

Both of them removed their hands. Both of them blushed. Both of them returned to their meal, and both of them managed to focus on the conversation of how to go about handling the visitors on their eastern shore.

A bit of debate, and it was decided to wait until morning, after finishing their preparations and briefing Rydan when he awoke, before making the next move. Which would be to send a “delegation” from the castle, if the visitors didn't finish taking on scavenged provisions and leave when the tide went out toward midnight again. No one thought that outcome likely, though it would have been nice. Not with the Prophesied Disaster looming.

As soon as the meal was over and the others had begun clearing the table, Saber grabbed Kelly by the hand and dragged her out of the new dining chamber. Hustling her to the nearest stairs and up them, he got them up to their chamber, slammed the door behind them, and yanked her up against him, bracing his back against the stout wood. There they stood for just a handful of seconds, panting from the fast climb up all of those stairs, then Saber hauled her even closer and kissed her.

She met the demands of his mouth willingly, heatedly, hungrily writhing against his body. His fingers dug into her backside, lifting her up against him. Breaking off their kiss, Kelly wriggled down his body, avoiding the hands that tried to pull her back up, and dragged down his trousers with an impatient tug at the laces to loosen them. With the garment tangled at his knees, she took him in her mouth and showed him what
a hot mouthful
really meant to her.

Saber banged his head back against the door behind him. The pain helped; he was determined to not climax, not this way, not when his whole body begged to be buried inside her own for that. Not just when deliciously tortured by her mouth. Shuddering as she cupped his sack, gently fondled the spheres inside his flesh, he gripped her hair, then her head, and pushed her away. Sinking to the floor, dragging her with him, he yanked impatiently at her own pants and undershorts, loosening them with her help.

Shifting onto her bared backside, she shoved the clothing down over her knees, lifting her feet—and Saber pressed her back, her cloth-imprisoned limbs hooked over his chest, as he stretched out over her, probed with his need, and entered her slick center in one sure thrust. There was a moment of stretching pain for her, from the angle and the sudden, filling depth of his demanding member in her only recently breached body, but it was nothing compared to the sweet friction that was the glide of his flesh into hers. He sucked in a breath as she cried out tightly and convulsed around him in an instant release, arms bracing his body above the curled angle of hers. Thrusting over and over into her quaking depths, seeking and yet delaying his own completion, he bit his lower lip as she did hers, and determinedly drove her back up and over the edge of insanity once more. When he fell with her, it was with a shout of her name, as her hips squirmed up into his.

Untangling themselves somewhat, breathing heavily, they curled up together on the floor, limp and sated. A few minutes later, when his body felt capable of assembling liquified bones and muscles back into working order again, Saber scooped her up and waddled over to the bed, since his breeches were now tangled around his calves.

Kelly kicked her own clothing-restrained legs and laughed.

“Does something amuse you?” he panted, getting to the edge of the bed and dropping her on it.

She bounced on her backside and kicked her feet again in explanation, giggling. He grabbed her feet, slipped off her slippers, tickled and nibbled on her toes while she squirmed and giggled, then threw her pants away and spread her legs. Tugging off his own footwear and garments, he dropped to his knees beside the bed, dragged her hips to the edge, and buried his tongue in her slick center with a wriggle. She shrieked and giggled, throwing her feet up, then parting her knees willingly, moaning. He raced his lips across her tender, slick flesh, nipping and suckling mercilessly, until she was forced to grip his hair and drag him away from there.

“Please—please—” Kelly panted, tugging him up over her. “Take me!”

He wanted to. But not like that. Disentangling her fingers from his locks, he climbed onto the bed and sprawled on his back, tugging her into squirming after him. With his hands on her waist, her hips, he got her over him. “Ride me…”

He broke off with a moan when she scrambled over his hips, grabbed his shaft without preamble, and sank onto him rather impatiently. Gripping her hips hard, Saber helped rock her down onto him in that exotic way she had taken him in the night. Until her insistence on a slow pace wasn't enough for him. Pulling his wife close, he rolled them over and showed Kelly exactly who was the ruler in their bedroom, with each of his masterful thrusts. At least, until she tightened deliberately around him, squeezing rhythmically.

Pleasure was the true ruler, at least in this particular corner of the donjon.

 

H
appy and a little disheveled, they returned to the great hall a while later. Transformed completely, it was now filled with people, making both of them slow and stare as they walked out of the stairwell at the ground floor. Men clad in tunics and shirts, some sleeveless, some sleeved; women clad in Katani-style gowns and in variations of the trouser-and-shell-skirt garment Kelly had created; all turned and bowed politely to the two of them as they walked onto a length of red velvet laid down for carpeting. Kelly recognized it belatedly as the curtains that used to hang in the chamber over their heads, washed free of the grime of ages and spell-stitched together into a long runner for their feet to tread upon.

Long banners that slowly changed in sunset colors hung down each of the eight ceiling-supporting pillars, from the highest balcony railing overhead to just brushing the floor, lengths of black muslin treated with Morganen's color-changing paint. And to the right, angled in front of the stained glass windows under the balcony area, was an actual dais. A platform that stood just high enough to place a seated head level with a standing one, and just big enough for the massive, carved chair to safely perch. Trevan—or someone—had been busy; the loveseat had been gilded over and pillowed with yet more of the pilfered aquamarine silk.

Dominor stood next to that dais, talking with a woman clad in a violet and cream version of Kelly's aquamarine clothes, which were currently still upstairs. When the two of them followed the runner to the middle of the room, they discovered it was laid out in four runners, not just one. In addition to the lengths stretching from archway to archway, there was one more runner leading to the dais. The five aisles ran between the wedge-shaped sections of people occupying the hall, who were murmuring around them quietly.

As Saber and Kelly approached, Dominor broke off the conversation and smiled at them.

“Your Majesty, Brother, this is the Lady Felisa of Novella, a barony not too far north of Corvis lands. Lady Felisa, these are Her Majesty, Kelly of Nightfall, and her Consort, Lord Saber of Nightfall.”

The woman dipped a little curtsy, knees together and bowing her dark-haired head, streaked faintly with gray at one temple. “Your Majesty, Your Highness. It is a pleasure to see you again, Lord Saber.”

Kelly and Saber both raised their brows. Kelly spoke first, addressing both brothers, though it was Dominor's skill in illusion-casting that earned him a look of respect from her. “You both know this woman? The real one your spell is based upon?”

Her husband answered her. “I knew her, when I was younger; she would visit our family occasionally while on trips that passed by our home—I sincerely hope she's an illusion,” Saber added to his brother. “She was one of the women advocating that the royal executioner should take our heads, rather than merely exile us to this isle.”

Dominor smirked. “Isn't it wonderful that she'll be here to help
save
our lives?”

“You have a wicked sense of humor, Dominor,” Kelly praised him. She held out her hand hesitantly. “Is she real to the touch?”

“Quite real,” the older woman asserted on her own volition, and held out her arm. Kelly almost jumped at being addressed by the illusion. A very interactive illusion.

“They have physical presence,” Dominor informed her as Kelly gingerly touched and explored the flesh of the woman's bare arm. “They have sight, they have sound, they have smell, and they have touch. Some even have a personality, and many have enough conversational skills to answer a variety of questions. The only sense these illusions do not have is taste, and the smell section of the spell is weak at best, but I figured if we burned incense and aromatic oils, that would take care of the first part, and if we made sure none of the visiting men tried to steal a kiss from anyone, that would take care of the second part.

“Now, would you like to be introduced to your courtiers? You'll notice that each one has a piece of embroidery in the trim of their garments that contains the Katani characters for their name, so that even for the ones we've cobbled together out of thin air, you'll know exactly who they are, or who they're supposed to be.”

Kelly immediately looked for the name on the woman's clothes. She found it a few moments later near the armhole of the lavender vest-bodice. “It's…very subtle.”

“We cannot know if these Mandarites have an Ultra-Tongue spell of their own, which allows them to read and write as well as hear and speak a given foreign tongue,” Dominor agreed. “Also, each one of these people has a different level of communicativeness. Lady Felisa, because I knew her well, is stronger in the conversational department than most; others mutter pleasantries when spoken to, and seek to go elsewhere if pressed for anything more than their enspelled existence can handle.”

“How did you anchor these spells?” Saber asked, curious.

“Anchor?”
Kelly echoed, confused by the term. It was kind of like listening to a conversation between computer geeks, listening to the brothers talk about the technical aspects magic. She couldn't tell a microprocessor from a soundcard, either. She could guess what they meant, but it would be better to know more directly what each said. This was her kingdom now, after all.

“Unless an illusion is cast by the mage directly, with full concentration, they must be anchored in something,” Dominor explained. He snapped his fingers, muttering yet another of the nonsensical, mystical words her Ultra-Tongue spell didn't translate, and the woman vanished. Stooping, the mage picked up a clear glass bead, no bigger than a largish marble, and displayed it on his palm. “Koranen usually uses these to create his lightglobes with, but they're perfect for anchoring the illusions. As are the lightglobes themselves, which cast light to begin with, and are thus easily altered. They're even enspelled with modest mobility powers, so that some illusory courtiers will move from room to room, while those anchored in a particular light-globe will remain within that room.”

“What if someone tries to drag them out of range of a lightglobe?” Kelly asked, worried about that aspect as Dominor returned the bead to the floor and restored “Lady Felisa” back into existence.

“Then they're enspelled to shout the word ‘
bekh
!,' and they vanish,” Dominor stated. “Koranen thought about that one, already. He reasoned that, if our castle could be concealed by illusion-camouflage, then it was likely that our whole “culture” could indeed be based on that sort of thing, as you suggested. For all
they
know, we could have a whole city on the eastern shore near where the sailors have landed, and the outlanders wouldn't even know, because it's hidden. And if we hide our palace and cities, then it would make sense to have the ability to hide our individuals as well.

“If uncertain or threatened, we simply hide ourselves. If our enemies cannot find us, they cannot strike at us. You will be certain to explain this to our ‘guests' if they ever ask why our castle wall looks like a rocky cliff at the moment, of course,” Dominor added.

“Naturally,” Saber agreed. He looked around at the chamber and the seventy or so “people” within it. “You've done rather well, in such a short time.”

“You've been gone for almost two hours,” his brother pointed out dryly. “
We
have been working ourselves to the bone all this time, putting this ‘kingdom' together.”