Mage guardian 1, p.14
Mage Guardian 1, page 14
“He wasn’t in love with you,” Rune said stiffly. “The man coveted you, or rather your body. Did you know his prostitutes looked like you? Habitually? He objectified you, Ria, made you into something he could never have. And it must have made him angry, deep down. That’s why he was constantly wasting your Valor and ruining your career. That’s how he was able to betray you. He couldn’t take no for an answer, and you couldn’t give him a yes. A small man like that doesn’t deserve a yes.”
Ria tilted her head, considering, and then she gazed out over the chasm, where natural granite fell away below them in jagged layers. Across the gap—which was about ten times as wide as any normal man could jump—the layers of ancient stone were more pronounced, bands of lichen green and sienna brown and storm-cloud slate. Ria seemed to be counting them as she considered his words.
I’m not like him, and I won’t ever be like him. If he was bonded to this woman, he was going to make that bond a strong one, sex or not. Because there was a lot more to knowing a person than just knowing their body, wasn’t there? It’s why he and Narcissa were already so strong.
Well, I’m strong, he conceded to himself. Narcissa, on the other hand, seemed to have lost the ability to mentally speak to him using words. The one time she had... that moment had been emotional, connective. Like she’d been telling him some key part of herself.
Plus, there was that kiss....
And then, afterwards, I slept with Lenore, Rune realized. Did Narcissa feel that, through the bond? She must have. Did it upset her? How much of it could she feel?
But if that was the case, why had Narcissa still trusted him? She had let herself be taken into custody based solely on his word that he’d save her. He had a hunch there was something more to her weaker bond than some sort of misplaced jealousy over a man she barely knew.
Meanwhile, here he was, still able to feel her pages at who knew what distance.
Pages. And petals. He looked up.
“How long did it take Mog to feel your petals?” he asked Ria.
That secretive smile again. “Months.”
And yet Rune already felt them. He’d already taken Ria, at least partially, into his heart.
“Wow. All I did was show you a bit of respect, a bit of trust,” he said, “and I get months ahead of the last guy.”
She laughed. “Yes. I guess you did.”
Saving her life had paid off in giving him a new bond, and trusting Ria to save his life—to get that carriage out of town safely and quickly—had rewarded him with months of power. Power which he suspected she shared.
“What do I feel like?” he asked. “My bond, or whatever.” He had never thought to ask Narcissa.
“Hmm, maybe I’ll tell you sometime,” she replied cattily. “Now, let’s try to find Narcissa, shall we? If you can already communicate with her in words, you may be able to sense her. The trick is to focus on the feeling of her. Whatever the ‘petals’ are, for her.”
“Pages,” he said.
“Ah, so she’s a scholar then?”
He wasn’t sure. Again, he was frustrated by how little he knew her. And yet their bond was strong—his bond, anyway. Why was that? He knew she had an older sister—from something her father had said—but he didn’t know that sister’s name, or if Narcissa had other siblings. Why was their bond so strong, when he didn’t even know her friends, or her hobbies or interests? When he didn’t know her favorite color or food?
When I don’t know what her mouth really tastes like, his mind roved. When I never had the time to kiss her back....
“She’s very intelligent,” he managed to croak out. If he dwelled too long on the memory of that kiss, or the memory of Narcissa in her tattered and burned dress, or of her wearing that skimpy thing Lenore gave her…
But even as he thought about these things, the pages fluttered inside him. Her bond sparked as if calling out to him, and he sensed its general direction. She was in Cedar.
“You’re getting it,” Ria said. She must feel it too. “Keep on thinking of her. Imagine turning those pages and seeing some new aspect of her on each one. Imagine that you’re madly in love with her, that she’s your whole world, your whole reason for existence.”
Rune swallowed and, against his will, his eyes started to burn and his stomach went all airy.
You’re obviously in love with her.
Imagine that she’s your whole world.
Pages fluttered. He saw Narcissa’s bravery in fleeing the house, her sorrow at losing her father, her determination to go through with his plan despite all her fears. He saw the expression in her eyes of dawnlit gold, when he presented her with their matching makeshift valorglasses. The way she looked with the storm clouds behind her, like a goddess of loss ready to take on the world.
And the trust that had seared through him, when she’d believed he’d come back for her. And the scream she had screamed, when she’d pretended he had died. And the way he felt now, like he was missing some part of himself.
Desire and lust turned the pages, but love read the book.
“I found her,” he said. “Damn it.”
“What? Is she hurt?”
“No.” He’d cursed because of the emotion. He hadn’t realized how afraid he was. But she was safe. He saw her form, sitting and yet moving slightly, almost vibrating. She was in a carriage, her hands behind her back. Being taken somewhere.
“Try talking to her,” Ria said, her voice gentle. “Assume she can’t respond, that it’s only one way.”
He nodded, eyes closed. He saw Narcissa in middle space, with his own consciousness neither above nor below nor to the sides of her—almost as if he was inside her, as if he were her skeleton. So he tried to speak, to imagine himself speaking, into the papery shadow of her head.
“Where are you?” he asked.
An instant response, a flash of relief—but no words. Right. She might not be able to reciprocate the same contact.
“We escaped safely,” he said. “We are planning your rescue. Do you know where your carriage is headed?”
A pause, and then a flashed mental image of a tree. It meant nothing to Rune, green-leafed and blurred. Images must be even tougher than words.
But if it was a tree, then that could be a place name, a city. Like Cedar or Maple, or like the capital, Rue.
“I didn’t get that,” he thought back. “But it seemed like a city. Is it Rue?”
A negative sensation. No, not the capital.
“Maple?” he asked.
Affirmative. They were headed to Maple, just across the canyon from here.
“Are you certain? Did you hear them say they were going there, when they didn’t know you were listening?” They might be slipping her wrong information, trying to mislead her.
She sent a flash of something that almost seemed to take the shape of the words not stupid. Rune smiled.
“No, you aren’t. Any other clues?”
He waited. She seemed to be thinking. Maple was a large city, so without more clues, he doubted they could find the Breeders’ hideout before they themselves were discovered. He could try to force Narcissa’s captors to reveal the hideout’s location, but they were all wearing the same valorglasses that Ivy had worn. If they gave up information, it might take their heads off, and that wouldn’t be useful to Rune.
But if the only clue they had was the city, he’d still call this off and intercept her carriage. He wasn’t going to risk Narcissa’s life just to pinpoint the hideout’s location, not when he had no way of knowing how it would be guarded. After all, what use was an exact location if there was no way to break into it?
Then Narcissa sent something else, another vague tree image, but attached to it was a sensation of power and awe.
“The Tree of Life?” he asked.
She mentally affirmed this, and then sent another word: create.
“Create?” he asked.
Negative. Rate.
“Rate?”
Negative. Kate.
She wasn’t very good at this, but there was definitely a lot more distance than there had been, when she’d spoken to him before, in complete sentences.
Create. Rate. Kate. The words were similar, but they weren’t the right ones. She was trying to say something else.
“Um. Crate?” he thought back.
Affirmative! She sent this with enthusiasm.
“Tree of Life, crate?” he replied.
“Yes!”
“She says Tree of Life, crate,” Rune said, confused.
“That’s good,” Ria encouraged him. “That’s very good, that you’re hearing this. Her bond is strong, too. Maybe not as much as yours, but still strong.”
This heartened him, even as the wind picked up and the first flicker of cold rain fell on his skin.
He picked apart Narcissa’s words a little bit more, but Tree of Life could have any number of connotations. It was a religious artifact, after all, the conduit through which the Eternal—all of magic—passed into and out of Orennian. The thing was vast, a huge clonal system of trees that were technically all one organism, with its every sapling and tree closely protected by the Covenant, and many of them worshiped from afar, on viewing platforms much like this one.
But crate—that was simple. Crate. She was saying crate in a carriage.
“Are there crates in the carriage with you?” he asked.
“Yes!” Her affirmations were words now, but childlike. She was incredibly happy to be hearing from him. “Empty!” she added.
“I think she’s sharing a carriage with some empty crates,” he told Ria, after confirming the idea with Narcissa. “And the crates have something to do with... the Tree of Life... something that gives us more clues... to where....”
Rune realized, almost too late, that his energy was flagging dangerously. His balance teetered toward the drop. He got an arm around a banister at the same time Ria grabbed him.
I almost fell off this damn cliff, he thought, heart racing.
“Rune, you need to cut off the communication,” Lenore said, and he was so startled to hear she had snuck up on him that he opened his eyes. As soon as he did, thousands of stimuli flooded his mind: the roiling storm clouds, the scent of rain in a forest, the gritty feel of stone dust and bleached wood under his hands.
And with that loss of focus, Narcissa was vanishing, their connection fading to a shadow of what it had just been.
No! he thought, reaching for it, for her, but it was too late. With the last of his energy, he tried to shout to her, as loud as he could.
“I’m coming for you! I promise!”
And as Rune fell back into Lenore’s arms, as the dark closed around him like a fist, and the sky broke in a storm, two words chased him, two words that said everything:
“I know.”
And then she was gone.
Chapter 15
Rune woke in leafy, crunching darkness. He lay on the earth, inside a bedroll. A tarp stretched above his head, and the sky was quietly falling on it in sharp little taps that broke the silence of the night.
The crunching was feet on dry leaves.
He sat up, and as soon as he became aware that he was weaponless, he also realized the shape was Lenore. She was ghostly, her tawny brown skin fading into the dark while her white undershirt and shorts hovered like a phantasm. There was a glowlight on the ground nearby, a type of Artificed creation casting enough colorless light to see by. Its glow showed her hair was freed from its braid and wet. As she knelt beside him, he saw the rest of her was dripping. She had a blanket pressed to her hair like a towel.
“You’re awake,” she said. “I just had a shower.” She smiled. “The rain is good for that.”
His gaze flicked to the hard points of her nipples, standing obviously through the delicate fabric. He scanned the woods behind her. but it was a moonless night and still storming, although the tree cover muted the worst of the weather.
“Ria’s working to reshape the carriage back that way,” Lenore said, pointing. “So that we can use it tomorrow without being recognized. She has to do it slowly, though, because you’re both tired. The bedding and whatnot is from her travel stores. Apparently she and Mog had to camp out on the road now and then.”
He felt around the bedroll and found a knife from under the sewn-in pillow. “I have to get Narcissa,” he started. “We know the city she’s headed to. That’s enough clues as to the location of the Breeders’ hideout. I’m not risking her just to pinpoint the place.”
Lenore laid a hand on his chest. “Slow down, Rune. Ria told me what you heard. She says she knows these roads well, and if Narcissa was headed to Maple at the time of day that she was, her carriage is definitely going to stop at the inn outside the Maple Bridge. They don’t extend that bridge until midday, if you remember.”
“Ah,” he said. He did remember something about that. Since Maple acted as a sort of gateway to the capital city of Orennian, only specific people—and specific numbers of people—were allowed entrance. They heavily tolled the bridge and withheld it for hours each day to prevent too many travelers from crossing.
It was a perfect place for an ambush, Rune realized.
“We’ll make our stand there,” he decided.
“That’s what I was thinking,” she replied, dropping the blanket from her hair and shrouding her shoulders with it. It was summer weather, but those little points in her shift made it clear she was cold. The hard-on that Rune had woken up with suddenly started getting ideas.
Lenore noticed. After all, he was still shirtless, and she must have stripped him down when she hauled him into bed, because he wasn’t wearing anything else but his breeches and the sapphire on a leather thong around his neck.
She slid a hand up his thigh with feigned nonchalance. “But if we’re going to save her, you’ll need to rest and recharge.” Her palm drifted closer to his cock. “You’ll need energy if you’re going to use both Ria and Narcissa’s magic effectively tomorrow.”
Although he was thoroughly tempted to “rest” with Lenore at the moment, Rune caught her wrist. “I can’t, Lenore. I need to go to her now. If they’re stopping somewhere for the night, who knows what they might do to her? You do realize what bad men do in the dark?”
“They won’t,” Lenore said.
He frowned. “What?”
“They won’t hurt her yet, Rune. She almost killed people at her testing, right? And that was without a Guardian. They’re not going to touch her until they know she won’t burn their dicks off.” She shrugged. “Besides, I’ve found a couple women over the years who escaped them. They always said the abuse didn’t start until later. At first, they just try to convince you that they’re your friends. It’s all a mind game to them. Sick, really.”
He thought this over. “Are you certain?”
“Are you kidding, Rune? Do you think I want to see what you’d look like if you thought they’d done that to Narcissa? Everything within a six-mile radius would be burned to a crisp from your glare alone, much less from the rest of you. No, I’m absolutely sure.”
Well, that did seem like certainty. And he did need to rest. He loosened his grip on her and led her hand to his dick, where she responded by closing her hand around it.
“Ria says there’s a back way to the bridge,” she said, squeezing. “She can get us there before Narcissa’s party arrives.”
Rune held her wrist a little longer, helping her find the rhythm he liked best. “So you’ve both thought of everything, have you?”
Her squeeze turned into the precise stroke he was looking for. A fast learner. “Yes. You choose your women well.”
He wouldn’t put it that way, exactly, but he wasn’t about to argue the point. “If you want to get yours, you’d better sit on my face,” he told her. “Otherwise I’m just going to lie here and enjoy you.” He really was that tired.
“Just relax, Rune. This is for you.”
Mmm, he thought, and now he did close his eyes, but he still forced himself to look over the plan for holes. No, it was good. There were details to be hashed out, but that could come later. Ria was exhausted, and so was he, and so was Narcissa, wherever she was. If he could sleep well, it would probably help them sleep well too.
And yet, there was Narcissa’s reticence to consider. Their bond had seemed weaker after he’d been with Lenore the first time. So maybe he shouldn’t....
He didn’t stop her stroking, but he did manage to say, “I’m worried that... uhhh....” He couldn’t deny the pleasure any longer. “I’m worried how Narcissa might feel... about this.”
Lenore slowed and straddled him. “Well, she knows about it, I can guarantee you that,” she said, maintaining the slow, languid pace even as her other hand picked apart his underclothes and exposed him to the air.
He groaned as her hands met his skin. He reached up to touch her shoulder, to exert a little downward pressure, to tell her what he wanted. Still, an uncertainty lingered.
“Were you... trying to make a point?” he asked.
“My point...” she crawled back a few feet, then leaned over to suck on him, her warm throat contracting on his tip, her tongue flicking over the fleshy ridge of his head.
It was good. Nice. Relaxing. He deserved a little bit of relaxing.
Lenore rose off him again, and he raised his head to see her breasts dangling beyond his cock. Her nipples were still hidden by that infernal neckline, but the sheer size of those things made his cock jerk in her hands.
“My point is that she knows,” Lenore said, kissing his head, “and still managed to communicate with you over miles today.” She kissed him again, then a deeper suck. “So she’s, at the very least, getting used to this.” Another deep suck. He slid in, all the way in, until his head met the back of her throat. She pulled off. “Ahh. And she’ll have to get used to it. Because you need strong bonds with Ria, and also with me. Once I’m your Adept.” She ran her tongue down his shaft, then spoke against his balls, “Because I will be.”
With a deft tongue, she sucked one of his balls into her mouth. He quivered, and she let him go, giggling.
