CHAPTER THIRTEEN - THE MANSION

The Mansion was laid out in classic Silvan style, a three-storey ziggurat that narrowed with each successive level. The ground floor contained the kitchens, wine cellar, servants' quarters, dining room and reception lounge. On the second floor were bedrooms and a large drawing room, with a wide terrace all around, supporting an overgrown hanging garden. The third and final floor contained the master bedroom and library, with a small hanging garden overlooking the lower terrace and the grounds.

Lendar conducted a guided tour of all this with patient Darian stoicism, pointing out bedrooms where the travellers could leave their packs.

Vashta insisted that Fethne needed an early night and packed them both off to bed, while Hnasi had already curled up asleep in front of the fireplace in the parlour. DeKellia lit his pipe, then twitched an eyebrow at his remaining companions.

“So, who's still up for exploring?”

Kam and Lendar demurred, the Daishen uninterested and Lendar already well familiar with the Mansion. This left DeKellia, Sorcha and DeSilva to discover the mysteries of the house.

Before leaving them to explore, Lendar said, “Watch out for the dog.”

DeKellia chuckled and waved off the warning. “I won't hurt it, don't worry.”

Together, the three of them set off into the Mansion, following DeKellia's lead to the main stairs and straight up to the top floor.

“Top to bottom,” he said, “that's the way; the most interesting things are almost always at the top of mysterious buildings.”

On the uppermost level of the ziggurat were two adjoining rooms. The stairs led up to a landing, and from there into a well-stocked library. Most of the bookshelves were thick with dust, but one section showed signs of recent use: DeSilva grinned when he read the titles of the books.

“Medicine,” he said. “Lendar's been reading these.”

DeKellia only shrugged, heading for the door to the next room. “Let him. Find me a good treatise on anatomy, I might read that.” He glanced back and added with a wolfish gleam in his eye, “useful to know about, anatomy; a rapier is a surgical instrument, after all.”

The double doors out of the library let into the master bedroom, where they found a four-poster bed built of iron swords welded together. DeKellia thought that he alone had seen it before, and warned his companions to stay well clear, but his son already knew the danger.

"It's the Bed of Swords," DeSilva said, "I've seen it before."

"So have I," DeKellia said. "We should leave well alone; this contraption shouldn't even be here.”

If Sorcha was surprised to hear DeKellia advise caution, DeSilva was astounded.

“Seriously? A mysterious mansion we've never heard of, housing a magic bed that we have, and you're not the least bit curious?”

“Of course I am,” DeKellia muttered. “But I've used the Bed of Swords before, I know what it does already.”

“So how does it work?” DeSilva pressed, and DeKellia shrugged.

“You sleep in it,” he said, relighting his pipe, then glanced at Sorcha and added, “Or not, as the case may be.”

DeSilva was not satisfied by this. “But what does it do?”

“It's a magic bed,” DeKellia reiterated, patiently. “What do magic swords and armour do? So, what does a magic bed do? You're the scholar, you work it out.”

He turned to leave the room. Sorcha moved automatically to follow, only to pause when she realised that DeSilva was still staring in fascination at the bed.

“Monte,” she hissed, and he turned at last.

“I just had a thought... Was I conceived in this bed?”

“Don't be silly,” DeKellia called from the landing outside. “You were nearly two years old before your mother even told me about you; we were on opposite sides of the war until then.”

“I remember that!” DeSilva said excitedly, as they left the master bedroom and DeKellia shut the doors firmly behind them. “It was just before the siege of Silveneir; it's about the earliest thing I can remember, like the first time I woke up. It was cold, I think on a parapet or something, but my mother was there, and she was talking to... well, it'd be you, wouldn't it? I remember these battered black riding boots and this smell like nothing I knew back then. Now I know it's horses, cordite and tobacco.”

“So your first impression was that your old man smells,” DeKellia observed, leading the way down the darkened stairwell. “I'll try not to take it personally.”

“You should take a whiff of your own armpit sometime,” Sorcha told DeSilva. “You know it wouldn't hurt to bathe once in a while, either of you.”

“Sniff yourself,” DeKellia said as they returned to the lower level. “Have either of you actually tried washing outside in Kellia? Neither have I, but I saw a man try it once. We had to fish him out of the river with boat-hooks and thaw him out by the fire. He lost six fingers and all his toes to frostbite, but he was dead inside a week anyway.”

“I thought you rescued him?” Sorcha said. “What killed him?

“He'd taken his bath in the Kessel,” DeKellia said. “And with a city on either side of it and Loth Kavnor's paddy fields emptying in there from upriver, you really don't want to know the sort of things floating about in that water. We'd called him 'Mad Anson' up until then, but what we put on his gravestone was just plain 'Stupid A'.”

“Oh, now you're having us on,” Sorcha said, but DeKellia shook his head.

“Not one word of a lie.”

They had passed by the doors of various lesser bedrooms on the mid-level by now and come to a door at the end of the hall leading out onto the hanging gardens. As they stepped out into the evening air, the thick perfume of night blooms rose from the overgrown flowerbeds. All three of them paused, momentarily taken in by the starry sky and the jagged mountains on the horizon, silhouetted against the night sky. Then DeKellia picked up the conversation again:

“Half the blokes I grew up with were dead by your age, a good cut of the girls too. Narillion was like that; it just ate people. That's why I left, only been back twice since; once to spring Karvallion's sister from the palace, which is how I met Vashta, and the last time, when I burned that rats' nest to the ground.”

They had been walking along the terrace, night shrouding the view so that the trees of the nearby orchard blended with the shadows into the thicker greenery of the forest beyond. Where the ivy had not overtaken all, windows looked in on darkened rooms within the house. DeKellia's pacing brought them to the corner of the building, where the terrace turned to the right to carry on around the Mansion. There was also a narrow stair leading down to the ground level and the lawns. Descending, they found the way barred by an iron gate tangled with ivy and weeds. It was set on the third step up, so that from the outer side it was higher than a man could reach, but from within the angle of the stairs put anyone descending that way above the lip of the gateway.

DeKellia paused halfway down the stairs, measuring the gate by eye. Then he glanced back at Sorcha and DeSilva.

“I don't you could clear that son. How about you, Sorcha?”

She shook her head. “I don't think many people could, a Darian or a Dacoit maybe but...”

Before she had finished speaking, DeKellia grinned, gripped his pipe between his teeth and launched himself off the step. Sorcha thought his jump had fallen short, but at the apex of his leap he shot out an arm, caught the top of the gate and vaulted over it, clearing the barrier with acrobatic ease to tuck and roll to his feet on the far side. He relit his pipe and grinned back through the bars at Sorcha and DeSilva.

“Well? I'm over forty years old and I've got a game hip. If I can do it, anyone can.”

DeSilva glanced at Sorcha, but she shook her head again, more vigorously than before.

“Oh, come on,” DeKellia jeered. “Up and over; you'll never know unless you try.”

DeSilva grimaced, then flung himself forward, grabbed the top of the gate in both hands and flipped his momentum into a flying vault. He landed less gracefully than his father had but came to his feet with only a few grass-stains to show for his landing.

With both of them waiting, Sorcha steeled herself, took a deep breath, and jumped. Her hands found the bar atop the gate and she hauled hard, putting every ounce of strength into twisting her body up and over the barrier. It was all she had in her; as soon as she cleared the gate, she was falling with no chance to roll. DeSilva stepped up to catch her and they crashed to the turf together, stunned and breathless.

When Sorcha's head stopped spinning, the first thing she became aware of was DeKellia's laughter.

“Nicely done.” He reached out one hand to each of them, hauling Sorcha and DeSilva to their feet. Not for the first time, Sorcha was surprised by the strength of him; a lean, middle-aged man, who yet retained a steely power in his grip that few men could boast even in their youth.

“Now,” DeKellia said. “Where have we landed?”

They were in an outside alcove set into the wall of the Mansion; on one side was the stairway with its barring iron gate, on another a short passage leading out to the lawns, and finally a narrow door leading back into the building. DeKellia tried the door and found it unlocked.

Beyond lay the kitchens. Here, it seemed, was Lendar's primary living space; there was a pallet bed made up in one corner, big enough for a Darian, and a pile of laundry at the other end of the room. The fire was built and had been lit, but now only coals glowed on the hearth. There were signs of a meal on the table, plates bearing leftovers and a goblet still showing traces of wine.

Sorcha stood in the doorway, shivering slightly in the evening chill now, while DeKellia poked about the room and DeSilva went to the door further in.

“Did we even look at the ground floor?” He asked, peering out into the darkened corridor.

“No, I don't believe we did,” his father replied. “Probably just the servants' quarters, the nursery, wine-cellar, maybe a downstairs parlour. Let's see what's on the our way back upstairs.”

They went deeper into the house, DeKellia striding ahead, limping slightly on his left side after vaulting the gate, DeSilva following curiously while Sorcha trailed behind. The dark corridors of the Mansion oppressed her mind; she had felt claustrophobic in the halls of the Winter Palace which were so much grander than the Mansion, and this place was by no means humble.

Gradually, she became aware that they had been walking for several minutes, but when she looked ahead, the corridor continued on and on into the darkness, punctuated occasionally by doors on either side.

Catching up with DeSilva, she put her hand in his and walked at his side, hurrying slightly to keep up with his longer strides. Softly he said, “This is getting weird.”

“Yes,” Sorcha agreed. “I don't like it here; I want to go back upstairs.”

Ahead, out of the darkness, emanated a muffled growl.

DeKellia paused and looked back, the glow of his pipe lighting his face eerily from below.

“Hear that?”

DeSilva nodded. “Didn't Lendar mention a dog?”

“Yes.” DeKellia paused ominously. “And I promised not to hurt it.”

Sorcha moved closer to DeSilva; he laughed, but put his arm protectively around her nonetheless.

“Don't worry, it sounded like it came from one of the doors on the left there.”

“Indeed.” DeKellia was already advancing. “This one, I believe. Let's have a look...”

As he touched the door handle, something huge growled again from the room beyond.

“Must we?” Sorcha asked, shrinking closer against DeSilva. “It sounds very big.”

“Don't tell me you're scared of dogs, now?” DeSilva asked. “Silvans love dogs.”

“Not me,” Sorcha told him. “I don't like them at all.”

“Me either,” DeKellia confessed, his ear to the door to better hear the growling beyond. “I prefer cats.”

“Big surprise there,” DeSilva chuckled. “But didn't you have a pet wolf once?”

“No, a wolf used to follow me around because I fed him; that's not the same thing as a pet. Domestication...” he shuddered. “Men, women, animals; it's cruel to tame anything. Just let 'em be. If you have to chain something up, then it doesn't want to be around you.” He glanced up from the door and added, “Just my opinion, mind. There's a reason I don't live in cities; nothing sadder than domesticated people.”

He looked at Sorcha as he said this, and she could not meet even that momentary gaze. She looked away, and when she glanced back saw DeKellia at last making ready to open the door.

As he inched it ajar, something huge and heavy slammed against it from the inner side. There was an awful cacophony of barking, a multifarious noise far too loud and varied for any one throat.

“Sounds like more than one dog,” DeSilva said. “And none too happy.”

DeKellia snorted and shoved the door open. The thing beyond the door flung itself forward at once with a frenzied howl of many voices; Sorcha caught a mercifully brief glimpse of it, a tangle of living flesh like a briar-bush of human and animal limbs walking on a dozen canine feet. fangs snapping and every eye staring wide and insane.

The glimpse was momentary; as soon as DeSilva saw the thing, he thrust Sorcha behind him and reached for his sword.

There was little room in the passage to draw steel, but thankfully no need; as quick as the thing pounced, DeKellia kicked it the chest and slammed the door again, then put his back against it.

As soon as the door shut, all noise from beyond it abruptly ceased.

Suddenly breathless, DeKellia patted himself down until he found a match to relight his pipe. He was pale and his hands shook, the first signs of fear Sorcha had ever seen him show.

“What the hell was that?!” DeSilva demanded while Sorcha cowered behind him.

“Nothing,” DeKellia said. “Just a nightmare; things like that don't exist.”

“I just piking well saw the bastard thing!”

“Do you want another look at it?” DeKellia stood away from the door and put his hand on the knob again. “We can if you like. Scares the hell out of me, but if you insist...”

“No, no!” Sorcha and DeSilva protested in unison, and DeKellia affected a look of disappointment.

“If you're curious, look it up in a book sometime. I already know what it is.”

Sorcha was not curious at all, any more than she had been to learn about the various other monsters she had encountered on her journey, but DeSilva immediately said, “What is it then?”

“My childhood,” DeKellia said, and turned away from the door. “Don't ask.”

He went on up the corridor, saying nothing. DeSilva and Sorcha followed, shaken and confused. The corridor stretched on endlessly, punctuated occasionally by doors and side turnings. Sorcha began to feel they had walked miles, descending steadily into a nightmarish realm where time and distance made no sense.

“What's going on?” she asked at last. “I don't understand...”

“This house is a trap,” DeKellia said at last, pausing in his rapid strides to look back at them. “It's been set here for me.”

“Don't be daft,” DeSilva began, “Lendar's been here for years, he says it's...”

“I know damn well what he says!” DeKellia snarled. “It's probably all true. This is your mother's clan estate; it's been here for centuries. But at the same time, it's a trap for me, and I know who set it.”

“Who?”

“Doesn't matter.” DeKellia shook his head firmly and turned to press on. “The same person who put the Bed of Swords upstairs and the dog in the nursery.

“Is it a good idea to stay here then?” DeSilva said, with a worried glance at Sorcha.

“Don't worry about it,” his father said, “we're not in any danger. It's just an old friend's sick idea of a joke. He's sending me a message, that's all. Like you said, Lendar's been here for years.”

“Then we should go back up to him,” DeSilva asserted.

DeKellia nodded, and within another minute's walk they stepped suddenly out of the passage into the main hall where they had first entered the Mansion. The main staircase led up to the second floor where their friends were waiting; all three of them hurried up and were glad when they came again to the lighted warmth of the parlour.

Here, they found Kam and Lendar playing chess, with Kalidor watching. The atmosphere was so different, so homely compared to the weird oppressiveness of the lower floor, that Sorcha immediately felt somewhat better. The nightmarish crawling sensation of the dark on her skin receded and she threw herself down in an overstuffed chair by the fire, drew her knees up and hugged a pillow.

DeSilva brought her a stiff drink, then poured one for himself. DeKellia took the entire decanter and drank straight from the neck, downing half the brandy at a swallow.

“I take it there was fun?” Noth Kalidor enquired, with a smile.

“Go look for yourself,” DeKellia said. “There's a dog in the nursery I'm sure you'd love to see.”

The Dacoit's usually impassive face twitched and even Kam Daishen's hand paused in the act of moving a chess-piece on the board. DeKellia nodded, smiling grimly.

“Best not to discuss it,” Kam said at last, then added to Lendar, “Your move.”

The hour was growing late, but Sorcha had absolutely no desire to venture out into the corridors again, even to go to bed. The parlour was warm and felt unaccountably safe despite the strange horror permeating the rest of the building, but she could not quite shake from her mind that momentary glimpse of flashing jaws and tangled limbs knotted impossibly together, nor forget the many-throated bark of the monster downstairs.

To distract herself, she joined DeSilva on the couch, sitting close beside him while his father sat at the other end, packing his pipe with more of the pungent herbs so much more potent than mere tobacco.

“What happened to the girls you knew in Narillion?” Sorcha asked. She said it only to distract herself, the first question to come into her head, but she had not when she saw the look of pain that flickered in DeKellia's eyes.

“Like I said, a lot of them died. I knew all sorts of girls, from both sides of the river. It didn't matter if they were born in a mansion or the gutter. You know why there are bars on every girl's window in Naril Na Silva and guards out all night?”

Sorcha and DeSilva shook their heads and DeKellia went on; “Because there was a gang that used to snatch them out their bedrooms and take them back across the river, never to be seen again. It put a serious dent in my early adventures; I had a fine line in climbing up to pretty girl's windows in the dead of night, and I very rarely got a bad response.” Beyond the first flash of bitter sadness, the story seemed to ease DeKellia out of the grim mood he had been in since their encounter in the nursery. “The bars on the windows didn't make much difference to the kidnappers though; they just had to plan more carefully and bring the right gear. It was Drake stopped them in the end.”

“How?” Sorcha asked, but DeSilva's question in the same moment was, “Why?”

DeKellia took the questions in reverse order. “Because the Silvan authorities were getting set to take drastic action. So, my father made one of his few appearances in my teenage years and told old man Drake to do something about it. No one knew who the kidnappers were; we figured they were an independent outfit, nothing to do with the Naril Mob. That made them fair game, so we staked out the river every night for a week, and when we saw a likely-looking boat sneaking across the water, we hustled down to the wharf they'd just left and killed every bastard we found there. Only half a dozen of 'em, mind. Clever beggars had long coats and big hats, so we took those and waited. When their mates got back, they handed over the girl before they knew we weren't who they were expecting. Then we shot 'em.”

“What about the girl?” Sorcha asked, staring at DeKellia.

“Well, we gave her back, obviously, along with twelve dead scrotes sewn up in body bags and a little card that said, 'Compliments of the Narillion Gentlemen's Society'.”

DeSilva had been about to light his pipe, but this detail saw him almost set his beard on fire instead. “Seriously?”

“Absolutely. That was Drake's idea. Gallows humour was the only way we could cope with living in a place like that. You just laughed everything off; soon as it got too much for a bloke, he'd top himself one way or another... by which I mean some blokes would punch their own ticket all alone and some would just go and do something that amounted to suicide. That's what I did anyway; one day I just took a walk out on the Moruna and never came back.”

“You were trying to kill yourself?” Sorcha was aghast, not at the notion of suicide which was held in Silvan dogma to be entirely honourable, but rather to learn that a man like DeKellia had ever considered it. “Why?”

“Well, it was over a girl obviously.” DeKellia exhaled a cloud of smoke and sat back in his chair. “At least that's what started it. One day I looked in the mirror and didn't see a boy looking back; for the first time I saw a man, and that man did not want to live anymore. So I took my sword and got walking. Nothing else, not even a cloak or hat; out on the Moruna and into the blizzard. And somehow I was still alive when I walked off the Moruna and found myself looking at the Northlord's fortress of Pen Kellion. And so began the legend...”

He spread his hands to indicate the end of his tale, then glanced at his son. “What about you, boy, while we're all sharing?”

“What, suicide? No, never. I suppose you'd both like to hear me say I wanted to kill myself when Sabra died, but I didn't. The only person I wanted to kill was Rathelon, and I still do in spite of the fact that he's dead.”

“That's the beauty of my people,” Lendar commented, looking up from his chess game. “If you really feel like it, you can dig a Darian up, revive him and kill him all over again. And if we're sharing as you say, DeKellia, I have wanted to kill myself many, many times. But it's not easy to do that when you're a Darian; hanging, blood loss, jumping off a roof, none of them will cut it. I've tried; you just wake up the next morning feeling stupid.”

“Poison?” Kam suggested, without lifting his eyes from the chessboard.

“Can you suggest one that might work?”

“Ur-Ite cobra venom,” DeKellia said at once. “Although I lived through a dose of that once, so it's by no means certain. I know it will potentially do for a Darian, though.”

“Must be a big snake,” DeSilva remarked, but DeKellia shook his head and mimed a snake about six inches long with his hands. “And now I think that's enough of this cheerful subject matter; why don't you two young people go and play? Not in the master bedroom, mind you.”

Sorcha was most reluctant to return to the passages of the Mansion while darkness still reigned. Fortunately, there was no need to assert her fear; DeSilva led her from the parlour by the patio doors, out onto the mid-level terrace of the Mansion.

Only outside did Sorcha realise how stiflingly hot the parlour had been. She had grown used to the biting cold of Kellia; Silveneir, even in the highlands, never achieved the deathly chill of a Kellion winter. The Silvan night air now was pleasantly cool, carrying the scents of the hanging garden and the orchard beyond. Sorcha's head cleared somewhat, the day's events seeming nightmarish beyond reality now that she thought on them.

“Monta, what did we see in the nursery?”

He shuddered. “I'd rather not recall. If my father wants us to leave that alone, then I'm happy to not even find out what it is in the first place.” He glanced at her, his hands going automatically to his pockets for his pipe, which was clenched between his teeth. DeSilva caught himself, swore softly, and lit his pipe on the Dancing Ring. Realising that he was more unnerved than he outwardly revealed, Sorcha moved close to him and snuggled beneath his cloak as they walked along the terrace. DeSilva gave her a look askance, not breaking stride but his pipe pausing a moment between tokes. Sorcha looked back up at him innocently.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“It's not a Silvan habit, is it?” She leant her head on his shoulder and let her arm stray around his waist, drawing herself closer to his warmth. “I'm sorry, if I ever saw the point in suffering on purpose just to prove that I could, then I don't see it now. I'm not a warrior, Monte, I never was.”

“You were scary enough when your clan chased me out of Silveneir.”

“My clan, Monte; yes, they're scary. Twenty Clan Kavnor horse-archers charging you should be pretty damn scary. But that's the point; there were twenty of us, and we were archers. I always hated fencing lessons, I never practised on my own or for fun. I've been in half a dozen swordfights, Monte, and they were terrifying.”

“Look, it's always scary...”

She held a finger under his nose to stall him, then reached up her lips to kiss him, briefly.

“Monte, I don't have it in me to stab anyone. Believe me, I've tried, and in actual fights where someone was trying to stab me first. I can't do it. The best I can do is fend them off at sword-length, I couldn't kill anyone.”

“You probably killed Charn,” he reminded her.

“Not on purpose.” She saw his frown and scowled back at him. “I didn't! I was angry, she'd been treating me like dirt! The ship was capsizing, and we both collided by the rail and I just... pushed her. I couldn't stab anyone though!”

“So, what happens next time there's a fight? There will be a next time.”

Sorcha snuggled close again, this time allowing her hands to rove more freely beneath DeSilva's cloak. “I'll just let you protect me.”

DeSilva laughed and gave her a squeeze, but then his embrace stiffened, and his grey eyes darkened. “How did you get across Uria alone?”

Sorcha pretended not to understand. “I had a horse.”

“No, I mean...”

“I know what you mean.” She broke his embrace and walked on, hugging herself though she was not cold. DeSilva caught up with her after a moment's pause.

“Look, I'm sorry, you brought it up, and...”

“No, I didn't. I said something so totally un-Silvan and you called me a whore.”

“Um... not exactly...”

They had rounded the corner of the terrace now and were coming up on another set of patio doors leading back into the house. The lights were on in the hall, revealing the main corridor servicing the bedroom suites. Sorcha went inside, still walking stiffly ahead of DeSilva.

“Hey.” He caught her arm and spun her around to face him. “Hey! I don't know how they taught you to walk in the harem, but don't shake your tail-feather at me!”

“I... I'm sorry!” She said it automatically, all her seeming of confidence and anger dissolving into submissive distress. She took DeSilva's hand in hers, almost sagging to her knees before she caught herself, staring at him wide-eyed. DeSilva drew her to him, and she clung to him, shaking.

“What did they do to me?” She mumbled into his shoulder. “I didn't understand what they were doing to me...”

“Who?” DeSilva asked, even as he led her to the door of the suite they had picked out during Lendar's guided tour.

“The Naril.” Sorcha trailed into the room after him, her gaze unfocussed, and sat on the bed.

“Well, they trained you to be a harem girl,” DeSilva said, relighting his pipe. He shut the door and stood near it, watching Sorcha with visible concern.

“I just thought they'd introduced me to sex...” her own voice came to her ears as if spoken by someone else; she felt eerily dissociated, watching herself and DeSilva like a disembodied observer.

“...but that's not all they did, they did something to me...”

“Tattooed you from neck to ankle?” DeSilva suggested.

Sorcha flinched but shook her head. “No, no, that's part of it, but it's not the whole, oh sweet Iaran what have they done?” Her gaze rose as if to seek DeSilva's eyes, but she stared through, back into her past. “The master...”

“Odacon?”

“Yes. He was more than a man, more than a wizard... the Naril worshipped him as a god. He did this to me.” In the next moment she was on her feet, fighting down panic. “I have to get home! I have to get back to Loth Kavnor, they'll send me to the church, they'll be able to help me!” She started for the door, but DeSilva barred her way.

“Are you mad? There's a hundred miles of wilderness between here the Loth!”

“I made it out of Heimjaro on my own!” She spat back. “And not by whoring myself across the continent either, thank you very much!”

“Dammit, I won't let you just dash out of here in the middle of the night!”

“You want to keep me like this,” Sorcha wailed, and took to beating her fists on his chest until he grabbed her by the wrists; she struggled, but he was too strong.

“You just don't want to lose your little sex slave!”

“Neither do you,” he snarled in her face. “Everything we've done, you asked me.”

She calmed suddenly; DeSilva relaxed enough to let her shake off his grip on her wrists.

“I need to get home.” There was a hint of long-absent Silvan steel in her voice. “I've sinned.”

“You what?” DeSilva boggled at her. “What have you sinned against? I told you; Iaran's dead, she was never a goddess anyway. The whole religion's just a pantomime to keep the poor in line.”

“My family isn't poor.”

“No, you're provincial, and to the palace that's the same thing.”

Sorcha absorbed this, thinking of the things her family had said before her ill-fated mission to the capitol. A den of sin, her grandmother had said, filth surrounding the pearl of Iaran's most holy temple. Sorcha glared at DeSilva. “You're lying.”

He groaned, clawing his fingers through his fringe and down his face. “No, I'm not, and why would you want me to be? If the religion's a lie, then nothing's a sin; there's no all-seeing bitch-queen judging your every thought and deed, no punishment in the next life, no reward for dying in battle.” Abruptly, he stood aside from the door. “But if you want to believe in some invisible tyrant, then by all means, strike out into the woods and pray she brings you safely through to whatever punishment you deserve.”

Sorcha walked stiffly to the door, reached her hand to open it.

“Sorcha...”

He rarely spoke her name; his tone, half question and half statement, stopped her on the threshold.

“Yes, Monte?”

“Come here.”

She came back to him, stood close, looking up at him. All her former distress had vanished; she was preternaturally calm.

“Take off your clothes.”

She held his gaze for several seconds, then said, “Yes, Monte.”

She stripped, stepping back from him and reaching deftly behind her back to peel off her top. Her breeches went next, sliding off her hips to fall around her ankles when she unfastened her belt.

“Get on the bed.”

She lay waiting while he undressed, moving only once when he said, “Cross your hands above your head.”

He moved between her thighs, settling a firm grip with one hand on her crossed wrists and looking deep into her eyes. “Do you want this?”

Sorcha arched her back and spread her legs, offering herself to him. “Yes, master.”

DeSilva shuddered and looked away. “Ach, no, that's just disturbing.”

“Please.” She undulated her body beneath him, but DeSilva remained unresponsive, still not meeting her gaze.

“What?” She asked. “Stop not looking at me like that!”

DeSilva had let his grip slide off her wrists. Sorcha took his face in her hands and made him look at her.

“Don't tell me you think you're taking advantage now?”

DeSilva rolled off her and sat on the edge of the bed, packing his pipe.

“When you do that slave routine, yes; it feels like I'm taking advantage.”

“You can't take what's freely given, even an advantage.” Sorcha tickled her fingers up DeSilva's spine.

“Is it though? You don't have to behave like that, Sorcha.”

“How should I behave?” She demanded. “Exactly as I was told my whole life that wanton girls who deserve to get whisked away to a harem behave? Oh my, what a coincidence!”

DeSilva turned to look at her askance, frowning at her sarcasm. “Are you feeling alright?”

“No, Monte,” Sorcha said sarcastically, “I want you to pin me down and ravish me and you're being suddenly coy about it.”

“I just... don't know what to say about what happened to you, in the harem and so on...”

“Have you never thought,” Sorcha said, “that I might have been raised in a miserable castle on a lonely crag by a bunch of puritans? Imagine my surprise to learn that the chief terror of the harem is this amazing thing called sex! Imagine my gratitude! Did none of that occur to you? Because it does to me, spectacularly, every time we're in bed together. And afterwards I can think for a while! Was I such an airhead when we first met? No.” She settled her hands on his shoulders, probing the firm muscles with her fingertips. “I'm not quite alright, I know that, but I can't get myself right if I can't think straight, Monte.” She drew his lips around to meet hers, running the tip of her tongue along one of his implanted fangs. “Help me to think straight.”

He turned towards her, gathering her in his arms for a kiss before moving his lips to her jaw and down her throat towards her breasts. Sorcha stopped him with a touch, drawing his eyes back up to hers.

“Bite me,” she said, indicating the side of her neck.

“You what now?”

“I want you to bite me.”

DeSilva shook his head, laughing, and returned his lips to her breasts. Sorcha draped her hands on the back of his neck, unable to press more for what she wanted. DeSilva was still chuckling as he kissed his way down her abdomen, his hands caressing her hips and thighs.

“Bite you... sure, I'll bite you, if that's what you want...”

Reaching her lap, he fastened a love bite on her inner thigh. Sorcha gasped and quivered, her fingers fluttering at DeSilva's hair and a spasm of ecstatic pain shuddering through her. Still gasping, her heart racing, she took his hand and pressed it hard against her side; when he bit her again, the sensation was intensified, pleasure and pain shivering from her hips up her spine and threatening to eclipse her mind entirely.

DeSilva let off his bite and came up, his hands on her sides as he shifted her into position, his lips kissing and nuzzling all the while at her breasts. When he entered her, he lunged forward with his whole body and bit her on the side of the neck. Sorcha screamed and blacked-out, awakening a moment later on a surge of orgasmic pleasure.

“Holy shit, are you alright?” DeSilva had paused in his lovemaking and was studying her now with concern. “I think you actually passed out for a second there...”

“I did.” Sorcha could barely speak. She rolled her hips lasciviously, urging him to continue.

“Was that another harem thing? Haroum's icy left nut, I had no idea...”

“Touch me here.” Sorcha guided his fingers with hers to touch her beneath the chin. Her body's reaction was instinctive, beyond her control; her back arched and she lifted her breasts, presenting them for his kiss. At the same time, her hips shifted and deep internal muscles engaged. DeSilva shuddered and gasped, almost losing all self-control.

Sorcha rolled her hips again and DeSilva made a choking sound, then bit her hard on the neck again. Sorcha lapsed unconscious on another inner surge, only to come awake again unknown minutes later, writhing in time with DeSilva's thrusts, his lips ravishing her breasts once more.