Idol of Blood (19 page)

Jak pressed the softness of the breasts from which he'd been banished against his bare skin, peeling him out of his morning pants, and stretched one leg across him.

“Tell me what to do,” said Geffn. “Tell me what not to do. I want to please you.”

“Do what you feel. Show me how you feel.”

Geffn reached up to Jak's mouth once more and pressed Jak against him as they kissed. It was enough to taste that mouth again, to feel the softness of the tongue, to be robbed of breath. Jak straddled him, and the wetness and heat of Jak's arousal pressed against his thigh. He let go of the pleasant mouth and put his hands beneath Jak's hips, raising them with Jak's knees braced beside him. There was more he wanted to taste.

Jak settled over him, filling Geffn's mouth with the musky sweetness of cunt, and he kissed it as he'd kissed the other lips. Jak moaned and pressed in deeper, making Geffn's mouth curve upward into Jak with an invisible smile. He held Jak to him with his hands against the hard buttocks, and Jak gave another stifled cry of pleasure, rocking forward against his mouth with feet in the air and only Geffn's hands for support. Geffn thrust his face upward to meet Jak's involuntary bobbing against his tongue, the delicate taste of Jak overwhelming, the opened core of Jak like drinkable silk.

Geffn moaned with unbridled enjoyment, and Jak gave a sudden jerk. He looked up the steep slope of Jak's body, eyes flitting over the hard peaks of the petite nipples and the glistening of sweat on the soft cups, and sought Jak's face with concern. Jak, with both hands grasping the dusty hair, was trembling in the blush of orgasm. He went at his attentions with greater enthusiasm, and Jak, eyes wide, brought down one arm and bit it on an unstoppable groan.

As the tight body went weak, Geffn wrapped his arms around the firm waist and slid Jak down to his chest.

“I've missed you too,” he said with a grin.

Jak's face was delicately pink, and Geffn realized he was seeing true embarrassment in it for the first time he could recall. He drew his friend down beside him and delivered a light kiss that made Jak whimper at the unexpected taste.

“Sooth,” he swore, pressing close. “Don't be embarrassed about feeling pleasure. Gods, I thought I'd never see it. You're beautiful.”

Fingers threading through Geffn's hair, Jak let out a quiet laugh. “Fucking sooth, Geff. If only I'd told you to do what you felt years ago.” When Geffn smiled, Jak stroked the long fingers along the side of his face. “I want to give you the same. If you want to—in the traditional way. I wouldn't mind having you inside me.”

Geffn laughed. “I'm afraid I don't need to. I was so excited when I saw you come…” He grinned and kissed Jak's fingers. “But thank you for offering. I'm touched.”

Jak lay back against the mattress, holding his hand. “I feel I've cheated you.”

“You're not serious?” He pulled the quilt over the two of them and discreetly wiped himself off. “Do you have any idea how wonderful that was for me? It's enough to last me the rest of my life.”

They lay beside one another, nothing more needing to be said. The sound of rain returned to their conscious awareness and they both glanced up at the window that looked onto the level ground above the mound. There was a dark line against the bottom of the glass, and Jak made a sharp sound. It was the darkness of saturated earth.

They woke the others, though most hadn't been asleep for a while and politely pretended not to have heard anything.

Rem inspected the ominous line of dark along the seal of the window while the rest waited anxiously in the doorway. He shook his head. “The ground can't hold this much water,” he said, his voice thin. “Gather up what you treasure. We'll have to move to the barn.”

Twenty-Two: Degeneration

Soth
AhlZel was alive. Having brought forth a populace of lifeless subjects from the depths of Shiva's divining pool, Ra had ordered them to rise and serve her, and they had obeyed. She had peopled her temple and her
soth
. Her power was limitless.

During the years of MeerRa's reign in Rhyman, he had diligently adhered to the precepts of his templars and would never have dared to indulge in luxuries simply because he was Meer. Every priceless ornament he'd ever worn had been worn out of sacred duty. And on those annual feast days on which he'd worn nothing but gold paint while he sat on his altar like a gilded idol listening to the wealthiest petitioners, he'd submitted to the ritual of being bathed and painted in the golden grease because it was his duty, not because it was his right.

But Ra was done with all that. She was a god, and she would do as she pleased.

Instead of reserving the ritual for a single day of the year, Ra decreed that she was to be painted in gold every morning with the rising of the sun over the crags of Munt Zelfaal, so that not even the radiance of daylight could rival her. A retinue of handmaidens attended her as was the custom of old, chosen from among
Soth
AhlZel's virgins.

Ra would tolerate nothing less than perfection, and her wrath when she was crossed was swift. When one of her handmaidens failed to please her, missing a stripe of painted flesh, Ra speared the girl's throat with nails sharpened to daggers, watching the blood gurgle out of her as though it were a mere curiosity. When another dropped a precious sapphire bead while braiding Ra's hair, Ra crushed the girl's throat in her fist. She had the slender corpses tossed from the city walls into the gorge for the ravens to feast upon. She was Ra the merciless.

Starlight illuminated her altar room, the sky above the open dome over Ra's renaissanced throne the one clear spot within the storm engendered by
Soth
AhlZel's raising. Rain was falling all around the temple, but none fell here. Had it not been daylight a moment ago? Disoriented, Ra tried to rise and tumbled from the seat, reeling against the altar and dropping onto all fours, where she huddled retching up nothing from the empty pit of her stomach. Her naked limbs were daubed and crusted with gold. How long had she been mad?

When the convulsing pith of her being yielded nothing, Ra sat back against her heels and found her golden torso smeared with blood, as though she were a sacrifice laid before the throne. Needles of pain in her abdomen suggested she might have been disemboweled, but there were no marks on the skin. Smoothing her hand downward, she saw it too was covered in blood, the fingernails, long and jagged, black with it. Moving her legs apart, she realized the blood flowed from between her thighs. Doubling over against a siege of cramps, she recalled that she'd been menstruating when she came here. But that didn't explain the condition of her hand.

Overwhelmed with a sudden flood of shame she couldn't place, Ra was seized with the conviction that what she must have done to herself could not have been enough.

Jak
, she thought fleetingly. She wanted Jak. With a searing swiftness, she was overcome with this need. Nothing would suffice but the sweet body of her love. She needed Jak's mouth, Jak's breasts, Jak's fingers, Jak's cunt. She slid from the altar and crawled on the floor, screaming Jak's name. She was naked, red and gold, like a violent, undulating snake.

Exhausted and without her voice, she found herself by Shiva's pool, gazing into it at the ghoul of her reflection. The memory of MeerRa similarly garbed in gold paint before a hall of shattered mirrors—the mocking, indestructible monster that was himself staring back at him—laughed up at her.

The pool was fathomless and colder than thought. She ought to summon courage and throw herself into it while there was time. She longed to. She feared the fading of this moment of reason.

But indigo-eyed Ahr, breathtaking and noble, appeared before her and blocked the way.
I will not have your death on my head twice
. She stood solemnly between Ra and peace. Ra was not to be allowed to die. This was Ahr's punishment of her.

“
Vetmaaimeerra
,” said a voice behind her, and Ra whirled on her knees to face the blue-skinned vassal that waited on her. She couldn't remember why she'd summoned him. A vein in her temple began to throb.

“Where are my virgins?” Ra demanded.

“
Meneut
,” said the servant, evoking the insufferably loyal Merit. “You have…dispensed with all who were in your employ.”

“Then fetch me more!” Ra ordered. “I wish to bathe.”

The fragrant bathwater rippled like liquid sunlight with the golden paint now floating on its surface. The waists and forearms of her maidservants were ringed with the glittering pigment as they rose at Ra's sides to lead her up the marble steps. With their pale blue skin, a minor consequence of Ra's method of necromancy, they were summer skies tinted with midmorning sun. Above Temple Ra, however, the sky did not mimic them. The great altar room—MeerShiva's—which Ra had left empty, was flooded with water, as were the streets of
Soth
AhlZel.

Ra grew irritated with the attentions of her handmaidens as they dried her, and she flung them away, not tempering her Meeric strength to their small bodies. One had fallen against the carved relief of a jade column, blood flowing in a steady stream against her pristine face. Another lay twisted and whimpering on crushed bones. Ra ignored them.

She strode through the temple in her naked glory, agitated and on edge. If this was the power Shiva had commanded, it was dull, and Ra was furious with its banality. Why should she tolerate such dullness and ceremony? This city, these puppets, were hers. She clapped her hands, and her Merit-like servant came.

“Today is a feast day,” Ra announced. “All feasts will now be in honor of me. There will be no
vetmas
.” She paused as a delicious thought came over her. “Take the virgins you brought me and deliver them to my altar. See that my subjects are assembled to witness their sacrifice. If I am pleased with AhlZel's offerings, there will be no need for more until I decree it.”

Ra's citizens came, trembling before her, to worship in honor of her feast day. They filled the court and courtyard—resplendently dressed by the whims of her making—wet, glistening jewels. Before releasing her handmaidens to their sacrifice, Ra had them paint her once more in gold. Delicate, quavering hands stroked her skin, dipped in the golden grease, painting her with fear and reverence in the knowledge that they were soon to be her sacrificial offerings.

When they'd finished, Ra commanded a quartet of brawny young slaves to carry her in an upright litter to her throne above the altar, where the virgins were presented before her.

“Please me with your sacrifice,” she commanded them.

The templar priests lifted the first of the virgins and stretched her across the altar at Ra's golden feet. Blue Merit held up the ceremonial dagger for Ra's inspection. She nodded and waved her hand impatiently at one of the templars. Wrapping his hands around the hilt without hesitation, the templar plunged the blade into the pale blue breast.

A fountain of blood sprayed up with the child's scream, its tint also darkly blue instead of red. Ra leapt from the throne at the gushing sight of it and crouched over the warm body to drink, her mouth pressed into the torn hole of the dying girl's chest, ripping at the flesh with her teeth. The body gave a final convulsion. Ra raised her head with a screech of triumph, and the blood dripped over her chin, now red where it had touched her vitality. “Another,” she demanded. “Bring me more!”

She gorged herself on the tender sacrifices, seven virgins in all, taking out the still-beating heart from the budding chest of the last and consuming it. This was what Meerhood was meant to be. All who came before her had been fools.
Soth
AhlZel would only be the first, her mountain throne, but all the world would eventually bow down to her, existing solely for her, for her appetites, for her indulgence. “
Vet
ma
aimeerra!
” she laughed. “
Vet
ma
!
”

Pearl avoided mirrors, trying desperately to shut out the horrifying images of MeerRa's reign of terror over the newly renaissanced
Soth
AhlZel. He could refuse to see, but he couldn't refuse to hear. His head was full of shrieks and wailing, and Ra's laughter that sounded nothing like the Ra he'd known. Whatever had befallen her, it had turned her into someone he couldn't recognize. When he wasn't sitting for his petitioners or conjuring their vetmas, he huddled in his bed, rocking, and sucking his fist as he'd done when he lived in Nesre's box.

But worse than the visions of Ra was the feeling of the poison that flowed into him through his Meeric connection. He couldn't escape it. Dark impulses in the mist of Meeric creation were becoming his own. He had visions of eviscerating Pike. Though he might have wished for the freedom to do Pike harm in order to be rid of him, the violence of these visions made him physically ill. He closed his eyes and felt Pike's warm blood running from his mouth after he'd torn out the Meerhunter's throat while the man was still alive.

He couldn't, of course, do any of these things. He and Pike were locked together, unable to harm one another because of Pearl's own words. But he'd spoken no such vow not to harm Ume.

Pearl tried to stay away from her, submitting to her ministrations because Pike wished it, but trying to avoid any further contact. She tried at first to speak to him, her kindness unbearable, because even as he craved the kinship he felt through her connection to Alya, every kind word and gentle look evoked an image of him stabbing or strangling her.

He didn't want to. He liked Ume, and he wanted her to like him, but his blood was treacherous. It taunted him:
Speak a word and break her neck. What is she to the Meer? Nothing but ordinary.
Pearl wanted to argue with his blood, but he didn't dare open his mouth for fear of what might escape it.