The Seer King: Book One of the Seer King Trilogy (62 page)

“They have sworn their love and devotion, and vow there shall be no others to come between them. They wish to join their lives together.…”

• • •

If I hadn’t had exact instructions, I would have missed the turnoff from the main road. The rain came in drifting sheets as the white horse pulled our small carriage up the lane, winding through the thick forest It was not yet the Tune of Change, but the leaves around us had begun to change to reds, bronzes, yellows.

The lane ended in a clearing, with a great tree in its center whose branches were a perfect umbrella.

The cottage sat to one side, almost buried in the red ivy that curled around it. It was small, built of multishaded woods, and cleverly crafted, all cornes rounded and curved, so it was almost like a small, furry animal’s burrow.

I pulled the horse up, stepped out, and handed Marán down.

A man in Lancers’ uniform appeared from nowhere and, without speaking, led the horse and carriage away. I barely noticed, having eyes only for Marán.

I took her hand, and we walked to the door, and pulled the latchstring.

The door swung open, and we entered. It was early afternoon, but the rain had made it dark enough for the two lamps to give welcome light, and the crackling fire warmth.

I do not know where Tenedos found this marvelous place, but we fell in love with it. There were only four rooms: this living room, a loft bedroom above it, a small kitchen, and, behind it, a very large bathroom, built over a rocky pool heated by unseen springs. But neither one of us noted these details.

We had but three days, but now I felt I had all the time in the world.

I lifted my helmet off, and cast it into a corner. Marán, her eyes solemn, never leaving mine, came close, and her fingers slowly unbuttoned my tunic, and I slid out of it, and pulled off my shirt.

There was a chair behind me, and I fell back into it. She pulled my boots off, then I stood as she unbuttoned my trousers and I stepped out of them.

Marán turned her back, and my fingers moved down the long line of buttons of her gown, and it fell in a pool about her feet. All she wore was a transparent white lace undergarment that began between her legs, ran vertically in the rear until it reached the base of her spine, then Y-ed out to reach over her shoulders and down to her sex, barely widening enough to conceal her nipples.

I ran a fingernail down the smoothness of her stomach, and she shuddered, her eyes closing.

I lifted her in my arms, and laid her down on the carpet, barely noticing another marvel, that it was as warm and soft as a comforter.

I kissed her eyelids, the edges of her lips, caressed the inside of her mouth with my tongue, the rims of her ears, her neck, slipped the straps of her undergarment, and teased her nipples with my teeth.

She lay with her hands together, above her head, as I moved my lips down over her stomach. Her hips lifted and I slipped the undergarment away. Her knees lifted and spread as I slipped between them, lips moving on her shaven satin, tongue sliding inside her, warmth meeting warmth.

“Oh, Damastes,” she whispered. “Oh, my husband. Now we are one.”

I rose to my knees, and guided my cock into her, measuring its length within her as her legs embraced me, her nails rasping on the rug above her head as we moved in the rhythms of love, little heeding the storm roaring outside.

• • •

“How does it feel to be doing this legitimately?” I asked.

“You know,” Marán said, and I saw in the flickering firelight that her expression was quite serious, “I never felt what we were doing was wrong.

“I just wish I’d met you when I was seventeen.”

“Now what would the chances have been of me, a country legate of what, twenty, being able to woo the beautiful, virginal daughter of one of the richest families of Numantia? I would have been horsewhipped off your estates by one or maybe all of your brothers. Things like that happen only in the romances.”

“I wonder,” she said. “I’ll always wonder.”

• • •

“Do you know when I first fell in love with you?” Marán asked. We lay side by side.

“The first time I held your hand, and lifted my eyebrows?”

“Stop being lascivious! It was when Hernad … when a certain person who shall never be named told you that ‘the little woman knows how to please,’ the very first night we met, and the way you looked at him. I’d never seen such contempt before. Do you remember?”

“I do. But I thought I kept better control of my features.”

“No, my Damastes. I fear you can be read like a book, at least by me. For instance, I can tell what you are thinking at this very moment.”

“That’s hardly much of a challenge,” I said. “You can
feel
what I’m thinking, too.” I lifted her thigh over mine, then came to my knees, pulling her legs over my thighs until her sex was close against me and I was fully inside her. She locked her legs around my back, and pulled herself back and forth, each time almost letting me come free. I slipped my thumb down, moving it gently across her clitoris, and her back arched as she moaned, then screamed aloud as her body spasmed.

I felt my own throbbing build, pulled out of her, and moved up over her, rubbing my cock between her breasts and then I came, gasping as I spattered across her body.

Marán smiled up at me, breath still coming hard, and began rubbing my semen over her nipples and breasts.

“A lotion to keep you forever mine,” she murmured, and liked her finger.

• • •

“What do you want your son to be named?”

“I didn’t know it was going to be a son. Or did you visit another mage without telling me?”

“I just know it will be a boy.”

“Thank you, my wizardess. We can name him after your father.”

“No.”

“All right, then
my
father.”

“Can’t we give him a fresh beginning?”

“Marán, isn’t this a little …” I stopped myself. “Very well. Let’s name him Laish. That seems to be a very lucky name these days.”

She considered.

“Yes,” she said, finally. “Yes. That is a very good name.”

She was lying on her stomach, staring at the dying embers of the fire. It must have not been far from dawn. I was lying on one elbow beside her, admiring the way the fire outlined her sleekness.

She got up and went into the bathroom. I heard her rummaging around in one of her cases, then she returned and lay back down.

“Can I ask you something?”

“I never knew you had to answer all these questions on your wedding night.”

“You don’t,” she said, and her tone was strange. “Not if you’re unlucky.”

I grimaced, ashamed I’d accidentally led the conversation onto uncomfortable ground.

“You can ask anything, you can tell anything,” I said, and hugged her around the hips.

“Once, when we were on a picnic, you started to do something, and I stopped you from going any further. Do you remember?”

Suddenly I did, and said so.

“Damastes … make love to me again. Please. Make love to me … that way.”

I felt a chill. I was wondering what I should say, and she turned her head and looked at me.

“Please, my darling?” There was urgency in her tone. I nodded. She gave me what was in her hand, and I saw it was a tube of unguent.

I caressed her buttocks, and moved my finger between them, and she flinched.

“Marán,” I whispered. “I don’t think this is right. I don’t want to hurt you.” My cock was limp against my thighs.

“You
must
… and I know you’ll never hurt me. Please. This is important.”

I began caressing her back, then moved my hand between her legs, stroking her sex, feeling the wetness I’d left from our lovemaking. After a time, her breathing became faster, became panting. I responded, growing hard once more. I lifted her hips and slid a pillow under them, then moved her thighs apart and knelt over her. I slid gently into her.

She gasped. “Not there, I meant — ”

“Hush!”

I moved slowly, long regular strokes, and her gasps became moans, her hands digging at the carpet. Now I put unguent on my finger, and put it in her, moving it in a circle, feeling my cock inside her body as it moved and my finger caressed. She cried out in pleasure, and I put another oiled finger beside the first, both moving, moving.

“Oh yes, oh now, oh Damastes, I’m ready,” and I felt her pulse back and forth around my fingers.

“Ready for what?”

“Oh please, fuck me, oh fuck me where I want it, where I told you to, please, do it, do it back there, oh please, put it in me, I can’t stand it any longer,” and I pulled my cock free, touched her open ring with its head and pushed, and she screamed and bucked, ramming her buttocks hard against my thighs, swallowing me in her, her hands clawing at mine as I supported myself on them. I pulled back until I was almost free, then buried myself in her as she writhed in passion, no more than a dozen times and then I, too, shouted aloud as we came together and collapsed.

We may have laid like that for minutes, or forever. I don’t know.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“I love you.”

“Thank you. It’s over now.”

I said nothing.

“I like feeling you … back there. We can do that again.”

But we never did.

• • •

Three days … I think we ate a day or so, slept every now and then, and spent even more time in the hot spring. But mostly we loved, loved and laughed. Blood and winter lay just ahead, but our love made a strong fortress, and kept the wolves of doom away.

I remember those three days as one long orgasm, of gasping lust and slow, serious, rolling joy, and wondered if I would ever be as happy again.

Then it came to an end.

Marán went back to Nicias.

And I went back to war.

• • •

There weren’t enough hours, there weren’t enough days, for my men to be ready for battle in time. We drilled, trained, cursed, and drilled once more.

I’m sure no soldier felt anything but hatred for his warrants, they for my officers and my officers for me, but there would be no more disasters like the Imru River if I had anything to do with the matter.

Little by little, the new recruits were becoming soldiers, although they were hardly as good as my Lancers. But exercises can only do so much — the final test of a soldier is in blood.

We developed new tactics, officers learning as much as the new men. Of course the most serious grumbling was done by the old-timers, who’d “never seen an army run this way.” The novices knew no better, and so found these new ideas no more or less perplexing than anything else.

Possibly the biggest change came from Tenedos himself. He’d vowed magic was as important a piece of the passage of arms as anything else, which Chardin Sher’s cadre of wizards had proven. Now it would be our turn. He had recruiters out throughout Numantia, seeking out magi who wished to serve their country, and day by day they trickled into camp and were slowly, reluctantly, absorbed into the army. If we’d had more time, and if there weren’t the charred corpses at the Imru River, it might have been amusing, to see all these sages, experienced with demons and spells, but having no more idea whether they should salute a private or a general than how to wind a crossbow. But they learned, and we learned the new tactics of sorcery Tenedos proposed to employ.

When the monsoon grew too fierce we moved under canvas, great umbrellas the men could crowd into and watch tiny battles being laid out on sand-tables. Then, when the storm abated slightly, they went into the field, to practice.

The Time of Rains came to an end, and the Time of Change began, and we were still not ready.

General-Seer Tenedos announced we’d march against Kallio in two weeks.

• • •

One of Laish Tenedos’s most famous sayings, made years later when he was emperor, was “I don’t care how skilled a soldier is. Is he
lucky
?”

He meant more than just being able to survive a battle unwounded — Myrus Le Balafre, for instance, rarely left the most minor engagement without some injury. He meant battle-luck, primarily, in which a warrior is able to be in exactly the right place — for him — and the wrong place — for his enemy — without ever planning the maneuver.

Tenedos said once I was the luckiest of all his tribunes. Perhaps so, although I wonder now. Perhaps I am the unluckiest, since I am the last survivor of those splendid, bloody days. But regardless of today, I have had much luck, in small things as well as great.

One such was what I chose to wear the morning I was summoned to the seer-general’s tent. One of the hundreds of wedding presents I’d received was a handmade knife from General Yonge. Where, in this wilderness, he’d found a knifemaker of such great skill, I didn’t know. But it was a beautiful blade of ondanique steel, about eight inches long, slightly curved, single-edged with its upper edge sharpened. Its hilt and pointed pommel were of worked silver, and its grip a wonderful mosaic of multicolored woods. Its sheath and belt were of patterned leather and silver as well. I buckled it about my waist as I left my tent, slinging my sword in a baldric over my shoulder.

It was blowing cold, but the army was alive with movement as the constant drills continued. I was just one more horseman, anonymous under a cloak, and no one paid me the slightest attention.

I reached Tenedos’s tent, the guards recognized me, saluted, stepped back, and I tapped on the tent pole.

“Enter,” Tenedos said, and I obeyed.

“I have a letter for you,” he said, and for an instant I felt my stomach crawl — something had happened to Marán. “It was brought to the border under white flag yesterday morning. The outer envelope was addressed to me, with a note asking the inner one be given to you.” He handed it over. It was addressed: To the Cimabuan named Damastes who styles himself a General.

It took a moment to recognize the handwriting, then I knew it to be Elias Malebranche. What the devils could the Kallian want with me? I tore it open, and took out the single page within. It was thick, heavy, and felt strange to the touch, like oilskin. I unfolded it and began reading: