Darkness Risen (The Ava'Lonan Herstories Book 4) (29 page)

“We must protect you,” Eyaba sul Madib protested.

“If we want to know the Ottanu’s ultimate plan, my
protection cannot be perfect,” Soku averred. “Don’t worry. I have plans to
guarantee my safety.”

“What do you want of us?” Peindawa sul Shundi asked.

“We have the sociopolitical protection that was the
primary function of our Yakan’tsu. But now we must also prepare to fill our
alternate purpose. Conflict is coming, Sisters, strife from within and possibly
from without. We must be ready to support the Heir to the High Throne, to lend
her aid, to open our Ways at her need. We must support her claim to the High
Throne, should it come to that, and part of the wealth and power that we will
wield must be bent to that purpose. So Trade well and successfully, my Sisters,
and be ever vigilant.”

There were solemn nods all around. Soku waited a
small sils, and the other Queens, aware that she was not quite done, looked to
her.

“There is one more thing,” she said quietly. “A
thing the populace must not know right away. Our enemies have - a
counter
- to av’rita.”

“A counter?” Zydoba asked, and the hushed edge to
her voice told of incredulity, and a thousand other, screaming emotions. “You
mean, a way to defeat av’rita? Then - then what are we to do? All of our
security is founded on the strength of av’rita!”

“We will have to find a new strength,” Soku
answered.

the light
turned...

Jahun’no finally caught up with the High Family ol’bey’woman,
D’rad’ni in her suite of lains. He immediately put up a privacy screen, and at
her enquiring face, clenched his jaw.

“I assume that you have examined the Heir,” he said.

“Yes. She is recovering well.” The ol’bey’woman did
not mention the Jur’Av’chi. If that was what the warru ol’bey wanted to
discuss, he would have to do so with the High Queen.

“There is something else you should know,” he said,
and the tiniest hint of urgency made D’rad’ni come alert. But then, having
begun the conversation, he seemed reluctant to disclose his findings. He sat
gazing at the backs of his hands, where the skin was a bit lighter than the
rest of him. Finally he looked up.

“The Heir wielded ama’av’rita,” he said. “She used
it to call lightning from the very air.”

D’rad’ni jumped to her feet. “She’s dying, then!”
she cried, running to grab her satchel of implements.

“She is not.” His calm voice and a hand on her arm
stopped her in her tracks. “I examined her just after it happened. You know she
was poisoned. The - the poison, I believe, has - changed her somehow. Made her
able to use a forbidden form of av’rita.” He related all that had passed when
the army of the enemy had surrounded them.

D’rad’ni sat back down. She was silent for a long
time.

“We must consult with the Gadayi,” she said.

CHAPTER
XV

in a fervor of ritious joy, the light
turned...

Gavaron
was in as full command of his power as he could be in the land of light, in
command of the gift from his father’s blood and family. He had learned much
about the grounds of the estates that held him and his fellow and sister
captives, even though Fekniri had blind-folded him for their rides each turn -
his lor’rita let him see without his eyes. He had, over the time that he had
been here, fine-tuned his di’rito’ka and lor’rito’ka. He knew the layout of the
compound he was kept in, and the system of guards securing the route he planned
to use in his escape. He had his liberation and the liberation of those around
him worked out to the gran. Only one last thing needed doing. He had to kill
Varo.

Varo came awake. It was just before the second moon
rise, Loriku a silver slice on the horizon. He knew Fekniri was going to come
for him this eve - she had had that hungry look all through the turn. He
shuddered at the thought of pleasing her - he could not endure much more.

 Something stirred in the back of Varo’s mind, like
a thought trying to surface. Then he heard a voice almost like his own, but
infinitely colder, ask,
Have you enjoyed this life?

No
, he answered himself.
No.

And before he could form another thought, cold,
steel-laced fingers wrapped around his mind. He screamed, but whatever had him
had taken control of his body away - almost as if the body had belonged to the
thing gripping him and he had just been borrowing it. The exchange of control
had been so smooth that he had not even felt it.

Please
, he pleaded.
Please, no!

You have served your purpose
, the other said,
squeezing, and Varo screamed again, fighting the force that was cutting into
his psyche. He sensed the steel-tipped fingers hover above him... searing
pain... darkness.

Gavaron packed away the dead and shredded
psyche-puppet that had been Varo.

the light
turned...

The Stable’Marm, Fekniri, led him to their secret
place beneath skies that threatened rain. She had put the muffles on his hoofs,
not knowing he could move as silent as a shadow when he wanted to. They came to
the deep cave mouth and entered, followed it to the cave decorated as a lavish
sleeping lain.

She hooked up his choke chain as she usually did.
His wrists were secured in front so that he could embrace her - she really
liked that. But she chained him within reaching distance of the unoccupied
pallet. The chains gave him the slack to lie down on his lower belly.

After everything was secure, she turned and smiled
at him, slowly loosening the straps of her training outfit.

“I want you to do something special for me this eve,
loverling,” she purred, peeling the tight leather off of her upper body. She
came forward and he automatically kissed her, not even having to think of his
hate for her to simulate the passion she desired.

“What is that, Mistress?” he asked, because she
expected him to ask. She grinned impishly and climbed onto the half raised
pallet, bent over and wagged her hips, looking at him through half-closed eyes.

“I am not allowed to make you separate - so I want
you to make love to me - with your mouth.” She stroked her riding crop along
her inner thigh.

Gavaron cringed inside. So far, he had been able to
avoid that, though she had tried to get him to do that once before. When he had
refused that first time, she had whipped his hide bloody, then healed him, then
whipped him again, her fury had been so great.

“Mistress, I-” he began, but the rest was cut off as
she jumped off the pallet and jerked on the choke chain. He grabbed at it as it
cut into his neck and cut off his breath.

“You dare!” she yelled, sliding off the pallet and
hauling on the chain with all her strength. “You dare to refuse me again?!
Insolent, stupid animal! How dare you?!”

He managed to dig his fingers under the
leather-wrapped links and he pulled the power of Loro into them, corroding them
from the inside out.

“P-please, Mistress!” he gurgled out, fighting to
get the words around the chain. “G-give me - an-another ch-ch-chance!” He grit
his teeth and pretended to continue to strangle as the chain parted under his
hands and went slack. He held it still, so that she would feel tension as she
yanked on it.

Fekniri came right up to his face and slapped him as
hard as she could. He was hard-pressed to keep a hold of the disintegrating
chain.

“Don’t you
ever
refuse me anything again!”
she hissed at him, hanging onto the chain as if she wished to break his neck.
“I may not be able to kill you, but I can make your life an everlasting eve-mare!
I can order a choke chain made of razor links that will leave the loveliest
decorations upon your neck, and a velvet covered whip that won’t mark your
hide, but will make every step you take a study in torment! Don’t test me, ‘yori’kin,
you want to remain in my favor, trust me!”

He nodded frantically, holding his breath and
willing his face to turn red and the veins to pop out. Finally she relaxed her
hold on the chain and he gasped for air, dropping to his knees. She turned
away, dropping the slack of the chain altogether, and resumed her former
position on the bed, but with her back to him. She knelt upon the edge, and
worked at rest of the snaps to her costume.

“Now come here and serve me properly, royal mount.
You will have to cool my temper to get me back to the state of mind where you
can pleasure me.”

Gavaron picked himself up off the ground. His neck
hurt only a little, since he had been able to break the chain. But this eve was
the last eve he would feel its presence upon him. He dropped the remains of it
carefully to the ground, and moved closer to the pallet than his chains would
have allowed, breathing hard.

Foolish to trust the fetters on him! She had learned
nothing from his tack eroding or the chains breaking at various times. The
tethers on his mind had been stronger - but not strong enough. She was, he had
realized some time ago, in love with him. And she probably believed that he, in
some small measure, loved her. And perhaps, in some small twisted way, he did,
out of pity, which made what he was about to do at once all the harder and all
the more necessary.

He lifted his arms and put them about her, a little
awkward because his wrists were still bound. He pulled her back in his embrace,
kissing her neck, her shoulders, her back, really meaning it this once, for it
would be the last time. He used the power of Dio, putting it into his kisses so
that they were ten times more erotically stimulating than they ever were
before. She gasped and shuddered with each one - he could feel all her pleasure
points, and he exploited them mercilessly, stimulating her nerve-endings with
his di’rita so that each kiss sent her into a paroxysm of pleasure. She was so
overwhelmed that she did not even notice when his hands came apart to hold her
fully, or bend her over so that he could kiss down her spine. All she could do
was gasp in time to his rhythm, moan to his guiding touch, move to the mounting
melody of delectation he wrought within her. He turned her around to kiss her
mouth, and she gave herself up to him, not cognizant that the choke chain was
gone as she wrapped her arms around his neck. She melted against him, in
ecstasy, as he peeled away the bottom half of her outfit and ran his hands over
her body. He kissed her throat, her sternum, her breasts, raising her to his
mouth, then finally lay her back, as though he were about to fulfill her
command. And when he kissed her belly, he made certain muscles within her
contract so that she thrashed in orgasm, crying out to the thick walls of the
cave.

“Have you ever encountered anyone with the di’rito’ka
to match your av’rito’ka?” he moved back up and murmured to her. But she could
not hear over the roaring thunder of pleasure filling her, nor could she have
answered around the gasps and cries of voluptuous rapture. “Or the lor’rito’ka
to overshadow your av’rito’ka? Do you know what someone with that kind of power
can do to you?”

She moaned, and perhaps she heard him, but he kept
the pleasurable contractions coming, making them stronger gran by gran, so that
soon they straddled the border between pleasure and pain. He turned her over
again and held her down by the neck, making the contractions spread to her
other muscles; she began to twitch and jerk beneath his hands and her cries
changed in nature and in volume, but were muffled by the pillows and the
material of the pallet.

“Fekniri, you enjoyed the pain you inflicted upon
me. Believe me when I say that I take no joy in what I inflict upon you.” He
stepped back as her thrashing grew more violent, and her cries cut off as the
muscles in her neck became swollen. Soon each thrash lifted her almost
completely off the pallet. Soon each thrash was accompanied by the snapping of
bone. Soon each thrash flipped her about like a bone-less doll. And still they
continued, until she was a pulverized, shapeless sack. Then they became weaker
and weaker. After a san’chron she lay still, no longer recognizable as even a
thing that once lived. Blood oozed from various places, though whether they
were joints or not was hard to tell. Her head was only identifiable by the mass
of tangled, bloody guinne.

Gavaron stared at the remains. Then he took his armor
down and strapped it on deliberately, keeping his eyes on the dead Train’Marm.
When he had slid the last of his weapons into place, he lifted the dead thing
as tenderly as if she were still alive and asleep, carried her back to the
Stables.

The other inhabitants woke up at the ringing sound
of the clopping of his hoofs. The sound should have been muffled but each
hoof-step rang true, and each head turned as much as possible to observe this
new development. They watched from the corners of their eyes as he carried the
former Stable’Marm. He gently tied one of the choke chains in the middle corral
around what might have once been her neck. Then he hoisteds her up for all to
see. The shapeless mass swung slowly from side to side. He stood watching it,
his face still, and all the others watched him. The body swung like a pendulum.
He watched it, following it with his eyes, one muscle in his jaw twitching as
she might have twitched in her death-throws. For ten ten-grans he watched and
the others watched. Then his face contorted and he reared up and spun,
transferring all the energy of his initial movement to his back hoofs, striking
the body with all his might. It flew apart with a spray of blood and gristle
and bone fragments. He trumpeted a purely equine scream of fury, rearing up
again, an apparition covered in blood and Cribeau scales, his gauntleted fists
raised to the cloud-pregnant skies. Then he was rampaging around, kicking in
stall-doors, ripping off harnesses and tethers, which rotted at his touch. The
freed mounts, Katari all, milled around at first, confused, having been captive
so long that the will to do anything on their own had left them, all except Tema
and those he had been able to contact beforehand. He trumpeted again, Stallyn
to this meekened Herd, his anger and fury drawing them to him instinctively. He
led them to the other parts of the menagerie, where Fedoa and Cribeau lived in
cages with thick glassine walls, and Rhundi flapped flightlessly in gold cages
suspended. Even lor’ugawu skulked in their own little enclosures, and there
were giant Uj’Urja, wilting and panting in the un-accustomed warmth. There were
even Minoa in huge glass enclosures full of water.

Gavaron trumpeted a challenge and threw his ‘tunned
voice to all the captives, pulling away the last of the dampening cages on
their minds and av’rita.

*:Hear me! I will free you, all of you! Those of you
who would fight, come to me! Those who would not, flee, to freedom!:*

He went to each glass wall, touched it, then kicked
it with his back hoofs. They shattered, but he toughened his hide and suffered
only minor scratches. The Katari lowered the cages and he touched them, and,
warning each captive to stay to one side, kicked at the other, making the cages
shriek open.

He freed the sophants first, the pre-Av’Touched
second. Some fled, but most stayed with him, helping him free all the creatures
in the place.