Sevin: Lords of Satyr (22 page)

Portone.
The word floated into his head as if on an ocean wave. He tasted it, rolled it around in his mouth. Then he spoke its meaning, softly so his brothers didn’t hear. “Gate.”

Hardly knowing what he was doing, he stepped over the low wall, wading closer to the fountain itself. Reaching out, he pressed his hand there upon its center. Stone seemed to liquefy under his touch.

He had to go.

There was something waiting for him on the other side of this gurgling fountain.

Shouts came from behind him. His brothers.

“Luc! No! Stop! What the—?”

But he was already moving forward. As if pulled by some magnet, he stepped forward into stone that would allow him, and only him, to pass through it.

It was so easy for him, this magical reshaping of molecules. This instantaneous travel that was impossible for others.

He would venture on, discover where the magic led. If it killed him, so be it. He was already dead inside.

Within seconds he was interred within the fountain, and then he found himself passing through and beyond it.

Transported.

Gone.

LUCIEN

Enclave a Roma in ElseWorld

T
hough it was his fondest wish, Lord Lucien Satyr did not die as a consequence of thrusting himself through the gate within the fountain. Instead, on its other side, he emerged into another world and was cast into sleep, his mind void of dreams.

In passing from one world to another, his entire physical being was transformed. Flesh, heart, and soul hardened and became stone. He felt nothing. And in this, at least, he found the solace he’d longed for.

And yet all was not as he wished, for he only lay dormant in this state. He was close, so tantalizingly close to the ultimate release that death would bring. A release he would have craved if he could have mustered the energy to care.

Then one day, something came to tease at his mind. A female.

On all too rare occasions—ceremonial ones he sensed—this special female drew near. Near enough that her scent threatened to fill his hardened lungs like new spring breath. And then his soul would stir in his breast and fevered dreams would pulse at his mind. But when she moved away, his mind, heart, and body quieted again.

He, a man who’d eschewed the touch of all others, began to hunger for
her
touch. A touch that never came.
Why this sudden terrible need?
he silently railed. Surely this body of his had been cruelly handled enough in his youth and his mind abused sufficiently by the twisted appetites of his enemies!

Time began and ended, ended and began, becoming a fluid thing. And through it all, he waited. This female was wary, and never ventured near enough for stone and flesh to meet.

It was for the best. For she was not yet ready for him. Nor was he ready for her.

But the day eventually came when the gods decreed it was time. A time for healing. For reawakening. A time for him to find and know love. At last.

Enclave a Roma in ElseWorld

W
ith determined steps of her sturdy half-boots, Natalia threaded her way through tufted hillocks of wildflowers. Following the well-worn familiar path, she moved ever upward toward her forbidden goal.

The evening breeze pulled at the severe plait of her chestnut hair, tugging wayward strands from it and brushing them across her pale cheek. She had left the institute in a rush and hadn’t yet changed from the uniform that marked her as an instructor there. Now burrs tore at her long, coarsely woven skirt as she went higher and higher up the moonlit hillside, away from the complex of academic buildings far below in the valley.

Somewhere in the distance above her, three female scholars—one of them her younger sister, Sophie—had a ten-minute head start on her. Foolish girls bent on mischief! But they were only eighteen, an age for foolishness.

Natalia was a decade older and had long since put such acts of rebellion behind her. It had been necessary in order to protect her sister after their mother had died a dozen years ago.

She heard muted voices just ahead. The trio of girls didn’t know she was behind them, but she didn’t dare call out for fear of waking the village below. Though she dreaded the prospect of venturing farther, she trudged on, determined to prevent a disaster in the making. Her gaze pierced the velvet twilight, searching. She could see the peaked roofline of the sacred temple at the crest of the hill now.

She could not yet see
him
. But soon.

Far below them, the institute’s dormitory was in complete darkness. All the other students, instructors, and researchers would be in their bunks by now. It was against community law for females, both teacher and student, to leave the school after curfew. Yet here they were. Their mutual transgression tonight would be harshly punished if they were caught.

Sophie’s voice floated back to her. “
Shh
. I hear someone.”

Natalia lifted the hem of her skirts and loped upward. Just over the rise, her worried brown eyes caught her sister’s hard green ones.

“Oh, it’s only you.” Sophie’s lip curled, then she turned and continued on her way toward the temple. “Don’t try to stop us,” she threw back over her shoulder.

The other two girls, Leona and Rae, looked less sure upon seeing Natalia. She was an instructor, after all. But when she didn’t make any dire pronouncements or expel them all on the spot, they seemed to realize they were safe and followed her sister. Natalia had a soft spot in her heart for all the girls at the institute. It was a fatal weakness that had kept her from rising from the pool of instructors to the more exalted position of healer, despite the fact that she was far more talented in the healing arts than others who had advanced beyond her.

“Of course I’m here to stop you. This excursion is a mistake,” Natalia replied in a voice meant to carry just far enough. “Your medicinal herbals tests are tomorrow. All of you should be studying, or sleeping in preparation.”

“What does it matter?” Sophie shouted.

“Quiet!” Leona hissed in wide-eyed alarm. “You’re going to wake the entire institute!”

Reaching her sister’s side at last, Natalia grabbed her arm. “Come back down the hillside. All of you. I’ll use my master key to let us in the side entrance of the dormitory. No one need learn of this foolhardy errand.”

Sophie yanked away and continued on her chosen path. “You go back. We didn’t invite you here. But I took a dare. I’ll follow through.”

Natalia wanted to slap her, and would have if she’d believed it would’ve done any good. She’d been hard pressed to watch over her younger sister all these years since their mother’s death from the Sickness. Since then, she’d made a good life for the two of them, the best she could. Yet Sophie always seemed to want more. It hadn’t helped that the girl was a beauty. Everyone had spoiled her, and she’d grown stubborn and willful.

Reluctantly, Natalia silenced her protests, hoisted her skirts, and trudged after her sister and her two schoolmates. “Then hurry up about whatever you’ve planned so we can return home. Honestly, I don’t understand you girls’ fascination with the temple.”

Sophie’s soft laugh floated down the hill to her on the breeze. “It’s not the temple that draws us. And you know it.”

Yes, she knew. Every female in ElseWorld with a pulse knew exactly what drew them here. It was
him.
The infamous statue.

A bramble bush caught her, and Natalia bent to untangle her lifechain from it. The chain, which dangled from the belt at her waist, held twenty-eight beads now. She’d received the last one from the priests only this morning, on this birthday that marked a lowering of her worth in the eyes of the community. When she straightened again, she saw Rae’s pitying glance.

A decade past her prime, Natalia was still husbandless, childless, bookish, and plain. It was an unforgiveable combination of attributes for a female in their village.

Since she had failed to conceive children during her ten years in the breeding program and failed to choose her own husband, she was to be herded in a new direction tomorrow. A brilliant scholar and healer, she was nevertheless now considered useless for little else but an arranged marriage.

A husband would be chosen for her in the afternoon tomorrow, toward the end of the annual festival. And tomorrow night—her wedding night—her lifechain would be forever removed by him. Thereafter, he would wear it around his throat to show his ownership of her. She would become his possession, bought and paid for.

Her lot was to become a convenience to him. A vessel in which he might relieve his lust when the mood moved him. A servant to keep his house. There would be no question of love between them. This she understood and accepted. But what if he refused to allow her to continue her work at the healing center? Or as a teacher at the institute? Her heart squeezed painfully at the thought. Her work in the healing arts was so precious to her.

She heard the girls’ voices up ahead. They must have reached the temple. Lifting her eyes, Natalia saw it just ahead. Saw
him
. Quickly, she averted her gaze.

But
his
image was burned in her mind’s eye.

He lay on his back, upon the sacred altar in front of the temple, his glorious nakedness enshrined in impenetrable stone. Under tonight’s three-quarter moon and the lanterns that eternally burned here, it gleamed, giving off an ethereal bluish light.

He’d appeared from nowhere during a great storm the year her mother had died. Natalia had been only sixteen then, and Sophie, six. And he’d lain here in this exact spot ever since.

The priests believed him to be a god. Claimed that he had the power to save this land of theirs, a land that was slowly dying. The hopes of the entire community had been hung upon him.

If only he would awake,
they said.
He would save us all.

Reluctantly, Natalia took the twelve granite steps upward. Out of habit, she and her charges dipped curtsies at the top of the temple stairs and drew the Sign of Respect across their chests.

The statue lay before them now at eye level, its pale marble as pristine as it had been the day it had first arrived. The rectangular altar that served as
his
eternal bed was hewn from the same fine marble and edged in gilt, and stood atop the polished granite stage that stretched out in front of the temple. The statue and stage were washed every morning and flowers placed in the vases by the temple doors. Pilgrims came here to the temple each spring from faraway lands to look upon him and to be anointed with droplets of the holy water used to bathe him.

Carved into the base of the altar he lay upon, in stark gold lettering, was the inscription:

W
HO WAKETH HIM, SHALL SAVE OUR LAND
.

Though the spring wind had not yet cooled with the evening, Natalia shivered and wrapped her cloak more snugly over her uniform. Coming here always unsettled her. Yet she was obliged to do so every Sunday as was the whole community.

“Do you think he’s truly a godking? One come to cure our land of its ills?” Rae whispered into the silence that had fallen among them.

“The priests think so. That’s what matters,” Natalia said firmly. It wouldn’t do to encourage disbelief in them. Punishment for questioning the old ways was severe, and as a healer, she could not bear to see anyone harmed, especially not her students.

“Just imagine if his eyes opened right now, and he saw us standing here,” Sophie breathed in wonder.

“Do you think he might leap up and have his way with us?” whispered Leona. Her tone said she found the notion deliciously wicked.

Natalia’s skin prickled. “Don’t be absurd,” she said sharply. Unlike the rest of the community, she didn’t believe he would ever awaken or that he was meant to save them all. He was rock carved by the hand of an anonymous sculptor, nothing more. Her thoughts were heretical ones, and she didn’t dare voice them.

The three girls approached the altar, but Natalia hung back on the periphery of the stage. She glanced back toward the institute. All was quiet for now, thank the gods, their mischief as yet undiscovered.

“I’ve never really understood it,” Rae said, walking around the statue and eyeing it. “I mean, it’s against the scientific principals we are taught in the institute to expect that he’s ever going to come alive. No matter how many of us ...” Her words died away.

“Fuck him?” Sophie supplied drily.

“Sophie,” Natalia reproved. “Don’t be crude.”

Sophie peered at her through the darkness. “It’s what we’re all going to do. Why not say it? We’re eighteen. It’s our time to sacrifice.”

Natalia wanted to weep at the truth of this—for her sister, and for Leona and Rae as well. Tomorrow was the anniversary of
his
arrival in their community. A festival would be held here on Temple Hill, and this trio of girls would be at the center of the spectacle.

It would be a day in which every girl in the community who had turned eighteen in the past year—which amounted to only these three—would be sacrificed in the performance of a pagan ritual. Not in the old ways of sacrifice, with their blood and entrails spattered. No, only their virgin blood was to be spilled on the morrow.

First would come the symbolic ceremony, a mock wedding in which these girls would be bound to
him
in holy matrimony. Afterward, under the direction of the priests and under the expectant gazes of the entire community, Sophie and her two companions would surrender themselves to
him
. Each in turn would ceremonially mount him and attempt to take his monstrous phallus into her body. It was said that the girl who finally accepted the entirety of his length inside her would bring him to life.