Theft of Dragons (Princes of Naverstrom) (16 page)

TAEL WATCHED SEBINE filter through the now subdued crowd until her slender figure disappeared. As soon as she was out of sight he felt a pang of remorse for not offering to escort her back to the palace. He darted after her, ignoring alluring smiles of pretty girls along his path, and deftly maneuvered around partygoers raising mugs of wine in celebration of the gods of winter. But after trailing her path and searching for the flower dress she wore, he realized he had lost her amongst the dense revelry.
 

"Looking for someone?" said a girl's delicate voice in an intriguing accent that marked her as from the far, southern Islands of Marr. Tael turned and felt the small hands of an alluring, nymph-like girl running up his chest.

"Oh, gods of youth...what a strong and beautiful body you have. The lines of your muscles are like the waves of the Ferelian Sea. I crave to see them in motion under the pull of the gentle moon." The girl smiled innocently, but Tael could see the devilishness and seduction playing on her eyes. "Could you help me, perhaps? I can see from your face that your mind is elsewhere, but you see, I've lost my friends in all this madness and the wine has made me disoriented. I fear I won't be able to find my way home safely. But look at that face—you have such a honest, handsome face. A face I can trust."

Her eyes sparkled in the light of the waning bonfire and although he knew her plea was mere pretense, he was unable to resist glancing down at her small but firm breasts, nipples erect under her sheer silk top. She possessed a tiny waist that flowed into perfectly round hips. In a quick turn, she scanned the crowd for her friends, but Tael found himself entranced at the sidelong view of her hips, which jutted out ridiculously. In his mind he imagined his hands locked on those hips, pulling her urgently into him.
 

He shook his head, thinking of Princess Sebine once again, and chastised himself for so quickly forgetting the girl he had so often dreamed about. Tomorrow he would see her, and she would be his, and he would be hers. Together they would enjoy the festival and share in this world of wonder.

"Still no sign of my friends. And how rude of me to bother you—weren't you looking for someone yourself? A friend perhaps?" Her face had changed to such a complete expression of innocence and concern that Tael found himself drawn into her plight.

"It's no worry...I'll meet my friend tomorrow night." Tael regretted he said the words
my friend
, realizing the unconscious intention beneath.

The girl smiled understandingly. "She will be fine, and you'll see her at the morrow. The Wintertide Festival is a festival of love and of the euphoria found in drink and smoke and sexuality. With the night so young it's a shame your friend had to leave so early...perhaps unexpectedly soon?" She studied him, small head tilted in regard. "Yes, I can see it in your eyes. Her departure was sudden and the passion inside your eyes still smolders—how would the poets say it? Let's see if I remember the lines correctly.
The heart of love burns for an eternity, while the heart of desire fires quick and certain, spent in the hours of lust.
"

"I'll save my lust for the new evening...as beautiful as you are—there is another who possesses both my heart and my desire." Tael spoke the words as if from rote, while the truth was not fully there in his mind.

"Did I offer you an outlet for your lust?" The girl laughed vainly. "I don't believe I did. Merely aid in finding my home under the protection of your strong arms. You amuse me with your foolish innocence and presumptiveness—as if all the girls at the festival fawned over your attention."
 

When the girl turned and walked away, Tael felt guilt strike his heart at her words. "Wait a moment...I'm sorry, I don't know what I was thinking. But I will help you home if you still want me to."

"You? Take me home? Oh, I don't think so. How do I know you won't rape me in my moment of weakness? I'm small and lack any defense from your power. I can see your girlfriend's enchantment still clutching your mind. Lust for her still rages in your loins. I recommend a trip to the red house on Berince Street." She cupped her tiny hand under his balls. "Or perhaps if you lack the money, there is an old beggar witch in the back alley behind the house that will relieve your pressure for a loaf of bread. They say she has the most talented mouth—lacking any front teeth."

A tingling spread through his crotch and flooded his craving for her. In that moment he knew he should leave immediately, a voice told him he was in danger, but his rebellious eyes inhaled every curve of her erotic figure and he grabbed her wrist and roughly pulled her against him. She yelped in delight, but a sudden scowl masked the smile that had briefly marked her face.

"Let go of me...stop it! I swear to the gods I'll scream." Her words were cut off as he pressed his lips hard against hers, her mouth tasting of sweet wine and cinnamon, and though she resisted and her body wriggled in fury and tried to break free of his enlocking embrace, in a few heartbeats she exhaled and gave in and her tongue spoke to his in the language of lovers. He could feel her stimulated nipples pressed against his chest. He was crazy—he knew it—all his cravings tonight were immoral and the smiling and angry faces of the girls mixed with the wine and the music and the wildness. But he couldn't help himself; Sebine was right—he was a man with excuses and he simply couldn't help himself.
 

The girl (he didn't even know her name) smelled of cloves and sour cherries and honey. Her skin was blanched white and silky to his fingers as they ran along the avenues of pleasure taught to him by older women desiring his youthful stimulation. Those hips that had enraged his mind at first sight felt firm and fantastic at his tight grip—and he lifted her against his now inflamed cock. He wanted her now, not a moment later, at any dark spot with a place to lie. Or perhaps he couldn't wait and he would take her here in the pressure and anonymity of the crowd. She felt so good he wanted to roar in delight and possess her in the madness and fury of his feeling.

"I knew you would control me." Her voice was a panting whisper in his ear. "No chance to stop you...I'm not strong enough...how could I stop—"
 

She moaned a terrible moan of agony and luxurious delight as he reached down and plunged two fingers into her wetness. That made it all the worse for him. She was so firm and ridged that even though she was wet, the width of his fingers was difficult for her to bear. She panted and her eyes closed, expression jubilant, and her eyelids fluttered as an epileptic in a seizure. Her knees buckled and he held her up: one hand cupping her hips and the other between her legs.
 

At that moment the crowd pressed in to them as if a wave cresting onto the shore. He kissed her again and this time she responded, tongue slithering and bold, and finally her small hands reached into his pants and she cried a bit—fingers hesitant—then she was desperate as she explored the features of his erection. Music erupted in a frenzy of drums and horns and now the partygoers were so tightly mashed against each other that Tael took the opportunity to spin the girl around, her ass facing his crotch, and at the swaying of the crowd's hips and shoulders timed to the music roaring around them, he and the girl ground their bodies together.

Head tilted sideways, the girl smiled and turned her eyes up towards his in a kind of crazed reverence, and he responded to her silent words of adoration with a kiss and his fingers teased a nipple, sending a shiver through her small frame.
 

"You're a demon," she said, her words slow and choked. "The soothsayer warned me I would cross paths with a demon...and my life would stumble and falter in the demon's wake. She told me the demon would wear a young man's face—a handsome face—but underneath was darkness and the cold brutality of slain bones. With a warning she advised me to try and stay clear of this demon, though she said that likely it was impossible—as fate steered me into this path like a ship caught at sea by the tangles of a giant sea creature. And look, see how you entangle me like an octopus. Your arms and..." She glanced down, groaned, and squeezed his now engorged cock. "...a tentacle of torture."

At her words a chill of fear prickled along his arms and caused the hairs to rise along his goose-pimpled skin. Her lips mouthed the words
take me
and she bent slightly over and guided his cock to the soft place between her thighs. His hands felt her hips—those hips his imagination had fired in a vision of lust and desire—and he yanked down her tiny-bell-lined dress and fished his cock around her wetness, sending a thrill of weakening pleasure through his body.
 

But in her now dark-and-dilated eyes he sensed the depths of the hell of Naverstrom—the same as in the eyes of the Hakkadian sorcerer he had slain. He had to stop this. As she studied him, blackness crept around the rim of the girl's eyes like a flood of ink spilling into water. And the chill he had felt now exploded into a dousing of iced water on his inflamed and muddled mind, and with a fervent act—like that of a heretic standing proud against a foreign faith—he pushed her away from him.

The girl paused and hissed—eyes pure black pools of malice—and her now forked tongue slither from scaly lips as twin daggers appeared in her clawed hands. The crowd fled like mob of rats from a dog's charge—screams and shrieks and slurred voices shouting in concern.
 

"Did you think the Black Heart Clan would forget about you, prized son and our quarry? Lustful fool...you would have enjoyed the death found by plummeting your manhood inside of me. But now you will never know of my special spell: the Seven Steps of Euphoria and Agony."

Shivering glints of light flared along her blades as she struck out at him in a rush.

Chapter Sixteen

IN HER DREAM Sebine was a young and conniving sea turtle paddling weakly on the surface of the ocean. A milky wash of starlight staining the sky, and the smell of a school of fish teased her nostrils. The light above flickered under the ocean's vapors that rose like spiraling offerings to the gods. She knew she was the dreamer, and the dreaming body, stubbornly, acquiesced to the control of Sebine's conscious mind.
 

I don't want to swim in the ocean,
she told the dreamer.
I desire to see the one I love—a young man strong and handsome and kind. I desire to see Tael. Won't you take me to him?

The dreamer turned to her, face impassive and stern, eyes black like the bottomless Well of Warning, and the dreamer opened its mouth and swallowed her, until the shock and pain of icy needles sliced her skin into sheets and caused her eyes to flare open, awake and alert. But before she woke, she had glimpsed Tael's body curled up like a baby, lying in an alley near the winemaker's shop, blood oozing from many hideous cuts along his once beautiful arms and chest.
 

Sebine woke in a rush and through off the sweat-stained silk sheets and rose to the basin to splash water on her face. She studied the lines of worry on her forehead in the mirror, and the truth of the dream filled her in an instant. Tael was in agony and close to death. She had to leave the palace and help him. The illusion of Emitt Weylor she assumed would be worthless now and only would arouse suspicion in the guards. She had to find another way. Though what spells did she know that would aid her? Or could she somehow summon the guards to help her rescue Tael? No...that would only invoke more questions and would put them even more at risk. She had to move and act quickly.

Through her quietly opened door she saw a posted guard standing in sleepy attention, and she praised the gods that he failed to hear her turn the handle. She cast a spell to eliminate light—one of the few spells she knew—and slid outside, avoiding the place where the muttering shouts of surprise came from the Vizathian Knight. She sneaked down the hallway, her hand on the wall, and felt her way to the peasant's stairs which led down to the palace's subterranean entrance.
 

Past the servant's waiting room at the bottom of the stairs, the narrow, musty tunnel was dark enough for Sebine to cast a spell of faint light that guided her to the end. On the other side of a locked steel door she knew was a guard post that housed perhaps ten to twenty men. Maybe all were at their post or maybe they were taking turns at whores in the storehouse aside the guard post.
 

Would the spell work? Sebine focused her mind on the steel door and pushed using the same spell she had used to raise books in display of her knowledge to the Hakkadians. But as she pushed she found her slipper sliding on the stone floor. That wouldn't work at all. And the harder she pushed the more likely she was to find herself crushed by the weight of whatever she was pushing. A book was easy; a steel door vastly different. Could she cast the spell she'd used to boil the blood of the soldiers, but this time melt the steel, or melt the hinges or the lock's mechanism? Or would the intense heat burn her up? All this time playing at casting spells she realized she didn't even know the basic rules of magic.