The Shadow Duke, part 3
The conclusion of The Shadow Duke. I hope you enjoyed it.
I'll probably post the next story, Barbaric Treatment, in a week or two. It's very short by comparison and isn't of terribly great moment, but it'll be something to look at while I'm writing the next tale.
Edit: This is the revised version.
When I came to, my white fire had receded. I lifted my head and looked around. Next to me were the remains of the sorcerer, looking like a bundle of dry sticks wrapped in burlap. No fire burned in the circle from which the demon had emerged. The fight was still going on, but the demon was noticeably weaker. Its eyes were dimmer, it had shrunk to its original size, and several of its horns had been broken off.
Kit wasn’t doing so well either. He was breathing hard and bleeding from a dozen more wounds than when I last saw him. When he attacked he was still very fast by any ordinary measure, but for him he was shockingly slow.
The demon had slowed too, but with Kit so weary its physical size was more of an advantage. I was still trying to clear my head when it rushed him. Kit dodged the main force of its attack, but it caught him with a forearm. The blow knocked him down. I struggled to stand, anxious to help him, but it was no good. The room spun around me when I tried.
Kit landed well, rolled with it, and came to his feet almost immediately. He paused for a moment and then with a shout attacked. At that moment he drew on some reserve of strength and showed a flash of his usual speed in a blaze of whirling steel. He struck the demon a dozen times, slicing deep into gray hide that was no longer smooth. With a final two-handed thrust he drove his blade into the demon’s chest. It pierced the carapace and penetrated almost far enough to come out the back. The demon toppled backward, wrenching the sword out of Kit’s hand, and lay still.
Kit bent over with his hands on his knees, gasping for breath. I had finally managed to stagger to my feet and step out of the circle when a voice like a gurgling cesspool made me freeze where I stood.
The demon was laughing.
It sat up, not bothering to remove the blade still protruding from its chest, and then stood. The wound that would have slain any earthly creature was to it nothing but an inconvenience.
Kit’s jaw dropped. “Oh shit.”
Before he could set himself, the demon pounced. With both claws it seized him by the neck and lifted him off the ground. Kit got his hands around its wrists and struggled, but it was futile. The techniques that would cause intolerable pain to a man in the same position didn’t affect the demon at all, and it was too strong for him to overpower.
Something red boiled up inside me that cleared my head in an instant. The candlestick I’d used to break up the floor was close at hand, dented and bent but still in one piece. I picked it up and charged. With all my might I swung it at the back of the demon’s knees. They buckled, and down it fell. It dropped Kit so it could break its fall. He crumpled onto the floor completely limp and lay still.
It wasn’t my white fire. It was pure rage. I had no thought in me but to mash the demon to a pulp. I pounded the it with the candlestick, beating it into the ground, connecting with its head once, then again, and a third time.
When I drove the candlestick down for a fourth blow, a claw came up and caught it in mid-swing, twisted it out of my hands, and tossed it away. I backed off as the demon got to its feet, my rage overshadowed by alarm. It sprang forward. I turned and ran.
I weaved back and forth among the benches, hoping its greater size would make the turns hard to follow. Maybe they would have, but instead it simply threw the benches aside and made straight for me. That slowed it down some, if not as much as I hoped. The next time I got a bench between us, I lifted it up and threw it. The demon knocked it aside. Another bench nearby was covered with flasks full of liquids. I flung them at the demon’s face one after another, hoping at least one of them was an acid that would burn its eyes. None of them had any effect.
By now I had worked my way back around toward the circle. On the other side of it was the open area where Kit and the demon had fought. Kit was still on the floor. Beyond him was the doorway blocked by the lightning-charged grille. I ran toward it it as fast as I could. When I reached it I turned and set myself in front of it. The demon was making for me in a rush. At the last possible instant I leaped aside, and it slammed full-tilt into the grille.
The metal gave way at the impact. A fountain of sparks shot out with loud crackling noise like a thousand miniature Whirlwinds. At the very least, I hoped the lightning would cause the demon as much pain as it had caused me.
My hope was false. As the sparks subsided it pushed itself back out of the doorway and spun around with a roar. I took off back toward the circle looking around frantically for something, anything, I could use against it.
It was only after I passed him that I realized Kit had gotten onto all fours. I stopped and turned to help him up, but the demon had already drawn abreast of him. I’d just thrown away my lead.
Without warning Kit leaped to his feet. His hand darted out and grabbed the hilt of his sword. As soon as he touched it he gave a shout so loud it shook the dust from the ceiling.
The demon stopped dead in its tracks and its eyes went wide. For just a moment they flickered a bright red. Cracks opened up in its skin. Light shone out of them, red at first but turning a moment later to white. There was an enormous billow of greasy black smoke, obscuring both it and Kit. A small whirlwind rose on the spot and the smoke dispersed. Kit stood alone, his sword drooping at his side. He swayed, then collapsed.
“Kit!” I hurried to his side. He was lying face down, his sword underneath him. I knelt and rolled him over, and cradled his head on my lap. He hadn’t landed on his sword’s edge as I feared. I stroked his hairline, and his eyes fluttered open.
“I’ll be all right, Tam.” His speech was slurred, as if he just woken up from a deep sleep. “Jus’ overdid it a little. Need some rest an’ good air, that’s all.” He closed his eyes again.
He had a point about the air. It was pretty foul when I got here, and with the addition of demon fumes it was almost intolerable. I had to get him out of there.
I retrieved Kit’s sheath and put his sword away. With Kit on my back like a child getting a piggyback ride and his sword in one hand, I clambered over the wreckage of the grille, then headed down the passage and back up the stairs.
Kit might be small, but what’s there is all bone and muscle so he’s nowhere near as light as you’d think. I was panting from the exertion by the time I finished climbing all those stairs. Lying in the short passage to the room was that creature that had brought me down to the sorcerer’s lair, Kulk. There was a wound on the side of its head dark with blood. Kit must have had to kill it to get past it. I stepped over the body.
I’d only gone a few steps when I heard a rustle behind me and with a sudden jerk, something tore Kit off my back. I whirled. Kulk wasn’t dead. It had the unconscious Kit in its grip and was holding him off the ground against the wall. Its fangs were bared and it was going for his throat.
Before I could think what to do, the world turned white.
I came back to myself crouched on the floor of the passageway with Kit clutched in my arms, kissing him hard on the lips. I drew back, wondering at what I was doing. Then it registered that his legs were thrown over my shoulders, and that I was hard and about to thrust into him.
Kit’s eyes were open. “Thank you, Tam.”
I looked around. The mangled corpse of the creature lay in a spreading pool of dark blood. My arms were covered in the same stuff up to my elbows, and I’d gotten it all over Kit. I fell back onto my haunches, staring at my hands. They began to shake.
“Kit... I... I’m sorry...”
“For what? Saving my life?”
I shook my head. I had no words.
Kit sighed. “Look, this isn’t the most comfortable place. Can we go into the room and talk? Help me up, I’m not too steady yet.”
I couldn’t even bring myself to look at him, let alone touch him.
“Please.”
I glanced up. He was holding out his hand, and his bright blue eyes pleaded with me. I took his hand and got him to his feet. He leaned heavily on me as we went the last few feet back to the bedroom.
We passed through the remains of the hidden door. From the fragments that remained in place it looked to have been a slab of stone on a pivot with one side paneled to match the rest of the wall. Gravel and wood splinters littered the floor both in the passage and in the room itself. The shutters were also smashed open. The first hint of dawn was on the horizon, casting just enough light into the room to see.
We reached the bed and I helped Kit into it. The blood on my hands and the blood I’d smeared on him stained the linens. Kit lay back, drew in a deep breath of the cool, fresh air, and let it out. I went over to the window and stared out at the empty courtyard.
“Tam? Come be with me.”
I’d been hard ever since I came out of the madness. I was still hard, so hard it throbbed. For a change I didn’t want Kit to see it. “I’d rather not.”
“I need you.”
Those words pulled at my heart. I couldn’t refuse him, but I still couldn’t look at him either. I went over to the bed and sat down on it with my back to him.
“Why are you hiding from me?”
“I...I can’t believe what I almost did to you. I’m sorry...”
“Stop apologizing. You weren’t going to hurt me.”
“You don’t know that!”
“Yes I do.”
I held my head in my hands, ignoring the blood. “I thought it wasn’t going to happen anymore.”
“It forced itself out because you still won’t grasp it.”
“I reach for it just like you said I should.”
“Only when you’re desperate. The rest of the time you’re still trying to hold it down. You can’t do that and have it behave like you want.”
“How can I trust it? Look at what I was about to do!”
“You were about to give me the ride of my life. Maybe in your normal state of mind you’d have kissed me instead, but you’d have meant exactly the same thing by it.”
How could he be so sure? How could he trust me? I couldn’t even trust myself.
“Turn around, Tam.” I didn’t move. “I want you to see me right now. It’s important.”
I turned. Kit was lying on top of the linens. As the light grew he didn’t look any better. His wounds had darkened as the blood clotted, and there was scarcely a part of him that wasn’t marked with purple-yellow bruises. The worst were around his neck where the demon had lifted him.
For all that his cock was as hard as I’d ever seen it.
He made no attempt to raise himself, but rolled his head to look at me with half-lidded eyes. “When I came to and saw what you were doing... Well, I’d have chosen a different place for it. But I wanted it. I still do.”
That didn’t make it any better. “This time maybe you did. But suppose―”
“Never mind that. I’m yours. Whenever you want me, take me. I mean it. We could be in the middle of the street at high noon for all I care.”
“I didn’t know what I was doing! I could have hurt you!”
Kit laughed quietly. “Tam, even at your best I don’t think you hit as hard as a demon. But even if you could, you wouldn’t. Haven’t you noticed? When I’m in trouble, you react just like you do when your own life is in danger, and you do it without even thinking. That... that makes me feel very safe.”
He grabbed my arm and pulled me closer to him. As weary and beaten up as he was, his grip was anything but weak. “Please. I have to have you like that.”
Underneath his bruises he was flushed with desire, and his stiff cock poked me in the thigh. I wanted him right then every bit as much as he wanted me, but the shock over my own behavior paralyzed me.
He put a hand behind my neck, pulled me down, and put his lips to mine. His tongue forced my mouth open, and he thrust it in. When he reached down with his other hand and grabbed my cock, I couldn’t help but react. A moan sounded in my throat.
Kit broke off the kiss and leaned close to my ear. “Do it, Tam. Bring up your fire. Fuck me.”
I was no longer strong enough to deny him, or myself. The white fire was still churning. Reaching for it was was as effortless as breathing.
All was lines and angles in a colorless world. All except for Kit. The contours of his face, the corded muscle, the curve of his buttocks, the rigid pole between his legs were the only things of color for me. The fire burned away the wall of separation between thought and emotion, and the yearning for him, my love and my admiration and my desire, coursed through every nerve and fiber. Just as when I pulled up the white fire while fighting, I could tell my body what to do but not how to do it, and now I had only one thought in my mind: Take him.
I seized him by the waist and flipped him over, and without any preparation I lifted his butt to me and plunged into him. The sensation hit me like a shock. Just as when I touched the lightning with my hand and my whole body was struck by the force of it, now my swirling fire brought the sensation of being inside him to every part of me. Rational thought deserted me, and restraint of any kind was impossible. I invaded him, ravaged him. My other senses were dim by comparison, and I was only faintly aware of Kit muffling his cries into the bedding, pounding the mattress with a fist, rearing up and reaching for the headboard, gripping it so hard as he came that he crushed the wood in his hands. When my own climax hit it was like my seed carried my all my fire with it into him, and the color returned to the world before I fell to the bed with Kit beneath me and was overtaken by sleep.
● ● ●
Rosy sunlight was streaming in through the window when I opened my eyes again. Kit, still unclothed, was in the middle of the room doing his morning exercise. It took him much longer than usual, the motions somehow bringing to mind the refreshing showers that tempered the hot, muggy afternoons of high summer. His bruises were nothing more than faint yellow blotches, his wounds reduced to red marks on his flesh. As his exercise progressed they faded even as I watched. When he reached the end he stood perfectly still for a moment before he went over to the window ledge, sat down on it, and unbraided his hair.
I got up and crossed over to the window. When he raised the comb to his head I took it from his hand and ran it through his hair myself. When all the tangles were out I combed down the entire length a few times just for the pleasure of handling it. Kit enjoyed it so much he was almost purring. As I started to braid it, Kit broke the silence.
“I’m sorry, Tam.”
“For what? Making me stop being afraid of myself?”
“For almost getting us both killed. I don’t know what in the dozen hells I was thinking, jumping you like that when there was so much wrong that we didn’t understand. I should have been more cautious.”
“It’s not all your fault. I wasn’t exactly a difficult lay.”
“That would have been even weirder than the castle.”
We both laughed at that. When I finished the braid, I hugged him around his chest and rested my chin on his head. Together, we gazed out at the dawn. When we heaved a sigh at the same time, we laughed again and kissed.
“I feel very much myself again,” said Kit. “Shall we have a few words with Gorlin?”
“More than just words. Let’s go.”
We dressed, armed, took up our packs, and headed back down to the great hall. The corridors were completely deserted. We didn’t even see any of the liveried pages.
In the great hall there was no sign of the orgy we’d joked about, but we got the drunken part right. Men were sprawled everywhere among the remains of the feast, some of them still clutching a bottle. A few were more or less awake, but from their groans they weren’t too happy about it.
We found Gorlin passed out on the floor next to the high seat. When the point of Kit’s sword touched his jaw, he opened his eyes. Red as they were, they went wide with shock when he recognized us. He scurried backwards as fast as he could until his back was to the wall. Kit kept his blade on him.
“Gorlin,” said Kit. “We have dealt with your sorcerer and his demons. You have one chance to convince me not to kill you where you sit. Make it good.”
Gorlin mouth worked. “P-please! No! I had to! I... I―”
I had no patience for this. I stepped past Kit, seized Gorlin by the front of his gown, lifted him up off the ground, and slammed him against the wall.
“My partner here is ready to slice you into bite-sized pieces if he doesn’t get a good answer. I’m not so pleasant. If I don’t get a good answer, I’m going to rip your belly open with my bare hands and strangle you with your own guts! Now talk!”
This pushed him into even more of a panic and he started to sob. Then Kit spoke.
“Moler, pull that sword out another inch and you’re a dead man.”
I turned my head. Moler was behind Kit with his sword halfway out of its sheath, his face twisted into a nasty snarl. At Kit’s warning he froze for a moment, but then made a quick motion and drew.
Kit whirled, his blade moving too fast to be seen. It sliced clean through Moler’s body at the waist. He stepped away from the gout of blood that erupted from the two halves as they fell.
A yellow stream trickled onto the floor from between Gorlin’s legs. Words tumbled out of his mouth in a rush.
“Please! Please! I had no choice! He trapped us in a bad deal, Imbarian did. Imbarian, that’s the sorcerer. He set us up in this castle―conjured it all in one night! We had to get him one or two people every month. But there weren’t any travelers, and soon I’d have to send him one of us. Then you came along―”
“That’s why the feast.”
“Yes. I’m sorry, so sorry. But don’t you see? We owe you. We’re free now! We didn’t think anyone could get to Imbarian. But you did, and we’re not his slaves anymore. If there’s any way we can show you―”
“What about Moler there?”
“He was an idiot. He did that on his own. Please believe me!”
I felt Kit’s hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go, Tam. There’s nothing more to be done here.”
I thought about it for a moment, then nodded and released Gorlin. He landed hard in the puddle of his own piss.
In the hills overlooking the castle we found a spring-filled pool and made camp near it. For the whole day we rested there, and spent as much time as we could stand in the cold water washing away the residue of the night.
That evening we watched the sunset together. I sat upon the grassy slope and Kit stretched himself out on the ground with his head on my lap. As the the sun departed and the day that saw the death of Imbarian came to its end, so did his works. The fall of the mighty castle shook the ground.
We continued on our way east the next morning.
I'll probably post the next story, Barbaric Treatment, in a week or two. It's very short by comparison and isn't of terribly great moment, but it'll be something to look at while I'm writing the next tale.
Edit: This is the revised version.
When I came to, my white fire had receded. I lifted my head and looked around. Next to me were the remains of the sorcerer, looking like a bundle of dry sticks wrapped in burlap. No fire burned in the circle from which the demon had emerged. The fight was still going on, but the demon was noticeably weaker. Its eyes were dimmer, it had shrunk to its original size, and several of its horns had been broken off.
Kit wasn’t doing so well either. He was breathing hard and bleeding from a dozen more wounds than when I last saw him. When he attacked he was still very fast by any ordinary measure, but for him he was shockingly slow.
The demon had slowed too, but with Kit so weary its physical size was more of an advantage. I was still trying to clear my head when it rushed him. Kit dodged the main force of its attack, but it caught him with a forearm. The blow knocked him down. I struggled to stand, anxious to help him, but it was no good. The room spun around me when I tried.
Kit landed well, rolled with it, and came to his feet almost immediately. He paused for a moment and then with a shout attacked. At that moment he drew on some reserve of strength and showed a flash of his usual speed in a blaze of whirling steel. He struck the demon a dozen times, slicing deep into gray hide that was no longer smooth. With a final two-handed thrust he drove his blade into the demon’s chest. It pierced the carapace and penetrated almost far enough to come out the back. The demon toppled backward, wrenching the sword out of Kit’s hand, and lay still.
Kit bent over with his hands on his knees, gasping for breath. I had finally managed to stagger to my feet and step out of the circle when a voice like a gurgling cesspool made me freeze where I stood.
The demon was laughing.
It sat up, not bothering to remove the blade still protruding from its chest, and then stood. The wound that would have slain any earthly creature was to it nothing but an inconvenience.
Kit’s jaw dropped. “Oh shit.”
Before he could set himself, the demon pounced. With both claws it seized him by the neck and lifted him off the ground. Kit got his hands around its wrists and struggled, but it was futile. The techniques that would cause intolerable pain to a man in the same position didn’t affect the demon at all, and it was too strong for him to overpower.
Something red boiled up inside me that cleared my head in an instant. The candlestick I’d used to break up the floor was close at hand, dented and bent but still in one piece. I picked it up and charged. With all my might I swung it at the back of the demon’s knees. They buckled, and down it fell. It dropped Kit so it could break its fall. He crumpled onto the floor completely limp and lay still.
It wasn’t my white fire. It was pure rage. I had no thought in me but to mash the demon to a pulp. I pounded the it with the candlestick, beating it into the ground, connecting with its head once, then again, and a third time.
When I drove the candlestick down for a fourth blow, a claw came up and caught it in mid-swing, twisted it out of my hands, and tossed it away. I backed off as the demon got to its feet, my rage overshadowed by alarm. It sprang forward. I turned and ran.
I weaved back and forth among the benches, hoping its greater size would make the turns hard to follow. Maybe they would have, but instead it simply threw the benches aside and made straight for me. That slowed it down some, if not as much as I hoped. The next time I got a bench between us, I lifted it up and threw it. The demon knocked it aside. Another bench nearby was covered with flasks full of liquids. I flung them at the demon’s face one after another, hoping at least one of them was an acid that would burn its eyes. None of them had any effect.
By now I had worked my way back around toward the circle. On the other side of it was the open area where Kit and the demon had fought. Kit was still on the floor. Beyond him was the doorway blocked by the lightning-charged grille. I ran toward it it as fast as I could. When I reached it I turned and set myself in front of it. The demon was making for me in a rush. At the last possible instant I leaped aside, and it slammed full-tilt into the grille.
The metal gave way at the impact. A fountain of sparks shot out with loud crackling noise like a thousand miniature Whirlwinds. At the very least, I hoped the lightning would cause the demon as much pain as it had caused me.
My hope was false. As the sparks subsided it pushed itself back out of the doorway and spun around with a roar. I took off back toward the circle looking around frantically for something, anything, I could use against it.
It was only after I passed him that I realized Kit had gotten onto all fours. I stopped and turned to help him up, but the demon had already drawn abreast of him. I’d just thrown away my lead.
Without warning Kit leaped to his feet. His hand darted out and grabbed the hilt of his sword. As soon as he touched it he gave a shout so loud it shook the dust from the ceiling.
The demon stopped dead in its tracks and its eyes went wide. For just a moment they flickered a bright red. Cracks opened up in its skin. Light shone out of them, red at first but turning a moment later to white. There was an enormous billow of greasy black smoke, obscuring both it and Kit. A small whirlwind rose on the spot and the smoke dispersed. Kit stood alone, his sword drooping at his side. He swayed, then collapsed.
“Kit!” I hurried to his side. He was lying face down, his sword underneath him. I knelt and rolled him over, and cradled his head on my lap. He hadn’t landed on his sword’s edge as I feared. I stroked his hairline, and his eyes fluttered open.
“I’ll be all right, Tam.” His speech was slurred, as if he just woken up from a deep sleep. “Jus’ overdid it a little. Need some rest an’ good air, that’s all.” He closed his eyes again.
He had a point about the air. It was pretty foul when I got here, and with the addition of demon fumes it was almost intolerable. I had to get him out of there.
I retrieved Kit’s sheath and put his sword away. With Kit on my back like a child getting a piggyback ride and his sword in one hand, I clambered over the wreckage of the grille, then headed down the passage and back up the stairs.
Kit might be small, but what’s there is all bone and muscle so he’s nowhere near as light as you’d think. I was panting from the exertion by the time I finished climbing all those stairs. Lying in the short passage to the room was that creature that had brought me down to the sorcerer’s lair, Kulk. There was a wound on the side of its head dark with blood. Kit must have had to kill it to get past it. I stepped over the body.
I’d only gone a few steps when I heard a rustle behind me and with a sudden jerk, something tore Kit off my back. I whirled. Kulk wasn’t dead. It had the unconscious Kit in its grip and was holding him off the ground against the wall. Its fangs were bared and it was going for his throat.
Before I could think what to do, the world turned white.
I came back to myself crouched on the floor of the passageway with Kit clutched in my arms, kissing him hard on the lips. I drew back, wondering at what I was doing. Then it registered that his legs were thrown over my shoulders, and that I was hard and about to thrust into him.
Kit’s eyes were open. “Thank you, Tam.”
I looked around. The mangled corpse of the creature lay in a spreading pool of dark blood. My arms were covered in the same stuff up to my elbows, and I’d gotten it all over Kit. I fell back onto my haunches, staring at my hands. They began to shake.
“Kit... I... I’m sorry...”
“For what? Saving my life?”
I shook my head. I had no words.
Kit sighed. “Look, this isn’t the most comfortable place. Can we go into the room and talk? Help me up, I’m not too steady yet.”
I couldn’t even bring myself to look at him, let alone touch him.
“Please.”
I glanced up. He was holding out his hand, and his bright blue eyes pleaded with me. I took his hand and got him to his feet. He leaned heavily on me as we went the last few feet back to the bedroom.
We passed through the remains of the hidden door. From the fragments that remained in place it looked to have been a slab of stone on a pivot with one side paneled to match the rest of the wall. Gravel and wood splinters littered the floor both in the passage and in the room itself. The shutters were also smashed open. The first hint of dawn was on the horizon, casting just enough light into the room to see.
We reached the bed and I helped Kit into it. The blood on my hands and the blood I’d smeared on him stained the linens. Kit lay back, drew in a deep breath of the cool, fresh air, and let it out. I went over to the window and stared out at the empty courtyard.
“Tam? Come be with me.”
I’d been hard ever since I came out of the madness. I was still hard, so hard it throbbed. For a change I didn’t want Kit to see it. “I’d rather not.”
“I need you.”
Those words pulled at my heart. I couldn’t refuse him, but I still couldn’t look at him either. I went over to the bed and sat down on it with my back to him.
“Why are you hiding from me?”
“I...I can’t believe what I almost did to you. I’m sorry...”
“Stop apologizing. You weren’t going to hurt me.”
“You don’t know that!”
“Yes I do.”
I held my head in my hands, ignoring the blood. “I thought it wasn’t going to happen anymore.”
“It forced itself out because you still won’t grasp it.”
“I reach for it just like you said I should.”
“Only when you’re desperate. The rest of the time you’re still trying to hold it down. You can’t do that and have it behave like you want.”
“How can I trust it? Look at what I was about to do!”
“You were about to give me the ride of my life. Maybe in your normal state of mind you’d have kissed me instead, but you’d have meant exactly the same thing by it.”
How could he be so sure? How could he trust me? I couldn’t even trust myself.
“Turn around, Tam.” I didn’t move. “I want you to see me right now. It’s important.”
I turned. Kit was lying on top of the linens. As the light grew he didn’t look any better. His wounds had darkened as the blood clotted, and there was scarcely a part of him that wasn’t marked with purple-yellow bruises. The worst were around his neck where the demon had lifted him.
For all that his cock was as hard as I’d ever seen it.
He made no attempt to raise himself, but rolled his head to look at me with half-lidded eyes. “When I came to and saw what you were doing... Well, I’d have chosen a different place for it. But I wanted it. I still do.”
That didn’t make it any better. “This time maybe you did. But suppose―”
“Never mind that. I’m yours. Whenever you want me, take me. I mean it. We could be in the middle of the street at high noon for all I care.”
“I didn’t know what I was doing! I could have hurt you!”
Kit laughed quietly. “Tam, even at your best I don’t think you hit as hard as a demon. But even if you could, you wouldn’t. Haven’t you noticed? When I’m in trouble, you react just like you do when your own life is in danger, and you do it without even thinking. That... that makes me feel very safe.”
He grabbed my arm and pulled me closer to him. As weary and beaten up as he was, his grip was anything but weak. “Please. I have to have you like that.”
Underneath his bruises he was flushed with desire, and his stiff cock poked me in the thigh. I wanted him right then every bit as much as he wanted me, but the shock over my own behavior paralyzed me.
He put a hand behind my neck, pulled me down, and put his lips to mine. His tongue forced my mouth open, and he thrust it in. When he reached down with his other hand and grabbed my cock, I couldn’t help but react. A moan sounded in my throat.
Kit broke off the kiss and leaned close to my ear. “Do it, Tam. Bring up your fire. Fuck me.”
I was no longer strong enough to deny him, or myself. The white fire was still churning. Reaching for it was was as effortless as breathing.
All was lines and angles in a colorless world. All except for Kit. The contours of his face, the corded muscle, the curve of his buttocks, the rigid pole between his legs were the only things of color for me. The fire burned away the wall of separation between thought and emotion, and the yearning for him, my love and my admiration and my desire, coursed through every nerve and fiber. Just as when I pulled up the white fire while fighting, I could tell my body what to do but not how to do it, and now I had only one thought in my mind: Take him.
I seized him by the waist and flipped him over, and without any preparation I lifted his butt to me and plunged into him. The sensation hit me like a shock. Just as when I touched the lightning with my hand and my whole body was struck by the force of it, now my swirling fire brought the sensation of being inside him to every part of me. Rational thought deserted me, and restraint of any kind was impossible. I invaded him, ravaged him. My other senses were dim by comparison, and I was only faintly aware of Kit muffling his cries into the bedding, pounding the mattress with a fist, rearing up and reaching for the headboard, gripping it so hard as he came that he crushed the wood in his hands. When my own climax hit it was like my seed carried my all my fire with it into him, and the color returned to the world before I fell to the bed with Kit beneath me and was overtaken by sleep.
● ● ●
Rosy sunlight was streaming in through the window when I opened my eyes again. Kit, still unclothed, was in the middle of the room doing his morning exercise. It took him much longer than usual, the motions somehow bringing to mind the refreshing showers that tempered the hot, muggy afternoons of high summer. His bruises were nothing more than faint yellow blotches, his wounds reduced to red marks on his flesh. As his exercise progressed they faded even as I watched. When he reached the end he stood perfectly still for a moment before he went over to the window ledge, sat down on it, and unbraided his hair.
I got up and crossed over to the window. When he raised the comb to his head I took it from his hand and ran it through his hair myself. When all the tangles were out I combed down the entire length a few times just for the pleasure of handling it. Kit enjoyed it so much he was almost purring. As I started to braid it, Kit broke the silence.
“I’m sorry, Tam.”
“For what? Making me stop being afraid of myself?”
“For almost getting us both killed. I don’t know what in the dozen hells I was thinking, jumping you like that when there was so much wrong that we didn’t understand. I should have been more cautious.”
“It’s not all your fault. I wasn’t exactly a difficult lay.”
“That would have been even weirder than the castle.”
We both laughed at that. When I finished the braid, I hugged him around his chest and rested my chin on his head. Together, we gazed out at the dawn. When we heaved a sigh at the same time, we laughed again and kissed.
“I feel very much myself again,” said Kit. “Shall we have a few words with Gorlin?”
“More than just words. Let’s go.”
We dressed, armed, took up our packs, and headed back down to the great hall. The corridors were completely deserted. We didn’t even see any of the liveried pages.
In the great hall there was no sign of the orgy we’d joked about, but we got the drunken part right. Men were sprawled everywhere among the remains of the feast, some of them still clutching a bottle. A few were more or less awake, but from their groans they weren’t too happy about it.
We found Gorlin passed out on the floor next to the high seat. When the point of Kit’s sword touched his jaw, he opened his eyes. Red as they were, they went wide with shock when he recognized us. He scurried backwards as fast as he could until his back was to the wall. Kit kept his blade on him.
“Gorlin,” said Kit. “We have dealt with your sorcerer and his demons. You have one chance to convince me not to kill you where you sit. Make it good.”
Gorlin mouth worked. “P-please! No! I had to! I... I―”
I had no patience for this. I stepped past Kit, seized Gorlin by the front of his gown, lifted him up off the ground, and slammed him against the wall.
“My partner here is ready to slice you into bite-sized pieces if he doesn’t get a good answer. I’m not so pleasant. If I don’t get a good answer, I’m going to rip your belly open with my bare hands and strangle you with your own guts! Now talk!”
This pushed him into even more of a panic and he started to sob. Then Kit spoke.
“Moler, pull that sword out another inch and you’re a dead man.”
I turned my head. Moler was behind Kit with his sword halfway out of its sheath, his face twisted into a nasty snarl. At Kit’s warning he froze for a moment, but then made a quick motion and drew.
Kit whirled, his blade moving too fast to be seen. It sliced clean through Moler’s body at the waist. He stepped away from the gout of blood that erupted from the two halves as they fell.
A yellow stream trickled onto the floor from between Gorlin’s legs. Words tumbled out of his mouth in a rush.
“Please! Please! I had no choice! He trapped us in a bad deal, Imbarian did. Imbarian, that’s the sorcerer. He set us up in this castle―conjured it all in one night! We had to get him one or two people every month. But there weren’t any travelers, and soon I’d have to send him one of us. Then you came along―”
“That’s why the feast.”
“Yes. I’m sorry, so sorry. But don’t you see? We owe you. We’re free now! We didn’t think anyone could get to Imbarian. But you did, and we’re not his slaves anymore. If there’s any way we can show you―”
“What about Moler there?”
“He was an idiot. He did that on his own. Please believe me!”
I felt Kit’s hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go, Tam. There’s nothing more to be done here.”
I thought about it for a moment, then nodded and released Gorlin. He landed hard in the puddle of his own piss.
In the hills overlooking the castle we found a spring-filled pool and made camp near it. For the whole day we rested there, and spent as much time as we could stand in the cold water washing away the residue of the night.
That evening we watched the sunset together. I sat upon the grassy slope and Kit stretched himself out on the ground with his head on my lap. As the the sun departed and the day that saw the death of Imbarian came to its end, so did his works. The fall of the mighty castle shook the ground.
We continued on our way east the next morning.