Bertrice Small - A Distant Tomorrow

Then the Shadow Prince said, “I think you will both be safer if I send you to Kaliq’s palace in our desert realm. If the emperor sends to the inn and you are found gone he will assume your faerie power took you both away. No one saw you leave?”

“Nay. The innkeeper was busy in his taproom with the many revelers,” Lara said. “Does the City no longer rest, Lothair? Or have I forgotten what it was like?”

“Once the nights were silent after the eleventh hour, but no more,” he responded. “It is so crowded that people rent their beds for just a few hours at a time so they may sleep. Many lack homes to go to now. And there is a new evil among the poor. It is call Razi. When put into frine it offers dreams, some beautiful, some horrific. One never knows which will ensue, I am told. It is sold quite legally and cheaply at what are called Razi kiosks. I understand that the emperor’s man, Jonah, owns quite a few of these kiosks. Dreaming helps to keep the poor from rebellion and offers them an escape from the hopelessness and drudgery of their lives. And the kiosks are open all day and all night for the convenience of their customers.”

Lara sighed. “Lothair, what will happen to Hetar?”

He shrugged. “I do not know,” he said.

“Perhaps now would be a good time to go,” Magnus said quietly. He could see that Lara was very distressed by the state of things in Hetar. It would be best to take her away from the cause of her misery.

Lothair nodded. “I will go with you,” he said. “There are no meetings of the High Council scheduled for the present. In fact, we scarcely meet at all these days. I suspect the High Council is retained only to give the appearance that everything is as it has always been. Lara, we are going to Shunnar now.” And he waved his hand in a languorous fashion.

Magnus put his arm about Lara, and just briefly he felt as if his body had turned to flowing liquid. Then he found himself in a wide hallway, open on one side that was colonnaded, and had a waist-high balustrade. Lara sagged against him. She was suddenly very tired.

“I will find my brother,” Lothair said.

“You do not have to,” Kaliq said coming from the duskiness of the long corridor.

“Welcome to Shunnar, my lord Dominus. A servant will take you to your quarters, and in the morning we will speak. I can see Lara is exhausted. Was your visit to Hetar so hard?”

“We have to talk,” Lothair said with a small smile. “Lara has tired herself in a most wicked and foolish feat. But she now sees the error of her ways.”

A serving man was at Magnus’s side. “If you will come this way, my lord,” he invited.

The Dominus picked his wife up and carried her off. They were safe now.

“What did she do?” Kaliq asked as he and Lothair stood looking over the green moonlit valley below.

“Her powers have truly grown, Brother. But she must learn to control them better. The emperor declared himself, and offered her a place by his side. Lara was offended for a variety of reasons. She delved into his mind and allowed him to know what it would be like to take pleasures with her, because she told him he never really would. To be fair, she did give him the choice of not knowing, and warned him that if he accepted her offer he would never again know satisfaction with another woman.”

“And of course Gaius Prospero greedily took her offer, and will now suffer for it. That Hetar should be governed by such a fool!” Kaliq exclaimed angrily. “We will need Ilona to come and speak with her daughter. To advise Lara on the more careful use of her powers. It would appear her faerie blood runs stronger than her mortal blood now.”

“It was cruelly done,” Lothair said, and then he could not refrain from chuckling. “Can you imagine the agonies this emperor of ours will suffer over what has happened this night? It will certainly not make him any easier to control. But that she could do it, Kaliq! And she is not even all faerie, my brother!”

“Which is why Ilona must speak with her. Tonight Lara veered toward the darkness. It is the first time I have known it to happen. And it must not happen again,” Kaliq said seriously. And then he, too, chuckled. “Aye, it was clever of her.”

The serving man came and stood by his master’s side waiting to be recognized, and when he was the man said, “They are settled, my lord Prince.”

Kaliq nodded, and the servant left him. “I want to speak to Lara first,” he told Lothair. “Will you remain with us? On the morrow you will entertain the Dominus, and show him our valley while I deal with our naughty faerie woman.”

“Call me when you want me,” Lothair said. “I will be in my own palace tonight.” Then he was gone.

Kaliq found his own chamber and slept for but a few hours. In the hour just before the dawn he awakened, bathed, dressed and then called out to Ilona.

She appeared with her son, Cirilo, by her side. “Greetings, Kaliq of the Shadows,” she said. “My daughter is here, I know. Her brother wanted to see her. Where is she?”

“She and her husband yet sleep,” Kaliq answered. “Cirilo, my lad, go and find the giant, Og, and have him take you to the valley of horses. When Lara is awake I will have Og bring you back. I need to speak with your mother now.”

“Has my sister been naughty?” the boy asked with excellent instinct.

Kaliq chuckled. “Yes, but it is not for you to involve yourself. Go to Og.”

“Yes, my lord,” Cirilo said. He was a handsome little boy of seven, with his parents’ fair golden hair and his father’s deep blue eyes. With a smile he ran off.

“Come,” Kaliq said, inviting Ilona to a table overlooking the valley. “Let us break our fast while we talk.” He seated her and offered her a bowl of fruit.

“What has Lara done?” Ilona wanted to know, plucking a small bunch of green grapes from the bowl.

“Her powers are increasing greatly, as we knew they one day would,” Kaliq said. Then he explained to the queen of the Forest Faeries what Lara had done to Gaius Prospero the previous evening.

“He probably deserved it,” Ilona said, secretly proud of her daughter.

“She must learn better to control her emotions when she uses her powers,” Kaliq said. “Unless she does she could easily slip into the darkness, Ilona. You know it is always there, waiting, watching.”

Ilona sighed. “That is her mortal side, I fear. Mortal souls are easily taken into the darkness, Kaliq. Her faerie powers may be growing, but she is still half-mortal.”

“I cannot disagree,” he answered, “but she must learn to control herself. She has made an enemy of the emperor when she might have simply ignored him.”

“He would never forget her, my lord, even if she had not given him a glimpse of paradise. Gaius Prospero will always desire Lara. Only his death can end it. But then there would be a vacuum in the power base of Hetar,” she said. “And it is not time yet for the change, is it?”

“Will you speak with her, Ilona,” Kaliq said. “Will you teach her how to control her mortal emotions?”

“Yes,” Ilona said quietly. “Now tell me of her husband? Does she love him?”

Kaliq nodded. “More passionately than she did Vartan, and the Dominus is completely distracted by his love for her.”

“Is he a strong man?” Ilona wanted to know. “Or is he one of those namby-pamby mortals we faeries love more often than not?”

“He is strong, and rules over much territory. He gave some of that land to the Outlands clan families, and with Lara’s aid we have transported them in their entirety from Hetar. The armies of Gaius Prospero will be met with empty territory. No villages, no flocks or herds, no people. Even the mines that the Tormod and Piaras once worked have been sealed over with ancient growth. Hetar will find nothing but the land. They will have to begin afresh, and it will cost them the instant profits they had hoped to reap from this violation of the old treaties.”

Ilona smiled as she sipped her morning frine. “And so my daughter’s destiny proceeds exactly as it should,” she noted. “No, we cannot allow her to be lost to the darkness, Kaliq. It is time for me to be Lara’s mother once again.”

LARA AWOKE to find her husband stroking her naked body. “Umm,” she murmured, and rolled over to face him. “Good morning, my lord.”

He leaned forward, and kissed her lips. “Good morning, my love,” he greeted her.

Then pushing her onto her back he kissed her again, slowly this time, his hands continuing to caress her. His tongue began a leisurely exploration of first one nipple and breast, and then the other. His fingers trailed down her silken torso, running suggestively along her shadowed slit, slipping between her nether lips to tease at the kernel of her sex. “Wicked creature, you are already wet with your lust,” he scolded her, amused. Two fingers pushed slowly into her, growing still, letting her sense their denseness. “Shall this be all?” he asked softly, his tongue tracing the whorl of her ear as he whispered hotly.

“No!” she replied.

“Tell me what you want, Lara?” he tortured her gently, the fingers moving just slightly within her.

“You! Inside me!” she half gasped. The delicate sensations his fingers were engendering within her were both terrible and wonderful.

“I do not know,” he said, “if you deserve my attentions, wife. I think you need to be punished for your actions last night.” His lips were close to hers again.

“Magnus! I remember nothing of last night. Only that you love me,” she said.

He swung his body over her, his manhood rubbing against her suggestively; watching the play of emotions across her face as she anticipated his next move. He pushed the tip of his lance just within her, and stopped.

Lara gasped a second time. She was burning with her desire to be possessed by this man, her husband. “Magnus, please,” she said.