Chapter 49: A Bitter Dream

Wizard Darrowyn Caniferd had lived a long time. She had not lived so long by being impatient or foolish. She’d survived by always layering her plans and overlapping the edges, so that one plan could serve multiple purposes and so broken plans could be resurrected by one of those which overlapped.

So, she was understandably disgruntled as she stood staring into the darkened room. This alone was a plan made in haste. She still couldn’t see an alternative, however. She had made commitments with people and, while the commitments meant little to her, it was not yet time to stab back at those with whom she had aligned. Other pieces needed to be moved into position. Other plans needed time to come to fruition.

She had not expected Isanto Hamlade to fail so utterly. He’d never failed her before.

Looking through his thoughts, she couldn’t even blame him – which was good because otherwise he’d be dead or worse than dead. No, there was something far grander at play out in the world. It was something she’d not anticipated so how could the stupid oaf reclining on the bed have anticipated it? She needed more information ... and Hamlade was going to get it for her. A fitting rebuke for his failure.

She could hear the light snoring breath she expected, but there was no trace of light within the room. It was as she’d intended. She wanted nothing to disturb the person inside.

Her eyes tightened slightly as she bent the wards guarding the room. Unseen to normal eyes, she watched their warped lines of eldritch power swirl for a moment before they twisted and parted, making a breach large enough for her to walk through. She regarded them with a soft smile as she walked through.

There was a murkiness to the air in the room. It was dry and comfortable but also stagnant and fetid. The wards blocked anything living from entering but they also partially blocked air from migrating between the room and the outer keep. It was a necessary trade-off. She wanted nothing bothering the lone inhabitant of the interior room.

She paused as the darkness closed around her, her eyes lingering on the surrounding, dark stone of the corridor’s walls. She regarded them solemnly, waiting for her eyes to become accustomed to the spelled darkness. Such ephemeral things, the rock and stones which made up the wall. Such transitory things. To the lay person, the walls seemed solid and eternal, but she knew they were neither. At a level far beyond human sight, she knew the stone was porous. If she wanted to, she could spell herself to slither through them, though it was a clumsy method of travel. The stones themselves were merely temporary, here and gone in the blink of an eye. Raised from the earth, they would return eventually.

She shook the thought off. Melancholy didn’t become her. With an unassuming wave of her hand, the spelled darkness released, and baleful light flickered and leapt across the internal walls from oil lanterns spaced around the room. She blinked, annoyed at the intrusion of light, but then, as her eyes adjusted, she let them travel over the rich, wooden furnishings. An armoire stood against the far wall, its wood dark even in the shadows. A dresser stood beside it. Neat. Orderly. Ephemeral. The wood would last even less time than the surrounding walls.

Her mind turned back to her overlapping plans, and she grimaced in near pain. She had no contingencies for this. Worse, she had no way to make a contingency for this. If this part of the plan failed, she would be hard pressed to come up with a secondary solution or a way to bypass the failure. Short of attending to the matter herself – travelling to Wenland and getting the answers she needed – she could see no other way to resolve a failure.

And she couldn’t travel to Wenland. The Wenland Queen’s petty law outlawing mages gave her no pause. Of course, given a mage of her talents, it was a law which couldn’t be enforced. Traveling, however, especially traveling to Wenland, would bring the eyes of the Council down upon her. She didn’t fear their eyes – she’d poke them all out eventually, of course – but it would hamper certain other efforts at a time when she wasn’t ready to be hampered.

No, this would have to work. Isanto would not fail her a second time. He knew the cost of failure.

She paused next to where he apparently slumbered.

He was motionless, of course. The spell would not allow his body to move while his mind was elsewhere. Thoughtfully, she ran her fingertips down his face.

He was a handsome man, now that he’d dropped Arlade Tinsto’s semblance. Long, blonde hair spread out upon his pillow surrounding a soft, sallow face. His features even looked faintly regal, with his thin, curved nose and granite chin. She ran her fingers across his full red lips as she pondered his face.

She let her fingers trickle lower, down his bare chest to where his hands were clasped atop a gray coverlet. She swallowed as she felt an ember of hunger rise within her. A hot, desperate hunger from deep inside. With a slight jerk of her chin, the coverlet pulled from under his hands and down, floating gracefully for a mere moment, before billowing and falling to the floor. The motion brought a swirling of dust through the room, eddying on streams of air kept out for too long. She ignored the dust disdainfully, letting it settle back from whence it came.

Her eyes ran down the rest of him and her fingers slowly followed, running down a body which was something less than his face had promised. His arms and legs were long and thin, his body bony if lithe. His skin lay loose against his bones, a product of the length of the spell. She was sure to feed him daily but to do so, she needed to use arcane energy to push the sustenance into his stomach. It wasn’t as easy nor as enriching as swallowed food, but it would keep him alive and that was all she needed.

Unconsciously, she found her hand curled around his flaccid flesh and the edges of her mouth turned downward into a hollow sneer as she dared the hunger to rise higher. She pushed at the cloying need, but it would not go.

Of course, he was naked. It was a convenience. Her chattel had to bathe him and move him, lest he succumb to bed sores. She didn’t care about his discomfort, but the sores could kill, and she still had need of him. She should move the coverlet back over him. She should turn away and forget what she’d seen.

In disgust, she moved to pull her hand back but stopped. The hunger, though, would not be pushed away so easily. Instead, it grew, filling her and fighting for control. She felt the familiar need flow within her, a desire she both needed and loathed. It was a weakness and she wanted none of it. She’d spent most of her lifetime pushing down the animalistic tendencies of her human nature. The idea of rutting like some mongrel had always disgusted her. She knew she was meant for better things and the sexual needs of her body would only hamper her.

Her gaze dropped to her hand, noting its tremble. Her nostrils flared as the heat subsumed her and she snarled desperately to keep it at bay. She grit her teeth, her eyes closing in concentration but the heat only grew and she felt her center moisten, once again needing release.

For all of her life, she’d shunned her sexuality. It was a nuisance and something to be ignored as she sought to concentrate solely on acquiring the power which was her due. She’d pushed it back, into the depths of her mind, never allowing it to see the light of day. She’d turned from it, buried it, cast it out of herself.

Then, the collars. The potential of the collars, having men and women who had no choice but to obey her every whim, had somehow unlocked this needy part of herself. Seeing the non-mage chattel without the least power to control themselves, their wills broken, unable to resist her commands titillated her. It had started her down the path where her sexuality couldn’t be pushed back into the depths any longer. Something about the slaves being unable to form their own thoughts, completely dependent on her every impulse and desire, had unleashed a flood within her.

She’d resisted that siren call. She’d subsumed those thoughts with the carrion call of amassing more power and greater influence. She’d buried those tendencies beneath her will but...

They’d not stayed buried. The lure of the absolute power she wielded over the collared infiltrated her thoughts. The desires she’d long pushed away, became more insistent. Finally, in an effort to placate them and hopefully send them away for good, she’d allowed herself to fall to them.

She feared it might have been her greatest mistake. Once her animalistic nature asserted itself, she could no longer bury it back within the depths. She found, against her very nature, she no longer wanted to bury it.

She started with a man, of course. The power she wielded over the emasculated man tempted her too much. She beat him, first. She beat him for what she was about to let him do to her. Then, as he lay bruised and beaten, completely subservient under the power of the collar, she’d used magic to engorge his staff so she could mount him.

She was not ready for the release she felt. She was not ready for the heady sense of power that came with taking the man. She was not prepared for the limitless joy bouncing on that hard rod of flesh had brought her. She’d reached her peak again and again, each time cutting at the man, torturing him for the temerity of bringing her such pleasure.

Eventually, she’d killed him, of course. She could not dare to let a man live who’d had the audacity to lay with her – not even when he had no will of his own. No, she had killed him in the most painful way she could imagine – slowly carving the flesh from him.