Chapter 1

The sound of the door opening told Darynn that his student for the evening had arrived. He put down the quill he worked with, moving slowly, and then covered the inkwell with a small stone cap. He turned slowly, anticipating the look of awe in the student's face (they always looked the same). But when he turned, he found himself surprised, because he had never before had a female student. "Well," he said.

He estimated her age between fourteen and fifteen years. That age where children become just perfect for teaching the ways of the advanced magicks he of all the mages, understood best. Her hair hung about her face and down her back in a black frame of soft, tight curls. He saw beautiful, powerful slate blue eyes under that frame, and a tiny, delicate nose hovered above an equally small and expressive mouth. "Come here, child. Sit, over there, on that stool with the blue pillow, yes." She moved as he directed, and although she needed her heels on the bottom rung of the stool, she did manage to get onto it without help. "Now then," he said. "Tell me your name."

"Aimee', sir." She held out an envelope.

"And your master?"

"Teltirray, Darynn-sir."

"He purchased you?" He opened the letter, which indeed carried Mage Teltirray's seal on it, as he listened.

The girl shook her head nervously. "No, sir. Well, yes sir. I mean I do not know. He removed me from an orphanage seven months ago, but the arrangement did not have the contract exchange of a slave."

"But coin passed hand nonetheless," Darynn said, nodding. Teltirray's last two students had been girls like Aimee'. They were always girls. Darynn disliked Teltirray, partially for his tastes and partially for his utter lack of social grace and manners. Teltirray's last two "students" had apparently found the stress of living with him unbearable and committed suicide, and he had suspected from the start that Teltirray merely drove them to madness as a simple method of disposal. With Aimee's appearance and the instructions in the letter she held out to him, he felt his suspicions were confirmed.

Darynn examined Aimee' carefully while deep in thought about a personal dilemma that had not existed before she had walked through the door. He switched his vision; decades had passed since he had needed to say anything to effect such change. Under his eyes, she appeared as a conglomeration of green and blue masses, swirling lazily. "By Sphahis!" he whispered to himself, then caught his words. This girl radiated power, power he was very familiar with, and Teltirray's current plan became clear to him. Teltirray sought his skill not so that he might train an apprentice, but an odalisque.

Darynn became convinced, and smiled to himself. Aimee' would get the training Teltirray sought, but he would not get just an odalisque; he would get an houri, as well.

"So, you have come to me to learn my magicks, Aimee'?" he asked.

"Y... yes, sir. He told me you knew best the teachings in the world about the magicks of the Satyrs and the Megass." She fidgeted nervously in her seat, still not daring to make eye contact with him.

He rose from his chair. The sound of his seat rocking startled her slightly, and she looked away. He stood before her and reached out with one hand to touch her under the chin, to reach into her. He wished her a calmness and she received it, turning her head back towards him. "Look at me, Aimee'. Tell me what you see."

Her eyes looked into his and her gaze pierced him. Oh, Teltirray, he thought as he let her in, you do like to play with fire, don't you? "I see a man. Young, but fully grown. Brown, your eyes, the same color as your beard and hair. You have a handsome nose, and a wide mouth, but the lips look thick, but not unhandsomely so. Your body, what I can see of it, shows care, well-shaped and strong. And you possess power."

"The last. Your opinion, or that of rumors given to you?"

"Mine," she said firmly.

He smiled and walked back to his comfortable chair, slowly lowering a spherical shutter over the magically glowing orb that sat on his desk. He wanted the darkness of the room to make it seem smaller and more intimate. He wanted her trust above everything else. "I want to tell you a story, Aimee', that tale I tell all my students, of my first encounter with the Satyrs and of my learning of the ways of love, of power, and of men. That you should hear it intrigues me, because I have never told it to a female before. Your master tests me, and I do not like being tested. But do not relay that message to him. You may tell him everything that occurs... but that. Do you understand?"

"Yes... yes sir."

"Good. Now listen closely."

I began my life as a simple blacksmith's son and the very idea that I might end up a mage never crossed my mind. I knew my place in the world and I knew that the worlds of mages lay far beyond my simple reach. Never did the twain meet.

I had a talent for the smithy, make no mistake. I knew how to make steel behave in manners never seen before or since, and I can still do the same today. I still smith as a hobby. And as a way of making the tools of my true trade, of course.

Do you know where Daber Wood lies on the map, Aimee? No? Some day I shall pull out my maps and show it to you, once you have learned to read the simpler ones. Yes, I intend on teaching you that as well. Suffice to say it should take many weeks and many forged rivers to reach it walking.

My father had many customers and when I came into my own often he sent me to see to their needs. As I approached my seventeenth birthday it became apparent to both him and me that my talents would someday surpass his. Customers more often requested my presence at their needs then they did his. I must give him credit for his fortitude and his benevolence for never once did he express grief or anger at my inborn skills, only joy and happiness at what we both saw as my future success. He knew that someday I would have the skills to save him in elder years. And now, although in ways neither of us intended, I do. But we could never know what would happen to me that summer.

Father dispatched me one morning to the house of a customer who lived on the other side of Daber Wood. He called himself Thomas Cailleac, and to the knowledge of our town he had come into his estate and his wealth from a combination of family and the lucky spoils of war. He had often called me in the past year, admitting to me once that he enjoyed my natural talents as a worker of iron, lead, and silver.

Even starting out first thing that morn the ride to his home would take me well into the day. It would also carry me through the thickest heart of those Woods. The stories in town often called those woods haunted, or worse, cursed! Men vanished in those woods, and sometimes, late at night, the sounds of pipe and drum carried on the wind. My father often warned me about the Daber, telling me not to ride through them after dark. When visiting Cailleac I often rode through them in the early evening but often managed to break through them before complete nightfall.

I reached Cailleac before high noon. As much as I could tell, Thomas lived alone although his house could easily have hidden a dozen sleeping chambers and staff. He extended his kindness as always, offering me bread and beer before indicating the work he wanted done. Iron frames and lead workings held the glass windows in his home in place but often those frames and working needed mending. He supplied the glass panes and the lead but he needed my skill to shape and work them properly. At least, he always said so. But Thomas had told me once of his life as a warrior and I didn't think him the kind of man to disdain simple physical labor. I offered to teach him the simple things that would make it possible for him to do most of the mending himself.

He laughed heartily. "I like your company, Darynn. Sometimes I think of breaking the windows myself just to have more excuses to invite you out here. But, your words have sense. Show me."

I taught him the basics of lead and the dangers therein. Then he showed me an iron fence that had rotted through and the bolts that had come loose in the last windstorm. Fixing that ruined masonry took quite a while.

I felt his eyes upon me as I work. I make no exaggeration in that. He wore tight pants of tanned cowhide, tall boots, the kind a soldier should own, and a simple tunic with a slit 'v' at his neck that could be drawn closed with a strap of leather. The heat of day sweated the life out of me as I worked and he brought me water, but as he offered it to me I could feel his eyes touch my skin where my shirt did not cover me. And his breath, like the scent of warm horses, carried to my nostrils something that I could not fathom.

For at that age I had known the pleasant company of women but not their intimacies. And the intimacies of men... pfagh! All I knew of that came from legends of evil, sickness, and death. What did my town cleric know? Nothing!

Forgive me, Aimee'. I forget that my cleric now thinks my kinds of knowledge 'corrupt' and evil, and I think he knows absolutely nothing. I must remain focused in my tale.

Have you ever watched a man walk, Aimee'? They all walk in almost the same manner. All except Thomas. His boots should have leant him a strident, powerful gait. Instead, his power seemed elsewhere, in his eyes and his broad, massive chest. His stride came in short, careful gestures, as if he thought about every step before making it. For a man so long a soldier he looked uncomfortable wearing those boots.

"You could stay the night," he offered me as I prepared my horse to leave.

"Father will want me home."

"Night falls already, Darynn. I fear for your safety if you walk through those woods at this hour. It takes you four hours to reach your home from here."

"I only spend the first two in the forest, sir. I will have no trouble."

His eyes darted back and forth, and the concern in his face warmed me. But at the same time it made me nervous; did he know something I didn't? His nervousness said he did. Finally, though, he nodded his head. "Take care of yourself, Darynn. I will want to see you again." He reached out a hand and dropped payment in my hand. Seven silver, and more than I had asked.

"And you, Thomas. God bless you." I mounted my horse and rode towards the woods even as the darkness of night fell further.

As I rode, I realized the error of my choice. For the clouds had covered the sky and neither moon shone through to light my way. At first I felt confident, but fear began to push that confidence down, so I lit a lantern.

I saw that I had strayed far from the road. I could not see it from atop my mount. I guessed that I had ridden in a straight line since leaving the path and that if I turned around and road straight back, I had to reach the road again. As my horse walked, I heard thunder in the distance. At first it came as a slow rumble, then it grew louder and sharper and closer. Then a lightning bolt struck nearby; my hair stood on end, my skin burned. Naturally, my horse panicked and threw me off. I landed on the ground, cursing, and then as my horse flailed my pack of tools feel from his back and landed very near my head. A blacksmith's tools weigh many pounds, and I realized that had they fallen on my head I would surely have died.

That thought stayed in my head for a long time. The fall had stunned me and I sat up to collect my wits. And then a young, boyish voice rang out through the woods. "A human, fallen from his horse!"

Another voice sang, "What shall we do with him?"

And the first answered, "Why, take him, of course!" Suddenly a small crowd of young boys appeared out of the woods. The oldest looked no more than sixteen, and the youngest thirteen. I looked around, bewildered, as they threw a net over my shoulders.

I sputtered and cursed as they drew the net tight. "Unhand me!" I demanded.

"Ah, ah!" the eldest chided me. "You dared to walk through our woods at night, and now we have you for our amusement."

"What... what shall you do to me?"

"You'll see. You'll like it." He smiled, and fear gripped my heart. The fall had stunned me so hard that only now did I realized that none of the boys wore any clothing. Hair covered their legs from the waists to their ankles, and those very legs ended not in feet, but in hooves. Satyrs had taken me. I knew the end of my life approached soon.

"I thought... I thought Satyrs only took women."

"We take what we want," the boy replied. "And tonight, our Master wants you."

"Your Master?"

"You will see." They hoisted my net between two poles and carried me through the woods like a stag trapped in a hunt. Which, in a way, they may have regarded me. We approached an open circle ringed with torches, and as we approached the winds seemed to die away. I knew that they controlled the magics of the woods, and here I saw the evidence.

The circle grew out of the side of a hill, and set into the hill I saw a throne, covered in shadows. A shape sat in that throne but I could not see who-- or what-- owned that shape. "Master," the eldest spoke, "We have brought your prize."

"Good." I expected their master's voice to frighten me, but instead it did the opposite. I felt warmed by it, reassured by it. And it had a familiar sound to it as well, as if I knew this Master. "Remove him from the net."

They lowered the poles and removed the net from about me. The Master spoke again. "Strip him."

The boyish, youthful satyrs tore my clothes from my body. I felt no urge to fight them. Instead, I felt curiosity, wonder, reassurance, and an uncontrollable emergence of lust. "Bring him closer."

They did not have to lead. I walked voluntarily and he noticed this. "You want," their Master said. "I can see it in your eyes and the way you hold your body. Good. You will need that. Now kneel before me."

That I would not do. I resisted him. I wanted to have my curiosity satisfied but not at the cost of my dignity. "Kneel," he repeated, his voice firm and demanding. The boys grabbed at my arms and my shoulders and began pushing me down. And although I felt my need to resist him utterly strong and unquestionable within me, I also felt myself sinking to my knees. But still I looked up, holding my chin high and defying him.