The Guild (36 page)

The spinning handle gradually slowed down as the internal spring stiffened in its resistance. When it stopped, Alonnen carefully pushed the button to the midpoint before releasing his spell, so that the handle didn’t spin the other way around in spring-wound release. Rexei blushed, knowing why he was being so careful; pushing the button all the way through its hole the other way would have sent the crankman rattling.

Setting it on one of the pillows so it would be within easy reach, he leaned over and kissed her. She kissed him back, liking this lovemaking stuff more and more. Conversations that had gone half over her head in the past now made much more sense. Though most everyone had assumed she was male and had discussed things with that viewpoint in mind, she remembered the things discussed from the other perspective. One of those things was something an actress had tried on her, thinking Rexei to be a boy.

The moment her lips nibbled on his ear, he twitched. A glide of her tongue along the slightly fuzzy curve made him pant. And suckling on the lobe evoked an outright growl. Overwrought, Alonnen dragged both of them fully onto the bed. The crankman slid off its pillow and thumped into her shoulder, but both ignored it for a long while in the passion of their kiss. Rexei tried nibbling on his ear again.

Frustrated with too much stimulation, Alonnen pulled free, grabbed the crankman, and brought the cool metal down to her breast. Her brows narrowed in confusion, but he couldn’t smile. He just thumbed the button and pressed the rattling, buzzing, vibrating machine to her left nipple.

“Oh Holy
Goddess
!”

It was a good thing the room had been spell-warded against
sound, for her shout echoed off the decadently papered walls. Alonnen teased each sensitive breast, switching back and forth as she shouted and clutched at the covers, at his shoulders, at his wrist, half clinging to his arm, half pushing him away. Thumbing the button to neutral, he leaned in close, admiring the little beads of sweat raised on her flushed face. “
That
,” he murmured, “is what it feels like to me when you nibble on my ears.”

Her brown gaze, soft and unfocused as she struggled for breath, sharpened. Looking at him, she stared into his hazel green eyes, clearly thinking things through . . . then deliberately slid her gaze to the side of his face and licked her lips. Staring at his right ear. It amused him that this bright, talented, cunning woman would dare to
think
about licking his ear some more in the wake of his unspoken sensual threat.

He did not turn the crankman back on, though. Instead, he slid the curved metal tip down between her breasts, along the soft curves and planes of her stomach, and teased the dark brown curls of her mound. Those eyes unfocused again, and her dark-lashed lids drifted shut. Her lips parted a moment later. So did her knees, granting him access to her netherfolds. Aroused by her acceptance of this passion between them, Alonnen focused firmly on plying the rounded tip down into her folds, between her netherlips. He gently stroked and rocked the quiet device a few times, then pulled away.

It was gratifying to see her hips lift in the wake of the crankman’s retreat, seeking more stimulation. The sight of her dew slicked over the polished metal made his hand tremble. He wanted to taste it, to toss aside the Clockworks toy and replace the cool metal shaft with the heat and the hunger of his mouth, and follow that with the heat and the hardness of his own shaft. Carefully, he refrained. Instead, he nudged her hand into taking the crankman from him, then helped roll her onto her side so that she faced away from him.

“Rub that between your legs,” he coaxed, gliding his palm along the underside of her thigh until she lifted it up and braced her foot on the bed. “Don’t turn it on, yet; just rub it against yourself.”

“Mmm . . . o-okay,” Rexei agreed. She was still a little rattled—pun inadvertently intended—by the way he had used the crankman, but she was willing to comply. Within reason.

The buzzing against her nipples had been unbelievably intense. Though the toy was purely mechanical, it felt as if sparks of electricity had arced down through her whole body, connecting her breasts to her belly, her loins, even her toes. She had no idea what would happen if she turned on the machine while pressing it to that little nubbin between her legs that felt so good whenever it was stroked.

She moved the metal against herself, while she felt him shift on the bed, no doubt fetching the jar of pomade. The metal, hard, unyielding, and polished nearly mirror smooth, felt good gliding between her folds. Pleasurable, mildly intense, and just enough of a distraction that she didn’t mind what he was doing with his fingers, slick and mint scented, between her nethercheeks. She stroked a little faster, a little firmer, feeling the cool ointment, the gentle insistence of his fingers . . .

“Now, bring it back up to your breasts,” Alonnen urged, hearing her breath quicken and seeing her skin beginning to flush with desire, “. . . and turn it on.”

“Uhh . . .” Do that to
herself?
Could she? Dare she? An impudent wiggle of his fingers reminded her why: as a very pleasant distraction. Ignoring the slick moisture coating some of the shaft, she brought it up to her chest, braced herself . . . and thumbed the switch. The wrong way, whapping herself in the wrist with the crank. “Ow!”

Her lover had the grace to stay silent, rather than laugh aloud . . . though she felt him shake a little from suppressed mirth.
Embarrassed but equally amused, she quickly pushed the button the other way. The crank immediately stopped pressing against her arm in the effort to unwind its internal springs, and the inner, rubber-wrapped hammers rattled to life. Bringing the device to her breast, she didn’t tease the nipple directly, choosing instead to press and slide the buzzing, tapered tip along the gentle swell of her left breast, then the right.

The feel of his fingers probing and stretching her star, the occasional pomade-slick brush of his knuckles lightly, teasingly along her perineum, all of that made her blush and bite her lip against the urge to moan.
Now
she understood all the jokes in her boy-disguised presence about “a back door to the Heavens.” Now she understood why so many couples used this route to avoid an unplanned pregnancy. Not because it was the only way to copulate without that great risk, but because it was also very, very pleasurable—and this was just his fingers.

In fact, it added a whole new layer of experience to her sense of sexuality . . . just as the crankman added something new. An addicting level of pleasure, because the more his fingers pumped in and out, the more the metal case buzzed and tickled her breasts, the more she wanted of both sensations. Panting, moaning between heavy breaths, she moved the machine up to her nipples in little teasing touches. The polished metal rarely lingered for long each time, since that would have been too intense all at once, but she did gradually increase the length of time each nipple was stimulated.

Pleasure in front, pleasure behind . . .
Guildra, tell me this is what lovers feel when reunited in the Heavens . . . !
Finally, his hand came over hers and shut the crankman off. Slick with pomade, his fingers were no longer prepping her body, but she could still feel something . . .

Oh. Oh my. He’s inside me . . .
She blushed hard, her eyes went wide, and she felt a small tremor of a climax ripple through her
nerves. His touch had distracted her from the realization that his shaft had actually entered her, replacing those fingers with a thickness that satisfied instead of scared.

“You feel so
good
,” Alonnen groaned, kissing her shoulder.

“A-Alonnen,” she gasped as he moved his manhood a little.

He nipped at the muscles underneath her skin, then sucked on the sting he had made, soothing it with lips and tongue. Working his way up to her neck, he lapped at the lobe of her ear. “Do you like this?” he asked, pausing to suckle on the soft flesh. “Do you like me nibbling on your
ear
? Does it excite you like it does me? Or is all this trembling and moaning because I’ve put my piston in your beautiful cog of a bottom?”

He suckled again. She shivered, and her leg wanted to twitch. “A-Almost as much . . . and . . . and more,” Rexei panted. “I want . . .”

“You want . . . ?” he growled, his tone conveying an unspoken promise to deliver on whatever she desired.

Swallowing, she confessed, “I want
more
.”

He shuddered and held on to her for a few seconds. She could feel his heart beating through his chest pressed against her back, felt his shaft twitching and throbbing faintly in time to that beat. Ignoring the slippery stuff on his fingers, Rexei twined her own with his, barely holding on to the crankman. She needed to anchor herself in him, not some mere machine, however blissful.

Finally, he moved. Slowly, patiently, Alonnen pushed deeper inside her untried back door. Plenty of pomade had made the trouble of friction minimal; it was simply the tightness of that ring of muscles that required caution and care. She moaned, feeling the lightning currents rushing out through her limbs, and he groaned with her, moved faster, feeling it, too.

His hand covered hers, turning her grip so that the crankman pointed downward. The damp metal slid down her belly, over her mound, and came to a stop between her folds, making her shiver
from the press of it against her clitoris. Then his thumb shifted, sought, and pressed . . . and the machine throbbed to life, snatching away rational thought in a deluge of overwhelming stimulation.

Pleasure escaped in a wordless holler. Rexei clawed sideways at the bedding. Bucked against him. That made her breath catch from a slight stinging stretch at the move, but Alonnen used it, rocking gently into her, delving deeper. Bracing his own foot on the bed, he abandoned her hand. That let her pull back on the crankman, easing the rattling press against her clitoris, but it was for a good cause.

Pulling her leg up over his to open her up more, Alonnen thrust deeply, if carefully. He had to grit his teeth against the urge to buck and pound in fast, holding back against the demanding needs of his own pleasure. Each inward stroke delved a little deeper. Once he was fully inside, he returned his hand to hers and pulled the buzzing crankman up to her breasts. Only then did he move, using her gasp and twitch to pull his shaft partway out, then he pressed back inside. That in turn pressed her forward, bringing her nipple once again into contact with the machine.

Rexei gave up control of the device. Gave up control of her pleasure. In absolute trust, she cried—with a spill of tears as well as with her sobbing voice—while he teased and tormented her nipples. He almost stopped, hearing her breath hitch in sobs, but she caught his wrist and held his hand close, then released it to reach back to his hip.

Relieved, Alonnen resumed making love to her, wanting her to forever associate pleasure with him, with this moment in his arms, rather than all the fears she had suffered while hiding for over a decade from the False God’s minions.

He did his job well; Rexei pulled on the blankets and sheets when he tucked the tapered metal cylinder between her legs, but she knew better than to close her thighs against the vibrating
invasion. And when he started thrusting in earnest, picking up speed in compliance with her broken pleas for more, more,
more
, she pushed back into every stroke, for it was just one more layer of deep, passionate stimulation in her mind-shattering pleasure.

Her writhing and trembling made it hard for him to keep the crankman positioned just right. During one of her thrashings, he tried a little too hard, bumped the tip past her sheath opening along the sensitive span of skin between it and her cog-star, and right up against his own flesh as he thrust. That not only stimulated the underside of his shaft, it also brought the buzzing metal up against his scrotum, vibrating straight through his flesh to his own perineum. Stars exploded behind his eyes.

Vaguely, he got the machine back into place; he knew he did because of the way she hollered and clenched up in pleasure with hands and toes and buttocks, limbs straightening and spine stiffening, but it was too late to stop his own eye-blinding, toe-curling bliss. His own body tensed, shuddered, then jolted like a bowstring snapping back and forth now that the arrows of his seed were being released. He shouted, too, a strangled sound that was too far gone to be her name, though he tried.

White-blinding bliss drained away rational thought. When it ended, he found himself shaking almost as hard as the still-rattling device. Carefully thumbing it off, he dropped it onto the bedding, then wrapped his arm around her waist. She, too, was still trembling hard from her own climax. Spooned together, still connected piston to cog, he held her while their hearts slowed and their breathing steadied. Every few seconds, her inner muscles clenched just a little in pure post-bliss reflex, making him bite his lip from the lingering pleasure of it.

Finally, the twitches ended, and Rexei could think again. Think and have enough energy to speak. “I . . . I don’t know if I can . . . do that again . . .”

Alonnen lifted his head a little, alarmed. “You can’t? Why not?”

“Because if this . . . if this is how the
back
door feels with you . . . I don’t think I can survive the
front
door version,” she half complained, half complimented him. “But . . . I, uh . . . think I’m insane enough to try. When I’m not a puddle of limp jelly, that is.”

This time, the sound-masking spell was needed to hide his hearty laughter from the rest of the building.

N
othing seemed able to ruin his good mood, come morning. Not the drizzling rain on the way from Heiastowne to the dam, and not the information that his scrying spies had found no recording of what the Patriarch’s right-hand man wanted from his fellow ex-priests in this corner of the land. Not even the frowns his mother gave him when he went down to the dining level to get something to eat at mid-morning could spoil his happy mood.

His brother Dolon came close to puncturing Alonnen’s ebullient attitude. Having invaded the dining hall of the inner circle for much the same reason—oven-baked flatbread topped with slivers of onion and scattered with cheese—Dolon ate slowly, frowning several times at his older brother. Toward the end of the snack, he finally smiled. Grinned, rather, with the predatory look of a sibling who had figured something out.

“Why, Alonnen, I didn’t know you liked
men
,” Dolon teased slyly.

Alonnen frowned in confusion. “What? Since when?”

“Since, oh, last night? When you took Master Rexei into town . . . and came home this morning sporting that unbelievably silly grin?” his brother said, pointing at Alonnen’s lips. “You haven’t done that since the last time you got to piston someone . . . or was
he
pistoning
you
? All those protests to the contrary . . . what a smoke screen! You should be nominated for an apprenticeship to the Actors Guild.”

For a long moment, Alonnen did not feel like smiling. His brother’s comments were crude, rude, and . . . well, typical hazing from a brother. This wasn’t the first time either of them had tormented the other verbally. But it wasn’t the teasing that bothered him; it was that as much as Alonnen wanted to correct his sibling’s mistaken impression, he didn’t know if he had the
right
to correct Dolon’s view of Rexei as a male.

“Rexei” was not an unusual name for both boys and girls; just about any name ending in
ei
was gender neutral in Mekhana. Many parents used it to ensure a casual conversation would not give away a child’s gender identity whenever a priest was around. His own name wasn’t gender neutral, nor was Dolon’s, but then their parents had raised them and their siblings mostly within the protections of the Vortex. But naming conventions were not the same as permission to speak.

Sighing, he settled on a different tactic. “Does it really
matter
whether or not the person I love is a male, a female, or . . . or some weird gender the Gods Themselves haven’t yet invented?”

“Oh-ho!” Dolon crowed, distracted as Alonnen had planned for him to be. “So my middle brother is in
love
, is he?”

Alonnen narrowed his eyes and peered over the top of the green-lensed spectacles he had not bothered to remove. “Are you going to keep giving me grief about being in love, or are you going to go do something more productive, like actually
work
?”

Dolon mock swept his strawberry blond curls back from his
face, lifting his hawkish nose into the air. “I’ll have you know I’m quite competent at doing
both.
”

Alonnen relaxed. This was just typical teasing. “You have a low threshold for competency, I see.” He started to say more, but the talker-box rang. He rose to go answer it, but Dolon beat him to the machine. “I was going to get that. It’s probably for me.”

“Hello, you’ve reached the inner dining hall,” Dolon offered into the speaking cone, lifting the matching earpiece to his head. “What? . . . He’s right here. I’ll let him know.”

The way his brother hung up the ear-cone, ending the conversation instead of offering the cable-connected device, annoyed Alonnen. “I could’ve spoke to them myself, you know.”

“Yeah, but you’d just hear the exact same thing, and this’ll get you upstairs faster,” Dolon told him, shrugging. “The Guardians have called a conference, and they need you up there, since it’s apparently about you.”

Glad he had finished his flatbread snack, Alonnen pointed back at the table they had used, and the dirty dishes still sitting on the age-worn surface. “Just for that,
you
can take care of my cup and plate. Since it’ll get me upstairs faster.”

Ignoring the dirty look his younger sibling sent him, Alonnen headed for the stairs. It didn’t take long to reach the top. Debating a moment, he touched the doorknob, chanted a brief set of spells to change the illusions cloaking his office, then stepped inside. What should have been a room with four or five people in it, examining the images captured by the spying roaches, had turned into an empty chamber with a single mirror on the wall.

Alonnen didn’t understand how it worked; his magical education wasn’t up to the task and wouldn’t be for a long, long time even if he had a competent teacher who did understand. But he knew that he wasn’t going to run over someone turned invisible, but not intangible, by some spell. The way Millanei had described
it, this whole floor acted more like his office formed a giant ring around the heart of the Vortex, and he had simply spun the floor like a cogwheel, accessing a gear-tooth version that had no one currently in it. Or perhaps it was the others he had shifted out of his office into an alternate version somewhere around the ring.

Donning cap and scarf to augment his green-tinted, identity-hiding lenses, he touched the frame, shifting it from a pulsing blue field to a set of squares filled with faces. Given the number of Guardians assembled, this was to be a very important meeting. He recognized nearly every face, but two of the mirror-windows were different. Both Pelai and Tipa’thia occupied the same scrying frame, one with her tattoos creased and crinkled into near-illegibility by her age-lined face, the other with her smooth-inked features framed by dark hair instead of white. In the other frame, not one, not two, but five faces peered at the others.

In the center, in a window that occupied the span of four of the others, Guardian Kerric nodded a greeting for their newest conference member. “I’m very glad you could join us, Guardian Alonnen, because
we
have come up with a solution for
your
problem.”

“A
temporary
solution,” Guardian Tipa’thia interjected firmly. “The spells will only last about two years, then they won’t be able to be reapplied for ten years. Keep that in mind, Guardians.”

Amber eyes rolled, and a suntanned hand tugged on a pale blonde braid. Alonnen quirked a brow at Serina’s image. She looked like she was not at all happy with whatever solution Kerric and Tipa’thia had in mind—irritated with it, even—but she didn’t say anything. She just stood there next to Guardian Dominor, her husband. Witch-Knight Orana Niel stood to Serina’s right, looking as calm and patient as ever.

To the left of Dominor stood some young man with ash-blond hair and aquamarine eyes. He was a bit thinner than Dominor but had the look of a kinsman to the dark-haired mage. To his left stood
a woman with hair just a few shades lighter than Alonnen’s own and a curious look in her eyes; those eyes were the same shade as the young man’s, but other than that, the two had nothing in common regarding their looks. Certainly she didn’t have the slightly slanted, almond-shaped eyes of a Katani. What she lacked in ethnic nationality, Alonnen realized was made up in the crown she wore: delicate-looking, it had been fashioned out of slender gold wires bent and joined together to look almost like a set of mountain peaks.

Given the location of the Fountain which Dominor guarded, Alonnen could guess who the crown wearer might be. “I take it you, milady, are the new ruler of Nightfall? If so, congratulations.”

“Queen Kelly of Nightfall, hi there. Forgive me for barging into this, but after reading the prophecies in question, I realized I might be of some help, even if I’m no mage,” she stated bluntly. “I also figured, given how secretive you Guardian types are of your magical whatsit-wells, it might help for you to have a front man, so to speak. You know, someone whom everyone could point to and say, ‘She ordered it!’ and thus send the stampede of questioners and complainers
my
way, to distract everyone from the truth and keep them from interrupting or interfering with your work.”

Her blunt forthrightness made some of the others blink. For a moment, Alonnen couldn’t think of why; her forthrightness simply reminded him of several other Guild Masters . . . and that was the reason why. For a queen, this Kelly woman did not act at all how the tales of outkingdom queens were reported to act. She even looked like a fellow ex-Mekhanan . . . like a Guildaran, given her buttoned shirt. Alonnen liked her immediately based on that. He suspected from Ilaiea’s impatient look and Keleseth’s frown that not everyone did.

“I think that’s a good idea,” he stated, before anyone else could speak. He might not know nearly as many spells as the other men and women in this scrycast conference, but Alonnen was not stupid.
He had given all the information gathered over the last few months a lot of thought. “Given the prophecies in question seem to suggest the Convocation is somehow involved, the queen of its host nation would indeed make a logical ‘target’ for all inquiring outsiders. And the ‘Synod Gone’ prophecy by the, uh . . . Seer Howpunay?”

“Howpanayah,” the ash-blond man pronounced. “Only the Seer Haupanea goes by ‘Hope’ now . . . and she’ll be joining us as soon as she gets out of the refreshing room.”

“Uh . . . right,” Alonnen said, thrown off-balance a little by the other man’s assertion that a centuries-old Seer would be joining them in a few moments. He dragged the conversation back to the point he wanted to make. “That prophecy does say, ‘
Gone, all gone, the synod gone, brought back by exiled might; By second try, the fiends must die, uncovered by the blight.
’ If the Synod is indeed the restored Convocation, as we suspect, then whatever is required to end the impending demonic invasion
will
happen within the kingdom of Nightfall, or at the very least, at the same time as your second Convocation ceremony, Guild Master Kelly . . . uh, sorry, is it Highness? I’m not used to addressing royalty.”

“Just call me Kelly,” the redhead soothed. “I don’t stand on formality when it’s not a formal occasion. I don’t even sit on formality, unless there’s an extra cushion or two,” she added, as the men and women sharing Guardian Dominor’s frame with her smiled in humor. So did some of the others, Sheren, Migel, Kelezam, Pelai, even the two stuffy Guardians of the Fountains in Fortuna. “And you had the very same thought I did, reading those two lines. Whatever happens, it
will
involve the Convocation in some way.

“The more I know right away on what your plans are, the more I can ensure that they get incorporated into my own plans for hosting the next Convocation. Which will be in four years, since that seems to be the long-standing tradition, and I won’t object to the wait, since we still have a long way to go before Nightfall is
fully functional as a kingdom and a hosting site. But enough about me; I’ll just listen in and take notes while you get on with the solution you found. Serina?”

“Ughh,” the younger of the two pale blonde women in view groaned, tugging again on her braid. “I don’t like this . . .”

“Stop whining, love, and get it over with,” Guardian Dominor told his wife.

“
Fine
. Okay, as many of you know, I’ve been working on the problem of the old mass Portals that used to span both continents and oceans, and how the Shattering of Aiar not only destroyed the heart of the old Empire up north and ended the last set of Convocations of Gods and Man, but it also shattered the aether, allowing said Portals to span the world. Well, between my efforts with the Fountain which Mother Naima has been sharing Guardianship of with me and the efforts of Priestess Saleria”—Serina nodded to the blonde priestess with the almond-shaped eyes and golden curls, who dipped her head in return—“we’ve managed to quell a strip of aether running from the center of Western Katan and the Fountain of the Grove all the way up to a stretch of kingdoms to the east of your, well, ex-kingdom and the region governed by Guardian Callaia.”

“Sorry about that,” Kelly muttered under her breath, giving Alonnen a somewhat guilty, apologetic wince.

“Don’t be,” he murmured back, wondering what the redhead had to do with the loss of Mekha. He returned his attention to Serina. “What does the restoration of Portal abilities have to do with the threat of a demonic invasion?”

Nose wrinkled in disgust, Guardian Ilaiea scoffed, “Are you really that
ignorant
, boy? Who in the name of the Netherhells made
you
a Guardian, if you’re so stupid?”

Alonnen narrowed his eyes. “Excuse me for being uneducated, but if you haven’t noticed, Mekhana has been a
death trap
for mages for the last four centuries, with damn few mages able to get in or
out without getting captured. Forgive us for most of our highly educated mages having their will suppressed by magical shackles and the weight of an uncaring, ever-hungering False God, who destroyed their minds and drained their magics to the very last drop. Forgive us for losing a lot of knowledge over the centuries under the oppressive rule of a False God who was just two steps away from
being
a Netherhell demon.
Forgive
us for—”