“Maybe later. Right now, I’ve got this motherfucker of a headache.”
“Yes.” The head slightly cocked again. Splinters of light danced across the inky eyes. “I apologize for the pain. The damage is slight, and in this place you will heal much faster than you would in your world. But even here, a physical price has to be paid. And it was the only means I had of ending the fight without killing you.”
“Then I suppose I should thank you.”
The dwenda grinned unexpectedly. Teeth. It wasn’t an altogether reassuring sight. “I suppose you should.”
“Thanks.”
The dwenda dropped abruptly into a crouch, faster than Ringil could react, and its hand shot out to cup the side of his face. The long fingers slid up into his hair, tangled in its strands, and tugged his head forward.
“I’m afraid in the end I’m going to want more from you than that, Ringil Eskiath.”
Its lips were cool and firm on his, the subtle pressure split his mouth before he realized he’d wanted to open it, and a slick, flickering tongue met his own. There was the sudden press at his chin of a stubble so soft it was almost like velvet pile. The trickling in his belly flared up like a bonfire. He felt himself hardening.
The dwenda drew back.
“You are not healed yet,” it murmured.
Ringil’s lips peeled off his teeth. “I’m feeling a lot better.”
But the dwenda was back to its feet again, just as rapidly, its grip on him gone, fading to a sense memory; he could still feel the tips of the fingers on his skull, the slip and press of the tongue in his mouth, like a promise of more. The slender figure turned away from him, rather hurriedly, he thought. Like wincing.
“Let me be the judge of that,” it said harshly.
Ringil raised an eyebrow at the change. “Well, it’s your place.”
“Not mine, exactly.” A glance back across one shoulder that he could not read. “But near enough. You’d do well to let me guide you here.”
“Okay.” Ringil got himself upright with rather less grace than his host had shown. He stood at the dwenda’s back, close enough to pick up scent. It wasn’t exactly new territory, he’d been here enough times before and to spare: the last-minute panic of a novice partner not sure what it was he really wanted. He’d learned at Grace-of-Heaven’s knee
He waited.
Silence. Long enough for him to notice that the dwenda gave off a faint musk whose constituent parts he could not quite—despite a tantalizing familiarity—pin down.
“Where are we?” he asked. “Under the city?”
“In a manner of speaking.” The dwenda seemed to have regained a little of its previous poise. It drifted away a couple of steps, turned to face him at what it apparently judged a safe distance. “Though it’s not a version of Trelayne you would recognize, I think. In your version, it will take millions of years for the river to lay down the sediment that goes to form this rock.”
“Then did we take the quick paths to get here? Travel through the pressured places under the earth like the Kiriath?”
“No.” A thin smile. “The Black Folk are engineers. They take the long way around to get to everything. Much like humans, in fact. In time you will come to resemble them more than you know.”
“That’s going to upset a few Majak purists I know.”
The dwenda shrugged. “They won’t live to see it. As a culture or as individuals. For that matter, nor will you, the League cities or the Empire.”
“You sound irritatingly superior when you talk like that.” Ringil offered up a smile of his own. “If you don’t mind me saying.”
“Why should I mind? The superiority is evident.”
“So it’s true, then. All the stories they tell, all that Aldrain lore they babble. You are immortal.”
Another shrug. “So far.”
Ringil laughed out loud. He couldn’t help it. “Just like that barking black dog, eh? How the hell would anybody
The echoes flapped at the chamber roof, then chased each other away through the dark. The dwenda frowned. “Black dog?”
“Doesn’t matter. Just something I heard the other day.” Ringil stared around in the gloom, groping after memories of the evenings spent in pointless discussion at Shalak’s place. Speculation run wild amid cheese and wine and easy company. “So, this place, then. This has to be part of the Aldrain marches. The places between,
“It has been called that, yes. Among other things.”
“And you brought me here with, what? Sorcery?”
“If you like. It might be simpler to say I carried you. When the aspect storm, the maelstrom gate of alternatives, is summoned, it translates everything within its radius. As it wrapped around me, so it brought you as well.”
“Neat trick. You think you can teach it to me?”
“No. You would have to
