Toll the Hounds полностью

Hasty departure to echo Torvald Nom’s flight back into the arms of his wife, out into the dusk when all paths are unobstructed, when nothing of reality intrudes with insurmountable obstacles and possibly deadly repercussions. In a merchant house annexe down at the docks, in the second floor loft above a dusty storeroom with sawdust on the floor, a wellborn young woman straddles a once-thief on the lone narrow cot with its thin, straggly mattress, and in her eyes darkness unfolds, is revealed to the man savage and naked — raw enough to startle in him a moment of fear.

Indeed. Fear. At the moment, Cutter could not reach past that ephemeral chill, could not find anything specific — what Challice’s eyes revealed was all-consuming, frighteningly desperate, perhaps depthless and insatiable in its need.

She was unmindful of him — he could see that. In this instant he had become a weapon on which she impaled herself, ecstatic with the forbidden, alive with betrayal. She stabbed herself again and again, transformed into something private, for ever beyond his reach, and, yes, without doubt these were self-inflicted wounds, hinting of an inwardly directed contempt, perhaps even disgust.

He did not know what to think, but there was something alluring in being faceless, in being that weapon — and this truth shivered through him as dark as all that he saw in her eyes.

Apsalar, is this what you feared? If it is, then I understand. I understand why you fled. You did it for both of us.

With this thought he arched, groaning, and spilled into Challice Vidikas. She gasped, lowered herself on to him. Sweat on sweat, waves of heat embracing them.

Neither spoke.

From outside, gulls cried to the dying sun. Shouts and laughter muted by walls, the faint slap of waves on the broken crockery-cluttered shore, the creak of pulleys as ships were loaded and off-loaded. From outside, the world as it always was.

Cutter was now thinking of Scillara, of how this was a kind of betrayal — no different from Challice’s own. True, Scillara had said often enough that theirs was a love of convenience, unbound by expectations. She’d insisted on that distance, and if there had been moments of uncontrolled passion in their lovemaking, it was the selfish kind, quickly plucked apart once they were both spent. He also suspected that he had hurt her — with their landing in his city, some part of him had sought to sever what they had had aboard the ship, as if by closing one chapter every thread was cut and the tale began anew.

But that wasn’t possible. All breaks in the narrative of living had more to do with the limits of what could be sustained at any one time, the reach of temporary exhaustion. Memory did not let go; it remained the net dragged in one’s wake, with all sort of strange things snarled in the knotted strands.

He had behaved unfairly, and that had hurt her and, indeed, hurt their friendship. And now it seemed he had gone too far, too far to ever get back what he now realized was precious, was truer than everything he was feeling now, here beneath this woman.

It’s said joy’s quick crash was weighted in truth. All at once Challice, sprawled prone atop him, felt heavier.

In her own silence, Challice of House Vidikas was thinking back to that morning, to one of those rare breakfasts in the company of her husband. There had been sly amusement in his expression, or at least the tease of that emotion, making his every considerate gesture slightly mocking, as if in sitting facing one another at the table they were but acting out cliched roles of propriety. And finding, it seemed, a kind of comfort in the ease of their mutual falsehoods.

She suspected that some of Gorlas’s satisfaction involved a bleed-over into her private activities, as if it pleased him to take some credit for her fast-receding descent into depravity; that his unperturbed comfort was in fact supportive, something to be relied upon, a solid island she could flail back to when the storm grew too wild, when her swimming in the depths took on the characteristics of drowning.

Making her so-called private activities little more than extensions of his possession. In owning her he was free to see her used and used up elsewhere. In fact, she had sensed a sexual tension between them that had not been there since. . that had never been there before. She was, she realized, making herself more desirable to him.

It seemed a very narrow bridge that he chose to walk. Some part of her, after all, was her own — belonging to no one else no matter what they might believe — and so she would, ultimately, be guided by her own decisions, the choices she made that would serve her and none other. Yes, her husband played a most dangerous game here, as he might well discover.