• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Then her eyelids closed in a slow blink, sweeping from left and right like curtains over her pupils. And still I could see the blackness beneath the flax-thin membranes of those lids. She turned her head to the side, a mannerism I’d seen her employ before. And in a mocking tone she said:

“So. Dear, dear, Ruenn. Go down on your knees and show me how much you wish to serve me. Swear to me this fealty that you promise so well.”

I chuckled, and Vohanna’s lips curled with a feral flash of white teeth. It seemed she doubted my stated wish to serve her. Yet, something about me appeared to intrigue her. Was it the same something that intrigued her about Bryce? That we were from another world, perhaps? Surely she’d seen men from other worlds. She’d had them kidnapped after all. No, there had to be another reason why—when she finally held me firm within her grasp—she’d not had me immediately killed. I began to wonder what that reason might be.

“Well?” Vohanna asked.

Only seconds had passed since she’d first spoken, but already her glittering ivory nails were tapping on the incised stone arms of her throne. It seemed the goddess Vohanna had no more patience than a spoiled child. I wasn’t surprised.

Smiling, I offered her an incline of the head. “Forgive me, Vohanna. It was only that your mention of ‘serving’ you made me think of Bryce. How...is my brother anyway?”

The woman smirked.

“Oh I assure you, Ruenn. He is employed at this very moment in carrying out critical duties for his...queen.”

I felt my jaws grind but fought to maintain my smile. Then Vohanna leaned forward, her fingernails tinkling over the rubies and opals and diamonds embedded like pebbles in her chair.

“But tell me. Ruenn! Where is the other who was with you?”

I frowned. “The other?” I asked.

“Yes. When I saw you at Kellet’s Bay you had the one called Diken Graye with you. And now he serves me. You had Eric Ryall and we all know that he is dead.”

Again she smirked, but by now my smile was firmly etched.

“You had a savage who was dying,” she continued. I knew she meant Kreeg. “And a warrior with green skin. A Llurn. Where is that one? That...Nakscherii?”

She almost hissed the final noun, the name that Valyan’s people used for themselves. I remembered a similar reaction by Valyan when he’d first heard the name Vohanna in my presence. I remembered what he’d said: that the Asadhie goddess Ivrail had birthed his people, and that Ivrail’s foulest enemy had been Vohanna. During the time known as the “God-War,” Ivrail’s and Vohanna’s followers had burned hecatombs of the battle-dead in their names. It seemed old enmities still had potency for both Valyan and Vohanna.

But there was something more important here. If Vohanna was asking where Valyan was, then it meant she didn’t know that I’d sent him to Nyshphal for help. It meant she wasn’t aware of the fleet that was almost certainly on its way to attack her. For a moment, then, doubt whispered to my ear. What if Valyan had not reached Nyshphal? What if Rannon and her father had refused to listen and no fleet was on its way?

I shook my head and let Vohanna think it was only in response to her question. I whispered, “they’ll come,” to myself—for I had to believe I did not stand completely alone—but the words I let Vohanna hear were: “As I told you, my friends either died or fled. Valyan fled.”

“Ah,” Vohanna said, nodding. “Adequate servants are so hard to find and maintain. And the Nakscherii were always...fickle.”

I glanced toward the scarlet-eyed guards that surrounded us, and up toward the membranous-winged devils that circled above with horns glittering and long tails lashing.

“Finding servants does not seem a problem for you,” I said, looking back at the woman. “But then, I guess it helps if you make your own.”

She chuckled. “Are you jealous, Ruenn?”

“I’m curious.” I nodded to the twisted, bizarre creatures around us. “If you can make such hybrids, then why send slavers to raid other worlds for men? I know now it was