Wings Over Talera - Charles Allen Gramlich [70]
Vohanna was still leaning toward me in her seat, and now she let her elbows drop to her knees and steepled her hands before her, letting her sharp little chin rest atop her index fingers. Beneath a drift of niveous hair, her brow furrowed.
“There are so many reasons, Ruenn. So many answers that I could give to your questions. I could tell you I draw slaves from other worlds because their families do not come hunting for them.” She smiled and something darkly humorous danced in her eyes as she gazed at me. “At least until now,” she added.
Then she lifted her chin from her fingers and nodded toward the hybrid servants that stood all around in perfect stillness. Her voice became a bell, ringing.
“Or I could tell you that such...synthetics, are costly to make. Natural slaves come cheap. And while the synthetics are deadly, they lack a certain level of initiative. Which is, I believe, something you pointed out as a weakness of my army.”
She rose slowly to her feet then, and the silk of her shift grew taut across her slender frame, moving against her skin with a whisper of friction that suddenly thundered in my ears. She smiled, and spoke as softly as a caress, so softly that I could scarcely hear her over the beat of my blood.
“I could tell you such things. Ruenn Maclang. And they would be facts. They would be accurate. But they would not be...true.”
She took a step toward me on her dais. The breeze blowing from somewhere within the room shifted and freshened. Vohanna’s scent closed around me, enveloped me in cinnamon and laurel, in saffron-cloves and smoke, in wormwood.
“The truth is,” she said. Her eyes were huge. “I take slaves because I can. Because I like it.” Her lips curved in a pout. “Does that make me bad...Ruenn?”
Her scent was like silken mud clogging my nostrils. My muscles trembled. The back of my mouth, the inside of my throat, grew dry and thick. My mind roiled.
Vohanna took another step toward me. And a third. Down the skull steps from her throne she came, and it seemed her sandals spurned the dusky wine that cascaded beneath her feet. Her eyes teemed with scarlet embers and with...other things.
“Kneel to me, Ruenn,” she said.
My legs ached. My shoulders rounded. I dropped slowly to one knee, fighting to keep my head up. Only the salt wetness in my mouth told me that I’d bitten my tongue bloody.
“Bryce,” I rasped. “What of Bryce? How...did...you take him? Was it like...this?”
Somehow, Vohanna was standing above me. Her hand reached and her fingers brushed a fallen lock of hair back from my forehead. Her knuckles were cool and dry, smooth as stream-worn pebbles.
“Do not fight me, Ruenn.” Her voice held a gentleness that I wanted to believe in. “Your brother did not fight me. There is a world gate here. In this pyramid. You were right. It was I who sent the sorcerer to steal your Earth crew. Your crew, or any crew. I sent him from here. But Bryce shot him in the sphere gate on your side, and the resulting explosion dragged you both through to Talera. Only one could come back through this gate. It was Bryce, who went before you. And you were hurled far away across the planet.”
My head was bowed, though I did not remember lowering it, and Vohanna’s fingers played in my hair, her nails curving over my scalp. Her words took on a new intimacy, as if there could be no secrets between us.
“Your brother was badly hurt, Ruenn. Bleeding at his sheered wrist from the explosion that stole his hand. I healed him. Saved him. And yes, I took him. His mind was powerful. I knew then what an ally he would make. But you could be greater. By my side.”
I felt myself drowning in the cool water of Vohanna’s words, felt my mind letting go, giving up. But still, from somewhere inside, some part of me flailed for a hold, for something to keep my head above that water.
“Rannon,” I whispered to myself.
And yet, Rannon had betrayed me. That last night in Timmuzz, she had seen to it