A Sword from Red Ice

She reached for Lan Fallstar in the dim blue light of the tent. She hardly knew what she was doing but she craved his warmth and was desperate to feel his live body pressing against hers. He gasped as she touched him, and she felt him hesitate. He had not been asleep, she was sure of that. A moment passed where he might have moved away from her, where his hands were up and touching her hands and it would have been a small thing for him to push back. He did not push back, instead he sighed sharply, parting his hands and sliding them down to her waist. A quick, almost violent flexing of muscle brought her next to him. Ash smelled him, the altenness of his skin and sweat. As he thrust through blankets and furs to grab her buttocks she kissed him. Her mouth was wet and full of saliva and it coated his lip before he opened them to kiss he back. Their teeth knocked together with an odd dissonance, and it slowed her for a moment. Lan's hand was moving between her thighs now and she could not understand why it was taking so long to reach where it needed to be. Her sex was hot and wet. It ached, literally ached, to be touched.

He did not taste human and that excited her. As she curled her tongue against the roof of his mouth he slid his hand against her sex. Ash opened her legs wider. Her tongue stiffened. Hot pulses passed along her belly. One finger found a sweet spot and rubbed it softly but insistently. She could hear the wetness swish against his hand. Grabbing him firmly she arched her hips toward him. The finger moved faster, its pressure increasing. With her free hand he squeezed her buttocks, his fingertips jamming into the point where they met. Ash gasped. All she wanted him to do was not stop. The finger was creating delicious friction deep beneath her skin. Suddenly the tension broke and her legs and hips started jerking. Heat pulsed down her thighs and up through her belly and she lost control of herself, grasping at his ribs and pushing against his hand. She did not breathe until it stopped.

Afterward he pulled himself on top of her and pressed his hard sex against her own. As he broke the fine membrane of skin that protected her body and entered her, he murmured, "Ish'I xalla tannan"

I know the value of that which I take.

Outside the tent the wind began to rattle the birches.

NINETEEN Hunting Prey

Raif reached the city on the edge of the abyss just as the sleet started. Smoke from the cave fires blew in his face. He could not say the familiar scent of burning sedge and willow canes made him glad to be back. He had a strong desire to set down his kit, rest, and not enter, but it was already too late for that.

"Twelve Kill on the ledge!" came the cry from a watcher on the high wind-carved cliff above him. Raif acknowledged the man with an open hand, yet did not look up. Already he could hear the call being relayed across the ledgerock, echoing from cave to cave and ledge to ledge, moving up cane ladders and rock-cut stairs, along tunnels and stone galleries before finally plunging down into the Rift.

"Kill. Kill. Kill" Raif heard. His name reduced to a single word.

The children came out first. Skinny and clothed in fine silks and brocades gone to rags, they kept their distance and stared at him with big eyes as if they ha|jreason to be afraid. One older boy bounced a stone in his cupped fist, his tight little mouth twitching. Raif looked him in the eyes, looked long, and the boy caught the stone, closed his fist, and dropped his hand against his side.

The Maimed Men and their women came out next and they were not a lovely sight. Dressed in dyed leather shirts and tunics, animal skins with the heads still attached, armored cloaks, spiked helms, rat-fur hoods, scaled breastplates, steel gauntlets, burned dresses, boned bodices, goat fleece collars and kilts and all manner of straps, belts, packs and chains, they did their name proud. Every one of them was lacking; a missing eye or arm, a clubfoot, a deformed spine, a cleft Palate, a claw hand, a wine-stained face, absent flesh, extra flesh. Things not present at birth and others taken away later. Raif became aware of his own missing flesh — the tip of his little finger, cut off at the knuckle-and wondered if he would ever lose enough of himself to feel at home here. He had a brief hut intensely strong desire to run, turn and flee back to the eanyonlands and Badlands-places were the land was the only thing that was wasted. The cragsman Addle Gunn's words came back to him. "None of us are whole" He had not been speaking about flesh.