Dreaming of Sin Ch. 01

She blinked into existence on the edge of the city, just outside the ether's barrier. It was a pathetic attempt at magic. Yes, whatever the spell had been, it could bar her path in the ether, but not in the physical world. She would simply have to walk. A delay, an annoyance, nothing more. And when she arrived, whatever mage had spent decades of his life to perfect that children's prank of a spell, would spend the rest of it in agony for having the impudence to use it on her.

A horn blast greeted her, and a cloud of dust rose up from the west. An army of horses galloped towards her. That could only mean one thing. "Oh Temüjin, you poor fool," she said to herself and stopped, facing the mass of riders, still little more than dust in the distance. It was a shame. Their time together had been the best of her existence and it would end on such a bitter note. Though, in its own way perhaps this was for the best. Her Temüjin could die fighting, die surprising her, die like a man instead of the dry bones left at the end of a meal. Still though, this was such a stupid way for him to die, this was beneath him. She sighed. All men ultimately proved to be disappointments.

She could see the Royal Tent in the city's heart on the horizon. Pink swirls of color enveloped it as spells were cast, rites performed, a symphony of magic was being played so rapidly she could hardly hear its notes. But it was all insignificant. Humans, even the most powerful, were children playing with sticks and stones compared to her powers. A binding spell that wouldn't so much as chip the manicure of her pinky toe. A concealment spell that would do nothing more than mist her vision. On and on, in a desperate attempt by mosquitos to stop a panther.

When the horses advancing on her were a half a mile away a swarm of arrows burst from them, and Saliah looked up at the climbing black mass. This was the Khan's personal guard. The arrows of five hundred of the best warriors of the Empire converged in the sky. The men rode in a horde the size of a village, but their arrows would all hit a point the size of a carriage. Mongol archers were known to be the best in the world for a reason.

"What a waste," she said and judged the flight of arrows as it plunged down towards her. Another burst was already on its way, the horde of warriors splitting into three groups, starting to encircle her, knowing that distance and their speed were all that would keep them alive.

No weapon made by the hands of man could touch Saliah, Temüjin knew that, but the arrows could, and did, rip her silk robes to tatters. One arrow - that had been on course to piece the chain of her golden necklace - she plucked from the air with her hand. The necklace was her favorite and having it damaged would add injury to insult.

She threw that lucky arrow back, lazily, it took a mere second to cross the three hundred yards that divided her from the nearest swarm of riders and the chest of the man she hit exploded. Riderless the horse was easy to pull towards her. The minds of horses easy to drive, even at a distance.

Two dozen arrows killed the horse when it was still a hundred yards from her. Smart. This would be more annoying than she had thought. Poor Temüjin. He thought his brilliance as a man, his tactics that had defeated all the armies of the world, would work against her.

An hour later and Saliah rode to the gates of her own home. She wore only her favorite golden necklace, and the blood of her vanquished foes. That was how it should be. Her body was sleek perfection, skin flush with the thrill of simple violence. It had been too long since she had fought an enemy that took more than a moment to vanquish. She had missed it.

"Darling, why couldn't you have just talked to me?" she asked as she pushed open the flap of their huge tent and walked into the cavernous, circular interior that was her and Temüjin's home. The royal tent of the Khan.

She hardly recognized the space. Gone was the gold, the rugs, the silks, the best paintings and art of a hundred conquered cities. Gone were the servants, the sycophants, the advisers.

Even the slave girls were gone. The mass of twenty writhing women was more a licking, gasping, moaning work of art than temptation. The women were too close to ecstasy when they joined the pile to be thoughtful lovers, and too spent by the time they left to be better than dolls. Still, it was supposed to be an eternal flame of lust burning in the heart of the Khan's tent, and it had been years since the pile had last been extinguished.

All to make room for a hundred sorcerers. There were a dozen different groups of them, all working different spells. Some looked up at her as she entered, most kept chanting, kept working, even in the face of death incarnate.

Curiosity. Damn her curiosity. She ought to have ended Temüjin the instant she walked into the tent. She ought to have wiped out every neuron in his beautiful mind. But she was curious. What had his plan been? Why had he even imagined he could succeed? He stood in the middle of the tent, behind a low table, its surface bare except for a rope. The rope ran under the wall of the tent, one end sat knotted on the top of the table. Temujin's powerful bow arm outstretched to her, fist closed as though in challenge. And instead of destroying him she reached into his mind. She reached out, past the layer of emotion she ordinarily listened to like background music of the world. Past the layer of inner monologue that she sometimes focused on. Past the layer of desires and motivations that were so easy to take advantage of, she reached into his memory and watched his life as he remembered it - even as his hand, raised towards her, hovering over the table, opened.

The Eye fell from his grip. The small stone shone like a star, its fire heated to an incandescent white by decades of corruption, as fine a meal as she had ever had. And it vanished.

Saliah stopped, it wasn't possible. She reached out for the Eye, where it had been only a moment before, commanding it to come to her. She couldn't feel its presence. She tried to draw energy from it. The Eye was a part of her after all, like commanding one's lungs to breath, but there was no answer from the Eye.

"What have you done?" venom in the words, she would tear the knowledge out of his mind if she had to, she reached back towards him, ready to strip the layers of his mind away, to flay his psyche, and found she could not touch it.

"What would you have said if I had spoken to you?" Genghis asked, her Khan, her husband, her partner on Earth for now thirty years. "Would you have admitted to what you were, to what you had been doing to me?"

She refused to let herself panic. She was Saliah, she was fear, she didn't fear. The Eye couldn't have been destroyed. Human sorcerers could no more destroy the Eye than they could an ocean. But perhaps, perhaps, they could conceal it from her.

"I would have said to look at what you accomplished," she answered. She usually loved this part of a relationship the most: its end. No more deception, no more games, she could simply enjoy victory. "No man has, or will, father more children than you. Your essence has been written into the blood of mankind's future and will never vanish. You have the largest empire to ever exist and will be renowned for your military and political genius. What man has ever had more pleasure in life than you? All thanks to me. What is your soul compared to that?"

"If my soul is worth so much to you, then it should be worth even more to me," he said.

Oh Temujin, there was a reason she had not yet finished her meal. Such a shame for it to end on a bitter note.

"You soul is already mine my dear. Whatever this is, it can't change that. This..." she waved a delicate, blood soaked, hand at the sorcerers. Half their number stopped, frozen, the rest redoubling their efforts, "is simply an annoyance. Insect bites. After all you have seen of my powers, what is it you were hoping to do?"

The sorcerers that had been frozen sprang back to life, attacking their former compatriots. They used fists, they used spell books, they used anything they could reach, intent to kill each other off because it was what Saliah wished.

Chaos raged around them, but her Khan was calm. He had always been a mountain of a man, it made turning him into a meal so much more rewarding.

"You think, over these thirty years, I haven't listened?" Genghis asked. "You think I haven't sorted the lies from the truth, and pieced together what must exist between the gaps of what you told me?"

The priests were almost all dead, only a handful still fought one another, the tent returning to a more intimate calm as blood slickened the floor.

"I'll admit, I am impressed," she said. "To make a vessel invisible to all my senses, I never imagined it could be done by mortals. But you've been a fool. I told you many times that there are three kinds of magics. Magics that bind to a person, magics that bind to objects, and magics that bind to the ether. Binding a spell to a person is all mortals can do, and even then, you do it badly. That vessel is only invisible to me so long as the person it is bound to is alive. I kill you and take back my Eye. All you've done is kill yourself."

He didn't smile. It was far worse than that, his eyes sparked in a way she had seen a hundred times before as he drew up plans. "There is one question I have, before you try and kill me. I've talked to hundreds of slaves you used your magic on. I could always tell if I probed enough. And I think they always knew on some level that you had done something to them. Not me though. You never used your powers on me. Why?"

She signed slowly, "I read your thoughts and emotions, but you're right, I never controlled your actions. That would be pointless, I wanted your corruption and if you were being controlled directly, your soul would be unblemished by your actions. The last mystery answered, are you ready to meet your end?" She asked, stepping closer, menace in ever shift of her naked body.

"Do you remember you told me that the Eye was a part of you? Do you remember when Junya took her life and you told me that your kind could not even cut yourselves? We found a spell, I'm sure it would be less than a bee's sting to the Eye, yet if you harm me, the spell activates. If I had only wanted to blind you to the vessel I could have done that a decade ago. I've waited so that my sorcerers could build a shield. Hurting me means hurting yourself, and that you cannot do."

She reached out, her hand formed a fist as she focused on her Khan's heart. Nothing happened. A hot rage bubbled inside Saliah, molten and unquenchable. "Your life is nothing, nothing. I am eternal you fool. Ten years, twenty years, I'll wait for you to die on your own, take back the Eye. But before then I'll kill everyone you ever knew or loved. I'll make every slaughter you conducted seem like mere prelude. I'll drown your empire in blood ten fold that of what you ever spilled!"

"Yes. That was a problem wasn't it. You know the Chinese believe that problems are also opportunities? For a man afraid of losing his soul, a man who had killed millions, a man who had done unspeakable evil, what better way to reclaim his soul than to stop ten times what he has done?"

"You can't stop it," she spat back.

"Why do you think I sent you away for months to search for the Stones of Extor? Why do you think I sent five hundred of my best warriors to die fighting you? Why do you think I let you slaughter the priests? You told me that your powers used energy, that magic and life were like gold that you spent, and the Eye was like your vault. Like a fool you let me draw down your supplies, and without the Eye you cannot replenish them."

Saliah laughed, relieved. Her laugher was like clattering bones. "A few decades until you die is nothing. In all our time together, you have never seen me use more than a fifth of my power."

The priests had finally stopped fighting. A bronze urn had been used to bash in the head of the second to last of them, and the lone survivor collapsed, exhausted, beside his victim. Whether he was one of Saliah's thralls or one of the unafflicted priests was impossible to tell.

Genghis Khan pulled the rope on the table twice, and it went taunt, then flew away under the side of the tent.

"Then I simply deny you the knowledge of how long you will need to wait. Decades, centuries, millennia. If you don't know how long it will take you to find the Eye you will have to be cautious of every drop of your power. You are right, the magic I've used had to be tied to a person, it just wasn't tied to me. It is tied to whomever possesses the vessel."

She sprinted out of the tent. If that were true she had to get the vessel back, now. She wasn't sure how, but she couldn't let it out of her sight. Sand filled the air around her, the morning sun low in the sky and obscured with dirt. All around her, in every direction, hundreds of horses galloped away, all pulling knotted ropes behind them. With the vessel holding the Eye invisible to her any one of them could be dragging it.

In millennia, in the history of her kind, in the wildest fables and legends she had heard, nothing like this had ever before happened. The magma hot hate that had been boiling inside her exploded from her throat, "Khan!"