Tales of the Apprentice 01 Ch. 06

"And yet life endures in the world," Irya said.

She reached out and took the mercenary's hand in hers. In her tiny hand it looked huge.

"Look around you, Raven," she said, her eyes finding his. "The world is full of life. In fact, the world itself is life. Life has endured for time untold, and it will continue to do so for time untold. It has been here since the dawn of time and it will be here until the end of days. Death has not managed to stop it. Death has not even managed to hurt it. Look around you. Death does all it can, and yet life flourishes. It thrives. Death has tried to chip away at forever, but it has achieved nothing."

Raven looked dubious.

"Think of it this way," Ayden said. "As individuals we all die sooner or later, so death is at least stronger than you and me and all of us here. But life is much, much more than that. It is so much greater than you and me. Life is all around us. Life is this vast force, this great source of the Energies that make us alive. It was here before we were born, and it will continue to be here after death has taken us."

Serana nodded.

"Your mistake is both a simple one and a very serious one at the same time, Raven," she said. "You think of life and death both in strictly personal and individual terms. But that is where the greatest difference lies: death affects life only on an individual basis. A tree withers, an animal is eaten by something bigger, people die from disease or accident or old age. But life itself persists in the world. It is far too great and far too strong for death to affect it in more than brief and insignificant ways. Even famine and widespread disease make little difference in the world as a whole. Plants and trees continue to grow, animals continue to multiply, and children will be born once more, when it's all over."

Galen listened with interest. While he had already grasped some of it during his time with Serana, he had never heard these things explained this clearly or concisely. When he looked at Raven's face, the mercenary was deep in thought. Galen sympathized with him. This had to be a lot for the man to take in.

"Sex magic is based on life," Irya continued. "The power that drives it is life itself. The Energies we use are the force of life. It's one of the most natural things. Haven't you ever noticed that? Before you fell victim to a death mage, I mean."

Raven looked confused.

"I'm not sure I follow you," he confessed.

"You weren't a virgin at the time, were you?"

He shook his head.

"Well then," Irya said brightly. "You should have paid more attention to what was happening while you were with a woman. Having sex builds up a concentration of life force within us. Orgasm releases it. If couples are genuinely in love with one another, the exchange of Energy strengthens their love. When they experience orgasm simultaneously, some of that shared Energy is returned to each of them several times over, which is why mutual orgasm is such a special and intense experience."

"I, ehm, I never..."

"You never had a mutual orgasm with a woman? We ll, we must change that as soon as possible. I could show you more about sex magic at the same time, if you'd like."

Irya looked suggestively up and down the mercenary's muscular physique, smiling appreciatively. Raven looked worried.

"Gently, my love, gently," Ayden said to her, smiling.. "Our guest here has not yet had the time to prepare himself for your predatory onslaughts."

"I know," Irya said blandly. "So this is the best time to strike, wouldn't you say?"

Raven sat up, looking as if he was ready to bolt.

"Perhaps we should continue this conversation in the morning," he said. "It is getting late."

"Relax, my friend," Ayden reassured him. "Your virtue is safe here."

"I'm sorry, Raven," Serana chuckled. "I should have warned you about her, I suppose."

Raven smiled ruefully.

"No need, my lady. I should have known. The most dangerous adversaries are those who appear harmless, after all."

"Adversary?" Irya said. "Hardly, Raven."

"Merely a figure of speech, my lady," Raven said, bowing his head.

Irya leaned across the table and gently kissed him on the forehead.

"Why so formal, Raven?" she said. "You're among friends. More than friends, if you will let us."

"I will always accept an offer of friendship," Raven said.

"Peace, then," Ayden chuckled. "You can try and seduce him another time, my love."

Raven looked at him, a question in his eyes.

"Jealousy has no place in sex magic, Raven," Ayden explained. "We tend to separate the act from the purpose. Irya and I love each other. We have been together for centuries. And we both know that we can trust one another and that neither of us will lose the other as a result of a simple roll in the hay with a friend. Or over a magical working, no matter how profound it might be. Sex and love are different things, or at least we treat them that way."

Raven was quiet while he digested this.

"I must confess that I don't quite understand," he said finally. "Your connection between... sex and sorcery baffles me."

"Not sorcery," Serana corrected him. "Magic. There's a great difference."

Raven looked confused.

"Sorcery is essentially a violation of nature," Ayden explained. "Sorcery makes things happen merely at the whim of the sorcerer, and cause and effect be damned. It goes against the natural order of everything. That's why sorcery is no longer possible. It used to be, a very long time ago, but no more. It was simply too wasteful of the world's life force, too disruptive. Magic, on the other hand, does not violate nature in any way. It rather uses natural processes to make things happen with a minimum of disturbance. And it does not draw upon the world's life forces. We use our own Energies to influence things."

"Perhaps you should show him your bathhouse, Ayden," Serana said. "It's a good example of how we do things."

Ayden nodded.

"And while you're there..." Serana said suggestively, looking at Galen.

Galen chuckled.

"Ladies first," he said.

"I already had my bath while you were in the kitchen, Galen," Serana replied. "So you gentlemen should feel free to use the facilities."

Ayden led them to the back of the house, where a small building was attached.

"We added this later," he explained. "When we first built the house we simply fetched water from the river. But then we discovered how much water there was in the ground here."

"How did you find that out?" Galen asked.

"Irya sensed it. She is very sensitive to such things. Don't ask me why; she just is. So when we knew we were sitting on so much water underground, we opened a fissure or two to let it come to the surface. Tricky work, that. Too much and the house would have washed away."

"You opened fissures... underground?" Raven asked. "How?"

"Well, that's where magic comes in," Ayden said. "Magic, at least our kind of magic, tries to work with nature as much as possible. Underground water usually wants to come up, you see. The weight of all that earth on top of it is pressing down on it, and the pressure makes the water want to flow to the surface. Think of it as the earth wanting to squeeze the water out of it. Quite often that happens spontaneously, and then you've got a natural spring. All we had to do was weaken a rock layer or two, about fifty feet deep, and the water flowed up the rest of the way all by itself. That's the sort of thing I mean. We work with the natural order of things, not against it. All we do is nudge things a little here and there to start the process, and then nature does the rest."

He opened the door in the little outbuilding and led them inside. A large, circular stone tub, built from what appeared to be large pebbles and finished smoothly, dominated the center of the room. It was big enough for three or four people. A small overflow was set into the side of it, and water trickled out of it in a small stream, flowing into a narrow gutter that ran through the wall and out of the room. Steam was rising from the surface of the water, and the room was quite warm and humid. Windows located high in the walls were obviously meant to ventilate the room and cool it if necessary.

"It's continuously being refilled from underneath by the well," Ayden explained. "We never have to worry about lugging water from the stream anymore."

Raven looked at the pool, a slightly perplexed expression on his face. Then he turned to Ayden.

"So how does one use sex to cause water to flow up from underground? I mean, how does it work?"

"It all revolves around controlling your inner Energies," Ayden explained. "Arousal builds them, and orgasm liberates them. With training one can become aware of his inner Energy and manipulate it to channel it into an Intent. There's a bit more to it than that, but that's the general idea."

"Could anyone learn to do this sort of thing?"

Ayden shrugged.

"Up to a point, I suppose," he mused. "The basic principle is part of nature, after all. When a man and a woman create a new life between them we don't think of it as magic, but when you really stop and think about it that is really one of the most magical things we know. But to deliberately apply it to other purposes requires a certain talent for it, just like most other specialized skills. It's as much an art as it is a skill, like singing, or sculpting, or swordsmanship."

"The water is warm?" Galen asked, looking at the slight haze that hung above the surface of the water. "How?"

"Have you ever heard of a hot spring?"

Galen shook his head.

"Deep down inside, the earth is hot," Ayden said. "Molten, even. We caused some of that molten rock to well up to a depth where the water would flow past it on its way up. That was a lot trickier than causing the water to rise to the surface, let me tell you. Too much heat and the water would have exploded into steam while still underground, and that would have been bad."

Raven looked around with a look of astonishment on his face.

"Sex magic created all this?" he asked.

"Oh no," Ayden replied. "That's what I've been trying to explain to you. The building, the basin and everything else we had to build the regular way, by hand. There's no natural process that could make that happen, so it would take sorcery, which isn't an option. All we did by magic was to encourage the water to flow in ways it wanted to do naturally anyway."

"So... In order to do that you had to have sex... right here?"

"In the basin, actually," Ayden said matter-of-factly. "It was still empty then, of course. Proximity is not absolutely required, but it was just easier for us to be on top of things, so to speak."

Raven turned to Galen.

"And you are studying this art?" he asked.

Galen nodded.

"So you and the lady Serana..."

"Yes," Galen said calmly. "She's teaching me, and there's only one way to do that."

Raven frowned.

"So you lied to me, on that first evening in camp?"

"No, not that I know of. As I remember, you asked me if I had eloped with her, and if we were husband and wife. You never asked if we were having sex together. And she and I are not romantically involved. I will admit that for a while I did have some feelings for her, but she cured me of that. She is much older than she looks, you know. She gave me a rather pointed reminder of that."

"When you say 'much older', what..." Raven began.

"A gentleman never asks," Ayden interrupted. "Galen here is as old as he looks, but he's the only one here, if I'm not mistaken. The ladies and I have quite a few years on you, and you yourself have seen many more years than what shows on your face, have you not?"

Raven looked troubled. Galen realized the mercenary would be wondering how much the other man knew about what had happened to him, and how he would take it.

"Speaking of faces," Galen said, fingering his own stubbly cheeks. "I notice you don't seem to have a need for regular shaving. That's a trick I could use."

Raven smiled, apparently grateful for the change of subject.

"There's nothing magical about that," he said. "My people don't seem to grow beards. They never have. It's a racial trait, I suppose."

"Oh? Where do you come from, originally?" Galen asked.

"Far west from here. Our lands border on the Western Sea. It was quite a while ago since I last saw them. For all I know they might have fallen to the evil that took me as well."

"I suppose that's always possible," Ayden said. "But let's not assume the worst until we know more. You can always go back there, you know."

Raven sighed, his eyes suddenly full of pain.

"No. I can't. Not until..."

Ayden nodded.

"We can help you, my friend," he said. "I promise you we can. But we'll not force anything on you. You must decide when you're ready. But meanwhile, I'm sure the road has been cold and uncomfortable, and there's a hot bath right here waiting to be used. You'd be a fool to waste it. Galen, why don't we leave him to it?"

Galen nodded, understanding what Ayden was hinting at: Raven could really do with some peace and quiet right now in order to digest everything he had to process. They left the mercenary to his ablutions and walked back to the house, while Galen gave Ayden a brief summary of what Raven had told him and Serana.

"I thought it would be something along those lines," Ayden mused. "Serana suspected something like it as well, when we spoke a few nights ago."

"Serana knows more about him than I do, I gather," Galen said. "I suggest you ask her. But... Can we really help him? I mean, from what I understand, death magic is pretty awful."

"Undoing it won't be trivial," Ayden admitted. "But yes, I think we can. We'll have to start by examining the spell that has been laid upon him. Or spells, maybe; for all we know there could be more than one. I think Irya should be the one to have a look at that. This requires a lot of sensitivity, so she's probably the best one among us to investigate what spell or spells we're dealing with. Maybe we'll do that tonight. Discreetly, of course. The poor guy is troubled enough as it is."

* * *

The bed was wide and comfortable but not too soft; just right for lovemaking. Galen was on his back, looking up at one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen: Irya, naked, sitting on top of him, straddling his hips with her slender thighs spread wide as she impaled herself on his rock-hard cock until the sweet, pink lips of her pussy were wrapped snugly around the base of his shaft. She was like a goddess: the creamy shoulders, the slender waist, the round hips, the marble thighs... He reached up to touch her breasts. They were firm, soft, smooth, perfectly shaped and just the right size. Her nipples were small and pink and utterly lovely, and they were hard as little pebbles under his fingertips. She squirmed with pleasure as he caressed them, rubbed them, gently squeezed them...

"Hmmmm..." she crooned, her eyes closed and an expression of ecstasy on her face. "You feel so good inside me... So deep and hard..."

She rocked herself back and forth, grinding herself into him before lifting herself off him, almost as if gravity had no hold on her She pulled his cock almost out of her as she did so, before slowly lowering herself back upon his steely shaft. Her inner folds slid down around him, hot and wet and tight, so tight, and her insides caressed the head of his cock in the most exquisite manner.

She rode him that way, slowly, each stroke calculated to give him the greatest possible amount of pleasure, and her breasts, firm yet soft, bounced gently with her movements. In his groin the pressure of his brewing orgasm built and built while deeper within him the Energies pooled likewise.

The wonderful pressure rose and rose, and suddenly he felt that he had only moments left before he would empty himself inside her. The wonderful feeling of his impending Release began to flood up into his loins and he felt himself grow even harder inside her. Her rhythm changed until she rode him with short, fast strokes, urging him on. He hovered on the brink of orgasm for the longest time. Almost there, almost...

Suddenly her face changed. In the space of a single heartbeat her skin darkened, became mottled, and it spread until large, black stains covered her entire body. Her flesh seemed to wither and shrivel as her entire body became wrinkled. Cracks appeared in her skin and in the flesh underneath, which was also black, and then it began to fall off her in large, dark, crumbling chunks that turned to ashes as they fell onto the bed, until only her black bones underneath remained.

The skeleton straddling his hips looked at him, the ghastly grin of its bony teeth mocking his lust, and then the black skull tilted backward, the jaws parted to let out a scream, a horrible, raw, soul-piercing scream...

With a shock Galen sat up in bed, his heart pounding and his body shaking. Sweat ran down his skin. The space underneath the roof of the house was low, but it was cozy rather than cramped. Across the room Raven was tossing and turning, muttering uneasily as he slept. Galen lay down again, still panting, but it was a long time before he could shake off the images of his nightmare.

When he woke up, his head felt like it was stuffed with cotton wool and his eyes felt sandy, even gritty. The bed was damp with sweat, and he could smell himself. There was something about that smell that he definitely didn't like. It wasn't just sweat. It was more like... fear.

It was late already; the sunlight was streaming through the small windows, so he wasn't surprised to see Raven's bed empty. But then he noticed that the mercenary's pack was also missing. When he made his way down the stairs, Serana and Ayden were sitting at the table, sipping tea. A balmy spring breeze came in through the open door and windows, and the day outside was beautiful: golden, green and blue. Galen looked around the room. Raven was nowhere to be seen. Ayden nodded.

"Yes. He's left," he said. "Don't worry, though. He'll be back. When he's ready, he'll be back."

"Is he going to be alright?"

Ayden shrugged.

"Hard to say. I hope so. But there are some things he has to work through all by himself, and we must respect that if we want to be able to help him. And what about you? You look terrible."

Galen smiled ruefully.

"I just had a bad night, that's all. Nothing serious."

Serana raised her eyebrows.

"A bad night? How?"

"Nightmare," Galen said curtly, sitting down at the table.

"Yes," Irya said calmly as she stepped out of the bedroom she shared with Ayden. "A bad one. And I was part of it. Not so, Galen?"

He looked at her, briefly at a loss for words. Then he nodded. Apparently she already knew all about it anyway, so the point was moot.

"Good morning everyone, by the way," he said, hoping to change the subject.

"You too. Better have some tea," Serana advised. "It'll make you feel better. Did you remember to take your tonics?"

Galen nodded, sitting down at the table and accepting a steaming cup of tea from her.

"Good," Irya said, with a smile that spoke volumes. "You're going to need them."

Ayden smiled and wordlessly handed him a slice of dark brown bread with honey on it. As he ate and drank he slowly began to feel better. Eventually the cobwebs cleared from his head. He looked at Irya and smiled ruefully.

"So how did you know what I was dreaming about?"

"I caught some of it. But then, I'm the one who caused it. Or rather, Ayden and I are."

He looked at her, trying to make sense of what she'd just said.

"I'm not sure I follow you," he said.

"We decided to have a good look at that dark spell that Raven is laboring under," Ayden explained. "Unfortunately it wasn't as simple as we'd hoped. When we approached the spell, we triggered some sort of... defensive reflex, I suppose the best word is, even before we got close."