Seven Sorcerers(33)

Why should it be such a strange thing? He was a being of double aspect. Why not share it with her? Why should his intimates not experience the fullness of his being? Already the female aspect slumbering within him leaped at the idea. The female Sungui was rebellious, defiant, and adventurous. To do this thing that had never been done before was a quiet rebellion against the established order. Zyung’s order. The thought excited him, grew in his chest and loins until he could no longer contain it.

Ianthe glided away to watch him change. The hard planes of his body softened to supple curves. His cheekbones and chin receded, growing smaller and more feminine. His neck lengthened and smoothed, as did his legs and arms. A pair of firm breasts sprouted from his chest, smaller than those of Ianthe but no less beautiful. The hair upon his body vanished except for the tangled black mane that grew soft as silk, and the matching eyebrows. Soon the female aspect had banished all manly elements from the body.

Sungui lay bare and splendid in the candlelight. She blinked her heavy-lidded eyes at the amazed and curious Ianthe. Wordless, their bodies joined together in a wholly different yet strikingly similar passion. The Pale Panther taught Sungui the secret arts of pleasing a woman, something only her male aspect had considered until this moment. If this was some arcane spell the pale sorceress had woven, then Sungui was entirely lost in its grip. She no longer cared. They spent the remainder of the night wrapped in an urgent bliss as fresh as new-fallen snow, yet hot as dancing flame.

When the first rays of a gray dawn crept through the porthole, Sungui rose to wash herself in a basin filled by mute slaves. Ianthe lay propped on one elbow, watching her every move. In the corner of Sungui’s vision the Khyrein seemed once again to be a great, white cat staring at her. Sungui accepted a platter of cheese and mangoes from her body-slave, and brought it to the cot. Ianthe’s ebony eyes haunted her with memories of the night’s splendors.

They fed one another slices of yellow fruit and shared juicy kisses as the morning light grew bolder, filling the cabin with a golden glow.

“Why do you serve Zyung?” Sungui asked, sitting on the cot’s edge.

Ianthe smiled. “Because I must,” she replied.

Her feline eyes whispered another message: I am using him to get what I want.

“The Seraphim resent you and Gammir,” Sungui said. She reached for a comb to run through her rumpled locks. “They feel you do not belong. You do not believe.”

“Do you believe?” Ianthe asked.

“I remember,” said Sungui.

“What do you remember?”

Sungui lowered her lips to her new lover’s ear. She whispered what she could not say aloud. “Freedom. And power.”

Ianthe placed a hand on her thigh, tracing invisible patterns with a black talon. “These things can be yours again.”

Sungui shook her head. “A few of the High Seraphim remember their true power, but still they fear Zyung. We are all Diminished in his presence. This will happen to you as well.”

Ianthe laughed. “I serve him, this is true,” she said. “Yet I refuse to be Diminished.”

Sungui touched the pale oval of Ianthe’s face. “So did we all, until we no longer could resist. I have tried to stir them, to restore their greatness, yet I alone retain this independence of thought. Perhaps it is because of my dual nature. I serve, yet I defy. I am a perfect union   of opposites.”

Ianthe kissed Sungui’s lips, one last ember of the fires that had blazed between them.

“What do you truly want?”

Sungui’s eyes were bound to Ianthe’s black diamonds. She hesitated.

“To be as I once was,” Sungui said. Her body trembled. “To be free of this Diminished state. To rule, to roam, to build my own empire. To love and slay and tear down mountains if they offend me. To walk this world as he walks it. Fearless and invincible.”

“I sensed this the moment I saw you,” said Ianthe. “These dreams are your birthright. You will have them, Sungui.”

“How?”

“I will aid you. We will both aid the Almighty in taking his new lands, then we will steal them away from him. He is no greater than you or I. You will see…”

Sungui did not believe this. But she wanted to. She yearned for it to be true. It had haunted her dreams for centuries. Longer. Yet none of Those Who Listened would truly hear. She had been alone in this private turmoil for so long, it had become an invisible chain that constricted her body in both its aspects, dragging her down with the weight of ages.

Now, for the first time, she might break that chain. She was no longer alone.

She would steal back the power that was rightly hers, and the world would no longer be slave to Zyung’s peace and order.