Enjoy!

Darek, youngest lieutenant of the house guard of House d’Wyr, normally kept to the upper levels of the house, but this shift he had been summoned to the throne room in the deepest part of the complex.

In the lowest levels, the ones located beneath the surface of the black waters of Lake Durak, windows of solid rock rendered invisible transformed the dark tunnels into an eerie otherworld of swirling liquid patterns. The solidity of the stone walls was easy to forget when one could look out through them and see the vast expanse of cold and unforgiving water beyond them.

Darek had always been a shrewd but daring risk taker. It was how he’d come to occupy his present positions, both within the guard and in the bedchambers of a future candidate for low priestess and matriarch. That had been no small feat. It had been daring of him to set his sights upon such a prize. It had been shrewd of him to press his suit first not with the heiress Delia Daella directly but with her nurse-turned-amakan, the venerable and beautiful Dehsah.

That combination of the daring to reach for things that should by all rights have been outside his grasp and the shrewdness needed to actually catch hold of them promised to take the young elf far in life, even as it threatened to land him in serious trouble. Every time he received a summons to the undercomplex, he couldn’t help wonder which side the coin had landed on this time.

It all came down to timing: would he achieve his ultimate success before he did total failure?

The lower levels were far from crowded most shifts, but they were all but deserted now. There was a civic processional being led around the shores of the lake, and most of the important house personnel, female and male, were in attendance.

One of those who had been left out melted out of an illusionary patch of wall at his left as he strode down the hall.

“Hello, Lieutenant,” Durilla Degra, the beloved of his own beloved’s mother, said. “We were pleased to see your performance directing the drills the other shift.”

“Were you?” Darek responded, using the plural inflection on the pronoun. “I had not realized that our Daella Degra was in attendance.”

“Oh… regrettably, she was not,” Durilla Degra said, her practiced blankness faltering just a bit.

“Oh,” Darek said. “That is truly regrettable.” He gave a small, measured bow. “Your favor honors me, Durilla Degra.”

“Thank you,” she said curtly.

“I suppose it was the goddess’s will that you and not she would be witness to the practice session, as you apparently have not been favored with the opportunity to witness the procession itself,” Darek said.

“I have duties here,” she said icily. “As do you.”

“Constantly,” he agreed, and he was on his way.

Durilla Degra d’Wyr was entitled to her wife’s matronym and the house name, but she was not of the noble line of the d’Wyri and she lacked the powerful mental gifts of that line. Otherwise, Darek would not have dared to tweak her so obviously.

She irked him, though, as she irked nearly all who encountered her.

By always referring to herself collectively with her partner, Durilla Degra had almost single-handedly introduced the concept of “The Royal We” to House d’Wyr. We enjoyed… we were pleased… we thought. She never thought or did or said anything singly, even when her amikan was nowhere in evidence.

The fact that she was left in the undercomplex during the processional was suggestive. By all rights she would be accorded a place at Daella Degra’s side, and Durilla Degra had never ceded the smallest thing she was entitled to without a fight. If she was not in attendance at the processional with her beloved, then that meant her beloved was not in attendance as herself. She was filling in for the matriarch, her living double… which meant that the real matriarch was still in the house, and almost certainly alone.

That told Darek who had summoned him, but it did not tell him why.

The wall in front of the throne room shimmered and disappeared as he approached. He did not wait for permission to enter; it had just been granted. Duala Deneira was not sitting on the house throne. Instead that was occupied by her pet, an aging six-legged purple lizard that seemed to be asleep every time Darek had cause to visit the throne room. He had never seen the thing stir or even so much as open any of its four eyes, though it was always in a different position.

From what Darek had observed, the matriarch never sat on the throne when her great-granddaughter was out somewhere being her. Whether this was some obscure point of protocol or a bit of personal superstition, he did not know and it was not his place to ask.

Alone, she was not wearing her hood, leaving her hair, face, and neck gloriously exposed. Darek’s beloved Dee was a strong, beautiful woman, but in his most private of very private thoughts he had often entertained fantasies about Duala Deneira and Daella Degra, the pair most of the city reckoned as the most beautiful d’Wyri women. Ranking one of them above the other would be impossible, as a quirk of heredity—and a fondness among their line for using the same men—had rendered their ageless bodies identical.

“A good hour to you, Lieutenant,” she said to him, giving him a slight nod. “Please remove your hood.”

“And to you,” he said, bowing low as he did so, exposing his pointed ears and the top of his smooth-shaven head. “And whom do I have the honor of addressing, at this very good hour?”

“Oh, do not pretend you don’t know. You have ever been able to tell us apart, Lieutenant Darek,” said the reigning matriarch of House d’Wyr. “You always can, even when no one else can. How is this, do you suppose?”

“I could not say, my matriarch,” he responded. “It is a gift.”

The truth was, it was in her eyes. The eyes of Duala Deneira were cagey and focused. Those of her otherwise identical great-granddaughter were haunted and scattered.

She was a telepath with thousands of years of experience. She knew this as well as he did, just as she knew that he would never admit out loud that he looked the women of the house line in the eyes, however briefly.

“A rare gift indeed,” she said.

“And how are you finding the processional, my matriarch?” Darek asked.

“Very enjoyable from this distance,” she said. “On the subject of viewing from a distance, Dehsah was found on the rooftop, watching the parade. Ce was eating a black plum. Do you know anything about that?”

“Dehsah enjoys the view towards the shore,” Darek said. “Did you know, Great Mother, that ce has not been to the city proper in over an octal? Perhaps if we arranged for a contingent of…”

“I have more fingers on my hands than I have had black plums in my life,” Duala Deneira said. “The guards who sent cer back inside did not even know what it was. They thought ce was nibbling on a bit of flesh. When the duty captain recognized it for what it was and Dehsah was asked from whence this great treasure had come, do you know where ce said?”

“Presumably, the Isle of Trees,” Darek said. The domed-over island, bathed in spells of sunlight and tended by blind monks, was the ultimate source of all fruit in Durakesh.

“‘I have a basket of them in my room’,” the matron quoted. “A basket. Of black plums. In the chamber you share with cer.”

“Halfkind have ever enjoyed a peculiar popularity with the monks,” Darek said. “And Dehsah is the most remarkable of the halfkind. Perhaps ce has an admirer or two, who remember cer fondly from days gone past?”

“Lieutenant Darek, you know it is simply not possible for Dehsah to truly be punished,” Duala Deneira said. “Ce has been trained and bred to take correction graciously, and so ce does, to the extent that it does not even begin to affect cer. The foundations of this house would notice a whipping before ce did.”

“I have always said that our pretty Dehsah shows a remarkable discipline in the face of discipline.”

“Nevertheless, ce must be whipped for possession of the stolen goods… however, ce cannot be punished for the actual theft of fruit from the holy island because as yourself pointed out, ce has not been outside this house since our Dee was a child,” the matriarch said. “Ce is not the thief.”

“I fail to understand the thrust of the matriarch’s speech,” Darek said. “Do you wish for me to undertake an investigation to find the rogue responsible?”

“I wish for there to be no more stolen fruit found within the boundaries of our house,” she said.

“I will circulate words to that effect,” Darek said.

“I am in deadly earnestness, Lieutenant,” she said. “Stealing from the island is a serious offense… there are limits to how much protection even a noblewoman’s love buys.”

“I can assure you, there will be no more fruit found,” Darek said. “And, what about pretty Dehsah’s punishment?”

“It is already being administered… there was no shortage of volunteers among the males of the guard for that duty. Knowing the regard with which the house rank and file regards our Dehsah, I was surprised by the sincerity of their enthusiasm. I believe there is something cathartic, for a male, to have an excuse for striking such a feminine-presenting figure. In any event, to avoid a riot I was forced to be… what is the word the faint kind use? Democratic. Ce will be occupied for quite some time, several shifts at least.”

“I see,” Darek said. He was coming up on an extended downshift once the festival on the shore was over, and had been looking forward to spending many hours in the company of the house’s greatest living treasure.

Not that he’d ever had any difficulty finding a sheath for his sword. He could walk into the male barracks at any time and find a willing enough partner among the younger recruits. They got the job done, but he preferred something with breasts.

“Do you know why I send my descendant out in my place, Lieutenant?” Duala Deneira asked abruptly.

“Because she looks so much like you?”

“That’s why the deception works, not why I do it,” Duala Deneira said. “You must not think at my advancing age that I have any great fear of dying. I have outlived children and grandchildren… even one great-great-grandchild. I would not look unfavorably on the chance to get to know them all better. But as matriarch, I must think of the good of the house… and while the death of my Daella would be devastating to me, that is where the tragedy would end. On the other hand, if I were to die… she is flesh of my flesh, but she serves the house far better as a decoy than she would as a leader.”

“As the matriarch says,” Darek said.

“You disapprove of my decision to put my descendant in harm’s way?”

“You are my matriarch, but she is the mother of my amikah,” Darek said.

“And so you show her the respect she is due,” Duala Deneira said. “But nobody is due the matriarchy. No one deserves such power, and few deserve the burdens that come with it. It is a post one can only be found worthy of holding in retrospect, and I have no hope of being judged favorably if I allowed it to devolve onto my soft-hearted, soft-headed descendant.”

“As the matriarch says,” Darek repeated.

“I feel that flutter of hope in the corner of your heart,” Duala Deneira said. “Do not be so quick to assume, Lieutenant, that I am announcing my favor for your beloved. Tell me, guardsman… would your passion towards Delia abate any if you knew she was destined never to become matriarch?”

“How bluntly shall I speak, Great Mother?” Darek asked, using the honorific inflection.

“Completely.”

“If you have no intention of stepping aside, given the candidates for your succession, then the question of that succession will, necessarily, be decided in your absence,” he said.

“Naturally.”

“That being the case, Dee may descend to the throne, whatever your wishes may be,” Darek said.

“This is true,” Duala Deneira said. “And it is also true that Dee is young. She may yet grow to be a better choice than my great-granddaughter.”

“And her other half,” Darek said.

“Too bold, Lieutenant,” the matriarch said.

“My apologies,” Darek said, bowing low. “Was I to be done speaking bluntly?”

Duala Deneira sighed.

“You have hit upon the problem,” she admitted. “Absent Durilla’s influence, Daella could be a passable if unremarkable guardian of the house. As things stand, she would be matriarch in name alone while that woman held the real power. What do you think that would do, to the trajectory of your career?”

Darek said nothing.

“Daella is petitioning me again for the right of generation,” Duala Deneira said. “Motherhood is a blessing, but she has three living children already and while she dotes on them, she scarcely spares any of them a thought when they are out of her sight. Nevertheless, I have already granted her permission, contingent on a single condition.”

“What is the condition?”

“That she accepts the goddess’s judgment,” the matriarch said. “If she is blessed with a fourth daughter, she will accept that she is not meant to have another son and she will wait to be reunited with the one she has already borne. Just how long she’ll be willing to wait is an open question, but if she is impatient enough, well… that’s one problem solved, isn’t it? Oh, don’t give me such shocked thoughts, Lieutenant… if she cannot find peace and happiness in this life, why should I stand between her and the next? I have lost better descendants than her already.”

“So, am I to provide the service in her pregnancy, then?” Darek asked.

“You know Durilla arranges for her wife’s brief alliances with men,” Duala Deneira said. “You would know better than I if she might seek you for that position. But in a manner of speaking, your services are so required. It is not likely that Daella’s entire maternity would pass with no need for her services as a double. For the deception to continue, we must remain as twins. Do you understand me?”

“I… think it might be safest if the matriarch explained her meaning fully,” Darek said.

“You are by all accounts quite a skilled lover,” she said. “I wish for you to give me a child.”

“I see,” Darek said.

“You cannot tell me you have never thought of such a thing before.”

“Not safely, no,” he agreed.

She laughed.

“I find your thoughts towards me flattering,” she said. “I hope you do not fear Delia’s reaction?”

“No, no… she’s utterly conventional in that regard,” Darek said. “She would be shocked if I refused you.”

“Then from where comes this hesitancy?” she asked. “I had not intended to bear another child, but since circumstances have so dictated, I could scarcely ask for a better match. You are of my line, are you not?”

“My mother was a soldier, but Degra Daura was her grandmother, matriarch,” Darek said.

“So, my child would have my blessings twice over,” she said. “Yet I sense the prospect fills you with a very unaccustomed sensation… is that fear?”

“Great Mother… I am accounted a good lover, yes, but what you ask of me… well, it sort of falls beyond the realm of my expertise, doesn’t it?” he admitted.

She laughed.

“No worries, Lieutenant,” she said. “I have had a man or two in my time, and though you may be younger than any of them were, some of them were equally inexperienced. I know the route well enough to guide you down it. In any event, you will need to get accustomed to this sort of thing. The more you excel in the course of your duties… as you did leading the drills before the procession… the more you will be called upon to contribute to maternity, and the less time you will have for dallying in the barracks. By the time our Delia returns from her self-imposed exile, I expect you will be quite the seasoned professional… and more than ready to give her a daughter.”

Darek swallowed.

“As you say, matriarch,” he said.

She smiled.

“Practice those words,” she said. “I will be calling for you when the shift turns.”

Dee awoke to darkness.

At least, that’s what it would seem like to a member of another race. Dee, however, could see perfectly fine in perfect darkness, and so she had no way to describe what she was experiencing.

She could, in fact, see darkness, in the same way that most people could see light. She could see the subtle gradations of tone within a shadow in a way that never failed to remind her of the way the shiny black hair of her lover, Dehsah, caught the darkness and reflected it.

Even when her eyes were closed, she could see the insides of the lids with perfect clarity.

What she was seeing was not darkness as she knew it. It was not anything as she knew it. That was it, in fact… it was nothing that she was seeing.

Even more disturbing than the nothingness was the silence.

The truly subterranean races, those who lived in the network of natural caverns which sprawled deep beneath the surface of the world, referred to death as “the sudden silence.” It was an idiom which had originated among the sightless ones, whose perception of the world was shaped and bound entirely by sound, but it had long since spread to the elves and other races who could see, by light or by darkness.

No matter how deathly still the underworld might seem to visitors from above, no matter how quiet its denizens seemed, those denizens understood that life was noisy, that life was noise… and when that noise stopped, when even the sound of your own pulse in your ears, your own heart in your chest, your own breath died away, it could only mean that you had, too.

“Hello?” Dee called into the nothingness, and was ashamed at the profound relief she felt when she heard her voice.

Why ashamed? she wondered. She was not supposed to fear death, but there was nothing shameful about being happy to be alive. Still, her reaction bothered her, for reasons that she could not articulate, and that bothered her even more.

She decided to focus on something else.

“If I can speak, I have a mouth,” she said, gaining awareness of her lips, tongue, jaws, and cheek as she said these words. “If I can hear, I have ears and a mind. From that, it follows that I have a head…”

She did not need to say the rest of what followed naturally from this: a neck, and all the rest. In this way, her body came back to her, though she felt oddly disconnected from it.

Part of this was the way she seemed to be hanging in a void. Part of it was that she didn’t feel anything, in the same way in which she could not see anything and had not heard anything.

This lack of sensation was internal as well as external. She remembered feeling tired… no, not just tired. Bone-wearyingly, soul-crushingly fatigued. She didn’t feel anything like that now.

She had never felt that way before coming to Magisterius University. Her society had a time and place for everything, and while there were periods of hard work and intense devotion, they each came with a designated beginning and end. When she even began to feel worn down, it was the sign that her time of rest was near.

Now, three weeks without a proper rest had slowly worn her down. The painfully bright light, both inside and out, had taken its toll. Actively using her mental gifts… reaching out, touching minds that were not open and receptive, crossing the barrier to physically manipulate the world… had not come without a price, either.

Things had progressed to the point where she felt like she might do anything for a decent shift’s sleep.

“So, you’ve started to work it out,” somebody said, from behind.

Dee turned, gaining the power of bodily movement now that there was another reference point in the void apart from her own body. She knew the voice very well, as it was among the first that she had heard in her life.

“Dehsah,” she said. “My pretty Dehsah. Why am I seeing you here?”

“You are so surprised to find me, dwelling in your mind?” Dehsah said. “Are you so faithless, Delia?”

“Are you my mother, to address me so?” Dee responded, shocked by the rude familiarity.

Nobody except the other daughters of the line… that was to say her mother and the matriarch… ever addressed her by her given name without her matronymic. Even her own sisters were not afforded that privilege.

“I am you,” Dehsah said. “I have nothing to say but what words you put in my mouth. Though, that you should give to me the level of intimacy reserved for your mother isn’t too surprising, considering who it was that nursed you when you were young.”

“The real Dehsah would not speak such blasphemy,” Dee said. “And neither would I.”

Dee waved her hand, and the image of her amakan shimmered and melted, running down and then seeming to pool like liquid. The fluid substance of her memories began to flow away from her, like a shallow stream running over an uneven bed of rock. It made a path in the nothingness, and she began to follow it.

The path was the same shiny black as Dehsah’s hair.

She could hear her footsteps on the rocky ground, even if she couldn’t see it. The sound echoed off rough cavern walls, giving her the shape of them.

She heard other things, too. The other priestesses who had been novices alongside her, chanting prayers. Her mother. Her great-great-grandmother, who ruled the house. Her grandmother, who had died before she came of age. Her younger sisters. Her long-dead brother, whose voice she’d only heard in borrowed memories.

They were all indistinct jumbles, and none of these memories loomed out of the nothingness to address her directly, as Dehsah had.

“Ce’s right, you know,” Steff said, walking beside her. The faint elvenblood carried a candle, which guttered and stank like the ones Dee had read about before coming to the surface.

“I am aware of that,” Dee said. She didn’t look at Steff, and only in part because the light of the candle stung her eyes. “This is obviously a dream. As I am too far removed from Dehsah to be making true contact, cer presence here must be a product of my own imagination, as is yours.”

“Well, that, too,” Steff said. “But I meant about the whole ‘mommy’ complex.” Dee was still avoiding looking at Steff, but in doing so, she saw the wispy images of Dehsah forming on what would have been the cavern wall. Ce looked young and vibrant as ce always would, with an infant who might have been Dee or any of her more recent maternal ancestors suckling at cer breast. “Dating your old wet nurse? That’s more than a little bit creepy, even with the whole ‘ageless’ thing.”

“I do not discuss my personal life with you in real life,” Dee said to Steff. “I do not know why you think I’d do so in a dream.”

The figment had changed to show a somewhat older child, who was now unmistakably herself, sitting on Dehsah’s knee and being given rudimentary instruction in reading… or perhaps simply having a book read to her.

“You mean, you don’t know why you think that,” Steff said. “Because it’s your dream, and here we are, talking about it.”

“My mind is wandering,” Dee said. “Clearly I am not myself.”

“Then who are you?”

“I am Delia Daella d’Wyr,” Dee said. “Daughter of Daella Degra d’Wyr, daughter of…”

“Yes, we know all that,” Steff said. “And you’re dating…”

“I do not date.”

“Fine, then,” Steff said. “You’re fucking your former nursemaid, a hotty guardsman, and a haughty priestess…”

The ghostly image of Dehsah, which kept pace with them no matter how quickly Dee stalked down the path, was now flanked by Darek, who was having his way with one of his young paramours from the men’s barracks, and Alea, who was seeing to the needs of Dee herself. Dehsah was still tending a younger version of Dee, now playing some chasing game with the child.

“I am not doing what you said with anybody at the present time,” Dee said, forcing the images to recede.

“What you said,” Steff corrected her.

“I am dreaming about having a conversation with you,” Dee said. “That does not mean that everything you say is a representation of my own inner thoughts.”

“Fine, whatever,” Steff said.

“That aside, your account of my lovers is too generous by one,” Dee said.

“Right,” Steff said. She stepped forward and held her candle out. Its light caught on unseen forms within the void, illuminating the space in front of them in a way that Dee had never experienced. The flickering light seemed to reveal or create a scene before her eyes.

Is this how other creatures see?

She recognized the figures in the scene… she recognized the scene, though it was incomplete. The setting was her private chamber. Her amekan, Darek, was there, as was Dehsah. Two cloaks hung on the wall.

Darek was dressed in supple leggings of lizard skin lined with nearly weightless spider mail and a similarly reinforced but beautifully tailored shirt. With his lizard skin gloves, the only skin that was exposed was above the shirt’s high collar.

Dehsah, by contrast, wore cer customary robes, which would have been identified as a “dress” by other cultures… low-cut and form-fitting, to show off the contrasting sets of assets ce boasted above and below. Ce held a silver tray with three silver goblets on it, expertly balanced on a single hand.

“Shouldn’t we wait for Alea?” Dehsah asked, addressing the empty air. “She isn’t going to want to miss one last chance to say goodbye.”

“I have already said goodbye to Alea,” Dee said, stepping off the path and into the memory. Now, as then, she spoke without inflection and felt her mind clamping shut. Now, as then, she knew that this did nothing to keep the truth of her feelings from her lovers.

“And so now you’ve come to say goodbye to us?” Dehsah asked, eyes bright and brittle with fear.

“Never,” Dee said. “I will love you forever, pretty Dehsah. If you died tomorrow, and I lived a thousand cycles longer, I would still spend every moment of my life loving you.”

Except, that hadn’t been what she had said, and so her memory of Dehsah did not respond to it.

It had been what she had meant, but it would have been wildly inappropriate.

“What I don’t get,” Steff said, “or what I wouldn’t get, if I was actually here, is Dehsah’s dress.”

“What do you mean?” Dee asked, looking at Dehsah. Both ce and Darek had frozen when she’d gone off-script.

“Your boytoy’s stuff is a little frilly, but aside from being lined with leather and mail, it still covers more than would be fashionable under the light of day,” Steff said. “But Dehsah’s got cleavage… and there’s only two cloaks hanging up there, for three people. What’s up with that?”

“Dehsah’s body is a gift from Arakhis the Forsaken,” Dee said. “It would be a sin to hide it away.”

“Do you say that because you believe it, or because you like to look at cer?” Steff asked.

“The two are not mutually exclusive,” Dee said.

“Have you ever asked how Dehsah feels about being paraded around?”

“I can only assume that ce is justifiably proud,” Dee said. “As are all the halfkind with which House d’Wyr is blessed.”

“Proud, of being an ornament in a society in which there is no greater shame than uselessness?” Steff said.

“Dehsah is far from useless,” Dee said. “Ce raised me, and my mother before me, and her mother, and her mother, and her mother, and her mother.”

“So, Dehsah played nanny to six generations of d’Wyri noblewomen,” Steff said. “Not exactly a bad position to fill… and leaving that aside, what did ce do in-between?”

“Ce had cer functions to perform, the same as any other member of the household,” Dee said.

“Nothing so indispensable that ce couldn’t be released the moment one of cer charges grew up and fell in love with the color of cer hair.”

“It is not just Dehsah’s hair,” Dee said. “Or even cer body. Just because you have a vulgar fascination with the physical…”

“Hey, I’m not even here,” Steff said, holding up her hands. “I don’t even know about any of this stuff.”

“So, you are trying to tell me… what? That I feel guilty about my treatment of Dehsah? I love cer,” Dee said, turning from the tableau of her frozen lovers and striding up to Steff as she spoke. “I have loved cer every day of my life. My first memories are of Dehsah, of cer shiny black hair.”

“At least it isn’t of cer breasts,” Steff said. “Creepy.”

“In any event, if I were to feel guilty over my treatment of any of my lovers, it would almost certainly be my former amikan,” Dee said. “But I do not. She chose to break with me.”

Dee turned away from Steff and found herself facing Alea, hooded and robed. Her cowl was pushed back enough to show her face and her metallic gray hair, but she hadn’t taken it off completely even though they were alone in the bare cell which Alea shared with seven other novices. This, even more than Alea’s strict shielding, foretold what was to come.

“Your mind is made up, then,” Dee said.

Alea dropped her head.

“I have already stated my intentions to the temple matron,” she said. “I will be released from my service before the cycle is over.”

“You do not have to leave the house,” Dee said.

“I do,” Alea said.

“You do not!” Dee said, her voice rising outside of her control. “There is a place for you…”

“My place was with you,” Alea said. “But you will not be here.”

“If you fear how you will be treated in my absence, know that Darek will…”

“I do not love Darek,” Alea said. “I love you.”

“You have a strange way of showing it.”

“I would go with you, if you let me,” Alea said.

“It is unthinkable,” Dee said. “You are only a novice. You…”

“I have been released from my service,” Alea reminded her. “Or do you only love me as a priestess of the Forsaken?”

Dee did not answer. In real life, she had. In her dream, she turned away and stepped out of the memory.

“What did you tell her?” Steff asked.

“That is not any of your concern,” Dee said.

“Is it any of yours?”

“What do you mean?”

“I just wonder if you’re losing any sleep over it,” Steff said.

“I have not had much sleep to lose, of late,” Dee said. “But that is easily enough explained by the circumstances of my housing.”

“Right,” Steff said. “Because being crowded into a dorm is absolutely nothing like the living situation in House Sardine Can.”

“You think my sleeping problem is due to guilt over my treatment of my lover?”

“Lovers,” Steff said. “I think you have issues with all of them.”

“I suppose next you’ll tell me that I’m leaning on Darek’s ambition as a crutch, as I have none of my own,” Dee said.

“That would probably have been the next step on our trip through memory lane, but I think you just saved us the trouble,” Steff said.

“So you do think that.”

“I’m not here,” Steff said. “Do you think that?”

“I think I have nothing to be guilty over,” Dee said. “Dehsah is a cherished member of our household. Darek’s personality is a fitting complement to my own. I regret my parting with Alea, but the choice was hers. I could have done nothing to prevent it.”

“If you say so,” Steff said.

“I say so because it’s all true,” Dee said.

“Well, if you’re bound and determined not to make any personal progress of any kind, there isn’t much point in hanging around in here,” Steff said. “Which brings us to the next problem: how you intend to wake up.”

“How does that remotely resemble a problem?”

“Have you tried waking up?” Steff asked. “For instance, when you first realized you were trapped in a formless void?”

“No,” Dee said.

“Just for the sake of experimentation, why don’t you?” Steff asked.

“I feel absolutely no inclination to do so,” Dee said.

“Because you’re having such a wonderful time?”

“Perhaps I’m not done resting,” Dee said. “Although, incidentally, I will point out that the idea that I could not wake up if I wanted to conflicts rather nicely with your idea that my guilt-wracked mind will not let me rest.”

“Unless you did something to overrule your own mind,” Steff said.

“I do not know what you mean.”

“You were desperate,” Steff said. “Exhausted… mentally, physically, and spiritually. Your back’s all burned and peeling, and you’re too proud to use your healing on yourself or ask anybody else to do the same. Add that to any emotional torment you may or may not be feeling about how you left things with your lovers… and the technique was fresh and clear in your mind.”

“What technique?” Dee asked.

“You aren’t normally this dense, Delia,” Dehsah said, on the other side of her from Steff. Dee turned to face cer, turning her back on the half-breed in the process. “Do you hear that?”

“I hear nothing but your voice and my own,” Dee said.

“Somebody’s at your door,” ce said. “I know it would normally be my function to answer it…”

“I never thought of you as a servant,” Dee said quickly.

“That’s true,” Dehsah said. “You never do think about it.”

“I love you,” Dee protested.

“And I you,” Dehsah said. “We’ve seen into each other’s minds often enough for you to know this to be true.”

“Yes,” Dee said. “The differences in our station are nothing.”

“You know, this is why Alea left,” Dehsah said.

“I’m sorry?”

“Excuse me, I said that wrong,” Dehsah said. “You know this is why Alea left. You can’t—or won’t—acknowledge your position and what it means, especially to those of us who are so tightly bound to you.”

“It means nothing,” Dee said. “Did I ever remind you of your place?”

“Did you ever have to?” Dehsah asked. “But when I brought you food and drink, when I served Darek and Alea and took nothing for myself, did you ever stop and tell me it was not necessary?”

“It made you happy to do so,” Dee said.

“It made you happy, too,” Dehsah said. “There was no question in your head that it was fitting. It’s part of why you loved me. You might have been infatuated with your pretty nursemaid regardless, but you could not have had a relationship with someone who didn’t know their proper place. You know this.”

“If I ‘know’ all this, why do I need a dream of you to tell me it?”

“Because you would never admit it… not to yourself, not when you’re awake,” Dehsah said. “You want to believe that love can defeat any obstacle. You are as romantic and idealistic as somebody of your position can be.”

Dee’s chamber formed around them again, and Dehsah was naked. Dee had just come of age, and they were at the beginning of their relationship. Now that Dee’s thirtieth cycle had been reached, there were no more objections Dehsah could raise against the persistent courtship which had begun when Dee was only twenty.

“I should have known you’d have your way in the end,” Dehsah said. Ce giggled. “You were a horrendously difficult child, you know.”

“I was not,” Dee said.

“But you were,” Dehsah said. “Your mother was bound and determined to spoil you as no child of the d’Wyri has ever been spoiled, and you ruined it by wanting nothing.”

“That isn’t true,” Dee said, slowly lowering herself to her knees in front of Dehsah’s swollen member. “I wanted you.”

“And… so… you got me.”

“It wasn’t like that!” Dee yelled, jerking to her feet and tearing herself out of the scene.

“Like what?” Steff asked. “Like ce had no choice in the matter? Like your mother and great-great-grandma effectively assigned cer to you?”

“Ce is bound by the dictates of cer position,” Dee said. “But so am I.”

“Yeah, but your position has better benefits,” Steff said.

“That doesn’t change the fact that we love each other!”

“It’s your guilt, sweetie, not mine,” Steff said.

“I have had just about enough of this,” Dee said. “This dream is over. I am waking up, right now.”

“Suit yourself,” Steff said. “I just hope it goes better for you than it did last time.”

“What do you mean, last time?” Dee demanded, but Steff was already fading away, along with the path they had been following and any concrete memory of what they had been talking about.

Dee awoke to darkness.

At least, that’s what it would seem like to a member of another race. Dee, however, could see perfectly fine in perfect darkness, and so she had no way to describe what she was experiencing.

Instead, it sustained the once-nomadic tribe of elves who had been fortunate enough to discover the immense cavern. Of all the commodities to be found in the underworld, water was the scarcest and most precious. Food was a close second, but it could be had from a greater number of sources, including the bodies of other creatures that had once competed for the same food supply. Food could be picked up and carried more easily than water. The reptiles and giant insects that served cave nomads as pack animals and mounts could be slaughtered in times of need.

Lake Durak provided both water and food, in the form of fish, shellfish, giant swimming monsters, and a wide variety of plant-like creatures that clung to the submerged rock face. The immense lake and even larger cavern which surrounded it was a comparative paradise, an oasis of life in the barren passages, but the tribe had grown steadily since settling down and the bounty of the lake was not infinite. Previous generations of deprivation had bred caution into the elves of the Durakesh, though, and the City Mothers took great care to not over-harvest.

The great fortune of the Durakeshi brought its own problems, of course. When the cavern had first been settled some twenty thousand years before, its existence had been unknown save to the assorted mindless beasts which had made it their home. The elven settlers had endeavored to keep their haven hidden away from the jealous eyes of rival tribes and other subterranean races, but as the city had grown, the need for trade had made that impossible. Now, the Durakeshi were lucky if they went two decades without having to fend off a serious incursion of deeplings, dweorgs, or other elves.

The Durakeshi, with a pragmatism necessary for subterranean living, counted their blessings as they sharpened their weapons. Their armed forces consisted of their entire able-bodied population. Each great house was required to provide the standing army with a number of fighters, wizards, and priests based on their size and resources, and in times of need the whole city could be called out to defend the outlying tunnels or sweep the streets and alleys. Combat training was mandatory for all citizens, male and female.

The Polloi, commoners who made up two-thirds of the city’s population, were the first to be called on in times of war, after the standing army. Their ancestors had not been of the Durakesh tribe. They could never gain the full protections and privileges of citizenship, but few of them complained. They were allowed to live and work within the confines of the cavern proper, inside the protective ring of barracks and fortified entrance tunnels. It was only right and natural that they be expected to fight to protect the city which protected them.

For the noble houses, a general measure of their power and importance could be taken by examining their distance from the outer walls of the caverns. The wealthiest and largest were located towards the middle, along the shore of the lake, or on islands of rock, with the biggest three somewhat uneasily sharing a single landmass jutting out of the very center of the dark waters.

House d’Wyr was situated on an island more than a mile from the shore and from the island compounds of any other houses. As the d’Wyri women carried a strong strain of mental powers, this helped prevent unintentional eavesdropping or broadcasting of private matters by the young and untrained, and did much to help their often tense relations with the other great houses.

Like many of Lake Durak’s “islands”, the d’Wyri’s wasn’t so much a usable parcel of land as a jagged point of rock jutting out of the water. When they’d been awarded use of the roughly cubic mass, its sides had been rough, angular, and unclimbable, and its peaked top too steep to build or settle on. The clan had anchored their house barges to it while they excavated the first crude shelter in one side. Over the intervening millennia, they had carved out a veritable palace within, and shaped every inch of the outside into a phantasmagorical vision of columns, scrolls, spires, statues, and bas-relief carvings of both grotesques and classical elven beauties.

Within the palace, life was as comfortable as it could be in a world of stone and darkness, though highly regimented due to the need to meet the house’s considerable military obligations. The limited amount of personal space was jealously guarded, as privacy was a complicated thing in a household of telepaths.

Where most subterranean elves observed the practice of concealing their faces in public spaces, the d’Wyri kept their cowls pulled low even inside their own home. They schooled themselves in not giving any more away with their faces than was strictly necessary. Eye contact, especially with one’s superiors, was strictly by invitation only. Only during religious rites were hoods thrown off, so that all could see the splendor and ecstasy of the goddess-touched, and even the mindblind could read the depths of the priestesses’ devotion.

In the austere and comparatively large private sleeping room of Delia Daella, there were currently no cowls, cloaks, or any other sorts of clothes on. There were no mental shields or screens, and no stony masks of self-control.

It was not a formal religious ceremony which brought on this display of openness, however.

Delia Daella was the daughter of Daella Degra, who was the daughter of Degra Daura, who was the daughter of Daura Duala, who was the daughter of Duala Deneira, who was the daughter of Deneira Deshalla, who was the daughter of Deshalla Duquesna, who was the daughter of Duquesna Desiera, who was the daughter of Desiera Docia, who was the daughter of Docia Demara, who was the daughter of Demara Della, who was the daughter of Della Dolora, who was the daughter of Dolora Delissa, who was the daughter of Delissa Deliza, who was the daughter of Deliza Dasera, who was the daughter of Dasera Dasera, who was the daughter of Dasera Decatia, who was the daughter of Decatia Delia, who was the daughter of Delia Deshara, who was the daughter of Deshara Denala, who was the daughter of Denala d’Wyr… an unbroken chain of first daughters that went as far back as had ever been reckoned.

None in the city could claim a longer such lineage than that, a fact which had been impressed upon the young Delia Daella since shortly after her birth, when her mind had first displayed receptivity and something like thought. It was her duty to grow up and bear a daughter, wisely and carefully, so that child could live to adulthood and bear one of her own, continuing the chain. House d’Wyr was not the most powerful or wealthiest clan in Durakesh, but they were the most careful.

Delia Daella’s lineage proclaimed this: see how expertly we preserve our mothers? Twenty generations birthed their first daughter without loss or interruption.

Delia Daella—Delia to her maternal line, and Dee to those who knew her best—was trisexual, a fact which alternately pleased and vexed her mother and her great-great-grandmother, the two other surviving firstborn of the line, and the current heiress and the matriarch of the house, respectively.

It pleased them, because Love Of All Kinds was rated among the very lowest of the blessings the goddess of intricacy could bestow upon her children. A semblance of it could be cultivated through practice, but only a very few were born with the perfect inclination.

It vexed them because their Delia was in the line of the firstborn, and might one day sit upon the throne, if Duala should ever pass on. The tetrad she bound together around herself was all very well for a free noblewoman, but would be politically inconvenient for the head of a house.

There was no question of her giving up her lovers, if it came down to it. She would do so if asked, out of duty to goddess and mother, but her mother would not ask her. The depth of love and passion her chosen three felt for her and vice versa were all too evident to the sensitives of House d’Wyr, also to the mingled pleasure and vexation of many.

Those feelings had never been quite so evident before the time of the Black Span, when the house chapels were turned over to the male monks for mutual spiritual cleansing and renewal. During this time, there were no priestesses. It was the first such Span that had been declared in Delia Daella’s lifetime, and it meant that she was simply a woman with no responsibilities or duties to anyone. It was something like a vacation or holiday, as the Polloi sometimes took, but it lasted for thirty glorious shifts.

Having already spent most of the Span’s first half in bed, the tetrad had moved to the floor. Dee sat on the lap of Darek, the youngest lieutenant from the house guard, letting his smooth black member slide with delicious resistance up inside the taut opening of her shapely rear.

Alea, a novice priestess—or one who had been a novice priestess and would be again after the Span—bowed low before her, her face between Delia Daella’s thighs, her tongue eagerly exploring the region that would exist only for her, until it was time for the young noblewoman to bear children.

Her mouth was filled by Dehsah, whose member was only slightly thinner and no less perfectly formed than Darek’s, and whose breasts were more exquisitely shaped than Dee’s own.

The three moved as one, filling Dee with pleasure that almost matched that of religious ecstasy. Had this been any other time, the young priestess would have found it necessary to rebuke herself for even thinking that… but this was the time of the Black Span, and so instead she simply abandoned herself to it.

With Dee’s shields down, she felt everything that her lovers felt, and they each felt everything that she felt. Every thrust, every stroke, every lick, every nibble, every suction, every part of every act was shared by all in the room… and many of the highlights, as it were, were shared with the rest of the talented among the household.

Love Of All Kinds, the ideal arrangement for a noblewoman… and not only because it allowed one lover for each orifice. On a lower plane of concern, it combined the perfect divine symmetry of Love Of Sameness, blessed balance of Love Of Halfness, and the all-important breeding possibilities from Love Of Otherness.

When the four collapsed as one in mutual exhaustion after their most massive explosion of shared orgasms yet, the one who had bound them all together found her thoughts drifting regrettably to practical matters. She was not a priestess at the moment, but she was still the firstborn daughter of her generation; she was still her mother’s daughter.

Of her lovers, only Darek would be counted a moderately good match for a matriarch. He was handsome, well-formed, ambitious, and talented, but his parents had been common soldiers in the house guard. Officially, lineage was less important than physical attributes and accomplishments for males, but it still counted for something. Alea had been born of the Polloi, a tragic failing for a future matriarch consort. Dehsah was at least d’Wyri, but had no lineage.

“You’re leaking serious thoughts, Delia Daella,” Alea chided, kissing the nearest part of her lover’s body… which happened to be her knee.

“I have invited you to call me Dee,” the noblewoman reminded her.

“But your name rolls so beautifully off my tongue… as do so many other things of yours,” the younger priestess said.

“That tongue is wicked, and I shall have it from you in an instant if you do not make it behave,” Dee said.

Alea stuck out her tongue.

“Yours for the asking,” she said around it.

“You have a wicked thought, lover Darek,” Dee said.

The elf man chuckled.

“Just that the feeling of my own rutting turned back upon me is almost enough to make me a boy-lover myself,” he said. “Almost.”

“You mean you have no lovers in the men’s barracks?” Dehsah teased.

“Certainly I do,” Darek said. “But as the proverb states, ‘more in giving than in taking.’ I remain a man.”

“Indeed,” Dee said, reaching out to put a hand blindly but unerringly on his slackening manhood, which twitched and half-stiffened again under her touch.

Dehsah laughed, adding a hand to Dee’s.

“Generous Darek. I’ll partake of your generosity, when our Dee abandons us.”

Silence, mental and physical fell in the wake of these words.

“Sorry,” Dehsah said. “I did not mean to… sorry.”

“I would not, for anything beneath the world, abandon the three of you,” Dee said. “But going to the surface is something I must do.”

“The goddess makes no such demands on her people,” Alea said.

“This demand is made of me alone,” Dee said. “I do not know if it comes from my heart, or if it has been planted there by the limb of the Forsaken, but I must obey regardless.”

“More than five cycles,” Alea said. “Anything could happen to you… to any of us… in five cycles.”

“You will be well-protected in my absence,” Dee said.

“Five cycles isn’t so long,” Darek said. “It may be just long enough for a lieutenant to become a captain, and then who can speak out against our union?”

“Your union,” Alea said. “In five cycles, I will be just as I am. How much easier will it be for your mother to convince you to set me aside when you have not known my face or touch for so long?”

“I do not go to the surface to abandon you but to better myself, gentle sister,” Dee said. “Have faith.”

“I would not want you any better than you are,” Alea said, pressing herself against her lover’s body. “I do not think I could stand any greater perfection.”

“Well, this is rather depressing,” Dehsah said. “The matriarch has not yet put her seal on our Dee’s plans. So, let’s drown whatever fool even mentioned it, and dim this harsh light with more love making.”

“Pretty Dehsah, you have a monk’s devotion and a priestess’s fervor,” Darek said, laughing. “I’m for it.”

“That isn’t all of theirs I’ve got,” Dehsah said.

“You two, please continue on your own,” Dee said, sitting up. “I will hold Alea for a bit, and we will watch.”

“As you command, matriarch of my heart,” Darek said, and he carried Dehsah over to the bed while Dee cradled her young lover’s head in her lap and stroked her long, dark silver hair.