On a cold and snowy winter's day, when folk this far out in the Wilderlands to the west were usually huddled before the hearth, families and friends close together to share body heat, all of the citizens of Festertool were outside, lining the main cart road through the small and remote village. They waved red kerchiefs and jumped up and down, cheering for their young king - this man, Aydrian, who had once lived in this town, and who had served all the region as Tai'Maqwilloq, the Ranger of Festertool.
Sadye hardly paid the jumping and shouting townsfolk any heed as she rode beside Aydrian, surrounded by the guarding cavalry of the few Allheart Knights who had accompanied them out from Palmaris. A score of Kingsmen had gone into the village before the main parade, ensuring Aydrian's safety. The rest of the troop, more than three hundred strong, marched behind Aydrian's group, with drumbeats cutting through the dull and snowy winter air.
And Aydrian was soaking it all in, beaming more proudly than Sadye had ever before seen him. They had come through several towns before this, of course, and with similar fanfare, but this one was different, Sadye recognized. This town had been Aydrian's first real experience with a human community after his escape from the Touel'alfar. In this town, he had learned how to speak the language of Honce-the-Bear, and had learned the other manners, subtle and not-so, of human interaction. In this town, Aydrian had risen from wayward boy to hero in a short period of time, and now he was returning, the ultimate conquering hero.
He seemed a beautiful person to Sadye in that moment, his face aglow with the cold and the pride, rosy cheeks and bright red lips accentuating those marvelous blue eyes of his. He wore no helm and had pushed the hood of his heavy cloak back off his head so that his golden hair, all tousled and unkempt, was shining above him with an almost supernatural glow.
Everything about Aydrian seemed larger than life to Sadye at that moment.
Truly he was the king here, in every aspect of the word, and just being beside him sent a shiver coursing along her spine.
She was still staring at him when they reached the end of the lane, and Aydrian dismounted to stand before the town elders. He paused and glanced all around, surveying the group, and Sadye could tell by his movements and the sparkle in his eyes that he recognized more than a few.
"Hey, boy, are ye still needin' old Rumpar's sword?" one old man cried, and those around him laughed and tittered.
Until Aydrian fixed them with a warning glare.
Slowly, very slowly, Aydrian drew Tempest from its sheath on his hip, sliding the blade out into the air before him and lifting it high. That alone brought many gasps, and those only multiplied a moment later, when the brilliant blade erupted into leaping flames.
To his credit, Aydrian chose not to respond any more than that, and he promptly let go of the magical fires and slid the sword away.
"Good people of Festertool," he began, turning as he spoke to take them all in, "you knew me as your ranger, defending your boundaries from highwaymen and monsters alike. And now I have returned to you as your king."
A great cheer began somewhere to the side, and rolled along the line of townsfolk, growing with each passing second. No doubt, the Kingsmen standing among the crowd were urging them, Sadye knew, but in truth, it didn't seem to her as if many needed that prompt. Their cheers seemed genuine, the hopes of a nondescript and usually ignored little town who saw one of their own step forward to the highest glory in all the world.
Sadye wondered if Jilseponie had received such a reception from the folk of Dundalis after becoming Danube's queen.
Aydrian caught her attention, then, looking over at her, his eyes sparkling with pride and also with something else, some intensity that caught Sadye off her guard at that moment.
Instinctively, she hugged her arms close in front of her, almost an attempt - a futile one - to deny the warmth that was suddenly flowing throughout her.
Their meal was served by a host of attendants, seeing to their every need, and while the food was rather plain, Sadye appreciated the great lengths to which Aydrian had gone to make this evening together something rather special.
She noted, too, the way he looked at her throughout the meal, and knew that the hunger in his blue eyes longed for something more than food.
This time, though, the woman was not caught off her guard as she had been earlier in the day. She did not recoil from Aydrian's stare, did not hug her arms defensively in front of her. Rather, she lifted her glass of wine - one of the few delicacies the army had taken out of Palmaris - and replied to Aydrian with a leading and teasing smile.
Aydrian dismissed the servants before he and Sadye had even finished their meal. And when she was done, he wasted no time in coming around the table toward her.
Sadye rose before he got there and moved to the window, pulling aside the curtain to look out on the quiet town of Festertool and the many campfires of the army gathered about it.
"The hero comes home," she said when Aydrian stalked up beside her, and her words slowed his deliberate approach somewhat. Still, he was right against her, looking not out the window, as was she, but at her. She could feel his stare boring into her, soaking in her delicate features.
Only after a moment did her words truly seem to sink in to him. "Home?"
he asked. "This place?"
Sadye turned her gentle expression to him. "This is not your home?" she asked. "Where, then?"
The question seemed physically to push Aydrian back at step and he blinked repeatedly as if coming out of his intoxication with Sadye's obvious charms.
"Is it this place you name as Andur'Blough Inninness?" the woman pressed, and Aydrian was shaking his head before she ever finished.
"I do not wish to talk about this."
"These questions do not dig so deep, do they?"
"No, I don't wish to talk about this!" Aydrian said more emphatically, and he turned away. "Not here. Not now." He spun back on her almost immediately, moving close once again. "This is not the time," he said, his voice going softer but hardly diminishing - rather, it gained a husky quality and a sense of urgency.
Aydrian pressed up against her, his arm going about her so that she could not even begin to lean away. "Not now," he whispered, and he moved in to kiss her.
A deft twist and duck had Sadye sliding under that holding arm and moving back toward the center of the room.
Aydrian's eyes popped open and he spun to regard her, his expression caught somewhere between surprise and anger. "You refuse me?"
Sadye recognized the genuine confusion in his voice, and, as she had expected, the lack of true confidence behind his imperial fagade. She didn't respond to him openly, not wanting to clear that confusion and those doubts, but merely smiled coyly.
Aydrian approached, but the graceful woman simply danced away.
"What game do you play?" the frustrated king asked.
"Game?"
Aydrian came at her suddenly with a move that would have served him well as a swordsman, closing the distance too quickly for Sadye to move aside.
And so she stopped him instead, with a simple change in expression, a sudden frosty stare.
Aydrian halted and shook his head.
"You just take what you will?" Sadye remarked. She nearly laughed aloud when Aydrian started to answer in the affirmative, and her fluid expression stopped him before he made that mistake.
"I am the king," he said instead.
"And so you have your kingdom."
"And so I have what I desire."
"No," came the woman's simple response.
"I could have any woman in the kingdom!"
"All but one, perhaps."
Aydrian clenched his fists at his sides and Sadye half expected him to stamp his foot in frustration. She resisted the urge to giggle at him.
"My word is law," he argued, and then reiterated, "I will have whatever I desire."
He started forward, but Sadye's outstretched hand, backed by a look of intensity beyond anything Aydrian had ever seen from her before, stopped him as surely as any barricade ever could.
"No," she answered in denial of his last statement. "Because what you desire cannot be taken."
Those words seemed to calm Aydrian somewhat, and he settled back, looking at her curiously.
"You could take me, of course, by force," Sadye went on with a shrug. "I could not stop you, nor would any speak ill of the act, since you are king."
Aydrian's expression showed her that he was considering that option at that very moment, and Sadye realized that she had a lot of work to do on this flawed young man.
"There would be no gain," she explained. "You would find nothing but physical release, and if that is your goal, better that you seek out someone for whom you care nothing, or service yourself..."
"Enough!"
"But you would gain no mastery over me, Aydrian," the woman pressed on, narrowing her eyes. "Because I would detach myself wholly from the experience. You would not hurt me nor subjugate me because I would be there in body only."
"Perhaps that is enough!"
The woman chortled at him. "If you believe that, then you are a fool,"
she said, and she turned away, moving around the table. She needed time, and distance, because he needed to learn. Once she had achieved that distance, Sadye began to laugh aloud, not derisively, but to show him clearly that she knew something that he did not. "You broke Symphony to your will, yes?" she asked.
Aydrian wore a perplexed expression, and he just stared at her for a long time before slightly nodding.
"And yet, you never mastered the horse," she added.
"So says Sadye," came the dry reply.
"Did Symphony not throw you at the joust upon first opportunity? Did Symphony not run from you at the first opportunity in Palmaris?"
"The beast desired to be wild..."
"And yet every tale I have heard shows that Symphony went to Elbryan, and to Jilseponie, willingly. Has it occurred to you that those encounters were more than anything you ever knew of Symphony? "
Aydrian's face crinkled. "You speak of a horse?" he asked, shaking his head. "What has that got to do - "
"You can take whatever you want, King Aydrian Boudabras," Sadye said directly. "But some things cannot be taken, can only be given."
"It is De'Unnero, isn't it?" Aydrian shouted at her.
Sadye didn't dignify that with an answer. She turned from him and walked from the room, not even looking back. She heard his footsteps as he started to follow, but only smiled when those steps broke off suddenly.
His emotions had dropped a solid wall before him, she knew, and it would not be one that Aydrian had any experience against, nor any weapons against. She had stopped him.
She had taught him the first lesson.
She went back to the house that had been set aside for her and spent hours preparing herself and her room, before finding an attendant and sending him across the lane to fetch young Aydrian. She wished that she could have waited a day or two at least before moving on to this next most-important lesson, but the army would march in the morning, and this was no lesson to be learned in a tent in the wilderness.
Aydrian locked a scowl on his face later that night as he walked across the small lane to the house Sadye was using. The young king could hardly believe that he was answering the call delivered by Sadye's appointed door guard. His first instinct was to send a stinging retort back to the woman who had so completely rebuffed him. But for some reason he did not understand, the young king of Honce-the-Bear was out and walking, his cloak pulled tight about him against the cold night wind.
He knocked on the door, but then just grunted and pushed through it, not waiting for any answer.
Immediately Aydrian's senses were touched, at every level. A fire blazed in the hearth to the left of the door, and many candles were set about the room, their lights sometimes crystal clear and other times dull glows behind the wafting layers of steam and scented smoke. Aydrian took a deep and intoxicating breath and a strange warmth washed over him.
He closed the door and moved deeper into the room, to a central collection of pillows and blankets set between hanging shades of delicate fabric. Only as he neared the pillows did Aydrian notice the music.
Sadye's lute, he knew, the plucked notes hanging in the air until moving seamlessly into the next. The song was slow, but full of sharp and distinct sounds.
Then came a hissing sound, and Aydrian turned, to see Sadye drifting about the steam, pouring a pitcher of water on heated stones before going right back to her playing.
She was dressed in light layers of the same teasing gossamer-like material as the shades, which hardly covered her lithe body. She danced aside as she played, drifting in and out of the opaque steam, and behind the hanging shades, turning as she went. Water glistened on her delicate shoulders and on her hair, and a single droplet hung teasingly on her lip for a few moments.
"What is this?" Aydrian asked, his words lost in the continuing music of the lute. "What are you about?" As he spoke, he pulled the heavy cloak from his shoulders and tossed it aside, and Sadye flashed a mischievous grin and did likewise, pulling a veil from about her waist and leaving it in her wake.
Aydrian's eyes fixed on that beautiful bare belly, seeming soft and firm all at once, with a delicate curve at its bottom, where it disappeared behind the veil wrapped about the woman's hips.
Catching on, Aydrian grinned wickedly and threw off his shirt, stripping to the waist.
In a twirl, Sadye did likewise, but then she moved sidelong to him, with her arms blocking his view, just barely.
"Sadye, what are you about?" Aydrian asked.
She didn't answer, other than to fix him with one of the most intense gazes he had ever seen, her eyes alone nearly buckling the young man's knees beneath him. Almost panting now, barely able to draw breath, Aydrian stripped off the rest of his clothes and moved toward her.
But Sadye moved gracefully away from him, and when he rushed to catch up to her, she turned and froze him with another look, one suddenly cold and denying.
"Sadye?" he asked, he begged.
The woman brought a finger to her pursed lips, bidding him to silence.
Only then did he realize that she had deftly removed the rest of her veils.
"What game is this, woman?" Aydrian said, his voice taking on lower and more insistent tones. Sadye moved around the other side of the circular pillow pile then, slipping behind another of the hanging screens, and Aydrian moved suddenly, and as purposefully as a charge in a sword fight, cutting her off so that there was only that thin sliver of fabric between them. He reached out and took her by the shoulder.
The music stopped and a frown crossed Sadye's beautiful face as she pulled immediately away from the man. "I told you before," she warned.
"You will have me on my terms alone. Now retreat to the pillows."
Aydrian did let go, but he stood there staring at her for a long moment, shaking his head. "I am the king."
Sadye moved up to him, her body just brushing his, her lips moving delicately over his. A groan escaped him and he leaned forward, but Sadye was already retreating, moving in perfect synchronization with Aydrian so that his body was barely touching hers all the way back.
He stopped, finally, gasping, and Sadye came back at him, first waving a burning brand of some lavender-scented branch before her, then tossing it on the fire and coming in behind the alluring scent, this time to press more urgently against Aydrian, kissing him hard and passionately.
Aydrian crushed her in his arms, moving to align himself with her, wanting only to be one with her. Waves of passion flowed through him, dizzying him. He could hardly breathe; he needed release.
But Sadye pulled away, giggling, and took up her lute again, twirling behind another of the hanging screens.
Aydrian started to pursue, but stopped short, looking at her, his mouth moving as if he wanted to say something but couldn't find the words, his hands wringing at his sides, his entire body taut, as if he would simply explode.
"What is wrong, King Aydrian?" Sadye teased.
"What are you doing to me?" he asked. "What bewitching..."
"I am teaching you," the woman answered. "Be grateful for the lesson, else I'll end it now."
"I will take you!" Aydrian said through his gritted teeth.
"Then you will get so much less than I can truly offer," the woman said with another giggle. "Poor Aydrian. Always needing to be in control."
He shook his head and moved a step toward her, but she laughed and spun away.
"But do you not understand?" Sadye asked. "Everything you do, you do with complete command. Everyone around you, even Marcalo De'Unnero, has become your puppet. You, young King, hold all the strings."
"Not all, it would seem."
"Then be grateful to Sadye," the woman purred. "No, you do not control me, nor can you. With your great strength, you could ravish me, but that would bring you so much less of the sweetness I offer. With your mighty sword, you could execute me, and none would question, but even in dying, I would laugh at you, and you know it."
"Another once thought she controlled me," Aydrian warned, his tone suddenly ominous. "I am on my way even now to kill her for that."
"Ah, but Dasslerond controlled you for her purposes and her benefit,"
said Sadye, obviously not shaken at all. "I control you for the good of... you." She motioned again to the pillows, and this time, despite his obvious desire to resist, Aydrian lay down upon them.
Sadye continued her dance about him for some time, teasing him with different, almost complete views of her alluring body, and with the notes of her song and the scents wafting about the air, with the steam and the heat, and the moisture glistening upon her.
Gradually, so slowly, she went to him, and even then, lying beside him or kneeling over him, she took her time, teasing more than touching, bringing the poor young man to near insanity with desire.
Finally, she straddled him as he lay on his back and leaned forward to whisper in his ear, nibbling his lobe before she spoke. "You have earned me," she whispered. She moved her face back, looking down at him with an expression that was part smile and part serious.
And then she came down hard.
The room began to spin for Aydrian. He felt as if he was lifting into the air. He couldn't draw breath and he didn't want to. His legs went so taut that somewhere in the corner of his mind he feared the muscles would simply tear themselves apart.
Sometime later, Aydrian was still lying on his back, thoroughly spent, his mind whirling with the sweetest memories. Beside him, Sadye sat up against some piled pillows, her lute across her lap as she absently plucked at the strings.
"I never imagined," the young man said, his voice barely escaping his throat.
"Because you spend your every day in complete control - you even control the weretiger within Marcalo," Sadye explained.
"I am the king. I will rule all the world."
"Almost all," Sadye replied with a wicked grin and she pointedly crossed her legs. "You will never rule me. You will never control me. Understand that."
Aydrian's face went tight with anger.
"And that is why you will always appreciate me, and love me," Sadye finished. "You will always be a boy, Aydrian, if you are always in control of everything around you. I will teach you to be a man."
"What foolishness..."
"Because only in letting go of that iron-fisted control, only by letting your emotions step through your willpower, will you understand the other half of what it is to be human," Sadye explained in all seriousness.
"Only when you embrace this other side of you, this passion, this freedom from control, this danger of the unknown, will you be complete, and only when you are a whole human being can you truly be a man."
Aydrian blinked repeatedly, but did not rebut.
"Marcalo was much like you," Sadye explained, and Aydrian winced through a shot of jealousy at the mention of her other lover. "So many powerful men... no, powerful boys, are."
"What of Sadye, then?" Aydrian asked.
The woman looked at him as if she did not understand.
"If you go back to him, I will - " Aydrian started deliberately.
"Kill me?" she interrupted. "Kill him? Kill everyone?"
"Do not play this game."
"You please me, Aydrian, in so many ways," the woman coyly replied.
"Continue to do so and you have nothing to fear."
Aydrian leaned back and closed his eyes; all of it was too confusing to him at that moment, still basking in the loss of his virginity.
Sadye began to play again, then, and began to sing, softly, and her sweet voice was the perfect ending to a perfect night.
Aydrian drifted off to sleep.
Sadye sat there for a long while, looking at the beautiful young king, the beautiful young man. He was the most powerful man in all the world.
Except when he was with her.