Echoes Read online

  Elna inhaled a needy breath as she took Vann's cock in her hand and slowly stroked it to life. She cooed softly, dropping to her knees and feathering soft kisses along the thick, throbbing length. Vann rested a hand atop her head, just one, avoiding getting his fingers caught in her hair. He simply concentrated on keeping quiet, a difficult task given how good Elna was with her mouth. Her tongue slid greedily along the hot flesh, slipping down to where cock met balls and sucking eagerly. Vann heard the soft, lewd sounds of her slipping a finger into her sex and playing with herself.

  He was fully hard now, and Elna worked her way back up to the tip of his length. She trailed her tongue in a circle around the head of his cock. Vann winced, then bit his lip to keep from crying out as she went down on him, her lips forming a tight ring around his slick cock and sliding up and down. His whole body felt warm, but not a good kind of warm. It was prickly, and excessive, not the warmth that sex was supposed to have but a hot flash of guilt and fear that warred with the delightful sensations pulsing from his groin. This was so risky, so dangerous. If anyone caught them, there would be no Gods, First or otherwise, who could save him. He knew that some people would like the danger, but for him, it only served to remind him of what his lot was in life.

  When Elna had gotten her fill of sucking on him, she simply rose without a word and strode to one of the workbenches. Vann followed like an obedient hound. Elna bent over the table, facing away from him so she didn't have to look at him, and spread her legs. Her sex was swollen and damp, partially hidden behind a veil of pubic hair. Vann knew what was expected of him. He moved behind her, pressing the tip of his cock to her entrance. The heat there was intense, but it was hollow and empty. He sighed and pushed forward, meeting slight resistance as he pressed into her. Heat caressed his length as he stilled for a moment before he pushed forward again with a soft grunt. She let out a quiet moan, her nails scraping against the wood of the workbench.

  Vann paused for a moment to settle himself, and repeated the motion several more times until his cock bottomed out inside Elna's throbbing cunt. He grabbed hold of her hips and started to thrust into her lazily, his breath huffing out in soft pants, the only real noise he could get away with. Elna was a bit more expressive, shuddering softly as he fucked her. “Harder,” she commanded, and he heeded his lady, putting a bit more force behind the rocking of his hips. His balls slapped against her thigh as he picked up his pace. Vann closed his eyes and imagined it wasn't Elna he was buried inside, but Lenire, a sweet, youthful woman with fire and passion who cared for him, and wasn't just using him to get off. The idea actually made him go a little faster, a little harder, the smack of his hips against Elna's filling the room.

  “Ah, ah!” Elna panted. “Eager, aren't we?”

  Not for you, Vann thought, tuning out her voice as the vision of Lenire in his head writhed with him, held him, whispered sweet words in his ear. His grip on Elna's hips tightened as he pounded into her, feeling his peak rise. Elna was safe to finish in – she was far past the point where she would be having children. Plus, she liked it, which meant that if Vann didn't, she got angry. So he slammed himself into her again and again until he inhaled sharply and stopped. His fingers tightened on her hips and he emptied himself into Elna, shuddering through his climax as she humped back against him. The added sensations made him see stars as she milked him dry.

  His fantasy of Lenire faded and he came back to reality, in the dimly lit conservatory with his cock sheathed in the Lady of the house. Even his orgasms were difficult to enjoy due to the circumstances. He slid out of her, his cock slick with her passion and his together. He took a step back, searching for a towel to clean them up with. The response was automatic at this point.

  “I've got it,” Elna said. She bent down and fished around in the pocket of her robe and fished out a raggedy cloth. She wiped off her thighs and between her legs, leaving the cloth on the table for him. Vann took hold of it as she shrugged her robe on and left. No farewells, no goodbyes, no further instructions. Truthfully, Vann was grateful. He cleaned himself up, then folded the rag and shoved it in his back pocket. He took a moment to make sure the workbench wasn't out of place, then turned and left the conservatory. All he wanted was to get back to his room, run a bath, and clean himself off.

  As he walked towards the dormitories, Vann stopped as a group of Songweavers rounded the corner. They were his age, the class that he should have been a part of, but couldn't be because of his injury. He stood to the side, intending to just let them go by.

  At least until they stopped. “Hey, Vann,” one said. “How you doing, buddy?”

  “How's the studying for the final going?” another said. “Oh, right, you can't Sing, my bad.”

  Vann felt his face burn. “Not my fault,” he muttered. Surely they had someplace to be?

  “What's all this?”

  All of the Songweavers to be turned. Yilon and his father stood at the end of the hallway, the two of them looking at the scene with very different expressions. Yilon looked angry, and was already stomping down the hallway towards them. Fandar's face was much more passive, looking as though the whole thing was beneath him.

  Yilon moved to stand at Vann's side. “Move along,” he snapped at the Songweavers.

  The Songweavers all looked away and hurried on, muttering to themselves. Fandar watched them go, his expression unreadable. Yilon turned to Vann. “You okay?”

  Vann clenched his jaw, not trusting his mouth when Fandar was within earshot. He shook his head. Yilon sighed and put an arm around his shoulder. “Come on,” he said.

  The two of them walked out of the hallway, up the staircase at the end to the higher floors of the palace. Yilon led him down a hallway that had carpeting instead of tile to his own room. It was a spacious square room with a semicircle glass window, facing the north so that the sun never shone directly in. Yilon's bed was off in one corner, while the rest of the space was taken up by a writing desk, a bookshelf, and several instrument stands.

  Yilon strode to the center of the room and stood still, threading his fingers into his hair. Vann stood in the doorway, the cum-stained rag in his back pocket feeling as though it weighed a ton. “Something wrong, Yilon?”

  Yilon sighed, then relaxed and shook his head. “Nah. Just... just had a long talk with my father.”

  Vann shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Did you ask him about Lenire?”

  Yilon smiled and nodded. “He approves. I'd like to live in a world where I didn't have to do that, but what can you do?”

  “Well, at least he approves,” Vann said. He didn't know why he felt like a door had just been shut on him. It was a door that had never been open in the first place. “Anything else?”

  Yilon shrugged one shoulder. “Just things.” A shadow flickered across his face, almost too fast for Vann to see. “After I get married I'll have to start taking on more and more responsibilities. My father's not getting any younger.”

  Vann nodded. His mind was still in the hallway, cornered against the wall by the Songweavers. “Will you keep me around?”

  The look on Yilon's face was like he'd been slapped. “Uh, yes? Why would I not?”

  Vann sighed. “I don't know, I just... In the hallway down there, those people aren't going anywhere. They all know my name, my face.” Vann ran a finger along his scar. “I don't want to be a problem for you.”

  “You won't be,” Yilon said, his voice strong. “I still haven't given up on finding a way to fix your throat.”

  Vann reached over to one of the instrument stands and grabbed the lute off it. His fingers flitted across the strings, finding them out of tune. He fixed them quickly, years of practice allowing him to pick out the slight differences in tone of the strings. A single strum brought out a smooth acoustic melody, and he nodded. “I've made my peace with it, honestly,” he said quietly.

  Yilon's face grew sad. “How long has it been since you tried?”

  “Since last time.”

&n
bsp; “Well then, why don't you?” Yilon offered. He gave Vann an encouraging smile. “Play something, I'll Sing a verse, then you go and we'll see what happens?”

  Vann looked down at the lute in his hands, then slowly began to strum an old song about rivers that he dimly remembered the words to. Yilon sat down on his bed, nodding his head in time with the beat. Yilon started to Sing as the verse rolled around, not putting a whole lot of his power behind the words, just enough to get some magic flowing through the room. The tempo was bouncy and upbeat, and out of the corner of his eye Vann saw the water in the jug by Yilon's bedside start to rise up into the air, pulsing in time with his lute playing. He could feel a little bit of the power in the air, as he often did around music. It was an instinct that had been ingrained into him years ago that he couldn't turn off. All he had to do was reach out with his magical senses, Sing a few words, and the magic would be his.

  For the briefest, briefest moment as he opened his mouth and began to Sing the second verse, he felt it. The magic, the power, the control. But his Voice wavered, and he lost his grip. All at once the magic went haywire. The ball of water hovering about the mouth of the pitcher burst like a balloon, making Yilon flinch as he was spattered with water. Vann turned quickly as he lost his grip on the magic, aiming the force as best he could at the wall. Luckily it wasn't that much, and the magic splashed over the stone and dissipated like a gas.

  “Well, crap,” Yilon said.

  Vann had to restrain himself from hurling the lute against the wall. It was a nice one, and there was no need to be childish. But he felt frustration and anger weighing upon him, the surety that he would never, ever, be able to do what he wanted to the most. So instead he simply set the lute down on the stand, and turned to leave. “I've taken up enough of your time, Yilon.”

  “Vann, no,” Yilon said, getting up off the bed. “Don't be like that.”

  But Vann was already at the door and pulling it open. “I really just want to go and lie down for a while, Yilon.”

  “But...” Yilon stopped in the middle of his room, silhouetted in the light streaming through the window. His hand was half raised, as if he wanted to lift it but couldn't. “Are you sure?”

  Vann looked back at his friend and managed a small smile. “Yeah. I'm sure. Have a good night.” He closed the door behind him before Yilon could respond, then hurried away down the hall before he could be waylaid by anyone else, not stopping until he reached the modified storage closet that was his room. He tossed the rag covered in sex juices in the corner, then ran a bath in the small ceramic tub he had, the edges stained from years of use. He sank into it slowly, closing his eyes and relaxing as best he could. His mind wandered, from his relationships with the three Brannas to how he was viewed by the others to the strange voice he'd heard in the library.

  After he was finished, he drained the water and dressed in clean clothes. He didn't feel like going to eat, so he simply sat down on the bed and retrieved the book from under his pillow. It was a history of the Metal War, containing all the little sordid details that Yilon couldn't tell the children about lest their parents chew him out.

  The book itself wasn't forbidden, being an analytical account of those years and not containing any specific methods by which the Metal Lords had operated. Discussing that was expressly forbidden, in an attempt to keep the past from repeating itself. Vann understood the logic, but what he was mainly interested in was how metal had allowed the Voiceless, and those otherwise with little magical talent, to wield magic that rivalled the most acclaimed Songweavers. He thought if maybe he could understand the logic, perhaps he could find a way to make it work with non-metal instruments and fix his current predicament.

  At the same time, though, the book's author had taken the liberty of drawing detailed illustrations of the events in the book. The one on his current page showed Rorzan Jetta Diavolo himself, the man behind it all. He stood on the promontory of a cliff, dressed in a sleeveless black tunic studded with squares of platinum and silver. His face was hidden by a drawn-up hood. In his hands he held his instrument, a forbidden device called a guitar, and it crackled with power. At his side was the Lady Arielle, an elf who had helped him on his path of heresy. She wore next to nothing, skimpy clothes that accentuated her femininity, a skirt of thin cloth billowing around her waist.

  Vann knew that the image was supposed to intimidate and horrify. But looking at them, standing atop a cliff together side by side with the sun rising (or setting, he wasn't sure) behind them, they looked… awesome. There was no other word for it. It was easy to see how they had commanded the force that they had. Something about them radiated power.

  But in the end, even they had fallen to the Canto of Lords. No enemy to the High Lords had ever survived a massing of the Canto.

  Vann sighed and tucked the book away. He still wasn't hungry, and he layed in bed for a long time before he fell asleep.

  ***

  Vann rose the next morning and went about his normal routine. He grabbed food from the kitchen just as the cooks were beginning to prepare the morning meal for the palace residents, and ate it on the way to his first task of the day.

  He stood attentively in the classrooms on the first floor as the Songweavers instructed their students, along with a few other servants. He was the only Voiceless among them, the others simply hadn't the ability to do magic. So they stood by and helped reset the room after attempts at magic gone haywire. Vann preferred working with those that had just started to learn how to Sing – they didn't have egos. Yet.

  Training ended around lunch, and after another quick meal Vann went to the library to take care of his chores there. He cleaned the bookcases, dusted off some shelves, and as always, saved the glass window overlooking the city for last. In an unusual twist, he was the only one in the library that day. He allowed himself to take his time with the window, popping the panes open to catch the snippets of Song from the garden as he did. No strange voices accompanied the Songs today. Vann breezed through the window, getting to his usual lower right corner in timely fashion. Lenire wasn't in the garden today, so there was no point in popping the panes open.

  As he cleaned the glass, he stopped. Something was… off.

  He turned and looked around, slowly. He was still alone in the library, every noise he made sounding like a dropped cast iron pan. There was nobody sneaking up on him, nobody anywhere near him. So why did he feel like he was being watched?

  Vann dropped the wet rag in the bucket and stood up, slowly walking around the nearby row of shelves. “Hello?” he called out. His voice echoed back to him. He waited a moment, then scoffed under his breath and turned around. “First Gods, I'm losing my damn-”

  As he turned, he saw it. A shelf on the nearby wall wasn't flush with it's neighbor.

  Vann narrowed his eyes and inclined his head. Some other servant must have knocked it out of position. He moved over to it and grabbed the shelf. As he did, he looked downward.

  There were scuff marks on the tile floor. And they looked old, the tile shaved down from several back and forth motions of the bookcase. Vann leaned around and looked at the books on the shelf. Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. Curiosity drove him. He grabbed hold of the shelf and pulled backwards. The shelf slid along the scuffed tile easily.

  Vann heard a clunk and the sound of something sliding against something else. He felt the floor vibrate through his boots and drew away from the shelf.

  The section of the floor between the bookshelves on the wall and the next row was opening up, the floor sinking down in two foot-square sections to form a staircase. After a moment, the hidden staircase clicked into place, and a wave of drafty air wafted up to Vann.

  At the bottom of the staircase was a passageway, lit by charged mana crystals inlaid into the wall. Vann took a careful step forward, then stopped. He knew he should go tell Lord Branna about this immediately. But something stayed his hand. He slowly approached the stone stairs, then put a hesitant foot on one. It supp
orted him.

  Vann descended the steps, running his fingertips along the walls. The stone was cool to the touch, and rough, the edges feeling like they'd been hewn from the quarry yesterday. Vann slowly moved into the passage, praying to the First Gods that the passageway wasn't the kind that would seal up behind him and leave him trapped like in the legends.

  The passageway curved back in a direction that would carry it under the library, and Vann followed it, keeping his footsteps light. “Hello?” he said. His voice echoed all around him. “Anyone here?” There was no response.

  Vann followed the passage as it turned, and eventually the passageway levelled out. At the end of the hallway was a room, lit from within by more mana crystals. Vann walked inside and stopped dead in his tracks.

  The room was bare of all decoration, save for a giant House Branna sigil etched into the rock on the wall opposite the entrance. There were only two things in the room: a raised stone dias in the center of the space, and the object that rested on it. Vann gasped.

  On the dais rested a guitar. One of the forbidden instruments of power. It simply lay there, it's lacquered black surface reflecting the light from the mana crystals. The body was black and shiny, and there were runes in a language that Vann didn't know etched all over it. The strings were silver and taut, the head of the instrument a rich mahogany color, the knobs metallic silver and free of rust. The craftsman in Vann wanted to weep at how beautiful it was. The pragmatic side of him wanted him to turn and run, run away and forget he had ever laid eyes on such a thing.