Free Bloodstone by Helen C. Johannes Page A

untouched?”
    His loins tightened at the thought. He smiled and stroked his free hand along the ridge of his arousal. Ah, the pleasures of the flesh. You’re too kind, Brandelmore, to have returned me to such a delightful state. And your bride, mm. Just think, it’ll still be you rutting between her legs, but I —he chuckled— I’ll be the one to feel it.
    He laughed out loud and flopped back onto piled pillows. Raising the crystal to palm its glow, he started at a flare of yellow. It was only the briefest flash, like lightning in the summer sky, gone before the mind’s eye releases its image. Even so, he sat straight up and, tightening his grip on the crystal, peered at the image still contained within it.
    Moments later, he raised his head and rubbed a hand over his face. “Brandelmore, these eyes are faulty. They see things that aren’t there.” He palmed the crystal, replaced it in its pouch, and lay down again. Even if something had managed to survive the initial spell-blast, too much time had since passed. They’re all dead. Every last one of them. There’s no one in the way.
    He smiled, closed his eyes, and drifted off to sleep contemplating that thought and all its possibilities.
    ****
    “You know I promised your mother I’d keep you here and see to your care,” Ulerroth was saying. “And I’ve done a fair job of it, wouldn’t you say?”
    Gareth nodded. His master had clapped a sweaty hand on his shoulder shortly after he’d arisen and now, while he ate, Ulerroth’s fingers returned so often to knead bone and muscle, Gareth’s neck and arm ached. Stuffing the last hunk of bread in his mouth, he slid out from Ulerroth’s grasp and handed Freth his bowl. “Was good,” he managed around bread jammed into his cheeks.
    “Don’t gulp.” Freth grasped his hand and placed a cup in it.
    He dipped a fingertip in the tea, found it warm but not hot, and downed it in one long swallow.
    “I told you not to gulp.” Freth snatched the empty cup from his hand. “You’ve the ears of a stump.”
    Gareth grinned. “But the nose of a hound. I can smell when you’re baking.” Swiping a handful of walnut meats from the table, he dodged most of the spoon applied to his backside.
    “Both of you out of my kitchen!” Wooden bowls thumped together. “Give me peace or you’ll not eat today!”
    Still grinning, Gareth popped a nut meat into his mouth and followed his master’s footsteps into the common room.
    At once, Ulerroth turned and gripped him by both shoulders. “About what I said, boy, I’ve always been good to you.”
    His master’s hands lay heavily on his bones, their touch communicating unease. Gareth swallowed the remains of the walnut meat and stuffed the others into a pouch at the base of his cuffed tunic sleeve. “Yes, sir, I know you have.”
    “I wouldn’t stand in the way of your...advancing, if that’s what you want. But I want you to know—” Ulerroth’s fingers flexed. “—you don’t have to agree to this.”
    Gareth frowned. His master seemed distracted, and the words he spoke sounded like riddles old Melfick told when he had a pint too much ale. He hunched his shoulders at Ulerroth’s grip, but it only tightened. “Agree to what, sir? I don’t understand.”
    He heard the hiss of the innkeeper’s exhalation and sensed Ulerroth straightening. The thick fingers kneaded his bones again. “The Shadow Man wants you to serve him.”
    Was that all? Ulerroth was afraid to send him to do again what he’d already done? It was hardly worth sweating over. “All right. I’ll bring up his tray again, as long as he wants me to.”
    His master’s fingers dug into his shoulders, preventing his attempt to turn. “Gareth, boy, it’s not that simple.”
    The heaviness of the words made a knot clench in Gareth’s stomach. It was a large knot, much like the one that had intruded there when Ulerroth first told him his mother was dying. His knees shook. He swallowed. “What then,