Beat Me

I stood on the green field, looking down at the young mon I had just beaten senseless. The witnesses to our combat stood two on each side as the rules required. Elwin had been such a nice young soldier that I had really hated doing this to him, but a geis is a geis. The witnesses were aghast as I walked off, leaving them behind. I prayed to my father that I hadn't crippled Elwin – there were too many that I had. Especially when I was in a particularly foul mood. A century of geis enforced virginity will do that to you.

Most people think I'm just a shopkeeper with a lot of strange customers, and even stranger suppliers. My mage shop, The Manticore Bones, sat in its latest location on the corner of Ship Street and White Ducks Road in Ocealay. In a few hours it wouldn't be there any longer. Every time I had to pound a would-be suitor, I packed up and moved on. I don't worry about letting my regular customers and suppliers know when I move – and they always knew where to find me since I never use a scry ward once I set up again.

A manticore skull sat upon the floor near the door, the tanned skin draped over it, the stinger, claws and teeth strung on a leather thong and run through the empty eye sockets. I had three different kinds of hands of glory in one glass cabinet; one clearly orc and the other two of species few people had ever seen before: dark things in that cabinet. My shop was a mix, a neutral place: Full of things of both light and of darkness and of everything in between and of things that would not bear the rulers' notice. Being a Badonthian, I believe in turning the tools of the hellgod against him and so acquire them from time to time – such as those hands – though I did not make them.

For one hundred years it has always ended this way. It was my mother's fault. She laid the geis on me the same day she told me who my father really was at fourteen. My mother was a battlemage, and I was reared among battlemages. I first saw battle at twelve. I saw war in all its ugly glory while other girls were primping for their first dances. I'm an interracial mongrel with Sharani blood watered down by numerous pairings with humans of various cultures.

My father is Badonth, God of Aggressive Warfare and Vengeance. I'm a yuwenghau, a demi-god. Most of us serve as divine knights-errant against the forces of the dark ones. We're all a pack of rogues with strange affinities, odd lusts, and uncanny obsessions. I suppose that was what my mother was trying to protect me from when she laid the geis.

Taking a traveling globe out of a drawer, I started ordering various cabinets and chests into it. They leaped into the air, and were sucked into the small crystal globe. I would pack up my shop, and all the furniture in the rooms above it where my assistant and I dwelled, then put it in my pocket and ride off to set up again.

"What are you doing?" Lilidh, my assistant, walked in, and stared at the swiftly emptying room.

"We're leaving."

"Again?" She sucked the word in with a hiss of irritation.

"Yes. Elwin insisted on courting me and I told him my conditions."

She looked alarmed. "You didn't kill him, did you?"

"I hope not. He was alive when I left him."

My mother's geis was simple and it has kept me virgin for a century: I could not marry or sleep with a man who had not subjugated me in a fair fight. I had to be conquered. I never got to ask her whether the outcome would be rape or whether I would be allowed to demure afterward, for she died four days later in battle. I spent the first twenty years after the laying of the geis examining all possible implications of the word 'conquest.' I remembered her words.

"When you have been thoroughly subjugated and conquered in a fair and empty-handed fight, only then will your legs be opened to a man."

Needless to say, I have never been beaten and I'm getting hornier than a bull-demon.

Badonth's blood is all through my lineage. Badonth also sired my ancestor, Josiah Abelard, who was called the Mage-Master. The god likes to mate with his own descendants to strength the magic in us. I suspect it also makes us a bit crazy. Certainly my mother was, gods rest her soul.

The little bell hanging from the door rang and I looked up to see the very last mon I wished to encounter stride in. He was the ugliest mon I had ever seen in my life. He would have been ugly even without the facial scars. Loky was fortunate that whoever made that one between his eyes and broke his nose had not managed to blind him. A second one ran down the side of his face. Even without the scars he would have been plain ugly. A too large, mobile mouth dominated his seamed, jowly face. His eyes were deeply set, black as night, with dark purple shadows beneath. His bushy eyebrows sat on a heavy ridge. His nose looked like it had been broken more than once. His height was six five and his body broad and blocky, with thick, massive arms.

"Moving again?" His deep voice was gruff, but with an undercurrent of fondness that made my stomach clench.

Loky was one of my regulars and always the first to find me whenever I moved on. He rarely bought anything. The mon simply liked to poke around and chat with me. I enjoyed his company more than anyone else's in my entire life.

"Go away. And stop following me," I snarled at him.

I had a terrible feeling that he kept finding me, no matter where I went, because he loved me. I didn't want to hurt him. That probably sounds silly, considering that Loky is massive. He has legs like temple-columns and arms like tree trunks. He was a mon with enough long-lived blood from some distant ancestor that he had been able to keep this up for fifty years. I had bested myn his size before. The yuwenghau blood in my veins makes me stronger than I appear and I look strong for a woman.

"I will always follow you, Amberlin. You haven't answered my questions."

Lilidh returned with three more globes, and I knew that we were completely packed up.

I walked out of the empty shop, heading for the stable where my horses were boarded. Loky followed.

"If you want me to stop following you, just answer my questions."

I glanced back over my shoulder and shouted at him. "Go away! I don't want you around."

"Why do you keep beating myn up and then moving?"

I spun on my heel and glared at him. "Stop pestering me. I'm geised!"

Loky had never seemed very bright, but he had always been kind. "Why?"

I knew then that he would have my secret from me and probably still follow, so I threw a spell of Summon Stone at him and sealed him in up to the waist. The spell would fade in a day's time, but by then I would be long gone.

We hurried to the barn behind the shop, saddled our horses, and rode for the city gates. To my utter astonishment, I could feel my spell start to give before we were halfway there. Loky was pounding at it with incredible strength. It alarmed me.

Ocealay sits on a strip of land made defensible by the islanding effect of two rivers converging and then pouring into the sea, forming a broad, steadily deepening delta to the west side; and a bottle neck where the rulers had dug away the isthmus to the landside, and sealed off their mon-made island with a sophisticated canal and bridge works. Walls and towers enclosed the entire island.

We crossed the bridge, and headed north, following the coast road. I figured that my best choices were either Timbren or Ildyrsetts. The latter had a large mage community and probably room for one more shop.

The backlash from my shattering spell hit me a staggering blow an hour from the city-state of Ocealay, and I slumped in the saddle with my head ringing.

"Amberlin?" Lilidh asked in concern. "Are you all right?"

"He – he broke my spell."

Lilidh smirked at me. "Maybe he's stronger than you give him credit for being. I really think you underestimate Loky. Besides, I think he's in love with you."

"Oh, for pity's sake, don't even suggest that. You know what happens to men who love me."

Lilidh knew better than to reply to that, so we rode until evening in silence. We bedded down for the night in a patch of oak trees just far enough off the road that we wouldn't be noticed. Lilidh fell asleep immediately after I set the tell-tales around our camp. I had just curled up in my bedroll when I heard someone moving around.

"Who's there?" Getting to my feet, I drew my sword and summoned power into my left hand in the classical stance of the battlemage as I was reared.

Loky stepped into the firelight. "Are you going to attack me?" He chuckled.

I glared at him, sheathed my sword, and dismissed the magic. "No."

GODWAR CENTRAL

Beat Me