Hiram sneaks into a trader’s cart and ventures past the rift wastelands near his poor village and passes through the forbidden portal to a world and love beyond his imaginings.
Unhappy in his simple life of work and more work, Hiram Oversher decides it’s time to find a bride and make a new life for himself. When he passes through the gateway he’s been warned about since childhood not to enter, his body awakens to a sensual calling and energy he cannot understand. He sees visions of a beautiful maiden, nude and in need of him. Inside the keep of Lord Beorolf, waking dreams and those during sleep reveal a secret Hiram longs to uncover and know.
Ebook ISBN 978-1-60054-235-0
Length: 15,000 Words
Genre: Dark Fantasy/Erotic Romance
Rating: Shooting Star
$3.00
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Chapter One: Key in the Dark
Hiram climbed into the back of Old Lysen’s mule cart planning to make a new start for himself by leaving the village of Pig’s End behind. He plotted to ride along past the rift and through the forbidden portal. Lysen always went the same way, and Hiram watched the cart drive on through with no trouble at all every three months even though no one in his village dared to try. He shoveled himself beneath the pile of cured hides. Settled in, he pushed some aside so he could peek out at what he would soon abandon.
As always, the clouded sky and mist from the nearby Gordian Forest combined to make a grim, hopeless scene. Worn mudhouses, crooked and in need of repair after the last rain, would not be missed by him. Failing pig fences awaited his father’s mending. A shadow of guilt crossed over his heart for abandoning him, but he set his hopes on the prospect of a new village, the possibility of being taken as a furrier’s apprentice, and maybe even finding a bride. It would be better to leave behind the mischief of his youth and set out on this new adventure.
Old Lysen hobbled out of the house, his thin, gray beard bouncing on his lanky chest. He tossed three goat pelts on the cart with a huff and bypassed Hiram’s hiding place, none too wise of his added cargo. The trader grumbled before he eased his crooked body into the seat, weighing the cart in a slight way. A whip cracked. The ancient mule brayed. Wheels turned and Hiram grinned, his escape underway.
The young women in Pig’s End tended to marry outside the rundown village or worse, they looked too much like their fathers. Hiram licked his lips and dreamed of a beautiful maiden waiting for him beyond the rim and the portal—a maiden with rounded hips, a waist he could grasp, and breasts ripe for his plundering.
The cart bumped over ruts in the road, and Lysen didn’t make any more stops. The acrid stench of the burning fields on the rim soon became a memory. Hiram peeked out when they passed through the portal, its murky haze always a mystery to him until this moment. Fear tingled in his fingers. Childhood stories about the portal and what lay beyond had him on edge. “Anything is better than Pig’s End,” he said, assuring himself. The haze passed through his body, waking his senses, alighting nerves and causing an embarrassing feeling of arousal. He felt alive and vigorous, as if anything were possible.
The cart passed on. The road smoothed out. The burst of energy pulsed in his body. He pushed his way out further, the better to see what the other side of the portal looked like.
Strange metalworking decorated the sides of the even stranger road. The workings resembled suits of armor, only larger than a normal man could possibly wear or bear. Shiny lights lit the eye-guards, sparkling with a latent vivacity. One of the metal things started to walk in stilted motions. Hiram gasped. He swallowed back his fear and stared at the thing. It lifted a pile of wood and went on its way as if it ought to walk around like a living creature.
There were more wonders, horses made of metal drawing fanciful carts much unlike Old Lysen’s run-down one, lanterns glowing green in the windows of metal-made homes, and flying creatures also made of the same shiny, silvery element. Hiram began to wonder though, where all the townsfolk might be. He didn’t see any fair maidens or any ugly ones for that matter.
Lysen’s cart gained on a smooth incline. Curious, Hiram sat up to see where the mule led them. A fortress, squared and gleaming in the reddish evening light, stood atop the high hill. It too, appeared made entirely of metal.
This is promising, he thought before ducking down into his hiding place once more. In a keep there will be serving wenches. He licked his lips before grinning wide. His future could change soon indeed.
When the cart stopped, he tried to slip out. A knotted staff rapped against the side of his head, halting him.
“Boy! What have you done?” Lysen glared at him, his wrinkle-mottled face shriveled with bitterness.
“I wanted to—”
“Nonsense! You’ve crossed the rim! You’ve entered the forbidden realm. You can’t go back now, not ever again! You fool.” He clucked his ancient tongue, furrowed his two bushy gray brows and lopped another cruel smack to Hiram’s head.
“I don’t want to go back to Pig’s End. There’s nothing for me there.”
Lysen snorted. He hobbled a few steps away and glared back over his shoulder. “You will want to, Hiram Oversher; you will.”
Hiram rubbed his sore skull as he took in his surroundings. Just within the first wall of the hold, more metalwork creatures went about chores. A massive iron gate lowered, closing off the way they’d entered. He didn’t feel trapped. He felt inspired. Here he’d make his way. “Lysen!” he shouted, jogging after the old trader. “Do you know a furrier here?”
The old man stopped by a metal tree, leaning on it. “Furrier? In Golem’s Keep? You’re a fool, I say. What need would there be for a furrier in a place where the horses are made of metals? Unbreakable metals at that.”
Hiram bit his lip, thinking this over, for it made no sense. “Well, who makes all of these magnificent things then?”
A light glittered in Lysen’s faded blue eyes. He rubbed the scraggly scruff on his cheek. “Hmm.”
Hiram recognized the look the old trader wore before he’d strike up a bargain. He tried not to smile and give away his excitement.
“Lord Beorolf. He makes them.”
“Does he need an apprentice? I know a little about metalworking. I’m not lazy; I’ll work hard.”
A bony hand curled around Hiram’s wrist. “Come.”
With that one word, he followed and hoped for new wonders to be revealed to him.
The keep’s inhabitants drew Hiram’s attention as the old trader led him through the city. “What are they?” he finally asked, when a particularly massive metal creature stomped past carrying a slab of marble.
“Golems,” Lysen answered.
Hiram had never heard the word before that day. “Golems…” he repeated. “Are they…alive?”
“Not exactly.” Lysen gave Hiram a stern look when they reached an ivory door with scrollwork over its face. “Let me do the talking. Got that?”
“Yes.” He pursed his lips.
The trader rapped the gold knocker on the door three times.
A green golem answered, thin and wiry with a purple cloak over its shoulders. It resembled a sickly human. Its eyes glowed brighter while it looked over Lysen and Hiram. “Who goes?” it asked in a monotone voice that buzzed like bees in a hay field.
“Lysen Drimwitch of Devany.”
“Who goes?” the golem asked again.
Lysen cleared his throat. “And my ward.”
“State your business,” the golem droned.
“Here to trade with Lord Beorolf.”
“Enter the shrine.” The golem stood aside to let them pass, the lights in its eyes flashing off and on.
Hiram followed Lysen through a portal similar to the one on the outskirts of the rift. The cool liquid mist flowed over his skin, burning his mind with licentious thoughts of a nude woman, her body stretched across a finely embroidered coverlet. The passage went on long enough that he saw her part her fair legs, revealing the secret between them. He blinked.
The mist receded.
The vision abandoned him and he wondered where it had come from.
Hiram touched his crotch, self-conscious of the heat lingering there.
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Author Bio:
Anastasia Rabiyah is an author of erotic romance and fantasy. She often blends the two genres to create magical worlds of romance portrayed in a dark light. Enter her imagination, a place filled with demons, secrets, magic and star-crossed lovers. She writes in every spare moment, haunted by her muses.
www.RabiyahBooks.com
