Faerie Story:  Chapter Ten

Skinner had arrived to attend his audience with the Ice Queen with a fully prepared speech.

Which flew out of his head the moment the Queen turned around to face him.

“You’re male,” he blurted, his mouth dropping open in confusion.

The Ice Queen’s face twisted with wry amusement. “Did you truly expect me not to be? There are no Faerie females here in the north.”

“But they call you their Queen,” Skinner pointed out, flushing slightly.

The Ice Queen laughed gently. “The title ‘Queen’ is simply one of polite respect and habit. What other term would Faerie use for a leader of their people?”

“Of course,” Skinner breathed. “To be a Queen is simply an office then, like that of a Chieftain.”

“And are there not female Chieftains in your human world?” the Ice Queen asked, with a sparkle of humor in his slanted green eyes.

“A rare few,” Skinner admitted. “Women who’ve gained the title through wisdom and great age rather than force of arms.”

“Well, I claim little wisdom and my fighting abilities are poor,” the Ice Queen laughed self-depreciatingly, “but my age certainly qualifies me.”

“How old are you?” Skinner blurted, then blushed at his own rudeness. “If you don’t mind me asking, that is.”

“I was old when the world was still young,” the Ice Queen sighed, looking wistful. Then he sighed, shook his head and gave a more constructive answer. “This hair of mine was once rich copper brown. It has taken over two millennia to leech its color to pure white.”

“You’re over two thousand years old?” Skinner gasped in amazement. “That isn’t possible.”

“You doubt my word?” the Queen frowned disbelievingly, his eyes narrowing with annoyance.

Skinner shook his head hurriedly. “I meant no offence by my words. It is simply that, despite your hair, your face and body retain the beauty of youth. I don’t doubt your words. I simply find them incomprehensible.”

The Ice Queen’s posture relaxed from the stiffness of anger to an almost preening satisfaction, and his right hand lifted and stroked his cheek as though to remind himself of just how truly exquisite he was.

Skinner choked a little. The gesture was so ‘Alexin’ that Skinner’s heart almost burst with remembered sorrow.

The Ice Queen's luminous eyes softened slightly at Skinner’s clear distress, and he showed empathy by gently saying, “This Prince you loved and lost was beautiful, too?”

“Alexin’s beauty eclipses even your own, my Queen,” Skinner replied staunchly.

The Queen’s eyes flickered with momentary annoyance, but then he sighed and shook his head as though to clear his thoughts of his automatic jealousy. “The eyes of love often transform even exceptional beauty into something even far more extraordinary. You can be forgiven for making such a mistake if you truly *do* love the boy.”

Despite his sorrow, Skinner had to swallow a chuckle at the way the Queen so easily – and decisively - dismissed the possibility of his being less beautiful than Alexin.

Though the Ice Queen *was* the most spectacular creature Skinner had ever seen, except perhaps for the scarred Roga, he *wasn’t* a match for Alexin’s beauty.

Or, maybe, it was simply that his beauty was of a different ilk.

Where Alexin was soft, the Queen was angular. His face was strong rather than sweet. His frame was rangy, thin and lightly muscular, not gently padded with flesh and soft curves like Alexin’s. His nose was long and proud, rather than short and cute. His eyes, though as luminously green as Alexin’s, were more slanted. Despite his inarguable beauty, the Ice Queen’s face was more similar to that of a gorgeous boy than an exquisite girl.

That was it, Skinner decided suddenly. In human terms, the Ice Queen looked more ‘masculine’ than Alexin did. Even despite the Queen’s extraordinary beauty, Skinner highly doubted he’d pass easily for a woman even wearing the finest of female gowns.

“I would ask a question, though I fear to cause offence,” Skinner said carefully.

The Queen shrugged. “Ask as you will, human child. I may not answer, but I will accept your questions without offence.”

It felt strange to Skinner to be called ‘child’ by the gorgeous, youthful faced Queen, even if the creature truly *was* two thousand years old.

“You...you say your white hair is a mark of age. Yet all the Faerie I’ve seen here in the north have white-streaked hair. Are you saying that they too are of great age?"

“There are no women here,” the Queen reminded him gently. “So there are no children save a few half-bloods. Every full-blood Faerie in the north has lived since the time of the great war. So all are more than a millennium old. I, however, was already that old when the war began, and so my hair is no longer simply streaked with white but fully so.”

“Then Frohike was right when he said that male Faerie age as slowly as the female?”

“Slower,” the Queen laughed, though his chuckles were sad rather than satisfied. “And our chosen lifestyle prevents such violent death as females often suffer. So, in our natural way of being, we are near eternal. I doubt you found any women in the south even a fraction as old as any of we males here.”

“I know not their ages,” Skinner confessed, “though I saw many queens and none with even slightly whitened hair. So I think it’s fair to agree with your comment.”

“The females constantly wage war with the humans and with each other. As if that is not foolish enough, they sport in ways that are fatally dangerous. They have almost as little care of their own health as they do of their males.”

“Then Roga was right when he said you know of the fate of males in the south?”

“That they are used and abused so much that they die while still mere buds on the vine?” the Queen spat. “Of course I know this. Just as I know of the ones who die of the thin blood and the few deformed creatures like your friend Frohike.” He smiled gently at Skinner’s frown of annoyance. “You like not that I call him such. And I agree, for a *human* his appearance is not so ill. Yet he is Faerie, and so he *is* greatly deformed.”

Skinner gave a soft sigh of reluctant agreement. “Your people have been kind to him though,” he admitted.

“Why would we not? It is no fault of his that he is so afflicted. He is living proof of Behaana’s curse and so deserves our love and sorrow rather than our disgust.”

“Behaana?” Skinner gasped. “It is of Behaana that I wished to speak with you.”

“That is a question I will not answer,” the Queen growled. “Choose another subject.”

Skinner shook his head. “As I said, I have no wish to offend you, but I *must* know of Behaana.”

“All you need to know is that Behaana *is* the curse. Behaana was the arrogant, prideful fool who caused all this to happen. The eternal imprisonment of the males here in the north. The endless suffering of the males in the south. The unbridled rage and violence of the females. All these things can be lain at Behaana’s door. If you *must* speak that name, speak it as a curse as all others do, Skinner, and ask not of the reasons it came to be so.”

“No,” Skinner argued bravely. “Not *all* speak the name of Behaana as curse. When Alexin and I were fleeing the Faerie land, the trees in the forest came alive to help us evade capture. They died for us, burned alive by the Faerie women, and still they ensured our escape even as they screamed in their death throes. And they did so for the sake of Behaana. They said, Behaana had given them life and for her sake they’d gladly lay down their lives.”

“The trees burned?” the Queen demanded, his eyes darkening with shock.

“Until nothing was left of them save black, twisted ruin,” Skinner replied sorrowfully. “And they said they did it because they prayed I was ‘The One’. I know not what they meant, but I have to believe it meant *something* if I’m to believe I will somehow rescue Alexin.”

“They spoke of a prophecy,” the Queen admitted, his eyes distant. “That one day one of Behaana’s blood would somehow break the curse and lead the males back to the south in victory.”

Then he shook his head, his eyes flashing with anger, “But the prophecy is no more than a tale. A last, furious and pointless attempt by Behaana to make the women second-think their decision. Not a true prophecy, but simply an empty threat howled in despair by one who realized he’d been the greatest of fools. The so-called prophecy was no more than Behaana’s way of trying to salvage a little pride in such terrible defeat.”

“He? Behaana is male?”

The Ice Queen trembled with both fury and despair. “Behaana is ME!” he roared.

“You’re Behaana?” Skinner gasped disbelievingly. “But Alexin said it was a female’s name. He said only royal females had names ending with ‘a’.”

And suddenly he realized why *Roga’s* name had bothered him so.

“Perhaps that is true now, but once *all* royals were so named. Thus my name is Behaana, because I was once a prince among my people.”

“*You’re* Behaana,” Skinner repeated, still shaking his head in disbelief.

“Do you think I *wish* to admit that to you?” Behaana cried. “Do you think I’d claim such dishonor as a jest?”

“I see no dishonor,” Skinner replied staunchly. “I see a man who tried to save his people and *did* so. Perhaps the means of it were not what you wished. Yet the result is true nonetheless. Here in the north I see thousands of healthy *old* males. I see a ‘prison’ that is of great beauty and comfort. I see males happy and laughing and loving each other with great passion. I look at all this and cannot see that Behaana was so mistaken in his actions. Perhaps separating the males from the females was not what you intended, but having met more females than I ever care to again, I say that this *has* to be a better thing than allowing the cruelty of your females to reign unchecked.”

“You understand nothing.”

“I understand that you stole the magic back from them. You took the power away from those who would have corrupted it beyond bearing. I understand that my people, the humans, have life and freedom *only* because you removed the ability of your females to destroy us. Humankind survives and becomes strong only because of you, Behaana.”

“But at what cost to *my* people?” Behaana argued. “You’re right. Humans would have remained animals, hunted for sport by my people eternally as they were before the great war. As long as the magic had remained in the hands of the female, humans would never have gained the chance to settle into communities and begin to develop a civilization. When I was a child, humans were no more than ragged packs of beasts who had no language and no desire for anything save survival one day at a time. They had no capacity to dream of becoming more because their lives were short and filled with danger. So it’s true that the human race owes its evolution to the collapse of the Faerie. Yet I am Faerie, Skinner. My duty was to *my* people, not yours. Can I truly take comfort in the idea that I destroyed my own race and handed domination to yours?”

“Hardly domination,” Skinner argued.

“You think so? In another millennia, perhaps two, there will be no more Faerie. We males in the north will gently fade from existence as age eventually takes the breath from our bodies. More and more of the southern males will be born like Frohike until there are no more Alexins born, only dark twisted males who will be the death knell of the Faerie. The females will destroy themselves in their despair, fighting to the death over the last few breedable males. And soon, all too soon, the land will belong to the humans and the only memory of the Faerie will be in the faint trace of the blood in men like you.”

“Unless the prophecy is fulfilled,” Skinner retorted softly. “Unless the males and females are reunited in such a way that the males can control the female aggression.”

“The prophecy *cannot* be fulfilled,” Behaana spat. “If such were possible, we males never would have been banished in the first place. Do you not see that it was my attempt to create such a society that brought the Faerie to their knees? In my pride, my arrogance, I thought to create a better world. Instead, all I did was destroy my people.”

“I don’t see, because I know too little of the events you describe,” Skinner confessed. “Tell me what truly happened. Please? Help me to understand.”

“You would have me speak to you of my shame?” Behaana cried. “You would have me lay bare the crimes I committed through my arrogance and foolish pride?”

“If you would have me believe that they *were* crimes then, yes, you must, for I look at you and see only a man who led his people from the yoke of cruel slavery and brought them here to live in safety and freedom. I see a ‘Queen’ who is much loved and adored by his people. How can they love you so if you truly are as culpable as you claim?”

“You understand nothing,” Behaana repeated despairingly.

“Then help me to understand. Convince me that Behaana is truly a fool, and I will leave and look elsewhere for aid. Convince me not and I’ll plague you for the rest of *my* life with my demands for your help. I may not be eternal as you, but I promise you’ll believe me so as I spend at least the next fifty years begging you for your assistance.”

Behaana gave a choking laugh. “You truly *do* bear my blood, human child. You share both my stubbornness and the desire I once had to learn the truth at any cost. Can’t you learn a lesson from my despair and see that some secrets are best left undisturbed?”

“Clearly I cannot,” Skinner replied with a shrug. “I would know the truth and care not what that truth might cost me. There is nothing you can say that will convince me that you are a foolish man, my Queen.”

Behaana sighed and deflated, his passion and fury fading to despondence. “I have not spoken of these things aloud for a thousand years,” he sighed sadly. “Perhaps it is time for me to do so if only to remind *myself* of my own stupidity. Lest I should ever dare to forget what I brought to pass.”

He turned his gaze to Skinner and smiled wryly. “It is the nature of Faerie males to crave adoration. Even knowing the truth, my blood sings with pleasure at your insistence that I cannot be as culpable as I claim. My ‘magic’ thrums with ecstasy that you look upon me with admiration and refuse to believe me a fool. It would be so *easy* for me to bask in the spell of your belief that Behaana is a hero. So I will tell you the truth of what happened, though you have no right to hear it, simply because you will then leave this place in disgust and I will escape the temptation of giving in to the lure of your admiring eyes. I cannot afford to forget my own responsibility for what has come to pass. Not even to feel the brief pleasure of your ignorant flattery.

“When I was a boy, almost two millennia past, the world was not as you now know it to be. The Faerie were not as they are now. I speak not of our fractured society but of our very natures. Or, perhaps, I should more truthfully say the nature of Faerie *women* was different.

“The Faerie, though at that time we knew ourselves as the Fey, had a balanced society where males and females shared the governing of our world. We were led by a single Queen who had dominion over the entire land and all the Fey looked to her for wisdom.”

“Then it was still basically a matriarchal society?” Skinner interrupted.

Behaana blinked a little but then nodded his head in assent. “Women ruled our world overall,” he admitted, “but it was a gentle yoke for the males and one the males were content with. No male has ever *wanted* to be a queen. Not even I, though that may seem strange for you to believe. The males were greatly prized as the holders of the sexual magic that enslaved the females, and although the women were the strength and power of our people, their energies were devoted solely to the protection of the males who had ensorcelled them.

“When I was a child, there was no other magic in our land but that which tied the females to the beds of their males. Neither was there much warcraft. Despite the females’ natural bent towards the acquisition of personal power, none could move more than a day’s ride away from their husband’s bed without suffering the withdrawal pains of the magic that bound them. So peace reigned in the land and the women contented themselves with acts of petty cruelties to the creatures of the forest. There was much sport for them in capturing the dumb beasts who later became humans. It soothed their savage natures to torment creatures that looked so alike to the Fey but who had no power to fight back against their cruelty.

“So that was the world I was born into, Skinner. A world that had endured with little change since the dawn of time. And, as a boy, my greatest or perhaps only concern was that I should make myself a great marriage. Something I was sure of achieving, since I was spectacularly beautiful then.”

“You still are,” Skinner interrupted quietly.

Behaana’s eyes flashed with pleasure, but his expression was rueful as he continued. “You need to understand that a boy had no need of beauty then in the way that the males of the Southern Territories need beauty *now*. It was not something ‘crucial’. It was not a boy’s only reason for being. Males could become scholars and medicants. They could even choose *not* to take a wife if their mother was generous enough to give them land of their own. A boy could even inherit his mother’s wealth and land if he had no sister to usurp his claim – even then, women often died young as a result of their propensity to ride on dangerous hunts – and if that boy then chose not to marry, there was nothing the females could do except mutter amongst themselves or attempt to woo his favor with generous gifts. The idea of taking a male against his wishes was never even dreamed of.

“But, with great beauty, a boy with ambition could use his looks to gain the favor of the most powerful, most wealthy of women. A boy with looks like mine could dream of even capturing the heart of the Queen herself. Except that the Queen was already happily married. Had been for centuries. So, in my pride and arrogance, I set my heart upon winning the hand of her eldest daughter, the Princess Diana, when I was still little more than a child.

“My mother encouraged my ambitions with endless flattery. Which should, I suppose, have been my first clue that I was making a grievous mistake. My mother was a cold, forbidding woman who had cared little for me when I was young. I have not the typical Faerie looks. My nose is a little overlong. My frame is a little too spare. Until I reached the age of 13, I was considered gangly, awkward and devoid of beauty. Yet in my thirteenth year my looks matured and my features grew into themselves, and suddenly, I looked into the mirror and saw beauty in my own face. And, before long, it seemed that *all* who saw me were declaring me exquisite. Even my previously disinterested mother.

“It was only my father who whispered to me that the world was not fully as it seemed. He was a strange man, alternatively the most important loving person in my life yet at other times distant, secretive and as cold to me as my mother was. I had, at some level, been aware of his unhappiness for many years. Sometimes he seemed almost ‘frightened’ of my mother, cringing slightly when she came too close to his presence. I put his fear down to my mother’s strange abilities. She was not as other women. She had magic such as none had ever seen. She could light a fire with merely her mind.”

“She drank your father’s tears?” Skinner demanded, his eyes flaring with understanding.

“Yes,” Behaana agreed. “Though at that time none understood that a male bore that type of magic. My mother was simply an aberration. A woman who found pleasure in abusing her husband. Though my father had the right, nay, the *duty* to report her perversions and leave her, he did not do so. He accepted her poor treatment out of cowardice or even perhaps because he truly loved her despite her aberration. Who can say? Certainly he never spoke of his true feelings to me. All I can say with certainty is that my mother had no idea of *why* she had magical abilities that no other woman had at that time. I do, however, feel certain that my *father* knew the source of her power was himself because of his vague warnings to me not to marry Diana.

“It is *that* that I cannot forgive him. That he *knew* the truth, but chose to give me no more than strange, incomprehensible mutterings that I would best find happiness with a different wife.”

Skinner frowned with understanding. “Then Diana shared your mother’s nature?”

“Exactly. She was greatly beautiful, in a womanly way, but her features hid a heart even colder than my mother’s. Since she and my mother were great friends, I should perhaps have suspected she would bring me no more happiness than my mother brought my father. But my father *must* have known the truth, and still he only whispered in my ear that I was *possibly* making a mistake. So, in my arrogance, I ignored his vague mutterings.”

“He should have told you straight out,” Skinner protested. “You were just an innocent child. You cannot be held culpable for your failure to understand his muttered implications.”

“Perhaps,” Behaana breathed sorrowfully. “Yet still, it was my own choice to accept Diana’s hand and so I am the one to blame for what then happened.”

“She abused you?” Skinner guessed.

“In truth I cannot, even two thousand years later, bear to face the memory of my treatment at her hands. She was... greatly perverse. Suffice it to say that on the day after our first bedding, I packed my clothes and announced that I was leaving her. It was my right to do so and I had every intention of not only leaving her but going to the Queen, her mother, and making plain *exactly* why I wanted the marriage dissolved. I cared not that my magic had been stolen and so no other woman would be likely to offer me marriage. I decided I’d rather live a solitary, scholarly life than become cowed and accepting of my wife’s violence. I was determined not to be like my father in that regard.

“When I told Diana of my intention to leave her, instead of being shamed by my rejection as I expected, she was enraged. She struck me so hard that she broke my jaw. Then she wrestled me onto her bed and took me cruelly while I was still weeping in agony and fear. She had tasted my tears the night before, but this time my tears were so copious that she somehow realized that the taste in her mouth was not merely a natural male sweetness but magic in its own right. You see?” Behaana laughed bitterly. “It was *I* who taught the females of the tear-magic. *I* who began the destruction of the Fey.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Skinner protested. “If anyone was to blame it was Diana herself, or even your father for not warning you of what he’d already begun to suspect. If your wife was truly as evil as you say, she would have learned of the magic regardless of whom she married. It is just unfortunate that you were the one who suffered her degradations.”

“Perhaps,” Behaana agreed slowly, as though he’d never thought of it in that light before. “But whoever was to blame, that moment in Diana’s bed was the moment that everything changed for *all* males. It didn’t happen overnight. For over five years Diana kept me imprisoned in her bedchamber, all the while devising new and better ways to keep my tears flowing, while she developed her magical abilities in secret. It was in the fifth year of our marriage that she made her move to wrest control from her mother, and she did so with a storm of such magnitude that it killed not only the Queen but her entire hunting party. Lightning flew from the sky and burned the forest in which the Queen and her riders were hunting until nothing remained except charred soil.

“And thus Diana became the Queen of the Fey.”

“She murdered her own mother?” Skinner gasped.

“Believe me, in the scheme of things, that was one of the smallest of Diana’s crimes,” Behaana answered. “The other women were too frightened of her to rebel, particularly since she then developed a small army of trusted women – including my own mother – who shared her strange powers. It took a long time before the secret of the source of their power trickled out to the other women. Perhaps fifty years. And for all that time it was *my* magic which sustained Diana as she fortified her position.”

“Those years must have been terrible for you,” Skinner said, his voice filled with horrified pity.

Behaana smiled ruefully. “I cried a great deal,” he admitted wryly. “And I felt such guilt at the use Diana made of my magic that my life was even more unbearable than simply because of the physical pain I suffered.”

“You borrowed that guilt,” Skinner replied firmly. “Though I understand why you laid claim to it, the guilt was not yours to suffer.”

“You have a strange way of looking upon things,” Behaana sighed, though his eyes glinted with faint gratitude at Skinner’s refusal to accept his blame for what had happened.

“Perhaps I simply look at the situation from enough distance to see truly. My vision isn’t slanted with emotion,” Skinner suggested. “What happened when the secret came out?”

“What *should* have happened, you’d imagine, is that the other women would have risen up against Diana and so prevented the perversion she and her followers were perpetrating on their husbands. I think, in fairness, that they *intended* to rescue we few abused males. It has always been a woman’s primary urge to prevent harm of any kind being given to a male. That urge was part of the spell the male magic wove around their hearts. So I actually believe they *meant* to restore the balance of power. But to gain the ability to fight Diana’s magic, they needed magic of their own. Magic they could only steal from *their* husbands. And so...” His voice trailed off and his eyes glazed over as he stared back into his unhappy memories.

“The dark magic corrupted them also?” Skinner suggested.

“Power is a greatly addictive thing, it seems,” Behaana sighed.

“So you were left to suffer Diana’s torments?”

Behaana shook his head. “No. The other women stole the magic from their own males, made war against Diana and eventually killed the Queen and her followers. I was freed from my imprisonment and, as a man without magic, was even allowed to take up a solitary life free of fear and pain. I was given a small holding of land and wealth enough to exist without a woman’s protection. My rescuers were, I suspect, quite horrified to find me in such terrible physical shape as I was when Diana died. In her efforts to wrest enough magic from me to defeat her enemies, she had shattered many of my bones. It took perhaps three centuries before I healed sufficiently to walk without the aid of a stick.”

“Gods,” Skinner breathed.

“Their pity for me proved, at least, that they didn’t share Diana’s insane cruelty,” Behaana admitted. “They still retained the basic instinct that a male should be valued and protected. However, despite that instinct, they found themselves unable to resist the lure of the tear-magic and so a new society developed in which males were still valued and treasured but were also expected to provide tears to keep their wives charged with the magic.

“The change was grievous for the menfolk, but we males are a passive, placid breed overall. After the initial shock and horror, the males learned to accept the change in their status. None of the women were *cruel* to their husbands exactly. They simply learned that a spanking prior to sex would give them the power they craved and then the sex itself, if performed with care, would soothe their husband’s tears and restore the relationship to one of harmony.

“And there was no denying that the magic made *everyone’s* lives better. Magic seemed to live and breathe throughout the land. It was no longer necessary for people to labor. There was so much magic flowing that, even though females can tap into only the smallest amount of a male’s power, the women had enough *collective* power to do most anything. Fields planted and ploughed themselves. Buildings could be erected with nothing more than thought. The next nine hundred years were a time of plenty. Those years became known as the ‘Time of Power’.”

“And what of you in that time? Did you spend those years alone?”

“For the most part,” Behaana replied. “I was afraid of all women still, even though I was without magic to steal, and so I kept to myself and barely made contact with the world around me. I buried myself in scholarly pursuits. I...I felt responsible, Skinner. The world of the Fey had changed because of *me* and I grieved for harm I’d brought upon my brothers. I spent most of those nine-hundred years in a vain search for a way to release the darker magic without the necessity to release a male’s tears.”

“You found *no* other way, not even in nine-hundred years of study?”

“The tear-magic is a dark magic, Skinner. It is born only of a male’s tears. There is no other way to awaken it. The more I studied, the more I understood *why* that was true. The world is a place of balances. For every day, there must be a night. For every summer, there must be a winter. For every good magic, there has to be a bad one. And who indeed can even argue that the sexual magic, the so-called ‘good’ magic, is not as insidious in its own way as the tear-magic is? Sometimes I think we almost deserved our fate. Since the dawn of time we had used our sexual magic to enslave women to our protection. Perhaps it was a fairness that our tear-magic gave power back to those we had stolen it from.”

“But your sexual magic brought the females pleasure, while the tear-magic caused the males pain. That hardly seems fair, does it?” Skinner argued.

“No less fair, perhaps, than the pain a female suffered if she attempted to leave her male’s side for more than a day or two. Perhaps our imprisonment of our females was a gilded, pleasure filled prison but it was *still* a prison,” Behaana replied thoughtfully.

“And so you found no other way for the females to keep the magic without inflicting pain on their husbands?”

“Oh, I found other ways than pain, Skinner. I simply found no one who would listen to me,” Behaana spat bitterly. “For the first century or two after my rescue, there were those who *would* at least hear me out. But they judged my mind as broken as my body. They listened out of pity and then laughed at me behind my back. By the third century, none even pretended interest in what I had to say. By the fifth century the fact I was male was sufficient reason to believe my reasoning flawed.

“Time, you see, wrought great changes in the Fey. In just five hundred years, the true history of our world was forgotten. The women who had been alive at the time before Diana all died. In the wake of Diana’s death, there was no longer a single Queen and one united Queendom. Instead there were many queendoms and many queens, all constantly vying with each other for land, power, wealth and the most beautiful of the males. And, in that time of constant warfare, the lives of women became short.

“At the same time, the lives of men were also shortened. Although none suffered the abuses that are prevalent these days in the Southern Territories, still the demands of their wives leeched the life out of their bodies. It became unusual for a male to live past a century. Something that, naturally, at first caused concern and consternation amongst the women but then was gradually accepted as a far more ‘natural’ lifespan for a male anyway. Before Diana, it was the norm for a male to be widowed at some point and live the remainder of his years alone. With the awakening of the dark magic, it was more likely that a woman would outlive even two or three husbands. Instead of that frightening the women, they decided it was the way things were *meant* to be. It was, they said, unkind and cruel for a man stripped of his magic and his wife’s protection to live a long, lonely life past his wife’s death.

“Be that as it may, within five hundred years of Diana’s death, I was the *only* remaining Fey. With the dissolution of the old Queendom, the new multiple queens began to refer to themselves as the Fey-re. The *new* Fey. And before long, they so forgot what the *old* Fey had been that they forgot even the origin of their chosen name and began to call themselves ‘Faerie’.”

“And no one remembered that life had ever been any different?”

“Even the males forgot that they had once lived lives free of the ‘duty’ to provide the tear-magic to their wives. Even the written histories of the time before Diana became ‘lost’ or were even re-written to fit the new reality of Faerie life,” Behaana agreed. “And I, who remembered all, was considered to simply be insane. As time passed, and I aged enough for time to bleach wide swathes of white in my hair, the females took that as *proof* of my mental illness because they’d completely forgotten that Faerie males were supposed to age rather than expire young of pain, exhaustion and misuse. My whitening hair wasn’t recognized as a sign of great age but as evidence of my insanity.

“But it mattered not, because there came a time when no female believed that *any* male was capable of intelligent thought, and so my ‘insanity’ was barely worthy of mention. In less than a millennium, the memories of thousands of years of peace, harmony and equality between the sexes were so forgotten that males were judged to be barely capable of reason at all.

“So none would listen to me when I said things could be different and that the women could keep their power without hurting their males.”

“I thought you said the tear-magic could *only* be released through tears?” Skinner asked, frowning with confusion.

“I did and it can,” Behaana agreed. “But tears don’t *have* to be released through pain, do they? Tears can be born of ecstasy. When two people truly love each other and take exquisite care to bring each other pleasure, their coupling can release the tear-magic without pain.”

Skinner paled. “I am, it seems, as guilty as your women of blindness,” he cursed. “I too brought Alexin pain and sought only to soothe him afterwards with a gentle touch. I never tried to use our bedding alone to bring such pleasure to him that his tears would be of joy in our union. All I thought to do was show him that the sex itself was something to be treasured between us in the hope it would compensate for the pain I caused him.”

Behaana laughed softly. “Then in two short weeks you learned more about how to ease his suffering than the Faerie women have chosen to learn in two thousand years,” he pointed out. “I see nothing for you to feel ashamed about.”

“Yet I still feel shamed,” Skinner admitted heavily.

“Then despite your ability to think and act like a female, there is more in you that is male than I had believed,” Behaana murmured. “Again it is, perhaps, a sign that male Faerie blood runs through your veins, if it hurts you so to bring pain to another.”

“I’d argue that my human blood is the source of that consideration for others,” Skinner retorted. “We humans have many faults, and some of us are cruel. But deliberate cruelty is an aberration rather than a norm. Though a tribe of humans will turn its back on the suffering of strangers if aiding those strangers threatens their own existence, the tribe *always* protects its own. To deliberately bring harm to one’s lover is anathema to us. Even the most brutish of males, one of those who keep their women jealously under their domination, wouldn’t dream of actually *hurting* his wife. Even if he were perverse enough to want to physically harm her, he wouldn’t dare face the wrath of the tribe.”

“Perhaps you are right then, that it is your human blood in which your kindness is born,” Behaana allowed reluctantly.

“I think that it must be, though I say that not as a claim of pride,” Skinner said, with a rueful smile. “Because my ‘kindness’, as you call it, surely lacks the intrinsic gentleness of a Faerie male. My dealings with people are more those of learned behavior rather than instinctive reactions. I made many grievous mistakes during my short time with Alexin. I was unwittingly cruel to him many times. Yet as I became aware of my cruelties, I swiftly curtailed them. As a human I am not *naturally* kind. I am, however, filled with the desire to be perceived in that way and I change my behavior accordingly. I believe that humans *desire* to be more than our basic natures intend us to be. We choose to become civilized. We wish to be gentle. And so our society is woven in such a way that our children are taught the desire to rise above our base natures and to thus embrace the principles of kindness to others.”

“You say all this with humility,” Behaana pointed out, “as though you humans are mere beasts who pretend to illusions of civilization.”

“I believe that to be the case,” Skinner admitted. “It is merely our unusual intelligence which gives us our ability to choose to rise above our own animalistic natures.”

“Then, in truth, I believe you humans to be worthy successors to the Fey,” Behaana sighed. “For we have *never* learned to rise above our natures. We males remain imprisoned by our excessive passivity and our females’ behavior is often completely controlled by their violent urges.”

“Then I take it the women were disinterested in your theory about tears of ecstasy rather than pain?”

“To put it mildly. Though, to be fair, there were those who *did* listen to me. Just as there were an unusual few with Diana’s insane cruelty, so there were women on the other side of the scale who had an unusual kindness. They alone tried to make their husbands’ lives easier and they found no faltering of their magic for doing so. They were *proof* that I was right. But the majority of women simply scoffed at me for wanting to change the way things had ‘always been’. Ironic, don’t you think?”

“They had truly forgotten then that things had once been different?”

“Indeed,” Behaana sighed.

“So what happened? How did the situation come to such a point that the great war occurred? Did the males eventually rise up and rebel against the cruelty of their wives?”

“Would that it were so. Perhaps then I would have found a way to forgive myself for beginning the whole mess. It was I who caused the slavery of my brothers and *I* who took it upon myself to attempt to free them. But before I did so, I made another grievous mistake. I fell in love with another male.”

Skinner’s eyes widened with comprehension. “It was *you* who discovered that males could use each other’s magic?”

Behaana flinched slightly but nodded his agreement.

Skinner pondered that for a moment. “You took a virgin boy to your bed and found you had the ability to use his magic?”

Behaana chuckled bitterly. “Would that it had been so simple. Had *that* been the case, the war would probably never have occurred.”

“I am confused once more,” Skinner admitted.

“Then let me take a step back and explain the situation more slowly. As I already told you, there were *some* rare women who cared greatly for their husbands. Some who even loved them in the true sense of the word. One such woman was Queen Videa of Western Seacove. She had outlived two husbands when she met and married a youth of surpassing beauty. A Faerie boy so beautiful that even I felt shamed in his presence. His name was Roga.”

“The same Roga whom I just met in the crystal chamber?” Skinner gasped.

“The one and same,” Behaana agreed, with a gentle smile. “He still *is* one of the most beautiful of us all, despite his scarring.”

“He is,” Skinner agreed. “If anything, the scar on the left side of his face simply forces the eyes to dwell fully on his unblemished features and appreciate them all the more.”

“Well, when Videa met Roga he was still unblemished and in the first blush of youth, so I’m sure you can imagine how exquisite he was then,” Behaana continued. “And though Videa wasn’t known for her kindness before her time with Roga, she *was* a woman of great intelligence. She understood that it had been her harsh treatment of her previous husbands that had caused their early deaths. So, out of pragmatism rather than a desire to be kind, she came to me and asked details of how to ensure the tears were of ecstasy rather than pain.

“As I said, she was an intelligent woman. She grasped the principles fully and applied them with great enthusiasm. She was not, perhaps, as clever as she imagined however, because her only reason for wishing to treat Roga well was her greedy desire to preserve his beauty forever. Yet the consequence of her good treatment of him was that he blossomed in her care, becoming even more beautiful and desirable, and so she fell completely and utterly in love with him. And, it must be said, he fell equally enamored of her. Faerie males always *do* adore the taker of their magic, even if that thief is as cruel as Diana. We cannot help ourselves from falling in love, even though we often bitterly wish our hearts were more intelligent in their choices.

“Roga gentled Videa. Not on purpose, but simply by existing. A woman can be indifferent to her male only for as long as she manages to keep her heart out of the equation. No matter how brutal the female, if she lets a male slip under her defenses, she is swiftly lost and her reasoning becomes clouded. It is, I suppose, that a woman’s heart is as vulnerable as a man’s. It is simply better armored. But if she removes that armor, she is helpless against a male’s beauty.

“So Videa dropped her guard and fell completely in love, losing all sense and reason other than to please her husband. Her cruelties to others caused Roga sorrow, so she ceased to be cruel. The way the other women in her court treated their husbands made him grieve in pity, so she began to curtail her women’s excesses and insisted that all males in her queendom should be treated with care and respect. Anything that put a frown on Roga’s face or caused tears of sorrow to well in his eyes was soon forbidden.

“I can see from your face that you imagine this was a good thing, Skinner. What you forget is that the Faerie queens ruled by might as much as bloodright. As Videa gentled and then enforced her own newly learned principles of kindness upon her followers, she began to lose respect among her troops. Not overnight, but over a period of years, until everything came to a head when Videa’s eldest daughter, Rayna, grew of an age to marry and chose to keep her husband in a more ‘traditional’ way.

“Rayna’s husband, Eyrn, was not of royal blood. His beauty was such that he won a princess’s hand but, without a royal mother who shared Videa’s new belief that males should be treated kindly, he was helpless against Rayna’s cruelty. He was so badly abused during his first bedding that he fled Rayna’s bedchamber in the middle of the night, bleeding and weeping and covered with bruises, and he ran to Roga to plead for his help. Roga took the tale to Videa, weeping much himself in sorrow for Eyrn, and Videa was so furious at Roga’s distress that she called challenge upon her daughter.

“Videa was the stronger, more seasoned warrior and should, under normal circumstances, have won the challenge. But two strange things happened. The cup of wine that her seconds passed her was mysteriously drugged and her sword snapped mid-fight as though it had been deliberately weakened. Both events were not coincidence, but neither were they cowardly acts by Rayna to ensure her victory. It was Videa’s own guards who conspired to cause their queen’s death and so ensure the ascent of Rayna to the throne.

“Naturally, Rayna repaid those guards with a terrible, torturous death. Though she undoubtedly appreciated their assistance, she would have no traitors in her midst. Guards who had turned on her mother were guards who *also* might turn upon herself at a later date.

“The other act of brutality that marked her crowning was the placing of a hot iron upon Roga’s face. She didn’t dare go as far as to kill him. At that time, it was still considered the most heinous unnatural crime for a female to take a male’s life under *any* circumstances. But, although Videa’s death had left Roga without magic or protection, Rayna feared that his exceptional beauty was sufficient that *some* queen might take him as concubine and then feel an urge to avenge Videa’s death on his behalf.”

“Could that have happened?” Skinner asked.

“It was unlikely,” Behaana replied. “Without magic to bind a woman to him, even Roga’s beauty was possibly insufficient to weave such a spell of loyalty from a woman that she’d avenge the loss of his great love. Yet beauty alone *can* win a female’s full adoration if she is foolish enough to lower her heart’s defenses, and for over twenty years Rayna had seen Roga weaving such a spell around Videa that she feared the power of his charm. And so Rayna decided that, although she dared not kill Roga, she could at least kill his beauty.

“It’s said that she intended to burn *both* sides of his face, but that at the last minute she couldn’t go through with it. His screams were so piteous at the first iron that many of the guards were physically sick. So perhaps Rayna also felt sickened by her own behavior or perhaps she simply feared losing the guards’ loyalty if she applied the second iron. I prefer to believe the former. After all, Roga *was* Rayna’s father.”

“She was his *daughter*? His own DAUGHTER scarred him so?” Skinner demanded, his expression horrified.

“It was a most heinous act,” Behaana agreed simply, though his eyes blazed momentarily with long remembered rage. “Roga fled Rayna’s queendom to the only place he dared imagine he might find welcome. Half dead, with his burned face an open festering wound, he arrived upon my doorstep and begged sanctuary.”

Skinner’s eyes widened with both understanding and incredulity. “Roga is the man you fell in love with?”

“The man I love still,” Behaana replied. “For over a thousand years we have been mates both in body and soul.”

“But...but...”

“But neither of us had magic?” Behaana chuckled.

“Yes,” Skinner agreed.

“That was our belief, too. Had it not been, I doubt we would have ever taken the step of lying together. What you have to understand is that males *never* lay together. It wasn’t something that was forbidden. It was too unimaginable to be prohibited. People only create laws to prevent things that might happen and no Faerie male had *ever* looked upon another with eyes of love or even lust. The magic of a male called to a female, Skinner. It was the natural way of things. No virgin boy *ever* dreamed of wanting anything other than a female mate.

“So much so that Roga and I lived together for almost thirty years before we finally accepted that our feelings for each other were of a physical nature. Until then we had called ourselves ‘brothers’ and had excused our love for each other in that fashion. But one day... well, suffice it to say we both found ourselves in a bedchamber together.”

“And your magic returned?”

“Not so simply as that,” Behaana laughed. “We lay together for nigh on twelve moons before that happened. It took that long for us to stop feeling shame in our coupling and begin to *truly* love one another. But after almost a year, we became so comfortable in our relationship that nothing mattered to us but giving each other pleasure. *That* was when we made the discovery that a male’s magic can only be *stolen* once, but it can be freely given forever.”

“You’re saying that a male can *choose* to gift his magic, even after it’s been apparently lost forever?” Skinner demanded excitedly. “You’re saying that even though my bond with Alexin is broken, it *can* be restored?”

“Only if Alexin *truly* loves you and trusts you with all his heart,” Behaana replied. “And, forgive me, but I cannot see that could be true. What little I know of your relationship hardly suggests that either of you felt more than the normal magic-born compulsion to mate with one another. To *gift* magic is an act of great trust, Skinner, and it sometimes takes centuries for a male to learn that manner of trust. Sometimes it *never* happens. Even here, in the City of Ice, there are males who still haven’t learned to gift their magic after a whole millennium of trying.”

“But it is *possible*?”

“Anything is possible,” Behaana replied gently. “It is even said that a male once learned to restore his magic with a female. Legend has it that not many years past Diana’s death, Enthor, the husband of one of the new queens, Agnala, was taken hostage and brutally raped by his captor. The magic binding him to Agnala was broken. Yet, when she recovered him, she didn’t put him aside as any other woman would have, but instead nursed him back to health and declared that her love for him was such that she’d keep and protect him even without the magic. In his gratitude for that love, he *gifted* her with his magic and the bond between them was restored.

“Though, as I said, it is merely legend. I know not whether it’s true. What I do know is that a male *can* give his magic freely, even centuries after it has apparently been stolen from his body, if he truly loves and trusts the person who lies with him.”

“Then the magic lies near the surface of an innocent virgin boy and so is easy to steal. But it doesn’t leave a male when the spell woven by the taker of his virginity is broken. It simply buries itself deep inside his body, so deep that even *he* is unaware of its presence, and hides itself forever unless it is lured back to the surface by a purer kind of love?”

Behaana’s eyes widened and he offered Skinner a genuine smile of approval. “That is exactly how it seems to me,” he agreed. “A virgin boy is too innocent to know he should guard his magic but a male who has already suffered such a theft becomes sly and covetous of his magic and hides it deep within himself. He releases it again with great reluctance, and only to one whom he trusts completely.”

“So you and Roga rediscovered your magic inside each other's arms,” Skinner prompted.

“We were terrified at first,” Behaana admitted. “But then I realized what it meant. Particularly when I discovered that we had more power over the magic than any woman had ever achieved. I realized the slavery of my brothers, a slavery that I had inadvertently caused, could be broken if only I could convince other males that the magic they possessed was *theirs* to own.

“I began slowly, starting by gathering the widowed males who were effectively cast out of society. They had nothing to lose by trying to regain control over their magic, and everything to gain. It took several years because, as I said, not all males are capable of gifting their magic and even those who could learn the ability only did so after they’d learned to love and trust another of the males enough to lie with them. Then I took a great risk and stole a virgin boy.”

He laughed at Skinner’s shocked expression. “Stole him from being forced into a marriage he did not want,” he clarified. “And he willingly lay with one of the other males, one who had been unable to gift his own magic, and being a virgin he gave his magic without any difficulty.”

“Over the next several years we remained cautious, only sharing our secret with widowed men and those boys we could safely liberate before marriage. Naturally, the occasional disappearance of marriageable youths didn’t go unnoticed. But the women always suspected that they’d been kidnapped by other women. No suspicion ever came our way. If anyone noticed that my land was quickly filling with males, they simply assumed that ‘old mad Behaana’ was willing to throw his doors open to any widowed man who came looking for sanctuary.

“The situation would probably have come to a head eventually, but that was the point at which my pride and arrogance kicked in. I had over two hundred males staying with me and more than a hundred of those had the magic. Collectively we had the ability to even turn a river in its tracks or shatter a mountain. It was time, I judged, for us to confront the various queens and demand that all males were restored to a position of value and respect.

“It wasn’t my intent to cause a revolution, let alone a war. I believed, I actually *believed*, that all it would take would be a demonstration that a male deserved the respect of his wife to restore the world to how it had been before Diana.”

“I understand,” Skinner said, his face heavy with sympathy. “You weren’t trying to raise the males over the females. You simply wanted to restore the balance between the sexes.”

“Exactly,” Behaana sighed. “I thought that by proving to the women that males didn’t *need* them but would still choose to share their magic freely in exchange for kindness, that equality could be restored once more. I thought to *force* the women to accept my solution to the tear-magic. We males would agree to gift our magic to the females but only if they agreed to take the tear-magic through an act of love rather than one of violence.

“I split my followers into ten groups. Each group was made up of five couples who shared the magic. Those ten groups visited each of the ten queendoms simultaneously. It was my thought that it wasn’t only the *women* we needed to convince but the males also. I couldn’t run the risk of rumors spreading so that the women could lock their males away to prevent them from learning that the magic was *theirs* to gift or refuse as they chose.

“So on one single day, nearly a thousand years ago, I made my challenge to every female in the land that they should change their ways or risk losing the magic forever. I said that any male who was not henceforth treated with civility should leave his wife and join us. It wasn’t a murderous intent,” he explained hurriedly. “I said that any male who chose to join us would *have* to lie with someone and sever his bond with his wife. I had no wish to kill the females with the withdrawal.”

Skinner nodded his understanding.

“At first the women were shocked to the core, so frightened by the implication of our abilities that they were almost silent in their acceptance that things would have to change. They were resentful, as I’d expected, and some tested our magic by using their own against us, but we quickly proved that our magic was of far greater power than theirs and, within two days, all ten queens bowed to my demands and declared that males were no longer to be treated as possessions but as equals once more.”

“They gave in? Just like that? I cannot believe it would be so easy.”

Behaana snarled angrily. “Would that I had been as cynical as you. But I wanted to believe them. I had no wish to war with the females. I wanted only to put right a wrong. And because I *knew* that males and females were meant to live as equals, I couldn’t imagine anything except life being better for everyone once the balance was restored. I was a fool.”

“What happened?”

“Do I need to spell it out? The women were simply biding their time, lulling us into a sense of false security. They played at being convinced that I was right. They pretended, for a short while, to change the way they regarded their males. For almost a full moon there wasn’t a male in the land who felt a blow from his wife. And then, when they rightly judged us convinced, they moved against us.

“They captured and separated most of my men. Threw them in dungeons apart from each other for two days and nights until the deprivation of their magic caused their veins to burst. The few men who escaped fled in terror to the far north of the land. Roga and I were amongst them.

“I was shattered. My confidence had crumbled to nothing. Even faced with such terrible violence towards my own men, I had turned and fled rather than using my powers to save them. Not through cowardice, though I doubt you believe that, but because, when it came to it, I found I *couldn’t* use the magic in violence. None of us could. Even the mere thirty of us who survived the treachery still had enough magic to destroy the females ten times over. Yet none of us could bring ourselves to use it.

“That would, perhaps, have been the end of it. Except the month of pretended kindness at the hands of their wives had changed *all* the males. Not even one of them could bear it when their wives immediately returned to treating them badly. Between the treachery they’d witnessed when their wives moved against us and the fact they’d learned that their wives *chose* to treat them so badly, rather than it simply being a necessity, all the Faerie males rebelled.

“Not openly, you understand. Not with violence or aggression. But over the next few moons they gathered together in secret and plotted to somehow escape their pitiful lives and join us in the freedom of being unwed men. Some actually fled to join us. Even at the expense of their wives’ lives, though to be fair they probably didn’t stop to consider that as being the consequence of their actions. They simply saw their chance and took it.

“Naturally, the women soon put a stop to such escapes. Males found themselves bound and chained in their wives' bedchambers. But by that time my thirty men, and the hundred who quickly joined us from my old home, had been swelled to over a thousand in number. It took time. Over three years. But by the time I returned south to rescue those imprisoned males, over four hundred of my men had learned to use their magic."

“So you went back for the other males.”

“How could I not?” Behaana groaned. “I had tried to make things better, and instead had awakened the females to even greater savagery. Males were no longer simply being abused in their wives' beds but were being chained like beasts and handled with brutality simply to keep them cowed.

“I still couldn’t face the idea of meeting the females in battle but the magic of four hundred males was so strong that I believed no battle would be necessary. We had power over all the elements. We had the ability to shatter castle walls, hold the female armies away from us with wind and savage rain, and break the males free without ever actually harming, let alone killing, the females.

“And so we traveled secretly to the most southern point of the land and then worked our way north once more, one castle at a time. One by one, we destroyed the queendoms. We marched upon their castles and used our powers to rescue every single male down to the smallest babe in arms. And each time a male joined us, I used our collective power to simply ‘snap’ the magic that bound him to his wife and wove his magic into mine. Even though his magic was not gifted to me, I was able to draw upon it. The females were defenseless against us. We never let them get near enough to use their paltry stolen magic against us and, anyway, with the theft of each male their magic was ripped away from them until they had no power against us at all.

“By the time we reached the foot of the northern mountains again, we numbered over ten thousand and not one male remained in the south.

“But the females were pursuing us. Even though they had no power to prevent our flight, they followed us like slavering wolves until we reached the mountains.

“And that was where I made my stand. I harnessed the power of all my followers and wove a spell out of all four elements. A spell to prevent the females from ever raising their hands to any of us ever again. A spell to prevent females from ever stealing our magic again.

“And there, on the side of a mountain, I told them of the spell I had woven. I stood there, in my proud foolishness, and warned them that, unless they lay down their weapons and swore a blood oath to honor the promises they had already made and broken, I would cast the spell and ensure that no female could ever lay hands on any of us again.

“Their answer was to draw their swords and ride at us, too furious to care whether we killed them or not. So I released the spell, believing that it would somehow render them harmless, but instead...instead the land broke apart, trapping them in what became known as the Southern Territories and us in the north. It...it wasn’t what I’d intended. Naturally,” Behaana told him dryly.

“Gods,” Skinner gasped. “You banished yourselves! It was *you* who cast the banishment spell, not the females. You trapped yourselves here in the Northern Territories.”

“You see now?” Behaana laughed bitterly. “You understand now why the name of Behaana is a curse? I had the power of ten thousand Faerie males in my hands, the females were helpless in front of me, and I *still* managed to lose the war. One mangled spell, one clumsily constructed sentence in its forming and, instead of casting a ward of protection over the males, I split the land in two and we males ended up in the thrice-damned frozen north while the females retained control of the good southern land.”

“But why are the males trapped in the north rather than the females trapped in the south?”

Behaana laughed. “The females *are* as trapped as we are. They cannot cross the ocean any more than we can, but the difference is that they don’t *want* to. Why would they? The spell makes us impervious to them. They cannot harm us. They cannot take our magic. We are of no use to them anymore. Besides, once they realized they had a way of rebuilding their world with the male children in their wombs, they decided they were well rid of us all. My clumsy spell said only that they couldn’t harm *us*. It said nothing of any males yet to be born.”

“Then why does the spell prevent *you* from returning if they cannot harm you anyway? It would make sense to me that the spell would work to keep the males and females apart. What better way to protect you from female violence than to ensure you can never again meet face to face? But if the females are unable to raise their hands to you anyway, why can’t you return to the south?”

“I don’t know,” Behaana admitted, rubbing his face fretfully. “If I knew what was wrong with the spell, I wouldn’t have cast it, would I? Gods, if I’d known the females would call my bluff, I wouldn’t have cast it at all.”

“I don’t see that you had so many other options, Behaana. Had you not done so, the alternative would have been for you all to meekly return to slavery at the hands of the females. Your inability to use your magic for violence left you with few choices except to free the males, run as far as you could and then attempt a bluff. How were you to know the females would choose possible death over the idea of offering you an equal standing with them? Their choice wasn’t logical.”

“The females never have been logical,” Behaana pointed out. “Though I admit that, despite my regret for the choices I made, I never *have* reasoned a different way that I could have acted under the circumstances. Except for casting the spell more cleverly.”

“So none of you can cross the ocean?”

“We can cross it,” Behaana sighed. “It simply does us no good to do so. The moment we set foot on southern soil, our bodies fail us.”

“Fail you how?” Skinner asked, frowning with confusion.

“With each step, our limbs become weaker until we can barely stand. We are forced to turn back again.”

“Forgive me for saying this, but are you positive it isn’t simply fear that freezes your limbs?” Skinner suggested.

Behaana’s eyes sparked with offended fury. “I once held the magic of ten thousand Faerie in my hands, *child*. I know the difference between magic and fear. The spell I cast to protect us is still alive. It protects us even against our wishes by preventing us from ever even attempting to return home.”

“Yet, according to the prophecy, you *will* return.”

“I told you, the prophecy was nothing but my scream of defiance as the land began to split apart. It was nothing but an empty threat.”

“Which you screamed while the spell was in action,” Skinner reminded him. “So perhaps your words became woven into the spell itself and were given power and substance. Perhaps what you *thought* to be an empty threat, truly *was* a prediction of a future which will yet come to pass.”

“How?” Behaana scoffed. “Do you even *know* what the so-called prophecy truly is? That one of my blood, bearing my power and that of my entire race, will return to finish the job I already messed up so badly. Even if the banishment spell could be broken, even if I *could* return to the south, I am no more capable of wielding that power against the females now than I was a thousand years ago. The best I could manage to do is free some *more* males and bring them here to share my imprisonment. And, before you say that’s fine by you as long as Alexin is one of those males, I tell you that I will not do it.”

“The prophecy doesn’t say *you* will do it, Behaana. It says one of your blood. I assume that would be me, unless you have another half dozen part-blood of your loins running around this city who can volunteer for the job.”

“Stupid, arrogant child. You have *no* magic. You have not even your Alexin’s feeble magic now.”

“I haven’t,” Skinner agreed calmly. “But you could give me yours.”

Behaana’s mouth dropped open in astonishment. “Mine?”

“You said that magic could be given freely. You are the only person capable of harnessing the magic of the other males. So you could give me not only *your* magic, but that of your entire people. And I, unlike you and your people, have no problem whatsoever with the idea of using that magic in violence. I used Alexin’s ‘feeble’ magic to immolate half a dozen females and to open a chasm that swallowed three dozen more. I came here with little hope and a lot of desperation. But now I’ve heard your story, Behaana, I believe the trees are right. I *am* ‘The One’ spoken of in the prophecy.”

“You know not what you ask of me.”

“I know exactly what I’m asking of you,” Skinner replied firmly. “I’m asking you to deliberately sever your bond with Roga after more than a millennium of you sharing your heart and soul with him. I’m asking you to lie with me and to trust me enough to gift me with your magic. And I’m doing so with no other intention than to rescue Alexin, whom I love. With whom I intend to lie and so break *our* bond at the earliest possible opportunity. I’m asking you to give me *everything* of yourself, and all I can offer in return is the chance that the prophecy *might* be fulfilled.”

“You’re insane,” Behaana spat. “You have so little Faerie blood that you may as well call yourself full human. My blood entered your bloodline many generations ago. I know this, for I lay only *once* with a human female.”

“And why did you do *that*, Behaana?” Skinner challenged. “Because you found Roga suddenly disinteresting? Because you merely wanted a perverted thrill? Five hundred years ago you deliberately shattered your bond with your lover for just one night of lying with a human woman. Tell me that wasn’t an attempt to make the prophecy come true.”

“It was a moment of despair. Of madness,” Behaana replied, flushing darkly. “I admit it. In that moment I *did* dream of fulfilling the prophecy. I and several of the other males stole and lay with human females with the crazed idea that the children of that union might combine Faerie magic with a human male’s aggression. But it didn’t work. The children of our unions were all female.”

“And yet, many generations later, here I am,” Skinner said softly. “It may have taken another five hundred years, but that one rape was the first drop of water that became a fast flowing stream.”

“It wasn’t rape,” Behaana snapped, shaking his head in offence.

“What?”

“It wasn’t *rape*. Do you honestly think the woman I lay with was unwilling?”

Skinner struggled to repress a chuckle. The expression on Behaana’s face was so ‘Alexin’ that it hurt. But it still amused him that the Faerie was so offended by the idea that *anyone* might find him less than completely desirable.

“Looking at you and, indeed, all of your people, no I cannot believe the women you lay with were unwilling,” he replied gravely. “I am certain they only claimed rape later to regain their honor amongst their tribe.”

Behaana nodded firmly. “That must be the truth of it,” he said, “for the only tears they shed in this city were those of parting when we refused to let them stay with us.”

“And I am glad, even many generations later, to learn that my birth was not the eventual product of an act of violence to my ancestress,” Skinner replied courteously. “However, that brings me back to the subject of *me*. From the moment the glacier moved upon my city, I believe that my life was predestined. I was meant to move to the Southern Territories. Meant to be captured by the Faerie. Meant to escape them and fall under Alexin’s spell. I even now believe that I was meant to lose him back into the clutches of the Faerie women so that I should travel here and meet you.”

“Or it could simply mean that you are a particularly unlucky individual,” Behaana countered. “You lost your home *twice*. Once through a glacier and once through time. You lost fifteen years of your life. You lost this boy you claim to love. Does it not occur to you that it isn’t fate to blame for your losses but bad decisions on your part?”

“Alexin is similarly bitchy when he doesn’t get his own way,” Skinner retorted mildly. “His tantrums wash over me as harmlessly as summer rain. And so do yours, my Queen.”

“You dare to speak to me thus?”

“I’d dare anything for the opportunity to save Alexin,” Skinner replied. “I’d dare even the risk that in lying with you, I’ll lose any possibility of him ever loving or trusting me again.”

“You’d accept that even should he return to you, his magic would be lost to you forever?”

“Until this conversation I had no idea his magic *could* be restored. It didn’t affect my desire to reclaim him. I accept that *his* feelings for me might have been born only of magic, but my love for him is real.”

“And if he rejects you entirely? If he chooses to accept *my* protection rather than to return to you, what then? Perhaps he is *glad* to be free of you. Perhaps your magic was severed at his choice rather than force.”

“Then I will free him into your hands and return alone to Crystal City. I don’t own him, Behaana. I can’t make him love me. But my love is not dependant on his. Whether or not he returns my feelings, I won’t leave him to his fate at the hands of those Faerie bitches.”

“And if I refuse to aid you?”

“Then I’ll return to the Southern Territories and die attempting to rescue him. It will do him no good, but it’s preferable to living the remainder of my life with the guilt of abandoning him.”

“Even if I agree to your crazed plan, what use would I be to you? I told you I cannot even *walk* on the soil of the Southern Territories, and if you lay with me you’ll be unable to leave my side.”

“Then I’ll carry you,” Skinner shrugged.

“Perhaps it is not only my physical strength that will be drained. Perhaps the magic will drain out of me also.”

“Perhaps we could spend the next ten years with me listening to you coming up with excuses as to why you’re too afraid to help me,” Skinner snapped.

“I’m not afraid.”

“Prove it,” Skinner challenged. “You claim to have spent nine hundred years regretting your marriage to Diana and blaming yourself for the awakening of the tear-magic. Then you’ve spent the last thousand years blaming yourself for the spell you cast. Do you truly want to spend the next two thousand years watching your people fade from existence and blaming yourself for not making this attempt to put things right?”

“It’s *that* I’m afraid of,” Behaana cried. “Can’t you see that every time I’ve attempted to help my people I’ve simply made things worse? What if helping you turns out to be the greatest mistake of all?”

“I understand *that* fear,” Skinner replied gently. “But think of it this way. Had you not cast the spell, the males would have remained under female domination and would *never* have escaped that slavery. In coming here to the Northern Territories and laying with my ancestress, you created a chance to finally wrest victory from defeat. Perhaps it’s taken a thousand years to come to pass, but you weren’t defeated, Behaana. You simply made a strategic withdrawal.”

Behaana chuckled. “I cannot tell whether your love for Alexin has driven you insane or if you truly have a clarity of vision. I lost all faith in myself a long time ago, Skinner. Yet, somehow, I find myself *wanting* to believe your words. I do, however, fear what I must do if you are right.”

Skinner nodded his understanding. “I don’t doubt the idea of lying with me is unwelcome to you,” he admitted heavily. “But I see no other way.”

“Despite my beauty, I sense that you don’t welcome the idea any more than I do,” Behaana replied wryly.

“It feels like the worst of betrayals. Even though I do so to save Alexin, I cannot bear the thought of facing his fury at my unfaithfulness.”

“Even though he too has clearly been unfaithful?”

“Not by choice,” Skinner said firmly. “Either he was raped or he made the decision out of sacrifice, knowing that I would die if he failed to break our bond. I know this to be true.”

“You *wish* it to be true. You actually know nothing of how it came to pass.”

“I know Alexin,” Skinner retorted, his expression clearly stating that was the end of the matter.

“And I know Roga,” Behaana sighed. “This will not be... easy. He forgave me once when I lay with the human woman. He permitted me to restore our bond after almost endless pleas for forgiveness on my part. I doubt he will be so understanding a second time. You ask me to risk much, when we don’t even know whether I’ll be able to gift you with my magic in the first place, let alone whether it will remain empowered should we travel to the Southern Territories.”

“I cannot make the decision for you, Behaana. You have to ask yourself whether the cost you’ll pay is worth it. It seems to me that you have already sacrificed much for the sake of your people, and perhaps the suffering you have already endured is reason enough for you to turn your back upon my request. And yet, would you have your previous suffering be in vain if you have instead a chance to finally succeed?”

“Do you find your Alexin so easy to manipulate? Do you tie him also in chains of logic so that his mind trembles under the heavy weight of your desires?” Behaana spat bitterly.

“I do whatever I must do to protect him, even from himself,” Skinner replied. “And I promise you the same protection, Behaana. I cannot promise you our success, but I *can* promise you’ll never regret giving me your trust.”

Behaana’s beautiful mouth formed into a childish pout. “I must speak to Roga,” he said, his eyes heavy with dread.

“Yes,” Skinner agreed solemnly, though he wanted to scream and yell his excitement at Behaana’s capitulation. “But swiftly, my Queen. While we remain in Faerie land, time moves equally speedily for Alexin. The sooner we leave and head south, the less Alexin will suffer. Most of our journey will be through human lands, and although it will take weeks for us to reach the Southern Territories, that journey will be but moments in the Faerie land.”

“I will speak to Roga,” Behaana repeated. “Should the conversation go well, I will send guards to summon you to my bedchamber so that we can seal this thrice-damned pact between us.”

“And if it goes badly?”

“Then like as not you will need to visit me in the medicant’s lodge. Violence is rare amongst Faerie males but not entirely unheard of. If any male has ever had the right to knife his lover in fury, it will be Roga when he hears of my intention to betray him a *second* time,” Behaana retorted dryly.

Skinner nodded his understanding, offered Behaana a wry smile and, with a courteous bow, he took his leave and returned to his own bedchamber.

He quickly filled Frohike and Langly in with Behaana’s tale and his intention to return to the Southern Territories.

“We’re going with you,” Frohike announced.

Skinner blinked in astonishment.

So did Langly for a moment but then the blond nodded his head in agreement. “What Fro said,” he said firmly.

“I cannot deny I’d welcome your company,” Skinner admitted. “But in all honesty I cannot see what help you might be to us, save for the pleasure of your conversation as we travel.”

Langly smirked, raised his hand flamboyantly, and a small bluish flame burned brightly from the tips of his fingers. “We might surprise you,” he chuckled.

Skinner’s eyes widened dramatically. “You’ve been busy,” he blurted.

“Very *busy*,” Frohike chuckled, wriggling his eyebrows and leering in Langly’s direction. “We had a most illuminating lesson on how northern males capture the tear-magic and, naturally, decided we had to practice the idea ourselves. It was... surprisingly pleasurable.”

“Frohike wept buckets,” Langly snickered. “Blubbered like a *girl*. Howled like a banshee. And afterwards told me I was the most fantastic lover in the entire world,” he added, with a satisfied smirk.

“I was only comparing your performance today to your previous pathetic attempts at giving me pleasure,” Frohike snorted.

“In the whole *world*,” Langly repeated firmly. “You can be as sarcastic as you like, Frohike. You can’t take it back. I was there as you melted into a weeping puddle of goo in my hands and I have the proof,” he added, making the blue flame flare brighter from his fingers in emphasis.

“How is it that your fingers don’t burn?” Skinner asked.

“It’s ice fire,” Langly laughed. “A combination of two elements. Water and fire. The flame burns cold.”

Skinner cautiously reached out to touch the flame and chuckled with astonishment. The flame was as cool as a mountain breeze. “It’s impressive,” he admitted, “but of little practical use.”

Langly shrugged. “It’s just a trick,” he admitted. “But it’s a harmless way to harness Frohike’s magic, and learning control over such tricks will give me better understanding of how to utilize the more useful magic. Well, that’s what the Faerie told me.”

“Let me get this straight. In the two hours I’ve been gone, you’ve received a lesson in sex education, a lesson in controlling the magic, and have also practiced both lessons physically?”

“I’m a quick learner,” Langly snickered.

“He is,” Frohike admitted, with a smug grin. “So that’s why we’re going with you. By the time we reach the Southern Territories again, Langly is going to have enough power to be of real help to you.”

“And Frohike’s going to have a permanent smirk on his face,” Langly snorted.

Selfishly, perhaps, Skinner’s primary feeling was one of immense relief. If Frohike and Langly were occupied every night with the enthusiastic exploration of *their* magic, it would be less embarrassing for him to spend those nights bedding Behaana. He still hadn’t fully recovered from the embarrassment of those two nights during the ride to Crystal City when his and Alexin’s matings had been such a source of entertainment to the two men. The idea of letting them witness him showing Behaana an equal amount of passion was quite mortifying.

Perhaps it was the twisting of his face or simply coincidence, but Frohike suddenly said, “What will you do about Behaana?”

“What do you mean?”

“How will you handle it if everything works out and he returns here to Roga. How will you bear it when he severs the bond?”

“I’ll have Alexin back,” Skinner replied. “It’s Alexin I love. I wouldn’t suggest this bonding with Behaana if I wasn’t *sure* he’d happily return to Roga’s bed.”

“Foolish human,” Frohike sighed, shaking his head in exasperation. “Do you truly believe you can sleep with a Faerie and not become besotted with him? You *will* fall in love with Behaana. So much so that, should Behaana choose to keep you, you’ll be enslaved by him forever. Even your feelings for Alexin won’t give you the power to break free of Behaana’s hold.”

“He’s right,” Langly agreed solemnly. “I spent five years *trying* to escape Frohike’s enslavement of my heart before I finally gave in and accepted it with happiness. I couldn’t leave him. It wasn’t simply the withdrawal pains of being without his magic. Despite my mind telling me I wanted to leave, my heart yearned constantly for his presence. I fought my love for him as perhaps no other man has ever struggled against a Faerie’s magic, and I still was unable to break free.”

“I’ll *never* forget that it’s Alexin that I truly love,” Skinner denied angrily.

“Perhaps not,” Frohike agreed softly. “Yet you’ll be unable to do anything about that love. Should a circumstance arise in which you have to choose between protecting Behaana and protecting Alexin, it is Behaana whom you’ll fight to save.”

“I guess it all comes down to trust,” Langly said. “Behaana has to give his trust to you if he’s to release his magic into your hands. You, conversely, are going to have to trust that he will release *you* when it's all over.”

“Why would he choose to keep me?” Skinner argued. “It’s Roga whom he loves.”

“The magic will work in him, too,” Frohike reminded him. “No matter his intentions, he *will* grow to love you at least a little. And as a human, your lifespan is short. Even though the Faerie blood in your veins may extend your life far past the norm for a full-blood human, you will still probably grow old and die in less than two centuries. That’s merely a blink of an eye for Behaana. Roga will still be waiting for him after you expire.”

“No,” Skinner denied, shaking his head in both anger and despair. “It will not happen thus. I will rescue Alexin, and Behaana will release me and return to Roga.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Langly soothed, though the look he exchanged with Frohike was less than convinced.

“And...and even if you’re right, Alexin will be safe. That’s all that truly matters.”

“That, I *can* agree with,” Frohike replied. “No matter what future lies in store for us all, the one inarguable fact is that the sweet boy *must* be rescued from those evil women who would so badly abuse him.”

Skinner opened his mouth to agree but, before he could speak, there was a polite knock on the door and a Faerie entered. Not one of Behaana’s guards, as he’d expected, but Roga. A Roga whose single eye was red-rimmed and tear-filled.

“I’ve come to escort you to the Ice Queen’s bedchamber,” he said, his expression steady but his voice wavering with grief.

“Roga, I...” Skinner began.

Roga raised a hand in an abrupt request for his silence. “I would not speak of it with you. I *understand*. I accept the choice that Behaana has made. I see the logic of his decision. I see in this mad plan a possibility of my beloved finally making peace with his past. Perhaps he will finally release his unnecessary guilt and see himself as we, his people, see him. As a brave and courageous hero rather than the failure he perceives himself to be. For his sake alone, I accept what must be done. Yet I would not hear your platitudes and lies, human. I will not listen as you pretend ‘reluctance’ in stealing my mate for yourself. I will not pretend belief in your stated intention to release Behaana back to me when all this is finished.”

“It is *Alexin* that I love, and for Alexin’s sake alone that I do this,” Skinner insisted.

Roga shook his head in temper and his eye flashed with such luminescence that it was clear his magic was rising through his veins, eager to be unleashed upon Skinner. Even knowing that males were incapable of using their magic in such a way, Skinner shivered involuntarily. As Behaana had said, if *any* male finally had an excuse to act violently, it was a man who was having his lover of a thousand years stolen from right under his nose by a mere ‘human’.

“None can compare to Behaana,” Roga spat. “No one has ever, or will ever, been more beautiful. No Faerie male has ever been more desirable. So your claim to love another more than him is a brutal, selfish lie.”

“I understand why you believe that to be true, Roga,” Skinner replied gently. “But the eyes of love always see the object of their desire as the most beautiful creature in the world.”

“You dare to deny Behaana’s beauty?” Roga roared.

“No. I simply say this to explain how I could love Alexin more *despite* Behaana’s beauty.”

The comment pacified Roga’s anger a little, but the unhappiness in his eye didn’t fade.

“Even if Behaana should survive this insane plan of yours, I fear I will never see him again,” he admitted.

“I swear to you, on Alexin’s life, that I will bring Behaana back to you,” Skinner said, trembling slightly at the enormity of his oath.

Roga regarded him silently for a few moments, his emotions flashing over his features, the sorrow in his good eye somehow all the more poignant for the ruin of his left, and then he shook himself and formally barked, “The Ice Queen awaits your attendance.”

Skinner’s tremble transformed into a shiver of near dread, but he simply nodded his agreement and stepped towards the door.

“We’ll see you later then,” Frohike said awkwardly, moving unconsciously into Langly’s embrace in search of comfort.

“How can Roga bear it?” Langly gasped, when Skinner and Roga had left the room. “I would kill before allowing another to touch you.”

“Even if the fate of the world depended on it?”

Langly frowned with confusion and shrugged helplessly.

“You might as well ask how Skinner can bear it,” Frohike continued. “I’m Faerie, Langly. I may not have Faerie looks, but I have the heart of a Faerie male. I *know* how Alexin will react to this. Regardless of the fact Skinner does it to save him, regardless of how many women Alexin may be lying with currently, he will not forgive this slight to his beauty.”

“You’re saying that Alexin won’t forgive Skinner lying with another, even though he’s done so himself? That’s crazy and unfair.”

“It’s not that he won’t forgive Skinner’s *unfaithfulness*,” Frohike sighed. “It’s that if Roga is right and Behaana truly *is* more beautiful than Alexin, the poor boy will be unable to bear it. The idea that Skinner might look upon him and find him lacking is more than Alexin will be able to handle. His nature is such that he *has* to believe himself a prize beyond compare. Even if Behaana keeps the bargain and releases Skinner back to Alexin’s arms, Alexin’s natural jealousy will cause him to reject Skinner’s declaration of love.”

“Then everything’s hopeless, isn’t it? There is no possible happy ending to this story.”

“Have you not learned yet that *all* tales of heroes end ultimately in tragedy?” Frohike sighed. “I begin to suspect that Alexin’s role in this was never to be more than the means of bringing Skinner and Behaana together to fulfill the prophecy.”

“I pray that you’re wrong,” Langly whispered.

“As do I, my love. As do I.”

~~~

To Skinner’s great embarrassment, Roga halted before the doors of Behaana’s bedchamber and, uncaring of the two guards who stood before the doors in clear earshot of the conversation, began to give Skinner a hurried but completely detailed account of what he should do when bedding the Queen to give him the best chance of winning the gift of Behaana’s magic.

Although Skinner’s cheeks burned hotly at the intricate and personal instructions that Roga barked, he couldn’t help but be impressed that Behaana’s own lover was telling him how best to succeed in his attempt.

“I do not understand you,” he whispered, even as he tucked the ribbons Roga handed him into his waistband. “Your eye flashes such hatred of me and yet your tongue gives me all I need to take Behaana away from you.”

“Firstly, I would not have my beloved touched in any fashion except that which he enjoys most,” Roga retorted. “Secondly, the prophecy is of great importance to Behaana. Should it come to fulfillment, it will finally convince him that his past actions were wise and true. I am not as a woman or as a human male like you. I do not seek to *own* my beloved. His happiness is paramount to me. Even if he finds that happiness in another’s arms. Though I hate and damn you for being that ‘other’.”

“I understand that,” Skinner agreed quietly. “And I swear to you that I will follow your instructions to the letter, no matter how strange and even unnatural they seem to my ears.”

“I will know soon enough if you do,” Roga replied dryly, referring to the magic which would leave his body the moment Skinner was gifted it in his stead. “And I will stand here, with the guards, and know soon enough if you *don’t*. Should I hear anything save my beloved’s cries of pleasure, I will prove to you soon enough that *some* Faerie males are capable of acts of cruel vengeance.”

Skinner swallowed heavily, believing Roga’s words. The Faerie’s magic was near leaping from his skin as he stood there trembling in both rage and sorrow at the idea of letting Skinner into Behaana’s bedchamber.

“If I should cause him pain, even inadvertently, I will not protest your demand for vengeance,” Skinner promised solemnly.

Then he turned, faced the doors and, when the guards opened them, he entered with a feeling of both dread and strange excitement.

Behaana’s room had less opulence than Skinner expected to grace the private bedchamber of a ‘queen’. It was peculiarly bare, having only a full size, silk sheeted bed, a small vanity unit upon which there were a bare handful of scattered cosmetics and ointments, an overflowing bookcase and a closet which seemed too small for even the wardrobe of a human male. Behaana was no pampered, magpie-like Alexin for sure.

Yet the fact that he was sitting on the edge of the bed, carefully brushing his long white hair, when Skinner entered assured him that even if Behaana had no wish for the fripperies with which Alexin surrounded himself, he still retained a Faerie’s need to be always perceived as greatly beautiful.

He’d exchanged his earlier ornate robe for a simple shift of pale blue and, as the doors closed firmly behind Skinner’s back, Behaana put the hairbrush down on a small table next to the bed, rose to his feet, turned to face Skinner and silently unfastened the shift from his shoulders and allowed it to fall to the floor in a silken whisper.

The breath left Skinner’s body so swiftly that he swayed on his feet. Or perhaps it was the sudden charge of blood to his groin which made him feel light headed and faint.

“You are... stunning,” he gasped, when he finally recovered the ability to speak.

Behaana’s slanted eyes grew catlike with pleasure, and he near purred as he held himself for Skinner’s inspection. “You find me beautiful?” he asked, though he spoke in far too self-satisfied a tone for it to be a true question.

Skinner had never considered himself either a romantic or poetic man, so he surprised even himself by blurting, “You remind me of a perfect moonrise over a peaceful lake. Almost too beautiful for bearing. Untouchable but eternally desirable. Just as I always wish to reach out and capture the moon within my fingers, I can scarce prevent myself from greedily trying to snatch at your perfection, my Queen.”

“Am I still less beautiful in your eyes than your beloved Alexin?” Behaana demanded, his face twisting with a little deliberate cruelty.

Skinner swallowed heavily. “You are exquisite. Perhaps even divine. Yet I *love* Alexin and so I find myself unable to even attempt to compare your looks to his.”

“A clever answer,” Behaana chuckled, his face relaxing into gentleness once more. “Come,” he beckoned. “Let us do this thing that we must do.”

Skinner swallowed again and dipped his head in sudden embarrassment. “I know not if I can,” he whispered.

“Your member disagrees with you,” Behaana replied dryly, glaring meaningfully at the obvious bulge in Skinner’s breeches.

“I feel the desire and the need, my Queen,” Skinner replied. “Yet faced by you, I find it hard to comprehend what Roga told me I must do.”

Behaana looked puzzled, but then saw the ribbons threaded into Skinner’s waistband and gave a sigh of relief. “I had prayed his love would be enough to prepare you for me,” he sighed. “Yet I also feared his anger at me would overwhelm that love.”

“Then he told me true?” Skinner asked uncertainly.

“I trust Roga, so I will trust myself to your care, Skinner. Do as he bade you, without fear. Should it not be as I wish, I will know the blame is not yours,” Behaana replied simply and held out his wrists.

Feeling awkward and still uncertain, Skinner took two of the silken ribbons and tied them securely to the proffered wrists. Behaana then turned, walked to the bed, lay down on his back and raised his arms above his head so that Skinner could fasten the ribbons to a wrought iron bedstead.

“I admit I do not understand why I should restrain you,” Skinner admitted, even as he followed Roga’s instructions.

“Because the kind of pleasure you wish to awaken in my body is almost torturous in its intensity,” Behaana replied. “There will come a point when I am screaming at you for my satisfaction and you must, of necessity, ignore my pleas. At that point, maddened by my own desire, I will attempt to bring relief to myself unless I am bound. It is only by crossing that point of terrible frustration and riding the wave of unsatisfied desire that I will reach true ecstasy. And at that point, the tears I release, though few, will contain *all* of my magic. A single drop on your tongue will be as satisfying to you as a thousand tears released through my pain.”

“And the other things that Roga spoke of?”

“Trust Roga. I will trust you. And by doing so, the magic will flow,” Behaana answered simply.

Skinner flushed and nodded, moving onto the bed so that he was kneeling between Behaana’s thighs.

Except for a brief jolt of pain that it wasn’t Alexin’s thighs that stretched in welcome to receive him, Skinner found no difficulty in lowering his head and swiping his tongue in a long, teasing stroke down the length of Behaana’s dormant member. Behaana’s groin had the same beauty as Alexin’s. Indeed, from that angle, staring only at the ridged member and tight sac, he could almost pretend it *was* Alexin he was pleasuring.

Behaana’s taste was slightly different though. Just as sweet, just as addictive and yet subtly dissimilar, like the vague difference between two vintages of the same high-class wine.

Skinner licked and laved at the honey sweet flesh until Behaana’s member filled enough to bring his ridges to prominence, the small protuberance at the base of his member was engorged and throbbing with blood and Behaana was groaning lightly with arousal.

Then Skinner reached for the third ribbon and lashed it carefully but tightly around both the root of Behaana’s member and his sac. He tightened it enough that both of Behaana’s balls were separated and bulging almost painfully on either side of the ribbon that divided them. He threaded the middle of the fourth and final ribbon through the ribbon restraining Behaana’s sac and laced the two free ends up the length of Behaana’s member before finally fastening it around the depression below the prominent, and now freely weeping, head.

“Is that too tight?” he asked worriedly.

Behaana groaned slightly, but then shook his head in negation.

“Just tight enough then,” Skinner joked lightly. “Roga told me it had to be tight enough that you *almost* complained.”

“Roga talks too much,” Behaana whined, pouting slightly, but it was clear he wasn’t in any true distress from the seemingly cruel binding.

“Now I’m supposed to drive you insane,” Skinner said, beginning to enjoy himself after all.

As Roga had suggested, Skinner began to map Behaana’s body with his mouth. From the beautiful Faerie’s soft neck right down to his exquisite toes, Skinner began to lick, suck and even bite the perfect skin until Behaana was groaning, writhing and pulling helplessly at his restraints. He discovered that Faerie nipples were even more sensitive than those of a human woman – and made a mental note to remember that when Alexin was restored to him – that biting Behaana’s inner thighs caused him to give the same high pitched squeal as Alexin emitted, that sucking Behaana’s toes into his mouth made the Faerie leap with shock, and that the tiny nub of flesh at the root of Behaana’s bound member was so sensitive after a little teasing that even a soft breath blown against its skin caused Behaana to wail and thrash his head in protest.

“Roga said you liked this,” Skinner chuckled, when Behaana began to bitterly complain that Skinner’s constant attention to the nub was ‘painful’. “In fact,” Skinner continued, “he told me I should play with it incessantly until you’re literally howling for me to mount you.”

Behaana let rip with a stream of very un-queenlike curses, promising Skinner a slow, torturous death if he didn’t stop tormenting him in such a fashion.

Skinner’s only answer was to press his thumb against the little nub of flesh and rub it vigorously until Behaana’s hips were banging against the mattress in frustration.

Behaana screamed a loud, incomprehensible curse and abruptly pulled his legs up until his knees were resting upon his chest and his buttocks were raised and exposed. “Please,” he gasped. “Please, Skinner. I need you inside me NOW.”

Skinner’s member leapt and throbbed in greedy excitement, but he still shook his head. “Not yet,” he said. “You aren’t ready for me yet.”

“If I was any more damned ready I’d explode,” Behaana yelled. “DO IT!”

Instead, Skinner lowered his head and licked the puckered skin that protected Behaana’s entrance. As Roga had assured him would happen, that was the action which released Behaana’s first true howl. So he continued to follow Roga’s advice, licking and sucking at the slightly darker flesh around Behaana’s hole until it began to open of its own accord. Then, ignoring Behaana’s increasingly loud wails, Skinner pressed his tongue inside the tiny opening and drank of the darker sweetness inside.

“Please. Please. Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease,” Behaana begged.

Skinner thrust his tongue as far as it would reach inside Behaana’s passage and then began to poke and thrust it rapidly inside the tender flesh even as his thumb returned to its torture of Behaana’s little protrusion.

Behaana was making so much noise that it surprised him that the guards and Roga hadn’t burst into the room to drag him off Behaana’s writhing body. The fact they hadn’t reassured him he was following his instructions correctly, but Behaana’s wails didn’t actually *sound* like cries of pleasure.

Well, except for the constant interspersion of ‘please’ into his howls.

Skinner couldn’t bear it any longer. He *had* to bury himself inside Behaana’s flesh. So he prayed he’d done enough teasing with his tongue, freed his member from the constraint of his breeches, coated it with oil from the conveniently placed vial on the bedside table, and drove himself into Behaana’s heat.

He had almost forgotten how it felt to mount someone without the dark magic roaring through his veins. It gave him a measure of control he’d lacked even during his most tender couplings with Alexin. Yet Roga had told him firmly that Behaana would not wish to be ridden gently. He had, in fact, told Skinner he doubted that a ‘mere human’ had the ability to ride a Faerie in the manner they preferred, with the clear implication that he doubted Skinner’s member was adequately sized to do the job properly.

So, although he began carefully, checking Behaana’s expression for any sign of genuine distress, he soon gave his member free rein to thrust inside Behaana’s passage with its full passion and force.

With each drive of his member, Behaana gasped with unmistakable passion, which only encouraged Skinner to thrust harder and harder until his own breath was coming in pained gasps and he could barely remember to keep his thumb working incessantly against the root of Behaana’s member.

It wasn’t until the blood was roaring in his ears and the pressure in his sac grew beyond bearing that Behaana began to sob rather than curse.

“Please, oh please, oh please, I can’t BEAR it,” Behaana howled, over the roar of Skinner’s own satisfaction.

Even as he flooded Behaana’s passage with his seed, Skinner maneuvered to lick at the first tears breaking free from the Faerie’s eyes.

“Release me,” Behaana begged. “Please. Please release me. I’m dying.”

Had Roga not been so firm in his instructions, Skinner would have given in to that plaintive wail and ripped the cruel ribbons from Behaana’s swollen member.

Instead, he calmly coated his right hand and forearm with oil, moved it to the already opened flesh between Behaana’s buttocks and carefully began to work his fingers inside.

Because he’d already taken his own pleasure, he was fully alert now to Behaana’s needs. He tuned out the various pleas and threats the Faerie uttered and chose to listen to the message of Behaana’s eyes rather than his words. The luminous green was dilated almost solid black with arousal and, as Skinner worked his fingers inside his passage, Behaana’s eyes glazed over with obvious pleasure.

There was a tiny resistance against his knuckles, and then another brief difficulty in driving his wrist through the narrow flesh but, beyond Skinner’s true expectation, he discovered that his whole hand *could* fit inside the place which had felt tight even against his member.

‘I have my whole hand inside the Ice Queen,’ he thought to himself in amazement. ‘And instead of bringing him pain, I’m giving him pleasure.’

He found it inexplicable how much pleasure he himself felt. He had been bewildered by Roga’s suggestion, unable to understand how such a thing could bring pleasure to *either* he or Behaana.

“Trust,” Behaana gasped.

And Skinner saw it. His pleasure was not in the physical sensation of having his hand so buried, but in the power he felt in that moment as Behaana chose to allow him such an intimacy.

“Now,” Behaana begged, and this time Skinner nodded his consent, understanding it was time.

He reached with his left hand and clumsily unfastened the two ribbons constraining Behaana’s member and sac. Then, lightly grasping the swollen, hungry member in his hand, he simultaneously stroked Behaana’s flesh and drove his hand further inside the flesh that gloved it.

Behaana screamed, and Skinner froze in terror for a moment, sure he’d caused pain or even injury.

But Behaana’s eyes were rolling back in his head, his seed was flowing out of his member like a river bursting its banks, and the tears that abruptly broke free of the glazed green eyes were sparkling like living diamonds on Behaana’s perfect cheeks.

Tears of ecstasy.

Tears that tasted, when Skinner removed his hand from within Behaana and scooted up his body to lap greedily, of such sweetness that the sensation seemed to explode inside his mouth.

He felt Behaana’s magic hit him. Not with a tingle as Alexin’s had done but with a wave of pleasure so strong that he cried out in ecstasy himself and his member erupted with a fresh offering of seed. He felt the magic surging through him, entering his cells with almost burning intensity, ripping through his veins as though his blood was boiling, invading every inch of his flesh until his whole body thrummed with a pleasure so intense it was almost agony.

Yet it did more than simply pour through his body and cause his flesh and blood to vibrate with its presence. It began to transmute his flesh. As he trembled and cried and even howled at the unceasing pressure building inside him, his sun-bronzed flesh lightened before his eyes. The burns and welts he bore from his time in the Faerie dungeon smoothed, faded and vanished.

“What’s happening to me?” he cried.

Behaana blinked sleepily at him. “My magic,” he purred happily.

Skinner shook his head in combined fear and disbelief. If Behaana’s magic was capable of erasing wounds and scars, why was Roga still so afflicted?

He jumped from the bed and staggered over to the vanity unit to stare at his reflection.

He was Faerie.

His skin was now the pale bluish color of Faerie skin. His formerly round ears were arched into points. And his eyes, while still brown, now had the unmistakable luminosity that marked the presence of Faerie magic.

“It seems you *are* ‘The One’,” Behaana told him dryly.

“Your magic has somehow called to my faint Faerie blood and drawn it to the surface,” Skinner breathed, staring at his appearance in disbelief.

“Is that *all* my magic calls to?” Behaana demanded, his voice suddenly dark, sultry and full of promise.

Behaana’s voice tugged at him, like a fisherman’s line drawing in a reluctant catch. Although his mind screamed at him that it would be a mistake to answer Behaana’s siren call, his member throbbed with excitement and eagerly led the way until he was settled between Behaana’s open thighs once more.

“Drink of me, Skinner,” Behaana urged, his eyes blazing as though the magic surging through Skinner’s body was weaving a spell through the Ice Queen also.

“I belong to Alexin,” Skinner gasped, shaking his head angrily to try and clear the lust haze from his mind.

“Oh, no,” Behaana purred. “You’re mine now, Skinner. And together we *will* fulfill the prophecy.”

“To free Alexin,” Skinner sobbed, even as he gave in to the compulsion to bury himself inside Behaana’s flesh again. “Only to free Alexin.”

“We’ll see,” Behaana laughed, and the look he gave as Skinner entered him was full of the lust and greed of the possessive dark magic.

“You don’t want me,” Skinner reminded him desperately. “You love Roga.”

Behaana looked confused and lost for a moment, but then his eyes flickered with green fire again. “I think... I think perhaps I love *you* now, Skinner.”

“It’s the magic,” Skinner gasped. “Working on us both, clouding our minds, making us *think* we love each other.”

Behaana purred happily. “You love me?”

Skinner ignored the roaring in his blood, closing his eyes and fixing the sweet, beautiful memory of Alexin in his mind. “I love ALEXIN,” he roared.

“Whom do you love?” Behaana mocked.

“ALEXIN.”

“Who?”

“Alexin.”

“Who?”

“Al...” Skinner began, only to waver in confusion.

“Whom do you love?” Behaana whispered.

“You. I love you. I love YOU.”

And, as their mouths met in a hungry kiss, the dark magic chuckled its way through them both, content that it had woven itself an unbreakable spell.


 

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