Page 38 of The Sorcerer's Alpha

He took advantage of the daylight to explore Sycamore’s body as he had been longing to. Sycamore’s skin was the same deep, rich brown everywhere, unlike Marut who was darker where he was exposed to the sun. Marut pushed back the blankets to kiss the soft, smooth skin of Sycamore’s wonderfully soft stomach and hips and admire his soft cock in its dark nest of hair, until Sycamore touched his shoulder with a laugh and said, “It’s much too cold for this, Marut, I’m sorry.”

Marut found himself whistling as he saddled the horses, and stopped, then glanced at Sycamore’s face and the small, almost imperceptible smile he found there, and began again.

The days passed in a dream. They rode through rolling hills and across frozen rivers, over forested ridges and across endless flat stretches of grassland. At night, as they sat by the campfire, the stars tracked a vast, bright arc overhead. Marut had spent his life in close quarters with other people, first in the temple and then in cantonments and military camps, but here on the steppe with only Sycamore for company, he was less lonely than he had ever been.

“Do you have family in Banuri?” Sycamore asked him one night as they waited for the winter hare Marut had caught to finish roasting.

“No. I was born in Banuri, but I have no family at all that I know of. I was raised in the Temple of the Wind.”

Sycamore looked up from the cup of warm water he was cradling in his hands. “What was that like?”

Marut shrugged. “The nuns and priests were kind to us. All decent people. There were too many of us to be loved. We raised each other, to some extent. It wasn’t a bad childhood.”

Sycamore watched Marut as if he could guess at what Marut wasn’t saying: that he had longed to be loved, that he had lain awake at night praying for a parent who would kiss his minor injuries and take pride in his successes. He was sure every child raised in the temple harbored similar fantasies. Sycamore said, “Marut—”

“Tell me of your own family, then,” Marut said, to cut off this line of inquiry.

Sycamore direct his gaze toward the fire. “I haven’t thought of them in a long time. I came to Banuri when I was six, and I was told it was best to forget about my parents. I didn’t, of course, but. Time wears everything away.”

“Yes,” Marut said. Sycamore didn’t want to tell him anything, then, and Marut was obscurely disappointed although he had only raised the subject to get out of doing his own telling.

“I was born in a Tambay farming village near Seoni,” Sycamore said, naming one of Chedi’s ethnic minorities. Marut glanced at him, surprised but pleased that he was revealing this information. “In the southeast, near the mountains.”

“I’ve been to Seoni. Once, years ago. There were bandits. I remember the Koramandi on the horizon with their white peaks even in summer.”

“Yes. We grew tea, mainly, and apples. My mother was the village hedge wizard, so she knew right away when I started showing signs of magic.” Sycamore’s mouth twisted to one side. “My parents didn’t relinquish me easily. I remember that much.”

“They loved you,” Marut said.

“I know they did. They made sure to tell me how much they did, the morning the king’s men came to fetch me to Banuri. My mother pleaded for a few more years with me, but—” Sycamore made a dismissive gesture. “I was wanted in the capital.”

“Do you think they’re still alive?” Marut asked.

“No. They died some years ago, in a mudslide during the spring floods. One of my aunts paid to have a letter written and sent to me in Banuri.” His gaze remained fixed on the flames. “I had been thinking of going to see them. Finally, after so many years. Maybe they wouldn’t have been pleased to see me, but—well, but then it was too late.”

“I’m sorry,” Marut said.

“Yes, well. That’s what I get for waiting.” Sycamore shrugged one shoulder, a casual gesture at odds with the somber way he stared into the fire.

Marut had no comfort to offer. Was it worse to never know one’s parents, or to love them and then be taken from them? He wouldn’t choose either. He said, “I didn’t know sorcerers began training so young.”

“Most don’t. Or, I suppose that’s not entirely true. If you have a talent for magic, it usually appears in childhood, and you’re apprenticed out to a hedge wizard. Then the best of those will sometimes come to Banuri for further study. It takes years of practice and work to master the art.”

“You were a prodigy,” Marut said, realizing. “I wasn’t mistaken that you’re young for a sorcerer. Youareyoung.”

Sycamore shrugged, his eyes darting toward Marut and away again. “I have a talent for elemental magic, that’s all. I can’t do anything like the sorcerers in the old stories. I’m not even any use at the high magic most sorcerers practice. All I can do is scry and cast wards, and sometimes convince the earth to listen to me.”

“You mean you can’t manifest a towering wall of flame that burns an entire army into ashes? I’m disappointed.”

Sycamore laughed, as Marut had hoped he would. “No. I should work at that, though. I imagine it would come in handy.”

The fire hissed as the flames hit an air pocket in the dung. Marut turned the hare to roast the other side. Sycamore stared into the fire, pensive again. Marut worked his jaw for a moment, unsure, and then said, “I never knew my parents. At the temple, they told me my mother sold fruit in the market in Banuri, and died of a fever before I could walk. They could tell me nothing about my father.”

Sycamore glanced at him. “Would you like to know?”

“I’m not sure. When I was younger, it would have meant something to me. But now—” Marut shrugged.

Sycamore watched him for a moment before he spoke. “I could try to scry them for you, if you’d like.”