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  Hiram’s Secret

  Anastasia Rabiyah

  Published By Purple Sword Publications, LLC

  Romantic Speculative Fiction

  HIRAM’S SECRET

  Copyright © 2011 ANASTASIA RABIYAH

  ISBN 978-1-936165-83-4

  Cover Art Designed By Anastasia Rabiyah

  Edited By Traci Markou and D. Thomas Jerlo

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious in every regard. Any similarities to actual events and persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used. Except for review purposes, the reproduction of this book in whole or part, electronically or mechanically, constitutes a copyright violation.

  Dedicated to Carol McKenzie and Claudia Regenos.

  Also special thanks to S.D. Grady.

  It was her idea on the gremlins, after all.

  Chapter One

  Key in the Dark

  Hiram climbed into the back of Old Lysen’s mule cart, planning to make a new start for himself by leaving the village of Pig’s End behind. He plotted to ride along past the rift and through the forbidden portal. Lysen always went the same way, and Hiram watched the cart drive on through with no trouble at all every three months even though no one in his village dared to try. He shoveled himself beneath the pile of cured hides. Settled in, he pushed some aside so he could peek out at what he would soon abandon.

  As always, the clouded sky and mist from the nearby Gordian Forest combined to make a grim, hopeless scene. Worn mudhouses, crooked and in need of repair after the last rain, would not be missed by him. Failing pig fences awaited his father’s mending. A shadow of guilt crossed over his heart for abandoning him, but he set his hopes on the prospect of a new village, the possibility of being taken as a furrier’s apprentice, and maybe even finding a bride. It would be better to leave behind the mischief of his youth and set out on this new adventure.

  Old Lysen hobbled out of the house, his thin, gray beard bouncing on his lanky chest. He tossed three goat pelts on the cart with a huff and bypassed Hiram’s hiding place, none too wise of his added cargo. The trader grumbled before he eased his crooked body into the seat, weighing the cart in a slight way. A whip cracked. The ancient mule brayed. Wheels turned and Hiram grinned, his escape underway.

  The young women in Pig’s End tended to marry outside the rundown village or worse, they looked too much like their fathers. Hiram licked his lips and dreamed of a beautiful maiden waiting for him beyond the rim and the portal—a maiden with rounded hips, a waist he could grasp, and breasts ripe for his plundering.

  The cart bumped over ruts in the road, and Lysen didn’t make any more stops. The acrid stench of the burning fields on the rim soon became a memory. Hiram peeked out when they passed through the portal, its murky haze always a mystery to him until this moment. Fear tingled in his fingers. Childhood stories about the portal and what lay beyond had him on edge. “Anything is better than Pig’s End,” he said, assuring himself. The haze passed through his body, waking his senses, alighting nerves and causing an embarrassing feeling of arousal. He felt alive and vigorous, as if anything were possible.

  The cart passed on. The road smoothed out. The burst of energy pulsed in his body. He pushed his way out further, the better to see what the other side of the portal looked like.

  Strange metalworking decorated the sides of the even stranger road. The workings resembled suits of armor, only larger than a normal man could possibly wear or bear. Shiny lights lit the eye-guards, sparkling with a latent vivacity. One of the metal things started to walk in stilted motions. Hiram gasped. He swallowed back his fear and stared at the thing. It lifted a pile of wood and went on its way as if it ought to walk around like a living creature.

  There were more wonders, horses made of metal drawing fanciful carts much unlike Old Lysen’s run-down one, lanterns glowing green in the windows of metal-made homes, and flying creatures also made of the same shiny, silvery element. Hiram began to wonder though, where all the townsfolk might be. He didn’t see any fair maidens or any ugly ones for that matter.

  Lysen’s cart gained on a smooth incline. Curious, Hiram sat up to see where the mule led them. A fortress, squared and gleaming in the reddish evening light, stood atop the high hill. It too, appeared made entirely of metal.

  This is promising, he thought before ducking down into his hiding place once more. In a keep there will be serving wenches. He licked his lips before grinning wide. His future could change soon indeed.

  When the cart stopped, he tried to slip out. A knotted staff rapped against the side of his head, halting him.

  “Boy! What have you done?” Lysen glared at him, his wrinkle-mottled face shriveled with bitterness.

  “I wanted to—”

  “Nonsense! You’ve crossed the rim! You’ve entered the forbidden realm. You can’t go back now, not ever again! You fool.” He clucked his ancient tongue, furrowed his two bushy gray brows and lopped another cruel smack to Hiram’s head.

  “I don’t want to go back to Pig’s End. There’s nothing for me there.”

  Lysen snorted. He hobbled a few steps away and glared back over his shoulder. “You will want to, Hiram Oversher; you will.”

  Hiram rubbed his sore skull as he took in his surroundings. Just within the first wall of the hold, more metalwork creatures went about chores. A massive iron gate lowered, closing off the way they’d entered. He didn’t feel trapped. He felt inspired. Here he’d make his way. “Lysen!” he shouted, jogging after the old trader. “Do you know a furrier here?”

  The old man stopped by a metal tree, leaning on it. “Furrier? In Golem’s Keep? You’re a fool, I say. What need would there be for a furrier in a place where the horses are made of metals? Unbreakable metals at that.”

  Hiram bit his lip, thinking this over, for it made no sense. “Well, who makes all of these magnificent things then?”

  A light glittered in Lysen’s faded blue eyes. He rubbed the scraggly scruff on his cheek. “Hmm.”

  Hiram recognized the look the old trader wore before he’d strike up a bargain. He tried not to smile and give away his excitement.

  “Lord Beorolf. He makes them.”

  “Does he need an apprentice? I know a little about metalworking. I’m not lazy; I’ll work hard.”

  A bony hand curled around Hiram’s wrist. “Come.”

  With that one word, he followed and hoped for new wonders to be revealed to him.

  The keep’s inhabitants drew Hiram’s attention as the old trader led him through the city. “What are they?” he finally asked, when a particularly massive metal creature stomped past carrying a slab of marble.

  “Golems,” Lysen answered.

  Hiram had never heard the word before that day. “Golems…” he repeated. “Are they…alive?”

  “Not exactly.” Lysen gave Hiram a stern look when they reached an ivory door with scrollwork over its face. “Let me do the talking. Got that?”

  “Yes.” He pursed his lips.

  The trader rapped the gold knocker on the door three times.

  A green golem answered, thin and wiry with a purple cloak over its shoulders. It resembled a sickly human. Its eyes glowed brighter while it looked over Lysen and Hiram. “Who goes?” it asked in a monotone voice that buzzed like bees in a hay field.

  “Lysen Drimwitch of Devany.”

  “Who goes?” the golem asked again.

  Lysen cleared his throat. “And my ward.”

  “State your business,” the golem droned.

  “Here t
o trade with Lord Beorolf.”

  “Enter the shrine.” The golem stood aside to let them pass, the lights in its eyes flashing off and on.

  Hiram followed Lysen through a portal similar to the one on the outskirts of the rift. The cool liquid mist flowed over his skin, burning his mind with licentious thoughts of a nude woman, her body stretched across a finely embroidered coverlet. The passage went on long enough that he saw her part her legs, revealing the secret between them. He blinked.

  The mist receded.

  The vision abandoned him and he wondered where it had come from.

  Hiram touched his crotch, self-conscious of the heat lingering there.

  “Ah, Brother, you have brought me something of value?” Half man, half golem, the strange wielder of the voice approached them from a shadowed room. He had one eye, the same shade as Lysen’s and his half of a beard scraggled and hung in the same way as the trader’s.

  “I do, Beorolf. This boy wants to be your apprentice.” The old man offered a wan smile.

  Thump-clank, thump-clank. Lord Beorolf approached. He stopped before Hiram and glowered down, inspecting. “Boy? I have no need of a boy.”

  “I’ve seen nineteen winters. I’m a man.” He couldn’t stop staring at the greenish black eye in the golem side of the lord’s face. It never winked out, glaring in its strange way.

  “Hardly.” Beorolf and Lysen exchanged a cold, pointed stare.

  “Please, sir…Lord…sir, I’ll do anything for you. I know how to work metals. I can be—”

  The golem-man snorted. “You need to learn to hold your tongue. Your kind aren’t allowed to pass through the portal. You have no right to be here in my city. I should send you to the dungeon to rot.”

  “But Lord!”

  “Silence!”

  Lysen backed away, an awkward grin spreading over his wrinkled lips. “He is yours, Brother. Enjoy. Consider our score settled.”

  Beorolf snarled. “Very well.” He waved his hand, dismissing the trader. Turning on Hiram, he motioned to a bulky, silver golem in the corner of the dim room. It lurched forth, its feet battering the stone floor.

  “Take him to the cells. I will not see him again until he learns the blessing of silence.”

  Gruff metal hands clenched Hiram’s shoulders. He wanted to protest, to shout that this was unfair, for he hadn’t known it to be unlawful to cross the rift and pass through the portal. He’d thought it a tale to frighten children into staying close to home.

  The golem dragged him along a narrow corridor with green lanterns in hollows along the wall. The metal monster did not speak. Hiram tried to get a better look at it. Where a mouth should be there was a smooth metal plate. Its eyes glowed in shades of deep purple, lighting a blinking path in the growing darkness.

  “What’s to become of me?” Hiram questioned.

  The dungeon smelled of stale straw and mildew. Shadows peered out from behind bars at him as he passed. Clawed fingers gripped the metal, but nothing spoke or made more than a rustling sound.

  The golem took Hiram to the last cell in the grim prison, opened the gate, deposited him inside and turned its finger to lock him in. It paused there, the color of its eyes pulsing to blue before it turned to go back the way it had come.

  Hiram sank down onto the floor. He cradled his head in his hands and began to cry. “Everything’s gone wrong,” he whispered. “How will I ever get out of here?”

  No one answered. The wraiths in the other cells said nothing.

  Curling up in the old straw, he tried to sleep and to come up with a plan to escape. He stared at the metal wall until his eyes slipped shut.

  The vision of the woman he’d seen when he passed through the castle portal filled his mind. A beauty with long, black hair and piercing eyes, she rose from the bed. Her nudity aroused Hiram. Every part of his body tingled with heat and anticipation. He wanted her, desired her lips across his own. She approached him, holding out one hand.

  He stepped toward her, feeling his modest clothing slip away. Breeches shimmied down his legs to rest over his feet before he kicked them off. He needed the woman, and she looked like she needed him as well. Like opposite forces drawn together, their paces increased, their gazes intent and locked.

  He reached for her fingers, meaning to tug her to him.

  Something clattered from her palm onto the floor.

  It plinked and came to rest against his foot. Cold. Hard. It felt real.

  Hiram woke and looked down. He frowned at the strange object resting against his foot. It looked just like the golem’s fingers. He sat up and grasped it. Unusual threads of metal snaked from one end of the mysterious thing.

  Across the dungeon, straw rustled. He thought he heard someone snicker, but the noise sounded too small to be human.

  “Hello?” he called, squinting at the cell opposite his.

  No one responded.

  He stood and brushed off the bits of soiled hay from his pants. The object in his hand remained cold, like a dead thing.

  Hiram edged to the door of his cage and slipped the metal thing into the lock. It clicked, turned, and the gate creaked open. He swallowed and stepped out, unsure of where to go.

  A pair of black eyes glittered in the shadows in the cell nearest him. He approached, thinking maybe his savior had tossed him the odd key for the cell had no lock and the bars were placed far closer together than his own had been.

  The eyes slipped shut and he could discern no true shape in the darkness there. “Hello?” he asked again. “Did you give me this key?”

  Chapter Two

  Maiden

  She stepped from the shadows much as she had in his dream, a vision of beauty beyond his imagination. Her fingers pushed at the bars of her prison. “Yes,” she answered simply.

  He came closer. Thankful for her aid, he touched his fingertips to hers through the tiny span of space allowed. The contact set something alight in him, a heat much stronger than the wave he encountered when he passed through the portals. This sizzled and burned through his body. His cock thickened and reached for the maiden, pressing against his itchy wool breeches.

  “Thank you,” Hiram said, his voice cracking as if he were a youngling again. “But how can I help you get out too?”

  Her face leaned in until her full lips touched the bars. “Number eleven. Take its eye.”

  Hiram’s brow crinkled. He moved his face near hers, wishing he could kiss her lips. Her dark eyes and skin taunted him, so different from his features. “What do you mean?” he asked her.

  “Eleven. Take its eye and bring it to me. Hurry. Beorolf sleeps now. You must return before the dawn breaks.”

  “But what is number eleven?” His forehead pressed to the bars. He felt her warm breath across his lips. So close and still unable to meet. Locked away. He wondered why Beorolf kept her in the dungeon.

  “A golem made of copper. There is only one like it.”

  “All right,” he whispered. “I’ll find it for you.”

  She pressed a kiss to the bars.

  He stared down at her mouth, thinking lurid thoughts of other places he wanted her to press it to.

  “Hurry,” the woman in the dungeon repeated.

  Hiram crept through the long walk between the cells. The muffled rustling grew louder. Shadows darted this way and that, but nothing showed itself. Determined to free the mysterious woman and make an escape with her, he pushed open the door and peered into the hall he remembered the golem leading him through. The green lanterns no longer burned. As silently as he could, he crept up the passage and entered the shrine room where he’d last seen Beorolf.

  It was blacker than before, the long table to one side with its single chair looming like a malformed monster. No golems waited there to stop him, at least none that he could see.

  The shimmery haze from the portal glowed blue when he passed it. His body tingled, and he felt dizzy for a moment, grasping the wall for support. Beyond the shrine room, he found a wooden door. He
opened it slowly, praying it would not lead to the lord of the keep.

  Gray light lit the chamber. Along the walls, alcoves bore the silent shells of the golems. None moved or regarded him with glowing eyes. They seemed to be asleep or turned off. He could not be sure.

  Fear niggled at the back of his mind. What if I’m caught? Will he throw me back in the dungeon or do something worse? Being trapped in this hold made him feel helpless.

  He examined the first golem in the line, trying to remember the symbol for eleven. It might not be the same here as at home. An emblem etched into the thing’s chest bore the marking of a stylized wolf and two symbols. Hiram turned his head to the side. “Ah, number thirty-eight.” The numerals looked familiar if not flourished. He hurried along the rows seeking the curved lines that represented eleven. Most of the golems were silver, a few gold and some a mottled greenish color that might be a result of tarnish.

  Hiram reached the end of the line. He heaved a sigh, his shoulders drooping. Number eleven wasn’t in any of the alcoves. Sprinting back past the entry, he paused and stared at the portal that led to the outer part of the keep. Its surface twisted and swirled like a river. Colors appeared and vanished. Nearing it, he pondered leaving now, forgetting the imprisoned woman and finding his way out of here. He didn’t want to go back home, but thought maybe there could be other villages besides this one.

  He held his hand out. His fingertips grazed the haze, dipping inside. A wave of sensations overwhelmed him, heat, lust, desire and a burst of sensual images…him coupling with the woman, entering her, crushing his hardness inside her tight warmth. He lurched backward in the throes of the vision, and fainted.

  In the darkness of unconsciousness, he heard her calling to him.

  Return to me. The sun rises. Beorolf wakes.

  Her voice shivered through his mind, twining in his muscles. His eyes pushed open. He stared at the ceiling. Light danced across it. Footsteps thumped in the next room where he had been with the golems.

  He turned his head to the side.

  Lord Beorolf, wearing a long sleeping shirt, paced along the hall before his golem menagerie placing something into each one’s chest.