Tales of Amaranth, book 1
by
In Amaranth, the Wayfarers' Guild attracts all kinds of custom. When Lucan the mage walks into the stable yard with a lame horse in the rain, slave boy Tam runs to serve him -- and soon Tam wants to do nothing else. Ever.
Lucan is demanding, ruthless, devastating, in bed and out: everything Tam ever yearned for in a master. He's also master of the darkest arts, and not blind to Tam's feelings, but heedless of them. Why would a free man care how a slave feels?
When Tam's mistress asks for the mage's help because the guild is under attack, Master Lucan finds other uses for Tam: as a guide to the city, as payment to a demon in hell. But when he doesn't come back to the guildhouse one night, Tam knows the great man is in trouble - and only an insignificant slave boy can save him...
- 2 To Be Read lists
- 1 Read list
Publisher: Loose Id
Cover Artists:
Genres:
Pairings: M-M
Heat Level: 4
Romantic Content: 4
Ending: Click here to reveal
Character Identities: Bisexual, Gay
Protagonist 1 Age: 18-25
Protagonist 2 Age: 36-45
Word Count: 49000
Setting: The city of Amaranth
Languages Available: English
Series Type: Same Universe / Various Characters
Master Lucan, it was obvious, would demand no less.
Even before I’d closed the door of the gatehouse room behind us, he was already stripping off his jacket and dropping it to the floor, tugging his shirt over his head, sparing me just one swift glance and one barked word: “Towel?”
“Of course…”
I fetched one from the linen press and held it out to him, but he simply turned his back.
His hair was dark and crisp, close-cropped and sodden. I rubbed at it tentatively; he grunted and said, “Harder, boy.”
“Yes, Master.”
Vigorously, then, his head between my hands; I felt the not-quite-roundness of his skull through the muffle of the towel and suddenly wanted to be exploring that same territory with my fingers, just my skin and his hair and nothing to interfere between them.
Swallowed the desire, moved the towel and my attention downwards.
READ MOREThat didn’t help. His shoulders were broad, his back was long and leanly muscled, leaning into the pressure of my hands. This time, when he wanted it harder, that was all for the pleasure of rough contact. I knew; I could tell from the way he worked his shoulder blades.
Mages are men and women of the half-world, all cobweb and shadow, threatening and scary. This close, though, Master Lucan smelled all man; and felt it too, dangerous and exciting beneath my hands. I almost forgot to be scared. Not quite, because slaves never do quite forget, and if we did the collar’s weight around our necks would remind us. By the time he turned to face me, though, it was his hands and strength and temper I was scared of, not his powers: the master, not the mage. As it should be.
I dried his chest and arms, feeling the firm resilience of his skin, the hard-trained muscles beneath. I ached to drop the towel and just be skin on skin with him; more than ached, I could feel my cock growing stiff beneath my tunic. In hopes he wouldn’t notice, I muttered, “This towel’s damp, let me fetch another…”
He stayed me with a hand on my waist. Had he noticed already? I glanced up, and there was no anger in his eyes, only the snap of that relentless impatience.
“It’s still drier than I am. Get my boots off, will you?”
“Of course, Master…”
It was a relief to drop to my knees, to drop the towel in my lap to hide my hard-on while I hoped for it to ebb away. Wet leather isn’t a turn-on for me, the way wet man can be.
Wet man with his long wet fingers suddenly in my hair, balancing himself while he lifted one foot for me to slip his boot off.
One foot and then the other, and I was quite used to that kind of casual contempt, being used however was convenient to Master. Of course I was; I was slave.
I was used to this too, the way his fingers stayed in my hair, played with it, even once I’d set his boots aside. That didn’t do my erection any good, at least not if I wanted it to go away. He laughed abruptly, clipped the side of my head, and unbuckled his belt.
I can take a hint. My hands went to the sodden laces of his trousers and loosed them carefully. I was aware of the weight of his cock within, just as I was of my own, throbbing again beneath the towel; I just wasn’t quite ready for the way his sprang out at me, as soon as it was free. Dark with blood, long and straight and tapered, thick at the root but sweetly rounded at the tip…
It was instinct, only instinct that made me catch the tip of it lightly in my mouth, with just a hint of teeth.
For a moment, I had him. He was entirely still, and I could hold him, the size and touch and taste of him right there in my mouth, musk and salt and mastery, the flavour of a man.
Reluctantly, then, I turned the focus of that moment into a kiss and let him go, dropped my head and worked his wet trousers down slowly off his wet legs. What happened next was up to him; he was Master here. Some guests I’d known would give me a whipping for impertinence; some would toss me onto the bed and fuck me without a word.
No point even trying to hide my own erection, now that I’d seen his. Seen it, kissed it, made an issue of it. I probably deserved that whipping. And him so ill-tempered, soaked and delayed in his intentions; he wasn’t likely to pass up such insolent familiarity.
Nor did he. His hand closed in my hair again; he kept a switch in a sheath on his boot, where I’d set it just a bend and a stretch away, and I thought he’d work out his temper on my hide. If he didn’t have other, worse ways to punish a boy. I’d never seen magic done, but all my life had been full of stories about the dark gifts of mages, how cruel and vengeful they could be…
All he did, though, he pulled my head back to his proud cock. His thumb caressed my temple in a lazy gesture that made me shiver all through; he said, “Lips and tongue and mouth, lad, nothing more. No hands, I’m not a cow for you to be milking. And if I feel those teeth again --”
He didn’t say what would happen, but his fingers flicked my ear stingingly, like a promise.
“Yes, Master…”
COLLAPSEDear Mr. Lane:
I’ve coveted this book since I first saw it at Loose-Id. For one, the cover image is stunningly beautiful. For another, the blurb and excerpt intrigued me. Tam is a house slave for an inn in the Wayfarers Guild in Amaranth. As such, he is trained to serve ALL the body needs, sexual and otherwise, of the inn’s guests, as well serve as general house boy. One rainy day, a mage stops at the inn with his lame horse. While Tam serves him, the inn’s mistress hires Master Lucan to figure out who was destroying the guild’s houses, how they were doing it so completely, and why. This short volume (150 pages) details how Lucan does just that, with Tam’s help, and the progress of the surprisingly equal Master/slave relationship between the two.
The world building is very well done. The world–or at least, this city in it–is divided into free and slaves. If someone is caught committing a crime, it seems, they can immediately be made into a slave by the victim of the crime. Tam was caught stealing by the kitchen-master of the inn, and as such has been their slave for years, being promoted to houseboy after being broken in by training. The slave training and its punishments are alluded to by Tam in his musings as he serves Lucan. There is no info dump, no memory that does not serve the present plot as well as character revelation. But the system of slavery, the complicity in and acceptance of the system by both sides of the equation–the very naturalness of the system–is thoroughly explained and smoothly presented.
And therein lies my one problem with the book. The society is built on and around slavery–to the extent, for example, that there are no carriage horses, but rather “bucks”: slaves trained to the harness to pull carriages (a la Anne Rice’s Beauty books). However, troublingly for our own society, there is no questioning of the system by anyone in it. Tam might wish he were still free, even if he was homeless in his freedom, a gutter thief, but he accepts the system itself, as do all his fellow slaves. Unrealistically, perhaps, we catch no glimpses of free people abusing the system, either. The slavery is much more a wish-fullfillment fantasy of a society built around BDSM submission and punishment than a commentary on the devastation of the all-too-real slavery in our history and our current world. And while the engaging writing makes it so easy to slip into a very willing suspension of disbelief that accepts the world as built, it is disconcerting, vaguely disturbing even, to surface from the story and realize that you’ve accepted, even approved of, a very real system of outright slavery that has no implicit social disapproval. The very ease with which I managed to accept the society, though, is a testament to how well-written the story is.
The suspense plot is well constructed and followed-through, if just a little too easily overcome in the end. The supernatural is brilliantly woven into the story: Lucan is a necromancer who can interrogate corpses and walk through Hell with Tam to ask favors of demons. Tam’s heroism at the end of the story is well-prepared for by the construction of his character and his background. It’s all neatly wrapped up in a enjoyable, eminently readable package.
But what really shines are the characterizations of Tam and Lucan. The story is told from Tam’s first person perspective, and we see everything through the eyes of an obedient, well-trained slave who is still a strong, even independent, and observant person with intelligent opinions and strong emotions. With Lucan, Tam is a natural submissive, happy to be serving his Master in all ways, and the story makes it obvious that Tam, while usually an obedient slave for his house, is only this willingly submissive with Lucan as he slowly falls in love with him. Even though Lucan is only seen through Tam’s eyes, the reader can appreciate his gentleness, his humor, his intelligence, and his power and competence as a mage, as his character is slowly revealed through Tam’s interactions with him.
I would actually have liked a little more heartache and despair from Tam as he accepted toward the end that even though he was in love with him so desperately, Lucan was just passing through, as are all the guests at the inn. But rather than cater to a desire for melodrama, you stuck to the world you built. Of course Tam doesn’t despair–he knows too intimately and accepts without question that guests always leave, added to the fact, of course, that he’s a slave and Lucan is not only free but an incredibly powerful mage. This adherence to the world construction and Tam’s characterization dims just slightly the *potential* emotional impact of the HFN ending, but doesn’t dim what actually happens, and isn’t enough for this book *not* to earn anything other than a well-deserved B+.
I can’t wait to read more of Tam and Lucan or of the world in which they live.
Grade: B+
Sincerely,
-Sarah F.
