by Regina Watts
Yes, by Weltyr. I would see to it that, one way or another, Valeria would experience the surface with me.
I had just resolved this desire of my own when my mistress emerged with a scourge in her hand—the same, I recognized, that I had used upon the elf and then endured myself. As I was already stripped down to my breeches, I began to slide from the edge of the bed to kneel against it, but she said, “No, Burningsoul—stand.”
“I’ll try to stay upright for as long as I can,” I told her, adding in a teasing tone, “and if I last the whole time, will you tell me the contents of the dream that so frightened you tonight? Surely that was no happy vision of coming to the surface with me.”
A shadow crossed her features and she said quite sternly, “I’ll not speak on it. Not tonight. Perhaps not ever. I’m sorry.”
At my surprise for her apology, she surprised me further by tossing down the whip and undressing. “I know it must be frustrating for you—I used to enrage my mother by refusing to tell her the dreams that woke me every dark. Did I do that?”
While the nightgown pulled free of her head, she gestured in the direction of the vase. I nodded, explaining, “You destroyed it on waking, as if something were attacking you.”
“Well! Then I certainly deserve a beating for ruining such a lovely piece of art.” With a dry laugh—for her own statement or for the look on my face, I am still not sure—my lady knelt at her bedside and drew the long tendrils of her hair from her back. “Go on, then. Give no quarter…how glad I am to have a loyal slave with a strong arm.”
After glancing between the curve of her splendid back, the beautiful round seat of her backside balanced upon her heels, and her perfect shoulders proud even as she awaited the lash, I then studied the whip waiting to be used. “I can’t help but wonder if this is some kind of test, or a trap…are you sure, Madame? Is this truly what you want?”
“As I told you, Burningosul…there are those who enjoy the fire of a good whipping. I never sleep more soundly than I do when I have been the recipient of a rare and happy beating. Treat me as though I were your slave; as though I were the spoil of some war, or a maid-servant whose misstep has displeased you most severely. Not that such a thing would be possible…you are too kind for your own good, Paladin.”
That may have been so, but the richness of the desire in her voice inspired me to find within myself qualities I did not normally possess. After considering for a few seconds the fact that her words seemed truly meant and this was no test of obedience or loyalty on my part, I dared caress the voluminous mane of her hair to inspire a gasp. My hand slipped down to the back of her neck; I gripped her by the nape and tilted back her head, warning, “If you are to play at being my slave, Valeria, be warned…I will fulfill my role as master in the game as thoroughly as a man can.”
Her bosom heaved with anticipation, her dark eyelids twitching as her pale eyes searched my face. “The qualities of all men, when measured against my master, are second-best. Use me as’t pleases, Paladin of Weltyr. Whip the heresy from me.”
I repressed a laugh in favor of maintaining the stern affectation my expression had adopted; nonetheless, at the burning of her eager eyes into mine, I bent my head and roughly kissed her upon that ready mouth. Her moan resonating through my body and in my very lungs, Valeria accepted the plundering of my tongue and arched her back into the explorations of my hands over her shoulders, her bosom, her back. Finally, gently, I pushed her forward against the bed and assured her, “You overflow with such wickedness that I doubt even the lash could properly purge it from your body, but we must try everything, mustn’t we?”
Her breath hitched with her slight smile, though she did not turn her face to show it to me and in fact folded her hands at the back of her head as though to keep herself still. How beautiful she was—like a statue of obsidian, one that animated to quiver with anticipation while I took the scourge in my hand.
“Tell me if I take it too far,” I bade her, drawing back the implement and swinging forward with it to strike. The many leather tentacles slapped down against her flesh to provoke a gasp that was perhaps the sweetest I have ever heard—only to be outshone by the next, even sharper gasp. While she shifted to steady herself more adequately against the bed, I lowered my free hand to caress the first welt that had drawn itself from relief.
“I feel almost too cruel damaging such soft and perfect skin as yours, Valeria…”
“Please, Burningsoul. Please, I crave it as I crave your touch—ah! Oh, yes, please—”
My arm flew into motion again, the same muscles that made me so adept at Strife’s use likewise providing a certain knack for applying the lash to a willing woman’s back. Especially when, on the next strike, a moan drifted from her glistening lips. Ah, my heart! Though the elf-slave had quite obviously taken pleasure in the whipping I gave her before the audience of durrow, there was something so much more sensual and erotic—deliberate, perhaps—about Valeria’s appreciation for the same. She shifted again, groaning at the fifth and sixth strikes, her pleasure still resonant in her voice as I lowered my free hand to tickle the raised stripes.
“Yes,” she whispered, “yes, oh, Burningsoul, the stinging is so sweet—sweet as the stinging love you make me feel. Oh! By Roserpine, what am I saying? Harder, slave! Beat me harder—ah! Yes—”
I bit back a small smile at this slip of affection, this forced but accidental confession that escaped her lips and filled my heart with pure warmth. Saying nothing lest she take it back or in some other way deny her claim in retrospect, I went on with the beating. Each strike of the lashes produced a lower moan along with the natural hisses of pain, but soon enough those hisses faded completely. Only the pleasure of a desperate woman remained.
Her thighs rubbed together and her fingers curled in her hair. Seeing how obviously she ached with far more than the pain of the whipping, I sat upon the edge of the bed and drew her into my arms. With a mewl of semi-protest to have her beating stopped before she commanded, Valeria permitted me to embrace her for a tender kiss. She seemed only about to demand I go on when I turned her delicate body over my knees and angled her forward to expose the luscious round flesh of her bountiful haunch.
Understanding now, my mistress gasped with pleasurable anticipation. I took up the lash and applied it in brisk, sharp strikes along her thighs, her backside, and the hint of lips that appeared between. This she loved most of all, moaning from the first untoward contact of leather against love’s valley. Bracing herself against me and the bed, she spread her legs as though to encourage me, and from then on I did nothing to prevent the thongs of the whip from occasionally extending their reach across her tempting labia. They glistened with her eagerness for the beating and soon I could not resist my desire to touch her, my free hand running from where it had rested upon her upper back to instead massage and fondle the stripes across her rear.
“Burningsoul,” she said, the noise an eager gasp, “oh, Burninsoul—take me, Rorke, oh, by Roserpine, by Weltyr’s single eye, take me now—I must have you.”
My heart surging with desire for my mistress, I dropped the whip and obeyed.
TO TRAP A TRAITOR
PREPARATIONS FOR THE party were infinitely duller than I had even imagined. Unfortunately, as my lady’s shadow, I was subjected to all of them. In matters of selecting food, wine, decorations and guests, I was forced to stand and stare into space and try to think of anything at all while Valeria—who, for her own part, barely seemed to tolerate the process of decision-making—made her ideal choices. Neither one of us was interested in anything but seeing the results of the banquet: in seeing whether or not our plan would work, and my lady’s assassins would be tempted to action at a crowded public gathering.
It was my great relief that no assassins came for her in that week, nor contrived any means that either of us noticed to lay a subtle attack—but it was my far greater frustration that our only leads came up cold. After sending a number of guards to interrogate the wadji
ta responsible for giving shelter to Al-listux, we discovered the smithy abandoned. Its cache of precious weapons had only been partly removed, as if, in a great hurry, the artisan could only afford to take those pieces that were most dear…or most useful. The building was watched for the rest of the week, and no one made any move to enter or exit. So far as we were aware, Al-listux and his servant had disappeared.
While she dressed on the eve of the gathering, a distant look in her already permanently distant white eyes, I asked her, “Are you frightened, Madame? You have been quiet.”
“Frightened for myself—no. Roserpine will see to it that I am protected. But, when it comes to you…”
Her lips pursed and she wandered off in thought, drawing her hair atop her head in a glorious white crown she fixed into place with a golden pin reminiscent of a dragonfly. “I can only pray that my goddess is not cruel enough to have given you to me only to take you from me straightaway again.”
Love inspired a throb of my heart to hear her say such a thing. Over the past week, distant as she had been, Valeria had made little use of my extra services for her—and, in truth, I had been making ample use of my pass. Each bloom I had explored the various halls of the palace under guise of being encouraged by my mistress to acquaint myself with its halls. Wherever I went, I listened and watched for the least sign of subterfuge. Nothing, not even a trace of untoward gossip, revealed itself readily to me, and the evening of the banquet arrived as if out of a puff of smoke. We were both frustrated, I sensed, but neither one of us wished to share these thoughts—as if speaking of our discouragement would produce the same ill effects on our future as the discussion of one of her prophetic dreams.
Regardless of the fact that I had not been put to extracurricular use at any more orgies or titillated by another thrilling show in the baths, however, something had changed in the aftermath of the assassination attempt. Though she had looked at me with fondness since my arrival, there had been an aloofness there, too—a wry skepticism, almost a kind of interest in hazing me to test my mettle.
Now, however, I had proved to her that I intended to fulfill my duties as her protector, regardless of how I had come to inhabit the role. Now there was a trust that I had not seen before. A gentleness, too. Rather than simply asking me to sleep beside her, she asked me to hold her as she slept. When we were alone together in her chambers during waking hours, she showed me great affection, often coming to perch upon my knee and stare into the distance, thinking strange things that were the secrets of priestesses while her fingers curled through my hair. I wondered sometimes if I was not as much her savior and lover as I was a replacement for the snake who once served a similar purpose of comfort…but, of course, I knew that I was more to her than some mere pet, no matter what she had to say.
Before her dressing table, she hesitated between several necklaces displayed upon a stand. Seeing this, I reached past her and plucked up the one whose great purple gem burned less brilliantly than but nonetheless recalled the indigo one upon her finger. She glanced at me, laughing just slightly, then lowering her head a degree in deference to my gesture.
Draping the jewels across her clavicle and bending my head to fasten them at the soft nape of her neck, I assured her, “Whatever your goddess intends for me, great Weltyr protects his loyal servants. Though it is a pity to think our gods might be at odds in the heavens, I personally take comfort in the thought that I have the finest of advocates.”
Smiling slightly into my reflection, Valeria caressed the necklace upon her sternum and said, “Aye, there is some comfort in that. A fine thing Weltyr is not half so cruel as Roserpine!”
“All gods are cruel to mortals, my lady…or they seem as such, for we small beings that have no comprehension of their wills and greater plans.”
“Too true, Paladin…too true.”
Sighing, Valeria rose from her dressing table and looked me up and down. Against all expectation, she plucked a thread from the collar of my tunic, then leaned upon her toes to tenderly kiss me. Though surprised, I yielded to the gentle caress of her lips, my eyes falling shut and my arms sliding around her soft, warm body.
“How glad I am that you have been brought into my life, Burningsoul.”
So was I. Though slavery was far from a comfortable lot, and though I was constantly swallowing back frustration at the daily belittling that occurred every time I was ordered here and there by even those who were not my mistress, the confidence my presence instilled in Valeria gave me some of my own. Protecting her was most assuredly the purpose of this trial being forced upon me. By the end of that ill-fated banquet, any doubts I had of the matter would be erased for good.
I have never been a man who does well at parties. I detest smalltalk, and though I speak charitably to all strangers—knowing, of course, that they may be gods or angels in disguise—it is difficult to argue that my experience with Branwen and the rest of my traitorous party did not leave me particularly eager to make new friends who did not fall directly into my lap, as had Indra, Odile and, of course, Valeria.
You may imagine my relief, then, when I discovered among the crowded banquet hall those same two durrow females who were my saviors as much as my slavers. Alert as I was to all possible threats, I noticed them quickly among the far more aristocratic durrow who had been invited to the gala. The under-dressed pair of adventurers hovered around a table of displayed delicacies intended to be enjoyed prior to the meal, but I laughed to myself to observe Odile slipping grapes (an expensive rarity in the Nightlands, I was informed) and various cheeses into a bag of Indra’s. The girls looked nervously around all the while, and in this inadequate scouting Indra’s eyes fell upon me.
Her lips contorted in a gasp. She caught Odile’s arm, gesturing eagerly toward me, then waving with delight.
I waved back, openly laughing beside my mistress who filled her throne and barely tolerated greeting each guest approaching to shake her hand. Sitting target that she was, I dared not leave her side or even distract myself overlong, especially since the point of the banquet was to prompt the conspirator into action. All the same, after a brief discussion, Indra and Odile hurried over to meet me—oblivious to or ignoring the more refined conversation being held by Valeria and some high-class durrow from the peak of El’ryh society.
“Burningsoul,” cried Odile, genuinely overjoyed to throw her arms around my neck and feel again my embrace. Indra squealed to enjoy the same while her older companion went on. “It’s great to see you! How are you, warrior-priest? You look healthier and happier than most slaves, I’d wager.”
“You’d win that wager, then,” I told her, trying to keep my volume modulated with respect to the mistress who was already barely able to maintain conversation for the sake of formality, let alone with a distraction now in her periphery. Valeria and I really did have very much in common, and it seemed a general distaste for boring banter was one such trait. I sympathized with her, but was beyond relieved that I could avoid similar pains now that these two rogues had managed to find me.
“How have you two been,” I asked before, with concerned thoughts of the wajita and her spirit-thief conspirator, adding, “keeping out of trouble, I hope.”
“You clearly haven’t known us long enough to realize we are trouble,” said Odile proudly, grinning at me, then at the glamorous durrow holding court with my mistress. The aristocrat had glanced over with a look of oozing displeasure for the loud-mouthed adventurers, who ignored her aside from that mocking smile. Odile continued, “Thanks for convincing the Materna to invite us to this thing, though—it’s wild!”
Indra nodded eagerly, enthusing with a mystified look around, “I’ve never been to anything like this before!”
“I’m glad you two are enjoying yourself,” I assured them warmly, “but I didn’t ask Valeria to do anything.”
As the aristocrat abruptly slunk off, having ended the conversation with Valeria in a passive aggressive statement on Indra and Odile’s volume, my mistress ass
ured them, “I invited you both so that Burningsoul wouldn’t fall asleep on his feet and fail me when I most needed him. Thank you for accepting my invitation.”
“The pleasure is ours,” insisted Odile, hurrying over to genuflect before the Materna and briefly kiss her offered ring. “What a beautiful scene it is! You’ve really pulled out all the stops, Materna.”
This was true. Using that catalogue the vizier had thumped into my hands, Valeria had selected an artful array of banners, tablecloths, candlesticks and decorative flowers. A group of musicians filled the air with lively music, their merry flutes joined with lutes and bright percussion to lend a celebratory background to the throne room-turned-banquet hall. Off on the far side of the room, near the entry doors, durrow danced together arm-in-arm while others watched and clapped to egg them on. I, romantic that I was, dreamed vaguely of dancing with Valeria in some other time and place while she entertained a few moments of conversation with Indra and Odile.
“I must say,” Valeria at last confessed to the two, reaching out and surprising me with an affectionate pat of the hand resting upon Strife’s pommel, “I owe you two far more than I could hope to give…inviting you here was the least I could do. Burningsoul is the finest man I could have in my employ…to call him a ‘slave’ before the two of you would do a disservice to the willing heart with which he has taken up the duty of serving as my protector, and my companion.”
“Isn’t he a nice man,” agreed Indra with approval, smiling over at me, then frowning slightly as I was forced to glance away to follow something that caught my eye. Regaining her mirth, she returned to conversation with my mistress while my concentration honed in on Trystera.
Although I was satisfied after my first solitary journey through the palace that Trystera did not mean ill will toward my mistress at that particular point in time, I was not satisfied that she was wholly innocent in matters concerning the conspiracy. However…in fairness to Trystera, I was suspicious of everyone with whom I had contact. It even crossed my mind that Indra and Odile might prove at least tangentially related to the crimes, as they had a pre-existing relationship with the wadjita; however, the unfeigned aggression between Odile and the snake woman made me confident that the two had nothing to do with any subterfuge. And though they may have been regular enough at the Palace to earn the honored recognition of the Materna, that was almost a flaw in and of itself. After all: they were certainly not there often enough to go unnoticed in its halls. Their presence was exceptional, or at least interesting. Interesting was something an assassin could never afford to be.