Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Her Warrior Harem
Savannah Skye
Contents
Her Warrior Harem
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Her Warrior Harem
This. Place. Sucks.
Being hidden away in a castle, sheltered from all the very real dangers outside these walls, has some perks, but frankly? I’m sick to death of praying and eating grapes. It’s lonely, and, except for my friend Sadie, the other girls here are shallow and catty. I’d do anything to get the hell out of here. But when four warriors, the likes of which I’ve never seen, ram down the castle walls and steal me away? I can’t help but wonder if some prayers are better left unanswered...
Chapter 1
The bell from the temple sounded every morning at six to wake the Chosen, allowing time to bathe before morning prayers. Most of the girls in my dormitory now wake automatically just before the bell tolls its slow, steady chimes. To wake later than that would be to risk being late for prayers or missing them altogether - which would be unthinkable. Yet, to wake any earlier would be pointless, in their eyes; what would a person even do in a place where this is nothing to do?
Personally, though, I had found that if you woke early – like, at five thirty - then you could do all sorts of things.
For example, if you climbed out of the window, from there it was a short run along the roof and a quick shimmy down the drainpipe to the kitchen window. Then you waited for the cook to leave the room so you could go in and nab a piping hot mini-loaf of currant-studded bread before going back the way you came.
Or, you could use that extra half hour to practice a few of the fighting moves you'd seen painted on the walls of the temple. Of course, such paintings were covered by sheets to conceal them from the eyes of impressionable girls like me, but another thing a person might do in that half hour, were she so inclined, would be to run to the temple, creep in through the door - which is always kept unlocked for symbolic reasons - and sneak a look under the sheets to see the paintings of the old wars, complete with blood and fire and fighting.
And, if anyone were counting, half an hour was also just long enough to dash to the cliffs, find yourself a nice piece of flint and dash back, then, the next morning, out on the roof where no one would hear you, you could chip that flint into a serviceable blade…if one were wont to do such a thing. Which I’m not saying I am.
Similarly, you could run to the forest, find a good strong stick and turn it into a spear.
When you actually put your mind to it, there were an awful lot of things a person could do with an extra half hour in the morning. But all of those things were forbidden, and for good reason. A girl would have to be extremely wicked to do any of those things.
Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on who you ask—I've always been wicked. And if there might have been any doubt of that fact, then I’d had about twenty years of the Caretakers telling me that I was, and punishing me for it, just to drive the point home.
By this time, I certainly should have learned my lesson, and yet I remained wicked and kept on breaking the rules. I had tried to argue that, since I'd been breaking rules and getting punished for breaking them my whole life, punishment clearly didn't work on me, so maybe it wasn't worth bothering. But that argument didn't seem to fly.
Why was I wicked?
Simple. I was bored. Dreadfully, horribly, constantly bored.
There was a reason that, despite my continued expeditions out, the dorm windows remained unlocked. Our faith put a great deal of stress on openness and an absence of locks. Open minds, however, were another matter. We didn't believe in openness generally; we believed that physical locks should be unnecessary, that a person should basically lock themselves up. You shouldn't ask questions or think for yourself, you should just accept everything is the way it is because we told you so. Self-control, mental repression and physical denial are way more valuable, spiritually speaking. If you only do the right thing because a lock on the door is stopping you from doing the wrong thing, then it doesn't count.
Me, though? I've never had any self-control, my mind is too active to be repressed, and I've never seen the point in physical denial when physical indulgence is way more fun. As for the no questions thing, if you'd spent your whole life, living in a dorm with four other girls, never seeing the world beyond the temple precinct, never knowing what was beyond it, never doing anything different from one day to the next, never knowing why you were kept here or what was going to happen to you later in life - wouldn't you have some questions? The only mystery to me was why the other girls didn't. But some people learn from punishment and others, like me, just, don't.
Fortunately, not all my rule breaking took me out the window. Discovering the world outside had always been my obsession, but I had recently started to discover a new world much closer to home. As I awoke that morning, I let my sleepy-eyed gaze drift around the other girls in my dorm to make sure they were all asleep as they were supposed to be. This precaution taken, I let my hand slide down between my thighs, seeking out a discovery I had made, not that long ago, which was even better than the shortcut I had found to flint quarry.
From an early age, all of we 'Chosen' had been taught that everything that happened between our waists and the top of our thighs was basically evil. Some of it was a biological necessity, but that didn't mean it was any the less evil and it certainly wasn't to be talked about. Everything that happened down there was a subject of terrible shame, and the only thing you could do was keep it clean, keep it shaved - because body hair was also evil - and don't ever mention it.
Beyond that, it was impressed upon us that this was an area which demons were wont to invade, and that they would try to lure us with enticing temptations which we should resist at all costs to our souls.
Frankly, I had never given any real credence to this until certain strange sensations started to make themselves felt when I bathed. I knew I was supposed to ignore them but, as ever, I didn't have self-control enough to do that for long. The Caretakers’ way of dealing with anything is to ignore it and pray - it'll go away with time. I prefer to confront things, to explore and to understand. I can't say I understood what I found on exploration, but it was awesome, and I called it my secret button.
What such a thing could be for I could not say, and for all I knew, it really was a demon living inside me, but it changed my life. To have lived an existence in which the most fun I ever had was a game of dominos with my friend Sadie for an evening, and then discover that with just a finger I could make my body erupt in hot, sweaty pleasure, the likes of which I had never even imagined, was an incredible discovery. Needless to say, I did become a little obsessed with my secret button, an
d it was inevitable that I got caught.
I had assumed it was wicked, because in my world, everything that's fun is wicked. And any doubt I might have had about this was removed when Caretaker Harvest walked in on me. I was on triple chore duty for the next week, with a stern injunction that if I was caught touching my 'Devil's Doorbell' again, then the punishment would be much worse. I resolved not to get caught again. I also resolved to adopt the name Devil's Doorbell, which was much better than secret button - who'd have thought the Caretakers had that much imagination? That was exactly what I supposed it was; I rang the Devil's Doorbell, and he came to tempt me with sinful ecstasy. A temptation to which I always succumbed.
As I lay in bed that morning, I sighed gently as my fingers located that wonderful little nub and began to massage it into delicious life.
"Aleah!"
My name, hissed across the dorm in urgent tones, roused me unwillingly from the trance into which I had been slipping, and I looked across the room to see my best - actually, only - friend, Sadie, looking at me in wide-eyed horror.
"What?" I asked.
"You mustn't."
"Mustn't what?" I asked, innocently.
Sadie gave me a look. "Just because I can't see your hands, doesn't mean I don't know where they are. You get a look on your face when you... when you ring the Devil's Doorbell."
"You'd like it if you tried it."
Sadie looked horrified.
It was a mystery to me why Sadie even still talked to me. We became friends when we were kids. She had been given the task of picking apples and had been given a ladder by Caretaker Rosalie. I thought it would be more fun if we climbed the tree. Sadie said she had been told to use the ladder. I still thought it would be more fun to climb the tree. So, we climbed and we played and, to be honest, we didn't get a lot of apple picking done and we ruined the clean white gowns that the Chosen must wear at all times. Needless to say that Caretaker Rosalie was less than happy; she cut a switch, bent us over and gave us each six sharp strokes for disobedience.
When we got back to the dorm with red faces and redder bottoms, I expected Sadie to ignore me and never speak to me again for getting her into trouble. But instead, the experience seemed to give us a bond.
Sadie was nothing like me, she was a sweet and innocent girl, not because the Caretakers had punished the defiance out of her, but naturally. She had been born a good girl in the same way that I had been born a bad one. It was a source of great irritation to the Caretakers that the two of us had become such firm friends, and over the years they had made various attempts to break us up. But it never worked. Sadie and I, for all our manifest differences, remained close. She was the one bright spot in my life, and was the only reason I ever felt guilty for my wickedness - because I sometimes felt that I let her down.
"It's almost time to get up, anyway," Sadie concluded.
"Already?" I must have overslept.
But Sadie was right. The dull, slow chimes rang from the temple's bell tower, setting the pace of the days here in the temple precinct with its regular monotony. The other girls instantly threw back their sheets and got out of bed, greeting each other as they did.
"Good morning, Clementine," I said, and got nothing in reply but a supercilious look right down the girl's nose. "Good morning, Jennifer."
"Good morning, Sadie." Jennifer pointedly ignored me, as ignoring the sinner in your midst was bound to win you extra bonus points with the gods. Or, at least, with the Caretakers, which amounted to the same thing around here.
"Good morning, Laura."
Laura shot me an unsure glance, then muttered, "Morning," before hurrying off in the direction of the baths.
"I'm winning her over," I said to Sadie, who was standing, waiting for me to get myself together.
"She doesn't like to be rude. You shouldn't mock her for that."
"She'd rather ignore me like the others," I pointed out, "but she's not sure if god would prefer her to be tolerant and friendly or intolerant and unfriendly. Because the holy books have good things to say about both. She's not trying to be nice, she's just unsure which is the quickest way to salvation and has decided to hedge her bets in the middle."
"I think she's trying to be nice." Sadie doesn't have a bad word to say about anyone. The others sometimes ostracized her because of our friendship - a difficult thing to do since Sadie was so perfect in every other way - but even then, she defended them.
In the bath house, just down from the main dorms, the baths were separated by thin partitions so girls did not have to see each other's nakedness. I slid gratefully into the warm water and looked down. I'd been interrupted this morning, something that always left me feeling nervy and on edge - you shouldn't play ring and run with the Devil's Doorbell. Well, no one could see me in here. I reached down through the water.
"Aleah!" Sadie said my name sharply from beyond the partition.
"What?"
"You know what."
How the hell did she know? I took my hand out of the water reluctantly. It was nice to have a friend as close as Sadie, someone who knew me as well as I knew myself, but it could be irritating at times, too. Like when she insisted on being my conscience.
Bathed and dried, we dressed, donning the plain white robes and sandals that we wore every day. Sadie was chatting but I wasn't really listening to her. There was nothing special about today, just as there had been nothing special about yesterday and would be nothing special about tomorrow.
Sometimes, most days, in fact, I wished that just once something could happen, anything at all that would make one day different from the one that had preceded it. Anything to break the hellish routine of life in the temple precinct. I sometimes wondered if, if I were to die in the night, my corpse might get up of its own accord, go to the baths, go to prayers, go to breakfast - if it would just keep following the same routine out of habit. It wouldn't make much difference, really, we all might as well be dead. This was not life as I understood it, even though it was the only life I had ever known.
How was that possible? I didn't know, but I had a sense inside me that there was something more, something greater than I could understand and beyond my imagination. It was like the Devil's Doorbell. One touch had changed my life. That was a metaphor for how I thought the world was - you thought you knew it all, and then one thing would open the doors on so much more.
"If Caretaker Harvest catches you, you'll be in big trouble," said Sadie as we walked to the temple.
"What can she do to me that she hasn't already done?" I had thankfully outgrown the switch, which had been a major feature of my childhood, adults were given never-ending chores that were increasingly laborious and/or disgusting.
"I'm just saying."
"And I'm just saying, you'd enjoy it if you tried it."
Sadie blushed and shook her head. "I wouldn't dare."
"I wonder," I whispered wickedly, "if I rang your Devil's Doorbell for you, who would be the sinner; you or me?"
Sadie couldn't help laughing, despite herself.
In the temple, we took our places and I was very careful to put myself on the end of a row by the eastern wall.
"Aleah..." Sadie already knew what I was planning.
"You don't have to come with me."
"If you get caught..."
The banging of the Priest's staff on the floor brought the room to silence. Senior Rowan was at least ninety, and hadn't aged well. He flung his skinny, chicken arms wide, the loose skin around his neck waving, raising his rheumy eyes to the heavens. The whole congregation seemed to collectively hold its breath, wondering if this would be the morning he dropped dead in front of us.
"We pray." At the command of his thin faltering voice, Caretakers and Chosen alike, knelt to make the morning prayer with which daily services always started. And with every eye turned to the floor, and the massed muttering masking all sound, I crept away to the narrow gap in the stonework in the corner of the room and slipped through.
; I had discovered this passageway quite by accident while I was scrubbing the temple floor after being caught doing something I shouldn't - I forget what. Whether it was used by Caretakers or Priests I did not know but I had never seen anyone else there, which was exactly what I wanted. If you share a room with four other girls, then moments of peace and quiet are few and far between, privacy still more so. Having a place that was mine alone was a little secret joy. It was also a thrill.
The corridor led down into a network of underground tunnels into which I now passed, pausing at the entrance. From under a rock I retrieved the sheet of paper and pen which I was using to slowly map this place. I did not come here every morning during prayers - that was asking for trouble and was also squandering the thrill of discovery that was one of the rare joys in my existence. I saved these explorations for when I was feeling particularly down or stressed. Those days seemed to be coming more often of late.
I set out down a new tunnel, my heart beating fast. It had to be said that, so far, my explorations of three tunnels from top to end, had revealed absolutely nothing. Not a thing. No buried treasure, no monsters from the dawn of time, no doorways to long lost civilizations; nothing. But this failure had not dampened my enthusiasm - the way I saw it; if those tunnels had contained nothing then that shortened the odds of the next one containing something.
I walked quickly down a new tunnel, mindful of the time, a flickering torch lighting my way. And then, up ahead, I saw something, and my heart fluttered with untold excitement. What I saw was a stone table, plain and simple, and on it was placed a book. There were not many books in the temple precinct, and almost all of them were holy books. Those that weren't written by prophets and saints were written by men trying to kiss up to god by writing moral parables.
Her Warrior Harem Page 1