The Barrow

by Mark Smylie

  She waited until they were done and gone, then slipped the latch on the door, and undressed as The Countess prowled about the loft, reclaiming her territory. She slid into the hot water with silent thanks, and brought soap and sponge nearby so she could begin her bath. Soon soapsuds covered the surface of the water and she was scrubbing the dirt and filth of the road from her body. Like her face, her body was lean, hard, almost boyish; sword work and fight training had given her strong shoulders and arms, a limber back, long muscular legs. She was the opposite of the soft, curvy ideal so prized by Danian and Aurian custom, which suited her just fine.

  Her fingers slipped between her legs, and she started to clean herself, and as she did her mind wandered. She could feel pressure in her chest and the back of her throat, a slight shortness of breath. Her mind drifted to Stjepan, and poor handsome Guilford, and to a pretty young Danian woman who had smiled at her on the High Promenade. Her breath grew quicker, and her fingers were no longer engaged in cleaning.

  She didn’t allow herself to finish, but stood up after a bit, the water slicking off her warm skin. She dried off with a towel, and slipped a long, fresh, clean linen shirt over her head that came down to almost mid-thigh, and went and sat down on her bed. She could smell bleach and flowers from the fresh sheets.

  There’s so much to do today, she thought. The whole city beckons, and I’ve got fresh coin in my pocket. And then Gilgwyr’s tonight, and the start of our new adventure. Gladringer, the sword of the High Kings. One for the history books, indeed. Despite her excitement, she could feel the lids of her eyes growing heavy, her breath slowing as she lay back against the goose down pillow. She didn’t want to fall asleep; she was picturing herself wandering the Grand Promenade, and perhaps eating some fried fish down at the food stands at the Plaza of the Bay, thinking of all the ways she could get herself into a bit of trouble, but the soft bed felt very good beneath her. The Countess leapt up onto the bed, and curled up next to her and started purring and licking herself. Erim scratched her behind the ears, and stroked her soft fur.

  And soon Erim was fast asleep, softly snoring as the temple bells rang the call for mid-morning prayers in the distance.

  Gilgwyr walked down the street, his cock freshly sucked and the world his oyster. He didn’t just walk, no; he strode, he sauntered, he strutted. He whistled a jaunty tune, a self-satisfied smirk playing across his long, narrow features. Today is a great day, he thought. Truly, a blessed day.

  Having a freshly sucked cock was not the cause of such joy. Indeed, for Gilgwyr, being the owner of a brothel, a freshly sucked cock would hardly have been something to brag about. He took great pride, however, in not sampling the wares of his own shop needlessly. He considered it beneath him, the mark of a poor pimp, to demand services from the women in his employ—or for that matter from the handful of men, and those in between, that called his establishment, the Sleight of Hand, their home, for Gilgwyr was well known as a genuine libertine willing to cater to just about every predilection, despite the threat of the holy writ of the Inquisition of the Sun Court. Gilgwyr considered himself an expert in the many varieties of female flesh that crossed the city from the corners of the Known World, and at one point or another had sampled them all. The local women—dark-haired, fair-skinned Danians and blonde-haired, fair-skinned Aurians, or those who mixed both lineages—could certainly be beautiful enough, though they tended to be soft and perhaps a bit plump for his tastes and, given the teachings of the Divine King that most had been brought up with, given to more conservative sexual habits. Dark-haired Maecite girls from the Watchtower Coast and the cursed hills of the west tended to be short and scrawny and a bit underfed, but were usually wild in the sack. The Athairi were rare in an establishment like his; their fae-born looks and lithe bodies made them an exotic treat, but their culture, steeped in the Old Religion, was quite liberal, and the notion of charging money for sexual favors was somewhat alien to them. But every now and then he would luck out and an Athairi dancer from a traveling troupe would spend some pleasant hours entertaining his customers on her back just for the fun of it. Or even better an Athairi man, as the blood of satyrs often ran deep in their veins.

  He had dusky, brown-skinned Sekereti in his stable, and curly-haired Galians, and showcased them to give the Sleight of Hand a decadent, imperial flavor. He had brown- and ebony-skinned Amorans amongst his girls, as the Amorans had for some years been establishing a presence in the Foreign Quarter of the city, though he had yet to score one of the dark southerners from the Mountains of Gold across the Ulik Desert. He had statuesque blondes and redheads with pale, freckled skin from the far north, bought from the Palatian slave trade. He had a woman from the Dawn Isles, and a woman from the far west who still smelled sweetly of the spices of Samarappa. He had Highlander courtesans from Daradja, down from the mountains; they were a mixed bag in terms of looks, a veritable melting pot of nations, but were usually strong and tall and lean, and well versed in the sexual arts. Women from the cities of Déskédré who had been trained in the great temples of Dieva there were, of course, the most prized by his customers: bronze-skinned beauties with long dark curly hair, wide, supple hips, and full breasts, who knew all the secrets of the Goddess of Pleasure; for Dieva the Evening Star had given the world fellatio and cunnilingus, copulation and buggery and much more in her twenty-two sacred positions and all their seemingly infinite orgiastic combinations. Though to his personal tastes copper-skinned Palatians and exotic Thulamites made the best dancers.

  Generally speaking he was actually bored with all of them, and found it something of a recruitment aid that he treated the entertainers in his service with some measure of respect, and even kindness. Any brothel owner could be a thug, and beat his girls, and take them whenever he wanted, and plenty in the festering underbelly of this great city did just that; but Gilgwyr had no intention of being just any brothel owner. The Sleight of Hand might not have been a temple to Dieva, but it was the closest thing to one that could be found in this city. There was no doubt that one or two would occasionally catch his eye and his mood—there was that gorgeous young man from Umat with one of the most beautiful cocks Gilgwyr had ever seen, for example; and the brand new girl, Ariadesma, a Palatian acrobat and dancer who had spent several years in Dieva’s temples in Lagapoli was the cream of the crop, a petite beauty with an innocent angelic face, long, supple legs, a tight firm ass, pert breasts, a saucy temperament, and a trick with a bottle that he found quite thrilling—but rarely would he ever seek the pleasure of their company.

  No, when it came to getting his cock sucked, Gilgwyr played a different and more difficult game, for he much preferred his customers to be sucking his cock, rather than his employees. Their gender didn’t have much to do with it, though obviously the bulk of his customers were men; Gilgwyr didn’t care what was on the other end of his prick, as long as it was wet and ever so slightly unwilling. Not quite blackmail, no; given his business, he was the holder of many deep dark twisted secrets, and that would have been the easy route. But easy did not excite Gilgwyr. He considered simple outright blackmail not only beneath him, but ultimately bad for business in the long run, and there were uses aplenty for the kinds of things that Gilgwyr knew about the more sordid and perverse patrons of his brothel.

  No, for Gilgwyr’s little game, the idea had to come from the customer for it to play right in his head, and opportunities at least abounded. He let young noblemen run tabs until they were deep in debt and begging to do anything, anything, for him not to go to their wealthy fathers for payment. Sometimes one of the girls would forget to drink their pennyroyal potents, and some poor married slob would find himself an impending father by accident, and who would not offer to suck a cock to get out from that under that stroke of ill fortune? Customers never had enough money, never had enough friends, someone always needed that extra favor, and inevitably one of them would ask, “Look, what can I do to make this happen? I really, really need for this to happen,” with just the right lo
ok of desperation in their eyes. And then they would wind up on their knees, doing their best to please him. And the moment he looked for, the moment that gave him the sharpest thrill, was the moment when some of them discovered they liked it.

  This particular morning had been a special treat, for the lips wrapped around his cock had belonged to none other than a member of the aforementioned Inquisition, and a seemingly devout one at that. Young Alain had been dispatched by his superiors on a secret mission, to procure a beautiful young woman for a secret rite, but the young Templar had been chosen because of his devoutness, his loyalty, and his discretion, not because of any particular knowledge he had on where to find such a woman, and he had despaired at first. Finally Alain had quietly asked one of the older Templars, Sir Berrick of Édain, whom he considered a worldly man, about how to find a prostitute; and while Sir Berrick didn’t really know about such things either, he was able to introduce Alain to his friend Under-Captain Gerard Torgis of the City Watch. Captain Gerard knew a few things about finding a prostitute but being something of a devout man himself this was only as a result of his duties and not from personal experience, so he was actually not much help; but he took pity on the devout young man—assuming that the Templar was seeking to lose his virginity—and referred Alain to one of his Watchmen, Baldwin Summers, whom the Captain knew to be a man of bad habits but good taste. Baldwin was true to his reputation and introduced Alain to Gilgwyr, much to Gilgwyr’s good fortune and eternal thanks.

  When Gilgwyr had heard the young man’s request that morning, he had pretended to blanch; for the rite was one long forbidden and only whispered of in old books. Luckily Gilgwyr had read those old books. Some men might have spent their time at University studying the great elixirs of alchemy, or the wisdom of Acelsus’ Khodex di Aballah ibn Basillus et Basilla (The Book of Words for Lords and Ladies in translation), but not Gilgwyr. Such things had bored him to tears, and he’d spent his time in the great Library tracking down every lurid and obscene legend and report ever written in the history of letters. And so he knew that Islik, the Divine King of Heaven, had been born of the union of the mortal woman, Herrata the Blessed, and Illiki the Bull, one of the gods of the sun. Everyone knew that, of course, that wasn’t the lurid part, and Illiki was depicted in most temple sculptures and art as a man with a bull’s head and a sun’s halo, but occasionally He was shown as just a bull. The Feast of Herrata, held during the next month of Ascensium, celebrated the Divine King’s mother and His holy conception. Less well known was that in more ancient and less civilized times, the climax of the feast was a reenactment of that conception, with a priestess of the cult of Herrata standing in for the Sacred Mother, and a priest of the cult of Illiki wearing a golden bull mask and standing in for the Sun Bull and Sacred Father. Gilgwyr very much suspected that the rite had been copied from the ancient Athairi Spring Queen rites, when the priestesses would lay with men in the fields in order to ensure the earth’s fertility. He’d thought about writing a paper to that effect, but did not think any of the Magisters would have accepted it for consideration.

  But thanks to his lecherous researches, Gilgwyr knew that beginning in 970ia, the High Patriarch Hereclaus had instituted a different version of the reenactment in the celebrations at the Sun Court itself, and according to dark legend each year of his reign he had chosen the most beautiful amongst the priestesses of Herrata, and had her fornicate with an actual bull painted in gold.

  Needless to say this was not a much talked-about period in the Sun Court’s long and checkered past. After Hereclaus’ brutal and difficult reign as Patriarch was over, ended by a trial in which he was convicted as an adherent to Ligrid and other Forbidden Gods and then tortured to death, the reenactment of the Divine King’s conception was officially banned from the rites of the Feast of Herrata in any form. And so it had been in the five centuries since. But Alain’s superiors knew someone of power and position that very much wanted to see such a thing during the upcoming Feast, a fanatic that felt the Sun Court had strayed from its true and ancient teachings. This someone had already reinstituted the reenactments of the Divine King’s holy conception in his private temple, having a man with a golden bull mask copulate the local priestess of Herrata during their celebration of the Feast. But this someone didn’t think that was a true enough reenactment of the divine act. This someone of power Alain’s superiors very much wanted to impress, and this someone would be in Therapoli next month just for the occasion of the next Feast of Herrata, and bringing his favorite stud bull just for the act. An actual priestess of Herrata was presumably out of the question for so extreme a performance, and hence, Alain’s path to Gilgwyr’s esteemed company.

  And so Gilgwyr had found himself faintly protesting: “King of Heaven above. Such a thing. It’s . . . unimaginable. It’s strictly forbidden, condemned by your own order. And besides, even if I could find someone beautiful enough to stand in for Herrata, and yet also willing enough to contemplate the doing of such a perverse act, the danger to the poor young woman alone would be enough to give me pause . . .”

  He had demurred, and protested, wrung his hands and paced and worried, prayed for guidance, all the while watching as the desperation filled Alain’s eyes. He finally relented to Alain’s pleadings, but only after Alain had agreed to arrange a meeting with his superiors. Gilgwyr would have to play that one carefully. I have to be there to protect my young charge, he would explain to them. I cannot allow one of my girls to come to harm. Of course, even if she survived the depraved ordeal in one piece it’d be unlikely they’d let her live to talk about it, or him for that matter, and in his mind he already had her death-price fixed, and the possibility of a blood-bound patron in the Inquisition was worth his own weight in gold. But despite all the risks, more than just about anything he very much wanted to be in that room during the performance, to see whom it was that had commanded it. He had his suspicions—rumors of King Colin Corwin Phalia’s private little rites had already reached his ear—but he had to know for certain.

  And finally, with a bit of coaxing, a bit of prodding, Alain had sealed the deal. “How do I know this isn’t some kind of trap, set for me by the Inquisition?” had asked Gilgwyr suspiciously. “What sign can you give me that you will be in as much danger as I, should I make this performance possible?” It didn’t take long for them to come to an understanding, and Alain had reluctantly knelt before him.

  “King of Heaven, forgive me, but I do this for you!” Alain had breathed right before his lips had slipped over Gilgwyr’s erect cock, already stiff to bursting at the image in his mind: the Feast of Herrata, the high arched halls of the Inquisition’s innermost chambers, the spring sunlight falling from stained-glass windows, temple bells ringing in the distance, the assembled Inquisitors and Templars in their ranks, the king of Dainphalia and his knights their honored guests, Gilgwyr as Master of Ceremonies, and in the center of the ring, his beautiful Palatian acrobat getting the wildest, hardest ride of her short, sweet life from a rutting, bellowing golden bull. And Gilgwyr had looked down, and been very happily surprised at the devout expression on Alain’s face as he worshipped on his knees.

  That particular bit of good fortune, however, was not the cause of Gilgwyr’s great joy that morning, but rather had merely been the feather in the cap of a string of good news. That string had begun a week prior, when Sequintus, the aging household enchanter of the Sleight of Hand, had trudged up the steps to Gilgwyr’s private chambers to report that a Sending had arrived from Harvald, written in their cipher upon the magic mirror in the enchanter’s workshop: The deed is done. We have it. No more than that was needed for Gilgwyr to break into a merry jig. He had spent the days prior to that Sending in dark doubt, for he’d gone to three separate fortunetellers who plied their trade in the back alleys behind Murky Street and the omens had been mixed and grim. Success, yes, but death, much death, and blood, much blood, and much trouble ahead, they’d hissed at him. He’d even crossed over to the Foreign Quarter to the
Street of Shrines and found a woman who claimed to be from Khael and had her perform a Reading of the Book of Dooms, but her report was no different.

  Sequintus himself would normally have spent his time contentedly brewing potents of almond oil to make the entertainers their most alluring, or brewing liveche leaves, mandrake root, and baalha weed into an elixir to increase the lusts of entertainer and customer alike. But in the days that followed that happy message, instead (and much to his great annoyance) he found himself trudging his rusty bones up and down the steps to Gilgwyr’s chambers to report more news. The first Sending was followed soon by others, indicating that Harvald and Stjepan were both safe and secure; that they were making with all due haste to return to the capital; and that they had the map and would attempt its translation upon their arrival in the city.

  With each Sending, Gilgwyr grew more and more excited. Three days ago the Sending from Harvald had made him positively giddy: I’ve convinced him. Summon Leigh for the expedition. And finally the Sending of the night before: We arrive tomorrow. Expect us at the Hand by midnight. Gather a crew.