“Faeswyn!”
“Sorry. It was just an observation. Well, anyway his groin is…damaged by the apparent bite of a glaon—”
Glaeonawyn held her hand up to stop her. “I understand.” She turned and walked down the hallway to the bedroom as Faeswyn followed behind her.
Glaeonawyn smiled at Theoch and Draedon, going over to Glywyn to give her a hug. “How’re your feeling today, love?”
“We’re fine. Just tired, and maybe a little stressed out with all of this,” Glywyn motioned to the men in the room.
“So,” Glaeonawyn said, turning to speak to Naihr. “I’m Glaeonawyn, clan of Rongaear. From what I’m told, you need my help?” Naihr nodded. “Okay. Everyone out, except for Faeswyn—”
“I’m not leaving him,” Naihr said with authority. “He’s my friend. He’s saved my life countless times. I won’t leave him until I know he’s going to be all right.”
Glaeonawyn seemed to think about that. “Fine. But if you stay, you’ll make yourself useful.”
“If he’s staying, then I’m staying,” Theoch said, staring intensely at Naihr.
“If Theoch’s staying, then I’m staying,” said Draedon.
“No!” Faeswyn said. “If he wanted to harm us, he would have already. His friend is injured, so, by the goddesses, let Glaeonawyn help him. Out!”
Theoch and Draedon, reluctantly, left the room with Glywyn trailing behind them after giving Faeswyn a warning glance. Glaeonawyn took a deep breath, and walked closer to the bed.
“Mud?” she asked. Naihr nodded. “Okay, let’s get this cleaned up. Now, I’m not sure what Faeswyn has told you”—she stared at Faeswyn as she began to take items out of her bag—“but many years ago, I was a young Mocmoran vaedra. I came to Quith with my husband, may the goddesses protect his essence, and I never left. Put this under his butt,” she said, handing Naihr a large, surgical-looking pad. “I have the gift of healing. Put these salts into the water, Faeswyn.” She handed Faeswyn a small silver container. “It’s not exactly magic. Vaedra use their auras. I can’t miraculously touch your friend and have him completely healed. It doesn’t work like that. Here.” She handed Faeswyn a brown vial. “Don’t open that until I tell you to. I have to see what I’m dealing with in order to heal. Now, I’m no expert on a man’s penis. I’ve seen my fair share over the years, but I’m no man, and more importantly, I’ve only seen what a fairy can do to a man once. I’m going to stitch him up, and then use my aura to hopefully heal what’s left. I heal by visualization. By knowing what a leg looks like, or an arm. A man’s penis is complicated—”
“Not so much,” Faeswyn said quietly, which garnered a stare from Glaeonawyn.
“A lot will be left up to him,” Glaeonawyn said. “How much he wants to live. I just didn’t want you to look at everything after it was done and think I hadn’t done what I said. Understood?”
“Understood,” Naihr said with a nod.
They cleaned the wound of all of the packed mud. With each step, Naihr asked Glaeonawyn what she was doing, what a certain liquid was, why she was doing what she was doing, until she finally threatened to kick him out unless he shut up and let her work.
Faeswyn looked down at Draeis’ groin, and was pleasantly surprised to see that it wasn’t as mangled and torn to shreds as she had first thought. It was apparent that he was endowed. She felt somewhat ashamed to notice the size of a man’s penis as he was lying semi-conscious in pain, but the lacerations and wounds notwithstanding, he had a very nice looking cock.
“Good,” Glaeonawyn said with a nod. “The muscle is intact. Most of the damage is to the flesh around his penis. I can stitch up the superficial wounds, and use my aura on the others. He has a deep wound under his scrotum, but,” she lifted up Draeis’ scrotum, and then smiled. “Nothing major. He’s lucky. But then there’s the possibility of infection. If he heals without much of that, I see no reason why he won’t have full use out of his penis when needed.”
“That’s good to know,” Faeswyn said, again under her breath.
Glaeonawyn turned to glare directly at her. “Faeswyn, could you please take the basin out and empty it. I need some fresh water.”
“Fine,” Faeswyn said, chancing another look at Draeis’ large, thick, mangled, yet oh-so delicious-looking package. She turned to look at Naihr. “I think he’ll be okay. You can let that breath out that you’ve been holding. I’m going to go and make some dinner if you’re hungry. I’ll check on him later, if you’d like.”
Naihr smiled and nodded to her. “Thank you. And, yes, I am kind of starved. Draeis and I haven’t had much to eat in the past few days. Thank you both,” he said, holding his hand out to Glaeonawyn.
“I wouldn’t get too comfortable yet,” Glaeonawyn said. “You have two men out there that have a lot of questions for you. I think, after you fill your belly, you need to ease their doubt. Go. I’m just going to dress his wound. Both of you. Out,” she said, shooing them out of the room.
Faeswyn stood alone with him in the darkened hallway, visibly aware of the closeness of their bodies. She took a deep breath and walked with him into the living room. For some odd reason, with a man lying in her bed with a mangled penis, a thousand questions unanswered about how the two men came to be there, and the tender thread of doubt troubling her about their trustworthiness, she was smiling.
Chapter Two
A half hour later, Glaeonawyn left and they all sat around the kitchen table eating the stew Faeswyn had set down in the center of the table. Glywyn kept giving her a look, but she tried not to notice. She knew what the look meant. It meant she should stop staring at Naihr like he was the main course. So when Faeswyn walked back into the kitchen for the bread, Glywyn made an excuse to go and help, following behind her.
“Don’t,” Faeswyn said, taking the bread out of the preparer.
“I haven’t said anything yet,” Glywyn whispered. “But since you’re expecting me to, I will. Why are you smiling at that man with googly, girlie eyes? We don’t know anything about him and his friend. He could be dangerous.”
“He looks dangerous,” Faeswyn said with a sly smile on her lips. “Like he could beat someone’s ass without batting an eyelid. He looks deliciously dangerous.”
“Faeswyn,” Glywyn said, pulling her over to the sink. “I know it’s been forever for you, but not these two. We find out what happened to them, make sure the other one isn’t going to die, and get them the hell out of here.”
“Draeis,” Faeswyn said. Glywyn frowned, shaking her head. “The other man’s name is Draeis. The one lying in the bed with all of the hair, and a very intimidating…wound.”
“You’re pitiful,” Glywyn said, grabbing the bread and heading back into the dining room.
They all sat back at the table and finished their meal in silence. When they were finished, they all sat in the living room, with Naihr sitting in one of the straight back chairs from the dining table as if he were being interrogated, which he probably was.
“So,” Draedon said, sitting on the sofa with his arm draped over Glywyn’s shoulders. “Tell us.”
Naihr frowned, staring curiously at his arm around Glywyn. “I-I thought she was your wife,” he said, pointing to Theoch.
Theoch smiled. “Glywyn is our wife. She loves both of us, and we are both in love with her. And that’s all you need to know about that.”
Naihr nodded, taking a deep breath. “Draeis and I work at the Gonwrath Tombs. We’ve been friends since we were kids. You know how things work in Morhais. We had no choice but to be a part of the royal guard.”
“Why is that?” Faeswyn asked, glancing at Theoch and Draedon, and then to Naihr.
Draedon sighed heavily. “Because of the genetic engineering,” he said, staring at Faeswyn.
“Oh, you’re going to have to explain this one to me before he continues,” Faeswyn said.
“It’s not like we’re made in some tube,” said Theoch. “When a highborn Morhais woman gets pregnant, the
y can have testing done to determine the gender of their baby at an early stage. A few weeks for some. Most Morhais women do that, highborn or not. It’s actually part of the standard care. But with highborn women, at the time of gender determination, they can be given special supplements for male babies, if they wish. The supplements guarantee that at puberty the young male will start to develop more muscle mass and grow taller, so they can specifically have a career in the royal guard, the military, the royal navy, or be a part of the royal court. It’s like assurance for the family to be connected to a specific elite status. Some Morhais women want the opposite. There are highborn women that don’t want their sons, or even their daughters to have any part of the royal guard because—”
“They don’t want them to fight in Gaeldos’ wars,” Faeswyn interrupted. “Makes sense.”
“So,” Naihr continued. “It was decided for us early on that we would be a part of the royal guard. We were assigned to the tombs right after training. We fought in a few battles here and there. The battle of Druith. The Skirmish of Vondotha. That was something…”
Both Draedon and Theoch chuckled at the mention of that battle, making Glywyn glare at them. They sobered quickly as Naihr continued. “But, for the most part, we were in the tombs. I kind of preferred it that way. Evil men being put in the tombs was one thing. They were supposed to be there. But then things started to change. People started coming to the tombs that Draeis and I knew had no business being there. People we knew. Neighbors. It all started about four years ago.”
“We know,” Draedon said. “That’s when Gaeldos began in earnest to look for his coveted vaedra.”
“Those families—people,” Theoch said, “fathers that wouldn’t submit their daughters for registration were sent to the tombs.”
Naihr shook his head. “They didn’t belong there. Gonwrath is the pit of depravity. The men there are the worst of humanity, if they’re human at all. We rarely walked among the prisoners. We patrolled on hovers over the prison population. If we saw something that needed further attention, we shot them with tranquilizing tracers, or…not.”
“What about their cells?” asked Faeswyn. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to just leave them in their cells? Just askin’.”
“There are none,” Theoch said to her.
Faeswyn stared at Theoch, and then at Naihr, and finally over at Draedon. “I don’t understand how you can have a prison without prison cells.”
“Gonwrath is a rock,” Naihr said. “It’s located deep in the desert of Tuboth.”
“The most goddess forsaken piece of land in Ai,” Theoch said with a grimace.
Naihr nodded. “Looking at it from the air, it looks like a flat rock set in the desert with about half a mile of empty space between the center rock and the outlying land. The prison itself isn’t visible. It’s beneath the rock. The only way to reach the bottom is through lifts. There are no cells because once a prisoner is brought to Gonwrath, they’re on their own. They’re taken to the bottom of the tomb and released. If they survive the night, they’re lucky. There’s a whole system of tunnels and infrastructure down there devised by the prisoners. There’s a hierarchy of sorts. Most of the men that live in the tombs—the prisoners—are murderers, rapists, child molesters…just the pure scum of humanity. They survive by doing what they do. Murder, rape, and worse. As guards, the only thing we did was gather the dead, and make sure they didn’t devise some way of escaping through the rock into more rock, or up the pillar of rock to the flat. That’s what the center rock is called.” Naihr’s attention seemed to focus on Faeswyn as she stared back at him. “Draeis and I had no problem with the men being brought to the tombs. Most of them deserved their sentence. But about five months ago, we started to see families being brought to the tombs.”
“Fathers and sons?” asked Glywyn.
Naihr shook his head as he continued to stare at Faeswyn. “No.” He swallowed hard. “Mothers, fathers, children—families.”
“What the fuck?” Draedon stood suddenly.
“We heard that Gaeldos was razing small villages and towns on the premise of them being sympathizers to a rebellion,” said Naihr. “I want to forget what I saw happen to some of those families in the tombs. I’m sure you can imagine.”
“They killed the families,” Faeswyn whispered more to herself than to anyone else.
“If they were lucky,” Naihr said. “Like I said, the prisoners were some of the most debased, feral pieces of scum known to Ai. Some factions of the population had resorted to…cannibalism.”
“Oh, shit,” Faeswyn breathed. “They ate the families?”
Naihr nodded, holding his head down for several seconds. He looked up at the rest of them. “We couldn’t do it any longer. But then Draeis heard that the village that he was from, Condagolar in the mountains west of Teveoch was to be razed. The people there were to be brought to Gonwrath. He needed to get his mother and sister out. We devised a plan to take them to the coast, east of Drisa to get on a transport to Jahlmerikahl.”
“What about your family?” Faeswyn asked him.
“I-I have none,” Naihr said. “Not anymore. My mother was a warrior that fought in the Battle of Two Rivers. She fell when I was only fifteen, may the goddesses protect her essence. My father was a Commander in the Seventh Guard, General Sehaldenorn, son of Buchospaen. He—”
“Your father was General Sehaldenorn?” Theoch said with interest.
“Yes,” Naihr said. “He fell last year at the Battle of Fundrae, may the goddesses protect his essence.” They all uttered the same phrase of reverence. “But Draeis and I had to get his mother and sister to safety. They’re now on their way to Jahlmerikahl. We were on our way back, heading through the wildwoods since we were AWOL from the guard. We were pretty sure they were out looking for us. The last communication we heard was that Gaeldos and Balaedras had issued death warrants on all deserters. We apparently weren’t the only ones. Our plan was to head back through the wildwoods, then head around to the coast to keep the attention off of us. We removed all of the tracking devises from the car. We removed them from our bodies,” he pointed to the small red mark near his right temple. “So we made a pit stop to relieve ourselves. I was on one side of the car, and Draeis was on the other. I looked over to tell him to hurry the fuck up, and”—he shrugged—“he wasn’t there.”
“That’s all it takes,” Theoch said to him.
“I’ve heard all of the talk about what to do with glaon fairies,” Naihr said. “We grow up listening to the stories. As boys, it’s kind of a joke that there are these fairies out there that want to suck on your cocks. But”—he shook his head—“this wasn’t funny. I started yelling for Draeis. I could hear them. I never thought they could be heard, but I heard them singing. I got to this clearing, and they were all dancing around. I didn’t look at any of them in the eyes. You look at one in their eyes, and you’re glamoured. Entranced. There was one that had Draeis. She was kissing him and working her way down to his crotch. I drew my tracer at the same time she opened her mouth. There were so many teeth,” he said, breathing hard. “I’ve never seen so many teeth in one mouth. She—She opened that mouth wider and then… Draeis started screaming, and I started shooting. I missed her, but I got others. One tried to come at me with her teeth bared, and I punched out at her.” He pointed to the cut on his hand.
“You killed them then? How many?” Draedon asked.
“I know I shot four,” Naihr said. “But this wasn’t some small band of fairies! There were at least thirty of them, and they had TCDs!”
Theoch shook his head. “No. Fairies are telepathic. They don’t need TCDs. You must’ve thought you saw—”
“No! I know what I saw! These fairies had TCDs! There was a head fairy, woman, person…” Naihr said in frustration. “I definitely heard her speaking to someone using the TCD. Portable TCDs, Theoch. I started shooting those that tried to come at me when I went to grab Draeis. I remember hearing one of them saying…” He
took a deep breath. “‘Four dead sisters is not the price.’ Then they were gone. I scooped up a huge hand of mud, shoved it down Draeis’ pants, and got the hell out of there.”
Faeswyn sat ramrod straight in her chair. “Did you slap him?”
Naihr stared curiously at her. “No. Why would I slap him? He was barely conscious from the pain.”
Faeswyn stood and ran into the bedroom with the rest of them following close behind her. “You didn’t slap him. Shit.”
“What the hell is going on?” Naihr asked.
“Draedon, sit him up,” Faeswyn said. She glanced at Naihr as she stood up on the bed straddling Draeis. “Fairies entrance, and their hold can continue unless you slap the entranced. You have to slap the shit out of them, or they’ll succumb to the fairies’ will. They’ll die, and then the fairies will come back and take him anyway. It’s like a homing device after you’re dead.” She slapped Draeis hard across the face. “He’s been entranced for a while, so I hope it isn’t too late.” Slap. “If you don’t break the trance, he’ll definitely die. It doesn’t matter if his wounds heal.” Slap. She continued to slap Draeis across the face, not feeling too confident that he would come out of it, but then his eyes fluttered open. She slapped him again, as hard as she could.
“Fuck! What the hell!” Draeis yelled out. “Oh, my cock! Oh, shit, it hurts! Naihr?”
Faeswyn fell, exhausted, onto the side of the bed. She was breathing heavily. “You’re welcome.”
“I’ll remember that,” Glywyn said.
“Baby, we would have to be entranced by a fairy,” Theoch said. “That’s a key point.”
Draeis looked around at them all. “What the hell is all of this? The last thing I remember is pissing by the car. And why does my dick hurt so much? Naihr?”
Naihr was smiling and nodding his head. “It’s a long story, brother. But say hello to the woman that just saved your life.” He waved to Faeswyn.
Faeswyn [The Maidens of Mocmoran 2] Page 3