"And?"
"And, you don't seem to have any."
"Ah, seem does seem to me to be the key word there, doesn't it? While you've detected no defenses, here we are, you unarmed, and I having unarmed you."
Tsu-Lao grimaced at the truth of Glynen's words.
"Pwslen-Ti expects you,” Glynen said, hoping against hope that this young man, physically less attractive, to Glynen's way of thinking, than the guy's lover, wasn't the weak link in the chain that was going to spoil everything. “Hopefully, you bring good news."
"The arrangements have been made. I've had the candle officially itemized within the roster of gifts I'm delivering to Dabu-Pol. That said, how do you propose to make him so entranced by but one wedding gift among so many?"
"Interest by the recipient is part of the magic, isn't it?” Glynen said, but he could only hope that was still the case.
"I've less faith in magic than Pwslen-Ti, my father having been a magician whose magic never got us anywhere as regards Dabu-Pol,” Tsu-Lao told Glynen: nothing Glynen didn't already know. “There has been little evidence of any magic as of late."
"And there will be even less evidence of it as time goes by,” Glynen told Tsu-Lao what the younger man already knew. “Times are changing but, at least as far as we're concerned, we've still time before this particular door bangs shut—if we're lucky. Are you feeling lucky?” Glynen could only hope that the door remained ajar until it was all over and done; other doors accessing lesser magic, had long ago banged shut in his face. For this bit of magic, too, it was only a matter of time before it was no more. “Or, maybe you're having second thoughts?” he suggested. Wouldn't that just be peachy-keen? Not! “Thinking, maybe, that your prematurely becoming an eventual suicide might deprive you of time better lived, especially as you're one of the lucky ones who can pass as dallin-de human?"
"Once Pwslen-Ti is en route, there'll be little left for me but revenge and suicide."
"Ah, yes. Your grandparents made dead by Dabu-Pol. Your mother made dead by Dabu-Pol. Your father made to suck Dabu-Pol's cock just before being made dead by Dabu-Pol. Your lover-before-Glynen slaughtered by Dabu-Pol. Most of your clan made dead by Dabu-Pol. You and Pwslen-Ti, because of some mutually shared aberrant gene that makes you seem temporarily civilized, even to Dabu-Pol, momentarily saved from extinction."
"And, what I wonder, has Dabu-Pol done to you and yours that had you search us out."
"Search you out?” Glynen was impressed. Maybe this one wasn't as stupid as he looked. “It's my recollection, that it was you who came to me."
"Wasn't it you, though, who incorporated the seed that grew the plant that blossomed the idea within us?"
"By magic, you mean?” Glynen wondered if it were really necessary for him to feign innocence. No matter that he had, by magic, implanted the seed, no magic presently existing would have been strong enough to get them all this far without willing participants all-around. “Magic so unable to do all that much, lately."
"Including what we propose?"
"Who knows? I do know that it is imperative that we keep to the schedule. Please try to think of that when I come to pull you two apart, both of you bemoaning that you need more time to complete your last-time sucking and fucking."
"Don't worry about us, old man. I've done my part to insert me and our candle into the gift-giver procession, and I'll do the rest that's required of me. Pwslen-Ti will do his part, I have no doubt whatsoever. You need only perform what you've been bought and paid for. Can you do that, magician (and I use that title lightly)?"
"What I can only do for certain is take you to Pwslen-Ti who awaits you.” Glynen wondered if Tsu-Lao had a big cock, and that was what had Pwslen-Ti so enamored of this jerk.
"Where's my weapon?"
"What need of a weapon among friends? It shall be retuned to you at departure. Now, if you'll come with me..."
"Wouldn't it be easier for you merely to transport us magically to wherever it is we're going?” Tsu-Lao asked after several long and sweaty minutes of traipsing through thick undergrowth."
"If you've not even the fortitude to endure a little hardship in trekking a forest for reunion with your lover, how might we expect you to succeed where it really counts?” Glynen suspected Tsu-Lao a whiner and disbeliever: not an encouraging combination.
Tsu-Lao trudged on in silence and, then, said, “Is it true you and Pwslen-Ti have had hot and heated sex?"
Glynen stopped, and it was only partly because of Tsu-Lao's query. Glynen wasn't as young as he used to be. He found all of this walking exhausting. If he had been able to perform transportation by magic, there was no doubt but that he would have done it.
"Are you jealous, then?” Glynen asked, curious about what made this man tick. In the game they played, Tsu-Lao was an important piece to whom Glynen had possibly not devoted nearly enough time.
"Pwslen-Ti said sex would be part of the bargain. He said all magicians demanded sex, and you would be no exception. That said, I can't believe the two of you actually..."
"You think I am too old,” Glynen divined. “You think that I'm not particularly attractive. You think that you would never be persuaded to let me suck your cock for love, for money, for candle—or vice versa?"
Glynen didn't have to get his answer to see it written all over the smug young bastard's I'm-more-of-an-enemy-to-Dabu-Pol-than-you-are-any-day face.
"Would you like to see the magic, then, that convinces that even you can be made unable to resist my eating your dick, if and when I was really interested?” Immediately, he converted into giant Gee-Cat. He opened wide his salivating jaws and roared. Quickly back again (he could no longer hold such illusions for long), he was more than a little embarrassed that he'd expended so much time and energy in making Tsu-Lao literally wet his pants; Glynen didn't mention the pee-staining of Tsu-Lao's trouser leg or the piss running into one of the warrior's shoes. He did say, “Of course, in that format, I'd probably eat not just your cock but the rest of you as well."
At cave complex, Glynen provided Tsu-Lao with bathing facilities. It would have been hardly suitable for Tsu-Lao and Pwslen-Ti to have their last sexual encounter accompanied by the stink of urine, although Glynen had actually heard of men turned on by golden showers.
Upon their joining Pwslen-Ti, Glynen could tell, just by looking, that Pwslen-Ti anticipated sex with this young man, and lover, more than he ever had anticipated sex with Glynen, no matter how attractive the magician's many guises.
"I shall leave you two, then,” Glynen consented. “Just, please, remember that we are on a tight timetable that could easily compress for consequences detrimental to our combined goal. So, watch the watch and gauge your spurting cream accordingly."
He left and pulled the door shut between them.
"I don't like him,” Tsu-Lao told his lover. “He's as arrogant as a magican with full powers and at his prime."
"Nevertheless, he's necessary,” Pwslen-Ti said and opened the robe that held the nakedness of his body. “He still has powers your father had lost long ago."
Tsu-Lao, who had been robed, too, since his bath, unfastened the softly clinging material. His cock stood tall and hard as any of the stone-juttings he'd passed in the cave to get there.
Two stiff dicks met, rubbed, caressed, kissed, even as the rest of Tsu-Lao and Pwslen-Ti's nakedness met, rubbed, caressed, kissed. Spit was exchanged by hungry mouths; pre-cum goo was exchanged by copiously leaking dicks.
"Fuck me!” Pwslen-Ti commanded. “I want to feel genuinely alive, even this close to extinction."
They fucked hard and fast and with all the finesse (or lack thereof) of two young and studly animals in heat. They sucked so much cock, plugged so much ass, ate so much asshole, that there was no way either's cock could have revived for repeats when Glynen was once again at the door.
Glynen escorted Tsu-Lao to another room.
"Drink this,” Glynen instructed, and he provided a goblet with crimson-red contents.
<
br /> "What is it?” Tsu-Lao queried. Despite everything, he was still leery of the magician, still wondering if Glynen still had the necessary magic to carry out what all three of them wanted.
"It's something that will keep you pleasantly occupied while I do what I have to do, as Pwslen-Ti does what he must do. It'll make sure that you do what you have to do, at least for most of your remaining stay here at the cave. I have no time to devote to entertaining you, and I've decided to use this by way of babysitter."
"I'm no baby!” Tsu-Lao was indignant.
"Of course, I meant studly warrior butch-as-they-come sitter,” Glynen amended facetiously.
Tsu-Lao drained the liquid. He'd expected it to be bitter; it wasn't. It was ... it was ... it was ... He wasn't sure what it was, so quickly did it take control of him and speed him off to somewhere so pleasurably erotic that even Tsu-Lao's fuck-and-suck-spent pecker found resurrection sooner than the young man could ever have thought physically or mentally possible.
* * * *
Glynen completed the incantation that united the weapon of choice (a garunma-wo-gun), with its warrior (Pwslen-Ti). Hopefully, the formula still could produce results. Who knew? No one would likely know for sure until the moment arrived when, once and for all, it was proven to have worked or not to have worked at all.
"Eat this,” Glynen instructed and provided what appeared to be a bit of moldy bread. As Pwslen-Ti ate, without question, he was given insight by the magician. “It will numb the nerve ends so you won't feel the pain. However, the spell is specific in that it requires you to enter, voluntarily, the cauldron under your own steam."
The cauldron was a large one, suspended by four large and heavy chains, ceiling-anchored, which kept the iron container suspended about a foot off the floor. Another four chains were connected to the pot's bottom and extended to attachments at each corner of the room.
"Maybe you should proceed inside now,” Glynen insisted and moved the stepping stool into position. What with the way spells were failing left and right, even when recipes were correctly followed, failure would assuredly result if a formula were followed incorrectly from the get-go.
Knowing the fungus was quick-acting, Glynen provided Pwslen-Ti a hand to within a foot of the cauldron, released him there, stood ready to offer a slight and unobtrusive balancing if Pwslen-Ti somehow looked on the verge on not making it, as required, at least as far as the lip of the container.
With surprisingly exceptional balance, Pwslen-Ti stepped up and into the pot. He sat down in its tepid water that came just up and over his chin. He laid his head back against the metal and shut his eyes.
Glynen pulled a lever. The portion of the insulated floor immediately beneath the pot slid it to one side to reveal earth's crust so connected to the molten interior of the planet that the surface rocks were red-hot and smoking.
"How do you feel?” Glynen asked.
"Woozy."
"You're supposed to feel woozy,” Glynen said and stepped farther away from the heat that was, even then, singeing his eyebrows. He sat in a chair in one corner.
When Pwslen-Ti was boiled down, Glynen commenced the harvesting of the young warrior's rendered fat for soul-infused candle.
* * * *
"What is it that the young man, over there, so lovingly cradles?” Dabu-Pol, bridegroom and imperial leader of the dallin-de, asked from his throne. “A candle?"
The kow-towed Tsu-Lao, who looked so much a dallin-de at that moment that he fooled even always-looking-for-imposters Dabu-Pol, tried not to look too surprised and impressed that Glynen had predicted the wedding gift would be singled out if the spell was still viable.
"Yes, Your Grace. Made fragrant with the attar of the jasmilrose, seldom smelled in that the contributing tree is so seldom found or seen."
"Attar of jasmilrose is supposedly aphrodisiacal, is it not?” Dabu-Pol's eyes went all squinty, and his thin lips pursed.
Tsu-Lao was again impressed. He'd never heard of it before Glynen insisted that he mention it if given the opportunity. “Actually, Your Grace, I've merely heard it mentioned as an enhancer.” That was another line fed to him by Glynen. “If a man's cock doesn't have the starch to begin with, this will not provide it, merely supply additional enjoyment for those who can already do the doing."
"A very clever man, you are,” Dabu-Pol conceded. “Did you suspect that you were about to lose your head because of insinuated derogatory reflection upon my virility?"
"No, Your Grace,” Tsu-Lao lied, furious at Glynen for having put him in such a vulnerable situation wherein everything could well have been lost by the swing of an ax. “Who is there anywhere who can question your virility which has already been proven time and time again?"
"You, there!” Dabu-Pol pointed to one of his servants who stood attendance on the sidelines. “Take that candle to my matrimonial bedchambers, and have it lit just prior to my arrival. I would test the insinuation that attar of jasmilrose can make a virile man even more virile."
* * * *
The flame at the end of the thinly tapered wood splinter began its approach of the candlewick as soon as the servant in charge heard the wedding party enter through the opened doors at the far end of the outside hallway.
That the candle didn't immediately get lit was the result of a distracting sudden commotion, again from the hallway, that insinuated all was not as it should be.
As the servant stood frozen to the spot, the flame of the taper seemed to try its best to extend as far as the wick, and vice-versa.
The door banged open, and the matrimonial chamber was suddenly filled with the chaos of a frightened bride and a bloody bridegroom. The latter was manhandled by two soldiers, one at his feet, one at his shoulders, who hoisted the bleeding-from-his-mouth imperial leader of the dallin-de up on the wedding bed. Pristine white sheets quickly turned red and not from ruptured virginal hymen.
The doctor, likewise part of the entourage, bent over the bed and over his master who was laid out on it, and proclaimed, with much wringing of hands, “Zuefulin poisoning!"
The servant, still with candle-lighting splinter in hand, felt the flame which, having burned so much wood, now anticipated consuming his fingers. He squealed in pain and dropped what little remained of the ignited taper.
Dabu-Pol's soliders, suspecting the servant's response in someway related to their leader now dying, spontaneously reacted with two deadly sword thrusts to the poor man's gut. The servant went down in a heap atop a now-gutted flame and accompanying miniscule ashes.
* * * *
Donald Perry steps back from the minor adjustment he's just made to the exhibit, and takes a look at what he hopes are the final results. His judgment is that it looks good, very good, but he checks each of the five photographs in hand to be sure he has all of the pieces pretty much placed how they'd been positioned when originally unearthed.
Of course, neither he nor any other museum curator on the tour route has been given the textiles or skeletons. The former have been withheld because of their delicacy and danger of additional disintegration; the latter have been withheld because of increasingly negative public responses to putting any human remains on display. Aside from that, though, everything looks right—for the private viewing that evening; for the public viewing tomorrow and for two months’ running.
Donald considers himself as having completed a job well done, not only in setting up the display but in having finagled it in the first place. Galahad, New Mexico, isn't exactly the end-all be-all town in the center of the world, even if Gallahad University does boast an alumni that includes three presidents, two vice-presidents, sixty-five senators, and one-hundred-two congressmen; none of whom has given Donald the helping hand his old school- and frat-mate, Charles Reginald, has provided in dealing with all of the red-tape attached to this career-crowning moment. Charles’ people know people who know people who were persuaded to include Galahad, New Mexico, in the touring Mystery King and Queen Exhibition itinerary.
Mystery, in that scholars are still trying to determine the identity of the duo decked out in such regal splendor and with such accompanying spectacular artifacts. Even the candle, among the funerary cache, is an exquisite masterpiece; the candle placed, as it was originally, to the rear of the treasure box that overflows gold and gem-encrusted objects. None of the engraved runes can be read. Only carbon dating provides the clue that the two parenthesized by all that finery had lived at a time long thought barren of any and all aspects of civilization. Speculators are even ballyhooing them as Atlantans, while those within the scientific community, who should known more, didn't know more. The quality of the textiles (missing here) and metal works (several examples present) are simply extraordinary and, like everything else, inexplicable. It all might well have been dropped from outer space; that theory, too, is making the rounds.
There is a knock on the wall at one end of the heavy curtain that presently keeps the display concealed from the long viewing gallery beyond. Donald turns toward his assistant, Carol Zynard, who has Donald's stepdaughter, Amantha, in tow.
Amantha is such a lovely and delicate child: all ivory-white complexion, big blue eyes, and a decidedly ethereal quality that not just a few, but everyone, always comments upon. She is always polite, always courteous, never prone to anger or to throwing hissy-fits (all character traits appreciated by adults who adore her for possessing them). Her blond hair often catches whatever the light that's available and, like now, braids it within her silky strands to provide the illusion that, "My God, the little angel even has her own halo!" Equally fascinating about her is her clairvoyance. At age three, she told her father he would come into a good deal of money; shortly, thereafter, a distant uncle had died. At age four, she cried for the loss of a playmate who was soon to die from a hit-and-run. At age five...
"Shall we wait for you in the hall, then?” Carol suggests and interrupts Donald's runaway train of thought.
"No, do come in,” he insists. “I think it's as finished as it's going to be."
"It is truly spectacular, isn't it,” Carol says, and it isn't a question. Whoever these two, they had been buried with great flare, pomp, and circumstance. So much gold hadn't even been unearthed in Tut's tomb.
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