Chapter Eleven
Three gentle swings of the flogger. Slap. Slap. Slap. Three gentle blows landing in succession on his back, his ribs, his outer thigh. Krais let the strands slither over his skin, soft suede dyed a reddish purple with the help of the sea snails that populated the local coastlines. The color complemented the tanned skin of his inner thighs.
She had a whole rainbow of the things, each one made of a different length, heft, weight, material, and color. The one with the stretchy sap strands came in a yellowish-white, and stung hard but landed with very little thud behind its lightweight mass. The one dyed red had angular metal beads clamped around its stiff leather strands, designed to raise welts, even perhaps a little blood. The blue one was nothing but fluffy strips of dyed rabbit fur. Green meant it was made out of chain-joined lengths of round, thin bamboo, like a fanciful threshing flail in miniature. Black, of course, was ceremonial, and rarely used for actual punishments.
Swinging the flogger again with his other hand, he whipped it up over his shoulder, smacking the strands onto the other half of his back on the left side, the opposite ribs, the left side again for his thigh. Whack, whack, whack. Unfortunately, the strands were too long. They struck spots too far from where he wanted to aim.
Krais stopped the tool, swept the finger-wide lengths of suede into a bundle, and folded them back on the handle. Reversing his grip so that it included the bundle as well as the leather-wrapped handle, he tried striking himself again. Much better. Much more control. He liked being in control, even of his own flogging.
The proof of how much he liked it lay in his lap. Kneeling on her bed with his kilt hem rucked up against his hips meant his erection was hidden in the folds. Well, somewhat hidden; it stood up visibly, pressing against the fabric in a distinct, pointed lump. One that twitched against the blue cotton of his kilt more than enough to stimulate the tip with each jostle of the flogger striking elsewhere on his body.
“You hesitate again, but you’re not adjusting your grip. What are you thinking right now?” Pelai asked softly. Coaxingly, unlike his father’s more brutal-sounding commands, his mother’s strident demands. Her tone invoked intimacy in his ears. Confidence.
She didn’t demand that he flog himself more, didn’t demand an explanation for the pause in his actions. She just asked what he thought in that moment.
Krais decided to tell her. “I am wondering what this thing will feel like if I remove my kilt.”
“Then do so, and find out,” she urged. Not with a heavy hand, but gently. An encouragement, not a command.
He slanted her a look. Pelai sat at the head of her bed, pillows mounded up behind her back. Still clad in her black and gilded Disciplinarian leathers, knees drawn up, but with the skirt tucked down between her thighs. Her hands, clasped on her stomach, drew his attention. They looked tense. Her dark brown eyes gleamed in the suncrystals lighting the room
“Are you . . . enjoying this? Watching me do this?”
“Do you want me to say yes?” she asked him.
“I want you to be honest with me, as you asked me to be honest with you.”
“Then I am enjoying it very much,” Pelai confessed. “Are my reactions that obvious? I could tone them down if they’re disturbing you.”
Krais shook his head on instinct before rational thought caught up. “No. Don’t suppress yourself. I . . . like knowing when my partner enjoys something. I really like it.”
“Then I would enjoy watching you experiment with the flogger on your naked pen,” she murmured, using the euphemism instead of the more blunt yet, ironically, longer version of the name for it.
Nodding, he set the tool down, then reached for the buttons of the waistband holding the pre-stitched pleats of his kilt in place. One set of buttons for the outer wrap, on the left side of his waist. A second set for the inner, over on the right. Fabric slid against flesh, sucking some of the air out of his lungs. He unwrapped the material gently, almost gingerly, and hissed again when it scraped along the sensitive head of his shaft.
“Goddess . . . !” The exclamation escaped in a hiss, since the side hem caught at the last moment, adding extra sensation. His shaft bobbed free, swaying and twitching a little while he splayed the kilt material out to either side, like rectangular blue wings.
“Excited?” she purred.
“You know I am,” Krais growled, blushing.
“Own it,” she ordered, her eyes dark yet bright, her soft lips curved in an eager little smile.
For a moment, he wasn’t certain how to do that. Blood throbbing, he cupped the underside of the shaft, stroked upward with his palm just a little, and fumbled his other hand along the bedding, until he shifted the kilt folds away from the flogger hilt, and picked it up. He had to let go of himself long enough to catch the strands and double them over against the handle, but that was fine; they would have been too long once again, otherwise.
With the memory of sueded leather dragged against his fingertips, Krais cupped himself once again, getting ready to strike. His skin felt soft as sueded fabric, hot like sun-warmed wood, hard as his thoughts. Adjusting his grip on the flogger, he swung it a little, hesitating, bracing himself. He remembered how much it had hurt when the lust philtre potion had driven him to chafed madness . . . and yet how much it still aroused him to be hurt like that.
Swirling his wrist, he swung the suede strands around, and smacked them into his shaft, his palm, his fingers; a few whipped around and stung his left thigh. An explosion of sensations raced through him as he jumped at the blow, icy heat, electricity, stinging, and yes, lust. “Oh!”
The strands trickled over the stinging lines they had laid across his flesh, lines that while not even all that hard-laid were still now more sensitive than other, unstruck swaths of skin. Deliberately dragging the flogger away, he groaned under the sensations, tickling, scraping, throbbing, arousing . . .
He struck again, just a swirl of his wrist, nothing halfway to hard, but even as he flinched and hissed, it scratched an itch inside that he hadn’t known he had. Not until just over six months ago, at least. His left hand slowly stroked the underside of his flesh. His right hand swung again, another jumping twitch, an explosion of feelings, the closest of which had been the fingernails of past lovers scraping down his back, digging into his skin.
Sensations beyond the ordinary enthralled him. A touch of pain, like hot spice on meat, enriching and changing the flavors of the meal beyond recognition. As he angled the strands of the flogger along his skin, he tested his thigh, his chest and shoulder, and his shaft again. The tickling trail felt good over the unflogged parts of his skin, but wherever he had struck recently, the touches seemed magnified several times in their intensity.
An odd sound reached his ears. A sort of furtive sound, rustling with a very faint yet rhythmic squeak. Opening eyes that had drifted shut while he explored his sense of touch, Krais found himself looking at Pelai. She had lifted her left hand in a fist, and it looked like her teeth clamped onto her foreknuckle. Her other hand . . . that originated the sound. Her fingers had rucked up her soft, pleated leather kilt, had wormed beneath the white cotton of her fundo, and . . .
He shuddered, watching her stroke. His gaze fastened on her actions, her dark curls just barely visible next to her undulating hand, the white edge of her undergarment, the faint rubbing of that leather against itself, source of the squeak. Krais fancied he heard a soft, wet sound as those fingers worked her flesh over and over. Believed he caught a whiff of her musky scent as she fingered herself. All taking place while she watched him arousing himself with her violet suede flogger.
A few moments after he stopped moving, her glazed eyes refocused with a blink. Blushing hard enough to be seen through the deep tan of her cheeks, Pelai rolled her eyes. “ . . . What?” she hissed with a somewhat defensive edge to her words. Her fingers stilled for a moment, or rather, slowed to a soft, almost lazy circling movement he couldn’t completely see. “You told me I shouldn’t suppress reactions. This is me, unsuppressed. I really like watching you do that to yourself.”
Krais blinked, but couldn’t fault the logic in her actions. “Alright,” he agreed huskily. “I . . . do you want to do this to me?”
He offered her the flogger, but to his surprise, she shook her head quickly, her knees closing her thighs around the wrist tucked between them. “Nope!”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because I promised you I wouldn’t touch you tonight,” she explained promptly. “I keep my word. I will not touch you. Tonight is about you exploring your new sense of sexuality.”
“I appreciate your honor,” he murmured, eyeing her askance, “but that makes me feel more like you’re denying me to torment me, to add to my experiences.”
“That wasn’t my original plan, but if you wish, I can twist it that way,” she offered. Her fingers moved.
“I’m not used to having my desires thwarted when a lady expresses interest in me,” Krais returned, holding her gaze. He flicked the flogger handle idly, swaying the strands so they lightly slapped his chest, more of a pattering than a thwack. Her gaze dipped from his eyes to his pectoral muscle, and she licked her lips. Inspiration struck. “Why don’t we torment each other, by seeing how much we can arouse each other without . . . touching?”
“Like, a competition?” Pelai asked. “The last one to climax . . . ?”
Shaking his head, Krais looked at her upraised thighs. At the hand still tucked under the folds of her half-askew loincloth. “If I can get you to climax without touching you, excite you enough from what you’re seeing that you stroke yourself to the peak of pleasure, I get to lick you clean.”
“That’s not fair,” Pelai murmured, pouting a little. “I promised I wouldn’t touch you, tonight. What will be my prize for you climaxing first, if I cannot touch you in any way?”
“If I can get myself to climax from a flogging, then you get to have me lick you to your climax?” he offered. Krais lifted his chin at her groin. “It’s my favorite thing to do with women. I told you it’s my favorite thing, downstairs. Not in so many words,” he amended, reflecting on their rather dry discussion of his preferences while finishing their plates of artistically arranged food, “but I implied it.”
“But that would involve touching,” Pelai pointed out. “As would you licking me clean . . . however enticing that is.”
“We’re going to touch each other anyway, since you haven’t arranged for a separate bed for me to sleep in,” he pointed out. “At least, I presume I’ll be sleeping next to you again . . . being used as your hugging pillow, as I was last night? Plus, you said you wouldn’t touch me. This would be me touching you. Your promise would remain intact.”
Pelai blushed again, but she smiled and lolled her head back against the pillows. “ . . . Alright. Sartorlagen.”
Instantly, almost all of her clothing vanished, save only for the anklet resting near her left foot, and of course her forearm bracers. Those stayed, hiding the tattoos of her calling. Everything else vanished, even down to the tie holding back her hair.
Nothing on Krais’s body vanished, but then technically—aside from his own contraceptive anklet—he was naked already. His kilt still rested against his buttocks, but with it unwrapped to either side, it left his body bared to her view. As for his view, when she spread her bent legs open like the wings of a brown, tattoo-traced butterfly, he had a very full view of her, too. Krais didn’t bother to look around for her garments; that spell was a common one, widely known across the whole world, and they would no doubt be found later in a neatly folded pile, resting on some flat, horizontal surface.
Right now, the folds and valleys of her loins held his full attention. He leaned forward, getting ready to crawl up between those splayed knees. Watched as the fingers of one hand parted them, with the first two fingers of the other poised over that delicious dark rose peak. Heard her clear her throat.
“I’m not rubbing again until you start flogging, you know . . . and just as I’m not allowed to touch you, you’re not allowed to touch me, either . . . at least, not until one of us wins,” she reminded him. Pointedly. Fingers caressing in a little circle, but only doing so a good two inches from her actual, glistening flesh. “Flog away, if you want me to frig.”
“Damn you, woman,” Krais murmured, but without any heat. Licking his lips, he stroked his shaft, but didn’t strike it. Instead, he flicked his right arm up, swinging the dozens of suede strands in an arc over his right shoulder. “You win . . .”
They slapped into his back with mild strength, before slithering forward along his skin, only to be flicked backward again in a lightly stinging arc over his left shoulder. Drag and swing, slide and slap; each time, his head tilted to one side or the other to avoid hitting his face, his ears. His braid slithered back and forth, too, making him shiver from the combination of sensations.
Sight, the vision of Pelai, naked and glorious, her sun-browned body covered in colorful tattoos undulled by the hue of her skin . . . her fingers swirling and stroking at whatever speed he flogged himself. He controlled those touches, Krais realized, and flogged faster. Smell, the scent of her lust, rising from between her butterfly-winged thighs, drawn up and out to either side to give him an excellent view. Sound, the way her breath panted, faint enough that his ears just had to strain to hear it over the smack and slap of him blushing his back with each whap.
Taste, the scent of her musk, sweet and feminine, coated his tongue when his lips parted. His breath panted the air in and out through mouth and nose, down into his lungs only to rush back out again. Feel, oh, he could feel the arousal buildling between them. Rising, spiraling upward, growing in its intensity. The gentle blows of earlier now had to compete via their force and speed with the stroke and the swirl of those beautiful fingers. She no longer bit her other hand by the knuckle; instead, those digits held her flesh parted to his gaze, parted so that nothing but the fingers of her other hand impeded his view of her frigging herself to the sight of him flogging his back.
A good blush had risen up on his back in two patches; he felt them, hot and tingling, bouncing under each blow. Each time he tilted his head to either side, that single braid slithered back and forth, the tip of the plait tickling along the uppermost edge of each patch reddened by his blows. With each retreating flick, the strands flung themselves the other way, swinging down to spatter against his thighs. Against the cock he still held out, displayed on his left palm, when his thumb and fingers weren’t stroking it.
Somewhere in there, he had risen up on his knees. Yes, it hurt when the suede smacked into his shaft—it hurt a lot more when one of the strands managed to get past his hand to strike his sac—but that pain was adrenaline, was excitement, all of it paired to her fingers and her loins, and oh Goddess, she cried out and thrust two fingers into her depths, plunging them in and out in the lust roused from watching him flog away.
Pelai lost their little bet first. That was, if “lost” meant climaxing with a keening cry, both hands working madly between her folds, one set of fingers now plunging, the other rubbing frantically until she shuddered. She writhed a little, rocking on the pillows supporting her back, liquid . . . Gods and Goddesses, liquid squirted from her depths. Krais stared, flogger forgotten for a brief second. He had heard of the phenomenon, but to see it . . . !
Abandoning the sueded strands, he dove forward, crawling awkwardly on hands and knees to get there, to press his face into her fragrant mess, tongue swiping and lapping with frantic hunger. Her fingers shifted from her folds to his face, leaving behind musky dampness on his cheeks before digging into his plaited hair, pulling him in close. Welcoming each suckle and lick with gasped encouragements and growled commands, she urged him to drive her up higher, higher—she shattered again, bucking her hips into his face, his fingers replacing hers in thrusting and fluttering, suckling lips having succeeded the stroking of her fingers quite well.
Everything went well, period, until one of her hands slipped from his hair to his shoulders, her fingers curling and digging inward. Scraping across the blush-reddened flesh. Scoring him in just enough pain mixed with the heady pleasure of her dew flooding his senses. Groaning, Krais humped once, twice, thrice against the bedding, and spent himself in toe-curling pleasure.
Gradually, he relaxed. Lapped gently, even fondly at her folds, breath puffing in and out between tastes of her dessert-like salty-sweetness. Finally, he twisted onto his side with a sated groan, pillowed his head on her right thigh and gave the other thigh a silly, satisfied smile. “ . . . That was incredible. Mmm . . . far better than when I flogged myself to try to get through the lust philtre’s effects . . .”
Reaching up, Krais patted her left thigh, then gently caressed the soft skin of it. She had nice muscles underneath, though not quite the sort a fully trained Painted Warrior would have wielded. She had a lot of the same tattoos, helpful bits of magic that allowed her to track down enemies of the nation, rogue mages who refused to behave and cooperate with their neighbors . . . but truth was, she hadn’t been sent out in the last three years on fugitive hunts, and hadn’t needed to keep in that kind of top shape. She had some muscles, a decent level of strength, but apprenticing to the Elder Mage and learning how to manage the more mundane organizational tasks required by a government department hadn’t required such things.
In short, her thigh made for a very nice pillow, with the right mix between firm and soft. And the way she stroked his hair felt wonderful. Soothing. A thought idly crossed his mind. “Is this ‘aftercare’ . . . ? Mother usually handled that for the subservients who wanted floggings and so forth in return for their service.”
Pelai mumbled something, then dragged in a deep breath and managed an intelligible reply. “It could be . . . What do you normally do after lovemaking? Cuddling, you said?”
“Mmm, yes . . .” Dredging up a bit of strength, Krais managed to push up onto his hands and hip, then onto his knees. Shifting around her legs, which she closed with a soft groan, he flopped down on his left side, snuggling up to her right where she still lay among the three pillows.
A grunt, a twist, and she managed to get onto her side, her arm flopping around his waist. He draped his around her arm and back, his other arm burrowing straight up under the pillows until it touched the headboard, then he bent it so that his forearm and hand aimed more or less straight up for the time being. Hers did something similar, and their fingers brushed, hands and wrists sagging together.
Pelai scooted a little closer, her breasts brushing his chest, her thighs touching his own. Knees, too. She started to say something, but froze with her lips parted. Lifting her head, she stared at his shoulder, her expression shifting to a look of dismay. “Goddess! I scratched you!”
“Hmm?” Krais asked.
“I scratched you!” she repeated, pushing up onto her elbow a little. “I drew blood! I wasn’t supposed to do anything to you!”
Okay, that ruined his afterglow. Shifting his hand to her hair, Krais dug his fingers through her plaited locks and gripped her head. Firmly catching her attention with the move, he looked into her nearest eye and said bluntly, “I loved it. That’s what made me climax. And if you say you’re sorry, I will spank you, judgment of penance or no. Do I make myself clear?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Yes, you make yourself clear, but you have no—“
“—But nothing,” he overrode her, and tugged her back down onto the pillows. “I consented. Enthusiastically. Now, lie down and cuddle with me. Or you’ll end up ruining my aftercare, and I shall complain mightily.”
She eased back down under his touch, awkwardly lay there a long moment . . . then snorted softly. “ . . . And who, exactly, would you complain to? You cannot complain to the Elder Disciplinarian without revealing the fact that this wasn’t a true punishment for you.”
“I shall complain mightily to you. And if that does not suffice, then I shall . . . I shall complain to . . . uh . . . “
“You cannot complain to Menda, because you told me yourself that the Goddess has forbidden you from protesting about your punishment,” Pelai pointed out smugly. “She didn’t say it was limited to a true punishment, either.”
“Then I shall complain to Nauvea,” he decided firmly.
“Now-who?” Pelai asked.
“Nauvea,” he repeated, trying to get the dipthong pronunciation right. Despite there being thousands of miles between the two lands, at least Katani had some decent conjoined vowels in it, unlike the dreadfully straightforward pronuniciation of most dialects in Aian. “She’s the Goddess of Dreaming. The smallest of the Gods at the Convocation. Ancient Goddess of the Duchess of Nightfall, who is a Seer who somehow skipped two hundred years into the future, from the end of the last Convocation to this one, and is now the High Priestess of the new Convocation.
“Don’t ask me how that happened, or how it works, because I don’t really know,” Krais added. “Foren paid more attention to all that than I did, I think. I’m not sure if Gayn was paying attention or not. His arm was still hurting at that point from the first break, though it was healing.”
“And what were you paying attention to instead?” Pelai asked him.
The way she nuzzled her face against his shoulder and chest as she spoke distracted him a little, but not by much. Enjoying it, he tried to remember. “Resentment, I think. Anger. And then . . . my Goddess spoke to me, and all else dropped away. It was still there, but it was unimportant. Background details.”
“A life-changing experience?” she inquired, her tone mild but somehow a little envious-sounding.
“Without hyperbole,” he confirmed.
She contemplated that for a bit, then asked, “Why Now-vay-uh? Why complain to Her?”
“Because what we just did was a daydream come true, but you’re trying to spoil it,” Krais told her. “And Nauvea is the Goddess of all forms of dreaming, daydreams as well as sleeping dreams.”
“Ah.” She nuzzled him a little, then sighed. “With the rain falling, it’s a bit too muggy tonight. The spells on these tenements keep the interiors cool, but don’t do much for the humidity. I don’t want even a sheet right now. Do you?”
“Just you,” Krais murmured. “Shall we settle down to sleep?”
“ . . . I should make you clean up the damp spot you left on the bedding,” she muttered. “My calf is resting in it.”
“If you don’t like damp spots, then you should clean it yourself,” Krais told her. When she lifted her head with an annoyed look, he reminded her, “You blocked my magic. If you want me to clean it up, I’ll have to use a damp rag, and that’ll leave an even bigger wet spot.”
“Ugh.” Muttering one of the mundic-class of cleaning spells, she cleansed the blanket underneath them. And their bodies, where they rested against the bedding.
“Careful with that,” Krais murmured. “Cleaning cantrips are a bit harsh on the skin. You might arouse me all over again.”
She started to reply, but a distinctly upset maaao! echoed through the closed bedroom door. Sighing, Pelai snapped her fingers, opening the door with a touch of magic. Meowing again, Purrsus trotted over to the bed, leaped up onto it, and sniffed at their feet. With a huffed sneeze, he rubbed his face against her toes, part gesture of affection, part attempt to self-scratch his itches.
Content, Pelai snuggled into Krais. “All is now right with my world.”
“You have a weird cat,” her bedpartner muttered . . . and winced when the Temple cat started rubbing his black and silver muzzle against the Painted Warrior’s toes, not just those of his mistress.
“Something wrong?”
“The bottoms of my feet are ticklish . . . and if you ever tell my brothers, I will—eeee!” Krais whined, gritted his teeth, shifted his legs so that his feet pressed flat into the bedding, and stated through gritted teeth, “I will strangle you and drop your body into one of the ornamental lakes, with rocks for weights!”
“That would be a waste of a perfectly good torture session, so it’ll never happen, I promise,” she reassured him. “I’d rather just tickle you myself with the blue flogger . . . and make you stroke yourself while I did so, so I could watch.”
“ . . . I think I’m actually looking forward to that,” Krais murmured after a long, long moment of thought.
The only reply he got from the brand new Elder Mage was a sleepy hum of agreement. And a soft. rolling purr from her cat, when Purrsus stopped trying to love their feet with his face and instead began grooming his silvery-white upper chest, oblivious to their naked state.
Frankei Strongclip—or rather, Fran these days, since the –ei ending was far too Mekhanan to pass unnoticed in foreign lands—came down the stairs of the house the Brotherhood rented, to find his nose assaulted by the pungent, stinging scent of burnt rice porridge, and his ears assaulted by the voices of half a dozen males arguing. Baritones and basses and tenors all mixed together, making it hard to tell who was on what side. He wended his way past the cheap benches that came with the house, crowded with men of all ages, and poked his head into the kitchen to see if there was anything left to eat.
“—but I don’t want to be beholden to a woman!”
“That’s the idea! We know she’s a fake Goddess, she’s not real, so we’ll never actually put any real faith into her manifestation!”
“And what’s wrong with having a proper patriarch for our order?”
“Why do we have to have a patriarch?”
“Because we’re men! And men were made to rule!”
“Having a male Patron is not going to get us female followers!”
“Why would we want female followers?”
Fran eyed Dor, who was scraping stuff out of the bottom of the cooking kettle. Burnt rice porridge indeed, with bits of vegetables and meats left over from yesterday’s meals, and seasoned with some sort of brown, fermented sauce produced locally, savory and salty. The salt made it much needed in this hot, muggy climate; the market traders who had offered the Brotherhood a free sample had explained that, when eaten in modest doses on food, it would help prevent cramped muscles.
“I refuse to allow any priestesses into our Brotherhood!”
“Same here!”
“Women are meant for breeding and housekeeping!”
“Yes, they should know their place!”
“That’s my point, gentlemen.” That voice, Fran realized, belonged to Brother Grell. “If we stick with a men-only Brotherhood, it’ll turn away gullible females who would rather worship someone more like themselves . . . but once we lure them in with the idea of a Goddess, we can describe that deity as more and more meek and subservient, bit by bit, until in their worship, they make themselves and their fellow females into our proper servants!”
“Brother Grell has a point . . .”
“Yes, but what if they actually start believing in the Goddess? And She becomes manifest because of their belief?” That was Priest Koler, or rather Brother Loker, these days.
“That’s why it should be Nurem, and we should stick to just ourselves!”
“Ourselves and select mortal patrons,” someone else amended—Brother Hando, formerly Priest Hansu.
Patron Elcar, formerly known as Archbishop Elcarei of Heiastowne, rapped his wooden mug on the table that he and the seniormost ex-priests had claimed for their meals. “We are not going back to the days of being ruled by a God, any sort of God or Goddess. We are here to find out if there are ways to manifest our own Destinies.”
“Sorry,” Dor murmured, handing Fran a bowl. Like Frankei, he had shortened his name from the equally obviously Mekhanan Dorei. “We’re almost out, and you’re the last one down. You only get the scrapings, Brother.”
Half-burnt scrapings. Ugh. Wrinkling his nose, Fran reached for the bottle of sauce stuff, only to find he could get just half a spoonful onto his brown-burnt porridge to try to cover the flavor.
“Try the plum-and-eel stuff,” Dor suggested, seeing his frustration.
Wrinkling his nose again, Fran accepted the bottle and splorted out the sour-sweet fishy stuff. It’s better than tasting unseasoned burned food, I guess. Slightly better . . .
“Now that we know something of how the Index Hall works,” Elcar continued, “I am going to divide each of your groups into a task force to track down all the spells and information we need. Something is keeping us from opening portals to summon our preferred magic-sources, and that will be the highest priority. Every spell has a way to counter it. Find that information, and you will be rewarded. This is something that every team will be looking for.
“Beyond that, you will be divided into six teams. Group One will focus on learning all that you can about various other ways to raise power. Not just temporarily, but in an ongoing manner. Whether that’s from anything you can learn about magical wellsprings, or from how to tap subtly into other mages, how to divert the energies raised by worship, or . . . I don’t know, a spell to somehow convert sunlight into magic, if you can find it. We are at the greatest repository of knowledge in the whole world, so if you can’t find it at the Great Library, you likely cannot find it anywhere.”
Using a wooden spoon, Fran ate the sauce-glopped mess, tasting pungent fish flavors, sour-sweet plums, a hint of spice from some sort of pepper, and of course burnt rice and vegetables. Maybe if I can use a bit of magic and get paid for it today, I can afford to just buy myself a breakfast tomorrow . . . though what with that stupid rule of turning over half of all our earnings or winnings to the whole group to use . . .
“Group Two will focus on training manuals for improving our spellcasting skills, focusing on offensive, defensive, and travel-based spells. Group Three . . . if you can find anything about this past demon-turned-Goddess thing in the historical archives, uncover it,” Elcar continued. “We need to know what our enemies might be looking for, and how the original group was defeated. Also we’ll need to know what mistakes to avoid making in our own attempt.”
Dor nudged his elbow. “That’s us!” he whispered. “And I think I know who can get us deep into the archives. Or at least Alger does.”
“ . . . Four will search the geography archives for the ideal kingdom or nation for us to take over, somewhere with a weak government, lax laws, an oppressed people who might view us as kindly liberators once we gain the power we need. I am sick and tired of traveling like a common vagabond, and I know the rest of you are equally tired of being without readily available resources whenever we have to travel through the wilderness regions. Just in getting here . . .”
“Where is Alger?” Fran asked Dor under his breath, curious.
“He made the mistake of getting up early, so he got sent to the Index Hall to see if Torven has shown up yet,” Dor whispered. “He relieved Loker, who was up all night, which is why he’s being cranky about Alshai.”
Grunting, Fran forced another spoonful of overly “flavorful” food into his mouth and down his throat. Food was food, though. Even with magic to lure in animals for their cook fires, his group had nearly starved to death while crossing the North Haida Pass in the depths of winter. Burnt rice porridge that filled his bowl tasted better than a sliver of half-burnt, half-raw icehawk, and thin soup the next day from the bones and skin boiled overnight for stock.
“Shouldn’t there be a Group Seven?” he heard Stearlen ask.
“Whatever for?” Elcar demanded. Fran couldn’t see the ex-archbishop’s face, but he could hear the confused annoyance in his voice.
“For looking up tantric sex magic. I heard it raises a lot of energy,” Stearlen stated.
“Where did you hear that?” one of the other priests crowded into the largish room next to the kitchen demanded. Fran couldn’t be completely sure, but it sounded like a priest from the capital of their former land.
“Well, I heard some Mendhite boys snickering about it at the public refreshing room yesterday, near the marketplace we visited,” Stearlen claimed. “They were talking about it being in the less strictly guarded parts of the restricted archives. I’m all for Nurem, because women are stupid, uppity creatures to be put in their place . . . but if we can raise magic off of bedding them, then we should be trying that.”
“One, we don’t have any crystals to store that kind of energy in, and two, to get women to be enthusiastic enough to not try to claim we raped them,” Elcar retorted, “we run the risk of them worshipping for real.”
“I didn’t mean . . . ! Look, with respect, Father Elcar, now that we’ve left Mekhana far behind, we can get amulets that prevent babies from being born, right? And we can make amulets that capture and translate languages in an aura around our bodies, allowing those we speak with to understand and hear? So why not amulets that capture magics raised by sex?”
Fran didn’t like the sound of that. Even with willing females who gave permission for sex . . . that was taking their energies without permission, if they didn’t mention the amulets in question. If such a thing were possible.
“Listen, you little half-toothed cogwheel,” Elcar retorted. “The world isn’t just whatever you can piston to death! This is serious power we’re seeking! Don’t you think our ex-Patron would’ve tried to raise power that way if it were feasible? Or that Father Torv would have mentioned it among the ways to raise a great deal of power?”
“Even a handful of grains gleaned from the seeds left behind on a scythed field can feed a man,” Stearlen argued. “I’m just saying we should look into all sources of power, and pursue more than just one way alone. We may need such stored scraps of power to augument our efforts to attain a greater prize. If we’d had more power to spare, we could’ve put up shields strong enough to keep out those greasers that ruined our first summoning attempt!”
“Fine! I appoint you to be our holy fuck-finder!” Elcar snapped. “You are reassigned to Group Two. Brother Tasik can take your place in Group Six—and while you’re at it, Brother Stearlen, find a way to acquire more unpurposed power crystals to store all this pistoning-based energy you’re so determined to claim we can use. Cheaply, because we’re going to run out of funding if we have to buy it all ourselves!”
Still in the kitchen, Fran shook his head and continued eating his breakfast. Cogs and springs . . . Stearlen’s always thinking with his piston, isn’t he? There can’t be that much energy waiting to be gleaned from sexual couplings, can there? Gods and Goddesses of the world, please remember I’m trying to redeem myself by playing spy and saboteur. I just haven’t found anything I can sabotage . . . nor a way to get information back to that Longshanks lad . . . er, lass. Whatever.
Presuming she even remembers me . . . and remembers the fact that I offered to do all of this infiltration stuff to help her and the others out . . .