Date: Mon, 30 Dec 2013 22:00:10 -0500 From: Subject: The Magpie and the Prince, 5 ((For the size, shape, and appearance of both Irau and Ten's penises (and Irau's buttocks), I refer you to the works of Po ju. If you already know, I need say no more. XI. The Dugout They had to leave that place. Ten used the one remaining talisman from the magician to create more illusory doubles; it was a piece of yellow paper inscribed with red inked diagrams and he burned it as they rode away. Anybody watching the cloister would have seen fourteen separate knight-and-prince combinations escaping on horseback into the forest, up both directions of the road, and through the marshes to the west. They rode nearly three hours; incredible pain doubled Ten over in the saddle, and Irau had to guide the horse. The Knight had done all but sustain a broken rib and had difficulty breathing. Nevertheless, he told Irau which way to go, until they reached a traveler's lodge that Ten had sheltered in some years before. Hunters had dug it out of a hillside and it was scarcely visible from the road. They left the horse outside, for she would not fit through the door, but they propped Ten up on all their baggage while Irau built a fire, fetched water, and went to find mallow root, yarrow, and white verbena. The prince was skilled at leechcraft and the finding of medicines in the wild. After he returned and pounded the roots and leaves with a stone, he bathed Ten's wounds in hot water and rubbed them with the pulverized medicine. The bruise was deep, and the knight wheezed and winced when he took deep breaths. Seeing the gashes and long blue splotch across Ten's back ribs, Irau began to feel his throat tighten and tears run down his cheeks. "What's wrong?" Ten wheezed. "You saved me!" the boy cried. "You saved me, too" the Paladin said, smiling, his hand wiping the boy's cheeks. Irau leaned down to kiss one closed eye. The knight reached up to rub the boy's ear, and tugged him down into a full embrace. With great tenderness, they parted, kissed again, and parted. "Soon we will be home," the knight whispered. "How soon?" "A day to reach the library city," Ten said, "and a day from there to the hill of the White Deer." Ten lay propped up in the hay wheezing as Irau finished dabbing salve across his wounds. None of them were very deep, but there was one across Ten's thigh which Irau insisted on sewing shut. The flesh on both sides gaped away from a deep gash that was clotted but unclean. Irau had shucked the knight's breeches off and gave the man a dram of white spirits to dull his senses. He had to reopen it to clean the filth and crusted blood from it, and the knight hissed in pain. Finally, with the fine needle of pure gold (for gold and silver were the only metals the Aldeni could work) the prince deftly passed silk through the superficial layers of the skin and bound the wound together just enough to keep it closed. By the time he was finished, he had noticed that the Paladin's cock was stiff beneath his breech cloth. "It seems the pain subsided," the boy noted, looking at the pink tip of the man's member poking forth from the undergarment. Irau put the needle and silk away, and then sat between the knight's sprawled legs once again, this time facing him, one hand massaging the knight's unwounded thigh. Ten smiled at Irau, but could scarcely move. "Are you trying to distract me?" the knight asked. "I'd like to," the Prince said with a blush. "Do whatever you like. I'm not in much shape to stop you. Even if I wanted to stop you." The boy's nostrils flared in excitement, never breaking eye contact with his man. For Irau, it was the first time he had initiated touching the man's body in a sexual way. They had been deeply affectionate with one another since that night at the hot spring, and all day would massage one another or lean together in the saddle as they rode. All night they would kiss and cuddle in the haylofts and hedgerows in which they slept. But most of the sexual attentions were Ten's on the boy: he massaged the lad's thighs and buttocks at night until he pleaded for release and then the paladin worked the boy off to a climax with his hands and mouth. But the only favor Irau had ever performed on Ten was when the two of them had masturbated together in the saddle one morning and the boy placed one hand around the knob of the knight's big, long pestle as he came. Now, the boy's hand swept Ten's inner thigh and touched the big weighty bollocks that hung beneath the breech cloth. Ten felt the boy's fingers brush accidentally through the tuft of hair around his anus, and that made his nipples tingle and his breath go short. He wondered how it would be to have the boy's thick little rod press through his muscled knot, or to have the boy's dainty tongue parting that dense hair to clean his sensitive hole, smelling the musk of his ass. Irau rolled the big testicles around and then gripped the root of his cock, sending shivers up Ten's spine. The knight could scarcely move without pain, and so staying relaxed throughout this added an incredible challenge not to tense, convulse, or tighten any of his muscles. Irau began to slowly pass his tightened fist up and down Ten's wood-hard rod. The foreskin peeled back to reveal the conical purple head and, without hesitation, the boy leaned in to flick his tongue up and down against its underbelly. Ten moaned, and placed one hand on the boy's head. "Keep moving your fist," he whispered. Irau put both hands on Ten's massive cock (he could wrap his own two hands around it and still the head would thrust beyond), and slid and lolled the head back and forth on his tongue. He worked his fists up and down, the foreskin closing and pulling back again and again. "Stop," Ten panted. The pain in his ribs was killing him; he had to go slow. "What do you want?" Irau whispered, his eyes flickering with the firelight. "Just suck the head," Ten said, "and pull my balls apart with both hands. And don't take your mouth off't!" The boy did as he was told, and Ten brought one strong hand to jerk his own lance into the boy's mouth, working the foreskin back and forth between his lips. Irau's pale hands rolled and tugged at his balls, squeezing them tighter at his urgent request. It wasn't long before the knight, desperately trying to stay relaxed throughout, felt his stomach and anus tighten as he fought the urge to thrust his pelvis upward. He squeezed one knuckle into the underside of his cock as he felt his balls boiling over at the soft, almost imperceptible suckling on his head. A few weak, suppressed bucks of his hips and he jetted his seed into the boy's silky, warm mouth, groaning with satisfaction. His hot cream spilled from the boys lips and back into the nest of his pubic hair. Still the jism spurted from his rod and the boy struggled to keep the cock in his mouth; he swallowed once, but copious semen oozed from his mouth and back down the long shaft as he continued his sucking and slurping at the head. Ten felt his cock spasm one last time into the lad's sweet, sweet mouth, and then relaxed. Irau got up, spit much of the load into the fire and then returned to milk the last drops from the shaft onto his tongue. The boy then pulled out his own long, cock and rubbed it against Ten's tumescent one. He spit a mixture of saliva and semen into his palm and rubbed their two rods together, thrusting with desperate, high pitched grunts and moans until he came to a hasty conclusion, spilling his own milk all over Ten's already sticky groin. The boy used the rag and now-cold water to clean the knight's belly and dense thatch before adding a few broken branches to the fire and pulling cloaks and mantles over his knight. "It tasted like honey," Irau whispered, coming to nestle into the man's side. "Ya liar." "No!" the boy argued. "I'm being honest." "Then swallow it next time!" the knight laughed. Irau giggled into Ten's armpit and sighed. They fell fast asleep as snow fell outside. XII. The Magpie They rode through the streets of the library city as new snow fell onto that left from the night before. Though the solstice was not far off, it was the first true snow of the season. Wreaths and garlands of holly and spruce and lavender hung from the gates, and a bonfire offering to the Goddess of Scrolls burned for all the poor to warm their hands. Peddlers sold dried figs and spices from the south, and for the festivals to come, barrels of ale and wine and brandywine were being auctioned in the public square. Irau marveled at the bureaucrat they spotted, decked in his black robes and flat, square hat, carrying a golden fascia and surrounded by obsequious scholars as he bid for not one but ten barrels of wine. Outside the city, the peasants were sowing winter wheat, rye, parsnips, turnips, and beets. They came to a party of knights on horse at a crossroads, and the boy expected that they would have to wait, but their sergeant dismounted, took one knee and removed his helm as Ten crossed through the intersection with a gesture of thanks. "Why did he do that?" Irau whispered as they passed. "I once defeated that man in a duel," the Knight said sheepishly. By evening, they passed a creek lined with tooth-like rocks of lime and entered a vast wilderness. Hills of rolling grass were topped with pine stands and obelisks of stone. The road wound through these until they came to a valley surrounded by fields of heather and wild yellow grass. At the top of a hill stood a squat white fortress with three odd shaped towers, its walls planing gently into triangles. Banners of violet, red, gold, green, and orange floated from its walls, and pines surrounded it on all sides but one. "It looks so small," Irau said. "It's bigger on the inside," Ten said, smirking. They rode slowly up the path and around the back. A old man emerged to take the horse to the stables and they went in the back gates, up a long icy stairway, and into what Ten called the magician's tower. A hall of many yellow glass windows led them to the a wooden door that Ten opened quietly to reveal a shrine room. The air smelled of sweet balsam and other incense, and the walls had tapestries of strange saints and deities. Many candles stood before a statue of a Goddess--or rather, Irau supposed she was not a Goddess, but like Ten said, a teacher. Carved of dark wood, she sat cross legged on a pedestal. Her left hand held a rose from which emerged a golden wheel, its many spikes made to look like rays of light; her other hand was outstretched, open, with a pearl falling from her palm. Before her, sitting on the floor before a scroll-heaped table, sat the Wizard. He looked so young! Nothing could convince Irau that he was more than twenty winters old until he saw the man's eyes: they betrayed the century he had seen all but a year of. He recited verses from pages heaped in front of him in a whisper, his fingers steepled beneath his nose. His hair was dark and wavy, reaching to his elbows; he wore a robe of saffron yellow cotton underneath a mantle of grey wool, and in his ears were big lozenges of white opal. None of this caught Irau's attention so much as those eyes, however; the mint sweet coolness of the magician's eyes. He had glanced over at them for just an instant, smiled, and then returned to his prayerbook without ever missing a beat in his recitations. In that simple gaze, the boy was trapped. Whether he was handsome or not, old or young, good or evil; all the questions Irau had for weeks escaped out some back door of his mind. Only quietude remained as he and Ten went to their knees and pressed foreheads to the floor in obeisance to the World Nurse, the teacher of Gods and Men, the Mother Liberator. At last, the magician uttered a long, low syllable. He rose and bowed toward the shine once before walking over to them. His eyes glittered as he smirked down, and helped Ten get to his feet. They kissed each other on both cheeks and briefly and then once on the corner of the mouth. "Hello Irau," the Magician said. "Hel--hello," the boy stammered. "I am the Magpie. You should call me Meru." The boy dug into his pocket and removed the ear, took one knee and held it up with both hands as Ten had instructed. "If you are truly the soothsayer we know as the Storyteller, I have come to offer myself as payment for the debt my people owe you!" the boy blurted, "Body, breath, and mind, I am yours!" The wizard laughed. "No need be so formal," he said, and tried to help the boy to stand. "I cannot stand in your presence, great soothsayer!" the boy protested. "Fine, fine," the wizard said softly, and squatted so that he was at the same plane as the lad. "Look me in the eye," he commanded. Irau looked into those rich brown eyes and felt as if he might wet his pants in terror or adoration. Tears welled up and he felt his heart pounding. Some terrific mixture of relief and terror saturated him to the bone; he felt as if some part of him long missing had been replaced. The sorcerer took the boy's hands and pressed his long, graceful thumbs into the palms. Warmth filled Irau's whole body, and he found himself sinking from one knee onto both knees, sitting on his own heels, feeling both lightheaded and yet more awake than he had ever been. "You have been so brave," the magician whispered. His eyes were closed now. "I'm still scared," the boy asserted. "You are still human. Only monsters have no fear. And her," the magician gestured with one whole hand extended to the shrine. "She has gone beyond all hope and fear." The wizard looked down into the boy's hands. "Aha! This is not my ear!" the sorcerer said with surprise as he removed it from the boy's hands. He giggled. "What?" Irau stammered. "It's not my ear. Don't worry. You'll understand soon enough. And just so you know, your people don't owe me any debt. They convinced themselves they did, for some reason, but I never expected anything." "I have come to offer myself nonetheless," Irau said. "Hurrah!" Meru smiled, "such an act will bring a lot of positive potential. A lot of merit." At last, he lifted the boy from where he knelt and kissed both his cheeks. Irau felt his whole body seize up in delight. Then, the sorcerer gazing into Irau's black eyes, the boy trembling as he gazed back, Meru grinned like a devil cat. "You brought me back my worst enemy's ear" he said with a chuckle. "You have no idea what that means to me." ((End of book One. Book two is on the drawing board but at the moment I haven't the time/money to write. If you've been reading thus far, you may look forward to a sneak preview of the new cast of characters and a few pages in the next few days, but until further notice I have no more draft left! This story thus far was sponsored by a very kind and generous sponsor, whom I cannot thank enough for giving me the impetus to bring these characters to life. Any further work will be iffy until I can find another source of income or a surplus of time to commit. If you'd like to sponsor a few pages or a new story (or additions to an old one like The Lad on the Train), writing is a thankless and low-paying task, and I appreciate any and all contributions toward my continued work on nifty. For this and other comments, questions, and criticisms I direct you to