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  Her bare foot slid into my lap, the arch working against my aching member while she slid the toy rapidly in and out of her tight-gripping body. I groaned, buck my hips against her foot while I pressed down upon her ankle as much as I dared. “I would watch you do anything, Materna, lovely as you are…it is no imposition to watch you tease yourself with your toys, or a slave, or some lovely durrow companion of yours.”

  “You sound so hopeful…oh, and this prick of yours is so hard! Keep it hard…oh, yes, I want to see it straining for me while I’m bathed. I want to see how desperately it wants me…oh, Burningsoul, oh, this thing is so hard, so deliciously hard…I wonder if you can take me half this hard…”

  “Odile and Indra can both attest that if you like it as rough as I think you do, Materna, then I am the best-suited slave for your needs.”

  Honey dripped from her swollen nethers and around the circumference of the rapidly working tool. All the while my mistress watched me, her lips parted, her toes sliding up and down the shaft of my engorged member. “Maybe that’s true…maybe that’s true…go on, slave. Use the toy on your mistress…make it quick, it’s nearly time for my bath…”

  Eager to please as ever, I took up the flat stand of the dildo and eagerly continued the task she had begun. At once she gasped, moaning even more wildly than before, her head thrashing back and forth upon the pillows while I pleasured her like I wished I could have with my own body. All the same, it was a sheer delight to see her bursting with pleasure, more uninhibited than any female I had ever encountered. It wasn’t very long before she was climaxing again, her body bucking up against the toy in my hand as she soon enough would against me.

  “Yes, yes! Oh, slave…slave, you’ll fit right in. Praise Roserpine! She sends to me the sweetest dreams…oh, dear. Don’t let me fall asleep, Burningsoul. Give me but a moment to recover, and then we’ll to the baths…hold me, though, would you?”

  THE PALACE BATHS

  TRUE TO HER word, my mistress delivered no release to me once she had found her own. After making use of my embrace for a few moments, she simply pushed me away, told me to fetch her clothes, then sprang up to dress while commanding me into my own. Once I had put the tunic on she reached beneath, clasping me in the cool grip of her soft palm for a few long tugs while she stared into my suddenly glazing eyes.

  “Remember what I commanded, Burningsoul…I want you to stay nice and hard.”

  Somehow, I didn’t think that would be an issue. Leaving her cloak for someone else to pick up, the Materna led the way in her skimpy priestess garb without the least thought to her nearly nude state. I suppose, since I had just been led around literally naked, I ought not to have been shocked by that—but, owing to my raising, it was somehow more surprising to see a woman so thoughtlessly audacious in her dress. Now I realize how different it was there in the Nightlands, where durrow lived without the subjugating gaze of men always upon them: lusting, scheming. Not to say slaves did not lust—but if a slave stared too long, or in the wrong ways, he was really looking, at best, at a public beating in the middle of the street. Maybe even execution, depending on who it was. Things were different there, and durrow women did not dress, as aboveground women did, to defend themselves from predators.

  This differentiation between the sexes to which I was so used was perhaps why I was somehow shocked to find the baths were technically mixed sex, at least in terms of servants. Men and women both served durrow mistresses amid the thick mist of hot spring saunas carved out in one of the sub-levels of Roserpine’s Palace. A few delicate elves of Branwen’s kind, lovely maidens from aboveground who had at some point in their nearly eternal lives been taken belowground to live and serve among their cousins, stood chatting in a corner, free of obligations and able to gossip.

  Each one of them was completely nude.

  I would quickly find that this was true of all the slaves working in the baths. Every once in a while I would glimpse, on the way back to the Materna’s private bathing chamber, another dressed guard in a similarly torturous position to myself, but over all the baths were a place of perfect security and civil business discourse to most durrow living in the central tower of the city. There was precious little need of guards, therefore, unless someone was exceptionally paranoid—whether they had a reason to be, or not.

  Upon seeing my mistress, the elfin trio cried out in simultaneous delight and hurried over to greet her. Each bowed with the grace of a dancer, then set about quickly stripping her of her clothes, speaking rapidly in the language of the aboveground elves. The blonde one peered coyly over at me, grinning a bit when she happened to look down to my beltline. By the time her eyes had flickered back to the Materna, my mistress had been divested of her clothes by the silver-haired elf and was now being led by the brown-haired one to the far pair of doors to which I followed.

  “You speak many languages, Materna.”

  “I have been a long time living, slave…a long time, spent learning many things.”

  While the blonde elf threw open the doors and the silver-haired one caught up to us, the brunette led the way inside and gestured to the warm crystal pool pre-arranged with a tray of oils, stones, sponges, creams, and all manner of other things about which I had absolutely no conception. Valeria stepped into the water while ignoring the offered hand of the brunette, saying to me, “With so many slaves from so many different regions aboveground, it is important to be able to communicate with as many as possible. You would be advised to learn a few more languages, too. If only to communicate with your fellow slaves.”

  As Valeria slid into the bath, her body extending beneath the waves of the almost perfectly clear water, the brunette elf hurried to capture her hair. Gathering the thick mane of lovely white locks in her hands, the slender slave produced a sort of crown atop Valeria’s head to keep her hair free of water. Then, looking pleased to do it, she accepted a palmful of oil from her blonde fellow and rubbed the substance into Valeria’s neck. The Materna sighed and moaned, her head sagging forward just so while her arms outspread along the edge of the pool.

  “Besides…if ever we have foreign visitors—rare, though it has been known to happen—I may offer your services to one of them, and a shared language makes it seem like less of a chore.”

  Though the elves attending to my mistress were quite a sensual show to behold, the rich, deep glow of the ring upon her finger caught my eye. She had worn it in bed, too, and I nodded at it.

  “You never take it off,” I commented, an observation more than a question. Valeria laughed lightly, a dry chuckle, and studied my neck with those phantom eyes that already haunted me.

  “And you never take that tattoo off. Each one means the same thing…service to the divine. It is my duty to bear Roserpine’s ring and endure her many burdensome gifts.”

  “Burdensome gifts?”

  “You cannot imagine what it is like to know as much as I do, Son of the Wanderer. Trust me when I say that some things are better left unseen in this life…there are times I envy, oh, everyone who is not me. Not as aware as I am.”

  She had lifted her ringed hand to contemplate the stone upon it. Now her fingertips drifted toward her mouth, resting there, worrying. She glanced from me, the tips of her nails lightly scoring her kissable lower lip. Ah! Would she let me kiss her? My mouth itched as had my hands—never had I been so taken with a woman on first sight. It was something about her, a heartfelt innocence and deep conviction behind her every uttered thought, that made Valeria appeal to me. It made me see that there was no show here, not in the ways of conjurers or heretics. There was real fear in her tense face, and not just owing to the string of assassins about which I’d been warned. I pitied her.

  “I’ve heard it said that Roserpine is the goddess of madness.”

  Even without visible pupils, I was growing used enough to the movement of durrow eyes that I saw her look back over at me. “Perhaps to your kind, to worshipers of Weltyr, her teachings can only seem as madness. To us—to me�
�she is the goddess of liberation.”

  “You don’t look very liberated to me.”

  Laughing, shifting, Valeria sighed low as the elf rubbing her neck and shoulders gradually expanded her range to include the sumptuous breasts whose nipples barely peeked above the water. “What part of my existence does not seem liberated to you, exactly, slave?”

  “Why, all of it. You live like a bird in a cage on a stand, your high apartment up in this tower. You’re clearly powerful, yet you’re so frightened by threats of violence and fears of overthrow that you need someone like me. By Weltyr, you don’t even bathe yourself—you let others do it for you.” I lifted my brows, leaving it at, “Not a very independent existence at all, Materna. Not very liberated in my estimate.”

  “While it is apt to say I am a slave to Roserpine, Burningsoul, I must point out that I mean a different kind of liberation. A spiritual liberation by way of knowledge, which can only lead to true physical liberation at the end of one’s relationship with the mortal plane. Until then, all the money in the world, all the respect, all the obligation, is just another way to hide true knowledge. To soften it. But for me it is not softened. There are no illusions remaining. I have many years of life ahead of me, and I will have to live them all in the perfect, crisp awareness of what it truly is to exist in this physical realm.”

  “This is why the Church of Weltyr is structured in the way it is, Materna…no one, human or elf or any other, should be burdened with the direct knowledge of any facet of the godhead. The linear mind is fragile…most of us cannot perceive the sorts of things to which you refer for a reason.”

  “Yet you seem to speak as though you understand.”

  “I am fully devoted to Weltyr, and there are many sacred mysteries that are revealed for the illumination of such paladins as myself. We are not encouraged to meditate much on the matters of the gods, but we do learn some important things. That mind and body together coordinate in the production of the soul, which is more still than either for it also encompasses all of eternity. I would imagine that, if one were to be too aware of one’s soul, it would be very preoccupying indeed.”

  “To say the least.”

  “This sort of thing is why I enjoy a good battle,” I told her, turning my tone out of my serious concern for her mental health as a result of the cult of Roserpine and into a more merry, easy-going attitude. “Such matters of the body keep a man occupied with earthly things, with the issue of preserving his life.”

  “Sex does the same thing,” advised the durrow priestess, sighing while the elf massaging her bosoms kissed the tip of her dark ear.

  How much I had to say on that matter! Sadly, our flirtations would have to wait. The door to the chamber opened and a shadow fell across the floor. I turned at the first hint of it and found, still clad in her dark robes, the vizier called Trystera.

  Coolly, the vizier assessed me, then said to her queen, “I see you are already adapting the new slave to his lot in life.”

  “Naturally,” answered Valeria. “These things must be seen to from the very first day…no one likes it when a slave is confused as to his purpose.”

  “Yes, well, that’s just it—one of the guards at the place gate said Odile and Indra had some…choice things to say about you, and sent this note…”

  From the dark sleeve of her robe, Trystera drew a hastily rolled scroll upon which I could easily imagine Odile angrily scribbling…or, perhaps more likely, angrily dictating to scribbling Indra. The vizier cleared her throat, then read, “Dear Marm, With all due respect we humbly request use of your slave as soon as possible.”

  While she read, the other elves took up the task of massaging what parts of the Materna could not be reached by the brunette. As this most eager elf toyed sensually with the sighing priestess’s nipples, the blonde waded into the water with her and slid between her splayed legs to massage the flesh of her powerful thighs. Up and up and up, those lovely elfin hands raised, and I ached to see just how high their caresses drew. While the silver-haired elf massaged her hands and arms, the vizier went on as though nothing at all were happening. Clearly, I was experiencing a little culture shock.

  “Our honor is dependent on this, and while we appreciate that you have been very lenient to us despite our mistakes, we humbly request a boon for just one day so as to make good on our pre-arranged bargain. You know our district, Odile & Indra.”

  “Oh…those two…” Moaning openly now, her legs splaying as the blonde nymph of a slave-girl sensually massaged the labia beneath that little tuft of white, the Materna tilted her ear into the lick of the brunette elf’s sweet pink tongue between lingering kisses. “They really are very audacious…but yes, I have just heard something of the same from Burningsoul. He does seem like a man of honor, I will give him that.”

  Ignoring that comment as effortlessly as she ignored the penetrations of the slave girl’s fingers into Valeria’s swollen pussy, Trystera rolled the note back up and stowed it away again. “That may be so, but you can’t think it wise to send your slave away so soon into his training; nor when you are so in need of protection.”

  “Oh…oh, ah, yes, well—it will be a fine opportunity to see if he comes back. Yes, yes, yes, oh, by Roserpine…but he will be back. Just look at that hard prick under that tunic, Trystera, oh, my! He does love to see me satisfied.”

  With a light sniff and a sidelong glance at me, the vizier looked forward again and asked, “Are you looking for a guard, Madame, or a bull out to stud?”

  “If I were in search of the latter, who better than the slave responsible for my life…at any rate, it was not my choice. It was Roserpine’s.” Contemplating the ring again, then sighing as the sweet blonde slave suckled gently upon a nipple, the priestess leaned her head upon the purplish stone at the back of the pool. “I have faith, then, that things will fall into place with accordance of her will. Send a message back assuring our little sisters that they may borrow my slave’s services two blooms hence.”

  “Very good, Madame.”

  “You know, Trystera—” The vizier, who had been turning away, paused and looked back at the watchful high priestess. The Materna lifted her head again to assess her inferior, all while writhing and shuddering beneath the multiplicity of caresses sliding across her flesh’s every inch. “I have made many invitations to you over the years of your employment in my service…there’s no call for you to be jealous.”

  “Your overtures have been flattering, but I assure you, I am not jealous. Enjoy the dark, Your Majesty.”

  Nodding, then turning with a pair of eyes that stared through me as though I were a chair or a rock, the vizier strode out again. The door rattled slightly upon its hinge. If she wasn’t jealous, then she was mad about something. And maybe it did seem absurd or even crass to accuse someone of envying a slave…but then I turned back to see Valeria, her head back to accept the swirling tongue and suckling kisses of the elf-girls upon her mouth, and I had to wonder if there was a being on Urde who would not have envied me in that alarmingly erotic second.

  The fever with which she filled me was immense. Even the most sensual and erotic of surface women, whether human or elf or dwarf or any other, was a prude by the standards of decadent El’ryh. At least, by the standards of decadent Valeria. The sensual priestess of hedonism cracked open her eyes to make sure I watched her exchange a kiss with one of her girl-toys. The elves switched positions and the lovely silver-haired creature proved herself quite possibly not an elf so much as some kind of naiad or merfolk—really just a cousin of the land-dwelling elf as much as were durrow. Her silver hair floated out behind her like lunar seaweed while she dove beneath the waters to explore her mistress’s swollen labia and sensitive bud of pleasure with her tongue.

  I held my breath, waiting for her to come up for air. Long before she did, I was gasping with the burning of my lungs. Hands moved all over Valeria; hands and lips and tongues, and soon entire bodies. All three elf servants (for who could really be a slave when
they were so willing?) now joined her in the water. The two land-dwelling elves ground against her. Massaging and suckling her breast, kissing her mouth, holding her thighs apart for the benefit of their water-breathing sister, the elf-girls laughed and exchanged affection with one another in between lavishing sensual caresses upon the body of their mistress.

  Then, suddenly, I remembered myself when Valeria once more locked eyes with me. For an aching handful of minutes I seemed to transcend spacetime while watching the caresses of these sylphs upon a goddess, and when I returned back to earth it was only at that goddess’s behest. “Remove your clothes, slave,” she commanded, then saying something to the blonde one. The elf nodded, expressing something back in that sonorous language of her people. Valeria waved her hand and, elegantly smiling, the golden-haired elf who had been so taken with me left her comrades and swam through the water to me.

  “I want to see how that great rod of yours works in the service of your talents before I decide whether I should bother letting you use it on me. Lira here has volunteered her services…she’s had her eye on you since we arrived.”

  “I noticed…hello, Lira.” As she rested her arms upon my side of the pool, I reached down and offered her my hand. A sweet dimple appearing in the edge of her cheek, Lira accepted my invitation and permitted me to let her pull her out of the water. While the naked elf girl stumbled to her feet, I cradled her svelte body in my arms and kissed her soft mouth. It was perfect and silken, yet it seemed to me as though Valeria’s would be infinitely more soft when at last I had the chance to taste its love.

  But, though Lira was not the Valeria I desired, I had no qualms with her. Her body already shimmered with desire when I caressed her backside, fondled her thigh, grazed her sensitive labia. She moaned, then again all the more when she saw I was looking not at her but Valeria. For her part, the Materna was now being fingered by the silver-haired slave that had emerged from the waters to kiss her. The subservient elf-girl in my arms moaned and lifted her leg, hooking her thigh against my hip to offer her pussy to me. I teased around it, tickling the tip of her most frayed nerve and letting her suffer the same proximity of my straining manhood that so pained me.