Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 19:39:02 -0500 (EST)
From: G Gueser <gueser@writeme.com>
Subject: EXPANSION

I saw the pants of his tunic slithering off his legs as smoothly as a
philanderer giving in to lust, surrendering without any resistance the full
beauty of his naked form to our waiting eyes. I tasted the tangy sharpness
of blood in my mouth before I realized that I was biting the insides of my
lower lip as if my teeth, the only part of me still conscious, was trying
their very hardest to grip on to some semblance of sanity in the face of
the awesome splendor not thirty feet ahead of us. The boy gently hooked the
toes of his left foot among the folds of his discarded apparel and, lifting
the foot, flung the clothes gracefully on to the higher ground behind
him. The motion itself was breathtaking in the fluidity of its completion,
the path that the limb took cut a swath of sparkling mist in the air that
it made its passage through, and for a moment I almost believed that the
foot had taken off like a delicate albino moth on its way to glowing
eternity. Bathed in the strange turquoise phosphorescence of the pool, the
boy sat himself down on a stool shaped rock and inched his right foot into
the hungrily lapping water which greedily sucked up those gorgeous digits
with licentious fervor. His profile, the left side of his face, was turned
to us and, as we watched, he withdrew his inquisitive foot from the tested
waters and pulled his right leg up to his burnished silver chest before
resting his glorious chin on the upturned knee.

My eyes traced themselves deferentially from the crystal drops of water
dripping off the toes of his elegant right foot up to the lyrical line of
his firm calf and on to the alluring bend of his knee before gliding back
down the inside of his right thigh whose skin was like the coolest stream
of satin where even the harshest of lava would be transformed into icy foam
when flowing through it. He hugged that knee to himself as he contemplated
the water that foretold of the bath he was going to take inside that warm
caressing liquid. His stretched arm reminded me of a cloud white monolith
that stood in the boiling sea not far from the village where I was born,
while sturdy in itself it was incredibly smoothened by the currents that
had washed over it for past innumerable millennia.  Swimming out to it as a
boy there were parts of the rock I could rest and rub my tired face against
without getting a single hairline scratch and even from this distance I
could tell that his arms were exactly like that. The slight muscles of this
arm curved easily into the niche of his elbow and then he straightened both
arms to propel himself off the rock seat. His flank heaved a little and the
delicate ribs that did not show while he was at rest surfaced briefly
against the flesh of his side, the walls of his very flat stomach caving in
just a little as his lithe form pierced the water as cleanly as a confident
white wood arrow traveling to meet the winged prey.

From the sharp exhalation of his breath, I could tell that my companion had
been holding back the air in his lungs all the while the boy was exposed to
us and as I glanced at him I saw a magnification of the unnatural gleam
that had reposed in his eyes from the first time we caught sight of the
boy. The fingers that always rested in a relaxed yet vigilant manner on the
hilt of his dagger twitched so uncontrollably that they caught my attention
even though the lower halves of our bodies were hidden in almost pitch
darkness. His breathing now came out as swift rasps as his gaze remained
fixated upon the dark head of the boy who was bobbing through the fragrant
gleaming water. Scratching the cloth of my pants at the groin area to
relieve the tightness there, I licked the small trickle of blood away from
my lips and turned my own eyes to the boy whose profoundly beautiful face,
mesmerizing as the all consuming abysmal silence right after a mighty
avalanche, reflected only supreme tranquility as he moved languidly through
the teasing embrace of the water, totally unaware that his young life would
be coming to an abrupt and violent end as soon as the two assassins hiding
behind the pillars of rock just outside the circle of light from the pool
revealed themselves and carried out their avowed mission.

But why should he be afraid? Like all the children born during the
conflict, including those of my own people, the war to him was the only
life he knew. The battle maneuvers of the soldiers were as normal as the
fleet footed races I ran with my own boyhood friends. The bloodthirsty
cries of men at war were like the laughter of the old men who used to spend
their evenings relating the myths and legends of my clan to us children.
The curfews, the scarcity of food, the negotiations that always failed were
as natural as the seasons that passed, as familiar to him as the warm
summers of the land that I grew up in was to me. He couldn't be more than
seventeen winters in age, I remembered that I myself was seventeen when the
word came through our camp that the enemy king had just had a new son. I
recalled that my companions and I had bellowed lewd remarks about his
parents and his parentage when his birth was announced, raucously yelling
about what we were going to do to his family when we conquered his father's
castle and becoming especially rowdy when we came to the part about what we
were going to do to his female relations. Yes, we were spirited because we
were young then and the siege was barely one full moon in age. Many of the
young men who had laughed at the swimming boy were in shallow graves below
us on the slope of the mountain, worn out by foul disease, the bitter
winters, home sickness and long hard years of fatigue, bad food and the
same punishing military routine day in and day out. I was seventeen when he
was born and, as I crouched looking upon him, I suddenly realized that I
had spent half of my life in his land waiting for just such an opportunity
as the one presented to us right then.

The events that led to this opportunity were the doing of the man beside
me, the one over whom I was still unable to decide if he was mad or not. He
must be at least ten years younger than myself, because he arrived only one
winter ago, though no one would have disputed it if I had said that he was
as old as I. Even while his vigor and agility had put my older bones sorely
to the test throughout the past days of the mission, his face told of tales
perhaps too harrowing to repeat. Underneath the fresh sandy hair of an
active young man, his left eye was slanted almost shut beneath a large fold
of flesh covering a part of his left temple and eyelid. To the knowing eye
of old soldiers, this fold of pink shiny flesh was once forehead and scalp
but many winters before he joined our campaign, someone must have swung a
sharp axe at his skull. Only the quickest reflexes could have saved his
life but the experience embedded in his hard gray eyes the legacy of what
must have been excruciating pain and left him with the horrible scar that
wiped the youth off his features forever.

I didn't look at his face much because of the unspoken rule about letting
be but whenever I did I would catch myself thinking that there must have
been a short period of time when he was considered a handsome young man
because there was that firm, determined jaw and that straight unerring nose
on top of a rather sardonic looking mouth. We soldiers liked to talk about
our wounds, in fact it was our second largest topic after sex and ahead of
even food. The ones who didn't discuss their injuries were the ones who
never recovered, many who received significant injuries went mad because
they couldn't bear the loss of their limbs or the pain proved to be too
much to withstand. We were wary of those who didn't talk about their scars
and we were downright suspicious of those who didn't like talking at all. I
must admit that my friends and I never liked Mennask because he was both,
all at once. After a while, we left him completely to himself because he
seemed contented mumbling quietly while sitting only near enough to the
campfire so that his fingers didn't freeze and fall off.

I could never hear what he said under his breath and even now, after I
became aware that there might be details of importance there, I still could
not follow the frantic contest of words that fell over themselves as they
chased one another out of his mouth like a muted fighting hoard. As the boy
flipped himself onto his back and started traversing the length of the
cavern pool like a playful translucent dolphin with the water sliding off
his twisting body like sheets of aquamarine moonlight, the words grew in
intensity but not in loudness.  I glanced at Mennask and opened my own
mouth with the desire to ask him what he was thinking and saying. But even
in the dark, I could see that Mennask was lost, his words traveled to my
ears from another plain of existence, one in which Mennask's soul, heart,
mind and body were bound in thick chains by the vision of the bathing
boy. His fist clasped and unclasped the hilt of his trusty dagger, the one
which had been the bane of the enemy soldiers we had met after coming out
on this side of the Thoriand Trap three nights ago, those who had not had
the wisdom to ignore us and let us go on our way.

I felt a little lost myself because, reluctant though I still was, I had
begun placing all my faith in Mennask, to trust unquestioningly in all the
paths he took as we maneuvered through the Trap, to implicitly obey every
one of his directives given in eloquent unvoiced gestures. I didn't want to
carry out the coming decision, the one that was made a short time after we
first saw the boy stealing out of his walled home in the middle of the
night to visit this heated cavern pool secreted in the warm pulsing heart
of the great mountain itself. I wished that my companion would break his
silence and say that we could leave this task to another day, to another
time far ahead in the future when the boy was older and had learned how to
fight in battle and to defend himself. Some day far away when he was no
longer so painfully beautiful.  I felt Mennask touch my elbow and with a
nod of his head towards the boy, he stood up slowly and at the same time
unsheathed the cruel serrated blade. The words I wanted to hear would not
come after all.

"It is a mathematical permutation." I remembered those being the first
clear words I heard from Mennask in almost one full winter since his
arrival at the siege and when we followed his upward gaze through the
frigid night we saw that he was talking about the rock maze on the slopes
leading up to Castle Thoriand.  We ignored him because not only did we not
know what he was talking about, the Thoriand Trap, as we called the maze,
was a place that we would rather not mention even in casual conversation.
Too many of our friends had been lost in there and sometimes, in the dead
of winter, we would hear the anguished howls of these frustrated ghosts
floating down to haunt the camp and jar us from our fitful slumber. The
Castle Thoriand was built less than halfway up the southern slope of a
tremendous mountain that stretched all the rest of the distance up to the
midday sun; the land that it stood on was actually a large plateau with the
cliffs of the mountain looming over it like a girdle circling the back of
the castle. The castle itself was walled and majestic, a huge white sentry
guarding the age old secrets of the mountain.

We soldiers had a name for Mount Thoriand, we cursed it as the Hag's
Breast; the peak was sharp as a nipple but the four slopes ascending to it
bore uncommon resemblance to the wrinkled sagging breast of a hundred
winter old witch. The southern slope was gradual but all other sides of the
mountain were steep unforgiving cliffs narrowing up to that pointed snow
covered summit. The front of the castle, the face that we had looked up at
from our entrenched camp for the last seventeen winters, presided over a
bare rocky slope of some nine hundred feet that was totally devoid of plant
life and saturated on its upper region with a confounding system of
wall-length boulders, artificial caves and man hewn tunnels. The slope
itself was easy to navigate as its steepness was measured and might prove
difficult only to children but not to grown men. When we first reached our
camp site seventeen years ago, we had already climbed a good way up the
mountain through lush emerald pine forests and emerged in a clearing that
continued on to this maze. We thought that negotiating the rocky slope up
ahead would take us at the very most the time needed to roast a mountain
goat so that it was satisfactorily crisp on the outside and tender on the
inside. The castle was within sight after having been hidden behind the
trees of the forest that we had marched through and every one of us exulted
at the prospect of capturing it by nightfall. The war which had started one
winter back would culminate in this glorious victory and we would all be
able to go home to our families. We sent out scouts to reconnoiter the maze
while the main army settled down, set up camp and roasted our dinner.  The
scouts never came back and neither did the first assault party. The battle
that was to end by nightfall became a siege that went on for the next
seventeen winters. Such was the power of the Thoriand Trap.

Mennask stepped out rapidly around the pillar and nimbly climbed a minor
incline of rocks that looked as if they were once underwater, heading all
the while in the direction of the pool and its frisky dweller. I followed
him quickly out of habit and, for my own safety, stepped in the exact
places that he set foot upon, for Mennask had a mysterious instinct that
had preserved his life and mine since the hour we crept behind enemy
lines. The blade of his dagger shone like a torch and flung its evil glare
on the shimmering walls of the cavern as Mennask and I proceeded
noiselessly towards our target who was diving and thus failed to notice our
swift unwelcome advance. Mennask bent to move beneath a low hanging boulder
without slowing his pace and I did the same, casting a wary eye on the
stone overhead as I did so. My moment of distraction would have been fatal
had we been inside the maze as it slowed me down so that I had to run to
catch up with Mennask who had never looked back since we emerged from our
hiding place. I watched his feet carefully so that I would not make a
single mistake in my step while in my mind the lingering screams of Bonruo
filled the cavity of my conflicted head. I shuddered because even now I
wondered if Bonruo was still falling, I never heard the thud of his body
hitting bottom and I never heard him stop screaming. A splash interfered
with the echoes of Bonruo's yells, the boy had somersaulted in the water
and his buttocks reared up for a moment from the glass surface of the
crater pool, they were creamy white and perfectly round like kanak, the
fish paste balls the women of my clan so painstakingly pound and mold in
the center of the village every summer when the harvest from the sea was
too bountiful. I could literally taste in my mouth the tender yielding
mildly spiced kanaks that my mother used to make, their salty sweet flavor
so very fresh that, though mild, it lingered on as an unforgettable
preservative of summer warmth even as we ate them with steaming hot
vegetable soup in mid winter. I longed to be sitting in my aromatic kitchen
once again, rolling the springy kanak over and under my tongue before
clamping sharp teeth to neatly severe it in half. Suddenly, I had no doubt
in my mind that the frolicking boy's supple buttocks would taste as
delightful in my mouth as my mother's seasonal delicacy.

Bonruo's mind was on food too for he was chewing on his ration of stale
bread when he stepped on the booby trap. The device that caught him was
clever, it was designed so that an infiltrator walking in single file would
throw himself back and hurtle into the person behind him and that person
into the one behind him and so on. We were on a narrow ledge inside the
Trap with the wall of the tunnel on our right and a dark bottomless pit on
our left. Mennask held the flambeau and led the way, we had been walking
incessantly for two days beginning with the stealthy inching of our way to
the enemies' left flank, where their commanding officer was old and
negligent, and breaking through the cordon of guards subsequently to reach
the start of the maze in the form of a small tunnel. The Thoriand army had
stationed themselves at the numerous entrances or, from their perspectives,
exits of the maze, occasionally raining down arrows or catapulting large
flaming rocks at our camp from their vantage point of higher ground.
Whenever we gave chase, they would disappear into the Thoriand Trap and
then the waiting would begin all over again. Over the winters, we had moved
our camp back to behind the tree line so that the no man's land between the
two armies ranged more than three hundred feet. We knew that they didn't
dare charge into the forest for despite everything, we outnumbered them by
far, our soldiers were valiant, and every one of us strong tall men who
would kill anyone in sight to bring an end to the siege. They knew that we
didn't dare follow them into the maze on foot, our horses and chariots were
practically useless in this conflict, and if any of us was stupid enough to
do so, they would ambush us and pick us off one by one like injured stags.

It was the first mouthful of food Bonruo had had in two days and with his
eyes on the bread in his hands, his foot slipped into the crevice in the
ledge that housed the mechanism that triggered off the contraption. There
was a crack followed by a sound like falling hail and when I twisted my
head around, Bonruo's body was already peppered with hundreds of pebbles
shooting out at him from the wall of the tunnel. Bonruo choked on the
bread, gave a muffled yell and took a step back, I heard Mennask shout
'Don't move!' but it was too already too late, Bonruo had lost his balance
in his haste to evade the stinging missiles. I watched helplessly as Bonruo
threw out both his arms in a futile attempt to hold on to the wall but as
the loaf of bread arched through the air towards me, he began to fall.

My foot slipped and there was a sharp crunch, I had stepped on the pile of
the boy's cast off clothing but more than that I had just crushed the
little handheld wooden box that the boy had used to find his way to the
pool. I looked down and saw a tiny black stone rolled away from the damaged
box which was lying in a small puddle of unidentifiable liquid that was
still seeping out from misshapen container. Mennask didn't turn back, he
was looking at the boy whose head and shoulders had sprung out of the water
at the sound of the breaking box, Mennask's mouth shifted slightly and it
looked like he was gritting his teeth. I looked over quickly to the boy and
my hand moved by years of training to the hilt of my short sword.
Strangely, the black haired boy didn't look shocked or even mildly
surprised, his eyebrows merely lifted a little into his marble forehead and
his mischievous lips curled almost imperceptibly as he beheld us staring at
him without any reserve.

At this close range, I was startled by the concentration of his beauty, the
light brown of his perfectly shaped eyes looked as if it was brewed and
distilled from a million cauldrons of the purest ancient magic, his full
saucy lips were red with the blood of those savagely impassioned kisses
siphoned off coupling lovers from all of romantic history, his nose stood
regally on his fine oval face like a fair prince who was extremely proud of
this domain of unsurpassable beauty and the skin that covered him was like
the most diaphanous gauze veil of cream, shielding and at the same time
showing off the magnificently healthy blush that suffused his whole form.
When he spoke it was with an imperious tone as befitting his birthright but
his voice, like the rest of him, was melodious and lovely, its notes
stroked the listening ear forthrightly and yet was layered with a rich
husky undertone that held in it the promise of a passionate nature.

'We will come when we please. You can go back and tell our Lady Guardian
that.  Go on. Leave us to our bath.'

I was about to say 'What?!?' when Mennask spoke in the Thoradine tongue
with such purity of accent that it made me jump for the second time in a
short while.  I was chosen for this mission because I could speak some
Thoradine from years of exchanging insults with the enemy soldiers and, to
my chagrin, because I looked a little like a member of the enemy race.
Unlike Mennask who was brown haired, lean but broad shouldered, and tall, I
was a little shorter than my average countryman and had the dark hair and
eyes of the Thorads. I must point out however, what I lost in height I made
up for in build for I was a well muscled stalwart fellow in my prime. I
didn't have the snowy complexion of the mountain people as I grew up by the
sea and the ocean sun had infused my skin with a robust brown that it will
never lose. I was sorry that Bonruo was not there because of the three of
us, he looked the most similar to an average Thorad.  Disguised in the
uniforms of Thorad soldiers we had captured, I thought that we would rely
on Bonruo when we came out from the maze into the vicinity of Castle
Thoriand as I had assumed that only Bonruo spoke Thoradine that did not
sound fractured and was thus marginally believable.

'My lord, we have merely come to ensure that my lord is safe from any form
of danger. The times are unpredictable and the marauders are all around
us.'

'The marauders can't get past the Annulus. They are so afraid of it they
call it the Thoriand Trap.' With that haughty conviction he placed both
palms on the edge of the pool and hauled himself out of the water. Before I
could prepare myself for it, he had walked across to us, stopping about two
feet away, and stood looking up at our faces. He gazed at our features for
a long while as my eyes were pulled down on their own accord to his pelvic
area. The breath snagged in my throat as I took in the resplendence of his
youthful penis, tender like a springtime sapling biding its time till the
day it would grow into a rugged tree and his testicles, fresh and soft like
the bodies of fox cubs encapsulating a comparable hint of the young
animals' fascinating vitality. As my throat constricted, I felt burning
tears being squeezed out of my eyes and unfortunately, the boy noticed them
too. Quick as a crocodile's sweeping tail, he turned to me and barked,
'You. Do you think the enemy can get past the Annulus?'

Caught off guard by his abrupt questioning, I gasped and coughed as in my
blind panic I tried to swallow down all the desire that was making me
lightheaded.  Recovering only after a long while, I replied, 'No. I don't
think they can.'

My response was greeted by complete silence and when no one spoke after a
considerable amount of time I turned and found that Mennask was staring at
me with a murderous fury in his gray eyes. I returned my eyes to the boy
and saw that he was looking at us very grimly. My heart sank rapidly and,
to my horror, I finally realized that the 'No' I had put in my reply was
said in my own language.

'So, you have eluded the Thoriand Trap.' The boy took a step back as he
quietly pronounced this, the statement was made even more poignant by the
fact that it was spoken in my own tongue with only the whisper of an
accent.

Mennask took a step forward, quickly closing the distance between himself
and the boy. In a very low voice pregnant with fearsome threat, Mennask
said to him in Thoradine, 'The Thoriand Trap isn't that difficult a
riddle. Your father would have to find other ways to keep my people out
now, my lord.'

'How did you solve the riddle? Did you capture one of my father's generals
and make him tell you? No one other than the generals knows the full answer
to the Annulus's riddle.' Even now, the boy was remarkably unafraid, in
fact, he looked as if he was more curious than frightened as he stared
boldly back at Mennask while waiting for the quick answer he was accustomed
to receiving from his subjects.

'Your generals would rather die than tell.' Mennask raised slightly the
fist that was grasping the dagger. He was being deliberately slothful with
the speed of his response. 'So I solved the riddle myself.'

The riddle, as the two antagonists so casually termed it, had claimed the
lives of many good men including that of my cousin Edgyn who must have
either starved to death or lost his mind in the dark before falling to his
death inside the maze. Edgyn was one of those eager young men who were
supplied to our campaign every summer when the roads were hard enough for
the hooves of their horses to carry them here to Mount Thoriand. Every
summer, without fail or variation, there would be a group of foolhardy
young men who boasted among themselves on their long journey here that they
would be the ones who would finally tame the maze and steer successfully
through the Trap. The advice of their elders were treated with derision and
hurled off along with loud mutterings that the older men had lost their
nerve and should just leave the winning of the battle to the younger
ones. The warnings of the commanding officers to stay away from the Trap
only served to increase the amount of bets placed on the ventures. I myself
have won much to be put aside for my old age at the expense of those who
never came back from their sally into the Trap. Those who have put their
wages on these young mens' success were usually silenced when I came around
to collect what was due to me. Despite all this, when Mennask disclosed to
our unit his newly drawn map of the maze, most of us believed him and to
this day, I don't know why I did. Perhaps we were desperate to try any
solution that made sense and Mennask's did with an intellectual logic that
escaped the grasp of my mind.

'It is a mathematical permutation. The expanded multiple of the sum of
three triangular windows and seven square windows. The final expansion is
the sum of 81 times four multiples of triangular windows and 756 times
three multiples of triangular windows as well as one multiple of square
windows...' I heard him tell this to the boy using a didactic tone
identical to the one with which he had instructed us before Bonruo and I
were picked by our unit to accompany him through the maze. He had used much
simpler explanations when he talked to us in the presence of our unit's
Leader. He said that the windows on the façade of Castle Thoriand
provided the clue to the maze and as we looked up at the stone wall of the
castle, he pointed out that there were four levels to the gargantuan
building. Each level had ten windows, and though they were in random order,
three of these ten windows were invariably triangles while the other seven
were squares. This caused him to think that the three should be added to
the seven and the sum of that multiplied by itself four times for the four
levels. '(3t + 7s) * (3t + 7s) * (3t + 7s) * (3t + 7s)' he wrote into the
ground at our feet.  When we stared back at him without the slightest
comprehension, Mennask shook his head and said, 'That is not important.
What's important is the fact that the key to the maze is the last expansion
of this form. What you must remember is this.' He wrote the following in
the ashes of an old campfire before sketching out a drawing of what he
showed in words.

8_1_ the fourth triangular door.  7_56_ the third triangular door or the
first square door.  26_46_ the second triangular door or the second square
door.  41_16_ the first triangular door or the third square door.  240_1 _
the fourth square door.

'From consolidating the reports given by those who have managed to come
back from the maze after wandering around in it for days, I believe that
you can enter the maze from any entrance at the bottom of the slope but
once you have walked a certain distance, you will be faced with a large
number of holes, doors, tunnel branches or openings to passageways. The
first time, always choose the eighth opening from the left. It should take
you to another clearing with a new series of doorways. This time, choose
the first from the left. You should be led to a chamber with a series of
doorways or tunnel openings in the shape of triangles or squares. Choose
the fourth triangle from the left no matter where it actually stands in the
entire order. Next, choose the seventh door and then the fifty sixth
followed by either the third triangular door or the first square door.
Don't worry if you feel yourself descending for I think that the creator of
the maze retained intention to confuse even those who are going the right
way. Do this until you complete the sequence that I have written out and
you should congregate at the same point on the plateau where the castle
stands no matter which entrance you used to get into the maze.'

The boy smiled wryly. 'Yes, and for those who do not choose the doors that
you proposed?'

'They will wander around in the maze in a never ending circle.'

The boy's smile widened into a splendid grin and he clapped his hands,
producing sweet echoes that bounced around the walls of the secret
cavern. 'And that is why we call it the Annulus. Not for the solution but
for the failures.'

That elicited a smile from Mennask. 'A wise idea for you must never trust
the people around you to be too clever.'

The boy shrugged lightly. 'We cannot trust them to be too loyal or. . .to
be able to withstand the tortures that you Uicans are famous for.'

He was right, for Heaven knows we have tried but we never did manage to get
any useful information from our Thorad prisoners. This time it was
Mennask's turn to shrug.

'There is no need for any more questioning, my lord. The war will end soon
enough and Thoriand will pay due homage to Uica.'

The naked boy inclined his head. 'Unless I am very much mistaken, you and
your friend here are only scouts and not the whole army. As we all know,
there have been many scouts before you. Are you so confident that your
generals will believe that you have succeeded where so many others have
failed? Are you so naïve as to think that I will value my own life so
much as to let both of you walk out of here alive to return to your Uican
mob with your knowledge of the passageways?'

The two rivals had taken to speaking to each other in the enemy's language,
the boy in the coarse unrefined Uican tongue which was incongruent with the
rest of him and Mennask in the poetic Thoradine that did not match his
rugged demeanor.

Mennask drew a deep breath. 'There is little need for concern about all of
that, my lord. It was too simple a matter to resolve for I brought along a
hound and have released it back into the tunnels bearing a handful of the
needles from the Thoriand Striped Pine that grow only around Castle
Thoriand. My leader would already know about my success and should be
preparing the army to strike even as we speak.'

That was only a half truth for Bonruo's hound became desolate after its
master's death and was still wandering the maze looking for our deceased
comrade. Mennask and I were unable to get it to follow us and our cajoling
only made it back further away into the caves. There would be no messengers
going back to camp other than ourselves. Nevertheless, the lie made the
boy's face change and some of that spectacular blush drained away from his
visage.

'Then there is nothing more to say. I will fight the both of you to the
death and, God willing, I will kill you or die in the attempt. I have my
sword among my clothes and if you have any honor at all, you will let me
arm myself for combat.'

Mennask did not appear at all uneasy in the face of such courage. He
chuckled and turning slightly, roughly kicked all of the boy's clothes
along with its accessories into the pool. I heard the sword hitting an
underwater rock with a loud clink and imagined that it was sinking rapidly
to the bottom. Mennask smiled complacently at the boy who was shaking with
unbridled rage.

'You brutes!'

'We came to murder you, my lord. Why would we want to waste any time in
childish play?'

The boy launched himself at Mennask with the velocity of a pouncing
mountain cat and leaping up, wrapped his fingers around the older man's
throat. The violence of the attack threw Mennask back a step or two and it
took a while before the Uican could manacle both of the boy's wrists in one
fist and find purchase around the Thorad's windpipe with the other. He held
on until the boy had worn himself out after struggling for what seemed like
an eternity. When the boy approached a lull, Mennask suddenly placed a hand
on the small of the prince's back and pulling him into his arms, lowered
his mouth to the boy's before giving him a forceful but achingly tender
kiss that seemed to suck all the air out of the humid cavern. When they
finally broke apart after much too long, shock had not completely left the
boy's face but he licked his lips tentatively as if fishing for the
remnants of that unexpected kiss. Mennask held the boy even more tightly
than before, his hands wandering down now to fondle the prince's beguiling
buttocks.

Bewildered by these bold, intimate touches, the boy gasped repeatedly while
struggling unconvincingly to get away. 'What are you doing? Free us from
your wicked Uican hands.' He watched weakly as Mennask's fingers began
kneading his sensitive nipples, until they protruded painfully with erotic
excitement, and muttered, 'There is evil Uican magic in this.'

'No magic at all, my lord. It is only your own desire that makes it seem
like magic.' His industrious hand reached under and between the boy's
buttocks to rub at the enchanted spot of flesh between prince's tantalizing
balls and his concealed asshole causing the Thorad to bite his lip and buck
with fierce pleasure.

'Oh, you barbaric Uican. You wish to dishonor us with your indecent
touches.'

'If they are offensive to you, then give the command and I will stop at
once, my lord.'

The prince opened his mouth but no words came out of it as his eyes
followed the wily hands of his captor. Mennask smiled knowingly.

'My lord, this may seem a strange time to say it but I greatly admire all
things Thoriand.' The boy responded only by looking away as Mennask pressed
on with his assertion, now manhandling the creamy buttocks which were
quickly turning into a delightful shade of pink. 'I love your music that
soars to the sky and skims the earth in tandem with the dance of the
wind. Compared to yours, Uican music is earthbound, heavy without the
inspiration of the heights which your race live on. Your literature and
your arts contain the passion of the lava underneath the mountain tempered
by the pristine snow on the slopes. Your mathematics and sciences have
climbed to the heavens and consorted with the stars because you are so
close to the heavenly bodies. Your laws are the lifeblood of ancient sages
who would have been gods were they still in existence today. Look at the
clothes which I just threw into the pool, look at the fineness of the
weaving, the softness of the layered wool, and then look at our rough Uican
robes. You can feel how prickly and crude it is. I am ashamed that your
precious skin has to make contact with this vulgar and primitive apparel.'
The soldier reached behind and under again, and finding the boy's gonads
dribbled his fingers around and between them as if he was attempting to
select the choicest cherries.  Closing his hand on them, Mennask retracted
his arm so that the prince was lifted up into the air by the strong but
measured support under his testicles, with the older man's coarse hand
sinking into the crack between the boy's buttocks. The Thorad was thus
pulled up for another jawbreaking kiss that lasted till the boy began to
whimper.

I could only frown at this sudden ardent declaration and wondered where
Mennask intended to go with all of this. The soldier and interpreter of
riddles didn't talk much when he was at camp and I never suspected he was
capable of such pretty speech. The panting boy watched Mennask's moving
lips intently as if waiting for brilliant spells to fly out of it. When the
prince spoke next, his words were still fighting ones but most of its
belligerence had given way to a shy trepidation.

'Stop your babbling and let us go. Fight us, man to man.'

The words had almost no effect, being severely compromised by the fact that
the naked beauty was sitting astride the warrior's rough hand with his legs
swinging powerlessly off the ground. The prince tried valiantly to alight
from this intimate human straddle but every struggle he made only succeeded
in helping the Uican's hand submerge more deeply into the divine ass crack
and in grinding his scrotum into the older man's trap of sly fingers. The
young one's handsome body began to glow from the unsolicited stimulation
and I saw his legs part a little so that he could sink even more into the
snug love seat. Mennask's other untiring hand grazed the boy all over so
that the recipient of his caresses now began to squirm frantically with
sensual overload, the boy was actively pushing himself into Mennask's
demanding hands, and every now and then would give a feeble moan.

'But you're not yet man, my lord. You are a boy, a beautiful and desirable
one at that. And if my army comes up through those tunnels tomorrow, you
may never get to become man. Thoriand will be wiped from the face of the
earth and along with it, you, your father, your subjects, your culture,
your language, your history. Think about that, my lord. Reflect on the
coming annihilation of all that you've ever known, all that you've ever
loved. All the songs of your good people will be wrenched from their
throats, the dances slashed from their knees, their warm houses burned with
their young children still inside, their unique knowledge perishing in
their bludgeoned heads, the Striped Pines chopped down to be made into
stakes that will drive your father and brother into the ground.  Even if
you are not afraid for yourself, have pity on your people. I know that you
love your people because if you're even a little bit like your father, you
are a good and compassionate prince. I have heard that your father would
lay down his life for his people and that his sons would do the same.'

This seemed to subdue the boy and he became quiet as catastrophic thoughts
ran through his troubled head. I was surprised when Mennask gently let go
of him and set him down slowly on the rock stool. Mennask was as tender as
a mother with her infant child and the boy didn't resist as Mennask knelt
in front of him and placed his large hands on the boy's soft thighs,
captivatingly close to the prince's bashfully peeking sex. The boy looked
down on Mennask's rough hands which had started to stroke the sensitive
flesh very slowly as the older man leaned in close and began again to
speak, all the while looking deep into the Thoriand prince's beautiful
downcast eyes. Mennask's voice was soft amidst the boy's increasingly heavy
breathing, attributable to either his earlier exertions or to Mennask's
sensuous attentions.

'I am half Thorad, my lord. By birth, I am one of your subjects. I have a
birthright to your love and I claim it now. Yes, you are my sovereign lord
and you have a responsibility to love and protect me.' The boy's eyes
jerked up and searching Mennask's, saw the truth there. Mennask smiled and
nodded. 'My mother was a Thorad noblewoman who left your land early in her
youth to follow the man whom she loved. She didn't mind the unsophisticated
and hard life of the Uicans because she loved my father too much. Like how
you love your people.' To the questioning look in the boy's eyes, Mennask
shook his head, 'No, she didn't know the key to the Annulus but she taught
me the mathematics I used to solve the riddle. My mother also taught me
Thoradine and the native songs of your land.

Thoriand's hair is the snow brushing the slopes His legs the roots of the
mount planted in earliest rock His arms the mighty ravines stretching to
the ends of time His chest the cliffs challenging the heights of heavens
His heart beats deep in the pool of his own sacred blood Pulsing to feed
the craving of the mountain that never dies And his manhood the labyrinth
that draws man in Never freeing him until he has yielded everything To
Thoriand's foremost desires.'

The boy was mouthing the words that Mennask sang in a low growl that
seductively carried the melancholy weight of the singer's heartfelt
yearnings. The prince's eyes were closed even as Mennask's foraging hands
drew closer to the sensitive labyrinth of this young Thorad.

'That song is not allowed in our land.' The boy murmured this as one
trembling hand sought the support of Mennask's steady shoulder.

'Yes, my mother told me that too. The song came down from the ancient
Thorads but is now forbidden because it suggests of sexual pleasures no
longer acceptable in your land. Your father saw to that law.' Mennask took
the hand gently and kissed the tips of the tapering fingers. 'And yet, you
know the song well. I would think that you love the song as much as I
do. Perhaps tonight I shall teach you to draw men into the wonders of your
own labyrinth.' The prince did not say anything so Mennask continued with
his whispers.

'My father died here on the slopes of Thoriand when I was thirteen. He was
a brave soldier but disease claimed him and left my mother and me to fend
for ourselves. Look, my lord, look at my face.' He took the boy's fingers
from his lips and touched them to his gleaming scar. The boy's eyes opened
and followed.  'I got this because I am half Thorad. Yes, my lord. I have
this testament of my love for my mother and for Thoriand. My neighbor, the
father of my best childhood friend, fought alongside my father. He brought
us the news of my father's death on his trip home because he himself was
ill with a cough that drew blood. While he was in my home, he dishonored my
mother. I was out at play with his son and when I came home, my mother was
a bloodied sobbing form on the floor. I ran all the way to the center of
the village to seek help in bringing the villain to justice. But do you
know what the village elders told me, my lord? They said that my mother
deserved no justice because she was a Thorad, the enemy of the Uicans. They
decided then to cast my mother and myself out of the village because now
that my father was dead, we were no longer legitimate Uicans. My father was
a good man and a strong leader when he was alive and they had never dared
lift a finger against us because of him. That night, I crept into my
neighbor's house and stabbed him with this dagger that you see by my side,
my father's dagger. I put a large hole in his chest but it wasn't enough to
kill or even slow him. He swung at me with his battle axe and here you see
the scar from that fight. My mother and I ran away and she died a short
while after when the hardships and sorrow overcame her. I trained to be a
soldier in the great Uican city of Pilli and joined the Uican battles in
other lands before coming here to the slopes of Thoriand last winter.'

'What is your name?' The boy asked this with a heightening of the red in
his already flaming face for even as he spoke, Mennask had gently pushed
the prince's unresisting thighs apart so that all the glory of his
unprotected sex lay vulnerable and quivering, for his penis had hardened
irrevocably by now, before this tough and seasoned Uican soldier.

'Mennask, my lord.' The rugged seducer closed in on the young trembling
rod, until his mouth was a kiss's length away from the tender vibrating
crown, then pursed his lips and blew softly on it till the boy's eyes
rolled into his head from the unendurable treat. It was a long while before
the boy could gather his wits together to speak.

'We have heard your story, Mennask of Uica. You are Uican and you are
Thorad.  You fight for Uica and yet you would kill an Uican to avenge
Thoriand. You are a clever man who lives a rough life but appreciates all
the finer things of the Thoradine culture. You are strong and aggressive
yet tender in your embraces.  You are ugly yet indescribably
beautiful. Your kiss would shut off our breath and still strike a strange
warmth into our soul. What will you have us do for you seem to be
withholding some element of great significance? You seem to have left
something unsaid.'

'I have come to give what Uica can offer.'

'You yourself know that there is nothing Uica can offer that Thoriand might
want.'

'There is something, my lord.'

'What? Brutality? An uncouth way of life? A warlike soul that is never
appeased?'

'You forget peace, my lord.'

'Peace? But you said that the Uicans are already on their way to destroy
our people and our land.'

'I know for certain that they are not yet on their way, my lord. Would you
be interested to listen to my solution for an end to the siege and that at
no great harm to the Thorads?'

The boy smiled without much conviction. 'I know you are very intelligent,
Mennask of Uica, but even you won't be able to put a hasty halt to the
hostilities that began before our birth. No one even remembers what the two
sides are fighting about but ask any Uican if he's willing to lay down arms
and go home. The answer you will get is no.'

'Unless you become king, my lord.'

'What? Tread carefully Mennask of Uica for we love our Father the King and
our Brother the Crown Prince.'

'I have it on good authority that your love for your brother is not
reciprocated, my lord. In fact, the good Crown Prince wouldn't mind if you
accidentally drowned in this pool tonight or were assassinated by Uican
spies.  If I conjectured correctly, his animosity is great due to the fact
that your father as well as the people love you more than they do him
because of your kindness and your cleverness.'

The boy's eyes flashed but he said nothing. Mennask held his peace for a
time, saying nothing but gently using two fingers to stroke the pulsing sex
of the Thorad prince. I moved closer to get a better view as a drop of
clear liquid lengthened from the slit of the penis' head and joined the
rough stone of the seat he was perched on. Mennask collected this emission
on his finger tips and returned the liquid to the massage of the shaft
which it had run from. Then, still without a word, Mennask lowered his
mouth and took the corona of the penis into his mouth. He rotated his head
all around the crown and then I saw his tongue scraping the underside of
the penis' head in quick snake-like motions. I saw his cheeks hollowing as
he sucked on the crown before his raking tongue zeroed in on the slit of
the head. As Mennask burrowed his flexible serpentine tongue into the
crevice, the panting prince grunted urgently and lifted his hips off the
rock to feed more of himself into Mennask's mouth. Both of his hands were
yanking at the back of the soldier's neck as he labored to deliver the
whole of his needy rod to Mennask's minute ministrations but the older man
merely withdrew his mouth and leaned away from the reddening pole.

'Was my surmise on target, my lord?'

The boy was impressively composed even as his frustrated staff waved before
Mennask's nurturing mouth. 'So what if it is?'

'If there is indeed truth there, then I shall assassinate your brother...'

'No!' The boy tried to jump up from the seat but Mennask's hands on his
thighs were too weighty a burden so that his flight was cut off very
abruptly. 'No. You can't do that.'

Mennask grinned roguishly. 'What a forgiving soul you have, my lord. After
all, you spurned the advances of this half brother of yours and gazing at
your beauty now, even I can understand what a great loss he must have
felt. The dejection had no place to turn to but rage and the man has now
become a constant threat to you. But of course, you were right to reject
him for he attacked you in a drunken fit. The Crown Prince was really
rather unwise for I have seen him and he is not without physical charms
which he could have leveraged for his amorous quest.'

The boy shook his head. 'He is our brother and his imprudence must be
disregarded. We will not hear you speak of assassination again.'

'Alright then. As you wish. I shall ambush and kidnap him two nights from
now as he goes through the maze. I know of his nocturnal activities too,
you see. I know of how he likes to join the Thorad soldiers inside the maze
to gamble and to drink the wine of the Striped Pine. I know how, after they
get drunk, they like to make ghostly noises to strike fear into the hearts
of the bravest Uican.  I shall capture him and transport him far, far away
from here. And then, you shall be Crown Prince.'

The prince considered this under a furrowed brow. 'What will you have us do
after we are Crown Prince?'

By the look on Mennask's face, I knew that he was already triumphant in
whatever strategy he was pursuing. Sooner or later, everyone listened to
Mennask of Uica.  The dispenser of solutions got up from his knees and
sliding his arms under the prince's body, he lifted the boy gently before
seating himself down on the seat just vacated. The prince was lowered
lovingly into his lap where one of Mennask's arms circled the boy's waist
while the other hand continued their intimate game with the prince's
sex. He nuzzled the young Thorad's neck for a while before continuing.

'When you are Crown Prince, tell your father to take an Uican advisor into
his court.'

'You are asking us to commit treachery.'

'No, I am asking you to be clever. I am asking you to bring an end to this
siege so that everyone can have peace, so that all my Uican brothers can go
home and all of Thoriand can reside in the tranquility of the mountain as
before you were born. Your brother is too proud but your father is weary
and he listens to you.'

'How do you know all this?'

'Even if they do not have the key to the maze, they are keepers of much
valuable information. The Thorads we captured become quite loquacious after
a while.'

'Vile torture.'

'Necessary, my lord. After seventeen winters, your people still do not
understand the nature of the Uicans. Uica is a warlike nation, full of
passion for the fight, ready to brandish sword and draw blood. What they
want is merely to win their quarrel and if you submit to them, they will be
happy enough to end the siege and go home. As I was saying, your father
will listen to you especially if you are Crown Prince. Tell him to take an
Uican advisor, send annual bounty to Uica and live in peace. But here's the
actual ruse that Thoriand would do well to employ. The Uicans may be good
soldiers but fortunately, they are not good governors. In the years to
come, Uica will not interfere with Thoriand if you are wise enough to keep
just beyond their reach.  Be quiet for a few years, pay your dues and when
Thoriand is strong again, banish the Uican advisor over some matter or
other. If you remain overtly submissive, Uica will not take the trouble to
pursue this matter. I know because my mother and I were never pursued when
we ran away.'

'Is it wise to compare your personal experience to this big war?'

'The Uicans love to win while the Thorads love peace. Can you find me a
better compromise, my lord?'

'How about your friend there? Would he agree?' The boy nodded towards me.

'I don't think the common soldier is very concerned about the details of
victory as long as he can go home after seventeen winters.'

The lovely prince glanced at me suspiciously before returning his gaze to
Mennask. Not finding any more direct answers there, he leaned back into
Mennask's strong embrace as he contemplated the solution that the soldier
had offered. The cavern became silent as he focused his thoughts on the
different aspects of the compromise, debating points over and over again in
his mind while Mennask's untiring hands soothed his restless skin. I felt
my eyelids drooping so I put my head against the wall, stretched out my
legs and promptly fell asleep.

I was awakened by a moan after the most delicious sleep in which I dreamt
that I had cornered the prince and was just about to pop my prick into his
inviting pinkish anus. Looking up, I saw the boy and Mennask engaging in
the most furious of kisses seemingly without the need to take in air. The
prince was moaning uncontrollably now as Mennask's hand held his penis
prisoner, firmly jerking it with a momentum that made me dizzy keeping
track. My hand went to my own crotch to relieve the tension there and my
movement caught Mennask's eye. He tore his lips away from the prince's and
grinned at me, his eyes dancing with libertine abandon.

'You are just in time, my friend. The young prince has just agreed to my
solution but before any further action is taken, he wants to know what else
Uica is willing to offer.'

'Why? What else can Uica offer?'

Mennask winked at me. 'I told him that these two Uicans will offer him
unimaginable bliss as a token of our good will. At the risk to our own
selves, we will show him the unfettered pleasures which are no longer
tolerated in his land. Are you going to help me make good on my word?'

I couldn't believe what I was hearing or the extent of my good luck. 'I...I
don't understand.'

Mennask sighed. 'We are going to fuck him until his body can no longer
withstand the joys of the climax. Come over here and we shall start
immediately.'

I bound up and almost tripped over my feet in my haste to get
there. Mennask started to guffaw.

'Just take off all your clothes before you come over. I need you as a bed
for the prince.'

I did as I was told without any further questions and as my pants went
down, my very thick and hefty prick leapt up and hit my stomach with a loud
slap. I hurried over and Mennask passed the trembling prince into my
longing arms, the boy's eyes never left Mennask's face and I didn't know if
he was even aware of my presence in his passion for the other Uican. I
didn't care however as I hugged this precious burden to my bare chest,
relishing in the thought that, soon, I would be pounding my aching rod into
his wondrous relieving softness.  Mennask made me sit down on the rock
stool and arranged the prince's body so that his buttocks rested on the
strong plain of my stomach and groin. The boy's beautiful head went into
the hollow right below my chin and his thighs rested on the end of my hips.

'Lean back a little so that the prince is in a reclining position.'

I did so and then finally realized what Mennask meant by bed. The rocky
surface all around us was much too hard and sharp and Mennask wanted the
boy to be comfortable as he was fucked by the Uicans so I have been
relegated the duty of becoming the boy's human bed while Mennask mounted
him. I prayed that I would get my turn soon.

'Hold his thighs far apart and secure him so that he can't move
about. Don't let him get tired.'

I placed a hand under each bend of the boy's knees and pulled his legs wide
apart, making sure that the weight of his legs rested entirely on my
hands. The boy lay trembling and limp on my broad sweaty chest, his fingers
straying to stroke the excited penis that Mennask had abandoned
temporarily. Mennask smiled as from his vantage point he must be beholding
what must be the most breathtaking sight of the prince's virginal rose
anus. It was a long while before he could detach his eyes and raise them to
the boy's face.

'Do you want this, my lord? Do you want me to pierce your body with mine?
Do you want to know the secret pleasures of being the receptacle for
another man's virility?'

The boy gulped and said weakly. 'Yes,' before adding the command, 'and be
quick about it.'

Mennask grinned and said to me, 'This is your lucky day, my friend.'

The Uican soldier began to disrobe slowly, shedding the heavy winter gear
that consists of cap, coat, shirt, belt, pants, underclothing and boots
while I made use of the time to burn my mark into the shaking beauty in my
arms. The loud panicked gasp shooting out from the prince's throat made me
raise my head from where I had been sucking and biting on the boy's face,
neck and shoulders, indulging in the heady sweetness of his burning skin. I
saw what made the boy gasp and my own jaw dropped at the sight of Mennask's
naked form. Without much ado, the Uican was the most magnificent male
creature I had ever set eyes on for the shape of his body could only be
described as perfect. He had a tapering form, broad on top and narrow at
the bottom but at such perfect proportions that there were no parts that
called attention to themselves because of an incongruent ratio. His
leanness was deceptive for under his clothes, the man was like the rarest
sculpture of a master artist, his responsive muscles rippling across a
great virile expanse of chest and shoulders, the brawns along his long arms
and the veins that lined them bearing testimony to hard work and much
physical labor, his long legs and calves hard as the boulders in the
cavern. The man's body glowed with health, it was a vital golden that
highlighted the stiff boards of his muscled stomach and revealed that here
was a man whose body was the flawless complement to his active intelligent
mind. From the neck downwards, I would say that Mennask was the flower of
manhood, the champion of our species, the absolute master of the male
kind. But then, that wasn't what made the boy shiver to his very soul with
admiring disbelief. Looking down, I saw that Mennask's rod was not a rod at
all but a club in all sense of the word, in thickness, in length and in
weight. In its excited state, it was the length and girth of a man's full
upper arm and as I gulped, I suddenly felt worried for the delicate prince
for I couldn't see how he could be a pliant enough receptacle for this
monstrous pole.

Mennask advanced the same question. 'Well, my little lord, are you still
willing or should we just forget about this game?'

The prince stared at the throbbing club that Mennask had brought to push
gently against the boy's shuddering anus even as the intoxicating envelope
of musk that was swirling off the Uican's nude body became an aphrodisiac
that would not disperse from around his fevered head. Breathing in deeply,
the boy said resolutely, 'We would never forgive ourselves if this was not
done. Mennask of Uica, you have our permission to enter our body.'

Mennask nodded but just when I expected that he would lunge his penis into
the apprehensively waiting boy, he dropped to his knees instead and brought
his lips to the rim of the prince's butthole. Before the rest of us could
brace ourselves, Mennask's busy tongue had shot out and pushed itself into
the sensitive hole, and the soldier started to lick, probe and forage
around the insides of the helpless anus. He brought his lips forward and
forming a suction cup, inhaled sharply and began to suck the heated flesh
into his mouth without ceasing the activity of his lusty tongue which was
darting purposefully all over the targeted area, twirling and churning,
burrowing and digging, stirring deeper and deeper into the laid bare
hypersensitive cavity. His raging tongue and cunning mouth must have opened
up a whole new universe of sensations for the prince who began shouting
with pleasurable anguish.

'Oh, what are you doing?!? Oh, we are dying! We are dying! What are you
doing?!?'

The boy was bucking on my chest like a beached dolphin and only my grip on
his thighs prevented him from flying right off. Mennask too held the royal
hips tightly in place using both strong hands as he continued to administer
the careful but energetic rimming and sucking of the prince's overwrought
anus. The boy's hands were clasped tightly on Mennask's sandy head, his
fingers gripping wildly at the brown strands, the digits heirs of the
prince's colossal uncertainty of whether he wanted to keep Mennask's head
in place and bear the risk of passing out or to wrench it away to bring a
stop to this excruciatingly agonizing pleasure. Mennask had no such dilemma
as he forged ahead with his tongue and his hungry mouth while the prince
started to cry with near orgasmic distress.

'Oh, we cannot breath. We are going to explode. Ah, it hurts. Oh, sweet
torture.  So evil and yet so very sweet.'

I watched the boy's sex shiver furiously as it laid painfully erect on the
smoothness of his fair stomach.

'Mennask, I think the prince is about to reach his climax.'

My little advice finally halted Mennask's extraordinary efforts. He came up
to look at the sobbing boy who was too weak and overwhelmed to say
anything.  Mennask smiled broadly and raised his eyebrows at me.

'Then he is ready for penetration.'

I grinned at my chuckling comrade as the boy began to whimper
quietly. Mennask leaned down and kissed the prince tenderly, using the back
of his hand to wipe the perspiration soaked black hair away from the boy's
tearful eyes.

'Shall I stop, my lord? You are tired already.'

The prince sniffled a bit and then shook his head. 'Bring it to
closure...please.'

In response, Mennask went off and searched his discarded pile of clothing
and when he returned, I saw that he had in his hands the pouch of whale oil
that we had used to light the torch inside the Trap. He unknotted the pouch
and inserted his hand until his palm was coated with globs of the oil which
he then proceeded to rub on the entire length of his massive penis and the
inside as well as around the opening of the prince's anus.

'If the pain proves too much, my lord, alert me and I shall withdraw.'

'Alright. You...may proceed.'

'Yes, my lord. Ready, my friend?'

'Yes, oh, yes.'

Mennask was nothing if not careful as he gripped the boy's hips firmly and
edged the tip of his fist sized crown into the prince's well prepared
hole. Looking up and smiling at his royal mate, he strained forward very
slowly, his hips moving onwards and onwards as if against its own will,
pushing the massive head of his organ into the lips of the young Thorad's
anus.

'Aaaaahhhhh, you are too...big. Stop. Stop.'

The boy tried to inch away from the vanguard of the invader that was
already stretching his nether hole like never before in his young life but
Mennask kept his hold on the young royal and refused to withdraw as he had
promised.

'Just a little bit more my lord. It will soon be in and you will enjoy it
spectacularly. Why don't you close your eyes? Here, blindfold him with my
belt.'

I smirked a little at the understatement in Mennask's assurance that the
monstrous penis would soon be in as I couldn't see how that was physically
possible. I did as I was told and using the leather belt, blindfolded the
young prince so that he wouldn't see the progress of the painful
intrusion. When it was done, Mennask signaled me to spread those beautiful
thighs wider apart as he maintained his position at the entrance to the
young unexplored body. Over the next half an hour, Mennask, with superhuman
patience and self control, crept his way into the interior of the prince's
rectum as the boy cried out and groaned at intervals, frequently asking if
it was all the way in yet. Finally, almost to my disbelief, the whole
enormous club went in with an ultimate heave and Mennask's great balls
swayed brushing against my own anus as I lay right below the prince.

'Take the blindfold off. He should see this.'

The prince looked a little dazed when his eyes were released from the cover
and he blinked at Mennask owlishly.

'It doesn't hurt as much as the start. Is this the end?'

We laughed and Mennask stroked the boy's chin gently. 'It's just the
beginning.  How do you feel, my lord?'

'We feel as if a giant fire-breathing dragon has pushed its monstrous snout
into our buttocks and if he opens his mouth even a little, we shall be
ripped apart.  Nevertheless, we feel a strange desire to clamp down on the
dragon's snout and see if we can tame the evil creature by stroking his
nose.'

'Ah yes, perhaps the dragon might lick you and tickle your insides with his
forked tongue.' Mennask patted the prince's quivering belly, gently poking
at the constricting navel before returning his hands to grip the boy's
hips. 'But what if the dragon were to roar and rear its head like beasts
are wont to do, my lord? What would you do then?'

'Oh, we fear that we shall be flung about like a doll in the hands of a bad
tempered child. We shall most certainly lose our life.' The young royal
pondered this for a while. 'We shall just have to let the beast wear itself
out inside our body. Perhaps it will be calm when it is fatigued.'

Mennask smiled. 'Let us see if that will all come true, my lord, for I
shall make the dragon roar. Now, take care, everyone.'

With that, he was off. Off can't be the correct term for Mennask unleashed
a furious power that would have caused diamonds to meld into each other. He
hammered heaven and earth and pounded his way through the solid gold gates
of Paradise. He started his thrusts with the speed and ferocity of a
million charging fire dragons and went on to add the velocity of a billion
rampaging hurricanes. I was almost flung off the rock along with the prince
on top of me as he slammed into the boy, backed almost all the way out and
crashed in again faster than the time needed to register pain. My mouth
opened and wouldn't close as he drove into the boy so fast that the
prince's reflexive grunts came out only on every fourth thrust. I felt the
weight of a mountain come down on me every time Mennask rammed in, my lungs
couldn't react fast enough when he backed out so that I too managed to draw
a fresh gulp of breath only at intervals of every fourth or fifth shove. On
and on he went and other than the periodic grunts, the prince said nothing,
the breath must have been knocked out of him so that he won't be forming
coherent words for a long time to come.

Mennask, on the other hand, laughed and talked the whole time as he fucked
the prince into oblivion. 'Do you feel me inside you, little one? Do you
feel my ramrod weapon overpowering every niche of your adorable buttocks?
Have I filled every recess of your soul with my need for you? Ah, little
one, the gods made you more beautiful than the fairest maiden so that all
men would become fools when they look upon you. Every one of them would
fall insensate at your pearly feet but only the kings among men would have
the greatest fortune of protesting their crazed love between your exquisite
thighs. And then the gods were kind as they made you male so that your body
would endure the almighty lust of these many kings for once these potent
lords rush inside you, most would lose their minds from the gluttonous
ecstasy and forget that there is only the thinnest line between rough
intercourse and brutal rape. Last of all, the gods truly smiled upon you
for not only did they make your nether chamber hardy, they also designed it
with your utmost enjoyment in mind. You will beg for men to lose themselves
inside your labyrinth for your bliss will be ten times that of every man
who ravishes you. Little one, you will be a river that never runs dry from
the masculine essence that men will disgorge in you with the force of
thundering waterfalls. There will always be abundant spilling over of
lustful semen flooding down your thighs for as long as you live.'

The boy's arms were hanging limply on both sides of his torso and flopping
manically in rhythm to the fucking which was causing his body to be as
slick with sweat as Mennask's penis was with the whale oil mixed with
seminal fluids and perspiration. After about the five thousandth ram, I
began to wonder if the boy was enjoying it as Mennask said he would
be. Despite all the frenetic rocking, I managed to look down at the face
tucked safely beneath my chin, the only part of him that was safeguarded
from the mighty quaking that was trembling the very core of his being. His
mouth was open but his eyes were squeezed tightly shut as if he was trying
hard to remember something. Intermittently, I saw that his lips would
quiver as if he was about to cry and then his forehead would crease
followed by his unseeing eyes popping open so widely that I was afraid the
eyeballs would fall out of their sockets. His face would become even redder
if that was possible and at these times low guttural sounds would emerge
from his windpipes accompanied by small yelps. At the same time, his body
would begin shaking on its own without help from the man fucking the life
out of him and his hips would jerk wildly as if the lower part of his body
wanted to tear itself away from his torso. Last of all, his tremendously
engorged youthful penis would grow a little more, lift off his stomach,
shudder dangerously, turn even more purple and finally, prodigious spurts
of milky sperm would erupt from the clit in his rod and go flying off into
space.

This unparalleled climactic event happened over and over again so many
times until finally, at the end of about an hour, the boy's eyes did not
snap open even when his sex throbbed and spat semen on to his
stomach. Mennask, despite being so apparently busy with the fucking and
talking, had been watching the boy closely too and when he saw how the eyes
remained shut, he leaned forward, pounded into the prince a few more times,
shivered mightily and climaxed deep inside the royal receptacle.

Heaving a long satisfied sigh, Mennask withdrew his penis and looked up at
me, the organ had not yet slackened in spite of the long workout it went
through. I shook my head with wonder at his endurance for, as a result of
his mammoth balls slapping against my private parts as he fucked the boy,
Mennask had even succeeded in giving me, the bystander, a considerable
orgasm that occurred shortly before the prince lost consciousness.

'Has he fainted?'

I released the boy's legs and held his face in my hand, his whole body was
limp and lifeless while his facial features showed deep restfulness, like
that on the faces of slumbering soldiers who have marched non-stop for the
duration of one full moon cycle. I nodded and grinned, 'Yes.'

Mennask grinned lecherously as well and going to the edge of the pool
brought back its water cupped in his hands. This he used to splash on the
prince's face making the boy splutter and open his eyes in a hurry.

'My lord, are you alright?'

The boy was too exhausted to speak but slowly, his face blossomed with a
smile that would take away the breath of soulless demons.

'Mennask of Uica.' He was whispering so Mennask had to lean in close to
catch his words. 'Mennask of Uica, you have killed me with your thrashing.'
I noticed that he had dropped the royal pronoun as well, as a result of the
thrashing Mennask gave him. His smile became shy as the man who now owned
his virginity kissed him softly on the lips.

'I said I came here tonight to murder you, my lord. Have I not kept my
promise?  Have you not been awakened, my lord? Do you not see and feel
things more clearly now? Do you now not know what heights pleasure can
attain? Have I not taken you beyond the unknown, my lord? Do you not trust
me now?'

The prince of Thoriand smiled and held out his arms to Mennask of Uica. 'I
trust you. I think I can do more than trust you. I think I can love
you. You are my master now for I would live only for the want of your power
moving relentlessly deep inside of me to conquer my very being. I can never
dislodge myself from you now, Mennask. My soul will be empty whenever your
masculinity is not wedged so tightly in me that I have no room for either
shallow breath or lucid thought.'

Mennask lightly bit the tip of the fingers offered to him. 'I was already
in love with you from the first moment I set eyes upon you, my lord. It
took all my self restraint to stop myself from seizing you and taking you
to a hidden place where I would ravish you to my soul's content, taking all
the time in the world I needed. For even now, my soul is not yet satisfied
and I would fight the most fearsome demons in Hell to go between your legs
again and impale you with my insatiable desire. If I could, I would spend
every instant of my life declaring my love to your body and filling you to
saturation point with the life force of mine.'

'You have no need to wage war, Mennask. My thighs will always lay
surrendered to you. They will always be open to you. Always'

Mennask smiled dangerously. 'Now that I have savored what lays hidden
there, nothing will bar me from tasting that sweetness again, not even you,
my lord.'  To take some of the implicit malevolence out of his words, he
tickled the prince's semen splattered stomach until the young man's squeals
have stopped for want of breath before he continued solemnly. 'My lord,
though I have emerged victorious from your secret labyrinth, I have yet to
hear you scream while I wandered within. I am aware that I fucked all the
words out of your mouth and air from your lungs but I cannot deny myself
the imperative need to rock you till you begged for mercy because your life
hangs by the happy thread of ecstasy.'

The Thorad grinned naughtily. 'Then you should gird yourself and prepare
your next surge.'

'Yes, my lord. The very next time and the next and the next, I shall hold
you down and break into you like a tidal wave demolishing a castle of
sand. Then, you shall know the full extent of my strength for I was gentle
today having regard that this is our first coupling.'

Undaunted, the prince replied, 'I shall pull on your buttocks with all of
my might and help you vanquish me. Kiss me, my love.'

Mennask lifted the boy off my chest with a tight embrace that unequivocally
affirmed their passion for each other and I let go reluctantly though I
knew I had no part in their mutual love. Sitting down and placing the
prince on his lap where his gargantuan cock still pulsated with superhuman
need, Mennask worked the boy into a frenzy with mad kisses that blanketed
every inch of the beautiful Thorad's flushing skin. As I watched Mennask at
his enviable task, I realized that there was method to his seeming madness
because every bite that his mouth took and every spot of burning flesh that
his hands pressed on was carefully calculated to give maximum erotic
pleasure to the sexually awakened boy who was again gasping with crazed
delirium. I became alarmed that the young royal's mind might snap with too
much of that perilous pleasure when Mennask slid three of his fingers into
the boy's addicted asshole and began to finger fuck him with a murderous
force that would have punched holes in stones. I grimaced as I watched the
shouting prince lash dementedly about as the fingers plucked ruthlessly at
his devastated rectum. And so it surprised me greatly when, even as he
yelled in hoarse appreciation of this mindbending torture, the boy slid his
own palms down and spread his firm asscheeks wide apart so that Mennask's
fingers could go unhampered in their work.

Flinging his splendid head back with reckless abandon, the prince sobbed,
'My love, my love, take me to the brink again for when you push me over, I
soar with the speed of lightning to an unknown place of blinding heat so
intense that my body bursts into a billion particles of persistent
agonizing rapture, never again to be reconstituted. Even now, my body is
approaching that heat which I can see when I close my eyes.'

Mennask sank his clever mouth to the boy's graceful neck and biting it,
growled, 'There is a sacred pledge you must take before I can convey you to
those thrills, my lord. Without it, I am unable to arm myself with enough
might to carry out your command.'

I listened to the soldier's words with cynicism for as far as I could see,
his omnipotent cock didn't seem to need any magic spells performed on it to
aid in its earlier indefatigable maneuvers deep inside the boy. The prince,
however, was willing to believe anything that came from the lips that were
studying his body like an overzealous scholar who had stumbled across the
Book of All Knowledge.

'What must I pledge, my love? Tell me and I shall declare it at the top of
my voice.'

The Uican licked one of the boy's rose nipples while adding a fourth finger
to his exertions down below. 'From this day on, I will give you what you
desire most only if you pledge that you will do as I bid. You must obey me
or I will not help you soar to that delightful extremity which you crave. I
will still ravage you but I will never let you reach your contentment. Do
you understand?'  To punctuate the seriousness of his demand, Mennask
withdrew his versatile fingers from the restless rectum and ceased all the
labors of his mouth and hands.

The prince of Thorad responded to this ultimatum by kissing Mennask hard on
the lips. 'I will obey you from this moment on, my lord and my love.' As if
to prove his obedience, the boy lifted his hips high into the air before
lowering his buttocks on to the massive erection in Mennask's lap, the lips
of the anus hurrying to swallow the tip of the penis' corona like a desert
wanderer drinking at the well of an oasis.

A look of steely satisfaction flashed briefly in the Uican's gray eyes and
I was not surprised for it was a tremendous concession on the part of the
prince of Thoriand, one that was intrinsically unequal in the benefits to
be received by both sides. I soon realized that I was a spectator to
Mennask's cleverest solution to a difficult mathematical equation. The
soldier allowed the boy to writhe in frustration, like a rabbit trying to
escape into its burrow, in his desperate attempts to impale himself on
Mennask's colossal stake. Smiling cruelly at the boy's futile struggles,
due to the size of the spear and the inversely corresponding delicate size
of the goal, Mennask stroked the prince's sweating body and occasionally
tickled the boy's genitalia which were swinging with the wild motions of
his twisting and humping body.

Despairing, the Thorad cried, 'Help me, my love!'

Mennask did nothing other than lick his lips with nonchalance. 'You will
obey me, will you not, my lord?'

The boy threw his arms around his lover's neck and screamed in frustration.
'Yes, yes. Please, I beg you. Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me! I shall expire
this instant if you don't! Oh my love! I can't wait any longer, you have to
fuck me now! '

The soldier grinned. 'You will never defy my pleasure, no matter what form
it may take?'

'Never, my love. I beg you. Come back inside where you belong and fuck
me. My body is home to your manhood and it will only be whole when the
master resides in it. Fuck me for it is my only desire in exchange for
eternal submission to you, my lord. Oh, I would spend the rest of my life
sitting in your lap and feeling you rule my body and soul. Fuck me, I beg
you.' He pushed more and more of his needy asshole onto Mennask's
glistening pike but remained stuck high above the soldier's lap.

'Pretty words but I am not easily convinced being the cynic that I am in
the best of times.' In a very relaxed manner, Mennask grasped the boy's
wasted cock and swung it like a pendulum, his casualness glaring in
contrast with the boy's growing agitation. 'Here is the first test for you,
my lord. It is my pleasure to let my friend over there take my place
between your thighs. What say you?'

Surprised, the prince bit his lip and glanced over at me with much
disapproval and even disgust before turning back to Mennask and sighing,
'Whatever you say, my love. Be it a hundred enemies who wish to ravage me,
I will not resist them as long as it is your will that I do not.'

I did not bother pointing out that not too long ago, Mennask was the enemy
as well because the Uican was already nodding briskly and standing up,
unfastened the young beauty from his own cock head with a wet plop before
carrying the boy over like a child, with his legs wrapped around the
soldier's sturdy waist. He kissed the royal lovingly and then handed the
prince back to me.

'My friend, I have not forgotten you. You have earned your reward and I
give him to you for use as he is now mine to give. Bestow upon him all the
pleasures you're capable of because his smiles now make me the happiest man
in the world.'

I noticed that even as Mennask relinquished his charge to me, he wrapped a
fist possessively around the prince's quiescent penis making the boy smile
sleepily.  Looking on this scene, I suddenly knew that the Uican had the
young royal wrapped around his little finger, the boy was like a docile pet
that lived for scraps of the soldier's love, begging for small caresses and
hungering for his master's every little gesture of affection. Mennask
arranged his cast off clothing on the rock stool and taking the prince from
me, put him down before making him kneel in front of the rock. He made the
boy, who was still pouting a little, place his elbows on the rock and then
Mennask lifted the young Thorad's hips and spread his smooth round buttocks
before gently pulling his thighs apart for the ease of my penetration. I
looked at the prince's gleaming butt cheeks and the red yearning anus and
felt my lust come galloping back like wild horses.  But I hesitated because
the boy might have had enough for one night. Smiling, Mennask took me aside
patted me on the back.

'The boy was born for this, my friend. His body was made to be fucked. You
were holding him and we both saw how much he could take. Did you not see
how often he reached the point of no return? You and I would be lucky to
get there three times a night. How many times did he attain climax?'

'Seventeen times. One for every winter he has lived. It was unbelievable.
Magnificent. Perhaps it's a Thorad ability.'

Mennask laughed heartily. 'Don't you wish you were a Thorad then? Every
time he had an orgasm, his insides squeezed my cock like a vice. A lesser
man would have ejaculated too soon and missed the wonders of this boy's
repeated sexual rite.  Go on and enjoy him, my friend. Savor the first
blood of the Uican victory over the Thorad. Take the boy as your first
surrendered enemy.'

Urged this way, I dithered no more and hurrying back, knelt behind the boy,
grasped his hips and entered him using all the force my lust had built in
me.  Oooooohhhhhhhh, it was everything Mennask said it would be and
more. The boy's gridiron tight anus and rectum were like the narrowest
gritty wormhole that was lined with a thick coat of superheated moss. The
moist muscled walls gripped and chafed on every minuscule bit of my fat
propelling cock, every nerve in my rod received a personal masseur that
lovingly but assertively rubbed and pressed at my sensitive erection inside
that luscious passageway, swiftly stoking every spark point until the fires
of pleasure raged as a wild and uncontainable inferno. The boy was the
finest thing that I had ever inserted my prick into, an unbelievable
quicksand of reality surpassing sex that I felt myself drowning willingly
in. Others may scoff but I would stake my life on what I now understood -
even the boy's indescribable physical splendor paled in comparison to what
could be found between his legs. The only thing in the world more beautiful
than the boy's unrivaled countenance rested inside of the royal body
itself. I could foresee horrific wars being fought so that the triumphant
kings could spend just one night with this boy spreadeagled underneath
them. On my every hundredth pummel or so, his rectum would spasm and
strangle my prick with a satin chokehold so tight that it left me crying
out with helpless gratification even though I was already breathless with
amazement. Mennask bent over my back and poured down words of encouragement
which I did not need.

'Yes, harder, my friend. Faster, much faster. Yes, that's it. Harder, as
hard as you can go. He likes it that way.'

Heaving, I increased my speed and force until everything became a blur and
I fucked the boy so savagely that my own sanity began fleeing me. As I
slammed into him, I used my hands to pull at his hips so that every forward
thrust was reinforced and magnified by a coordinated backward wrench that
drove me deeper and deeper into the pleasure chamber. Soon, even that
wasn't enough and leaning forward till my chest was glued to his back, I
reached both arms around his waist and wrapped my biceps across his heated
midriff. Locking him in this unbreakable bear hug I began to voraciously
hoard all of the boy's superb treasures with sweeping arms and rapidly
ramming obese cock. On my knees and having the prince pinned under me, with
gravity and my powerful hips as willing assistants, I tore into the boy
with a violent appetite I have never before known. The boy's each
responsive grunt acted as a pace setter for my coming shove, a bravo to
bring on the encore of my following plunge. I lost track of time, there was
only one way to tell that time was moving on and that was by the boy's
spasms which were increasing gradually and had begun tugging at my elated
cock much more frequently and urgently than before. In my ardor, I bit his
tender sloping shoulders and clasping opposing wrists with fists, hauled
the boy into my pelvis so that he and I would be joined as one by the
molten heat of my coursing sex inside his volcanic aperture. The young
one's limbs left the ground and his joggling body was held up only by the
squeeze and my ravenous buttress which was gobbling up everything in its
path deep inside his delicious tunnel. I was fast approaching my own
climax, my pleasure fountain was waiting to explode with enough power to
tear my heart out of my chest and soon I would be stampeding to heaven
transported by this angel beneath me. Mennask was speaking again but I
hardly heard what he said.

'Did you know that the Thorads are an older race than the Uican, my friend?
Did you know that when the Thorads were composing poems, the Uicans were
only learning how to speak corrigibly? Did you know that the Uicans can
never hope to achieve the beauty and culture of the Thorads? Not in a
thousand years and we can't wait that long, can we? My friend, did you know
that once lured into the tunnels, the entire Uican army could be poisoned
with the fatal perfume made from crushing the cones of the Striped Pine?
They would be paralyzed at once and then die a slow agonizing death, their
bodies would then fall off the ledges into the abyss, did you know that?
Did you know that that would be an even more effective way of freeing
Thoriand than trying to kidnap the Crown Prince? Think about it, think how
good it would be for peoples everywhere if the confrontational Uicans are
wiped out in one fell swoop. Think of the peace to be had everywhere. Think
of how people like the Thorads would thrive. Do you know how long I have
wanted to reclaim my Thorad roots? I am a Thoriand nobleman by birth but an
Uican peasant by the same. Different balances on two sides of the same
equation. Which one would you choose, my friend? When the boy is king in
the near future, I shall be right behind him, sharing his bed at night and
his throne by day and together, he and I will rule this magical
domain. With Uica weakened thus, I shall teach the Thorads how to fight and
in no time at all, Thoriand will have military might as well as the
sophistication to rule skillfully. The other nations will have become
complacent in the absence of barbaric Uica and ultimately, there will be
nothing in my way, nothing at all, when I become the conqueror.'

I couldn't understand what he was saying but it hardly seemed important
when I was about to have the biggest orgasm of my life. I felt the familiar
heat and the tightness rising in my groin, except this time they felt like
a white squall compared to my usual drizzle, and I pounded even faster in
my hurry to be ensnared in the storm. I was coming, I was coming, the
climax whirled ominously just ahead. I reared up and my back arched to
prepare for the climatic detonation while behind me, Mennask chuckled.

'Stupid and simple to the end. Uican to the very last. But at least, my
friend, you will die happy.'

My orgasm burst out of me into the boy like an apocalyptic waterspout
sucking all the oceans of the world up into the heavens and I screamed. And
screamed because another sensation had jumped in with the mind splitting
pleasure. It was pain. Unbelievable pain from my side where, when I had the
presence of mind to look down, I saw Mennask dragging his embedded dagger
from my side to the middle of my stomach. The pain and the pleasure mingled
into a concoction of the purest light, I smelt blood and semen in the air,
I tasted a strange metallic saltiness on my tongue, I heard the panting
from my own labors, I saw the light implode inside my head and then I saw
no more.