Date: Sun, 29 Dec 2013 16:00:14 -0500
From: redpatience@Safe-mail.net
Subject: Magpie and the Prince part 4

IX. The Baths

 	They passed through sunny days and rainy ones, and autumn became
winter. Ten said he had left to find Irau nearly a month before he
encountered the boy, and it would take nearly as long to return to the
White Deer Tower. One afternoon, they reached the city of the Brothers,
emerging from the forested road on a hilltop to see that great metropolis
on the sea. Tenements and towers of orange brick stretched upward and
behind them, white sailed frigates skated on the glittering water. The
pearly dome of the Temple of All Gods hubbed the center of the city's
streets, and behind it rose the black-columned palisade of the Church of
the Holy Heart.
	Within a mile of the city, they stopped at a barber. Evening had
almost set and Ten had to ply the man with a whole silver to get him to go
about his work: a shave. The foamed soap and hot razor took no time to
sculpt Ten's face out as if it were a work of art liberated from
stone. Irau had never seen the Paladin without his shaggy black beard of
travel, and he looked not only ten years younger but much more attractive,
to the extent that Irau became uncomfortable. His clean, strong jawline and
dimpled chin gave the boy the feeling he had become a stranger all over
again.
	They stopped at an inn that was much cleaner than the Three-Legged
Dog. There was fresh straw on the floor, and men and women alike seemed far
more civil, merry and flushed with wine but not fiendishly drunk or
spoiling for fights. There were many men and women with skin as dark as
tea, but nobody seemed to have seen features like Irau's. His long
earlobes, almond shaped eyes, and delicate features marked him as an
Aldeni. Many of them openly stared at the boy, and not just because he was
so comely.
	"Your people are still remembered in this land," Ten said, "but in
the same way as sunken cities and fire-breathing worms. No one thinks
you're real."
	They paid for a room and a couple steins of ale. The knight drank
his with his feet kicked up on the bar; he flirted freely with the barmaid,
who was an old admirer.  After quite enough teasing, she pinched his thigh
so hard the Paladin yelped in pain.
	"You're a criminal, knight of the West," she accused, "to make a
woman think you've got a mind for anything but booze and boys."
	After their first glowing bellyful of beer, they went and pissed in
the street, where it was growing dark. Irau still felt sheepish about being
nude around so many people, and pissed against the wall. Ten put his arm
around the boy's shoulders, an act that required him to stoop a bit.
	"Hungry, lad?" he asked.
	"Yes," the boy admitted.
	"Let's go see the room."
	 For once they had a proper bed of down. The sun had just set, and
a few coals glowed in the hearth. Ten closed the shutters and added a few
logs to the fire. A meal was waiting in a crock; a potage of lentils,
carrots, onions, and numbing spiked peppercorns. There was a small hunk of
fatty roast pork, rye bread in a basket, and two brown pears. Hungry from
their day in the saddle, they devoured the whole thing in minutes and
finished it off with cakes of honeyed oats and a glass of warm cider.
	Ten got up from the table and went to the door. "Are you going to
come with me?" he asked.
	"Where?" Irau asked.
	"There's a hot spring. I haven't bathed in weeks."

	The baths were a long walk from the tavern down into a marsh where
planked causeways spanned mire and patches of quicksand. Steam clouded the
air. Sulfur filled their nostrils and they reached a stone bathhouse with
lanterns glowing. Before entering the pool, they had to wash with some
tallow soap so as not to spoil the water with their filth. Irau watched
with more and more curiosity and less and less hesitation as Ten lathered
his taut muscular frame and poured steaming water over himself again and
again. The boy stared out of the corners of his eyes as the Paladin
slathered his cock and bollocks with soap and doused them. The water that
came off was black with dirt, ash, sweat, and oil, but the sight of Ten's
body glistening in the yellow lamplight made Irau's prick grew hard. Ten
had seen it several times now, on the road, and had never said anything,
much to the boy's relief. Nevertheless the boy turned away from the man,
ashamed and afraid he would make the knight uncomfortable.
	They sank into the scalding water as gingerly as they could, but it
was still painful. Irau's people made annual pilgrimages to their neighbors
who lived near such springs, but it never ceased to sting. At last, up to
his neck in the water, his face red as Ten's childhood beets, Irau took as
deep a breath as he could with the pressure of the water on his chest. He
sighed in satisfaction. There were two old men there, soaking old bones and
old injuries, and they had watched keenly as two younger men sank in. Now,
however, they got out of the water, drying off with rags and itching their
numb, sagging balls.
	"It feels very good," Irau said, lightheaded.
	"Don't stay in too long," Ten warned. "This is a very strong
spring. The salts in it will make you lose your head."
	"Mmm" the boy moaned in assent. He stood and went to sit on a
higher seat where his chest and knees would be exposed to the cold
air. Steam poured from his body into the night sky. The old men tottered
off into the night. At last, they were alone. Irau looked at Ten and, for a
while, the two just stared at one another in the cloud-broken light of the
autumn moon, the boy resting his face on his hand.
	"You are such a beautiful boy," Ten said softly.
	"Thank you," Irau replied, blushing in the dark.
	A long silence. Irau looked at the water, and back at Ten. Back to
the water. Back to Ten.
	 "You're very beautiful, too. Or, handsome, I mean."
	"Thanks," Ten smiled.
	"The barber?I mean, your face--it's--It's wonderful!" the boy said
awkwardly.
	"My face is wonderful?" Ten asked, and chuckled.
	"Err--I mean, I think you look very, very good. You make me feel
strange," Irau suddenly realized what he was saying, and the degree to
which he was embarrassing himself. He clammed up mid syllable. His heart
was pounding in self conscious shame. Had he just said all of that? He
couldn't believe he had said all of that.
	As if to compound the boy's anxiety, the man stood, sleek and dark
and walking through the hot water as fluidly as a panther. He sat next to
Irau but lower, the water coming up to his chest. The moon emerged from
clouds and washed everything silver and black; the lines of their faces
shining and wet hair hanging in the steam.
	"You didn't trust me at first," Ten said.
	"Now I do," Irau supplied.
	"Now you trust me more than anyone, I think," Ten said. "Is that
true?"
	"Yes," Irau said. He didn't even have to think about it.
	"I think there is more than trust, too."
	"Like what?" Irau whispered.
	"Like adoration," the man said softly.
	"Mm--yes." the boy admitted.
	"I'm very happy you adore me, Irau. I adore you, too."
	Irau hunched over a bit and sunk deeper into the water. He both
overwhelmed and ecstatic.
	"I want you to adore me," Irau confessed softly, speaking into the
water. "I want you to like me more than anybody I've ever met."
	"Would you like it if I touched you, Irau?" Ten asked huskily.
	The boy said nothing. He just slid down into the water next to Ten
and brushed up alongside the man, stiffly, uncertain what to do but
exhilarated by contact. Smooth, hot muscle pressed into his shoulder and
thigh.
	The Paladin made no motion, but looked over at the boy, who still
avoided his dark eyes by staring at the moon in the water.
	"Yes," the boy said softly, "I mean, I think I really do. Please?"
	"Are you sure?" the Paladin asked.
	"Please."
	Ten's hand, swollen and hot in the water, settled on the boy's
knobby knee. Irau gulped, and heard his blood pound in his ears. Those
fingers brushed up his inner thigh, parted them, gently gripped the whole
fleshy thigh and squeezed.
	Irau shuddered and made a high-pitched oh!
	The man slid his hand higher, until he came to the boy's bollocks,
silky smooth and loose in their sack, and he fondled these a while before
moving thumb, fore, and middle fingers to grip the base of Irau's rigid
member. Perhaps the Aldeni were well-endowed, but Irau had a pestle the
size of his whole hand from palm to middle-finger, at least six inches on a
boy who stood only five feet.
	Ten leaned over, then, his hair hanging in Irau's face, and kissed
the boy on the corner of the mouth. Irau kissed back, awkwardly at first,
but then with one wet hand on the man's face, then reaching around his head
to pull him closer into the embrace. He felt Ten's tongue slick and warm
across his bottom lip, and then suckled it, making the knight moan. The man
felt the faint hair growing on the boy's upper lip brushing his own, and
kissed the lad's nose.
	They continued to kiss and the knight milked the boy's penis with
three fingers. The prince bucked his hips in the water and then came up to
stand.
	"We should go," he blurted.
	"I hear them, too," Ten said softly, "stay calm. You've got nothing
to fear. I'm here, remember?"
	They dried off and found their clothes just as a party of bathers
came from the tavern; the same who had seen them earlier, though they were
very drunk and took hardly any notice of the two dark forms that walked
away half nude toward the town, still steaming in the moonlight.
	The fire had gone out but they did not need it. Ten lay on his back
and pulled his soft prince into bed with him. They kissed again, Irau's
hair hanging down cold and damp against Ten's cheeks as he straddled the
man. Untying the laces of the boy's breechcloth, he unloosed the stiff
pestle within and began to work the foreskin over the tip, peeling it back
only to put one slickened thumb against the underside and rub it in
circles. Irau gasped and sucked on Ten's chin and lower lip as the man
worked harder and faster. At last, hips thrusting into the man's palm, Irau
gasped and a sweet stream of come shot forth three times onto the knight's
bare belly, then bubbled forth once again, dripped a few more pale jewels,
and quit. Ten flipped the boy onto his back and sucked the lad's cock into
his mouth, squeezing its final pearls and cleaning it with his tongue. Irau
gasped and pushed the man's head away--it was too sensitive. Ten just
grinned. He stood and used his bare hand to clean the thick come from his
body and flick it into the fire. He passed a hot rag over himself and then
joined his spent and delighted novice in bed.
	"Are you sure I won't become a woman?" Irau whispered.
	"Nothing to cry about if you did," Ten said, "a woman is a mighty
thing to be. But no, silly prince. Look at me. When I was your age, I did
far more than that with a man. Look I like a woman?"

X. Cloistered

	Rain drenched them and they both shivered in the saddle, passing
fields of corn and beans that stood under six inches of water. They were
not far from the library city, now, but every mile seemed like ten. Broken
pillars lined the road and they reached the ruin of an abbey; the stones
were thick with blue moss and the broken windows arched high above wild
rose beds that were planted by gardeners long dead.
	"I have hidden here, before. We should take shelter," Ten said.
	They rode into a cloister where the roof was intact. Peasants used
the place to store hay, and soon they were lying back on big heaps of it
with a small fire crackling, their feet bared and drying against the
coals. Ten hung their clothes on his spear, propped above the fire, and
they sat in their soggy britches, shivering themselves warm.
	Irau saw them first, but Ten had heard and was already armed and
hidden by that time. Two figures appeared at either end of the cloister
running toward them. A crossbow bolt shot through Irau's cloak over the
fire and the boy scrambled to hide behind a broken section the wall.
	 Ten leapt out with his sword strapped to his back and his spear in
both hands, wet cloth still hanging from it.
	One assailant wore a grass cloak and a straw hat; he had a long
brown beard and wore only rope sandals on his feet. He attacked Ten with a
staff of waxwood, each end capped in iron. The paladin sidestepped blow
after blow, never raising his weapon except to block the man from
approaching Irau, which seemed to be his intent. The other assailant, a
woman in full scales of iron, wore a helmet with wings that came back from
the ears. A blue figure eight was painted on her round shield, which she
bashed full force into Ten, sending the Paladin flying back and, for the
first time, retaliating.
	How he wove through the blows and swipes coming from both sides
mesmerized the boy, who could think of doing nothing but watching the
deadly contest; Ten's spear tip and spear butt clapped away staff and sword
often in the same move, and his bare feet kicked through armor and weapons
alike to drive blows into the assassins' bellies and chests. The woman
seemed far more dangerous, her sword flicking and slashing ribbons through
the air, often nicking Ten's belly or shoulder. Blood oozed from these tiny
cuts that were growing in number until at last, distracted and overwhelmed,
the Paladin suffered a heavy blow from the iron staff. It hit him squarely
across the shoulderblades, and he wheezed to recapture his breath, wheeling
away toward Irau, giving his attackers their first gained footing since the
fight began. The bruise was already visible on his back as he made a thrust
that dented the woman's shield and a counter-thrust that struck the bearded
man in the foot.
	Irau was digging through the saddlebags, and his fingers found what
they sought. He had no idea if it would help, but he curved his fingers
into the depths of the white conch, brought it to his lips and blew.
	The sound this time was higher and more like the trumpeting of a
clarion or a horn; it struck the walls of the cloister and made the hairs
stand up on the back of Ten's neck. Only the Paladin knew what to expect,
so he threw his spear at the grass-cloaked man before, a second later, the
weapon burst into flame. Every other weapon, piece of armor, and tool of
war became white hot and covered with sorcerous fire. The woman's sword and
shield and her ally's iron staff both clattered to the floor and, unable to
escape the burning heat of her armor, the woman fell to the ground howling
in agony. She tore off helmet and leather skullcap to reveal her bald white
head, and kicked off her mail boots, but she was still cooking inside her
curass.
	As Ten and the straw-cloaked man boxed and kicked and hurled bricks
and rolled across the cold floor, Irau ran to the woman and tried to help
her escape the armor. She was convulsing uncontrollably and screaming in
weak, stammering outbursts. The fire did not burn Irau's fingers, nor did
he even feel any heat. He slid open buckles and ripped open laces, and
tried to peel the stiff curass of scales away from the woman's body, but it
was too late. She went pale as a corpse and then, an instant later,
shattered into thousands of pieces of cold, wet ice.
	The boy cried out in alarm just as Ten struck the man with two
fingers in the chest, then stabbed him in the belly with his hand rigid as
a knife. The man doubled over, vomited black oil, then fell to the ground
twitching.
	"Bring me a brand from the fire!" Ten shouted. Irau fished a
smoking piece of wood out and brought it to Ten. The knight pressed it
against the grass cloak until, as if it were made of quicklime, it burst
into flames and the man erupted into sparks and tongues of green fire. In
minutes, he had melted into a puddle of foul-smelling pitch.
	"What were they?" Irau whispered.
	"Spirits of water and fire, enslaved in illusory bodies. Like us,
in a way," Ten said, "but more fragile."
	"What did they want?"
	"To take you back to their slavers."