By the Sweat of the Succubus' Brow

Belarthor cleared his throat. "It'd been my master's intention to dine with you this evening, Professor. But he has met with a minor accident and must beg off. He'll meet you in the morning."

"An accident?"

"Nothing, really. As I said, the two of you will meet in the morning. Meanwhile, please accept his hospitality. Eat your fill. Cook will show you to a room."

"I hadn't planned to spend the night."

"Please consider it," he said, with valet's professional smile. "Staying would make matters simpler all around, wouldn't you agree?"

A deep instinct urged him to refuse. Z'mbutu felt that there was something fundamentally wrong about the situation. Yet, he found himself shrugging. "Why not? I generally prefer a hot meal, wine, and a warm bed to the cold and dark of night."

"Then it's settled. See you in the morning." Belarthor left the room.

Z'mbutu sat down. He saw that the heavy crystal was scratched and clouded with age. The plate was well-crafted enough, wrought of porcelain, with an artistically rendered vine pattern around the edge. The silverware was of an antique design. The linen napkin, although fine, was yellow with age. The bread on its cutting board and the beeswax candles in their silver holders seemed the only things new on the table.

Hana, the cook, came back through the swinging door, using her ample hip to knock the panel open again because her hands were full with the wooden platter she carried. The trencher was loaded down with a steaming mincemeat pie, a bowl of stewed potatoes, and a small earthen jar of wine, cool and beading sweat from the cellar. The woman put the platter on the table, nodded her head at the guest and prepared to withdraw.

"Oh, come now, stay. Sit, sit," Z'mbutu said, gesturing to a chair across the table from him. "Enhance my supper."

"No, sir, please," Hana said, suppressing a surprised smile. "You're a guest of the master. It wouldn't be proper."

"Proper? You'll find I'm not a great one for propriety," he said with a grin. "Besides, wine should be shared. Why stand on ceremony when we're alone?" And his grin spread into a slow charming smile.

"If you insist, then." She blushed, unaccountably, and sat down, allowing him to pour her a glass.

Hana looked at him over the rim of the crystal as she drank in deep swallows. She emptied the glass and thudded it down on the table. He poured it full again. "My thanks. You're brown."

Z'mbutu chuckled. "You're welcome. And, aye, that I am. As you are pink."

"I've only seen one other brown man in my life. He was a sailor on a river-boat. You're a far way from home. The lands of the Brown and Black peoples lie a long way to the south, I'm told."

"That's true too."

He swept her with another frank gaze, showing his interest, and watched as Hana responded, her breasts slightly jutting more outward as her back arched. "Are the women of Narlenyss like the women where you hail from?"

"In some ways, no. But, in all the ways that count they are."

She laughed and sipped from her crystal, looking at him from under girlish lashes. "What is your business with the master of this house?"

"That, I'm afraid, is the business of the master of this house and myself."

"Fair enough." The light in her dark eyes danced. She drank from her glass again, taking his measure, before she reached across the table and tore a piece of bread from the loaf. She manipulated the crust between her work-toughened fingers and brought it to her mouth.

Z'mbutu watched her chew. He knew her kind. An unpretentious, natural, earthy woman. He liked women, generally, he liked earthy women, in particular. "Have you a name? Or did your folks dub you Cook at birth?"

Her smile widened. "No. It's Hana. Like the queen."

"Ah." Hanazeltha had been a legendary monarch during the Third Epoch. It was a very common name in the city. "I'm called Z'mbutu."

She inclined her head. "Master Z'mbutu. Thank you for sharing your wine with me," she smiled.

"My pleasure," he said. Their glances were locked over the table and they stared at one another, man and woman, through the steam of the hot mincemeat pie. :. In the night, he heard the quiet creak of the bedchamber door's neglected hinges. He wasn't altogether surprised.

There followed the sound of feet lightly padding across the cold stone tile of the floor. He caught a glimpse of her form as the housekeeper passed in front of the fireplace with its maw full of black and orange dying embers, before she climbed into bed, slipping under the covers with him.

"You seem to be lost, lass."

Hana chuckled softly, liking being called a lass, feeling like a maiden in her boldness. "Not at all. I came to see if you required any more of my services, before sleeping." She wiggled her hips against him, warming herself. Her pronounced ass was soft and smooth cushions which instantly hardened him.

"P'raps."

"Only, p'raps?" Her fingers, cool from exposure to the night's chill, moved over his thigh. She grasped his manhood, giving him a long stroke.

"It's just that I have no knowledge of your skills," he said, with a smile in his voice. "I wouldn't want either of us to waste good sleep time."

She squeezed down hard on his cock. He grunted and sought out her nipple with his fingers, then pinched it. She giggled and squealed, the wine and arousal washing away her normal reserve. He turned her around in his arms and pulled her to him, her hard nipples pressing into his chest. Her blunt chore woman nails dug shallowly into his biceps. He released one of her arms and put his big hand to the back of her head, pressing her mouth to his, forcing her to accept the demanding kiss. After some initial resistance, Hana submitted, parting her lush lips and accepting his probing tongue into her mouth.

The kiss was long and intimate. As they explored one another's mouths, Z'mbutu's free hand stole to her ass, squeezing the fleshy cheeks. She moaned when the kiss was broken. He rolled her on her back and kneed apart her damp thighs, positioning himself above her.

"Put me in, woman," he grunted.

She obeyed. Mopping the unusually large head up and down her drenched slit a few times to wet it, Hana cried out as the tremendous wedge of the head stretched her wide. She bit her lower lip down on a louder scream, not wishing to disturb the house. Above her, Z'mbutu chuckled softly, feeding her tumultuous cunt inch after fat inch of his cock.

It was staggering.

Hana hadn't felt a man in her for years. She began to climax in shuddering waves as the dark visitor packed her full. Finally, the thick long cock ground completely into her. His heavy sac slapping her ass. She bit into a pillow as she moaned, more and more shrilly as the intensity of her releases built. It was only a few minutes into the fuck before she began to spasm under him again. Her mouth grimaced open and the cords in her neck strained. Her cunt clamped around him as a damn broke and she was swamped in a mind-shattering multi-orgasmic string. She screamed gibberish and curses as she humped upwards, her body slick with sweat as the climax tossed and slammed her.

Z'mbutu rode her easy, letting her violent movements stroke his cock. He felt her gush scalding juices around his buried phallus and he chuckled. Without dislodging himself, he flipped them around, so that the panting housekeeper now lie wet and trembling atop him.

He slapped her ass, hard enough to make it feel bee stung. "Fuck me, slut."

She sighed as she slowly slid down his huge pole, her cunt forcibly lodged wide by the great cockhead which speared open her clutching walls. She had delivered two babies and still he filled her, stretched her taut, as if she were still a long-haired maiden. He began to curse again, snarling out obscenities as she lewdly rode him. Gyrating her hips, grinding her cunt down around his commanding cock.

She felt him grow larger, his movements less controlled and Hana knew he was cumming.

Z'mbutu shouted as he came, unmindful of the house's sleeping tenants. He came strong in the wanton vixen. He felt his cum rushing into her, filling her, until it backwashed along his shaft and drooled from her quivering pussy mouth. She slumped down against his chest. Satiated and spent. :. "I was a soldier's woman," she said in the dark, as he held her in his arms. "He was an officer in the city guard, the leader of a cohort. Then, one noontime, I found him with his cheap whore. They say I killed them both with his sword but I don't remember doing it. I don't remember anything after I opened the door and saw him between the slut's spread thighs. I was to hang, but was paroled to Master Chenei. I've been his cook ever since."

"Only his cook? Surely your master has other appetites."

Hana laughed. "Oh yes, he has a particular taste, indeed. But not for me."

"What do you mean."

"Linger here long enough and you'll find out. As you say, that's business to discuss with the lord of this house. You're worn me out, my black stallion. Its sleep for me." :. He awoke to the thunderous beat of the manse's heart, throbbing in the night, propagating through the stone of the walls and the floor. At first he thought he must still be sleeping, caught in a gripping and vivid dream, then he felt Hana's fingers on his naked shoulder.

"Z'mbutu, do you feel it?" Her voice came from close to his ear in the dark.

"Aye."

Her breath was hot and moist on his earlobe, her luscious body pressed against him from behind. "I knew it. I knew I wasn't imagining it. That's what Belarthor always says."

"What is it?"

"I don't know, but it happens under every full Moon. I think it has something to do with the thing in the dungeon."

"What thing?"

"The thing. The demon Chenei keeps imprisoned."

"What'd you mean, demon?"

"It's what I said. A demon. That's what Belarthor calls it, anyway, letting it slip his lips, when he's drunk. I've never seen it with mine own eyes."

Z'mbutu's scholarly curiosity was immediately piqued. A demon? As a man of science, the alchemist was not a superstitious man. But, although true magic had nearly been rendered extinct, isolated residue of the Ancient Art remained across the land. While rare, creatures of magic did yet dwell in the world.

He threw back the quilts and sprang from the bed, hastening into his pantaloons and stamping on his boots in the cold chamber.

"What're you doing?" Hana asked, with real concern in her voice. "Come back to bed."

He chuckled. "As lovely as is your embrace, my girl, I've never seen a demon."

"Then Fortune has favored you," she shot back. "It's foolish to tempt Fate."

"P'raps, sweet Hana, you've been sleeping with a fool this night." He smiled in the faint orange light of the fire's embers, kissed her furrowed brow, and left the room. :. Belarthor's forehead bled as he leaned against the stone of the cellar's wall, catching his wind. But, the man Z'mbutu assumed to be the master of the house was in somewhat worse shape than his manservant. Chenei lie dazed, on his back, and moaning on the dirty floor.

Shadows jumped and stuttered across the block and mortar walls, created by the flickering light of several torches set in iron wall-brackets. Z'mbutu cautiously descended the stairs down into the subterranean vault. He gripped his walking staff tightly in his left hand. A lit oil-lamp was in his right. He saw the two wounded men and pulled the cap from the end of the staff, exposing the long blade, before he started forward across the basement floor. His overexcited nerves bade him try to look everywhere at once as he proceeded.

The cellar was at least ten foot wide but it was four times as long, giving the long stonewalled space an illusion of narrowness. The jumpy light added a somewhat claustrophobic effect. There were four strong-rooms in the mansion's basement, which could be used for dual purposes, as safe-depositories for precious objects or as gaol-cells for prisoners. All of the chambers' thick iron doors stood open, faces swung flat to the wall. The first three were empty, and to Z'mbutu's eyes seemed long unused. The lone occupied cell was between him and the two men. As he approached it, the alchemist looked through the doorway, as he'd done with the others.

Unlike the others, it was a room sheathed in iron, the walls, the ceiling, and floor. The metal was streaked with orange where the iron surface had oxidized over time. The thing that vaguely resembled a woman lie naked and chained to the black iron frame of the cell's narrow cot. Her, or Its, skin was a chalky gray color and it clung tight to her skeleton without benefit of padding fat. Silver hair, dirty and greased, lie flat around her bulbous head and clung pasted to her knobby shoulders. Her overlarge eyes were blood-red, livid, and unwholesome. A strong odor wafted out of the chamber into the cellar. Z'mbutu found it offensive. There was a bitterness to the smell.

Succuba, he thought. Or, more commonly referred to as Succubus. I'm looking at monster. A real demon.

And she looked back.

The scarlet gaze which Z'mbutu had found so off-putting, only moments before, seemed to soften and become truly beguiling as he stepped to the threshold of the cell. Indeed, the odor cast off by the creature too had lost its repugnance, becoming more and more altogether agreeable to his senses.

He took a step through the doorway and into the gaol and the succubus stirred in her chains, the jangling links echoing against the rusted metal walls. The creature gazed at him intently, never blinking, never breaking eye-contact. Utterly mesmerized, he took another step into the room.

The succubus sat up on her cot, her shrunken and wrinkled thighs opened, refreshing her strong scent which again assaulted the alchemist's nostrils. He thought it the sweetest fragrance he'd ever chanced upon, full of primal and lusty promise. He found the countenance of the creature the most beatific sight he'd ever seen. He took another step, his lips bent into an open smile, as he would greet a long-lost beloved.

The chained thing returned the smile, pulling back thin lips and exposing teeth green with age and rotted at the gums with neglect. The expression on the monster's intensely wrinkled face seemed one more of victory than joy. Z'mbutu only saw loveliness, the object of his affection returning his ardor. His heart picked up the pace and he felt an erection growing. He took another step toward the creature, completely smitten, thoroughly aroused. His hand relaxed, his bladed staff clattered unnoticed to the iron-shod floor. The lamp slipped from careless fingers and crashed against the metal, spilling oil and spreading a thin fire.

The creature hissed, her sight momentarily drawn to the dancing flames on the iron floor.

Z'mbutu was brought back to the moment by the meaty hand of Belarthor slapping onto his right shoulder.

The alchemist snarled, for a flashing second he was completely enraged that he'd been drawn from the gaze of those expressive and lovely eyes. He wanted to kill the valet for daring to intrude on such an intimate moment, and if he'd still held his staff he might've done so. Then he felt the wet cloth Belarthor slapped across his broad nose and mouth. He took an abrupt intake of breath and was assaulted once more with a highly disagreeable smell. It was as bracing as a hard slap. His senses began to clear immediately and he looked around, surprised to find himself in the cell. And almost within arm's distance of the monster.

Instinctively, he backed away, as his flesh crawled and pebbled.

"Keep it to your nose and your lips shut." Belarthor told Z'mbutu, pulling him by the arm out of the room, accompanied by the snarling hiss of the frustrated succubus. She made as if to leap forward, but the licking flames made her give it second thought.

"You're in the thrall of the bitch-demon's redolence," the manservant informed Z'mbutu. "The cloth has been soaked in the antidote."

Dumbly, the alchemist nodded, keeping the cloth to his mouth and nose. The fog which had so quickly and completely gripped his mind upon entering the cell began to disperse, as he stood in the cellar beyond the gaol, and watched the manservant clank shut it's heavy door. With the slamming of the heavy panel, the succubus' angry and frustrated hiss was cut off knife-sharp. But, her pounding against the iron walls could be felt as vibrations through the floor stones, the same muted pounding which had originally awakened Z'mbutu.

"What is this antidote?" He asked through the rag, ever the investigator.

"Skunk extract."

Z'mbutu's eyes widened in disgust, but he bore with his revulsion, not wanting to chance being enthralled again. "Why're you unaffected?"

The man shrugged. "I've always been immune to all the demon's wiles," Belarthor said with some fierce pride.

"I'm in your debt."

"No man deserves to succumb to that creature's evil touch," he said, with an expression of abhorrence. "Come, help me with my master."

Z'mbutu followed Belarthor to the fallen Chenei. "What happened to you two?"

"I tried to pull him from the room after the she-thing ripped the cloth from his face. He hit me, but I managed to knock him senseless and drag him from the cell. It was the only way to save him. He, like you, had become enthralled and had nearly let that monstrosity embrace him, which would've been his end. Although her legs are still chained, she's managed to break her wrist manacles again. You may take the cloth away now, you should be safe with the door shut. Whatever trace lingers will be too weak to rob you of your mind. If you'll grab his feet I'll take his arms."

Z'mbutu complied and the two of them carried the dazed Chenei up out of the cellar. :. They carried Chenei to the house's library, it being near to the cellar door. Belarthor arranged his master comfortably on a couch and stood over him, a concerned scowl on his blunt face until Chenei began to stir. Shaking his bald head, Chenei grunted loudly and seemed to gain his wits. He looked about himself, finally seeing Z'mbutu.

"Ah, the alchemist."

"Yes."

Chenei glanced to his servant. "Pour us the good port."

"Yes, master."

Belarthor hastily poured two glasses, handing one to Chenei the other to Z'mbutu. Then, at his master's hoarse command, Belarthor left the library, closing the door behind him.

Z'mbutu sat in a high-backed black velvet chair which smelled strongly of dust. Chenei slowly sat up on a equally dusty and velvet couch across from him. Obviously once a robust man, the aristocrat was in obvious decline. His big shoulders slumped forward, his barrel-chest now rose above a large round belly, and there was a slight but noticeable tremor to his hands.

Seeing his guest take stock of him, Chenei said, "Congress with the demoness is draining. Of body and soul, I'm afraid. Add to that Belarthor's well-meant, if painful intervention, and a man's bound to look the worse for wear."

Z'mbutu smiled politely as he sipped the port, feeling his own wits slowly gather more firmly around him. "Why then do you elect to expose yourself to such rigors?"

Chenei stared into his glass. "Even at the great price she exacts, it's worth it. As I'm sure you've surmised by now, she's the source of the essence of the city's famous perfumes. Her sweat, and other secretions, to put it delicately, are both the fount of my wealth and the base for the fragrances."

"But the legends of the women of Narlenyss stretches back for thousands of years."

Chenei gave him a level gaze. "Yes."

"I must then assume that you inherited the Succubus. Or stole her."

"Neither. I was the one who brought her here. Nearly six thousand years ago, when the city was nothing more than a remote town on the rugged banks of the untamed river. It was a safe retreat. I've watched the metropolis grow up around me, down through the ages."