A Long Time from Home Ch. 10

The swirling Vis in the room gave of so much light it almost hurt my eyes. Squinting slightly, I endured assault just long enough to determine that the second last woman outshone the rest by a large margin, meaning she had a lot of Vis and didn't bother to hide it. It didn't mean that she was the real Queen though. One of her maidens might have lot of power and showed it as another decoy, while the real queen hid her power.

"... bloody thieves." I hear a guard mumble to his friends a few meters to my right, bringing me out of speculation and into the real world again.

As I turned my head to look at the speaker, one of his friends mumbled. "Yeah... Just give me one or two rounds alone with them and I'll... "

"And you would get defeated." Said a familiar voice softly.

I looked up and saw the commanding officer of the Queen Mother's bodyguard walking towards us. He had been at the Hao's wedding as well and we had talked several times.

As I watched, he stopped and looked at the guard. "Mind your tongue, Soldier, and stop insulting people you don't know. It will get you killed some day."

"Yes Sir." Said the soldier, though he didn't really look like he believed the commander.

The commander nodded shortly to the guard, but if he had intended to say more, he was interrupted by the woman pretending to be the Queen Mother.

"Well met, Sun Wukong. I assume that you have come to claim your bride."

"Yes, your majesty." Said Wukong.

"... but not alone, I see." She continued as her eyes settled on me.

The commander took the cue. "Your majesty, allow me to present Bai Boa of Mount Penglai, Healer and a student of the wizard Anqi Sheng."

A hush went through the room by the mention of my old healer mentor. He was obviously famous here, which was something he had neglected to mention during our many training and healing sessions.

The woman pretending to be the Queen Mother regarded me in silence for some heartbeats, before turning towards Wukong. "Sun Wukong, I will grant you your bride... however there is a slight issue in my garden we need to look into." She paused, eyeing both Sun Wukong and me. "According to my gardener, there seems to be some peaches missing. Do you happen to know where they are?"

"Yes, your Highness." I said with a bow and explained how my stomach had started to growl while hiding and that I had eaten the peaches.

"Though not alone." Added Wukong. "I ate half of them."

"So, you two admit having eaten five peaches each?" There was something in her voice I couldn't quite place. An edge, that wasn't there before.

"Yes, Your Highness." We answered in unison, with me adding, "If that is a problem, I will gladly pay for them. It just wasn't an option at the time."

A new hush went through the room, but this time it was slightly aggressive, as if having eaten the peaches was taboo.

A nicely dressed man glared at me and before anybody else could say anything, he sneered. "The Peaches of Immortality are priceless, you moron! They grant eternal life!"

For once, I was speechless. Belonging to the Queen Mother of the West, the Peaches of Immortality was a sacred fruit common in Lescarian stories and it was said, that the fruit took three hundred years to ripen. When consumed, a peach would add three thousand years of life and grant eternal youth to whomever ate it.

"It's gonna be a long ass life." Mumbled Wukong in Baylon so softly only I could hear it.

I almost laughed but remembered where I was and stopped myself in time. Compared to magic, Vis Vitae was a relatively weak force, and I simply couldn't believe, that a fruit could extend life more than the mightiest of Ars Magica. However, we had obviously stepped on a taboo and that was never good.

The Queen Mother looked at the one who had spoken. "Long life, not eternal life... and only to the wise." She corrected him gently and then addressed us again. "We shall talk more about this, but in a more private setting." Looking at the guards, she added. "I will talk with Sun Wukong first. Bring Bai Bao to the jade chambers."

The Commander bowed. "As you command, my Queen."

Wukong and I exchanged glanced. Short of fighting our way out, there wasn't much we could do.

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The Jade chambers proved to be a luxurious room filled with jade carvings, and I enjoyed looking at them for a while, until my thoughts returned to what the Queen Mother of the West had said about only the 'wise' were granted a long life.

If they really believed the Peaches were some kind of magical or Vis-imbued super fruit, it didn't make sense that it only granted its powers to a select few. Any herb I knew of, magical and ordinary alike, worked on everybody, wise or not.

The word 'wise' also bugged me. Normally Lescarians used 'wise' in the meaning of learned or knowledgeable, but how could that apply to eating some fruit?

It didn't... unless the fruit released some power only the 'wise' could use and in the terms of Lescarians, that meant a Vis or Magic user. It also meant, that the energy should be inside me right now since I ate five of those peaches.

Taking a seat on one of the rooms many large pillows, I closed my eyes and concentrated on the energy flow inside me. Superficially it seemed normal, but looking closer, I discovered some slight differences from before.

The most important change being a healing pattern, that extended throughout my body and connected some of the most important energy nodes in ways that reminded me of how the energy lanes were connected in a woman.

Since women were designed to give life, their energy patterns were both different and more efficient than those in a man.

However, there was a reason why I haven't seen that kind of connections before. Under normal circumstance, there was no way to get the flow of Vis in the body of a man to behave that way, as the energy lanes to support it simply wasn't there.

It was like watching water flow upwards and the only possible way to do that was to use either Ars Mentalis or Ars Magica. However, if the power was to be contained in a fruit, it simply had to be Ars Magica, since Ars Mentalis couldn't be stored that way.

Opening my eyes again, I walked over to the window and looked out at the garden, concentrating first on the flow of Vis Vitea in the area and then on the flow of magic.

The result nearly floored me.

Both Magic and Vis were natural to the Earth itself and flowed through the planet as blood flowed through the body. Mostly these flows, like veins in the body, were hidden underneath the surface, but in some places, they came near or ran on top of the surface, allowing people to tap into that enormous energy if they knew how to.

The Lescarians knew them as Dragon Lines, others called them Earth-blood Veins and in Baylon they were known as Ley Lines. The rare places where two such lines crossed each other were known as a Node and held even more power. There were a few places where more than two Lines crossed, and these were called a Junction or a Nexus.

These were extremely rare, but from my place at the window, I could see huge amounts of both magical- and Vis-energy flowing through the valleys surrounding Mount Kunlun, crossing each other at the place where the fortress was built, creating two Ley Line Junctions placed almost on top of each other. One was magical, while the other was Vis Vitea.

It was an incredible sight and I admired it for a while, until a slight disturbance caught my attention. Normally, magic couldn't and didn't interfere with Vis, but right where the centre of the two junctions overlapped, the flow of Vis temporarily took on a shape that was suspiciously similar to the ones inside me, before it returned to normal as the flow continued.

"Oh, sweet goddesses." I mumbled to myself, as I realize that the legend about the Peaches of Immortality might be true after all. With magic involved, all bets were of.

The sound of a woman laughing softly brought me out of my speculations and made me turn around. Less than ten paces away stood the Queen Mother of the West. Light skinned and dark haired with red lips, she was even more beautiful than when I had seen her in the audience chamber. She wasn't alone though. On each side of her stood one of the biggest Snow Leopards I had ever seen. As Snow Leopards weren't uncommon in the mountains of Lescare, I had seen quite a few of them, but these were the size of tigers and from the way they were watching me, it was clear they were here to protect the woman.

"I'm honoured by your presence." I said and bowed.

She gave of a dismissive motion of her hand. "Don't be, Bai Bao. I'm Xue and like the woman Sun Wukong and you came to rescue, I'm just a lowly handmaiden. The disguise you saw earlier was a safety measure."

"Rescue might be over-dramatizing it." I chuckled. "But I get your point."

"Good... oh, if the cats bother you, please don't hesitate to say so. I can always have them relaxing in a corner."

"They don't bother me." I answered truthfully. For some reason unknown to me, cats of every kind loved Mentats, and I couldn't think of a single case, where a big and otherwise healthy cat had attacked a Mentat.

Extending my mind, I briefly connected with the Snow Leopards. They both visibly relaxed and one lay down by the woman's side, while the other ambled over to me, gracefully accepting a scratching on top of the head.

The woman's eyebrows lifted in surprise. "I see you didn't get your name for nothing. They have never done that before."

The Snow Leopard grunted, strolled over to a rug, and laid down.

"I'm not a danger and they know it." I said and changed the subject. "The Queen Mother said that she wanted to talk with me, but I assume you have taken over that duty."

"Indeed, though from the look you had when you turned away from the window, I guess you have already figured out most of what I'm here to talk about." Xue gestured in the direction of a table with two chairs. "Can we sit down?"

"Of course."

My mind was still reeling from the discovery of the pattern inside me, and I had trouble concentrating on what she was saying, since most of what she said was steeped in Lescarian mythology. To make it worse, the new pattern made the Vis inside me acted strangely, making me dizzy.

However, I wasn't dizzier than I could see that her dress was made of the finest silk and clung to all the right places, leaving no doubt that Xue was a curved and well-shaped woman, which in my present state of mind was a distraction I didn't need.

I suddenly realized that Xue had asked me a question and was waiting for an answer.

When she didn't get one, she shook her head. "You're not listening, Bai Boa."

"You're right." I admitted. "My mind isn't really working."

"As I was saying, it's the effect of the Peaches." She said patiently. "They balance the Yin and Yang in your body."

I blinked a few times, as I translated what she had said from Lescarian mythology into Baylon power-theory in my head. The Lescarian believed there was two different types of Vis Vitea. One female type, called the Yin, and one male type, called the Yang. However, according to Baylon power-theory there was only one kind, but it did run in different energy lanes in the body, since men and women are designed differently.

In that way of thinking, balancing the Yin and the Yang meant having an equal amount of energy running through both male and female energy lanes. A feat that was impossible or at least had been, until the Peaches of Immortality had created what looked like female lanes pattern inside me. Now it was possible, but there wasn't really any flow through the new energy lanes yet and I guessed the energy nodes had to be opened before that could happen.

"Not yet," I said slowly. "The energy is there, but it was created by the peaches, and it's not really connected to me... yet. However, since the Queen Mother said that it only worked for the wise, I guess it's up to me to figure it out."

She smiled, revealing her perfect teeth. "I cannot tell you the answer, but I'll will assist you in any way possible."

"So, it's a test." I determined.

"Yes." The smile disappeared. "But a test with only two outcomes: If you can't balance the forces you will die. If you succeed in creating a balance, you will live for a very long time, but be sterile. With that amount of Yin in the body, it's simply not possible to produce children."

I nodded slowly. For most other people, that would have been a major problem, but I was pretty sure that the Mages on Baylon could come up with a solution for that, so the main focus would be to survive the test.

I drank some of the tea, while working on the problem. A quick opening of the nodes took a lot of power, but by being in the middle of a Dragon Line Node, power was present in abundance.

The next step was focusing and channelling that power. A task that, like surgery, was a lot easier to do on other people, than doing on yourself. However, Xue had already promised to assist me, and I had little doubt that she was a skilled Vis user. That meant, she was the focus.

Suddenly it dawned on me how it could be done, and I had to suppress a laugh. I doubted it was something that happened often here.

Xue did notice my amusement and lifted her eyebrows. "Yes?"

"You're the focus, the Dragon Line node is the power and success will depend on my skill in handling the energy you channel."

The eyebrows lifted even more. "I'm impressed. It normally takes a few days, before people discover that." She paused and added. "If they ever do."

"It's not like there's a lot of options." I said dryly and paused before saying, "I'm just not sure how to tell you the next part."

"Just say it." She said, watching me curiously.

"As the focus, I'll have to channel from you and as far as I know, that can only be done using the technique used to gather Vis."

"Correct."

Looking her over, I slowly said, "I use Art of the Bedchamber."

She looked at me with an expression of sheer disbelief on her face. "You want to share pleasure with me?"

"Yes, but more to the point, I need us to share pleasure. I can't think of any other way to make this work." A complication drifted into my dizzy mind. "You're not married, are you?"

Still looking slightly stunned, Xue giggled as she shook her head. "The men I meet are normally too much in awe with the Queen Mother of the West to dare make any suggestions regarding sex or marriage." She stood up from the chair. "I'm not a virgin, but I'm afraid I don't know much about the Art of the Bedchamber. It's not an Art we practice here," She looked at me with a little smile. "but from what I've heard about it, I'm looking forward to try." Her dark slanted eyes studied me for a moment. "After you have had time to meditate and eat some food." Her smile widened. "Channelling and directing life energy aren't something that should be done, when you're tired and hungry... and neither is sharing pleasure."

Seeing the wisdom in her suggestion, I agreed.

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After a fulfilling meal, I sat down to meditate and when I came out of the trance again, I discovered that somebody had carried a large bronze bathtub into the room and filled it with hot water.

At least, I assumed that it was hot when it got here, but by now, it was lukewarm, so I extended my will and heated it up, before undressing and getting into the tub.

The water felt heavenly, and I yawned when the effect of having been awake for more than a day suddenly hit me and made me dizzy.

Shaking my head to clear it, I mustered just enough self-discipline to get out of the bathtub, dry myself and then stumble to the low, but soft looking bed, where I let myself fall into the covers. A moment later, I was asleep.

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A voice softly calling "Bai Bao!" woke me up.

Still feeling slightly dizzy, I opened my eyes, looked in the direction the voice was coming from and discovered a worried looking Xue standing a few meters away. She was illuminated by the light from two oil-lamps, but the rest of the room was dark, meaning I had slept most of the day.

On the plus side, she was a gorgeous sight, as she stood there dressed in a long peach and gold coloured silk kimono. Her black hair was beautifully arranged on top of her head, held in place by golden hairpins and decorated with peach-coloured flowers. Most of her beautiful face was hidden in the low light, but somehow her dark slanted eyes reflected the glow, making them glitter like stars on a cloudless night.

When she saw I was awake, the red lips parted in a smile. "Good... you're awake. For a moment, I feared you had drifted into a coma."

"Not quite yet." I managed to say and sat up in the bed. I must have slept like a rock because I hadn't even noticed that someone had covered me with a blanket, while I had been sleeping.

Xue eyes grew wide and then I felt a spike of lust from her as she suddenly giggled. "It looks like you had good dreams."

Unsure what she meant, I looked down to where her eyes were focused and discovered that I had a morning hard-on that made a tent out of the blanket.

Looking at her again, I shrugged with a smile. "If that is the case, I have good dreams most nights."

"Oh..." She hesitated for a moment, but then asked. "Are you hungry? There's a light meal waiting for you. It's just bread, fruit, and cheese."

I got the distinct feeling, that she had been about to ask something else, but had changed her mind in the last moment.

"And when did you plan on starting the ritual?" She added before I had time to answer the first question.

Looking her in the eyes, I said, "I would like something to eat first, and we need to get to get to know each other a bit better, because your mind isn't ready for this and without a completely willing partner, the Art of the Bedchamber doesn't work." I sent her a smile. "So, let me get dressed and then we can eat and talk."

She nodded. I'll go get the food then."

The light meal turned out to be a delight, as we slowly ate and talked Vis Vitae and the different way, we looked at it. Then Xue wanted to know more about the Art of the Bedchamber, and I explained some of the basics to her, going into more details whenever she asked.

Most of those details were rather graphic and as we talked, I could feel her mood change from intellectual interested, to turned-on.

It remained the way for a while, slowly building until Xue stood up, walked around the table and seated herself gracefully on my lap with a playful smile on her face. "I think it's safe to say that both my mind and my body are ready for the ritual by now."

"Good." I said and kissed her softly, laying my arms around her.

She kissed me back, her lips and tongue dancing against mine as we became accustomed to each other. She tasted good, felt good in my arms and smelled even better.

Her breathing became heavier as the kiss grew more passionate and pressed her body against mine, responding to my touch as I explored her. Moaning when my hand found her small firm breasts and caressed them, the hard nipple pressing against the silk of the kimono.

My lips started to explore her ear lobes, neck, and upper shoulders. She smelled like the flowers in the palace garden.

Xue moaned and let her hands slide over my upper body, reminding me of two problems: We were both dressed and the current position with Xue on my lap seriously limited our movements.

Taking a good hold of her, I stood up with her in my arms and walked over to the low bed. I had planned to lay her on it, but Xue managed to get her legs down, so she was standing on the bed.

That turned out to be a good move. With her standing on the bed, we had the same height and could kiss and caress each other freely, which we did.