Dragon Sweat: Scroll 4

"Is that better, Master?"

By Gwal's beard, she smelt sweeter than flowers and mead and new mown hay. The lightest of the witch's caresses had him quivering like a hunting hawk seeing prey. He wanted above all to seize hold of her with both hands -- except that he wanted even more to keep his hands.

"Master, I would tell you something and then ask you a question. You understand?"

"Yes."

His voice sounded to Hal's ears as if it came from a throat which was being slowly strangled.

"Very well, then listen. Every magician has only so much power available. If they would cast a spell which needs more magic than they have within themselves they must use what is known as free magic. This free magic is spread loosely throughout the world as finely as . . . as . . . "

The witch nodded towards a patch of grass beaded with drops of water that glittered in the newly minted sunlight.

"Why, as finely as dew in the morning. To gather a powerful amount of free magic together and control it needs a special attraction."

"An attraction?"

One set of fingers kept moving with his groin. Two others slowly nipped the very tip of his shaft's helmet. Hal gurgled like a baby.

"An attraction. In the same way that a smear of jam attracts wasps. Is that clear?"

Hal grunted and nodded his head.

"And Gaunt Gregory almost spoke the truth when he said that mortals fucking each other made magic. What he really meant was that mortals fucking each other attract free magic like jam attracts wasps. Free magic which can be used by a skillful adept to enhance his or her own magical strength in casting powerful spells. Do you understand all that?"

The fingers which had touched his cock's eye moved further down, fluttering as lightly as thistledown against Hal's rampant snatch rammer. He sucked in air and tried to prove he was listening.

"Does it make any difference how many couples there are?"

Morgana's free hand cupped his balls and squeezed them gently. Hal hoped very, very much it had been the right sort of question.

"Well done, master, well done indeed!"

Thank you Fria, thank you, Hal's mind whispered in secret triumph within his head.

"Yes, the more humans that are fucking each other in the ceremony, the more powerful the incantation. And the harder they fuck, the more free magic is harvested. But if it sounds easy to arrange such a thing, learn better. For the human couples must be doing it out of genuine passion for the free magic to gather around them. Paid whores can go through the motions but with no real feelings, and the males who tup them know they are only dealing with tavern drabs. There is no real passion to be had with such scum. Decent couples in a sober condition are oft times ashamed to perform in such a ceremony, even if forced into it at sword point. And to overcome such scruples with wine deadens the senses of the mortals and makes them poor attractors of free magic."

Morgana's right hand slipped out from his groin. Fingers still smeared in grease gently encircled the base of Hal's proud tower. "So, Master, can you guess now what the question is that I would ask most urgently of you?"

A fingernail of the witch's other hand scratched behind his balls as if they were a cat's ear. Hal's legs trembled as his mind raced. Talk or try to keep the secret? No, it was too late for secrecy, unless he was much mistaken. Morgana already knew much and had perceived more yet.

"Is it about what happened in the shed yesterday?"

"Oh, wise Master! O upright Master! How truly you speak. Yes, I would know what spell was used in your dragon's lair. Those two chits were sent mad with desire, I was put near to melting with lust and those soldiers did things to each other when we three females were no longer there that I would never have believed. Was not the power which affected us all so much somehow held within the water of the trough?"

A gradual tightening of the fingers, a small but forceful tug, the scratching fingernail digging just a fraction deeper. As a questioner, Morgana was in a class of her own, even before she started hurling lightning bolts around. Well, true, she wasn't in the same class as Sir Tarquin, the Royal Torturer. Not yet anyway, but Hal had no doubt that it could be arranged if that was what the witch felt was necessary to get the answers she wanted.

"Yes. It was in the water," Hal admitted. "There was dragon sweat mixed in it."

"Dragon sweat?"

The witch's fingers had stopped moving, her eyes were staring into Hal's as if seeking the very depths of his soul. Like a cat, there was no telling what was going on the other side of such eyes.

"Dragon sweat?" she repeated.

"From Josephine. From underneath her wing roots. It began trickling out very slowly about two months ago. I found out that if I mixed it with water anybody who even had a drop of that water touch them went completely off their head -- totally fucking mad, I mean. They'd tup any breathing thing within reach or wank themselves into exhaustion. The stuff is more dangerous than a lawyer spider's venom."

Morgana looked as stunned as if somebody had hit her with Thor's own hammer of the Gods. And then a smile even more brilliant than the rising sun spread over her face.

"By the Great Ones themselves, this is the greatest discovery in sorcery for a score's score of years! To be able to collect free magic as easily as netting eels in a trap . . . "

Morgana's voice trailed away as her eyes continued to glitter at Hal as if deciding whether to kill him like a mouse in a eagle's claws now she had plucked his great secret. He was also in great pain because her grip around his prick had indeed tightened like that of a bird of prey. Eventually he was forced to squeak in protest as if he was indeed a mouse.

"Master, forgive me. I was lost in my dreams."

The smile had returned, even wider than before, though the glitter in the witch's eyes remained unchanged. But at least Morgana's fingers were playing gently with him again.

"Master, have you any notion of how important this dragon's sweat is? No, of course not, how could you? But hear me when I say we can now become the most powerful adepts of the black arts in the whole wide world. And I at least have many debts to repay with such strength. And you, a stripling, a mere emptier of filth buckets, have had this gift bestowed on you by the Great Ones themselves. Is this not all strange beyond belief itself?"

"Yes."

Saying yes to whatever a witch suggested was a natural instinct for self preservation. Just as natural as it was to agree with anything any woman said whilst she was pulling him off. But then Morgana took her hands off Hal's quivering cock, to his great disappointment. Perhaps she'd been expecting a more intelligent or enthusiastic answer. Whatever that might be.

Morgana produced a bright red ribbon from somewhere inside her leather jerkin, an incongruous affection set against such warrior garb. He watched in fascination as she tilted her head back, shook her long black tresses, then did that thing that only woman can do at the back of their heads, securing the loose hair with the ribbon. Hal's mouth went dry as he saw Morgana's lip flicker between her pouting lips, as if it were a threatening snake seeking prey. Outside the shed Josephine had settled on the grass, wings fully stretched out to catch the sunlight, her eyes watching the scene at the well.

"Master, do you know what a coven is?"

The woman moved closer, her sweet smell in his nostrils again.

"I've heard it's a group of witches come together to work their magic."

"Not necessarily witches. If a warlock wishes to draw free magic into himself he may take a dozen women of any kind he chooses and assemble them under the rules of Actaeon, the horned god of the forest. Actaeon's rules allow him to declare the meeting of such women and himself a unique coven, to meet once and then to part forever. And the male adept appoints himself the Magister, the leader of the coven for the meeting."

Both of Morgana's hands were sliding up the inside of Hal's legs. He had never felt such smooth palms in his life. But even as his body stirred with pleasure the boy's mind was wishing that Morgana was wooing some Ice Warrior in the frozen North, far, far, away.

"Then the Warlock -- the Magister -- will join the female members of the coven together with a fascination spell."

"A fascination spell?"

"It joins together all the minds of the twelve females. Sometime called a glamor spell. A circle cast sunways around the group, beginning and ending with the Magister."

"So what does that mean?"

If this was his first lesson in magic, Hal was in a class of his own and already the class dunce.

"Why, Master, tis simple enough. Twelve women in the room, enchanted, and whenever you touch one of them, they will all feel it. Like this."

Her fingers touched each side of his erection, stroking it softly. But even that treatment failed to take Hal's mind from the image she had conjured up.

"They'd all feel whatever I do to any one of them?"

"That's right, Master. So if you sheath this proud sword into one of the covendom's female scabbards they all share the feeling together -- and the free power garnered from all twelve women flows to the Magister. To you, Hal, to use as you will."

"But . . . but I thought it was necessary to have couples to attract this magic."

"That is one way. But if the adept can do all the fucking himself he can directly channel all the free magic to himself. It's much the best way to perform the ceremony, provided the Magister can make love as a coven master should. And with this magic wand you have here to wave around and some dragon sweat to arouse the females -- well, you should be able to work miracles, Master. Magical miracles."

Now the witch's fingers were tickling and rubbing and stroking, somehow all at the same time. Hal grabbed at the top of the wall to prevent himself from toppling backwards into the well as he began to bounce up and down to Morgana's timing.

"This method . . . this way of doing it you talk about, with twelve women and one male. Can it really work?"

Morgana smiled with a freshness to match the sparkling air of the morning itself: "Of course it will work, Master. We witches even have a technical term for it in teachings of sorcery -- we call it cutting out the middle man."

The witch laughed, bent forward, rested her hands on Hal's thighs and put her lips around the war bonnet of his prick. From around the back of the dragon shed a cock crowed to greet the rising sun. So did Hal.