Flowers of the Imperial Palace Ch. 04

"Good," the matron croaked finally. She withdrew her hand, "Sweet girl. Go."

Lor tried to reply but found her lips weakened with a tremulous whimper. She winced, and smiled, then turned away to push open the thick wooden door of the archway.

Over the threshold, the atmosphere enveloping Lor's body thinned abruptly, as if she were passing through the surface of a bubble. Her skin prickled with a sudden balm of cool, and she shuddered. The temperature here was perhaps not actually cooler, or only slightly. But it was perfectly, cleanly dry. After the initial shock of change, the heat struck her once more, and settled on her skin anew. The rising day still baked in through the glass-domed skylights at the apex of each crossed arch in the roof overhead. And the stone against the soles of her feet was still warm. But the cloying humidity that permeated the rest of the harem was gone. Lor felt the contrast again as the wooden door swung closed behind her and swept a last breath of hot jungle damp over the backs of her legs.

The dryness was maintained so as to protect the paintings. Lor knew that much. Though she did not know by what feat of Uyraali engineering the humidity was drained from this one chamber. Lor had not seen canvas paintings before coming to Uyraal. Her people wrote their accounts on cured hide. She had known only that such a thing existed. As traders, other members of her family had had occasion to deal with Uyraali-trained artists in the larger cities. But she had never imagined that any painter could be so skilled as those in the service of the empress.

Each painting in the gallery was mounted just above head height at the end of each of a semicircle of deep recesses in the wall. The first of them revealed itself as Lor began to walk around the edge of the large chamber, her footsteps slow with reverence. As Lor looked up, it was as if her Goddess were standing over her, as large as in life. More than merely made recognizable, her likeness had been captured with painstaking perfection, a care for the smallest detail that only the love of a Goddess could inspire. The light and the darkness of the painting shone natural as if illuminated by the sun, and no facet of Goddess' intoxicating beauty had been glossed over, not the sheen of her long gold-brown hair, not the moisture on her full and smiling lips.

At the mouth of each recess was a velvet cushion, flattened by use. Lor lowered herself and settled her knees onto it, with her toes pressed to the stone floor behind her. She leaned back her head to look up. Between her thighs her dick burned with heat, painfully hard and pointing up straight at the object of her longing. In this first painting, Goddess was shown as a young woman, at the occasion of her coming of age. That was some five years before her accession, and she would then have been First Princess of Uyraal, a fact that was reflected in her adornments, the slim silver diadem that encircled the crown of her head, the stacks of colored bracelets at her wrists and ankles, and other precious items whose significance the harem matrons had explained at a time before Lor knew enough Uyraali to understand them.

There was a tinge of wistful regret to Lor's devotion whenever she contemplated the earliest paintings. She wished that she had known her Goddess then. She wished that she had been brought into the fold of her love earlier and had been among the first to fill her. But it was a selfish thought, she knew. Even before her accession, Goddess had worked tirelessly to bring justice to the peoples beyond the edges of the empire, to bring them within the safety of its reaches. Her grander design for peace was more important than the petty injustices suffered by Lor's people. And if Lor had come into the embrace of the empress only later, it was in part because her own family had not been quicker to see the sense in offering themselves to her.

Lor lived that never-been moment in her fantasy, every time she made devotion at this first image. The moment at which she met the embrace of the young empress, was held tight against her body and slid easy and deep into the wetness of her cunt. Aside from the ceremonial jewelry, the body of the young woman in the depiction was bare. Her skin was sun-tanned, more so than it was now, and it was coated from neck to ankles in a sheen of the dark scented oil with which Goddess still liked to anoint herself on some visits to the harem. The artist had rendered the glisten of the oil on every contour of her figure with hazy splashes of bright white, as if direct sunlight were shining on her from all sides. Lor felt the slide and the softness of that imagined first embrace as a visceral warmth across the front of her body. Her nipples ached stiff and prickled with heat. She imagined too the oil-smooth caress of the short hairs of Goddess' cunt, stroking the underside of her dick as their bodies pressed tight, face to face. And she felt a tingling on the skin of her lips as she parted them, mouthing their first kiss in a silent enactment of her fantasy.

Lor could not help but imagine Goddess' embrace and her body as knew it now. With only some success could she will her fantasy to acknowledge instead how it might have felt to hold herself to the younger woman in the painting.

The face was the same, was almost exactly like that of the Goddess she loved now. A little less lined, but only slightly. The clear stare of her green-brown eyes, the softness of her skin, the ruddy blush and the freckling, were all familiar. Only the expression stood out as different. It was sterner. The smile lacked the round-cheeked, mothering benevolence that Lor looked upon whenever they coupled. Instead the lips were bunched into a pensive pout, pursed and plump, the dark eyebrows very subtly knotted, defiant.

But where the face had endured almost unchanged, Goddess' body had bloomed in beauty over the fifteen years or so since her first portrait. The younger Goddess' breasts, though already full and heavy, sat much higher on her chest, and had not yet swollen with the weight of her many sirings. Her limbs were thick, but it was the taut thickness of undergirding muscle rather than the looser softness that had layered onto them since. In the basin of her hips, her stomach was a single firm curve, protruding just slightly above the slim mound of her cunt. The clearest foreshadowing of her later bulk and bounty was in her hips, where her bones were big and broad, and in the thick thighs beneath, the thighs that she liked to clasp tight around a girl's body to hold her in place while her cunt clenched itself to climax.

Lor looked away finally, unable to endure the fantasy any longer. She was moaning, she noticed, and a tiny trail of saliva was drooling from one corner of her mouth and down her cheek, her mouth watering to the heady scent rising from the pomander around her neck. She rose to her feet and lurched on and around the gentle curve of the chamber to the next recess, where she sank down onto the cushion and knelt in fresh contemplation.

The Warrior Princess. Here, Goddess was shown on horseback, clothed in strong leathers as if for combat. The chestnut brown flanks of her mount were glossy with grooming, its black mane pleated for ceremony. She was lightly armed, slim helmet with a broad T-shaped opening that showed the brightness in her stare, and around her shins and forearms strapped metal plating that gleamed with polish.

Lor wondered, as she had some times before, about being taken as a prize in conquest. Some of the older girls in the harem had been taken, or so they claimed. They also said they had been tied and slung over the saddle of the young empress' horse, that she had carried them with her to her caravan as spoils. Lor doubted some of the details of their accounts. She never knew whether they were mocking her. But she wondered, and imagined. She contemplated the painting, saw the saddle and its carrying satchels draped across the powerful rump of the horse, and the spear strapped at its side. Her dick ached with want. When she leaned herself forward to touch her forehead to the stone floor in abasement, she felt its heat and its hardness against the soft of her inner thigh.

Lor had not been taken in conquest, because her people had not been conquered at all. The families that between them loosely governed the trading routes of the south, though they were unlearned in many respects that Lor now recognized, had at least been wise enough to comprehend the beautiful harmony of an empire ruled by a Goddess, and to perceive the love that drove her mission. So Lor had been offered. She had been chosen by her elders for her good looks, deemed the most perfect example of southern beauty. Lor had gone willingly, if nervous. She had been very proud of her special destiny, of the affirmation of her beauty and her value. She knew now that notions of beauty were not universal. The features that in the south had made her such a prize, that had made southern women wet with desire, stood out as exotic in the harem. Her short stature, her firm, pointed breasts, and the subtle dark down at the corners of her smile, were particular here. Most of the harem girls were taller than her. And they mocked her for the beautiful fine black hairs on her forearms. No matter, Lor had learned to take solace in one thing she knew, that Goddess loved every girl. Goddess' love was inexhaustible, her cunt was deep with compassion and hungered to be filled by every girl in her empire. And it hungered for Lor too.

Lor lifted her head from the floor and stumbled again to her feet. Her head swam for a moment and she felt drowsy, tottered a little until her legs felt firm. Then she walked and set herself down again in front of the third alcove.

The coronation painting was much larger than the first two. It was one of the largest in the devotion gallery. Oriented landscape-style, it filled almost the entire breadth of the rear wall of its recess. Unlike in the earlier paintings, here there was the fullness of a backdrop, and the same painstaking detail had been lavished on the setting as on the empress herself. Lor imagined the hall in which Goddess had been crowned empress of Uyraal must be the vastest and most beautiful in the palace. She had not seen any of the great audience halls from which Goddess directed the work of her empire, indeed she had seen almost nothing of the palace beyond the harem. But the work of the court painter was masterly, and conveyed a vivid sense of the grandness of the space even without showing its full extent. In the composition of the painting, no attempt had been made to give a full perspective from floor to ceiling. Instead, the scene was centered closely on the new empress and her immediate retinue, and the grandness of the hall in which she stood was hinted at in the depth of the background. Behind her, over her shoulders, was visible a row of tall arched glass windows. And through these blazed the light of the rising sun, casting a halo of gold around Goddess' silhouette. As in her coming-of-age portrait, Goddess was anointed with fine dark oil, and her body was bare to display the power of her beauty. Her only adornment was the imperial crown, a circlet of gold from which there hung an emerald the size of a bird's egg, cut to the shape of a teardrop. The jewel sat between Goddess' eyebrows, almost resting on the bridge of her nose. Her face wore almost the same purse-lipped pout as in her earlier portraits, only now there was a subtle asymmetry to it, one corner of her mouth turned up in a sly smile. Lor felt Goddess looked pleased, and resolute, in the moment of the assumption of her destiny.

The empress was depicted standing before her new throne, as if having just risen to present herself or to make an address. The imperial throne was a grand tall-backed chair carved perhaps from one solid trunk of blackwood from the Uyraali rainforests. Across the seat and the armrests were draped the sable and black patterned furs of the jaguar.

Since her coming of age, the young empress' legs had thickened slightly with strength, the fruit perhaps of her many campaigns on horseback during her years as First Princess. Her skin was tanned a smooth cream brown and her hair was thick and long, curled at the fringes about her face and her neck. The hairs framing her cunt were sculpted a little differently, had been left to grow to a thick tuft, but a tuft that was trimmed narrow, into a dense strip that obscured her slit but bared the soft creases where her mound met the crux of her big thighs. When Lor contemplated Goddess' nakedness, her dick throbbed in painful desire, and a glowing hot ache gathered at its base in an immovable knot. Lor held her breath, and then let her shoulders slacken as the tension half-spent itself in a frisson that shuddered up her spine to her shoulders.

She turned her eyes from the Goddess to examine the figures depicted around her. Arrayed in two rows that converged just beside the throne, there were a dozen women that Lor had learned were the girls belonging to the deceased former empress. Today they no longer served in the harem. They had been retired at the accession, since among them had been the new empress' own sire-mother. In the painting they were shown veiled uniformly in white, from crown to feet, in mourning for their goddess. The skill of the court painter was fine enough that Lor could scry an impression of their faces beneath the hazy gauze of their veils. They looked beautiful, eyes turned upward in wistful longing. A few were young, if not as young as the new empress, but most of them were much older. The bare hands that protruded from the edges of their veils were worn and creased, their limbs heavier and tired. Some were visibly aroused in the new empress' presence, the jutting stiffness of their dicks pushing a long curtain-like crease into the front of the veil. Lor found a swell of melancholy rise in her chest and in her throat whenever she contemplated the harem girls in mourning. She tried always to push the idea aside and to drag the focus of her imagination elsewhere before she could ruminate. The idea that she might one day find herself aching as she did now, her body apulse with heat and her dick hard and unyielding, and yet no longer be able to find relief against Goddess' soft body, no longer look forward to burying herself in Goddess' burning wet cunt. Lor knew with a stubborn certainty that it could not happen, must not. Her Goddess was too strong, too perfect.

Lor swallowed the knot in her throat and examined the last two figures depicted in the painting. Two more harem girls knelt by Goddess' ankles, and were not dressed in mourning. They were the new empress' own, offered to her from among her people on her accession to the empire. They were young and cheerful, faces bright with happiness. They knelt at each side of the throne, in loose mirror symmetry with each other, long bare legs tucked to one side, one arm draped over the armrest of the throne, the other palm-down against the floor to prop up their reclining bodies. Lor knew them both. Yul and Far, Uyraali both. They were the oldest girls in the harem, now a few years over thirty. But at Goddess' accession they had of course been as young as Lor was now.

Far was tall and slim, long-limbed and flat-chested. Her slender fingers, decorated with rings, were curled elegantly around the blocky wood of the throne. Her hair was very long. It was swept over to one side of her head so that it hung in a glossy black cascade all the way to the floor. She held herself in a careful pose, chin up, dark-rimmed eyes and full lips turning a bold smile directly at the beholder. Yul was slim too, with the leanness of youth, but her figure was more robust, with some thickness to her shoulders and upper arms, and strikingly broad hips cocked to one side where the curve of her silhouette bent at the waist. Like Far she was smiling, but her smile was open-mouthed and showed her sharp front teeth. Her demeanor in general seemed less guarded, less posed. Her pretty eyes were animated with girlish excitement, and her chestnut brown hair was tousled in tufts across her brow.

Each girl's dick stood proud and swollen in her lap, and among the fine jeweled chains with which their bare bodies were adorned was a pomander like the one Lor wore around her own neck. Lor clutched hers in her fingers and fidgeted at the chain. The stiffness in her dick ached all the way down to where the base of it was rooted in her body. She felt the knotted muscle behind the tight sack of her balls, a swollen ridge that reached almost as far back as her butthole before disappearing up into her body. Her hole was pulsing hard, spending a little of the tension inside her in slow, stinging spasms. Lor wanted to continue her devotion and to see the next painting before the pressure became too much to bear. Before she rose, she lifted the pomander to her lips and opened her nostrils to draw the scent of the God-Empress all the way to the bottom of her lungs.

Lor walked, knelt before the next recess, and shuffled her hips as she sat back, to ease the discomfort between her legs. She made her devotion then, before looking up. With her forehead pressed to the floor and her long black hair pooled about her head like a sheltering blanket, she whispered against the stone, murmuring her devotions.

"Goddess. Goddess, I... I will... I want... I will..."

With a quiet moan, Lor pushed herself upright on trembling arms, lifted her head, and tossed the hair from her face.

The scene was again more detailed than in the early portraits. Lor knew the setting well, because it was the harem, her home. At the fringes of the painting in lush shades of green was an intricate rendering of the vines and their leaves that coated the walls from the floor up to the base of the dome. The dome itself was not shown, but the artist had rendered the pattern of its panes of glass in bands of glowing sunlight on Goddess' bare skin. One such patch of light fell directly across her stomach, and where the sun struck its swollen curve most directly it was scattered back in a bright glare by the oil with which she was anointed.

A swell of longing rose in Lor's chest and her throat clamped dry. She listened to her own quick, shallow breaths whistling from between her lips. Goddess' first pregnancy. She had borne twins that time, or so Lor recalled from the matrons' instruction. Many of her sirings had been double, a recurring proof of her divine strength and power.

Goddess lay on a litter of furs on the floor, reclining and turned slightly on one side towards the beholder. Her stomach was vast and taut, as wide as her hips, and sat heavy against the fur-strewn floor beside her. Its prominence eclipsed her breasts, which though engorged and darkened were still firm with her youth, had not yet filled to the huge slouching weight that Lor knew.

Though the front of Goddess' naked body was turned to the beholder, her face was not. In this painting, unlike in the others before, Goddess' eyes were not looking back. Instead they were turned away, lids half closed, and her attention was focused on the dick that she held clasped in the seal of her pursed lips. At her head knelt a harem girl. Lor looked the girl over, then quickly turned her attention away at the first ugly pang of resentment. Lissi, with her tall slim figure, her sallow skin and long black hair. Vapid, jealous, unkind, and beautiful. It was Lissi's long stiff dick that Goddess was taking in her mouth.

A quavering moan rasped its way out of Lor's throat and her body shuddered. She heard a tiny spat in the echoing quiet of the chamber and looked down to see that a drop of thin fluid had fallen from the pulsing tip of her dick. Another was gathering slowly in a viscous bead.