Full Confession Ch. 02

I hesitate even now to recall the mess which had been made of Grrrss'k's face. I was swept by a wave of nausea, and for a moment could not speak for fear of retching; but gazing into her eyes, the only unmutilated portion of her face, I saw that she was wholly, indubitably human.

"Take Grrrss'k," she said abruptly. Then, pleading: "Take Grrrss'k." She was weeping steadily, twin strands of mucus dangling from her gaping nostrils. "Take Grrrss'k," she moaned. "Grrrss'k a good girl!"

I knew, as you surely know, Dear Reader, that the goblingirl could never live a normal life among humans. How could she be seen in public -- with a sack tied over her head? She must perforce lead a solitary and miserable existence. That, or return to the goblins and suffer their unimaginable mistreatment to her dying day.

How could I force her to choose between two intolerable alternatives?

Grrrss'k lifted one trembling hand to wipe the tears from her eyes, and I did for her the only thing I could do: Without warning I struck her with the rock, hitting her just above the ear.

Grrrss'k gasped and staggered backward. The sharpened stake fell from her fingers. She dropped heavily onto her side, eyes wide with shock and pain. I had hoped to knock her senseless with the first blow, and having failed in that I now feared she would lunge for her weapon and attack me. Instead she turned onto her elbows and knees, puling incoherently. Gazing over her shoulder at me, she raised her buttocks and offered her sex, hips gyrating. I suppose it must have been an ingrained response to physical assault, a desperate attempt at pacification.

Her body was exquisite, unmutilated, and as I stepped forward with my stone upraised I felt the unwelcome rush of blood to my manhood. Grrrss'k moaned fearfully as I approached, her upraised vulva bobbing and twitching. "Vuck Grrrss'k!" she pleaded. "Grrrss'k a good girl!"

I loomed over her, trying to find the will to finish what had to be done. Grrrss'k clenched her pointed teeth and squeezed shut her eyes, gasping for breath. "Grrrss'k a good girl," she whimpered, her body shaking with sobs. "Vuck Grrrss'k."

"Forgive me, Grrrss'k."

I finished my act of mercy as swiftly as I could, then sat down with my head in my hands, utterly forlorn. If Satta had indeed been sold to the orcs, I had no reason to pursue the Broken Hands any further. But what use would it be for me to turn my attention to the orcs? I could not possibly hope to wrest her away from them by either strength or stealth.

Nevertheless, I could not face the thought of living the rest of my life without Satta. If finding her proved to be tantamount to suicide, then so be it.

I checked the goblin's corpse and found only a half-full wineskin. My belly rumbled, chastening me for having set off without thought of sustenance, but there was nothing on the goblin which I could definitively identify as food. I sampled the contents of the wineskin and discovered that it was not wine, but an acrid liquor which burned all the way down to my stomach; once there, however, it warmed and invigorated me. I tied the wineskin to my belt, snatched the sharpened stake which Grrrss'k had wielded, and set off in the general direction of the orcish lands.

As the morning advanced the day became overcast, and the gloom and murk did nothing to ameliorate my mood. I knew that I needed to go south if I hoped to reach the orcish lands, but with no sun in the lowering sky I was bereft of even the roughest measure of my direction of travel. At some point well past noon I came upon a wide stone bridge spanning a narrow but high-banked stream. I recognized the ancient, lichen-carpeted bridge, which lay several miles downriver from Edgewater; I must have been traveling southwestward throughout the afternoon, rather than southeastward as I had intended.

In any case, I was standing at the farthest frontier of human habitation; there were no settlements in the wilderness beyond that bridge. Indeed, there were no humans whatsoever -- just wild animals; the queer, inscrutable fae; and orcs with their many pets.

Among them my Satta.

Boldly I started across the bridge, slipping slightly on the damp moss. There seemed nothing sinister or forbidding about the forest beyond, and I strode into it without hesitation. As soon as I left the grassy purlieus, however, the atmosphere underwent a transformation, and I felt a gnawing encumbrance of spirit which rasped at the edge of my consciousness.

At first I dismissed this turbid unease as a symptom of a fanciful imagination, and I could almost hear the Countess's cutting disparagement of my unmanly anxieties. Yet the feeling persisted, and even worsened as I delved deeper into the trackless wilderness; within two hundred strides I was thoroughly lost and bewildered, and more than a little alarmed. The trees seemed somehow more feral -- bent, hypertrophied, menacing; the low canopy formed by their gnarled and grasping branches was all but impenetrable to the sinking sun, throwing all into a deep and oppressive gloaming.

The sounds of that forest were more unnerving than any other I had known; the familiar buzz and throb of insects was louder and more abrasive than I was accustomed to, almost nerve-wracking; while the songs of the birds were abrupt outbursts of acrimony, without a hint of their customary dulcet harmony. The only other sounds in the forest were those of my own making as I blundered through the undergrowth.

Eventually, following an hour or two of perfectly aimless progress, my attention was arrested by a sudden whisper, as of a word or a breeze, somewhere just ahead. I stopped short, breathing heavily, sweat pouring down my face, and peered into the tangle of foliage. For many seconds I saw nothing.

Then a clump of furze ten feet away from me twitched, too sharply to have been caused by the wind, even had there been any. I gripped Grrrss'k's sharpened stake, my only weapon, more tightly in my fist and ventured a challenge:

"Hello?"

My throat was constricted with fear, my voice less than a whisper. I recalled too late that the only denizens of this forest must be either wild animals or creatures wholly antagonistic to my presence. Before I could crouch unobtrusively into the underbrush, I glimpsed a movement by the massive bole of an ancient oak -- a pair of luminous eyes in a shadowed humanoid face, bared for a moment and quickly withdrawn behind the trunk of the tree.

Given its diminutive size, I wondered if the furtive figure were a child who had wandered away and become lost in the woods. Clinging to this surmise, I stepped forward cautiously, brandishing the wooden stake ahead of me.

"Who's there?" I called, raising my voice to a full whisper. "Come on out, I won't hurt you."

There was a rustling at the base of the enormous oak, and then from the parting branches of furze appeared a creature of humanoid aspect, but not wholly human. It stepped boldly forth and stood before me, not five feet away.

I have described it accurately as not wholly human, but it was indeed wholly female. Though childlike in stature (not standing even as high as my armpits) her diminutive body was formed with the most voluptuous proportions -- breasts large and firm, and a waist so narrow I might encircle it with my two hands, with hips curving delectably.

Her flesh, however, was distinctly inhuman in hue -- a green so dark as to be almost black; and in her face the resemblance to humankind faded further. She had a tiny, sharp chin; a wide, narrow-lipped mouth; an almost rudimentary nose; and eyes which seemed to fill half of her face.

The creature gazed at me, fearless and unthreatening, her enormous eyes rejecting any attempt to resist or dismiss them. I stared back, entranced, aware of a rising sense of anxiety lest my rapturous, uncanny visitor suddenly choose to flee.

"Wait," I said softly, raising one hand as if in entreaty.

The creature cocked her head to the side, much as a bird might do, still regarding me intently. Then she spoke, very slowly and carefully. "Come," she said, and in her voice was the sound of leaves rustling in the wind.

"Come where?" I asked.

She put one slim finger to her lips, gazing abstractedly into the woods behind me. "You are followed," she murmured in a tone somehow conveying both disinterest and urgency. "Come."

She turned and disappeared into the underbrush with a sudden lithe bound. I did not doubt the veracity of her assertion and followed immediately after, silently marveling at my good fortune in having been found by this enchanting savior.

She moved with preternatural grace, and I had difficultly keeping her in sight; but she would occasionally pause when I fell too far behind, allowing me to catch up. After twenty minutes or more she stopped abruptly in a tiny clearing, and I came blundering after her several seconds later, immediately tripping over a protrusion which I took for a small tree stump. I fell to one knee, huffing and gasping, hoping we had reached a place of safety.

I devoted a few moments to the recovery of my breath, and then posed the question foremost among the many I had formulated during brief long march through the wood: "Who are you?"

I looked up, and found that the creature had silently moved close to me, to stand almost eye-to-eye before me as I knelt. She regarded me for some time with intense curiosity, then spoke a sound.

"'Sw'ss'lm'rr'?" I echoed, gazing into those immense, fathomless eyes. "Is that your name?"

The ends of her narrow lips curled very slightly upward, toying with a smile; she raised one finger, dark as an emerald, to her lips, and reached out with her other hand to touch my own lips.

"We must be quiet?" I whispered.

Sw'ss'lm'rr nodded, the strange smile widening incrementally; the finger on my lips moved slowly, softly down to my chin, and then up my jaw until her palm rested against the side of my face. I had assumed her flesh would be rough as bark, but it proved to be as smooth and soft as a green shoot. I simpered into Sw'ss'lm'rr's face, while she peered into mine with what seemed an immeasurable infinitude of tenderness and compassion.

"We can rest here?" I asked.

Sw'ss'lm'rr stepped back, made a sweeping gesture with her arm as if to welcome me to her home. "Safety," she murmured. "Rest."

Never had a bed of moss and humus seemed so inviting to me. I rose to my feet and stood hesitating a moment, fearful lest I transgress the bounds of my ethereal host's hospitality; but Sw'ss'lm'rr continued to smile encouragingly up at me, and so I strode to the center of the clearing.

"Rest," repeated Sw'ss'lm'rr -- and now I thought to detect something new in her tone, a trace element of eagerness. Before I could respond, Sw'ss'lm'rr was once more directly in front of me, one small hand on my chest, the other on my upper arm.

Amazed and delighted, I put a hand on the firm, pliant flesh of Sw'ss'lm'rr's tiny waist; the strange wonderful smile continued to beckon, the immense eyes now frankly affirming the fulfillment of my desire -- A desire which had been growing in me, all but unnoticed, since the moment I first laid eyes on her.

What followed is a disjointed memory to me, as if my perceptions had come uncoupled from the passage of time, and I was seeing events follow one upon another in discreet tableaux: First, I was seated on the soft earth gazing up into the enigmatic face of Sw'ss'lm'rr, who stood just beyond the reach of my outstretched hand; then I was naked, lying prone with Sw'ss'lm'rr crouched beside me, both hands gripping my cock; next, Sw'ss'lm'rr stood straddling my midsection while my erection awaited her descent, rising like an iron tower from my groin; finally Sw'ss'lm'rr was on me, my implacable tower of flesh and blood engulfed to its foundation in her

exquisitely tight, wet quim.

But despite this apparent shrinking of my perceptions, my sensation of the event seemed only to intensify, each passing instant protracting ever further toward infinity, toward the promise of everlasting ecstasy. All cogent thought ceased; there remained only the experience of the eternal now of our coupling.

And then followed a fading, a gradual diminishment in that sensation of bliss concomitant with a weakening of strength and will. I noted this enervation without alarm -- indeed, without much interest at all. My senses were dulling, my consciousness receding.

I might more accurately say that my consciousness was dying, yet I felt no anxiety since "I" was too far gone to feel anything.

But before I had disappeared altogether into the welcoming infinitude, I had the distinct sense that my fall or dissipation into eternity was interrupted by a powerful buffeting, and I was suddenly conscious, however minutely, that my consciousness itself had been all but extinguished only a moment before.

My first feeling in that instant of recovery was a pinprick of panic, and I fought with all my strength to move, or to speak, or to see or smell -- fought mightily as a drowning man might fight against the water engulfing him though he has no notion whether his struggles will carry him up or down, toward salvation or doom.

I felt on my face a faint warmth; smelled something acrid; heard a muffled roar and a distant lingering shrill; saw at last a glow -- or at least a detectable lightening of the encompassing darkness. And then I breached the surface of consciousness and came fully to my senses.

I could not have been more astonished at what I saw at that moment: Berjamin Rucker standing beside me, bellowing like an ox, hacking madly at the ground near my head with a longsword. I cried out in alarm and rolled away from him, looking about for my clothing and thinking only to escape from his maddened assault. I realized suddenly that he must be attacking Sw'ss'lm'rr, and even as half my brain was moved to come to her aid, the other half awoke to the understanding that she was the real threat.

Crouching, I turned and saw Ruck standing with the point of his sword poised above Sw'ss'lm'rr's midsection; she was propped on her elbows, glowering at him with a face transformed by fear and rage: Her enormous lambent eyes were narrowed to glimmering slits, and her mouth was now a gaping maw with dozens of needle-sharp teeth bared.

Ruck's sword plunged into Sw'ss'lm'rr's belly again and again, while she thrashed violently, hissing and spitting. At length she fell still, but Ruck skewered her prostrate form a few more times before he was satisfied.

Then he turned toward me, breathing heavily, flush of face. "Are you wounded?" he asked.

"I ... no. I don't think so."

"We are safe for now," said Ruck. "It has fled."

"Fled? Didn't you kill it?"

I glanced at Sw'ss'lm'rr's corpse and was stunned to see only a pile of vegetation -- broken branches, tangled coils of vines, and dozens of the bright crimson leaves of red ivy scattered over all.

"Listen to me, My Lord Dunderpate," said Ruck, breathless. "Your lover was fae. A tree nymph, most like. In coupling with you, it was sucking away your soul, making of you a slave. Had I not found you, it would have soon reduced you to a witless automaton, obeying its commands without thought or will of your own, until the day you died." He leaned over and scooped up my piled smallclothes, tossed them to me.

"I didn't know," I said, fumbling with my clothes, my benighted brain still struggling to catch up with all that had happened. "I had no idea Sw'ss'lm'rr was a fae. How did you ever find us?"

Ruck raised his left hand, and I saw that he was holding a strange amulet on a leather thong, a thing of surpassing ugliness fashioned from a tiger-dragon's fang, a few gnarled twigs, and a bent nail encompassing the whole.

"My talisman not only detects the presence of fae, but offers some measure of protection against their enscorcellment," said Ruck. "It is an essential piece of equipment when entering an enchanted forest." The amulet's oscillations stilled, and Ruck peered intently in the direction indicated by the point of the nail.

"Will she be back?"

"Without a doubt. We are trespassing on its home. Somewhere nearby will be its hearttree, wherein lies its lifeforce. So long as that tree stands, no mortal weapon can destroy the nymph. A fire will keep it at bay, for tree nymphs fear fire above all else, but we should be away from this place without further delay."

I spied my trousers and shirt draped over a large bush and went to retrieve them, tripping again in exactly the same place I had stumbled when Sw'ss'lm'rr first led me into the clearing. Looking down, I saw what appeared to be the top of a large round stone protruding from the ground.

"You seem to have uncovered the remains of a previous paramour," said Ruck.

It was huge. I dug around it, curious to see its full dimensions, and finally succeeded in prising it out of the earth. I stared into the dirt-encrusted eye sockets of a gargantuan skull.

"Orc," said Ruck, and I shuddered. "Come, my lord. The sooner we are out of these woods the better."

"No. I came here to find Satta. I won't go back until I do."

"I appreciate your determination, but I was requested to bring you straight back to your home, and I intend to do just that."

"Then you will have to kill me, Ruck, and carry my body back to the Countess."

Ruck scowled. "We can continue this discussion elsewhere. For now, it would be best to put a considerable distance between ourselves and this place. Agreed?"

"Agreed. But I will choose the direction of our travel."

"Have you any notion of where we are? Or where you would like to go?"

"None whatsoever. But I intend to proceed in that direction." I pointed at random into the forest. I wanted only to forestall our return to Edgewater, where I knew Ruck intended to lead us straightaway.

"This direction would be better, my lord," said Ruck mildly, pointing.

I stood up and tossed aside the orc skull. "Then I will see you upon my return with Satta."

"This is foolishness! If I must truss you hand and foot and carry you from this forest, I will do it."
"And what are our chances of getting out of this wood alive if you are carrying me the whole way? None, I daresay."
Ruck grabbed my arm, glowering. "See here, fool! I don't give two rat's farts for you. I came after you because the Countess is scared witless at the thought of losing you! I won't hesitate to leave you behind if you refuse to come with me right now!"

"I think I've made my intentions perfectly clear," I said.
With a snarl, Ruck put the point of his sword under my chin. "I must insist we return the way we came, my lord," he said quietly.

"Ruck, do you mean to kill me in order to stop me from risking my life in the woods?"

He glared at me balefully for many long seconds, but at length lowered his blade. "I almost admire your determination, my lord. But then I remember that you are merely a lovestruck mooncalf. All this passion and valor for the sake of a servitrix." He turned his head and spat in disgust.

"Satta didn't deserve her fate, Ruck."

"She was born, wasn't she? We all get what's coming to us." Ruck resheathed his sword. "Well, Lord Mooncalf, let us see what destiny awaits us."

For two hours we trekked deeper into the forest, until we were halted by the failing light as dusk approached. We made camp and built a small fire, and from under his cloak Ruck pulled a backpack, which he had stocked with a variety of simple provisions, apples and black bread and saltmeat, a skin of water and another of wine. I was reminded that I had not eaten all day, and devoured my portion with alacrity. Then I leaned back and felt the weight of my weariness settle into my bones.

"Where are your men, Ruck?" I asked, stifling a yawn. "Why didn't you bring them?"