Prophecy of Noto Ch. 01

[This is a completed four-chapter GM ancient world fantasy novella that will complete posting by early July 2019.]

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The Oracle at Noto had prophesized the future glory of united kingdoms on the island of Li' under the High Kings arising from Aram on the nearby land of the endless desert. The Watchman himself had made the journey to the oracle and returned to tell old King Cresum the news before, even in his moment of joy, the old warrior gave up his own soul to the gods. A direct male progeny of Cresum would rule the lands as no other monarch of Aram had and would also unify the volatile island of Li' under one ruler as it had been in the time of the ancients. This would make it strong enough to withstand the coming of the northern giants from dark lands hulking over the island beyond the Sea of Calm and Storms. This prophecy gave the old king the peace he sought before he died, for he had had doubts of his only son, Cletar.

Such a beleaguered nation as Aram on the land of the endless desert required constant and clever care by a strong man, wise in governing. The young prince had shown no interest in the kingship—even now, when his ascension as warrior king was necessary as never before. Instead, he had frittered his youth away with pleasure and debauchery. And even here he had been no use to the line of Cresum, as he was drawn to catamites rather than the king's harem, any woman of which King Cresum would gladly have yielded over to his son—if only his son would provide him with a grandson.

Thus, on the brink not only of the old king's death but also of the advance on the last stronghold of the defending Arameans by the forces of the island king Xera, monarch of Akamantis on the island of Li', the news from the Oracle at Noto that had been brought through enemy lines, thanks to his protecting cloak of the ancients, by the Watchman, was a voice of salvation.

Only the old king had believed, though. His son, Cletar, had not cared. And the king's own close advisers, the Lord of Sorso and the Lord of Jerzu, as well as the carrion cousins who had gathered around Cresum, ostensibly to give him aid against the Akamantises, but, in reality to be in on the pickings on the king's demise, did not believe. What they believed rather was that the Watchman, the only adviser who retained loyalty to the old man to the end, had conjured up the oracle's prophecy, as he conjured up so much else, out of his imagination, to soothe the dying man. The strongest of the cousins, Severmist, also known, with much justification as the Prince of Madness, was the most grasping and dangerous of the lot, as the size of the sliver of a state he claimed kingship over, Kerastis, did not match the size of his self-esteem and overweaning ambition. Nearly equal to him in treachery was the other cousin in attendance upon King Cresum's death rattle, King Kleemus of Tharsis, the city state that shared the island of Li' with the kingdom of Akamantis.

For the Watchman's part, he did not care what these vultures thought. He knew the oracle had spoken and that he had reported faithfully what it had spoken. And when it had spoken, it gave him strength and assurance—but only to the point of what the oracle added to the prophecy. As he had turned to leave the grotto, he heard a low laugh and the added phrase, "But only if you make it so."

In later years, contemplating all that had subsequently happened, the Watchman wondered whether the path to fulfilling the prophecy would have been so much clearer and straighter if he had not heard that last phrase—and then done what he did.

And having obtained the oracle's prophecy, the Watchman, who originally had intended to fade into the desert as the false advisers and cousins fought over the leavings of Aram, such as they had become, and dealt with the invading Akamantis army as they were able, now found that a heavier burden had been assigned to him. He could have let whatever would be come to pass, but the oracle's added dictum had chilled him to the bone. In that instant, he realized that his own fate hung in the balance as well. This had never been part of his existence before. He was of the old ones—one of the last of the ancients. He had served King Cresum's father, and his father, and the father before that. As far as the Watchman could remember, he'd been there at the Creation. But in that one phrase the oracle had uttered, he knew, deep in the heart of him, that if the prophecy did not come about, he too would be finished.

* * * *

It was not even a full changing of the moon since the old king had died and been ascended to the heavens on a flaming pyre at the highest tower of the bastion at Mascus—within sight of the legions of Akamantis in the valley below—when the Watchman knew this was the crucial night—the night that the future the oracle spoke of must be set in motion, or the future would collapse into the present and all would be no more than dust and chroniclers' laments.

King Cletar, young and handsome in his dusky, almost womanly beauty, was as much in his cups as usual. The Watchman had stood, in the shadows cast by the torchlight on the stone walls of the king's hall, not wishing to be any part of the travesty he knew was afoot. Beside him stood Tieg, grand eunuch of the king's harem, as much full of consternation as the Watchman was that the young king had not visited his domain.

The king's advisers—Sorso and Jerzu and Severmist and Kleemus—scheming together and separately, had convinced Cletar that the morrow was the most auspicious time to move the army out of the stronghold and engage the enemy in the valley. Cletar was too far into his cups—and anxious to move to his pallet, beyond which the youthful royal catamite, Raum, barely a man at eighteen, was already beginning to sway to the music of the flutes, beckoning the young king to join him—to give the venture any thought whatsoever. If his father's advisers and his father's cousins thought this the thing to do, why, then, it must be the thing to do. But that was tomorrow. Cletar had pleasures to pursue tonight.

And so the evening progressed. Cletar approved the attack for the morning and went to the royal pallet, a large pad of many layers of pillows on the floor of the chamber, set before the arches leading out onto the belvedere, the covered balcony porch beyond his chamber. Raum was dancing in the moonlight in the belvedere, and the flutists were weaving their soft, musical spells from behind woven hangings at the side of the chamber, where, upon a signal, they could withdraw through a door into a side corridor unseen and unseeing.

Their business finished, the advisers, lords, and royal cousins gathered around the platform of the king, all four surreptitiously having exhaustively paired among themselves to weave their individual plots, and joined in the enjoyment of the sensuous dance of the talented young catamite. None of the four begrudged Cletar this one last night of life and pleasure, but all were focused on Raum, each with his own dream of owning and enjoying the young dancer when Cletar no longer had use for him—or for anything else in this veil of tears.

As Raum danced, the diaphanous scarves with which he had intriguingly swathed himself began to come off and were languishly cast aside—until he was dancing, his hips sensuously swaying, his full lips humming a seductive tune, in only a bejeweled headband and wristbands and ankle bands. Cletar was lying prone on his bier, on his back, besotted and moaning for attention.

The four advisers groaned their need as well, as Raum slowly danced into the chamber from out of the moonlight and circled the platform—the object of the rapt attention of all four advisers as well as the young king. When the dancer mounted the throne platform, all four drew near, licking their lips and murmuring their anticipation. Raum untied the sash of the king's robes and brushed the material aside, revealing the trembling readiness of Cletar's dusky skin and lean frame. Cletar sighed for the dancing hands of Raum on his ready body, and then there was a heavy release of lustful breath from all sides of the platform, as Raum straddled the king's calves with his knees, grasped the king's phallus, rolled his pelvis up, and moved erection to under his balls, rubbing it against his entrance. The king groaned, as did the four counselors watching the tease.

Raum did not yet impale himself on the shaft. Instead, he slipped down to the based of the throne platform onto his knees between the king's spread thighs. He moved his hands and mouth to the king's erect phallus. The king sighed and ran his hands through Raum's hair, as the catamite's head rose and fell, the king's phallus being taken all the way into the young man's throat; withdrawn to where Raum's lips pressed into the base of the cock's bulb, with the king gasping at the sucking the head and tongue darting into the glan's slit; and then the long slide of the mouth back down to the root of the shaft, while Raum laced a hand in the monarch's testicles and stretched, squeezed, and rolled them. The king cried out and the watchers groaned as Cletar jerked and ejaculated in Raum's throat, jerked and released a second time, and then yet again. Young and virile, the king was fast on the recovery, as Raum well knew. There would be opportunity quite soon for Raum to impale himself and give the king sport.

Raum raised his face from the king's groin and, cum dribbling out of his mouth, looked around at each of the four counselors in succession and smiled at each, with each giving a little moan of want.

The Watchman did not see this. He had already withdrawn, pulling Tieg with him into the outer corridor.

"We must try to do something," Tieg lamented. "I fear the young king is not long for this world. And yet there is the prophecy to fulfilled. But he will not come to the harem or summon one of the princesses."

The Watchman mulled the possibilities and options.

"Is there no princess in the harem manly enough looking to possibly pass with the king in his current state."

"No, Watchman, I fear there is not one. They were all chosen for feminine beauty. He will not touch any of them. He is smitten with the dancer Raum."

"Then we must have one who at least has borne a daughter by the High King—for whom there is some hope of conceiving a son from this king. I believe I have a plan if we can find at least this."

The grand eunuch thought on this for longer than the Watchman could afford to let him. But at the point he was about to give up and proceed to the harem on his own, Tieg spoke. "Does it have to be a princess? The old king was too ill for many months to lay with a woman. There are serving women in the harem. One, a woman taken from the land of Nubia in a raid, got herself with child whilst serving in the harem. She will not reveal the father of the child, who would surely be put to death for violating any woman in the harem, princess or servant. But she has borne a son. Is it possible that she would—?"

"Take me to her," the Watchman demanded. "She will have to do."

The two hurried to the harem, knowing that time was crucial to the unfolding of the Watchman's desperate plan. There Tieg called forth the Nubian serving girl, Nailah, who was suckling her baby. The Watchman looked around the harem, dismayed at the number of women there, lazily lying about, unused, unwanted. But not just any harem princess would do, the Watchman knew. He knew that, for his immediate purposes, proven fertility was crucial, and, as strong a warrior as Cresum had been, his field duties and long illness had taxed his reign sorely and his harem had been left largely barren.

Hissing at the woman, the Watchman drew the trembling serving girl forth. She was frightened to be leaving the harem, but she was not a stupid girl, and she'd known since the death of the old king that she would either be leaving the protection of the harem soon or she would die here, most likely at the piercing cock and sword of some rough, uncouth Akamantis solider. The new king had no use for the princesses in the harem. There certainly wasn't a future for a captive servant like her—and worse, not for her newborn son either. But she had every intention of not dying here. She had a son now, and she meant for him to grow to manhood.

In whispers, the Watchman told her of his plan and of her part in it. At first she objected and demurred, but when the Watchman told her that when she had done, he would lead her and her baby to safety, she knew that her salvation had arrived. This was what she had prayed to the gods for. Not deliverance for her, but for her all-important son. Nailah knew of the Watchman and of his powers and of his reputed magical abilities. And she put her faith and future in his hands. Leaving her baby with one of the other women—for only a short while, the Watchman had promised—she followed him back through the maze of the unknown corridors to behind the woven tapestries in the king's chambers that the flutists had only recently vacated.

Just as the Watchman had hoped—no, as he had willed—the king became thirsty almost immediately after the Watchman had reentered the chamber and taken up a position in the shadow of a stone column. The Watchman closed his eyes and concentrated hard on what needed to pass.

As he wished, the king commanded Raum to take off from his resumed attentions to the royal cock and refill the royal flagon from the table across the room. Although the eyes of all four advisers followed the mincing dancer's progress across the room, the Watchman raised his cloak and, for the briefest moment, neither he nor Raum could be seen—nor did this surprise or concern the four, who returned to whispering among themselves, as the young king belched, and farted, and cried out in a slurred voice the query of why Raum was taking so long.

In the briefest of time, the Watchman told Raum what must happen if he wished to live beyond the setting of the sun on the following day. And Raum, knowing who the Watchman was and of his wisdom and power, agreed readily to the plan.

When the young dancer returned to the king's bier, he ensured that the king drank of the wine—now augmented with a potion that would keep him awake and in full erection but groggy and unaware after the fact of what had transpired—and Raum mounted the king's pelvis and slid down on his staff and began to move up and down, up and down, in the rhythm of giving and taking and mutual arousing and flow. While he did so, though, he also looked around with smiling and enslaving eyes at the four advisers intently watching him, conveying to each one that this could be them being served thusly by Raum.

When someone spoke, it was Raum, in that honey-rich, seductive tone of his that had ensnared a king-to-be long before he ever had danced on Cletar's cock—offering himself to the four, all at once—and now. The four advisers laughed lustful laughs, each and all seeing and appreciating the joke of depriving the semiconscious king of this last pleasure—and seizing that pleasure for themselves. In consort, the four reached for Raum and lifted him off the king's cock, each taking possession of a limb of the sensuous dancer, and in a frenzy of wanting, carrying him into a side chamber.

Soon only the king, still moaning, still thinking he was in coitus, was alone in the chamber, save the Watchman and the trembling Nubian serving girl beyond the tapestries. The sounds from the side chamber told the Watchman in no uncertain terms that the dancer, Raum, was paying heavily for his chance at escape.

"Quick, we must be quick," the Watchman hissed as he drew Nailah from the darkness beyond the tapestry into the torch-lit king's hall.

"I don't know if I can . . ."

"You are a woman; you have done this many times before. This time it will be with one who is young and virile, even though he would not choose to give his seed to a woman. He will not know the difference, however. But the gods will know the difference. And one day Aram will know the difference. I would ask you to do it for Aram, but I know you had no love here beyond whatever lover you took. So, you will do it for your own salvation and for that of your own child. And you will be quick about it."

Where Raum had been astride King Cletar's pelvis, Nailah now held sway, working him inside her channel, riding him until he cried out, jerked, and released—and again and yet again. Nailah rose from him, assuring the Watchman that the king had spilt his seed.

This was not enough for the Watchman, however. He knew of Cletar's ability—perhaps his one useful talent, not useful to anyone, however, until this moment.

Assured by the not-yet-peaking sounds of the four-cocked taking of Raum from the side chamber, the Watchman made Nailah continue to ride the king's hips as he moaned in his drunken, drugged stupor but yet had the juices to seed the Nubian serving girl again. The king once more jerked and released his seed inside the serving woman.

And then the Watchman and Nailah stole back to the harem, where he gave her instructions on where to be at dawn's light and what she could take with her—and that she was to tell no one. Afterward, the Watchman, being no less aroused than the four advisers had been by the dance of Raum, and still very much a man with the ability to stand his phallus, sought out his own catamite, Dila, from the bowels of the stables and took the young stable servant back to his own quarters and rode him until the young man cried for mercy and, like Nailah and Raum that night, was well seeded.

The magic of a near immortal such as the Watchman was to have a phallus that filled and stretched a man's passage to the edge of bursting; to cause the muscles of the man's channel walls to dance on the phallus, bringing ultimate pleasure to both; and to come in prolonged flows that left the man nearly senseless but purring. No man turned down the opportunity to lie under the Watchman.

* * * *

Shortly after dawn, the Watchman held up his small, motley band—the Nubian serving girl and her baby, Raum, and Dila—on the upper slopes of Mount Nule, within sight of the stronghold at Mascus and the valley below, in time to see the Arameans sally forth from the gates of the stronghold for the all-too-short skirmish on the plain below. There in the vanguard was King Cletar, surrounded by his most trusted advisers, those pledged to fight to the death to protect his body and the standard of his throne. Behind them, straggling out of the gates at a leisurely pace, were the ragtag forces of Aram.

The comity of nations dictated that the commanders of the two armies would parley at the middle of the field in a traditional ceremony of forestalling battle if an accommodation could be made. And thus it was this day, with the retinue of the Arameans and that of King Xera of the Akamantis coming together. But in contrast to other times—although, truth be known, not all that uncommon—as the two retinues came together, and Cletar had dismounted to meet with his counterpart, Cletar's four "faithful" protectors peeled off and rode back to their own, still-forming lines.

"They have left the king alone, defenseless," Nailah cried out, as she hugged her precious baby to her bosom.

"Yes," the Watchman said.

They looked on—three of them in horror, one of them in anticipation of the fulfillment of the inevitable—as King Xera raised his sword and split King Cletar asunder. The two pieces of the young King Cletar fell to either side, in the dust of the plain before the gates of Mascus.

But then a nation-saving miracle happened—or so it seemed.

King Xera and his bodyguard, turning away from the rent and bleeding body of the foolish young king of the Arameans, lying in the dust of the plain before his last stronghold, rode their steeds slowly back to the lines of the Akamantis, whereupon the whole enemy army turned its back on Mascus—and trotted into the rising sun. Within the hour, it was as if the siege army had never been there.