Six Rings and a Pendant

"There is much pain?" Her voice had taken on a soft cast, very un-Nellie-like. Almost motherly, and the priest looked wryly back at her.

"You are not what you seem," he murmured. "It's not just your name you're hiding."

She bowed her head and risked a glance at me. "I'm not sure what you mean, but you should rest."

He nodded sideways toward me, still with his eyes fixed on hers. "Does he know?" I felt a curious heaviness in the room, apart from the smoke and the stench of gangrene, as if the very air was trying to tell me something. I cocked my head at her as she sent me a furtive glance.

"No, priest," she whispered.

"Know what?" My voice sounded very loud in the little temple.

"He needn't," the priest nodded, "but I think you should tell him. He knows your other secrets; why not this one?"

I watched, my gaze shifting between the two of them, aware there was something unsaid but completely unable to make any sort of connection. She threw her hair back and glared at him. "And how do you know?" she demanded.

He smiled tiredly. "I've spent a lifetime watching people. Talking to them. Learning them. You are hardly a noblewoman. Most well-bred women from... Smallbridge, was it? They sit a far better horse than you seemed to as you came charging into the manor."

"Yeah. Riding has never been my thing," Nellie squeaked.

"Yes. And your rings are the wrong size." His eyes were awls, boring deep into her soul. "They're not yours, child."

"No, priest," she whispered. I held my breath and wondered whether I'd need to draw my sword.

"Do they belong to a good woman?"

She thought about that, about Lady Manda's endless trips to her confessor, her rich gifts to the priests, the expense of the abbey she was building with Berken. "She tries hard to be good," Nellie said slowly. Her voice was very small.

"She possesses the virtue of charity?" Nellie hesitated, then nodded. "And you are poorer than she?" Another nod. "Then she should not begrudge you the jewelry. It is up to you now what you do with it." He sketched an impatient, wavy sigil in the air before her. "Blessings, et cetera."

She gasped. "Um. Priest, have you absolved me?"

He shrugged. "Do you feel absolved?"

"Sure?"

"Then you're absolved, I suppose. Use the rings well." He paused. "And the necklace," he added pointedly, and then he glanced at her lap. "As well as whatever else you've got hidden in your womb." He flashed a quick glance my way As Nellie flushed scarlet. "How about you, paladin? Any sins you need taken care of? Hidden bracelets around your ballocks? Perhaps an inkwell up your ass?"

"Priest!" I blinked. "No!"

"No sins? Or nothing up your bum?"

I hesitated, glancing at the silent Nellie. So many sins. So very many, and all of them pretty bad. When fornication is the least of your faults, you're not doing well. "I've got sins," I admitted quietly.

He waved his hand again, that complicated sigil carving through the smoke. "There you are," he smiled, and I actually seemed to feel it: a sensation passed through me like a vole through a bank, digging in and then through and then out, a most extraordinary feeling. The man nodded at me, and for the first time I noticed just how fine his features were. Fine and ageless, as if he'd never been younger and would never grow older.

I shuddered.

Nellie cleared her throat. "Look, priest..." She hesitated, and when she glanced up at me she was still blushing. "I can do something about your leg."

"Can you." He did not seem surprised. "Thought you might. What would you ask in return, child?"

"You've already given it," she replied, hushed. "Shelter. Hospitality. Absolution from the gods." She sighed. "I can do this."

"Do what?" I asked quietly, but I thought I knew. She actually thinks the girl's a sorceress, Hilda had laughed, and I'd chalked it up as spite from a spurned woman toward her faithless maid. But then, who would know Nellie better than the Lady Manda? "You're a... a sorcer..."

"Hush now," she hissed, and at a wave of her hand I went dead silent. I could not have spoken had I wished to. She'd taken on a different air, crouching there, looking suddenly older and more competent. "I'm busy, but this will not take long." She held her hands over the fire, her lips chanting soundlessly, and when she blew on them and laid them on the priest's leg, he lay back with his face in the rain through the high window. "This will sting, priest," she warned, and then she went to work.

* * *

Afterward, I sat by the door and stared at her a little mistrustfully. At least Nellie had the grace to look guilty. "Listen," she whispered, "I wasn't about to tell Lord Berken that I'm a fucking sorceress, okay? He and Manda are religious fanatics. They'd have burnt me alive!"

"But..." Shit. I had so many questions! "I don't even know where to start!"

"I have healing powers," she explained, glancing over at the priest. He'd passed into a deep sleep once she'd healed his leg. "As a little girl, I was consecrated to the healing goddess Alithea. That doesn't mean I'm immune from bad shit happening to me. And when a slave raid comes through your village, and your choice is servitude or death?" She threw her hands up. "I did my best."

"Wow," I sighed, "this is crazy."

"For the record," she pointed out, "I'd have been just as happy if you never found out." She sniffed. "I think you and I already have more than enough lies and deceit in the world we're living in. Don't you?" She shrugged. "What's one more?"

"It's a pretty fucking big one," I muttered. "You're a sorceress!"

"Well. We can't help who we are."

I nodded toward the sleeping priest. "Not like all our lies and deceit have fooled him any. He saw right through us."

"He's blessed by Aersus," she said, as if that explained everything. "Can't fool the Trickster." As if the man had heard us, he stirred in the dying rainspatter and sat up slowly by the ashes of the low fire. "How are you?" she asked him, crouching down.

He reached down and rubbed at his leg, then sniffed his hand. "I think I'm fine," he nodded, eyebrows raised. "Aersus be praised. Many thanks, Lady Jessa," he said softly, but this time he used the name without irony. "Your nobility is proven by your actions, not your blood."

"It was nothing," she smiled.

"Food." He rose, towering over us now with the firelight dueling with the dim greyness blearing through the high window, the priest's black-robed figure in between. "My Lord is not at home, alas, but the freemen of the manor will feed us. Make yourselves at home here. We shall dine, and then you shall stay the night. And if you like, I can offer some advice on your journey. So that you know where you're going tomorrow."

"Father, what makes you think we don't know where we're going?" I almost had to fight to speak past a closed throat, the compulsion to remain silent, docile, even timid quite strong in here. I'd never encountered a man such as this.

"You know where you're going, in a way," he shrugged, "but you don't know how you'll get there. I can help, perhaps." He moved swiftly past us, flitting to the door almost too fast for the eye to follow. "I'll return."

The room went close and silent after he closed the door, leaving me to glance across at Nellie in the firelight. "Who the fuck is he?" I muttered.

"He's creepy," she agreed, before falling silent for a moment. "Sexy. But creepy."

"Sexy?" I scoffed. "He's a priest!"

"Yeah," she shrugged, "and I'd let him have me any way he wanted. If he wasn't so creepy." She elbowed me. "Priests fuck, Pewick. Trust me," she added with the kind of knowing nod that made me understand she'd probably sampled some consecrated cock herself. She confirmed it a few moments later, with a mysterious little smile of some salacious memory. "They definitely fuck."

"Well," I sighed, unfolding my legs so I could stretch them out with my back to the wall, "we're here now. Creepy or not, might as well stay to dinner." I watched her for a moment, admiring the way the flames danced on her face. It made her look healthier, more vibrant. Once again, I felt my cock lurch and wondered why we'd never done anything back at Berken's castle. "Unless you want to make your excuses and ride in the rain."

"No!" She mimicked my position on the other side of the little temple, yawning as she rested her head on the daub behind her. "I could sleep for days."

"Did he tell you his name, before I came in?" I glanced at my wet cloak, now steaming a bit.

"He did." She gathered her legs to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. "I don't recall it now, though."

I blinked at her, the smoke taking its sweet time on its journey through the thatch. "Don't recall it? What, were you too busy thinking about his priestly little prick?"

"Mind your tone, paladin," she snapped, "and remember your place. I'm a Lord's daughter now, not a slave from the Witch's Tit."

I laughed. "Quit that. He saw right through you. He knows what you are."

"So do you, now." She scowled.

I was about to reply when a silent woman entered bearing a large basket. I looked up at her inquisitively: a local peasant, it seemed, drawn and worn from what looked like a recent illness. "Many thanks," I nodded. I peered up over the rim of the basket and saw eggs, some bread, cheese, and a few scraps of some sort of meat.

She said nothing, just laid the basket down by the fire as the rain dropped hissing from her cloak to the flames. She looked inscrutably over at Nellie, her mouth pursed in disapproval, then scuttled back out into the storm. I blinked after her, for the priest was already standing in the shadows. He smiled that oily grin once more. "Eat. I'll return late. I've got business to attend to." He turned to Nellie. "M'lady," he began, once again without irony, "you may sleep in here if you wish, but the Lord's house is empty. Feel free to use his bed in there." He shrugged as though it did not matter.

I waited, but he said nothing more. "And I?"

"You? You are a fighting man." He shrugged. "I assume you're accustomed to finding your own bed. You're welcome to use the temple, though, or to spend the night with your lady." He waggled his eyebrows and made a complicated gesture with his hand. At once I felt a cloud pass into my head, almost like I'd just had too much to drink. "Yes. I think you might both enjoy that. As I say, I'll be out most of the night." I thought of asking where, but decided that might be rude, and then I noticed something odd about his clothes. "Sleep well. We'll speak again in the morning," he said abruptly, and then suddenly the door was flapping shut and the rain was once again locked outside.

Nellie looked slowly from the door to me, eyes wide. "What the fuck."

"His clothes," I whispered, "were totally dry."

"Never mind that," she replied, and now the ruddy cast to her face was not just the fire. "I'm suddenly really, really horny."

I cocked my head. "Is that really something I need to know?" Even as I asked, though, I realized I knew she was. I'd have known even without her telling me: I could almost feel her body reaching out, seeking something.

Seeking me?

Why, yes. Seeking me. "So are you," she went on, her voice coming out as an urgent croak.

She was right: a quick internal inventory informed me that I was rock-hard underneath my leggings, and even as I realized it Nellie was uncoiling from where she sat huddled on the floor and was getting quickly to her hands and knees, slinking across the dirty rushes toward me. She ignored the untouched basket of food and just kept coming, a look of determination in her eyes, until I felt her knees on either side of my bare feet and she halted. Still, I felt drunk: her slack face told me she felt the same, as she slowly straightened until she knelt above me, her legs straddling my ankles.

"So are you," she repeated, whispering, almost chanting now as her hands snaked up my legs, with no hint of hesitation or teasery: her fingers darted straight into my lap, converging where my stiffly straining cock surged across my thigh. "So. Are. You," she said one last time, her lips curling in satisfaction as her warm hands felt me. Her crafty smile became an all-consuming grin, her fingers probing me, and with some wonder I realized I was smiling just as broadly.

She left me with one tender, caressing squeeze at the middle of my shaft, my brain sizzling now with lust and need, heedless of the food and the rain and the odd priest who'd just left us in such a state, and without thinking I fumbled at my leggings, unknotting myself with the haste of a stallion chasing a heated mare.

Nellie straightened again, her face a confident mask as she ripped Lady Manda's brooch from her dress and, seizing its hem, flung it contemptuously off over her head: the fire on her naked body matched the fire in my mind as I got my laces free, pushing my trousers down to free my rigid cock. She looked at it with a hard, triumphant look in her roguish eyes, nodding softly to herself as I thrashed my legs between hers, kicking the troublesome garment low enough that I could open my thighs and display my balls.

She licked her lips then, glaring down at me, her smooth body swaying hypnotically before me. I could already see the wetness sheening her inner thighs. She reached boldly out and took my hand in hers, pulling it, raising it to her as her other hand drifted across her hip to cup her mound, hiding the red wet skin I'd glimpsed there through the damp forest of her hair. For an instant I frowned at this near-modesty, pulling my shirt impatiently off my body, but she noticed my frown and smiled once more, mysteriously, clasping my fingers.

She was not hiding herself.

Her fingers busied themselves inside her slit, digging, and when she raised that hand to mine I caught the low flames glinting off the wetness there. She held her hand over mine, and when she opened it my palm felt the weight of three heavy gold rings, cunt-damp, glimmering before my wide eyes while she went back to pull more jewelry from herself. Another pause, heavy-breathed and tense, and now six of Lady Manda's rings lay in my hand in a thick, brothy puddle of her juices.

Nellie closed my fingers around the gold, nodding as she released my hand, for her other hand was once again busy at her crotch. I watched in wonder as she pulled her hand away, bearing with it a heavy pendant with its long gold chain drooling from her wetness as she pulled it from her body, only to hold it glistening before my face.

She waited a moment, her face going mischievous, then reached languidly down to wrap that wetted gold chain around my penis, trapping me, then looking down and nodding in satisfaction when she saw what she'd done.

I'd never been so hard, and as I felt the weight of the gold and the warmth from her cunt and the wetness of her body sliding over the veins of my shaft, I swallowed in a dry throat. There was nothing I could say, nothing at all, staring in rapture as her hand traced up over my cock, to the top of it, collecting a pearl of my own moisture from the tip. She looked at where it wobbled on the tip of her finger, turning her hand this way and that to see the fire dance in the fluid, before she put her finger to her tongue and licked it off.

And stared into my eyes while she did.

That was all it took for me to lose control, my brain going blank in a profound and irrepressible urge to bury my cock in this woman. I registered a dull chinking noise, not even realizing it came from my own hand dropping the six rings to the packed earth floor, my hand now free to grapple for her naked hips and drag her up my legs, my hungry growl filling the temple. She smirked as she leaned forward, her own hands in my lap, around my cock, beneath my balls, unwinding Lady Manda's soiled pendant from around my hot, tight flesh so that she could mount me.

It came free at last, the chain's fine links ripping some of my curled hair free, but I did not even notice: by that time, my fingers had met at the crack of her ass and I was pulling, lifting, helping her rise up on her knees so that she could take me inside. Nellie's hands held me up so that she could impale herself as her other hand found my face, my cheek resting lightly in her cunt-stenched palm as she rose high, our eyes meeting in that split second before she laid my eager cockhead to her soaked slit and began to sink down.

She opened around me, warm and wet and alive, and my head thunked back against the wall as I lost myself in the sheer amazement of her body, her cunt. And her eyes above all, staring into mine with a fixity of expression as intense as the priest's had been earlier, but so much warmer. So much more human.

For we were doing the most human thing imaginable.

I felt her cunt lips grip my veins tightly, her body falling to the bottom of my shaft, our flesh nestled together, hair tangling in wild lush profusion as I filled her. She moaned long and husky as she tossed her head back, her breasts crushed against my chest, the two of us as close as we could be.

Her flesh filled my hands, my eyes, my nostrils: she surrounded me and enfolded me, and when our mouths met in a tangle of tongues it seemed inevitable, the most natural thing in the world that I would taste her as I thrust deep inside her, the two of us groaning out our lust. Her eyes wide, she took on a red-faced look of urgency as, suddenly, she began to move on my lap in sensuous, swaying motions, keeping me deep as the two of us fumbled ourselves from sitting against the wall to lying on the rushes; I wanted to be able to arch up into her, and as I settled my back against the floor and saw her snakelike body shadowed against the dying fire, her hair billowing out in a halo, I gripped her hips and thrust.

She moaned once more as I bucked her up, twice, then three times, and then suddenly she had planted her feet on the floor by my ribs and was hunching up and down with lewd, writhing abandonment.

We grappled hard on the floor of the little temple, fucking urgently, raw and carnal and almost vicious in our need. Very quickly we fell into a rhythm, fast and energetic, our bodies meeting with a lewd smacking noise when her ass met my thighs. I churned deep inside her, watching in wonder as the red flush spread down her chest, past her nipples, until her nude body glowed as it twisted on top of me.

Without an instant's thought, it occurred to me that I wanted to take her. Ravage her. Claim her. So I shoved her off me, a faint squeak gusting from her throat when she landed, and then I was on top of her without a moment's hesitation: our twisting flesh moved fluidly again, her legs wide, welcoming me between them. And I did not wait, swooping low, my cock spearing deep inside her juiced cunt to the mingled sounds of her gasp and my growl.

I plundered her, fucking in deep, long strokes that left her pinned powerless to the rushes. At one point she screeched, her nails raking my back, her wet sleeve a fluttering vise for my plunging cock, and I caught a delirious look in her eyes as I fucked her through it, straining to hold myself back: I had a vague sense that the Trickster God would laugh if I came so quickly inside a slave girl in a temple. He'd want me to slow down, to tease. To trick. But his voice was a nagging whisper and my lust was a crashing yell and I was not going to stop.

Nellie's arms and legs both clung to me as I arched my body, pushing far inside her, my sweat dripping onto her face as I plowed her. Once more, twice, and then I was gasping in her face as I blew my muck up inside her. I launched powerfully, both of us gasping, my seed flowing deep into her womb as my cock sent tingles all through my body.

We were both gasping, giggling, our foreheads touching as we lay tangled together in the aftermath as the fire died and the rain pattered on the roof.