The Ring of Perliss Ch. 01: Queened

The road followed the edge of the forest, for the most part, so that we caught only glimpses of the mountains to the east. To the west, the fields of grain gave way to pasture land, the sea beyond a little too far away to be seen. Ahead of us in the far distance were the high peaks of the northern range where passage would be difficult even in summer. At some point the road would divide, one route following the coast, the other climbing up and over towards Benatek.

I was glad not to be alone, otherwise I might have despaired after walking even half a day and felt no nearer my destination. In the tales of great adventurers, they don't talk of all the long days where nothing happens. Always there is fresh danger and new monsters to face, never the long march through pleasant countryside broken only by crude, murmured suggestions for the use of my cunt.

Their leader, Fenizir, and his second, Arden, both rode on horseback, one at the front, one at the rear. Fenizir sat with me when we broke at noon. A stream nearby provided water for the horses, and a fallen tree provided a convenient bench for ourselves. I had packed enough food to last a few days, and had certainly built up an appetite through walking.

"You're doing well," Fenizir said. "Of course, the way across the mountains will be a lot harder, and colder too."

"Are there monsters?" I asked, both hoping there would be, and fearing it too.

"There are trolls," he said with a tense expression. "It used to be they kept to themselves, doing no worse than stealing a horse or two, but I've heard it said their king has returned."

"What are they like?" I had heard stories of trolls, but they varied as widely as the human imagination.

"Much like men," Fenizir said, "but their hides are hard as granite, and their eyes can penetrate the deepest shadows. They don't like the sun though."

He turned to study me closely. "Are you really a healer?" he asked.

"I am."

"Then it's likely we'll be grateful for your skills by the time we reach Benatek."

And with that he stood and soon had the wagons ready to roll again.

We pulled in at dusk at another village with an inn, this one far smaller and more remote from civilisation than my own had been. "This is the last inn in Denkhar," Fenizir said. "From here to Benatek, we sleep without a roof over our heads."

It was good to have a bed for the night, even if it was a hard and narrow bed in a room shared with the three merchant wives. They took an immediate and instinctive dislike to me and kept firmly to their own company. I was well used to women avoiding me, but unused to sharing such an intimate space with them.

For an hour I struggled to sleep, too aroused by the thoughts of who and where I was, coupled with the memory of all the dirty and unsubtle suggestions that had been thrown my way. I was a woman now, and of course men desired me, but for me to be desired by men was still a strange and confusing thing.

Weariness won out in the end, though, and sleep claimed me at last.

*

I dream I am Perliss, aware but unawake, the bed beneath me nothing but dried out timber, my clothes long disintegrated. Days and nights have long lost their meaning, and seasons matter not in the Iskreti.

Unmoving, I wait for I know not what, my legs spread wide in a long-ago effort to cool the lustful heat. Waiting. Waiting. I witness the birth of a dragon, the mighty wyrm unfurling its wings and taking to the sky in a roar of flame. How magnificent it is, and I wish I could take flight with it.

Waiting. Soldiers break in upon my awareness, taking refuge from the wyrm that haunts their heels. It is a young wyrm, well fed now and far from its nest, and the walls of my palace baffle it as they were designed to do.

The wyrm goes, but the soldiers stay. There are three of them, weary and thirsty, and they discover the well in the courtyard. Long dry now, of course.

And then they discover me. Aware. Unawake. My legs wide. My cunt wet. One at a time, impatient, thirsty, they devour my wetness, their tongues adoring my clit and delving deep into my flesh. "She is sand," they say, their hands digging into my face, into my breasts. "She is nothing but sand."

Perhaps, but they drink deep, and I come so hard it's amazing I don't awaken. And -

*

I awoke, a hand rough against my shoulder. It was Lela, the youngest of the three merchant wives, and the only one whose expression had shown any trace of compassion for me the day before. "It's time," she said, and then I was alone, dawn's light flooding in through the open window. My cunt aching with an unfamiliar need. The still vivid memory of tongues against my clit.

My uncle as a young man.

The second day passed much like the first, except I was now a member of the company. "Which means," Arden said, "all our food is shared and you'll be paid on reaching Benatek."

Arden was a young man, only a few years older than me. He could ride with confidence and was skilled with the sword, a skill that he clearly enjoyed showing off for my benefit as he sparred with the others.

For the first time in my life, a man was flirting with me. He was handsome in a way, with short black hair and blue eyes, a beard too that was kept short, and he certainly had the energy of youth.

"Surely a young woman as beautiful as you should be married," he said. "Certainly, if I were your brother, I would not have permitted you to come with us - but as I am not your brother, I'm glad he did." He grinned as if to suggest he had claimed me already for himself.

I had awoken aroused, and that arousal had kept me tense throughout the morning. Walking had helped to distract me from that deep frustration, but there was never a moment's privacy to do something properly about it. Arden's flirtation and my awareness of his physical potential just made the tension worse.

"I have no wish to marry," I said. "I need no brother to guard me and tell me what is right and wrong."

"My kind of girl," he said with a laugh, and made a point of adjusting his cock before climbing back onto his horse. There was no mistaking the hardness of it beneath his trousers. Nor was there any denying my sudden yearning to feel it in my hands, and elsewhere too.

In becoming Lia, I had not anticipated the strength of my lustful desires. Had my uncle suffered similarly, or had all those nighttime adventures of his been furtive sexual encounters with other men? How confusing it must have been for him to live as a man during the day and to fuck as a woman during the night.

That night we slept in tents. I had not brought one myself, and when Arden invited me to share his, I lacked the will to deny him.

I understood. I knew what I was giving him permission to do. Everyone there knew it. An unmarried woman sharing a man's tent can mean only one thing. But I needed him, as much as he wanted me, and when his hard cock found its way between my legs, and into my cunt, it was like the answer to a prayer.

Suddenly I no longer cared about my life before. I was no longer Orin. I was Lia. I was Perliss. I was a woman, and Arden's hard cock filled the yearning emptiness in me.

I lost my virginity, not as a man but as a woman, and though he was rough and demanding it didn't hurt. As much as he gave me, I wanted more. I loved the passion of his thrusts, even as I wondered how absurd the experience would feel if I could actually see him.

The smell of him was earthy and sweaty, the taste of salt was on his skin, the sharp brush of his beard, his kisses harsh - I had never even kissed before, and to have his tongue in my mouth was brutal and startling. But his cock...

I wanted it in me so badly. I thrust up with my hips to take him as deep as I could, loving the way it stretched me, filled me, the tension within building slowly to an exquisite height. "Yes," I whispered, over and over. "Yes. Yes. Yes."

And then it was all I could do not to scream as I climaxed hard, my cunt contracting rhythmically about his thrusting cock, waves of blissful pleasure radiating from my core, like nothing I had ever experienced before. I almost didn't notice when he finished too, his cock pulsing inside me, filling me with his seed.

And I laughed quietly to myself, thinking of how Old Mother Baria had known this would happen, long before I had ever suspected it myself.

The Barbed Vine

The merchants' wives, I had learned, wore a frilly underwear beneath their dresses. My uncle had had none for Lia, and in my ignorance of women's clothing it had not occurred to me to buy any - not that I would have known how to do that. And besides, I was quite comfortable without, and wearing delicate silks seemed, to me, unwise for an adventurer such as myself.

"Good morning, beloved," Arden said, catching me unawares for a long, lingering kiss. His hand teasingly lifted my skirt, forcing me to push him away before my lack of stupid frilly underwear was exposed to all.

"Stop that," I growled, glad to be able to hide my genuine irritation at being kissed beneath my lesser irritation at this exposure.

He laughed and strolled away, and I glowered after him. I loved being a woman, but I did not love dealing with the arrogance of men.

With every day that passed, I became more certain of myself as a woman, as Lia. My nights were spent in Arden's warm arms, and I welcomed his possessive hunger for me. In the dark of the tent we shared, I could concentrate on what I wanted and needed from him, undistracted from the reality of who he was and what he might want from me.

I was Lia, no longer Orin, and yet, should the Ring of Perliss fall from my finger, that simple truth would crumble. To Arden, I was Lia, and only Lia, and I knew he would forever hate me if Orin were ever revealed. He would hate me, as Orin, for deceiving him, for making him fall for me, as Lia.

But as Lia, my deception was in permitting his continued advances. In the relative privacy of our tent, I craved his touch and his vigorous attention to me, and even his kisses I found enjoyable, but during the day, when his flirtation and kisses were sweeter, when his words of love were not accompanied by a hard cock thrusting into me, I struggled to feel anything other than frustration.

How was I supposed to tell him that I felt nothing for him as a man, and yet craved his use of me in the dark?

Especially since the others - the merchants and their scowling wives - already viewed me as a deeply immoral woman for being part of the company at all, an opinion only confirmed by my sleeping with Arden. The merchants all hailed from Saruz, and were devout followers of the goddess Veshla, whose auspices included trade. They were sophisticated city folk who believed women should wear frilly underwear, and they saw me as an uncultured villager and, well, little better than a whore. Even Lela, who showed me an occasional kindness, dared not do so openly.

My days were spent walking, and if at times I paused to dig for bulbs and roots, or to gather herbs and fruits, as much for our shared meals in the evening as for my collection of medicines, then also I was swift enough on my feet to catch up with the others in good time. The boots and dress my uncle had bought for Lia had proved to be of good quality. I had walked hard in them for seven days, and the stitching was still secure. They were stained and scratched in many places, but nowhere so damaged as to need mending.

At night I dreamed of the desert, and of a palace that was bright with colour and whose halls echoed with soft music. I dreamed of opulent chambers, and of a bed luxuriously soft with satin sheets. I dreamed of lovers, never the same, men with lustful expressions and hard cocks, and often would wake from one brutal love-making to find myself in the midst of another.

*

We were long past the fork where the road turned towards the coast, and the wagons were following a narrow track that led gradually upwards through the forest and into the northern foothills. We were high enough to catch glimpses of the sea in the west, and I longed to see it better.

For two days it had rained hard, and although the forest had been some shelter from the worst of it, the wagons had kicked up sprays of dirty water and at several points we had had to combine our strength to pull them free from some submerged, mud-filled rut or hole.

The sun was out at last, and the forest behind us, but the road proved to be treacherous. Sudden screaming, loud and terrifying as it broke the lulling quiet of the day, brought me running to the front of our wagon train. The road had fallen away beneath the lead wagon that had tumbled wildly down a steep slope, disgorging its wares so that the dark mud of the slope was littered with brightly coloured fabrics.

The horses had fallen with the wagon, still in harness but the tongue had broken free from the wreckage and they ran now across the slope in a panic. Corvis and Lela had fallen too, and Lela was screaming as Fenizir cautiously descended the slope towards them.

I didn't understand why, until I saw the vines, slithering like great, green serpents, closing in on the two merchants as they scrambled away and up through the slippery mud. One vine snared Corvis by the waist and he shrieked as it dragged him brutally downwards. Another coiled about Lela's leg - but Fenizir was there too, his sword slicing through the vine; and then Arden was there too, the two men carrying a flushed and whimpering Lela up the slope to the road and the remaining wagons.

"Well, healer," Fenizir said to me, his casual tone masking a visible fear. "Let's see if you're as good as your word."

I stared at Lela, and at the rope-like length of vine that was wound about her leg. Her clothes were torn and caked with mud, so that the bright pink of her exposed underwear was particularly vivid. "Get it off me!" she screamed.

Fenizir held her firmly by the wrists, however. "No. I've seen this before. Its thorns will dig deep if we try to pull it away. I watched a man bleed to death for trying."

"So how, then?" I asked as I emptied my backpack in search of bandages.

"Stroke it," he said. "Like you would a cat. Keep stroking until it lets go, then be ready with your medicines."

The idea of it was absurd, but I did as suggested, running my hand gently along the length of the vine. I felt it shiver beneath my fingertips, tightening then relaxing, tightening then relaxing. Each time it tightened, Lela cried out in pain. Each time it relaxed, a shocked gasp burst from her lips. In her eyes I saw horror, but something else too. "Stop," she pleaded. "Stop!"

"Don't stop," Fenizir said, so I did not. I stroked the vine, understanding now the cruelty of its purpose.

Lela's cries of pain became whimpers, and her gasps became panting horror. "No," she whispered. "Please no." With a loud moan of undisguised pleasure, she climaxed, convulsing within Fenizir's tight grip as I continued to stroke the vine that clenched and shivered, the severed end whipping about wildly and spraying suddenly a milky fluid across the grass.

And with one last shivering contraction, it died, its thorns pulling out from Lela's skin and leaving a trail of bleeding puncture wounds running down and around her leg.

Lela burst into tears, and I wondered whether the tears were for her husband, or because the vine had forced an orgasm from her while everyone watched. Her pink underwear was soaked through, and she had no choice but to sit with her legs wide as I applied a healing salve and bandages. She sat still through it all, her eyes shut tight, her cheeks flushed with shame, but the whimpers that escaped her lips each time I touched her damaged skin were not the sounds of pain.

Only once I was done did Fenizir release her wrists. "Can you give her something to sleep?" he asked.

I did so, and the other two merchant women gave her clean clothes to wear and made a bed for her in one of the wagons. Her own wagon we abandoned on the hillside, along with her husband. No one dared approach the hidden nest of vines to find out if Corvis lived still. No one wanted to see what the vines did to their captured prey, not after witnessing Lela's humiliation.

"Let's go," Fenizir said loudly. "Find a way round."

*

A full day she slept, and half a day more she hid, her wails of grief giving way to intermittent sobbing and occasional screams of fury. Night had fallen when she asked to see me. Her bandages needed changing and the wounds inspected, but not so urgently that it could not have waited till the morning.

She watched in silence as, by candlelight, and in the privacy of this wagon that was not her own, I unwrapped the bloodstained bandages from her leg to examine the skin beneath. My medicine had done its trick. The wounds had sealed, leaving a trail of angry red bumps. Beneath them, however, was a tracery of black veins. "What does it mean?" she asked, her dark, sad eyes seeming black in the dim light.

Lela's eyes were beautiful. She and Corvis had been the youngest of the three merchant couples, and Lela could not have been much older than me. Her fair skin was soft and smooth, and her long, black hair was straight and free of tangles. I was used to hostility from the merchants, but there was none in Lela's eyes.

I ran my fingertips curiously along the trail of black-veined skin. With a quiet scream of surprise, she wrenched her leg away from me, and pressed her hand against her underwear, white this time. Uncaring that I watched her, she massaged her clit through the increasingly wet material. "I can't help it," she said. "I've wanted to do this since the moment I woke up."

With a frustrated whine, she stood and tugged off her underwear completely, and thrust two fingers into her wet cunt with a gasp of satisfaction before returning to massaging her clit with determination.

"I can't think of Corvis without thinking of his cock," Lela said. "He was my husband. I didn't love him, not the way he loved me, but he was a good man. Our parents arranged the marriage... In bed, I was always nervous, never wet like this." So wet, indeed, that glistening strings of her natural lubricant were dripping from her cunt. "But now he's dead - or worse - and I can't stop thinking about his cock!"

With a strangled cry, she climaxed, fluid gushing past her strumming fingers as she collapsed onto her knees. "Help me," she pleaded. "I need a man. Please, I need a man. Help me."

She burst into tears again, and I recognised in her suddenly the same feverish need that had recently possessed me. "Wait here," I said.

Outside, the others were in their tents save for Vigo and Rafiz. The two men were on guard duty, which in practice consisted of a card game that absorbed them to the extent they ignored me completely. "Come," I said quietly, and guided Lela to the tent I shared with Arden.

There was barely space for two, let alone three. Arden was asleep, or almost, but awoke with startled confusion at finding himself sandwiched between two naked women. Lela's hand sought out his hardening cock as I kissed him.

"What -?" he asked. "Who -?" But then Lela was straddling him, guiding his cock into her, and his questions gave way to lustful sighs as he thrust deep and urgently into Lela's cunt and Lela cried out in rapturous pleasure.

They were no more visible to me than shadows in the dark, but I could smell the lingering traces of Lela's perfume blended with Arden's more familiar and masculine odour. I could feel his body move against mine as his hands grabbed at Lela's breasts and his cock rammed into her cunt. I could hear their gasping pleasure and the smack of flesh against flesh.

Once more, I traced my fingertips along the black-veined path, invisible in the night but the bumps were easy to follow. "Aah!" she cried out, and surrendered to ecstatic convulsions.