The Stonebare Witches

He drew in a quick breath, realizing what it was about to do. Margrit gave an evil smile.

As the vine pressed against his soft flesh, it secreted an oddly warm liquid that ran down its length, and when Sand looked down he could see it dripping onto the ground. The vine pushed, and the liquid eased the passage; the tip forced itself in.

Sand made the most undignified sound he had ever made in his life, and the two women laughed. All of their bondage and teasing and plying still had not made him feel as exquisitely helpless as having the vine force its way into his body. Because of the hot, slick secretions of the vine, his hole dripped like a woman's.

The vine pushed again, another sweet, irresistible force, and the air hissed out of Sand's lungs. His head lurched forward, tongue lolling out of his open mouth.

The witch let out a deep, closed-lipped laugh. The vines in his mouth receded, freeing his jaw.

"Margrit, why are you doing this?" he wailed. "We already had an agreement. You could do practically anything to me!"

"Exactly," she said, putting a hand on his kilt. "It's no fun when you consent. I don't want you to lie back for me. I want to take you!" She found his erection through the cloth.

Sand gritted his teeth, making one last, desperate attempt not to show he was enjoying it.

She pumped him, letting his cock ooze into the cloth of his kilt and make a wet patch over the tip. Enjoyment bloomed on her face as she looked up at Sand. "It's adorable when you try to look tough." Her hand moved slowly, stroking him and teasing him. "But you're loving it. I can tell."

"Yes..." The last of his shame left him with that breath.

Putting a hand on her hip, Margrit flipped up the kilt to expose his shaft. Its tip dripped with his arousal, betraying him further. Periodically, her fingers twitched on his underside, squeezing his delicate nerves. Sensation, more natural than Fentri's magic but more delectable than the ministrations of the native prostitutes, burned away his focus. He squirmed, basking in her unassailable power over him.

Margrit never accelerated her pace, but the sight of her pleased, dominant face staring into Sand's sent him over the edge. Every muscle strained against the vines, and his body pumped with heavy breaths as thick whiteness spurted up from him, landing on Margrit's hand and arm.

The witch gave a little gesture that slowed the pumping vine to a stop.

"No," said Margrit, "keep fucking him."

At her bidding, the vine pushed back in. "Yes!" the words came out of Sand's mouth unbidden. "Yes, yes, more!"

Margrit laughed, raising her cum-stained hand to his mouth. "As you wish," she said. "Now clean me up."

Obediently, Sand opened his mouth and tasted his thick, salty essence as he licked it from her fingers.

'It's up to you, Fentri,' he thought. Margrit had him pinned, body and mind.

*

Fentri had had a feeling that she hadn't seen the last of those foreigners. After Sand had left in such a hurry, she had almost hoped that she would learn more. Then one of Sand's men had appeared, confused, embarrassed and desperate. From him, she had heard the bad news and Sand's call for help.

Under the glow of the half-moon, she stalked up to the clearing where the Stonebare witches had made camp.

They had broken tradition by setting up to sleep above ground, sheltered by nothing but the indifferent stars. Now Fentri would make them regret it. She felt in her pocket for the long-lasting paint. The makeup on her forehead had come off with a simple wipe of her arm, as Sand had promised. The witches would not be so lucky.

The paint phial jittered in her hands. Now that she was so close, a part of her wanted simply to run away and never hear of witchcraft again. But she had been part of their villainy. Now it fell on her to end it.

Kneeling, she whispered an invisibility charm, then held perfectly still as it took effect. She held her hand in front of her and watched with satisfaction as it disappeared. The invisibility crawled down her whole body, even swallowing her clothes, until finally her vision clouded; just as no one could see her, she could barely see the world. It was a tradeoff worth making.

Swallowing her fear, she picked across the brush, into the camp. Only one witch was standing. She perched on the far end of the camp, keeping lookout. She failed to notice as Fentri lay down and dispelled her invisibility. In a flash, the world became crisp and clear again.

Men lay mixed among the witches, but most of them were bound in a way not in the least bit sexual, with their clothes still on. Only a few brave witches had tied their men in accessible positions, and only a few among those had stripped their men to the waist, or even bare naked.

Fentri stalked past one such man who was not yet asleep. Sweat glistened on his hairless chest, and his cock lay limp on his stomach, used and flaccid. Beside him, a witch snuggled against his warm body with a contented smile on her face.

The only other movement in camp came from a witch who stared down at her bare-chested captive. She reached down with one hand, as delicately as if she were petting a porcupine, and touched his nipple. Then she nudged it left and right. Boundless curiosity burned on her face.

But Sand, to her delight, lay alone, dressed only in a loincloth that pulled so tightly around his cock that it only made him more naked. Easing up to him on all fours, Fentri straddled Sand's handsome body and gently brushed his face.

His black-ringed eyes came slowly open. He blinked at her. Then he cringed. "I'm all spent," he murmured. "You've got me, Margrit, you've proven it. Now please let the others go."

"That's what I'm here for," Fentri whispered. "Sand, it's me. Fentri."

Sand's eyes shot open. His mouth worked open and shut, trying to find words and failing.

"Listen, I'm disguised as one of the witches, and I have a plan to get you out of here." She glanced up at the sentry, who was no doubt aware that someone was talking to one of the men. Fentri looked down at him. "Lick me while I explain."

After a moment of confusion, Sand seemed to understand; a woman whispering to a prisoner was suspicious. But a woman being pleasured by one was not. Reaching up, he parted her cloak, revealing her thighs and her womanhood to the cold night air.

Fentri felt a little thrill just from the cold on her bared skin. Her fear of the witches had only served to make her tenser and more receptive to sensation.

Bringing his head up, Sand placed his mouth over her lower lips. His warmth chased away the chill of the night air, and his tongue gingerly poked at her.

"That's good," said Fentri. "Now the plan is to put everyone to sleep. I have a sleeping spell—I'm good at those—but it will affect all of us, even me."

Sand's tongue went a little farther, lapping at her thighs around her slit, then teasing her lips. His warm saliva massaged her skin.

For a moment, Fentri felt like a real witch. She felt the sudden temptation to make Sand finish her, then to wrap him up and carry him away as a trophy. She understood why someone would want to live in a cave and cast curses instead of trying to find a family; it was for this, this inimitable, intoxicating feeling of power.

But then the moment passed, and Fentri remembered herself. "You will wake up first," she went on. "So I'm going to give you a knife to cut your bonds with. While the witches are still sleeping, you tie them up and paint them. Understand?"

He withdrew his tongue. "How do we know I'll wake up first?"

"Sh-sh-sh-sh." She put a hand on his head and drew him back in. "Keep licking me." Soon, she felt his warm, nimble tongue plying her lips, then probing deeper. She teased her by caressing up close to her clitoris, then coming away before he could meet her.

"You've never connected with magical powers," Fentri explained, "so the spell will take longer to seep into you, and it'll seep back out faster. Besides, the men are mostly in the center of camp. When I set the bounds of the spell, I'm going to rhyme the numbers... oh! Oh, thunder, you're good at this!" She took a moment, her clitoris tingling from the barest hint of contact. "I'm going to rhyme the numbers so that when they add up to nine, all the higher ones will be on the outside, so the spell will be strongest farther away from us. And farther from you and the men."

Finally, his tongue pressed onto her button, then circled the base.

Fentri bucked involuntarily. "Stop, stop!" she gasped. "You'll make me wake up the whole camp. Just lie back."

Sand obeyed, and Fentri felt a flash of regret that she couldn't make Sand finish what he had started. Perhaps she could make Kaethe do it to her, next they met.

Fentri began to weave the spell. As soon as she pronounced it, she felt the familiar pall of sleep smother her thoughts.

*

Fentri woke up and saw the ground. She blinked, muzzy as her mind chased away the last streaks of somnolent magic. She tried to get up but couldn't.

Fentri pulled. Her wrists, she found, were fastened to her ankles, pulling her into a hogtie. She became aware of a searing soreness in her back.

She looked up. The other witches, too, were bound. In front of her, Otka was stood up by one of Sand's men, and the wind parted her hair to reveal the power-muting air mark on her forehead.

Fentri looked around desperately. She wanted to ask one of the witches what had happened and how she had been betrayed, but most of them were gagged with ropes. Fentri cried out, but only a messy howl came out; she was gagged too.

A boot stepped on the grass in front of her, and a man knelt. Straining her neck to look up, she saw that the man was Sand.

Immediately, he undid her gag. "Fentri, I'm sorry," were the first words out of his mouth. "There was a mix-up. I forgot to tell them about you."

"Did you just-"

"But it could have been worse," he interrupted, undoing her hogtie as fast as he could. "At least I stopped them before they could paint you."

Her limbs came free, and Fentri stretched painfully. Then, feeling sensation return to her body, she stood up. Gagged witches were being fitted with linked collars, she saw, while the men salvaged their gear. None of the witches tried anything.

"Did we get them all?" asked Fentri, looking around. The prospect of the entire witch clan bound and powerless seemed too good to be true.

"Yes," said Sand distantly. "Except Margrit."

Fentri's nerves froze, then she realized something. "There's no witch named Margrit."

"I know." He looked around at the forest, still cold with fear.

Fentri decided not to ask.

"Fentri!" said a female voice, terribly familiar.

Conradine, that stuck-up bully, knelt in front of a man who was cheerfully undoing his kilt. She pulled at the bonds that kept her arms pinned behind her back as she glared murder at Fentri. "What are you doing with him? You traitor! You rat, you have them working for you! You ar- ulp!"

She was interrupted when the man pushed his cock into her mouth. She flinched away and tried to wrestle her head free of his hands, but she was hopelessly trapped. Finally, she gave in, closed her eyes and began to suck on him.

*

The harvest feast was going well. Oats, barley, milk and honey were piled up on everyone's plates, and the colonists had somehow managed to find room for it all. Wherever people had already finished the main course, they talked warmly.

The colony had done well this year. The ocean goddess had smiled on them and brought just the right kind of rain for a rich harvest.

Sand gently sipped his onion stew and decided that it needed a pinch more salt. He snapped his fingers, and in stepped the witch Adelinda.

Except she was not a witch anymore. Her arms were pulled back and fit into a sheath behind her, and her black hair was likewise pulled back to expose the permanent air mark on her forehead. It was the mark that all of the Stonebare witches now wore.

Now that she was a captive of the colony, some other changes had been made to her outfit. A tray, bolted to her belt and hung like a drawbridge from her shoulders, allowed her to serve without hands. Her skirt now had slits down the sides, giving glimpses of her legs as she walked, and instead of a loose-fitting cloak, she now wore a white woolen blouse made especially for her, so thin and tight that it did not hide her breasts, but only shrouded them. Her pricked-up nipples did not escape the eyes of the men around her, and she knew it. Her round, plump-cheeked face blushed profusely.

In their first few weeks here, none of the witches had been this docile. But captivity, punishment and reward had transformed them. Servitude and male domination gave the witches a chance to stop worrying about a pecking order between them. It gave them a framework in which to interact with each other as equals or to leave each other be. The ones who stuck to their bullying ways found themselves in tight restriction. But not Adelinda. She was one of the good ones.

She stopped beside Sand. "Yes, Master Sand?" she said demurely.

"Bring us a dish of salt," said Sand. "And leave it here. I think others will want some too."

She turned and walked out of the dining house as rigidly as if her spine were a metal rod. Sand laughed to himself. She would get accustomed to the staring eventually.

A few paces away, Adelinda stopped and tiptoed back. "Master Sand, sir? I was meant to tell you... something is wrong with dessert."

"What do you mean, something is wrong?"

Adelinda shrank from him, obviously fearing another spanking.

Sand stood up. "I'll take a look." It always seemed to fall to him, solving problems like this.

He followed Adelinda outside, into the twilight that was swiftly giving way to blackness. In the fields, some of Adelinda's comrades finished up the last of the harvest. Two painted former witches, obedient ones who had their hands free, piled the bounty into a cart, and when it was full, they signaled it to get moving.

The puller of the cart was not a pack animal. That ignominious task fell to one of the naughtier witches, a short, stocky redhead. At the signal, she strained against the harness that enwrapped her whole body, her feet digging into the ground, her thighs tightening with muscle as the cord between her legs pressed deeper. Her breasts, too, bulged from around the harnesses that crisscrossed her chest. She complained bitterly into her bit gag, but only murmurs came out, and she drooled a little on the soil. As she trudged past Sand, the redhead turned and glared molten hatred at Adelinda.

"Why that face?" asked Sand. "She was looking at you, not me."

"Oh!" Adelinda twitched as if she'd just been spanked. "It's nothing, I just..." She stopped, and Sand saw a naughty smirk tug on her lips. "The first day she was harnessed, I went up and... well..." Her head sank guiltily into her shoulders. "I put clothespins on her nipples."

"That was you?"

"I couldn't resist. She was always making fun of me back in the cult. I had to pay her back." She giggled. "Ooh, she did not like it. She did not like it at all."

"I like your imagination," said Sand, as he got her moving with a soft pat on her rear.

At the kitchen house, where the air was still steamy from all the boiling and frying, Grey Fish the cook operated the butter churn while witches watched intently.

"We fixed it!" said Grey, smiling through his bushy grey beard. He patted one of the witches on the head. "Jenelle here fixed it!"

Silver-haired Jenelle grinned, looking down modestly. The loose leather collar around her neck was all she wore for restraint—clearly, she was a good girl.

"Have you rewarded her?" Sand asked.

Grey's eyes widened. "No. No, I didn't think of that." He perked up. "Come along, Jenelle!"

Uncertainly, but then eagerly, Jenelle followed him outside.

"If only it was always this easy," said Sand warmly, as he stepped out of the noise and heat of the kitchen, back into the stillness of the cold night. As he and Adelinda walked back to the feast hall, he found himself falling behind.

She turned to face him. "What's wrong, Master?"

"Nothing," he said. "You go on without me."

She obeyed, disappearing into the dinner hall.

Finally alone, Sand sighed, letting the cool evening air wash the heat from his skin. Facing the forest, he took in the beauty of the tree line, silhouetted against the orange-black night sky. The darkness soaked into his thoughts, and he remembered the one woman who had escaped the colony's ropes and collars—the one woman he feared. She would not forget him, as surely as the sun would rise tomorrow. She was twice the hunter and tracker he was, and unlike him, she was obsessive. Sooner or later, she was bound to come for him, ready or not.

Sand's reverie faded for a moment, and he realized that he had strayed off the path, into the obscurity. A part of him wanted to offer himself to Margrit. 'Sand, you slut!' he admonished himself. But still he lingered, glancing around at the shadowy grass.

A female silhouette, unbound, separated from a tree trunk. She began a slow, silent cat's-walk toward Sand. He froze. Now that he was face-to-face with it, the thought of being ravished by Margrit seemed far less attractive. 'What will she do to me?' At last, he gained command of himself. He moved to sprint away.

"Sand." said Fentri. "You noticed me."

The cramp of fear in his heart went loose. "You're not Margrit," he sighed. "You scared the head off my shoulders. And what are you doing here? If someone sees you, you'll end up tied across the dinner table!"

"It won't be the first time one of you people has tied me up."

"Why are you here? I told you, we don't need any of your safe-sex charms. We bargained with the druid and we're set for life." His worry—for her and for him—cooled a little. "And... thank you. You saved the colony."

"Is it really so bad? Do your kin really hate me just for being a witch?"

As his eyes adjusted to the dark, Sand stopped noticing her intimidating black cloak and her shadowy face. Instead, he saw sadness in the depths of those eyes. "I'm sorry, Fentri," he said. "They don't know all that you did. They wouldn't believe it. You used to be one of them, and my people simply won't look past that."

"Then I'm alone."

"I..." Sand wanted to give her a better answer than 'yes.'

"I see." She fixed him with a piercing glare. "That Margrit woman. You're afraid of her."

"A little."

"Don't try to hide it. I found out the truth. You're her helpless little man-slut."

He opened his mouth to argue and found that he couldn't.

"But don't worry. I can keep her away from you. She's no match for a good seer."

Sand tried to see ahead. "And I know what you'll want in return. You want to replace her."

"No. For one thing, you'll never be as good as Kaethe. For another thing, I'm not making this as a deal. I'm doing it as a favor."

"A favor?"

"When I left the witch clan, I thought there were only two ways to treat someone: either you fear them, or they fear you. Then Kaethe treated me like just a friend. I want more of that. Can we do that, Sand? Can we simply be friends?" Even under her hard manner, that lonely need still shone through in her eyes.

"Yes," he said. "Friends."

She smiled. "Then I'll see you around, friend."

Sand wanted to say goodbye, but somehow it did not feel right to say anything. He only watched silently as Fentri disappeared into the foggy night.