The Warden Stones Ch. 02

When the sun was low in the sky they finally stopped for the night, pulling off the road miles from where they had started and Garrett dug through trunks on top of the wagon until he found what he was looking for: the blue grey robe of an initiate in the sisterhood. It was more of a shapeless sack than a dress, but it was wool, and looked warmer than what she was wearing, so Evelyn took it gratefully.

"Now you go try that on while I get a fire started," Garett said, waving her away while he unlimbered the horses.

Evelyn stepped alone into the dim interior of the wagon. It looked no different than her last visit, but this time she felt infinitely more confidant. She laid her new outfit down on the bed and took a long slow look around the room. Other that the bed, the brazier, and the mirror, there really wasn't much to see. There were a few drawers, but looking through Mr. Lee's private possessions would be wrong. Her tour complete, Evelyn shrugged gracelessly out of her dress shivering only a little in the relative warmth of the wagon's interior. She picked up the initiate's habit to put it on, and stopped mid motion with the feeling that she was being watched. A quick inspection of the room reviled that nothing had changed except her nudity, which she caught in the mirror.

Maybe Garrett was watching, she thought as she regarded herself. On another day, the urge to cover herself at the very thought would have been overpowering, but today she was felt like a new woman. Instead she turned from side to side, enjoying the view the play of her musculature and the sway of her breasts. Her long blond hair tumbled down, almost to her waist, and just as it could not hide the shapely curve of her spine, neither could her underwear entirely conceal her shapely ass. She wasn't the prettiest girl in her village, but she had nothing to be ashamed of either. Evelyn slid her hands down her ribs to her thighs, admiring her pale and flawless skin. The worst part about all of this is that no man would ever get the chance to admire this in person. She shrugged, and then started to put of the robe. Garrett implied that the sisters were no saints, maybe one of them would like to take a closer look. Maybe she would let them, Evelyn thought wickedly.

Evelyn regarded her reflection in the mirror once more after donning the robe, and was less than impressed. All of her curves, even the flare of her womanly hips were hidden in this outfit. No one would like to get to know her better like this, but what could she do? Wearing an unflattering robe was the least of the sacrifices she had already made. Who knew what they expect of her when she reached their destination.

Feeling curious, and not yet willing to brave the cold once more, even with the warmer outfit, Evelyn cast an eye toward the bookshelf. It wasn't exactly private, and her curiosity was piqued. She couldn't read, but perhaps there might be some pictures that would give her some clues about her future. Evelyn traced her finger along the spines of the top most bookshelf, and then selected one at random. Other than a few inscrutable geometric designs however, she was disappointed. Frowning slightly, Evelyn placed it back on the shelf, and drew out another at random. It wasn't until the third try that she found a volume with abundant pictures, and her eyes went wide at what they depicted.

Between the red leather covers of that volume were pictures and writing about the denizens and creatures that served the gods below, there could be no doubt. It wasn't just the evil that was exuded by the drawings, it was the raw sexuality that some of them had. Demons with breasts larger than her head or cocks larger than her arm, or both! Page after page of dark monstrosity dominated the right hand pages, while words and symbols decorated the left. Evelyn continued to flip through the book blindly until a single image arrested her, causing her to gawk, mouth open. The large illustration covered both pages and showed several women bound, suspended, and penetrated by a mass of writhing tentacles. She was so revolted that she could taste the bile building in the back of her mouth, but at the same time, she was turned on enough that she could feel her clit starting to tingle. It was that second reaction, not the first that caused her to slam the book and put it back on the shelf.

Garrett hadn't stressed much at this point, but the one thing he had was the importance of purity. Before seeing those images she could scarcely have imagined such horrors, now Evelyn would have trouble forgetting them. As she exited the wagon, she wondered why Garrett would even have such a thing. The blue ladies were a real organization. Every school child new that, just like the Paladins of the Verge or The Black Templars. The ladies cared for all of humanity as their children since they had none of their own.

She looked around for the gypsy and found him some distance away feeding a newly started fire small branches. When he saw her, he waved, and she waved back and started slowly toward him. Was it possible that Garrett worked for someone else? It was hard to say. Evelyn resolved to wheedle it out of him, before the end of the trip. It was possible that her worries were entirely misplaced, after all she had thought that he was spying on her while she dressed, but that would be a difficult trick since he was two dozen feet from the wagon.

When she reached the edge of the fires glow, Garrett looked up. "It looks nice," he said, feigning surprise. "That's a good look for you."

"No it doesn't, and you know it." Evelyn said, crossing her arms across her chest.

"No, it doesn't," he agreed, nodding, as he turned his attention back the kettle he was setting to boil. "But then, that's the point."

Evelyn couldn't disagree with him there, as she sat down to join him by the fire. He took half a loaf out of the bag that sat beside him, tore it in half and handed part to her. He didn't attempt to carry the conversation any further, and contented himself with building the fire. Evelyn, by contrast, ate greedily and quickly. When she had finished, she sat in companionable silence for a few moments until it wore on her. After that she there thinking about the right question, which was not quick in coming.

"How did you find me," she decided on finally.

"Find you,?" Garrett's queried, not even looking up.

"Didn't your mother ever teach you it was bad manners to answer a question with a question," Evelyn retorted. She was usually so bad on thinking quickly on her feet, but this was a line that had often been used against her by her mother's friends, so it was ready on the tip of her tongue.

"Didn't yours," Garrett said, looking up with a wide grin on his lips.

It took Evelyn a moment to see figure out what he meant, causing her to blush furiously. In the end she was less embarrassed by the misstep then by the amount of time it had taken her to figure it out.

"You'll forgive my poor manners," he said finally, "it's a sensitive subject."

"I didn't know..." Evelyn started.

"Of course you didn't, how could you have?" Garrett rubbed his hands together over the fire, letting that question hang in the air. "It's a geas, a curse, that lead me to you, and all those like you. For over a hundred cycles of the moon I have been compelled to wander the roads of the north, seeking out magic. If it is someone useful to one of the orders, then I am to bring it to them, and if it of the gods below then I am supposed to kill it, or die in the attempt."

"But how do you know," Evelyn followed up. His question had only raised more questions. "You said there is another girl, in the next town over. What does that feel like?"

"It's hard to say," Garrett said pausing to contemplate the feeling and attempt to put it into words "It's just there in my mind - an unerring compass. I usually know if it's a man or a woman, and since there are so few demons or darklings this far north, it is usually farming folk with the gift."

Darklings was a new word that Evelyn had not heard before, and one that she would file away. She resolved to ask him about it later, but she didn't want to lose this thread of the conversation. She sat in silence a while longer, trying to puzzle out the best way to keep the conversation on this topic going without making Garrett shut down completely. It was evident from his tone and posture that the topic made him very uncomfortable. He certainly didn't seem to mind the silence, as he watched his water start to come to a boil.

"Ten years is a long time," she started again hesitantly. "Did you kill someone?" It seemed the most logical crime to go to such extreme lengths for.

"No one worth such a fate," he said, laughing. "If you were to tally up the men I have slain over the years, you would find that I was due rich rewards, not a lengthy sentence in service to the orders."

"Then what did you do," Evelyn asked, perhaps too eagerly.

She was met with only an icy look, as Garrett stared into her eyes across the fire before turning away again to steep hi tea in a large ceramic mug. Once that was done, he held it in both hands and turned to face her once more.

"I seduced the wrong woman," he said solemnly, "and helped her to break her oath."

"Shouldn't they punish her for that then," Evelyn asked, confused.

"She received a far more severe punishment than I," Garrett said sadly as he added a jigger or two from his flak to his mug.

"Ten years seems pretty harsh to me," she said, poking the fire halfheartedly.

"Oh, it was, I mean is." He said, pausing to take another long draught. "But truthfully, I don't expect that they expected me to survive even a year when put to such a task. In the ruins where The Arbiter judged me there where more than enough impossible tasks that I should have been killed in the attempt, but I found a loophole and fled north, to more civilized areas." Garrett smiled, "I guess he didn't know how clever the folk of the roads can be."

"What happened to her, to the woman you seduced?" Evelyn knew instantly when she asked the question that she had gone too far.

Garrett finished his drink, and got to his feet. "Come on then, we'll be getting an early start tomorrow. He walked toward the wagon without waiting for her to follow suit. We she caught up, he was already climbing into bed. When she balked, his only response was that she could sleep outside if she preferred. Given how low the temperatures were falling at night, that wasn't an option, but at the same time, part of her screamed that sharing a bed with a man wasn't either. Evelyn quickly squashed this part of her mind as she climbed into the bed on the other side and pulled the musty blanket up to her chin.

She had shared a bed with her younger sister for most of her life. This was no different she argued with herself, but she did not relax completely until she heard the sounds of Garrett snoring softly next to her. After all, this was the bed she had cum on earlier that day, how could she not doubt his intentions? Only when she had quieted those last doubts did she finally stop worrying and fall asleep herself.

When she woke again in the middle of the night, it was that same part of her mind that let her know that it had told her so. As the darkness outside had gotten colder, their unconscious bodies had pulled inexorably together for warmth. It was only natural, it had happened with her sister several times a week, but her sister didn't grope her breasts as Garret was right now. At some point in the evening they had begun to spoon and he had reached around in his sleep to pull her closer. As a result, she could feel her hardening nipple pressing into his firm grip, and worse, his stiff cock pressing into her ass from behind. They were both still fully clothed, so nothing could happen, but even the threat of ravishment was making her moist.

For the second time today, she almost gave in to lust. It seemed so natural and right in the moment, but step by step she walked herself back from that mental abyss, and delicately removed his had so she could roll away and avoid any awkward questions. The explanations were flimsy things: he wouldn't want to fuck her, the geas wouldn't let him fuck her, she shouldn't give herself to a man she had just met, and so on. The explanations continued inch by inch, back toward sanity until she got to the most important one of all - she wanted to join the sisterhood to learn magic, and chastity was the price of entry. She found it difficult to return to sleep after that argument. As Evelyn lay there in the dark, she knew that sleep would find her much faster if she could cum once or twice, but she couldn't take the risk of waking Garrett. She would die of embarrassment. Reluctantly she waited out her urges and returned to untroubled sleep.

In the morning they set off again, and Evelyn joined Garrett once more on the boxseat. Garrett said nothing, and she doubted that he had any recollection of the events of last night. They rode mostly in silence, and made good time to Eachum. It was the nearest town to the small village of Briar where she had grown up, and was important to her for two reasons. The first was the farthest she had ever been, when her parents had brought her to the county fair last season, and the second were the memories of Colton. They warmed her more than the robe she was wearing, and when they passed by the village square where they shared their first kiss, Evelyn squeezed her thighs together involuntarily. Leaving her dream lover behind was undoubtedly the worst part of this choice, but it's not like she ever would have been able to marry him anyway. His parents never would have allowed it.

She brooded on choices made and roads not traveled until they pulled to a stop at a farm on the north side of town. It was so similar to the home that she had left behind, that if it had been a little more run down, she would not be able to tell the difference. Garrett asked her to wait where he was while he went to talk to the parents. Evelyn was struck with deja vu repeatedly as she watched the proceedings. A father interested in hearing his pitch. A mother in tears. A confused 19 year old girl escorted into the back of a wagon. It was like she was watching yesterday repeat itself. Evelyn wished she could watch the rest, and see how similarly it played out, but she did not think Garrett would invite her in. Instead she sat their twiddling her thumbs and humming to herself as she wondered just how many times Garrett had gone through this same exercise.

Evelyn sighed in resignation, wondering if she should just take a nap to pass the time when she first heard the muffled voices whispering nearby. A quick look around confirmed that she was still alone, so she put her ear the wagon's wall. That did nothing to improve the clarity, but it definitely sounded like a man and a woman. Evelyn sat there, puzzled at where it could it be coming from? After another minute or two of listening, she decided that the noise was coming from underneath her. Evelyn rose, and warily opened the bench. The last thing she wanted was to get caught snooping after all, but as soon as the bench's lid was open, the sound got louder. She was definitely on the right track.

"...results were positive..." she heard Garret say, as she did more digging. At first she thought that perhaps a crack in the wall was letting noise through, but when she found that the sound was coming from a leather case, that was soon proven incorrect.

"So that's a good thing, right?" she heard the farm girl say hopefully, when Evelyn opened the case. Inside was a just a mirror. Not only was it the source of the voices she had been hearing, but it was also a window to the events going on inside the wagon. Evelyn's first instinct was to look at the back of the mirror, but it was just a silver frame. She had no idea how it was working, but as she looked again, she could see that it seemed to show her everything that the mirror inside the wagon could see. Garret sat on one side of the table, and it was strewn with gemstones just as it was in her test. His latest candidate on the other hand, was practically naked, and her hair looked frightful; she had gotten into the second test even more than Evelyn did.

Evelyn smiled wickedly and gripped the frame a little tighter. Somehow that made her feel better about how much she had enjoyed it. "Well," Garett said as Evelyn looked on with interest, "you want the first half of the test to be positive. You show real promise, the second half though..." he trailed off purposefully.

"I told you I was a virgin though," his prospective candidate said crossing her arms defensively over her naked tits. Evelyn couldn't see the face of the girl, but even see didn't believe that the speaker was telling the truth.

"Amandra," Garett said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the table, "we both know that isn't the whole truth, now don't we."

"But it was only the once with Thom," Amandra started before blanching under Garett's gaze, "Well, maybe two or three times, but he never finished inside me, I swear. He pulled out and sprayed his seed all over my tits." She hefted them slightly, "Can you blame him?"

Trying to seduce your way out of this already, Evelyn thought to herself that almost certainly meant that Thom wasn't the only one she had had a chance to practice her charms on. Until last night, she would have guessed that such an act might work on Garrett, but with the geas in place, there was no chance...

"I hate to tell you miss," Garett said, sounding almost like he meant it, "but there is no way you can join the order. The rules are very clear."

"What," Amandra blurted out. She sounded like she wasn't told no very often.

"Purity of mind and body are required to join..." Garett started, spreading his hands as if there was nothing he could do...

"But what will I tell my parents," Amandra said, the panic starting to show. "They don't know. They think I'm a good girl."

"Well, there's no rules about purity concerning me," Garett offered up helpfully, leaning a little closer, "I could always give them another reason. There's no need for me to tell them the whole truth..." The way he let those last words hang, so that she could tell him that he would do anything for him to make this right made Evelyn wonder. The tone of his voice and the lust in his eyes certainly made it seem like he was about to have his way with her. But he couldn't could he?

Amandra seemed to get the message too, as she lowered as she made her body language more inviting by lowering her hands to the bed, and spreading he legs slightly. "Just don't cum inside me, she said in a bargaining tone. It's not a good time of the month for me."

Garett didn't need to hear anything else. He got up, walked toward her, and kissed Amandra deeply. For her part, she melted into him without hesitation. Evelyn was envious. She had felt that same urge yesterday, only it had gone unrequited. For a moment they held tightly, both locked in the power of that kiss, and then, as the moment passed, both of their hands got to work. Amandra set to work blindly on the lacing of his pants with the practice that, more than anything that spoke to the number of partners she had been with up to now. Garrett likewise made short work of her dress and was soon pushing a naked woman back onto his bed with practiced skill.

Evelyn started to squirm as she watched. The moans that Amandra was making now that Garrett had switched from kissing her to sucking on the dark haired girl's pillowy breasts were resonating deep inside of her. He was between her thighs, but only so that he could position himself. This was about him and his dick, not about her.

"Remember, you have to pull out before... ohhh god" Amandra began to caution before Garrett pushed inside her in a single slow thrust.