Zar Ch. 03: Brothel and Temple

Zar gives the amulet to Jien, and gains the breastplate of Veshla - and a salve.

*

Zar awoke from a dream, a recurring dream in which she was massaging her breasts, not with the witch's gel but with the bull-prince's essence, the smell of it intoxicating, her breasts continuing to grow even beyond their unwelcome enlargement. As usual, she woke intensely aroused, her swollen, sensitive nipples pressing against her leather tunic - a new one made to fit her new curvy shape - and that other constant need denied by her moonsilver belt.

But there was only one way to get the relief she craved, and that needed more privacy than offered by a milk cart. Zar sat up, surprised by how long she'd slept. Thanking the farmer's wife, who had not demanded payment for this favour, Zar gathered her stuff and hopped off the cart, eager to see the great city.

Raised in the Convent, she knew nothing of cities and temples, and indeed little of gods beyond fireside tales. Saruz was a huge city, a port that served both river and ocean. Thousands of boats graced the water, some carrying passengers, most ferrying goods. The language at least had been taught to her by Sister Alvesi, though many of the words flung past her ears by locals were unfamiliar.

Their clothing too was strange to her, far lighter and more revealing than the Convent's thick habits, and far more sophisticated than her leather and wyrm-wing. The women looked pampered, cleaned and oiled, and trailed exotic perfumes. If anything, the men even more so, although with some concessions to utility. Here and there, mixed in with the parade of exuberance, were more sombre expressions, often worn by men in military uniforms. The Black Queen's influence felt even this far south.

And there - a woman in the dull cream habit of the Sisterhood. Zar hastened after her, almost losing her in the crowd. Catching up with her amidst the chaos of the marketplace, Zar said, "Sister, your help, please?"

The woman, strangely young for a Sister, tried to pull away, her expression fearful. "Please, Sister," Zar insisted. "I am a stranger here and have travelled far. I was not told there is a Convent here, and would be glad of direction."

The young woman relaxed a little and took a moment to examine Zar's clothing. "You are indeed a stranger here," she said with a barely suppressed laugh. "Do you have money, by chance?"

"A few coins, no more," Zar confessed, showing her.

"Are you a fighter, at least? Can you use that sword?"

"I have some skill with it." Zar frowned, frustrated. "Will you guide me or not?"

"I'm sorry, Stranger. There is no Convent here, nor anywhere to stay that will accept your coin, but -" She held up her hand to ask for patience. "I am in need of a guard, and in recompense I can provide a room. Not one, perhaps, that you will thank me for, but you will at least have a roof over your head."

"You are not of the Sisterhood," Zar accused.

The woman laughed. "Nor you, by the look of you. Come, do we have an agreement?"

A roof over her head was at least a start. Zar nodded and held out her hand. "I am Zar."

"Gaela," she said, returning the handshake. "Now stay close and keep watch."

Zar followed Gaela through the market to a dingy establishment where men were drinking and playing cards, money changing hands. A gambling house, she realised.

"Habor!" Gaela yelled, gaining the attention of the whole room. "You owe me!"

Nobody moved, but Gaela stood firm, hands on hips, the picture of implacable wrath. A man, well dressed and rotund, appeared from a side room. "Gaela. I have no business with you."

"Your son does, Habor, and he owes me a hundred crowns for what he did to Jien - or do I have to go to the magistrate."

"Don't be absurd. Your girls are lucky to make a crown a night. Take it." He tossed a silver coin through the air with an easy negligence.

Gaela ignored it. "I'm talking *my* profits. Jien was making me a crown a week. With the scars your boy left, she won't make a tenth of that. That's lost earnings, Habor. I want one hundred crowns. Now."

Habor glowered at her darkly. "Well, since you put it that way..." He took a bag from a drawer and threw it at Gaela's feet. "Business is business, after all." His smile did not match the ice in his eyes.

Gaela picked up the bag, weighing it in her hand. "You're an honorable man, Habor." She spun on her heels and marched out, swearing under her breath.

Zar followed closely. "You run a brothel?"

"Questions later, Stranger."

Her nervousness was infectious, and Zar kept watch for signs of threat, but she wasn't used to crowds. She didn't see the danger until it was on them. Three men with knives, two she recognised from the gambling house. The road was narrow and relatively quiet. There was no time to draw her sword, but Baruk had trained her well and she reacted quickly, surprising the assailants.

Or two, at least, tripping one and grappling with another. They had strength but lacked skill, had weapons but lacked armour. Zar had wyrm-wing boots and leather, but still received a nasty cut along her bare arm before she succeeded in disarming them. Gaela had made swift work of the third man, who lay sprawled on the road clutching his belly with blood-soaked hands.

"Leave them," Gaela said, scowling at the men who kept their distance. She wiped her narrow-bladed knife clean and slipped it into her sleeve; then hurried on, Zar following.

The brothel was an old house that had seen better days. There was a salon where men could relax and drink while waiting for their choice of woman, all overseen by a pair of brutes who deferred to Gaela, and a dozen brightly furnished bedrooms that seemed luxurious to Zar, where the women slept and worked.

Gaela led Zar into one of the rooms. A young woman lay on the bed, half her face bandaged, the other badly bruised. "My poor Jien," Gaela said, sitting next to her and emptying the bag of silver crowns. "It's not much, my dear, but it's something. Now listen, Jien, you'll be sharing this room with Zar here, all right?"

Jien nodded, looking curiously at Zar through her good eye. Zar regarded her back, wondering what exactly she'd got herself into.

Gaela picked up a box full of medicines and bandages. "Now, come here, Stranger. Let's see to that arm..."

*

"You don't mind sharing with me," Jien asked when they were alone.

Zar had washed herself thoroughly in the communal bathroom, warm water being a treat for someone who had spent months travelling, and now she lay beside Jien in a borrowed bathrobe. "In the Convent, I often shared a bed half this size."

"A convent! What must you think of me?"

Zar laughed. "It's true the Sisters would not approve, but I am not the innocent girl I was. Indeed, there's a part of me that envies you this life."

This time it was Jien who laughed, though the pain of it echoed in her expression. "Then you are a fool. No woman would choose this life."

"No woman would choose to wear a chastity belt, and yet..." Zar parted her robe, and Jien's eye widened in astonishment. "For months I have been denied even the touch of my own fingers."

Jien's fingers traced the moonsilver wonderingly. "I almost envy you," she murmured.

Zar tried not to show how much the subtle touch excited her. Despite her words, the Convent's strict morality had shaped her youth, and to be in bed with a prostitute was deep in forbidden territory. "The belt itself I have learned to live with, but there are days" - Zar took a hesitant breath - "that I just want to fuck." Saying the word made her blush. "And finding someone to fuck me the way I need... isn't easy."

"Ahh, I understand." Jien's fingers searched deeper between Zar's parted thighs until they teased that rear entrance. "I've had a few men who like it this way. I prefer it the other, myself, but if you'd like?" She pressed against the tight ring of muscle, her finger beginning to penetrate.

Zar squirmed away with a moan that was both lust and denial. Jien's curiosity was seductive and having an undeniable effect. "I've never done it with a woman."

"Do you want to?" When Zar hesitated, Jien withdrew, her expression one of hurt. "It's me, isn't it? This face."

"No," Zar insisted, "there's nothing wrong with your face. It's that I know nothing about you - that and the last woman who seduced me was an evil witch."

Jien chuckled. "Lots of women are evil witches." She looked intently at Zar. "I didn't choose this life, but it is mine. It's often an ugly business, but there is pleasure in being desired. And until that bastard -" Her voice caught, fury blazing from her eye for a long moment. "I was the prettiest girl here. Now all they'll see is the scars."

The anger faded, leaving an air of mischief. "So, you find me seductive? Not wholly unattractive?" Jien parted her own robe to reveal a lilac nightdress, the sheer satin doing nothing to conceal the voluptuous curves within.

Zar could resist no longer. She closed the distance between them, her lips finding Jien's in a passionate kiss entirely unlike any other. With one hand she caressed a soft breast, teasing the hard nipple through the silky fabric, while Jien's sharp-nailed fingers dug into the flesh of her behind, pulling the two women closer together still.

"Is there truly no way to remove it?" Jien asked.

"There is a key, but it is far from here." Zar lifted Jien to free her of her robe and dress, leaving her beauty fully exposed. She had of course seen women naked before, but never in such an overtly sexual pose, nor with the freedom to explore it.

Jien sighed as Zar's lips descended on her breasts, tasting and kissing, sucking on sweetly engorged nipples while fingertips explored below, caressing Jien's smooth, sensitive inner thighs and dipping into her wet centre. "It's too long since I did this," Jien said, sighing. "Use your mouth, Zar. Make me come." And she guided Zar's head down between her thighs.

Zar, who had never conceived of such a possibility, was momentarily confused, but also more than curious. She could see Jien's most intimate and private place in greater detail now than she had ever seen her own, even before it was sealed away from view. And not just see it. The raw aroma was intoxicating and there was pleasure merely in breathing it in.

There was something so fundamentally wrong in the idea of putting her mouth there, but between Jien's urging and her own fascination, she yielded, kissing the lips and running her tongue between them, for which she was rewarded with a loud, lustful sigh. With greater certainty now, she continued her exploration, remembering how she had once liked to use her fingers on herself, concentrating her attention on that sweet, sensitive spot as Jien writhed like a captive serpent.

Jien was often so wet that Zar was almost drinking from her. The intimacy and connection of the act made it unlike anything Zar had ever experienced. For the first time in her life she was utterly focused on someone else's pleasure - and when Jien cried out, convulsing in ecstasy, there was the satisfaction of victory for both.

"Goddess bless you, Zar," Jien said after, between kisses. "I needed that. I only wish I could return the favour."

*

"In Saruz," the seer had said, "from the Temple to Veshla, take the Breastplate forged by Derushil for the Goddess." At the time of the prophesy, Saruz had seemed far away, and indeed the journey to Tanarwel and thence to Saruz had been long. Already the first leaves were turning to gold.

Finding the Temple was the easy bit, given Jien's directions to it from the brothel. Even finding the breastplate was easy, given that the statue to Veshla, dressed for war, overlooked the interior. Zar's misgivings that the breastplate, assuming she could get it, would fit her enlarged breasts were put to rest. Like many goddesses, Veshla was well endowed, reflective of her fertility and maternal nurturing.

No, the fit would not be a problem, though how effective it would be as armour was unclear. It looked to be made of thousands of tiny silver scales, undeniably expert craftsmanship but surely too delicate to survive harsh use. Then again, the seer had said it was made by Derushil, the mythical smith, so perhaps its secret was in its enchantments.

The problem was getting it. The Temple was busy, well guarded and clearly a place of great wealth. No way would they simply give it to her, and Zar was not a trained thief.

Unable to solve the conundrum by herself, Zar confided in Jien, and, at the latter's urging, with Gaela too. "To steal from Veshla is unwise," Jien said.

"And you would have to leave the city immediately," Gaela added. "Hmm. Glador is one of the night guards, and could be persuaded for a price to allow you within." She seemed unhappy with the idea.

Jien chuckled. "I think it's a price our Zar will be happy to pay."

Gaela gave Zar a surprised look. "What would the Sisters say..."

That evening, the bandages came off. The bruises and swelling had mostly faded during Zar's stay at the brothel, but the twin scars looked ugly. One disfigured the eye, blinding it. Jien studied herself in the mirror, her expression devoid of hope.

"I have a gift for you," Zar said. "It is a dangerous gift, one that I hesitate to give, but I think you deserve to be the one who makes that choice."

Jien looked up at her with a dull curiosity. "A gift?"

Zar circled her neck with a silver necklace, on which hung the amulet of Minarwe. "Tell me what you see."

The change was not immediate, but it was profound. The erasure of the scars, the apparent fixing of the damaged eye, the subtle lessening of signs of age and worry. It was Jien as she probably looked before she fell into a life of prostitution. Jien gasped, touching her hands to her face to test the evidence of her eyes.

"It's an illusion," Zar explained, "and more powerful than you realise." To Zar's eyes, the amulet was a fading green star, and she struggled to remember what Jien looked like beneath the enchantment. "Beautiful... I mean, you were beautiful before, but not like this."

Jien was crying. "Thank you, Zar," she whispered. "I think I understand - but I need this. Thank you, my sweet love."

Gaela, who had been there watching the whole time, shook her head. "I know that there is magic at work," she said slowly, "that something really important just happened, but..." She gave a confused shrug. "Anyway, it's time for you to go, Stranger. Jien's wasted enough time, and you have a date with Glador."

Laughing, Jien embraced Zar and kissed her. "I'll miss you," she said.

"And I you," Zar echoed.

*

The Temple's main doors were closed, two guards outside. A third guard roamed within - or should have. Instead he cracked open a side door to admit Zar, who had left her gear concealed a short distance away. She still couldn't quite believe she had agreed to this. Sex with a complete stranger, as if she were a prostitute. It was so wrong, but for all her nervousness she was excited too. Days of making love to Jien had driven her to a fever pitch.

Glador was tall and well built, reddish beard and moustache trimmed short enough that the ragged battle scar could be seen. His armour was plate bronze, and he stank of sweat, leather and smoke. The contrast to Jien could not have been more stark. He was undeniably a man, and right then it was a man she craved. "You're different from the others," he said as he led her through the Temple.

"I am," she agreed, stripping out of her tunic and exposing her breasts.

Glador eyed them lustfully, but led her on, all the way to the altar before the statue of the Goddess. "Here," he said, removing his trousers as quickly as the armour allowed. "We do it here."

Zar wondered what the Goddess would think of them fucking on her altar, but shrugged and eased out of her skirt. Gaela had given her a small pot of gel. "A salve to protect," she'd explained, "and to ease the passage." Given her previous experience with protective gel, Zar had been wary, but seeing Glador's cock standing at attention, she was glad she'd used it. It was a good size. Not so long as the golden cock that had taken her virgin rear, but longer than Baruk's, and thicker too.

The rough skin of his hands scratched her breasts, but she melted under the assault, the rush of sensation answering her immediate need. His mouth on her nipples was brutal, sucking and biting, and she had to force him away. "Too much," she gasped.

Glador twisted her around and bent her over the altar, the head of his cock quickly finding its way between her cheeks. There was no subtlety about it. No seduction or romance. She wanted none. She cried out as the pressure increased, forcing her open, stretching her like never before. Her cry echoed in the quiet space between the marble walls.

And then he was in, thrusting deeper, the friction sending shivers of excitement through her.

"So, you would steal what is mine?" a woman's voice said. Zar looked round in a panic, but there was only the Goddess - and Glador, who continued his assault on her ass, oblivious to the awakening of Veshla. "What gives you the right?"

Zar tried to push Glador away, but his strength was beyond her, and his cock rammed into her unrelenting. Caught between fear of the Goddess and helpless enjoyment of that vigorous use, Zar struggled to think coherently. "The Seer," she gasped. "She told me -"

"I know what the Seer saw. I showed it to her. But you could have asked me for the armour. Offered something in exchange. An amulet, perhaps. Instead you sneak in like a thief and a whore..."

Glador was getting close. Despite the terrifying distraction, Zar was close too. "Forgive me, Goddess," she pleaded.

"No. You shall get what you came for - but you shall forever be marked as a whore." And the Goddess's hand smacked sharply against the left cheek of Zar's ass.

Glador roared with victory, his cock erupting within Zar, and she echoed that cry of pleasure, feeling every potent kick of the thick cock and the answering convulsions of her own flesh. But there was more too, a tickling of her skin, a tightening about her waist, a firming of her breasts.

Tugging himself free of her, Glador whistled happily as he dressed again. Zar felt the absence of him acutely, could feel his essence running down her legs, but the transformation of her skin commanded her attention. From her neck to her waist, she was becoming silver, thousands of tiny scales. The living armour obscured her navel and nipples, and exaggerated her curves, constricting her waist, and lifting her breasts.

It was beautiful, and didn't restrict her range of motion, but it also felt obscenely sexual. A glance up at the statue confirmed that the Goddess was now bare-breasted, but Glador seemed unaware of the change. "Get dressed, woman," he said cheerfully. "Unless you fancy going again?"

Zar shook her head and dressed hurriedly, her tunic now absurdly tight about her armoured breasts, and loose about her narrowed waist. Feeling embarrassed by the whole event, and more than a little ridiculous, she followed Glador to the door, and departed into the night.