Zar Ch. 05: The Silver Cock

Zar journeys north from Denkhar to the Black Queen's castle.

*

Zar bid farewell to the White Queen of Lliria on the shore of Denkhar, and watched for a while as the ship set sail, but time was not a luxury she could afford. Already autumn was giving way to winter, and the road north would only get colder. Still, Zar was glad of the days she had spent with the warrior women, in part for the chance to train and learn new fighting skills, but also for the chance to recover from her ordeal in the underworld.

That and gradually coming to terms with her body's craving for pleasures that her spirit sought to deny. She had been raised by the Sisterhood to believe in the sanctity of the flesh, and even though she had not been strictly obedient to this tenet, she had retained her virginity into adulthood. Indeed, the most sacred part of herself had never been touched by another, and the moonsilver chastity belt that she had worn since leaving the Convent had protected it well.

But if in that one respect she was a maid and pure, in others she had proved herself a whore and corrupt. The Goddess Veshla had even branded her as such.

Ultimately, for her quest, it mattered not. "Only a warrior pure and chaste," the old seer had said, and Sister Palwe had perked up immediately.

The Sisterhood was not wealthy and its treasures were few, but amongst its dusty collection of artefacts was a simple wooden box embossed with the symbols for purity and chastity. Within was an intimate garment spun from seemingly delicate moonsilver. "Once worn," Sister Palwe had warned, "neither blade nor prayer will remove it." And indeed it had protected Zar's maidenhood very well indeed, just as Veshla's silver breastplate now guarded her chest (from pleasure as much as injury), but whether Zar was a warrior sufficiently pure and chaste to stand against the Black Queen... well, only time would tell.

With one last wave to Llirian queen, Zar turned her back to the sea, and set her aim for the Black Queen's castle.

*

In northern Paraldiar, the Black Queen's men were everywhere, some foraying across the mountains into Denkhar to raid villages and steal livestock. The Denkhari, grown wary of all strangers, viewed Zar with a suspicion that bordered on hostility, forcing her to zig and zag her way north, crossing and re-crossing the mountains while evading patrols both east and west. In this, the Eye of K'Dunhe aided her, for she journeyed mostly at night, and the rocky terrain was vivid even in the dark.

In time the mountains gave way to a vast plain that had been stripped bare of the forest that existed now only as wounded stumps and weeds, threaded with glints of ice, and crossed by a great road that ran with unnatural straightness from the pass at the Paraldian border to the distant city of Benatek and the Black Queen's castle. Zar studied the ruined landscape and watched the road, busy with swift messengers on horseback, and with wagons laden no doubt with loot for the Queen and supplies in both directions.

Her eye was drawn, however, to a lone tree at the base of the pass, still standing tall but stripped of its branches. Pinned to the twisted trunk of that once mighty tree was the figure of a man. Alive or dead, Zar was unsure, but she crept close in the dead of night, watching for the guards that patrolled the border. The road was near too, with many camped there for the night, awaiting the dawn before attempting the pass through the mountains.

Alive, she realised, discerning the aura of the man as she approached. There was something familiar about him too. "Tendaran?"

The Paraldian prince lifted his head wearily. "Have you not tormented me enough?"

Zar laughed. "If breaking your chains was a torment, then perhaps. It seems you enjoy it."

She sensed his confusion, and his slow recognition. "Zar?"

"I could set you free, but you'll probably live longer if I don't."

"I'll take my chances with you."

The chains were steel, and no ordinary weapon could have done more than scratch them, but the Dawn Blade was no ordinary weapon. As before in the witch's house, it cut through the hard metal with ease - but not without a clamour that echoed loud in the night. Twice the ring of steel on steel cried out, waking the distant sleepers and calling the attention of patrolling guards. As Zar severed a third chain, then a fourth, she spied torches converging on her position, although still at a distance. There was time still for the final chain that wrapped securely about the prince's waist.

"Get ready," she warned, a swung a fifth time, and cried out helplessly as an unseen assailant punched her in the chest, sending her tumbling backwards. She sat, momentarily stunned, searching the dark for some hint of her attacker.

"Zar!" Tendaran shouted. "Move! It's the Queen's bow!"

Oehr's Bow, Zar thought to herself. Not that it made a difference. She rolled quickly away, even as a second arrow whispered through the air, narrowly missing her. Their flight was swift, and despite the almost impenetrable dark the Queen's aim was good, but the castle was far away. "Need to keep moving," she muttered, and with a final swing of the Dawn Blade she severed the last chain.

She caught Tendaran as he fell, too weak to stand, let alone run. Fortunately, he was a slender young man trained for courtly matters, not a muscular warrior weighed down with armour. Zar hoisted him over her shoulder and ran, keeping the lone tree between them and the castle.

She found cover just in time, even if it was no more than the shallow gully of a stream bed. The converging guards were too blinded by their own torches, and too deafened by their calling to one another, and perhaps just too unbelieving that the prisoner might be escaping towards them, to notice Zar slip past.

Keeping low to evade the Queen's sharp sight, Zar carried Tendaran as she circled the encampment, and found a resting place far from the searchers. "We will be safe here, I think." She gave him food and water, made sure he was as warm as possible, and stood watch as the searchers fanned out and diminished eventually into the distance.

*

Dawn was still far off when the guards changed shift in the encampment and the wagon drivers stirred, emerging to care for their horses and prepare for the hard climb up the pass - or for the final journey to Benatek and the Black Queen's castle - and perhaps it was their calls to one another that awoke the troubled prince.

Tendaran had slept fitfully, and it had not escaped Zar's notice that his hand drifted repeatedly to his crotch. Several times, while still apparently asleep, he had attempted to pleasure himself, only to be frustrated by his trousers and the blanket she had covered him with. Abruptly awake, he swept away the blanket and thrust his trousers down, and seemed entirely oblivious to Zar watching him as he worked his hard shaft with frantic determination.

So lost he was in almost helpless self-pleasure, he nearly spilled over himself - but at the last moment he rolled onto his side, and he lay there gasping as his cum spurted onto the moss-covered rocks. "I'm sorry," he whispered once he had calmed. "I needed - You've no idea -"

Zar changed the subject to spare him. "Five wagons descended the pass yesterday," she said. "Three as a group, and it looks like they've joined up with one of the others. But one wagon, the two drivers are keeping themselves away from all the rest."

"It is pointless to try for the pass," Tendaran said, with a despairing sigh. "The Queen's guards watch too closely. There are paths to the west and the sea, perhaps, but I do not know them."

"There are such paths," Zar agreed, "but I go north from here."

"To Benatek? Then you did not come to rescue me?"

Zar laughed. "No, though it does seem our paths are destined to cross. My aim is for the Black Queen herself."

"Then you are a fool." Tendaran fixed his clothing, and shuffled round to join Zar in her observation of the camp. "The Queen has a silver cock," he said. "To see it is to desire it. To surrender to it... is to crave it forever. Her generals would all sooner kill a man than admit any affection for one, and yet they would gladly slaughter whole villages for the prize of serving the Queen's silver cock. They kneel before her and pay homage with their mouths, and pray that she will use them further."

"And would you?"

"I don't know. In truth, I have a yearning to see it again, for it is strangely beautiful, but the thought of being a slave to it terrifies me. Huh." He pointed suddenly at the same wagon that had held Zar's interest. "I know them. From my father's personal guard."

"Then either they are spies, perhaps come to seek you, or they are traitors to Paraldiar."

"The former, then, for they are not the latter."

"Then we shall meet them on the way. Can you walk?"

"I think so... but what about you? You were struck by the Queen's arrow!" Tendaran pressed his hand against her chest, as if expecting to find a fatal wound, but found only the tear in her leather tunic where the arrow had struck. The silver scales beneath were undamaged. "What kind of armour is that?" he asked, his voice awed.

"The Breastplate of Veshla," Zar said, "and this is the first time I'm actually glad of it."

*

The two Paraldian guardsmen seemed both relieved and alarmed at the sight of Zar and Tendaran on the road ahead of them. "Quick," one said. "Get in the back."

Zar and the prince caught hold of the still moving wagon and pulled themselves into the back. It was a covered wagon, and full of silks and sweets and treasures, with little space for two extra travellers. "Stay down and out of sight," the guard instructed. "We'll talk when we get there."

Though Zar was reluctant to trust her safety to another, she was also weary from the constant danger, and the warmth and motion of the wagon lulled her to sleep, her back to the exhausted and already sleeping prince. Once again, though, his sleep was troubled, and she was soon aware of him pressing urgently against her, the hardness of his cock unmistakable even through her skirt and his trousers. She wondered if he was dreaming of the Queen's silver cock, the same way she so often dreamed of the matching gold cock and her near surrender to it in the Crypt of Dar-Gratt.

"Put it in me," she said quietly, caressing the prince's cock through the confining material. Whether he had been awake or not before, he heard her, and was soon pressing between her cheeks. Zar guided him to her rear entry, and sighed with pleasure as he thrust into her ass. It had been weeks since she'd last had a cock to answer her perpetual hunger to be filled, and the prince's obvious need for her was satisfying in its own way.

She wasn't aroused enough to climax herself, not even by the sensation of his cock pulsing within her, spurting its royal seed into her, but she was glad to feel him still hard and buried inside her as they both drifted off to sleep again.

*

The two Paraldian guards were Arren and Eedsan. Despite posing as wagoneers, they carried themselves with the grace of trained warriors, and Zar wouldn't have liked to face them in combat. They'd brought the wagon to a halt just outside the city gate, at a place used by many for feeding and housing horses. While Arren took care of the animals, Eedsan climbed into the wagon to interrogate Zar.

She told the story of her quest, of her journey from the Convent across the desert to Saruz, and then north through Denkhar. The details, by and large, she skipped over, and her rescue of the prince from the witch was less than honest, but Tendaran did not contradict her. "It is purely by chance that I came in time to save him again - and it is nothing short of a miracle that we evaded the Queen's guards."

How much of her tale he believed, she couldn't tell, but he seemed wary rather than distrustful. "The Black Queen is too strong," he said eventually. "Paraldiar will fall soon. We were sent with gifts to buy time, but also to determine the fate of Prince Tendaran. The King will be glad he lives - he was sent as a tribute, not as a sacrifice - but it will not be easy to smuggle him past the Queen's guards."

"What if," Zar said. "What if I can end the Black Queen's reign? Will you help me? If I succeed, then Paraldiar and Prince Tendaran will be safe. If I fail..." She shrugged.

"Getting into the castle is easy," Tendaran said. "Facing the Queen will be anything but."

And indeed, getting into the castle was easy. They entered in chains. "Here is the fugitive," Arren said to the Queen's guards at the gate. "And here is the foolish girl who dared to free him. We bring them to the Queen as gifts."

"She will be glad to receive them," the guard said glumly. "More than one head has found a new home today." He pointed up at the battlement where a number of bloody, severed heads adorned spikes.

They were led through a maze of halls and narrow stairways, behind a string of servants who carried the silks and other gifts from the wagon. There were guards everywhere, well armed and attentive. Fighting her way in to see the Queen would not have been possible. In chains, she endured only leers and lecherous hands and lewd suggestions, as if she were a common whore and not a skilled warrior. She pretended to ignore them, but couldn't deny to herself how perversely it aroused her. The Goddess Veshla had branded her as a whore, and there was a part of her that was excited by the guards' vulgarity.

The throne-room was high in the castle with windows overlooking the city and the plain beyond in all directions. The ceiling was polished gold, the floor a grand mosaic of precious stones, and the walls adorned with art and weaponry. In the middle of the room, on an ornate throne of wood and silk was the Black Queen.

Like her sister in faraway Lliria, Hanwe wore a robe of white. Her hair was blonde and braided, and her human eye was blue, but the other was pitch black. Oehr's Bow stood ready by the Queen, a quiver of arrows beside it, but what commanded Zar's attention, almost at the expense of all other thought, was Ulaxr's moonsilver cock.

The eye, the bow and the cock were all overlaid with auras of phenomenal power, and Zar was reminded again of her encounter in the crypt. Coupled with the natural strength of a Llirian warrior, and a profound natural beauty too, the impact of all that divine magic made Zar tremble in awe.

And yet, there was weakness in it too. The guards stared longingly at their Queen, their attention not on the two prisoners, and the Queen herself was clearly used to being in complete control of those around her.

"You thought to escape me," she said, her expression icy, her fury focused on Tendaran.

"I wished only to see you again," he said, visibly trembling.

"I know what you wished to see. Perhaps I should let you taste it, then deny you its touch evermore. Let you watch as others enjoy its blessing, knowing that you never will again? Is that what you wish?"

Zar used the distraction to work her hands free of the cuffs that bound them - they had been applied loosely on purpose - and pulled her sword from the sheath that Eedsan wore. That he and Arren had been allowed to keep their swords in the Queen's presence spoke of her arrogance - but the speed with which Hanwe reacted, sweeping up the bow with one hand and nocking an arrow with the other, was frightening.

Had she aimed at Zar's head, it might have ended for Zar there and then, but the arrow launched straight at Zar's chest - at her heart - even as the Dawn Blade swept round at the Queen's neck. As the arrow punched into Zar, Hanwe shielded herself with her bow, and the energies released in that destructive impact sent both Zar and the Black Queen sprawling backwards, away from each other.

The Queen screamed, blood streaming from a savage cut along her arm - from the broken bow string, not from Zar's sword. "Kill them!" she yelled at the guards. Stunned by the sudden attack and their Queen's failure, they had been slow to react, but they leapt into action, converging on Zar and Arren, while Eedsan and Tendaran snatched a pair of ceremonial blades from the wall.

The Queen's guards were skilled, but Zar's breastplate brushed off all attacks to her body and her sword cut easily through her opponents' armour. Arren held his own, but Eedsan fell protecting the prince, and then abruptly it was over - except it had only just begun. "Hold the door," Zar said. "Leave the Queen to me."

Hanwe was on her feet, and armed, her aura one of violet rage. "Who are you?" she hissed.

Zar circled her cautiously. The Queen's reflexes, the deceptiveness of her movements, were not to be underestimated, and she had had long enough to understand Zar's strengths. "I am the answer to a prophesy," Zar said. "Only a warrior pure and chaste may end the Black Queen's tyranny."

The Queen snorted dismissively. "Pure and chaste? I'd know you were a whore even if I hadn't seen the branding. I can smell it on you."

Zar tried to brush off the taunt, but the heat in her cheeks betrayed her. "It's true," she said. "I am a whore, but I am protected where it matters - and I will end your tyranny."

Laughing, the Queen whipped off her robe and flung it at Zar.

Zar stepped away quickly, but the robe momentarily blinded her to the Queen's whereabouts, and the fierce kick delivered by Hanwe's long leg to her wrist sent the Dawn Blade skidding across the mosaic floor. She backed away as the Queen leapt at her - but they crashed onto the floor together, Zar trapped beneath.

"You fight well," the Queen said, "and soon you will fight for me. You feel it, don't you?"

And Zar could. Ulaxr's moonsilver cock hard against her thigh, its magic like a battering ram demanding surrender - but Zar had resisted the gold cock, for a while, and she would resist the silver too. "I am pure and chaste," she growled through gritted teeth, "and I will defeat you." Though how, she didn't know. Across the room, Tendaran and Arren were holding the doors shut, but the battering and clamour from the other side did not bode well.

"You fool," Hanwe said. "My cock is divine. No belt of silver can protect you from me." To prove the point, she pressed her cock against the shield that had denied Zar for so long, even from herself, and that had once denied even Uxur's sungold cock. "You will be mine!" the Queen cried.

The door burst open, and Tendaran and Arren retreated swiftly as guards charged into the throne-room. Seeing their Queen in apparent control of the situation, they quietly and calmly surrounded and disarmed the two Paraldians.

Zar screamed as the belt tore and the Queen's cock drove into her virgin sex. The pain of it was excruciating - but it was being free finally to fuck unhindered, the knowledge that it was over for her, that there was nothing now to stop her embracing a life of whoredom and sexual pleasure, that truly astonished her. All that remained was for the magic to hammer her into submission.

And yet... Wonderful though the Queen's silver cock felt in her, as the pain of the intrusion faded, its magic seemed muted. Held back, somehow. Hanwe's brutal thrusting slowed as if she too sensed a wrongness to this coupling, and she eased out of Zar.

The watching guards shuffled nervously, whispering to one another, and Zar peered round to see the Queen staring dumbfounded at her silver cock - or rather at the moonsilver that wrapped about it, and below it, and about her hips. It was Zar's chastity belt, broken now from Zar but firmly in place about Hanwe. "What have you done!" she shrieked.

Zar took advantage of the Queen's horror to escape, and darted across to collect her sword. The guards ignored her, however. Their attention was entirely on the Queen, and not with adoration but with a seething hatred. Only their lingering fear of her held them back. Taking advantage of that hesitation, Hanwe ran to an alcove and disappeared through a secret door, and by the time the guards battered their way through it, she was long gone.