Seeds of Retribution (closed for PieTaster)

[TheQueenofCups]

Zora woke in her bed, unaware, briefly of where she was as a bright shock of sunlight carved through the small windows. It ran up her body and cut through her squinting eye. She turned her head, feeling half-blind.

“You slept for some time, my Queen.” Yana's eyes fluttered with relief at her waking. Her small form, as ever, stood in the corner of the room. “I was nervous for you.”

Zora blinked, centering herself, in what was now, letting go of the last remnants of the nightmare that followed the dream she'd had with Falke in the laboratory. Her mind and body seemed to cling to the memory of both. Falke...

She sipped from the goblet beside her, instead, of letting the thought draw back the desire. The goblet was regrettably filled with water.

Yana was so quiet. “Don't worry, please. As I told you before, our gods were killed with our men, but now they seem to call to me, even so. Because they are dead, they do not mind if I am tired. They find me and drag me from my sleep to listen to them. It must be quiet to hear them. And then I must sleep.”

“What do the gods say to you?”

“They say...” Zora rose up, wincing as she moved, a twinge running quickly though her quim, sharp, but then utterly gone. She reached for the goblet and brought it to her lips. Yana, with rapt attention on her lady's suffering, frowned, a worried knitting of her brows had become all too common lately. Zora smiled until the girl smiled, too. “They say not to worry so. They have seen our troubles. They have put in our heads a good dream. A plan. One where we are safe again. But we must be brave.”

Yana softened at her words and Zora ran her hands through her hair. She'd managed to clean herself off well enough last night, but her hair was exceptionally, unexplainably tangled.

“A bath?”
Yana shook her head, some of her perpetual concern already returning to her features. “They've stolen your bath water as you slept so long. I tried to tell them not to, but now the other servants have gone to help Jasna – she, well, she's no one, I suppose. A servant girl, but she started giving the signs at dawn and they think her babe, well, maybe she's having it now.”

A flutter of thoughts. “Well, then. How else am I to be made a fool today?”

Yana said nothing. Zora pointed to the laid out dress on the small stone-carved seat near the bed. Another Cizinec choice. Clearly, it pillaged or stolen from some sacked city, taken from an unknown woman's wardrobe. Strange how they seemed determined to make her wear them now. The skirt was brightly dyed in green, deeper than anything she had seen before, long enough for its hems to graze the floor. It was the same as last night, designed to bare its wearer's chest to the world, coils of braided leathers around her shoulders and down her belly where they laced one another to pull the garment tight before it spilled into the flowing skirt. She would have preferred to leave her chamber wrapped in bedsheets.

“If you do not like it...” Already Yana reached for it to take it away as was Zora's long habit, but she stopped the girl. “Yana.” This simple drop in tone seemed to imply far more than an opinion on a dress. Yana handed it over and began to help her with it.
They were halfway through the laces when noise outside the door, some conversation.

“Queen Zora!” The voice was sharp. Followed by another, soft, almost like a cooing bird. She slipped on the dress, quickly, shooing Yana off to disappear wherever she went when Foersa was in view.

The woman strode in just as Zora finished the last lace and looked up, aware now of the shadow that followed her. Not Yana. Foersa's daughter who was a few years older than her servant and twice as round.

She clicked her tongue and pulled a comb from her pocket. She, like the Queen, knew Gorun was soon to be home and so she was taking all the liberties she dared before his return.

Brooking no argument save an outright scream, Foersa gripped her wrist and drew her to the flat chair where the dress had been and began working her way through Zora's plaits, with a maternal ferocity.
“Why. Are. You. Here, Lady Foersa?”

“I had just been thinking since our last Feastday. You were young when our King found you here, my dear.
“So young.” Vera echoed, forlornly, as if she'd half-forgotten all of this was a ridiculous charade.
“And he wed you so quickly, before any of us might have given him good counsel, all this nonsense of visions and prophecy...”

This was the first time she'd ever heard a Cizinec openly question Gorun's plan – one wholly sprung out of the bizarre horror of killing her father and brother before her and falling to his knees piteously. He could love no other. Her children would rule this city again. Her first would be a warrior and ride alongside him. He would be so beautiful she would thank the Cizinec for conquering her people. He had looked into her eyes in that throne room so painfully full of sunlight and shed tears. Tears of madness, in the end, but in that moment...Zora did not know who or what she was looking at. She would be his wife...he had said, with his enormous arm shaking as it held out his blood-smeared blade...or she would be no man's wife, he would end her people forever if she refused him. He did not know her name. He did not know a thing about her, but whatever vision he saw, broke his bloodlust, if only for a moment.

Zora should have been brave enough to tell him no. She thought about it often. Though that would have meant the death of Yana and the few others who still lived. Would he have have run her through as quickly as Karel and Boian? Would he have used her there regardless, next to her dying family?

She did not tell him no. She stood stock-still in terror and hatred long enough so that he drew her up, slung her over his shoulder, and carried her back to the encampment his people had made to siege the city. His bloodlust briefly broken by the novelty of his newfound epiphany. And while no child came of his rutting, for a time, she did carry his madness. Madness to think he was anything but a murderous warlord. He had fawned over her as his beloved queen for one moon before the servants whispered he'd bedded one of his own kind. All of this, this name of Queen, was a convenient lie she would swallow to save her skin again and again.

And this, too, Foersa understood.

“I'm sure you know nothing about how to coax a man in bed. How to satisfy him. A man such as our king...”
“Satisfy.” It was Zora's turn to absently echo.
“Give him this.” Even unseen, Foersa's eyes felt particularly beady and small, perhaps glaring at the back of her neck as she slid a small clay and cork-capped tube over her shoulder and into her hand. The kind most women kept an oil or scent in. “When he returns with the warbands, put this on your warm places and he will want nothing more than you and your bed.”

She knew nothing of the Queen's rather extensive knowledge of nearby botany and herbalism. But this no great surprise. This was the trade of the women of the High Hill. Men destroy. Women control. Faintly, Zora wanted to rush to the laboratory and examine it.

“Give him this and he will bed you until he puts his child in you. If there is no mark against you, of course.” Vera stroked the side of the queen's arm softly as her mother said this, in the same moment Foersa pulled the comb through her hair with a fierce unfeeling yank. The swell of her unborn brushing against her back. On purpose, of course. As ever, Zora refused to give her the satisfaction of crying out.

“Why would ever I trust you?”

“We do not want to leave. I am tired and this one kicks me all day. I do not wish to follow the hunters again. Sleep on dirt. But two years is a long time for any man to wait, much less our King. Surely, you can feel it. Pretty as you are, you deny him the one thing he wants. Sooner or later, he's going to find a way around you. Until then...well...”

Foersa handed her the comb, and she and her daughter left the room.

 

[PieTaster]

Szargo had a series of small sticks topped with colored ribbons marking spots about the trodden grass of the yard of which Falke could only trust were in proper order. The small-statured sage stood amongst them, head bowed in concentration with a simple lantern-like device hanging from his outheld palm. Within the chamber of the device a feather lay atop a thumb-sized crystal.

"How goes?" Falke asked as he approached.

"It goes ... well," Szargo punctuated his play-on-words with only a simple crook of his brow. "I suspect it rather deep but there is indeed water here," he explained in his monotone of concentration. "But I would do well to try again later when there is less breeze, before pinpointing the optimal spot."

"I see."

"The main concern is that we may well hit rock before water," Szargo contemplated.

"How would we know?"

"Dig."

"Water witching are we?" It was Foersa. She came with a clever glint in her eye, something keen in the point at the corner of her mouth, and her eldest in tow.

"Perhaps," said Falke.

"There's nothing perhaps about such a display," she said as she gestured to the ribboned pegs. "A simple wye rod would not suffice?"

"I leave that to the good shaman," said Falke. "He would know far better than I in such matters."

"I do suppose that if it means not having to carry water all the way from the river, I care not how it is found," said Foersa with hands on her belly, her thin limbs in contrast with her spherical protrudence which she placed them upon as if holding the bundle together from bursting. She took a moment to wince and shake her head with a sarcastic grin as she braced for the kick in her womb. "And speaking of carrying," she humored, "one more moon cannot come soon enough." Where Mother was slender, Daughter was plump with heavy breasts and hips that would likely have no trouble birthing when her own time would come. The young one's curves stretched the loose folds of her garments as she stood behind the shoulder of her mother, peering rather shyly at Falke, the wavy fall of her earthen hair fluttering in the breeze.

"Yes, well we'll see what comes of it," he said.

"Vera," Foersa nearly snapped as she took note of her daughter's gaze. "Come," she ordered and the young one bowed her head to hide the blush in her cheeks. Then glancing back at Falke with the same coy grin that she had arrived with, Foersa spoke. "Falke, Szargo, good luck in your witching," she bade, turned and left.

As the afternoon waned, Falke ventured down to the falls, their eternal thunder soothingly crushing his ears. Perhaps fifty span in height and nearly three times as wide, it's glory was impossible to measure accurately. Once, Dax had tried to hang a plumb from the edge of the plunge but as the weight neared the frothy white foam it merely danced about like a bumble bee amongst blossoms. There was absolutely no way in behind the cascade. It would be death to try. The tunnel was the only way to the secret destination. After nightfall he would explore them further to see what other secrets Amenja held.

Explore he did. As he went he periodically took note of the walls and how difficult the substrate may have proved to dig through. It all seemed quite rocky but not solid. It could be picked at. Perhaps digging for water would not be so daunting, although he noted no seepage and the only dampness was the moisture from the falls in the one passage that led to them, so he reckoned that sage Szargo was correct in his assessment that the hole would likely be deep.

Falke found the laboratory chamber where he and Zora had fornicated the night before. Waving his torch about in the darkness he found it empty. For a moment he thought that he could still make out the lingering scent of their passion. Then he made his way back to the thunderous falls and its two mechanical wheels. Again he found nothing. It was time to search the other two branches that he had previously ignored.

At the first one, Falke already began to recognize specific outcroppings in the rock and knew where he was. This was the branch with the steep descent. He held his torch into the opening to assess the danger, as the the last thing that he needed to do was to slip and tumble where no one could find him. Cursing himself for not bringing rope, he took a tentative step in until he judged the slope unsafe and backed out.

The remaining one bent as he remembered and he followed it. This passage too descended but only gradually, and never retained a perfect straightness, a subtle bowing in its path always obscuring the distance. After perhaps a half-verst, it hooked sharp to the right and there was a door. It was thick and wooden, braced with irons and barred on this side. The metal was old and rusted. He tested the door but it was firm. Even putting a shoulder into it, it would not budge. Then he tried to lift the bar but it too was rusted shut. It was futile without tools.

Falke's torch was dimming so he returned the way that he had come and made one more trip to the alchemist's cave. It was perfectly still. Perhaps Zora could not get away this night. She would not always have the freedom to jaunt about without risking her secrets. If not this night, they could meet another time.

 

[TheQueenofCups]

She had been kept from the feast last night, to be fed at a smaller table for the women to celebrate the Cizinec servant girl's child having made its way into the world. A kindness that she felt almost entirely was conspiracy. The men would hear Gorun's plans, the men would know and she would not. She would lose the opportunity to see their faces change, what the true reaction was...were they returning in glory or another had he lead the warbands down another bloody, fruitless trail?

Still, she smiled when Yana suggested she join them. A necessary smile, but there might well be gossip enough to divert her for the evening. Zora was to be their honored guest. So honored that leaving before the last piece of boar meat was picked from the bone and the last of the women had told the last of their tales – though few enough were spoken in the shared tongue so she could understand – would be unthinkable. If it was Foersa's plan, she was not in attendance, leaving her daughter to take her place, explaining her mother was poorly as she grew near her own time. That was as much information as the girl seemed capable of providing, staring with placid interest at Zora the remainder of the time like a drunk, but determined guard dog. Zora ate and drank along with them and though she derived little from the chatter. There was something soothing to being among them and not isolated from such rituals. This was some comfort, though it was impossible to be at ease.

Even in the dress they gave her, her breasts as bare as any at the table, she felt she wore too much. They were much louder and more carefree in the lower halls than when the men had their eyes on them. The few questions she received were mostly of Gorun, what he liked and disliked, things a good wife, she supposed ought to know...how she could help the servants to please him...asked as if anyone believed she knew. She was here because she needed to not be elsewhere, she was sure of it.

As the evening ranged later and later into the night, later than most council feasts ever ran, no matter how much she had intended to save her energy to find Falke, to draw from him both as much seed and word from the Council as he could offer, she was drowsy on drink and the moonlight. The servants put her to bed and she had fallen asleep before the ravenous maw of her desire could have its say.

She awoke with her hand between her legs, a quick survey with her fingertips found her soft and silken with want. A tail of a dream was running from her, details already blurring save the final image, her belly painfully heavy with child, and an unknown hand reaching from behind her to possessively stroke the roundness...

What a waste yesterday had been.

Strangely, dawn had not yet broken through. Zora rose quickly, dressed in her own favorite dress, one that made no accommodations to present her body for view, ignoring what had been left for her to wear and eat. She slipped down

The few whispers she could glean from her own servants - Yana and Aniya – were only that there had been progress on the well, but that was as much as had been shared. There had been no village riders today to offer any other news. That there was no word to tell from the Council bode ill. Some rumor, some sense always leaked out among the servants, but nothing. She stole a few slices of warm bread from them and had them bring her one of the cylinders of honey, gave each a kiss on their foreheads and an plea to tell anyone and everyone that she was sleeping late after indulging last night.

From here, the queen made her quiet way back to what was long ago a well-trafficked temple, finishing up her little breakfast as she went. Today, at least, she felt a presence stirring in the silence.

From her knees, she poured a pool of the honey atop Vaestred's low altar, where she and Falke had fucked, letting it drip over the edges and down into the carving She pulled a small seed pearl from her pocket, pulled from the design sewn into the dress. She stuck it into the flowing amber, honey for both she and the Mother of Mothers, and she whispered words in her own tongue, words she once swore she would never speak again.
Vaestred, show me your power. As I give you life, please follow in turn. We are in one another's debt. Goddess and woman.

She used her fingers to write a secret, sacred name in the honey before pouring more to watch the letters melt away.

The carafe she would use to wash the altar was, of course, long dried of water. She would bring the water tomorrow. For now, she felt heard, and enough to rise from her knees and head back through the tunnels, turning and slinking through the paths to rise up to another entrance as she was not entirely sure which servants would be about in her own room.

Her face slightly dirtied, and hands smudged by honey from carrying the nearly empty vessel, she quietly and carefully pulled open the false door, inch by inch. There was light, but she could hear no one, to be expected as no one made any use of this otherwise out of the way corridor.

She looked up and then down the stone hallway to hear a footstep. It was Falke, alone.

 

[PieTaster]

Sensing a presence, he turned and saw Zora emerge from the shadowy bleak. Even though he had expected the Queen, her motions had put him on edge even for a split moment. Her covering garments made her all the more alluring as their attempts to mute her beauty by hiding her flesh were futile. He relaxed as she came forth.

"Good evening," he greeted her with a tone low and soft. Then he butted the end of his torch into the fire pit and held it to rekindle what was there. "These tunnels have yet more secrets," he mused. "How many more shall I expect?" Falke could smell the smoke of the embers stirring to life as he motioned for her to add more splinters from the stack against the wall. They would do this together, in equal parts. "Here is Fire, " he said, "and and at the other end is Water," he noted the falls. Removing the torch from the pit, he inspected the dim orange glow, then rebutted. "And all around us is Earth. Entreat me," his eyes fixed upon her. "What of Air?" If Zora could discern his features in the dark she would make out a smirk upon his lips.

 

[TheQueenofCups]

“Air? Air.” There was a relief at the corner of her eyes the firelight, she hoped, half-hid. Zora had many reasons to be grateful at being found by Falke. With Vera left to wander Amenja, there was yet another set of eyes.

“Air is in any emptiness that asks to be filled....or....” She gestured by way of example at the empty carafe in her hands before bending down with no excessive grace to gather a handful of kindling and fed the flame Falke had begun. Then, she brushed the last flecks of its bark away on her hips. Settled on the balls of her feet, the Queen watched the fire pit ravenously devour the wood and grow in light and strength.

“...or Air is the breath of the gods. Living and dead. When believers kiss, they pass the truth of their faith to one another.”

She rose and stepped backwards, lightly, to away from the growing heat of the fire, still clutching the empty ceramic to herself.

“Perhaps it is both things at the same time. Is it so for you?”

 

[PieTaster]

"Air is in any emptiness that asks to be filled ... or ..."

As the Queen left her notion to ruminate, Falke noted how she wiped her fingers upon her clothes, and how by abandoning the tact that was demanded of her by day, she was at ease in his presence. The two of them were quickly growing familiar with one another. Neither was it lost upon him her hinting of the notion that the greatness of her need was comparable to the vast ether around all.

"Or Air is the breath of the Gods. Living and dead. When believers kiss, they pass the truth of their faith to one another. Perhaps it is both things at the same time. Is it so for you?"

"I do believe, but I believe that Gods leave such things to us," said Falke. "To have faith is to have faith in oneself, as Gods have faith in us to determine our own fates." As he had done so before, he unburdened himself of his torch by the wall socket. Then he approached and took her flask with one hand and her soft touch in the other. "So, what concoctions, potions or other such aphrodisiacs shall you employ upon me tonight?" he asked as he brandished the vessel and curiously inspected her fingertips for any inky smudges. "Do you not believe the warmth of your flesh enticement enough?"

 

[TheQueenofCups]

“I do not need to entice, do I? We act with purpose.” Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly, even as a smile rose on her features. Zora believed this, though it was impossible to ignore what the past few weeks with Falke had brought her, had unleashed. The truth was that what was spilled from the vessel could never be returned there, but it would have to be, somehow, when Gorun returned.
“Be it of your fate or faith, you've proven you surpass the Blessing. We needn't use it unless you found it pleasurable.”

The smile widened. “Still. It does...please me that you have not found it a...hardship....to serve.” Now that Falke had provided her with a free hand, she ran her palm across the flat of his chest, lower then, to punctuate her point. The queen stepped into the unplanned embrace, leaving her hand to stroke the outline of his body through his clothes. She whispered into the muscled angle of his neck and shoulders, kissing lightly there between words.

“Foersa's girl. She spies for her mother. Not here, but above ground. She feeds the woman gossip. She follows me for crumbs. Be careful when you leave here. What you say where she might hear. I would not have you...”

She shook her head, letting that terrifying thought leave her.

“We do our work too well, I must be certain to speak to you now before you take from me my speech. I have so many questions of the Council, of the riders, but those shall keep. I am yours in whatsoever way you desire.”

Zora laughed lightly, with her lips upon Falke's. She breathed to calm herself, aware of the needful feelings, the mad beast of wanting, as it were, rousing between her legs.

 

[PieTaster]

"I do not need to entice, do I? We act with purpose. Still. It does ... please me that you have not found it a ... hardship ... to serve."

She was clinging to the premise that there were no emotions involved, that this arrangement was simply a rite or even a chore. It even humored him that she would try to pretend that he was a knuckle-dragging man on the hunt for mere sweaty fornication. She was too smart to honestly believe that. Zora also was desperate to hold onto the notion that one was serving the other. She was in a frantic battle to deny that they were in this together, that they had become intertwined so quickly. It was a battle that she was clearly losing as she drew close with such ease that her moves were absent of all thought. The soft breath of her words caressed him, her delicate lips even tickling somewhat, the sensations bringing tiny random twitches from his flesh, while she warned him of Foersa and young Vera, as if he himself would be sloppy. Indeed, he felt that he'd been more careful even than the Queen.

"I have so many questions of the Council, of the riders, but those shall keep. I am yours in whatsoever way you desire."

As strong as she was, she was still a woman, and as with all women there is a point when emotions get the upper hand, take over and betray. Zora, with her gentle palm between his cloak and tunic, had reached that point, and in some corner of his bosom her tragic sadness touched him. It was a glimpse of true beauty like he had not seen before, but Falke would not let his emotions get the better of him.

Neither would he ask of time. If it would not permit, she would protest. Otherwise he would take her up on her offer.

"Come," he said, as he returned her empty flask and led her by the hand to his torch on the wall. "Show me these tunnels." He turned to her, watching the the orange torchlight shimmer in her golden plaits and flicker in the gloss of her eyes. "Not completely. Just a brief guide," he said. Then his brow relaxed and a corner of his mouth curled into a clever grin. "It is what I desire."

 

[TheQueenofCups]

Zora wondered at the nature of goddesses. She imagined Vaestred would not be so eager to see one woman so satisfied if she were not so newly reborn. It felt as though they existed solely for one another, beams of belief and blessing directed in one single path. She would take it, for it would pass soon enough.

Amenja's secret pathways were extensive, and she suspected she knew about far less than was there. But she had always imagined she would send others to explore and scout the information that did not survive when the Cizinecs invaded. Gorun had hardly given her leave, and when he was within the fortress, there were no experiments, and she rarely came below ground. It wasn't safe and she was little equipped to fumble around beyond the few caches and lairs she was familiar with. Though there were a few points to mention, nearby.
That Falke wanted to know ought to worry her, but it wasn't surprising. They lived atop a hundred secrets. When Gorun returned, something...something would happen. A decision was coming.

She reached out her palm to take his hand, walking slowly to manipulate a few nearly unseen triggers to defend against invaders. Defenses gone unused when they were overrun, but while the light foot of a serving girl passing by would not set them off, together, she and Falke might have trouble with the spikes. She opened a barely visible door, within were a few crates of aid supplies gone unused, bandages, herbs dried beyond use, a rack of dulled axes. Beyond, another room with two rows of cots with bedrolls that had never been rolled down.

“Do you hear the water?” Zora remembered as she walked, seeing a bit of natural light begin to coalesce in the distance.

 

[PieTaster]

Her fingers gripped his palm and led him forth in earnest with careful steps. Falke was in her care and although his trust of her was firm, he kept his eyes open not to miss anything that she would reveal to him. As they slipped through the unseen secret entrance in the rock wall, widenining it with the iron handle hidden in the slim black gap, her footing was deliberate but sure, as if she'd traversed the path many times. Falke stepped in each of her tracks meticulously until her gait and stance eased telling him that they were in the clear. He held the torch up to see the stash of old wares in the flickering glow before they moved on through the dusty dorms of the secret emergency barracks.

"Do you hear the water?"

"Indeed," he answered. In fact he could feel the cool air refreshing his lungs. Approaching the exit at the far end of the room he glanced back to Zora for her approval. When she did nothing to stop him, he deemed it safe to continue, and handing the torch he gripped the old iron handle. It was cold and rough to the touch, pocked with rust from the moisture of the falls, and required the effort of both arms to budge, but eventually, round it went and the gap in the stone widened to the full frontal assault of the awesome thunder of water. The gate opened right to the small staircase at the end of the last straight stretch of tunnel that he had visited the night before and he was surprised that he hadn't detected it from the other side himself.

"After you," he offered as he dusted his hands and brushed the rust onto the edge of his cloak.

 

[TheQueenofCups]

Zora slipped around Falke, moving into the unceasing din of churning water, feeling it spatter over her feet and up her legs. The space was wider, more open than one might expect for such a hidden location, so muted by rock to the world above. Inaccessible to all unless one knew the secret.

She had no particular memories of playing in the water here as a girl. For that, there were other, far warmer springs deeper in the forest where the women would go and they weren't invited here. The water map was often a matter of discussion between her father and brother, though she had never seen a complete version. She was not even sure they had such a thing.

Still, it braced the senses. The falls were loud enough to swallow whispers, and the tributaries it fed were diverted by mechanism into several directions. Though the gates that might send the sun-warmed water in once-used ruts back towards Amenja and not out towards the sea appeared broken and covered in rust.

As busy and fast as the water flowed down and out towards the massive iron grates that would pour into the Sapata, the external waterfall that poured down the rocky side of High Hill, there were a few pools that stayed steadily filled and were not so churned with river water as the depths that caught the falls. The defensive grates let in light from the bright sun that warmed the channels and dashed rocks that cut the coast from the sea.

Zora stood still, breathing, watching the water move, calmer than reason would suggest.

 

[PieTaster]

A mere few paces before them the awesome falls thundered down with a pure natural power that was infinitely larger than themselves. Falke drew close behind her, his footsteps buried into surreal silence by the enormity of the relentless droning cascade. As he wrapped his arms around her waist he could have sworn that a magnetic pull teetered their bodies towards each other to bridge the final slender space between them. His hands clasped her belly, the cloth of her dress already faintly damp from the inescapable mist, and worked upwards to palm her heavy bosom as his lips found the soft nape of her neck. His hands began kneading her breasts, his fingers finding her nipples through the fabric to stroke between his knuckles as the heat of his erection pressed into her lower back.

 

[TheQueenofCups]

Zora stood on the smoothed stones at the lip of the calmer edge of the collecting reservoir. They were close enough to the waterfall for the mist to begin to permeate and darken her dress against her skin. As Falke's fingers began to pinch at her, and he kissed along her neck, and she made a moan of surprise at the sensations, muted as it left her lips.

It had been but a few days, but already the Queen felt her lust as constant, as crushing as the water madly rushing from above. The falls under the keep were siphoned from underground rivers by those who built Amenja, for purposes unknown before slowing it, returning it to the Sapata to the vast waters below High Hill.

His hands on her tits. She found her own people's style of dress, here and now, to frustrate her. She could hardly tolerate how bound and swaddled she felt by the tautly woven fabric, the friction against her sensitive flesh. The underthings the Cizinec women laughed at her for bothering with. But for the first time in ages, she felt safe. Whatever awaited her upon return, they couldn't be followed here.

She turned her back to the falls, pushed the curling tendrils of hair behind her ears, and reached up to stroke Falke's face with a tenderness she did not regret. Zora kissed him, letting Falke's tongue slip around hers, letting him draw his arms around her. The mist dotted along her spine, the water warmer than she supposed, though the air cooled it quickly. She stroked the flat of her palm on Falke's hardened bulge, now pressed against her stomach.

There had never been anything in her that had fists to fight. There was cleverness, guile, ever a plan, but a red-hot anger that might have driven another out grief and madness had never been gifted to her. Perhaps the girl she was, the girl, who lost Amenja would be ashamed of her, as she grew wet between her thighs for a Cizinec, a Conqueror's cock. Would finally be enraged. But that girl was no more and in this moment, Zora wanted no more than precisely that. For Falke to have her here in whatever way would please him most.

 

[PieTaster]

Zora's mewlings were faintly audible so close to his ear but the crush of the falls obliterated any of their reverberations off of the stone walls around them. Falke's hands worked to undo her wraps while his mouth explored her neck from her collar up to her jaw and her garment fell free into a defeated heap about her ankles in the water that calmly sheeted over the stones beneath their feet and soaked the leather of his boots.

Turning to him, Zora took an endearing moment to fix her hair, the lose lock clinging to her cheek curling in the misty moisture surrounding them. She embraced him sweetly. Falke tried to slow the moment and savor her serene touch, but when she parted her lips to kiss, hot passion consumed him. He kissed back, deeply and ravenously as his palms swarmed her back, her ribs and her breasts. Her own hand found his erect member, causing his breath to vent heavily through his nose while his mouth and tongue were occupied, and he reached down into the heat between their bodies to guide her sleek fingers to the laces of his britches.

 

[TheQueenofCups]

Falke's tongue inside her, his hands finding her bare flesh as swiftly as the mist could pearl on it, the queen felt a wave of need surge and draw her up and into him. She found her kisses speeding to match his, the hard smack of her body as he pulled her up against him. A veil of water droplets crowned her and ran down her side with no fabric to claim it. She expected some sort of chill, but the water was mild. She felt his hand take hers and pull it towards the uncomplicated knot that laced his trousers, bulged out by his needful cock. He brought the pants down to the floor, they would end up as sodden now as her shift from the waterfall's proximity, too wet to wear soon enough. Queen Zora kicked at the stacks of cloth, but didn't get far before she stopped bothering and was back to kissing her lover again.

In the midst of this, Zora looked over Falke's shoulder, back at the water falling down and along the crag, though there was a path continuously smoothed by the flow. As strong and steady as the rock stood, the water found a way to mold it for its own purposes. She breathed in, stepping softly, her hair becoming heavier on one side as the water darkened it. Perhaps this was the first time they had seen one another without the smoke and strain of fire to make subtle adjustments to their forms, but it only encouraged her desire further. The statuesque shape of Falke's body, it had a sort of elegance most Cizenec men lacked. She liked it. The thoughts flickered through her head, decisions made without conscious thought.

The queen, with a coy, overtly seductive gaze that ran the length of him, lasciviously pausing to view his cock in the daylight, smiled and walked around the rim of the pool towards the pouring water.

She bent at the hip, holding the surface of the rock face to steady herself. Daylight and water spilled down around her, splashed over her shoulders and down her spine. It was oddly warm, soothing, as it ran down her ass and legs, mist collected and dripped from her hanging breasts, the tips of her nipples, the reddening pink around her slit.

Safe as she felt here, comparatively, to nearly anywhere else in Amenja, she nodded back at him, beckoning for the general to come and make use of the body she presented him with.

 

[PieTaster]

Her body tantalizingly summoned him in its pose, spine arched to salaciously offer its tail. The growing daylight now reflected bright gold in her hair and gleamed off of the wet curves of her flesh. Dawn had broken. Their absence may now have been a cause for curious concern. Falke and Zora's tryst was now becoming careless. Still, he could not bring himself to deny the Queen of her needs. It was the one ultimate power that women had over men, to cause foolishness in them and lead them to ruin. His cock with its subtle bend and mallow glans protruding wet and shiny from its foreskin led him to her, and taking her hips in his palms he aligned her gruffly and with a subtle grunt, shoved himself into her hot cunt.

After a quick couple of exploratory strokes, he adjusted his feet and began to fuck her, pulling her ass back into his thrusts and hilting in deep until his abs pressed flat into the flesh of her bottom which wiggled back into shape each time that he withdrew. His pace quickened as he banged away, the slapping of her thighs drowned into silence by the thunder of the falls. This seemed to urge yet more force from him. Falke could not resist her skin. His lust was in full control and he ran his hand up her ribs to roughly grope her dangling right breast and indulgently yank on the thick nipple between his thumb and forefinger. Bent over her now, his pace slowed as he endeavored to drive deep with each ramming, jarring her body against the stone wall.

 

[TheQueenofCups]

As Falke slowed, she pushed back against the stony face. It been carved out by time, Amenja's people taming the water to flow and crash within as well as without, but the rock remained nearly sharp enough to cut the flat center of her left palm. Rivulets of water and mist ran down along its surface, between her splayed fingertips. She took the leverage and squeezed her cunt around his cock, her body back against him, ignoring how weak her legs felt against his thrusts. There were no real handholds to be had, but she pressed her hand into the pain. All of his touches was strong, unyielding, demanding, but without her husband's cruelty. This position she so hated to be in...she could take it. She could take more of it.

“Good. Good.” Her words were half-hissed half-growled, but he was curled over her so closely, she felt certain he could hear her. She found the word rising in her throat again, but it left her as a fragment, followed by just a series of encouraging noises.

The queen didn't know how a man knew how to do what Falke knew how to do, what thoughts he had when he was inside her, what understanding came from fucking. But he knew, like the birds knew the weather would chill, what would give her the gift of pleasure and from that, Zora began to know herself. Some instinct that was developing in her each time they joined. Was she going to have to find a way to unlearn this in a matter of days? She couldn't. She refused.

She pulled her hand from the wall, quickly gripped her small palm and fingers around his muscled bicep as he held her tit to keep her from falling. Bent even further downward towards the bubbling surface of the water, she pulled his left between her legs, letting her fingers move with his to rub the bright, blinding starlight back into her eyes as they stroked her clit.

 

[PieTaster]

As he ground into her, Zora braced herself, her feminine limbs exerting force, desperate to find hold in the stone and keep her hips rigid for his deep aggressive pilings. He was taking her and she was giving, her pussy accepting all of his rough lust. The more that she gave the more that he took, with no rhyme nor reason to his pace or force other than his own zealous whims, some thrusts slower and others quick, some more languid yet others straining to the extent of her depths, although finishing each with a gruff grunt of toil.

Her fingers guided his to her clit and he amused her in this for a moment, flicking the tip of his index back and forth across it but soon abandoned the action as it affected the angle and depth of his penetration. Lower and lower, she slowly bent downward and down, keeping her ass up and letting her hair spill away until Falke could no longer comfortably reach her breast and had to let go. It was just as well as her legs began to tremble and he caught her by the hips when her knees gave, gruffly steadying her in position as he found new and steadier footing on the wet stone.

No matter how willing he may have been, this was her idea after all - this tryst - and the streams of leaking sunlight reminded him of how they were taking the risks way farther than necessary and of all the danger that she was putting him in. Falke conned himself into believing that his thoughts were not clouded by her wanton needs and supple flesh and his irresistible desire for it and that his brusqueness were just the consequences of her actions. In truth, if his wits had indeed still been intact he would have left her before the dawn and returned to the camp under the cover of darkness.

Still, Falke required not to decipher her muffled sounds as pleasure, as the way that she took him was all that he needed to know that it wasn't as if she was objecting. Their copulation was primal and passion rushed through his veins with the exhilaration of mating with this exceptional woman.

The Queen's legs buckled again, but this time he let them collapse and together they clumsily toppled down to their knees in the sheeting pool of water with a smack barely audible under the weight of the falls' awesome rumbling, the ends of her hair soaking and fanning in the gentle streams. With a hand in her back he shoved her down and their bodies slowly flattened out with only her ass perched upwards for him to continue pounding her from behind in their animalistic rutting.

 

[TheQueenofCups]

It hurt. Of course it hurt, but it was a pain she could use, could like, could burn away like fresh wood fed to a fire...a fire that lit a room where nothing hurt at all. A vision where Zora was Queen of Amenja. And in that vision she could have this in her own bed, on the banquet table if she liked. Fuck. Fuck. His hands on her tits. His body demanding that she meet him, his cock that she take him. But had she all the power that she deserved, she'd still want this feeling.

His hisses, his outright growling made her tighten inside. He felt so hot and so hard that she hardly noticed herself dropping down into the water. At this edge of the pools, the water was shallow, moving gently past her into the deeper, cooler pools further into the space. The water churned enough from the falls to bubble around her wrists, then elbows as he pressed her down to her forearms flat in the water. She could see her hair floating around her, past her, reaching out like the arms of some creature of the sea.

Shoving herself up and back against his weight became merely holding her own as his savage thrusts guided their joined bodies. Zora could tell he was pushing himself, his thrusts felt feverish with need, a sense of wary timing that was deserting her. He could fuck her till the end of days and it would not be enou...

Half mad with pleasure, and distraction, Zora felt the change happen. She was coming, coming now, no power, no thought could stop it. She felt Falke's hot seed pour within her shuddering frame, so different to the tepid comfort of the water. The daylight for a moment as she closed her eyes, was all that she could see. Then, she muttered a prayer (some of her people called it a curse) to Reyja, exhausted as her clenched muscles finally calmed.

 

[PieTaster]

His balls dipped into the cool water with each stroke as her ass lifted to meet him for every collision, such was her want that she would lap up his punishing drive so vigorously. He found the wetness then splash about his pubes, soaking all of his genitalia, but in warmth. Falke realized that he had brought her to ejaculate and as the queen's thighs quivered and rippled beneath him, he lost concentration and tossed his load into her too soon.

With each ragged recovering breath his arms lowered his torso upon her until his spent weight pinned her down in the serene trickling waters. After a moment he realized that his knee was sore from striking the stone in their stumbling and he surmised that Zora may have taken a bump or two herself. It had been a while since he had given it that rough and he wasn't terribly surprised that she had held up rather well, considering the crass brute that she shared her matrimonial bed with. His mind slowly returned to him and contemplating the knife blades of sunlight through the metal slats, he conceded that his premature climax was probably for the better.

"We need to get back to the day," he reasoned as he peeled himself from her body, watching her ribs expand and retract, her golden skin and golden hair in the golden morning sunshine and her golden afterglow, before righting himself. "Especially yourself. You will be missed more than I." Re-cinching his breeches, he thought twice about offering her a hand up, but ultimately extended his to her. "And we need to get dry."

 

[TheQueenofCups]

Zora breathed in, found all the edges of her body returned to her in a single moment. She rubbed at her face, pushing her hair back behind her ears as she slowly rose to take his hand. His grip pressed against where she'd cut her hand on the rock. She stepped up and out of the waterfall's aura and back to her clothing. The dress was damp and did little to remedy the situation.

“Maybe it's better if...” She shook her head, coming back to herself one moment at a time. The waterfall's noise was muted just enough where he might have heard her, he might not have.

“Yes. I have been absent longer than...it...we should go. I should go.” She could She found it difficult to meet his eyes. She did not feel guilty. It was necessary. But she felt aware of the everything the lust obscured. The sodden fabric clinging at her made it somehow worse. The impulse to wince a bit as she walked was ignored, her growling stomach waved off. She stood back, her hair dripping delicate pearls down her hairline. She brushed the hair back once more before returning her hands to one another in front of her, almost primly, almost as if the woman she was but a few moments ago was a stranger.

“I can guide you back, if required, but perhaps you recall the traps. There are those supplies...back where we came...dry cloaks, at the least. Then, I'll...go.”

 

[PieTaster]

Falke could sense the conflict within her as she put herself back together. It showed in her guarded movements, her sheepish stance, her troubled expression, her tentative voice. Zora uncharacteristically stammered through her words, obviously unsettled by her emotions.

"I can guide you back, if required, but perhaps you recall the traps. There are those supplies ... back where we came ... dry cloaks, at the least. Then, I'll ... go."

"I'm not sure any of that stuff is still wearable," he reasoned. "Even still, the garments would look conspicuous. Perhaps these secrets down here should stay secret." He straightened his own attire, pulling the soaked leggings from clinging to his thighs and gathering the hem of his tunic to give it a tight wringing. "If I could refresh my torch in your alchemist's room," he contemplated. "A small fire there could dry your hair - if there's time for that. As for your clothes, if you do not keep a change down below, it would not be unusual for you to keep bare in your own chambers?"

He wanted to ask her more about these tunnels, all the possible places that they led to, but he was beginning to believe her that she probably really didn't know herself. So many of the doors and steps looked untouched. Meanwhile, Zora had other things on her mind. She was taking great risks, at least as great, almost certainly greater than he was and it was bound to take its toll on her nerves sooner or later. Strong or not, she was still a woman. Stepping towards her, he took her tenderly by the shoulder with his left hand and brushed the fall of her hair aside with the fingers of his right. As his hand passed through the slat of sunshine he saw the reddish smear upon his palm and paused to check it. He was not wounded. The blood was hers. Inspecting her hand, it was a scrape, not deep, but long enough that it would need tending. He drew her close, pressing her cheek to his chest and held her sweetly, like a delicate flower. He could love her body savagely, but her emotions as exposed as the blood on her hand required softness.

"I suppose that will need to be explained," he said. "Perhaps too much wine, you don't recall the fall," he hinted.

 

[TheQueenofCups]

She softened under his touch, against the firm expanse of his chest, though the concern did not leave her expression as he looked over her hand. It was one thing to be his as they fucked. This...pause...they both were drunk on something that blunted their minds.
“Wine. ” A reverie, a taste in her mouth, a memory. His kindness now frightened her. It was not...he was meant to take her, seed her, see her as a task, a duty and take her as he'd taken others. And perhaps it was still nothing more than that for him...but his eyes did not say so and she felt a betrayal dance idly in her own, one she'd yet to feel in her cunt.

No. Upon his return, Gorun would destroy him, leave nothing left of him and would make her watch before he ended her and whatever gift of Reyja he'd put in her belly.

Her voice was not sharp as she pulled her hand slowly from him. It whispered, with a sense of mourning. “It's nothing. I must get used to it again. Else it will become impossible. Else I will do something I regret long before we know there was a reason for the suffering. It's not just my hand. This...you're right, this must be the end of it. If it is, then it is. If it is not...for your sake. I can't...”

She shook her head, feeling the discomfort in everything intensely. Her sopping hair and clothes, between her legs, the throb in her palm. “Something...I will think of something. They've little enough purpose for me so long as they believe me to leave them to their gossip and their shadow throne of the kitchen fires. Wine.” She repeated the last word, as if tearing a nettle from her heel, a sliver of stone from her palm, and an idea bloomed behind it. “There's a thought.”

She tilted her head, looking up at him, half-seeing Mayefin's features floating over his for a moment and staring into the sun behind him until the image left her. Staring still and seeing Falke alone now, she tried to somehow memorize his face, his shape, the thoughts she would need to be able to recall in a few more days.

Unsure of what she had captured, she stepped lightly away, just a step, but she held her hands to her sides.

“Follow me, then? Yes, as you say, there's some spare clothes where I do my studies, good enough to return to my chambers. And something that will cover you. You can tell your men you took a swim in the cove. Or...or...whatever you like.”

She took a few more steps towards the door, but stopped again, her voice a whisper. Her posture slightly sunk and protective, arms crossed. “We'll change and...have a parting.”

 

[PieTaster]

"Wine."

Zora repeated the word absently creating a distance between them, imperceptible except by the heart which detects the ebb and flow of such energies. Falke allowed her this space as she found her focus, a sharp change of course in thought, and continued.

"It's nothing. I must get used to it again," Zora lamented. She spoke of the pain in her hand but Falke knew immediately that she meant the torture of her marriage. "Else it will become impossible. Else I will do something I regret long before we know there was a reason for the suffering. It's not just my hand," she confirmed Falke's deduction. "This ... you're right, this must be the end of it. If it is, then it is. If it is not ... for your sake. I can't."

"For my sake?" Falke began before she moved on to their immediate strategy.

Something ... I will think of something," she dismissed. Then she nattered about gossip and such before finishing with that word again. "Wine."

Her expression held a cryptic streak as she regarded him peculiarly awry. For a moment he thought that the Queen might be coming unhinged from the stress of it all. When she bade him follow he complied, but then she halted.

We'll change and ... have a parting.

"We can end if you want," he started. The sombre air that she had wafted about them was incongruous to their coupling. To be sure, Zora was hurting. Falke closed the gap and encircled her waist with his right arm. Her clothes dripped onto the stone at their feet but it was as if it was her body that had been wrung out. He could sense it as it wavered against his. "But ..." With his right hand he gently lifted her chin so that her gaze would not falter likewise.

"You will stay strong," he said quietly but firmly. It was a statement, not a command. Then his left hand slid further around from her hip to to caress her lower belly.

 

[TheQueenofCups]

Three days ago, when Zora had clambered back up into her chamber, dressed in dry clothes and hidden, the wet ones she'd been wearing, Yana had not rushed out to see her. The room had been eerily empty and quiet for some portion of an hour until the door opened without a knock. Vera, for the first time, presented herself without her mother.

Vera matter-of-factly said she'd been called to help with the child one of the servants had borne just a few days ago. The servant had taken a turn. The delivery, if she hadn't heard, had been difficult – she wasn't recovering. Zora had demanded why she had not gone, why the women thought Yana was required when she served the queen. Vera had shrugged, unbothered, picking up a comb. She said Yana was a cousin of the girl and the women had thought it best. Zora had not fought it, and let the girl roam her sleepy eyes over her, for everything she would feed her mother.

Zora had gone so far as to cut her hand again on the little oil pot to perfume her skin near the dressing table, she'd held out her palm, crossly, by way of explanation of the wound. Vera said nothing, wrapping her hand and asking for no further conversation. She even drank the wine as Zora requested, imbibing the few little droplets of a tincture from Naescius's book that Zora had left in the bottom of the glass unseen. She'd used it only once before. When the memories of the sacking and fall had terrorized her, she'd made it...a few nights before she found herself willing to give herself to Falke. A calm and fuzzy quality had overtaken her and when she awoke after a night's sleep, the venom and fear had left her. Her memories less present.

Perhaps this was the reason that for the balance of these days, the girl had been a strangely adequate servant. Were she a queen void of secrets, were it that she did not know the ravenous desire of Foersa to use the girl to see her downfall, if she did not linger amongst the other servants who ranked and rated every man in these halls, Zora might have found her entirely sufficient.

But none of that was so. The girl stood there, slack-jawed, but listening to the chatter, as some of the women chopped up slabs of meat and dropped them into a large, boiling pot of stock in the corner. Zora knew Vera was an enemy, but she would leave no raw meat for the girl. Her thoughts were her own.

So, she sat with her hands folded, no more nights of prayer under Vera's near lazy-eye and kept her own counsel.

She'd told Falke it had been time to part. And in that moment, she had meant it. Even now, as she overlooking the preparation of the final meal she would eat in freedom, she knew it was best, obedience was best. The energy in Amenja had shifted. The time had come. An excitement, a foreboding excitement, a zealous solemnity for what Gorun would return to them with. Conquest and riches or...what was truly prayed for was a promise that seemed so unlikely as to be madness to say aloud. For Gorun to announce his plans to rule from Amenja and let the men remain here, with their women, their children, and not risk their lives for increasingly little on the plains.

But Gorun had said the Queen would carry his child and this would be the sign the wandering would cease. She wondered now if she had become pregnant on her...wedding...night, if the promise would not have somehow changed. If Gorun, for all that she failed him, did not want to not be required to follow his word.

In truth, Zora wanted Falke for her own. To ride far away, to the other side of the world. To stay in his bed, to keep his shaft inside her, to have him every night as their child grew in her. To be his. For the feelings she felt to matter. Even if it meant giving up Amenja and all else to have it.

It was not possible and it was folly. Every moment she sat upright on the bench, sipping the darkly brewed tea of the Cizenecs, swarmed by laughter and kitchen stink and the occasional glance to confirm she had not wandered off, it was more impossible. Still the thought persisted, to the point she felt herself flush and had to pour another cup of the bubbling aromatic tea placed in front of her.
It was not possible.

She remembered his hand, low and flat on her belly, his eyes looking into hers, and she'd felt certain as if the Goddess had whispered it into her ear.

But it was Gorun's. It was Gorun's. Their son or their daughter, was his. She would stop thinking of Falke, his body, their time as love-making. It was fucking. It was necessary. It was their gift to their King to allow him a legacy. Vaestred blessed the way. She was pregnant with Gorun's child. Or she would be..come tomorrow night.

Out of nowhere, Vera turned her head towards her, an eerie, thoughtless smile on her face.