Cruel Enchantment

by Janine Ashbless

  ‘Then I shall cut you free,’ said the dragon. ‘Hold yourself still. If you try to run away, I shall eat you.’ It paced forwards to fill the whole of Sheldi’s vision, the whole of her senses. It was too huge to understand. The air thrummed with the sound of its breathing and the scrape of scales on rock. The ashy stench of its breath, like dead fires and oily slate intermingled, filled her protesting lungs as it lowered its head close – so close she could see into the cavernous gape of its nostrils, black and ridged and tarry, as the head swung past her, dipped and twisted behind her. She cringed away but forced herself not to struggle, then felt the rope that bound her tug cruelly, yanking her shoulders back. A small cry escaped from her – but the rope parted and her arms fell free. Sheldi fell to her hands and knees on the rough stone and bit her lip to prevent herself loosing the tears she felt start to her eyes. When she looked up the dragon had cocked its head back and was watching her. Its immobile, bony face had the permanent expression of a sardonic smile.

  ‘Happy now, little Sheldi?’ it enquired.

  ‘Uh,’ she said as she stood unsteadily, rubbing at her wrists where the severed ends of the rope still bit into her skin. ‘Are you going to eat me now?’ she added miserably.

  ‘Not yet,’ the dragon rumbled. ‘I am taking you back to my home.’ Quick as a snake striking, it lunged out with a foreclaw and snatched her into its grip; before Sheldi could shriek it bunched itself on to its haunches, threw open its wings and leaped into the sky. If Sheldi screamed she did not hear it over the battering of the wind and the whistling crack of flapping wings. She opened her eyes into the stinging wind and saw the ground falling away below her before she shut them again, tears of pain streaming down her face. Only shock and disbelief saved her from the agony of panic in that insane flight. The dragon’s claw gripped her so tightly she could hardly breathe and, although it was warm, the air itself was icy and ripped at her hair. Exposed parts of her skin – her face, lower legs and one arm – chilled in minutes to a grinding ache, while the sky lurched and yawed around her. She pulled her arm across her face to shield herself and wished she could faint, just so as to escape from the nightmare. The only thing she could compare it to was an old memory of childhood when she had been climbing a tree in the garden and a branch had snapped beneath her, dropping her through layers of foliage until she had caught and clung on sturdier lower limbs. There was the same sense of battering pain, of clinging to unyielding structures that might at any second give way while the world yawned beneath her, the whole trusted foundation of the earth turned into a gaping pit, and her heart trying to burst out of her throat. Time ceased while the cold ate into her limbs and the sky spun to the beat of the beast’s wings. Sheldi felt herself sinking into dizziness without colour or form.

  Then it stopped. The regular motion of the dragon became a confusion and a darkness, and suddenly Sheldi was sliding across a stone floor, her pinned limbs sprawling aimlessly as they found their release. When she had stopped moving she lay as still as she could, her cheek pressed against the flagstones. She could hear the dragon moving about above her, and the yammering echoes made her think that they must be in a great cave.

  ‘Are you alive, Sheldi?’ came the dragon’s voice.

  ‘Ah – yes,’ she said faintly, not daring to remain silent, despite her desire to vomit. She lay awash with nausea for a long time until she decided that she was not going to be sick, probably because she had been given nothing to eat that day. She sat up and looked about her uneasily. Her whole body was shaking.

  ‘Welcome, little Sheldi,’ said the dragon. ‘This is the house of Oromon.’ The beast couched like a dog on the bare stone, head and foreclaws up and alert, hindquarters sprawled away, belly exposed. Its heraldic setting was revealed to be a great hall with arched pillars and narrow windows that lanced high into the roofspace, filled now with a web of leadwork but only the remnants of glass. One end wall of the room, presumably the one through which they had entered, was broken away entirely. Sheldi looked behind her and saw a vista of treetops and a winding river valley directly below; the building was perched right on the edge of a crag. The hall was bare except for a jumble of barrels in the vast fireplace and a wooden door at the far end, far too small for the dragon to squeeze through, under the splintered remains of the minstrels’ gallery. Sheldi searched her reeling thoughts for recognition.

  ‘This is the Castle of Crows,’ she said slowly. She had seen it before from the woodland road below; a ruined border keep miles from the city, gutted after the rebellion of its minor lordling decades before. It was said alternatively to be inhabited by bandits or by ghosts; she guessed that now it had become the home of a new legend.

  ‘It is a pleasant place,’ said Oromon. ‘Water and farmland nearby, and deer on the moors beyond. Difficult to approach except by air. Several of your villages in the area. An excellent home for one of my people. I was quite surprised to find it vacant.’

  Sheldi wrapped her arms around herself and stared into its golden gaze wordlessly.

  ‘Are you going to scream?’ it enquired. ‘This is the point when your kind usually fall on the floor crying, or defecate, or jump from the edge. Sometimes your females are drugged, of course, and then they don’t panic until it wears off.’

  Sheldi shook her head and shivered. ‘I’m cold,’ she said. There seemed to be no need to raise her voice to speak to the beast; it heard her whisper well enough.

  ‘Get up and come here, then. I will warm you.’

  Sheldi saw no point in disobeying. She walked over shakily until she was almost within arm’s length of its ribs. She could feel the warmth radiating from its skin, true enough – it was almost comforting, after the flight. She sat down on the floor, not trusting her legs. The dragon regarded her inscrutably, its head propped on its crossed forelegs.

  ‘Have you been drugged, little Sheldi?’ it asked. ‘You are very calm, for a maiden.’

  Sheldi allowed herself a smile. ‘No,’ she told it. ‘But I have drunk so much fear that I can’t taste it any more.’ In truth, she felt light-headed, as if slightly detached from her body, which was buzzing at the extremities with renewed blood-flow. She wondered abstractly if it were true that a dragon’s gaze could catch you in a glamour. Now that she was calmer she could grasp a better picture of Oromon’s true size; she noted that his lower jaw was roughly as long as she was. It was not a comfortable thought.

  ‘Are you a princess, then?’ Oromon enquired. ‘I have heard that it is traditional to offer princesses to my people, though I do not know if I have ever met one.’

  ‘I’m not a princess,’ she said bitterly. ‘I’m standing in for one. The King’s daughter was entered into the lottery with all the other noble maidens, that’s true enough. But when her name was drawn this time the King appealed for someone else to take her place. And I was chosen. It’s possible my father volunteered me – though I don’t know that for sure. I know he didn’t protest when my name was put forward. I expect he sees it as an honour for the family.’

  ‘Ah,’ the dragon hummed, making the lead in the windows quiver. ‘So who are you, Sheldi?’

  ‘I’m no one,’ she said with a slow shrug. ‘My father’s a trader in pepper and horses from the Middle Sea. He’s very rich, for a merchant – richer than most of the noble families in the city, I’d guess – but he’s not old blood. That makes me good enough to be put into the draw to be eaten by a dragon, though not good enough for anyone to want me to marry their son. I go to Court a lot, waiting for some gentleman to propose, but it hasn’t happened. I don’t do anything else. When I was little, my father would take me on his trading journeys, but not since I reached a marriageable age.’ She shrugged again and smiled acidly, before asking, ‘So why do dragons only eat noble maidens, then?’

  ‘We do not. I have eaten all kinds of your people, male and female,’ Oromon corrected her.

  ‘Did you eat the other three before me, from the city?’ she asked reluctantly.


  ‘I did. They were too squeamish and full of panic.’

  ‘Oh.’ Sheldi looked at her feet. She noticed that her fine dress was much the worse for wear; torn now and bedraggled. She assumed that the woven strings of flowers would have fallen from her hair during their flight. ‘Why do people offer you their best maidens, then? It’s always the traditional way, I mean – and it’s what you expect. Like a bargain, almost. As soon as a dragon appears, it’s out with the virgins to the stake, and you’re there waiting.’

  Oromon blinked a long, slow blink before asking, ‘What do you know about dragons, little Sheldi?’

  ‘Well. You fly. You breathe fire. You sleep on mounds of gold.’ She looked around briefly at the bare hall. ‘You get killed by heroes or Saints, sometimes. You live for hundreds of years. And you steal away and eat noble maidens.’

  ‘We steal away females of your kind,’ the dragon said musingly. A wisp of smoke spiralled up from its nostrils. ‘My people live a long time, little Sheldi. I am one hundred and forty-six years old, which makes me only a young male by our standards. It will be another hundred years before I have the size and strength to go and challenge older males in the mating dances, before any female of my people will even look at my courtship. So for a hundred more years I will be alone. I will hunt, and sleep, and perhaps talk to your wizards. They seem to like that. But I will be alone. Do you see the problem? My people have traditions too. One of them is to take away a human of your kind and train her to be a concubine. A substitute for a real mate. Do you understand now?’

  Sheldi, who had thought she was beyond further shock, stared blankly into the dragon’s eyes before turning to look down the length of his belly. She saw no sign of a testicular pouch, but there was a bony rigid penis sheath slung from the soft skin between his hind legs. It was half the length she was. She turned back, appalled.

  ‘Ah, no,’ she said hoarsely. ‘No. I mean, it’s not possible. I mean – you couldn’t even start …’ A blush rose up the whole length of her body like a second skin. Oromon chuckled, the noise throbbing in her bones and adding to her confusion.

  ‘No need to be afraid, little Sheldi; I have no intention of mounting you. Just the opposite, in fact. But you do understand why we take your kind, now. You may be small, but you have hands, and intelligence, and imagination. And you are adaptable.’

  Sheldi stared him in the eye. ‘Is this going to kill me?’ she said, feeling the pulse knock in her throat.

  ‘No, of course not. However, the alternative will, as you can guess. But I will look after you very well, if we are suited to one another. You can have whatever you want, from anywhere. It could be a very happy relationship.’

  ‘I see,’ she croaked.

  ‘Good. If you see, then I assume you have made your decision.’

  ‘Yes.’ She wondered how her voice could sound so flat and calm.

  ‘Stand up, then,’ said the dragon. ‘I wish you now to remove your clothes.’

  Sheldi stood, though it was a long moment before her hands moved to the cross-lacing at the front of her bodice and began to loosen the cords. Every movement was slow, as if her hands were weighted, as if she were trying to give her mind time to catch up with what was happening. She let the stiffened bodice fall open, then slid from it and the thin undershift beneath in one drawn-out motion. The silk pooled at her feet like water. She kicked off her little slippers, then raised her head and stood up straight, feeling Oromon’s gaze upon her naked flesh like a physical touch, conscious of every inch of her skin as never before in her life. Her hair, perfectly straight, fell in a heavy cascade across her shoulders and down the long line of her back to brush the curves of her buttocks. The jewellery at her throat and wrists gripped her gently. She could feel the icy floor beneath her bare feet, the radiated warmth of the dragon on her right side, the small cool breezes that played across her skin and caused her nipples to stiffen.

  ‘Good,’ said Oromon dryly. ‘Tell me, are you considered attractive by the standards of your people?’

  Sheldi looked down at herself, at the firm curves so generous that they were almost a joke. Noblewomen of the city aspired to be tiny and fragile with huge dark eyes. She remembered the barbed ‘She has the physique of a dancing-girl, not of a lady!’ hissed deliberately just within her hearing, a lifetime away. ‘Actually, I’m thought to be too tall,’ she said quietly to the dragon.

  ‘Not now,’ said Oromon, bringing his head in close to her, so close she could hardly avoid touching it. His hot breath whistled around her feet. Suddenly his tongue – forked like a snake’s and pale blue – slid from between the mesh of his teeth and flickered up the taut line of her stomach. Sheldi gasped and put out her hand without thinking on to the scaled ridge between his nostrils. It was warm.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she whispered.

  ‘Smelling you,’ he replied. ‘Kneel down; you will be more stable. It is necessary,’ he added as she obeyed helplessly. ‘My people have excellent hearing and vision, but a poor sense of smell. And the scent of your kind is not very like that of my own. But close enough. Ahh.’

  His tongue brushed across her breasts, moving in and out of his mouth, tracing a path across her shivering skin from throat to belly, exploring under her arms and across her lips. Sheldi shut her eyes and submitted, yielding to the dry, delicate touch. When it slid between her parted thighs, she made no sound, though her eyes flew open. She felt the tip of the tongue questing in the moist folds of her flesh and realised with silent shock how adroit a forked tongue could be at parting and spreading that flesh.

  ‘Open your legs,’ breathed Oromon, withdrawing for a moment, and when she complied he returned to probe deeper. And she was wet, she suddenly knew: soaking wet. His tongue was drawing slick trails of moisture down from her vagina across her thighs and she could smell herself. She flushed with shame. The dragon-tongue slipped into the hot passage of her sex, flexed there and withdrew – Sheldi bit down on a tiny moan.

  ‘Not entirely unpleasant, then,’ Oromon chuckled; then, when she refused to reply, he stabbed again in a teasing caress that jerked a cry from her lips and left her shaking.

  ‘Oh, please,’ she whispered, forced to admit her pleasure as her hips, without voluntary instruction, pressed her aching mound against his reptilian flesh.

  ‘Not yet,’ he reprimanded, pulling his whole head back into the gloomy shadows of the roofspace. Sheldi knelt still, her dignity stripped from her, her mind reeling. ‘Go to the fireplace,’ he told her implacably. ‘There is oil there; anoint yourself.’

  Sheldi rose to her feet and walked unsteadily across to the hearth. She found the oil, golden and nearly odourless, in a barrel, and as the dragon watched she poured cupfuls over her breasts and down her legs, rubbing it in with her hands until she was slick and gleaming from shoulders to toes, pressing herself shamelessly between the legs as he rumbled his amusement. ‘Now come to me,’ he commanded at last, but she needed no telling. She burned with frustration and curiosity. She wanted to know what a dragon’s pizzle looked like. Taking a cupful of the oil with her, she walked across the breadth of the hall to the red wall of Oromon’s belly.

  From the rigid protective sheath his erection was beginning to protrude, white as fish-skin – shockingly pallid against the dark colours of his scaled body – and glistening with its own moisture. Whether it was her scent or his anticipation, she had begun to arouse him, and this made her flush in her turn. Sheldi reached out to touch the pale flesh, feeling it smooth and slick beneath her palm. She poured some of the oil on to the tip and began to stroke it along the length, but more emerged into sight in response to her touch.

  ‘Harder,’ growled the dragon thickly. ‘You must be firm.’ She obeyed at once, pressing and massaging with the heels of her hands, causing him to rumble deep in his throat and twitch his barbed tail. His penis was as thick as her own thigh and not bulbed at the end like that of a man but tapering to a point, on the underside of which was a moist slit. Sheldi
was awestruck. Her oiled hands described lavish caresses down span after span of its turgid length, and the erection jumped beneath her touch.

  ‘Climb up, now,’ Oromon told her. She scrambled on to the ridged sheath and wrapped her arms around the pizzle to hold on as he rolled carefully on to his back. Sheldi found herself yards above the ground, straddling the dragon’s stiff prick, her knees on the hot, soft leather of his belly. The hard, slippery pole under her was as long as her own body now and pointed out like a battering ram. Sheldi had a vivid image of how bizarre it must look, this enormous spear arising from between her thighs, and the thought made her wriggle upon her perch. She pushed forwards with her hands and rubbed backwards with her groin upon the oily surface, working up a rhythm of pressure and motion. Oromon groaned and her head buzzed from the deep tones. Her own open, needy cunt was pressed against the white flesh, hopelessly unable to encompass its girth but yawning and desperate and sliding. Waves of heat passed through her belly; without warning she began to come, frigging herself on the dragon’s huge prick, loving it, exultant, gasping out her release. The pizzle bucked beneath her, lifting her from her footing – she nearly lost her balance and had to lie forwards and cling to it as the shocking vibrations of her pleasure died away.

  She came back to her senses lying face down, draped around the white lance that fitted tightly between her slippery breasts. She looked up the length of it towards Oromon’s head, saw the glow of his golden eyes, his teeth bared in tension. No words came from him now; he was caught on the apex of anticipation, wordless and unthinking as any beast, needing her to finish it. She smiled.

  Then she began to work her way up the length of that prick to the tip, using her whole oiled and sweat-slick body to rub it, wrestling, using the friction of hands and feet and breasts and thighs and groin. She clung to his member as if it were her lover, grinding and mauling. She felt muscular spasms chase through the taut surface of his belly. She reached the tip and pushed her face into the slit, delving with her tongue as she hugged and writhed. She lay on her back, the very end of the prick between her upthrust breasts, her legs crossed over and around it and squeezing, and she dug her nails into the white skin and dragged lines of exquisite pain across the surface.