Cruel Enchantment

by Janine Ashbless

  My mouth was dry. The moon-lines encircled her breasts, emphasising their roundness, and radiated from her small nipples like star-bursts. She moved in a graceful dance about the circle, her hands describing elaborate passes, her naked breasts and buttocks wobbling gently with her motions. You might easily cover each of those small breasts with a hand. They would be as warm and soft as doves. The head of my member was swollen like a plum now and its shaft stood up erect as a tent-pole under the coarse cloth of my vestments.

  She finished another rotation and without warning loomed close to the field of my view, her moon-washed torso and then her face filling my chalice. Her eyes were wide and filled with light, the pupils dilated, and her lips were softly parted, shaping unheard syllables with a caressing action that made my stones burn. She gazed into the silver basin of her own ritual circle and I gazed back, so close to her despite all the miles that I might have leaned forwards and kissed her. I could see the pulse beating in her throat. My loins tightened as if they were ready to burst.

  A thunderous knocking sounded on the outer door of my chambers and shattered my concentration. I jumped like a guilty boy caught spying on his sisters and wrenched my gaze from the chalice.

  ‘Lord Magus!’ the voice of a guard roared from beyond the door.

  The image in the chalice had gone. There was nothing in the silver cup but water and a drowned flower.

  ‘Wait,’ I croaked. I was unable to risk further speech. I rose to my feet, ignoring the furious remains of my erection, and gathered my concentration. Raising a ritual circle is like dragging a heavy net full of weeds and fish into a very small boat; it is done slowly and with a great deal of effort, and releasing the net once more must be done with equal care, or else you will find yourself pulled down into the depths with it. I dismissed the circle as quickly as I safely could, then threw a heavy cloak about me. Only then did I go to the door, forced to leave the accoutrements of my rite scattered about the inner room.

  The guard shrank back a little from me as I flung the door open, which was mildly gratifying since he was somewhat taller than I and wider at the shoulder – I never quite lose the satisfaction of moments like that, however childish it might be. His meaty hand tightened around the halberd he carried.

  ‘Interrupt another ritual like that and you’ll spend the rest of your days as a frog,’ I told him.

  ‘Lord Magus,’ he muttered: ‘Forgive me. The Baron of Chedzoy requires your presence in his chamber straightaway.’

  I pulled on some clothes and reluctantly followed him through the castle to the Baron’s private rooms, which filled the southern face of the keep and were thus the warmest in the building. I was shown in past two more guards and bowed low before my employer.

  Chedzoy was wrapped in a fur-trimmed robe and stood before a perch on which a hooded gyrfalcon stirred uneasily. White bird-droppings spattered the floorboards beneath it. The room was warm – the fireplace was ablaze, despite the season – and smelled of male sweat. The curtains of the great bed were drawn closed, presumably to shield his wife from my ignoble gaze.

  ‘Fine creature,’ said he, stroking the falcon’s breast-feathers. I was not expected to answer and I waited patiently for his attention to drift in my direction.

  ‘Julian,’ he said at last.

  ‘My lord?’

  ‘A good day’s hunting, but I lamed a horse. The bay gelding. You’ll go down to the stables and cure it.’

  ‘Of course, my lord,’ I agreed.

  He turned his pale eyes upon me. I wondered how such a bland face could be so disagreeable. ‘Have you seen to the Pedwell witch yet?’

  ‘I have made enquiries, my lord.’

  ‘She is a witch, is she not?’ he said pointedly.

  ‘She may well be.’ My reply was guarded. I had seen no evidence that she was not – but then I could not imagine what such evidence might be. ‘I think she may also be an Immaculate, my lord.’

  ‘What in the Hell’s that?’ he asked.

  ‘A Religious, my lord.’ Like the Archbishop, I added mentally. His ignorance appalled me. ‘She may have vowed herself to Gwydion; sworn abstinence from certain things. Iron, for example.’

  ‘So?’ His sandy eyebrows rose.

  ‘They are very powerful, my lord. It may be difficult for me to confront her – and impious, at that.’

  Chedzoy tugged irritatedly at the falcon’s jesses and the bird took offence, flapping its wings. ‘I didn’t employ you, Julian, to tell me that maybe you can’t deal with problems. I want you to get rid of the witch. If you can’t, I’ll send for someone else.’ His half-snarl showed a row of rotten teeth.

  I bowed very carefully. ‘I will see to it at once, my lord,’ I promised.

  ‘Good. You may leave. Don’t forget the horse.’

  I went down to the stable bristling like a cat that had landed in mud. I was already beginning to rethink my prospects with this liege-lord, though I had in law no right to refuse his commands or shrug off his authority. My attitude infected the gelding, which despite its swollen fetlock danced nervously around its stall in my presence and would not let me examine the injury. Horses generally do not like the feel of magic and this one could smell my ill-will. I had to raise up a circle in the corner of the yard and cause a groom to lead the beast within – I did not bother with the proper tools of my art for such a simple rite, making do with the silver knife I carried at my belt to inscribe the pattern in a layer of mud, and a wooden bowl of well-water, and letting the outdoor setting compensate for lack of fine detail – the man holding its head tight while I worked my way along its flank to within touching range of the injured leg. The beast tried to kick me even then, but I forced healing into the ungrateful animal and backed out of range without too much loss of dignity. My pride was already smarting badly.

  Of course, if I had been aligned to Darkness too I could have charmed it to absolute obedience.

  I retreated from the awed but nevertheless untrusting admiration of the grooms to the Great Hall in search of food. The household had eaten their evening meal just after sunset and the tables had long been cleared. I found a servant scraping the wax from the sconces for remelting and sent her down to the kitchens to find me dinner, which I ate alone sitting next to the embers of a fireplace larger than my own bed. The repast – what remained after the servants had made their own meal from the leftovers – consisted largely of bread and congealed cider gravy, with the pickings from a fowl carcase, but I had hardly eaten anything all day and I finished it with a will. Nobody waited on me, but nor would I have been welcome in the kitchen. I fell between the two poles of the household, neither servant nor nobility, and in consequence I was forced to become familiar with my own company.

  I was tired too, I realised as I recognised the melancholy stealing upon me in the echoing gloom of the hall. My sleep had been patchy recently; it is one of the obvious yet curiously disorienting results of being a nocturnal mage. I climbed at last to my bedchamber, praying that I would not be needed further that night.

  But my rooms had been invaded. I noticed the smell before I could make out anything by the light of my small cresset-lamp; a sweet hedgerow scent partly rank but mostly floral. My rooms were full of roses. I sagged in the doorway and began to laugh weakly. A vast tangled wave of briars, rootless yet in glorious health and full bloom, sprawled through the doorway from my ritual room, heaped right up to the lintel, swamping most of the furniture except the shrine. The inner room was totally inaccessible, the outer room held by the vanguard of thorns. Serrated leaves glinted glossily in the lamplight. The air was full of moths feeding on the open flowers.

  It was the rose I had left in the chalice.

  I shook my head, not wanting to believe what I saw. Galiena’s message was very clear: I know you have been watching me; now see how I turn your tools against you; see the strength of my art that I can grow briars from air and stone without even being present. Flowers and thorns. It was an open threat, yet it was
also extravagantly beautiful.

  And it cut me off from my circle and my tools. If I wanted to dismiss the enchantment, I would have to stretch myself to the limit.

  I paced the room as best I could, considering my options, and in the end elected to do nothing that night. Though there were hours of darkness left, exhaustion already had a claim on me. I made my way carefully to my bed which was only partially covered, crushing a few outlying tendrils underfoot, and then cut away enough of the stems to allow me to sit down upon it, and even to lie at a pinch. My head was thumping. Galiena had me worried and impressed, but I did not anticipate her launching a direct attack so soon after her symbolic challenge. Or at least, that was my hope. Kicking off my boots, I stripped and crawled under the blanket and was asleep even before I had pulled in my feet.

  I woke with the early morning light streaming through the window over my bed. The sun was rising behind a wall of summer mist, filling the world and my chamber with a brilliant white luminosity. Little tendrils of fog drifted across the flagstones. Dew had dampened my blanket and my pillow and left tiny droplets in my hair. There was no sign of the roses of the night; they had faded to nothing with the dawn.

  I hardly had time to notice this and to stretch out flat across the reclaimed expanse of the bed when the inner door to my chamber opened and Galiena walked in. She was naked but for the ash-drift of her unbound hair and the blue filigree of tattooing on a skin white as moonlight itself. Her eyes were hard, but her mouth twisted in a smile when she saw me.

  I was struck dumb and frozen motionless with shock. I could not react even when she reached the side of my bed and looked down on me.

  ‘Chedzoy’s dog,’ she sneered. Her voice was soft, nonetheless. She reached for the blanket and drew it from the bed in one motion, dropping it at her feet. I think I raised my hands in silent protest. And my prick moved too, stirring to life under her gaze with a wrench so sharp it was almost painful. Her glance was not modest; it was cool and appraising, conducting as harsh an examination of my supine form as it had of my character. She raked her glance down my body from head to foot, taking in all from my startled face to my chest with its delta of black hair, down the flat stomach bisected by a line of hair that flared into the thicket of my groin – lingered there while my prick quivered and thickened visibly – and then travelled on down the long stretch of my legs right to my toes. I felt self-conscious about every inch, even my entirely neat and inoffensive feet – but she did not seem displeased. Her smile relaxed a little. She laid one hand upon my burgeoning member and it leaped under her touch like a hound greeting its mistress. If it had been a dog it would have fallen fawning at her feet – if I had been a dog, so would I.

  I groaned like a stunned ox, and stared helplessly as she slipped her hand around my shaft and caressed it from root to tip.

  The smile, still not entirely gentle, suffused her face further. Still stroking me, she sank down on the edge of the bed, laid one finger on my lips and then explored my face with her free hand; my short beard, the stubble on my cheeks, the soft skin of my throat. I could not have resisted even if she had produced a knife and cut my jugular. Her left hand cupped and weighed my quivering ballocks, pulled tenderly at my hairs, then slid up and down the rampant length of a prick that was now harder than rock and hotter than fever. I felt like the giant of Cerne Abbas. I spread my thighs further and pushed up into her kneading grasp.

  She bent over my face. Her lips brushed mine, very softly. Her hand, relentless, worked my long staff. I felt her breath mingling with my own, tasted her warm mouth. I could move now; enough to pass one hand up to the back of her head and pull her against me, our tongues melting together in a warm, hungry, terrifying dance. Her hair was thick and soft under my palm. Joy stabbed through me so sharply that it hurt.

  Then she pulled away, ignoring the pressure of my hand, leaving my lips bereft. Her expression was heavy-lidded and grave. She kissed my face and my chin and my throat, began to work her way down my body with her mouth. My skin was cool; her mouth felt like fire, her tongue like a salamander though it left a cold trail across my flesh. She tongued my flat, sensitive nipples until they hardened to hailstones and I writhed under her touch; she tugged my chest-hair with her teeth; she blazed a trail down my breastbone and belly and licked a tickling, tormenting path around my navel. My right hand was entwined gently in the abundance of her hair. It fell like a living fountain washing across my skin, cold and warm all at the same time, soft as nightfall, puissant as moonrise.

  The bell in the castle tower began to toll the hour.

  Her lips joined her hand at my prick. I nearly wept with pleasure; I know I did cry out. Her hot mouth slid over the turgid bulb of my member, pushing back the velvety foreskin, her tongue stroking the ridges and the furrows. She took me all the way down into her throat, sliding me into the moist velvet tunnel, then eased me out again that she might whip the most sensitive tissues of my prick to a frenzy with her tongue. She sucked and she licked, her head rising and falling at my groin, her every breath dragging in my scent, her hands stroking my thighs and balls. She was unstinting and ravenous. My shaft glistened with her saliva as it emerged into and receded from the light. My right hand raked across her scalp, stroking her hair but also pushing it back so that I might better see her full lips distended on my gleaming rod. Blood was racing through my veins; fire building in my loins. The bell rang for the fourth and last time in my head.

  She was more beautiful than any woman I had ever seen. Her right breast was just within my grasp as she kneeled over me. I slid my left hand down and that warm, perfect globe nestled into my palm. My other hand tightened on her scalp. My muscles locked, only my pelvis thrusting as she forced me unrelentingly to my crisis.

  The air was filled with the scent of roses. An owl cried.

  A single moment from my climax, in a white-hot blur of desire and panic, I wrenched Galiena’s head from my groin and threw myself across the bed.

  I regained my reason to find myself lying face down, the blanket wrapped around me in a strangling grip, my feet thrust into the briars that framed my bed and my calves on fire with a thousand bloody scratches. It was dark, with that steely luminescence that comes an hour before sunrise, and I was alone. I had always been alone. She had never been there. My own hand was on my straining erection. My body was a lather of sweat.

  I thrust my face into the mattress and groaned in torment. Then I rolled over on to my back again, stripping the knotted blanket from my hot limbs. My prick stood like a megalith, in an agony of denial, but though I kept it in a firm grip I did not dare give it the relief it demanded.

  Galiena! The bitch had walked in my dreams …

  Had she not?

  I pushed the sweaty hair back from my eyes and tried to think straight. No man thinks best with his prick and mine was staging an open bid for control. I struggled to reassert mental dominance over my mutinous flesh.

  It would have taken the utmost arrogance for her to dreamwalk with me; it would be an admission of guilt so blatant that it could only be interpreted as a challenge to the death. I tried to focus on any lingering trace of Darkness in the room, but my nerves were so much on edge, my thoughts so deranged, that I did not have a hope of detecting such a delicate spoor. Moonlight was chasing across my skin and singing in my pulse; it compounded my lust and made self-denial almost impossible.

  But not quite. Despite the throbbing in my balls I kept my hand still and my mind active. If she had come dreamwalking, then why like this? To torment me? To humiliate me? To cripple me in the last hour of night so that she could launch some more deadly attack? That thought was not pleasant. Nor could I wholly believe it; I did not think our meeting had been so hostile as to warrant all-out war. If it had, she would not have wasted her energy on sending me roses.

  Probably she meant it as a warning: See how powerful I am; even without your tokens, I could find you. And to mock me. To point out how easily I could be fooled and trapped.
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br />   Oh shit, thought I. My prick struggled in my hand like a wild creature. I had experienced orgasm during my time of empowerment only once, when I was at college and young enough still to be testing the boundaries. I suppose most novices try it out at some point – all except the truly holy and the truly ambitious, of course, among whom I did and do not number. The experience had been terrifying; physical ecstasy beyond description, a period of unconsciousness, and then waking shaken under the moonlight bereft for the first time of even the residue of power. And blood everywhere. And it had felt like I was pissing fire for a week. I had heard of some mages who found the experience addictive, but after that I had always shrunk from temptation during the night.

  Galiena’s tactics were below the belt, to say the least.

  Unless of course, it had not been her doing after all. Perhaps I was blaming her for my own lechery. Perhaps she currently slept the sleep of the innocent, and it was my own arrogance that flattered me with the illusion of her presence.

  I gritted my teeth and stared at the ceiling.

  I could do nothing until dawn – and I did precisely that, though it seemed like the night was crawling away at a snail’s pace. But there was no chance of me dozing off again and I had to wait it out, moment by agonising moment, my hand clenched so firmly around my erection that I started to suffer cramps in my forearm. I have never been so glad to feel the sun rise, to feel the power ebb from my bones, to know that I was only a mundane man and thus free again. With a groan of relief, I let my hand sink to my shaft-root and slid it up to the tip again, squeezing the foreskin closed over the swollen dome, pulling it back so that the tight cowl rubbed life into its neglected head. My own moisture quickly seeped out from its leering slit to lubricate my knob-end and my hand found a glorious rhythm, seeming to fly over the crest of my prick. My other palm hefted and caressed my balls. The image of Galiena’s pouting mouth stuffed with my hot meat filled my inner vision, and my hand became a blur, and in a very few instants I thrashed and stiffened under the blows of the most savage, satisfying, mortal climax. My come splattered my belly and chest with wet bombardment; four jerking spouts of moon-pale seed falling upon my skin.