Dagger Through The Moon

I am Darien, magician to the D'Ibelins; son of Jared, magician to the D'Ibelins before me; and grandson of Deter, magician to the kings of the Aquitaine. Can anyone deny my powers after the Horns of Hattin? But, no, no one but me knows of what really happened there in miracle of the stronghold of Belvoir. And that, perhaps, is as it should be. But as I glide across the sky, I look at that brand on my belly of the dagger through the moon and I wonder if the sacrifice was worth the victory.

My master, Hugh d'Ibelin, had been reluctant to include me in the company of horsemen who rode out to parley with the great Saracen chieftain, Umar ibn al-Hakam, almost the peer of the incredible Saladin. But, thanks to my visions, I knew better than Hugh what was at stake, and I had to be there to make eye contact for the magic to work—and I had to be riding the great white steed. The lives of all of those under siege within the walls of Belvoir depended on that, although none but I knew that, or would ever know that.

Weeks before there had been another such parley, one that didn't go nearly as well as this one must if we were to survive. Umar, astride his legendary white stallion, had demanded our unconditional surrender. And Hugh d'Ibelin, desperately counting on relief led by his suzerain, Guy de Lusignan, king of Jerusalem, the Levant, and Cyprus, was trying to play for as much time as possible. He tried to negotiate terms, but, with a laugh, the magnificent beast of a man, Umar, standing head and shoulders above all of his retinue, swept his beefy, hairy arms out wide to bring our attention to the many thousands of Saracen soldiers investing our redoubt on the Horns of Hattin—as if we were not aware of the sea of hateful unbelieving faces ourselves—and boomed out in a commanding and fearful voice that he saw no reason why he need negotiate at all, that he could sweep us away as quickly as a wave from the nearby Mediterranean could sweep away a grain of sand. Hugh huffed that, in that case, why were we even parleying—that both he and Umar knew that many of his forces would be needlessly sacrificed in any attack on the imposing stronghold of Belvoir. Hugh did say, however, that he would contemplate Umar's terms, but that he was wary of Umar's reputation for great treachery and cruelty.

While Hugh was making this blustery speech, Umar's eyes had roamed about those Hugh had brought with him and they had fallen on me—and I knew, without using any of my magician powers, that he fancied me. That was the way that Hugh himself had looked at me when he took me into his retinue.

"Perhaps then, you will be comforted enough to consider the terms wisely and quickly, if we exchange pledges of safety—temporary safety," the Saracen chieftain offered.

"What pledges might you have in mind," Hugh asked, trying to keep the triumph out of his voice. He had no illusions that Umar's forces couldn't easily take Belvoir in it's present condition. But Umar obviously didn't know how dire conditions were in Belvoir now. And any time given to Hugh to stave off attack was time well invested in seeing the lances of Guy de Lusignan's forces appear over the sand hills to the south."

"I would suggest mutual hostages. Nay, honored guests. Say my second son Ahmad for that young man over there? We exchange our pledges briefly for you to come to your senses on surrendering unconditionally." The great and terrible Umar had singled me out. This, much to Hugh's relief, having thoughtlessly included his own first-born son in our retinue.

"Done," Hugh declared and hurriedly pushed me forward lest Umar think twice of the true situation.

As I was being led away astride my horse into the far-flung Saracen encampment and Hugh and his new charge, Ahmad, were racing back to the false safety of Belvoir, I soon saw why Umar had struck this improbable bargain. As we breached the first hill beyond the valley surrounding the Horns of Hattin, I saw that massive structures the Saracens could use to easily mount the walls of Belvoir were being constructed just out of sight of the crusaders' stronghold. Perhaps no more than a week's time and these structures that would tower over the walls of Belvoir and allow Saracen archers to rain death down into the stronghold from relative safety would be completed and ready to be rolled into place. Umar also was buying time to conserve his forces. And it was possible that Umar had better intelligence on the nearness and intentions of the Lusignan reinforcements than Hugh did.

My worst fears of Umar's intentions and appetites were realized that night, when all considerations of my status as an honored pledge of safety were thrown to the wind. Not long after dark I was brought to the tent of the great Umar and stripped and left there standing in the intoxicating smoke from bronze incense burners on thick oriental carpets at the foot of his silk- and fur-covered massive bed. The half-drunk hulk of a Saracen chieftain waved a flock of comely women from his bed and rose off the divan, his manhood huge and throbbing, and took hold of me and knew me as no man other than Hugh d'Ibelin had known me in hours of vigorous and deep-plowing ravishment. The man was insatiable and ever ready. Thrice he entered me in the first hour alone—once in a gagging attack deep down my throat with that monster tool of his, once like a bull on heat from the rear on the carpet beside the brazier, and finally, in a slow, languid discovery and mining of every nook and cranny of my passage as I lay on my back on the rich trappings of his bed with my legs thrust wide to accommodate his rock-solid weapon.

My greatest fear was that I would be put to the sword immediately thereafter if I didn't perish first from the thrusting of that broadsword between his legs, so, for self-preservation, I feigned deep passion for him almost from the beginning of his onslaught. And, if truth be known, after the first moments of the pain of never having been known in such thickness and depth before, I was able to take pleasure in what he could do to me with that magnificent body of his. Hugh's tastes had been highly refined and expansive, and I had learned much of the art of pleasing a man with my body already. I must admit, though, that the Saracens had refined these techniques much farther and that Umar had me in positions and within waves of moaning pleasure that I had never known before. At one moment he was making exquisite love to my body in positions I had never even imagined in my most debauched wantonness, and at the next moment he was brutally possessing me like a rutting animal.

I must have pleased him greatly, because, except for that one brief period that will forever be branded in my soul as it was branded on my belly, he kept me in his tent and in his bed and belabored and possessed by his huge cock for the next three days. The one instance of terror and excruciating pain was when he called for burly guards who dragged me away and branded me on the belly with Umar's own signature, a crescent moon being pierced by a Saracen dagger. I was marked now as his. And not only as his property but as his sex slave, someone he had fully known and possessed. Everyone in the Crusader world as well as the Saracen world would know and understand what this meant whenever they saw that mark.

By the early hours of the fourth day, my youth and inventiveness in matching his love making, much to his surprise and delight, had ascended over him, and he slept the sleep of the drunken drugged and sexually exhausted. All this time the guards at the door had stood there, silent, watching every thrust of Umar between my butt cheeks and into my mouth, every cry of his enjoyment of me. They were forced to stand there, stolid and silent, but I could tell by the rising of their cocks that they were no less aroused by me than Umar had been.

So, pretending to be the lustful wanton, after Umar had been satiated into unconsciousness, I swung my hips saucily over to the guards of the entrance curtain and enticed them into feeding their lust on my body in a shared fuck on the oriental carpets at the foot of the bed, taking me in turn, one from the front and the other from the rear. Out of panic and determination, I outlasted both of these as well, and when they had nodded off, their thirst for my body satisfied and slackened, I stole out of the tent and, as an intended message and as was necessary for the foretelling, boldly made off with Umar's white stallion and galloped through the sleep-laden Saracen camp, across the valley, and into the arms of my Crusader comrades.

I was not to fall into the arms of my erstwhile lover, however. Once Hugh d'Ibelin had seen the brand on my belly, he never again would touch me. He didn't blame me and he didn't mistreat me—if denying me the plowing of my passage when I was in heat couldn't be called mistreatment—but I had become an untouchable, spoiled goods. In a fury, he dispatched Umar's second son to his treasured paradise forthwith, but I had no illusions that Umar had not expected that—or that, indeed, the lad really had been Umar's son at all. And even if so, I had experienced enough of Umar's virility and of the fullness and strength of his flow to known that he had sons to spare.

From that moment, I heeded the visions I had been given of the white stallion and started planning the deliverance of my comrades in Belvoir and my revenge on Umar for his branding of me as his sex slave.

All of that day I conjured up my most powerful spell in the highest room of the highest tower of Belvoir. That night I summoned the moon, and a full, brilliant, yellow moon answered my call. I removed myself to the open platform above the tower, disrobed, spread my arms wide to the heavens, and cried out passionately to the moon.

My passionate cries awakened Umar, as I knew they would—as I had planned for them to do. He stirred in his sleep, alone in his bed, distraught into impotence since I had escaped him that the first lover to ever fully satisfy his needs had flown from him and had insulted him by stealing his white stallion as well. I summoned up for him a vision of my youthful, naked body, well-muscled legs in wide stance on the stone roof atop the highest tower of Belvoir, arms lifted up and out to the heavens, muscles rolling and rippling, and young, strong cock and balls swinging heavily below that brand on my belly. His member stirred for the first time since I had left him, and he could hardly contain it with his hands in its rising at the vision of me. I disassembled in the smoke from his braziers, and he moaned at the loss of me. He looked up, without opening his eyes, and found that his tent had dissolved and that his field of vision was dominated by a full, brilliant, yellow moon, a moon that seemed to be moving closer to him.

Knowing that I had captured Umar's attention from across the crumbling walls of Belvoir, and the empty valley between the warring factions, and the endless tent city of the Saracen forces, I waved my arms and was taken up into the air. As I floated toward the all-encompassing moon, my body was changing into that of a magnificent white stallion—Umar's white stallion.

Umar saw his white stallion racing across the moon, and he raised his arm and tried to grasp his beloved steed with his clawing fists. It was almost as if he could touch the apparition, but that it hovered just outside his grasp, its sweat glistening in the moonlight. He stretched out his arm, and his arm moved toward the moon steed, his naked body floating behind.

He was astride me now, his strong naked thighs encasing my white silky flanks. I could feel his giant tool thicken and lengthen and slide back and forth on my trembling back as we rode the moonbeams across the scuttling clouds. Umar was groaning and moaning for me, wanting to take me, crying of his need to be inside me, to fuck me. I was revealed to him now; I was both white stallion and Darien, the lover, to him now—and he needed me in both my forms. He cried of his need to ride the white stallion and to ride his lover simultaneously, together.

But I would give him nothing until and unless he promised, upon pain of being denied paradise, to give safe passage to boats on the sea to the defenders of Belvoir, every man, woman, and child of them. He tried to overpower me, but I remained the white stallion, beyond reach of his insistent cock until he promised. He wheedled and tried to seduce me with the retelling of how masterfully he had fucked me and how much he knew I genuinely had enjoyed him. I could not deny to myself that what he said was true, but I remained strong against his entreaties by touching the raw edges of the dagger through the moon brand on my belly, the symbol of his arrogance and cruelty. But in the end, he kept some of his own; he offered to let all go except one. And the feel of his strong thighs encasing my flanks and the sliding of that monster cock of his on my back as we dashed across the sky tore at my defenses and I agreed to that condition, knowing I was at my limits of resisting my lust for him.

The deal struck, I turned from white stallion fully into young lover Darien and rolled onto my back under him as we glided across the sky. I spread my legs wide for him, and, with a shout of victory and joy, he thrust his mighty sword up into my encasing and welcoming passage and thrust and thrust and thrust. I met him thrust for thrust, and we entwined and writhed against each other as we became a piercing dagger careening toward the surface of the moon. We both came in a shower of semen that watered the fertile valley between the Horns of Hattin and the Saracen camp, giving new life to the denuded cedar forests there, just as we pierced the moon and sent it shattering in pieces across the sky, dispelling night into day.

When Umar awoke, he knew what he had to do. He summoned Hugh d'Ibelin to another parley, and to the astonishment of Hugh and his retinue, announced that the holders of Belvoir need not surrender or give up their arms as long as they were prepared to march down to the sea under safe passage through the Saracen ranks and embark on boats and leave the Levant forever. The only conditions were that they had to return Umar's prized white stallion to him and that the magician, Darien, had to remain in Belvoir.

Before Hugh could even consider refusing, I nuzzled the white stallion over to his side and whispered in his ear that I was willing to accept this fate but to trust me that all would be well. Then I told him what he needed to offer.

Hugh then agreed to Umar's terms, saying that I would be locked in the high tower of Belvoir and was to remain there until all of his people had been put to sea.

I was duly locked in the tower, under guard by the Saracens' strongest set of eunuchs, Umar no longer trusting me to the care of any man with balls and a seeking cock. And then the defenders of Belvoir started to straggle out of the stronghold gates and down the Horns and Hattin and to the sea. The Saracens honored their pledge of safe conduct, if only because I had declared that I would be watching and would take my own life if Umar showed any sign of treachery. I had charmed Umar so fully that he almost burst into tears at the thought of losing me.

And I didn't dishonor any pledge, either, as I hadn't personally made any in this regard. What I did do, however, was to slip out of the secret passage in the high tower, dressed as an old hag, and merge with the last of the refugees leaving Belvoir. When we were all on boats, I turned my eyes on Umar, sitting with his strong thighs pressing firmly into the flanks of his beloved white stallion, and made sure that he made eye contact with me. When he did so, he let loose with a strangled cry of fury and loss and raced the white stallion down to the sand. But the white stallion would not enter the water and reared up and unseated the great Umar, who fell back on the ground and hit his head on the rocks. As our boats plowed into the waves of the Mediterranean, I watched the great chieftain's retainers gently lift his body and carry him toward the tents.

That night, when we had gained the safety of the Cypriot shores and found Guy de Lusignan comfortably ensconced in his harbor castle at Larnaka rather than leading a relief force across the Levant toward the Horns of Hattin, I separated myself from those celebrating their deliverance by forces they did not know or fully appreciate and stole to the top of the castle's highest tower.

There I once more rendered myself naked and summoned the full, yellow moon to my bidding. As before I rose in the air and floated over the tent of the semiconscious and barely breathing Saracen chieftain, laid out uncovered on the silks and furs of his enormous bed, luxury that he no longer was able to appreciate. He opened his eyes to me without opening his eyes, and his body floated up to mine. I encased his broken body in my arms, and we soared up toward the yellow moon. I took his hand in mine and made him trace the ragged outline of the dagger through the moon brand on my belly.

And then I whispered in his ear. "Remember me. When you mourn the loss of your paradise, remember me."

As we careened up toward the surface of the moon, I pulled his back to me and thrust my cock up inside him, showing him a virility, vigor, and filling possession that no man had dared attempt with him before. Once, twice, three times I buried my cock deep inside him. And he screamed in pain and passion with each gut-depth thrust. With a cry of ecstasy, our arms and legs intertwined and, me holding deep inside him, we pierced the moon, which, as in the previous night, shattered in a million pieces to mark the advent of a new day. This time, however, I pushed the bucking body of the great Umar away from me and he plunged, alone, crying of being held short of releasing ejaculation and clutching for me with his fists, back to earth.

All of the attendants at his bedside heard his death rattle and were perplexed, as they could swear that he had clearly screamed the name of Darien with his last gasping breath. And then with a cry of sheer joy, he shot off a shower of ejaculate at the point of death that covered all in the room and that was the source of many legends of the extraordinarily virile Umar ibn al-Hakam for generations to come.

But I, Darien, was no longer there, nor did I return to the castle in Larnaka or to the side of my now-unwelcoming master-lover. When I released Umar to his fate for his multitude of sins, I once more reformed into the guise of a great white stallion and rode the rays of the sun beyond the moon. And I am still racing across the night skies today in the form of a constellation spied as the form of a galloping stallion with a dagger through a crescent on its belly and named many centuries ago as St. Darien for no reason that anyone but me can now recall.