Magical sex, romance, and a world in peril!
I'll upload the remaining sections over the next week or so.
Thank you for reading, and your comments are always welcome.
#
Complex carvings adorned the heavy door, but they'd faded over the centuries. It was an old keep, and this was not a prestigious corner. That suited Leo Oakborn all right, but his stomach churned with the familiar dread anticipation.
He traced the patterns one last time, swallowed, and reached for the iron knocker.
"Come," said the bored voice, as usual before he knocked. Leo swallowed, adjusted his underclothes, and hauled open the troublesome door, trying not to let it smack on the stop. Lady Carwen hated that. She hated a lot of things.
A great drooping canopy bed filled much of the room, and Lady Carwen lounged in her ordinary spot. Leo suppressed a sneeze as he entered, closed and latched the door, and bowed carefully. Lady Carwen didn't acknowledge the bow, but she didn't correct him either. It'd been months since she'd given him complaint about that, so either he'd finally learned or she'd given up instructing as his lessons came to an end.
The last lesson, he told himself. Whatever came next couldn't be worse than this. It just couldn't.
Leo knew better, though. Lady Carwen might be cruel, but didn't she didn't take particular pleasure in it. She hardly seemed to care about teaching enough for that. She was a bitter old hag, but he'd heard stories from some of the other boys that made his skin crawl. Then again, he'd heard other stories that left him achingly jealous.
The Lady looked up sourly from her meditation-card. A flick of the wrist, and a faint breeze blew out most of the candles. She still had some talent, though she was far past her prime.
"So," she said, leaving the word hanging. Leo knew better than to speak. Eventually she rolled over, pulling her shift over her head, exposing heavy breasts and the fat nipples that had so fascinated Leo when he'd first seen them. Maybe she was getting old and kind of stretched out, but Lady Carwen wasn't really ugly, not to look at anyway. Not until you spent a few minutes with her.
"At least you're properly erect this time," she said. "Come here and see if you can apply the lessons I've wasted so much time on. Skies above, I hope my next student is less useless. They think they can shove me aside, deny me potent Seed, give me the bottom of the barrel of the trainees, but I could still show them. If I just had the proper Seed, I could show them."
Leo walked forward, feeling dizzy. Suspended smoke and dust made his eyes water, and the horrible bitter taste of the herbs wouldn't leave his mouth. His cock was hard, true enough, though he didn't know how long it'd last. The herbs never worked so well on him as they were supposed to. And they made him so nauseous.
"My Lady's desire?" he asked, trying not to cough.
She rubbed her eyes. "I believe this can be a short session, don't you? I've taken pity on us both and prepared myself. No need to paw me with your clumsy hands and mouth. Just dribble out what you've got and Skies have pity on the woman who gets you."
Stung, Leo nodded. This really was his last lesson, and that was her judgment. Inadequate. He felt the shame boil over him, the feeling competing with the herbs, dampening his body's urges. He pulled his breeches down rapidly, but the Lady had already sensed it.
"Skies, boy, this is a sad performance even for you. Well, go on, then, do whatever it takes."
Blinking tears, he gripped his cock, the motion feeling awkward as always. For two years, this room had been the only place he'd been allowed to touch himself. Ever since he'd reached eighteen and his adult lessons began.
Leo stroked, trying to imagine a kind mistress, like Lady Charlotte. She'd taught mathematics, been patient the way other instructors weren't. And she was pretty. He was sure it would be easier with her. Leo had done everything right, never broken the rules, and this musty room with Lady Carwen was all he'd gotten.
As she'd implied, the Lady was sticky with her own juices. Smell memories filled his nose, the hours spent servicing her enough to couple without causing extra discomfort. That duty had tailed off the past year, and of late she rarely bothered, often simply using oils on whichever hole she picked.
Still, something about it reminded him of the first days, when he'd been young and stupid and imagined that a lustful, potent woman was hiding behind the Lady's stern face. His manhood hardened as he fantasized what it would've been like with Lady Charlotte instead. And then he sensed the tightening in his groin, and a great relief loosened the rest of his body.
"My Lady," he said in his most courteous tone, and climbed on the bed. She rolled slightly, looking vaguely bored.
This would be a good climax, though. He slipped inside her stickiness, hearing her grunt and feeling her shift to accommodate him. Maybe he'd surprised her, stiff as he was. Her curly hairs tickled him, and secretly he'd always liked that sensation despite everything. He'd show her his Seed was valuable after all, and she'd tell the other mistresses that he could eventually be a solid Consort for one of the minor Ladies. That would suit him just fine. And maybe one day, he might be lent to Lady Charlotte. She wasn't at all powerful, but she would touch him gently, and he would give her all the potency he could.
Leo stifled a groan, and felt the liquid fire emerge from his balls. It was the single thing that made his orphan's life valuable: the potential in his Seed, sniffed out by a hedge witch years ago.
The moment came and went, and the fire faded. He dribbled out his weak orgasm in the Lady's sticky folds, and finally pulled away.
Lady Carwen might disdain his Seed, but she wasn't foolish. She quickly brought the cloth between her legs, tipping her hips back onto a pillow, sighing as she greedily absorbed what power she could.
She opened her eyes, and for a moment he imagined them glowing with power. Kit claimed that had happened with Lady Biswan, right before she levitated off the bed, but you couldn't really believe that kind of High-Mage stuff. Lady Biswan would have more than one full Consort if she were that powerful.
The thing with her eyes was a trick of the light. Lady Carwen gestured, and a slightly stronger breeze fluttered the drapes around the bed. She curled her lip into a sneer.
"Out, then," she said. "Your apprenticeship is done. Congratulations, Journeyman-Consort."
Leo stuffed himself back in his breeches, ignoring the unpleasantly cooling stickiness. He bowed precisely one last time. Nothing to give offense. Then he turned and courteously fled the chamber.
#
The lecture hall filled with titters and for once the teachers didn't shush them. This was Matching Day, and everyone knew what that meant.
Everyone except Anya Tur. A year was not enough time to understand the strange social currents here, this rarefied life so removed from home. She missed Mother Zephyr, and she missed Alishe and the other girls, at least some of them. She even missed the dirt and the potatoes. Though not too much, she reflected. They were a delicacy here, served in little porcelain platters, and no one else seemed to understand the humor.
All she really knew was that she would get a Journeyman. A young man who would be a kind of servant, of an intensely personal fashion. The whole idea filled her with no little dread. When they'd brought her here, insisting her talent couldn't be wasted, she hadn't understood what that meant. But as she'd struggled to fill her mind with all the education she'd missed, Anya had often enough seen the young men from a distance, herded by stern women and a few older men.
She had talent, though much less than her sponsors had hoped. But for true power, you needed the Seed.
She sighed, looking sidelong at Lady Jeharia. Her sponsor was aging rapidly, looking five years older than she had when she'd imperiously taken possession of Anya. Behind her and quiet as always, her gray-haired husband. Their family's fortune was fading, and Anya knew they'd lost their gamble on her strength. Sure, she had some talent. But she hadn't mastered any of the disciplines, and it was obvious she wasn't Mage material. At best maybe she'd eke out a life of reasonable comfort on the estate, predicting weather and teaching the children. It sounded like a paradise for Anya, no matter the disappointment of the Lady and her husband.
Still, she'd heard stories of what a Consort with truly powerful Seed could do. High Mages and their Consorts could wield immense powers, holding back the elements by sheer will. A great Consort might even turn a mediocre practitioner like her into a competent Assistant Mage, at least for brief spurts.
Her face colored at the metaphor. The other women had grown up in this world. But at the farming Conclave, she'd only heard the vaguest descriptions about ordinary coupling and childbearing, and nothing about this bizarre world of royal magic a continent away.
Anyway, she wasn't getting a powerful Consort. None of the young women here were ready for that, even though a few of them showed great promise. Those would be the ones with first choice.
Anya was last. In truth there was some doubt whether she'd even get Matched. Until a contract was finalized, more powerful Mages had the right of preemption, though it was only sporadically exercised for a Journeyman.
The audience hushed and a group of men and women entered from the front left. A line of young men followed them, and Anya had to admire their grace. Compared to their teachers, these men walked like dancers, every step just so. They were all different, some hailing from regions even further than Anya. Faces solid or angular, figures slight or muscled, but all of them looking physically fit, with elegant sober tunics and cleanly shaven cheeks.
The air resounded with Lady Montak's stentorian voice, and Anya ignored the meandering monologue along with the rest of them. Instead she scrutinized the men's faces, trying to understand them. Since arriving Anya had been cloistered with the other women, given precious little interaction at all with men. But unlike the others, she had no childhood experience of males either. She told herself these were just humans, a different sex. But to her their expressionless faces might as well belong to carved statues.
Lady Montak finished, and the tittering rose again.
"I can't wait," hissed Prala. "Do you see the one on the left?"
"The red-haired one?"
"No, the one next to him. Look, you can even see it through his tunic."
