Spellbreakers (18 page)

“My friend and I were travelling on the road,” said
Leal, trying hard not to stare rudely at him.
“The road to
the Elverlaen, from Nevraan.
But we got lost.”

The little man looked serenely up to her. “I am not
surprised. It is many a year since people travelled that road in any great
numbers. The track is falling in disrepair. The forest is taking it back. The
forest takes everything back, soon or late. Travelers lose their way all the
time.” He shrugged philosophically and resumed his whittling. He was carving a
line of chasing fish along the handle. Every fish bit the tail of the next one,
and the last fish dived in the little pool that would one day fill the ladle’s
bowl. The topmost fish was still unfinished, but it was obvious that its
curled, forked tail would form a hook to hang the ladle by the kitchen fire. It
was an astonishingly beautiful object.

“We were wondering if you could give us a place for
the night,
sir?
And some advice on
how to get back to the road?

“A place for the night?” asked the tiny man
doubtfully. “Why, young sir, I am sure I do not know. Our house is very small,
as you can see. And our stable is too low for your tall horses. We only keep a
few goats and a pony. But I will ask my flower, my starlight. My lady wife,
that is. She will know.”

He got up, brushing tiny wood shavings from his
leather breeches and apron, and set out towards the little house. His legs were
very crooked, and he walked in a funny, shuffling, crablike way.

“Wow, there’s more than a bit of goblin blood in that
one, I bet,” said Daria in an undertone when the man had hobbled away and
withdrawn through the door of his strange cottage.

Leal nodded and grinned, but did not comment. Goblins
were vastly renowned for their wood-carvings. Even in Escarra some of their
work was being sold at markets and fairs as a fabulously expensive curiosity,
never by the goblins themselves, always by travelling dealers. Leal and Daria
had never, ever imagined they would meet such a person on their trip. They
waited patiently to meet the goblin’s wife, quietly commenting on the beautiful
ladle.

After a minute the little man reappeared.
Astonishingly, he was towing a woman so perfectly huge in every direction that
it was a wonder how she could squeeze through such a little doorway; even her
voice boomed out in a low bass, more like a foghorn than like a human voice.
She had extraordinarily long auburn hair, and despite her impressive size she
had a rosy, apple-pretty little face, totally at odds with her voice. She wore
a long loose green dress, large enough and full enough to give the impression
of a moderately large green ship sailing with a steady fresh breeze on its
quarter.

“Why, husband dear, aren’t these the prettiest young
boys we have ever seen? And look at their horses! I have never seen such pretty
horses in these parts, have you, my darling?” She chuckled amiably to herself
and walked out to meet them. She patted them both on their arms, and pinched
their cheeks very affectionately.

“Sweet as peaches.
Never had to shave once, I bet. What pretty boys they
have in the south. Of course they can stay with us tonight, my darling. We have
a nice snug hayloft and food aplenty and to spare. Come, darling, show them to
the hayloft, and bring them a can of water to wash their poor sweet faces. We
will all eat together, and then they can have a good steam bath in the hut
before sleeping. They will leave tomorrow as fresh as daisies.”

As he was showing them to their night quarters, the
little man spoke volubly and at great length about the flower of his life. Her
name was Senija and his was Paavi, and, he said, they lived in the woods all by
themselves because they needed no company but each other’s. He sold his spoons
in the Nevraan’s market twice a year. But his best spoons, which he called
love-spoons, he always kept for the flower of his life. They would see them in
the kitchen at dinner.

Afterwards, as they were all sitting at table in the cozy
kitchen of the cottage, Leal couldn’t say what was more bizarre, the improbable
matching of the two spouses, their open gallant tenderness, or the way Senija
invariably talked to them through her husband, as if such pretty guests could
not possibly be addressed directly.

“Will they take a trifle more of the mushroom soup,
Paavi darling, you think? They sure look half-starved with hunger, the poor
pigeon-doves,” she would say.

“I dare say they might, my flower,” he would answer,
holding an exquisitely carved wooden ladle full of steaming soup vaguely over
the table until they shyly put forth their bowls, out a suspicion that he might
go on and spend all night in that position, else. And so on, with a pie of
bacon and freshly picked greens, a salad of herbs and tart summer apples, trout
baked with bear-garlic and sweet red peppers, tiny round goat cheeses melted in
honey, a blackberry fool, until they were so full that they could not possibly
eat another morsel. The food was simple country fare, but exceedingly good and
nourishing after all those days in the rain eating stale moldy bread and salted
meats. It came with an earthenware bottle of pale dandelion
wine,
and another of red elderberry cordial, because Senija had put on the table
quite a sumptuous feast for the guests.

Finally as the evening grew dark, even Senija’s
ingenuity could not press any more food into the poor starving pigeon-doves,
and Paavi hobbled off to far end of the kitchen garden, on the edge of the
forest, where he showed them a round tent of willow and cured leather standing
all by itself almost at the edge of the forest. Leal had supposed it to be a
sort of garden shed, but as it turned out, it was what Senija had called the
“steam-bath”.

“This is our way to cure all ills, in the forest.
There is water for bathing here, hot and cold. There are these hot stones by
the oven which I have lit before our dinner. On the stones, you will pour this
water, and the steam will draw all the weary humors out of you. These birch
twigs will flog the tiredness away from your muscles. And you will then sleep
like fat winter dormice, so you will. Tomorrow you’ll be as fresh as spring
salmons. And now, I will leave you. My flower awaits me, and the summer nights
are never long enough for us.”

Left to themselves in the hut, in the flickering red
light coming from the brazier, and the slightly brighter flame from the lantern
they carried, Daria and Leal looked at each other and burst in a fit of
incontrollable giggles.

“Well,” said Daria when she could eventually speak
again, “indeed it’s true that there is somebody for everybody.”

They took off their clothes and folded them on a bench
by the door; their boots they had left outside. They were already sweating.
They washed from the basin of water, hot and cold mixed in due amounts, sighing
with pleasure at getting rid of all the ingrained dirt collected in a week of
rough travelling and camping in the mud. When they were done, they sat
companionably by the fire, and Daria gingerly poured a ladleful of water over
the hot stones; the air was immediately filled with hissing steam. Sweat broke
anew from both their foreheads immediately, clean sweat over clean skin, and
for a long time they just sat on the woven reed matting that covered the whole
floor, except for the center of the tent, where the fire pit was lined with
flat stones. It was almost unbelievable to sit naked, warm and completely
relaxed on a clean floor after all those days of rough camping in the wet
forest.

“Oh, dear.
It is
true that I will sleep like a log tonight.
But not yet.
Heaven knows when I’ll be able to see you naked again,” said Daria.

“We did have the most beastly nights this last week
and more. I thought I’d never be warm and dry again,” said Leal pouring another
ladleful of water on the hot stones and smiling to
herself
.

“Wait until we get to Ice Waste, princess,” said
Daria, almost gloomily, and Leal’s smile faded.

“To tell you the truth, I’d rather not think of that
right now. Tomorrow we’ll be back on the road. We have this night to ourselves.
Let’s just be together in peace, like we used to.”

“No arguments here, princess. I actually brought a few
comforts from my pack,” said Daria with a rascally grin, reaching for a bundle
of damp but clean small clothes she had brought.

“Come, princess, I will make you forget about
tomorrow. Turn around.”

Leal moaned softly when Daria’s hands ran on her back,
skimming on the sweat, and, Leal guessed, sweet oil. She rubbed her back
thoroughly for several minutes, until Leal was in a state of perfect relaxed
happiness.

It was hard to remember how wet and cold and miserable
she had been just the night before, and how scared she had been just that very
day, lost in the forest. She was filled with an immense love for life, for the
comforts of a simple, clean home, for their generous hosts and for Daria’s
skilled hands.

After a while, drawing her closer, hugging her from
behind and palming her breasts, Daria kissed the back of her neck and nibbled
her right earlobe. After having her breasts bound for so long, Leal felt their
weight and sensitivity more than ever, and she sighed with pleasure and
anticipation at the touch.

“Kneel,” said Daria in a low rough voice.

“You don’t think that—that someone might come?” asked
Leal with a not entirely unpleasant quiver down her spine.

“Oh, dear, I sure hope so.
Me, for
one.
Kneel.”

She pushed Leal’s shoulders forward, and Leal went
down with her knees on the matting and a growing heat between her legs. Daria’s
practiced hands, slick with dampness and fragrant oil, came to rest for a
moment between her buttocks, spreading them wide and brushing down the crack of
her butt. Then two fingers rubbed her anus, spreading it, not wholly gently.
Between her position and the thought that nothing but a leather flap separated
them from the outside world, Leal felt terribly exposed, opened and vulnerable.

She felt wonderful.

She moaned again, pushing her buttocks back, looking
for a deeper contact, an even rougher exchange. She was disappointed when the hands
left her, and she sighed. She knew better than to complain. She slowly passed a
hand between her legs, feeling her sex with her fingers, scooping up some
smooth moisture from her slit to touch her clitoris.

“How do you figure these things work?” asked Daria
behind her, breaking in her excitement somewhat. Leal heard a swish and a slap,
and she turned to look at Daria.

Daria was casually wielding one of the bundles of
fresh birch twigs that Paavi had left in the hut.

“I gathered that one is supposed to flog the skin with
these, although I don’t see what the purpose is,” said Leal.

Daria slapped her own thigh harder and harder,
obviously trying to get a feel for the thing.

“Oh, I could think of one or two purposes...” she said
in a distracted murmur.

Leal shrugged and began touching herself again. She
just wanted to indulge in the pleasure of warmth, cleanliness, and nakedness
while she could.

A swishing blow caught her across her thighs, and she
yelped in pain and surprise. She turned to look at Daria. She stood behind her,
swishing the green birch twigs around.

“Neat,” she said, and hit Leal again, on the buttocks,
from right to left. Leal cried out, and tears filled her eyes. She went down
flat on her belly in a wholly involuntary attempt to get away from the blows,
but even as she squirmed on the floor she could feel her sex engorged with
desire. She could not even begin to say why. She liked, she had always liked
,
to be bossed around by Daria in bed, and although it had
never come to blows before, it suddenly felt like a natural progression. The
twigs did not hurt, or at least not very much. It was the gesture that shocked
and excited her.

She moaned again, wildly, and spread her legs,
inviting a forgiving caress, or the next blow. Anything would do.

“Kneel like a good girl, Leal. I don’t want to have to
stoop down for you.”

Leal rose to her knees again, and the birch caught her
across the buttocks again, left to right, right to left, and then on her
thighs, right, left, right, left, moving down towards her knees. There were
plenty of green leaves on the birch and that cushioned the blows somewhat, but
there were also sharp scratchy twigs in there. Leal could feel the glowing
stripes left on her skin, and moaned and whined, until a growing knot of shame
and glee made her mute with emotion. Tears coursed down her face more out of
extreme agitation than actual pain. Her slit gaped and contracted rhythmically,
dripping wet.

“Please, oh please,” she whispered, and Daria, hit her
harder, back, shoulders, sides, butt. Leal fell flat on the floor again,
pressing her belly on the matting, squirming and writhing to escape the whip.
And yet, at the same time she rubbed her sex down hard, as hard as she could,
looking for release from the yearning that filled her. She tendered her
submission like an offering.
Take it, take it all. See? I am not your
princess. You can do whatever you want to me. Don’t hold my birth against me. I
didn’t choose our roles.
Except here, now.
This is
what I choose.