Thrall of the Warrior Witch

Chapter Three-2

Jia reached out a hand to each woman, clasping fingers tight.

“Sisters, (for so I call you too Nala, though you are of the Cadre), I say again you may have saved us all, down to the last little child. Wonderfully done. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It is up to us now to follow through, to make this shining possibility a reality.”

Jia gave their beaming one last squeeze before dropping their hands.

“So Elia, what do you think? Is it true? Could the distinctiveness you sensed, the ‘rare burning purity’, be this man’s obsession with suffering for women? This s****l compulsion that seems so unlikely and yet promising?”

Elia was nodding and frowning both.

“It seems probable, mistress. Yet I am not sure. My instinct tells me this is only part of his difference. Yet I certainly can suggest no better avenue to explore.”

Sounds of hopeful agreement came from around the table. Jia shrugged.

“Of course, we don’t even know yet if this thrall will prove as vital as he seems. We will learn that this evening and possibly much more as well. As you know, during the draining I often absorb images, memories, language and other perceptions from the vessel. That may provide us with further insight.

“Since I will be leading the foray to wipe out the death-seekers this afternoon, I will entertain the thrall after dinner. We will do it not in the dungeon or one of the disporting rooms but in my own private bedchamber. Mina, I’ll need a recording crystal and several instruments installed.”

Jia rattled off a list of devices for concentrating exudates, increasing a subject’s suggestibility and augmenting telepathic impressions. She named the restorative or aphrodisiacal potions she wanted prepared and in what quantity and at last turned to Nala.

“You will attend me and no others. Prepare my bed as you choose for us.” Jia grinned back at the euphoria in the girl’s face at all this implied. “Likewise I leave it to you to arrange whatever instruments or implements you think will be most effective. Bring the thrall to my bed when the sun stands three spans from the horizon.”

Jia faced Mina and Elia. “Tomorrow, once I’m hopefully enlightened and empowered beyond all earlier expectations, we will gather the Conclave again. This time I will join you and lend all my strength and talent and understanding as we search across the worlds together. Between us we will find the means to preserve our people!”

As always Jia’s conviction was infectious. Mina nodded decisively, already writing down formulas. Elia gazed at her with the awed reverence reserved for mythic sovereigns while Nala’s adulation was openly erotic as well as inspired. So new to her entourage, these two would now be behind her to the end. Thrilled with how well the meeting had gone, Jia whistled shrilly.

Within seconds her runner appeared, a little girl of maybe twelve sun-cycles whose slender, leggy frame befitted her station.

“Yula, tell the armory I’ll be down shortly and to have my gear ready. Also find War Master Boran and inform him I will lead the foray. I want the best hundred warriors we have available, a third from the local garrison. The people must see their Empress in action!”

“Yes, great mistress!” Fleet as an antelope, the girl galloped off.

Jia stood to dismiss the others.

She stretched and swung her limbs, limbering up her sword arm. Boran wouldn’t like it, and neither would her other advisers besides Mina, what with such crucial matters at hand. But the risk was minimal. And a little taste of battle, even a routine maneuver to wipe out a bunch of lunatics who thought they could keep secrets from Seers, was just what she needed to both distract her for a few hours and whet her appetites for later.

***

After recent excesses Drake slept late – this despite the constant clangor of doors as slaves were herded to and from duties, lodgings or punishment. When he rose at last he used the sewer hole provided. Carefully he capped this and then emptied his bowl and flask. These contained some kind of grain, peas and bird meat along with more of the bitter potion he was sure now was behind the unnatural swelling and roiling in his balls.

By now this was a constant feverish pain that grew worse by the hour. The limited room he once had to erect was history; the pinching was unrelenting now even in his shriveling. Still he never considered ditching the drink, nasty as it was. Deranged as it was, the fealty he felt toward Nala forbid him from disobeying her wishes. In like vein he composed himself to spend the day not in wretched anxiety or malaise but recharging himself for the coming encounter.

Drake was sure as well that it was his last day in the cell.

At the end of their final marathon of frenzied, c**k-locked, mistress-worshipping punishment-s*x, Nala had quit shrieking and stabbing and squirting and collapsed atop him.

Pegged to the floor beneath her, playing the maid in the missionary position, Drake had been surprised by a new shine in those darkly expressive eyes. She breathed to him as if even the mice might overhear.

“Tomorrow, beloved, I must give you up – or share you to the end. My heart will hurt so bad then. My duty to the Empress has never been such a pleasure. I will mourn you forever.”

Teardrops fell on his face and then she was kissing him with an ardor completely outside his experience. Enraptured Drake had only a minute to treasure this incredibly thrilling bliss. He vaguely thought to lower his shackled arms (currently stretched above his head) and loop his lover into an embrace from which she might never escape. Before he could succumb to this impulse though she was out of him and off of him and closing the door behind her.

Earlier she’d explained what a privilege they were both being shown in allowing her to expend some of his energy stoking his frenzy. Along with urging him to drink every drop of his potions, Nala had pleaded for him to harbor and restore his ‘anima’ every way he could.

Whether this was the same prana he’d been attempting to accrue when taken or not, Drake wasn’t about to hesitate. If it helped to prolong the draining days ahead he would fill himself to surfeit with it.

Thanks to Nala, he was further along toward an ‘indestructible sense of well-being’ than he ever could have dreamed. With death, nirvana or both imminent, Drake did as directed. Turning himself into the most effective energy collector he could condense into a single mental image, he settled in to meditate.

***

Motivated like never before, he easily surpassed previous achievements.

Ever deeper into his psyche Drake sank, much deeper than he’d ever dared. Everything swiftly sloughed away. The noisy prison, its foul odors, the discomfort of his wonderfully belt-welted butt sitting on stone all ceased to impinge on him. There was only that one crystalline image originally suggested by Jeff: the impossibly dense center of the supermassive black hole at the core of an enormous galaxy.

He was sucking in all matter and energy with such stupefying force that not a single charged particle within parsecs could escape. Everything in Drake and his vicinity had been reduced to a singularity: that pit of ultimate black exerting an infinite attraction. Eventually he grew unaware of even the pain in his groin and heart, or the remarkable slowing of his autonomic systems. Pulse, respiration, even his temperature had plummeted.

His onboard computer was shutting down all the accessories, running everything on maintenance while the battery of his body charged. All day Drake remained in this nearly insensate, passively receptive state, escaping his otherwise escalating dread, lust and suspense in the process. Only when the door to his own cell finally clanged open did some inner sentry nudge him back to awareness. Was it Nala? No. Sigh.

The same turnkey that brought all his meals had returned with a seeming feast: a great hunk of tender rare beef, a pile of raw yellow string beans, salted potatoes and a flask of watered wine.

This was certainly a gesture not wasted on his fellows, as was the bucket of hot water, cake of coarse soap and sponge provided. Carefully Drake un-kinked his stiff limbs. He did a few exercises to get his system warmed back up, amazed at how refreshed he soon felt.

He bolted his condemned man’s last repast and guzzled the wine, though usually he was a teetotaler. What did it matter anymore? Enjoying the slight buzz Drake returned to the sewer hole and evacuated thoroughly before gratefully scrubbing all the sweat-stink from his naked body. Then, still dutifully following instructions, he returned to meditating, though only lightly. It wasn’t long before the door opened again.

Drake opened his eyes to see lovely Nala entering his cell. Her engagingly shaved head gleamed; as did her teeth. Her big dark eyes were as brilliant as her smile. All heartbreak at losing him had been subsumed by the adventure at hand.

“Thank you for bathing yourself thrall, though I’d have enjoyed the chore myself. Did you feast on the dinner I had sent down?”

“Very gladly beloved. Thank you so much. Is it time for us now?”

“Yes, delectable one. Tonight we join the Empress, and not in some crude dungeon or disporting den. We go straight to her bedchamber, just the two us. You cannot grasp the scale of the honor shown us both, or the stakes at play. Are you prepared?”

“Yes mistress. I will go eagerly to my end for you and your Empress.”

“She is your Empress too now thrall.” Nala unlocked his collar-chain from the wall. “This you must accept in the depths of your soul.”

“Of course. Forgive me mistress. May we go to my glorious Empress now?”

All the week’s cumulative agony in his groin seemed to have returned and redoubled. Drake groaned as he wrestled himself upright.

“Yes my love. We will go to her quicker than you think. I will show you another rare honor granted us, and tell you of more as we go.”

Leading him out of his cell by the chain to his collar, Nala turned not to the barred gate leading back through the slave pens, the way Bill and Jeff had been taken. Heading toward the blank wall opposite she tripped an unobtrusive lever that opened a disguised door in the stone. Shuffling in his shackles, Drake followed his jailor down a narrow dark tunnel. It occurred that he could use his manacles to choke her from behind and he immediately flushed with guilt at the betrayal. Luckily they soon emerged at a nexus of several such tunnels, a large round chamber boasting many entrances. Within this circle was a second formed by a ring of huge standing mirrors, all facing inward so that they bounced infinite reflections of each other back and forth between them. Nala drew him toward the center, where the tiles of the floor made an intricate mosaic describing some creepy occult symbol.

“The Sisters have established this shortcut for emergencies – or the privileges of rank. We will not daunt and exhaust you as usual, or delay the draining by making you climb thousands of steps. Walk to the very center of the pattern with me, where the reflections all intersect. We will feel pain, but only for a moment. Then we will appear high up near the battlements. You may lose your chains and cage and I my harness, it is uncertain when travelling in this fashion. Often objects will not accompany one. I will have your obedience regardless, yes?”

“How can you ask, my love?”

“Duty insisted, though the answer was obvious. Let us go then. Our Empress awaits us, freshly blooded in battle and eager to feed. We will save all of Shatra perhaps, tonight. And though I will soon lose you, I will gain a memento of our momentous time together to savor forever. Only being allowed to bear your child could be better.”

This staggering statement distracted Drake as they stepped into the nexus. Then suddenly he was nauseous like before, his skin tingling, itching, burning! A wave of disorientation came with the peak of searing pain and then abruptly his ears popped and the light changed.