The Lost Colony

Chapter 15

The two crashed together, their orgasms overpowering any lingering shreds of self control. Sparr's hands seized Lell's hips like a vise, while the slender brunette's p***y clamped and released. A new surge of dampness flooded her.

"Yeah!" Sparr grunted as another shot of c*m ripped into Lell's depths.

Liette twisted before the couple. The blonde tossed her hair and clamped her thighs together. Her orgasm crested as she shuddered and moaned. "Ooooooooooh, f**k!"

Lell pushed back against Sparr's bucking hips, welcoming the last of his seed. She gasped out her release. The two rode the wave of ecstasy together, shuddering and crying out in pleasure. When both were spent, they collapsed in a tangle on the couch, panting and depleted.

Her own ecstasy slipping away, Liette regarded the pair through slitted eyes. Her breath came ragged. She smiled.

"Welcome to the temple."

***

"I'm sorry Efreem, but I really had no choice."

Sparr sat on a three-legged stool at the side of Efreem's bed. The Olm had been propped up against cushions, the better to receive his visitor. The room the Origin had placed him into was cramped, and in Sparr's mind, depressingly dim. Like most of the temple's inner rooms, it lacked any sort of window, instead relying on perforated panels at the top of the door for circulation.

"It's okay," Efreem said weakly. The side of his head where Sparr had struck him with the flat of his blade was heavily bandaged, but his beard had been neatly trimmed. Sparr thought he spotted Phia's handiwork. "I was crazy."

"You were drugged, Efreem. I'm certain of it."

"Yes," Efreem agreed. "The red draught. I can show you the plant when I..." He trailed off, eyes wandering about the tiny room. "What is this place?"

"We're at the temple. The high priestess, Liette, bought us both."

"Bought," Efreem sighed. "Always bought." He turned his attention back to Sparr. "Your language has improved."

"I'm a fast learner," Sparr said, allowing himself a faint smile. In fact, his implant was still learning new words, or in some cases, correcting itself. With attentiveness and daily practice he continued to improve. "Kess is here."

"I thought I saw her. She's nice." Efreem's voice had a distant quality to it. Sparr had been told he was getting better but now began to wonder. The man's dusky skin was dotted with perspiration, which Sparr found odd given how cool the temple's inner rooms were.

"Are many of the Olm sold into slavery?"

"Mmmm? Oh, yes."

"Why is that?" Efreem was one of the few people who Sparr felt comfortable speaking with openly.

"Us?" Efreem seemed never to have considered the question. "No homeland," he said. "And we aren't warriors."

Sparr raised his eyebrows. "You seem pretty good with a blade. Almost killed me, even drugged."

It was Efreem's turn to smile. "We learned in our village. Most of the boys could fight, and some girls. But," his eyes slid shut, "they came in the night, so..." Again he trailed off.

For a time the two sat quietly. Outside the doorway a burst of giggling rose, then subsided. Sparr tried to imagine what it would be like to be born into a life of such uncertainty that even children had to be taught how to fight for their lives. It was beyond his experience.

Something else occurred to Sparr. "The blades we fought with, they were of much higher quality than I've seen here."

"Yes," Efreem said. His attention span seemed limited, perhaps by fever or concussion.

"Well, don't you think that's unusual?"

"Here, yes," Efreem agreed. "Vonde is far from the center. There's less trade here, fewer fine things."

"The 'center'," Sparr said. "Places like Shong?"

"Yes." Efreem raised his eyes in surprise. "Like Shong."

"I thought Shong was a dead city."

"I've never been." Efreem fussed with his blanket, trying to get comfortable.

"But you've heard?"

"Shong is mostly empty," Efreem agreed. "But nearby, there are towns full of marvels."

'Full of marvels' sounded like a marketing pitch that Efreem must have heard repeated. "But only the Origin goes there?"

"Trading caravans go to the center, too, but usually not to Shong itself."

It was as Stef had described. Sparr's best chance to get to Shong would be in the company of the Origin. "Can anyone go?"

"Go where?" Efreem asked. He was showing signs of fatigue.

"With the Origin, to Shong. Can anyone go with them?"

"Oh, no. Only the wealthy get to go."

Before Sparr left he pressed his hand against Efreem's cheek. The man was burning hot.

***

Sparr didn't belong anywhere in the temple.

Though bunked with them, he wasn't welcomed by the princes. All younger, and seemingly consumed by vanity, the youths shunned the older newcomer. They would fall silent when he entered the room, follow his movements warily, then affect peels of laughter as if at some inside joke. When they weren't preening themselves in front of the bunkroom's large mirror, they fussed over their uniforms or exercised in the yard. Sparr had to admit they were a handsome lot, fit and muscular without being threatening. They were, as Liette had said, pretty boys.

The maidens were certainly off limits. Though they giggled or smiled shyly in Sparr's presence, the young women were either kept busy with temple duties or sequestered in their shared quarters. Velyn greeted him once, a sparkle in her eye accompanying a brazen glance toward his c**k. They might have spoken more, but a dour priestess chased the redhead away, shooting Sparr a suspicious look in the process. Like the princes, they were property.

It was in the kitchen that Sparr found welcome. Rounding a corner on the way back to his quarters, he heard a metallic clash and a salvo of curses. When Sparr investigated, he found a woman with Asian features holding a ladle in one hand, and surrounded by no fewer than twenty pots, roasting racks, and skillets, all of which had tumbled onto the well-worn stone floor. She glared at him.

"Have you come to gawk?" she asked, clearly frustrated.

Looking up, Sparr could see that one end of a rack had come loose from where it had been attached to the low ceiling. "I think you were storing too many pots on it," he offered.

"Try to think less," she muttered. The chef was scarcely more than five feet tall. Sparr wondered how she had ever retrieved cookware from the rack.

"Here," Sparr said. He was tall enough to investigate what had gone awry. "Do you have a hammer?"

"Of course, because this is a blacksmith shop. Can't you tell?"

Sparr thought quickly. "What do you flatten cuts of meat with?"

The chef rolled her eyes but returned with a stout wooden mallet. She slapped it into his hand with more force than necessary. "Show us what you can do, big boy."

By now several kitchen helpers, little more than children, had wandered into the room. With the chef, they watched curiously as Sparr felt along the ceiling where the rack had been hung. He found a crevice in the stone and carefully tapped in the wedge of crude metal which served as a bolt. Sparr reattached the rack, but only after lowering it by several links in the chain. He repeated at the other end. "That should hold," he said, "unless one of these troublemakers decides to use it as a swing." Sparr winked at the helpers, who scattered with a giggle.

The petite chef inspected Sparr's work, testing with one of the blackened pots. "You lowered it," she mused. "You think I'm that short?"

"You want me to get you a mirror?"

She rolled her eyes, but there was a smile on her lips. "Help me put them back, then."

When the two had replaced the cookware, the chef retrieved a bottle of spirits from a locked cabinet. "One of the advantages of this job," she said with a smile. "I'm Silla."

"Alain," he said. The two took a sip of the surprisingly complex spirit while Silla eyed him carefully.

"You're the gladiator," she said.

"I'm..." Sparr hesitated, "yes, I'm the gladiator. Not really sure why I'm here, honestly."

"You're Liette's new toy, I'm sure." Silla spoke as if this was a given. "She likes 'em big. Tall, I mean," Silla said, blushing slightly.

The chef wasn't as blatantly s****l as Liette or the maidens, Sparr realized. She wasn't part of the act. "Curse of my life," he said, allowing a hint of a smile to show itself.

"Seems it serves you well," she said. "You're still alive, after all. Heard you took down that Olm, and they say he's faster with a blade than I am."

Sparr realized what was different about the woman. On Earth, distinct racial features were becoming increasingly rare. Centuries of interracial relationships, and the babies that came with them, had steadily blurred the lines between races. On Kaybe however, that trend hadn't held. Silla had obvious Asian features, including high cheekbones, pronounced epicanthic folds, and lips just a touch fuller than was common on Earth. Sparr was intrigued."Where did you learn to cook?" he asked. Sparr took another sip of the spirit. "Not around here. The temple food so far is amazing."

"They get me fresh ingredients," Silla said. "That's at least half of it." Again, the chef allowed herself a modest smile. "But no," she continued, "I learned at my mom's side. Grew up not that far from Shong."

"So you came here for work?"

Silla's face froze. "What?"

"To the temple." He had something wrong.

"No. No Alain. I'm a slave." Silla shook her head. "We all are. Where did yougrow up?"

Sparr groaned inwardly at his own naivete. Every time he thought he had found a free person on Kaybe, he was proven depressingly wrong. "Earth," he said. Sparr had already learned that the name meant nothing to the inhabitants of the planet.

"That fairy tale?" Silla took another sip and pushed back some of the straight, black hair escaping her cap.

"Fairy tale?" It was Sparr's turn to be surprised. The chef had recognized the name.

"Well, of course if you believe it's real..." Silla smirked. She was toying with him.

"It's just that your version of the tale may be a bit different than the one I was raised with," he said. Sparr tried to remain outwardly calm, but scrambled for information. "I'd like to hear yours."

"I'm sure it's the same," Silla said. For a moment Sparr thought the chef would say no more, but perhaps sensing his earnestness, she continued. "For kids to behave, of course." She took a sip. "Stray too far and the Earthies will come and get you!" Silla playfully exaggerated the last part. "So, are you here to take me away?"

Sparr couldn't tell if Silla was flirting or just teasing him. Regardless, his attention was divided. The inhabitants of Kaybe, some of them at least, still remembered Earth. The home planet had at some point become vilified.

"It was the Urst that came and got me," Sparr said. There was no point in asking more questions about Earth.

Silla simply nodded, and for a moment the two drank in silence. Sparr once again considered how readily the men and women he had met seemed to accept slavery as an inescapable part of life. The temple had a few desultory guards, but those, Sparr suspected, were posted more to protect the temple wealth than to keep in the princes, maidens, cooks, and laborers.

"What are the scrolls that the priestess hands out?"

"The 'wisdom'?"

"Yeah, they're drugged, right?"

"Oh yes, very" Scilla said. "It's half an hour of bliss, of forgetfulness. You're not in the temple, you're not on the planet, you're not even you." Her face had a distant look. "They gave me one once, a reward for cooking all night for a temple feast that just wouldn't end. I knew immediately, if I ever had another one, I'd be addicted." She sat back. "Fortunately for me, the temple doesn't share them lightly."

"I saw some in town, at the arena." Sparr remembered the Governor offering one to Liette.

"Those?" Silla poured herself and Sparr another drink. "They're nothing compared to the ones the temple makes."

"The temple makes them?" Sparr wasn't sure why he was surprised; prostitution and drugs had long been partners.

"Yes, apparently the secret is known only to the priestesses."

"They make other drugs here, medicine maybe?"

"No, they... oh. You're asking about your friend, aren't you? The Olm."

"Yes, how did you-"

Silla cut him off. "Please," she said. "All gossip passes through the kitchen. Although, I think it's odd that he's your friend and you almost killed him."

"It's complicated," Sparr said. "They gave him the, uh, 'red draught'? Anyway, he almost killed me, too."

"Mmmm," she said. "Yeah, that'll turn a friend against you. And no, nothing that can actually heal the sick gets made anywhere in this town."

"Well s**t. I really need that pack."

"What? What pack?"

"Oh," Sparr said. He hadn't meant to mention his supply pack. "A bag. I had it with me when I was captured by the Urst. Has some medicines in it."