The Emperor's New Pony (13 page)

“Why must I call his wrath down that way?”

“Because you are going to be the spark that lights the fire.”

Chapter Fourteen

Ranin came to get Edera from her stall just as the horns of sunset were blowing for evening worship at the temples throughout Maq. As soon as the sun touched the horizon, the horn on Cape Maq-li was blown, and then every horn at every temple in Maq blew the call: let us give the gods their due—come and sing with us of the great palace of the Maqian gods, up in the sky. Edera rather liked the sound, and the idea of it—so different from the new moon feasts of Amidia, when they followed the old Aurian custom of greeting each new moon with a bowl of ale poured out to moon and sun by the prince, and then a meal of mutton.

He did not give her permission to speak, so she did not; then he had put her bit in her mouth, and after that she could not. Edera had come to feel very strange about the silences that made such a great part of life as a filly. As the princess of Amidia, when she had wished to speak, every other voice was silenced. She had never considered what the knowledge that if she cared to deliver her opinion on any matter, every man and woman in the principality had to listen respectfully, had done to her. She blushed now to think of the silly things she had said. Now, she was unable to speak when she had the bit between her teeth, and she was not permitted to speak without permission at other times, upon pain of the quirt on her bare bottom. Every word she uttered seemed to count, whether whispered to her Amidian sisters—as she and her ladies-in-waiting had come to think of one another—in the night or spoken when one of the stable men had given permission, usually for the purpose of assessing Edera’s health.

And the silence otherwise seemed somehow to free her to feel everything a princess turned into a filly must feel. If only she could confess that feeling to Ranin, her wonderful counselor and her marvelous trainer, along with the other feeling—the one about him—everything in Maq would be strangely perfect, as long as she could hear that her people were safe and prospering from the trade that Ranin had said would flow in with the legions.

Where was Ranin taking her on the lead he had hooked to her collar after he had gotten her into harness? He seemed preoccupied, and Edera suddenly wished she could smooth his brow and tell him that she, at least, was fine—the same way he seemed to tell her that he was pleased, when he patted her bottom to praise her for a perfect canter. Gods help her, but she loved it when he did that, though it would have been unthinkable in Amidia. It made her think of the night he had spanked her, and that always made her blush, but in a sort of lovely, happy way.

Or… when he had ridden her, before the emperor the day before, and he had stroked her cheek and patted her shoulder. Feeling Ranin control her like that, firmly in the saddle and tugging gently but authoritatively on her reins, had made her so warm and wet between her legs that she thought she would die if he didn’t soothe her. And he had soothed her after he brought her back to her stall and took the saddle off, but just a little—not enough to make her feel that wonderful thing that had happened the night before, after the spanking.

Ranin led Edera across the yard to the steps that led down to a door that never seemed to be open. Because her hands were bound at her sides, she had a little trouble balancing on the stairs, so Ranin put his arm around her shoulders to guide her. Edera turned her face to look up into his, self-conscious for the first time in several days about what her face must look like in her bridle, bound in leather to show that she was a filly who was treated as a filly, and had to wear bit and bridle like a filly so that men could control her properly. Ranin looked back, and despite the very serious look upon his face, he gave her a quick kiss on the brow.

Then he lowered his head and put his mouth against her ear. “My princess, what will happen through this door will be very difficult to bear. I beg you to trust me, and to believe that I am making plans to save you.”

Edera felt her eyes widen in alarm, and she forgot about her bit for a moment and tried to speak. When she heard the mangled sound that came out, she felt herself flush.

Ranin kissed her on the forehead again and said, “We must go forward.”

The door opened.

* * *

Lord Qartin showed Ranin and Edera to their place in the very front row of the strange, enormous room. The only thing like it Edera had ever seen was the field of honor in Amidia, where her grandfather had built great wooden banks of benches, rising to twice the height of a man, so that the people could watch the races and the jousts. This place, which she heard Lord Qartin call the arena, resembled the field of honor only in that it had the same kind of banked seating, but everything else seemed to Edera like something out of a dream.

The underground chamber was lit by torches placed all around the walls and down the aisles. That at least explained the black smoke that came from the chimney at the side of the imperial residence every fifth night. Those aisles ran down between banked seats upon which sat the lords and knights of the imperial city, dressed in fine robes. All of them, or nearly all, had serving girls at their feet, and some of those serving girls had already opened their companions’ robes to suckle at the cocks they had revealed, as the men so pleasured chatted with their neighbors. Were there a hundred lords and knights? Two hundred? It was very difficult to tell in the smoky darkness.

The strangest thing about the arena, for Edera, was its shape: a perfect circle of those banked seats, sloping down to a circular floor, made of wood, and—to make her disquiet complete—revolving slowly, turning upon some invisible mechanism. The motion of that floor made Edera queasy the first time she looked at it, as Qartin led them down the aisle, and so it was only when she was herself seated, like one of the serving girls, at Ranin’s feet, that she turned to look at the figure and the furniture on the stage, whom she had only glimpsed briefly when they first entered.

She saw Sir Lennar first, and felt a deep blush spread from her face down to her chest when she realized that he had turned his face to look right at her, as the turntable revolved, slowly taking his front away from sight and showing the back of his wooden seat. He had not seen his princess fitted with bit and bridle yet, Edera realized. The captain of her honor guard wore on his haggard but still handsome face a look of shame that must, Edera thought, match the one she had worn when Ranin had arrived in Maq to find the ladies of Amidia naked but for their harnesses.

And then Edera grasped that Sir Lennar was bound at elbows and ankles to the chair on which he sat, and that he was dressed only in a breechclout. After that, she saw that the two matched devices that stood side-by-side in front of Sir Lennar, perhaps three paces from his chair, were mounting saddles like the ones in the yard.

Edera’s heart seemed to be trying to pound its way out of her chest. What was this? What was going to happen? Ranin had not lied when he said that it would be very difficult to bear, for it was already so, and Edera did not see how it could do anything but grow more difficult.

Suddenly, from the aisle opposite the one where Edera and Ranin had entered, a blast was blown on a trumpet, and the emperor entered, with Lord Qartin on his right hand and on his left, Lord Haq, the lord chief marshal of the imperial legions, dressed in fine court robes and so for a moment unrecognizable as the man who mounted Salana of Muad—with whom Edera had become fast friends—and came to ride and mount her regularly wearing only a tunic and breeches. Behind them walked Master Morqan, also in court robes, but Edera would recognize him in any costume, she thought. She felt a complicated rush of affection for the man who cared for his fillies as pampered, if degraded, possessions.

The emperor sat, and Lord Qartin took to the turntable floor, assuming a position standing behind Sir Lennar’s chair. The crowd quieted, and all Edera heard for a moment was the creaking of the device that must lie beneath the chamber and a soft wet sound behind her that must be a serving girl sucking a cock. To her shame, Edera realized that the sound made her mouth water, and she suddenly longed for Ranin to open his breeches and let her do the same to him. She turned her face up to look at his serious, handsome visage, framed by his long dark hair. He looked intently at Lord Qartin and he was tugging at his ear, which surprised Edera because Ranin usually possessed such a quiet repose that she would never have expected him to make such a nervous gesture.

“Tonight,” Qartin declared, in a voice that echoed through the vast underground chamber, “we shall see a performance from the empire’s newest possession!” A cheer rang through the arena, until the emperor waved to acknowledge it, beaming at all sides of his gathered court.

“Yes, all the way from Amidia,” Qartin went on, “where the men love to mount their fillies more than anywhere else in the world, as we hear!” The court laughed and applauded.

The turntable had brought Sir Lennar back around. On his face now was a look of stoic regret. Edera realized that he must have no more idea than she did what was about to happen here in this terrible theater.

“Tonight, the man who was the captain of the princess’ own honor guard, Goodman Lennar of Amidia here, will show us exactly that. But he will also show us something of the Amidian character, for Goodman Lennar will have a terrible choice to make.”

Edera saw a look of surprised dismay come across Lennar’s face for just an instant. She could not help feeling desperate sympathy for him, though she had to admit that she harbored a secret thought that he had been foolish not to agree with Lord Ranin that Edera should never have gone to the parley with the emperor.

Something about the way Lord Qartin spoke, at the same time, had another effect on her. The shame of the situation, and the sight of Lennar’s strong, nearly naked body in the breechclout that seemed to heighten Edera’s dreadful curiosity about what his cock looked like—the cock that both Alira and Melisan had felt, and of which they had professed great enjoyment—and the mounting saddles placed there on the floor to be occupied, she was now sure, by her Amidian sister-fillies: Edera felt that she should be glad her hands were fixed to her sides, for otherwise she knew she might touch herself, and shame herself that way.

“Let the Amidan fillies come in!” Qartin said. And the door through which Ranin and Edera had come—through which, Edera thought, only they had come thus far—opened, behind and above, and the stable boys led in Alira, Melisan, and Adilan, in full harness and ready for the mounting saddle.

None of the Amidians had been assigned to a lord or a knight yet, nor had they been fucked in their cunts or bottoms since Master Morqan had had Alira’s backside at wash-down on that second day, when Ranin had arrived. They had all given regular mouth service to the stable boys, but they had wondered why no other man had had the privilege of covering them: Alira with frank frustration, Adilan with nervous excitement, and Melisan with resignation. It appeared to Edera now that the reason had been that the emperor planned this arena show.

As the stable boys led the Amidians down the aisle toward the turntable, Lord Qartin continued, “One of these girls will have her honeymoon night here before you, tonight in the arena. Another will wish she had been chosen for that privilege. The third will serve as an assistant to the lucky bridegroom and to her friends, with her sweet mouth and fingers. Let Melisan and Adilan of Amidia be fastened to the mounting saddles, and let Alira of Amidia have her bit and wristlets removed, for so the great emperor of Maq commands!”

Alira was put on her knees between the mounting saddles and Lennar’s chair, while onto the saddles went Melisan and Adilan, bottoms high and faces low, leather blinker flaps at either side of their faces keeping them from seeing anything but the floor. Of those two beautiful young women he had brought down the ascent to the ambush, black-haired buxom Melisan and chestnut-haired Adilan, Sir Lennar could see now only the shapely bottoms, bound by the harness straps that framed their black tails. Now the stable boys removed those tails, to the squeals of the girls whose bottoms they had graced.

The boys tucked the tails into the special place on the side of the saddle that displayed the tail but did not permit it to interfere with a man’s view of cunt and bottom hole ready for his cock. Reins were also affixed to the girls’ bridles and laid over their backs, so that Sir Lennar could enjoy that aspect of his fucking, if he chose—as most lords and knights did, making their fillies arch their necks while the cock drove into them.

“When we unbind this man,” Qartin said, “he must choose: he must whip one girl, and fuck the other. If he does not, as you can guess, my lords, the girls will suffer much, much more greatly for it.”

Chapter Fifteen

A mewling went up from the mounting saddles, which came very pleasantly to Comnar’s ears. The news that their precious toy knight would have to make the choice of which way to shame each of them was apparently not to their liking. Well, Comnar thought with a smile, as he looked across the turntable at Ranin and Edera, whose eyes were very wide, they would change that quickly enough.

“Does it seem to you,” said Lord Qartin, “that these fillies would rather not undergo the ordeal of our arena, my lords? I assure you that we have the cure for that.” He shifted position and rested his hand on the top of Alira’s head, stroking her beautiful mane of fiery red hair. He looked down into the girl’s eyes. “This filly, Alira, the most trainable of the Amidians and herself no stranger to Goodman Lennar’s cock, will see to it! Let the entertainment begin!”

Qartin stepped off the turntable and came to sit next to Comnar, who patted his steward’s shoulder approvingly. Sometimes the man seemed less enthusiastic about the arena shows than Comnar would have liked, but tonight Qartin seemed almost as moved by the spectacle as the emperor himself.