Maiden Read online

  ‘Princess Talithea Mund, third daughter of Utharion V, King,’ Elethrine spoke in the correct formal address between their respective ranks. ‘I give you welcome to Korismund.’

  ‘Demoiselle Ethrine Korismund, daughter of Karmoth, Baron, I accept your welcome,’ the Princess replied.

  Elethrine choked down her immediate flush of anger at the contraction of her name and her father’s, instead completing their formal introduction and asking if Talithea would care to take refreshment in the Maiden Garden.

  When Aisla had left to fetch an infusion of pear blossom, Elethrine attempted less formal conversation, choosing as her topic the dark leaved, purple flowered roses the cultivation of which was something of an obsession among Mundic horticulturists.

  ‘Most fine,’ Talithea replied evenly, then paused before continuing, ‘for an outland Barony, very fine indeed. Of course in the Royal Botanical Gardens at Theiron we have had pure black flowers for some time now.’

  Elethrine found herself brindling but went on trying to be polite.

  ‘You are fortunate in Prince Kavisterion,’ she suggested. ‘He is a great warrior and exceptionally handsome,’.

  ‘He is a monstrous, hirsute oaf,’ Talithea responded, ‘also a barbarian; broad but rather less tall than your maid and with hair of a colour that suggests more than a touch of peasant blood. He has the manners of a troll and something of one’s appearance. Still, one of my rank has little choice in these matters. You, of course, are more fortunate.’

  ‘My nurse,’ Elethrine replied, desperately trying to find a topic that the Princess was unable to turn into an insult, ‘hopes that I will be ravished, in the old tradition, but I have little hope that any thane would dare the attempt.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Talithea answered, ‘it is hard to imagine a man of real quality considering the reward worth the risk. Still, perhaps if you were to wear your hair in a more fashionable style and try a little more make-up you might tempt a man of moderate ambition.’

  For a moment Elethrine could find nothing to say but found herself wondering what the consequences would be is she and Aisla were to sit on the haughty Princess and give her a well deserved dozen cuts of the cane across her thighs. Talithea was relatively small, and Elethrine was sure they could do it and that it would not take many more goads to make her lose her temper completely. At that moment Aisla returned with the infusion and also a companion, immediately reducing the tension.

  The newcomer was quite unexpected, being a tiny girl, although quite obviously mature. She stood no higher than Elethrine’s chest and was pale skinned with a great amount of jet black hair, a rarity in Mund. Pert breasts constrained within her bodice and neatly rounded hips showed that she was not the child she would otherwise have seemed. Her manner was grave and pensive, her clothing black in every detail.

  ‘May I present, Ea, apprentice to the witch Aurora,’ Aisla announced, bobbing slightly to Elethrine and Talithea. ‘Ea, I present the Princess Talithea Mund, third daughter of Utharion V, King and my Mistress, Demoiselle Elethrine Korismund, daughter of Karmoth, Baron.’

  ‘Elethrine?’ Talithea demanded, turning in sudden outrage.

  ‘We hold by the old traditions in these outland Baronies,’ Elethrine replied, rather pleased that Aisla had made the mistake of giving her proper name.

  ‘No matter,’ Talithea responded, suddenly gay again. ‘I shall call you Trina to remind you of your place.’

  Elethrine opened her mouth but shut it quickly, sure that whatever retort she made it would only meet with a still more biting response. Short of physically punishing Talithea there was nothing she could do, and the consequences for her would undoubtedly be worse by far.

  ‘So what is this?’ Talithea continued in an amused tone as she turned her attention to the newcomer. ‘A witch’s apprentice, you say?’

  ‘The apprentice to Aurora, who can summon a demon with a single motion of her hand,’ Elethrine said, hoping that association with the powerful witch would impress Talithea. ‘She is due to stand witness to your betrothal.

  Talithea made no reply but stepped forward.

  ‘She is extraordinarily small,’ the Princess remarked as she walked around the tiny witch’s apprentice, studying her as if she were a moderately interesting piece of pottery.

  ‘Possibly she is half-elf,’ Elethrine suggested, glad that Talithea had found a new mark for her bitter tongue.

  ‘Elf!’ Talithea replied with a sharp laugh. ‘Whoever heard of a lordly elf condescending to speak to a mere human woman, never mind take her to wife! Especially as, with a name so short, her mother would have to be the lowest of pariahs.’

  ‘It is rumoured,’ Elethrine said, mindful of propriety, ‘that elven girls have sometimes surrendered to woodsmen, or possibly been taken unawares. They are without doubt winsome, after all.’

  ‘Sheer fancy!’ Talithea snorted. ‘No, she is more likely half-dwarf.’

  Aisla laughed, a nervous titter promptly silenced as Elethrine turned to look at her. Ea raised her eyes, and Elethrine found herself staring into them. The apprentice’s gaze was more than a little disturbing, her eyes large and lustrous with irises as black and shiny as the pupils. The suggestion that she was half-dwarven was absurd, halflings of dwarven lineage were invariably squat and broad, almost as much so as dwarves themselves.

  ‘Or even half-goblin!’ Talithea continued, oblivious to Ea’s expression of mounting fury. ‘Perhaps on her mother’s side!’

  ‘I am one eighth part nymph if you must know!’ Ea answered in a hiss, the appalling and impossible insult finally stinging her into refute.

  ‘Oh look, she is angry! How droll!’ Talithea laughed as Ea turned to her. ‘Still, we cannot have a lowborn halfling daring to answer us back, can we?’

  ‘Indeed not,’ Elethrine answered, unwilling to dispute the Princess despite her caution.

  ‘Then have your maid spank her,’ Talithea continued in an amused tone. ‘By hand, it will teach the little frippet an important lesson.’

  Elethrine hesitated. Having Aisla spank Ea would certainly be amusing, especially as the indignity of a hand spanking was bound to make the tiny apprentice thrash and squeal most beautifully. It was also hard to resist Talithea’s forceful personality, yet there was something about Ea that made her nervous. More importantly, seeing Ea punished in such a humiliating way would do something to reduce her own feelings at the way Nurse Anaka had treated her.

  ‘May I speak mistress,’ Aisla put in meekly.

  ‘You may,’ Elethrine answered, grateful for the interruption.

  ‘Thank you mistress,’ Aisla continued. ‘Please forgive my presumption, but might I not strip her nates, the better to bring her punishment home to her.’

  ‘Excellent!’ Talithea laughed. ‘Bare-bottomed, over the knee of a mere maid! That will truly teach her to not to be impudent to her betters! Yes, do it!’

  Elethrine felt a rush of anger. Talithea had no right to give Aisla a command, Princess or not. She had also manoeuvred Elethrine into a difficult situation. For Elethrine to support the order would be an admission of her inferiority to Talithea, while if she countermanded it she would look weak. There was only one option that allowed her to retain her dignity, which was to make the punishment more degrading still.

  ‘Yes,’ Elethrine said in her most haughty tone, ‘do it, but do not merely strip her bottom, strip her naked.’

  ‘Naked?’ Aisla asked in obvious alarm.

  ‘Naked,’ Elethrine repeated, ‘and do not answer me back, or you shall be served the same way.’

  ‘Yes mistress,’ Aisla replied hurriedly.

  Elethrine raised her chin, aware that the game had gone far further than they had intended but determined to carry it through. To strip a girl naked and spank her by hand was a punishment considered so degrading to the victim that it was normally reserved for the daughters of peasants, and then only in private. Talithea was looking a little shocked, which pleased Elethrine immensely. Ev
en when nurse Anaka had beaten Aisla and herself she had not gone so far as to do it by hand, although she had subjected them to just about every other possible degradation.

  Ea looked as horrified as was to be expected. Her face, always pale, had gone white. Her little mouth open was in an O of disbelief and her eyes were wide and staring. As Aisla advanced on her she backed away, but instead of the rush of tears that Elethrine expected, the apprentice began to chant and make patterns with her fingers. Elethrine swallowed hard, having once seen Aurora summon a great black demon with the body of a monstrous toad and recognising similarities in the apprentice’s chant and hand movements.

  ‘Silly child,’ Talithea remarked, but her subsequent laugh sounded more than a little strained.

  Ea’s voice rose to a scream as Aisla backed her into the corner of two tall yew hedges.

  ‘Come quietly,’ Aisla remarked firmly, reaching out to take Ea by the arm.

  Elethrine relaxed. Whatever invocation Ea had been attempting had evidently failed. She felt her pulse calm and a smile came to her face as Aisla dragged the struggling apprentice away from the corner towards a heavy iron bench. As Aisla got a firm grip, Elethrine and Talithea exchanged glances of malicious delight at the prospect of seeing a naked spanking, their initial antipathy forgotten. Ea fought hard, pulling Aisla’s hair out of its net into a cloud of red-gold, an action that caused the maid to give a cry of annoyance and redouble her efforts. A moment later the apprentice’s dress was being hauled up over her head, revealing her petticoats and corsets, as black as her dress and worked with purple embroidery and ribbon. With a brisk motion the maid knotted Ea’s dress over her head, rendering her helpless. Elethrine felt a disturbing, yet familiar, warm sensation between her legs as Aisla set to work at the stripping, tearing the tiny girl’s chemise-bodice open to reveal two breasts not much larger than the halves of a big plum, yet surprisingly womanly.

  Ea gave a scream of pure outrage at the exposure of her breasts, but with her dress up she could do nothing. Elethrine laughed at the girl’s consternation, glancing once more at Talithea to find the Princess watching the stripping with an expression of rapture. Aisla had pushed Ea onto the wet ground and turned her bottom up. The maid’s face was set in mischievous delight as she took hold of Ea’s petticoats and began to pull them out from under her corset. Ea kicked and thumped at the ground with her fists as her drawers were exposed. Aisla laughed and whipped off the petticoats, all three at once. Ea began to chant again, her muffled voice pure fury as Aisla began to interfere with the strings of her drawers.

  Elethrine found a hard lump in her throat as she watched Ea’s legs kick. They were pretty, and sheaved in black silk. A froth of lace, also black, hid the more interesting parts of the girl’s trim figure, but Aisla had opened the drawer string and was about to expose it all.

  ‘One… two… three… and off they come!’ Aisla chuckled wickedly and pulled Ea’s drawers down and off, revealing a pert bottom covered only by black silk pantalettes.

  ‘More black, how pretentious,’ Talithea remarked, the hauteur of her voice failing to conceal the underlying lust. ‘And silk too, quite inappropriate.’

  ‘Pull them off Aisla, and throw them to me,’ Elethrine said, ‘they’ll make a nice trophy.’

  ‘No!’ Ea screamed and then yelled out another word which Elethrine didn’t understand.

  Ea was kicking and bucking frantically, putting every effort her small body could muster into trying to prevent Aisla from inflicting the ultimate indignity on her and pulling down her pantalettes. Elethrine found herself grinning and desperately trying to resist the temptation to push against the front of her dress so that her tuppenny rubbed on her purity girdle.

  ‘Say goodbye to your modesty!’ Aisla crowed and tugged Ea’s pantalettes down.

  Elethrine felt a hot flush rise to her face as the girl’s pert white bottom was laid bare. Aisla raised her hand and planted a heavy smack on it, making the soft nates wobble delightfully. Another harder smack made them part a little, giving a glimpse of jet black hair and wet, pink flesh. Two hand marks showed pink against the white skin of the small girl’s bottom. A shiver went right through Elethrine at the sight, making her want more of the same; a tiny, round bottom, red all over and parted to show the girl’s most intimate secrets. Not just framed by a tangle of dishevelled clothing either, but on a nude, shamed girl.

  ‘Naked!’ she ordered.

  ‘Naked! Stark naked!’ Talithea echoed frenziedly.

  Once more Ea screamed, using the same word as before as her pantalettes were pulled free of her ankles. A scream of utter fury sounded, not from the struggling girl, but from high above. Elethrine looked up, and screamed herself.

  High above the castle, a grotesque shape was tumbling towards them in a tangle of wings and other, indeterminate body parts. Elethrine found herself frozen to the spot, her eyes locked on the horror as it untangled itself and the head became apparent, then the rest of the thing. Elethrine immediately wished it had stayed hidden.

  Vast, leathery wings supported a bony body from which stubby legs and a short, flattened tail stuck out behind. Yet it was the head to which Elethrine’s eyes were riveted. The skull was an explosion of bony spikes, from the centre of which two great red eyes starred angrily down, likes the eyes of some nightmare owl. A long beak protruded from between these eyes, with two high set nostrils on top and a quadruple row of spine-like teeth lining the open jaws.

  She heard Talithea echo her scream as the ghastly apparition went into a dive, directly at them. Ea was gabbling frantically, a sound of which Elethrine was barely aware as the demon landed with a rush of air and a great crash of its wings. She heard Aisla’s scream and then a gigantic claw gripped her body, crushing her to Talithea. Ea screamed out once more and the great demon responded with a furious croak. It’s wings beat down and Elethrine was being lifted, whirled high into the air with the walled garden shrinking with distance beneath her and then the castle itself. The shout of a guard and Ea’s triumphant yell reached up to her and then everything went mercifully black.

  Chapter Two - Exile

  Several times Elethrine regained consciousness only to faint again as the realisation of her predicament returned to her. On each occasion she was vaguely aware of landscape far below - sea, a great bay, a land of woods and rivers, desert and on the last occasion a great arid plain dotted with tiny figures.

  The next time her senses returned it was at the shock of being deposited into a snow bank. As her eyes jerked open she caught one final glimpse of the appalling demon, only to see it vanish to a point against a sky of absolute blue. For a long time she lay shivering in the snow, the nightmare journey still fresh in her mind. Finally it was the sight of Aisla’s face, full of fright and concern, that brought her back to full sensibility.

  ‘Mistress?’ Aisla asked.

  Elethrine managed a nod, then pulled herself to one elbow, her need to show strength in front of her maid overcoming her shock.

  ‘The snow is cold Mistress,’ Aisla continued. ‘We must move down the mountain.’

  ‘Mountain?’ Elethrine replied groggily.

  ‘We are on a mountain, a big mountain,’ Aisla told her.

  ‘Somewhere on the Spine?’ Elethrine asked.

  ‘No Mistress I don’t think so,’ Aisla answered quietly.

  Elethrine sat up fully. In front of her a long snow covered slope descended to a belt of evergreens, just as did the upper slopes of the Spine. Beyond the pines, though, the scenery was unlike anything in Mund. The trees gave way to a plateau of sparse blue-green vegetation and rock, which rose again and then ended abruptly at a lip which ran from horizon to horizon in a near straight line. Beyond the lip there was nothing, only the blue of the sky, the haze of distance and a curious area of pale dun colour quite unlike anything of her experience. A glance behind her showed the bulk of a mountain, with others to either flank and yet others, even greater, beyond.

  ‘Where are we?’ s
he managed.

  ‘I don’t know Mistress,’ Aisla answered. ‘I thought perhaps with your better teaching…’

  ‘Nothing in my lessons spoke of a mountain range that ends in thin air,’ Elethrine replied. ‘Could it be the edge of the world?’

  ‘No Mistress,’ Aisla said. ‘What you see is a great cliff, below which is a plain. I saw it from the air.’

  ‘You stayed awake!?’ Elethrine asked. ‘Through that!’

  ‘Yes Mistress,’ Aisla said. ‘I awoke several times. We have crossed Aegmund, the Aeg Roads and lands beyond that sea which I know nothing of. We are far to the south.’

  Aisla broke off, looking ready to cry, which made Elethrine feel stronger despite the knowledge that the maid seemed to have taken less shock then she at the experience of being snatched and carried by the demon.

  ‘Come then,’ she said, getting to her feet and then suddenly remembering the Princess Talithea.

  Elethrine looked around as Aisla began to brush snow from her dress. A blotch of crimson in a deep drift a little way up the mountain side showed where the Princess lay, apparently still insensible.

  ‘What of the Princess Talithea?’ she asked Aisla.

  ‘I do not know, my first duty being to you Mistress,’ Aisla replied.

  ‘Then we must see to her,’ Elethrine announced, her authority beginning to return along with a hint of satisfaction that the sharp tongued Princess had proved the weakest of the three of them.

  Talithea lay in the snow, her crimson dress and pale hair spread out around her. Shaking her produced no response, and Elethrine finally managed to rouse her by rubbing snow in her face. Her immediate response was outrage, and then shock as her memory came back to her. In the end Elethrine and Aisla had to help her to her feet. She was weak as they set off, pausing frequently to rest, but by the time they reached the tree line something of her normal personality was beginning to reassert itself.

  ‘I can manage on my own,’ she said sharply. ‘Now hurry, we must return to Korismund Keep before Prince Kavisterion arrives.’