Handmaiden's Fury (5 page)

The Sires of Rydia trained to be
perfect men. Most failed. Following their own rigorous path, those men become
our Devoted, such as Brys. The men who succeeded trained as fiercely sexual
creatures, both physically imposing and every bit as strong of will. Immune to
the Fervor of our Lady, they learned secret gifts denied even to the Handmaidens.
Each Sire tended seven Handmaidens, performing his sacred duty to quench their
fire once they had called upon it. This training required such discipline and
devotion that only one out of every ten successfully traversed the Goddess’
path.

Older than me by several years, Sire
Mattias had earned his rank as one of the strongest of our order with his stern
demeanor and consummate skill. He kept his dark hair cropped short to his head
and almost always wore the silk and satin dress of his office.

Now, as I meekly walked after him, I
inhaled the sweet balsam and myrrh of his room. Just the smell calmed me,
soothing the wild thoughts in my head with memories of past promises kept. So
many times, in this very room, I had screamed myself senseless while he gifted
me with the Lady’s flame.

He had pushed to the outer limits of
what I had thought possible. Here, we would seek the Lady.

“Your collar, Handmaiden.” Prepared
for this moment, he retrieved it from his nightstand and held it toward me.

I drew in a swift breath, though I’d
expected no less. The collar was a tool only available to Handmaiden’s who
reached the most sacred heights of worship. It would keep me from hurting
myself or my partners by accident. It taught me about control while at the same
time allowing me to be utterly free.

Not everyone understood the collar’s
purpose. Many times parishioners were horrified when learning of it, thinking
it a humiliation that made the wearer less than human. They did not understand
the freedom it brought. They did not know how to surrender.

I leaned in, keeping my eyes on his
face as he fastened the leather collar firmly around my neck.

Once he had it buckled, he locked his
eyes to mine.

“Whose body is this, Handmaiden?”

I trembled. “It is the Lady Rydia’s,
Sire.”

“I am Her rod, Handmaiden. I am Her
lash and Her tongue of fire. Do you submit to me?”

My eyes drifted closed. “Yes, Sire, I
do. My body is nothing but a tool, a tool for your hand.”

His voice rumbled with pleasure. “It
is so, Handmaiden.” He kissed my lips, the barest brush of softness.

Just the ritual litany made me eager,
made my breath catch.

I let the remnants of my dress fall
from my shoulders and pool around my feet. I kept my eyes on his only with
difficulty.

Sire Mattias’ gaze traveled across my
body, scourging like a whip on my skin. He looped a finger through the silver
ring on my collar and pulled me behind him.

I stumbled at first but then caught
up as he walked me toward his balcony doors. He pushed them open and led me
out. The balcony overlooked a small, open-air courtyard that he shared with his
Handmaidens in our adjacent rooms.

He walked me over to the wooden
Tower, a post he kept erected there to service his charges. “The fire burns too
strongly in you.”

My body trembled. “I know, Sire.” I
paused, my voice shuddering. “I knew when I came to you.” My tears turned to a
flood.

As much as I wanted, no, needed this
blessing, I also feared the fire of his anointment.

“Good.” He attached the ring to a
large clasp on the Tower. It wasn’t built to hold my hands, only the ring of my
collar. With a length of thick but fine-spun rope, he tied my hands and began
deftly weaving the long ends toward my elbows, securing my arms tightly, almost
painfully, behind my back.

The sigils pulsed softly as I meditated
upon my sacred helplessness.

“Such a good girl.” His fingers
traced their way around my side. With the barest of touches, he caressed me.

“Yes, Sire, thank you.” My voice
trembled with my body.

I knew what would come next. Before
pleasure, I required pain to quench the white-hot desire running through my
body. Only after could my Sire attend to my need. Even with his training, the
full force of my Lady’s sigils would sunder our minds.

Such dangerous passions would leave
us mad, broken disciples unfit to serve Rydia.

He took up his tawse. At first, he
let the leather ghost gently along my flesh, and I gasped.

The Goddess’ Passion rose up in me, a
red haze of pleasure and flame that licked at my body.

He flicked his wrist, and I felt the
warm sting. The first strike was light, but soon those vicious little tongues
nipped at me.

“Please, Sire.” I didn’t even know
what I begged for. I knew nothing beyond the longing that ached deep in my
mortal coil. There would be no mercy, no mercy until I opened for him,
screaming, and the arms of the Goddess engulfed me.

He flicked his wrist, and his tawse
bit again.

I sobbed loudly.

Then he truly began.

My Sire walked from one side to the
next striking my flanks with an ever-increasing ferocity. He started slow but
soon claimed my body with strips of razor-flame. I screamed, my begging echoing
over the courtyard for the ears of any of my sisters who happened to stir.

With each strike, the sigils
answered, a pulse of pleasure burning away the pain.

Karas.

Ouigiin.

Doch.

The outlines of the swooping,
delicate whorls stung and burned, the flaming sensations flickering with each
strike, hot and hotter.

Karas
surged to a bright brand, white and
steady between my shoulder blades. With an insistent will, it urged me to break
my bonds and turn on Sire Mattias.

I let it burn.

Doch
sizzled, looping around my ribs,
roiling over them with the red-hot, bubbling touch of a bright orange ember
drawn across my flesh. Once free of all these binding restrictions, it wailed
of all I might do with my Sire’s delicious body even as he tormented me.

I let it burn.

Ouigiin
smouldered on my low back in a dark,
sputtering flame that flared up unpredictably. When it did, I could feel the
heat of it spread down my thighs, warming them. It yearned, pulling me from my
bonds toward that pillar of Rydia’s strength, Sire Mattias. It was hungry; so
hungry. If I would let it, it would consume him and all his power would fill
me.

I let it burn.

Then the tawse struck me fully, no
more holding back. I screamed and let the sigils burn. They flared as one,
pouring heat down my agonized back in a rush like scalding water to cleanse me
of any lesser sensation. What was the pain of Sire Mattias’s tawse compared
their heat, their passion. They flared with desire so deep, so wide, their
torrent filled me until I could hold no more, yet they still raged. More and
more and more, until Her fire poured out of me.

My screams crested, pulling from me
the pain and pleasure and flame and desire and
wanting
and
yearning
and
NEEDING
.

Overwrought, they became wordless, my
entire world reduced to strips of white fire.

As tears ran freely down my face, I
clung to one hope. In a moment of dispirit weakness, my scream formed that one
word: “STOP!”

“Stop? You know better, Handmaiden.”
He did stop, for the moment, and caressed me. His fingers were deft, cunning.

I exhaled my relief, a whimper
pulling at my throat as his hands wandered my body.

Oh, Goddess,
I prayed even as I reveled in my
Sire’s touch.

“I cannot stop yet. Not until you
surrender.” He caressed my stinging flanks. “Why are we doing this, Handmaiden?
What is this for?”

I took a ragged breath. “It is Her
purifying flame, Sire.”

“It is. This is Her Crucible. Pain is
where you learn your strength.” He swung again.

I bit my lip, stifling another
scream.

I tasted blood.

“Here is where you learn that you are
stronger than desire, stronger than pain. Here is where you remember that which
is true.”

A flurry of strikes followed, one red
tongue of flame after another, biting, burning. I know I screamed, crying out,
rambling and senseless. Yet within, I grew silent, almost serene. At the core
of me blossomed everything my Sire had taught me: strength, and courage, and
resolution.

The sigils slowly waned, their
dancing lights dwindling in the face of the strength Rydia granted me.

Ouigiin
died down first, a slow simmer of
desire that melted to a liquid core within me.

“Yes, Sire.” I couldn’t help but sob,
but my words held steel. “This is Her Crucible, and I am Hers to shape.”

Doch
became a soft caress, a silken touch
by a trusted lover as it slid down to add its desire to my own.

Sensing our preparation neared
completion, my Sire recited, “I am Her rod, Handmaiden. I am Her lash and Her
tongue of fire. Do you submit to me?”

“Yes, Sire.” My tears cooled on my
cheeks. “Yes. Always.”

Karas
dissolved, a gentle bubbling froth
that simply boiled away, eliciting a tender ardor in the very center of my
being.

I couldn’t see him of course but
sensed the movement as he disrobed.

Sire Mattias walked around my bound
body, his lean muscle silhouetted in the moonlight.

“All my strength comes from Her,
Handmaiden. I submit to Her, and you to me.”

“Yes.” I writhed in my need.

“I decide when you breathe. I decide
what you eat, who you bed, what you do.” He bent his face close to mine, all
angles and darkness.

In the night, I could only faintly
see his eyes.

“If I send you into the city to do
the Lady’s work, you return when I say.” His voice came ragged and soft.

He was worried.
The idea sank like a thorn into my
mind.
He was afraid.

Just the thought unleashed fresh
tears. “Yes, Sire Mattias. I’m sorry, Sire Mattias.”           

“Good.” He walked around behind me.
“Let me take you to my chambers, Handmaiden. I will give you ease.”

“Thank you,” I breathed, tranquil in
anticipation of my relief.

Gently, Sire Mattias unbound my arms.
They fell limply to my sides. He unfastened my collar, and I slumped onto him.
He cradled me, as he would a child.

I couldn’t move.

“There’s my girl.” He wrapped his
arms beneath me and lifted, a simple motion requiring no strain for Sire
Mattias. Smoothly he carried me to his feather bed and then lowered himself
over me, kissing my expiated flesh.

Chaste through my mortification, Sire
Mattias claimed me for our Lady.

His rhythm rose and fell like a storm
at night, like the wind scouring the desert.

My voice returned in rambling,
senseless cries as he communed with me. As one weak with new rebirth, I could
only cry out and clutch to him, wordlessly begging with the passion of my body,
the one language that all women knew, and I spoke it well.

Claiming me for our Lady Rydia, I was
his in every way.

He sated me beyond the skills any
other man, even any other Sire for I had no bond to another. His fierceness
tore into me, breaking down walls around my heart that I hadn’t even known
existed. The man was like the tide, smashing against my shores, over and over,
with no hope, no chance of ever stopping. He carried me, crashing over my edge
and then building me back to the crest, over and over.

I wanted to hurl him across the room.
I wanted to claw and bite and scream. I wanted to exhaust him, to drain every
drop of vitality from his powerful body. Even as he took me, I wailed a litany
of curses, crying and moaning, again and again, sanctifying him with the Lady’s
Water.

The power in the sigils still coursed
through me, like the sun’s breath. Red washed over the world. The world was
nothing more than blood and nectar, pain and pleasure.

Everything was his.

Everything was mine.

United in our service to Rydia, we
became as one.

Borne on the endless waves of my
keening wails and his masterful touch, time lost all meaning. The last fragile
thread of my control snapped.

Unlike typical love with a typical
man, I wasn’t simply going to blossom and be spent. No, this was the Lady’s
Pleasure, bearing its way through my body, into my body, from my body.
Comparing Her power to mere pleasure is like comparing a drop of water to an
ocean.

This ritual created a conduit for my
Goddess Rydia’s power. Without the daily devotions Sire Mattias dedicated to
Her, the sensations Rydia now provided him through me ran the risk of dementia.
The sensations She provided through me now would unbalance even new initiates,
showing them a psychotic, irrational world.