Futanari Legends: The Frozen Queen (Book 2: Astrid) (7 page)

“A mage? How unexpected.” Her voice is cold, powerful, and seething with anger yet calm. She pulls me to my feet, and I hold onto her to stand. Her eyes flash rage that I actually touch her, and she grabs my chin, her blood stained fingers pressing into my cheeks.

“Mage, I seemed to have lost a pet of mine.” Her emerald eyes glance back at the tear, the dragon diving down to some unknown temple in the forbidden valley. Anger flares from her brows. “I shall require you to sacrifice your life so I may chase it.”

I try to say something but my words are lost, and my body too weak.

“Say nothing, sweet.” She smiles. “I need to stop him before something terrible happens.”

Chapter 7:

Accolade

The Captain’s red-cloth tent rests on the edge of the waterfall, pitched up rather quickly by the ‘bandits’ of which I have infiltrated. Two poles hold up the tent, and other men unpack the contents quickly. A long trail of pack mules and horses which follow us into this Dwarven ruins overlooking this lost valley of secrets.

Honestly, a supply train of mules? I have seen junk merchants travel lighter than these bandits.

I watch the Imperials work like a well-oiled machine. Inside furniture is placed, a desk, beds, a large table, chairs, and a large case of maps and other documents. They light lamps and place fresh meat on a fire to the back of the tent. Large carpets are unrolled and placed around the room with pillows atop each.

In moments, everything is done as if it were done hundreds of times before, with everything placed according to the officers’ liking.

I step inside, the Captain to my right, and the High Priest Keller to the other. At the table sits a priestess, a beautiful young woman with delicate features, black straight hair, and a smaller-breasted form. She looks just of age as well, but possesses a sweet, youthful look to her features. She wears the holy golden robes of the God-King Amarus, with a gold sun emblazoned on her chest, and her waist cinched by a wide red scarf with metallic fleck to the cloth. Her kind and large eyes brighten as she sees us enter, and she bows her head as she puts her incense sticks away. She is smiling, and looks up at me doe-eyed and innocent.

A lone stick burns in the center of the table, smoke wafting off in a lazy stream through the air.

“Good day to you, milady,” the priestess says with a short bow, “I am Faith Norgarde, priestess of the God-King Amarus, and my home is in Sunrise.”

“From the temple herself,” High Priest Keller says, as he smiles and takes a seat, “she is full of youthful energy, and well on her way to becoming a priestess there. I have grand hopes for her.

Faith, this is Icebow, one of our scouts. She was in the choir in Mist Valley. You need to hear her voice.”

She turns to the Captain, who hangs up his sword. “Captain Garrus, can she?”

He nods and rubs his temples. “Might as well. She deserves a rest after chasing those two for as long as we did. When the men get the ropes set, we will descend. Until then she may take a break and make this blasted exercise a little more enjoyable for the lot of us.”

My curiosity is piqued. The temple at Sunrise, our capital, is involved, along with men from the hold of Greyrock. Sunrise and Greyrock are just down the road from each other, the latter being the hold of earl Garl Grayrock and his son Thane. So these are either Thane’s men or Garl’s, working with the temple at Sunrise to retrieve this girl. They are doing so in the hold of Dragon’s Reach, the largest hold in the center of the North, and the hold of the earl Mards Mannan.

Mannan plays the Imperials against the Freemen, the Iceblade rebels, led by Daugr Stormpeak. The Iceblades raid Imperial garrisons and patrols all across the Reach, but I don’t know why the earl of Greyrock would need to hide his presence from other earls, especially to arrest these two, and what interest they have in this girl.

The church of the God-King Amarus must have taken an interest in her, or at least the hierarchy of the church in Sunrise. The Iceblades see the church as a heresy against the Northern gods, so there could be a fear of the Iceblade rebels attacking an overt Imperial operation. But if it were important they could have asked for support. Either this mission is so sensitive it can’t attract a lot of attention, or these Imperials and the church of Sunrise have a good reason to hide whatever it is they are doing from the earl of Dragon’s Reach.

It could be they are trying to hide whatever they are doing from the Imperials themselves. A secret conspiracy inside the church? Being a bard is never easy, as I am always trying to work out one truth from another. For music, it typically matters not, as legends are subject to change, and the truthfulness of song is never really a primary concern. We play to ears and feelings, not minds.

But for other matters, the truth can make all the difference in the world. Part of bardic training is to be able to tell the truth from fiction, as we can never let the lies of fiction be the basis of truth. Sometimes they are, or they may be a window to a certain truth, but one must always be wary of believing in a myth to the detriment of one’s reality. For those who tell tales and weave stories, the ability to separate the stories we tell from the lives we live is paramount to avoid believing in our own fairy tales. One cannot be so blinded by the myth we build for our life that one begins living the idealistic lie.

It is a bit of our professors keeping us down to earth and grounded for the persona and stage presence we create for our act, but it is sound advice for anyone. There are many ways to lie, but one of the most dangerous is the lies we tell to ourselves.

I remove my leather helm, pull the red scarf from my neck, and let my white pony tail fly free. If I’m singing, I might as well get comfortable. It is not that the leather bandit armor is uncomfortable, I have worn better, but it does do a good job of protecting me while accentuating my curves, both gentle and sudden. I wear knee-high leather boots, with a pleated leather armored skirt, a leather halter and two large shoulder pads. The halter accentuates my ample bosom, and I suspect bandits like their women archers this way around these parts.

I wonder the wisdom of keeping my chest half-exposed, but these are bandits we are talking about, where motivation and brutality trump practical armoring and common sense. There were a couple other women in the unit dressed similarly, so I pilfered a piece here and a piece there from the Imperial-bandit females when I first found these soldiers, and I blended in the rest of the way with magic and song.

‘Whatever works’ is a bardic saying common to many lands.

“White hair?” Keller says. “Amazing. Are you one of the Mistweaver witches?”

I blink, staring at the high priest. “I don’t know. This is the first time I have ever heard of a Mist-weaver.”

It truly was. The fact the term is so close-sounding to my last name, Songweaver, gives me pause.

The wrinkles around his eyes turn deep as he sits back. “Mistweavers, witches of the North, and daughters of the elemental goddess Gaia. A secretive lot, hunted by the Empire-”

I feel a chill shoot through my chest in his pause.

“-but worry not, for if you were in the choir of Mist Valley I suspect neither you nor your mother were practicing. One cannot worship both.

It is death.

Though it is said their blood runs deep in that place, and from time to time we see ones with hair as white as snow. The God-King Amarus forgives them if they swear loyalty, with his wisdom and blessing we follow.

Did I scare you?”

I blink again. “I little, I apologize if I startled you.” One of our bard tricks, apologize to steer the direction of conversation, force a reply for a question asked not.

“I apologize.” He smiles. “Not everyone knows their lineage so well, young lady. Since the war there was much forgotten. The past is the past. I have been in these lands long enough to know their secrets, better than many of the peoples here. The Mistweavers were beholden to Elemental Lords, long since relegated to myth and superstition. God-King Amarus represents mankind’s control of this world, with the Old Gods relegated to superstition and history.

The Mistweavers were a witch-cult of their mother, and I am pleased to say none of their kind have been seen since the last twenty years. Storm-weavers they, and a major pain for the legions. And again, another bit of the old ways relegated to the past, where they belong.”

I am a bard, and I know my local lore, but this I did not know. There are things even the Bard College hides from its students, as I suspect to keep the Empire off the college’s back, and this bit of knowledge struck a little bit close to the bone for my liking. Mother had never told me about my past, or hers for that matter, and now I suspect that she isn’t telling me everything about herself or our family.

And her hair was as white as mine.

I bow my head and lie. “I am loyal to the God-King, and his light. May he shine upon the light of humanity.”

“No need for pomp and piousness here,” Captain Garrus says. He pours himself some ale and loosens his belt. “You are one of us, ‘bandit’ Icebow, and a loyal Imperial scout. Relax.”

He said ‘Imperial’ which makes me wonder if the men here are even from Greyrock at all. The men Astrid killed with her fire bore all the resemblance and markings of Greyrock militia, but what if that unit was unique and attached to this effort. What if the scouts were Imperials from farther away, perhaps the South even? Were the scouts trusted more than others? Were all the ‘bandits’ on the same page regarding what we are doing, or are most of the men as in the dark about what is going on here as I?

Faith smiles, a curl of her black hair across her youthful face, and her presence warm and inviting. “You are said to have a wonderful voice. Please share, Miss Icebow of Mist Valley.”

“If I may?”

A wave of hands and a couple here-heres from the Captain, and I am singing again. I stick with traditional hymns and folksy jaunts, and keep my magic notes out of the mix. I stick to the first songs I learned, nothing from the Bard’s College, and hold my magic tongue as I weave my pitch-perfect notes into their ears. Do I miss a couple to keep it real? This is probably my weakness, for to miss a note intentionally might make me slip in a magic note or two to make up for it, and then my pride forbids me from making a mistake. What they hear is near-perfect, and I probably should bite my tongue and flub, but I just can’t force myself to make a mistake.

Faith looks entranced by my notes, and she sits forward and smiles. She mouths some of the words and sings along, grabbing for my wrist at times, and I hold her hand and let it go at the right moment. Captain Garrus nods and drinks, his pock-marked and unshaven face smiling, raising a toast to me between songs with a toast of ‘well-done.’ High Priest Keller sits back, his expression calm and unflinching as he takes me in, and I begin to suspect if he wonders that I had more than simple choir experience to be so melodious.

“Absolutely brilliant,” Keller says as I finish a hymn, “and just perfect. Who says we need bards at all with you singing the God-King’s praise?”

I smile and blush.

“Have you ever thought of training as a bard?” Keller leans back, taking me in, and I notice a long bulge down his robe that surprises me. The man has an erection.

Imperials.

“It’s not common that one could hit those notes so perfectly without formal training,” he says.

“My mother had me tutored,” I say, and it isn’t entirely a lie, “by bards that came into town, and a teacher or two locally. She thought it my dream, but I stayed with the church and then true to the hunt.”

“The best of both worlds,” Keller nods, “the beauty of a bard’s voice without any of the manipulative schemings of the College.”

And in that moment, I knew the obvious. It is true the College has its fair share of manipulative aspects, but the College itself is loyal to the God-King, at least by word and pledge. The rumors of bards and others from the college using their magic to manipulate minds and shift favors is legendary, and it generates a huge amount of distrust of bards in general, especially by the church.

“Thank you,” I say and lie, and feel a slight tinge of disgust for the high priest. He is entitled to what he believes, being a conqueror and all. And I am entitled to twisting his flock’s minds. I glace down and notice his erection growing blatantly beneath his robe, and feel another pang of disgust in my gut. How
could
he? Have he no shame? I sigh under my breath and smile to the others.

When I notice Captain Garrus’ hand under his armored skirt secretly stroking his cock, I begin to become a little concerned for my presence here. The Captain’s eyes are glazed with lust, and he casually fondles himself privately out of view of the priestess.

I wonder if he knows I saw him, or that I am watching him? I meet his eyes and smile, and I watch his hand fondle his balls in return. I resist the urge to roll my eyes, and instead laugh a little and meet the priestess’ rapt attention. Her gaze seems genuinely fixed on my music, but I can’t say I haven’t seen this same reaction from men before. When you deal with drunks and rowdy crowds, you see all sorts of deviant behavior underneath tables and in the corners of darkened rooms.

Though I wonder if I hadn’t been subconsciously turning on some charm of mine to them, or possibly there is some other magic at play here I do not understand with my notes and words.

“Beautiful,” the priestess Faith says, the sparkle of candlelight in her eyes, “just wonderful. Can you perform more?”

“Sit,” High Priest Keller says as he gestures to a chair at the table. I accept and sit, and thank the gods I don’t have to watch Captain Garrus play with his balls anymore. “Relax and dine with us. You shall be our special guest.”

Keller stands next to me, his erection ballooning against his robes. Priestess faith gasps, pretends not to notice, and then looks up at the man. “Father! Have you no shame?”

“Shame is for those who sin,” Keller says, untying his robes to my shock, “and the God-King allows us certain liberties with our flock as you will learn, priestess.”