The Book of the Blessed

The Blue Temple

Connleth Aragareth had stopped working and sat at his desk in their large room, looking out of the window. Once this room had belonged to Cal and the curtains had always been shut. It had been dominated by a bed, for Cal was devoted to pleasure. The same bed was there, but in a corner now, and curtains looked onto the roves of the Everdeen, even the turrets of the houses peculiar to this part of Westrial where shops and open courts were on the first few floors which, at night closed up and became spaces for the homeless and vagrant while the floors above became turreted mansions and palaces, lovely gardens one could gaze down upon from the roof of the Blue Temple. In another city, and even in parts of Kingsboro, alleys were places to be stabbed. Here, alleys were often places that revealed the backs of these mansion shops were little doors and gardens for humble folk and walkways led to the second and third stories which gave way to lavish gardens and great front doors of the wealthy. The building fronts were austere, but the alleys revealed a secret world of turrets and towers, For the wealthy who truly despised the ground, often bridges led from one house to the other, or jumped from street to street. Conn still found it amazing that there were many who never had to touch the dirty world below.

He supposed in some ways he did not either. After all, he had found his way to the Blue Temple years ago. At this point he was no longer required to even visit the Sanctuary of the Blue Rooms, though he still felt he should. This was the same of his husband, Derek, who sat across from him, long legs folded like a frog’s or a grasshoppers, slowly smoking a cigarette whose grey smoke scented the room.

Conn knew it was not proper to call Derek his husband. Technically, Blues had no husbands. The proper word was vashert.. And yet it could not be argued that by now Matteo was surely Quinton’s husband and Cal was Gabriel’s and Lorne and Brian felt no need for such attachments. That they were not sexually exclusive did not matter. After all, aside from what Gabriel often called “the hypocrisy of monogamy”, there were several societies where marriage did not mean your spouse was the only person you lay with. And they were Blue Priests.

Derek had shaven today, and put his dark hair in order. He was always amazing to look at, but Conn knew this meant he was going to serve in the temple. Since becoming a priest of the Fourth Grade much of Derek’s time was spent looking like the University student he had come to Kingsboro to be. Always clean, he let his beard go to a three days growth not and rather than combing his hair, often took his fingers through it and called it a day. He was absorbed in research and, Conn knew, also absorbed in relaying and receiving messages from both Ohean Pendarvis and Prince Anson. There was a courier who regularly came from the court of Sussail and Derek was involved with that too.

Today he wore what he often wore, the thin, nearly transparent mesh pants that clung like a second skin. Their point was as much to arouse desire as because in the Blue House people were beyond desire and shame. Even Conn wore them, though now now. You barely felt them an in the winter they warmed, in the summer they were cool. Derek rose, crushing out his cigarette, and walked into the bathroom at the end of the room to gargle. Through the mesh trousers, Conn saw and loved the perfection of the round globes of his ass and when he came out, Conn would see the shape of his sex, see his penis through the opaque smoke blue.

“I won’t wait up for you,” Conn said.

“I don’t imagine I’ll be gone that long,” Derek told him, liquidly lifting his shirt to reveal his marble chest. When he did, Conn knew he was going to meet whoever he would meet like this, not in the blue robes. How lovely it would be for him, Conn thought, at it was lovely when Derek, mindful of the importance of still being a lover, came to him as well like a young god, still after these three years.

“You never know,” Conn said with the caution of someone who was not a jealous lover, but who did the same service Derek did, and knew the surprises that often went with it.

Derek nodded, his black lashes hiding his eyes, his black hair falling in his face. Barefoot, wearing only those gossamer barely there trousers, he left the room. Conn stopped himself from getting up and squeezing his buttocks.

It was not quite a decade since Derek Annakar had come to this temple as a weedy young boy of eighteen going on nineteen. He had been so very conscious of his body then, especially s he made his way through the trainind as a priest and began to play the part of a beautiful young man. And it was a part to him. He awas amazed when he stpped back now, to think that anyone who saw him would see something lie ka youngm well muscled god, cared of alabaster, with showny skin touched by red, and night black hiar, and he saw only himself, knew this was only a part, did nto confuse his beauty with more than the glamour it was. The Blue Priests were black and white, red and brown, tall ans short and tlithe like him, or large like Loren, but all were beautiful, and all bore the glamour. The test of a true Bleu preist was no physical beauty, but that the all accepting beauty of Adaon shone through them and came to the Rite whenever they took a lover in the secret rooms of the House.

Last night he had received a message from the Abbot telling him to arrive at the next morning at a given time, in a particular room of the Sanctuary behind the altar and wait for whoever was coming. Derek had heard nothing of intiations to the priesthood, and it was not the time of year for that. Because it was more rare for an abbot to command a Blue to service, Darek also knew it should not be disobeyed or even questioned. The last time Hyrum had sent such a message it was for him to receive his friend Prince Anson before he had gone off to war with the Daumans.

Derek came down the half darkened back stairs, and then he opened a door most never passed through, this took him down a secret way so that he never had to enter the Sanctuary and be seen by worshipers, but came down into the garden courtyard with its pool and entered the secret rooms through the back way. He walked along the warm lit corridors and placed his palm against the door he’d been told to enter. He turned the handle and closed it, entering the blackness.

“Hello?” he called.

“Here,” a thin voice returned, and Derek locked the door behind him, coming to the bed.

He had planned to lay down beside this man in the dark, to gently touching him, encourage him, ease him into love, but a gentle hand came out, and Derek stood while those hands pulled down his trousers running over his thighs, his buttocks, swiftly and gently, and then the surprise of the wet, firm mouth, sucking up his cock, cupping his buttocks, strong hands, guiding him to the bed.

This was not Anson. Anson had taken up with a male prostitute named Pol, and besides this, Ohean was back in town. Also Anson would not come to him in darkness. He pushed these questions of out of his mind as a man so expert and unafraid it surprised Derek, darted his tongue deep inside of him and began to thrust in his asshole.

He heard the unscrewing of a bottle, the vapors brought to his nose, his body thrilled and his mouth opened to receive a cock, large and firm. He was at his pleasure now, between the sniffs of vapors, he could stop suching this cock, and then they were like the World Serpent, or the Great Twins..sucking each other, the tongue sucking him occasionally delving inside of him, Derek, unable to keep his face from the firm buttocks of this uninhbited lover.

His body trembled with lust and with the high of the vapors he had sniffed when he arched his back on his hands and knees and received this man inside of him. They went from gentle to rough, pose to pose and in the dark, at last, Derek knelt down on him, and rode him into the blackness, unashamed of both of their loud cries, of how this man angled through him. He remembered Conn saying, “I won’t wait up for you,” Conn said.

“I don’t imagine I’ll be gone that long.”

“You never know.”

With no inhibibtion, slamming down, feeling him slam up, bruised by the power of their sex, Derek rode him until he was exhausted. Sometimes sex was distinctly a job, and it was ended quickly. This he did not want to end. He was wrung out and throbbing and unexhausted.

“I’m not done yet, either,” the voice in the dark whispered, and gave a hollow laugh. “But… we can recover.”

For he did not know how long, Derek indulged his desire and was glad to indulge this man’s. Gentle love making turned into furious fucking, and Derek knew in his mind this must a Blue, for Blues came to the rooms to experience the Rites too. He tried to stop himself from thinking. It was a lie that men did not think during the rut. He wondered even as he hooked the man’s arms under him and fucked him against the door, “But could this not have been done in the Gorgon Rooms?” No, no, for some reason this had to be holy, had to be a Rite.

Some long time later, when his body was drenched in sweat, and he wiped it from his wet hair, Derek lay on his back, his stomach covered in the cooling semen of his dark lover, his cock ridden, clenched and massaged by his buttocks. As he gripped the bedsheet and moaned, his cock arched up and he gave his seed up, rock ridden and ridden and still ridden.

They lay in the dark and, at last, the man said, “Go… Go into the hall and bring the lamp in.

Derek wondered why he was reluctant to do so. After all, it was customary for both to finally see each other when they left the back door of the room and entered the garden and bathed in the pool.

Derek, legs still shavking, body still aching, throbbing deep in his ass, opened the door, and pulled in a lamp even as he remembered there were lights to be turned on in these rooms.

“Bring it near,” the voice commanded.

Derek did, tracing the feet, the knees, thighs, sex, belly of this man he judged to be in early middle age, brown, Royan. Even as he undertood, the voice spoke gently:

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never overcome it.”

“Master!” Derek said in shock, almost dropping the lamp, ready to fall to his knees, to… apologize.

Naked and placid, Master Hyrum rose to sit before Derek Annakar, smiling.

“Master, but why?” Derek shook his head, confused, far more confused than he had ever been.

“Because I am the Master, and this is always what the Master was supposed to do, but I never did it. I should have done it with you when you first came. So I do it now. Because I love you.”

“And I love you, Master, but…”

“We are Blues. This is way it was supposed to be. How it must be.”

Derek nodded, understanding a little, but still feeling largely dazed.

“This is one of the last things I will do,” Hyrum said.

“Master?”

“You are saying that a lot.”

Hyrum rose up leisurely in the semi darkness, as elegant nude as he was in a great blue robe.

“But what do you mean?” Derek shook his head, “this is one of the last things you will do.”

“There will be a new Hyrum,” Philemon Paghast said. “I am leaving.”

While Derek continued to blink at this, Hyrum said, “We both smell like goats, and if you keep standing here, you will miss an afternoon with Conn. Come, let us go to the pool and bathe.”