Prophecy of Noto

“I think it’s wreckage of a ship. From the storm last night.”

It wasn’t strange to find ship wreckage on the Cefalu beach, in the kingdom of Akamantis, after a tempest like the one that had raged the previous night.

Two scouts, on their regular patrol along the coastline of the island of Li’ in vigilance against the forces of the Prince of Madness, which sought to invade Akamantis, had stopped on the beach, their attention arrested by shattered ship planking and tangles of shredded sailcloth washing up in the surf.

“Shall we hope that it is a ship of the Arameans, even perhaps the flagship of the old mad prince himself?” said the second of the scouts, as they pulled up their horses on the cliff above the beach.

This particular beach had been scouted constantly over the past few weeks, because twice the Oracle at Noto had said the invasion would come here, on the beach at Cefalu. If it spoke the same name the third time, this would be a certainty.

“What ho?” called out the first scout. “I see movement below, in the wreckage.”

The two spurred their horses along the cliff front until they came to the winding path that led down the beach.

As they approached, a figure was pulling its way out of a pile of splintered timbers. The young man was slight, but well formed, and brown as the earth in the fields of Li’. No, he was browner, a rich chocolate brown. And he had black curly hair and was handsome of face and limb. As he stumbled to stand and the two riders drew nearer, they could see that his clothes, typical in style and color of the hated Aram ruling family, were in tatters.

The first rider unsheathed his short lance, ready to erase one more Aramean from the earth, but the other stayed his hand.

“Nay, brother, can you not see? He is one of the browns, one of those we call the Nubians. Not a real Aramean.”

“Yet he wears the vestments of the Aram and no doubt is part of the invasion fleet. He should be dispatched.”

“No, hold,” the second scout called out again. “Have you not heard? Have you not heard that the browns are meant for the Sword of Xera? The Sword of Xera hungers for them, and this one appears to be well formed. We will take him back to Enna, to the Sword of Xera. The Sword of Xera will dispatch the lad. This too may be an omen, a favorable omen. We will be rewarded.”

The small young Nubian man had come to his senses enough to see the two horsemen bearing down on him, in the livery of King Xera. And in apparent panic he turned from them and stumbled as in confusion and exhaustion across the burning sands on naked feet.

It was a futile gesture. The two scouts bore down on him, and the first scout reached down and lifted the small young man easily and slung him, belly down, in front of him on the back of the horse. Anxious now to pass on the treasure they’d found, the scouts turned the noses of their mounts toward the land and raced up the sand and across the sand dunes to the king’s high road.

If they had been more observant and in less of a hurry, they might have looked back to where the young Nubian had risen from out of the wreckage of the ship and seen a second figure, a wizened old man, bent over and stumbling into the brilliant sunlight—and lifting his head to watch the horses disappearing over the rise of the dunes . . . and forming a smile, a pleased little smile, on his lips.

The two scouts were cantering back toward the capital of Enna when a large contingent of horseman approached from the central plains at a gallop.

The first scout, recognizing the horsemen of the king, raised himself up in the saddle and waved his lance back and forth, signaling that they had news. By the time the larger force had drawn up before them, the two scouts were off their horses and on their knees, heads bowed.

From out of the pack of horseman emerged a man taller and bulkier and more majestic than all of the rest. He strode to where the two scouts were kneeling, their eyes cast to the ground, their shoulders trembling as all men in the kingdom trembled in the presence of their king.

“Why do you impede my progress?” the king growled. “Are you not supposed to be on coastal watch? What have you seen? And it better not be a trifle.”

“No, my lord, it is no trifling matter,” the first scout replied in a shaky voice. “We have seen wreckage, the wreckage of a ship, perhaps an Aram warship, maybe even its flagship, on the beach at Cefalu. As the oracle said—”

“I know what the oracle said,” thundered the king. “I speak to the oracle. Only I. I do not expect my scouts to speculate on what they do not know. The storm of last night was mighty. It may have been one of our own ships.”

“Beg your mercy, lord,” the second scout ventured, “But there is evidence.”

“Evidence? What evidence? Evidence of what?”

“We have found a survivor. The tatters of his clothes are in Aram style and color. And, you will be pleased to know—”

“Don’t tell me what will please me. Did you leave the body on the beach?”

“No, sire,” offered the first scout. “He is here, on my horse. We spared him because we understand the likes of him are for the Sword of Xera. He is African brown.”

“The Sword? A Nubian?” The king was suddenly interested. “Let me see this one?”

The first scout popped up and dragged the Nubian youth off his horse and set him on the ground, but so weak was the survivor of the shipwreck that he sank to the ground on his knees.

The eyes of the king lit up, and he smiled broadly and stood his full stature. The muscles on his chest seemed to expand, and he became a god of men, a man of huge and divinely sculpted countenance.

“A sign. Another sign beyond the pronouncement of the oracle that we are to look to the Cefalu beach for invasion,” the king announced in a voice that rung out over the gathered contingent.

“Yes, this is one for the Sword.” the king declared. “To be dispatched by the Sword of Xera. And on the altar. We are near the hill of the altar to the sea. Come bring him to me there.”

The scouts took up the trembling Nubian youth and slung him on the horse’s back once more. Then they merged their steeds in with those of the king’s contingent, their minds trying to countenance the reward that would be theirs for this day’s work, and the force moved up to the top of a hill overlooking the sea. Here there was a small, low-lying altar of smooth stone, flat, with horns of bulls wedged at the corners.

At the king’s direction, the young Nubian man was pulled off the horse, and his tattered clothing was stripped completely away. He was laid on his back on the altar, and his wrists were tied with leather thongs and forced over his head and attached loosely to the horns at corners above his head.

His eyes were wide in fright, and he was mumbling his fear and begging for mercy in the universal language of the kingly classes. All the men gathered around him in awe. A Nubian knowing the universal language and one of such delicate but well-formed beauty. Taken for a child at first, he had the stubbling on his chin that revealed him to be older. He was, in fact, a man. His figure was trim, but he was well muscled and smooth skinned, with no callusing. He was no normal Nubian servant. He was someone special to someone of the royal court of Aram. His cock and balls were those of a youth, but they were in excellent proportion to his body. He had the beauty of an ebony statue.

“You are not of low estate, are you?” The king demanded, as he walked through the circle of men and stood tall and mighty at the base of the altar. “Tell me who your master is.”

The Nubian did not answer. He went silent and just lay there, trembling.

“Right. You will talk while you live,” the king bellowed. “But now the Sword of Xera wants you. You will talk before the might of the Sword. Tell me what I want to hear and I will dispatch you quickly. Otherwise I will tear you to shreds from the inside.”

All grew silent on the sacred mound, all except for the panting and involuntary whimpering of the Nubian, no longer speaking, having already betrayed himself as an educated man.

Knowing the ritual as they did and the Nubian did not, the onlookers knew the king was toying with the young man. The Sword of Xera would tear him to shreds anyway. They groaned and moaned their lustful imaginings in chorus in anticipation of the entertainment.

The king held out his arms, which had the span of a giant eagle from the lands of the grasses to the north where the giants dwelled. And when he did so, men pressed forward at the crouch and unlaced his armor. They lifted it off his magnificent torso and did as well with his tunic and backed away, the one holding the kingly garment of linen shot through with threads of gold folding it reverently in his arms.

The king stood there in only his short skirt and his sandals that laced up his calves in ropes of gold. When the attendants had unlaced and taken away the strips of metal that had hung down from the golden belt at his waist, his only remaining adornments were gold bands on his biceps and high on his thighs, the one on his right thigh holding the sheath for a golden dirk knife. The king was old by the standards of the day, but he was of excellent stock and was in battle trim.

The king himself reached to the small of his back and unlaced the waistband of his short skirt.

“I am King Xera,” he bellowed to the heavens, “and this,” he declared in a ring tone, “is the Sword of Xera.” At that he dropped his short skirt and all in attendance, not the least the young Nubian lying on the altar, gasped at the revealing of the longest, thickest cock on the island nation of Akamantis. Hanging down behind the huge cock was a set of matching balls the size of cannon balls.

“Prepare!” the king declared, and three attendants shot forward and took turns working the king’s cock with their mouths and rubbing it with ointment.

Two other attendants surged forward and grabbed the Nubian by his ankles, one on each side, and pulled his small body down to where his perfectly rounded buttocks were on the edge of the altar top. And then they lifted and spread his legs out, rolling his pelvis up to receive the Sword.

No one present, including the king, thought that the sheathing of the Sword was going to be possible; they all assumed that the small Nubian would expire at the first thrust. Still, they knew that even in death the Sword would be thrust inside—and would continue its thrusting until the king’s seed had been split—and the sacrifice would be torn asunder and lose his lifeblood at the base of the altar. All took a step forward, licking lips, anxious for the rarely seen spectacle, wanting to see the expression on the Nubian’s face and hear his last strangled yowl as the thrust of the Sword transmitted him to the world of the dead.

Everyone looked at the king, now in full erection, and saw that his cock was as long and thick as the Nubian youth’s forearm.

This was what the Akamantises did with any stray brown person finding himself on the island. The customs were ancient and clear. The brown people—the Nubians—were a sign of good luck for the island. But only if they were dispatched with the sword of the ruling king. No king in history had had the sword that King Xera possessed. Thrice before Nubians had been brought to him during his reign. And each time good times had come to Akamantis when he had dispatched the Nubian with his sword. Only one had survived the first thrust, and then only for a matter of moments. A Nubian like this was a sign of the Oracle at Noto and a gift from the gods.

And this was the smallest Nubian sacrifice of all. All attention was on the altar, no one wanting to miss anything, titillated at the image to come of a giant taking a dwarf, and all assuming it would be an entertainment of but a moment’s length before all of the life would be out of the screaming dwarf.

The king approached the Nubian between his spread legs. He unsheathed his golden dirk and placed the tip under the chin of the young man. Looking down at the Nubian, the king was in full arousal. The Nubian was pure beauty, the height of sensuality to the king. He would not make this quick if he could help it. He did not relish dispatching the arousing youth as quickly as the others. But even in death, the king would have his sheathing and plant his seed at the center of the Nubian.

The king placed the huge bulb of his monstrous cock at the hole of the Nubian and leaned over and looked closely into the young man’s face.

“Tell me who you are and who you serve and how you came to be on the beach of my kingdom,” the king growled.

“I am Toma,” the youth murmured. “And I serve the gods. Beyond that I cannot say. Kill me if you wish. I cannot say.”

The king watched with relish as his bulb gained purchase in the young man’s hole, which caused the youth to shudder and his head to veer back and his howl of pain and stretching to be cried to the heavens. The king was pleased with the expression on the Nubian’s face; it made the king feel mighty and invincible.

“The heavens cannot help you, little one,” the king muttered. “The heavens favor me, and you have been sent as yet another favorable sign. Now, tell me, who do you serve and how do you come to be on my beach? It will go quickly with you if you tell me now. Slowly if you tell me later. But tell me, you will.”

Silence.

The king, angry now, pushed his greased member in several inches in one thrust. The pupils rolled back into the eyes of the Nubian youth, and he screamed a scream that stopped in mid voicing, and he had passed out.

All in attendance thought he was dead—indeed they thought that the taking he had received was enough for him to be dead. But the king saw that the young man still breathed, in shallow breaths, and he signaled attendants, who stepped up and slapped the youth on the face until he was revived.

“Who do you serve and how do you come to be on my beach?”

The Nubian just looked the king steadily in the eye and was silent.

Angry again, the king started to thrust even farther into the channel of the captive, but now it was he who gasped. The surprise was his now, as the Nubian’s channel expanded, and the undulating muscles of his canal seized the king’s cock and pulled him deep, deep, relentlessly deep into the center of the Nubian youth. And then the young man arched his back and raised his pelvis farther. He jerked his ankles out of the grasp of the attendants and crossed his legs tightly above the king’s buttocks and started to fuck the king in a steady rhythm, a rhythm involuntarily taken up by the loins of the king—the Nubian, not the king, in control of the fuck.

The shocked king was lost in ever-greater waves of arousal. He dropped his dirk, and when the Nubian raised his lips to the king’s, the two went into a deep sensual kiss, totally focused on each other—all of the crowds about them spun off into another world.

No one took the initiative in kissing the king.

The king was lost in full fuck now, forgetting tradition and custom and the sacrifice completely. And the flowing he experienced was the best he’d had in memory.

Afterward he collapsed on top of the breast of the Nubian youth, and Toma put his lips to the ear of the king and murmured, “I serve you, if you will have me. And I came to be on the beach because the gods sent me to endure the sheathing of the Sword of Xera and to pleasure the king of the Akamantises for as long as you will have me.”

Recovered, the king bluffed for all of his warriors in attendance to hear by declaring in a voice he tried to make as ringing as possible following the complete draining of his manhood by this little one that the gods had sent the Nubian Toma to answer to the arrogance of the Aram and that he would be locked away in the castle to be sacrificed on the altar of the sun there, the altar of the sea not being worthy enough for this sacrifice.

The gathered crowd murmured in awe, knowing that the altar of the sun was so sacred that only the king could approach it.

And so, Toma was locked away in the king’s chambers, and in due time the king issued the announcement that he had been sent to the gods on the altar of the sun. And in a short time, all in the kingdom forgot the Nubian had ever existed beyond being yet another conquest of the Sword of Xera and favorable omen for the kingdom. King Xera was still faced with the dilemma of who this Nubian was. The first time the king called for Toma, however, Toma straightaway gave the king the answers he had originally sought.

“I will keep no secrets from you, my lord, as long as you search my depths with the Sword of Xera. Only you have brought me satisfaction. Before coming to you, I served the Lord of Sorso, who was lost at sea that stormy night, he along with all of his forces. Only I survived, being sent to you by the gods to serve you. And I gladly tell you that it is more than the forces of the Lord of Sorso who are no longer with the prince who besieges you. The Lord of Jerzu has deserted him as well, with all of his contingent. And the puss sickness has taken away even some of the prince’s forces. But it is true, he is the Prince of Madness. He insists on attacking you and taking Akamantis. He knows you do not have the forces to cover all of the approaches to your island kingdom. He believes he can find your unprotected underbelly.”

“He does not know what I know, little one,” King Xera said. He was lying on his bed of pillows, holding the small Toma to him and running his hands over the Nubian youth’s body. He was transported by the brown bodies of the Nubians. He had regretted the short play time he had had with the first three sent to him. He had no idea how this young man had managed him on the altar, although he had only been half sheathed when he had given up his seed in surprise. Toma was arousing him to the heights, but he did not want to kill the lad with his sword until he had learned more from him. In the meantime, he was toying with Toma’s hole with his thumb, which was larger in itself than the cocks of most Akamantises, and Akamantis men were famous for their thick cocking.

Toma was sighing and began to move his hips on King Xera’s thumb and, without thinking about it, the king had substituted first one and then two fingers.

“He does not know that we know precisely where he will land. The Oracle at Noto has told us so. It has spoken twice. When it speaks the same name the third time, we will know for sure, and that is where we will position our defenses.”

“I fear for you, my king,” Toma said, as he reached down and held the wrist of the hand the king was slowly finger fucking him with. The king felt the pull of Toma’s channel upon his fingers, and he inserted another one.

“You are being led astray. I cannot remain silent. I must prove myself to you. I yearn for your sword, which reached farther into me than any other man’s ever has. Please I beseech you, sheath your sword in me once more, and then I will tell you secrets that will shake you to your very soul.”

“I do not want to dispatch you,” the king murmured. “I wish to play with you further. But I am too much for you. You cannot survive me.”

“Nay, sire,” Toma said. And then he laughed. “Look, sire, look for your hand.”

The king looked down at the hand he was using to play with Toma’s hole and gasped in shock. His whole hand up to his wrist was inside Toma now, and yet Toma’s channel muscles were working to pull his arm even deeper.

The king’s lust knew no bounds, and he rose and, with effort, pulled his fist from out of the Nubian’s ass and lifted the youth up with broad hands more than encircling his waist and settled Toma’s hole over his fully erect sword.

“At least I feel I must lap you,” the king said, “lest I crush your body. That at least is too delicate for my frame.”

The king pulled Toma half way down on his cock and began to lift him and bring him down, beginning the rhythm of the fuck.

After the initial cry and groan, Toma began to pant and moan. “Nay, my king. Sheath your sword in its entirety. I must have it all.”

To the king’s amazement, Toma did take it all. The king had never before fully sheathed his sword; he had killed many a wife and concubine trying to do so. And after the king had given over his seed, Toma refused to release him, clamping down his channel muscles tight and demanding a second ride and then a third—until the king, virile as he was, had no more kingly seed to give, no more power in his pelvis and thigh and buttocks muscles, and just lay back, exhausted and sighing the satisfaction of total fulfillment.

Toma slithered up to where his lips were at the ear of the king.

But the king spoke first. “You are no innocent young man; you are a king’s catamite, are you not?”

“Yes, lord, Toma answered in a whisper. I was the Lord of Sorso’s catamite, but he did not satisfy me, and then the Lord of Jerzu’s, and he did not satisfy me. And then both lords at once, both working their shafts inside me, and still they did not satisfy me. Three men have I taken at once, and still I was not touched to the quick. I went to the prince, and he did not satisfy me. But I satisfied him, and he confided in me. And I had heard about you and that you had the most magnificent member in all the world. And so I came to you. And you satisfy me, my lord. You, today, have reached me to the very center—not once but three times. You are an elephant of men.”

They kissed, the king’s vanity stroked to the limit, lost in love, blind to love and his Nubian lover from this point forward.

“And in your satisfying of me, I must tell you all. I must whisper it in your ear as even the walls of your palace have ears and tongues that speak to the Prince of Madness. You must not believe in your oracle. The Prince of Madness has suborned your oracle. It is not the beach at Cefalu where the attack will occur. It is the beach of Gela, on the other side of the island. You must gather your forces there.”

“But the oracle—”

“Bought and paid for by the Prince of Madness, who is not really that. He is really the Prince of Darkness. I know as no other man does. His cock is as long as yours, but it is not as thick. It is not an honest sword. It is a serpent’s tongue, hissing and slithering inside me. And it is as black as his heart. I cannot let this prince prevail over you. That is why I have come to you.”

“But I go to the oracle tomorrow.”

“No matter what it says, you must announce the truth and prepare for war in the right place. But now you must sheath your sword inside me once again. The very quick of me wants to feel the prick of your blade tip.”

The cries and sighs and moans emitted by Toma during this fourth cocking assured the king that he satisfied his Nubian lover in each successive sheathing more than the previous one.

Such was King Xera’s vanity. And such was his undoing.

The next day King Xera made the last of three ceremonial visits to the oracle. And, sure enough, the word that was whispered and echoed all around the smoky cave walls was “Cefalu.”

“It repeated ‘Cefalu’ for the third time, but, even as you say, I think I could hear the treachery in its voice,” the king whispered to his new catamite when he returned from visiting the oracle in private so that his court did not know the consultations were finished and when they were alone inside the canopy of the king’s bed. “But the more I think on it, the more I hear the true oracle whispering the name of the beach at Gela to me. This is not the first I have heard of the beach. This is where the little Aramean lad who came to me told me of the presence of the prince of the oracle as well as where the prince could be found—but who was not there when my men searched him out. Yes, that makes sense. But what can I do?” the king moaned into Toma’s ear as he cuddled the Nubian into his belly and entered him deeply. “I certainly cannot tell my people that my Nubian lover has told me the Oracle at Noto lies. They would pull me apart limb from limb and feed me to the Galotes. I am not mighty enough to withstand all of the men who would align against me. And they think you are dead, anyway, sacrificed on the altar of the sun.”

“There is no problem, my King and the sovereign of my channel,” Toma whispered in the king’s ear as he pushed the king on his back and straddled his hips and began his own soothing ritual once more. “You go alone to the cave, saying this is the final consultation. Merely say that you went in and the name whispered was ‘Gela.’ And that as you were leaving the cave in confusion, the oracle called you back—twice—and the name ‘Gela’ echoed each time, providing the three declarations that told you the truth.”

“I don’t know. I . . . Oh . . . my ancestors!” Toma had descended full way on the Sword of Xera and was sheathing and unsheathing it and melting away all of the king’s concerns and reason.

And thus it was so. King Xera declared that the oracle had saved its third, and authoritative, pronouncement for the beach of Gela, and his generals and armies and people believed it was so without reservation and planned their defenses accordingly.

On the day of his ceremoniously orchestrated departure for Gela, as the king was putting on his armament before leaving the palace at Enna, Toma came to him, a dirk hidden in the lining of his robe. “Let me go with you, King Xera. Let me show my loyalty and pledge of truth by riding with you.”

“No, little one,” the king replied. “You ride with me as far as the village of Favara, in heavy disguise, but no farther than that. You are unknown in my world, having already been thought to have been sacrificed to the Sword of Xera on the altar of the sun. I cannot give you up, but neither can I display you. And I cannot trust those I am leaving here to protect you. It’s a simple village, but they are my kinsmen, and they will give you sanctuary. There will be no guards, no sign that the king’s most precious treasure resides there.”

King Xera had made these arrangements, as he had no intention of going into battle with the Arameans himself—and he saw no reason to share his duplicity with his devoted catamite.

Toma secretly rejoiced at the naming of the village of Favara, for he already knew there was a treasure there—nay, two treasures. And, although he fingered his hidden dirk, he knew now that the Watchman had told him true—that, although what he did would lead to the removal for all time of King Xera, it would not be Toma’s hand that did the dispatching. Strangely enough, the Watchman had said that Toma had other, far more valuable talents and gifts than that of a warrior.

On the day of the invasion of the kingdom of Akamantis on the island of Li’, in the month that Akamantis came under the sway of the country of Aram, Toma was standing tall on the cliff overlooking the beach at Cefalu to welcome the arrival of his sovereign and lover, the Prince of Madness, and a mighty force that included the contingents of the Lords of Sorso and Jerzu. In far off Enna, the allied forces were already inside the walls of the capital before the army King Xera had arrogantly and secretly sent forth to the beach as he himself returned to the comfort of his palace, even realized that they had been duped by a small Nubian spy with a talent fit for a king.

Transporting back to Enna on the winds of the Watchman’s magic, Toma was set down on the top of the breached bastion wall in time to see the figure of his half-brother, Cleus, at the forefront of the fighting, slashing his way into the inner circle of King Xera’s defenses and to the king himself. The Nubian’s heart leaped with joy at each avenging thrust from Cleus’s sword into the heart of the traitorous principal murderer of his father, Cletar.

Standing beside Toma a wizened, bent old man in a dark brown cloak laid a trembling hand on the arm of the small Nubian he had trained ever so well. “Have you had your fill of the sight of the Aram forces in victory, my son? Do you not wish to return now to Favara—to the arms of your wife, Maia, and of your own young son?”

“Yes, I am ready, Watchman,” Toma murmured. “But what of you? And how does this help our goal for the Prince of Madness to hold sway in Akamantis as well as Aram?”

“All in good time, my son. You have done well; this is all according to plan. I remain in Enna for now. There is much more that is to be done.”

“And so we part here? I have done my part?”

“We part here for now, yes. But as far as doing your part, no, my son, it will seem to you someday that your part had not even started at this point. And we will surely meet again. In Enna.”

The Watchman almost told Toma right there and then of his destiny, but still he was not fully believing in the inevitability of the Prophecy of Noto nor of the inclinations and intentions of Prince Cleus. And so he held his tongue and did not presume to speak for the oracle. Even in his ancient years, he was capable of learning and biding his time. He had done enough meddling in the ways of oracles and the gods already.