The Book of Battles

Conn

Turusachan had been a training place. Conn had known they could not remain there, and indeed, the priests seemed to know he had the blessing of Ohean and the Blue Mages, and this counted for something, When Conn had left them to head for Immrachyr, he had left taken several young priests, but left Gabriel to be trained as a mage.

It was on their second night they had met the priest Coruko, long and tall, dark as night, and guested in his quarters. He told them the differences between their temple and this one.

“It may seem obvious to you, but it makes a great deal of difference. There are far more of us than of you, as many as there are of you in Westrial, and Westrial is, in all those Sendic lands the one with the most Blue Priests, so you are needed in your First Service far more.”

Matteo did not know what First Service was and Quinton had said, plainly: “Sex.”

“Yes,” the older priest had said, “For in those lands where they practice the White Faith, Sex has been reviled, The Lover and the Great Lady dishonored and misunderstood. So men are confused and filled with lust and fear and much of your work is done with them, or people cannot turn to each other so they must go to you. Here that has never happened. In your lands there are Brown Priests and all the Orders of Holy Monks. Some of those are here too, but here we are the priesthood. And here some of us are mages like in the old way. What that means is that the Sex Rite is a smaller part of this Blue Temple.”

The others had blinked, but Conn understood. In whatever House he opened when he left here, the Sex Rite would not be as important as it was in Westrial.

“It is not that it does not exist or does not matter. The rooms of Offering are still here, and every priest is still consecrated and has to have performed the Act of Offering, but in this Temple there are some priests, who almost never do that.”

“In our House,” Derek said, “there was a number of times we were all required to lay wirh men in the Blue Rooms before we never did again.”

“It is not so here. There are enough of us and enough other work to do for that not to be so.”

“But,” Gabriel wondered, “might there be some who simply go through the Offering because they have to and then never do it again? Is that… not wrong? Distasteful?”

“I would not say none have ever done that,” Coruko said, “but I would say that, as in your house, we have dependents and there is no need for anyone to become a priest who does not wish to.” 

 

They lived in a three story house now, with the windows painted red, and blossoming plants in a courtyard. The plain blue façade looked over bustling Candle Street. Conn was sipping his coffee slowly this morning, in the sun room that was living up to its name, and down the hall, where the door was open, Derek was crying out in agonized pleasure while Wayne made love to him. Wayne had come to the house almost the moment they met, and taken a liking to Derek. By then Conn and Derek had had several months together. It was Derek who was more unsure about taking Wayne to bed than was Conn. After all, in this new house there were at least five Blues who never lay with men, and Conn himself hadn’t decided if he would be one or not. He’d stopped drinking coffee to listen to Derek’s cries.

Every week, whenWayne came to the house, Conn knew what to expect. The first time he had been with Derek, Derek came out of the room after him, face flushed, black hair sticking up.

“He was like a lion,” Derek said, later, shaking his head in wonder. “I’m not sure if I liked it or not.”

“But part of you did,” Conn said.

“Yes,” Derek admitted more to himself. “Part of me did.”

“If he comes back do you want him again?”

“I think I have to have him again,” Derek said.

They always talked like this. The fact that they were both Blue priests united them. Jealousy had only been a part of what their relationship in those first years. Talking about someone else’s sex was like talking about someone else’s cake. At night, Derek slept beside him, and in the nights and days, Derek made love to him. They grew closer and closer, not less.

By the second and third time, Conn knew that Derek was experiencing pleasure and love like he had never known, except for with Prince Anson or with another Blue. He knew because, Derek ceased talking about the pleasure Wayne gave, after the man left, the Blue came back out contented and quiet, his eyes shining, a spring in his step. On those days, after Wayne had left, Derek was filled with an extra fire and Conn knew that the nights would be especially passionate. It was as if Wayne’s sex was a gift, in the end, to him, and so as he listened to Wayne and Derek cry out, Conn shivered and rejoiced.

Conn’s experiences were mixed, but then so were all of theirs. Conn had honestly thought, and so did Derek, that in this new country they would be done with the Offering Rite, but he discovered he loved it. There was still that part of him that was a boy from a small Westrialian town that no matter what, thought of sex as sinful and what he did as prostitution, and when he talked to Derek, he understood that part lived in Derek as well. But he loved the laying with men. He loved not knowing what would happen. He loved being with nervous seventeen year old, or the nervous married man, the sexually eager visitor who pleased his body in every way, or the old man who thought he would never know love again. He loved the sacredness of the bedroom act even when the individual acts were less than spectacular. Earlier that morning, he’d spent twenty minutes riding up and down on a dull, unskilled hairy man who hated to be kissed but had an enormous penis. As Conn rode him, he understood that this man had little love or passion in his life, and this experience, so common for him, was one that the dull man needed, the closest he would come to bliss. Conn finished, his penis finally beginning to be hard as the man shouted and came. In these lands, Conn had been introduced to slua, the bottle of intoxicating liquids sniffed to make the body hot and pleasure easier. It made sex with bad lovers better. Down the hall, as Derek screamed he realized it made sex with tremendous lovers almost unbearable.

 

When Wayne came down the hall and out of the room it was with a spring in his step, naked, his cock still erect. He never dressed in the little room, and he never bathed before leaving though baths were here.

“I like the smell of him on me for some time,” Wayne had said. “I don’t want to forget it.”

“Tea?” Conn offered. “Coffee.”

He touched his nose. Slua was to be inhaled, but when the liquid got to the edge of the bottle it burned, and if it was not wiped away immediately could do damage to the tender skin around his nose.

“No, no,” Wayne said, dressing. “Thank you, Patera, thank you,”

Patera was what they called the head priests around here, and Conn was head of this house, this thing between a Blue House and a House of Knowledge.

Conn could hear water running, and it was only after Wayne was gone and his shower done that Derek came out in a dark blue silken house robe, stretcheing and combing his black hair.

“Would you like to join us next time?” he asked Conn.

“What?”

“I don’t think Wayne would mind. Things have gotten very intimate, and it seems strange to have that much intimacy and you not be there. You can say no, but if Wayne wished it, we could share him.”

A thrill ran through Conn. Whenever he heard them making love, he wished he was in the room. He said this.

“I don’t know if I want to be part of it, but I would not mind seeing it.”

“Alright,” Derek said, softly.

“However, we are priests and you cannot suggest this. Wayne must want it. We are not for ourselves when we have men here, no matter how good it may feel.”

“And how your man this morning?”

Conn shook his head ruefully and Derek, who knew what it was like to be with dull and unskilled men, laughed.

“That,” Conn said, “was definitely not for me.”

 

The Temple in Turusachan had not been for him, either. It had been the place of learning, and learning was necessary.but it was a place he knew he could not stay. It did not need him. What he longed for was the Blue House in Kingsboro and maybe one day he would return there, but more than anything, what he wished to create was the joy he had felt in that house, being seventeen and new to everything, experiencing the full acceptance of being a dependent in the house, part of a new family, making friends with the priests who would become his brothers. What he wished was that, somehow, he could always return to that newness and recreate it in this house. He hoped that he had.

In the Blue Towers of Turusachan, he could see that what was in Kingsboro had been created in large part here. The cities of the north that seemed to crumble into themselves and then rise into newer structures, where a block of ruins yielded a block of houses and inside of a new temple could be seen the ruins of the old, were different from the vibrant cities of the south. But Turusachan had been something between them, and coming through the Red Gate, he and Derek understood that this was a replacement of what had once been the Red Door, for a walkway of crushed red stones led to a great high and porched temple which must have been the Great Sanctuary. Where, back home, one would have walked to the right and then traveled down the long blue wall to the White Door, here it was a series of long buildings and houses that led to a high, terraced palatial building with minarets and fine parapets that Conn saw bore a great White Door. Here, the needy were received and instruction took place, but there was far more instruction and there were far more in need than ever had been in Kingsboro, and there were walls and small outbuildings, gardened courtyards that shot out from this building.

The next day would reveal that to the north was a similar complex surrounding a temple as great as the entire Blue House in Kingsboro, and this bore the Black Door. This whole house was dedicated to sexual pleasure and sexual instruction. And as time went on, Conn understood that these three palaces formed a semi ring and where actually, by the arteries of courtyards and outbuildings, all linked together, and at the center of them, and then jutting out to make its own palatial structure and outbuildings to the north, just as back in Kingsboro, were the living quarters for the priests and these also, by catwalks and underground walkways, linked to the other three palaces. Together, all of this, along with the great houses and markets outside of them, had made the fabulous blue city of Turusachan.

           

This morning, as Conn cleaned the front room of his house, sweeping up the dust that was barely there, and wondering if a strange new lover would come this afternoon when he was on duty, he saw, walking purposefully up the mildly busy street, a man robed in black, and he was surprised when this hooded man threw off his hood and walked up the steps, briskly entering the room. There were, true enough, all types who came to the House of Learning, but they did not generally include serious minded wizards, and this was, most definitely, a wizard.

“Are you Connleth Aragareth?” the man who resembled Ohean a great deal, who had that… mark of magic on him, asked, and Connleth, standing straight and laying his broom against the door said, “Sir, you know that I am.”

“I have come from the Rootless Isle,” he said. “Ohean Penannyn is there, and has has requested that you return to his service once again.”