The Book of Battles

 Do not despair when you see the fire, for fire is but the spark. All ending sparks the seeds of beginning, death the seed and its flowering life. Therefore, little ones, take heart. Rejoice!. 

-The Sermon of Flowers, The Prophetess Lyssaguran

Pol

 “This was how it was, long ago,” Jasper said to Pol, “before so much happened.”

Jasper was sitting at the window of his room in this large townhouse which hung from the white walls of the Hidden Tower, and overlooked the sea.

“When you have been back home, in the South, you have observed the great Rite?”

“Never,” Pol said. “Actually. I knew of it, but I never went down to it.”

“But you have heard of the Lord of Beasts?”

It seemed strange to Pol, in this civilized room, grey with the light of a misty morning to talk of such wild things, but then this wildness was in every place, and this very rainy morning, he could remember, years ago, awaking in the hotel to the patter of rain, in Cinder’s arms.

“Yes,” Pol said, “I believe we met him in the Green Wood, though he is no longer spoken of in the cities and large towns.”

“I played the Lord of Beasts,” Jasper said. “I wore the shaggy coat, the great antler crown, painted myself blue and went out into the fields at the Belmarine, and at the Hallows. At those times, if a maiden or even a young man goes out, then he is welcoming sex, and the Lady of the Rootless Isle herself goes out to meet the Lord of Beasts in the fields.

“It is not quite the same here,” Jasper said, “but it used to be here that the Green and the Red Orders operated their temples and performed their Rites. Women who desired to be with a man came to a Red, and men who desired women came to a Red priestess. Those men who desired to be with men came to the priests in Blue or Red. It used to be that in those times what you saw when you went to that house with your friend, what you yourself have done for others, was enacted in power by the Three Orders.”

“And that is why you called me to be initiated?”

“Yes.”

“There was still a great power in it. There is still a great power.”

“Yes,” Jasper said. “I am a Red Priest, and I once would have shielded others from that power, but there is great power in you that you have not learned to channel, that you have used only for seduction and not for wisdom, for healing sometimes, but not as much healing as you could. I believe you are of the Red Priesthood.”

“How must I be initiated?”

“It is my belief,” Jasper said, as the thin smoke of his cigarette curled away from him “that you have already been through the first initiations. Am I wrong? There is no formal way for those initiations to occur.”

Yes, laying with Cinder had been a sort of initiation, and after that all the other times, the lovers, the men who had paid to be loved. Austin. Ah… Anson, the intense love they used to make with each other and, as a team, to others.

His body opened, his balls became heavy hot globes, his cock stiffened, remembering Cinder back in his room, just dressing, trying to make his spiky hair stay down.

“I want to go back to them,” Pol said. “There was one, Kirk. He saw that this was not a place we were used to. He made sure we understood and that we came through it safely.”

“He was your psychopomp.”

“Our…”

“Your leader through that underworld. Much like the one who leads young mages through their Ordeal. But for the Hidden Orders there are other psychopomps, and this Kirk was yours.”

Five Orders, the Blue, the Red, the White, the Grey and the Brown, and three of these were Hidden. Two of the hidden ones were the Other Red Order and the Other Blue, both guarding the principal of sex. What the last was, he thought he knew, but did not ask.

“Now, when you are initiated as a mage, you disrobe and, naked, drink from the stone chalice and kiss the Archmage’s staff, but in the Hidden Orders one realizes that those are aligned with with another ritual.”

“Will I go through that other one?” Pol asked.

“If you wish.”

Pol nodded.

“I do.”

 “So you are going to do it,” Austin said, “become a Red Priest?”

“Yes,” Pol said. Then, “Do you mind?”

“No,” Austin said. “I am going to go through it as well. I assumed the ritual would be…”

“Sex,” Pol said, simply.”

“Yes,” Austin said. “Only I assumed it might be with each other.”

Pol had not assumed that. In fact, he had known better. That would not have been an initiation. Pol had actually taken it for granted that it would be Jasper or some other mage, a long made Red Priest, that somehow the sex which was good to him, but also not uncommon, would be made transformative by some Red Priest who would somehow show him things he had never known.

He did not say this to Pol, though. He thought, to fill the space, that he might bring up Anson and the woman on the island but this was no one’s business, and discussing Anson for the sake of mere conversation was immediately unappealing.

“I wonder what else will happen,” Pol said. “I really do wonder what sort of… training is involved.”

“Whatever it is,” Austin realized, “will we still be here when Anson and Ohean leave?”

“Where are they going? When? I heard nothing about it.”

“I heard nothing about it, either, but we’ve been here for some time. You can’t expect them to remain forever.”

 

For the last few days since Jasper had begun speaking to Pol and Austin, but never both together, he made sure they slept apart and often, when Pol awoke, he was surprised that Austin was not there, surprised by the flood of desire that filled him in the night. When he felt someone shaking his shoulder, he croaked, “Austin,” but was surprised to blink, squint his eyes and realize Jasper.

“It is time for your initiation,” the handsome dark haired man said.

Though it was in the middle of the night, and Pol’s cock was stiff as a board, he did not think of lust when Jasper told him, but was possessed of some holy fear. This was initiation, after all, and the only one he’d ever been through because it was the only one he believed in. Vague but huge hopes rested on it as he followed Jasper out of the room and down the hall of the house, out into the cool night. The sky was black and the moon half gone in the month, now seen only through trees, now clear again while Jasper led Pol, trembling into the new house. They entered a room where there was a dim lamp. Sitting up in bed, Pol saw a beautiful, slender bronze man with deep Royan blue eyes.

“Conn,” Jasper introduced him.

“Connleth Aragareth,” the young man elaborated.

Pol blinked. The last time he had seen Conn, the Blue priest had been departing for Chyr. It all seemed like a lifetime ago, but it couldn’t have been a full year.

“Hello, Pol,” Conn said.

He rose from the bed, strongly made, bronze bodied and bronze haired, but still a boy. Pol saw his penis was hard and upturned though his face was solemn. It was only now that Pol realized he had been awakened naked, and was standing before Jon just as erect.

“Go to him,” Jasper surprised Pol. “Your initiation.”

So saying, Jasper kissed Pol on the cheek and left, shutting the door behind Jon and behind him.

They lay side by side, chests heaving, bodies slick, and Conn grinned and looked up at Pol in friendship. The two of them laughed, and suddenly Conn lay on his side and pressed his mouth to Pol’s.

“Do you think we can do this again?” Pol asked.

“We can do this whenever you want,” Conn told him.

“You have cigarettes,” Pol noted.

“Would you like one?”

“Yes.”

Pol climbed out of the bed to light his cigarette on the little lamp

“You are so young,” Pol said.

“Twenty one,” said Conn, moving past him while Pol heard him open the coldbox door, and the boy came back in with a juice container that had been emptied a week earlier and filled with chilled water.

“That shade needs to be drawn down further,” Conn said.

Pol watched the naked boy squat on his hams and examine the windows. That was the best part of what came after sex, the lack of self consciousness or shame. Conn was tall and narrow backed, strong thighed with thick, dark bronze hair.

“You are not of the Tribes,” Pol said. “And not from the Far North.”

“I am from the north of Westrial near Rheged,” Conn said, “Half Royan, less than half Sendic.”

“Ah, there it is!”

Pol sank into bed while the young man looked over him.

“I like looking at you,” Conn said, earnestly.

“I like looking at you too.”

Pol rolled over and reached for an ashtray.

“How are you here?” Pol asked.

“I am here because Ohean discovered the Gift in me. I will be a mage.”

“Then….” Pol was confused, “You are no longer a Blue Priest?”

“That too,” Conn said.

“And even though I am to be a Red Priest…”

“It does not matter,” Conn laughed gently. “All is one.”

“And that is why you are here?”

“You are here,” Conn said. “because I asked Jasper about you and he sent you.”

Pol blinked.

“You looked confident, and I wanted to be with a man, and he said you were from Kingsboro, and studying to be a Red and… You’ve probably been with many men. No, that’s a poor way to put it. I just meant you have experience.”

“You were right both times.”

“I have been a Blue Priest for nigh on four years,” Conn continued. Then he said, “Can I have a puff of that?”

“Go right on ahead.”

“And then more of what we did before?”

“Oh,” Pol grinned at him as he handed over the cigarette, “there can always be more of what we did before.”