Samhain Publishing

A passion to appease the gods…or call down their vengeance.

The jungle-wrapped city of Challas is dying, crumbling under the weight of its corrupt priesthood and degenerate new gods. But an even greater threat looms on the horizon. Outside the city walls, a pestilence breeds. Unless stopped, it will crawl through the city’s decaying streets and destroy everyone.

Phalandria wants to see her magnificent city reborn and freed from the perversion of the priests who murdered her father. And she wants Massilis, the man who has stood by her side since childhood. The man who’s developed into a magnificent, jungle-hardened warrior…and ignites her unquenchable desire. Although Massilis has always protected her, only once has he allowed his hunger for her to show.

Now the water oracle has called for Phalandria and Massilis to perform the Concubitia, a sexual rite to propitiate the gods. But the priests suspect a conspiracy and will do anything to protect themselves. And Phalandria realizes that the priests are not the only ones sabotaging the ritual.

The man she loves has an agenda of his own.

Copyright © 2009 Cathryn Brunet
All rights reserved — a Samhain Publishing, Ltd. publication

Sunlight dapples the old temple walls, the ruins of a lost time. They stand, these shrines to forgotten gods, but precariously, half eaten by our ravenous jungle. I touch a lichen-encrusted figure etched in the crumbling tufa. I do not know which of the old gods this is, but I fear that I should. My race is dying, withering under nature’s exuberant gaze. The god knows this, and taunts me from his stone prison.

Butterflies drift past my face, iridescent escapees from the encroaching forest. Heat pummels my skin. This close to the city boundary, the atmosphere hangs thick and dense. Oppressive, as though the earth is leaden with expectation.

The world waits, breathing the shallow air of anticipation, like I do. From a distance comes the triumphant wail of a hunter’s horn. Startled birds shoot for the sky in an explosion of cobalt, emerald and scarlet wings. They quickly resettle, hiding amongst the intense verdant foliage and resuming their incessant chatter.

Some think our old gods are dead, that they starved from lack of worship like the unwanted babies my people sometimes leave in the jungle to die. But I know they are not. They are slumbering, biding their time in theistic limbo until they can once again emerge and play havoc with our lives. No different to our current gods. Greedy. Demanding satiation of their myriad desires in an eternal summons to humankind. A call we always answer, in the end. That is our lot, we mortals.

I trace my finger over the carving, dragging the tip across the stone to caress the god’s phallus. It is oversized and scarred, as though he has used this mighty weapon in war.

I stroke it and think of another godlike creature. Of Massilis. Of tomorrow. The god smiles at me. I press my sweaty forehead against the cool stone and drown in a fantasy of displaced time and the quiver of wanton need.

“Are you excited, Phalandria?”

Massilis.

His voice is low and I shiver at its timbre, knowing it has rumbled from the depths of a powerful chest. From the body of the man I am destined to publicly love at the rise of tomorrow’s moon. More fodder for our rapacious deities, but a feed I will gladly provide. For once, the gods and I are in accord.

Massilis. Warrior. Hunter of animals, killer of enemies, hero of my caste, and the man the gods have chosen for me. Tomorrow night, we will expose ourselves to the entire ruling caste of Challas, our beloved jungle-smothered city. We will make love in the temple chamber in front of all except the very young. We will hear the sacred chants in our ears, the moans of the worshippers as they succumb to sexual and religious intoxication, drunk on the sight before them. And this time, they will not turn away as they did the last, barely able to hide their disgust, their faces drawn with fear of what may come.

This time, the worshippers have the crème of our caste. We are young, glorious in our beauty, radiant in our sensuality. We are neither old, nor ugly, nor infirm. And we are not selfish. We will not appal our audience with a disrespectful, perfunctory coupling.

That will not happen to Massilis and me. We will weave a spell. We will enchant. We will exalt and shower the gods with our ecstasy. Massilis and I will be magnificent. I know this. It was foretold, whispered in my ear by the water oracle of Lake Muchato. Together, he and I will resurrect our dying race. It is our destiny.

We cannot fail. We must not. For if we do, Challas will succumb to an apocalyptic pestilence no one will survive. And neither will we.

I do not turn around. He is close. I sense him in many ways, as I always have. We have grown up together, but never made love, not even under the protective cloak of the Concubitia rite. It is against our social order. Until we choose our life partner, outside the Golden Temple only the lower castes may experience our lusts. Unless the gods call, as they have to Massilis and me, answering a prayer I have murmured an eternity.

I feel his breath lift the fine hairs that grow on my neck. Pulsing, throbbing heat emanates from his skin onto mine. The air is redolent with the smell of his body, the slightly gamy odour of man, like lust’s testosterone-drenched perfume. I detect the metallic twang of fresh blood, the lingering, inevitable scent of a successful hunt. A light breeze flows across my moist, broiling skin. My flesh puckers in response and erupts in a rash of goose bumps, a manifestation of the moan I want to let out.

“Yes,” I say. “I am eager to appease our gods. Our city’s fate depends on it.”

My hand stays on the carved god’s priapic phallus. He is mocking now. The chisel marks around his eyes look like laughter lines, his mouth a sneer. He has seen inside me and knows what I desire, what I need. His greedy eyes tell me he wants it too. Our gods are voyeurs, even our forgotten ones. Deified reflections of ourselves.

“The priests want us to fail, Phalandria. But we must not. Their grip on Challas must be broken. They are killing us with their decadence and debauched ways. Challas needs a warrior to guide her, not a perverted priesthood.”

He is right. Our priests are foul and degenerate creatures, yet they hold us in their thrall. We are moths around the flame of their Golden Temple, battering ourselves to death against the light, each day growing weaker, each day calling annihilation closer to our city walls.

And now our extinction is almost upon us.

Massilis leans in to me and traces his finger down my arm. His finger is rough, callused from the clutch of his bowstring, the rub of the hilt of his hunting dagger. I want it in my mouth, to suck on it and soften the skin with my saliva. To make it ready for when he touches me. To taste his raw manhood.

His hand engulfs mine. Together, we masturbate the unfeeling, rigid god as though our hands can give him life. The carving does not laugh at me now. His eyes are closing as I narrow mine, his mouth parting as he responds to our ministrations. Lucidity loosens its fragile knot as I succumb to my carnal instincts and join him in debauchery.

“Concubitia,” Massilis says, and in that word I see the water oracle’s fantasy.

The stone feels slick against my hand. I cannot tell if it is from perspiration or the pre-come of a dissolute, undead god. My gaze is too unfocussed to tell, my nose too full of Massilis, my ears too full of his words. I do not want to know.

“Concubitia,” I reply, my voice sounding dry and old. I swallow, seeking moisture, but all my bodily fluids are flowing downward, leaking between my thighs. Oily. Preparing me for what I have wanted for so long.

Massilis presses his mouth against my ear. “With you it will be easy, Phalandria. But not, I hope, too quick.”

His left hand creeps up my side and across the silken fabric of my tunic. A thumb brushes the hard nub of my nipple. I want to groan aloud but there are others visiting the old temple. Our society is liberal, but for some the half-ruins remain a sacred place. We should not debase it with lust. And although Massilis and I can indulge in endless rounds of foreplay, that is all we may do. Until tomorrow.

“Yes.” The word comes on my panting breath. I am too excited to hide my want. He is right. It will be too easy, although I suspect it will also be too quick.

The brushing continues and then stops. My breath is loud. As though testing it, Massilis takes the hard point of my nipple and rolls it between his thumb and forefinger. The action sends a spike of electric lust into my groin. A trickle of fluid escapes me and slips down my inner thigh. It feels warm and cool at the same time. My desire for him oozes from me like sap. I have become a slave to my anticipation.

I cannot help myself. My lips part and a soft mewl escapes me. It echoes off the wall and bounces back as if it has come from the open mouth of the carved god. The atmosphere trembles as though it is changing, transporting me to another world. A place where I am blind to everything except the throb between my legs.

Massilis presses into me, his erection hard along the cleft of my backside. His left hand strays down my stomach toward my heated, slick interior. My groin convulses. I pant hot, excited breath at the wall, uncaring who sees me, who hears me. I grind my rear into him, lost in the feel of his cock against my arse, imagining impaling myself on that massive length. I know I cannot. Not here and not now. Sex between us is forbidden. Tomorrow’s moon has not risen, nor have we taken the sacred vow. But at this instant I would willingly sacrifice the remainder of my life for a taste of that ecstasy.

Massilis’s breath is short in my ear. “Tomorrow,” he says and thrusts against me. Then there is nothing but the faint breeze on my back and the grogginess of awakening from an interrupted dream. But I am not dreaming. The birds still call their melodic chirrups, the air still smells of sweet bangorn flower, and the sun still beats its relentless rays on my shoulders.

I press my forehead against the tufa wall and slap it, cursing the damp, still-erect but grinning god for conjuring up Massilis.

In the days when my breasts were tiny buds and the first downy hairs of puberty had begun to sprout between my thighs, my friend Delicaxia and I played on the lush lawns of the Golden Temple. The temple precinct was forbidden territory, declared off-limits by my father for reasons he had never explained. I was not a child who defied parental orders, but my disobedience was accidental and the afternoon too glorious to hold threats. Danger belonged in another realm.

We arrived at the grounds after following a rabble of butterflies through the streets of Challas, catching the insects in our small hands and then letting their wings flutter gently against our palms before launching them back to their friends.

It was a game we sometimes played. The sort of joyous indulgence that is the purview of the young and carefree. With the iridescent dust the butterflies shed we would paint our skin until we glowed like the temple roof and, with our arms outstretched and our faces turned to the sky, we would spin around, pretending we were human sunbeams.

A year older, I was more skilled than my friend. I caught more butterflies and coated my skin faster. My flesh glowed pewter and gold, shot through with the pearly effulgence of a Zarbithnath’s complexion. Pleased with my colour, I span and span with my face to the flaring sun until dizziness overcame me. A sign, we believed, of the gods’ satisfaction.

Giddy and dazzled, I tripped and fell, laughing breathlessly while Delicaxia continued her chase. I lay with my back sunk into the lush lawn and stared at the sky, regaining my breath and listening to Delicaxia’s giggles. Her laughter burbled and flowed like water over pebbles, innocent and heart-filling.

Suddenly, it stopped. Curious, I rolled onto my stomach and stared toward the temple, the direction in which I had last seen her run.

Two priests hovered by the far corner, leaning forward as they talked to the pretty girl who had wandered innocently in their direction. The priests were old, their faces wrinkled, their hair faded and thin. The taller had a drooped eyelid and a face that slid to the right as though pulled by an invisible force. The hand on the same side was clawed, with long, curling nails that looked like they were stolen from an animal. The shorter priest was less decrepit. His cobalt eyes were filled with sparkles but they did not have the beauty of a typical Zarbithnath’s aureate flecks. Instead, they were almost otherworldly, the eyes of a monster whose realm was somewhere deep and dark and foul.

Both priests’ loincloths bulged and lifted as they caressed and squeezed Delicaxia with hungry fingers.

The shorter priest turned his filthy gaze to mine. His lip curled up, exposing a blackened eyetooth. He crooked a finger in my direction, bidding me to come to him.

A quiver of fear turned my stomach squalling. I had picked up an impression from my father that not all our priesthood was holy, and though I was too young to understand their faults, I recognised these priests’ impiety as if it was written across the temple wall. I responded with a frantic shake of my head.

He stared at me for a moment longer before returning his focus to Delicaxia. His red tongue slithered out of his mouth and ran lasciviously over his pouty bottom lip, the saliva glistening like a slug’s trail.

Delicaxia looked back over her shoulder at me. I did not understand her expression but whatever her face showed, I sensed it was nothing good. I rose and took a step in her direction but an innate fear took me no further.

“It is late,” I called to her, then glanced at both the priests. “Father will be here soon.”

It was a lie. My father was hunting with Massilis’s, as they always did this time of day, and the priests knew it. The claw-handed one sneered at me and pressed that ugly paw against Delicaxia’s back, compelling her to walk with him.

Forcing courage into my muscles, I took another step forward. “Delicaxia!”

But she did not turn around. The shorter priest laughed and wheeled to follow. I was left alone on the grass, anchored to inertia by an anxiety borne only of instinct and my father’s vague warnings. These were our priests, our society’s protectors. In their hands, Delicaxia should be safe.

Except I feared she was not.