Edern stood at the window, not really looking out onto the king's parkland below, but intent on the manuscript open before him. It was indeed a puzzlement but mention was made of nushadir, a substance powerful enough to break down lead and iron. Such a substance, even if it took a journey all the way to the Flame Mountain, could be just the missing key in his search for power.

The king saw merely gold, but Edern saw a larger horizon filled with the power of the Philosopher's Stone, eternal youth and the vision of slaves to satiate his burning lust. Edern would stop at nothing, using king and commoner alike, to achieve his end.

"Ah, Edern, I see you have discovered my most recent purchase. I bought that for a song from a foreign merchant named Anosh in desperate straits. Seems he had taking a liking to poking the rear of one of the king's favorite servants; the king was not amused. To what do I owe the honor?"

Edern turned to Ashwin. The court alchemist had grown even older, more stooped with leathery, stretched skin and watery eyes from too many late nights over candles, but he certainly hadn't lost his sharp bargaining skills or his wit.

"It's quite a thought, Ashwin, this notion of nushadir that can corrupt the surface of base metals with such power," Edern allowed, "but I've not come to compare strategies of metals. I am looking for an apprentice."

Ashwin straightened a bit. "Indeed. An apprentice, you say? Perhaps I can lay a hand on a lad or two for you to consider."

Edern understood all too well what Ashwin meant by laying a hand on a lad. In the small circle of alchemists throughout the known lands, Ashwin had a reputation for preferring the male over the female. But that was not his concern; he needed an apprentice and now.

"You misunderstand, my friend Ashwin. It is not a lad I seek but a girl to be my apprentice."

Ashwin tipped back his head, loud guffaws echoing off the stone walls of the chamber. "A girl, you say? Surely, Edern, you have lost your mind. Girls are there to serve and to fuck if you are of such a mind," he sneered, his eyes crafty, "but to apprentice to an alchemist? What would make you want a girl? If you are looking for one to have handy for what she has between her legs, I suppose I can steer you to the right people. But apprentice? Who ever heard such a thing?"

"Ashwin," he replied, a cold look freezing the echo, "I never make jokes. I have no time." Edern fingered the edge of the scroll, choosing his words carefully. "The Goddess has appeared to me in dreams. Several times she has come and each time the message is clear. I need an apprentice who must be female to please the Goddess and if I do so, the path will be made clear. I need a girl, Ashwin!"

Edern's mind wandered a bit in the silence of the chamber. He had not told Ashwin at all the depth of the dreams, dreams so real that he could smell her sweat and arousal. He had not described the detail of how this apprentice would be the channel between himself and the Goddess, the great, colorful, lusty detail of her sexual submission that he would awaken and, through that helplessness, gain the power that was his every desire.

Oh, no, Ashwin could have his males gleaned from certain Turkish seraglios. There was nothing in that but a place to spread his lustful seed. But the dream was clear. The new apprentice in her helplessness not only would be a vessel for his lust, but would cast the female aura about all that he attempted. The aura was power, pure, raw power surpassing gold and he meant to have that girl.

"Well, my dear Edern, dreams are nothing to sneeze at certainly," Ashwin pondered, scratching his chin. "But a girl? I have no knowledge of a girl who can even count, much less be sharp enough to serve as a master alchemist's apprentice."

"Then I shall take my leave and good day to you, Ashwin," Edern replied and strode quickly from the chamber, despite the good-natured invitation from Ashwin to stay the night. There was no time, no time at all, in which to find the girl to please the Goddess. The cosmic time was coming so fast, the favorable moment in which to find her, and he might not get another chance. Where is she! he thought irritably.

 

***

 

Edern paused as the path broke out into field at the forest edge. The false dawn had only fooled a few of the day birds into a sleepy chirp, but the night birds, the owls in particular, had ceased their noise.

He had traveled through the night because the time was right: he had cast the bones of an owl and the bones had not lied. The air was ripe with possibility. The hair lifted on Edern's neck. Now, he thought, it's going to be now. I can feel her. And I will have her finally. He shifted his robes a bit as his erection throbbed at the thought. His lust told him the truth. She was nearby.

He stood in the shadows as the morning mist and vague shapes appeared. His breathing and pulse stilled to nearly nothing, every sense attuned to the awakening world. And still the sounds came so gentle that he almost missed them.

A soft clunk almost of wood against flesh and then a swish of cloth over cloth or maybe cloth through dew-soaked grass and then she appeared. Edern was reminded for all time that of a sudden she was just there, much like the deer that appears in the meadow.

The mist was still too great for him to see her clearly, but he could tell that she carried two wooden pails banging gently against her legs. He couldn't see her face, but she was the one all right. He had seen and smelt her raven hair and bruised the scarlet lips with his teeth a hundred times in his dreams. He thanked the Goddess under his breath and then pondered how to procure her.

The girl wandered a bit further along the edge of the forest, unaware she was spied upon. She walked into an opening. Edern slid along from shadow to shadow and followed her into the forest.

Here the mist had not penetrated although it was still set in shadow. But the girl soon stepped into a meadow and leaned over to fill her buckets from a bubbling spring. Edern could see her black hair well enough now. She pulled up her skirts and bent over in the grass at the spring's edge to drink directly from the spring, much as a woods animal might. Edern's cock made itself even more noticeable.

Edern caught his breath entirely as she then pulled up her skirts to her waist and squatted a bit away from the spring. The faint hiss of her piss and its odor reached him. I must have her and right now, he thought. I can wait to buy off her family, but I can't wait to use her. Her back was to him as he crept up behind her. She half rose when he had her by the hair, the other hand clamped firmly over her mouth.

The hand muffled her scream, but she had the presence of mind to bite him and try to kick backwards, for she knew very well where to kick a man. His hand left her mouth only to close around her throat, shutting off her breathing as she panicked.

"Stop it, you silly bitch," he hissed, "if you ever want to breathe again. I've caught you fairly and I mean to have you if I have to knock you senseless first. You choose!"

Gradually her struggles weakened and Edern felt secure enough to relax his grip on her windpipe. Her eyes widened with shock as she looked into his face. Edern had the impression that she recognized him.

"What do you want?" she whispered.

He didn't reply but ripped open the front of her shirt, exposing her pale breasts in the dawn light. He mauled her, tugging and tweaking at the nipples until she was moaning.

Unable to contain himself further, he threw her to the ground right there in the spot she had pissed, his fingers still entangled in her hair. The one free hand tugged the skirts back up over her waist. He dragged open his own robes and, without more preliminaries, drove his lust into her.

He realized as he speared her that he had taken her maidenhood. All well and good in this moment the Goddess had ordained. He would take more than that before his purpose with her was complete. He left her hair for the moment and grabbed her wrists, twisting them cruelly behind her back and driving her face into the damp grass.

She moaned louder as he pounded furiously into her, her sex suctioning him relentlessly. And then he thrust into her especially hard and held himself there, spilling his pent up seed into her as she cried out for mercy and in lust, her own body spasming.

The two lay panting for breath until she muttered, "Please get off. I can't breathe."

Edern sat cross-legged in the grass watching her bare flanks become clearer in the morning light. "I've been dreaming of you," she said lazily.

"How so, girl?" he asked, instantly wary.

"I know you want me. I know you want even more than this. But everything blurs after this morning."

Edern relaxed a bit. "Yes, I want you for an apprentice. I am a master alchemist in need of younger legs," he stated boldly. There was no point in revealing any more of his plans if the Goddess hadn't done so. "What is your name?"

"I am known as Franseza, daughter of the smith in that village there," she said, pointing.

Edern cupped his hand over his eyes against the bright morning light. He stood up, pulled her to her feet, and said, "Well, Franseza, daughter of smith, you will do nicely. To your feet and let us go see this smith."

With Edern's leave she quickly filled the buckets with sweet water and followed him back down the path to the forest edge. Edern was satisfied to see that she had some idea of her place as she walked along behind him a few steps, her head down and the smell of her wafting his way now and again.

Already the heat of the forge was uncomfortable as Franseza's father worked on a long sword. Edern stood by for a bit as the smith worked with the heat, thrusting the blade into a barrel of water to temper and then back into the fire.

Edern handed the man the agreed upon gold. He tossed the pouch into the air and grasped it tightly. This was much more than he had hoped to get for Franseza, aware that he might have had to pay dowry to some idle local lout of a boy. He grunted in satisfaction, "When you no longer have need of her, send her back if need be. Franseza, run off and say goodbye to your mother and be quick about it."

The two men discussed the finer points of working with metal until Franseza came running back, nearly out of breath. "I am ready, Sir!"

And so Edern headed off to home with Franseza trailing behind but only after a short side trip to the spring. There at the side of the meadow he stripped her, making her grab a branch over her head and then beat her soundly with the leather belt that she had worn around her.

She cried out at the sting of the sweat-soaked leather as it curled around her hips and up under her breasts, the tip sometimes hitting a nipple. The branch swung up and down under her weight as she held on but still tried to dodge the blows.

"You will come to understand," Edern muttered as he applied the leather with enthusiasm, "that this will be your lot, for I have bought all rights to your services. I alone shall decide your destiny and I would hope that you would learn from this little lesson."

Franseza screamed as the leather curled viciously over her pubic mound, shouting out her agreement, her pleas for mercy, her pleas for more punishment.

There under that tree, Edern took her one more time as she was bent over an old stump ripe with moss and fungus.

There was no more doubt, he had found her, the key to it all, as he shuddered inside her and she cried out in the agonizing passion that had already gripped her.

 

Chapter 1

 

Edern poked his finger down at the page and exclaimed, "Now there is a likely possibility!"

Franseza rolled over on the rough cot, pulling a deer skin up over her head, trying to drown out the morning sun and the mutterings of her Master as he pored over some brittle ancient manuscript. This was a fit time of day only for farmers and shopkeepers, not for a girl who had toiled by flickering candle late at night ciphering manuscripts. She started to drift off again until Edern slammed shut the book. She groaned.

Edern crossed the one small room of the cottage in a few steps, deftly moving between the tables loaded high with precious scrolls and the paraphernalia of an alchemist, his wiry body grabbing the side of the cot and overturning the girl in a heap on the floor, her bare legs sprawling.

"You must be the laziest apprentice I have ever had! Get your useless tail out of bed, girl, and be about your business!" he thundered. He gave her a swift kick, his toe catching her left rump. She stared up at him with her tousled hair in her eyes, ready to retaliate with a sharp tongue, but she was awake enough to remember that would not be a smart thing to do with an alchemist running on a short temper.

"It's Friday the thirteenth, an unlucky day to be sure. Are you sure you really want me to gather plants?"

Edern threw a basket at her. "Take this and gather some lemon balm; I'll hear no more of your Christian nonsense. It's a day full of ripe feminine auras and it's lemon balm I mean to have. Make sure it's from the sunny side of the garden where the dew has burned off. I want no corruption on it and it must be gathered now for the celestial time is ripe. Now, be gone with you!"

He stamped back to the other side of the cottage, ignoring the young apprentice's glare and was soon back with his finger thoughtfully tracing the outlines of experiments from countries far to the east, experiments which he believed would help him create the Stone of the Wise.

Franseza stood in the open doorway, blinking in the sun and rubbing her backside. She hardly could see as it was and did not notice the king's procession arriving until it was almost too late.

Edern cursed, muttering under his breath at the interruption. He pulled on his best robe, pushed her out the door and toward the garden, brushed himself off and bowed as the king rode a chestnut charger right through the cottage gate.

Obviously Franseza wasn't wanted. She wanted to eavesdrop on the royal conversation but that was for the likes of a Master Alchemist and not a lowly apprentice. She dawdled around the garden, not careful at all where she picked the balm, one eye back on the cottage. The old fool was trying to stay in the king's graces that much she could tell, but he was also trying to dissuade the king from something.

The king would not be put off and pointed his finger at the alchemist with a threat. Edern made a very low bow as the king galloped at full tilt down the path, his entourage struggling to keep up with him.

Edern shouted at her. "You, girl, get busy and get me that balm!"

She watched him turn back through the cottage doorway and sighed.

 

Franseza gently brushed the twig broom across the rough floor, trying hard to stay out of Edern's way as he prepared the balm, grinding the essence with mortar and pestle, murmuring mysterious words over each step, gently heating the substance until a strange aroma permeated the room.

She was trying so hard not to be a problem that she didn't notice where she was backing as she swept. The precious glassware provided by the king (no mere alchemist could afford the expense) clattered off the table and shattered into shards across the rough planks, spilling substances once combined with laborious precision by Edern. Startled, Edern looked up, burnt his fingers and uttered a mighty curse.

Normally Franseza would have turned and tried to flee the oncoming wrath, but she remained rooted to the spot in her fear. Edern's face was a mask of purple apoplexy.

"That would be it, girl! You are the most clumsy, ill-mannered bitch of an apprentice in all of nature! You have spoiled the day's work and worse yet you have put me in jeopardy with the king! You will rue this day for certain," he warned.

He grabbed a handful of her raven hair and pushed her hard up against the door frame. She cried out in pain; her hands flying up to try to protect her head. Edern held her against the wall with the weight of his own body where, with the strong grip of his other hand, he ripped her tunic from her.

"Don't get a female apprentice, they said. She'll be nothing but trouble, they said," he muttered to himself. "And I said but she'll be useful, she'll cast the female aura about my search, I said. The Goddess will be pleased, I said." He left the fragments of the tunic scattered on the floor and, twisting his fingers viciously, he pulled her along behind him out the door.

Franseza groaned against the stabbing pain, trying not to make him more angry than he already was. Tears splashed down both cheeks as she gingerly hobbled along after him, her sensitive feet scored by the branches and sharp seeds that littered the ground. Blinded by the pain and tears as she was, she could only sense that he was pulling her along to the garden. She stumbled over some rough stone, only held up by the merciless fingers in her hair.

Edern paused at the edge of the garden, glancing about until he saw what he was looking for - a spreading oak with stout limbs, strong enough to carry the weight of a struggling girl.

"I have just the place to hang a stubborn whore of a girl out of my way. This may really be your unlucky Friday the thirteenth," he said through clenched teeth.

He pushed her up against the rough bark of the tree and tied her wrists behind her with rough cord. She still thought at this point that if she didn't resist, her punishment might be lessened. She knew that resistance was pointless anyway. Her father had been more than pleased to strike the unusual deal regarding her apprenticeship. This way she wasn't costing him a dowry and, between the laws regarding women and apprentices, she had been lucky to be treated as well as she had. He tied her wrists back to a loop that ran around her waist, while her tears soaked her breasts, nipples erect against the rough bark.

Edern roughly pulled her back by the hair until she landed on her cheeks in the dirt, her feet kicking out. She stammered in protest now that she had an inkling of what he intended for her. He lashed her ankles together as she started to kick too late. A foot came far too close to the alchemist's crotch and he kicked her back until she stopped. There she lay in the dust, bawling, as he finished trussing her. He threw the rope over the limb above and, working her body up with one hand, he managed to suspend her upside down like a side of beef.

He slapped her hard across the rump, sending her body swaying and twirling about. "Now that I have you out of my way, there you will stay. Maybe I can get something done. But once I have started some processes back working again, never fear, I shall return to you. And it will be with lash that I will entertain you since you seem so bored that you must constantly get yourself in trouble this fine day."

He turned on his heel and left.

It might make no difference that she was an apprentice and mere chattel. She would not go along gently with her punishment. Not hanging upside down naked and bound in the heat of a summer day. Her body began to sway as she explored her bonds.

The raven hair dragged through the dust as she twisted, trying to get a finger somewhere on the knots that held her wrists fast. Damn him, he had prevented her from contorting her body up to reach her ankles with that loop he had tied around her waist, a convenient place to keep her hands out of mischief.

That didn't dissuade her at first as she twisted, groaning with the exertion. The morning sun climbed, the dew long since burned away and now the beads of sweat trickling down her body were more frustrating. The tickling, the itching sensation from the back of her knees to the spot exactly between her shoulder blades, the damp, uneasy feeling of droplets of sweat mixed with her own juices caught in the dark pubic curls, made her twist more furiously until she hung exhausted upside down from the branch. There she remained in an eternity of heat and tickled by the occasional fly that decided to take a stroll over her helpless skin, plenty of time to consider her misdeeds and her unfortunate Friday the thirteenth.

Desperate she tried calling out for the Master Alchemist, begging forgiveness, anything if he would cut her down, even ease her parched throat. Yet there was no sign of him in the cottage doorway and she soon gave that up. Now the tears really flowed, stinging her eyes, blinking, adding them to the sweat that still soaked her in spite of the hot sun, until the beads of moisture eventually collected in her hair, the dusty tresses now matted.

"So you think you've had enough, eh, wench?"

Her eyes blinked open. "Oh, please, please, I'm sorry I spoiled your experiment. Please tell the king it's all my fault. Just please cut me down? Please? I'm so dry, the sun is so hot ..." Her voice trailed off as she gave up.

Edern pulled her head up by the hair and, as she cried out from the pain, he ladled lukewarm water into her mouth. He dropped her head, her body swinging some, gagging some in a coughing fit.

"I think not. You have cost me far too much today; I have no idea how I will explain to the king the loss of that glassware, to say nothing of missing the most opportune cosmic junctions of the day. No, I do not think I am done with you yet. As a matter of interest, I have decided to try a little experiment with you, something I have gleaned from deep within the scrolls recently arrived from the East. Now hold still," he warned.

She coughed again and blinked. How could he think to perform experiments on her! This was entirely too much. She started to struggle again, her wrists now rubbed raw.

"I see you still have some life in you," he said cheerfully, mixing some kind of paste with mortar and pestle. "Well then, you should like this. It is rumored to produce the most irritating sensations in the female womb, taking her deep into the mysteries of the Goddess. The lust is uncontrollable, I'm told, especially when combined with physical pain. So, like it or not, you will serve as my subject just as you are. I will take notes and you will report to me after all your sensations."

His probing fingers split her quim lips apart, rubbing copious amounts of the paste into her tender skin. She bucked and tried to clench her thighs but to no avail. She cried out in protest, her fingers twisting once more in the rope, screaming when he even rubbed gobs of the vile stuff back between her cheeks, his finger poking past the tight rubbery ring of her anus.

Almost immediately her flesh began to burn and her quim produced more wetness to dribble down into her pubic hair. But the burning sensation was not all; she tried to ignore the lust that had been building within her in her bondage but was now threatening to spill out everywhere. Her mind began to focus on mental pictures of forests of erect cocks against her will. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw male testicles heavy with semen and the lust grew.

She could see him step back away from her a bit, her vision blurry from the tears. Franseza couldn't tell what he was doing, until the end of the whip curled around her flank, the tip biting into that same drenched pubic mound.

Too late she screamed. Her body twisted of its own accord, her fingers scrabbling for some kind of purchase, some way to absorb the burning shock to her nerve endings. The tip of the whip pulled away, swinging her around again.

The whip took its time, caressing her from thigh to breast, lighting up her skin with burn but oddly enough also her lust. She twisted and cursed, crying out against the bite but soon enough crying out shamelessly for a raging phallus to fill her void.

Eventually the whipping stopped. She hung upside down, her body still swinging a bit but now covered with crimson stripes punctuated by the trails of sweat and female heat running down the dust. She cared nothing for the whipping; it was the lust that still coursed through her that plagued her most. All she desired, more than water, more than to be right side up, was to be thrown over almost anything belly down and sex up and to milk cock after cock in her spasming quim muscles until she passed out from delirious orgasm.

The Master had been wrong; indeed, today was really her unlucky day for she would hang tormented by her lust without so much as a middle finger to diddle her clit. There she hung, naked, until a bucket of cold water was thrown on her. Somewhere within, she could hear the king.

"Ah, so this is the apprentice wench who has cost me so dear. Well, Master Alchemist, we may not have found the Philosopher's Stone this day, but I dare say we have found a recipe to drive the female lust. And for that I shall reward you well indeed!"

Edern bowed low, satisfied that the day had ended well for having begun so badly. "You are too kind by far, Your Highness."

The king motioned for a couple of soldiers to cut Franseza down, her body collapsing in a heap in the dust. "If you would be so kind as to loan your apprentice to my soldiers for the evening, they might not be set upon by bad luck this unlucky day."

Again Edern bowed low, "I am but your humble servant, my Lord."

Franseza moaned as she was thrown naked over the shoulder of a soldier and carried off back into the forest. Perhaps this day would be lucky for her as well.