Prologue

There had not been a lindworm sighting in the realm of Frosfiant for over three hundred years. King Thragor had dismissed the first reports of a great serpent, one that stretched and swelled the ground it passed over, as the imaginings of common folk with too little to gossip about. After his own best scouts had verified the nature of the tracks, however, he had promptly set a bounty for the beast’s live capture at ten carts of gold. The sum was enough to secure whosoever claimed it a place in high society, and a place for their descendants for centuries to come, but it was no more than the crown could recover in a single week with the lindworm in its power.

What a lindworm rested upon multiplied, be it grain or spices or gold.

The public bounty was a courtesy. There were many self-proclaimed monster hunters in Frostfiant, and a few of them might occasionally have a decent cockatrice or bugbear pelt to sell, but for a task like this, there was only one hunter who mattered.

Hildrid Molander was as legendary as the beasts she hunted, and as mysterious, much to King Thragor’s frustration. He usually made a point of knowing as much as possible about anyone with unique skills he found useful. He had hopes that, upon winning the bounty, Hildrid might accept a place at court as a new-minted noble, but he suspected that she would squirrel the gold away somewhere, or perhaps funnel it to some unknown loved ones, and carry on with the same secrecy as ever.

Some simple facts about her were clear enough. She had been performing her work long enough that she must have reached her thirtieth year by now, and she had never been married.

She was beautiful in the manner of the ancient statues, powerfully built and as tall as most men, with deep brown skin and silken black hair which, by its volume, must have reached her waist, though few had ever seen it released from its customary braided bun. For that matter, few had even seen her without the gleaming, silvery, unnaturally quiet armor she wore for hunts and negotiations alike.

There were rumors, curiously persistent and specific rumors, about what might under that armor. But of course, mysteries always produced rumors, particularly where women’s bodies were concerned.

One thing was certain. Within a day of the bounty being posted, Hildrid was on the move, cutting a confident path from the lindworm’s last known location, and perhaps that was all that mattered.

In ordinary woods full of ordinary game, there were various ways for a skilled hunter find success. One might set snares on well-worn trails, or lie in wait near a water source, or stalk after the freshest tracks in search of the perfect shot.

Hunting monsters and wondrous beasts through enchanted terrain, on the other hand, was an entirely different animal.

Most people believed that magic was what made possible the impossible, and that was not untrue, but those, like Hildrid, who tangled with magic often, understood that it closed as many doors as it opened. Cutting off every backtrail, accounting for every course of action a person or creature might take — those were impossibilities magic made possible, too.

When magic bound the ghosts of a tribe of murdered witches to a particular river, for example, so that they might drown all travelers who sought to cross without a blessing from one of their surviving kin, it meant all travelers.

The best engineers could not build a strong enough boat, or a flying machine that soared high enough to avoid the ghosts’ clutches. Even a set of magic gills could not overcome such a curse. Creatures with gills could drown, too.

To cross that river alive, each traveler had to get that blessing. It was as simple as that.

This example was, of course, not theoretical.

The haunted river in question cut off a handful of acres at the base of the mountain range. The lindworm’s tracks led right to the river’s bank, where it had evidently crossed with impunity, not being quite sentient enough, for all its bestial cleverness, to count as a traveler.

Hildrid

I knocked on the riverside cottage’s weathered oaken door and then forced my hands to fall casually to my sides, not wanting the witch’s first glimpse of me to be a gauntlet clutching the hilt of a sword.

The seconds grated on me as they passed, widening the opportunity for the lindworm to get two steps ahead instead of one. I had to remind myself of how little forest the river protected. The beast was there for refuge and rest and would be for some time yet.

There were shuffling sounds inside the cottage, and at last, the door opened on a woman with a scrub brush and a large river mussel in her hands. She returned immediately to the wooden slab that passed for a kitchen table in the single-room dwelling to continue her chore.

Only once she was settled did she acknowledge me.

“Come sit with me, Hildrid Molander.”

I closed the door behind me and sat on the stump of wood across from her. The air was thick with a pleasant blend of herbs, and a warm fire crackled invitingly in the hearth.

“You have heard of me,” I said.

“And you of me, it would seem.”

“Yes. But I don’t know your name,” I admitted.

“Nettle,” the witch replied, with her eyes on her buckets of mussels.

I didn’t feel as if I knew her any better now than I had a moment ago, but at least now I had something to call her other than “witch.”

She looked to be about a decade older than myself, though her dress was a single, worn length of fabric draped in a fashion that had not been common for over a century. It covered her breasts in a utilitarian way, leaving her hard, wiry arms and back exposed.

“I don’t wish to bother you,” I said, “but I came to ask—”

“I know what you came to ask for,” said Nettle. “Not a potion to cool fever, nor a forecast of your next year’s trials. No. You came to me for my guardianship of the Liquid Line.”

The river’s name was Mathers’ Folly, at least on every map I’d ever seen, but I nodded. She had more claim on the place and its name than any royal cartographer.

“It’s a matter of some urgency,” I said. “I’m following a creature that could bring on an era of plenty for all of Frosfiant.”

Nettle snorted. “An era of plenty for some people in it, perhaps.”

I started to argue, but she gestured for silence with her scrub brush.

“Your reasons for crossing aren’t important,” she said. “You pay the toll, I bless you, I send you on your way.”

“Oh, of course,” I said, relieved by such simplicity. “It’s been a while since the last good prize came through, but you’re welcome to every coin in my purse. If it’s not enough, I can return after I’ve claimed—”

Nettle was shaking her head. “No coins. Coins are only worth what someone says they are. My ancestors took great care that no guardian of the Line would ever be taken advantage of. To cross the water, you must make a noble sacrifice of something of true value.”

I began nervously inventorying my weapons. And body parts.

“True value to me,” Nettle clarified, looking directly at me for the first time. “Luckily, the dearest thing you could offer me is something you won’t even miss.”

“What, then?” I asked, at a genuine loss.

She set down her brush, silently evaluating me. “Semen,” she said simply. “A single batch would do.”

The air had left my lungs. My head spun with a panic I would not have felt facing down the fiercest troll.

“I don’t know what you…. That’s impossible,” I stammered out the least convincing lie of my life.

It was the same lie I’d been telling in large and small ways for as long as I could remember. I would have hoped to be better at it by now, but none of the defenses I’d built for the nobles’ veiled barbs and double entendres could hold fast against Nettle’s directness.

“I should go.” I knocked the stump over in my haste and heard it roll toward the hearth.

“Go where?” Nettle asked, easily righting the stump before it could catch the flames.

I paused with my hand on the door.

I could go anywhere. Anywhere in the world but this room. I had all I truly needed, and my skills would always be in demand.

But I would have failed in the hunt, the most consequential hunt that had ever come my way, the one that could secure my position and legacy for all time, even against all the nosy backbiters the realm had to offer.

“I assure you,” Nettle said gently, “I would never betray a client’s confidence.”

With a slow, shaky breath, I forced my grip on the handle to release. Beneath my armor, my secret was swelling, as it often did when I was nervous. Sometimes I could swear it wanted to be found out.

I turned my head. “What must I do?”

“You must do nothing,” Nettle answered, with a tenderness I was unused to in wielders of magic. “But if you choose to pay the toll, I would ask you to remove your armor.”

I nodded, resolute, and began undoing the leather straps, one knot at a time. Nettle helped me, stacking the pieces respectfully on another of her furniture stumps. The cottage was warm, at least, thanks to that roaring hearth, and the low light provided by half a dozen beeswax candles promised forgiving shadows. I pulled off my tunic, baring my breasts, but leaving my loincloth in place.

If it weren’t for the nervous swelling nudging the cloth forward, I would still have looked like any other woman. Well, any other hulking fighter of a woman.

Nettle did not insist that I strip further, but guided me to stand in the center of her cozy little cottage, on the clearest bit of floor.

“I’m going to secure you in place,” she spoke softly near my ear, brushing the few tresses that had escaped from my braids off the back of my neck.

I nodded again, biting down on the inside of my cheek.

With a wave of Nettle’s hand, ropes that dangled from the cottage’s ceiling sprang downward like striking snakes. They wrapped around my arms, binding them firmly behind my back. Others slithered across and around my chest, above and below my breasts, between my legs and behind my knees. The ends fastened themselves to a row of waiting metal cleats set deep into the cabin floor, like those along the edge of a fishing boat.

With a slow, winding tightening, the ropes pulled me down to my knees atop a thoughtfully placed animal skin, and then tilted me forward, until my torso hung nearly parallel to the floor.

“Why?” I spoke softly, surprised that I could even hear myself over the pounding of my heart in my ears.

“To ensure we catch every drop,” Nettle answered, crouching down to position a wide, shallow bowl beneath me, right in front of my cock. “If you want me to stop, tell me plainly, and I will. But in the crucial moments, you might move without consideration. Neither of us want this exchange compromised by a passing impulse, or—”

“I mean, why is this the toll?” I asked. “Why is this the thing you want?”

“The semen of a woman is a rare and powerful thing,” Nettle said.

I had so many more questions, but at that moment she was placing her hands gently on either side of my face and leaning forward to touch her lips to mine. The simple, soft contact sent a vibrant shimmer of sensation through my body. She brought her hands down to pinch the two extra bright shimmers that had settled in my nipples, tripling their intensity.

My cock swelled further, bumping harder against the dangling front of my loincloth.

Nettle circled around behind me, running her hands up the backs of my thighs.

“Being a monster hunter requires a certain rough-and-tumble temperament, doesn’t it?” she asked. “Gentleness probably has an exotic appeal to you at this point. But the roughness… you were drawn to that from the beginning, and the draw is still there, isn’t it?”

The tingles through my body felt fragile, precious, and like they might be shattered by the slightest lie.

“Yes,” I murmured back to her.

Nettle swept the back of my loincloth aside and lay a heavy slap on the left side of my ass.

I gasped, not so much at the sting of the slap as at the throb my cock gave in response. I let my breath back out, hearing a clear sound of pleasure resonate out through my throat. Nettle repeated the slap on the other side, and I moaned openly.

“Are you glad your path brought you here, to this moment?” she asked.

I was. I couldn’t deny it. But nor could I stop a brutal rush of shame from reddening my face and making me want to curl and shrivel away into nothing.

“It’s all right,” said Nettle, reaching forward to brush my cheek again, no doubt taking its temperature. “The way the world has made you feel, it’s yours. Those feelings belong to you now, and you can put them to new use. Take it from a witch: there’s power in shame. There’s passion. There’s excitement. Have you noticed before?”

I lifted my shoulders. Even if I had sensed the power she spoke of, I didn’t know what I could possibly say about it, let alone what I could do to control it.

“You have,” said Nettle, reaching forward and running her fingers lightly along the underside of my cock.

The shimmer of sensation flowing through me was thankfully uninterrupted, even as the heat of embarrassment washed over the top of it.

“Will you share your shame with me?” she asked. “Will you let me help you wield it?”

To that, I nodded vigorously. For a fraction of a second, I almost forgot what I was here to barter for in the first place. The thought of being able to lift the weight of my shame, let alone swing it, was a boon of legendary proportions unto itself.

Nettle pushed my loincloth to the side, and I closed my eyes to keep from seeing what was beneath it, should I happen to lower my head. Her hand worked its way up my shaft.

“Take me back there with you,” she whispered.

And somehow, with a rush of magic that could not wholly come from me, I did.

My eyes opened, or maybe they were still closed, with a dream behind them as vivid as life.

I was back at the Tipsy Caterpillar Inn, a place I’d only been once in my life, because after that once, I could never show my face there again.

I had stopped here after a months-long hunt, to treat myself to a soft bed, a meal prepared by somebody else, and, most fatefully, a hot bath.

I was luxuriating in the scented water when two maids entered with hardly a knock. Their ruffled skirts and sleeves were already hiked up over their smooth, muscled limbs, to keep them dry as they… attended me.

I hadn’t asked for them. I hadn’t known.

The moment when I could easily have told them I preferred solitude came and passed, and then they were kneeling around my tub, directing me through raising my arms, leaning forward, leaning back, while they scrubbed weeks of trail from my skin. Their breasts shifted in their bodices, right at my eye level, with every movement.

If I told them to leave now, they would think it was something they’d done, something about them, rather than something about me.

But my concerns were not all for their feelings. I thought that, if I could hide my reaction well enough, I could capture these rare memories for myself, without the two women ever knowing anything unusual had passed them by.

I didn’t believe that anymore, of course. I couldn’t remember if I’d truly believed it the first time, but now, I knew how this bath ended.

“There’s nothing left to fear,” Nettle’s voice spoke from behind me, though the young, bright-smiled woman who was scrubbing my back looked nothing like her. “This has already happened. Whatever ripples it set in motion have already scattered far beyond your reach. All that’s left in your grasp are the feelings.”

By whatever witchcraft Nettle was working, those feelings were as fresh as the day itself, not only the emotions, the shame and terror and perverse desire, but the purely physical sensations as well. I could feel my mismatched appendage swelling, rising, threatening to break the surface of the water with its overeagerness. I could feel the building of pressure that, at the time, I told myself was not as dangerous as it felt.

As long as I was conscious, and there was no friction, not from their sponges, not from my hands, I believed that I would naturally contain myself, no matter how uncomfortable it became to do so. I refused to listen to the alarming pulse inside me, counting down my last seconds of secrecy.

“I was such a fool,” I whispered, sure that Nettle was hovering unseen somewhere close enough to hear me. “If I had been more careful, no one would know. You would never even have heard what I was. Or would your magic have told you that much anyway?”

“Does it matter now?” Nettle asked, from right beside me.

A warm, sure hand gripped my shaft beneath the water, and I yelped. “What are you doing?”

“Giving this moment the sort of care it was so sorely missing,” she answered. “Do you object?”

I didn’t.

In her hands, the sensation that was already irrepressible on its own sharpened and thickened until it blotted out all other concerns. I lay back in the tub, gasping and reveling in the shape she sculpted from my memory, the unadulterated pleasure of that fateful explosion that breached the surface of the bath like a fountain and turned the water undisguisably milky.

Like the first time, a shockwave ran up my body as well as down, so forceful that I nearly lost my senses, but even the inky black splotches on my vision could not save me from the shock on the bath attendants’ faces.

I had been seen. I had survived being seen. This time, that knowledge somehow enhanced the warm aftermath, where I was being cradled from behind in Nettle’s unperturbed arms.

I was not lying back in a bathtub.

I was bound on the floor of Nettle’s hearth-warmed cottage, dribbling into a bowl. I was spasming and thrashing without thought. The ropes held me secure, just as she had planned.

“Thank you,” I sputtered.

“Oh, thank you, dear,” Nettle replied, whisking the bowl away to some secure upper shelf before gesturing for the ropes to release me.

She helped drape my loincloth back in place and brought me my armor, still neatly stacked.

“I do hope you find what you’re looking for,” she said, helping me back into my tunic.

“Yes,” I said, slowly finding my way back to the present, from the clouds of magic and memory swirling in my head. “Yes, the lindworm. Of course.”

***

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