Bertrice Small - Lara

The chieftains all paled with this knowledge.

“Hetar wants the ores and the gems, is that correct?” Vartan said.

“Aye,” Imre said, and Petruso nodded vigorously.

“Then we will have to drive the Hetarians from the mountains, and kill as many as we can to make our point most clear,” Vartan said. “Hetar must not be allowed to violate our borders, or be encouraged by our lack of action to push further into the Outlands.”

“Aye!” those gathered in the stone ring cried with one voice.

“Winter is upon us,” Floren of the Blathma said. “We cannot fight a mountain war in the winter. And when the spring comes, who will tend to the fields if we are fighting? Can we not send a delegation to the Hetarians and negotiate this misunderstanding? They have always been a most civilized people. Surely they are open to reason.” He was a plump man with a perpetually worried expression on his face, but he grew the most beautiful flowers in the Outlands.

“If Hetar comes into your lands, Floren, they will lay waste to your fields and send the daughters of whom you are so proud into the Pleasure Houses of the City,” Imre said bitterly. “Hetar did not negotiate with us. They violated our boundaries and murdered our people. This is no small misunderstanding. This is an act of war. We have risked much to come to the Gathering and ask for your help.” He stood proudly looking around at his fellow clan family chieftains.

“If we do not put a stop to this aggression,” Roan of the Aghy said, “Hetar will push further into the Outlands.”

“Perhaps it is just the ores and gemstones that they want,” Torin of the Gitta said hopefully. “It is the only real thing of value in the Outlands.”

Lara stood up. She didn’t know if she should, but she did. “Your lands are the most valuable possession you have, my lords,” she told them. “The farmers in the Midlands have no acreage left into which they may expand their farms. They cannot grow enough crops to feed the people. The City is overcrowded, and people need a place to go. They have begun to encroach on the Forest. I know my people. First Hetar will steal the wealth in your mountains, and then they will come to steal your beautiful lands.”

“My wife knows well of what she speaks,” Vartan said.

“Because she is a Hetarian!” a voice among the crowd cried out.

“Yes, I was born Hetarian,” Lara said, “which is why I know the minds of those who rule that land. You must listen to me. Never have I known such beauty as is here in the Outlands. Never have I been treated better than here among the Fiacre. The people of Hetar are taught to believe you are savages, but you are not! I have come to love your ways. If Hetar invades the Outlands you will all lose your way of life. Many of you will be enslaved as the Tormod and the Piaras have already been enslaved. You must listen to me, for I have known both ways, and yours are better.”

“I believe her,” Rendor of the Felan said.

“So do I,” Accius of the Devyn agreed. “We must put a stop to Hetar now. We cannot wait until the spring. How many more people among the two clan families will die if we wait even a few months? We must strike now!”

“There will be snows in the mountains before we can assemble an army and march there,” Blathma protested. “It is the end of October.”

“And your fields lie fallow and will lie fallow for the next several months,” Rendor of the Felan said with a wolfish smile. “I know you, Blathma, and you wish to spend the winter as you always do, safe and snug in your warm house, planning new gardens and dreaming of the spring to come. But there will be no spring for many of the Piaras and the Tormod unless we come to their aid now. We have no other choice.”

“There are always choices!” Blathma cried.

“The only other choice is to wait for Hetar to come to you,” Lara told him, “and they will. But when the Crusader Knights come, Lord Blathma, your choices will be gone forever. Hetar will drive the Outlanders from their lands, and repopulate them with their own kind. You will be strangers in your own land. Where will you go? What will you do, my lords, when Hetar has taken away your home?”

“Perhaps,” Gitta of the Torin said, “they will share the land with us.”

“Mayhap,” Lara agreed, “in the beginning. But as their population grows again, and Hetarian law takes over here, the people of the Outlands will be squeezed out. You must remain separate from them as you have always done or you will be destroyed.”

“Let us take the night, my lords, to think on this,” Accius of the Devyn said reasonably. “In the morning we will meet again, and decide what course of action we must take to protect ourselves, and to free the Piaras and the Tormod from the harsh captivity they now bear.”

“Aye!” the other clan chieftains said with one voice.

The council adjourned. Usually the evenings of the Gathering were meant for feasting and merriment, but tonight no one felt content to eat and dance. Everyone began to return to their own encampments. Lara walked hand in hand with Vartan.

“I could not help but speak up,” she said. “I hope I did not embarrass you, my lord. But suddenly I know what my destiny is, Vartan, and you must not laugh.”

He stopped and, smiling down at her, took her face between his two hands. “And what is your destiny, my beautiful halfling wife?”

“My destiny is to save the Outlands,” Lara said seriously. “Kaliq knew it, which was why he said I had chosen well when I decided to come to the Outlands. He could not tell me, of course.”

“You are certain your destiny is to help us?” Vartan said slowly. Of course! It was all beginning to make sense now. She was a halfling, a woman with certain powers. She had important friends, and a mother who was a queen.

“You must listen to me when I advise you, my lord,” Lara told him. “And you must not prevent me from doing certain things, Vartan.”

“What things?” He kissed the tip of her nose, releasing her face from his gentle grip. “What do you plan?”

“You must know your enemy, and quickly. Imre speaks from his anguish, but he tells us nothing of the Crusader Knights. How many of them are there? How and where are they transporting the riches they are stealing from the mountains? Who made the decision to invade the Tormod and the Piaras? But most important, just how far is the High Council of Hetar willing to go in this endeavor, or can they be forced out of the mountains if we resist them? These are the things you must know, my lord,” Lara told him, seriously.

“But how can we learn all these things?” Vartan asked her.

“I must think on it,” Lara said quietly, “but I will find the answers for you, I vow it. This is my destiny! This is what brought me to the Outlands.”

“It is, I suspect, but the beginning,” Vartan replied. “Your destiny, Lara, I think is much bigger than just this difficulty with Hetar.”

And the crystal hanging between her breasts began to glow brightly in response.

SHE LAY ON THE BED they had made from furs in a corner of their pavilion. Beside her, Vartan slept content with the passion they had shared earlier. But Lara could not sleep. Finally she arose and slipped from the tent. The night was dark, and above her three of Hetar’s four moons glowed silver in the sky. She had not shape-shifted in many weeks. Could she even still do it? Lara thought of a young eagle, and silently said the words “Aral go!” She felt herself soar upwards, wings flapping softly. Catching a whorl of current in the air she rose higher and higher above the encampment. It was wonderful. It was amazing! She knew she dared not remain aloft for too long. Already the horizon was beginning to grow light at its edges. But she could do it! She could really do it! But she would need more than the ability to shape-shift to help the Outlanders. She needed magic, and she knew exactly where that magic was to be found. With Kaliq of the Shadow Princes. But not now. She guided herself back down to the ground near their pavilion again. “Lara return!” she murmured, and regained her own shape. Smiling she walked back into the tent, and lay down by her husband’s side.

“Where were you?” Vartan asked her softly.

“Seeing if I could still shape-shift,” she whispered back. “Go back to sleep, Vartan. I will tell you on the morrow.”

“I am hungry now,” he told her.

“Hungry? You ate like a pig at the evening meal,” Lara exclaimed.

“Hungry for my faerie wife’s delicious body,” he said with a wicked grin.

“We have no privacy, Vartan,” she fretted. “Your mother, your brother, his wife and Noss sleep just beyond our curtain.”

“We will be as quiet as mice.”

“You are never quiet!” she teased him. But she wanted him now every bit as much as she knew he wanted her.

“If you do not remove your night robe, I will tear it from you,” he threatened.

Lara quickly pulled the gown from her slender form. “I will find a way to repay you for this,” she threatened, half laughing.

“Oh, wife, I hope so.” And he pulled her into his arms, his hands caressing her eagerly. “Punish me with your kisses, Lara!” His mouth took hers in a searing embrace.

She lost herself in his arms. When he had satisfied himself with her mouth he laid her back upon their camp bed and began to kiss every inch of her flesh, not only with his lips, but with his tongue as well. He suckled for a time on each of her breasts, covering her mouth with his big hand to still her cries of delight, his blue eyes blazing down into her green ones. He brushed over her belly, licking and breathing on the quivering flesh as he went. His fingers played between her nether lips, teasing her until she was drenched with her excitement. When he slowly and deliberately put those fingers in his mouth, sucking on them, she almost swooned. Kaliq and his brothers had loved her with exquisite delicacy, but Vartan loved her with a fierce passion that set her afire with longing such as she had never known.

Suddenly eager to return some of the pleasure he was giving her, she pushed him onto his back and straddled him. Her fingertips brushed over his hard flesh, and putting one hand over his mouth, she pinched one of his nipples teasingly with the other. His big body jerked in surprise, but he did not unseat her. “Two can play at the same game, husband,” she whispered in his ear, licking it slowly and nipping at the lobe. Lara slithered down his long torso, kissing and licking as she went. Her sweetly rounded buttocks filled his sight. Now and again she would nip at him, but he restrained his cries. His excitement, however, was an entirely different thing, and when her hand reached out to enclose his burgeoning manroot, he stuffed his fist in his mouth to silence himself.

Lara squeezed hard on the pillar of flesh in her hand. Then she bent to let her tongue encircle its blazing tip from which the tiniest milky bead slipped forth. She lapped at it then, releasing the manroot, took him into her mouth even as she felt him move beneath her, raising himself that he might taste her secret flesh with his own tongue. She suckled on him, but as she did her attentions were diverted by the sweet heat that his mouth on her was engendering. Lara bit her lip until it bled to keep from screaming.

“Let me go,” she heard Vartan growl low, and when she did he pulled himself from beneath her, still keeping her on her knees and bent before him in a gesture of utter submission. His hands clamped themselves about her hips, and Lara felt him enter her in a single smooth motion. He remained still within her, swelling more until he filled her tightly.

She had never felt a manroot with such incredible intensity. He was hot and hard within her pleasure sheath. She shuddered with pure delight. Then gaining a small mastery of herself, she squeezed him several times until he began to move slowly within her body. Lara thought she would die with the sweetness she was experiencing. He moved in a leisurely fashion, drawing himself out almost to the tip of his manroot, and then plunging back with great deliberation until he was fully encased by her hot flesh.

“I love you,” he murmured low against her ear. “I will never love another woman except you, Lara, my beautiful faerie wife.”

“Then why do you kill me?” she sobbed back. She felt aflame with her desire, a desire he seemed in no great hurry to satisfy.

In response he began to move faster, and faster and faster, until sensing her impending crisis, he forced her into their pillows that her cries of pleasure be silenced as her ripe body shuddered with release. When she was finally still, he released his grip on her. Lara turned over and looked up at him in wonder.