Yrba's Travels Pt. 10

"Highness! You've returned! What a joyous day! Our prayers have been answered! I'll immediately tell the high priest! Just don't leave and stay right here! We're deeply honored!"

And he was gone, scrambling up a ladder to a rope bridge across the canyon. The wobbly construction led right up to the crenellation. He left the puzzled couple behind, in front of the still impassable drawbridge.

~

Mirca scratched her head.

"All right, what wasthatall about? Have I grown any duh-wine marks recently? Or did he look at you?"

"Divine'sthe word. Not a clue. 'Don't leave?' Hah!" Yrba leaned around the corner of her caravan again and looked at the lengthening queue of other travelers that blocked the road behind them. "How could weleave? We can barelyrockthe cart! And I wonder what he saw through that —"

"Hey! What's the matter up there in front? You're holding up the damn queue! If you can't pay, then move your cart outta the way and don't haggle,gypsy!" bellowed an unfriendly voice from behind. Yrba rolled her eyes.

"Yeah,someoneis in a hurry all right. Every goddamn time! Mirca,no, let it be. He'll shut up soon enough." She put her hand on her friend's thigh.

The blonde curled her upper lip.

"Oh come on! I'll teach him a lesson he won't forget in a hurry."

"No!We may be in enough trouble already, so just forget about him."

Meanwhile, the plap-plap-plap of pieces of mud hitting the rear end of the cart had started.

"That does it!" Mirca tugged at the neckband of her cowl. "I didn't wash the cart for him to throw dirt on it! He'ssogoing down!"

"Mirca,no!"hissed Yrba from the corner of her mouth, casting nervous glances around.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to use my tits. I'll be 'dy-scary-it'."

"Discreet. No! Young lady, sit still now! We'll be through the gate in five minutes, give or take, it's just not worth —"

Mirca didn't listen. Shrugging off the cowl, she reached up over her head, grabbed the edge of the caravan's protruding roof and swung her legs up. For a few seconds, she hung with her legs pointing up at the sky, then she tensed her arms and pushed herself up to a handstand.

Moments later, she stood akimbo on the top of the cart, like a blond jack-in-the-box. Her chain mail top, its hem cutting into her ample, currently melon-sized breasts, sparkled and jingled as her chest heaved in anger. Tied around her tapering waist was a white pareu, billowing in the morning wind. Every now and then, a gust made it perfectly clear she was an all-natural blonde.

She had visibly put on a pound or three after she no longer had to chop up and carry logs for the stoves of a whole castle. Lucky for her, the padding had gone into all the right places only and made her towering, muscular figure all the more feminine and rounded. The morning had been warm to start with, and after spending most of the time wrapped in the thick brown cloth, a thin film of perspiration covered her head to toe and made her body glisten in the sunlight.

After a moment of surprised silence, the wolf whistling started all around. Mirca raised her eyebrows, grinned, bowed and began posing for her audience. She flexed her back and bent down, granting them a prime view into the deep cleavage of her heavy, constrained breasts before she jiggled her shoulders and made her bosoms swing and bob, which earned her a few cries of "woohoo!" and "momma!". The blonde knelt down until one of her toned thighs squeezed into her cleavage. The bustier's metal rings creaked under the strain, and her hands felt for something on the roof. A lever clicked.

Mirca slowly straightened up again, and all around the crowd's noise slowly died down. They all heard the faint, scraping sound as she drew the razor-sharp blades of the huge broadswords out of the hidden sheaths on the cart's top. The blinding reflection of the sun on the polished metal wandered over the mute faces in the crowd as she slowly turned her single-handed grip on each of the handles. People blinked and lifted their hands to shield their eyes. Those on the fringes of the crowd already retreated, slowly, to not attract her attention. Mirca's upper lip curled and revealed her clenched shiny teeth. The ditzy dancer had suddenly become a vengeful fury out for blood.

"You," she snarled slowly and pointed the tip of the heavy sword in her right hand effortlessly at the man on the cart next in line. "Now you —"

"Your highness! I offer our sincerest apologies! So it is true! On yourknees, people! The new embodiment of Mamaria the goddess has arrived!"

She spun around on the spot and stared down at the man that knelt at the guard station. He wore an expensive robe made of fur, and several heavy chains of gold. Both seemed far too big for his slender frame. His narrow face was red, and he panted. He must've been running all the way down from the palace. In a gesture of surrender and pleading, he spread his arms to his sides.

"We beg you to forgive our inexcusable rudeness. Do not soil your weapons with his unworthy blood. Just say the word, and the guards will run this ... this insolent pig through on the spot for you!"

Mirca slowly lowered the blades. Looking over her shoulder at the loudmouth on the coach box who suddenly had turned into the pale, trembling wreck of a man, she cocked an eyebrow and sneered:

"Don't bother. He's done enough soiling by himself already."

She turned back to the kneeling man. Resting her weight on one leg and tilting her hip comfortably as she relaxed, she let the swords swirl in her hands before she rammed the points into the roof.

Dammit girl, not another leak, Yrba winced inwardly at the dull thudding, while her protégé crossed her arms on top of the handles and leaned forward. With her breasts jutting out through the frame of her bicepses, she slowly started to smile, like a playful tigress staring down on a mouse.

"And, pray tell, who are you, handsome?" she purred.

"Carwon, High Priest of the temple of Mamaria, Vizier of the town and shire of Ebron, my goddess."

"A bit young for such a long title, aren't you?" Mirca gesticulated towards the drawbridge. "Right, Carwon. Want to make me happy? What makes me unhappy right now is that missing bridge thing over there—"

"At once, Goddess!" He signaled with an impatient wave of his hand to the guards on top of the gate. The heavy chains began to rumble and rattle.

~

Mirca stashed away the swords, somersaulted from the roof and landed, legs astride, right before him. He looked up, recognizedwhathe was staringinto, gasped and immediately dropped down again. Mirca laughed, straightened her displaced loincloth and slunk to the coach box. Looking at Yrba from the corner of her eye, and talking from the corner of her mouth, she whispered under the din of the gate's mechanism:

"How did you like that? Wasn't I allragout? Now we don't even have to pay! But what was that 'goddess' stuff all about? Me?"

Yrba answered in the same fashion.

"Regal. Not a clue about that goddess thing.Quiet now!They're coming closer!"

~

Chapter 51: The Palace

~

Yrba kept her head down and stared straight ahead from under her brows while she guided the wagon around another narrow turn of the meandering, climbing main road.

"What have you gotten us into this time?" she hissed at Mirca. "Oh will you stop waving to them!And what makes it so hard for you to understand 'Mirca, no!'? I almost liked you better when you were a bit more docile."

"Well, it seemsthesepeople like me the way I am now!"

Around them, the townsfolk cheered and danced. Every wave of Mirca's hand was answered with a chorus of "Praise the goddess!" and each time she ran her fingers through her golden mane and shook her long hair over her shoulders, arching her back as she turned to smile left and right to the crowds, the applause and cheers made Yrba's ears ring.

"Of course, because they don't know youyet," the gypsy mumbled.

"Hey, we're getting closer to the twin boobs palace."

"You ain't sayin'," hissed Yrba.

~

The cheering masses stopped at the archway of the palace walls. News must've spread fast through the town, because the grim guards let them in without a question.

Mirca and Yrba left their wagon at the gates to the stables. Now Carwon, who returned just as the witch kept a close eye on how her horse was treated, ushered them on. They walked across a forecourt with a huge fountain —if I ever see a statue of a reclining woman with balloon tits spewing milk again, I'll go decorating with a sledgehammer,Yrba groaned quietly — towards the wide stairway that led up to the colonnaded front of the temple with the strange double-dome roof.

~

Two women in white togas pushed open the huge gates leading into the throne room. The witch and the blonde walked in and hesitated, staring at the marble floor and walls and the ornaments and, on top of that, the sheersizeof it. Yet the room seemed empty, as if its sole purpose was to provide a lot of space with a roof on top. Near the rear end of the hall, two steps led up to a blanket-covered throne with a divan by its side. Carwon quickly led them on to a huge hallway that opened from the far side.

Between the columns of the hallway, murals depicted the incarnations of the goddess through the ages. Though their hair and faces and clothes changed, there was one thing that remained the same: They all had been extremely well-endowed. Yrba shook her head.

"None of them would've been able to get by on her own. A few, they couldn't even have been able toget upon their own."

"Of course not," answered Carwon. "If the power of the goddess is particularly strong in one of her embodiments, she's almost immobile. That's what the maids are here for. See now—"

They turned a corner at the end of the wing. Mirca gasped, and even Yrba at least gulped. Carwon extended his hands in a broad, sweeping motion. Down the next hallway, a cordon of girls and women stood to attention along the walls. They all bowed to them as the group walked by.

"I'm seeing all kinds of nubile women, all shapes and sizes. How do you—," Yrba began.

He answered as if he was quoting from a scroll of law, which he probably was.

"The maids of the guard of honor come from all over the shire. After their twentieth birthday, they serve a mandatory three years here before they're allowed to return home and marry, and their families are exempt from taxes for that time." He hesitated for a second, until he continued, a little less fluent, "If they want to stay longer, that's also possible. It's pretty popular, we don't have any trouble filling the ranks."

"Any other priests or servants? Males?"

"No, no more. We ended up with girls getting," and he blushed and lowered his voice, "ahem, pregnant all the time, I'm afraid. Somehow, the presence of so much breasts — oh,youshould know, I guess. So, some hundred years ago, and older and wiser priest than I decided to go all-girl on this temple. Except for one man to keep an eye on everything. So today I am," he shrugged, "high priest and the shire's vizier all in one."

Yrba nudged him and nodded to the long row of maids.

"Getting a boatload of action then, eh? I've got an ointment that helps against the chafing."

He stared at her as if she'd asked him to copulate with fowl. She shrugged and smiled. "Just sayin', that's all."

He hissed, "I'll hold your peasant ways and naivety in your favor. I don't know what kind of depraved priests you've encountered in your travels, but here in Ebron, wedon'tjoke about those things.Of courseI don't fornicate with the servants of the goddess! Unthinkable!"

Yrba patted his shoulder. "You know, maybe you should," she said, and as he furrowed his brows even more, she added, "Oh, sorry, then. You're a rare exception, is all I can say. Poor boy. So whatarethe duties of your goddess?"

Carwon breathed deeply before he replied, "Well, she's the goddess. She lounges about, is pampered head to toe, and once every full moon, she's expected to give milk in a ceremony for the people."

"Uh-huh."

"Then the most influential members of the town's council gather to taste a drop or two, for it is said that her milk enlightens the mind."

Yrba frowned. "From her breasts?"

"No, no! Ohheavens, no! Who would dare to touch her? No, we've got a goblet for that. It's all become sort of symbolic, anyway. We've not been in a position to properly perform the ceremony for years." He glanced at Mirca. "Maybe, come next moon ..."

"And when do the knives and the blood come in?"

"Sorry,what?" He seemed honestly shocked.

Yrba shrugged. "It's a religion. There's bound to be blades and blood somewhere down the road."

Carwon stared at her and shook his head. "What kind of barbarian world doyoucome from, Darkskin woman?"

She snorted. "You don't want to know."

He eyed her, but she couldn't make heads nor tails of his expression. They finally ended up in front of a portal framed with marble pillars, several yards high.

"This is the royal bath."

Carwon waved his hand, and half a dozen of women rushed ahead and pushed open the two huge, heavy leaves. Mirca nudged her friend and leaned over, whispering:

"Bath, eh? Do you think they'll have something like Red's —oh my goodness!"She bounced in place, giggling into her fists.

The huge hall was an orgy of architecture, composed of marble floors, gold ornaments and fountains gushing into basins of all sizes and shapes, lowered into the floor. Mirca rushed in and put her toes into one of them.

"Ooooh!Come here! You've got to try this! Yrba, it's warm!"

The witch cast a glance at Carwon instead.

"All right, now I'm impressed. How many servants do you need to bring the water up here?"

"This one, too!" came Mirca's giggle from farther in the room.

"We don't need any servants at all. We just tapped into the aqueducts of the old empire's ruins. The water comes down from the mountains, from the old crater cistern, and runs along a small tunnel a few hundred yards higher up near the —"

"Wheeee! Cold! Cold! Cold! Brrr! Oooh—!"

"—top of the ridge. Oh sure, we maybe could do better than just poking holes into it, but ... these days, we're just happy it still works. The ancients,theysure knew how to build. We've lost so much knowledge since then. I shudder if I just think about needing to fix it some day."

He eyed Yrba and cocked his head.

"You know, maybe I shouldn't have told you that."

~

The rest of the tour went quite well, and slowly Carwon relaxed and began to sound more like a human being and less like an angry scholar quoting laws from dusty scrolls. Mirca had the best of times, peeking into every corner of the palace —herpalace — while the maids doing their chores either scattered or bowed before her. The building was huge. Yrba's feet were starting to ache. She now regretted not dipping them into one of the basins when she had the chance.

"And here you see the kitchens for the goddess' victuals! They will prepare your welcome dinner right away!"

The nervous cooks bowed to them and generally tried to be on the opposite side of the room as the blonde immediately started to rummage around the long shelves.

"Salt, pepper, marjoram, oregano, the usual," she said, sniffing the containers. Then she suddenly pointed at a small sign on a separate rack. "Yrba, you're better with this letters and reading stuff! What does this one say?"

"Specialcondiments," the witch read out loud and raised her eyebrows. "Mirca!"she added with a tight-lipped urgency. "Young lady, will you stop behaving like a curious kitten in a wool basketthis instant, and let the cooks do their work?"

It was about as helpful as talking to a wall. It only served to make all the Ebronians gasp at the unseemly addressing of their goddess, for goddesses didn't have to be bright or vocal or respectful, but those talking to them were expected to be. Quite a few angry eyes were on the witch, butthatshe had gotten used to since a long time ago.

"Ooh, Yrba, look! A whole glass of dried twin-leafed milkmaid's friend! You know, the stuff that makes cows gush milk like crazy! This must be worth thrice its weight in gold! It's so rare around here! Isn't that what you like to chew on when you're bored?"

Yrba rolled her eyes and groaned quietly. Carwon bit his lips and stifled a chuckle. Somehow he managed to keep a straight face. Now it was his time to nudge and nod to her.

"So I take it you're versed in nature's little helpers too, then."

"A little," grumbled the witch. "Some of them are good money."And they keep most of the sag away,she added in the back of her head as she straightened her clothes.

~

The last hallway led them back to the throne room. Carwon ushered them on towards a door to the side of the main gates.

"Well, now you've seen all of your palace. It is high time to reveal yourself to the people. I take it the news has spread and the townsfolk has assembled?" he asked the entourage. One of the maids, a tall brunette in her mid-twenties, nodded.

"Goddess, if you'd please follow me now ..."

Over the course of the day, Mirca had lots of chances to practice her regal nodding and hand-waving. Not only did she tower over the assembled crowd of maids because of her sheer size, but the newfound air of arrogance and pride she boasted really seemed to add a sparkle of a goddess to her appearance. Yrba leaned in to her.

"Just don't do anything stupid now, all right?" was all she could hiss to Mirca before they were separated in the hubbub.

~

Yrba fought to at least stay near the blonde as they and the guards of honor streamed out onto the balcony. Mirca and Yrba were rendered speechless by the crowd of people who stood in silence, staring at them from below.

Wind came in from the valley and pushed Mirca's clothes against her chest, modeling her evening-heavy,loadedbreasts and perky nipples, trapped in her chain mail bustier, through the thin layer of silk. Her golden, open hair billowed in the wind.Dammit, you're looking great, girl,Yrba couldn't help admitting once more. Carwon raised his arms.

"People of Ebron, I give you — the new Goddess!" he hollered. The applause was deafening. Yrba cringed and fought the desire to plug her ears. Distracted, she never saw the knife coming.

Carwon's hand moved with great precision. The forked blade dove swiftly into the back of Mirca's billowing clothes, just above her buttocks, and ran up along her spine, splitting her cloth and breaking the ties that held her breasts in check without ever touching her skin. The blonde gasped, stooped and grabbed at the crenellation as her clothes suddenly snapped away from her body. Visible to all and in the broad daylight, her nipples and areolae started to throb and stretch. In quick pulses, her breasts filled up, lurched forward and sagged. The chain mail top and the cloth beneath tumbled through the air down to the raging crowd.

She clenched her teeth and bent her fingers into claws. Yrba was tensing up as well and getting ready to rein in the inflating spheres when Mirca glanced at her from the corner of her eyes and barely shook her head.

I can handle that alone,assured the tall young woman's sapphire gaze.

The witch slowly stepped back and relaxed her fists.

I really hope so, girl,replied Yrba's brown eyes and raised eyebrows.

She bit her lower lip when she saw how Mirca had a hard time making good on her promise. Pushing against the growing pull of the dangling, wobbling milk bells, Mirca's fingernails scraped over the warm marble of the balcony and slowly neared the edge.