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“The third time,” Sheriam intoned formally, “is for what will be. The way back will come but once. Be steadfast.”
Nynaeve threw herself at the arch in a run.
Laughing, Nynaeve ran across the hilltop meadow. Below lay the city of Malkier, surrounded by a thousand lakes glistening in the glorious light of early summer. At the center, the Seven Towers reached toward the heavens, the banners of the Golden Crane waving gently in a breeze that kept the heat from becoming oppressive.
But Nynaeve had no eye for all that beauty right then, as she was trying to dodge the man chasing her. A few times he almost caught her, but she managed to dart from his grasp. Ultimately, though, her pursuer was faster and stronger, her attempts at evasion futile. He grabbed her by the waist and before she knew it, she was down on the ground, the grinning form of al’Lan Mandragoran on top of her.
“I have you,” he said, pinning her arms above her head with one hand, while the other came down to fondle a breast through the thin fabric of her white muslin dress. “Now what should I do with a pretty captive?”
She squirmed against him, seeking out his fiendishly delicious touch. “Ravish her until she can barely walk?” she suggested hopefully.
His grin widened, making it hard to believe that some considered him stone-faced. “A very good idea. I might do just that.” And he made a good start, bringing down his mouth to hers for a searing kiss that left her breathless and moaning. The way back will come but once. The voice in her head seemed to come from very far away, and she firmly shoved it aside.
The kiss went on for a long time, his tongue sparring with hers. Instinctively, she parted her legs in silent invitation, feeling his erection grinding against her belly through their clothing. But when his hand began to tug at the flimsy strap of her dress to liberate a breast, she breathlessly broke off the kiss. Light, they were in a meadow, not in the privacy of their bedroom! “Lan! Anybody can see us!” There were people working in the fields below!
He seemed amused. “Have you suddenly become a Two Rivers woman again? No Malkieri will take offense if they see their King making love to his Queen.” A queen? She? That made no sense. She was a village Wisdom. But then he was definitely a King, and she was his wife, so she supposed she had to be. “Besides…”, he continued, giving her a sly grin, “you were not so reticent yesterday in the baths.”
Her cheeks caught fire at… not so much a memory but a memory of a memory. Once she had been scandalized by Shienaran men and women bathing together. What had happened in the baths? Malkieri could make Shienarans blush, for all they appeared so stoic and reserved in public. But I was in the Tower yesterday…
Her confusion evaporated as he went back to kissing her, and she no longer put up any resistance as his nimble fingers freed her breasts. She moaned into his mouth as he explored the soft mounds, nipples stiffening rapidly. Gone was the pretense that she was his captive, and her hands roved across his body with as much enthusiasm as he explored hers.
She moaned, too, when his mouth abandoned hers and made a path down her neck to suckle at a dark teat, while his fingers teased its sibling. It sent a spasm of delight down her spine toward that place between her legs. The way back. The voice came again, jolting her lust-addled mind.
“Lan,” she gasped, pushing him away, squirming out from under him. “I… I need to go.” She rose to her feet, uncaring now that she stood bare-breasted in the meadow. She was faintly aware that her hair was loose, a dark-brown cascade down her shoulders and back. That was as scandalous as her exposure. No, more so! It was one thing for a Two Rivers woman to let her hair down in the bedroom for her husband, but to go out in public like that? What had she been thinking? A memory of a silver arch dimly flickering in her mind, she looked around, simultaneously desperate and dreading to see it.
He got up, slipping his arms around her from behind. “Go? Where?” He sounded puzzled.
“Back,” she said. “I… They need me, Lan.” She wasn’t sure who they were, and what they needed. Rand. Yes, he needed her; she had to find a way to save him from going mad. And Egwene; rescue her from the snares that the Aes Sedai were going to use to bind her to them.
“Whatever it is, it can wait, my love,” he murmured in her ear, his breath sending a thrill of desire through her body. “You drive yourself too hard. You cannot do everything for everybody all the time. A queen is entitled to private moments.” His hands came up to cup her breasts, gently squeezing them. “Besides,” he whispered, “your king has needs too.”
The solid evidence of his need was pressing against her rear. She couldn’t help but giggle, thoughts of her friends fleeing from her mind. She supposed they could wait. Her dress was already down to her waist, and a shimmy of her hips caused the whole insubstantial thing to flutter to the ground, leaving her as naked as a newborn.
“Yes,” she said huskily, twisting around in his embrace. “I can feel that you have needs.” She knew what she had to do. After one last searing kiss, she sank to her knees before him, grinning at the eager look on his face. After all the years of their marriage, she never failed to elicit that response - as if he were once again a boy about to be pleasured by his carneira for the first time. Carneira? What was that?
Licking her lips in anticipation, she unbuttoned his breeches with practiced ease and yanked them down. His cock sprang free with the eagerness of a stallion darting from the stables, the sight of it taking her breath away. As a Wisdom, she had seen plenty of male appendages - but not usually mere inches from her face. And none had been so big, or so… aggressively erect. Before, she had been rather unimpressed by penises - silly, floppy things that the weaker sex was cursed with, nothing like the elegant flowers of women. There was nothing silly or floppy about Lan’s shaft. A mighty King should have a mighty sword, and Lan was the mightiest of kings. The tip looked angry and red, the shaft a battering ram eager to breach a woman’s gate, and below it a pair of heavy testicles, filled with seed eager to find a home inside her.
Suddenly she felt a wave of uncertainty. She had done this a thousand times before. Hadn’t she? She must have. They had been married for years. Memories shifted in her head, bit of shattered glass reassembling into reflections of past events. Yes, of course she had. Pushing aside her confusion, she leaned forward and kissed the tip, tasting an eager drop of salty liquid that had come out to greet her.
The hand tangling in her hair urged her forward, and she took the glans into her mouth, experimentally swirling her tongue around it. Encouraged by Lan’s eager groan, she began to bob her head up and down, the seal of her lips ensuring a gentle suction while she began to tease the length of his shaft with fluttering little flicks of her tongue. The sensation that having a cock in her mouth was strange and familiar at the same time was dissipating, the memories returning to her of all the little tricks she had learned over years of marriage that would make him moan her name.
And moan her name he did, especially when she brought her hands into play, gently massaging those plump balls while lightly stroking the part of his shaft that wasn’t in her mouth. “Light, Nynaeve, you’re incredible,” he croaked.
She smiled up at him, no longer uncertain, working his cock with increasing confidence. She no longer cared that she was kneeling naked before a man in a meadow on a sunny day to fellate him. She was a woman pleasuring her King and husband, and what could be wrong with that?
Nothing at all, and she took her sweet time doing so, slowing down every time she sensed him approaching his peak. Odd how a woman could be on her knees before a man, and yet he was the one enslaved by the pleasures she granted. The stiffness of her nipples had nothing to do with the gentle caress of the summer breeze, and she could feel her own arousal leaking down her thighs, her sex clenching as if anticipating that it would soon be parted by the shaft now between her lips. She wanted him inside her, but she also wanted to taste that salty spray - to make him feel like her loving mouth had sucked out his very soul more thoroughly than a Draghkar ever could.
Lan had other plans. Roughly, he jerked his shaft out of her mouth. “Enough,” he grated.
“Not good?” she said, arching an eyebrow. As if there was any doubt, with the noises he had been making!
“Very good. Too good, in fact. I don’t want to waste it where it won’t do any good.”
“Oh?”
He sank down onto the grass, pulling her alongside him, the grass tickling at her naked skin. “You’ve said you wanted to try for another child, love. I think that’s a wonderful idea. Perhaps it will cure this strange mood of yours. Your place is here - as my queen and the mother of my children.”
She blinked at him, trying not to get distracted by the hand that was sliding down her belly. “We… we have children?”
He laughed, apparently taking her confusion for humor. “There are times I would prefer to forget that too. Any day now I expect to find you and Elnore trying to strangle each other.” Elnore? That was her mother’s name. “She inherited your temperament for sure. And I’m trying very hard to get Maric to pay attention to anything other than his books or horses.” An image came to her of a handsome boy with his father’s black hair and roguish grin, and a beautiful young lady who was becoming aware that she was already turning heads; and scattered memories - the pains of childbirth, of little mouths suckling contentedly at her breast.
His hand was now between her legs, nimble fingers delving between moist folds, probing at her opening, finding her ready. “But enough about them. Having children is a nuisance, but making them is such a delight, don’t you think?”
“Easy for you to say,” she muttered. “Men don’t have to carry a babe in their innards for nine months.”
It was hard to say no to that charming grin, though, and she allowed him to part her legs to receive him. Wasting no time, he settled between her thighs, positioned the thick head of his cock against her entrance, and pressed forward.
She felt the walls of her channel parting before him, stretching and then stretching more. “Stop,” she gasped in a panic as she realized that his shaft had barely entered her. Surely he was going to tear her apart! “You’re too big!”
He grinned at her, seeming to think she was joking again, but he mercifully arrested his forward motion. “Flattering, but untrue. I seem to recall it fit just fine yesterday morning in the baths, and I haven’t grown any bigger since.” The shocked gasp she gave was as much from how he stretched her as from the memory of the baths that flickered into place. She could not possibly have been so forward, could she? Malkieri were so reserved in public, but behind the walls of their keeps they could make a Domani blush… A Wisdom does not lay with men. No, she was his wife; surely they had done this countless times before.
The thought disintegrated when Lan resumed his conquest of her. Not roughly, but inexorably - a slow, shallow thrust followed by a withdrawal and another thrust. Each time he entered her slightly farther than the last, forcing her flesh to yield, inch after inch of his thick shaft filling her.
At long last his pelvis was pressing against hers, and she looked down in amazement to see that somehow she had taken all of her husband’s cock inside of her. The sharp pain that she had expected had never come, though she felt like a goose being stuffed for Bel Tine. Lan grinned down at her. “See? It fits just fine.” Easy for him to say! He wasn’t the one with a stone pillar shoved up her fanny.
But soon that stone pillar started to feel surprisingly good as he began to thrust into her slowly, her moans of discomfort turning into moans of pleasure. In fact, it was beginning to feel really good, the tightness of her sheath around his cock providing for some delicious friction despite the embarrassing amount of fluid that was dripping out of her.
“Faster,” Nynaeve gasped. “You can go faster.”
“Oh?” Lan’s smug smile should have earned him some boxed ears. “Not too big for you anymore?”
“No! Fuck me harder!” She could scarcely believe the words coming out of her mouth. The man was turning her into some sort of Taren Ferry slattern!
He, of course, was only too happy to provide, and soon she was receiving a proper pounding that had the soft mounds of her breasts jiggling madly on her chest under the power of his thrusts. They weren’t as high and firm as they once had been, not after nursing three children. But from the way his gaze kept flicking down from her face to her chest, he didn’t seem to mind the view. She should have scolded him for the decidedly ungentlemanly expression on his face, but since that boyish grin made him look decades younger, she couldn’t summon the outrage. Especially when he was solicitous enough to reach down and take them into a firm grasp to arrest their wild motion.
His grin widened even more when he saw her hand creeping down to the place where they were joined, fingers teasing the erect little nub at the apex of her sex. “Yes, touch yourself, love. Light!” he groaned. “You’re so fucking tight!” Her climax fast approaching, Nynaeve could only moan in reply, her head lolling to the side.
There, behind Lan and to the left, stood a silver arch, right there in the meadow, her glazed-over eyes barely able to focus on it. How had she not seen that thing before? The way back will come only once. The way…
Suddenly she splintered, forgetting all about that strange arch, crying out as her orgasm washed over her, beyond caring whether anyone saw or heard her bliss. “Yes, come for me,” Lan grunted through clenched teeth, making a few more desperate thrusts before the contractions of her sex milked his climax right out of him. She felt his cock swelling inside her, and then it was twitching and pulsing, a glorious wet heat flooding her womb. Knowing that it was his seed spurting into her intensified her own orgasm, her scream of bliss joining his triumphant roar.
Slowly they came down from their shared climax, his lips tenderly seeking out hers while gently caressing her hair and sweaty brow. His weight on top of her was not oppressive at all; it made her feel safe and cherished. His cock grew soft inside her even more slowly, before he wistfully pulled out and collapsed beside her with a satisfied grunt. Still quivering in bliss, she took his hand and pressed it to her belly.
The way back. Her eyes flew open and she sat up, looking at where the arch had been.
It was gone.
“No,” she gasped in horror. “No!”
Lan sat up as well, a look of concern on his face. “What is it, love?”
She rose to her feet, ignoring the wet trickle down her inner thighs. “I have to leave. This isn’t real. None of it is. It’s an Aes Sedai trick.”
“What are you talking about, Nynaeve? If you are unwell, we should get you to Sharina. She will…” His hand reached out to take hers, but she slapped it away. The look of hurt on his face made her want to weep, to beg for his forgiveness.
“Nynaeve, whatever ails you, we can figure this out together. Please.”
She let saidar flow into her, through her. Dimly she remembered being warned against channeling, but it came to her so easily.
“Nynaeve…”
“Don’t say it,” she sobbed, tears leaking down her cheeks. There had to be a way out. She had to get back, to save Rand, to make Moiraine pay for what she had done to them. She pictured the arch in her mind, every little detail, as if wishing it into existence could make it happen. Futile, for sure, but…
“.. I love you…”
There, in front of her, the arch flickered into existence, shimmering as if not quite there. She drew more saidar into herself, throwing everything into the arch, until it solidified, standing there with its ominous white glow.
“… with all my heart.”
She couldn’t bear to hear more, couldn’t bear to spare one last look at him, for she knew it would undo her. She ran towards the arch, as much to get to it as to get away from her love’s anguished voice. “Nynaeve, don’t leave me.”
The white glow consumed her.
Naked and sobbing, she emerged from the arch to fall to her knees in the cavernous room deep below the White Tower. Sheriam Sedai was there, kneeling beside her to comfort her. Nynaeve didn’t want to be comforted. “I hate you!” she hissed. “I hate the Aes Sedai!”
Sheriam pulled Nynaeve to her feet, a sympathetic look on her face. “That’s what most women say when they emerge from the last arch. It’s never a pleasant thing, to face your greatest fears. You…” She frowned as her gaze traveled down Nynaeve’s body, scanning for injuries. “What’s this?”
Nynaeve wished she could shrivel up and die when she realized where Sheriam was looking: at the silvery runnels of sperm that were making a slow path down the inside of her thighs. Quickly she pressed her legs together, her hand covering her sex.
“Don’t be ashamed, child,” Sheriam said softly. “Sadly, you are hardly the first woman to be violated during her Testing. I’ll have a Yellow sister look at you to heal any damage and to make sure nothing takes root. We do not know if it’s possible to get with child in the arches, but we do not want to find out, do we?”
Nynaeve had to fight the urge to punch the woman in the face. Yes, she had been violated, but not by a man. Lan could not, would not ever do that to her. The violation had been by these Aes Sedai who forced women through their torture machine. And where did this woman get off thinking that a Wisdom wouldn’t know about contraception?
She realized then that there were more Aes Sedai than before, all of them wearing their shawls - one woman for each Ajah. They were all there to witness her degradation. She saw a Red sister - with that extravagant crimson dress, Nynaeve didn’t need to see her shawl to know her Ajah - sneering at her in disgust. Worse was the Green - Myrelle - who was giving her a knowing smirk. Moiraine wasn’t even the worst of this bunch!
The Amyrlin was there as well, in full regalia, the striped stole around her shoulders, holding the final chalice. It was to her that Sheriam led her. Reluctantly, remembering Sheriam’s instructions, she knelt before the woman.
“You are washed clean of Nynaeve al’Meara from Emond’s Field,” Siuan Sanche intoned as she slowly emptied the chalice over Nynaeve’s head. “You are washed clean of all ties that bind you to the world. You come to us washed clean, in heart and soul. You are Nynaeve al’Meara, Accepted of the White Tower.” She drew Nynaeve to her feet. “You are sealed to us, now.”
The Amyrlin’s eyes seemed to hold a dark glow. Nynaeve’s shiver had nothing to do with being naked and dripping with Lan’s seed.