Chapter 5 - part four

'Your Majesty, I present to you Princess Liara of Tenuis."

Liara stood before Queen Morgana in the throne room of the great palace of Impiorum. She was in awe of how impossibly regal and beautiful the Queen looked sat upon her throne. Morgana was all the young Princess had thought of since that fateful evening at the ball.

As much as it had grieved her to leave her sisters and travel to a distant land, Liara had been so excited when the news had reached the palace of Tenuis that Queen Morgana had requested that she come and live in Impiorum.

"Please, father," Ava had pleaded with King Edric. "We can't send Liara away. Surely there is some other way that we can repay our debt to the Queen?"

"We owe Queen Morgana a great debt and she will not settle for anything else." her father had sighed. He turned to Liara. "You are my first born and yet I barely see any of my blood in you, you have aways been a stranger in this land. Perhaps the greatest kindness I can show you is to send you away."




Now Liara bowed before the Queen. "Your majesty, it is an honour."

The Queen inclined her head. "Impiorum is pleased to receive you, Princess."

Liara hesitated a moment and then finally said, "Your Majesty, if you can forgive me for speaking plainly, I am unsure of my purpose here."

"Your purpose...?"

"How I might serve you, your Majesty. I am unsure why I am here."

The Queen simply smiled. "All will be revealed in time, my dear. But for now you have journeyed far and must be quite fatigued. Please allow us to show you to your quarters."

Liara expected the Queen to summon a handmaiden but instead a young man in a loose white shirt and brown suede britches like a stable boy came to her side.

"Tristan is one of my most trusted and valued servants," the Queen said.

As Liara followed Tristan through the palace grounds she noticed the Queen's unusual taste in art; the passages were lined with tapestries that all displayed very voluptuous nude women in scenes of plentiful food and as they entered the palace courtyard there was a grand fountain whose centre piece was a gold mermaid with her mouth open to receive the stream of water. Liara could scarcely believe her eyes but by some strange enchantment the statue appeared to grow fatter as it swallowed water.

She began to feel uneasy as they left the palace, passed the royal apartments and even passed the servant's quarters. They eventually arrived at a stable yard with a large barn and rows of stables. Tristan led her into one of the stables. It was bizarre, just like the stables her father kept his horses in with a straw floor and a feeding trough it was much larger with space for a double bed and a large bath tub.

"Are these... servants quarters?" Liara asked. "Have i been brought here to serve the Queen?"

So this was the price of her father's debt, she thought. She was such a fool. Of course this was why she was here, the Queen simply wanted a slave.

"You will serve the Queen but... perhaps not in the way you might imagine." Tristan said.

"You may speak plainly to me, I am not a child. I simply wish to know what my father's greed and foolishness has cost me."

"Then-" Tristan was interrupted by the sound of a bell ringing. "It would seem I am spared the explanation. That sound means you will see soon enough."

He beckoned her to the door of the stable to watch the scene that was unfolding in the yard. Stable boys with buckets began filling large stone troughs in the centre of the yard with some kind of thick, white swill while others with sacks scattered something that looked like grain on the ground.

It was the sound that came first: a kind of murmur of anticipation that grew louder and became grunts of exertion and squeals of excitement then a rumble of a stampede and the slapping of flesh. I was then that she saw the great fleshy sea flooding the yard. It seemed like there was over a hundred of them, each one moving on all fours and jostling and pushing one another to eagerly push their faces into the trough to slurp up the swill and gobble up the grains from the mud.

Liara stood transfixed with a mix of horror and fascination. Her hands unconsciously went to her own stomach, feeling its subtle curve beneath her bodice. "This is monstrous," she whispered. "Is this what she wishes to do to me? Turn me into one of these poor beasts?"

All the food in the yard had been devoured in a matter of minutes but still they grubbed int the earth and eagerly licked the trough in the hope of finding some hidden morsel, some last dreg. Eventually the stable boys returned to the yard, holding wooden paddles to herd them back into the great barn.

Liara grimaced at the sound of wooden paddles slapping flesh and the sight of the rippling, jiggling flesh as the stable boys paddled the wide, fleshy backsides of those who would not return to the barn willingly. She tried to turn away, having seen her fill but Tristan forced her to look.

"Notice how there is so little difference between the male and female," he whispered in her ear. "Their thick thighs and hanging bellies obscure their sex and even the males have breasts."

Liara turned to him and realised that he spoke with admiration, not revulsion and noticed the bulge in his britches.

"Much like the people of Tenuis, most of the people of Impiorum find it impossible to gain weight. However, we consider it a curse and not a blessing as we have a taste for the voluptuous."

"So you abduct these people from their homelands to satisfy your sick appetites?"

"Sick appetites?" Tristan smirked at her. "Tell me, Princess, are you hungry? I don't think you can remember a time that you were truly satisfied."

Liara felt her cheeks flush with outrage and embarrassment. "How dare you."

"I understand that this is difficult to accept. It goes against everything you've been taught to believe but won't you consider for a moment that what you see here isn't wrong? Can't you see that it's the way your vain and cruel father and all his ridiculous courtiers raised you that's sick and unnatural, that goes against your grain?"

As Tristan gazed into her eye, Liara felt a familiar hollowness in the pit of her stomach and she thought of her carefree girlhood with her grandfather in Adipos where nothing was forbidden and she didn't constantly feel like there was something wrong with her. Her stomach gave a shameful growl and suddenly she was brought back to the moment.

"None of the people you saw gave themselves unwillingly," Tristan assured her. "They are all people whose gluttony is so all consuming that their appetites could never be satisfied by normal society."

Liara shook her head. "You've made a mistake. I'm nothing like those... those freaks. Please, I know my father owes the Queen a debt and it must be paid but surely there must be some other way. I'll do anything: cook, clean, whatever you want. Just don't make me like them."

"I'm sorry, Princess. I have my orders and they must be obeyed," he said. His tone was suddenly so cold and formal that she knew there could be no more discussion. "I must prepare you for presentation to the Queen this evening. Please remove your clothes so that I might bathe and groom you."

Liara's blush intensified. She was accustomed to being bathed and dressed by servants but never a man before.

Tristan appeared to grow impatient at her embarrassment. "It is required, Miss." He began to unlace her bodice himself and removed her dress with quick and efficient fingers.

She stood naked before him with her arms protectively folded across her breasts but he regarded her slender body with the same indifference that he might regard a horse. He busied himself filling the bath with hot water and scented oils.

Once she lowered herself into the soothing water he took a sponge and began to soap her body. Although he worked with care, his indifference continued even as she squirmed as he worked his way up her thighs.

As he dried and moisturised her pale skin and brushed her blonde hair until it shone Liara wondered aloud. "Do the others receive this kind of treatment?"

"Only those who are kept in the stables. The personal pets of the Queen and her closest Lords and Ladies."

"And the others? The ones in the barn, I mean."

At this question Tristan looked abashed. "They are for the pleasure of the lower members of court, soldiers and even favoured servant like myself."

"So you have your own... "pet"" She grimaced at the word.

"Not quite," Tristan smiled grimly. "The Queen ensures I am satisfied and I have one who I love but she is not mine alone. That is something beyond my station."

"The Queen does not care for your feelings?" Liara asked. Despite herself, she almost found herself pitying her jailer.

"My devotion is to my Queen, anything else is secondary. But really I should not have spoken, it is not your concern," he said. "You have been chosen by the Queen to receive her special attention and that is all that matters."