Fetish of Prince Eric, Ch I

The Fetish of Prince Eric
Chapter One

Eric awoke to the grate and hiss of the metal door tearing open. Blinks revealed the door’ shadows draping down a hulking guard with yellow eyes.
“Learn yer lesson about treatin the ladies, have you, my prince?” the guard laughed, knowing his contempt would go unpunished, “the queen says a day in the cell was all ye needed. Luckily she ain’t one for floggin’s.” The guards walked Eric up the continuous stone road, up from the castle dungeon. The moans and cries of prisoners penetrated the darkness like a fog, occasionally interrupted with the crash of a whip. The flickers of the guard’s lantern revealed desperate faces caked with dirt; barefoot women clinging to their wailing children. He heard the shallow breath of men, and the orange glow fled over their gaping, black wounds.
As stupid and cruel as he was, he felt relief that his mother confined him here for only a day. A young man dressed in black robes passed them in the labyrinth of horror, overtaking them on the stairs as he hurried up to the third floor of Queen Callista’s dungeon. Certainly he was a guard, as the torch-bearer made no attempt to stop the robed man on his way. Eric had learned that tools for torture were often kept at the lowest level of the dungeon, but if this man was an inquisitor, why was he not agonizing over an iron maiden or a sack of methasand? Instead, all that was about his person was a fantail of feathers and a small bag of holding.
His boots clattered over the bricks as they approached the third floor. The moans remained, but now the screams grew sharper and louder, and in the distance he could hear almost…laughter.
“I say, what goes here?” he asked the torch-bearer. No answer. His boots pressed on something soft as they walked on, the laughter growing louder. Snatching the object up without the torch-bearer’s notice, he realized he stepped on someone’s boots, with rolled up socks stuffed inside. His interests heightened. He sniffed the socks and the instant dream of a peasant girl’s soft white feet warming by a fireplace intoxicated his brain. Now the torch revealed a delightful scene. A blonde girl of nineteen, with a scarf about her head, wrapped clumsily in a white and brown peasant dress sat in a pair of stocks. Leather belts strapped down her bare legs, and cords bound her wrists behind her chair. A padded stock caught her naked ankles. Her pale bare soles wiggled as she balled up her chubby little toes, laughter coming out in screams as a stiff red feather danced around each foot. A robed man tickled her feet, expressionless.
“Keep em, my prince,” the guard laughed when he saw what Eric had found.
“Who is that girl? Wh-what did she do?” Eric covered his embarrassment.
“She’s with the Palensarn Allegiance, honor abound to restore the kingdom to the House of Arbrenial. The queen was marked for death at the festival last night…this brave young soul was with ‘m. Nothing to fear, my prince. She’ll soon lead us to the others.”
The Palensarn Allegiance did not take kindly to the sudden death of Eric’s father, the mad Prince Jakkin. It was no mystery that his mother Queen Callista shared a bed with the Baron of Zakar. Jakkin’s outraged brothers wanted Palensarn back from the hands of the warrior queen, but until the end of her reign, all attempts to rebel or negotiate were futile. Callista’s battle record far outranked those of her brothers, as she fought with the wrathful force of Aramol. The whisper of her name throughout Palensarn’s five kingdoms brought forth unrivalled terror. Only the Palensarn Allegiance, growing ever larger in number dared to contend with her wrath, but they had remained quiet, unseen in the last year or so.
“Oh! Poor mum!” Eric feigned sadness, while secretly realizing that her death would give him control of almost all Ligeia. Bother all, he had found something to distract his thoughts of the throne. The torch-bearer brought him into the castle corridors, for a meeting with his mother. In moth wing robes, Queen Callista glided into her court.
“Hullo, mother,” Eric said in a tone that intimated he would disregard the queen’s words entirely.
“Eric, I’ve had to bid farewell to Crithni this morning. Could I blame her with this? Of course I’m letting her go unpunished and she’ll go wherever she wants with the queen’s approval. But you…”
Eric couldn’t blame her either. Crithni, an elf maiden of twenty from North Ceft adored her queen, but the prince adored her more. Callista’s royal robes were always ready and warm when she woke at dawn. The queen loved her equally, giving her the privilege of fanning and massages that were often reserved for eunuchs. Crithni lovingly wove her queen’s hair into exotic elven braids, always decorating her for state occasions, and sometimes gave her magic potions that filled her with sexual readiness for her lover.
Eric often watched these scenes lustfully in secret. He woke many times covered in sweat as he dreamed of the elf maiden’s powdery white hair flowing around him like clouds as he breathed heavily, his tongue exploring her blue lips. He once saved a pheasant feather from hunting and broke into the servant quarters by night, slipping into Crithni’s room she shared with another maid. He soundlessly parted the light sheets on her bed to reveal Crithni’s blue soles. After four years of wondering and contemplating, he finally knew what her feet looked like. His heart beat faster as his eyes massaged the feet from the long toes to the buttery insteps. Rings decorated each toe, and gold bracelets wrapped around each ankle. She wore elven sandals.
The blue wood elves of the Cefts almost always went barefoot, except in the glaciers of Icanthria. It was also customary to remove all coverings from one’s feet when a guest in the elven villages. They were still known for elven sandals, jeweled shoes that left the sole of the foot bare, connecting from the ankle to the middle toe, worn most often by elven women. Crithni submitted to the leather slippers royal servants were required to wear but kept the sandals as a symbol of Ceft pride. She even made several pairs of sandals for Callista.
His nose drifted up and down the exposed soles, as he could still smell the fresh leather on them. Then he softly dusted her feet with the pheasant feather. Her toes wiggled and she tried covering one foot with the other to shield the feather. Eric fled the room as fast as he had come, making sure no one would see him in the maids’ quarters. Besides, Crithni was quite skilled in the art of magic.
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