I let Valeria and Gren figure out what we were packing for the trip. I didn’t want to reveal the secrets of the bag of holding, or reveal anything from Earth to the elves except a few posters. I made a hardware run and loaded up the zombies. I gave a few of them directions to just make a circuit every day, to take whatever they were handed at the crypt or the trading posts, and drop whatever it was at the next place. I left Inka in charge of the Orc post, Gruush in charge of the troll one. Kathy could keep acquiring things we needed to trade, and load the zombies up every morning. It seemed like it would work.

I also ordered some radios. They wouldn’t have the range to get to the elf palace, but they would at least enable communication between the trading posts and the main base. It was something I should have thought about before, but with cell phones, radio communication had seemed old school. I couldn’t make cell phones work at a distance, though, and radios I could. If I set up repeaters… I asked Kathy to try to figure it out, and I brought Jill in on the discussion too. Maybe, eventually, we’d be able to communicate all over, using a network of repeaters. Amaranth’s airwaves were delightfully uncluttered.

Given the way the internet had affected civility and politics, I didn’t want to make the technology too widely available. Call me selfish or merely cautious, but the network would be for just me and mine.

At last we were ready to go. I didn’t succeed at making it a day, but I managed a day and a half; we set out for Avonia late in the afternoon.

Travel is broadening, they say. It’s also dull to describe. I did see animals and plants I’d never seen on earth, so it wasn’t an uneventful trip, exactly, and camping out in the open in a strange world with orcs and demons and what-not required a certain amount of alertness. I could describe our watch arrangements in detail, or perhaps describe some fictional attack along the way to make it all seem gripping. Did you ever wonder how ordinary commerce was even possible in a world with those D&D wandering monster charts?

Instead, I’ll skip it.

Of course there was the sex, the wild late night orgies with Harmodiel looking wistfully on, but no one wants to read about that. Especially not the time, after the emissary absented himself, that Lesseth came out, made herself into a rubber sheet and held Valeria down, with just a few strategically placed holes that allowed Gren and I to tease her until she screamed. Fear not, tender reader, I won’t even hint at such goings on.

 We declined Harmodiel’s offer to use one of his scourges on Valeria. Just because she was into bondage didn’t mean she was a masochist. I also declined his offer to have us use them on him in order to punish him for the suggestion.

Late in the evening of the sixth day Avonia came into view, and it was impressive. Towers made of nearly white stone jutted up into the blue sky, topped with cone shaped roofs that were painted in a variety of bright colors, sort of like Neuschwanstein done up for Pride, but expanded to be a whole city rather than a barely livable castle. We had to camp, though, because apparently the gates were closed up at night.

The next day we went up to the gates. Two guards in shining bronze plate mail stood at the side of it, one male, one female. They looked more decorative than functional, as they stood at attention with only a little more mobility than the guards at Buckingham Palace. The gates were open by the time we got there, and their eyes scanned us while their heads barely moved. “Emissary,” they said.

So Harmodiel was a big enough cheese that the guards recognized him on sight.

“Guards,” he said.

He walked through, with us in tow.

Avonia was a city of spires and trees, especially cedars. I suspected the verticality of the buildings, and the peaked roofs, was meant to imitate the shape of the trees that lined the streets, in sort of the same way that suburban lawns and grassy parks are an unconscious attempt to create something of the African savannah in which humans evolved. The streets themselves were narrow, like forest paths, and one was always conscious of being shadowed by the mélange of buildings and trees. There was a randomness to their placement that evoked the forest, as well. Harmodiel led us through the maze like a skilled woodsman.

The elves gawked at us, and I suspect I gawked back. Elves are generally slender, with soft, feminine features regardless of gender. The women are curvier than the men, but there was still a boyishness to their hips and modest chests. Bright colors abounded, although green seemed to be the Elvish black, and tunics and codpieces seemed to be fashionable for the men, whereas dresses with bare shoulders, and long slits to reveal shapely legs, were in vogue for the women.

The palace, when we came to it, was naturally the most involved, spired building of all, with multiple branches, some extended from the massive, trunk-like, central structure. On one side, it seemed that the attempt at tree-like architecture had gone too far, because the building was marred by what appeared to be an extended tower that collapsed. Despite that, what remained was impressive, although I hoped that we wouldn’t be housed in one of the more precarious extensions.

The guards at the front of the palace were just as extravagantly armored, if not more so, than the ones at the gate, but they took their jobs more seriously. They took down our names, and didn’t let us enter until they turned us over to an escort, who took us to our rooms. I was relieved to find that our quarters were in the trunk-like central structure, and even on the ground level. Perhaps it was where they put the lesser guests, but I didn’t care. And when I saw the interior, I doubted that was the case.

We had a three-room suite; an anteroom, a bedroom, and a bath. The bed was a little larger than a Full-size, and would be cramped, but the covers were soft and silky, and a lovely shade of red. I don’t want to overstate the case, because you can certainly buy better in any shopping mall, but compared to what I’d seen of the orcs and trolls, this was luxury. There were candles on marble candlesticks, drinking glasses and a flagon of some kind of blue liquid, and cedar chests in which to store our belongings. We unpacked, except for the things in the bags, and then they left us alone for a while, telling us we would be informed when the Queen could see me.

We waited.

And then we waited some more.

And then Gren suggested a way to pass the time, and Valeria agreed. Who was I to argue? Which is why, at the moment a svelte, particularly long-legged elf lady whose white, almost translucent off the shoulder dress was bordered by cloth-of-gold, entered the room without knocking, Valeria had her hands tied behind her back and her lips around my cock, while Gren was guiding her head, sometimes roughly, and kissing me. We were actually too busy to notice the newcomer’s quiet entrance until she was almost standing next to Gren. The first thing I noticed was the light sparking off the diamonds of her tiara, which topped long, straight flaxen hair.

She looked down. “By the silver laurels of Lorien,” she exclaimed. “You have a male member!”

I just gaped. As did she, as I backed out of Valeria’s mouth. Her eyes widened further.

“It’s huge!” she said.

“Isn’t it?” Gren said, sounding delighted that this time it wasn’t a secret.

Valeria, however, was turning bright red. She’d come a long way from when I’d first met her, but being discovered by a stranger while tied up and giving a blowjob clearly embarrassed her. So, rather than grabbing a dress and putting it on, I moved around to untie her. The elf’s gaze followed my cock.

“Is it throbbing?” she asked.

“Uh, some, I guess.”

She nodded. “It probably yearns to be buried in the soft, yielding sex of your beloved. And yet, your heart must beat like any other woman’s, yearning to be held while hot kisses are rained upon your lips.”

“I was taking care of that part,” Gren said. “Luscious lips.”

“Where are my manners! I am the Princess Lysandra. And you must be Queen Abby.” The princess curtsied. “Which one of you is Gren, and which Valeria?”

“I’m Gren,” Gren said.

“Uh-huh,” Valeria said. Freed, she stood and backed up a few steps, while using her hands to provide some modesty and looking yearningly at her dress on the bed.

“Pleased to meet you both,” Lysandra said, and curtsied again.

“It’s nice to meet you, Princess,” I said. I grabbed my dress, and put it on.

“That’s an unusual shade,” Lysandra said.

I looked down, and double-checked. “It’s black.”

“Yes,” Lysandra said.

I shrugged.

“I’m very sorry to have interrupted you in your moment of passionate lovemaking,” Lysandra said. “Although I admit to being secretly delighted to have witnessed it. I never thought that a woman could possess the member of a male, not to mention such a prodigious one. And such large breasts, heaving with each breath as you pant with desire…” she broke off, and fanned herself.

“Um, yes,” I said. How does one answer that. I tried again. “You’re very lovely yourself.”

“Oh!” she said. “My! Do you think so?”

“Your legs are amazing.”

She blushed. “Flatterer!” she exclaimed. “Alas, I have been promised to another. In any case, her highness, Queen Maeve, will see you as soon as you get dressed, and put on your jewels and crown.”

I shrugged. “I don’t have any jewels, or a crown. Well, I have a crown, I suppose, but I left it at home.”

The princess blinked. “Oh. You’re full of surprises. Here. You can borrow mine.” She took off her tiara, and put it on my head. In doing so, her hand brushed against something hard and pointy, and she pulled back, looking at her finger.

“You have horns!” she said.

“I do.”

“Horny horned whore,” Gren said, obviously pleased with herself.

“She’s not a whore,” Valeria said, glaring at Gren. “She’s never charged anyone.”

“Oh, come on, the alliteration was too good to resist,” Gren argued. “Sometimes exact truth must make room for poetry. And besides, you have to admit she gets around.”

Lysandra, having determined there was no actual blood, looked between us all. “Your subjects are not as respectful as they might be,” she said.

“Well, they are my wives.”

“And yet, still your subjects, yes? You tie them up at your whim, and require they service your royal, er, scepter?”

I had let the whole “queen” thing get out of control.

“There’s no requiring needed,” Gren said. “I bet you wouldn’t mind servicing it yourself!”

“Gren!” I said. It was possible that bringing my favorite troll along on a diplomatic mission had been a mistake.

Lysandra blushed. “I-I-I-”

I sympathized with her. What does a good diplomat do when confronted with an unwanted sexual advance? She was in a hard position. No, better to call it a difficult one. “Thank you for the loan of your tiara,” I said. “Come on, we have to get ready. We should wear our best.”

So Valeria changed again, out of travelling clothes, and Gren didn’t change at all. I think she thought the two-piece animal-skin bikini look was her best, and I wasn’t sure I disagreed with her.

I put on lipstick. It wasn’t black. It was just a very dark burgundy. As soon as Valeria got her little black dress on, we let Lysandra guide us through the labyrinth of corridors to Queen Maeve’s throne room.