Hairy Peter and The Prisoner
Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2014 2:13 pm
Some of you may remember that a while ago I posted nearly half of the novel Hairy Peter and The Gallstone, which some of you seemed to like (and some didn't!). The fourth book in the series was published more recently,Hairy Peter and The Prisoner in Tasha's Barn, so I'll post a few chapters here hoping you enjoy them.
Chapter One
Myra
“I can’t find anyone,” said Myra unhappily.
“Don’t worry about it,” replied her mother. “These will last us for the moment.”
She picked up the whip. The man in front her moaned, straining against the cuffs that held his arms high above his head.
“Be quiet,” warned Natasha. “I haven’t done anything yet. Really, Myra, I think I’m going to have to gag them.”
“Don’t do that, mother,” said Myra. “I love to hear a man scream in pain.”
She walked casually over to the naked man and ran her fingernails down his chest, hard enough to leave thin, red lines all the way to his groin. She gripped him in one hand and squeezed. He squealed.
“Lovely,” said Myra, releasing her grip and then squeezing repeatedly. The man gasped and shrieked in pain. “But he’s not even a wizard,” Myra continued, holding him with enough pressure to make him squirm continuously. “I didn’t take him, did I?”
Her mother shook her head. “No,” she said. “It was Electra. I think she said she found him drunk outside The Firkin Seat in Asfixi-by-Mooning.”
“She took an awful risk,” said Myra, letting go of the prisoner and giving him a stinging slap on his buttocks with the flat of her hand. “The village is still full of phylaxes. You would have thought they had better things to do while the university students are on holiday, wouldn’t you? What do they think they’re guarding? There’s no one there but a lot of ancient professors who wouldn’t know a bit of bondage and sadism from a vicar’s tea party.”
“Don’t criticise until you know a lot more about it,” advised her mother. “You’ll be going there next term. We were lucky they agreed to take you, right in the middle of the university year.”
“Lucky?” Myra aimed a particularly vicious slap between the man’s legs. “It wasn’t luck. They took me because I’m a very talented witch. I expect they’re hoping I’ll graduate and become famous. Some chance! I’m there for one reason only, as you well know.”
“You’ll need to be very careful,” warned Natasha Majester. “Those witches and wizards come from a very different background, and they don’t think like us. Don’t forget, none of your sisters went to university. Neither did I, and neither has anyone in our family, as far as I know. We keep ourselves to ourselves. We’re not interested in what outsiders do or think, so you may find it’s not so easy to fit in.”
“I wouldn’t have to go if you were more careful with the prisoners,” Myra pointed out. “I don’t know what’s the matter with them, but after a few months they just seem to give up the will to live.”
“It’s not me,” Natasha pointed out. “It’s you and your sisters. I’ve kept you all away from the Major, and he’s been here since not long after you were born. He’s as fit as he always was.”
“And all the others since then?” asked Myra. “You can’t blame it all on my sisters. I know very well that you haven’t let any of us touch them until you thought we were old enough, so that’s less than ten years even for Maya. How many did you get through before then? Ten? Twenty?”
“Probably around thirty,” admitted Natasha. “But, as I said, Major Orson Petter has been here nearly nineteen years, and he’s every bit as good as he was when I first took him.”
“That’s not so great,” said Myra. “One of these days you’ll have trouble there. He was a wizard, and one of the best, wasn’t he? Electra said he’s a metamorph, so if he ever gets out of that dungeon we’ll all have problems.”
“There’s no chance of that,” declared her mother. “He can’t use his magic while he’s in those rooms, and do you think any wizard would have the slightest chance against the eight of us if he did? It’s not going to be a problem.”
“One day someone will come looking for him,” said Myra pessimistically. “Someone somewhere will be wondering why he was never found.”
“I doubt it,” her mother told her. “There’s even less risk than with most of the others. Don’t forget that when I took him the dark wizards were at their strongest. He-Who-Must-Never-Be-Sat-Upon and his followers were killing witches and wizards all over the place. No one would ever suspect a witch whose desires were most obviously conventional. I like my wizards, Myra, as you and your sisters have always done too. I can think of nothing better than having a wizard tied up and in pain, and that is exactly what the Ministry expects of a normal witch. There is nothing about me, or any of us, that would raise the slightest suspicion, and Major Petter was a prime target for the dark wizards. He was the liaison officer with the non-magical government. He was recognised by them as a very effective operative in their security services. He represented everything that He-Who-Must-Never-Be-Sat-Upon wanted to destroy.”
“We can’t take any risks,” insisted Myra. “You know we’re on top of one of the Seats of Power. Can you imagine what would happen if he managed to tap into that? It’s not impossible, even though I know very well that you haven’t managed to do it in all the years you’ve been trying.”
“We’re just on top of a vein, not on a Seat of Power” Natasha corrected her. “The veins just connect them.”
“You’ve told me that before,” said Myra. “I’m not sure I understand it.”
Her mother sighed. “And you’re supposed to be the intelligent one who’s going to university. The more I think about it, the more I worry. All right. I’ll explain it again. The Mooning Hills, the hilly area around Mount Moon, are on top of one of the strongest concentrations of elemental power in the world. It may well be the strongest. That’s why Fessewarts Castle was built here, and why the Mistress of Mooning chose it for her headquarters. It’s also why settlers built the village of Asfixi-by-Mooning, as well as all the other obvious reasons for settling here like the streams that flow down from the hills. As you’ll remember from your elementary schooling, I hope, no one chooses to live where there isn’t a plentiful water supply. Magic alone is not enough.”
Myra nodded, looking bored already. “I know all that,” she said scornfully. “It’s the ‘Seats of Power’ I don’t understand. Surely there’s either this elemental magic, or there isn’t.”
“A Seat of Power is invariably deep in the ground,” Natasha continued. “Nearly always it’s in a deposit of volcanic rock that seems to hold and concentrate the power. It was once believed that the rock itself is magical, but I think it’s fairly certain these days that elemental power merely finds the rock a suitable receptacle. I’m not going to try to explain it. I’ll leave that to your professors at Fessewarts. I’m sure they’ll have their own theories. I only know what our family has found out over the centuries we’ve lived here.”
“So we’re right at the centre,” said Myra. “We must be. Our house is on the edge of Mount Moon.”
“No!” said Natasha in exasperation. “I’ve told you again and again, and still you don’t listen to me. Our house was built here because one of your ancestors assumed that the centre of power was right in the centre of the largest hill. He was wrong. We are very close to one of the smaller concentrations of power. The elemental lines of force converge in these hills, certainly. That has been known for centuries, but if my calculations are correct, the point of focus, where the lines of force actually meet, is underneath Fessewarts Castle itself.”
“So the Mistress of Mooning got it right!”
“I don’t think so,” Natasha disagreed. “If she had known, I think she would have mined the rock to build the castle from that particular spot. She didn’t. Her building material came from a little further away. Fessewarts’ Lake is her quarry, and she mined deeper in search of more powerful concentrations from where the village of Asfixi-by-Mooning now stands. I believe the entrance to her old mineshaft still exists, or so Madam Lasheem claims.”
Myra stepped away from the man she was tormenting, pulled out her spell crop and examined it.
“She still mines it?”
“Maybe,” her mother nodded. “As you know, we had the greatest difficulty in persuading Madam Lasheem to make crops for you and your sisters. Other crop makers are far less particular, but the Ministry has tightened the regulations and I think it’s clear they believe Madam Lasheem’s crops do more than just channel a witch’s or wizard’s own abilities. Only materials from a Seat of Power could do that.”
“So we’re not even at any of the Sources of Power?”
“It’s not quite like that. I do wish you would listen properly. We shouldn’t be talking about sources of power. They’re not. They are concentrations of power, where elemental forces come together and are stored if suitable material exists to hold them. It so happens that the Mooning Hills and the area around them has a particularly large amount of the rock that has the perfect structure to absorb and hold the power, and the lines of power that circle the world happen to converge here. We’re close to a mass of the rock, right in the middle of Mount Moon, and we’re over a spur of rock, a ‘vein’, that happens to connect the main concentration at the very centre of the lines’ convergence with the other local concentrations.”
“How many other concentrations? Where are they?” asked Myra.
“One, as I said, is slightly to this side of Mount Moon. Another is a little further away, but you can see the spot from here. One is under Madam Lasheem’s shop in Asfixi-by-Mooning. One, the main concentration, is just the other side of what is now Fessewarts University. One, somewhat depleted now, I think, is under and around Fessewarts Lake. It’s more difficult to describe the locations of the other two, but I’ve visited them all, although not since you were born.”
“Seven?” asked Myra. “And you had seven children, all witches. What a coincidence!”
Natasha looked at her daughter with a slight smile on her face. “Don’t assume it’s a coincidence,” she said. “Now stand out of the way. You’ve delayed this whipping quite long enough.”
http://www.strictsusan.com/publish/hairypeter4.htm
All Susan Strict's books are available on:
http://www.tabooreading.com/49.htm
Chapter One
Myra
“I can’t find anyone,” said Myra unhappily.
“Don’t worry about it,” replied her mother. “These will last us for the moment.”
She picked up the whip. The man in front her moaned, straining against the cuffs that held his arms high above his head.
“Be quiet,” warned Natasha. “I haven’t done anything yet. Really, Myra, I think I’m going to have to gag them.”
“Don’t do that, mother,” said Myra. “I love to hear a man scream in pain.”
She walked casually over to the naked man and ran her fingernails down his chest, hard enough to leave thin, red lines all the way to his groin. She gripped him in one hand and squeezed. He squealed.
“Lovely,” said Myra, releasing her grip and then squeezing repeatedly. The man gasped and shrieked in pain. “But he’s not even a wizard,” Myra continued, holding him with enough pressure to make him squirm continuously. “I didn’t take him, did I?”
Her mother shook her head. “No,” she said. “It was Electra. I think she said she found him drunk outside The Firkin Seat in Asfixi-by-Mooning.”
“She took an awful risk,” said Myra, letting go of the prisoner and giving him a stinging slap on his buttocks with the flat of her hand. “The village is still full of phylaxes. You would have thought they had better things to do while the university students are on holiday, wouldn’t you? What do they think they’re guarding? There’s no one there but a lot of ancient professors who wouldn’t know a bit of bondage and sadism from a vicar’s tea party.”
“Don’t criticise until you know a lot more about it,” advised her mother. “You’ll be going there next term. We were lucky they agreed to take you, right in the middle of the university year.”
“Lucky?” Myra aimed a particularly vicious slap between the man’s legs. “It wasn’t luck. They took me because I’m a very talented witch. I expect they’re hoping I’ll graduate and become famous. Some chance! I’m there for one reason only, as you well know.”
“You’ll need to be very careful,” warned Natasha Majester. “Those witches and wizards come from a very different background, and they don’t think like us. Don’t forget, none of your sisters went to university. Neither did I, and neither has anyone in our family, as far as I know. We keep ourselves to ourselves. We’re not interested in what outsiders do or think, so you may find it’s not so easy to fit in.”
“I wouldn’t have to go if you were more careful with the prisoners,” Myra pointed out. “I don’t know what’s the matter with them, but after a few months they just seem to give up the will to live.”
“It’s not me,” Natasha pointed out. “It’s you and your sisters. I’ve kept you all away from the Major, and he’s been here since not long after you were born. He’s as fit as he always was.”
“And all the others since then?” asked Myra. “You can’t blame it all on my sisters. I know very well that you haven’t let any of us touch them until you thought we were old enough, so that’s less than ten years even for Maya. How many did you get through before then? Ten? Twenty?”
“Probably around thirty,” admitted Natasha. “But, as I said, Major Orson Petter has been here nearly nineteen years, and he’s every bit as good as he was when I first took him.”
“That’s not so great,” said Myra. “One of these days you’ll have trouble there. He was a wizard, and one of the best, wasn’t he? Electra said he’s a metamorph, so if he ever gets out of that dungeon we’ll all have problems.”
“There’s no chance of that,” declared her mother. “He can’t use his magic while he’s in those rooms, and do you think any wizard would have the slightest chance against the eight of us if he did? It’s not going to be a problem.”
“One day someone will come looking for him,” said Myra pessimistically. “Someone somewhere will be wondering why he was never found.”
“I doubt it,” her mother told her. “There’s even less risk than with most of the others. Don’t forget that when I took him the dark wizards were at their strongest. He-Who-Must-Never-Be-Sat-Upon and his followers were killing witches and wizards all over the place. No one would ever suspect a witch whose desires were most obviously conventional. I like my wizards, Myra, as you and your sisters have always done too. I can think of nothing better than having a wizard tied up and in pain, and that is exactly what the Ministry expects of a normal witch. There is nothing about me, or any of us, that would raise the slightest suspicion, and Major Petter was a prime target for the dark wizards. He was the liaison officer with the non-magical government. He was recognised by them as a very effective operative in their security services. He represented everything that He-Who-Must-Never-Be-Sat-Upon wanted to destroy.”
“We can’t take any risks,” insisted Myra. “You know we’re on top of one of the Seats of Power. Can you imagine what would happen if he managed to tap into that? It’s not impossible, even though I know very well that you haven’t managed to do it in all the years you’ve been trying.”
“We’re just on top of a vein, not on a Seat of Power” Natasha corrected her. “The veins just connect them.”
“You’ve told me that before,” said Myra. “I’m not sure I understand it.”
Her mother sighed. “And you’re supposed to be the intelligent one who’s going to university. The more I think about it, the more I worry. All right. I’ll explain it again. The Mooning Hills, the hilly area around Mount Moon, are on top of one of the strongest concentrations of elemental power in the world. It may well be the strongest. That’s why Fessewarts Castle was built here, and why the Mistress of Mooning chose it for her headquarters. It’s also why settlers built the village of Asfixi-by-Mooning, as well as all the other obvious reasons for settling here like the streams that flow down from the hills. As you’ll remember from your elementary schooling, I hope, no one chooses to live where there isn’t a plentiful water supply. Magic alone is not enough.”
Myra nodded, looking bored already. “I know all that,” she said scornfully. “It’s the ‘Seats of Power’ I don’t understand. Surely there’s either this elemental magic, or there isn’t.”
“A Seat of Power is invariably deep in the ground,” Natasha continued. “Nearly always it’s in a deposit of volcanic rock that seems to hold and concentrate the power. It was once believed that the rock itself is magical, but I think it’s fairly certain these days that elemental power merely finds the rock a suitable receptacle. I’m not going to try to explain it. I’ll leave that to your professors at Fessewarts. I’m sure they’ll have their own theories. I only know what our family has found out over the centuries we’ve lived here.”
“So we’re right at the centre,” said Myra. “We must be. Our house is on the edge of Mount Moon.”
“No!” said Natasha in exasperation. “I’ve told you again and again, and still you don’t listen to me. Our house was built here because one of your ancestors assumed that the centre of power was right in the centre of the largest hill. He was wrong. We are very close to one of the smaller concentrations of power. The elemental lines of force converge in these hills, certainly. That has been known for centuries, but if my calculations are correct, the point of focus, where the lines of force actually meet, is underneath Fessewarts Castle itself.”
“So the Mistress of Mooning got it right!”
“I don’t think so,” Natasha disagreed. “If she had known, I think she would have mined the rock to build the castle from that particular spot. She didn’t. Her building material came from a little further away. Fessewarts’ Lake is her quarry, and she mined deeper in search of more powerful concentrations from where the village of Asfixi-by-Mooning now stands. I believe the entrance to her old mineshaft still exists, or so Madam Lasheem claims.”
Myra stepped away from the man she was tormenting, pulled out her spell crop and examined it.
“She still mines it?”
“Maybe,” her mother nodded. “As you know, we had the greatest difficulty in persuading Madam Lasheem to make crops for you and your sisters. Other crop makers are far less particular, but the Ministry has tightened the regulations and I think it’s clear they believe Madam Lasheem’s crops do more than just channel a witch’s or wizard’s own abilities. Only materials from a Seat of Power could do that.”
“So we’re not even at any of the Sources of Power?”
“It’s not quite like that. I do wish you would listen properly. We shouldn’t be talking about sources of power. They’re not. They are concentrations of power, where elemental forces come together and are stored if suitable material exists to hold them. It so happens that the Mooning Hills and the area around them has a particularly large amount of the rock that has the perfect structure to absorb and hold the power, and the lines of power that circle the world happen to converge here. We’re close to a mass of the rock, right in the middle of Mount Moon, and we’re over a spur of rock, a ‘vein’, that happens to connect the main concentration at the very centre of the lines’ convergence with the other local concentrations.”
“How many other concentrations? Where are they?” asked Myra.
“One, as I said, is slightly to this side of Mount Moon. Another is a little further away, but you can see the spot from here. One is under Madam Lasheem’s shop in Asfixi-by-Mooning. One, the main concentration, is just the other side of what is now Fessewarts University. One, somewhat depleted now, I think, is under and around Fessewarts Lake. It’s more difficult to describe the locations of the other two, but I’ve visited them all, although not since you were born.”
“Seven?” asked Myra. “And you had seven children, all witches. What a coincidence!”
Natasha looked at her daughter with a slight smile on her face. “Don’t assume it’s a coincidence,” she said. “Now stand out of the way. You’ve delayed this whipping quite long enough.”
http://www.strictsusan.com/publish/hairypeter4.htm
All Susan Strict's books are available on:
http://www.tabooreading.com/49.htm