Entry Fee

Adoria sat among the boxes and bales and watched the centaurs. It was her first trip to the centaur Land, although she was not going to actually cross into it. “Maybe next time,” her uncle Zorian had said. “Absolutely not,” her mother had answered. So now she waited outside the border post while Uncle Zorian went to do – whatever the centaurs did to visitors.

There were both male and female centaurs here. A few were border guards; more were waiting for Uncle Zorian to hire them as porters. They made Adoria feel small. Like her uncle, she was below average height for a human, with dark hair and eyes. But she was not a child, by the gods! She was a full-grown woman, if only just barely, and she had already turned down one proposal of marriage. After this trip, she would stay with Uncle Zorian. She would get out from under mother’s thumb. Next trip would dare the unspoken terrors of the centaurs, earn her own dowry, and choose the suitors she wanted and not the ones her mother tried to force on her.

Now she saw Uncle Zorian returning. He was red-faced and staggering slightly, almost, but not quite, as if he had drunk a little too much wine. A female centaur walked beside him: Cora or Idalia – Adoria wasn’t sure of the name. Everyone’s attention was on the returning pair. Adoria stood up and headed for the border, giving in to a sudden impulse. After her long journey this trip, she would make at least a token visit into the centaur Land.

She had gotten perhaps 50 paces across the border, and had turned back before anyone noticed her. Then everyone seemed to notice her all at once. “Adoria, you fool!” her uncle shouted. One of the centaur border-guards came thundering at her. Frightened, Adoria broke and ran for the border.

After only five steps, the bola caught her, wrapping around both legs and one arm and throwing her to the ground. The centaur came up and knelt beside her. Rough, efficient hands bound her wrists behind her back, then pulled off her sandals and crossed and bound her ankles. The centaur slung her across his back and rose. Adoria lay very still and limp, so as not to fall.

Uncle Zorian came up beside her. “Adoria, you fool,” he repeated. “Timon–” he said to the centaur.

“Make it short.” Timon said.

Uncle Zorian spoke quickly: “Adoria, listen. Don’t cry and don’t beg. They’ll respect that. Be brave.” Then Timon took her away.

After a moderate jog, they came to the stocks. Stocks, and other devices designed to hold people in place. Human-type people, Adoria corrected herself. Not to hold centaurs. There was also an awning under which stood a male centaur of about her own age, a sundial, and a sign.

Alja Kentaros mor kental velator velex bartaros mel Uru, nor Kentaros yonvel morkap i patalos. the sign read in the centaurs’ curlicue script: “If the Kentaros should ever fail to visit merciless torment on foreigners who enter the Land, then will the Kentaros suffer betrayal and ruination.”

Now Adoria understood. The centaurs weren’t simply being cruel; they had a gods-sent Prophesy to deal with. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “I didn’t know.” She was ‘well cooked’ in a phrase she had heard used somewhere or other. The centaurs wouldn’t be cruel to her, but they would be merciless. And she could only blame herself.

“Ho, Timon.” the younger centaur said. “What sort of flatfooter are you bringing me now?”

“Ho, Kratos. I’m bringing you a runner. She’s Adoria, Zorian’s niece.”

“Zorian’s niece? I thought she was staying behind.”

“She changed her mind. Then she tried to change it again,” Timon said. “Women! Here, help me get her on this bench.”

In a few moments, Adoria found herself lying face-down; her wrists locked in stocks in front of her. Another set of stocks locked around her ankles, holding her knees bent in a right angle and leaving the soles of her feet facing straight up. She heard Timon leave to return to the guard post. She felt water splash on her feet, felt Kratos wash them with something both soft and rough – either a sponge or a rag. Adoria bit back a giggle at the tickle and the silliness of it. As Kratos began to lace her toes down, Adoria managed to ask, “What are you going to do?”

Kratos paused. “You weren’t told?”

“No.”

A longer pause. When Kratos continued, Adoria heard a grin in his voice. “I am going to tickle-torture you. I am going to tickle your flat feet until you’re limp, until you can’t stand it. And then I’m going to tickle you some more.”

“Oh.” Adoria felt an excited quiver in her belly.

“You shouldn’t have tried to run, you know. That just makes your time longer.”

“Oh.”

Kratos stepped away to adjust the gnomen of the sundial. Adoria tried to wiggle. She could wiggle her fingers and move her body, but her wrists and ankles were held fast. In addition, leather straps held her legs and leather lacings held her toes. She could not move her feet at all. The wrist stocks locked with a simple but effective pin-lock, out of reach of her fingers. The ankle stocks had a similar lock, and that latch, of course, was even further out of her reach. She was stuck.

Adoria heard Kratos return, humming slightly to himself. She could have caught a glimpse of him if she had twisted, but she decided not to waste the effort. The bench, she suddenly realized, was built to hold her naked soles at the level of a centaur’s worktable: They were just the right height for a craftsman to comfortably reach and work on. And Kratos, she suspected, was a craftsman at tickling.

Another belly-quiver ran through her, like the one on her first sea-voyage when the ship first entered open waters. Then the tickling began.

It started with gentle touches. Some of them felt like they from Kratos’ fingers, some from something feather-soft, and some from a hard stylus or quill. Adoria felt Kratos keep a slow and steady tempo, probing random spots until he had tested every spot on her soles. Some of the spots were only mildly ticklish but others were quite sensitive. Adoria giggled, squealing slightly as Kratos hit an especially ticklish spot. Adoria never knew where the next touch would fall, nor how much it would tickle, and the uncertainty increased her sensitivity to every touch.

The random touches gave way to stroking. Kratos used feather- and fingertips, touching gently, persistently, and penetratingly. Adoria could not believe that such a gentle touch could have such a strong effect. She tried to ignore it, tried to relax, tried to let the stroking on her soles sooth her, but she could not. As gentle as Kratos’ touch was, it was still a tickle. Under it Adoria squirmed and giggled.

Then Kratos pounced. His gentle touch turned into a vigorous roiling attack that ran up and down Adoria’s soles and forced peals of laughter from her. With the feather, he invaded the tender skin between Adoria’s toes. Adoria squealed and jerked, and pulled wildly at the stocks. But those stocks were built to hold an amazon warrior, and Adoria’s girlish strength couldn’t even make them creak.

Unlike the earlier stroking, this attack wasn’t constant. Kratos would tickle vigorously for a minute, and then he would give Adoria a minute’s respite. With each pause, Adoria would feel a faint hope that the tickle-torment was over, and then another tickle-attack would dash her hopes. But at last came a longer pause.

“Is it over? Please?” Adoria asked at last.

“Oh no, only a little more than half way. I’m just thinking about what to try next,” Kratos answered. “Now if you hadn’t tried to run, it would be almost over.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure you are. But I’m afraid I still have to keep working on you.”

“You’re enjoying this!” Adoria accused.

“I have to prove myself,” Kratos answered primly. He did not, Adoria noticed, deny enjoying it. “Hrm,” Kratos continued. “This, I think.”

“This” felt leathery as it scraped and rubbed Adoria’s feet. It must be that leather oddment she had seen without noticing when Kratos and Timon had locked her into the stocks. Once, somewhere, she had heard it called a “bullfeather,” and she had wondered why it was called that and what it was good for. But now she was learning. Gods and goddesses was she learning now! She never imagined that leather could tickle, and certainly not like this. It was worse than the gentle stroking, worse than the attacks of Kratos’ fingers, worse even than the probes of the feather between her toes. There was no part of the universe left but her body, no part of her body left but the soles of her feet, and nothing else happening in the universe but the tickling. Adoria could only lie limply on the bench and laugh.

At last, the leather-tickle ended. Sometime after that, Adoria realized that it had ended. She was sweat-soaked, and exhausted, and sore from too much laughter. But Kratos still wasn’t done. He was rubbing her feet with some sort of salve. It wasn’t an intended tickle, but it still made Adoria squirm and whimper. Then Adoria felt water poured over her feet. Then Kratos applied a scrub-brush.

Adoria screamed. She would go mad. She couldn’t bear it. But it wasn’t pain. It wasn’t even agony, it was too much pleasure, more pleasure than even a goddess could stand and she must be mad because she didn’t want it to stop.

But it did stop at last, and Kratos released her from her restraints. He offered her a drink of water and a strong shoulder to lean on. He caught her and carried her when she found herself too weak to walk.

Adoria saw the sign again as Kratos carried her away: Alja Kentaros mor kental velator velex bartaros mel Uru, nor Kentaros yonvel morkap i patalos She knew that she would not betray the centaurs. They might torment her with tickling, but they would not harm her. They didn’t feel any malice toward her. And she didn’t feel any toward them. She was their friend, and that they were hers.

Back at the border post, Timon handed Adoria the precious pass tokens for entry into the centaur Land. “Your mother’s going to skin us both,” Uncle Zorian said. But he was smiling. “It looks like you’re going to come with me to Naranos after all. You’ve earned it.”