by Allan Cole
Another clap from the Evocator and a thick cloud of red smoke burst from the incense brazier. It smelled of roses and violets and my flesh tingled in anticipated pleasure. The curtain of billowing silk parted. We saw nothing in the dark alcove except stringed instruments and pipes abandoned on the floor by the never-seen musicians.
The Evocator clapped again. "Oh, beautiful Butala," she intoned, "grant us music as sweet as your womb." She crooked a finger at the instruments. "Play," she commanded. We sat in gaping wonder as the instruments rose from the floor. Pipes and harps and dulcimers alike swayed gracefully. Two small gilded drums danced on either side. Strings were plucked by invisible fingers. Small, padded hammers coaxed beauteous sounds from the dulcimers. Pipes fluted visions of woodland bowers. Drums tat-tat-tatted the rhythms of love.
Melina came out of the gloom like a ghost from the mountains of the gods. Torches flared up on either side, lit by invisible hands. Her naked flesh shown pure gold. We saw the startling perfection of her smooth body for so quick a moment one couldn't be sure it wasn't the sacred drink and our imaginations. Suddenly Melina was covered from toe to crown with writhing shapes of many colors. She stood quite still for one, two, then three heartbeats. We saw images of men and women coupling, other figures in playful chase, women embracing other women as lovers, handsome boys doing the same and wonderfully twisted combinations of both sexes. Melina turned in a slow pirouette, body alive with other scenes of living erotica.
The music shifted and Melina began to dance. First, a slow, swaying shuffle, hips rotating, arms weaving, long, firm legs moving gracefully. Melina's dance quickened, as did the music and spirit forms at play on her body. She kicked and twirled and shook her breasts and hips until I thought I would go mad with lust. I felt the heat rise in the other men. The room became stifling with our must. When we could bear no more, Melina stopped. She held a pose to make a sculptor weep. The images were gone and we could see her in all her glory. My eyes fed on her like a starving man, on her lips, breasts and smooth, shaven vulva outlined in henna. Then the alcove went black. We turned to look at one another, mouths dry, eyes aching in their sockets. Our balls as hard as stones.
"Well, gentlemen," came that wondrous voice, "did I please you?" Our heads swiveled. There...lounging on the couch... was Melina. Dressed in pantaloons and jerkin as before. Only a slight sheen coating her body hinted she had danced that incredible dance.
"All praise Butala," we shouted. The applause was deafening. Men tumbled forward to praise her art. There was a loud and constant jangling of coin and clink of rare gems as gift after gift was flung at her feet. Leego floated among the men, smiling, patting them on the back and coaxing even more gifts. I couldn't help myself. I jumped to my feet, hands fumbling for the only gift I had... my father's fat purse of gold. I muscled through the crowd around her, elbowing my competitors aside as if my strength were twice that of a normal man. She lifted her eyes to meet mine as I stood before her. I saw a glint of pleasure. Sensuous lips curled in smile. I dropped the purse on top of the other gifts. The sound of its fall was pleasingly heavy.
"Ah... It is my handsome young man with the fiery hair," she said. Her voice was warm and welcoming. But her hot perfume rose to smite me dumb. All I could do was nod.
"Amalric Antero, is it not?" There was no music as lovely as my name upon those lips.
I bowed. "At your service, my lady," I said.
She laughed at my stiff formality. But it was not meant to be unpleasant. Still, I flushed. Melina's white, perfect teeth gleamed. "Oh, do please call me Melina. All my gentlemen friends do. My very close friends, that is." Her fingers touched my hand and I trembled at that touch. "And I can see as well as any diviner, young Amalric, you and I are destined to be... close friends."
I'm not sure what I stuttered. But she giggled as if I were the great wit of all Orissa. "Tell me," she said, "is your hair real? Or is it some clever cosmetic the young bravos of Orissa now affect?"
"It's quite real, I assure you, my... uh... Melina. Upon my honor."
"Perhaps I shouldn't take your word for it," she teased. "After all, there are more interesting ways of proving it, young Amalric." The glint in her eyes told me it was not my sprinkle of chest hair she hinted at. "I could also learn if it is true what knowledgeable women say about red-headed men and their ardor."
If I was dumb before, now my tongue had been ripped out. I wanted to shout to the gods to let me prove it now. Now! I would show her true ardor. Not the fraudulent love these... these.. beasts offered. Before I could recover, Leego pressed forward. With him was a middle-aged man of distinguished bearing. I recognized him as one of my father's wealthiest competitors.
"If you please, my dear Melina," Leego said, "I want to introduce a very special admirer of yours."
The man stepped forward, his eyes eager. Before I could hear the exchange, I started to rush away. I knew this was the man chosen to enjoy Melina's favors that night. The gift he had presented would beggar mine and those from most of the other men in the room. If I don't leave now, I thought, I'll kill him where he stands. Melina's voice stopped me. "One moment, Amalric."
I turned, afraid to lift my eyes, because I knew they would betray my feelings. But I couldn't help it. I had to see her once more. For the first time, I saw the color of her eyes. They were as green as stones from the hot forests of the north.
"What is it, Melina?" I husked.
"You will come again, won't you? Please promise me you shall."
My answer was hot, unguarded. "I would lay my life down as a gift, fair Melina," I said, "to win another invitation from you."
She did not answer. If she had, I'm sure I would have slit my throat for being such a fool. Instead she kissed one of her perfect fingers, and laid it against my hand. "I'll be waiting, Amalric," she whispered. "My handsome, red-headed man."
I don't remember how I got home. But I felt so godlike after those words, I'm certain I must have discovered the power to levitate.
* * *
After that night I went to see Melina at every opportunity. Which meant anytime I had weaseled enough coin to buy a suitable gift? Leego made it very clear I would be unwelcome without one. I blamed him for this, not my fair Melina. I was certain she wanted me for myself, not for something so crassly material as gold. What could he know of the higher feelings that beat in both our breasts? He was a Procurer, after all, only interested in the profits the hetaerae guild said was his right. And I knew he must be the greediest individual of his money-grubbing trade.
I tried desperately to ignore Melina's wild swings of mood. One moment only I seemed to matter. The next I would be dust at her feet. I wallowed in her humiliations, the rich gifts she scorned, the cold looks, her ostentatious displays of affection to other men. I put my gift at her feet with the others. Bore her scorn. Bore her jokes at my expense. Bore Leego's increasingly mocking manner.
I spent all I had. Then I sold my possessions. I lied to my father, and begged sum after sum. When he refused me, I borrowed from my friends so heavily they began to avoid my company. For soon as I would despair, Melina would become warm, casting long haunting looks, stroking me and petting me until I was on fire with desire. She would praise me loudly to the other men, make a trinket I had delivered into a treasure trove or complain she was weary and ached from her work - I dared not imagine how she came by those aches and pains - and beg me to massage her. Many a time I was her slave and worked her limbs into suppleness. She would groan under my hands as if lit by passion. She would turn slightly and allow my hands to brush against her secret places. Then she would send me away with promises burning in her eyes. So I always returned, richly laden and eager. This time, I would think, she'll fall into my arms and beg me to carry her away like that brave captain in the song. That moment never came. Because as sure as the sun king lashes his chariot into motion each dawn, the next greeting would be as cold as a slave seller's heart.
This went on for month after humiliating month
. I became pale and think in the fevered pursuit. When I slept, the sleep was so troubled that awakened as exhausted as before. It was in that time I began to have a strange dream. A nightmare that came with increasing frequency as the days of my obsession passed. Even now, as I recall it to write these lines in this journal, the dream leaps, leaving me as shaken as it did so long ago.
But I swore I'd tell this tale. And tell it all, despite any pain I might relieve. So here it. The dream that came to me nights:
I was not fettered, but rose when he beckoned as if I wore manacles and he was the keeper at the end of the chain. I stepped awkwardly across the boat's thwarts and then lunged up onto the slime-thick dock carved from living stone. My feet dragged, as my mind screamed: Strike out. You cannot go up those stairs. You must not.
The water beside the boat was thick, heaving, a dark viscous substance. I could hear the hiss of the great river beyond as it rushed through the black gorge the boatman had brought us through. I could also hear baying. It came from above, from the ruined, cursed city on the gorge's plateau. It was not the howling of jackals, or even direwolves. Far above, far outside this river-dug cavern, in the city, in the shattered amphitheaters, in the gods-hammered stones, the creatures sat in patient rings. Up there in the moonless night those creatures that bayed like hounds bore no semblance to anything seen on this earth. The thought came they might have been men, once. Men who had struck a dark bargain.
The boatman took one of the torches that guttered on either side of the arched stairway, and beckoned once again. I saw his arm clear in the flare of the burning pitch, muscles flexing, jumping; an arm that was twisted like an olive that had fought its way up to sunlight through arid stone. But there was no sunlight in his world. I knew his body's contortions had come from the rack, from the fire-hot rod. He turned, satisfied I was following, and went up the worn stone steps, steps that many had stumbled up, crying aloud in their pain. But no one had ever come down again. No one but the masters. Or, this man or his comrades.
I knew this. I knew not how.
He wore only black breeches. On his back, I could see the marks of the lash, old and new. I knew he prided himself on those lash-scars. On my own back wounds throbbed, and I felt the searing, shame, struggle, and moment of pride not yet yielding.
I, too, had been tortured.
Somewhere above, someone was waiting. A great drum began, its boom drowning the dark howls from the ruins on the midnight plateau above.
The steps ended.
We entered in a great chamber, stone arches lifting into blackness. A king's welcoming chamber. It was empty -except for the man and myself. He beckoned once more. I heard the shatter of a cymbal, perhaps only in my mind as I stared full into his face. clang of a cymbal, perhaps only in my mind. It was riven by a thousand sins, a thousand eagerly-sought pains. His nose was broken, then broken again before it had healed. His lips had been shaven away, and his ears were cropped. His face was sliced by a smile, crooked black teeth leering. One eye gleamed black. The other was a gaping socket. But something moved within that socket. A tiny red, writhing fire. A fire that saw more than the solitary eye that peered at me.
"Yes, Amalric, my prey, my enemy, my friend, my reward, his intended partner and ambition." came his voice. "We are almost there. This is what you wanted. This is your weird. This is what your brother could not embrace. Come... Come... It has been too long and He is waiting."
He laughed, and the laugh was joined by a great boom from the darkness, from beyond. That roar came from someone who could find no pleasure except in lashing pain. It rose, echoing the now-mad baying from the nightmares in the damned city beyond, then it buried their joy, and became its own cacophony.
I smiled and walked forward. My arms open, welcoming the dark comradeship to come.
I awoke, trembling and perspiring, more exhausted than when I had come to my bed. At first I feared the dream might be an omen or a curse in repayment for my obsession with Melina. But to accept this, I would have needed to confront myself, and see the folly of my ways. So each time it returned I pushed the dream from my mind and fell to scheming once again for money or presents for Melina.
Finally, the day of reckoning came. Spurned by my friends, mocked by enemies, and in danger of being disowned by my father, I sat in my room reviewing the meager possessions yet unsold. I was to see Melina that night. One of her slaves had brought the invitation to my house. She had written at the bottom of the card in her own, dear hand: Come early, my love. So we might steal a few precious moments alone. Hope burned bright in my breast and my loins, then dimmed as I realized I had nothing of value to sell for her giftprice. I thought of rushing to the river and throwing myself to the demon of the currents.
I seriously considered creeping into my father's strong room and stealing the gold that would be required. I was appalled for even thinking such a thing. To steal from my father? What devil has possessed you, Amalric? How could you have allowed events to come to such a pass? This must stop. This must end. Besides, what if she spurns me once more, after I steal from the man who gave me life and was so generous and understanding of such a useless son? It would be impossible to bear.
But I must have her, I thought. I must make her mine. Yes... but, how? An evil plan rose. It disgusted me to even think it and I hurled it away, and flung myself onto the bed. Buried my head from the betraying light that streamed in from the balcony.
A bird cried outside, and I swore it called: "Melina... Melina... Melina." The evil idea crept in again. If I could borrow enough money, I knew of dark places in Orissa where it was reputed certain potions and spells could be purchased, with no questions asked and without the chit of permission from an Evocator. I would buy a love spell.
I understood this was not only evil, but illegal as well. I knew very well it was strictly forbidden to give a love potion to a hetaera. The whole courtesan's guild system might collapse, making a mockery of the sanctity of Butala. The penalties prescribed by the Council of Evocators started with dismemberment, and grew quickly worse. And you will shame your family, I thought. Think of the terrible shadow your family already suffers under for once angering the Evocators. Think of the awful disappointment for your father.
I tried. I really did. But all I could think of was Melina's lips and breasts and thighs that had been denied me so long. These hot thoughts were further fueled by the vow I had taken after our first meeting. I had been with no other woman since that time.
Lust won the toss. Risking life and my family's honor, I rushed out to put my plan into action.
* * *
CHAPTER TWO
JANOS GREYCLOAK
By dusk I was pacing back and forth outside Melina's door. I had a bottle of spirits in my pocket, spiked with a blackmarket love potion and its guaranteed enchantment fixed in my mind. I was waiting for dark... and courage.
The moon was a sliver over the tenement when I saw Leego exit the building and stroll off, whistling a merry tune. I knew he'd be ensconced in his favorite tavern for some hours. A few moments later I was up the stairs, pulling on the bell chain and Melina's servant was leading me to Melina's bedchamber.
"It is your red-headed slave, my fair Melina," I sang out as I entered, my voice as bold as you please, despite the frantic beating of my heart.
"Oh, my dear, dear Amalric," she said when she spied me. Her face was so dazzling when she greeted me, I thought perhaps I had been a fool to think I needed a potion. "I have been so bored," she said, sprawling across a mighty bed that seemed to have been built to pillow a legion. "I am sick of potbellied old men with skinny legs."
I plumped down. She was dressed only in a rough, carelessly draped half-robe. She was direct from her tub and looked like a fresh-scrubbed milkmaid with knowing eyes. As she raised her head to pillow it on an arm, the robe fell open. I saw the flash of a tender breast, pink tipped nipple, and, as she lazily tugged the robe closed, the vee of softness between her thighs, the paradise I so longed for I was
willing to risk all.
"Then let me take you away from all this, Melina my love," I said, in false lightness.
"You would make me your wife?" she said. Her voice was mocking. But only a little.
Now I was all seriousness. "I would pledge anything to make it so," I said fervently.
"I don't think you'd welcome a hetaera as the mother of your children," she laughed.
"Then you don't know me, Melina," I answered. "For I love you more than any man has a right to love. I fear the gods will grow jealous if they realize just how great my feelings are for you."
Melina sighed. "You are very sweet and very kind," she said. "But you will come to your senses some day, and find some deserving woman of your own class."
"Never," I said, as hotly earnest as only the very young can swear.
"Besides," Melina said. "you are too young to afford me. Now, don't pout. Because you know what I am saying is true." She patted my hand. "Please don't spoil these few hours we have together. My back is so tired and I need those strong young hands of yours to soothe it." Melina gave me a naughty wink. "And... afterwards... If there's time... Who knows? Possibly this will be the night I learn if you are truly a red-headed man."
My heart sank. Despite the tease, actually because of the tease, I understood for the first time that night would never come. I know now I did intrigue, possibly even arouse her. Curiosity is a powerful aphrodisiac, and Melina was honestly wondering about the exotic color of my hair. I know it also excited her to have such a young man a willing slave to her slightest whim, sexual or otherwise. But it would never go beyond that. She would take me for everything I owned, including my honor. Then she'd cast me aside. I forced cheer. "First, I have a small gift for you," I said.
