by Brian Craig
He hesitated just a little, but she was handsome in her way, and he was not usually a man to refuse what was freely offered. Even the thought of her magic, and its possible source, did not inspire such fear that it dampened his desire entirely, now that he could smell her hair and see the curve of her breast.
He was still afraid of her, but he was curious too.
"Do you seek to spoil me for other women, then?" he whispered, as she placed her body closer to his. "Is it your intention that no other night of my life will ever compare with this one?"
"Of course," she said. "It is too long since I had a fair-haired man, and for all that I love this place, it becomes tedious to visit the same beds too often. Let me enchant you, just a little, and I promise you no disappointment. I will teach you the true meaning of luxury, without detracting at all from your strength."
She took his hand then, and placed it inside her blouse, as if to tempt him with the beating of her hungry heart. He felt the curve of her breast, which encouraged his own desire.
The touch took his fear away, and the uneasy feeling which had come over him when first he saw her watching him seemed foolish now. She was only a woman, after all.
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"I need no magic," he whispered to her, as his fingers began to tease her flesh. "I suppose that you have grown so used to these moody Estalians, that you have forgotten what the men of our own nation are like. Bretonnians, my lady, have always known the meaning of luxury in love. Let us play our tunes with ordinary skills, and I promise you no disappointment."
At that she laughed, and seemed to agree, but when she climbed on top of him and he relaxed his wits, she brought her magic to hear after all, and when he felt the ecstatic thrills which she set to running through his body, he was not sorry that she had defied him. He was consumed by fierce sensation, whose intoxications drew him to extraordinary efforts. The taste of her sweat was sweet upon his tongue, and her caresses were empowered by her magic to reach into the very core of his being. When she finally brought herself to orgasm she shuddered and shrieked with the pleasure of it, and spun it out for an amazing length of time which left him envious. In that long moment, while he struggled to hold her, he longed for magic of his own which might allow him access to such ecstasy.
Indeed, when at last they lay still together, he wondered in the contentment of his satiation whether he might not have spoken truer than he knew, and that this might be a memory to make many future nights seem dull. But the excitement ebbed away, and the sweetness upon his tongue turned to a bitter aftertaste.
He had always thought of sexual intercourse as a kind of music, better when it was played as a duet than as a game of soloist and instrument. The girl who had lain with him the previous night made a living by offering herself as paid instrument, but she had come to him freely as a player, and though she had had no magic to thrill her as the lady Morella had thrilled, there had been artistry as well as honesty in her enthusiasm. Tonight, he had taken the instrumental part while his lover merely used him—and all her magic would not serve now to make him glad that he had been used.
He knew, furthermore, that with the morning light his memory would fade, and that when passion came to take hold of him again, even if it were inspired by a tired street-girl seeking comfort in his arms, that moment would drive all others from his mind. The present would always drown out the past: that was what gave lust Its privileged place in human affairs.
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He was tempted to languish in the fulness of his feeling, but the opportunity to be inquisitive seemed too good to miss, and he thought that this Lady Morella might be in a better mood now to feed his curiosity than any other he was likely to meet.
So he said to her: "What have they done with the priest?"
She stirred in his arms, and gave a little laugh. "They have not killed him yet," she said. "They will save him for a while, to make a pleasant morsel for one who will not care that his meat is less than tender."
She said it warmly, almost lasciviously, but the meaning of the words struck a chill into Orfeo's heart. He resolved that he must hide his disgust, though, for he thought that she would tell him more if he followed the tide of her feeling.
"He will be food for daemons, then?" he said, as though it were a light matter. "I had thought that their kind would not like the taste of a man of Law."
"Oh no," she said, with a liquid chuckle, "that is the taste they love best of all. To feast upon the flesh of an enemy is e'er to make a satisfying meal."
"It had not occurred to me," he admitted. "Perhaps there are luxuries of life which I have not tasted yet."
"Oh yes, there are," she said, wallowing in her contentment.
"A man like you could make so much of them, if only you cared.
There is a god of luxury, you know—I cannot tell you what a joy it was to find that out. You are a clever lover, I concede, but a novice in the true art of ecstasy. I have given you a taste tonight, but I swear to you that you cannot imagine the harvest of pleasure which an adept may reap, if only he has the will, and knows the way."
"I have heard of the way," said Orfeo, in a small and distant voice. "But it is one I have not cared to follow. You knew the priest of Law, did you not, when you saw him come into the hall? I saw that you recognized his voice."
She was a little surprised by this, but not discomfited.
"I met him once in Gualcazar," she said, "when I undertook a small mission on the Duke's behalf. I did not think that he would care to face Semjaza a second time, but it seems that I was wrong."
There was much left unsaid in this speech, but Orfeo did not dare to become too precise in his questions, because whatever 64
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he said to the sorceress would surely be reported to Sceberra, and to Semjaza as well. He had spoken the truth when he said that it was not his intention to involve himself in this affair.
"Semjaza told me you had travelled far, and were not born blind,"
said the lady Morella, when she saw that he did not mean to ask another question. "And you have that appetite for love in you that a wanderer should have. A commoner by birth you are, but not so very common in mind and soul. I knew when I heard you play that you were no man of Law, and I knew that when we made love the pleasure would carry you away. Law is all hard discipline and sullen strength, and you were not made for such a life as that!"
"But I was not made for Chaos, either," he said, softly.
"You know that name! You are as clever as I had supposed.
But you do not know what lies behind the name, nor can you.
I dare say that you heard it from the lips of some disdainful elf, who spoke of it as though it were something dwarfish, not fit for those who know the meaning of beauty and sublimity. But did you not sometimes hear your vainglorious woodsmen say the word human in much the same way, as though spitting it out from their mouths like a vile taste? You are not an elf, my love, as I know to my reward. You are one who might gain much from the powers which I command—and should know that without some spirit of disorder the world would be dead and dull, and humans little more that halfling dimwits. There is Chaos in all men, my darling Orfeo, and were you to cut it out of a soul like yours it would be as if you had severed the hand which plucks the strings of your lute."
"You are right to say that I know little of Chaos but that which is contained in fearful stories which men tell to frighten one another," he said, "but I have known those who would call you daemon-led, and seek to sentence you to death by fire."
He said it grimly, careless as to whether she took offence, but she only laughed with apparent good humour.
"All men die by fire, dear Orfeo," she said. "Some burn more quickly than they like, on a witchfinder's pyre, but all are in the end consumed. Life is fire, my lover, and we begin to die in its subtle flames before we are even born. Those who know how to live must learn the secrets of the fire which they are, and the ember which they mu
st become. Our bodies are filled with mordant fluids which sear our flesh as we move, and use us up while the clocks 65
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tick away our litle measure of existence. There is no fate but fire, my love, but the luckiest and the best of us can learn to fan that fire into better kind of life, to burn more brightly than is given to us by our destined span."
As she said this, her own eyes seemed lit from within, and he saw how red they were. Suddenly the thought came to him that perhaps this was not Morella d'Arlette who spoke to him at all, but another who had placed these words upon her tongue—and then the idea came to him that while he lay with her there may have been others sharing in the pleasure of his body, and in the magic which had enlivened it.
The thought that he had lain, somehow, with the monstrous Semjaza he quickly put out of his mind. That it was Semjaza's voice which spoke to him now, though, he could not doubt. The lady Morella was not entirely herself, but had been made an instrument for his temptation.
Something might be made of a man like you, Semjaza had said.
Orfeo repeated those words to himself again, and for a second time he shied away from the notion.
He resolved then, with a stubborn spirit of rebellion, that if it should transpire that he might somehow find Arcangelo, and could reach out a hand to help him, perhaps he would do it after all, in spite of all the warnings he had heard. It might serve as a kind of penance, offered in return for that guilty pleasure which he had recently enjoyed with Morella d Arlette—who was, he had no doubt, a toy of daemons.
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Chapter Five
Orfeo was rudely awakened shortly after first light when the door of his cell was thrown open with a bang. His own start of surprise was quickly controlled, but the lady Morella was clearly unused to such entrances in the places where she normally slept, and the discomfort of her abrupt arousal was more than redoubled by the anger she felt at being discovered here. It was probable that she had intended to leave before dawn, but had slept too soundly, in which case it was no one's fault but her own that she was found here—but as she came quickly to her feet, hugging a blanket in order to hide her nakedness, she was by no means intent on blaming herself for the unfortunate situation.
In the open doorway there stood a man-at-arms with a naked sword, and there walked into the cell before him a servant boy, no more than ten or eleven years of age. The boy was carrying two trays, each loaded with a wooden dish, a loaf of bread on a plate, and a jug of water. He was such a small boy that the task of balancing the two heavy trays was not an easy one in any case, and when he caught sight of the furious woman leaping up before him, that balance became instantly precarious.
"How dare you!" screeched the lady Morella.
Inertia carried the boy forward one more hesitant step, and then the fear of dropping his burden made him stagger forward even 67
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further. The lady raised her arm, and caught the boy a tremendous blow about the head, which he could not duck because of his problem with the trays. The blow, of course, settled the matter, and they contents of the trays flew everywhere, while the boy was hurled across the cell. He crashed into the wall, and struck his head hard, falling limply to the ground on the instant.
The man-at-arms tried feebly to make some excuse, but could only produce half of some garbled statement about the prisoner's breakfast before Morella—further enraged by the fact that her protective blanket had been drenched—shouted him down.
"Imbecile!" she cried. "This is no prisoner! He has been examined by Semjaza and found innocent—did no one tell you that he is to be moved today to a proper apartment? Has no one taught you that servants do not come to a sleeping guest slamming doors and hurling slops, but wait to be called? You will learn that lesson now, that I swear!"
Orfeo, meanwhile, had gone to the stricken boy, and found him nearly unconscious. There was blood in his mouth where he had bitten his tongue, and more in his hair where the collision with the wall had split his scalp.
"My lady," he said, "the child is hurt."
"And so he should be," she said, still speaking very angrily.
"And he will certainly be whipped for his stupidity."
"My lady," said Orfeo, very soothingly, "it is plain that no one did tell these people that I was no longer to be reckoned a prisoner, and they were only doing their duty as they saw it. The fault is not theirs, and the boy is hurt far worse than he could possibly deserve. Let me take him back to the servants' quarters, where I will see what can be done for him—this man must guide me."
There were two ideas in his mind while he said this—first, that the boy was indeed hurt, and did need attention; second, that it would leave the lady alone in the room, to put her clothes on and take herself away before the commotion attracted more attention.
If she did not care about the first matter, she certainly cared about the second, and she was quick enough to agree. The manat-arms began some protest, but Orfeo stilled his tongue with a fierce look as he picked up the stricken servant-boy and immediately handed him over. The soldier looked surprised, having no time even to sheath his sword, but accepted the burden 68
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and allowed himself to be pushed away from the door. The boy moaned faintly, but suffered himself to be carried out.
Orfeo then took up his own clothes—as many of them, at any rate, as would serve the purposes of decency, and brought them outside the cell, closing the door behind him before he put them on. He found that he had left his shoes, but he decided that his stockings would have to do, even though the stone floor was cold.
When he had dressed himself he took the boy back from the arms of the other man, and said: "Show me where the kitchens are!"
The unfortunate man-at-arms was desperately confused. Here, it seemed, was a prisoner (or perhaps, his slow mind had now realized, a man who was not a prisoner) walking out of his cell, leaving a lady of the court behind him, and demanding to be taken to the kitchens bearing a bleeding servant in his arms. It was an occurrence for which no possible precedent could offer him guidance.
"The other prisoner..." he protested, feebly. "Food for the lady Serafima..."
"Whatever food and drink there was has been spilled," said Orfeo firmly. "If you have a prisoner to be fed, then we must first go to the kitchens. Now goF'
The man-at-arms reluctantly went, leading the way downwards through the cold corridors. They had to go outside, and then came inside again to pass through a huge room which must have been the Great Hall, but the hour was very early and they met no one en route save for sleepy men-at-arms who did not challenge them.
Orfeo was certain that the lady Morella would be able to make her way back to her own quarters without attracting any more attention.
"What is your name?" asked Orfeo, sharply, as they passed through a door in the further wall of the Hall and began to descend into the bowels of the castle.
"Fernand Arrigo," replied the man-at-arms, after an unhappy pause. He had apparently decided that having gone so far as he had, there was nothing left to do but take the orders given to him by this person who was not a prisoner.
"Well, Fernand," said Orfeo, "I will tell you something now which you must remember, as a fact which you know beyond a shadow of a doubt, so that you may tell it to anyone who demands 69
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the truth from you. When you came to my cell this morning, I was alone. The boy tripped over his own clumsy feet and hit his head against the wall. You permitted me to bring him to the kitchens because you had been told that I was not to be treated as a prisoner, though you had not been told that my breakfast should not be brought until I asked for it. Is that clear? I was alone, and the boy fell over his own feet."
"But..." began Fernand Arrigo.
Orfeo looked down at the boy, to see if he had heard, but the child was too dazed and confused to listen properly. "When the boy is better," he said, "you must remind him of everything I hav
e said. You must make him understand. Do you hear me, Fernand?
You must remind him."
"Yes sire," said the man-at-arms, sullenly.
"You need not address me as sire," Orfeo informed him, drily.
'I am but a common man, like yourself, and you may call me
'Master Orfeo', or simply 'Orfeo' if you prefer."
They soon reached the kitchens, where many other servants were busy with their duties. Half a dozen of them gathered around while Orfeo laid his burden on a table.
"Poor boy!" said Orfeo, having explained his own version of what had happened. "I fear that he may be badly hurt." He examined the child again, but he was no healer, and could not say for certain whether the skull was cracked or not, though by now the boy seemed to have come to his senses again, and had never been unconscious. Fernand, meanwhile, was saying something to the cook about the lady Serafima's ruined breakfast.
All was confusion until a senior manservant came in, demanding to know what was afoot. Orfeo explained yet again, and though the man seemed suspicious he did not challenge the story. Orfeo guessed that this was due at least in part to the other's realization that whoever had been informed of Orfeo's altered status had made a bad mistake in omitting to make sure that the news was passed on to the likes of Fernand Arrigo and the boy.
"I thank you, sir," said the manservant—his careful 'sir' being far less a term of respect than Arrigo's' 'sire'. "I will take care of the boy now."
Orfeo shot a warning glance at Fernand Arrigo, reminding him to hold his tongue regarding Morella d'Arlette, but he left without 70
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saying any more to anyone.
Orfeo fiilly intended to make his way straight back to the cell where he had been placed, which would by now be empty of any other persons. There he planned to wait, until a servant came to bring him to better quarters. It did cross his mind, though, that he might peep into the other cell which was across the corridor from his own, to see if he could catch a glimpse of the other prisoner who was lodged there—it intrigued him to discover that there was someone there whose quality properly required such a prison, all the more because it was a lady.
