West of January

by Dave Duncan

  “I want no fools in my service.” Her voice cut like a butcher’s knife. “Go to the pens and make yourself useful there.”

  “Oh, Great One… I beg you…” The giant was whining. A drop of water fell on my chest.

  The spinster spoke again, less harshly. “Your strength will serve me well, and if you make amends, then later we shall see…”

  Ing-aa moaned and rose. I closed my eyes. Feet squelched in the mud and were gone.

  Ayasseshas’s voice again: “Um-oao, Ah-uhu? Bear him gently. Put him in the shade. I shall see to him shortly, when I have thanked all these brave fellows.”

  Hands lifted me and rushed me away. I heard gravel, then bare feet on boards, as I felt myself carried up steps. Continuing to feign unconsciousness, I was gently laid down. The footsteps departed.

  I seemed to be alone, but I lay still, pondering what I had learned. I had value. That was very hopeful. But what were the “pens” that could so terrify a colossus like Ing-aa? Pens implied livestock, and Shisisannis had mentioned pasture. I could still hear a bleating in the distance, but the only punishment that came to mind was mucking out stalls, and a trivial indignity like that would hardly provoke such obvious dread.

  I had been laid upon a rug, I thought, and a cautious glance showed a roof of beams and woven leaves far above. Quick looks to each side… I was lying on a sort of porch, stretched out on a thick woolen rug laid over what must be a plank floor. I raised my head and confirmed my assumptions.

  There was no one watching. I sat up and felt only a passing dizziness. I heaved myself back a few feet to lean against a wall, then rubbed the scrapes I had acquired in my fall. There was a door at my side, so my guess of porch had been correct. In the center, two chairs and a table sat on another richly patterned rug. The only real furniture I had ever seen had belonged to the ants, and this was much finer than theirs, gleaming bright. I knew the style of the rugs. They had come from the grasslands, tough woollie yarn in bright colors, though the specific designs were none that my mother and aunts had ever used. My trader experience wondered how much they had cost here, so far from their birthplace.

  Beyond the shadowed veranda the sun blazed on the apron of white gravel. At the far edge of this stood Shisisannis and his little band, black men and dark brown, still in their line of inspection. Only Ing-aa had gone. The spinster was working her way along the line, welcoming each man in his turn. At her back stood two more of the tall swampmen bearing swords, a personal bodyguard. As I watched, Ayasseshas rose on tiptoe again to embrace one of her champions. How did one woman bewitch so many men?

  And in the shadows of the huts beyond the snake totem pole, I saw again those strange hooded and gowned figures—solitary, motionless, and apparently watching. Who were they, and why so idle?

  “What happened to your knees?”

  I twisted around in alarm. One of the brown-shrouded people was standing in a dark corner, beside the door. I had overlooked him—or possibly her, although the voice had sounded more male than female. There was no way to tell who or what was inside that garment, and I could see nothing but darkness within the peephole of the hood.

  “How do you know about my knees?” I asked warily.

  Just when I had decided that he would not reply, he uttered a curious little gasping sigh and said, “The lady told me she was buying a wetlander, but his knees were damaged.”

  “How many wetlanders are there here?”

  “Just me. And now you.”

  My heart sank at the news. I had hoped for more company. But conversely this stranger must be very glad to have me join him.

  “I am Quetti.” His voice was muffled by the hood, but there was also an odd quality to it that I could not place.

  “Knobil.”

  “That is not a wetlander name.”

  “My father was a wetlander, I think. My mother was of the herdfolk.”

  “That explains…” He paused again, this time for longer. Again he sighed. “That explains your size.”

  “What about my size?”

  “You are too big for a wetlander. We are slighter.”

  I thought of Orange-brown-white, the ants’ captive and the only wetlander I had ever met. He had been a slim small man. “My mother was little, though.”

  “Herdwomen bear large sons.” The curious quality in my companion’s voice was a jumpiness, a quaver. “You’re as big as Shisisannis!” He sounded annoyed at that.

  I had believed myself a dwarf in my youth, but now I knew I was as tall as the men of most races. Swimming, and then slavery, had given me fair bulk, so what he said was perhaps true, but why did it matter?

  “Who are those people, the ones dressed like us?”

  “Snakemen. Swampmen. A couple of treefolk.”

  “But why are they being kept covered?”

  “It is better to be out of doors than shut up in the pens.”

  “She just sent Ing-aa to the pens. What—”

  “I saw. But he will be of little use at pasture. The lady has told me often: Small as I am, to her I am worth fifty like Ing-aa.”

  “And me also?” I asked cautiously.

  “More, I suppose,” he agreed grumpily, his tone showing a trace of the jealousy I had expected in Shisisannis and Ing-aa. “There is more of you.”

  My questions were not bringing me much wisdom. How much time did I have to cross-examine this cryptic Quetti? Could I trust whatever he might tell me? I glanced out at the spinster. She was near the end of the row, embracing one of the snakemen. “How does she do that?” I asked. “Can she really reward so many men with her favors?”

  Quetti chuckled dryly under his hood. “She rewards them mostly with promises. And pretty ribbons. Shisisannis, sometimes…” Again a long pause, another sigh. “The rest of us rarely get more than words. Even me! Um-oao and Ah-uhu do better, I think.”

  So Ayasseshas was largely a tease? That made the men’s ensorcellment even more incomprehensible. Or did it? “I don’t understand!”

  “You will.”

  “And no one has ever told me what a spinster wants with wetlanders.”

  He grunted. “Do you know why they are called spinsters?”

  “Not even that.”

  “Then you—” He choked. “Wait!” I heard a foot tapping, and he seemed to shrink slightly. He was breathing hard.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked as the silence lengthened. “Are you ill?”

  He shook his head but did not speak, and he was curiously hunched. I rolled over on my belly and levered myself upright. I took a couple of rolling steps toward him, but he held up a hand, draped in its too-long sleeve. He made his curious heavy breathing noise again, and relaxed.

  “You’re in pain!” I said.

  “Of course.” He seemed proud that I had not realized sooner.

  I shook my hands free from my sleeves, reached out to unfasten his hood and push it back so I could see what he looked like. He did not resist, but he stared up at me resentfully.

  He was barely more than a boy, his mustache downy, his beard too faint to hide the dimple in his chin. A mop of golden waves framed a thin, rather sulky face. His eyes were a pale, pale blue, like the far end of the sky.

  I had thought I was light-colored after my long confinement in Misi’s cab, but Quetti’s skin was as white as raw fish, marked with a single tattoo, a red snake as wide as my finger, running from his hairline, down between his eyes, and then curving off across his cheek to vanish under one ear. It stood out starkly on his pallor, uglier even than the tattoos on the dark snakemen.

  I offered my hand. He hesitated, then pulled back a sleeve to respond, but he did not return my smile. His fingers were long and delicate—and white—but I felt the remains of fading calluses.

  “How did you come here?” I asked.

  “I was a pilgrim. I was caught by—uhhhh!”

  He hunched his shoulders, screwed up his eyes, and twisted back his lips to show clenched teeth. I saw sweat break out on
his face, and this time he could not suppress groans. Not just pain—the kid was in agony. His white skin seemed to go even whiter, and I wondered if he was about to faint. My own heart began to pound, but whether from sympathy for him or rising terror for myself, I was not sure. Then Quetti released his breath in one of those long gasps I had heard earlier and opened his eyes.

  I reached out to steady him.

  “Don’t touch me!” His pallor had turned to pink under my stare, and he scowled. “That was a bad one!” He was defensive, ashamed of displaying weakness.

  “Then…sit down,” I said, gesturing at one of the chairs.

  “I can’t. Not just at the moment.”

  “Why not, for Heaven’s sake?”

  “Because I have other, more important uses for…” He closed his eyes again, but the fit was briefer and less severe. By now I was sweating also.

  “What happened to your face?” The, wide red band was not a tattoo. It was a raw, weeping sore, as if a long strip of skin had been ripped right off. Where it reached his scalp, the hair had gone also, leaving a narrow canyon only partly concealed by his golden waves.

  He raised his cotton-fluff eyebrows, showing ironic amusement at my ignorance. “A graze.”

  “God!” What was hidden under that robe? “You’ve been flogged?”

  “Flogged?” He laughed. “I wish I had. So what happened to your knees, herdman?”

  “An ant held them on an anvil, and a blacksmith smashed them with a sledgehammer.”

  “You don’t have much luck, do you?”

  “It got me out of the ants’ nest.”

  “You should have stayed.”

  I was about to ask why when Quetti turned his head. I followed his gaze and saw that the inspection was over. Ayasseshas was approaching across the gravel with her two bodyguards at her heels. The men who had brought me were running off across the muddy compound, dismissed.

  “Those two with her…”

  “Ah-uhu and Um-oao,” Quetti said. “The pride of my lady’s herd.”

  I had thought Ing-aa to be a giant, but these two snakemen could have made three of him. Their black skins shone in the sun, oiled to show the ripple of their muscles, while their high red feather headdresses emphasized their height. Heavy gold chains around their waists supported brief pagnes of shimmering, translucent water silk, and they had gold bands on their arms and legs. Wide-bladed swords flashed at their sides. A woman who collected men could have found no more impressive specimens, nor have displayed them more outrageously.

  And the spinster herself… I had been avoiding looking at this terror, but as she mounted the steps to the porch, I forced my eyes to their duty. She was a snakewoman, dark skinned and stocky. Her shiny black hair was tightly braided and piled on top of her head, pinned tight and decorated with yellow butterflies. From neck to golden sandals, her robe of many-hued water silk iridesced and flickered, but it did not mask the snake tattoos in blue and red that writhed over her belly, squirming up from between her thighs in coils and curves, ending in fanged jaws poised to engorge her nipples. More red and blue serpents wriggled upon her neck and face.

  She was about my age, with youth a memory and decay not yet a dread. Her body had started to thicken, but her limbs seemed muscular rather than fat. Her breasts, though generous, did not droop enough to ever have suckled babies. She had power—not only the inexplicable authority that ruled her army, but pure physical strength also. Spinsterhood is no occupation for weaklings, of course, although I had not yet realized what it entailed nor what price she paid to coil each one of her slaves.

  Her eyes were fixed on mine. I felt tiny shivers all over my skin, and I backed away as she approached, discovering that my ability to walk backward was unimpaired. She was only a woman, I told myself, but I had heard too many hints and had already seen too much not to fear her. I stopped when I reached the wall, and I still could not tear loose from the hypnotic stare.

  But when she reached Quetti, she turned to him, ignoring me and drawing in breath with a sudden hiss. “My poor boy! How you are suffering!”

  He was not quite as tall as she. “It missed my eye.”

  “Ah, but you are in pain.”

  “I will survive.”

  She took his face between her hands. “I weep for you. I should not have asked, not until you were older.”

  “I am a man!”

  “But I know you are, Quetti, my special one. You showed me that when we first met. Mightily you showed me. I do not doubt your manhood, and you are proving it again now, even more.”

  “I promised you…” His voice quavered. “I promised you twelve.”

  “And you still have so many?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “My beloved!” Her tone was that of a mother, not a lover. She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his, still holding his face, but not letting their bodies touch.

  Quetti’s ashen face flamed red. “And they must be almost done?”

  “Very near. Not long now.”

  “Thirteen is good, isn’t it, my Lady?”

  “It is very good. Much more than I truly expected. Wonderful for your size. Did you see what happened with that idiot Ing-aa? No matter how long he endures or how many crops he yields, all of it will not be worth a fraction of what you are doing for me now, Quetti, my dear one.”

  He nodded and tried to smile, but I saw the signs of agony build in his face again: livid lips and sweat. Despite his efforts to conceal it from Ayasseshas, she pulled his head down to her breast to comfort. For a long moment there was silence and no movement except a wild fluttering from one of the yellow butterflies imprisoned in her hair.

  Then the fluttering stopped, and Quetti sighed and straightened up. “I will deliver on my promise, my Lady, and I do not mind a little pain if I can please you.”

  “Oh, you make me very happy, dear Quetti. And when you have delivered on your promise, then we must let you heal, and I shall call on you to partner me often, for your beauty gives me more joy than any. Are you eating properly?”

  “It is hard, my lady.”

  “You must keep up your strength. For now, and for later. I need strong men to satisfy me, my love. Go and try, dearest, for my sake…and try also to get some rest.”

  She kissed him again and then closed his hood over his blushes. Again an anonymous, shrouded figure, he turned away and floated obediently toward the steps.

  This had to be why the men in the canoes had driven themselves to exhaustion. They had been proving—to the others and to themselves—that they could endure pain, because their mistress would demand it of them. I did not know what was causing Quetti’s torment, or why this monster desired it…and I most certainly did not want to find out.

  Now she turned to me again and looked me over coyly, with a sudden change from mother love to seduction. She smiled, but it was a strange smile, keeping her thick and sensuous lips over her teeth.

  “Welcome, wetlander.”

  “I am Knobil.”

  “I know.” She reached a hand for the door and glanced at her guards. “Ah-uhu? Wash him and bring him in when he is ready.” Then she was gone.

  I did not know which was Ah-uhu and which Um-oao, but when one said “Strip!” I stripped. The other had leapt from the porch with a force that had shaken the whole building, sprinting away across the compound. Soon he came running back, bearing a huge steaming bucket in each hand.

  These human mountains were as large as some herdmen I had known, and they obviously enjoyed favored status in the spinster s retinue. Yet they now proceeded to play body servant to me, sponging me vigorously with hot water and rubbing suds in my hair and beard. One of them even screwed a massive fingertip around inside my ears until I thought my brains would squirt out. They dried me with soft towels and trimmed the nails on my fingers and toes. They rubbed me all over with scented oil. Not a word was spoken until they were finished. Then one of them reached out to open the door and growled, “Go in!”


  “But I have no clothes!” I protested weakly.

  He stared down at me with both contempt and disbelief.

  I went in to meet the spinster.

  —3—

  THE ROOM WAS LARGE and bright and high-roofed, constructed of massive timbers. A glimpse through the far windows revealed another wide expanse of mud, more of the pot-shaped huts, and part of the incomplete stockade, so I knew this palace must stand in the exact center of the compound. Before me were thick rugs and many gaudy, shiny things scattered around. Yet little of it registered, for my mind was quivering with apprehension at meeting the fearsome spinster. My eyes soon fixed themselves on her.

  She was reclining on an expanse of rugs and cushions in the center of the floor, an island of turquoise, vermilion, and bronze. Beside her on a very low table were silver dishes of fruits and breads, bottles and goblets of gold, and plates of brightly colored sweetmeats.

  I stopped to stare, and my buttocks received a slap hard enough to make me stagger.

  “Go to her!” growled the giant behind me. Unwillingly I began to roll forward in my stiff-kneed gait, aware that he had closed the door and taken up station beside it. The other, I assumed, had stayed outside.

  Ayasseshas was wearing only her butterflies and her tattoos. As I approached, she stretched out languorously, reaching for a gold fruit from the table, while the snakes seemed to slither over her smooth brown curves. She bit into the fleshy globe, juice gleaming on her lips, and she looked up at me with a glance of challenge.

  I had spent most of my adult life penned like an animal in the ants’ compound, so my own nudity bothered me little. Yet hers did. Many times I had drawn near to a naked woman and always with eagerness, always with every intention of taking from her as much pleasure as my stamina would allow. There was a peculiarly sinister fascination in those ribbons of color on Ayasseshas’s body, and she was a luscious, imposing woman, strong and tempting. She could hardly have been more obviously available. She would be a stimulating partner, inventive in cooperation, tantalizing in opposition, and uncomplaining in subjugation. Yet now I came to a halt at her feet, nonplussed, feeling a revulsion that could have been no greater had she been clad in real serpents.