Silk Dreams - Songs of the North 3

by Mia Marlowe

  —from the secret journal of Damian Aristarchus

  Chapter I0

  * * *

  Erik watched Loki wandered forlornly around the edge of the courtyard, nosing the shrubbery. When Valdis was dancing, she had no time for her little dog. Tail drooping, the mongrel worked his way along until he came to Erik's boots. Then Loki plopped his bottom down and cast his sad black eyes upward, as if Erik could fix the problem.

  “Don't look at me, friend,” Erik said in whispered Norse. “Of the two of us, you're the only one who's sleeping in her bed. You've no cause for complaint.”

  With a sneeze, Loki stood and started to waddle away, then seemed to think better of it and turned back to lift his leg on Erik's boot.

  “What the—? Get away from me.” He shooed the animal as the reedy music began once more.

  Erik watched from the shadows of the corridor while Valdis and her dancing master went through their paces in the slanting sunlight of the courtyard. The eunuch was seated like a grand pasha in a high-backed chair near the fountain. Erik stifled a snort. Aristarchus might follow the fluid movement of the women with intense concentration, but the eunuch would never suffer the jolt of desire that seared through Erik.

  He'd seen a number of fine dancers during his stay in Miklagard. Erik and his friend Hauk even enjoyed a more than passing acquaintance with some of them. They were women who exuded raw sexual energy on and off the dance floor, but Valdis surpassed anything he'd ever seen. She moved with the grace of a leopard on the hunt, sinuous muscles undulating beneath her flawless skin. Erik couldn't tear his gaze from her.

  She wouldn't even glance his way.

  “Well done,” the eunuch said when the women finally dropped to a deep curtsy, veils fluttering to earth around them. “Chloe, you have exceeded my expectations yet again, and with time to spare. What of the other elements of your tutelage?”

  Chloe raised her gaze to her master, but remained in a respectful crouch. If not for Erik's attraction to Valdis, he'd have been captivated by this Greek woman's speaking eyes. Beneath the veil that hid the lower half of her face, she was undoubtedly a woman of deep beauty.

  “She excels in all areas, though the praise goes to Valdis, not me,” Chloe said in a soft, sibilant voice. “She is exceptionally quick-minded. You will find her table manners impeccable and her dinner conversation sparkling.”

  “And the art of love?” Damian demanded. “You have schooled her in the techniques of pleasuring a man?”

  Erik winced. He'd tried to teach Valdis that himself, but found her a less than willing pupil.

  “We have left that subject for last,” Chloe explained. “Dance is the foundation of sybaritic arts. I want Valdis to be comfortable in her own skin before I educate her on tormenting someone else in theirs.”

  She needs no further instruction, Erik thought ruefully. Valdis already understands the principles of that type of torture well enough.

  He wasn't going to lurk about for more torment if he could help it. Valdis had been too busy with her new teacher to take another language lesson from him since that ill-starred night outside her chamber. In truth, she hardly needed further instruction. She was a natural mimic with a fine ear for the cadence of Greek. Despite a slight accent, Valdis was fairly conversant in her new language. She didn't need him anymore and she obviously didn't want him, either.

  Erik strode with purpose into the sunlight toward Aristarchus and the two women. He sketched a fisted salute to the eunuch and steeled himself not to look at Valdis.

  “I’ve taught Valdis all I can of your tongue. I am no longer needed here,” Erik began. “But while I loll away the days in your villa, my century is being led by another. I would not see my pledge-men sent into danger without me at their head. Release me from your service and allow me to return to the city and my command.”

  Damian nodded with a smug smile that told Erik he was truly glad to see him go. He also enjoyed making Erik beg for the privilege. “Very well. You have lived up to your part of the bargain, Varangian. Valdis has progressed in her language skills far more than I could have hoped in such a short span. If you but stay till the sun reaches its zenith, I will compose a commendation for you to carry to your general. I’ll urge Quintilian not to remove you permanently from your command over this leave of absence.” Damian stood and the smugness left his face. “We may not agree on much, you and I, but we both honor the same master. The emperor is fortunate to have you in his service, as I have been. You stand relieved.”

  “No,” Valdis interrupted. “He mustn't go.”

  Both men looked at her sharply; then the eunuch turned a sardonic glare toward Erik. “I see you have failed to instill in her a more biddable frame of mind.”

  “In the Northlands, our women enjoy more freedom in both speech and conduct—”

  “Which is one of the reasons your people have earned the title barbaroi,” Damian finished for him. “A woman should be silent unless she is invited to speak.”

  “That’s a mistake. In the North our women are renowned for their wisdom,” Erik countered. “Anyone strong enough to thrive in our harsh land deserves a voice. If a Norse-woman speaks, she will be heard. Valdis must have a good reason for not wanting me to go.” He tried to disguise the hopefulness in his words by saying them with gruffness.

  “Well?” Damian turned back to her. “Why should I detain the centurion further?”

  “There is yet something I must learn from this Northman, something he offered to teach me,” she stammered.

  Ja, but you didn't want to learn the other night, did you? he almost blurted out.

  “What could that be?” Damian asked.

  Her gaze flicked first to Erik, and then back to Aristarchus. “You may not be aware of it, but in our homeland, Erik Heimdalsson is considered a master of seid, the very craft you wish me to emulate.”

  “I thought your men usually don't practice magic,” Damian said with a wicked grin. “I heard that those who do are deemed effeminate. If it's true, that must surely be something you'd like to keep from your pledge-men.” He fixed Erik with a stare. “Are you a seid-man?"

  From over Damian's shoulder, Valdis cast him a look of entreaty. She wanted him to stay. And she was willing to lie to keep him here. His balls still ached from the bruising she gave them. Even so, he was reluctant to call her a liar to her face.

  “Seid is not something entered into lightly. I've no time to train a novitiate in the mysteries now.” He turned to go.

  “But what of runes?” Valdis hurried on. “If you finished teaching me runic writing, I could use them to send a message.”

  Erik didn't know a rune from a goat track, but he was tripped by his first lie into agreeing with another. “You write Greek well enough. That should suffice.”

  “Quintilian should have told me you were an adept at runic writing, but then, perhaps he doesn't know,” Damian said with eyelids lowered in frank reappraisal. “If a Greek missive is intercepted, its contents swirl around the entire city before the sun sets, but if it were written in runes...” Damian shrugged eloquently. “They are crude enough to be mistaken for random lines and scratches. Those who can read them, even among you Northmen, are few and far between. It would be worthwhile for Valdis to be able to send a message in such writing. You will see that she is equipped with the knowledge. Only then shall we discuss your return to your cohort.” Damian signaled Chloe to follow him. “I leave you to your studies. See that I am briefed on her progress, Northman.”

  Erik watched the eunuch's retreating back, wishing his heart wasn't pounding so. It hadn't rioted this much since the last time he went into battle. But he was better armed then against his foe than he was now against this woman. He folded his arms across his chest.

  “Aristarchus will use any ruse to get his own way. Congratulations, Valdis. You have learned to think like a Greek,” he said with gravel in his voice. “But a lie does not become your lips.”

  “And trying to sneak off
without giving me a chance to explain doesn't become a Varangian, either,” Valdis said, refusing to be shamed by her actions. She draped herself across a stone bench, arranging the gossamer folds of her palla around her as if she were unaware of how the sight of her in the filmy garment affected him. She gestured with a graceful wave for him to sit in the eunuch's vacant chair. “Don't you want to know why I fled from you the other night?”

  “Not particularly.” He decided it would be safer to remain standing. If a man lowered his guard around this shield-maiden, he might well find his heart skewered.

  Or his balls.

  Her mismatched eyes glistened. He almost thought she was near tears, but dismissed that notion as fanciful. A she-spider sheds no tears over the males she consumes. Valdis broke off her intense stare and cast her gaze on the pebbled walkway.

  “I was only trying to protect you,” she said in a whisper.

  Erik snorted. “May the gods deliver me from such protection.”

  “You don't understand.” She told him of the horrible disfigurement hidden by Chloe's veil and the story of the Greek woman's dismembered lover. “If we'd been caught that night, you would have suffered terribly,” Valdis explained. “I couldn't bear to see you hurt.”

  “So you took it upon yourself to do the hurting,” he said with a wry grin. “I can take care of myself, Valdis. A Varangian could protect himself and his woman better than a Greek harpist.”

  His woman. Had he actually called her that?

  He turned away from her lest she spell him with her eyes again. Erik paced around the fountain with restless energy.

  “I had not thought of that.” Valdis fingered the folds of her palla. “You're right. Chloe's lover was no warrior.”

  “No one will harm you as long as I breathe. We can lay aside the threat of someone lopping off your nose just now,” he said, determined to change the subject. “But the immediate problem is the one you've embroiled us in with your not-so-clever lies. You know full well I'm no rune-master. I can't teach you what I don't know.”

  “Ah, but I can teach you.” She all but pounced upon the stylus and tablet at her side. “I already know runes.”

  He cocked his head at her. The woman was full of surprises. “So you did more than love-spelling when you dabbled in seid.”

  She nodded enthusiastically. “Those who practice seid want us to believe there is malignant power in the symbols, but truly, they are benign.” She worked the tip of the stylus into the soft wax tablet. “If there is magic in runic writing, it is that sounds can be captured and turned into simple slashes to be understood by another. Look, this is your name.”

  She pointed to each individual mark, voicing the separate sounds, then putting them together to speak his name. Then she handed him the writing implements. “Here. You try.”

  His natural impulse was to shy away from anything smacking of seid. Old prejudices die hard. A man who could not prove himself on the field of combat often turned to seid as a means of acquiring power. Real men were revolted by the simpering seid practitioners.

  And fearful at the same time. A curse could not be turned by a shield or a spelling undone by the stroke of an ax. No amount of armor would protect a man from a seid-master's ill-wish. The spiritual world was a shadowy realm, inaccessible to the warrior, unless one counted the madness of berserkr.

  He'd experienced that foray into the black world of the spirit intimately. The Rage had driven him to slay his brother without even being aware he'd done it until afterward. Even now, he had no clear recollection of the murder, only the bloody aftermath and his wife's keening sobs.

  “Truly, Erik, there is no magic here,” Valdis said, her eyes sending mixed messages of light and dark. The violet one was clear and guileless, but the deep brown one had darkened to onyx. The pull toward her strengthened. If the woman believed there was no magic swirling about her, she was delusional.

  Against his better judgment, he took the stylus from her hand.

  For the rest of the day, Valdis led him through the maze of the futhark, the Norse alphabet. He mastered the individual sounds and the symbols that called them forth, but with the slowness of a snail's pace. More than once he was tempted to throw the tablet down in disgust.

  “Really, you are doing quite well. We must walk before we run,” Valdis said as she peered over his shoulder to inspect his work. “Didn't you practice many hours before you learned to use the gladius of the Christians?”

  Erik nodded with reluctance. The short sword favored by the Byzantines was a more subtle weapon than a Nordic ax and, at close range, just as lethal. Erik had sweated on the practice field with a wooden gladius for weeks before the hilt of a real one was placed in his big hand. He gripped the stylus tighter and tried again to copy the phrase Valdis had written for him.

  “Have you deciphered the meaning yet?” she said with a feline smile playing about her lips.

  “One thing at a time,” he grumbled as he faithfully reproduced the last slash. “Let me get it written first.”

  Chloe joined them in the courtyard and Eric lowered the stylus, feigning reading in silence the message Valdis had carved in the soft wax.

  “A thousand pardons for interrupting,” Chloe said with a graceful inclination of her head.

  “We are nearly finished here, anyway.” If Erik hadn't known what desecration lurked behind her veil, he would have thought her a striking woman. Even if she was guilty of impurity, what kind of animal, he wondered, would disfigure a woman so horribly instead of just killing her outright? Christians were always carping on about the quality of mercy. If Chloe's scarred life were an example of that attribute, Erik thought mercy had little to commend it.

  “What do you want?” he asked her.

  “It is time for Valdis to begin the last stage of her lessons with me,” Chloe said.

  The art of love, Erik remembered. Harlot's tricks and cheats, feigned passion and cock-teases. Valdis was a virgin daughter of the North; even though he lusted after her himself, it made his blood boil to think of her being cheapened by such false carnal knowledge. Her passage into full womanhood should be made with a man who cared for her, who could teach her the mystic connection the act of love created between lovers. She should find the beauty and power of inn mattki munr, the mighty passion, with a man who loved her more than life.

  After his failed marriage, Erik knew he was not the man to teach Valdis love. But he certainly wouldn't mind showing her the delights of the love couch.

  Short of breaking his oath and stealing her away, there was nothing he could do to prevent Valdis from receiving a carnal education from Chloe. Damian was her legal master and if he wanted her trained as a whore, he was within his rights.

  Erik's heart tightened like a fist in his chest. He dismissed Valdis with a wave, not trusting his voice to speak.

  Valdis, however, suffered from no such difficulty. “Thank you for my instruction,” she said with a polite half bow. “Please read the last message with care to make sure I wrote it correctly.”

  Then she turned and followed the much smaller woman from the courtyard with a bewitching roll of her hips.

  “Read the message,” he muttered once he was able to tear his gaze from her disappearing form. He forced his concentration back on the tablet, where the slashes began to take shape as words in his mind.

  If you . . .

  He strained at the next set of words.

  If you would make me ...

  When the meaning became clear, he nearly dropped the tablet. He worked through the symbols again to be sure he was not mistaken.

  If you would make me your woman, my door stands open. Come to me at moonrise.

  “A general may claim he would never to send one of his soldiers on a mission he would not attempt himself. I do not have that luxury."

  —from the secret journal of Damian Aristarchus

  Chapter II

  * * *

  Chloe led Valdis into the bathhouse, a white marble b
uilding separate from the main villa. The interior was spacious and the stone floors radiated heat from the hot air funneled beneath them through the hypocaust. A deep clear pool sent tendrils of steam into the air.

  “Before a woman can please a man,” Chloe explained as she gathered her heavy dark hair in one hand and pinned it in a knot on top of her head, “she must know what pleases herself.”

  “It would please me not to be sent to the bed of a strange man,” Valdis said stonily.

  “Life gives us few choices, but one we always have is to choose joy, despite our circumstances,” Chloe said. “If you are to be an odalisque, a woman of the sacred womb, you must have your own source of joy, for your future master may take little interest in providing it for you.”

  “And your source of joy was your lover?” Valdis asked, and was immediately sorry for it. A deep shadow passed behind Chloe's eyes.

  “I am trying to teach you to take pleasure in all areas of life, not just your bed. Your joy must come from inside yourself,” Chloe said. “You must decide to enjoy every moment of your life, for it is fleeting and most uncertain. For example, this lovely bath. Is it not a delight to the senses? Are your eyes not pleased by the order and beauty they see? The patter of water into the base of the fountain calms the spirit, does it not? Does the scent of rose-water and jasmine not tickle your nose?”

  Valdis inhaled deeply and smiled despite her determination not to cooperate with Chloe. The air was heavy with the sweetness of flowers, but Valdis suddenly realized that Chloe must not be able to smell them. “But you cannot—”

  “No, I cannot,” she said with sadness. “But I see the petals and I remember their fragrance as one recalls the face of a loved one. As I told you before, do not judge a life by what is lost. After all, you too have lost much. Your home, your family, your freedom.” Chloe ticked off the list with relentless ease.