The Shepherd Kings

by Judith Tarr

  He was to stay with the king. He was the king’s charioteer. It was an office of great honor, and great power if he chose to take it. Which he might well do. He had drunk from the king’s cup, out in the city. He would not be averse to another taste.

  Dangerous thoughts, he told himself wryly as he passed the guard at his own door. He stopped in the outer room, yawning hugely. There was no servant waiting to undress him. At last: the palace servants had understood that Khayan preferred to look after himself before he slept, though he was glad enough of help in the morning. He dropped his robes and his ornaments with a sigh of relief, leaving them for the servants to find, and stretched till his bones cracked. Another yawn seized him as he half-walked, half-stumbled into the inner room.

  The lamps were lit, the nightlamp in its niche and the cluster by the bed. They cast a soft glow across the coverlets. Those were fresh, scented with some green herb. Someone had scattered petals across them, as if he had been a prince. He shook his head at that, and lay down with a sigh that was half a groan.

  He should rise again, blow out the lamp-cluster. But the bed was marvelously comfortable. Sleep toyed with him, hovering just out of reach. Memories flickered behind his eyes. The king’s face, the great riverhorse dying, the messenger and his staggering team, shouts and cries and the dim clangor of war.

  Soft hands stroked his back. Warm breath tickled his nape. A supple body fitted itself against him.

  He was suddenly and completely awake. All through the hunt and the beginning of war, he had kept memory at bay, had let himself forget that he had left Iry without a word. But it seemed she had forgiven him. Her hands stroked down his breast and belly to grasp his wakening rod, tightening softly round it, stroking and teasing, knowing just where to—

  Iry would not know that. Only one pair of hands would tease him precisely so.

  He tensed to turn, but she held him fast. “Barukha,” he said. “I thought you were with your father.”

  “My father has gone to fight with Khamudi in the south,” she said. “He gave me leave to go back to your mother. Aren’t you glad? Aren’t you delighted to have me back again?”

  “You should not be here.”

  “Silly man,” she said indulgently. “Of course I shouldn’t. But aren’t you glad?”

  His manly organ was in bliss. The rest of him, insofar as it had wits to think, could only see one face. And that was not Barukha’s.

  Somehow, he never quite knew how, he worked himself free. He stood swaying. Barukha lay in his bed, naked and beautiful. She stretched, and wriggled a little, arching her back till her breasts jutted boldly at him.

  “Go,” he said to her. “Let me be.”

  Her smile did not fade. She raised a knee and let it fall lazily to the side, opening herself to him, black curly hair, moist pink lips like the petals of a flower.

  He tore his eyes from that secret place. “I said, go.”

  “My dear sweet man,” she said, “what’s come over you? Did some outraged papa catch you, one night on the hunt? Did he whip you? Let me see—let me kiss the memory away.”

  “Barukha,” he said, his voice so low it was a rumble in his chest. “I want you to go.”

  At last it seemed to dawn on her that he was not toying with her. Maybe she had not seen his face at all, only his body. And that had obliged him by going cold. She was beautiful; she was alluring. He did not want her.

  Then she looked up past it. He did not know what she saw in his face, but her own went still. “You really—want me—”

  He nodded.

  She shook her head slightly, once. “You can’t do that.”

  “I am doing it.”

  “I said, you can’t.” She rose to her knees amid the coverlets. “Tell me who she is.”

  Khayan set his lips together. He should deny any knowledge of another woman. He knew that. But he could not lie. He never had been able to. Therefore he resorted to silence.

  “Tell me,” Barukha pressed him. “Tell me!”

  He would not.

  She sank back on her heels. “That shouldn’t matter. Should it? All women have to share. Men take as many as they like. I’ll share you. I won’t like it, but it’s the way the world is. Isn’t it?”

  “I don’t want to be shared,” he said.

  His heart was as cold as his voice. It was true. He did not. He had not expected that.

  Barukha was beautiful. She was a marvelous lover. And gods knew, he was far from the first that she had ever taken, nor did he expect that he would be the last.

  He did not want her. Perhaps he never truly had. What he wanted was a slip of an Egyptian girl with neither art nor skill, but sweetness beyond any other he had known.

  He could not say that to Barukha. “Go,” he said. “If you won’t be commanded, I beg you. Surely there’s another man who can give you what you look for. He might even be prettier.”

  She did not smile at that. She wore no expression at all. “You’re casting me out.”

  “I’m asking you to go. For your safety even more than my own. If your father hears—”

  “My father.” She laughed. It was a strange sound, light yet brittle. “Do you know what I did, Khayan? Do you know what happened to me? When I was shut up in his house, wrapped in veils till I was like to suffocate, and no servants near me but women and eunuchs, I knew that I could never live like that. I couldn’t be some old man’s harem ornament. I need a young man, a strong man, a man who will let me have the free air. Then I knew. It came to me like the voice of a god. I wanted you. No other man. You. When my father comes back from the war, you must ask him for me. You’re rising high in the kingdom; the king loves you. My father will find you worthy. You’ll see.”

  “Barukha,” Khayan said in a kind of despair.

  “It will be a very suitable match,” she said. “Even my father has to see that.”

  “Barukha,” Khayan said. “I can’t—”

  “The bride price is high, of course. But you can pay it. You’re a royal favorite. You can ask the king for whatever my father demands.”

  “Barukha!” Khayan said sharply—with a small start as it struck him. A name spoken thrice: so Egyptians gained power over one another.

  Barukha was not one to be ruled by any man, except by force. But she stopped her babbling. She stared at him.

  “I will not marry you,” Khayan said. “I will not bed you. Come, where are your clothes? I’ll take you back to your rooms. You sleep in my mother’s chambers, yes?”

  “Yes,” she said rather faintly.

  “Good,” said Khayan. “Good. Here.” Her gown was close by, gods be thanked: crumpled in a heap beside the bed.

  He lifted it and shook it out. She made no move to take it. With a sigh he laid it about her shoulders, lifted her unresisting arms to slip them into the sleeves, reached to draw the front of it closed. She stirred at his touch, turned a fraction, till her breast filled his hand. He drew back quickly.

  The robe gaped open. She made no effort to cover herself. Quite the opposite. Her hand rose to cup her breast, stroking its nipple to tauten it. “I’m beautiful, aren’t I?” she said.

  “Very beautiful,” he said, but stiffly. With greater care then, he drew the robe across her breast and belly, lapping it over, fastening it as was proper and modest. “Come; I’ll take you back where you belong.”

  “Yes,” she said in a voice that was half a sigh. “Do that.”

  He knew better than to think that she had surrendered. But she had yielded, he thought, to the inevitable.

  Somewhat belatedly he remembered to put on a garment of his own. The first thing that came to hand was a nightrobe like hers, light and open. He fastened it with a cord, and reckoned that it would do. He was not about to parade either of them through the public ways of the palace.

  They went the way she must have come, through a small inner door to a passage that led, in time, to his mother’s rooms. It was a servants’ corridor, narrow and ill-lit,
but there was enough light from a lamp or two in a niche to find his way.

  Barukha clung to him, stumbling a little. It might be a ruse, but truly, it was dark. He let her find her balance against his body.

  It was not far at all, but more than far enough, in Khayan’s estimation, before she said, “Here. My room is here.”

  The door opened on a surprisingly large chamber, with an ample bed in it, and a golden lamp. Barukha stumbled on the threshold and nigh went down. Khayan caught at her. Her arms locked about him.

  He struggled free. She flailed at him, clawing, spitting, diving for his eyes. He flung up a hand to defend himself. It struck flesh—her face, as if she had cast herself in its way. He drew back appalled, but she pursued him, hammering at him, till he seized her and pulled her to him to make her stop.

  She melted against him—briefly, before he gathered himself to pull away. Then she erupted anew. Struggling. Shrieking. Shrilling like a mad thing. “Let me go! Let me go!”

  He was trying desperately to do just that, but every move she made clutched him the tighter. He clapped a hand over her mouth. “Idiot! Do you want to—”

  She bit him. He cursed. She screamed all the louder.

  The outer door burst open. Faces—eyes—staring, gaping, weapons gleaming as guards poured into the room.

  Then at last, and mercifully, she ceased her shrieking. She slumped in his arms, hands fisted in his robe. As she sank down, she took it with her, leaving him bare to all the staring eyes.

  She lay at his feet. Her own robe had given way, baring a long lovely leg, a round white breast. It was scratched and torn. She must have done that, somehow, in her struggles.

  He looked up into the crowding faces. The shock in them mirrored his own. He found his voice somewhere, enough of it to speak. “Someone fetch a physician. She’s taken a fit, I think.”

  His words fell dead in the silence. They were all staring, not at her, but at him. And no wonder, with his robe at his feet, and the poor mad creature sprawled on it. He bent to retrieve it.

  Like hounds on the lion, the guards fell on him. They bore him back and away from her, and flung him down with force enough to knock the wind out of him. He tried to protest, to struggle, but there were too many. They were too strong.

  It only came to him once he was down and pinned, with a guard’s sword pointed at his throat and another at his manly parts, what they must think they had seen. A man in the women’s quarters at night, locked in struggle with a woman, and he naked and she nearly so. If he had seen it, he would have thought exactly the same.

  He stopped fighting. They hauled him up, not gently, and bound his hands behind his back—wrenching at his shoulders till he gasped.

  “Serves you right,” one muttered. “Son of a dog.”

  He clenched his jaw against a spate of words. Barukha was still lying where he had left her, in a flock of chattering women. Those kept glancing at him—glaring murderously, though some let their eyes linger.

  He would have to try to understand. Somehow. If there was time; if he was let live for violating a lord’s daughter in her own chamber.

  Or was it? He did not recognize these women. They were all strangers. Unless his mother had cast off all her maids and servants, these were not his mother’s women.

  The guards dragged him out before he could ask the women who they were. He set himself to go limp, to offer no resistance. They grunted as they took the brunt of his weight, but it was better for him than fighting.

  They did not cast him in prison, perhaps because it was a very long way down from these heights to the stronghold’s foundations. They thrust him into a room and left him there.

  There was no light in the room. It was black as the pit of Set’s heart. Khayan lay for a while on his face where he had been flung. But his shoulders were crying in pain. He rolled and struggled and scrambled, and somehow got to his knees; then, with a grunt of effort, to his feet. He almost fell again, but somehow managed to stay erect.

  He stood for a moment and simply breathed. Then he moved. Carefully, foot sliding in front of foot, groping his way around that space. It was larger than he had expected. He barked his shin painfully against what must have been a chair, or perhaps a chest.

  There was an inner door. It yielded to the thrust of his shoulder.

  Light. It was dim, the reflection through a window of a torch below, but it was enough to see that he was in a set of chambers much like those in which he had been living.

  He sat on the bed, because it was closest. He could not lie down. There was nothing in the room to cut his bonds, no weapon, nothing edged or sharp.

  He sat, therefore, and let his head hang, till his shoulders objected again. If he could have beaten them into silence, he would have.

  Somewhere amid the struggle with Barukha, amid her shrieking and carrying on, she had said something. He had not remembered it then. It came back to him now, vivid to the point of pain. “If I can’t have you, no one will.”

  He had never thought that she was mad. He knew she was reckless, and cared little for consequences. If her temper was roused, if she was wild with jealousy . . .

  Could jealousy compel a woman to destroy a man?

  Foolish question. The more fool he, for walking into the trap. If he had simply sent her away, she could not have done this thing; not without explaining why she was in his chamber.

  He was not dead yet. Nor had they gelded him. He was intact, all but his honor.

  ~~~

  They came for him much sooner than he had expected. Again he was dragged, this time a greater distance, but up into the higher reaches of the palace rather than down into the prisons. He knew these corridors: they led to the king’s residence.

  Of course the king would judge him. There was no higher authority, and Khayan had been his man. Was still, if anyone knew it.

  For this hour, which must be well short of dawn, the passages were remarkably full of people. All of them stared as he stumbled past, and whispered to one another. Next to the war, this would be the greatest scandal they had seen in an age. A lord of high rank and great favor caught assaulting the maiden daughter of a fellow lord—delicious. Appalling.

  The king was waiting for him. Apophis looked as if he had not slept; and perhaps he had not. His robe was a nightrobe, as if he had been abed or about to go there.

  Khayan hoped that he would never have to look into such eyes again. Eyes that had seen all there was to see, and gained from it nothing but sorrow.

  The guards kicked Khayan’s feet from under him. He fell hard, on bruises from the falls before. He did not try to rise. It was not that he lacked heart to do it. He simply could not see the use in it.

  “Unbind him,” the king said above him.

  The guards were not happy with that. The man whose knife cut the bonds was not careful; the blade nicked Khayan’s arm. He felt it dimly, though his arms had gone numb. They fell lifeless to his sides.

  “Lift him,” said the king.

  Hard hands dragged him up. They had to hold him: his knees had turned to water. But he could lift his head. He could do that.

  The king looked him up and down. He supposed he was a shocking sight. The guards had made certain that he struck every stair on the ascent. The heedless swing of a fist had split his lip. One eye was swelling shut. He did not even remember what had caused that.

  “Set him in a chair,” the king said, “and go.”

  That was not at all to the guards’ liking, but the king had spoken. They had perforce to obey.

  There were still people about. Servants. A guard or two. No lords or princes. In that absence, they were as much alone as they could be.

  “Tell me why,” said Apophis.

  Khayan could not answer that, not in any way that would be honorable. He sat in the chair that the guards had brought, aching in every bone and struggling not to slip ignominiously to the floor, and said nothing.

  “You were found,” the king said, “in the mid
st of the chambers allotted to my queens, forcing the virtue of a lady of considerable rank. The lady is prostrate. She will not tell us why she was there, some distance from the rooms in which she should have been sleeping. It is all too clear why you were there, and what you were doing.”

  Khayan closed his eyes. If he defended himself, he dishonored Barukha. Dishonor for a woman was worse than for a man. No man of rank would take a woman who pursued and seduced a man. Whereas a woman who had been forced—she might be forgiven, and absolved through swift marriage to a man of impeccable honor.

  Silence was his refuge. He had no other.

  “Why?” Apophis asked him again. “Why, Khayan? You of all men—this is the last crime I would ever have expected to find you guilty of. Are you guilty? Or is there something that we haven’t been told?”

  Khayan let his head fall forward. He could, if he let go even a fraction more, have fallen headlong into the dark. But he was too stubborn for that. He did not want to wake and find himself a gelding.

  A strong hand, but not a harsh one, tipped his head up. He looked up blurrily into the king’s face. “I should have you killed,” Apophis said as if to himself, “but not for this thing which I begin to doubt you did. For being such a blind and perfect idiot. I don’t suppose you’ll name the man who laid this trap for you?”

  No man laid a trap for me. The words were there, on the back of Khayan’s tongue. But they would not speak themselves.

  “You understand,” said Apophis, “that if you won’t defend yourself, I can’t defend you. The woman’s family is out for blood already. Her father has been sent for. When he comes, he’ll want your jewels for a necklace. Tell me why I shouldn’t let him have them.”

  “Mine.” That word obliged Khayan by letting him speak it. “They’re mine. He can’t have them.”

  “By law he is entitled to them,” Apophis said.

  “No,” Khayan said. “Can’t have them.”

  “If I let you keep them,” said Apophis, “and give you what it is you seem to want, what will you give me in return?”

  “Loyalty,” Khayan said.

  “Yes,” said the king. “That is a valuable thing. What if I take your rank with it, and your holdings?”