Cruel Enchantment (Black Lace)

by Janine Ashbless

  Yesterday I witnessed one of their rites by chance. I found it touching, in a strange way. They were led by the king’s daughter; I could tell that by her retinue of handmaidens and their rich dress. The troop came down to the river bearing baskets of linen to wash and I concealed myself among the bushes only just in time, seeing no reason to reveal myself to such a giggling, light-hearted party. The princess was most fair, in the unremarkable way of mortal women – rounded, pale limbs unmarked by labour and dark hair tied high with a golden filet, her eyes outlined heavily in black. She supervised the washing of the soiled clothes, doing little work herself, and then gave gracious permission for bathing to take place. The girls discarded their dresses and splashed about in the shallow river, throwing water at each other and shrieking. Then they sat upon the banks and dressed each other’s hair, drying their limbs in the sun, careless and self-absorbed as nymphs. I waited in the shadows, idly amused, so motionless that a mouse ran over my foot and did not see me.

  Then the king’s daughter grew restless, pulled on her peplos over skin still damp, and led the whole crowd, with much stifled laughter and sideways glances, into the cypress grove. I followed, unseen. All their real attention was on the marble form of the idol within the trees. At the sight of him, even my heart stirred.

  I have forgotten his name, or even if he told it to me. He is old; his upturned face has worn away a little, blunting his nose and smoothing his hair. He kneels, knees braced apart, hands splayed on his thighs. There is a bare patch of earth about him where the women of the town have walked. His phallus rises straight as a spear, white as the moon. It too has been worn by much touching and anointing. It is slender and smooth; not ugly or massive so much as to frighten a virgin, but quite virile enough to bring a blush to her face. The handmaidens of the royal court, none of them older than their princess, giggled and sighed and hid their faces in modest hands at the sight of such a shocking thing. Then without exception they came forwards to touch him, to pay their respects. Some were nervous and only stroked his shoulder; some tickled his straining member teasingly; one of the older ones, greatly daring, fondled his hard pouch and kissed his unyielding lips before swaggering away, swinging her hips for the benefit of her companions.

  The king’s daughter stood with hands on hips, watching these flirtations. Her lips were parted and her colour high; she was the only one of the maidens who was not laughing. I watched her closely, my interest piqued. She signalled to her entourage and gave them some order, and reluctantly they all retreated to the edge of the clearing and sat upon the grass in little groups, their backs to the princess and the image.

  The conversation of mortals flutters like leaves in the wind; unless they are praying it is difficult to follow their words, they make only wittering noises that are hard to concentrate upon. But she prayed, when she was sure that her companions had stopped looking over their shoulders. She leaned forwards to the stone image, put her pink lips to his ear and whispered a heartfelt plea. I heard those words clearly enough. She wanted a gold-crowned hero, a king’s son who would love her and make her his wife – and soon. The sincerity of her desire made my nape prickle. She was ready for bedding, that maiden; her words were only confirmed by the unconcealed curves of her young body showing through the half-transparent folds of her wet, clinging peplos. Her eyes smouldered as she stepped back from him and bit her lower lip.

  Then she kneeled, as many had kneeled before her, and laid one hand on his rigid shaft. She stroked it cautiously, as if it might come to life under her touch – and I could almost believe it would, if stone were able to be tempted as flesh is. She circled the snake’s head with one finger, blushed, then leaned down and pressed her lips to it in a long, devout kiss. He looked whiter than the snows of Olympus against her rosy skin. I saw the very tip of her pink tongue lick his alabaster wand.

  She sat back and looked around her, silently daring any of her entourage to have been spying, but they were obediently turned away, awaiting her orders. Hesitantly she took from the folds of her peplos a small stone jar. When she broke the wax seal I smelled a waft of expensive perfume, such as is used after bathing upon the skins of great princes and queens. She wished to make an offering. I licked my dry lips. She slipped her painted fingers into the jar and drew out a scoop of slippery white unguent, then very slowly applied it to the phallus before her. The scent filled the grove; the handmaidens stirred and whispered. She trailed her fingers up and down the elegant shaft, spreading it from wrinkled balls to smooth prick-end. As she gained confidence she used both hands and found a firm, rhythmic grip. I watched entranced as she massaged the erection – gods, it was already so stiff and vertical that it could not have responded in any way except to erupt in spurts of silver sand, and I could almost imagine that happening, so lifelike was his form and so intimate, so apposite their pose.

  A handmaiden stifled a nervous giggle.

  The king’s daughter paused, looked down at herself and shifted her posture. Something between her legs was causing her discomfort; she wriggled her creamy buttocks as if to accommodate some alien presence. Then, looking about her from beneath her lashes, cheeks burning with shame and some other, more imperative emotion, she rose to her feet, pulled her peplos up around her thighs, straddled the image’s hips and, one hand on the back of his neck to balance herself, sank slowly down over his slippery stone member until it touched the doors of her secret underworld.

  I had to admire her strength and her determination. Unable to drop straight down the entire length of the rod, she had to brace herself on straining thighs and cling to her obdurate partner’s neck as she introduced the bulb of his phallus to the wet lips of her virgin hole. Her eyes closed in concentration and her face creased with effort; she did not wish to hurt herself, yet her every instinct was to take the shaft as far as she could within her. She rocked back and forth, letting the cold stone stir the hot hearth of her fires, mingling the chrism with her own juices. Her peplos slipped from her shoulder and one rose-tipped breast slid into view; she did not notice, or care, that it was quivering shamelessly in full sight of the gods and anyone else who might look at her. She did not cry out but her breath was ragged, and the faces of her handmaidens, who still did not dare look round, were growing pink.

  My own breathing had almost stopped. Her head lolled from side to side, she arched her back and thrust her buttocks out, rolled her hips and pawed at his face. She seemed unable to slide the phallus more than an inch or so into her, despite its slenderness; something was blocking the path. She worked the hard prod from side to side, stretching her pink inner lips unbearably, spasms chasing visibly through her limbs. Her face, prettily blushing before, was flushing darker. Her breasts strained up as if towards her unfeeling lover’s face. I was entranced. She was reaching her crisis; the agony of pleasure was upon her and she could not stop. Her eyes, half open now, were unseeing, her mouth slack, her face suffused with a pain that was not pain. I saw the spasm come upon her, as clearly as if I had felt it in my own flesh. She impaled herself deeper and deeper on the glistening stake between her thighs, thrusting it into the cavern that begged to be filled. I knew her agony; my own hot wetness was slicking my thighs.

  She threw back her head, mouthed a silent scream, and rammed the phallus to the hilt within her. Every part of her shook; her breasts wobbled wildly. Then her legs gave way and she collapsed, straddling his hips, staked upon his spear.

  I was filled with awe. To offer up her maidenhead to her god was to make the most terrible, costly, precious sacrifice. That her god was a false one who could never know of her devotion – that was a tragedy that moved me as the prayers of the most fervent worshippers could not.

  She withdrew panting from him, her pleasure and her pain still unvoiced, and readjusted her dress. She left a little blood upon the stone. Then, after silently contemplating him for a time, she cleared her throat, and ordered her entourage to their feet. They turned to look at her; some puzzled, some concerned, some emba
rrassed. They could not be sure what had happened, but most would have guessed. She snapped her fingers, head held high – an imperious expression on her face – and ordered them from the clearing. The fluttering cloud of maidens disappeared from my view.

  On the great loom in my chamber that scene is emerging now from the jumbled weft, threads of colour spiralling in to fuse and make the image of a mortal maiden loving a statue. It burns in my mind, and there under my hands it takes shape and grows. It kicks inside me, like a child wanting to be born.

  All these strands come together; the anger of the Owl Queen, the Earth-Shaker’s scheming, a youth’s pleasure, a maiden’s need, a broken mask. My desire. These are spun by fate like strands of carded wool, to make the threads of a design that will be a wonder to those that see it. What skill, they will say, what artistry, to produce such a bold image from these little shreds of fleece.

  The image troubles me, and I brood upon it as I sit upon the flat rock near my house, warming myself in the sunlight. I do not dance now. She worships a false god who will not hear her. When the world is filled with divinities, how is it that they turn so easily to ones of their own imagining?

  I am uneasy.

  A man is coming up the path towards me – but I will not hide, this time. He carries a bronze shield, I think. He must have polished it; the disc catches the light and shines like the sun.

  Toil and Trouble

  THE CURSE WAS written not in blood but in chalk, scrawled on the wooden door of their courtyard; 7-3d-1fl-1x.

  The family gathered; Marlam Silversmith brooding like a thundercloud, Sermil his mother loud and bitter, his younger brother Oris stiff and clench-fisted, the servants conferring nervously. Only Elgith said nothing, had no measure of outrage and patriotic resentment to add to the hoard. She followed her mother-in-law out to the gate, looked at the marks and silently tailed her indoors again. It was not her right to express indignation. She was not from the city and its occupation by the Empire’s soldiers was not a personal affront to her, though this privilege was claimed by every other member of the household.

  ‘They will bankrupt us!’ Sermil complained to her eldest son; ‘You know how the price of food has been – we will starve!’ Marlam, typically, said nothing. He had a closed, secretive face and was not a man inclined to share his worries.

  ‘Where will they sleep?’ Sermil demanded relentlessly: ‘Will they put us out of our own beds?’

  Marlam looked round at his brother. ‘Clear the stable,’ he ordered. ‘They can sleep there.’ His three horses had been requisitioned during the siege and had doubtless lined the stomachs of many a soldier, so their lightless quarters now stood vacant. Oris raised his thin shoulders and scowled but did as he was told, leading off two servants to begin the shovelling-out.

  ‘See to the shrine,’ Marlam told his mother darkly, and strode away towards his workshop.

  Sermil, unable to command her own son, turned her frustration as usual upon the house servants and her son’s wife – lowest of the low in the household hierarchy. Elgith braced herself before the rain of abusive contempt and tried not to hear.

  ‘Now go and hide the wine under the boards in the back cellar, you lazy slut,’ Sermil finished. ‘If they find that I hate to think what they will do. Heathens. Filth. You know what they did to the Bishop.’

  Seven soldiers of the 3rd Phalanx. One file-leader. One auxiliary adviser.

  The prospect of a gang of drunken soldiers in possession of the house was alarming, and Elgith set to her task willingly enough. She was a hard worker, for all Sermil’s complaints, and only her sullen attitude marred her demeanour. Elgith made it her habit to get her work done blamelessly, keep out of the way of the rest of the family as much as she might and speak as little as she could. There were those outsiders who thought that she and Marlam were a well-matched pair.

  When she emerged from the cellar, the statue of the Windlord was missing from its prime place in the shrine, though the other gods, blank-eyed and bland of feature, were undisturbed. The Empire of the Shining Mask could find a place for lesser gods, for the Trade-lord and the Harvestmother and the dozens of other deities that the free peoples of the lands had worshipped since time first dawned. The Empire tolerated anything, good or ill, fair or foul, so long as the rule of the Effulgent God was unchallenged; the only virtue it demanded was obedience. But the Windlord – he was the restless, undisciplined soul of the free people and would bow to no one, and he would not be tolerated in the city by its new masters. They had destroyed his temple on the top of the cliff; it had been their first action upon taking the city. Ranks of battle-bloodied soldiers, their bronze armour and spear-points flashing in the sun, had advanced in protective cordons about the yellow-robed priests of the Effulgent God. The air had whined with battling spirits and stunk of protective magics. When the great altar of the Windlord was overthrown, horns blew across the battered city, and all the populace fell silent to watch a shape wheel across the sky from the tip of the mountain; a winged bull, the Windlord’s child, had descended upon the temple, trumpeting with rage. But the soldiers of the Empire had released from its cage a screeching wyvern, dripping with venom and uncleanliness, which had slain the sky-bull and then rampaged unchecked across the city, slaughtering any not bearing the mark of the Shining Mask until it had eaten its fill. Only then had the soldiers and priests moved to recage their monster. The warning from the Empire was clear: we have terrible weapons in our armoury – don’t force us to use them.

  Now, no doubt, Marlam’s little silver statue of the Windlord was, like hundreds of similar idols across the city, hidden in a safe and secret place, to await the time of its revenge.

  Elgith went down to the market to try and find fresh eggs. There was pitifully little on the stalls, and that overpriced. War and conquest had driven the farmers from their fields; occupation blunted the city’s instinct for trade. Hoarding was now the fashion. The chalk curse had appeared all over the city on every house greater than a hovel. Until new barracks could be built, soldiers of the occupying army were to be billeted among the populace. All the noble palaces at the top of the cliff had been seized for officers’ quarters and command stations, but the cluttered dwellings of the merchant quarter, where houses were built back into the rock and on top of each other in a cascade down the face of the ravine, were to take the bulk of the rank and file. Marlam Silversmith, a middling dealer and worker in precious metals, was to bear his share of the burden.

  The price for meddling with the chalk-marks upon your door was to have your thumbs struck off; you and your household, if you would not confess. The Empire did not tolerate insurrection.

  ‘The Windlord has abandoned us,’ people whispered in the secrecy of their own chambers. But, ‘Ah, we are still alive, praise the gods,’ they muttered in the market place, glancing at the knots of soldiers on every street corner. They would look uneasily up at the sky before speaking the mildest discontent; it was difficult to feel secure any more while in an open space under the eye of the sun. Yet they lived, and their city stood – all but the stones of the Windlord’s temple, even now being dismantled. Though there were brutalities, it was a contained and disciplined cruelty that brooded over the city. The way of the Shining Mask was conquest and assimilation, not destruction. These soldiers were here to stay, not to pillage; when they retired, they would be granted parcels of land here, and when they married it would be to local women. They would breed the next generation of loyal citizens; that too was a part of their duty.

  The curse bore its bitter fruit a day after the chalk – marks appeared. Elgith was in the kitchen alone, washing the platters from their evening meal, when she heard the noise in the courtyard. She ran to a window to peer out between the shutters. She saw Oris gesticulating with his thin arms at a tall man in a yellow cloak, though she could not hear what was being said. Beyond them a knot of Empire soldiers leaned on their spears, looking bored, and to one side a stocky, tanned man in civilian clothes st
ood with arms folded and stared about him with interest. Low sunlight caught at something in his hair that glinted. There were no horses in evidence; the Empire’s army moved on foot, unlike the mounted warriors of the free people.

  One of the soldiers was despatched into the stable at a word from his officer. Elgith heard Sermil come into the kitchen behind her, nagging one of the servants she had in tow.

  ‘They’re here,’ Elgith said quietly. Sermil pushed her aside at the window.

  ‘Yah!’ the older woman exclaimed in disgust. ‘Get your husband, Elgith!’

  She threaded her way through the twisting corridors of the house to Marlam’s workshop, not needing a candle although the passages, cut into the rock of the hillside, were almost completely dark, for she knew all the ways of the house well enough by now. Marlam’s trade of course demanded light, and the workshop was one of the few favoured rooms to be built from wood and out at the side of the building, under the master bedchamber, overlooking the sheer drop to the rooftops of the streets below. Marlam was sitting before one of the great windows, drawing out a design for a new chalice with painstaking care.

  ‘Husband,’ she whispered, pausing in the doorway. Marlam ignored her until the end of a line and then turned his face towards her, eyes dark and cold as ever under the grizzled fringe of his hair, expression as blank as those of the gods he had sculpted. ‘The soldiers are here,’ she said, unable to keep the apology out of her voice.

  He put the charcoal stick down with a snap. Elgith shrank to the side of the door as he passed her, turning her face away. She would have preferred to linger in the workshop alone, but she did not dare to be seen shirking.

  They reached the main hall and found that the soldiers were already there – or at least the tall officer and the man with the brass rings knotted in his unkempt brown hair, the latter of whom was leaning against the great elm boards of the long table while the soldier paced slowly up and down the room. Elgith, huddled with the rest of the household in the kitchen doorway, stared over Sermil’s shoulder as her husband entered the room.