by Janet Morris
Gasping, little sated, I lay down there, upon the mat, and cried myself into a sleep that was no respite. That which cannot be given, he had taken. I saw him, in my dream, and he was indeed with forereaders. Can you be even half of what they are? he demanded. Of what you once were? And I spoke of love. Upon the word there came to be in that place another, who resembled me, and with her a great hulion. She bade the hulion devour him. I found myself between him and those gaping fangs. I saw even the spittle and the yellow fungus that bubbled and grew thick upon the beast’s tongue. She would have pushed me aside, destroyed him. Upon slim bronze fingers she ticked off importunities for which she would hold him to account. Khys’s laughter rang in my ears. And I, after each point she made, repeated the same answer. I could not allow it. The time, I told her, must be served, the will of the father done. He has gone too far, she thundered at me. And he then tired of the game. With a wave of his hand she was bound and collared and marked by my side.
And I woke from the dream as her answering tirade was muffled by the gag that came to be in her mouth, to find Khys’s fingers loosening my bonds and the rays of first light shining upon my face. My body was cold, damp, my breasts heaving, as if I had run a long way.
He crouched, naked, above me. I rubbed my white-striped wrists. Surely it had been part of the dream. My fingers explored that place upon my breast. The skin felt unmarred. Heartened, I looked there. It glittered against my copper flesh, Khys’s device, the bursting spiral. He nodded. I would have risen from my back. His hand stilled me.
“I stood for you in my dreams,” I murmured, half-placating, half-accusing.
“It took well,” he adjudged my brand, the quality of it upon my skin, brushing my hair back. He put his knees upon the mat, bent, and kissed my breast there. “And the night’s meditation did you good.” I saw him rising, and knew that the mark pleased him, that he would use me. And I was grateful that I bore it.
“Speak to me of what you have learned,” he suggested, his hand testing, then making more eloquent suggestions. I did, withholding nothing of what I had come to feel.
“Consider it your heritage.” He chuckled when I fell silent. “Long have you been destined for this end.” And I would not have had it otherwise. His final taking of me was once again upon my knees, from the rear. I watched her couch him, wild-eyed, sweating, dancing unconstrained upon his manhood. She moaned and begged and cried for him, her rhythms punctuated by breathless whimpers. Then he pushed me forward from the waist, my head to the mat, and I could not see, but only receive his fierce thrust. For the first time, I heard Khys’s lust escape his lips. It thrilled me, setting me once again aquiver, that he had cried out.
He did not let me rest replete, but stayed in me, rearousing my flesh. When he removed himself, too soon, I was again beginning to tremble. He touched my risen nipples. I looked at him, and had no doubt that he could have finished what it had pleased him to start. I rolled over, pressing my belly against the mat. I caught his eyes, imploring him.
He rose and stretched, looking down upon me. “Stop that!” he snapped. I stilled my hips, with effort.
“Yes,” I breathed, anguished. “Anything. Khys—”
“No. Sit. Do not touch yourself. I want you that way awhile.”
I sat, as he preferred, my shoulders well back. The air swirled cool against my blood-mottled skin. I pushed my hair back from my face.
“Why?” He turned from the door and came back to stand over me.
“Is it not enough that I wish it?” he said quietly.
“It is enough,” I murmured. Would he lock me in here again? Had I not well served him?
“You have the run of both keeps. Stay within them. I have much to do. This evening I will take you with me, to a gathering of some small import.” His eyes narrowed, sparking. I felt his intrusion, his deft, casual appraisal. I sat very still. And he was gone, out from both keeps, stopping only long enough to gather up his formal robes.
When I was alone, I rose and went and lay upon his rust-silked couch, slamming shut the doors to my prison as I left it. Do not touch yourself, he had said. The morning sun sliced the keep into sections, spilled over my turned hip. I rolled upon my belly and pressed myself against the couch. If I disobeyed him, he would know. I did not do so, only raged at him for what he had done.
I still lay thus when Carth, carrying a tas-wrapped bundle, entered the keep.
I sat up, clutching the rust silks around my body’s nakedness. But I could not cloak my mind’s lusting.
Tossing the bundle upon the couch, he sat beside me. Gently he pulled the couch cover from my hands, that he might examine my mark. His mouth pulled inward at the corners. His brows met above his eyes. He ran his hands over me familiarly. He had never before touched me in such a fashion.
“No.” He smiled without humor. “I will not use you, now or ever.”
I wished he would go away. I turned my face from his dark-robed form.
“Soon enough, child, your wish will be granted,” he said dryly, tugging at the straps upon the tas binder.
“I did not mean that, Carth,” I wailed, and threw my arms around his neck. All that one might feel for a father, I felt for the arrar Carth.
“And I did not mention it as threat or punishment. It is only a fact. Long he has had me at your care, assigning much vital work to others in my stead. He evidently feels”—and he smiled sourly—”that you are no longer in need of such stringent supervision. And I must say that, seeing you, I believe he is right.” His fingers desultorily stirred the tas cover back, disappeared within the bundle.
“May I dress?” I asked dully. My stomach pitched and rolled with loss. Carth, answerer of quandary, soother of fear, Carth, the man whose approbation had sustained me, would be taken from me. I would be alone with the dharen. Oftentimes, this past set, his counsel had been invaluable in my dealings with Khys. How, I wondered, fearful, searching in Khys’s wardrobe for a wrap, would I manage without him?
I knelt down there a time, my palms pressed against my eyes, out of his sight. I calmed my pulse with difficulty. Purposefully, as he had taught me, I sensed the pile under my feet, thick and soft. I tasted the air upon my skin, counted its waves. Thus was Carth’s teaching for mental distress. Upon this day, I would show him I had learned it.
When I emerged from Khys’s wardrobe, a white robe of Galeshir sheer belted around me, he had spread the contents of the bundle out on the rust silk. There were three volumes, ors, bound in patterned slitaskin. There was a gossamer-thin something, sunlight upon marsh mist, jeweled with dew. I touched it with my fingertips. It was as stroking a wirraget’s wing.
“Oh, Carth, it is beautiful.” I picked it up, and it spilled the length of my body. Such a wrap, though it could conceal nothing, would much enhance any who wore it.
“Thank the dharen, when you see him.” The arrar was more than brusque.
“Where is he? What is this gathering?” I asked, slipping my arm between two layers of the web-work. It hugged my limb, overgleaming it with shadow-soft sparkle.
“He is meeting with his dhareners, and with those others who hold power upon Silistra. This”—he picked up one ors—“is what he gives them, why he had called them together.” Abruptly he threw one book to me. I caught it, barely, opening it to the title page. Then I turned to the contents, scanned them. I closed it, holding it against my waist.
“Why did you give me this?” I asked.
Carth leaned back upon Khys’s couch. His dark face was unreadable. He ran a hand through his black curls.
“Not me. He. It is some part of his hest concerning you. He has ceased to confide in me so far as you are concerned. I do not know why he wanted you to have it. With a lesser man, one might say that it is his newest creation, a work upon which he has spent more than a year, and he but desired you to read it.”
“But you do not think it that simple.” I sat beside him, regarding my toes peeking from under the Galeshir silk.
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��The dharen is anything but simple. Let it rest. All who bestow chaldra have today received from him this volume upon the chaldra of helsars, and how it may be adjudged. Perhaps he would simply like you to be able to make polite conversation. None will have had the manual longer than you. The dhareners will be more confounded than you could ever be; not in twenty thousand years has there been a new chaldric strand for which to strive.”
I put the ors down, trading it for the next.
“Do you think,” I asked, touching Carth’s arm, “that he might let me test for one?”
Carth took a deep breath, regarded the midday upon the Lake of Horns through the windows. He found the sight so intriguing that he left me, drew the rust draperies fully apart, and spent a long time in contemplation of the lakeside.
The second volume was entitled Hesting, the Primal Prerogative and was twice the thickness of the first. It was filled with odd diagrams and charts. I laid it by. The third was the Wellwoman’s Ors, written by the foundress of Well Astria. To hold that in my hands sent thrills and tremors up my nerves.
“This,” I whispered, half to myself, “I will read straightaway. I am in need of nothing more.”
“You had best work first upon the others, and save that for your leisure,” decreed Carth, coming to stand over me, shadowing the open book upon my lap.
“Why are you so somber. Carth?” I wondered, looking up at him, wide-eyed.
He, back-lit, silhouetted, laughed harshly. Then he squatted down before me.
“My little one is grown up. I suppose I regret it.” He ran his finger down my nose, withdrew his hand. “That woman’s trick proves it. Tonight you had better be as ready as he has deemed you.”
My own fingers rubbed my left breast. I swallowed hard. I had not missed Carth’s eyes upon it, then my face, lastly upon the band at my throat. Before all Khys’s high ones, I would be shown, banded, marked. My skin turned hot as a bather’s in midsummer sun.
“And with his couchbond strand at your waist,” Carth reminded me sternly.
I touched it, grateful for another thing to do with my problematical hands.
“You will not be the only restrained one present, nor the only woman bearing such a sign. That everwelling pride of yours may yet be your ruination.” He rose up, one hand upon his hip. Something in his stance before me had changed. I was conscious of him as male, as I had never been before. I shifted, knowing my own moisture, my eagerness, my body’s response to his.
“It is you that have changed, have grown aware. Get up. In this one instance, such enlightenment will do little for you.”
“Where are you taking me?” I said. Putting the Wellwoman’s Ors carefully upon the couch, I rose obediently to follow him.
“Down into the common holding, that they may prepare you. Then to a meal, if you would like.”
“Carth?” I asked him, pressing against his arm in the hall.
“Speak,” he allowed, looking at me askance. He did not disengage my fingers.
“Will you be at this gathering?”
“Yes, along with a number of other arrars.” I took my hands from him, falling silent. In my mind I saw another arrar, and those eyes, so disturbing, seemed to hover before me along the corridors.
Out we went into the bright clear day, and along the ways by the lakeside. Carth, as if in reparation for his bad humor, allowed me to take up some rounded pebbles and dance them across the water. One, I found, as I was about to fling it, had been woman-formed by the lake’s constant lapping. I dried it upon my robe and handed it to him solemnly, that he might have something by which to recall me. He clasped me to him, crushed the breath from my lungs. After a time he kissed me upon the crown of my head and pushed me away. Though I asked him, he would not speak of what concerned him, nor of where he expected to travel upon his pursuit of the dharen’s will.
In the forereader’s tower lies the common holding, plush, elegant, all in soft neutral shades, as if fall had come indoors, and installed itself in that great hall. Across the clear floor we walked, within which, set deep, were designs of colored earth that teased the mind and gave lightness to the spirit. I did not pay the floor attention, nor the great striped ragony table that encircled it, nor the furred and sueded and tapestried cushions piled along its circumference. At four places one might pass through the circle, across the floor, and out again among a number of grouped couches. Only, I wanted out of that place. I hated the feel of the gol under my feet, the dark cloying scent that seemed to sweeten my tongue. Here I had been ill-treated by those forereaders whose keep this was. Here I had seen the forereader restrained. I blinked away the phantom of that sight, the room suddenly filled with bodies. Even could I hear the musicians playing softly from their alcove, smell the roasted denter upon the air.
Carth’s hand upon my shoulder, his sidelong glance, warning, rebuked me. I chased the past from my mind. We passed out of that hall into a cerulean passage of gold-flecked ornithalum, and through it to the right, down two flights of stairs. At the stairs’ foot was an open door, into a large chamber, where six women lounged upon a great pool, divided into three sections.
There, Carth, with an admonition relating to obedience, handed me into the care of a forereader whose name I do not recall. I begged him wait, but he would not. The woman laughed, remarking upon the discomfort of men before a woman’s beautifying arts. If she had used them upon herself, I thought, she must, aforehand, have been a horror to look upon. Her eyes, resentful upon me, bespoke how I had fared in her assessment.
Graciously I smiled at her, and allowed that she might, with alacrity, attend me to the best of her ability. Upon the last word I made it clear with a lifted eyebrow that I doubted her skill. She flushed, and stared pointedly at my band. I stripped off my robe, that she might see my chald and be made aware of how I stood in the dharen’s eyes. As naked as she, I stood before her, taller, finer, and with his chald of couchbond, upon which was strung a fortune in gol drops, at my waist.
Her small and overly squat body stiffened. She was forced to crane her short neck to meet my eyes. In them she found nothing but contempt.
No other word was spoken between us during the two enths it took her, with her two assistants, to make me ready. Finally, my body soothed with oils and my hair confined by ten tiny braids through which were worked strings of fire gems, I was prepared.
I regarded myself in the mirror, my pubic hair and nipples aglitter with a scintillant powder, my eyes gilded, the nails of my fingers and toes shaped and lacquered gold. Their avaricious looks, reflected in the mirror behind me, brought a warm feeling to my heart. Any of them would gladly have borne my restraint, my mark, any indignity, to be possessed of such a reflection. I smiled at myself, regarding my tongue as it flicked out to moisten my lips. I turned slowly full about. Khys’s device upon my left breast took the light, pulverized it prismatic. Then I saw Carth there, and his expression was eloquent tribute.
The squat forereader brought my creamy robe and held it for me. Belting it about me, I approached him.
“What think you?” I whispered, teasing.
“I think I had better feed you,” he mumbled.
I found his consternation delectable fare, but I only nodded and brushed by him, into the corridor, that he might observe from the rear my begemmed mane.
“I have been thinking,” I informed him as he came up beside me, his arm encircling my waist.
“About what you would like to eat, I hope?” he said, turning into a side passage of brown taernite.
“About the hulion that attacked us yesterday, and about what was done to me by the dharen’s council, and about the literature you gave me.”
“You must be fatigued,” the arrar remarked.
“When they assessed me, one of his council undertook to dismantle a web that extended out from me. What was it?”
“Ask the dharen,” he evaded.
“I will not have your invaluable counsel much longer. Please, Carth, do not withhold your a
id from me. Was it a hest? It seemed to me to bear a resemblance to a diagram I saw in Khys’s text.” I turned my face to his, my eyes imploring. He watched the floor before him, intently.
“Only can I say to you, it might have been. If it was, no matter; it exists no longer. As for those other questions you have, I am not empowered to answer them.”
“Will you not, this once, bend his rule upon you?”
“Not even this once.” And the arrar’s face was as dark as I had ever seen it.
“Return me, then, to his keep,” I said, toneless. “I would study the texts before I am called to him.”
“As you wish,” Carth said, reversing our direction in the passage.
All the way to the dharen’s keep we made in silence. When he had gone, I stood by the window until I saw him pass along the ways, in the direction of the arrar’s tower. He stopped and spoke awhile with another, by the lakeside. Before them, on the lake’s surface, a disturbance arose, as if unseen stones skittered there. Far out upon the water, almost to the opposite shore, the lake skipped and danced. Both men watched, it seemed, but neither had taken up stone or raised arm to throw. After a long time, they separated, each headed the opposite way. And the water of the lake was becalmed, meditative.
