Samples from books that we have published under the Eartherean Press imprint.
This is another in a series from the second book in the 4-book series The Doom-Quest of Ara-Karn: The Divine Queen.
© 1982 by A. Adam Corby
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
The Prisoner of Ara-Karn
DARK GOD PASSED WHEELING over the empty face of Tarendahardil, and fell alone behind the dark horizon. Then the people waiting in their chambers heard the tolling of the bells and the wailing of the women, and knew that it was time.
They emerged from black-draped dwellings and filed up streets past covered statues, mounting in silence to the great square in High Town where the royalty of Tarendahardil were entombed. Their faces were tear-streaked, their stiff robes of linen harsh upon their skin. The great square was invisible beneath them; they clustered upon nearby rooftops and hung out of windows and balconies. More tightly were they pressed here than at the docksides when they had seen the prince depart; yet here were no shouts, no elbows, and no brawls. In disbelief they gazed upon the huge, barge-shaped tomb, its newly cut blocks glittering austerely in the pale face of Goddess. They had a name for it already: they called it, the House that Ara-Karn had built.
No more than four weeks, forty passes of dark God, remained before the chill rains of winter would reach the green South; and already most of the North was in the barbarian’s hands. With Mersaline, Torjulla and Tezmon taken, the entire Vesquial coast in turmoil and Akrion and Orovil besieged, there was little hope that any there would stop the barbarian. News of fresh defeats arrived with every ship. By springtime all the North would be his, and only the warships of Rukor and the sands of the Taril would hold him from Postio, northernmost city of the South. But had they known how far he would go, or how high he aimed, then these mourners would not have stayed in weeping-weeds but taken arms in haste, and girt themselves for war.
Upon a great bier of bronze upon the marble steps were gathered the prince’s belongings, what the Mersalinals had brought back with them. Instead of a body, the prince’s ceremonial armor, which he had worn in setting forth from the city, lay in the center of the bier. Only the golden breastplate was missing, for Elnavis had insisted upon wearing that into battle, that its brilliance might serve as a beacon for the defenders; so that the heart of the armor was gone as the heart of the city was gone. The charanti and charai, weeping bitter tears, went past the bier in silence; and more than one young chara left her tears upon the cold metal, shivering liquid gems.
Beyond the bier stood the holy virgins of Goddess, wholly veiled in black, with the ritual masks of heavy gold covering their faces. So moveless did they stand, they seemed other than mortal: spirits waiting to claim the ka of the dead: the very handmaidens of Goddess who guide the souls of the deserving across the hot Desert sands to the happy lands of the dead.
Above them stood the Empress, the last surviving member of the once mighty Bordakasha. A single sheath of black linen covered her, rising in a hood to conceal the golden wonder of her hair. On her face she wore no paint. Yet though her features were scrubbed and drawn stiffly back and her lips austerely pursed, she seemed only the more beautiful, for it was a beauty pure of all artifice. From the corners of her wet-lashed eyes ran two streams of salt, which she did not wipe away. Only her arms were bare, gleaming like antique ivory against the linen, naked even of the ring that bore her seal. That treasure, the massive crude signet of Elna himself, lay upon the bier next to the silver-inlaid gauntlets.
At the Queen’s side, like the other side of some coin of fabulous value, stood the Chara Ilal of Corthio. She too was garbed simply in black, but heavy bands of gray iron weighted down her slender, elegant wrists, like the penalty-chains used upon disobedient slaves. She was there to support the Empress; but it was rather the Empress’s arm that lent her lady strength.
At either side of the bier stood the High Regents Farnese, Arstomenes, Lornof, and Dornan Ural. Now that Elnavis was no more, their Regency would be extended until such time as the Empress was permitted to marry. One regent was absent: Charan Ampeánor of Rukor had not returned from the fighting in the North, and was believed slain. The crowds of the lower quarters had all but set upon the feeble refugees from Tezmon when they had learned this news, one more ill-telling, it seemed, than they could bear. Yet none had seen him fall, and the Empress had forbidden any rites for him until the knowledge was sure. The people pitied their beloved Queen, that she should so delude herself with hope: it honed more keenly their hatred for Ara-Karn.
Of the four about the bier, Dornan Ural seemed least moved. Scarcely a tear did he shed, but simply gazed upon the empty bier with faint irony and horror in his eyes. The common folk, seeing this from a distance, muttered among themselves that the High Regent was as sparing with his tears as he was with the gold in the Treasury. Arstomenes was garbed, masked and painted like a mourner in a tragedy; yet with such art as not quite to make a mockery of it. Lornof of Fulmine sniveled and wiped his nose. Only Charan Farnese seemed deeply moved, never lifting his eyes from the scattered belongings, and shamelessly weeping the hard tears of the aged and the proud.
When the last of the nobles had passed before the bier, and the stone steps were damp with tears and strewn with the blossoms of the black chorjai flower, the High Priestess came forward, leaning heavily upon a small staff. She lifted her thin swathed arms to the bright horizon; and from behind the golden mask issued the opening chant of the Invocation to Goddess, uttered in the ancient tongue of the realm that few understood now, and that was so like the tongue of the barbarians. With the words came a chill across the folk-filled square, for a cloud was crossing the countenance of Goddess. The priestesses gave the Sign of Goddess to ward off the evil in the omen, and the High Priestess continued with her chant.
Over the cold armor she sprinkled powder, the same used on babes fresh-dripping from the womb, symbolizing the prince’s rebirth in the lands beyond. Then she began a new chant, birth-chant, and the other priestesses gathered to lift the bier. The regents drew back at this, for it was unholy that the hand of any man should touch the bronze now. Into the darkness of the tomb the virgins carried their burden, thence to emerge only when they had begun the final rites, never to be seen or spoken of by the uninitiate.
The masonwrights then performed their final task, sealing the entrance with stone; and the High Priestess stood over the blocks and whispered a prayer to seal the door with a curse. The other virgins stood on the top of the barge-shaped edifice, raising a sail of thin silk upon the tall mast. Almost immediately it bellied full of wind, a good omen now. The sail flapped and strained under the pressure of the winds. Soon it would be reduced to tatters, and the voyage of Elnavis begun; and when the last tatter was gone the people would know that the ka, the spirit of Elnavis, had come at last to the land beyond, and taken on flesh glorious, unaging, and immortal.
Throughout the vast City, so soon as that saffron sail was raised, plumed incense arose from every altar and shrine, commemorating the soul of Elnavis, who had died so young, to the care of beneficent Goddess. And due sacrifices were offered, and the bells rang out, and the women wailed, again, again, again. Silver clouds and the jade orb passed by serenely overhead and the still hours slowly passed. A brief shower came, chill with the sting of nearing winter.
Gradually the crowds thinned in the square, and the rooftops emptied, and the windows grew vacant. The people returned to their black-draped homes, there to cover every window, and light no lamp or candle, and break bread and sup water in silence, and sleep alone in remembrance. Every house of pleasure was closed, and every courtesan went to her couch alone: for wine and meat and all pleasures of the body were forbidden in this pass of mourning.
Empty, the great square was scarcely more quiet than it had been full. Even the regents went at last, singly and wordlessly, to their hushed palatial abodes.
The rain came again, dampening robes of black linen. Now there remained only the holy virgins, the chara and the Queen. Soon dark God would rise from the distant bright horizon, and whisper His words into Goddess’s ear; and the last of the rites must be completed before then. The priestesses beckoned, and the chara touched the elbow of the Empress; but the grieving mother stared heedless at the barge of harsh stone and the rending sail above. The High Priestess approached, and took the Queen’s hand; and silently, as a mother leads her bemused, infirm child, she led her majesty to the waiting litter. Behind, with the movements of a doll, came the Chara of Corthio. The aged priestess put her majesty into the litter and signed to the bearers. They took up the two litters of ebony and black silk and bore them away. Only then, in the privacy of the rain, did the priestesses ascend again the stone steps, there to do what was needful.
§
THE FUNERAL PROCESSION continued in the city, but high in his chambers in the Imperial Palace, the Gerso sat alone.
His windows were covered with dark hangings, and the chambers were as dark as any chamber could be. One small oil lamp flickered on the floor, throwing a yellowish stain of light across the walls.
The Gerso sat naked before that lamp. His body was bathed in laurial oil, and strange markings rippled across his skin, a charactery tortured and bent, half drawing, half writing. His dark skin gleamed also with sweat and his muscles were hard knots, so that the veins and tendons stood out.
He sat utterly still, and strove and worked against himself.
A trickle of sweat formed among the black hairs of his chest, and licked its way down over the ridges of his lean belly, to the dark root of his sex.
His fingers twitched from his left knee and the dagger flipped onto the floor before him. Between the man’s knees and the oil lamp the dagger stuck in the floor, leaning at an angle.
The pommel of the handle ended in a green orb, which was carved so that it bore in its seven facets the image of the moon’s true aspect at that very hour, as the jade chariot of dark God passed from thin crescent at its rising over the bright horizon, to the full body disc when it sank below the dark horizon.
Thus the Gerso sat naked on the floor, and the lamplight passed through the green orb and threw a sickly strange light upon him. In the shadow that his body etched on the wall from this light, something stirred.
The shadow grew large. And it crawled across the wall, to face the man.
The Gerso opened his eyes, and looked upon the thing.
‘I want her,’ he said. ‘Fetch me the heart of the Queen.’
And the thing on the wall writhed and made answer, in the manner of tongueless, mouthless, voiceless things,
Her heart I cannot give you. Her loins I can make twitch and dance, and I can topple her over into lust for you. But such things as love lie beyond my reach.
‘I want her body, not her heart,’ the Gerso said. ‘Give me her loins and her heart will follow.’
And the thing upon the wall shook with silent laughter, and flitted up through the crack between the ceiling and the wall to do its master’s bidding.
§
SOLEMNLY the bearers took the litters up the silent, empty streets. They met but a few people, who bowed in silence until the litters passed. Through the barren marketplace and over the high road bridging the coomb to the Citadel the bearers took their burdens, up unto a Citadel as the priestesses had borne theirs to a tomb. And very like a tomb was that Imperial house: every face of marble draped with black, and over every window and dark doorway the hangings. Every slave was swathed in mourning; and only one in ten of the hundreds of lamps in those twisting depths was lighted, and that with wick trimmed well back. Even the great golden Disk of Goddess was covered. It was such a place where dark God Himself might feel at home, and stop to take His pleasure for a few hours.
Into those somber depths the bearers bore their burdens, separating in the innermost courtyard. The royal litter went on to the central halls; that of the Chara Ilal went to the southernmost wing, where the chara kept her chambers. In the central entrance hall the slaves put down their litter, but the Empress did not emerge. They grew worried; and at last they bent and helped her majesty forth, which she permitted with the air of one who walks abroad still dreaming. Absently, she signed for them to go. But the slaves only stood watching her ascend the curving marble stairs, tears welling in their great dark eyes.
With steady trudging steps, she ascended the many stories of her palace. The soft pad of her naked feet upon the stone did not echo off the black-draped walls. Through the murk of long slanting passageways and up coiling flights of steps she walked, where she could see nothing about her.
But her feet carried her on, knowing well the path they trod. In the darkness slaves passed the Queen without seeing her; and even, once, bumped into her, to fall back abashed and abject. Yet the Queen took no notice.
In time, the great oaken doors of her chambers presented themselves, and opened before her. She passed within, silent as a specter come to haunt its onetime abode. The great doors swung shut behind her, closing with a mocking ring of gray iron. At the sound, the Queen’s shoulders began to fall and her posture slumped. Each step seemed slower and more burdensome than the one before. Then a hand gripped hers, and a strong arm went around the small of her back, and she looked blankly up into the face of Ennius Kandi.
§
IN THE DARKNESS, Ampeánor’s body stirred, and he roused himself from the dream.
He felt the stiffness of his back and the soreness of his limbs. Images of the battle swam before his eyes: the unkempt barbarians, the terror of the Tezmonian guardsmen, the arrows filling the sky. It was said that Ara-Karn alone had given them the bow. But whence had he had it?
Heavy chains weighted his arms and legs. He lay upon cold, damp stones, and all about him there was hollow silence and darkness, complete and overmastering. He might have lain upon his bier in the chamber of the death-barge of the Torvalen, high atop the necropolis of Rukor.
Despair swept over him then, the way a freshening breeze will take the sail of a ship when she emerges from the shadows of the Isles, and takes again the deep; and he felt for the first time in his life, helpless. Ara-Karn had told his men to take him alive, and that could mean but one thing: they meant to torture him to death. It was the way with these savages. Else they might leave him here and forget him; and here he might lie and starve and rot while the years wheeled and the cities southward fell and were gutted.
Out of the pained confusion of his waking mind, Ampeánor was sure of but one thing: that the civilized lands must learn the secrets of this strange new weapon if they were to endure. Bows must be stolen or captured, and the master craftsmen of the Empire must learn to fashion them. And more: somehow the urgency of this knowledge must be borne to Tarendahardil, that Allissál might be warned and learn some way to guard herself. Yet what could he, the prisoner of Ara-Karn, do to aid her?
Allissál … into the darkness her beauty came and wounded him anew with longing. In all these years he had never touched her, save to kiss her hand or steady her: a few rare times he could not forget. No alliance had been possible between them, for he had not seen her before she came as a young maid into Tarendahardil to be consecrated as its Queen; and that same year, the year which had known Elnavis’s birth, she had been consecrated again, and ritually wed to dark God.
But once, a few years ago, they had chanced to be alone together on a hunt in the forests of Rukor, separated from the others of the party. Then, heated and dirtied, she had bathed in the mountain stream, and he had parted the reed stalks and gazed upon her nakedness. That had been a tempting that had tried his soul; yet he had prevailed, and returned dry-mouthed and shaking to his watch post. And now, chained in this underground cell, he saw again that summer hunt: and he wished he had fallen to his desires no matter what the consequences, even if she had despised and hated him for it forever after. Then, at least, he might have faced his death without regret.
‘Allissál, O Allissál,’ he groaned aloud, ‘will I never see you again, to tell you of all my feelings?’
The thought mocked him and maddened him. He strove up against the heavy chains. Half to his feet he rose in a supreme effort, his veins bursting, the blood starting afresh from his many wounds. The ring of iron was like the tolling of a great bell in his skull; dizziness assailed him and he fell back gasping, blood streaming into his open mouth.
He lay a long while unconscious.
The beard upon his cheeks was bristling and itching when glaring torchlight reamed through the bars in the door of his cell. Rough cursing sounded from without; then the rasp of a key turning the lock. The cell filled with the glare; he shut his eyes tightly.
‘What do you want?’ he asked, knowing well why they had come.
A clay tankard of water and a rough wooden bowl containing a greasy hot mess were set in the straw beside him. A voice grunted in the barbarian tongue, ‘Eat.’
He was suddenly ravenous. He ate and drank as greedily as a farm slave. When he had done, they took back the bowl and tankard. They did not answer his questions. The torchlight fled the cell, the door slammed shut and the lock grated. He was alone.
He thought, They wish me healthy before they begin.
After that he was fed four more times at odd intervals. The routine never varied; they never spoke save to issue him rude commands. How much time passed was uncertain; that internal clock that he shared in common with all beasts and men was unreliable here in the darkness. Yet from the length of his beard he guessed it was weeks since the battle on the walls. The fifth time they came was shortly after the fourth; and this time they brought no food.
There were four of them. They laid strong hands on him; he heard a rasp sounding by his head on the wall. They lifted him up. The chains about his legs were gone, but the heavy manacles still weighted his hands.
‘Come,’ they said, shoving him forward.
‘Where are you taking me?’ he demanded.
One of them hawked and spat. ‘To see the King.’
They dragged him forth from the cell.
§
THEY TOOK HIM along a low corridor sloping gradually upward. Ampeánor was weakened, starved and but half-healed: he could only walk unsteadily. The barbarians cursed him and shoved him along.
‘You filth,’ he swore at them in their own tongue. ‘If I live, I’ll see you on the point of my lance for this!’
They only laughed and shoved him more rudely. ‘Aye, if you live! But it will be the whim of our great King as to how long you’ll live, and who’ll have the pleasure of killing you!’ He added an obscene jest at Ampeánor’s expense, at which the others howled derisively.
They emerged from the tunnel into the light of Goddess, whereat Ampeánor shrank back. His captors laughed, and dragged him forth. Around the courtyard high walls gaped with breaches. Then he knew the place: those stones had gone at his command to repair the city’s outer walls, and this was the prison of Tezmon. A few more barbarians joined them as they passed through the gates. Ampeánor smiled. At least he commanded some respect among them.
They drove him stumbling up the winding streets. On all sides were visible the ghastly evidences of the rule of Ara-Karn. Corpses, not all of them entire, lay rotting and stinking in the strong sunlight. Rats tore openly at the graying flesh. Dogs, once the pampered pets of scented foreign courtesans, now slunk the streets half starving, gnawing human bones. Charred remnants stood where once proud buildings had towered. Other structures were even now aflame, with none bothering to extinguish them. From dark windows came shrill cries of tormented women and gruff, violent laughter.
The guards brought him to the mansion of the mayor, through the ornately carved inner doors, into the hall where once Armand had commanded his beloved Vapio dancing girls. About the walls the slave-maidens were positioned still; but now their hair was disheveled, and their paints blurred, and golden looping bonds their only dress.
Upon the dais in the ornate chair Ara-Karn sat now, the hard lines of his huge frame seeming too massive for the delicate woodwork. He did not so much sit there as sprawl, with one long leather-clad leg thrown over the arm. In one scarred fist he held a golden cup slopping wine over the blood-stained coat of mail; beside and behind him several other maidens attended him and eyed him fearfully. When they looked at Ampeánor, it was with pity and a desperate mute appeal.
The guards threw Ampeánor sprawling on the mosaic tiles. He heard their coarse laughter in his ears. He looked up, saw a tilted Ara-Karn regarding him expectantly. He set his teeth. Despite the heaviness of the chains and the weakness of his long-starved limbs, he rose staggeringly to his feet. He threw back his lank, heavy hair with a scornful toss of his head, planted his feet wide and, still gasping, stared down at the seated barbarian.
The giant rumbled an amused laugh at the sight. The laughter shook an ugly mass of livid scar tissue that ran down one side of his once-handsome face, where there had been hair and beard and the upper half of his ear. Someone had hurt him badly, once. May he strike again, Ampeánor prayed, and may I aid him to do so. He looked about the hall, trying to find the instruments of torture.
‘You fought well,’ Ara-Karn admitted equably, ‘for a civilized man. How would you like to fight for me from now on?’
He looked back, shook his head in silent contempt.
‘No? We have gold in plenty, man. Women, too, as many as you’d have the strength for.’
The sounds he had heard in the street returned to Ampeánor’s mind. He shook his head. ‘Torture and slay me now,’ he said wearily, carelessly. ‘But I shall never join you, Ara-Karn.’
‘Do not call me by that name!’ the giant roared. ‘I am not Ara-Karn, that thief, that trickster, that fleer, that barge-robber! I am Gen-Karn Great King, the chieftain of Orn!’ He had risen from the chair, his black eyes blazing like coals, his scarred fist knotted upon the hilt of his massive sword.
‘Hearken to me, Southron,’ he blazed, ‘that you may know me – it is I, Gen-Karn, who speak! When I was a youngster and had taken my first bandar pelt, then I slew a man, my father’s brother: for I had lain with a woman of his, and he was jealous and challenged me. But even then few could match my sword, and I slew him. But this angered the chief, a wheezing old fellow. And he had more to fear from me than the portent of my name alone. So they cast me out for seven winters’ time, knowing no other tribe would dare to shelter me. This was their hope, that I should die when the winter snows came, and the winds drive down from the white-toothed North. But I did not die. Instead, I came southward, and went among the mountains of the Spine. Over rivers of ice and between the wind-scoured rocky peaks above where not even birds dare go, I found a way: it was the burning of my anger and my youth that warmed me.
‘I came down from the mountains. I found the green fields of the civilized lands. And it was not yet even winter there! I shook the ice from my beard, and I vowed unto those mountains, that Orn should know my hand again. Seven winters I roamed the lands of the lower North and the South: even unto the great City I ventured. And what I saw made me laugh, and shake with desire.
‘What are these that you call men? No better than women! None from all the tribes had gone so far as I: not Bar-East himself, the old footshaker, has seen the City Over the World! And with all this knowledge driven like knife-blades into me, I went back to the far North, through Gerso where they knew me not, and so to Orn.
‘Then the old chief of our tribe was long dead, and my brother was chieftain of Orn. But I would not long bide that, but slew him that winter, and held the warriors to me with my tales of the wealth that would be ours when we fell like snow-winds on the blossomed South! And that next autumn, when the time was come for the Assembly of the Tribes, I challenged the old Warlord Obil-Kalth and slew him before the Pyre.
‘And in truth, I was the greatest Warlord the tribes had known for as long as the lists are remembered. It was I who spread rumors among the tribes, of the riches of the South: it was I who made them lust for war! This was my plan, and it was of my devising: and we should have been heard within these halls ere this, had not Gundoen and some of the other chieftains opposed me out of their own little pride! Then the trickster, the barge-robber, came along: he robbed me of my rightful place, this Ara-Karn: by a foul trick and an unlawful challenge, or else he would have never bested me, and I should have hurled his corpse from off the lip of Urnostardil, and Gundoen’s besides!
‘Unlawful I call his challenge, and so it was: I remain the rightful Warlord; and now I only bide my time until the Assembly of the Tribes, which he dare not deny, when he shall know of me again! And if he dare not meet my challenge, then I declare him coward and slave, a man to be mocked or spit upon even by women!
‘Now know you, Southron, that I, Gen-Karn, have broken with the barge-robber Ara-Karn. These men are my men, not his; and they know no will but mine! This city is my city, not his; Gen-Karn is King in Tezmon! And if he doubt it, let him come and take it from me – and until then let him give over sending his beer-boy Gundoen, or his beer-boy Gundoen’s beer-boys, to beg me to return to his standard!’
So the giant raged in the ornate echoing hall, as much to himself and his own followers as to Ampeánor. The captive women cringed in terror before the fury of their drunken, demonic captor; even the callous, iron-clad warriors looked uneasy. Only Ampeánor stood undaunted, gazing upon the barbarian chieftain with scorn and disgust.
The mood passed as suddenly as it had come. The giant shrugged and rumbled a drunken laugh, fell back into the chair and took wine from one of the nude captive women.
‘Your speech is that of one greater than a mere fighting-man,’ he said after a space, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. ‘What are you called?’
‘Ampeánor nal Torvalen, High Charan of Rukor, Imperial Regent to his highness, counselor and envoy of her majesty Allissál, the Divine Queen in Tarendahardil.’
The barbarian lifted his one eyebrow. ‘So? I have heard of you, Rukorian.’ He seemed to consider for a bit. Then he suddenly rose. ‘What is this, you dogs?’ he shouted to his men. ‘And have you kept an Imperial envoy in chains? By dark God, blood will spill for this! Remove them!’
Some hastened to obey. The chains fell clattering to the tiles; Ampeánor’s arms felt suddenly as if they were made of willow. He gazed at the barbarian with astonishment.
The giant handed him the winecup. He looked at it dubiously of a moment, then shrugged and drank. The Postio wine coursed like fire down his throat.
‘Yes, drink, my lord,’ said the barbarian. ‘Drink! I am no barge-robber – had I been, this would have been poison instead of wine! That man is worse than the lowest thief of the tribes; but I am Gen-Karn, and it is with me you deal!’
He grasped him by the shoulders, calling orders to his men: ‘A cloak for the lord of Rukor! Ready a feast in the banquet hall! The Imperial envoy would break his long fast! Charan, I knew not you were from the Holy City. I visited Tarendahardil in my youth, and know of your customs. I am no barge-robber: I have broken with him: here it is Gen-Karn who rules! I am become a civilized man, a true king: King of Tezmon! Speak to me, then, as monarch to monarch.
‘We shall be friends, and allies against the barge-robber! Come and feast! Would you like women? In truth, I think God and Goddess erred, and made our lands differently: for ours breeds up the finest men, but our women are born hard; and yours makes women of your men – but for your women, there is no matching them! And have you really seen the Divine Queen herself, and is she lovely as they say? Often have I dreamed of her, the Goddess with the golden hair, the golden woman of the South! You shall tell me of her while we eat. Ah, if I could but meet her! You, there, wench! More wine!’
Ampeánor, too stunned for word or thought, sat by the barbarian in the banquet hall. And as food was brought he began to eat, ravenously, greedily. It had suddenly been borne in upon him that he was not going to be tortured after all.
§
THE GERSO’S usual sardonic smile was vanished. He was looking into Allissál’s eyes now gently, even sadly. How he had come to be here in her chambers she did not know; she simply accepted the fact. At the first touch of that strong arm about the small of her back, she slumped into his embrace. Half was she carried into her chambers. She did not know whether he had spoken or not.
She saw Emsha’s cry, and the Gerso’s hand waving her away. He said something, but Emsha did not budge: she did not like the Gerso. Allissál gave her a sign, like a child imitating her parents’ gestures; only then did Emsha stiffly bow and leave the chambers. The great iron clank of the shutting door sounded again, like some word of warning from the lips of her long-voyaged ancestors, too faint to be understood. The two of them were alone.
He took her to the side of the bed and left her there. She swayed gently when his arm left her; but somehow she remained upon her feet. She looked about her at this chamber of hers, quiet and quite dark. With the black hangings across the high, narrow window, the place seemed alien to her, as if it were someplace she had never been.
Beside the table he lighted the lamp and poured two goblets full of wine – purple wine from Postio, and unmixed. One he lifted to his lips and downed in a single, shuddering draught. He wiped his lips along the back of his hand, regarding her. Then he brought the other goblet to her and put it to her mouth.
She was about to protest, but felt the cool wetness at her lips and, unwillingly, swallowed a few drops. Her lips moved clumsily, sucking at the lip of the goblet; most of the wine dribbled down her chin and dripped coldly upon her breasts beneath the thin black linen. He smiled, and wiped her mouth and chin with a cloth. Then he tossed cloth and goblet aside. She heard the dull metallic clank as the goblet struck the stone floor, like the tolling of the bells without.
He put his hand up to her cheek and stroked at the tracks of salt. He reached past, and drew back the covering black mantle, unveiling her bound pinned hair. He put his hand to her throat, where the veins were dully throbbing. He grasped the black linen firmly in his browned muscular fingers, and began, gently, slowly, inexorably, to pull. And the linen began to rip. It tore straightways down her front; from his fist trailed a long, narrow shred of black, wine-soaked linen. It ripped in an even pathway down the front of her robes to below her knees. The long tatter he dropped to the floor. Beneath her knees, the robe was whole down to her naked feet, where he had not bothered to rend it
The two sides of black hung akimbo to either side; down the middle, shining out from beneath the black folds, was exposed her flesh, warmly golden and mysterious in the lamplight. She had worn nothing beneath the robes of mourning; that would have been unseemly. So when she looked down, irresistibly following his own dark gaze, she saw only the inner curve of her breasts, trim, flattened belly, long smooth thighs, and the golden, glowing patch between. She could see the perspiration beginning to bead in the hollow between her soft breasts. The sight of her own nudity, incredibly erotic in its contrast to the plain linen, stirred feelings deep inside her not easily contained. She looked back up at him expectantly, uncomprehendingly. She waited.
He reached up and pulled the pins from the masses of her hair, one after another. There were so many of them that this took some time; but still she did not protest. With each pin or riband pulled free a fresh bunch of hair fell loose, releasing a gust of sweet scent. She was startled at this scent, having put no perfumes in her hair for many passes now. This was the natural aroma of her own hair, smelling of the freshness of new reaped hay. She smelled it in wonder, having never before realized how heady it was.
He smiled at the delight in her widened eyes, and let fall the clattering pins to the floor. He moved closer to her, so close their breaths intermingled. When he put his hand between her thighs, there where she knew her flesh was softest and warmest, she resisted, drawing her knees closely together. Then she ceased resisting and relaxed somewhat. Slowly, tentatively, she felt herself opening, a phalix flower blossoming under expert care. Somewhere within her a feeling, like a string drawn too tightly on a golden lyre, snapped; and she ceased relaxing, and began to respond. When his lips came in contact with hers, she surprised herself with the ferocity and avidity with which her opened lips reached out to grasp and hold him…
He forced her gently back upon the couch, and her torn robes fell openly to either side of her. She no longer heard the bells without, or the city’s women distantly wailing: those sounds were lost beneath his body and the harsh pulsing of his veins caressing her tingling skin. She forgot her grief and all the despair that had shrouded her ever since the coming of the Mersalinal with his news. She forgot her great ambitions, she forgot the impropriety of her actions, she forgot that this was a man she scarcely knew, a penniless adventurer practically from the lands of the barbarians. A roar of blood resounded in her ears, like the sound of the surf on some deserted shore. She remembered, she knew, she felt only passionate release of all the harshly constrained desires of so many, many, many years.
When she cried out in the darkness, her women in the silent chambers below nodded their heads in sympathy and went back to their weeping.
