West of January (36 page)

“You did not give the traders so much silk just for one more bed partner, when you have so many already.”

“But golden hair excites me.” She ran her fingers down my chest. “No salutes yet? I do begin to feel slighted, Knobil.”

I had flinched at her touch. “I have no wish to insult you, lady. My lack of response is not deliberate.”

“But why? Your tastes do not run to Um-oao, surely?”

“Certainly not!”

“Quetti would be a safer choice?”

“Neither of them!”

She laughed, and I discovered that I had just smiled.

“You must have lain with women before?”

I had lain with hundreds, but I merely said, “Yes.”

“Is it fear that troubles you? Are you afraid of me?”

“Perhaps. I do not know what horrors you have in store.”

She frowned. “No horrors! As you guessed, I paid dearly for you, so I will cherish and guard you. Of course I hope that you will choose to remain in my service, but any small tasks you may agree to perform for me will be entirely voluntary. You are certainly in no danger at the moment…unless your callous rejection should rouse my wrath, of course?” She raised a mocking eyebrow and again displayed her dagger teeth.

Ayasseshas was a skilled manipulator of men. She was running through her repertoire, seeking what would work best on me.

“I see that,” I admitted. “I am not a brave man, lady, and I do not mean to defy you. I do not think it is fear.”

She glanced toward the giant by the door. “Is it Um-oao? I promise you that he is not here to chaperone me. Do as you will with me, Knobil. He will interfere only if he thinks I am in danger of serious injury. He has never restrained an overly ardent lover yet, although an enthusiastic snakeman treats a woman much as his constrictor treats its prey.”

An audience would not deter me. “Not he.”

“You love another?”

“I do.” Misi had betrayed me, yet I loved her still.

The spinster pouted. “She is fairer than I?”

Misi was ugly. She was obscenely fat and hairy, and I knew that. Yet had she been in Ayasseshas’s place, I should have clasped her to me in rapture. “No, lady, she is less fair than you.”

“Then you wish to remain faithful to her?”

I considered that possibility and then shook my head. There was almost no chance in the world that I should ever see my darling again. She would never know nor care if I took other women, and most certainly she would feel no obligation to me.

Ayasseshas shrugged and sighed. The serpents around her breasts writhed. “I am at a loss! Tell me the answer, then.”

Hesitantly I said, “Partly it is this: I heard how you spoke to Shisisannis and Ing-aa. You praised each for his virility in the other’s hearing…and the same with the rest of the men, I expect. You made a mockery of their manhood. Somehow you have unmanned them all, lady, and I fear that you will cast your witchcraft on me if I accept your offer now.”

She gave me a glance of exaggerated astonishment.
“Unmanned?
I swear to you that the last time I checked, there was no detectable flaw in Shisisannis’s manhood, neither quantity nor quality. Ing-aa always travels the same predictable road, but the distance he can journey on it is astonishing… Unmanned? I have not lowered their manhood, Knobil. I wish I could do something to raise yours!”

I suppose I had nothing to lose. I became rash. “It is unnatural for many men to share one woman!”

Ayasseshas hissed softly. “A herdman, you said? How many—”

“That’s quite different!”

Her eyes were cold as shining pebbles. “In what way, exactly?”

The question was so absurd that I think I spluttered before I found an answer. “Babies, for one thing. A herdmaster can breed many children at the same time. How many can you carry, lady? Do you bear sons for all your lovers?”

She sighed. “Knobil, babies are not what I seek from them. Truly, babies are not my purpose! But if you think you can quicken my womb, then you are welcome to try. Most welcome.”

I shook my head and looked away.

“What does deter you? Am I so ugly?”

“No… Try to understand this, then, lady. I see no great passion in you, either. You offer yourself to me like a plate of meat. It is brutal and demeaning. You think that because a woman is available, a man must be willing. It is no reflection on my manhood that I spurn you, for you strive somehow to use my body—and use it against me, although I know not how.”

“Goodness!” the spinster muttered. She stretched out in her sensual fashion, reaching for a grape, and again I watched the play of color on her skin. “You never
use
a woman? You do it only for love? You never seek to find pleasure, only to give it?”

“Share it.”

“Mmm?” As if pondering, she held the grape for a moment in those meat-red lips and then sucked it in, with an audible
plop!
“They say a man never forgets his first time. Who showed you how, Knobil?”

I know that I blushed furiously, but there was challenge in her eyes. “A woman on the grasslands, when I was traveling with the angel.”

Ayasseshas took another grape and smiled at it. “Angels do not
use
women?”

Indeed they did, and all those unfortunate herdwomen whom the addle-headed Violet had so callously thrown my way I had
used
without scruple, for my own selfish pleasure. I had even reveled in his praise for a job well done, not recognizing how he had been infecting me with his own twisted bitterness.

“And what of the women in the seafolk s grove?” That must have been a guess, but her aim was deadly. I could not reply, for I had
used
them to advertise my superior virility

“And in the ants’ nest? Did you find love there, Knobil?”

That was the worst of all.

“What you say is true, mistress. Yes, I have
used
women in the past, but since then I have come to know love. I see now that men and women should come together in a giving of pleasure or at least a sharing, and not simply a taking. I do not think you expect pleasure from me, and I seek no debts to you.”

“How sweet! And who taught you this great truth?”

Sudden caution tempered my rashness. I must not be too specific about Misi, lest I somehow expose her to the spinster’s envy. “I told you, lady—I love another.”

Ayasseshas stretched her arms overhead and yawned, as if weary. “Well, this has been a fascinating conversation. I am always willing to listen to talk of love…so ethereal a subject…and you are quite the most pompous man I have ever met. But now, wetlander, you will fornicate with me, and I shall be satisfied with nothing less than total exhaustion. If you are unable to rise to the occasion, I have means to assist you.” She reached for a goblet on the table.

“It makes tall tree grow in forest?”

She smiled, showing those protruding incisors again. “Usually I reserve it to blow on embers—for maximum effect, you understand—but in your case it will evidently be required to ignite the tinder. Drink, guest!”

I thought of my wild frenzy when Misi gave me such a potion, and the memory of how I had treated her shamed me anew. I could guess that the brew might be dangerous to me, but I had survived before, and I would have no compunction about being rough with Ayasseshas, even had her bodyguard not been standing by the door. What man could resist a chance to experience again that firestorm of ecstasy, passion magnified and prolonged beyond endurance and farther yet? For the first time, the potential of the situation began to arouse some reaction in me. Of course that did not escape Ayasseshas’s notice.

“And if I refuse to drink?”

She leaned very close. “I will persuade you.” Her dark eyes gazed unblinkingly into mine, and I felt a cool hand slither gently up my thigh.

My heartbeat had begun to rise, yet I returned her steady gaze. “How?”

“Um-oao will sit on your legs, Ah-uhu will hold your arms, and I shall pull your testicles down to your knees.”

Some truths are self-evident. For a long silent moment we were eye to eye, while her fingers continued their encouragement. “That would be a convincing argument,” I said. “Your logic is inescapable.”

“It has never failed. Bottoms up, lover!”

I took the goblet and drained it, wincing at the familiar foul taste.

Ayasseshas smiled and released me. She leaned back on her piled cushions and wriggled herself comfortable. “Proceed when ready, man.”

“It takes a moment or two,” I said. “So while we wait, tell me what a spinster does with a wetlander. I truly do not know, lady.”

That surprised her. “Indeed? I thought you were being courageous. You are merely ignorant?”

“I told you. I am a herdman. We are expected to be ignorant.”

“You were serious with all that talk of love? Astounding! Well, do you know how silk is made?”

My heart was pounding wildly now and my belly was a furnace. It did not feel quite the same as the time before, though.

“No,” I said. My eyelids were prickling.

“Silk,” said Ayasseshas, “is—How do you know it takes a moment or two?”

“I’ve had it before.”

“No!” She sat up, staring. “You lie!”

I could not speak; my throat was too constricted. A strange throbbing filled my head, and my lips seemed to be swelling and turning outward. I could barely keep my eyes open, so swollen were the lids now. Vaguely I could hear Ayasseshas screaming for her guards, and then I sank down into a thick blackness. I was trying to vomit but I could not even breathe. Other people had invaded the room and were clutching at me. I roused briefly as something hard was forced down my throat, and I knew that death was very near.

—4—

I
T WAS NOT
I
WHO DIED
, though; it was the giant Ah-uhu.

Much of what happened I learned later from young Quetti. Restless, suffering, unable to settle, he had returned to stand in his favorite place outside Ayasseshas’s door, as close to his beloved as he could be without annoying her. Any other would have been chased away by the guards, but a wetlander was precious and had privilege. When Ayasseshas started screaming for aid, when Um-oao went racing off to fetch Othisosish, when many others were flocking freely in and out of the palace, then Quetti drifted inside also to watch.

The long-ago saint, Issirariss, in his treatise on the virgin’s web, had noted that it was dangerous. He did not mention that a second dose is guaranteed to be fatal. The body can not twice withstand such maltreatment, and even a tiny trace of the drug will provoke a reaction quick and deadly. I may be the only man who has ever survived it.

My survival was due entirely to Othisosish, Ayasseshas’s resident medicine man. The oldest person in the settlement, he was also the only one not bound to her by the imprinting effect of the virgin’s web. She had his loyalty without it, for he was her father. Um-oao was sent for Othisosish. Luckily for me, he found him at once and brought him and his bag of magics back at a gallop, bearing him bodily like a child.

By that time my face had turned black, Quetti said, but Othisosish rammed a tube down my throat to give me air. Then he applied the venom of the yellow log snake. It is a tiny but deadly serpent, whose bite is almost always fatal. The venom can be extracted from the poison glands, and in very small amounts it is a potent physic, but to slaughter the snake and make the extraction takes time. There was no time, so Othisosish used the only other means available to him. No swampman could be worth as much as a wetlander, and Ah-uhu died to serve his beloved. The snake was then applied to my arm for a second bite. Even that may sometimes kill, but I was lucky. My recovery was as miraculously speedy as the onset of the symptoms. I found myself alive, suspended upside down by Um-oao while I vomited out blood and Ayasseshas’s love potion all over her precious rugs.

─♦─

By the time I was capable of speech, some sort of order was returning. Ah-uhu’s body had been removed, and men were busily cleaning up the mess. Others stood around, nervously watching Ayasseshas as she strode to and fro, screaming curses. She had not thought to dress herself, but they would all have watched her anyway. Quetti lurked in a corner, shrouded in his long burnoose, unnoticed or merely ignored.

The spinster stopped her pacing to come and stand over me as I lay sprawled on cushions. My throat was raw, my swollen right arm smoldered, and my heart hammered strangely. I had never felt more ill in my life.

“He will live?” she demanded.

“He will live,” Othisosish replied. He was behind me and I had not seen him, but I was not paying much attention to anything. “He will be as good as new very shortly.” He cackled. “Let him rest—he will be little use in bed for a while now.”

“He wasn’t before,” the spinster said. “How do you feel, wetlander?”

I croaked wordlessly.

“Tell me about this woman you love, the one less fair than I.”

That mention of Misi cut through my nausea and giddiness. I thought how wonderful it would be to have her enfold me once more in her great arms, to hug me as she had done before when I was sick. “Trader,” I whispered.

Ayasseshas knelt at my side to take my hand. “Describe her.”

I was still much too befuddled to work out why the spinster should be interested in Misi, but not so confused that I could not sense danger. “Beautiful, too.”

“Old? Young?”

“Just…beautiful,” I mumbled, being cautious.

“Shisisannis, come here!”

“My Queen?” The burly young snakeman appeared in my foggy field of view and then knelt opposite Ayasseshas on the other side of me. Earlier I had heard her send him off to bed like a child, but he had apparently been summoned back.

“Did you see any trader women when you picked up this rubbish?”

Serpents twisted as he grinned. “I saw two. There was an old fat one in brown and a younger one in a green dress, driving the wagon.”

“Which one do you love, Knobil?”

“Young one… Pula.”

Ayasseshas smiled grimly. “Go and fetch her in haste, Shisisannis my champion. The wagon will not have gone far, and a blind man could follow that trail.”