Destiny's Lovers (13 page)

“You do not eat, child.” Tamat was looking at
Janina’s untouched stew bowl.

“It’s the batreen,” Janina began.

“No, it’s the man.” Tamat patted her hand. “I
understand how difficult it can sometimes be to hold to your vows.
I’m old, girl, but my memory hasn’t failed me yet. Stay with me
tonight, in my room. We’ll talk of other things so you need not
think about what he will be doing.”

Soon after this, Tamat rose to leave the
feast. She took Janina and the two lesser priestesses with her.
Sidra and Osiyar would remain to preside until the villagers had
eaten and drunk their fill and had stumbled off to bed with
whatever partners they desired.

With an aching heart, Reid watched Janina go.
He wanted to hurry after her, to tell her he had no intention of
coupling with any woman but her. Then he saw Sidra looking at him
and knew he would have to be on guard lest she discover what he was
planning. He tried to make his mind blank, to think about nothing
but the food and the batreen and the dancing that had just begun.
He let the village women take turns teaching him how to dance in
the circular, four-partner steps that seemed to go on and on
forever. After a while he saw Sidra and Osiyar talking to a pair of
well-dressed elderly men, whom he assumed were important in the
village and he decided Sidra would be too busy to watch him
carefully.

He pretended to drink heavily, but over and
over again he managed to dispose of his batreen onto the ground or
into the bushes. He began to weave and shout the way the other
dancers were doing.

“Come with me,” urged a woman, catching his
hand to pull him from the crowd of dancers. “I’m Anniellia, and I
chose you for tonight.”

As she dragged him away, Reid snatched up a
large jug of batreen.

“You won’t need that,” the woman said with a
knowing laugh. “I’m all you’ll need or want until dawn.”

“I like the taste,” Reid declared, weaving
drunkenly. “We’ll just have another cup before we retire.”

Anniellia took him to her home in the
village. It was little more than a shack, set closer to the water
than the other houses. She lit a lamp, then fastened the shutters
tight over the single window.

“Have you cups for the batreen?” Reid
asked.

“Only one,” Anniellia replied, producing a
dirty wooden specimen. “You shall use it. You are my guest.”

“No, lady,” Reid insisted gallantly. “You may
use the cup. I’ll drink from the jug.” He filled her cup and then
pretended to drink deeply from the jug, upending it.

“It’s good,” he said, wiping his mouth on his
sleeve. He filled Anniellia’s cup again. She drank only half of it
before putting it down.

“Take off all of your clothes,” she ordered.
“You are mine for tonight, and I’ve never seen a man who looks like
you. I want to watch your body while we’re together.”

To replace his soiled and damaged treksuit,
Reid had been given the same loose grey tunic and trousers the
village men wore. When Anniellia reached for the waist of his
trousers, he stepped away from her.

“You first,” he said, filling her cup to the
brim. “I want to look at you, too.”

Anniellia pulled off her grey dress and flung
it into a corner.

“Well?” she asked, pirouetting in front of
him. “Am I pretty enough to please you?”

“You are lovely,” he murmured, hoping he
sounded convincing. She was a slightly heavier, much coarser
version of Janina. She had full, rich breasts and nicely curving
hips. Her hair was a shade or two darker than Janina’s and curly
instead of straight. Her eyes were sky-blue. Reid felt not the
slightest stirring of desire for her. She was not Janina.

Anniellia lay down on her narrow bed, spread
her legs a little, and beckoned with a provocative smile.

“Come to me,” she said. “I have been waiting
for you all evening, and I’m ready. Just take me now, Reid. We can
do it more slowly the next time.”

“I’m flattered that you chose me.” Handing
her the cup of batreen, Reid sat on the edge of her bed. “I shall
drink a toast to your beauty.”

“Can’t that wait until later?” she said
peevishly, shifting her legs. “Reid, hurry.”

“And you must drink a toast to me. I’ll be
hurt if you don’t.” Gently but firmly he urged the hand holding the
cup toward her lips. “Drink all of it, Anniellia. That’s the custom
in my home village.”

“I’m getting dizzy.” Her voice was plaintive,
the words slightly slurred.

“Have I done that, made you dizzy with
desire?” He laid one hand on a bare breast and felt her squirm in
pleasure. “Now, I want you to drink another toast, my sweet
Anniellia. To your lovely right breast. That’s it. Now another, to
your incredibly beautiful left breast.”

He made her drink toasts to her nose, to each
of her ears, all of her fingers and half of her toes before she
finally fell asleep. She’d have a foul head in the morning, but he
had confirmed the information Janina had given him by asking the
lesser priestess, Philian, and she had assured him that while
enough batreen would send the drinker into a deep stupor, it never
caused any permanent physical damage. It was a completely harmless,
totally pleasurable drink. Reid might have enjoyed it himself if he
had been free to drink it in safety.

He picked up Anniellia’s dress from the floor
and tucked it over her naked body. Then he splashed a little of the
batreen around her so she would smell it in the morning, and
finished the job by rumpling the bedclothes. Finally, taking the
jug with him, he slipped out the door and headed back to the temple
complex.

The feast was over, except for a few folk
draped across the tables in sleep and a group of elderly women
talking together, who broke off to stare at him as he went by them.
Sidra and Osiyar had gone. Reid made his way toward Osiyar’s
dwelling, eager to find his own room and lock the door against the
women of Ruthlen.

The moment he stepped inside the High
Priest’s house, Reid knew there was something different within the
building, some unusual yet faintly familiar feminine scent. It
reminded him of red flowers. He peeked into the rooms used by the
two younger priestlings, but they were empty. While priestesses
were severely restricted, it seemed the priests were free to spend
festival evenings as they wished. Shrugging his shoulders, Reid
started for his own room. A low moan stopped him. It came from
Osiyar’s chamber.

Thinking the priest might have imbibed too
much batreen and become sick, Reid pushed open the unlatched door,
intending to ask if he could help. There, within the chamber, he
saw the source of the sweet fragrance and recalled on whom he had
recently smelled it.

Sidra lay naked on her back upon Osiyar’s
bed, her softly waving golden hair spilling across the covers, her
eyes closed. She was an incredibly beautiful woman in the full
ripeness of maturity, who was obviously lost in the throes of
passion. Beside her, but not touching her, lay Osiyar, also
unclothed and in the same aroused state as Sidra. His eyes, too,
were closed. Sidra moaned, and Osiyar answered her with a long,
drawn-out groan. The room was filled with a tension so strong Reid
could not avoid feeling it, with sexual need, with a woman’s
demanding urgency, and with that sweet, heavy khata-flower perfume
which he now recognized as Sidra’s.

Reid turned away in disgust, left Osiyar’s
bedchamber, and closed the door softly. He paused for a moment in
the round central room of the building, feeling sickened by the
perversion of a great power. Now he understood why he had disliked
Sidra so much since first meeting her. Something in him had seen
her basic falseness.

Sidra, High Priestess-Designate, was
doubtless virgin in body, but in mind and soul she was as unchaste
as the lowest prostitute on any prison planet. It took no
telepathic ability to understand that the two in the room behind
him had linked their minds to commit in spirit an act they were
forbidden to perform physically. The dishonesty and hypocrisy of
that act took his breath away. He thought he knew who had
instigated it, who had the greater telepathic power. The only
question unanswered by the scene he had witnessed was whether
Osiyar had been seduced or was a weak and willing accomplice.

He wondered briefly if Tamat knew. Then he
thought surely not. That knowledge would destroy her, would break
her gallant old heart. For Janina’s sake, who loved Tamat, and
because, in spite of their differences about opening Ruthlen to
outsiders, he had come to admire and respect the High Priestess,
Reid decided not to tell Tamat what he had seen. He hoped she would
go to her grave not knowing. He felt certain that Sidra’s
telepathic power was strong enough to keep her secret well hidden.
But when Tamat was dead, how could he leave Janina under the rule
of those two in the room behind him? And what would they plan for
him, once Tamat was gone?

He did not remember leaving Osiyar’s house;
he simply found himself in the temple courtyard. Breathing deeply
of the clean night air to get Sidra’s perfume out of his lungs, he
hurried toward the opening in the encircling wall. His overpowering
need to get as far away from Sidra and Osiyar as he could propelled
him into the feasting area just outside the entrance.

“There you are.” A female hand reached toward
him to pull him away from the temple complex and into the
darkness.

“Who are you?” he demanded, trying to shake
off the unwanted touch.

“Senastria the fisherwoman,” said the
seductive voice. “I want to lie with you, Reid. I want to bear your
child. Anniellia said she would have your first son, but she was
wrong. It will be me.”

After what he had just witnessed, Reid wasn’t
certain he could have made love then, even with Janina. He felt
sick and dirty. This woman did not interest him at all, but he did
not want her to make an uproar about his unwillingness.

He followed her up the nearby hillside.
There, on a grassy spot between two rock outcroppings, she pulled
him down beside her. To his great relief, Reid realized that he was
still carrying the batreen jug. He thought it likely from her
behavior that Senastria had already imbibed a fair amount. She
proved to be a more willing drinker than Anniellia had been. She
gulped right from the jug, giggling, and giggled again when Reid
pretended to drink, too. It was not long before she slept soundly
on her rocky pillow.

Reid returned to the temple, where he spent
the rest of the night sitting against one of its columns with the
empty batreen jug between his legs.

* * * * *

“I understand that you lent yourself to two
women last night,” Tamat said. “I am pleased with you, Reid, and I
will be even more pleased when they produce healthy children.”

“No one can be certain they will have
children,” Reid said.

“They always do after the twin full moons
festival,” Tamat replied serenely.

Reid had not thought about pregnancy, he had
only been interested in avoiding women he didn’t want. He saw Sidra
smiling at him and tried to guard his thoughts. He could not look
at Janina’s set, unhappy face. He wanted to tell her he had lent
himself to no women, because he wanted only her. Realizing that
Sidra’s lovely blue eyes were still on him, Reid tried to make his
mind a blank.

“If there is something wrong with Reid, so
that these women do not conceive,” Sidra said with false sweetness,
“he can always try again at dark moons time, when we will celebrate
Janina’s full admission to our ranks. That seems to me an
appropriate night for Reid to prove his value to us by impregnating
two, or possibly three women. We would like you to father as many
children as possible, Reid.”

Before you are destroyed. The message lay so
clearly in his mind that Reid was amazed Tamat had not sensed it.
But Tamat obeyed the laws and would not expect her designated
successor to violate them. He stood mute, wondering how much of his
thoughts Sidra had penetrated, wondering if she knew the contempt
and disgust he felt for her.

“Reid will do what he is required to do,”
Tamat said, making Reid remember that in this room there were at
least two conversations taking place at one time. Sidra cast a
mocking look in his direction before excusing herself to discuss
some temple matter with Osiyar.

Go to your lover, you false, vicious
creature,
Reid thought scornfully as Sidra walked past him in a
sweet wave of khata-flower fragrance.

Be careful, Reid,
she answered
silently.
You don’t understand the Power you are tempting.
He heard her laughter in his mind just before he doubled over and
fell to the floor in sudden, excruciating pain.

Tamat cried out in surprise, while Janina
rushed forward to help him. In an instant, the pain was gone. Reid
lay too limp from shock to move, with his head in Janina’s lap
while she mopped his damp forehead with a corner of her robe. When
Reid was able to open his eyes, the first thing he saw was Sidra’s
dainty, silver-sandaled foot peeping beneath the hem of her soft
blue robe. He thought for a moment that she would kick him or make
the pain return with greater intensity. Instead, she spoke
aloud.

“Reid, I believe you have consumed too much
batreen and it has disagreed with you. Please be more careful at
the next festival.”

“I will be careful,” Reid promised in the
shaky whisper that was all he could muster. Sidra went away. Reid
caught Janina’s small hand and held it to his lips for a
moment.

“Stand up, Reid, and face me.” At Tamat’s
bidding, Reid took a couple of deep breaths and made himself get
off the floor. Tamat looked hard at him. “I do not believe what
just happened to you was the result of batreen. What is wrong?”

“Nothing, Tamat.” He felt steadier now. The
brief, unbelievable pain was only a memory, coupled with a fear
that it would return. He recognized that fear as something Sidra
had implanted in his mind in an attempt to gain control over
him.