Student of Kyme (15 page)

‘
I’d like to show it to you,’ Iscane responded. ‘We could go
there now, if you want.’

‘
I want.’

He
laughed. ‘Let me pay the bill. Won’t be long.’

I watched
him slink across the restaurant, a tall, slim perfect har, his long
fair hair swinging loose down his back.

We walked
back arm in arm, kicking up the powdery snow. Iscane wore a huge
fur coat and at one point he stopped walking and enveloped me into
its musky warmth. We shared breath, snowflakes settling on our hair
and clothes. ‘You taste like roses,’ Iscane murmured.

‘
And you like honey,’ I said.

‘
What a tasty combination.’ He put his lips to mine once
more.

Iscane’s
apartment was on the first floor of the old building and to reach
it we had to climb some very narrow stairs that creaked ominously.
The space above was one huge room, and was indeed a very tasteful
and comfortable place. A huge fire burned in a wide hearth, well
stocked with logs. I wondered whether Iscane had planned on
bringing me here all along, seeing as the room was so nicely
warmed. His bed lay beneath a skylight in the arched ceiling. There
were many furs upon it. ‘Get undressed,’ Iscane said. ‘I want to
see you naked. I’ll get us something to drink.’

He went
over to the far side of the room, while I pulled off my clothes. I
stretched out on the furs, aflame with anticipation. Iscane came
back to me and handed me a tall glass of red wine. He stared at me
in appreciation. ‘It seems almost pointless to say it, but you’re
lovely,’ he said.

‘
So are you.’

He
smiled. ‘Wait, you’ve not seen everything yet.’

He gave
me a show, disrobing slowly and sensuously. One of his nipples was
pierced with a silver ring. He turned his back on me to ease off
his trousers, displayed his perfect buttocks to me. I wanted to
bite him. Then he turned around and I saw he wanted to be ouana. He
was larger than Malakess and a tremor of uncertainty went through
me.

‘
Iscane,’ I said.

He came
to the bed, straddled my prone body and pushed his hair back over
his shoulders. ‘What?’ He leaned down to nibble my
chest.

‘
Be careful with me.’

He
laughed. ‘Roon, of course. But what do you mean?’

‘
I’ve had problems with soume, a childhood injury.’

He
frowned. ‘Oh, poor you. Would you like to be ouana?’

‘
No, just… take care.’

‘
Direct me,’ he said. ‘We’ll take it slow.’

And slow
it was, almost too slow. He had me writhing beneath him with need,
yelling out his name. I felt stretched, but not torn. The slight
ache was actually delicious. At the end, he allowed himself to be
more forceful; it was intoxicating. Aruna with Ysobi, I realised,
had never been like this. I’d been obsessed with him as a har, but
my problems had been too great for aruna to be anywhere near what
it should have been. And with Malakess, I’d still been getting over
Ysobi. Our aruna life had been decorous in comparison to the free
abandon characterised by Iscane. He and I felt more like equals,
and there was a lack of reserve and inhibition in him that made
things easy for me.

‘
Doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with you!’ Iscane
declared.

‘
Don’t stop. No, there’s nothing wrong. Iscane, don’t
stop.’

‘
I’m yours for as long as I can maintain a stalk,’ he said,
which sounded incredibly funny to me at the time. I was still
laughing when the next peak came, but almost delirious by the final
wave.

Afterwards, we lay side by side, drinking the wine and
talking. I knew that probably within only a few hours, all of
Iscane’s friends would hear about what had happened. I hoped he
would deliver a good report.

‘
Have you ever gone double flower?’ Iscane asked
me.

‘
No, what’s that?’

‘
You haven’t?’ He laughed. ‘Wonderful. Wait till you
see.’

‘
But what is it?’

‘
Pike mouth first.’

‘
What?’

‘
Pike mouth, you know? On each other?’

‘
No…’

He
sighed, but was smiling. ‘Hmm, seems I have a lot to teach you.
This is pike mouth.’ He leaned over me and took my ouana-lim
between his lips.

‘
Oh, that. Yes, I know what you mean.’

‘
OK, we do it to each other.’

He
manoeuvred himself so this was possible. This was something I’d
never done before, and it was as if we were one creature, a serpent
eating its own tail, but that was not the treat he wanted to share.
It was just the preliminary. Once we were both high on aruna,
Iscane pushed me onto my back and slowly lowered himself onto my
ouana-lim. ‘Use your hands on me,’ he said, guiding my fingers to
his flowering ouana-lim. After that, he did most of the work. Ouana
and soume at the same time. I hadn’t believed such a thing was
possible. When his soume-lam contracted to meet my peak, aren also
jetted out of him and he uttered a shout that sounded like a cry of
pain. His soume-lam gripped me like a metal fist. I was showered in
his glowing fluid, and I’m sure it encouraged my own flow. I seemed
to peak for longer than usual.

‘
That is double flower,’ he said, still panting upon me. His
hair was dark with sweat. ‘And before you ask, yes it does hurt a
bit, like a needle through the groin but it’s a pain you want again
and again. Want to try?’

‘
Well… yes… but now? Already?’

Iscane
laughed. ‘You’ve spent far too much time with first gen. Welcome to
the world of youth. Flowering again post peak makes it even more
powerful. It just takes a little longer.’

And so it
did. We were soft in each other’s mouths for a while, but I felt
extremely tingly and when the hardness happened it was sudden and
almost brutal. Iscane guided me onto him and took my ouana-lim in
his hands. It was the most strange sensation, and not altogether
pleasant. The ouana-lim’s instinct is to retract into the body when
soume is stimulated, but when it’s aroused, it can’t do that. It’s
impossible to describe exactly what it feels like but it kindles a
need that you are sure can never be satisfied. A peak with a
distinctly different flavour built inside me, and when it cascaded
through me, so my ouana-lim synchronised and experienced its own
release. Iscane was right. It hurt as if my body was being cut in
two. But it was the most powerful physical sensation
imaginable.

‘
Did you like that?’ Iscane asked me.

‘
I’m not sure like is the right word,’ I said. ‘It’s… well… I
see what you mean.’

‘
With three or more hara, you can imagine what can be
achieved,’ Iscane said. ‘But that’s a treat we must save for
another time. Let’s have another drink. Before we sleep, I want you
to roon me senseless, in single flower. There are a few more tricks
I can teach you to make me lose my mind with pleasure. Can you keep
up?’

I
laughed. ‘Your stamina is pretty amazing, but I think I can just
about survive.’

‘
Good.’ He pushed me off him. ‘Move over. I need to open
another bottle.’

This
morning, I awoke before Iscane did. He was lying on his belly
beside me, one arm cast across my chest. Gently, I eased myself
from under him, and rose from the bed. I went to his kitchen area
to get myself a drink of water. Unaccountably, I felt depressed. As
I sat drinking the icy water, gazing out of the yard below, I
remembered a dream I’d had. In it, I’d been taking aruna with
Iscane, soume beneath him. Then I’d seen movement in the shadows
beyond the bed and saw that Malakess was standing there, his face
grey and constricted with grief. I was overcome with shame and
remorse, and then it was Malakess upon me, deep inside me. ‘I loved
you,’ he said. ‘And you have forgotten me already.’ And then it was
Ysobi above me. ‘You won’t forget,’ he said. ‘Not ever. I am
you.’

I
couldn’t remember any more of the dream. Perhaps that had been it.
The fact was, I now felt strangely guilty even though I knew I’d
done nothing wrong. Iscane was a free young har, as was I. Malakess
had left Kyme. There was no reason why Iscane and I shouldn’t be
intimate. It was part of life. Yet still that sad dream ghost
haunted my mind. My heart ached with longing, but it wasn’t for
Malakess. I loved you… so much. As I stared out of the window at
the snow covered land, I was suffused with a memory of Jesith; the
smell of the place, the ambience. I was filled with a sense of
Ysobi, as if he stood towering behind me. When he’d held me, my
face would always rest against his chest. I’d listened to his heart
beat. Then it all came back to me in a powerful rush. The coldest
wave.

The night
I told him how I felt.

I think
he already knew, of course he did, but I knew that if I didn’t
speak my heart I would literally explode. I’d sat before his chair
on the floor. He held on to my hands as I spilled it all. He
stroked me with his thumbs, and he looked at me with such
tenderness, hardly even blinking, for what must have been over an
hour. That was the worst aspect. If he’d been indifferent, or just
concerned in a teacherly sort of way, it might have been easier.
But that look. No har had ever looked at me like that before, and I
doubt they will again. Within his eyes was this unspoken thing.
Such tenderness. There is no other way to describe it. When there
was nothing more to say, he’d pulled me close and I’d got to my
knees to rest my chin on his shoulder. ‘I am here for you,’ he’d
said, but not in the way I wanted. ‘I will always be
here.’

But of
course, he wasn’t.

As I
recalled that night, which I had tried to bury so thoroughly, I
began to weep; those gut deep choking sobs that are the end of all
hope. Every har in Jesith believed I was a scheming fool. They
hadn’t been there. They hadn’t seen. Sometimes I’d doubted my own
sanity, because I remembered that night so clearly, yet it was as
if I’d only dreamed it. When things had got too messy, Ysobi had
made the decision to abandon me. I think that hurts me more than
the fact he didn’t want me. He hung me out to dry. How could I ever
forgive that?

Now that
I’d let these feelings out, they wouldn’t stop flowing. I couldn’t
stop weeping. I didn’t want Iscane to see me like this, and even if
I managed to pull myself together, I had no doubt that the psychic
reverberations of the aruna we’d shared would mean he’d intuit my
every feeling for next day or so. Somehow, taking deep breaths, I
got control of myself. Leaving Iscane a note to thank him, but
claiming I needed to be back at Huriel’s for a lunch engagement, I
left his apartment.

Outside
the world was blindingly white and untouched. A few harlings were
out playing in the pristine snow, and in a field nearby three young
horses galloped through it, drunk on life.

Lunilsday, Frostmoon 25

In just a
couple of short months my life has changed so much it’s as if I’ve
woken up in a different universe. My supervisor at the Library, an
under Codexia named Crytah, is, as Iscane predicted, responsible
for me hardly ever having a moment to myself, in both a working and
social sense. I now have dozens of friends, and many of them I know
intimately. Aruna is as much a part of socialising with these hara
as sharing a meal. Life is a dizzying whirl and I am caught up in
it, and yet some part of me isn’t there, not really. I feel like
I’m faking it. Fortunately nohar seems to notice this, but then the
young hara of Kyme – or at least those associated with the Academy
and Library – don’t appear to pay much attention to the more
serious aspects of life. My first impressions of fusty academics
were misplaced. While the older hara might be like that, the second
generation hara aren’t. They are hedonistic and carefree at night,
yet able to work hard during the day. Their openness about aruna,
and their fascination with experimenting is not only educational
but liberating. It’s difficult to feel inhibited around them,
because despite their lustful behaviour they are in another way
very innocent. Their frankness and wonder has charm. And they think
I’m one of them, but I’m not. It seems that even as I grow,
becoming more established in Kymian society, I am in some ways
becoming more estranged from it. Perhaps I am really going mad and
splitting into two people in my head.

As to
what I am, I still don’t know. I find myself thinking of Ysobi and
then Malakess quite a lot despite my aggressive attempts at
exorcism. Huriel and I are working on my next level of training –
Acantha, the first tier of Ulani. The strange thing is that as I
learn to observe myself more, I feel I know less about myself.
Knowledge is a strange thing. The more you have of it, the less you
seem to know. Huriel says this is normal, part of my development.
He occasionally gets letters from Malakess but I’ve not received
one. I don’t suppose I should expect to, even though I didn’t want
us to become so estranged. So many times I’ve thought of writing to
him, but something stops me.

I sent
another present to Jassenah, just some trinkets I picked up, and a
short while later I received a letter from him. The same stuff as
before; news of everyone in Jesith but for Ysobi. The hot pain I
used to feel has subsided since that morning in Iscane’s apartment,
but there is still… something. Sometimes I wake up in the night
from a dream of him, and my heart is pounding as if I’ve been
running. Then I wonder whether he’s dreamed of me too. Often I
speak his name aloud, which seems like a magical and potent thing
to do. But this is all mixed up in confusing feelings about
Malakess. Did I really care about him or was he just a substitute?
I can’t speak to anyhar about this, so I have to work it out on my
own. Winter is still all around us, but its grip is breaking. I
like the spring. It’s a turning time, when anything seems possible.
I hope it will bring me something good.