The Shepherd Kings (20 page)

Then that was as it was, the horse said with a tilt of the
ear. Oh, yes, it was very like a cat. Just as mystifying, and just as
maddening. And like a cat, it had wanted her here, for gods knew what reason;
and now that it had her here, it would not tell her why. It simply asked her to
accept.

She would not play such a game. Not unless she knew the
stakes. She thrust herself away. The horse made no move to stop or keep her.

She walked down from the hill—quickly, but she did not run.
She was proud of that. Nor did the horse follow. It had set her free—for the
moment. And if it summoned her again—when it summoned her again . . .

She turned her mind from that, as she had turned her back on
the horse. The house was waiting, both refuge and prison. She was almost glad,
just then, to go back to the life of a slave.

Khayan came in dusty and sweaty and reeking from his
morning with the chariots. He had nothing in mind but a bath and a clean tunic,
and a cup of wine maybe, and something other to eat than the endless Egyptian
barley bread.

When the ambush fell on him, he was taken off guard. He
reeled against the wall.

His attacker laughed, sweet as water in the desert. She
wrapped strong slender arms about him and trapped him there against the wall,
with her breasts against his breast and her hips against his hips and the
strongest part of him, just then, rising high between.

“Barukha!” he gasped. “What are you—”

“Tormenting you,” she said. For proof, she nibbled his ear.
He yelped. She laughed.

“Should you not be waiting on my mother?” he demanded—not as
harshly he wanted; there was too little breath in him.

“Your mother has maids enough in attendance,” she said.
“She’ll not miss me for a while.”

“And when she does, and if it gets out, and if your father
and your brothers hear of it—”

“My father and my brothers are safe in Avaris,” she said,
“waiting on the king. They’ll never know what we do here.” She paused. “Are you
a coward, then, my beautiful lord?”

“I am not!” he burst out; no thought in it, either.

And at that, too, she laughed. “You are so lovely,” she
said, working fingers beneath his robe, weaving them into the curly hairs of
his chest. “Who would have thought it? Such a great gawk of a boy you were, all
knees and elbows. Your mother’s people made a man of you.”

He bit his tongue before he betrayed secrets. But in the
safety of his mind, he laughed a little bitterly. They would never make a man
in the way she meant.

She knew nothing of the people who had guested him and
suffered him to ride with them, afar away in the east. Nor would he be the one
to tell her. “You have grown,” he said, for something to fill the silence. “You
have grown—beautiful.”

And so she had. He had known her when she was a child, too
young to conceal herself in veils, with no more shape to her than a peeled
twig. That image, now, one would never think of in relation to her. She was
all, and entirely, a woman.

He could see it perfectly clearly. She was veiled, oh yes,
but those veils were of Egyptian weaving, gauze as fine as spidersilk,
revealing far more than they concealed. Her face with its full cheeks, its ripe
lips. Her shoulders, so sweetly rounded. Her breasts—such breasts, milk-white
beneath the frost-white linen, the rose-red nipples erect, taunting him. His
hands had found the rich curve of her hips, the narrow waist above, and below—

He pulled away. “This is dishonor!”

“Dishonor is what I say it is,” she said with a suggestion
of edged bronze beneath the sweetness. “Come here, my lord, my beautiful one,
my lion of the desert. Am I not beautiful? Are you not the most splendid of
men?”

“I’ll be the most thoroughly emasculated of men, if your
father gets wind of this.”

“Oh you coward!” She looked ready to spit on him. She seized
him instead, and got a grip on his robe, and with strength that made him stare,
rid him of it.

He stood like a plucked goose, naked but for his loincloth,
and caught all flatfooted. “Barukha—”

“Khayan,” she said, mocking him. “I can scream now, and the
guards will come. You know what they’re going to think.”

“I think you may scream regardless,” he said tightly, “when
you have what you want of me.”

“I might,” she said. “Won’t you gamble? Am I not beautiful?”

“You are glorious,” he said with a kind of despair.

“So then,” she said, capturing him again, and somehow she
had lost her veils. She was as naked as she had been born, but for the golden
bells that swung from her ears. They chimed softly, oh so softly, as she mounted
him—even standing there, with him braced against the wall, and no more will or
resistance in him than in a stallion broken to the bridle.

They began so, but they ended in the bed, as was more
proper—though what could be proper about a lord’s daughter dancing the oldest
dance with a man not her husband, Khayan could not for his life’s sake imagine.

Once there was no escaping it, Khayan gave up the fight.
Fear made it keener—that much was true. And she was no maiden, either. He was
not, by then, astonished to make the discovery. Barukha had always been wild,
even as a small big-eyed child trailing after her brothers.

She had had excellent teaching. But then, so had he. Honor
among his mother’s people was a strong thing, as strong as the life that bound
blood to bone, but it was not the same honor that his father’s people knew. In
that world, a woman would indeed do as this one had done. Had she known it,
then? Had she trusted in it, in laying her ambush?

For a while then, all thought vanished. Her lips, her hands,
traced his body in lines of fire. He found her hot secret place, and plunged
deep. She gasped; then she laughed. “O beautiful!”

He had no words. If he had, he might have cursed her—or
blessed her. Beautiful. Yes, beautiful. And oh so deadly dangerous.

~~~

They lay in a tangle, breathless. She was laughing—she
lived her life in laughter. He was rather perfectly spent. But he could not
fall into the sleep that lured him so irresistibly. “Where—” he managed to say.
“My servants—”

“Now you notice,” she said. Her fingers tangled in his hair,
tugging lightly, not quite enough to rouse pain. “They’ll be back in a little
while, and ready for your bath, too. Don’t you feel marvelous? Aren’t I a
wonder?”

“You are horrifying,” he said. “What do you want of me?”

“Ah, suspicion.” She rose over him, smiling down, swooping
to kiss him: brow, cheeks, lips. “Do you know,” she said, “it’s strange to kiss
a bearded man, now. Egyptians all shave their faces.”

“You’ve been consorting with Egyptians?”

She grinned, wild as a boy. “Oh! I’ve shocked you.”

“If your father knew—”

“My father wants to marry me off to someone dull, suitable,
and preferably elderly. Then I’ll bear him a son, and he’ll oblige us all by
dying, and my father will have his lands and wealth, and I’ll have a regency to
keep me occupied. It’s a sensible plan, don’t you think?”

“I may be dull,” said Khayan, “and for all I know I’m
suitable, but I am not elderly.”

“No,” she said tenderly, stroking her breasts against his
breast till he was nigh mad with the mingling of annoyance and pleasure. “You
are not elderly. I’ll not marry you, my beautiful lord. But if you would like
to sire my son . . .”

“What, are you leaving tomorrow to marry some ancient?”

She laughed. “Not likely! No, I’ll be here for a goodly
while. I’m your mother’s servant and her pupil. I’m to learn whatever she can
teach.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. It did wonderful things to her breasts. “I
asked. She consented. It seemed a useful thing, to know what she knows.”

His eyes narrowed. He was wide awake, and that was no small
feat, either. “You came to serve the goddess?”

“I came to wait on your mother,” Barukha said. She had not
answered him, precisely.

“And I’m what? Diversion in the afternoons?”

“If you like,” she said. She curled against him, head cradled
on his shoulder. “I’ve always wanted you, ever since I knew what it was to want
a man. When you came back from the east with the Mare and her people, and won
the lordship from that lout of a brother—what a wonder that was. And what a
pleasure. I knew I’d have you then. Whatever it took to win you.”

“Very little,” he said, more wry than angry. “Tell me your
father didn’t have something to do with the delegation of princes who persuaded
me to fight for the lordship.”

“Did he need to?”

“I’m the foreign woman’s son, the one who went away, who
came back on another errand to find his father dying and a war ready to break
out over the spoils. I’m hardly the most likely of choices.”

“He chose you,” she said.

“How did you know that?”

“Your mother told me.” She drew idle swirling patterns on
his breast and belly. “There were sons ahead of you, and not a few of them,
either, and one who was sure he would be lord. But your father named you the
heir.”

“He was half out of his head,” Khayan said sharply. “And he
was well out of patience with the vultures flocking to the feast. They were
already squabbling, though he was still alive to hear it. I came in, he rose
up, he pointed to me. He said, ‘That one! That one is my heir!’ He only did it
for spite.”

“Maybe,” she said. “A man can be both spiteful and wise.”

“Wise?” Khayan nigh choked on the word. “I had to kill three
brothers whom I barely knew, and one of whom I was almost fond, when they challenged
me for the lordship. And now I have blood on my hands, and enemies among my own
kin. He’d have reckoned that a fair price, I suppose, for going away for so
long, and living among my mother’s people.”

“You didn’t refuse to take the lordship,” she said as her
hand wove and spiraled downward. “You could have done that. You could have gone
back into the east again once you’d brought the Mare to her priestesses, and
been free of it all.”

“So I could,” he said.

“But you didn’t.”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t.”

“So,” said Barukha.

“So,” he said. “Tell me what you want of me.”

“You,” she said.

“That can’t be all of it,” he said.

“It’s more than enough.” Her hand closed around his shaft,
which was waking again at last. “A widow is allowed to choose her husband.
Maybe I’ll choose you.”

“And if I don’t wish to be chosen?”

She smiled and did something astonishing with her fingers.
He gasped in shock and sudden pleasure. “Imagine this,” she said, “whenever you
want it.”

He could not answer. She had shocked the words out of his
head—again. She was a witch, no doubt of it. Her spell was on him, too strong
for any escape.

~~~

Khayan was not at all surprised, that evening, to be
summoned into his mother’s presence. He had left Barukha with more reluctance
than he liked to admit, and gone to the duties that he had taken on himself.
When he came back to his rooms, she was of course gone, and the servants were
all in attendance as if nothing had ever happened.

But there was a messenger waiting, a shy boychild who spoke
the words in a rapid singsong: “My lord your lady mother summons you at once if
you please.”

Khayan did not please, but he knew better than to refuse
such a command. He went as he was, in the robe he had worn for sitting in
judgment, with the staff of lordship still in his hand.

None of the women had settled in what was, he had been
assured, the women’s house. That was the province of that strange and very
beautiful woman who had been lady of these lands while they were still in the
hands of an Egyptian. His own women—such as they were, for he had no wives and
precious few concubines; most of those who had ridden with him had belonged to
his father, and had nowhere else to go—his own women had taken up residence in
a lesser house, but one, they professed, much more to their liking.

Once he had entered it, he could see why. No wide bare
Egyptian spaces here. No walls crawling with vividly colored images: beasts,
birds, flowers and trees, and human shapes, too, drawn in the strange twisted
way that was the fashion of this country. All the walls in this house were
decently curtained, the floors carpeted. The scents were scents of home:
incense, musk, roasting mutton. Egyptians were all too fond of complicated and
difficult perfumes, and bread and barley beer, and profusions of strangely
scented flowers.

The guards on the door here were women, daughters of the
eastern tribe from which he had too lately come. He yearned for it with sudden
and fierce intensity. They greeted him with bold eyes and no more respect than
they reckoned any male deserved. There was a surprising degree of comfort in
that.

Here, in this world, he was not a lord of creation, or even
of these lands. He was the son of his mother. That set him moderately high, but
not as high as one of her daughters.

She kept him waiting for some little while. That it was to
humble him, he had not the slightest doubt. He set himself to be patient; to
refrain from any display of temper. He sat in a room hung with dark draperies,
but one of them had been looped up and away from a window. There was little
enough to see beyond: a covered colonnade, a dazzle of sunlight in a
courtyard—brilliant even so close to its setting. The room was cooler than the
air without, but warm still.

Not for the first time, Khayan considered Egyptian dress, or
lack thereof. A linen kilt, one’s head and face and body shaved smooth, a wig
for grand occasions. Ornaments in profusion to mark a man’s standing in the
world. No heavy, scratching wool, no sweat-sodden weight of leather to bear one
down.

Some of the lords in Avaris had succumbed to temptation.
Khayan could well see why. The sun could flay skin little accustomed to it, but
for idling about under canopies and in palaces, it was a thoroughly sensible
garment.