West of January (35 page)

So Ayasseshas was largely a tease? That made the men’s ensorcellment even more incomprehensible. Or did it? “I don’t understand!”

“You will.”

“And no one has ever told me what a spinster wants with wetlanders.”

He grunted. “Do you know why they are called spinsters?”

“Not even that.”

“Then you—” He choked. “Wait!” I heard a foot tapping, and he seemed to shrink slightly. He was breathing hard.

“What’s wrong?” I asked as the silence lengthened. “Are you ill?”

He shook his head but did not speak, and he was curiously hunched. I rolled over on my belly and levered myself upright. I took a couple of rolling steps toward him, but he held up a hand, draped in its too-long sleeve. He made his curious heavy breathing noise again, and relaxed.

“You’re in pain!” I said.

“Of course.” He seemed proud that I had not realized sooner.

I shook my hands free from my sleeves, reached out to unfasten his hood and push it back so I could see what he looked like. He did not resist, but he stared up at me resentfully.

He was barely more than a boy, his mustache downy, his beard too faint to hide the dimple in his chin. A mop of golden waves framed a thin, rather sulky face. His eyes were a pale, pale blue, like the far end of the sky.

I had thought I was light-colored after my long confinement in Misi’s cab, but Quetti’s skin was as white as raw fish, marked with a single tattoo, a red snake as wide as my finger, running from his hairline, down between his eyes, and then curving off across his cheek to vanish under one ear. It stood out starkly on his pallor, uglier even than the tattoos on the dark snakemen.

I offered my hand. He hesitated, then pulled back a sleeve to respond, but he did not return my smile. His fingers were long and delicate—and white—but I felt the remains of fading calluses.

“How did you come here?” I asked.

“I was a pilgrim. I was caught by—uhhhh!”

He hunched his shoulders, screwed up his eyes, and twisted back his lips to show clenched teeth. I saw sweat break out on his face, and this time he could not suppress groans. Not just pain—the kid was in agony. His white skin seemed to go even whiter, and I wondered if he was about to faint. My own heart began to pound, but whether from sympathy for him or rising terror for myself, I was not sure. Then Quetti released his breath in one of those long gasps I had heard earlier and opened his eyes.

I reached out to steady him.

“Don’t touch me!” His pallor had turned to pink under my stare, and he scowled. “That was a bad one!” He was defensive, ashamed of displaying weakness.

“Then…sit down,” I said, gesturing at one of the chairs.

“I can’t. Not just at the moment.”

“Why not, for Heaven’s sake?”

“Because I have other, more important uses for…” He closed his eyes again, but the fit was briefer and less severe. By now I was sweating also.

“What happened to your face?”
The, wide red band was not a tattoo. It was a raw, weeping sore, as if a long strip of skin had been ripped right off. Where it reached his scalp, the hair had gone also, leaving a narrow canyon only partly concealed by his golden waves.

He raised his cotton-fluff eyebrows, showing ironic amusement at my ignorance. “A graze.”

“God!” What was hidden under that robe? “You’ve been flogged?”

“Flogged?” He laughed. “I wish I had. So what happened to your knees, herdman?”

“An ant held them on an anvil, and a blacksmith smashed them with a sledgehammer.”

“You don’t have much luck, do you?”

“It got me out of the ants’ nest.”

“You should have stayed.”

I was about to ask why when Quetti turned his head. I followed his gaze and saw that the inspection was over. Ayasseshas was approaching across the gravel with her two bodyguards at her heels. The men who had brought me were running off across the muddy compound, dismissed.

“Those two with her…”

“Ah-uhu and Um-oao,” Quetti said. “The pride of my lady’s herd.”

I had thought Ing-aa to be a giant, but these two snakemen could have made three of him. Their black skins shone in the sun, oiled to show the ripple of their muscles, while their high red feather headdresses emphasized their height. Heavy gold chains around their waists supported brief pagnes of shimmering, translucent water silk, and they had gold bands on their arms and legs. Wide-bladed swords flashed at their sides. A woman who collected men could have found no more impressive specimens, nor have displayed them more outrageously.

And the spinster herself… I had been avoiding looking at this terror, but as she mounted the steps to the porch, I forced my eyes to their duty. She was a snakewoman, dark skinned and stocky. Her shiny black hair was tightly braided and piled on top of her head, pinned tight and decorated with yellow butterflies. From neck to golden sandals, her robe of many-hued water silk iridesced and flickered, but it did not mask the snake tattoos in blue and red that writhed over her belly, squirming up from between her thighs in coils and curves, ending in fanged jaws poised to engorge her nipples. More red and blue serpents wriggled upon her neck and face.

She was about my age, with youth a memory and decay not yet a dread. Her body had started to thicken, but her limbs seemed muscular rather than fat. Her breasts, though generous, did not droop enough to ever have suckled babies. She had power—not only the inexplicable authority that ruled her army, but pure physical strength also. Spinsterhood is no occupation for weaklings, of course, although I had not yet realized what it entailed nor what price she paid to coil each one of her slaves.

Her eyes were fixed on mine. I felt tiny shivers all over my skin, and I backed away as she approached, discovering that my ability to walk backward was unimpaired. She was only a woman, I told myself, but I had heard too many hints and had already seen too much not to fear her. I stopped when I reached the wall, and I still could not tear loose from the hypnotic stare.

But when she reached Quetti, she turned to him, ignoring me and drawing in breath with a sudden hiss. “My poor boy! How you are suffering!”

He was not quite as tall as she. “It missed my eye.”

“Ah, but you are in pain.”

“I will survive.”

She took his face between her hands. “I weep for you. I should not have asked, not until you were older.”

“I am a man!”

“But I know you are, Quetti, my special one. You showed me that when we first met. Mightily you showed me. I do not doubt your manhood, and you are proving it again now, even more.”

“I promised you…” His voice quavered. “I promised you twelve.”

“And you still have so many?”

“Thirteen.”

“My beloved!” Her tone was that of a mother, not a lover. She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his, still holding his face, but not letting their bodies touch.

Quetti’s ashen face flamed red. “And they must be almost done?”

“Very near. Not long now.”

“Thirteen is good, isn’t it, my Lady?”

“It is very good. Much more than I truly expected. Wonderful for your size. Did you see what happened with that idiot Ing-aa? No matter how long he endures or how many crops he yields, all of it will not be worth a fraction of what you are doing for me now, Quetti, my dear one.”

He nodded and tried to smile, but I saw the signs of agony build in his face again: livid lips and sweat. Despite his efforts to conceal it from Ayasseshas, she pulled his head down to her breast to comfort. For a long moment there was silence and no movement except a wild fluttering from one of the yellow butterflies imprisoned in her hair.

Then the fluttering stopped, and Quetti sighed and straightened up. “I will deliver on my promise, my Lady, and I do not mind a little pain if I can please you.”

“Oh, you make me very happy, dear Quetti. And when you have delivered on your promise, then we must let you heal, and I shall call on you to partner me often, for your beauty gives me more joy than any. Are you eating properly?”

“It is hard, my lady.”

“You must keep up your strength. For now, and for later. I need strong men to satisfy me, my love. Go and try, dearest, for my sake…and try also to get some rest.”

She kissed him again and then closed his hood over his blushes. Again an anonymous, shrouded figure, he turned away and floated obediently toward the steps.

This had to be why the men in the canoes had driven themselves to exhaustion. They had been proving—to the others and to themselves—that they could endure pain, because their mistress would demand it of them. I did not know what was causing Quetti’s torment, or why this monster desired it…and I most certainly did not want to find out.

Now she turned to me again and looked me over coyly, with a sudden change from mother love to seduction. She smiled, but it was a strange smile, keeping her thick and sensuous lips over her teeth.

“Welcome, wetlander.”

“I am Knobil.”

“I know.” She reached a hand for the door and glanced at her guards. “Ah-uhu? Wash him and bring him in when he is ready.” Then she was gone.

I did not know which was Ah-uhu and which Um-oao, but when one said “Strip!” I stripped. The other had leapt from the porch with a force that had shaken the whole building, sprinting away across the compound. Soon he came running back, bearing a huge steaming bucket in each hand.

These human mountains were as large as some herdmen I had known, and they obviously enjoyed favored status in the spinster s retinue. Yet they now proceeded to play body servant to me, sponging me vigorously with hot water and rubbing suds in my hair and beard. One of them even screwed a massive fingertip around inside my ears until I thought my brains would squirt out. They dried me with soft towels and trimmed the nails on my fingers and toes. They rubbed me all over with scented oil. Not a word was spoken until they were finished. Then one of them reached out to open the door and growled, “Go in!”

“But I have no clothes!” I protested weakly.

He stared down at me with both contempt and disbelief.

I went in to meet the spinster.

—3—

T
HE ROOM WAS LARGE
and bright and high-roofed, constructed of massive timbers. A glimpse through the far windows revealed another wide expanse of mud, more of the pot-shaped huts, and part of the incomplete stockade, so I knew this palace must stand in the exact center of the compound. Before me were thick rugs and many gaudy, shiny things scattered around. Yet little of it registered, for my mind was quivering with apprehension at meeting the fearsome spinster. My eyes soon fixed themselves on her.

She was reclining on an expanse of rugs and cushions in the center of the floor, an island of turquoise, vermilion, and bronze. Beside her on a very low table were silver dishes of fruits and breads, bottles and goblets of gold, and plates of brightly colored sweetmeats.

I stopped to stare, and my buttocks received a slap hard enough to make me stagger.

“Go to her!” growled the giant behind me. Unwillingly I began to roll forward in my stiff-kneed gait, aware that he had closed the door and taken up station beside it. The other, I assumed, had stayed outside.

Ayasseshas was wearing only her butterflies and her tattoos. As I approached, she stretched out languorously, reaching for a gold fruit from the table, while the snakes seemed to slither over her smooth brown curves. She bit into the fleshy globe, juice gleaming on her lips, and she looked up at me with a glance of challenge.

I had spent most of my adult life penned like an animal in the ants’ compound, so my own nudity bothered me little. Yet hers did. Many times I had drawn near to a naked woman and always with eagerness, always with every intention of taking from her as much pleasure as my stamina would allow. There was a peculiarly sinister fascination in those ribbons of color on Ayasseshas’s body, and she was a luscious, imposing woman, strong and tempting. She could hardly have been more obviously available. She would be a stimulating partner, inventive in cooperation, tantalizing in opposition, and uncomplaining in subjugation. Yet now I came to a halt at her feet, nonplussed, feeling a revulsion that could have been no greater had she been clad in real serpents.

My reluctance seemed to surprise her as much as it did me. “Sit here, Knobil,” she said, patting a cushion at her side. “We shall get to know each other…intimately.” She sent me a smile that again seemed oddly forced. A skilled seductress should be able to smile better than that.

“What do you require of me, woman?”

She frowned, leaned back, and stared up at me appraisingly.

“You cannot venture a guess? Most of my visitors, when in your situation, are already displaying a certain readiness to satisfy my requirements.”

“Obviously I am not, although I mean no disrespect.”

She sighed. “Well, we can talk. Now sit, or I shall have Um-oao assist you.”

I let myself fall forward onto the pillows, and then I rolled over and sat up. She turned to lean on one elbow, facing me. Her scent was strong and musky, yet even her nearness was inducing no desire in me.

She stroked my thigh with a gentle finger. “You are not quite as pale as Quetti yet, but you are very fair, wetlander.”

“I was raised as a herdman.”

“Indeed? Do herdmen prefer a more subtle approach?”

“To be honest, they wouldn’t know subtlety from rape, nor care. The fault is not yours, lady. You are comely.”

Ayasseshas sighed again. “Then we must be patient. Tell me your story while we wait, herdman.”

She was dangerous, and I was utterly in her power. To anger her further would be great folly, so I obeyed, recounting my history. She watched me carefully as I spoke.

“Poor man! Well, you are safe here.” She sat up also, brazenly cross-legged. “Can I offer you refreshment now?”

The sight of food on the table had already made my mouth water, but I was deeply suspicious. “Thank you, no. Mistress, tell me again what you want of me.”

“Again I say that it is obvious.” For the first time she revealed her teeth. They were large and white, but badly placed, protruding in front, and crooked. I realized that the enigmatic quality of her smile was merely an attempt to conceal this flaw in her beauty.