Chapter Text
I was sinking. A tiny hand stroked the top of my head. I tried to turn to look, but the hand became an iron fist that grasped my hair and shoved my head under the water. I struggled, flailed, splashed. Fighting free for a moment, I gasped for air before being shoved under again. Bubbles erupted furiously from my mouth. Looking down, I noticed my belly had purple bruising all over it and felt strange: hard and swollen like a watermelon. Then, it wriggled as if harboring a large eel. I screamed and inhaled a lungful of water. Choked. Above me there was a face with eyes like searchlights in the fog. It plunged down into the water to look at me: a small, bony face amidst a cloud of dark hair that floated like seaweed. It smiled, revealing tiny shark's teeth.
I jerked upright with a splash. Yelling and flailing about wildly, I grabbed the rim of the tub and remembered where I was. I looked around at the bathroom bathed in morning light. A dream. It had been a fucking dream. That's all. My head fell back against the porcelain as I put my hand on my chest, trying to slow the beating. The water had grown cold.
What time was it? Where had Terzian gone? I ran more hot water until I warmed up, then got out, wrapped myself in the towel, wandered out into the bedroom that had become a stage for whatever games I was enacting with the master of the house. I pitched face forward into the bed, burrowed under the covers, and passed out.
Waking. Groggy. Someone was gently shaking my arm. It was Kexel hovering over me with an armload of something purple. "Terzian bids you dress and come down to dinner."
"Does he now?" I threw an arm over my face. "What if I just ignore him and go back to sleep?"
"No, no, you can't do that," Kexel protested. He began shaking me harder. I opened the covers as if I were getting up, but instead grabbed his arm and hauled him into bed with me.
"What are you doing?" he cried.
I rolled on top of him, feeling utterly wicked. Looked into surprised, brown eyes. "I've had to be soume for a full day now, Kexel. I think I'd like to be ouana for a change. What do you think about that? Hmmmm?" I rocked my naked loins against him.
"No, please, tiahaar!" He sounded genuinely frightened.
"Why, what would he do to you?"
"You don't understand. Nohar disobeys him. It's the way he looks at you. His air of command."
"But what would happen if you said, 'Fuck off Terzian. I'm not following your orders?'"
"He m-m-might demote me. Put me to work out in the fields or send me out with the next patrol. I'm not suited for that kind of work."
"Nothing worse than that?" I queried.
"If it was a really bad offense, he could banish me. Or have me beaten . . . or shot."
"Has that happened before?"
"Yes, but not often. No one wants to disobey him, tiahaar. We owe everything to Terzian. He takes care of us."
"What's the worst he has done?" I leaned close so that my lips were inches from his. He froze as if looking at a viper.
"There are rumors," he whispered. "Of some hara who have been sent north and subjected to terrible poisons and ritualized pelki."
"I guess that's not worth a tumble with me then, is it?"
He shook his head vigorously.
"You won't know if it's worth the risk unless you try it." I grinned at him, and rolled off to the side, landing in the pillows.
Kexel's face relaxed into a smile. "He wouldn't do anything so drastic to me for such an offense, but I might get a reprimand. You are beautiful, tiahaar, and very tempting, but I value my position here too highly."
"Don't worry, I won't get you in trouble." I sat up and dramatically swept back a cascade of silky blond hair off my face. "Very well. Is that what he wants me to wear?"
"Yes, I hope you didn't wrinkle it." Kexel wriggled upright, attempted to smooth out the material.
"Let me see." I took the garments from him, stood, and held them up to myself. There was a short purple tunic with one sleeve and a wide scarf of soft suede strung with jiggling coins.
"He said to pick something to go with your eyes. It does. Perfectly. I've always had a good sense of color," Kexel said with a giggle. "Wait 'til you see it on. It's very sexy."
I had a sudden thought. "Kexel, do you have access to cosmetics, jewelry?"
"Sure."
"Can you make me look like this?" I reached down under the bed, pulled out one of the magazines, and flipped through it until I found a suitably exotic looking woman.
Kexel laughed. "I gather you've figured out his weakness."
"Let's hope so," I replied.
Kexel now appeared to be in his element. "You'll be stunning," he promised.
Nearly an hour later, I was examining our combined efforts in a looking glass. The tunic reached mid-thigh, with sides slit even higher, and was cut on the diagonal baring one arm and half my chest so that one nipple was revealed. Under it, I wore thigh-high boots and nothing else. The wide suede scarf wrapped around my waist, angled over one hip, and the coins on the long fringe jingled as I moved. Kexel repainted my nails, decorated my hands with rings and my wrists in brass bracelets. I wore dangling gold earrings. He had plaited skinny ribbons into several long thin braids behind my ears. The rest of my hair, brushed until it shone, hung loose down my back. He'd painted my face, outlining my eyes in dark blue kohl extending the line to the far inner corner of my eyes, drawing a tiny triangle at the outer corners and brushing purple shadow on the lids. It made my eyes look huge and their color startling.
"You have such bedroom eyes," Kexel had said, approvingly. He painted my caste symbols on the center of my forehead and one cheek and rouged my cheekbones so they appeared becomingly high and prominent. Last, he took a brush and painted my lips scarlet. "Press them together," he said. Then he stood back. "Lovely, but for one more thing . . ." and he took another brush, dipped it in the rouge powder and dabbed at my exposed nipple with it.
"Not bad," I said, preening in the mirror.
"Not bad," Kexel said, somewhat breathlessly, "it's devastating. Once he sees this, I expect you will be locked up in here for a week."
"If I'm lucky," I said, while reflecting that it's always good to use whatever power you have, which in my current situation was very little. "Thank you, Kexel." I tilted up his chin, leaned down, and brushed a kiss across his lips.
"Oh, don't, you'll ruin your paint," he said. But his eyes were glowing. "You'd better go down now. He'll be impatient that you're holding up dinner. You should have been down there more than a half hour ago."
"It won't hurt to make him wait," I replied airily. "Anticipation is good for the appetite."
"Yeah, but anger isn't. I'll tell him you're on your way," Kexel said. Picking up the tray of cosmetics and rejected jewelry, he left, giving me a wink just before he shut the door.
I looked at the exotic creature in the mirror, thinking how much I'd like to show this to Pell. I wanted to hear him say, 'Oh Cal, really, you're such a slut,' and then grab me and share breath and end up tumbling together on the bed like a couple of inebriated puppies. We hadn't been separated for this long since we first met. Suddenly, I missed him. Missed the breathy sound of his voice, the way he would tilt his head when considering a question, his wise counsel and starry-eyed trust in me, and his beauty that smote me every time I looked at him. I was a better har with him at my side, and at that moment I knew that I couldn't give him up. The thing was how to extricate myself from the situation I'd gotten myself into.
I went to the open balcony doors and looked out. The afternoon wore long shadows in the garden. I felt psychically damaged somehow. There was a vague throbbing in my temples. I watched a har working at pulling weeds. Everything was ordered here. So different from the chaos I knew they inflicted on others. Staying here would mean the insulating safety and rewards of a locked harem, with me as a painted courtesan. Maybe that was acceptable for others like Cobweb. But for me, well, I had never played it safe.
All right. Time to face the music.
As I entered the dining room, Terzian's look of annoyance melted into a very satisfying moment of open-mouthed appreciation. He stood up.
"I wondered what was taking you so long," he said.
"I had to get myself fixed up. Was it worth it?" A coy tilt to the head, a quirk of the lips.
"Most definitely."
His smile was openly lustful. I went to him and he looked me over as he stroked exposed flesh and pinched my rosy nipple, then gathered me into his arms, shared breath until we were both dizzy. He slid a hand up my thigh and gripped one cheek of my bare arse, pulling on it slightly. It made me ache for him.
"If you keep that up, we'll have to dispense with dinner and go directly to dessert," I said.
"Maybe I should take you on the table again."
"If you're going to make a habit of that, you should at least keep some pillows about. My rear still hasn't recovered from last time." I was keeping it light.
"Good. I want you sore, so you know who it was had you last." Then we were sharing breath again.
Several hara bustled through the door carrying covered dishes and averting their eyes from our indiscretion. They set out the food, poured us copious amounts of sheh and left. We sat across from each other. Terzian eyed me hungrily in between bites of food. I played it for all it was worth, giving him sideways glances, sucking juice off my fingers, running my tongue slowly over my lips, and trying not to get drunk.
When dinner was over, we could barely get up the stairs fast enough. The door slammed and he had his arms about me, devouring my mouth. I pushed him away laughing and undressed him, kissing each part as it was revealed while he watched and purred appreciation. I pulled off my boots, then he knelt and kissed up my inner thighs. Laughing, we fell on the bed. He began torturing the exposed nipple with his tongue, murmuring something about how it had been tempting him all through dinner. He slid his hand up my tunic fingering my folds. I writhed and moaned like a good little whore.
"You are absolutely breath-taking," Terzian said as he came back up to gaze into my eyes. He traced a finger along my jaw. "Insolent little Cal, I think you have bewitched me. I swear, I don't know what I'll do . . ." He stopped, looked at me, shook his head.
"What?" I teased the ends of some hair like a paintbrush along his lips.
"Do you believe in fate? That we have a destiny - that your whole life can be spent waiting for someone and you don't even know it until you see him, and then, it's as if you've been holding your breath all that time?"
The vision came back to me, reinvented and timeless: Pell, now in my image fully har, a storm-haired, dewy-eyed beauty, standing in the middle of that barren dirt road, looking at me with expectation. "Yes," I said. "I believe in fate." I rolled on top of him, put my fingers on his lips. "Don't talk, Terzian. I'm not worthy of this kind of affection. I left my last lover to die."
"So did I," he replied.
We shared breath. Bare branches scraped across a winter sky. I saw a willowy teenage girl with yellow hair and violet eyes. A wind came up, blowing the hair wildly about her face. She held out her hands imploringly, and then exploded into screaming fragments of black paper that swirled aloft over fields of smoking wheat. I felt his grief, still there. I rocked him, licked the salt water from his cheeks. Pressed my fingers to his temples, using whatever healing power I had. 'Forget,' I soothed.
I understood now. It was making me feel guilty, getting me mixed up in the head. Knowing what I knew, could I stay with him? Maybe Pell and I, we could work something out. Trysts in the fields, in the inns. We must not be selfish with each other. Wraeththu mantra. Terzian couldn't object to my having another lover. Could he?
We were blending our thoughts, making it difficult for me to shield mine. He was thrusting up against me, primed for me again. I sat up, unknotted the suede scarf about my waist, pulled it slowly away, and lifted my tunic off over my head. Then carefully, one by one, took off the jingling bracelets and set them on the nightstand.
He was watching me - a look of lust and something else, something wistful. Eyes glittered sky-pale in their fringe of black. He was unusually passive. I sat back on his thighs and palmed his ouana lim, stroked the multi-colored, velvety petals, slicking them with the emerging dew drops, feeling him jump and pulse in my hand. Then I reached between his legs and inserted a finger. He was wet.
"No," he said.
"Why deny your nature, Terzian? You're the champion of Wraeththu, the new world order. Think. You are female as well as male." Two fingers slid inward searching for the first sikra . . . He made a strange gasping sound, arched his back. Ah, found it.
"It's not the way of the Varrs," he said angrily as he pushed my hand away.
"Who makes the rules, Terzian? You?"
"Yes. Deal with it."
"If I stay with you, I must always be soume?"
"Not with others," he said.
"With you."
"Yes."
"And I must be a breeder?"
"You'll be more than that. You will be my consort. I want a son by you, Cal. Don't you see? He would be as perfect as Swift."
"What if I don't want it?"
"All in good time. Let's not talk about that now, shall we? I need you desperately."
"Then, we'll compromise," I replied as I squatted over him and lowered myself right onto his ouana lim, piercing myself with a rush of exquisite, delirious pain. We both cried out in concert. He arched his back up and grasped my hips. I leaned forward and rode him at a gallop. He thrust up into me, chanting my name, 'Cal. Cal.' Our flesh met in juicy, repetitious fervor.
He was mesmerizing me again. I was lost to images: roots growing wildly, trees leafing out in spring, green everywhere, and then sprays of apple blossoms floating earthward in the wind, birds chasing each other in dizzying patterns. So good, so good; it felt so good. He reached up and took a nipple between his fingers, twisting until it was painful. The blood pounded in my nipple, my ears, my loins. I wanted him deeper until it hurt, until I retched with wanting it. Terzian.
I felt a sudden reckless power. Bloodlust. Charging through a green meadow on a great black war-horse, chasing down ragged men. There was a small girl running with a grey animal clutched in her arms. She jerked, fell to the ground with a blossom of red across her back. The animal ran off yowling. There was shouting, fire, banners breaking with a snap in the wind, swirls of black birds surging over fields of corpses. A terrible stench. Was this my future, to preside over this? No! The feeling of power dissipated like mist in the sun; in its place grew desperation.
There was another voice - it was Cobweb's, hissing in my ears. "Calanthe, you think you can escape, but you can't. You are his now."
"Terzian," I gasped, truly frightened now. "Let me go!"
Terzian twisted his body around so that we were lying side by side. Then he rolled on top and thrust into me, holding me down as blackness floated like a ferrous river around us. My knees were drawn up, legs flung wide. He was in control. I felt it as an echo of booted feet on a marble staircase. A baby crying. He seemed to be splitting me open, wide and vulnerable and it scared me worse than I remember being scared before. The universe had cracked, presenting me with a tiny presence as yet unborn, hovering on the edge of consciousness. Terzian stilled, leaned down and shared breath, pouring himself into me, like fire and iron. His ouana tongue snaked out, flicked at my seal, nudged it like a cat licking its young. For the first time I felt the awful potential of creation and heard, rumbling in my ears, his promise of the night before. 'And somewhere in the depths of the night, I desire to break you open, take you as no one has ever done before.'
A shriek. Mine. Nooooooo! Terror. I wasn't ready, not for that! Damn him!
"Terzian, stop!" I roared and slugged him hard across the face. Focussed as he was on his goal, my blow was unexpected. He reeled and bent sideways, still deep within me. I twisted my hips, squirming out from under him and crawled backwards rapidly, paddling feet and elbows. In my haste to get away, I fell out of the bed, landing with a painful thump on the floor.
I leapt up, faced him in wrath. "How could you! You knew how I felt about this. This, of all things should not be forced. Never! You've betrayed me!"
He looked at me dazed, as if coming out of a fog. "What? Cal?" He sat up, stroking a hand gingerly along his jaw where I'd hit him. "I don't know why I did that. I didn't mean to. It, it just happened."
"I don't believe you," I cried. I began pacing back and forth, waving my hands in agitation. "How can I trust you again after this?"
"Did you ever? I felt your thoughts. I know you are planning to leave. I must have been trying to prevent it, subconsciously."
"Don't give me that crap. Subconsciously. You are a cold, calculating monster."
He stretched out a hand beseechingly towards me. "Not with you, Cal. Please, believe me. I didn't mean to do it. I would never hurt you. Never."
"Prove it." I folded my arms.
His face took on a crafty look. He reached for a cigarette and lit it. "How?"
"Let me and Pell go."
He flinched as if in pain, looked stricken. "Don't ask for that. I can't do it."
I sat on the bed again. Mentally, I reached for the magic in the box under the bed, pulled it to me, and then cast it in his direction where it writhed about him like a ghost before penetrating his skin. "Cal," he cried. "What are you doing?" Then he shivered, looked blankly at me, hands relaxed in his lap as if awaiting my summons.
I crawled towards him like a panther. "You said you loved me, Terzian. Was it a pure love or a possessive one? Would you lock me here in chains? Sentence me to bear your harlings? Is that love? If so, it's no wonder Wraeththu have eschewed it!"
"I have never felt this way before," he said, shaking his head in wonder as if he couldn't believe it himself. "This is not normal, I agree."
"Now is when you reach into yourself and discover if you are truly the future of Wraeththu or a some twisted perversion of human ambition," I said. "Your ability to let me go determines this - for yourself, for me, for all those you lead."
"You're making a mistake. It's a bad world out there, Cal. I can't protect you once you leave."
"No har is asking you to. Pell and I, we got along fine before we came here; we'll make our way out there just fine again."
He paused, tilted his chin slightly as if scenting the wind. "Cobweb has told me there is something terrible awaiting you."
"I'll chance it," I snapped. "Do you believe in Sulh prescience?"
"I've learned to listen to him. He is uncanny sometimes. He told me you wouldn't stay." Terzian sighed, shook his head, and took another drag on the cigarette. "Very well, Cal. You can have your freedom."
"You won't stop me from leaving?"
"No, I won't. Not now. Cobweb told me something else about you too." His eyes glowed wolflike for a moment. "Now, in your abrupt rejection, you've left me unsatisfied. Finish me. A last aruna. It's all I ask." He stabbed out the cigarette, then turned to stare at me. His eyes were bruised-looking, the expression haunted. I nearly fled then and there.
"How do I know I can trust you?"
"If you trust me to keep my word that I won't harm you and Pell, then you can trust that I won't get you with pearl against your will. It was wrong of me, Cal. See that? You've wrung an admission of guilt from me. Few in this world have. Be satisfied."
He was still lord and master.
I went to his arms once more. I have to admit that his attraction is powerful, an aruna of fire. Much later, I left him sleeping - a smile of dreamy satisfaction on his face. It was the least I could do.
I folded up my borrowed finery, placed it on a chair, drew on the pants discarded the day before, and then washed the paint off my face.
Padding down the hall, I felt a sense of increasing lightness with every step. This was the right decision, the one that would make me happy. I felt it in my bones. I needed to see Pell. Needed to hear his voice. Thirsted for a drink of his calming breath.
Opening the door to our room, I saw them in the grey light, lying together as if wrapped in a fog of uneasy dreams. I came and stood at the foot of the bed, angry in a calm, dispassionate way. Cobweb, what have you done to my Pellaz? How could Pell could have fallen for this? He was always too trusting. But then, I suppose that was unfair. He merely had been waiting for me to play out my own drama. No, he was my steadfast Pell. As usual, I was the one who had been faithless. Sometimes I wonder what he even sees in me.
Pell opened an eye. I smiled, shook my head at him, silly Pell, and was unprepared for the suddenness of his response. He threw back the covers and literally hurled himself at me.
"Cal, are you alright? Are you?" he cried.
"Alright? What do you mean? Of course I am."
We'd weathered the storm. I knew that now. We would be fine - and closer for the experience. Cobweb lifted his head, stared at us, eyes filled with a feral light. Slowly he drew his limbs together as if ready to spring. Still doing Terzian's bidding, no matter how distasteful. I was angry with him. Did he have no pride?
"Get back to your master," I taunted him.
He climbed out of the bed, picked up his nightgown and pulled it over his body. With a short, sarcastic laugh, he said, "I don't know what you think you're doing Cal, but you won't get away that easily. And if you do, you'll be back someday."
Not very fuckin' likely, I thought. Why would he even say such a thing? My return was the last thing he wanted. "Beat it," I growled at him, raising my fist threateningly, and he scampered off. He seemed to take his mind-numbing magic with him.
Pell and I embraced. He was naked; his warm skin and hard muscles felt good under my hands. Real, solid. I drank in his smell, feeling prickles of arousal. For a moment, I thought of tossing him on the bed and taking him hard. To think I had nearly given him up - for what? I am a fool.
"We cannot stay here," I said and he nodded as if he'd expected that. He was worried but still quite unaware of the full extent of what had happened. Suddenly, the enormity of the last day and a half overwhelmed me. Emotion welled up, and for a moment, I thought the tears would spill over. I sank down on the bed and put my head in my hands, feeling dirty, used. Well, that had been my desire, hadn't it? I had no one to blame but myself. Pell stood by helplessly, waiting for my direction so I told him to pack while I took a long, hot bath. Happy to be able to do something, he began pulling things out of drawers. While I was in the bathroom, I heard him ask if we'd have any trouble. Would Terzian try to stop us?
No, I assured him. Even as I said it, I knew it was true. If Terzian even woke up from that last spirit-bruising roon we'd had and the spell I had woven about him, I had the added assurance of his promise. The way he had said it, I knew keeping it would be a point of honor with him.
We got the horses and left in the dead of night, like thieves. As we crossed the misty courtyard, shivering in the damp air, I looked up at the balcony where Terzian had tempted me. For a moment, I felt again the throb of desire. Curtains were drawn tight across the glass doors. I half hoped to see him. Why, I don't know. I had already said goodbye.
Then we were cantering through wet fields. Deep in thought as we put distance between us and Terzian, I pondered the mistake I had almost made. If you play with matches, you're lucky if you escape unburnt. Pell rode behind and every so often, I would turn to look at his beautiful face. He was watching me, brow knit with concern. Anxious. But not wanting to push me to talk before I was ready. I realized it was one of the many things I loved about him.
We Wraeththu are still so young. Sometimes I think we haven't learned anything. If we are complete within ourselves, both male and female, why do so many of us seek permanent bonds with another har? Why do we seek chesnari? As the miles passed and the rain drenched me sober, I began to feel certain that Thiede was wrong. We, like our human counterparts before us, need a mate to be complete. I feel it now to the marrow of my being. Male, female, what do they matter? It's not the union of opposite sexes we hara need. Instead, we seek the end of the loneliness of the soul, which can only be found in another. Even proud Terzian felt it. In this, perhaps, we are no different from the humans.
I am damaged by what I've been through, sometimes I think irreparably. Seel and I went on separate paths. Zack was wild, and he made me wild, and like an animal, I left him. But with Pell it is different. He makes me better than I am, than I deserve to be. His sweet, steadfast spirit heals me. I know now that I can never give him up. Never. Not for safety, or self-aggrandizement; not for a roon to the stars and back. Because Pell is the only one who makes me feel whole. Together we are stronger, shining and feather-light, the way Wraeththu are meant to be. And if ever I was to conceive life with someone, it is with Pell I want to do it. The realization takes my breath with its power. It has never occurred to me before to put a name to the feeling I have. Now I do. Love. That is it. I am in love with Pell.
It is time to tell him. Now that I know the truth of my heart - our hearts, for I am sure he feels the same way, though he has yet to put it in words - it seems we have all the time in the world to discover what it means. See there, the sun has burst through a fissure in the clouds. Metaphor. We are heading into the light towards a glorious future together. Nothing will stand in our way. My heart soars on the wind of dreams.
The End