Dave Duncan - West of January

Ayasseshas stretched her arms overhead and yawned, as if weary. “Well, this has been a fascinating conversation. I am always willing to listen to talk of love…so ethereal a subject…and you are quite the most pompous man I have ever met. But now, wetlander, you will fornicate with me, and I shall be satisfied with nothing less than total exhaustion. If you are unable to rise to the occasion, I have means to assist you.” She reached for a goblet on the table.

“It makes tall tree grow in forest?”

She smiled, showing those protruding incisors again. “Usually I reserve it to blow on embers—for maximum effect, you understand—but in your case it will evidently be required to ignite the tinder. Drink, guest!”

I thought of my wild frenzy when Misi gave me such a potion, and the memory of how I had treated her shamed me anew. I could guess that the brew might be dangerous to me, but I had survived before, and I would have no compunction about being rough with Ayasseshas, even had her bodyguard not been standing by the door. What man could resist a chance to experience again that firestorm of ecstasy, passion magnified and prolonged beyond endurance and farther yet? For the first time, the potential of the situation began to arouse some reaction in me. Of course that did not escape Ayasseshas’s notice.

“And if I refuse to drink?”

She leaned very close. “I will persuade you.” Her dark eyes gazed unblinkingly into mine, and I felt a cool hand slither gently up my thigh.

My heartbeat had begun to rise, yet I returned her steady gaze. “How?”

“Um-oao will sit on your legs, Ah-uhu will hold your arms, and I shall pull your testicles down to your knees.”

Some truths are self-evident. For a long silent moment we were eye to eye, while her fingers continued their encouragement. “That would be a convincing argument,” I said. “Your logic is inescapable.”

“It has never failed. Bottoms up, lover!”

I took the goblet and drained it, wincing at the familiar foul taste.

Ayasseshas smiled and released me. She leaned back on her piled cushions and wriggled herself comfortable. “Proceed when ready, man.”

“It takes a moment or two,” I said. “So while we wait, tell me what a spinster does with a wetlander. I truly do not know, lady.”

That surprised her. “Indeed? I thought you were being courageous. You are merely ignorant?”

“I told you. I am a herdman. We are expected to be ignorant.”

“You were serious with all that talk of love? Astounding! Well, do you know how silk is made?”

My heart was pounding wildly now and my belly was a furnace. It did not feel quite the same as the time before, though.

“No,” I said. My eyelids were prickling.

“Silk,” said Ayasseshas, “is—How do you know it takes a moment or two?”

“I’ve had it before.”

“No!” She sat up, staring. “You lie!”

I could not speak; my throat was too constricted. A strange throbbing filled my head, and my lips seemed to be swelling and turning outward. I could barely keep my eyes open, so swollen were the lids now. Vaguely I could hear Ayasseshas screaming for her guards, and then I sank down into a thick blackness. I was trying to vomit but I could not even breathe. Other people had invaded the room and were clutching at me. I roused briefly as something hard was forced down my throat, and I knew that death was very near.

IT WAS NOT I WHO DIED, though; it was the giant Ah-uhu.

Much of what happened I learned later from young Quetti. Restless, suffering, unable to settle, he had returned to stand in his favorite place outside Ayasseshas’s door, as close to his beloved as he could be without annoying her. Any other would have been chased away by the guards, but a wetlander was precious and had privilege. When Ayasseshas started screaming for aid, when Um-oao went racing off to fetch Othisosish, when many others were flocking freely in and out of the palace, then Quetti drifted inside also to watch.

The long-ago saint, Issirariss, in his treatise on the virgin’s web, had noted that it was dangerous. He did not mention that a second dose is guaranteed to be fatal. The body can not twice withstand such maltreatment, and even a tiny trace of the drug will provoke a reaction quick and deadly. I may be the only man who has ever survived it.

My survival was due entirely to Othisosish, Ayasseshas’s resident medicine man. The oldest person in the settlement, he was also the only one not bound to her by the imprinting effect of the virgin’s web. She had his loyalty without it, for he was her father. Um-oao was sent for Othisosish. Luckily for me, he found him at once and brought him and his bag of magics back at a gallop, bearing him bodily like a child.

By that time my face had turned black, Quetti said, but Othisosish rammed a tube down my throat to give me air. Then he applied the venom of the yellow log snake. It is a tiny but deadly serpent, whose bite is almost always fatal. The venom can be extracted from the poison glands, and in very small amounts it is a potent physic, but to slaughter the snake and make the extraction takes time. There was no time, so Othisosish used the only other means available to him. No swampman could be worth as much as a wetlander, and Ah-uhu died to serve his beloved. The snake was then applied to my arm for a second bite. Even that may sometimes kill, but I was lucky. My recovery was as miraculously speedy as the onset of the symptoms. I found myself alive, suspended upside down by Um-oao while I vomited out blood and Ayasseshas’s love potion all over her precious rugs.

By the time I was capable of speech, some sort of order was returning. Ah-uhu’s body had been removed, and men were busily cleaning up the mess. Others stood around, nervously watching Ayasseshas as she strode to and fro, screaming curses. She had not thought to dress herself, but they would all have watched her anyway. Quetti lurked in a corner, shrouded in his long burnoose, unnoticed or merely ignored.

The spinster stopped her pacing to come and stand over me as I lay sprawled on cushions. My throat was raw, my swollen right arm smoldered, and my heart hammered strangely. I had never felt more ill in my life.

“He will live?” she demanded.

“He will live,” Othisosish replied. He was behind me and I had not seen him, but I was not paying much attention to anything. “He will be as good as new very shortly.” He cackled. “Let him rest—he will be little use in bed for a while now.”

“He wasn’t before,” the spinster said. “How do you feel, wetlander?”

I croaked wordlessly.

“Tell me about this woman you love, the one less fair than I.”

That mention of Misi cut through my nausea and giddiness. I thought how wonderful it would be to have her enfold me once more in her great arms, to hug me as she had done before when I was sick. “Trader,” I whispered.

Ayasseshas knelt at my side to take my hand. “Describe her.”

I was still much too befuddled to work out why the spinster should be interested in Misi, but not so confused that I could not sense danger. “Beautiful, too.”

“Old? Young?”

“Just…beautiful,” I mumbled, being cautious.

“Shisisannis, come here!”

“My Queen?” The burly young snakeman appeared in my foggy field of view and then knelt opposite Ayasseshas on the other side of me. Earlier I had heard her send him off to bed like a child, but he had apparently been summoned back.

“Did you see any trader women when you picked up this rubbish?”

Serpents twisted as he grinned. “I saw two. There was an old fat one in brown and a younger one in a green dress, driving the wagon.”