Robert Silverberg - The Mountains of Majipoor

He tried to kiss her, but she averted her mouth. Not their custom, apparently. So be it, Harpirias thought. That little sliver of carved bone stuck through her upper lip would have caused difficulties anyway.

She said something to him in her language. "I don’t understand," he told her. She laughed and said it again. Othinor words of tender passion? Somehow he doubted that. Maybe she was just telling him her name.

"Harpirias," he said. "My name is Harpirias. What’s yours?"

She giggled. Said something again, a single word, which a moment later she said a second time. Perhaps it was of some significance; but of course, he hadn’t a clue to its meaning.

"Shabilikat?" he ventured.

His attempt at mimicking her sent the girl into a gale of wild laughter.

"Shabilikat," he said again. "Shabilikat."

It seemed to amuse her inordinately to hear him repeating the word. But when he tried it one more time she put her hand over his mouth; and then, an instant later, she wrapped her powerful thighs around his waist, straddling him in a manner that left him without much of an urge to make further attempts at conversation.

It was a long night, and an active one, and rather more pleasant than Harpirias had anticipated, although the style of it was very strange to a man accustomed to the more polished women of the Majipoor aristocracy. Yet he accommodated readily enough to the lusty vigor of her lovemaking, the eager clawing hands, the fierce rocking thrusts, the robust uproarious outbursts of hilarity at what struck him as oddly inopportune moments. She seemed insatiable. Harpirias, though, after long months of unbroken continence, was far from troubled by that.

Somewhere along the way the furs with which he had covered them went flying to one side, but he hardly noticed the cold. Eventually — he had no idea how many hours later it was — he tumbled suddenly into the deepest and darkest of sleeps, the way one might tumble into a well; and when he woke, much later, he discovered that she had covered him once again while he slept and had slipped out of his room without awakening him.

He could not know, naturally, whether he had indeed sired a little princeling for Toikella on her that night. But if the effort had been a failure, he told himself, well, then, he would be quite willing to make another try at it.

The king, the next day, was in a far more congenial mood than he had been yesterday. He greeted Harpirias at the entrance to the throne chamber with hugs and bellows of hearty affection, and then with lascivious grins and winks and sniggers and nudges that made Harpirias wince with barely concealed embarrassment. Plainly Toikella had had a full report from the girl and had been very much pleased by what he heard.’ • But he still refused to let Harpirias draw him into any specific negotiations. He was in truth, as Korinaam had said, a man who disliked being hurried.

Harpirias had the Shapeshifter deliver a tactfully worded request for a discussion of the welfare of the hostages. Toikella’s reply was cool and brief, and even Harpirias could tell that it was a refusal.

He looked toward Korinaam. "He says no, does he?" "The king wishes to assure you that all will be well in regard to everything you wish, but he asserts that this is not the time to talk about it. He is going to set out on a hunting trip three days hence and it would be unlucky for him to engage in matters of any substance until he returns."

"Which will be how long? A week? A month?"

"Two days. One to ascend, one to return. Perhaps a third day if the animals make themselves scarce."

"By the Lady! If this keeps up we’re never going to—"

"You are invited to accompany him," Korinaam continued smoothly. "I advise that you accept. The midsummer royal hunt is a great sacred festival of these people, and he is honoring you greatly by asking you to come."

"Well, then," Harpirias said, somewhat mollified. But all this delay was irksome to him none the less.

The rest of that morning’s meeting was devoted to plans for the trip. Afterward, as he and Korinaam were returning to their lodging house, Harpirias said, "You taught that girl how to say words like ‘please’ and ‘I come in,’ didn’t you?"

"I felt that the situation was dangerous. She needed my help."

"Dangerous to whom?"

"The king was very resentful of her failure to seduce you that first night. He saw it as something close to treason on her part. It is always dangerous to attract the resentment of a barbarian king."

"And you think he would have had her killed if I hadn’t allowed her to—"

"There was that possibility. It seemed wisest to me not to risk it. The king was determined to have his way. He would only have sent another woman to you if this one hadn’t succeeded."

"No doubt you’re right," said Harpirias. Then, when they had walked on a few steps, something else crossed his mind and he asked the Metamorph, "Do you happen to know the meaning of the Othinor word ‘shabilikat’?"

"What?"

" ‘Shabilikat,’ " Harpirias repeated. "Or something approximately like that. It’s a word that she spoke just as she and I were— were about to—"

"Say it again."

Harpirias pronounced it once more, clearly, carefully. Korinaam was slow to respond. Then he began to laugh, not a familiar thing coming from him. The laughter began as a quiet inward sound but quickly grew to a guffaw.

"So it’s funny, is it?"

"Obscene, actually. So— terribly— filthy— " Korinaam appeared positively electrified by the word. "Of course you’re mispronouncing it hideously. It’s more like—" And he delivered himself of something that had the same number of syllables, but was studded with an impossible array of jaw-cracking consonants heaped together like boulders. "Is that more like what she actually said?"

"I suppose. What does it mean?"

Korinaam hesitated. He was snickering in a way that made Harpirias want to smack him across his face. "I can’t say it out loud. It’s too awful."

"Come on. You’re not a child, Korinaam. Don’t be coy with me!"

"I ask you, prince—"

"And I order you."

"Knowledge of this word is not essential to your diplomatic work."

"How can you be sure of that? I want you to tell me what it means."

Korinaam’s forehead was chartreuse with embarrassment. He smothered an attack of the titters and said, forcing the words out with no little difficulty, "It means — roughly — ‘The gateway of my body is open to you.’ Feminine mode of address to masculine listener. Men and women use different verb forms here."

Harpirias understood now why the girl had been so amused when he had repeated the word to her. It was a simple grammatical error, a man using the feminine form of speech. But where was the filth that Korinaam saw in the word? The gateway of her body was open. She was simply describing the situation as it existed at that moment. If he had unknowingly used the wrong verb form when he had repeated what she had said, well, no one could have expected him to understand the subtleties of Othinor grammar.

He gave the Shapeshifter a perplexed look. Korinaam had his head turned away from him and was staring abashedly at the ground.

"I don’t find anything obscene in that phrase," he said. "Erotic, maybe, yes, but not obscene."

"The image — the body perceived as having a gateway—" Korinaam was unable to go on.

"But it does. The female body, anyway. Explain to me why anybody — particularly a savage like her, uncomplicated, uncorrupted by civilization’s absurdities — would see obscenity in a straightforwardly anatomical descriptive metaphor?"

"She probably doesn’t," said Korinaam. Harpirias had never seen him look so uncomfortable. " I do. — If we may, prince, may we speak of something else?"