Танит Ли - The Storm Lord

“You pulled a knife, you clod. Let’s see it, then. Think you can nick me, do you, before I break your neck? Besides, it’s a hanging offense to resist the Am Dorthar.”

A voice called out: “He hasn’t a knife.”

Other voices yelled: “We’d’ve seen, wouldn’t we? You imagined it, Dortharian.”

The soldier’s face darkened. He spun to the crowd, snarling, but another soldier shouted for him abruptly from the road. With an obscene curse the Dortharian turned and glared briefly at Raldnor.

“Sometime I’ll settle with you, dung-creeper.”

He swung aside and shouldered through the press to his station.

A hand slipped Raldnor’s knife into his grasp. One or two people were going past; he was not certain who did it. He climbed back on to the box, shaking with a horrified sick fury, and saw Orhvan’s white face at the wagon flap.

A burst of trumpets. Dimly Raldnor became aware of the advent of the procession. He had a fine vantage point, which went mainly unused. He registered only a vague blur of dark soldiery, the colors of Dorthar and Thann Rashek, and the priestesses of Yasmis in their carmine garments, while the brass music howled in his ears. But then he saw the chariot.

For some reason all his senses sharpened and centered on that chariot—the vehicle of the Storm Lord, jet-black metal drawn by a jet-black team of animals. Perhaps it was the animals which first caught his attention, for he had never seen their breed before.

The man in the chariot had the Dortharian black copper skin and the black hair. His face was curious, a strangely distorted face—as if it held, half concealed, a cauldron of inner violence—though externally well-formed and boasting the large ebony eyes of his mother, Val Mala. He wore black, with a gold chain slashed across his breast. He held the reins in his right hand, in his left a gold handled whip. And that left hand had on it a gauntlet, with a smoky sapphire on the smallest finger.

And this then was the High King. This dark and odd-faced man was the royal Enemy.

Until this moment he had been merely a phantom; now, as if fated, all Raldnor’s hate transferred itself to him.

At the rose heart of Lin Abissa lay the Pleasure City, that area dedicated to the more carnal side of Yasmis, goddess of love. Xaros came in the blue dusk for him, and they soon left behind them the almost empty hostel and the pale girl sitting at the fire.

She had not wanted to go to the fine Xarabian’s house; she equated that dinner with the food and fear offered by the Ommos, Yr Dakan. Yet neither did she want to be alone in this creaking shadowy room, with its smoking, barely hospitable fire. On the hostel stairs she had brushed Raldnor’s arm.

“Must you go with Xaros?” she faltered.

“You know I must. I explained to you—we’re to see a furrier about the wolf pelt.”

“But must it be tonight?”

“Why shouldn’t it be?”

She could not tell him.

Soon he grew impatient. She tried to repress her tears for she knew that he hated her to cry. In his eyes there came that look which appalled her. She gave him no pleasure—how could she when she did not understand how? So he must look elsewhere. For she realized already that it was to a brothel he was going.

Now the tears ran down her face freely, and she did not wipe them away.

The narrow streets glowed with hot windows. Spangled women flaunted their sensual wares on high booths—fire dancers from Ommos and Zakoris, snake dancers from Lan and Elyr. Pimps roared out the virtues of their most expensive whores.

“Such breasts—such thighs—”

“Three of each,” Xaros remarked to the immediate crowd.

They came to a tinsel doorway and went in.

There was a naked Yasmis statue in the middle of the room, and a girl acrobat was contorting herself about it; prisms were pasted over her nipples and between her thighs a piece of mirror. Various customers were scattered here and there, drinking and observing her.

They sat down in an alcove, and a man brought them wine unbidden, and charged a ridiculous amount for it. Discomfort took hold of Raldnor. Presently two girls came drifting across the room.

They might have been twins—both pretty, both the smoke and honey shades of Xarabiss, their blue-black hair in heavy curls, gold sequins at the corners of their eyes. Their dresses were transparent gauze, cunningly pleated to opacity at breasts and pelvis, yet revealing a red gem set in each navel and a gold sunburst raying out from it across each softly curving belly.

They greeted Xaros with chirruping affection, but one sat dutifully by Raldnor and poured him wine.

“You’re very handsome,” she whispered to him over the cup, but it was a mannered sweetness. “My name is Yaini. And you’re a Lowlander.”

“Yes.”

“There’s love in the wine,” she murmured. By this he understood her to mean that it was laced with an aphrodisiac, and he set down his goblet untasted. She looked at him curiously, then smiled. “There’s a room above.”

He rose at once, embarrassed by this sexual etiquette of which he knew nothing.

He followed her to the room, which was only large enough to accommodate a bed. In the dim lamplight she reached to embrace him with a delicate, well-simulated passion. There was magic in her mouth and light-fingered hands, and, as he caressed her pliable and willing body, she seemed to quicken too, though possibly it was part of her training to seem to do so.

Much later, as they lay together in the golden gloom, it came to him suddenly that perhaps his unknown mother had been a prostitute with a sunburst painted on her belly, and he grinned maliciously at this.

“You’re smiling,” she said, raising herself on one elbow to look at him. “Why? Did I please you?”

“Naturally you pleased me. You’re very lovely and also very well instructed.”

“That’s a cruel thing to say to me after love.”

“You must think me very naive,” he said. “Am I the first Lowland peasant you’ve entertained?”

“You’re not like a Lowlander at all. Neither like a peasant. You despise me as a whore. You think you bought my pleasure automatically.”

He looked at her, and she was clearly angry. Her responses had seemed genuine enough certainly. He drew her toward him and kissed her coral mouth and honey breasts.

“Again and again and again,” she whispered breathlessly. “You’re indefatigable, a Storm Lord—” He scarcely heard that hated name. “If I please you so much, will you visit me later?”

But he did not answer her except with his body.

A hurricane rent the darkness in his skull.

He woke, crying out, and the Xarabian girl caught his shoulder.

“What is it? A dream? It was only a dream. You’re awake now.”

“No,” he said, his eyes wide, “not a dream.”

And in his brain the alien terror thundered, making him giddy, sick and afraid. He flung himself off the bed, snatched up his clothes and began to dress.

“Oh, what is it?” she sighed frantically. “Let me help you.”

But he was at the doorway and suddenly gone. Distressed, Yaini huddled on the bed. He was the first man who had ever totally pleased her. She had not expected such strength, such passion and such exquisite lovemaking from one of the moderate Lowlanders. And now he had left her—she did not know why—as if some demon had suddenly driven him mad.

Outside he shouldered through the idling customers and their whores. Of Xaros there was no sign. Intolerable waves clashed in his head. He ran from the brothel.

A black velvet night, towers stitched golden on it now, and lamp shine on snow. He thrust between knots of people, who laughed or cursed him. He lost his way and found himself in a desolate alley, sobbing and clutching at his skull like a drunkard in a fit.