“The darkness has ended, little savage,” he said softly. “How did you find it?”
“Like no other,” I replied, running my hand down his firm, hard belly to what lay beneath. “Ceralt is a male without equal, fit for none save a warrior.”
The laughter of his pleasure sounded even as his manhood stirred beneath my fingers. “Such is not the reply of a well-bred village wench,” he chuckled, striking me smartly upon the bottom. “Such a wench would bewail the tortures she had gone through, begging the Serene Oneness to spare her from such use again. You do not see the matter in such a light?”
I stiffened in anger at being struck so, and also at the mockery in his tone. “Tortures are to be avenged, not bewailed,” I informed him, drawing away as far as possible. “And your words hold no meaning for me, as it was pleasure I felt, not torture. ”
“There, you have done it again,” he laughed, paying no heed to my stiffness. “Such immodesty is unbecoming in a good wench, and we must school you in the matter. Do you wish my riders and their wenches to think you a pavilion-she—a mere varaina?”
His humor grated as did the term varaina, which was unfamiliar to me. “I do not know the word!” I snapped, truly annoyed. “Nor do I comprehend the nature of a—a pavilion-she! I am a warrior of Mida, a war leader, not a denizen of villages and cities!”
My opinion of the places of males came through clearly in my tone, and Ceralt grinned faintly as his hand went again to my face.
“You are a what?” he asked, his voice soft yet filled with that which I could not define. “Surely I could not have heard what I thought I heard.”
His face was mainly in shadow, his voice was not menacing, yet the words he spoke were somehow disturbing. With uneasy awareness of his hand upon my face and his arm about me, I replied, “I am a warrior of Mida. Ceralt has known this since first we met.”
“Since first we met,” he echoed, the strangeness yet within his voice. “And from the moment I first laid eyes upon you, I vowed that one fey you would be mine, not as a warrior, but as a woman. My woman. That fey has now come to pass.”
No further trace of the grin was upon him, and his hand had tightened where it held my face. I moved in discomfort against his grip, finding instead that his reawakened manhood sought me also where I lay against his body. So large was this Ceralt, and lately so strange, that Mida herself might have hesitated before him. I knew not what his intent might be, yet it seemed one with the chill of the air and the gray of the fire’s ashes.
“Ceralt has ever known that Jalav is Mida’s,” I whispered, my hands to his broad, bare chest. “Though once I might have wished it otherwise, I can never be yours. Do not fault me for that which is beyond my power to alter, Ceralt. I am chosen by Mida to serve her, and must do so till the sweet earth drinks of my blood. Such are the ways of Midanna.”
“No longer are you of the Midanna!” he snarled, so like a child of the wild that my hand grasped frantically for a weapon. No weapon came to me, and I shivered, held there so near to him. “Now have you been chosen by me,” he rasped. “Your service mine alone! By Mida you vowed that you would be full woman to me, that you would obey me in all things, and so it shall be! Do you recall the vow, woman? Do you?”
He shook me now, by the face and the arm, so savagely that my neck and shoulder ached to the clenching of his fingers. Wildly, I pulled at his hand, attempting to free myself from it, all the while refusing to hear the import of his words.
“No.” I moaned, unable to counter his strength, a vast emptiness spreading within me. “I could not have vowed such a thing! You lie! You lie!”
“Do I?” he demanded, the lightening of the fey spreading within the windows to show me the coldness in his eyes. “Do I lie, Jalav? Are you to be forsworn?”
“Never!” I screamed, throwing myself at him in a frenzy. “Sooner the final death than to be forsworn!” Madly I clawed at him, raking furrows in his arms and chest, my body twisting upon the furs so that I might have greater purchase in my attack. I wished to destroy him then, to send him to Mida’s chains or the great darkness, to still his tongue so that it might never speak again. My chest heaved and ached with the madness of my efforts, yet his strength kept my claws from his eyes, my teeth from his throat. His hands captured mine and his body fell upon me, forcing away what little air I had. I threw my head to one side, away from him, squeezing my eyes shut so that I need not look upon him. Deeply I gasped for air that would not come, my wrists held prisoner between his hands, my body caught beneath the weight of his, my agony too horrible to bear. I had made the vows he had said I had made, faintly yet clearly I recalled the act, yet I could not accept the results of the vows upon my lifeshadow. When a warrior stood in her true self before the Midanna who had gone before, all actions of her lifeshadow lay open to their view. To think how such vows would be seen by them! Rightly would they condemn such a one to eternal solitude, never to join Mida’s everlasting legions! I screamed then, feeling the tortures of my loss from the self-imposed darkness of a withered soul, cursing my body for the consequences its hungers had brought upon me. I, once a war leader of the Hosta of the Midanna, was now no longer fit to stand in the company of the lowliest of warriors, was now to be thought of as less than the least of city slave-women. My screaming grew higher and wilder, rising in waves to the dwelling’s rafters, then Ceralt’s hand struck my face hard, and again, driving the screams from my throat. I lay shaking beneath him, shattered by the enormity of what I had done, yet even so his annoyance came to me clearly.
“Jalav, cease this caterwauling,” he commanded. “I shall not allow you female hysterics over the simple fact that you have been mastered. You are mine now, and shall remain so forever. Accept it.”
Accept it. So easily did he command me, he who knew naught of honor. Bitterly I looked upon him, seeing the deep scratches upon his chest and arms which his light eyes refused to acknowledge. As ever, a lock of his dark hair fell over his brow, a clear symbol of the unruliness he demanded for himself, yet would never allow to me.
“Release me from the vows!” I rasped, breath still coming hard to me. My cheek burned where he had struck me, and my hands and wrists no longer had feeling.
“Such is not my conception of acceptance,” said he with a dryness in his tone, and then he grinned. “Know yourself defeated, my varaina, bested as surely as though you stood among your own, and nearly as savagely. Your life has not been lost to you in the living, merely in the directing, and though your restrictions shall be great, the living of it shall prove sweeter. You are now no more than a wench beneath a man, a position you will often be required to take. How stand your views upon the matter now?”