But as she said this, even tensed with self-revulsion, there came the heavy, languid stirring in her loins. She closed her eyes and did not open them until she felt the heat of him beside her.
He was naked, now, as she was, the tawny nakedness flared with jet-black hair, that came from the mixture of race. The excellent body had few scars. It had fought too well and been too cunning to get many. She had seen men who wanted her, before, but from his readiness her gaze removed itself. She stared up and saw instead his face was only intent, in control of all of him, even the blaze of sex.
Abruptly, what had gone before was meaningless. She could ignore it as he did, leave it lying on the floor with her clothing and his.
She did not ask him if her nudity also was like Val Nardia’s. It was.
The slim figurine of this girl, lightest gold as Val Nardia’s skin had never been, the eyes darker, the hair darker if as rich, was Val Nardia seen through a lens of pale amber.
Her arms were around him, caressing, gathering, pleading.
He found her mouth, and the hollows of ears and throat and hands. The beautiful breasts were young and flawless, as he remembered, their tips eager and hard now as pearls.
There had been many women of many types. But the scent of this girl was her scent. The glide of fingers, plains of flesh, hers. The strong hidden mouth, taking, filled. Hers.
Raising himself, he saw the long primal spasms beginning like waves under the surface of her, how her eyes emptied and were shut, the winged lids drawn tight (Val Nardia’s), and the throat arched—as her throat was arched. He felt again the frantic drowning grip of limbs and hands, the drumbeats of her groin. The agonized cries were known.
When she was still, he stilled himself, looking down at her. But when he began to lift her again she was lazy, almost unwilling, as Val Nardia had been. And then quickening into tumult more avid even than before, and the summit was there, the ascent which was the fall.
Of Kesarh’s hungers, sex was probably the least. Possession he valued. This night was necessary to him, and there would be other necessary times of lust, and of sure comparison. To give this girl the High Queen’s portion of the empire he meant to make himself, that would establish her, the jewel in the jewel. He would look at them, his lover’s double, the world he owned, and perceive he had not been cheated.
But of Ulis Anet he took no concern. Her words, her thoughts, her life, could not interest him.
At daybreak, he left her.
Ulis Anet, cold without his heat, stood in a window glaze by ice, and watched men and zeebas turned black on snow and sunrise.
She understood now why she had been afraid. She had had demonstrated the narrow scope of his need for her, even as she helped him to enslave her flesh. These things might not have mattered if he had been some other man. But he had turned his devastating personal armament against her, as against any he wished to use.
She did not even see the rising sun. His darkness blotted out her sky.
She despised her sentiments hopelessly. It was like some tavern song.
They had been singing Karmian songs in Amlan, raucous from the Salamander barracks, which now took up one side of the Palace Square. You kept clear of that by day. At night, the curfew left the roads empty, but for patrols.
The traveler, who had just successfully dodged one of these, scratched at the door of an inn.
A shutter in the door went back.
“No trade. Go home before the Am Aarl catch you.”
“Basjar.”
“Yes, he’s here. Who wants him?”
“Raldnor, son of Yannul.”
“All of the goddesses! Wait. We’ll open up.”
Hauled into the inn and inspected by the proprietor who had known him, Lur Raldnor, deaf to questions about Dorthar, was next taken to a private room. A few men were drinking under the candle-wheel of thirty spikes that only wore four candles since the Karmians had rationed them. The biggest man was Basjar, the Xarabian.
They drew aside into an alcove.
“You found my message under the hearth stone.”
“Yes. Where Medaci used to put them. In Anack’s name—”
Lur Raldnor had gone the Lowland kind of pale, that was like bloodloss. He looked only fifteen again and peculiarly old.
“No,” said Basjar, “they live, all three of them. Yannul thought it wise to travel. From the way the Karmian riff-raff left your farm, you’ll agree he may have been right. I sold much of the livestock before they could get their bloody paws on it. All the money, and most of the valuables are secure, bonded in Xarabiss where Kesarh’s tribe can’t reach. Your father’s only lost the land.”
“He loved the land.”
Dasjar shrugged woefully, a very Xarabian gesture.
Lur Raldnor had been awhile trying to get home. He had let the servant remain in Dorthar. The man had no family, and did not fancy Lan’s current dangers. It should have made the journey lighter, but did not. In Ommos, shipping seemed a myth. Giving up on it, Raldnor had ridden after all for the Xarabian border. Near here, he met seven men, who robbed him. Reaching the first port penniless, he must lose further days hiring out as a laborer to get cash to pay his passage. Finally, when he would have killed to get it, someone had mercy and let him work his way on a shallow skimmer which was risking Lan to set up prostitutes for the soldiers. The seas were rough. The girls lay retching along the rail, wishing to die. Lur Raldnor rowed, or bailed, seasick too and numb with cold, wishing the ocean would die instead.
When he got to land, and so to the farm, he had wandered for too long amid the nightmare. The walls still stood. But they had fired the roof, urinated into corners, killed orynx in the yard. The snow hid nothing. Every exquisite memory of childhood, which the villa-farm had held in crystal, lay about mangled. And he had deduced his mother, father and brother were murdered. He almost never thought to search under the stone.
Basjar sat by quietly for the moments Raldnor needed, silently and with complete dignity, to weep. Then wiping his eyes on his sleeve like a boy, he said, “Where are they?”
“They went with a Vardish caravan, to be sure. Yannul’s goal was the Lowlands. Hamos, most likely. I sent my letters there for him.”
“She wouldn’t have wanted the Plains,” Lur Raldnor said. “Damn Karmiss.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
They drank to it.
Next morning, funded by Yannul’s agent, and with certain helpful papers and seals, Basjar had been able to supply, Lur Raldnor bolted out of Amlan, pressing south through the snow as Yannul had once done. And thus, bypassing Lanelyr, Olm and the Zor, rode on toward Elyr and the Shadowless Plains.
His namesake, Karmian Raldnor, Guardian of Lan, had himself no plans for travel that season. There were, at the onset of the siege snow, three thousand, five hundred Karmian troops split between the port and the city of Amlan, and, though he could not work sorcery on them by glance or voice, as could Kesarh, they liked him. He let them do almost as they wished, and gave them “bounty” for it. This bounty came from extortion elsewhere, but this did not upset the mixes and Vis who served under him. Commanders in other reaches of Lan and Elyr also had a glowing opinion of Raldnor Am Ioli. He could flatter, and he would pay. They committed crimes, and he forgave them. He caught them out in swindles, and understood. There was also the matter of Karmian rations. It seemed Kesarh had not cared to let his warriors have quite enough, prepared for them to go without in Lan. Raldnor, who had diverted or withheld supplies, now distributed them as his own gift. He saw that women and liquor were brought in. And while preserving a modicum of policy in Amlan, near riot was now and then allowed elsewhere.