But it was not a game to Hera. It seemed a matter of life and death. If Zeus bedded a woman, for a moment he would be able to celebrate the points he scored. But if Hera blocked his tryst, she not only robbed him of his damnable points, she won a reprieve from the ache his infidelities caused.
I can’t let him enjoy his decadence, but at least I can feign to do so, she thought. Tonight I’ll unbalance Zeus. “Perhaps, now that we no longer wear our Guides, we will be free to put aside our jealousies?” she said with a hint of petulance. Zeus’s expression of pleasant surprise gratified her to no end, encouraged her a bit more. After all, if he was a stranger to her now, she was as much one to him. Hera affected a breathless, pleading tone. “You’ve sported with enough women; certainly you cannot object if I choose a man?”
Zeus put a hand on his hip, suddenly tense. He was possessive and would not like the idea of her sleeping with another. Yet the idea of truce tempted him. “So, you want to sleep with this Milk?” He snorted the term “Milk” in derision, as locals often did when speaking of people from the Milky Way. “That … would be your affair,” he said, turning away, feigning disinterest. “I would not come between you. In fact, it could be entertaining to see if you can lure him to your bed.”
Hera laughed. “If? You wonder if I can do so? I have my attractions.” He watched her in the mirror. She smiled at him, pulling at the vee in the neck of her low-cut evening gown. Hera was beautiful. How could she not be? The greatest body sculptors in the universe had designed her.
“Seduction is an art”-Zeus shrugged-”one you have not bothered to acquire.”
His condescending tone hurt her. You lout, she thought. You have no idea how I play you! How many times have I had to draw you back into my arms?
“Then you don’t mind if I bed the Lord Protector?” she said flatly.
“Ah, you don’t have to be hurt,” Zeus soothed. “I mean no disrespect. You’re lovely beyond all women, Hera. How could this cretin not be allured by your”-he waved toward her chest-”obvious charms?” He added, “Besides, if you have difficulty attracting the prey, I can advise you.”
“Thank you. I’m sure I don’t need a coach.”
Zeus glanced at her, a puzzled expression. “Sport with him if you like, but don’t become attached. Skills are so … easily learned. If he does something you like, you will, of course, teach me?”
“As surely as you have taught me the things you’ve learned abroad,” Hera responded. She went to the window, gazed out. She did not want Zeus to see her face, red with anger. She wanted him to imagine she was anxious for the escapades to begin. She’d known all along that Zeus would, try to seduce Maggie. It really did not matter whether Maggie was married or not, pretty or not, pregnant or not-Zeus collected lovers the way settlers on Ruin collected spirit masks from dead Qualeewoohs.
For years now, Hera had suffered humiliation at Zeus’s hands. Seldom had she been able to take much vengeance. Now Zeus would pay. He could not suspect the humiliation she would heap on him. Hera almost felt sorry for Zeus, so handsome, with eyes smoldering from his desire. Almost she felt sorry.
Chapter 8
Ten weeks after he’d confirmed Maggie’s scent to Lord Karthenor, Thomas’s captors roused him from sleep and hustled him outside. He stood blinking in the cool morning sunlight. The day looked different than he remembered, the skies too purple. Such was the atmosphere of Fale. Thomas felt surprise at his surroundings-palm trees and groves of strange fruits. Bright parrots squawked among the green shadows. Nothing like the landscape where he’d been abducted months before. Nothing like home.
Lord Karthenor was nowhere to be seen, but two of his men had prepared airbikes and packs out behind the house, in a green glade. Three bikes sat by, slick silver things with winglike stabilizers front and back.
Thomas wanted to run, struggled to run, but the Guide affixed to the base of his skull kept him in place. Still, he was relieved when his captors removed his shackles and handcuffs. They did not speak to him. They treated him as a thing to be prodded and moved about, much as any other piece of equipment.
Lord Karthenor appeared from a door at the back of the house. He and his men wore dark robes of brown, faces hidden by the golden masks of Fale, which gave off their own dim light. Karthenor addressed Thomas, “Greetings. The sunlight should do you some good, don’t you think? You’re looking rather pale after months in the basement.”
Thomas could not answer. His Guide did not permit him to speak. Karthenor’s questions were not meant to elicit a response, only to torment.
“Perhaps you are curious where we’re going? We’ve located Maggie. She’s jumped off the gated worlds, and we’ve run her aground in the Carina Galazy. She believes she is safe, beyond the range of dronon ships. But we have a surprise for her.”
Karthenor smiled. “Here, have a seat on the airbike, in back. You can ride with me.”
Thomas could think about running, could dream of knocking his captors in the head and darting into the jungle, but the Guide would not let him. He could not move a muscle without Karthenor’s command.
So he mounted the bike behind Karthenor and sat like a bag of parsnips on the airbike as it skipped along the ground to a distant world gate.
So, Thomas’s betrayal would bear fruit. Thomas abhorred the thought. He wished he could kill Karthenor. Running from the man would do no good. He had to fight.
Yet the Guide held Thomas prisoner in his own body. Perhaps that was the greatest torture of all, to sit behind Karthenor, smelling the scent of the man’s dark robes, while Thomas imagined how he could unclasp his hands, reach up, and throttle Karthenor.
Thomas struggled to control one hand; he needed but squeeze with two fingers. He concentrated till sweat poured from his brow, and his whole body trembled. All during the two-hour trip to the world gate, he fought, then wrestled even harder as the airbikes carried them through the portal between worlds.
Thomas did not understand the gates. He knew that for a moment he became incorporeal. The tiniest fragments of his body were somehow tossed through a hole in time and space, so they landed on a far world.
Thomas hoped that in that moment of travel, he would be free, he would be able to lift his hands and strangle Karthenor. Or perhaps he would stick his hand in Karthenor’s robe and draw the weapon this evil lord had secreted there. Thomas knew little about guns but he had no doubt that the bulge he felt in Karthenor’ s chest holster carried something deadly.
Still, when they passed between worlds, Thomas could not move.
On Tremonthin they zipped over hills green with a stubby growth of grass, a dismal land of rain and clouds. Oak trees sat in groves in the distance, until at last Karthenor found some muddy roads, rutted from carriage tracks.
Karthenor and his cohorts seemed pleased by this discovery, and they followed the course of the road, whipping past carriages and oxcarts. The locals were much like people from Thomas’s home-plain folks in simple cloth of their own making, many wearing swords. They passed stone houses with thatched roofs, screamed through the narrow streets of towns.
For hours their journey dragged, as daylight waned.
The locals were shocked at the sight of the airbikes, and many shouted and pointed.
It was not the ignorant wailing of those who believed they saw demons-as would have accompanied their appearance on Thomas’s own home world. Instead, the airbikes caused outrage. By riding them, Thomas’s captors proved then were criminals, and many shouted, “Out, get out of here with those things!”
Some locals tossed rocks as Karthenor passed, and late in the evening, when a rock finally connected lightly with Karthenor’s shoulder, the Lord spun his airbike around and confronted the man, a simple farmer with long yellow hair who’d been herding a flock of sheep down a narrow mountain road. Up above them, a tiny stone home sat, smoke coming up from its chimney.