As they moved, he heard a door open, heard bare feet running almost silently as one of the Haruchai came in pursuit. Ceer or Cail must have sensed the sopor of Brinn and Hergrom and realised that something was wrong.
But beyond the last door, the stone of the walls altered, became mirrors. The Lady led Covenant between the mirrors. In an instant, their images were exactly reflected against them from both sides. Image and image and flesh met, fused. Before the Haruchai could catch them, Covenant and his guide were translated to an altogether different part of the Sandhold.
Stepping between two mirrors poised near the walls, they entered a large round chamber. It was comfortably lit by three or four braziers, seductively appointed like a disporting-place. The fathomless blue rugs asked for the pressure of bare feet; the velvet and satin cushions and couches urged abandon. A patina of incense thickened the air. Tapestries hung from the walls, depicting scenes like echoes of lust. Only the two armed hustin, standing opposite each other against the walls, marred the ambience. But they made no impression on Covenant. They were like the spiralling ironwork stairway which rose from the centre of the chamber. He looked at them and thought nothing.
“Now at last,” said the Lady with a sigh like a shiver of relish, “at last we are alone.” She turned to face him. The tip of her tongue moistened her lips. “Thomas Covenant, my heart is mad with desire for you.” Her eyes were as vivid as kohl could make them. “I have brought you here, not for the Kemper's purpose, but for my own. This night will be beyond all forgetting for you. Every dream of your life I will awaken and fulfil.”
She studied him for some response. When none came, she hesitated momentarily. A flicker of distaste crossed her face. But then she replaced it with passion and spun away. Crying softly, “Behold!” as if every line of her form were an ache of need, she began to dance.
Swaying and whirling to the rhythm of her anklets, she performed her body before him with all the art of a proud odalisque. Portraying the self-loss of hunger for him, she danced closer to him, and away, and closer again; and her hands caressed her thighs, her belly, her breasts as if she were summoning the fire in her flesh. At wily intervals, pieces of her raiment wafted in perfume and gauze to settle like an appeal among the cushions. Her skin had the texture of silk. The nipples of her breasts were painted and hardened like announcements of desire; the muscles within her thighs were smooth and flowing invitations.
But when she flung her arms around Covenant, pressed her body to his, kissed his mouth, his lips remained slack. He did not need to utter his refrain. He saw her as if she did not exist.
His lack of reply startled her; and the surprise allowed a pure fear to show in her eyes. “Do you not desire me?” She bit her lips, groping for some recourse. “You must desire me!”
She tried to conceal her desperation with brazenness; but every new attempt to arouse him only exposed her dread of failure more plainly. She did everything which experience or training could suggest. She stopped at no prostration or appeal which might conceivably have attracted a man. But she could not penetrate his Elohim-wrought emptiness. He was as impervious as if their purpose had been to defend rather than harm him.
Abruptly, she wailed in panic. Her fingers made small creeping movements against her face like spiders. Her loveliness had betrayed her. “Ah, Kemper,” she moaned. “Have mercy! He is no man. How could a man refuse what I have done?”
The effort of articulation pulled Covenant's countenance together for a moment. “Don't touch me.”
At that, humiliation gave her the strength of anger. “Fool!” she retorted. “You destroy me, and it will avail you nothing. The Kemper will reduce me to beggary among the public houses of Bhrathairain for this failure, but he will not therefore spare you. You he will rend limb from limb to gain his ends. Were you man enough to answer me, then at least would you have lived. And I would have given you pleasure.” She struck out at him blindly, lashing her hand across his bearded cheek. “Pleasure.”
“Enough, Alif.” The Kemper's voice froze her where she stood. He was watching her and Covenant from the stairs, had already come halfway down them. “It is not for you to harm him.” From that elevation, he appeared as tall as a Giant; yet his arms looked frail with leanness and age. The child cradled at his back did not stir “Return to the gaddhi.” His tone held no anger, but it cast glints of malice into the room. “I have done with you. From this time forth, you will prosper or wane according to his whim. Please him if you can.”
His words condemned her; but this doom was less than the one she had feared, and she did not quail. With a last gauging look at Covenant, she drew herself erect and moved to the stairs, leaving her apparel behind with a disdain which bordered on dignity.
When she was gone, Kasreyn told one of the Guards to bring Covenant. Then he returned upward.
The husta closed a clawed hand around Covenant's upper arm. A prescient tremor forced him to repeat his litany several times before he found ease. The stairs rose like the gyre of Sandgorgons Doom, bearing him high into the seclusion of Kemper's Pitch. When they ended, he was in the lucubrium where Kasreyn practiced his arts.
Long tables held theurgical apparatus of every kind. Periapts and vials of arcane powders lined the walls. Contrivances of mirrors made candles appear incandescent. Kasreyn moved among them, preparing implements. His hands clenched and unclosed repeatedly to vent his eagerness. His rheum-clouded eyes flickered from place to place. But at his back, his putative son slept. His golden robe rustled along the floor like a scurry of small animals. When he spoke, his voice was calm, faintly tinged with a weariness which hinted at the burden of his years.
“In truth, I did not expect her to succeed.” He addressed Covenant as if he knew that the Unbeliever could not reply. “Better for you if she had-but you are clearly beyond her. Yet for her failure I should perhaps have punished her as men have ever punished women. She is a tasty wench withal, and knowledgeable. But that is no longer in me.” His tone suggested a sigh. “In time past, it was otherwise. Then the gaddhi drew his Favoured from those who had first sated me. But latterly that pleasure comes to me solely through observation of the depraved ruttings of others in the chamber below. Therefore almost I hoped that you would succumb. For the unction it would have given me.”
A chair covered with bindings and apparatus stood to one side of the lucubrium. While Kasreyn spoke, the husta guided Covenant to the chair, seated him there. The Kemper set his implements on the nearest table, then began immobilizing Covenant's arms and legs with straps.
“But that is a juiceless pleasure,” he went on after a brief pause, “and does not content me. Age does not content me. Therefore you are here.” He lashed Covenant's chest securely to the back of the chair. With a neck-strap he ensured that the Unbeliever would sit upright. Covenant could still have moved his head from side to side if he had been capable of conceiving a desire to do so; but Kasreyn appeared confident that Covenant had lost all such desires. A faint sense of trouble floated up out of the emptiness, but Covenant dispelled it with his refrain.
Next Kasreyn began to attach his implements to the apparatus of the chair. These resembled lenses of great variety and complexity. The apparatus held them ready near Covenant's face.
“You have seen,” the Kemper continued as he worked, "that I possess an ocular of gold. Purest gold-a rare and puissant metal in such hands as mine. With such aids, my arts work great wonders, of which Sandgorgons Doom is not the greatest. But my arts are also pure, as a circle is pure, and in a flawed world purity cannot endure. Thus within each of my works I must perforce place one small flaw, else there would be no work at all.“ He stepped back for a moment to survey his preparations. Then he leaned his face close to Covenant's as if he wished the Unbeliever to understand him. ”Even within the work of my longevity there lies a flaw, and through that flaw my life leaks from me drop by drop. Knowing perfection-possessing perfect implements-I have of necessity wrought imperfection upon myself.