Raising his glass, he waved it vaguely in Thu-Kimnibol’s direction. “Enough of this talk. A toast, a toast! To my dear friend and beloved cousin Thu-Kimnibol!”
“Thu-Kimnibol,” Chham echoed quickly.
“Thu-Kimnibol,” the others chimed in.
“My dear friend,” Thu-Kimnibol said, lifting his own glass. “Who’d have thought it, twenty years ago, that I’d sit here tonight, at this very table, in this very seat, by Salaman’s hearth-fire, thinking, How splendid he is, what a great friend, what a staunch ally! To you, dear Salaman!”
The king studied him as he drank. He seemed sincere. He was sincere. They had become friends. The last thing I would have expected, he thought. His eyes filled with tears. Dear Thu-Kimnibol. Good old Thu-Kimnibol. How I’ll miss you, when you leave here!
“Wine!” he called. “Wine for Thu-Kimnibol! And wine for the king!”
Weiawala hopped up at once to refill their glasses. As she came within range of Thu-Kimnibol, he slipped his hand along her waist, and down the side of her leg. He never missed a chance to fondle her and stroke her. From the moment soon after his arrival when she had begun to share his bedchamber, he’d scarcely looked at any other woman here. Good, Salaman thought. A royal mating will come of this, perhaps. There’s reason to think Thu-Kimnibol can make himself chieftain in Dawinno after Taniane’s reign is over, since there seems to be no woman there who’s fit to have the job. How useful, then, to have one of my own daughters sitting on Dawinno’s throne at Thu-Kimnibol’s side.
He took a deep pull of his wine. He was beginning to feel a little better now. The wind seemed to be dying down.
“Dear Thu-Kimnibol,” he said again, after a time.
There was a sound like the slap of a giant hand against the palace wall. The wind’s brief lull was over. The gale was back with twice the fervor of before. And with its return, Salaman’s little moment of good feelings was gone. Suddenly there was a pounding in his head, a constriction in his breast.
“What a terrible night it is,” Thaloin whispered to Vladirilka. “It’ll drive the king mad.” It was only the barest thread of a whisper. But Salaman’s hearing was unnaturally keen when the black winds were blowing. Her words reached him with the force of a shout.
“What’s that? What? You think I’ll go mad, is that what you say?” he cried, springing up. Thaloin shrank back, one arm across her face to protect herself. The room grew very still. Salaman loomed over her. “A terrible night. This terrible season. A terrible night. This terrible season. The Long Winter come again, you say. You complain all the time, woman. Can’t you ever be content with what you have? I ought to turn you out into the cold so you can see what it’s really like!” Thu-Kimnibol was staring at him. The king gripped the edge of the table to steady himself. Rage is coursing like lava through his brain. In another moment he’ll be roaring. It’s all he can do to keep from knocking Thaloin across the room. His own mate, whom he cherishes. Perhaps she’s right. Perhaps he’s mad already. This damnable wind, this accursed season.
I’m ruining the feast, he thinks. I’m shaming myself and my whole family before Thu-Kimnibol.
“You must excuse me,” he says to his guest in a hoarse, ragged fragment of a voice. “This wind — I’m not well—”
He looks around the room, half glaring, half apologetic. Dares them all to speak. No one does. His three mates are terrified. Thaloin is ready to fling herself down under the table. Vladirilka looks appalled. Only Sinithista, the calmest and sturdiest of them, seems in any way composed. “You,” he says, beckoning her to his side out of his group of women, and goes sweeping off with her to his bedchamber amidst the screaming of the wind.
In the depths of the night a terrible fantasy overcomes the king. Salaman imagines that he is lying not with his familiar mate Sinithista but with a female of the hjjks, whose hard scaly body is pressed close against him.
Her black-bristled fore-claws caress his cheeks. Her powerful multiple-jointed hind legs are clasped tightly about his thighs, and her mid-limbs hold him by the waist. Her huge gleaming many-faceted eyes, bulging like toadstools, stare passionately into his. She makes harsh rasping sounds of delight. Worst of all, he is pressing himself to her with equal fervor, his fingers running tenderly over the orange breathing-tubes that dangle beside her head, his lips seeking out her fierce sharp beak. And his mating-rod, stiff and immense with lust, is plunged deep into some mysterious orifice of her long rigid thorax.
He cries out in horror, a dreadful wailing bellow of pain and rage that might almost have toppled the city wall itself, and pulls himself free. In a wild bound he springs from the bed, and goes searching madly about the room for a glowberry candle.
“My lord?” Sinithista called, in a small, plaintive voice.
Salaman, standing naked and trembling convulsively beside the window, managed to find the light and uncover it. No hjjk, no. Only Sinithista, sitting up in bed and staring at him in astonishment. She was shivering. Her breasts were heaving, her sexual parts were swollen in arousal. He looked down at his mating-rod, throbbing painfully, still rigid. All a dream, then. He had been coupling with Sinithista in his drunken sleep, and had taken her for — for—
“My lord, what is it that troubles you?” Sinithista asked.
“Nothing. Nothing. An ugly dream.”
“Come back to bed, then!”
“No,” he told her sternly. If he lets himself sleep again this night the dream will seize him anew. Perhaps if he banishes Sinithista from the chamber — no, no, that would be worse, being alone. He does not dare to close his eyes a moment. Behind his eyelids the dreadful image of that monster would burst forth again.
“My lord.” The woman was sobbing now.
He pitied her. He had abandoned her in mid-coupling, after all. He had not been with her in many weeks, not since his fascination with Vladirilka had overwhelmed him, and now he appeared to be spurning her.
But he wasn’t going to return to the bed.
Salaman went to her and touched her lightly on the shoulder, and whispered, “This dream has so disturbed me that I must have some air. I’ll come to you again later, when my mind is clear. Go back to sleep.”
“My lord, your outcry was so frightening—”
“Yes,” he said. He found a robe and threw it on, and went from the room.
There was nothing but darkness in the palace. The air was frigid. A ghastly wind was ripping down out of the east, and white swirls of snow rode on it like angry ghosts. But he couldn’t stay here. The entire building seemed polluted by his monstrous nightmare. He went down and down, and out to the stables. Two grooms looked up sleepily at him as he entered, saw it was the king, and rolled over again. They were accustomed to his moods. If he wanted a xlendi in the depths of the night, well, that was nothing new to them.
He selected a mount and rode out, toward the city wall, to his private pavilion.
The storm raged above him, so strong a wind that it was a wonder it didn’t blow the Moon itself out of the sky. There was more snow with it than he could remember, already enough to encrust the ground with white to a depth of a fingertip or so, and coming down more swiftly all the time. He looked back and by the blurred moonlight he saw that the xlendi’s hooves were leaving a sharply pronounced track in the whiteness.
Tethering his mount below the pavilion, Salaman raced up the staircase to the top. His heart was hammering at his ribs. In the pavilion the king grasped the window-ledge and hung his head outside, heedless of the icy gusts. He needed to cleanse it of every vestige of the dream that had coursed through his sleeping wine-sotted mind.