He had gone to the inn on Five Mile Street, the drinking-house that he would visit before an event, to taste the “last sweet cup.” (One day that would be true.) He had been there the night before. To go back after the stadium was a favor they would value.
He did not climb up to the roof, but sought the smaller court to the building’s rear, from which, once in a way, you might catch the sighing of the ocean. It was a spot for trysts, vacant tonight, as he had foreseen, for all the assignations had been made. The Lydian did not want fame or celebration, he did not want to drink.
The girl who came to him through the vine shadows was Velva. Her skin, darkest honey, was as smooth, her face clear of the blow the Var-Zakor mix had given her, for the physician on Sword Street was excellent, even if he could not cure the dead—
She drew in her breath when she saw the man under the vines. The fragrance of her caught in his brain.
Her hair, as his had been, was wreathed by golden poppies.
“What can I bring?” she murmured.
“You.” He took coins and put them in her palm, holding her fingers closed upon the money. “If you can, and will.”
“Yes—” she said. Her eyes flamed in the light of the Star.
“Not a room here,” he said. “Come to the shore with me. Give the cash to him. Tell him I want you for the night.”
“No payment—not from you—He wouldn’t.”
“Yes, payment. And more for yourself.”
“No.” But she ran to take the politeness of the coins to the inn-lord, her anklets ringing.
When she came back, her eyes were lowered. She let him lead her down out of the inn to the yard, and lift her up before him on the black thoroughbred.
Five Mile Street was loud with people and lights. Here and there someone greeted the champion, but soon they turned into the side alleys that ran toward the market.
Near the harbor wall a sentry or two gave them a mild good night. The Guardian’s men knew well enough who this rider was, but made no comment. With all the palace and aristocratic liaisons he could choose from, if he wanted to bring a wine-girl to the beach, that was his business. As for such a man being a slave, this sort of slave did not seek to break for liberty. Bred for their destiny, whatever other thing could offer them what slavery gave? The gods of the stadium went where and how they pleased.
As they rode down the path into the vast, plush, reddened black of sea and night, he began to caress her. The entire ride had been a caress, their bodies moving against each other, his arms roping her as he held the reins.
The pleated sea was fired by the Star. The Red Moon scorched behind the heights of the city. Nearest of all to heaven and to Zastis, strangely, the long hill cumbered by the tombs of the dead—
Under the rock, at the sea’s edge, the Lydian lay over Velva in a bath of satin sand. Her flesh burned with the light, her breasts tasted of powders and cinnamon, and of the sah of the ocean, budding against, within his mouth—She could not be still, her hair furling in inky coils along the dune, her hands polishing his skin, every muscle and tendon waking at her touch—She fell back dying into ecstasy long before he had penetrated the sea-cave between her thighs. He laughed at her rapture, cradling her through the joy, beginning again to court her even as it ended. When he took her, she was already crying out, calling thin and disembodied as a sea-bird—He thrust to the center of the sweetness, and the fount of life surged from him, excruciating pleasure, with the misleading finality in it of death. The poppies of her garland had been crushed between them.
In the brief hiatus, before the urging of the Star seized on him again, Rehger heard the waves on the shores of Alisaar, as he had heard them some eighteen or nineteen years. Changeless, those waters. Mankind did not matter. Once could know that at such moments, and not mind.
He had come to this southern city to enable them to betroth him to a girl he had never seen. She was apparently most beautiful. That did not encourage him; his mother was beautiful, the bitch of bitches, a Dortharian woman who plastered her skin with white. Why? To be different from every other woman of Vis. Or for some secret reason beyond him—Unless it was to turn the knife a little more in his wounds.
From the palace windows, he saw the snow, white also, lying on the city.
There were Lowlanders in the city. Despite everything he had ordered, every edict. Every terror.
Gloved, held in by cloth and rings, his hand lay out on the window embrasure before him. He need only strip the rings, the one great ring on the smallest, deformed finger, to see the hand as it was. The right hand, (naked, well-formed, very dark, unflawed), the right hand moved toward the left, stealing up on it. Take off the glove, and look. No. No need. He knew.
From childhood, from his first conscious hour. He recalled that once, once only, he had stared very long at the ungloved hand, turning to catch the lamplight of another room, in Koramvis. It had come to him then that the hand was actually a marvelous thing, almost an artifact, for it seemed made of silver, and the fine chiseled scales upon it, marred only by old scarring near the wrist, were perfect as silver discs laid one upon another. The scales, after all, of a dragon, not a serpent. Not the snake-scale curse on him of the lowland goddess Anackire—
There was rapping on the door. The woman, the mistress of his pleasure-girls. He had told her to go and fetch the one the soldiers had abducted. The Lowland girl-beast.
The door was already opened, and as the slave slipped out, the Lowlander was pushed through, and left to him.
She was terrified, he saw immediately. Good. She was too afraid to see his fear. That was often his means, was it not, the fear of others before a High King, a Storm Lord. They dropped at his feet and did not see him trembling.
He said something to her. What had he said? That she was a Lowlander, was she? Take off her rags then, and let him see the rest.
But she only stood there clutching at the air and gasping.
So he went on talking to her, reviling her, and in the middle of it, as if he could not prevent himself, his own horror filled him and that in turn spoke to her. Was she afraid of his hand, this one? Well, that was just. The blasting of her people laid in rape on her.
And he was also horribly aroused by her, her whiteness, her skin like snow, her hair like ice. Revolted and fascinated, sick, and avid—He pulled her to him and pressed the snake-scale hand over her breast and felt the heart leaping like a creature in a net. But then it ceased leaping, there was nothing, under his hand, his mouth. She had died. She was dead. He let her go and looked at her on the floor. A child. A dead child.
He knelt down slowly. He kneeled beside her, waiting for her to live again, for death to be a faint from which she would recover. He smoothed her face. He took her hands, and relinquished them. He slapped her.
He had not meant her to die. That was not fair, on her or on him. He had meant her to be used. Perhaps not even that. Only the gods, who hated him, knew what he had wanted or truly meant to do. But to kill her—should not have been possible.
Yet it was foolish, for he would not tolerate any of her race in the world. He would be rid of them. And this—was one less.
“It was only a dream.”
He looked into the girl’s dark face, framed by black hair and night, the Star-burned ocean.
“Yes,” Rehger said. “A dream.”
But Velva leaned over him still, her eyes wide, searching his.
He said, “What is it?”
“The Lowland witch,” she said, muttering so he barely heard her. “You were saying, the Lowlander, the Lowlander—”
Red lightning flickered, smiting the southern sea.
Rehger drew her down. “Now I say only ‘Velva.’ ”
He silenced her with kisses. He drew her astride and let her ride him, helping her with his strength until she moaned in an agony of delight. But even as his own body swelled toward its tumult, his mind stood far away. His mind was in the palace rooms of Koramvis and Lin Abissa, looking out of the eyes of Amrek, High King of all Vis, one hundred and thirty years and more in the past.