She could not see his face but she was able to picture it when suddenly he said, “You’re a liar, black girl, and a rotten one. Sell you on the road—if you don’t make off first. Do you know the reward given runaway slaves? For runaways from a temple? For those who annoy a priest of the goddess?”
Panduv drew back from him. She sat on her heels and gave him stare for stare.
“So you value yourself so slightly you reckon no woman could love you?”
“Women’s love—what’s that matter? Rubbish, nothing.”
Panduv said cunningly, “You offend Cah, to whom a mother is sacred. Didn’t even your mother love you?”
He opened his mouth—then laughed again. Lifting his hand he struck her glancingly across the cheek. Panduv leapt to the floor, her hand after the nacre sheath—her knife—which she had luckily removed before coming to him. Her eyes were for sure a leopard’s. She could kill him with her body alone. And then the temple guards would intercept her and do to her whatever they did do to slaves who annoyed the priests of Cah.
As for Watcher Arud, he was all agog. She should have been prone, entreating forgiveness. But this creature would not do that. She was a compendium—a swamp-cat, a devil, and a lean beautiful boy with breasts. His muscles still sang from what she had done to them. He already wanted her again.
“You lawless thing,” he said. “Cah didn’t create you. Were you even born?” He waved her to him. It was evident why.
Recovering herself, Panduv said, “I won’t he with you again, unless you promise me, in Cah’s name, to take me with you.”
“I can have you anyway.”
“Try,” she said. She thought, in that hot second, it might even be worth a death, to get her vengeance on him, for the temple and the temple food, for the Shansarian slaver and the wave that destroyed the city.
“Yes,” he said abruptly, lying back. “Get out then. Tell the mistress to send me in another girl.”
Panduv shrugged. She was no longer heated. She came to the couch and slid herself upon it. She lowered her head until the silk of her hair flowed over his belly and his thighs. It was the gambit of story and legend, but by Yasmat’s lilies, in such naive circumstances, a hope.
When he was writhing and arching beneath her, she pulled herself away from him.
“Promise me, and by Cah.”
“You—bitch—No.”
“You must finish yourself then.”
He lay helpless with fury, weak with interrupted lust, gathering himself.
“I’ll have them flay you.”
“You must still finish yourself.”
It was the absurdist in him that won her day for her. She saw the amusement struggling in his inflamed face. He gave-a roar and bawled at her: “You’ll come with me, to the mud-nest up the mountain. Miles without number—You’ll walk every step. You’ll have zeeba rations. If you become a burden I’ll sell you, or push you off a cliff. This I swear, by Cah. May she oversee my words. Now—”
She returned docilely, and gave him all he wanted. The rush of his orgasm, the sea wave . . . She had bought a potential liberation. With her body. The first time she had ever had so to use herself. In a night of bargains, she had become what she was meant to be, here, in Cah’s brothel.
12
False Magic
Zastis vanished on the first lap of the journey. Arud told her in the tent that night he would slough her at the next village prosperous enough to buy. “You’ll be able to escape from such a spot with ease.”
“Where should I go,” she said, “in this rocky dust-platter of a land?”
“Better now than later. The villages and the rocks are worse where I’m going.”
“Why not manumit me?” said Panduv, teasingly. “You paid the temple nothing for me.”
“No, you haven’t walked sufficient miles over the stones. I vowed it to Cah, to punish you. And you know if you run away from me, those outriders will soon get you back. They’d enjoy it. And then—”
“I adore you,” said Panduv. “I would never run away from you.”
Both of them laughed. It was a malign game, perilous—to Arud much more than to his slave. For there were chances now, to cut his throat in the darkness, to sprint away before the hue and cry was up. But, as she said, the land did not invite. Its tracks were channels of powder and its rivers thin runnels of spit. Ahead, the mountains were now in view, static brown upheavals going to distant mauve. She had exchanged one prison for another, but this at least was in the open air. Walking much of the day—despite his words, he afforded her now and then use of a zeeba, to the outriders’ disapproval—was exercise she valued. At their halts, too, she exercised and sometimes she danced for him, once even with a pair of lighted torches, though naked, for her clothing was a utility, not to be burnt. Arud marveled. He would not, being a son of Iscah, praise her, but he called on Cah over and over. Despite this, Panduv found herself rusty, her genius already withering. She had expected nothing else. Even so, it made her rage. It was a stormy session that night upon his blanket.
Before his servants, and in the villages, she adopted the decreed stance of the Iscaian female. She did not want to exacerbate him. Besides, coming to a mild fondness for him, she did not, either, wish to cause him embarrassment.
On her freedom, she had developed some awkwardness of thinking. She never had been free, she must acknowledge that. Perhaps slavery, although she had never formerly thought herself a slave, was now ingrained. If she ran from Arud, as she had said, to what should she run? It was more simple to remain with him. Too simple, maybe. But eventually life itself would show her the way. He would sell her, or dismiss her—at liberty. Or his enthrallment would go on, she would accompany him through the mountains and back down again, to the capital. And then, surely, something must occur, to wrench her loose, to employ her.
She would never move in the verity of the fire dance again.
She would never be “the Hanassian.”
Meticulous in diet and exercise, in the city she had had five or six or seven flawless years before her as a dancer, even more if her well-tuned body kept faith with her training. After that, obviously, decline would have come. She would then have been a valued instructress of the stadium, a courtesan if she chose, (as unlike a holy-girl as orchid to weed.) This existence might not have suited her either. She might have preferred suicide to ease and envy and regret, and not been the first. Yet that time was far off. Far, far and far.
But her body, agile, fluid and lovely, had already succumbed, betrayed her, in the foolish dance in the grove before lascivious Arud. He had thought her talent wonderful. She could have wept.
Late at night, Arud sleeping deep, when she might have got away, she had gone out among the trees and set up a small altar of stones, and burned some oil there. One of the outriders came to see what she was at, but finding her praying, left her alone.
She had given back her life’s reason to Zarduk, for to attempt any more the dance would be an insult to the god. She asked for some other thing to fill the gaping crevice in her spirit.
They climbed the paths into the mountains of Iscah. It was a thankless business. Up and down, down and up, the heights and the valleys, wading in the dust.
He took her less often now the Star was gone. But he liked the way she tended his hair, and massaged his body after the day’s fatigue. Hardly knowing he did so, he had begun to talk to her. In an unwary moment he remarked he was glad she was with him. She hid her eyes Iscaian fashion, covering her contempt. Probably that was the origin of the ritual. For if the women here showed what they thought of their men, doubtless the men would slaughter them at once.