“Then you wish to remain faithful to her?”
I considered that possibility and then shook my head. There was almost no chance in the world that I should ever see my darling again. She would never know nor care if I took other women, and most certainly she would feel no obligation to me.
Ayasseshas shrugged and sighed. The serpents around her breasts writhed. “I am at a loss! Tell me the answer, then.”
Hesitantly I said, “Partly it is this: I heard how you spoke to Shisisannis and Ing-aa. You praised each for his virility in the other’s hearing…and the same with the rest of the men, I expect. You made a mockery of their manhood. Somehow you have unmanned them all, lady, and I fear that you will cast your witchcraft on me if I accept your offer now.”
She gave me a glance of exaggerated astonishment. “Unmanned? I swear to you that the last time I checked, there was no detectable flaw in Shisisannis’s manhood, neither quantity nor quality. Ing-aa always travels the same predictable road, but the distance he can journey on it is astonishing… Unmanned? I have not lowered their manhood, Knobil. I wish I could do something to raise yours!”
I suppose I had nothing to lose. I became rash. “It is unnatural for many men to share one woman!”
Ayasseshas hissed softly. “A herdman, you said? How many—”
“That’s quite different!”
Her eyes were cold as shining pebbles. “In what way, exactly?”
The question was so absurd that I think I spluttered before I found an answer. “Babies, for one thing. A herdmaster can breed many children at the same time. How many can you carry, lady? Do you bear sons for all your lovers?”
She sighed. “Knobil, babies are not what I seek from them. Truly, babies are not my purpose! But if you think you can quicken my womb, then you are welcome to try. Most welcome.”
I shook my head and looked away.
“What does deter you? Am I so ugly?”
“No… Try to understand this, then, lady. I see no great passion in you, either. You offer yourself to me like a plate of meat. It is brutal and demeaning. You think that because a woman is available, a man must be willing. It is no reflection on my manhood that I spurn you, for you strive somehow to use my body—and use it against me, although I know not how.”
“Goodness!” the spinster muttered. She stretched out in her sensual fashion, reaching for a grape, and again I watched the play of color on her skin. “You never use a woman? You do it only for love? You never seek to find pleasure, only to give it?”
“Share it.”
“Mmm?” As if pondering, she held the grape for a moment in those meat-red lips and then sucked it in, with an audible plop! “They say a man never forgets his first time. Who showed you how, Knobil?”
I know that I blushed furiously, but there was challenge in her eyes. “A woman on the grasslands, when I was traveling with the angel.”
Ayasseshas took another grape and smiled at it. “Angels do not use women?”
Indeed they did, and all those unfortunate herdwomen whom the addle-headed Violet had so callously thrown my way I had used without scruple, for my own selfish pleasure. I had even reveled in his praise for a job well done, not recognizing how he had been infecting me with his own twisted bitterness.
“And what of the women in the seafolk s grove?” That must have been a guess, but her aim was deadly. I could not reply, for I had used them to advertise my superior virility
“And in the ants’ nest? Did you find love there, Knobil?”
That was the worst of all.
“What you say is true, mistress. Yes, I have used women in the past, but since then I have come to know love. I see now that men and women should come together in a giving of pleasure or at least a sharing, and not simply a taking. I do not think you expect pleasure from me, and I seek no debts to you.”
“How sweet! And who taught you this great truth?”
Sudden caution tempered my rashness. I must not be too specific about Misi, lest I somehow expose her to the spinster’s envy. “I told you, lady—I love another.”
Ayasseshas stretched her arms overhead and yawned, as if weary. “Well, this has been a fascinating conversation. I am always willing to listen to talk of love…so ethereal a subject…and you are quite the most pompous man I have ever met. But now, wetlander, you will fornicate with me, and I shall be satisfied with nothing less than total exhaustion. If you are unable to rise to the occasion, I have means to assist you.” She reached for a goblet on the table.
“It makes tall tree grow in forest?”
She smiled, showing those protruding incisors again. “Usually I reserve it to blow on embers—for maximum effect, you understand—but in your case it will evidently be required to ignite the tinder. Drink, guest!”
I thought of my wild frenzy when Misi gave me such a potion, and the memory of how I had treated her shamed me anew. I could guess that the brew might be dangerous to me, but I had survived before, and I would have no compunction about being rough with Ayasseshas, even had her bodyguard not been standing by the door. What man could resist a chance to experience again that firestorm of ecstasy, passion magnified and prolonged beyond endurance and farther yet? For the first time, the potential of the situation began to arouse some reaction in me. Of course that did not escape Ayasseshas’s notice.
“And if I refuse to drink?”
She leaned very close. “I will persuade you.” Her dark eyes gazed unblinkingly into mine, and I felt a cool hand slither gently up my thigh.
My heartbeat had begun to rise, yet I returned her steady gaze. “How?”
“Um-oao will sit on your legs, Ah-uhu will hold your arms, and I shall pull your testicles down to your knees.”
Some truths are self-evident. For a long silent moment we were eye to eye, while her fingers continued their encouragement. “That would be a convincing argument,” I said. “Your logic is inescapable.”
“It has never failed. Bottoms up, lover!”
I took the goblet and drained it, wincing at the familiar foul taste.
Ayasseshas smiled and released me. She leaned back on her piled cushions and wriggled herself comfortable. “Proceed when ready, man.”
“It takes a moment or two,” I said. “So while we wait, tell me what a spinster does with a wetlander. I truly do not know, lady.”
That surprised her. “Indeed? I thought you were being courageous. You are merely ignorant?”
“I told you. I am a herdman. We are expected to be ignorant.”
“You were serious with all that talk of love? Astounding! Well, do you know how silk is made?”
My heart was pounding wildly now and my belly was a furnace. It did not feel quite the same as the time before, though.
“No,” I said. My eyelids were prickling.
“Silk,” said Ayasseshas, “is—How do you know it takes a moment or two?”
“I’ve had it before.”
“No!” She sat up, staring. “You lie!”
I could not speak; my throat was too constricted. A strange throbbing filled my head, and my lips seemed to be swelling and turning outward. I could barely keep my eyes open, so swollen were the lids now. Vaguely I could hear Ayasseshas screaming for her guards, and then I sank down into a thick blackness. I was trying to vomit but I could not even breathe. Other people had invaded the room and were clutching at me. I roused briefly as something hard was forced down my throat, and I knew that death was very near.
—4—
IT WAS NOT I WHO DIED, though; it was the giant Ah-uhu.