by Ann Maxwell
Lord Puc looked at Kirtn with a hatred that needed no translation. Jealousy had eaten at the lord until he was barely sane. Rheba could not help wondering what the Bre’n female had that apparently all other women lacked—and did Kirtn feel the same way about her that the Loo lord did?
“Begin,” said Lord Puc to Jal. “Now.”
“Don’t be in such a rush, chim,” said a silky voice from the archway. “Don’t you want your leman and her pet to watch? She should know how well you keep your promises.”
With an audible snarl, Lord Puc turned on his chim. The sight of Ilfn with Lheket brought an ugly sound out of the male polarity. “I said she was never to see the boy unless I was present!”
“But you were present, my chim, my other half, my petulant nonlover. Where I am, you are. Soothe yourself, chim. The bitch hasn’t touched her blind pet.” Lady Kurs smiled, then turned her shattered blue eyes on Jal. “Begin.” She turned back toward her own chim, bane and treasure of her existence. “Of course, dear Puc, you won’t let the fact that your nuga is stuck in the furry bitch affect your judgment of an Act’s worth.”
Lord Puc made an effort at self-control that showed in every sinew of his body. “Of course not. Acts are sacred.”
Lady Kurs smiled. “Then begin, Lord Jal. Now.”
The command was issued in such silky tones that it took Jal a moment to realize what Lady Kurs had said. Hurriedly he summarized the central conceit of the Act, the story of Saffar and Hmel. Lady Kurs listened, but her eyes never left the swell of muscle beneath Kirtn’s velvet plush. His fur was so short, so smooth, that it defined and enhanced rather than concealed the body beneath.
Watching, Rheba realized anew that Kirtn, like all furred slaves, was naked, accorded no more dignity than a draft animal. She felt a sick rage rise in her at Lady Kurs’ lustful inspection of the Bre’n’s body. For an instant Rheba’s rage broke free, lighting the lines of power beneath her muffling robe. Kirtn felt power flow, saw Rheba’s hot glare at Lady Kurs, and guessed what had triggered his fire dancer’s rage. With an inner smile, he turned his back on the female polarity’s intrusive stare.
“—finds the crown but can’t penetrate the demon fire,” summarized Jal hurriedly, silently cursing the unbridled lusts of the Imperial Loo-chim. “His chim, meanwhile, has descended to hell in search of him. She has forgiven him for his unnatural desires, knowing that he was under the spell of the furred bitch demon. Together, the chim fights the demons and wins back the crown. He’s freed from hell, but to remind him of his sins, he’s forced to wear fur for the rest of his life. And to this day, Loo children sometimes bear the curse of fur, sign of our ancestor’s unnatural mating so long ago.”
Lady Kurs licked her lips with a long blue tongue. “Unnatural mating ... the curse of the Imperial Loo-chim. Isn’t that so, my brother, my chim?”
Lord Puc stared death at Kirtn and said nothing. Jal swore softly as he gave Dapsl the signal to begin. “Start with Saffar’s entrance,” he said in Universal. “And move quickly, for the love of the Twin Gods. I don’t know how much longer I can keep them from killing something!”
Rheba forced herself to look away from the deadly blue lady. She tried to see beyond Ilfn, where the Senyas boy stood, but he was hidden behind his Bre’n, nothing showing but a thin, tawny arm and fingers clinging to hers, “—four!”
Dapsl’s hiss brought her mind back to the exigencies of the Act. She sent energy to bloom around clepts and J/taals. The Act began. Beneath her robe, her skin itched suddenly, miserably. In a gesture of defiance, she tore off her slave robe and threw it aside. If her Bre’n had to go naked, so would she.
But she was not naked, not quite. Lines of power made incandescent traceries over her body, veins and whorls of gold that were so dense on her fingers that little other color was left. Her lower arms were laced with intricate patterns, pulses of gold like an endlessly breaking wave. Tendrils curled up her arms, across her shoulders, around her neck like filigree. A single line swept down her torso, then divided to touch each taut hip.
She felt the cool air of the room like a benediction. It was far more comfortable to control fire without cloth stifling her. Her own sigh of relief hid from her the sound of Ilfn’s gasp, and Kirtn’s; both Bre’ns knew the danger of so many new lines on so young a dancer. And they both knew what the fire lines touching her hips meant. She was too young to be developing the curling lines of passion. For an instant the two Bre’n akhenets looked at each other, silently protesting what they could not change. Then they looked away, faces expressionless beneath fine fur masks.
Like currents of energy, Rheba sensed the silent exchange between the two Bre’n. It disturbed her, so she put it aside. The most difficult part of the Act lay ahead and she was already tired.
Dapsl cued her entrance.
Fssa crooned, a sound both soft and penetrating. The call ended on a questioning note, but no one answered. Rheba/Saffar came onto the stage, seeking her lost chim. She had built no fires around her body to illuminate it—nor did she need to. Akhenet lines rippled and blazed as she shaped energies to the peculiar demands of the Act. Fssa spoke for her again, as he spoke for everyone in the Act.
Kirtn/Hmel, striving to reach the crown in the midst of demons, seemed not to hear. Saffar came closer, drawn to him by the subtle bonds that connected all chims. Hmel leaned toward the crown again. Violet fire cascaded, drawing gasps from the Imperial Loo-chim. Against the dark fire Hmel’s outline blazed wildly.
With a musical cry, Saffar turned toward her chim. She touched him. Fssa screamed. Black fire leaped as the demon still in Hmel tried to kill the innocence in Saffar. Against Fssa’s background of screams, demon shrieks and the harmonics of pain, Saffar fought to free Hmel of the demon curse.
The battle consumed the stage, fire and screams, darkness and light, hope and despair, demon and human. Just as it seemed certain that Saffar would be crushed by the demon strength of the chim she loved, she surrendered. Her sudden stillness shocked Hmel. His grip on her loosened. She could have slipped away, but did not. Instead, she sang.
And it was Rheba, not Fssa, who shaped those notes.
The first pure phrases of a Bre’n love song rose like silver bubbles out of the black lake of hell. The notes came faster and clearer, surrounding Hmel with a net of beauty. He screamed in raw agony, for demons cannot stand against beauty. Saffar wept, yet still she sang, each pure phrase like a knife driven into the body of her lover, seeking the demon at his core.
Fssa joined the singing, an echo that haunted violet demon fires. He screamed for Hmel, wept for Saffar; but he let Bre’n and Senyas sing for themselves and shivered with delight at such perfect sounds.
A glittering black demon shape fought over the incandescent surface of Hmel’s body. Saffar clung to him, using desire as a weapon against the demon. He writhed and screamed as the demon was driven out of him. Song and Hmel’s natural desire for his chim tore at the demon, separating it from Hmel until it stood revealed for what it was—an embodiment of unnatural lust, a demon both male and female at once, animal and human and all possibilities in between. Black, shivering, it gave an awful shriek and flew up into the darkness above the Act.
Gently, Hmel pulled away from his chim. He walked between the fire demons to the place where Saffar’s crown glowed, waiting. The demons made no flames to stop him; they were themselves frozen by the departure of their animating force. Unmoving, impaled on invisible talons, the demons waited in their grotesque positions for another chim who could be seduced into forgetting its other self.
The crown blazed when Hmel put it on Saffar’s head. All other light faded, leaving a gold nimbus surrounding Hmel and Saffar’s long embrace.
The silence that followed the end of the Act was even longer. Finally the Loo-chim stirred, still transfixed, shattered blue eyes unbelieving. As one, the chim sighed. Lord Jal made a few discreet noises, recalling the Loo-chim to the question at hand. The room brightened at Dapsl’s command, bre
aking the spell woven by a fire dancer and a Bre’n.
“The Act pleased you . . . ?” Jal smiled as he asked, knowing that the Act had done just that. There were many aesthetically superior Acts in the Concatenation compound, but not one of them spoke so completely to the obsessions of the Imperial Loo-chim.
Lord Puc blinked several times as though demon fire still troubled his sight. He looked at Kirtn, but saw mostly Hmel. Lady Kurs looked at Rheba, but saw only Saffar’s grief over her lost chim. The Imperial Loo-chim looked at itself. During a long, silent exchange, lines of tension were reborn on the chim’s face. But there could be no disagreement about the disposition of the Act.
The male polarity turned toward Lord Jal. “An Act worthy of the Concatenation, Jal. I congratulate you.”
Lord Jal bowed and turned toward the female polarity.
“I agree, of course,” she said, her voice brittle. “They will be the last, and best, Act of Last Year Night. But I don’t congratulate you, half-man. You’ve set our own furred demons among us. There will be grief now, as there was in Saffar’s time.” She paused, then looked toward Kirtn. “But before grief, there will be pleasure such as only demons know.”
She took her chim’s arm and guided him toward the door. When they reached Ilfn, Lord Puc stopped. Before he could speak. Lady Kurs intervened.
“She and her pet will stay here until after the Concatenation.” The female polarity’s voice was calm and very certain. When Lord Puc would have objected, she said, “Only a few days, sweet chim. Until the old year ends we’ll have each other. Afterward, we’ll have . . . them.”
XIX
Rheba shivered and moved closer to Kirtn. As always, she was cold. She felt the steady rhythm of his heart against her cheek, the warmth of his fine fur, and the resilience of muscles relaxed in sleep. She smoothed his sleek hair beneath her palm. He murmured sleepily and shifted, bringing her closer. She settled against him and tried to sleep, but could not. Her feet itched, her legs itched, her shoulders and breasts itched. It seemed that even the inside of her backbone itched.
Gently, trying not to wake him, she rolled away and shed her robe, preferring to be cold rather than to have her lines irritated by the rough cloth. She stood up, went to the fountain along one wall for a drink, then returned to Kirtn’s side. Behind her, J/taals and clepts slept in a tidy sprawl. Fssa lay curled around Rainbow, but he was not in his speaking mode.
On the other side of Kirtn lay Ilfn and Lheket. The boy was long, thin . . . and as blind as a stone. She felt pity tighten her lips; Ilfn had told her that the boy’s blindness was a flight from what he had seen in Deva’s last moments.
Reluctantly, as though drawn against her will, Rheba walked around Kirtn until she could see Lheket more clearly. She looked at the boy for a long time before her itching skin distracted her. She stood, scratching absently, staring down at Lheket and trying to see the father of her future children in the thin shape of the sleeping child. At last she made a gesture of bafflement and negation and turned back to Kirtn.
“Is it his blindness you dislike?”
Ilfn’s soft question startled Rheba; she had thought the Bre’n asleep. She heard Ilfn’s love and protectiveness of her Senyas in her voice, and saw it in the hand smoothing the sleeping dancer’s hair.
“I don’t dislike him,” Rheba said. “I simply can’t see him as my mate. He’s such a sweet child. So . . . weak.”
Ilfn looked from the soft gold lines coursing over Rheba’s body to the pale, barely marked hands of her sleeping rain dancer. “He’s young. Too young. I’ve had to keep him from—”
The Bre’n’s voice stopped. Rheba waited, then finished the sentence. “You’ve kept him from using his power?” She did not mean for her voice to sound accusing, but it did.
“Yes!” whispered Ilfn fiercely. “If Lord Puc even suspected what Lheket could become—” Her voice broke, then resumed in the calm tones of an akhenet instructing a child. “The Loo like their slaves powerless. I’ve done what I had to. Lheket is still alive. Before you judge me, fire dancer, remember that.” There was a space of silence. Then, “In the days since he has felt the Act’s energies pouring through this room he’s been hard to hold. I’ll have to choose, soon.”
“Choose?”
“To kill him or to shape his gift. It’s a choice all Bre’n akhenets make.” She looked up, sensing Rheba’s horror, “Didn’t you know that, fire dancer? Didn’t your Senyas parents tell you what your Bre’n was?”
“I—” Rheba swallowed and tried again. “I didn’t know.”
“What of your Bre’n parents?”
“They died in one of the early firefalls. After that, it was all we could do to hold our shields against the sun. The years I should have spent learning Bre’n and Senyas history, I spent learning how to deflect fire.”
“But at your age—ah, yes,” sighed Ilfn. “Your age. I keep forgetting that you are at least ten years younger than your akhenet lines indicate. So much power.” Ilfn shifted, moving away from Kirtn without disturbing her sleeping boy. “Sit down, fire dancer. You resent me, but I know things you should know.”
“I don’t resent you,” Rheba said quickly.
Ilfn laughed, a gentle rather than a mocking sound. “You have many and powerful lines, but you lie as badly as a child half your age.” Her hand closed around Rheba’s, gently pulling her down. “On Deva you never would have had to confront your emotions about your Bre’n before you were wise enough to understand them.”
“Deva is dead.”
“Yes.” The word was long, a sigh. “Listen to me, akhenet,” said Ilfn, her tone changing to that of a mentor. “You shift between woman and child with each breath. The child in you resents my pregnancy, Lheket’s future claim on your body, and everything else that would separate you from your Bre’n. There’s no point in denying it. The Senyas instinct to bind Bre’n is as great as the Bre’n instinct to bind Senyas. There is a reason for that instinct. Without Kirtn you would die, victim of your own powers. Without you Kirtn would die, victim of a Bre’n’s special needs. I would no more stand between you and your Bre’n than I would gladly lie down with Lord Puc. But slaves have few choices, and none of them easy.”
Rheba looked away from the Bre’n woman’s too-dark eyes. Compared to Ilfn, she had suffered very little at the hands of the Loo. “I hope,” she whispered, “I hope Kirtn pleased you.” She looked away, embarrassed, not knowing what to say, feeling more a child than she had in years. “I’ll try not to be afraid or jealous. I know that it’s wrong. You’re my sister. Your children are also mine.”
The last words were sure, all that remained to her of the akhenet rituals of her childhood. For the first time she understood the need of ceremony to mark times of great change in akhenet lives, change such as had happened when Kirtn went to Ilfn and they conceived children. A ritual would have told her what to say, what to feel, reassured her that the world was not turning inside out. There were no rituals left, though, and she was afraid that she had made an enemy of her Bre’n’s mate.
Ilfn’s hands came up and stroked Rheba’s seething hair. “Thank you for naming me sister, even though you had no part in choosing me. I never thought I would be called that again.”
Rheba stared at Ilfn, realizing anew that the Bre’n was a person with her own history on Deva, her own families and lovers and losses to mourn. And now, only memories.
“I’ll have fine children,” continued Ilfn, her gaze turned inward. “My Senyas father was a gene dancer; he gave me the ability to choose my children. I wonder if he knew just how much the race of Bre’n would need that.” Her smile was thin, more sorrow than pleasure in her memories. “He gave Lheket that gift, too. Your children will be powerful, fire dancer, and they will come by twos and threes as mine will.”
Rheba looked away, unable to bear either the past or the future that was reflected in the older woman’s eyes. The past was ashes; the future nothing that Rheba could or wanted to touch. All t
hat was real to her was now, this instant—Kirtn. But the Bre’n woman and her akhenet boy were also real.
Silently, Rheba struggled with her childish desire to shut out everything but Kirtn. When she had dreamed of finding other Bre’ns and Senyasi, of building a new future for both races, she had not dreamed that it would be this painful.
“But your children,” said Ilfn, looking down at Lheket, “are years in the future, and you’re too young to know how short years really are.” Tenderly, Ilfn put her soft-furred cheek against Rheba’s smooth cheek, where lines of power lay cool and gold, quiet, waiting to burn into life. “You’re braver than you know,” whispered the Bre’n, “and more powerful. Take care of your Bre’n. He needs you, child and woman, he needs you.”
Rheba pulled back, disturbed by Ilfn’s words and her intensity. “What do you mean?”
Ilfn moved her head in the Bre’n negative.
“Tell me,” whispered Rheba. “I haven’t had any real training, no quiet years of learning with my Bre’n and Senyas families. If there’s something Kirtn needs, tell me!”
“I can’t. It’s forbidden.”
“But why?”
“Each akhenet makes the choice you will make.” Ilfn spoke reluctantly, using words as though they had edges sharp enough to cut her tongue. “The choice comes from your very core. To describe it is to violate its purity. It would be better to kill you both than to do that.”
“I don’t understand,” said Rheba, her voice rising. “First you tell me that I’m doing something wrong, or not doing something right, then you tell me that you can’t say any more.”
Ilfn turned away from Rheba’s anger and watched her sleeping Lheket. The Bre’n profile was cold and distant as a moon. It was one of the faces Rheba had seen in Lheket’s earring, a face both beautiful and terrible, utterly serene.
Rheba turned away and looked at Kirtn, seeing him as though he were a stranger, powerful and obscure. Child and woman, he needs you.