The crowds had fallen to their knees as the Gods moved among them, stopping to give a kiss or caress a bowed head, favors that often led to the recipient fainting dead away or smothering under a pile of onlookers anxious to share the blessing. Neya and Nerr ascended the dais, and the murmured prayers of the multitude ceased. Temmin searched for even a shred of Allis and Issak as They approached, but there was none; the calm professionalism usually on their faces had been replaced with a radiance that gave off both light and heat, as if the Gods truly burned inside them. He feared that if his eyes met Theirs he might burn to ash and blow away. He dropped his gaze to the ground.
"You have brought us a gift?" They called out together.
"Temmin Supplicant," responded the Most Highs.
"Approach Us."
No turning back. Temmin rose on shaking legs, eyes still down; he cast a glance at the stairs leading downward and out into the night, to whatever else there might be for him in this life, turned and faced the Gods. Something compelled him to look into Neya's borrowed eyes. In their green depths, figures moved, coupling and uncoupling and recoupling with others, an endless dance of love and pleasure that expanded to encompass him and then the world, enveloping it all in the rose light that shone from Her. "Would you serve Us?"
"Yes," he said hoarsely.
"Would you learn from Us?" said Nerr.
"Yes," he replied, his voice strengthening.
"Would you share that knowledge with the world?"
"Yes," he said.
Neya kissed him then, filling him with a euphoric languor, an erotic pulse flowing from Her lips down his body and back up in a neverending coil, a joined spiral. He was completely alive, completely at home in his body, and afraid of nothing; whatever doubts he may have had dissolved. In that moment, whatever she asked of him he would have done. The elation stayed with him even when She stepped back, even when Nerr tore his shirt from his back and kissed him so hard he wondered in the back of his mind if his lips were pulped. Fingers at his waist untied the red linen trousers; they caught on his arousal, but he shifted and they fell to the floor, leaving him naked before the crowd of worshippers.
"We accept your supplication, Temmin," said Neya. They led him off the dais into the Gods' Chambers and shut the doors behind them.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The chanting of Temmin's name glided under the Chambers' closed doors to the gardens; inside, it was still. Temmin floated lightheaded, as he had near the incense smoke. The idea that perhaps he'd been enchanted flitted through his mind until Neya took his hand and led him to the low, enormous bed in the middle of the room. His mind emptied into the shifting present of animals: no past, no future, only now, as it had been in that brief moment in the chapel, the now-wordless, soundless voice singing all around him, no longer small.
Beside the bed stood many ritual offerings of cakes and candies, stacked in towers of intricately patterned pink and white. "Sweets!" exclaimed Neya, seizing several delicate little crescent moon-shaped cakes, and popping a white chocolate bonbon into her mouth. "The best in years. Sweets of all kinds," she smiled at Temmin. She slipped a sticky pink confection between his lips. "One to stop your tongue, sweet Temmin. This is a night of secrets," She said. "You will not speak of this night ever, to anyone, you will share the blessings you receive in this bed in Our service for two years and two days, and you will use the wisdom We give you the rest of your life. Do you agree?"
"Yes, of course, Lady," he answered.
Neya smiled and kissed his hands. "There is no creature sweeter than a young mortal. So agreeable, so pliant. Now," she said, "show Me what you know about women." Temmin looked down into Her eyes. His mother appeared first, full of comfort and love. "She is important, certainly, but she is in the realm of Amma--mostly," murmured the Goddess. Then his sisters, Ellika at the forefront, so like their mother in her gold-and-cream looks, and Sedra behind her, so like their mother in her stormy temperament. "These women are mysteries for later," chuckled the Lady.
Next came Alvo. "He is not a woman. We are talking about women, not sex, Supplicant. In your time with My Brother, you will explore this one."
Mattie followed, her face tear-stained and frightened, and Temmin felt his stomach sink even through the euphoria. Then Emmae, spirited and strong even in her subjugation. Arta--a wrench at his heart--her innocence and tenderness turned against her, because of him. Anda, voluptuous and gleefully forthright. And finally Allis herself, knowing and wistful, the mystery.
He scrabbled for the commonalities, a joining thread, but found none. "I don't think I know anything about women. The women I know are all different." His eyes teared up; Senik was right, he knew nothing, he was a disappointment. "I'm sorry."
Neya smiled. "Wise little one, that's the first thing one must learn about women. Lie down. You will learn something else, a secret. Are you ready? Taste a Goddess." She straddled his head and lowered herself down until Her folds were the boundaries of the world.
At first, She tasted of the ocean, salty and clean, as if water swirled around him; he lapped at it, searching for its source. Then came earth, loam rich and dark, and green things growing. A bitterness arose, herbal and strong, but as he licked it turned to honey, thick on his tongue. He let out a muffled moan and drew every bit of Her he could into his mouth.
No time, no place, only Her, until a mouth slid down his length. Temmin had forgotten Nerr, but remembered now as His tongue worked on him. It was far too much, far too soon; he would never last. He tensed in panic.
Neya shifted, lifting him out of his fears and into the moment; once more, Her taste and smell were everywhere, and everything. How could he worry? He breathed in as deeply as he could: roses and sandalwood, and then the scent of the broom growing around Whithorse, the herbs that Jebby crushed under his hooves as they rode over the hills. His heart swelled with love for his home. He loved the Lady above him, he loved the Lord beside him, he loved his land, he loved his people, he loved the world. Love pulsed through him until it burst from every pore, a gushing of ecstasy leaving him blind and deaf but for the rushing of his blood.
Temmin's first thought when he returned to full consciousness was that he'd come too soon; They would be angry. And yet, a hand held his cock; he was still hard. He hadn't come at all, though he could swear he had. Two tongues licked his face, catlike, cleaning him. When he opened his eyes, They had finished and were kissing one another above him.
Neya sank down beside him on one elbow. "Now I shall reward you. Ask any question you'd like. Anything. I will answer you truly."
Temmin's brain struggled to string words together, let alone a question. "Did I please you?" he finally said in a thick voice.
Nerr burst out laughing. "A chance to ask a Goddess a question, and you ask that!"
"Did I say the wrong thing?" said Temmin, struggling to sit up.
"That's two questions," said Neya. "To answer the first, yes. Your eagerness to please made up for your lack of finesse. In time you will have a very talented tongue, little Prince."
"That's good," he said, shaking his head to clear it. "That's...what just happened? I came, but I didn't."
Nerr squeezed him at the root until his eyes fluttered. "You will always be ready when you are with Us. We'll give you many releases, but you will not spend, you will not shoot your seed unless we allow it. Your pleasure belongs to Us."
"Enough," said Neya. "I wish to enjoy this gift."
Nerr slipped behind Temmin and put His arms around him, stroking him until his head rolled back against His broad shoulder.
Neya pinched his nipple. "Pay attention." Temmin brought his head up with a start. "Better." She straddled his lap and brought his hands to her breasts. They were heavy and full, perfect as his hands had always known they would be. Every time he'd ever looked at Allis, he had imagined her breasts, just like this.
A knife cut through his arousal. This was not Allis. He touched Allis's body, but the Lady was not Allis. He had wa
nted his first to be her. "I am Allis," said Neya. "But then, I am every woman who desires a man. I know your thoughts. I am a Goddess. Allis is far away, but she feels this, and she will remember this. We are both your first, and you will have her many times before your service is through. Now, please Me."
She brought Her breasts closer to his face, and he ran his tongue around each nipple before taking one in his mouth. She tasted like no human woman--not Anda, nor his ancestor's memories of Emmae. She tasted of flowers: the honeysuckle he plucked off the walls of the stable and ate with Alvo back home on lazy summer evenings, the sunlight still slanting low among the trees. What an odd thing to come to mind.
"Everything you've ever loved, every person, every place," Neya whispered, "everyone and everything you've ever wanted, I am all of that. I am the fulfillment of desire."
All his yearnings converged into one. He kissed Her deeply, tongue searching Her mouth and finding each love there. Nerr's hand reached between them, guiding him inside Her. The head rested briefly at Her entrance, and then She was on him.
Hot and wet, yes, he knew women were hot and wet inside from his limited experience both real and inherited from the book, but this was a perfect wetness he would drown in, a perfect heat he would burn in, burn to ashes until all that was left was his smile. She fit around him as if he'd been made for Her, and he wondered if he had been. The ecstasy flooded him again, and when he returned from it, She still rode him in a long, slow rhythm. "You know nothing, Temmin, nothing at all," she murmured. "But you will learn." She threw her head back and let out a long sigh of pleasure. She pulsed all around him, always moving, riding him and coming over and over but never letting him spend, keeping him in a driven euphoria, driven to please Her no matter what. All he wanted was that, to stay sheathed inside Her, to laugh with each joyful ripple that moved through Her.
Neya rose up on Her knees; the warm air against his suddenly exposed cock felt icy cold. She lay back on the bed, her arms and legs open and appealing. "There is an old, old ritual, before the founding of your line, Prince Temmin, before your namesake was ever thought of. Your people don't remember it. But in the men of your line it still lives, buried deep in memory, and I have waited so long for you to remember--a thousand years I've been waiting for you to return to Me. Bring down the blessing on your land, on your people. I am the field, you are the plow."
Temmin fell on Her, sliding back inside with a grunt. The deep earthy smell came to him again; it sprouted into green tendrils that curled around him as he furrowed inside Her; they held him close and twined around his root. The green burst into bloom, simple, homelike flowers at first--honeysuckle, pinks, sweet peas, fields of daffodils, all flowers that made him think of Whithorse again. Then came white roses and gardenias, freesias and tuberose, the scent of the incense in Allis's ordeal, reminders of her suffering, and he wept as he kissed the Goddess inhabiting her. His tears ripened the blooms into fruits: apples striped in red, russeted pears, berries wild and cultivated, purple plums with their white-bloomed skins, peaches soft as a woman's thigh, and some he'd never seen before.
"Well done, my King, well done," She sighed.
"Lady, I am not King!"
"You will be. Look at Me, Temmin." He gazed into the green of Her eyes again. The fruit slowly rotted; the smell of decay and dry leaves filled his nose. Figures reappeared in Her eyes: his father on a battlefield; Sedra shielding a child; Ellika standing against Tremontine soldiers; Jenks galloping across the rolling hills of Whithorse, sword in hand; Ansella bloody-handed and sobbing; Teacher and the Traveler Queen, wreathed in flames.
"What's going to happen, Lady?" he cried.
"You. You will choose to be either Temmin the Liberator or Temmin the Magnificent. Tell Teacher: It's time. Take your blessing, Temmin--don't be afraid, take it! It's yours, take it!"
Temmin let out a long roar, lips snarling back from his teeth, and plunged into Her.
Temmin woke up, unsure whether he'd been dreaming or if the lovemaking really had gone on all night after the visions. He remembered slipping into Neya over and over, holding Her in his arms as Nerr took Her, kisses that left him blind, breasts and hands and mouths and cocks, but a film overlayed it all, turning it indistinct and hallucinatory: a terrifying, ecstatic fever dream. Again, there were no windows in the room, and he couldn't gauge the time.
He rose. Allis and Issak lay each to one side, clearly themselves again even in sleep. Their faces were drawn and exhausted; Anda hadn't told him the half of it. Allis turned in her sleep, clutching vaguely around her shoulders for sheets, but they lay heaped at the bottom of the bed. Temmin stooped to cover them both.
There on each twin's left hip was the silver sigil he'd seen and dismissed on Issak the night before--they both had one. Now that his head was clear of the incense, he recognized them instantly as the same sort of sigil the Traveler Queen had placed on Emmae. He hadn't seen one on Issak the week before. Were they new? Or had something else happened to him?
A prickling shiver passed over his scalp, and he decided to tell no one, just as he had said nothing about seeing Teacher in the mirror. Well--he'd told Teacher, but that was only logical.
Temmin was always hungry, but the night's exertions brought the word "starving" into clear, sharp focus. He cast about for the towers of sweets, but the plates were bare of everything, even crumbs. He found a towel to wrap around his nakedness, and shambled into the anteroom ruffling his hair, hoping for breakfast. The antechamber was deserted but for neatly laid-out clothing--Lover's red for him, undyed for the twins--a small tray of cold food he immediately began to ransack, and a note addressed to him from Anda, too late for the bread loaf's topknot: "LEAVE THIS FOR ALLIS AND ISSAK, GREEDY GUTS. Get dressed and come to the Supplicants Chamber for a proper breakfast."
This promised proper breakfast hurried him into his red Temple garb and through the door leading directly to the Supplicants Chamber. Only one of the beds was occupied, but it was occupied to capacity. Once the occupants untangled themselves, the bed proved to contain Anda, Senik, the rugged blonde Lover, Evra Postulant, and a very confused but happy apprentice chandler. Anda called for breakfast, and the rest carted the chandler off to the baths and thence to the dining hall.
"So?" said Anda once they were settled with the fragrance of coffee and toast all around them.
"So?" shrugged Temmin, slapping marmalade on his toast a little more firmly than necessary. "You've been with Them. I don't need to tell you."
"Was it what you hoped it would be?"
"Was yours?"
She shook her head impatiently. "Temmin, you're different. You're different from any other Supplicant this Temple has ever had, and that includes Finnia--you've heard of her, yes, the other royal Supplicant? You are one of a kind. I cannot believe your investiture deserves only 'so.'"
Temmin hesitated. The Lady had said he must never discuss it with anyone. But surely, talking to another Supplicant, someone who'd laid in that bed herself, would be all right. He opened his mouth, but his tongue stuck; his mouth filled with the sticky, pink taste of a Neya's Day sweet. No matter how hard he tried, not a word would come out. "Ah," said Anda. "She showed you something."
"Many somethings," Temmin blurted, tongue released. "Did She not show you anything?"
"He did. Not Her. I can't speak of them, either," she murmured, "and they were all personal, anyway. I just thought--since you're different--maybe that was different, too. Maybe She'd tell you something meant for everyone. The Most Highs hoped She would."
Allis and Issak staggered in. "Food," said Issak.
"Coffee," said his sister.
Anda went to the side door and called for more of both. "Are you all right?" said Temmin, pouring coffee into cups.
"The usual," said Allis in a haggard voice. "We'll be eating most of today, eating and sleeping."
"Mostly sleeping," said Issak, piling his plate high with the remaining bacon, sausages, eggs, fruit, as Allis gnawed on a chop. "But als
o eating."
"Is there anything I can do?" squeaked Temmin.
"Pass the jam."
The Embodiments devoured what food was left on the table, their usual sophistication and poise abandoned, and pounced on the reinforcements when the servants carried them in.
After a trip to the bath crowded with lethargic men and women, and a soak in the hot pool until they were all the color of well-done lobsters, Temmin and Anda helped put the twins to bed, each in their separate rooms with attendants nearby if needed. "Now what?" said Temmin.
"Now nothing," yawned Anda, plucking a candy off one of the huge piles of offering sweets distributed among the clergy. "I'm clean, I'm brushed, I've tucked the Holy Ones in, I'm done. No one who worked last night does anything today. The lay servants run the place, the petitioners' rooms are closed, and there's no real offering traffic the day after a Spectacle. I am going back to bed for a nap. Aren't you tired?" Temmin shook his head, still wet and shaggy from the bath. "Well, you may do whatever you like, but don't expect me to do it with you." She rose from the couch they were sharing, dropped into her bed, and was asleep in five minutes, her odd, musical snoring muffled in the crook of her arm.
Temmin nibbled in boredom at one of the traditional crescent moon cakes heaped on a nearby plate, eating first the delicate green icing leaves, then the pink icing rose, then the whole little white fondant-covered cake all in a bite. He pocketed a handful of candies intending to take them to Ellika, before he remembered that he couldn't go back to the Keep for at least a few days, if not a few spokes. He shuffled into the bathroom, past the giant mirror in the antechamber and around the modesty wall, and relieved himself, pensive and staring off into space as he pissed.
The full enormity of what he'd done weighed down on him. He wouldn't see Jenks, or Sedra, or Ellika, or his mother for some time. They might try to come here, but he was sure his father would discourage it with everything at his disposal. Perhaps the King might even sack Jenks--a horrifying thought he didn't let himself dwell on. He might see Teacher, if Harsin let anyone see Teacher ever again. How odd that a tutor would prove to be Temmin's greatest ally; he would never have imagined it. He actually wished he could see Teacher, if only to talk about the sigils he'd seen on the twins. Teacher knew about magic--everything Temmin knew about magic, he'd learned from Teacher.
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