Lion's Blood

by Steven Barnes

  In the house were hundreds of books and scrolls that touched on doomed Rome and its defeat at the hands of Egypt and Carthage. Kai had read a dozen of them. They all agreed on the fact that the poverty, disease, and war that ravaged Europe had been ended only by the rise of Abyssinia and the subsequent capture of the Egyptian throne. Black soldiers patrolling Egypt's European kingdoms a thousand years ago had filed reports filled with tales of horror and unbelievable poverty. Much of this misery existed in the very shadow of mystifying ancient ruins. While such relics suggested a forgotten culture, the buildings and statues were doubtless the remnants of ancient Egyptian conquests.

  If Aidan was a good fellow, he was doubtless the very best of his breed, and they were lucky to have found each other. When Kai had his own estate, he would need a trustworthy aide, as the Wakil had Oko and some of the others. Perhaps he would begin to speak to Aidan about converting to the true path.

  Kai had to laugh at that: as if the Prophet would be happy with Kai as a messenger! But the world of responsibility was so infinitely wide, and Kai had so little time to enjoy the youth remaining to him. He would enjoy it all.

  And then he would settle down.

  One day. Not today.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Dar Kush's rolling lawns were crowded with highborn and share-landers from the surrounding district. Sharelanders, blacks who contracted to work the Wakil's vast holdings in exchange for a share of the crops—usually worked hours comparable to that of the servants. On holidays, however, they were invited to lay down their farming tools and join in the festivities.

  It was Kai's nineteenth birthday, and although dignitaries above the local level had merely sent gifts and notes of congratulation (unlike Ali's birthday, or the Wakil's, which drew visitors from as far as New Alexandria), it was still a joyous, festive time.

  The weather was mild and sunny and the tables filled with friends and good cheer. Kai's uncle Malik observed the proceedings with an unusually broad smile softening his bearded face. Perhaps his mood had something to do with the presence of his wife. Still childless, Fatima remained as slender as a girl, and Malik doted on her famously. At the moment, however, his gaze was locked on his nephew. There were more threads of gray amid the black of his beard, but the fire in his eyes was undimmed, and the passing years had only lent strength and agility to his sword arm. "And in honor of his majority," Malik said, "I offer Kai the finest mare in my stable, that his enemies may always be a length behind. I present. . . Djinna!"

  To much applause, a magnificent black Arabian mare trotted out of the barn.

  "Uncle!" Kai was wide-eyed. He had not seen such a mount since his father had chosen Isis eight years before. "I have no words!"

  Malik's hand fell heavily on Kai's shoulder. "You are a man now. We want deeds, not words."

  Kai's teeth flashed. "Deeds it is. Here, girl . . ."

  Kai set his cup down and walked toward the horse, first with nervousness, then growing confidence. Her eyes were very calm and startlingly direct, and he could sense the intelligence behind them. Kai ran his hand along her neck, marveling at the strength and grace of that ebon column. Djinna turned her head to watch him as he examined her flanks, and the firm muscles of her legs. Magnificent! Kai could have sworn that she nodded her head yes, as if offering him permission to mount. Grinning, he set his hands on the saddle and pulled himself up. He dug his heels in and triggered Djinna into motion.

  Kai had ridden almost before he could walk and was a superb horseman. To the delight and applause of all, he weaved through the crowd and jumped the pasture fence. He put the magnificent creature through its paces, jumping fences and bushes, racing as if pursued by a band of Aztecs.

  He couldn't believe how responsive she was, how powerful. The whistle of wind past his ears was intoxicating. Monthly drill with Amin's regiment would be a joy with such a glorious beast at his command!

  He trotted the horse back in a great circle and stopped before the guests, who applauded loudly. Malik and Abu Ali stood shoulder to shoulder and applauded loudest of all.

  "Well done!" Malik said.

  Kai was breathless and bright-eyed. "Uncle," he said. "Djinna is indeed her name. I will strive to be worthy of such magic."

  "You have my blood," Malik said as Kai dismounted. "I expect no less." The two men embraced warmly.

  Kai's head swam. "I have been blessedly gifted today. It is hard to imagine any greater good."

  His father smiled. "It is my turn, Kai. A father's honor to present the final gift. As you all know, my son is famed not only for his riding and scholarship, but for his . . . nocturnal adventures." Kai's ears burned at the ripple of good-natured laughter.

  Abu Ali continued. "It is time childish things were put aside. I believe in enjoying the fruits of labor and courage, but the responsibilities of manhood cannot be ignored. There are many delicious temptations in this world." The men at the table pounded their fists on the table while Elenya averted her eyes. Fatima gave her husband a polite but disapproving frown. Malik hugged her around the shoulder and merely laughed.

  Kai didn't like the sound of this. Abu Ali continued expansively. "But my son is also a man, and I thought it best if he distracted himself from such temptations with a tutor."

  Kai groaned.

  "—and since Babatunde will not return for months, I imported the very finest tutor available for my son, that his studies might last far into the night." The Wakil removed a red scarf from his pocket and waved it broadly. A pair of servants scrambled from beside the table and jogged toward the front gate, a quarter mile distant.

  Just as Kai wondered if a protest would serve any purpose, he heard a distant creaking of wheels and hinges, and the estate gates opened. The Wakil's new personal coach approached, even grander than the one that had borne Lamiya to the harbor. Of lacquered ebony with veins of gold, it was certainly too ornate for use by any Muslim warrior, perhaps reserved for guests from India's royal house. Drawn by four brown Spanish stallions, the tasseled window curtains bounced as it rolled forth, concealing whoever—or whatever—awaited within.

  The prancing horses pulled to a stop. For a long moment nothing happened, and the tension made Kai's neck itch. Then the door opened, apparently by itself. Kai realized that he was holding his breath, although as yet there was nothing to be seen.

  Then a hand appeared around the frame of the door, tapered brown fingers tipped in lacquer just a little darker than her own skin. A face appeared next, and Kai's heart leapt.

  He had seen such women before, knew that they were children of Andulus, the product of the Moorish empire's influence on the bloodlines of southern Europe. They were beings of grace and fire, prized as dancers and courtesans.

  Her eyes were slanted, half-lidded. When they opened a trace more and fastened on him, he thought his heart would stop.

  Her smile was the promise of a perfect sunrise following an exquisite night. Her every motion glided like honey-water down a parched throat, but restrained in a manner that promised the absolute limit of what mortal flesh could bear. Although her skin was pale her lips were full and African, her hair and eyes dark, her nose more broad and sensuous than any of the poor thin-blooded Irish girls.

  Had a lion licked the back of his neck, Kai could not have taken his eyes from the girl as she approached and knelt before him. Her hand made a single rolling magician's flourish, and a long-stemmed rose appeared. When he accepted it, he was embarrassed to note that it was his hand, not hers, that trembled.

  Her eyes met his for just a moment. They were deeper and darker than the night. Kai felt as though he were balancing on the edge of some massive revelation.

  "Her name is Sophia," his father said.

  In what was clearly a very choreographed motion, several of the female servants appeared, and swept Kai away from the table.

  Sophia floated behind, barely seeming to bend the grass beneath her feet.

  With agonizing slowness, the servants removed K
ai's clothes one piece at a time. Then they led him to his bathing tub, which had already been filled with steaming water, where they cleaned and anointed him in precious oils. Not since childhood had Kai been so pampered, and the entire ritual seemed dreamlike.

  Then Kai slipped into a plush saffron robe, and was led to his bedchamber. The door was closed behind him. The bed was deeply canopied, its shadows inviting and somehow mysterious. He had not been a virgin since an occasion in the barn soon after his fifteenth birthday, but he had never brought a woman into his own bed, or into his father's house.

  The curtains around the bed obscured Sophia's form. Only a single hint of a shadowed breast pulled him forward.

  He drew the curtains aside, and stared. The sheets were covered with rose petals, and Sophia watched him with an expression he could not read. Expectation, perhaps. Judgment, perhaps.

  She was a sight to steal a man's breath. He slipped into bed beside her, his hands seeking eagerly.

  She set her palms flat against his chest, and said in perfect Arabic, "Not like that." Her voice was heavily accented, as sweet as syrup.

  He pulled back, mystified but not angered. "Then, what?"

  She took both of his hands in hers, and kissed the fingertips. Every touch sent tremors up his spine. "Slow," she said. "Touch. I am not a horse, to be driven to speed. In exchange for each day's labor, Allah gives us one glorious night. Let us take them a moment at a time."

  He was dizzied. Her scent was unlike that of any woman he had ever known, heavy with a hint of her own musk, and some essential oils that he could not name. He sensed that she was the door to mysteries undreamed of. Kai had believed himself to be a master of these, but the loss of illusion was the beginning of wisdom. This woman would teach him the secrets that his father and uncle and brother knew, secrets that had only been hinted of in the frantic tumbles with servant girls in glens and barns and hovels. Sophia was the doorway to lovemaking as an art. "Teach me," he said, and she drew him close.

  As the night thickened, Abu Ali, Ali, and Malik reclined on the lawn, enjoying a bit of Turkish tobacco in the hookah and Kenyan tea in their cups. When the wind blew just right, they could hear sounds from Kai's window: creaks, and groans, and the mingling of male and female voices raised in pleasure.

  One groan was more exquisitely prolonged than the others, and Abu Ali raised one bushy eyebrow. "Such sounds! The torture must be exquisite."

  "I think the prisoner will soon succumb," Ali chuckled, and raised his cup in salute.

  The night rolled on. The grounds were deserted save for the pacing overseers and guards.

  Kai rose naked from his bed and walked to the balcony. He felt that he could sense every blood vessel in his body, that his sensitivity to every muscle and motion was enhanced, that his very nerves carried their messages more quickly.

  He felt. . . older. Changed. He looked out across his father's estate with a man's eyes. He would own a healthy part of this, and his brother would control the rest. And he would be ready, when the time came.

  Slender arms twined around his neck. Sophia leaned in, her perfect breasts pressing against him from behind. Her lips nibbled at his earlobes. "The lesson is just begun," she whispered with honeyed breath.

  He turned into her kiss, drunken with the music of lips and tongue, lost in the depths of her hips and breasts, so recently explored. Burning as she molded herself against him.

  Already she had drained and rebuilt him three times. He should have been exhausted, but miraculously felt himself responding to her yet again. "Are you a witch?"

  "I am whatever you desire," she said.

  He scooped her up in his arms, and carried her back to the bed. And there, on a mattress of rose petals, they rejoiced until the dawn.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Kai hit the mat hard, then rolled onto hands and knees and mule-kicked into Malik's rock-ribbed gut. His uncle slid to the side and swept Kai's supporting foot, miming a crippling stomp to the knee.

  Sophia sat at the side of the room, wide-eyed with amazement as the two warriors practiced, astounded that neither had accidentally crippled or castrated the other.

  Groaning at his gaffe, Kai stood, wiped the sweat from his brow, and began again.

  The two warriors had been practicing for over an hour, and even the indefatigable Malik now moved with a certain heaviness. His burly bare chest glowed with perspiration. This was an empty-handed session ("Occasionally one loses the sword, or is attacked before one comes to hand. A warrior must be prepared for all things"), and Kai seemed to be actually enjoying this kind of play more than the sword skills she had also watched him perfect.

  Although he left sweat and sometimes blood on the mats, Kai's rigors were ennobling, quite different from the severe training to which Sophia herself had been subjected.

  Sold into slavery at thirteen to pay her father's debts, Sophia De Moroc had understood her eventual fate even before leaving Andulus. At Dar Hudu, Alexandria's House of Submission, she had not only been deflowered, but indoctrinated in the thousand arts of love, taught to pamper her body with dance and lotion, and how to prevent conception with an herb-soaked sponge.

  Then, fully trained, the girls had been told that a few, just a few of the very best of them, might charm their eventual masters into privilege and possibly even freedom.

  The night of her rape she had been fourteen. God! The pain and humiliation! If not for the hashish ball they had forced her to swallow, she swore she would have killed herself. Four years had passed since then, and every day of those years she reminded herself that she would be free, no

  matter what it cost her. Her body was just her body, and might be used against her will. But her mind and heart would be hers alone. The other girls might weep and wail at night, calling for parents who would never come for them. In Dar Hudu, Sophia learned to bury her heart and forget childish dreams, and spent her nights reading scrolls from Persia, or translations of erotic texts from India and China.

  She swore that she would master any man who purchased her, using the only tools in her possession: her mind, heart, and body.

  She might have no say in where she lived, in whose bed she slept. She would trust in her beauty and high price to bring her to a man of wealth. When she learned that she would be the manhood gift to a boy of Kai's breeding, she had sighed with relief, knowing that, however small, here was a chance to make her mark, to possibly earn more than mere freedom. The other girls at Dar Hudu spoke in hushed tones of one "graduate," almost legendary, who had convinced her fat and wealthy master to marry her. She not only made him an excellent wife, but lived to inherit his estate!

  Lies? Reality? It mattered little. If there was a spark of hope at all, Sophia would fan that spark to flame, and become that myth other girls whispered to bind the demons in their dreams. And Kai, unformed, earnest, beautiful Kai, might well be the key to her prison.

  She wrested her mind away from the past and to the present. If there was an answer for her, a way out, it lay in mastering this boy's heart. So far, praise Allah, that heart had proven to be kind.

  To her dancer's eyes, Malik's combat technique was like wrestling, with the addition of short, fast blows. The practice was brisk and often painful, but knees, elbows, and head-butts were usually pulled before contact, to avoid crippling injury.

  Three Benin drummers provided the rhythm. Kai danced to their improvisational beat, arcing and inclining his body in a hundred different ways to avoid, change distance, feint, shift angle or position, alter footwork, counter, or manipulate the pace.

  Neither man spoke, but occasional sharp cries or exhalations accompanied a forceful strike. Malik grinned as his nephew landed a solid elbow to his gut, a blow he had taught Kai only a week before. "Paralyzes the diaphragm," he had said. "Not a killing blow, but one guaranteed to cause disruption in the opponent's breathing. A gift from heaven—a golden second, perhaps two, in which to find a sword."

  He spun away, depriving Kai of the opp
ortunity to follow with a finishing technique. "Ahh! Good, boy. But not good enough . . ."

  Malik hip-faked to the left. When Kai turned that way to block, Malik twisted to the right and spun like a darvish. He swept Kai's legs from beneath him so that the young warrior corkscrewed in the air, landing in a jarring breakfall.

  A few cubits away from her, Fatima applauded lightly. Malik's wife more or less ignored Sophia. She leaned toward Mani, a young Dahomy girl engaged to one of the drummers. "See how well young Kai moves," she said, as Kai sprang back up lithely. "He might almost be an acrobat." Mani nodded agreement.

  Sophia sidled closer to them. "He learns new movements very well," she said.

  Fatima's answering gaze was utterly frigid. "Speak when spoken to, girl."

  Stung, Sophia immediately lowered her gaze, biting her lip hard. Malik's wife saw her as little more than a whore. She was not! She was yaqid imrat, a fire woman, a teacher of erotic arts. Given time she could win a place in this world, she knew it. But first, she must learn to hold her tongue.

  Kai attempted a fancy kicking maneuver, beautiful and sweeping. Malik simply leaned out of the way, then stepped in and slapped his face hard, smacking Kai unceremoniously to the ground.

  "Enough!" Malik called. Kai seemed immensely relieved. He rolled over onto his back, panting with open mouth. Malik knelt close to him. "Boy, such leaps are pretty things to display for women. Try them on the battlefield, and you'll leave your head on a pole."