Dream Dancer

by Janet Morris

  “What right? The right of my favor, of my pleasure. Surely you cannot be grieving that your freedom is assured . . . but if you are, you are welcome to join them in their detention cells, awaiting deportation . . . that is, as soon as we are legally wed. Now, lest we be more tardy than is fashionable, will you please come with me? I am truly trying to be patient—” And that was true, she saw: his difficulty was mirrored in his paled cheeks, in the muscles twitching in and out of shadow beneath their arch, in the tautness about his mouth that ironed the curl from it. “—but this is no place for second thoughts.”

  “Have you a better one?”

  He thrust a spread hand up across his forehead. When the hand came away, all exasperation had been erased, as if he had plowed it back to hide among his auburn curls. “Yes, Shebat, I have a better one. If you will accompany me . . . ?”

  So she went with him, through the anteroom with its portraiture, down the rightmost corridor of three, out of the ken of the former consuls staring down from their ornate frames and the two bodyservants staring with their ears while making themselves small in the corners from which they attended the closing of the consulate’s doors.

  The hall, softly lit and warmly hung, gave way to another, which was strewn with plinths and pedestals bearing sculptures from the Golden Age. Between two bronze busts was a door of real ebony, carved with beasts, which despite its antiquity drew back as obediently as might have any of the prismatic crystal portals flanking it.

  Within, Chaeron sighed, “The consul’s inner sanctum. Here, you can say what you will.” And the face that topped a body suddenly drained of tension was also washed with relief, made young with it, so that she saw the fairness so lyric that a song might have been sung for him, had songs been still made by men. And that recalled to her how she had first felt when he had come and comforted her during the funeral on Lorelie, how she had been afraid even to breathe. For breath might have rippled the waters of dream and then the man with eyes like midsummer dusk and hair like the sun settling low and a mouth both willful and heroic would disappear. Once again, she felt clumsy, emptied of words and wit like a spilt wine jar. She shuddered: “I cannot talk to you. Say what I will? I would not dare. You make the rules; I can hardly grasp the point of the game.”

  He wiped a chuckle from his mouth by an inclination of his head. “Say if you approve of my quarters; they will be yours also, henceforth.”

  She grasped the rope he threw her, turning on her heel, taking in the teal and chocolate walls with their muted paintings each lit from a hidden source; the deep, sculptured carpet where eagles soared among the stars. There were three couches; and six of the high wing chairs Parma favored grouped around a low table with feet like claws grasping crystal balls. There was a carved desk like the door through which they had come, with real books upon it, pressed together by silver stallions. On either side and behind the desk, portals lay open, one revealing a bedroom in Kerrion blues, the other a service kitchen. There were no windows; there was no sign of console or terminal or communicator.

  “Go on, look around. In the bedroom, in the closet, you will find some suitable gowns. Pick one.” He touched her, fleetingly, a caress that silked along her back as he passed. She watched him sprawl on the closest of three deep-pillowed settees, watched until he had loosed his uniform jacket and rubbed his eyes and thrown back his head with a sibilant aspiration.

  Then she edged by him, past the wing chairs, her boots silent on the thick pile; past the desk, where the silver stallions held leatherbound books she could not resist touching as she passed. She stole into the bedroom, a thief in a prince’s lair, and sat on the opulent bed, facing a mirrored wall. She stared at her boots, rather than the flush-cheeked creature in pilot’s coveralls who betrayed all her covert desire with flaring nostrils and thumping pulse and clasped hands pressed tightly in her lap. She would not fall in love with Chaeron Ptolemy Kerrion. She would not. She hated him—well, almost. He was unprincipled, dissolute; worse: he was Marada’s brother. She must not let him charm her; yet her hostility to him was born the predilection of her body to succumb to him. From the first, she had marked him: danger. At the last, she had fallen under his sway. Her integrity had been the final sacrifice, but it was gone, too, left behind in a seventh-level compromise. And he had told her: he had no interest in her. Not really. She sighed, and bent to pull off her boots, first striking the tears away with an angry hand. She did not care. She dared not. She could play the Kerrion game. Barefoot, yet fully clothed, she got up abruptly and went to see what the closet held.

  It held scandalously seductive sheers that might have taken aback a born Kerrion. She chose one that was a teal eagle spreadwinged about her breasts, above the circle of seven stars which blazoned her crotch, open at the back but for a string coming round the eagle’s wings, and so low over her hips that she twisted before the mirrored wall to determine if the separation between her buttocks actually showed, or only felt that way. . . . It showed, but just barely. There were no shoes: barefoot, she went in to get his opinion, feeling the long skirt catch her toes as she walked, thinking that she should better have chosen differently, if there had been a better choice. She turned the bracelet he had given her, fingering the emeralds’ smooth coldness.

  He had taken off his black jacket, lay sprawled out in a form-fitting, cream shirt, and his consul’s trousers, striped red up the leg. The shirt was loosed at his throat; perspiration glittered there. She came so close that she could see the chain of the gold medallion he wore before he opened his eyes, rubbed them and sat up: “I had rather hoped it would be that one.” He made room for her beside him: “Sit here. You look lovely.”

  Shebat stretched out one leg and wriggled a bare toe: “You forgot shoes.”

  “Shoes. By the Jesters, you are right. I did. Well, no matter. Let us get the formalities over with, and we will go to our party.”

  “Whatever you say,” she aspirated, tense with his hip burning into hers.

  He spoke casually into thin air: “Slate: permanent recording. Date and time. I hereby take Shebat of Bolen’s town, nee Kerrion, to be my wife, waiving a betrothal interval as is my right by consular decree. Shebat Kerrion agrees. Say you do,” he instructed her.

  “I do,” she obeyed.

  “Shebat Kerrion also appoints Chaeron Kerrion her Voting Trustee, irrevocably and for as long as we both shall live. Say you do.”

  “I do.”

  “End: slate,” he ordered the computer’s hidden ear. “May I kiss the bride?”

  “I— No . . . yes . . . if you want to?” It was meant as a statement, it came out a pathetic plea. She started up from her seat, but he took hold of her.

  “I do want to,” he assured her, and proved it with a kiss obtrusive and full of tongue, that caused her breathing to come harsh and her thoughts to slow to a standstill. When she was free once again, she sidled the couch’s length away from him, her eyes glazed and full of struggle, her fingers to her lips.

  “Shall we go and join in the celebration?”

  “That is all?”

  “Unless you want more. I am not so insensate as to deny a woman’s passion.”

  Shebat was on her feet and behind the wooden desk before she was aware of the urge to move. From that safety, she said: “I meant, are we married? That is all. Do me no favors, Chaeron. I would sooner lie with a stone.”

  “Suit yourself. Can we go? You really do look elegant; it would be a shame to waste all that on an empty room.” He rose up, and came toward her at measured pace, his humor a taunt that crinkled his eyes, his coaxing mien the worst of it.

  She spat: “I am not some animal, to be gentled!”

  “Most assuredly not. You are my wife, second Lady of Kerrion space. Remember that, tonight: take what you will and cast aside what does not please you. Your word is a power on its own. . . .”

  But her fingers were busy, spelling quickly. A blue light, spurted, searching.

  Chaeron Kerrion stopped quite
still. He put his hands on his hips and grated: “If you do not stop doing that, you will find yourself married and divorced on the same night, a feat which even I myself would rather not lay claim to. Shebat. I am warning you—”

  The lightning licked out toward him; he could have tried to avoid it; he stood immobile, in the agony of seconds drawn out neverendingly, while the licking tongues approached. He was touched with cold; with ice; with knowingness that made him one with the waveform of universal process. He heard her, from a distance, her murmur crackling through the blue fog wrapping his limbs like some ectoplasmic boa constrictor.

  “My wedding gift to you, husband.” She drew her hands apart, and the air cleared so that he could see something besides the maelstrom of ultramarine. “Twelve coils binding may protect us from each other. It may not. One thing is sure: you will never willingly hurt me.”

  “You are living in your dream dance, Shebat. Because you can color ambient air does not mean you can control events. That is impossible. And I feel no differently than I felt before. It has never been my intention to do you harm.”

  Her chin was held high, her head tilted slightly. The gray eyes laughed at him; the soft mouth was still. Then her ingenuous, husky voice said: “Nor I you. Shall we go?” And she came around the desk to meet him, smiling a Kerrion smile.

  The consul’s function hall was four corridors from Chaeron’s quarters: they heard the revel long before they came to the end of the fourth. They saw signs: folk sprawled on the carpet in the final corridor, mumbling to one another; drunks snoring in stained finery; lovers embracing on beds of clothing, naked but for mil smeared with food and drink. A girl in gold-flecked mil and spire-heeled shoes whose gilt laces had come loose from her ankles and dragged perilously along in her wake danced past them in a series of altered-state arabesques.

  “What is that smell? And the smoke? Is something on fire?” It looked so, and a magical fire it must have been, for the smoke was blue and glowing. From out of its depths came the din of raucous laughter, buffoonery, mis-made song. Hearing the eldritch hymn, “Singin’ in the Rain,” Shebat reflected that should the tone-deaf singer truly know the meaning of “rain,” he had already failed at petitioning it down from the skies. His addled brain had miscounseled his tongue. To so garbled a spell, the Rain Spirit would not answer. Which was a pity: rain might have sent to ground the wreaths of smoke into which Chaeron was urging her without qualm. But she did not think the spell would have availed, even if rightly chanted, in this cave-warren man had built among the stars.

  Chaeron, having maneuvered her down three stairs into a press of scarved and jeweled manhood over whose heads she could see nothing, assured her that the smell and the smoke and the fire were contained and purposeful, while tapping a broad back covered with verdant iridescence which barred their way. Once; twice; thrice Chaeron prodded, until the man turned with some difficulty in the crowded press, pipe held protectively to his chest, a snarl on mobile lips. He was taller by a bit than Chaeron, with black, lank hair reaching down to his shoulders from a high, fawn brow. Below it, ophidian eyes sat deep, protected, on either side of a nose that speared out from his face, tympanic counterpoint to flared jaws. Where his chin had its point, a deep, shadowed cleft reigned. He rubbed it and said: “Bossy son-of-a-bitch. What’s the matter? Want to go for a ride? I’m willing, but hardly able. . . .” He blinked, grunted, and elbowed back fiercely without looking into the crowd behind. An indignant cry came over his shoulder; a scuffle that never touched him sounded. “My, my, my, who’s your friend?” He bent his neck to see Shebat better, so that a glitter in his hair caught her eye.

  “Valery, the pipe’s gone out. Light it for Shebat. She’s never tasted Earth’s only worthwhile export.”

  “Shebat? Never tasted . . . We will surely fix that.” He fumbled inside the silky fall of forest green, low on his hips where it bloused. Where he got the little nail whose tip turned red she could not imagine, for his steely leggings clung along his thighs like mil, disappearing into fantastic, multihued knee boots bound round with scarves like the lemon one knotted at his throat. “You look familiar,” he mused, plunging the nail deep into the little pipe’s bowl, which began to smoke.

  Chaeron said: “Valery Stang is our pilot, second bitch in Kerrion space, though some say that was a mistake.”

  Valery coughed, nodded, handed the pipe to Shebat. “I would have to disagree that this’s the only export— Our pilot? Haven’t I seen you someplace before?” The pilot scratched his head, showing his ear’s rings. There were three of them; the man was on his third cruiser and inordinately proud of it.

  Shebat pulled urgently on Chaeron’s tunic, shaking her head to Valery’s question. Holding the pipe, she puffed eagerly.

  “Valery, Shebat is my wife.” Valery’s explosive exhalation was lost on her: the opportunity to partake of the sorcerous weed was too long coveted. She held it in, making little strangling noises rather than cough the blue smoke out.

  “I know where I have seen you,” said the pilot, narrow-eyed, smiling only with his mouth. “In the guildhall. I never forget a pair of tits.”

  “Shebat was Spry’s apprentice,” said Chaeron easily as Shebat grabbed his arm with both of hers, laid her cheek against it. Yet it was an order, a silencing, a warning. The pilot nodded, took back the pipe.

  A soft voice slightly behind Shebat and to her left obtruded. She heard Chaeron answer:

  “When the dream dancer, Lauren, comes, inform me. If she attempts to leave, have her taken into custody and put into detention with her cohorts. Otherwise, the pink room would suit her. Have it prepared. As for Julian, get him sobered up. I will meet him at the buffet in five minutes.” An elfin houseboy in livery slipped back into the crowd, nodding.

  “Valery, watch over Shebat. She is not so knowledgeable as she appears. I will be back directly.”

  “No,” she pleaded aloud, though she had not meant to.

  “I must calm my little brother, to whom all things are dire and grave, as happens at sixteen—” She let go of his arm, with her free hand twisted the bracelet on her wrist. “You have not met, I would venture. He was here at the school the whole time you were in Lorelie. I will bring him over, if he can walk.”

  “Soon,” said the sorcerous weed that had wound itself around her tongue and taken control of it. And then she found herself alone with the master pilot, who was examining her like a flight plan with an elusive glitch.

  He tugged on his scarf, offering her more of the divining drug. Having divined her fate in his eyes, she refused. He capped the pipe, put it beneath his blouse where he had dug for the lighter, and she saw the purse sewn into a belt there.

  His arm came around her. His scarf tickled her face. The trailing hand landed near her collarbone, stroked comfortingly. “Come with me, and I will give you some pointers on what Chaeron likes. . . .” His fingers trolled beneath the eagle’s wing, caught her nipple there before her hand could dart to stop him. When her fingers caught his, he added into her hair in a languorous bass whisper:

  “And what he doesn’t like. That,” he flicked his eyes down to her fingers holding his away from her flesh beneath her gown, “he would not like at all. You are going to have a difficult time being a true wife to that one, perhaps more difficult than you had being Spry’s apprentice. Surely Softa could have done better than to send you unprepared into such a discerning embrace as Chaeron’s?”

  The stressing of “apprentice” was a blizzard, burying all her thoughts beneath its featureless chill. She said to herself that Chaeron’s pilot could be no threat, mean no ill: she was Kerrion. But her steps were clumsy and her volition was numb. She let him steer her to a corner, on the way to which his hand came out from under the eagle’s wing, slipping along her spine. As it dove beneath the derrière of the gown he said: “This is another thing that Chaeron likes,” She gasped in surprise at what resting place his finger sought.

  Shebat lunged away from him. The gown hissed, com
plaining at every seam, even as he took back his hand and let her free. Then she had her back to the walls. He was leaning down and toward her, one outstretched hand supporting him. He murmured: “I am not Softa Spry’s best friend. But we are all in this together. If I can help you, I will. As for that little scene, I have an image to preserve, though I admit there was nothing I would rather have done.”

  “I do not know what you are talking about.”

  “Then forget I said anything. I must have you confused with some other Earth girl who has three sets of ID and has lost her cruiser.” His face did not match his flippancy; it was gray beneath its burnish. “What say we repair to one of the private rooms and you can be apprentice for a night in the navigational complexities of the cruiser ‘Chaeron’? You are going to need it.”

  Shebat Kerrion, despite all resolution to the contrary, began to cry fat, silent tears.

  “That is good. When in doubt, weep. He will melt under it.”

  She ducked under his hand and ran. She ran blindly, bumping into sequined backs, naked backs, plush-cloaked backs and painted backs, until someone grabbed her from behind. She whirled, ready with all the aggression she had learned so well from Lorelie’s intelligencers. Her hand half-raised, fingers curled so that the heel of it could hammer home a deathblow, she saw Chaeron’s wry headshake almost too late to defeat her own strike, flashing out with lobotomizing force. He caught her wrist easily, inches shy of his aristocratic nose: “We went to the same teacher, remember?” he teased.

  “This, dear brother, is your foster sister, your new sister-in-law, my wife, Shebat. Shebat, Julian Antigonus Kerrion.”

  “Julian,” she gasped, trying to slow her heart, catch her breath, clear her head. Julian: half a head shorter than Chaeron, six years his junior, flesh stretched taut over Parma’s heavy bones. He bowed to her, flaxen waves of hair swinging about his angular, open face. Wide eyes tinged with red appraised her. His carriage was rod-straight, his neck thick, yet graceful, like a young stallion’s. He wore midnight blues flowing softly over long arms and legs, caught at waist and ankle and wrist with gold cuffs and a cinch to match. The collar of his shirt was high and open almost to his navel, exposing the easy, belly-forward posture of one who has no need to fear criticism. But it was his soft, youthful commiseration that made her ever after recall that meeting: “Paranoia, that’s what the smoke does to me, too. I cannot seem to get the knack of running on a tenth of my faculties. I eat too much. I end up in odd places in the morning, and I never can really say that I meant to be wherever I happen to wake.” He held out a spatulate hand nearly as large as Valery’s. “Greetings, sister. I had regretted that I never met you. It seems we are going to have a second chance.”