Ibro, glancing at Thameron, whispered to the fat woman. Irritably, she walked to his table and asked him what he wanted.
“What did you say?”
“Do you want anything? To eat? To drink?”
He shrugged. He wasn’t hungry, and he had never— “A cup of wine.”
The fat woman arched one eyebrow.
Thameron reached into his pocket, drew out one of the gold coins, and handed it to her.
She took it. Murderers, thieves, pimps, sailors, soldiers, aristocrats—now a priest buying drink in a tavern. Well, why not? The world no longer made sense; we might as well offer him a jump at one of the girls, too.
Back at the counter, she poured a cup of wine.
“For the priest,” she told Ibro.
He chuckled and made an obscene comment, told her that the priest was a regular visitor, and made change for the gold piece. The fat woman returned to Thameron, placed his wine and change on the table, and stared at him for a long moment.
Thameron met her look. Finally she shook her head, turned on her heel, and huffed away.
Thameron watched her as she went. There had been a time—years ago? yesterday?—when he would have looked upon this woman’s obesity and exhaustion as yet another aspect of the marvelous design of the immortals. But now he was repelled by her. He saw only her ugliness.
He sipped his wine.
The old man at the counter finished his brew, turned and looked at Thameron, and advanced on unsure legs toward him.
“Brother, I am a criminal in the eyes of our prophet.”
Thameron regarded him darkly. “Friend, so am I.”
“Please, brother. I’m drunk, but I need help, I need— My boy died yesterday. He was a good boy.”
Impatiently, Thameron asked him: “What do you want me to tell you? That he was saved?”
“Please, brother.…” Tears waited at the rims of the man’s puffed eyes. “My boy is dead. I don’t know why. It was an accident. I think my wife blames me because—”
“Listen to me,” Thameron said coldly to him. “I’m not a priest. I’m not a real priest. I’m an actor. I’m only wearing these robes because I’m an actor.”
The drunken man stared at him. Despondent and ashamed, he dropped a heavy hand on Thameron’s table to support himself as he swayed. “I—I thought—”
“I’m a false priest,” Thameron admitted to him. “I can give you no comfort.”
“I—I only wished to—” The old man turned away, looked back at the counter, and wove an uncertain path across the floor to the door. He paused there, looked back at Thameron, then went out.
Thameron swallowed more of his wine.
I’m a false priest.…
Sandals first, then slim white legs appeared on the stairs on the other side of the room. An arm and a hand on the railing, a slim waist revealing an open-front embroidered vest.…
Assia.
Surprisingly, he was shocked by her appearance.
“Thameron?”
Ibro, behind the counter, laughed harshly. “He’s drinking, too! I knew there was a human being under them robes! Priest! He weren’t coming here to be no priest!”
Assia glowered at him and hurried across the floor. “Thameron! What’s the matter? Why are you—?”
“Look at that fat pig!” Thameron growled angrily, staring at Ibro with fire in his eyes.
Assia was frightened; what Thameron was this? “What’s happened?” she asked. “Something’s wrong, what’s happened?”
Tilting unsurely in his chair, he faced her and slurred, “They’re liars.”
“What are you saying?”
“They’re liars. All of them! Muthulis, Hapad, the Church, the prophet—all of them, they lied to me! They wanted to see me crawl. They have no vision. They resent my vision; they wanted to—”
“Oh, Thameron, what’s happened? Tell me.”
He threw a hand to his face and began to sob.
Assia sat beside him, put her arms around him, and held him to comfort him.
Shortly, they went upstairs to her room. Assia made him lie on her bed to rest. He insisted that he wanted wine. To calm him, Assia went downstairs and took a jug of wine from the back room, telling Ibro to mark it on her bill. As she returned upstairs, Ibro followed her into her room.
“I don’t care why you’re here,” he announced to Thameron, who was still on the bed, “but she’s one of my girls, and anybody who spends time with her pays for it.”
Thameron became angry. Throwing himself forward, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his second gold piece. “Here!” He tossed it directly at Ibro’s hanging belly.
Ibro caught it with a deft movement.
“How much is that good for? The hour? The night? The week? What kind of price do you get for her? Or does it depend on how much she does without complaining?”
Ibro laughed at him. “Assia’s worth one in long gold for the night. But do you know what to do with her, priest?”
“Get out of here!” Thameron snarled at him.
“You’re in my house now, I’m not in yours, so you be polite, or I’ll dump you down the stairs!” Ibro went out, closing the door behind him.
“Dog!” Assia spat.
Thameron groaned and fell back on the cushions. “Give me a cup of wine.”
No, she didn’t love the robe or the office; she loved a young man, and she loved the young man’s spirit. And she knew she desired Thameron—not the priest in him, but the man in him, Thameron himself.
“They lied to me,” he complained to her again, his voice losing none of its bitterness.
“The world always lies to us,” she whispered. “You must realize that, Thameron. But don’t let it—”
“I’m no fool, but—I’ve been a fool all my life. I believed them.”
“Please, no. Don’t let them do this to you! Thameron—Thameron, now you’re free. You’re free of all of it! Don’t let them do this to you. You’re not a priest; you never were a priest; you’re much more than a priest! I can see that in you.”
“It’s all that I know.”
“No, no,” she disagreed. “You’re much more than that. I’ve always felt it. You must understand that, too. Thameron—look at me.”
His senses were thickened by the wine, but he was awake. Still on the bed, he turned his face to her; Assia was sitting on a chair.
“What am I, Thameron?”
“You’re…Assia, a woman.”
“No, no—what am I, Thameron?”
He didn’t understand. “You’re a—woman,” he repeated.
“I’m a prostitute, Thameron. A whore.”
It hurt him to hear her refer to herself that way. “Assia, what have I told you? That’s only a name, and a name means nothing by itself. You’re Assia. You’re a woman. If you choose—if it has been chosen for you—”
“Are you a priest, then, Thameron? Is that what you are? That name? Or are you a man first?”
He was startled. The obviousness of it. The truth of it. Everything he had believed, everything he had habitually looked at with such clarity, turned around. He began to weep.
Assia set down the wine jug and leaned forward. Thameron sobbed quietly while she, with a warm hand, stroked his hair.
“I love you,” she told him.
The room was very still, lighted only with the glow of two oil lamps. They were alone. The wine had taken its effect on Thameron, the wine and emotional exhaustion.
“I love you, Thameron.”
“Do you?” he whispered.
“I always have. I fought it. It seemed ludicrous. But it’s true. I love you. I know, too, that you love me.”
He groaned. “What can I do? What can we do?” And he rolled over, turning his back to her.
“Look at me, Thameron.”
Slowly, cautiously, he rolled over, stared into her deep eyes.
She removed her vest and dropped it to the floor. Her flesh glowed in the warm lam
plight.
“Kiss me, Thameron.” She leaned toward him.
He was a man. He sat up and kissed her, pressing his lips to hers. Assia opened her mouth and moved her soft tongue into Thameron’s mouth. They shared wet, frantic kisses.
Gently, then, she urged him down, to lie back, because she loved him. He was a man; he was not a priest but a man, and all that she recognized in him was true, true for her, when he kissed her, when she urged him down and leaned over him, and he kissed her arms and her breasts.
He was frightened, excited, ashamed—all at once. He felt the shadows in him vanish before a new light, a new glow.
“Kiss my breasts, Thameron.”
He was surprised at the weight of her breasts; he marveled at them, marveled at their texture. He stroked them with his fingers, thumbed their nipples, and smiled childishly as Assia’s nipples tightened beneath his touch. Smiled because he was responsible for that, and responsible for her sighs of pleasure.
She stood and removed her skirt, then bent to unfasten her sandals. She told Thameron to take off his robe, and he did. He removed his under-robes as well, and his sandals, then lay back on the bed. For the first time in his life, he was naked with a woman. Assia stretched out alongside him and ran her hands lightly along his body. Thameron shivered.
Assia smiled at him and kissed his mouth some more, then moved her head to his chest and licked his nipples. Thameron told her not to do that, but Assia ignored him. She stroked his penis with her hand, holding it firmly, moving her hand up and down around it. Thameron felt warm thickness gathering and filling his penis.
“Assia.…”
She kissed his belly, moved her kisses down to his thighs, then took his penis into her mouth. She moved back and forth, still looking toward him with familiar friendship. Thameron tightened his hands on the bed; his fingers knotted on the cushions. He moaned. His body was hot now, and damp. He felt hugeness in him rising, and then the hugeness escaping from him again and again, from deep within him, all through the length of him.
He gasped and groaned. Assia reached up with her free hand to stroke his chest; Thameron looked down and saw her eyes. She was grinning at him.
She did not explain why she was doing this, and Thameron, worried, was not certain that he wished her to explain.
Assia stretched out alongside him again, her body aglow in the lamplight, her flesh, too, damp with perspiration, her long legs, her soft belly, the hair between her legs gathered there like one of the warm, dark shadows of the room.
“Kiss me, Thameron,” she urged him softly. “Kiss me wherever you please.”
He began to weep.
“Oh, I love you,” she promised him.
He wept for joy.
Alive with the sense of his own body, aware of himself as he never had been before, he crouched beside her, feeling awkward but proud, and kissed Assia’s face, kissed her pulsing throat, trailed his gasping kisses down her breasts and belly and legs. He moved his face between her thighs and explored, with tongue and lips, with teeth and fingers, the pungent secrets of her, earthy and strong, his tentativeness relieved by Assia’s gasps of pleasure. Excited because he was exciting her, he was amazed and delighted with the taste of her; he discovered fine wonders in the thickness of her damp lips, in the aroma of her. He licked and kissed Assia’s folds of wet flesh and her sensitive little bud (she called it) as she moaned and rolled her thighs, hunched her hips, pushed against his face, moved her fingers in his hair, scratched his shoulders, and laughed, moaned, sighed.…
* * * *
When he awoke, he thought it was to the light of dawn. But the room was still dark, and the light was the glow of the oil lamps.
Assia, awake beside him, kissed him and rubbed her hands on his body, tickled him and licked his face, sucked on his ears.
“I love you, Thameron.”
Who was he?
A man, some deep resonance in him promised, reminded him, urged him.
His penis grew again, as though opening below like another him, and he moved atop her. Assia guided him into her. Thameron grunted at still another intense sensation, as though all of him were merely part of her. Was this his body? Where had this body been? Was this his body, the body that was attached to his mind, his thoughts and worries, the arguments he had had, and the anger, the rage? Who was he?
They moved with one another, hips together, pushing at each other, Thameron at one moment imagining himself as an animal coupling in some primitive, secret fashion, and the next, feeling himself moving away from himself but still present, still here with his friend, with Assia.
The room tilted. The lamplight glowed in his eyes. Drops of sweat from his forehead ran onto Assia’s face. She clutched him. He bent into her and felt her muscles guiding him, pulling on him, felt his own body more aware of what it was accomplishing than his mind was. He grunted, moaned, and spasmed in quick little bursts of wet life, while Assia dug her fingers into him and pushed, twisted and pushed, breathed quickly in such gasps.…
* * * *
He awoke to the light of a gray dawn at her window. The oil lamps had burned out. Half asleep, no more than a phantom come to life, a phantom returning from a cloud, Thameron was aware of Assia’s body next to him, her long body and the weight of her in his arms and the warmth of her, all of her right there. He was aware, too, of her quiet sobs. Not happy sobs, now, but sad ones. She was crying. Her back was to him; he held her in his arms, and he could hear her.
But he was not entirely awake, and although in his mind he wanted to sit up, speak with her, share a thousand more things with Assia, kisses and words and thoughts, more words and promises, he was too exhausted. Thameron fell asleep once more, listening to his friend’s sounds, feeling her body in his naked arms, the comfortable length of her there with him.…
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Late that morning, Thameron made his way up the wide steps of the main entrance doors, walked slowly down the central nave, and followed the bending hallways to the rear of the temple, where the sleeping chambers were. He felt eyes upon him, following him.
But he no longer cared.
He heard voices whisper as he passed, but he did not care.
In his room, he lay on his cot, threw his hands behind his head, and considered and reconsidered all that had happened to him since the council interview of yesterday.
Then, a voice. “When you have cleaned yourself and made yourself presentable, you will report to my office, Thameron.” It was one of his masters, regarding him with a look of painful disquietude.
Thameron stared at him.
“Do you hear me?”
With no deference in his tone: “Yes. I hear you.”
“Clean yourself. You look like an animal.”
His master turned and, with a grunt of complete disgust, left him.
He remained where he was for a long time.
He heard the bells sound the noon meal. Several young priests returned, some to change clothes, others to urinate in the pots in the corners or to retrieve personal objects they had forgotten. Hapad was among them.
“Thameron!” He was shocked; he hurried to his friend, sat on the edge of the cot and stared at him. “Where have you been? What’s happened to you?”
“I left.”
“They are furious with you!”
“Are they?”
“Why did you do it?” Hapad asked him with grief. “My friend, my friend—why are you doing this? Don’t you know they’ll punish you?”
“Let them punish me,” was Thameron’s cold reply. “My eyes have been opened to truths far greater than Muthulis or Andoparas knows.”
“Don’t speak that way!”
Thameron grinned at him. “Everything has turned around, Hapad! You can’t imagine what visions have opened to me!”
“Thameron, don’t speak this way. You’re a priest—my brother, you must—”
But Thameron waved an impatient hand at him. He glanced around the room
, but no one remained to overhear what he said. The others had left for lunch.
“It is life, Hapad!” Thameron announced, chuckling.
“Thameron, what—”
“They’re fools!” he declared. “They lie to us every day! They’re dogs! Hapad, Hapad—I left yesterday, I was so furious, I went into the city—”
“Oh, Thameron—”
“I went into the city, my friend. I drank. I did! I visited a woman I know—”
“Thameron, no!”
“I did, I did!”
Hapad stood quickly, terror on his face, and anger, disappointment. “You wore the robes of a priest!” he shouted. “How could you do such things in the robes of a priest!”
Thameron was not in the least humiliated. “They drug us!” was his hot reply. “They treat us like fools, Hapad! They connive, they lie, they twist us and turn us until—”
“Silence!” came an angry voice from the door.
Both turned their heads and looked upon the dormitory’s archimandrite—and the gray visage of Muthulis.
“You!” Muthulis pointed a finger at Thameron. “Go with your master. You—” to Hapad “—come with me!”
* * * *
It came swiftly.
Weeping, Hapad betrayed his friend, falling to his knees before the chief priest and praying for forgiveness. “I am confused!” he sobbed. “Where is my loyalty? To my friend or to our prophet?”
Muthulis did not hesitate to remind Hapad that his loyalty unquestionably belonged to Bithitu and Bithitu’s church. For the guilt of being friend to someone so lost and insolent as Thameron, Hapad was sentenced to a week in a solitary cell. Muthulis passed that verdict upon him; but when the heartbroken youth screamed out, agonized at such a punishment, Muthulis suspended it and reduced Hapad’s reprimand to a week of probation, so long as he kept to the temple grounds.
Thameron was then ushered into Muthulis’s office by the archimandrite, even as the crying Hapad left. Standing before the chief priest, Thameron was defiant, his stance bold, his eyes red with self-righteous anger.
Muthulis’s verdict was swift and cruel; in two sentences, he accused Thameron of his crimes, denounced him, stripped him of his caste and rank, excommunicated him from his prophet, and banished him from the temple.
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