by YatesNZ, Jen
All about the chamber people were scrambling to their feet, eyes avidly absorbing the beauty of the fair Princess from Poseidonia and anxious to watch this battle of Queenly wills. There was an ugly stain of natural color high on Nudon's painted cheeks and her jaw worked convulsively.
After a tense and fraught moment Nudon stepped stiffly down from the dais, sank to one knee, and in a tone of deep aggrievement, said, ‘I kneel to the Queen Present of Nyalda.’
Gynevra reached to assist Nudon to her feet, then said, ‘Lady, please return to the throne. For now, I think it's more important the King find me suitable raiment to replace the only gown I have to my name—which he has destroyed.’
Nudon pursed her lips and commented acidly, ‘I don’t know what he was thinking to present you to us in that state, this being neither sacred arena nor House of the Night.’
‘What I was thinking, Movuon, is still on my mind. By all means return to your throne. My Queen has no need of it just at the moment.’
Swooping a protesting Gynevra into his arms, he strode across the Chamber to where a pair of lustily grinning warriors parted the leather curtains with gold-tipped staves.
‘Taur, put me down!’ Gynevra commanded.
‘Not likely,’ he growled, breaking into a run down a long hall hung with rich gold net. ‘You just stole a throne from one who'd held it for nigh on a quarter of a century without so much as a drop of blood—nor scarce even a harsh word! I've only seriously claimed my power in the last few tonni and I don't intend to risk the possibility of you getting me on my knees! Woman, do you realize what you just did?’ he demanded, shouldering through another set of heavy leather drapes to fall with her through voluminous silk curtains into the utter seclusion of a huge, soft box bed.
He reached out and removed the cover from a small lamp on the gilded corner shelf. Smoothing the tangle of curls from her face, he held her captive by her hair and said again, ‘Woman, do you understand what you've done?’
‘I think—I've made you quake in your boots,’ she said, her eyes dancing with mischief, ‘and I can't think of a better punishment for a kidnapper!’
‘You would punish me for doing what you wanted me to do anyway?’ he growled, pulling playfully at her hair.
‘Oh, I did not! Who would choose to be drugged—and stuffed in a box? Or to risk their life sailing in a gale of the Gods' greatest fury? Who would choose to be tossed about by a great oaf who has delusions of being the lustiest bull who ever served a cow? Who—?’
‘—can make you moo like a cow, growl like a bear, and purr like a cat because he is—your—bull!’
With a realistic bull roar and one deft movement he parted her thighs and joined their bodies. Gynevra couldn't suppress a squeal of surprise and valiantly tried to turn it into a moo between breathless giggles.
‘I forgot to mention squeal like a hogging sow,’ Taur chortled, then folding her in his arms he rolled so she lay on top of him. ‘Ride me, Golden One, ride me, before I give you my throne just for what you can make me feel.’
Gynevra needed no urging. High priestess, Princess, or even Queen she might be, but she'd just been gifted her first arousal by laughter and she knew it for a gift more precious than any she'd ever received. Long after Taur had removed his boots and properly undressed them both, covered the lamp, and slept with her held close in his arms she stared into the enclosing darkness, tears of wonder seeping down her cheeks. The tears were as much for happiness as they were for the underlying fear that such happiness could only come with a price too terrible to contemplate.
The price of ecstasy is agony. Like an echo from the past, the thought brought to mind Ianthe's words at the time of her joining with Gotham. She'd known a kind of ecstasy with Go' at first but they'd both suffered great agony in the aftermath. If the depth of agony was governed by the intensity of the ecstasy Gynevra knew she'd be called to account for loving Taur by a cruelty beyond imagining. For herself she knew she'd suffer gladly but the thought of any harm befalling this man whose precious breath feathered her brow, brought agony in reality to the pit of her stomach and turned the gentle tears of wondrous joy into a torrent of ugly grief.
Taur stirred.
‘Gyn'a?’ he murmured, touching his lips to her brow. His fingers found the tears coursing down her cheeks.
‘Woman, what's wrong?’ he demanded, uncovering the lamp again. In its brightness he stared down at her tear-ravaged face. He swore gently. ‘Cloaba! Golden One, what ails you?’
Gynevra could no longer hold in the sobs she'd been desperately suppressing in the darkness. Turning her face into his chest she clung tightly to the strong muscular body and tried to banish all thoughts of its destruction.
‘Gyn'a, have I hurt you?’ Taur demanded harshly.
Gynevra shook her head.
‘I'm just so afraid of what price the Gods will demand for this happiness.’
‘Aa-ah, Gyn'a,’ Taur breathed. ‘The Gods would not give us this only to take it away again. You were always meant to be mine. You can't deny that, my Golden One, you who show me the other side of the stars every time we join.’
‘Our joining is ecstasy beyond ecstasy and it's this which terrifies me. The price of ecstasy is agony. It's a natural law. The price of great ecstasy is therefore, great agony. I can't bear that for you.’
For a moment Taur stared into her eyes. Then he shook his head as if to shrug off an old memory or a deep premonition, and said, ‘Alara, why dwell on such thoughts when we make such beautiful music together? Come, let me show you how to play my instrument, show you new melodies I can coax from yours.’
With the hands and mouth of a musical genius he dried her tears and strummed her body into harmony with his and Gynevra had no strength left for crying, let alone for fearing.
Light kisses across her eyelids woke her and for long moments she lay gazing up at the dim outline of the man leaning over her and her first thought was a prayer to the Goddess that she wake this way every morning for the rest of her life. Then Taur slid open a section of the inner wall of the bed box and the rising sun streamed across the bed and Gynevra felt the dawn latreia rise within her, a paean of praise and joy. She pushed aside the exquisite woven wool bedding and knelt before the crystal window—and gasped.
She looked straight down for hundreds of gladvenon into terraced gardens where water fountains danced in the crystalline light of dawn and down further again to where a tiny trail snaked its way in a back track down the cliff-side. A small herd of milch cows trudged along the trail ahead of a cloaked figure walking with a staff. A falconer released a bird from the bluff at the outer edge of the garden and the creature soared directly towards the rising sun.
Gynevra drew in a sobbing breath of wonder, then reached for Taur and drew him to the window at her side.
I sing you Hail! Great God of the Morning
I sing you Hail! who comes with the dawning
I sing you Hail! who the mountains adorning
I sing you Hail! for your great light a-borning
Rise in the east to lighten the Air
Heaten the south for Fire is there
Quicken the north so Earth is not bare
Set in the west all Water to clear
Taur's deep base voice joined with her on the second line and there was an aching sweetness in remembering how Gotham had sung the dawn latreia with her that first morning on the Isle of Ebbawen. There was a sense of rightness to his intrusion on her thoughts in just the same way Taur had intruded those long days ago. For the first time since the destruction of Fyr Trephyr she could think of Gotham and the beauty they'd shared so briefly as a thing apart from the ugliness that had followed. Perhaps she'd needed to come to Fyr Heceuda—and Taur—to heal. She shivered and Taur pulled a blanket about them both.
‘I'm not cold,’ Gynevra averred. ‘In truth, this castle is amazingly warm. How long before the snows come?’
‘Two tonni. Maybe less. Each day it gets colder. We put larger
crystals in the indoor braziers so the temperature stays pretty much the same all year round.’
‘I will need some clothes.’
‘Why, when I don't intend to let you out of bed?’
Gynevra chuckled.
‘I'll be gone the moment you sleep. I long to explore your beautiful country and I'm sure I'll find Sons of the Dragon cousins a-plenty in Nyalda as there are elsewhere, who'd be delighted to guide their naked Queen on such an expedition and keep her warm.’
Taur tumbled her back onto the bed.
‘There's only one Son of the Dragon in Nyalda, or anywhere else, who'll be anywhere near my naked Queen—and don't you forget it,’ he growled, cupping her face and taking her mouth with his.
More than content to have it so, Gynevra twisted her fingers in the tangle of his hair and it was long before either of them cared whether she had clothes or not.
‘How many seamstresses are there in the castle?’ Gynevra asked when they lay replete once again.
‘I've no idea,’ he said, closing a hand over her fingers teasing at his flat male nipples.
‘I shall need at least twenty.’
‘Twenty! Cronos! What are you dressing? An army?’
‘No. Just a Queen.’ Gynevra freed her fingers from under his hand and slid them down his belly to close over the flaccid length of his manhood and the soft ball pouches beneath. ‘Queen's—need a lot—of clothes. I intend to empty a few of those sacks in your stadrag just as I've emptied these sacks here. I believe you owe me.’
‘Then it's fortunate, isn't it my Queen, that these sacks naturally refill themselves, guaranteeing not only your satisfaction but more sacks full of gold in the stadrag?’
Heat that had nothing to do with sexual desire flooded Gynevra and she snatched her hand away and flounced into the corner of the bed, thumping a clagren down between them.
‘Most men give up contract siring when they take a sacred partner.’
‘I collect I'm lucky to still be whole,’ Taur commented after briefly checking his nether regions. Then rolling on his side, he leant on his elbow, and fixed her with a sparkling gaze from under a quirked brow.
‘I don't have a sacred partner.’
The heat, which a moment ago had suffused her body, coalesced into a lancing blade biting deep into her heart.
Like an archer's bolt she flew upright and began untangling herself from the blankets.
With a gentle swing of his arm Taur hauled her back into his embrace.
‘Join with me,’ he pleaded huskily.
‘You know I can't do that! It’d be a lie!’ Gynevra cried, pushing against his arms. Suddenly she stopped, and searching his face, asked, ‘Would you give up contracts if we joined?’
He gazed steadily back at her for a long moment before he answered. ‘I couldn't promise you that. I'm the King. My people expect me to sire their children.’
‘Does it occur to you,’ Gynevra asked sweetly, ‘that our grandsire was an egotistical arabo and that you're exactly like him?’
‘No. But he was a nostum arabo and in that I'm definitely like him.’
‘Well, you can go satisfy your problem, egotistical or nostum, somewhere else. I've had enough,’ Gynevra declared, and this time when she surged out of his embrace, he didn't try to hold her.
Indeed, he was out of the bed before she was, hauling on his kirt and boots, his face dark with anger.
‘Thank you for reminding me of my Kingly duty, my Queen. I'll attend to it forthwith. Meantime, I'll command Lord Maden to send you every seamstress the Castle boasts and ask my movuon to send a maid to you. If you put one foot outside this door before you're fully clothed I'll whip you within a whisker of your life!’
The harsh words were flung over his shoulder as he strode from the room. Arrested by his sudden similarity to Gotham, Gynevra stood by the bed long after he'd gone, wondering at what was yet so different. By now Gotham, temper raging out of control, would’ve tethered her to the bed and mercilessly lashed her until his passion had transmuted from rage to desire, when he would take her with a crazed disregard for her welfare or satisfaction. The fear that had sprung to life like an opening flower in her breast subsided. She told herself she was a fool to expect Taur to sire children only on her. Wasn't it enough that he didn't beat her for making him angry? She already knew he was different to Go', that he had more charisma, more honesty than any other man she knew.
Why then must she cry for the moon, for so much more than any Paggi woman would dream of expecting from a man? Sacred Ist, she whispered, leaping onto the bed and tenting the blankets about her shoulders, it's because I would give him more than he would ever expect from a woman.—But I cannot!
The thought spiraled through her being, a silent wail of despair. To keep herself from devolving into a water-spout once more, Gynevra leant her elbows on the window-ledge and gazed out onto the world far below. Half a dozen donkeys pulling carts laden with bulging sacks were being driven along the coast road toward the Castle and everywhere were people going about their business.
A ship under the distinctive squared orange sail of a loaker from Khemu sailed up the harbor, sailors like ants on her deck, and Difleer was in her mind again as she so often was. What would Difleer have done when Gynevra was reported missing? Sweet Ist, she missed her housekeeper's irreverent wit, her laughter, her caring.
Difleer would love this place. There must be some way she could get her here. Her gaze roved up the harbor to the stepped-pyramid powerhouse, its seven tiers of huge clear quartz generators topped by a king transmitter glowing like an obscene jewel on the gently heaving breast of the water. Warily she tested the energy, proving the presence of the deadly curved webbing waves and just as quickly disengaged before the vibration could damage her own soul energy.
While she was annoyed she couldn't even send a message, Gynevra noted with wry amusement, she was deeply relieved she couldn't apportate back to Qrazil, even though she was angry at Taur. Could it be she was prepared to share him with any number of women rather than not have him at all?
‘Good morning, Queen Gynevra.’
Startled, Gynevra turned to see a woman in the red and black plaid of a Castle servitor kneeling before the bed. Surely it was only that she'd been thinking of Difleer that an intonation of the voice had sounded familiar.
‘Good morning. You may rise.’
‘Thank goodness for that! Wool rash on my forehead would spoil my looks for sure and then who'd want to scrog me?’
‘Diffie!’ Gynevra squealed and leapt off the bed into the woman's arms. ‘Where—?—How did you get here?’
‘Lady, you're naked as a delilah in business!’ Difleer strove to sound disapproving while hugging Gynevra to her as if she were her own child.
‘I probably smell like one, too! Oh, Diffie! Diffie! I'm so glad you're here. Tell me how.’
Difleer grinned and held her mistress at arm's length.
‘So that great horny Bull's been having his way with you, has he? No wonder I feel like I'm lookin’ at the old Princess Gynevra and not that lifeless Archinus Elect I found at Qrazil. We'd better get you in the bath ‘cos an army of seamstresses is on its way an hour from now. It seems that once again you have no clothes, my Lady!’
Gynevra's eyes danced as she slipped away from Difleer and pulled a cover off the bed and draped it round her body.
‘But this time, Diffie, I have a King with a mountainous stadrag to provide them for me—and so he should since it's his fault I'm here with nothing to my name!’ she ended with a toss of her head.
‘He makes you angry, Lady?’ Difleer asked with concern.
‘Diffie, he makes me madder than a rat in a basket and—more nostum than a taglag on huoda! He has me here and says he wants me to join with him as his sacred partner but he doesn't intend to give up contract siring and—and—oh Diffie, I simply shouldn't be here but he won't let me go.’
‘Doesn't sound like you want to go?’
‘I d
on't,’ Gynevra agreed readily. ‘But I won't be able to stand it if he makes me witness his contracts!’
‘First things first was always my motto, and it seems to me the first thing you need is a bath,’ Difleer responded with her usual dry logic. ‘Have you seen the bath here, Lady?’
‘D’naa.’
‘Then you're in for a treat.’ Difleer gathered a bathing gown and drying linens from an ebony chest and handing the gown to Gynevra said, ‘This will be easier to wear than a blanket. Have you noticed how warm it is in the Castle?’
Gynevra pulled on the gown and crossing to the crystal brazier on its polished copper circle in the center of the room, curled her toes in the thick woolen rug on the floor.
‘In fact, it's warm everywhere,’ Difleer went on. ‘Even the stone walls are warm.’
‘The walls? How is that?’ Gynevra asked, moving to lay a hand against the inner wall. It was as Difleer claimed.
‘They say the reason is the crystal braziers have warmed the place for hundreds of years. The heat is in the very rocks. Now let's find that bath.’
‘And you'll tell me how you got here—and when,’ Gynevra ordered.
‘As soon as you're in the bath, my Lady.’
They traversed two day-rooms with crystal windows over-looking the city and harbor. Furniture was of ebony inlaid with gold and ornate carved couches with embroidered silk ilobaron abounded. Difleer veered off from the third room into a passageway leading straight into the mountain and lit by crystal lamps set into carved niches along the walls.
‘This place reminds me of the grotto in Mt. Qam!’
‘Wait until you see the bath,’ Difleer chuckled.
The passage opened into a small, intimate golden cavern. Gynevra came to a halt and gazed around in wonder. The whole place, floor, ceiling and walls, was overlaid with solid gold. Hot and cold water ran continually from the horns of a molded orichalcum bull's head into the deep gold bath, the overflow from which drained away through a hole in the rocks. Several polished ebony benches of varying sizes stood about the bath and crystal lamps glowed from niches around the walls. At the innermost point of the cavern where walls, floor and ceiling melded into one, stood a golden plinth bearing a luminous aquamarine statue of Ist and Asar standing on a perfect sphere of clear quartz. Bodies intimately entwined, foreheads reverently touching, the piece glowed with its own energetic light and Gynevra halted for an entranced moment and acknowledged the sacred presence.