Flames of Desire

by Vanessa Royall

  This night was nothing if not special.

  Slowly, listening to his moans, she touched dabs of cream to several places on his parts, and then, even more slowly, she moved from one dab of cream to the next, gently rubbing the sweet salve into his flesh. His breath came faster, a keening, almost a gasp.

  You made me your whore for pleasure, she thought, nerving herself for the moment. She glanced at the beige pouch. It was open and waiting. The decision was up to her. Master! she thought, with trembling scorn. I accept no master unless it be for love.

  Now he was covered with the stinging cream, and she moved her hands in soft, wide, sweeping arcs over his belly and thighs, now and then touching his sex. When she did not touch the parts to which she had applied the cream, they would burn with a delicious fire. And when she did touch them, his skin would turn suddenly cold. Even now, he was on the brink of release, but holding back, not wishing it to end. His eyes were closed, and he writhed in delicious agony upon the couch, sobbing with sensual joy.

  Selena took a final breath and reached into the wallet.

  She leaned forward slightly, and brought down upon him the deep, startling coldness of her kiss. His body thrust upward to meet her mouth, and deeply she held him with the ice-and-diamond glitter of her teeth.

  And she brought down into his heart, into the smooth brown chest the blade that had to fall if freedom waited.

  For one long, exquisite, agonizing moment he lay still. It seemed there was not even pain, or perhaps a pain so piercing that it transcended experience, an ecstasy such as had been given no man before.

  He lifted his head, face distorted with the torture of release, and his essence left him. His manhood thrust upward from his groin, joined to Selena. The dagger thrust upward from his heart, joined to Selena as well. Death and life together, at one perfect instant. And in an instant twice released.

  His eyes fluttered, glazed.

  The breath went out of him.

  She opened and let him fall away from her, releasing her hand as well. The twin juices of his body fell and flowed.

  Davi, it is done! she cried, barely believing. Be ready!

  My life is yours, Davi told her with his mind.

  For a long moment she stood there over the dead man, not courageous enough to tear her eyes away. She was fascinated; she was transfixed. His beautiful body, his almost perfect face turned into stone. It was obscene. Moments ago, this man’s blood had throbbed through his veins, hot for her, and his breath had come keening. And now his body was still, eerie and premonitory, and he did not move. She had done that to it. It. She had done it not because of the body, but because of the alien force that had occupied his mind, a force, a will, that promised her luxury and pleasure. Humiliation and debasement.

  I’m sorry, she said to him. You had my body because there was no choice. But you never had my spirit, and it was not right for you to try to possess it.

  Sometimes it is necessary, Davi had said.

  You must learn to rid yourself of enemies, Royce had said.

  Well, she had done that, and he lay dead before her; he could do nothing to stop her now. Yet all around the two of them lay Jabal-Mahal, with its myriad strangenesses and dangers, like a living body outside his dead soul. Waiting to take revenge upon her. Waiting to even the score, as Roxanne had said all scores were evened, in due course.

  If you waited long enough.

  The Hindu night. The human heart. The dark, curved bowl of the universe. Trackless aeons, nameless stars. All of history and time. In the daytime, when the call comes and the heart yearns to be free, or in the nighttime when the blood leaps toward forever, then, then, striding the earth or sailing high upon the sea or riding on the very wind of God, then we shall take the world into our hands and fling it toward the stars.

  And then we shall seize the sky!

  Make yourself an instrument of your desires. Sean Bloodwell.

  A person defines himself by choices that are free. Her father.

  There is no defeat unless you believe it.

  That was Selena, and she left the dead man where he was, heading for the nursery where the child slept. The child was the second thing. There were four things she had to do.

  Davi was as good as his word.

  Selena approached the nursery, and he was there, braced straight to his full five feet, conversing with the Sherpas. Or, rather, he was goading them, angering them, distracting them.

  “Are your people descended from the gorillas in the Himalayas?” he was asking one of them. “You Sherpas look like gorillas, did you ever notice that?”

  The big warriors, dumbfounded, looked at one another, as if they could not believe what they were hearing.

  Davi knew what was coming, had to know, but his heart was set and his mind hard. He did not tremble or show fear. He saw Selena without seeming to, and she slipped behind the guards and into the nursery.

  “Why, you little black monkey bastard,” growled one of the guards, “you dare say something like that again and I’ll use your face to mop the floor.”

  “We’ll crush you like a fly, birdbrain,” snorted another.

  Selena closed the door.

  “Ten Sherpas equal the brain of a bird,” Davi was saying, “so you ought to be very familiar with…”

  She heard a grunt, and then running.

  Go. Now, Davi told her with his mind. It is all right.

  Quickly, she walked over to the cradle, reached down, slid her arms under the little girl’s sleep-limp body, and lifted her up. The child stirred, gave a soft cry, but did not awaken. She slept close to Selena’s shoulder. She herself wore only a plain sari, and the child had on a light gown. Taking a blanket, she drew it around the girl, and moved to the door. Paused. Opened it. Far down the corridor, enraged Sherpas were pursuing little Davi. He was taking them into the front courtyard, which was opposite the wall at which Sean waited…

  And then she stopped stock-still. Executions! The maharajah had told her he was ordering the execution of the English trading party. Did that mean Sean was already in custody, under arrest, in the hold beneath the palace which held men and women who displeased the master?

  Go! cried Davi’s mind, reverberating in her own.

  No time to think of it. Thought was useless now. She opened the door, hurried down into another unfamiliar wing. She had only seen it once before. From all sides now, she heard a great commotion, shouting, cries of glee. Outside, bivouacs of soldiers, on the watch for Ku-Fel, set up a hue and cry. Men were running somewhere ahead of her. She ducked into an archway, and they pounded past her, laughing.

  “The Dravidian’s gone crazy,” one of them chortled, running. “He offended Bo-Huk and called him a gorilla. They’ve got Davi out in the courtyard now, I understand. It should be quite a show.”

  Selena said a wordless prayer for the tiny black man at the mercy of these barbarians, then eased out of her hiding place. The coast was clear. The child cried once, as if dreaming. Selena walked hastily, seeking her goal, but tried to keep from breaking into a run.

  Be there, Sean, she thought. Oh, please be there!

  She went far down into the depths of the wing, and the crying and shouting from the courtyard seemed to diminish. But she knew that was only illusory. Pictured in her mind was little Davi, dashing among the soldiers, giving them their sport, but seeking escape even as he served as a diversion for her own.

  She did not want to think of it.

  Then she was there. The great doors gleamed in the night, unguarded, and open to all her dreams. She had to hurry; it must be at least two already. She tried them, and the doors parted. Holding the child with one arm, she moved back a section of the heavy curtain that shut out the light on all this glory.

  The chest was exactly where it had been, in the center of the room, set on a small, slightly elevated platform, like a sacred object upon an altar. Carefully, she laid the little girl down next to it, and opened the mahogany casket the breath going out of he
r once again in the presence of such beauty, such vast wealth. Even in the dimness, the angular facets of diamonds glittered like the eyes of the devil. Bloodred rubies regarded her, hypnotic in their power. Time stopped, and it was all she could do to reach out, touch those cold hard chunks of power, feel the frigid arrogance of them against her fingertips. The girl moved on the floor and coughed. Hurry. She dipped both hands into the casket. The jewels rattled one against another like ice. She brought up a great handful of them, dipped down again, let the stones fall. Selena, hurry. You must hurry! But one final time she bent and reached down into the chest, trying to hold them all, trying to embrace the very essence of wealth. Up came her arms, fairly hugging the glitter to her breasts. And up with the jewels came something else.

  White and rounded, with black holes and glittering teeth.

  Gayle’s skull.

  Diamonds struck the marble floor, spun off into the darkness, and Selena leaped up and cried out. The child awoke, afraid, and began to cry.

  Now you’ve done it, idiot. Keep your head.

  She had dropped the skull, and it looked up at her balefully, accusingly, from the floor beside the chest. She understood, of course. The maharajah had permitted burial of the skeleton, but, as a memento, secreted this relic with the rest of his prizes.

  Far away, the shouting rose, and in her mind she felt Davi trying to reach her, but his message was cut off by his confusion and pain.

  “Ena?” sobbed the child.“Ena?”

  “It’s all right, dearest. In a minute, it will be all right.”

  Gayle watched then, as Selena bent down to the floor and swept her hands upon the cold smoothness of it, gathering to herself what scattered stones she could. There was neither time nor light to look; she simply swept whatever she could reach into a corner of the blanket fashioned a pocket and tied it securely.

  “All right,” she said, picking up the little girl, drawing the blanket around her. The corner with the stones was heavy; it hung down and bounced against her thighs as she walked.

  A horrible lancing shadow of pain came into her mind, and a silent scream. They had begun to inflict on Davi whatever torture had been selected. The yelling warriors would be milling around, not wanting to miss anything.

  She knew then that she would make it to the wall.

  Davi, she cried, sobbing aloud, Davi, there is no way to thank you.

  She was running now, out of the wing of the palace and across the smooth lawn, the grass dull and brown in the winter. The little girl, startled by her flight, had stopped crying, and chuckled to herself, as if this were some funny kind of night game.

  Once again, Davi’s pain split her head. Ahead was the wall, the finely worked metal spires and scrolls set in white stone, with enough space to slip through easily. It was not, as in Europe, a wall to protect the people within, but rather to decorate the palace. A thing of beauty to gaze upon. Selena slipped between the bars, and out onto the high hill that looked toward the east. The white cross was there, eerie, almost luminescent in the night.

  It is you…” Davi tried, and again she felt the shadow of an incredible surge of pain. Far off, she could see the bonfire of the troops, and something seemed to be rising out of their mass, something being lifted.

  The baby began to cry again, frightened by the darkness and the haste. Selena looked around. There was no sign of Sean.

  It is you who should be…

  She could hear his screaming, far away in the courtyard. Oh, God, what are they doing to him? Where is Sean?

  The shadows on the slopes of the hill led only to darkness and the valley below. Selena turned first one way, then another, fighting panic. Reaching the wall was the fourth thing, and the last. He had to be here. They had to be free now.

  It is you who should be thanked, Davi said at last, and the bonfires in the courtyard illuminated his wriggling black body. He was thrust up over the heads of the raucous Sherpas, impaled on a pole, dying. He had been fortunate. The Sherpas, exuberant careless, had jammed the pole in too far, or overestimated the length of his small body. The point of the stake had touched his heart, and, bearing his full weight the sharp point pierced it.

  I did love, he called to her, dying. I did. Against all odds. Because of you. I leave my life in expectation of happy rebirth. Now, go. Fulfill your karma.

  There was no more, and the sudden, angry groan of disappointment from the courtyard told her that Davi had returned to the mind of Vishnu, out of which the world had come.

  His body, a husk that had always been too small to contain his power, his spirit now shivered one last time upon the pole, quiet as his heart.

  Selena began to cry again, but stopped, not wanting to upset the child. She heard an odd pounding down along the wall.

  The soldiers in the courtyard quieted suddenly. An instant of shame, a vestige of humanity that was still in their hard hearts, forced their eyes upward at the tiny black martyr. Then they forgot about him, and the shouting began again.

  The pounding rounded the corner of the palace wall, and appeared in the form of a galloping horse, rider leaning into the wind, giving free rein. Sean. Even in the darkness she saw that he was in rags. He pulled the horse to a skidding stop, and instantly, his strong arm reached down and pulled them, woman and child, up on the horse with him. Just as quickly, as if he had not stopped at all, they were galloping again, Selena holding on to his strong body, holding on to the little girl, who was too stunned by this odd, rhythmic movement to make a sound.

  Down the great hill they went, beginning a long circle that would carry them into the west.

  “An army is coming in this direction,” she tried to tell him.

  He nodded but it made no difference. He seemed to have decided something. He was totally his own man now. He was free, and that was what mattered. Then they were heading due west and he slowed the horse a little.

  “Where are we going?”

  He laughed, delighted, determined.

  “Bombay!” he cried. “And that’s the first stop. There are two more. America. Then, although it may take a little time, home. And you are coming with me.”

  He was so exultant, so confident, Selena herself forgot about the five-hundred-mile trek to Bombay, and all the years ahead. It would be. They would return to Scotland. It would be because he said it would be. She pressed her cheek into his back, and laughed, delighting the child. It was going to happen! She grasped it now. She was free! “Aaaaaaiiiiiieeeeeeee!” Selena cried, and it was a blood call of joy, pure joy and the thrill of wonder, a sound such as she had heard Royce Campbell make when he readied the cannons aboard the Highlander. The horse galloped on under the Indian sky, and the sound of its hooves struck the pebbles of the roadway. But Selena did not mark this. She was no longer in the Orient. Whatever years lay ahead in her journey, they were gone now. They had already passed. She and Sean were home now, together, in Scotland. Fog drifted in off the North Sea and hung in the gardens of Coldstream, where once Father had built her a house that reached the sky. Bees hummed above the heather of the moors, and in the smoky Highlands…

  Finally, Sean reined in the horse, to let it rest. He leaped from the mount, and helped Selena and the little girl down.

  “Are you sure she’s not yours?” he asked, smiling, touching the bright yellow hair. The child, quiet, looked up at him and smiled. A bond had been formed between man and child just that quickly, a bond that was to alter all their lives.

  “She is ours now,” Selena said.

  With the baby still in her arms, they embraced and kissed. He saw her looking at his clothes.

  “All I could find,” he said. “I had no hope of meeting you tonight. I’d been arrested and placed in what passes here for a dungeon.”

  “How did you get out?”

  “Luck of the draw,” he said. “Or maybe God. Whatever. A Sherpa rushed in and said the maharajah had been killed. Stabbed in the heart. Chaos overtook the place. Somebody was being killed in the courtyard. E
xactly as I would have been tomorrow. The six of us seized the opportunity and broke out. I mounted the first horse I saw. I hope my friends’ luck has been as good as mine. I’d also like to thank whoever put the dirk in that maharajah. He confused the guards and gave us our chance.”

  “She,” Selena said.

  “What?”

  “Thank her,” Selena said. “A kiss will do.”

  The little girl laughed.

  “Or you can make love to her. When the time comes, a kiss will be extraordinarily insufficient.”

  He understood. “My God, Selena, I never…”

  She smiled, at peace for the first time in so long.

  “…you…you killed for me…?”

  “No, for us. For you and me and the child.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Davina,” she answered. “And we’re free.”

  He frowned, just a touch of a wrinkle on his forehead.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Free is all we are. A little cash would speed our trip.”

  Selena smiled, handed the child to him, and, as he held her, she untied the knot in the corner of the blanket cradling the contents carefully in her hands. He looked but said nothing. He could not speak. Even Davina was fascinated by the colored stones, in which the light danced and shone.

  “I have made it up to you,” she said softly, herself transfixed, hypnotized, by the jewels. “I have paid you back.”

  He continued to stare at the glorious stones. The world was there in her hands, in the tattered corner of a baby’s blanket. All the world was theirs.

  “God, Selena,” he sighed at last, “they must be worth a million pounds. How did you get them?”

  “I earned them,” she said with just a trace of bitterness. Already, Coldstream Castle was close enough to touch.

  Part Three

  America, 1776