Fantasyland 02 The Golden Dynasty (34 page)

I shook my head again and got another touch
of his tongue.

Oh God.

“Sahnahsoo nahna Dax neenkah, kah
Dahksahna,” he murmured.

Let your King inside, my Queen.

Oh God!

I had to stop this, like,
now.

One of my hands slid up his back, under his
arm, up his chest, his neck and I cupped the side of his jaw,
sliding my thumb between our lips.

“No, Lahn, kah lisa lapay kahna,”** I
whispered.

His eyes smiled again, a knowing smile,
therefore a
scary
smile.

“
No, baby, your mouth is
mine,
” he
whispered back then his thumb swept across my cheek, my lips,
taking my thumb with it and when he had access, he bent his head
and touched his mouth to mine again.

I held my breath but he only lifted his head
and whispered, “Okay, my Circe, anah na vatay. Anka, ta junay
tooka.”***

I didn’t catch any of that but I felt
extreme relief mixed with almost devastating disappointment when he
slid off my side but tucked me close under him, tangled his legs
with mine and muttered, “Trahyoo.”

I wanted to trahyoo, I
needed
to trahyoo.

But all I could do was feel the specter of
his lips against mine and the phantom of his tongue.

So it took me awhile.

Then, tangled with my warrior king, I
trahyooed.

*
Translation:
“This is not the part of me you love but it must
do.”

**
Translation:
“No, Lahn my mouth is mine.”

***
Translation:
“Okay, my Circe, tonight you win. Tomorrow, we play
again.”

The Judgment

Six days later…

“Poyah, kah rahna Dahksahna!” I heard,
turned my head and saw Keenim, the boy who sang to me days ago in
an open space. He was with a bunch of other boys kicking around
what looked like a ball. It was bigger than a football but shaped
like one without the pointed ends.

“Poyah, Keenim!” I called back, waved, he
waved and his friends all stared at me in shock, their eyes then
turning slowly to their friend in more shock that the queen would
know his name and wave. Clearly, he had not told them he’d been to
my cham twice since his initial visit (where I played his guitar
and he played with Ghost) or they didn’t believe him.

This made me smile until I made my way back
into the sea of chams then my smile faded and my thoughts
wandered.

I was walking, thinking and most
importantly, being seen. With the return of The Horde, there were
thousands more warriors, their wives, their children, their slaves
and other hangers on. The din of the Daxshee had escalated as had
its sprawl.

The good news about this was that Lahn’s
returned army kept my husband busy.

And the bad news about this was that his
returned army kept my husband busy.

Therefore, for the last six mornings, he
woke me with his hands then wasted no time getting me hot before he
fucked me fast, hard and brilliant. He always forced my orgasm
before he let his go. It was sweaty, it was energetic, it was
heated, it was freaking great but it never lasted long. Then he’d
demand my mouth, I’d refuse, he’d grin his knowing, scary grin that
told me, clearly, he was biding his time. Then he’d drag me out of
bed so I could give him a quick bath and braid or arrange his hair
how he instructed. Then he’d pull me to him with one arm, wrap his
other hand around my jaw to position my face so I couldn’t escape,
touch my mouth with his and then he’d be gone.

As in
gone.
I didn’t see him all day and even though I tried to stay
awake at night (though, I was not admitting this fact to myself); I
was never awake when he slid in bed beside me.

The good news about
this
was it made it easier to resist his sweetness, his
hotness and all other things Lahn.

The bad news about this was I missed him. It
sucked to admit but there it was.

I missed my scary, savage brute, king of a
marauding horde in another universe husband.

How whacked was that?

The other bad news about this was that it
gave me plenty of time on my own.

Diandra had a husband, a daughter and a
cham to see to and I wasn’t her only friend so although I spent
time with her every day, as the days went by, I opened my eyes and
saw cham, it seemed I was settling into this world and doing it on
a permanent basis. This meant I actually had to find some way
to
settle
into this
world and I couldn’t have Diandra by my side every
second.

The same with Narinda who had a very
attentive savage on her hands and he didn’t have a legion to
command. So she was tied up a lot of time (hopefully not literally,
or, maybe, if he was sweet about it, then hopefully literally).

Nahka, the same with cham, husband and two
kids.

And my girls seemed to be always busy
pounding rugs, rinsing out baths, cleaning my sarongs, polishing
candlesticks, baking flatbread in a clay oven, roasting meat on a
spit over the fire and the like. I tried to help (more than once)
but Teetru had a fit when she saw me laughing with Jacanda and
Beetus while pulling my tops and sarongs off a drying line and she
lost her mind (in her quiet, solicitous Teetru way) when she caught
me rinsing breakfast dishes at the creek with Packa so I stopped
doing it.

I was a queen. I needed to do queen things.
And queen things clearly didn’t include doing the dishes.

The thing was, I knew no other queens of
primitive, savage hordes to tell me what queen things I should be
doing and although Diandra was a great advisor, she’d never been a
queen. My husband wasn’t around to advise me, I wasn’t sure he’d be
good at it and his advice might be scary.

So I decided the best queen thing I could do
was to get out amongst my people, smile, nod, talk (as best I
could), get to know them and let them see me. Therefore, every day
I took walks through the Daxshee followed by whoever was guarding
me that day.

Today it was Bain, or the grinning
warrior, who was friendly, unlike Zahnin, the other warrior who
kept watch over me (and the one who had plucked me off my horse
twice that day we were riding). Bain walked with me and talked with
me all the while scanning the people and chams. Zahnin walked two
feet behind me and never looked at me. However, he
did
look like he was in a perpetual
bad mood. The first time he was with me, I tried to engage him in
conversation. This was so unsuccessful, I didn’t try
again.

And talking with Bain was fun. He had no
clue when it came to English so I was forced to try out my Korwahk
on him. This made him laugh (a lot, my Korwahk was really bad) but
after he quit laughing, he was a patient teacher. He would correct
me and as we walked he would point things out and tell me what they
were called (for instance, firepit,
pahkah,
torch,
pahkan
and just fire,
pahk
).
He also intervened when I chatted with my people, often miming what
they were saying which made
me
laugh.

But today, I was in my head and Bain sensed
it so although he walked close and often spoke softly to me; he was
letting me have my thoughts.

Bain doing this made me think that perhaps
somewhere his new bride was grinning too.

I was in my head mainly because the day
seemed weird. I couldn’t put my finger on why but it was weird. I
woke up feeling it in the air and it hadn’t gone away.

But also, I was thinking about what Lahn
said about how I came into the possession of a Korwahk scout. He
clearly knew, thus must have asked, how that came about. This was
not surprising; curiosity about your new mate, and that didn’t
bother me. What disturbed me about this was that there was a story
to tell. I thought I’d woken in a pen filled with women.

How could I be on a pirate ship?

That didn’t make any sense in a situation
that made no sense. I was here, I’d been here nearly three weeks
and it seemed I wasn’t going home.

But how did I get here?

And who was the Circe (or whoever) who was
on a pirate ship?

I needed answers but I didn’t know how to go
about finding them and I wasn’t sure I wanted them. The knowledge
might be more frightening than the reality.

That said, Diandra had said something I
hadn’t paid attention to at the time because I felt crap, was
shaking uncontrollably and Lahn was extremely pissed, so I had
other things on my mind, but when I had sunstroke, she told me the
medicine was natural, not “witchcraft”.

If you could hear animals in this world (and
Ghost spoke to me, she was a baby, she didn’t have a lot of words
and all of them were Korwahk so I didn’t know what she was saying
half the time, but I still understood her mews and purrs and growls
like human language), if horses could be so white they shone ice
blue, if innocent women could go to bed in Seattle and be
transported to an alternate universe – then there could be
magic.

And perhaps someone here practiced it.

And perhaps that someone knew what the fuck
was going on with me.

And, if I knew what that was, then maybe I
could figure out what I should do.

“Dahksahna Circe,” Bain muttered and I
belatedly noticed that he’d tensed at my side.

I came to myself, looked up at him then
looked where his eyes were aimed.

The Eunuch was headed our way and his eyes
were on me.

“Tee lapay lee Xacme,”* Bain said under his
breath to me.

I looked back up at Bain and before he
rearranged his features, I saw distaste in them.

Oh man.

“Kah Dahksahna,” The Eunuch murmured, bowing
his head as he stopped before me.

Hmm. He called me “kah Dahksahna”. Most
everyone called me “rahna Dahksahna” or “rahna Dahksahna hahla” or
“Dahksahna Circe” if they knew me pretty well.

No one simply called me their queen.

How weird.

“Poyah,” I greeted and his head came up, his
face masked.

Oh man.

“I am The Eunuch,” he stated and I
blinked.

“You know Eng… I mean, Valearian?” I
asked.

“I speak the language of the Vale,” he
answered, lifting his chin a bit.

He spoke English.
Very
weird. Why didn’t Lahn use this guy as an
interpreter?

“Well, um… cool, uh, that’s great, I mean.
Lovely to, uh… finally meet you,” I stammered. “Uh, what’s your
name?”

He stared at me. Then he repeated, “I am The
Eunuch.”

“Uh… okay, I’ve um… heard that but…” Yikes!
“I was asking your name.”

“My name?” he asked back.

“Yes, the one you were given at birth,” I
told him.

His face, already masked, closed down.

“That name was taken with my manhood, kah
Dahksahna,” he informed me coldly.

Okay, there were a lot of uncomfortable
conversations a person had to have in their life. When they broke
up with someone, for one. When they fucked up and had to admit they
were wrong, for another. But talking to a dude who had his balls
cut off about his balls being cut off beat them all.

I held his eyes. Then I said softly,
“Right, but you
are
still that
man no matter that that atrocity happened to you so… I’d like to
know your name.”

At this point, Bain said something that
sounded like he was asking, “What does your queen require of you?”
but I wasn’t sure.

“
Kah trooyha,”
my name,
The Eunuch answered (there it was, I was right
about Bain’s question).

“
Uvoo tee luh zah,”
give it to her,
Bain ordered firmly and
impatiently.

The Eunuch looked hard at Bain for a brief
second then turned to me. “Karrim, my queen,” he answered on
another slight head bow.

“Shahsha,” I said softly.

He stared at me a second and then said, “You
will beg my pardon; I have had many things to do. The Hunt, the
selection, the ride, I have been too busy to present myself to my
queen. I am giving you my apologies.”

“There’s no need, I understand.” I threw an
arm out to indicate the busy Daxshee at the same time I gave him a
smile. “Your responsibilities are vast. Anyone can see that.”

Another obsequious head bow and a muttered,
“Shahsha.” His eyes slid to Bain and back to me so fast it was
almost like I was seeing things before he went on. “I am asking you
if you are managing well with tahna Dax.”

I tipped my head to the side. “Sorry?”

His eyes pointedly went to my cheekbone,
now, I would suspect, without any discoloration and then back to
me. “You and tahna Dax, I have the hope that all is well in your
cham.”

A tingle slid up my spine before I said,
“Everything is fine.” Then, because I wanted Bain in on this
conversation, I said in Korwahk, hoping I got it right, “Jak lapay
yahka.”
All
is well.

“Jak lapay yahka? Zut tela?” Bain asked and
I looked up at him.

“
Kay loot kah Dax,” I answered his question
of,
All is
well? With what?
then I
looked at The Eunuch. “Kah Lahn lapay uh… busy gahn we are, um,
coping well, uh, ta lapay yahka. Fahnahsan.”**

The obsequious bow from The Eunuch again
then, “Dohno, kah Dahksahna, very dohno,” he was obviously avoiding
Bain’s eyes and, perhaps, the unhappy vibe Bain was emanating and
it was clear he wanted to seriously avoid it and I knew this when
he said with another mini-head-bow, “I will leave you to your…
wanderings. Goyah, kah Dahksahna,” a bow without any eye contact to
Bain and a muttered, “Goyah, Tunakan.”***