High Couch of Silistra (14 page)

“Forty between us.” The Slayers took one tooth from each corpse.

“So the hunting was adequate. Was it profitable?”

Ganrom shrugged. Then he brightened, licked his lips, and reached for the pipe.

“You are really going to enjoy that one,” said Ganrom, pointing at me.

“Doubtless,” Sereth replied. “I paid an exorbitant price. I like to get my worth.”

Dellin got up abruptly.

“I must go see to the Well-Keepress,” he said softly.

“Make a time with Ganrom. I will be at your convenience. Tasa.” He waved, disappearing in the crowded common room beyond.

I could feel both Slayers relax. Sereth whistled softly through his teeth.

“It seems,” he said to Ganrom, “that things will be getting more exciting here in Arlet. My foresight tells me that it would be well if all the men sought to keep within a day of Arlet, for a pass, that we may see where the flow takes us.” He looked questioningly at the other Slayer.

I felt the wind from the abyss chill me, and then it was gone.

I shivered against Sereth Crill Tyris’ chest.

As they talked, I puffed on the pipe, and I, on little food and rest, got very high. The drug precipitated my talent, and the presence of Sereth of Arlet came flooding into me. His eyes were brown, and sparkled as if at some private joke. He was conscious of himself as what the Slayers had made him, insightful, tenacious, sure in his power and his skill. He would stop the time passing. He had come up through the ranks to his position, and he relished it. He was still hungry. His appetite for life was staggering.

He taught me the difference between Astria and Arlet. In Astria the woman gives the man what he wants; in Arlet, he takes it. What had been fetish to Dellin was foreplay to Sereth. Eventually, weeping, I brought him the keyring that I had hidden earlier, that no man might bind me without my consent. With the ring in my hand I went to him, that he might put the chains of Arlet on me and teach me their meaning. This he was willing to do, until the sun peaked the crags of Arlet.

“So,” he grunted, “you think you know, now, the ways of Arlet?”

“Unchain me,” I suggested.

“It is morning,” I protested.

“I will pay the overage. Perhaps I will stay until tomorrow morning. I have to be here for the set games.”

“Then I am truly lost,” I groaned.

“Doubtless,” he agreed.

“Here I am, in chains, with a maniac, in Arlet.” I giggled. “If my girls could see me now, I would be much diminished.”

“If anyone could see you now, you would be much diminished. In fact, you are much diminished. I diminished you. I ought to know.” His tongue licked at my navel. I shivered.

“Are you frightened?”

“No. Nothing would bother me now. You are right, my diminishment is complete.” I moved my wrists, and the chain clinked. “Eventually you will leave, and I will hide those keys and get me from Arlet.”

“Do not be too sure that there is nothing that would bother you now. After all, I have been doing this a long time. I can teach you more of Arlet yet. What if you are pregnant?”

I rolled away from him as best I could. “I am Well-Keepress,” I reminded him, but he wasn’t listening. His hands were in my chald.

“Where did you get this?” he said in a strained voice.

“What? What is wrong?”

“This ring, on your chald?”

I tried to sit up, but I was well-restrained.

“Why?” I asked, my throat aching.

“When I was at the Falls of Santha, I found a cave behind the falls, and within it, a very similar design on a slab of metal. I thought it something left from before the rebuilding, and reported it to the Day-Keepers as such. How did you come by the ring?”

I told him only that it had been my father’s, and that I would like very much to see the cave at the Falls of Santha.

“We both get consideration for our services, Estri. Would you pay me, or I pay you, for the trip to the Falls of Santha?”

“What if I get the Liaison to pay for it, as a joint project of his and mine? Then you can do what you will with the money.”

He looked at me very solemnly for a moment. Then he pulled me to him, and we missed sun’s meal, and at mid-meal Celendra sent the shaved-headed girl to check on us, and Sereth had food sent up. I ate in the chains of Arlet. In the late day, just after fourth bell, the girl returned and announced that the Liaison Second awaited Sereth crill Tyris in the dining room. He left me there, helpless, to await his return.

I had missed my match with Celendra. I hoped she would understand.

With my hands braceleted to a ring sunk in the floor above my head, and my ankles to one of the posts, I was well-secured, among the Parset rugs and silken cushions of my blue-hung keep. Sereth did not return until after the fifth bell, by which time my muscles ached from inactivity and I knew I would kill Sereth of Arlet if given half a chance.

When the keep door slid aside to admit him, Sereth of the Slayers’ Seven was not alone. Craning my neck, I saw Dellin push Celendra, looking somewhat diminished herself, in bracelets and leashed, across the threshold. She was pale under her dark skin. Dellin pulled her to where I lay bound on the rugs and chained her by the neck to the ring that secured my wrists. He gave her a long tether. Her hands were bound in front of her. Dellin, before he rose from securing her, reached across and touched my face.

“You look well-used, Estri. The Seven must suit you.”

I did not answer, but turned my head away. This was more than I could stand, him seeing me thus. I fought back tears.

Sereth stood grinning down at us, Celendra and myself, chained to the same ring. His arms were folded across his chest.

“What do you think, Dellin? They look good together, do they not?”

I turned to Celendra for comfort, for she was more experienced than I, but her face was drawn and tight, and a little frightened.

“They do complement each other,” Dellin agreed. “Shall we make them work? They are good for little else.” Sereth prodded Celendra with his foot. “Long ago, when I brought child on this one, she invoked the Well-Keepress’s immunity against me.” He had that quiet tone that had chilled me in the drug chamber.

“This one,” said Dellin, his foot at my neck, “rejected my offer of shelter and protection, in favor of well work and chaldra.”

“So they both would rather be bought and paid for, at the command of any master, than trust themselves to a single man.”

“We have bought them, for the time.”

“And paid dearly for their use. And there are two of us, which should please them,” mused Sereth. “But I think them both too full of pride for my taste.”

“Well-Keepresses,” reminded Dellin. “Perhaps it is an occupational hazard. If you are as tired as I, then let us do what we have discussed. I think it would put the situation in perspective for them.” I did not believe what I read in him.

Sereth took a lash from the post, and without warning brought it down upon us, my stomach and Celendra’s hip, for she was on her side. The thonged lash bit, and I gasped in pain. He raised the whip to strike again.

“What do you want from us?” I pleaded, but his arm came down. Celendra struggled to her knees and put a leg over me. She knelt over me. I could see the long slitsa-shaped welts rising on her skin.

“I would have done this another way, Estri, under my own will,” she said, leaning close to my face, her lips against my neck.

“I would not!” I protested, straining at my bonds, pulling away.

“Move away from her,” Sereth commanded of Celendra. Relief flooded me. “Invite her,” he ordered me, bringing the thonged lash down hard on my stomach. I bit my lip. Celendra knelt at my side, shaking her head.

Twice more did Sereth strike me before I obeyed him.

They sat on either side of us, and we followed their instructions until their voices faded. Then there were only Celendra and I, prisoners of mutual need that was, in the end, only partially fulfilled.

When, in the tangle of bodies that followed, I was once again servicing Sereth, my emotion got the better of me.

“I hate you,” I hissed at him.

“Good,” he grunted. “You do me great honor, admitting that I have shown you things about yourself you had not seen. Hate and love are like pain and pleasure, lady, at times one and the same. Between now and the Falls of Santha, you will learn still more, I promise you.”

“I will not go with you. I will choose another.”

“Dellin.” The Liaison looked up from Celendra.

“Estri no longer wants me to take her to Santha.”

“I cannot spare another, and we have an agreement. To fulfill her chaldra, she must go. Or would you gainsay your task, Estri?”

He would not get that from me. I would not abrogate my chaldra.

“Then,” I said, defeated, “after I see the Day-Keeper, you will have your way with me, as you have had all along.” I myself did not know to which of them I spoke.

The sun sank, the moon rose, and the four of us together spent the night. Toward sun’s rising we slept, and I awakened at seventh bell, mid-meal hour, in Celendra’s arms, still chained with her to the ring set into the floor. I moaned and turned, and she pulled me close, nuzzling my hair. The keyring was between us, that we might free ourselves, and Sereth and Dellin were nowhere in sight. They had gone, I realized, to the pass games, for this was Detarsa first Seventh. I had been absent a set from Astria, sun’s rising tomorrow. I roused Celendra, whose hands freed us from our bracelets.

“Would you go to the games?” I asked her, sitting cross-legged, facing her, as I unlocked the leashed metal band from her throat.

“It would be foolish to so encourage them,” she replied, fingering the swollen welts on her belly and hips.

“Perhaps their events are ended.”

“And perhaps not. I have a Well to run.” She looked at me, critically, at my own marked flesh. “I shall tender the Liaison a bill for this,” she said as she rose awkwardly and stretched. I, also, was stiff and sore in every muscle.

We bathed together, I washing her hair and she mine. We soaked long in the steaming water, fragrant with soothing oils. My welts smarted and burned.

“If I could”—Celendra winced as I applied salve to her belly—“I would have them both castrated. When men interfere between two women, they overstep their authority.”

“They paid for us,” I reminded her. I would have had little interest in Celendra’s advances, no matter what the circumstances. I did not tell her that, nor that I had never been with a woman before, nor that I had gotten great pleasure from her touch. I handed the salve to her, and she dressed my lesions, and my eyes watered with the pain.

“Tonight,” she said, “you will not know these marks existed.” I thought I would know, for the rest of my life, marks from the last evening’s couching.

We went to her keep, where she had food brought to us, and went over the night’s take, and did her paperwork. I dozed on her couch.

“Estri …” She shook me awake.

“What?”

“Ginisha was settled by Jerin, while we were with Sereth and Dellin.”

I groaned. That meant Feast of Conception. When a well woman is impregnated, all men who were that night in the Well are given free access the following evening, for they are considered talismans to the lucky well woman. The Well is closed to business from any others, and a great feast and debauch is put on for the lucky couple at the Well’s expense. Each man receives a special token, which has no denomination, and is free to use it any way he sees fit.

“And another thing. Your Day-Keeper has arrived, and awaits your pleasure. He is quartered in their offices across the court. Shall I send him your regrets at being indisposed, or would you see him today?”

“Can I get him into the feast? Or plead exhaustion, and not attend myself? I must see him and get on with my search. I cannot stay much longer in Arlet. I am not suited to this Me.”

“It is not always like this,” she said softly, running her hand over my back. “I will get you a token for him for this evening, but I would not tempt the fates by having you absent from the Feast of Conception.” It would be a bad omen if all who had taken part in the eve of conception were not present for the celebration.

“I will go, then, to my keep and dress, and to the physician’s keep. I would get checked. The small pain of ovulation might have been smothered by the larger pains. Directly from there I will go to the Day-Keepers’ offices.”

“It would take a magician, not a physician, to figure out whose child it was if you caught last night. Here,” she said, handing me a tas-wrapped bundle.

I took it, and unwrapped the breech and band, black with chased-silver studs and buckles, and silver circles at the nipples, that Celendra had promised to have made for me.

“It is superb,” I said softly, kissing her on the top of her harth-black head.

I put it on. The leather was soft and supple, the lining web-cloth. I looked at myself in, the mirror behind Celendra’s couch. In the breech and band, with the scarlet-hung keep of the Keepress for backdrop, I looked, with my copper skin and damp-darkened hair, like some Parset warrior woman.

“It suits you,” Celendra commented. “May the flow guide you. I will leave instructions for you to get the token for your Day-Keeper at the entry desk.”

I nodded, at the door.

“My thanks again, Celendra. Tasa.”

In the physicians’ keep I got, from a kindly old man in the cerise of his calling, a shot of time-release stimulant. He gave me the usual warnings, about perspective, and possible drug psychosis. I had no alternative other than stimulants, or I would not have used them. He checked me, and my cervix showed not even a hint of blue, nor were any of the other tests positive. Wide-awake and trembling from the drug, sure that I was not pregnant, I made my way past the entry desk, where I picked up the token, and across the Inner Well to the Day-Keepers’ offices.

My mind blithered information at me. I recalled all I had ever known of the Day-Keepers. I recalled how, thousands of years ago, when Silistra’s great machines warred with each other, releasing holocausts of bacteria and flame upon the planet, the Day-Keepers and the forereaders had been ready. In seven subterranean labyrinths, the two groups secreted themselves, living underground for more than a thousand years. During that time had the Day-Keepers and forereaders developed the system of chaldra, which allows an individual to feed his need for crisis and problem on a physical level, rather than internalizing his struggles. There, too, had the Slayers been envisioned, and the Well system begun. We are, all of us on Silistra, descended from the seven groups of Day-Keepers and forereaders, the bast, the crill, the diet, the stoen, the aniet, the rendi, and the gaesh. There, too, had the Day-Keepers and forereaders begun the temporal selection process that was their major function. Out of all possibilities inherent in time, they choose that most compatible with their long-range objectives, and through the arm of the Slayers implement their desires. Time charting is a difficult undertaking. The measure of their success is that Silistra lives without great machines of wars, without oppressive government, and that we are repopulating our decimated planet.