Idol of Glass (24 page)

A great sob rose out of Ahr's chest, and Ra kissed it away, and these were his lips, this was her love, whom she'd punished for not loving her. He was risen from the dead and still he kissed her as though she'd held his body in her arms as he lay dying instead of spitting her last curse at him as his head was beaten. He kissed her, and it was the kiss of Meer on Meer, a sundering cataclysm of merging souls.

Ahr hardly realized until Ra released her that Jak still held her. A wave of fear and guilt rode through her, but Jak placed a tender kiss on her throat in reassurance, while Ra rose and unbuttoned his coat.

He gave Jak a questioning look, and Jak nodded. To Ahr's surprise, Jak slipped the robe Ahr wore from her shoulders. She tried to pull the sleeves back up, but Jak only kissed her again.

Ra's eyes were on Ahr. “I didn't ask your
vetma
before I took it from you in the last life. I asked you nothing but whether you came to me willingly after I'd already taken it.” He slipped out of his clothes as he spoke, folding each piece carefully. His body was hard and uncompromising in its expression of his desire. Ra knelt once more before her. “
Vetmaaimeeráhr.
May I rise as Meer?”

Ahr was unfamiliar with the etiquette between Meer, but it was abundantly clear what he meant by this request. She glanced at Jak, her cheeks warm, certain this couldn't be what Jak wanted, but Jak nodded encouragement.

Weeping softly, Ahr loosened the ties of her robe and held out her hand to stroke Ra's arm, fingers tracing the terrible scars from Pike's knife. “
Vetmaaimeerrá.
”

Without hesitation, Ra lifted her from Jak's arms and laid her on the bed on a blanket of her own coin, cold and arousing beneath her bared skin. Still fully dressed, Jak lay beside her and kissed her while Ra climbed onto the bed.

“Forgive me for hurting you,” Ra whispered at Ahr's throat beside Jak's caress, poised above her as he'd once been poised inside the violet-scented silk of a Meer's litter. “I knew less of women than of Rhymanic custom.” He stroked her neck with his lips, sending an uncontrollable shiver through her, while Jak mirrored this touch at her right, until Ahr shook between them like the limbs of a birch in a winter storm. “Forgive my brutal ignorance. You are the greatest pleasure I have ever known.”

Ahr's body arched from the bed, blood tears flowing anew, as Ra entered her with sacred care. Her body was still new, and there ought to have been discomfort despite her deflowering at Jak's hands, but he was like solid silk inside her. Each motion was for her pleasure, not the furthering of his, a union of divine transport that took Ahr nearly out of herself. She'd forgotten the inhuman joy of this.

She moaned Jak's name, though it was Ra inside her. It didn't seem to matter. Jak's mouth was at her breast, and Ahr was a willing captive to them both as they brought her to the brink of an oblivion in which she'd gladly perish.

“Kiss me,” she begged as she soared into the obliterating waves, and both mouths came to her. Jak's took her as the waves broke and crashed against her body, and Ra's as she was moaning softly into the receding tide, holding tightly to Jak. Ahr no longer knew the difference between them.

Beside Ra in the pre-dawn gloom, Ahr was utterly relaxed, cocooned in Jak's arms, both of them soundly sleeping. Ra hadn't promised to stay. He wasn't breaking his word. He rose with the stillness and silence only a Meer could achieve, not disturbing even a coin on the bed, and dressed for the trip to Rhyman. Ahr and Jak had each other, and Ra had been blessed with what he'd believed would never be his again: a night with both his loves. It would suffice. It was more than he deserved.

He stepped out and pulled the door silently closed behind him, turning to mount the stairs, but he wasn't the first awake. In the gathering room, Keiren and Mell were absent, but a fire burned on the hearth, and Shiva sat beside it in the same blood-red blouse and slim black pants she'd worn the day before. Ra was frozen in place. He hadn't meant to see her before he left. There would be too much to explain.

“The storm is still raging,” she said quietly, sensing his presence. “Or I would have gone myself.” She glanced up and took in his appearance, and a look of shock, phenomenal and complete, transformed her face, as if it were the first time she'd been surprised in the entirety of her existence. Gripping the arms of the chair, she rose and stared at him. “In the name of all Meerity…what have you done?”

Ra stepped down into the gathering room. He had to face her.

Shiva came forward and grabbed him by the arms and turned him about, disbelieving, repeating the words in dismay. “What have you done?”

“I think what I've done speaks for itself.”

“Have you gone mad once again?” She shook him roughly. “Had you no faith in me at all to bring Ahr to you? You had to do this to seduce her?”

“I'm sorry,” said Ra. “My heart—”

“Your
heart
?” Shiva gave him a contemptuous look. “You act like an ordinary fool instead of the Meeric one you are. Desires can be fulfilled without following the transitory delusions of the so-called heart. I told you to be frugal with your conjuring, and you do this for a lay.”

“No,” he insisted. “It was much more than that. Rhyman needs its Meer.”

Shiva laughed bitterly. “No one needs the Meer. And now not even you will need me.”

“Of course I need you—”

Shiva slapped him, and Ra put his hand to his cheek, surprised and chastened. “I don't want your need. The renaissanced Ra, the one that you were, she needed me. And you've taken her from me.”

He shook his head, holding the throbbing cheek. “I'm the same Ra.”

“You're not. You're the one who took my AhlZel
.
”

“No,” Ra insisted. “I'm not your son. That Ra died on the steps of
Ludtaht
Ra.”

“Is that what you told your concubine? That you were not the one she wanted?”

Ra blushed, unable to answer that. Perhaps he
was
twisting the meaning of renaissance to suit his conscience. “MeerShiva—”

“You will not interrupt me! You came to me a woman after nearly four hundred years, someone altogether different from the Ra I brought into this world. Your spirit called to me with need and pain, begging my chastisements, begging to be made whole. You suffered my lash, and still you longed for my comfort and companionship. And at last, you also comforted me. When have I ever had that? Not even from Hraethe. To him, I'm just another hollow portal to an end. And now you peel away the Ra you have been to me, and you are nothing but this usurper underneath. How dare you?”

He hated the look of betrayal in Shiva's eyes. Why hadn't he thought before he'd done this? “I'll go back. It was a mistake.”

“Back? If you're not insane already, you will be. Not even I could withstand that.”

He'd lied to Jak and said it was simple. He hadn't told Jak he'd had to stop his heart with a lightning shock and raise the temperature of his body at the risk of his brain in order to rework his chromosomes from within. He hadn't told Jak how easy it was to become lost in the elemental mix and how difficult to return.

He'd wounded Shiva with his thoughtlessness, and she was the only one who could remedy it. “Then I have one more selfish thing to ask of you.” Ra knelt at her feet, head to the floor, as he'd done a thousand times in his youth at her temple, and prepared to wait. As then, her feet were decorated once more in pearls, but they were black pearls adorning a blacker slipper.

Shiva didn't bother to entertain the question. “The answer is no.”

As Ra lifted his head, a door opened from one of the rooms along the spokes of the corridor. He rose and turned to find Hraethe staring at him from the edge of the gathering room entrance.

“My liege,” Hraethe breathed, and as he'd never done before, he came to Ra and took his face in his hands and kissed him.

Turning on her heel, Shiva returned to the room Hraethe had vacated and slammed the door.

Hraethe stepped back and looked over his shoulder with a sigh. “There's no pleasing her.”

“I don't think it was you who upset her,” said Ra.

Hraethe laughed. “Perhaps not this time, but I seem to excel at it. And you,
meneut
… Did she effect this change in you? To what end?”

Ra shook his head, running his hand over the plait at the back of his head. “It was my doing. The Meerhunter intends to reveal my return to the solicitors. I figured I'd meet their expectations.”

“You're leaving now?”

“I was. But I think I'll wait until the winds die down.”

Hraethe glanced at the closed bedroom door where Shiva had disappeared and nodded. “I think I'll do the same.”

Thirty-two: Symmetry

Ahr stretched and pretended to wake as Ra slipped back into bed, pretended not to be aware he'd been gone. He'd forgotten that Ahr had Meeric sensibilities now, and Meeric hearing. He'd meant to leave her after all.

Afraid of what her body had betrayed to him, she turned toward Jak—rough and warm and comforting, the one to whom she'd returned from the mystery of death. Jak woke, mussed and fuzzyheaded as the Meer never were, and Ahr wrapped herself around the hard but ordinary body, trying to become a part of it.

“Good morning.” Jak gave her a sleepy smile.

“Do you know how much I love you?”

“If it's half as much as you love Ra, I'm scared to death.”

Ahr kissed Jak. “It doesn't hurt you that I love him?”

“Honestly, it hurt me when you didn't. You're like my right hand and my left. What would I be with only half of that?”

“Left-handed,” said Ra, coming up on his elbow beside Ahr. He stroked Ahr's bare neck, giving it a kiss.

Jak drew both their hands close, kissing them in turn. “Honestly. It's all right. I'm content to be with you both in whatever way you want me.”

Ra drew Jak into his arms, and Ahr moved in closer to contain Jak between them.
Contentment.
It meant more than mere consolation, but it was a word that didn't satisfy her. She wanted Jak to be more than content.

With little to do while the whiteout still raged outside, Ahr and Jak retreated to Jak's room to nap after breakfast, while Ra remained in his room—he'd skipped breakfast, claiming not to be hungry, though Ahr suspected he was reluctant to face the questions from the others that he would otherwise have avoided by slipping away before they woke.

Ahr lay mulling their earlier discussion. Her surrender to Ra had changed something in Jak toward her. She was certain Jak would never have used the word “content” to describe their intimacy before. It was as though Jak had become one step removed, less participant than observer in the dance between Ahr and Ra.

It came to her then: Jak was a subject to them. They were Meer, and Jak was their Merit. She nuzzled against Jak, the realization unbearable. She wanted it to be as it had between them, as it undoubtedly had been between Jak and Ra. She sensed the inequity, the intimidation Jak felt at not being able to please either of them as each Meer could please the other. But this was an illusion; all Meericry was an illusion. If only Jak could understand that as Ahr now did. If only Ahr were himself once more, the ordinary man with whom Jak had fallen in love. Shiva's blood had ruined her.

She sat up, while Jak rose on an elbow with a questioning look. “There's something I need to do.”

Jak watched her as she got out of bed and headed for the door. “You're going to Ra.”

“
No
. I need to talk to Shiva,” she admitted and came back to kiss Jak with reassurance. “There are things I don't understand. I'm born of her blood. I have to know.”

Ahr went out and found Shiva beside the fire—burning low and strangely colored a deep jade green. Not a hair was out of place in the severe rope behind Shiva's head, not a wrinkle to her garments, though she'd worn them for two days. She was more of a carven idol than Ra had ever been.

“I keep them all from the fire.” Shiva spoke without looking at her. “I suppose I ought to be more considerate. But where would I go?”

Ahr stood still before her, trying to formulate what she wanted to ask.

“Don't you think you ought to kneel before me if you've come for a
vetma
?” Startled, Ahr began to lower herself to the ground, and Shiva laughed. “It was a joke, you little tart. MeerHraethe told me you had no sense of humor. I couldn't resist.”

Ahr straightened. “I didn't come here to be made a fool.”

“What did you come here to be made?” Ahr opened her mouth, but Shiva didn't wait for her answer. “
Meershivá
, but you're transparent.
‘Return me as I was.'
The
vetma
of the day. What do you selfish Meer brats think I am, a wind-up toy that dispenses treats for coin? No. I will not restore you to your former self. The blood is yours. Live with it.”

“I don't want to be one of your puppets.” Ahr itched at having been so easily read. “I'm not your child.”

“Then why do you insist on asking me for things?” Shiva gave her a look of denuding scrutiny, her eyes moving slowly upward from Ahr's feet to the top of her head, and missing nothing in between. “No, you aren't my child, but what a beauty nonetheless. You could be sisters. It's too bad I don't care much for you. You'd be delicious in bed.”

Ahr's cheeks burned, and her mouth dropped open in astonishment.

Shiva sighed. “Don't waste those looks of effrontery on me. It's like being offended at the sun. I'll go on doing what I do, and you'll go on being burned if you insist on parading about before me without protection.” She gave Ahr another of her unpleasant smiles. “It's not as if I haven't ridden you before.”

Ahr fumed. “That was hardly my choice.”

“Wasn't it? You forget I've had considerably longer to practice my art than you have. Even if you weren't transparent, I could read you.” Shiva smirked. “I preferred you with a cock. But you're mistaken if you think Jak does.”

“You keep changing the subject.”

“The subject, girl? What subject? You haven't even broached the subject. Do you think
vetmas
are won without any effort at all?”

“That I want to be ordinary.” Ahr shook with emotion she could no longer distinguish from the chaos in her head. This wasn't like parading before the sun; it was like trying to eat the sun. Shiva left one molten, if at all.

“Ordinary,” Shiva scoffed. “Dull.”

“Jak isn't dull.”

Shiva inclined her head. “True enough. Jak ought to have been born Meer. But you've been given the gift of my blood, and you would throw it back in my face. You haven't even thanked me for restoring you to life. You may think I'm a cold creature with no heart, but I assure you the blood comes from somewhere. I gave you to them because they were sick without you, and in it all, in the flow, your spirit was bereaved. Such conjuring cannot be done in the absence of feeling. I swallow it all, chit, and if I were ice as you all think me, the fire of your passions would have destroyed me long ago. If you can give me neither affection nor gratitude from your superior half-ordinary heart, at least have the decency to show me some respect.”

Ahr was speechless, humbled before her.

Shiva flicked her wrist. “Go away now.” She sat back, serenely marble, enthroned beside a fire now turning from jade into amber. Ahr did as she was told.

The afternoon was short, with the dim gray of the mound's interior softening to black in the absence of the snow-muted light. Jak had welcomed Ahr back with a miserable kiss. She'd been with Ra after all. The murmured sound of their voices had carried from the corridor before she entered. It wasn't unexpected. Ahr had been Ra's since the moment they'd first seen each other on the street during that long ago procession, and both had crossed the very reaches of death to be together. Jak was an intermediary comfort.

Ahr tried to placate Jak with an offering of passion, undressing and pulling Jak on top of her with her arms stretched out across the bed as though she was Jak's to do with as Jak pleased. Jak kissed her neck and throat and thought how it must feel for Ra to kiss them, and instead pulled Ahr in close to simply hold her, savoring the Meeric warmth she seemed to radiate now, and the velvet smoothness of her skin.

They fell asleep, and Jak woke again after dark to find Ahr missing.
To Ra
. Jak rolled over and slept once more, comforted by dreams of them both, only to be startled awake by the presence of someone in the room. Ahr and Ra were silhouetted in the dark.

“It's only us.” Ra raised a dark band of cloth in his hands. “Do you trust us?”

“Of course I trust you.” Despite the assertion, Jak tried to pull the cloth away as Ra brought it against Jak's eyes. “What are you doing?”

Ra moved Jak's hand and tied the cloth behind Jak's head. “Hush. Lie still.”

“Don't fuss,” Ahr whispered at the bedside. “Our touch erases any that has come before. You're safe.” Firm hands were loosening Jak's collar, and then a mouth took their place and removed the buttons from their holes one by one, sliding down Jak's skin as each inch of it was bared. This had to be Ra. It was the sort of thing Ra would do.

At Jak's feet, the ever-present woolen socks were removed, and the Meer descending through Jak's buttons moved to the riveted fasteners of Jak's pants and continued down. Jak let out a whimpering moan as a pair of lips descended to the last of the buttons and a tongue pressed between the fly while the pants were pulled down and away.

“May I touch you here, Jak, if I promise not to put my tongue inside?” This whisper was harder to distinguish. Jak decided it was immaterial and wiggled upward in assent.

Unexpectedly, another pair of lips descended instead on Jak's right breast while the hot breath of the other whispered below. Jak reached out, breath catching sharply, but was shown in no uncertain terms that touching would not be allowed, pinned gently at the wrists against the bed. As Jak was distracted by these hands—Ra's, it seemed—the mouth between Jak's legs plunged, and the tongue consumed the entire perimeter of Jak's sex with a hot and wonderful jolt.

“Fucking sooth,” Jak moaned, knees rising involuntarily. As with the arms, Jak's legs were swiftly corrected, held by the ankles and spread in the shape of a generous “A” while the tongue was temporarily withheld.

“Don't make me hold you down,” one of them whispered, “or I won't be able to reach you. “Do what your Meer says.”
That
had to be Ra. Jak obeyed and gave over to the delicious sensation.

Ahr, at Jak's breasts, nipped lightly at their delicate peaks. Jak made a sound of surprise and jerked beneath the restraining hands, and they were instantly removed.

“Am I hurting you, Jak?” came the whisper at Jak's ear.

Jak let out an involuntary gasp at a stroke of the dexterous tongue below. “Sooth, no.”

“Do you want me to continue?”

“Yes, I—
please
.” Jak could barely speak.

Ahr's mouth lowered once more to Jak's breasts, this time only touching with a flick of the tongue, while Ra instead nipped at Jak's most sensitive part. Jak jerked forward, coming up on both elbows with a loud moan.

Ra offered up his hands for Jak to hold as his tongue parted and pressed against the sensitive flesh until Jak was moaning and rocking, almost lost to where they were in the small cloister of snowbound Mound RemPeta. While Jak clung to Ra's fingers, Ahr continued her own devotion, devouring all of Jak that was available to her, a wild mouth against breast and mouth and throat, until Jak arched beneath them both with a crooning moan of release. The climax crashed over Jak in waves, leaving Jak shuddering and whimpering and utterly spent.

“What is left of reason loves you desperately,” Ra whispered when Jak had calmed, and Jak's fingers tightened against his. Ra had said these words to Jak before.

“My dream,” Jak breathed.

Ahr laid Jak back against the bed and loosened the silk scarf that had kept Jak in the dark. As the scarf came away, Jak looked into her eyes, only it wasn't Ahr, but Ra—
Jak's
Ra, as she'd been a day ago.

“Ra?” Jak gazed at her with wonder as she came forward and wrapped Jak in her arms, pressing her head to the soft slope of Jak's breasts. Jak embraced her. “Am I dreaming, still?”

“You weren't dreaming the first time,
lif
. I came to you in the night when I could, when I could escape the tyranny of madness. I left my body there at AhlZel and brought my soul to you.”

Jak was overcome with tears. “But how are you changed again?”

“Don't ask so many questions,” Ahr scolded, and Jak looked up with equal astonishment, for Ahr was male.

Jak reached up to touch him, making sure he was real, and Ahr took Jak's hand and knelt beside the bed, laying his head, still capped in close-shorn hair, beside Ra's. “This is what I get for screwing with the Meer,” said Jak warily, and Ahr laughed against Jak's breast. “This is very disconcerting.”

“But do you love us?” he asked.

“Sooth, yes. Of course I love you. How can you ask that?”

“Male or female?” asked Ra.

“Meer or un-Meer?” asked Ahr.

“I love you, I love you,” Jak laughed. “However many of you there are.”

Ra lifted her head and rested on one elbow. “Do you believe we love you? That you aren't some intermediary comfort with which we consoled ourselves while separated from the other?”

“This
is
what I get for screwing with the Meer,” said Jak with chagrin. “Never a thought to myself again.” Jak pulled Ra close and kissed her. “I will believe whatever you tell me.”

“Would you say you're content to be touched as you have been tonight?” Ahr rested on his elbow as Ra had done. “Is that a word that describes our intimacy?”

Jak looked up at the ceiling. “I knew something was bothering you. I'll have to choose my words more carefully.” Jak met the disapproving indigo eyes. “No, I'm not content. I'm not content at all. I want you again and again and again. Sooth knows it will kill me eventually, but
meerrá
, I intend to enjoy it while I'm of sound mind and body.”

Ahr was giving Jak a familiar look, the one he'd perfected in his years of masculinity, a nearly convincing demonstration of humorlessness.

“Stop brooding and kiss me,” Jak insisted. Ahr complied, smothering Jak with the earnestness that was characteristic of him in any guise. “Why are you both dressed?” Jak asked when he'd let up at last. “Is this some peculiar Meeric tradition? Are we always going to do this?”