Her hands went on beating at him, clawing at him. She tugged at his hair, scratched his throat—but again, strengthlessly. And all the while she muttered her one word of entreaty and objection—No, sometimes his name mingled in it—and he muttered her name, or the pet name, Ulis. It became a litany between them, a song, meaningless.
Soon he lifted her and carried her over to the mean bed and put her on it, and lay down over her.
He could feel the tensions of her flesh, all the agony of Zastis. The fastenings of the robe came undone with ease, and the rough lace beneath. He found her breasts, moulded them, tasted their sweetness. She struggled still against him, her clutching hands now like those of one who drowned. But he thrust her back under the water and drowned with her. The room seemed scarlet from her hair, the hair of her head, and the ulis-petalled hair of her loins.
At the final invasion, her eyes were open, meeting his, her hands fierce on his shoulders, her mouth hungry for his, forgetting at last all words. Almost instantly she became a whirlpool, a whirlpool which clasped him, dissolving him. Her cries came, louder, higher, endless. She seemed to be dying against him, but somewhere in her death there surged his own. He lost her, but not the essence of her, never that.
In the defended stillness of death which followed, he smiled, lying on her hair, her flesh, thinking this too a victory, quite conclusive.
4
The first of Suthamun’s heirs, his eldest legal son, waked in his love-bed and kicked the nearer girl into communication.
“What’s that din?”
The girl did not know. Nor did the other, when he kicked her.
Prince Jornil rose from the bed, petulantly furious. He was clear Shansar from both parents, but birth and growth in Karmiss the Lily on the Ocean had caused him to be a twining plant rather than a tree. He had never had a moment’s doubt of himself or his future. Only his father’s wrath could make him blink.
He stood, goldenly handsome in the window, listening incredulous to the uproar out in the streets. He knew nothing about it. It was not for him or his.
When a servitor informed Jornil the hubbub sprang from a crowd, gathering to watch the return of the Prince Am Xai into Istris, Jornil laughed aloud.
Paid word-mongers had prepared the way. Then genuine rumor and real truth had augmented everything. Making camp in the eastern hills above the city, the returning heroes had paused, sending some ahead to collect and bring them out their finery for a processional entry. Somehow Prince Kesarh had persuaded them that Suthamun would countenance acclaim for the victory. Even the single lost ship would be forgiven. Because he had been clever, the three captains and their ship-lords thought themselves clever, too, and were not difficult to convince.
In fact, Suthamun Am Shansar had had no intention of drawing the public gaze to their achievement. Having received the official messenger Kesarh had sent, the King had had prepared a slight speech of commendation to be delivered in council, by the Warden. The King himself would, after an interval, extend a fairly private audience to the Prince Am Xai, thank him, give him some small gift; upbraid him gently and with magnanimous brevity for the loss the galley. As for an entry into Istris, Kesarh and his twenty men might come in at any time. The ships might also make free of the harbor as they wished.
The going-out had been stagy, to display Suthamun’s excessive care for clean shores. He had himself reckoned the Free Zakorian menace less than it was, or he would have sent his own captains in Shansar-built ships, and under the command of his brother, Uhl.
Suthamun, though, had reckoned without Visian Istris. Men in Shansar had a weakness for show, but it was show of a different sort, magic or mystic often, generally significant. Little events were seldom blown up to gales with hot air. When the crowds came out to cheer him home from a hunt, the King had failed to see it was the pleasure of event they rejoiced in, not his royal self.
There had, additionally, been the touch of organization. Men who, at sun-up, had stationed themselves about, stating which streets should be kept clear, therefore encouraging the crowd to pile up on either side. The women who had gathered or purchased flowers, declaiming on the lord they would cast them to, garlands for his greatness. And there were the others, who had spoken from the beginning—At last, a dark man who would safeguard their honor and their security.
By midday there was expectancy, press of people and loud sound throughout all the wind and stretch of streets and avenues from Istris’ White Gate to the palace. Banners had been hauled from chests and hung out of windows. Hawkers sold colored streamers, bells and squeaky trumpets, with the wine and sweets. Only the Ashara Temple, last bastion on the route before the palace was reached, gave evidence of extreme uninterest.
A few minutes after noon, the word of an approach began to fly.
On the heels of this faultless rabble-rousing forerunner, the Prince Am Xai came through the White Gate from the Ioli road, in the midst of his cavalcade.
Drummers marched in first, six of them, in black burnished mail, setting a brisk solid tempo. Directly after these came bronze horns and rattles, and then the Lily banner of Karmiss borne high on the music. After the Lily banner prowled two nubile girls, dressed in ribbons and little else, with lilies in their hair. They led by ropes of flowers two black gelded bulls, docile and obliging. The crowd was quick to see the analogous joke, or perhaps they were helped. “Free Zakoris!” the cry went up. Free gelded Zakoris, led by the dulcet Lily. The girls flirted and blushed. They were wenches from the hills, earning money beyond their dreams. The bulls, too, were from the hill farms.
Ten soldiers rode by, and two soldiers walked in their trotting wake, carrying between them the outspread banner of Kesarh’s blazon, the Salamander in gold on a scarlet ground. The overall approving noise winged into cheering. The crowd started to call his name, as men had on the ships at Tjis: Am Xai! Am Xai!
They could already see him, standing in the brazen chariot. He wore red today, the color of the wine with which he had made dupes and corpses of the pirates. His team of zeebas was black, black as his hair. Despite the uproar, he held the team in perfect check with one hand. The other rested almost idly on the chariot rail, loosely holding in its grasp a gold-handled whip. The symbols were exact. Not many missed them, though most would not have given them a name. The stance of facile strength and grace, the warlike masculine beauty which seemed to encompass Kesarh, surrounded by his men in their dark mail, in control of all things, so it seemed. The image of a king. A Vis king.
They were bawling now, and the flowers were coming down like rain.
He turned now and then, acknowledging them. None of Suthamun’s riotousness, or the heirs’ simpering or smiling contempt. Kesarh was different. His courtesy and his arrogance enthralled them. They felt they had been noticed, as was their right, by a god.
Such was Kesarh’s presence, which he understood, and used so plainly and so well, having waited so patiently for a chance to use it.
Behind Kesarh rode twenty more of his men, all the Twos and all the Fives of his one hundred. Altogether, almost forty of his personal guard were on view through the procession.
The heroes of the ships, who rode after, were more gaudy, and the crowd made a fuss of them, naturally. But they tasted the vinegar on the honey. Even the blond, dark-skinned captain named—along with many others—for his looks: Raldnor, even he on his costly horse knew he was not that day’s darling.