One night she dreamed that she was coupling with him.
It took her by surprise. In actuality she was lying with Koshmar. As it happened, they had twined that evening, for the first time in many weeks. Her mind should have been full of Koshmar while she slept. Instead Lakkamai came to her and stood silently over her, studying her intently. She beckoned to him and drew him down — he seemed to float to her side — and Koshmar disappeared and there were only the two of them on the sleeping-mat, and Lakkamai was inside her, and she felt sudden heat within her womb and knew that he had fathered a child upon her.
She gasped and woke, sitting up, trembling.
“What is it?” Koshmar asked at once. “A dream, was it?”
Torlyri shook her head. “A passing chill,” she said. “The winter air brushing across my face.”
She had never lied to Koshmar before.
But she had never desired a man before, either.
The next day, when Torlyri saw Lakkamai outside the temple, she could not bear to meet his eyes, so powerful was her feeling that she actually had coupled with him the night before. If the dream had been so vivid for her, he must also have felt it. It seemed to her that he must already know everything about her, the feel of her breasts in his hands, the taste of her mouth, the scent of her breath; and, old as she was, Torlyri felt suddenly like a girl, and a foolish girl at that.
That night she dreamed of Lakkamai again. She gasped and moaned and throbbed in his arms, and when she awoke Koshmar was staring at her, eyes bright in the darkness, as though she thought Torlyri was losing her mind.
On the third night the dream came again, even more real. She did things with Lakkamai that she had never seen others do while coupling, that she had never even imagined anyone would think of doing; and they gave her delight of the deepest and most intense kind.
She could not bear this any longer.
In the morning the rains that had been pelting the city for many weeks finally halted, and the bright blue winter sky burst through the clouds with the force of a trumpet-blast. Torlyri performed the sunrise-offering as she always did; and then, in utter calmness, she went to the house where the unmated warriors lived. There was a cage hanging on the porch at the corner of the building, with three small harsh-eyed black creatures in it that the warriors had caught, running around and around and crying out in angry, piercing, high-pitched tones. Torlyri gave them a sad compassionate smile.
Lakkamai was waiting outside as though expecting her. Silent as ever, seemingly at ease, he leaned back against the wall and watched her draw near. His eyes, cool and solemn, held no trace now of that fierce probing stare that he had so often turned on her of late. But the corner of his mouth was moving repeatedly in a quick short tic that betrayed inner tension. He appeared unaware of that.
“Come,” Torlyri said softly. “Walk with me. The rains have relented.”
Lakkamai nodded. They started off side by side, keeping so far apart that burly Harruel would have had room easily to walk between them. Past the houses of the tribe, past the entrance to the six-sided tower of purple stone that was the temple, past the garden of shrubs and flowering plants that Boldirinthe and Galihine and some of the others now maintained with such care, past the sparkling pool of pink radiance that once had given pleasure to the sapphire-eyes. Neither of them spoke. They looked straight ahead. It seemed to Torlyri that she caught sidewise glimpses of Hresh, of Konya, of Taniane, even perhaps of Koshmar, as she walked. But no one called to her and she did not turn her head to see anyone more clearly.
Beyond the garden of the women and the light-pool of the sapphire-eyes there was a second garden, a wild one, where tangled vines and crook-armed trees and strange swollen-bellied black-leaved shrubs grew in crazy profusion above a thick carpet of dense bluish moss. Here Torlyri entered, Lakkamai walking beside her, but closer now. Still neither spoke. They went inward perhaps two dozen paces, to a place where there was an opening, almost a bower, in the undergrowth. Torlyri turned now to Lakkamai and smiled; and he put his hands to her shoulders, as if to pull her downward with him to the moss, but no pulling was necessary. They descended together.
She could not say whether it was he who entered her, or she who enfolded him; but suddenly they were pressed close upon each other with their bodies joined. From the moss beneath them came a faint sighing sound. It was heavy with the stored moisture of the many days of rain, and as they moved Torlyri imagined that they were squeezing it out into the shallow declivity in which they lay, so that it was forming a pool around them. She welcomed that. Gladly would she submerge herself in that gentle warmth.
Lakkamai moved within her. She clung to him, clasping the ridged muscles beneath the thick fur of his back.
It was not quite as it had been in her dream. But it was not at all as she remembered its having been with Samnibolon and Binigav and Moarn, either. The communion was nowhere nearly as deep or as full as was twining — how could it have been? — but it was far more profound than she had ever known coupling could be. Holding tight to Lakkamai, Torlyri thought in wonder and surprise that this went beyond coupling: this must be in fact what mating is like. And in that moment of astonished realization there arose a discordant voice within her that asked, What have I done? What will Koshmar say?
Torlyri let the question go unanswered, and it was not repeated. She lost herself in the wondrous silence that was the soul of Lakkamai. After a time she moved free of him, and they lay a short distance apart, only their fingertips touching.
She thought of touching him with the tip of her sensing-organ, but no, no, that would be too much like twining. That would be twining. Koshmar, not Lakkamai, was her twining-partner. But Lakkamai was her mate.
Torlyri turned that thought over and over in her mind.
Lakkamai is my mate. Lakkamai is my mate.
She was thirty-two years old and had been the offering-woman of the tribe for a dozen years, and now, suddenly, after so long a time, she had a mate. How strange. How very strange.
On a cool bright winter day when the last storm had blown itself out to the east and the next had not yet come sweeping in from the western sea, Hresh went once more to explore the grim building he called the Citadel. It was Taniane’s idea, and she went with him. Lately she had begun to accompany him on many of his journeys. Koshmar seemed to have no objection these days to his going into the ruins without a warrior to protect him. And Hresh had quickly come to accept Taniane’s participation in the group of Seekers. There was still something about being close to her that made him uneasy and uncomfortable; but at the same time he felt a curious giddy pleasure at being alone with her in the distant reaches of the city.
Hresh had not wanted to return to the Citadel. He thought he knew now what it was, and he feared to know that he was right. But the strange building fascinated Taniane, and she insisted again and again, until at last he agreed. He dared not tell her why he had been keeping away. And having agreed to go, he resolved to force the mystery of the Citadel to its depths, no matter what the consequences. Tell her nothing, but let her see. Let her draw her own conclusions. Perhaps the time had come, he thought, to share some of the terrible truth that he had kept pent within himself. And perhaps Taniane was the one to try to share it with.