Talk and feed her imagination, stimulating it with thoughts of blood and pain, of combat and wounds and final victory. Triggering her sexual drives so as to render her a willing victim to an ancient domination.
He said, "Is that what you want me to do? To kill Yunus Ambalo."
"What?" The suggestion was sobering, frightening, but even so it held an attraction. Yunus lying on her floor, dead, ripped, bleeding-madness! "No! No, of course not!"
"A mistake. I apologize."
"You should. It was insane even to suggest it." More softly she added, "Would you kill him if I asked?"
"No." Dumarest was blunt. "I'm not that stupid. To kill one of the Cinque would be to invite an unpleasant end."
"One more horrible than you imagine. And it would do no good. His heirs would inherit my debt and I'd still not be free." Her fingers resumed their caress. "Why aren't you drinking? Isn't the wine to your liking?"
It was rich, holding tartness, a hint of an astringent pungency. He drank, holding the fluid in his mouth, tasting, wondering what she could have added to the original brew.
"You're suspicious," she said, watching him. "Earl, you're so suspicious. Have other women invited you to their homes? Tried to drug you? Used chemical artifice to pursuade you to their beds?" Her laughter held a genuine amusement. "Am I so old that I need take such measures? So ugly that I must delude a man into becoming a lover?" Rising she turned, arms uplifted, the thrust of her breasts prominent against the shimmering gold of her tunic. Her hips and thighs were a poem in seductive curves. "Shall I sing for you? Would you like me to sing?"
Without waiting for his answer she crossed to the player, changed the recording, stood poised as music welled from the speakers. A raw, nerve-scratching pulse of drums mingled with the sobbing of pipes, the wail of a lonely flute. Her voice matched the piece; yearning, calling, stimulating an inherent, primitive response so that Dumarest was acutely aware of her proximity, the feminine scent of her body, the aching need of her flesh.
Aware too of the trap into which she was leading him. Tantalizing him with a lure as old as time. As the piece ended he said, bluntly, "Did you ask me here just to provide an audience?"
"You think it such a small thing? For that one song alone I have been paid-" Her anger dissolved in sudden recognition of the absurdity of what she was saying. But still her pride needed to be appeased. "Are you saying you didn't enjoy it?"
"My lady, I enjoyed it too much. And I drink to your talent!" Deliberately he emptied the goblet. To insult her more would be worse than stupid. And, though he recognized the transparent attempt at seduction, she had what he needed; the possibility of money and a friend who knew of Earth. Casually he mentioned him adding, "What does he do?"
"Hunt, I think. You are eager to meet him?" She read the answer in his eyes and recognized the advantage it gave. "It could be arranged."
"When?"
"Perhaps tonight. It's possible he will be at Tariq Khalil's party. Another novelty." Her eyes darkened at memory of the slight. "I should have performed but would be welcome as a guest and you can be my escort Why not?" She smiled, anger forgotten. "Amuse yourself, Earl, while I change."
The room reflected its owner; delicate, fussy, spoiled. Dumarest moved around, looking, halting before an image which sat grimacing with endless pain. Another depicted a scene in the same mode; a couple this time locked in an embrace which blended ecstasy with torment. Gifts from Yunus?
He moved to the player and changed the recording, picking a crystal at random, the throbbing of strings echoing his choice. The air was warm, tainted with a peculiar odor and he guessed that spices had been burned to provide a pungent incense. From the bedroom he could hear small sounds as the woman busied herself. Moving away from the door he reached the masked window. A button cleared the panel.
Under the blazing light of massed stars the desert looked like a frozen, silver sea.
It was calm now, the air free of wind, the undulating dunes locked in a transient stasis. One which held a unique beauty for never again could the sand take on that same exactitude. The shape and flow of the ridges would be changed, the shallow dells, the peaked mounds, the long, sensuous slopes which seemed to reach to eternity. Then, at the limit of vision, looming like a toothed ridge against the glow of the sky, rested a long range of uneven mounds.
"The Gouhen Hills," said Ellain. "In time they too will be desert."
She had come to stand at his side, moving soundlessly on naked feet, her hair lifted and bound with a golden fillet the scarlet strands drawn up tight against the round perfection of her skull. A thick, fluffy robe enveloped her and her face, wiped free of cosmetics, looked startlingly young in its innocence.
A trick of the light; the silver glow from beyond the window was kind. Or an inner relaxation so that now, for the first time, Dumarest saw her as she really was. A child trapped in a woman's body and forced to live in a harsh, adult world. Then, looking beyond her, he saw the images and their depiction of endless pain. No child-or if so one who had more than her share of childish cruelty. He recalled the faces he had seen edging the arenas in which he had fought-they too, at times, could look innocent and young.
"It can be beautiful at times," she whispered, looking at the desert. "The storms come and the world changes and everything vibrates to the fury of the wind. You can hear it screaming as if it's a thing alive. Watching it, you can imagine eyes, a mouth, hands reaching to rend and tear, claws to rip. A destroyer awful and magnificent in its terrible power."
"Wind," said Dumarest. "Sand and dust. There's nothing else."
"No?"
"Creatures, perhaps." He thought of the sannak. "An adapted form of life."
"And ghosts," she said. "Never forget the ghosts. I dream of them at times; those caught in the storms, the others condemned to die in them. The old, the helpless, those so deeply in debt there can be no prospect of them ever getting clear. Those who refused to pay-have you never thought of that, Earl? Wondered how they are dealt with? The Cinque have found a way."
Murder-to expose anyone unprotected to the winds would be nothing else. Legalized, perhaps, justified on the grounds of logic, but murder just the same.
"That's why I've got to get away," said Ellain. The mask of the window rasped across the pane as she pressed the button. "I dream of it at times. Of being out in a storm, lost, hopeless, doomed. To be flayed and, still living, to crawl while the flesh is stripped from my bones. To be skinned, blinded, turned into a thing of horror. God! Earl, I can't bear to think of it!"
"Then don't!"
"To be driven out, left to wait, to watch." Her voice rose, became a scream. "To-Earl! Don't let it happen! Don't-"
She broke off as he slapped her cheek, a gentle blow but one hard enough to quell her incipient hysteria. As she lifted her hand to the mark of his fingers he fetched her wine.
"Drink this."
"Earl?"
"Drink it and stop worrying. No one is going to turn you out into a storm."
Not yet, perhaps not ever, but the threat was always present. Wine slopped as she drank, a ruby stain appearing on her chin, another on her robe. Dumarest took the empty goblet she handed to him.
"Earl, I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"For acting the fool. I didn't come out here to make an exhibition of myself. It was just seeing the desert and you and hoping you could get me away from here-am I asking too much?"