Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [266]
The king was upon her now in her reverie. His immense bristled back arched over her. There were nights, there were nights in the summer, when he would call her to his bedchamber. She would go barefoot, anointed. Mai trailed beside her with the whale-oil lamp, its flame carried in a bubble of glass like some incandescent wine. She would appear before him knowing that she was the queen of queens. Her eyes would be wide and dark, her nipples already aglow, her thighs alive with an orchard of gwing-gwings ripe for the tusk.
The pair of them would throw themselves into their embraces with a passion which was ever new. He would call her by her pet name, like a child calling in its sleep. Their flesh, their souls, seemed to rise up like steam from two hot streams mingling.
Mai TolramKetinet’s duty was to stand beside their couch and throw a light upon their transports. They were not to be denied the sight of each other’s naked body.
Sometimes the girl, staid though she was in her daylight nature, would be overcome, and thrust her hand into her own kooni. Then JandolAnganol, ruthless in his khmir, would harvest the girl down beside the queen and take her as if there were nothing to choose between the two women.
Of this, no word was ever spoken by the queen in daylight. But her intuition informed her that Mai told her brother, now the general of the Second Army, what occurred; she knew by the way that young general looked at her. Sometimes in her hammock, daydreaming, she wondered how it would be if Hanra TolramKetinet also joined in those encounters in the king’s bedchamber.
The khmir sometimes failed. On occasions, when dusk moths flew and her lamp again waxed incandescent, JandolAnganol came by secret passage to where she lay. No one else had his footfall. It was, she thought, at once rapid and indecisive, the very footprint of his character. He flung himself upon her. The gwing-gwings were there, but not the tusk. Fury would seize him at this betrayal of his own body. In a court where he trusted few, that was the ultimate treason.
Then intellectual khmir would seize him. He would flagellate himself with a hatred as intense as his previous passion. The queen screamed and wept. In the morning, slave women would go down on their knees, bitter-mouthed and sly-eyed, to mop his blood from the tiles beside her bed.
To this characteristic of her master’s, the queen of queens never made reference. Not to Mai TolramKetinet, not to the other ladies of the court. Like his footfall, it was part of him. He was as impatient with his own desires as he was with those of his courtiers. He could not be still enough to face himself, and while his wounds healed he had been alone with his thoughts.
Summoning more branches of gwing-gwings to soften what she was saying to herself, she told herself that the vein of weakness was part of his strength. He would be weaker without it. But she could never tell him she understood. She screamed instead. And the next night, the humpbacked animal would be rooting among the hedgerows again.
Sometimes in the day, when it seemed the gwing-gwings blushed for their devouring, she would plunge naked into her pool, sinking down into the embrace of the water – and looking upwards would see the bright scattered blast of Freyr across the surface. One day – oh, she knew it in her eddre – Freyr would come blasting down into the depths of the pool to burn her for the intensity of her desires. Good Akhanaba, spare me. I am the queen of queens, I too have khmir.
And of course she watched him in the day.
Talking with his courtiers, with wise men or fools – or perhaps even with that ambassador from Sibornal who fixed