Soon Oparr returned.
“Did you hear what was said?” I asked him.
“I? But, goddess, I was not present.”
“Naturally,” I said, “there is some spy-hole that looks into this room.”
He was silent, and the gloved hands twitched uneasily in the folds of his robe.
“Listen, Oparr,” I said. “You are Vazkor’s man, but I am loyal to him also-you have seen as much. We must work together, we three, or your master’s schemes will come to nothing. The interview I have just had might have gone better if you had warned me beforehand what the Javhovor would say. Now, get word to Vazkor, and ask him what I must answer, and what I must do.”
Oparr stood quiet a moment, then he bowed low, murmured “Goddess,” and went out.
Part of me had hoped that Vazkor would come himself, but he did not come. It would, after all, have been a foolish thing to do. Instead, Oparr slunk in to me at midnight, as the women were preparing my bed for sleep.
“Well?” I asked him.
“Yes, goddess,” he said.
“Yes? What do you mean?”
“To all that has been asked, the answer must be ‘yes-‘”
I had guessed as much, but it infuriated me. As ever, I was bought and sold. Using all the force of my hate, I struck Oparr across the head and neck. He staggered and fell down. For a while he lay on the floor, groaning at the pain and the injustice.
“Get out, or I shall kill you,” I said, and he ran.
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The women cowered away from me in fright. Hate stabbed from my eyes at a tall black vase, which shattered instantly.
“Go!” I shouted at the women, who thankfully fled.
I lay in the cool dark. I thought, I will leave. By night, 1 will run away into the desert.
I dreamed of it, the horse flying under me through the moon-drained spaces. But another horse came after me, black, and more powerful than mine. And Vazkor caught my reins, and halted me, and I knew that I was glad that I had not escaped from him. So it was.
My answer went to the Javhovor, together with a golden seal ring. There was, apparently, great rejoicing in the City. Five days passed, days of supposed purification for my bridegroom. On the sixth, the women brought me my bridal gown-black velvet, so thickly embroidered with a phoenix of gold thread that it stood stiff as armor on my body. It was a strange business. At the appointed time I entered the vast hall of the Temple, girls going before me, strewing the torn off petals of forced winter roses, white as the snow. I sat on a tall throne, and Oparr, larger and more impressive in his ceremonial regalia, led the chants to my greatness. At last, the formal question-would I take a man as my husband? And the formal reply, yes, it should be the High-Lord I would have.
The elegant, beautiful boy who was to be my spouse came forward, faceless, dressed in black and gold. It seemed quite wrong this sham should involve him. He was at once too innocent and too aware to have been drawn in. Yet he kneeled before me, and spoke in a clear cool voice all the praises and promises which must be spoken. After which I raised him, and stood with him hand in hand, and it seemed curious to find him altogether so much bigger than I for all his slimness; for he seemed so young to me I had half expected to stand hand in hand with a precocious child. More chanting, and then together we left my prison of darkness for, I imagined, another, different prison.
Through the snow-filled, crowded, noisy streets we rode, standing, still hand-clasped, in a large golden chariot, drawn by a team of six black mares. Behind and before us, marching guards, maidens singing and casting colored petals on the snow. It was bitterly cold and took a long while. Occasionally, from our closeness in the chariot, I would feel my companion shiver, a little helpless spasm, that eluded even his
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poised control. His hand was light on mine, the spare, long fingered hand of a poet or musician.
We reached the palace, another of the huge, many-tiered black towers of Ezlann. Inside, mosaic floors, golden lamp clusters, a drifting warmth from the hot pipes which lay behind the walls and under the paving.
For an hour more we sat on our thrones, while the aristocratic multitude filed past, laying priceless trinkets at our feet.
It was dusk, and lamps blazed. We were alone together in a circular room with twenty narrow windows that looked out over Ezlann. The Javhovor removed his mask, which he did not seem to like wearing, and spoke to me for the first time that day, except for his appeal at my feet in the Temple, which was not for me at all.
“Well, then, it’s over, goddess. At last. I’ve allotted you ten women, I hope they will be enough; if not, you have only to tell me. They’ll come when you press that carved flower there. They’ll see to whatever refreshment you require, prepare your bedchamber, and attend you at all times. The palace is yours to walk where you want. Naturally, you will wish to preside in the Temple from time to time. I’ll arrange a suitable escort whenever you need it.”
He was very courteous, as ever, but his voice was a little too cool now, perhaps.
“And my wifely duties?” I inquired.
“None,” he said. “You are my goddess before my wife, and I remember it. I am honored.”
“And you,” I said, “are my husband. Am I not even expected to honor your bed?”
“That least of all,” he said.
I felt the slightest twinge of disappointment, and it surprised me.
“You will not, then, command me to lie with you,” I said, “but I imagine I might command you.”
“You can command me only so far, goddess. There are some things even you have no power to command.”
I had expected him to be embarrassed, but he was not, only reluctant to explain he did not want me, that the thought of me made him sick-She whose face turns men to stone, She who kills with one look. And I was Vazkor’s, he had virtually told me he knew as much.
“You underestimate my powers,” I said to him. “However, I understand your reluctance. A peaceful night to you, my husband.”
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He bowed to me and went out. I pressed the carved flower, and soon the women came and took me to my new apartments, which were gold and green and white, not the black of Ezlann. In a metal box lay his marriage gift to me, a great collar-necklace of twisted gold and silver, set with jades in the shapes of lions.
It troubled me, he troubled me, but I put him from my mind, and slept.
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There were many processions in which we rode hand in hand, for it was traditional. There were many entertainments at which we sat, and he would courteously ask me what I would have the dancers or the players or the jugglers or the magicians do. I had been afraid of these entertainments once, expecting the corruption to be strongest here, but I saw only beautiful things-a woman changed into a single jewel, two albino lions on whose backs two albino youths made strange knots of their bodies. There was music too, sinuous and softly thrilling, languid melodies coaxed from the round bellies of stringed instruments, and the bowls or silver horns.
Yet I was more aware of him than of the things I saw. In public we sat close enough, but in the palace we were separate. A word was not exchanged between us except those formal words when we must speak for his people. The vast library of the palace, filled with beautiful books, painted and bound in gold and jewels-I would often find him there, but when I came he would go away. I had thought at first he had never been with a woman, and perhaps feared me because of that, but I learned later, as one always can from the gossips of any establishment, that two or three of the small, beautiful, deerlike palace maidens had shared his pleasure at one time or another.
I had never really been lonely before, there had been no time or person to induce such a feeling of emptiness. In my dreams I would long for Vazkor, and the body and the power of Vazkor, long to hurt him, punish and destroy him, long to use him as a man would use a woman-to humiliate him, and finally become his slave. But awake, I would think of my husband the Javhovor, whose name I did not know. I would think of him beside me in the chariot, the slight abrupt shudders of cold that had run over his body, and yearn to