West of January

THE NEWCOMERS WERE NOT AS DARK AS THE ANGEL HAD BEEN, and their black hair was straight, not woolly. They wore only brief pagnes of spotted fur, but bright green and yellow bands of tattoos writhed all over their faces and chests and around their limbs. They were thick and broad, and their rain-wet skins shone like polished walnut. The blades of their spears were even shinier.

They stripped me, for my clothes had not been included in the purchase. They clucked approvingly at my paleness and disapprovingly at my wasted legs. They made me stand to show I could. They enveloped me in a burnoose of heavy brown stuff that seemed absurdly big, hem trailing on the floor, sleeves covering my hands. The hood pulled right over my head to fasten in front, with only a tiny gap for me to see through. I was too bewildered to believe all this was happening.

Then they lifted me down to the ground. Misi was standing nearby, towering over a group of the male traders and more of the short brown men, like a duck training ducklings to swim. They were all examining a pile of dark-colored bales in much the same way the newcomers had examined me.

“Misi!” I shouted and started waddling toward her in the absurd straight-legged gait that later led the cherubim to call me “Roo.” The traders glanced at me and then turned away. Except for one. Little Mot Han was staring fixedly, his face strained and pallid, as if he were about to throw up.

I reached Misi and fell against her, my knees screaming pains of protest at my haste. I clutched her, but she did not return my embrace. “Misi, what’s happening?” I knew what was happening.

“Dear Knobil!” Misi said. “I want you to go with these men.” She bent her head a little, to plant a kiss on my wet forehead.

“Why? Misi, I can’t bear to be parted—”

“To please me, Knobil? To make me happy?”

And to make her rich. I glanced bitterly at the heap of wealth. Misi was a trader, and wealth her dream of heaven. I must not judge her by others’ standards.

“You go now, Knobil. I want you to go now. Please. You were a great lover, Knobil.” She went back to counting.

One of the men gripped my arm to urge me away, then two of them scooped me up to carry me. My feet dropped and I howled in agony. All I could think of then was to scream that my legs must be kept straight. When I managed to make that clear, four of them hoisted me shoulder-high and bore me off like a corpse. So I did not get another glimpse of Misi.

She had sold me. Yet I cannot hate her for it. Even now I love her and cannot think badly of her. We must all follow our own paths in this world, and Misi was a trader. I’m sure she really was sorry, for I saw a tear in her eye.

I don’t think it was rain.

My pallbearers did not carry me far. Beyond a stand of great trees lay a wide river, and there we came to three canoes drawn up on the bank in the steamy jungle gloom. I was dropped into one, not gently, and before I could even free my hands from my sleeves to make an attempt at scrambling out again, the craft had been launched and was underway, surging over the dark oily waters. A line of six kneeling men labored before me. Six rain-slicked backs rippled; six paddles flashed.

I unfastened my hood, and a spear shaft thwacked my ribs so hard they rang like a drum. I yelped and looked around.

A seventh man sat at my back. “Stay covered!” He was bigger than the others, with a broad, strong face. Without all the green and yellow tattoos he might have been quite handsome, but his expression was unfriendly. He looked young enough that he might not have realized how hard he had hit me. He also looked capable of hitting much harder.

I fumbled to close my hood, even as I was asking, “Why?”

He bared big white teeth in what he probably thought was an approving smile. “Wetlanders must stay out of the sun.”

Even if the sun had been shining through the drizzle, most of the river would have been shaded by the great timber that walled its banks. “Why?” I demanded again. “Who says so?”

“Ayasseshas.”

“Who is Ayasseshas?”

A curious dreaminess danced in the darkness of his eyes. “She is our queen. Our goddess. She is Ayasseshas.”

“A spinster?”

“Of course.” He produced a rope and leaned forward to tie one end around my waist. “Ayasseshas expects us to deliver you, wetlander. Every one of us would die for her. You will not escape.”

I did not know what might live in those gloomy waters, and we were a long way from the banks. I could swim, of course, but not as fast as a canoe traveled and probably not while wearing a tent. The sort of escape he was talking about was suicide.

And suddenly suicide seemed like a very good idea. The thought of losing Misi was unbearable, and the notion that she had betrayed me unthinkable. Had my guard not tied that noose on me and fastened the other end to a thwart behind him where I could not reach, then likely I would have tried to kill myself. Hrarrh had warned me once that a trader would sell his grandsons, but I still would not believe that Misi had sold me. Despite the evidence, my mind rejected the possibility. There had been some horrible misunderstanding. Or it was a trick? Was she planning to rescue me…? I slumped over in a heap of misery and stayed like that for a long time.

The three canoes headed upstream, eastward. The current was sluggish, the still waters moving without a ripple, dark with the reflections of the undersides of branches arching overhead. Paddles flashed in a murderously swift rhythm, but the canoes were large and we made slow progress along that serpentine tree canyon. Later the sun came out, with patches of blue showing high above us. Then came thick clouds of insects to torture the paddlers. I alone was well protected in my voluminous burnoose, although I soon began to feel like a steamed fish.

Eventually I recovered enough from my shock to twist around and talk to my guard. He was quite willing to be friendly, as long as I behaved myself. His name, he told me, was Shisisannis, and he was of the snakefolk. When the other canoes happened to be close, I noticed that two or three of the men were obviously of another race, more like the lanky black angel I had met earlier. Those, Shisisannis said in a contemptuous tone, were swampmen. Swampers were cowardly types who fought with bows, he explained, while real men used spears.

How did snakefolk gain their name? I asked. He grinned and reached behind him for a bulging sack, weighty enough to test even his brawny shoulders. Already I had begun to regret the question, but he untied the neck and peered inside. Then he shot a powerful walnut-colored hand in and pulled out the head of a snake, a snake so large that his hand could not close around its neck. I bleated in fear, seeing yellow crystal eyes staring at me and a forked tongue flicker.

“This is Silent Lover,” Shisisannis said fondly. “Do not be alarmed. As long as I keep my thumb hard just here, she cannot move.”

I believed him, but I was very glad when he closed the bag again. He explained, at length and eagerly, how he hunted with his scaly friend, hanging her on a branch above a game trail. Then he would circle around through the jungle, seeking to drive some unsuspecting victim underneath. His snake would fall onto the victim and crush it. The trick was to get to her before she began to swallow and then to use that secret grip again to immobilize her. He bragged a lot about the things she had caught for him, most of them creatures I had never heard of.

Despite my shock, my fear, and my bereavement, I rather liked Shisisannis. Only much later did I learn that no other race ever trusts the snakefolk. I had no need to trust him, though. I had no choices to make.

We paused briefly to eat. The canoes were beached, but the men ate where they had been kneeling. Then they set off again. I was impressed. Except for Shisisannis, who was both my guard and the overall leader, every man was working at his utmost. They poured sweat, they were tormented by insects that they could not brush off, and their endurance was astonishing. I said so.

Shisisannis gleamed his teeth at me again. “Ayasseshas told us to hurry back. Nothing else matters. She is eager to meet you, wetlander.” He sighed. “Ah, how I envy you.”

“Why?”

He looked surprised. “You do not know?”

I shook my head, and then decided he might not be able to see that gesture inside my shroud. “No.”

“Then I say only that you are about to have the most glorious experience that any man can hope for in his lifetime. Few are ever so favored. You are fortunate beyond imagining.”

This was not what the angel had said. Or Hrarrh. But it might just possibly explain Misi. Had she parted with me out of love, so that I could enjoy this promised paradise? Of course that was a ridiculous idea, but it was all I had, and I clung to it.

“You speak from experience?” I asked.

“Indeed I do!” Shisisannis rolled his eyes in rapture.

“Describe it.”

“It is beyond words.”

I gave up.

A man in one of the other canoes signaled that it was time to stop. He did so by collapsing. His companions tried to keep up for a while, until another of them did the same. Shisisannis called a halt. The paddlers beached their canoes and prepared to make camp, every one of them staggering from total exhaustion. Even in the mine, I had never seen a group of men more weary. Some needed help even to stand. However this Ayasseshas did it, she inspired a devotion that went beyond pain to the very limits of endurance. Shisisannis had said they would die for her, and now I believed him.

Shisisannis himself lifted me ashore and told me to walk. I set off with my absurd skirt held high, but the ground was tangled with lush undergrowth and I fell repeatedly. Each time I raised myself again, buttocks first, walking my hands backward and keeping my throbbing furnace knees straight. I heard chuckles of amusement, but I persevered until I took a worse than average tumble and Shisisannis s voice behind me said that was enough. I lay on my belly and panted, groaning at my weakness and humiliation. Eventually I recovered enough to roll over and sit up. I had covered about fifty paces, yet I felt as exhausted as the paddlers.

Food was passed, but half of the men were asleep before it even reached them. Soon they all were, stretched out on crumpled bushes or wet moss. Only Shisisannis remained awake. He sat on his heels, alert and watching, a darker shape of menace in a deep gloom, staring at me without a blink.

Back from the water’s edge, the undergrowth was not as thick as it had been on the bank. All around us, giant pillars of trees rose up ten times higher than any I had ever seen on the grasslands, seeming as solid as rocks nearby, but fading away with distance into murky wraiths. The close-packed jungle trees grew almost vertical, with little twist. Only rare speckles of blue showed through the canopy roof and the thick tresses of creepers suspended from every twig. The air was cool and damp, reeking of mold and rain, and so laden with water that it was visible, a dark mist hanging in all the vacant spaces. I was grateful for my all-enveloping garment, wondering how my near-naked companions could bear the chill. Bright-hued birds flashed past sometimes, and their calls echoed eerily among the continual faint dripping sounds. It was creepy and oppressive.

“Food?” Shisisannis inquired.

“I’m not hungry.”

He shrugged and continued to stare.

Nor was I sleepy. One thing was certain, however: I was not going to escape. I might be capable of launching one of the canoes, if I could reach them, although they had been pulled well clear of the water, but Shisisannis was not going to take his eyes off me. He could apparently squat there in the undergrowth forever, watching me, unblinking, with hunters’ patience. He was not even bothering to swat at the bugs and flies that walked on him.

I lay back, head on hands, and reviewed my hopeless position, bitter with the rank taste of betrayal and the dread of unknown horrors to come. Oh, Misi…how did I fail you? I wallowed in the depths of my ill luck, I soared to heights of self-pity, and I piled up mountains of despair. At last, though, another problem asserted itself, one of the trivial indignities that our bodies use to mock our souls when they seek to transcend mundane affairs. I sat up to meet Shisisannis’s unwavering gaze. I explained.

He shrugged and pointed with his chin. “Go that way.”

My captors had all stayed between me and the river, and he had told me that I should go deeper into the jungle. I was not to be allowed to approach the canoes.

So I rolled over and levered myself vertical again. I raised my long skirt, and I rocked my way cautiously through the tangles, my bare feet sinking into clammy moss and a mush of rotted leaves. Shisisannis would be able to see me and hear me, and without question, catch me if he wanted. I found a fallen tree to use as a seat. I attended to my needs.

I stood again and was about to return…

Bird calls, the stirring of the wind, and dripping… The sky had turned gray once more and probably rain was falling on the forest roof, but I could hear something else, a deep humming. It was tantalizingly faint, but as I concentrated it grew more distinct, nearer, and I could tell that it was song, a gleam of silver melody in the green hush. Someone was coming!

I wondered if Shisisannis could hear it yet. I glanced covertly in his direction; he did not seem to have moved. How much time would I have before he roused his warriors? How far could I travel before he came after me?

Cautiously I planned a path between the nearest obstacles and then rocked my way slowly forward. I could not tell if I was hearing a wordless voice or an instrument, or both together, but the tones were growing louder, and I was sure that the source was approaching. Rescue! Music meant hope. It meant people, my fellow man. If spinsters were as horribly evil as the angel had suggested, then surely other human beings would take pity on me. No matter who this musician was, I could hardly be worse off than I was now.

I still did not know whether the sound came from throat or fingers or both, but I was certain the singer was not animal or bird. And it was beautiful! It soared. It brought tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat. It spoke of love and longing and compassion. Strangely, it reminded me strongly of some of the herdfolk songs that my mother had sung to me when I was very small. No one capable of such beauty could be so heartless as to turn down the pleas of a helpless captive.

Faster I drove my crippled legs, reeling dangerously, tripping, staggering, and never heeding the jarring pains. The melody welled up in unbearable glory, close now, and yet I could see no one in the dense gloom. I wanted to call out, but I dared not interrupt that peerless refrain. Never had I heard such music—

Two strong hands slammed against the sides of my hood, covering my ears and then holding my head up when I would have fallen with the shock. Shisisannis steadied me, then transferred his grip to my shoulders. I twisted around to stare at the dark contempt lurking amid the green and yellow serpents of his tattoos. The song had gone and I could hear nothing but a faint and distant humming.

“That’s close enough, wetlander.”

“What? Who? Wh—”

He raised his eyebrows in mockery. “I said spinster, not spinner.”

“I don’t understand!”

The hum had become melody again, faint and far off. He pointed. “Between those trees, see? No, closer.”

A man’s length before me, outlined only by faint silver spangles of dew…a giant web.

“Harp spider, wetlander. There she is, up there. See her?”

Bewildered, I looked where he pointed. I could see nothing but trailing moss and dark clutters of twigs. Then I made out a tangle of furry legs as long as my shins… I shuddered and recoiled backward. Shisisannis caught me and steadied me again.

“I’d let you go to her lover’s kiss, wetlander, if that was what you really wanted, but Ayasseshas told me to bring you whole and healthy, and her I will obey.”

“I’d have been trapped in that web?”

The aria was soaring louder and nearer again, heart-rending in its wistful glory.

“Oh, you’d have broken free. Only small animals get really caught. But her ladyship would have had her fangs in you before you did. You would not have gone far, and you would not have shaken her off.”

“But the song!” I protested, grateful that my hood hid the tears that were soaking into my beard.

“Cover your ears!”

I did that and then listened again…a faint humming, far off.

“Do that when it gets too strong,” Shisisannis said. “Now, come back and enjoy it at a safe distance. She might jump.”

With a shudder of revulsion and fear, I wrenched my feet around and rolled away from the harp spider’s web. There could be worse things than spinsters, I thought.

—2—

THE EXHAUSTED ROWERS were given little more time to rest. Shisisannis kicked a few awake. They scrambled up without a whisper of complaint and began kicking others, while Shisisannis himself draped me over his shoulder and trotted effortlessly back to the canoes. The others came running after, hastily wolfing down food on the way, laughing and joking in their eagerness to be off. I knew enough about physical overload to know how their bodies must ache. I marveled at their zeal and puzzled over its source. It certainly did not stem from fear, for the ants had never inspired such dedication and no one could have used more fear than they.

The second leg of the journey was shorter and also much hotter. Of course, climate is normally invariant, its changes too slow for men to notice, and this unnatural unpredictability troubled me. Much later I was to hear the saints talk of weather and the torus of instability, but I never truly understood how those worked. Whatever they were, we were within them, beset by unpredictable alternations of sun and storm that did nothing to calm my jangled nerves.

Sweltering within my gown, peering out from the hood, I could see no difference between one bend of the river and the next, but apparently my captors did. A shout of challenge rang out, and all at once they all rose upright on one knee in racing stance. The paddles flashed even more furiously, and the canoes themselves seemed to rise from the water and fly. The pace was brutal, inhuman torment. They could not sustain it, I thought, but they kept it up far longer than I would have believed possible, six men with two passengers in our craft, against five men in each of the others. Ours came in second, driving onto a muddy beach that apparently marked the finish line. The paddlers flopped over, lungs rasping, as the third canoe slid in at our side.

The winners attempted a cheer of derision and triumph, but they were too winded to sound convincing, and still I could see no landmark to determine why this spot on the bank was different from any other. The spinster’s lair was well concealed.

Laughing but still gasping, my captors scrambled out and pulled the canoes higher. Shisisannis untied me and bellowed: “Ing-aa?”

One of the black, woolly-haired swampmen stepped over from the winning canoe. He was decorated with beads instead of tattoos, but he looked every bit as intimidating as the snakemen, and I had met trees that would have been proud to have had sons so tall.

“You won. You can deliver the goods,” Shisisannis said offhandedly as he lifted the bag that contained Silent Lover.

The giant flashed teeth in a beam of pleasure. His great hands scooped me from the canoe as if I were a sachet of petals. He laid me over his shoulder, went up the bank in two huge bounds, and hurtled off through the woods at a long-legged sprint. With supermen like these to serve her, what possible need could the spinster have for a cripple like me?

Head down, I was jiggled and bounced. My knees enjoyed being bent forward no better than being bent backward, and I was only vaguely aware of a narrow muddy track winding through dense and fetid jungle, dark and damp. Then we emerged into sunlight. More mud squelched beneath those enormous feet, and the pace quickened. The giant came to a sudden stop and just stood. I remained dangling over his shoulder, rising and falling with every rasping breath.

“You going to put me down?” I inquired of his kidneys.

“No,” said a voice, rumbling so deep that I felt it as much as heard it.

I gripped his sweaty loins and levered myself up as well as I could, partly to ease the strain on my legs and belly, partly to look around. As far as I could determine through the slit in my hood, we were in the center of a large and very muddy compound. I saw leaf-covered huts shaped like pots, with glimpses of an encircling stockade beyond. The canoes were arriving, being carried in on the paddlers’ heads—on the double, of course. There would be no trace of our arrival left outside the settlement, therefore, except footprints in the mud, and the next shower would erase those. Shisisannis was bringing up the rear, running also, and clutching the bag that contained Silent Lover.

There were other men around. I could hear the rhythmic chant of a gang working in unison, an irregular thudding of axes, a distant bleating of livestock. I could even see a dozen or two of the inhabitants. Half of them were dark-skinned men very like my captors, striding around in spotted fur pagnes and decorated with either tattoos or strings of beads, some carrying spears. But the other half were draped from crown to toe in all-enveloping burnooses, as I was. Mostly those muffled figures were just standing, staring in my direction. Some, at least, were too tall to be women, and with a sudden flash of hope, I decided that they must all be wetlanders like me, being kept out of the sun.

Wetlanders came from the far west, so we must be a rare breed so close to Dusk. To collect a dozen or more of us would take considerable time and expense, so whatever the spinster did with wetlanders, she would not put them to a quick death. I felt a little better, then.

Apart from those mysterious shrouded figures, though, I could see no one but men, no women or children or old folk. The spinster maintained a private army of young males, a very impressive and virile collection, judging by those I had met so far. I wondered why she needed them, who her foes were. And again I wondered at the source of her power over them.

In the center of the compound, not far from me, stood a massive carving in the likeness of a rearing snake, its cobra hood spread wide and the rest of its body looped around the base, all painted green and yellow, and strangely repellent even to me, who believed in no god. Then I could not keep my head up any longer. I sagged down, feeling sick and giddy.

Our canoes had been stowed alongside a group of others. The men came running across toward my bearer, Shisisannis going to one side of him and the rest lining up on the other. Then they all just stood, in a silence broken only by heavy breathing, waiting for someone, or something, but with none of the comments or muttered complaints I would have expected. I had my wrong end pointing forward and could not see what they were watching. All I could see was feet, but I did notice that they were placed at the edge of a patch of white gravel, markedly different from the juicy mud that covered the rest of the compound, steaming gently in the sunlight.

Then a sigh ran through the waiting platoon. I heard footsteps on the gravel.

“Shisisannis!” said a woman’s voice. “My devoted War Band Leader, Shisisannis!”

Shisisannis sank to his knees. “My beloved Goddess!”

“You have done as I asked!” Her voice was deep and throaty, and she spoke as if to a lover.

“To please you is all I seek in life, my Queen. Command and I obey. And if I ever fail you, Majesty, in the slightest detail of your desires, may I be put at once to pasture.”

I heard a tinkling laugh that I did not like. “You serve me better thus, Shisisannis my joy. He is a true wetlander?”

“And already very pale. But his knees are worse than you were told, my Queen. He can barely walk.”

“Other than that he seems fit?”

“Quite healthy, Majesty.”

“Knees are helpful…but not the most essential items.” The men laughed at her joke. “Rise now, War Band Leader. Ah, too long have I neglected you, you most perfect pillar of manhood. I yearn for your strong embrace.” In public such words should be spoken only with humor or mockery, but these sounded like real seduction. Remembering Shisisannis’s expression when he had talked of this woman, I decided she must be in earnest, unbelievable though that might seem. “This ribbon is one I give only for exceptional service. Wear it as my personal promise of a greater reward in store. As soon as my duties allow, I shall send for you, for none is a more dutiful servant or more deserving of whatever favors a valiant warrior may claim from an eager and grateful lover.”

Shisisannis rose. “Majesty… I…” His voice broke. He sounded overwhelmed.

“You have done well to return so soon. You must go now and rest.”

I could not believe my ears. She was sending him off to bed?

“Great Queen, the stockade progresses but slowly…”

She laughed again. “You will not serve me well by working yourself to death, Shisisannis, as poor Yshinanosis did. Rest first. It is my wish.”

Two more feet came forward into my inverted field of view—brown female feet in golden sandals. They rose on tiptoe, and I took the ensuing silence to mean that Shisisannis was being rewarded with a kiss. My dizziness and nausea were mounting, my attention was wandering, but I could have sworn that his knees trembled.

Then the woman’s heels sank down, and she stepped away again, out of my view.

“And Ing-aa! Canoemaster Ing-aa, my great black bull!”

The blood collecting in my head, the constriction of my gut, the sweltering heat of my gown, and the agony in my legs—I was failing rapidly. Red waves surged before my eyes, and bile rose in my throat. Yet I could still somehow register that there were unholy things going on. “Black bull?” She was inveigling Ing-aa with the same crude sexual cajolery that she had given Shisisannis, and Shisisannis was right there at their side. She had two young bulls present and by any normal standards of male behavior they should already be rolling around on the ground, doing their utmost to maim and impair. Yet Shisisannis chuckled with the others as she made lewd remarks about Ing-aa’s size, promising him the same reward she had pledged to Shisisannis. I did not understand.

Then, through my fog of pain and nausea, I heard her say, “But show me this prize you have brought me, lover.”

Ing-aa slid me forward so my feet hit the ground. He lifted me easily and twirled me around to face the spinster, then set me down again and let go.

I caught a brief, blurred glimpse of a female figure in a shimmering gown of water silk.

I pitched forward in a dead faint.

Of course my collapse was mostly a reaction to the head-down position and the sudden correction, compounded by overheating, fear, and pain. I was unconscious for only a few moments.

“He is coming around, my Lady.” Ing-aa’s voice spoke close above me.

I was stretched out on my back, although I had first landed on my nose and forehead. My hood had been pulled from my face and the front of my gown opened. The ground swayed, my ears sang, and I kept my eyes shut.

“That is fortunate.” There was no seduction in the woman’s voice now.

“Majesty… I was thoughtless.”

“Very! You know his value.” She was furious, and that was encouraging for me.

I peered narrowly through eyelashes. A huge black shape was kneeling at my side, his fingers on the pulse in my neck. It had to be Ing-aa.

“Majesty! Forgive me!” He sounded heartbroken or…

“Forgive you? Why?”

“My Queen…” No, not heartbroken. I had heard that tone in the ants’ nest. The fingers on my throat trembled.

“I want no fools in my service.” Her voice cut like a butcher’s knife. “Go to the pens and make yourself useful there.”

“Oh, Great One… I beg you…” The giant was whining. A drop of water fell on my chest.

The spinster spoke again, less harshly. “Your strength will serve me well, and if you make amends, then later we shall see…”

Ing-aa moaned and rose. I closed my eyes. Feet squelched in the mud and were gone.

Ayasseshas’s voice again: “Um-oao, Ah-uhu? Bear him gently. Put him in the shade. I shall see to him shortly, when I have thanked all these brave fellows.”

Hands lifted me and rushed me away. I heard gravel, then bare feet on boards, as I felt myself carried up steps. Continuing to feign unconsciousness, I was gently laid down. The footsteps departed.

I seemed to be alone, but I lay still, pondering what I had learned. I had value. That was very hopeful. But what were the “pens” that could so terrify a colossus like Ing-aa? Pens implied livestock, and Shisisannis had mentioned pasture. I could still hear a bleating in the distance, but the only punishment that came to mind was mucking out stalls, and a trivial indignity like that would hardly provoke such obvious dread.

I had been laid upon a rug, I thought, and a cautious glance showed a roof of beams and woven leaves far above. Quick looks to each side… I was lying on a sort of porch, stretched out on a thick woolen rug laid over what must be a plank floor. I raised my head and confirmed my assumptions.

There was no one watching. I sat up and felt only a passing dizziness. I heaved myself back a few feet to lean against a wall, then rubbed the scrapes I had acquired in my fall. There was a door at my side, so my guess of porch had been correct. In the center, two chairs and a table sat on another richly patterned rug. The only real furniture I had ever seen had belonged to the ants, and this was much finer than theirs, gleaming bright. I knew the style of the rugs. They had come from the grasslands, tough woollie yarn in bright colors, though the specific designs were none that my mother and aunts had ever used. My trader experience wondered how much they had cost here, so far from their birthplace.

Beyond the shadowed veranda the sun blazed on the apron of white gravel. At the far edge of this stood Shisisannis and his little band, black men and dark brown, still in their line of inspection. Only Ing-aa had gone. The spinster was working her way along the line, welcoming each man in his turn. At her back stood two more of the tall swampmen bearing swords, a personal bodyguard. As I watched, Ayasseshas rose on tiptoe again to embrace one of her champions. How did one woman bewitch so many men?

And in the shadows of the huts beyond the snake totem pole, I saw again those strange hooded and gowned figures—solitary, motionless, and apparently watching. Who were they, and why so idle?

“What happened to your knees?”

I twisted around in alarm. One of the brown-shrouded people was standing in a dark corner, beside the door. I had overlooked him—or possibly her, although the voice had sounded more male than female. There was no way to tell who or what was inside that garment, and I could see nothing but darkness within the peephole of the hood.

“How do you know about my knees?” I asked warily.

Just when I had decided that he would not reply, he uttered a curious little gasping sigh and said, “The lady told me she was buying a wetlander, but his knees were damaged.”

“How many wetlanders are there here?”

“Just me. And now you.”

My heart sank at the news. I had hoped for more company. But conversely this stranger must be very glad to have me join him.

“I am Quetti.” His voice was muffled by the hood, but there was also an odd quality to it that I could not place.

“Knobil.”

“That is not a wetlander name.”

“My father was a wetlander, I think. My mother was of the herdfolk.”

“That explains…” He paused again, this time for longer. Again he sighed. “That explains your size.”

“What about my size?”

“You are too big for a wetlander. We are slighter.”

I thought of Orange-brown-white, the ants’ captive and the only wetlander I had ever met. He had been a slim small man. “My mother was little, though.”

“Herdwomen bear large sons.” The curious quality in my companion’s voice was a jumpiness, a quaver. “You’re as big as Shisisannis!” He sounded annoyed at that.

I had believed myself a dwarf in my youth, but now I knew I was as tall as the men of most races. Swimming, and then slavery, had given me fair bulk, so what he said was perhaps true, but why did it matter?

“Who are those people, the ones dressed like us?”

“Snakemen. Swampmen. A couple of treefolk.”

“But why are they being kept covered?”

“It is better to be out of doors than shut up in the pens.”

“She just sent Ing-aa to the pens. What—”

“I saw. But he will be of little use at pasture. The lady has told me often: Small as I am, to her I am worth fifty like Ing-aa.”

“And me also?” I asked cautiously.

“More, I suppose,” he agreed grumpily, his tone showing a trace of the jealousy I had expected in Shisisannis and Ing-aa. “There is more of you.”

My questions were not bringing me much wisdom. How much time did I have to cross-examine this cryptic Quetti? Could I trust whatever he might tell me? I glanced out at the spinster. She was near the end of the row, embracing one of the snakemen. “How does she do that?” I asked. “Can she really reward so many men with her favors?”

Quetti chuckled dryly under his hood. “She rewards them mostly with promises. And pretty ribbons. Shisisannis, sometimes…” Again a long pause, another sigh. “The rest of us rarely get more than words. Even me! Um-oao and Ah-uhu do better, I think.”

So Ayasseshas was largely a tease? That made the men’s ensorcellment even more incomprehensible. Or did it? “I don’t understand!”

“You will.”

“And no one has ever told me what a spinster wants with wetlanders.”

He grunted. “Do you know why they are called spinsters?”

“Not even that.”

“Then you—” He choked. “Wait!” I heard a foot tapping, and he seemed to shrink slightly. He was breathing hard.

“What’s wrong?” I asked as the silence lengthened. “Are you ill?”

He shook his head but did not speak, and he was curiously hunched. I rolled over on my belly and levered myself upright. I took a couple of rolling steps toward him, but he held up a hand, draped in its too-long sleeve. He made his curious heavy breathing noise again, and relaxed.

“You’re in pain!” I said.

“Of course.” He seemed proud that I had not realized sooner.

I shook my hands free from my sleeves, reached out to unfasten his hood and push it back so I could see what he looked like. He did not resist, but he stared up at me resentfully.

He was barely more than a boy, his mustache downy, his beard too faint to hide the dimple in his chin. A mop of golden waves framed a thin, rather sulky face. His eyes were a pale, pale blue, like the far end of the sky.

I had thought I was light-colored after my long confinement in Misi’s cab, but Quetti’s skin was as white as raw fish, marked with a single tattoo, a red snake as wide as my finger, running from his hairline, down between his eyes, and then curving off across his cheek to vanish under one ear. It stood out starkly on his pallor, uglier even than the tattoos on the dark snakemen.

I offered my hand. He hesitated, then pulled back a sleeve to respond, but he did not return my smile. His fingers were long and delicate—and white—but I felt the remains of fading calluses.

“How did you come here?” I asked.

“I was a pilgrim. I was caught by—uhhhh!”

He hunched his shoulders, screwed up his eyes, and twisted back his lips to show clenched teeth. I saw sweat break out on his face, and this time he could not suppress groans. Not just pain—the kid was in agony. His white skin seemed to go even whiter, and I wondered if he was about to faint. My own heart began to pound, but whether from sympathy for him or rising terror for myself, I was not sure. Then Quetti released his breath in one of those long gasps I had heard earlier and opened his eyes.

I reached out to steady him.

“Don’t touch me!” His pallor had turned to pink under my stare, and he scowled. “That was a bad one!” He was defensive, ashamed of displaying weakness.

“Then…sit down,” I said, gesturing at one of the chairs.

“I can’t. Not just at the moment.”

“Why not, for Heaven’s sake?”

“Because I have other, more important uses for…” He closed his eyes again, but the fit was briefer and less severe. By now I was sweating also.

“What happened to your face?” The, wide red band was not a tattoo. It was a raw, weeping sore, as if a long strip of skin had been ripped right off. Where it reached his scalp, the hair had gone also, leaving a narrow canyon only partly concealed by his golden waves.

He raised his cotton-fluff eyebrows, showing ironic amusement at my ignorance. “A graze.”

“God!” What was hidden under that robe? “You’ve been flogged?”

“Flogged?” He laughed. “I wish I had. So what happened to your knees, herdman?”

“An ant held them on an anvil, and a blacksmith smashed them with a sledgehammer.”

“You don’t have much luck, do you?”

“It got me out of the ants’ nest.”

“You should have stayed.”

I was about to ask why when Quetti turned his head. I followed his gaze and saw that the inspection was over. Ayasseshas was approaching across the gravel with her two bodyguards at her heels. The men who had brought me were running off across the muddy compound, dismissed.

“Those two with her…”

“Ah-uhu and Um-oao,” Quetti said. “The pride of my lady’s herd.”

I had thought Ing-aa to be a giant, but these two snakemen could have made three of him. Their black skins shone in the sun, oiled to show the ripple of their muscles, while their high red feather headdresses emphasized their height. Heavy gold chains around their waists supported brief pagnes of shimmering, translucent water silk, and they had gold bands on their arms and legs. Wide-bladed swords flashed at their sides. A woman who collected men could have found no more impressive specimens, nor have displayed them more outrageously.

And the spinster herself… I had been avoiding looking at this terror, but as she mounted the steps to the porch, I forced my eyes to their duty. She was a snakewoman, dark skinned and stocky. Her shiny black hair was tightly braided and piled on top of her head, pinned tight and decorated with yellow butterflies. From neck to golden sandals, her robe of many-hued water silk iridesced and flickered, but it did not mask the snake tattoos in blue and red that writhed over her belly, squirming up from between her thighs in coils and curves, ending in fanged jaws poised to engorge her nipples. More red and blue serpents wriggled upon her neck and face.

She was about my age, with youth a memory and decay not yet a dread. Her body had started to thicken, but her limbs seemed muscular rather than fat. Her breasts, though generous, did not droop enough to ever have suckled babies. She had power—not only the inexplicable authority that ruled her army, but pure physical strength also. Spinsterhood is no occupation for weaklings, of course, although I had not yet realized what it entailed nor what price she paid to coil each one of her slaves.

Her eyes were fixed on mine. I felt tiny shivers all over my skin, and I backed away as she approached, discovering that my ability to walk backward was unimpaired. She was only a woman, I told myself, but I had heard too many hints and had already seen too much not to fear her. I stopped when I reached the wall, and I still could not tear loose from the hypnotic stare.

But when she reached Quetti, she turned to him, ignoring me and drawing in breath with a sudden hiss. “My poor boy! How you are suffering!”

He was not quite as tall as she. “It missed my eye.”

“Ah, but you are in pain.”

“I will survive.”

She took his face between her hands. “I weep for you. I should not have asked, not until you were older.”

“I am a man!”

“But I know you are, Quetti, my special one. You showed me that when we first met. Mightily you showed me. I do not doubt your manhood, and you are proving it again now, even more.”

“I promised you…” His voice quavered. “I promised you twelve.”

“And you still have so many?”

“Thirteen.”

“My beloved!” Her tone was that of a mother, not a lover. She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his, still holding his face, but not letting their bodies touch.

Quetti’s ashen face flamed red. “And they must be almost done?”

“Very near. Not long now.”

“Thirteen is good, isn’t it, my Lady?”

“It is very good. Much more than I truly expected. Wonderful for your size. Did you see what happened with that idiot Ing-aa? No matter how long he endures or how many crops he yields, all of it will not be worth a fraction of what you are doing for me now, Quetti, my dear one.”

He nodded and tried to smile, but I saw the signs of agony build in his face again: livid lips and sweat. Despite his efforts to conceal it from Ayasseshas, she pulled his head down to her breast to comfort. For a long moment there was silence and no movement except a wild fluttering from one of the yellow butterflies imprisoned in her hair.

Then the fluttering stopped, and Quetti sighed and straightened up. “I will deliver on my promise, my Lady, and I do not mind a little pain if I can please you.”

“Oh, you make me very happy, dear Quetti. And when you have delivered on your promise, then we must let you heal, and I shall call on you to partner me often, for your beauty gives me more joy than any. Are you eating properly?”

“It is hard, my lady.”

“You must keep up your strength. For now, and for later. I need strong men to satisfy me, my love. Go and try, dearest, for my sake…and try also to get some rest.”

She kissed him again and then closed his hood over his blushes. Again an anonymous, shrouded figure, he turned away and floated obediently toward the steps.

This had to be why the men in the canoes had driven themselves to exhaustion. They had been proving—to the others and to themselves—that they could endure pain, because their mistress would demand it of them. I did not know what was causing Quetti’s torment, or why this monster desired it…and I most certainly did not want to find out.

Now she turned to me again and looked me over coyly, with a sudden change from mother love to seduction. She smiled, but it was a strange smile, keeping her thick and sensuous lips over her teeth.

“Welcome, wetlander.”

“I am Knobil.”

“I know.” She reached a hand for the door and glanced at her guards. “Ah-uhu? Wash him and bring him in when he is ready.” Then she was gone.

I did not know which was Ah-uhu and which Um-oao, but when one said “Strip!” I stripped. The other had leapt from the porch with a force that had shaken the whole building, sprinting away across the compound. Soon he came running back, bearing a huge steaming bucket in each hand.

These human mountains were as large as some herdmen I had known, and they obviously enjoyed favored status in the spinster s retinue. Yet they now proceeded to play body servant to me, sponging me vigorously with hot water and rubbing suds in my hair and beard. One of them even screwed a massive fingertip around inside my ears until I thought my brains would squirt out. They dried me with soft towels and trimmed the nails on my fingers and toes. They rubbed me all over with scented oil. Not a word was spoken until they were finished. Then one of them reached out to open the door and growled, “Go in!”

“But I have no clothes!” I protested weakly.

He stared down at me with both contempt and disbelief.

I went in to meet the spinster.

—3—

THE ROOM WAS LARGE and bright and high-roofed, constructed of massive timbers. A glimpse through the far windows revealed another wide expanse of mud, more of the pot-shaped huts, and part of the incomplete stockade, so I knew this palace must stand in the exact center of the compound. Before me were thick rugs and many gaudy, shiny things scattered around. Yet little of it registered, for my mind was quivering with apprehension at meeting the fearsome spinster. My eyes soon fixed themselves on her.

She was reclining on an expanse of rugs and cushions in the center of the floor, an island of turquoise, vermilion, and bronze. Beside her on a very low table were silver dishes of fruits and breads, bottles and goblets of gold, and plates of brightly colored sweetmeats.

I stopped to stare, and my buttocks received a slap hard enough to make me stagger.

“Go to her!” growled the giant behind me. Unwillingly I began to roll forward in my stiff-kneed gait, aware that he had closed the door and taken up station beside it. The other, I assumed, had stayed outside.

Ayasseshas was wearing only her butterflies and her tattoos. As I approached, she stretched out languorously, reaching for a gold fruit from the table, while the snakes seemed to slither over her smooth brown curves. She bit into the fleshy globe, juice gleaming on her lips, and she looked up at me with a glance of challenge.

I had spent most of my adult life penned like an animal in the ants’ compound, so my own nudity bothered me little. Yet hers did. Many times I had drawn near to a naked woman and always with eagerness, always with every intention of taking from her as much pleasure as my stamina would allow. There was a peculiarly sinister fascination in those ribbons of color on Ayasseshas’s body, and she was a luscious, imposing woman, strong and tempting. She could hardly have been more obviously available. She would be a stimulating partner, inventive in cooperation, tantalizing in opposition, and uncomplaining in subjugation. Yet now I came to a halt at her feet, nonplussed, feeling a revulsion that could have been no greater had she been clad in real serpents.

My reluctance seemed to surprise her as much as it did me. “Sit here, Knobil,” she said, patting a cushion at her side. “We shall get to know each other…intimately.” She sent me a smile that again seemed oddly forced. A skilled seductress should be able to smile better than that.

“What do you require of me, woman?”

She frowned, leaned back, and stared up at me appraisingly.

“You cannot venture a guess? Most of my visitors, when in your situation, are already displaying a certain readiness to satisfy my requirements.”

“Obviously I am not, although I mean no disrespect.”

She sighed. “Well, we can talk. Now sit, or I shall have Um-oao assist you.”

I let myself fall forward onto the pillows, and then I rolled over and sat up. She turned to lean on one elbow, facing me. Her scent was strong and musky, yet even her nearness was inducing no desire in me.

She stroked my thigh with a gentle finger. “You are not quite as pale as Quetti yet, but you are very fair, wetlander.”

“I was raised as a herdman.”

“Indeed? Do herdmen prefer a more subtle approach?”

“To be honest, they wouldn’t know subtlety from rape, nor care. The fault is not yours, lady. You are comely.”

Ayasseshas sighed again. “Then we must be patient. Tell me your story while we wait, herdman.”

She was dangerous, and I was utterly in her power. To anger her further would be great folly, so I obeyed, recounting my history. She watched me carefully as I spoke.

“Poor man! Well, you are safe here.” She sat up also, brazenly cross-legged. “Can I offer you refreshment now?”

The sight of food on the table had already made my mouth water, but I was deeply suspicious. “Thank you, no. Mistress, tell me again what you want of me.”

“Again I say that it is obvious.” For the first time she revealed her teeth. They were large and white, but badly placed, protruding in front, and crooked. I realized that the enigmatic quality of her smile was merely an attempt to conceal this flaw in her beauty.

“You did not give the traders so much silk just for one more bed partner, when you have so many already.”

“But golden hair excites me.” She ran her fingers down my chest. “No salutes yet? I do begin to feel slighted, Knobil.”

I had flinched at her touch. “I have no wish to insult you, lady. My lack of response is not deliberate.”

“But why? Your tastes do not run to Um-oao, surely?”

“Certainly not!”

“Quetti would be a safer choice?”

“Neither of them!”

She laughed, and I discovered that I had just smiled.

“You must have lain with women before?”

I had lain with hundreds, but I merely said, “Yes.”

“Is it fear that troubles you? Are you afraid of me?”

“Perhaps. I do not know what horrors you have in store.”

She frowned. “No horrors! As you guessed, I paid dearly for you, so I will cherish and guard you. Of course I hope that you will choose to remain in my service, but any small tasks you may agree to perform for me will be entirely voluntary. You are certainly in no danger at the moment…unless your callous rejection should rouse my wrath, of course?” She raised a mocking eyebrow and again displayed her dagger teeth.

Ayasseshas was a skilled manipulator of men. She was running through her repertoire, seeking what would work best on me.

“I see that,” I admitted. “I am not a brave man, lady, and I do not mean to defy you. I do not think it is fear.”

She glanced toward the giant by the door. “Is it Um-oao? I promise you that he is not here to chaperone me. Do as you will with me, Knobil. He will interfere only if he thinks I am in danger of serious injury. He has never restrained an overly ardent lover yet, although an enthusiastic snakeman treats a woman much as his constrictor treats its prey.”

An audience would not deter me. “Not he.”

“You love another?”

“I do.” Misi had betrayed me, yet I loved her still.

The spinster pouted. “She is fairer than I?”

Misi was ugly. She was obscenely fat and hairy, and I knew that. Yet had she been in Ayasseshas’s place, I should have clasped her to me in rapture. “No, lady, she is less fair than you.”

“Then you wish to remain faithful to her?”

I considered that possibility and then shook my head. There was almost no chance in the world that I should ever see my darling again. She would never know nor care if I took other women, and most certainly she would feel no obligation to me.

Ayasseshas shrugged and sighed. The serpents around her breasts writhed. “I am at a loss! Tell me the answer, then.”

Hesitantly I said, “Partly it is this: I heard how you spoke to Shisisannis and Ing-aa. You praised each for his virility in the other’s hearing…and the same with the rest of the men, I expect. You made a mockery of their manhood. Somehow you have unmanned them all, lady, and I fear that you will cast your witchcraft on me if I accept your offer now.”

She gave me a glance of exaggerated astonishment. “Unmanned? I swear to you that the last time I checked, there was no detectable flaw in Shisisannis’s manhood, neither quantity nor quality. Ing-aa always travels the same predictable road, but the distance he can journey on it is astonishing… Unmanned? I have not lowered their manhood, Knobil. I wish I could do something to raise yours!”

I suppose I had nothing to lose. I became rash. “It is unnatural for many men to share one woman!”

Ayasseshas hissed softly. “A herdman, you said? How many—”

“That’s quite different!”

Her eyes were cold as shining pebbles. “In what way, exactly?”

The question was so absurd that I think I spluttered before I found an answer. “Babies, for one thing. A herdmaster can breed many children at the same time. How many can you carry, lady? Do you bear sons for all your lovers?”

She sighed. “Knobil, babies are not what I seek from them. Truly, babies are not my purpose! But if you think you can quicken my womb, then you are welcome to try. Most welcome.”

I shook my head and looked away.

“What does deter you? Am I so ugly?”

“No… Try to understand this, then, lady. I see no great passion in you, either. You offer yourself to me like a plate of meat. It is brutal and demeaning. You think that because a woman is available, a man must be willing. It is no reflection on my manhood that I spurn you, for you strive somehow to use my body—and use it against me, although I know not how.”

“Goodness!” the spinster muttered. She stretched out in her sensual fashion, reaching for a grape, and again I watched the play of color on her skin. “You never use a woman? You do it only for love? You never seek to find pleasure, only to give it?”

“Share it.”

“Mmm?” As if pondering, she held the grape for a moment in those meat-red lips and then sucked it in, with an audible plop! “They say a man never forgets his first time. Who showed you how, Knobil?”

I know that I blushed furiously, but there was challenge in her eyes. “A woman on the grasslands, when I was traveling with the angel.”

Ayasseshas took another grape and smiled at it. “Angels do not use women?”

Indeed they did, and all those unfortunate herdwomen whom the addle-headed Violet had so callously thrown my way I had used without scruple, for my own selfish pleasure. I had even reveled in his praise for a job well done, not recognizing how he had been infecting me with his own twisted bitterness.

“And what of the women in the seafolk s grove?” That must have been a guess, but her aim was deadly. I could not reply, for I had used them to advertise my superior virility

“And in the ants’ nest? Did you find love there, Knobil?”

That was the worst of all.

“What you say is true, mistress. Yes, I have used women in the past, but since then I have come to know love. I see now that men and women should come together in a giving of pleasure or at least a sharing, and not simply a taking. I do not think you expect pleasure from me, and I seek no debts to you.”

“How sweet! And who taught you this great truth?”

Sudden caution tempered my rashness. I must not be too specific about Misi, lest I somehow expose her to the spinster’s envy. “I told you, lady—I love another.”

Ayasseshas stretched her arms overhead and yawned, as if weary. “Well, this has been a fascinating conversation. I am always willing to listen to talk of love…so ethereal a subject…and you are quite the most pompous man I have ever met. But now, wetlander, you will fornicate with me, and I shall be satisfied with nothing less than total exhaustion. If you are unable to rise to the occasion, I have means to assist you.” She reached for a goblet on the table.

“It makes tall tree grow in forest?”

She smiled, showing those protruding incisors again. “Usually I reserve it to blow on embers—for maximum effect, you understand—but in your case it will evidently be required to ignite the tinder. Drink, guest!”

I thought of my wild frenzy when Misi gave me such a potion, and the memory of how I had treated her shamed me anew. I could guess that the brew might be dangerous to me, but I had survived before, and I would have no compunction about being rough with Ayasseshas, even had her bodyguard not been standing by the door. What man could resist a chance to experience again that firestorm of ecstasy, passion magnified and prolonged beyond endurance and farther yet? For the first time, the potential of the situation began to arouse some reaction in me. Of course that did not escape Ayasseshas’s notice.

“And if I refuse to drink?”

She leaned very close. “I will persuade you.” Her dark eyes gazed unblinkingly into mine, and I felt a cool hand slither gently up my thigh.

My heartbeat had begun to rise, yet I returned her steady gaze. “How?”

“Um-oao will sit on your legs, Ah-uhu will hold your arms, and I shall pull your testicles down to your knees.”

Some truths are self-evident. For a long silent moment we were eye to eye, while her fingers continued their encouragement. “That would be a convincing argument,” I said. “Your logic is inescapable.”

“It has never failed. Bottoms up, lover!”

I took the goblet and drained it, wincing at the familiar foul taste.

Ayasseshas smiled and released me. She leaned back on her piled cushions and wriggled herself comfortable. “Proceed when ready, man.”

“It takes a moment or two,” I said. “So while we wait, tell me what a spinster does with a wetlander. I truly do not know, lady.”

That surprised her. “Indeed? I thought you were being courageous. You are merely ignorant?”

“I told you. I am a herdman. We are expected to be ignorant.”

“You were serious with all that talk of love? Astounding! Well, do you know how silk is made?”

My heart was pounding wildly now and my belly was a furnace. It did not feel quite the same as the time before, though.

“No,” I said. My eyelids were prickling.

“Silk,” said Ayasseshas, “is—How do you know it takes a moment or two?”

“I’ve had it before.”

“No!” She sat up, staring. “You lie!”

I could not speak; my throat was too constricted. A strange throbbing filled my head, and my lips seemed to be swelling and turning outward. I could barely keep my eyes open, so swollen were the lids now. Vaguely I could hear Ayasseshas screaming for her guards, and then I sank down into a thick blackness. I was trying to vomit but I could not even breathe. Other people had invaded the room and were clutching at me. I roused briefly as something hard was forced down my throat, and I knew that death was very near.

—4—

IT WAS NOT I WHO DIED, though; it was the giant Ah-uhu.

Much of what happened I learned later from young Quetti. Restless, suffering, unable to settle, he had returned to stand in his favorite place outside Ayasseshas’s door, as close to his beloved as he could be without annoying her. Any other would have been chased away by the guards, but a wetlander was precious and had privilege. When Ayasseshas started screaming for aid, when Um-oao went racing off to fetch Othisosish, when many others were flocking freely in and out of the palace, then Quetti drifted inside also to watch.

The long-ago saint, Issirariss, in his treatise on the virgin’s web, had noted that it was dangerous. He did not mention that a second dose is guaranteed to be fatal. The body can not twice withstand such maltreatment, and even a tiny trace of the drug will provoke a reaction quick and deadly. I may be the only man who has ever survived it.

My survival was due entirely to Othisosish, Ayasseshas’s resident medicine man. The oldest person in the settlement, he was also the only one not bound to her by the imprinting effect of the virgin’s web. She had his loyalty without it, for he was her father. Um-oao was sent for Othisosish. Luckily for me, he found him at once and brought him and his bag of magics back at a gallop, bearing him bodily like a child.

By that time my face had turned black, Quetti said, but Othisosish rammed a tube down my throat to give me air. Then he applied the venom of the yellow log snake. It is a tiny but deadly serpent, whose bite is almost always fatal. The venom can be extracted from the poison glands, and in very small amounts it is a potent physic, but to slaughter the snake and make the extraction takes time. There was no time, so Othisosish used the only other means available to him. No swampman could be worth as much as a wetlander, and Ah-uhu died to serve his beloved. The snake was then applied to my arm for a second bite. Even that may sometimes kill, but I was lucky. My recovery was as miraculously speedy as the onset of the symptoms. I found myself alive, suspended upside down by Um-oao while I vomited out blood and Ayasseshas’s love potion all over her precious rugs.

By the time I was capable of speech, some sort of order was returning. Ah-uhu’s body had been removed, and men were busily cleaning up the mess. Others stood around, nervously watching Ayasseshas as she strode to and fro, screaming curses. She had not thought to dress herself, but they would all have watched her anyway. Quetti lurked in a corner, shrouded in his long burnoose, unnoticed or merely ignored.

The spinster stopped her pacing to come and stand over me as I lay sprawled on cushions. My throat was raw, my swollen right arm smoldered, and my heart hammered strangely. I had never felt more ill in my life.

“He will live?” she demanded.

“He will live,” Othisosish replied. He was behind me and I had not seen him, but I was not paying much attention to anything. “He will be as good as new very shortly.” He cackled. “Let him rest—he will be little use in bed for a while now.”

“He wasn’t before,” the spinster said. “How do you feel, wetlander?”

I croaked wordlessly.

“Tell me about this woman you love, the one less fair than I.”

That mention of Misi cut through my nausea and giddiness. I thought how wonderful it would be to have her enfold me once more in her great arms, to hug me as she had done before when I was sick. “Trader,” I whispered.

Ayasseshas knelt at my side to take my hand. “Describe her.”

I was still much too befuddled to work out why the spinster should be interested in Misi, but not so confused that I could not sense danger. “Beautiful, too.”

“Old? Young?”

“Just…beautiful,” I mumbled, being cautious.

“Shisisannis, come here!”

“My Queen?” The burly young snakeman appeared in my foggy field of view and then knelt opposite Ayasseshas on the other side of me. Earlier I had heard her send him off to bed like a child, but he had apparently been summoned back.

“Did you see any trader women when you picked up this rubbish?”

Serpents twisted as he grinned. “I saw two. There was an old fat one in brown and a younger one in a green dress, driving the wagon.”

“Which one do you love, Knobil?”

“Young one… Pula.”

Ayasseshas smiled grimly. “Go and fetch her in haste, Shisisannis my champion. The wagon will not have gone far, and a blind man could follow that trail.”

“They may have joined up with other wagons, Goddess. There were eight men there.”

“No matter. Bring this Pula to me as fast as you can.”

I sighed with relief. My instincts had been correct.

Shisisannis looked me over as though planning how best to skin me, and then he smiled. “There will be a fight, of course. Angels may hear of it… I shall slay all the witnesses.”

“No!”

He chuckled. “The fat one is the one you want, Majesty. He cried out to her, and she said he was a great lover.”

“Ah, Shisisannis, my joy!” Ayasseshas leaned across me to touch her tongue to his cheek. “You are wise as well as courageous, crafty as well as loyal, valiant and virile, also. When you return, you shall replace poor Ah-uhu as my guard.”

“Majesty!”

“And since you will have a fight anyway, why not have a good one? Take all the canoes and as many men as they will hold. Return my silk and anything else of value that catches your eye. You bring the fat woman here at once. The others can follow later, when they are loaded.”

“It will be a joy to me, my Queen. We shall burn the wagons and slaughter the beasts, of course.” He rubbed a tattoo thoughtfully. “What about the men? Trader men are small, but quite pale.”

Ayasseshas laughed and patted his thigh. The two of them were obviously enjoying planning their massacre, as excited as children. I rattled my fuddled brains in vain, searching for some way to save Misi or to distract the spinster.

“Trader men are small,” the spinster agreed, “but very fast! Of course, if you manage to trap any that look healthy, bring them, but I expect that they will all be off over the hills as soon as they see you. Do not pursue. You could never catch them.”

“As you command, my Goddess, my Queen.”

She clasped his big hand. “Be careful, lover, and hurry back. You will then be with me always.”

“Lady!” I wailed. “Do not do this, I beg!” My throat burned with every word. “Spare the traders and I will do whatever you ask of me.”

“Will you indeed?” Ayasseshas shook her head. “You will do what I want, yes, but only if I hold this trader sow as hostage.”

“No!” I forced myself to sit up, although my belly squirmed with nausea. “I swear I will obey you, and be loyal, and serve you.”

“But you don’t know what I require of my followers, do you, Knobil? You said you did not know.”

“No, but whatever it is, I will do it, if only you will leave the traders alone.”

“Quetti!”

Men backed away uneasily. Shisisannis rose and stepped aside as the brown-shrouded figure floated forward.

“Lady?”

“Show him your babies, Quetti, my dear. Show him the little ones you bear for me. Teach this ignorant herdman how silk is made.”

In silence Quetti opened his hood and threw it back to reveal his face. He stared wanly at me, and I thought that the shadow of pain around his pale blue eyes was even darker than before. There was a lump of white jelly adhering to his cheek, an ugly slug shape as big as a man’s finger.

Seeing that I still did not understand, he smiled lopsidedly, unfastened his robe, and held it wide. Some of the other twelve silkworms he was pasturing were not visible, but I saw enough of them, and enough of what they were doing to him, to understand at last.

Had my throat permitted, then, I am sure I should have screamed. As it was, I made a terrible scene, blubbering and pleading in a frantic whisper that changed nothing. My weeping continued even after Shisisannis and most of the other men had departed on their mission of death and pillage.

Returning from her farewells at the door, Ayasseshas scowled at me in disgust. “Um-oao?” she said. “Othisosish said he should rest. Take him over to the pens and tether him. He is of no use here.”

“And seed him, Majesty?”

“Why not? Yes! He is pale enough to get started. And hurry back, big bull. I am much in need of loving.”