Starfire Saga, page 32
I started for a moment, then got up and went to the window, standing and staring out at the storm, fascinated, as I had been by that first, gentler storm when I was in the tower of the Lewannee stonehouse. This storm was a very different one, creating kaleidoscopes of white and gray out of what might have been the sunset. Particles of white struck against the panes of glass, laying a base for the inevitable frost patterns which would follow in the sunlight after the storm cleared. The howl of the wind, and the violence of the ice beating on the window, in contrast with the calm and secure warmth of the house’s interior, was somehow exciting. I wasn’t sure why, but it transfixed me—so much wild power, so entirely uncontrolled.
Jemeret came up behind me and rested his hands lightly on my shoulders, his thumbs automatically massaging the muscles of my upper back. I realized that I was responding to the savagery of the storm in a nearly physical way, and suddenly, without his prompting it, I had turned under his hands, reached up for his face and pulled him down to me.
He circled me with his arms, as he had the first time we kissed, and the feelings built quite naturally, without augmentation, adding to the comfort and security of being inside and sheltered. We ended up on one of the couches, and I vaguely heard Numima give a squeak as she started to set the table, looked up and saw us. Jemeret laughed softly as his housekeeper scampered out of the room, moving much faster than she usually did.
That Severance Storm lasted only three days, which left us with two tendays until the start of Midwinter Song. I had successfully been the initiator all three nights. I suppose I should not have been astonished by the level of his response to me, but I was. One of the best things about Class C talent in a man is that he never has to worry about his sexual performance, and I sensed that Jemeret had not once in his life been uneasy about his ability. He was invariably wonderful, and sometime during the storm, I began to accept the fact that he found me wonderful, too, even when I reached for him first.
As soon as the storm blew itself out, Jemeret insisted on my going with him to confirm that everyone and everything had come through the weather. I was surprised to see that, instead of there being more snow on the ground, there was less. Jemeret explained that the violence of the winds scouring the inside of the bowl tended to move most of the snow against the slopes of the mountains and out of the village or the fields. The tivongs had already been let out of the sheds into the pens, and Sejineth and his workers were gathering the dung amassed during three days of forced enclosure. It would be carted to the potting sheds and made into fertilizer or soil. Shenefta waved a rake at me as we went past.
Jemeret’s mother would be coming to dinner that night, her previously scheduled visit having been forestalled by the storm. Numima was bustling around to get everything ready, and I was nervous, but trying to ignore it. We went on to the storehouses to confirm their integrity, for they held the tribe’s winter supply of food, except for the fresh meat the guards would gather on hunting expeditions. Once that was completed, we went through the village to ensure the safety of all the houses. One house had had some shingles blown off, but it was already being repaired before we reached it.
All in all, by early afternoon Jemeret was satisfied with the condition of his tribe, and he sent me back to our house while he went to talk with Gundever about arranging a hunting party.
I had been watching for Tynnanna everywhere we went, but had not seen him. On my way back to the house, however, I spotted a moving, funy body against the white of the slopes on the shoulder of Harrilith, and I watched it draw close, wondering where he’d been. As he approached, I realized he was carrying a fresh kill in his mouth. He danced alongside me, making certain that I noticed and was proud of him. He seemed taller to me than he had been, his ears now on more of a level with my shoulder, and I was glad I’d come to trust in his affection. Clearly, he had come through the storm well, though I couldn’t have imagined any living creature, exposed, surviving the violence of that weather without augmented talent.
We went back to the house together, and Tynnanna stayed outside until he had finished devouring the kill, then came up on the porch and banged on the door until I let him in. Numima clucked and wiped the floor after him as he stalked with dignity to the hearthside, lay down, and began washing himself to remove all traces of his recent carnage. When Numima had made certain the floor was spotless again, she returned to her bustling, trying to make the house more minutely presentable than it already was. The cooking smells issuing from the kitchen were even more attractive than usual, so I guessed she had outdone herself there, too. Housework and cooking had never been occupations to me before I saw Numima taking such pride in her ability to do them. They had been background tasks, unworthy of attention—other than, perhaps, contempt—until now.
“Are you nervous, my lady?” Numima asked me.
The question was a surprise. “Why would I be nervous?”
“My lord’s mare is a formidable woman,” Numima said with conviction. “She made certain he challenged Brenadel and became chief, so we say she carried the legacy of the Lords Before until my Lord Jemeret was willing to take it up.” She seemed to see an infinitesimal speck of ash on the hearthstones beside the klawit, and, glaring at him, she hurried to wipe it up, as if she was afraid it would multiply if she did not. “She was not entirely approving when he returned with you, though of course she would never gainsay the stars’ choice for him. Who knows what would have happened if the braceleting had failed?”
And I said nothing, thinking, Who knows what might have happened if I hadn’t been sent here? I excused myself, leaving her cleaning an already immaculate room with such nervous energy that she almost infected me. I bathed, glad that Numima had thought to keep the fire built up under the water tank that provided our bathwater. Then I dressed in front of the bedroom fireplace, for the cold after a Severance Storm was intense. By the time I went back into the living area, Jemeret and Alissa were seated on the couch, drinking a golden liquid from goblets. Jemeret rose and went to the table to pour me a gobletful.
Alissa watched him with an amused expression, then looked at me, hesitating in the doorway. “Sit with me,” she said.
I went obediently forward and sank onto the couch, then looked at her. “What happens if you don’t approve of me?”
Her eyes—so like his in some ways—widened in surprise, and she said calmly, “My son is an adult and Lord of the Boru. It’s not for me to approve or disapprove of what he chooses to do.” She paused infinitesimally as Jemeret returned to the couch, holding out a goblet to me. “Or whom he chooses to do it to.”
Jemeret bent and kissed her cheek, then looked at me. “It’s me in general that my mare is warily approving, not you and me. It’s a characteristic of mares. You’ll see that when it’s your turn.”
The words were casual, but went through me like a bolt of electricity. I’d forgotten.
Alissa turned toward me as Jemeret settled on my other side, leaning inward as if to provide shelter for me with his chest and shoulders. “Am I to be a na-mare?” she asked.
I analyzed my body for a moment and relaxed with relief. “Not yet.” I had realized that, should I have become pregnant, I would have been sorely torn. I didn’t feel I was in any way ready to cope with having a baby, but I also knew that I had reached a point where I could not simply expel a fertilized egg—it would be half his, and I completely recognized that.
“I have no intention of impregnating Ronica until she wants me to,” Jemeret said quietly.
Alissa nodded, accepting the statement. I gathered, reflexively and hard, to stop the trembling that had sprung over me. He looked at me as I clamped down on my reactions, then sipped some of his wine.
“I’ve waited this long,” Alissa said. “A good fifteen years of patience. I suppose I can wait longer.”
Numima started putting dishes on the table. I heard myself ask Jemeret, “Why did you never have a child with Shantiah or—if there were others—with the others?”
Alissa got up and took her goblet with her to the table, complimenting Numima on the meal and asking her how this dish or that had been made. It didn’t put much distance between us, but it gave the illusion that she was leaving her son and me alone. It was an extremely gracious gesture, and I appreciated it, even as I waited for him to reply.
Jemeret seemed to weigh his answer, his eyes never leaving my face. “Yes, there were others, but they don’t matter now, and I trust you’re not fool enough to think that they do. None of them had enough power, for one thing, and for another, I didn’t love them. I might have had a child with Shantiah, but the Ilto ruined her for that.” He paused. “And then I would not have a child by a woman I had not braceleted, and the stars refused her when I asked.” His eyes glittered, almost warningly.
I knew that he was saying he would not have had a child without the blessing of the starfire on it. He had waited—fifteen years longer than he might have, according to Alissa—because he wanted to play for the highest possible stakes, because he wanted to unite the Samothen, and because he needed a woman of power to do it. If he had only known me when I had my full power—but I shut off that thought as ruthlessly as I had shut off the trembling.
“Not yet,” I said, almost a whisper.
“I know.” He took my arm and we joined his mother at the table.
After supper Alissa left, without kissing either of us. I could tell quickly that she was a woman unaccustomed to yielding to emotion, that, like so many people I had known in the Com and so few I had met here, she had fastened a veneer over her feelings and always kept it there. Before she left, she confirmed that she had indeed embroidered the bands that edged my talma for the Day of the Fire, and she fingered the exquisite material, glancing at Jemeret as if it had some meaning to them both.
Jemeret went with his mother when she bundled herself into her cloak and walked back to the house of women. I knew he’d also see to the guards before he returned. I put the talma away, then undressed, lay another log on the bedroom fire, put out the stanchion lights, and climbed naked into the huge, soft bed. The wind had come up outside, so I listened to its high-pitched moan until I drifted to sleep.
I awoke at the sound of movement in the room. The fire had burned down to mere embers, and Jemeret was undressing. He looked across at me, obviously aware that I was awake, and tossed his clothes onto one of the chairs by the fireplace. I watched the play of dim light on his muscles and thought his body beautiful in a way I’d never tire of. Wordlessly, he got into bed beside me, his hands already caressing me even before his mouth took mine. It was clear that tonight he was choosing to take control again, and I was both relieved and grateful. The depth and range of my response to him still surprised me; the speed with which my body signaled my readiness to receive him seemed altogether unreal.
He lay on his side beside me and lifted his mouth away, watching me closely. I felt him slide his hand between my thighs, and I closed my eyes, enjoying the caress. When he inserted fingers in both the openings at my body’s core, I gasped and twisted toward him, shaken by the crashing of sensation. In a strangely controlled voice he said, “Ronica, I want you to open your eyes.”
He had to repeat it, a little more harshly, before I could respond, but I finally managed to gather and force my eyes open. The second I had obeyed him, he moved his hand in a way that made me wrench and try to roll my face away, but he held me firmly in place. “Open your eyes,” he said again, “and this time raise your shields.”
The command was so unexpected that my eyes snapped open on their own. It had not occurred to me to shield my mind against him since the night he took it. With an effort, I dragged the shields up. The sensation in my body decreased instantly by what seemed a factor of ten, even though I knew he had not withdrawn his fingers.
“Let the shields down,” he said. They dropped instantly, and the rush of heightened arousal overwhelmed me again. Jemeret used his other hand and began both internal and external persuasions. I might have cried out; I know I moved uncontrollably against his hands.
“Raise your shields,” he said, his voice still steady.
It was much more of an effort this time, as if the sparks thrown off by his touches took up all the neural pathways I would have used myself, but I did it. Despite the fact that he continued caressing me, the feelings of excitement diminished at once, and dramatically. I still felt him, still felt the desire, but I could control my reactions and focus my eyes on his face.
“Good,” he said, nodding. “Now try to let down just enough of the shields to feel what you want to feel, but not to lose yourself in it.”
It was not a skill I had ever had to master. All my life it had been vitally important that I stay in control, and for me the alternative to being in control was being out of control. I tried to release only a little of the shields, but they slipped downward and I was overcome with feeling so intense that I clutched at his arms and bit his shoulder.
“All right,” he said thickly, his own control slipping away, “We’ll work on it later.”
After a time, as we lay side by side with my cheek on his chest, he stroked my tangled hair and asked, “Do you want to try the shields again?”
At that moment, I admit, I wanted nothing less. And to delay the acquiescence on my part, which had always been so much a part of our physical relationship, I asked, “Why is there such a dramatic relationship between the shields and the sensation?”
“You know,” he said, but continued anyway. “You know how the body works. No matter where the sensation originates, it ends up in the brain, but I’m already there, so I can create your pleasure both ways, where I touch, and—”
Without moving or touching anything but my hair, and despite the satiation I had just experienced, he flooded me with desire, using only the sting. It felt much like being shielded and physically manipulated. I liked it. It felt, I imagine, the way sexual desire feels to people who make love without the Class A reflex. Jemeret withdrew the sting.
“I want you to learn to retain part of the control when I’m inside you,” he said seriously. “It’s important that you begin to share the responsibility for every one of our sexual acts. I want you to learn to use your shields gradually. Right now, it’s all or nothing—either they’re fully deployed or fully absent. There are gradations of shield use, and you have to find them and become comfortable with them.”
From his tone, I knew it was almost vital, though I didn’t know why. It was not a concept with which I was familiar—I’d always used my shields for defense, and a defense only half activated was no defense at all. “I’ve never needed to do that,” I said softly.
“You’ve never controlled the shields at all,” he told me. “They are triggered reflexively when they snap up, and you push them down again to clear them. But you can practice choosing to slide them up, pausing anywhere along the spectrum.” He held me close as he spoke, his voice rumbling right over my ear. “Part of defending yourself is choosing the proper level of response, not just going all out. I want you to practice it while I’m gone.”
I tried to lift my head, surprised, but he held me tightly against him. “Gone?”
“I have to go out of the valley for three or four days,” he said, “and while I’d like to take you with me, I can’t. You’ll be fine here, and I’ll want to see some progress with the shields when I get back.”
I sensed that he would not answer questions, so even though I wanted to know where he was going and why, I didn’t ask. I had not been separated from him since my first days on this world, when I was in the hands of the Honish. Even when the Ilto abducted Shenefta and me, we were in their hands only a few hours. I was uncertain about the prospect of spending time away from him, of sleeping apart from him.
As if he read my mind, heard my doubts, even though I didn’t think he had, he repeated, “You’ll be fine here.”
I said nothing.
I felt his absence as keenly as I had felt his presence. The weather held, and I found things to do during the days. I wrote a lot in my journal; I played the nomidar; I visited with Variel and Gundever, and Shenefta, who took me once to her parents’ home for dinner. I went tramping in the hills at the shoulders of Marlith and Zuglith, with Tynnanna dancing around me and kicking up great quantities of snow. I worked out with the other warriors, for men and women practiced together here, on a field almost sheltered by the tivong sheds on one side and one of the large storehouses on the other. Shantiah was there, but we avoided each other, not even exchanging polite nods. Most of the men—Gundever, Wendagash, and Tuvellen most prominently—knew enough to keep us apart, usually at opposite ends of the field. And while Shantiah practiced largely with the other woman warriors, of whom there were seven, I was kept preoccupied by the men.
On the morning of what would have been the fourth day of Jemeret’s absence, I decided to take Rocky out for a ride. I hadn’t been on his back since we arrived at Stronghome, and I found I missed riding. It was one of the few things I had done all through my childhood and adolescence that I could also do here—that and the nomidar.
Sejineth and Shenefta were working in the sheds, feeding and watering the stock. Pepali and Lutamo were filling barrels with manure to be stored outside and freeze-dried. We talked for a few moments about the storm, and Lutamo, who had ambitions to be an artist as well as a tivong trainer, showed me some of the sketches he had made of the tivongs reacting to the violence outside the sheds, for during the storm he and Pepali had slept with the animals to keep them fed and watered. I praised his work honestly, and then we conjectured on how much time we would have before the next storm, an imprecise but grossly accurate calculation made from the length and severity of the one preceding.
