Silk Dreams - Songs of the North 3 (12 page)

“Not particularly.” He decided it would be safer to remain standing. If a man lowered his guard around this shield-maiden, he might well find his heart skewered.

Or his balls.

Her mismatched eyes glistened. He almost thought she was near tears, but dismissed that notion as fanciful. A she-spider sheds no tears over the males she consumes. Valdis broke off her intense stare and cast her gaze on the pebbled walkway.

“I was only trying to protect you,” she said in a whisper.

Erik snorted. “May the gods deliver me from such protection.”

“You don't understand.” She told him of the horrible disfigurement hidden by Chloe's veil and the story of the Greek woman's dismembered lover. “If we'd been caught that night, you would have suffered terribly,” Valdis explained. “I couldn't bear to see you hurt.”

“So you took it upon yourself to do the hurting,” he said with a wry grin. “I can take care of myself, Valdis. A Varangian could protect himself and his woman better than a Greek harpist.”

His woman.
Had he actually called her that?

He turned away from her lest she spell him with her eyes again. Erik paced around the fountain with restless energy.

“I had not thought of that.” Valdis fingered the folds of her palla. “You're right. Chloe's lover was no warrior.”

“No one will harm you as long as I breathe. We can lay aside the threat of someone lopping off your nose just now,” he said, determined to change the subject. “But the immediate problem is the one you've embroiled us in with your not-so-clever lies. You know full well I'm no rune-master. I can't teach you what I don't know.”

“Ah, but I can teach you.” She all but pounced upon the stylus and tablet at her side. “I already know runes.”

He cocked his head at her. The woman was full of surprises. “So you did more than love-spelling when you dabbled in
seid.”

She nodded enthusiastically. “Those who practice
seid
want us to believe there is malignant power in the symbols, but truly, they are benign.” She worked the tip of the stylus into the soft wax tablet. “If there is magic in runic writing, it is that sounds can be captured and turned into simple slashes to be understood by another. Look, this is your name.”

She pointed to each individual mark, voicing the separate sounds, then putting them together to speak his name. Then she handed him the writing implements. “Here. You try.”

His natural impulse was to shy away from anything smacking of
seid.
Old prejudices die hard. A man who could not prove himself on the field of combat often turned to
seid
as a means of acquiring power. Real men were revolted by the simpering
seid
practitioners.

And fearful at the same time. A curse could not be turned by a shield or a spelling undone by the stroke of an ax. No amount of armor would protect a man from a
seid
-master's ill-wish. The spiritual world was a shadowy realm, inaccessible to the warrior, unless one counted the madness of
berserkr.

He'd experienced that foray into the black world of the spirit intimately. The Rage had driven him to slay his brother without even being aware he'd done it until afterward. Even now, he had no clear recollection of the murder, only the bloody aftermath and his wife's keening sobs.

“Truly, Erik, there is no magic here,” Valdis said, her eyes sending mixed messages of light and dark. The violet one was clear and guileless, but the deep brown one had darkened to onyx. The pull toward her strengthened. If the woman believed there was no magic swirling about her, she was delusional.

Against his better judgment, he took the stylus from her hand.

For the rest of the day, Valdis led him through the maze of the
futhark,
the Norse alphabet. He mastered the individual sounds and the symbols that called them forth, but with the slowness of a snail's pace. More than once he was tempted to throw the tablet down in disgust.

“Really, you are doing quite well. We must walk before we run,” Valdis said as she peered over his shoulder to inspect his work. “Didn't you practice many hours before you learned to use the
gladius
of the Christians?”

Erik nodded with reluctance. The short sword favored by the Byzantines was a more subtle weapon than a Nordic ax and, at close range, just as lethal. Erik had sweated on the practice field with a wooden
gladius
for weeks before the hilt of a real one was placed in his big hand. He gripped the stylus tighter and tried again to copy the phrase Valdis had written for him.

“Have you deciphered the meaning yet?” she said with a feline smile playing about her lips.

“One thing at a time,” he grumbled as he faithfully reproduced the last slash. “Let me get it written first.”

Chloe joined them in the courtyard and Eric lowered the stylus, feigning reading in silence the message Valdis had carved in the soft wax.

“A thousand pardons for interrupting,” Chloe said with a graceful inclination of her head.

“We are nearly finished here, anyway.” If Erik hadn't known what desecration lurked behind her veil, he would have thought her a striking woman. Even if she was guilty of impurity, what kind of animal, he wondered, would disfigure a woman so horribly instead of just killing her outright? Christians were always carping on about the quality of mercy. If Chloe's scarred life were an example of that attribute, Erik thought mercy had little to commend it.

“What do you want?” he asked her.

“It is time for Valdis to begin the last stage of her lessons with me,” Chloe said.

The art of love,
Erik remembered. Harlot's tricks and cheats, feigned passion and cock-teases. Valdis was a virgin daughter of the North; even though he lusted after her himself, it made his blood boil to think of her being cheapened by such false carnal knowledge. Her passage into full womanhood should be made with a man who cared for her, who could teach her the mystic connection the act of love created between lovers. She should find the beauty and power of
inn mattki munr,
the mighty passion, with a man who loved her more than life.

After his failed marriage, Erik knew he was not the man to teach Valdis love. But he certainly wouldn't mind showing her the delights of the love couch.

Short of breaking his oath and stealing her away, there was nothing he could do to prevent Valdis from receiving a carnal education from Chloe. Damian was her legal master and if he wanted her trained as a whore, he was within his rights.

Erik's heart tightened like a fist in his chest. He dismissed Valdis with a wave, not trusting his voice to speak.

Valdis, however, suffered from no such difficulty. “Thank you for my instruction,” she said with a polite half bow. “Please read the last message with care to make sure I wrote it correctly.”

Then she turned and followed the much smaller woman from the courtyard with a bewitching roll of her hips.

“Read the message,” he muttered once he was able to tear his gaze from her disappearing form. He forced his concentration back on the tablet, where the slashes began to take shape as words in his mind.

If you . . .

He strained at the next set of words.

If you would make me
...

When the meaning became clear, he nearly dropped the tablet. He worked through the symbols again to be sure he was not mistaken.

If you would make me your woman, my door stands open. Come to me at moonrise.

Chloe led Valdis into the bathhouse, a white marble building separate from the main villa. The interior was spacious and the stone floors radiated heat from the hot air funneled beneath them through the hypocaust. A deep clear pool sent tendrils of steam into the air.

“Before a woman can please a man,” Chloe explained as she gathered her heavy dark hair in one hand and pinned it in a knot on top of her head, “she must know what pleases herself.”

“It would please me not to be sent to the bed of a strange man,” Valdis said stonily.

“Life gives us few choices, but one we always have is to choose joy, despite our circumstances,” Chloe said. “If you are to be an odalisque, a woman of the sacred womb, you must have your own source of joy, for your future master may take little interest in providing it for you.”

“And your source of joy was your lover?” Valdis asked, and was immediately sorry for it. A deep shadow passed behind Chloe's eyes.

“I am trying to teach you to take pleasure in all areas of life, not just your bed. Your joy must come from inside yourself,” Chloe said. “You must decide to enjoy every moment of your life, for it is fleeting and most uncertain. For example, this lovely bath. Is it not a delight to the senses? Are your eyes not pleased by the order and beauty they see? The patter of water into the base of the fountain calms the spirit, does it not? Does the scent of rose-water and jasmine not tickle your nose?”

Valdis inhaled deeply and smiled despite her determination not to cooperate with Chloe. The air was heavy with the sweetness of flowers, but Valdis suddenly realized that Chloe must not be able to smell them. “But you cannot—”

“No, I cannot,” she said with sadness. “But I see the petals and I remember their fragrance as one recalls the face of a loved one. As I told you before, do not judge a life by what is lost. After all, you too have lost much. Your home, your family, your freedom.” Chloe ticked off the list with relentless ease.

Valdis's mouth tightened into a hard line. Her family's abandonment of her was an ache that never quite stilled.

“And yet life can be full of joy.
If”
—Chloe paused for emphasis—“you choose for it to be.”

Valdis nodded slowly. That one choice gave her a measure of power in her powerless life. Perhaps that was why she'd made the choice to invite Erik to come to her. She had the power to accept the pleasure he offered. She'd been reared to regard the
Havamal,
the sayings of Odin, as the fount of wisdom by which to measure her life. Yet here was wisdom that rang truer in her ears than the dry homilies of the one-eyed All-Father. Even as a slave, Valdis could choose joy and it would be real.

“Teach me more,” she said.

“The act of love should be one of joy.”

“Even if it is not accompanied by true love?”

“True love is another subject altogether. We are speaking of joy now. Of course, the congress of a man and a woman is enhanced by love. Yet even without it, if the woman is skillful, a full measure of pleasure may still be found. The natural impulse of a man is quickness. They see something they want and they move to take it,” Chloe said. “It is the job of the woman not to stop him, but to slow him down. A rush to the prize diminishes its value. In the deferment of desire, its coals are stoked.”

“I don't understand,” Valdis said.

“Let the dance be your teacher,” Chloe said. “Did we begin with large movements?”

“No, slow and small.”

“Yes, and so should it be with a lover,” Chloe said. “Let us begin with the unveiling. Your master may wish to undress you himself. Some men do, but if he allows it, you may set the tone for your dalliance by how you reveal yourself to him. Imagine, if you will, that your master wishes you to dance for him while disrobing. How would you do it?”

Valdis's eyes widened. The idea of undressing before a strange man made her belly writhe like a ball of snakes. “I don't think I could.”

“Nonsense,” Chloe said. “I have heard the rumors. The master will see you freed if you comply with his wishes and complete the task he assigns. Do you not want your freedom?”

Valdis gnawed the inside of her cheek and nodded.

“Then wipe that pained expression from your face and use your imagination,” Chloe said. “One way a woman can wring joy from a forced match is to imagine. Banish the real man. Picture instead the man you could love. See him clear in your mind. Hold that thought and dance for him.”

Valdis squeezed her eyes shut, and immediately Erik's face came into focus. Could she love him? She couldn't say, but she had known little peace since that night in the garden when her body stirred to his. She'd relived each kiss, each touch a hundred times, till her body ached for release. When he said he was leaving, panic clawed at her belly. She was beginning to think he was the only one she could trust in this Byzantine household, the only one whose gruff, straightforward way of thinking she understood.

Besides, she also wanted to give him a chance to show her what pleasure they could share without taking her maidenhead and putting them both at risk. But love? She just didn't know. She only knew that if he came to her chamber at moonrise, she wouldn't send him away again.

But for now, she would use his image as Chloe commanded. His features were taut with the hunger she'd first seen in him at the slave market.

“Can you see him? Does he desire you?”

“Yes.” Valdis swayed a little, remembering the white-hot longing that robbed her of sleep after their last tryst.

“Then reflect that desire back to him as a piece of polished brass shows you your own face. Feel his heat. Let it burn you to your inmost place,” Chloe's voice urged with a rasp. “Now dance.”

Chloe began to beat time on the floor with her palms, and Valdis started to move. What had started as a lesson in joy became an exercise in longing. As Valdis performed the prescribed steps, she saw how natural it was to slide a thumb beneath her palla to bare her shoulder, how the dance was designed so she could send smoldering gazes at her imaginary lover as she slowly allowed part of her dress to drift down to expose her breasts.

Erik had seemed delighted with them. She thought she heard the echo of his growl of pleasure when he claimed her nipple.

She cupped her breasts in her hands and offered them up to her phantom man, the pink tips aching. She ran the pads of her thumbs around her nipples and they puckered with longing. In her imagination, Erik's mouth was upon them once more and she groaned with need.