The Shepherd Kings by Judith Tarr Read Free Book Online Page A

youths and
maidens, crowned with garlands, dancing in a long skein. The many lamps that
illumined them gave them the semblance of life, so that they seemed to move, to
toss their ringleted heads, to whirl in a shimmer of laughter.
    The living form amid them seemed less lively than they. It
was a single figure, seated on a low couch, hands resting quietly on knees. It
did not move, seemed not even to breathe. Only its eyes were alive. Dark eyes,
large in the narrow face, fixed on him with a fierce intensity.
    He knew that face; knew those eyes, and those high impudent
breasts, and that body in its tiered skirt and its embroidered vest. As if she
had only waited to be recognized, Iphikleia rose to face him. She held out her
arms.
    He moved toward her; but stopped, breathing light and fast.
What he had taken for armlets of ornate and subtle artistry had stirred and
roused and lifted narrow serpent-heads. Forked tongues flicked. Jeweled eyes
gleamed.
    Serpents in Egypt were sacred, but they were deadly—as gods
could all too often be. No priest or priestess would dare to wear them like jewels,
or stroke them as they coiled about her arms, and smile over their heads at
Kemni.
    That smile was sweet and terrible. Whatever fear had roused
in him, suddenly was gone. In its place was a white and singing exultation. It
came from nowhere and everywhere. It took sustenance from her eyes.
    The snakes coiled and slid up her arms, over her shoulders,
down about her breasts. They circled them, lifting them briefly even higher, as
if to say, See! See how beautiful! And
they were beautiful, as beautiful as the moon.
    Twin moons. Twin goblets carved of alabaster, tipped with
carnelian. The serpents left them, perhaps with regret, down the sweet curve of
her belly, girdling her tiny waist and the sudden flare of her hips. She had,
somehow, forsaken her garments. She stood all naked, like an image in ivory.
Her only covering was jeweled serpents.
    They joined about her middle, circled it and settled and
were still; save one that, wicked, dipped its head down and for an instant, too
swift almost to see, kissed the dark-curled thatch that shielded her sex.
    Kemni’s breath caught. He would have given—oh, worlds—to be
so blessed. But he could not move. He dared not. He had known when he saw her
in the waking world that she was more than simple woman. That would have been
difficult to mistake, once he had seen her appear out of the shadows of Memphis
and take the ship with the sure hand of one who owned it.
    But this was more. This was a thing of gods and mysteries.
Whatever his manly parts cried out to him to do, and they cried out most
piteously, his wiser spirit knew that whatever he did, he did only by her
sufferance.
    She beckoned. Her smile had warmed to burning. Now , she said, he thought, the air
itself murmured.
    He did not take her. She was not one to be taken. He approached
her as one approaches the shrine of a goddess, bowed down before her,
worshipped as she should justly be worshipped. He drank her like wine. He
folded his arms about her and sank down to a floor that had, in the way of
dreams, become as soft as water.
    They floated there, drifting on a warm and surging tide. She
opened to him. He plunged deep. She sighed like a wave drawing back from the
shore. A wave as warm as blood. He sank into it, deeper and deeper, stronger
and stronger, hotter, more urgent, till all the world had shrunk to that single
awareness.
    It narrowed to a point, a pinprick of blinding light; and
burst, and blazed, and consumed him.

IV
    Kemni woke in the dark, rocked still on the wave that had
borne him in the dream. It faded inescapably into waking: the dimness of his
own space under the deck, his bunk under him and the planking of the deck just
above. From the quality of the dark, it was still night without, but Dancer had come alive—softly, quietly,
but unmistakably. Men ran hither and thither, voices called not far above a
whisper.
    He crept out