Books by Maggie Shayne (321 page)

“It is the custom that this be applied by a eunuch,” she whispered, her voice nearly gone now. She forced her legs to part. Aahron closed his eyes respectfully as he dipped the brush again and brought it out, dripping, to stroke a path in her most private places. Three times he dipped the brush and painted her with it. And finally he said, “It is done.”

Nidaba opened her eyes, felt her face burning, and was glad to see that Aahron had turned away from her. Good of him to think of doing so. He fussed with the jars on the tray, capping and righting them. And then he went to the corner, where a wooden chest sat alone, and he drew it closer, opened its lid, and said, “The costume of the sacred dance of Inanna.”

She nodded, knowing the contents. She had studied the tale of Inanna’s descent. She had learned the dance. As a priestess it was a part of her duties to know these things. He pawed through the box’s contents as the honeyed wine that coated her slowly dried to shining hardness.

Finally, Aahron held out a hand. “Come.”

She took the hand he offered and let him draw her to her feet. And when she was standing he took the items out of the chest one at a time. The crown of the Goddess, a ring of gold with elaborate stones affixed to its face, he placed upon her head. A necklace of lapis lazuli stones he tied around her throat. He encircled her waist with the girdle of purity, which was little more than a golden belt with chains of precious stones dangling from it, shorter at the outside, longer at the center—just long enough to hide her honeyed woman’s charms from view. And finally, the twin
nunuz
stones. These were small oval stones, luminous and multicolored, each suspended from a tiny chain, at the end of which was a small, spring-controlled metal clasp.

Aahron looked at her wide eyes, and she saw sympathy in his. He squeezed the clasp so that it opened its tiny teeth, then placed it on his own fingertip and released it, letting it bite down. Holding his finger up, the clasp attached, the chain and
nunuz
stone dangling from it, he said, “It pinches only a little, and the weight of the stone is not so very much.”

She nodded and closing her eyes held her arms out to her sides. “Affix them as you must, Aahron.”

He cleared his throat and stood very close to her. She could feel him there. And then the teem of the tiny clasp closed on her breast, right at the nipple. They bit into her enough to make her gasp, though not in real pain. But when he took his hand away, the weight of the stone tugged at her nipple, and she could only bite her lip in bittersweet anguish as he affixed the second stone in the same manner.

As she tried to accustom herself to the sudden throbbing awareness and constant tugging at the tips of her breasts, there was a voice at the door. “Time is short!” Lia called. “The others are at the palace already.”

“We are nearly finished,” Aahron called. “Only a moment more.”

Nidaba trembled, and every movement set the stones to dancing and pulling at her. But Aahron’s gentle smile soothed her. He reached into the chest to begin pulling out the multicolored veils, all silken, which he began to drape artfully about her body. “There is much I need to tell you, Nidaba. Much you do not know about yourself. What and who you truly are.”

“What can you know of me that I do not know of myself?”

He arranged the first veil about her face, covering her nose and mouth. The next two he draped ‘round her shoulders, to cover her breasts. “I know that you are immortal, my lady.”

She blinked down at him as he bent to suspend two more veils from the girdle of purity in the back to shield her buttocks, and another in front. The final veil was knotted at her wrist and hanging freely from it. Its use would come later, should the king desire to bind her as the Goddess had been bound during her time in the Underworld.

“Immortal? There is no such thing! What foolishness.”

“It’s true,” he whispered. “You cannot die—well, not easily, at least.”

Nidaba shivered even though she laughed at his farfetched tales. There was something about his words that touched a chord in her, and reverberated deeply. But then the door opened, and Lia stepped into the room. “It is time,” the priestess said.

Nidaba hesitated, glancing at Aahron.

“It will be all right,” he told her. “And we will talk again ... later.”

“Nidaba. Come on, now, it’s all right. Calm down.” Nathan watched her thrash in the bed, her head twisting from side to side on the pillows as her fists clenched the blanket and sheets and her feet kicked at the covers.

He leaned close to her and put his hand on her cheek to keep her head still, but he was careful, remembering what had happened the last time she’d become this agitated. He could see the rapid movement behind her closed eyelids, and he sensed her need to escape from the dreams that plagued her.

“Nidaba. Come on, stop fighting it. It’s time to wake up.”

The restless movements stilled all at once.

“Open your eyes,” he whispered. “Come on, Nidaba. Open them.”

The long lashes shielding her eyes fluttered, then fluttered again, and finally, slowly, they lifted. Her eyes were blank. She stared past him at some invisible spot in space.

“Look at me.”

She didn’t so much as blink.

“Nidaba, look at me.” He held up his finger, trying to put it in the spot at which she stared so intently. Then slowly he brought his hand to his face, and amazingly, Nidaba’s huge blue-black eyes followed it. She stared at him, and the dazed, unfocused quality faded as that gaze sharpened. Her brows drew together, and her lips moved, but barely a sound came out.

“It’s all right,” he said, and quickly filled a glass with water from the pitcher on the nightstand. He held it to her lips as he lifted her head from the pillows. She drank. And drank some more. When he took the glass away, she came off the pillows, placing a hand over his to pull the water back to her, and drank still more. Water dribbled down her chin, wet the front of her nightdress, and still she drank. She drained the glass, and only then did she release his hand, staring down at it as she did, no doubt aware of the tingle of energy that had jumped and crackled between them when they had touched.

He reached for a tissue to dry her face. But she was already wiping it dry with the sleeve of her nightgown. She sat up in the bed, looking around the room, examining every corner, every piece of furniture, every lamp and drapery and square foot of carpet, all in dead silence.

The tension stretched tighter, and finally he could take it no more. “Do you know who you are?” he asked her softly.

Her head turned, her dark gaze coming back to him. “Yes,” she said at last.

“Good, good. Tell me your name.”

Those eyes narrowed. “You know my name,” she said in a voice so deep he thought it sounded like an echo from beyond the grave. She looked away once more, scanning the room.

“Yes, that’s right. I do. I just want to be certain you do. So ... please, tell me, who are you?”

Her head snapped back again, eyes narrow and fierce. “I am the woman you lied to. The woman you betrayed. The woman you tried to murder, Eannatum. I am the woman who will make you pay for your past sins if it is the last thing I ever do.”

He recoiled instinctively, backing away as if she’d struck him. Then he stood still, not believing the power of the hatred he saw blazing from her eyes. “Then you
do
remember—my name, at least. Nidaba, I don’t know what you think I did to you, but—”

“Think? What I
think?”
She flung back the covers, swung her legs out of the bed, and surged to her feet, only to sink floorward fast.

Nathan lunged forward, gathering her to him before she could hit the floor. He held her close, and she leaned into him, hands pressed to the front of his shoulders, face lying weakly on his chest.

“What have you done to me, Natum? Why am I so weak? My knees feel like water, my head... swimming.”

His throat went dry. “You think
I
did this to you?”

Her head lifted, eyes meeting his, searching them, mistrusting him. “Is it poison?”

His hands tightened around hers. “For the love of the Gods! Of
course
it isn’t poison. Nidaba, I found you in a hospital. You’d been drugged, your doctor attacked. Killed. Perhaps by someone who was after you. I broke the law to take you away from that place, and I brought you here to protect you and to try to make you well again.”

In silence she contemplated all he had said before replying at last. “You’re a liar.”

She said it flatly, no expression on her face, no inflection in her tone. As if it were a simple fact, and one that caused no reaction at all in her. As if it were something she had accepted long ago.

He sighed in disgust and eased her into the chair where he had been sitting only moments before. “Fine. Believe what you will. Whether you like it or not, Nidaba, you’re stuck here with me for the moment. Once you get your strength back, you can do what you want. But until then, you’re dependent on me.”

She raised her chin, her eyes narrowed to mere slits and shifted rapidly as they scanned his face. “I
always
do what I want, Natum. And I’ve never been dependent on anyone. Nor will I.”

“I hope you’re not expecting me to argue with you. You’re in no shape to fight with me right now.” And besides, he thought, fights with Nidaba were seldom won. He turned away from her, tugged back the covers of the bed and looked at the damp sheets. Damp with her sweat and her tears. His jaw tight, he began peeling them off the bed.

She watched him the way a cat watches a mouse as he tossed the sheets aside. They landed in a white heap near the door. Then he walked into the bathroom, feeling her eyes on his back all the way. He took a clean set of linens from the closet and brought them back into the bedroom. Still her gaze burned into him. Ignoring it, he began remaking the bed.

“Do you think,” she asked very slowly, “that all of this will absolve you of your guilt? Nothing can do that.”

“You have no clue about the state of my conscience, Nidaba, so don’t pretend to.”

“Are you saying you
feel
no guilt? That what you did to me was not a crime worthy of hell’s hottest fires?”

He looked up from the smoothly tucked sheets. “I don’t believe in hell. You know that. Neither do you.”

He jerked the blankets roughly back into place.

“Oh, I believe in hell, Eannatum. I’ve
been
there.”

Her froze at her words, then slowly, he turned to face her, searching her eyes. “What... happened to you, Nidaba?”

Her eyes were cold. Colder than he had ever seen them. “It has been over four millennia, Natum. A great deal has happened to me. But none of it more terrible than the crimes you yourself perpetrated.”

“You are wrong. Whatever you think I did to you, Nidaba, you’re misinformed ... or confused.”

She skewered him with her gaze. “I know what I know,
Your Highness.
I am not insane.”

“I thought you were dead,” he whispered. “Do you realize that? All this time, I thought you were dead.”

“And I
hoped
you were. But you live.” She lowered her eyes. “I had heard you were murdered in your bed, but of course, not whether the killer had taken your heart.”

“She tried.”

“She?” Nidaba asked, looking up at him again. Then slowly, a smile spread across her face. “Do not tell me your bitch-queen was a Dark High Witch all along?”

“No. She only aspired to be.” He stared at her in silence for a long moment, seeing a surprised expression cross her face. “Nidaba... the Gods know we have a great deal to talk about, you and I. Four thousand years have passed, but even before, there were things you didn’t know. Many, many things. Give me the benefit of the doubt, will you?”

She snapped her head away. “Never.”

“You loved me once,” he said, his voice soft. “And I... Look, I only brought you here to protect you. If I had wanted to harm you, I would have done it by now. God, when I saw you in that place where they had you locked up, I—”

She held up both her hands, and he went silent. “You are right, Natum. The past is dead. What has been done cannot be undone by telling a revised version of the tale. So let us discuss it no more. I am dizzy with hunger. I need food. This penance you seem so determined to pay, does it extend to feeding me?”

“It’s not a penance,” he said. “But of course I’ll feed you. I’ll get you something right away. But first, Nidaba, I want to know what has happened to you.”

She blinked rapidly at him, brows up, a sarcastic mannerism of hers he had always found enchanting. “I will starve to
death
in the time it would take to tell you what has happened to me in the past four millennia.”

“That’s not what I meant.” He sighed, pushing a hand through his hair. “They said you jumped from a rooftop in Manhattan, Nidaba. You revived in an ambulance, broke an attendant’s arm. They sedated you, and you, naturally, became catatonic, so they transferred you to a mental hospital and kept you there, tranquilized into a state of nothingness.”

Her sarcasm vanished. Her face paled. “Drugs... have an exaggerated effect on our kind.”

“I know.”

“They had me ... imprisoned, you say?”

He bent lower to try to see her face, which was turned downward. “You were in a locked room and a strait-jacket.”

Her jaw tensed, and she raised her eyes. “Then I am glad I was drugged. Being held captive for the amusement of my captors has never been my favorite pastime.”

“You say that as if you speak from experience.”

She only stared at him, and an icy rage shivered through him as he thought of who might have held her, harmed her. He was going to have to find out exactly what had happened to her, and who was responsible. And then he was going to have to kill them. Slowly.

It felt odd, the rise of that murderous taste for blood. It was totally at odds with the man he thought he had become. Or was that simply the man he had been pretending to be? Because truly, his time without this woman in his life seemed less than genuine somehow. Like one long act, a way to kill time until she reappeared to turn his world inside out again.

Her stomach growled.

“I’ll get that food,” he said, and when he left the room, she didn’t say a thing to stop him.

He felt as if he were escaping some new, cruel form of torture as he stepped into the hall. To see her alive, awake, alert—and to see the hatred in her eyes, and hear her accusations—it was almost more than he could bear. And there was still the question of her mental state. She seemed perfectly lucid now. Perfectly sane, despite her wild accusations. But the young blonde woman who had come looking for her had mentioned insanity. Was Nidaba truly sane? Did she really believe the things she’d accused him of or was it part of some delusion?

“You look like the very living dead, Mr. King. Has there been some change in the patient?”

He sighed wearily as Lisette walked toward him through the hall. “She’s awake, and alert,” he said slowly. “I’m going to find Sheila and see about getting her something to eat, and—”

His words were cut off by an ear splitting shriek from somewhere far below. Nathan’s head came up fast and his heart jumped. “Gods, that was Sheila!”

He told himself as he raced down the stairs that Sheila had in all likelihood spotted a mouse in the basement. But he knew better. Sheila didn’t panic at the sight of mice. And he could feel something emanating from her. Something horrible and dark.

He ran down the stairs, hit the bottom and raced through the house toward the back. The kitchen was back there, along with the nearest entrance to the basement, from whence Sheila’s cry seemed to have come. There was only one other, a hatchway door outside.

He reached the kitchen, and his blood went cold because Sheila screamed again, and he felt the horror, the despair in that sound, felt it down deep in his bones. Something was wrong. Horribly wrong.

And every cell in his body told him that whatever it was ... it was only the beginning.