The Moghul Page 10

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The dream was more vivid than reality, intensely colored andastir with vague forms that drifted through his mind's ken, appearingthen fading. The room seemed airless, a musk-filled cell of gilded bluepanels and gold brocade. Guarded faces hovered around and above, theireyes intense yet unseeing, distant as stained-glass masks of cathedralsinner and saint.

  A fingertip brushed his cheek, and with its touch the room gloried in apowerful fragrance of saffron. Then a hand, floating unattached, gentlyremoved his doublet; another slid away his mud-smeared breeches.

  He was naked.

  He looked down as though from afar at the texture of chest and thigh,and he wondered dimly if they were his own. Then other hands . . . andsuddenly he was immersed in a sea whose shores were white marble, whosesurface sheened with oil of the rose. Translucent petals driftedrandomly atop the crests. Hands toured his frame, discovering everytightened nerve, while powdered sandalwood enveloped his hair and bearduntil he seemed lost in a fragrant forest.

  As suddenly as the sea had come it drew away, but now there weresteaming wraps tingling with astringent orange and clove, and hedrifted through a land of aloe balm and amber.

  The room dissolved into semi-darkness, until at last only a single faceremained, a woman with eyes round and moist and coldly dark. Her lipswere the deep red of betel, while her hair was coal and braided in askein of jeweled tresses. A faceted stone sparkled on her left nostril,and heavy gold rings swung gently from each ear. Henna-red nipplespressed erect against her diaphanous blouse, and between her breastsclung a garland of pearls. The heavy bracelets on her wrists and herupper arms glistened gold in the flickering candlelight.

  As he studied her eyes, they seemed locked into his own, and betrayedno notice of his body. He sent his voice through the dream's carpetedchambers, but his words were swallowed in dark air that drew out theirsound and washed it to thin silence. In a final, awkward futility hestruggled to free himself from the velvet bolster.

  But gently she pressed him back.

  "What would you have, my love? Sweet _bhang _from my hand?"

  A cup found his lips, and before he knew he had taken more of theincendiary green confection. Its warmth grew slowly into a pale lightthat shimmered off the gilded panels and then coalesced into therainbow now pivoting pendulum-like above him, a glistening fan ofpeacock feathers swayed by a faceless, amber-skinned woman.

  His gaze returned to the eyes, and again he searched for sound. Thencame a voice he recognized as his own.

  "Who are you?"

  "You may call me Kali. Others do. It's a name you would not understand.But can you understand that love is surrender?" The words coiled abouthis head, coruscating and empty of meaning. He shook them away andwatched as she brushed a strand of hair from his face. With that simplemotion, her nipples traced twin heliotrope arcs across the gossamerscreen of her blouse. He examined her in disbelief, unable to findwords.

  "When my lover lies silent, I do as I choose."

  Deftly she uncoiled the white silk sash from around her waist and in asingle practiced motion bound it over his eyes. The room vanished. Inthe dream's sudden night he grew intensely aware of touch and smell.

  Commands came in an alien tongue, and he felt his breast and thighsbrushed lightly by a new, pungent fragrance.

  "We have cloaked you in petals of spikenard, to banish the sight ofyour unshaven body. A _feringhi _knows so little of what pleases awoman."

  He felt a light brush across his parted lips, and then her eyelashes,stiffened dark with antimony, trilled a path downward over his skin, tohis nipples. The hardened lashes stroked each nipple in turn with rapidflutters, until the skin tightened almost to bursting. An excruciatingsensitivity burned through him, but still the lashes fluttered,determinedly, almost unendurably, until his aroused tips touched theaching portals of pain. Then he sensed a tongue circle each nipple inturn, searching out the one most ripe.

  He felt her kneel above him, surrounding him with open thighs thatclasped his chest. The room fell expectantly silent. Then, as anunknown syllable sounded somewhere above him, he felt the nipple of hisright breast seized in the lock of a warm, moist grasp. The surroundingthighs rocked gently at first, but slowly increased their rhythm intime with the sound of breath. Suddenly he felt her body twist lightlyand another tip, hardened as that on his chest, began to trace thenipple's swollen point. Her thighs were smooth and moist as she pressedin with spiraling, ever more rapid intensity. He found himself deeplyconscious of her rhythms and the hard cadence of breath. He reached forthe strength to rip the silk from his eyes, to end the dream'stantalizing dark. But strength was not there. Or time.

  Before he could stir, he sensed the hardened tip shudder. Again a grasptook his nipple and worked it with measured spasms, until the room'saustere silence was cut by her sharp intake of breath, timed to match asingle insistent contraction that seemed to envelope the whole of hisbreast. He felt her seize his hands in her own, and although he couldsee nothing, in his mind there grew a vision of her eyes at thatmoment. Then there came a sound, partially stifled in her throat, butnot before it had found the gilded walls and returned, annealed to aglassy relic of release.

  He felt her slowly withdraw, but then her mouth took his breast, tillit had drawn away the musk. At last, perhaps to signify repletion, shelightly brushed his lips with the tip of her tongue.

  "You have pleased me." Her voice was quiet now, almost a whisper. "Nowwe will please each other."

  A hand worked at his loins, methodically applying a viscous, harshlyscented oil.

  "Would you could see with my eyes. The _lingam _of the fabled Shiva wasnever garlanded such as this, or anointed so lovingly."

  Then her voice turned harsh as she spoke short staccato commands in anunknown tongue. Bangles sounded and silk rustled as the room emptied.Now he caught a new scent, the harsh smell he remembered from the boxthe governor had offered.

  "I will tell you my secret." She whispered close to his ear. "There isno more exciting way to experience the ecstasy of love than with_affion_, the essence of the poppy. But I have a way to receive it noone else knows. It is like the burst of a lightning stroke. Its powerenvelopes the senses."

  He felt her smooth a thick paste along the sides of his phallus, andsensed a tingle as she clasped it carefully with both hands. Again shemoved above him, but curiously there was no touch of her body. Only thepresence of her scent.

  A tight ring seemed to circle his flesh, and he felt the weight of herrounded buttocks slide down onto his thighs.

  He startled upward in shock and disbelief. Never will I . . .

  "You must lie still, my love. In your surrender, only I may have mywill."

  She began at once to move above his thighs, and again muted soundsstruggled stillborn in her throat. With deliberate regularity herrhythm mounted, while an overwhelming sensation spread upward throughhis body. Slowly he felt his new _Resolve_ slipping from him.

  The convulsions started in his lower thighs, as muscles tightenedinvoluntarily. And then the precipice grew near and he was at its edgeand he was falling. He felt the surge, as though drawn out by the twistof her buttocks. Then again and again, each spasm matched by her own asshe worked to envelop him completely. He was scarcely aware of hernails fixed in his breasts. At that instant he seemed to drift apartfrom his body and observe mutely as it was consumed by its ownsensations. Until numbness washed over him, stilling his sense.

  As he lay in exhaustion his mind sorted through her words, and in thedream's darkness he vowed to take her again. The next time, it's youwho'll surrender, woman called Kali. To my will. And you'll find outthe meaning of surrender.

  But his thoughts were lost among the gilded panels as she pulled thesilk from his eyes and quietly whispered something he did notunderstand. In that instant he thought he saw where a tear had staineda path across one cheek. She looked at him longingly, then touched hislips with her own for a long moment before slipping quietly into thedark.
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  The dream dissolved in sleep. And she was gone. . . .