'This weapon,' she said, touching him, 'is used as skillfully as you used your sword. You will stay with me, Duwan the Wanderer.'
'High Mistress,' he said, 'I am honored, but my business—'
'Is to please Elnice of Arutan,' she said, with a hint of metal in her soft voice. 'Now we will eat.'
He found that a few cups of the fruit juice stilled the throb in his head. The bed was soft, the female soft and her commands irresistible.
'How long will you allow me to stay?' he asked, putting the question as tactfully as he could.
'Until I cool that fire in you,' she smiled. 'You act as if I am your first female.'
He felt heat in his face, but he did not admit that she was right. 'Am I so different from others?' he asked.
'Some can make it through one night without cooling,' she said. He resolved to make his own fire dim, and to his chagrin it roared higher. Her touch was enough. The next morning he knew that he would stay as long as she would have him, for his body controlled his mind now.
'Elnice,' he said, 'I have two pongs at the inn. I would send for them. Can you house them here?'
'Don't concern yourself with two pongs. They'll be taken to the pens.'
'I have these two trained to serve my needs,' he said. 'It's such a nuisance to have to train others.'
She laughed. 'I know. When I had a serving pong peeled for spilling food on a new gown it took months to train a new one. Sometimes it is better to put up with the stupidity of the pongs one has than to train others. I will send for them.' She reached over and pinched him painfully on his bud point. 'But you will have no use for the female.' Three days and three nights were spent without either of them leaving Elnice's inner quarters. But now there were more periods of talk, as they lay joined, and Duwan used that time to learn more about the enemy. Elnice's father, Farko, a direct descendant of Farko the Great, who, in antiquity, had led the Devourers out of the steamy, dense jungles far to the south, ruled the lands from the western mountains to the eastern sea. In his realm were twelve major cities, Arutan the queen of them. Thus it had been for generations. Of the lands to the south and the west Elnice knew nothing, so it was safe, at the rare times when she questioned him, to make up lies about the southwestern desert and the mountains of the far west. It was when he was telling a tailored version of his encounter with the great animal, the farl, that he garnered some interesting information.
'In your travels to the west did you encounter any of the escaped pongs?' she asked.
'Of course not. Had I done so I would have killed them.'
'Captain Hata continually advises my father to mount an expedition to the west, to exterminate those escapees.'
'I don't think there are many,' he said. 'And what can pongs do against our blades?'
She mused for a long moment. 'In the guards quarters, once each full moon, it is required that all guards hear of the past,' she said. 'The telling is done by a priest of Ahtol, and it is to remind those whose responsibility it is to guard the throne that pongs were not always docile and stupid.'
'I would like to hear this telling,' he said.
'It bores me,' she said, reaching for him, 'but if you so desire, I can arrange for a priest to give you a private telling.'
'It would please me,' he said.
True to her word, a priest came to her quarters at midday, and Duwan had to admit that he was a bit relieved to part from her for some brief time. He left her lying in graceful beauty among the colorful cushions, her bud point swollen attractively and invitingly.
The priest was an old one, with wrinkled skin. Duwan, politely asking the priest's age, was amazed to hear the number of years, and it was then that he learned another difference between Devourer and Drinker, for Devourers did not harden as did Drinkers, but seemed to crumple in on themselves, judging from the old priest.
'When Farko the Great led the people to the north the rich, cool lands were teeming with a population that seemed, at first, to be like our people. They were not warlike. They lived on the bounty of the land, eating the green things that grew so plentifully. It was Farko's first intention, with conquest so easy, to integrate these native peoples into our own, but soon it was noted that there were basic differences. This was first discovered when a living bed of young ones was discovered. The barbarians' of this land, after sprouting young, actually planted them, like grass, in the earth, and roots grew from the young ones' feet to feed on the things of the earth.
'The first major differences among the two peoples grew out of the barbarians' superstitious regard for any living plant. When our settlers cut down trees for building, the barbarians protested, calling the trees brothers. Among
