earlier had been Arlais coming in with a beautiful white flower, and sticking it beneath her nose to smell. After that it was all a blank. It did not take a great deal of thought to realize that the flower had been enchanted. But what had happened in those hours she could not remember? Ahura Mazda said he had made love to her many times. She was sore enough to suspect that he was neither lying nor bragging to her.
The flower’s scent, which she had breathed in, must have dulled her memory so that she permitted him to have his way with her. Cinnia shook her head sadly. No one could say that she had not fought to keep the Yafir lord from having his way. She had held him at bay for several days by shape-shifting into the persona of the tiny flea. Why had she been so foolish as to smell that white flower? But the truth was that Arlais was hardly a threatening figure. It just hadn’t occurred to Cinnia that the flower would be magic. She could not remember anything like that in Belmair.
The door to her bedchamber opened, and five women trooped into the room led by Arlais. “Come, Cinnia, dearest, ’tis time for the baths. We go together at the same time each day. We are all Ahura Mazda’s wives. You have met Minau, of course. This is Volupia.” Arlais drew forward a tall girl with red hair and eyes like black cherries. “And this is Orea.” Orea had dark gold hair, and brown eyes. “And Tyne.” This last girl had rich chestnut-brown hair and lovely gray eyes.
“He has used you well, I can see,” Volupia said. “Good! Now perhaps he will be content with the rest of us. He has been eager for your arrival for months now.”
“I don’t want to be here,” Cinnia said to them.
“Of course you don’t,” Orea said. “None of us did at first. And then we realized there was no going back, and that our husband was kind and loving. We are fortunate. Not all of the Yafir have so even a temper as Ahura Mazda. Some we have seen are downright mean. My sister, who was stolen when I was, has a husband who beats her.”
“I have a husband,” Cinnia said softly. “Dillon, king of Belmair. He is handsome and kind, and I love him with all my heart.”
“Put him from your memory,” Tyne told her. “He will never take you back now that you have lain with a Yafir. You are now the wife of Yafirdom’s most powerful lord. You are very fortunate that you were not put in the Mating Market.”
“Tyne, do not frighten, Cinnia,” Arlais scolded gently.
“What is the Mating Market?” Cinnia wanted to know.
“Our husband has told you how each female infant born in Belmair is marked by a Yafir male for possible harvesting one day. Girls who are claimed by their husbands have six months in which to prove fertile. If they do not, and their husbands choose to do so, they are brought to the Mating Market. There they are chosen by another single Yafir male who mates with them regularly for three months. If they become with child then the Yafir takes the woman for his wife. If she does not then she is mated by another and another and another until she has a child. When she reaches the end of her breeding cycle and is no longer fertile, she is returned to Belmair. That only happens rarely. It is every Yafir man’s duty to produce children else the race die,” Tyne said primly.
“Our good lord has given all of us children,” Volupia noted. “I have two sons. Arlais has three. Minau, two. Tyne and Orea have one each, and are both with child again as you can see. Alas, none of us has produced the desired daughters. It is to be hoped that you will do that for him.”
“We can chatter in the baths, Sisters,” Arlais said. Walking to the bed, she took Cinnia by the hand. “Come along now, dearest. Awash, a soak in the tub and a massage will make you feel ever so much better.” She kissed Cinnia upon her cheek. “You’ve been weeping, and you must not. You will be very happy here, I promise you.”
When they reached the baths Cinnia was surprised to see servants. The first she had seen within the castle. “Why are they all men?” she asked.
“They are gelded men,” Arlais told her. “We have a surfeit of males born, and so those from among our lower class sometimes sell their sons to be gelded and sent into service. There aren’t enough women to go around, and of course there are fewer and fewer females born in Belmair now to be marked for harvesting.”
Cinnia had been naked to begin with. Now the eunuchs took their garments from the other women. They were led into the first bath chamber where each of them stood patiently in a rounded-out depression in the marble floor while a eunuch took up a large sea sponge, filled it with soap, scrubbed them and rinsed them. Then together they trooped into a second room where a large square scented pale green marble pool awaited them. Its water was covered with rose petals. Beneath the water were benches about three sides of the pool. Seating themselves in the warm water, the women began to chatter. They were quite curious as to how Cinnia had enjoyed pleasures with Ahura Mazda. Avidly they leaned forward to hear what she would say.
“I remember nothing until this morning,” Cinnia told them.
“The Lotus flower can do that,” Minau spoke for the first time.
“Did it make you wanton? It can have that effect on the most proper woman.”
“She was very wanton,” Volupia said mischievously. “I overheard our husband speaking with Arlais when he left her bedchamber. She demanded pleasures of him over and over again. He was forced to take a restorative so he might continue fucking her until she was well satisfied and could sleep.”
Cinnia’s pale skin flushed bright red. “I remember nothing until I awoke and found Ahura Mazda using me. I did fight him!”
“But that big skillful cock of his gave you pleasures nonetheless,” Volupia laughed. “Our husband has a magnificent weapon, and he wields it well.”
“You belong to him. We all belong to him,” Arlais said. “We are so fortunate.”
“How long have you been here?” Cinnia asked Arlais. The woman looked no older than twenty-five.
Arlais thought, and then she said, “Several hundred years at least. I was twenty-seven when Ahura Mazda took me. We do not age here in Yafirdom. They say that those who are sent from here grow old immediately.”
“That is true. The stolen women who have been returned are crones,” Cinnia noted, thinking that here was another reason she could not leave Yafirdom now.
“I am the first woman Ahura Mazda took to wife,” Arlais said.
“In the many years before he spent his time struggling for the leadership of the Yafir. Once he had a Yafir wife. She died giving birth to his twin sons. They were grown before he took me to wife. Minau has been here for almost three hundred years. Volupia came but seventy years back. Orea and Tyne have been with us over a hundred and fifty years. We all remain the ages we were when we came to Yafirdom. Minau is twenty-three, Volupia, nineteen, Orea, twenty, and Tyne is also twenty. How old are you, Cinnia?”
“I had just celebrated my eighteenth birthday,” she answer Arlais.
“So you are the youngest among us,” Arlais noted, smiling. “Those born Yafir, or with Yafir blood, grow to adulthood, and then do not show their ages for many centuries. Ahura Mazda is at least two aeons old. He is just reaching the prime of his life for which I am very grateful. If I must remain twenty-seven for the rest of my existence I want a vigorous lover in my husband.”
The others nodded in agreement.
“It does not disturb you to share a single husband among you?” Cinnia asked.
“Why would it?” Minau responded.
“Ahura Mazda is kind,” Orea said.
“He is generous to all of us,” Tyne noted.
“And he is certainly Arlais’s vigorous lover with us all,” Volupia said, grinning. “We are glad to have someone else with whom to share his lusty nature. He has been known to exhaust two of us at a time.”
The other women giggled.
“How do you share him?” Cinnia was curious in spite of herself.
“He visits each of us at least once a week,” Arlais explained. “But because you are his new bride, he will spend the next few weeks with you alone. He will want to get you with child quickly so your fertility may be assured. With Orea and Tyne both so great with child, Minau, Volupia and I have had to share the burden of our husband these past two months. We will be delighted for the rest.” She smiled at Cinnia.
After a time a signal was given by Arlais, and they left the scented water to be dried with large warm towels by the impassive eunuchs. Then each woman stretched herself out upon a marble bench and received a thorough massage. At last they departed the baths and returned to their large apartment. Cinnia noticed as they sat together in the dayroom that it was a circular chamber with seven doors. One that led out into the corridor of their quarters, and the six others that led into each woman’s bedchamber.
