Once more she led him breathlessly through the festival grounds, through gaming-halls and arcades and brilliantly lit pavilions, past dining-tables and pleasure- houses, never halting, floating birdlike from place to place, until finally they turned a corner and were in darkness, beyond the zone of revelry altogether. From behind them came the raucous sounds of fading merriment and the dwindling glow of garish light; as they moved forward they encountered the fragrance of heavy blossoms, the silence of trees. They were in a garden, a park.
'Come,' Carabella murmured, taking him by the hand.
They entered a moonlit glade where the trees had been pleached overhead to form a tightly woven bower. Valentine’s arm slipped easily around her taut, narrow waist. The soft warmth of the day lay trapped under these close-tangled trees, and from the moist soil rose the creamy sweet aroma of huge fleshy flowers, bigger across than a Skandar’s head. The festival and all its chaotic excitement seemed ten thousand miles away.
'This is where we’ll stay,' Carabella announced.
With exaggerated chivalry he spread his cloak, and she drew him to the ground and slid easily and swiftly into his arms. They lay secluded between two high dense bushes of gray-green sticklike branches. A stream ran not far from them and only the most slender gleams of brightness entered overhead.
Fastened to Carabella’s hip was a tiny pocket-harp of intricate workmanship. She drew it forth now, strummed a brief melodious prelude, and began to sing in a cool, pure voice:
'How lovely that is,' Valentine murmured. 'And your voice — your voice is so beautiful—'
'Do you sing?' she asked.
'Why — yes, I suppose so.'
She handed him the harp. 'Sing for me now. One of your favorites.'
He turned the little instrument over in his hand, puzzled, and said after a moment, 'I don’t know any songs.'
'No songs? No songs? Come, you must know a few!'
'All gone from my mind, so it seems.'
Carabella smiled and took back her harp. 'I’ll teach you a few, then,' she said. 'But not now, I think.'
'No. Not now.'
He touched his lips to hers. She purred and chuckled, and her embrace grew tighter. As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness he could see her more clearly, small pointed face, bright sly eyes, glossy tumbling black hair. Her nostrils flared with expectation. He drew back momentarily from what was to occur, obscurely fearing that some sort of contract was about to be sealed, but then he put those fears behind him. It was festival night, and he wanted her, and she him. Valentine’s hands slipped down her back, came forward, felt the cage of her ribs lying just below the skin. He remembered her as she had looked standing naked under the cleanser: muscle and bone, bone and muscle, not much meat on her except at thighs and buttocks. A compact bundle of energy. In a moment she was naked again, and so was he. He saw that she was trembling, but not from chill, not on this balmy humid night in this secret bower. A strange, almost frightening intensity seemed to grip her. He stroked her arms, her face, her muscular shoulders, the small hard-tipped spheres of her breasts. His hand found the sleek skin along the inside of her thighs, and she let out her breath sharply and pulled him to her.
Their bodies moved in easy rhythms, as though they had been lovers for months and were well practiced with one another. Her slender powerful legs clasped his waist and they rolled over and over, until they came almost to the edge of the stream and could feel its chilly spray on their sweaty skins. They paused there, laughing, and rolled back the other way. This time they came to rest against one of the gray-green bushes, Carabella pulling him downward, taking the thrust of his weight without difficulty.
'Now!' she cried, and he heard her hiss and moan, and then her fingers dug deep into his flesh and a furious spasm racked her body, and in that same instant he gave himself up fully to the forces that were sweeping through him.
Afterward he lay gasping and half dazed in her embrace, listening to the booming of his own heart.
'We’ll sleep here,' she whispered. 'No one will trouble us on this night.' She stroked his forehead, pushing his soft yellow hair back from his eyes, smoothing it into place. Lightly she kissed the tip of his nose. She was casual, playful, kittenish: that dark erotic intensity was gone from her, burned away in the fires of passion. But he felt shaken, stunned, confused. For him there had been sudden sharp ecstasy, yes. But in that moment of ecstasy he had found himself peering through gates of dazzling light into a mysterious realm without color or form or substance, and he had teetered precariously on the brink of that unknown before tumbling back into the world of this reality.
He could not speak. Nothing he might say seemed appropriate. He had not expected such disorientation to come out of the act of love. Carabella evidently sensed the disquiet in him, for she said nothing, only held him, rocked him gently, drew his head against her breast, sang softly to him.
In the warmth of the night he drifted gradually into sleep.
When the dream-images came, they were harsh and terrifying.
He was carried back yet again to that bleak, familiar purple plain. The same mocking faces leered at him from the purple sky, but this time he was not alone. Looming up against him was a figure of dark visage and heavy, oppressive physical presence whom Valentine understood to be his brother, although in the fierce crackling glow of the amber sun he could not clearly see the other man’s features. And the dream enacted itself against a background of somber music, the low keening note of mind-music that denoted the peril-dream, the threat-dream, the death-dream.
The two men were locked in a bitter duel, and only one would come forth from the duel alive.
'Brother!' Valentine cried in shock and horror. 'No!' He stirred and twisted and came swimming up to the surface of sleep, and hovered there for an instant. But his training lay too deep for that. One did not flee dreams, one did not reject them no matter how appalling. One entered fully into them and accepted their guidance; one came to grips with the unthinkable in dreams, and to avoid it then meant the inevitability of confronting it, and being defeated by it, in waking life.
Deliberately Valentine drove himself downward again, through the borderland between wakefulness and sleep, and felt stealing about him once more the malign presence of his enemy, his brother.
They were armed with swords, but the contest was unequal, for Valentine’s weapon was a flimsy rapier, the brother’s a massive saber. Through skill and agility Valentine tried desperately to slip his sword past his brother’s guard. Impossible. With slow weighty strokes the other parried steadily, sweeping Valentine’s frail blade aside and driving him inexorably backward over the rough gullied terrain.
Vultures circled overhead. Out of the sky came a hissing death-song. There would be blood spilling soon, and a life returning to the Source.
Step by step Valentine yielded, knowing that a ravine lay just behind him and further retreat soon would be forestalled. His arm was aching, his eyes pounded with fatigue, there was the gritty taste of sand in his mouth, his last strength ebbing. Backward— backward—
'Brother!' he cried in anguish. 'In the name of the Divine—'
His plea drew harsh laughter and a sharp obscenity. The saber descended in a mighty swing. Valentine thrust out his blade and was shaken by a terrible body- numbing shiver as metal rang against metal and his light sword was snapped to a stump. In the same moment he tripped over a dry sand-scoured snag of wood and tumbled heavily to the ground, landing in a tangle of thorny creeping stems. The huge man with the saber reared above him, blotting out the sun, filling the sky. The death-song took on a murderous screeching intensity of timbre; the vultures fluttered and swooped.
The sleeping Valentine moaned and trembled. He turned again, huddled close against Carabella, took warmth from her as the dread cold of the death-dream enveloped him. It would be so easy to awaken now, to escape the horror and violence of these images, to swim to safety on the shores of consciousness. But no. With fierce discipline he thrust himself again into the nightmare. The giant figure laughed. The saber rose high. The world lurched and crumbled beneath his fallen body. He commended his soul to the Lady and waited for the blow to descend.
And the blow of the saber was awkward and lame, and with a foolish thud his brother’s sword buried itself deep in the sand, and the texture and thrust of the dream were altered, for no longer did Valentine hear the wailing hiss of death-songs, and now he found everything reversed, found currents of new and unexpected energy pouring into him. He leaped to his feet. His brother tugged at the saber, cursed, struggled to pull it from the ground, and Valentine snapped it with a contemptuous kick.
He seized the other man barehanded.
Now it was Valentine who commanded the duel, and his cowering brother who retreated before a shower of blows, sagging now to his knees as Valentine battered him, growling like a wounded bear, shaking his bloody head from side to side, taking the beating and offering no defense, murmuring only, 'Brother . . . brother . . . ' as Valentine pounded him to the sand.
He lay still and Valentine stood victor over him.
Let it be dawn, Valentine prayed, and released himself from sleep.
It was still dark. He blinked and clasped his arms to his sides and shivered. Violent frenzied images, fragmented but potent, swam in his troubled mind.
Carabella studied him thoughtfully.
'Are you all right?' she asked.
'I dreamed.'
'You cried out three times. I thought you would wake. A strong dream?'
'Yes.'
