Chapter 17
ONCE AGAIN they were on display, but this time there was no overt compulsion, this time they were not in a cage, this time they were not facing a hostile mob. They stood on a stone platform at the end of a vast cavern, an ovoid chamber in red, igneous rock formed by long-ago volcanic action. Around the walls gas torches flared, giving heat as well as light. Behind Grimes and Tamara hung a huge, silken screen on which, in bright colors, glowed depictions of the loves of Delur and Samz.
Before them the women danced to the throbbing drums and the squealing pipes, the deep-throated chanting of the worshippers. They were naked, these dancing girls, save for golden anklets and bracelets hung with little, tinkling bells. With their blue skins, their bald heads, their spidery limbs and their glowing red eyes they should have been grotesque, but they were not.
They were beautiful.
The tempo of the music changed, became slower, languorous.
On to the stage, stepping in time to the beating of the drums, swaying, walked a man and a woman. Each was bearing a golden chalice. The man bowed before Tamara, preferred the drinking vessel. She took it in both hands. The woman stood before Grimes, looking him up and down. Then she bowed and imitated the actions of her male companion. Grimes accepted the offering.
He looked at Tamara.
She looked at him.
Her eyebrows arched in tacit enquiry.
In reply he raised his goblet, said, “Down the hatch!”
She smiled slightly, raised her chalice to her lips.
He sipped from his.
The wine—if wine it was—was deliciously cold, aromatic.
Almost without conscious volition he drank deeply. The golden bowl fell from his hands as did the one that Tamara had been holding. The utensils rang like gongs, shrilled like coins being spun on a hard surface. Freakishly they came together, one nesting inside the other.
“Delur . . . Delur . . . Samz . . .”
The insistent throbbing of the drums, the high, sweet piping of the flutes . . .
She dropped her blanket . . .
“Delur! Delur!”
He cast his from him.
“Samz! Samz!”
And there was a rightness about what happened that had been altogether lacking from the erotic exhibitions before the assembled Shaara, before the jeering crowds in the market places.