In the back of the room, a trio of aging eunuchs began to play a steady rhythm on zurna, tombak, and kanun. Qeva beckoned, and Khavel approached. The muscular eunuch was clad, as usual, in nothing save his golden shackles and a silken loincloth that hung like a flag from his great, stiffened member. Like many of the girls, Inevera felt her eyes drawn to it like metal to a lodestone. She shifted uncomfortably.
The dama’ting laughed. ‘As you can see, already Khavel is prepared for his duty. But a man should always be tantalized to the point of madness before being allowed to sheathe his spear.’ She took Khavel’s arm and pivoted, using the eunuch’s own weight to throw him onto the pillows.
Then she began to dance. Her hips swayed in time to the music, even as she beat a complementary rhythm on the tiny brass cymbals attached to her thumbs and forefingers. The golden bells on her ankles and the bracelets on her wrists added to the spell as she gyrated around the bed of pillows, her feet as quick and sure as they were at sharusahk. Indeed, many of the movements she made were the same as those practised each morning in the hours before sunrise.
Khavel stared at her, mesmerized like the mouse before the tunnel asp. His loincloth was taut, seemingly about to tear, and his great muscles were no different, tense and defined, veins pulsing with the pounding of his blood.
It went on until Inevera began to feel dizzy. The room was hot, filled with sweet incense smoke, and she began to sway to the music and the dama’ting’s endless rhythm. The other girls were no less affected, all watching intently as the Bride stalked her hapless prey.
Finally, Qeva struck, moving to the pillows and tugging Khavel’s loincloth away to reveal his proud spear. She ran a finger along its length, and the tongueless eunuch moaned. Taking the vial from her waist chain, she dribbled oil into her palm and rubbed her hands together until both had a coating of the slick substance.
‘There are seven strokes laid down by the Damajah, as she told of the nights she lay with Kaji,’ the dama’ting said, reaching for Khavel’s member. ‘Watch closely as I demonstrate each one.’
Khavel soon threw his head back, moaning again, but the Bride squeezed tightly at the base of his mushroom-like tip, cooing softly as she waited for him to calm again. ‘Though Khavel is stoneless – the men you will lie with will not be. In their loins lie the future generations of Krasia, and the Evejah’ting commands that none of their seed be spilled or swallowed.’
Several more times, the dama’ting’s ministrations brought poor Khavel to the brink, but each time, she applied pressure and patience until he regained control.
‘Seven strokes,’ the dama’ting said, as she moved to mount the eunuch, ‘but there are seventy and seven ways to lie with a man. This is the first, Jiwah Superior. It is not enough to simply move up and down his spear. You must … twist.’ She demonstrated, using many of the same gyrations of her dance, now practically applied.
‘When you control a man’s loins in the pillows, you control him,’ the dama’ting said, ‘and you can ensure your own pleasure besides. Most men barely know where to put it, and will simply hump like a dog if given their liberty.’
As she stretched for morning sharusahk, Inevera’s muscles ached from countless hours spent practising the pillow dance. There were tiny calluses on her fingertips where the brass cymbals were held, and her feet were red with blisters. She would smooth them with pumice in the bath later.
But though she was stiff and sore, Inevera felt strong. Stronger than she had ever felt, even when hauling great stacks of baskets through the bazaar. She was ready to assume the sharukin, but Qeva did not remove her robe. Instead she beckoned the girls to form a ring around her, and summoned a muscular eunuch. It was not Khavel this time, but one named Enkido.
Like the other eunuchs, Enkido spoke with his hands in an intricate language of gestures that Inevera and the other nie’dama’ting learned as part of their studies. The dama’ting could give their servants complex commands with quick gestures, and receive equally detailed answers on the rare occasions when one was required.
But the similarity ended there. Unlike the other eunuchs, Enkido was always clad in black robes, though he still wore the gold shackles of servitude. His veil was red, meaning he had been a Sharum drillmaster before coming to the Dama’ting Palace, an expert in sharusahk and a master of the Maze. It was said that he had killed many alagai, fathered many sons, and taught many warriors before falling under a dama’ting’s spell and willingly allowing his stones and tongue to be cut from him.
Inevera heard he continued to wear the black to hide the terrible scars he incurred as a Sharum, but when the dama’ting clapped her hands, he pulled off the robe and she gasped aloud, as did several of the younger girls.
He did have scars, but they were long healed – more badges of honour than unsightly blemishes. It was not that which made the girls gasp, but the tattoos on his shaved, muscular skin. All over his body, there were lines and small circles, the black markings running up his limbs and all over his torso, onto his neck and shaved head.
Qeva dropped her robe as well and they stood nude, facing each other, though as always she kept her veil in place. She motioned, and Enkido attacked, moving with sudden, frightening speed. He outweighed the woman twice over, but it did not seem to slow him as they grappled and he put her quickly into a submission hold, lifting her feet from the ground so she could find no leverage.
But the dama’ting seemed unconcerned. She shifted slightly, then drove two stiffened fingers into one of the tattooed points on his chest. Immediately one of his arms slackened, and she pulled it away like the arm of a toddler, twisting from his grasp and flipping him onto his back.
‘All of Everam’s creatures are guided by lines of power and points of convergence, where their muscles, tendons, bones, and energy meet,’ the dama’ting said. ‘These are places of great strength, but also vulnerability. Touch the right place, and even the most powerful will lose their strength.’
She beckoned and again the warrior attacked, this time refusing to grapple, striking with lightning-fast kicks and quick, snapping punches like the strikes of a tunnel asp.
But the dama’ting bent like a palm in a windstorm, flowing this way and that, his blows never striking home. Finally, she reached out almost gently while he was mid-kick, pressing one of the points marked on his supporting leg. It collapsed under him, and while Enkido managed to control his fall and quickly come upright, his leg was now slack and would not support him. He stood balanced on the other, hands up protectively as he waited on the dama’ting’s command.
Instead, she turned back to the girls. ‘Trained in Sharik Hora, Enkido was the greatest sharusahk master the Kaji Sharum had known in a hundred years. No man of any tribe could stand against him, and alagai quailed at the sight of him. More than one dama’ting sought his seed to bless their daughters, and through them he learned of our art. But though he begged time and again, he was forbidden to learn it. The Damajah teaches that no man can be trusted with the secrets of flesh. At last, the Damaji’ting took pity on him, and told him that only by yielding his tongue and his freedom would he be allowed to glimpse our secrets. He broke his spear over his knee right there, using the point to cut out his tongue and sever his own manhood, root and stones. Bleeding to death, he laid them at the Damaji’ting’s feet. No longer a man, he was healed and blessed with the right to aid in your training. You will accord him every honour.’
As one, Inevera and the other girls bowed to Enkido. Though he was only a eunuch, he looked at them all with the stern eye of a drillmaster assessing his nie’Sharum, and when he spoke with his hands, the girls quickly obeyed.
Inevera kept her hand on the Evejah’ting but did not open it, eyes closed as she recited the holy verse:
‘And from the sacred metal did the Damajah forge the three holy treasures of Kaji.
First, the cloak,
Sacred metal hammered into supple thread,
Sewn into the finest white silk with wards of unsight.
Months she laboured,
At Everam’s will,
Until the eyes of the alagai slid from Kaji in his raiment,
As easily as her fingers coated in kanis oil,
Slid along his skin.
Second, the spear,
Sacred metal pounded thin as vellum,
Etched with wards,
Rolled seventy-seven times about a shaft of hora.
The blade she made of the same sheet,
Folded and fused with hora dust
Seven times seventy times
In the fires of Nie’s abyss.
A year she laboured,
At Everam’s will,
Until the edge she ground with diamond dust,
Could cut the skin of Nie Herself.
Last, the crown,
Sacred metal warded on both sides,
Masking the many powers she blessed upon it.
Fused to a circlet cut from the skull of a demon prince.
