The Carnelian Throne by Janet Morris

trenches newly dug among the weeds.
    “Does it hurt so much?”
    “Yes,” he admitted, very low. He longed to touch that strange, glowing skin, unwind the thick braid of copper hair.
    She sat back, inspecting him critically. “Let me see the back of you. Go on, turn around.”
    He was glad to do so, that he could not see her.
    “Who is Mahrlys-iis-Vahais?” she asked, her strong fingers rubbing salve into his back.
    “Mahrlys,” he repeated, pulling away from her. If Mahrlys knew that he had been naked before this creature, messenger of Mnemaat or no, the iis’ retribution would be terrible. But he remembered the slain quenel and ptaiss, and the whelt’s message, and he realized that no worse could befall him.
    “Mahrlys-iss-Vahais rules Benegua,” he said simply, when she asked again. “Please, do not amuse yourself with me. It is not permitted.” His voice even to his own ears, came thick and hoarse. Her hands turned to soothing, to kneading the thrice-knotted muscles of his back. “Most High,” he moaned, driven to desperation. “No!”
    “Turn around.” And when he did not: “Now! Face me!”
    Slowly, he obeyed. Her face was unreadable, eyes half-closed.
    Implacable, she reached out a hand to him. He squeezed his own eyes shut, kept them shut, but he knew what he did. He simply could do no different.
    When it was done, when he had committed the final, most heinous sacrilege, he groaned softly and pried his lids apart. His fingers, digging into her arms, would not at once heed his command that they release her.
    He allowed himself the further iniquity of appreciating her, as he waited for death to come. He had earned it.
    She rolled aside, and he felt her finger run the length of his transgression. Pulling her legs under her, she put her finger to her lips and licked it, her eyes huge over her hand. Then she laughed and scrambled to her feet. He followed suit, naked, his belongings forgotten in the grass.
    “Most High, who are you?” he asked, taking her proffered hand. Behind her back, the two firelit figures hovered, blades drawn, at either edge of the blaze, stone-still, listening.
    “Estri,” she replied firmly. “But that is not what you meant. Chayin once observed that we are more than men, yet less than gods, and sometimes used by the latter to mold the former. Will that do?” She smiled, touched his lips.
    Deilcrit, then, heard what softly rising sounds had so concerned Sereth and Chayin. He pushed her toward them awkwardly, unable to answer her bright smile. From behind her he said, “In that case, you three may yet survive.” He could feel the breeze of them, the restless air that always accompanied the gathering of wehrs in numbers.
    “What do you mean?” she demanded, then stopped dead so that he stumbled into her. This time, it was she who gripped his shoulders.
    “That I did not tell you all that the whelt told me. I was forbidden to. But I cannot ... What we have done ... Most High, forgive me, but I am trying to tell you that the whelt told me to await the wehrs’ justice, to keep you here. Wehrs’ justice is that of death. Can you not hear them? See?” And he pointed to where pair upon pair of glowing eyes bestarred the forest’s blackness from ground to treetops.
    “Deilcrit.” With a shudder she released him, whirled, and scrambled up the hillock in a dash that ended her in Sereth’s arms, babbling urgently.
    He turned his eyes from their frantic embrace, and sought the ptaissling, who slumbered fitfully now that ptaiss-mutter filled the air. He had to pass by the dark one, Chayin, to get there.
    That one fixed him with a piercing glare, half-pitying, half-contemptuous, and spat in Deilcrit’s direction.
    “Well, will you fight, ungrateful whelp? Or will you meet your death like you have spent your life, cowering before gods and spirits and even dumb beasts?”
    Deilcrit, his face buried in the ptaissling’s neck, felt at last the first spray of horror cool his