The Wildside Book of Fantasy: 20 Great Tales of Fantasy (27 page)

Her hands rested on her knees. Every finger had a ring of silver or gold and assorted jewels. She wore also a wig of indigo hair, plaited with blue gems.

She seemed neither pleased or dismayed at the sight of Leopard. He found he could not fathom her expression. But then he was stunned by her wonderfulness, by her female aura and her sexual glory.

He greeted her ritually, and musically spoke aloud for her his four line poem, then knelt on the patterned floor to await her commands.

Silence snowed heavy as old blossoms.

He smelled incense and perfume from his clothing.

Partly afraid to go on gazing at her, he stared at the floor and the painted animals there began to waver before his eyes.

“Oh, get up,” she barked suddenly in a hoarse high little voice. “Rise from your knees before you faint. So many of you do. How I dislike this fainting. Get
up!
”

Unsteadily yet quite gracefully Leopard obeyed her.

“Your poem’s thought clever,” she said. “That use of the one word
see
three times, then a fourth time but altered. How admirable. I suppose. Well,” she said. She reached her small plump hand towards a silver side-dish and selected a sugared plum. She ate it slowly, looking at him.

And her cold-sheened eyes slid over him.
They
were entirely expressionless, like pieces of opaque black slate. Over and over him the slate eyes slid.

How wondrous she was.

Oh gods, he could hardly bear it—and already in a kind of desolation, fearful she did not like him, even so his sex was upright and ready, the most potent weapon of love.

“Come here then,” she said. “Since you must.”

He went to her, stood there, standing once again in every sense.

“Well,” she said, her shrill voice rather more dull, “take off your garments. Let me see what you are, you—what do they call you?—
Leopard?
” And at this, his name, she laughed, more shrilly, like a flute warped by rain.

And yet
he
laughed as well, vibrantly, loving her mockery even, loving
her
, and burning.

Naked, Leopard was a man like a perfect statue, made of satiny tawny wood polished smooth as glass. Wide-shouldered, slim, every muscle well-developed yet lean. He shone in the icon of his body, which had the form of both fighter and dancer. On his chest the two jewels of his nipples, themselves erect, were the colour of the purest beer. At his groin the short black pelt resembled, in its silkenness, the thick silk hair upon his head. And from his groin also rose his succulent phallus, blushing and firm as the most edible fruit. He had no flaw. And his face too was a marvel. Where his brother Copper was transcendently lovely, Leopard was incandescently handsome. And while his parted lips—he was breathless with terror and lust—revealed the whiteness of his teeth, his large dark eyes revealed the flames of longing, and perhaps some aspect of his soul.

The woman regarded him with care. Then she pushed herself off her seat and puttered all around him. She observed him front, sidelong and back, scarcely blinking. Were her own eyes pitiless? Like a reptiles? Surely merely a trick of westering light.

She was not tall, The Woman.

The top of her blue-wigged head was level only with Leopard’s ribcage.

Behind him still, she grunted.

He was afraid to turn, in case this sound of hers indicated some annoyance—or disappointment—
dismissal
. He trembled.

Out of one of his luminous eyes a single tear dropped like silvery jasper. Yet even now his eloquent phallic erection stood its ground. His brain and heart might quake; this rose-gold warrior, primed with battle-juice, was too forthright and too wise yet to surrender.

Perhaps—could it be?—
its
instinct, if not the man’s, had picked up from the short round woman who patrolled the vicinity of Leopard’s splendour, some secret scent of answering desire...

“Oh,” eventually said The Woman, at Leopard’s back, “very well, then. Over there. The room behind the lacquer doors.”

“Lady—do you mean—“

“I mean we’ll go to the couch and do what’s to be done.”

And then The Woman turned and waddled away, and Leopard, dipped in fires, followed her.

* * * *

Among his self-educations, which as an adult had come to include singing, fighting, drama and philosophy. Leopard had not neglected to add the arts of love. He had learned these, as with the others, from the best teachers, who taught him everything at one remove. And he had then practiced all alone, over and over. “Beware,” they had told him. “If
ever
you should enact these things with a real subject—that is with a
woman
—it will be as it is also when you fight. For in love too your lover, male or female, is unwittingly your opponent, striving to overthrow you. But you must subdue your ardour and yourself remain the master. And, whereas in battle you must kill with force and pain, in sex you must kill with delight. That death’s a very different matter.”

And Leopard, his goal—her—had fully learned and then practiced with total dedication.

Now therefore, even as he saw The Woman take off her clothes, even her wig so her hair fell forth, he kept the confidence of a great mage, whose power sweeps in on him at his instruction. The more mighty the odds against self-control, the more mightily controlled now might Leopard be.

So at last, assured, he went to her, and leaning over her, measured and gaged her with his learned hands and fiery eyes.

* * * *

Three hours was the time Copper had quoted for his companion, Prince Nine.

But Leopard and The Woman entered a timeless zone. Which in fact lasted the rest of the day, all one night, and some space of the subsequent morning.

Leopard coaxed and seduced and adored and magnified The Woman. With acts not words he laved her body with caresses, used on her a musician’s hands, a poet’s mouth like velvet, a tongue like streams and feathers and bees, a sexual organ like a magician’s tireless and world-ordering wand. Again and again he brought her to the prolongued spasm of ecstasy. Sometimes even she might emit a squeak of pleasure, though generally she was noiseless in culmination, only the ripples of her loins and belly giving evidence of achievement. How he loved her.

Her fat, barrel-shaped form with its sallow, coarse, slightly blotchy carapace of skin. Her shapeless breasts. The thin hair that meagrely clad both her head and the heavenly, wide gate between her short legs. He loved her spatulate hands and ridged nails, and the nails of her toes from which the paint had worn, leaving them like ten square and striated rocks. He loved her teeth, which were so charmingly discoloured, and her sugar-sour breath. The ordinary non-profundity of her face. Her arrogance and indifference he loved too, though they lashed him with tragic fear of failure. And her gelid eyes. Even these—though they condemned him, surely.

Ah gods, even in victory over the reluctant, grudging climaxes of her body, Leopard at last heard the lament of approaching defeat.

Long before the night wore out, the red dawn—no longer peach but bloodied wine—he knew in his heart’s heart he had not won her. And never could. None could.

None.

3 - The Reject

All that day-night-day, Copper paced his apartment.

It comprised three rooms and a private courtyard on the roof. He went from one area to another, climbing up, descending, walking, turning. Now and then he touched something. A small statue of a dancing lion, a cup of black onyx, a little dagger of twisted wood Leopard had carved and given him when Copper was only five years old.

Copper wept. Chided himself and blotted up his tears. Cursed Fate and The Woman, cursed life and the world. Flung himself in a chair, wrote down his thoughts without coherence, got up and paced again, wept again, chided and blotted and cursed—again. Again.

Gods knew, if only Leopard had loved only men. There were male men who did so. Some of Copper’s nicest ‘lads’ were like that, and those like Copper, if not pretty enough to make their way, came to such gallants for solace. One indeed had married a male man from Copper’s wine-house, and they had lived happy now three whole years.

But Leopard was only Man.

So many men, despite dalliances with their own gender, were only—Men.

And so: The Woman of the Crimson City.

Copper knew, despite his hopes and wishes, and Leopard’s glamour and virtue, that The Woman would not want him for long. She had never wanted any of the ones who devoted their dreams to her and then passed all the required examinations but one. For to meet and make love with The Woman was the Ultimate Test. No man had
ever
passed it. Evidently. Or she would not be there still, hung like an over-ripe yellow fruit, cruel and evil with her thorns, on the tree of human longing.

How the gods must hate mankind, to do this to them.

The hours ground away under Copper’s pacing, weeping and cursing.

About sunfall, the man he had sent to watch the Palace’s Lower Gate, bounded up Copper’s stair and beat on the door.

“What’s happened, Heron?”

But Heron was crying. His tears spoke loudly, in an uncouth bellow.

“So then,” said Copper, gripping in his own emotion, “did he emerge from the Gate?”

“Yes, oh yes—oh gods, I’ve seen old gentlemen whose white beards brushed the earth, whose backs were humped with age like a camel’s—and they walked more sprightly than your brother, lovely Leopard.”

“Where did he take himself?”

“Towards the bank of the river—“

“
And
—?”

“And my companion, Lamplit, our best runner as you know, sped after and caught him. Then Tomorrow, my other friend from next door, ran up too. They took hold of him and are bringing him here now. But slowly. He can barely move, Copper Coin.”

Copper whispered a curse then that curled up the air of the apartment. The sun too seemed to wither in it and threw herself off over the precipice of the horizon. Dusk veiled everything. Nightingales and tweet-birds sang from the tall scent tree outside.

One more hour later, when the sky was black and the bright windows and rosy lanterns of the city showed the path, Lamplit and Tomorrow helped Leopard into Copper’s reception chamber.

“Drink this.”

“Nothing. Please. Give me nothing.”

“Darling Leopard. It’s myself offers the drink. Look. Do you see me? Your brother.”

“I see you, dear. But take the cup away. The dead need no food, no water.”

Finally, persuaded to one sip, the kindly soporific in the drink took its effect.

Leopard was laid on the second bed, his head on pillows of silk.

But even sleeping, his face was old, and ruinous. He looked like a man who must soon die.

The physician came. This doctor was of high quality and learning, but once Copper told him why Leopard was distressed and ill the physician bowed his head. “I shall do whatever I am able. But I also had a brother once. This was thirteen years ago. He too went after The Woman, and won through to her. When she cast him out he lived only two months. We watched him night and day in case he tried to poison or hang himself. But in the end, without assistance of bane or rope or blade, he simply died. It was through his death I set myself to learn medicine, to understand the windings of the human intellect. But I doubt I can help you or your brother.”

“She’s vilely wicked,” said Copper, “The Woman. A demoness sent up from the hells to destroy us.”

“Perhaps,” said the physician.

Then Leopard woke up and the physician set to work on him. Seven days, and the nights between them, trudged by.

Then seven more.

Copper went on with his usual duties, but refused all those clients he normally had pleasure with. He explained to them privately that he could experience
no
pleasure at this time. Only Prince Nine was permitted to arrive frequently, and he simply to talk with Copper, gratis, to steady him and try to ease his sorrow.

In the end Leopard began to be seen. He would walk in the courtyard or sit there quietly on his own. At evening, sometimes, he would dine at the communal table of the wine-house, if not in Copper’s apartment.

Regular customers treated him with care, and with respect and sympathy. If they were jealous of his having been a finalist, and briefly winning The Woman and lying with her, they curbed themselves. Decidedly they could see where his moment of success had afterwards dragged and abandoned him. He seemed quite soulless. He seemed part dead.

One evening a newcomer entered the wine-house, and sat down at the main table. He was an older man, of fine physical appearance, and perhaps a philosopher.

He spoke directly to Leopard, in an actor’s clear voice. “So you are the unlucky fellow who fucked the great bitch in the Palace?” he said.

Instantly silence deafened the room.

Heron, who had been eating, got up without a word and went straight to knock at Copper’s door, despite the fact Copper was just then entertaining a prince of the High Family of the Ninety-Two.

Leopard however raised his head and looked at the newcomer.

“I am he. But she is not a bitch. She is beautiful, and by me beloved, and will be so until the day of my ending.”

“Very well,” agreed the philosopher, if so he was. “Very well. Maybe she is a bitch since only circumstances have made her one. As also time has made her older and fatter. But I think a snake gave her such cold eyes.”

Leopard lowered his gaze. He did not reply. The philosopher went on, in his clear and reasonable voice, “Surely you, or some of you here, at the very least, must understand
why
men venerate and think such a creature wonderful?”

A man cried out: “Because she is The
Woman.
”

“Just so,” said the philosopher. “The
only
woman. That is,” he amended, “the only known woman yet living in our city, or in the existing world, who has not yet died of the excessive bearing of male children, or grown into an ancient hag.” A vast sigh, nearly a groan, curdled from the room-full of men. It passed on into the courtyard, where the other men had, many of them, risen and come to see who spoke such words. It drifted up to balconies of the wine-house and surrounding buildings, and was echoed back from them. It fled along the white streets and found some kind of other echo always there, in every masculine throat, in every masculine mind. For there
were
only men in the Crimson City, as the philosopher had stated. Men who were feminine or men who were male, and some who were gifted with both states, and those who were young or old. Or there were a few old, old women who had somehow survived relentless decades of child-bearing, scorned and sworn at on every occasion, which had been by now
every
occasion without exception, that they had produced, rather than a daughter, yet another son.