The Shepherd Kings by Judith Tarr

scrambled its wits together to demand of her,
“Who are you? What are you doing here?”
    “I am Ariana,” she said. “I’ve come to keep you company.”
    He glared at her. “You are not Ariana. I know her, and she
is not—”
    “I am Ariana,” she repeated. “The Ariana sent me. Therefore
I am—” He shook his head. He had fancied himself well in command of this language,
after so many days under Iphikleia’s tutelage. But this made no sense. “Ariana?
The Ariana? What—”
    “We are all Ariana,” she said. “All who serve the goddess in
the Labyrinth. The Ariana bids us come and go. She bade me come to you. Do you
not want me? Will you disappoint her? She so hoped that you would find me
pleasing.”
    Kemni struggled with fogged mind and sore distracted body,
to understand what she was saying. “Ariana—is a title? An—an office?”
    She nodded happily. “Yes. Yes, a title. The Ariana likes
you. She calls you the beautiful man.” She narrowed those big round eyes, and
tilted her head. “Yes, you are good to look at. Will you come now, and let me
keep you company?”
    Kemni had never, in years of dallying with maids and
servants and the occasional, desperately daring lady of quality, been approached
quite so boldly or with such vivid intent. He could not move, nor could he
speak.
    The girl—this one of what must be many Arianas—shook her
head and sighed. “The Ariana said you might be silly about this. She told me to
tell you that you can’t have her, it’s not permitted, but you can have as many
of us as are minded to play with you. Would you like more? Am I too few?”
    “No!” cried Kemni. “Oh no. I didn’t—I don’t—I’ve never—”
    “Ah,” she said. “Poor beautiful man. Come here.”
    She said it so imperiously, and yet with such warm and
bubbling amusement, that he could not help but do as she bade. She was almost
child-small in his arms, but no child was so supple or so wickedly skilled. She
teased and tormented him, casting him down and rising above him, just touching
him with lips and breasts, till he arched in a near-convulsion. But she would
not let him spend his seed. Not yet. She gentled him, calmed him, nibbled here,
stroked there, till he lay in a quivering stillness.
    He was all helpless against her. She rode him as if he were
a ship on the sea, great waves rolling, lesser ones surging and ebbing, and no
release, though he was ready to groan with the sweet pain. She had him in her
hands, stroking, tugging till he gasped, and laughing all the while. “Oh!” she
said. “Such a great tall man you are!”
    He shrank at that, or tried; but she would not suffer that,
either. Her tongue flicked. His body snapped taut.
    Then, and only then, she had a kind of mercy. She mounted
him, took him inside of her, hot sweet pleasure, and rode him long and slow,
till he was all one great throb of desire. He had no mind, no will, no self.
Only the heat that was between them, rising and rising, no end to it, no
relief, no consummation. She would torment him until he died. And he was powerless
to resist.
    Death. Yes. A little death, swelling till it burst, a great
ringing cry that made her laugh aloud.
    ~~~
    He fell from the summit into sleep that was like black
water, deep and bottomless. If he dreamed, he never afterward remembered it. No
dream tonight of Iphikleia, nor of dancing the bulls, either. And yet, in the
grey interval between sleep and waking, he remembered. He knew whose face
Ariana—the Ariana—wore. He had seen her in the first dream, that dream that had
brought him here, the dream of the bulldancing. She had been the maiden who
danced the bull, for whom one of the youths died, because he could not bear
that she should best him.
    And had the youth worn Kemni’s face? He did not think so. It
had been a Cretan, he was sure of it. Not an Egyptian. Not Kemni nor any of his
people.
    He took the memory with him into daylight, full morning and
the slant of sunlight across