The Shepherd Kings by Judith Tarr Page A

that ridiculously vast bed. Someone, a servant
most likely, had opened shutters on a blue brilliance of sky.
    He yawned hugely and stretched. His body ached all over, but
it was a pleasant ache. Even the one below his middle, where he felt as if he
had been pummeled with fists.
    There was no mark on him, even there. He might have dreamed
it all, except for the imprint of her body in the cushions, smaller and
narrower than his own, and a faint, elusive scent that spoke of her.
    He rose gingerly. All of him seemed to be where it belonged.
He had not been so thoroughly pleasured since—no, not even since Gebu and a
pack of lesser princes had taken him on a grand campaign through the underbelly
of Thebes. He had thought himself a man of skill and wide experience. He had
been a child, a babe at the breast.
    He was rising to the memory of her, and gasping with it,
because yes, oh gods, he ached. Chill wind off the mountaintop cooled him
enough to go on with; and there on the windowledge he found a jar of watered
wine and a loaf wrapped in a cloth, and a bowl of olives cured in brine.
    He ate perched on the ledge, prickle-skinned with cold but
glad of it. His heart had risen and begun to sing. He was not in Egypt, not at
all, and yet he was glad—to be here, in this place, on this of all mornings in
the world.
    ~~~
    His bright mood clung to him as he dressed and went out,
determined to find the horses’ field and, if it were possible, someone there to
teach him what he wished to know. A god must have guided him. He wandered not
too hopelessly amid the mazes of the palace, turned on a whim and found himself
in a gate that opened on the tumbled hillside. It was a postern of sorts, faced
away from the city. There Kemni got his bearings, took a deep breath and
ventured the road that narrowed to a path, turned and twisted and wound among
the hills and hollows.
    And there, as he had hoped, was the herd that he had seen
yesterday, grazing round the bubble of a spring. Someone was there already: a
figure in well-worn leather, harnessing a pair of horses to a chariot.
    It was a woman, and no mistaking it. He braced for
Iphikleia’s clear hard glance, but froze as the dark head lifted. It was not
Iphikleia.
    Ariana—the Ariana, the mistress and model for them
all—laughed merrily at his expression. “Beautiful man! Are you shocked?”
    “Startled,” he said.
    “And was she pleasing, the one I sent to you?”
    He was blushing. He could not stop it; the more he tried,
the hotter his face grew. “She—she was pleasing. But—”
    “I can’t, you know,” she said, light and calm as ever. “I’m
for other uses. But my servants are delighted to take my place.”
    “I would never expect a princess,” he said, “to—to—”
    “She never said you were shy,” said Ariana. “Come here,
beautiful man. Don’t you want to learn to drive a chariot?”
    Her shifts were too quick for him. He could see nothing for
it but to be obedient, since after all she was the Ariana.
    A chariot was an odd unstable thing, rolling and shifting
underfoot, lurching as the horses fretted in their traces. Ariana held the
reins lightly with strength that made him stare. She was like a blade of fine
bronze, slender and seeming frail, but fiercely strong.
    He had no such strength, and no grace, either. He clung to
the chariot’s sides, rocked more strongly than on any sea. The horses were not
moving swiftly, he knew that, but it felt as if he flew upon the wind.
    She rocked against him, warm solidity, and somehow, in the
shifting of the chariot, he found his hands full of the reins. They were a
living weight, the horses tugging, that on the left markedly stronger than the
right. The chariot began to veer. He tugged hard to the right. The chariot
lurched sidewise, and the right-hand horse flung up its head.
    Kemni gasped. Ariana laughed. “Straight on,” she said. “Soft
now. Light, but be firm—don’t let go. Yes, yes, that’s so. They’ll go