Sarnian Lady rolled sickeningly in the heavy swells like a drunken sailor weaving his way out of some waterfront dive. Her colorful lateen sails flapping and shuddering as the big trireme barely made headway over the heavily rolling blue green sea. The motion making my stomach heave once again and reminding me that I would never make a good sailor. Darlanis walking up to the rail alongside me on the tall quarterdeck, her azure eyes a pair of lovely gems smiling into mine as she slipped her arm about me. I had already "fed the fishes", and my poor heaving stomach seemed to have the idea that they were still out there looking for more!
We were, captain Eric Stone informed me, skirting the edge of a storm perhaps a hundred miles away. The oppressive heat and the heavy swells, plus Sarnian Lady's shallow draft, the galley being flat bottomed like a canoe with a big centerboard that could be raised or lowered as desired, made me wish that ships like this had never been invented! Especially when one could see the example of the Ronda and the Seahawk, both of which, in my own considered opinion at least, were more seaworthy vessels than this damm galley of Darlanis'! The big trireme having the unfortunate tendency to roll itself from side to side as the heavy swells crossed its path, the vessel reeling as I have said like a drunken sailor staggering bleary eyed from some seaport tavern.
Clearly visible to port was land, wonderful solid land with trees and green growing things. Where the wind gently rustled the leaves in the trees and the sunbeams danced through the towering trees to the ground below. Then my stomach heaved and once again I vomited sour bile over the rail. Darlanis holding me, stroking my hair as I cursed ships and the seas on which they sailed. In my thoughts cursing Her too just because she didn't suffer from seasickness! Because She couldn't know how I felt!
"We should reach Sarn tonight," Darlanis told me. No one hoping more than me that she was right. Not after having to endure Sarnian Lady's motions in this heavy rolling sea. The officers on the quarterdeck seeming to smile to themselves as the legendary Lorraine Duval showed that she too had her weaknesses. I hoped they enjoyed the sight as they stood there swaying easily with the ship's motion. I thought of wiping the smiles off their faces with the point of my sword, such was my "suffering" then.
Darlanis' new Imperial Princess then weaved across the deck trailed by Yvette Senchal to take me from Darlanis as I raised my pale sweaty face from the heaving sea. Sharon holding me, stroking my hair and suggesting that perhaps it would be better if we went below. Darlanis telling me that she had some brandy that might help relieve my suffering and that she would ask Tala Sen, the ship's physician, if she had anything for my seasickness.
Tala Sen's dark slanted eyes and yellow tinted skin hinted of lands now legend as she gave me a bitter potion. Telling me that it would help relieve my discomfort and nausea. The woman physician telling me of the young Prince's recovery from his wound suffered during the battle with the pirate. It had cost us twenty eight lives to put an end to his infamous career, including the lives of two dear to me. I wondered if it had been worth it. The women we had rescued doubtlessly would have thought so.
The brandy Darlanis gave me did definitely help, along with her suggestion that I slip off my clothing and get into her bed, the Empress giving me a big tumbler of her brandy that warmed my stomach and made the blood sing in my veins. "Now isn't that better?" she said, kissing me, her lips warm and sweet against my cheek. I thought how beautiful she was, although by 20th Century standards she was too tall and muscular to be considered as such.
Darlanis refilled my tumbler and filled one for herself, sipping the brandy as she sat on the edge of the bed and made small talk with me. Her eyes lovely azure gems, the gold mesh of her attire exotic and beautiful. I remembered that this same woman had once been raped by her own brother. I wondered what her sexual life was like. If she even had one anymore. I knew there were no lovers, no one to whom she could turn. No man to take her in his arms and hold her close. No one who loved her for the woman she was. Tender, vulnerable, loving. Her marriage had been loveless, the King of Sarn having been more interested in his own slave girls than in her. She had been but a beautiful figure on a golden throne to him. A sort of "trophy", nothing more. I felt sorry for her. The only man she had ever loved was a barbarian enemy Prince living beyond the mountains that divided her Empire from his lands. She had once spoken of him, but only briefly as if the memories were still yet too painful for her to bear. He had been the only one who had seen her as a woman, not as the imperious tall golden haired ruler of Imperial California.
"Lys! Is it hot!" Darlanis breathed, the sweat glistening there on her forehead. I suspected the brandy, not the heat, but refrained from informing her of that fact. "`Mind' if I strip?" she asked, standing up, undoing her golden mesh halter, the skirt quickly following as did her boots. Leaving her in nothing but golden nipple clips and a brief blue triangle of silk that did little to conceal the perfection of her body. She doubtlessly would have made an excellent "centerfold", although she lacked the big full breasts of a Playboy Playmate, Darlanis being broad shouldered and wide hipped, a tad heavy in the buttocks. She is magnificent in a long silken evening gown, especially one fitted to her so that the perfection of her figure is clearly revealed.
Darlanis went to the door and slipped the lock home, giving me a smile that promised much. Although just what I didn't know or care just then, reaching for the brandy bottle and emptying the rest of it into my glass. "This is a good cure for seasickness," I told her with a smile, holding up the glass. I noted that Sarnian Lady was rolling even more than ever, but it didn't seem to bother me anymore thanks to Darlanis' wonderful brandy!
"If you were a man and you could have me any way that you wanted, how would you have me?" Darlanis suddenly asked as she stood before me, her words coming as a complete surprise to me!
"On your back, your wrists and ankles tied to the bedposts, after you'd been teased and played with for at least an hour," I told her, thinking of Jon and what we had done together. It was a heck of lot better than the way Jack had always wanted it with me. Dressing me up in tight leather corsets and all that stuff so that I looked the part of his own perverted sexual fantasies.
"I wish you were a man," Darlanis answered, standing there, looking down at me. I am somewhat "bi", but Darlanis didn't arouse any sexual feelings in me. I didn't know about her and I dreaded what might happen if she did happen to have such feelings towards me! Unlike the Dularnians, who are a somewhat "strait- laced" puritanical people by 26th Century standards, the Empire did not look upon such things as being anything too much out of the ordinary! "I want what I can never have," she breathed, her words almost a sob. "Never will I be allowed to be a woman!" I reached out my arms to her and suddenly she was sobbing bitterly against my shoulder, her magnificent body pressed against my own!
"It can't be all that bad," I spoke softly, stroking her hair, feeling the wetness of her tears. She was drunk, the brandy having no doubt released all the inhibitions, all the secrets she had been holding back all the years now finally coming out!
"I want him!" she moaned. "I want him to have me, to have me on my knees before him, my hands bound behind me so that I am helplessly his when he tears off my last bit of clothing and I am naked before him, his to enjoy, to use as he sees fit!" I had to smile a bit to myself, Darlanis having a rather vivid way of expressing things that were just a bit "pornographic" by 20th Century standards. "I want to be bound before him, helpless, his to enjoy, to use!" she added, obviously a woman who enjoyed total submission to a man despite her appearance which might lead one to think otherwise of her! "I want to bear his children!" she added, weeping on my shoulder as I held her, letting her talk herself out. This last of course is no longer ever possible for her after the injuries she suffered as a captive of the pirates.*
* It was necessary for me to surgically remove her uterus to save her life due to infection caused by the abuse that she suffered.
"You can have what ever you want as long as you are willing to take the full consequences of your actions," I told her, gently stroking that rich golden hair, smelling the perfume of her body as I held her to me. I was glad that the door was locked. I wouldn't have wanted Sharon say for example to come barging in just then and see Darlanis lying there in my arms wearing no more than a 20th Century "strip-tease" artist! "Let your heart guide you, let your emotions flow, let yourself become the woman that you are capable of being," I said to this lovely golden Empress.
"But I would have to give up `everything'!" she wept in reply. "I would have to wear beads and a buckskin loincloth in his tepee! Become his squaw!" To a "civilized woman" like Darlanis this was no doubt a horrible fate. She had no doubt been sexually excited by his "masculinity", by his exotic qualities, but on the other hand she had been very much aware of what such a love might "cost" her. Darlanis was a politically ambitious woman. The ruler of an "empire" that covered a good portion of what had once been California, Oregon, and Washington back in my own era.
"If you had truly loved him, such things would have meant nothing to you," I told her. "Nothing at all." I brushed back her golden hair, wiped at her eyes, her eye makeup having "run" a bit. Darlanis' awesome beauty is of course partly due to the skillful use of cosmetics. She does have the face, the bone structure, the figure, but there are "enhancements" she uses too. The skillful use of tiny brushes, various pigments, all do count.
"But I thought I did!" Darlanis protested, getting up, wiping at her eyes, finding a cloth, and completing the task. I was drunk. There was no doubt about that now. She was too, I felt!
"You confused your own sexual excitement for love," I smiled back. "You confused the involuntary responses of your body for something that was not `real'." That she had felt such things made her more "human" in my eyes, and less of a "golden goddess".
"A woman of Dularn is not supposed to feel such things," she said to me. I recalled what Janis had said about such matters.
"Women have had such `feelings' for a million years," I pointed out. "Your political beliefs have little to do with it."
"Have you ever had such feelings?" Darlanis asked, her eyes glowing down into mine as she stood there swaying with the roll of the ship. She didn't seem overly "steady" on her feet either.
"Yes," I answered. "Had it not been for Sharon I think I would have sailed back on the Janis to Dularn with Jon Richards."
"He was married before," Darlanis smiled. Apparently she knew something of him. "His wife was killed by Imperial troops."
"In a war that you were responsible for," I answered without thinking. The brandy was obviously effecting me too or I would have never said something like that to her. Darlanis nodding in reply, staring over my head out through the stern windows of Sarnian Lady at perhaps something that only she could have seen.
"That Queen Tulis caused," Darlanis answered in reply.
"If you could take her life, would you?" I asked.
"You speak like a Priestess," Darlanis answered back.
"I am responsible in a way for them," I informed her.
"I would not wish her death," Darlanis then now admitted.
"Your brother's?" I ventured, using my professional skills.
"I would not weep at his funeral," Darlanis answered back.
"If you had a sword in your hand and he stood before you, would you kill him?" I asked, driving deep for the "truth" here. Had Darlanis not been as drunk as she was I would have never been able to do this, but the brandy had relaxed her normal "reserve" and made it possible to plumb the depths of her own feelings towards her family there in Dularn. The same royal family that she now fought a long and bloody war with. A war that had taken the lives of thousands on both sides over the long years it had been fought. I recalled that she had lost her father when she was but a little girl. No doubt that had also had its influence on her.
"I think castration would be a more `fitting' punishment." Darlanis answered. "He took that which is most precious." I had to smile a bit to myself at that, although I knew that Dularnian high caste girls did value their virginity highly, and usually only finally surrendered it there upon their own marital beds.*
* This is what Janis once told me. It is only partially true.
"And if you someday set your standards over Dularn, what then?" I challenged her. "What will you do then?" Darlanis did not answer me, but merely went to the sofa beneath the stern windows where she sobbed softly to herself, perhaps seeing for the first time truths that I believe she had never before faced!
(.txt)