Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

“Medraut,” I said, “stay with me a while before you return to your father in Camlan.”

His idle hand turned suddenly over. The long, beautiful fingers folded around mine in apology. He could have crushed my hand.

“I can’t stay here.”

The seven-year-old I had fought with and beaten and solaced regarded me through the poised and guarded gaze of the young man. He looked down at our thin hands entwined and smiled ruefully. “I only came because I did not think I would have another chance to see you. But I am bound for Camlan. I have been doing too much. There’s nothing for me here. I need to act. I need to learn.”

He had been important in Aksum. He had been feared and loved and admired as an administrator, and for his skill as a warrior and a hunter. He had taken great cats of strange and wild strains on the African plains, and brought me gifts of lion and leopard skin.

“You could learn much from me,” I said.

He looked up. It was like staring at my own gray eyes in a glass to look into his calm and shuttered gaze. “How much do you mean that, I wonder,” he said. He had never been anyone’s fool. “You have always kept your knowledge jealously concealed.”

“I have only ever wanted one apprentice,” I said. “I have been waiting.”

“Waiting for me?” He laughed. “You never told me so. Do you mean to say that in thirty years you have taught no one else any of your physician’s skill?”

“And lose my reputation as a sorceress?” I said playfully. “I am revered for it.”

“And abhorred, some would say.”

“You are as bold with me as you ever were.”

He was silent a moment. “I did not mean to be rude. But I feel as though I am being tempted not for my good will, but to your own purpose, Odysseus ensnared by Circe.”

I laughed lightly. “The traveler and the witch.”

“You suckled me on Greek legend,” he made excuse. “And the old stories have been much on my mind in my journeys, seeing the famous places for myself.”

“I did not suckle you,” I corrected gently. “But I am glad you remember the stories. You do not really fear me, do you?”

“Of course not,” he answered swiftly

“Then stay here,” I said. “Prove to me your courage. I have much to teach you.”

I felt like one who wants to trap and cage a little bird, and after years of waiting and luring and baiting finds that she must do no more than hold out her hand, and the finch lands on her finger and does not fly. You scarcely dare to move. It rests on your hand whole and free, foolishly trusting and infinitely courageous. It will never be more beautiful.

“I’ll do it,” he said.

My pig of a husband had long since ceased to share a bed with me. I think by now he must have guessed that the only thing that stopped me lacing his ale with aconite was my brother’s threat to have me executed for regicide if he heard rumor that Lot had died unnaturally and in my presence. “Well, you’ve a new toy now,” Lot said to me at the end of the evening. “Perhaps this season you won’t find it necessary to drug all the townsfolk at the Lammas festival.”

“You are idle as I am.”

“Take a lover,” my husband said.

“None of your fawning retainers is to my taste. Let you rut like a wild boar, without choosing, the nearest thing on heat. I can better satisfy myself.”

“Then do so,” Lot said cruelly. “Wait much longer to choose a man and none will have you. Go to bed, old woman.”

Easy, easy, easy to twist the knife.

That night I stood still and aching in the antechamber of my empty apartment and thought of my dearest bid for power: of my brother the young king, over twenty-five years ago, and how barren a life he had then condemned me to. It was an old and stale ache. So I had a new toy, as Lot said, something to amuse me during the short days; but the northern nights would ever be as long. Years ago, on such a night, I would have had a handmaid sleep with me, for warmth and for the semblance of companionship. But now I hated my ladies-in-waiting for their careless youth and petty beauty, and for knowing they would rather have my husband’s favor than my own.

I let fall my mantle and stood before the dressing table. Silvered glass and polished bronze mirrors in many lengths held my frame and face for my inspection, and I reflected bitterly: I am still beautiful. The lines of my belly have changed, my face is thinner. But my skin is smooth, my breasts are full, my eyes are a clear color between smoke and slate… My teeth are better than any of my stupid servants’. How can it be possible that the lines around my eyes and the spotting on my hands have marred me so much?