Free High Couch of Silistra by Janet Morris

between his rear, his fur touching my leg, waiting for me to taste his gift. His huge eyes shone like two golden full moons out of the night.
    “Santh, find a knife,” I commanded, sending to the great beast’s mind a picture of the object I wanted.
    He sighed explosively and slunk off in the dark.
    “Well”—Dellin let out his breath—“at least he is not going to devour us immediately. Do you think he understood you?”
    I nodded, forgetting that Dellin could not see such a slight gesture in the dim light cast by the small sliver of moon now directly overhead.
    Only when Santh returned and laid the knife he carried in his mouth between us did I realize that I, also, had been holding my breath.
    Dellin bent to the ground and took the knife in his own teeth. It was not long before our feet were free. The Liaison Second crawled behind me and sawed through the ropes that imprisoned my hands. Then I took it and cut him loose.
    Santh sat guarding his newest kill, purring softly in his throat.
    I rubbed my wrists and went to him. He lowered his massive head that I might scratch behind his tufted ears. I dug my thumb deep into his inner ear and let him lick the wax, stroking and fondling him.
    Dellin, amid the camp of our assailants, lit a torch. In the flicker, he waved me to him.
    Santh growled as I started up the gentle incline, and nudged the body at his feet with his nose.
    “No, Santh, I love you, but I have no stomach for such a meal,” I said. The hulion snorted.
    At Dellin’s side, I inspected the carnage in the glow of the torch. None of the men had any throat left, nor stomach. Some were mangled beyond recognition. I went to my knees and vomited quietly. Finally my stomach stopped convulsing. I had no more to give. I wiped my mouth with clean grass. On my hands and knees, I was unable to rise. My limbs trembled uncontrollably. I had been clear-headed and numb while my life hung in the balance. Safe, I was consumed with fear, and with anger at the Liaison’s thought.
    “Are you hurt?” Dellin was kneeling beside me, his hand on my bowed back. I raised my head and looked at him.
    “Can one have such an experience and remain untouched? When two people share such a point in time, when the wind from the abyss roars around them and they live to remember, cannot there be trust? No, I did not get pleasure from them. I see the question in your mind.
    “I would not have imperiled my life. They bound me, and I am grateful for that. I had no alternative but to submit. Had they not bound me, I would have served them, for my life’s sake. But I did not have to suffer that greater humiliation. I am grateful for that. Although every woman in her deepest self desires to be bound and raped, because of my terror I felt very little. I am also grateful for that. And I live. I am unmarked in body and mind. I thank you for trusting me.”
    He touched my face. I could read the turmoil in him without trying.
    “You have no reason to thank me,” he said softly.
    “Had your pride caused you to fight them, you would have lost. Perhaps your life, and certainly your maleness and your mind. What could I have salvaged of my own sanity had that been the case?” I hoped it would work.
    Dellin made no reply.
    “I think it is much harder for a man than a woman. For me it was an exaggeration of a normal experience. For a man, I would assume, there could be nothing but pain and humiliation in submission under duress.” I looked at him questioningly.
    “I, too, feel the chill,” he admitted. I felt him relax, the whirling within him slow and cease.
    “We will be,” I quipped, “in fashion in Arlet.”
    “What?”
    “M’lennin did not tell you, then, how Arlet differs from Astria?”
    He rocked back on his heels, rubbing his eyes.
    “No, he did not. But I think you just did. This is a strange world, Estri. Perhaps I am not suited for Liaisonship here.”
    “Doubtless it seems strange to you, from the prudery of M’ksakka. You