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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] Luxury. I could have lived my life happily without such luxury. There was a large animal-skin rug on the floor before the fireplace. I sat down on it and stared into the low fire trying to think. Everything had happened too quickly, too unexpectedly. It made no sense. Diut had hardly looked at me during my stay with the Tehkohn. And surely I could not have seemed sexually attractive to him. He came into the room, his feet making almost no sound against the stone floor. I looked at him once, then looked away quickly, closed my eyes in desperation. I would keep still. I would not behave stupidly. We would talk, Diut and I, and end this nonsense. "Tehkohn Hao," I greeted. My voice was steady. "Alanna." "Am I to have a liaison with you?" "Yes." "Why?" "Why do men and women usually have liaisons?" He was standing over me off to one side, towering, huge. I felt powerless and afraid and angry at myself for being afraid. I had to keep calm. "Are forced matings the way among the Tehkohn?" I asked quietly. "Have I used force?" "Have I accused you?" He whitened slightly and sat down beside me. "We have no tradition of forced matings, Alanna." "Will you let me go then?" "But I have chosen you." a a T T n n s s F F f f o o D D r r P P m m Y Y e e Y Y r r B B 2 2 . . B B A A Click here to buy Click here to buy w w m m w w o o w w c c . . . . A A Y Y B B Y Y B B r r "I have not chosen you." "What man have you chosen?" "I& none. I didn't know I would be permitted to mate here." "Has any man approached you?" "No." "No man would unless I ordered it. None but me." I said nothing. "Your differences keep others away," he said. "You come to me as a stranger, an alien in spite of all that you have learned. But when you leave me, you will be Tehkohn. When others see that I have accepted you, they will accept you." I began to tremble, and to believe, really believe, that there was no way out of this. I was afraid I would lose control of myself if he touched me. When he touched me. He reached over, took my hand, and examined it much as the Garkohn huntress Gehl once had. "The fingers are too long," he said. "And too slender. The nails are too thin, too weak. You are right to keep them short. The hairlessness is ugly at first wrong, a distortion of what should be. But the coloring is the greatest distortion. Brown. No blue at all. The lowest artisan has some blue, but you have none." I snatched my hand away from him, now more angry than frightened. "There are* no customs here that apply to you," he said. "You have no rights, no freedoms that I do not allow. Without the blue, you are like an animal among us." I glared at him. "How could you want a woman who is like an animal?" And his blue grew suddenly lighter with a great deal of white. "To see for myself that she is truly a woman." My fear was drowned in anger and humiliation. It was an experiment then. The creature wanted to see for itself what it was like to make love with an ugly distorted woman. I was here to satisfy its curiosity. "I wish I had the words to tell you how deformed and ugly you are to me, Tehkohn Hao. No animal could be as terrible." He would hit me. I didn't care. He did not hit me. He stood up and hauled me to my feet. "We have traded insults. Now we will go and prove to each other how little our differences matter." He led me into the other room where there was another fireplace-more luxury more wooden chests and a wide wooden platform strewn with furs. It took me a moment to realize that the platform was actually the first bed that I had seen in the Tehkohn dwelling. I stood staring at it mindlessly until Diut opened my robe. Then I looked at him. a a T T n n s s F F f f o o D D r r P P m m Y Y e e Y Y r r B B 2 2 . . B B A A Click here to buy Click here to buy w w m m w w o o w w c c . . . . A A Y Y B B Y Y B B r r In that instant, he must have sensed just how much I suddenly hated him. He drew back warily. "Be careful, Alanna." There had been a wild human on Earth a man fast enough to run me down to get what he wanted. He got it. Then I smashed his head with a rock. As I faced Diut now, I hardly saw his ugliness. It was as though he was wearing the face of that wild human. It was as though he had brought me the pain that man brought me. He put his hands on me again and I lunged for his eyes. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |