“Tyne, do not frighten, Cinnia,” Arlais scolded gently.

“What is the Mating Market?” Cinnia wanted to know.

“Our husband has told you how each female infant born in Belmair is marked by a Yafir male for possible harvesting one day. Girls who are claimed by their husbands have six months in which to prove fertile. If they do not, and their husbands choose to do so, they are brought to the Mating Market. There they are chosen by another single Yafir male who mates with them regularly for three months. If they become with child then the Yafir takes the woman for his wife. If she does not then she is mated by another and another and another until she has a child. When she reaches the end of her breeding cycle and is no longer fertile, she is returned to Belmair. That only happens rarely. It is every Yafir man’s duty to produce children else the race die,” Tyne said primly.

“Our good lord has given all of us children,” Volupia noted. “I have two sons. Arlais has three. Minau, two. Tyne and Orea have one each, and are both with child again as you can see. Alas, none of us has produced the desired daughters. It is to be hoped that you will do that for him.”

“We can chatter in the baths, Sisters,” Arlais said. Walking to the bed, she took Cinnia by the hand. “Come along now, dearest. Awash, a soak in the tub and a massage will make you feel ever so much better.” She kissed Cinnia upon her cheek. “You’ve been weeping, and you must not. You will be very happy here, I promise you.”

When they reached the baths Cinnia was surprised to see servants. The first she had seen within the castle. “Why are they all men?” she asked.

“They are gelded men,” Arlais told her. “We have a surfeit of males born, and so those from among our lower class sometimes sell their sons to be gelded and sent into service. There aren’t enough women to go around, and of course there are fewer and fewer females born in Belmair now to be marked for harvesting.”

Cinnia had been naked to begin with. Now the eunuchs took their garments from the other women. They were led into the first bath chamber where each of them stood patiently in a rounded-out depression in the marble floor while a eunuch took up a large sea sponge, filled it with soap, scrubbed them and rinsed them. Then together they trooped into a second room where a large square scented pale green marble pool awaited them. Its water was covered with rose petals. Beneath the water were benches about three sides of the pool. Seating themselves in the warm water, the women began to chatter. They were quite curious as to how Cinnia had enjoyed pleasures with Ahura Mazda. Avidly they leaned forward to hear what she would say.

“I remember nothing until this morning,” Cinnia told them.

“The Lotus flower can do that,” Minau spoke for the first time.

“Did it make you wanton? It can have that effect on the most proper woman.”

“She was very wanton,” Volupia said mischievously. “I overheard our husband speaking with Arlais when he left her bedchamber. She demanded pleasures of him over and over again. He was forced to take a restorative so he might continue fucking her until she was well satisfied and could sleep.”

Cinnia’s pale skin flushed bright red. “I remember nothing until I awoke and found Ahura Mazda using me. I did fight him!”

“But that big skillful cock of his gave you pleasures nonetheless,” Volupia laughed. “Our husband has a magnificent weapon, and he wields it well.”

“You belong to him. We all belong to him,” Arlais said. “We are so fortunate.”

“How long have you been here?” Cinnia asked Arlais. The woman looked no older than twenty-five.

Arlais thought, and then she said, “Several hundred years at least. I was twenty-seven when Ahura Mazda took me. We do not age here in Yafirdom. They say that those who are sent from here grow old immediately.”

“That is true. The stolen women who have been returned are crones,” Cinnia noted, thinking that here was another reason she could not leave Yafirdom now.

“I am the first woman Ahura Mazda took to wife,” Arlais said.

“In the many years before he spent his time struggling for the leadership of the Yafir. Once he had a Yafir wife. She died giving birth to his twin sons. They were grown before he took me to wife. Minau has been here for almost three hundred years. Volupia came but seventy years back. Orea and Tyne have been with us over a hundred and fifty years. We all remain the ages we were when we came to Yafirdom. Minau is twenty-three, Volupia, nineteen, Orea, twenty, and Tyne is also twenty. How old are you, Cinnia?”

“I had just celebrated my eighteenth birthday,” she answer Arlais.

“So you are the youngest among us,” Arlais noted, smiling. “Those born Yafir, or with Yafir blood, grow to adulthood, and then do not show their ages for many centuries. Ahura Mazda is at least two aeons old. He is just reaching the prime of his life for which I am very grateful. If I must remain twenty-seven for the rest of my existence I want a vigorous lover in my husband.”

The others nodded in agreement.

“It does not disturb you to share a single husband among you?” Cinnia asked.

“Why would it?” Minau responded.

“Ahura Mazda is kind,” Orea said.

“He is generous to all of us,” Tyne noted.

“And he is certainly Arlais’s vigorous lover with us all,” Volupia said, grinning. “We are glad to have someone else with whom to share his lusty nature. He has been known to exhaust two of us at a time.”

The other women giggled.

“How do you share him?” Cinnia was curious in spite of herself.

“He visits each of us at least once a week,” Arlais explained. “But because you are his new bride, he will spend the next few weeks with you alone. He will want to get you with child quickly so your fertility may be assured. With Orea and Tyne both so great with child, Minau, Volupia and I have had to share the burden of our husband these past two months. We will be delighted for the rest.” She smiled at Cinnia.

After a time a signal was given by Arlais, and they left the scented water to be dried with large warm towels by the impassive eunuchs. Then each woman stretched herself out upon a marble bench and received a thorough massage. At last they departed the baths and returned to their large apartment. Cinnia noticed as they sat together in the dayroom that it was a circular chamber with seven doors. One that led out into the corridor of their quarters, and the six others that led into each woman’s bedchamber.

A silent serving man brought cakes and a crystal decanter filled with a pale gold liquid. He placed the tray carefully on the table around which the six women were now sprawled upon large colorful cushions.

“You have already eaten cakes and drunk wine with Ahura Mazda,” Arlais told Cinnia as she handed her a goblet. “I do not lie to you.”

“It makes no difference now,” Cinnia replied sadly. “I cannot go back even though I long to do so.” She took a deep draught of the liquid in the goblet, and found it oddly soothing. Still she sighed.

Arlais caught the others’ eyes, and they nodded understanding to each other. Every newcomer to Yafirdom felt like this in the beginning. But although Cinnia did not realize it, her sorrow would soon pass, and she would be happy and content once more. She took a tiny iced cake and handed it to Cinnia, smiling. “Eat,” she said. And Cinnia did.

10

THE YAFIR HAD BEEN stopped from stealing any more of Belmair’s women. But the young queen was among the missing. Soon all of Belmair knew it, and would have mourned but that Dillon would not permit it. He sent Nidhug with messages to all three dukes, telling them that now the real battle would begin. They had to find where the Yafir were hiding themselves and Belmair’s queen.

After having convinced the dragon that even she could not have been in two places at the same time, and was with her king, which was only right and proper, Nidhug ceased her weeping to everyone’s relief as she had caused her own moat to overflow in her guilt and grief, temporarily flooding a third of the gardens that separated the two castles. Cirillo’s company had helped. He soothed her with especially delicious faerie cakes iced in gold that he conjured from the air, and with his magical kisses, which seemed to melt away her sorrow.

The three dukes were called to the royal castle to discuss the crisis. On this bright late-autumn morning they sat about a rectangular table within a small room with tall windows that looked out over the hills now dressed in scarlet, orange, purple, yellow and several shades of gold and brown against a bright blue sky. A fire in the large hearth warmed the room, the large logs crackling as the flames leaped high up the chimney. At each participant’s place there was a chassed silver goblet decorated with green malachite.

In the table’s center was a large decanter of dark red wine.

Dukes Alban, Dreng and Tullio looked curiously, and perhaps a bit nervously, at Kaliq of the Shadows and Prince Cirillo. They had grown quickly familiar with the young king, and they all knew Nidhug well. There was much magic to be found about the table and the dukes were frankly a little bit afraid if the truth had been known. They waited for Dillon to speak first.

“We have contained the Yafir as you know,” he began. “Now we must find them, and take back those women who wish to be repatriated to Belmair. And we must rescue the queen, my wife.”

“Surely, my lord, many of the women stolen over the years are now dead,” Dreng said. “And as for the others it is unlikely their families will want them returned now that they have been tainted by the Yafir. The threat is contained. It is no more, and our women are safe again.”

“The women stolen over these last centuries are very much alive, my lord,” Dillon told him. “Mortals living in the faerie world do not age. They remain as they were when they were stolen away. These are women of childbearing age. Many were married. Those stolen in the past few years may well wish to return to their husbands and homes. As for the others the families that they knew are long gone. They will undoubtedly remain with their Yafir husbands and children.”

“It is unlikely their families will receive them back,” Duke Alban said quietly. “Dreng is sadly right. Those kidnapped will be considered tainted. I will, however, welcome back any citizen of my dutchy of Belia who wishes to return. And I will provide for them if their family do not want them.”

“I want my wife back,” Dillon said quietly.

“My lord!” Now it was Duke Tullio who spoke. “You cannot accept Fflergant’s daughter back as your wife, as your queen. She has been taken by the Yafir. She is tainted! It is all well and good of Alban to offer sanctuary to those from Belia who wish to return. Those women are for the most part the wives and daughters of fishermen and herdsmen. But Cinnia was a king’s daughter, a king’s wife. You cannot take her back! Belmair’s queen must be above reproach, and even a minute spent in the Yafir lord’s custody makes her unfit to be our queen. I am sorry for I know you had come to love her, but this is not Hetar where a woman may dabble with many lovers, and still be considered a proper matron. This is Belmair. Dreng, Alban and I will carefully make up a list of maidens from among our families who would be suitable as your queen.”

“Do not bother,” Dillon said coldly. “I will have no one but Cinnia for my queen. I know, my lords, that you mean well. But I want no other but Cinnia to be my wife.”

“What if the Yafir gets a child on her?” Dreng asked in a tight voice.

“I cast a spell on my wife when we were first wed to prevent her from conceiving a child until this business with the Yafir could be settled,” Dillon told them. “Our child could have been used against us, against Belmair,” he explained. “My spell cannot be broken or reversed by any but me, my lords. She will not give Ahura Mazda a child.”

“My lords,” Kaliq said quietly, “you argue about something that can be settled at a later date. Let the king continue on with the purpose of this meeting.”

Dillon nodded a thanks to his father. “Our first goal is to ferret out the Yafir’s hiding place. Every inch of each dutchy must be searched carefully, thoroughly. They will probably have set up their world in a maze of connecting caves, or beneath the earth, or perhaps inside the hills themselves. They will be hidden where you would not expect them to hide. Once we have found their hidden place we will decide how to approach them. This business between Belmair and the Yafir does not have to end badly.”