Page 25 of Dark Shaman: The Lost Treasure (The Children Of The Gods #98)
ELUHEED
A s befitting the warlord's concubines, the dining room was elegant and opulent. Crystal chandeliers hung over a table that could have graced any palace, set with china so fine it was nearly translucent and silverware that had been polished to reflect the light like mirrors.
Eluheed paused in the doorway, acutely aware that he was crossing a threshold he'd never expected to breach.
Seven ladies sat around the table, their beauty so perfect that it was almost painful to behold. Sitting between them, Tony looked like he didn't belong. As a human, he might be considered good-looking, but next to the female perfection he was surrounded with, he was painfully ordinary.
They turned toward Eluheed with varying degrees of curiosity, and he dropped his gaze to the floor as he'd been trained to do.
"Elias!" Tony called out. "Come join us. We saved you a seat."
When Eluheed lifted his head, he saw the American looking pleased to see him.
Tamira patted the empty chair beside her, and Eluheed's pulse quickened.
Once again, she wore a deep blue dress that complemented her olive skin, but it wasn't either of the ones she'd worn the other two times he'd seen her.
Did each of the ladies have her own signature color?
He also noticed that her hair had a slightly reddish hue, and he wondered if it was a trick of the light or if she had colored it since he'd last seen her in the courtyard.
It was swept up to reveal the elegant line of her neck, the long ends cascading down her back in perfectly styled ringlets.
When she smiled at him, his chest tightened and then expanded.
"Thank you," he managed, making his way to the chair. The thick carpet muffled his footsteps, making him feel like he was floating in a dream.
As he sat, a familiar figure entered the dining room, one of the kitchen staff who'd shared his bed a few times. She kept her eyes downcast as she poured water into his crystal goblet.
"Thank you, Mariam," he said quietly.
She glanced up, surprise flickering across her face as if she'd expected him to forget her name just because he'd been moved to the ladies' quarters. She answered with a slight nod and then rushed out of the dining room.
The exchange hadn't gone unnoticed.
"You know the staff well," said a pale, blonde woman across from him. She spoke English with a faint Germanic or Norse accent.
"The staff is not so extensive that it was difficult to learn all of their names over the eighteen months I've been here," Eluheed said. "After the doctor died, I've been treating their various ailments to the best of my abilities."
He'd been doing that prior to the doctor's death as well, but he chose not to mention that. Many of the staff had trusted him more than they had trusted the ancient physician.
"This is Liliat," Tamira introduced the blonde. "And beside her is Raviki, then Rolenna—she's the one experimenting with glassmaking. Across from them are Beulah, Sarah, and Tula."
Each woman nodded as she was named, their expressions ranging from friendly curiosity to careful assessment. Eluheed had the uncomfortable sensation of being a specimen under examination.
"And I'm Tony, but you knew that already," the guy added with his characteristic grin. "Welcome to the dinner table discourse society. We solve all the world's problems between the soup and dessert."
"If only the world knew," Raviki said dryly. She had the darkest skin of the group, her features sharp and elegant. "Thousands of years of accumulated wisdom, and we're using it to debate whether the latest fashion trends are an improvement or a travesty."
"Fashion is important," Rolenna protested. "It's one of the few ways humans have to express their inner selves through external means."
It felt surreal to hear them discuss fashion when somewhere on this same island, women who could have been just like them, immortal, were dying as old humans. According to Tony, they had the right genes but were kept from transitioning so they could have many more dormant children for Navuh.
They were treated as breeding stock.
If Tony knew about that, the ladies must know as well, but it wasn't as if any of them could do anything about it.
They were also breeders for Navuh, just with an elevated status.
"Everything is important when you have eternity to fill," Sarah said. She had a bookish air about her, including a pair of wire-rimmed glasses perched on her nose despite the fact that she surely didn't need vision correction. It was a fashion accessory, and Eluheed found the choice strange.
Another servant appeared to serve the first course.
Sonia, whose son he'd helped through a bout of pneumonia just the other day.
She shot him a grateful look, even though Mika's miraculous improvement was thanks to the antibiotics that had finally been delivered from the island's main clinic and not Eluheed's herbal remedies.
"You seem uncomfortable." Beulah studied him with dark, intelligent eyes. "Is it us, or is it being served by people you consider friends?"
The directness of the question caught him off guard. "Both and neither, I suppose," he admitted. "I was served by people I knew in the staff quarters as well, so it's not about that. It's about being here and being treated as one of you. It's an adjustment."
"An honest answer," Liliat approved. "How refreshing. You are not pretending that this is perfectly natural for you." She cast Tony a sardonic smile.
"Nothing about this situation is natural," Eluheed said, then wondered if he'd been too blunt.
Tamira laughed, the sound melodic and pleasing to the ear. "On that, we can all agree." She turned to Tony. "You have to tell Elias about your first dinner with us. You spilled wine all over yourself trying to impress Tula."
Tony groaned. "I wasn't trying to impress anyone. I felt like an extra in a historical drama turned into a science fiction movie, and I was afraid of breaking the crystal stemware. My grandmother had a set of six crystal glasses, and I wasn't allowed to even look at them."
"Surely you could have afforded to buy a set," Sarah said. "Don't bioinformaticians get paid well?"
He grimaced. "I was just a post-doc, and I was being paid peanuts. I could barely cover my rent. That's why it was so easy to lure me to this island under the pretense of a fake job offer. I was desperate for money."
"Speaking of bioinformatics," Raviki said, "You started to explain something over breakfast and didn't finish."
As Tony launched into a lengthy explanation that involved a lot of hand gestures and scientific terms Eluheed only half understood, the main course arrived.
Lamb prepared with herbs and vegetables he recognized from the kitchen gardens.
In addition to smelling amazing, it was also beautifully arranged around his plate, making him reluctant to mess up the presentation.
"You're not eating," Tamira noticed after everyone had dug in.
He picked up his fork. "It's almost too pretty to eat. I'm not used to food presented as art. Food is supposed to be simple fare meant to nourish and delight the palate, but this also delights visually."
"Spoken like a true shaman," Liliat said.
"Although, to be honest, I have no idea what shamans of different traditions do.
My ancestors practiced shamanism which was a form of magic and divination called seier.
It involved communicating with spirits, prophecy, and healing.
But I've only read about that in fiction, so I don't trust the accounts. "
Eluheed considered his answer carefully.
These women had lived for millennia, and they would spot shallow pretense immediately.
He would have to lean into his knowledge of human shamanic practices, which wasn't as extensive as he pretended it was.
What humans expected from their shamans was very different than what had been expected from him where he'd come from.
"I think that shamanism is pretty universal, but some focus on one of the aspects more than the others, so it depends on who you ask.
To some, a shaman is a bridge between the physical and spiritual worlds.
To others, we're simply healers who understand that body and spirit are inseparable. "
"What is it to you?" Tamira asked.
"To me, shamanism is about seeing the fundamental truths of everything and seeing the connections others miss.
Understanding that everything is interwoven.
Plant, animal, and person. Earth, water, and sky.
Past, present, and future." He paused. "Though I suspect that sounds like mystical nonsense to those raised in this age of technology. "
"Not at all." Sarah leaned forward, adjusting her unnecessary glasses.
"Modern physics is just beginning to catch up to what shamans have known for millennia.
Quantum entanglement, the observer effect, the possibility of parallel universes—it all points to a reality far stranger than pure materialism suggests. "
"Have you studied physics?" Eluheed asked.
He'd read extensively on many subjects, including physics, but some of the topics were too complicated for him to grasp. Humans had advanced so much during the last two hundred years or so that it was hard for him to wrap his head around the progress.
Eluheed often wondered if his people, or what was left of them, had progressed at the same rate. If he ever returned home, would he find that they lagged behind humans, or would he be surprised that they'd leaped ahead?