Snake Bite and Other Homoerotic Dark Fantasies: Excerpt:

The shutting of the door was the sound of desolation. A candle had been left for him if he wanted it, but Adaz had warned him that it would consume his air all the more quickly; the eunuch had also left him a vial of poison, which he tried to refuse.

Adaz merely pressed the small glass more firmly into his palm, breathing in Menes’ ear. “A time will come when you’ll want it,” he whispered, “so take it.”

If circumstances had been different, he would not have been alone in the tomb. When the Turyar raiders came down from the hills as they often did in late autumn and stormed the stronghold, Lord Nenkadu’s concubines had not fled in time; some were carried off while others were slain in the first bloody frenzy of the raid. Only he, who had been in his master’s bed at the time, had escaped; Adaz and some of the other eunuchs had whisked him away while Nenkadu, half-naked and still dazed by sleep, stayed behind to fight.

At daybreak, a force led by the lord’s eldest son swept into the ruined stronghold and put the raiders to flight, but for some things it was too late. In their wake the Turyar had left scores of dead and wounded, and had made off with a sizable portion of the household plate and jewels. Certainly there was little to spare for Lord Nenkadu’s funeral. Menes had not seen the body, but those whose task it was to prepare it for burial told him how savagely the Turyar had dealt with him.

“You’ll have to make do with what’s left,” said one of the eunuchs, “but what matters is still there, and we’ve sewn his head back on. It will suffice in the hereafter.”

There was no discussion that he would be the one to accompany Nenkadu into the hereafter. Beyond the brief stab of terror he felt at being told, he was ambivalent. For much of his life he had been a slave; as his lord’s catamite his lot had been better than most. Nenkadu had not treated him harshly, and after some initial discomfort being taken by him had not been unpleasant, though Menes never experienced with him the passion of which others spoke so highly.

Accompanying a lord and lover to the afterlife was an honor for which concubines often fought; to survive was to be treated as used goods. Menes accepted the compliments of the eunuchs who attended him. His best robe of red Rhodeen silk had been taken, but his second-best, which he had worn to his master’s bed and hastily thrown on as he fled, had survived. The servants washed it and replaced the ivory buttons with golden ones rescued from a ruined garment. His hair was dressed with scented oil and Adaz found him a pair of earrings; it was all the finery they could spare for him.

As they were dressing him, Nenkadu’s son had come in, stern and handsome, and drawn him aside. “Such a lovely boy,” he murmured, lightly stroking his callused fingertips over Menes’ cheek, tracing the bow of his lips. “You must be no more than sixteen. Such a waste. If the gods permitted anything less than a living sacrifice, I would have left him his dead concubines and taken you for myself.”

Menes was, in fact, not long past eighteen, but the eunuchs had taught him the tricks women used to conceal their age and prolong their beauty. Had he not died, Nenkadu might have kept him another year before replacing him with a younger, fresher boy.

At that moment, the priests had come in to lead him in the requisite meditations that would enable him to get through the funeral rite without fear; they assured him that once in the tomb they would give him a drink to dull his senses so he would not make a scene when the door was sealed.