Authors: Chris Bunch
“I told you, Damastes,” Marán said, “I’d figure out a way to not need bodyguards.”
I grinned. “It’ll be as if we’re children again, and our parents are away for the night.”
“Exactly,” Marán said. “But even better. Do your second marvel, Seer.”
Sinait walked to the table and picked up the flask. “I’ll need three drops of blood,” she said. “One from each of you.”
“What does this one do?”
“This is what I’m proudest of,” Marán said. “Something Amiel said made me come up with the idea. She told me once she was sorry that you can’t drink.”
“Won’t, actually,” I said. “Tastes like dung and then my head’s the source of the dung for the next day.”
“But there’s something to be said for wine,” Amiel said. “It loosens the mind and gentles the senses. Some, anyway. Others it makes more acute.”
“Then you’re throwing up in the gutter,” I said.
“So what we want,” Marán said, “is something that’ll give you all the good that drink can bring, but none of the evil. I consulted Devra, and she said such a potion was possible. Amiel suggested we should all take the same potion, so we’re on the same level.”
“What’s in this potion?” I asked suspiciously.
“A bit of a lot,” the seer said. “Nothing that magical, other than that I said an efficacy spell when I mixed the potion, like a cook sautéing his spices for greater effect. As to what’s specifically in it, mostly herbs from the Outer Islands. Some you might recognize, like Carline thistle, lovage, water eryngo, gelsemine, centaury, sweet flag root, three or four varieties of mushrooms — the usual witch’s hell-broth, in other words.”
“Do we drink it or pray to it?” I asked skeptically.
“First your finger,” Sinait said, and there was a needle between her fingers. It darted, and a drop of blood welled on my fingertip. She held the flask under it and the blood dropped, further discoloring the murky solution. “This, and some things I did earlier, will seal the potion to you.” She did the same for Marán and Amiel. “Now drink,” she said. “Share it equally.”
We obeyed. The mixture was bitter, tangy, but not unpleasant.
“Now what do we do?” Marán said.
“Whatever you wish,” Sinait said. “The potion will be quite long-lasting, well into tomorrow morning.”
“When will we know what its effects are?” Amiel asked, a bit nervously.
“You will know when you will know,” Sinait said. “And there’s certainly nothing to fear. All that I put in it is natural.”
“So are nightshade and fly agaric,” Amiel muttered, but appeared a bit reassured.
“Have a good time,” Sinait said, and I swear she was about to add “children,” but caught herself and bowed out.
“That is that,” Marán said. “Now, what do we wear? I didn’t have time to plan a costume.”
I went to the window and opened the shutter. For once the sages were right in their weather prediction, and I felt spring rushing on the land. A warm, gentle breeze blew off the river, and I thought I could smell the sea, miles north of us, about to awake to Jacini’s gentle touch.
Marán and Amiel looked at each other. “Come,” my wife said. “Let’s raid our closets. Damastes, meet us downstairs in two hours. Dress sensibly, for we’re going to be the peacocks this night.”
I bowed obediently. This night was to be entirely Marán’s show.
• • •
I chose a flowing silk tunic in the deepest blue, black pants and kneeboots, with a matching cloak treated to be waterproof, remembering how quickly Nicias’s weather could change. Even though Sinait said it wouldn’t be necessary, I took a simple black domino. I opened one of my arms cabinets, but decided I’d be in no jeopardy this night. I considered how seldom I’d gone unarmed over the years, but put the thought aside as possibly depressing.
A few minutes after the agreed time the women came downstairs. Both were dressed very simply. Amiel wore a lavender silk button-front dress. It was strapless, and she had the top two buttons unfastened, so it was quite beyond me how it stayed up, barely covering her jutting breasts. She wore matching sandals with leather straps curling up around her lower leg. The silk was very thin, and I could glimpse her rouged nipples. Around her neck she wore a matching scarf, and a simple eye mask in the same color was atop her head.
Marán had chosen a dress of knit red cloth that fit her body like a sheath from her ankles to just above her waist, where the material came to a point under her right arm. A gold catch held a triangular cloth of the same color that ran over her left shoulder, then down her back, leaving her midriff and right shoulder to just above her breast bare. Her shoes were slip-ons and, like her feathered mask, matched her dress. Each carried a cloak over her arm.
“And aren’t we gorgeous?” Amiel said. “The prettiest threesome in Nicias.” Her mood changed suddenly, and she looked sad. “Isn’t it a pity the four of us never went out more than we did? Perhaps …” Her voice trailed off, and she shook herself. “Sorry. I’m being dunceish, aren’t I? We don’t need anyone but the three of us.”
“No,” Marán said softly, seriously. “We don’t.”
We went out into Festival.
• • •
The riverfront was thronged with people laughing, drinking, eating. Some wore costume, more did not. We marveled at a man and a woman dressed as cowled demons, who must’ve spent an entire year working on their outfits, then a goodly sum on the sorcerer who animated them, for in place of the monsters’ fearsome faces were mirrors, but instead of merely reflecting they showed the faces, magically warped into evil, of those who peered under their hoods.
We started for the artists’ quarter, where Festival was celebrated with the greatest dedication.
There was a ten-piece band, earnestly playing a song that had been on everyone’s lips last year. In front of each musician was a mug. But instead of holding money, it held alcohol, and any passerby with a flask was invited to pour a measure into it. I wondered what the always-changing concoction tasted like, and winced.
There were about twenty dancers weaving about the band, and as they spun, each shed a garment. Some were already naked.
“What,” Marán wondered, “will they find to do in twenty minutes? They’ll all be bare as babes by then.”
“Maybe put everything back on and start over,” I hazarded.
“Or maybe they’ll find some other way to pass the time than dancing” was Amiel’s guess.
• • •
I felt myself grinning, without any particular reason. My body was wonderfully, comfortably warm, and the night was alive with wondrous scents. The people around us were marvelous to behold, whether they were rich, poor, ugly, or handsome. I looked at Amiel and Marán, and knew there were no two more beautiful women in all Numantia, and no one’s company I’d prefer. Everything was soft, gentle, good. My cares about my duties, my worries about Maisir — all were meaningless. I was in complete control, my senses heightened, not altered. All that mattered, all I should concern myself with, was this moment in time that would last forever, when everything was permitted and no one could mean anyone harm.
Amiel smiled at me, and I knew she was thinking the same as I.
Marán hugged me. “I think,” she said softly, “there was some potion in that potion.”
Hunger came, and we found a line of stalls, and then tried to decide which delowa vendor had the tastiest wares. We settled on one, and he took three of the sausages from the grill, their aroma floating around us, and slid them into their obscene buns. He ladled the fiery white sauce over them and passed them across.
Another stand sold drinks. Neither Amiel nor Marán wanted wine, so we bought three fruit punches, found a quiet corner, and sat on a stone wall.
Marán took her sausage from its holder. “I always start like this,” she said, protruding her tongue and licking sauce from the meat, looking at me as she did, tongue curling around and back.
“I prefer getting straight to the heart of the matter,” Amiel declared and took a crunching bite of sausage and bun.
“Ouch,” I said. “So much for sensuality.”
“Not so.” Amiel used her tongue to scoop sauce from the bun, stuck it out at me, then curled it back into her mouth. “Some prefer it before, some after,” she said.
My cock stirred, and I concentrated on my own meal.
We were in a many-angled square, and in its center were perfume trees, still without buds, but the trees’ aroma drifted over me like a curtain. There was a street magician with a small stand and quite a large crowd around him.
“Look ye, look ye,” he bellowed. “Let me take you beyond this time, this place. Let me show you the terrors, the wonders of another kingdom, the evil kingdom of Maisir.”
His wand swirled, and red fire dripped from it, fire that vanished before it could reach the ground. Above us stretched a foreign sky, and there were vast snowy deserts, then plains that went on forever, then a huge city unlike anything I’d ever seen. It was built of wood, wood painted in a thousand different colors. There were towers, some conventional, some shaped like elongated onions, others in more subtle geometric shapes. I knew it instantly from my reading — Jarrah!
“This is the heart of evil, the Maisirian capital,” the sorcerer announced. “See its riches,” and we were outside a palace. One wall vanished, and everything inside was gold, silver, riches.
“Ripe f’r th’ lootin',” someone shouted.
Another image came, and we saw a young girl, in peasant woolens, screaming in silent fear, as a ruffian carried her away from a burning hut. We saw her again, and this time she was nearly naked, her body clad in translucent silk. There was still fear on her face, especially as a fat man, wearing fantastic garb, stood nearby. He beckoned, and she shook her head. Again he motioned, and this time she went after him, slowly, reluctantly, dread on her face.
“That’s what th’ king a’ Maisir does wi’ his virgins,” someone shouted, and I realized, perhaps with the heightened awareness of the potion, that the same man had shouted both times. I looked closely at the magician, and recognized him. It took a moment to pull his name from my memory. It was Gojjam, and I’d last seen him years ago, giving a rousing speech to the soldiery before Dabormida.
He was no more a street magician than I, but was busily keeping the emperor’s agenda alive. I wondered whose gold he pocketed — Kutulu’s, the emperor’s, or perhaps the Chare Brethren. But this was no night for thoughts like these.
• • •
Nicias is named the City of Lights for the enormous gas deposits under its rock, gas that’s been channeled until the meanest house has free light for the striking of a match. At Festival the valves are turned up, so Nicias is aflame from one end to the other. Here are pools of light, there pools of darkness. Some seek one … and some the other.
A fortune-teller, old, with a white beard almost to his knees, had a stand. We admired its elaborate woodwork. He looked up at us, but said nothing, waiting.
“I already know my fortune,” I said, and so I did, having had it told at my birth when my mother consulted a wizard and he’d said, “The boy will ride the tiger for a time, and then the tiger will turn on him and savage him. I see great pain, great sorrow, but I also see the thread of his life goes on. But for how much farther, I cannot tell, since mists drop around my mind when it reaches that moment.” I didn’t understand the prediction, nor did my parents, but those dark words kept me from ever consulting another seer.
Amiel shook her head as well. “I don’t want to know about tomorrow,” she said. “If it’s good, then I’ll be surprised; if it’s bad, I don’t want to worry.”
Marán asked me for a silver coin. “What do you examine, seer?” she asked. “My palms?”
“I’ve already made my examination,” the old man said quietly.
“So what is to come?”
The fortune-teller started to answer. Then he looked at all three of us, shook his head, and tossed the coin back. “Not at Festival” were his only words.
“What does that mean?” Marán demanded.
But the man was looking down at his table.
Marán’s face darkened. “How in the hells can he make any money, being like that?” she demanded. “This is a complete waste of time!” She walked away quickly. Amiel and I exchanged glances, then followed.
In a few minutes, my wife’s good spirits returned. It may have been the potion, but just as likely the laughter, the music of many bands, from official orchestras to neighborhood groups to the piping of a cheery drunk on his tin whistle.
A man stood in a deserted square, his arms moving as if he were conducting a full orchestra. There were no musicians to be seen, but music swelled, flared around us.
A column of bears moved past, as if part of a show — mountain bears, tropical jungle bears, even the huge black bears of Urey. But there were no keepers, no chains, and the bears disappeared into the night.
We reached the river, and now the walkways were packed. Every small boat in Nicias had been decked with flowers, ribbons, and multicolored torches, and drifted up and down the Latane River. Above them in the sky were other ships. These were made of the lightest paper and carried torches filled with oils that burned with variously colored flames. The hot air lifted these small ships of the heavens high. Every now and then flames would reach paper, and fire would cascade into the water.
We kept moving toward the Emperor’s Palace, where there’d be a real show.
• • •
Festival was the time for Numantia’s magicians to parade their skills, and their wizardry filled the sky as we approached the Imperial Palace. This year the wizards seemed to outdo their previous attempts. Lights from no known source or any earthly color flared, vanished. Strange beasts, some known, some fabulous, pranced along the walkways. Trees grew, changed, took on animal life. Huge fish broke water and leapt high into the air, fish no man had ever hooked. The crowds cheered and laughed when one creation, something half a lion, half an octopus, pranced from a balustrade into thin air, then shattered as its creator became flustered and lost control of his fantasy.
Then the images vanished, and there was nothing but the starry night, and the Grand Illusion was to begin. Nothing happened for long minutes, then Marán gasped and pointed. Slowly, very slowly, the stars were winking out. The crowd saw what was going on, and the murmurs of excitement changed, became fearful. Then there was complete blackness. Children started to cry. A woman screamed.