Authors: Alice Borchardt
When we made it around the building’s curve and could see the dark archway that was our goal, things became much easier. It seemed no time until we were clear of our precarious position and standing out of the wind in a courtyard, looking back at the stair we had just used to escape Aunt Louise’s attentions.
Meth was leaning against one semitransparent wall. “My heart was trying to leap out of my chest,” he said.
“Here.” He seized Cateyrin’s hand and pressed it against his left ribs. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so afraid before in my life.”
“My poor dear.” Cateyrin wound her arms around him. “My poor darling.”
“My poor stomach,” Albe whispered. “This is nauseating. What a whiner. Did he think the rest of us enjoyed that? I’ll be forced to cut his throat soon if he doesn’t shut up.”
“Shush. She wants him. We’re taking refuge with her mother. Let’s try not to poison the wine before we drink it.”
Tuau hunkered down beside me and began to cough, a disturbing sound from a cat.
“What’s wrong now?” Albe asked, sounding bored.
Tuau got his breath. “Goddam dust . . . bitch!” Then immediately began coughing again.
“Damn! Cateyrin!” I called as Tuau went on coughing. “Where can we find some water?”
“In the middle of the garden,” was her reply.
Yes, sure enough, there was a garden under a light well in this courtyard also. But I hadn’t noticed it because the light was failing. It was very small, only a shallow bed surrounding a basin into which water trickled rather than flowed.
“Yes, and what happens when we try to take the water?” Albe asked. “Does something jump out of the ground and try to kill us? They’re everywhere, these gardens.”
“Yes, we have to—food is one of our biggest problems,” Cateyrin said. “And no, nothing will try to eat you for taking a drink of water here. Just don’t pick the plants.”
“Perish the thought,” I said.
Tuau let fly with another string of honking coughs. He sounded as though he might strangle to death. I hurried toward the basin. Sure enough, there was a dipper. I filled it and brought it to Tuau.
He slurped, not lapped.
“Christ!” Albe exclaimed.
“She” stepped out of the darkness inside the black tower.
“The towers are glass, tinted glass, but if you are close enough to the walls, inside you can be seen,” Cateyrin explained.
She was very beautiful: bejeweled, wearing a headdress, necklace set with glittering violet stones, gold filigree cuffs, and anklets that formed a mass of golden chain dripping with tiny bells. She studied us “women.” I could see her thinking as her eyes rested on Albe and myself. Cateyrin received the same treatment, as did Tuau. Then she saw Meth.
She smiled; it was a bewitching one.
He ogled her and grinned back stupidly.
She lifted her arms to show off pink-tipped, perfect breasts, then turned to one side and bent over. I couldn’t see him, not completely. He was only a shadow through the curved glass. But we all watched, fascinated, as he came up behind her, entered her body, and used one hand to stimulate her and the other to guide her hips back and forth over his organ in such a way as to achieve maximum pleasure for himself.
She turned her head and again smiled at Meth. He moaned, and fell back against the wall behind him and closed his eyes.
Cateyrin spun around and slapped him as hard as she could. He let out a yell.
“What was that for? I didn’t do anything.”
“You were thinking about it,” she said between her teeth.
I glanced away from Meth and back at the glass wall. “She” was gone and her partner with her.
“The show’s over,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Indeed it was growing darker and darker. We had no torches or any form of light with us, and it might be difficult to negotiate the stair.
“Maybe if we give Tuau another drink of water . . .” Meth began.
Cateyrin slapped him again. This time he hit her back. She staggered away, reeling, her nose streaming blood.
I heard Albe’s sword clear the sheath.
“No killing!” I shouted.
“My lady, you’re making life difficult for me. I can’t think which of them is worse: his instant lechery, her frantic jealousy.”
“I be nod aleous!” Cateyrin shouted. I considered the possibility that her nose was broken.
I could barely see now, but this courtyard looked to have only one exit. I pointed toward it.
“Cateyrin! Is this the way to your mother’s house?”
“Yeth.” Cateyrin was blotting her bleeding nose on her shirt.
“Then get going now. March! Move!”
Meth shot a fearful look at Albe. She smiled back—it was not a pleasant one, containing as it did elements of both threat and derision. Then he and Cateyrin obeyed.
“Take point,” I told Tuau.
“Oh, hell. Why can’t . . . ?”
“I’m going to cut the throat of the next person who starts an argument about anything,” Albe said in a quiet, conversational tone.
Tuau obeyed, albeit grumbling under his breath, though not loudly enough to be clearly heard.
The stair spiraled down, and down. At times we had to feel our way through almost pitch darkness. At others, light shone through the semitransparent walls and we could see well. Besides light, I heard talk and laughter and even fancied I heard a word or two I recognized. But we could see nothing clearly, and though I had a sense of being in a densely inhabited place, we encountered no one else during our passage down.
At the bottom, the stair began to widen out. We were all winded and tired. I gave the order to stop. The speed and alacrity with which I was obeyed demonstrated it was a good idea.
Cateyrin’s nose was still bleeding, and Albe moistened a cloth pad.
“My lady,” she said. “May I call on your healing skills?”
I touched Cateyrin’s face. The air filled with the pepper scent of roses.
“Oh, my!” Albe exclaimed. She was sitting on a step a little above Cateyrin. I was bending over them. “Roses. Cateyrin, the air is filled with them. Where did they come from?”
“She’s Danae. Tuatha de Danae,” Tuau purred. He was stroking himself against Albe’s bare legs on the other side.
“Sit,” Albe said.
With a sigh, he complied. “Mean. Mean. All of you, just selfish.”
“You will get yourself overexcited and try to take a bite,” she explained. “Cats are like that.”
“Can I rub my cheeks on you? Oh, please! Please?”
Meth said, “God, she was beautiful.”
“You idiot!” Cateyrin started to stand up.
Albe pushed her back down. “Stop it. You have no claim on him. What he does is his own business.”
“You don’t understand,” she wailed.
My hand had done good work. The swelling around her nose was down.
“Cateyrin!” Meth shouted. “You’re being a jealous bitch. I don’t believe a word of those stories. They’re all made up by skinny little twats like you or old baggy hags like your mother and her . . .”
“You ingrate. Keep your mouth shut about my mother.”
I clapped my hands and brought the screeching to a halt. “Stop!” I commanded. “Cateyrin, what don’t we understand? Take a deep breath and tell me. Slowly and clearly.”
She gave Meth a nasty glance. He returned a sulky glare.
“She’s a Circe! A Fand!”
I knew the names, but wondered what they meant here. Circe turned men into pigs and Fand was . . . well, no one was quite sure what Fand was. She came in sleep to men who were going to be mighty warriors. But some families sacrificed to keep her away, because she sometimes ruined them for real women and they took such chances that they were not long lived. So she was both courted and dreaded.
“Tell me!”
“She makes slaves of the men who come to her as lovers,” Cateyrin continued. “She’s like a drug. They can never get enough of her and they can never escape.”
“Nonsense!” Meth shouted.
“One at a time,” I ordered. “Let Cateyrin talk.”
And talk she did. Seems many, not all, but many, who fell under the spell of a Fand were willing to do anything to remain in her company. They voluntarily allowed some sort of device to be placed around their necks that controlled them, and most of the farmwork was done by the Fir Blog and similarly collared men. The Fand, who started out as a real woman, became stupendously rich, long lived, and beautiful.
There were dreadful stories about men who wore away their lives in a semidream state, toiling in the fields under the sun—lost to their wives, children, friends, and other family members simply to be allowed to sit at the Fand’s feet and adore her and sometimes touch her hand.
“It doesn’t work on everyone,” Meth snapped. “A lot just walk away after a few tumbles.”
“And you believe you are one of those?” Albe asked.
“Yes . . . yes, I do. We could have found refuge with her better than at your mother’s place. It would be the adventure of a lifetime to have a Fand.”
“Why didn’t you warn us?” I asked Cateyrin.
“I didn’t think she’d come out for a party made up mostly of women. She only showed herself once or twice to me when I was young.”
“You are such a grown-up now,” Albe said, laughing.
“Since today, I am.” She did her best to look grim, but with her lower lip sticking out, Cateyrin seemed about eight years old.
“God help us,” Albe whispered. Then she turned to Cateyrin. “Girl, what can we expect when we come out of this stairwell. You and Meth already said the streets aren’t safe at night.”
Meth and Cateyrin glanced at each other. “Well,” she said slowly, “there are the gangs. Every street has one. In fact . . .” She glanced up the dark stairwell we had just come down. “I’m surprised we didn’t meet one here. I was afraid we might.”
“What do they do?” Albe asked.
“Una . . .” Meth and Cateyrin looked at each other again.
“We’re not sure,” Meth said. “They seem to do whatever they want to. Depends on what they think they can get. We were good children and always home before dark. So I’m not sure.”
“Oh, fine!” Albe said. “Great! Wonderful! Brigands!”
“Maeniel says all cities have them, “I told her.
“We have a lot,” Cateyrin said solemnly.
“Why do I believe you?” Albe rolled her eyes.
Sarcastically, Tuau commented, “We are a well-armed party and you are protected by one of the Akeru.” He threw a defiant glance at Albe. “I’m not to be sneered at.”
A slow grin spread over Albe’s face.
Oh, no,
I thought. It doesn’t do to break down a warrior’s confidence.
So I interrupted, “We have some food and drink left. Let’s finish it here and get moving.”
When I got up, my legs were stiff, my ankles sore.
I’m tired,
I thought, surprised. You see, I wasn’t used to fatigue, not this kind.
Too much,
I thought. My mind was dulled by unexpected and dangerous events. If packs of brigands were awaiting us, I must be alert.
I closed my eyes and summoned my armor. It came and covered me with a vivid intensity I had not heretofore experienced. I glowed, my fair skin pinked by excitement and patterned in the speaking images my people used to express the complexity of life. The knot work and intricate, vining spirals that speak to our souls.
Once we used them on everything. They were carven into leather, wood, and stone, woven into cloth and intricate, colorful braids. When we couldn’t speak each other’s languages, we used these symbols to communicate. Before the ogam alphabet or the Greek were conceived, the wise among the peoples of Europe from the Out Isles to beyond the Rhine could mark the turning of the years, rising and setting of the stars, and even calculate the hours and moments by the shadows cast by the sun as it traversed its long arc across the sky. They are our everlasting prayers to our gods, abstract statements of a belief in the community of life and that of the living, the dead, and the yet unborn. I wore them on my skin and called on them for protection.
I couldn’t see myself except in the eyes of others, but they looked satisfactorily impressed. Tuau’s pupils widened, turning his eyes from emerald to black.
“My, my. I’d only half believed you were Danae. But now . . .”
“Let’s go,” I said.
The stairs widened as we dropped down to the black tunnels that seemed to form the base of the city. The air felt damp and a mist filled the air. The lower we got, the more it thickened, until we were traveling in a gray void.
“Fog, thank God,” Cateyrin whispered to me. “I had hoped for it.”
“Why, girl?” Albe asked. “It makes it easy to ambush us.”
“Hush,” I whispered. “Move as silently as you can. If we can’t see them, they can’t see us, and won’t be expecting an armed party.”
We were no longer single file, but had spread out a bit. About then, we left the stair behind and were traveling in a tight group down the center of a corridor whose roof and walls were lost in the thickening mist.
“Where is the light coming from?” I asked Cateyrin. I was uneasy about it. The fog was illuminated in silver-white, as though by bright moon glow. “Is the moon out?”
She glanced at me as though I had taken leave of my senses. “What’s a moon?”
I placed that question aside. I’ll deal with it later, I decided.
“The light?” I repeated.
“Starlight,” she said. “The roof here catches starlight and makes it brighter. Look.”
She pointed to an opening in the fog above and I saw them. Thousands of tiny hexagonal cells. Like the eyes of an insect, each with another tiny hexagonal cell in the center. The roof was lumpy with them, and they were of all different sizes. The brightest stars had large ones, the dimmer stars small ones.
“There are all sorts of things here that make light,” Cateyrin continued. “Some good, some very bad. This is only one of them.”
I was about to ask what happened by day . . . when a terrible scream sounded not far behind us. Albe and I stopped, turned, and looked back.
“No! No! No!” Cateyrin tugged at my hand. “God, no! Don’t stop! Keep moving!”
Tuau was pressed against Albe’s leg. “It’s a kill,” the cat muttered. “I can smell the blood and torn guts from here.”
Cateyrin pulled frantically at my hand and, though she was white with fear, she didn’t speak above a whisper. I cut my eyes at Meth. He also looked terrified. Albe and I obeyed and hurried along. I found I was shivering. The corridor was dank and cold. It grew perceptibly darker. I looked up and saw the roof was broken here, a big hole above us.