Authors: Alice Borchardt
“They’re not men, and without a master, they’re feral. Meth says . . .”
“Meth is stupid as a flat rock,” Albe said. “Raise the gate, so I can tie him up before he comes to. He has so little between his ears that if I hit him in the head again, it might ruin all he has left. He is only a bit smarter than a chicken, not so intelligent as a cow, and a pig could run rings around him in any contest I can think of.”
“He will be better when the Lethe water wears off, but tie him up tight until then,” Ilona said. “When his head clears, he’ll be so sick for a few days that nothing much will matter to him, and he won’t be dangerous.”
The dress rang slightly as the meshes tinkled. I held it out, away from my body. I remembered Igrane’s “scarf.” Funny how your mind makes connections without any logic being involved. The scarf (or was it more of a mantle?) made the wearer invisible, and Igrane had asked me if I didn’t think that my great ancesstress Bodiccia had something similar to the “scarf.” Something that reeked of raw power as the “scarf” did. She had been on a fishing expedition; I could see that now. Trying to find out if any such artifact or even the memory of one was preserved among my mother’s kin.
I’d answered with the truth, “No.” But I knew such things existed and, further, I knew I might be holding one now. It didn’t look like much, but then I had seen what it had done to bars of welded steel. It was blackened by fire and coated with the greasy ash deposit left by the Fand’s burning.
I rubbed one dark ring with the ball of my thumb and found the filth wiped away. I gazed at the untouched metal glowing beneath. I threw the mass of dirty chain over my shoulder, and when someone strolled into the corridor leading into the house, I realized I was naked. Our visitor was a small, graceful, red-haired woman.
“Nest!” Ilona cried. “What are you doing here?”
“Amazing you can ask that question. Dear, I feel I must break it to you gently. At least half the city is milling around in the corridors outside. And most of them saw one of the worst Circes enter with her armed guards and her newest doomed lover. Then something like an explosion occurred, and her fierce Fir Blog were seen running from the entrance to your little home. Without their chains, I might add.”
“They’re free,” Ilona said. “I hope the crowd didn’t harm them. The Fand, the Circe, is dead.” She glanced at the puddle of still-blazing oil. It was clear now, and the dark material which I surmised was all that remained of the Fand seemed to have been consumed. Only a minor grease fire remained.
“Let me see if the portcullis will rise,” Ilona said.
It did, though with more creaking and rattling than I remembered.
“As I said, I hope the crowd didn’t harm any of the Fir Blog.”
“No! No, love,” Nest said. “They were running too fast to be caught. But one did stop for a few moments to tell us their wicked mistress was dead. He told my ladies, and I made so bold as to enter. Oh!” Nest exclaimed as she caught sight of Albe, Tuau, and me.
Albe was binding Meth hand and foot and didn’t notice the horrified look Nest directed at her face. She turned her eyes to me and seemed pleased.
“My dear, how lovely. But aren’t you a bit scorched?”
I suppose I was. My armor had turned most of the heat, but it, too, was blackened by smoke. I had no eyelashes and my hair, just growing back, was reduced to a frizz of curls. Then she glanced at Tuau.
Probably just for the fun of it, he gave a big cat yawn that showed every fang in his mouth. Nest bolted.
“God!” Ilona exclaimed. “Now I’ll have to talk her back in.” She let the portcullis fall with a crash.
“Tuau,” I said, “can you find the lake by yourself?”
He glared at me. “Is this the thanks I get for standing by you in time of trouble? You send me away to coddle some overexcitable female who—”
“Tuau,” Albe said. “Go kill some lunch and shut up. I don’t know how much help you were at this particular juncture. Seems to me my lady defended all of us, including you. We probably all owe her our lives.”
The glare he gave Albe could have boiled water. But he obeyed and started toward the stair, muttering imprecations under his breath in what sounded like three languages.
“Be back before dark,” Albe continued. “Try to kill enough for the rest of us, not just yourself. And watch out for those snakes.”
“I am not—I repeat, not, a fool!” he spat as he entered the hole in the rock where the stair began.
Nest had come back and the portcullis was clattering its way up. Despite the noise, the two women were deep in conversation, with Cateyrin nearby, freely adding her comments.
“Let us finish our bath, my lady,” Albe said.
We returned to the river. It ran under the city, as well as through it, a rabbit warren of tunnels and passages, all filled with greenery and thick tree roots. They twisted in and out of holes in the rock and formed mats in the pools, which allowed visitors to the tree’s domain to clamber up slopes and cross through flood fords to reach other beauty spots the tree nourished. Here and there, springs poured from the pure white inner part of the tree.
I pressed my lips to one, drank, and received a shock as I felt an increased awareness of the tree’s living presence. I found out about the dress of chain mail hanging over my shoulder. There is a curious silence that enters the mind when we receive certain sorts of messages.
I left Albe and Cateyrin scrubbing each other’s backs and wandered upstream. Yes, the river was beautiful here. Torrents poured between big boulders and down chutes composed of broken rocks. Long falls tumbled over mossy tussocks and around islands thick with a kind of cypress bearing small cones and fine leaves. Between moss and the webwork of fine roots, a child could walk here safely.
The city was part of the river and the river part of the city. Savory cooking smells drifted to my nose from eating places that overlooked the water. Some were as informal as our arrangements on the floor in Ilona’s house; others were glassed in with rich cloths on the tables and cushioned chairs, upholstered in silk, brocade, linen, and, sometimes, fur.
There were shops. I supposed they were shops. I have never been in any other city. These were glassed-in spaces filled with a staggering variety of goods, very much the sort I had seen when we made our entrance into the city. There were the usual: foods, wine, beer, mead, clothing. Furniture, an astonishing number of different kinds, some heavy, made of dark wood, others light, seemingly composed of strips of leather, cloth, and metal.
The array of both cloth and clothing was bewildering and so were some of the liberties taken with it. The women wore transparent gowns. Some wrapped themselves up or wore a tunic over them. Some didn’t.
Among us, it’s pretty clear what is worn at home or only in a sleeping place, and what is worn in public. Not so here. Beauty paraded itself near naked or covered in gossamer rainbow-hued silk. And jewels. God, what jewels. Collars of pearls, ropes of them, freshwater and saltwater, black, blue, brown, white, regular, and irregular. Gemstones, tourmaline, ruby-faceted, and cabochon. Sapphires, belts of them, twined with gold. Topaz, golden blue, aquamarine. Amethyst, amber garnet, brown, red, bright red, dark red. Opal. The opals were the most stunning among the jewels. Some were cut into thin plates and set in necklaces, belts, rings, bracelets, and headdresses. One woman I saw bending over a balcony rail wore only a loincloth wrapped in the usual way around the waist, up between the legs. The cloth was pale-blue silk. Her breasts were bare, and between them, set in gold and on a simple gold chain, was the most beautiful black opal I have ever seen. It was as long as the span between my wrist and the tip of my forefinger.
She leaned over the rail and called down to me. I was modest up to my shoulders, in cool but boiling foam from a dozen or so small cataracts rushing over jagged, rocky promontories that seemed to leap everywhere from the riverbed.
“How do you make those beautiful patterns on your face? By what art?” she asked.
I looked at my arms and hands and noticed my armor was still protecting me. She saw it glowing green against my fair skin. I didn’t want to try to answer, so I moved away into a maze of staggered islands, each supporting a different ornamental tree. The one I paused under had deep-green leaves, beautifully patterned with white.
There was sand on the bottom of the pool next to the island. I dove down and rubbed the gold ring dress I had taken from the Fand in the sand. The flowing water and sand scoured the golden rings that composed the dress, returning it to its former splendor. Then I rubbed myself with the sand to clean my armor. The slight roughness of the sand made my armor leap out against my pink and white skin, but then, once clean, it vanished, leaving me looking much as usual.
I tried to drop the dress down at my feet. I thought it might need a bit more scrubbing. But it would not leave my hand, not even when I spread my fingers wide. The golden chain mail clung to my skin.
I lifted it out of the water and studied the way it was made. It was perfect: golden mail, the rings each one fastened to the one on either side and the one on top. Each ring with a small, faceted jewel dangling inside it. It was perfect, and that, in and of itself, was enough to strike fear into my heart.
All of the rings were the same size. All the jewels matched. Nothing we do is like this. Real mail is made by drawing iron wire, then cutting it into sections. Each section is then bent to form a ring connected to the layer above and the one beside it. The ring is riveted then, to hold it in place. I know. I have seen my friend Gray make mail and I have worn it.
These rings were connected, but perfect. No sign of rivets or the minor irregularities found in drawn wire. All the rings were the same size and the same shape, as were the gems. And I remembered with a chill that, though the roaring blaze that burned the Fand had blackened the metal, it was untouched and barely heated.
The mail dress was a simple one. It was a rectangle with a hole in the middle for the head. The hole was formed by two triangular openings, one in the front and one in the back. Again there was that strange sense of “I told her so.” “I gave warning.” Either one, it was wordless.
The Fand? “No impression.”
No impression,
I thought. What? No impression? Animal? Predator? And again, I was standing in the rain, looking up at broken buildings. Moss. Mud.
And I really was there. I could smell the swamp, an odor of water, earth and green growing things, and the rain was streaming from my hair and wrapping my body in the peculiar coldness a driving rain brings to bare human skin, because I was naked in the rain. My fear snapped me back to the river.
Take me,
something begged.
She won’t mind. She is gone while she was wearing me. You need me now. The Fand . . . the Fand was an aberration. . . .
I jerked my mind away with difficulty.
God,
I thought.
This thing is alive, and it can do amazing things.
I glanced down and saw my feet were muddy. The last of the mud was just being washed away by the river.
And God! God! God! I was so afraid!
Lancelot saw when he returned to the ruined villa with Cregan that there were more of the ravens there, feasting on the dead. He waved one hand at them and said, “Begone!”
They flew up with what sounded like a cry of raucous laughter and entered into some nearby trees.
“Never before have I seen ravens with red eyes,” one of Cregan’s men said. He made the sign of the cross. Several others tended toward less Christian remedies, amulets or horns against the evil eye.
They had taken two of the combatants alive: the Pict and the Hun. Lancelot knew one thing with poisonous certainty: almost never did an adult male survive losing a battle in his world. The Romans took prisoners, but they survived only to go to their deaths in the arena or to a slower, more miserable death as forced labor in mines or road building. But here, no one had the time or the wealth to imprison a man, and in any case, a warrior capable of combat never would make a trustworthy slave.
Lancelot stared at the two bound prisoners and read the knowledge in their eyes. Three of Cregan’s men had perished in the engagement, and their bodies had been returned to the river to be washed and shrouded for burial. The contents of the wagon were shared out among Cregan’s warriors, both the living and the dead.
Lancelot had found that out when he returned to the river and he saw that the three shrouded bodies had gold and silver resting on their chests. Then he realized that one of the dead was Red, the one who had told him about his adventure with the lioness. No one knew him by any other name. He was only just recognizable, having taken a blow from a franca, a throwing ax, after which the Franks were named. His skull was split nearly to the teeth.
Cregan and the rest shared out the wealth and Lancelot found that after Cregan, he got first pick. He saw only two things he wanted. One was a necklace so old that he thought it might be the plunder of some ancient tomb. A thing of beauty, a simple chain of gold rosettes with rubies at the center of each rosette. Perfect tiny pitchers dangled from the chain. He knew what it was: a perfume chain. Fill the very tiny pitchers with unguents and the body warmth of she who wore it would release the perfume into the air, surrounding her with a cloud of fragrance.
“Ah, you do not forget your leman,” Cregan said when Lancelot chose that. “You’re right, son. She loves beauty and careful craftsmanship and has no need for more wealth.”
The other was a cloisonné bird of prey done in amber and garnet with a ruby eye. It was the fastener for a sword belt.
“Might have been made for you,” Cregan commented. “And look, boys. He’s not only modest and courageous, but frugal, too.”
Hearing the jeer in Cregan’s remark, Lancelot blushed and looked uncomfortable.
“Actually,” he said stiffly. “Did he”—he indicated Red with a gesture—“have any heirs?”
A young man shouldered his way to the front of the crowd. He was dark, but his eyes were the same blue-green as Red’s had been.