Authors: Alice Borchardt
“Is communication absolutely forbidden?”
The question was a testy one. I transferred the mass of chain from my right hand to my left.
“What?”
Instant confusion dominated the thing’s . . . mind? There were no more words, but a yearning took their place. It wanted to push me upstream.
Well, why not? I obeyed. The tree’s connection with the city was complex. Here it served the people by breaking up into small freshets, alleyways of water between islands that, as I said, supported a large variety of ornamental trees. One held golden fruit similar to the type I had seen Albe eating this morning. A nude girl with a small basket was helping herself to the ripest ones.
“Do the islands belong to anyone?” I asked her. “Or is the fruit free to all those who come here?”
She gave me an odd look. “The fruit is part of the river truce. You may take what you like, provided you observe the geis and do not harm the tree. How could you live here and not know? Ohooooo!”
She gave a cry of horror. “I know who you are!” She ducked around the island and peered at me past the tree’s many low branches. “You burned the Fand this morning!”
I held my position. “Yes, I did,” I said quietly. “She was trying to kill me,” I defended myself.
The youngster was a beautiful child, small breasts like buds, honey-colored skin, dark eyes and wild, curling dark hair that hung to her shoulders. She thought about my statement for a moment.
“Yesss . . . Aibell was a bad one, or so Mother says. Mother is a Circe. Have you something against Circes as a group?”
“No,” I said. “We all live as best we can.”
She looked a bit less frightened, but still stayed well away from me.
“The Fir Blog say Aibell ate her lovers. Mother doesn’t do that. She does make them work, if she can. It’s not easy to get most men so besotted they will let you put a neck chain on them. But it can be done. Mother bags about four out of ten. It depends on the Lethe water, how susceptible they are, I mean.”
“Seems a lot of people here are pushed into serving others by force,” I said.
“It’s hard to live here unless you belong to one of the more important families. And yes, if you slip below a certain level, yes, it’s easy to be forced into slavery. Only the most resolute avoid becoming someone’s dependent. There are all sorts of ways: debt, capture, drugs, poverty, or just carelessness. Mother says sometimes she thinks some of her men just want a quiet spot to recuperate after some failed venture. They get regular sex, medical care, and bizarre drugs. Mother’s very good with drugs. She comes up with wonderful combinations.”
“Your mother accommodates all her men?” I asked carefully.
“Oh! No!” The child blushed. “We have a dozen women in our household who take care of that. Mother pays them piecework—fees for each one. They count up the times and submit a bill. The men meet with Mother on a rotating basis. She tries to make it special for each one. The Lethe water has to be mixed properly in each individual case. But two ran away last week, so she must be recruiting again. That’s why I’m here collecting this fruit. She uses it to flavor her potions and she’s giving a banquet tonight in the Hall of the Tree.”
“The Hall of the Tree?” I repeated.
The yearning began again, and the chain dress tinkled. It was hanging over my left arm. I sensed irritation.
“Oh!” The child’s eyes got very round. “You have Aibell’s
thing
! You did kill her. Tell me, did you kill her to get it?”
“No!” I said. I told the truth. I was defending myself.
“Caressa!” someone called. “Caressa!”
The child looked around. “Oh, it’s my nurse. She will have a cat with a velvet tail if she sees me talking to you.”
The child began to move away into the maze of islands around us.
“Wait,” I said. “What is the Hall of the Tree?”
“Oh, you
are
a stranger here, aren’t you?” she said. “I can’t explain, but just keep going and you will come to it.” Then she vanished.
I didn’t plan to keep going, though. I was tired and beginning to get wrinkled. Instead, I turned, looking for an open channel among the labyrinthine paths that wound among the trees, water plants, and rocks near the shore.
His arm was around my neck and my air was cut off before I knew what was happening. He pulled me under while trying to tear the garment away from my left arm. It clung to my skin. The pain was vicious, agonizing.
I reached up and grabbed the wrist on the arm around my neck. I poured heat into it, but because of the water, I couldn’t make him burn. He shrieked and for a second let go. That was all it took.
I twisted free, turned, and slashed at him with the chain-mail dress. It was coiled around my left hand and arm.
It grew hooks. I swear I saw them appear as I swung the mass of chain at his face. The hooks tore through cheek, nose, neck, and upper chest. He went under and blood filled the water.
Suddenly, violently, the current increased, and it swept me downstream quickly. But I had time to see him surface again. The water around me was blood warm, but his eyes were open and his body was frozen, coated with ice. Then the cold lump of his ice-encased body brushed by me, propelled by a sudden strong current that seemed to affect only it. Then the frozen corpse went under and vanished.
I hurried out of the islands toward the banks, trying to get into the shallows and find the place where the river passed Ilona’s lodgings. While I was wading, I transferred the dress to my right hand.
“You choose not to listen!! You fool!! How many in this city do you think would kill you for me? The river belongs to the tree. It defended you, otherwise you would have died. Now will you listen?”
I paused thigh-deep in the shallows near a pool I recognized as belonging to Ilona’s house. The tree and other water plants had thickly overgrown the area. All around me I could hear furtive movements. I knew I was being watched. They had seen what happened to the one who had challenged the tree.
But as soon as I was out of the river, . . . they would close in.
“Throw it to us,” a voice called out of a thick stand of papyrus. “Throw down the mail and we let you live.”
A second later, I realized I’d been drawn when a spear slammed into my back. I went down on my face. I rolled, trying for deeper water, and got there. I looked up into the shallows and saw at least four pairs of legs. The one who’d tried to drive the spear into my body wasn’t one of them, though I heard him scream. The cry was loud enough to carry underwater.
He didn’t freeze; he boiled. I saw the hairless, eyeless, scarlet corpse drift into a deep pool where the current seized him and pulled him away. Afraid or not, I had no choice. It was only a matter of time before one was able to seize me on dry ground.
I pulled the Fand’s garment on over my head. In a second, it had molded itself to my body. The neck expanded; the rings on the sides joined, then tightened. It grew sleeves that covered me to the wrists.
A second later, an eddy current pushed me back into the shallows and I stood up among a cluster of water hyacinths. I waded ashore, the spikes of blue flowers brushing my legs and ankles. I could see them—at least a half dozen big men watching me from the shadows among the long grass, tall reeds, papyrus, cattails, and cress growing along the shore.
One of them moved toward me.
“Let it be!” a rather authoritative voice called. “She’s wearing it and make no mistake, it will defend her. No one, however clever, could get it away from Aibell. And I don’t think we will have any better luck with this one.”
It didn’t take me long to find my way through the narrow passages into Ilona’s house. Ilona and Cateyrin were bathing in the room where the open white root filled the hollowed basin with water and the dragonfly’s eye in the ceiling warmed it.
“So you took the garment?” Ilona said, studying me.
“I had no choice. Too many were ready to kill me for it.”
“Nest talks too much,” Cateyrin said. “I’ll bet the whole city knows.”
“Probably,” Ilona said. “I’d best lock the passage leading to the river.”
A second later I heard a gate rather like the portcullis at the front of the house drop in the passage behind me.
“Few care to defy the river and the tree, but I suppose if the stakes are high enough . . .” Ilona shook her head and sighed. “Come with us. Nest is dressing Albe for dinner.”
“The Hall of the Tree?” I asked.
“Yes,” Ilona said. “All the great families will be there tonight. Nest says, and I agree, the more you try to hide yourselves, the more savagely you will be pursued.”
My armor seemed annoyed at the clatter of rings and flashed out to cover my skin. I could feel thought. Then, suddenly, the dress vanished.
My armor faded and I wrapped a thick, linen sheet around myself. And asked, “Where did you go?”
“Nowhere!” was the tart reply. “I know better than to make a nuisance of myself when I’m not wanted.” Then it gave an audible sniff of disgust.
“You annoyed it,” Ilona said. “Best be careful it doesn’t turn on you.”
“You tell that prissy bitch I never turn on anyone, least of all someone I’ve formed a bond with.” This statement was accompanied by an audible clatter of rings.
I was terrified of the damned thing, but if we were to be companions, I knew I must take a strong stand now.
“You stop!” I told it. “And stop right now. I am this lady’s guest, and courtesy is as incumbent upon a properly behaved guest as it is upon a generous host. No calling names, and no further insults, if you please.”
“Well!!! I!!! Never!!!” was the reply. “I couldn’t expect much from the Fand. After all, it was simply a means of composting dead, organic matter. It had only a little intelligence and no feelings. But I could tell the moment you touched me that you were a being, a mature being, enjoying the adventure of intelligent comprehension and contemplation of the universe.”
Then I got the strong sensation of something going off in a huff to sulk.
“Unhappy, is it?” Ilona said.
“It seems to be,” I said. “But it made protestations of loyalty.”
“Let’s hope it means them,” Ilona said. “We all thought Aibell a very powerful being . . . but maybe we were wrong.”
The thing had to be listening, and I didn’t want to say much. I was annoyed and angry. The intrusion and the lack of privacy the thing represented troubled me deeply. But part of Kyra’s teachings had been about self-restraint and the perils of making important decisions when under the influence of any strong emotion.
“Albe?” I asked. “You say Nest is dressing her?”
“Oh, yes,” Cateyrin said. “Wait till you see.”
A few minutes later, I did see. Albe and Nest were together in what Ilona called her practice room, the place where she taught the martial arts. Every wall was covered by polished silver mirrors, and Albe was admiring herself. And there was much to admire.
Nest had repaired the ravages of Albe’s face with a crystal mask. She filled each scar with tiny, sparkling crystals, and with the scars thus covered and repaired, Albe was a very lovely woman. Her beautiful eyes glowed like jewels among the fine chain and crystal that composed the mask. It was held in place by a snood of the same fine chain that held the crystal mask together. Thus fastened, the crystals seemed a part of Albe’s face. When she smiled, frowned, spoke, the gems moved as though they were a second skin. Below the neck, she was clothed in armor.
The finest Roman armor was made by forming a model of the chest and stomach of the officer, then fitting the leather armor to the model. Thus had been done for Albe; from neck to groin the leather plates were solid. Filigree arm and leg guards protected her extremities. The armor was black and dusted with the same glittering crystals that covered her face. She was wearing Talorcan’s shoes. They had adapted and simply looked like an extension of the intricately formed leg guards that protected her lower extremities.
“Well?” she said.
“Splendid.”
“When you are mated to a powerful man, don’t forget the Diviners Guild,” Nest told her.
“With luck, I won’t be mated to anyone,” Albe said.
I called my armor. In a breath, it covered me. I dropped the linen towel.
“This is inspirational!” I heard my invisible companion say. “But you need no masks.”
Instead, the dress formed itself into the same sort of armor Albe was wearing, a formfitting cover from neck to groin. I felt conversation below the level of thought, and the golden bodysuit turned the same color as my skin armor, a shimmering green.
“Are we agreed?” came the question.
“I believe we are,” I answered.
“There will never be another night like this in Gorias,” Nest said, looking at me. “But dear, do you always converse with yourself?”
“She’s talking to that thing she’s wearing,” Tuau said as he strolled into the room.
Nest backed away from me and got behind Ilona. Tuau sidled up to Albe and brushed against her armored legs, rubbing his cheeks and the fanged sides of his mouth against the filigree.
“Oh, that’s soooo goooood. Oh, I just love you. Ohoooo.” He rolled over on his back, paws in the air, and wallowed, rubbing his face against the shoes Talorcan had given me. His purrs sounded like a hive of swarming bees.
Albe reached down and scratched his stomach. He batted at her arms with his forefeet, but when his claws began to slide out of their sheaths, Albe said, “Watch it! Velvet paws, or Momma will spank.”
“Eeeeeha!”
Half purr, half growl. He rolled over like lightning and began to lick his balls vigorously. His penis leaped from the sheath.
“Woooowoooo!”
he roared as it spurted.
Then he was up doing shoulder dives at her legs, yelling, “Wooooo! You’re sooooo beeeeeautiful! I juuuust love you!”
“Sit and calm down,” Albe said. “Don’t scare Nest.”
Sill ensconced behind Ilona, dear Nest asked, “Why do you talk to your dress?”
“Because it talks to me,” I said.
Albe gave a crack of laughter. “Serves you right for asking. He needs a collar,” she went on, pointing to Tuau.
“You stick out your hand to put a collar on me, you’ll pull back a stump,” the cat said.