The Adventure of the Jigsaw Dragon
Page 13
trunk and scampered out of sight around the bole.
She touched Margaret on the elbow. "Come on, let's get out of here. This place gives me the collywobbles." She headed down the path and Margaret fell in beside her.
"What's up with all that theeing and thouing?"
"Zoogs have an archaic way of speaking. I sometimes think they learned English from reading Shakespeare."
"Does everyone talk like that here?"
"Fortunately not."
"Wait, how could they know about Shakespeare?"
"He was a Dreamer, like me, but the Woods also touch on a number of places in the Waking World. There are Zoogs in Sherwood Forest."
"Waking World?"
"That's what our home universe is called here."
She fell silent and said nothing the rest of the way. Differel got the impression she had come close to information overload.
When they emerged from the Woods, the bright sun momentarily blinded her, but her eyesight adjusted quickly.
"My god! It's beautiful!" Margaret stared at the vista with a dumbfounded expression. A meadow sloped gently down to a river in the distance. Beyond it, a grassy plain stretched to the horizon, and at the extreme edge of vision sat the hazy mass of a town.
"You know what this reminds me of? That scene in The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy steps out of her house and everything explodes into colour!"
"I know what you mean. I've been coming here for over thirty-five hundred nights, and the sight still awes me."
"Bugger!"
She glanced at her and found her staring at her with an astonished look.
"What?"
"I couldn't be sure inside that bleeding forest, but you look twenty-five again!"
She grinned, satisfied she had gobsmacked her again. "So do you."
Margaret reached up and touched her face in wonder.
"Dream bodies tend to be healthier, stronger, and sturdier, too. For example, my eyesight here is perfect, while in the Waking World I'm blind as a bat."
Margaret smiled. "I always thought that appropriate. Wait, if you don't need glasses, why wear them?"
She shrugged. "Matter of habit, I guess. That, and they're probably part of my identity. These just have plain glass."
"My Lady Elissa!"
She turned, and a leather pouch dropped out of a tree. She caught it, and tipped her hat. "My thanks!"
"Mayest ye fair well, on your adventures!" She didn't see anything, but she heard the Zoogs scramble deeper into the Woods. They didn't like bright light.
She opened the pouch as she faced Margaret, and poured a number of golden coins into one hand.
"Bugger! Is that real...?"
"They're called crowns, and yes, each is an ounce of pure gold. Hold out your hand." She divided them up. "I have the Zoogs keep some money for me, because I like to have traveling expenses on hand as soon as I arrive." She separated the lot into two piles of ten coins each and poured one into her purse. The rest she put back in the pouch. "These are yours. Try not to spend them all in one place."
Margaret grinned like a kid at Christmas as she took the pouch and stuffed it inside her sash. "How much is it?"
They started down the slope together. "It's hard to say, exactly. Crowns are minted in the kingdom of Ooth-Nargai, but outside that realm they are used pretty much for credit transfer. More common is the tahler, which is an ounce of pure silver. The exchange rate is fifty tahlers per crown, so carrying crowns is easier than the equivalent value in tahlers. Though the value of silver in pounds Sterling is considerably higher, you can think of a tahler as having the purchasing power of one pound. Since there are no coins of smaller denominations, everything is priced in whole tahlers, and the only items priced at less are those purchased in bulk. You have the equivalent of 500 tahlers; that's a lot, but no better or worse than having 500 pounds."
"I didn't ask you how to make a clock." Margaret sound piqued.
"Oh, shut it, you slag."
A gigantic shadow passed overhead and a scream like that of a titanic eagle split the air. Margaret shrieked, covered her head, and collapsed to the ground. Differel couldn't help bursting with laughter.
Margaret sat up and looked out over the meadow. A huge raptor soared low over the ground. Even in the bright sunlight the wing tips glowed with St. Elmo's Fires as sparks danced between the pinions of its crest. Once it reached the river it gave a ponderous flap and rose into the air.
"What the bleeding hell is that?!"
"That's my faithful Wakiya, Eleanor d'Aquitaine." She held out her hand. "We share an empathic bond, so she always knows when I'll arrive. That's just her way of saying hello."
Margaret took it and Differel hauled her to her feet. "A what?"
"Another name is 'thunder bird'. She can pick up and store static electricity in her feathers, and discharge it at will as lightning."
"You and your dodgy companions."
"Hmph. You're one to talk."
They started off again, but just before they reached the river they came to a road. Differel crossed over and went on down to the river to fill the canteen, but Margaret paused and squatted, running a hand over the rust-red surface. "Is this concrete?"
She looked back as she pulled the brown glass jug out of the leather pouch. "No, it's called laterite. It's a form of subsoil rich in iron. When mixed with sand, small stones, and water, it forms a slurry that can be poured like concrete, but it dries in the sun, forming a hard, brick-like surface. It's brittle, so it cracks easily, but it can be repaired with minimum effort."
She knelt by the bank to fill the jug, and Margaret kneeled beside her. "This is the River Skai, and it's one of the major waterways in this part of the Dreamlands."
But she didn't seem to pay attention as she examined her cute round face in the water. "Oh, bugger. I wanted to see what I looked like."
Differel understood what she meant. The water appeared so clear it seemed invisible.
Margaret eyed the canteen. "You sure that's safe to drink?"
She stood up as she stopped it. "Perfectly. Further down it picks up junk from the fields, but here it's practically pure." She placed the jug back in the pouch.
Margaret took off a glove and filled her hand, then slurped it up. "Mmmm, fantastic! I've never tasted water that fresh and clean before!"
"Part of it's because there's no pollution, but part is due to the nature of Lands themselves. Hungry?"
"I could eat." She stood up and Differel handed her a piece of bread and a handful of jerky.
She chuckled when Margaret made a face. "The bread looks like hardtack, but it lasts three times longer and tastes like pastry. But you can only get it in the Cavern of Flame." She watched as she nibbled at it, and laughed when he face lit up in surprised enjoyment.
While Margaret ate, she loaded her pistols. She took a practice shot with each and reloaded them.
"I thought you said this place was sword and sorcery." She spoke around a mouthful of food.
"That's basically correct, but not strictly so. Nothing that was invented after 1500 in the Waking World can exist here. No one knows why, though most believe it's because it takes 500 years for something to become embedded in the collective unconscious. Regardless, there are exceptions, but there are also items and technologies that people think are modern but are actually much older. Firearms and gunpowder are two examples. These are called wheellock pistols. The mechanism was invented just before the sixteenth century. They look like flintlocks, but they use an internal spring-loaded wheel to create sparks. They're bloody complicated to maintain and clean, but I feel more comfortable with one of them in my hand than a sword. I have quite a collection by now; these two will put it at nearly 400."
"You always were a packrat, Dribble."
She felt her irritation flare. "At least I collect something other than men, Maggot."
Coming in April.
From "The Surrogate"
Shasta watched as her hostess poured coffee into two cu
ps before setting the pot on a ceramic hot plate. She then added a touch of brandy and a drop of honey to her own.
"And what would you like?" She gestured to the dozen silver or ceramic containers spread across the top of a glass-shelved cart standing at her left elbow.
Shasta gave them all a quick glance. "Just...a little milk, please." She felt too nervous to ask for anything else.
She saw the corners of Ms. MacCandels 's mouth twitch in a quickly suppressed smile. That made her feel even worse. It seemed to her the woman toyed with her, and not for the first time she asked herself why she sat in the breakfast nook of her mansion having high tea. A $25-a-trick street whore meant nothing to a woman of her social and financial standing. With interests in real estate, biotechnology, mining and banking--to name only a few--she wielded a lot of power in Colorado. And she used her enormous wealth to support universities and hospitals around the country, provide endowments to the arts and sciences, establish scholarships and fellowships, and donate huge sums to many charities, both public and private.
Still, she was there, and that meant there had to be a reason. One thing she knew for certain, if Ms. MacCandels did want something from her, she would undoubtedly get it. She had a reputation for being ruthless in her business dealings, even cutthroat, and rumors of foul play followed her like her own shadow. She would simply take her time, and play her games, and try to break her before making her demands. Knowing all that did not ease Shasta's nervousness, but it could help her give the old bitch a good fight.
Ms. MacCandels passed the cup across the frosted glass table top and then turned to the cart on her