Crewel Lye

by Piers Anthony

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” she cried, making another break for the door. But she wasn’t very strong, despite being strong for a woman, and I held her and got her hands tied behind her. I picked up several scratches and a bite in the process, but I had expected that. She was a hellkitten! And the dirty truth was, that was every bit as appealing to me as the milk-and-honey type of woman.

  Then I took her out and set her on the ghost horse and tied her dainty feet to the chains. Pook seemed disgusted at having to carry her, but he understood. I couldn’t trust her on her own two feet.

  It was too bad, I reflected, that women weren’t more like horses. Horses were so much more reasonable.

  “My lute!” she exclaimed. “I need my lute!”

  “Your what?”

  “My lute, bumpkin! My musical instrument. So I can play and sing.”

  But I distrusted her motive. She certainly didn’t plan to play music at Castle Roogna, since she believed it would fall when she got there. She wasn’t going to play for me, since she was fighting me. “Forget it,” I said.

  Her mouth closed in a hard line. She was really angry about this—more so, it seemed, than about getting captured and tied. Women are funny creatures.

  “Where is your trouser-tree?” I asked, looking around. “Forget it!” she snapped.

  Ah, well, I should have known. I would simply have to use the dress.

  We started off toward Castle Roogna. I didn’t want to go through the tarasque’s maze or over the flesh mountain, so I went east instead, along the brink of the chasm, hoping to cut south beyond the range of mountains I had encountered before. Progress was slow, because I had to walk and keep a constant eye on Threnody as well as on the landscape. Traveling in Xanth is not much of a picnic, anyway, and was less so now. My heavy stone feet thunked into the ground like ogres’ pads. I had learned to walk, but it remained clumsy.

  Threnody, evidently getting bored with riding, started talking. “How did you survive the poison and the fall?” she asked, as if this were a routine matter of curiosity. Perhaps it was for her.

  I saw no harm in explaining, since I intended to give her no chance to kill me again. She listened attentively. “So you can not die,” she concluded. “Not to stay.”

  “Well, it hasn’t happened yet,” I said. Was she mellowing? I didn’t trust it. I had had experience with gentle, straightforward, loving women, but never before with a treacherous vixen like this. Maybe she was just trying to figure out how to kill me permanently. So, despite my halfway desire to believe her, I remained cautious.

  “Demons can’t die either,” she said.

  “That’s because they’re not alive to begin with,” I said.

  “Oh, no, they’re alive—it’s merely a different sort of life. They have feelings and interests, just as human folk do.”

  “Only the evil feelings,” I said. “They don’t have love and conscience and integrity.”

  “Do barbarians?” she asked as if nettled.

  “Certainly. We’re primitives, closer to nature than civilized folk are. We care about nature and magic and friendship.”

  “Do you have any friends?”

  “Pook’s my friend!”

  “A ghost horse!” she sneered.

  Pook’s ears laid back again, and he made a motion as if to buck her off, but controlled himself. He certainly didn’t like this woman!

  “As I said,” I said, “we barbarians are close to nature. Pook’s a fine animal, and I’m proud to be his friend.” I noted as I spoke that now Pook’s ears were blushing.

  “What about love?”

  “I love my father and mother—”

  She rolled her eyes. “Imbecile! I mean man-woman love! Have you ever truly loved a woman—or do you merely use a woman and go your way?”

  I pondered. Elsie had been nice, and I liked her—but if I had really loved her, I would not have left her. As for Bluebell Elf—there never had been more to that than the favor I had promised. So the barbarian virtue of integrity forced me to yield the point, grudgingly. “No, I guess it’s just a passing thing, so far.”

  “In that you do not differ from a demon,” she said, smugly establishing that point.

  “But I could love,” I said. “A demon can’t.”

  “True. But what’s the big difference between a person who can’t love and one who doesn’t love?”

  “Listen, I’m no demon!” I protested hotly. “What are you getting at?”

  “You are taking me against my will to a castle that will be destroyed by my presence,” she said. “Do you call that an act of conscience?”

  This was uncomfortable, because I had already experienced a nudge of guilt about it. “I undertook to perform a mission,” I replied, disgruntled. “My conscience says I must do what I agreed to do, whatever it is.”

  “Even when you know it’s wrong?”

  Now I understood what she was doing. She was trying to talk me out of it. But some of the intelligence from the eye-queue spell remained, despite being filtered through dirt and stone, and I was able to answer her. “How can you talk to me of right and wrong? You treacherously killed me twice over!”

  “Well, I told you I was sorry!” she snapped. “I didn’t like it, but I had to do it.”

  “Well, I don’t like doing this,” I retorted, “but I have to do it.”

  “Touché,” she murmured. Or something like that. There’s only one human language in Xanth, but this sounded like another. She was silent for a bit, then started in again. “You had a normal human barbarian upbringing?”

  “Sure. And then I went adventuring.”

  “And this is your adventure.”

  “Right. Fighting monsters and spells—good old-fashioned sword and sorcery.”

  “And kidnapping helpless maidens for a fate worse than death?”

  She certainly had a way with a barb! But I could barb back, thanks to that dirt in my mind. “Bringing a murderess in to be married.”

  She mulled that over for a while. Finally she said, “It’s true I tried to kill you, and you have a right to be perturbed about that. But I knew your mission could cause great harm to Xanth, so I had to stop it. I still have to stop it, any way I can. If I can’t kill you, maybe I can reason with you.”

  Something about that seemed backward to me, but it did seem better to have her talking than to be coldly silent. “Reason away,” I said. “Barbarians aren’t very smart about things like logic.”

  “If I employ methods you disapprove of, it’s because I am not a barbarian,” she said. “In fact, I’m not precisely human.”

  I glanced at her. She was tied to the horse, probably not in the most comfortable position, but she was a beautiful figure of a woman. Barbarians have an excellent eye for that sort of thing. “You look pretty good to me.”

  “Thank you.” She made a little curtsy. I don’t know how, since she was astride the horse with her feet tied, but she did. Women can be remarkably talented in insignificant little ways. “But not all that looks good is good.”

  “Yeah, like the nice little paths leading up to a tangle tree,” I agreed. It happened that there was a tangle tree in the distance, and we were avoiding its too-convenient path. Analogies are easy to come by in Xanth.

  “There is something I didn’t tell you about my ancestry.”

  “You’re not the King’s daughter?”

  “I am his daughter—but the Queen was not my mother. That’s why the Queen resented me so much and finally cursed me. She hated me for what I represented and for what I was.”

  “Not your mother?” I repeated blankly. “How is that possible?”

  “You simpleton, not all offspring derives from marriage! I am a bastard.”

  The word appalled me, coming as it did from so lovely a creature. Of course I knew what it meant, but it shocked me to think that she should know it, let alone describe herself by means of it. “You—the King—?”

  “The King was seduced by an unscrupulous te
mptress who cared not a whit for him,” Threnody said. “I was the result. My mother conceived me purely as a challenge; she had no interest in keeping me, only in embarrassing her lover. And that she did—by turning me over to King Gromden and proclaiming my origin.”

  “But—but that’s inhuman!” I exclaimed.

  “Naturally—considering the nature of my mother.”

  “No decent woman would—”

  “But, you see, my mother was neither decent nor a woman.”

  “But—” I skidded to a verbal halt, confused. “You’re obviously not a half-breed, like a centaur or harpy or werewolf. You’re human!”

  “Half human.”

  “I don’t understand!”

  “My mother is a demoness.”

  A female demon! Still it did not explain everything. “King Gromden wouldn’t—not with a demoness—he’s a good man!”

  Threnody smiled grimly. “So it would be nice to believe. But the fact is, human beings are sometimes naïve and often vulnerable. I love my father and know he’s a good man. Therefore I have spent some time rationalizing this matter of my birth. It is necessary to understand that the Queen, my foster mother, was not the most attractive of women and was no longer in her prime, while the King was a virile man. He had married her for practical reasons, to help unify the diverging subcultures of Xanth. She was from a village in the south that had felt neglected, among the so-called curse-fiends, who are actually human but live apart from others. They are said to be great actors. When he married one of their women, it cemented their loyalty to Castle Roogna and strengthened the throne. He really was trying to do what was best for Xanth! But she was barren and, in any event, not much interested in storks.”

  “I know about storks,” I murmured.

  “Then you know that they do not choose the couples to whom they deliver; they must wait for the couples to summon them. They merely fill those orders that have been properly entered. It is a peculiarity of their nature.”

  “Yes. And they always deliver to the woman, no matter how hard the man works for the baby. I don’t think that’s fair.”

  She laughed. “Many things in life and magic aren’t fair, barbarian! So this meant that if the King wanted a baby, he had to make arrangements through some woman other than the Queen. I think that was in his mind when the dusky demoness came to him. Maybe there were other things in his mind, too—men can be quite superficial about such things—but I must believe that he really did want me.”

  “Of course he did!” I exclaimed. “And he wants you back home now! That must be why he agreed to this—”

  “And I don’t think he knew the nature of my mother. You see, a demon can assume any form. So she became the most beautiful woman anyone could imagine, midnight of hair and eye, perfect in every physical detail—”

  “You favor her,” I said.

  “Be quiet, imbecile!” she said angrily. “My mother was a terrible creature! She had absolutely no conscience. Demons are soulless; they have no human values, just human passions. She wanted to make mischief for the human folk, and she knew the most telling way to do that was to compromise and humiliate the human King. So she assumed a ravishing form and came to him with a story about being outcast from her distant village and needing help and protection, and when she got him alone—oh, you don’t know what lying is until you’ve seen a demon do it! She—well, she got him to help summon the stork, and the stork took the order for me, and when my mother was assured of that, she laughed and changed into the semblance of a Mundane monster called a crock-o-dile so he would know what she was without any further illusion, and then she became a puff of laughing gas and faded out. The King was mortified when he realized he had been with a demoness, but it was too late.”

  “Poor King Gromden,” I agreed. Now I remembered that there had been a passing mention of scandal at Castle Roogna; that reference was coming clear.

  “And when the stork delivered me, she had the other part of her terrible fun—causing everyone in Castle Roogna to know what the King had done. She brought me openly to him in broad daylight, when the King and all the people of the castle were at dinner, and set me down before him, saying, ‘Here is your bastard baby, O adulterous King! Dare you deny it?’ And the King, being an honest man, whatever other weaknesses he may have had, did not deny it, perhaps in part because he knew I would fare ill indeed if he refused to accept me. In that sense I was the cause of his loss of respect in Xanth. Then my demon-mother vanished in another puff of smoke, only her cruel laugh remaining. She had deceived the King, ruined his reputation, and forever finished any decent relation he might have had with the Queen. After that, the people associated with the castle began drifting away, each one finding some important business elsewhere, and of course the King could not say nay. He had been rendered impotent by the cruelest of lies. When the Queen cursed me, there were fewer than a dozen people remaining there.”

  “There are only a couple now,” I said.

  “Only the ultimately loyal,” she said wryly. “People resemble demons in some respects, but they react more slowly and make excuses for their dereliction, while the demons act swiftly and without apology. I wish I could be with my father now and provide the support he needs. But I can not; that curse prevents.” She shook her head as if clearing it of distress. “So now you see why I had to go. I don’t blame my foster mother the Queen. My presence was demoralizing the whole region, simply because of my origin; I was a constant reminder of the King’s peccadillo. The King never held this against me, but the others did—at the same time as they condemned him for that error. They magnified it grotesquely—” Threnody paused to choke back her rising emotion. “I don’t think much of the average human being.”

  “It’s better among the barbarians,” I said. “We would never—”

  “It was getting difficult for the King to govern Xanth effectively. The Queen had no love for the King, but she did see the need for Xanth to be unified. She knew that could not be while I remained at Castle Roogna, and she knew the King would never send me away himself, so she arranged for me to take myself away. Her curse made it plain to me that I was destroying Xanth. I had been unable to see it until she made it literal. If I was going to destroy Xanth as the seat of effective government, why not bring the castle down, too, and complete the job? So she was right; she did what had to be done, and I don’t hate her for it. I had been a child; I grew up in a few hours and I left Castle Roogna forever.”

  I felt the impact of her story, but I remained suspicious. “You said she was jealous of you.”

  “She was. I don’t say she wasn’t petty in some ways; that’s part of what had alienated her from the King before my mother stepped in. I was beautiful, while she was not, and the King loved me and not her; that was grounds for resentment, though I had not intended any evil. She never made any attempt to relate to me, and so I had neither mother nor foster mother. She shares some of the blame. No one’s hands are entirely clean in this. But she was right about me, and about the need to make me leave.”

  “Then why did she curse the King to forget why you left?”

  Threnody shrugged. “I exaggerated. My father never understood why I left. He was absolutely blind to any negative thing about me. I was his favorite and only child, and he wanted me to inherit the throne after him. Of course that was impossible for several reasons, and I always knew that, but it shows how he felt. No curse was needed to make him forget. He simply refused, and still refuses, to believe that my presence is bad for Castle Roogna in any literal or figurative manner. He thinks of me as his darling little girl.”

  Some darling! But I knew how fathers could dote on their daughters; I would, if I had the chance. “Well, aren’t you?”

  “Damn it, I’m half demon!” she flared. “Have you any idea what that means?”

  I shrugged. “That you’re a crossbreed. That you have some human and some demon traits. Xanth has a lot of crossbreeds. I happen to know of an upcoming human/ elven c
rossbreed—”

  “You fool, it means I have no soul!” There was the anger of despair in her tone.

  “I don’t know much about souls,” I said. “But I thought they came with human ancestry. Since your father is human—”

  “A human parent means a soul is possible, not that it is guaranteed. I suppose the chances were even for me—but since the delivery was to the demoness, not the human man, I lost. I didn’t get one.” Her voice was flat and cold.

  “How do you know?” I asked, genuinely curious. I had some concern for the son the stork would bring to Bluebell; would he have no soul?

  “Do people with souls kill passing strangers?” she demanded.

  I pondered, taken aback by the point. “I’m human,” I said after a bit. “I’m ready to kill strangers if they attack me. I’m a barbarian warrior; I live by my sword. It depends on the circumstance. In war—”

  “This isn’t war! You came to me injured, and I poisoned you and dumped you into the Gap.”

  There was that. “But you said you were sorry.”

  “Big deal! I’m also sorry you returned to capture me.”

  “But demons have no conscience,” I pointed out. “They’re never sorry.”

  “You’re wrong, ignoramus. They can be sorry—when a plot turns out bad. Like my killing of you. It didn’t work, so my effort was for nothing. I’m sorry you ever set foot on this misguided mission.”

  “But you said you were sorry before you knew I would recover,” I persisted. “I remember hearing that, just before I died.”

  “I say a lot of things,” she said irritably, but she seemed slightly mollified. “I also inherit the demon capacity for lying, the more cruelly the better. You can’t afford to believe anything say.”

  I found this confusing, but there had to be some truth in it. If a person tells you he’s a truth-teller, he may be lying; but if he tells you he’s a liar, he has to be telling the truth, ironically. Because a truth-teller could never call himself a liar; he could become a liar by that statement. A liar, in contrast, can’t lie all the time, because that makes it too obvious; people start interpreting what he says the opposite way, so he becomes a truth-teller in reverse. It’s confusing, but Magician Yin had helped clarify this matter for me. So I had to believe that Threnody could lie, and that therefore she spoke the truth when she warned me to be wary of anything she said. “Maybe so,” I agreed. “But you could still have a soul. Some human beings are liars, like Magician Yang, and you’re more human than demon.”