by Lisa Cach
A guilty shame came down on me. I’d forced him into this, made him continue when he didn’t want to, when he was vulnerable—
Something wet hit the hot coals of the brazier, great hissing splashes of it. The scent of the smoke in the air changed, and the heaving of Maerlin’s back stopped.
I stared at his rigid back, and watched it slowly relax. Then he made the unmistakable motions of a man tucking himself back into his garments. A low gurgle of laughter rose in my throat as I realized what had happened.
Maerlin heard and looked over his shoulder at me, the wild green glow of his eyes fading. A sheepish grin touched his lips. He shrugged. “Better than on the wall.”
I pushed down my skirts and rolled onto my side, drawing a couple of pillows under my arm to hoist me semi-upright. I patted the edge of the bed, pretending a nonchalance I didn’t feel. With the draining away of passion, reason was returning and asking me what in Juno’s name I thought I was doing, wanting Maerlin—Maerlin!—to pet me, or barring that, at least watch while I fondled myself. I fought to keep my cheeks from burning, and failed.
Maerlin came and sat, his own cheeks sporting bright flags of color, both of us careful not to touch each other. He cast a wary look at the doorway, which at least was better than looking at me. “What other languages do you speak?” he asked in a low voice.
“How about Gothic?” I said in that tongue.
He nodded, and risked a glance at me. “Have you ever done that before: shared a vision with someone?”
I shook my head.
“Me, neither. It seemed . . . less vague than usual.”
“The snow maiden.”
He nodded. “Una.”
“She must have the green stone.”
“Or she knows where it is. It’s meant to go in the sword we forge for Arthur.”
“Skalibur. It means ‘immortal’ in Phannic, doesn’t it? Una remembers my mother, by the way. Maybe she’ll tell us where Ligeia went, and where the green stone is.”
“She might tell you. Never me.” He sighed and rubbed his face. “I had hoped to be quickly gone from here. There’s no chance of that now.”
“We’ll have to pretend we believe what Tanwen and Akantha said about my mother, won’t we?”
“There’s no point in confronting them. They want something from us—or from you—and we’ll only find out what it is by playing along.”
“Gods help us. I hate to think what they have planned, if they’d be so cruel as to lie about a mother’s death to a fellow tribe member.”
“I told you, they’ve lost all right to call themselves Phanne.”
“With females like this raising you, Maerlin,” I said, “I no longer wonder why you’re so bad with women.”
He raised an arrogant brow, its arch a reminder of what had passed between us such a short time ago.
My face heated, and I shut my lips.
And a little part of me looked forward to calling up that storm.
For two days I pretended to be prostrate with grief, too stunned to do more than silently wander the college buildings and grounds, and to bravely hold back tears when Tanwen took me to the hillock from which she had supposedly cast my mother’s ashes to the wind.
Sometimes I caught a glimpse of Una stalking me, keeping to the shadows and slipping around a corner if I turned to look. A few times I gestured to her or spoke, inviting her closer, but that seemed to alarm her. I sensed that she wanted to observe me while remaining unobserved herself, and that in her own time she would speak to me.
My days of false mourning gave Maerlin and me time to become familiar sights to the women of the college—the “acolytes,” as they were called—our hope being that they’d eventually speak freely when we were near, rather than guarding their words. From them we might get a sense of what Akantha and Tanwen expected of us.
It quickly became clear that the Phanne mother and daughter were held in a holy awe, as if they were goddesses who had temporarily taken mortal form. There was a lot of worry about what would happen when Akantha died, leaving only Tanwen as their head priestess—one goddess plainly being not as good as two. And who would succeed her, when the time came?
Which, Maerlin pointed out, was one possibility for what they wanted. If I believed my mother to be dead, then I would stop trying to find her and be more likely to stay and help run their so-called college.
It seemed a thin reason for such a vicious lie.
“They care only for themselves,” Maerlin had said. “Don’t ever forget that, whatever truth they pretend to tell you.”
As they sought something from us, so we sought things from them. I put on my “still suffering but ready to move on” face and went looking for Tanwen. There was a small part of me that doubted my mother was alive, and that feared Tanwen and Akantha had told the truth; there was a larger part of me that knew they lied and was murderously angry at being manipulated in such a cruel manner for their own ends. It was as evil as their having told Una that Maerlin had raped his sister.
While I approached Tanwen, Maerlin was going to brave Akantha’s bedside. As she was sipping poppy juice throughout the day, we thought she’d be less on her guard, less careful in her answers, especially without Tanwen there to control her. She would also be less coherent, but one had to try. And perhaps reestablishing contact with her estranged son while on her deathbed would soften what Maerlin called her “cold black pebble of a heart” and loosen her lips.
An acolyte brought me to Tanwen in her chamber, a lushly decorated room much like Akantha’s, where the goblets were gold instead of the silver of the hall, the bedding was fresh, and half the room was taken up by shelves heaped with finely embroidered clothing in rich hues, racks of glimmering jewelry, pots of perfumes and mysterious beauty creams, and a silver mirror as tall as I was.
The mirror startled me. It was so perfectly smooth and polished that I had not seen it at first: I’d mistaken it for a doorway into another room. It was only when I passed in front of it and saw my own form that I jumped, thinking another person had suddenly appeared.
Tanwen laughed from her couch, where she was rubbing red cream onto her fingernails, giving them a rosy stain. “I doubt they have anything so fine in either Rome or Byzantium. Have you ever seen its like?”
“Never.” I stared at myself. This was how I looked? I’d seen my face in small mirrors; even seen as much as my head and shoulders. Never, however, had I seen my whole body at once. I looked shapeless, like a chubby child, in my warm layers of clothing. “I don’t have as nice a figure as I thought.”
Another laugh from Tanwen, and she heaved herself up and came to stand behind me, a head taller and half again as wide. Her lush curves had been fed too well, yet she retained the in-and-out silhouette of femininity, and I knew there would be many men who saw such mounds of flesh as an irresistible feast to be devoured. “That’s every woman’s reaction.”
“I didn’t know I was this small, either. I could have sworn I was only a hand’s breadth shorter than you.”
“Your mother was even smaller. The same lovely hair, though,” she said, and ran my thick black braid through her hand. “What I wouldn’t give for such a mass of hair, rather than this thin, fading stuff on my own head.”
I made the necessary murmurs of denial, and forced myself to turn away from the mirror. “I don’t know that I’d want to see myself in that every day.”
“You get used to it. I wouldn’t advise watching yourself have sex in it, though. The idea seems erotic, but reality is . . . jiggly.”
I forced a laugh, wanting her to think I liked her.
“No woman wants to see the pimples on her bottom,” Tanwen went on, encouraged, as she led us back to the couch, “or the way her breasts fall off to the sides, sloshing back and forth while she’s on her back with a man’s hips smacking against her thighs. Not th
at the men notice, as long as they’re getting their swords oiled. I’ll count that in their favor.”
I laughed again as we sat at either end of the couch, legs drawn up inside the warmth of skirts and elbows resting on pillows, as if settling in for a sisterly chat. Tanwen’s raunchy, frank humor was disarming, and if not for what I knew about her I would have been charmed.
I did seem to like a lot of people whom I shouldn’t. Terix probably had an unflattering theory about why; likely my greedy loins were at the center of it, in regards to the men. My urge to like Tanwen did at least make it easy to act as if I were taken in by her and ready to believe all she said.
“I have so many questions for you,” I said, “about my mother; about the Phanne; about this place, and what you can teach me.”
“You’ll want to start with your mother, I’m guessing.” Her face took on a somber cast and with deep sympathy in her eyes—she looked like a weeping puppy—she reached over to touch my clothed arm and give it a squeeze. “How are you doing?”
I pressed my lips together to still their false trembling. “Holding on.”
She nodded and patted my arm. “I will soon share your loss. You are forging the path that I will soon tread. You’re being very brave.”
I lowered my gaze as if embarrassed by the compliment, but more to hide the fury I was sure would show in my eyes. “Did she leave any message for me? Did she know I would come here, looking for her?”
“I’m so sorry, Nimia. I wish I had something I could tell you. She was sick when she arrived, worn-out. She’d been seeking Phanne, seeking a trace of her own family. She did mention you, and said that you’d been taken as a slave by a Roman general in Gaul, and that it was for the best.”
“My mother wanted me to be a slave?”
“She meant it was best to be with the Romans. Civilized people. You’d been living more or less as slaves in a crude band of Ostrogoths, hadn’t you? She thought it better that you grow up in a rich household, protected and well fed.”
I still couldn’t imagine my mother wishing slavery on me, but there might be a grain of truth in what Tanwen said. “She always told me to wring the most I could out of any choice I was given in life. Being taken as a slave wasn’t my choice, but I took all the advantage I could of my position.” I had learned music, and to read and write. And I’d learned far more than I would say about sex, and the perversions that slicked the loins of female nature.
“Spoken like a true Phanne,” Tanwen said, nodding in approval. “Men think they control us, but they don’t understand the least part of what we are thinking and what we are capable of. They don’t know how their hunger for our bodies, and our willingness to part our thighs, are their undoing.”
“I’m only beginning to understand it, myself. There was a man . . .” I said, thinking of Mordred.
Tanwen grasped her hands together and leaned forward. Her tongue darted out to moisten her lips, looking unsettlingly like a snake tasting the air. “Tell me.”
I was getting a feel for her now, getting a sense for how she enjoyed power and control. I wanted her to believe I felt the same way, and got the same thrill from it. Keeping his name out of the story, I told her what I’d done to Mordred, emphasizing how excited I had been to humiliate him and making him do my bidding. I wouldn’t tell her how revolted I had been at my delight, and how frightened I was of the cruel monster that lurked inside me.
Tanwen was a living embodiment of that monster.
When I finished, Tanwen released a long breath and half-closed her eyes. “I’m wet just hearing about it.” She smiled. “I am so happy you found us, Nimia. You and I are going to be great friends, I can sense it.”
Her Phanne prophetic gifts were clearly not omniscient.
“That will stick a thorn in Maerlin’s backside,” I said, giving her a mischievous, sidelong look. “He hates you.”
Tanwen studied me, and then tilted her head. “What do you think of my brother?”
I thought it safest to distance myself from him, and make her think I was in her camp, not his. “He’s strange. Not Phanne strange; just strange, like he doesn’t possess normal human emotions. I had to bribe him with a promise of sex to get him to bring me here.”
She laughed. “That sounds absolutely normal for a man.”
“You know what I mean. He’s not as he should be.” I thought the blame for that could be laid on Tanwen and her mother. Maybe he would have been far more normal if they hadn’t taken gross advantage of him when he was a boy.
“I’ve often wondered if the Phanne gifts were never meant for a male body,” Tanwen said. “They seem to have warped him. He gets outlandish ideas in his head, and thinks things are real that are not. Once he has an idea, he can never shed it, either. Una, for example. You know that she is our child?”
I nodded.
“Akantha forced us together, controlled us both. Ah, I see by your face that he told you differently. That it was me?” She shook her head. “You wouldn’t think it now, seeing her the way she is, but Akantha was a force impossible to be denied. Neither of us was safe from her.”
“And yet you’ve stayed here with her, all these years.”
“The danger of being a viper is that your offspring are vipers, too. I learned from her, and I have the energy of youth on my side. Relative youth, anyway.” She ran a hand down over her round hip, clearly enjoying the feel of her own luxurious body. “She has no power over me now. And truth be told, we needed each other. We needed Maerlin, too, but he left us to fend for ourselves.”
In what seemed another lifetime, Sidonius Apollinaris had told me that there was always more than one side to a story, with one rarely more good or bad than the other. Perhaps Maerlin’s youth had had him see Tanwen as the aggressor, and he had not the maturity to see how she was controlled in turn by their mother. She may have been as innocent as he.
Or it might be convenient for Tanwen to place the blame for her own misdeeds on the woman about to leave this world. Akantha could take the guilt with her to the grave, and leave Tanwen free.
“It’s not what Una thinks happened,” I said. “She thinks he raped you.”
“My mother told her that. I went along with it because I thought it would be easier for Una; she loves her grandmother. We all had to live together, after all, and Maerlin was gone.”
“Kinder still to tell her that her father had been a brave Briton soldier, who died in battle.”
“Of course it would have been, but vipers aren’t known for kindness, are they? Akantha was hurt when Maerlin left us, and Una’s hatred of him is her revenge. It’s an unhappy story, and I’ve let it go on for far too long.” She gave me a pleading look, pressing her hands together. “I’ve felt so guilty about the harm my mother’s lie has done, I’ve let Una run wild and have her way when really I shouldn’t. She’s been indulged far more than is good for her. A mother is helpless before the pain of her baby, isn’t she?”
From our few days here, I’d gotten the sense that Una was forgotten or ignored far more than she was indulged. I’d play along, though. “Love that strong can feel like pain,” I said, thinking of Theo.
Tanwen’s face melted into glowing warmth. “You do understand.”
“That leads me to what I came here to learn. I have a son, in Gaul. I want to know if I can reach him with my mind across this distance, and talk to him.”
“A son?”
“Theodoric. Less than a year old. His father’s family took him from me.”
Tanwen’s eyes narrowed. “Bastards! Of course, you would have eventually given him up anyway if you’d been with your tribe, as he’s a boy. That would have been different, though. No one takes a child from the Phanne.”
“I’ll get him back, when I’m stronger. I need your help with that, Tanwen. I don’t know how to use my gifts, or even what they are. Can I reach Theo? Can
I see through his eyes, feel what he feels? Can I speak to him, or even with him?”
She chewed her lower lip. “I don’t know. I doubt it. Even with a daughter, it’s not possible if she’s without the Phanne talent. I can’t reach Una. The girl is impenetrable as a stone.”
My hopes fell, shattering on the tile floor. I scrambled to salvage a shard. “Did you ever try to reach your father?”
She tucked in her chin. “Him? Why? What would I have cared of him?”
“I was wondering, given the tie of blood . . .”
“The seed from a lover forms the most powerful mind-bond. That between family members is weak, barely worth the effort.”
“But your mother could control you?”
She set her jaw. “Not anymore; not unless I let her. Which I don’t.”
“Can you reach Maerlin, across distance?”
“He won’t let me. But once, before everything went bad . . . yes. The tie of blood and his talent allowed it.” She sighed. “It was like nothing I’d ever felt. Such closeness! Two minds speaking without words, as if in one body, while miles apart. It only happened a few times, and I’ve missed it ever since. It’s probably why I never fell in love. What bond with a normal man could compare?”
I blinked and tried not to show my thoughts. To say that no man could compare to the closeness shared with one’s brother . . . Could she not see that these should be different types of love? “I’ve felt something similar in bed with a man, though. I could see into his mind, sense his wants, and tell him mine.”
“And yet he could not see into yours. Not the same, is it? It shows the man for the basic creature he is. A woman cannot respect or lust for a man so easy to control. It goes against our nature. We need an equal.” She nodded at her own words. “Have you had sex with Maerlin yet?”
My face flushed. “No.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Close, though? Close enough to know it was going to be unlike any other joining. Never mind that he’s barely human, you can sense that it will be sex that turns you inside out and makes you beg for more.”