The other two were stirring around now. The one who had hit his head was sitting up, but he had a sort of lost look and I didn’t think he’d be giving anybody any trouble soon. The one whose shield I’d burned had smacked both face and forehead against the road a little too hard. His face was bleeding, and while he didn’t look lost, he was dazed. The one with the broken face hadn’t gotten his color back, and he looked to be getting ready to throw up again. The girl was sitting down, a bleak expression on her face. I noticed her arms and legs were heavily padded. It didn’t take a lot of brains to figure out what was going on here.
The one in brass armor spoke again. He motioned us to pass him, saying, “Go forward and wait for us at the city gates. There are food vendors there, and you may purchase some. Doubtless the food sellers will want some of your jewelry in exchange for water and sustenance.”
“Doubtless,” I replied. “However, we’re not going anywhere till we find out what you’re going to do with that girl.”
The one with the broken face gave me a sharp look. “Brother, we have food and drink with us. We can share it with them—”
“I’m growing weary of this insolence. We have an important task to perform. Now, do as you are bid, or I will have our family cast you off.”
The girl stood for the first time. “Please . . . Meth! Don’t . . .”
“Be quiet,” the bronze-clad warrior snapped at her. “You were chosen properly by honest lot, were you not? Silence becomes you.”
Meth staggered to his feet. “Shut up, Amrun, and I mean it. Wounded I’m still a better fighter than you are, and if you don’t close your mouth, I’ll kill you now and take the consequences.”
Everyone looked a bit horrified, but Meth ignored them. “You must . . . must . . . show me how you did that.”
I assented by nodding and walked toward the plants. I waved my arm near them. My armor leaped out on my skin, and I brought my hand closer. The vicious thing stabbed at me. The spine bounced off my armored hand.
Looking down at them, I saw the plants were beautiful, with broad, green leaves that overlapped one another in an almost mathematical rosette. The leaves were light green at the edges and darkening toward the center until they shaded from deep green to purple near the stem. The whole plant resembled a flower, while I suspected the flower itself was insignificant. It didn’t surprise me. I had seen similar plants in my own world.
I moved my hand again and watched a heart-shaped leaf curl itself into a spike, the tip glittering with a sticky-looking honeydew I thought must be poison. Albe’s reaction, the quick swelling, suggested the presence of poison to me.
“See if it has fruit on it.”
“You do it,” I said. “You’re armored.”
“Watch!” He peeled off one of his gloves. It was formed of metal plates on the outside and mail on the inside. It was a beautiful piece of work. He brushed one of the leaves with his glove. The spine went through it as though the glove were made of curd cheese.
He waved the empty glove at me. “This will stop a sword cut, but not one of those thorns. Simple armor is not enough. But I can tell that what you have isn’t simple armor.”
“A gift from my father,” I said.
Meth laughed. “Who was he? One of the Tuatha de Danae?”
“Probably,” I said.
The laughter faded from his eyes. “You aren’t joking.”
“No.”
He rose to his feet. “Cateyrin!” he called out to the girl. “Fetch the boxes.” Then, to me, “Please? Look for the fruit. They seem to be crystal buds.”
I crouched down. This one had three flowers. They were small, vivid scarlet, and tightly closed. However, it had one fruit. It was oval and looked as though it were made of glass covered with swirls of ridged lines.
My armor surprised me, rising at my command. I stretched out my hand and, despite a few whacks from the long-spined leaves, plucked it.
I held it up to the light, then gasped as the colors changed. First it flashed like a clear crystal, and all the colors of the rainbow filled the surface. Then it became clear yellow, but only for a second. Suddenly, it was molten gold, followed by light green, emerald green, then blue-green. Azure blue was succeeded by the blue of a summer sea, then brown, red-brown, until it rested at garnet.
“Beautiful!” Albe said.
I glanced away from the gemlike seed and saw Meth kneeling at my feet. The look in his eyes was almost one of worship.
“Stop that!” I said. “Get me some food and drink. Albe’s hungry and thirsty, and so am I.”
He didn’t move, so I rested the back of my left hand against his cheek. I didn’t see Mother, but the rose scent filled the air. When I pulled my hand away, his face looked better. Some of the serious swelling that disfigured it was down.
He scrambled to his feet. Cateyrin was already returning with the food and boxes.
I pointed to the other three warriors. “Go sit down on those rocks by the roadside where I can watch you. Now,” I asked Meth, “how many of these things do you want?”
“Five boxes,” he said.
“Serve Albe,” I told Cateyrin. “Give me the boxes and strip off that padding. You won’t need it.”
It was the beginning of a rather long, weary afternoon. Meth and I placed the boxes in the shade of a rock, since he told me the jewels didn’t need to be exposed to the sun as I collected them.
“Best that be done by whoever purchases them,” he told me.
I went looking for fruit. “The damned place is a graveyard,” I snapped at him as I eased around the edges of the ravine where the plants grew.
“The price of five boxes is usually a human life,” he said as I handed him one.
“Why?” I asked.
“We have to have them.”
“Why?” I was looking down at a dozen or more plants growing up through a pelvis and rib cage. I plucked four from it quickly.
“It’s all the city of Gorias has to sell.”
“Gorias?” I stood oblivious to a couple of really hard smacks from those spines. “Gorias? Your city is named Gorias?”
“Yes.”
“Fire,” I said.
“Falias, Gorias, Findias, Murias. Those are all that remain but for the jungle lands, and the denizens of those swamps are as dangerous as the snakes they rule.”
The wind blew down the ravine toward the Dead Sea, clouding the air with a fetid stench. I moved toward the fresh corpse I had stepped on. There were paths among those plants; they weren’t what I’d call safe. But following them meant the difference between three whacks by those spines and thirteen or even maybe thirty. I had already observed that they fruited best near the dead.
The corpse had indeed soaked into the soil. He . . . or was it she? I couldn’t be sure. The thing was facedown and that was good, since I didn’t want to look at its face. But it had padding a lot like Cateyrin had been wearing. I filled two boxes from the . . . he called the plants Gorias Purples. Then I made my way quickly back to the road.
“Seems to me,” I told Meth, “you could spread the damage. Let the person rest up between times.”
“Doesn’t usually work,” he replied. “The poison seems to be cumulative beyond a certain point. Most die, and in agony, a few days after they are dedicated. No, usually after so many spikes drive into the skin, the hetrophant becomes euphoric. They are lifted out of themselves into a visionary state. If that happens, it’s very productive for their guiding party, because they get a lot of fruit and the celebrant dies in ecstasy.”
“A doom rapture?”
“That’s what they call it,” he said.
I rested for a second against a pile of rock. Albe approached me with a glass jug and a cup. She offered me wine. I was not expecting much, but it was wonderful. It wasn’t wine, but some other beverage. Mead? I found it warmed and strengthened me.
I wasn’t grateful. “Maybe that doom rapture gets a little help?” I asked Meth.
He
was a poor liar. His eyes widened and his face slipped into a look of innocence that wouldn’t have fooled an eight-year-old.
“I can’t imagine—” he began.
“No? Well, I can,” I snapped.
He glanced furtively at the others, seated along the roadside.
“All right. All right. But the celebrant is going to die anyway. Some of them are brought back to their families, and I’ve never known one to survive. Those plants . . . the mariglobes . . . are truly venomous. Except that you seem to have some special powers and can withstand them.”
I couldn’t, but he didn’t realize that. My armor isn’t perfect, and if I went on collecting those fruits long enough, I would die like the other celebrants, as he called them. My relative immunity was transient.
I went back to work, and in no time, we had filled the other boxes. In the meantime, Amrun and the other two warriors had their heads together.
Meth studied the five full boxes. “I almost don’t believe it. Usually it takes all day, because the celebrant gets slower and slower, then has to be coaxed, then bribed and drugged, sometimes threatened and even beaten. . . .”
“I don’t need to know this,” I told him. “And I would just as soon not.”
Meth took the boxes and walked toward Amrun, knelt at his feet, and, rather humbly, presented them to him. Something flickered at the edge of my vision. I moved my eyes to the left and saw Albe slipping a lead shot into her sling. I felt the skin on my face tighten, but I didn’t want Amrun to see I was ready to fight.
Amrun had a kind, almost benevolent expression on his face.
“My lord, accept this as a token of my true submission to your will.” Meth intoned the words in a ceremonial fashion. “And pardon my seeming opposition. Now Cateyrin may be preserved for another occasion. Forgive me, my lord.”
Amrun stretched out his hand to take the boxes. He must have palmed the knife, because I didn’t see it until he used it to cut Meth’s throat.
Blood sprayed everywhere. Meth went down screaming.
Cateyrin shouted, “No!” and went for Amrun with a knife in her hand.
But he’d turned to run and looked to show us a clean pair of heels. He’d grabbed those precious boxes with his left hand even as he cut Meth’s throat.
But then Albe had a lead shot in her sling. There was an opening between his helmet and the back plate on his armor. It couldn’t have been more than an inch wide. Albe found it, though, or rather, her lead shot did.
Amrun had reached the top of a low rise just ahead, but when the lead stone severed his spine, he dropped where he was like a wet rag. The one in brown armor had his knife out, ready to gut Cateyrin, and I didn’t see how she could do much against him. My sword was out before I knew I had my hand on the hilt. But I thought I would probably be too late.
Brown Armor took an underhanded slice at her torso. I didn’t see the knife in her hand. It was small, and she did miss his throat with it.
The one in green armor had taken his helmet off, never a safe move around Albe. I don’t know if he tried something or she just killed him on general principles. A little housekeeping chore—get him out of the way so he wouldn’t involve himself in any mischief. But when I tore my eyes away from Cateyrin and Brown Armor, I saw he was already dead.
As I said, Cateyrin missed Brown Armor’s throat, but he had a prominent Adam’s apple and her knife had a hook on the end of it. He went spinning round and round, clutching his throat and trying to scream and breathe at the same time.
Cateyrin screamed and look horrified by what she’d done. Albe obviously didn’t share either sentiment. She charged in and tripped Brown Armor, then kicked him into a thick stand of those horrific plants growing at the roadside.
I had a graphic lesson in how useless conventional armor was against the plants’ defenses. It took Brown Armor about fifteen seconds to die, and I imagine it was a long fifteen seconds.
When Brown Armor stopped convulsing and twitching, I saw Cateyrin was on her knees beside Meth. She had a small case with a leather strap on it. She pulled out a bottle and poured it over Meth’s throat, and I saw well enough that Amrun had made a hash of killing him. The cut in his neck wasn’t deep, except on one side, and it had opened only one big vein. The stuff Cateyrin poured from the phial hardened when it hit the air, sealing the wound shut, and the bleeding from the jugular ceased instantly.
Meth lay quiet, looking pale and shocked. Then he rolled on his side and whimpered, “Cateyrin, my sweet Cateyrin.”
When she saw that the damage from Amrun’s knife was repaired, she jumped to her feet and kicked him hard in the stomach. His armor blocked a lot of the kick’s force, but he felt some of it, because he curled up like a sick caterpillar and threw up whatever he had left in his stomach.
“Sweet Cateyrin! I’ll give you sweet Cateyrin, you unmitigated son of a bitch!”
She drew back a foot to kick him again, and Albe said, “Stop that! You can kill him if you want, but don’t mess him up so he can’t walk. We can’t be bothered to carry him.”
Now, Cateyrin had just seen Albe kill three people. The anger vanished from her face, and she assented to Albe’s request immediately, backing away from Meth as though he were on fire.
Albe strolled over to strip the corpses, beginning with bronze-armored Amrun.
“Maybe we ought to skip the city,” I said as I concentrated on helping Meth sit up.
“No! No, you can’t!” Meth cried.
“He’s right,” Cateyrin said. She was collecting the five boxes of crystal fruit. “Things come up from the jungle at night to hunt. That’s what Amrun meant when he said he would cast Meth off. That means he and his men would put Meth outside the city gates and abandon him to die. Meth’s only a purple, and his fealty to Amrun was all he had. I’m even poorer than Meth. I’m only a gray, and a pretty dark one at that.”
“This color thing,” I asked. “It’s some sort of rank?”
“All civilized people know . . .” Meth began.
“If I were you, Meth, I’d shut up and let me do the talking,” Cateyrin said. “So far, your decisions haven’t been all that productive. And trusting Amrun to protect you when you knew what a stupid, mean-minded—”
“Enough!” I said. “Both of you.”
Then Albe added, “Suppose you do shut up and let her talk. She’s the first person who’s made any sense since we got here.”
“Yes, it does have to do with rank,” Cateyrin explained. “The city is run by seven great families. The Fursa are one of them. Meth was brought up in their household, and so pledged his fealty to Amrun. I told you not to. I told you—”
“Do not go on about what you told him,” Albe interjected. “Continue.”
“At any rate, when the time of choosing came, the lot fell on me.”
“You choose the person who picks these berries by lot?” I asked. “Is the lot honest?”
“It’s supposed to be,” Meth said.
“So!” Cateyrin rested her hands on her hips. “How come they always choose a commoner?”
Meth looked a little uncomfortable, but persevered. “The others are not entered in the lottery as often as commoners. In fact, the higher the rank you are, the less often they drop your ball into the cage.”
“I’ve heard tell some are never entered,” Cateyrin snapped. She was looking up at Meth defiantly.
“Wait!” I said. “I can see there are a lot of differences of opinion here, but the sun is westering and if what you say is true, we will need to be at this city before nightfall. How far away is it?”
“About a half hour at the most,” Meth said.
“More like twice that,” Cateyrin argued. “And besides, when the sun goes behind the mountains, the streets aren’t safe.”
“Usually nothing happens till dark.” Meth looked impatient. “Besides, how do we get in? The Fursa high lord will be there with his guard, waiting. And when he finds out Amrun is dead, he’s going to have his me
n slaughter the lot of us.”
“Is Amrun the only one he cares about?” Albe asked.
Both Cateyrin and Meth turned toward her. Cateyrin answered, “Yes. Amrun is the only one he’d miss.”
Meth said, “I don’t—”
“Meth!” Cateyrin sounded infuriated. “You and I both heard him tell the High Lord of Mochtac that no one of note was killed after a battle that took the lives of fifteen of his men. Your best friend, Kerwan, died in that fight, and he said ‘no one of note!’ ”
Albe laughed. “Sounds like they are no better than some of ours. Fine,” she continued, “you dress up in Amrun’s armor, and we walk right through this gate and keep on going. Will that work?”
“It might,” Cateyrin said. “In fact, I think if we move fast, it would. My mother will be glad to see me.”
“You hope!” Meth snarled. “Besides, you know what the penalty for impersonating a ranker is. It’s death.”
“So how many times can you die?” Cateyrin asked. “Believe me, if he finds out you had anything to do with Amrun’s death, he’ll tie you to a griddle and roast you over a slow fire. You know that, don’t you? Don’t you!? If you don’t believe that’s what he’ll do, tell me I’m wrong. If not, put on that armor right now.”
Albe had done a pretty fair job of stripping all three men, including the one who had fallen among the plants. She’d hauled him out by his heels.
Meth marched over and began stripping off his own trappings and putting Amrun’s on. He grumbled a lot, but he did it.
“My lady?” Albe spoke to me courteously. “Is this course of action agreeable with you?”
“Keep on,” I told her. “You’re doing just fine.”
We dumped the corpses among the plants, then set out along the road, walking in what Meth and Cateyrin told us was the direction of the city. As we walked, Cateyrin and Meth tried to explain how matters stood in the strange world we’d entered. They didn’t agree on much, but between the two of them, we got some idea of what was going on.
The city was ruled by seven noble families that apparently, as far as I was able to figure out, quarreled about everything. They all wanted sole rule of the city, but none of them had, as far as anyone could remember or any historical account reported, ever been able to achieve primacy. The historical accounts weren’t reliable, since each of the seven families had their own version of the past, and it differed considerably from all of the others. The commoners—who were, by the way, the majority of people in the city—were forced to ally themselves with one or another great family simply in order to survive. They were obsessed with the politics of the city.
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