The armor was heavy and he was very tired. He stood alone on the high riverbank watching the rest. A warrior with a bronze spear and wearing very worn clothing was walking along the river bottom, looking for deep spots where he might find fish. Others were scattered along the gravel beds on each side of the narrow stream. The light was gray and patches of thick mist lay in places along the river. His men wandered in and out of them like ghosts—the ghosts they were.
A few lit fires and sat around them to warm themselves. One of them, a lean man in Roman dress, paused next to him. Lancelot remembered him, a surgeon with the Legions. But then he picked up extra work questioning prisoners under torture and that was why he’d ended nailed up as a trophy, his head swinging by the hair from a chieftain’s saddle. He’d said after he was captured, they’d squared accounts before they killed him.
“There is no sun yet,” the Roman said. “When it rises, we will be gone. We melt in its rays like the ground mist. We are dead and not dead, gone and yet not gone. You may summon us with a word. Simply say you need us. We will come. But I cannot think you will find us comfortable company. Yet I am not sorry I began this adventure.”
“What’s it like?” Lancelot asked. “To be . . . gone?”
“Like light everywhere and nowhere. We don’t lose anything. We just aren’t and then we are. And none of us know why any more than we knew why in the first place. I think that barbarian farmer has got a fish.” He pointed to the man with the bronze spear.
He pulled the limp fish off the spear and tossed it to a pair bringing along a small fire in a circle of rocks. One of them caught it, chopped off the head, and began to clean and scale it.
Just then Lancelot caught a flash of molten light as the first sun began to shine through the trees. When he looked around, they were all gone but the fire was still burning and the cleaned fish lay on the rocks nearby. He walked down into the riverbed, spitted the fish, and began to cook it.
A few minutes later, She rose from the deep pool downstream where the “farmer,” so called by the Roman, speared the fish. It was like a glowing bowl filled by the new sun. One moment she wasn’t there, the next moment she was. She was wearing a green and yellow dress that seemed made of autumn willow leaves. Like all her clothing, it left her breasts bare.
She walked toward him, her feet leaving no tracks in the sand and gravel riverbed. When she reached him, she touched her throat and glanced all around at the shining water, the fading mist, and the new day.
“What have you done? I have never felt so many in one place before.”
“The dead?” he asked.
“Yes.” There was dismay in her eyes.
“I don’t know, and I’m not sure. The ravens came to me for redemption, and I tried to give it to them. I don’t know if I succeeded or failed. But I’m afraid I might spend the rest of my life finding out.”
“I hope you found out about being a warrior, because I think that you have some problems that don’t lend themselves to negotiated solutions.”
“That’s a fancy way to say what?” He was eating the fish now and his mouth was full. He mumbled.
“You know that sorcerer that tried to get you to come with him the same day we met at my lake?”
“Yeah. I felt bad about leaving him there all alone.” He finished the fish, got up and walked to the slow trickle that represented the river and washed his hands.
“Don’t feel lonely. I can’t say I was all that interested in him either. Both our minds were on other things.”
He grinned nostalgically. “We weren’t thinking about much else. I wanted to lose my virginity and you were more than ready to help me get rid of it.”
“Brace yourself,” she said. “You have some shocks coming and they are not good ones.”
He dried his hands on his leather trousers.
“Your little blond girlfriend is in a lot of trouble. She doesn’t know it yet, but she is. She and her royal consort are both the targets of a hunt by the King of the Summer Country, Bade.”
“King Bade is folklore,” Lancelot said in a lofty fashion.
She studied her fingernails. They changed to an orange color. It didn’t go well with her white, rose petal skin. She sighed and her nails turned pink.
“You like that better on me?” she asked.
“Stop your distracting me,” he said. “King Bade. He doesn’t really exist, does he?”
“I wish,” she said. “Next to ‘Her,’ he’s the most powerful mortal being in the universe. Merlin found that out.”
“Merlin!” Lancelot said. “What’s he got to do with anything?”
“A lot. I just spent a very unpleasant ten hours with him. First, I had to capture him, then drug him to blow the cobwebs out of his brain and get him to thinking rationally. Then I had to pry the story out of him bit by bit. He’s still pretty incoherent at times. Bade’s curses are no joke, and when I did hear all he had to say, it scared the bejesus out of me. So I hope you learned what Cregan had to teach you, because unless I miss my guess, as Arthur’s subject and the little blonde’s foster brother . . .”
“Her name is Guinevere,” Lancelot snapped.
“I stand corrected. Guinevere’s foster brother. I’d say you were involved in this whole nasty business up to your cute neck.”
“The old sorcerer is . . . ?”
“Right, bright boy,” she answered. “He’s Merlin.”
Neither Maeniel nor Mother were sympathetic about fear. I ducked my head underwater and let the current beat on my face for a moment. The water was icy cold here. When I came to the surface, my skin seemed to glow. The fear ebbed and I found I could think clearly again. The dress the Fand wore was still clutched in my right hand.
“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.”
“L
et’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.
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