“My … my … you … are … pretty,” she managed with the unfamiliar lips and tongue that had belonged to Laron.
Now she was taken by surprise by an even more unfamiliar stirring between the legs. Ah, so this is what you men feel when you fancy us, she thought. The things I do to myself in the name of the cold sciences.
Wensomer shook her own head as she detached her mind from the other body. There was no ancient soul there, smothered by Laron for seven hundred years. That soul had departed before the oracle sphere had been attached to the corpse. She got down from the bench, reached into a locker by it, and took out two sets of manacles. The new corpse was safely secured by cold iron before she picked up the circlet, spoke another casting, and attached it to the head. She stood back. Before her eyes, the wounds to the chest and head healed over with a flickering of etheric lines of force. Any moment now, Miral would begin rising. She saw an eyelid flutter.
Laron tried to bound up with something like a slurred howl. Wood splintered beneath chain links, but the chains held against the vampyre’s struggles. Finally he lay still.
“As always, success,” said Wensomer. “You will remain chained here until Miral sets, then someone from Gr’Atos Arak’s Necrotic Merchandise will take your body inland on the river and dump it. In a day or two the army of allied kingdoms should be calling past, and you should have plenty of livestock to feed upon. Warsovran may even give you a medal—who knows?”
The vampyre Laron turned its head and looked across to where the teenaged body lay. It took a quite unnecessary breath.
“Wwwenssmerr,” Laron slurred through lips he had never used before. “G-go. Ba-ba-back.”
“What do you mean? I live here. The villa cost me twenty seven thousand gold pagols. I had to buy at the wrong time of the year—or so Honest Jerrik assured me.”
The vampyre’s jaw worked again. Long fangs gleamed in the noonday light streaming in through the tower’s windows.
“M-mm-me. Go … b-b-back. A-live.”
“To that body? After I spent eleven gold pagols on this body? You want to grow old and die, like the rest of us? Do you realize that you still have the soul of a vampyre, and when you do die, you will again revert to being undead? If you die of old age you could be a very unattractive vampyre. I suppose someone could do a purge-casting on your oracle sphere to really release your soul to its proper destiny, but—”
“Go … b-back!” insisted Laron, already in better command of his new tongue.
Wensomer removed the circlet with an appropriate casting, then replaced it on Laron’s head and stood clear. He opened his eyes, shook his head, and sat up on the bench, swaying slightly.
“How do you feel?” asked Wensomer.
“Better.” He hurriedly satisfied himself that he had teeth instead of fangs. “Better, but odd. Odd in some places more than others. One might almost say glowing.”
He looked at the beams of sunlight and the shadows they cast through the windows of the tower. “I was aware of only minutes passing, yet I estimate that your procedures have taken over an hour. Just what did you do with me?”
“For that hour, the body was no longer yours, Laron the Chivalrous and Reasonably Well Endowed. I merged with the body’s head, checking whether the soul of the previous occupant was not still there, suspended against time.”
This possibility had not occurred to Laron. He swung his legs down and hastily climbed into his trousers.
“Well, was he?” Laron asked.
“Believe me, if he had been there, my own sense of ethics would not have allowed me to let you back into this weedy young body that nevertheless has plenty of potential. You are lucky indeed. You were very nearly stuck with that.”
She gestured to the corpse, whose wounds had opened again now that the etheric forces of the vampyre soul had departed.
Laron shuddered. “Ethics. Hah! I have a feeling that your ethics nevertheless extended to taking control of this body and giving yourself one!”
“That, young man, is between me and my own conscience.”
Laron pulled on his tunic and buckled on his ax. “Look, thank you for doing this for me,” he finally said in grudging acknowledgment. “I’ll pay for the depreciation on the corpse. Ten pagols, you said?” he asked, reaching for his purse.
“I think you will find that they are already missing.”
Laron frowned and released the purse. “In that case, I should probably leave you to write up the results of this unique and edifying experiment.”
“Just one matter. Why did you choose to return to mortality and life after you had been restored to your old state? Was it longing to again experience of the musky delights of Nurse Pellien or Academician Lavenci that changed your mind?”
Laron grinned pleasantly, then hefted his recently lightened purse. “What is it worth to you?”
Wensomer’s mouth dropped open. “Worth? To me? After all that I did for you?”
“And to me. You learned a lot, and for free. You have payment on the corpse’s depreciation, so I estimate that you are already ahead by, say, six pagols.”
“Six pagols!”
“Not to mention use of my body for, er, whatever the term for male harlotry is.”
“The body that you had abandoned at the time.”
“Ah-ha! So you did!”
“I conducted tests, nothing more.”
“‘Tests’! I’ve heard it called ‘humping,’ ‘jiggy-jump,’ ‘intimate entertainment,’ and ‘procreative recreational activity,’ but never ‘tests.’”
“One pagol.”
“One pagol! Thanks to me, you have just become the first woman in history to experience sex from a male perspective—for free. And now you want my fascinating, priceless and pioneering experiences, also for free?”
“I’m not interested in what you did with Pellien and Lavenci, I want to know why you gave up a chance to be undead again. Two pagols.”
“Five.”
“Three!”
“Four or nothing!”
“Four, if you throw in that glass thing from Larmentel which plays a pentatonic scale.”
“Feran stole it. What about that ocular of the king of Gironal?”
“Done!”
Laron went to a window, leaned on his elbows and looked out over the city. Clouds were beginning to obscure the sun, and rain was threatening. Diomeda was somehow meant to be viewed in sunlight, and seeing it under clouds made it seem ill and diseased. Wensomer came up and looked out, too, leaning against him in the narrow space.
“Well?” she asked, nudging him with her hip.
“Uncertainty.”
“Uncertainty? Just uncertainty?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Being undead was very certain. I knew precisely what I could do and could not. I never changed, and I knew that my intentions toward women were honorable because I could offer them nothing else but honorable intentions. Oh, that body behind us was superb, but I know that it will be precisely as it is in a century, and that becomes boring. Immortality is not living forever, immortality is total and absolute certainty.”
“But being asleep and helpless when Miral is down must have been uncertain. Were your oracle sphere to be removed from your body and a purge-casting applied, you would become truly dead.”
“No, that was totally certain. As a vampyre I was driven to survive. I did not say that I enjoyed it. Uncertainty is life. Certainty is worse than death. I had some problems adjusting to being alive again, but … Wensomer, after I had returned to actually being a vampyre, I realized that I could never again stand with someone who takes me in her arms and presses her lips against mine with the tingling softness of the most finely wrought massage-casting, then tells me that I am her brave and valorous champion. People could feel compassion and gratitude for me when I was undead, but never tenderness.”
Wensomer attempted to stifle a sob. Laron turned to see that tears were running down cheeks.
<
br /> “Dammit, Laron, I’m alive and I’ve never had a chance to call any man ‘my brave and valorous champion.”’
Cautiously Laron draped an arm over her shoulders. “Well, ah, perchance you are spending time in the wrong taverns?”
She gave him another nudge with her hip, then put an arm around him. “You don’t meet that sort of man in those sorts of taverns, Laron. Don’t ask how I know.”
Laron held up the little chunk of glass from the center of Larmentel, then smiled knowingly at Wensomer.
“Filthy pictures?” she said.
“Well, yes. Would you like them now?”
“I need a laugh. Why not?”
“Then do you have an anchor amulet that I can use to bind the ocular? I have not finished my investigations on the etheric leakage into the glass as yet.”
Wensomer detached a garnetlike stone in a silver claw-clip from her navel and dropped it into Laron’s hand. “It once belonged to a powerful sorcerer who was killed and eaten by a rather more powerful etheric leatherwing—the stone, that is, not the mounting.”
“I should hope not,” responded Laron.
“It stayed lodged in the creature’s gut for ninety years, until the creature grew old and nearly blind. It became what one might call a creature of habit, then someone built a castle on a mountain peak where it was inclined to roost every summer. The following summer it flew straight into a tower, jamming its head into a bedchamber window and breaking its neck. When the beast was being chopped up for disposal the stone was found. It has an intense and dark solidity in the etherworld.”
“Oh. So how did you obtain the stone?”
Wensomer frowned, then her eyes darted back and forth. Finally she hunched her shoulders slightly and stared at the railing. “I was sleeping in the bedchamber at the time, and Roval—”
“That’s enough! I do not wish to know any more.”
Laron made a fine etheric mesh and trailed it over the fragment of glass from Larmental. The ocular’s base was now manifested as a pinpoint of bluish light, but this sank into Wensomer’s red stone as he placed the mesh in the palm of his hand. Finally he made a fist over the stone, and when he opened his fingers again, the mesh was gone.
Velander watched the operation with increasing horror. The etheric mesh that detached the ocular’s base was too coarse to pick up such a weak and diffuse presence as her. She was left in the darkness of the etherworld, clinging to the filament of orange light.
When death comes, I shall not notice, she told herself. just a brief sensation of dozing that becomes nothingness. Perhaps I deserved it. A continent had been murdered, yet my only thoughts were for revenge on Terikel. What is evil, then? True evil? Terikel never ceased to fight Warsovran and his fire-circles; she even paid for the Shadowmoon’s voyage to Torea. Serionese just played games and gathered scraps of power about her like an ebonian bird collecting scraps of bright cloth and colored glass for its nest.
Velander wondered if she would go mad before she faded completely. Never liked Feran, she decided. Perhaps if I had surprised Terikel with someone nicer? Laron, perhaps? Poor Laron, but at least he has stumbled out of the briars onto the path to happiness. He fought for the good name of Pellien. Nobody else would have done that. Would he fight for me, if he knew that I still lingered? And Terikel—she was a spy for the Metrologans. Had the Elder ordered her into Feran’s bed? Did Feran revolt her as much as he revolted me? It must have been so. We were soulmates, she must have felt precisely as I did. She must have hated Feran, too; it must have been duty alone. Poor Terikel. First defiled by Feran, then shunned by everyone. Except Laron. At the end, when all others have gone their various ways, Laron is always there. When I fade to nothingness and die, the glass that anchors my axis line will be resting against Laron’s chest. He will be with me, I shall not die alone.
So have I gone mad? Rejoicing each time Laron is seduced? Aching for Terikel’s forgiveness, ready to beg to be her soulmate again? Or have I become sane for the first time in a great many years? Probably I am sane. Suddenly everything is so clear and certain. Laron, I am not worthy to love you, but I do worship you. Were it in my power, I would be you. Should any means to serve alongside you cross the dark and narrowing path I tread, I shall take it without so much as a second thought.
Hadyal was such a small place that everyone knew when the camel caravan had arrived. Through the serving girls and eunuchs of Madame Voldean’s school, Dolvienne also learned that it was heading south, to Baalder. That was a Sargolan city, even though it was hot, dry, dangerous, and filled with more desert people and nomads than Sargolans. It had a Sargolan governor and was the northernmost outpost of the empire. It certainly meant safety if she and her companions could reach the place.
Dolvienne watched and listened continually. She knew the rhythms of Madame Voldean’s school, she knew the footsteps of most of the guards, and she knew who came and went from day to day. Dusk had almost faded as the rider arrived. At once, Dolvienne was at one of her many spyholes and saw Toragev arrive by the light of the guards’ torch. He tied his horse to a rail, told a guard to fetch it a nosebag. Toragev has authority, she reminded herself. She hurried back to her room, fetched a thumb-lamp and frantically scratched sparks from the tinderbox until she had a flame. By the time Toragev strode up the stairs she was in the corridor, sweeping one of the rugs. She bowed low as she caught sight of him.
“Ah, well met, fair and devoted Dolvienne,” he said, sweeping his cloak open with a flourish.
“Master Toragev, well met,” she replied politely.
“Step into your room, I have something to discuss,” he said without further ceremony.
He was furtive and cautious as he entered her room, as if he had no business there. He took Dolvienne’s arm and led her to the window.
“The smoke and glow across there is from the fires of a caravan camp,” he said, pointing through the fretwork and bars. “It has just arrived from Zalmek, and is heading south to Baalder.”
“Baalder, in the Sargolan empire?” said Dolvienne, with a very good imitation of hope and innocence.
“Yes. Baalder is two hundred miles away, across open desert. In less than a week the caravan will be on your homeland’s soil.”
“It would be sweet beyond telling to be traveling with them tomorrow.”
“If you could pack tonight, you could leave tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” gasped Dolvienne. “Leave?”
“Yes.”
“I—I have nothing to pack,” she said excitedly. “All I need is a change of clothing, a disguise.”
“Well, yes, that has been arranged. See here.”
He took a bundle from beneath his cloak and shook it out. It was a man’s roughweave tunic and suncape.
“But how may I escape this place?” asked Dolvienne. “There are armed eunuchs at the entrance.”
“There is no need to escape. I do have your deed of custody, after all. We can just walk out.”
“As easily as that?” she exclaimed.
“My dear Dolvienne, it is never as easy as that. Only one of you three may leave. If what your so-called mistress says is true, when the, ah, escapee reaches Baalder, the other two of you will be ransomed. You see, in order to verify your story, you have to be given into the custody of the Sargolan governor in Baalder.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Officially, Sargolans do not keep slaves, even though there is some unofficial trading in that regard. That means that my master loses a slave if you are not what you say you are, and my master will take the price out of my wages and back, have no fear of that.”
“You have our scrolls, you know who we are.”
“I also know that scrolls can be forged.”
Dolvienne certainly knew that scrolls could be forged. Her certificate in dancing from Sairet was in Senterri’s handwriting, after all, but then, nobody had required Senterri to write anything since she had been abducted, so no comparison had ever betrayed
her.
“What could convince you of our sincerity?” asked Dolvienne, now pleading very convincingly. “We have nothing of our own to give as surety.”
“There is one thing,” said Toragev, leaning against the edge of the window. “The three of you are virgins, and that rather fragile commodity is highly prized in the kingdoms of the far north. On the other hand, the girl who goes to Baalder will certainly cease to be the property of my esteemed employer, so the state of her innocence will cease to have relevance. Whichever of you three is to go must first spend an hour entertaining me in her bed.”
Dolvienne gasped and stepped back. For some moments neither of them spoke or moved.
“Well?” asked Toragev. “Are you willing to pay?”
“I—I do not fancy the idea,” she said slowly. “But there are three of us. What do the others say?”
“Clown, I have only just arrived!” laughed Toragev. “I intend to speak with them, then let you gather together and discuss the matter.”
He left, and Dolvienne heard the bolt slide over to lock her door from the outside. She hurried about her room, pulling parts of selected furnishings out and piling them together. With the skill of practice she made a dummy for her bed, then dressed herself. Within only minutes she was six inches taller, dressed in a dark, hooded cloak made from a dyed bedsheet, and holding a light ax whose shaft was a cane curtain-rod and whose head was parchment and paste. She drank from a vial of something sharp-scented, then spat it out almost at once. Gasping and wheezing, she gradually got her breath back under control.
The handmaid tugged at her door. There was a soft snap as the resin holding the bolt gave way. Dolvienne stood in the doorway for a moment. Somewhere nearby people were talking.
“Who is he with?” whispered Dolvienne to herself, her voice deeper and more ragged from the corrosive polishing fluid. “Is it you, Your Royal Highness, or is it Perime?”
At the far end of the corridor, at the head of the stairs, two eunuch guards sat playing dice by the light of a single lamp.
“Perime would die for you, my princess, she would even do more if she could. When you call, she is there, when you speak she agrees, but she is as dangerous as a pleasure barge on a river with the rapids rumbling in the distance. And what will you do? You have a good heart, but it is not yet wise with the lessons of the world. If you are to be free, there is no other way. This is not betrayal, I swear it.”
Voyage of the Shadowmoon Page 43