Wrath-Bearing Tree

by James Enge

  “Ooooh,” Lÿrfü crooned at it. “Has some bad boy run away from the riding wall? He’s a very bad boy, naughty-waughty widdle boy. Does he want a little drink? A little drinky-winky from Auntie Lÿrfü?”

  The creature shied away when it heard Lÿrfü’s voice (although Aloê couldn’t tell how it heard: it had no ears that she could see). It seemed to cower, so that Aloê was between it and Lÿrfü.

  “Oh,” the older woman said to Aloê, “that’s cute. He likes you. Here’s your drink. You should give him a sip and maybe he’ll let you ride him. They do that when they like somebody.”

  It was a priest who bore Aloê’s drink—like enough to Ynenck and the priest at the door to be their sister (or brother). The priest handed the drink to Aloê and smiled. Lÿrfü looked at her and smiled. Even the creature who cowered beside her seemed to be smiling with its odd wide panting mouth.

  Ride him. That was what they were doing over by the far wall, she saw now through the smoky perfumed air. There were women mounted on these crab-ape things, on their phalluses, and plunging up and down.

  Sex with animals? But: what kind of animal?

  She looked at the thing crouching before her. It hadn’t been born that way. Someone had made it that way: there were the bold purplish marks of scars on its shoulders, knees, face—partially obscured by the tattoos, but clear enough now that she looked for them. The hands and feet were human, not apelike.

  This thing was a man. Anyway, it had been a man. They had changed it into this thing.

  And they did expect her to have sex with it. She turned to look at the faces nearby. A few were openly aroused (like Lÿrfü and the priest). A few were tittering in embarrassment or amusement as they watched and waited. Others were breathing heavily, sickened expressions on their faces—their eyes averted, but stealing the occasional glance, as if to refresh their disgust.

  Aloê would have liked to pass the matter off with a joke, or a polite refusal. She’d been in many an odd situation—many more obviously dangerous than this one was. But she found that horror was strangling her, making speech impossible. It was the smell of semen rising from the beast next to her—oppressive, summoning memories that were distant yet all-too familiar, nightmarish.

  She shoved her booze-can into Lÿrfü’s not-unwilling hand, stood up, kicked the cringing beast out of the way, and walked toward the door.

  “Off to see the Festival, are we?” the priest at the door said brightly. “Well, I’ll see you later.”

  “I’ll see you in hell; not before,” she told the shocked priest. She looked back before she walked out into the night. Lÿrfü was blissfully at peace, eyes closed, slack in her chair with a booze-can on the floor under either hand.

  She turned away and stepped out into the clean air of the night. She breathed it in gratefully without thinking. Then: she thought. Her reaction had some degree of panic in it, that was clear. But she sensed something wrong here. Unless she was much mistaken, they needed to get away. Now.

  She turned to the doorman, “I need to speak to . . . to Pebbexäk, my cousin-by-oath.”

  “Can’t go in the men’s side,” the doorman said. “Only men and holes there.”

  Holes. The subhuman equivalent of the poles she had already seen. She grimaced.

  “I don’t want to go in,” she said candidly. “Can you send him a message?”

  “Can’t,” the doorman said. “Can’t leave my place.”

  “Send a message or I’m going in. Choose.”

  “Can’t—”

  She kicked him in one knee, and he tumbled off the porch to the muddy street. She walked past and stepped into the men’s side of the nameless hostelry.

  “Where’s the bar?” she said to the shocked purple priest within. “Or playroom. Whatever you call it.”

  “You can’t be here!” he gasped.

  “I won’t be long. I’d ask you to carry a message to someone, but you wouldn’t.”

  “Of course I wouldn’t!”

  “Screw you, then.”

  She walked past him into the men’s side.

  It was like and unlike the women’s side. The decor was all purple, and the smoke was less perfumy, but still dense with the reek of poppy and beer. There were men riding holes, the hideous parody of women, on every side. There seemed to be many more men than holes, and each one was surrounded by a crowd of hooting spectators.

  As she watched, one man dismounted a naked capering hole and another leapt forward to grab his chance. He kicked another aspirant out of the way (to the delight of the crowd), but the hole skittered away and wouldn’t let him climb aboard.

  He had a tankard of beer in his hands, though, and he poured some of it into the vast pink maw that was the only thing the hole had for a face. The maw filled with foaming beer to the thing’s rimlike lips. The beer gurgled out of sight down into the thing’s gullet; the lips smacked with satisfaction; and finally the hole allowed the half-naked man to mount. When he did so he roared as if he had won a great victory, and the beast bucked under him. The crowd of men standing near applauded—some already stripped from the waist down to seize their own chance when it came.

  No one saw her at first, and that was good, because it took her a while to search out Morlock in the wide murky room. But she saw him at last, seated at a long table, listening with amused patience to some tale being told by a man wearing a wide-brimmed black hat.

  She walked through the room to reach him. Eventually men began to notice her. Most seemed more frightened than angry, though there was something of both in their reactions.

  One pudding-faced man with no pants on grabbed his genitals as if she were going to steal them. “You can’t be here!” he hissed at her as she passed.

  “I won’t be long,” she replied coolly, “much like yourself,” and gestured significantly. He turned away, his pale formless face blushing a savage shame-filled purple. Apparently just being here was bad enough; she made it worse by talking. She was glad of that. She resolved to talk to anyone who talked to her or stood in her way . . . but nobody did, and at last she stood next to Morlock.

  “. . . and so we have a barbarian-warrior, a priest-healer, a gnome-thief—,” the man in the black hat was saying, gesturing at the people sitting at the table as he named them.

  “A gnome?” Morlock asked, nodding at the red-eyed dwarf sitting next to the man with the black hat.

  “Well, a dwarf. Same thing.”

  “No.”

  “It is to us.”

  “You’re wrong about that, but it’s no skin off my walrus.”

  “It—what does that mean?”

  “Don’t let it worry you. Go on.”

  “Well, we need a mage and a rogue before we start on our quest. I was pretty sure you were one or the other. We were supposed to all meet here at the tavern.”

  “What’s a mage?”

  “Someone who does magic.”

  “What’s magic?”

  “Magic is . . . It’s . . . Well. It’s something amazing.”

  “Eh. Different people are amazed by different things. I amazed someone earlier today with this.” Without seeming to move, Morlock triggered the grabby-thing he had made from bones, reached out across the table with it, tapped the rather drunken barbarian on the other side of the table (who proceeded to fall off his bench), and retracted it.

  “That is amazing!” shouted the man in the black hat. The barbarian raised himself from the floor and made some noises suggestive of agreement.

  Morlock shrugged and rolled his eyes. “Anyone who knew how to make it could have made it. Are you sure that’s magic?”

  “Of course I’m sure!”

  The barbarian made some sounds suggestive of disagreement. The man in the black hat turned toward him to make some sort of theological point. Morlock cast his eyes about in desperation, and so caught sight of Aloê.

  He raised his mug agreeably to her and smiled, so she learned at last that he could do that. In fact, he seeme
d more relaxed than she had ever seen him—suspiciously so. Morlock was strangely unmoved by the filth and stench of his surroundings. Maybe these things were different for men.

  “How much money have you spent on those?” she asked, gesturing at the mug.

  “None,” he replied. “First one’s free.”

  “What about the next one?”

  Morlock looked surprised. “Why would I want more than one?”

  “People do. Never mind; I’m glad it’s not a problem. Listen, we have to get out of here.”

  The man in the black hat was staring at Aloê in amazement. “You can’t be here!” he whispered. “You’re a—a—a—”

  “—a woman, yes,” Aloê said. “But your rules don’t matter to me.”

  “Rogue!” muttered the man in the black hat to the person sitting next to him on the bench, the dwarf—so red-eyed and serpentine in appearance that Aloê half expected to see smoke trailing from his nostrils.

  “Yuh!” said the dwarf, and smoke did follow his word in the air. He was holding a bowl of some burning herb in his hands; perhaps he had just inhaled some of it. Or perhaps he was near the dragon-change, as his appearance suggested, and only held the smoking bowl to hide that fact.

  “She’s not a rogue any more than I’m a mage,” Morlock said. “She’s—”

  Aloê was worried that Morlock was going to say “a Guardian” (maybe even in Wardic—he looked more relaxed than anyone under a death sentence had a right to be). So she broke in, “I’m his cousin-by-oath. And we’re leaving.”

  Aloê dreaded the veiled explanations she’d have to make to her partner. She hardly knew herself why they had to leave—she was just sure it was wise.

  But, as it turned out, none were needed. Morlock looked sharply at her, then set down his half-empty mug and stood up.

  “Good-bye, venturers!” he said. “Good luck with your quest.”

  “But you can’t go now!” the man in the black hat shouted. “A mage and a rogue—right in the tavern, where the magister said you’d be!”

  But they could go and they did go, leaving the man baffled behind them.

  The priest was gone from his station inside the door. As the Guardians approached the doorway to the porch they heard men shouting in the street.

  “—strangers from Tekatestömädeien,” one man was screaming, “come to preach the false consolation of the Two Powers, to kill our god and destroy our sacred culture and heritage!”

  “Maybe we should wait until they finish lynching those poor bastards,” Aloê whispered. “We don’t want to walk into a riot.”

  Morlock nodded and drew to a halt—a little unsteady on his feet, Aloê was alarmed to notice.

  “—and the brazen whore walked past me, into the men’s side, as if she were a man or a hole!” one man was shouting. “That’s not my culture and heritage! Is it yours?” Aloê thought she recognized the voice of the doorkeeper she had kicked.

  As the crowd outside shouted various flavors of “No!” Aloê met Morlock’s eye. No word was needed; both realized that they were the intended guests at this lynching party.

  Morlock tilted his head toward the other side of the inn.

  Aloê nodded. Time to make a discreet exit through the back door and run like madfolk for the gate. Any gate.

  They turned as one and plowed through the crowd in the room, now quieter yet more menacing than before. Clearly some of the men had heard at least some of the shouting in the street.

  The inn was as thin as a child’s excuse: there was no kitchen or backroom behind the tavern. As soon as they burst through the back door they were in another street. Both ends were crowded with people listening to the ranters on the far side of the narrow house.

  High overhead, Chariot the major moon glared whitely down on them from a clear cold sky, and Trumpeter burned bright blue in the west.

  As the two vocates hesitated as to their next move, someone shouted, “There they are!” and the mob started to boil toward them from either side of the street.

  Aloê wondered desperately how they had been recognized—and then she knew. No woman of this town would be seen with a man, or vice versa.

  Morlock looked one way, then the other, and started to run on rather wobbly feet toward the nearer end of the street.

  The crowd did seem a little thinner there. She grabbed the thin pole holding up the awning and followed him into the fray.

  Drunk or sober, the crooked man could fight. She watched with admiration as he plunged into the crowd, weaponless. With his left hand Morlock grabbed the wrist of a man waving a long knife and twisted. Aloê distinctly heard the wet crack of breaking bone. Then Morlock had the knife—and his right hand wielded a club he had harvested from some other hapless rioter.

  Now Aloê was in the thick of it, too, spinning her staff to force back the crowd, and lashing out to strike those who lingered too near.

  But surprise and momentum only got them deep into the rioters. Soon they were surrounded and forced to stand back-to-back to protect each other.

  It wasn’t looking good, with more of the crowd running over from the far end of the street. Mere pressure of numbers was forcing people closer to the two vocates.

  Aloê felt a certain fierce satisfaction, though. Everyone had to die sometime, and it was good to be fighting back-to-back with someone who fought as hard as Morlock.

  “Time for another lightning bolt!” she shouted, although she knew he could not possibly summon lightning from a clear sky, even if he could have gone into rapture.

  She thought she heard him snickering and was pleased.

  But nerve wouldn’t push them through a crowd as dense as this, and she started to plan for when their weapons got knocked out of their hands, or when her companion was struck down.

  Then help arrived. The man in the black hat, waving a long ill-balanced sword, laid with joyous fury into the circle of citizens surrounding Aloê and Morlock. “Venturers! To me!” he shouted pompously, and slashed and stabbed and confused the crowd.

  Meanwhile the snaky dwarf wriggled in among the crowd and started cutting their pockets openly. Many who had turned with courage to face their fresh attacker turned again and backed away to save their wallets.

  And now the big half-naked barbarian arrived, broadsword in both hands, and he went down into the crowd like a reaper into a field, swinging his weapon with grim and businesslike determination.

  The wall of people around the two Guardians was now full of gaps. Aloê and Morlock turned together and ran through a rift in the crowd, past confused rioters, up a nearby alley, running without thought of a goal except to get away from the melee.

  For a few breathless moments Aloê hoped that the crowd would let them go. Unfortunately, the self-styled venturers followed, the man in the black hat shouting again and again, “To me! Venturers to me!”

  And the crowd, or part of it, began to trail up the dark winding street.

  Aloê glanced at Morlock; his eyes were unreadable in the shadows, but he was already turning back. She did the same, and they sprinted together back to face their pursuers.

  A mob is strongest when it has no face, when it is so numerous that it acts on its members as powerfully as on anything it confronts. This was just a wispy tendril of a greater mob, the faces clearly distinguishable in the moons’ light, like petals on the black branch of the street.

  Aloê lashed out at one big-nosed balding man: right on his nose. She felt it give under the blow, all the way up the staff. He turned away wailing, his face dripping blood that was black in the moons’ bluish light.

  Morlock, meanwhile, passed his sword (where had he gotten a sword?) through one mobster’s soft protruding belly while stabbing the eye of a gaping onlooker with the knife in his other hand. Both staggered off screaming down curses on him in the name of their purple god.

  The mob, or moblet, changed its mind and started withdrawing from the sidestreet before more of its members were hurt.

 
Morlock seemed almost inclined to chase after them, so Aloê pounded on his higher shoulder and gestured at the invitingly empty darkness at the other end of the street. He nodded and turned away with her.

  Aloê realized that the man in the black hat was no longer shouting. Looking back, she saw why: he was lying wounded on the ground, his black blood staining the dusty street. Near him crouched the priest-healer, muttering some words—a healing spell, perhaps, or a prayer for the dead. On the other side of the body crouched another figure: the dwarf-thief efficiently rifling through the fallen man’s pockets, his red eyes aglow with greed, his breath smoking in the cool night air.

  This much in a single long glance she saw; then she turned away. The advent of the venturers might well have saved her and Morlock’s lives. But if they were to keep them, they had to get out of this town; that was obvious.

  They ran on until the street emptied into a square with several exits. Aloê paused there, wondering which way to take.

  “Feel groggy,” Morlock said.

  Aloê was irritated by this remark, which seemed to her quite pointless. Of course he was groggy. She was groggy, too—half-dead on her aching feet.

  Then it occurred to her that Morlock didn’t make idle conversation. She looked more closely at him. He was standing unsteadily, as if the firm-packed ground under his feet were shifting swampland. His eyes were half-shut. There was the gleam of sweat or drool on the side of his face.

  How much had he drunk? Less than half a mug, if he wasn’t lying.

  Suddenly Aloê remembered looking back from the exit of the women’s tavern, and seeing Lÿrfü asleep in her chair . . . after drinking the ale she had ordered for Aloê.

  “The first drink is free,” Aloê muttered furiously. “Listen, Morlock: you’re not drunk; you’ve been drugged.”

  “Telling you,” he said thickly, and perhaps a little sullenly.

  “Can you vomit anything up?” she asked. “Might save you from the worst of it.”

  He glared at her and muttered, “Guess so.”

  Did he not want to puke in front of her? Aloê found men baffling. He hadn’t been ashamed to be seen drinking in that tavern, even though it stank of beer and semen and faceless inhuman whores. But he didn’t want to perform a simple bodily function while she watched, even though it might help save both their lives.