Either Lady Pleasure had invaded her mind at some point to plunder her most intimate memories, or . . .
The alternative was too unbelievable to contemplate, for anyone but a mage or a monk. Her exposure to theurgy was minimal, just enough to inform her thaumaturgy, and she knew little about most gods and goddesses.
Save one. She had studied the lore of Ishi for years, haunting temples of the goddess of love and beauty – and sexual pleasure – and pestering her flirtatious priestesses for the sacred secrets of femininity.
Along the way she had gathered a volume of lore on the goddess, her myths, her stories, her legends, and the particularities of her aspect of divinity. Among the sacred lore of the priestesses was the theory that Ishi witnessed all acts of love and pleasure.
And not just the active ones. The lore was clear on that point. From the moment an individual recognized the existence of sex as an existential concept, Ishi had knowledge of their soul. There was no escaping that, it was said, no matter how pious a monk or nun you might become.
“I don’t know what you are, but you aren’t Baroness Amandice,” Pentandra accused. Sweat broke out on her brow as she struggled to resist the subtle arcane forces whipping around her, trying to convince her to relax, surrender, submit . . .
“I am her,” Lady Pleasure countered. “All of her . . . and so much more. Your fears are misplaced, Pentandra. I mean you and the Duke no harm. Indeed, I’m here to help!”
“You cannot fight her, Mistress!” Alurra said, for the first time since they’d entered the chamber. “She is too powerful, and now is not the time!”
“Wisdom from the young,” Lady Pleasure chuckled as she circled the mage. “And so pretty, too! Once that hair is dealt with, and you are properly dressed . . . I swear, Pentandra, if this is how poorly you treat your apprentices it's no wonder you haven’t had one before!
“I’m new,” Alurra said, flatly. “And I know who you are! Who you really are!”
“Do you, my sweet?” Lady Pleasure purred as she regarded the blind girl and the raven on her shoulder with amused contempt.
“I do,” Alurra said, firmly. “And I know nothing you say can be trusted!”
“But sweetling, we just met! How can you say such cruel things on short acquaintance? That’s just unladylike to be so bold and so rude!”
“You aren’t a lady,” Alurra said, calmly. “Nor am I. You are Ishi incarnate, goddess of love and beauty, taken the form of this poor woman for your own ends!” the blind girl accused, her brow furrowed in anger.
There. The moment her apprentice said the words, the last of Pentandra’s doubts evaporated.
She was facing Ishi. The goddess. Of sex.
That explained everything. And made her more terrified of Lady Pleasure than she had been of anyone since Sheruel.
A goddess . . . here. In Vorone. The very idea seemed ludicrous, but as she considered the news she had to admit that it explained a lot.
Everkeen’s reaction to her. Her non-thaumaturgic arcane power over people. Even that damnable glamour that made her so incredibly captivating. A mere mortal mage might have been able to carry off such a display of power, technically, but it would take the overwhelming power of theurgic magic to side-step Pentandra’s thaumaturgic probes. Only when her apprentice had called it out could she allow even the possibility of such a thing into her imagination.
Lady Pleasure whirled on her heel and faced Alurra. “Well! Aren’t you a clever little witch!”
“And you’re a powerful goddess who controls the destinies of all mankind,” Alurra responded, thoughtfully. “And you know what else? You’re also kind of a cunt.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ishi Incarnate
Everything was a blur in Pentandra’s mind after she left the House of Flowers, until she found herself back in her coach, on the way back to the palace, glaring at her apprentice.
“So, you knew,” she said, accusingly, to the girl. Alurra sighed.
“Yes, I suppose I did. But I wasn’t supposed to tell you.”
“Old Antimei said so?” Pentandra ventured, her emotions reeling.
“That’s right,” Alurra said, simply. “She said that if you knew before you went there, it would . . . change things.”
“Damn right, it would have!” Pentandra agreed. “Maybe if I had been forewarned I wouldn’t have gone blindly stumbling into the lair of an incarnate goddess when I suspected mere sorcery!”
“That’s what Antimei feared,” Alurra said, swallowing. “But you had to meet . . . her that way. You couldn’t know ahead of time.”
“Why?” demanded Pentandra.
“I don’t know!” the girl said, biting her lip anxiously. “Antimei told me some stories, and she gave me some instructions, but I don’t really know why or how or . . . anything, really. I’m just doing what I was told to do,” she said, a little defiantly. “You had to meet her that way. Or the rest of it . . .”
“What happens with the . . . rest of it?” Pentandra asked, insistently.
“I can’t tell!” Alurra said, her tone desperate. “Please don’t ask me to! Because I won’t! I can’t! Everything will go in the chamberpot if I do, you have to trust me!”
“I’ve known you for less than a week,” Pentandra pronounced. “There are people I’ve known for years I don’t trust.”
“Then you need to make an exception, about this, at least!” insisted Alurra. “I don’t like this any more than you do – worse, ‘cause I already know some of what happens, and it isn’t all fairy tales and feasts,” she said, uneasily. “There is dark magic ahead. But a way through it, if you can just trust Antimei’s vision. And me,” she added.
“Alurra, I just came face to face . . . with a goddess,” Pentandra said, the effect of the realization just dawning on her. “A real, live goddess. And not just any goddess, but one who I am very familiar with. By reputation. And apparently she is familiar with me,” she added, more to herself than to Alurra. “Now I find out that not only does my mysterious new apprentice know this, but she has been specifically forbidden to tell me. Apparently for the amusement of the aforementioned deities.”
“She’s kinda mad at you,” Alurra ventured, after a few moments of silence became unbearable. “She is, I mean.”
“I got that impression,” Pentandra agreed, dryly. “I’m guessing you are forbidden from telling me why? Because that might be helpful, to know why one of the most powerful goddesses on Callidore is angry with me.”
“I . . . I wasn’t told I couldn’t talk about that,” Alurra decided. “But it’s simple, really. She’s upset because you got married and rejected her. She could have . . . inhabited . . . you, instead of that other woman. You were her first choice,” she added.
“Me? I’m not even one of her priestesses!” Pentandra dismissed.
“That wasn’t her concern. You were the one most like her in spirit, according to Old Antimei.”
That made Pentandra feel sick to her stomach.
Lady Pleasure – the goddess Ishi – was absolutely beautiful and possessed a rare and decisive confidence, but she also had an overbearing, superior manner about her that put Pentandra on guard. She reminded Pentandra of every woman who thought herself worthy of being the Queen Bee in a social circle, only orders of magnitude more annoying. The idea that she was at all akin to the chaotic divinity even in spirit was not welcome, she discovered . . . despite having for years considered such praise as desirable.
“So she’s angry I wouldn’t be her vehicle towards becoming a whoremaster,” Pentandra sighed. “I suppose I owe Arborn for that, now, as well. So, you know the story well enough to know her mind . . . can you try to explain to me what her plan is?” Pentandra asked, patiently. “It’s not often that goddesses set up shop in town.”
Alurra bit her lip, clearly trying to decide how much to tell Pentandra. Finally, she broke.
“She’s trying to help,” blurted the blind girl. “She really is, in her own
way. Just like she said. She promised . . . she promised the Spellmonger she would,” she added in a softer voice, as if the admission cost her.
“Minalan?” Pentandra asked, sharply. “She mentioned him, as if she did know him. What does he have to do with all of this?”
“I . . . I just know that they are . . . acquainted,” she said, hesitantly. “I don’t know how. I don’t know much more than that. Only that she feels beholden to him, for something he did.”
“That little . . . all right, all right, let me think . . .” she said, her mind whirling at the possibilities.
It wasn’t unthinkable that Minalan would have attracted the attention of the capricious gods – he’d been a sudden and important player in human politics for a couple of years, now. Not to mention the power he commanded, both arcanely and temporally. That sort of thing traditionally attracted the attention of the human divinities, from what the legends told. Pentandra didn’t know a lot about theurgy, but she knew that religious history was sprinkled with divine revelations and even divine visitations for people at the center of such power.
What was unthinkable was that Minalan would indulge in such relationships without telling her. That seemed a shocking betrayal, and it made her mad at her friend and colleague. After all they had been through . . .
And from the back of her mind, her mother’s voice rang in her head: You know you can’t trust men!
Yet the more rational part of her mind pointed out that when the gods were involved, ascribing free will to any situation became fraught with error.
The gods of man had a long history of popping up, interfering in human affairs, and then disappearing back to whence they came after crafting chaos in the name of religion. Assuming Minalan had been acting with independent agency could be dangerous, or at least mistaken. She resolved to postpone indulging in being really angry at him until she got the truth of the matter. That was only fair.
And it profoundly disappointed the voice of her mother in her head.
“Well, it seems as if I need to have a chat with Minalan,” Pentandra sighed, as the coach pulled up to the front of the palace.
“The Spellmonger?” asked Alurra, impressed.
“Yes, ‘the spellmonger’,” Pentandra said, rolling her eyes. “He’s been a naughty boy, talking to strange goddesses without me. But more importantly, I need to figure out what to do about Lady Pleasure before things get out of control.”
Alurra didn’t look impressed anymore, she looked scornful. “She’s not a very nice woman,” she pronounced with all of the solemnity and judgment an adolescent girl could conjure.
“She’s the goddess of love and beauty,” Pentandra reminded her. “Being ‘nice’ isn’t exactly an important part of her aspect. On the contrary. But if I were you, I’d be more concerned about how she felt about you, than the other way around.”
Alurra started. “Why?”
“Because you just called the goddess of love and beauty a ‘cunt’ to her face,” Pentandra reminded her. “Something that, in all of my years of studying the lore of Ishi, has never happened before.”
“Did she . . . look mad?” asked Alurra guiltily. “Ordinarily I’d never use that kind of language, but—”
“I’m not saying that you were inaccurate, dear,” Pentandra soothed. “Just unwise. I wouldn’t plan on having any boyfriends any time soon,” Pentandra suggested, half-joking. “Or at least no good ones.”
“Boys aren’t often interested in blind girls,” Alurra said, discouraged. “That’s fine. I’m not that interested in them, either.”
“That’s a very thoughtful and wise perspective . . . and one doomed to be short-lived, I’m afraid,” Pentandra said, sympathetically. “You are very pretty, under all of that hair, even if you’ve never been told. You aren’t even done growing yet. Eventually Ishi wins over us all. Save for the very pious. Or the very ugly.”
“It all seems an awful lot of fuss over nothing,” Alurra said, doubtfully.
“Sex always does . . . until it isn’t. Then it becomes the most important thing in the world. And a fine excuse to make really, really terrible decisions about your life.”
“You make it sound so appealing,” Alurra said, sarcastically.
“It has its benefits,” Pentandra said, thinking for a moment about the way Arborn’s huge arms seemed to lovingly crush her within them. “It’s not all bitter disappointment and anxiety.”
“Well, I hope it will be years before I get involved in all of that nonsense,” Alurra declared. “I can’t think of anything more useless.”
“No doubt,” smiled Pentandra. She’d said similar things as a child, she recalled. Before she saw the maid and the groomsman together.
“And she really was kind of a cunt,” muttered Alurra.
Pentandra waited until the next evening before she got around to contacting Minalan. There was a problem with procedure at the Mirror array they were establishing, so she had to straighten it out, and then she had to interview new potential Spellwardens for the town. It wasn’t until the office was closed and she’d retired to her chamber before she composed herself enough to approach Minalan, mind-to-mind.
By that time the damage had already started to be done. Not only were the halls and corridors of the palace filled with pretty young prostitutes working on the Wildflower Festival, but they had quickly moved their attentions beyond the young-and-handsome and toward more affluent and powerful courtiers.
Before the day was out she happened across a pair of Lady Pleasure’s agents giving Ishi’s Blessing to Sir Antinon, the Ducal Chamberlain, in an alcove, and inspiring him to call the lustful goddesses name several times during the event. After that she walked into a privy on the second floor to discover Sir Bestus with one maiden bent over a table in secluded lounge, her skirts raised and his pants down, while another murmured encouragement and watched for interlopers.
By the time Alurra came to her at supper with a half-dozen rumors of similar encounters breaking out all over the palace, Pentandra had had enough. She didn’t know how, but the sudden wave of determined lust had to involve Minalan, somehow. It was time to hold him to account about it.
Are you at liberty? she began. She didn’t want to interrupt him if he was, for instance, in the middle of a moment of passion. Or at least not much. But apparently Minalan was focused on his domestic affairs, not his erotic ones.
From a really good maid, apparently, he sighed into her mind. How goes the restoration?
Well, she admitted, to her own surprise. She hadn’t stopped to think about it in those terms in a few weeks, but Minalan’s perspective gave her an excuse to think about it and venture an opinion. Particularly about the investment of trust and potential Minalan had made in the Orphan Duke. Anguin is more of a Duke than I thought he would be. He has acted with utter confidence. It’s almost scary, how determined he is to be a good ruler. What the hells did you give the boy?
A challenge, he answered, a cocky note in his mental voice. He couldn’t have done it without seeing it so. He was primed to mope his way through his reign, and I convinced him it was more challenging to rule, and rebuild what his fathers left him.
Well, he took your words as counsel, she reported dutifully. Within a week of arriving he had the palace straightened out. Two weeks after that he had the town in hand. There have been a few executions, some exiles, and some imprisonments, and the Iron Band got about a hundred unexpected recruits . . . but we’re making progress. We’re working on the countryside now – there are bandits everywhere, mostly refugees turned highwaymen for the lack of better options. And the refugees are starving, of course.
Have you ever met a well-fed refugee?
I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that – if you’d seen what I have, you wouldn’t jest.
Thankfully, Minalan changed the subject. Unfortunately, it wasn’t one she was prepared to discuss, and his inquiry caught her off guard. How is married life?
Married life? What married life? Pe
ntandra found herself complaining, when given the opportunity. She realized as the words came tumbling out that she had an abundance of pent-up feeling about it, and virtually no one to whom she could turn for sympathy, advice, or guidance. If Minalan was foolish enough to ask, her subconscious didn’t see any reason to spare him the result. And she had a lot of feeling built up inside her, since they’d come to Vorone.
I see Arborn maybe two days in a week, as he’s hunting bandits in the woods most of the time. Which is fine, of course, because we don’t really need bandits in the woods, but we’ve got bandits actually running large parts of the town and that’s where we need his focus. When he is here he barely speaks, we sit and stare at each other, and he hasn’t . . . it’s been hard, re-adjusting, she said. She tried hard to sound confident, but she knew it came across as misery.
It takes time, Minalan soothed. You’ll settle in.
It’s even worse now that we’re living in the palace, she complained. But I didn’t summon you to complain, she said, redirecting herself admirably. This is business. Of a sort. I’ve run into someone you know, and she wanted me to give you her regards.
Really? Who is that? Minalan asked, innocently. Pentandra could tell he’d gone on his guard at the question, and the innocence was mere affectation. That confirmed her worst suspicions.
The goddess of love, sex, and beauty? she offered, accusingly. Ishi? She’s been hanging around the palace. Hanging around Vorone. She revealed herself to me, and spoke very highly of her recent dealings with you.
There was a long pause before Minalan answered.
Oh.
That’s what I said! Pentandra exploded. Min, do you care to explain to me how you’ve been consorting with strange divinities and not telling me about it? Because that bitch has the entire town in an uproar, and I’ve just about had enough!
Calm down, calm down! Minalan urged, which did nothing to calm Pentandra down. She reflected about how telling someone to calm down almost never had the desired effect. What’s going on?
Court Wizard: Book Eight Of The Spellmonger Series Page 49