Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress XXIII

by Waters, Elisabeth

  #

  Pimchan's Female did the unthinkable—she burst through the workout room doorway, knocking over the rosewood filigree screen, and entered her Mistress' practice arena uninvited.

  Pimchan, ripped from battle meditation, whirled from her knees to her feet and grasped the girl in a double-handed grip designed to tear soul from body. With a brief quiver of muscle, she stopped herself on the very brink of harm.

  Through clenched teeth, she said, softly, "Give thanks, my Female, to Chaos, who has granted me control. Now you know why I must not be interrupted."

  "Mistress, come!"

  The lack of repentance rang alarms. Pimchan released her gently, registering the panic of her female slave, a dark-haired and dark-eyed child of twelve, padded with baby fat. When the girl turned back toward the doorway, Pimchan grabbed her arm.

  "Talk first."

  "We have to hurry!"

  "Talk quickly."

  "It's your Male. They took him! They came over the back wall right into the garden. They tried to take me, too, but I was farther from the wall. They're gone—he's gone."

  Pimchan threw the girl across her shoulder and ran, talking as she went, the girl answering as best she could between bounces.

  "How many?"

  "Two."

  "Dressed how?"

  "Like... house servants. One m-male and... one female. Brown... trousers—and—tunics, short boots... of cracked red leather."

  Pimchan felt the girl shudder as they reached the back wall and the Female craned around to share Pimchan's view of the bloodied bricks.

  "Is he dead?" her Female asked.

  "If he were dead, would they have taken him?" She put the girl down, ignoring the child's agitated fidgeting.

  "Go on," she prompted her Female. "You got away."

  "The male stopped chasing me when I got close to the door. When I got in, I looked back. Your Male nearly got loose, but the woman swung him against the wall. I heard a thunk. The man went back and boosted her over the wall, then picked up your Male and went after them. It all took less than a minute. It's only been a couple of minutes now."

  Pimchan heard the unspoken sentence: You can catch them if you hurry!

  She replied aloud, "A Warrior moves quickly, but never hurries."

  She inspected the blood on the wall, rubbing the runes tattooed on her own shaven head to help sharpen her vision.

  "A few hairs in the blood, but not many. Probably hurt but probably not badly."

  She inspected the boot prints, pressed deep into the dirt, where the invaders dropped into the garden.

  "Anything else?"

  "The female was not as tall as you, but she was big—" Pimchan's Female held her hands out in front of her own flat chest, "—here. Her skin was yellow like mine, only more brown. The male was taller than you and his skin was dark, almost the color of the good garden dirt. I didn't see the color of their eyes. I was running by the time they hit the ground."

  "Did either of you strike a blow?"

  "Your Male may have. I just ran."

  "Well done. Now go inside and stay there. Tell Tyana to lock you in the keeping room, but to give you wash water, food, drink and fresh clothes."

  "Y-yes, Mistress." Pimchan's Female only hesitated a second as the enormity of her trespass into the Warrior's arena hit her, then she returned to the house to prepare for her warranted punishment.

  Pimchan drew her serpentine blue-steel dagger and lifted it high.

  "Let there be steel between me and mine. Let there be a sharp edge." She gave way to anger at the unexpected trespass, to resentment at having to set protections appropriate to the wilds but—usually—unheard of in a Warrior's home. "Let my Male and my Female, my Overseer and myself pass unharmed, but let all the unprotected feel the full power of my arm."

  The curling runes near the dagger's tip darkened, then faded again.

  Pimchan sheathed the weapon, willing her emotion to go with it.

  She climbed the garden wall so quickly she seemed to levitate, and stood atop it, surveying the paths around what was supposed to be her inviolable sanctuary. Invasion was bad enough—Warriors had been attacked in their safeholds before—but kidnapping a Warrior's attendant slaves was even more perilous a gamble. Who would be so stupid? Who would have so much more to gain than to lose?

  She looked down, focusing her eyes to see what was no longer there. Finally, a vague shape coalesced into two shadows, one carrying a smaller shadow. They clarified into a man and a woman, the man carrying Pimchan's Male. They climbed into an oxcart; the woman mounted the driver's seat and picked up the reins, the man clambered into a hollow in the middle of a stack of bulging grain sacks, lay down there with the unconscious child, and flipped a cloth over the hiding place.

  The wagon pulled away to the north, toward the market.

  Pimchan jumped from the wall, landing lightly, and followed. She bore no weapons except her dagger, but a Warrior was a weapon, capable of turning anything to destructive or defensive use against clubs, blades—even, with luck, spears and the new foreign firearms.

  The phantoms became more difficult to see as they passed through real carts and real people. Pimchan raised a hand, palm out, at belly level and muttered a string of syllables she had been taught by a very old man in a cold desert cave. The shapes she followed took on a yellow nimbus. She growled—dark blue would have been better in this bright sunlight, but the Glow colored itself arbitrarily. One of the drawbacks of accepting someone else's spell in payment instead of cash.

  The second-hand spell fizzled and died in the sunlight and high traffic of the marketplace. Just before the glowing cart entered the turbulence of buyers and sellers, the driver looked back and Pimchan caught the gleam of spectral teeth, as if the shade expected her to try to follow and expected her to fail.

  Her quarry gone, she became more than peripherally aware of her surroundings.

  Lek, the chestnut seller, with his bags and brazier and bamboo fan, hunkered down at the corner. In a moment, she stood beside him.

  Lek raised a heavily wrinkled face and squinted at her as she described the invaders and the generalities of their vehicle. Lek had once served in a Warrior's household, and had no more fear of a Warrior than he did of any of the many other people more powerful than he was.

  "I saw a woman in clothes like that with a scratch on her chin driving an old wagon down this street and into the market." He pointed with his fan. "This wagon was painted black, but the paint was peeling. Is that the one you mean?"

  "It could be. Tell me more."

  "Well...." He scratched his thin beard with his fan. "The grain sacks were white with red catfish on them. The oilcloth was brown, but not the same brown as her clothes. Her clothes were like.... Like your skin, if you forgive the familiarity."

  Pimchan glanced at her bare arms: the red-brown of roasted fowl. A difficult color to reproduce in dyed goods. That and the red leather boots pointed to a wealthy household. The disrepair of the wagon and age of the boots pointed to bad times.

  Lek went on. "The oilcloth was the color of this dust. Pale."

  "Have you seen her before? Or the wagon or the clothing? Or the symbol on the grain sacks?"

  Lek shook his head. "But there are a lot of farms and estates and enclaves tucked back in the passes and down in the foothills. They don't always send the same people to town, or the same carrier."

  Pimchan bowed her thanks.

  "Did they take anything?" Lek's voice sounded concerned, but Pimchan knew he was eager for details. Even the priests' quarters were more open than Warriors' compounds, and any crumb of information would be worth a free drink or even a bowl of rice.

  "A purple orchid blossom. They tried to take a white one, as well, but they were stung and gave it up."

  "A precious blossom?"

  Pimchan shook her head. "One of many. They just wanted a trophy, I think, to prove they won a dare. I hope it was worth it to them."

  Even if this had
been the harmless prank she had invented, the taboo against entering a Warrior's domain without permission could not be broken without punishment. The outrage that had actually been committed demanded worse than death, and only a Warrior's domestic impenetrability would keep the revenge from being as public as possible. Instead, it would be an open secret, communicated by whispers and facial expressions and nodded understandings, unspoken horrors that would enforce the taboo on impressionable young minds so it would be less likely to happen again.

  This was not a prank. It was not even a crime. It was a gambit—a move in a game that had yet to be announced.

  * * * *

  Tyana, the Overseer, stood at the back door of the small house that extruded like an afterthought on the workout arena. Pimchan could have lived happily in the arena, cooking for herself and sleeping in the open. But two years ago she had saved the All-Father from an ambush when her mercenary wandering crossed one of his not-as-clandestine-as-he-thought travels. The cost of that service—meant to be a reward—was this small town nestled in the Circling Sisters mountains.

  But Warriors made townspeople nervous, even Warriors bound to the town by the All-Father's decree. Town Warriors were given walled enclaves with workout arenas built to their specifications in the hope they would be content to practice there and not on innocent townsfolk. Town Warriors were given a male and a female slave—unwanted and unnamed orphans, trained from birth for a life of service. Someone had to oversee and train the children to care for a Warrior and a Warrior's equipment—an Overseer, usually a former Male or Female who had been freed and named by his or her Warrior.

  Three dependents, so now a Town Warrior needed a house and a garden and a chicken run and a goat or two to supplement the townspeople's grudging tribute which was not always sufficient for four appetites, two of them young and bottomless.

  "You didn't find him?" Tyana's sun-browned face was stained with tears.

  Pimchan shook her head. "He was taken for a purpose. They wanted both the children, but one will serve their design. I'll be hearing from whoever sent them. Is my Female safe?"

  "Safe and waiting."

  "Bring the Discipline."

  Pimchan removed the carved bar that held a screen of woven rattan across the keeping room doorway and folded the screen to one side. Her Female kow-towed, body trembling in fear. Pimchan knew that rumors told of slaves killed for what this Female had done. Judging from some of her fellow Warriors, she believed the rumors. Her own chest pounded and she rubbed the white scar just below her right collarbone.

  Tyana entered the room and Pimchan accepted the Discipline from her: a small leather whip, half a meter from butt to lash.

  "Stand," Tyana said.

  Pimchan's Female scrambled to her feet.

  "Turn."

  The Female presented her cringing shoulders.

  The Warrior laid one blow, calculated to sting but not cut, across the small back. With the butt of the whip, she lightly bumped the girl's skull—well-padded with unruly black hair.

  "Honor is satisfied," Pimchan stated, and handed the Discipline back to the Overseer. "You did well today."

  The girl flashed a smile of surprised gratification and dropped into another kow-tow.

  "I'm going back to my meditation," the Warrior said. "I will not be interrupted."

  * * * *

  After meditation, Pimchan worked out physically, barehanded and barefoot, then in boots and with weapons.

  When she crossed into her living quarters and called for water and fresh clothes, Tyana said, "You have a visitor."

  "Where?"

  "In the shelter outside the gate, of course. Do you think I'm so stupid I would invite someone in past your wards? I passed him rice cakes and tea through the window. He hasn't touched them. He didn't say what he wants, but we can guess."

  "Does my Female recognize anything about him?"

  Tyana shook her head. "He isn't the one."

  Pimchan took her time over washing and had her Female dress her in blue steelcloth woven with protective runes.

  "Tell Tyana to bring more tea and rice cakes to the Chaos garden. I'll unbar the screen to our visitor."

  The screen to the outside world was solid mahogany hung with a hundred tiny brass bells. The bar was hinged so even the children could swing it up out of the way, and the screen balanced on bearings that made it slide easily—if noisily—aside.

  The man who stood to face her shone even in the shelter's gloom. His trousers and tunic of red-brown silk were trimmed in gold, and his red leather boots shone with polish. He dipped the shallow bow of the highest caste, then seemed to force himself a little lower in honor of her.

  "Come in," Pimchan said, leaving out the inflection that would have added, "and welcome."

  He stood half a head taller than she did, black braids slithering against his silk tunic like twin snakes. Pimchan felt a thrill of terror at the sight of those braids, and knew it was a terror her Male had been made to feel.

  She moved back so the man could pass, then closed and barred the screen without taking her eyes off him.

  "Take the red path," she told him, and followed him as red tile curved away from the blue tile that led to the living quarters' door.

  The low table in the center of the Chaos garden's gazebo was already set. Pimchan knew the tea was cold and the cakes were stale—Tyana wasn't one to waste good food and tea on a meeting where nothing would be consumed—but the form was acceptably observed.

  They knelt on either side of the table and listened to bees buzzing in the garden's wildflowers while each waited for the other to speak first.

  Pimchan was certain he was the wealthy man fallen on hard times whose peeling wagon and threadbare slaves had carried off her Male. He would be accustomed to speaking first, so the pressure of the silence would weigh more heavily on him.

  It wasn't long before he shifted his weight and said, "I have a problem. I think you can help me."

  She nodded, her gaze never leaving his face but her wide range of vision missing nothing of his body language.

  The man fingered his empty teacup and said, "Something was stolen from you. Something important. You want it back. Your heart is set on it."

  His gaze seemed to harden and sharpen as he said the last sentence.

  Pimchan remained still, but knew that her visitor knew the shaft had struck home.

  The man smiled. "There's only one sorcerer around here capable of making a heartsafe charm. He admitted to making two, of a power suitable for use with children. For you." He shook a finger at the Warrior, which would have earned him a broken hand under other circumstances. "It's selfish enough to hide your heart in the body of one child, but to divide it and make two children suffer your adult emotions—your Warrior's rage and remorse...."

  Not her whole heart, obviously—everyone knew the heart was the seat of thought as well as emotion, and was also a muscle that pumped blood through a body's veins. But there was one part of the heart—a part no one could see—that held the life force. That part could be removed by sorcery and hidden in a person or a thing. Warriors sometimes did it, as did royalty and merchants—even courtesans—anyone wealthy enough to pay the price.

  "We wanted both pieces, but half is enough," the man assured her. "Better, in fact."

  "You must be very persuasive, to make that sorcerer betray a client."

  "We are persuasive. We are."

  Pimchan imagined her Male at the mercy of this man and his associates and understood the terror the sight of him had inspired. She felt an ache in the purple scar below her left collarbone, but gave no sign of it.

  "You want something from me," she said. "What is it?"

  "Very little. Tomorrow morning, go for a walk. A long walk. Leave your door unguarded by might or magic. Take your Female, if you like, and your Overseer. Go through the Karashi pass and spend the day." He shrugged. "Spend the night, if you like, or a week, but at any rate don't come back here before dusk tomorrow
." He shrugged again. "That's all. When you come back, you'll find your Male here, safe and sound, as well as a chest of gold coins—a fortune."

  "Why do you want this?"

  He shook his head. "If you refuse, or agree but don't leave, or leave and come back, your Male will die, and half your heart with him. Half your courage, half your strength, half your wit, half your will, half your connection to life."

  It was a living death. It would leave the sufferer with insufficient resolve even to end an insupportable existence. Yes, taking half her life was an infinitely more frightening threat than taking it all.

  Looking into this man's eyes, Pimchan could see his willingness to murder a child, to leave a Warrior helpless, with full remembrance of the might that had been lost.

  "Do we have a bargain?" he asked.

  "There is no question. I have no choice."

  * * * *

  She gave orders for the next day's expedition and ate what meat and bread and fruit her Female put before her. Instead of finishing her day in the arena, where she ordinarily followed a final battle meditation by wrapping herself in a cloak and sleeping on the sand, she had her Female bring the cloak to her in the Chaos garden. She would spend this night between the outside world and her sanctuary.

  She would spend the night, but sleep little. She sat at the tea table and studied her memory of the day's visitor.

  A wealthy man in rich clothes. The clothes were newly made, but the man had the air of one accustomed to fine things. The invaders wore his color, but they were shabby, as was his oxcart. Fallen on hard times, with a fresh infusion of money, possibly a first payment for his usefulness? And he had said "we," yet he delivered the threat and the demand himself, so he was the servant in this enterprise—whatever it was. Again, she saw a man restoring his resources by selling his honor.