Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress XXIII

by Waters, Elisabeth

  Very well, then—selling it to whom? Obviously, to someone with great wealth. Someone of power and position, or a man of her visitor's caste would take the money and report the bribe to the All-Father's Warrior, Pimchan.

  The All-Father sat at the edge of her thoughts like a Primus figure on the corner of a carto board. Pimchan left him there and continued her musings.

  They wanted her out of town for the day. No, not out of town: they could have demanded she stay within her walls and not respond to any calls for help. They didn't want her out of town; they wanted her out of her enclave. They wanted to use it for something. They wanted to use her—use her absence—for something.

  In her mind, the All-Father slid along the edge of the carto board and she remembered the ambush she'd saved him from during one of his unattended meanderings. Had he learned nothing? The Primus figure clicked into place at the board's near corner and, in her mind's eye, the All-Father sat in the center of her arena.

  No. He had learned nothing.

  The All-Father was coming to visit his Warrior here in this remote village. Someone in his confidence knew it—someone who knew his most secret plans and knew enough about Pimchan to tell the man with the braids where he might look for Pimchan's weakness. They were setting a trap for the All-Father, and they were using Pimchan for bait.

  The rest of the night alternated between rehearsing possible courses of action and resting in a deep meditation that was more refreshing than sleep.

  * * * *

  They left before dawn, Tyana and Pimchan's Female swathed in lengths of woolen cloth and Pimchan dressed in black leather armor reinforced with blue steel, rectangular arm shields of red leather strapped to her forearms, twin swords crossed on her back.

  No one was visible, but Pimchan had no doubt their movements were observed. Tyana led the way with Pimchan's Female behind her, both laden with sacks of necessities and luxuries for the Warrior's jaunt. Pimchan followed, instincts tuned to their highest pitch.

  Yes, they were being followed, but it didn't take a Warrior to know it. The follower seemed unused to the rough trail leading to and through the pass. The occasional suppressed curse floated to them across the rocks and, when they reached the meadow pass, green and yellow with the wild mustard that bloomed there, the occasional smothered sneeze.

  Before the day was half gone, they had reached a tidy stone hut that overlooked the south side of the gap. It had one narrow doorway and no windows. Snuggled under an overhang, its entrance could only be seen from one angle. Pimchan entered first, to make certain no unpleasant surprises waited inside.

  She came out and let her Female and her Overseer light the candles they had brought with them and sweep grit and pollen from the floor and benches. Pimchan stood, facing the valley below but concentrating on her peripheral awareness, looking at what was not before her, listening beyond the sounds closest to her. When the hibachi was burning and the tea was brewing and the rice with dried vegetables and smoked meat was cooking, she went in.

  "Just the one," she said.

  "Where?" Tyana asked.

  "Up by the spring, in the mouth of the cave. Shade—water—the most obvious place."

  Tyana snorted.

  Pimchan's Female served the three of them chrysanthemum tea, her hands trembling in spite of herself.

  Pimchan patted the girl's head. "Try not to fret. When I chose you and the boy, I promised you I would keep you safe and bring you through your bondage skilled and healthy—and certainly alive. I gave you a Warrior's word. I suppose the word of a Warrior is good enough for you?"

  Pimchan's Female, a worried frown lingering on her brow, said, "I know you'll do your best."

  Tyana laughed, slapping her knees for emphasis. "Spoken like a true companion! Two years ago, she was a mouse. Now, she's a mongoose, dragging truth into the light whether you want her to or not. That's my training of her."

  "Oh, yes," said the Warrior, lips thinned but eyes crinkled in humor. "I'm very well served. What luck." She tossed the dregs of her tea onto the hibachi's coals and stood. "This won't take long."

  She slipped out the door and darted across the meadow, directly toward the cave. The watcher, unable to leave without losing sight of the quarry, would be pinned in place until Pimchan reached the broad ledge where the shallow cave overlooked the pass.

  The Warrior crossed the stream, drawing both swords as she did.

  "Come out," she said.

  There was no answer.

  "You will come out. The only question is: in how many pieces?"

  The movement was so sudden, Pimchan nearly struck. A woman flopped into the sunlight, kow-towing so vigorously her head made little clonks against the stone.

  "Forgive me, Mighty One! Forgive me! I didn't mean to hurt your Male—it was an accident. He woke up later, and ate and drank. He's a very brave boy—"

  "Stand. Stand now."

  The woman stood. Small and big-bosomed, with a scratch on her chin, she fit the description Pimchan's Female and Lek had given and wore a threadbare version of the red-brown clothing of yesterday's visitor.

  "Who do you work for?" Pimchan demanded. "Why was I sent from my home?"

  "I don't know, Sun of Strength. I mean, I don't know why. I work for Master Aroon Kama, whose land is in the valley to the north. He made us rob you, Mighty One, and he made me follow you. If we disobey, he swears he'll give us to the monster."

  "What 'monster'? All the monsters were driven out of our land by Kuhn Pane, long ago."

  The woman shook her head.

  "Come, then," Pimchan said. "We're going to that hut you've been watching."

  The woman scrambled before her, clearly terrified even after Pimchan sheathed her swords. All the way across the meadow, she cringed as if expecting a kick and twice she whined, "Will you protect me from the monster, Sun of Splendor?"

  Inside the hut, Tyana and Pimchan's Female waited on either side of the door, each holding a teakwood club, in case Pimchan needed backup. The captive, utterly cowed, gave them no excuse to use their weapons.

  "That's her!" Pimchan's Female said, and raised her club.

  "Ah-ah!" Tyana blocked the blow. "Wait for the Warrior's orders."

  "Tie her up," Pimchan said. "She hurt my Male by accident, and he's safe and well. I'm going back, now, to make sure he stays that way. My Female, I leave you in charge of her."

  And if she thought a Warrior was frightening, or a monster, Pimchan reflected, as she headed back to her enclave at a kilometer-eating lope, wait until she spent some time as the prisoner of a twelve-year-old girl with a grudge.

  * * * *

  Pimchan crouched in the brush on the far side of the path that circled her wall. She watched as a man wearing scruffy red-brown trousers and tunic passed, then waited until he passed again. She wasn't surprised to find such lackadaisical security: Aroon Kama was obviously running this operation on the cheap, keeping as much of his payment as possible for his own use.

  The third time the man came around, she confronted him, both swords drawn.

  "Not a move. Not a sound," she said.

  His face turned a sickly gray-yellow and his eyes darted back and forth like minnows in a koi pond.

  "The woman is safe and out of the way. Wouldn't you like to be safe, too?"

  The man nodded.

  "Answer, then: How many inside?"

  "My master and the monster and your Male, and I let in a vagabond—a flute player—and then I was sent out on patrol."

  The "vagabond" would be the All-Father, in one of his go-among-the-people disguises. But "the monster"?

  "What sort of monster?"

  The man nodded, quivering. "It gives the master gold and tells him what to do. The master isn't afraid of it, but it told me it would eat me if I failed...." His trembling grew more violent, then his eyes rolled up in his head and, with a sigh, he collapsed in a faint.

  Pimchan sheathed her swords, dragged him into the bushes and bound and gagged him with se
ctions of his own sash.

  A monster? Intuition tripped a series of switches in Pimchan's mind, and she rose and ran, vaulting the wall and landing soundlessly in the garden. Swords again drawn, she eased up to the house door, listened intently, and slipped past the painted bamboo screen inside the doorway. She heard voices coming from her arena, and one of them belonged to the All-Father.

  "I fail to see how The Blessed Land would benefit," he said querulously.

  She slid closer to the rosewood screen in the arena doorway and peered through the filigree. The All-Father knelt in the center of the arena, as she had seen him in her mind the night before, but dressed in shabby clothes and with a long flute tucked into the sash at his waist. Before him was a tea table and on it was a piece of paper—paper of a snowy whiteness covered in even lines of black symbols. Aroon Kama knelt beside him, holding an inkpot and a quill pen. Her Male was bound, his hands high above his head, to the empty rack that usually held the swords now in her hands. Seated on her meditation altar, legs stretched in front of him and crossed at the black-booted ankles, was "the monster".

  His skin was pink-tinged brown; his eyes were as green as a spring frog and his hair was the color of a fresh egg yolk. His nose was long and pointed, like a beak, and one of his teeth flashed gold. No wonder he had terrorized the servants, who would never have seen or heard of such a creature. Pimchan, the All-Father, and the no-doubt well-traveled Aroon Kama recognized him as a Fahr-ang—a foreign Barbarian from across the Endless Sea (apparently not endless, after all).

  When the Fahr-ang spoke, he spoke clearly, but with the words of a child. He had been expertly taught and had learned The Beautiful Language well, and was intelligent enough not to over-reach his abilities.

  "I have told you. Twice. The Blessed Land needs to grow up and work with the rest of the world. You and your old nobles hold it back. Some of your young nobles are tired of the past. They are right. Sign this and make your young nobles glad. You will see it's best. Trade is good. We have bright goods to sell you. You have some things we might want to buy."

  "There are Fahr-ang in and out of my court daily," the All-Father said. "I've heard many presentations of trade agreements. My advisors and I consider all of them. We will draft a comprehensive policy on this subject soon."

  The Fahr-ang shook his head.

  "Those ones from other lands lie to you. They want to rob you. Only my land can be trusted. That's why I had to see you like this, where they can't tell you lies. Sign."

  Aroon Kama thrust the inkpot closer. "Do as he says, Blessed One."

  The All-Father reached for the quill, then drew back his hand and tapped the paper. Ignoring Aroon Kama, he spoke to the Fahr-ang:

  "This is written in your language. I can read it, but not well. There are some things I don't understand. I need—"

  "Sign!" The Fahr-ang pushed himself to his feet as he shouted. He loomed over the All-Father, who quailed back toward Aroon Kama. "Sign!"

  The All-Father flinched, knocking the inkpot up and splashing the liquid into Aroon Kama's face.

  Pimchan kicked aside the screen and erupted into the room.

  The Fahr-ang drew an object Pimchan knew to be a firearm—a "gun"—and pointed it at her. Something exploded in it, and she dropped her left-hand sword and reeled back, struck by an invisible blow. He threw the spent firearm aside and drew another, striding to the All-Father's side. Kicking Aroon Kama out of his way, he held the gun to the All-Father's head.

  "Oh!" said the All-Father, eyes wide with surprise. "If you shoot me, who will sign your paper? Pimchan, who will sign their paper?" He picked up the quill from the table, where Aroon Kama had dropped it. "Pimchan, I have no ink."

  What was wrong with the man? He wasn't old enough to wander in his mind. Had they knocked him on the head? Had terror chased away his sense?

  "You fool!" Aroon Kama shouted, wiping sand and ink out of his eyes. "Warriors are sworn to let the All-Father die, rather than give in to Fahr-angs or other bandits. Here's what will stop her." He wrenched a spear from its place on the wall and drove it with all his weight into Pimchan's Male. The child didn't even have time to cry out, but sagged against his bonds, the spear piercing the red rune just below his breastbone.

  Aroon Kama laughed, his ink-smeared face a purple mask as Pimchan turned blankly to the All-Father.

  The Fahr-ang, his attention on Pimchan, failed to see the All-Father's hand move, failed to see the quill become a small knife. The All-Father somersaulted over the tea table, using his momentum to drive the knife into the Fahr-ang's forearm. The gun discharged into the air.

  The Fahr-ang drew his sword and backed to one of Pimchan's many weapons racks and pulled down a small red shield worked with silver runes of defense. He couldn't have chosen better.

  The All-Father ripped the flute from his waistband, put it into Pimchan's empty hand, and stepped aside.

  Aroon Kama gasped, "No... ," and was quiet.

  The All-Father's placid voice said, "Proceed, Warrior."

  Pimchan became a blue-steel whirlwind. She could feel the runes carved into the All-Father's flute, carefully rubbed full of ink from the soot of holy candles. Time after time, the flute blocked the other's assaults, and even struck him once on the tip of his over-reaching nose.

  The "monster" fought well, but his pale blade was no match for the blue steel forged in The Blessed Land, which cut through the Fahr-ang sword like fire through straw. Only the shield he had taken from the wall saved him, and gave him the chance to unrack one of Pimchan's swords and meet her with an equal weapon.

  He was good, he was disciplined, he was strong, and he was fighting for his life. But Pimchan was a Warrior, so enraged that only the self-command learned in battle meditation kept her from losing control. He tired before she did. She saw his death reflected in his eyes, and his death was herself.

  Two blows, and he sprawled face down on the sand, his blood mingling with the ink to make a richer purple.

  Pimchan dropped her sword and the All-Father's flute and turned, barehanded, to the man who had put a spear into the body of a child she had sworn to protect.

  He lay, eyes wide, mouth gaping, in a heap near the wall. The All-Father was lowering Pimchan's Male to the floor, having cut his bonds.

  "What happened to Aroon Kama?" Pimchan asked.

  "Hmmm? Who?—Oh, he killed himself. Strangled himself with his own braids. Or took poison. Something or other. Are you all right?"

  Pimchan inspected herself. Cuts on her hands and face, chest deeply bruised where the lead ball of the Fahr-ang's gun had hit her steel-reinforced armor with the steelcloth beneath, weary and sick at soul, but all in one piece. Alive.

  "Even with half a heart," the All-Father said, "you fight like an angel."

  "You know I don't have half a heart."

  "Go fetch the other half. Go."

  Pimchan kow-towed, retrieved her swords and left.

  Aroon Kama's male servant was right where she'd hidden him. She freed his feet but kept his hands tied and his mouth muffled. She wanted no trouble from him and she wanted no talk. There were three dead bodies in her arena, and the fact that two of them were Aroon Kama and his monster instead of the All-Father and herself only lightened that burden but didn't eliminate it. The third body was still that of her Male, the beating of his heart silenced by steel.

  At the stone hut, all she said was, "The men who ordered these two to take my Male are dead."

  "The monster is dead?" cried Aroon Kama's Female. "You killed it?"

  "Go away," Pimchan said. "Both of you. Down this side of the mountain and through that valley. If I see you again within three days' walk of here, I'll kill you, and honor be damned."

  "Names—our names!" said the woman.

  "You don't want any names I would give you. Name yourselves after the first creatures you see when you leave here. But don't leave until we've gone. I don't want to see you walk away alive."

  She left the hut and took a dee
p breath, calming her spirit as best she could.

  When Tyana and Pimchan's Female joined the Warrior, the girl said, "I hope the first things they see are a spider and a toad."

  Tyana shook her head at the girl, and then followed the silent Pimchan through the afternoon light back to the enclave.

  The "vagabond" had set the screen back in the doorway of the arena and draped it with a woven cloth to hide what lay inside. Pimchan's Male lay on the floor of the common room, washed and shirtless. A pot of unguent and a roll of linen were arranged beside him. The shaft and part of the head of the spear protruded from his thin chest, too small to engulf so large a weapon.

  Tyana cried out, but Pimchan's Female walked calmly to him, knelt by his side and took his hand.

  "I thought you should do the honors," said the All-Father.

  Pimchan grasped the spear and, gritting her teeth, tugged it out cleanly and cast it through the doorway into the garden beyond. From now on, it would be a beanpole and never again a Warrior's valued ally.

  "Tend his wound," she said. "Bind it tightly, before his heart goes back to work." She stepped away and Tyana knelt by his other side, packing the gash with unguent and folding some of the linen into a pad.

  "Help me lift him up," she ordered Pimchan's Female, "and we'll use the other strips to tie this on."

  Pimchan waited until the color came back into her Male's flesh, then followed the All-Father out into the Chaos garden. They sat in the soft shadows of the gazebo until Pimchan had recovered her serenity.

  The All-Father, as was proper, spoke first.

  "I'm not a fool."

  "Of course not, All-Father. Anyone might have a councilor who betrayed him."

  "Any fool might. I would not have a councilor who was not above betrayal." He sniffed in disdain. "Some of the Fahr-angs think I'm a fool. The man you killed was one of the worst. The rest will reconsider their opinions, now."

  "All-Father...."

  "Yes, my Warrior?"