by Неизвестный
" Getting away from them," she said in a low voice. Four greyclad soldiers marched down the path. Knokno canted his head to one side and peered at them.
" Ah, yes, they are real. Getting away from them, as you put it, is much more difficult than escaping from my creations, even my most intricate ones."
Inyx began walking, the mechanical following her. They topped the knoll and left the soldiers behind. They hadn' t taken any notice of her, for which Inyx was grateful. The fluttercraft trip, the dealings with the trapped demon, the craft' s theft, and the tiger attack had left her a little on the confused side. She' d been too long in the white limbo between worlds to be in top fighting form.
" What do you mean, ' your creations'?"
" Why, most everything inside the park boundaries is mine," proudly said the mechanical.
" Even the tiger? One attacked me. A huge cat. Never seen one larger."
" Attacked you? A tiger? Oh, my. I intended him for Constable Luffkin."
" You want to get rid of this Constable Luffkin?"
" No, no, good lady. The Constable asked for a tiger image. He fancies himself some sort of big- game hunter. Tigers are extinct in all but the southernmost province of Torr."
" Tiger image?"
" It' s not real. Nothing in the park is real. This is an amusement park, good lady. A real tiger is dangerous."
" I know," Inyx said. She heaved a sigh and tried to compose her thoughts. The trapped demon had known and hadn' t told her this was an amusement park. It had been interested only in escaping its work assignment powering the fluttercraft. Her eyes tipped skyward, seeking the craft. Only tiny dots high above were visible. They moved much too fast for fluttercraft.
" You have encountered a real tiger?" asked the mechanical. The eagerness in his voice was almost comical. " Tell me about it. Did my image match the real thing? Should I have added a few more touches? Like smell? What do real tigers smell like?"
" It was a great image. Had me fooled completely." The woman remembered her initial fright. Even after the first attack she had continued believing in the reality of the tiger. " Would it have hurt me if its attack had connected?"
" Oh, well," hedged the mechanical.
" It would have killed me, wouldn' t it?"
" Sometimes I go a bit overboard with my images. That one was a specialty item, and I put ever so much work into it. It might have been a bit too much on the substantial side." Knokno averted his glassy eyes and looked at the ground.
" So the images and the real thing might as well be one and the same."
" I do very good work. About the best in Dicca."
" No argument from me on that point," she admitted. " Tell me a little about Dicca and maybe I' ll forget to report that to your superior." Inyx wasn' t even sure the mechanical had a superior. This world grew increasingly complex. Flying craft, demons, soldiers who weren' t even armed with swords, images more deadly than the real thing, talking clockwork mockeries of humans- it all struck her as bizarre.
" What do you want to know?"
" I' m from out of town."
" Oh, one of the Outlanders come in to take part in the election." Knokno gave the impression of relaxing visibly, though how a creature of steel limbs and glass joints relaxed wasn' t too clear to Inyx. He had somehow placed Inyx into a convenient niche in his ordering of things around him and was content. She didn' t want to shake him from this complacency, so she agreed with his appraisal. " Well," he said, " the elections are truly important. The Lord of the Twistings has promised the fairest elections ever."
" But:?" she probed.
" But the grey- clads are doing so much to discourage opposition to the current Lord of the Twistings. I understand some of those most likely to stand against the Lord have: vanished."
" Under mysterious circumstances," she finished.
" You might say that."
In the distance came a trumpeting noise. Inyx turned to see a long, slender neck rising above a foggy shore along a small lake. The snakelike neck whipped this way and that until deciding on a proper direction of travel. The gargantuan body following the tiny head and long neck dwarfed the largest of animals Inyx had ever seen.
" Another nice creation. Our natural history section found bones in a tar pit matching such a beast. The purple skin is my idea." Knokno proudly pointed toward the behemoth.
" About the election," Inyx said weakly, her eyes never leaving the monster now sloshing through the murky waters of the still lake.
" About the only firm opposition is Jonrod the Flash. And everyone knows what he' s like."
The lake monster trumpeted again. An answering challenge rumbled upward to where Inyx sat.
" Knokno, show me out of the park, will you? I' ve got to find suitable lodging before it gets too dark. I don' t know my way around town very well."
" Being from the outlands, that is understandable. The mechanical rose and helped Inyx to her feet. She didn' t want to chance even a fraction of a second with the monster noisily sucking up green water from the middle of the lake. Nervous, she kept glancing toward the stagnant pond. " Just be sure to avoid Luister len- Larrotti over on Lossal Boulevard."
Distracted, she only partially heard.
" What? Right. Lossal Boulevard. Look, can we leave now? I wouldn' t want to be late." Inyx saw a second monster approaching. The two giant creatures faced off, ready for combat. As large as they were, either could step on her and never even notice the lump under its foot. Before she dropped out of sight behind a hill, the two longnecked creatures were savagely battering one another, knifelike teeth slashing and sending out a rain of imaginary blood.
Inyx could do without imaginary death.
" Here' s the gateway into the city. Remember what I said," cautioned the mechanical.
" Lossal Boulevard."
" Right. Luister len- Larrotti."
" Got it. And thanks, Knokno."
" Just don' t mention it." Lower, the mechanical added, " To my boss. Won' t do having humans killed in the park. He' d scrap me for sure." All the way back into the park, the mechanical mumbled. Inyx heaved a sigh of relief when she saw Dicca proper.
Streets. Paved. People wandering along. Campaign posters plastered on every wall. Hustle. This was her world, not that of illusion inside the park.
Whistling to herself, she set off to find Lossal Boulevard, where Knokno had said she could find lodging.
Inyx tried to remember the name Knokno had given her. She' d been distracted at the time and couldn' t- quite- remember. Still, she' d found Lossal Boulevard easily enough. It turned out to be a major arterial cutting through the heart of Dicca. Lined with shops, she found enough to eat. The vendors didn' t even give her strange gold pieces a second look as they exchanged their wares for them. Inyx felt she was being cheated and overcharged, but she said nothing.
Raising a fuss might be the stupidest thing she could do. Everywhere throughout the city were Claybore' s soldiers. Their presence kept even the most boisterous quiet. Many of the citizens around her grumbled, but none came out and spoke against the grey soldiers. Whether from fear or approval, it was hard to say.
Inyx wandered, looking at the wares offered in the many stores along Lossal. The street turned increasingly dingy and more people lounged in doorways, eyeing her in suspicion and lust. She straightened her shoulders and made sure her sword was near at hand. Never had she turned and run because of being in a strange, unfriendly portion of a town. Inyx sought out such places; they made her travels along the Cenotaph Road more interesting, if more dangerous.
" Luister Something- or- other," she said to one man leaning bonelessly in a doorway. " Do you know of him?"
" Luister' s a common- enough name," came the answer. The man picked his teeth with a slender steel spike as his eyes took in Inyx' s form. He didn' t miss a thing, not the trim waist, the slender legs, the womanly swell of her breasts, the piercing blue eyes, or the lustrous black hair. She almost laughed in the
man' s face when she saw his look. Inyx had seen it before, and in men with a much better chance of doing what the man mentally considered.
The amused expression on her face made him stiffen.
" Luister len- Larrotti' s down the spittin' street."
" Thank you."
" You' re welcome, bitch. You two deserve one another."
She turned and glanced back over her shoulder. The man wilted, seeming to collapse in onto himself. He turned and walked off hurriedly. Inyx wondered at the parting curse. It made no sense to her. She continued on, the fatigue of her plight finally catching up with her. When she saw a small sign dangling out from a stone facade, she sighed in relief. Luister len- Larrotti, Fine Rooms, it read.
She knocked. A small peephole opened. A rheumy eye peered forth, studying her.
" What do you want?" came the question, muffled so much by the thick wooden door that Inyx couldn' t tell if the voice belonged to male or female.
" A room. A friend recommended your boarding house." Inyx began to wonder why Knokno had bothered mentioning this place.
" You wish to stay?"
" What a ridiculous question. I just said I did." She stamped her foot and took a deep breath. She quickly lost patience with this interrogation. The eye again studied her.
Then the door opened. In the shadows stood an elderly woman, shawl pulled over her shoulders. The old woman gestured Inyx inside. The door closed and bolted behind them, she finally spoke.
" Not often I see the likes of you. You' re a young' un, aren' t you?" The old woman reached out and pinched Inyx' s behind. If a man had done that, his hand would have been severed from his wrist in an instant. Inyx didn' t know quite how to respond to a woman old enough to be her grandmother.
" I' m from the outlands. In for the election," she lied. The old woman bobbed a greying head in acknowledgment. " I only need the room until the election' s over."
" Can always put up a fine lass like you for a week." Inyx mentally filed the information away. About a week until the election for Lord of the Twistings.
" How much?"
" Don' t worry yourself over that none. Come in, sit, enjoy some of my fine herb tea. Don' t see many visitors here. Not recently, not ones as pretty as you. Some muffins? Made ' em myself."
The room made Inyx force back a tear in her eye. It so closely matched her mother' s parlor that she felt transported across worlds, backward in time. But all this was gone on her home world. Gone forever, along with her mother, brothers, and husband.
" Eat. Sit and eat. And drink the tea. Brewed it myself. Good, or so' s everyone tells me."
" Hmm, it is good," said Inyx, surprised. The tea daintily tingled on her tastebuds, exciting a cinnamon taste that mingled subtly with peppermint- or perhaps lemons. She failed to pinpoint the exact taste. Trying the muffins, she found them equally good. They satisfied her growing hunger better than any of the meat and cheese she' d purchased from the vendors along Lossal.
" So seldom we sees fine ones like you," repeated the old woman. She sank into a chair across from Inyx. " Tell me about yourself. In for the election, but who' s tending the farm with you here?"
" No one," Inyx said. " Fact is, I' m a traveller from much further away than the outlands."
" The Cenotaph Road?"
" You know of the Road, then." Somehow, this made her relax even more. This kindly old woman already knew of interworld travel. " I' m trying to find friends of mine."
" Your party has become separated?" came the sharp question. Inyx relaxed even more. Here was someone to care for her, someone who knew all her woes.
" They follow, but I don' t know how long they' ll be. The greyclad soldiers chased me off, away from the cenotaph." Inyx found herself confiding in the woman. She told of the demon, the fluttercraft flight into Dicca, the deadly illusions she' d confronted in the park. And she told even more, things that had remained buried under the brittle crust of hurtful memory for too long.
" My husband Reinhardt," she heard herself saying, " died almost three years ago. It' s hard figuring out exactly when because of time differences between worlds. It must have been three years; it seems to me like an eternity."
" You loved him much."
" Yes." Inyx sighed, picturing tall, dashing Reinhardt in her mind. The dark hair and white smile, the three parallel pink scars on his right cheek where the winter bear had slashed him, the quickness of his movements- she saw it all again. And it hurt.
" Along the Cenotaph Road, no one dies," came the old woman' s soft words.
" Reinhardt is dead. I buried him with my own hands. It was one of those damned foolish things that should never have happened. He and my brother Patrin got involved in politics, an election.
" Like the one for Lord of the Twistings?"
" Different. The election was for nothing of any consequence, but others didn' t consider it such. Others wearing grey uniforms."
" The soldiers killed him?"
" They ambushed him. Patrin lived long enough to tell me where. I found Reinhardt. He died in my arms. And then I tracked down and killed every single one of those murdering bastards. I killed them, slowly, as slowly as I could." She felt the horror and terror and anguish welling inside her. Inyx relived Reinhardt' s death, those of the murdering soldiers sent by Claybore to subjugate her world. " Then I walked the Cenotaph Road. There was nothing of importance left for me on my own world. Nothing."
" The soldiers' deaths might rekindle Reinhardt' s flame. Somewhere along the Road, he again lives."
" I don' t believe that. I:" Inyx stopped, the words choking her. The old woman grew in stature, shoulders widening, shape changing in eye- confusing shifts until a tall, dark man with perfect white teeth stood before Inyx.
" Reinhardt!" she cried.
" My dearest Inyx. It' s been so long. Too long. My love!"
Strong arms held her in the embrace she had hungered for over three long, lonely years. She buried her face in his chest and unashamedly cried.
" Reinhardt, where have you been? How could you have let me think you were dead all this time?"
" No questions, my dearest. Not now. Not until after a proper homecoming." His strong, blunt fingers worked at the ties on her tunic. Inyx felt a pang of- what? Confusion tried to turn her inside out. Then the remembered feel of Reinhardt' s hands on her breasts drove away all uncertainty.
She crushed her body to his, kissed him hungrily, felt him respond. Almost frantic now, the passionate lovers worked to get free of unwanted clothing.
On the floor, their bodies merged into one surging, striving unity. Inyx felt the heavy body weighing her down in familiar ways, the pressures inside, the heavy breathing in her ear. She stared at the ceiling, dread welling up inside again. Something was wrong, something still niggled at the fringes of her mind. Then she forgot all about it, gasping, crying, rejoicing.
" Reinhardt!" she cried. " Oh, Reinhardt, yes!"
CHAPTER FIVE
" Oh, woe, why must I be such a weakling? A craven, that is all I am," lamented Krek. The giant spider walked in the center of a ring of twelve soldiers. They eyed him with a combination of fear and awe. Lan Martak guessed that creatures the size of Krek didn' t exist on this world- or if they did, they weren' t inclined to talk and berate themselves.
" It wasn' t anyone' s fault, Krek," he said. " The howler spotted us and guided the soldiers in."
" I could have fought. Oh, the horror of it. Krek- k' withkritklik, Webmaster of the Egrii Mountains, has fallen on such hard times. And all because I am so cowardly." Lan said nothing. He' d seen his friend in moods like this before. Absolutely nothing but time got him out of them. " Who am I to even breathe the name of Webmaster? I, who have shamed myself in the eyes of all my hatchlings? Lovely little Klawn knows me for what I am. A coward. I can never again hold up my head."
Lan involuntarily shivered when Krek mentioned his mate' s name. Krek was enormous; " lovely little Klawn" was even larger. She and t
he giant spider had mated, then Krek had left the web before being ritualistically eaten by her. Choosing the Cenotaph Road over being devoured seemed to Lan a reasonable choice. For Krek, it went against all his race' s mores and genetically inbred behavior patterns. Somewhere, perhaps even on this world, Klawn followed along the Road, still seeking her mate to finalize the nuptials. Lan didn' t want to share even the same continent with that love- crazed female.
" And if that were not enough, in the Suzerain' s care I slaughtered helpless innocents. With these I slaughtered them!" Krek clashed together his mandibles. The noise echoed across still forests. The soldiers guarding him jumped in alarm, their hands reaching automatically for the tubes they carried at their sides.
Lan frowned when he saw this reaction. He' d guessed those were weapons of some sort. But what type? While his magic sense required much more honing, it didn' t give the slightest twinge when he studied those tubes. Rather than magic, they utilized mechanical principles, much like the robotic servants encountered on the world he and Krek had just vacated.
He had no " feel" of magic being used by any of the men. If anything, they relied too heavily on the ordinary world around them. His ears turned toward the leader as he grumbled about having to walk.
" If she hadn' t stolen our fluttercraft:" was all Lan overheard. But hope surged. She the captain had said. Lan had no idea what a fluttercraft was, but the she had to mean Inyx.
It had to!
" You mean we' re walking because Inyx robbed you?" Lan called out to the officer in charge.
" What? You know her?" came the immediate question.
" Captain, the spider," complained one of the guards. Krek had dropped into a forlorn lump in the middle of the road, refusing to go on. He wept, tears staining the areas under his dun- colored eyes and eventually dripping onto his furred legs and matting them. This, for the spider, was the ultimate in degradation.
" Halt!" ordered the leader. To Lan he said, " Get the bug moving again or we move it for you."