Kate, anticipating his question, said, "I sent Tony down the road to look for Jack."
Walt grunted and seated Kate. He noticed that the rash that had broken out on her several days ago was getting worse. If it continued to ridge and redden her usually cream-smooth skin, he would take her into Slashlark and let Dr. Chander look at her. As soon as the shearing was done, that was.
When he had seated himself at the head of the table, Lunk Croatan, the house servant, lurched from the kitchen. He almost tipped the platter of steaming unicorn "mutton" onto his master's lap.
Walt sniffed and said, "Been sampling the totum wine again, eh, Lunk? Hanging around with the satyrs?"
"Why not?" replied Lunk in a rough voice. "They're getting ready for a big celebration. The Blind King's just learned his son and daughter are coming back tonight from the mountains. You know what that means. Lots of music, singing, barbecued unicorn and roasted dog, wine, beer, storytelling, and dancing.
"And," he concluded maliciously, "no shearing. Not for three days, anyway."
Walt stopped carving the mutton. "They can't do that! They've a contract to help shear. Why, three days' delay will mean we'll lose half our wool. By the end of this week, the beasts'll start shedding. Then what?"
Swaying, Lunk said, "Nothing to worry about. They'll call in the forest dwellers to help. And everything'll be finished on schedule. So why get hysterical? We'll all have a good time and then work hard to catch up."
"Shut up!" growled Cage.
"I'll speak when I want to," Lunk said with a dignity that was lessened somewhat by the back-and-forth movement of his body. "I'm no longer an indentured servant, I'll remind you. I've worked myself out of debt, and I may leave any time I want to. So what do you think of that?"
He walked slowly from the room.
Walt jumped up so fast his chair fell back and struck the floor. "What's the world coming to? There's no respect any longer for those who deserve it. Servants. . . the younger generation. . ."
He struggled for words. "No beards. . . all the young men smooth-shaven and letting their hair grow long. . . the women at court wearing low-cut bodices, exposing their breasts as if they're sirens. Even some of the officials' wives at Slashlark are imitating the custom. . . none of my daughters, thank God, would have the daring and indecency to wear such gowns!"
He glared about the table. His girls glanced at each other from under downcast lids. They'd never be able to wear those new costumes to the Military Ball now! Not unless they added much more lace to the open deep Vs. Thank goodness the dressmaker hadn't brought them out to the farm yet!
Their father waved his knife and threw juice on Boris' new vest and shouted, "It's horstel influence, that's what it is! By God, if the human race had iron to make guns, we'd wipe out the godless, savage, naked, immoral, indecent, lazy, drunken, arrogant, contract-making race! Look at the effect they've had on Jack. He's always been too friendly with them. He's not only learned child-horstel, but he knows much adult-talk. He's been seduced by their devil-inspired whisperings to give up working the farm -- my farm! -- the farm of his grandfather, may he rest in peace!
"Why do you think he's risking his life by hunting that dragon? To get the bounty for the head so he can go to Farfrom and study under Roodman, a man who's been investigated for heresy and demon-dealings. . .
"Why, why, even if he does bring back the dragon's head, though probably his body is torn to pieces and lying scattered in some lost thicket. . ."
Kate cried, "Walt!" and Ginny and Magdalene gave little cries.
"Why can't he use the bounty -- if he gets it -- as a dowry for Elizabeth Merrimoth's hand? Unite his farm and fortune and hers? She's the prettiest girl in the county, and her father is, next to Lord How, the richest man. Let him marry her and raise children for the greater glory of State, Church, and God -- not to mention the delight it would bring to my heart."
Lunk Croatan came back from the kitchen. He was carrying a huge bowl of egg pudding.
When Walt shouted his last statement, Lunk closed his eyes, shuddered, and said loudly, "Dear Lord, preserve us from such satanic pride!" He stepped forward. His bare toe caught on the edge of a tailbear rug, and he pitched forward. The bowl upended over Walt's balding head; the hot thick pudding cascaded over his face, creamed his beard, and poured down his clean vest.
Yelling with pain, surprise, and fury, he jumped up. At that moment there was a shriek just outside the dining-room window. A second later, little Tony ran into the room.
He was shouting; "Jack's coming! He's coming! And we're rich! We're rich!"
Jack Cage heard the siren singing.
She was far off, and she was close. She was the shadow of a voice demanding that the substance of the owner be found.
He left the highway and disappeared into the thick greenery. Samson's yellow bulk preceded him. The twang of a lyre vibrated through the winding green aisles. After he'd twisted and turned through narrow bole-lined avenues, he halted to reconnoiter. The forest broke away in a green rush from a little glade that was a cup of molten sunlight. In its center was a large granite boulder, twice as tall as a man. The upper part had been carved into a chair.
The siren sat in the chair, and she sang. While her lovely and strange song rose, she combed her long red-gold hair with the dried shell of a lake cilia. Beneath her, squatting at the base of the boulder and plucking the lyre strings, was a satyr, a male horstel.
She was looking through a break in the glade -- a tree-lined boulevard that sloped down the mountainside and gave a view of much of the country north of Slashlark. Jack could see his father's farm. It was so far away it seemed as small as the palm of his hand, but he could make out the white coats and horns of the unicorns flashing in the sun as they bent their heads to the grass or raced across the meadows.
For a minute, he was distracted from the horstels by a wave of homesickness. The main house glittered redly as the sun bounced off the crystals that lodged in the copperwood logs. It was a two-story building, sturdily built and flat-roofed so men could walk on its top while withstanding sieges. A well was in the middle of the courtyard, and at each of the four roof corners was a catapult, a bomb-thrower.
Nearby was the barn. Beyond it was the checkered pattern of fields and orchards. On a meadow at the farm's far north end rose twelve gleaming white fangs of ivory, teeth from the earth, the cadmi.
The highway that ran by the farm could be traced in most of its wanderings until it reached the county seat of Slashlark. The town itself was hidden by a rise of heavily wooded hills.
He was recalled to his immediate surroundings when the siren stood up to launch her final greetings to the country to which she and her male companion were returning after three years of "rites" in the remote mountains.
A notch in the trees outlined her against the light-blue sky. Jack sucked in his breath in sudden admiration. She was a splendid specimen -- beautiful from a thousand years' breeding. Like all Wiyr, she wore nothing except a comb in her hair. At the moment, she was passing its teeth through the thick red-gold swarm. The left breast, following the arm's movements, tilted and dipped like the muzzle of some Euclidean animal feeding upon the air. And Jack's eyes fed upon its beauty.
A breeze lifted a tress and revealed a humanly shaped ear. She turned slightly and disclosed a quite unhuman distribution of hair. A thick, almost manelike growth sprouted from the base of her neck and grew in a spinal roach. From the tip of her backbone it fell in a cascade -- the horsetail.
Her broad shoulders were as hairless as a woman's, as was the rest of her back except the vertibral column. Jack could not see her from the front, but he knew her loins were tufted. A horstel's pubic hair was long and thick enough to satisfy the humans' desire for genital covering; it hung like a loincloth halfway down the thighs.
The males were as shaggy between navel and mid-thigh as the mythic satyr from whom they derived their name. The females, however, had hips naked except for the pubic
triangle, which was really a diamond, as the base of another three-cornered shape grew from it, sloped up the belly, and tapered off at the hair-ringed navel, which looked like an eye balanced on the apex of a shiny gold pyramid.
That was the Wiyr symbol for a female -- omicron speared by a delta.
Lost in admiration, Jack waited until the lyre tmmmed its final note and the siren's creamy contralto cast the end phrase down the green aisle.
For a moment, there was silence. She stood poised like a bronze statue topped with gold; the satyr crouched over his instrument, eyes closed and brooding.
Jack stepped from behind a spearnut tree and clapped his hands. The explosion was like an unwarranted, even profane, intrusion upon the semireligious silence that had followed the music. Probably the two had sunk into one of their voluntary, half-mystic states.
Neither seemed startled or even surprised. Jack, maliciously, had hoped they would be. But their calm turning of eyes toward him and the grace of their bodies in following the eyes twinged him with annoyance and faint shame. Did they never appear awkward or embarrassed?
"Good afternoon, Wiyr," he said.
The satyr stood up. His fingers ran over the lyre strings in simulation of an English voice. "Good afternoon," the strings spoke.
The female stuck the comb into her hair, poised like a diver on the rock, and jumped to the ground. Her bent knees took the shock easily; the impact bounced her large, conoid breasts in a movement that disconcerted Jack. Before the quivering had ceased, she had walked up to him. Her purple-blue irises contrasted pleasingly with the sinister cat-yellow of her brother's.
"How are you, Jack Cage?" she said in English. "Don't you know me?"
Jack blinked down at her with a start of recognition. "R'li! Little R'li! But you -- holy Dyonis! -- how you've changed! Grown!"
She ran a hand through her hair. "Naturally. I was fourteen when I went into the mountains three years ago for the rites. Seventeen means I'm an adult. Is there anything surprising in that?''
"Yes. . . no. . . that is. . . you were built like a broom. . . that is. . . and now. . ." Automatically, his hand described a curve.
She smiled and said, "You needn't blush so. I know I have a beautiful body. However, I like compliments, and you may give me as many as you want to. Provided you're sincere about it."
Jack felt his face warming. "You. . . you misunderstand. I. . ." and he choked, helpless before the terrible candor of the horstel.
She must have felt sorry for him, for she tried to divert the talk away from them. "Do you have a smoke on you?" asked R'li. "We ran out a few days ago."
"I've three. Just enough."
He took a case out of his jacket pocket. It was made of expensive copper and had been given to him by Bess Merrimoth. From it he shook out three rolls of coarse brown paper containing tobacco. Unconsciously, he offered the first to R'li because she was a female. His hand forgot to play the customary rude role of the human dealing with the horstel.
He did, however, stick a roll in his own lips before he offered her brother one. The satyr must have noticed the slight, for he smiled in a peculiar fashion.
When R'li bent over to light her roll on the lucifer Jack struck for her, she looked up. Her purple-blue eyes were as lovely as -- he could not help thinking -- Bess Merrimoth's. He'd never been able to see what his father meant by saying that gazing into their eyes was gazing into a beast's.
She drew smoke deep into her lungs, coughed, and blew clouds from her nostrils. "A poison," she said. "But I like it. One of the gifts you humans brought from Terra was tobacco. I wonder how we got along without it?"
Was she being sarcastic? If so, she was so subtle about it that he couldn't be sure. "That seems to be about the only vice you picked up from us," he replied. "It's the only gift you've taken. And that is something nonessential.''
She smiled. "Oh, not the only gift. We eat dogs, you know."
She looked at Samson. He, as if sensing what she was talking about, edged closer to his master. Jack could not keep from showing his disgust.
"You needn't worry, big lion," she called out to Samson. "We never cook your breed. Just fat and stupid frydogs."
She turned back to Jack.
"As to what we were talking about, you shouldn't feel that you Terrans came to us barehanded. We've learned much more from you than you think."
Again she smiled. Jack felt foolish -- as if the lessons administered by the human beings had been negative. Mrrn, her brother, spoke to her in rapid adult-talk. She answered the few syllables needed (translated into English, Jack suspected, the conversation would have taken much more time), and then said in the human tongue, "He wants to stay here and work on a new song he's been thinking about. He'll play it tomorrow at our homecoming. I'll accompany you as far as my uncle's. That is, if you don't mind?"
He shrugged. "Why should I? "
"I can think of half a dozen reasons. First and foremost, some human might see us and turn you in for fraternizing with a siren."
"Walking on a public highway with one of you doesn't legally constitute fraternizing."
They walked silently down the leafy corridor to the road. Samson walked a little ahead. Behind them, the notes charged from the lyre in a phalanx of fury. Where his sister's singing had been sweet and happy and tinged with a certain spriteliness, Mrrn's playing was Dionysiac, frenzied.
Jack would have liked to stay to hear it. Though he had, of course, never confessed it, he thought horstel music was wonderful. No reasonable excuse for lingering came to his mind, so he kept on going down the forest aisle. When they reached the road and turned the corner, the notes, became faint. The towering trees and heavy foliage blanketed them.
The road curved around the gently sloping mountain -- a fifty-foot broad highway at least a thousand years old. It was composed of some very thick gray stuff that must have been poured out in liquid form and then hardened, for it was not laid down in blocks but presented a continuous strip. Resembling stone, it felt slightly rubbery and gave the illusion of sinking a little beneath one's weight. Though the sun was hot, the road felt cool to the naked foot. Somehow, it passed heat through the upper side and stored it beneath, for during the winter the process was reversed. Then the surface radiated warmth, enough to keep the unshod foot from freezing even in the coldest weather. Snow and ice melted and ran off the subtly tilted slope.
It was one of the thousands that spider-webbed the continent of Avalon, a network whose ready transportation had helped humankind spread so rapidly across the land.
He was silent so long that R'li, probably seeking a hook on which to hang conversation, asked to see his scimitar. Surprised, he unsheathed it and handed it to her. Holding it by the hilt with one hand, she feather-touched the sharp edge with the fingers of the other.
"Iron," she said. "That is a terrible word for a terrible thing. I wonder what kind of world we'd have if there were much of it left. Not so good, I think."
Jack watched her handle the metal. One of the tales he'd heard in his childhood about horstels had just been proved false. They could touch iron. Their fingers didn't wither, their arms didn't become paralyzed, and they didn't scream with agony.
She pointed to the inscription on the hilt. "That means what?"
"I don't really know. It's said to be Erbic, one of the languages of Earth."
He took the weapon back from her and turned the hilt to show her two inscriptions on the other side. "One A.H.D. One of the year of Homo Dare. The yeare we came. Cut by Ananias Dare himself, so it's said. This sword was given by Kamel the Turk to Jack Cage the First, one of his sons-in-law, because the Turk had no sons to hand it on to."
She said, "Is it true that your scimitar is so sharp that it will cut a floating hair in half?"
"I don't know. I've never tried it."
She plucked one of her long hairs out and let it drift down.
Swish!
Two red-gold threads fell to the ground
.
"Do you know," she said, "you might have given that dragon something to think about, after all."
His jaw fell, and he goggled while she ground the glowing butt of her smoke into dead ashes with her callused heel.
"How -- how did you know I'd been trailing that dragon?"
''The dragon told me."
"The dragon -- told you?''
"Yes. You didn't miss her by much. She was with us for a while but left about five minutes before you showed up. She was getting tired of running. She's pregnant, and she's hungry, and she's exhausted. I advised her to go up the mountains to the rocky parts, where you wouldn't be able to find any tracks."
"Well, now, isn't that nice!" His voice shook. "And just how the hell would you know she knew I knew -- I mean -- she knew I was coming and she was going. . . I mean, how did you know where she was going? I suppose you spoke to her in dragon-talk?" he concluded sarcastically.
"Right."
"What?"
He looked into her eyes for a sign she was pulling his leg. You never knew about Wiyr.
She returned his gaze with two cool purple-blue enigmas. There was a swift exchange, voiceless but intelligible. R'li put out her hand as if to place it on his arm and then stopped it midway as if suddenly remembering that human beings did not care to be touched by her people. Samson growled warningly and crouched facing her, yellow hair bristling.
They continued walking. She chattered blithely on as if nothing untoward had happened. To add to his annoyance, she used child-horstel. An adult used that tongue to another only in anger or contempt or to a loved one. She couldn't be in love with him.
She spoke of her happiness at coming home and seeing her friends and parents again and roaming the beloved fields and forest of Slashlark County. She smiled often; her eyes glowed with intense feeling; her hands flew as if she were batting the words out of the way in order to make room for more; her red mouth shaped itself into fascinating spouts as she spilled out the liquids of her speech.
A strange and unexpected thing happened to him as he watched the writhing mouth. His anger shifted to desire. He wanted to crush her to him, grab the red-gold cataract down her back, and bury that mouth beneath his. It was a swift and treacherous thought, and it surged through his blood stream, roared in his head, and almost overpowered him.
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