The Woad to Wuin

by Peter David

  “Use?” I didn’t understand.

  With what seemed a visible effort, Meander focused upon me once more, and I had never seen such pity turned in my direction. “You have so much hatred within you. So much … from so many different sources. A blind man could see as much, and I am many things, but blind I am not. And you must put your hatred somewhere. You cannot put it upon yourself, for that would be too much for you to bear. Put it on me, then. My shoulders are both broad and stooped enough to sustain it. Put your hatred upon me … and be done with it. It matters not to me.”

  My fury bubbled over, and I charged his cage and shook it violently. Astoundingly, he didn’t even seem to notice. “Do not dare speak so patronizingly to me!” I bellowed. “You are a captured prisoner! Do not act as if you are a martyr, willing to lay down your life whether you are innocent or no, just to remove some sort of … of burden from me! I won’t have it! I won’t!”

  “It is neither yours to have nor mine to give,” he replied.

  “Gaaaaahhh!!” I shouted inarticulately and shoved the bars away from myself. For an instant I felt as tired as he must have, my breath coming in ragged gasps, and then I pointed an angry and shaking finger at him. “You seek to make a mockery of my pain!”

  “Grimmoir.”

  I stopped and stared at him. The word had come out of nowhere and at first made no sense to me. “Grimmoir?” I demanded.

  “I seem to recall … vaguely, which is the way I recall anything at best,” he said with a frown, “that Grimmoir bore marks such as you described.”

  Then I remembered. That had been the name of his second in command. The one whose head I had found littering the field. What a contemptible trick! “Foul creature,” I sneered. “You would seek to escape your fate by blaming a dead man?”

  “No man escapes his fate, by definition. Fate is what it is,” he said mildly.

  “Well, I looked full on Grimmoir’s face, even at the time when the marks would have been fresh years ago,” I informed him. “I saw nothing like that upon his cheeks.”

  “I never said they were upon his face. They were not. They were on the top of his head. Grimmoir was bald. Did you ever see the top of his head? Do you know for certain that the marks were left upon the assailant’s face?”

  I stopped, cast my mind back, and realized to my sinking horror that the answer to both questions was negative. I had only ever seen Grimmoir with his helmet on, even when his cranium had rested in the field of battle. And as for the way that my mother’s assailant was described to me … I’d simply been told she marked him. No one had specified where, and I had always just assumed. But if a man had been atop my mother, his face burrowed in her bosom, she could have just as likely ripped up his scalp as anywhere else.

  “It’s a trick,” I whispered. “A … pathetic trick … to confuse me …”

  “That was not my intention,” replied Meander. “Very well, then. I shall make it simple for you. Yes, it was me. I am responsible. I did it. Or if I did not do it, then one of my men did and as his leader, his crime is mine.”

  “Stop it …”

  “Do as you will. You are, after all, the Peacelord. Your word is law. And all must abide by …”

  “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!”

  I charged the Crow’s Cage once more with the intention of shaking it as furiously as I could, and Meander’s arm snaked out between the bars and slammed me in the chin. The impact sent me off my feet, and I hit the ground hard. I stared up at him, my chest heaving, and he wasn’t even looking at me. He was simply dangling his feet once more, and once again singing that same damned aimless tune.

  Slowly I hauled myself up, and in as fearsome a voice as I could muster considering how thoroughly unmanned I was feeling at the moment, I snarled, “You ambushed me and tried to kill me. That alone would warrant your execution. The rest … the vengeance that my mother’s soul cries out for … that’s simply a bonus. You die this very night. So if you have any gods that you believe in—gods of the north, gods from wherever—you’d best start praying to them for absolution. And before you think yourself so smug and so above me, let me remind you … you’re the one who’s hanging here in a cage.”

  I spun on my heel, started to walk away, and from behind me he said quite sadly, “There are all sorts of cages, boy … and all sorts of ways to be trapped within them.”

  I did not even deign to look back.

  Chapter 8

  Monsters and Gods

  I walked quickly through the halls of the manor, my blood boiling, my mind in turmoil. That, of course, was what he had wanted. To confuse me, to make me feel less the man, less the conqueror. Well, to hell with him, and to hell with that strategy. I knew exactly who to go to and what to do with her in order to reestablish my manhood.

  I threw open the doors to my chamber. Sure enough, Kate was waiting for me, sprawled upon the bed in a most alluring fashion. I couldn’t believe it. “Radiant” was barely sufficient to describe her. She looked positively glorious, more vital, more alive than any creature on the planet had a right to be. She threw back the sheet and she was not nude beneath it, but instead clad it a shift so completely sheer that she might as well have been. She ran her tongue along the bottom of her top teeth and purred, “I was worried, my love. You were taking so long. I had almost given you up for lost.”

  “Lost? Me?” I strode forward, pulling off my tunic, feeling excitement building below my waist, the frustration caused by Meander already fading into distant memory. “How could any man conceivably be lost when he has such as you to return to?”

  “No mere man are you,” she said, throwing wide her arms, and then I was upon her. She covered my face, my bare chest with hot kisses as she moaned beneath me, “You are more than man! You are my god put upon this sphere to please me!”

  “Oh, is that my only purpose?” I laughed, propping myself up and gazing down at her hungrily.

  She made a delightfully pouting face. “Yes. Yes, that’s it. That’s the only reason. You are here to please me. To service me. To sate me. To worship at the altar of my femininity.” And she swung her hand down and between my legs, and grabbed with determination, causing me to gasp into her ear. “So get to it!”

  I got to it. We moved against each other, and I wanted to be leisurely about it, but at the same time I was driven with overwhelming urgency. Ultimately I gave into it, tearing the shift from her, the rest of my own clothes piling atop it. I shoved into her quickly, harshly, and she gasped at the sudden entrance but didn’t shrink away. With every thrust deeper into her, I felt I was pushing Meander that much farther away. I would not let him weaken me or my resolve. He deserved to die. The dreams about my mother were just that: fantasies spun from a mind that somehow could not believe I was finally going to lay that personal ghost of mine to rest. Once Meander died, I would be free. Free. The last bit of unfinished business would be disposed of, and finally—finally—I would be my own man.

  Except … I was beginning to suspect I wasn’t any closer to figuring out who the hell that might be than I’d ever been. The confusion was understandable. I had spent a lifetime with the only conviction I had being that I had no convictions.

  I wanted to stop feeling confused.

  My mind obliged.

  Later, as I lay next to Kate, her head tucked serenely upon my shoulder, any doubts concerning Meander or his guilt faded away, and I was back to knowing that what I was going to do was good and right and true, and that was all. I glanced out the windows and saw the shadows lengthening. Night was rapidly approaching. Even now they would be preparing for Meander’s execution. No death by hanging as was more fit for the common man would be Meander’s end. No, his head would be lopped from his body. And as his conqueror, the duty would fall to me to carry out the sentence.

  Then I remembered something, and I sat up. Kate, lying in bed, sleepily looked up at me. She looked …

  “Younger,” I said, doing so with some surprise as I realized it.
>
  “What?”

  “You look …” I laughed. “You look younger, that’s all. I mean, I know I’m imagining it …”

  “No, you’re not at all,” she said, almost cooing as she spoke. “When I’m with you, I feel so exuberant, so alive as I’ve never been … naturally I’d seem younger to you.”

  “Oh!” I suddenly exclaimed. “I just remembered! I’ve brought something back for you!”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes.” I got out of bed and drew on my robe. Lying in a corner of the room were the materials from my ride, including my saddlebag.

  She bounced up in bed excitedly, letting the sheet fall to reveal her nakedness as I picked up the saddlebag. Walking quickly over to her, I opened it up and dropped the bound-up cloak onto the bedspread. Then I opened wide the cloak and the gems glittered up at her.

  Kate let out a squeal of delight. “They’re beautiful! They’re … they’re breathtaking! The men have been speaking of how you faced Beliquose in a cavern. Were these in the cavern, in the walls?”

  “Good guess,” I acknowledged.

  She grabbed fistfuls of them, holding them to herself, and she moaned as if the gems were the greatest aphrodisiac ever created. And who knew? Perhaps they were indeed. I stood there watching and grinning as she rubbed them against her skin, and her breath was coming in increasingly shorter gasps as if she were building to a climax just feeling them against herself. “Poor, pathetic Beliquose,” she said. “I suppose after you sent him into the pit, he had no need of them.”

  I paused.

  I was beginning … to feel a warning.

  It had happened to me on occasion before. A vague sense of foreboding, and when I had ignored it, the results had always been … detrimental. I was feeling it now, with Kate. And I was further starting to realize … that I had been feeling it with her for quite some time. I had simply chosen to ignore it. I could have, should have, done it on this occasion, too. There was no reason to doubt her. She was who she’d always been, the Lady Kate, glorious and dedicated and perfect.

  And what in this world … was ever perfect?

  “You know of that?” I asked, sounding quite casual. “Of the pit?”

  “Of course!” she said cheerfully. “Everyone knows of that! They’re already writing songs about it! I told you, the men spoke of it.”

  “Of the pit.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Beliquose’s demise.”

  “Yes, yes.” She was beginning to sound impatient, even suspicious, and gods above, wasn’t she the most glorious thing in the world? Too much glory, indeed, for the world to contain?

  “And you heard this … while lying in the bed?”

  “I was not here all this time,” she said, and there was confusion in her expression, with an edge to it. “I was out and about … and I heard them …”

  “Composing songs.”

  “Yes.”

  “About the battle.”

  “Yes! Apropos,” she said with exasperation, “what is the difficulty here? You brought me these lovely gems, and yet seem bent upon not allowing me to enjoy them …”

  “You heard about the battle.”

  “Yes, gods above and below, my love, what—?!”

  “About how I tripped him.”

  “Yes, with the staff, now can we please … ?”

  And she realized. A heartbeat after the words were out of her mouth, she realized what she’d said, and then she tried to leap free of the bed, free of me, but I was upon her fast as a jackal, faster than I’d ever been. I drove her back, shoving her head down and into the mattress, and she looked up at me with utter terror. She opened her mouth to scream, and I grabbed a pillow and shoved it over her face.

  There was a brisk knock at the door, and I heard Boar Tooth’s voice from the other side. “Peacelord,” he called politely, “I do not wish to disturb you, but all will shortly be in readiness. Your presence is requested in the courtyard.”

  Kate was struggling fiercely beneath me, pounding at my hands, trying to shove me away. Small wonder: She couldn’t breathe. She tried to bring her legs up to kick me, but I straddled her thighs and immobilized them. “I shall be along shortly,” I called.

  “Will the Lady Kate be joining you?”

  “That is still open to debate,” I said. “On your way, Boar Tooth. I shall be along.”

  I heard his footsteps move away, waited a few moments more, and then yanked the pillow off her face. As I knew would be the case, she wasn’t able to let out a scream, because her first instinct was to suck in huge lungsful of air. Natural enough, considering I’d deprived her of the breath of life for nearly a minute. But her next breath would most assuredly be a scream, and though I feared no man under the roof, I was not inclined to answer a lot of questions at that moment.

  I hauled the naked woman up with my hand clamped around her throat, cutting off her air again before she could raise her voice to try and summon help. Twisting around on the bed, I slammed her against the wall, and her eyes were wide with stark terror. She did not look especially young and vibrant at that moment; she looked frightened.

  “Who are you?” I demanded.

  Her voice was a hoarse, petrified whisper. “You’re … you’re mad …”

  “If you mean insane, no. Angry, however, I’ll readily admit to. Who are you?”

  “Kate! I’m Kate!” she practically sobbed in what was very convincing terror. “Apropos, my love, how could you not—?”

  I pulled back my hand ever so slightly, then tightened it again and slammed her against the wall once more. Her naked breasts heaved back and forth, and unsurprisingly I wasn’t finding it the least arousing. I leaned forward, my face practically in hers, and snarled, “I did not tell anyone that my staff tripped him, because I didn’t consider it a heroic enough way to tell the story. No one else knew. This gem …” and with my free hand I pulled aside the robe to display the gem wedded to my chest, “is called the Eye of the Beholder. Did you know that? Yes, yes, I think you did,” I continued, without bothering to wait for her answer. “And if the gem is the Eye of the Beholder, then it stands to reason that someone is watching through the eye. Someone saw the battle. That someone was you, wasn’t it. Wasn’t it!”

  “My love, no, I—”

  I drew back and slammed her against the wall a third time, and there was no trace of pity in my voice, no shred of mercy in my heart. “I am a liar, and have always been a liar,” I said heatedly, “and if there’s one thing I know, it’s when someone else is lying to me. One more falsehood out of you, and I swear, Kate, I will kill you. Right here, right now. I will crush your throat like an eggshell. You were able to watch me through an Eye that was once within the province of the gods themselves. You become stronger and more vibrant with each triumph you witness, with each tribute given to you. You will tell me who and what you are, woman, and if you do not, then I swear if you are capable of seeing through this gem, what you will witness is your own demise, now speak the truth or die, who and what are you? “

  And with both hands she lashed out, and suddenly she was gripping my throat with an intensity that made my own pale in comparison. Startled I released my hold on her and tried to pry her hands away. I did not come close to succeeding.

  Her eyes seemed to flicker for a moment, and then orbs of emerald green were fixed upon me. Without the slightest effort she raised her arm and hoisted me off the bed. I desperately tried to kick free, but she was holding me at arm’s length and I was helpless as a babe in her grasp. There was savagery in her expression that looked like some sort of perversion when adorning that beautiful face. And when she spoke, her words cut like knives.

  “You should know,” she whispered. “Your little bitch princess, Entipy, prayed to me on enough occasions.”

  As if hurling aside refuse, she shoved me away. She did not propel me in anything vaguely resembling a human manner. I must have landed a good ten feet away, and as I tried to catch my breath, she cr
ossed the distance between us and gave me a solid kick in the ribs for good measure. Despite my imperviousness, it still hurt like hell, and I clutched at my chest as she presented her back and casually walked away from me. Normally a stark-naked woman strolling about in my presence commands my full attention, but at that moment my mind was very much elsewhere.

  And as I lay there, in pain and confusion, it took long moments for the words to filter through my brain, for the full realization to settle upon me, to comprehend who and what I was facing. Meantime she yanked the sheet off the bed and draped it around herself. Slowly I sat up and then froze there, like a statue, hardly able to articulate the name that had emblazoned itself in my mind.

  “Hecate?”

  Casually she nodded, and damn, but the goddess looked insufferably pleased with herself. “So,” she said, “at last we see each other true.”

  Honestly, I’d had no idea how she was going to respond when I’d threatened her with death. On some level I’d anticipated just more begging and pleading, or perhaps an admission of weaver skills of some sort. I thought she would allow that she was some kind of demon … a succubus, perhaps, draining away my very life force and incorporating it as her own. I certainly did not anticipate, however, being tossed about like a boneless baby and … and this …

  … this …

  “Hecate?” I said again.

  “My, my, my,” she said mockingly. With my fingers off her throat, with the revelation of her identity, she now seemed to have taken the upper hand. Truth to tell, I was too stunned at that point to try and wrest it from her. “Fancy the power the uttering of a single name has. Had I known it would command this degree of respect from you, I would have punted you about sooner.” She displayed her perfect teeth in a grim smile.

  I shook my head. “It’s … it’s impossible.”

  “There are those who would say that a warrior whose wounds instantly close up is likewise impossible. One never knows, does one.” She stared at me, amusement seeming to bubble over.