“You, too. Well, since I’m guessing you two ladies aren’t from around here, I should tell you something. It’s not good, by the way. Not good at all.”
Lutho sounded like he was positive these particular words were true, and Iris didn’t like that one bit. “What is it, then? Please, tell us.”
“There’s word among my people that trouble is coming to our land. Or, actually, trouble is already here. The word is also that someone has returned from a far-away place. No one knows who yet, but they know it isn’t good, not good at all. The person or being or whatever they are…well, they’re very evil. My people can sense such things. I’m only still working because I need the money to help a sick friend, or I would have left by now. Anyway, we’re all worried that it might have to do with what happened twenty-and-some sun-cycles ago. Some of my people have heard about the clay warriors being back, but that couldn’t possibly be true.”
“No, it is.” Anandra sounded none too pleased telling him this, and a look of fear rushed across Lutho’s petite features.
“Really?! No! No, not good, not good!”
The raft shook a little and tilted slightly to the left. Iris shrieked and grabbed onto Anandra, but then the raft righted itself. But the next thing that happened to the raft seemed almost worse to Iris, at least when it came to her fear of drowning—the raft began to speed up, faster and faster, until it was positively rushing toward the other side of the river. Lutho and the raft were shaking equally, equally greatly, which didn’t exactly help Iris feel any safer.
“Lutho, calm yourself. I will help you, I promise, but you must get us safely to the other side.” Anandra sounded more in control than either Lutho seemed or Iris felt, and her steady voice calmed Iris enough to remind herself to take a deep breath and try to calm down, too. Lutho seemed to have the same idea, Anandra’s voice and words having the desired effect, and moments later the raft slowly drifted down to the shore on the other side of the river, landing on the ground instead of on the water.
“Phew!” Lutho wiped his brow with one of his tiny hands and slowly flew down to the ground, landing on what looked like very shaky legs. Iris’s weren’t much more stable than his, but she managed to get to her feet when Anandra offered Iris her hands, letting her pull her up onto the dry land, which she was quite grateful to have back beneath her feet.
“Lutho, I have something for you.” Anandra reached into her bag and held out a handful of shiny gold coins. “Will this be enough to help your friend and to allow you to leave the land?”
“Oh, my, oh, my, oh, my! Yes, yes, it will. Thank you, Anandra! Thank you, Iris! I will never, ever forget this.” Lutho held out his arms, and Anandra placed the coins into his trembling hands one by one, giving him four gold coins in total.
“You’re very welcome, Lutho. I like helping kind people, and you’ve given us some very useful information.”
“I hoped it would be. Good-bye, now, ladies, and good luck. Much, much good luck.” Lutho nodded at Iris and Anandra and then flew off.
“That was incredibly sweet of you, you know,” Iris told Anandra, and she leaned forward and gave her a small kiss on the cheek.
“He seemed like a dear little fellow to me, a truly good example of a man and a friend. I hope his sick friend actually exists,” she added in a gruff voice, but Iris guessed she was just trying to sound tough. She knew Anandra well enough by now that Iris was positive she was also a truly good example of a woman and a friend. And a truly good example of a lover, too.
They set off down a path through some thinly scattered trees. Iris might have been grateful to get safely across the river, but she was more grateful to be staring at Anandra’s lovely ass and curves. The woman in front of her had become someone Iris was growing to care about deeply, despite her best efforts. But she tried to concentrate on her friend’s body and nothing else, as Anandra led her in what Iris hoped was the direction of a bed and some privacy: so she could experience those curves and that ass in more detail, and so she could spend some time, one-on-one, with Anandra. She found herself thinking, then, that she had grown to care for Anandra much more than she was comfortable with, and much more than would allow her to travel home without emotional pain.
This sucks, she thought as she followed Anandra through the woods. This really, really sucks.
Chapter Twelve
Iris had heard of the giant iguanas of the Galapagos Islands, but she’d never seen any of them walking upright, nor had she seen any of them dressed in long tunics of varied colors, tunics that seemed to be made of shimmery fabric like silk or satin. And admittedly, these amphibians in front of her and Anandra didn’t look like iguanas. They looked more like the blue-bellied salamanders she’d caught when she’d gone to her family’s regular vacation spot each year. She’d always been very careful not to hurt them when she’d caught them, and so she hoped these much-larger versions that she and Anandra had just met up with were just as peaceful and non-nipping. The salamanders at the cabin by the river had never so much as gummed her while she’d held them.
“Hello?” she said, more of a question than a greeting.
Just seconds ago, the salamanders had somewhat suddenly appeared on the path she and Anandra were on. They’d come from a clearing in the trees to the left and seemed to be headed off to the right. In that direction, the trees thinned out, blocking the mid-afternoon sun only now and then, but slow-moving pale-pink clouds had given her and Anandra enough shade to fully block the sun’s heat. It had been a very hot day around noon, and the trees around them then were much more sparse. Iris noticed now that her sweating had only recently started to slow. She’d hoped Anandra wouldn’t mind her strengthened scent, but Anandra’s nose hadn’t wrinkled while she’d walked close at her side, so at the very least it hadn’t bothered her.
“Greetings,” replied the salamander who stood slightly in front of the rest—there were about ten or twelve of them, all dressed in the same long, flowing, and quite pleasing-to-the-eye tunics, clearly finely made. The salamander who had spoken was also wearing what looked like a fez, red to match his clothing, and it had a thin, black tassel hanging from its top. The tassel’s tip bounced slightly when he spoke, but Iris only barely noticed its merry little dance, because he was her first talking salamander, and he was also almost her size. Based on their physical size, and also the size of their group, these beings might prove to be a threat.
“Greetings,” said a few of the other salamanders, in low, soothing voices, and the one in the front bowed slightly. That didn’t seem threatening! Iris thought.
“It is such a delight to run across one of your kind,” the salamander in the fez said, turning toward Anandra. “Two of your people saved my father’s life in the Great War, and I am forever grateful to them. I believe their names were…Sena and Rhan. Yes, they camped with him and me for a few days, telling us stories of their daughter back at home. They loved her dearly, they told me. I don’t suppose…”
Anandra’s eyes were wet, and she rubbed at them roughly with her left hand. “No,” she said in a scratchy voice. “No, they weren’t my parents, but I knew them, and they were dear to me, almost like another mother and father, we were so close. Thank you, hathlal. Now I must incline my head and body to you, for you have brought me a great gift.” Anandra bowed slightly at the waist for a few seconds, then rose with both a smile and a few tears upon her face.
“They were very brave, you should know. They saved many lives in our camp beyond just my father’s. They even saved mine. Sena shielded me when one of the clay warriors shot an arrow at me, and it only barely missed her heart. I don’t think…did they…?”
“No, they didn’t make it home to us,” Anandra answered.
“Here.” Iris held out her arms before she could consider that Anandra might not want her to. “Come and get a hug, sweetie.” She was surprised at her own use of a pet name, but she was more surprised when Anandra gladly took her up on her offer, falling into her arms and holding
her incredibly tight to her breast. A few of the salamanders (or hathlal) placed their hands on them, making soft clicking and humming noises that sounded quite compassionate to Iris. Apparently they weren’t a threat in the least, unless it was to Anandra’s ability to stay stoic.
After a shockingly long hug, Anandra slowly moved away from her, placing her now-free arm around the hat-wearing salamander. “Please,” she said, turning her head slightly down and looking into his eyes. “Please, join us in a small meal from my bag and tell me anything you can of my family friends. I never saw them again after the war began, and I am desperate to hear anything at all you can tell me or remember about them.”
“I am more than happy to do so, my new friend,” he answered, and Anandra led the troop of hathlal to a small circle of rocks slightly off the path to their left.
As they ate some fruit and bread from Anandra’s bag, the hat-wearing leader of the group introduced himself as Kee and told her all he could recall of the time he spent living with her close friends. He told her about how they always shared any food more than generously, sometimes going hungry just so children they met on their travels could eat. He told her of the many lives they had saved, and how, after a while, they had left, going off in the direction of the castle to hopefully meet up with Selehn and help her overthrow the evil Queen, giving Iris the chance to remember where she’d heard her possible grandmother’s name. But she couldn’t possibly interrupt, not when this meant so much to Anandra. The salamander finished by saying that he didn’t know if her friends had ever reached Selehn, but he did hear that they had fought in a great battle, yet again showing their heroic nature.
Neither Iris’s nor Anandra’s eyes were dry by the end of his tale, and some of the hathlal were tearing up as well, making quiet gulping noises every now and again.
“That is all I know,” Kee said finally. “But have you heard the news? There is word that the Sreth—or the ex-queen, as you may call her—has returned, and so you two should keep off the main road as much as you can. Heed my words, brave women, heed them and keep safe. Shortly before dark, you should reach an inn about three sun-falls up the path. When you come upon it, knock three times, and the innkeeper will let you in. He serves very delicious worms.”
Iris couldn’t help making a face of disgust as the idea of dining on worms crossed her mind. “He serves good people food, too,” Kee added with a chuckle. “Please take care, and remember,” he said, rising to his hind legs, “keep off the path, and go nowhere near the castle.”
“We will,” Anandra told him, smiling and bowing again, but Iris knew it was a lie. Then Anandra also rose, and Iris followed her and the hathlal back to the path. They continued on their way, starting at the right of her and Anandra, and Kee bowed again as they walked away, seeming to smile as he made eye contact with Anandra. As he and his fellow travelers marched off into the woods, Anandra surprised Iris yet again, taking her hand and giving it a tight squeeze.
“I cannot begin to tell you how much our meeting with the hathlal meant to me,” she said in a still slightly teary voice.
“You don’t have to,” Iris told her. “I can easily imagine how you felt.” She turned to Anandra and smiled widely. “Should we continue on our way, then?”
“Yes, yes. I hope this inn they spoke of really does serve something other than worms,” Anandra joked. “I only like my long, skinny food to have never lived, and to be coated in a good, rich sauce.”
“That sounds like the pasta of my world,” Iris said, following Anandra back onto the path and back in the direction they’d been headed. She wasn’t all that happy to have heard the hathlal’s warning about going to the castle, but she hoped he was wrong. After all, everything they’d heard so far hadn’t necessarily indicated that the castle would be unsafe, unless this being who had returned to the land wanted to overthrow the current Queen. Wouldn’t that be great, if they were to arrive at the castle, all ready to send Iris home, and instead got ambushed? Wouldn’t that be great, indeed.
Just as the salamanders had said, they arrived at a place to stay the night about two hours later, by Iris’s guess. However, their place to stay the night happened to be a large, flat rock. Wide enough to sleep on, but in no way was it an inn, especially one that served delicious worms, unless they were crawling around its bottom edges.
“This is where it should be, for I see nothing for miles ahead except for the castle.” As Anandra said this, Iris turned slightly to her left and saw turrets and everything: not too far in the distance, probably no more than a day’s walk, stood a white castle, sitting on a slight rise on the otherwise flat path leading in its direction.
“We’re almost there!” Excitement rose inside Iris. She was almost home. But…was that what she really wanted? Did she really want to go home?
Anandra seemed not to have heard Iris speak, pacing the area around the rock. “I wonder if it’s hollow,” she mumbled, and she knocked on it twice.
“You might as well knock on it a third time,” Iris told her.
She had been joking, but Anandra did just as she’d suggested, and suddenly, a large brick building with two stories and two round windows on either side of an open door appeared right in front of them. Iris jumped at its sudden appearance, but Anandra looked pleased instead of startled. “May we enter?” she asked the short, balding man who stood in its open doorway. “I have coin, of course.”
“Please do,” the man said, opening the door a little wider. Then, “Please do!” he shouted. “Please do, and hurry—danger is almost upon us!”
Anandra pushed Iris inside, following right after her, and the innkeeper shut and locked the door behind them. He reached into a giant pot by the front door and tossed some blue powder onto the door, murmuring some words in an unfamiliar tongue.
“Are we cloaked once more?” Anandra asked him.
He turned to them, glancing from face to face with wide eyes. “Yes, yes. Let’s go to the window and watch. I want to make sure they don’t try to enter.”
They all crowded around one of the inn’s large round windows. Coming down the path, in the direction of the castle, were three of the creepy clay warriors they’d seen a few days ago. One of them held a chain, and a snarling, gray, three-headed hound yanked on it, clearly wanting to get free. As the three warriors and the hound drew closer to the rock, the hound’s heads all turned in the direction of the inn. Each of its noses began to sniff furiously, and one head tilted toward the sky and howled, the other two heads growling as it pulled the warrior straight toward the building where Iris, Anandra, and the innkeeper hid.
Iris gasped and placed a hand in front of her open lips, more scared than she had been at any point since their trip had begun. She hoped the beast wouldn’t be able to enter the inn, and she hoped that if it could, it wouldn’t be as hungry as its three drooling mouths seemed to imply. It drew closer and closer to the window they stood behind, scenting the air as steam rushed out of its nostrils. Then, the warrior yanked it roughly back and kicked its side with a loud thump. “There’s nothing there, you stupid, worthless sack of shit.”
The dog whimpered, and Iris found herself feeling sorry for it. Her compassion wasn’t the only thing on her mind, though, because a small black circle was now floating midair near their front door, and it was quickly getting bigger. Soon it was twice as wide as the inn’s front door, and Iris could see a woman inside it, her blond hair pulled away from her face. She was quite beautiful, although she was also rather hard looking. Iris felt an instant mistrust of this woman, mistrust that was apparently justified, as the woman turned to the warriors, pointing at them with a look of anger and disappointment painted across her pretty features.
She didn’t appear attractive anymore when she began to yell at the warriors, her elegant face now twisted into a look of fury and hate. “Get the fuck in here! He was wrong!” She huffed out an angry breath. “Besides,” she muttered, a sharp grin spreading across her lips, “we’ll get what we want soo
n enough. No reason to rush things when they’re obviously going to go according to plan. Yes, get in here, you idiots. Hurry up!” She turned and stomped off, probably to yell at someone else, and the warriors and their hound quickly entered the portal, following her down a hallway just a few steps as the portal shrank to nothing, and then the warriors and the woman were gone.
“Oh, my!” Iris heard from behind her, and she watched as Anandra only barely managed to catch the innkeeper as his eyes rolled back and he fainted.
Anandra turned to Iris. “Help me get the poor man into that chair in front of the fireplace. It seems he’s suffered quite a shock, and I want to see if my bag can provide something to bring him back to consciousness, so that we may question him and see if he will tell us why that woman scared him so.”
“Yes, and let’s do it for his health, too.”
“Of course.” Anandra slung one of his arms over her shoulder, and Iris took the other, dragging him over to a tall-backed, leather armchair that sat directly in front of an unlit stone fireplace. They lowered him into the chair, and Iris sat down on a matching leather sofa to the chair’s right, checking his pale, round face for signs of life as Anandra rustled around in her bag. After a few moments, she said, “Aha!” and pulled out a small, stoppered vial.
She uncorked it and waved it under his nose, and he came to with a loud gasp, and then followed the gasp with the shouted words, “Oh no…Oh no! She has returned! Tressa has returned! And with no Selehn here to save us, we are clearly doomed!”
Chapter Thirteen
Anandra took a large step back and appeared to almost drop the vial she’d used to revive the innkeeper. “How do you know?” she asked him, her voice full of wariness.
“I know because Selehn lived here for not nearly enough sun-cycles, with her partner, Brenne.”
Out of This World Page 15
