Now the borderman walked back to Irving, who had been watching all this with increasing horror. At least he had been properly briefed for his own questions.
“You are not born here?”
“No, sir, first time. I am of age, and my father is taking me to be trained by the one who trained him.”
The border patrolman walked back to Joe. “All seems in order, sir. Left to Terdiera. You are cautioned that most of the route is Royal Preserve—no poaching.”
“Any problems?” Joe asked him. “The last time I was through the Master of the Dead was working down almost past here.”
“He withdrew his forces northward as far as we can tell upon the sorcerer’s return,” the soldier told them. “Your route should be safe, although there are reports of hidden enemy encampments in these parts and occasional bits of nastiness—-cemeteries getting up and taking walks, that sort of thing. Stay on the road and camp only in and around the towns and you should have no trouble. The Majin fairies have been moved in between Hotsphar and Terdiera as they are loyal and have proven resistant to the enemy’s powers, but from a few miles north of here until perhaps the old tollhouse at Grotom Wood there’s been reports of firesprites and possible banshee presence, so don’t camp in there even after dark. Otherwise, no problems.”
Joe nodded, and they moved through the opening to the crossroads and turned left.
“I wonder what that guy considers a problem?” Irving asked no one in particular.
CHAPTER 4
ON CHANGES AND UNCHANGES
Fairy flesh is essentially immortal (except under Sections 7 and 16 and provisos in Volumes IV and VI as amended) and, once fixed, can never be changed in its character. It is outside the purview of magic.
—The Books of Rules, III, 79(b)
The road to Terindell kept getting creepier and creepier as they went.
The road was in excellent shape, and obviously was well maintained, but the landscape quickly became a jungle, with huge trees rising almost too high to see the tops of them, so close together that they tended to block out much of the light and form almost a rooflike canopy over them.
“So this is home sweet home?” Irving asked, looking nervously around. He could believe zombies or almost anything in this place.
“Marquewood’s a huge country, one of the largest in Husaquahr,” Tiana told him. “There are rolling hills and beautiful glades and mountains and river valleys and just about anything you can think of. It’s just that this area, for the next twenty-five miles or so, is swamp and rain forest.”
“Yeah, but it hadn’t occurred to me that we’d be on this route,” Joe said a bit nervously. “I’m never gonna be really thrilled with this region again.”
Tiana dropped back and said to Irv, in a low tone, “It was elsewhere in this region that Sugasto had an encampment. Our souls were snatched from our bodies and taken here and stored there. The changeling Marge was a key to them finding us, but there was no way to tell who was who.”
“Yeah, you told me that. Around here!”
“Farther south, but the same sort of place. What he’d never tell you was that he was placed in the body of a wood nymph and bound by her Rules. It took powerful magic much later to restore him.”
Irv suppressed a loud laugh. “Dad? A girl?”
“Worse. A wood nymph. They are compulsive hussies with the brains of a banana peel. There’s no real memory of our time in the bottles, but he still has nightmares about his time as a nymph. Don’t rub it in.”
Irving felt a shiver creep up his spine. “Man! I hope that don’t happen to me! I don’t never wanna be no girl!”
She stared at him. “Why not? I happen to like it just fine.”
“Yeah? Would you like to be a man instead? Really?”
“No! I like it the way I am!”
“See?”
“What’re you two whispering about?” Joe asked, turning.
“I just filled him in on why you really want to get even with Sugasto,” she told him. At his expression, she added, “He had a right to know.”
Joe shrugged, but he was clearly angry at her for doing it. He was just realistic enough to know that you couldn’t undo something once done.
Irving thought it would be a good idea to change the subject.
“Hey—back there you said you was Dad’s mistress and slave, even. You’re his wife, ain’t you? Why the other line?”
“Not only under the Rules, but under the law, we’re not married anymore,” she explained. “We just consider ourselves married. The one who married him is different from me. Officially, legally, and under the Rules, I’m somebody else. So is he, for that matter. That dizzy nymph ran off in his old body and this one, which looks the way he originally looked, was actually a magical transformation. Under the Rules, I’m of the underclass—the class of the masses, like the people in those towns, and serfs, and slaves. I was not married within my class in proper fashion, but instead I am a dancer who dances before crowds for money. That places me in the same category as a trained animal who performs in the square for coppers for its owner. An animal has no rights at all, let alone the right to marry. An animal can only be wild or owned.”
“Yeah, but—slave! You ain’t no animal! You’re just a person bein’ treated like an animal!”
“Joe has explained to me how terrible that idea is to you, which is one reason we never brought it up, but it is like the thing we discussed about women’s dress here. This is not only a different world, it exists stuck in a different, earlier time and way of thinking.”
“But keepin’ slaves is wrong! It’s evil!”
“There is a lot of evil in both our worlds, some practiced by very good people. You must learn to think differently. There will be no revolutions here to change things like this. Not ever. Things can only become worse. Now that you know, you should be aware that I will be telling everyone here that I am Joe’s slave. It is vital to me that I do so. Being someone’s property is the only protection I have here.”
“Come again?”
“Otherwise, you see, I am nothing at all, without status or position of any sort, and, therefore, anyone could do anything with and to me that they felt like. As his slave, I am protected under law and the Rules because of his property rights.”
This kind of thinking made Irv dizzy. Still, it suddenly occurred to him that this put her indiscretions of the night before in this new light. “But, if he gets mad at you or somethin’ he could sell you or even just give you away!”
“That is so,” she admitted, “but we are married in our own minds, and I think I know him better than that.”
“Couldn’t he just give you your freedom?”
“No, that’s not permitted. If he freed me, renounced me, or sent me away, I would still be without status and unable to be anything other than I am. I can only survive as someone’s property. It is the only way I get some measure of independence.”
“Come again?”
“He is my owner, not my puppeteer. I am as independent as I can get away with.”
This was too much for the boy. If they weren’t married anymore, then she wasn’t cheating on him last night, and, likewise, he could have all the flings he wanted and not be cheating on her. But he still didn’t like it. Slavery was evil; when it was the good guys who kept slaves, what did it take to be a bad guy? He had been with them many months now, and he was only discovering what they already knew.
“What was that bit about a nose ring?” he asked her.
“He means a small ring that would be inserted through my nose, of course,” she told him. “Each nation has its own unique alloy for making them, all done by fairy folk, of course. In addition, it carries a spell which identifies the owner and all previous owners. They’re usually not worn unless ownership is transferred—sort of a bill of sale, as it were. You notice how the guardsman barely questioned the two of you but went to some length to determine I really was of Marquewood?”
“Yeah.
So?”
“Because I had no ring, he wanted to make certain that Joe wasn’t smuggling me in. I hadn’t even thought of it before, but I’m very glad he was so easy on us. A stickler for the law might well have confiscated me!”
“You gonna get one of them rings put in?”
“I’d rather not,” she replied honestly, “but I think I’ll have to. I don’t want to take a risk like that again. I tried not to think about getting one, since the idea of having something in my nose sends chills through me, but, all of a sudden, I keep thinking about all the nasty possibilities without one. Without Joe around, I have nothing to prove that I am his. Slavers could steal me and sell me to anyone with impunity! And the law would back them up!”
They rode in silence for a while, and that wasn’t much better, since he wasn’t getting things sorted out at all, and the lack of conversation made the dark, junglelike swamp even darker and more menacing. Aside from the noise of the horses moving along the road, all other sounds came from the dense forest, and those noises included strange hoots, weird screeches, growls, grunts, and other sounds hard on the nerves, made all the worse because you couldn’t see what was making them.
He noticed that Tiana wasn’t anxious to get her run in around here, either.
“Let’s pick up the pace a little,” Joe suggested. “I’d like to be out of here before dark.”
This was good for a while, but horses couldn’t be pushed forever without some water and breaks. As the afternoon went on, the low light that filtered down angled lower, causing a sinister, creeping dark to pervade slowly, the hot, humid air as still as death. It was also nearly impossible to tell what time it was; they didn’t seem to have watches in this world, either, and under this jungle canopy it was nearly impossible to tell where the sun was in the sky. In these latitudes, the sun went down like a stone somewhere around six-thirty.
“What happens if we don’t make it out of this mess by dark?” Irving asked nervously.
“It’s too damp to find anything useful as a torch,” Joe replied, frowning and looking around. “We’ll be blind as bats once the sun sets if we don’t clear it, and the only thing I’d rather not do than spend a night here is ride blind. We’re just gonna have to push the horses and hope.”
But within another twenty minutes, it seemed to grow darker still, and from the tops of the great trees there came a rushing noise as some strong winds picked up, and then there was the sound of thunder.
So dense was the canopy that for quite some time no rain fell on them, although the air was so thick and heavy it made them wet just riding through it. Finally, though, it filled the upper reaches and began running off, not as rain but more like the buckets of giants being emptied on top of them. They were forced to stop, not only because of their own problems but because it was dangerous for the horses, and they could only find as dry a place as they could up against some big trunks, hold the horses, and wait it out.
The storm itself was over in perhaps half an hour, perhaps less, but the runoff continued for almost as long as the rain made its way down below. By the time they were through, they were in a muddy, wet steambath. Worse, they had lost an hour and it would be slow going for a while from this point as well.
“What do we do now?” Irving asked his father miserably.
“Well, all those in favor of camping here, in ankle-deep water and smelly swamp, have a seat. I’m for pressing on. We may not make it out, but the closer we are to out the better; at least, it’ll give things time to dry. There’s not a prayer I Ve got anything dry to put on, either, so I’m gonna shock you all and go bare-ass on a wet horse blanket and hang this loincloth on the side to dry as we ride. Irv, I’d suggest you do the same with your leather, since, when that stuff dries, it’s gonna cut right into you.”
“But—suppose we meet somebody on the trail?” the boy responded, embarrassed.
“Have we met anybody yet? And we’re not likely to meet anybody, either, at least not anybody who’s here for honest purposes. We’re more than halfway, I’m pretty sure, and only nuts like us would start in on this route after sunup.”
Ti was busy wringing out her hair, almost to no avail, but she commented, seeing the boy’s nervousness, “Come, come! I have seen much worse than you and lived!”
The leather thongs were already starting to irritate his skin, so he knew he had no choice, and finally stripped. Seems like this place is hell bent on gettin’ everybody stark naked, he thought sourly.
The horse blanket was also soaked through and felt like a wooly sponge, but there was no getting rid of it. Bare-assed and truly bareback on a horse was an open invitation to saddle sores, as he’d learned early on in his experience here. Until Husaquahr, he’d never been on a horse that moved unless you stuck a quarter in the slot first, but his father had been a good teacher and he a quick learner. It no longer even hurt like hell to get off anymore.
The problem really was, it didn’t seem to get any dryer as they went on slowly through the muck that had been the road and was still better than what was on either side of it. Instead, the rain forest took on an even more eerie cast, with fog forming just above the ground and thickening as they went. Irving couldn’t help noticing that his father was still wearing the sword that was the boy’s namesake, and in a position where it could be easily drawn while mounted.
The fog grew thicker, as did the silence of the land, with only the drip, drip, drip of water making its way down to join its whole at the base of the great trees. What sunlight remained created only a grim, ghostly gray, and it seemed that it was getting darker and darker with each passing minute.
Joe had given up any idea of getting out before full darkness; now he was looking at every place that gave any potential for both safety and protection. Cursing himself for not allowing for any variables and maybe waiting until morning for this passage, he spotted an area that might just have to do.
“We’ll have to camp there,” he told them, gesturing to an area on a slight rise about twenty feet off the right side of the road. “The trees are close enough to give us some protection for our backs, and there’s fallen logs and thick wood shavings all over. It’s not much, but it’s the best I’ve seen since we took this road and I don’t expect any better if we keep on. On the other hand, I’d rather be there than in the swamp.”
Tiana looked it over. “This is almost like a fairy circle,” she noted. “Are we certain we’re not going to camp in the middle of trouble?”
He shrugged. “Maybe, but it’s suddenly almost dark as pitch, and I don’t think we have much choice.” He couldn’t explain it to them or to himself, but this place felt right, felt, somehow, safe and secure. It was a mystery, and he didn’t plan to trust the feeling absolutely, but he knew this was the right place.
When the darkness fell, it fell. There was no light at all, anywhere. Irving had thought he’d seen darkness out on the trail under cloudy or moonless skies, but this was the darkness of a cellar, or maybe the grave. Tiana tried the flint, but there was nothing around dry enough to set afire, and the brief sparks, hardly noticeable in other circumstances, briefly lit the scene like flashes of lightning on a dark night.
“We’re lucky it’s midsummer here,” Joe said, trying to sound optimistic. “That means we’ve only got eleven hours of this instead of thirteen. Now if I can find the pack—ah! Anybody want some soggy, half-stale bread and some warmed wine?”
They managed to eat something, although none of them had a lot of appetite. Nerves made it nearly impossible to sleep, either, although Joe suggested a guard rotation, but being wide awake and seeing nothing but darkness while sitting in back of logs against great trees and on soaked wood chips wasn’t exactly thrilling. It seemed, somehow, even risky to be talking, but there wasn’t much else to do. Even so, they all found themselves whispering, although none could really say why.
“Hey, I been here a pretty long time now,” Irving said, trying to make some conversation, “and mostly it’s been gettin�
�� the horses, goin’ off into that plains area and campin’ out and learnin’ how to ride and doin’ a litde huntin’ and fishin’ and all, but how come it ain’t ’til we’re in this pesthole that this slave bit comes up?”
“It’s the Rules again, kicking in, most likely,” Joe replied as they huddled together. “They can be pretty cruel sometimes. And tremendously inconvenient.”
“I’m sure of it,” Tiana agreed. “This body was not even fully defined, I think, when I became it. I was from the upper classes; I thought in those terms, even when I didn’t realize it. It never occurred to me that I would drop in class or could. But almost from the start, everybody kept commenting on how I had an athlete’s body, then a dancer’s body. I’m native to here; the Rules bind me always. Even I began thinking of athletic dancing, idly fantasizing as a dancing girl, that kind of thing. I was defined by that. Slowly, the Rules under which I had unconsciously lived slipped away as no longer relevant; the Rules that replaced them were the ones I and others defined without even thinking about it.”
“That don’t seem fair.”
“It’s not,” Joe agreed, “but it’s only a kind of legal thing of what we both already knew from Earth. People always looked at me, particularly in the east, and they started defining me. At first they thought I was Hispanic, and when I told them I was a full-blooded native American, the real jokes began. I was called ‘Chief,’ talked to in mock-Tonto, everything. That’s one reason I grew up tough. I had to take it or fight. I fought. That’s why I wound up driving a truck instead of getting a decent education and maybe going on to college. I always thought I would be some kind of sports superstar. Jim Thorpe, a full-blooded native American who was also born in Pennsylvania, was a sports superstar and my big hero. But I never really worked at it and I got passed over. Wound up doing some bare-knuckle boxing at truck stops and doing repairs of big rigs. Everybody remembers those dumb cowboy movies and figures, hey, he’s an Indian. He’s got muscles and all that but no real brains. Pretty soon, you find yourself thinking that way, too.”
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