"They only go to the person to whom they are addressed. Let's see what she said."
I unfolded it. All that was on the minute page was the image of a puzzled clock face. "She couldn't read it," I said, crestfallen.
Ay-Talek shook her head. "Not at all. She is asking where and when."
"You choose," I said.
"Not I," said the clerk. "This is your love life, not mine."
"No, I mean, how do I tell her, 'you choose'? Where would she like to go?"
Ay-Talek nodded understandingly. "Ah. You are a nice young man." I followed her quick scribbling on a new sheet. The answer was in my hands almost as soon as my papyrus ball flew out of sight.
The new message had two glyphs on it.
"She says," Ay-Talek told me, pointing at the pictograph of a smiling Ghord with a tweezer-like face under a half-sun, '"come tomorrow at noon. We will visit the lair of Shan-Tun. It will be fun.'"
"And what does that one say?" I asked, pointing to the image of a man who wore a disheveled looking kilt.
'"Don't wear good clothes.' Good luck, young man!"
How odd, I thought, but it was Matt's choice.
Chapter 29
"I was just stringing him along."
—Arachne
Bunny and Tananda were delighted that I had taken their suggestion to approach Matt. I took both of them with me shopping in the Bazaar to find a small present to give her along with the flowers that Tananda insisted I bring. I suggested a little enameled box that kept food fresh, so she didn't always have to trust My-Nah's not very delicious meals for her brief noon breaks.
"A first-date present should be useful but not practical," Bunny said. "If you brought her a lunchbox, she has every right, according to the universal women's charter, to hit you with it."
"Then what should I bring her?" I asked, replacing it on the display with regret.
"Nothing intoxicating, fattening, or intimate," Tananda added. "Just considerate."
"Then, you pick it out," I suggested.
"Oh, no!" they chorused. "This has to be your choice!"
I ended up with a miniature picture frame that captured the images of anything you pointed it at. I figured she could display a picture of the sacred cats. They also insisted I buy a little peach-colored silk bag to carry it in, instead of
wrapping it in the heavy gray paper the Deveel merchant used. He gave me a sympathetic glance as we left.
The local Ghords assured me I couldn't get to Shan-Tun's on Camel-back, but they gave me good directions on how to get there by air.
I found Matt at the appointed hour on a cliff-top about forty miles to the east of the Zyx Valley. A lonely-sounding wind whistled around us, kicking up dust. There wasn't a single plant or a blade of grass for miles. It was the most unappealing site I could imagine for a date. Matt waved to me as I flew in. She had on a pleated white robe like those she wore to the office, but her skirts were divided into trousers. Her long, feathery black hair was braided under her headdress, which was held tightly to her forehead by a red band.
"Hi," I said. I cudgeled my brains to remember my lessons. "Uh, you look nice."
"This old thing?" she asked, looking down at her outfit. "It is comfortable. I am glad that you took my advice." She indicated my clothing. I had followed her instructions with regard to clothes, picking out garments that were good enough to be seen in but not dressy. Both Tananda and Bunny had verified my selection.
"Yes. I, uh . . . " My throat went tight. I thrust the small silk bag at her at arm's length. "Um, this is for you."
Her eyebrows went up in amusement. "For me? That is most kind of you, but unnecessary."
"It's not? I mean, it's just a little gift. I hope you like it. And these are for you, too." I handed her the flowers. She laughed. When she opened the bag and saw the frame, she laughed some more. This wasn't
going as well as I hoped.
"Such formal presentations," she said, tucking the stems of the flowers into the bag on top of the little frame. "I hope that you are going to be able to relax!"
"Relax?" I echoed, my voice rising against my will. "What are we doing?"
"You have never heard of Shan-Tun?" she asked. When I shook my head, she smiled. "It is something that I have always wanted to do. And as you were so generous as to let me choose our activity, I thought you might like to share the experience."
"What is it?"
"Shan-Tun and his partner Bon-Jee have devised a most daring amusement," Matt said. "Come and see."
I followed her over the crest of the barren hill. The hilltop sloped down slightly toward a sheer drop at the far end. There, two enormous creatures like caterpillars but each about the size of a Sphinx hunkered, spinning shining white threads between their hands. I realized that each of them had five or six sets of limbs.
"They are Silkwyrms," Matt said. "Their people make all the clothing for the royal family, but some of them have gone into business for themselves. As here."
A dog-headed Ghord stood between them. The Silkwyrms applied some of those thin white threads around his chest, down between his legs and up again. As soon as they withdrew their touch, the Ghord let out a wild yell.
"Yee-ah!"
With that, he leaped backwards off the cliff. I cried out and ran to try and help him.
"No," Matt said, running after me. She caught my arm to hold me back. "It is what he wanted to do."
"But..." I sputtered. "He came here to kill himself?"
"Not at all," Matt began.
Suddenly, the Ghord came catapulting up out of the void, high over our heads. "Whee-hee-hee-yeah!" he bellowed. He dropped down again. In a moment, he bounded back again, a little lower. I could hear his happy cries echoing down the ravine. When the bouncing stopped, the two Silkwyrms started reeling in the nearly invisible threads until the Chord's head reappeared. They grasped him by the shoulders and pulled him back onto the cliff's edge.
"It is wonderful!" he told us, ears flapping. "You will love
it!"
He joined a knot of Ghords who stood laughing and chattering at a safe distance from the edge. They must all have gone before him, because their headcloths were disheveled and windblown.
"Come, come," the larger Silkwyrm, Shan-Tun, said, gesturing to us. "You must take your turn, so the others can go again."
"This is what you want to do?" I asked Matt, a trifle disbelievingly. "Jump off a cliff?"
"Yes," she said. "Head first. I have been looking forward to this for ages!"
"Why not go first?" Shan-Tun asked me.
I looked down over the edge of the precipice. It was a long way to the valley's bottom. A riverbed cut through the yellow-gray wasteland, but it must have been centuries since any water flowed through it. "How does this work?" I asked.
The smaller worm, Bon-Jee, worked his mouth pincers. "We spin fresh silk for every leap," he said. "We wind it around you. You leap. You bounce. It is refreshing. Hold still, sir, while I measure you." He extended three pairs of arms and wrapped them around my chest, shoulders, and between my legs. It tickled, but I did my best not to flinch.
"That will be one silver piece each," said Shan-Tun. "Do you wish to pay for the lady, too?"
"Uh, yes," I said, taking the money out of my belt pouch. They expected me to attempt suicide, constrained only by threads narrower than a strand of my hair, and they wanted me to pay for it? In advance? But Matt was watching me. I smiled as I paid.
I was less than confident as I watched them spin. They pulled the lengths of white out of their backsides. It didn't look sturdy enough, even after they braided it into a triple thickness of cord. It could snap like the thread it was, catapulting me into the void. Had I told anyone where I was going? Would it hurt when I landed, or would falling on my head kill me instantly?
Then, I gave myself a mental slap in the forehead.
What was I afraid of? Was I a magician for nothing? I could soar off the precipice and float downward at my leisure, p
erfectly safe and secure. I'd impress Matt with my courage and nonchalance. Maybe I'd even turn a somersault as I bounced upward. Maybe two.
I looked around for force lines. A nice, moderate power source followed the line of the ridge we were standing on. Plenty of magik. I absorbed an adequate supply. I stood at the edge of the cliff hanging on only by my toes and held my arms out straight in front of me. I'd leap head first, then do a series of somersaults on my way up.
"Look at me!" I called to Matt.
I bent my knees and prepared to jump.
"Oh, no, sir!" Shan-Tun exclaimed, grabbing me around the chest. "No magik!"
"What?" I asked.
"You must not do magik," said Bon-Jee. "Why not?"
"Did you not see our sign?" asked Shan-Tun. He pointed to a sign pounded into the windy plain that I had missed on our way over. I peered at the line of pictograms painted in red, each more alarming-looking than the next. "No glyphing, no flying, no magik. It weakens our silk. You don't want to land on your head, do you?"
"No! I mean, not even a little magik?" I asked. Suddenly my perch on the very lip of the cliff seemed too unsteady. I took a step closer in. Matt called out to me.
"What is wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong," I said.
"You must release all magikal power," Shan-Tun said. "Trust us. We have not lost any of our jumpers."
"Not in weeks," agreed Bon-Jee. The two of them laughed, their mandibles quivering.
That didn't make me feel any better. But I had no choice.
I had to do the jump relying only on the Silkwyrms' silk, or chicken out and maybe have Matt scorn me. I desperately needed her approval. She was the only source I had left for getting through to Diksen. This was for Aahz.
"Well... all right," I said, though my heart had moved up to my throat. I hesitated.
"We can let someone else go until you are ready," Bon-Jee said.
"No! I mean, I'll go. Just give me a moment."
For the first time since I had started learning magik, I deliberately emptied my internal reserve of all the power I had. It left me with an uncomfortable hollow sensation inside. I looked down. The dry river bed seemed twice as far away as it had been before.
The Silkwyrms' mandibles separated in what I translated as a broad grin.
"That's right, good sir. Now, go ahead and jump!"
I held my breath and took a step backward.
I remembered when I was little that some of my family put me on a blanket they held among them and tossed me high into the air. I laughed and yelled and begged for more.
This was nothing like that. As I went over the edge, my hair flew upward, and my clothes flapped against my body, as if they wanted to free themselves from someone crazy enough to jump off a cliff. All the nerve endings in my body tingled against my skin. They'd be the first to know when I struck the ground. I was falling too fast to draw breath. It wasn't like being dragged underground by the slowsands.
There was plenty of air up here—too much, in fact. I screwed my eyes shut, waiting for the inevitable impact.
Suddenly, giants grabbed me by the chest and dragged me upward, back into the air I had just fallen through. My eyes were forced open. The blue sky seemed to loom closer and closer. I heard a sharp, thin, agonized noise. Someone was screaming.
It was me.
I was flung up over the cliff's edge. Matt stood with the Silkwyrms, watching me fly up, up, up, until I hit the acme of my arc. Then I started dropping again.
It was no more fun the second time.
Or the third.
Or the fourth.
By the time I had bounced for the fifth time, I could feel my breakfast, and probably last night's dinner,
fighting to get out of my stomach. I was no longer screaming, since that required breath, and I had none to spare. My heart banged against the inside of my throat, and my eyes were popping out of my head. This time as I passed the edge of the cliff, the Silkwyrms grabbed me and helped me back onto solid ground.
I could have kissed it. As soon as Shan-Tun and Bon-Jee disconnected me from their threads, I staggered down into the center of the hilltop and just stood, shaking.
Matt cheerfully took her place in between the Silkwyrms. They attached the ropes to her and helped her back to the edge. She gave me a jaunty wave and leaped out into the empty air.
The happy cries of excitement she emitted while catapulting up and down left me feeling resentful and more than a little foolish. When she returned at last to the starting point, I put on a pleasant smile and went to meet her.
Chapter 30
"The end always justifies the means."
—D. Vader
I had arranged for a fine lunch in a restaurant that Chumley had recommended in the capital city. The waiter, a Ghord in a tall, conical hat, seated us with many bows and compliments. He took Matt's flowers away and returned them in a pottery vase with a ribbon around it, then left us to read the menu.
"This wasn't the first time you've done that jump, was it?" I asked, as soon as he was out of earshot.
"Well, no," Matt admitted, with a sly grin. "But I thought you would enjoy it more if you believed it was the first time for both of us."
"You knew I couldn't use magik out there, didn't you?"
"Oh, yes." The grin broadened out into a smile. "It was very amusing, watching the terror on your face. Shan-Tun let you bounce an extra time just for fun." She touched my cheek, then bent her head to examine the menu. "Now, what shall we try?"
The thought made my stomach roil. "I don't think I'll ever be able to eat again," I said.
"Nonsense," Matt said. "The food smells marvelous. Just take a deep breath."
I did. My stomach forgave me the abuse it had undergone.
By the time the waiter came back with a slate and a stylus to take our order, I had lined up in my mind all the lessons that Bunny and Tananda had hammered into me. I was prepared to be charming at all costs.
"And what will the lady have?" the waiter inquired.
I nodded to her. "Whatever she would like."
What Matt liked, as it happened, was the rarest and most expensive item on the list. I kept my face straight, and ordered an entree for myself.
"What about appetizers? Soup? Salad?" I asked.
"Why, yes," Matt said. She put a dainty finger on the list and ran down her choices of three more
courses. "And essence of minnetango to drink, perhaps." The waiter gasped. "What do you think?" she asked me.
"I think that sounds good," I said. "Two."
"Two?" the server asked. His careful air of nonchalance dissolved into open delight. He scurried away into the back room, where I heard exclamations of disbelief and happy astonishment. I guessed that minnetango must be pretty pricey. I was determined not to react, whatever Matt did. It was only money.
I made determined small talk as we dined. Matt picked at her meal. I ate heartily. The food was as good as Chumley had said it would be. I commented on it, asked polite questions, and avoided the subject that was nagging at me as long as I possibly could.
The minnetango arrived in golden cups no taller than my little finger on a solid gold tray accompanied by every server in the restaurant and the manager, who bowed as the tray was presented to us. In a less fancy place, it would probably have been accompanied by a brass band and a robed choir. The fragrance hit me even before the waiter set my cup before me. The few ounces of bronze-golden liquid smelled like a combination of a whole hothouse of roses simmered together with marshmallows and fifteen kinds of fruit. One sip told me I should never judge anything in advance. It tasted like boiled spiders. Matt tasted hers. Her lips curled in a small, contented smile that wouldn't have been out of place on the face of one of her cats.
"Uh, that's pretty good," I managed to choke out.
"We are proud of it," the manager said. "It takes a hundred Ghords a hundred days to make a single bottle! Enjoy!"
"This is a special occasion," I said, hold
ing up my cup to Matt. "I've never jumped head-first off a cliff on purpose."
She looked a little sad, but extended her cup to touch to mine. "Your continued good health."
"Yours, too," I said. I took my time finishing it. One sip at a time was about all I could gag down. Matt drank hers, but with little apparent pleasure.
"And, now, dessert?" the waiter asked, appearing at my elbow.
"What would you like?" I asked Matt. I refrained from suggesting that she probably had no room for one, since she had eaten very little of four previous courses and a sorbet (offered as a palate cleanser between the salad and the entree), but I could just hear Tananda giving me a piece of her mind if I criticized my date to her face. I was determined to do this absolutely right.
"Nothing, thank you."
I was surprised. "Are you sure?" I turned to the waiter. "Why don't you give us some more time to decide? I'll call you when we make up our minds."
He withdrew to a distance where he could see us, but not hear us.
Matt leaned close and put her slender hand on mine.
"You must want this information very badly," she said.
"What?" I was taken aback. "No! I mean, I'm enjoying our time together. In fact, I'd be happy to see you
again, any time."
She shook her head. "You don't really like me. You are being a gentleman in the face of my outright rudeness. I would have preferred it if you took me out because you wanted my company. The truth is that you're using me, or you would like to."
I was shocked. I shook my head. "But I liked having lunch with you the last couple of times, and I have really enjoyed being with you this time. Didn't you have a good time at all?"
"It was a nice date," she conceded. "You were brave to try the jump even though you were afraid. It shows how determined you are, and I can respect that. I've seen your women friends, the ones who accompanied you that evening to confront Diksen. I'm not under any illusions that I'm the sort of person you would choose for yourself, or that they would choose for you."
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