'I meant no harm, my lady -'
'Do not call me "lady"! I am not of noble birth! I was a soldier and I am a woman. If that cannot deserve your courtesy, then you cannot command my mercy!'
'I meant no harm, I meant no offence. I beg your pardon ...' He looked up into her unreadable silver eyes. 'I beg your pardon, northern woman.'
There was no contempt in his voice now, only terror, and to Wess that was just as bad. She and Quartz could expect nothing here, except to be despised or feared. They had no other choices.
Quartz sheathed her sword. 'Your silver is on the table,' she said coldly. 'We had no mind to cheat you.'
He scrabbled up and away from them, into the room. Quartz grabbed the key from the inside, slammed the door, and locked it.
'Let's get out of here.'
They clattered down the stairs. In the street, they tied the packs together and to the horses' harnesses as best they could. Above,. they heard the innkeeper banging at the door, and when he failed to break it down, he came to the window.
'Help!' he cried. 'Help, kidnappers! Brigands!' Quartz vaulted up behind Aristarchus and Chan clambered up behind Wess. 'Help!' the innkeeper cried. 'Help, fire! Floods!'
Aristarchus gave his horse its head and it sprang forward. Wess's stallion tossed his mane, blew his breath out hard and loud, and leaped from a standstill into a gallop. All Wess could do was hold on, clutching the mane and the harness, hunching over the horse's withers, as he careered down the street.
They galloped through the outskirts of Sanctuary, splashed across the river at the ford, and headed north along the river trail. The horses sweated into a lather and Aristarchus insisted on slowing down and breathing them. Wess saw the sense of that, and, too, she could detect no pursuit from the city. She scanned the sky, but darkness hid any sign of the flyers.
Abandoning the headlong pace, they walked the horses or let them jog. Each step jarred Wess's ribs. She tried to concentrate on pushing out the pain, but to do it well she needed to stop, dismount, and relax. That was impossible right now. The road and the night led on forever.
At dawn, they reached the faint abandoned trail Wess had brought them in on. It led away from the road, directly up into the mountains.
The trees, black beneath the slate-blue sky, closed in overhead. Wess felt as if she had fought her way out of a nightmare world into a world she knew and loved. She did not yet feel free, but she could consider the possibility of feeling free again.
'Chan?'
'I'm here, love.'
She took his hand, where he held her gingerly around the waist, and kissed his palm. She leaned back against him, and he held her.
A stream gushed between the gnarled roots of trees, beside the nearly invisible trail.
'We should stop and let the horses rest,' Aristarchus said. 'And rest, ourselves.'
'There's a clearing a little way ahead,' Wess said. 'It has grass. They eat grass, don't they?'
Aristarchus chuckled. 'They do, indeed.'
When they reached the clearing. Quartz jumped down, stumbled, groaned, and laughed. 'It's a long time since I rode horseback,' she said. She helped Aristarchus off. Chan dismounted and stood testing his legs after the long ride. Wess sat where she was. She felt as if she were looking at the world through Lythande's secret sphere.
The sound of great wings filled the cold dawn. Satan and Aerie landed in the centre of the clearing and hurried towards them.
Wess twined her fingers in the skewbald's striped mane and slid off his back. She leaned against his shoulder, exhausted, taking short shallow breaths. She could hear Chan and Quartz greeting the flyers. But Wess could not move.
'Wess?'
She turned slowly, still holding the horse's mane. Satan smiled down at her. She was used to flyers being lean, but they were sleek: Satan was gaunt, his ribs and hips sharp beneath his skin. His short fur was dull and dry, and besides the scars on his back he had marks on his ankles, and around his throat, where he had been bound.
'Oh, Satan -' She embraced him, and he enfolded her in his wings.
'It's done,' he said. 'It's over.' He kissed her gently. Everyone gathered around him. He brushed the back of his hand softly down the side of Quartz's face, and bent down to kiss Chan.
'Frejojani ...' He looked at them all, then, as a tear spilled down his cheek, he wrapped himself in his wings and cried.
They held him and caressed him until the racking sobs ceased. Ashamed, he scrubbed away the tears with the palm of his hand. Aristarchus stood nearby, blinking his large green eyes.
'You must think me an awful fool, Aristarchus, a fool, and weak.'
The troll shook his head. 'I think, when I can finally believe I'm free ...' He looked at Wess. Thank you.'
They sat beside the stream to rest and talk.
'It's possible that we aren't even being followed,' Quartz said.
'We watched the city, till you entered the forest,' Aerie said. 'We saw no one else on the river road.'
'Then they might not have realized anyone but another flyer helped Satan escape. If no one saw us fell the tent -'
Wess reached into the stream and splashed her face, cupped her hand in the water, and lifted it to her lips. The first rays of direct sunlight pierced the branches and entered the clearing.
Her hand was still bloody. The blood was mixing with the water. She choked and spat, lurched to her feet, and bolted. A few paces away she fell to her knees and retched violently.
There was nothing in her stomach but bile. She crawled to the stream and scrubbed her hands, then her face, with sand and water. She stood up again. Her friends were staring at her, shocked.
'There was someone,' she said. 'Bauchle Meyne. But I killed him.'
'Ah,' Quartz said.
'You've given me another gift,' Satan said. 'Now I don't have to go back and kill him myself.'
'Shut up, Satan, she's never killed anyone before.'
'Nor have I. But I would have ripped out his throat if just once he'd left the chains slack enough for me to reach him!'
Wess wrapped her arms around herself, trying to ease the ache in her ribs. Suddenly Quartz was beside her.
'You're hurt - why didn't you tell me?'
Wess shook her head, unable to answer. And then she fainted.
She woke up at midaftemoon, lying in the shade of a tall tree in a circle of her friends. The horses grazed nearby, and Aristarchus sat on a stone beside the stream, combing the tangles from his fur. Wess got up and went to sit beside him.
'Did you call my name?'
'No,' he said.
'I thought I heard -' She shrugged. 'Never mind.'
'How are you feeling?'
'Better.' Her ribs were bandaged tight. 'Quartz is a good healer.'
'No one is following. Aerie looked, a little while ago.'
'That's good. May I comb your back for you?'
'That would be a great kindness.'
In silence, she combed him, but she was paying very little attention. The third time the comb caught on a knot, Aristarchu" protested quietly.
'Sister, please, that fur you're plucking is attached to my skin.'
'Oh, Aristarchus, I'm sorry...'
'What's wrong?'
'I don't know,' she said. 'I feel -1 want -1...' She handed him the comb and stood. 'I'm going to walk up the trail a little way. I won't be gone long.'
In the silence of the forest she felt easier, but there was something pulling her, something calling to her that she could not hear.
And then she did hear something, a rustling of leaves. She faded back off the trail, hiding herself, and waited.
Lythande walked slowly, tiredly, along the trail. Wess was so surprised that she did not speak as the wizard passed her, but a few paces on, Lythande stopped and looked around, frowning.
'Westerly?'
Wess stepped into sight. 'How did you know I was there?*
'I felt you near ... How did you find me?'
'I
thought I heard someone call me. Was that a spell?'
'No. Just a hope.'
'You look so tired, Lythande.'
Lythande nodded. 'I received a challenge. I answered it.'
'And you won -'
'Yes.' Lythande smiled bitterly. 'I still walk the earth and wait for the days of Chaos. If that is winning, then I won.'
'Come back to camp and rest and eat with us,'
'Thank you, little sister. I will rest with you. But your friend -you found him?'
'Yes. He's free.'
'You all escaped unhurt?'
Wess shrugged, and was immediately sorry for it. 'I did crack my ribs this time.' She did not want to talk about the deeper hurts.
'And now - are you going home?'
'Yes.'
Lythande smiled. 'I might have known you would find the Forgotten Pass.'
They walked together back towards camp. A little scared by her own presumption, Wess reached out and took the wizard's hand in hers. Lythande did not draw away, but squeezed her fingers gently.
'Westerly -' Lythande looked at her straight on, and Wess stopped. 'Westerly, would you go back to Sanctuary?'
Stunned and horrified, Wess said, 'Why?'
'It isn't as bad as it seems at first. You could learn many things...'
'About being a wizard?'
Lythande hesitated. 'It would be difficult, but - it might be possible. It is true that your talents should not be wasted.'
'You don't understand,' Wess said. 'I don't want to be a wizard. I wouldn't go back to Sanctuary if that were the reason.'
Lythande said, finally, 'That isn't the only reason.'
Wess took Lythande's hand between her own, drew it to her lips, and kissed the palm. Lythande reached up and caressed Wess's cheek. Wess shivered at the touch.
'Lythande, I can't go back to Sanctuary. You would be the only reason I was there - and it would change me. It did change me. I don't know if I can go back to being the person I was before I came here, but I'm going to try. Most of what I did learn there I would rather never have known. You must understand me!' 'Yes,' Lythande said. 'It was not fair of me to ask.'
'It isn't that I wouldn't love you,' Wess said, and Lythande looked at her sharply. Wess took as deep a breath as she could,
and continued. 'But what I feel for you would change, too, as I changed. It wouldn't be love anymore. It would be ... need, and demand, and envy.'
Lythande sat on a tree root, shoulders slumped, and stared at the ground. Wess knelt beside her and smoothed her hair back from her forehead.
'Lythande...'
'Yes, little sister,' the magician whispered, as if she were too tired to speak aloud.
'You must have important work here.' How could she bear it otherwise? Wess thought. She is going to laugh at you for what you ask her, and explain how foolish it is, and how impossible. 'And Kaimas, my home... you would find it dull -' She stopped, surprised at herself for her hesitation and her fear. 'You come with me, Lythande,' she said abruptly. 'You come home with me.'
Lythande stared at her, her expression unreadable. 'Did you mean what you said '
'It's so beautiful, Lythande. And peaceful. You've met half my family already. You'd like the rest of them, too! You said you had things to leam from us.'
'- about loving me?'
Wess caught her breath. She leaned forward and kissed Lythande quickly, then, a second time, slowly, as she had wanted to since the moment she saw her.
She drew back a little.
'Yes,'she said.'Sanctuary made me lie, but I'm not in Sanctuary now. With any luck I'll never see it again, and never have to lie anymore.'
'If I had to go-'
Wess grinned. 'I might try to persuade you to stay.' She touched Lythande's hair. 'But I wouldn't try to hold you. As long as you wanted to stay, and whenever you wanted to come back, you'd have a place in Kaimas.'
'It isn't your resolve I doubt, little sister, it's my own. And my own strength. I think I would not want to leave your home, once I'd been there for a while.'
'I can't see the future,' Wess said. Then she laughed at herself, for what she was saying to a wizard. "Perhaps you can.'
Lythande made no reply.
'All I know,' Wess said, 'is that anything anyone does might cause pain. To oneself, to a friend. But you cannot do nothing.' She stood up. 'Come. Come sleep, with me and my friends. And then we'll go home.'
Lythande stood up too. 'There's so much you don't know about me, little sister. So much of it could hurt you.'
Wess closed her eyes, wishing, like a child at twilight seeking out a star. She opened her eyes again.
Lythande smiled. 'I will come with you. If only for a while.'
They walked together, hand in hand, to join the others.
ISCHADE C. J. Cherryh
1
Shadows slipped along the cobbles in this deepest sink of the Maze, in that small light of the moon which wended its way among the overhangs and glistened wetly off noisome moistures. A well-dressed woman had no place here, even shadow-clad in black, robed and hooded - but she went deliberately, weaving only from the course of the foulest and widest streams, stepping over most.
And a ruffler, a bravo, a sometime thief- Sjekso by name-he took to the alleys as a matter of course.
Sjekso belonged here, had been whelped here, wove in his steps too, but not from fastidiousness, as he came from the opposite direction down the web of dark ways. A handsome fellow was Sjekso Kinzan, a blond youth with curling locks, a short and carefully kept beard, his shirt and jerkin open from the recent heat of the common room of the Vulgar Unicorn - from the heat, and, truth be told, from a certain vanity. He radiated sex, wine vapours, and a certain peevishness: was out of pocket from the dice, had lost even Minsy's purchasable favours to a bad throw ... his absolute nadir of discomfort. Minsy was off with that whoreson Hanse, while he-
He staggered his hazed way back towards his lodgings and his own doorway off the Serpentine. He snuffed and faltered and lamented his misfortune with himself. He hated Hanse, at least for the evening, and plotted elaborate and public revenge...
And blinking in the vapours up from the harbour and in the Uncertain focus of his eyes, he found his way intersected with a woman's in the alleyway. No ordinary doxy, this: a courtesan of quality strayed from some rendezvous, an opportunity some fickle god had tossed into his path or him into hers.
'Well,' he said, and flung wide his arms, leaned from one side of the way to the other to block her attempt to walk around him ... a little fun, he reckoned. And again, owlishly: 'Well.'-but she made a quick move to go past him and he seized her in that swift pass, grabbed and grasped and felt female roundnesses in delightful proportions. His prey writhed and pushed and kneed at him, and he gripped her hair through the hood, drew her head back and kissed her with fair aim and rising passion.
She struggled, which motion only felt the better in his hands, and she gave out muffled cries, which were far from loud, his mouth covering hers the while. He held her tight and sought with his eyes for some more convenient alcove among the broken amphorae and barrels, a place where they might not be disturbed.
All at once another sound penetrated the fog of sense and sound, the scuff of another foot near him. Sjekso started to spin himself and his victim about, went the least bit over to that foot and had a hand clamped on to his own chin, his head jerked back, and a deadly keen blade at his throat in the same instant.
'Let the lady go,' a male whisper suggested, and he carefully, trading in all his remaining advantage, relaxed his hands and let them fall, wondering wildly all the while whether his only chance might be in some wild try at escape. The woman in the edge of his vision stepped back, brushed at her robes, adjusted her hood. The knife rode razor-edged at his throat and the hand which held his chin gave him nothing.
Mradhon Vis kept his grip and held the ruffian just off his balance, looked in a moment's distraction at the lady in question ... at a severe and
dusky face in the faint light of the alleyway. She was beautiful. His romantical soul was touched - that seldom-afforded self which launched itself mostly in the wake of more profitable motives. 'Be off,' he told Sjekso, and flung the villain a good several body lengths down the alley; and Sjekso scrambled up and set to his heels without stopping to see anything.
'Wait!' the woman called after Sjekso. The would-be rapist spun about with his back to a wall, ducking an imagined blow from behind. Mradhon Vis, dagger still in hand, stood facing him, utterly confounded.
'The boy and I are old friends,' she said - and to Sjekso: 'Isn't it so?'
Sjekso straightened with his back against the wall and managed a bow, if a wobbling one ... managed a sneer, his braggadocio recovered in the face of a man he, after all, knew from the dice table that night - and Mradhon Vis took a tighter and furious grip on his dagger, knowing this vermin at least from the tables at the Unicorn.
But feminine fingers touched very lightly on his bare arm. 'A misunderstanding,' the woman said, very soft and low. 'But thank you for stepping in, all the same. You have some skill, don't you? Out of the army, maybe - I ask you, sir ... I have need to find someone ... with that skill. To guard me. I have to come and go hereabouts. I could pay, if you could find me someone like yourself, a friend maybe - who might serve...'
'At your service,' Sjekso said, with a second grander flourish. 'I know my way around.'
But the woman never turned to see. Her eyes were all for Mradhon, dark and glittering in the night. 'He's one, in fact, I might sometimes want protection/row. - Do you know someone who might be interested?'
Mradhon straightened his back and took a superior stance. 'I've served as bodyguard now and again. And as it happens, I'm at liberty.'
'Ah,' she said, a hand to her robed breast, which outlined female curves in the shadow. And she turned at once to the confused villain, who had taken advantage of the moment to slip towards the shadows and the corner. 'No, no, wait. I did promise you this evening. I had no right to put you off; and I want to talk with you. Be patient.' - A glance then back, her hand bringing a purse from beneath her robes. She loosed the strings and took out a gold coin that caught Mradhon's whole attention, the more so when she dropped the heavy purse into his hand. Only the one coin she held, it winking colourless bright in the moonlight, and she held that up like an icon for Sjekso's eyes - another look at Mradhon: 'I lodge seventh down from this corner, the first steps you'll come to that have a newel on the rail: on your right as you go. Go there. Learn the place so you can find it tomorrow morning, and be waiting there for me at midmorning. I'll be there. And the purse is yours.'
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