Isle of Woman (Geodyssey)

by Piers Anthony

  Stone ran up to them. “That was an assassin,” Blaze said tersely. “He tried to kill her, not to rape her. That means the priest knows. He will send others. We must hide.”

  “I know where,” Seed said. “Stone—cover for us. Pretend we’re not gone, until someone tells Lea. No one saw what happened, I think.”

  She was probably right. The others had been going to their homes, and not watching. Blaze heaved the man’s body into the courtyard, where it landed with a soft thunk of displaced refuse. The rain would soon wash away the blood.

  Seed led the way. Blaze followed, hoping that she really did know a good place. They crossed a number of roofs, and came to one he had not been to before. They lifted the cover, climbed down the ladder, and replaced the cover.

  It was completely dark inside. That gave Blaze no trouble as long as he was on the ladder, but once he stood on the floor he did not know where to go.

  But Seed did not hesitate. She took his hand and led him to a pile of filled bags. “This is a wheat storeroom. It links with other chambers for barley, acorns, lentils and peas. No one comes here at night, and the bags are soft.”

  Indeed they were. The two of them settled down on top of the broad pile, shifting some bags to make their bed comfortable. They were safe, for now.

  But the moment Blaze relaxed, he remembered what he had done. “I killed him!” he whispered. “I slaughtered him like an animal. I never did that to a man before.”

  “You came to my rescue,” she reminded him. “He was trying to kill me. I was terrified.” Indeed, he felt her body shivering with reaction.

  That put it into perspective. “When he threatened you, I knew nothing but to stop him. But now you are safe, and I know what I have done. I am a murderer!”

  “You protected me.”

  He was conscious of the oddness of it: she had almost been killed, but he was the one reacting. “I should just have pushed him into the courtyard. I didn’t have to kill him!”

  “He was an assassin. He would just have kept coming after me. Boro knows who I am, and has given the order. You did what you had to do.”

  But Blaze perversely would not be consoled. “I am a murderer. What will become of me?” His future seemed as dark and blank as the chamber. Their desperate move to the city had ended in disaster.

  Seed did not argue further. She caught his head in her hands and drew it in to her bosom. Her breasts were marvelously full and soft, as they had been three years before, and her embrace was wonderfully comforting. He lay there, allowing himself to be thus comforted.

  After a time he could no longer ignore the irony of the situation. “Seed, I am selfish,” he said. “I should be trying to comfort you.”

  “It is all right, my love. I have always been here for you.” She embraced him more closely.

  There it was. She still loved him, and wanted to be with him. Now they were together. But it wasn’t right.

  “You must not stay here, Seed. You must nurse your child.” That was only part of it, of course.

  “Oh, yes, I must,” she agreed. In another year Tree would be weaned, and Seed would have another child. But in the interim the child had to be fed every few hours. Both his appetite and the pressure of the milk in her breasts required this. She would soon be uncomfortable.

  “You have shown me where to hide. Go to your son.”

  “Yes. In the dark I can do it. You stay here and sleep. I will return to guide you to a better place. This was just the closest one.”

  She gave him one more intimate soft squeeze, then disengaged and went to the ladder. He heard her climbing, then heard the roof panel move. Then he heard it being replaced. He was alone.

  What was he going to do? Surely he could not remain in the city, after this. But if he fled it, what of his family? There was no living to be made out on the range; that was why they had come here. But he was the one working; his family depended on him more in the city than it had in the tribe. They were all in trouble, because of what he had done.

  Yet how could he have let that man attack Seed? She was probably right that the man would simply have come after her again, if he had lived.

  Yet again, the high priest could send another assassin. There seemed to be no end to the dangers of their situation. All because Boro had somehow found out.

  How had that happened? Now Blaze was able to put it together: Crockson, of course. The man had guided Bunny to Seed’s mother. He had remarked how the woman had lost her own daughter. He could have mentioned to others Almond’s participation in the ceremony the priestess required. Word could have circulated to the priest—or Crockson could have mentioned it to the priest himself, thinking nothing of it. The priest was surely not stupid. He could have made the connection.

  In that case, Seed would be in constant danger as long as she was in the city. The priest knew that her testimony could help ruin him, so was determined to kill her before she could speak. They would simply have to flee the city, because Seed could never live safely in it.

  Perhaps they could travel farther on south, and join a tribe in a region not suffering drought. That seemed to be their best hope.

  Somewhat reassured by that decision, he relaxed and slept.

  He woke as the panel was moved. That would be Seed returning.

  She replaced the panel and came directly to him. “I nursed him well,” she said. “Both breasts. He is soggy full. He will sleep till morning.”

  “I have slept,” Blaze said. “But you should too.”

  “In your arms I can sleep,” she agreed. “Be with me, my love.”

  Something else fell into place. “We agreed never again,” he reminded her. “I am married and have children; you are married and have a child. We are not for each other.”

  She sighed. “I hoped you would forget.”

  “Our love has no future. It is pointless. Even though we must flee the city together, we have no business betraying our families. Suddenly this is clear to me.”

  “You are right. Yet my heart will not hear. I never loved any man but you.”

  “Is my son not worthy of your love?”

  “He is worthy. I am the one who is not. You always knew that, Blaze.”

  He had another revelation. “Because of your experience, you felt unworthy. You thought yourself suitable only to be someone’s mistress, not to be someone’s wife.”

  “It is true. I am unworthy. You alone understand.”

  “Oh, Seed, you are more than worthy! You have made Stone happy. You have given him a son. You have earned your status. Now it is time to give yourself the happiness you deserve. Love Stone as he loves you. He knew your history too, yet loved you from the start. Love him back.”

  “I have gotten him and all of you into trouble,” she said, and he heard the weeping in her voice. “I should never have come into your lives.”

  “You transformed our lives! Promise me that if we live, you will let yourself love him.”

  She laughed, not happily. “That is an easy promise to make. I think we will not live.”

  “Promise anyway.”

  There was a pause. “I promise,” she whispered. “It would be easy to do. He is truly worthy.”

  Then he held her, and she slept. For the first time they lay embraced without desiring sex. For he knew in retrospect that he had desired her from the moment he first saw her, at the fire mountain, as a shadow of his dream woman, and she had oriented on him also at that moment, as her rescuer. Their relationship had now changed, subtly but certainly.

  Before dawn she woke. “We must change our hiding place. I told Stone where we would be, so the priestess can help us.”

  “The priestess? Why should she help us?”

  “If she makes her move now, and brings me forth, she may yet overthrow the priest. Then we will be safe in the city, under her protection.”

  “But the assassin! I killed him!”

  “He was as worthless as the swamp fever. No one will claim him, not even the pri
est.”

  “No penalty for murder?” he asked, amazed.

  “Not if Lea wins.”

  He shook his head in the darkness. “I do not understand the ways of the city!”

  She found his face and kissed him. “That is why you think yourself unworthy to be a citizen. Promise me you will abolish that notion, if we live.”

  He had to laugh. She had reversed his ploy, and shown him the other side of his logic. “I promise.”

  Then they left the wheat chamber and moved across the deserted roofs to what turned out to be the carpentry section. Here there were stacks of curing wood, waiting for the many uses it would have throughout the city. They hid behind the piles. “No one comes here, even in the day,” she explained. “Not until the wood is ready. It has to sit for a long time, drying.”

  “A good hiding place,” he agreed. “But there is no food.”

  “Someone will bring some. We have only to wait. Lea will know what to do.”

  Blaze thought of something else. “If no one will care about the assassin, why should I be hiding?”

  “Oh, I didn’t think of that! I am the only one who needs to hide. You can return to your house.”

  Blaze shook his head. “I might as well wait for someone to come here. I should have realized before.”

  “I know why I did not think of it,” she said. “I wanted to be with you, before I died.”

  “That also must be why I did not think of it,” he agreed. “But now perhaps we understand each other better.”

  “Perhaps we do.” She kissed him again. “See—the power of our bodies is fading.”

  “Yes, it is,” he agreed, surprised. For he still appreciated the phenomenal desirability of her body, without actually desiring it.

  “Yet we will always remember what we promised to forget.”

  “Yes. We could not forget, but we can remember.”

  After a time Blaze thought of another aspect. “If there should be trouble, and you fear death, you should have a knife.”

  “A knife?”

  He brought out his. It was one of Stone’s fine obsidian blades fastened to a stout wooden handle. “Stab this into someone’s belly, below the chest so the ribs will not turn it. Or slice it across a throat. Then you will not die alone. Perhaps you will be able to escape.”

  She took the knife. “You withdraw your love, and offer me death,” she murmured. “I thank you for both.”

  An hour after dawn showed through the crevices of the roof panel, two men entered the chamber. “We have cloaks to conceal you,” one announced loudly to the chamber. “So you can go to the priestess without being known.”

  Blaze and Seed stepped forward. “The priestess sent men?” he asked, surprised.

  “Do you think she would send women wearing leopard cloaks?” the man demanded. “That would be no concealment!”

  Blaze saw the logic. They donned the cloaks and followed the men to the roof. They moved across to a new section of the city. Blaze saw that it was not the shrine section, but realized that that, too, would have been obvious. There had to be a meeting place that no one suspected.

  They entered a chamber illuminated by a large wax candle. One of the men replaced the panel. Then both drew knives.

  Blaze realized that they had been betrayed. These were the priest’s men! “Seed—act,” he cried, leaping at the closer man. His swiftness of reaction caught the man by surprise, and his shoulder collided with the man’s shoulder and shoved the man back against the wall. Blaze went for the man’s knife with both his own hands, and in a moment had caught the wrist and hand and was twisting the knife away.

  Meanwhile Seed had surprised the other man just as much. Blaze’s knife had appeared in her hand and was menacing him back. Women used knives for many things, but never in combat, and for a moment he did not know what to do. That moment was all Blaze required to complete the capture of his man’s knife.

  Blaze made ready to stab his man and jump for the other. He knew that hesitancy could be disastrous, because an old man and a woman could not truly expect to prevail against two young men.

  “Wait!” the second man cried. “We were not trying to kill you!”

  “You are from the high priest,” Blaze said. He feared that he should not allow them to distract him for even a moment, but he also did not want to kill again if he could avoid it.

  “We are,” the man admitted. “We tricked you. But we were supposed only to disarm you and hold you here for the priest.”

  “The priest wants this woman dead,” Blaze said.

  “No—he wants only to prevent her from testifying. He will spare her life if you leave the city.”

  Blaze glanced at Seed. “Does this make sense?”

  “Why would he be sure I wouldn’t come back?” Seed demanded.

  The man shook his head. “It wouldn’t matter.”

  “Why wouldn’t it matter?”

  The man looked uncomfortable. “She wouldn’t talk.”

  Something was strange. Blaze had seen that manner in a trader who thought to cheat him. “Why wouldn’t she talk?”

  The man did not answer. But Seed suddenly understood. “You were going to cut out my tongue!” she cried. “You were going to rape me, cut out my tongue, and send me out of the city again, with some trader who would sell me too far away to return. And the rest of the family would be banned from the city, so they wouldn’t tell.”

  The man did not deny it.

  Suddenly Blaze was ready to kill again. His grip tightened on the knife he had wrested from his man.

  Then another man appeared in the doorway to the next chamber. He was followed by yet another, and a third. Blaze realized that their delay had indeed been fatal; they had missed their chance to kill and flee, and now had no chance. These were probably nominally servants of the bull, but actually hirelings for dirty work.

  “Wait!” Blaze cried, realizing that it was time to use his last ploy. “I must talk to the priest.”

  “He will soon be here,” one of the new men said. He glanced at the one before Seed. “You have not finished with the woman?”

  “Touch that woman, and the priest will have your tongue cut out,” Blaze said. “He wants to hear what I have to say.”

  The man would not be bluffed. “Tell it to me, and I will judge.”

  “I will tell him alone, and he will judge.”

  The man considered. He was evidently a lesser priest, with some authority. “We will wait.”

  Seed moved across to join Blaze. She could not know what he had in mind. She just wanted to be near him when they died. And she expected to die, because she had the knife and would not allow herself to be raped or mutilated without trying to do the same to her attacker. She had loved Blaze constantly, but he realized that she was not the same naive girl she had been three years before, and now was capable of hate as well as love. Considering the horror she faced, this was understandable.

  They waited somewhat tensely, the two of them on one side of the chamber, the five men on the other. No one spoke.

  The high priest arrived. He looked at the tableau, and immediately realized that something had gone wrong.

  “The man claims he has something to tell you, that you want to hear,” the lesser priest said.

  Boro shrugged. “Then tell me,” he said to Blaze.

  “You will want it private.”

  The priest’s mouth quirked. “Then set aside your knife, come to the other chamber, and tell me.”

  Blaze started to move, Seed beside him.

  “Not the girl,” Boro said. “She will remain here. Should you displease me in any way, she will pay the price.”

  The man knew how to bargain! Blaze set down the knife and walked to the doorway. Seed remained behind, realizing that this was the way it had to be. She was trusting him to know what he was doing, certain that he would never willingly allow harm to come to her. He climbed through the portal, which was only half the height of a man.

 
The priest followed him. They moved to the far side of the chamber. “That woman has a son,” Blaze said.

  “And a husband,” Boro said. “That is your news?”

  “That son may be yours.”

  The priest’s beginning sneer froze. “Mine?”

  “You know who that woman is. She was your fertility maiden three years ago. That boy is two years and three months old. He could be yours.”

  The man was obviously interested. He was in deep political trouble, and in the next few days, at the time of the fertility ceremony, the high priestess would charge him with failure to invoke the protection of the gods against the swamp fever. Then Seed would testify to his false charge against her, and be believed, and he could be finished. But if he could demonstrate that he had put a baby in a sacrificial maiden, his reputation and power could be salvaged.

  Blaze appreciated why the priestess had said to use this ploy only as a last resort, because it would weaken the priestess’s case. But if Seed were about to die or be rendered mute, this was better.

  Boro’s eyes squinted. “If the child were mine—what would be your price?”

  “Merely to be allowed to live in the city in peace,” Blaze said, realizing that the ploy was working. “The mother would of course be honored by the priestess for her part in the matter. Her husband knew her history, and would not object to the identification of the child. Her husband will have his own turn to have a child by her, in due course.”

  “No one would deny the paternity of the child?”

  Blaze shrugged. “We have no way of knowing, for sure. But perhaps you do.”

  The priest put his head to the doorway. “Bring the woman’s child here.”

  There was a scramble as someone headed up the ladder from the other chamber.

  “Bring the woman here,” the priest said. “Alone.”

  In a moment Seed came through the aperture. She was without her, knife, realizing that she could not otherwise be trusted near the priest.

  “They dyed your hair and marked your cheeks,” Boro said, looking at her.

  She nodded. She did not know what Blaze had said.

  “Your son could be mine,” the priest said.