Thrice Bound

by Roberta Gellis

  Opening the mind of the animal was horrible. Not that the animal tried to attack her nor even tried to run away; instead it whined and cringed and begged, crawling to her feet and licking them while whimpering with pain. Hekate broke down in tears and stopped what she was doing, patting and hugging the hound, whispering reassurance to it.

  However, when it could stand and return to the cave, Kabeiros the man was utterly exasperated. He dried Hekate's tears and silenced her apologies with a gesture.

  "I know you don't mean to hurt me. I know what you are trying to do and that it is necessary. I am quite ready to bear the pain, but the body of the dog doesn't respond to what I know. The body of the dog only `knows' that you are its master and you are hurting it. To the dog that can only be a punishment so it tries to show it is sorry for what it has done."

  "But what am I to do?" Hekate wailed. "I like dogs, and your hound form is a particularly attractive one. I can't bear it when the poor creature begs not to be hurt. And if I continue to hurt it, won't it become shy of me and be unwilling to travel with me or protect me?"

  "I don't know," Kabeiros sighed. "Some of those reactions are so deep within the animal that I cannot control them. Let's try again and I'll try to make the man dominate the dog enough to suppress its reaction to pain."

  More effort gained some success, but not much. Hekate pried here, bored there. She tried to hurry when the dog grew restless, but that made it worse. In the end they found a compromise by making the sessions short, achieving one small goal at a time, and rewarding the hound lavishly with praise and tidbits of food and the kind of play a dog enjoys.

  Hekate shook her head at herself one evening when she and Kabeiros were sitting on their bedrolls near a small fire—lit for comfort not for warmth; Kabeiros could generate warmth by drawing enough earth energy through the rock to heat it slightly—sipping some of their wine.

  "I have no idea why I feel the need to hurry," she said. "We are just at the beginning of summer. We have plenty of time to get through the mountains before the cold weather. We could easily take another ten-day or a month even before there is a need for us to go."

  Kabeiros shrugged. "I know the source of my impatience. I want to be free of this place and the sooner the better. I think you can push the dog harder now. It has learned, I think, that the pain is for some purpose other than punishment for wrongdoing and that it will be rewarded for patience."

  He had eaten well that day, but not the cooked food Hekate had prepared for herself. He had gone hunting as the dog—a reward to that body for bearing so much discomfort and a bribe to reduce the faint unwillingness he had felt that morning when he slipped into the dog form. He was surprised—and a little disgusted when he became a man again—at the intense pleasure he had felt when he tore out the throat of a small deer he had found and the hot blood flowed into his mouth; he had lapped it eagerly. It was delicious, and the red, bleeding meat of the abdomen had a savour even Hekate's skillful spicing of cooked meet could not match. And the entrails . . .

  Now a man, his gorge rose slightly as he recalled how he had torn and gobbled the intestines and their contents, the liver and heart. But he felt the need, a desperate need, and the flavor was exquisite. Moreover he felt replete, sated, as he had not felt no matter how much he ate of good wholesome food in the caves. He could only guess that he had been missing something in the food that the hound needed and the hound, even if not visible, was a part of the man Kabeiros. Now he wanted only to sleep.

  That caused no questions. Hekate was as tired as he. They finished their wine, washed the cups, and curled up in the bedrolls they had stretched out where each could see the low, yellow flames of the fire flickering as they died.

  On the tenth day, success was complete. The hound sat patiently through a much longer session than usual and at the end the white eyes sought hers and the dog said, *I am the hound, Kabeiros, but with me is the man. Do you wish to speak to him?*

  "Yes, I do," Hekate answered aloud, then silently, *Kabeiros, how is it between you and the dog? Will he be able to control you, or you him?"*

  *I think we will work out a compromise. I will be happy to let him rule when you throw a stick for us or in the hunt.* There was a hesitation and then the soundless words continued. *I hope Kabeiros the man does not yield completely to the joys of the hunt. I seem to remember from long, long ago that it was the hunt and the taste of flowing blood and hot red meat that seduced me into—* And then he showed that the man was all there by picking up her subtle change of expression and asking sharply, *What is wrong, Hekate? Do the desires and joys of the hound disgust you?*

  "No, not that," she replied aloud, smiling, but not for long. "I have had dogs."

  The answer was perfectly true, but Kaberios proved that the man could remember what he had said and thought as the hound. When they were back in the cave setting up a cradle of stones for Kabeiros to heat so they could warm the remains of yesterday's stew, he said, "When I asked what was wrong you answered what I said about the hound, but you didn't really answer my question. Something is making you uneasy."

  "I wish I knew what it was," she replied, adding a little water to the pan to thin the stew, stirring it, and then setting it on the stones. "I don't feel anything in here, but just for a moment when we were outside and I was talking to the dog, I felt . . . well, just what you said . . . uneasy, as if someone might be listening."

  "The bindings?" Kabeiros asked. "Have you neglected them too long?"

  "No, I think not. I know that feeling well because I kept forgetting poor Dionysos when he was a baby. Of course, he didn't care then. As long as he was fed and cleaned and hugged and held—and the Nymphae did that—he was content, but the binding didn't know that, and I felt it if I was away from him too long. No, the bindings won't trouble me unless I forget them, and Mother knows they are clear in my mind and heart. I don't know what it is . . . possibly my father still watching for me?"

  "Could it be the guhrt?"

  Kabeiros' nose and lips wrinkled; if he were the hound then, he would have been snarling. Hekate was so interested in the fact that the man showed many characteristics of the dog now that he was changing form often that what he had said did not make a deep impression and she answered almost absently.

  "The flavor of the watching . . . Perhaps. But I've never known a summoning to keep an otherplanar creature more than a ten-day. My father is very strong and fed it well—on human blood, too—but we were in the caves invisible to it for nearly two months."

  "We could stay within longer." Kabeiros sighed and then shook himself. "I'm eager to go out into the world, but not eager enough to risk your safety. I can wait."

  Nervously, because she had finally focused on what they were saying, Hekate shook her head. "I have the urge to be gone, to be elsewhere. If you think the dog is fluent in mind talk, I would like to go as soon as possible . . . even tomorrow."

  "Tommorrow it is then," Kabeiros assented heartily, taking the bowl of warmed stew she handed him and beginning to spoon it into his mouth hastily. He swallowed so fast he almost choked in his eagerness. "We have little enough to take and I can hunt and you gather on the way." Then he laughed. "The only thing we have never talked about was how we are to go."

  Hekate shrugged and laughed also. "On foot. How else?" And when Kabeiros, his mouth full, glared at her, she added more soberly, "Olympus is west—so that is the way we must go—but we must not pass near Ur-Kabos. There is too great a chance that my father will sense my aura if we are close."

  "Then perhaps the safest path, the farthest from your father, is to go east across the mountains. It will be longer, but I have heard that there is a river to the east that comes from the north and we can follow that until you feel safe. In these lands a sure source of water is not to be despised."

  Hekate nodded eagerly and hastily swallowed a mouthful. "I've heard of that river also. It's called the Orontes. And there will be villages and towns along the river where I can do some h
ealing, which will provide us with bread and vegetables to go with the meat you bring in. I have some metal." Hekate set down her dish and got off the bedroll to rummage in her pack. She found the twist of cloth that held the bits of silver and wire she had taken from her sleeve soon after settling into the caves with Kabeiros and held it out for his inspection.

  "Good enough," he said, pouring a little water into his empty bowl and wiping it clean. "We won't starve then even if I can't hunt or there is no healing to be done. But it's not nearly enough to take us to Olympus."

  Hekate's brow furrowed. "Something is tickling my memory. Wait, let me think. Yes, it seems to me there is another place where magic, even the Gifted, are welcome. Once when my father did something that annoyed the ruler of Ur-Kabos, he said he would leave here and go to . . . to . . . Colchis!"

  "Colchis," Kabeiros repeated. "I've heard of that place also. Someone . . . yes, a friend who was also Gifted with shape-shifting and could change into a bear . . . said he wished to go to Colchis. I never knew whether he did or not because soon after that the sorcerer damaged my Gift, but he said it was on the east coast of the Pontus Euxinus. He said the king there was a young man who was already a mighty sorcerer and welcomed any who could spell-cast; in particular those who could build spells."

  "I hope that king is not long dead . . . No, he couldn't be, or if he is, his heir must be of much the same mind because it can't be more than two or three years since Perses spoke of going there." She nodded. "Maybe it was only last year. I'm sure it was the quarrel with the ruler of Ur-Kabos that made my father decide to rule the king of Byblos so he need never again fear the use of force against him."

  Kabeiros' eyes were alight. "Colchis—that will be a place utterly new to me and the lands between here and there also."

  "Every place will be new to me." Hekate smiled at Kabeiros' eagerness, finished her meal and wiped out her bowl. "Still, the place sounds almost as promising as Olympus and it may be much nearer. If we can find an answer to the tangling of your Gift and I can learn what I need from the sorcerers there, we could come back to free my mother and end my father's power much sooner. And if we don't find our answers in Colchis, since it's on the coast, we could take a ship to reach Olympus."

  Kabeiros was almost quivering with excitement and eagerness. He got off his bedroll to unfold it for sleeping. Hekate laughed silently, watching him unbind his sandals, pull off his tunic, turn twice around (much like a dog settling himself, she thought), and lie down. Still smiling, she followed his lead, thinking the sooner asleep, the sooner awake, and the sooner on their way.

  Suddenly she was so eager to start that she would have urged Kabeiros to begin their journey right then, except that she knew they couldn't go far at night. Neither of them knew the ground and picking their way through the forest would be much quicker in daylight. Unless she used magic . . . She began to sit up, then remembered that bare hint of watching. To use magic would be like lighting a beacon fire for that watcher, if there was one.

  Then she remembered that the pressing desire to leave the cave had come upon her only after she had been out of the cave. Well, that might be natural after being confined, never seeing the sun or the stars or feeling the wind, for so many ten-days . . . but it might not. If her father were still watching for her—he did, after all, know she was in the cave—it was by no means impossible that he would set into that watching an urge to leave the place of safety.

  Hecate bit her lip. Her first instinct was to do the opposite of the compulsion, but it was equally likely that the feeling was genuine, particularly since the urgency to go didn't leave her when she was inside and she was sure the caves were Mother-protected. Besides, they must go. If they didn't, she couldn't loosen the bindings that held her and they would grow stronger and tighter the longer she resisted. Go, yes, but no magic. She would do no magic until she was sure she was well beyond her father's scrying.

  She woke in the morning feeling the same urgency, although now the desire to leave was mixed with caution. Still, she was impatient about relieving herself, reluctant to take the time to wash even though she knew there might be few opportunities once they left the stream. Although they would be following a river, the water might be highly prized and guarded against use by casual strangers. Fortunately Kabeiros was as eager to leave as she and was content to wait to break his fast until they were on their way. He said he could eat strips of dried meat and she some dried fruit as they walked.

  Hekate took the bedroll into which Kabeiros had tucked his cloak, the pan for cooking, and one change of garments for himself and Hekate. When he had changed to the dog, she laid that across his back and fastened it by loops of deer and rabbit gut to a harness he had contrived from the same materials. The harness was closed with a slipknot on his chest that the dog could reach with his teeth. One pull on the correct line and the whole thing, harness and pack, would tumble off leaving the hound free to fight or run.

  When Kabeiros said he was comfortable and that they would need to go some distance before he would know what adjustments he wanted made, she rolled her bedroll over the greatly diminished pack of supplies, tucked her cloak on top, and strapped the whole closed. Another pair of straps was fastened to the first and she slid her arms into the empty loops, grateful to the worshiper who had left the support in which he carried his offering to the caves of the dead.

  Finally she slung her pouch, with her herbs for both curing and magic, over one shoulder, the last, half-emptied, wineskin over the other, picked up her staff, and looked down at the hound. He wagged his tail and lolled out his tongue; Hekate patted his head and ruffled the fur around his ears. Together they stepped out of the cave into the bright morning sunshine. With the dog slightly in the lead, they crossed the open land, crossed the stream, and headed for the forest.

  Just before they entered the shade of the trees, Hekate turned suddenly and faced west, swinging her head from side to side and closing her eyes the better to "see" and to "listen." Kabeiros went a few steps back, almost to the bank of the stream, and sniffed the air. He came back a few moments later.

  *What did you sense?* he asked. *I got no smell of magic, only a little whiff of something rotten . . . * The dog could not shrug, but there was a feeling as of a mixture of puzzlement and dismissal about the words.

  *I don't know that I sensed anything, just a . . . a flicker of unease. Then it was gone. One thing I thought of last night just before I fell asleep was that if there is a watcher, I mustn't do any magic.*

  *I hope our talking this way will not betray you.*

  *Oh, no. I know there are some who have the Gift to speak over great distances, but I never learned the paths to make that possible, if it is possible for those who are not so Gifted by nature. We can talk side by side and perhaps several rooms apart, say from the loft to the main room of a sleeping house, but I doubt you or I can reach farther than that.*

  *And this close to Perses, it would not be safe to try. When we have reached the river, you can try to call me when I am hunting and see if I can hear.*

  Hekate laughed as they turned their backs on the small open area and the stream and set off under the trees. *If I can make you hear when you are hunting, I will have a far more powerful call than I ever believed.*

  CHAPTER 8

  Although Kabeiros and Hekate had been concerned about the possibility of encountering high mountains and difficult terrain, they discovered that the traverse of the caves from the west entrance to that on the east had brought them through the worst of the heights. Before them lay only rugged foothills. There were several steep climbs and more precipitous descents—those were more dangerous for the hound than for Hekate aided by her staff and once they spent half a day wandering the edge of such a drop because she would not allow Kabeiros to take a chance and jump.

  "You'll break a leg," she protested.

  The dog looked up at her. She remembered that her father had once told her dogs had no expressions and began to laugh. Anyon
e who wasn't blind could have read the irritation and impatience on the hound's face.

  *So what if I do break a leg?* Even the mental voice was sharp. *I'm not a horse. You won't have to cut my throat. I can limp along on three legs until the leg heals.*

  "Which will delay us a lot longer than finding a safe place to get down."

  Since that was probably true, Kabeiros was reduced to uttering a snort, which made Hekate laugh and ignore him when he turned suddenly and trotted back the way they had come, sniffing. She continued her search for a way down and had found a marginally possible spot when the hound came trotting back.

  "Do you think you could get down here?" she asked.

  *I'd better try. The back trail is worse. There's a waterfall there, and I can see that the ground is rising again ahead. If we take off the pack and drop it, I should be all right.*

  "Shall I climb down and try to catch you?"

  The dog laughed soundlessly. *Do you know what I weigh? If I came down on you, you might suffer worse than a broken leg. Just throw the pack down and stay out of my way.*

  At first it looked as if all were well. Having leapt and stumbled, the dog rose to his feet and looked back at Hekate, who was climbing down with relative ease. When she reached the floor of the descent, however, she saw that Kabeiros was holding a forepaw off the ground.

  "Did you break it?" she asked anxiously.

  *No, it's only twisted. I can walk on it, but it hurts.*

  "Then we'd better camp. How far back is that waterfall you saw? It would be nice to camp near water."

  The dog put his sore foot to the ground and took a step or two, but he whined before he put the foot down a third time and sat. The smooth black brow between the white eyes furrowed.