Still, it could not be doubted that the creature was in excellent physical shape; the diet surely contributed to that.
“I find it difficult to tell your males from the females,” Ware continued diffidently. “I know this may seem blind of me, but-”
“There are no males and females,” Sharras interrupted. Ware gave him an incredulous look.
“There are no males and females,” Sharras insisted. “This is a society of complete equality, and there can be no equality where there are two separated sexes. We are all both male and female, and life-partners take turns in bearing the children. Only in this way can there be complete equality in all things. Life-partners wishing to bear children must wait until there have been two deaths in our land; then they both become gravid, and bear their offspring at the same time. This makes all things equal.”
“So youaremortal,” Ware exclaimed without thinking.
Sharras made a face, but said nothing. “All of our people are changed by our science, so that all are equally beautiful,” he continued. “In this way, too, we achieve complete equality. There is no ugliness, and when the signs of age become too obvious, the Sylvan will retire from the world. I am about to do just that,” it concluded proudly.
“Retire?” Ware said, carefully. “Do you mean-die?”
“Die? Great Forest, no!” Sharras laughed, as if Ware were some kind of idiot for even suggesting such a thing. “Do you understand nothing I have said? We take no lives, not even in defense. No, I will simply join the rest who are aged, in a special community, surrounded by a wall of roses, where we will clothe the signs of age with pleasant masks and costumes, where we will live the remainder of our lives with nothing but leisure to fill our days. And when the final time comes, I will be taken to a place where I shall fast and be given special herbs, so that I may meet rebirth with a tranquil spirit.”
Where it would be closed off so that none of its kindred would have to look upon the terrifying reality of age and death, Ware thought in disgust. And where it would be drugged and starved so that it would die more quickly, so that someone else could have a child.
The masks and costumes would disguise the fact that the population of these little communities changed so quickly; no one who did not know the secret would guess. But Ware had centuries of observing humans and their nature, and changed as these people were, they still were human, and there was very little they could do that would surprise him. Disgust him, yes. Surprise him, hardly. “You have answered all my queries most gracefully, Sharras,” he said, putting aside his stew and standing up. “And I thank you for your time and trouble. Now I must go, before my companions miss me.”
He turned and walked quickly away, slipping into the shadows at the entrance to the clearing, and keeping to them as only a demon could, becoming the next thing to invisible. Sometimes he was tempted to enter Xylina’s sleeping chamber this way, just to gaze on her as she slept. But he did not; he was not looking for illicit temptation, but for a relationship meaningful beyond the comprehension of most human beings. So he had to be patient. He did believe that he was making progress; Xylina no longer looked on him with disgust, and indeed seemed to be coming to respect him. In time she could come to him of her own accord.
Then, of course, he would have to tell her the rest of the truth. That well might destroy the relationship. So, much as he desired her now, he was not eager to rush the matter. This tacit relationship might be the best they were to have. When he passed through the stone walls that Xylina had erected around the camp, he found the Mazonite in her tent, discussing the Sylvans with her slave. They both looked up at his slight cough, and Xylina waved him inside. “I assume you’ve been out of the camp,” she said, “since no one could find you in it. Did you learn anything, skulking about?”
Was there an edge to that query? Or was she genuinely concerned for him? Perhaps both. She was so lovely even in her incidental ways! “Some,” he replied, and described his conversation with Sharras in detail-then added his own guesses.
Xylina made a face. “And these people callus barbarous!” she said with contempt. “Well, I will give orders to the men to take no notice of them, and to answer no provocations. I think the best way to deal with Sylvans who choose to harass us is to ignore them.”
“That is probably a good idea,” Ware said thoughtfully. “They may have sanctions against the taking of lives, but I would not care to find myself being drugged and ‘educated’ so as to see the error of my barbarous ways.”
“My thought precisely,” Xylina replied. “They are slippery, these Sylvans; they say one thing and mean twenty others. I think they have very little idea of honor, and I would put nothing past them. We have provisions enough to carry us across their land; I think we should eat nothing of theirs, and drink nothing but water, and have as little to do with them as may be. I do not trust them.” She looked directly into Ware’s eyes for the first time since the journey began. “In fact, compared to them, you are a model of honor and humanity, demon. I had far rather trust my safety with you and your word. If you can slip off every night and learn more, I would appreciate the effort.”
Ware’s heart exulted, although he kept his face as impassive as any Sylvan’s. “I will do my best to help you, Xylina,” he replied gravely. “You know this is true: I will give you every effort I can.”
“Yes,” she said, suddenly and unexpectedly, with a shy smile that lit her eyes. “Yes, I do. Thank you, Ware. You are proving a better and truer friend than I had given you credit for.”
He bowed a little in recognition of the praise, and his heart leapt again.
She had called him “friend.”
Soon, perhaps, she would be ready to call him more than that.
Chapter 12
At last it was over: they had passed through the land of the Sylvans without any mishap. The guardian of this “door” dilated the orifice to let them out across the border, making no attempt to conceal his contempt of them. The men marched through quickly, making no effort to conceal their relief at being on their way out of Sylva. Xylina rode her mule into the Thorn-Wall tunnel with a feeling that she and her men had narrowly escaped. It had been very difficult for the men to hold their tongues in the face of ridicule and harassment on the part of the Sylvans. She suspected that only the fact that the Sylvans tended to concentrate their harassment on her, as the mistress, ignoring the slaves for the most part, had kept serious incidents from occurring. She had been able to keep her temper only by following Faro’s example, playing to the Sylvans’ expectations and exceeding them, ridiculing them in turn. She had not known she was capable of that. But then, there were a great many things she had not known she was capable of.
The past week of crossing Sylva had taught her many things about herself and about the men, but the most profound was something that simply could not be put into words. It was a feeling, and she experienced it once again as she looked at her guards and servants.
Kinship. That was the closest she could come to it. These men, slaves though they were, and utter strangers a few short weeks ago, felt as close to her as if they had all been born of the same mother and raised together. They were, together, a tiny enclave of “home” among strangers, speaking the same language, following the same customs. Even the three paw-footed women; they had been some time in Mazonite service, and identified with the group. So far, unified, the members of this mission had survived encounters with the surprisingly friendly barbarians, and with these arrogant creatures so completely unlike anything she had ever seen that they might as well have been created from the plants they were so fond of. She and her men and servants were far more alike than any of them were like the Sylvans.
In fact, although she hated to admit it, the Sylvans frightened her, and she was very glad to be out of their reach. She didn’t understand them, and doubted that anyone not born among them could. Ware had spoken with them and spied upon them every night that they were within the Thorn-enclosure, and nothing he to
ld her brought her any closer to understanding them. In fact, at this point she wasn’t even certain that she wanted to understand them; if she began to do that, she might start to act like them. No, she would far rather turn barbarian and go to live with the Pacha than even think of turning Sylvan.
On the other hand, Ware didn’t seem to understand a great deal about them, either, other than simple things, like the obsession with absolute equality. “It can be an admirable goal, Xylina, so long as people realize that an absolute goal can never be reached,” he told her, trying to explain why the Sylvans changed their very bodies so that there were neither males nor females among them. There were stories of shape-changers, were-creatures, that were told to Mazonite children-eventhat she could understand. She could see why someone would want to have the power of a bear, the grace of a panther, but not this.
Ware continued, trying to find words that would make it clear to her. He seemed to want her understanding, in an almost flattering way. And-she found herself being flattered, though she resisted it. “There are no absolutes; there never can be,” he said. “When people like the Sylvans refuse to accept that, though-”
“That is when they begin to twist things,” she had finished, finally getting a glimmering of what he was trying to tell her. He nodded.
Still, she could not understand what really drove these people, and she doubted that even Ware could explain them. “These people frightenme ,” he continued. “I think I know why the demons have never tried to make any kind of contacts among them. They are so sure of their superiority; people like that can resort to force to ‘convert’ you, if persuasion does not work. They are so passionate about what they believe in, that there is no room for anyone else’s beliefs.” His eyes had swirled with a confusion of colors that mirrored an internal distress. “I tell you, Xylina, there is no creature more dangerous than a fanatic. You must either join them or escape them, for they will bury you. Reason does not enter into their thinking.”
She did not ask whathis reasoning was, but the idea that the placid-seeming Sylvans frightened a being as powerful as a demon was disturbing in itself. She did not understand what he meant about fanatics, but she tucked the words away to think about later, in the darkness of the night. Instead of allowing her blank mind to fill with fantasies of a demon lover, perhaps.
“Your people have far more in common with my kind than we whom you call ‘demons’ do with these Sylvans,” he continued. “Never mind that the ancestors of the Sylvans were humans like you. Believe me, my dear, we are far more like you than we are like them.”
In that, she had to agree with him. When Ware had first revealed his identity, all she had noticed was how strange, how alien he was. She had not been able to read his emotions; she was not even certain that he possessed anything she would recognize as an emotion. But now-now she could read him as easily as Faro, and now she trusted him. And he was far more “human,” if such a word could apply to him, than these Sylvans were. That bothered her, oddly. The “door” irised shut behind the last of her men. “I am glad to be gone from this place,” Ware said, from just behind her, echoing her thoughts.
“I hope we can find some other way through, or around,” Xylina sighed. “I do not like those Sylvans, and I would not willingly put myself in their hands again. Not unless I commanded the kind of power that would make their numbers trivial. If I meet them again, I would wish it to be with them as my petitioners, and not the other way around.”
She moved to the head of the cavalcade, as the men waited for her to assume her position in the lead. It felt right and good to be there, and without all the critical eyes of the Sylvans upon her, she felt more confident than she had in several days. Confident enough to face whatever unknown dangers lay outside this passage.
The Sylvans, though for the most part professing ignorance of the lands that lay on this side of their country, had told Ware that this region was one full of wild magic. It was hazardous to cross, so they said, and Ware’s memories of the last time he was here agreed with that.
As if in answer to her thought of him, Ware rode up to take his place at her side. Since their first night in Sylva, Faro had begun to ride at the back of the cavalcade, telling Xylina that he trusted in the demon’s honor enough to believe that Ware would not deliberately bring them into danger. In fact, he and Ware were getting along much better than she would have believed; something about Ware’s dry sense of humor appealed to Faro’s own. Now Faro took his mule to the rear, behind the wagons, and Ware held his stallion to a pace that matched Xylina’s mule.
“What are we likely to meet with?” she asked, as the lantern-bearer walking in the front of the column illuminated the way ahead. “Can we expect trouble the moment we break out of the tunnel-or even before?”
“I wish I could tell you, Xylina,” Ware said, his face fixed in that calm mask that she now knew meant that he was thinking furiously. “This region changes from year to year, and it has been a long time since any of my people were here. I can tell you only generalities. That the place is dangerous and treacherous. There are illusions here which cover the reality of the land. You may see a terrible beast which proves to be only an illusion-you may see it a moment later, may even believe that it is the same beast as before and you find that it is not an illusion, but a beast which will kill half your men. Illusions of water can conceal desert, and illusions of solid ground can conceal chasms. There are monstrous creatures here, and sometimes the very fabric of nature seems to have been warped and changed beyond recognition.”
“You don’t sound very comforting,” Xylina said, wryly. She might have taken some alarm at his words-except that Ware had known all along that they would be coming to this region, and he had said all along that with his help, Xylina could survive this. She and her men had learned to work together; the men had learned to work with Ware instead of staring at him and expecting him to transform into something hellish for no particular reason.
“I suppose I don’t sound comforting.” Ware actually smiled a little-a warm smile, and the most genuine that Xylina had ever seen on his face. She smiled back, feeling a pleasant rush of corresponding warmth as she did so. “I am trying to err on the side of caution; where we are about to step, nothing can be taken for granted, and there is no such thing as taking too much care.”
He had changed, she decided. He was no longer stalking her. He was-a friend. Maybe he had finally given up the notion of possessing her, and was going to settle for friendship instead. But strangely enough, that idea didn’t seem to comfort her as much as it should have.
Ware continued, interrupting her thoughts. “The one thing that you can always be sure of is that the illusions always fade for at least a little, and that the cycles of change are no more and no less than one day and night in length. That, or so I was told, is due entirely to the effect of the crystal shard in the heart of the land; the cycle is a limit it imposes on the chaos of the wild magic here. So if we study the hazards carefully, we should be able to weave our way through them.”
“If they give us time to study them,” she pointed out. “Does anyone actuallylive out there?”
“Oh yes,” he told her. “Yes, humans and other things. There are even likely to be some that will be friendly to us.”
“And just as likely to want to kill us.” She nodded, actually with a little satisfaction.This was something a Mazonite could understand: foes that fenced with weapons, not words, and situations where it was simply “kill or be killed.” The sophistry of the Sylvans had confused her; right at the moment, she would prefer a raging beast that charged straight at her.
But she was careful not to say that aloud. Something warned her that to do so might be calling down misfortune on herself and her party. An old saying was, “be careful what you ask for, because you might get it.” That was the last thing she wanted. Thus far, care and thought had kept her little band intact. She would like it if she could continue to do so. She had killed, herself, and had seen many
dead men since she attained her citizenship-but never ones that she knew personally. There was a difference; she had learned that over the course of this journey, too.
Ware was right: a little precaution wasn’t going to hurt anything-and whatever lay ahead of them, it might not be as reticent about entering the Thorn-Wall tunnel as the Pacha had been. It would be best to prepare for trouble coming to meet them.
“Keep your weapons at hand, men,” she warned, speaking over her shoulder. “We don’t know what is ahead of us. The Sylvans wouldn’t say, and whatever it is, it just might think that this tunnel makes a perfect site for a nest.”
There was a rustling and a clatter that told her that weapons were being loosened in their sheaths, and quivers were being uncovered.
Good. She stared ahead into the darkness beyond the moving spot of light, and called the lantern-bearer in until he was walking just in front of her mule’s nose. She noticed that he was now walking with his sword in the hand not burdened with the lantern. “If you see something charging you, throw the lantern at it and get behind me,” she told him. “You should be safer behind us. Ware’s stallion is battle-trained, and my mule is at least accustomed to reacting to defend himself.”
“Like he did with that critter he kicked into the tree-tops?” the man-Ladan, that was his name-answered, with an uncertain grin directed back at her. “Yes, mistress, if that’s what you want me to do. But I am a fighter; I am trained-”
“It’s what I want you to do,” she assured him. “If there is a monster, it may be nothing you are prepared or even able to fight against. By throwing the lantern at it, and getting out of its way, you may buy us time. That is the best thing you can do, and since you are trained, I am sure you can manage to hit it squarely with the lantern. I hope a face full of hot oil will make it stop long enough for me to conjure a rock wall between it and us.”
If I Pay Thee Not in Gold Page 25
