Incarnations of Immortality

by Anthony, Piers

  Mym was treading water, making sure she was all right before resuming the swim. The speaking of the fish had been a shock, but this was evidently a harmless manifestation. He glanced back-and saw a huge fin cutting the water toward them.

  Now he felt dread, for he was weaponless and ill-equipped to defend himself in the water. Rapture, of course, was even more vulnerable. She screamed.

  The fin circled and cut between them and the shore ahead. There it remained, awaiting them.

  Mym considered. The talking fish had made it clear that their attempt to escape had not gone unnoticed, and the fin suggested rather strongly that it would not go unpunished. He sighed.

  He pointed back to the Castle. They began to swim back the way they had come-and the fin did not follow.

  They spent the rest of the day touring the lovely gardens and alcoves of the premises, remaining close together, and it was pleasant enough. The Castle did not threaten them as long as they tried neither to escape it nor to separate from each other. But this proximity continually caused Mym's thought to dwell on the obvious virtues of the Princess, and she felt flattered, though she tried to fight it, and this feeling came back to Mym, encouraging further thoughts.

  They sat in a pretty stone patio, sharing the feeling of captivity. "What are we going to do, Mym?" Rapture asked. "You know where this is leading."

  "I know," he sang. "But perhaps if we knew each other better, the result would not be what is intended."

  "It would not?" She was perplexed.

  "Every person has faults. My impediment of speech is obvious. You have been gracious, but I think you would tire of it soon enough."

  "Then stop singing and speak!" she exclaimed, understanding immediately.

  "Y-y-y-yes," he stuttered.

  "And if you understood my faults better," she said, "you would surely find me less interesting."

  "W-w-w-what f-f-f-?" But his thought had been clear long before the word could get out.

  She felt pensive. "I had hoped to conceal-but of course that's foolish. I have three great faults, and the first is quite as obvious as yours."

  He gazed at her, baffled. "It is n-n-n-not ap-ap-"

  "It is apparent," she said. "I was a terrible disappointment to my father, because I was born a-" Here she balked, but her thought came through.

  A girl! he thought. But that's no fault!

  "It is if a male heir is needed," she said grimly.

  "I w-w-would n-n-not c-c-c-call-"

  "Then you are more generous than my father," she said.

  He would not have had her otherwise! He could not imagine this absolutely lovely woman as a male. What a sad commentary on the state of contemporary values that such a creature should consider her gender to be a fault!

  "You're not cooperating, you know," she said.

  He made a mental laugh. I hate the situation, but I cannot hate you. Rapture of Malachite. There is no fault in you I have yet seen, other than the fact that you are slated to replace the woman I love.

  "And none in you, Mym," she said.

  In the evening the demon showed again, terrifying Rapture. Mym was perplexed; by day she was a self-reliant woman, competent in whatever way required, yet by night she was helpless.

  "It is true," she confessed. "I am, as I said, a woman; I have no strength to stand up to malice or ugliness. From my childhood, I have been terrified of demons. I deeply regret being this burden to you."

  There was indeed, he realized, some fault in being female. No man he knew of would have permitted anything like a demon to dismay him. But of course men were trained to fight. Women were trained to be dependent. It was still not truly a fault, but rather an aspect of the cultural expectation.

  And if women were destined to be vulnerable, so were men destined to protect them. He lay on her bed with her, as before, and put his arms about her, and slept.

  His dreams had always been chaotic, but this time they were more so. He dreamed he was holding a beautiful woman and knew that the dream was true. He dreamed that he rejected her-and saw her head mounted upon a spike.

  He woke to the sound of screaming. The demon was leaning over them, leering, reaching out. Mym grasped his sword-but the demon faded back and away.

  It was Rapture who had screamed. She had read his dream, and felt the spike.

  We have to get out of here! he thought, and she agreed.

  Next day they explored the premises more thoroughly-and found a brass ring set in the ground in the comer of a chamber seldom used. Mym wedged it up, and it was the handle of a metal slab, and beneath the slab was a deep hole. Stone steps descended, curving out of sight.

  Rapture fetched a lamp, and they descended. The steps ended somewhere under the wall, and a squared passage led onward beyond the wall. This was a secret tunnel, a possible escape!

  The air became cool, and the walls clammy. Rapture shrank away from contact, but stayed close beside him. They did not bother with the mental sums this time, as it was evident that they had not concealed the prior day's escape attempt. At least this time they were on their feet, and Mym had his sword.

  They came to a chamber wherein were several stone altars, and on each altar was an object. The first had a bright gold ring, the second a burnished copper lamp, and the third a calf molded from gold.

  Rapture, always intrigued by jewelry, paused to pick up the ring. She tried it on one finger, and then another, but it fit none of them, so she put it back.

  Mym picked up the lamp, to see whether it would serve better than the one they had, but it had no fuel. It was merely a decoration, of no practical use. I wonder whether I should rub it? he thought.

  "Or make a wish on the ring," Rapture added.

  They considered, then decided that these artifacts were likely to be traps for the unwary. What horror might be invoked, if they tried to summon the powers of ring or lamp? Better to pass quietly by.

  But as they passed the gold calf, it lifted its head and said: "If your father knew, he would slaughter a woman an hour!"

  Mym jumped, appalled. That spoke to his own weakness, his dislike of unnecessary killing.

  Then there was a sound from the tunnel ahead, a series of thuds that jarred the chamber, as of some creature striding toward them. Mym drew his sword-and there was a horrendous roar, and a blast of smoke came from the tunnel.

  "That's a dragon!" Rapture squeaked. "You can't fight that!"

  Surely not. The fire it breathed would bum them both to death before the thing came close enough to be stabbed.

  Mym sighed, again. "We must retreat," he sang, and set the example, turning and walking back the way they had come. Rapture followed close behind, carrying the original lamp. The dragon did not pursue.

  Back in the castle proper, they talked again, and Rapture confessed her second great fault. She had, once in her childhood, permitted a man to touch her. She had found her way out into the city, sneaking away while her nurse was preoccupied, and did not yet realize that all children were not princesses, or that there were different castes. She had come upon a laborer and touched his hand to get his attention. Then her nurse had caught up with her.

  The man had been an Untouchable-one of the casteless. There had been a serious row, and she had been subjected to a horrendous series of cleansings and ablutions to purify her from that hideous touch. The laborer, of course, had been summarily executed, and his family clubbed to death. But what she remembered most was the rage of her towering father: TWICE YOU HAVE FAILED ME!

  And Mym suffered another vision of a lovely head set on a spike. No! he thought. You did not know! You meant no harm!

  "That hardly mattered," she said. "Ignorance is no valid excuse." But emotion surged up within her bosom because of his supporting thought, and she had to fight it back down, for it was not what they sought.

  They spent the night together as before. This time Mym dreamed that he held her in his arms, as he was doing in reality, but the dream continued farther. He kissed her, and
then he began to undress her, and her flesh was warm and silken-smooth, and he sought to possess her-

  And wrenched himself awake. Reality had been mirroring his dream, and her body was open to his touch.

  Why did you not stop me? he demanded.

  "I tried-but couldn't," she whispered.

  I never forced a woman in my life!

  "Couldn't-make myself protest," she confessed.

  We must escape this place!

  "Of course," she agreed.

  But it was several more days before they discovered another way to make the attempt. High in the Castle, on a turret, birds of every description landed to take the pure water offered there. On occasion a very large bird came a roc.

  "That bird could carry us over the wall," Mym sang.

  "But wouldn't it consume us?"

  "Not if we let it know our nature. Man-eating rocs have been hunted to extinction; only safe ones remain."

  And so they climbed the myriad stairs to the high turret and brought there a large bag fashioned of net. When the roc came, they stood in the net, and Mym hurled the tie-rope out to snag in a claw. The startled bird took off with a great downdraft of air and hauled the bag up with it. They dangled precariously below, airborne.

  The roc climbed rapidly to the clouds. As they approached a cloud bank, a great face formed, and wintry air whooshed out of the mouth-hole. "If your fathers knew, they would blame each other," the cloud thundered. "Their Kingdoms would go to war, decimate each other, and become so weakened that the alien Mongul horde would sweep down, enslave both, and use their fair young women to satisfy the lusts of prize bulls and their men as flesh for dogs. Furthermore-"

  "Enough!" Rapture screamed, voicing Mym's thought.

  "Roc, set us down!"

  The big bird obligingly descended and settled back on the turret, where they cut away the net and retreated. They had failed again.

  "Tonight," Rapture said with grim determination, "and every night following, we must sleep apart."

  "But the demon-" he sang.

  "I fear the demon now less than I fear what will happen if we are together. I am weak, and you are merciful; we are at the limit of our resistance."

  And this was true. Surely the demon would not actually hurt her; it existed only to frighten her into obeying the design of the Castle.

  Rapture retired alone, but her fear spread throughout the Castle. Mym remained in his own suite, determined not to go to her unless she called. It was difficult.

  Yet what were they fighting? he asked himself. Their physical contact was urging them on to sexual fulfillment-but that was not the same as love. He had sex with concubines; he loved Orb. Wouldn't it be easier to treat Rapture as-

  No. She was, as she had said at the outset, no concubine. She was a Princess. She was not to be used and set aside.

  He thought about Orb- but now she seemed far away. Of course he loved only her-yet the cutting edge seemed to have been blunted. This Castle was working its sinister magic despite all he could do!

  It was not that Rapture was unworthy. She was, objectively, the equal of Orb. She was a Princess, as Orb was not, but Orb was self-assured, as Rapture was not. Orb could stand alone by day and by night; Rapture was forever vulnerable. That was a mark against her. What man wanted a totally dependent woman?

  He became aware of something else. He focused on it, and realized that it was Rapture's suppressed thought. She was trying to shield it, to prevent him from reading it-and that made him curious.

  THREE TIMES YOU HAVE FAILED ME!

  Mym saw another head upon a spike, and this time there was no doubt about its identity. It was Rapture's.

  He leaped up and charged to her suite. She was there, sitting naked on the bed, a knife at her breast. Now the muffled thought was clear to him. She was about to kill herself!

  "No!" he cried. "You must not!" He ran across and grabbed her hand just as the sharp point touched her flesh. A streak appeared, as she fought to complete the act.

  He forced her arm away, outward, but she clung to the knife with the strength of desperation. "Three times I have failed!" she cried.

  They fell to the bed, his left arm against her right, fighting for the knife. His face banged into her bosom, and he tasted the blood.

  Then a storm formed within him, as the blood brought on the berserker madness, bereft of his conscious control. He squeezed her wrist, causing the knife to fall away, and clutched her to him as the storm hurled them both into a chaos of passion.

  The madness spread to her own being, for they were inextricably linked in emotion as well as body. Her lips drew back from her pearly teeth and her eyes slitted. Something like the whine of a chained killer-animal sounded in her throat. Her jaws parted, and those strong teeth snapped at his shoulder. In a moment she had drawn his blood and tasted it. Reddish froth bubbled between her teeth.

  Then the storm intensified in their minds as their bodies strove against each other. Never before had Mym fought another berserker. Her strength and speed matched his, and her rage matched his. Whirling funnels developed, gouging out segments of the atmosphere, their ferocious winds screaming like banshees. His funnel advanced on hers, and hers met it eagerly, and the two danced about each other, seeking devastation.

  Then the two aspects of the storm charged together, while his teeth and hers attacked their physical targets. Their snarling mouths met and struggled for purchase, but could find none. Locked together, tooth against tooth, nullified, they paused. Now their tongues sought battle, wrestling against each other. The two storm-funnels merged, and their winds formed into an overlapping pattern, doubling the force.

  The coursing winds expanded, forming a larger funnel, a larger eye, bringing a new kind of order to the chaos of the storm. Steadily the air became organized into a huge circular pattern, savage in its force. And steadily their mouths, gnashing against each other, modified into a different kind of contact.

  In this whirling intensity and stasis the thoughts that were the most focused aspects of their feelings and experience were stripped of their clothing of qualification, and stretched out in full view before being dissipated. I expected a tough, callous, overbearing brute, who would ravish my body but never touch my soul, she thought involuntarily.

  And I expected a cold, aloof woman who would never risk her heart, he thought.

  Their lips were softening into a sustained, deep kiss.

  Or an inconsequential courtier type, of no practical use, perhaps more interested in young boys than in genuine women.

  Or a seductress, set to vamp any man regardless of his merit-a concubine in the likeness of a princess.

  The kiss intensified, and their bodies slowly relaxed against each other.

  But I found a decent and caring man, who tried to treat me with courtesy, though he loved elsewhere.

  And I found a woman who was competent and beautiful by day and vulnerable by night.

  I could have despised the brute or ignored the courtier. I could have ignored the aloof or used the seductress. And so she had discovered in him a man she could genuinely respect. But because of that, she did not wish to corrupt him. He had another love; she would not attempt to interfere with that, despite her mandate from her father. But her good intention was subverted by her female nature. When he protected her at night, she came to appreciate him more than she wished. Unable to prevent the development of what she strove to avoid, she had finally set out to solve the problem in the only way possible.

  That is why I have to die, her thought concluded. II is the only decent thing to do. I could not face my father, after failing him for the third time, but I could not allow myself to corrupt you.

  And he had discovered in her a woman the equal of the one he loved, and one he might have loved had he met her first. But because he did love another, he had no right to compromise this one. He had exerted his discipline to act with propriety, despite the devices of the Castle. When she had required protection at night, he had done w
hat was required-and no more.

  But I could not allow you to die, his thought concluded. That was no decent thing to do.

  And so their dilemma was upon them, for both knew that if she did not die, she would corrupt him. The ambience of the Castle made that inevitable.

  He did not like that term, "corrupt."

  And even if you did not love elsewhere, I would not be worthy of you, she thought. The one you love is strong, while I am weak.

  She is strong, while you are weak, he agreed. Therefore I must be sacrificed, that you may return to her.

  But Orb, he realized, could survive without him-because she was strong. A woman like her could have any man she chose. She had blessed him with her love and done more for him than any woman before had done but she did not truly need him. While Rapture could not, at this stage, survive without him.

  So let me die! she pleaded.

  Rapture loved him; this could no longer be concealed. So she chose to die, solving her problem and his. She had never sought the selfish way that would bring her the praise of her grim father; she had never tried to capture him, despite her emotion and her need of him.

  He considered her, while their bodies remained locked in the kiss and their emotions swirled in a monstrous pattern about them. Rapture was the perfect woman, except for her single great weakness, her dependence on him. She was terrified of being alone. Yet she had had the courage to do what she felt necessary-to abolish her own life, to free him. This had been no pretense, no play for sympathy; she had made her decision and sought to implement it. He was assured of this, for no false thoughts were possible here. The courage she lacked for herself, she had risen to in her effort to protect him. It is already too late, he realized. I would be dead now, if you had not prevented me! You would have been safe from corruption.

  I prevented it because I was already corrupted. Then he laughed, mentally, at the irony of the term.

  Even now, let me go and you will be free! she persisted. How can I be free by letting you die-when I love you? Like startled birds, her thoughts and emotions swirled, finding no anchorage. But I am weak where she is strong!