by Diana Rivers
Then, quicker than my eyes could follow, she drew some lengths of cord from under the bed. Before I was even aware of her intentions she had me bound to the bed posts by my wrists.
It startled me when I found myself helpless against those restraints. “Release me, Alyeeta,” I said angrily. “What sort of game are you playing here?”
“You will find release soon enough, Little One, soon enough, as soon as I am able,” she said, laughing as I twisted and struggled against those ropes. “But you must be patient. It may take me a little while. Do not be in such a hurry for release. Enjoy your little time in bonds. Give your power over to me for this moment. You will find it a great pleasure to be unburdened in this way.”
I was ready with a sharp answer, but when she leaned forward and dragged the soft coils of her hair along my body, brushing me everywhere with that feather-like touch, I could feel myself melting. With a groan I surrendered to her will, only to find that in another swift motion she had tied my ankles as well. So now I was bound hand and foot, naked on her bed while she loomed over me fully clothed, dark and oddly distorted in the quivering light of the lamp. She stood in such a way that she was in shadow.
I had indeed given over my power, or it had been taken. When she began running her hands up and down my body, I ceased to struggle. “This time you will remember everything,” she whispered again. I could sense her mind probing mine for my secret places and for a while gave myself over to enjoyment. She used her hands, her mouth, her tongue in such a way that I no longer knew if it was one who worked on me or many, with many hands and mouths. I lost the boundaries of myself in that wash of feelings, but each time I came close to release, begged for it in fact, she slowed almost to a halt. Each time, when she started again it was very, very slowly.
This seemed to go on forever, with me floating in some timeless place. Then suddenly all changed and shifted. The sensations were too strong, too sharp to bear. I struggled again against my bindings, gasping, “Too much, Alyeeta, too much! Stop, have mercy!” At my first cry her hands stilled. Her face, when I looked up at her, changed before my eyes. It took on a different aspect, lost its fierce, hungry look and turned remote and distant, or so it appeared from what little I could see, half-shadowed as she was. It seemed a stranger who stared down at me. I shivered and grew afraid. “Who are you? You are frightening me!” I gasped.
At that she straightened and said in her most mocking voice, “Oh, so the girl who is not afraid of wolves is frightened by a little loving.” She crossed her arms with her hands tucked up into her armpits, hidden away as if she meant never to use them again. I felt all her passion and power withdraw from me, tucked away with her hands. “Do you want me to stop, then?” Her voice seemed to come from a great distance.
I shook my head, needing her hands, her touch, regretting my quick words. “No, no, go on. Only be a little more gentle,” I said, almost in a whisper. She made no move and no sign that she had heard. By the way she stood now, she blocked all the light from her face. I could only see her outline, dark against the glare of it. “Please, please go on, Alyeeta,” I heard myself begging to this shadow woman. “Please touch me again,” I said, louder now in my desperation.
Still she did not move. Never in my life had I felt so naked as I did at that moment, lying bound and unclothed on Alyeeta’s bed, with no hand on me and no mouth. I was alone with my longing, stretched out, shivering with desire and fear, my own face and body clearly lit by the lamp while Alyeeta stood in the shadow. “Please, Alyeeta,” I begged again. “Please touch me. I had not really meant for you to stop.”
“But those were your words,” she said coldly. Since I could not see her face and so read her mood there, I thought she might be so angry as to never touch me again. I thought she might even leave me in that condition, to die of desire. My whole body was swollen with it. I could feel myself pulling toward her, straining at my bonds, my back arching with want, a terrible ache of need between my legs. “Please,” I said, pleading one last time, putting all my need in that one word.
With a sudden motion she shifted the lamp so that now her face was all in light, and just as quickly she tucked her hands away again. “Can you see me clearly? Watch my eyes,” she said in a strange voice, as if speaking a spell. “Watch my eyes. Do not look away even for a moment. Watch my eyes.”
I watched her eyes. I had no choice. I watched as her eyes traveled up and down the length of my body. Everywhere they touched me it felt like the touch of hands, but deeper, much deeper, hands inside my skin as well as on it. With all my senses quivering I followed those invisible hands. At moments I even saw my body through her eyes, my body laid out before her, flickering bronze in the firelight. At that time I had never been to the ocean, but later, when I was to feel the pull and swell of her tides, I remembered that night in Alyeeta’s bed when only her eyes touched me. Suddenly she leaned forward and put her face between my legs. At the touch of her tongue I cried out in release. The wolf howled an answer from her place in the clearing.
***
My first sight on waking that next day was of a toad sitting on the bedpost. It regarded me so thoughtfully with its hooded, gold-flecked eyes that I was tempted to nod and wish it good morning. I was alone there in the bed, my body pleasantly sore and languid. Man and wolf were gone, that I could sense. Alyeeta sat in the far corner of her house talking rapidly and in low tones to another woman. I lay listening. No matter how I tried I could not catch the meaning of their words, and so thought they spoke in a different language. Then Alyeeta said clearly in Kourmairi, “She is awake now.” This other woman stood up and walked over to look at me. I thought from her manner and from the way Alyeeta spoke with her that she must also be a Witch.
In appearance she looked older than Alyeeta, though I knew by now how little appearances meant with Witches. She was very thin, thinner than Pell, not thin and frail with age, but thin and hard like a branch of garswood such as farmers use to make their fences. Nothing can pass through garswood. It only hardens more with age. That was my first impression of Telakeet, that she would get harder and more impenetrable with age. She wore her gray hair short and tight like a cap or helmet on her head. Her face was dark and deeply lined. There was nothing soft or gentle there, nothing kind or forgiving in the unrelenting stare she turned on me as she peered down into my face. “She does not look to be so much after all, certainly nothing to frighten Zarns and set old women to chasing after her,” she said in a tone even more acid than Alyeeta at her worst.
I flushed with anger, pulling the covers up tight around me to protect my nakedness from her hostile stare. Alyeeta said something sharply in that other language. The Witch laughed and answered rudely, “Well enough if you like them that way.” Then she turned back to me and said, “I am Telakeet the Witch, and we will soon meet again.” With that she scooped up the toad from its post, slid it into her pouch, and was gone, slipping out of the room like a shadow before I could sit up to see her better.
Alyeeta came to sit by me, stroking my warm, sleep-softened flesh and looking hungrily at me. I shook free of her. “No, Alyeeta, enough. You will swallow up my soul. We have other things to do.” I was glad I could find the strength to resist. In truth, it was myself I was fighting as much as Alyeeta, for I could easily have sunk back upon that bed and fallen under her hands again. I did not think this was what Pell had sent me here to learn.
“Yes, true, it has been such a long time since there has been some good loving in my life that it is a danger. I could get drunk with it and lose all sense. We must get you ready. When Hereschell returns, you are to go with him and take a message to Pell.”
“Hereschell?” I said with surprise. “But how will he know the way?”
“Do you know the way? Did you mark it well when we came? Could you find your way back alone?”
Embarrassed, I had to shake my head at all her questions.
“Do you think I would send you into the woods with someone who would lose y
ou there or betray you to the guards or bring you to some harm?”
I shook my head again.
“Good, then it is settled.”
“But he is dumb,” I burst out, angry at having to state so obvious a truth.
“Dumb means silent, not stupid,” Alyeeta answered sharply. “He still has eyes to see and ears to hear, and the wolf is his nose. I know of no one better in the woods.” She sounded offended at my words.
A sudden cold fear gripped my heart. “Alyeeta, are you sending me away?”
“No child, it is already too late for that, far too late. I am sending you both together because Hereschell cannot go alone among those women with a message, and you cannot find the way by yourself. You can come back as soon as it is done.” With that she handed me a note that was folded and sealed, saying, “Keep this safe. Open it and read it to Pell when you get there.”
“What does it say?”
“You will find out when you read it.”
I got up and dressed myself with ill will and dread in my heart. When I went out, I was surprised to see the day already well on its way. At least the wolf would accompany us—that much was a pleasure to hold.
As we rode, the heavy silence between us became more and more oppressive. Yet what was there to say to one who could not answer? One who was mute and witless, though he held my life in his hands? It wearied me to even try to think of such a conversation. And as for speaking in thought, more response came back from rocks and trees than from this man. So, with Hereschell always in front and me coming doggedly behind trying to keep pace, we rode a long time with no words through a narrow, wooded way. This seemed like no way I had been before, but I did not try to judge; I merely followed. In spite of my hard lesson with Pell, I paid no heed to how we went. It felt to me as if all power in the matter had been taken out of my hands. Besides, exhausted as I was by my work with Alyeeta, and, truth be told, by the lovemaking as well, one tree or rock or hill looked much like another to me.
It had been well into the afternoon before we set out, with the sun already slanting low. This meant traveling in the dark or, worse yet, camping on the way. Considering the company, neither of these prospects pleased me, but when I had suggested we delay till morning, Alyeeta would not hear of it. I wondered if it was to humble me or to teach me something that she had sent me traveling on the road with a fool and a silent one at that.
At first Soneeshi ranged close by, sometimes to the left and sometimes to the right, but mostly within sight of us. It gave me much pleasure to watch her move. Often she seemed more like a swift, gray shadow than a being of fur and bone and flesh. For a while she disappeared on her own affairs and was gone so long I began to worry. When she appeared again, a silent gray shape moving far to the left of us, I felt a surge of joy and relief. I looked at Hereschell’s ragged back bent before me, and in spite of my hard feelings toward him, I thought, anyone who has such a way with wolves cannot be altogether worthless.
“Anyone who has such a way with wolves cannot be altogether worthless.” The words were said aloud as if in that instant they had been plucked from my brain. Hereschell had turned back to look at me with a grin on his face and sharp, mocking wit in his eyes. I could have fallen from my horse in amazement. I would have been no more surprised if it had been his horse that spoke those words to me.
“You saw into my head,” I said angrily, feeling both tricked and intruded upon.
“Yes, I can read minds when I need to. You and I thought almost the same thing at the same time. It is true that Soneeshi comes to no one else but me, not since Korbin died. You may be a rude Ganjar, but there must be something more to you as well.”
“And you speak. I thought you silent.” I said stupidly, trying to cover my confusion.
“When it suits me I speak.”
“Why did Alyeeta not tell me?”
“Because it is for me to speak or not to speak, my choice to make, not Alyeeta’s.”
“But why, for what purpose, do you play the fool?”
“It saves me a great deal of nonsense with the Ganjar to pretend that I am dumb. Also I learn many secrets, some of them valuable to Wanderers. You cannot imagine the things that are said in front of me by those who think me stupid as well as silent.”
I blushed at those words. I was in an agony of embarrassment now for the things I had said to Alyeeta in front of this man and even more for the things I had thought. Damn her, anyhow—she could at least have silenced me.
“I feel in you a great confusion of regret for all you have said and thought of me. Why bother? Regret is for the real fools. The way to go is forward. Let us teach each other stories and enjoy this ride we have together, since for the sake of the wolf I have chosen to speak to you, something I do not do for many Ganja, very few, in fact. Or perhaps it is not for the wolf, but for the sake of our friend Alyeeta who shared love with a young fool so many years ago. Either way it is an honor, and you may take it as such.” He nodded his head in a slight bow.
I stared in amazement at this man, dirty and ragged and with his hair in mats, who spoke like a Highborn lord in disguise, such as those in the childtales told in our village. He stared back at me with such fierce intelligence in his eyes that it made me want to look away, but I determined to hold his glance.
“You are not a Ganja,” he said at last. “Alyeeta is right about that. You are something new, something worth studying, perhaps.”
“And you,” I said, stung by his arrogance. “You are not a fool, and you are not a wolf, however you may seem. What are you, then?”
“A Wanderer.”
“Ah, yes. Wanderers used to pass through our village sometimes. Pell has spoken to me of the Wanderers.”
“So then, I suppose, you know all about us.” I heard such bitterness in his voice it startled me.
“I know what is said,” I answered curtly. “Now tell me what you think to be the truth.”
He had turned back and was looking straight ahead. He was silent for so long I thought he would not deign to speak to me again. I could not help but notice how straight he sat his horse now that he no longer played the fool. Finally, out of boredom, when this renewed silence had gnawed at me long enough, I asked, “Who takes up a Wanderer’s life and for what reason?”
I was still not sure he would answer, till finally, without turning his head, he said, “Different ones and for many different reasons. The younger son of an uppercaste Shokarn family, for instance, one who can expect to inherit little or nothing, not the house, nor the land, nor the money, nor the title, and yet is untrained for a trade and so must live on his older brother’s charity. Such a one sees no expectations before him and may find a Wanderer’s life more promising. Or the youngest child in a peasant’s but where there is already a crowded table. That one may be left in the hills for the wolves or the birds-of-death. When the Wanderers find such a child they will take it to raise in their own way. Many a mother has prayed, in spite of her fears, for the Wanderers to pass through. Or think of the young woman sold by her family in marriage, or not even in marriage, to a man she abhors. What can she hope for from such a life? With the Wanderers she can slip free of her fate. Or the woman who sees before her years of being beaten by her husband and finds some way to escape her marriage, yet must flee her village as well. The villagers will only send her back to be beaten again, even if it means her death. Such a one may come among us and find protection in ‘The Code.’ Then, of course, the Wanderers themselves come together and make children who may become Wanderers as well.”
“And you?” I asked, thinking he might be one of those Highborn younger sons.
“I was one of those left for the wolves.”
Left for the wolves—I hoped that might mean some story that would last us the rest of the way. It was almost dark by then. In the gloom before us I could barely make out a piece of road we would soon need to cross. Just as we were starting down the last steep part of the path, the wolf growled and crouched low. I
nstantly Hereschell swung his horse about, squeezed past me on the path, and signaled me to follow him back up the slope to the safety of some large rocks. There he leapt off his horse, scrambled up the largest rock, and lay flat out on the top, turning his head this way and that as if sniffing the wind. The wolf was still growling low in her throat. Except for that, there was only the silence of night around us. Then, far off, I heard the sound of horses. With a chill of fear I dropped off Marshlegs and pulled us both behind the shelter of the boulder to wait for those men to pass. Instead, they seemed to stop and gather on the road below us. Soon I heard horses coming from the other direction as well. Hereschell dropped down beside me and said with disgust, “By the Mother, do they mean to camp below us right at the crossing?” We listened for a while in silence. It seemed as if rather than leaving, more and more riders were joining them.
“Come,” Hereschell said at last as he swung back onto his horse. “There is no use waiting here. Who knows what they plan to do? We will go back and camp in a little valley I know. In the early morning we will ride across the river instead of going by the road.”
All my worst fears had come true, but it no longer mattered. As I rode up next to him he said, “Good thing we were not in the middle of crossing that road with such a mob of them coming from all sides. We Wanderers do not have the same powers of protection you are blessed with. For myself, I prefer a more peaceful way to pass the night than playing chase with men and horses in the dark.”
We camped in a tight circle of boulders with just room enough between for the horses to pass through, such a circle as might have been made by the Old Ones and left for us to puzzle on. I was afraid the firelight would betray us, but Hereschell hid his fire well. He dug a little pit for it in the sheltering curve of the largest boulder, the one that towered far over our heads and hid the stars in that direction. While we sat huddled together in this shelter he boiled water, cutting into it chunks from a large lump of hard, gray stuff. After a time of stirring, this turned into a gray gruel. Though the smell was pleasant enough, the sight of it near took my appetite away. “Eat,” he said gruffly when it was done. “It is better than it looks. If nothing else it is hot and filling.”
