"I'll live, and you'll die."
The lights came. The pretty, pretty lights. Tayes stopped crying when she saw the lights, when they brushed against her downy cheeks, her silken hair. Tayes laughed.
Liendir loosened his grip on Jarenne's neck and whispered, "Look, Mamma. Oh, look."
The lights came. Soft and pale and beautiful, they swirled down like a hundred thousand stars transformed into snow. They touched skin and clothes, like butterflies landing.
And after them came the pain.
Thirteen
Jay's nightmares flowed together, eerie Daliesque jumbles that included blood and bones; a hunter, blue-gray-golden eyes and fangs and cat-clawed hands and an aching alien beauty; a dreadful stench; an overpowering feeling of searching malevolence that was both dark and light, both hideous and beautiful. And woven through it all, like the sign to Peter after he betrayed Christ, or like the voice of the oracle of some pagan temple, was the crowing of a cock.
A pinpoint of light touched her right eyelid, and something sharp and heavy scratched its way across her arm. Jayjay woke to find herself eye to eye with the skinniest, evilest chicken she'd ever seen. When she moved, it glared at her and the dirty black feathers around its neck stood out. It lowered its head and spread its wings.
She hated chickens.
"Hah!" she whispered, and flapped her arms at it. It took a peck at her, got a finger, drew blood, then withdrew when she yelped and flailed at it with hands and feet. Jay glared after the retreating fowl. "There seems to be some confusion over which of us is going to have the other for lunch, bird."
Behind her, Sophie laughed. "Impressive. I had no idea you had such a way with chickens."
Jay sucked on her bleeding finger and turned to find her friend awake and watching her. "You put it up to that, didn't you?"
Sophie grinned at her. "You bet. My way of thanking you for the bathrooms."
Jayjay winced. "Where might those be, incidentally?"
"Just guess."
"Uh-oh. Chamber pot?"
"Dear…a chamber pot would be high society compared to this."
Jay bit her lip. "Outhouse?"
"Did you see an outhouse when we got here?"
"No."
"Nor will you."
"Worse than an outhouse?"
Sophie pointed to the little square of oilskin that covered the window to the loft where they—and many chickens—had spent the night. "If we could see out the windows, I could show it to you." She bared her teeth in a smile that would have looked at home on a werewolf. "It's lovely. This little trench dug into the dirt over there near the trees. You put one foot on either side and—" She closed her eyes and shuddered. "—and you squat. And these lovely facilities aren't in the woods, where you might have a bit of cover…oh, no! They're simply near the woods."
"The guide did say that Inzo wasn't really recommended," Jayjay said. She felt guilty that Sophie wasn't having a lot of fun; she wanted her friend to get back to being herself again. She had hoped a wonderful vacation would do the trick. "The cities will be more exciting."
"I don't know how much more excitement I can stand." Sophie glared at another of the skinny, temperamental chickens. "Oh, yeah. And be sure to take a handful of leaves with you; I gather that none of Inzo's brilliant inventors have gotten around to toilet paper yet."
"Oh…wonderful."
Jayjay headed for the edge of the woods, recalling that mornings were not Sophie's best time. After discovering what passed for plumbing in Inzo, though, she found herself in agreement. The little ditch had nothing quaint about it.
She stood, feeling grungy and smelly. She would have paid good money for the use of a bathtub; and she would have bet the gold in her money belt no such thing existed in the village.
She sighed and looked over Inzo. In the daylight it was obviously more dusty and dirty and poor than it had been at night. She'd seen poor; the palm-leaf shacks in the mountain villages of Guatemala filled with naked, potbellied kids and men and women who were old and worn at thirty had clung to her memory for years. But even in those remote mountain villages, she'd seen television antennas. Power lines. A few cars. Even in the smallest of villages, not everybody had been poor.
In her entire life, she'd never seen the sort of poverty that existed in Inzo. These people had nothing.
This probably isn't the place I should have taken us first.
She hooked her thumbs into the belt of her tunic and turned her back on Inzo. The village sat on the fringe of forest; the fields through which she and Sophie had ridden the night before ended abruptly in a wall of trees. Fifty men could have held hands around the trunks of some of those venerable trees; Jayjay didn't doubt for an instant that the biggest of those weathered giants had been standing when Christopher Columbus sailed out of Portugal in search of his shortcut to the East Indies.
She stared through the green velvet shadows at a clearing some distance in; pencils of golden light slanted onto the inviting perch of a huge, moss-covered rock. Flashes of pale yellow and rich purple fluttered in and out of the light—butterflies of several varieties that drank nectar from clouds of tiny white flowers growing at the base of the boulder. Even from where she stood she could see the rainbow sparkles of light shimmering through the dew. It could have been Eden.
The feeling that she'd found her true home returned to her. She forgot the squalor and poverty of Inzo; the beauty of the ancient forest washed it all away. She vaguely recalled some comments about the forest from her Fodor's, mention that the wildlife in it still included a few creatures extinct in the rest of Western Europe—creatures that could kill humans. Wherever the big predators hunted, she couldn't imagine them being anywhere near that beautiful clearing.
How could Sophie have missed this? she wondered. That single vista made the scratchy straw-filled mattress thrown directly onto the hand-planed boards of the loft a nonissue. It made sleeping with chickens irrelevant. It made missing a hot bath…well, Jay still wanted a hot bath, but she figured she would live until she and Sophie got to Zearn or Rikes Gate.
She started into the trees, toward that clearing. She wanted to sit on the rock and watch the butterflies for a while before she and Sophie had to get back on horseback and ride to the next town. It would make up for missing the bath.
The feeling of home grew in her—the certainty that she had been waiting all her life to find this place. She stepped onto the deep humus of the forest floor with a happy sigh, and rested one hand against the trunk of an ancient tree. Light sparkled around her—the effect of a slight breeze moving the leaves in the canopy above, no doubt, but still an enchanting sight.
She thought, I could stay here forever, and she fancied the forest sighed a deep, contented "yes."
"JAY-JAAAYYYY!!!"
Sophie's voice, shrill and panicky, shattered her fantasy. Go away, Jay thought. The clearing and its dappled sunlight and dancing butterflies beckoned, promising lazy contentment. I'm on vacation and I want to relax. I want to forget. The little glade promised forgetfulness.
"Jay-JAAAYYYY!!! Where are you?"
Jay sighed and turned back toward Inzo. She was surprised to find herself so far from the cottages; the clearing must have been much further than it looked, for while she could no longer see any part of the little village, the clearing still looked no nearer. "I'm coming!"
"Where are you?" Sophie shouted again.
"I only walked into the woods for a minute." Jesus, I really walked into the woods, too. She trudged over logs and through thickets she hadn't remembered at all. How did I get through this? She looked at her arms, puzzled. Her forearms bore scratches, mute testimony to the fact that she had waded through thorns and thickets…oblivious.
She frowned, annoyed with herself. She frequently found bruises on her arms and legs, and had no idea where they'd come from. One of her facts of life; she concentrated so hard on whatever she was doing that little things like pain didn't get a chance to intrude.
&
nbsp; Through the trees, she saw the roof of Retireti's cottage; behind her something growled. The hair on the back of her neck stood up and she shivered; that growl, nearby and angry, resonated in a sub-bass timbre that made her think the creature making it might have been a wolf. Maybe a grizzly. Or something bigger. What was bigger than a grizzly?
She didn't know, and she didn't want to find out. She fought her way through the thickets, praying.
"Are you going to tromp around in there all day?" Sophie sounded close, but Jayjay couldn't see her. Perhaps she stood behind one of the massive trees.
Jay pushed uphill through vicious briars, astounded that the last few yards of her retreat could be so hellish. She could not possibly have come in the same way she was leaving—she'd evidently gone in on a cleared path and come out off of it—but she couldn't remember seeing anything that rough looking when she'd admired the butterfly clearing.
Jayjay broke free of the forest.
"Oh, there you are!"
Sophie moved. She had been in plain view, standing next to a tree; why neither she nor Jay had seen each other, Jay couldn't understand.
"Here I am," she agreed. She gasped for breath and her heart thudded beneath her breastbone.
"Jesus, Jayjay, what happened to you?"
Sophie stared at her with disbelief in her eyes. Jay looked down at herself; her arms bled, her peasant clothes were rent in several places. "I went walking in the woods," she said, feeling the explanation was lame even as she gave it. "I got snagged in some thorns on my way back."
"Where?" Sophie looked into the forest, back along the route Jayjay had taken.
She turned and pointed. "Right—" There, she had meant to say. But the deep, placid woods behind her grew clear as a park, the leaf mold and humus making a rolling golden-brown carpet from which the great trees arched up like pillars in an Old World cathedral; the clearing with its butterflies lay near them, the way to it unobstructed by any underbrush. Jayjay frowned and studied the woods to either side of the clearing. They were as free from underbrush as the manicured grounds of a park. She looked for the slope she'd had to climb, but couldn't find that either.
She stared down at her arms. The gashes in them still welled with drops of bright red blood. She could still see her skin through the rips in her sleeves, too.
"What…in…the world…?" She turned to Sophie and saw her own confusion reflected in her friend's face. "All I can tell you is, it's a lot rougher in there than it looks." She shook her head slowly, then shrugged and grinned.
"You always were like that," Sophie mused. "You would come in filthy from walking down to the end of the drive to get your mail; I remember your mother looking at you like she'd gotten you from Mars, and was thinking of sending you back."
Jayjay laughed. "Some things never change." She was not buying the "Jayjay from Mars" explanation to whatever had happened in the woods, but she didn't intend to make a big deal out of it in front of Sophie, either. The trip had already been pretty odd, and if it got any stranger, Sophie would decide to cancel Glenraven entirely and go to Spain or something. Jayjay refused to let that happen. Glenraven had been sitting in its little valley forever, waiting for the two of them to find it. Jay intended to make the most of her discovery, no matter how bewildering it might be.
Fourteen
"Did you see the look on his face when you gave him that one tiny coin? I thought his eyes were going to fall on the ground." Sophie shifted her weight in the saddle and twisted around to get at her canteen.
Jayjay's big bay gelding ambled beside hers. Jayjay slouched against the high cantle of her saddle; she rode only slightly more gracefully than a bag of bricks would have, but Sophie kept this opinion to herself.
Jayjay snapped out of her reverie. "Huh? Oh…yes. I think I overpaid for the room. When I looked in the Glenraven guide, I found out money goes a lot farther here than I'd thought."
Sophie sipped the water. It was already lukewarm and tasted of the metal canteen, of grit and mud and the tablet she'd dumped in it to rid it of anything noxious. She felt wonderful. They'd shaken off whatever trouble Lestovru had planned for them, and if Coke in a can would have tasted a million times better, so what? She couldn't have had that riding on a superlative horse through this undiscovered patch of God's own country. "Retireti certainly seemed happy. You gave him about five dollars for the two of us, didn't you?"
"Yes. That included the bean-soup breakfast."
About ten times what the accommodations were worth, Sophie thought; but that was uncharitable. Retireti hadn't been running an inn. She'd realized that when she saw the place. He'd been putting them up in his home—two uninvited strangers. He'd cooked them breakfast, carried on an endless chatty unintelligible conversation, kept his hands to himself. And he had been profoundly grateful for the lousy little five-buck coin Jayjay had pressed into his hand as they were leaving. He'd given them the best he had, and if that wasn't much, it also wasn't his fault.
She glanced over at Jay, who had tied her reins together and looped them over the low, flat pommel of her saddle, and who, still bricklike in the extreme, sat thumbing through the Glenraven guide.
"So what's next, O mighty explorer?"
"I'm debating." Jayjay didn't bother looking up from her pages. "We should come to the intersection any time now; then we can either go left to Rikes Gate or right to Zearn. The guide recommends both places. Rikes Gate has the Sarijann Castle. We had reservations to spend the night there."
"Castle? You booked us into a castle?"
Jay grinned over at her. "You bet. Sarijann is one of the highest-rated castles in Glenraven. I figured we deserved it. We're traveling first class."
"I would have believed you if I hadn't awakened with a chicken on my chest."
"That was an aberration. We were simply being cautious; I mean, you wouldn't have wanted to run into an ambush, would you?"
Sophie reconsidered the likelihood of an ambush; in the warm light of day, riding along the peaceful dirt road with cultivated fields to either side of her, she couldn't imagine why she had been so frightened the night before. She felt confident they would discover a logical explanation for the bizarre events of the previous night. But she nodded and, straight-faced, said, "Nope. I wouldn't have wanted to get ambushed."
Jay was still reading. "Rikes Gate also has an open-air market, some interesting little shops, a couple of taverns that come highly recommended, and the Walled Sector, which sounds cool. Zearn has something called an Aptogurria—I can't figure out from the description what it is exactly—and a mine and a lake and road-houses. And another open-air market; this one is supposed to have a lot of textiles. No castle, but it does have two fortresses—Kewimell and Doselt. Both are still in use, and the Fodor's says Kewimell has unique architecture. And we could rent a boat to go on the lake."
Sophie thought about the castle. She would have loved spending the night in a castle. "Any chance we could get a room at Sarijann Castle tonight, without reservations?"
Jayjay sighed. "I don't think so. Those reservations were hard to get. I do have us booked into another castle in a couple of days, though. That one is a pretty little castle built right in the middle of a lake in Dinnos. We're supposed to have a luxury suite. Rikes Gate would really be backtracking, anyway."
For as long as Sophie had known Jay, her philosophy had always seemed to boil down to the two-word maxim, never backtrack. Push ahead, forge on, keep moving. Never cover the same ground twice. Sophie didn't want to battle Jay's psychological momentum over the now-unlikely possibility of a night in a castle. "Let's go on to Zearn, then." She looked over at her friend, who'd finally put the book back in her pack. "I want to know something, Jay."
"What's that?" Jayjay grinned.
"Why didn't you ever tell me about Bill and Stacey and Steven?"
"I did tell you." Jay's grin vanished and she looked away. "I told you yesterday."
"That isn't what I mean. I knew you before you had front teeth,
Jay. We shared classes and teachers and makeup. Jesus…we both kissed Bob Blatzmeir. I've known all three of your husbands through you. If I'd had something that big going on in my life, I would have told you."
Jay glanced sidelong at her and raised a single eyebrow, but she didn't say anything. The corner of her mouth curved up in a tiny half-smile.
Sophie looked away and swallowed hard; the lie stuck in her throat. She felt the heat rise to her cheeks and hoped she wasn't blushing. Did Jay know? From the look in her eyes, Sophie would almost think so, but how could Jay know? She took a deep breath. Or had Jayjay Bennington once again come up with the perfect way of sidetracking the conversation? That was most likely the explanation. "I really want an answer, Jayjay. If your husbands were awful, why didn't you say something? Maybe I could have helped."
For a long, uncomfortable moment, the horses plodded along the dirt road and Jay kept her silence. Then she cleared her throat and stared straight ahead. "Soph, there are people in this world who get a big thrill out of pity, but I'm not one of them. I never told you—I never told my folks—I never told anybody. I never wanted to have somebody whisper behind my back, 'Oh, poor Julie, she married such a shit…did you hear that he beat her?' I never wanted that." Jayjay's expression turned stubborn. "I figured it was better to be the goat than the sheep. So when my marriages went sour, I smiled and talked about made-up lurid affairs to people I knew couldn't keep secrets, and sooner or later the word got back to the husbands and…pfffftt!…Mr. I-Want-A-Divorce-You-Bitch came barreling through the door." Sophie found Jay's humorless smile unnerving.
"That hardly put you in the best light for a divorce settlement."
"I didn't want anything from either of them except out. I could take care of myself then, and I can take care of myself now." She turned in the saddle and looked at Sophie, her eyes ferocious. "I'm nobody's victim, and I won't be treated like I am."
Marion Zimmer Bradley & Holly Lisle - [Glenraven 01] Page 8
