"Aye. We depend much on thee, in both thy forms. More I may not say."
They left the chamber. Flach, troubled, let Nepe take over. He knew why Trool was not telling him more: so he could not betray others who might be pan of it, if he got caught. Just as the vamp-girl would not be told her role. At least it meant that the elders were doing what they could.
Nepe behaved in a childlike manner, except when she flirted with Alien, pretending that all was well. But she knew it wasn"t. Her sleep that night was uneasy. How bad was it going to be, if all the major figures of the planet were to be taken captive? And what had bothered Neysa so much that she had interrupted even this mission to talk to Brown alone? Trool said it did not affect Nepe or Flach"s own mission, but she wasn"t sure. Anything their grandam took seriously affected them.
4 - Shame
Neysa arrived back at the Brown Demesnes, in the same chamber as before. She knocked on the wall, signaling her return, and waited. In a moment Brown was there.
"I thank thee for coming back so soon," Brown said. "I be distraught for lack o" company."
"Needs must we talk alone," Neysa said. "I fear that can not be here, near the Adepts."
"Aye. They be under geis, but they hear."
"Will thy castle keep, in thine absence?"
"A few hours."
"Then march us to my Herd."
"Aye." They walked to the front storage chamber of the castle, where a.s.sorted wooden golems stood idle. "Franken," Brown said.
A huge and spectacularly ugly golem stirred. It was in the likeness of an ancient Earth monster said to have been crafted in a laboratory. The name was a misnomer, because it was the doctor, not the monster, who had been called Frankenstein, but for this offhand use it sufficed.
Franken picked Brown up. Neysa a.s.sumed her firefly form and flew up to perch on the golem"s head. Franken tramped out of the castle, faced the setting sun, and proceeded at cruising velocity. That was faster than a unicorn could run, because the golem was big and indefatigable. The landscape pa.s.sed at a horrendous rate. To Neysa, perched on the head and hunching down to avoid the rush of wind, it seemed most like an image in Agnes" mind: that of an airplane flying low over the terrain, coming in for a landing at a dome. Such machines were fewer now, because of concern about pollution; less wasteful means were employed to travel. But Agnes had been in Proton during the old days, and ridden such machines many times. She remembered.
At dusk they reached the spot where the Herd was grazing. Clip charged up, but recognized the golem and relaxed. Neysa flew down, a.s.sumed her nature form, and conferred with her brother in horn talk.
"Brown and I needs must converse in private for a time."
"Graze in the center; none will hear."
"Our thanks to thee, sibling."
"There be an ill wind coming."
"Aye."
She trotted back to the golem, now waiting like the wooden statue it was. She a.s.sumed human form. "Walk with me within the Herd," she told Brown. "Magic penetrates not there, an we will it not."
Brown dismounted. They walked among the unicorns, who ignored them, each grazing a particular section. In the center was a broad area, already grazed.
"Thou dost be pensive, and the prisoners be flip," Neysa said. "Be the geis slipping?"
"Nay, it be tight," Brown said. "They can harm me not."
"But there be aught. I felt it as we arrived, and when I saw them, I knew. Thy strait be dire. Willst tell me?"
"Mayhap I will harm myself."
Neysa shook her head, unpleasantly perplexed. "At their behest? How can that be?"
"Willst make oath o" silence?"
"Be it that bad?"
"Not to thee, mayhap."
"I make the oath." And from her proceeded a tiny ripple, barely visible in the twilight, but significant: the splash of truth.
"Then will I tell thee what may please thee not," Brown said. "It be with relief I tell, for the secret consumes me. Yet, an thou have patience, needs must I tell it mine own way."
"Then ride me while I graze," Neysa said. "My patience be endless then." She a.s.sumed her natural form.
Brown mounted her, and began to talk. Neysa listened, and let her mind clothe the narration with the details she knew. It was a tale that should have amazed her, yet somehow did not, for it answered much that would have puzzled her had she thought to ponder it.
Brown was a child of eight when she ran away from home. That was not her name then, but her name didn"t matter. It wasn"t because her mother beat her; all the children of her village were beaten as a matter of policy. It wasn"t that she often went hungry; that too was common, when the goblins raided the village stores. It wasn"t that her father intended to betroth her to a fat merchant"s son; that was a satisfactory placement as such things went. It could have been that the gang of boys was making her take off her clothes and do things with them she neither understood nor enjoyed; but that happened to any girl they caught; and hardly a girl escaped at least one such session before she came of age to marry. Some had been caught many times, because their houses were beyond the lighted fringe of the village, and the boys lurked in ambush. Some even claimed to like it, though Brown suspected they were merely covering the hurt with bravado. Brown made no bones about not liking it, but it didn"t matter; if they caught her, they did it. She had become canny, so had been caught only three times. She often walked home through the woods, because she liked the trees, and the trees liked her. When the boys tried to ambush her there, a tree would arrange to snap a dropped branch under one of their feet, alerting her. Then she would reroute, and avoid them, and if they set out in direct pursuit she would shinny up a tree, knowing how to do it without getting scratched. If they tried to climb after her, they would snag seemingly by accident on the twig stubs and thorns, and the tree-ants would bite them. The trees were her friends, and the trees were not the boys" friends; that made all the difference.
No, none of these things drove her out. It was when she started making things from the wood of the trees that the trouble came. Because she liked trees, she liked wood, and the trees did not mind if she took their deadwood and worked with it. She made herself a doll from an old curly knot, and it kept her company at night; they told each other stories. She fashioned a pretend dog from a twisted fragment of a stump whose roots projected like legs and a tail. She had always wanted a dog, but never had one. So she adjusted the legs, and used charcoal to paint fur, and affixed old b.u.t.tons for eyes, and wooden pegs for ears, and splinters for teeth, and she had her pet. She named it Woodruff.
It was when she started taking Woodruff for walks that the trouble began. The boys ambushed her, and Woodruff growled them off. When that got around, her father got nervous. He tried to throw the dog out, but it hid under the bed and growled. He used a broom to push it out, and kicked the dog, and Woodruff bit him on the leg. So he smashed it to pieces with the axe. Brown came home from lessons and found the sundered pieces. That was when she ran away, blinded by tears, taking only her doll.
But it was evening when she left, and night in the forest. The trees did not seem nearly as friendly at night, and it was cold. Her strait, as Neysa was later to put it, was dire. She had either to return home and take her punishment, which would be horrendous, or continue on, and perhaps perish in the wilderness. She could hear big animals prowling, and was terrified.
The animals were wolves, who ranged these parts and did not get along with the villagers. But they were werewolves, and Brown was obviously a child in distress. A b.i.t.c.h changed to human form and took her in. When they learned that Brown had run away and would die rather than go back to the village, because her brute father had killed her pet dog, the other wolves became more friendly. But though they could succor her for a night or two, they could not keep her. She was not a were, and would not be able to hunt with the Pack. Their leader, Kurrelgyre, was in exile because he had refused to slay his aging sire in the werewolf way, and things were in disarray already.
But there was someone who might be able to take her in. He was the Brown Adept, who lived in a wooden castle not far off. "Adept!" she cried, terrified anew. Everyone knew how terrible the Adepts were.
The wolves a.s.sured her that this one was kind to animals, as was the Blue Adept. He would not hurt her, and if she did not want to stay, he might help her go to the Blue Adept, who they understood had a beautiful and kind wife, the Lady Blue.
The huge golems were a forbidding sight, but they let the b.i.t.c.h and girl pa.s.s. The Brown Adept was a gnarled old man, his long brown beard turning white. "But I don"t know the first thing about taking care of a child!" he protested.
Brown, catching on that he was a woodworker, turned positive. "I can feed myself, if there be food," she said. "I will be not much bother, honest, if thou dost mind not my playing with thy wood dolls."
Wood dolls? The golems were huge and ugly, a sight to frighten any normal child. The Brown Adept reconsidered. Perhaps he could let her stay for a few days.
That was the start of a friendship that quickly became an apprenticeship. The Brown Adept recognized in the child the talent to work magically with wood. He had no family and there was no one to take his place. He had thought that his Demesnes would simply fade away after his death; now he saw that they could continue. He showed the girl how to fashion the wooden golems, the way their bodies were pegged together so that they could move without falling apart. He showed her how to supervise the existing golems in their foraging for the proper kinds of wood. No live tree was ever taken, but a freshly dead one was harvested as soon as possible, so that the wood would not rot.
Soon she made another wooden dog-only instead of adapting this one from a gnarled stump, she made it from solid wood, with strong and jointed pegs. He showed her how to make the dog heel at her command, so that it would not bite anyone unless she told it to. As for her doll-that had been his first clue that she had the necessary talent, because it had taken him years to make his golems talk, yet she had done it with her first one.
It was a great time, for a year. But the Adept was old and growing older. He had been hanging on to his health with the help of amulets he had traded from the Red Adept, but even these could not keep him going forever. "I am going to die," he told her. "Thou must be the Brown Adept. Do not let others know I be gone, until thou hast grown into thy full strength, else they may try to destroy these Demesnes in thy weakness."
"But I be not ready!" she protested tearfully. "Thou must live longer, Grandpa Brown!" For so she called him now, having adopted him in lieu of the family she had thrown away.
"Alas, I can not," he told her. "But this I needs must say: thou has made my last year a delight, and banished my loneliness. For that I thank thee, lovely child."
"Thou has been good to me too!" she said. "Ne"er didst thou beat me or starve me or do to me what the village louts did."
"An I had known o" those things, I would have sent my golems into the village to slay those evil folk," he said, grimacing.
"Grandpa Brown, I beg thee, leave me not!"
He squeezed her firm little hand in his worn brown hand. "It were not my choice, O sweet girl." Then he died.
She wept. Then she told a big golem to take him out and bury him under the garden. It was the onset of her Adept status-and her awful loneliness, which he had unwittingly bequeathed to her.
She had her doll and dog and the other golems for company, but none of them were alive. She did not dare let it be known that the old Adept was gone, for fear of an attack by others, as he had warned her. She didn"t even tell the werewolves, though they were her friends; she pretended she was merely running errands for her master, who was busy making more golems. She managed, but she wasn"t happy.
So it was for a year. She learned to make and handle the golems better, but knew she had more to learn. She longed for living company, but even when she dealt with others, trading golems for food and other staples (in the name of her master), she never got personal. She didn"t dare.
Then the Blue Adept raided her Demesnes. At first she was afraid of him, and tried to drive him out, but he destroyed her defenses with his magic and had her at his mercy. But then he turned out to be a nice person, and helped her. He had somehow thought that she was a bad Adept who had attacked him, because one of the golems had been fashioned in his likeness and tried to take his place. He was a very small man who called himself Stile, and he was even newer as an Adept than she was. He had a small unicorn with him, the first she had met up close, and she was nice too. Her horn sounded like a harmonica, and her music was wonderful.
"And that were the onset o" our friendship, Neysa," she said. "Thirty years gone. Much has it meant to me."
Neysa, grazing, blew an affirmative note. She remembered their meeting, but had never heard it from Brown"s point of view before.
"I were just ten then, but suddenly I knew love," Brown continued. "I loved the Adept Stile, but kept it secret, knowing it were laughable. He had the Lady Blue."
"I loved him too," Neysa said in horn talk. "And I an animal."
"Child and animal-how could we compete?" Brown asked rhetorically, and Neysa agreed.
Stile went on about his business, in due course, destroying the Red Adept, who had killed his other self. In those days only a person who had lost his otherframe self could cross between the frames; that was why Stile had been able to cross from Proton. Then Stile became a Citizen in Proton, and the Contrary Citizens opposed him, as well as the Adverse Adepts. Brown of course helped him all she could. She would have done anything for him, but he treated her with perfect courtesy like the child she was, never knowing her love. Finally he saved the frames from the depredations of the bad Citizens and Adepts by separating Phaze from Proton. He restored the body of his other self, the original Blue Adept, and made ready to return to Proton and to the robot lady Sheen, who loved him (of course!) but whom he did not love. (How could he love any other, with the Lady Blue? How well they all understood!) Here it was that Brown betrayed him in her fashion. She had temporary access to the great Book of Magic, and made a spell to reverse things so that it was Blue who went to Proton, and Stile who stayed in Phaze, where he longed to be.
There, separated, the frames remained, for about twenty years, until Stile"s son Bane exchanged places with his other self, the robot Mach. That set off a complicated sequence, and renewed the warfare between Citizens and Adepts, as the bad ones tried to grab power. After most of another decade, Stile went the opposite route: he summoned the Adept Clef, and the Platinum Flute, and they merged the frames.
But in the long quiet periods between Adept wars, Brown remained alone. She no longer had to hide the loss of her predecessor, and she mastered the control of the golems, but her life was mostly empty. For now she found that isolation was not just a temporary state; it was standard for Adepts. Those few who were married were extremely fortunate; the others existed in increasing private bitterness, for all normal folk were afraid of them.
With reason. After the third a.s.sa.s.sination attempt against her, Brown knew better than to trust any stranger even slightly. She a.s.sociated only with other Adepts, whom she mostly detested, and with the werewolves of the local Pack. They, at least, could be trusted. But that did not mean they were close. They were invariably polite and accommodating, but they had their own lives and commitments, and she realized that she was imposing when she visited them too often.
Then she broke her foot. It was a stupid accident with a golem. She had had it carry her to the Red Adept"s castle-Stile had arranged to install Trool the Troll in those Demesnes, and to her surprise the troll turned out to be an excellent Adept and excellent man-so that they could make arrangements for further exchanges of magic that benefited both. But on her return trip the golem had stumbled and fallen, and her foot had been caught. She had needed healing and a.s.sistance, and had to go to the wolves for it.
They had helped, of course. They a.s.signed a b.i.t.c.h to care for her and manage the castle under her direction, until she mended. This was Lycandi, fifteen years old, the same as Brown. The b.i.t.c.h was nice enough, and attractive enough in both her wolf and woman states, but was something of an outcast because she had rejected first mating and never achieved the final syllable of her name. This was probably why she had been a.s.signed to this ch.o.r.e: she would hardly be missed from the pack.
The healing of the foot was slow, but Lycandi was patient. Indeed, it became evident that the b.i.t.c.h liked this a.s.signment, for here there was no pressure on her to do what she chose not to. They talked, and Brown learned the b.i.t.c.h"s concern.
A werewolf was not considered mature until he or she indulged in a first, ritual mating, and exchanged syllables with the partner in that mating: the Promised. Thereafter those two would never mate with each other again; each would find another to pair with. Lycandi had come into her first heat two years before, and had received offers from several wolves, but had turned them down. In the ensuing time she had steadfastly refused to mate, though it locked her into juvenile status.
"But why not, "Candi?" Brown asked. "It be a simple thing to do. I were not able to fend off the village boys e"en when a child, while thou-"
"Didst thou like it, when they forced thee?" "Candi asked sharply.
"Nay. I hated it. But-"
"I, too."
"But that were because they were louts. Were it the Adept Stile who sought me, or e"en a handsome wolf in man form-"
"I like not wolves or men, that way."
"But surely the mating urge, the companionship-"
"Companionship, aye, and mayhap the urge. But not with wolves."
"Then with a human man. That may count not toward the completion o" thy name, but I have heard they can be fine temporary lovers."
"Why didst thou not take such a lover, then?"
"I can trust no human man. Three tried to kill me."
"Candi nodded. "Thou hast reason, then. Me, I wish no lover, nor man neither wolf. That be my shame."
Brown was amazed. "But an thou hast the urge-"
"Any b.i.t.c.h would tear my throat out."
Brown stared at her. "A b.i.t.c.h..."
She saw the b.i.t.c.h, in her girl form, sitting beside her, suffering. She reached out to comfort her, then drew hastily away lest she be misunderstood, then moved again. Something in her own life was coalescing, a mystery she had not fathomed before.
"Wouldst settle for one who were no b.i.t.c.h?" she whispered.
Lycandi gazed at her, her eyes wet. "Thou-Adept-"
"And woman." Brown caught her shoulder and drew her in.
Then they were together, kissing, their tears mixing. Brown had never imagined love of this nature, but now she discovered what it offered. The ambushes of the boys had soured her on males in a way she hadn"t fathomed, and the a.s.sa.s.sination attempts had soured her on adult males. Now she realized that it was more than that. She had loved Stile, in part, because he was unavailable; he would never seek s.e.x with her. The violence of the male, the urgency, the cruel brevity-this was not to her taste. But this, gentle, sensitive, understanding of her nature, with a female...
And so they were lovers. Lycandi did not depart when Brown"s foot healed; she became servant and guardian, and Brown paid a wage to her Pack, for the loss of one of their members. Neither of them ever stated the true nature of their a.s.sociation to any outsider, for neither the wolf nor the human cultures would have accepted it. The problem of companionship had been solved, for them both.
But in time Lycandi had sickened with an intractable distemper that sometimes affected wolves. Magic could ameliorate it only so far. Two years ago she died, and Brown was alone again.
The horror of her isolation closed in on her once more, not one whit abated because she was now a mature woman. She missed her lover, and grieved for her, but that would gradually pa.s.s. The lack of companionship would not. Brown saw no end to that other than death.