She watched the barefooted little man hobble unsteadily over a stretch of path made mud by rain. As a girl, the old woman had been teased unmercifully by the other children for her height, and she wondered now if anyone had ever teased him for his shortness. A wretch like that, a bandit? she thought. Him? “You’ll be in Myetra in half a day if you stay on the main road,” she called. “And keep away from those ruins. They’re not a good place at all…” She started to call something else. But then, if only from his smile and the smell, when she’d bent over his cloak, those teeth, she knew, were beyond even her art.
She watched him a minute longer. He did not turn back. In the trees behind her shack a crow cawed three times; then flapped up and off through the branches. She picked up the red bowl, overturned on the wet grass, and stepped across the sand, drying in the sun, to go back inside and wait for whichever of the townsfolk would be the first of the day’s clients.
RETURN TO ÇIRON
WHEN he was an old man and the Calvicon historian sought him out in his hut outside the fishing village with the sea below gnawing at the stones, one evening after they’d gone over yet again the organization and exploits of the Myetran army, he began to speak of something unmentioned in their previous conversations.
When I left him there, my prince and leader, dead in the old peasant woman’s shack, I had the strangest feeling — as though I… were no I at all. Ah, I wish I could find some trace of the ‘I’ I was then — you understand, there are moments when it seems it would solve so many problems today. But that old self has been all but squeezed out of existence, between my total absence of self at the time and my own voice and consciousness exploring the ashy detritus of that time now — I don’t know: can you put yourself in my place…? Not my place today: the place I occupied then. I had seen my executioner revealed as my savior and, only a breath of time on, had watched my mentor — who had been, of course, my real executioner — die. Well, as I left him in the stifling, peasant’s hovel, to step into the light and air, I thought, again, that I must return to our camp and make one more try to get an idea of the damages, if only in terms of names.
But the last time I’d been taken from the camp to the execution site, I’d been bound, it had been dark; nor had my mind really been on the route we followed. Thus the village was, for me, a wholly unknown landscape. At one point I turned from an alley, to step through some trees I thought must put me out at the Myetran camp after only thirty or forty paces — and after eighty or a hundred, about convinced I was lost, came out at the edge of a field, covered with charred patches, like ashy lakes, several of them joined to one another. On the far side, I saw a scattering of what had to be corpses — from the carrion birds swirling above them: at this distance, they were the size of flies. A wagon stood among them. To one side, between some trees, were the burnt ruins of a shack.
Near me, on the grass, where I’d emerged, the first thing I saw was a vine web — like the one that had saved us on the town common. This one was staked out at one edge along the ground. Then, it slanted upward toward a branch of gnarly oak. Bales of that vine webbing lay about, higher than my waist. Against another tree, one of their gliders leaned. Two others sat on the ground.
On the branch where the net went, a Winged One perched. Another squatted on the ground, wings sloping out across the green and ashy stubble. As I stood, a third flew down, into the web, caught the vines, pulled in those great sails, and turned back to stare at me — then laughed, with the most shrill and astonishing Screeee!
I had no idea if they’d attack or let me pass. But the one on the ground suddenly looked up and cried: “Play a game with us, groundling! Play a game…!”
The one on the branch mewed distractedly, glancing at the sky: “We are here to play with the hero…!”
“But the hero is away, playing a hero’s games, with the prisoners and the victorious villagers!” declared the one who’d arrived at the net. “Perhaps you will let us play with you…?”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “What… sort of game?”
“A game of desire,” said the one clinging.
Knowingly, the one perched looked down. “A sexual game…”
The one squatting said: “Climb on my back! Let me fly with you, just a little ways — just a short flight… just enough…!”
I’d seen my friend take off and land, on the back of Handsman Vortcir. Who, so seeing, could not covet such flight!
Also, I suppose, I was afraid not to. For they were so strong — they’d just vanquished the whole of a Myetran brigade!
These particular three, you understand — well, I was not even sure if they were females; though, now, I assume so. But it was hard to tell. Certainly they were younger members of their tribe. And clearly they brought an enthusiasm, if not an avidity, to their play.
I bent to take the back of the one who squatted.
The wings pulled in, rose, opened, and fell — and I was born up, grabbing at the great shoulders.
And what was the game?
Now — now, in the air, I was to transfer to the back of one of the others! But how in the world — ?
Just do it!
First, one came close. I threw my arms around the neck of one flying so near their four wings beat each others’. And I was pulled away, to hang, till, at a certain maneuver, we flew upside down — and I lay with my carrier, belly to belly, looking at that strange smile, just under mine!
Then, again, when I was not really holding, I was rolled loose and actually fell, my heart blocking my throat with its beats, as if my head were back on the block, to land on the back of the third — and I scrambled over, to grasp and hold the shoulders, while we sagged down with my added weight and recovered, while the others, flying just above, mewed caressive reassurances: now I was urged to leap, myself, from the one I rode to one who flew just under us; and — rather than be thrown again — in a perfect panic I leaped; and was caught between those billowing leathers. They passed me among them, while, between the wings of one and the wings of another, the village lay hundreds of feet below. Next time I looked, the stubbled field passing back beneath was so near — not a full two feet under us, every daisy and grass blade and burnt twig speeding clearly — I was sure we’d wreck ourselves on the smallest rise. We lifted again. Somehow, I was tossed, again, for a last time — and caught, in the net, on my back.
They swarmed over me!
One pulled loose my waist cinch, another the fastenings on my jerkin. They mewed into my ears such things as: “We play the game of desire, along the chain of desire, serving the Winged One’s Queen! We serve the beloved of the Queen, who is the Handsman. We serve the beloved of the Handsman, who is the brave groundling. We serve the beloved of the brave groundling, who is the groundling’s black clad friend… We tangle the chain in our play!” One piece and another, my clothes came away, till all that was under my naked back was the harsh uncured skin — and, folded over it, the wondrously soft fur — of the puma.
The three of them at me, there, shook me and pleasured me, bit at me — yes, in several places, my shoulder, my inner thigh, they sipped blood — while I rebounded in the web.
Do you understand? Moments before, I had been by a dying man, with whom I’d constantly felt I was not present to his words — a man who had urged me to exchange promises with him, as if we’d been a pair of lovers, yet, to whose urgings, my own perceptions had been so blighted I could not tell if he knew or not I was unable to respond, for he might as well have been addressing the lion skull, already dead, by mine.