" Luister len- Larrotti' s down the spittin' street."
" Thank you."
" You' re welcome, bitch. You two deserve one another."
She turned and glanced back over her shoulder. The man wilted, seeming to collapse in onto himself. He turned and walked off hurriedly. Inyx wondered at the parting curse. It made no sense to her. She continued on, the fatigue of her plight finally catching up with her. When she saw a small sign dangling out from a stone facade, she sighed in relief. Luister len- Larrotti, Fine Rooms, it read.
She knocked. A small peephole opened. A rheumy eye peered forth, studying her.
" What do you want?" came the question, muffled so much by the thick wooden door that Inyx couldn' t tell if the voice belonged to male or female.
" A room. A friend recommended your boarding house." Inyx began to wonder why Knokno had bothered mentioning this place.
" You wish to stay?"
" What a ridiculous question. I just said I did." She stamped her foot and took a deep breath. She quickly lost patience with this interrogation. The eye again studied her.
Then the door opened. In the shadows stood an elderly woman, shawl pulled over her shoulders. The old woman gestured Inyx inside. The door closed and bolted behind them, she finally spoke.
" Not often I see the likes of you. You' re a young' un, aren' t you?" The old woman reached out and pinched Inyx' s behind. If a man had done that, his hand would have been severed from his wrist in an instant. Inyx didn' t know quite how to respond to a woman old enough to be her grandmother.
" I' m from the outlands. In for the election," she lied. The old woman bobbed a greying head in acknowledgment. " I only need the room until the election' s over."
" Can always put up a fine lass like you for a week." Inyx mentally filed the information away. About a week until the election for Lord of the Twistings.
" How much?"
" Don' t worry yourself over that none. Come in, sit, enjoy some of my fine herb tea. Don' t see many visitors here. Not recently, not ones as pretty as you. Some muffins? Made ' em myself."
The room made Inyx force back a tear in her eye. It so closely matched her mother' s parlor that she felt transported across worlds, backward in time. But all this was gone on her home world. Gone forever, along with her mother, brothers, and husband.
" Eat. Sit and eat. And drink the tea. Brewed it myself. Good, or so' s everyone tells me."
" Hmm, it is good," said Inyx, surprised. The tea daintily tingled on her tastebuds, exciting a cinnamon taste that mingled subtly with peppermint- or perhaps lemons. She failed to pinpoint the exact taste. Trying the muffins, she found them equally good. They satisfied her growing hunger better than any of the meat and cheese she' d purchased from the vendors along Lossal.
" So seldom we sees fine ones like you," repeated the old woman. She sank into a chair across from Inyx. " Tell me about yourself. In for the election, but who' s tending the farm with you here?"
" No one," Inyx said. " Fact is, I' m a traveller from much further away than the outlands."
" The Cenotaph Road?"
" You know of the Road, then." Somehow, this made her relax even more. This kindly old woman already knew of interworld travel. " I' m trying to find friends of mine."
" Your party has become separated?" came the sharp question. Inyx relaxed even more. Here was someone to care for her, someone who knew all her woes.
" They follow, but I don' t know how long they' ll be. The greyclad soldiers chased me off, away from the cenotaph." Inyx found herself confiding in the woman. She told of the demon, the fluttercraft flight into Dicca, the deadly illusions she' d confronted in the park. And she told even more, things that had remained buried under the brittle crust of hurtful memory for too long.
" My husband Reinhardt," she heard herself saying, " died almost three years ago. It' s hard figuring out exactly when because of time differences between worlds. It must have been three years; it seems to me like an eternity."
" You loved him much."
" Yes." Inyx sighed, picturing tall, dashing Reinhardt in her mind. The dark hair and white smile, the three parallel pink scars on his right cheek where the winter bear had slashed him, the quickness of his movements- she saw it all again. And it hurt.
" Along the Cenotaph Road, no one dies," came the old woman' s soft words.
" Reinhardt is dead. I buried him with my own hands. It was one of those damned foolish things that should never have happened. He and my brother Patrin got involved in politics, an election.
" Like the one for Lord of the Twistings?"
" Different. The election was for nothing of any consequence, but others didn' t consider it such. Others wearing grey uniforms."
" The soldiers killed him?"
" They ambushed him. Patrin lived long enough to tell me where. I found Reinhardt. He died in my arms. And then I tracked down and killed every single one of those murdering bastards. I killed them, slowly, as slowly as I could." She felt the horror and terror and anguish welling inside her. Inyx relived Reinhardt' s death, those of the murdering soldiers sent by Claybore to subjugate her world. " Then I walked the Cenotaph Road. There was nothing of importance left for me on my own world. Nothing."
" The soldiers' deaths might rekindle Reinhardt' s flame. Somewhere along the Road, he again lives."
" I don' t believe that. I:" Inyx stopped, the words choking her. The old woman grew in stature, shoulders widening, shape changing in eye- confusing shifts until a tall, dark man with perfect white teeth stood before Inyx.
" Reinhardt!" she cried.
" My dearest Inyx. It' s been so long. Too long. My love!"
Strong arms held her in the embrace she had hungered for over three long, lonely years. She buried her face in his chest and unashamedly cried.
" Reinhardt, where have you been? How could you have let me think you were dead all this time?"
" No questions, my dearest. Not now. Not until after a proper homecoming." His strong, blunt fingers worked at the ties on her tunic. Inyx felt a pang of- what? Confusion tried to turn her inside out. Then the remembered feel of Reinhardt' s hands on her breasts drove away all uncertainty.
She crushed her body to his, kissed him hungrily, felt him respond. Almost frantic now, the passionate lovers worked to get free of unwanted clothing.
On the floor, their bodies merged into one surging, striving unity. Inyx felt the heavy body weighing her down in familiar ways, the pressures inside, the heavy breathing in her ear. She stared at the ceiling, dread welling up inside again. Something was wrong, something still niggled at the fringes of her mind. Then she forgot all about it, gasping, crying, rejoicing.
" Reinhardt!" she cried. " Oh, Reinhardt, yes!"
CHAPTER FIVE
" Oh, woe, why must I be such a weakling? A craven, that is all I am," lamented Krek. The giant spider walked in the center of a ring of twelve soldiers. They eyed him with a combination of fear and awe. Lan Martak guessed that creatures the size of Krek didn' t exist on this world- or if they did, they weren' t inclined to talk and berate themselves.
" It wasn' t anyone' s fault, Krek," he said. " The howler spotted us and guided the soldiers in."
" I could have fought. Oh, the horror of it. Krek- k' withkritklik, Webmaster of the Egrii Mountains, has fallen on such hard times. And all because I am so cowardly." Lan said nothing. He' d seen his friend in moods like this before. Absolutely nothing but time got him out of them. " Who am I to even breathe the name of Webmaster? I, who have shamed myself in the eyes of all my hatchlings? Lovely little Klawn knows me for what I am. A coward. I can never again hold up my head."
Lan involuntarily shivered when Krek mentioned his mate' s name. Krek was enormous; " lovely little Klawn" was even larger. She and the giant spider had mated, then Krek had left the web before being ritualistically eaten by her. Choosing the Cenotaph Road over being devoured seemed to Lan a reasonable choice. For Krek, it went against all his race' s mores and genetically inbred behavior patterns. Somewhere, perhaps even on this world, Klawn followed along the Road, still seeking her mate to finalize the nuptials. Lan didn' t want to share even the same continent with that love- crazed female.