Isles of the Forsaken (34 page)

“By the rock, a Grey Lady!” he exclaimed, staring. “What are you doing here?”

“I am free to go where I like,” Spaeth said.

“Free, yes; but not wise,” he said. “Don’t you know the risk you run here? This is not a place for the likes of you.”

Spaeth did not answer. She knew it was true, but she had no other place to go.

“Put up your hood again,” the man said, glancing around. When Spaeth obeyed, he held out his hand. “My name is Tolliby.”

Hesitantly, Spaeth touched his hand, glove against glove.

Tolliby’s eyes searched her face. He was middle-aged; he had receding black hair, and his left earlobe had once been pierced. “Let me give you some advice, child. You are in the city now. It’s not like the outlands. You must follow the rules of this place. I know. I was once new in the city, too.”

Spaeth knew how true his words were. Whatever she had been in the South Chain, she was no longer. She was not even an individual any more, only part of the drifting cloud of humanity under the angry mountain.

“I can show you to a safe place,” Tolliby said.

“All right,” she answered.

Putting an arm around her shoulders, he led the way across the square to the west, where the buildings backed up against a cliff of rock. Stairs had been cut into the cliff face, each flight becoming narrower and more step-worn than the one before. At last they emerged onto a cliff-side street that looked down on the market over the tops of the buildings below. Ramshackle wooden shops clung precariously to the steep hillside. To one of these shops, where a hand-lettered sign in the dusty window advertised food and drink, Tolliby headed. A dead cat lay nearly in the door; he kicked it aside and entered.

Inside the shop, men sat on stools before a wooden counter running length-wise down the room. In a back room more men sat talking in booths lit only by dim oil lamps. And in the middle, behind the counter, was a figure that dominated the room like a glowering Mount Embo of flesh.

“That is Romble,” Tolliby whispered. He approached the place where she sat enthroned—for it did not seem possible for her to move—watching over the shop like a cat gorged on vermin. She was swathed in yards upon yards of cotton frock, and her greasy hair fell in every direction; but her eyes took in every movement.

“Romble,” Tolliby said, “I have something for the Provost.”

She looked at him in mountainous silence. Not a muscle of her face moved, though a fly had landed on her cheek and was scaling down the pale foothills of her chin. She turned to scrutinize Spaeth. Tolliby tugged back her hood to reveal her face.

Romble’s small green eyes lit with a ferocious glee. “Lashnura,” she said. “And young. Where did you find her?”

“Down in the Fountainmarket. I told her we would protect her.”

“Oh, yes,” Romble said. “No one will get at her.” She gave a snort that passed for laughter, then turned and took a key from a hook behind her. She gave a shrill whistle, then turned and riveted her gaze on a young man who was trying to sneak out without paying. He slunk forward with his money.

An emaciated child of twelve or thirteen emerged from the back of the shop, wiping her hands on her apron. Spaeth felt her mouth go dry at sight of the bruise on the child’s face. She tried to block it out.

“Grackle, show the Grey Lady upstairs,” Romble said, tossing the key in the child’s direction.

Spaeth looked at Tolliby. He said, “I will be down here. Don’t worry, you’ll be safe.”

Without a word, Spaeth followed the child up a steep wooden stairway into a long hall with closed doors on either side. Grackle hesitated, looking at the key. “Did she want you to go with the other Grey Lady?”

For a moment Spaeth was so preoccupied stifling the desire to touch the child that she did not hear the question. When it penetrated, she said, “There is another Grey Lady?”

Grackle nodded solemnly. “Is that where you are to go?”

“Yes. I want to see her.”

Grackle led her to the end of the hallway and unlocked a plain wood door. When Spaeth stepped into the room, the child immediately pulled the door shut behind her and locked it. Spaeth tried the knob, but it spun loose.

At first glance, the room looked empty. There was a rope bed on one side, and a tall, battered wardrobe on the other. On the dressing table a candle burned before a mirror, surrounded by a gleaming forest of bottles, vials, and pipkins. Some were empty, but others glowed with a deep wine colour that Spaeth recognized. They were full of blood—dark Lashnura blood.

She heard a sound and turned to see, sunk into an oversize chair, what looked like the skeleton of a woman. Delicate stick ankles rose from loose shoes and disappeared into a dress that sagged over a wasted frame. Her skin was the colour of bleached driftwood.

“Who is it?” the woman asked in a voice like rustling leaves.

Spaeth stepped forward into the light. “Ah,” the woman said. Her hollow eyes were dull. “Not one of my bandhotai.”

Sinking onto the bed beside the woman’s chair, Spaeth said, “Ehir. What are you doing here?”

“Why, leading my life, as we all do,” the woman said. She gave a small, dry cough, but there seemed too little energy left in her for even that.

“Are you a prisoner here?” Spaeth asked.

“No, of course not. Oh, they lock the door, but there is no need. I would never leave this room.”

“But you are—”

“Dying? Yes, I know. Leaving would not cure that. What is outside for me? Only the city. I could not survive in the city. It would drive me mad. I have lived in this room for twenty years.”

She said it without resentment. Spaeth looked around at the close walls, and imagined how many times you could touch the same spot in twenty years.

“I thought there were no Lashnurai in Tornabay,” Spaeth said.

“I may be the only one,” the woman said with a light sigh. “They pay high prices to be with me, Romble says. If there were many of us, it would not be so.”

“They
pay
?”

“Oh, yes. Romble sends them to me. Some are sick, others merely curious. I cure them all. One every night for many years. Everyone has something they want to give up to me, some hurt to heal. The only problem is—” Her voice caught; for a moment Spaeth thought she had choked, and was leaning forward to make sure, when she saw the tear running down the bony cheek. “They do not feel it the way we do,” the woman said in a breathy voice. “Oh, at first they do. They can barely stay away at first. I see them again and again. But they always run out of money, and have to stay away. Then it fades.”

“What fades?” Spaeth said.

“The bandhota bond.”

Spaeth said nothing.

“But not for me.” The woman’s voice was barely a whisper. “It never fades for me.” She raised a trembling hand to her mouth, and Spaeth saw that the tips of three of the fingers were missing. Carefully, barely daring to breathe, she took the woman’s hand to touch the stumps, though under the gloves her fingers had lost all sensation. It was just as well. To give dhota to such a person would be death.

“Yes,” the woman sighed, as if noticing her hand for the first time. “I do not heal the way I used to.”

“Why not?” Spaeth asked.

“Who knows? A little bit of you dies every time a bandhota fails to return. After a while, your hope and faith start bleeding away. First a little, then faster and faster. In the end, nothing grows back.”

Remembering the bottles of blood on the nightstand, Spaeth turned to look at them. “Are those yours?” she said.

“Yes,” the woman said. “It is silly. Romble sells the blood as a cordial to cure all ills. It is amazing what people will pay great sums for. It does no good at all, of course. Not without the person who gave it.”

Spaeth felt a coal of anger glowing inside her. Was this what Tolliby meant by safe? “Romble has a lot to answer for,” she said.

Waving her hand lightly, the woman said, “Oh, no. It is not her fault. She has been kind enough. All this was inevitable as soon as I set foot in the city. Nothing else could have happened.”

They could hear voices on the street outside, and the door below them opening. “Is there no mora here?” Spaeth said darkly.

“No, I suppose not,” the woman said. “There is only law.”

Only compulsion from without, not compassion within. The Lashnura were a quaint anachronism here.

“This will not happen to me,” Spaeth said fiercely.

The woman looked at her with a childlike smile. “Why, it is nothing to be feared. I have been lucky. Look at how many people I have loved. I can remember each one, for each one left a part of himself in me. I have it still. Sometimes I dream that they have come back—all of them at once. The room is full to bursting with them, and my heart can hardly stand the joy.”

Her eyes gazed off into a summery vision. For a moment, her face looked candle-bright.

Small footsteps came racing down the hall, and the key rattled in the lock. Almost before she had the door open, Grackle was saying, “You must come! You must come! Romble wants you downstairs.”

Spaeth rose slowly. She knew what was going on now. Lashnura gifts were vended here like wares. She felt rage inside, and with it, power.

When she came down the stairs, the shop had filled with customers. Flushed faces and loud voices assaulted her senses. Romble had moved to one of the booths in the back room. Tolliby and another man sat with her, absorbed in a low-toned conversation that broke off as Spaeth approached. She saw with surprise that the third man was an Inning.

“God’s piss!” he said when he saw Spaeth. “You’re dealing in high-quality goods now, Romble.” He spoke with an indolent, dismissive tone, but his eyes on her gleamed.

Romble’s voice was wheedling. “Nothing but the best for you, sir.”

Tolliby rose to take Spaeth’s arm respectfully. “Do you know what she is, Provost?” he asked.

“Lashnura, unless you’ve painted her,” the Inning said, taking a sip of wine. He was already slightly drunk.

“Oh, she’s the real thing, straight from the Outlands,” Tolliby said. “You may have heard of the Grey Folk.”

“I’ve not only heard, I’ve seen one already. Tell me, is it true that if you let them pierce their veins, the sex is unbelievable?”

“Not only that,” Tolliby said. “Once you couple with them, they become your slave for life. You can do anything to them, and they still worship you.”

The Inning looked at Spaeth with a possessive interest. “Do they really rut with anything that moves?”

Spaeth had opened her mouth to give a barbed retort, but was arrested by his face. The fair skin was flushed with pursuit of oblivion, but the shadowed eyes showed he had not achieved it. His long, dark lashes gave his face a sensuous look. As she watched, his mouth curled up in a smile so bitter it looked half mad. She hated that face, and could not take her eyes off it. It masked a kind of pain she had never seen before. She wanted, with a deep instinct, to plumb it.

“Why, I think she fancies me,” the Inning said.

“You are evil,” Spaeth forced her mouth to say.

He laughed and rose to come closer. “I’m evil and you want me,” he said. “Don’t you?”

She bit her lip to keep control. He was a twisted thing; to cure him would be a dangerous bliss. Her body yearned one moment, repulsed the next.

“By God, this will be a treat,” he said, and his fingers touched her face. She wanted to pull away, and couldn’t. “You have done well, Tolliby,” he said, his breath hot on her cheek.

Suddenly, Tolliby was between them. “You know the price, sir,” he said.

The Inning’s face turned hard. “Torna flesh-vendor,” he said with contempt. Tolliby only shrugged. The Inning turned back to the seat where he had left a parcel sitting, and took from it a small blue bottle. He handed it to Tolliby. “This had better be worth it.”

“It will,” Tolliby said. “You have never had a woman anything like her.” He took the glass stopper from the bottle and shook out some milky white slivers onto his palm, counting them.

Romble had a ravenous look. “Give me some,” she said. “You owe me, Tolliby.”

He hesitated a moment, then picked a sliver out of the pile and gave it to her. “Another,” she said.

“You will kill yourself,” Tolliby said.

“No. One isn’t enough any more. I want two.”

He handed her another one. They all watched silently as she bared her arm and pushed the sharp slivers just under the skin.

“That’s the way,” the Inning said.

A group of onlookers had gathered around them. Romble sat perfectly still, her eyes switching to and fro like a cat’s tail. A little hum of conversation started up around them. Then silence fell, and all eyes were again on Romble.

She had stiffened, and her eyes stared motionless ahead of her. Her skin looked pasty in the dim light. She gave a shiver, and beads of sweat glistened on her face. A convulsion passed through her body, and she slumped senseless onto the floor.

Spaeth’s instinct made her start forward; but Tolliby held her back, hissing in her ear, “Don’t touch her! Don’t interfere!”

“What is wrong with her?” Spaeth asked.

“Nothing is wrong. Everything is right, very right. She has taken achra.”

A strange, bubbling cry of pleasure came from Romble’s throat. Her body twitched and shivered; then an unbearable wave of ecstasy seemed to pass through her. Her back arched, her face contorted into a mad mask of delight. Scarcely had the first spasm passed when a second came. Her flesh rippled and she groaned in the clutch of frenzy.

The circle of men watched in awestruck silence. One of them moaned in sympathy.

Before long, sweat had drenched Romble’s hair, and her skin gleamed wetly. The contortions of her body had worked her dress up to her vast, quivering thighs. She was crooning like an animal, and her arms flapped loosely on the floor. The Inning came forward to stand over her, his face suffused with desire. He lifted his foot and placed it lightly on the great, rounded mass of Romble’s belly. She gave a shriek of delight, twitching helplessly.

“Touch her,” he said to the gathered crowd. “You can only increase her pleasure.”

They crowded forward, eager to participate. Their faces looked strangely alike. Watching, Spaeth felt her horror blend into a blazing rage at the Inning and his gifts. It seemed to come from the very ground below her, flowing up through her body, burning away all inside her with a pure, hot flame.