Seventh Sword - The Reluctant Swordsman Part 3

She fetched a flint from the shelf and lit the candle, and the whole table sparkled with many little flames.

"Candlelit dinner for two," he said. "Pardon my informal dress. Now you sit there and tell me what you think we should start with."

"My lord..." she protested. She must not sit at table with a free man.

He paused, standing by the table with a bottle in his hand, his face and chest s.h.i.+ning in darkness, lit strangely from below by the flickering light and its myriad reflections. "When your mistress, this ... Kikarani? When she gave you orders about me, did she say what you were to do when I awoke?"

"Yes, my lord." She looked down at her hands.

"And what were those orders?" She could hear amus.e.m.e.nt, but no anger or threat.

"I was to do anything you said, my lord."

"Mmm? Anything?"

She nodded to the floor. "There are a few things I don't have to do for the pilgrims, my lord, even if they ask. But she said ... she said, 'In this case do anything at all, anything, just keep him there.' My lord."

The man cleared his throat harshly. "Right. Well, here are my orders. First, stop 'my lording' me and call me Wallie. Second, forget you are a slave and pretend that you are a beautiful gentlewoman. I expect most swordsmen with seven swords have a beautiful lady at home in a castle somewhere?"

"I don't know, my..." It made her forehead p.r.i.c.kle with sweat, but she managed to say, "Wallie."

"Neither do I," he said. "But let's pretend that I'm a great swordsman and you are a great lady. Now, tell me what you think of this wine. Lady Jja."

She had never tasted wine before. She had never eaten off silver dishes. She had never sat with a lord. But she was ravenous, and the food was the best she had ever tasted -- meat in rich sauce and tender vegetables and fluffy white bread that she knew only by hearsay.

He did most of the talking, sensing perhaps the strain she was under and knowing that conversation was beyond her means. "You are very lovely, you know," he said. "You should have long hair, but of course this is a hot climate. Laundry work, I expect? Yes, your hands...

"Black is not your color," he said later. "Blue, I think. I did a very good job of imagining beauty, but I should have imagined you in a long blue dress ... no sleeves, s.h.i.+ny light-blue silk, cut low in the front and clinging ... You would look like a G.o.ddess...

"This wine isn't too bad, is it? And this looks like a fruit pie for dessert. There was a jar of cream somewhere. And here's a cake! Eat up, there's lots..."

It was a dream, she was certain, sitting in the warm dark with a single candle flaring off silver and s.h.i.+ning on a great lord smiling at her, teasing a little. Not a rasp-handed old stonemason of the Third making a pilgrimage to beg the G.o.ddess to cure his cough, or a toothless gray shepherd of the Fourth wanting his herds to prosper, but a very large and very handsome young lord, flas.h.i.+ng white teeth in that big smile and sparkling at her.

A dream that might come in a dream.

And he cared. She knew men -- she could see the man-interest in his eyes when he looked at her. For once, she was enjoying that. She tried very hard to be a good slave, to make amends to the G.o.ddess by doing her duty conscientiously, but sometimes it was not easy. Tonight she thought it would be quite easy, although it was strange that he had not even handled her yet.

At last they had both finished eating, and her head was spinning from the wine. Now, surely, he would give her the usual orders. She waited for them with a strange excitement that she had never known before, but they did not come. He just sat, holding a goblet, gazing sadly into the candle as moths crazed wildly around it.

Then he seemed to remember her. He jerked out of his sadness. "We could dance," he said. "If I could just imagine up some musicians! Do you dance, Jja?"

She shook her head. "I don't know how ... Lord Wallie." Not wanting to disappoint him, or perhaps because of the wine, she added rashly, "I can sing a little."

He was pleased. "Sing me a song, then."

And even more rashly, she sang a little slave song.

"In my dreams I hear me calling, Hear me calling here to me, From a life I've left behind me, Or a world I've yet to see.

"Someday when the G.o.ddess calls me, I will find that other me: Handsome lord or lovely lady, Once again I shall be free."

He asked her to sing it again, listening to the words carefully. "That's your explanation, is it?" he asked. "You think Shonsu lived in one world, and Wallie Smith in another, but they were the same person? The same soul? And somehow they got mixed up?"

She nodded. "That is what they say dreams are, my ... Wallie. Your other lives."

He considered the idea carefully, not dismissing it as slave nonsense. "Reincarnations? I can see why you would like the idea. But surely one enters a world by birth and leaves by death?" Then he smiled, but as though it were an effort. "If I'm a newborn baby, Jja, how big am I going to be when I grow up?"

"I ... don't know, my lord."

"Sorry! I shouldn't make fun of ... I know you're trying to help, and I'm grateful. Why are you a slave?"

"I was very wicked, my lord."

"In what way?"

"I don't know, my lord."

"In a previous life?"

She nodded, perplexed. Why even ask such things?

He scowled. "So the priests tell you to be a good slave in this life? Bah!"

He fell silent again, brooding. Greatly daring, she said, "The G.o.ddess will care for them."

"Who?"

She had been wrong, she sensed. "Your womenfolk ... sons..."

For a moment the sparkle of man-interest was back in his eye. He shook his head. "None of those! No one special ... Were you wondering?" Then his mood went bitter. "And why only mention sons? If I had daughters, would I not care for them also?"

She stammered. "I thought ... a swordsman..."

He sighed. "I'm no swordsman, Jja. Not in this world nor any other. And I never will be!"

"The G.o.ddess can do anything, my lord."

He smiled again, ruefully. "I doubt if She could make me into a swordsman! Fencing must take years of practice. Jja..." he paused. "Please listen carefully. I don't want to make ... joy ... with you tonight, although I'm sure you expect me to. But you mustn't think it's because you're not desirable -- the sight of you makes me s.h.i.+ver and makes my flesh rise. It isn't that, you're gorgeous."

She must not let her disappointment show.

He was looking down at the candle again. "And it isn't because I know that you have to do it with a lot of men. I can guess that that's what happens, isn't it?"

Perhaps he had sworn an oath? "Yes, my lord ... Wallie. If they pay my mistress."

He bared his teeth at the candle. "So you have no choice, and therefore I do not think less of you because of it. So it isn't that, either, you see ... This may be hard for you to understand. Where I come from we despise people who own slaves. If I said _lie down_, you would have to lie down, and that isn't the way it should be. A man and a woman should do that thing because they love each other and they both want to do it. So I'm not going to."

"I do want to, my lord!" Oh, no! Where had she found the courage to say that? But of course, this was only a dream.

"Because it is your duty! No, Jja."

It must be the wine ... she had to fight down a desire to explain how she fetched the highest price, how Kikarani therefore saved her for the older men, the ones most likely to have the most money, how it was the older, uglier women who got the young men. Could he not guess why she had thought to hide him from the spying priestess in the way she had? Or even guess that she had wanted to weep with frustration because he was not able to respond, while at the same time she had been terrified that he might wake up and find a slave lying on top of him?

She said, "My lord," bowing her head.

"You sleep on that side of the bed, then." He rose, not looking at her. "And I'll sleep this side. Now, where do I go to..."

"Outside, my lord," she said in surprise.

He grinned around at her -- that strangely boyish grin that came and went very suddenly, making him look very young and happy. "I wasn't planning to do it inside! Anywhere's okay, huh?"

He stepped out through the curtain into the warm tropic night. She tidied the table. There was plenty of food to be saved for tomorrow, so she fished out a few moths that had fallen in, covered the dishes, wrapped them again, and packed the hamper. Finally she pinched out the candle and the cottage was dark, only a trace of a silver glimmer from the Dream G.o.d glistening through the window.

Then she heard him, and went out to see.

He was leaning against the wall by the door, his head on his arms. His whole body was shaking with sobs. A swordsman weeping? That seemed very strange, but already she knew that this was no ordinary swordsman.

Again, it must have been the wine that gave her the courage to put an arm around him, to lead him inside and over to the bed. He said nothing. The bed creaked loudly as he lay down. He buried his face and continued to sob. She took off her wrap and went around to lie on the other side of the bed as she had been told. She waited.

Finally he choked off his sobs and said in a whisper, "That light in the sky? What is it?"

"It is the Dream G.o.d, my lord."

He did not reply. She waited, but she knew he was not asleep.

It was the wine ... "The G.o.d of sorrows and the G.o.d of joy are brothers, my lord."

After a moment he rolled over and said, "Tell me, then."

So she told him, as she had been told once, long ago, by another slave, a young man she would never see again. "The G.o.d of sorrows and the G.o.d of joy are brothers. At the time of the unrolling of the World, they both courted the G.o.ddess of youth. It was the G.o.d of joy she chose, and they loved greatly. In time she bore him a son, the most beautiful baby that even the G.o.ds had ever seen, and the father delivered the baby himself and held him up for his mother and the G.o.ds to look at.

"But the G.o.d of sorrows was jealous and greatly enraged at the sight of the child -- and he hurled his wrath and killed him.

"Then the G.o.d of sorrows was terrified at what he had done and fled away, but all the other G.o.ds wept. They went to the G.o.ddess Herself and besought justice. And so She decreed that ever after the G.o.d of joy might deliver from the G.o.ddess of youth the most beautiful of the G.o.ds, but he would always be a baby, and he would only live a few moments. But although he would be only a baby, he would be stronger than his father, and the G.o.d of sorrows, the most terrible of the G.o.ds, would not stand against him and would flee from him always. That is why only this smallest G.o.d, of all the G.o.ds, can put to flight the G.o.d of sorrows."

"And what is the name of this smallest G.o.d?" asked the man in the darkness.

"He is the G.o.d of ecstasy, my lord," she said.

He turned to her and took her in his arms. "Then let us seek this little G.o.d of yours together," he said.

She had thought a swordsman might be brutal, but he was the most gentle of men. He was patient and strong and untiring and considerate in a way no man had ever been to her. Together they summoned the little G.o.d many times, and the G.o.d of sorrows was driven away.

*5*

A fly buzzed in his ear, waking him. He opened his eyes and then closed them again quickly. Thatch?

It had not gone away.

There had been hospital, with its grave-faced doctors in white coats and tired-looking nurses with needles ... familiar faces faking cheerfulness ... flowers sent by the staff at the plant ... smells of disinfectant and the sound of floor-polishers ... IV bottles ... pain and confusion and the damp heat of fever.

There had been dreams and delirium ... fog and a giant of a man with brown skin and long black hair and a brutal face -- a wide face, high cheekbones, broad jaw; barbarian tattoos on his forehead. He had seen that monstrous naked figure shouting at him, threatening.

He had seen that face again last night in the mirror.

Under the damp sheet he felt one arm with the hand of another. That body was still there. Wallie Smith had never had arms like that.

So it had not disappeared as he had hoped it would.

A bird was calling an idiotic two-note refrain not far away, and he could hear voices, more distant, and a rooster, ever hopeful.

"Ferry mule train!" That must be from near the bottom of the hill. Then a very faint bugle ... and under it all was the deep rumble from the waterfall, most distant of all. The sound of hooves echoed into the little room. "Ferry mule train!" He wondered if mules looked like that absurd horse he had seen, camel face and ba.s.set-hound body.

It had not gone away. Encephalitis often produced strange mental effects, they had said. He had thought the delirium was over, the strange visions and the pain and confusion. Now it had become more real, more terrifying.

It did not feel like delirium.

He must remember that it was all hallucination. They would cure him, somehow, and drag him back to the real world, the world of hospital sounds and hospital smells; away from this madness of stink and mule hooves and roosters.

Reluctantly he opened his eyes again and sat up. Only the woman had gone. Now if _she_ had been real...

She had felt real, deliciously, wonderfully real. Of course s.e.xual hallucinations would be the most vivid, wouldn't they? That would make sense. Nothing else did. What sort of Oedipal garbage was he fantasizing with this super-jock body he had conjured up? And what subconscious nastiness was he revealing when his delusions invented slave girls? A little insecure, are we, Wallie-boy? Ugh!

He rose and stretched. He felt good, enormously good. He strode over to the mirror and studied that cruel, barbaric face with its tattoos of the seven swords. Was this how he fantasized himself, his subconscious desires exposed by delirium? Did he see himself as an inadequate wimp and want to be a big, strong, fantasy hero?

The foreskin bothered him more than anything else. If he pinched it, it hurt. How could he feel pain in something that had been cut off when he was a baby? There was no trace of his appendectomy, but he did have a red birthmark on his left knee and a conspicuous scar on his right shoulder and some faint little marks on his ribs, mostly on the right side. So he wasn't quite a perfect specimen, and somehow that was odd.

The mule train clattered closer and then stopped nearby. Again he heard the skinner make his call. He went over to the window and peered out, keeping back from sight. Two men were paying the skinner and climbing on mules, and there were half a dozen people mounted already. The mules were even more grotesque than the horse -- long ears and camel faces. Then he remembered the rings he had seen in the night sky. It had been the rings that had finally cracked his precarious self-control. It was not only an imaginary country he was conjuring up in his madness; it was a whole imaginary world, a ringed planet.

And the people surprised him a bit -- smallish, although that might be just because he seemed to be much larger than average. They had brown skins, all of them, with hair of light or dark brown. One of the women on the mules showed a reddish tinge, perhaps dyed. A neat, compact people, mostly slim and agile, they seemed to laugh and chatter a lot ... features vaguely Amerindian to Caucasian. They might have stepped out of a doc.u.mentary on the South American jungles, or perhaps southeast Asia. Beardless -- he rubbed his chin and there was no trace of stubble, no hair on his chest or legs.

There were other people walking up and down the roadway -- men in loincloths, and women in simple wraps that tied under their arms and hung to their knees, like bath towels. Jja's had been shorter, but then she was a wh.o.r.e. The muleskinner wore leather breeches. The old man had worn a robe that covered all of him except his head and hands. Then he saw a middle-aged couple going over to the mule train, and they were wearing robes, but sleeveless, so the amount of cover must be related to age. Not a bad idea; show off the good-looking youngsters and hide the old. Some of the men and women in his world could learn a thing or two here.

Wallie reminded himself sternly that this was an illusion.

Yet he felt so good! And curious! He wanted to explore this fantasy world ... but he had no clothes. Could that be his subconscious mind telling him to stay in his hospital room?

He had nothing at all -- he could not even see the wrap he had used the previous evening. Newborn naked! He had never been a great collector of possessions, for he had been too much of a wanderer. His childhood had been a continual bouncing from parent to parent, from aunt to uncle; then college; then a succession of jobs. Roots were something he had never had, and worldly goods likewise. But to have nothing but a bed sheet to cover himself...