Masters of Fantasy Part 26

Jon-Tom was grinning. "I can't imagine why."

A familiar hand tapped him on the arm. "You'd best lose that sappy grin now, guv', or they'll likely 'ang

you for it back in Lynchbany. You look b.l.o.o.d.y thick."

"Be at peace, my good friends and saviors." Though rather deeper than was traditional, the voice of the restored princess was still sweet and feminine. "I have some small powers. I promise that upon your return home, you will receive a reward in the form of whatever golden coins you have most recently handled, and that these shall completely fill your place of dwelling. As Mistress of the Namur, this I vow."

"Well now, luv," declared a delighted Mudge. "That's more like it!"

It took some time, and not a small adventure or three, before they found themselves once more back in their beloved Bellwoods. Espying his riverbank home, a tired and dusty Mudge broke into a run.

"Time to cash in, mate! Remember the hairy princess's promise."

Following at a more leisurely pace, Jon-Tom was just in time to see his friend fling open his front

door-only to be buried beneath an avalanche of gleaming golden disks. Hurrying forward, he dragged the otter clear of the mountain of metal.

"Rich, rich! At last! Finally!" The otter was beside himself with glee.

Or was, until he peered more closely at a handful of the disks. Doubt washed over his furry face. " 'Tis odd, mate, but I swear I ain't never before seen gold like this."

Gathering up a couple of the disks, Jon-Tom regarded them with a resigned expression. "That's because

they're not gold, Mudge."

"Not gold?" Sputtering outrage, the otter sprang to his feet. Which, given the shortness of his legs, was a simple enough maneuver. "But the princess bleedin' promised, she did. 'The last golden coin I 'andled,'

she said. I remember! That were wot that slimy Wolfram character paid us with at the tavern back in Timswitty." His expression darkened. "You're shakin' your 'ead, mate. I don't like it when you shake your 'ead."

"She said 'golden coin,' Mudge. Not 'gold coin.' " His open palm displayed the disks. "Remember when we were fleeing my world? These are London Underground tokens, Mudge." At the otter's open-mouthed look of horror, he added unhelpfully, "Look at it this way: you can ride free around greater London for the rest of eternity."

Sitting down hard on the useless h.o.a.rd, the otter slowly removed his feathered cap from between his ears, let it dangle loosely from his fingers. "I don't suppose-I don't suppose you 'ave a worthy spellsong for rescuin' this sorry situation, do you, mate?"

Bringing the duar around, Jon-Tom shrugged. "No harm in trying."

But Pink Floyd's "Money" did not turn the tokens to real gold, nor did all the otter tears that spilled into the black river all the rest of that memorable day.

Child of Prophecy

A War of Light and Shadow Story Janny Wurts Meiglin all but wished for death on that clear winter morning, when the brothel's madam cupped her face between perfumed hands. Eyes shut, Meiglin endured as the woman a.s.sessed her fresh skin and, still considering, fingered the tangles the wind had wound in her l.u.s.trous seal-brown hair. The p.r.i.c.k of the older woman's nails against her flesh was not another bad dream. Meiglin fought down tears and terror. Only a fool could have clung to belief that she might be allowed to stay innocent. Though her immature b.r.e.a.s.t.s had just started to bud, and the hips underneath her tattered skirt were as yet boyishly slim, one of last night's clients had winked at her as she had rushed in, cheeks flushed from an errand. Today, the madam's shrewd eyes, cold blue, weighed up her a.s.sets as merchandise. "Mistress, wait," Meiglin pleaded. "I'm surely too young." "Not so young. A man has asked for you, dearie. Time we had Feylie cut you a gown." The powerful woman patted Meiglin's shoulder, not ungently, for all her hard heart. "Lavender, with black lace at the throat. That will bring out the unusual color of your eyes, and forgive the fact you have only promise filling the front of your bodice."

Meiglin jerked free, blazing with shame. Her future had been in plain sight, all along, her prospects no better than the other wh.o.r.es' daughters born comely enough for the house. Tomorrow, she would have cream for her oatmeal, to fill out her coltish frame. She would no longer scrub dishes or wash soiled linen. By the time the new gown had been made to measure, her chapped hands would be soft, and her lips would be painted. She would be presented as the new, virgin jewel, and the clients would do more than wink.

"Come, now," chaffed the madam. "We don't feed any child who's not suited for the business. Nor any grown woman, either. Your mother's aging. She can't fill her bed as once she used to. Put a good face on this, Meiglin." Entwined ropes of pearls clicked over layered silk as the madam crossed the lush carpet.

She slapped open her account book and started inscribing the writ for the dress maker. "These are hard times, with the wars and the mayor's exorbitant taxes. It's your earnings, now, girl, will pay for your shelter. Your mother's had her day. You'll now have to make your own way."

Left standing in chilled disarray, her unbound hair tumbled over the unlaced strings of her overdress, Meiglin trembled in shattered desperation. How had she ever dared hope for reprieve? The pilfered h.o.a.rd of coins she had stashed away in secret could never have bought her escape. No man of decent family would wed a child of fourteen years, or employ one born and raised in a bawdyhouse. Meiglin swallowed back shock and anger. She drew a shaky breath, raised her chin and forced out a winsome smile. "I'll take the note to Feylie's and be measured?"

The madam's icy stare regarded her over the poised tip of the quill. "No, girl. You won't." She sighed in

reproach. "Do you take me for an idiot?" A crisp snap of her fingers summoned Quincat.

The side door opened. A heavy tread entered. Meiglin bolted, too late. Quincat's ma.s.sive hands caught her arms from behind. She had seen the way things went with a girl who fought her fate. Day after day,

she would weep and rage behind a barred door, until she became too used and tired to dream, or care

about running away.

"Best strip the clothes off that chit right now," the madam instructed her henchman. "There's defiance in her, make no mistake. She'd slip through the eye of a needle, she would, if you leave her the unguarded chance."

Meiglin did not weep. She refused to battle Quincat as he hauled her upstairs. To her worldly eye, the brute seemed to relish her sorry discomfort too much. She ignored the indignity, denied him the piquant satisfaction of a struggle as he did the madam's bidding and confiscated her clothing. Behind the locked door, wrapped up in a stale, musty sheet well used by last night's clients, Meiglin paced in helpless fury.

Dread for the future made her sweat and shiver, until her throat felt hardened to gla.s.s, that might shatter with screams at a word.

When the soft step approached, and the key finally turned, it was not Quincat come to leer while Feylie's lisping seamstress prodded and mumbled over measurements. The hand at the latch was shaking and frail, fast followed by her mother's breathless whisper.

"Meiglin, hurry! No, girl, no questions! A bawd's life's not for you!" Her mother's touch was clammy with nerves as she bundled her terrified daughter over the threshold. "The door to the pantry's ajar for you, sweetling. There's no choice left. You have to run!"

"Like this?" Meiglin gasped. The sheet fluttered around her bare ankles. The draft cut with cruel chill as she pattered down the back stair. Outside in the alley, heavy snowfall would have rimed the mud into a slurry of glazed ice.

"You daren't stay!" Her mother paused, kicked off velvet slippers, then peeled the sheer, scarlet lace off her shift. "Here's the best I can do for you, child. Have you the courage? You'll need to go as you are."

Meiglin balked, aghast. "What about you? Mother, for this, the madam will-"

"Hush child! That can't matter." Through a rushed and desperate pause, thick with the overpowering musk of cheap scent, her mother hustled Meiglin into her own cast-off garments. The sequined fabric was woefully thin, and the ribbon-laced slippers, too large.

"I'll freeze inside an hour," Meiglin protested, afraid. This bid for escape was no less than stark madness.

Why, if a mother cared a straw for her daughter's secure future, had she thought to bear the child of a client?

Her mother arrested her scathing questions; shook her head, to a rustle of curls dulled l.u.s.terless from too much henna. "No. Just listen, Meiglin! There are facts you must know, and no time to explain. You are no client's byblow! I was already bearing, do you hear? Married, and only a month from my time when the mayor's rebellion brought our family to ruin. My husband was an old-blood clansman. Egan s'Dieneval. He died at Earle, fighting the Mistwraith at the right hand of his king. I was left a widow, when the mob destroyed Tirans, driven out and hunted as a fugitive. I had no haven to give birth in safety. Not until the madam took me in. Oh, yes, she noticed what my accent could not hide. I had looks enough, then, to cozen her silence. She agreed to ask no questions, even helped to coach my speech. I sold myself in trade. But you were never to be any part of that bargain."

"Clanborn!" Meiglin shuddered, horrified, the last, secure bastion left in her life torn away at one stroke.

"You're telling me now, you were clanborn?""Yes." Dimness hid her mother's face. Yet the unmasked force of her pride rang through, in crisp diction nothing like the downtrodden lisp she a.s.sumed to cajole madam's clients. "That is your true birthright, and your heritage, Meiglin."

"No inheritance at all," Meiglin whispered, shocked. She had never imagined herself to be on the wrong side of that round of bloodletting conflict. Clanborn were hated, even killed out of hand, since the

uprising broke the ancient law of the High Kings. "And you say the madam knows? Dharkaron's mercy on us!"

Where the mayors ruled, their zealot factions bid to match the guilds' pledge to offer bounties. Packs of

b.l.o.o.d.y reivers were now offered a rich purse to cut down the remnants of the clan bloodlines. That volatile fact explained all too well why the madam should force Meiglin to brothel service, so young.

There would never be retirement, sewing gowns or washing linen, not for such as her mother.

Meiglin wrestled panic. "Now, more than ever, you're worth silver to them, dead."

"We both are." Her mother seized her hand, tugged her onward without mercy. "Can't you see? That's why you have to run, child!"The madam had no scruples where her steely eye saw profit. She would peddle Meiglin's maiden a.s.sets for as long as eager clients paid to bed her for a premium. Once the novelty paled, the madam would sell

out. Mother and child would inevitably be thrown to the swords of the mayor's headhunters.

"Get out of here and live!" Urgent fingers pressed Meiglin across the darkened pantry. "Go! Hurry, child! Egan s'Dieneval. Remember your lineage! Before everything else, that name matters."

Upstairs, Quincat's bellow showed the unlocked bedroom had been discovered.

"Go, Meiglin!" Weeping bitter tears, the doomed mother shoved her daughter through the doorway, into the cutting winter wind. "Leave Durn and never look back."

Meiglin fled.

She lost the slippers straightaway, their sodden cloth sucked off by the muddy slush clogging the street.

Since the sheet made her conspicuous, and her narrow, bare prints left a track too easily followed, she s.n.a.t.c.hed the first chance of refuge she found, beneath the loosened tarp of a trade wagon lumbering downhill toward the city gates. Huddled under flapping canvas, bound she knew not where, Meiglin wedged herself between a raw wool bale and a gunny sack of millet, probably hauled to feed the mule teams.

The cold seemed preferable to the butchery that waited if she was overtaken by a bountyman. Meiglin huddled in abject misery, silently cursing the lot that bound her to the mischance of her ancestry. She had no a.s.sets, no place to go. Her mother's people were scattered. Their proud history had been reduced to ashes in the turmoil that followed the Mistwraith's invasion, when shouting mobs had rampaged with fire and sword. They had cut down every old blood liegeman they could find, then turned in vengeful fury on their families. The clans' steadfast charge, to stand as liaison between humankind's needs and the world's ancient mysteries, had devolved into persecution and conflict. The hunted survivors hid deep in the wilds. Their armed scouts roved the land like secretive shadows, still defending the ground the old centaur guardians had forbidden to the ways of outsiders. A girl with no more to her name than a bed sheet would die of exposure, searching the hills, if she was not shot down by an arrow for trespa.s.s upon proscribed territory.

Despondent and alone, Meiglin suffered the insidious cold. Her blanched hands and aching feet slowly went numb. She slipped at length into somnolent grayness, overcome by a trance state of dreams that hurled her beyond the dimension of ordinary nightmare. The oddity had happened before; but never under the frightening, new knowledge that she sprang from a bloodline that would carry arcane gifts.