I Am Not the Goddaughter
|
Table of Contents Part 1 and part 3 appear in this issue . |
| part 2 of 5 |
3
“He’s up to something, Rhiannon.”
“Rosalyn, do not be so cynical.”
“’Ptah. Rhiannon! Magic jewels that will bathe you in light so no one will see your butt, your bosoms and your womanhood. That will warm you in winter, so you can frolic in the snow. Rhiannon, he is dragon-dropping on you.”
“Well, what if he is? What do I have to lose?”
She humphed and stared up ahead, where Raoul, in buckskin pantaloons and chain mail, was riding on his pony, whistling. We were wending our way to New Prydain, where Raoul’s agents had last seen the thief. In New Prydain, anything can be sold, including people, and I am at risk there. Slaves are considered domestic animals, and you do not put clothes on domestic animals. Since I am naked, I am constantly mistaken for a slave. If it were not for one thing, I would have as many rights as a dog or a cat in that riverside kingdom.
And that one thing is that Branwen, their queen, is my personal friend. She would see to my escort and safe passage.
The road from the Cave of the Goblins, which is in a golden mountain whose diamond crags are like those of a war-wizened face, is filled with holes that look like pox marks on the ground and things that slither underneath the surface of the earth. We would never see what creatures did so move, but from their shapes they were far larger than any natural snake or gopher. There would be an occasional whirring noise as tunnels emerging from nowhere collided with one another.
I was vastly relieved when, after seven days’ ride, the road turned into the well-traveled one that was covered with woodbine and circled overhead by woosels. There had been weeks of warm weather already, and the stalks of Modron’s Nipples were exploding into spores around us, and spiraling as though a goddess had captured tiny rainbows, had bent them into little spheres and had tossed them in an invisible game of miniature bowling.
The road was beginning to be marked with spikes whose placards read ‘New Prydain,’ with an arrow pointing in the right direction. The farther away from goblin territory we rode, the more normal the scenery. I was happy when the yellow savannas and the Matera trees, with their hanging man limbs, came into my line of vision. The smells of dragon’s blood from the pink, clown lips of the Matera flowers were a pleasant contrast to the foul smells of decay, feces and urine of the Cave of the Goblins. The skulls placed atop the spikes even had a homey look to them.
I was musing on Branwen’s government’s guarantee of safe passage when the rope fell over me, and I found myself being dragged off of my horse and through the dirt toward a gaggle of rude men, who had several naked women in cages that were hoisted on carriages.
Raoul and Rosalyn went rushing after me, swords held high, gleaming. Raoul was running like a foul midget, barking something at Rosalyn. I could not tell what; it affects the acuity of my hearing to have my head and body scraping along the roadside. I tried yelling myself, but got a mouthful of crud for my efforts.
And then I saw it. Rosalyn had thrown the death sword toward me. Right toward me. It was heading right to the small of my back.
At this point I could care less. I hurt all over from being dragged. The sword point touched my spine and loop-de-looped over my backside, flipping around my scalp and presenting its hilt toward me, as I was scraping right to left in the dirt.
I reached out, gasping and hurting all over, and held it. Swathing an arc through dirt and fiber, I cut the rope that was dragging me. I staggered to my feet, still reeling.
My would-be captors corralled me, and began fighting Raoul and Rosalyn, who had dismounted and were wading into the gang.
Still shaky and with my bosoms hurting like Nifelheim from their encounter with gravel and dirt, I started to jab the varlets. I twirled around and cleaved one of the brigands in twain, did a front crossover and struck another in the throat. But then one grabbed me from behind. Before I could sink into a horse stance, he had me off my feet. A rope, held by another, was being wrapped around me. I dropped the sword.
I was trussed on the back of a horse. Its rider whipped it. I was being carried off.
“Well, you may be my only prize, but I will enjoy your company tonight, and tomorrow you will fetch a high price at the auction.” He was tall, blond, muscular, with curly hair, and though his offworlder ears were small and rounded, he could have any woman he wanted. Why did it have to be me?
I was going to have to kill him. No question there. The only thing was how was this to be managed, with me tied up tighter than a ham at harvest?
4
My question was soon answered when I heard the flapping of wings. It was like a night wing itself was following us. My captor looked back, and his face froze. The flapping whipped its way toward my bonds. The sword swiveled to the side of the horse, where my hands were bound, and the rope that encircled its underbelly held me fast.
My hands were tied together, but my fingers could still clutch. I clutched at the sword, held it in both hands, and shook it up and down. I did this until my wrists felt they would break off, but each time I came closer to severing the rope. Its binds became more like straw at my efforts. Finally, the sword edge touched the rope, and it frayed as if it were set on fire.
I slid off the horse, fell underneath it, and rolled quickly before its rear hooves trampled me. I held tight to the sword with a new-found appreciation.
“You are a powerful ally,” I said to it. I could have sworn I heard it sing. But that could have been the blood rushing to my ears. Whoever heard of a sentient sword? And before my encounter with Raoul, it had shown no signs of intelligence.
I rushed back to where Rosalyn and Raoul were still fighting. Strapped to a horse, it seemed like I had been taken a long way away, and it could have been the humors gushing through me, but I made it in what seemed like minutes.
Raoul was between the legs of one villain, cutting through the tendon right above his knees; Rosalyn was cutting first the wrist of her opponent, then through his neck, then she circled back to complete the beheading; finally she cut through his torso. Her pantaloons made a crisp snap at her twirl.
As Rosalyn’s opponent’s head and trunk fell to the ground, the others scattered, jumped unto their carriages and with a “Yah!” and a rattling of the cages that held the women, fled from us.
I was gasping for breath, as Rosalyn and Raoul approached me. He sheathed his sword, and snatched at my womanhood from behind, as I hugged Rosalyn.
“Fine sword, is it not?” he squeaked, as I dropped it, grabbed his wrist, turned it like a faucet and took him to his knees. He gibbered and whined.
“It has served me well and not just on this occasion. Rosalyn?”
She had turned to watch my kidnapper return on horseback. She put her hands on her hips.
“Jean-Paul. I should have known it would be you to try to kidnap my mistress.”
“Why, Mistress Rosalyn. My misfortune has now evaporated to see your lovely face scowl at me.” He pressed one hand to his bosom.
“You know this person?” I said angrily, turning to Rosalyn and waving off Raoul, who, even released, continued sniffing my bottom half.
“Yes, I’ve the bad luck to have run into this rascal once before.”
“Oh, your words cut me to the quick, beautiful, hard Rosalyn. To the quick.” He placed both his hands on his heart, as if to pray. His horse moved slightly side to side at the dropping of the reins.
Raoul had stopped sniffing me and was doing so to the pockets of Jean-Paul’s pantaloons.
“Hah!” He pulled out a group of gems. “I thought I recognized this villain. He is the one who stole the Goblin Ice. I now have them back!”
But his victory was short lived. Jean-Paul beaned him on the head with his sword hilt and, as the gems that could cover me fell from Raoul’s hand, snatched them from the air. Then the varlet spun his horse around and sped off.
“We must go after him!” I cried, and headed to Nightshade. Rosalyn rushed to Scout.
“Hey, wait for me!” Raoul staggered, rubbing the goose egg that was growing above his furrows.
But I could not wait. The idea of having no longer to walk the earth naked made me run and then ride like a mad woman. And I would have caught up with the rascal too. If it were not for the soldiers who arrested us, swords drawn and with angry looks on their faces.
5
“Do you think they believed us?”
“Oh, yes, Rhiannon. A naked slave girl is the best friend of the queen. Happens all the time.” She rattled the bars of our cell.
“Rosalyn, I am not a naked slave girl,” I returned bitchily.
“Yes, no such luck there. But you know everyone in New Prydain thinks so when you are not in Branwen’s presence.” She looked around the cell angrily. “And where in Nifelheim is Raoul?”
“Probably down in the sewers taking a bath,” I said. I was squatting on the lumpy, hard as rocks bed. Oh, well. At least this jail cell had a bed. It had a hole for a privy and a bucket. An iron floor, instead of one of stone. Even a barred window so you could see sunslight and the sounds of happy free people outside. Luxurious. They treat their prisoners well in New Prydain. My mind wandered to how I could redecorate my own dungeon.
Rosalyn stopped rattling the bars, sat down crosslegged on the floor. There was not room on the bed for the both of us, and she knows how I like to place my bare bottom on floors of uncertain cleanliness. I loathe the ideas of creepy crawly critters scuttling inside of me, and that has happened when I sit on jailhouse floors.
We had been arrested for interfering with slavers; Jean-Paul had run into some of New Prydain’s finest, spun a tale that we were outlaws and they had been determined to bring us to the bar of justice. I had pleaded that I was Branwen’s friend, which earned me a cudgeling. Between my dragging, my beating, and the fight, I knew I looked a mess — all bedabbled with bruises, scrapes, and cuts. Not at all regal, but then naked, I do not anyway.
“This is not a very proper jail cell. No feces, hardly any urine, just nothing at all to eat.”
Once again, I had to swallow bile, as much at his observations as that Raoul was climbing through the hole that Rosalyn and I had had to use just moments before. Little golden droplets were falling from his bald pate, and from their stink they had come from us. He would get a curious look on his face when he felt a drop, would touch it with his right index finger, and then lick the finger. He then displayed an expression I’ve seen on wine merchants as they sample their wares.
“Good vintage,” he remarked, as if hearing my thoughts. “Here you may want this.” As Rosalyn and I lifted him the last few inches, he reached behind him and produced Eligor. I was amazed, as the sword is almost my six feet in length and he is less than a third of that. He handed it to me.
“I thought only Rosalyn and I could hold it.”
“And me, of course, you silly goose. I did forge it.” Again, the dyed eyebrows went up and down. He must think that to be becoming in some way.
“Why is it all sticky? No, do not tell me. I do not want to know.” I wiped the tiny filaments that adhered between my fingers off on one of the bars of the cell door.
“So what are you waiting for?” He pushed his lips in and out, making sucking noises.
“What do you mean?”
“Cut through the bars and let us explode from this beverage station.”
“This what?”
“It’s an offworlder expression,” Rosalyn said. “But it’s usually ‘blow this pop stand’.”
Raoul looked annoyed. “It means ‘Let us get out of here’,” he said with dignity.
“That would be a good idea, Rhiannon.”
“Rosalyn, I trust to Branwen.”
“You’ll be the very favorite reward of a lot of sewer slaves before she even hears about it. Raoul, stop smacking your lips or I will smack them for you.”
“Darling Rosalyn, the idea of Rhiannon giving her favors to a lot of sewer slaves hurts me deeply but the idea of her, covered with sewage, and me licking it off-”
“Eeeww, Raoul. Eeeww.” Rosalyn and I chorused.
I quivered at the idea and realized I did not know which was the worse thought — bathed in waste and fecal material, or the thought of Raoul licking me.
Both Rosalyn and I held our stomachs. I went over to the jail door, placed the sword into the bolt, and pulled upward. It sliced through it like it was butter.
I hefted it admiringly, as Rosalyn pushed the door open. I had used it to kill Ferrell and to command the legions of the dead, but I just beginning to glean its full potential.
“I truly like this sword, Raoul.”
“And I like your butt,” he slobbered. “But let’s go before we attract attention. I have a line on that Jean-Paul.”
We assembled in the corridor. Other inmates were cheering us.
“How are we to get out of here?” Rosalyn asked.
“We could climb back down the sewer hole,” Raoul answered, his eyes gleaming like Aurora’s cresting over the water. A golden glow seemed to engulf him at the thought.
“I think we will just walk out. Do not look at me like that, you two. I have seen people do this all the time. The trick is to look as though you should walk out.”
“All right, Rhiannon. But remember, it is you who will be sold to pay our fines, if we fail.”
“Rosalyn, just use the coins in my purse if that be the case.”
“I can’t, Rhiannon. I gave our geld to a guard to place on a pony in the third race at the coliseum.”
“Rosalyn, if I get sold into slavery, you had better buy me out of it.”
Rosalyn rolled her eyes; went ahead of us, and got to the iron stairwell that would lead to the outside of the jail and freedom.
After we emerged from the stairwell to the jail’s round reception area, placarded in wood, we sauntered, whistling nonchalantly past the guards, in their blue jerkins and trews, acting as if it were natural that one of us was a green dwarf and that a naked woman would be swinging a sword in her hand. A couple of guards eyed us suspiciously. A third joined them.
“I know that woman!” He threw down the cigar he was chewing on.
I made to run. Rosalyn and Raoul bolted after me. We emerged unto Warf Street, with its buildings of marble and stone and its traffic of carriages, carts, pedestrians, and mules.
“Queen Rhiannon, please wait!” I turned around. The guard was panting up to us. “Queen Rhiannon!”
“What do you wish, sirrah?” I pointed Eligor at him.
“We were not told of your visit. I wish to ascertain whether you were well pleased with your reception.”
“Well pleased, you bast-”
I placed my hand over Rosalyn’s mouth with my free hand.
“We were well pleased. But I do wish that you convey a sentiment to Queen Branwen.”
“Of course, m’lady.”
“Tell her that I will be visiting her forthwith, and will need an escort.”
“Sure you wouldn’t rather have these?” I glanced around to see Jean-Paul smiling at me and twirling one of the ear rings in his hand. He was across the crowded street, leaning against a livery building that had been dyed a bright orange.
“No, Rhiannon. You cannot run off after him! You’ll end up on the auction block!”
Rosalyn hurled after me. Bumping past fat merchants in flowery robes who shouted obscenities at me, I went after Jean-Paul’s rapidly disappearing form, twirling Eligor.
Jean-Paul ran into an alley. I went in. It was narrow, between two almost pressed-together marble apartment buildings. Their shadows made it hard to see, but Jean-Paul was nowhere to be found. I cautiously cleared the debris and headed to the other end of the straits.
It was at the opposite opening that a hand went over my mouth, a needle went into my arm, and a smug voice whispered in my ear. “You won’t be the first woman to end up as a slave because of a lust for jewels. Man alive, you will fetch a nice price. I will have you and your jewels and will sell them both. Sweet dreams, sweet princess. Enjoy them. Your future owners won’t let you sleep very much. Oh, you will be in their beds, but you won’t be sleeping.”
I wiggled my legs, tried to free my arms from his grip and struggled to bite him and felt the black curtain come over me.
Copyright © 2006 by Rachel Parsons
