These are the continuing adventures of the Swordmaids of the Storm and Lioness beginning in An Invisible Knife, and continued in Deiryan’s Smile, which can be found in earlier issues of this magazine. The third tale is called The Stature of a Slave, an erotic dream sequence with character development, which can be found in the fantasy section of the Grey Archive, but is not necessary to the totality of the story.

I’d like to thank Crystal Chilton for her last minute editing help, and as always the Morgans for giving me this opportunity.

I hope you enjoy this journey as much as I do.

John Henry Wilson

Prelude: Shade

Danilo rushed through the streets of New Albergone’s poorer namen Quarter, hand laying over the repeating crossbow cased on his hip to emphasize the fact that it was knocked, and his backpack slung across one shoulder for easy use as a bludgeon.

Namen meant unbeliever in the pre-Reeman Empire language of this part of the world, and the Belisarian faith still used it to refer to those of other religions despite their nominal connection to Aramina’s Church of the Lords and Ladies who taught that all the gods were one and all religions to some extent valid.

This was no place for any sixteen year old boy to be traveling alone close to sunset, especially with the locks of hair, shockingly red hair that grabbed the eye a mile a way, falling in front of his ears to mark him as one of the arrogant bigots from the other side of the city, but he’d just heard the news and had to share it with the only people who could truly care.

Danilo hated this city, and not just because of the religion everyone told him he belonged to and the bastard who commanded him to stay here. The inefficiency of the place was monumental. With ancient sewers and catacombs boring down into the earth for the gods alone (should any such exist) knew how deep people had no business throwing their chamber pots into the street.

He could easily build latrines into all these houses, comfortable seats with holes to deliver waist directly to the sewers. Hell, he could use the rain-barrels on the roofs to flush water through pipes to wash waist from various parts of the house into the latrine-hole. With filters and nozzles that same water could be used as some kind of stand up bath, like rain in your bathing room. With the streets clean he could build a system of aqueducts to bring water to every street corner. With a full sewer map he could use isolated sewer tunnels to bring purified water to fountains, or even to houses.

If only some rival prince or horde of monsters would conveniently burn the town to the ground. The army of reptilians, trolls, and dragons to the north had swept across the whole of the Carlishar hills and could have been here in an eight-day, but had been defeated before they actually could have done some good.

Normally these thoughts would have awakened Danilo’s cruel half. Then he would feed it with intellectual fantasies of how to burn down the city with three properly placed torches, or what different tactics the reptilians might have used to decimate the country. But today he was too exited over what he had just found out and had to share it with the only people who would care.

The red-haired youth found the house he sought and a knocked twice, a pause, then thrice, a pause, and then once.

A moment later a burly orckin lad of about the seventeen opened the door, dropped his spiked cudgel, and scooped the redhead off his

feet and into a hug bellowing “Dan!”

“Whoa! Easy there, Gorus! If my crossbow goes off it’s going to drill a hole in your halfling-sized foot.”

The orckin laughed at the friendly threat and set him down inside before barring the door. The redhead brushed down his shirt. Some people just couldn’t get used to the idea that others didn’t like to be touched. Inside a motley assortment of children and youths in dark gray clothes set down their assorted bludgeons, knives, blowguns, and crossbows to call greeting as an older man cantankerously chided them for assorted failures in the hurried hiding of glasscutters, lock picks, hacksaws, snatch-sticks, and ropes. Danilo gave the old man a respectful half-bow, “Lord Fagin.”

Fagin was his title; the redhead didn’t know his name, and the rank Lord was held within the guild of thieves rather than squabbling Alliance of Princes that made up Calimsara. The king, if indeed the mysterious king of thieves was a man, or even human, saw to it that his Fagins were as gentle and paternal as one could reasonably expect a career criminal to be, which in Danilo’s eye made him the closest thing he’d ever encountered to an angel. Blatant disobedience might result in a caning or exile to the beggars guild, but the rules were clearly defined and easy to learn; no one was beaten on a whim, or because the lord of the house got lost in his cups or had a bad day at work.

“Welcome, Danilo, do come in and sit. Mina, the washbasin; Angie, tea for our guest.”

The redhead accepted a pillow and settled onto it as a bony girl rushed into the kitchen to put the kettle on the fire and another, a year younger than he, who was ripe and pretty despite her poor diet, offered him a basin and clean, folded towel for Yavist purification ritual.

At least he’s not wanting to wash my feet. Dan tried to be cynical about Fagin’s “fanaticism,” but inside the man’s deep faith, faith that seemed so out of place in a man who taught children to wield knives and steal from the rich, touched him in a polar opposite way to every other religious person he’d ever met. A very big part of this was that he would not impose that faith on even the youngest of his charges, but that didn’t

mean he’d accept dirty hands or other traif things under his roof.

“Is everything well, my friend?” the Fagin asked. “I wouldn’t expect you to be traveling in this quarter at such an hour; that bow you made so well won’t make you a match for a gang.”

“Of course not, milord. As to everything being well there’s a civil war in Albergone, Cadavermen were sighted to the south again, there’ve been two murders and a suicide in town today, and Prince Kermis and my father are still alive. But personally I’m doing great. I’ve perfected the crossbow and can produce them for thirty gold crowns and a month’s labor; the guild sets the price at three hundred crowns, so selling for half that I can buy my way into the university in a year. I could offer them to a friend for seventy-five, interested?”

Fagin studied the dancing in the red headed imps cynical eyes. “If tonight goes over well I might take you up on that, but you didn’t come here so close to dark to sell me a crossbow. You have news… Is this about the destruction of the horde?”

“How long has it been since you heard from Cat?”

“Not since last fall when she wrote to describe the elven ritual that attuned her to nature. We showed it to you. Have you received a letter?”

“You know she wouldn’t acknowledge father so far as to send a letter where he might see it. What I have done is purchased a newspaper.”

Marius removed a sheet of paper the size of a small towel from hip pack, “Special edition of the Town Crier, reprinting a letter sent from King Samnaratch of Elithiira to the twelve princes to relate the facts of the ending of the war. He confirms that the horde of monsters that boiled out of the Swamp of Fangs was lead by some sort of undead god called a forsaken child. After three and a half months the war was won by four strike teams that killed the monsters’ generals. There’s a long list of the names of the various heroes, but here at the bottom is a band of all woman adventurers who defeated the reptilian king and won a magic weapon called the Sirocco’s Tooth Trident.”

Daniel proceeded to read that part of the letter, but the gist of it was that one of these Swordmaids of the Storm and Lioness was their very own Cat. The thieves listened with rapt attention to the lyrical recitation of their comrades deeds, then toasted her with their tea and traded stories about their friend’s knife fighting and burglaring prowess. When at last Marius left, refusing both escort and the invitation to stay the night, it was well after sundown; time for the children to begin their night’s work.

Marius determined to wait for the old bastard to fall asleep and then wake his brothers and sister to tell them the news. The redhead stuffed the paper back into his backpack and paused again, struck by the reality of it. “My sister is a hero.”

Five streets later the redhead’s wonder was buried under his worry over how to get home safe. Home safe, now there’s a fine joke. The moons were still down and the prince tended to save on lamp oil by leaving every other lamp unlit in the parts of town where people couldn’t afford to complain.

The streets were empty, no thieves went about their business, no scantily dressed women plied their trade, yet Danilo knew he was being watched; knew it with the same half intuitive survival instinct that woke him up with warning that his father had drunk to much and it was time to go out the window.

The boy raised his crossbow and threw back a catch that opened the clip, allowing the first of seven bolts to fall into place. He hurried into the midst of a circle of lamplight, eyes scanning wildly in all directions.

A husky chuckle floated out over the street; he couldn’t tell from where, but it was very familiar. “Cat?” Danilo called, not quite believing. It had the lusty passion of his sister, but the cruelty at the core of it belonged in the darker corners of his own soul.

Somewhere in the distance there was a crashing and a shout, but Danilo’s attention was fixed on the shape that melted out of the shadows a few paces away. More of a silhouette than a shape, a shadow that cast a shadow. The patch of nothingness was the very image of his sister, just as tall as Danilo, sleek but curvaceous, and graceful as the beast she took her name from. She might have been nude for all Dan could tell; save for the field of magic that destroyed any light that touched her all was darkness save for the stark white bone knife in her right hand.

Danilo trembled and swallowed his scream, for his studies insisted that only necromancy, the magic of death, could create such an effect. The jerking in his hand told the redheaded boy that he’d just fired his crossbow, but an instant before the bolt struck a sphere of nothingness sprang into being around its target and the bolt ricocheted as if striking stone. Danilo scuttled backward, jerking back the lever and firing again.

The red headed boy’s bowels churned as the shield flickered into existence again. He knew that a scream of “fire” might bring a crowd into the street, but he couldn’t force it past the tightness in his throat, couldn’t find the wind he needed to run, only stumble back knocking and firing.

The shield took a third quarrel, then a fourth. If Dan remembered how to pray he might have asked the gods for cold iron bolts to neutralize magic, but all he could do was scream curses at himself for not bringing such and loose a fifth missile.

Then the darkness between the lamps swallowed Danilo’s attacker completely. The husky chuckle came again and he sighted on the direction of the sound; then gasped as the bow slipped from his shaking hand. The boy whimpered at the pain quivering up his arm, ever increasing. He lifted his hand in front of his face and shuddered to see it pulsing. Danilo broke towards the next lamp, screaming as he went, and paused in the midst of its light to stare at his hand.

The whole arm had turned gray, then greenish. Gangrene. Danilo could not look away, his mouth worked but he could not scream past the pain. Before his eyes his hand began to rot away, strips of rancid flesh peeling down his arm, then falling away in chunks till the bone was bare.

Someone was screaming. As his finger bones fell away from the hand that had nothing left to hold them with the shadow-woman glided into the light. Part of Danilo wondered why he was on his knees, why he wasn’t popping the knife out of his sleeve or the cold iron brass knuckles from his pocket, why he was curling into a ball as the shadow brought her knife high.

As the first blow pierced Danilo’s shoulder he understood. He always surrendered. He always lay like this while his father beat him, he always returned to that awful house. He let himself be a victim, that was why Cat was a hero in Elithiira and he was a murder victim who used to dream about destroying the world.

The Swordmaids of the Storm and Lioness

Wood clacked rapidly against wood, practice sword against trident. Sweat plastered white fencing uniforms into bodies strangely alike despite being opposites. Cat didn’t know whether it was the skill or the half visible bodies that were so hypnotic.

Quinterra Winterstar, paladin of the Silver Swordmaid, was tall with tightly sculpted muscles rippling under fair, impossibly smooth skin. Thick, hip length hair made a cloud of shimmering silver around her as the trident-wielder danced across the practice field, striking with speed and grace, short, fast steps accompanying every blow, bringing her clear of attacks that might otherwise hurl the wooden weapon from her hand to batter her not entirely mortal form.

Quinn’s hair was silver from the raw feminine power of the warrior goddess that infused her body, coursed through her veins. It gave her eyes a purple hue one might find in a lilac’s petals. It gave her bouncing chest the magnitude and fullness that kept drawing Cat’s eyes, bounty almost visible through the sweat-soaked white cotton.

Lydia was even taller than her sparing partner, tall as many elven men. Her dark skin was even more obvious beneath the translucent uniform than Quinn’s. In Calimsara many would claim the sable-skinned people from the southern continent where naturally inferior, in Lydia’s native Shallotte dark skin was a slave brand.

Cat found it beautiful.

Lydia was well spoken, practical, level headed, and brilliantly skilled with bastard sword or knife. Powerful muscles sculpted her cream-in-coffee form into something more panther than human. Her body was sleek and feminine, but not to the extreme of her sparring partner’s. Hair fell to her shoulders in bouncing curls. Brown eyes gleamed tawny gold from the passion of their sparing match.

Her wooden bastard sword struck with strength and precision, forcing the lilac-eyed swordmaid to parry from awkward angles, and the mocha skinned woman’s tight defense, centered around a large shield of rectangular steel, forced Quinn to circle her opponent, while Lydia simply turned to face the paladin, shifting feet in slightly circular patterns that gave her body a dance-like roll. If the silver haired paladin were a fraction weaker, like Cat, or a fraction less skilled, like Cat, Lydia’s superior strength could have quickly finished the fight, but Quinn wasn’t, and the paladin’s superior speed and agility left the stronger woman only one reasonable strategy, to wear her opponent down.

These two had trained together since old enough to pretend a stick was a sword. In the two tendays Deiryan had trained them they had integrated trident techniques into the rest of their skills and, as when Quinn wielded her favored rapier and main gauche, their bouts could stretch on till both collapsed from exhaustion with neither finding advantage. Cat had a mastery of two weapon fighting neither of these swordmaids could match, but thus far that hadn’t given her edge enough to defeat their superior strength and skill.

The uniforms were for their teacher’s benefit. Or rather, the fencing uniforms were what these maidens normally worked out in, the lack of shifts or even undergarments beneath them were to dazzle Deiryan’s eye.

These two swordmaids had apparently been smitten with the handsome indigo elf since first meeting him and, with their wilder passions awakened by elven freedom and victory revels, were now completely washed away by the wild currents of their flirtation, never knowing what would happen next or weather they would submit or flee when it did.

Cat reveled in wild flirtations like that, but she could handle them. These two were quite out of their depth. Quinn had taken two men to her bed, but both were the product of relationships, not out of control attractions. Lydia, four years older than she, though Cat had avoided mentioning her relative youth, was a virgin, and more than a little scared of men as near as Cat could tell. Both were terrified beneath their giddy delight.

This was strange to Cat. With no other books available on a training trip last year the red-haired swordmaid had read some of the Parables of Aramina, a recording of the tales told by the prophet, supposedly somehow the daughter of the gods, upon whom the modern, unified Church of the Lords and Ladies was based. One of her favorites had explained, in delightfully erotic detail, how the Warrior Goddess Bernadette gave the

Rapture to the people of the world. The friend she'd borrowed the book from considered submitting to the Rapture, the desire to reaffirm life after facing death, divine commandment. She had sex after a battle with the same religious fervor that Cat cleaned blood from her body as soon was possible.

The red-haired swordmaid did not understand why a silver haired paladin, the very embodiment of the Warrior Goddess, would not express similar fervor.

Of course she practiced the Reeman religion, it wasn't her business to tell a nun of another faith how to go about practicing it.

Cat could have told them that an orgy was no big deal, a few minutes, or hours as there were elves involved, of tangled bodies and burning sensations, wonderful but almost anticlimactic compared to what they dreamed of and feared. But why ruin their fun? Besides, if they went through with it they might be open to other facets of love-play proper young women did not participate in, and Cat would certainly adore some warm bodies pressing in around hers in the cold nights to come.

The battle on the redhead’s other side was more interesting, if not so impressive. Dahlia Featherfoot, a halflingkin healer and earthmage, wielded her preferred weapon, the quarterstaff. The maiden was significantly taller than her halfling father, but quite a bit shorter than her human mother, poufy bangs not quite reaching Cat’s chin. Since the lover of her youth had returned home at the end of the victory celebration Dahlia was slowly drawn deeper and deeper into the flirtation with Deiryan.

The healer wore her normal burgundy blouse and forest green divided skirts, but had acquired a new bodice that was square and cut in the Sarasperen fashion, low and wide to the point where her huge brown orbs threatened to spill from their confines. It was more cleavage than the most revealing court gown Cat had ever seen, a vast expanse of smooth brown a few shades lighter than Lydia’s skin. The healer looked like a statue of the Mother Goddess, all bust and hips and warm welcome and serene smiles.

Thoroughly pleasing to look upon.

The halflingkin was clearly loosing for, though their skill was fairly equal and Dahlia possessed agility few humans could ever hope to match and endurance enough to shame a dwarf, her opponent was even faster and considerably stronger.

Beside herself, Saidyara was the only maiden here not out to drive Deiryan wild, which was a natural enough attitude to have towards your own father. Saidyara normally dressed in a conservative, if snug, style not unlike her father’s, deep purple leather pants and bodice over a silvery-white shirt.

But elves usually didn’t wear much. Why bother? They were comfortable naked in anything from desert heat to the brink of freezing and never sunburned. In this the elfkin took completely after Deiryan, not her long departed human mother. Saidyara’s skin was silken smooth and pale with the slightest hint of indigo, particularly at the flushing cheeks. Her tightly curled hair was dark auburn with purple highlights and her eyes the inverse of a cats, black without, green within.

In celebration of time spent among elves, where she could get away with it, the bard wore leather in her signature purple so dark it was almost black; pants that laced up both sides with a matching top that stretched from navel to neck, but likewise laced up the sides leaving creamy legs, ribs, and nearly an inch of the sides of her breast bare save for criss-crossing ties.

It was nearly enough to distract Cat from her jealousy; the elfkin was everything she wasn’t. Saidyara was a true bard with a heartbreakingly beautiful voice, Cat dabbled in the arts and could only dream of making her living that way. Cat was as agile as Quinn and trained to take advantage of it, particularly in the field of archery, Saidyara’s agility might well be beyond the scope of human ability; though only a dabbler in juggling the elfkin could spin six knives through the air without fear of injury. Saidyara was, well, an elf. Cat could only strive futilely to match the magic and enlightenment and power she was born to.

Dahlia caught a lunge at an awkward moment and Saidyara twisted her trident. The tines wrenched the staff free from one hand and the nut-brown maiden staggered back as she fumbled to recover her grip. The longer legged elfkin drove ruthlessly forwards and struck the nut-brown maiden between the breasts, slender body cracking like a whip to put all hundred pounds of her into the blow. A field of magical force flashed into visibility around Dahlia for an instant, taking the brunt of the blow, but the nut-brown maiden was still hurled to the ground in a half controlled tumble.

The healer yelped as her hand slapped the ground, then gasped, “I felt that.”

As Quinn glanced over in concern Lydia’s practice sword took the paladin in the side of the head, sprawling her in the grass. “Can’t you check if someone’s injured without getting killed, shieldmate?” Lydia teased.

Deiryan’s glance must have told him if anyone was injured, because a moment later he was giving a gently mocking laugh and offering his hand to Dahlia. “That is good, young healer. One day you will have the power to survive and fight on with your heart cut out if you can withstand the pain, now is the best time to start learning. I see the beginnings of friendship within this partnership. Sooner or later, through mistake or argument or a moment of weakness, all friends hurt each other. What good is a friendship that can’t survive that?”

The elf turned to where Lydia helped her silver haired friend to her feet. “Are you hurt, Quinn?”

“I’m going to be bruised for a few hours, but Lydia’s given me worse.”

“Will that slow you down?”

“Of course not.”

“And is your heart hurt at the pain in your jaw?”

Quinterra answered by pulling Lydia into a fierce hug while staring deep into Deiryan’s eyes.

Her teasing expression suddenly grew sad. “That’s not the wound we fear.”

The indigo elf smiled at them and the other maidens grew calf eyed, save for Saidyara who had to suppress a laugh. “Enough baby games, time for more powerful defensive enchantments and live steel. I guarantee you won’t feel pain through this.”

What was wrong with her? Deiryan was a beautiful man with long waving hair of raw gold, hairless indigo skin tight and smooth over sculpted muscles with the tone of a steel bell. The grace and flexibility of his every motion defied description, cats were ungainly by comparison, silk was coarse, spider web stiff. His unusual eyes, not the catlike orbs of most elves but the reverse, emerald within black, were startling, mysterious, ultimately hypnotic. Power radiated from him as light radiated from the sun. If he were a painting she could stare at him for hours. She could for that matter, but only in awe and jealousy, an orc would sooner stir her womanhood.

What was wrong with her? She wasn’t quislaren, men in general were just as attractive to her as women. Just not this man.

He should be dangerous, a little scary even. How could a man with the power to crush mountains with a thought, the skill to slaughter whole raiding parties in a blink, not radiate danger? Lydia had more masculine appeal!

As the others caught their breaths and Cat convinced herself that the problem was in Deiryan Lydia gripped the Sirocco’s tooth trident and tried to call forth a bolt of lightning.

That weapon had reshaped her life. Deiryan assembled them on advise from the stars to slay its former wielder, the only group weak enough to move behind enemy lines without drawing the Forsaken Child’s personal attention, but with the right gifts and strengths and luck to accomplish the task and survive. They were heroes, she supposed, burdened with a weapon of legend. Rather than fight each other for the prize they agreed to form an adventuring company and share it, the Swordmaids of the Storm and Lioness.

Four elven weeks had passed since they won the trident, and with it did their part in winning what was already being called The Forsaken War. In the first ten-day, after they’d all recovered from their battle with the reptilian king and begun to recover from the death of the sorceress Lienessa, they’d joined Elithiira’s forces in hunting down the scattered monsters. It was a frustrating time of constant riding and running and teleporting, moving from ambush site to ambush site, with the most exciting moment being when Cat had placed a flaming arrow into a troll at two hundred paces before five elves could move into position to rip it apart with razor-rings of star magic.

The next week was given to funerals and celebrations, getting to know her new companions while enjoying her pick of dance partners and lovers; human, elven, or something in between, seventeen years old or seven thousand, man or woman, it seemed the whole word was vying for her affections. She could have bedded King Samnaratch one night had she not been so busy trying to choose between a wolf-shifter and an obsidian-skinned elfmaid with full purple lips and two thousand years too master the arts of love. (They’d agreed to share her, but she hadn’t gotten another chance at the Elfkin King.)

Of course that paradise couldn’t last. The revels were on the verge of turning hollow anyway as the Rapture was sated. Perhaps it was a kind of madness that afflicted those escaped from the very jaws of death, to hunger for life in its rawest form. Perhaps it was the most natural thing in the world.

Then their partnership had truly begun with lessons from Deiryan and occasionally other elves filling their days between massages to rejuvenate their overstrained bodies and almost girlish games to build friendship between them. Cat and Saidyara taught Lydia and Quinn to shave their armpits, for imitation of the hairless bodies of elves was the fashion in almost every land save for the latter two’s xenophobic home nation of Shallotte, and even Shallottan ladies shaved their legs. They shared rare imported chocolate and gossiped late into the night, all but herself and Lydia eventually sharing the tale of their childhood and many of their intimate secrets. They’d stumbled over the language barrier, laughing their heads off at the ridiculous things people would say in one language and what they meant in another.

It was hardest on Cat, she supposed. Though she already spoke the human languages of two nations knowledge of Old Reeman was the key to the trade-speak that allowed communication between any humans on this continent, and a few other areas conquered or otherwise incorporated into the Reeman Empire so long ago, and Cat’s

Belisarian education included less of that than the piecemeal schooling Lydia had assembled by reading to Quinn and Lienessa.

Deiryan and a magus from Shallotte who’d been enamored of Lienessa had puzzled out that the trident would call a bolt of lightning if properly attuned and directed, but couldn’t make heads or tails of its numerous other powers, or so they claimed. Quinn had been the first to hurl a thunderbolt, and had unlocked the ability to call powerful blasts of wind soon after. One by one they’d all mastered the Thunderbolt, Cat only yesterday, for she couldn’t close her fingers around the shaft of the bloody thing without memories of indescribable agony, the acute sensation of three tines lodged in her lungs and lightning cooking her from the inside out, rearing up to shatter her focus.

Now only Lydia lacked the knack.

Five minutes later the mocha-skinned swordmaid hurled the weapon of legend away in disgust. Deiryan opened his mouth and Lydia snapped, “Do not tell me how much potential I have again!”

As if Lydia’s endowments of strength and martial talent weren’t sufficient, she had strong magical potential as well. If she had a hairsbreadth more talent the gift would have manifested itself without training at puberty, which would have been a very ugly position for a Shallottan slave girl to be in.

Then Deiryan wove a body hugging field of purple light over each of them, set Dahlia with her staff and Saidyara with a trident to sparring Quinn with her favored enchanted rapier and Maine Gauche, then turned to Cat. “The arts of the ranger draw their power from agility, speed, and harmony with the natural world, both elven strengths and your own. Saidyara’s fighting is mostly a lesser version of the ranger’s art, and Quinn and Dahlia both draw their greatest strength from finesse. Lydia doesn’t; Lydia draws firstly on strength few men can match and ruthlessness that I hate telling people to cultivate. You’re strong, but most professional swordsmen and monsters you face will be stronger.”

“Lydia, you’ll be using a trident. Except for exceptional orcs you won’t face many people stronger than yourself, and your usual sparring partner is faster than you, but there are two major differences here. The first is that Quinn usually only uses her off hand blade for defense, and the second is that, under that bright smile, Cat can be just as vicious as you.”

Lydia’s eyebrows raised and Cat gave her a sly wink. “Okay, this is as close to a real fight as you’ll come without getting blood on your blades. No holding back, no quarter, no pauses, no honorable concessions that you wouldn’t grant to an orc. When your star armor goes scarlet you’re dead. Begin.”

It was only then that Cat realized her twin scimitars were snug in there sheathes while Lydia was already mid-lunge. The redheaded ranger’s left arm shot up reflexively and caught the attack on her armored sleeve, but Lydia twisted the weapon and pinned her arm between the tines.

A twist of Cat’s right arm launched a dagger out of her purple sleeve and the ranger hurled it at Lydia’s shoulder. The mocha-skinned swordmaid stepped back to evade a bit too late and the weapon grazed her, drawing a flash from the purple aura. Lydia’s shift of positions twisted Cat’s arm low and she threw herself into an awkward flip to avoid her arm breaking. As the tines around her went slack the ranger wrenched the limb free, landed on her side, and rolled away. Got to do some serious work on the tumbling. That landing might have stunned me without the star armor.

Cat flipped around to her feet and leapt behind a tree as Lydia jabbed, but the mocha-skinned swordmaid did not oblige her by lodging the tines in the bark. Cat ran, struggling to yield to the forest as the elves taught her, to let the earth guide her steps, but it was still so new.

So new! I’ve spent a tenth of my life studying the ranger’s arts. You’d think I could do this after a year and a half of solid practice!

As she struggled for maximum speed the hazel-eyed ranger had to fight not to fall into her old flat-footed walking habits, had to actively remind herself to step toe first. Cat had run this way every day since her training began, but the city girl seemed to have no trouble keeping up. Cat leapt a creek-bed and Lydia followed easily. The far shorter woman ran beneath low hanging branches and the mocha-skinned swordmaid ducked low and barreled on.

Cat’s mind spun as she tried to remember the surrounding terrain, where she could go to put the city girl behind her at a disadvantage? But all the familiar spots she past were gone before she could make use of them.

Cat gave up for a moment, trying for simple speed and distance. In that moment of not trying she yielded to the forest. Without quite thinking the ranger turned, hopped over a small bush, caught a branch above it, and swung past the vines that Lydia’s feet tangled in. The fire-haired ranger ran half way up a tree to steel her momentum, spun, drew her twin scimitars, and winked at the cursing warrior half loose from the vines.

Lydia hurled a dagger of her own, which Cat tried to bat aside but only managed to take on her arm, then the hazel-eyed ranger dove into a bush.

She’d lost count of the number of times Lydia defeated her in mock combat, but this was the first time she could face the mocha-skinned swordmaid on her own terms. Perhaps a healthy dose of elven woodslore and good old-fashioned skullduggery would give her an edge. Now if only I had my cloak of invisibility.

When Lydia reached the bush a moment later Cat was gone. She let the mocha skinned swordmaid stalk her for many minutes before striking, leaping from the bushes to jab a scimitar against the taller woman’s kidneys, trade blows for a moment, take a stab in the shoulder, and spin with that momentum to disappear again.

It seemed to go on forever, heart pounding, every sense at its keenest, the sensations of the forest filling her on a level just bellow what she could consciously perceive. Sometimes Lydia foiled her ambushes, sometimes Cat escaped before the mocha-skinned swordmaid could strike back. Once it was Cat who was surprised by the canny warrior, stepping ‘round a tree to feel a knee smashing into her stomach before

Lydia cart wheeled aside, came up with trident high, and lunged with force enough to hurl her atop an evergreen bush.

Cat managed to disappear again, then scrambled high into a tree to catch her breath. The star-armor had a rosy hue. One more hit and I’m out of this. Damn, one minute she’s a soldier, the next she’s a duelist, the next she’s using unarmed moves and elven dance-fighting, and the next she’s a footpad! Who trained this girl? Thieves? Rebels? She did not learn all that from a noblewoman duelist turned crusader. Well, one last ambush, I just hope it’s enough.

A few moments later Cat used the only trick she hadn’t tried yet. Lydia’s eyes drifted cautiously about the trunks and bushes, eyes not quite focused as they tried to take in everything at once. Earlier in the game she’d focused on the shadows, as Cat herself had done upon first arriving in Elithiira, but she was clearly beginning to understand the differences between daggers in the dark in a crowded city and blades among the green. If Cat had worn her old working clothes, tight tunic and leggings in mottled green that she’d set aside in favor of purples and blacks when Deiryan gave her the cloak of invisibility, this might not have been such a close game.

Cat dropped from the bows, nearly fifteen feet above the forest floor. Fiery hair flared up above her for nearly two feet as the hazel eyed ranger’s body sent her the curious message that there was no ‘down’ even as she hurtled in that direction. Cat’s scimitars both struck the spots where neck joined shoulder an instant before her feet touched the ground and the flame-haired swordmaid threw herself back, to roll over one shoulder, then sprawl face first on the ground.

Gasping for breath Cat struggled to her knees and brought up hands that were empty as Lydia loomed over her, trident cocked back to pierce her throat.

The hazel-eyed ranger began to laugh.

“What’s so funny, kitty?” Lydia demanded, “You’re dead.”

Cat doubled over for a moment as her eyes went deep blue with her laughter. The redhead managed to gasp out, “You’re blushing,” before dissolving again. She’d been nearly killed early in the fight with the reptilian king, her contributions to that battle arguably having more to do with the enchanted flaming arrows she’d been given than her skill. Lydia and Quinn consistently dominated her in their sparing matches. She was barley a match for Saidyara, and the bard offered the group magic as well as her living crystal blades. This was the first proof Cat had that she could pull her own weight in this partnership.

Lydia looked down at her crimson glowing hands and cursed, then planted her trident in the ground, leaned on it, and joined Cat’s laughter.

An hour’s training later the Swordmaids of the Storm and Lioness and their teacher stalked wearily towards a pond. Just outside the bower of trees two elven youths appeared with stacks of warm towels, smiled as they filled their eyes, then scampered off giggling when Cat and Quinn kissed their cheeks in thanks. The lilac-eyed paladin turned to the indigo elf and smiled winsomely, “Will you be joining us, Deiryan?”

The elf grinned back, the teacher gone and the man at his most charming. “Not today, I’m afraid, there’s a naming day celebration in Aurin's Run and I promised I’d play for the dancing. 'Til next your smile lights my life.” Golden light engulfed the elf; then he was gone.

Moans of disappointment came from three throats as the swordmaids ducked through to the banks of the stream and began to strip. “I thought men and women bathed together here, Saidyara?”

“Sometimes,” the elfkin smiled.

“Then what are we doing wrong?”

Cat could see the thought behind the elfkin’s twinkling eyes. Nothing at all. Do you know what you would do if you had Deiryan naked in the bath? Of course you don’t, wanting is better than having. “Oh, you know elves. When I was in the elven crown city I had an ebon lover named Tan’tamolin. Tan would have lingered in the kissing stage the whole year I was there if I hadn’t unlaced his leathers. They’re too patient for their own good. What you need to do is catch him bathing and join in.”

Quinn blushed at that thought.

She’s not going to do it. We’ll leave next week and they’ll all still be panting for a man who’d rather preserve their virtue than wade in and live. Maybe I should step in. Deiryan wouldn’t be so hesitant if the four of us started playing with the ties of his leathers. No man can resist that. No woman either for that matter.

As she waded into the stream, surrounded by beauty, Cat lost herself in the fantasy, even an elf isn’t enough for four women. If I get them experimental enough they won’t hesitate if I show them how women can please each other.

Quinn approached with herbal lather and offered to scrub her back and Cat almost went up on tiptoes to kiss her. Then the reality crashed onto the redhead like a ranger from the bows. There was no flirtation here, no awareness in Dahlia of the fact that another woman’s hands were stroking through her hair. These women were not quislaren or any other kind of person to take pleasure from a woman’s touch. Deiryan was right, they would never pull him into the pool just because his smile made their hearts beat faster. They would never share him in anything beyond a shared fantasy. They would certainly never join her in a casual tryst.

She had to bury these feeling very deeply, right this very instant, or she would never share this casual intimacy with them again. If they knew she thought of them that way they’d respond to every embrace like a pinch on the bottom. She wouldn’t be able to share tents with them, or help them change. She’d might as well be the only man in the company.

Meetings and Partings on the Calimsara Road

According to popular belief back in Shallotte, Lydia thought, I am a l…

Actually, according to popular belief back in Shallotte I am a childlike near-human who needs to have Shallotte’s culture and religion crammed down her throat before she turns into a wild desert dervish as brutal and villainous as any orc. Since I’ve nominally joined the church of the Lords and Ladies I’m a primitive nature worshiper who’ll burn in Hell if she isn’t baptized into the Reformed Traditionalist Reeman Church.

But as a swordmaid, I am a lesbian who, despite puissant skill at arms, will still be subdued by brutish, virile orcs, and, despite preferring the company of women, will pull any man who rescues me into my blankets and eagerly pleasure him from sunset to sunrise with the help of my four lovers. Just ask anybody. Why I heard seven of the crusaders swear on their mother’s wedding ring how it happened to them and they found the prowess to pleasure all three to eight of the lesbian swordmaids.

These two are almost enough to make me believe it.

“These two” were Misha Scribesdaughter and Fileen Marhause. They’d been hired by the same caravan in Southport, an independent city-state north of the mountains that encased Shallotte, as part of a daring attempt to defeat Shallotte’s staggering channel tax. The massive wagon train carried chocolate, saffron, indigo, gemstones, brass, gold, contraptions, a small menagerie, and random curiosities along half-blazed trails north of Shallotte, around the mountains. The small army of guards struggling to defend the precious cargo from orcs, ogres, and viler things from the mountains to the south, feral spirits, woods-orcs, and shape shifters whose territories they violated from the south, bandits from all over, and the ever present terror of a dragon catching whiff of all that wealth.

They bypassed a staggering tax by avoiding Shallotte, but that barely paid for the expense of the army. It was the return voyage would be truly profitable. They would trade for elven leather while passing through Elithiira, then carry all those goods to the Stormport, greatest city of Calimsara, where they’d trade for silks, spices, porcelain, and tea from the City of Jade and the Five Thousand Islands of Nihonjin, luxuries that could make the smallest investor rich beyond their wildest dreams even when paying half their profits to Shallotte or Ossiris as channel-tax.

The army of guards was well supplied with fine weapons, skilled healers, battle-mages, and magic wands and talismans, and had taken few casualties, but its master was very nervous about passing through an area so recently overrun by monstrous hordes. (The rumor was he held an irrational terror of trolls. Lydia felt a very rational terror at the prospect of fighting the regenerating, flesh devouring fungus-beasts, so what must a phobia be like?) So they’d been happy to sign on various crusaders and adventurers returning home from the war, or off to seek a new legend.

With their status as war heroes the Swordmaids of the Storm and Lioness commanded a staggering fee for a leisurely ride to Calimsara with an army watching their backs.

Amazing the connections five big-chested women can make among mercenaries who’ve been on the march for the last two seasons, the mocha skinned swordmaid snorted.

They’d had offers on their swords, their bodies, and their hands in marriage from three armies-for-hire, twelve adventuring bands, one noble house, and two magi. The thinly disguised drooling, from men and quislaren alike, made Lydia’s skin crawl, though Anakerie’s Steel and Roses tales had prepared her. Cat answered pinches in kind while Saidyara, Dahlia, and Quinn enjoyed the attention and expressed just enough interest with the men, and just enough camaraderie with the women, that the eager suitors spilled their life’s stories and left feeling satisfied without so much as a kiss to show for their troubles.

The Swordmaids of the Storm and Lioness now counted among their allies three armies-for-hire, twelve adventuring bands, one noble house, two magi, Misha Scribesdaughter and Fileen Marhause.

The two swordmaids said they’d fallen in love after the first orc raid and hadn’t left each other’s company since. They were constantly touching each other, and saying ridiculous things about how much they loved each other. But that didn’t stop them from grabbing every opportunity to be close to, flirt with, and, in at least one instance, spy on Lydia and her friends while changing. The fact that none of them were interested didn’t matter one whit, and the fact that all her friends found it royally amusing didn’t help at all.

To their credit the two Quislaren were much gentler with Lydia.

Misha, who claimed she wouldn’t rest ‘til she’d tasted each of their lips, was a tiny, shapely woman with ruby hair from the Crimeean Isles. Everyone knew the magic-deficient people of Crimeea were the world’s premier crafters of contraptions, but that seemed small excuse for a swordmaid to go anywhere without at least one reliable weapon. She was a scout with skills not unlike Cat’s, yet she carried only a seven shot crossbow and two sleeve shields with numerous retractable blades and bolt-launchers.

Fileen, who said she’d be satisfied when they all performed a moonlit striptease for her, fit a completely different lesbian stereotype. She was as tall as Quinn and at least as muscled, but Quinn’s power was softened by the lush, healthy flesh only a rich, rounded diet can maintain.

Fileen was whipcord and rawhide. Quinn’s fair skin was preserved by the healing power of the goddess’s blessing, Fileen’s was weathered and peeling from the sun. The paladin’s chest was large to the point were the burdens outweighed the benefits, whatever chest Fileen had was swallowed utterly by the plate mail. Either she’d never used estren tea to preserve her figure as she built muscle, or she’d never had much to begin with. ileen might have been beautiful with her ice blue eyes and pale yellow hair, but she’d sacrificed whatever femininity to she’d had to the swordmaid’s life. Plainly put she looked like a boy.

Fileen favored a long bow of layered wood that few warriors, man or woman, could hope to string, a bastard sword, and a sleeve shield like Cat’s, thick steel from elbow to wrist, then protruding over the hand in a half-moon blade, only Fileen’s had two protrusions from which small crossbow quarrels were launched.

Needless to say, Cat was fascinated. That worthy approached now. Hopefully the ranger would have the grace to save Lydia from the latest embarrassing innuendo Misha was entangling her in while her so-called “friend” Quinn chuckled, stance and face declaring, “It’s good for you. Trust me. I’m white; I know what’s best for you.”

Cat’s save came not with words but with audience, for she brought the only band they’d yet to work their wiles on. Quinterra stiffened in shock.

The redheaded ranger strode forwards, weapons sheathed and bow slung across her back, arm and arm with two orcs.

Cat was a bit tall for a white woman, just over five and a half feet, and the orcs on either arm stood a head higher. One had skin the color of clean ash with ebony hair and a chin that begged, “Shave me! Shave me now!” His charcoal gray leathers were covered in black iron studs and knives sheathed all over his body. The crossbow in his free hand was a repeater; one could buy a farm with the cost of that toy. His only other weapon was generally called a “hacksaw” for the short blade was jagged enough to make woodchips with hooks at the top for catching and breaking swords.

The orc on her other arm seemed almost reputable by comparison. He wore mail and helmet of fitted crocodile hide over charcoal skin that drunk the light in a way Lydia’s race could never hope to aspire too. She’d never seen anything that black save for a few ebon elves, and even they were not so well equipped to disappear into the night. His neatly trimmed beard was snow over sawdust. A large mace sheathed on the orc’s belt, wooden shield and crossbow were slung across his back, and he walked with the shoulder stock of a knocked great crossbow.

The orc riding beside them wore piecemeal armor complete enough for a knight and carried a crossbow heavy enough to treat it like paper along with a great sword and cold iron mace. As his battered dragon-headed helmet rested on the saddle in front of him Lydia could see he was a twin to the hide-armored orc.

An orc woman with olive green skin and loose black hair walked a little to the outside with arrow knocked in a short bow. Lydia blinked, not believing what she’d chosen to wear. It should have been perfectly functional leather armor of impressive craftsmanship, the breastplate shaped to her body and boiled to the consistency of bronze and studded with cold iron, the arms and legs so supple they might be elven work but tough enough to protect from superficial cuts and force through brambles. It should have been, but the monster had chosen to flaunt her double row of breasts by cutting out a diamond between them, revealing cleavage from the lower set and the bottom curve of the upper. The arms and legs were also torn in places as if to bare the scars beneath, and her cheek was tattooed with a crimson whirlwind, apparently their company symbol as the twins wore it on their tabards. A chain hung around her neck, falling past each breast to dangle foreword-curved blades over her thighs.

The final monster was the biggest humanoid Quinn had ever seen, a head taller than she and probably twice as heavy. They were all broad-shouldered, but this one was two-men wide. He seemed even more savage than the female with scars criss crossing his mid-gray arms and legs. His only protection was a shirt of chainmail, his only weapons a bandoleer of flint hatchets and a pole-axe that Lydia was willing to wager he took off the corpse of a Shalotan Murlin-rider, an elite cavalryman who rode a giant four limbed kangaroo like the one currently between Lydia’s legs.

Quinn stood in the saddle, mouth gaping in shock, as they approached, then mumbled something about having to check with the caravan master and healed her new horse into a canter. When Cat saw this she said something to her companions and whistled for her horse. A few moments later the redhead called for the rest of the swordmaids to “come on” and rushed to accost the paladin.

Lydia’s teeth smarted when they caught up to the silver haired woman, for the pace she set forced the murlin to hop and, despite advice from various elves to “yield to the leap”, she still lacked the knack of it. “I can’t believe you’re associating with those monsters,” the paladin hissed.

Cat quirked an eyebrow and replied, “They’re from four different corners of the world. Believe me, they’re not spying for some bandit clan.”

“They’re orcs!”

“They’re orckin,” Cat replied.

“What’s the difference?”

“Free will! I don’t believe I’m hearing this from a woman who risked her neck getting illegal emancipation for the slave she grew up with.”

Quinn stiffened so abruptly she almost fell of her horse, but Lydia didn’t notice. “What do you mean illegal?” the mocha skinned woman whispered, then wrenched open a saddlebag to dig out her emancipation papers.

Quinn began to shiver but didn’t respond.

“What do you mean illegal!” Lydia bellowed, jerking out the folio and staring at the document within. “How can this be illegal? The Firehawk seal of the royal bureaucracy is right there! Just below yours! How can this be illegal?”

The paladin snapped to reality with full body jerk and twisted in the saddle to face her friend. “She doesn’t understand the law, Lyds. It’s perfectly legal.”

“My schooling was so full of propaganda they might have told me dragons were poodles,” Cat stammered, “of course it’s legal.”

Lydia reeled her murlin around and grabbed Quinterra’s arm with crushing force. “What’s she talking about?”

“You’re free, Lydia. The right of emancipation is written into the treaty that unified the nation, in the section on dealings with Ossiris. It can’t be changed without alienating every noble house in Shallotte. You’re free, and King Federico himself can’t change that unless you become a citizen of Ossiris and are captured in military action.”

While struggling with an impulse to throttle her friend Cat came to her rescue with the proper question, “So what did Federico the fourth decree in 1153?”

“He said anyone who emancipated a slave would face the headsman.”

“What!” Lydia bellowed.

Quinn abruptly snapped her back straight, purple fire flashing in her eyes. “I said that signature is your freedom and my death warrant! I don’t care what everyone says, some things just have to be done!”

“Damn you!” Lydia’s shout could be heard at the end of the train. “That funeral was crawling with Whitefires and you didn’t think to mention I was carrying your death warrant? Do you know how close I came to waving that under old Whitefire’s nose? Damn you!”

“It was my choice and sooner or later I have to pay the price for it.”

“No! It’s not your choice; it’s my life! My life; not your statement. It’s not yours to control, live, model, or guide, and it sure as hell isn’t yours to die!”

As Quinn’s mouth worked soundlessly the sun went out. Screams of panic surged across the caravan as guards and porters recognized the shape covering the sun, crocodile head on a serpentine neck, strangely feline body sprouting bat-like wings, crocodilian tail long as two wagons.

A dragon had found them at last. Arrows and crossbow bolts and minor spells bounced from the monster’s hide, or pierced shallowly, only the largest crossbows and Cat’s enchanted flaming arrows managing to do more than sting the beast. A minor magus with a magic wand singed it with a fiery explosion that might have dropped a dozen men before a wagon was abruptly jerked into the air. The dragon arched away with its prize, thinking to be gone before the heavy bowmen could hope to reload or more powerful wizards arrive. Arrows glanced off harmlessly as it gained height, and the caravan master bellowed.

Misha lodged a bolt the size of a short sword in the monster’s skull to match the one she’d put in its forearm, then tossed aside a contraption that they later learned used a spring to winch back the mighty bow in seconds before fitting another to it, yet the dragon had caught an updraft and would be out of range in a heartbeat.

It seemed the air was torn asunder by the noise, a noise too loud to hear, leaving Lydia to wonder if she’d ever hear again. In the same moment the world went blue-white, and the mocha-skinned swordmaid realized that Quinn had loosed a thunderbolt form the Sirocco’s Tooth Trident.

A crash nearly bounced her murlin into the air; then Lydia’s eyes cleared enough to make out the swamp dragon thrashing on the ground over the mangled cart, orckin leading the charge against the fallen beast. Its left wing was a mangled cinder.

“Oh well done shieldmate!” The words tore themselves from Lydia’s lips as her murlin leapt towards the thrashing monster, argument abandoned but not forgotten.

A horde of hacking axes and broad-blades descended on the dragon.

Quinn asked Cat to invite her friends to their camp that night, but they were all so exhausted that no one noticed that neither orckin nor ranger were seen till morning. As camps were broken and breakfasts past round the guest arrived in the middle of morning work outs, so Dahlia silently brought out extra plates and put on a few pans of potatoes to spread out the rabbit and spinach quiche Saidyara had prepared the previous night. (Quail eggs, and wild shova-hen. As was proper for a Yavist Cat wouldn’t touch chicken with a ten-foot pole and Quinterra was still not comfortable with it despite her insistence that she did not bend knee to her country’s dominant religion. Lydia ate it with the relish she might use for Old Whitefire’s balls.)

The orckin observed Quinn and Lydia’s forms closely, and then cheered their sparing match. When the swordmaids settled down for cool tea the fire-haired ranger began the introductions, giving them all so many fanciful titles that they probably never realized some of Quinn’s were real. The hairy-chinned man was Sir Narin Shadowblade, Ember-Knight, Doom of the Tuskan Bandits. The gray orckin in boiled hide was “Sir

John Tempest-Runner, Tsunami-Surfer Macresh, Arcmage of the Chalice,” and his brother, “Sir David Horse-thrower, Doom of Twelve Bandit Knights.” The green woman was “Brizat, Grand Mistress Of The Chain and Clachette, Who Teaches Worgs To Chase Their Tails, Moyle of Clan Greenspear.”

This was enough to jerk a roar of laughter and flash of affection from Lydia, she could think of half a hundred men she’d love to “circumcise” with her bastard sword.

The giant was, “Cor, the Silent Knight, Titan of Twilight, Sage of Steel, and All Around Big Guy. He doesn’t talk much, but that’s because he waits till he has something to say. Um, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, um.” Cat seemed extremely flustered by her inability to communicate whatever was in her head, which in Lydia’s limited experience meant it was either very important or Saidyara had recently done a better job of saying the same thing. She experimentally shot a warning glance at the elfkin, who blinked and shut her mouth. I may get the hang of this social interaction thing yet.

Quinterra came to the young ranger’s rescue with, “I think I understand.”

Dahlia had been glancing back and forth between the orckin throughout the introductions, and while scrutiny was exchanged by all she was staring straight into their eyes. Norin met her wide, dark orbs with unfocused defiance, the brothers with the easy intensity they might an admirer, Cor with serene, silent regard, and Brizat with the fierceness of a wolf staring down a challenger. Despite growing increasingly uncomfortable Dahlia seemed unable to stop the intimate inspection ‘til Brizzat gave a soft snarl, then the halflingkin blurted, “You have elf eyes.”

Then orckin went quite for a moment, and then roared in laughter. “Elf eyes,” David managed, “Oh, that’s rich.”

“Well you do,” Dahlia insisted. Their eyes were all iris, the whites only visible when they peered sidewise without moving their head. All in different shades of yellow from pale egg-yolks for Narin to wolf-like tawny gold for Cor and Brizzat. In the bright morning light their blacks where thin slits, little more ovals than lines, but, cat-like, they would widen in the dark and luminess faintly as they sucked in the dimness. The only exception was Jon, whose eyes seemed the shade of the sea.

“My eyes have been called everything from a snakes to a devil-cats,” David explained, “but elf-like is a first, thank you Dahlia.”

“I’m having some trouble getting Shallotte our of my head,” Quinn began her enquiry, whipping silver bangs clear of her brow, “do you mind if I ask some personal questions?”

“Not if you mind our getting just as personal,” Norin replied with a tongue-rolling leer that, were his lips fuller, might have come straight from a slave man named Kaorl.

Lydia had almost castrated Kaorl.

Cat squeezed the orckin’s thigh. “Down boy. You’re not man enough for me alone, much less me and Quinn together.”

The orckin roared again, though Cor’s laughter was almost soundless, and the other swordmaids stared at Cat in shock. Lydia snorted, did they really think normal people teased each other for months before sleeping together? Did Quinn really think her beaus would put up with it if they didn’t have their “little niger girls” at home to relieve their tensions on?

“What made you, um, choose to live this way?” Quinn managed.

“You mean why aren’t we running with orc raiders, killing you to get at all the gold?” Brizzat asked, her voice fierce and proud. “Well let me tell you about orc life. See the way my skin is green while the others are gray? I’m a forest orc. My clan’s territory is about three hundred miles north of here. We don’t have all these delusions of civilization. In Shallotte you pretend you take slaves to give them culture and religion,

but the truth is you’re stronger than the slaves and you take them because you can. This is the natural order. The strong live, the strongest lead and breed, and the people grow stronger. Wolves and horses are no different. The mountain orcs may not be so tough or large, but their life is about the same. There’s a lot of strength to that lifestyle, and I’m not yet sure what parts of it I want to keep now that I’m not running with the clan anymore. Cor seems to have it all figures out, though, so for now I follow his lead.”

Lilac eyes blinked, then blinked again. For all the Shallottan prejudices she was clearly grappling with Quinn probably hadn’t expected an endorsement of orcish society; the paladin always expected the best from people. She certainly hadn’t expected an endorsement that made sense!

As the three-inscisored grin Brizzat favored her with stretched on Quinn finally managed, “If you liked it so much why did you leave?”

The green woman’s grin broke. “Oh, I kind of lost that part, didn’t I? I got tired of playing brood mare to every orc big enough to take me and take me from the man of the hour, so I started making myself harder to take. Eventually no one could, but that just made me all the more desirable, because hey, if a woman can kill Jedic Broketusk what could her sons do? Eventually I had to kill the chieftain’s son because he couldn’t comprehend the meaning of no, so they exiled me.”

Lydia wondered if her jaw was as slack as the others. Quinterra’s hand was involuntarily reaching forwards.

“What?” Brizzat glanced among them, confusion written on her face. “Oh, you humans always blow that out of proportion. I didn’t enjoy myself but you always act like it was a lifetime in the torture chamber or something.”

Lydia blinked, then blinked again. Was that all there was to something she’d lived in terror of since her eighth birthday?

Saidyara managed to break the shock by turning to John. “What about you? I don’t see many men practicing chalice magic.”

The ocean-eyed orckin smiled, poured deep red wine into his silver chalice, and swirled it with his fingers. “Gran said, “It’s woman’s magic, so you’ll just have to treat the magic as you would a proper young woman. Court her with courtesy and strength and tenderness, lead till she yields to you, but if you fight her then she’ll wash you away.”

As he spoke the wine cycloned up and shaped into the face of an ancient woman, care worn and lined with smiles, her dress long, the staff in one hand more for show than support, the chalice in the other seeming to pulse with power. She regarded them all with wisdom and serenity, eyes and neck turning fluidly to look from one to the other.

“I suppose David and I and our family have always been very lucky. We grew up in Ardenburgh, a few weeks up the road past New Albergorne. Our names are Tarsin, but our faith is Aramina’s as practiced beyond the Crags, not Bel’s. My father was a carpenter, not a noted one but not a bad one either, and because of Gran he was very liked and respected. He married a plump baker’s daughter for love.

“In their first year together mother went to visit her cousin in an outlying farm and was taken by orcs from the Crags. The current prince wasn’t very cooperative about helping get them back, but Gran had been the healer for the quarter since the oldest crone’s earliest memory, when she asked for aid the quarter answered with enough coin to hire the finest adventurers in a thousand miles.

“Mother and a few others were brought out three months later. She recovered, though she was never quite so plump again, and father never set her aside even when we were born.

“I suppose I was eight before I realized father was not my father in blood, but the problems began a year later when we sought apprenticeships.

“David was the strongest boy in town, but the guilds wanted nothing to do with him. The blacksmith’s and the woodcutters and the watch would have nothing to do with him. He chose the military over the mines and the stables.” For a moment John’s eyes saddened as the face of his brother as a boy appeared in the wine. “You used to be gentle, once.”

“Who me?” David’s grin showed as many fangs as teeth. “That’s right, I’m just an ironclad teddy bear with a grandfather who stuffs to many sweets down my throat.”

“Well my gift was obvious by now, but the man who was a Water-Healer in Stormport would have nothing to do with, nor would the masters of the Academy, or the city’s other male healer, so Gran did her best to teach a man chalice magic alongside my sister Abigail while little Yole with the gift of Fire promised to be the first girl to be accepted by the mages at the academy.”

The swordmaids had been enraptured by the wine sculptures of the people he’d known and the people he’d imagined, his mother before his birth a work of art, the unnamed adventurer’s portraits of heroism. Now Quinn’s lilac eyes again pleaded for an interruption, and he met them.

“I’m sorry again, but we have no Elementalists in Shallotte and words and concepts are just tumbling past me. I’ve read of Firewalkers, Windracers, Earthcallers, and Waverunners, but I have no clue what a chalice mage is.”

John smiled again. “Well in Shallotte you have mages who channel all four elements and sometimes other things with formula, but this is not a natural process and I think it strains your body. Elementalisim is more natural, a thing some start to develop without training. I could sometimes feel things growing up, when rain was coming, what my friends were feeling, what was happening up stream. I could swim without trying, and my touch soothed pain, so they knew I could be what some call a Waverunner and a Healer. Abigail was like me, but she couldn’t heal. Yole had so much potential that Gran named her for a Firewalker in Aramina’s fables when she was born, little fires would start when she had nightmares.”

“Now I don’t know where you got those names, I’ve heard others use them in the north, along with a dozen more, but I have more water within me than any other element. My spirit adapts, flows, and is capable of incredible strength, so Gran was able to teach me to harness the energy of water. The silver chalice is normally used by women to gather water energy, but I’ve got the knack of it. The power’s not just in the chalice, it’s increasingly in me. Since learning to harness it my eyes have turned from yellow to blue. It cords in my muscles so that I’m as limber as a little boy and as strong as my brother despite getting less exercise. Gran is just a little old woman but she can match my strength. If I ever equal her power I might be stronger than Cor.

“A windracer would gain speed, an earthcaller fortitude and endurance. Yole’s fire energy settles into the mind and charges her intelligence. With what she’s already got the mages at the Academy want her badly for her blend of power and intelligence, but if she turns them down and continues to study raw fire her intelligence will continue to be empowered, her auburn hair will turn increasingly red, healing energy will suffuse her ‘till you can watch her wounds heal, the beauty of youth will stay with her into her forties with never a scar or blemish and the flush, vibrant skin of a swordmaid.

“I don’t know if she went to the academy or not, when a letter found me last year she was trying to decide. If she does no energy will ever really build up in her save that of the healer, and she’ll loose much of her capacity for intuitive magic. In return she’ll be able to weave fire and water to make steam or lightning, shape as well as destroy, cool as well as warm.”

“I worry for her, though, because young prince Tolemer has ambitions of being king of the nine cities of Calimsara. We had to leave four years ago when he mobilized the army to try and conquer the surrounding cities. He was put down, of course, but I don’t know that he’s given up. We haven’t been home since, and intend to leave the caravan at New Albergorne.

“We’ve traveled with Cor ever since, from here to Iceland and back. Maybe next we’ll cross the crags, travel through lands still torn by the dark ages ‘til we see the wonders of the east. Prince Tolmer sits in his palace and thinks himself rich, but he’s never danced with elves in the woods or prayed at the great basilica in Thrace. He never rode the trolley cars of the Crimean Isles or stared across the ocean of ice from the mountain city of Hart’svale. He’s never seen the stars dancing in the bay of Letrezz or been smiled at by dusky skinned beauty from Sarasper. I count myself the richer by far.”

After a quite moment they turned to Norin whose hand was as far up Cat’s hip as the black boiled leather codpiece of her traveler’s leather allowed. The red haired swordmaid seemed to have some modesty after all, for she tried to pull it away, but Norin’s fingers clamped over the supple black elven traveler’s leather that fit her like a second skin till she winced and subsided. Lydia growled, and Quinn would have done more than that if she understood what she was looking at. That “caress” had just left bruises.

“Well, there’s not much to say. I remember life among the orcs, though I couldn’t tell you who my father or mother was. We served Pyren Orenstophomere, who renamed out tribe the Flametalons. He was a flame dragon three times the size of that thing we killed yesterday. I don’t care what everyone says, that thing wasn’t a dragon, just some ugly winged croc with poison for breath. Looking at a dragon is like… Like looking at fire and rubies and music made flesh. It was the most… There’s nothing like it.”

“Swamp dragons are unseelie mockeries made to hunt elves,” Saidyara explained. “I played for a celestial dragon once…” Words failed the elfkin for the first time since they’d known her, leaving only shudders of awe.

Egg yolk eyes considered the elfkin, then continued. “I didn’t really know I wasn’t an orc till Josten Dragonbane slaughtered everyone I’d ever known but me. He and the wizard he companioned and the other’s in their retinue split the horde to buy titles and retire to a life of luxury in the capitol. Rather than kill me he took me as a house slave. I think I was seven, the Flametalons were about to take me on my first raid.

“Life was pretty bad, they never let me leave the city or gave me any coin, and Josten’s son was bitter that he was feeble and would never match his father so he played “Slay The Orc” in ways that left me bruised for weeks.

“So I took control of my life in the only way I could find, joining with a band of thieves to hit my enemies where they hurt worst. I ran with them for several years, usually using my shares to by friends among the poor and a little candy, since there was nothing I could do with it, but when Cor bought me and set me free I had a little extra stashed away to start a new life, and a network of friends to hide me, so I went back and took a few back wages from the house I’d never dared to rob before.” He removed his hand from Cat’s leg and whispered, “Ember.”

With a red flicker from his boot a long, ruby pummeled dagger of silvery mithral appeared in the orckin’s hand. Flames licked out of the blood-groove and along the razor sharp edge. “Josten took the dagger from Pyren, and his friend the court magician enchanted it as his backup weapon. But because Josten was retired he gave it to Jarl, that’s his son, and the brat gave me three scars to celebrate. I didn’t have time to return the favor when I took it.”

Lydia’s jaw had gone slack. He was a slave. Of course he’d never learned how to treat a woman. That didn’t excuse Cat from not drawing a knife and teaching him but… A slave.

Quinterra turned to hulking Cor. “This all comes back to you.”

The big man smiled and shrugged. “My mother wanted to leave the tribe, so we left.”

David and Norin chuckled evilly and Brizzat roared. “Leaving how many headless corpses behind you? Twelve, fifteen? Chief Tharliss wasn’t happy that you took his woman,” the piecemeal knight gloated. “Sessory is the dearest person you will ever meet in a thousand years; if Cor would let us we’d all die wiping out the tribe that took her.”

Lydia looked him up and down, eying the axe. “You’re from Shallotte.”

The giant nodded.

“And you took that from a murlin-rider.”

Silent regard. He knew she knew full well he’d done so.

“How do I kill them?”

Cor glanced back and forth between her and Quinn and the murlin nuzzling Lydia’s shoulder till her brown hand came up to stroke his muzzle. The giant’s question seemed more for Quinterra’s benefit than her own. “For defense or offence?”

Lydia forced herself not to think of the torn confusion in the paladin’s lilac eyes. “Both.”

The giant nodded. “When the murlin leaps at you you must roll past it so that you are as low as possible and moving fast when the axe comes down. There is no parry. When you come to your feet take off the murlin’s tale tip. Without it the creature will have no balance and will crash if forced to leap again.”

They said that, were the rain not pouring down so hard that the watch was pointless lest a thief pass within five feet, Lydia could see a dim glow on the horizon from the lights of New Albergorne’s streets.

Were someone watching her they might fancy they could catch a glimpse of grim brow eyes beneath the water pouring past the hood of her elven rain-cloak. Her body was stiff, like her spine had calcified into a straight iron rod, and her watch was just as pointless within the hood as it was without.

Always Quinterra defined her life, always. Lydia was educated because Quinn needed to be read to. Lydia knew the sword because Quinn needed a sparing partner. Lydia left Shallotte on a crusade for the paladin’s goddess. Now she traveled the world because Quinn wasn’t ready to go home and die for the noble act of freeing the little nigger girl too weak to free herself, who wasted her secret weapon on a chest of fripperies because Miss’us Quinterra didn’t want to loose them.

“I am not your cause.” The rain drowned the soft hiss.

When Quinn spoke she had to bite her tongue and freeze in place not to obey. When a white person met her eyes she had to gather her pride not to look down. Where Quinn went she followed like a mindless dog with steel fangs. What Quinn suggested they do she did, who Quinn loved she loved, what Quinn said to kill died at her hand.

“How long will my life be defined by the lady Quinterra Winterstar and her old fashioned goddess?”

She’d spent the past week more with the orckin than the swordmaids. Sparing, talking, learning, teaching. Cor had her hewing wood with his spare battleaxe to build strength, Jon showed her local plants that killed infection in wounds. They were all better than she, but they had four years on the road at the least to temper themselves.

In four years they’d traveled from here to the frozen north and back, wherever the wind or their hire took them. Bound by no master and no law save what they’d made for themselves. Free to leave at any time, earning their own keep rather than living off some noblewoman’s gold.

They were free.

And they were like her. Despised and demeaned for the accident of their birth, but thriving for the control of their own destiny they claimed. Not even vile, petty little Norin could be held in the chains he came from.

There was the catch, though. The things they let Norin get away with. The way he treated Cat, like a servant, a child. When they argued they fought with fists and when Norin beat her down he dragged her into his tent. She wanted to slash him up till he begged Cat for forgiveness, maybe kill him, but Cat’s eyes and words always said, “Stay out of this.”

But she was not such a person. If Norin tried that shit with her she’d castrate him.

Freedom.

A life not defined by Quinterra Winterstar, with no Shallotte hanging over her head.

“I refuse to be defined by you ever again.”

Red Cat

If Lydia had still been with them Cat might have asked her for back up, but Dahlia would be horrified at the very idea. Saidyara would try to talk her out of it, and Quin might try to stop her. Half of her wanted to be talked out of it, and half of her feared it more than anything, for it just might succeed.

Cat left the other swordmaids lounging in the huge circular baths, for once finding it easy to ignore suds sliding over ripe, healthy bodies.

“I have some personal business to take care of, I'll see you at breakfast." Then the redhead rushed out, wrapped deep in her robe, before her companions had time to question. They'd probably just think she was going to meet Narin for a final tryst and scowl in disapproval.

Wrapped in her robe the young ranger scurried up to her small, private room. Quite a luxury that; though she was getting used to her lovely companions it would be hard to hide her attraction with Saidyara changing right in front of her, or Dahlia handing out massages clad only in one of Quinterra's shirts, or, worst of all, sharing a bed with Quinn. Dahlia had to be an empath[1], all healers were, did she already suspect?

Cat tried to distract herself from the night’s dark business with what few threads of vanity she'd managed to cultivate. Vanity and hard won pride. She gathered a pile of equipment and clothing in a chair, then stood before the full-length mirror and slipped the robe from her shoulders.

The ranger's life has been kind to me, but why did Myshara have to go and take my scar? Cat's body was medium in size and build, her skin lightly tanned and almost impossibly smooth. Once she'd proudly worn twenty-three knife scars and three from dog bites, and, her pride and joy, a slash from a short sword half way down her left breast. Yet the Silver Elf Myshara, the only Unseelie in the known world to return to a life of beauty and joy beneath the stars, had practically transfigured her when healing the wounds dealt by the reptilian king.

Dahlia and Quinterra's power was such that they healed dozens of times faster than normal people, and Saidyara and Lydia had their wounds tended by healers most of their lives. Cat had not grown up with such costly luxuries. Her wounds healed the hard way, with cleaning and stitching and time. At fourteen she could tell the weather by aches in old wounds. By the time she could call herself a swordmaid she had the scar on her breast to prove it, but now her skin was as silky as Lydia's. The old aches and pains, twinges in her knees and tightness in her back, were gone. She had the body of a newborn babe with the maturity of a woman grown.

More than that, she didn't sunburn so easily anymore, she could walk naked under the trees all day and barley darken, like any elf, though the open roads still called for a hat. Her breasts had abruptly filled out a bit, standing pert and high on her chest, as if she'd drunk estren tea in her early teens to preserve her figure while building the strength necessary to climb a wall with hands alone.

Her chest was larger than Saidyara's now, though Quinn and Dahlia put her to shame. It was still the slender body of a cat burglar, though, for all she'd put some deceptively soft curves over her supple whip-chord frame. Her eyes were deep blue in the candlelight, almost violet, a sign that the ranger had found the serenity she sought. A smile lit the redhead’s heart shaped face, serene dimples and pointed chin hinting at the elven smile she craved. Her bangs were almost long enough to obstruct her vision; she'd have to fix that soon. But not tonight, she had time for a proper barber. Her body was hairless from toes to forehead save for the neatly trimmed fire of her womanhood, and she might never have to shave again if the spell Dahlia had cast was as easy as she claimed, and there were weeks yet till she'd have to renew it.

Cat set to work. The first magic talisman she'd ever owned hooked over her right ankle, a tiny silver chain dangling a cheep bloodstone against her calf. The talisman to prevent pregnancy could be sold for enough coin to live on for a year, but His Majesty the king of thieves insisted that all his girls be so equipped.

Next three long steel pins of varying thickness, the three most commonly used lock-picks, were slipped into the last place any lawful soldier would look. Then a full set of the tools were expertly and subtly braided into her thick, fiery hair before Cat pulled it back and tied it loosely with a simple leather chord which doubled as a handy garrote.

Next the flame-haired swordmaid donned soft, tight linen purple undergarments with a tiny bar, a slip, of platinum in a hidden pouch between her legs. Next a body-hugging linen shift that ran from mid-breast to the tops of her hips, and over that a garment resembling a thick corset pushing her breasts higher and making breathing a touch difficult, if not half so much as a true corset.

The garment was, in fact, padding a third of an inch thick and hot as hell, but the elf-crafted marvel was as efficient as human crafted quiltings three times as thick. It also concealed a number of gold and platinum slips, which could not be accessed while the armor was on no matter how cunning the pickpocket, and a full set of locks picks that could be reached from above.

Tying the garment herself was no easy feat, but Cat was as limber as her namesake and much practiced, and the garment was soon snug. Next she stepped into a breastplate of stiff, boiled, and fitted rawhide. This was difficult, as it had to be forced past her hips and breasts, but the cleavage was wide enough that she didn't have to crush her breasts. The softer leather straps settled over her shoulders, covering the straps of the

garments beneath, and now she looked the part of the swordmaid, though in truth she would almost be willing to accept extra weight in the name of cold iron studs to dampen magical attacks.

A codpiece of the same quickly joined the ensemble, followed by dark black pants of elven traveler's leather, tight as a glove with nearly the suppleness and strength of silk.

Next Cat hung a dagger behind her neck and strapped a dagger in a complex sheath to her right forearm. Others, especially Crimean’s, made sheathes like it, but this one was her brother's design. She pulled back a lever; then slid her favorite dagger into the sheath. When she twisted her wrist a catch would be thrown and the dagger would launch into her hand, far more effective than the drop-sheaths commonly used hereabouts.

Next her sleeve shield fastened over her right arm, protecting from elbow to wrist with a half-moon blade projecting just over her fist, yet high enough not to interfere with the full mobility of the hand. That said it made twisting her wrist difficult, but she was confident that her skill would overcome that small impasse. She opened a cleverly hidden compartment and slid a small glasscutter into a cunningly placed groove beneath the sleeve-shield.

Then the hazel-eyed ranger hung a small purse around her neck, where it snuggled between her breasts, a purse containing enough platinum coins to purchase a small house. Let Quin rely on her triple locked and spell warded chest, the Red Cat knew better than to keep all her eggs in the same nest.

Next the swordmaid donned her purple tunic. This too was an elven material, though it resembled fine woven flax it could stretch in a way no other cloth she was familiar with could. The subtle design gave the impression that her garment was so tight she couldn't be wearing anything but scant undergarments beneath it. Like the leather it was at least as strong as silk. Elven tailors spoke of suits of silk armor that would turn living-crystal blades as efficiently as chain mail and break the light but amazingly sharp blades used in the east. This would offer little protection against the steel-clubs-with-edges that were the preferred swords of non-elves in this part of the world, and quite a bit thinner than such armor anyway, but in a proper knife-fight it was better than platemail.

Cat raised the tunic and buckled her pants in place with her pouch-covered swordbelt but removed her sheathed scimitars. Above that she wrapped her most prized elven treasure that was not a weapon, three hundred feet of elven rope. Thin as twine it was, and quite capable of holding up all five swordmaids at once, and perhaps a small horse to boot. Elven craftsmen were enigmatic about its make, but the general gist of their enigma was, "you're too anxious, asking to know things now that it took me three hundred years to learn." They did say it was woven from spider-silk though.

All three hundred feet of it formed a five-inch wide coil around her waist, which was easily concealed beneath the burgundy sash Cat donned next and tucked her swords through.

Then brown elven boots with a fringe up her calf, sliding the pregnancy talisman over them. They were like the traveler’s leather only thicker, with a soft sole to feel Mother Earth beneath her feet. Soft enough for one such as Cat creep close enough to touch a deer in. Two daggers were tucked into the tops of each one, and a few coins and jewels were already concealed therein.

The red-headed swordmaid selected three throwing daggers and tucked them into a pouch sewn into the tunic behind her neck, a bar magnet held them in place point up to draw and throw with one smooth motion, another of her brother’s innovations.

Finally she swirled her cloak over her shoulder and fastened the clasp, a silver falcon on a silver chain. The cloak was pure, dark black. Seemingly of velvet it kept her warm in the winter and cool in the summer. The garment’s true power was not in its fabric, but it’s magic. As Cat raised the hood she faded from sight, the footsteps moving towards the window would seem, to one actually able to make out the quite woman’s footsteps, to come from a spot somewhere a few feet to her left.

As Cat opened the shutters and climbed to the roof of the inn her sense of grim purpose returned. It was time for revenge on the man who taught her the meaning of fear, of sex, and of pain. The man who drove her to the life of a thief and eventually the life of a hero. Tonight her father was going to die.

He was a large man, a woodcutter by trade, who would have never amounted to anything without the favor of the Belisarian church. He ruled his two wives and five children with an iron fist and a leather lash, but he was no warrior. Cat was a ranger and a thief, a swordmaid skilled and powerful enough to slay Orcs and reptilians. A drunken hulk of a man with a heavy belt and reeking cock was no match for her twin scimitars.

No watchman could catch her, she’d evaded them easily since she was a girl of eleven, and now, with the gift of invisibility and the backing of the Swordmaids, even the Church watch-mage couldn’t find her.

The unseen swordmaid set an easy pace across the tile roofs, angling first towards the richer Belisarian quarter, trying not to think about what she was about to do. Her hands shook as they never had before a battle, and she wished she had someone to throw an easy joke or winsome smile to.

Nervous as Cat was the thief she found atop the roof, standing impatiently over the lines that his friends would use to send loot up from below, heard nothing of her approach till the backs of her fingers brushed the back of his neck.

The thief spun, knife lunging instinctively, and Cat took it from him and held it at his throat. “I remember you,” the unseen voice whispered, “you sided with Kricheck in the last revolt. Sill got your left hand? His majesty must have been merciful because you were fourteen at the time. But I see you still have the cheek-scar too, do you think I’ll be so merciful if you ever interfere in my jobs again?”

This brute’s gang had been showed up by Cat’s several times, and when the rebel crime-lord Kricheck began grasping for power they’d begun sabotaging Cat’s jobs by waking the guards and calling the watch. He was not the best of messengers, but if she put the proper fear into him he should be reliable enough.

The young rouge managed a confidant leer. “Red Cat, no one’s given you a new grin yet? What mercy? You couldn’t kill me.”

“I figured when you jumped out the widow to escape me and landed in a dung-cart I’d had revenge enough. As you can see I’ve learned a few things from the elves, any more of those tricks and I’ll give you a lot worse than a new grin.” A new grin was a slit throat; it was a favorite threat in these parts. “When you get done here tell His Majesty that Red Cat is in town for a few days and she’s got a mess to make. After that

I’m gone, and if His Majesty wants a tax I’m happy to pay.”

The young rouge considered her. Making a mess meant that she was going to murder someone, and that she didn’t have a convenient dupe to shift the blame too. His Majesty frowned on such clumsy jobs, and performing them without informing the guild was as good as a death sentence. Of course, Cat was in good standing with the guild when she left, her messenger was a rebel. If he failed to deliver this message he might succeed in bringing the guild down on Cat, but most likely he’d loose his hand and Cat would be charged a higher tax to recoup the losses.

An instant later she could see in his face that he would not risk such a scheme, and Cat tucked his dagger into his belt, right above the crotch, before slipping soundlessly away, chuckling inwardly at the question of how long her messenger would stand there, wondering if she was gone.

The house was a fine example of the allure of the Belisarian faith. Here did a drunkard woodcutter house five children, two wives, and one servant in a two story home in the middle of a city with a garden, a small room for every member of the household, and wealth enough to burn a candle all night should Cat feel like steeling a moment under the covers with a borrowed pulp-novel or Danilo not be satisfied with doing his studying while the sun was up.

In the poorer quarter for practitioners of the Reeman faith or Aramina’s Church a house like this might house four families this size, three to a bedroom. After running away Cat had lived in quarters even more cramped than that, and several of her lovers had been taken with roommates crowded close enough to touch.

Why wasn’t there a candle somewhere? Had Danilo stopped reading and tinkering all night or her sister-mother Philees stopped waking up with nightmares?

Cat slipped in her father’s window and found the room both empty and unnervingly clean. She crept through the house, checking in on her young brothers Joseph and Luke, of whom there was no sign, and her little sister Sara, whose room was empty. In the parlor the young ranger turned to stare at the back corner, the huge chair her father liked to drink in and the area near it where the floor had taken on a dark stain that could not be gotten rid off. In her youth there’d always been something awful about that spot. Logically she thought it must just be where her father built up his rage and lowered his intelligence with bottle after bottle of liquor till he grabbed her by the lock of hair worn over the front of her left ear and…

But in her nightmares, as in the nightmares of her brothers and sisters, there was always a blackness with blood colored eyes staring at her from that corner, whispering in her father’s ear, piercing her soul with hungry eyes.

While the memories where as horrible as ever that sense of wrongness, of a malevolent presence felt with what she’d always assumed to be a latent version of the empathy with the world the elves had awakened her to, was gone. Perhaps it was never there. If it had been she’d certainly be able to sense it now, and that area was no more brooding than any other part of the house.

In the kitchen she found Gareth toasting cheese-bread on the stove. Gareth was a drudge, whom the elders deemed to stupid and too weak to merit a mate. Cat supposed her father’s blood might have had something to do with the ease with which Danilo and she, at least, approached academics and their physical fitness, but, though he could barley read the labels on the canned goods and Cat could probably overpower Gareth with one hand, she’d be far more proud to call this man father. Was Philees deemed unfit to breed for her frailty? Or voluptuous Rebecca next door who made Gareth seems smart?

Cat decided to keep this as involatile as possible. She placed herself in the door and the voice that seemed to come from beside it snapped, “Gareth Calim, this is the Royal Watch Mage. Quickly, where is Joshua Mavin?”

The man yelped and stiffened, eyes flying wildly about the room. “Ruth? Oh mercy please, Ruth, please! Not me too; not like that!”

As the drudge went limp and curled into a fetal position on the floor the hairs on the back of Cat’s neck stood up at the sheer terror in his voice. What in the seven hells was going on here? She was Ruth, of course, though she hated the name as much as the father who gave it to her.

What the hell could make him this afraid of her?

Cat stiffened her spine; she had nothing against Gareth and no desire to prolong his torment. She wouldn’t get anything coherent out of him about why she scared him. Cat grunted and hefted the drudge by his lapels, wincing at the sound of fabric tearing.

“Where is he, Gareth?” she hissed, “Say the magic words and I’m gone.”

“The tabernacle, please, they bury him at sunrise!”

The Song of the Stars

Saidyara leaned back against the steepled roof of the inn, thick thatch easily holding her slender but powerful frame. The elfkin’s fingers worked idly across the strings of lute, weaving improvisations round the half-heard song of the stars.

The auburn maiden couldn’t decide weather or not she enjoyed being an elfkin among humans. She’d spent four long, luxurious hours in bed. Four hours, what a sybarite!

Saidyara remembered a time when she was outraged that she couldn’t get a days rest in an hour and experienced only a few seconds of the vivid dreams her father spoke of in a given night. Deiryan explained that true sleep, though capable of refreshing mind and body faster than anything short of healing magic, was a vulnerable time when even physical injury might go unnoticed by the dreamer. Saidyara’s human half gave her a billion years of survival instinct that would not accept the vulnerability of true sleep for more than a few seconds at a time.

Among humans that meant a lot of time alone, time she could use to practice her music and commune with the stars, but Saidyara ultimately thrived on an audience.

An audience? More than that. The elfkin’s fine cheekbones dimpled. Friends. Family. Perhaps for once in my life a group of people besides father who I won’t leave with the turning of the seasons.

That thought turned her mind to Lydia riding away to those orckin with so many words unspoken, the tears shining in Quinterra’s lilac eyes.

Is this Shallotte’s future? Can friendship survive slavery even when the slavery is gone? What hope for peace is that? Where is Lydia right now; surely she hasn’t already left the city. Shall I seek her out and tell her what Quinn whispered as she left? “I love you, Lids. Be free.”

Quinn’s alone now. One childhood friend gone, the other dead. Probably the only people she was ever close too, growing up a Tomboy touched by the wrong set of gods. What are three strange swordmaids compared to that?

Saidyara’s lute gave music to Quinterra’s torment, then abruptly paused. Father called us star-crossed, doomed to live in interesting times, destined to greatness or bitter tears at our inaction, a hero’s legend or an unsung death. Why must destiny always be so much a thing of might-bes?

Saidyara didn’t like probing the future, but in a fit of pique she opened herself to the song of the stars and hurled herself into the symphony.

The music… The unimaginable power… cradled the elfkin bard gently even as it swirled her away, straight into the million, billion possibilities that swirled into being the moment her friends lives where interlinked. Faint visions of the future, not of what might happen but of how life threads might swell and mingle and fade and die.

When emerald glowing eyes looked away from the stars Saidyara stood and considered.

She’d been seeking news of Lydia more than anything, and the mocha-skinned swordmaid was indeed facing a turning point, a choice between life that seemed free but demeaned her and life where everything she changed changed the world.

Yet Cat’s life was also at a crossroads. She squared off for battle against an ancient foe and knew not where to seek it. The foe held her in bondage all her life, might hold her so forever, or destroy her in the next few hours.

Again she locked swords with the wraith over her shoulder.

“One must turn away, one must ride to war forever.”

Saidyara stood silently for many moments; then decided.

To be continued…

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Wraith Over Her Shoulder, Part 1

Copyright© 2001 by John Henry Wilson

Prelude: Shade

The Swordmaids of the Storm and Lioness

Meetings and Partings on the Calimsara Road

Red Cat

The Song of the Stars