The Keys to Paradise, page 5
‘Row me ashore and you’re free.’
Jelk wheezed as he pulled at the oars. ‘What about the bonus you promised?” he asked between strokes.
‘You’re just lucky you don’t have any gold on you for me to steal,’ Keja said. ‘Or do you? No? Then pull.’ He tapped the captain’s chest with his knife tip to emphasise the message.
Four
The coast road stretched nearly empty before Petia. Farmers bringing produce had entered Klepht hours ago and no other traveller ventured out this day. The ugly pony whinnied enthusiastically as he trotted along; the sense of freedom communicated to Petia, who felt cheerful for the first time in weeks. The outdoors appealed more to her than smoky, dirty human dwellings.
After a few miles, she found a trail following a watercourse that would bring her out on the clifftops above the coast. She dismounted and led the little pony.
Some distance behind her two men paused to fill their pipes and enjoy a leisurely smoke. ‘Wouldn’t have thought that she had so much spirit in her. Stole that pony just as easy as you please. Maybe we’ll get a reward for bringing it back.’
The other glanced over the bowl of his pipe. ‘Gonna have a little fun first, though, ain’t we? I want that tawny body.’ They chuckled, then continued following Petia.
At the top of the climb, Petia rested and let the pony breathe. She adjusted the load on its back, ran her fingers through it tangled forelock. Its shaggy coat was matted with mud and manure, offending her cat-clean nature. But there was little she could do at the moment if she wanted to make good time along the road to Neelarna. It wouldn’t do for that gold key to arrive before she did.
She soon urged the pony on again, taking a rough track through a forest of scrubby, windblown trees. A shiver passed through her lithe body as she entered the miniature forest. The tree limbs, sculpted by the wind whipping over the cliff top, created a grotesquerie of patterns, casting their twisted shadows onto the ground and frightening her horse. Petia soothed the animal, cursing at its fright even as she enjoyed the bizarre shapes dancing about her.
The day passed in magnificent solitude, and well before dark she found a satisfactory place to make camp for the night. She gathered small chips of wood and shredded some bark, then took out her flint and steel. Soon, a small curl of smoke gave evidence of an ember underneath. She nurtured it with soft puffs of breath and allowed it to grow into a full-sized fire.
The joint of beef didn’t have as much meat on it as she remembered, but there was enough for a sparse meal. She sharpened a green branch, impaled the meat and started it roasting. Petia leaned back, thinking as her supper cooked. Even if she didn’t get the gold key – and she would! – simply being away from Klepht pleased her. She felt a part of this wilderness, not the city with its filthy humans and their prejudices.
Petia delicately nibbled at the rare meat and had to agree with Keja – it was tough and tasteless. She started to toss it away when the snap of a twig alerted her to the two men spying on her. Whether she tensed or they had already decided to attack, she didn’t know. Petia tried to reach for her knife and make the motion seem natural. Her hand got only halfway to the weapon when an ear-splitting, ‘Haieeee!’ echoed through the forest and both men charged like wounded water buffalo.
She rose in one fluid motion and flung the beef joint at the nearest one. He flinched as it glanced off his cheek. This gave Petia time to draw the knife from the top of her boot. The men hesitated, their surprise attack failed.
‘Don’t be fearing us now, little one,’ said the larger of the two. He kept his hands in front of him like a wrestler, groping, grabbing, never stopping for an instant.
Petia moved around the fire and leaped forward at the man. He lunged to meet her, his arms wide to wrap her in a bear hug. In one lithe movement, Petia sidestepped, flicked the knife to her right hand, lashed out. He screamed and threw calloused hands up to his eyes. Petia helped him along with a kick to his kneecap. He tripped and fell headlong into the fire. Petia watched it in slow motion – the man tumbling, landing in the fire, screaming, the flames licking at his clothing.
‘Wol! Wol!’ the other man cried, horrified at the sight of his friend ablaze. Petia drew her short sword and lunged. The point took him in the sternum. He put his hand to his chest and seemed fascinated by the blood seeping out between his clenched fingers.
‘I’m dying,’ he said, face ashen. He sat down heavily, trembling like a leaf in a high wind. Petia grabbed the boot of the man in the fire and pulled him out. She shook her few supplies from the flour sack and used it to beat out the flames on his coat and trousers. The man moaned constantly, his clothes still smouldering.
Petia propped him against a scrub tree nearby, lashing his hands to a low branch. ‘No, no,’ he moaned. ‘Help me!’
‘You’ll get none from me,’ Petia said bitterly. She stuffed her supplies back into the sack. ‘You should never have attacked a Trans. But you humans are all alike, thinking you’re so superior.’
She fastened the sack onto the pony, looking at the sky to see what illumination she might expect from the moon. ‘I don’t take such attacks lightly. I ought to hang you up, then do what a real Trans would do to you.’
‘Wh-what’s that?’ The man’s voice carried true terror.
‘You’d be found naked, claw marks covering your chest and stomach. The tendons in the back of your legs would be severed and more than likely you’d be emasculated. See how lucky you are that I don’t have the time to waste?’
‘But you can’t leave us here like this,’ the man moaned.
‘Can and will.’ Petia wiped her weapons on some leaves and replaced them. ‘Tell whoever finds you – if anyone does – what you were about. Don’t lie to them.’
She clucked at the pony, and they moved off into the darkness, the man’s shrieks following, growing weaker and weaker.
* * *
Smoke. Petia cursed. For two days she had ridden this track and now came evidence from a dozen different fires. She had hoped to avoid all further human contact after her encounter with the would-be rapists and robbers.
She sat on the cliff overlooking the encampment, watching and thinking, and warmed herself in the sun. Above in the bright azure sky a hawk soared. Its screech warned her of the boy and girl climbing towards her.
Petia considered avoiding them, then decided that she ought to be the one in control. ‘It’s all right,’ she called down to them. ‘I won’t hurt you.’
The little girl was shy, but the boy pretended to be brave. He came up to Petia. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded arrogantly.
‘My name is Petia, a traveller to Neelarna. Who are you?’
‘I’m Etter. That’s Milla,’ he pointed. ‘She’s my sister.’
‘Are those your people?’ Petia pointed to the smoke below.
‘Aye. We’re charcoalers.’ Petia had already guessed as much from the black, grimy hands and faces. ‘We come here every year,’ the boy continued. ‘Good wood.’
Petia nodded.
‘Are you a Trans? We’ve got Trans in our camp,’ the boy volunteered. ‘Wanna come see?’
The girl stood and watched Petia silently, with nearly all of one small, grubby fist in her mouth.
‘Yes, I’d like that.’ Petia pulled up the pony’s stake and tucked it in the sack. ‘Lead the way,’ she said.
The charcoalers’ camp was much cleaner than Petia had expected. The columns of smoke she had seen came from the charcoal-producing fires tended by solemn adults. Of any other children, Petia saw no sign.
The children took Petia to their mother. She was a buxom woman who welcomed the Trans without a flicker. ‘You’ll stay the night with us?’ she asked, and seemed to welcome it.
‘If that’s all right. I’d appreciate it,’ Petia replied.
‘The children are always dragging somebody back to our camp. We’ve become accustomed to it. We tend to spoil them. There’s so few, you see.’
‘I don’t see many other children,’ Petia said. ‘What’s become of them?’
The woman vented a sigh like a fumarole. ‘This is a hard life,’ she said, as if that explained all.
‘No life is easy these days,’ Petia pointed out.
‘Many hound us,’ the woman said, as if admitting to high crimes. ‘They buy our charcoal but revile us as they do. The young women find it easier in the cities and the young men, well, they prefer easier labours.’
Petia understood. The nomads were a dying breed.
She changed the topic. ‘The children said there was another Trans in your camp.’
‘They exaggerate. One travelled with us for a while last week. A truly awful person. Always barking and yapping like a dog.’ Then, fearing she had insulted Petia, the woman added, ‘Not that we minded. The company perked up our spirits and livened the fire tales.’
‘A dog Trans?’ Petia couldn’t help but smile. ‘I have little love for them myself.’
‘No, I suppose not.’ To her children, the woman called, ‘Find your father and the others. Tell them I will throw away their supper unless they come immediately.’
The children rushed off, giggling and laughing, the only merriment in the camp. Slowly, a string of blackened men came in from the fires. One man grabbed the children by their collars and playfully dragged them off. When they returned, they were all as scrubbed clean as their natures allowed.
‘Hard keeping them clean,’ he said. ‘No way to keep them as clean as the likes of you.’ He eyed Petia critically, almost accusingly.
‘It is dirty work,’ Petia said, ‘but necessary.’
‘More should have that attitude.’ They ate in silence, others coming and picking up plates of the almost tasteless stew the woman had prepared. After eating, the men fixed pipes and smoked, for the first time smiles coming to their faces.
‘Tell us a story,’ said Etter.
‘Oh, yes, please do,’ cried Milla, when the little girl saw Petia hesitate at the request.
‘I’m not much of a storyteller,’ Petia said, but she saw that the adults gathered around were just as eager. She had eaten their food; she ought to repay them in some fashion. This seemed an easy enough way to do so.
‘Do you know how the Trans came to be?’
‘Yes,’ said Milla.
‘Shut up,’ her brother said. ‘No, no we don’t. Tell us!’
Petia almost laughed at the exchange. ‘Well, it was over two hundred years ago. The story goes that Baron Lophar of Trios Havres made an agreement with a sorceress.’ Petia had heard the story so many times during her childhood in her own land that she remembered it almost word for word.
‘The agreement between Lophar and the Sorceress Lady Cassia n’Kaan was an important one, one involving trade, treaties with other lands, contracts for shipbuilding, the transfer of livestock. Much money would be made.’ Petia could see that she held everyone’s attention, even the adults. She warmed to the telling.
‘Lophar let greed get the better of him. He would have become immensely wealthy by the treaty. There was no need for deception and deviousness. But even so, Lophar sought benefits beyond the contract. It is said that in his private chambers he danced with glee and that his cackling laugh could be heard all the way to the harbour.
‘What followed when the Lady Cassia learned of Lophar’s treachery?’ Petia’s voice lowered for dramatic effect. ‘The Trans! never had Lady Cassia been so outraged and, some say, hurt, for she loved Lophar. Not only was Lophar to suffer, but all his people.
‘With a power that not even her sister sorceresses had suspected, Cassia n’Kaan changed the human population of Lophar’s demesne – every man woman, child – into beings which were part beast, part human. A wave of her hand, pop! and it was done. Nor was it a simple spell. Oh, no. Some became part cow, some part pig, some part horse, and even less common animals. And some, like me, became part cat.’
The children’s eyes widened. Petia rushed on with the story.
‘Ten generations have passed since the creation of the Trans. Gradually, most of the animal features have faded, becoming human features again. Perhaps the Lady Cassia planned it that way. But the personalities of us Trans are still marked by the animal.’ Petia had them all leaning forward to hear her almost whispering voice. With a loud snarl and a hiss, she clawed at the air just inches in front of Etter’s nose. The boy let out a yelp, then laughed when he saw it was only part of Petia’s story.
‘And that’s my story,’ she said with satisfaction.
Some of the men grunted their approval. ‘Well told, stranger.’
‘Do you ever get to Neelarna?’ she asked, accepting a cup of herb tea from Etter’s mother. ‘That’s where I’m going, and it’s a new city for me.’
‘Sell charcoal there once a year,’ said the children’s father. ‘Not a pleasant city, not for our kind.’
Petia read into that a veiled warning. If Neelarna was unpleasant for charcoalers, what would it be like for a Trans?
‘Things are pretty unsettled there, we’ve heard.’
‘I’m always careful,’ Petia said, thinking about her fight with the men several days before. ‘It’s been a long time since I heard a story. Now it’s your turn.’
‘What would you like to hear?’ asked Etter.
‘Do you know the one about the Gate of Paradise and the golden key?’ Petia asked guilelessly.
The simple request opened the floodgates of the charcoalers’ tongues. What Petia got in the next half hour was a hodge-podge of all the stories about the Gate and the key. There were nearly as may versions as there were people around the fire. Sorting through it all, Petia decided that there was a Gate of Paradise somewhere, as she had always believed. Nobody knew the location, and a person with the gold key could unlock the Gate. And behind the Gate? Immortality, said some, others hotly insisted on love, immense wealth, jewels, slaves, finery, anything a heart valued.
‘That makes a fine tale,’ Petia said when the stories wound down. ‘Has anyone seen the key or found the Gate?’
‘No, but it’s there. I know it is,’ one lanky old charcoaler said. The others around the fire nodded in agreement.
‘I doubt it very much,’ Petia lied. ‘It’s just a good story, a tale that offers everyone in the world a chance for untold wealth – a hope and little more.’
‘No, it’s true,’ another man cried. ‘You just ask Mistress Mellon when you get to Neelarna. Shell tell you. She knows all about it. She told me the story, and she’d not lie!’
Again everyone nodded, as if Mistress Mellon were the final authority on key and Gate. Petia tried not to show her eagerness.
‘Well, now,’ she drawled. ‘Who’s this Mistress Mellon?’
‘A wise one,’ the woman seated across from Petia answered. ‘She knows all the herbs, and how to heal, and many fine stories, and she can cast spells. You just go see her when you get to Neelarna. You ask her. She’ll tell you. You tell her the Lowbend Forest charcoalers sent you.’
Everyone beamed at the recollection of Mistress Mellon, obviously a favourite of them all.
‘How do I find this wonderful woman?’ The irony was lost.
‘The Cheese Ring, the Cheese Ring,’ the children changed.
‘What?’ Puzzlement showed on Petia’s face.
‘Outside the city walls. You just ask anyone for Mistress Mellon at the Cheese Ring. They’ll know.’
* * *
Catlike, Petia only dozed all night long. Before any in the camp stirred, she rose and silently departed. Petia wanted no fuss at her leaving. As in many other ways, she shared this trait with her feline companions. Greet warmly, leave quickly.
As she rode, Petia watched the morning sun warm the vale. Dew glistened on the wildflowers, then soon dried. Wispy clouds disappeared like so many wraiths under the sun’s rays, leaving behind bright blue sky. And high above, a hawk lazily circled, looking for his breakfast.
The morning wore on, and Petia realised that the hawk still wheeled above her. She dismounted to watch it. As the bird banked, jesses flashing in the sunlight, showing this to be a trained hawk and not a wild one.
The hawk folded its wings and swooped at her. It hurtled down, the wind whistling past it. Stunned, Petia backed into the side of the pony. The raptor continued to dive, and Petia saw that it hunted her with its slashing talons. She raised her hands and let claws inch out. A hiss escaped her lips as she readied for battle.
The bird opened its wings at the last instant, sensing the danger it courted. It zoomed over Petia’s head. Baleful eyes glared at her, and behind that deadliness, an evil intelligence. It frightened her.
At times, with other animals, she achieved some tenuous empathic contact. With the hawk she failed totally. This worried Petia even more.
She kept her eye on the sky, but the hawk did not attack again. It circled continually, shaking Petia’s nerves. When the trail joined the coast road and Petia turned eastward towards Neelarna, the hawk flew north and out of sight.
* * *
‘Too high,’ she protested. Petia stamped her foot and glared at the farmer. He sucked at his cheeks and nodded.
‘Four coppers, then. For currying the beast and what feed I have. Not much around here.’ The farmer told the truth on this count. Petia had decided to stable her pony outside Neelarna, where it would be cheaper. An owl-eyed urchin peered her from the inside of the barn. Petia guessed the boy would get the job, and his father would keep the money.
‘Done,’ she said. ‘Half now, half when I return.’
‘Seems fair,’ the farmer allowed. ‘What’s your business in the city?’
Petia tried to keep the tremor of eagerness from her voice when she answered. ‘Looking for Mistress Mellon.’
‘Oh.’ The farmer spat. ‘Another one lustin’ for the damn aphrodisiacs, eh?’
‘Could you help me? With directions to the Cheese Ring?’
The farmer’s laconic instructions would serve her well, Petia decided. She nodded to him and set off, but she had gone only a few hundred yards when the clanking of metal on metal alerted her to danger. Petia dove for cover, hiding beside the dirt road, waiting.
