Dave Duncan – The Living God – A Handful of Men. Book 4

Facing her, Thaile sat on a mossy root, legs crossed within her loose skirt of gold and brown, sandals lying nearby, discarded in the grass. Her white lace halter was very nearly transparent and she wore nothing under it. She seemed like part of the woods themselves, a wild flower.

Kadie wore identical garments, except that the stripes on her skirt were gold and a green that Thaile said matched her eyes. It was very suitable costume for a deserted forest on such a day as this, but the blouse would cause a revolution in Krasnegar—she tried to imagine Papa’s reaction and thoughts failed her. The mind boggled, whatever boggling was.

Poor Papa! How she had enjoyed teasing him! Never again would she be able to outrage him. Never again would she smell burning peat, or run panting up the interminable stairs of the castle, or lick snowflakes off the end of her nose—a trick that always annoyed Gath, who couldn’t. Oh, Gath! He and Mama had gone off with the imperor, never to be seen again. Probably never to be heard of again. Thaile could not help, for she did not know what had happened to the king and queen of Krasnegar, or to Gath. The Keeper might know, because the

Keeper knew everything, but apparently no one ever asked questions of the Keeper. Nasty old witch! Papa had never come to rescue his dutiful, beautiful daughter from the goblins, so he was probably dead, just like Thaile’s baby and husband. The world was cruel. Blood Beak was dead; Death Bird and all the goblins were dead. The legions had been burned up by the dragons . . .

“You all right?” Thaile asked softly.

Kadie sniffed. “Oh, yes! Quite all right. Perfectly all right. Nothing wrong. Well, my fingers are a little sore, maybe.” Thaile laughed and threw her half-finished basket over her shoulder. “Then forget about the footling baskets!” Her big gold eyes sparkled.

“But I want to! I want to be able to make them round and smooth and even, like you do, and not all lumpy and squished.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me!” Kadie said crossly. “You’re so good at everything and I’m so hopeless!”

“I expect there are lots of things you can do that I can’t. Not without using sorcery, at least.”

“I don’t know any. And even if there was something I could do, then it would be a Krasnegar thing, a princessy thing, and those things aren’t going to do me any good at all here in Thume. I’m no good for anything here!”

Thaile pushed her feet out of the hem of her skirt and scrabbled over on her hands and toes, gangly as a newborn colt. She sat down next to Kadie and put an arm around her.

“Berry brain!” she said softly. “Of course you’re good for something! You’re company for me. I don’t know what I’d do without you, Kadie!”

“Really? Truly?”

“Really! Truly! I have no friends, no family. I can’t make friends with the other archons, I just can’t! Not anyone here. I miss Leeb horribly! I know why the Keeper and the archons and the College did what they did, even if I can’t tell you. And yet I can’t help blaming them. You’re the only one who doesn’t remind me of Leeb, and I really, truly think I’d go mad if I didn’t have you here with me.”

Kadie blinked a few times. Then she wiped her cheeks with a finger. “I feel a fool, weeping all the time like this.”

“You don’t weep all the time. You don’t weep any more than I do.”

They had this conversation, or one like it, far too often. The next bit was where Thaile told her that all those months with the goblins couldn’t be wiped out in a couple of days, or a week-and now it was more than a week. That was nice to hear, but in truth she was not behaving at all like a rescued princess should. After all, it wasn’t as if the goblins had ever actually hurt her. Blood Beak had only threatened to rape her, so he hadn’t ever meant what he said, and no one had ever subjected her to any of the awful tortures they had used on all the other prisoners, filling the nights with howls of torment and bellows of mirth from sunset to dawn. Just being terribly frightened for a very long time was not much of an excuse for a princess to behave like a ninny.

“Let’s keep that first basket of yours,” she said. “It’s too good to leave behind.”

Thaile nodded vaguely, golden eyes staring at nothing. “We can pick some plums and strawberries on the way back to the Thaile Place.”

“Mm.”

Kadie felt a twinge of alarm. “And will you let me try cooking again tonight?”

“What?” The pixie looked around distractedly. “Sorry. Er, I have a job to do.”

“Job? You’re going to leave me here?” Kadie heard her voice quaver into shrillness. “All alone?”

“We can go back to the Place first, and I won’t be long.”

“How long?” What if Thaile never came back and Kadie was left in the cottage all alone, a stranger here in Thume . . . “Steady!` Thaile squeezed her hand. “No need to panic! No need for me to leave you, either. I’ll take you with me. Come!” She jumped up in a flounce of skirt and ran to her sandals. Kadie fumbled in the grass for hers.

“It’s all right—you taking me, I mean?”

The pixie grinned. “And who’s to complain? I’m an archon, I can do anything I want. Come, give me your hand.”

“Where are we going? Why? Who’re we going to meet?”

“We’re going to the coast. Close your eyes, it’s bright . . . They joined hands. Kadie felt no sense of movement, but at once pink light glared through her eyelids and a shivery wind enveloped her. Its clammy embrace raised every goosebump possible. She said, “Eek!” loudly. She was certainly no longer in a shady forest. She heard a familiar unending rumble, scented a familiar smell. Gulls shrieked appropriately in the distance.

In a moment she forced her eyes open against tears. She stood on a sand dune, knee-deep in coarse grass that danced in ranks before the breeze. Below her lay a silver beach and beyond that, of course, the sea her nose and ears had detected. It had never been so blue in Krasnegar, nor the sky so wonderfully deep.

“Oh, I love the sea!” she said.

“It’s all right, I suppose,” Thaile agreed doubtfully. “It’s so restless and noisy!”

“It does bump things around a lot.”

“It repeats itself all the time.”

“It steals things and litters.”

“But I suppose it is useful. If it went away, all the fish would fall down.”

They laughed together.

“Where are we? Sea of Sorrows or Morning Sea?”

“Somewhere in the west. This is my sector, and someone’s coming.”

Kadie took a long, careful look around the bay, from headland to headland: waves, wet shiny sand, dry golden sand, dunes, trees, and sky. There was no one in sight at all-no boats, no ships, no cottages, no livestock, just a few white birds. About a furlong away, a small stream emerged from the woods and slunk across the beach in a shallow, sinuous channel. Each new wave sent ripples exploring up it, but that was about the limit of the excitement hereabouts, as far as she could see.

“Where? How do you know?”

Thaile was studying the sea, and perhaps she was seeing sorcerous things, because she spoke distractedly. “I know because it called me. The coast called me, to say there were strangers.” The sun chased golden highlights through her hazel-brown hair.

Kadie waited a moment for more explanations. None came. “The coast called you? The waves or birds? Or all the little sand grains jabbering at once?”

“Just the coast. I’m attuned to it, like the mountains speak to Raim . . . Yes, truly!” Thaile smiled.

“I believe you!”

“Your face didn’t! All right, I wouldn’t have believed it, either. I didn’t know, but it’s true. More of Keef’s work, I assume.”

“Oh,” Kadie said doubtfully. “And where are the strangers?”

“They’re here! Watch the trees.”

In a flash, the trees changed. Most of them disappeared. Those that remained were different, and in among them lay fields, and a couple of distant cottages. Turning, Kadie saw that there were more cottages spotted along the course of the stream, and the stream’s path across the beach was different, too. Four dories lay above high water mark.

“This is the other Thume,” Thaile said. “The one the people . . . Ouch! I’ll try and explain sometime.” She pulled a face, as she always did when she tried to talk about sorcery. “Pixies?”

“Pixies. Not typical, though! This would rank as a pixie slum. Most pixies won’t tolerate a Place that has another Place in sight. And there are the strangers.”