Virgin City (The Lesbia Chronicles) Page 2

  "Hello, Lady," Reed said, a soft smile on her lips.

  The lights moved softly about the sky, forming the outline of a face. Though each light remained in motion, the face itself seemed solid. A static object made of constant stellar motion.

  The lady smiled.

  "I still haven't managed to seduce her," Reed said conversationally, resting her head on interlaced fingers. A few inches from the top of her skull was a sheer drop that would have turned every bone in her body to mush should she have fallen, but Reed was quite relaxed even at that great height. What was a few hundred feet when the entire universe looked down upon you? "She's very prickly."

  A warm sensation started spreading across Reed's body, starting in her stomach. The lady was bestowing her touch. It bought euphoria, a sense of corporeal disconnection. Reed was keenly aware that she was not her body any more than she was the wall, or the tree or the grass. She was something else. She was something inhabiting the world, piloting her meat suit about the place for the duration of its lifespan.

  She laughed at the silliness of it all, quietly at first, but soon she was roaring with laughter, caught up in the mirth of the cosmic giggle.

  "Who goes there!" The rough shout of a guard came from below. Reed felt the guard's separateness. She felt the guard's mundanity.

  "Nobody! Everybody! You! Me!" Reed shouted the words in quick order.

  "Come down from there!"

  Reed seriously contemplated obeying the order, but she couldn't work out how. "There is no here, don't you see!?" She rolled over and stuck her head over the Clitera City side of the wall. The wall was not nearly so tall on that side. The drop was a much more manageable hundred feet or so. "Your here is my there. How can I go there when I will always be here?"

  "It's not safe! That wall is due for maintenance."

  The shiny tin head of the guard spoke with angry staccato. Reed saw the words rising out of the woman's head. Little black dots floated up, up, up into the sky. Then two thick black baubles rose up to Reed. For long seconds they hung before her eyes. Curious, Reed reached out with a finger and poked one. They both burst in her face, expelling their words.

  "Bloody idiot!"

  Chapter Four

  Inside the little cottage Ayla and Atrocious shared, three cups of tea were being consumed. "The summoner is an addict and a criminal," Ariadne explained, regarding her brew with suspicion. "There is a reason why we must always find the summoner before she has her twenty first birthday. Do you know how old this one is?"

  "I do not."

  "Thirty one." Ariadne said. "Practically ancient for a human."

  Wrinkled and bent, Atrocious muttered and made a very rude gesture.

  Ayla folded her hands in her lap and regarded Ariadne with a solemn look. "I understand what you are saying," she said, "but my loyalty is with Atrocious now. Our time together grows shorter by the day."

  "Take her with you," Ariadne snapped. "This summoner is starting to come to the attention of other entities. If she should fall into the wrong hands, or go too far down the wrong path, the Blood Witch will be the least of anyone's concerns."

  Ayla looked uncertain. It was Atrocious who decided the matter. She spoke in a frail voice, a whisper of conscience. "What if you had not found me?"

  The lovers shared a long look, at the end of which Ayla sighed.

  "Very well," she said. "We will travel to Clitera City and find the summoner." She cast a wry look at Atrocious. "It is a pity Kira is not here to collect her. She would have been very effective."

  Atrocious nodded solemnly. "Poor Kira."

  "Poor Kira," Ayla agreed.

  "Poor Kira," Ariadne echoed with a brief roll of her immortal eyes. "Now please, go and collect this summoner before she destroys the world yet again."

  *****

  The next day, Atrocious and Ayla set off for Clitera City. They rode in a little horse drawn trap which Ayla drove. Atrocious was content to sit next to the half-elf witch, wrapped in a blanket and making the occasional disparaging remark about potatoes.

  "Remember," Ayla said. "Rogette lives in Clitera City now. We are going to stay with her in her tavern."

  "Fancy fancy, Rogette and her tavern," Atrocious said, glowering at the passing wildflowers. "Is there not somewhere else we can park ourselves?"

  "You will be comfortable there," Ayla replied. "She is eager to receive us. She sent word by carrier pigeon this morning."

  "Oh I bet she's eager to receive something," Atrocious muttered. "Did you pack your best carrot dildo for her?"

  Ayla's cheeks dimpled with a smile. "You are never going to let that go, are you?"

  "You harvested her potato that day," Atrocious said. "And drank her filthy potato juice, no doubt."

  "Please," Ayla said patiently. "It was necessary."

  "Was it? What did you ever do with that potion?"

  "Look! A rainbow!" Ayla changed the subject.

  Atrocious narrowed her wrinkled eyes at the witch beside her. "I don't want to stay with Rogette. I don't want to watch you two rutting."

  "Rogette is more than a hundred years old," Ayla said. "I think she is beyond rutting."

  "Hmph." Atrocious' suspicious look did not abate in the slightest. She wrapped her blanket more tightly around her thin shoulders, veins visible in her bony hands as she clutched at the fabric.

  "We will all be together again," Ayla said. "Besides Kira, of course. Poor Kira."

  "Poor Kira," Atrocious echoed. "I never thought she'd let a giant eat her."

  "That wasn't what happened," Ayla replied. "It was a pack of shifter she-wolves."

  "They ate her?"

  "In a manner of speaking," Ayla said. "I heard she was found dead from exhaustion under a pile of nubile young ladies, having made love to them all."

  "No, that can't be right." Atrocious scowled as she searched her memory. "Didn't Kira go to Iskendar?"

  "Oh, perhaps she did." Ayla agreed. "But I heard she had returned..."

  "I heard she became Queen of the Amazons," Atrocious said. "Which is strange, because I don't know who the Amazons are."

  "A jungle tribe," Ayla replied. "But were there not reports that Kira became the head of the Imperial Army?"

  "Whatever happened, poor Kira," Atrocious said, shaking her head.

  "Poor Kira," Ayla echoed in agreement.

  "Poor Kira," Ariadne agreed, making Atrocious and Ayla startle. The high witch turned out to be hitching a ride on the back bar. She certainly hadn't been there when they departed, but she was there now, face a'swirling, eyes a'burning.

  "Listen," she said. "This is all very well, but you're going to need to hurry this journey along. You can portal yourself to Clitera City, Ayla. I will take Atrocious the rest of the way."

  "It can't be that much of an emergency, surely."

  Ariadne snapped her fingers. In an instant, Ayla and Ariadne were standing on the high wall of Clitera City's cliff border, looking down at the nigh unconscious figure of a woman. She was damp, soaked to the bone by rough weather which she'd obviously made no attempt to escape.

  Ayla looked down into the pale, bedraggled face and saucer wide eyes which stared but did not see. The summoner's chest was rising and falling shallowly, indicating life, but little else.

  "This cannot be her." Ayla refused to believe her senses even as she crouched down and touched cold skin. The summoner's fingertips and lips had taken on an unhealthy blue shade. She was likely not an hour from death.

  "But it is. This is what happens when you show up ten years too late," Ariadne said. "This is what happens when you abandon your responsibilities."

  "But the summoner, she has power," Ayla said. She removed her cloak and placed it over the prone woman, then reached into her robe for a salve. She began dabbing it on the summoner's lips. "This one has discovered hers, you said. Surely someone who has remade the world a half dozen times can work out how to get in out of the rain?"

  "She has talent. Talent is nothing. The
world is full of talented people dying in ditches," the high witch replied. "Do your job. I will do mine."

  Chapter Five

  Reed opened her eyes. It was a small achievement, but she was proud of it. She looked at wooden beams above her head and she saw that they were good. As her eyes became accustomed to the light, she slowly became aware of the noise of the world. She listened to the noise, and heard that it was good. Sounds of chatter and revelry were drifting up through floorboards below the bed she was very comfortably ensconced in. Deduction told her she was in an inn or tavern of some kind. Her body told her that she felt like hell. That was the problem with Blue Lady. The pure stuff was pretty good, but it was often cut with other substances to bulk it out. It was those substances that left her joints aching, her mouth dry, and her head pounding.

  If the truth were to be told, and verily it would be told, Reed had no idea where she was. That did not overly concern her. These days it would have been stranger if she had woken up knowing where she was.

  Her clothes were different. She noticed that when she pushed the coverlet back. Her clothes were different, and she saw that they were not good. The pale blue robe she was wearing was not at all her style. She couldn't imagine her reason for having swapped her nice, neat leggings for the billowing dress thing that was tangling around her legs.

  Just as Reed was about to seriously contemplate getting out of bed, the door opened. A tall blonde woman, the most striking example of femininity Reed had ever seen, entered the room. She cast a kindly smile in Reed's direction. "Hello," she said. It was good.

  "Hello," Reed replied. She sat on the bed, just staring at the lady. There was something very elfy about her. Something very magical and mysterious. Reed was quite transfixed. The woman was woman, but she was also something more than woman. Her presence was almost angelic - it was certainly ethereal. Pale strands of golden yellow hair ghosted about her face and shoulders, framing a face of wisdom and kinditude. Her body was curvaceous, bosom and buttock emphasized by the fall of silken violet robe. She dressed and comported herself with undeniable nobility, but not the sneering kind Reed was used to encountering in the High Lanes. It was more natural, more genteel, an organic sort of aristocratic bearing.

  "You're awake," the woman said. "That's fortunate."

  "It is," Reed agreed. "I'm always pleased to wake up."

  "Are you?" The lady seemed to doubt her answer.

  "Certainly."

  Censure came into the slanted gaze. "One would be forgiven for thinking you wanted to die, given that you smoked yourself into unconsciousness next to a thousand foot drop."

  "One definitely would be forgiven," Reed agreed, smiling. "I'm very forgiving."

  The woman smiled slightly in response. "My name is Ayla. I'm afraid I owe you an apology."

  "I don't think you do," Reed replied. "You seem to have been quite kind to me." She pinched a bit of the robe and held it up. "Look at this lovely dress you've apparently given me to wear. Isn't it... soft."

  "I should have come to you long ago."

  "Well I wouldn't have complained about that. Feel free to come to me any time." Reed tried to be polite, but she was increasingly being distracted by the pounding in her head and the dripping from her nose. She really did need a little something. Just a little something...

  "I'm glad," Ayla said. "Now I have found you, things will change."

  "Mhm." Reed wasn't really listening. She was looking around for her pouch. It didn't seem to be in the room. Her nose was beginning to run, indicating need for a little spot of something. "Where are my things... I had a pouch with, er, stuff in it." She mimed a pouch with one hand and indicated having put things in it with two fingers.

  "I'm afraid you won't be able to indulge in that anymore."

  "You mean I physically can't smoke anymore?" Reed clutched at her throat and probed her mouth for her tongue, making sure all the bits and pieces she was usually equipped with were still there. They certainly seemed to be.

  "Physically you can," Ayla clarified. "I mean I don't intend on allowing it."

  "You don't intend on allowing it..." Reed rubbed her face with her hands, then looked over the tops of her fingers at the woman who had seated herself next to the door. "Who are you, again?"

  "I'm Ayla."

  "Ayla," Reed nodded. "Okay, Ayla. What... How... The idea... Hmm.... I don't..."

  It was difficult to express what was essentially a simple question, which boiled down to 'who the hell do you think you are?' That was rather confrontational though, and Reed wasn't in the mood for confrontation. She stood up, unsteady on her feet and shuffled toward the door. She would have wagered her left foot that one of the carousing folk below would have some hair of the dog on hand.

  "It has been lovely meeting you, Ayla," Reed said with one of her charming smiles. "Thank you for the... dress. I'll see you around."

  Ayla's hand wrapped around her upper arm, arresting her progress.

  "I'm afraid I can't let you do that."

  Reed looked down at Ayla, who was shorter by merit of the fact that she was sitting down. She also looked at the slim, but long and strong fingers wrapped around her arm. "Let me do what?"

  "Leave."

  A burst of laughter escaped Reed. "You cannot stop me."

  "I can." The woman, this Ayla. She was very insistent.

  "You don't understand," Reed tried to explain. "I am a goddess. I am the one who hung the stars in the sky. I am the one who fashioned each blade of grass. I am the creator of all you see. Nothing exists, but through... hey!"

  Her little speech was interrupted by a sharp tug which sent her sprawling across Ayla's broad and buxom lap. Reed did not know what to make of that turn of events, so she elected to ignore it. It was not difficult. Reed had managed to ignore all sorts of objectively much more important things in her life. Ignoring the fact that she'd become a human seesaw was easy as falling off a wall.

  "You are not the one who hangs the stars in the sky," Ayla spoke above her. "You have an enhanced understanding of the words that make up the world, that is all. You are the one who opens the book, not the one who writes it."

  Reed wiped her nose with the back of the robe's sleeve, finding it to be pleasingly absorbent. "Are you quite sure?"

  The response was dry and certain.

  "Very."

  “Er…” Reed made the noise as her nose dipped toward the floor. “Is there… I mean.. if you don’t mind me asking… why… am I in this position?”

  “Well,” Ayla said, smoothing her hand across Reed’s lower back. “The way this usually goes is the summoner throws a fit and I spank her until she sees sense, cries, or both.”

  “Fascinating,” Reed murmured, staunching the flow of her nose with the back of her wrist. “The summoner, you say? That would be me?”

  “It would be.”

  “Well that’s nice, isn’t it,” Reed said cheerfully. “It’s nice to have a title. I’ve never had one of those before. Not an official one. I shall make very good friends with it. Maybe I’ll write it on something. A stick, maybe.”