CHAPTER 10—RABBLE
DARIUS blinked, acclimatizing to the gloom. They were in a cave or tunnel that seemed to be the continuation of the hole of the giant mandolin, leading straight on into the rock. Perhaps they had simply passed through the petrified back of the mandolin, which had blocked the passage.
It was dark, but the darkness was not total. As they walked, the light brightened somewhat, until they had no trouble seeing their way.
“But where is your contact mind?” Darius asked the horse.
It retreated in alarm as we arrived. But there is another approaching, I can not read it, I only sense its presence. It is female.
“Did you read anything in the original mind?”
No. It was stupid. I reached only as far as its eyes, to help you conjure us.
“Keep working on the new mind. First test for hostility, and warn us. We want only to hide safely until Colene and Provos return.”
“You must be ready to use your magic here, Nona,” Stave said. “The rabble may be dangerous.”
“You call them rabble?” Darius asked, not amused.
“That is what we call them,” Nona explained. “All the people and creatures who have been banned from the surface because they lack even illusion magic. There are stories that they have an awful society in the center of the world, and live only to break out and slay all those on the surface. Both the despots and theows watch constantly to be sure that there is no escape for them.”
“They may not be friendly, then,” Darius remarked with irony.
“Yes,” Stave agreed. “But there may also be too many for us to oppose physically. Since they do not have magic, Nona should be able to protect us against them.”
“I will try,” she agreed. “But I depend on Seqiro to alert me to danger.”
She is here.
They paused and let the woman approach them. She was young and comely in a belted brown tunic. She smiled and spread her hands, showing by gesture that she intended no harm. Her hair and eyes were the same shade as her tunic, a nice match.
“This is a banished inhuman monster?” Darius inquired.
I can not yet read her mind, but she is alone and seems friendly.
“I had gathered as much,” Darius said wryly.
The woman came to him. She said something.
“I can almost make it out,” Nona said. “I think she said she loves you.”
Darius snapped a glance at Nona. “This is humor?”
“Maybe I misunderstood,” Nona said.
The woman put her arms slowly around Darius, embraced him, and tried to draw his head down for a kiss.
“But I don’t think so,” Nona added.
He resisted. “But I don’t know her!” he protested. “And Colene would be upset.”
“I will try to explain to her,” Nona said. She spoke to the woman, and because Seqiro continued to translate her thoughts, he heard it as his own language, “Woman, this man is taken.”
The woman clung to Darius, speaking emphatically.
I can get only a glimmer. The thoughts are not coming through, but the fringe of the emotion is.
“There is no other,” Nona said, translating.
“Yes, there is,” Darius said firmly. “Her name is Colene, and she is my love.”
Seqiro’s thought came again, while Nona tried to get through to the woman.
That emotion is not love as you feel it. It is not quite lust. She desires to breed with you, but for some reason other than your physical appeal. She wants to foal your offspring. I can not fathom why.
The horse was not conscious of irony. Seqiro was not insulting Darius, merely admitting that the woman’s motive for choosing this stranger was unclear.
Meanwhile the woman was answering Nona. Nona was catching on to the variant of the language.
“She says that when you come here, you are hers.”
“She can say what she chooses. I am not hers.”
The woman finally let him go. She turned and walked ahead of them down the tunnel. Darius found her retreat as intriguing as her advance. He glanced at Stave and saw agreement there. The brown tunic was as close-fitting in back as it was in front. Whatever the woman was, she was no physical monster.
“Do we follow?” Nona asked. She too was watching the rabble woman, and her expression was just about what Colene’s would have been: assessment and marginal resentment.
“There seems little else to do,” Darius said.
They followed. The woman rounded a turn and disappeared, but in a moment they saw her again as they rounded the same turn. She was waiting for them, and now stepped forward to embrace Darius again. She said something.
“Her name is Potia,” Nona reported. “She says you must breed with her.”
This is odd, Seqiro thought. I thought I was making progress, but it has become harder to reach her mind.
“She must realize that something is happening, and be closing her mind,” Darius said, gently pushing the woman back. “To what I say as well as to your probing.”
A second woman approached. She too was in a brown tunic, but her hair and eyes were yellow. She was as pretty as Potia, but in a different way. She approached Stave.
“Hey,” Nona protested as the woman embraced Stave.
The woman spoke. Darius was beginning to recognize the patterning of the language. This woman was saying the same thing to Stave that Potia had said to him, Darius.
Stave looked at Nona. “May I tell her that you are my love?” he asked.
“Is there any danger in that?” Darius asked. “Could that woman decide to get rid of Nona, if she sees her as a rival?”
There does not seem to be hostility, only urgency. She is interested only in Stave.
Nona was hesitating. Then Darius realized, as he felt the underlying emotions Seqiro picked up, that it was not just a matter of safety, but of uncertainty. She was not in love with Stave.
“Perhaps I am not,” she said apologetically.
Stave spoke to the woman. “I am not looking for love at the moment.”
The woman hardly paused. Her name, she said, was Keli. He had to breed with her. She clarified this by taking one of his hands and placing it on her full bosom.
Stave, intrigued, nevertheless demurred. After a moment Keli withdrew, disappointed, and joined Potia, leading the way on around the turn. They disappeared.
“Again we follow,” Darius said, somewhat bemused by this pattern.
As before, the women were waiting for them, as if surprised that the party had not kept up. Each embraced “her” man again, despite lack of encouragement.
They are not hostile. But their minds are odd. I have lost progress again. There is something strange about this situation.
Darius and Stave laughed. There certainly was!
Then a young man approached. He was in brown, too, with brown hair and yellow eyes, and quite handsome. He approached Nona.
Both Darius and Stave moved to block him from her. “No, let him come,” Nona said. “These folk seem to have their way of greeting us.”
They did indeed! Darius and Stave moved out of the way, and the man came to embrace Nona. He sought to kiss her, but she turned her face aside. “I am Lang,” he said. “I am to breed with you.”
“Not yet,” Nona said, disengaging much as the men had. “But thank you for the offer.”
He let her go, though evidently disappointed. He joined the two women in brown and they led the way on down the curvy passage, walking quickly.
“This grows familiar,” Darius said. But he did not rush to keep the pace, knowing that the three would wait the moment they got out of sight.