I woke thinking of my suicide. I thought it was a warm sharp thing, a dark beyond the scope of reason, a thousand small and tangled threads dropped into insignificance. I felt that I had been dreaming a long time, caught up in the lust and passion of my lover, of my friends. Giddy, then numb. Stumbling through the tasks of everyday like some ridiculous automation. But beneath, my suicide. To wrest control of my life from the vain and petty outrages of fickle masters. To throw up against the absurd hurt and horror of the world the simple inarguable end of self.
I was alone in the small hovel. My arm was very stiff and my head ached badly. There had been a knife in one of the bags. I could use it to die. I reached for the bag above my head and my shoulder popped loudly, but felt better after. The bag of tar was gone. I checked both bags but it was not where it had been. I searched through the loose blankets but it was not there either. I was willing to feel the pain, to suffer it. But could my body plunge the blade knowing what pain would follow? It was, I realized, a moot point. The knife was gone as well.
I wrapped one of the blankets around me, I wasn't sure if my back needed to be cleaned before I could wear my dress, and crawled out of the small chamber. Jade was sitting on a low rock just outside, and turned to me as I came out.
“Mistress,” I said, and tears were in my eyes again. She looked at me and then sighed.
“Okay, lets get you dressed hun. Let me see your back.”
I dropped the blanket and turned away from her. She used her fingers to pull the dried poultice from my back.
“It looks pretty good. Does it hurt?”
“Only a little mistress, when I move my back.”
“Good,” she said. She walked before me and crawled into the space. I felt self-conscious, standing there naked. Not from my nudity, but from remembering Jade's words. I saw Argyl some ways up the cave, not quite at the entrance but closer. He seemed to be carefully not looking at me.
“Here you go hun,” Jade said. I tried to pull the dress on, but my shoulder popped and would not bend far enough, so Jade helped. The boots were easier, and I stuffed the mask and gloves into the bosom when she handed them to me. She smiled a little at this. The clean whirling and snapping of a machine, arm up, dress on, life lived.
“We're going to move deeper into the cave,” she said. “We think it'll be safer, and there's water.”
“Yes mistress,” I said softly. I stupidly could not meet her eyes. Better not to think of that. She seemed to consider me a moment, sighed, and walked towards Argyl. I meekly followed. He nodded at me as we approached, but I did not meet his eyes. Instead, I looked out the entrance.
There were more of the tree men now, maybe thirty in all. They were all colors, greens, browns, even some deep purples and blues. They were all the same, as if they were stamped by some machine, huge hulking impressions of men, as if a sculptor had ended after hewing out the rough form.
Only a few were faced in towards us. They seemed to watch us, although they had not eyes. The rest faced outwards, forming a semi-circle around the cave and patch of trees. And beyond them, thousands and thousands of the black bugs. Carrion bugs, giant roaches with strange dead eyes. Some flitted back and forth over a few inches of space, but most stood stock still, cleaning their mandibles or antennae. Shriveled eyes.
And among them stood a gray robbed man. His face concealed by a hood, his form leaning heavily on a cane, but I knew him. Archmagio. I started back.
“Do you know them?” Argyl asked.
“Archmagio,” I said, “they are servants of my master”.
“That's the name you used with that fop in the woods,” Jade said.
“Yes.”
“That's not the same man.”
“Mistress, it is, he is a servant of my master, as I am sure the bugs are. They come for me.”
She considered for a moment. “Well fuck.”
“Do you think the tree men will stop them?” he asked.
Nobody said anything.
“Do you think you will stop them?” he asked again, this time to the brown splotched man who I had first met.
“They are not of the forest, or of the mountain. They are not.”
“Huh.” he said. We watched the bugs amassing for a moment. Then he added, “We should go.”
He walked back to the chamber we had been sleeping in. After a short moment Jade followed and I followed her, dropping my gaze to her feet. They were bare still.
Argyl rigged up the two remaining saddle bags so that he and I could each shoulder one. To Jade he rigged up the blankets, which were not as heavy. He had discarded anything he didn't think we needed, so they were not too heavy.
The cave had a dim luminescence, even but very dark, so that everything seemed hazy. I could just see the outline of the cave, which seemed a huge cavern tapering slowly inwards as we descended. I could make out Jade before me, but barely. The effect was not dissimilar to the tar, I felt dizzy and removed from the world. My thoughts were fuzzy, my head ached lightly but persistently.
It seemed to go on forever. Staring at Jade's bare feet, the cave floor seemed very smooth, and stumbling forwards forwards forwards. The cave walls closed in until we could only walk single file. The grade too became steeper until I had to turn my feet sideways to keep from falling. We stopped a few times. They offered me water and jerked meat. They must have found water somewhere. It tasted faintly of clay, but was drinkable.
They did not speak. It seemed tense between them, and I wondered if Jade had spoken to Argyl as she had spoken to me. He was polite to me, but seemed more distant than he had been.
I thought of my suicide. The knife had been missing, but one of them must have it. Perhaps I would have to wait for some other opportunity. A chasm in the cave to hurl myself into, a river in which to drown myself. Or my master's minions would catch and murder me. But they were dull thoughts, reliefs carved into the haze of my mind.
At some point later we stopped. The intervening time seemed only an impossible vertigo, a whole of time, a series of moments impossibly the same as every other one, no progression and no time, simple a single moment infinitely deep.
We spread out the blankets but it had become quite warm inside the mountain, so we lay on top of them rather than inside of them. We all slept several feet from each other. None of us undressed. We spent the next day stumbling down into the mountain and not speaking. I kept watching Jade's body sway in the dim and impossible light. Her figure danced back and forth to some unheard song, our forwards momentum lost in the hypnotism of step after step after step.
It seemed an army of hands assaulted us and I cowered back suddenly, only to realized that they were simply hand prints on the wall. Some of the fingers had been broken, it seemed, as they jutted at odd angles. They fluttered in and out of sight, my eyes barely able to discern them in the dim light. Next a group of antelope and gazelle, pursued by lions, loped along besides us.
“It's remarkable,” said Argyl.
“Master, it makes little sense.”
In the dim light the figures seemed to move and flicker before us.
“How so?” Jade asked.
“These animals, they do not live so far north.” There was no response.
The way grew even steeper. At one point there was a drop of five or so feet. Argyl was able to lower himself, but Jade's tight fitting wrap prevented her, although she had hiked up the legs so that she could walk more normally. I was able to lower her down into Argyl's arms.
“I'd almost rather be naked than helpless,” she said.
“Yes mistress,” I had responded. She looked at me for a time, but I could not make out her expression in the dim light.
At one point I stumbled down a passage, slipping on the steep and slippery rock and sliding into Jade's legs. She managed not to fall, and helped me to my feet. She said nothing, but held my hand as we descended, until the slope eased. My heart thrilled at the touch. She was kind, allowing her fingers to linger some moments after I had regained my balance.
We came then upon a river. It cut directly across the path, and beyond it the chamber opened into a larger chasm. Argyl leaned down before it and put in a finger. Drawing it forth he smelled it.
“Huh,” he said.
“What is it?” Jade asked.
“Smells like wine.”
“Huh,” she said.
He cupped a little in his hand, brought it to his lips and tasted it, just a little.
“Yep. Wine.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
Jade crouched with some difficulty, and scooped a mouthful.
“A little too sweet, but not bad. Seems white.”
“Yeah. I don't really know all that much about wine.”
“I think the fact that it exists is more important than the variety of wine.”
“Lets keep going.”
The wine river was not deep, and we waded across easily. We came across another painting. Three nude women held hands in dance. Their stomachs swelled as if pregnant. The figures were primitive but seemed almost alive in the dim light. The sloping cave floor gradually transformed into shallow steps, and the artwork appeared more regularly. It also grew more obscene, until it seemed a series of instructions of exotic and improbable sexual positions. They grew more realistic as well, as if as we descended we walked forwards through eons, from the primitive palm plants of a crazed medicine man, to the sophisticated sexual abandon of an advanced civilization.
I cannot relate them in more detail as I hardly paid attention to them. My eyes stayed downcast except for quick glances. I was a daze of sorts, lost behind vague and imprecise perceptions, an unthinking mind dully plodding behind a beautiful and curved form that descended through a vague darkness. Jade, walking before me, kept glancing back at me, but whether to check and see if I kept up or for some other reason I did not know.
The stairs gradually became more sharply cut and steep. I stumbled on one, and Jade caught me as I stumbled down a few steps. I doubt I really would have fallen.
“You okay hun? You seem, distracted.”
“Mistress, I, I feel as though I am dreaming.”
“Yeah, the light here is funny. You going to be okay?”
“I think so mistress.”
“Good.”
She took my hand then and helped me down a few steps. Her hand was warmer than mine. I followed her easily, letting her hand guide me and drifting after her. I felt that I was floating. The cave, my master, my suicide, they seemed distant, like a fine cloud had settled over them, softening them. I could leap from the stairs. They were steep enough that I would fall some ways and likely crack my spine on the hard stone. But to hold that warm hand, to drift down after Jade, was easier. Surrender to the dream and vagueness of that stumbling journey.
“Mistress,” I heard myself mumble, “I only wish to please you. I, I am very sorry I have wronged so. I feel very lost.” But my words were too soft, she did not hear.
“Oh,” Jade said as the cave flattened and opened up before us.
“It's beautiful,” said Argyl. I stumbled down and Jade steadied me, then changed her mind and helped me sit. Below us was what seemed a city. The strange luminescent stone had been carved into buildings that snaked about several chasms in the stone. The paths meandered naturally, as if they had been cut by water. The buildings were several stories high, and stone footholds had been built into the sides so people could climb to the higher doors. The structures showed signs of wear, corners were crumbling, in some instances footholds were chipped or missing
The longer I looked at the city in the dim light, the more it seemed to swim and flutter in my vision. Tiny specs of light danced to and fro, and the constancy of lines seemed dubious, as if the standard way in which rocks and angles worked was suspended there.
I realized I was rocking, my eyes hanging half open, leaning, leaning to left, into Jade's legs.
“We better stop for a bit,” she said. Argyl turned to us, his eyes darted down to me, and worry crossed his face.
“Eat some more,” he said, offering me some more of the meat. I took it and absently put it into my mouth.
They were talking then, but it was too hard to concentrate on the words, so I just sat, rocking. I should be saying my mantra, but it seemed too far from where and who I was, so I just left my mind empty.
The images about me seemed to loom and move. A woman shrieked in the excitement of orgasm, a man guided his cock carefully to maximize her pleasure, two women felt each other's with their fingers, a man blew another man as he crouched and held his own sex. The shapes took an an inhuman form, a wing here, a beak, a claw and hooved foot. They seemed to dance about me, mocking me, fucking openly to shame me.
“Kara,” Jade said. She was holding my shoulders and I thought she had been speaking my name. Was is my name? She had been speaking that name to me for a time.
“Mistress,”
“Can you walk?”
“Yes mistress,” I said, but stumbled as I stood. She held my hand and I managed to steady myself.
Can you take the blankets Argie?” she said.
“Sure,” he said, though he seemed to struggle with them a little. Jade took my arm and draped it around herself, so that I could lean on her. I felt very small, and very lost, and leaned my weight on her and she became the only piece of me that was in reality at all. I felt her bare feet against the cool stone, felt my dead weight dragging along, but that was all.
“Things just seem to keep getting more perverted as we go,” she said at some point. All about me there was fucking. Bulls mounted on men and women, harpies fucking lizards, women masturbating themselves as gods and demons watched.
“Perversion,” said a strange cultivated voice, and one of the beast men seemed to walk before me, the legs and hooves and horns of a goat, the face, body and cock of a man. A cock that hung huge but flaccid between the scratchy fur of his goat's legs.
“Perversion,” he started again,” is the murder, the torture you surfacers commit, the suffering of your world. Not good old fashioned fucking.”
“Um,” Jade said, and I stumbled as she stopped walking.
“We meant no offense, sir, we did not realize we could be heard.”
“We,” the voice said, and the picture seemed to move off the wall and stand before us, “do not take offense. Welcome to our city! You have no need for violence, friends, we are prepared to submit to you, sexually, in whatever way or combination you might desire.”
“Um,” Jade said again.
“That, um, we, that will not be necessary, my friend. We are, we are travelers only, we are seeking, we are passing through,” Argyle managed to stammer out.
He grinned big. “Well, that's just great. Really wonderful. Not that we would have minded the sex, but it's always nice to meet friendly people. Sure you wouldn't like, you know, anything?”
“Er, no, thank you, but no. Do you, um, do you have any water?”
“Oh sure. We can get you a room. Come on.”
Jade and Argyle looked at each other for a moment, then we were moving forwards again, down into the city, following the satyr. I leaned on Jade heavily, enjoying the press of her body more than I felt I should. But I was too tired to stop. Her arm around me too seemed more familiar to me as well, as though her hostility had melted into pity. Or, or something else. My head hurt and I stumbled on.
“I'd take you for a tour, but ya'll seem pretty worn. Did you come all the way down from the surface?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Wow, that's far!” He was earnest and unguarded and made me feel awkward for him. He did not seem to notice or mind however.
Lights streamed and danced around us as we walked. They seemed almost human, bright little lights in human form, naked little men and women peering at us, skittish, zipping away before we could fully see them.
“Here,” he said at last. “Can you climb?”
He was looking at me.
“Sir, yes I think so. I am very far away.”
“Yes, I can tell.” He walked before me. Jade tensed and hauled me up. He put a hand, human but covered in thick black hair, up to my chest and placed it where my severed breast had been. I felt a tingling run through my from my touch,
“You,” he said, “have suffered much.”
I looked up at him. His eyes were dark and deep, and seemed to hold all the suffering of the world in them.
“You, you are very beautiful. A dark skinned beauty. Is that racist?”
“No sir,” I said, or rather, my voice said. I was floating far away.
“You have a lover who is far away, but she loves you truely, and, how did you lose your breast?”
“Sir, it was cut from me.”
“Ah. Well, our mistress may be able to heal that. She is very powerful.”
“Sir, I do not understand.”
“Later,” he said. “A piece of you, it has been cut away.”
“I have been told, sir, but I do not remember.”
“I can restore it for you. But, ah, but it has been done for you, not for them, so perhaps I should not. You lover, she is a tree?”
“She, I love, yes, sir, but she sent me away.”
“But she loves you, it, she could not come. You confuse yourself. The abominations above, at the cave, they are not as trees are. Your lover spoke true.”
I was weeping. Heavy tears that heaved themselves from my eyes and fell heavy against the stone floor.
“You were made for sex, my dear. Madam. Mistress, for I would serve you as you would serve your companions. Madam, you were made for sex. Do not blame your body for the evil of others. The surfacers, they are perverse in their repression of themselves. They make monstrosities of their sex. They rape and kill, enslave and torment their kind as we once did, before our great lord came. But it is no fault of yours. It is no fault of your sex. The fault is theirs.”
“Sir, I do not understand.”
“No, you are far far gone. Time, though, your friends here, they are pure of heart. They will aid you.”
“Sir, yes sir, I love them.”
“Yes, it is right that you do. I will help how I can.”
“Sir, thank you.”
“Madam, thank you.”
“What?” said Jade, and I realized we had not been speaking aloud as her voice cut through my thought.
“Mistress, I am sorry. I am well, I only need to rest a moment.”
“Indeed, here, I will show you in,” said our Satyr guide. He climbed with impossible nimbleness, given his hooved feet, and Argyl, after a glance at Jade, followed.
“Go on hun, I'll catch you if you fall,” Jade said to me. I don't particularly remember climbing, but I stumbled into the room with the two men and Jade stepped in after me.
The room was chiseled of white stone. A singe large bed, stone but topped with a thick mattress, lay in the center, and a low stone bench was besides it. A small table, of wood rather than stone, sat surrounded by four stools. Opposite the bed there was a deep bath filled with steaming water. Two founts were cut into the wall, each bubbled with liquid, one as clear as water, the other a dark red.
“This one is water, the other is wine. It's not, alas, the best wine. But it's not terrible either, it'll get the job done. The bath is safe, it is fed by a spring and has been carved so the water refreshes constantly. It's big enough for four, so you should be able to all get cozy in it. I'll go get some food for you.”
“Thank you, sir,” Argyl said, nodding at the satyr.
“Yes, our delight!” he responded, then descended the ladder, pulling shut a curtain that covered the door.
“What the fuck just happened?” asked Jade. Argyle looked back at her, almost smiling.
“Not sure.”
“Are you okay hun?” Jade asked, lowering my pack to the floor.
“Mistress,” I felt my brows furrow, “I, he spoke of my lover, I had thought, I had thought she had sent me away, but he spoke of her. I am, yes, I am well, mistress. I, how may I serve you mistress?”
She sighed. “By not calling me mistress first of all. Call me Jade hun.” She put her hand on my shoulders.
“Yes Jade. I know, I didn't.”
“It's okay,” she said kindly.
I sat on the bed and stared quietly at the floor.
“So,” Jade said. Argyl turned away from the wine fountain.
“They don't seem to be hostile anyway,” he said, “and Kara here needs some rest even if we didn't. Which I do anyway. I'm not used to all this walking, and those stairs were rough.”
“What about those bugs?”
“I don't know. Kara, do you think they will get past those tree monstrosities?”
“Argyl, I am not sure. I think it, I do not know.”
“Well,” Jade said, “they'll slow them down at least, and we won't make it much further without finding food and water. Maybe the Satyr will help us. What did he say to you Kara?”
“Mistress? I mean, Jade?”
“When he spoke to you.”
“He, we spoke of my lover. Jade.”
“You don't have to say my name every time you address me.”
“Yes Jade.”
She smirked but said nothing. The curtain pulled aside then and the satyr entered. With him were two female satyrs, also naked, with large hairy breasts. They both stumbled a little, as if drunk. They had with them three large silver treys. They placed them on the table. One had a large roasted fowl on it, the other two a variety of dishes that seemed highly improbable so deep underground. Steamed greens, pastries, other things I did not know what.
“Thank you for your kindness,” Argyl said. “My name is Argyl, this is my wife Jade and our companion Kara. We are very grateful for your hospitality.”
All three of them beamed giddy smiles.
“Sir, madam, madam,” the male said, address each in turn. “We are delighted with your company, and hope, sincerely, that your stay with us is a pleasure you will remember you whole life. I am Achtan, these are my friends Laylie and Bella. You are in the city of Agalaka, which is a stupid name but a wonderful place. There are not so many of us here, but we are all happy to help you.”
“It it our pleasure, Achtan. Will you please dine with us?”
“Absolutely! But first, wine. Wine wine!” He took an empty cup from one of the treys and filled it from the fountain. He held it out to me, and I stared at it for a moment, then took it. He started singing in words I did not understand, but his deep baritone filled the room with pretty song that made me think of fields and sun and joyful, free love. One of the women joined him in the chorus, and I drifted in their song and felt lighter, happier somehow. My suicide waited for me, secure, knowing I would return. But it was far away, and the song and food and wine close, and the memory of Jade's body against mine, holding my weight as we stumbled down the endless stairs, and I smiled and drank the wine and swam in it.
We gorged ourselves on the food. The satyrs ate with us, drinking and singing and telling jokes, all of them dirty and none of them funny save the joyous way in which they were told. As we finished out meal they rubbed wet fingers over their wine glasses, making a beautiful ringing sound that filled and reverberated through the room. I felt lost in it, as if the echos left ripples through my dazed thoughts, vibrating colors and patterns across my consciousness. The female, I did not remember which was her name, sang a sweet sad song. I did not understand the words, but it made my heart ache for my lover, and I wondered at the satyr's words.
He said she loved me, that she had done what she had for me. I remembered her, her body, her soft embrace, her tears at our parting, and the music carried me and I drifted in it. The touch of her body, the wonderful orgasms that had ripped me from the stupor of obedience to a terrible master. Is that what it had been? Had she freed me? Or did I walk enthralled still?
I grew very tired, and lay back on the bed. I felt gentle hands grasp me, and I opened my eyes and saw Jade above me. She pulled me up onto the bed the bed proper and rested my head on a pillow. I drifted and very quickly was asleep.
In my dream my lover pressed her firm strong body to mine. Cradled in her tree, we floated gently in empty black space. Stars and nebula filled our vision and faded softly into one another, a great purple and red blur, punctuated with bright little pricks of light.
“Love my love my love I am so sorry so sorry.”
I was weeping and she was covering me with kisses. I shut my eyes and drifted into her, her warmth, the sensation of dry pressed lips. I was weeping but felt joy, not sadness, an explosion of light within my closed eyes.
“You sent me away, you did not come.” The words seemed thin, the inane prattle of a badly written drama.
“My love my love, I am my true form. Those, things, they are abominations. They are forest, but not. I am not as they.”
I felt no relief and realized I had already forgiven her, but drifted further into her warmth. To be safe and warm and unalive, to float in that womb forever, the terrible light of the world kept forever at bay. Was this what death was like? The be nothing, float away into nothing and be nothing, the warm embrace of a lover, the end of all thought. Her hand found my crotch and mine her's, and our hips danced some few inches away. We had no thought, only a desperate urgency, to keep moving, keep touching, keep building, to blow our minds out into space and cease all time in the sensation of that single moment. We came together, one mindless being bound in orgasm for a too short moment, for a perfect moment.
And then she was fading from me, her and her tree, slipping from my hands as I grasped her tighter to me, and cold light pressed on my skin and I shuddered at the terrible ache of loss. A heavy chain was about my neck, so that heavy I could hardly lift my head. The ground was rocky and cut into my hands and knees, my cheek as the chain bore me down and burned cold into my neck.
Archmagio was there, a gray shifting form, meandering aimlessly between ten thousand forms of men. He held the chain, but did not seem to see me.
“She is silk, scraps, an abominations of thought, an I where there ought not.”
It was not Archmagio who spoke, but the bull man. He stood just outside my vision, a glimpse of terror forcing itself into my periphery.
“Our master thinks it otherwise. Ours is to serve his perfect will,” the wizard responded.
“He is a foolish god, he toys with sharp sharp things, cracks and unknowable and broken sharp things, like silk, and clay and bones and feces and bones bones.”
“Uh, what?”
“You are a petty petty shit.”
Before us a thousand of the giant bugs, their stench of death and rot assaulting my senses and gagging me. They descended on the wood. The tree brutes clobbered and smashed them as ruthless automatons, great machines that killed without thought or fear. But they were too few. A thousand bugs for every man, a thick swirl of black about them, blotting out the forest and leaching the light from the sun. The bugs attacked not the men, but the trees, crushing their leaves and branches in their mandibles, digging and sniping at their roots.
It was a great slaughter of insects, but still they came. Their carcasses piled deep on the forest floor.
I woke shivering and realized I had been very cold. Also that it was pleasantly warm. I was sprawled along the foot of the bed, someone had pulled a thin sheet over me and tucked a pillow beneath my head. Argyl and Jade slept on opposite sides. Argyl faced outwards, but Jade faced him. Was that significant, or had they just rolled in their sleep?
Not someone, it had been Jade who rose me to the bed. The memories of the night were hazy, imprecise, the dream lingering in my senses. I rose quietly so as not to disturb them. There were cup on the table, so I brought one to the water, changed my mind and filled it with wine. The wine was not as sweet as it had been. I liked it better and refilled my cup. Better to be hazy and imprecise, better not to feel the world.
There was a small separate room with a flush toilet, a luxury I hadn't seen since my old master had taken me from his manor. I used it to defecate, cleaning myself after with water from a small basin. White, smooth stone all of it.
When I returned to the main room Achtan was standing in the door, bold and naked against the soft glow of the outside. That made me wonder how the room was illuminated.
“Sir, how may I serve you?”
“Madam!” he said grinning widely, “how may I serve you?”
We stared at each other for a moment.
“More wine?”
“Sir, if it is okay?”
“Madam, my only pleasure is to please you.”
I filled my wine glass up again and wondered if I should be keeping track of how much I was drinking.
“Come,” he said, “it is still night, drink, drink!” He laughed and filled another cup up, quaffed it, and refilled it. “You, you are not as the other two are. They are good enough, but you, you are such a free being, we felt you coming, knew you were coming. Will you come with me? I will show you our underground city before your friends wake.”
It felt a command. “Yes sir,” I said meekly. He laughed.
He