I woke again feeling very groggy, but still high from the tar, the world pleasantly dimmed, buffered by a warm dark womb.
“How do you feel?” Jade asked me. She looked restored for the first time since her fight, color in her cheeks and a bit of her bravado back in her voice.
“Mistress,” I mumbled, “very groggy, and my head aches” I felt that I was slurring my words some. She smiled at me.
“We did drink an awful lot last night.”
I realized she was drying her hair with a towel, and wore a dark blue robe of fine silk.
“Have some water, it'll help your headache. You should clean up, there's fresh water in the tub. It seems to be automatically refreshed somehow.”
I stumbled as I stood, misjudging my height and the distance of the floor, and Jade caught and steadied me.
“Careful hun.”
“I am okay, mistress,” I said, enunciating every syllable very carefully, executing with my full attention the steps to the tub. It was large enough for four or five people.
“There's no curtain but I promise to only peek a little.”
“I don't mind mistress.”
“It's a joke. Never mind. It feels great to be clean.”
I pulled off my dress carefully. It took a great deal of concentration not to get lost in it, but I managed. The boots were much easier.
The water was very warm and I felt that was sinking into it for a moment, the room and Jade seemed very far away. Then there was water in my mouth and nose and I was choking. I pushed myself up with a shot of panic and hacked water from my windpipe.
“You okay?” worry on her face and in her voice now, rather than amusement.
“Yes mistress, sorry mistress.”
The adrenalin pulled me from my stupor somewhat, and I felt dizzy but closer to the world of sensations and reactions. There was soap and so I scrubbed myself. I turned carefully so I could not see Jade. I wanted her to watch me without feeling self-conscious. I hadn't realized how dirty I had gotten. It was a dry but thick layer of dust over me, as if I had been a neglected vase, dusted now and returning to life.
The water was surprisingly clean; there was a steady stream of warm water from a stone spigot. I saw there was a razor and scissors, so I shaved, scrapping the sharp blade against my legs and armpits. I used the scissors to trim my pubic hair. When done I stood and turned slowly so as to not lose my balance I felt close to sober now. Some property of the water perhaps?
Jade was looking at me, but blushed and turned away.
“Mistress I do not mind.”
“Um,” she said, and turned slightly darker red. “Is that, do, did you shave yourself like that as, when you were a prostitute?”
“It is, mistress.” I looked at her a moment. She looked back at me.
“There's, um, a robe here for you.” She brought it over to me. I took it but didn't put it on yet. She walked back to the bed and messed unnecessarily with the blanket, smoothing it.
“I'm, uh, sorry that I was rude to you earlier, Kara. I was, very stressed and, well, I cheated on Argyl, so.” She stumbled through her language awkwardly, then stopped abruptly.
“Mistress, you do not need to explain.”
“But I owe it to you,” she said, looking up at me.
“No, mistress.”
“I cheated on him. We had just lost the baby, and, it was a very, I don't know.”
I walked to her and took her into my arms. She was surprised a moment, then held me back. After a moment she disengaged.
“I didn't expect you to take it like you did. You've saved my life, you've saved his life, I need, I should be more patient with you, I can't expect you to understand everything.”
I did not know what to say. I felt more sober but it was still an effort to hide my condition. I felt that I loved her, and wanted to hold her and take her to the bed, but she would be upset so I did not.
“I've never been into girls,” she said. “Maybe, I mean,” she trailed off.
“It's okay mistress,” I said, my heartbeat thundering in my ears. Anxiety washed through me and I breathed carefully so I would not fall.
“Maybe in a better world, we could all just love and never be jealous or, I don't know.”
“It's okay mistress,” I said again, this time very faint. We were both facing each other but looking down. I looked down at the robe, noticing it for the first time. It was a deep dark red. Red, the color of whores. But probably not here, among the satyrs there seemed to be no money anyway.
“Red is the color of whores mistress.”
“Oh. I'm so sorry. We can, I didn't know, we can trade.” She was flustered.
I looked at her for the first time. “I do not mind, mistress, Jade.” I remembered finally she had asked me to call her by her name.
“I do not mind, I, being a whore is not a shameful thing for me.”
“You're not a whore, Kara, we'll, Argyl and I will make sure of that, if we live through all this.”
I wanted to shrug but didn't. “My master, he brings great danger on you mistress, you should leave me here and escape.”
“No.” She looked firmly at me. “Argyl would be captured and dead if not for you, and I too probably. And your lover, your tree friend, she helped, she saved us as well. I don't, it wasn't an accident that we were safe until we crossed the mountains. It should not have been that easy.”
“I, mist.. Jade, my master comes to revenge himself on me. You must go.”
“No, we will fight, we will find a way to free you.”
She took me in her arms again and we held each other for a moment.
“I feel so strange, like, like ever since we entered this city I haven't been able to think right, or, I don't know, like that satyr is casting some spell on me, or us.” The words coming from me surprised me, seemed as though they were someone else's, someone else speaking with my voice.
“I murdered a woman, she was, she was only half a woman, they had taken her arms and her legs, she was just there to be fucked, they had taken her mind and she was just floating in a thick warm gel. I think I am like that, impotent, thoughtless, floating in a thick warmth. Am I alive? I get fucked, cut, whored, and tortured, and I float and say nothing, feel nothing. Am I alive? I loved her. I love her. I love my, my lover, I love you, and Argyl. Does that make me alive? Life is a strange small string of dust of life and love and small bits of silk and cloth and burlap. I am dead I am dead I am a little scrap of death that wrecks and savages all. My lover wept, you were hurt and cut at me, am I alive? Am I a dark hole?”
“You're so fucking weird.” I looked at her but she was smiling at me. Then she stepped back and shook her head, as if to clear it.
“I don't know what to say to any of that. I think, I do not think you are dead, but I think you are not used to living? I don't know. You keep calling us master and mistress even though we don't want you to. Do you know any other way to relate to people?”
I didn't say anything, not knowing the answer.
“I think you are very smart. Educated too, at least in some ways. You seem at times very simple, driven by simple ideas of love and relations. At other times you speak of obtuse philosophical questions with more sophistication than I could. Did you really kill a Clachnik woman?”
“Clachnik?”
“The woman without arms or legs.”
“Oh, yes, for my master.”
“Well, that's almost a mercy.”
“I am, I don't know what I am.”
“You haven't called me mistress in a while.”
“Sorry mistress.”
“No!” she glowered at me, then softened and laughed. “Why is it so hard?”
“Mistress, I” I didn't know what to say.
She leaned over me a moment, our mouths coming close, and I felt a pull towards her, as if she willed me to lean forwards and kiss her then. I started to, but then she turned away, blushing.
“I don't know, I feel strange, this is such a strange place,” she said.
The curtain pulled aside and we both looked up to see Argyl and Achtan enter bearing trays of food. Argyl blushed and looked away, and I realized I was still naked. Achtan grinned and winked at me, and I quickly pulled on the robe to alleviate Argyl's discomfort.
We ate a combination of fresh fruit, impossible deep in the mountain, and sweet pastries. There was coffee and wine available. Jade and Argyl both had coffee, I did not drink. Eating for some reason made me feel dull and dimwitted again, but everyone's attention was elsewhere and I do not think they noticed.
“I will take you to meet our priestess now, if you like. She's requested an audience, we don't get many visitors you know.”
“We will be very pleased to meet her.” Argyl said politely.
The city seemed to swirl about me as we walked, the dim white buildings blending together until I could not tell one from the other. They seemed to be before and behind me at once. I felt dizzy and had to concentrate on following Jade, who walked just behind Argyl and the Satyr.
We came at last, by what twists of the city path I knew not, to a temple. Outside was little more than a relief of various sexual couplings, all different beasts mating cross species. They seemed to loom over me, mocking me with laughter, even moving or dancing, though I have no memory of which beasts fucked which beasts. Dizzy and unthinking I followed Jade inside.
Inside darkness assaulted me. It seemed I stumbled into a great void. Jade and Argyl dimmed to shadows, their steps and voices echoing away into unintelligible clamor. Achtan alone seemed to leave some piece of himself with me. His strong nude form gingerly striding before me, with his strange reversed joint where his hoof descended from his ankle. I have no memory of thought then, only of plodding after him for an indeterminable amount of time, as if we descended into the void and diminished in significance and size, although our distance from one another never changed.
A blue light originated from the form of a woman, details lost in brightness All light seemed to be her skin, her edges indiscernible, so that her body only implied her form, so that she was before but also around us. Maybe even that we were within her, no walls about us but her light reaching out infinitely around us.
“Why is everyone always naked?” Jade asked in an ironic tone.
“You,” the woman said, “are alone among your kind.”
“Yeah, still it's strange for a city girl like me.” Jade said.
“That makes sense,” Argyl said, “is it the same with the trees and Satyrs?”
“Yes mistress,” Achtan said, and retreated back into the darkness.
“Mistrss, I” I addressed the woman. She had eyes only for me. Jade and Argyl continued speaking with her in words that seemed incongruous with what words the woman spoke to me.
“I am not your mistress, little one. Do not address me as such.”
“Yes,” I almost said mistress but managed to choke the word back. Her blue light seemed to fill my vision, blinding me to anything but it. I could hear them speaking around me, but it all seemed unintelligible. It was not unlike how my master thundered in my mind, pressing all other thoughts and sensations from me. Yet, this was not a violence, more that my mind could not comprehend more than only her. Instead, a great feeling of peace filled me, blotted out everything else until I felt soft and pliable in a great sea. A scrap, a piece of something not whole, fluttering in the wind, a few words nearly sensical.
She placed a hand on my chest where my breast had been. And as she pulled back her hand a breast grew beneath it, the perfect twin of its twin. She giggled then, and small flutters of joy passed through me and I giggled too. She kissed me and I felt a warmth between my legs, the growing urge of sex, undirected and pleasurable in its own right.
“You desire your companions?” She seemed to speak aloud but I could not answer. Rather, longing in me reached out at her, at an image of them she held in my mind, and I saw us all three held in a nude embrace, all smiling and flowing into and out of each other.
“It is fear that holds them. Rational Argyl, pragmatic Jade. He fears he does not love her enough, and that he is falling for you and this will hurt her. She fears she has hurt him, that the heir that died in her womb was her only use to him, that her feeling for you make her abomination. It is not so simple, but words are poor devices for your hearts.
“There is no room for fear here in my city. You will love both of them. It is there now a little, but it will grow inside you. You who have no true past, no true future, no true self, you, super human slave, may bring them together in your love.”
She stepped forwards and kissed me, and intense waves of pleasure shook me. It was not as an orgasm, no slow build then release, only the pleasure, only the peak suddenly there then gone.
Then she was gone, dissipating into light that hung about the temple. It was very dim and the walls were still not visible. Achtan stood behind us. Jade and Argyl seemed as startled by the woman's disappearance as I had been. Argyl said something but it was lost in echos. How did it echo if there were no walls? Achtan led us back through the door, which seemed only a rectangle of light in the center of the vast emptiness.
I hardly remember the walk back to our room. The dim light of the city almost bright, and it felt as though I had taken only a few steps before I was climbing the rails to our room.
I sat on the bed dazed. I worried that the drug would be discovered until I realized Jade and Argyl too were sitting stupefied. After a bit Achtan came in with a platter of food. I paid no attention to what he was doing, and after a while realized he was gone.
“Kara, come eat,” Jade said, and I realized Argyl was sitting at the table. He looked as dazed as I felt.
Food was some kind of fowl, roasted with a number of different vegetables. It was hearty and filling, and I remember nothing else about it, or what it was served with. When it was gone, however, I felt myself returning to the world some, most of the effects of the drug were gone as well.
“Well,” said Jade, “I'm starting to feel normal again. What was that?”
“Who the girl?” Argyl responded.
“Yeah, was she a girl?”
“Well, no, not when you put it that way. I'm not sure exactly, although she is very powerful I think.”
“She was talking to all three of us at once, wasn't she?”
“I think so, what did she talk to you about?”
“How to deal with Kara's master and escape the mountain. There's a cache of ancient weapons not far from the city, she thinks they will help. Also there are several passages we might take to escape them when they get this far down.”
“Did she say how long we had?”
“She didn't know exactly, but she did know they weren't in the mountain yet. It took us two days to get this far down, but she thinks it will take them three.”
“Why longer for them?”
“She is going to, to slow them somehow. I didn't really understand the specifics. She thought we should leave tomorrow if we were going to escape them.”
“Well, it would probably be wise to do as she wishes. Did she say why she is helping?”
“Not exactly, but I got the impression she doesn't like her master very much.”
“Huh.”
Jade rose and filled a glass with wine. “Would you like some?” she asked me, and I nodded.
“How about you?” she addressed Argyl.
“We talked about the nature of magic mostly. It was very interesting.”
She handed me a glass of wine and another to Argyl. It was red and slightly sweet.
“How so?”
“Well, she said there's always an element of irrationality to it, or rather, of impossibility. If there weren't, it would be science, not magic. Like my herbs. Many people think it's alchemy, or a kind of magic, but really I'm just combining different substances in different ways. The results are rational and reproducible. But with magic, for example, it isn't possible, really, for someone to be healed from a sword through the gut in two days, as Kara's, as your, sorry, as your lover did. Not really possible, therefore magic.”
“I always thought it was a science. Such and such wizard gyrates his hands in such and such a way, and bam, the ex-wife is a newt or something.”
“Maybe superficially, but underneath it's still irrational. She talked about it like, it's an extension of what she is, she just wills things and they happen. Her relationship to the world is such that she manipulates natural laws the way we might manipulate an abacus or something. That's not a great example but it's hard to explain. Human magic, if there is such a thing, is just manipulating the senses of other humans. It's a very weak and minor form of it compared to what this glowing woman can do. Like that man who captured you, those were half starved neglected bodies that he made seem like incredible brutes.”
“Wait, that doesn't make sense. How did they beat me then? I wasn't faking.”
“Hmm. I'm not sure. Maybe there was some other element to it as well. He serves your master as well?”
I realized after a moment they were looking at me.
“Uh, what? Oh, yes, master, I mean, Argyl, he is also a slave of his.”
“So it could have been the demon's magic at work in the fight. That's the other source of most human magic, channeling the power of something greater. That comes at a price though, the master giving the power gives it on certain terms only. I hate to think what that man, what was his name?”
“He called himself Archmagio.”
“Wow,” Jade said, “pretentious git.”
Argyl laughed a little. He was very animated as he spoke. All his awkwardness interacting with Jade and I was gone. His mind had grabbed hold of something and he had forgotten his self-consciousness in his excitement. Jade was smiling at him, enjoying his enjoyment more than the subject. Still, she did a good job keeping him engaged.
“Well, we assume. I hate to think what he traded to her master.”
“Do you know?” Jade asked me.
I tried to think on it. “He, I remember on the mountain, he summoned him, or pretended to summon him. My master abused him, pinched his legs and bled him. I, he said something about time, only having a little time.”
Jade looked disgusted and drank more wine as if to wash the image away. We were all drinking more wine, I was starting to feel it more. Argyl stayed interested.
“The man, Archmagio, he put a heart and veins into me, he said that I would be his
revenge, he said the knife of his revenge. He, the heart, when it beat I did not want to kill. I killed from the blood in me, my obedience beat in my blood, was my blood, but that other heart, that woman's heart, it slowed it, made me love and stayed my murdering hand. Or tried to.”
Jade wore pity openly on her face. Too tipsy now to hide it maybe.
“I wonder how much of that was illusion. You can't have two hearts, but maybe he planted the thought with some magic of his own. Is he trying to free himself from his master?”
“I don't know.” My wine glass was empty but Jade refilled it.
“Hmm. That might be useful.” she said.
“Maybe.”
A silence fell over us a moment.
“What about her tree lover? Is her magic the same as the blue lady? What don't any of these things have names?”
“Not sure about the lady down here. She might, and just didn't give it. The tree magic though, I think it has something to do with time, with manipulating time. Making it so things happened other than how they had.”
“Oh gods don't get started on the time paradox crap.”
He laughed. “Okay. But, exactly, it's impossible. Any time manipulation would already have happened, so it isn't possible that we would remember it differently than how the effect came out, thus magic.”
“Okay, that makes sense. Well, makes sense that it doesn't make sense.”
“Right. And that's the problem with all the scholarship. They try to present the study and use of magic as systematic and scientific, but it's fundamentally not. Most of the publishers won't even print anything unless the 'magic system' has a solid philosophical foundation and a consistent method of operation. In other words, they wont publish anything that's actually about magic.”
“Sounds about right.”
We all had drank a fair amount of wine by this point. I was drifting pleasantly, enjoying Argyl's excitement for his subject even if I didn't share it. I stood and refilled my wine glass. Jade had shifted to sitting on the bed, Argyl lounged in his chair still. I sat back into my chair.
“Kara?”
“Yes Jade?” I had almost said mistress.
“You said the wrap was almost how you used to do it?”
“Yes.”
There was a mischievous intensity to her. “Show me.”
“Yes,” I said. It took a sheet from the bed and folded it to the right width. I began to unfasten my robe, but she stopped me.
“No, on me.” she said. She undid her robe. Argyl was suddenly uncomfortably stiff and looked into his wine as he swirled it in his glass.
“You've got your boob back,” Jade said, startled and staring at my chest. Argyl too looked up with surprise.
“Yes, she gave it back to me.”
Argyl blushed as he realized he was staring at my chest and looked away.
“Well,” Jade said after a moment, “show me the wrap.” She took her robe off completely.
“Uh, you start at the chest here. You it it this way so your boobs will press up and together. You about half cover the nipple. Then you come up around the shoulders here, and here like this, letting it open down the arm. Then tuck it here, careful not to block your cleavage, and drape the rest like this, so your one leg is covered and the other is seen through the slit here.”
“That's amazing,” she said, smiling down at herself. “What do you think hun, would you shell out your money to fuck me?”
He laughed, but awkwardly said nothing. I smiled at this, and sipped more wine.
“I'm not sure I've ever seen you smile before,” Jade said, which made me smile more until I looked down and regained my composure.
“How long did you do it for?”
“I, I'm not sure about time.”
“So you would solicit men? On the streets?”
“Oh no, we were in a brothel. Men, usually men, sometimes couples, would come in and we would entertain them until they chose one of us.”
“Entertain how?”
“Well, some would speak to them, or dance, there was a little stage for it. Or we would kiss each other or even make love to get them aroused.”
She laughed a little. “I bet it was more fun with the girls than when they brought you upstairs.”
“Neither were fun really. You make love differently when you are doing it for show. It isn't the same.”
“How so?” She was smiling at me, here eyes fixed on mine.
“Well, when you work to please a man, you focus on the sensations you are creating. Being visually appealing is part of that, but is less important. If you are trying to please a man visually, you have to make sure they can see what you are doing. So you have to keep your body further away. Like, if you kiss with the tongue, it is more visually appealing if you are further from who are kissing, but if it is to please the one being kissed, it is better to be closer.”
“Ah, I see.” she said. She was smiling at me. “Will you show me?” She said it hesitatingly, drunk and unsure, but wanting to. I felt a twinge at the question, something inside me tightening with excitement and anxiety at once.
“Yes, if you like.”
“Yeah, lets see if we can get Argyl worked up enough to pay me.” Then almost immediately, “I'm sorry, is that, was that insulting?”
“No, it is fine.” I said. I felt queasy a little and was glad for the wine. I drank the rest of my glass and stood and took a half step towards her. She looked awkward for a moment, then took my hand and guided me to sit on the bed besides me. I didn't look back at Argyl.
“So,” she said, and by the way she lurched I realized that she was more drunk than I had thought. “So, show me first how you would kiss me to excite our client here.”
“Jade,” Argyl said.
“No,” I said, surprised by my voice, “I, like this.” I leaned forwards and kissed her lightly. Her lips were very soft, which seemed strange. I closed my eyes then kissed her again, pulling back as she kissed back and teasing her lips with my tongue. Her lips parted slightly and I licked and kissed gently at her tongue.
“See, like this. So that he can see. If I were kissing to please you, I would be much closer with my mouth, and being more careful to keep my saliva from you.”
She laughed at that. “No messy kisses?”
“No,” I said, “nobody likes lots of saliva. Or, not many people. You have to be careful how open your lips are, and to suck it back when you inhale.”
“Show me?”
I smiled and kissed her again. This time, I stayed close, and our lips and tongues nibbled, licked and explored each other. I was leaning towards her and she placed her hand on my shoulder. The touch was hesitant, uncertain.
She pulled back then, as if to say something to Argyl, but I leaned after her and we were kissing again, then laying facing each other on the bed. I put my arm behind her and pulled myself to her. Bosom to bosom, we kissed, her hand on my back pulling me towards her.
Then she was pulling away and sitting up, steadying herself with an arm on the bed.
She looked at me, flushed but smiling. “I'm pretty drunk,” she said.
“Yes, me too.”
We looked at each other a bit longer, wavering slightly. I wanted desperately to kiss her more. I realized I was staring lustily, mouth hanging slightly open, and I shut it and looked away. She was blushing very deeply. The moment hung awkwardly for a long time. I waited for her to do something but she did nothing, only blushing deeper and wavering in her drunkeness.
Argyl was there then, offering me a glass a wine. I took it from him and sipped it. He stepped in front of Jade then.
“Do what you want to do, hun. I won't mind.”
She reached up to him and he took her hand, holding it gently and smiling down at her.
“Do you, do you like to watch us?” she asked.
He laughed a little and blushed as well.
“I certainly don't mind dear. Not, we're all drunk, just have fun.”
Jade was looking at me again and I smiled. “I am here,” I said. I leaned forwards, but she pulled back. I wanted very badly to chase forwards for her lips but I held back.
She was looking at me levelly. We were all drunk still, but the giddy silliness was gone. The silence stretched for a long time and I felt a weight descend over us.
“Master.” I said, although my words surprised me as I heard them, “I mean, Argyl, do you not mind because you want to watch us, or because you want Jade to be happy?”
He looked at me, then at the floor as if considering.
“I think,” he said, “I feel a bit like a creep watching. But I want her, I mean, I want you to be happy Jade. I don't know, I, this is a strange place, and maybe I'm just drunk, but I really don't see a problem with it. Be drunk, have fun! If you wake up regretting it we can just chalk it down to a drunk mistake. But, I don't know, it feels right somehow.”
“Yeah,” Jade said, looking at me now. “I, are you okay with that? I mean, I think it's fun, I don't want to lead you on though or anything.”
“Mistress, Jade, you do not need to worry so much about Argyl. He loves you, he is just lost in his mind all the time. You hurt him but not so bad as you think, he is quiet about it because he is cautious. Love is many things to many people, it is not something that is always the same or must be the same. He loves you as he loves, and you as you love. There is no need to fear or be hurt anymore.”
She was staring at me. Argyl smiled. They kissed then, the quick sincere kiss of those long accustomed to each other. Argyl then stepped away, refilled his wine, and sat back at the table.
Jade looked at me, blushed and fumbled with her hands. It was strange to see her so. I was used to her boldness and practicality. Her uncertainty now made my heart leap, made her more beautiful to me.
“Jade,” I said, the wine making me bold perhaps, “my companion, let us entertain the master.” I stood and undid the clasp of my robe, letting it fall open and off my shoulders so to expose my breasts.
“It looks like it was never missing,” Jade said.
I felt my new breast. More firm than soft, the same as it had always been. I sat on the bed and kissed her. She hesitated, then returned it. I reached for her, felt her back and shoulders, and gently loosened her robe. She fumbled with the clasp and I slid it down.
“When performing, comrade, it is important not to block the master's view. Were we lovers we would embrace, but instead we hold our bodies so, breasts just touching, torsos turned so that he might see.”
“Mmm,” she moaned softly. “Should I touch them?”
“Yes, comrade, like this. Gently, tease the nipple hard.” I demonstrated on her and was rewarded with goosebumps and an erect nipple. S