If I Pay Thee Not in Gold Read online

  If I Pay Thee Not In Gold

  Piers Anthony & Mercedes Lackey

  Chapter 1

  Xylina ignored the hum of whispered conversation that followed her as she wound her way through the crowded bodies in the bazaar. She kept her head high, pretending there was nothing more on her mind than the perfectly ordinary purchase of food. But her muscles were knotted with tension and she really would rather have been back in her home.

  This task was ordinary for her, anyway, though odd or eccentric for any other woman. She sometimes wondered if she was the only Mazonite in the city who did not have at least one male slave to tend to the domestic chores. The bazaar thronged with male slaves, sent on the same errand she was performing herself. They were draped in the loose, soft, pastel tunics of household servants. The few freedmen who had permission to be in the marketplace at this hour were in black, and barefoot so that in theory they could not run very fast if they committed some crime.

  The women in Xylina’s immediate vicinity were leather-clad fighters in suede body-wrappings and trews, bearing combat-scars and the marks of armor and weaponry. Others were the heads of households, in their severe linen or samite tunics and breeches, the uniform of the workaday world for those who had property. For those who did not, dress was whatever the woman could conjure; in Xylina’s case, a simple drape of soft mage-cloth. She had intended dark blue, but it had come out a soft sapphire. Whatever the color, it marked her as poverty-stricken; no female of substance wore mage-cloth.

  Then again, there was no disgrace in being poor. That was not what the others were whispering about. She knew what they were saying, those scarred and hardened warriors who murmured to each other like gossiping kitchen-slaves; she’d heard it all before.

  … coward…fool…

  … soft… weakling…

  … cursed…

  “Mama!” cried out a child; by the shrill voice, a very young one, too young to know better than to shout in public. “Mama! Look! She has hair like aman !”

  Snickers and sly, sideways looks followed that innocent exclamation-and muffled laughter from those male slaves in the bazaar who were not in the company of their mistresses. Xylina continued to hold her chin up, despite the flush she felt spreading from her ears to her cheeks until her whole face burned. There was nothing else she could do; she did have hair like some pampered male leisure-companion, long and luxuriant and well-cared-for, cascading from her head to her waist in a curtain of gold silk. It represented a tiny defiance, another mark of her difference from the rest of them. Most Mazonites cut their hair short, or even shaved their heads. A banner such as hers was an invitation to an enemy, a weapon he could use against the wearer. Only one or two Mazonites Xylina had ever seen wore their hair longer than to the shoulders, and they had been warriors of such surpassing excellence that they flaunted their skill in this manner. Let he who dared, try to touch those tresses!

  One of those had been her mother, Elibet… and that was why Xylina wore her own hair this way.

  She bent over a cart full of fresh vegetables, glad of a chance to hide her blushes. Someone nearby spoke, with an audible sniff of contempt.

  “Dresses like a pretty little dancing-boy, too. You’d think she’d have the decency to bind those breasts.” It made no difference that binding her embarrassingly full bosom made it hurt, and that nothing could be done about her slender waist and round hips.She was at fault for the way she looked, as if she had deliberately conjured up her appearance. Everything was held against her. “Girl’s a disgrace” the harsh voice continued. “Gives the freedmen ideas.”

  Xylina’s blush deepened, then faded. What was the point? It wasn’t as if this were the first time.

  “Well,” drawled another, a voice Xylina recognized as Panterra. She dared a glance aside, and saw that Panterra wore the uniform of the Queen’s army, with the insignia of an officer. She’d bullied the younger girls of the neighborhood for years, and now was presumably bullying them in the Queen’s army. “At least we won’t have to put up with her little airs and graces for much longer. She goes to the arena tomorrow. Xantippe’s scheduled it.” There was a snicker. “Should be quite a show.”

  Xylina felt her blood turning to ice, and her muscles knotted even tighter. She was perfectly well aware of both the date and hour of her woman-trial, for she had scheduled it herself. But to hear about it on the street only reminded her, harshly, of what it meant.

  “It’s about damned time!” the first woman said acidly. “The little bitch’s been flouncing around the city for three years now, putting it off, while decent girls her age did their trials and began acting like responsible citizens!”

  The two of them moved off deeper into the bazaar, and if Panterra made any reply, it was lost in the general crowd noise. Xylina made her meager choices, ignoring the avid-and perhaps, slyly gloating-interest of the slave minding the cart. Her stomach knotted; her depression deepened. Especially after seeing how little her coins would buy. A tiny summer squash, a handful of insect-scarred damson plums; that was all she could afford.

  She moved on, grateful that the only other purchase she needed to make was a small goat-cheese and a loaf of bread. No point in lingering to look at anything; she would spend her last coin on the bread. That, and the growing threat that she would be exiled as a coward if she didn’t undergo the rite, had prompted her to finally schedule her woman-trial.

  She had sustained herself as long as she could, but the past year-in fact, the past several years-had not been the life of ease Panterra’s friend seemed to think it was. Oh, her ability to conjure was a lot more formidable than anyone guessed, and she could produce evanescent luxuries enough to sate anyone, but they were fleeting things, vanishing within a day, and conjured food nourished no one. It was, however, one reason why she was so slim-eking out her limited resources with conjurations.

  She wondered why she had bothered. Mostly, it was habit, she supposed; the habits of the day overpowering the wish to end it all when the sun went down and the gloom of night added to her own gloom. Then, one dark gray morning several months ago, she had awakened to the realization that she had just turned sixteen, and very soon now the Queen’s officers would be enforcing the law against avoiding the woman-trial. Her time was running out. Within weeks she would have to fight for her life, or be exiled for cowardice.

  There was nothing left to sell but the tiny house itself, her bed, and a few household items. Not even clothing or utensils, tools or furniture; all that she conjured when she woke, and in the evening it was all gone, and she had to conjure it again. The possessions her mother had left her had long since been worn out, used up, or sold a little at a time.

  The buzz of conversation around her increased, as she bought her cheese and bread, and the covert stares became open. Although the afternoon was hot, Xylina’s skin felt chilled by all the hostile glances. And she was no little bewildered, holding back tears, which would have been unwomanly.

  She didn’t know more than a tenth of these people, if that, she thought. She tried to keep her eyes fixed in some vague middle-distance, with a lump in her throat, and her heart sinking to the soles of her sandals. Why were they all staring at her? Why did they all hate her? She hadn’t done anything to them-

  But she knew the answer. If she hadn’t done anything, her mother surely had, simply by being obstinate enough to bear her child in defiance of the curse.

  Never mind that the curse-if indeed, there really was a curse-was more a matter of myth and hearsay than recorded fact. Xylina’s mother had gone to the Queen’s own library of chronicles, and had been unable to find anything but a vague hint about it. Something about a barbarian shaman
who immolated himself in the midst of his articles of power, rather than endure capture by Xylina’s great-great-grandmother, and had hurled his curse at her from the heart of the fire. The chronicler of the time had not thought much of this “curse” except as a kind of joke, proving the superstitious nature of the barbarian men. Everyone knew curses had no strength against a Mazonite. Her very ability to wield the magics of conjuration granted the Mazonite immunity from such petty nonsense as “curses.”

  Xylina’s mother, when she first realized she was with child, had scoffed at such superstitious drivel as a curse, and had refused to give the thing any credence. And while she lived, she had sheltered Xylina even from the knowledge that it existed.

  But when Xylina’s mother had been crushed by a fall of stone during an earthquake-and when the family fortunes had taken an abrupt turn for the worse, as the earthquake turned what had been productive farmland into an arid desert by turning the course of a river and stopping up a spring-and when a plague had killed most of the slaves in the month following-that was when the whispers of “curse” had surfaced again, and not even Marcus, her faithful steward and protector, could keep her from hearing them.

  “…curse…”

  The word rang out amid the babble, as Xylina turned towards home again; as did the reply, spoken loudly enough that she could not avoid hearing it.

  “We’d better hope the curse takesonly her!” said an age-harshened voice. “Or hadn’t you heard the whole of it?”

  “Only the part about ‘child of the fifth generation, ill-luck touches all who touch her,’” replied the original speaker.

  “Not just those who touch her-” the second said, grimly.

  Xylina forgot about politeness, and simply shoved her way through the crowd to escape the hateful words. But she could not erase them from her memory, where they repeated in a pitiless refrain. She remembered the first time she had seen the words-on a sheet of paper pinned to her door one morning, paper that proved its conjured origin by dissolving into mist by noon.

  I send you doom in your own seed, twisted monster of depravity. I send you a child of the fifth generation. Ill-luck touches all who touch her; those who dare to love her see their doom in her eyes. Child of the tempest, child of the whirlwind, destined for the teeth of the dragon; fate casts his dice at her feet. As death follows the child, upheaval follows in the woman’s wake, and nothing is the same where she has passed.

  She blinked stinging eyes, determined not to show the tiniest bit of emotion. If ever there was a reason to think she was the cause of every bit of the troubles that had dogged her heels all her life, there was the confirmation of it. Her mother had ignored the warning.

  And she died, said the insidious little voice in her mind.So did Marcus. So will anyone else who cares about you. You’re better off dead, you know.

  She reached the sanctuary of her home-a stone building of two rooms in the poorest quarter of town, with a tiny paved court in the rear and a high wall around the whole. That wall, and the pump and trough in the courtyard, showed what it had originally been: the stable attached to her mother’s larger townhouse, where they had kept her mother’s horse and her own pony. Originally, the “rooms” had been two large box-stalls. Her mother’s horse had been a nasty gelding, inclined to bite; hence the partitioning of the stable into two rooms with a wall between them. Later the doorway had been cut in the wall, when she and Marcus had moved into the building.

  Now the townhouse lay on the other side of two walls: the original wall that had hidden the sight and smell of horses from those in the garden, and a wall that had been put in place three years ago, when the freedmen had been given permission to expand their quarter.

  Xylina’s mother had been dead for several years at that point, and there had been no one left but herself, Marcus, and two other slaves she’d had to sell. She had wanted to free them-but she had no choice. The value of property in this part of town plummeted as soon as house-owners learned what direction the expansion would take. Xylina had been planning to sell her mother’s house anyway, but suddenly she found she would be getting much less for it than she had hoped. What had been a valuable townhouse had dropped to a tenth of its original price.

  She had sold it, nevertheless. She and Marcus had needed the money from the sale of it and the other two house-slaves because Marcus had been terribly ill, the wasting disease that would take his life when she was thirteen. A consortium of freedmen had bought the house, and once they had bought all of the property they could afford, the Queen ordered the new wall erected to seal off their quarter from the rest of the town. The new wall, to confine the freedmen within their own place after curfew, then rose a full arm’s-length above the rear section of the old, head-high wall that had surrounded the little stable-yard.

  She and Marcus had taken what was left of their belongings to the stable. Then she had encountered unexpected kindness from a source she would have never believed. The wall was built by the freedmen themselves-and some of them, it seemed, knew Marcus. On the very day they were to move out of the townhouse, a round dozen of them had appeared from the quarter, scrubbed the stable down to the stone inside and out, contrived a little outdoor kitchen in the courtyard, and cut the doorway between the two rooms. All that was left was for the two of them to move in. The freedmen had worked in haste and silence, as if afraid they might be caught in their charity, and would not stay for thanks. Xylina had been too young to feel anything but gratitude.

  For that reason, when from time to time the sound of coarse revelry drifted over the wall, Xylina chose to ignore it. This afternoon was one of those times. Hoarse male voices shouted at one another, slurred with drink. Utensils clattered, and the savory smell of rich foods wafted in on the breeze.

  She winced at the clamor, but there was no point in getting upset about it. There was nothing she could do. Had she been wealthy and powerful she could have sent her own slaves into the quarter to enforce the rules of silence, or demand that the Queen do so. She was neither wealthy, nor powerful; she had more rights than a slave, but no way to enforce them.

  And besides, some of those men might be the ones who had helped her.

  Instead of wasting her energy in anger, she used it in conjuration. If this was to be her last night-if she died in her trial-by-combat-she was determined to enjoy it to the best of her ability.

  Half the bread and cheese went into the tight wooden box that served as a pantry, to be saved for breakfast. The rest, with what was left of her barley and the squash she had bought, would be her supper.

  But not alone…

  She gathered her concentration and her power, and began to conjure. Magic flowed from her hands, visible and glowing in the dusk like a misty rainbow. It swirled and danced, sparkled with a joy she could not feel, until it finally solidified into whatever her will directed. As one object materialized, she moved it aside, and went on to the next. While she was conjuring, she would not, could not, think or feel. She could notfeel and concentrate at the same time.

  When she was done, the sliced squash had been joined by rare mushrooms, crisp baby carrots and peas, a lump of fine beef, garlic, ripe olives, and little heaps of expensive herbs, including saffron. The barley had been augmented by superb olive oil in a simple (non-conjured) pot. The best honey and creamiest butter had been conjured up into two more little pots, to spread on her bread with the damsons. The cheese had been joined by two more kinds, both costing far more than the original goat-cheese at the marketplace. By tomorrow night, these delicacies would be gone, of course-but by then, her trial would be over. And she would probably be dead….

  And in any case, she was getting her nourishment from what she had purchased; the conjurations were only to give her a fleeting illusion of lost luxury.

  She put the vegetables and meat to cook above her fire of conjured charcoal, set the bread on a grid of conjured wire to warm, and turned her attention to her rooms.

  She would make these two rooms into a t
iny palace for one night, testing her ability to conjure right up to its limit, something she had never dared do before. Why, she didn’t know; perhaps because it would have reminded her too much of Elibet, who had been able to conjure almost anything. Perhaps because the Panterras of the city would have condemned her for flaunting such conjurations.

  Before the sun set, scent filled the air-from the conjured oil burning in her lamps. She still had no furniture, but rather than conjure anything that required construction, she magicked up great swaths of colorful silks, and soft, puffy nondescript shapes to lounge upon. Streams of brilliant sparks and plumes of luminescent mist followed

  her hands as she directed her conjuration across the ceiling and down the walls. Draping the entire outer room in festoons of red and orange and yellow, she worked until the place resembled the inside of a luxurious tent, then conjured up pads of velvety mage-cloth as thick as her thumb to serve as carpeting.

  She turned her attention briefly to her food, but it was cooking nicely, so she completed her conjurations in her sleeping-room. This she draped in blues, from sapphire to midnight, and created a huge puff of material, as soft as a cloud, to sleep on. It took up most of the room.

  As she completed the last of her conjurations, she felt the last of her power run out, as if it were water and she a jug. For a moment, she was exhilarated. No one she knew had this much power! What she had just done would have taxed the conjuration of anyone but the Queen herself! She had mostly limited herself to creating a length of material to drape around her soft body for clothing, a pallet to sleep on, something to augment her plain, dull food, and wood or charcoal to burn in the winter. She had, infrequently, decorated and lit her sleeping room and had of course practiced creating small objects of many lands. Yet she’d had no idea she could conjure this much at once! Her power had grown.

  But immediately depression set in again. What did it matter, anyway? Conjured material wasn’t good for anything permanent. By this time tomorrow it would be gone. Assuming she was still alive to care.