Teller of Fate

Fourth Movement: Custodians of the Incunabulum

Chapter Thirty-Three

* * *

Jane Airkhart’s mind was overwhelmed by the white light she had fallen into after the corridor had vanished out from under her.

It oozed into cracks and under the doors of her psyche despite all attempts to block it.

The sensation of tumbling down faded. The light became all-enveloping and so not seen at all.

After a time, she began to dream.

She was standing on a hill under a red sky looking at crisscrossing wires overhead and hearing the distant sound of cannon-fire.

Now she was standing on a crumbling concrete wall looking down at a corpse that wasn’t quite human. It reminded her of someone. She felt a deep sadness knowing it had died violently.

Cat people? Something about that seemed familiar.

Then a terrifying dream where another cat person tried to rape her.

Finally, staring at a blue light, a horribly confusing dream of being inside someone who was inside her at the same time. The two truths stuttered back and forth in her mind until the discomfort ejected her altogether.

Now she was having sex with one of the cat-people. It was female.

Was it the same as the one she found dead? She’d never been with a woman before, though she’d been curious about it.

Jane behaved more aggressively than she would have with John. She stayed with this dream right through a mind-shattering orgasm and languorous drifting off to sleep. The last thing she saw jolted her out of her fog and back into a vague sense of self.

Lying on the floor a few feet away from the bed she shared with the cat-woman was the unmistakable form of the Incunabulum.

She woke.

The furry biped was still with her, turned away and curled up on the bed, her tail making lazy feather-light brushes along Jane’s right thigh as it wagged in her semi-doze.

At first, Jane thought this was part of another dream, but no. This lucidity had a substance to it the that no dream of hers could muster.

She doubted now that any of what she’d experienced were dreams. She had full control of her body. Somehow, she’d managed to evict her possessor, if only temporarily.

Jane lifted her hands before her face and recognized the large ruby set in the gold of the ring on her left thumb. Her prison had been this ring.

It wouldn’t come off. She had her suspicions as to why but wasn’t concerned with that riddle. The Incunabulum was the important thing.

Jane was slowly getting out of the bed when the unmistakable sound of weeping came from her bed partner. Consciousness fled.

It returned a fuzzy, white interval later. Jane was spooning the cat-woman and felt a weakness in her thighs and belly and a fading sense of euphoria that meant another orgasm.

She was sorely tempted to keep cuddling and sleep but knew there were much more important things to attend to. It seemed that she could only control her body when her captor was asleep.

Jane couldn’t make off with the Incunabulum so long as she shared her body with its thief. She had to do something though and quickly, as she might only have a few moments before again losing the battle for control.

Only one thing Jane could think of doing. It wouldn’t help much but would at least reduce the odds of disaster.

It took three slow, careful minutes to untangle herself from the softly breathing cat-woman.

Jane padded naked to the table. Moving around it, she stopped to shut her eyes and closed the Incunabulum where it lay near the door.

She paused then, looking back at the sleeping woman.

Jane felt good.

Despite the circumstances, she felt mentally and physically light. Something happening here was answering a long held, never voiced question about her life.

Jane was again tempted to just let things be and go back to bed. To her great surprise, she realized this urge came from now having something in her life besides duty and her brother. She wanted to explore it.

After a brief struggle, duty won out. The Custodian set to work jamming a wrench into the gears of the Thief’s plans.

Getting back to bed before the Thief woke was easier than leaving it.

She woke twice more in the night, both times after sex. Erahndira was in great pain, mourning a death on the wall. Loving her helped soothe that distress.

Jane realized that a thread of awareness remained to her, even when the Thief was at his most alert. She couldn’t control him, though.

She wondered how she could make use of that. Could he, perhaps, be swayed to reconsider selling his treasure, or even to take it back?

She quickly dismissed that. It would involve changing his judgement; an achievement she doubted she could manage.

Jane was almost sure she had been influencing the Thief’s emotional reactions to his surroundings. She could read his intent and how it had changed since his arrival.

Her presence seemed to be changing his outlook. At first, his reactions bothered him, but now he seldom thought of how much he’d changed.

Maybe she could use that, further guide him along a course that would see him abandon his plans and even talk himself into staying with this strange woman-creature, hiding the Incunabulum in a cupboard somewhere.

She floated in the back of his mind all that long, long day; fading in and out of awareness depending on the strength of the emotion he was feeling.

At one point, he and Erahndira shared an embrace and words of affection for one another. Jane felt a momentary stab of jealousy which, considering the situation the three of them were in, cross-faded into amusement.

Jane frankly relished the Thief’s shock when Erahndira unknowingly revealed what Jane had done to the Incunabulum. His complete misinterpretation of the change was the cherry on top.

Things got grimmer as they went to the gathering to prepare for the inevitable conflict with the people who had kept them prisoner for so long.

The escape of the weak and the infirm was to be bought by a fight with the advancing zealots who would certainly try to exterminate them all.

The Thief’s wonder at the true extent of the maze that housed these people, and his increasing estimation of their chances was likely more of a reflection of Jane’s opinion than any he would have on his own.

The long afternoon of preparing for the battle and that conflict’s surprising outcome gave her a sense of hope that these noble people would be able to live their lives out in some kind of peace.

The Thief and Erahn left the population of the ghetto planning for a migration they never thought they’d take and, led by the cat-woman, headed for the settlement on Porta where the non-cat refugees from Glyph dwelt.

That night, camping under the dim red sky, Jane’s awareness returned to find that the Thief was deeply asleep, but Erahndira was not.

Jane was lying on her back; the thin blanket under her doing nothing to soften the hard sand of the beach. She was naked because of the heat.

Erahndira was astraddle her, furry hands gentle on Jane’s breasts. Jane opened her eyes slowly, turning her head to face her lover.

“Good mornin’” Erahn smiled.

Jane debated with herself on whether to tell her companion what was going on. She could fake being the Thief easily enough. “Is it time to get up already? Feels like I just dropped off.” She didn’t have to fake a returning smile at least. Jane’s hands reached out and petted the other’s thighs.

“You are the one hidin’ in his mind, ya?”

For a moment Jane’s expression froze, so startled was she.

Erahndira read her reaction perfectly, “I knew, ya. Ever since the Blue Lamp.”

“Do the others know?”

“No, but they weren’t lookin’, ya.”

“Why were you?”

She shrugged, “Somethin’ in the eyes. There was more than one person lookin’ at me, I swear.”

“He didn’t even know.”

Erahn laughed. It was a husky, hiccup-y sound and quite infectious. “He still doesn’t, ya!” More laughter from them both.

Jane recovered first, “How can you tell these things? Are you psychic?”

“I don’t know that word, but some of us have a way o’ seein,’ ya. It’s one o’ the reasons they locked all of us up. That and we don’t think much o’ their god. ‘Didn’t,’ I mean. Anyway—” she made a sweeping away motion with her furred hands—“that’s done now.”

They were silent for a time, staring at each other. Jane obeyed an impulse and sat up, arms sliding up Erahndira’s back, and kissed her.

The cat-woman’s ears poked up from her hair and flicked back and forth as she enthusiastically returned the embrace, sandpapery tongue seeking Jane’s.

Her whiskers quivered, brushing and tickling Jane’s cheeks. She wrapped her legs around Jane’s waist. The sound of their breathing and, later moans, echoed against the cliffs bounding the beach for some time after.

* * *

Afterward they lay side by side talking. Because of the heat they only held hands.

“I’ve been awake a long time.” Jane turned to Erahndira, “Did you do something to him?”

“I gave him somethin’ to make him sleep, ya. He’ll be out for another coupla hours, yet.”

“What happens then?”

“He wants to take me with him to Glyph. Should I go with him?”

“Should I, you mean?” Jane answered.

“Why wouldn’t you want to go?”

“He’s likely going to meet a buyer, either in Glyph or somewhere beyond it. I must get free of him. I could find help in Glyph to do that, but the danger would be greater that I’d lose the Incunabulum there.”

“Depends on what we decide to do. You can influence him, ya. Maybe you can make him want to stay.

“You’d like me to stay with you? You don’t have anyone here? A mate?”

“I only had one mate, ya. He gave me Zilonen, my daughter.” A catch in her voice. She recovered quickly, “I don’t like the boys much, ya.”

A grin, wider and full of more pointed teeth than a human one, split her right profile. She turned as her smile faded. “How did you come to be tied to this man?”

Jane had decided to tell her everything, so she did.

“So, this Book is dangerous, ya?”

“I’ve made it slightly less so. But the spell won’t last. It needs to be caged, where it can never be used.”

“Why not destroy it?”

“I’m not sure it can be. Even if it is, it’s too risky. If looking at the Incunabulum can change Reality, what might destroying it do?”

Erahndira shivered. “We need to get you free of him, ya. How can we do that?”

“I don’t know what he did, or how. He used tech or magick that I’ve never experienced before.”

“Glyph’s the one place you might find an answer, ya.”

“I guess I’ll have to let him take me, then.” Jane paused, looking at her. “Come with me?”