Swords: 08 - The Fifth Book Of Lost Swords - Coinspinner’s Story (7 page)

      
At the moment, apart from the twisted architecture surrounding them, and the occasional inexplicable sounds that issued from those structures, there was hardly any indication that they were in the City at all. Or so it seemed to Adrian.

      
The little river maintained its muffled roar. The hot sun shimmered on the brown and gray of the pavement tiles, and glared on the surface of the pond.

      
The vessel resting almost motionless in the calm water drew his attention once again, and he remarked: “We have some canoes very much like that one at home. But I never saw one so neatly finished.”

      
“We should be getting on with our job.” Trilby’s sudden protest began in a tone of considerable urgency, but before she had uttered half a dozen words her voice once more lacked conviction.

      
“I suppose we should,” agreed Adrian, after taking some time to think the matter over. But even as he spoke he felt a reluctance to hurry, or to be hurried.

      
By now the two of them had slipped off their packs, and were sitting quietly, contentedly beside the pool, contemplating the water and the canoe that drifted lightly on its tether. It was as if they were waiting for they knew not what. All around them, beyond the borders of the park, the City seemed to have grown quieter, except for the ceaseless roaring of the stream. Even the strange sounds proceeding from the buildings came less frequently. All hints of dangerous magic were in abeyance.

      
Methodically, unhurriedly, Trilby pulled off her boots, and lowered her feet into the cooling water, wiggling her brown toes. The riparian ledge on which the explorers sat was just at a handy height above the pool for this maneuver.

      
Adrian imitated her actions. “That feels good.”

      
“It sure does.”

      
Trilby poked aimlessly at the water with her hiking staff, then laid it beside her on the ledge. “I wonder if we have time for a swim. I’d like a chance to really cool off.”

      
“That sounds even better.” And it did, it sounded great, except maybe there was something else they ought to be doing … but the thought refused to complete itself just now. Later he would come back to it…

      
Now the girl, frowning slightly, had turned her head toward him. “Adrian, I know you’re not, well, you’re not grown up yet, but…”

      
“Oh, sure. If you want a dip, I can take a walk.” In Adrian’s experience most people were fairly casual about nudity; he felt faintly surprised, and vaguely complimented that Trilby did not want him to see her with her clothes off.

      
She stood up. “Then it’ll be your turn to swim. Or maybe we should toss to see who goes in first?”

      
“No, you go ahead. I’m not in any hurry.”

      
Adrian turned his back on Trilby and started to take a walk. The hedged border of the park was only a short distance ahead of him, and beyond it rose the distorted bulk of the mysterious Red Temple, an interesting goal for exploration.

      
There were several openings in the boundary hedge, where little paths had been worn through, and the prince chose the nearest one. Only when he had begun to climb the broad stone stairs leading ultimately to the Red Temple did he realize that he had left his pack, canteen, and boots back at poolside. Oh, well. He climbed on barefoot, becoming interested in the configuration of the structure before him. Toward one end of the Temple, on his left, the carved figures and other elements of the design were all grotesquely flattened in one dimension, elongated in another, as if the perspective of the space in which they existed had been changed by the magical forces that had brought them to this exotic place and forced them into coexistence with other elements from elsewhere.

      
A selection of dark doorways, all leading into the Temple’s interior, stood open ahead of him. And now that he was alone, he began to be troubled by the feeling that there was some trick, some clue, regarding their surroundings that ought to be of concern to him and Trilby but which they had not yet discovered. It wasn’t a strong feeling, only a slight irritation. And it wasn’t really a matter of danger, not as Adrian perceived it now. In fact he wasn’t thinking of danger at all. But there was something forgotten or overlooked, maybe something that they were going to need…

      
Having progressed at a leisurely pace fully halfway up the stairs that ascended toward the distorted building, the prince on impulse stopped and turned to glance back. From here he could see over the hedge bordering the park into its interior. There was the narrow dam, the water rushing over, its muted roar still audible. And there, sure enough, was Trilby, forty or fifty meters away now, standing naked on the edge of the pool. Her brown skin was gleaming wet, and she was getting ready to dive in again.

      
And so he had got to see her that way after all.

      
She was unaware that he was looking, and indeed it didn’t seem of any great importance. Yet Adrian stood very still, continuing to watch the girl. He told himself that he had a good reason for watching, that he was carefully making sure that she was still all right.

      
Her figure poised for a dive, and then arced out of sight. The faint sound of the splash was swallowed by the steady heavy murmur of the stream falling over the barrier. The canoe, beside its dock, bobbed gently with the waves the dive had made.

      
Very soon, before Trilby had resurfaced, the prince walked on, conscious of a vague feeling of uneasiness.

      
The nearest of the Temple’s dim doorways widened around him, and he passed through it. Inside, once his eyes had adjusted from the direct glare of sun, he could see well enough. Entering the first hall he came to, Adrian discovered many empty tables and chairs, most of them tipped over now—once the instruments of gluttony, he supposed. He gave the place a perfunctory inspection upon entering, but all his senses assured him that these surroundings were perfectly safe. There was simply no danger here. Anyway, Trimbak Rao wouldn’t have sent two of his favorite tender young apprentices into a place where there was real danger, would he?

      
Would he?

      
No, of course not!

      
Coming aimlessly outdoors again, Adrian paused, squinting upward, to check the position of the sun. By leaving the pool he had certainly changed his own position relative to the neighboring building, but there was the sun, the same angular distance above its rooftop as before.

      
Something to think about. Well, all in good time. He moved back into the Temple’s dimness.

      
This time he took a different turning. Certain of the interior doorways were completely blocked, or their openings impossibly constricted, by tiers of masonry that seemed, through whim or ignorance, to have been built in the wrong place. Progress was difficult but not impossible.

      
The interior of this Temple was laid out according to a plan shared by a great many of its sister Temples around the world. Not that Adrian, at twelve, had ever been in any one of them before. Nor was he well acquainted with any cult of adult pleasures—but here and there he had heard stories.

      
This great chamber, containing a few large and strangely decorated tables, had to be the House of Luck. One wall was entirely dominated by a huge gaming wheel, wall-mounted so that the numbers as they came up could be seen clearly from any part of a large room. A number of gaming tables were in the room also.

      
The wheel, big enough if not sturdy enough to run a sawmill, for some reason started to turn by itself just as the boy entered the gambling hall. He paused, looking at it attentively. Music from invisible instruments, played by no human hands, was suddenly loud and clear. Adrian, turning his head in response to a different, half-heard sound, observed a pair of semi-transparent forms, of vaguely human shape, ascending a stairway. One form, now exaggeratedly female, seemed to turn back to glance at him before disappearing at the top of the stairs. Upstairs, if the stories he had heard were true, was where the House of Flesh would be.

      
The wheel ratcheted to a halt, at the number zero.

      
He continued his exploration of the ground floor. Along with the steadily increasing euphoric sense of confidence, tranquility, and well-being, though in definite contradiction to it, the undercurrent of anxiety now came back more strongly than before. It was an apparently baseless feeling that something was beginning to go wrong, something that seemed the result at least in part of sheer bad luck.

      
He was picking up plenty of things to think about. Yes. Well, all in good time.

      
But his vague uneasiness guided him outside again. As if reluctantly, shuffling on bare feet, he made his way back toward the parkland and its pool. Pausing halfway down the broad steps, at the place where he had taken a secret look at Trilby, he looked for her again. But the girl was out of sight. If she was in the pool he couldn’t hear her splashing, not above the steady background roar of falling water.

      
Adrian moved on, still walking deliberately, heading back into the park to rejoin his companion.

* * *

      
Arriving at the pool, he found nothing surprising. The canoe bobbed idly, its presence suggesting … something. But what? And Trilby, dressed once more in shirt and trousers, was sitting where she had sat before, again contemplating the water.

      
She raised her head almost languidly at Adrian’s arrival. “Where were you, in the Temple? Discover anything new?”

      
“No. Not really.” He sat down beside her, just where he had been before, dipping his feet in the water again. He wondered what to say. “How was your swim?”

      
“Fine. Cool. The water’s nice and deep, you can even dive.”

      
“My turn, then.”

      
“Sure.” Trilby got to her feet. “And my turn to take a walk around.”

      
“I looked inside the Red Temple, but there wasn’t much. A couple of spooky-looking figures, and a gaming wheel moved. No real interaction. Maybe you can find something interesting.”

      
Left alone, Adrian became interested in the canoe. Carved in one piece, very skillfully, from a single log of gray-brown wood, it was thin and light-looking and graceful.

      
But first, he felt hot and the water beckoned. In a moment, Adrian was standing, and in another he had stripped off his clothes.

      
The first plunge was a clean joy. Coming up from the surprising green depths, the prince drifted on his back, in water marvelously cool. Now, he thought, to see about the canoe. A few strong kicks brought him to its side.

      
Pulling on a gunwale to peer in, he observed a single wooden paddle, neatly carved, lying in the bottom. Yes, he was going to have to try the canoe out.

      
Small boats of every kind were common enough in Tasavalta, and Adrian considered himself something of an expert. Starting in deep water, you couldn’t simply scramble in over the side of a canoe. He climbed first to the pier, then got himself aboard the little craft and untied the cord that held it to the dock. As he did so, he abruptly realized what was so unusual about this boat—of all the objects in sight, here in the middle of Wizards’ City, it was the only one devoid of any magical aura at all.

      
That ought to mean something, but he wasn’t sure what.

      
For the time being he let the paddle stay where it was. The canoe, left to its own devices, showed no immediate tendency to be carried out of the pool and over the dam.

      
There had been a very little water, hardly more than damp spots, in the bottom of the canoe, before he climbed in dripping. He thought it might have trickled from Trilby’s naked body—she might have investigated the boat too, played around in it between swims. And when she sat in it, her bare bottom would have rested just about where his was now.

      
Adrian eased himself from the middle seat and lay back, stretching out as much as possible, raising his knees over the middle thwart. He let his eyes close. The sun-heated wood would have felt the same, almost too hot for comfort, on her body as on his.

      
…on her soft, smooth, brown skin. On her flesh that was so very different from his, rounded but firm with unobtrusive muscle underneath. Her big breasts, as he had seen them from a distance, bulging in the sun, their broad dark nipples seeming to turn up a little in its heat.

      
The canoe bobbed lightly, for no discernible reason. Adrian remembered the female figure he’d glimpsed in the Temple. With his eyes closed he could imagine he saw her walking toward him.

      
Opening his eyes, the boy looked down at his own bare body, wiry and immature. Most of his skin was pale, seldom touched by the sun. But his body wasn’t going to stay childish much longer. Soon, in a year or two, he’d be growing, developing real muscles. And something else too.

      
Like the male statues carved on the Temple wall. His body would be as much a man’s as any of them.

      
Time passed.

      
At last, driven by some subliminal warning, Adrian sat up abruptly. He could feel that his face was red, his ears burning, his body uncomfortable as if it had been used by alien powers. The canoe was drifting, bumping against a little bar that fortunately ran along the dam. Fortunately, because otherwise he and his boat would have gone right over. He still might, if the craft drifted only a little sideways. Grabbing up the wooden paddle, he backed water none too soon.