Chapter Four: Codura

The manacles were made for meatier arms, and closed loosely over her wrists, but screw against them as she might, her hands would not pop through.

"Triepana duga, codura." After he snickered and pulled the hood free, her eyesight was even blacker, but the dirty echo of his snigger and the scent of cold stone, urine, mold, and mildew washed her in terror. While she had known fear fleeing Inglefras, that was mixed with exhiliration, and this was nothing but pure dread. As she peered into the nothingness, he shoved her onto a cushiony suface scented with the bitter flowers of the Human World. When she collided with a squirming body in the darkness, and her fingers merged with a warm, sweaty hand, she recoiled, jangling the chain.

Her jailer barked another laugh of "Codura!", and after this parting shot, the hinges creaked, a door slammed, a deadbolt slid, and Leitara rolled onto her back, planted her feet on the wall, and yanked the chain until the wall squeaked.

As Leitara's eyes became accustomed to the pitch black, a vast room surfaced, longer than it was wide, and perhaps many times longer, as its lengthwise ends disappeared into the dark. While the darkness was bottomless in both directions, the endless black was narrowed to the point of claustrophobia by the facing beds packed in with less than a yard between them, on each of which lay as many as four shadowed figures. As her night vision improved, the heaped shadows became blanketed, slumbering women, and the dark figure in her bed resolved into a petite Cuvaernian woman clad in a sumptuous nightgown of sleek silk. In the dim cell, she was uncertain if the fabric was orange, yellow or white; to be fair, she was certain of very little, as they had dragged her first down a hallway, then downstairs, and then down a chilly corridor five times longer than the ramshackle storehouse.

The uncertainty proved a stronger deterrent than manacles and bars. While they underestimated her strength, and given time, Leitara's vegetal muscles would rip rusted hinges from a rotting wall as easily as tree roots pulverize boulders, she did not know where she was.

As she reclined on the bed, she examined her wound. Though she could only dimly see it, it felt not only dry but smooth. Was this healing, and the flowering of royal clothes, only side-effects of being a newborn seed? If so, she had neither heard of such a thing, nor seen it in her past selves.

When a drip sprinkled the floor, Leitara licked her lips and her pulse quickened, and when the rivulet streamed down the wall to pool in a depression, the rapaciously thirsty Tree-Woman leaped from the bed to strain at the chains until her wrists were chafed and her pliant neck seemed to fold double, at which point her shackles tore from the wall with a metallic crunch and a jingling of popped screws.

Leitara stumbled through the outstretched arms of the murmuring prisoners to press her lips to the wet floor and suck until her lips touched dank stone. It was not nearly enough, but it would have to do. As humans and other flesh not only tended to rot, but had a greater attraction to it, they swarmed toward the cloying scents of flowers, sugars, honeys, and creams, but a dryad's world of scent is different. To Leitara, the floor smelled and tasted good, like the firm stone it was, that might crumble in a thousand years, mingle with the soil, and feed grasses, shrubs and trees.

When Leitara stood from the puddle, her irons scraped the floor, and her bed mate bolted upright in bed. Though her night vision had fleshed out, Leitara could barely see the dim, disbelieving curl of the woman's mouth.

While meat men, having a greater propensity to rot, went like flies toward the cloying scents of flowers, sugars, honeys, and creams, a dryad's world of scent differs from a human's. Most Dryad World flowers were orchids or other symbiotes, covering the natural beauties of the Tree-Mothers, or even parasites that drained them of their sweetness. The meat men were just like these primitive, garishly colored parasites of the Dryad World. They despised while they sucked dry the shadowy fecundities that gave them life. To Leitara, the floor smelled good, like the firm stone it was, and in a thousand years it might crumble, mingle with the soil, and feed grasses, shrubs and trees.

This reverie was interrupted by a hestiating, faltering voice on the faint but scratchy border that divided the speech of old women and girls.

"Cey Codura?" Despite the innocent tone, Leitara felt her green blood bubble. Gods help this world if codura was not flattering.

"Do you speak dryad?"

"Cey codura!"

Leitata closed her eyes, then rubbed her temples. As she walked across the cell, her chains clinked on the flagstones, and the women bolted up in their beds. When she seized the door handle, then strained, then shook against the stress, the metal-banded wood groaned, then creaked so momentously that it sounded like the door cracked, though it still stood, a dark, obdurate monolith.

The women murmured, then rose to their bedsides, rattling their chains and chattering nothing fathomable, except for the repeated "codura!" While Leitara didn't want to disappoint her vocal followers, unless she became a kiuvathi, she would be unable to budge this door. When she let go of the handle, the door squeaked and fell a hair loose in its jambs. Leaning forward, she saw dimly that the upper screw of the top hinge had stripped and protruded. But when she grasped the handle and renewed her assault, keys rattled on its other side, and cursing echoed in the wood, for the lock was inoperable with Leitara pulling on the door.

The Tree-Woman released the handle, darted back to the bed, clutched her bed mate, and dragged her to the mattress. When the others did not follow suit, Leitara raised her head, tapped her forefinger to her lips, and hissed, and they rolled into a recumbent position as the lock rattled and clicked. When the prisoners groaned and flounced on their squeaky beds, Leitara shuddered at their awful racket, for if she had not bent the door hinge, which caused the door lto lean and stick in the frame, their jailers would have forced the cell sooner, and known by this suspicious behavior that the women shared some nocturnal secret.

As torches flared, Leitara's breath came hot and rapid.

"Relkio. Nosura relkio." He was so shadowed by the torch light that he seemed blacker than the darkness.

When the Cuvaernian women dropped from and paraded to the front of their beds, then stood, as if at attention, Leitara did the same, with her hands folded behind her, the better to conceal her broken chains. She could not tear her eyes from the flame.

The guards walked between their ranks. As each bed faced another and slept two or three, every few yards there were four to six prisoners chained out of reach of passing guards. Even by yanking the links taut they would be unable to reach their captors, and the guards abused this with impunity, groping the women brazenly and smacking their faces.

While Leitara was only a newborn, her past selves had no memories of motherhood, and no Tree-Woman ever became a mother, she was overpowered by an inexplicably inflamed maternal ardor that she could only have inherited from her Tree-Mother; though that sentiment was utterly detached from rememberance, and despite her disdain for the meat women, she wished to answer for the prisoners as if they were seed-sisters, and the only thing that mastered this sympathetic rage was her overwhelming terror of the torches.

I am a victim myself, she told herself, I am no liberator. Why concern myself with sticky meat women, who are no doubt the worst of this monstrous city; it is better they become bruised than I become blackened by a torch. I will not stray from this spot. But as the guards moseyed toward them, her bed mate grasped her hand, and though the prisoner's tremulous, meaty fingers quivered as if each were separate vermin, she fought through the receding loathing and was washed in a wave of empathy.

Without hearing why, without knowing the language, Leitara knew the cowering woman had taken the brunt of one of these hulking meat men, and become this shaking, shrinking shadow of her self.

She eyed the Cuvaernian males harshly; if not for the torch, she would have no reason to fear. Though the animals were no doubt capable of short bursts of strength, and outweighed her considerably, her dryad limbs were more unyielding, and though her strength was slower to mount, she could snap their bones faster than wood, steel or stone.

Could she do it? A bonfire of terror burned in her viny guts, and she stayed stock still as the men walked past, their eyes not lingering long enough to notice the chains.

"Codura nia trul." She had a lopsided smile, one end worming nearly to her ear as she pointed at Leitara. The others hushed, then turned dark glares on their fellow prisoner.

When the guards turned, they saw the dangling chains, and drew iron-studded cudgels which sported various red and redder stains, indicating not only that they were plied with regularity, but that it was dark enough in the dungeon that they need never be cleaned. Though she no longer heard its whisper on Hravak, where vermin crawled thicker than plants, she thanked the Evermind that these fleshy brutes knew nothing about dryads, and had not the common sense to know the torch was their best weapon.

When the cudgel cudgel fell, she darted back, but when the sickening crunch downed her bedmate, she half-turned, her mouth agape as she gawked dumbly at the shadowy wetness spilling from the crushed skull. While Leitara did not know if the meat woman stood for the blow or found herself in its unimpeded arc, she fell in Leitara's place all the same. Despite the terror thrumming in her face and hands, Leitara hungered to seize the torch, to shroud these meat men in dark fire--until she saw the cold door leaning on the wall.

She had dashed a yard when she was jerked backward by a guard stomping her dangling chain. When she flipped the other end towards him, his teeth shattered in flecks of blood, and when he recoiled, she sunk her fist into his chest with a crunch, and he dropped like a stone. As his torch fell and flickered on the damp floor, Leitara reeled, but was propped up by the women, who now chanted "Codura."

When the other guard heaved his cudgel within reach of three prisoners, they yanked him onto the bed, where, acting like one monstrous mind, they strangled him in their six-handed embrace. As his life wheezed to an end, his thrashing limbs flopped limp as vines. While the chant of Codura still echoed, his pathetic murder inspired the prisoners to harsh peals of laughter.

When Leitara moved for the door, they screamed, "Codura! Meila!", and gesticulated wildly towards the unconscious guard. She stooped, grasped the jangling key ring, tossed it to the nearest woman, then snatched the cudgel as well.

As she exited, their glee roared in the dank hallway, and as she fled, shame thundered in Leitara. While she was neither hero nor liberator, and felt only contempt for the Cuvaernians, the anonymous woman lived or died defending her, and she should have at the least checked to see if she had died in vain or was broken but alive.

Passing an alcove, Leitara creeped past its nodding guard, first stealing his sword. While the Tree-Woman's past selves remembered only plying spears and javelins, the human blade had such a comfortable weight and a murderous edge that she would have preferred the bold steel to a more familiar weapon. When the scabbard scraped the wall, the guard slumbered on, and Leitara skulked down the hall, opened the door, and saw Khyte in a brawling crouch, his fists bloodied, and a dozen unconscious or writhing Cuvaernians strewn in the street, many bleeding from the nose, ears, or eyes, and their heads covered with blue and black knots.

"There you are," said Khyte.

"Why did you come?"

"That's gratitude for you."

"I was holding my own."

"I see that. Aren't you happy to see me?"

"The husband of my hated enemy?"

"Don't think I'm in her good graces."

"Nor in mine."

"You must be hungry. Let's get something to eat."

"No. I'm leaving."

"We're in no danger, Leitara. Though I must give them a reminder from time to time, they know me here."

Though Leitara was not hungry, and Tree-Women only sup once or twice a week, her travails through the Abyss had sorely dehydrated the dryad. "Actually, I am thirsty."

"There's a bar I know..."

"Not for liquor."

"I forgot who I was talking to. Then we must go elsewhere. While Cuvaernians don't drink water, I know a brewery with a restaurant and a well." While they talked, Khyte led Leitara down sordid Cuvaernian streets covered with broken bottles, dry bones, fruit rinds, and the filth of horses, dogs, and humans.

"How did you find me?"

"Through the Doorway under the ruins of Glesingren, which I reached by way of Ingelfras's hidden cove."

"I thought you might come that way, but you're not answering my question."

"From the Doorway's other end in Kreona, I traveled to Hravak, where I went to the foothills of the Juntawni and waited. When it became clear that either I had overlooked your descent or you arrived long before me, I looked for you in Cuvaernei."

"Did Kuruk tell you were I was?"

"Kuruk? That isn't Cuvaernian."

"No. It's Inamu."

"Who?"

"Finish your story."

"While I didn't see your friend, I did see an old friend, so to speak, when I saw a dagger I once squeezed from Sarin Gelf anted up as a gambling stake. That was a few minutes ago."

Having arrived at the brewery, Leitara adored its attached restaurant, for it was redolent of old wood, the faint charcoal odor of whiskey, and the yeasty scent of beer, all of which masked the stink of humans. She was curious of the spirits, and accepted a sampler from the bartender, who bowed and called her Codura in a much humbler attitude.

"What does it mean?" she asked Khyte.

"He likes you," laughed Khyte. Without asking, Khyte took the leftmost glass from her tray. While the cloyingly fructiferous elixir wrinkled her nose, and not only would she not have drank it, but would have abstained even from a sip, she was irked that the spouse of her murderess--no matter how estranged--felt so familiar as to take from her plate.

"No, what does Codura mean?"

"I've never had to learn Cuvaernian, as they speak broken Drydanan. Beragan!" he shouted at the bartender, who returned with another flight of glasses and an ingratiating smile smeared on the bottom half of his face, as if the toothy grin was scrawled by a child.

After Khyte conferred with the Cuvaernian, he turned, took another sweet-smelling wine from the latest tray, and quaffed it.

"Well?"

"You don't want to know."

"Yes I do!"

"You'll take it personally."

"I promise!" Leitara deliberately chopped off any mention of what she promised,

intending to take personally whatever insult Khyte had discovered.

"It means savage."

"Savage!" Leitara became livid.

"In Cuvaernei, it's a kind of compliment."

"How could savage be a compliment?"

"To Cuvaernian men, women are cofera--tame--or codura--savage. Though they appreciate females for their attributes, they have no word that means beautiful. Women are only valued for their place on this scale."

"Then they are little better than property!"

"Actually, Cuvaernians prize property more than cofera."

"What of codura?"

"Caged, like other savage creatures."

"That's wretched--those poor women."

"What women?"

After Leitara described the dungeon from which she liberated herself, Khyte's smile took a sinister turn, and his eyes became forbidding. "Why didn't you tell me this then?"

"If I met you at a cage door, would you introduce your fellow captives, or ask where I tied my kiuvathi?"

"I wish I had a kiuvathi," said Khyte, looking through the open door at the tethered horses. "I'll forgive your assumption, as you barely know me, and I wasn't my best self on Ielnarona."

"You're avoiding the question."

"I'm not really a plan A or plan B person."

"What does that mean?"

"Would you like to see?"

While tempted to rake Khyte over the coals for being a show-off and a braggart, Leitara was more tempted to see what he would do. Before she could respond, Khyte stood, smacked a silver krupek on the table, dragged Leitara by the hand, barged through the door, sliced the ties of a horse, boosted Leitara to its back one-handed, then vaulted into the saddle.

"Where did you get the horse?"

"In front of Beragan's bar," said Khyte. "Weren't you paying attention?"

"Are thieves so common here?"

"Thieves are everywhere. You don't see the thieving on the Dryad World because Tree-Mothers rob Tree-Women all day long."

"What do you propose to do? If Cuvaerneian women have only two statuses,

you can't set them free unless you take them with you."

"Though my luck isn't always good, I'm lucky in choosing wise friends to sort out the issues. For instance, here I was, ready to stage a great show of bravado, and feared only falling flat like a jester with no ass. When you put the facts like that, my decision becomes easier. As you've pointed out, only slavery and ignominy awaits them in Cuvaernei.

"You can't be serious!"

"You didn't give me an alternative, and I'm not seeing one now." On reaching the storehouse, their clip-clopping faltered, Khyte prodded the horse with the heel of his palm, and the beast plowed through the bruised, griping storehouse guards, knocking back then trampling two, while scattering the rest.

After the door burst inward under the rearing and plunging horse, the beast then backed into the staggered men, stomping a few feet and unbalancing the rest.

When Khyte dismounted and drew his sword, those he sliced shrieked around gurgling wounds. They were not skilled warriors; none thought to parry with the broad backswords dotted with dried blood and rust. As one's head flew ten feet straight up, another hurled himself toward Khyte's back, but with preternatural awareness, Khyte stooped, and the hurtling Cuvaernian collided with another so hard that their jaws mingled in a spray of shattered teeth.

Khyte swept an opponent's leg, lodged his dagger in the tripped man's sternum, then lifted him bodily by the embedded hilt for a feeble, protesting shield whose whines whistled as pieces flew away from the slices of his friends' backswords. The dying man blocked blows until a stroke hewed off his head, when Khyte lobbed the torso in a high, overhead arc, and the others fled from the sprinkling corpse.

Leitara followed Khyte into the storehouse, down the steps, and through the long hallway to the cell, where the codura were stabbed and hacked to bits with steady, workmanlike blows, as if they were dismembered according to rite or pattern.

"Why did you bring me here!"

"It was not I who did this grisly deed."

"You did! You gouged out my clean memory of freeing these poor women, and tore this bloody memory in its stead."

"Truly, the injustice here is a crime against your memory."

"Why not? I remember four hundred years, and might live four hundred more, while these wild women barely knew their names."

"You lie. They knew that, and their mothers' and fathers' faces. Many died thinking of their children, and some even died pining for their wretched husbands. While these slaves might have only lived forty or fifty years, Tree-Women live seven years at best. My neighbor's dog lived longer. One dryad I knew suggested Tree-Women are not properly alive, but an offhanded murmur either fated to be forgotten or blessed to be remembered."

When Leitara walked away, Khyte followed. "If their lives and deaths were meaningless, Leitara, why not prepare yourself for the inevitable?"

"You mean my murder at the hands of your megalomaniac wife? You should not have come after me."

"Don't you think I know that? You reminded me of myself, rootless and fruitless, a far-ranging seed at the start of her journey and the end of her line."

Leitara trudged upstairs. "Whether death is far or near, human, I am not beneath you. When Hravak is ground under heel, what will become of your unlived years?"

"What are you talking about?"

As they exited the storehouse, a squad of spearmen backpedaled at the sight of Khyte. When one flung his javelin, Khyte sidestepped, and the missile grazed Leitara's outflung forearm. As it flew toward her eye, she was struck by the unitary nature of the experience; in that moment, she became one with the hurtling weapon, grasped her own existence, and uprooted herself from the smothering greenhouse of memory, in which her past seed-selves survived their wounds to be subsumed in the Tree-Mother's final embrace. On the other side of Leitara's brush with death was only the continuity of Leitara. While her Tree-Mother had averted death by avoidance and winnowing the dead from the continuity of its consciousness, Leitara had averted death by reflex.

Moreover, she realized the seed-selves whispering in her hall of memory were not there for her benefit, but as shades of the Tree-Mother's dead self-interest. Their suggestions betrayed desires that had no end, and when she heeded their ghostly impulses, she labored towards no possible future. Leitara was not only alone, but haunted; however, as proxies for the dead, her past selves were not even true ghosts, but their afterimages.

When she recovered from the blow, and the crushing understanding, Khyte had dispatched the guards without injury to himself, other than a racing breath and his enflamed countenance. Townsfolk watched from rustling curtains, aside from a few tottering drunks leaning from balconies and porches.

Having resolved to live for herself and cage the whispers like chameleons, Leitara had the most vehement thought of her brief existence. While she found meaning in turning the javelin, Khyte's meaningless, muscular triumph over so many seemed less a show of prowess than a spectacle that distracted the eye of the Abyss from her life's thread. If the javelin was the needle, and her eye threaded meaning through her twisted interior to the entangled roots of her being, Khyte was the part of the weft no fabric would ever darken. If she followed him, she would wander into his snarl of snapped threads, and if she allowed his help, his strays would quilt her narrative. In Khyte she saw the seams of her existence.

When she leaped on the loitering horse, it reared under the light burden, and she only stayed mounted by holding rudely to its mane, so that she didn't ride so much as was dragged by its helter-skelter head. When her legs clamped its flanks, each buck and jerk pulled her arms taut, painfully tightened her stomach, and chattered her teeth. At the wide-eyed sneers of Cuvaernian men and the buried brows and numb smiles of cofera, her hall of selves shattered, and in the fragmenting emptiness, there was no thought, only its wild echo: codura.