Under A Velvet Cloak (8 page)

“What?” he asked, amazed as his arms swung around her. “Am I going blind? I see nothing.” One hand closed on her left buttock, through the cloth; the other found her right breast, similarly.

“You rogue!” Kerena exclaimed. “You heard me coming!”

“Aye, miss,” he agreed, letting her _go. _”And got a good feel, too.”

She had to laugh. “You’re used to magic, around here. But suppose you’d done that to the Fey?”

“She’d have sprouted spines and stabbed me. But I know you apart by your tread and smell.”

Here was a learning opportunity. “Teach me to mask those, and I’ll give you more than a feel.”

The man was happy to cooperate. Soon she was managing to step without sound, as she could do in the dark forest, and knew that a thorough body wash would diminish her smell for several hours if she didn’t sweat much. She rewarded him with an invisible sexual clasping that left him more than satisfied. It was after all her stock in trade. The coachman had left her alone, surely on the Fey’s order, but would not have been a man had he not had a serious hankering for her body.

She returned to her room, and tried to remove the cloak And failed; it would not come off. She realized that she did not know how to turn off the spell. She remained cloaked and invisible.

She went to the Fey. “Please, I need to know how to end the invisibility.”

“You have had your question for today,” the woman snapped. “Save it for tomorrow.”

“But I’m stuck this way!”

“You should have considered that before invoking it, you silly girl. Never get into something you don’t know how to get out of.”

It was excellent advice, albeit a bit late. Also a stiff lesson. She would not make that mistake again. Kerena returned to her room. She used her chamber pot, and saw that when she left it, her refuse was visible, no longer masked by the cloak. But she herself could not leave it similarly.

She slept imperfectly, angry with herself for making such a stupid error. But the cloak was comfortable enough, keeping her warm. In the morning she tried to put something on beneath it, but was unable; it clung too tightly to her body. She would have to remain nude until she nullified the spell.

She went back to the Fey. “Repeat the invocation, exactly as you made it,” the woman said, not waiting for the question. “It is an on~off latch.”

“Thank you, mistress.” Kerena retreated to her room, repeated the invocation, and became visible. Now she was able to remove the cloak.

“Next, master protection,” the Fey told her later that day. “It should shield you against arrow, blade, or club. That can be useful on occasion.”

Kerena went to her room, romanced the cloak, then whispered her impromptu ditty: “Wield a shield, yield the field.” It didn’t make a lot of sense, but she trusted the cloak to respond to her meaning.

It did. She did not disappear, and the cloak felt no different, but when she went to the coachman she verified it. “Strike me and you can have me,” she told him.

“Magic?”

“I hope so.”

He curled his fist and tried a cautious punch, not wanting to hurt her. It sheered off harmlessly. He tried again, with greater force; his fist bounced back at him. He tried a third time, with a carriage stay; it jarred from his hand as if caught on an invisible rail. “Can’t touch you,” he said. “Too bad for me.”

“Let’s find out.” She opened the cloak, exposing her nude body, and stepped into him. Now there was contact. It was the cloak that fended him off, not her body. “Take me anyway; I appreciate your assistance.”

He did not argue. In a moment his member was out and in, as it were, as she stood against the wheel of the coach. She had not had to null the invocation; the cloak repelled intrusion only where its fabric was. “You’re a nice girl,” he gasped. “Not a tease like those others.”

“I can tease when I choose. But I might need a ride sometime.” She had long since established that the coach was authentic; it seemed the Fey had found it simpler to get a real one, rare and expensive as it was, than to maintain sufficient illusion to fake it.

“Anytime!”

Unfortunately the impromptu tryst mainly served to remind her of the extent to which this man, and any other man, fell short of her lover of the night. She had been spoiled for ordinary men, just as she spoiled ordinary men for other women. Perhaps it served her right, but her loin still ached.

The third power of the cloak was to make solid substance permeable to her progress, even stone. The ditty she worked out seemed stupid, but it was the best she could
do
at the moment. “Let me jog through fog, unclog the bog.”

Nothing seemed to happen, but she tried walking through the bed. There was no resistance; her cloaked lower portion passed through the bed as if it were, yes, a bank of fog.

She tried the wall, and it seemed like illusion. But why wasn’t she sinking through the floor? She kneeled-and suddenly was dropping down through the floor and ground. Oops!

She straightened her legs and came to a halt, well below ground level.

She was entirely surrounded by rock. She felt claustrophobic. She didn’t dare null the spell, lest she be crushed by the rock. How could she get back to the surface? Her walking produced only forward motion, which didn’t solve the problem.

She felt as if she were suffocating. She had to get out of here! But
how?

The timelines began to blur. Jolie was already alert; now she knew her concern was justified. Kerena had gotten herself in over her head, literally, and needed help if she was not to perish here. She was running out of air; it seemed that all she had was what had accompanied her inside the enclosure of the cloak. There was not much time left.

Jolie remembered that it had been possible to embrace the coachman while the protection spell was on, because it repulsed only where the material was. If that was the case here, how did it relate? Could the girl open the cloak and-what, be buried in solid rock? Still no
good.

She had kneeled, and plunged, as the material made the ground below her pervious. Her feet weren’t similarly covered, so found the rock solid as usual. That meant, in turn-

Jolie had it.
Stair steps! Lift your feet and ascend.

Kerena responded. She lifted one foot, poked her toe forward, and found purchase at the higher level. She lifted the other and leaned forward for balance, achieving the higher level. Where the feet projected beyond the enclosure of the cloak, they found solidity. It was like climbing a hill.

Encouraged, the girl adjusted her stepping to become more efficient. She was gasping from lack of air, but was determined to fight her way up and out. If she collapsed, Jolie would have to step back, perhaps preventing her from dropping below the ground level, but that might cause the timelines to separate. So it was better to let her get through herself, if she could.

At last her head poked out of the ground. She panted, sucking in air, recovering. She was in a cellar, having traveled some distance from her point of entry. Fortunately no person was there to see her.

After a time she climbed the rest of the way out, and stood on the cellar floor. Then she walked through the wall toward the Fey’s house. This had been another stiff lesson, and another mistake she would not make again. The magic of the cloak had almost killed her, because she had used it improperly.

Meanwhile the Fey had another assignment for her. “I have my own designs,” she said seriously. “But there are villagers who once did me a favor, and I do not wish them ill. They are about to be tricked, trapped, killed, raped, and enslaved, depending on their ages, genders and physical appeal. You must prevent that.”

“Of course!”

“They mean to travel to Ireland, where greener fields beckon. This is in order. But a pirate slaver ship means to represent itself as their legitimate transport. Once they are aboard it will be too late; any who try to resist will be summarily beaten or killed. The pirates will publicly gang rape the women. Any children who cry will be hurled overboard. It is necessary to prevent this from happening.”

“Yes!”

The Fey’s smile suggested that she did not share Kerena’s feeling. To her, this was merely another business item. “The legitimate ship is sailing from the south, tacking slowly against the winds. The pirate ship is sailing from the north, with the wind. It will arrive a day ahead, and its representative will approach the people to persuade them it is their intended ship. He is silver-tongued and they are trusting; he will succeed. You must intercept him and divert him that day. If you fail, you must kill him. It is the only way.”

“But I’m not a killer!”

“What is your preference: to spare the lives of a hundred innocent villagers, or the life of one criminal?”

“There must be another way.”

The Fey shrugged. “Perhaps you will find it.”

Kerena arrived at the village inn by coach. This was near the Port of Patrick in southern Scotland, where ships sailed for Ireland. “I have come to catch the ship to Ireland,” she told the innkeeper. “Am I in time?”

“You are,” he agreed.

“How much for a room and a meal?”

He gave an inflated price.

“Oh, I can’t afford that,” she said. “My family perished of plague in England, and I have barely enough for food and passage to get me to relatives in Ireland. I will have to sleep on the floor.” Her nervous voice could be heard throughout the room.

A dapper man rose from a table. “As it happens, I have a room with a bed big enough for two, if you would care to share it.”

She gazed at him with large innocent eyes. “My mother told me not to share a bed with any strange man.”

“Then come to my table for some food, and we shall talk. Soon you will be satisfied that I am not strange.”

She considered, evidently not picking up on the suppressed smirks of a number of other men. This was almost too easy! “Why thank you, kind sir. That seems fair.”

They sat at the table, and the innkeeper brought lamb and ale. Kerena, clearly unused to such brew, was soon pleasantly tipsy. Meanwhile she learned that her companion was called Joiner. He made arrangements for things. He was on his way to make a deal for a village traveling to Ireland to obtain passage on the same ship she sought. “Oh, that seems so important!” she exclaimed, much impressed.

In due course, she accompanied him to his room, trustingly and not completely steady. He was soon kissing her and running his hands over her body. She removed her cloak, then her traveling dress. They had urgent sex. Then, as they relaxed, she engaged him in further dialogue. He had taken a fair amount of ale himself, and that and her wonder-filled interest loosened his tongue. He confessed his real mission: to trick the villagers into boarding the pirate ship that had arrived before the legitimate one.

“But that is not nice,” she protested. She was playing her role, but she agreed with it. She did not like malicious mischief. “What have those people done to you, that you should treat them thus?”

“Nothing. They are merely marks. They deserve what their idiocy brings them.”

Kerena decided to distract him until it was too late to meet the villagers. She was pretty sure she could do it, because she had hardly begun to show him what she could do with her bare body.

The lines blurred.

Jolie moved back a few seconds, revising the thought.

“I must warn them,” Kerena said, rising from the bed. The lines clarified.

Joiner realized, that he had said too much. “I can’t let you do that.”

She ran to the door, swooping up her cloak and drawing it about her, lacing it at the neck. “You can’t stop me.”

He laughed. “I don’t need to. You will not make it out of the inn. The others here are pirates on leave from the ship. They will make gang sport of you, and take you with them to the ship so their fellows can finish the job.”

“Oh!” she cried in maidenly dismay. “I thought you were nice.”

“I was, until you made me talk too much. Now I must kill you. But first I mean to have my way with you again, because you are a really nice morsel with a tight little bum.”

“You can’t kill me,” she said desperately. “That would be murder.”

He caught her arm and hauled her back to the bed. “You have no family, and are in a foreign country. So one will miss you until long after my mission with the villagers is done. You should have heeded your mother’s advice.”

“Oh, I am undone!” she wailed helplessly.

“Therefore I will do you,” he said, pressing her down on the bed. Her cloak fell open below the neck, providing access to her breasts and belly.

She tried to resist, but her flailing arms had no power against his restored urgency. She wept as he brutally penetrated her. It was evidently way too late to distract him the necessary time.

“Delightful,” he said as he concluded. “I am truly sorry to waste such a beautiful body. But business is business. Now fare well in the other realm.” He caught the ends of his kerchief, which he had laid conveniently under her neck, and twisted them together in front, slowly throttling her. Her face reddened as her breathing was cut off. The pirate had no mercy.

Then her hidden dagger plunged into his side, severing blood vessels near his heart. “Aaahh!” he groaned, falling over. The wound was not immediately lethal, but there were no good treatment facilities here, and he would die in a few days. His condition would serve as a distraction so that the other pirates would not think to find another man to tackle the villagers.

Kerena got out from under him. “You should have allowed me to distract you longer,” she said. She had not actually been choked; the laced cloak had protected her neck, and she had faked it by holding her breath. She had hoped he would reconsider, then acted when it was clear the hope was vain.

Jolie was also sorry the man had not allowed himself to be distracted longer. Yes she had been the one to prevent that. Why had she had to put Kerena into such a brutal alternative?

The man’s warning about the other pirates was surely well taken. Kerena did not risk it. She invoked the cloak’s permeability power and walked through the wall. Outside, she canceled it and invoked invisibility. When she was well clear of the inn she returned to normalcy.