Good Faith

The merchant Zorian smiled wanly at the two female centaurs as they returned from the sundial. Leather straps tied his arms to the arms of the ancient stone chair that sat in a comfortably cool nook or half-cave in the hills. His legs, bound with more straps, extended out before him, spread well apart, with his sandals removed and placed on the ground beside him. Two metal rods rose vertically from holes bored in the stone, running along the insides of his ankles, and leather throngs bound his big toes to them, leaving his feet staked out, naked and vulnerable. The two centaurs took their positions, one by each foot, and resumed their tickling.

Zorian laughed uproariously, squirming in his chair, but he knew better than to beg or complain. He was a ‘flat-footer,’ a human, and thus by definition a foreigner in the centaur Land. And centaur law was strict on this point. It had to be, due to the Prophesy quoted on the rock wall: “Alja Kentaros mor kental velator velex bartaros mel Uru, nor Kentaros yonvel morkap i patalos,“ the freshly repainted words said in the curlicue script that the centaurs used: “If the Kentaros should ever fail to visit merciless torment on foreigners who enter the Land, then will the Kentaros suffer betrayal and ruination.”

Zorian had last renewed his monthly pass-tokens three and a half weeks ago, and so, strictly speaking, he didn’t need to submit to the centaur’s tickle-torment for another five days. But although he had made his annual trading journeys in the centaur Land for over a dozen years now, this was the first time he had visited Rivertree. Celekronus, the village chief, had at first refused to allow Zorian to stay and trade. So Zorian, as a sign of good faith, had agreed to renew his monthly pass tokens a few days early.

Peri, the pretty centaur working over his right foot with a nubby wooden roller, had won the drawing among the village females who had reached their Score, and had selected her friend Syna to help her. Syna was now attempting to tickle his left foot’s instep with a bullfeather, a simple leather device that could produce the most extraordinary effects in the hands of an expert. Syna wasn’t an expert, but Peri’s efforts made up for it: Running the wooden roller crosswise, first over the ball of Zorian’s foot, and then moving it slightly closer to the heel with each pass, she sent waves of tickling over his right sole that seemed to run half-way up his legs.

“This isn’t working,” Syna complained over Zorian’s helpless giggles. Peri handed her the roller.

“Told you. Try this.” She picked up a vos-hawk feather as Syna began to apply the roller to Zorian’s left foot. “We’ll save the oil for the last.”

Syna ran the roller up and down over Zorian’s vulnerable instep, producing renewed, involuntary, squirms and giggles. “Yes, this is better. But I still want to see what happens when we run a scrap of silk between his toes.”

If Peri answered, Zorian didn’t hear. Syna’s application of the roller was different from Peri’s, but just as tickle-inducing. In addition, the soft-and-firm tip of the vos-hawk feather, as it glided randomly between the toes and heel of Zorian’s other foot, complemented the sensations produced by the roller rather than distracting from them. Laughter poured from Zorian as he writhed and twisted.

Suddenly Syna dropped the roller. “We must show him mercy,” she said in a grating, half-strangled voice. “Show him mercy,” she repeated in the same odd voice as she shoved her friend aside with a body-slam that made Peri stumble.

“Syna, what are you doing?” Peri asked as Syna began to release Zorian from the chair.

“This - can’t be right,” Zorian gasped. “It’s not time yet, is it?” He felt lightheaded and strangely disappointed. Not at all like his usual drained whimpering at the end of a tickle-session, when he would promise himself that he would leave the centaur Land forever and never return to suffer another tickle-bout ever again.

“Must show mercy,” Syna said once more in that odd voice as she continued to undo the bonds that held Zorian captive.

On the way back to Rivertree, Zorian and his two ticklers fell in with Landon, the informal leader of Zorian’s centaur porters. “What happened?” he asked on seeing their faces, but Zorian shook his head. Later. The three centaurs and the human sought out Celekronus and his mate, Aclina, and found them carding wool.

“Ho, merchant Zorian,” the grizzled chief said before they could speak. “I have to admit, I’m impressed by the way you went off to take your medicine. Usually we have to drag flat-footers to the chair, all crying and whining.”

“Told you so, silly,” Aclina said to her mate. “Master Zorian came from the western borders. He isn’t one of those Meadsian worms.”

“The great-grandfather of their current king invaded the Land, ‘bout a century and a half ago,” Celekronus explained, mistaking their expressions for puzzlement. “We kicked his army out in the end, but they left a lot of centaur bones to the south of here. The current king still sends up spies occasionally, and we drag them to the chair and then send them crawling back. And somehow it’s never the same one twice,” he ended with a grin.

“Tell them,” Zorian ordered the two younger females.

Peri and Syna told, their story tumbling out as they interrupted each other. “It was some kind of spell,” Syna said at the end. “I couldn’t help myself. There was a voice whispering to me, and I couldn’t disobey it.”

“So where was the sorcerer?” Aclina asked.

“It couldn’t have been any of us,” Landon said, his gesture taking in the camp where his fellow porters were staying. “Zorian’s too good a man to trip up that way. And it couldn’t have been Zorian himself. He isn’t a sorcerer, and even if he was, no sorcerer can cast spells in the middle of a tickling.”

“Oh?” Celekronus said in a skeptical tone.

“Of course not, silly,” Aclina told him. “Everyone knows that. We’ll have to try again.” She looked at Zorian. “After your pass tokens expire.”

“Tomorrow, if you please.” Zorian managed to conceal the effort it took for him to say that. “If it works, it will be over with for another month. If not,” he shrugged. “We’ll have a few days to try something else.”

The next morning, Aclina did the tickling herself. Peri and Syna stayed in Rivertree while Celekronus led a mostly-male band of centaurs in a hunt for hidden sorcerers.

This time Zorian sat with his legs lashed together. He had taken one of the metal rods out from its hole and moved the other to the central position, before taking his seat and allowing Aclina to bind his ankles and big toes to it. This left his bare feet staked out much as they had been the day before, just as helpless and vulnerable, but positioned more conveniently for a single tickler to torment.

Aclina offered him the traditional dipper of water, and then splashed the rest over his feet before applying the equally-traditional scrubbing. As he always did with this preliminary, Zorian howled as the stiff-bristled brush worked over his naked soles. He couldn’t help it; it tickled enormously even though he knew it wasn’t part of the actual torment. “A tender-foot, eh?” Aclina commented.

“Yess,” Zorian managed, just before Aclina set in with her fingers and laughter made speech impossible. She has a nasty smile he observed, before the tickling made coherent thought impossible as well.

Aclina kept one hand spidering steadily over his soles, working methodically from toes to ball to instep to heel and back again, covering every inch of both feet. With her other hand she’d make occasional, sudden, flicking attacks, seeking out Zorian’s most sensitively ticklish areas. The last of these attacks turned into a lengthy assault that made Zorian throw back his head and roar with laughter. He threw himself from side to side, forced by the tickling to attempt escape yet knowing that escape was impossible. The leather straps held him in place, and the leather thongs kept his feet perfectly positioned for Aclina’s attentions. All that could escape was his mirth, forced out of him by Aclina’s competent touch on his terribly sensitive soles.

And his soles were sensitive now: This was only the first part of the tickle-torment. More was to come. Aclina switched to a vos-hawk feather, running its tip slowly, lazily, luxuriously over his toes and instep, over the balls of his feet and the heels. This cleverly gentle tickling allowed Zorian to catch his breath, but it didn’t allow him to stop squirming. Nor did it let him completely suppress his giggles. They leaked out occasionally, and each time they did the ticklishness of his poor exposed soles seemed to increase.

Zorian couldn’t tell how long the tickling had lasted. Each phase seemed to go on for eons, as they always did when he suffered the torment of renewing his pass-tokens. However, when Aclina set aside the feather, he knew that there must still be much more yet to come. “Excellent. Excellent,” Aclina said. She held up the knobby wooden roller where he could see it. Where he could anticipate its touch on his helpless, naked soles. “Excellent,” she repeated. “You’re doing well, but we’re still not finished yet.”

She applied the wooden roller first to one sole and then the other. This tickling, with its renewed vigor, brought loud laughter from Zorian once again. He tried to set himself to endure, but doing so was impossible. And unnecessary: He had no choice but to endure the continuing tickling of his feet, for however many eternities he still had left to go.

Suddenly Aclina dropped the roller and stepped back. “Show you mercy,” she said in a grating, half-strangled voice. “Must show you mercy.” She freed his feet and jammed his sandals back on them, then began to undo the other leather straps holding Zorian in the chair.

“Madam Aclina?” Zorian asked uncertainly.

“We must show you mercy,” Aclina said again in that same grating tone.

Zorian shook off his tickle-induced befuddlement. He licked his lips, considering his next words carefully. “Who is ‘we’, Madam Aclina?” he asked at last. But the female centaur didn’t answer. She led him back toward the village, carefully avoiding the centaurs searching for the hidden sorcerer - a sorcerer that Zorian grew more certain didn’t exist.

Near the edge of the village, Aclina came to a stop. “Get out of my head!” she shouted, her voice no longer half-strangled. “Get! Out! Of! My! Head!”

“Madam Aclina?” Zorian said again. But she galloped away from him into the village, leaving him standing in a cloud of dust.

Zorian stood there for a minute, wondering if he should try to chase after her. It seemed foolish to match his human speed against a centaur’s, but she couldn’t keep running forever. Then he saw a pair of the patrolling centaurs in the distance, and waved.

One of the centaurs was Celekronus. “What happened?” he asked as he trotted up. Zorian explained as well as he could. Celekronus clucked his tongue when Zorian finished. “You’d better let me talk to her,” The two centaurs trotted off again, and Zorian decided to see how his porters were doing.

They were doing fairly well, as it turned out. Landon had organized a small market, and the other porters were now displaying goods to several of the village centaurs. Landon himself was with Peri and Syna, watching as Landon demonstrated a bullfeather to them. He held out his hand and demonstrated the proper twists and strokes of the device against his palm. On seeing Zorian he hesitated, and the human turned away, pretending not to have noticed. He caught a few words as Landon resumed his explanation of how the bullfeather worked and then another of the village females took up his attention with a question about beads and ribbons.

A fair number of Zorian’s sales in the centaur Land did consist of bullfeathers, knobby rollers, and other tickle-implements. His porters joked that this proved Zorian to be a merchant to his marrow. Their comments had a certain core of truth: Human-made tickle-implements did have a certain cachet among some centaurs, but many human merchants refused to deal in them. It didn’t bother Zorian, though. In his view, he would suffer a monthly tickling in any case, and it didn’t make a difference whether the devices used were centaur-produced, human-made, or even sold to the tickler by Zorian himself.

Aclina and Celekronus came to the market a short time later, and Zorian stepped forward to speak with them. Aclina looked grim, and Celekronus looked both grim and worried. A gesture from the centaur chief brought Peri, Syna and Landon over, and the group of six walked off to speak privately.

“It wasn’t as spell,” Aclina said. “Not directly. It was an evil spirit that possessed me this morning and Syna yesterday. I think it was a Meadsian spirit, summoned by a Meadsian mage-priest and sent here to bedevil us.”

“So when was it sent?” Syna asked.

“And how?” Peri piped in.

“I like to know that too,” Landon said. “If Zorian here gets eaten by an evil spirit, my friends and I won’t get paid. So I have to keep him safe.” Four centaurs and a human looked at him, and he continued with dignity. “I didn’t say that was our only reason to keep him safe.”

“It’s too bad that it wasn’t a sorcerer,” Celekronus said after a moment. “A sorcerer we could catch. And question. Can’t do that with a spirit.”

The haunted look that had been in Aclina’s eyes was suddenly noticeable by its absence. “But we can catch and question a spirit, silly. I think I could, anyway. That is,” she looked at Zorian, “That is if Master Zorian is willing to spend an extra morning in the chair.”

Now four centaurs looked at Zorian. Landon looked away, his expression and body language speaking eloquently of his neutrality.

“I’ll do it,” Zorian said at last. “I’m not looking forward to it, mind. But I said that I’d sit in your chair before, and if it’s turned out to be more than I thought I was bargaining for - well, that’s my problem.”

“Thank you,” Aclina told him. Then to the two other females: “Come along now, Peri, Syna. We have work to do.”

Celekronus clapped him on the shoulder. “Good on you!” he grinned. “We’ll share a wineskin after we kick this spirit’s tail, eh?” Then he too, trotted off.

Zorian waited until the villagers were out of sight, then turned to Landon. “All right, you can tell me now what you were being so careful not to snicker about.”

“You,” Landon answered. “You’re looking forward to tomorrow morning, even though you’re careful not to admit it.”

“No I’m not,” Zorian protested. “I hate being tickled. I put up with your Law because you’re good people, and I don’t want to be the one to fulfil the Prophesy and betray you. But every month I stagger out a ruin, and I tell myself that it’s the last time, that I’ll leave the Land and never submit myself to the tickling again.”

“And every time you find an excuse to stay another month. We wouldn’t even be here, this far from the western border, if you hadn’t been looking for an excuse to stick around last month. And every year you come back for another trading trip. Year after year. This is what, the twelfth year, now?” Landon shook his head. “I suppose it’s a question for the philosophers whether you really hate the tickling or just think you do. But there are plenty of flat-footers who come to the Land, then leave as if their tunic’s on fire and never come back. And you’re not one of them.”

“The trading’s too good to leave. I’ve made a fortune, here in the Land.”

“Whatever you say, boss,” Landon grinned and turned back to the tiny village market.

For his third time in the stone chair, Zorian found himself tied once again with his ankles spread apart so as to leave his feet convenient for a pair of centaurs to tickle. He was not, he told himself, disappointed. Celekronus had had a brainstorm, last night, and as a result Aclina had modified her plans: Zorian wouldn’t need to spend a fourth session in Rivertree’s flat-footer chair after all. This morning’s tickling would not only get rid of the spirit, but would renew his monthly pass-tokens as well.

Peri and Syna had already offered him the dipper of water, and had already made him howl when they scrubbed his feet. Those feet now tingled with a sensitivity that slowly grew over time as they awaited the gentle punishment to come. The two younger females waited as well, shifting from hoof to hoof as they impatiently awaited to start their tickle-torments. Aclina chanted as a bronze brazier produced an aromatic smoke from burning sweetwood and dried herbs. The fragrance mixed with Aclina’s words as she walked slowly around the brazier, bow in one hand and an arrow in the other.

At the end of the final stanza Aclina fitted her arrow to the string and shot it high into the air. It caught fire, vanishing in flame before it could begin its descent. A cloud of black smoke boiled up from the brazier and took a roughly man-shaped form.

“You cannot win, old nag,” the smoke-spirit rumbled in a voice deeper than either a human’s or a centaur’s. “You may delay me with your shriekings, but you cannot deny me. I will take one of the three here, so that this stranger - a foreigner who is neither Meadsian nor centaur - will know mercy. And mercy for the stranger will become betrayal and torment for the centaurs. Thus the Prophesy will at last be fulfilled.”

“So you were sent by a Meadsian mage-priest?” Peri asked the cloud.

“I was indeed, beast-woman. Long ago, when the realm of the old king extended nearly to this place, I was put here. Years and decades went past, and no stranger came here - only Meadsian men and you centaur-beasts. I could not act. But now a true stranger has come, and I am arisen. In moments more the herbs that hold me will burn away, and the mercy I force you to show this stranger will bring victory at last to the Meadsian king!”

Aclina set down her bow and waved Peri back. Opening a small jar, the older centauress stepped up to the stone chair. “You forget something, evil one,” she called over her shoulder.

“Oh? What do I forget, old nag?”

“There are four of us here, not three.” With that, she dipped a finger into the jar and placed a smear of ointment on Zorian’s forehead.

“Nooo!” the spirit wailed. Flames flared up, consuming the smoke, and then died back down. Zorian found his sensations strangely doubled: The spirit now possessed him. He could still see and hear and feel with his own senses, but the spirit used his senses as well, and Zorian shared the spirit’s perceptions as well.

“Go ahead,” Aclina waved the two others to begin. Syna stepped forward to Zorian’s right foot, and Peri took her position by his left.

“Stop,” Zorian heard himself say in a grating, half-strangled voice. “Let me loose. You can’t do this!”

Coward, he silently told the spirit possessing him.

But they’re going to tickle us! it answered. Tickle us mercilessly! Ha hee hee hahahahaha! it laughed as Peri and Syna began to spider their fingers over Zorian’s helpless soles. It released its control over Zorian’s body it cringed away from the tickling. But it could not release its hold on his senses, and so it fully shared the tickle-torment that Peri and Syna were so cheerfully inflicting.

Zorian laughed with his own voice as the spirit released its hold on his throat. He squirmed with the doubled tickle-sensations, and howled in a duet with the spirit’s silent laughter when Peri or Syna made a sudden flicking attack across his instep or over the ball of his foot. The extra sensations from the spirit made the tickling feel somewhat worse than usual, but not twice as bad. Not for Zorian, anyway - the spirit was a different matter. It writhed and gibbered in an agony of tickling, and Zorian had a sudden insight into its plight.

The spirit sought to escape to the brazier, but if it did so it would then become a captive, trapped in the bronze and compelled to obey. Furthermore, it could only escape to the brazier if Aclina allowed it to do so. Until Aclina gave this permission, it had to endure their shared tickle-torment. Zorian overheard its call to Aclina’s mind, its begging, its frantic pleading for mercy, its desperate promises to deliver the most abject obedience to her if only the tickling would stop. But Aclina stood stock-still by the brazier, refusing to make the mystic gesture that would allow the spirit to surrender.

Coward. Zorian told it again. Silently, of course - he was giggling too hard to speak the word. Then Peri switched from fingers to vos-hawk feather, and a moment later Syna started using a wooden spoon to scrape and tap. Thinking became impossible, as the tickling wandered over feet that now seemed as large as the rest of him.

No hahahahaheehee haha no! the spirit cried as the laughter poured from Zorian. The soft-firm tip of the feather gently punished his left foot, the tickle-sensations soaking in between the toes and over their pads, into the ball of that foot and the instep and the heel. The light taps and smooth-hard scrapes of the wooden spoon tormented his right foot with bursts of tickling on its own heel, instep and ball. And between its toes as well. Zorian squirmed and roared, his soles in the complete possession of the two centaurs who enthusiastically applied their tender, merciless torment. Every so often they would pause, allowing Zorian to catch his breath and the spirit to gibber frantically for mercy. Then they would begin again, inflicting a honey-sweet torment on feet whose sensitivity had been renewed.

Eons passed as Peri and Syna traded implements back and forth. They used wooden spoons and knobby rollers, vos-hawk feathers and scraps of silk pulled between the toes, fingers that tickled slowly and fingers that tickled with furious speed. They seemed determined to squeeze every ounce of ticklishness from Zorian’s feet. And there was absolutely nothing Zorian could do about. He could only struggle uselessly against his bonds, giggling and screeching, the spirit within him half-forgotten as it writhed and howled with its own laughter.

And now Peri and Syna each held up a bullfeather for their victims to see. The spirit sharing Zorian’s vision looked on the leather objects with incomprehension, and Zorian felt a grim anticipation for what was to come. But when the tickle-devices touched his soles, Zorian’s eyes widened in shock, and his breath hissed in. The two centaurs proved Landon to have been an able tutor and themselves to have been apt students of the demonstration that Landon had given the day before. Zorian dissolved in laughter, and the spirit possessing him screamed. Zorian knew, from personal experience at the receiving end, that a true expert could produce excruciatingly sophisticated results with a bullfeather. The two tickling him now lacked that skill - but there were two of them, applying two of the devices, and they did have the knack for it. And the enthusiasm to make up for their lack of expertise. Toes and heels, balls and insteps, the twin bullfeathers thoroughly and mercilessly tickle-punished both of Zorian’s feet.

Zorian felt the spirit flee, as Aclina finally allowed it to accept captivity in the brazier. The tickling paused. Zorian caught his breath, but he knew that more was still to come even before Aclina spoke. “Go ahead without me,” she told the other two centaurs. “There’s still a bit more time left, according to the sundial.”

“Good,” Peri said. “We can use the oil, now.”

Zorian whimpered as they coated his feet with olive oil, and then giggled one more time as Peri and Syna inflicted a last brief eternity of tickle-torment with their oil-slick fingers.