Snare

by Katharine Kerr

  ‘There’s a stream over there,’ Jezro said, ‘and the horses need water. It’s too damn muggy today. I’m hungry myself. We might as well stop here and eat.’

  They slacked the horses’ bits to let them drink, then unsaddled them to let them roll and rest while they brought out the food they’d bought in Shairb. Zayn took his chunk of bread and cold meat and walked back to the road, where he stood eating and looking east at the rise of hills. Somewhere out there Soutan was searching for Ammadin. If you’d only kept your mouth shut, Zayn told himself. If you hadn’t gone and told the khan everything, Ammi wouldn’t be in danger now.

  Why had he spoken, why had he forgotten that discussing another’s quest was Bane? Because he’d forgotten all about Bane in that moment, sitting in a dining room with brother officers. He now understood something about himself, that he became different men at different times. It wasn’t a question of merely changing certain actions or obeying social mannerisms. Whole personalities rose and fell, embedded in memories like sea-wrack rising and falling with the waves in Haz Kazrak’s harbour. Zahir Benumar, faithful member of the Chosen, had died when he’d failed to assassinate Jezro Khan. But who was he now? Captain Hassan of Jezro Khan’s new revolutionary cavalry? Zayn the comnee man who needed to return to the Mistlands to find his true name? Someone else entirely? That question had still to be answered. He was beginning to wonder if it ever would be.

  Zayn had just finished eating when the wind brought him an all-too-familiar scent. He tossed his head back and breathed deeply – ChaMeech, all right, and close at hand from the strength of the smell. He whirled around and ran back, yelling to the others.

  ‘ChaMeech coming!’

  Swearing and shouting, Warkannan and Jezro leapt to their feet. Jezro was unarmed except for his walking stick; Zayn had his long knife, useless against ChaMeech. Warkannan had the only sabre among them, not that it would do him much good on the ground. The horses picked up their alarm and tossed their heads, pulling at tether ropes. With years of long practice behind them, the men rushed over, scooping up their saddles on the run, and reached the horses before they could pull free. They had the bits in place and the saddles on and cinched before the stink of male ChaMeech grew much stronger.

  Zayn laced his hands together and gave Jezro a boost up, then turned to his own horse and swung himself into the saddle. Warkannan was already mounted; he drew his sabre and made the long blade flash in the sunlight.

  ‘Get going,’ Warkannan snapped. ‘I’ll take the rear guard.’

  ‘It’s too late,’ Jezro said calmly. ‘We’ll never outrun them now. Besides, there’s a female with them. We may not be doomed after all.’

  Across the road, in the tall blue grass, six big grey males, all carrying spears and wearing yellow kilts, were trotting straight for them, led by one small ChaMeech with lavender skin. ‘Shaitan!’ Warkannan kept the sabre up and ready. ‘What’s a female doing out here? She’s not much more than a filly.’

  Zayn could barely focus his eyes. His mind was drowned by those other memories, as vivid as hallucinations, of running at the end of a rope, his whole body cramped in agony, his lungs burning, his hands covered in the blood from his wrists. He was choking on fear, he realized, could barely breathe, could barely think, caught and suffocating in sheer ugly panic. Jezro and Warkannan were talking, but he could understand nothing of what they said. The ChaMeech came closer, they reached the road. Zayn could only stare, clutching his useless knife.

  The males spread out, spears at the ready, then stopped in a half-circle that corralled the men on horseback against the stream. The lavender female, naked except for a necklace of trade beads, paused some ten feet in front of the three riders. Up close Zayn could see how young she was, a bit smaller than his horse. She held up both pseudo-hands in a gesture of peace.

  ‘Jezro,’ she said. ‘Jezro Khan.’

  Zayn stared, shaking in shame as much as fear. She couldn’t possibly have said the khan’s name, or so he thought until she repeated it. Her voice rumbled like thunder, but it fell well within the ranges of human hearing. Jezro seemed perfectly calm as he urged his trembling horse a few paces towards her.

  ‘I’m Jezro Khan.’

  ‘Khan. Come with.’ She was speaking in Hirl-Onglay, Zayn realized, though with an odd accent.

  ‘Why?’ Jezro said. ‘Come with where?’

  She hesitated, then swung her long neck down to bow her head, a gesture that, Zayn knew, meant submission. She was trying to convince them that she was harmless, and he realized that had the males wanted to kill them, they would have already attacked. She bent her forelegs to lower her head further. ‘Please,’ she rumbled. ‘Come with.’

  Zayn wanted to turn his horse and run. He could feel every muscle in his body aching with that desire, even with Idres and Jezro there to see his cowardice. If he did run, he knew that he would despise himself for the rest of a life that he’d make as short as possible.

  ‘Come with you?’ Jezro said. ‘Why? Are you friends?’

  She stamped a massive foot on the ground and bobbed her head, then straightened her neck to look at him normally. Her eyes gleamed, both pairs as blue as the sky.

  ‘Not friend,’ she said. ‘Bigger. Many us. Come with. Not hurt.’

  Sitting easy in the saddle Jezro considered her for a moment. ‘You want us to come with you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We have no choice. You are bigger, there’s more of you.’

  ‘Yes. Come with, no hurt.’

  One of the males turned towards her; his throat sac swelled, his lips moved, but Zayn heard nothing. The female, however, stamped her foot again in the equivalent of a smile.

  ‘Hostages,’ the female said. ‘Be hostages. We bargain-next-soon. No hurt.’

  ‘Hostages for what?’ Jezro said. ‘What do you want to bargain over?’

  ‘No say.’ She lowered her head again. ‘Come with. Us bigger.’

  ‘Is it Soutan? Will you take us to Soutan?’

  ‘Soutan madman! No Soutan.’ She made a dipping motion with her pelvis, as if she might squat on Soutan’s name. ‘Come with now!’

  Once more Zayn had to force himself to breathe. He turned and looked at the khan, who was leaning forward in his saddle, watching with no trace of emotion. Warkannan sat like a ceremonial statue, motionless on horseback, his sabre raised. Jezro reached into his shirt pocket, took out a handkerchief, and wiped his nose.

  ‘Well, gentlemen,’ Jezro said. ‘We can’t outrun them and we can’t outfight them, so we don’t have a lot of choice in the matter. Idres, you may now say “I told you so”. We should have stayed in Burgunee.’

  Warkannan growled like a shen and sheathed the sabre. Zayn did the same with his long knife. At the gestures the female stamped both forefeet in delight.

  ‘Hostages,’ she repeated. ‘Come with.’

  ‘All right,’ Jezro said. ‘We’ll come with you, but it’s under duress. Don’t try to take that sword away from my friend. He’ll kill you before you can get it, and then one of your men will kill him, and you’ll only have two hostages, not three.’

  Zayn doubted that they could understand, but no ChaMeech made an attempt on their weapons, not then nor during the rest of their captivity. The female gestured at the riders to follow her, then led the way back across the road. As the men fell in behind, the ChaMeech males closed their circle, but they stayed a good ten feet away. The familiar rhythm of riding eased Zayn’s panic. No one tortures hostages to death, he reminded himself. We’re valuable alive.

  ‘This should be interesting,’ Jezro said, grinning. ‘I’m glad we loaded up on food in Shairb.’

  ‘Interesting!’ Warkannan snarled. ‘Shaitan!’

  ‘What I wonder,’ Jezro went on, ‘is how they knew who I am and where I was.’

  ‘The mayor back in Shairb,’ Warkannan said. ‘Who else? I’ll bet he had some sort of signalling device, like the one Soutan had.’

  ‘No wonder he want
ed to show us around,’ Zayn said. ‘The little bastard was stalling for time. Remember how he rushed back inside when we were leaving?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jezro said. ‘If we get out of this, he’s going to regret it, I can promise you that.’

  Ahead, one pair of ChaMeech males were busily trampling down the high thatchy grass to clear a path for the horses. Chirring and shrieking, blue-winged lizards burst into the air and circled overhead to scold them. Every now and then the female ChaMeech would snake her head around and make sure that the H’mai were still following. Soon they came to a white sphere, surrounded by faded grass, once high, now trampled down and broken. The ChaMeech drew up in a rough circle around it, and the female gestured at the men to dismount. Once they had, she gestured again, pointing first to their hands and then to the horses’ heads.

  ‘I understand,’ Jezro said abruptly. ‘She wants us to hold the bridles. She’s afraid of scaring the horses.’

  Jezro followed her orders. Zayn caught the sorrel gelding’s bridle and murmured the meaningless Hirl-Onglay syllables that comnee men used to calm their mounts. Warkannan’s cavalry-trained horse cocked one ear forward and one back, as sceptical as its owner, but it never showed the slightest trace of fear, not once in all that followed – and a good thing, too, since the other two mounts gave the men more than enough trouble.

  Two of the males laid down their spears, then stood waiting, pseudo-hands at the ready. The female tossed back her head and thrummed. Her throat sac swelled out golden, and she let out a sound just barely audible to the human men, a rumble like distant thunder, a pressure in the air like a blast of wind. The white sphere squealed in answer and began to turn in its hidden socket.

  ‘What in hell?’ Warkannan muttered.

  She thrummed again. The sphere emerged spinning from the ground. At first Zayn thought it was floating; then he saw that it spun on top of a slender, transparent rod. The rod in turn was connected to an enormous plate of white flexstone, at least fifteen feet across, that slowly rose to the surface. When the sphere stopped turning, two males rushed forward and caught the rod in their pseudo-hands. Grunting and booming, they pushed it down, proving it to be a lever. The white plate tipped up on edge, then settled into some sort of slot to expose a round opening in the earth. Zayn could just see the head of a ramp that led down into darkness.

  ‘Come!’ the lavender female said. ‘Down.’

  The males retrieved their spears, tucked them under their pseudo-arms, then one at a time stepped onto the ramp and started down. The remaining four ChaMeech moved in close and waved spears to urge the H’mai on. Some twenty feet down, a light gleamed, and a tunnel opened out at the bottom of the ramp.

  ‘Down!’ the female repeated. ‘No harm.’

  Grinning like a maniac, Jezro saluted her, then clucked to his horse and led it forward to the top of the ramp. The horse predictably balked, and it was only after Warkannan coaxed his mount down that they could convince the other horses to step onto the ramp. Behind them the sunlight streamed in, and ahead a lightwand glowed, held aloft in the pseudo-hand of a ChaMeech. The males were standing on a stone platform at one side of what proved to be a white flexstone tunnel, heading off into darkness in both directions. Two sets of tracks, moulded as an integral part of the flexstone, ran along the tunnel floor. Sitting on the tracks beside the platform was one of the most peculiar contraptions Zayn had ever come across.

  Whoever had constructed it must have seen canal boats. The barge stretched about thirty feet from bulbous nose to irregular stern and about half that from side to side. Its flat wooden bottom must have concealed many sets of little wheels under it somewhere, for eventually it rolled along the tracks with some stability. The sides, made of bundled bamboid and vines, ranged in height between three feet at the lowest and five at highest; they sloped, bulged, dipped, and in places looked as if someone had absent-mindedly chewed on them. From the nose hung harnesses made of magenta saurskin. Three of the males trotted to the front and strapped themselves in. They adjusted a welter of buckles, then folded their arms across their chests.

  The female ChaMeech took the lightwand. With gestures she told the H’mai men to get themselves and their horses aboard – a shaky process that nearly tipped the cart-barge over. Once they were settled, the remaining three males positioned themselves behind the cart. The female turned and thrummed. At the top of the ramp the circular plate slowly lowered itself, then fell into place with a boom that echoed and died along the tunnel. The air, however, stayed fresh, hinting at hidden vents. The female stepped into the cart and hunkered down at the front.

  Zayn started to tremble; no matter how hard he tried, he could not stop shaking in terror at being shut up underground with ChaMeech. Warkannan flung an arm around his shoulders. ‘Steady on,’ he said. ‘We’ll get through it together.’ Zayn managed to force a ‘thank you’ through parched lips.

  Ahead the harnessed males started walking; the cart lurched forward. Those behind grabbed a twisted bamboid rail and pushed, slowly at first, then faster, and faster still as the males in front broke into a trot, until all six were loping along more or less in unison. The cart squealed and tilted, shook and veered back and forth as it plummeted through the darkness. Now and then a chunk of bamboid fell off, but none of the ChaMeech seemed to notice or care.

  The tunnel stretched on and on, as straight as a piece of string pulled tight between two hands. The ChaMeech males loped along, never slacking nor speeding up. Now and again they would thrum; they filled their throat sacs and let the air out in great gusts that sang at a high enough pitch for the men to hear. The female never spoke, merely switched the lightwand from one pseudo-hand to the other at intervals.

  Warkannan and Jezro turned all their attention to keeping the horses calm. Zayn fought with his memory. In the play performed in Sarla, the Recaller character had wrestled with bad memories of her own. Zayn repeated her line silently, over and over, ‘you are not there then – you are here now’. Eventually he began to believe it, and the memories receded, though they never quite left his consciousness – rather they lurked at its edge, like wild animals at the edge of firelight. As soon as he stopped concentrating on keeping them away, they crept back, and he would return to the plains, the burning in his wrists and lungs, the cold terror not so much of dying itself, but of the inevitable damnation that lay waiting for him on the other side of Death’s gate. He had known that he was damned with a certainty more painful than any torture the ChaMeech might have worked upon him. The torture would have had its inevitable end, but damnation would last forever.

  Now at least he no longer feared eternity. Zayn desperately wanted to talk with Warkannan, but the clatter of wheels on track was so loud that they had to shout at each other to be heard. Jezro tried to start a conversation, only to give up the effort after a few exchanges.

  ‘I think we know how Yarl managed to stay out of sight,’ Jezro shouted. ‘These tunnels must run under parts of Burgunee, too.’

  ‘It’s a good guess,’ Warkannan said. ‘His tame ChaMeech would have let him in on the secret, I suppose.’ Warkannan laid a hand on Zayn’s shoulder and leaned close to speak normally. ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘I’ll live,’ Zayn said, then raised his voice. ‘Just wondering how long this tunnel is.’

  ‘So am I,’ Jezro said. ‘I suspect we’re going to find out.’

  Shortly before sunset Sentry’s chimes woke Ammadin. The sun was just touching the horizon, and Loy still lay asleep with her hat over her eyes to block the light. Ammadin picked up Sentry and quieted him. For a moment she wondered why she was even bothering to scan. The one person she wanted most to see had become invisible, thanks to the imp he was wearing. At that moment, caught by cold anxiety, Ammadin was forced to admit that she cared more about Zayn than she had ever wanted to care about anyone.

  With an animal growl for her own weakness, she activated the crystal. In the late hush of the golden day, the dry, blue grass stood unbending, u
nmoving for mile after mile. She did see animals similar to grassars, mottled white and violet beasts with six sturdy legs, drinking warily at a stream under the watchful eye of a bull with three big, twisted horns.

  ‘Spot anything?’ Loy said from behind her. ‘Anything that wants to have us for dinner, I mean?’

  ‘No,’ Ammadin said, turning. ‘You’re up?’

  ‘Oh yes, and god, I feel almost human.’ Loy was actually smiling. ‘Clean shirt, nap, no saddle beating my behind – this is really living, I tell you.’

  Ammadin had to laugh.

  ‘When you finish,’ Loy went on, ‘we can chomp our way through some more of these ghastly trail rations. I wonder if these yap-pack lizards are tasty? I wouldn’t mind a little fresh meat.’

  ‘Neither would I, but do you know how to cook? The men take care of all that back on the grass.’

  ‘They do? Maybe I should seduce a comnee man one of these days. I know how to cook, but I get very tired of it.’

  Ammadin returned to Spirit Eyes. About half-way between the camp and the eastern end of the crystal’s reach she had a piece of real luck. Apparently Arkazo had wandered beyond the range of Soutan’s ‘hide me’ command; she saw him clearly, standing out in the grass and taking the nosebag off one of four horses. The other three were already grazing peacefully at tether. Ammadin watched as he tethered out the fourth horse, then stooped and picked up the nosebags from the ground. For a moment he stood wiping the sweat from his face onto his sleeve. Ammadin focused in close. She could see that he was wearing something on a chain around his neck – an imp, maybe? He ran both hands through his hair to shove it back, then unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. As he did so, she got a glimpse of the object on the chain – made of blue quartz, all right. She wondered what spell it carried – obviously not ‘hide me’.

  Arkazo walked off towards the east and disappeared under the cover provided by Soutan’s crystal. What had Loy called the imp she’d given Zayn? An interference pattern something-or-other. Ammadin studied the place where Arkazo had disappeared; she noticed an odd edge or join, as if the grass beyond that point had been somehow pasted onto the real view. As she studied the image, she realized that she was seeing a portion of the ground by the horses, as if it had been copied and put in place of Soutan’s camp.