by Gayle Greeno
To be so near, especially in a setting like this, almost paralyzed her with a sense of his otherness; she had on occasion glimpsed one still as a fawn in the midst of the forest, but even then had never entirely credited her senses. The clacking of ornaments brought her back to herself; the Erakwan had rattled his tray to catch her attention. A shy smile dimpled one cheek; he looked at ease but not at home in the square, his coppery skin .decently clothed in a minimum of Canderisian garments, his waist cinched with a woven leather belt from which hung a worn but intricately beaded pouch.
“No.” She shook her head, signifying her regret. “They’re beautiful, and you have much skill, but I cannot buy today.” The dark eyes saddened, but he picked up a curious ornament, cunningly carved like an animal she’d never seen, and rested it against his lips. Cheeks puffed, he blew once, and a note echoed out, pure and overpowering with its clarity: a whistle. He smiled again, as if at a secret they shared, and started to hand it to her to try. Then his face abandoned all expression, closed off tight as he spied Khar escorting Claire back from a few booths away. One hand dipped to his waist pouch, clutched it to absorb the comfort of his earth-tie, while the other hand waved her off with a brusque, chopping motion. She took a backward step, then another, Khar closing the distance between them, curiosity plain. The wary beauty of his expression vanished, a masklike implacability and suppressed anger replacing it and she felt as if she’d been physically assaulted, pushed backward by an invisible hand. She backed further, turned, at a loss to know what she had done to provoke him. Or Khar, for that matter. The ghatti and the Erakwa were both original inhabitants; she as an outsider she could understand.
“They always dose their minds from us, from our touch. Trying to read them is like scratching on glass.” Khar whisperspoke, craning her head over her shoulder as they retreated. “Someday I would like to ’speak one of them. No ghatti has ever succeeded, but there would be honor in trying.”
Doyce shook herself as if breaking free of a spell and turned after Claire, losing herself anew in the multitude of objects around her, the familiar, the workaday, rather than the exotic. No hope of gaining the whistle now, even if she had the money to pay. Somehow she had offended him and lost something she thought she was meant to have without knowing why. Earth eater, earth taster, the strength and endurance of the earth in their very stride—a Ninth Mystery of a Ninth Trust. Beyond the Lady’s ken, but not beyond Her love, she hoped.
They moved on. Fine linen, coarse linen; nails and hinges and ironwork; lamp oils; laundry soaps in rough-cut bars; cow balm; early greensaps and late pears near bursting through their pink-gold freckled skins with juice that attracted eager swarms of wasps; fresh baked bread and figure-eight twisted rolls studded with raisins and dredged in cinnamon sugar; broidery flosses and ribbons and yarns. By these last they stopped, and Claire began fingering first one and then another.
Khar sat at her feet and reached a tentative paw to bat a dangling tail of yarn. The crowds were hard on the ghatta, crammed in at knee level with no one looking down to notice her presence. Feet intent about their business, random flying feet, feet with a mind of their own. Khar had yowled once in protest when someone trod on her tail, and now Doyce carried her through some of the more crowded spots, Khar’s haunches balanced in the crook of her arm, her forelegs over Doyce’s shoulder. Khar held her place by digging her claws into Doyce’s sheepskin tabard, one of the things for which it had been designed. But the ghatta proved more of an armful than her slight frame could comfortably manage, and Doyce set her down whenever she could.
Claire perused a fine apricot-tinted wool, touched an end against Doyce’s cheek to test for softness, and cocked her head, waiting. Doyce pursed her lips in thought, then finally shook her head no. “What about this, then?” and passed her a skein of pale yellow, light as a petal. Out of the comer of her eye Doyce caught Khar again batting at the dangling yarn like an untrained ghatten.
“Khar, stop that this instant,” she reproved as she bent over, hands on hips. The ghatta ignored her and grasped the yarn in her teeth, pulling hard.
“ ’Is one!” Her mindspeech echoed the fact that her mouth was full. “ ’Effect!”
Doyce untangled the strand of wool from Khar’s teeth and surreptitiously wiped it on her sleeve before Khar could take another bite at it. “Claire, look what Khar’s picked out. She’s convinced that it’s perfect.” Following the yarn back to its main skein, buried under others on the table, Doyce found the source at last. “I think she might be right.”
Blue, a blue that changed and glowed with each feeble comparison she thought of—the delicate shade toward the start of sunrise, the first tiny star-shaped bluet of spring, the tremulous mist-hazed edge of distant mountains—all that and more. The sheerest outer fibers of the yarn seemed to borrow from whatever color was nearby, a touch of violet, rose, a deeper blue, moss green, the delicate faded yellow of Doyce’s tunic, the amber of Khar’s eyes.
Claire stroked the yarn with reverence. “Oh, yes,” she barely breathed the words. “Oh, Khar, Doyce, it’s what I’ve dreamed of, but I didn’t know you could spin a dream.”
The stall owner edged around the table, proprietary hand laid on the yarn, nostrils flared as if she could scent their coins. “How much for four skeins,” Doyce asked, since Claire still seemed rapt in contemplation, holding the yarn up to catch the sunlight, turning it this way and that.
“One silver, six coppers,” the old woman stated, rapping her knuckles with flat emphasis on the stand as if to count out the sum. “There be but two women in the hill lands who spin and dye such as that. Not much comes our way.”
“Too much,” Doyce replied with genuine regret and turned to briskly escort Claire from the stall. Claire’s jaw dropped in protest, but Doyce shushed her, clamped down hard on her arm to silence the cry of entreaty she could feel building inside the younger woman. All part of the game, even if Claire’d momentarily forgotten the rules. The stall owner let them retreat one step further than Doyce felt confident about, then gave a harsh, begrudging cry to reconsider.
They haggled back and forth, Doyce hindered by Claire’s adamant refusal to relinquish the yarn a second time. At last, with one silver and two copper agreed upon, both sides felt pleased with their bargain. Tucking the packet under her arm, Doyce whistled up Khar and led Claire from the stall. Their purchasing finished, they strolled back toward the Bethel, stopping once to buy two meat pies and two mugs of ale, planning to sit on the steps and eat.
Doyce perched one step higher than Claire and set the mugs down. Claire broke off a corner of her meat pie and placed it in front of Khar, who patted it this way and that, waiting for it to cool. Resting her elbows on the step behind her, Doyce stretched out her legs and absorbed the scene around her. Shepherd Harrap sat on a leather-seated tripod stool to the left of the large double doors, and an elderly woman clothed all in black, head draped with a black scarf, sat beside him on a similar stool. He held her hand, listening, head cocked to catch each word, patting her shoulder as she broke into sobs. The soothing sound of his rich baritone voice, though not the words, floated down to them.
When she looked back, Khar sat bolt upright, almost lifting off her front paws. intent, meat pie scrap forgotten. Her ears twitched and turned, the hoop and rosette glowing in the light, and her whiskers rippled and flexed as she sniffed, testing the air.
Doyce herself,could hear something faint and far away but closing fast. She sensed a difference in the bustle and hum of the square and surrounding area: a distant but irate shout, an outright scream, a rumble as if something had been knocked over, and the pounding of horse’s hooves. The sounds edged closer, jumbled but louder, ricocheting off the closely packed stone buildings, then swallowed by the canvas tents and stalls.
“Trouble,” Khar announced. “Ghatt in it.” She began to weave her way through the crowd, jumping up to walk a ledge, springing higher to a low porch roof.
“Who?” Doyce queried as
she trotted to where Lokka was tied to yank sword and staff from their saddle sheaths. She buckled the sword in place around her waist, settled it to draw properly, and gripped the staff, loose but ready, in her left hand. Shadowed by the Bethel, she hoped no one noticed her precautions, prayed they weren’t necessary as she moved back into position.
“Don’t know. I sense fear, but he isn’t speaking. Concentrating too hard on escaping.”
“Claire, go up with Harrap. Now!” She pulled Claire to her feet and gave her a push up the steps. The Shepherd hadn’t noticed anything amiss and still spoke, melodious and low, with the elderly woman.
Claire grabbed up her bundle of yarn and protectively cradled it to her chest. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know, but go! Probably a rumpus of some sort, a street brawl, so just stay clear.”
A ghatt, orange and black and white in no discernible pattern, ran full tilt through the throng, dodging under feet, between legs, over baskets, and beneath tables. His tongue protruded from his whitened, foam-flecked muzzle. Clearly he’d been running long and hard, was near to the end of his endurance.
Close behind, a man on a horse cursed and maneuvered his panicky mount through the crowd. The horse’s eyes rolled white-edged as he tossed his head, trying to shake the cruel pinch of a hard-held bit, but the rider spurred him and cursed again, leaned down from his mount to shove aside two merchants with a sideways swipe of his staff, then hauled the horse around in the direction the ghatt had run. With mounting horror, Doyce took in the tabard, the twisted face: a Seeker straddled the horse, a Seeker named Georges Barbet. The ghatt had to be Parm, then, but why, in the name of the Lady, would Georges try to ride Parm down like that? Had the world gone mad, metamorphosed overnight while she slept?
“Georges!” she called, throwing herself into the melee at the foot of the steps. “Hold! What ails you?”
With a savage jerk he reined in and the startled horse reared back, then sprang forward as he dug spurs into already bleeding sides. “I’ll kill him! By the Lady, I’ll kill that ghatt!” His dark eyes gleamed wild, sparked by a searing rage so deep she couldn’t begin to fathom what fueled it.
Mouth dry, her nervous swallowing loud in her ears, she pushed after Georges, though the path he’d cleared now overflowed with people rebounding and caroming off each other, uncertain in which direction to move. Whose side was she supposed to be on? A blind man could have picked out their trail: smashed crockery, overturned tables of bruised fruit, bright ribbons crushed and dusty underfoot, people picking themselves up and brushing themselves off, mouths agape.
“Khar, what is going on!” she mindspoke, desperate to understand. She couldn’t see the ghatta but knew she had to be somewhere near. “Are they both mad?”
“Black heart! Black soul!” Khar wailed.
“Whose, damn it? Georges or Parm?” Neither was possible. Doyce forced her staff horizontally across her chest, clearing her path in the direction of Khar’s voice. She lurched, bowled over a self-important little man in a rich blue weskit just picking himself up from his first headlong dive to safety. No time to apologize.
Now Parm retraced his route, spinning back into the heart of the chaos, generating even greater havoc as he landed in the middle of what he’d already upset. Doyce whirled back, running hard, shoving, flailing her elbows as she tried to gain a lead on the ghatt, desperate to anticipate his route. The press of sweating, panicky bodies, the confused mingling with all order or pattern disrupted made it well-nigh impossible, fool’s fancy. No one knew which way to turn, where to run.
As far as she could judge, the ghatt didn’t know either. Still, his best chance of escape, if escape were his goal, lay in the crowds, the close, winding, packed streets. He could eel his way through, lose himself in shadows, nooks, and crannies where a horse and rider could never follow. The greatest danger lay in a clear, straight, unobstructed path of escape. Incredibly fast for a sprint, a ghatt couldn’t sustain a full-out pace for more than three hundred meters. Much beyond that and a horse and rider were superior, sure to win out.
Doyce ran smack into the small, self-important man in blue whom she’d swept off his feet only moments earlier. He grabbed her hard by her upper arms to steady himself, fright and frustration clear on his face, and they essayed a ritualized dance of passage, intricate, desperate footwork in a confined space.
“This way! Back to the steps!” Khar’s voice homed in on her although she couldn’t see the ghatta’s location. Out of the path of trampling feet, she hoped, as the little man stepped hard on her instep. She gritted her teeth at the pain, snapped her forearms up inside his grasp and broke his grip, and was off and running, limping. She thought Claire had reached the relative safety of the steps. She cast her mindspeech back in Khar’s direction. “Are they both mad? Whose side are we on?” The Market Square seethed and twisted with knots of shouting people, pushing and shoving, belaboring each other as they tried to clamber over counters and collapsed canvas stall walls, pushing and boosting each other. She doubted the townspeople would ever look kindly on Seekers or Bondmates again. And to top it off, she didn’t know whom she was fighting for—or against.
“Georges is mad. Something cracked inside his head. Parm can no longer serve!”
“Impossible!” She heard the words but couldn’t believe them as she shoved and pummeled her way toward the crowded steps. An elbow drove into her midsection and she returned the favor; managed to turn her head to avoid another elbow crashing toward the bridge of her nose. The world was not a safe, sane place; Oriel’s death had proved that, but this sudden instability, the random absurdity of this mad, directionless rushing, the hysterical crowd, left her mind whirling to escape the import of Khar’s words. A ghatt served until death took one or the other of the Bondmates. There was no turning back. And Georges, mad? No ghatt or ghatta would have ’Printed on an unstable person, one who would prove unworthy of the offered Bonding.
With a gasp and a final hard shove, she scrambled to the first landing on the Bethel steps and paused to look back, winded, blessing the advantage of added height. A middle-aged farm woman, face scoured red by weather and anger, swatted her on the shoulder with her net bag of purchases as if she held Doyce personally responsible for the confusion. Maybe she was, she had no way of knowing. As credible as any other explanation she could think of.
Parm rounded the comer, back into the heart of the Square, horse and rider struggling behind. He sprang, banked off the top of a handcart loaded with eggs and a brace of trussed, gabbling hens, scrambled on, leaped a fallen child bawling dismally, and landed on a table of cutlery, sending knives, scissors, and razors spinning in deadly circles. His path zigzagged, but he gained ground, the havoc he’d created swamping the horse and rider in his wake.
Sides pumping like bellows, eyes intent on his goal, he hurtled up the steps past Doyce. Georges Barbet had finally abandoned his horse and ran close behind, bulling his way through the crowd that now showed enough sense to try to pull away from him and clear a path. As his boot slammed the first step, his empty eyes looked straight through her, made her feel invisible. They registered blankly, glazed over, devoid of any human emotion she recognized. He moved like an automaton, a vile wrongness in trappings that should have been right. Despairing, she planted herself in his path, brought up her staff, knuckles clenched white, and braced herself for the impact. She couldn’t restrain him without using force and didn’t know if she could bring herself to hit a fellow Seeker. Now was the time to find out. Khar chose that moment to reappear and dart between Barbet’s legs, tumbling him back into the Square.
At the same instant a yell and a crash crescendoed from the top of the stairs by the Bethel doors, and she wheeled, distracted, in time to see Shepherd Harrap and Farm collapse in a tangle, Harrap’s arms windmilling for balance as the tripod stool kicked out from under him. One hamlike leg swept up and scythed over the widow he’d been praying with, and she swayed and crashed on top of Harrap with t
he stately, implacable grace of a felled tree, Parm sandwiched between them.
The widow bolted up with surprising agility, black veils swirling and flapping as she fled without a backward glance, a keening wail unraveling behind her. Harrap and Parm struggled, rolling and wrestling, the ghatt either locked in an embrace or captured. The ghatt yowled frantically, high and lonely, and Harrap roared colorful variations on an earthy vocabulary that had no business near the Lady’s House or coming from one her Shepherds. Harrap’s robe had ridden up, exposing a large, plump, white buttock. The total irrelevancy of her thought transfixed Doyce; the age-old question that generations of children whispered when they felt daring: What does a Shepherd wear under his robe? The answer stared her in the face, and her giggle degenerated into a choked-off moan. A new moon on the Lady’s horizon! Indeed, a full moon! Lady forgive!
Shaking her head, whimpering snorts of laughter spurting out of her, she started up the steps, placing each foot with deliberation, buying scant time to think, to control herself. Khar walked alongside, tail erect. She dared spare a thought for Barbet’s whereabouts but trusted the crowd to contain him; someone would have to pay for the damage, and he was closest to hand. Harrap had managed to sit up and tuck his robe under him for modesty’s sake; a large goose egg swelled over his left eye where he’d hit something on his way down. Parm sprawled across his lap, one of Harrap’s meaty arms pinning him in place. The ghatt’s sides rose and fell quickly, his ragged breathing audible as she reached the top step, took in the absurd tableau.
With deliberate intent the ghatt painfully twisted his head and sank his teeth into the fleshy palm pad below Harrap’s thumb.
“By the blessed butt and tits of the Lady!” Harrap’s heartfelt intonation of the oath silenced everyone in the crowd. He caught the ghatt a buffet behind the ear, then raised his hand to suck at the wound. His face slackened, then tightened, all color blanched from it, his terror palpable as shudder after shudder racked his body. “By the Lady, no! No! Not inside my head like that!” he whimpered.