by Gayle Greeno
A hand crept from under the blanket, trying to move as stealthily as a mouse. Parm’s uncovered eye watched it creep down and halt, then the fingers waggled and brushed the curve of his flank. “Are you awake, little one?” The mindvoice twittered and broke, a startled bird flushed from cover.
“Yes, my Bondmate. I am always eager to hear your voice.” He gave a little stretch and wiggle that managed to slide his head under the man’s hand, felt his ears being scratched.
“We must get new earrings,” he purred, “a pair for you and a pair for me to show we belong.”
The hand stopped scratching, held steady just above his head. “Earrings? But the Lady insists that we employ no adornment beyond our medallions. It is not fitting to bedeck oneself like that.” One finger prodded the hoop in Parm’s left ear, moved it back and forth. “Though I do admire it.”
Parm tried not to rush the words, not to overwhelm the man with his ’speaking. “I would wear a Lady’s Medal for yon, if you wanted me to, if it would make yon feel better.” .
Muffled laughter made waves through the bed, rocking and soothing the ghatt. “I don’t know what All-Shepherd Nichlaus’d think of that idea. Best not to try it.”
“But I wonid,” he protested, “I would wear that, I would do anything you wanted of me!”
“Even leave me if I asked you to, little Parm, little mindbadger burrowing through my brain?” The baritone voice echoed solemn and serious through the bleakness of night.
Parm choked, made a little wailing sound, and mewled. Then wordlessly, he slunk on his belly toward the foot of the bed, ready to slide off and be swallowed by the darkness. Cast off! Oh. by the Elders, no! Unwanted, disowned, doomed to wander without mindmate! Cursed, unfit to share a human brain! So wrong, wrong to try this! His front paws reached the foot of the bed and he readied himself to slip to the floor, run out the door, and hide deep in the woods until he died of loneliness, rejected by humans and his own kind for his failure. Reckless hands seized him around the middle, hoisted him into the air, and crushed him breathless and bruised against Harrap’s chest. Never had pain felt so good.
“I don’t care what the Lady thinks, but I don’t believe she can think badly of you, for you’re one of her creatures,” Harrap roared. “If Nichlaus tries to send you away, he sends me away as well! You are my Bond, and I—for whatever you’ll do to me, with me, for me—am yours. But, oh, little one, go slowly, because I am so very afraid of the unknown. And you certainly are that.”
Trilling so hard that his mindvoice dragonfly-fluttered, then floated steady on an updraft of love, Parm answered, “But not unknown for long!” Yet a thought nagged at him. “What would the Lady ask of me? I do not know what yon call religion, how you worship or why. But I would embrace it if it would please you. Explain to me hew and I will try!”
Harrap’s cheek sandpapered against the soft, short hairs behind his ear, then came to rest on his crown. “Well, let’s see.” Harrap considered, then continued, “First we have to have you tonsured.”
The ghatt squirmed, cracked his head under Harrap’s chin. “Tonsured?” He glared upward, unable to see any farther than the meaty underside of Harrap’s jaw, his throat. “Tonsured! They laugh at me now because of my markings!” Then he subsided, settled, heart steeled to the indignity of having his crown shaved. “But if it is what you wish, then do so.”
“Ah, poor little Parm, you’d suffer any indignity I offer you. Just as we do for Our Lady, putting others’ needs first above our own. We vow to have no other being or thing ahead of Our Lady, but perhaps She will permit you to walk beside Her. Mayhap you are one of the Lady’s mysteries, sent to me to decipher, and mayhap you are simply you. But for better or worse, we are together now and until the end.”
“Not going to shave head?” Parm whisperspoke.
“No, no tonsure, and perhaps, when I’ve thought about it, an earring or two for me, if it means so much to you. We’ll see. Now sleep, little one.”
And Parm fell asleep on Harrap’s broad chest, lulled by the gentle rise and fall of the Shepherd’s breathing, feeling safe at last.
PART FOUR
A long night and promising to be longer still, Doyce knew as she knuckled the graininess from her eyes. Lucky Khar to be able to sleep on the pommel platform, rocking unconcernedly to Lokka’s stride, while she, Doyce, played pilot and lookout. The afternoon had grown tormentingly long, the evening longer still, a drain on mind and body.
“Am too watching. Even with my eyes dosed I see more than you.” Khar thwacked Doyce’s wrist with the tip of her tail in reproval.
“Good, then you can use your tail to tickle me awake.” Doyce gave a deft tug at the twitching tail. “Now, have we done everything we should have? When do you think Bard and M’wa will reach Harrap and Parm?”
Khar resettled herself on the sheepskin padding, pulled her tail from unresisting fingers. “Soon, probably before daybreak. They’ve been given permission to cancel the circuit, so they can cut cross-country.”
Doyce had had Khar mindspeak M‘wa to report the situation to him and Bard; M’wa, in turn, would transmit the story in its entirety to Byrta and P‘wa, who would transmit it back to Headquarters, though what the Seeker General would make of the day’s astounding events she would have dearly loved to know. Georges Barbet’s defection; a second Bonding, all too fantastical for words. The Seeker General desperately needed hard facts, not suppositions, but these hard facts did nothing but engender more confusion. She’d downplayed what she’d told Khar about her previous evening’s thoughts regarding Ballen and dissection. Rationality, daylight logic told her she had jumped to unwarranted conclusions with insufficient evidence. At any rate, at least they could send a Seeker-Guidancer pair to work with Harrap and Parm. Until then, Bard and M’wa would remain at Harrap’s side, and Mahafny had promised to stay on, although Doyce fought her uneasiness at the situation. Why she should feel distrustful she wasn’t sure. Just a prickling unease that somehow a eumedico should play no part in this. Or, she struggled with the thought, tried to face it squarely, am I jealous?
“Of what?”
She forced herself to try to pin it down, to give an answer that would be true and make sense to the ghatta. “Because Mahafny belonged to my previous life, and I deserve to be beyond her sphere of influence now. Or ...” she paused, thinking, feeling the wind tumble her hair, staring off and beyond at the eight satellite moons waxing and waning in their stately dance around the Lady Moon. Harrap would reassure her that the answers would be there. “Or ... because I don’t want to share her. I don’t know anymore.”
“Mmph. Some of one, some of the other.” Khar’s tone was noncommittal.
Doyce changed the subject rather than waiting to see if the ghatta would probe any further. “Do you think Claire is mad at us, or more likely, at me?”
“She’s not well pleased, but her curiosity will hold until we see her again.”
Claire had not relished Doyce’s further instructions to take Lokka back to the inn so she could perform her afternoon’s and evening’s duties for Eli, but had admitted she had little choice. She needed the job. Only the promise that she could bring Lokka back into town along with Doyce’s gear later that evening to say good-bye had placated her. And a good thing she had returned, because in her excitement she had forgotten her yarn.
“I still don’t see why we had to push on tonight.”
“I don’t know. Obstinance, mayhap. I just felt we had to reach Kissena by morning. Tired, but I couldn’t have slept anyway, could you?” Although she felt dreamy and lulled by the ride, sleep still eluded her. Suddenly she sat bolt upright in the saddle, knees squeezing Lokka tight, panicking Khar who, in turn, nearly spooked Lokka. She soothed and apologized to them both.
“But what was Mahafny doing in Cyanberry anyway? She doesn’t travel as a eumedico any more, she’s Staff Senior at the Healing Hall at the capital!”
Looking put out, Khar resettled herself, rewrapped her
tail, and kneaded the pommel platform. “A little late to ask that now.”
The scream harrowed the air with passionate despair and utter hopelessness, hung for a long breath, puncturing the very earth, drilled through the faint, false-dawn breeze with a piercing intensity that racked mind and body. Then a convulsive shattering of sound and a leaden curtain of silence slammed into place, suffocating thought.
Every hair on her body prickled, her flesh crawling as adrenaline coursed through her, arguing for action, any action. But nothing was possible until she controlled Lokka. The mare reared skyward, and Doyce dug into her stirrups, forcing herself straight, aware of Khar pinned between her and the platform, only to feel the mare slamming down stiff-legged, trying to buck them both off. Using every iota of strength she possessed, leaning back on the reins so hard on Lokka’s soft mouth that she grimaced in sympathy, she clamped her legs tight and managed to hold Lokka steady. The mare quivered and blew as if she’d run a long race.
“What was it?” she gasped, daring to ease the reins a fraction.
“Quick! Quick! We mast follow!” Khar’s rigid form stood nearly twice its normal size, her fur needling out all over her body, her tail crooked and her ears pinned tight to her head, mouth wide in a snarl.
“Where, damn it? You still can’t see a thing off the main road! Where are we going? Calm Lokka first!”
“I will guide Lokka!”
Muscles straining, body canted forward until it appeared the ghatta might take reckless flight over the mare’s head, Khar seized control, mindspeaking Lokka into a careening gallop. Doyce held on grimly, ducking whipping branches and draping vines that tried to noose her head, praying all the while the valiant mare wouldn’t trip and fall. She was galloping full tilt, Khar exhorting her, and Doyce hadn’t the slightest idea of their direction, except that they had left the main road. False dawn, but still pitch-dark in the hardwood stand that hemmed the two-track road they had followed before veering off into a planting of long-pin pines, the air sharp with the smell of resin and the ground treacherously slick with old needles. All her energy and control evaporated, sapped by the sinking hour between dark and first dawn. She crouched in the saddle, thrust an arm to deflect a branch that she sensed more than saw in the murkiness. The branch whipped by, slapped and stung, scraping the length of her forearm.
Lokka broke from the stand of pines and rocketed across a grazing meadow, oblivious to the dangers of chuckholes and rocks. A small cottage and barn glowed gray-white in the distance, like leftover pieces from a child’s toy town, abandoned for the night.
“Too late, too late,” Khar moaned, and the flood of agony overwhelmed Doyce. “Too late from the very beginning!”
Lokka clattered to a stop outside the barn, chest pumping and light brown coat slicked dark with sweat. Khar sprang clear as the mare took a last stumbling step, and Doyce swung herself after, clinging to the pommel platform for balance as she hit the ground. The place looked forlorn and deserted, dead quiet in the early, creeping light, not even a cow lowing in anticipation of the milking, nor the early, uncertain bustle of chickens, or the lithe shadow of a hunting barn cat returning home. Belting her sword around her waist and grabbing her staff, she went toward the partially open barn door. It was then the shadow moved.
Doyce lurched to a stop, legs locking except for the tremors that coursed through them, but the ghatta stiffened, then walked ahead, ignoring the old man and the equally elderly ghatt propped against the wall. “They are not the problem. Come.”
She hesitated, then swept the lantern from the ground beside them without asking or apologizing. The old man acted drunk or in shock, never looking in her direction, one hand ceaselessly stroking the ghatt, lost in his own private thoughts. Edging to the threshold of the black rectangle of emptiness that stood out against the white siding of the barn, she paused for Khar to catch up with her, afraid to step through into the unknown. Much as it shamed her to admit it, she hoped the ghatta would enter first.
“Together?”
She nodded, exhaled through clenched teeth as she held the lantern high and to the left, away from her, and raised her sword on the diagonal to shield her body. Khar glided low and stealthy, then they both stepped inside.
Heart banging, breath fast and ragged, she felt as if she were reliving the terror of their earlier headlong ride, and her stomach roiled, sour with fear, threatened to reverse itself. Poised like a javelin about to be launched, the ghatta rippled with an unending, monotonous growl, hair standing in bristles along her spine. Holding the lantern higher, swinging it in cautious arcs, she strained to see, vision drowned in darkness and shadows.
The smell bludgeoned her very being, an odor comprised of the sickish-sweet smell of clotting blood, blood in abundance, as if she had wandered into a shambles, an abattoir; the reek of perspiration, sweat engendered by terror; and the raw, pungent odor of loosened bowels. Even her eumedico training had not prepared her for this prodigality of blood. She forced short, niggling gasps through her open mouth; waiting for her sense of smell to numb itself to the stink. An uneasy cow stamped and grunted, its eyes rolling as she swung the lantern back.
One guarded step, then another, and she saw beyond the cow’s stall a human leg jutting obscenely pale in the light, stocking ruckled down around the ankle, foot twisted in an improbable direction. Pooled blood, rapidly sinking, darkened the packed dirt floor. Clutching hard at the lantern and her sword, she tightroped one foot ahead of the other, navigating around the darker patches. Finally she peered over the partition of the stall.
A man lay still, face in a rictus of agony, an angry, oozing crushed spot jelling his right temple. She counted other body wounds aplenty, parallel slash marks that puzzled her, and deeper, gaping wounds, the obvious work of a swordsman intent on obtaining as much suffering as possible from his work before killing. He lay in a pool of blood, one hand still locked tight on a pitchfork, the shaft broken off halfway. A fat, bumbling fly, one of the last of summer, slow-witted, sated on blood, and desperate for a warm place to finish out its time, bounced and butted at Doyce, slamming into her shoulder, her cheek, the lantern. Its mindless, whining drone buzz-sawed through her, made her want to scream to drown it out.
Khar’s monotone growl rose in pitch and intensity, breaking into a cry of devastation that spanned an octave on one tortured breath. Spinning left, Doyce tilted the lantern higher, trying to locate the ghatta as her scream filled the barn to overflowing with lamentation. Khar’s eyes reflected eerie green in the lantern light, and she followed the luminescent twin beacons.
In the unsteady circle of light Khar crouched over the body of a tortoiseshell ghatt, twisted, torn, bloody, its neck at an unnatural angle, one ear nearly torn off, lips peeled back from sharp teeth. It, too, had not died an easy death. She bent down and had the doubly sickening sensation of realizing that it was a ghatta; a tiny white ghatten with gray and black patches lay inert under the ghatta’s foreleg. She stroked Khar unthinkingly, smoothing the bristling fur, and the ghatta whirled, teeth bared, aiming a reflexive strike before she mastered herself.
Desperate not to inhale the fetor, Doyce rationed herself a thimbleful of air, hungry for more. “Khar, it’s Wwar’m and Asa Brandt. I didn’t know we rode that close to their farm, you didn’t tell me where you were leading.” The words, inconsequential at best, dropped lifelessly around her.
Asa, recently retired with Wwar’m; she had attended their farewell fete two years ago. How could she not have recognized the strawberry blond hair? Easy, she knew, for Asa had been so alive: energetic, bubbly, warmhearted, suggesting perfectly sensible and absurd things in the same breath. A clear blue sky and a bright yellow sun offered occasion enough for Asa to scoop up Wwar’m and indulge in a dance of joy. No more, she thought, no more.
Khar swallowed in agitation, throat muscles straining with the effort. Her mindspeech sounded hoarse, as if her actual growls and screams had strained that as well. “Wwar‘m! Why!” And then she cock
ed her head and sprang into the farthest corner of darkness, a jumble of burlap sacking tossed by the wall where harness and various leather straps and leads were hung. She could smell the oil; Asa always took good care of things.
Breathing a prayer to the Lady, Doyce followed, until Khar’s growl of warning pulled her up short. Then she heard it, a tiny, thread-thin wail of terror as Khar hooked a guarded paw into the topmost sack. A little yellow tiger ghatten lay beneath, eyes pinched shut, body quaking, tiny claws spread wide to defend itself. She reached out for it in an agony of compassion, and Khar batted her hand away, hard. The reaction shocked her.
“No! It’s ready to ‘Print. The shock made it come early. Don’t touch!” Khar nuzzled him and received a pawful of needle-tipped claws across her nose. She tried again and the ghatten squalled, his small heart hammering frantically against his rib cage. One survivor.
“In your ‘script pouch ... larissa, mengwort, a pinch of mull bark? Do you have it?”
“I think so, I ... yes.” She mentally reviewed the necessaries she carried in her saddlebags. “An infusion?” The ghatta nodded. “But how can we get him to swallow it? And what will it do?”
“Put him to sleep until we can get him to a nursing ghatta.”
“Doyce!” The unexpected touch on her shoulder galvanized her, nearly sent her exploding straight up into the loft. She pivoted in a defensive crouch, ready to strike and kick. Where had she left her sword? Starting to dive toward the ghatta’s limp body she cursed bitterly, Fool! In the midst of danger more danger and death stalked, and now she and Khar would accompany Asa and Wwar’m and the unnamed ghatten, one barely alive and one dead, on that journey. “Doyce! It’s me, Bard!” And strong arms snaked her upright, held her tight until sagging limbs gained control. “Didn’t you hear me come in? I spoke.”