Exile's Return

by Gayle Greeno

  Anxious, eager, Barnaby planted his nose to the ground, snuffling, nostrils flaring as he trotted back and forth. Returned, nose moist with exertion, sniffed sadly behind Parm’s ear. “Seek bleak. Scent weak. Scent spent.”

  “Keep trying,” he begged, but the dog sat, stubborn.

  “No scent!” he repeated emphatically.

  “Please, Barnaby. Barnaby good dog.” Barnaby grinned his approval. Parm hated himself for it but drew himself up, looked as imposing as his bedraggled state would allow. “Parm will whip Barnaby if Barnaby doesn’t find Harrap.”

  The dog cringed, tail wagging from side to side, low and appeasing. “Farm rails, flaile? Flail Barnaby for his failings? No find in your mind?”

  “No, I need you.” His whiskers trembled. “I’d never whip you. I’m sorry, Barnaby. Barnaby’s a friend.”

  “Barnaby find,” the terrier reassured him, brow wrinkling. He began to quarter the camp, ranging wider and wider, Parm limping in his wake, head hanging, banging. By the Elders, he was beginning to sound like Barnaby! But by the Elders and the Lady that Harrap held dear, he’d make Hylan pay for this!

  By the time the sun had risen high in the sky, Parm had had to concede Barnaby was right. “No scent.” Barnaby sank his muzzle into a bucket of water by someone’s wagon, splashed and bubbled and slurped, flopped wearily in the wagon’s shade. “Harrap’s feet no beat path. No scent.”

  “No scent,” Parm agreed. No scent, no mindvoice. “But he can’t have flown away like a bird.” He heaved himself up. “Let’s go back to the goat cart, check.” It was the only place Harrap knew, the only place Parm knew where they should expect to find each other. “Barnaby’s a loyal friend.” The smell of frying sausage assailed his nose, his stomach, although Barnaby’s tail began a slow wag, his tongue hanging out. Someone had returned from the festivities for lunch, pinching pennies, not buying food from the street vendors. He wished he could cajole the person into giving Barnaby a sausage. It seemed important to show his thanks.

  A baby cried from the wagon, its cry a bolt of inspiration. He winked at Barnaby, directed him into a crouch behind the wagon wheel, and marched around the wagon rowling, weaving himself around the woman’s ankles. “My, you’re a big kitty cat,” she said, turning the sausages as the baby cried again. Parm perked up his ears at the cry, jumped into the wagon, pretending to investigate. Many women were uneasy having cats around infants, and this one was no exception, chasing after him. Parm came scooting out, a flash of orange and black and white fur, hooked a sausage from the skillet and tossed it to Barnaby. The dog snapped it in midair, gulped it. “Phewl Hot-a-lot! But good!”

  “Come on, Barnaby, back to the cart!”

  But the goat cart was deserted, Hylan and Tadj elsewhere, and no sign of Harrap. Barnaby jumped on the dropped tailgate and onto the canvas covering, started to curl up, then sniffed and sneezed. “Harrap! Harrap layer-up here!” He bounced stiff-legged. ”“Harrap not fly—lie! Lie on canvas—drag saggy mass!” With that he shot off.

  Not entirely understanding, not daring to hope, Parm followed after. Barnaby seemed confident, which was more than he was. He tried to puzzle it through: Harrap on the canvas? Why? Drag sag mass? Panic as it clicked into place—Harrap’s body had been dragged somewhere on the canvas. Was he dead—ill? “Harrap! Hear me! ’Speak me!”

  Barnaby was trotting faster now, nose to ground, confident, tail gaining speed. They dodged between tents, some of canvas, others improvised from blankets, quilts. This was where Hylan’s faithful camped, Parm thought. Looping around a tent, Barnaby came to a halt. “Harrap canvas scent, canvas scent tent,” he announced proudly. “Harrap nap.” With a trembling paw, Parm hooked back the tent flap. And inside was Harrap.

  With the gentlest of questing nose flickers, Parm sniffed along Harrap’s face, breathed in his ear, touched eyelids, moved down to test at nose and mouth, practically reeling from the stench, the scent of Hylan’s seasoning exuding from his breath, his very sweat, a miasma of it.

  Abruptly Barnaby sat, dug a hind foot behind a brown ear, his whole head shaking, jowls flopping. “Wake make?” he inquired, shifting his foot behind a shoulder blade. “Make wake? No wake?”

  “No wake,” Parm agreed sadly. “I can’t make him wake up, he’s even worse than I was.”

  “No sick trick, make head less thick?”

  “I can’t make him sick if I can’t wake him up.” His body rumbled with purrs and he willed the vibrations to stop. He could never understand how or why the ghatti purred when they were hurt or afraid; it seemed contrary to such a state of distress.

  In turn and in tandem the dog and ghatt spent the afternoon fruitlessly attempting to rouse Harrap to consciousness. Even Barnaby’s chill nose had little effect, other than to elicit an occasional moan or quiver from Harrap. Barnaby at last threw himself across Harrap’s shins, exhausted. “Mind find?” he yawned.

  “It doesn’t work any more. It’s not me, but Harrap’s got too much of the drug in him to hear me, I think.” He settled on Harrap’s chest, disconsolate.

  “More again,” Barnaby urged. “Mind roar, can’t ignore Try,” he cajoled. “Barnaby tried. Barnaby found.”

  More to avoid disappointing the terrier than from any hope of success, Parm tried again. “Harrap! Harrap, my beloved Bond, listen to me!” A slight movement gave him hope. “Listen to me, I need you. It’s important!”

  Harrap’s head made little searching circling motions, tousling his sweaty hair. “Oh, wonder ... wondrous, wonderful raptures,” he whispered aloud, “the very world ... speaks to me now that ... Our Lady has spoken. Oh, Blessed Lady to have ... revealed all this to me, her humble servant!” He fumbled at his chest for his golden Lady’s Medallion, seemed to gain strength. “Oh, Blessed Lady, let your Disciples speak to me, let the whole world speak to me now that I have ears to hear.”

  “It isn’t the ...” Parm almost stumbled, said “bloody,‘ ”Blessed Lady or her world you’re hearing, it’s me—Parm.” Indignation raised him practically on tiptoe as he shoved and jammed his head under Harrap’s chin. ”I’ve been ’speaking you for a long time now, how could you mistake me?“ And why did such maunderings as wonder wondrous, wonderful raptures have a faint, embarrassing echo in his own brain? Damn Hylan and her seasonings those drugs that had robbed them both of their will and rea son!

  “Reason-seasoning,” Barnaby whined almost guiltily.

  “Parm?” the switch to Harrap’s mindvoice was as rusty and tentative as a speaker testing a foreign language learnec long ago and unused for years. “Nice Parm, nice ghatti. ”

  “Ghatt, Harrap, there’s only one of me.” Well, at leas Harrap had the name straight. “Listen to me. Hylan’s been drugging you, drugging us. She’s up to something she doesn’t want us to know about. We’ve got to get away report to Saam.”

  “No, oh, no,” Harrap’s head thrashed on the pillow. “Hylar is the reincarnation of the Lady, I know that now, though don’t know how ... I could have been so blind. Whatever She does is for the good of us all, Her beneficence shines ... on u like the sun and rain make the flowers ... grow. Lady Hylan Lady Hylan,” he sang and the booming, joyous baritone tha Parm loved so well was cracked and husky, barely there Harrap’s eyes flickered closed again.

  “Harrap, I cannot lie, I ‘speak truth, you know that. am ghatti and we ’speak the truth. You can’t have forgot ten that, can you?” Parm felt as if the world were spinning under him, ready to throw him aside, unable to hang on any longer.

  From wherever he’d been, Harrap painfully climbed back “Oh, you ’speak the little ... truths, the truths of the earth but Our Lady Hylan speaks the truth of the universe, the im mutable, unchanging glorious verity of Her existence, He care over Her children! My head resounds with the glory o it all. Resounds ...” breathless, he sank into unconsciousnes again.

  Unable to bear any more, Parm skittered out of the teni desperate to lose himself in the dark, find a private place to think things t
hrough. The. running felt good, made him tern porarily forget that Harrap had cast him off in favor o Hylan—or was he abandoning Harrap by running like this? Barnaby scurried after him, twiglike legs and dainty paws a blur. It struck him then and he blurted, “Saam, I’ve got to contact Saam! He’ll know what to do, he can ask Mahafny. Why didn’t I think of it before?” But he’d been so muddled with apprehension and fear, the residual effects of the drug leaching out of his system, that the obvious, the logical, hadn’t pertained.

  “Who Saam?” Barnaby panted plaintively. “Saam who? Better-getter, better companion than Barnaby?”

  “No, Barnaby, you’re a good friend, best, best friend.” For a moment he feared the terrier would roll with joy. “But Saam’s clever, thinks from afar, thinks of things Barnaby and Parm can’t because we’re busy worrying about Harrap”

  “And Hylan” Barnaby insisted.

  With a scramble Parm shot up an elm, the best vantage point he could find, leaving Barnaby below, leaping and snapping in frustration. He steadied his heaving sides, oriented himself to the north toward the lavender mountains in the distance, and cast his mind out. Again and again he cast, but there was nothing. Had Saam left the Hospice? He swung wider, searching for any trace of the mindnet, but unless Mem‘now and the others were ’speaking in this direction, it would be almost impossible to alert them to his need. Nothing. His head sank on the branch, so limp with woe that he almost blended with the bark. Then he sat up with a scrabble and grab that barely retained his place.

  Fool, fool, a thousand times fool! With this many people gathering in Ruysdael, there must be at least one Seeker Bond-pair somewhere near. Even without a gathering of this sort—was the king truly coming?—Ruysdael was a regular stop on Seeker circuits. Usually a pair passed through every other day. He began to comb the surrounding area, every fiber of his being alert, trilling out a general distress call, invoking the Elders to strengthen him and come to his aid.

  Bard shouldered his way between stalls and booths, up and down streets, ceaselessly searching. M’wa prowled a quick, efficient path along the next packed aisle. That way they could cover twice as much ground. The colored lanterns bobbed, cast their eerie glows like a magic spell, transmuted the familiar into the unfamiliar, changing faces and forms into surreal, gyrating shapes. “Any sign?” He was increasingly nervous.

  “No, nothing.”

  He veered back to the ribbon booth where he’d left Lindy after extracting her solemn promise to stay put, wait for him. He’d thought she’d find enough to admire there, be content waiting, but obviously something else had captivated her and she’d drifted away. He’d spied the gold chain with the cat pendant at a booth they’d passed earlier, had made careful note of it. The cat was chunky, broader than it ought to be, inadvertently ghattilike, which made it even more perfect. Touching his breast pocket, he could hear the tissue rustle, feel the lump of the pendant under his finger.

  The crowds were more restless now, harder and harder to move logically, methodically through them, but he tried, asking as he went. “Have you seen ... ?” “Have you seen ....?” And each time the answer was no. No, they hadn‘t, or no, they didn’t remember, it wasn’t always clear. “M’wa? Anything?”

  “No. I think she was over here by this raised stage. I can almost catch her scent. ” The ghatt sounded harried, as flustered and frustrated as he felt. “But there’s no one here to ask.” And by that Bard knew that M’wa meant mindspeak, ready to enter a strangers’s brain uninvited if it would aid in finding Lindy.

  “Wait!” He could feel M’wa’s shock, his intensity of focus as if the ghatt were beside him.

  “You’ve found her?” Joy, relief flooded him. And an overpowering desire to paddle her fanny for disobeying him.

  “No. Parm just ’spoke me! There’s trouble. Harrap’s here and Parm’s terrified, thinks Harrap’s dying. He wants us to come.”

  Bard scowled, frightening two elderly women with his savagely warped expression. “But we have to find Lindy!” How could he desert Lindy? She’d be waiting for him somewhere, more and more frightened because he and M’wa weren’t there. And when it dawned on her that she was alone, adrift, she’d panic.

  “We will, we will, but she’ll have to amuse herself without us a little longer.” M’ wa pressed harder. “Would you deny Harrap, let him die?”

  “M’wa, it’s Parm saying that—Parm. Think about it, it can’t be that bad. You know he always exaggerates, embroiders a tale to death.” Death, why had he said that word?

  “He’s not exaggerating, and even when he does, he ’speaks truth—must! If you won’t come, I’ll go alone.”

  “All right, all right, I’m coming!” He shouldered himself around, oriented toward M’wa’s mindvoice. Naturally it meant he was traveling against crowds streaming toward the city limits to welcome the king.

  “Parm says bring salt!”

  “Salt?” There, proof-positive Parm wasn’t making sense.

  “Yes, as an emetic. Harrap’s been poisoned.”

  Poisoned? Bard saw an opening and plowed through the temporary gap, searched for the next one, gave up, and rammed his way ahead. Where was he going to find salt? Not to mention Lindy?

  “She’s not a princess! I was wrong.” Wrists tied to the cart’s wheel rim, Lindy sat cross-legged, rested her head against the wheel. Davvy knelt opposite her, similarly bound, restlessly bouncing his hands between two spokes. His jacket shoulder was ripped, and a dirt-encrusted scrape glowed a raw, ugly red over his right eyebrow.

  “It’s all right,” he reassured her in hushed tones, glancing toward where Tadj and Hylan sat in front of the fire. “Anybody from the country would have thought that. Not everyone’s seen them like I have.” Grabbing a spoke, he tested it at hub and rim, but it was tight. Pitch-dark now, but the moons’ glow on her hair gilded it with strands of starlight. “ ’Sides, you were awful brave to bite that old Hylan when she wouldn’t let go of you to come help me. Smerdle, you should’ve seen her face!”

  “Smerdle?” She tilted her head so the moonlight caught her brow, “What’s smerdle mean? Sounds like one of the words my pa’d cane Jo for using.”

  “That’s the beauty of it. Doesn’t mean a thing, but it sounds bad. Sometimes a man’s gotta let out his frustrations, but a gentleman wouldn’t use improper words in front of—umph!—a lady.” The spoke below showed no more sign of budging than the one above.

  “That’s what that man, that Tadj, should have said when you threw him after he grabbed you! ’Stead of what he did.” Her giggle formed a trailer of mist in the cold night air.

  “Well, I’da had him fair and square, but then, trying to get that old Hylan separated from you, I didn’t watch my back. Stupid. You’ve got to watch everything, not get distracted.”

  “Know what’s funny?” She tapped his foot with hers. “I think I’ve met you in my dreams. Not you, exactly, but someone who knows you, is looking for you. A pregnant woman and a stripped ghatta, she’s pregnant, too. They’re both going to have twins. She’s been calling for you, looking worried.” He cocked his head to one side, a fixed, wary regard in his eyes. “That’s why, when I heard your name, I knew you must be nice.” She shrugged. “Of course, I dream a lot, and since I’m to help a woman who’s having a baby soon, I suppose it’s not unusual. Bard’s taking me to her.”

  “Is her name Doyce Marbon?”

  An excited head bob. “Yes, do you know her? You must know everybody.”

  “What’s she look like in your dream, the dream-Doyce?” How could Lindy know Doyce was having twins? He’d hoarded that bit of information, shared it with no one. Would Bard know? Being as he was a twin perhaps it was possible, but had he told Lindy?

  Frowning, she tried to describe the dream woman. “Not real big, not a lot taller than you. Not plain, but not gorgeous, could be prettier if she tried. Brown hair that’s fairly short with reddish highlights in it. Nice hazel eyes, shrewd but funny. And the ghatta’s lovely, stripe
s almost like a bull’s-eye, a pink nose against the white.” She looked through Davvy, not at him, “I think I’ll like them. I hope that’s what they look like, because Bard isn’t good at describing people.”

  “Hush!” he kicked her calf to bring her back to herself, mimed silence as best he could. “Someone’s come.”

  They heard Tadj’s exclamation of delight, the thumping slaps that men make when they embrace. “You came, after all.”

  The other voice was richly melodious, the kind you’d trust. “When your note reached me, I had to. And this, I take it, is Hylan Crailford. Madam, I’m at your service, in your debt.” Davvy strained to see, but they’d moved so the only thing visible was three pairs of legs.

  A sound like someone kissing air, and he could see Hylan step backward, a disgusted grunt bursting from her. “Who are you?” she snapped. “I can barely see you in this light. Strangers trying to kiss my hands. I don’t insist the faithful do that.”

  “My name’s not important, my lady. Just my devotion.”

  Hylan shuffled uneasily. “Tadj, I’m going now. I’ll leave the lambs in your charge, bring them along a little later.”

  The makeshift campgrounds were nearly deserted, the majority of the people off in the city proper, jostling for places to see the royal progress. But perhaps a hundred or more, Davvy couldn’t be sure how many, flowed after Hylan as she stalked away from the cart, flowed after her like water coursing downstream, their faces rapturous at being permitted to follow. He didn’t know what to make of it. What was it about that old Hylan, wrapped in her-cloak, her hair straggly, that gave her such a profound authority, an ability to hold people in her sway? Left him with a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, though it might have been the sausage he’d eaten earlier. Something enormously wrong about her, and not just that her mind twisted different from most people’s. Not evil, exactly, he grappled with the thought, but warped, distorted. It might be bad, but that was the last thing she meant to be, too earnest for that. And that odd tune she was humming as she strode away, “DA-de-Da DA-DE-DA ...”