by Clayton, Jo;
The Kauna elders pressed the onlookers back until they were a thick sludge around the edges of the square where they squatted patiently, eyes on the little group by the tower. Aleytys nodded her satisfaction with the efforts of the elders then focused her attention once more on Riyda.
“Help me to help you, Riyda,” she murmured. She reached out to touch the woman.
Riyda jerked her head away. “Help you.…” Anger fought with fear. “Help you? When you’ve stolen everything from me?”
“You know that’s not true.” Aleytys reached toward her again but Riyda knocked the hand away. “Do you really want to be outcast?”
“I want nothing from you.”
Pukili ground the end of his staff in Riyda’s ribs, drawing a grunt of pain from her. “Ungrateful bitch. You waste your time on her, si’a gikena.”
“Get back,” Aleytys exploded. “Fool! This is none of your concern. Back off and let me do what I must.”
Offended and a little frightened, Pukili retreated and stood frowning sourly at the two women.
Aleytys ignored him and spoke softly, soothingly to Riyda. “I am healer, woman. Hate is a sickness in you that is destroying you. Let me give you peace, Riyda.” She reached out again.
“Don’t be afraid, Riyda. Let me help you. Look at me. Look into my face. See me, my poor wounded one.…” She crooned the words over and over until Riydal was staring dazedly at her. Slowly, carefully, she extended her hands until she touched the woman on the temples. Sliding her fingers around she pressed the palms of her hands on the woman’s sweaty forehead.
She closed her eyes and let the black water flow through her fingers to wash over Riyda’s sick and aching brain. Not knowing what to do, where to guide the flow she let it splash at random until the current began to race in a roaring torrent around a glowing thing like a hard cancerous knot. Around and around the black water rushed, eating away at the knot, eating and eating until at last the knot was gone. The torrent slowed to a trickle.
Aleytys opened her eyes feeling her heart thudding, her body shaking with exhaustion. Riyda lay flat on the pavement writhing slowly in small animal twitches, the intelligence drained from her face leaving it ugly, shapeless, inhuman. Sighing, weary to the marrow of her bones, Aleytys rocked up onto her knees and touched Riyda’s shoulder. “Little one, it’s a new world for you. Open your eyes and look at it.”
Riyda moaned as she opened her eyes. Stiffly she pushed herself onto her knees until she could straighten her back and face Aleytys. After a minute, she spread her open hand over her heart. A timid tentative smile twitched at her full lips. “It’s gone,” she murmured.
Aleytys stumbled to her feet and held out her hands. Catching hold of Riyda’s she pulled her erect.
Riyda looked around. When she saw the avid greedy eyes of her friends and relatives, dark blood flooded her face. She pressed her hands against her face. “I’m so ashamed. Ay-gikena, I’m so ashamed.”
“No need, little one.” Aleytys put her arm around Riyda’s, trembling shoulders. “That was the hate. Don’t worry, you’ve got a home still. Loahn wants you to hold house for him while he serves me. You don’t need to fear him either, I’ll take care of that.”
“How can I look at him after what I did? And them.…” She waved a frantic hand at the people in the square. “They all know.”
“Think this: Any one of them might have done the same. Koen, help me with her.” Aleytys tugged at Riyda, pulling her toward the caravan. Stavver slid down and together they got the stumbling weeping woman up the back stairs into the caravan and laid her down on the mattress.
For a minute Aleytys leaned back against Stavver, his hard healthy flesh a healing anodyne for her tattered spirit He wrapped his arms around her and held her with quiet affection. “All right now, Leyta?”
“Life keeps getting more complicated,” she sighed. “Well, let’s get back to those idiots outside.”
“Think about this, love. When we get to Loahn’s place you can have your bath.”
Chapter IX
On the way to the house Olelo murmured in her ear, “The first task is done, sister.”
“Oh, is it then?” She eyed the bouncing rumps of the trotting horses. “So. What’s the second?”
“A little thing.”
Aleytys snorted skeptically. “And what is that little thing?”
“You are to curse the city Karkys and drive the Karkiskya off Lamarchos.”
PART II
Chapter I
Karkys rode the ridge, a heavy, basalt lump dark and massive against the whorls and streaks of pastel tints that made the sky a delicate wonder. Behind the city the ridge flattened into tableland where a number of slender needles were partially visible. Star ships. Beyond this the western horizon broke into gradually increasing waves of land until a wall of mountains melted dim and blue into the multicolored sky streaked with the hordes of aerial bacteria until it resembled a circus tent. As they came closer the clouds of dust from the unpaved road swirled up from beneath the hooves and wheels and feet to throw a softening veil over the harsh contours of the city.
Aleytys wiped the rag across her face, scrubbing away briefly the mixture of sweat and dust that prickled like nettles against her skin. “What a mess.”
“Soon over.” Stavver brushed fastidiously at his arms and frowned at the mob of humanity surrounding them. “We could do with a bit fewer bodies.”
Aleytys laughed, then regretted it as the clogging dust swelled into her mouth. She spat, then spat again. “Phahh! I get your point. But we’ll be lost among them.”
“I’d settle for a thinner cover.” He sneaked the rag off her lap and scrubbed at his face. “I haven’t seen Loahn for a while. You send him off somewhere?”
“You were sleeping. He went ahead when we were way back down there. To get us a good place to camp. I sent Olelo with him to keep him out of trouble. With that stubble on his head someone’d probably try to kill him as outcast.”
“Mmmmm.”
A man on horseback trotted past, glanced curiously at them then vanished in the dust pall. Slowly, in a painfully drawn-out creeping forward, the line of wagons and complaining herds and plodding packtrains wound up the hillside. The noise was appalling.
The massive walls loomed higher and higher as they crept near.
“Formidable.” Aleytys raised her brows. “The four of us are supposed to get around that?”
Stavver shook his head. “That pile of stone isn’t where the difficulty lies.” He leaned forward peering through the eddying dust. “The pinch is in the electronic gear concealed in those walls. The scanners by the gate will be taking apart everything that passes them. That’s why my tools sit in Maissa’s Vryhh-box. One smell of them.…” He laughed then spat in his turn, grunting in disgust.
Aleytys stared fascinated at the looming gate. Then she shook her head. “Anything more complicated than a crossbow makes my head ache.”
“Leave it to me, mountain girl. That’s my business. Why I’m here.” He yawned, shielding his mouth with a hand, then stretched and groaned. “Another hour of this at least.”
“Ahai, Miks, seems like a year to go.”
He glanced at the sun’s glow spot. “Since we started the climb at sunup, that’s not so long.”
“It’s just seeing the thing so close and not being about to get there.” She frowned and jerked her head toward the caravan behind. “Maissa. How’s she taking the crawl?”
“She’s a cat in her fastidiousness but she can take anything she has to when it helps her get what she wants. Her temper won’t be at its best.” He chuckled. “Not that it’s ever much to depend on.”
Aleytys frowned at the bobbing tails of the horses. “I understand now, Miks, what you meant about not knowing what she’d do next. She’s crazy.”
“No.”
“Huh?”
“She functions. Her values are skewed at a wide angle from ours. In some societies that’s the definiti
on of insanity. But …”
“I should think so.”
Stavver shook his head. “On Immat’kri the children kill their elders when the old ones reach a certain age and eat them with tenderness and love.”
“Tenderness!”
His eyes were narrowed on her, his spine curved in an indolent arc as he leaned against the seat back. “It’s their way. If you judged sanity by social norms, would you be the sane one there?” He nodded at the dusty anonymous forms crowding in around them. “Even here. If you weren’t gikena, you’d be crazy to expect a man to take notice of what you thought. Maissa functions with a measure of success causing minimal damage in the society she chooses. What more do you want?”
“Ahai, Miks, it makes me dizzy.”
He smiled. “You’ll get used to it, Lee. Besides it’s not too likely you’ll have to spend much time on any one world. But when you set foot off Star Street, you play by groundlings’ rules if you’re smart. Otherwise you’ll be dead. Fast.”
Aleytys sighed. “Complicated.”
He wrapped long fingers around her hands, the warmth of his flesh comforting on hers. An angry wail came from behind the curtains. Stavver took the reins from her. “Your master calls.”
She stood and stretched, keeping her balance with the ease two weeks of riding had developed in her. Then she slipped around the seat and through the curtain.
A fine layer of dust lay over every flat surface. Aleytys pulled a clean rag from a drawer and dabbed at her breasts with it. Dropping the rag over her shoulder she picked up the baby and settled cross-legged on the bunk, back against the wall.
“Dirty face,” she murmured affectionately. She wiped the red and angry face with firm fingers. “Hungry, Sharli, Sharl-mi? One minute, one minute. Don’t rush me, dirty face. There. That’s better.” She lifted him to her breast, smiling dreamily as he began a vigorous sucking, hands and feet kneading at her body. She ran caressing fingers over the small head regretting briefly the shimmering coppery red of his natural hair, chuckling softly at his intense concentration on filling his belly. “You’re going to be a survivor too, tough guy. Like your mother. Only better, you won’t have the kinks in your soul.”
“You finished in there?” Stavver’s muffled voice interrupted her musing. “We’re getting to the gate.”
Aleytys slid off the mattress and removed her breast from Sharl. Holding his protesting squirming body against her shoulder, she worked her way around to the driving seat. When she was settled, she scrubbed her other breast and put him to suck. “That was fast.”
“Faster than I expected.”
Presenting this calm domestic image the caravan rolled unhurriedly past the hidden scanners. They were in Karkys. Minutes later Miassa’s caravan rumbled onto the pavement inside the gates. Aleytys sighed. “So we made it. It’s a little hard to believe.”
“My admiration for the Vrya grows every day. I wonder what Maissa peddled for those favors.”
“Why not ask her? I wonder where my eager acolyte got to. We need to know where to go.”
Stavver pointed with the whip. “I think we’ll find out in a minute.”
The boy rode toward them, picking his way cautiously through the noisy miscellany flooding into the city. He maneuvered his excited mount around until he was riding beside Aleytys.
“You’re looking cheerful,” she shrieked at him, the incredible clamor trapped between the walls making normal conversation unworkable. “Did you find a good spot?”
He nodded. “Next to the wall where the stream goes under. Water for the horses. Makes it cool too. Trees for shade. The family Peleku clan Fox hold it for us honored to have gikena as neighbor.”
Stavver lifted an eyebrow. “Where’s the speaker?”
“I left it with Puki. A girl. She’s keeping ground clear for us.”
Stavver grinned at him, one man to another. “Where to?”
“Straight ahead. I found a short cut. Turn right two streets on. Watch where I go.” He kneed the horse to a faster walk.
Stavver slapped the reins on the horses’ backs, urging them out of their tired amble, edging them out of the main stream of traffic toward the right side of the wide street.
Aleytys settled the baby in her lap then passed the rag over her face and breasts. “Ayee, Miks,” she screamed. “At least the dust is behind us. But the noise!”
Stavver didn’t try to answer, just nodded. The iron-rimmed wheels rumbled over the neat stone pavement. Horses tramped, whinnied, squealed. Excited adolescents shrilled banalities. Adults called greetings to acquaintances and clansmen. A small herd of pihayo bellowed their resentment at the prods of the drovers that forced them over the sterile stone in spite of their thirst and hunger. The whole kaleidoscope of sound was sucked in and amplified by the blank-faced buildings, the interminable walls rising twenty meters sheer and unornamented, acting as reflectors for the melange of noise bombarding them.
Holding Sharl against her, protecting his ears with her hand, Aleytys leaned over to Stavver. “What’s in the houses? I thought the Karkiskya stuck to their own quarter.”
“Visitors. Off-world traders from other Companies.”
The second street opened out. The tail of Loahn’s roan vanished around the corner. When Stavver followed him, the noise began rapidly abating. Aleytys looked curiously around. The walls rising on either side of this narrow alley were lower, with thick greenery visible, a hint of trees growing in hidden gardens.
“Why aren’t others coming this way?” Aleytys glanced over her shoulder but Maissa’s was the only caravan rumbling behind them.
“Loahn said it was a shortcut. Probably they don’t know about it.”
Loahn rode placidly ahead, his horse’s tail switching like a metronome. He didn’t bother to look back to see if they were following but sat relaxed and indolent in the saddle, whistling some lilting song with a strong beat to it. After winding around a few shallow curves, the street opened out into a wide campground already teeming with people who bustled about like ants from a spilled anthill.
Loahn threaded his way through the laughing chattering crowd, still whistling nonchalantly. Where the wall loomed over a scrabbly bunch of trees, he pulled his horse to a stop and slid off. A slender girl, Olelo cradled in her arms, moved out of the shadows and smiled up at him. Line patterns of dancing foxes pranced in twin ranks from her breasts to her shoulders and twin fox masks, delicate tracery in blue, lifted and fell coquettishly with her smile. The speaker curled happily on her breast, eyes half-closed in bliss as her small fingers searched through his fur.
“Did you have any trouble holding for us?” He started walking to the water with the girl, the horse pacing beside him.
She laughed, a joy-filled carefree sound that sent quivers through him and made him smile in response. “Two came.” Her small straight nose wrinkled in disgust. “One was really dreadful. I’m glad he won’t be next to us. He wasn’t going to leave even when I told him gikena had claimed. He just laughed. But Olelo, he stood up and told the creep to move off before his horse fell dead tinder him. He turned the color of lye-ash and went off so fast he nearly ran into the wall there.” She looked back, eyes fixed on Aleytys. “Is she the gikena, the one with the baby?”
Loahn nodded. “Lakoe-heai call her sister.”
“Ah.” The girl’s eyes opened wide.
Stavver pulled the caravan around and backed it under the trees, slanting it at an angle. Kale did likewise so that the two wagons enclosed a triangular space of ground giving the campers a measure of privacy. While the two men began to unharness the teams, Aleytys settled the baby back into his sleeping drawer after shaking the dusty blankets out the back door. Grimly silent, Maissa took a bucket to one of the crude taps to fetch water for washing. Aleytys came out and stood on the back steps.
“Si’a gikena …”
Aleytys ran her hand through her filthy hair and smiled at Loahn. “It’s a good place. Thanks, Loahn.” She nodded to the girl.
“Is this the one who held the place for us?”
“Yes, si’a gikena.” His voice was respectful, but there was an impudent twinkle in his eyes.
Olelo chattered excitedly and began kneading Puki’s arm with nervous pricking feet. She sighed and reluctantly lifted the small animal out from her body. “The speaker was much help.”
Aleytys laughed as she took Olelo back. He scrambled up her arm and settled contentedly beside her ear. She touched him lightly and smiled at the pretty girl. “What’s your name, my dear?”
“Pukipala Peleku’s daughter clan Fox, si’a gikena.” She dipped her head in a shy but graceful bow.
“And I am Lahela gikena, Puki. No doubt this one’s named himself.” She jerked a thumb at the grinning Loahn. “But may I present to you Loahn Arahn’s son, clan Hawk holder of clan Poaku, owner of a hundred horses, a thousand pihayo now serving gikena by his own will until she sends him home to his people.”
Puki opened her dark eyes wide and dipped into a bow of exaggerated reverence while Loahn shouted with laughter. “My father bid me say you will be welcome at our fire, gikena Lahela,” she said when she got her composure back.
“Give him my thanks, Puki, but not tonight. I’m tired and dirty and certainly not fit for company.” She glanced over her shoulder at the other three puttering about setting up camp. “Loahn, is there a bathhouse around?” She shuddered. “I stink.”
He shook his head. When Puki tugged at his arm, he turned with an impatient frown. “I know where it is,” she said quickly. “I have to get leave from my father first, but then I’ll show you.”
Aleytys sighed with pleasure. “Another thing I have to thank you for, young Puki. Loahn, would you arrange for me? The baby too. And the others if you can get room.” She stretched and yawned almost dislodging the speaker. “To be clean again after that dust!”
Puki ran off. They could see her talking excitedly with a stocky grey-haired man standing beside a small fire. After a minute he nodded and she came flying back. “My father says yes but will you be sure nobody bothers me, Loahn, he doesn’t trust anybody here but a gikena is different.”