by Clayton, Jo;
“Yeah. Promote.” She sighed, ran her hand through her tangled hair. Flies were crawling noisily over the stiff body of the speaker sending a shiver of disgust through her. Then she shrugged off the oppressive distaste, recognizing in the ugly swarm the natural and necessary process of decay and rebirth. She closed her eyes. Rider, she thought, help me.
As calm grew within her she noted something else. It was too quiet outside. The cheerful clamor of the close-packed campground was stilled for some reason. Hastily she wrapped the bloodstained flannel around Olelo’s body and carried him out through the back curtains.
Silent frowning Lamarchans stood in shifting groups, each family or sept group drawn apart from the others, all watching intently three grey cloaked figures as they stalked from camp to camp, searching the caravans, speaking briefly to the people, then moving on, winding a complex path through the camps. By the time Aleytys stepped down onto the ground, they had worked with formidable frightening patience half way through the throng. She bit her lip, looked down at the bloody bundle in her arms, then back at the approaching Karkiskya.
Stavver came up leading a pair of horses. “Puki had them by the stream. Doesn’t look like we’re going anywhere, though.” He wound the lead-rein around the spokes of a wheel. “Keep your cool, Lee.”
“You think they’re looking for the poaku?”
“Probably.” He nodded at Olelo’s body. “I don’t think it would be a good idea to bury anything right now.”
“What?” She glanced down, vaguely startled. “Oh.” She placed the bloody bundle on the steps then stood beside Stavver. “Well, they won’t find poaku here.” She swung around, her shoulder knocking into him. “Maissa wouldn’t.…”
“Not a chance. She’s not stupid.”
Aleytys sighed and relaxed against him. “I don’t know, Miks. She hates both of us.”
“But she wouldn’t leave a clue like that behind, Leyta,” he said patiently. “It wouldn’t take them an hour to run her down if they had reason to suspect her.”
“Oh. What do you think happens when they finish searching?”
He shrugged. “They question us, I suppose.”
“Miks?”
“What?”
“You. Even with that dye-job you don’t look much like a Lamarchan.”
He smiled down at her. “Every soma-group has its extremes. Besides, Lee, the more you keep their eyes on you, the less they’ll look at me.”
“I can do that all right.” She spread out her fingers, contemplating the backs of her hands. “Yes.”
“Don’t do anything silly, Lee.” Stepping back so that he could see her face, he frowned uneasily. “You’ll be doing the talking.” He pulled a finger down her cheek. “Keep your head. What’re you going to say if they ask you about Maissa?”
She closed her eyes, her loss suddenly piercing through the insulation she’d wrapped about her nerves. Trembling all over she fought for control.
“Lee—”
“No. No …” She opened her eyes, willing the tears back. “I’m all right. Never mind, Miks. I know what to tell them.”
“He’ll make it, Lee.”
“I now.” She sighed and brushed the back of her hand across her aching eyes. “We’ll find them. The diadem will help.”
“Think about this too. We need Maissa.”
“To get us off this world.” She leaned against him once again, watching the three Karkiskya working closer to them. “But there’s something you should know, Miks.”
Exasperation sharpened his voice. “What now?”
“I’m about to defy the Lakoe-heai. I’m supposed to curse the city, drive the Karkiskya off Lamarchos.”
“What?”
“I’m not going to do it, Miks. I can’t. From what you told me, from what I’ve seen myself, the Karkiskya aren’t bad for this world. And what would take their place?”
He frowned and pushed her around so he could see her face.
“You think I’ve cracked.” She rested her hands on his arms. “Poor Miks Stavver. Only comfortable with the things he can see and hold.” She ran her hands up his arms then clasped them behind his back, leaning her cheek against his chest. “In a way, I envy you.” She tightened her grasp holding herself tight against him. “I’m glad you’re here, Miks. God, I’m glad you’re here.”
He stroked her hair, moving his hands over the curve of her skull and neck. Then his hands stilled. “Lahela, someone wants to talk to you.”
Aleytys moved away from him, rubbed her hands once again across her eyes, then turned to see Puki biting her lip and fidgeting from foot to foot.
“Puki?”
“Si’a gikena, Loahn asked me to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“That he couldn’t wake you, that he kept the woman Leyilli from taking both teams, that she only gave in because she didn’t want a lot of noise over here, that he let her go because he didn’t think you’d want a fuss either, that he’s going to follow her to see where she goes and will come back and tell you as soon as he finds out.”
Involuntarily Aleytys chuckled, smiling down into the breathless excited face of the girl. “You’re wondering why I let this happen to me, aren’t you. I can’t explain, Puki.” She looked up. The three grey figures were approaching Peleku’s camp. “Quickly. Get back to your father. What you’ve just told me is nobody’s business but mine, though you can tell your father if you need to. Do you understand?”
With a frightened nod, Puki wheeled and ran back to her family.
“Well.” Aleytys sat down on the step beside the speaker’s body. “That tells us what happened to Loahn.”
Stavver laughed, a short barking sound. “The fatal spell.”
“What?” She tilted her head to see his face. “What are you talking about?”
“Your lovers come to sticky ends. I wonder what’s in store for me.”
“Don’t talk nonsense. I thought you didn’t believe in spells.”
“I’m learning.”
“No!” She jerked her head away and stared at the ground. With a sudden swift movment she kicked the sand beneath her feet into an explosion of small particles. “Haven’t I got enough on my head without that, Miks? You’re wrong anyway. He’s bound to Puki and you know it. Me, I was just pleasure taken on the wing.” She kicked the sand up again and listened to it sing as it struck the earth. “He knows this world. He knows how to go.”
Stavver grunted. She felt his disbelief and turned her back on him angrily.
The long grey figures stopped in front of them. One spoke. “You are?”
Aleytys straightened her back proudly. “I am Lahela gikena and Keon serves me.” She used the polite forms indicating converse between equals.
“What is the bundle? There is blood there.”
“The body of an animal.” She unwrapped the speaker far enough so they could see the matted fur.
“Why is it dead?”
“By the will of Lakoe-heai.”
“Why did you come to Karkys?”
“By the will of Lakoe-heai.”
“There were three others in your party. Where are they?”
“I don’t know.”
“When did they leave?”
“Early this morning.”
“Why did they leave?”
“By the will of Lakoe-heai.”
“A gikena is said to be a healer.”
“I have healed.”
“Heal this then.” He took a black rod from somewhere inside his robes and touched a stud. The flesh charred along Stavver’s arm. The thief gasped with pain and fell beside the steps, writhing on the dusty earth.
Angry and frightened Aleytys knelt beside him. His pain distracted her from her fury. She reached out, dipped fingers into the black water, felt it surge through her focussing body and splash out from her onto the charred wound. Stavver screamed with pain as she touched the raw flesh.
The Karsk radiated surprise and even awe as h
e watched the destroyed flesh flake away and the new flesh spread until it filled the wound with pinkly-pale growth. She pulled her hands away and jumped to her feet, her body between him and Stavver. “Keon,” she said sharply. “Get up. Go inside.”
Head down, eyes averted, the healed arm pressed against his side to hide the streak of too-pale flesh, Stavver stumbled up the stairs and disappeared through the curtains.
The dominant member of the Karkesh trio turned to the others. “Any reading?”
Aleytys heard the alien words, not understanding what was said, then the automatic translator in her head crashed open with a thunderous ache that threatened to blow her head apart. When the pain cleared she understood but took care to keep her face blank so she wouldn’t betray that understanding.
The second Karsk said calmly, “No, maistre. The caravan is clean.”
The first turned back so that the darkness under the cowl faced Aleytys. “There is no need to search your wagon, si’a gikena. In one hour line up with the others by the gateway there. You will be questioned by the searcher of souls.”
Aleytys nodded briefly and watched as they moved off along the wall repeating the questions and the search with each caravan they came to. Then she went aside.
“A thorough bastard.” Stavver grinned at her, exhibiting his arm with its wide streak of milky white flesh. “Wonder what the searcher of souls will make of this?”
“Too much. Don’t you have some stain or something you can put on it?”
“Sure. Sitting in the Vryhh box in Maissa’s caravan.”
“Damn.”
“Agreed.”
“Might as well confess now as go in like that.” She touched his arm lightly, thoughtfully. “Maybe.…”
“Try. I couldn’t be worse off.”
That startled a burst of laughter out of her but she sobered quickly. “Don’t say that, Miks. Don’t tempt them.”
“Hah!”
She closed her eyes and concentrated. Change a fine layer of the surface, she thought, brown, brown, red-brown, like the rest on the outside. She felt the power flow through her. Then she opened her eyes.
“You’re a useful thing to have around.” His arm was uniformly dark.
“Thing!” It was a relief to laugh.
“Person?” He ruffled her hair. “Lady person.”
Chapter X
“This one is what they call gikena.”
The narrow form behind the desk tapped thickly gloved fingers on the polished wood. “What’s that?” He flattened his hands out and gazed somberly at them. “This isn’t supposed to be a complex world.”
“It has its quirks. When you’ve been here a little longer.… A gikena is a shaman-type, combination of healer and seeress. The natives hold her in exalted reverence. I’ve questioned the ones we’ve seen so far about her and they have no doubt she’s genuine. I thought you ought to see her.”
“That’s her, then?” He turned his cowled face toward Aleytys who was sitting quietly in the low leather chair on the other side of the long narrow room. He shivered. “They are so … so uncovered. What do you think, is she genuine?”
“About the seeress part, I can’t say. Maistre Echon tested the healing. He lasered the arm of her servant creating a deep burn, searing to the bone an area about six inches long. Took the woman less than a minute to repair the wound. I examined his arm myself. Not even a scar.”
“Hunh. These blasted native religions.”
“None the less, exaggerate the respect, honored one, or you could be sticking your hand among a fleydik’s tentacles.”
“What’s her psi-reading?”
“Needle jumped off scale.”
“Hunh. Any chance she was involved in the raid?”
“I doubt it. However there are one or two odd things. I haven’t questioned her about them yet.”
“Odd?”
“Her baby’s missing.”
“Baby? What’s that to do with anything?”
“Don’t know. It’s odd, that’s all.”
“What else?”
“She had another caravan travelling with her. Two people in it. And another servant. A boy.” He fussed with the folds of thick grey cloth. “The couple took off this morning. Early. I checked the tape. The baby went out with them. A little later the boy rode out alone.”
“They were scanned?”
“Down to the corns on their toes. Clean. Not a flicker on any probe or a small of anything that shouldn’t be there. But why did they take the baby?”
The Karsk behind the desk turned his cowled head and scanned Aleytys, curiosity radiating strongly from him, evident to the psychologist by the poise of his neck, the slight clawing of his hands. “I suppose I’d better ask her about those things. But you’re right about one thing. No pre-technological psi-freak broke in here last night.”
“If I were a thief, honored one, I’d come in as a native.”
“Be glad you’re not. You’d be sitting downstairs contemplating the irons on your wrists. There’s no way past the scanners.”
“Nonetheless, someone got in here last night with tools sophisticated enough to bypass the alarm fields and melt the charka out of the window.”
“Granted. But I think we’re wasting time with these primitives. For that very reason.”
“I suppose so. But Star Street and the merchants can wait a while. No one’s going to leave until the auction’s over. In any case Maistre Reikle is ferreting around the merchants and Maistre Friz is going through Star Street.”
Aleytys listened to this exchange, struggling to maintain a smiling mask even when they mentioned her baby, confirming that Maissa had him. Fortunately the conversation went on long enough after that for her to steady herself and long enough for her basic curiosity to reassert itself. Then the Karsk switched languages and spoke to her.
“You are?”
“Lahela gikena.”
“Why did the woman take your child away this morning? It was your child?”
“My son. The Lakoe-heai punish me.”
“Lakoe-heai?”
“They who are the spirit and soul of Lamarchos.”
“Ah. Your gods.”
“No. Not gods.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They ARE. That is their characteristic.”
The Karsk dropped the unprofitable exploration and took up the other arm of her statement. “They punish you?”
“Were you told of the dead beast?”
“What beast?” He tapped impatiently on the desk, turning his cowl to the psychologist.
“There was an animal body wrapped in flannel on the gikena’s caravan steps.”
Aleytys nodded. “The one who died was a speaker, the beast Lakoe-heai use to communicate with gikena. The woman Leyilli killed it to warn me I must do what I was told to do.”
“And what is that?”
“I was to curse the city Karkys, curse it body and bones so that no man of Lamarchos would dare enter the gates again.”
“What!”
“The Karkiskya do no honor to Lakoe-heai and so they are angry. They are jealous of their honor.” She spread her fingers out, resting one hand on each leg, then stared down at them. “You are skeptical. Let me tell you this. If I put curse on Karkys, you would not see a Lamarchan within twenty kilometers of it. Never. To come onto this piece of earth would make any one of them pariah, stripped of home, hearth, and clan, cast out of the community of man. And this is the least of it. Lakoe-heai would send flies to torment his flesh, nightmares for his mind, until reality melted around the edges for him. You also would feel their hand. Even though you don’t believe, my curse would open beneath the city, swallowing whole buildings, the flies would come and other predators until your lives became a misery to you. As long as I waited out there.” She flipped a hand to the south. “Out there beyond the gates, I would be the burning glass through which they funnelled their power.” She was silent a minute. “I tell you this knowin
g you could kill me here, seeking to avoid this doom. But I warn you, this would not serve.”
“You refused. Why?”
“Because we need you. Because I am healer, I am breaker of curses. What boy is ever a man without a Karkesh blade to drink the blood on the day of his blooding? I suspect you are equally satisfied with the stones you get in exchange.” She shrugged. “Never mind. I didn’t refuse from any love of you.”
“Interesting.” The Karsk shifted impatiently, tapped the tips of his fingers on the desk top. He turned his head to the psychologist, switching languages in the sure knowledge that no native could understand him. “Doctor, what’s she read? Do I have to sit through much more of this nonsense?”
“She believes every word she says.” He glanced down at the box resting on his lap, frowning. “Some odd anomalies, but nothing inconsistent with the truth. From the way the others spoke of her, I’d say she’s right about the effect of her curse. So I’d be very, very polite and listen to her with respect.”
The cowl swung back to Aleytys. “You know what we are?”
“I know this. Your kind had its beginnings under another sun. I’ve seen sky ships flying over my homelands, I saw the star fliers behind the wall there.” She nodded to the north. “May I tell you a story I heard from my grandmother?”
The Karsk snorted impatiently but waved off a warning hand from the psychologist. “My time is limited, si’a gikena.”
She inclined her head. “I’ll keep it short, sho Karsk. One day the frogs that inhabited a pond, a place of beauty where the blue waters shone like sapphire under the many colored sky, these frogs decided they wanted a king to make them feel important.” She smiled slightly as the Karsk radiated impatience. “They named a log to be their king as it was the largest and strongest thing in their region. But they grew dissatisfied when their king just lay around and did nothing. So they determined they would find another. A stork came by impressing them with his grace and beauty. This king was indeed more active. By the end of the week he had eaten them all, for frogs are a major item in the diet of storks.” She smiled again. “That is my story, sho Karsk. This is my reason for refusing to curse you off Lamarchos.”