by Clayton, Jo;
“Hm.” He tented his narrow hands, placing fingertip precisely against fingertip. “Admirable logic, madam. If you can see so clearly, why are your patrons so obtuse? Can’t they think of such things by themselves?”
“Who says they think?” She shrugged. “They ARE. They ACT. They SPEAK to me. Who knows how their thoughts walk, or even if they have thoughts?”
The Karsk shook his head impatiently. “And you refuse to do what they demand.”
“As I have said.” She shifted restlessly in the chair. “I must go after my son. Let me leave, please.”
“If your patrons are punishing you, you said it for yourself, how do you expect to get him back?”
“I serve them, but I’m no slave. I have power of my own. I WILL have my son back.”
The Karsk tapped fingertip against fingertip. Once again he turned to the psychologist, switching languages. “What do you think?”
“She believes everything she says.”
“That doesn’t make it true.”
“I didn’t mean that. However, if you really want my opinion, the faster you get her out of the city, the better.”
Aleytys leaned forward, catching the interrogator’s attention. He faced her, fingers tapping impatiently on the polished surface of the desk. “What is it?”
“A suggestion. You need to make your peace with the Lakoe-heai. I shall be burying the body of the speaker beside the wall where the stream goes under. Build a small shrine over the spot and out of each year’s take of poaku, give one in honor of the Lakoe-heai. By paying them honor you may appease their anger. I don’t know. Get a builder of Lamarchos to plan the shrine.” She chuckled. “You Karkiskya build the ugliest structures I’ve ever seen.”
“We will consider it.”
“So. Let me go. And my servant with me.”
“Your servant?”
“Outside. Keon.”
“Take this.” He pulled a sheet of leathery paper from a niche by his knee and scrawled a series of ideographs over the face of it. “It’s a permit to leave. The guards will let you through the lines if you show them this.”
She took the paper. “I’ll mark the place where the speaker is buried. Let me give you one last bit of advice. Start construction of the shrine as soon as possible. It’s a small enough price to pay for survival.”
PART III
Chapter I
Flies crawled over her breasts, swarmed around her head. Buzzing. A persistent irritating intrusion. She wanted to scream. She couldn’t scream. The flies would crawl into her mouth and down her throat.
They bit. They crawled over breasts and her face and they bit.
She brushed and brushed at herself, skimming handfuls of crawling wriggling blackness, shuddering at the sticky prickly rustle of their legs, the unending unendurable tickle moving erratically over bare skin.
Stavver pulled on the reins, kicked the brake in, stopping the caravan. “Leyta. You can’t—” Beating at her with a tattered rag, he drove the flies off for a moment then looked helplessly down at her blotched contorted face. “What’s happening to you?”
She huddled on the seat, arms locked over her breasts while she stared blankly at the placid horses. Their tail-twitching, hip-shot lack of progress struck through the haze around her brain. She jerked her head up. “Why are we stopped?” She brushed at the flies. “Get going. Maissa. We’ve got to catch her.”
“Aleytys!” He shook her, flushing with anger, then let his hands fall helplessly, unable to talk past the half-mad glare in her bloodshot eyes. “At least you can be a little more protected,” he muttered. He moved around the end of the driver’s bench and stepped over the threshold into the caravan. The drawer where Sharl had slept still hung open, piles of dust collecting among the folds of flannel. With a muttered oath, he slammed the drawer shut and picked up a quilt.
Avoiding the glare in her eyes, he dropped the quilt over her shoulders. “Wrap this around you. It might help a little.”
She nodded dully. “Miks—”
“Patience, shrew.” He slipped the latch on the friction brake and slapped the reins down on the horses’ backs. Moving with clumsy slowness Aleytys huddled the quilt around her then sat wiping at the nonexistent flies as she stared with desperate anguish at the road ahead.
“Lee!” Stavver’s demand brought her eyes slowly around to him. “I thought you could control this sort of thing.”
She turned away.
“Aleytys.” He glanced irritably at the plodding horses, then turned back to her. “You want your son back?”
She gasped and huddled smaller beneath the quilt.
“If you crack up, woman,” he went on, his voice edged with cruelty. “If you crack up, you’ll never get him back. You think I’d waste my time chasing a kid that’s not my own?” He tucked the reins under his leg and caught hold of her chin, forcing her head around. Speaking with exaggerated clarity, he said, “It’s up to you, Aleytys. You.”
She sighed and seemed to collapse in on herself. “I.…” Blinking and shivering, head bowed, she sighed again. “Please, Miks, let me alone. I’m hanging … hanging on with my fingernails.”
He settled back on the seat, rescuing the reins from under his leg. “I never expected to see my witch as rattled as this.”
“Was I so arrogant?” She made a small unhappy sound in her throat. The wind blew through her hair and seemed to blow some of the fog out of her head. “I remember bragging about what marvels of endurance I’ve accomplished.” She leaned back, able to relax a little as the team moved steadily ahead, stride on stride putting the kilometers behind them. “Did I tell you? I was supposed to curse Karkys.”
“That you told me.” He grunted disgust.
“I told you … no, that Karsk.…” She shook her head. “Ahai, I’m falling apart like wet paper.”
“I still don’t see why you’re making so much out of a stupidity like that. Why don’t you just curse the place. You don’t really think that’s anything but superstitious nonsense?” He fingered the reins idly, glanced up at the spectacular sky. “Even if it wasn’t, these aren’t your people.”
She wrenched her eyes from the road long enough to scan his cool cynical face, a needle pain pricking her heart. “They’re people, Miks. People. I’ve made friends.”
“Worth this agony?”
She heard the harshness in his voice and shivered. It was a side of Stavver she preferred not to see. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I think it’s worth this bad time.” With a shaking hand she rubbed at her face. “There don’t seem to be so many flies around.”
“Maybe those fucking elementals got bored,” he burst out viciously, the emotion in his voice startling both of them.
She chuckled suddenly, a note of genuine mirth in the sound.
“What’s so funny?”
“Your choice of words. I doubt if they have the equipment.”
“Hunh!” He smiled tightly, reluctantly. “Good!”
“Good?”
“Think about it.”
Aleytys laughed but let the sound trail away uncertainly. She looked around at the desolate stonelands where dust devils wheeled around wind-tortured stone carved into needle chimneys or chunkier buttes. “It took us half a day to cross this coming in.” A hoarse wail floated downwind, followed by another. She shivered. “Rock cat.”
“Some distance off yet. You think they’re coming this way?” Stavver wound the reins around his hands, holding the nervously sidling horses on the rutted road.
“I don’t know. Anywhere we can hear them is too close.” She shut her eyes and reached into the skittish horses, calming them so Stavver could straighten them out and keep them to a steady trot, quelling an urge to send them racing down trail and out of the stonelands as fast as possible. Killing them in the process.
One brow flicking up and down again in sardonic appreciation, Stavver relaxed enough to take his eyes off the team. “Back to normal?”
“No.” She clo
sed her eyes, covered them with her hands, pressing the heels of her palms down until red light flickered across the inside of her eyelids.
The rock cat howled again. “Think you could handle a pack of them?”
“I don’t know.” She pulled her hands down over her sore swollen face. “Thanks.”
“For what?” The horses were twitching, ears flickering in an uneasy rhythm, tails jerking, gait uneven, mouths pulling irregularly at the bits. “Settle them down again, will you?”
Aleytys nodded. When the team was once more moving easily, she said, “For breaking me out of the mind trap. They set it up and I tumbled right in.” She sighed, brushed a few wandering flies from her face and watched them zip off into the dust blowing up and around the creaking rumbling caravan. After a minute she went on. “I let them use my fears and physical misery to beat me flat Miks—”
His eyes were warily flickering over the convoluted rock which provided enough possibilities for ambush to keep him uneasily alert. He glanced briefly at her. “What is it?”
“You wondered if my involvement with these Lamarchans was worth this misery. What about you?” She let the quilt slide down and flattened her hands on her thighs. “If you kicked me off the wagon, you’d lose a lot of trouble.”
“Don’t tempt me.” Then he laughed, an odd bitter sound that startled her into staring at him wide-eyed. “If it was that easy …” With quick nervous fingers he picked up the rag and wiped the dirt and sweat off his face, then tucked the rag back beneath his leg. “Aleytys.” His voice lingered over her name. “Aleytys. You wouldn’t let me go.”
“Me?” She frowned. “You’ve muttered things like that at me before.”
“No doubt.”
“I’m so fascinating? Hah! I’m not stupid, Miks.”
He was silent a while, brooding over the bobbing rumps of the horses, forgetting his nervous attention to the landscape, until a rock cat wailed again and whimpering answers came pulsating around the rock chimneys. He jerked upright. “They’re getting closer. No question now.”
Aleytys pulled at a piece of her hair and stared uneasily around at the dust-hazed rock. “Lakoe-heai,” she whispered. She brushed at her face.
“Well?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they’ll jump us in the stonelands, maybe wait till we camp. What did you mean, I won’t let you go?”
“You don’t know you’re doing it.” A hot blast of gritty air shot around the side of a butte and scoured over them. Stavver spat and rubbed the rag over his face. “Another talent, woman. When you need a man, you reach out and bind him to you.”
Aleytys shivered. “I hope not.”
“Hope.” He shrugged, his mouth curving down in an ugly sneer.
“I don’t believe you.”
“So? That change anything? I’m stuck with you, Leyta. Until you stop needing me.”
“I won’t believe you. You’re just digging up excuses.”
He turned his shoulder on her. “For what? What do I get out of this?”
“Not me. I’m not worth … I’m a sometimes pleasant convenience. The poaku. And Maissa. That’s it, isn’t it.”
“You want to believe that.” He shrugged and wouldn’t say anything more no matter how insistently she probed.
The road wound interminably through the desolate dry stone, the dust haunting them. Hovering around them as if they travelled in the center of a vortex that kept the powdered stone whirling around them. The flies came back, riding the dust storm, landing, feet pricking in a maddening dance over her dirty sweaty skin. Absently, automatically, she brushed them off her face, while she huddled miserably into the quilt. The heat, the monotonous creaking of the caravan, the steady thud of the hooves combined with recurring sick anxiety about her baby to weaken her defenses until she sank once again into a lethargy where hope was a distant concept cold as a winter sun.
“Leyta!” Dull and distant Stavver’s voice came through the haze.
She looked over at him, still brushing, brushing at the flies crawling around her eyes and mouth. “What?”
“Get in back. Get some sleep.”
“I can’t.”
“You’re half asleep now.”
“No!”
“Aleytys!”
“I don’t dare. I’ll dream.…”
He pulled the horses to a stop, kicking in the brake to keep the caravan from rolling on down the slight slope. “Get in back. When you’re tucked in, I’ll go on.”
“No.…”
Overhead, thunder rumbled in mocking laughter from a cloudless sky where the streaks of pastel color visible through the swirling dust twisted themselves into slowly changing knots. Aleytys shivered.
“Leyta.” He paused to wind the reins around a cleat, his eyes continually scanning the layered ledges of stone hanging over the rutted track. He stood up. “Lee, you look terrible. Those damn flies. I tell you, woman, if you don’t move, I’ll carry you.”
“I don’t dare sleep.”
“The rock cats are keeping away. I’ll wake you if they get too close.”
“Not that.” She touched her face with trembling fingers. “You’re right. I must look disgusting.”
“Never that, love.”
“It’s the nightmares, Miks. I’m afraid. I’ve hurt too many people. The faces of the dead … too many dead … because of me … because of me.…”
“Aleytys!” He pulled her onto her feet, the lines cut deep in his face drawn into a web of disgust. “Maudlin nonsense. Healer, heal yourself. What are you trying to do, punish yourself for some imaginary guilt?”
She tried to jerk away from his hold. “Damn you.”
His hand slapped across her face, stinging painfully. “Stop it, Lee.” His voice was cold and demanding, hammering at her. “Damn masochistic baby. Because of you? What makes you so damn egotistical! So damn selfish! Let us have our manhood. We’re not figments of your sick imagination. We have a right to make mistakes, to make decisions. What right have you to take this away from us? Guilt? Phah!”
She collapsed against him sobbing weakly. He lifted her and swung her over the back of the seat. “Pull yourself together, Aleytys. Hand me out a quilt. This damn sandstorm is stripping my skin off.”
The inside of the caravan was stifling, the hot air drained and lifeless. Aleytys groped to a bunk and leaned against it. Her body ached and her mind sank slowly through sloshing waves of fatigue. It would be so good to lie down … lie down and sleep … sleep … She splayed her fingers out over the hard surface and leaned on her arm, her dirty sweaty hair falling forward over her face Sleep … and dream … no … why can’t I let them be … because of that thing in me, Miks said. The faces paraded through her mind. Vajd … eyes torn from his head, exiled … Zavar, little one, exiled … Tarnsian … dead … Raqat … dead … the nine nomads, dead.… NO! She straightened and pushed her hair back. “No! Miks is right. It’s stupid to punish myself.” She snatched a quilt from the bunk and climbed back onto the bench seat.
“I thought you were going to sleep.”
“Later, Miks. Please?” She held up her hand palm out. “I couldn’t sleep. Really. I know you’re right about my stupidity.”
“That’s something. Here.” He handed the reins to her and wrapped the quilt around his upper body. “That’s better. Give those back, Lee, and heal your face.” He chuckled. “I prefer to look at your face without a decoration of fly bites.”
A while later Aleytys glanced uneasily at the sky. The glow spot of the sun was directly behind, throwing diffused shadows out before them like black stains on the rock. The banded swarms of aerial bacteria were beginning to coagulate into the false thunderheads, baring narrow stretches of blue sky along the eastern horizon. “How much longer?”
“Another hour’s driving.” As the track ahead turned between two towering colossi of rust-streaked, bluish-grey stone, he straightened his back and began scanning the ledges spiralling up their precipitous sides. “Haven’t heard th
e rock cats in a while.”
Aleytys closed her eyes and searched. Red thoughts of blood hunger prowled in shifting circling patterns. She sensed a waiting. “They aren’t ready to strike yet.”
“They’ll follow us out of the stonelands?”
“Left to themselves, I doubt it. Predators have more sense than that.”
“Then there’s nothing to worry about once we’re past those.” He pointed to a pair of needle chimneys like dittos against the pale blue horizon line.
“No. They’ll follow. Probably attack when it’s dark.”
“Lovely. Think you could control them?”
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
“Hm. I could hit something big as a horse if it was standing still. How about you? Know anything about those crossbows Kale stuck under the seat?”
“Man’s work, Miks. With my people, anyway.” She leaned back hugging the quilt around her. “Not so skewed against women as this world. Still.…”
“Poor planning, Leyta,” He chuckled. “You should have learned to shoot.”
“Hindsight.”
“Then you better figure something else out, my love.”
“Don’t worry. I have.”
“I don’t relish the thought of providing exercise for a lot of teeth. It better be good.”
“I suppose the diadem can handle a crossbow. It seems to be good at that kind of thing.” She tapped her temple and pursed her lips into a pout as the faint chime answered her touch.
“If killing those four-legged appetites bothers you so much, why don’t you just send them away?” He nodded at the horses. “I’ve seen what you can do with animals.”
“Ordinarily.…” Aleytys shifted uneasily on the seat. “Miks …”
“What?”
“Maissa won’t hurt Sharl, will she?”
“I don’t know.” He moved his shoulders impatiently, irritated by her constant preoccupation with the baby. “Drop it, will you?”
“Why’d she take him, Miks?”
“How the hell should I know. Look.” He pointed to the east.
“Where?”
“There. See the green?”