by Mark Angel
Tamik, knowing his sister, half expects her to thrust a knitting needle into the intruder’s gut, or at the very least push past him and show him to the door. But her smile remains sweet enough to compete with sugar pine.
Jidar draws back his lips to show a set of unnaturally large teeth. They are almost radiant. Then he glances at the new cabinets that encase Meera’s collection of decorated eggs. Tamik recalls that the finely engraved piece of furnishing is a gift the skywatchers sent to honor Meera’s union with the Grandmaster Teller.
Meera pushes the man. It seems to Tamik that she is trying to move him closer to the door, but Jidar looks deeply into her eyes and simpers. The murmur of conversation acquires a resonance it did not have moments before as the skywatcher extends his palms outward toward Meera and places his hands on her shoulders.
She walks, almost stumbling back toward the eatingroom, contradictory behavior that worries Tamik as much as it confuses him, but the longer he watches, the more he feels at ease. A warmth, usually not associated with being in such dense fog, seems to pass through him and permeate the air, and he shivers.
Jidar turns Meera and begins to massage her shoulders, whispering softly in her ear. Tamik strains to see, but they are now out of sight. He moves to another window near the kitchen and peers through. Tamik can just hear them now.
“Does that feel good?” the skywatcher says in a throaty voice.
“O-h-h-h,” his sister moans, and the sound is as disturbing as anything Tamik has heard in his short life. But he still does nothing.
The skywatcher continues to rub her shoulders as he slowly pushes her toward the large eating table where her knitting needles await. Tamik expects her to grab the sharp implements and use them to defend herself. He deems that that is when he will rush in and help. The skywatcher softly presses her hips against the smooth wood. But instead of grabbing the needles, she does nothing, surrendering to his will as he rubs her back and shoulders. He bends her forward until her chest and cheek are resting flat against the table’s surface. Her eyes are closed; her lips wear a dreamy smile.
Jidar gently lifts the layers of Meera’s skirt, rubbing her buttocks and thighs rapturously, and then pulls back his cloak to expose himself. With no hesitation at all, he penetrates her unresisting body.
Tamik goes rigid as stone. The excitement he feels directly contradicts what his mind tells him he should feel. The wrongness of the thing overwhelms him, but he is transfixed. Guilt and shame bubble up underneath, but they are still far away as he can not tear his eyes from the scene.
“I’ve always loved you Meera,” Jidar rasps as he pumps his life into her. “Dream of my love when you sleep,” he groans, “your secret lover whom you adore . . . Go to sleep hoping for the next time I will come to you.”
Jidar’s thrusts become more insistent, powerful. The table groans under the strain, shifting across the floor a sliver for each thrust. The assailant’s words are as insistent as his actions. The once leisurely motions grow faster. Harder. The table finally knocks against the wall, setting loose a small tapestry that falls to the floor. Meera wears the dull and silent smile of an idiot.
Tamik can not take it any longer. Something snaps inside him and he is free from his paralysis. He storms through the door and rushes in upon them.
“What are you doing?!” he yells and runs toward Jidar. Tamik feels ill when he sees the intruder is still inside his sister.
The skywatcher grins, and extends his right palm. Tamik feels a resurgence of tranquility—not unlike what he felt outside, only stronger—and senses the skywatcher’s mind invading his own. An impression of warmth radiates through Tamik’s body, intensifying quickly, creating a kind of sweet lethargy. Tamik feels as though the skywatcher could do anything to him and he would submit. Like the prey of a rex. But the rex accompanies his attack with a rumbling roar felt deep from within, or so his father has said.
There should be a roar.
“Everything is just fine, boy,” Jidar rasps. “Do not call out or run away.”
Tamik’s feet have become one with the hard, stone floor. He watches Jidar finish with his sister, who rests unmoving on the table, but now displays a deep furrow in her brow, and are those tears in her eyes?
Something is suppressing Tamik’s urge to vomit.
Meera remains bent over as Jidar takes a hand cloth from the table and wipes himself hastily. He reties his belt. “You will remember none of this, boy,” he says, leaving one palm on the small of Meera’s back and raising the other toward her brother.
“Look at my hand!” he commands. “Nothing else is here.”
The hand of the skywatcher looms large in his field of vision. Tamik feels another rush of warm seduction. He tries to shake the cozy feeling, but it may take more will than is at his disposal.
The skywatcher releases Meera and turns both palms toward Tamik. “Look at my hands!” he demands.
Tamik manages to close his eyes tightly, trying to focus on the skywatcher’s smug face, to burn it indelibly into his memory—the nose, the eyes—to resist the temptation to forget, but the visual is already fading, giving way to acquiescence.
Suddenly Tamik realizes that the skywatcher’s palms are resting upon his forehead and chest and the invader floods the boy’s mind with marauding thoughts of emptiness and bliss.
“No one was ever here but you and Meera.”
Most would have submitted by now, to the ecstasy induced by the Power, but Tamik continues to struggle against it. He focuses on the small ball of nausea in his gut and asks himself again.
Where is the roar?
A ball of rage wells up from deep within him and expands to push the false feelings of peace from his heart, but he cannot create enough momentum to break the skywatcher’s psychological shackles. He knows he must retain the memory of his assailant’s face! So he squeezes his eyelids shut and concentrates on the visage he first saw when he entered the room.
Tamik hears Jidar stepping back toward the door. There is no telling how much time has passed. The latch clicks. The door shuts. The skywatcher has disappeared back into the night.
Head now pounding, Tamik opens his sodden eyes, and even though his instincts tell him the smug skywatcher is gone, he stands stationary for another age as if the man is still holding him. When he finally forces himself to move from his locked position . . .
. . . he roars!
At first no sound emits from his throat, but soon he bellows like the rex his father rides, and by the time his vocal cords feel raw from the effort, he has shattered the spell and wakened his sister who now stands beside him shaking him.
"Tamik!" she shouts. "Tamik, calm down! What's the matter?"
“Meera!” He says urgently, trembling uncontrollably. “Meera!”
"I'm here," she says, holding him, streams of tears dried on her face. She straightens herself.
“What has gotten into you?” She says quietly.
“Meera, are you alright?”
“What do you mean?” She rubs her eyes with her apron.
“That pale-skinned man—he attacked you!” His trembling manifests into pronounced tremors.
Concern again fills Meera’s face. “There was no man here.” She hushes him again and puts her arms around her brother. “I’m fine, really, and I’m so glad you could come tonight.” But she seems to realize how disturbed he is and asks, “Did something happen to you on the walk over?”
Tamik pushes away from her. Tears stream down his face. He wears the shameful look of one who has betrayed a loved one. Words he expected to barely get out come bellowing forth.
“The skywatcher!” he screams. “Why didn’t you fight him off?”
“Calm down, Tamik.” Nonplussed, she steps toward him and tries to take the boy’s flushed face in her hands.
Tamik snaps his head backward. “You once called him Jidar. I remember him from before. I’ll find him, Meera!” he sobs. “I swear I’ll find him. And even if you don’t care,
one turn, I’ll kill him . . . for what he has done!”
“Hush, Tamik,” she whispers reassuringly. “What is this nonsense about a skywatcher? I haven’t seen Jidar for moons. No one is here but you and me. Perhaps you are remembering a dream.”
Tamik has the urge to run out of the dwelling and never return again, but after the first few steps he realizes his legs are giving out from under him and he collapses in a semi-comatose heap on the floor. Darkness overtakes him.
Home often seems more attractive from afar.
The lights beckon your return.
But once there, it seems like you never left.
— Pirlan
15. Home Stretch
Lover’s Peak after dawn, 12/01/1643--
A striation of high clouds softened the sun’s glare as it climbed toward its zenith. The wind had changed, and the noises of birds in the orchard joined the trickle of the stream in announcing that the dawn had come to the pleateau and long since gone.
Tamik listened to the rhythmic breaths that ebbed and flowed from Tyna’s small round nose. Beyond the flaps of her shelter, the campsite was still. Even the rexes seemed to have slept late. With no fledglings present, the pride seemed to have lost its energy. It was not long, however, before Tamik heard the sound of others emerging from their hutches and the breaking of dry branches to stoke the cookfire. Hesitant to disentangle himself from Tyna’s embrace, he instead studied her features as she slept. She must have been dreaming something good, for a smile crept across her sleeping face as her eyelids quivered.
As for himself, he had rested well in the soft folds of her sleepskins with her warm body close to his, but he was again feeling aroused and for reasons he was finally beginning to understand, the sensation still made him feel uneasy. After he shared his boyhood experience with Tyna, she observed that his sister’s assault, being his first and most intimate encounter with an experience between a man and a woman, likely influenced how he felt now about women. He would have to rediscover his relationship with women apart from that event, and apart from the skywatcher’s stranglehold on his mind. It would not be easy, but she seemed committed to helping him. He smiled at the recollection of how much she had already done to guide him along the way.
As if on cue, she stirred, stretching her legs over his and rolling onto her back.
“How about a swim?” he whispered, propping himself up on one elbow.
She nodded, smiling, eyes still closed.
Tamik reached for his undergarment, but reconsidered after his nose caught its whiff.
“I think I’ll just gather up my things and meet you at the pool,” he suggested as he covered himself with a bathing wrap.
Tyna nodded once again, and rolled over to go back to sleep.
Tamik crouched over her. “Hey,” he gently nudged her ribs with his toe.
“What?” she grumbled, brushing at his foot.
“Swim?”
She opened her eyes and squinted up at him, then wiggled out of the sleepskin. “Turn around,” she said. Tamik complied, and she slipped out of her sleepgown, tying her bathing wrap around her waist, up over her breasts and around the back of her neck.
Tamik, puzzled by this modesty, gathered his things and surreptitiously stepped out of the hutch. No one seemed to notice as he walked around the encampment to leave his wares behind his father’s hutch. The red-earth path to the pool was dusty, but the water in the pool was refreshing. As he waded in, he turned back to watch Tyna treading carefully down toward him.
“It’s nice to be in a pool of water where you don’t have to worry about crox,” Tamik said. He dropped under the surface and wet his hair, springing back out with a shake.
Tyna chuckled. “There are other dangers. You should especially take heed of the rainbow-fly larvae this time of sar; they can claim a decent chunk of flesh.”
Tamik lifted one leg out of the water. A trickle of blood ran down it.
“So I have already found, but it’s not quite as bad as a crox.”
“Not quite,” Tyna quipped.
“Too bad we don’t have time to take the Plunge.” Tamik said it as a dare.
“I’ve never jumped through that hole and I never will.”
“Never? It’s fun. Just when you think the fall will go on forever—SPLASH!—and then it’s over.” Tamik emphasized the expletive by splattering water on Tyna.
Perhaps taking a cue from the young pair, or simply because it provided such a refreshing contrast to their dusty travels, the majority of the rexriders were soon enjoying the clean, clear water. Their indulgence was short-lived, however, for they were still more than a turn’s travel from Stonehaven, and if they were to arrive home before darkness fell the next turn, they had to leave the plateau by high meridian. Soon, they were all up on shore and tending to the business of breaking camp.
For the remainder of their journey they followed the more improved trade route that connected the Western and Southern Kiths. They rode past dusk, their course lit only by the waxing gibbous moon, and forwent formal encampment and the erection of shelters as the weather was mild and they were well inside the territory of their own Western Clan. They slept under the stars beside their saddles, and rising early, pushed hard to get back to Stonehaven before dusk.
When Whitepeak finally came into view, rising like a naked spur above the Skywatcher's Plateau, Tamik felt relief. The familiarity of the mountain beckoned to him with the fiery orange glow it shared with the setting sun. Before long, he was peering down the throat of the valley at the serpentine perimeter wall, lit against the dusk by gas lamps spaced regularly along its broad promenade.
Tamik took his hunting horn and joined his fellow rexriders in blasting a chamade to the gatekeepers. Deep resonant notes from the massive carved bone horns mounted on the parapets answered their call. The tempo, rhythms and pitches played communicated to all that the rexriders had returned from hunting, laden with wares to sell and trade. When the band of rexriders got close enough, the gatekeepers tackled the pulley blocks and cranked the heavy doors to the protectorate wide open.
Gar-rex followed Tiga-rex over the sturdy bridge that traversed the drought-parched Kemek River, and up the road to the main gate. Gyro dancers and barrel drummers busked among the crowds of people who had already started to gather on the grounds just inside the massive gates. Rexrider families, saddle crews, and those who hoped to relieve the rexriders of their bounteous burdens of fresh animal products joined in the celebration.
It made for a festive dusk as the merchants paid particularly close attention to the cartloads of corporeal cargo hauled by the rexes. That the hunting party was arriving late in the turn suggested to them that the rexriders would be tired and barter would favor the buyers.
“Three cubes of silver for a square of hide!” called a tanner’s agent.
“Hard currency for fresh meat!” cried a well-heeled flesh monger with sagging jowls. He shouldered his way through a horde of bedraggled outsiders, most of whom lived on the south side of the inner paddock, far from the comforts of Stonehaven.
“I’ll pay nine cubes of silver for a smoq of choice flesh!” the monger hollered, shaking bags of cubeage to get the rexriders’ attention.
“I’ll give a chip of gold if it’s a prime cut!” called a competitor.
“We’ll pay heavily for bulk seconds!” offered a tailor representing an industrial tanning house.
Tamik was the last rider through the gate, and was almost immediately accosted by a ragged young woman with long, limp hair who scampered past the tailor. She wore what looked like a roughly-sewn dung bag over her torso, with a hole in the top for her head and split down the sides. It was tied at her narrow waist with an old strip of hide.
“Please, Master Rexrider,” she implored, “can you spare a course slab of flesh for a hungry outsider family?”
Tamik snapped into focus. The smudge-faced teenager had ventured too close to the beast for safety. Before he could say anything, Gar-re
x began to bend down, most likely only to sniff her, but the rider could not take any chances. He yanked sharply on the reins. The bull stepped back abruptly tossing his massive head backward in the process.
Melok sat up in response to the sudden clunking motion, barking out a half-articulate complaint about being roused. After taking a second to get his bearings, he called out to the faceless gray gathering of outsiders that had begun to congregate loosely around them. “Keep your girl at a safe distance!” A few of the outsiders recoiled visibly, unaware until now that anyone was lying on top of the cart.
Tamik threw down a prime slab, from among those he had stacked on his saddle. The package hit the dusty ground with a resounding thud. The barefoot adolescent graced Tamik with a somewhat awkward curtsy before grabbing the offering and dragging it back toward her people.
An older rail of a woman, perhaps the girl’s mother, stepped forward. “May Mystery reward your generosity,” she said, bowing deeply before assisting the girl. Tamik appreciated the fact that even the cured gut-skin wrapping and the ties that held the packs of meat together would not go to waste among these thrifty people.
The other outsiders in the vicinity had now joined in the work of loading the share into a nearby calash. Seeming to realize that they had probably gotten all they could out of Tamik and Melok, they moved past Gar, beseeching other rexriders whom they hoped would be similarly accommodating. Then it would be back to their cumbersome dung-carts and rickety carriages to head home to their hovels, sharing their prizes with their bedraggled community, even those too weak to come to the gates. There was something to admire in that, Tamik thought, although the majority of “proper” Rexians had little but disdain for these diminished people.
As he scanned the group of shabby-looking folk from his perch atop Gar, Tamik’s eyes happened to fall upon the Seer. The sight jolted him. The crooked old man was standing quietly in the shadows scrupulously observing the goings-on, and beside him was a stunning looking young woman rather plainly dressed. Though difficult to see clearly in the darkness, she had the same piercing eyes as the old man, translucent skin that stood out against the dimness of her background, and black hair that occasionally glinted in a beam of stray light. Unlike most outsiders, she stood with a bearing of absolute confidence.