Star Hunters

by Clayton, Jo;

  With great concentration she poured the water on the five powerstones, deriving her ceremony from images that welled up from deep inside her, humming intensely a rising and falling tune that came from the same darkness. Her body vibrated with it and it grew stronger and stronger as the stones woke, answering to the names she gave them. Black Wehweli. Agodoz, amber-brown with paler spots. Leghu, green and white like frozen water. And the Twins, both a pale, pale blue. In the half-light of the roof shrine with the storm wheeling in great circles outside, the rain coming in gusts against lowered louvers, lightning turning the darkness white, the power stones hissed under the touch of the water and sang with the power in their pattern. The air shook around her.

  The eyestones waited in front of her knees. She felt them waiting. Taut. Desiring. Her body hummed with their desire. She struggled. Sought. The humming clashed, then began merging. She felt it merge. Felt the power coming into her hands, her arms. She lifted the gourd high, then dashed the last of the water on the eyestones. She swayed her upper body as the humming power consumed her. She felt a great heat, saw flickers of red and yellow. Images stirred against the darkness, swung around and around in dizzying circles, around and around, crossing behind her and coming to the front again, blurred glows that sharpened into faces.…

  Hodarzu’s face. Puzzled. Wrinkling to cry.

  Fa-men bent over him, assegais dripping red. Blood running, pumping out the spear tips. Changing to smoke figures. Wavering. Fading. Changing.…

  Manoreh flat on his back, pinned to a table by broad flat straps, naked, head shaved, a web of light obscuring his face.

  The Woman. The Hunter woman, red-headed. Standing. Flames leaping out from her like sun rays. Power. Deadly. Killing, power radiating out from her. To touch Manoreh. To enter him and explode outward.…

  Haribu. Thin horrible creature. Old. Obscenely old. Looking young but old. Green eyes stone-hard. Withering to death, the old man. Evil. Haribu.…

  Fa-men standing over her. She crouched on a floor holding Hodarzu. Bent over her. Threatening her. Pressing down on her. Fa-men. Fa-men.…

  Abruptly the humming power was gone, wrenching itself free as waves of need swept across her. She blinked, dazed, struggling to control her own terror awakened by the images, then heard the cries coming from outside.

  “’Tosime! ’Tosime! Mama ’Tosime!” The children’s voices pulled her. Once again her foot caught in the hem and she stumbled, slamming her head into the door post. For a moment she was paralyzed by the shock, then she fumbled her way outside and stood blinking into a lightning flash as a gust of rain caught her in the face.

  “You’re all soaked! What is it?”

  Shielding her eyes from the water streaming down her face, S’kiliza stared up at her, body shaking with anxiety. “Mama, come down.” She took Kitosime’s hand and pulled her to the stairs. The other children, silent but projecting their own terror, followed, crowding close against her.

  At the stairs she lifted her dresscloth high and fled downward; pushed on by the panic of her children. The big front door was open. She ran through to the porch, dropping the cloth as she passed the door. She stopped, smoothing her dress into place with shaking hands.

  An adult wilding stood panting beside the Mother Well, rain streaming thickly over the ingrained dirt on his face. His right hand was closed tightly about his left forearm. Blood welled out between his bony fingers and spattered slowly onto the court tiles to mix with the film of rain water and spread into wide, pale smudges of red. He was thin, starved to the bone, but he gazed at her with a stubborn pride that reminded her for a fleeting instant of Manoreh. She brushed the thought impatiently aside and turned to Mara. “Mara, there are clean cloths in the kitchen. Bring them here, would you, little one?” As the girl ran into the house, Kitosime smiled at the other children. “Do you think you could persuade your friend to come up here out of the wet?”

  Cheo and Amea nodded eagerly and ran down the steps. They roared REASSURANCE at the man and began tugging at his unwounded arm. At first he resisted, his eyes on Kitosime. She closed her eyes, tried to project WELCOME. She was better at that now. She smiled to think that some day she could perhaps speak and project with equal fluency. When she opened her eyes again, he was climbing the steps slowly and with some difficulty, swaying with his growing weakness, but he’d lost his fear of her.

  Then Mara was back with the cloths. Kitosime tore one of them into strips and began bandaging the ugly tear in the muscle of his arm. She glanced over her shoulder at the boys. “Wame, what’s this about? How did this man get hurt?”

  The man winced as she spoke. It suddenly occurred to her that pain explained why wilding children stopped talking. She shook her head, cursing once again her own ignorance that kept her fumbling her way to ideas a little more knowledge would bring to her easily. She tied a careful knot and tucked the ends of the bandage under, then tugged the man down until they were both sitting on the floor of the porch. She tilted her head up at Wame, waiting.

  The small boy straightened his body proudly. He had a gift for story telling and apparently wanted to make up for years of silence in a few days for he was always chattering. He grinned at the wilding, then sobered, remembering the frightful things he had to tell. “Fa-men,” he said. “Come down out of the mountains now the hares are gone.” He swept his hand in a wide arc from north to south. “Holdings are empty. The wildings, they come out of the juapepo.” He pantomimed a wary looking about, then a joyful dance, hands gathering invisible treasures to himself. “They need much. They have hunger. They are naked.” He pointed at the dirty hide about the adult wilding’s loins. “They remember the good ways of their fathers who have denied them. They remember and are sad. Now they come and take. They are clean and not hungry for a little while. The hares chase the Fa-men away. Now the Fa-men they come back. They take wildings to burn and eat. They know the hares are all at Kiwanji. They do not fear the hares. They send the hounds after the wildings. They cut with assegais. They put ropes on wilding necks. They make a great fire and burn them. Then they eat them and drink their blood. This man he run from them. They follow him. The hounds sniff for him. He run past here. He FEEL us. He come in to warn us. Fa-men come here soon.” Wame shivered as the wind blew a scattering of raindrops onto the porch. “The rain, it help. Hide him from the hounds. But look.” He pointed to a thinning patch of cloud where the storm was beginning to break up. “They come to all Holdings.” He held up a hand, thumb and forefinger about two centimeters apart. “About this much time before they are here. This one, he tell us to run now while the rain hide our scent. He want to leave now.”

  Kitosime wiped the damp from her face. She smiled at the wilding and tried to project REASSURANCE/UNDERSTANDING.

  He touched her cheek with the tips of his fingers, projected GLADNESS/WARNING/QUESTION?

  A hand touched Kitosime’s shoulder. She looked up. Cheo. He held a sack, and thrust it at her, projecting QUESTION?

  She took it, felt the round hardness inside and laughed, projected PRIDE! As the boy shuffled back, embarrassed, she put the sack on the wilding’s knee. She opened it, let him see the golden-brown loaves inside, then pulled the neck strings tight and closed his fingers around them.

  He touched her arm, got heavily to his feet, then trotted down the steps, splashed across the courtyard. At the arch he hesitated and looked back, projected WARNING!! then vanished into the gray rain. It was still coming down hard enough to wash out his scent and erase what marks he made. Kitosime got to her feet. “He’s got a good chance,” she told the children. S’kiliza pressed against her, trembling and uncertain. Liado and the others crowded around her too, even the big boys. Liado was on the verge of hysteria. He’d felt Fa-hound’s teeth and only escaped by falling into the river and nearly drowning. She held him tight against her. “I promise. I won’t let them get you. I promise you.”

  Then she worked free of the clinging children and said briskly, “And if I want to keep
that promise, we’d all better get busy.”

  Aleytys sneezed. Stale dust tickled into her nose. She was piled in a heap, face down on a rug, her body one great ache. She rolled over and straightened her legs, eyes still tight shut, then reached out for the black river and slammed against the restraint of an inhibitor. “Shit!” She ground the heels of her hands into her eyes. “Not again. Can’t they ever think of something else?”

  She grimaced. There was a harsh metallic taste in her mouth. A sudden soft whoosh of air stilled her body. The whisper of feet moved over the deep rug, then there was a presence standing over her. She continued to lie still, her eyes shut, breathing steadily. The footsteps whispered away again. She heard more faint noises, then they stopped. Sitting, she thought. Probably watching me.

  She ignored the presence and returned to sorting out her sensations. Mouth dry. Slow rolls of nausea. Numbness in the tips of her fingers. That taste in the mouth. Babble drug. Leukoy or mequat. She forced herself to relax. Next year, she thought. Next year I get my conditioning. Now … now he knows everything he had the wits to ask for.

  She began poking at the limits allowed her by the inhibitor. The claustrophobia induced by the walls around her mind stirred up the settling nausea in her stomach. She swallowed. Then she remembered Manoreh. The link. What about the link? As his image strengthened in her mind, she became aware of him. When she concentrated she felt pressure on her ankles and wrists and a lighter pressure across thighs, waist and shoulders. Bound to a flat surface wherever he was. Briefly she wondered why the inhibitor hadn’t cut the link. Maybe a matter of sheer power. Forgetting to remain passive, she rubbed at a warm spot under her collarbone without thinking of what it meant. Haribu. Wonder if that’s him watching me.…

  Then she realized what she was doing and what that warm spot should have told her. Grey! Here too. Sudden terror brought her sitting upright, staring at the foot of a wide bed. Her backup was taken out before the game began. She pushed the tumbled hair out of her face and forced down her rising panic. She sucked in a deep breath, then swung quietly around to face the man sitting in the pneumochair watching her.

  Metal clinked. Her thigh brushed something cold. She looked down, realizing for the first time that she was naked. She laughed and fingered the cuffed chain beside her, then leaned back against the bed and gurgled with amusement. “How melodramatic.” The absurdity of the situation struck her as she examined her captor.

  A long man, grotesquely thin. The hands resting lightly on the chair arm were plated with metal. Exoskeleton. Narrow triangular face. Parchment skin crossed and recrossed by thousands of tiny wrinkles. Hair as red as hers and cold green eyes.

  She pulled fingers through the tangled strands of her hair. Her nudity didn’t bother her nearly as much as her untidy hair. For some reason he’d undone her braids but hadn’t bothered to comb the hair out. She touched a sore spot at the base of her skull. She poked gently at the lump, a slight swelling around the neck bones.

  The man in the chair spoke quietly. “Tampering with the inhibitor will cause a small explosion that will blow your head off your shoulders, Hunter.”

  “I see.” She let her hand fall, moved her head tentatively back and forth. “A little stiff.”

  “You’ll get used to it.”

  “You’re Vryhh.” She frowned. “Haribu? Isn’t this a bit small for a Vryhh?”

  The Vryhh smiled but the curling of his lips left his eyes dull green like filmed jade. “Not small, halfling. Not for the RMoahl diadem.”

  “Ah!” Involuntarily she touched her temple. “Did you enjoy your stroll through my head, Vryhh?”

  His smile widened and the green eyes began to glint with malice. “I wonder how far Vryhh traits breed true. Shall we stop by the vadi Kard and take a look at your son?”

  Aleytys’s mouth went dry. She watched the narrow cat face of the Vryhh, the cold eyes feeding on her pain. “No.” She leaned against the bed and swallowed further protest. “You were the one with the Chwereva in Head’s office. You were the one who tampered with her mind. For the diadem?”

  “In part. It’s unique.”

  “Hah! Why am I still alive? Now that I know what you’re after, I don’t mean to make an easy corpse.”

  He was briefly amused. “Corpse?” He came out of the chair gracefully, the exoskeleton a marvel of engineering. When he reached her, he bent down and touched her hair with his fingertips, then tapped lightly at her temples. His face was so close she could track the thousands of tiny lines in his skin. “I’m Vryhh, not some halfwit RMoahl. I know how to purge the diadem out of you and leave you alive to enjoy the other things I’ve planned for you.” He was coldly amused by her involuntary grimace of distaste.

  Aleytys rubbed at her nose. “You’re very thorough. Mequat or leukoy?”

  He ignored her questions, stared down at her, his pale face filled with scorn. Then there was a sudden hot glare in his eyes, his mouth twisted, and he spat in her face. He hauled her to her feet and threw her away, suddenly, violently slamming her against the wall.

  She screamed. When she collapsed on the floor, he was beside her, jerking her back to her feet. He slapped her into silence, the metal on his hands cutting into her skin and cracking the bone of her jaw. “Shereem’s get,” he hissed. “Halfblood. Mud! I’ll parade you before them after I’m done with you and they’ll see her rotten.…” He hissed in fury.

  Horrified at the madness in his face, confused by the pain in her head and body, she hung in his hands thinking, he hates her. Hates my mother. Crazy.…

  He dropped her and strode away. While she struggled onto her knees, he settled himself in the pneumochair and watched her. After a minute he turned back a sleeve, exposing a long, narrow plate with two rows of touch-sensors. He flicked his fingers in a rapid pattern over the sensors. When he looked up, she felt the clamp gone from her head. “Heal yourself, mud,” he snarled.

  Forcing tears from under shut eyelids in her agony, Aleytys wove a fine force web to pull her broken jaw into place, then reached for the black river. The cool, cool water flowed into her, washing away the pain, healing the breaks and the bruises. As her strength returned, she glanced at the Vryhh. He was watching her intently, fingers ready on the arm wearing the sensor plate. Not yet, she thought. But I know one of his weaknesses now. As the water flowed away, she trapped a great pool of it within herself. Then she felt the inhibitor clamp down again.

  The powerpool began to seethe and surge at the restraints she held around it. She had a sense of extreme danger. Fighting to hold it stable, she sat very still, watching the Vryhh. For several long minutes they stared at each other, Vryhh and half-Vryhh. Then he came out of the chair again and pointed at the wall beside her. A door slid back.

  “Stand up, mud,” he said softly.

  Aleytys pushed onto her feet and waited.

  “Come here, mud.”

  Watching his hands, she walked slowly to his side. The room, now visible, was a fresher with a cleansing cabinet and a toilet. A small prison of a room, harsh and unlovely. The Vryhh’s hand came down on her shoulder. She suppressed a shudder at the dry papery feel of his skin. His touch made her feel unclean, as if by simple contact he could taint her with his disease. “Wash yourself, mud,” he whispered. He played with her hair, then pushed her inside.

  When she came out, he was back in the chair, a length of shimmering cloth spread over his legs. She stopped, waiting for him to speak.

  “Come here.” He lifted the length of velvet, dark green with a bluish tinge in the shadows and silver where the pile caught the light.

  She took the dress, careful not to touch his hands. The thought of touching him again nauseated her.

  “Put it on.” There was an odd light in his eyes, a caress in his rich dark voice.

  Aleytys looked at the soft material in her hands, more frightened by the new softness in his voice than she’d been by his violence. Madness. She thought wistfully of Harskari. “I need you, Mother,”
she whispered, but there was no answer. What this new turn means … God, I can’t, understand him. How can I deal with craziness? She slid the dress over her head and smoothed it down. Wait and see. She caught the brush he threw at her and began to work on her hair.

  He looked her over when she was finished. Her hair was brushed to a silk firefall hanging halfway down her back. The velvet clung to her breasts and hips and swung in long graceful folds around her ankles, changing color in ripples when she shifted from foot to foot. She stiffened as he slid out of the chair and came toward her. He fastened a fine gold chain around her neck, the pendant gem glowing with green fire against her skin in the deep scoop neck of the dress. He then slipped a matching ring onto her finger.

  He stepped back and ran his eyes over her. “Straighten your shoulders, halfling. Hold your head up.” His deep voice was still caressing her. He stroked withered fingers down the side of her face. “Vryhh skin,” he murmured. His fingers slipped under her chin and jerked her head up. “But the wrong color, halfling.” His face swam in her vision. From a great distance she heard the soft voice. “No, that’s too easy.”

  He threw her away again, the exoskeleton driving her up and back in a tumble of arms and legs. This time she landed on the bed, sprawled ungracefully, the dress hiked up about her waist, her stomach jerking with nausea. She sat up, smoothing her hair back and pulling her dress down.

  “One of these times you’ll break my neck.” She stroked exploring fingers over the new bruises on her throat. “What do you want of me?”

  “Halfling.” He smiled. “Silence. Cooperation. You belong to me, blood of my blood, kinswoman. I’m Kell of Tennath, halfling, Tennath himself. Word of a Vryhh, you’ll live a long, long time with me. As will your son.”

  “You seem fascinated by my half-blood.” She ran cold eyes over his body. “I suppose your appetites are as diseased as your form.”