Moonscatter

by Jo Clayton

  There was a shallow hollow in the barren stone, protected from the wandering dream-winds, death-winds, behind a screen of scraggly stunted brush with tiny leaves whose unassertive green was dusted to a dead gray. Serroi hitched her mount to the brush, shook it clean of dust in case he wanted to browse and settled herself in the hollow to wait the cessation of the song in the Gate which would mean the dropping of the wind. Shadows raced into long distorted shapes that were swallowed by the dropping night. She gazed out over the Plain and saw the gathering of thick dry clouds, dust clouds not water bearers, yellow-tinged even in the pale, bleaching light of the rising TheDom. The edge of the Plain marked the edge of the clouds. They were there, she knew, to keep heat pressing down on the land, a blanket spread by her Noris. Serroi wiped at her sweating face, the sun-heated rock behind her still holding the day’s warmth. The sky over the Vachhorns was clear, it’d be cool soon enough, cooler than she liked. She thought about the cloak still tied behind her saddle, made no move to fetch it, lassitude heavy on her arms and legs and sitting like sleep in her head. She couldn’t keep still; itches ran along her legs and played on the inside of her knees, worse when she scratched at them. They ran along the sides of her back and in between her shoulderblades where she couldn’t reach. A tic jerked by the corner of one eye and the inside of her nose tickled. She thought of trying’ to sleep, but was afraid to sleep, afraid of the dreams that would haunt her in this place.

  What Hern was thinking she couldn’t tell. He sat toward the front of the hollow, turned away from her—all she could see of his face was the convex curve of his cheek, the jut of his brow. He sat very still, his square rather beautiful hands resting lightly on his thighs (she saw one and assumed the other from the shape of his back). There was a quality of repose in him that she’d hadn’t expected, another jolt to her image of him. Briefly she envied that repose (scratching with industry at an itch on the inside of her thigh) then she wondered what he was looking at, shifted onto her knees and crawled over to him, followed the direction of his eyes.

  Beyond the Gate the mountains curved north, wave on wave of wind-carved stone, naked and barren and eerily beautiful, their patterns of dark and light slowly oh so slowly changing, evolving as the great moon rose higher pulling the smaller moons after him, like a dance in slowtime requiring infinite patience to know all its cycles.

  Still the wind sang, sometimes so loud it raised echoes from the slopes around the Gate. The rock leaked its heat away into a clear and cloudless sky while the yellow clouds boiled and tumbled above the Plain. Serroi and Hern waited without talking for the tedious vigil to end. About two hours after midnight the windsong died to a whisper. They gave the macain all the water they would drink, then rode warily into the Gate.

  The rutted, wrinkled floor of the pass was littered with rock fragments and more rock fell before and behind them, small bits clattering loudly from bulge to bulge to shatter into smaller bits on the rocky floor. It was very dark inside the Gate. TheDom was on the far side of the sky, his light touching only the upper few feet of the eastern cliff. The Jewels of Anesh floated overhead, three small glows the size and tint of copper uncsets, their feeble light only adding to the confusion among the shadows at the base of the rotten cliffs. Hern and Serroi rode straining to hear the crack and clatter that would announce a major fall, their uneasiness transmitted to the macain, already unhappy and moaning with distress at the sharp bits of stone pressing against their tough fibery pads.

  The Gate wound on and on, undulating up and down, never straight anywhere for more than a dozen macai strides, up and down and around, until Serroi was dizzy with the switches, suffocated by the dust kicked up by macai paws, near screaming with frustration at the slow pace—and still the ride went on.

  After two more hours—or a small eternity; both perceptions being true—she saw a pale deep vee ahead, and heard a tentative moan from the walls as wind began to tease at her curls, wide-spaced tentative tugs. Then it blew a cloud of grey dust around them and she no longer saw the exit ahead. The faint starlight reaching them, the only light they had now, was eaten by the dust and they rode blind, dependent on macai senses, battered by moans and whistles and howls from the fluted stone around them.

  All things end at last and they came out of the Gate into the faint red light of the earliest hint of morning. Hern pulled his mount to a stop on the flat space atop a cliff, wiped at his face, scraping away a layer of grey dust, leaving streaks behind. He fished in his pocket for the cloth he used to clean his sword and scrubbed it hard across his face, searching by feel for the burning streaks, growling with distaste each time he inspected the rag and refolded it for a bit of clean surface.

  Serroi cleaned herself with less fuss and gazed around. They were on a kind of lookout, a flat area edged with boulders whose orderly array hinted that intelligence rather than chance had set them in their places. She looked at the boulders and remembered that this was the Sleykyn road, the way that most of those assassins and torturers took to reach the mijloc, Oras and across the Sutireh Sea since Skup was closed to them, their own southern coast was impenetrable marsh and their northern reaches swept by hostile nomads. The eastern sky was rapidly brightening into conflagration, the sun’s tip a molten ruby resting between two peaks. The mountain dropped steeply from the lookout, its dead stone and long dead vegetation layered over with large grey-green crystals that caught the red light from the east and turned it into a purple-brown murk. On the floor of the basin the lake was a shimmering bloodstone, muted green water with trails of bloody decay winding through it. And on the basin floor shimmering short-lived dust devils walked the desolation, continually dying, continually reborn. If she looked at them too long she saw eyes in the dust that gazed back at her.

  With Hern ahead (she was in no mood to dispute leadership) they wove back and forth down the slope in the exasperating tedium of a dozen switchbacks. The trail was crumbling, neglected and starting to melt back into the mountainside, a result of the Gather storms when passage through the deadlands became impossible, the mijloc protected from more Sleykynin by Air and Earth herself, matron face of the airy Maiden, Mother Earth Who brought forth her fruits for the delight of man. Delight not Duty. Dance in the moonlight for the joy of it, the joy, dance the two-backed dance for the Maiden’s delight the Matron’s joy, drink down the wine and warm the spirit, warm the body with cider hot and spicy, foaming headily in earthenware crocks, in earthenware mugs, splashed to celebrate the earth, sloshing in human bellies, leaping in the dance, laughing the water music, watch the moth sprites dance, spin the light-lace on the water … Hern stop … Hern dance with me, the two-backed dance … make joy with me.… Serroi blinked and tugged her hazed mind free, blushing, hoping rather desperately that she hadn’t said those things aloud, that Hern hadn’t heard her. She swallowed. Her mouth felt dry already but she knew better than to drink here.

  They reached the basin floor without incident though twice more Serroi had to discipline her wandering mind and body and stiffen herself against the insidious influence of the ever-present dust. The road across the basin was marked at intervals by large cairns and scraped flatter than the seamed surface on each side, the crude finishing of the surface overlaid by a deep, muffling layer of grey dust. Dust devils danced thick on the road and blew to nothingness against them. Serroi began to hear whispers in the wind despite her efforts to deny them, voices whose sibilant syllables were almost clear enough to gel into intelligible words, whispers that teased at her to listen harder, just a little bit harder, there were secrets to be heard. She scolded herself out of listening again and again but always the temptation returned. Beginning to feel a little frightened, she kneed her mount to a faster gait until she came up with Hern. She let the macai slow to a walk, the two beasts matching strides again, content to move side by side. Hern was staring intently at the dust devils whirling through their brief lives ahead of him. She wanted very much to talk with him, using the commonplaces of ordinary conversat
ion to hold her raveling mind to ordinary paths. “Hern,” she called, then coughed and spat as dust flew in her mouth. He didn’t seem to hear and she didn’t try again.

  The macain paced steadily on, perhaps seeing their own visions, hearing their own spectral sounds. As the hours passed the whispers came closer, grew louder and more insistent though she still could not understand them. Sometimes she thought she heard her name, though she couldn’t be sure. She blinked now and then at Hern, wondering if he heard the same. There was a dazed dull look on his face, a touch of pain in it and self disgust. She turned quickly away, feeling like an intruder on his privacy.

  The dust thickened and lumped into half-formed creatures that loped or undulated or slithered beside her. She tried to ignore them. At first they were little more than blurred lumps with indeterminate outlines, but gradually the outlines sharpened as if she herself, by looking at them, acted on them. She looked away, but always looked back again, drawn to look by a force within herself that beat down her feeble attempts to assert her will.

  Tayyan rides beside her, a sketch in grey and black, a blur at first but even so Serroi knows her by the tilt of her head, and angular grace of her body. The wind whispers now in Tayyan’s voice: Serroi. Serroi. Serroi. Serroi weeps, tears cutting runnels through the dust mask on her face.

  A tall form comes drifting in the dust between Serroi and the dust Tayyan, an elegant black form with pale face and pale hands and a shining black ruby drop hanging from one nostril (the black ruby bothers Serroi for a moment but she forgets it when the scene evolves). His mouth moves and the wind’s whisper takes on the dark music of his voice: Serroi. Serroi.

  Tayyan reaches a long-fingered hand to the Noris. Pale hand closes on pale hand. Riding the dust macai with her knees, Tayyan pulls the Noris astride facing her, his long narrow robe riding high on thin muscular legs. He leans to her, they kiss, a long slow terrible kiss where they seem to melt together. He is suddenly naked, enormously rampant. Serroi stares, knowing this is impossible, forgetting why she knows this is impossible. Tayyan is naked too now. It is absurd. Serroi would laugh but she cries instead, sobs her hurt and pain as Tayyan and the Noris couple, though frantic, somehow manage to maintain their balance on that walking dust macai. Eyes burning until tears blur away the scene, sick yet unable to look away until she sees nothing but the sliding dust, until she rides blind and sobbing, fighting a terrible sense of loss, a chill anguish of betrayal, a hurting beyond healing.

  When at last she fought back to reality and wiped her eyes of muddy tears, the hurtful images had faded into the dust. She glanced at Hern. There was a scowl on his face and as she watched he seemed to wince away with a look of horror in his eyes. She wondered what he was seeing, then decided that she didn’t want to know.

  Beads of light begin gathering about Serroi, sharpening into moth sprites, their tiny glowing bodies weaving a lace before her of mind-dazzling beauty. She gasps with pleasure, gasps with horror as one by one the lights begin to die, the small forms breaking like puff balls, the broken husks raining against her face, dead and gone with the world worse off for lack of them.

  Chini pups play beside her, jumping in exuberant delight at the wonder of being alive; chini pups run beside her, silent, eyes calling her betrayer and murderer. “I couldn’t help it,” she cries. “He was too strong for me. I fought him, yes I did. You know I did.” The pups run together, melt together into a great black beast that lopes beside her, grinning at her until it too melts into the dust.

  Dead men, her dead, dead at her hands float around her, grinning at her, cursing her, each curse simply her name: Serroi. Serroi. Serroi. Serroi.

  The land began to rise. Slowly, painfully they left behind the level of the dust devils and climbed into a cleaner wind. Serroi had wept herself empty; she rode with her hands clamped on the saddle ledge before her, sunk in a dull stupor that stayed with her until the wind carried the clean spicy odor of vachbrush and snowline conifers strongly to her, the smells of vigorous life rekindling her own life. She sat straighter, scrubbed at her face, drew in several cleansing breaths that flushed the last of the poison dust from her lungs. When she tilted her head back, following the steepening slope to the peaks, she saw not far ahead two great horns of stone. The Viper’s Fangs. The Gullet ran between them. An hour or two more, that was all. An hour or two and she’d be pouring cold clean water over her. She closed her eyes, swallowed with difficulty. Cold clean water, outside and in. She let her shoulders sag; her back curve into a weary arc.

  The macai went steadily onward shifting from its sluggish walk to a jolting trot that broke her rapidly from her daze of exhaustion. She glanced at Hern. He wore his court mask, his bland rather stupid smile, a face he could put on without effort while his mind worked busily behind it. For a moment only she wondered what he was thinking, then shrugged her curiosity away, and settled herself as comfortably as she could in the saddle while her macai turned into the first of the switchbacks.

  CHAPTER VII:

  THE MIJLOC

  The hour before dawn was silent and cool, as cool as the blanket of clouds would let it be, and the Traxim were gone from over the Players’ camp when Rane woke Tuli and Teras. She gave them food, hot cha, more grain for the macain and sent them on their way with a thoughtful scowl on her long face.

  Teras and Tuli kept to the trees though the riding there was not especially easy or quick; they had to work their way around tangles of dying, thorny underbrush, through root mazes and past thickets of saplings where a viper would have had trouble wriggling between the trunks. When the color had faded from the east and the sun came clear of the horizon, bloating as it rose, Teras worked cautiously to the outer trees. On the edge of shadow he watched the sky above the road for a long time and still saw nothing. “They’ve really gone off,” he said. “Come on.” He kneed his mount to a quick walk and started up the embankment to the Highroad, Tuli coming quiet and thoughtful after him, glancing repeatedly at the empty sky. The clouds were gone now, burnt away by a sun that had already grown half again as big as it should be.

  They had the Highroad to themselves until about an hour before noon when a brownish dot popped up from the northern horizon, resolving itself eventually into a Pedlar coming south, ambling unhurriedly beside his esek, a small brownish-orange beast padding steadily along on three toed feet, the pack on its back almost as big as it was and far noisier. Metal pans dangled from the side of the pack, along with clutches of spoons and forks, long-handled ladles and digging tools, all of them clattering musically with each of the esek’s swinging strides. The Pedlar—a small dark man with long thin arms and legs—waved as the macain trotted past him, called a greeting. Teras grinned back, waved. Tuli heard the clank-clunk-clang for a long time before it finally faded into the distance. When the cheerful noise was gone, she sighed. “I wonder how much longer the Aglim will let folk like him and the Players be?”

  “Don’t know.” Teras uneasily rubbed at the back of his neck.

  “What is it?” Tuli rode closer, anxiously scanned her twin’s face. “Gong?”

  “Not exactly.” Teras pulled his hand down. “Sorta like someone’s staring at me, you know, you get that itchy feel on the back of your neck.”

  She twisted around, “There’s no one back there now.”

  “I know that.” He kicked his macai into a trot and pulled away from her and her questions. Tuli sighed and rode after him.

  About midafternoon when the heat was so bad they were beginning to think about leaving the Highroad and moving back under the trees, a stenda lordling and three stenda herdsmen brought six macai yearlings out of the foothills and drove them up onto the Highroad in front of the twins. Arrogant as always, the young stenda ignored them as beneath his notice, didn’t offer them the customary traveler’s greeting but the herdsman on their side grinned at them and waved as the twins took to the steep grassy slope alongside and edged their way past the boisterous young macain. Teras and Tuli returned both gri
n and wave, Tuli’s spirits rising as she was taken for the boy she pretended to be.

  The heat grew oppressive. The wind fell and the air twisted and distorted ahead of them as the black paving turned to an oven floor. They left the the Highroad to ride along at the edge of the trees, letting the macain drop to a shuffling walk, stopping frequently to water the beasts and splash a little water on their own reddened, burning faces.

  Near evening when the road became passable again, they began meeting other riders. Two Sleykyn assassins were moving south. I wonder who they’re after, Tuli thought. She shivered, hoping it was no one she knew. She only relaxed where they were small figures far behind. They passed guards, traveling craftsmen, passed tithe wagons going south after grain flanked by more guards, footloose laborers hunting work from Tar to Tar, scattered young men much like the twins appeared to be, rootless and ragged with a feral lost look to them even when they laughed and joked together. Most of them were walking. Teras and Tuli got a number of speculative looks, the macain they rode drew more. Teras grew edgier. He began keeping the width of the Highroad between them and the larger groups they met. And he began looking back more often. “Tuli,” he said finally. “The itch is a lot worse.”

  “Someone following us?” She twisted around, stared along the Highroad behind her. There were several riders wavering in mirage riding north just as they were, but no one close. “I can’t see anything to worry about.”