by Gray Prince
Before dawn the party was astir and away. A great reef of clouds obscured the east and the party walked in maroon gloom. At noon lightning began to strike down at the buttes, now lonely shapes in the southern distance, and draughts of dank air blew north across the plain. Halfway into the afternoon a rain squall raced past, drenching the group to the skin and laying the dust; shortly after, the sun found gaps in the clouds and sent remarkable pink rays slanting down at the ground. Jemasze led the way, accommodating his pace to that of Kelse, whose limp had become somewhat more noticeable. Schaine and Elvo Glissam sauntered along to the rear. Had the circumstances been different, had her father been alive and Kelse not so obviously contriving each separate step by an effort of will, she might almost have enjoyed the adventure.
The land sloped down into a sink paved with pale hardpan. At the far verge stood a cluster of sandstone pinnacles and beyond, an irregular scarp of pink, mauve and russet sandstone. Schaine called ahead to Kelse: “There’s Bottom Edge!”
“Almost like home,” said Kelse.
Schaine excitedly told Elvo Glissam: “Morningswake starts at the brink of the cliff. Beyond is our land—all the way north to the Volwodes.”
Elvo Glissam shook his head in sad disapproval, and Schaine looked at him wonderingly. She thought a moment, reflecting upon what she had said, then laughed but made no comment. Clearly she was not a Redemptionist by instinct, or by innate conviction…How to reconcile her love for Morningswake with the guilty suspicion that she had no right to the property? Kelse and Gerd Jemasze had no such qualms. On an impulse she asked Elvo Glissam: “Suppose you owned Morningswake: what would you do?”
Elvo Glissam smiled and shook his head. “It’s always easier to relinquish somebody else’s property…I’d like to believe that my principles would dominate my avarice.”
“So you’d give up Morningswake?”
“I honestly don’t know. I hope that’s what I’d do.”
Schaine pointed toward a cluster of tung-beetle mounds about a hundred yards west. “Look: in the shadow to the right! You wanted to see a wild erjin—there it is!”
The erjin stood seven feet tall, with massive arms banded with stripes of black and yellow fur. Tufts of stiff golden fiber stood above the head; folds of gunmetal cartilage almost concealed the four small eyes in the neck under the jutting frontal bone. The creature stood negligently, showing neither fear nor hostility. Gerd Jemasze and Kelse became aware of the beast. Kelse stared in fascination, and slowly brought forth his gun.
Elvo asked in dismay: “Is he going to shoot it? It’s such a magnificent creature!”
“He’s always hated erjins—worse since he lost his arm and leg.”
“But this one isn’t threatening us. It’s almost murder.”
Gerd Jemasze suddenly turned and fired to the east at a pair of erjins lunging forward from a thicket of greasebush. One sprawled forward and fell only four feet from Schaine and Elvo Glissam, to lie with great six-fingered hands twitching; the other jerked up into a grotesque backward somersault and fell with a thump. The first erjin, who had acted as a decoy, slipped behind the tung mounds before Kelse could aim his gun. Jemasze ran off to the side to get another shooting angle, but the creature had disappeared.
Elvo Glissam stood looking down at the quivering hulk of the near erjin. He noticed the hand-palps, as sensitive as human fingers, and the talons which extended themselves when the erjin made a fist. He examined the tuft of bronze bristles on the scalp, which some authorities declared to be telepathy receptors. Another bound and the creature would have been at his throat. In a subdued voice he said to Gerd Jemasze, “That was a close call…Do the erjins often use tricks like that?”
Jemasze nodded curtly. “They’re intelligent brutes, and unforgiving. How they can be domesticated is a mystery to me.”
“Maybe the secret was Uther Madduc’s ‘wonderful joke’.”
“I don’t know. I plan to find out.”
Kelse asked: “How do you propose to do that?”
“As soon as we get to Morningswake we’ll fly back to the Sturdevant and rescue the log,” said Gerd Jemasze. “Then we’ll have an idea where he went.”
The afternoon waned. At sunset the party camped among the sandstone pinnacles, with the southern edge of Morningswake Domain still three miles to the north. Jemasze stalked, killed and cleaned a ten-pound bustard, the wild descendant of fowl imported from beyond the stars. Schaine and Elvo Glissam gathered fuel and built a fire, and the four toasted chunks of the bird on twigs.
“Tomorrow we’ll find water,” said Gerd. “Three or four streams cross South Morningswake, so I recall.”
“It’s about ten miles to South Station,” said Kelse. “There’s a windmill and maybe a few stores there. But no radio, worse luck.”
“Where are the Aos?”
“They might be anywhere, but I suspect they’re moving north. No help for it; we’ve still got sixty miles to go.”
“How’s your leg holding up?”
“Not too good. But I’ll get there.”
Elvo Glissam leaned back and lay staring up at the stars. His own life, he thought, seemed relatively simple compared to that of a land-baron…Schaine! What went on in her mind? One moment she seemed intensely subtle and sympathetic, then naïve, then caught up in some emotion beyond his knowing. Beyond question she was brave and kind and cheerful. He could well imagine passing the rest of his life in her company…At Morningswake? He was not so sure. Would she agree to live elsewhere? He was not sure of this either…Three days more of this arduous marching. He wished he could in some manner help Kelse. Perhaps in the morning he’d inconspicuously take part of Kelse’s backpack and hang it on his own.
In the morning Elvo Glissam put his plan into effect. Kelse noticed and protested, but Elvo Glissam said: “This is just simple common sense. You’re already working twice as hard as I am, and it’s in everybody’s interest that you stay healthy.”
Gerd Jemasze said, “Glissam’s right, Kelse. I’d rather carry your pack than carry you.”
Kelse said no more; the group set forth and an hour later reached the base of the South Rim. By a dry gulch they ascended five hundred feet, then toiled another hundred feet up a face of rotting conglomerate and finally stood at the lip. Behind spread the Retent, melting into the southern haze; ahead the ground fell away to a pleasant valley grown with green-gum, dragon-eye, slender black-green gadroon, and copses of orange vandalia. A mile to the north the sunlight glinted on a shallow pond. “Morningswake!” cried Schaine huskily. “We’re home.”
“With about sixty miles to go,” said Kelse.
Jemasze looked back over the Retent. “We’re past the worst of it. The going should be easier.”
There was a day of silent trudging across the south prairie; another day was spent toiling up and down the Tourmaline Hills. Kelse now moved in awkward hops and lurches. There was a long sweaty morning in the marsh north of Skyflower Lake. At noon the party struggled through a thicket of coarse vines to reach solid terrain. They halted to rest. Kelse looked ahead. “Fourteen more miles…We’ll never make it tonight. Perhaps you’d better go on to the house and send a wagon back for me.”
“I’ll wait here with you,” said Schaine. “It’s a good idea.”
Gerd Jemasze said: “It would be a good idea—except that we’re being kept under observation.” He pointed toward the sky. “Three times in the last two days I’ve seen a sky-shark hanging in the clouds.”
All stared toward the sky. “I don’t see anything,” said Schaine.
“Right now he’s in the fold of that cumulus cloud.”
“But what could he want? If he’s hostile, why doesn’t he try to shoot us?”
“I would guess that he wants to take us alive. Or some of us alive. If we separated, the chances would be much improved. There might even be another party of Hunge on the way to intercept us before we reach Morningswake.”
Schaine said in a hushed voice: “Wo
uld they dare come in so far from the Retent? Our Aos would kill them.”
“The sky-shark would observe the Aos and provide warning.”
Elvo Glissam licked his lips. “I wouldn’t care to be captured now. Or even killed.”
Kelse struggled to his feet. “Let’s get started.”
Twenty minutes later Gerd Jemasze once more searched the landscape. Looking to the northwest he became still. He lowered the binoculars and pointed. “Uldras. About twenty.”
Schaine peered wearily through the pink dust-haze. More fighting, more killing; and in this region of thickets and clumps of vandalia there was small hope—in fact, no hope—of beating off an attack. Fourteen miles to Morningswake. So near and so far.
Elvo Glissam had arrived at the same conclusion. His face became pinched and gray; a husky sound forced its way up his throat.
Gerd Jemasze looked through the binoculars again. “They’re riding criptids.”
Schaine released her pent breath. “They’re Aos!”
Gerd Jemasze nodded. “I can make out their headdress. White plumes. They’re Ao.”
Schaine’s breath came in a rasping guttural sob. Elvo Glissam asked in a soft strained voice: “Are they hostile?”
“No,” said Kelse shortly.
The riders approached, raising a trail of dust behind them. Gerd Jemasze studied the sky through his binoculars. “There he goes!” He pointed to a minute mark among the clouds, which drifted slowly west, then picked up speed and presently disappeared.
The Aos rode in a ritual circle around the group, the soft-footed criptids*running easily and low to the ground. They halted; an old man, somewhat shorter and more sturdy than the ordinary Uldra, dismounted and came forward. Schaine took his hand. “Kurgech! I’ve come home to Morningswake.”
Kurgech touched the top of her head, a gesture half caress, half formal salute. “It gives us pleasure to see you home, Mistress.”
Kelse said: “Uther Madduc is dead. He was shot down over the Dramalfo by a sky-shark.”
Kurgech’s gray face—he wore no azure oil—showed no twitch of emotion, and Schaine surmised that the information had already reached his mind. She asked: “Do you know who killed my father?”
“The knowledge has not come to me.”
Kelse, hobbling forward, said hoarsely: “Search for the knowledge, Kurgech. When it comes—tell me.”
Kurgech gave a curt nod which might have meant anything, then turned and signaled to four of the tribesmen, who dismounted and brought their mounts forward. Gerd Jemasze half-lifted Kelse into the saddle. Schaine told Elvo Glissam: “Just sit quietly and hang on; it doesn’t need guidance.”
She herself mounted, as did Gerd Jemasze, and the four Aos mounted double. The party rode north toward Morningswake.
Two hours later, past the Skaw and across the South Savanna, Schaine saw her home. She blinked back tears, unable to restrain her pent-up emotion any longer. She looked at Kelse, who rode beside her. His face was strained with pain and as gray as Kurgech’s; his eyes also glinted with tears. Gerd Jemasze’s dark face was unreadable; who could fathom this man? Elvo Glissam, far too polite to betray any excess of relief, rode in grave silence. Schaine watched him covertly. For all his lack of wilderness craft, he had by no means disgraced himself. Kelse clearly liked him and even Gerd Jemasze treated him with civility. When he left Uaia and returned to Olanje, he would have memories to last him a lifetime.
And there ahead: Morningswake, serene among tall frail green-gums and lordly transtellar oaks, with the brimming Chip-chap flowing to the side: the landscape of a dear reverie; a place forever precious; and tears once more flooded Schaine’s eyes.
Chapter 5
Across two hundred years Morningswake had been built and rebuilt, extended, remodeled, subjected to a dozen modifications and improvements as each land-baron in turn attempted to impinge some trace of his identity upon the hereditary manse. Morningswake therefore lacked a definable style and showed a different aspect from each perspective. The roof of the central structure stood tall and steep, with a dozen high-pitched dormers, a curious little observation deck overlooking Wild Crake Pond, and along the high central ridge a line of black iron ghost-chasers in the shape of trefoils. From either flank extended a rambling two-story wing with verandahs at each level; the double colonnades were overgrown with arabella vine. The framing timbers were gadroon from Fairy Forest; the exterior clapboards were green-gum, equally durable; the interior stairs, balusters, floors, moldings and wainscotings were ironwood, pearl sachuli, verbane, Szintarre teak. The chandeliers, furniture and rugs had been imported, not from Olanje (the products of which were considered cheap and unsubstantial), but from one of the far Old Worlds.
The central structure enclosed the Great Hall which was the heart of Morningswake, where the family celebrated important occasions, entertained guests and took its evening meal in an atmosphere which Schaine remembered as portentously formal. Everyone dressed for dinner; the table was laid with fine porcelain, silver and crystal; the conversation was confined to dignified subjects and lapses of decorum were not tolerated. As a child Schaine had found these dinners tedious and she could never understand why Muffin was not allowed to dine in the Great Hall where his fancies and drolleries would certainly have enlivened matters. But Muffin was excluded; he dined alone in the kitchen.
When Schaine was eleven her mother drowned in a boating accident on Shadow Lake. Dinners in the Great Hall became subdued rather than merely decorous, and Uther Madduc inexplicably—to Schaine—turned gruff and unreasonable; frequently she had been aroused to anger and even rebellion. Not that she did not love her father; Schaine was too warm not to love everything connected with her life; still Schaine had decided that her father must be taught a lesson on how to get along with people and how not to be so arrogant with the Uldras, specifically poor Muffin.
Uther Madduc at this time had been a man of remarkable appearance, straight and tall, with thick gray hair worn in a style of elegant simplicity, clear gray eyes, features of classical regularity. He had been neither easy nor gregarious. Schaine remembered him as a man of brooding imagination and sudden impulses, simultaneously calm and restless, lacking all talent or taste for frivolity. His rare angers were cold and controlled, and diminished without perceptible aftermath; neither Schaine nor Kelse had ever incurred punishment at his hands except possibly on that last climactic night—if being sent to an expensive boarding school on Tanquil could be reckoned as punishment. Really, thought Schaine, I was an arrogant feckless self-important little wretch…And yet, and yet…
Kelse and Gerd Jemasze had flown south in the Morningswake cargo carrier to salvage the Apex and the Sturdevant. With them flew two of Gerd Jemasze’s cousins and a pair of Ao ranch-hands. An automatic cannon had been mounted on the cargo deck, to fend off sky-shark attacks. Elvo Glissam had not been invited to join the party, and he had not volunteered his services; instead he and Schaine enjoyed a leisurely breakfast under the green-gums. Elvo Glissam told Schaine: “By no means feel that you must entertain me; I know you have a hundred things on your mind.”
Schaine grinned. “I’m not worried about entertaining you. I’ve already shown you a wild erjin, as I said I’d do—and whatever the hundred affairs on my mind, I don’t intend to consider them for several days, if ever. In fact, I may very well decide to do nothing at all for the next month or two.”
“When I think back now,” said Elvo Glissam, “I can’t believe it all happened. And yet it did.”
“It’s certainly one way of getting acquainted,” said Schaine. “On a five-day march, a certain intimacy is almost unavoidable.”
“Yes. At least with you, and with Kelse. Gerd Jemasze—I don’t know. He puzzles me.”
“Me no less, and I’ve known him all my life.”
“I’d swear that he enjoys killing Uldras,” said Elvo Glissam. “It seems churlish to cavil at his motives. He brought us home alive—as you predicted.”
“
He’s not bloodthirsty,” said Schaine. “He just doesn’t consider the Hunge human beings, especially when they’re attacking us.”
“He amazes me,” said Elvo Glissam thoughtfully. “Killing just isn’t one of my skills.”
“You did yourself credit,” said Schaine. “Kelse and Gerd both respect you, and I do too, so don’t go agonizing over imaginary deficiencies.”
“Oh, I’m not agonizing. Still, I can’t believe I did anything noteworthy.”
“You made no complaints. You did your share and usually more of whatever work was needful; you were always cheerful. I think that’s all very commendable.”
Elvo Glissam made a careless gesture. “Inconsequentialities. I’m back in an environment I prefer, and whatever good qualities I possess will go back into hiding.”
Schaine looked off across the South Savanna. “Do you really like it here at Morningswake?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And you’re not bored?”
“Not with you here.” Elvo Glissam’s glance was unmistakably ardent.
Schaine smiled absently off across the distance. “It’s been very quiet at Morningswake since my mother died. Before, there were parties every week. We always had guests, from other domains, from Olanje, or even off-planet. Several times a year the Aos would organize a karoo. Often we’d go up to Twin Lake Lodge, or Snowflower Lodge in the Suaniset Crags. There was always excitement and fun—before my mother died. You mustn’t think we live like hermits.”
“And then?”
“Father became—well, ‘recluse’ is too strong a word. Then I went off to Tanquil, and for the last five years Morningswake has been very quiet. Kelse says Father’s closest friend has been Kurgech!”
“And now?”
“I’d like Morningswake to be a happy place again.”
“Yes. That would be pleasant. Except…” Elvo Glissam paused.
“Except what?”
“I suspect that the days of the great domains are numbered.”