by R. M. Meluch
“We knew you would be back.” He rose from his worktable. “Rest thou. Our air is thin to thee. Keep thee here and rest.” He moved toward the door.
“What would be my chances of leaving Iry within the week?” Alihahd asked, and quickly added, “Seven days.”
“Oh,” said the physician without excitement as he was leaving. “None.”
All in a wave, sickness rose in Alihahd’s throat. His vision blurred and he reached for the wall, suddenly too dizzy to stand. There was no chair, so he sat on the floor.
When the spell passed, Amerika was kneeling at his side, biting her lower lips, afraid to touch him.
“It is nothing,” Alihahd said.
Amerika sat back on her heels, unconvinced and unhappy. She was a lovely child, smelling clean of sunlit air, grass and leaves, and the woolen scent of her cloak.
The eagle in its corner stretched out its neck and lifted one wing to peck at a bare patch of skin. Amerika snapped her head around and cried, “Not to do that!” And the eagle stopped. Amerika turned back to Alihahd.
Alihahd gave a pale smile. The girl was a provincial. She spoke Universal in the peculiar dialect of the Itiri. She must have learned the language here, not on her backward homeworld Solea.
Her necklace placed her. The necklace was a polished chain carved from a single block of petrified wood, each loop an unbroken circle. The chain had been placed on her as a baby and could no longer be taken off over her head. The chains were customary to certain Solenense tribes. That Amerika still wore it meant she had never fallen into Na′id hands. The Na′id habitually cut the repressive symbols from the necks of all the young Solenese girls. That she still wore it signified that she was a virgin.
“A Solenese healer?” Alihahd said. “Is that not unusual?” Solea had no medical technology.
Amerika tried to hide a bashful smile, but it glowed in her eyes and on her cheeks. “Who told thee I was of Solea?” she said playfully.
“You did.” Alihahd looped his forefinger through the chain at her throat.
Amerika’s skin warmed against the back of his hand, and she blushed very dark. Alihahd let the chain drop.
He got up and smoothed his tunic. He moved to the door.
Suddenly plaintive, Amerika said, “Why must thou leave in seven days? This place pleaseth thee not?”
The way she said it made him sound ungrateful for wanting to go. He turned at the door. “Do you know, child, only hours ago I believed I was dying, and I expected nothing else. I know I am fortunate to be alive and to be here. But now that I am here, alive, and I find these people have starships—”
“Thou wantest to go home,” she finished for him with a downturn in her voice, a litany of disappointment.
“No,” Alihahd said. “I can never go home.”
Amerika brightened. “Then stay thee here.”
“I have no choice, it seems.”
“Why so eager to go nowhere?” she demanded.
Alihahd couldn’t explain, not without touching the past, and not without telling a child that the prospect of living could be infinitely more terrifying than dying. So he excused himself and left.
• • •
The warrior-priest Jinin-Ben-Tairre wrapped the felt cover around the ancient tungsten-plastic blade and replaced it in its scented wood chest, closed the lid, and fastened the polished brass catches. He had heard the eagles arrive earlier with Universal-speaking newcomers. Ben-Tairre had not gone out to look. It was his practice to avoid off-worlders. He preferred to maintain ignorance of things that lay beyond the planet he fiercely loved—or even of things beyond the Aerie—since the time he had first walked the fire and become a warrior-priest.
He stood, straightened his clothes, and secured his cloak with a short length of chain across his broad chest. Then he turned and bowed to his Elder. The hanina’s hood was up. The old woman had ceased speaking for the day. The younger warrior withdrew and set off for his own chamber, muscles flowing in his powerful thighs with each stride, his winged familiar fluttering at his shoulder.
Long rays of the sinking sun reached the far wall of the arcade. Ben-Tairre walked through the colonnade, stepped down to the Ledge Path, and came face-to-face with one of the newcomers. Thunderstruck eyes met his own, and both men stopped dead.
The newcomer was a tall, gaunt human with straight Nordic nose and clear deep-set eyes in a swarthy, long face.
Jinin-Ben-Tairre’s shock passed to fury. His eyes blazed and he walked swiftly past. Who had spat this being at him? Laws of hospitality forbade him striking the stranger’s head off. The warrior’s fury doubled at his own inability to choke down hatred. He did not go to his own chamber, but kept walking.
• • •
Alihahd turned to watch the retreating figure incredulously. If a hallucination, it was vivid.
The warrior was human.
• • •
A swift breeze swayed the bridge unsettlingly as Alihahd crossed to Havenside.
He found Harrison White Fox Hall and Vaslav at dinner in the dwelling of the human woman Montserrat. The cave was large, warm, its walls hung with red-and-amber tapestries. A kettle bubbled on the hearth.
There were two women inside. The pale, nervous, petite woman in a red dress was Montserrat. She kept her rusty wiry hair cut very short except for long bangs that nearly obscured a red chevron tattooed on her brow. She gave up her cushion at the table as Alihahd came in, and she fetched another for herself, her brown eyes downcast all the while. Hall called her Serra.
The second woman was as small, looked tougher, and was wearing a hide jerkin and trousers. She was cleaning a jeweled dagger and scowling at Harrison Hall, her lightly freckled nose wrinkled in disdain. Straight brown hair was pulled off her heart-shaped face and braided back with a leather thong. Her brown eyes were lined black like an Itiri’s. She wore a small beam gun holstered under her left arm but seemed to favor the dagger in her hand. She was Layla, a Nwerthan mercenary. Alihahd could spot those right away. Modern worlds customarily recruited and trained the primitive Nwerthans in warfare because they fought like the very devil and seldom asked why.
Both women were not much older than thirty years Earth standard.
Alihahd bid a proper Universal greeting to them, then spoke to Hall. “I saw—” And he stopped, doubting what he had seen—a powerfully built young warrior-priest with golden skin, brown-black slanted eyes, a heavy jaw, flat nose, and short black hair. He’d borne the symbols of a warrior-priest: the red broken scars on his broad cheeks; a white flower at his belt; a signet ring on his forefinger, though his was on his left hand. His right hand was gloved in black and didn’t look real. His knife had been sheathed left-handed. Red rags were tied around the highly arched insteps of his small feet which were scarred as if by fire.
A bird had ridden on his shoulder—a real bird, not an avian alien. It was a kestrel.
There was a power in the young warrior, and a horror-branded depth in his dark eyes that looked murderously at Alihahd. He had walked past Alihahd as if past an urn of ashes.
Alihahd decided that he was certain of what he’d seen. “I saw a warrior-priest,” he told Hall. “He was as human as you and I.”
“Jinin-Ben-Tairre,” Layla said. She sheathed her dagger at her belt and placed eight dainty rings from the table onto the short, tapered fingers of her rough-lined and callused little hands.
“Is that a name?” Alihahd asked.
Layla assented with a nod. “It means ‘The Warrior’s Feet Are Burned.’” She spoke Universal with the studied precision of a second language.
“The Fendi said there were three humans on the Aerie,” Alihahd said. “Why am I counting four?”
“Because Roniva will not speak his name. And because Jinin-Ben-Tairre is not human anymore,” Layla said.
Alihahd found the idea of
a human trying to be alien offensive. “He pretends he is not human so that makes him not?” Acid had crept into his deep voice.
“If Ben-Tairre thinks something is so, it is so,” Layla said. “You will see. He has a familiar.”
Alihahd remembered the warrior’s kestrel and Roniva’s disappearing owl. “What are they, the familiars?”
“I do not know,” Layla said. She crossed one dun-booted foot across her opposite knee. “I do not think the Itiri know.”
“Are they alive?”
“They do not eat,” Layla said. “I do not think they breathe.”
“They disappear from one place and appear somewhere else in an instant,” Serra added haltingly in a low voice that went to breathiness and slight feminine gravel. Her hands fidgeted over her teacup. Serra’s skin was pale brown, without sun, her eyes unlined. Her small nose had once been broken, and there were scars on her pretty face. Someone used to hit her.
“From where did Jinin-Ben-Tairre come?” Alihahd asked.
“He has no past,” Layla said. “He killed it. He locked it in a box and burned it. It is dead.”
Serra spoke in a near whisper. “Old ghosts have a way of catching up with you in the safest of places.”
“I guess that bears keeping in mind,” Harrison White Fox Hall commented. He turned his eyes to Alihahd.
“And what are you?” Layla challenged Alihahd. “You look like a Na′id.”
The boy Vaslav had been letting the others talk. Here he spoke up in defense, proud and indignant, “He is not a Na′id! He is Alihahd!”
Layla’s jaw dropped in surprise, showing crooked white teeth. “I know you,” she said. Alihahd flinched. Layla’s attitude changed to deference. “You fight Na′id.”
“I do not fight them. I run from them,” Alihahd said.
“You are much too humble,” Serra whispered.
“No. In point of fact, I never met them in battle,” Alihahd said. This point was important to him.
“But you are a great man,” Layla said. “Everyone knows you made the Na′id leave Chesa.”
The liberation of Chesa had been Alihahd’s first and most notorious feat. It had made his “name.” By means of false orders from nonexistent admirals and generals, false intelligence reports, bogus replacement troops, fabricated computer records, suspicions cast left and right so that no one talked to anyone else, and all manner of deceptions, Alihahd had systematically tricked the Na′id into abandoning an entire occupied planet. A full standard month passed before someone realized that anything was wrong.
“An exercise in vanity,” Alihahd said. “They came back. There was no point to it beyond letting it be known that I could do it.”
When the Na′id reoccupied Chesa and demanded of the natives who was responsible for this incredible plot, they replied, “Alihahd,” which in their native tongue meant, “He left.” And so he was known ever after, an elusive force with a formidable knowledge of the Na′id chain of command, codes, and way of doing things. He’d spent the rest of his shadowy career throwing the system into chaos and providing means of escape for unwilling subjects of the Empire.
“You are not eating,” Serra said.
“We ate at Lower Aerie,” Alihahd said. From the corner of his eye he saw Hall scowl at him. “Have you anything to drink?” Alihahd asked. He’d barely touched his tea.
“If you mean alcohol, there is none.” Serra shrugged. “The Itiri don’t seem to make any.”
Alihahd dismissed the thought with a pass of his hand. His head hurt.
The sun was setting. The only light in the cave came from the hearth. It had been a long day—days. Alihahd had lost all sense of time since the Liberation had broken apart.
He stared futilely at the bowl of stew cooling in front of him. He couldn’t eat.
Amerika came to the door, and she peered in. Alihahd could see half of her, one bright black eye, one half of a coy smile, one baby-fat hand hugging the doorjamb.
Hall was speaking to him, “Did you find a way off-planet, Captain?”
“No,” Alihahd said and closed his eyes. “We are trapped here.”
Layla uncoiled from her cushion. “Then let us find a place for you.” She was looking at Hall. “You are not staying in here.”
“There is a chamber,” Amerika piped cheerfully from the threshold. “Sit thee down, Layla. I shall show them.”
“Whose chamber?” Alihahd asked.
“Thine,” Amerika said.
Alihahd turned to Serra. “Why are we being given everything? Whose chamber am I taking, and who is giving it to me in return for what?”
Serra smiled for the first time, color in her pale brown cheeks. “It is the way of hospitality. Travelers must have what they need. If the cave is empty, you may have it. No one gives it. Nothing belongs to anyone anyway.”
“Is this the law?” Alihahd asked.
“Not law. Virtue.”
“Then what consequence if you are not hospitable?” Alihahd asked.
“Then you are a bad person,” Serra said.
Alihahd didn’t understand the world. He’d never been so lost, forced to conform to alien ways. “Is there anything I should be sure to do or not do? Am I likely to commit a crime in ignorance?”
“No there aren’t any laws. Only for the warrior-priests. A guest would have to be very evil for harm to come to him. You’re safe here,” Serra said.
“Safe from the Itiri,” Layla said, her eyes on Hall.
No, I am not safe, Alihahd thought. I must leave this place very, very soon.
“Come with me,” Amerika sang and waved the men outside with her.
“And do something with their clothes,” Layla called after the girl. “They stink.”
The night was clear. There were no lamps on the paths, for the starry sky was bright, shedding light equal to several full moons.
An albino Itiri sentinel crouched at his post on the dawn ridge, his face washed silvery blue in the cold light. Red eyes watched over the peaceful valley, while distant yellow firelights winked back from the little village far below.
Small black shapes darted through the air over the Aerie—swifts—catching winged bugs swept up the chasm on rising air currents.
Alihahd stopped on the windy path. Across the chasm a figure lurked in a dark archway. Starlight gleamed off a naked sword blade slanting down from a left-handed grip.
A man without a past was a dangerous sort, Alihahd knew. He stood out of the edge of the cliff path and faced the shadowed figure across the abyss, the wind in his hair, his long arms hanging at his sides from his wide, straight shoulders in weaponless, tired readiness until the dark figure and the sword withdrew again into blackness.
Alihahd walked on.
The cave where Amerika led them was clean, with a fire already burning in its hearth, and three separate piles of bedcovers set on the expansive chaff-filled mattress that would have been big enough for six people. The girl had been busy. Amerika stirred the coals in the hearth. She darted out again like a swift. “Good night. Good night.”
Alihahd peeled off his tunic, pulled off his flat-bottomed deck boots, pounded out a place on the uneven mattress, and lay down.
Vaslav took a place against the wall behind which sounded the trickling of water. Vaslav huddled against the warm stone and was soon snoring softly.
Hall walked out to water a bush on the mountainside, then returned and undressed. His dirk he kept with him. That and his gun and his fox-head pipe. He gave up his other things to the little ranga male who came into the cave to collect their clothes and spirit them away.
Hall’s trim body took on a burnished sheen in the firelight, muscular and taut for his age, deep-chested and wasp-waisted. A few age spots dotted his shoulders. His hair, loosed from its tie, was streaked heavily with steely gray.
&nbs
p; Hall settled under a pile of bedding on the other side of Alihahd from Vaslav.
The glowing coals in the hearth shifted and settled. Outside, night birds sang.
Alihahd shivered. This place was barbaric. He could have been in New Triton by now. His emergency shuttles should have arrived there by this time. He could hear them telling the other rebels, “Alihahd is dead.”
Alihahd wished he were.
He sensed Hall was still awake. Alihahd turned to him.
One tiger eye was open and watching. “A touch xenophobic, aren’t you, Captain,” Hall said.
“I was never known for my love of aliens,” Alihahd said shortly.
“The Na′id call rebels alien-lovers,” Hall said. Alihahd was a notorious rebel indeed.
“Does not necessarily follow,” Alihahd said.
They were speaking in near-whispers, reluctant to disturb the quiet. Except for the birds, they seemed to be the only beings awake in the world.
Hall propped one bare arm behind his head, the brindle fur cover across his deep chest, his gaze directed toward the ceiling. Hearthlight picked up copper flecks of beard stubble on his cheek.
Hall was a hunter and a controller. The more elusive and powerful the quarry, the more interesting the capture and control. Alihahd would not be controlled.
Hall sighed and went to sleep.
Alihahd shivered. He couldn’t seem to put on enough covers. He’d never felt the cold before. This cold came from within.
He fell asleep shaking.
4. Circle Circle
HARRISON WHITE FOX HALL awoke the first morning, pushed the blankets from his face, and breathed in the cold sting of mountain air. The fire was dead. He reached out a bare arm from the warmth under the covers to rest atop the frosty fur.
Some small light came from outside. It was almost dawn. The boy Vaslav was still asleep, quietly snoring. Alihahd had already risen and gone.
On the corner of the wide mattress Hall’s clothes had been returned to him, neatly folded, clean, dry—and cold. He threw off the blankets and jumped out of bed onto the icy granite floor, naked and barefoot. He was quickly dressed.