Diadem from the Stars

by Clayton, Jo;

  9

  The pains were coming closer and closer together. Aleytys clung to Khateyat’s hand while fear and pain jumbled in her. “Khatya,” she gasped. “Mother …”

  “Hush, Leyta, everything’s fine. Don’t worry.” Khateyat’s voice cut through the pain mist and spread over her spirit like a soothing oil. She squeezed Aleytys’s hand and brushed the hair back from her sweating face.

  Aleytys panted and trembled. The low curving roof of the chon seemed to push down on her so that her breath caught in her throat and her head throbbed. She wriggled and tried to sit up but firm, gentle hands pushed her down again.

  “Khatya,” she gasped out. “Not in here. Please. Not in here.” She shoved the other hands away and rolled up onto her knees. “Help me.”

  “There’s no time.” Kheprat touched her shoulder with a warning hand.

  “Help me,” Aleytys repeated urgently, then grunted as another pain rippled through her. “I want to be by the river. Please.” She twisted her head back and forth, sweat beading her forehead. “I need to go to the river.”

  Khateyat examined her closely a minute, then she nodded. R’prat and N’frat took Aleytys’s arms and helped her out of the tent. The other women rolled up the birth leathers and followed. Kheprat shook her head disapprovingly and held out her hand for Khateyat.

  It was very early morning. Horli was thrusting her tip over the mountain like a ruby on the circle of the world. The narrow strip of trees on the river bank wrote with long shadows in red-tinged calligraphy across the sandy stone-pointed earth while the river danced down the slope, clear and cold, blue-green-blue, with a low musical roar that was like cream along her nerves.

  They spread the leathers on a level grassy spot warm in the rich red light. The two young Shemqya helped her down. The pains were clutching at her almost constantly now. She stretched out, letting her spirit drift, to merge with the water and the air and the sky, then the pain became a force welling up from the blood and bones of Jaydugar herself.

  A loud wail cut through the quiet murmurs of the morning. Aleytys felt limp and wrung out. Khateyat’s face smiling, gentle, loomed over her. “You have a son, Aleytys.” Another angry, demanding cry clipped the end of her words. “A strong and hungry boy.”

  10

  The wagons moved clumsily up the slopes of the mountains and trundled along a rutted road into a wide, steep-walled valley. Sitting beside Khateyat, Aleytys pulled the neck thongs loose and bared a breast so Sharl could nurse. “This is where you winter?” She looked around at the barren steamy valley. “How do the yd’rwe eat?”

  Khateyat didn’t speak for a moment, concentrating on urging the team through a downslanting S-curve. Safely around, she relaxed. “We slaughter all but the breeding stock.” She pointed to the rocky ground below with its scattering of hot springs leaking steam into the air. “This is the killing ground. There …” She nodded at a monolithic cliff rising, to be lost in the ceiling of cloud. “Around there the grass is thick and lush, the floor protected from the worst of the winter winds. It is a good place. We’ve had to fight for it a number of times.”

  “Fight?”

  Khateyat shrugged. “Often another clan grows greedy or the winter is harder than usual, so that the less sheltered places are not good enough to sustain life, so they come with men and magic to challenge us.” She frowned. “If this winter is bad, we’re weaker by one.”

  “My fault.”

  “No. Not you. The Khem-sko’s greed.”

  The silence between them lasted until the herret rocked onto the floor of the valley. Then Khateyat sighed. “When we camp, Leyta, I don’t know what Myawo will try.”

  “Well, my dear friend, I won’t be troubling you over the winter. There’s a place I have to reach as soon as possible. The Bawe Neswet.”

  “Ah!” Khateyat glanced at her. “I know it.” She began threading through the scattered boulders toward the narrow neck beside the cliff. “It’s an ill place, bad feeling there.”

  “Hopefully I won’t be there long.” Sharl stopped sucking and began kneading her soft flesh with his tiny hands, so she shifted him to the other breast. “Greedy little gurb,” she murmured happily. “No.” She turned back to Khateyat. “I’ll be calling for help offworld. Could you make a map for me so I could find the place?”

  “Yes.” Khateyat pursed her lips. “Take the slave with you.;”

  “Hai?” Aleytys stared at her, startled.

  “Before Myawo uses him again.” Khateyat grunted as she swung the herret into the inner valley. “He’s stirring Shanat to rebellion, using her grief for Raqat. This is very bad.”

  “You’re stronger than he is. The other four of you. Why do you tolerate his mischief?”

  “We need him in full strength. He is the male aspect of our skills. Male and female make a whole and if broken …” She shrugged.

  Aleytys took the baby from her breast and pulled the neck of her tunic shut. She reached behind her, spread a cloth on her shoulder, and lay Sharl over it, patting his back briskly. “Can you get the chains off his legs?”

  “Yes. That and food and mounts.” She laughed. “Keep out of sight, my dear, and let me arrange your escape.”

  11

  The baby gurgled and stretched his mouth into a wide toothless grin, reaching up with clumsy, groping hands for the braids swinging past his face. Aleytys laughed and turned her head back and forth, dancing the tickling ends across his nose. “Hee, baby,” she whispered. As she tickled his stomach, he kicked his feet energetically, laughing with every muscle in his small active body. “Ahi, baby, ahi, Sharl, my dream-singer boy, my Vajdson.”

  Sharl lay against her legs, his diapered bottom resting on her stomach. She picked him up and rocked him back and forth, crooning softly.

  In the steamy barren valley to her left far, far below, the drying racks were almost full. The bloody butchering ground was out of sight around a bend in the rocky walls, but even up here on the cliffside vagrant gusts of wind carried the stink of the blood that had run rivers into the collecting buckets as half the herd was slaughtered in preparation for wintering.

  She glanced down at the valley and shuddered at the memory, glad for once to be an outsider, since she was not permitted to touch the meat. Women carried buckets in a steady steamy line to the vats for blood sausage. Men labored, bloody to the elbows, swimming in sticky, sweet red blood, slicing the meat from the bones in long, thin strips. The rest of the women pounded herbs into the strips and hung them on the smoking racks where the smoke and the sun turned them rock hard as the days passed.

  Sitting above the low-hanging clouds of mingled smoke and steam from the hot springs, Aleytys sniffed the fresher air and leaned back against the granite wall that rose straight up over her head for at least thirty meters in a massive cliff sliced from the side of the mountain. She pulled the cords off her headcloth, flipping the ends back so that the wandering breeze could get to her face and neck. The baby was making a small but intense hot spot, so she lifted him and laid him down on his sleeping mat in a brush-shaded niche. He worked his mouth, sighed, and slid back into deep sleep. She touched him gently and relaxed against the rock.

  She tilted her head against the stone and dreamily watched the suns slip down toward the mountains. Hesh was back on the south of Horli with the ragged ring of hydrogen rather thicker and brighter on this side of the world. “Almost night,” she murmured lazily. She touched the thin warm soil beside her. “In a way I hate to leave you, Mother Earth.” An answering warmth flowed up through her. Her eyes drooped shut and she drifted into a comfortable doze.

  A chuckle cut into her dream. She opened her eyes and stretched. Rubbing her neck, she looked around to see Khateyat standing on the narrow track.

  “Tscha! A pair you are, sleeping peacefully away while the whole world works.” Khateyat sat down on a small boulder and smiled at her.

  “You startled me.” Her eyes closed halfway, Aleytys grinned sleepily back. “I did
n’t expect anyone up here now.” With a grunt of effort, she stood up, shaking out her stiffened joints. She looked down at the distant drying racks and turned back, puzzled. “They’re not working anymore.”

  Khateyat was watching her, a grim look on her face. “The butchering’s finished. Leyta, I’m sorry, I let too much time slip past. You’ve got to leave. Quickly. You should have gone before.”

  Aleytys stood up. Glancing at the suns, she nodded. “As soon as it’s dark.”

  “Myawo’s been busy but he hasn’t forgotten you. I saddled sesmatwe for you and the slave, put food and things the baby needs in the saddlebags. And a map to the Bawe Neswet. Go now.” She glanced nervously down the trail. “Don’t wait for dark.”

  “Khatya.…”

  “No, no.” She jumped up and paced feverishly back and forth on the narrow trail. “I’ll distract him. Somehow. Take Sharl and go. Or you’ll never get away.”

  Aleytys bent down and picked up her sleeping son. “I have to thank you, Khatya.”

  “No time for that, Leyta.” Khateyat pushed at her with shaking hands. “Go. Go.” Her words tumbled out nervously, short, sharp, clipped. “Hurry.” She pushed Aleytys onto the downtrail ahead of her. “I’m afraid … run … hurry.” Her hands fluttered against Aleytys’s back in a series of short quick taps.

  Out of the drifting veils of smoke and steam a soft, insistent drumbeat thrust like poking fingers up the side of the mountain. Khateyat stiffened. “Too late,” she said somberly. “Listen.”

  “A drum. I’ve heard drums every day since we’ve been here.”

  “It’s the Nayal.” She was silent a minute, then burst out, “I didn’t want your blood on my people’s hands.”

  “I’m not too fond of the idea myself,” Aleytys said dryly.

  “The Nayal.…” Khateyat’s face crumpled. “I came … you’ll feel the summoning in a minute. I should have sent you away before. You couldn’t know. I’m sorry, Leyta.” She turned away, letting her hands drop helplessly.

  Aleytys grimaced. “You’ve got more to worry about than a little guilt, my mother.” She reached up and touched her temple with a long slender forefinger. A ghost tinkle floated for a second on top of the drumbeats. “The diadem protects itself. Remember? I don’t think it’ll let them kill me.”

  Khateyat picked nervously at the wide bracelets on her wrists. “Ah, hem-has,” she moaned.

  Aleytys drew her hand gently along the grieving face. “I’ll fight it, my best mother. I don’t want to hurt you and I don’t want them to die. Even Myawo, since you need him.” She looked down at her baby sleeping peacefully through all the emotional storms. “But promise me …”

  “What, daughter?”

  “Take care of Sharl if I’m killed, please. Love him for me, please?” She held the baby against her breast and stroked her hands gently along his back. “He has to be loved,” she whispered intensely. “He must be loved.” She held Khateyat’s gaze with hers. “You know how much this means to me. I told you about my life.”

  Khateyat nodded quietly. “You needn’t worry, daughter. He will be my son. If it is necessary.”

  The slow drumming began to pulse in Aleytys’s blood. She rocked restlesssly from foot to foot. With a little gasp of pain, she thrust the baby into Khateyat’s reaching arms. Eyes shining fiercely, she ran downhill a meter or so, then fought her way back. “Khatya, the mounts … Stavver.… Have them all ready for me … in case. Please?”

  Khateyat nodded, holding the baby against her breast. “I’ll have two sesmatwe west of the camp,” she said hurriedly. “Stavver with them. Break free if you can. And, Leyta, fight. Let there be no blood.”

  Aleytys gasped out her thanks and ran stumbling down the steep track, pulled faster and faster by the pulse of the drum.

  As Aab and Zeb swept up toward apex, Aleytys stood restlessly kicking at the dirt inside a circle drawn on the ground. A sharp tap on a tenor drum shattered the tense silence. Aleytys started, then turned to face the boy drummer, poised warily on her toes. Myawo walked heavily, portentously, into the ring of firelight, startling a giggle out of her. He was naked except for a narrow loincloth, his body painted in snake patterns from head to foot with paint that glittered and glistened in the firelight.

  She sobered immediately as a chill walked her spine, born of the aura of power pressing out from him so solidly that it was almost tangible. His little posings and pomposities melted away under the glow of that tremendous power battering at her. She faced him defiantly.

  Myawo stopped just outside the line he’d drawn an hour ago in the gritty dirt. He smiled at her, triumph glittering in his round eyes, then began to walk slowly around the circle, slow heavy words falling like drops of blood from his lips, the sound weaving in and around the tink-tink of the small drum. The beat quickened. His footsteps quickened in turn, changing into a wild stamping dance as the Khem-sho summoned the last drop of power he controlled, summoned the dark boiling forces of Mechenyat. His voice shrilled into a compelling rhythmic chant. His hands reached out, catching handfuls of firelight and moonlight, which he wove into a silken gleaming rope. Almost forgetting her own peril, Aleytys watched, fascinated.

  The rope trailed him as he stamped around the circle, hovering in long, slow undulations in midair, stretching out longer and longer … red and silver … fire and moon … silver and red … strands weaving in … over … around … around … and around the circle … weaving a fence around her.

  Pain shot through her head as a familiar weight pressed down about her temples. She shuddered out of her half-dream. Her hands began to stiffen, fingers curving into claws. When she lifted heavy reluctant arms to touch her head, wooden fingers traced the graceful curves of the petals, warm-cool through the numbness. Her brain ached. She was being thrust aside again … like before.…

  She fought. Myawo forgotten, she clung to her fingers, to her feet, to her body, to her tongue. She fought. It was like hitting a cloud of steam, painful and futile. Then agony shot through her nerve ends until her body was a sheet of pain as her fingers crossed the line.

  She gasped as she felt the influence of the diadem peeling up and off like a worn-out snakeskin. Opening her eyes, she faced Myawo, who was standing in one spot, shifting on his feet in a broken rhythm like the fluttering leap of the flames in the fire. The tail of the light-rope dipped across her shoulders and left a line of fire that ate at her skin. She moaned and writhed in the agony of that touch.

  Then the diadem spilled the power-pool over her again, so fast she had no time to struggle, leaving her backed into a corner of her mind, staring, out of the peepholes in her skull. Horrified, she watched her hands drop down, then stretch out, pointing directly at Myawo. Horrified, she sensed a sick, oily power flow down through her cringing body, to pool at last in her shaking hands. She darted around in her head like a mikhmikh in a cage, trying to force a way out of her body again. But there was no way.

  The light-rope flicked across her shoulders again. In the pain of the touch, for a brief moment, she could force her arms down to her sides. Straining desperately, she gasped out, “Khem-sho, don’t … keep … keep away from me.… I can’t hold … if I touch … touch you …”

  Chant broken off, he clutched at the disintegrating rope of light and stared at her.

  She staggered around in the circle, her thin brown arms corded with the effort she was making to keep them down. She got close to the line and jerked herself away, almost toppling over with the violence of her struggle; got close again, jerked away.… Shuffle … shuffle … legs like sticks … board-stiff arms thrust out like spears … a puppet on strings pulled by an idiot puppeteer. Once again her outstretched fingers, splayed out, bending slightly backward, crossed the line.

  Fire flowed like water over her whole body. Her mouth stretched open in a soundless scream. She twisted, twisted, struggled to break away … shuffle … shuffle … legs like sticks … forward … one step … jerk sideways … forward … inch by sea
ring inch. She felt the tendons in her neck harden into ropes.

  Myawo backed slowly away, inches from the thin fingers with their jagged nails and work-roughened skin, the killing rope spun from fire and moon dropping from flaccid hands, melting into the fleeting sparks.

  She strained, pleaded with her eyes. I can’t help it, she wailed inside her head, I can’t stop it.

  He began to chant once more, moving his hands in slow circling mandalas written in lines of green and purple fire.

  Wind swooped in like a blast from a deep winter storm and caught at her, spun her around and around until she felt invisible hands clutch at her waist, her arms, her legs. Dozens of hands. With needle-pointed claws that sank deep into her trembling flesh. Howling wordless syllables that crept slyly into her brain in the shape of obscene whispers, the winds slashed at her with those numbing claws, whirled her around and around. But the claws slipped out as easily as they went in, so that the buffeting hands got no grip on her, but they spun her until her mind reeled, until tears streamed from her aching eyes.

  Through the howling of the demon winds and the harsh gutturals grunted out of Myawo’s throat she could hear—growing louder and louder—the lovely ripple of notes singing out from the crown flowers. The blackness of the night took on a flickering amber glow.

  There was a rising frustration in the wind’s howls, then Myawo’s chant grew louder. Aleytys shrank inside her skin from the sound. Horrible throat-tearing syllables not meant for human throats drowned out the chiming of the diadem. Weariness spread its own poison through her body but the winds would not let her rest, winging her through complicated pirouettes.

  The chant seemed to harden. She felt icy bodiless hands cup around her arms and legs. This time they held, swooping her into a widening spiral that swung her higher and higher off the ground until the chant fires were red pinpoints on the black surface of the world. Higher and higher the icy hands carried her, until she spun through the edge of a cloud that flowed around her like cold and scentless smoke.