Diadem from the Stars

by Clayton, Jo;

  Aleytys frowned. “What?”

  A hiss exploded into a spitting sound. He took a step toward her, his body poised forward on his toes while his arm came up, a tautly trembling finger jabbing at the animal sitting on her shoulder. “The speaker. That.” The finger jabbed again. “I don’t know how you caught it, woman, but only a gikena—a real gikena, woman—can keep it. Fool!” His hand jerked in a crooked circle compassing the ship, wagons, and the distant rim of the horizon. “Do you want to wreck everything?” His eyelids came down, hooding his eyes. “Let it go.”

  “You call me fool?” Aleytys snorted. “Use your eyes, Kale. Why didn’t you tell us about these animals and their connection with the gikena?”

  He dropped his arm. “Why say anything when there’s nothing we can do about it?” Thrusting his thumbs aggressively behind the wide belt resting on his hips, he watched her through slitted eyes.

  The silence grew taut between them, a wordless confrontation that was a clash for dominance between the two. Like a stench in her nostrils, Aleytys sensed treachery in him. A closely guarded set of ends that he was using the rest of them as ladder rungs to reach. She felt distrust bloom cold in her and held her icy, blue-green eyes hard on him, thrusting at him her certainty and power. After a minute he cursed and looked away.

  “No,” she said softly. “You didn’t tell us. That was stupid, Kale. Maissa would have done something. What were you trying? Who would believe I was gikena without the speaker? Stupid!”

  The long muscles in his neck swelled but he kept his eyes sullenly on the ground.

  “Look at me!” she commanded. “You’ve got eyes in your head.” She nudged Olelo out away from her ear until he was clinging to the point of her shoulder, obviously unfettered.

  Kale stared at the ground.

  “Look!” she repeated, throwing her anger at him.

  Reluctantly he lifted his eyes and fixed her with a bitter, hating stare. “I’m looking, woman.” He sneered the word, the scorn for females inherent in his culture boiling up through the crust of sophistication he had acquired rambling around a dozen worlds.

  “But you don’t see. Hunh! Look at the speaker, man. What holds the little one where he is?”

  Kale shifted his gaze, saw the speaker sitting free on her shoulder. He gasped, his dark skin turning dull ash.

  “Lakoe-heai,” she said softly.

  He twitched like a nervous horse, flinching repeatedly as she went on. “Lakoe-heai sent the speaker to me. Olelo, tell him.”

  The animal edged back to her head and straightened, keeping his balance by wrapping small hands in her hair. He focused brilliant black eyes on Kale. “The woman is gikena and more. Sister to us and under our protection. We lay this command on you, man. Until you have what you seek, you will aid, protect, and obey the woman.” Olelo broke off and cuddled against Aleytys.

  Still grey in the face, Kale stumbled a few steps backward. “I hear,” he said hoarsely. “Aid. Protect. Obey.”

  “Aleytys!”

  She swung around to face the lock. Maissa leaned impatiently out. “Get your kid,” she snapped. “We’re leaving.”

  “Now?” Aleytys glanced at the vanishing sun.

  “Now. Soon as Stavver has the Vryhh-box installed. The rain’s quit so we need to put distance between us and the ship.” She looked nervously around. “Don’t just stand there.”

  Aleytys took a step toward the ship then glanced over her shoulder at a silent and thoughtful Kale. “If you can help it,” she said quietly, “don’t let Maissa drive.”

  He jerked his head up as if waking from a not too pleasant dream, stared blankly at her, then nodded his understanding, a fugitive flicker of awe struggling through the black chill of his eyes.

  Chapter III

  “What lies ahead?” Aleytys flipped her free hand at the rutted road unreeling beneath the horses’ plodding hooves. Abruptly she yawned, eyes widening in surprise at the effect of the clear, cold morning air.

  “This road goes along the edge of the lakelands,” Kale said gravely. After their confrontation the night before, he had thawed considerably, treating her now with a dignified courtesy that she found rather charming. He leaned against the slatted back of the driver’s bench, relaxed and enjoying the fresh feel of the new day.

  “The lakelands. Tell me about them. Did you live there?”

  “No. My clan …” His mouth tightened. “We live close to the sea. On the far side of the mountains.”

  “Oh.”

  “The lakelands … mmmm … They raise our finest horses there.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Pihayo. A meat animal with long hair and a strong tink. Vegetables near the towns. On the lake islands, fruit trees. A rich land. Seas of grass. Much water. Streams. Hundreds of lakes. They have a good life, the lakelanders.”

  Aleytys nodded. “I can imagine. My people lived in much the same style, though we have a harsher range, valleys high in the mountains with winters longer than your whole year. A good life, though.”

  He slanted a glance at her, his unspoken questions loud in the silence. Why had she left? Why had she abandoned her people to chance her luck in this ill-matched crew? After a minute he turned his head so that his eyes followed the road as kilometer after identical kilometer slid toward them through the gently undulating hills. “Was it the thief?” he asked, a hint of sneer back in his voice.

  Aleytys sighed in exasperation but knew enough to let it go. “They called me a witch. An aunt of mine was arranging to have me burned at the stake. So I left. Stavver came later.”

  “Then we’re both exiles.” His hand settled on her arm. She felt the heat in him.

  Shaking the hand off, she said coolly, “It doesn’t make us kin.”

  “Woman, you have no courtesy.”

  “Man, I walk my own road and you’d better learn that now.” Though the words were a challenge in their content, her voice was slow and thoughtful as if she were exploring something in herself rather than answering him.

  “I don’t understand you. You have the form of a woman, but …”

  “Different people, different ways. You should know that by now.” She shook the hair out of her eyes. “After the Lakelands, what then?”

  “The stonelands and the wind gods. Then the killing posts.”

  “Killing posts?”

  “Aye. Boundary posts of the Karkiskya holding. I saw a man burned to ash when he tried to cross between them outside truce time.”

  “Truce time?” She shivered. “Is this truce time?”

  “Yes. The time of fall fairing.” He grunted and hooked his thumbs behind his belt. “Karkiskya don’t like prying eyes. They keep the road closed except at spring and fall fairing. Then the posts flanking the road have their kill-force turned aside.” He took the knife from the sheath slotted on the leather belt, pulling it free with quiet pride. “This is a Karkesh blade.” He turned the blued steel so it caught the golden light of the morning sun coming up behind them. “Not mine. I had mine at my blooding. It cost my father the poaku ikawakiho my mother brought as part of her dowry. And, in a way, it cost me an uncle” His voice slowed until the last words dragged out like stones.

  Aleytys flicked a glance at his brooding face. “Poaku? That’s another word for rock. You mean someone took a rock as payment for a knife?”

  He shifted restlessly on the hard, wooden seat, fingers absently stroking the smooth metal of the knife blade. “Poaku ikawakiho. An Old Stone. Not one of the Very Old. Still, it had its power. Blue, this one, with cream-white veining. Carved with summer bloom.”

  “Ah.” She sucked in a deep breath delighting in the silken feel of the air, refusing to let his absorption in some nameless tragedy from his past spoil her pleasure in the beautiful morning. “How many days to the city? Will we be meeting other travellers? Or stopping any place before then?”

  He slid the knife gently back in the sheath. “Si’a gikena, given good faring, six days by this road
will bring us to Karkys. We may indeed meet others. And certainly we will when we reach the city. As we get near the dust will reach the heavens; the roar of voices, the shriek of wheels, the thunder of hooves will drown out thought itself. As to stopping before then, that lies in her hands.” He jerked a thumb at the caravan behind them, brought thumb and forefinger together in a circle, and touched the circle to his lips. “And in their hands.”

  “As you say.” A wail came from inside the caravan. “Kale?”

  “Si’a gikena?”

  “Take the reins a while, will you? There’s a small, hungry person summoning me.”

  The day rolled placidly on, the hours as alike as the curves of the road. Stop for nooning. Go on. The only difference visible in the world the changing angle the sun made with the earth. Inside the caravan Aleytys sank into a memory-haunted lethargy.

  Qumri’s hate-filled face swam out of the sinks of memory, shouting at her: “Bitch! Witch-woman’s daughter, whoring after any man. You’ll burn, I’ll see you burning.…”

  She fled the hate and the threat, surfacing at the gates of the Raqsidan, seated on the back of a russet mare, looking down into the moon-shadowed face of the dream-singer. “Vajd, I don’t want to leave.”

  His long, mobile mouth curved into a smile. “You do.”

  She reached down and he wrapped his fingers around hers, the touch warm, comforting, full of tenderness. “You know me too well,” she said ruefully. “Come with me.”

  “I can’t.” The smile faded from his face, his dark eyes grew larger and larger until she swam in them in the agony of parting from him. “Go to your mother, Leyta, you’ll be safe there.”

  Once again she fled the pain, flipping through the pages of memory—lying in the light of the double sun on a wide, flat stone, the heat baking the tiredness out of her body. Lying beside the lazy, black form of the tars. “Daimon,” she murmured with pleasure. She buried her hands in the long, soft fur at his throat, scratching vigorously until his fang-lined mouth opened into a heart stopping yawn. She laughed softly, revelling in his pleasure. “Daimon …”

  A page flipped. The tars was gone, whipping like black death across the meadow to kill the herdsman, her nemesis, as the herdsman’s victim crumpled, spurting blood around three arrow wounds. She ran to him. His lips moved painfully. “Bad luck piece from … Raqsidan.…”

  A third time she drove herself frantically away from the hurting memory but out of the chaos of images she pulled Tarnsian’s bloated face bending toward her, black wings of obscene power beating the air behind him; smothering her; defeating her; driving her out, out of her body until her spirit shattered under the burden of her terror and her loathing. She tried to break free from the sick horror of that hideous time but she was caught by the hot, tranquil afternoon, transmuting memory into nightmare.

  Like a fly fighting from the prison of a web she struggled until an intangible something gave a little and she was fleeing again. Riding madly, drowned in dust, black stallion’s feet pounding, pounding, beneath her.…

  She dreamed the relentless pursuit, the mind pressure like a goad driving her beyond her strength … anything to get away … away. The word throbbed in her head driving out caution, prudence, forethought; driving out anything but the mindless will to escape. Without rest, choking down a mouthful of dry bread, a gulp of water, on and on, up over the mountain, over the pass called the tangra Suzan, with Tarnsian clinging doggedly behind—crazily behind, abandoning all he had gained for this relentless pursuit. Over the tangra Suzan, weaving with fatigue, then down and down; endlessly down, switchback coiling on switchback until her mind reeled and fear ate at her—in the frustration of the necessarily slow progress. Down and down and down … twist and turn …

  Despair. The tijarat place, meeting place of nomad and caravanner, spread out flat, dry, deserted. There should have been herds and herders, gaudy caravans with gaudy caravanners peddling anything that would bring a profit no matter how meager. Too early. Another week. Just another week … hope died in her. She pulled the saddle from the black stallion’s back and sent him off to fill his gaunted stomach, then settled in a hopeless huddle to watch the river flow past her feet.

  The black miasma thickened as it neared, spreading a stain of evil over her then—strangely, a feeling of affection touched her. Khateyat’s strong square face broke through the stinking cloud of terror, driving it back with the hammer of her calm good sense.

  Sturdy red-brown hands held out a dusky velvet bag whose dull black seemed to suck in the light around it. Out of the pouch Khateyat poured the shimmering beauty into her hands, a circle of flowers spun from gold wire with glittering jewel centers, each a different color. The diadem. She stroked her fingers over the beauty, evoking a ripple of clear, pure chimes; each stone center singing its own note. Enchanted, she set the supple circlet on her head, smoothing down the flyaway red-gold hair, blowing gently in the river breeze. Then she plummeted headlong into strangeness. The diadem. Older than the oldest memories. Prisoned by the Rmoahl, freed by the thief Miks Stavver, brought to Aleytys in the hands of the nomad witch Khateyat. She couldn’t take it off, it wouldn’t come off, it sank roots into her brain, burned unendurably when she tried to tear it from her head—then it melted into her … somehow … melted. Vanished—yet stayed. Oh god, it stayed.…

  And Tarnsian came riding out of the trees—caught up with her at last. Himself as much a victim of his obsessive evil as she was. As he leaped from his horse the diadem chimed, and his feet slowed, slowed … took eons to reach the ground. He leaped at her, knife a bitter tooth in his reaching hand, mouth screaming obscenities that moved so slowly they died before reaching her.

  Her body moved. Without her willing it, her body moved. The diadem sang to her, sweet whispering chimes that deepened, deepened.… She watched. Prisoner in her own skull. Watched in terror as her hands came up, clasped themselves together and slammed down on his neck as his terrible, slow leap took him past her. Heard the sharp, cracking sound … like a twig breaking.…

  She jerked away and fled into her memory. Fled past the slow, sweet images of the pleasant days trekking with the herds across the Great Green to winter sanctuary in the western mountains; fled past the joy of holding her newborn son in her arms; fled on in memory until horror meshed around her again.

  Stavver rode before her down the deepening ravine, his mount like hers the lanky, cat-like sesmat. Ahead … excitement and expectation rose in her. Ahead the ship, her way off Jaydugar, her way to finding her mother, her first step on the long journey to the legended world of Vrithian. She scratched the mare’s arching neck, then moved from side to side in the saddle to ease sore and aching muscles. A small murmur sent her hand into the folds of the baby sling to comfort her son.

  A spear whipped by her so close it dragged away her headcloth. Before it struck the sidewall of the ravine she was tumbling off the sesmat, clutching her baby to her breast and scrambling into the shelter of one of the huge boulders lining the path.

  In her uneasy sleep Aleytys huddled, knees against her breasts, head rolling back and forth on the coarse cloth covering the thin mattress. “No,” she moaned. “No.…”

  They drove her from the rocks, faces grinning and sweating in their lust for her death. Drove her to Myawo her enemy.

  And then the diadem chimed. She watched her hands hold a short spear and push-pull it again and again into the hard muscled chests of men who couldn’t even know they were dead until the time spell lifted. Saw her hands drop the spear and turn to the men in front of her. Saw her hands pull a knife from unresisting fingers and carve new mouths in four more necks. Heard the diadem chime again. Heard dead men fall around her. She screamed. One, two, three, four. Screamed. One, two, three, four.…

  “Aleytys!” Kale bent over her, his hand leaving her shoulder. “You were dreaming.”

  She sat up, eyes heavy, head aching from the harrowing of the nightmare memories. “Thanks,” she muttered. The air inside
the caravan pressed around her, hot, stifling, used up. She blinked repeatedly and pushed her hands through her sweaty hair. “Do we stop here?”

  “No. But you were making so much noise.…”

  “Oh.” She staggered to her feet. “Let me drive a while. I need to clear my head.” She moved clumsily through the curtains, swung around the seat, and dumped herself down. As soon as she was settled, she looked around at the wagon stopped behind. Stavver seemed half asleep himself, his long, thin body bowed forward over the reins, following her lead without comment.

  She sighed and leaned against the age-polished slats, grateful for the fugitive current of air flowing past her sticky face. “What about Maissa?” Lazily she watched Kale stretch out his legs and lean back. “Didn’t she have something to say about us stopping?”

  Kale yawned. “She’s probably asleep. She’s drugged.”

  “Oh.”

  “Better get going.” Kale folded his arms across his chest then sent a sliding glance at her. “What were you dreaming about?” As she sent the horses into a steady walk he stared at her, dark eyes glinting with curiosity. “At the end you were counting. Loud enough to wake the dead.”

  “The dead.” Aleytys swallowed painfully. “A good choice of words. I was counting the ghosts I drag behind me.”

  His face paled and a shiver ran through his body. With a sudden, swift gesture he touched eyes, nose, mouth with middle finger pressed on top of forefinger. “Riding the nightmare. Bad luck when the sun’s still high.”

  Shaking off the lingering wisps of the dreams, Aleytys laughed raggedly. “Bad luck anytime, Kale, for the one who suffers them. Poor Miks. He’s had to deal with my dreams a dozen times. Ahai, I wish I could forget.…”

  Lids lowered over heavy eyes, she settled into the rhythms of the drive as the hours passed.

  The sun shone almost flat into her eyes when the caravan tilted up a gentle slope. Black specks circling in front of the color streaks ahead caught her eye. “Kale?”