A Bait of Dreams

by Clayton, Jo;

  The catman’s arm loosened and dropped away from Gleia, he circled her and came toward the fire in a slow and sensuous dance, ghostly silent, powerful male animal oddly beautiful, the light of the fire running like, wild red honey over the sleek, furred body. The Juggler caught the spheres and held them out from him, their glow leaking like oil between his fingers. “Hredragh,” he sang again, “ashagya yacha, yach ashai the wind sing free in your ears, your feet run free in the grass, hredgragh anuu ka nuuka ya friend be to me and I do thee, urr-aha, r’adar, uura-ah-ai, chanoyi, sleep brother, sleep you here, grass-son.”

  The catman stretched out on the ground at the Juggler’s feet, his body drawn up into a comfortable curl, his claws retracted, air snuffling rhythmically through the flattened flaring nostrils, long streaks of matted hair dark with dried blood, raw circles at ankle and wrist where the irons had been.

  Gleia picked up the kettle and went to the stream to fill it; Shounach squatted, set the two spheres in a tuft of dry grass, their glow almost dead. Deel went stiffly back to the groundsheet and eased herself down, the worst of her aches back magnified now there was nothing to take her mind off them. Gleia returned with the dripping kettle and hung it from the tripod over the fire. Deel began bending and straightening her legs again, working her fingers. When she looked round, Shounach was holding Gleia tight against him, his eyes closed. Her face was pressed against his shoulder. One of his arms curled around her shoulders, the other hand, shaking, smoothed again and again over her fine brown hair. He said nothing, but his face held a tenderness and a vulnerability that for some reason angered Deel so deeply she had to look away from them. She sneaked another look at them. They hadn’t moved. Anger gone like a candle blown out, confused and as embarrassed as if she’d stumbled over them naked and coupling on the grass, she fell back on the groundsheet and stared up at the face of the Aab visible through the thin skim of leaves not quite covering the campspace.

  Some minutes later Deel heard soft murmurs, then silence, then the rattle of leaves. She sat up. Gleia was gathering the meat strips and brushing them off. The Juggler gazed down at the fire, looked up suddenly, caught Deel watching him and grinned at her, then with a quick limber grace, scooped up the blue spheres and slipped them into the magic-bag. Deel started to speak but he touched his lips and shook his head, then pointed at the sleeping catman. He yawned and stretched, crossed to the sleeper and knelt beside him. “Hredragh,” he said softly, “Chanoyi, chanohaya.” He snapped his fingers over the dreaming face. “Hredrag friend, damaisheh be at peace. Damaisheh, chanoyi grass-son.”

  The catman surged onto his feet with a quick twist of his body, looked frantically about, then fled across the cleared space to pounce on his knife. He wheeled to face them, his lip lifted in a snarl.

  Deel stopped breathing for a minute, wondering if the Juggler had lost his mind.

  The catman sank into an attack crouch, his glistening eyes shifting from one face to another. The Juggler knelt without moving, his hands quiet on his thighs. Deel sat very still, trying to project an all-embracing amity at the frightened and dangerous wild man. Gleia knelt without moving, a strip of meat in one hand, the other held motionless a short distance from her knee. The catman’s eyes traveled from Shounach to Gleia to Deel and back, around and around the circle of three, ending always with the Juggler. “Frien’?” he said finally.

  “Friend,” Shounach said quietly. “Gleia, come here, away from the meat.”

  Gleia nodded, got to her feet without hesitation, circled round the fire and knelt beside him. Deel watched with envy the slight brown woman’s calm easy movement and her utter lack of fear.

  Shounach pointed at the meat. “Take what you need, friend. Reyaish y shan, sesh yi tabay, hredragh.”

  The catman opened his eyes wide. His tongue flicked about the tearing teeth whose points protruded slightly from under his twin-curved upper lip and fitted into grooves at the sides of his pouty lower lip. His dark nostrils flared and his pointed ears lay back against his head. He stared at the Juggler for several heartbeats, then relaxed all over with a rapidity that startled Deel. He slipped the dagger into the sheath hanging on his wide leather belt, patted the leather triangle more decorously in place over his genitals, then came slowly from the shadows, his head erect, his ears brought forward, quivering. “Shairesh, G’esh-frien’.” He marched toward Shounach, his palms turned up, his stubby fingers straightened from their usual curl, the claws retracted and invisible in the soft swirling hair on the tips and back of the fingers. “Phrurr ghl Ruhshiyd od Yrsh-edin.”

  Shounach stretched out his long hands, touched the catman’s fingertip to fingertip. “Ruhshiyd of the line of Phrurr of the clan Yrsh-edin, child of the high-grass, I am Shounach the Juggler, born of dreamsinger and firewitch, wanderer about the face of Her.” He bowed his head, a sharp jerk up-down that was matched by Ruhshiyd. He stepped back, bowed again, then moved swiftly to the meat, scooped up a thick strip, nibbled at it, passed it to Ruhshiyd. “Be free to take.” With a swift gesture, he indicated the meat, the fire, the kettle that was beginning to steam, then backed away and dropped to a cross-legged seat on the ground beside Gleia.

  The catman squatted and began gulping the meat down, tearing at the strips with teeth and claws, swallowing the chunks without bothering to chew them.

  Gleia shifted around so she was sitting instead of kneeling, her hand resting lightly on Shounach’s knee. Deel felt a touch of envy and irritation at being so completely shut out of their world. Their quarrel forgotten, they were close enough that they seemed not two persons but rather two aspects of a single being. In the leaf-mottled moonlight of the clearing where everything was again shades of gray, she saw once more the elusive likeness between them, felt an intense curiosity about them, a hunger to read them fully, to answer the thousand questions she knew would never be answered. She stirred restlessly, feeling helpless. Ranga Eyes. To see them cleaned off the face of the great Mother, it was a thing to make songs about. And dances that would last a hundred winters. Then she saw before her Seren and Chay and the young Sayoneh she’d played with, danced with, taught; a pain churned in her that she couldn’t endure and so she shoved the images away and struggled to stop thinking about anything at all.

  Gleia was watching the catman. “What will he do when he’s finished there?”

  “Leave, I hope. Once he’s out on the grasslands he can feed himself and I’d bet on his staying free this time.”

  Gleia stroked the back of his hand, laced her fingers with his. “I wish him well, having known chains myself.” She touched her brands with her other hand, let it fall into her lap.

  Seeking distraction, Deel said. “You weren’t afraid, even when he cut you? Why? I would have died.”

  Gleia smiled at Shounach. He freed his hand, passed it over her hair, let it rest curved about the back of her neck. The awareness between them was strong enough to embarrass Deel again and she looked away. Gleia laughed. “If he didn’t kill me right off, poor old thing, he didn’t have a chance. Give the Juggler a crack to work through, it’s all over.” She laughed again. “And I put up a good show while he’s doing it.”

  The catman rose and came toward him. Shounach stood. The catman bowed his jerky bow that swayed his arm in a swift and graceful arc. “Do you come to Grass, Shouna’ dreamsingerline.…” He spoke with grave dignity and slowly so he could properly articulate the alien words. “Come you to Grass, fires of Yrsh-edin be free to you and yours.” He looked from Deel to Gleia, his black lips parting in a surprisingly genial grimace in spite of the gleaming fangs. He nodded with approval. “Fehs with fire.” He did his abrupt head bow once again. “They do bless they men.” He turned to go, then turned again, his ears quivering. “Do be you, shungler, sung they dogs away?”

  Shounach smiled, spread out his hands. “Was me.”

  “Grass do bless the Shouna’ the beas’master.” He turned a last time and disappeared into the shadow under the trees.

&nbs
p; “Well!” Deel began working with her legs again, groaned. “How much longer on those Madar-cursed horses? And this miserable place.”

  Gleia got up and went to the fire to rescue the boiling water and make the cha. When she was finished she took a larger pot and went for more water.

  “If you keep moving like that, you’ll be all right come sunup,” Shounach said. “Barring accidents we’ll be out of the trees by tomorrow this time. As for the riding.…” He shrugged. “You’ll get used to that in time.”

  “Time!”

  GLEIA

  About midmorning the land began humping up but the Forest grew as densely as before; though the ground was changing, the heavy, overly sweet air, the thorns raking at them, the sullen hatred of the trees, these were all too much the same. The hostile silence was filled with tree sounds, groans and soft rubbings, the papery rustle of thick hard leaves, the creaks and whispers that made her homesick for the brasher more clamorous sounds of a city.

  Once again they didn’t halt for a midday meal, but chewed on thin strips of dried meat. Gleia wasn’t hungry but she forced the meat down because she needed the strength, then overloaded herself with water (though she knew better) because the meat raised a thirst in her that demanded drowning. She slapped the stopper into the spout before she felt satisfied and let the skin bobble back down by her knee, then spent the next hour feeling bloated and more miserable than ever.

  They rode on and on through the steamy gloom, nothing to interrupt the boredom until Shounach searched in his bag, brought out a shepherd’s pipe and began playing a lilting tune, throwing the light liquid music as a taunt at the heavy solemnity of the trees. Deel laughed and began to hum along with the flute, then started one of the songs she’d used in her dance routine and Shounach took that up. For a little over an hour, until they tired of what they were doing, they challenged the Forest with their noise.

  When they reached the end of the trees, Horli was a nail-clipping on the western rim of Grasslands spreading out from them on three sides, flat as the top of a table, or so it seemed as they sat in the hot red light flooding over them and felt the air moving freely over them and saw the pale yellow grass fluttering like hair in that wind. Not far away and a little downhill from the knob they halted on, a much subdued Skull Crusher came looping lazily off the plain, a river of redwine shining. They stayed on the knob for a moment more of quiet enjoyment, then kneed their mounts into a walk and cut across the grass toward the river, finding the flatness was illusion; the plain was one hillock after another, welted like flesh after an attack of ticks.

  marching in place

  SHOUNACH

  Aab was high and gibbous, riding through cloud feathers. Shounach sipped at his cha, enjoying its clean green bite. The smell of the bydarrakhs was sharp in his nostrils, the smell of dust and lingering heat, of sun-dried grass and mud; the murmur of the river rolling by, the hum of bugs in the grass, the scrape of leaf against leaf, a howl in the distance answered by another, these made a pleasure for his ears. He watched Deel a moment as she slapped at bugs, scratched at her legs. She was in better shape this night than the last, but she wasn’t greatly happy about where she was. He turned to look at Gleia. She was leaning against a tree, her eyes half-shut as she gazed at the fire, though he didn’t think she saw it. She felt him watching her, lifted that shallow gaze to him. He couldn’t read it and wondered what she was thinking about.

  “How are you planning to follow the Sayoneh?” She brushed at a gnat that landed on her face and started walking across her creek. “They’ll be watching for trackers.”

  “The night after Deel came.…” He rubbed at his nose, tried to smile and decided not to lie. “I planted some tracers in their gear.”

  “Ah.” Her eyes opened wider. This time he had no doubt about the line her thoughts were taking.

  He shook his head, spread out his hands, admitting his mistake with a silent and he hoped suitable grimace.

  She smiled, the slow lazy smile that warmed him as it always did, warmed him especially now because it meant she was regaining her confidence in herself and in him. Odd that the stupidity that almost drove them apart should, by being tacitly admitted, bridge the gap between them. Or perhaps she was beginning to accept that weakness in him and planned to stay with him in spite of it. That anxiety laid, he stretched and yawned, glanced at the moons to see how much of the night was left to them.

  “We’re going to stay here awhile?”

  “No point in moving on until we know where we’re going.” He laced his hands behind his head. “The Fair will be closing down in a few days. And the Sayoneh will be going home.” He watched the smooth secret face that never ceased to fascinate him, strong bones, generous mouth, the brands, her talismans, dark brown lines etched into the paler brown of her skin. She looked away, uncomfortable at the intensity of his gaze, stared down at fingers laced together in her lap. “The end is close.”

  “I think so.”

  “Just as well.”

  “Tired?”

  “A little.”

  He glanced at Deel, rolled up now in her blankets, asleep or pretending to be. “Come for a walk?”

  She looked at him a long moment, seeming slightly remote, then she nodded. “Give me a hand up.”

  GLEIA

  Just before high heat, Shounach wound a cloth about his head and went out on the grass. He tromped about, flattening grass and weeds in a square as wide as he was long, then he laid a groundsheet on it, dark side up. He reached into his bag, drew out a tangle of silver wire and crawled about on the groundsheet, flattening the tangle into a web of tiny coils and many connections, finishing by winding two straggling wires about two stumpy stubs poking out one side of a small black cube. He dipped into the bag again, brought out a shimmering roll of nothing, a film he spread out on top of the webs of wires.

  Sitting at the edge of the tree-shadow, Gleia watched him work purposefully and skillfully at something that looked wholly absurd.

  He fiddled with the film, touching it with some care, until he had it spread and tacked down the way he wanted, then came back to the shade and threw himself down beside her. He tore the cloth off his head and dabbed at the sweat on his face and neck.

  “What was that about?”

  “Solar collector,” he said. “Time I re-energized the laser.”

  “Jabber, jabber,” she said. “Maybe it means something to you.”

  “The rod. That will power it up so I can use it again. Might need it.”

  “Oh.”

  “Where’s Deel?”

  “Asleep. Back there.” She waggled her thumb over her shoulder.

  He jumped to his feet and strode away into the trees. Before she finished her yawn, he was back. “There’s some shade still over the river. Down a ways. Come swimming with me.”

  She chuckled. “After famine comes surfeit.”

  He bent, took the hands she reached up to him and pulled her to her feet. “Surfeit’s a long way off.”

  “Mmm. A bit hot for wrestling.”

  “Water’s cool.”

  “Seaborn say love’s better under water; me, I’m not so sure, never having tried it.”

  He laughed, but walked faster, pulling her into a trot to keep up.

  The fire flickered late into the night on the fifth day in the camp. Gleia lay watching Shounach pace in and out of the firelight, back and forth like lightening walking, Aab’s halved-light mottling the skin on his upper body with leaf-shadow, touching to a shimmer the sweat glistening on hard muscles. The Sayoneh hadn’t appeared. The Fair was over but they didn’t appear. According to what Hankir Kan had said, the women were supposed to travel south along the Skull Crusher, but they hadn’t come. And none of the sensors had lighted on the small box he’d showed her; its scatter of colored lights was dead. He was beginning to doubt himself and his interrogation of Hankir Kan. Had he asked the right questions the right way? That was what he’d been fretting about earlier, that was pricking a
t him now while Deel slept and she watched.

  Deel had been sleeping a lot the last few days, seeking escape from things she didn’t want to think about, especially the Sayoneh. If only they hadn’t connected themselves to Ranga Eyes. Deel could neither tolerate nor forget that; though years had passed and the islands were stadia upon stadia distant, they were present in memory, hard troubled memory, present in nightmare now, if her moans and twitches were true indicators of what she dreamed. Deel was driving herself to finish what she should never have started.

  “Shouna’ firebrother.”

  Gleia started, sat up. The husky growl of the catman was the first intimation of his presence. He limped into the firelight, bowed to her and spoke again. “Damaisheh, firebrother.”

  Shounach strolled as casually as he could to Gleia’s side. “Tss-sha shau, Ruhshiyd firebrother,” he said. “How may we serve the free-meh?”

  Ruhshiyd limped closer to the fire. The leg irons had bitten almost to the bone in the struggle that freed him from them. His fur was tufted into peaks instead of lying smooth and silky on his skin; his eyes had a hard glitter that would have signaled fever in a human and probably meant the same in a catman. He hunkered by the fire as if its meager heat comforted him. “You sit this place a full hand of days. You hunt not, you plant not, you sleep much, walk about much. You wait. What wait you, firebrother?” Ruhshiyd blinked slowly, smoothed the fur on his cheek with the back of a trembling hand. “You tell Ruhshiyd and he give it you, Shouna’ dreamsingerline. Ruhshiyd honor the Shouna’ hold in debt, the balance is not, must be.”

  Shounach spread both hands in a quick deprecating gesture. “A hair, a breath, no more. The Shounach has no secrets with his brother of the grass, but let me do a bargain. For my words, I ask a thing.”

  Ruhshiyd held out his hands, palm up, claws retracted. “Be give, be take, speak.”

  “It comes to me the Yrsh-edin and their healers hunt far from here, Ruhshiyd od Yrsh-edin. It comes to me the firebrother would be better able to favor me if the fever was out of him. Permit the Shounach to use a salve he knows of on the brother’s wounds.” He didn’t wait for Ruhshiyd’s assent but went to the magicbag, brought out the leather case, came slowly back to the squatting catman. “By your favor, brother.” Kneeling beside him, he took out the blue wafers that Gleia remembered from Istir. He frowned at Ruhshiyd, tipped a wafer out, broke it in half, put half back into the vial and held out the other. “This will mute the pain, firebrother.”