Diadem from the Stars (13 page)

Khateyat let her arms drop, bent down, and picked up the discarded tunic. Silently she backed away, leaving Raqat standing alone, arms still outstretched.

The moon singer stood like a bronzed statue, her skin gleaming like dark water, golden highlights on the high cheekbones, the points of her shoulders, her full breasts, and the thrust of her generous hips. The thief watched her appreciatively.

“Ger-n-Mowat shanyef.” Khateyat's rich full voice broke through the meaty thud-thud-thud. Raqat drew in her breath in a shuddering sigh; she began to sway; highlights rippled like mirrored flames over her glistening body.

Hands beating on thighs, breathed-out chants, tongues clicking, sound working in and around thudding feet, scraping through across hard-packed earth, feet moving up,' down, in careful patterns; liquid-gold voice, gold highlights pouring over thrusting, curving planes, and in the background hands slapping on thighs, breath forced between teeth, weaving in-out, golden voice spinning words into silver moon-web.

Hands beat on thighs, faster faster faster faster; feet spun out a pattern over bruised grass, faster faster faster; breathed chant growing urgent, urgent
—
demanding!

Singer's voice rising to strong demand, repeating over and over the staccato syllables.…

Silence called.…

Silence wailing around the seated thief, the glowing diadem
.…

Let it be done
.

Let it be done
.

Let it be done!

Singer whirling, eyes blank, feet touching ground in intricate patterns, pattering soft sound weaving in and around the chant, in and through, around and over the insistent rhythm of the wordless sounds and beating hands.

Yatfedarya: let it be done!

…
Sound stopped with the final triumphant
It is done.
The thief let the air trickle out of his straining lungs, feeling a harsh prickle over his exposed skin, a tightness bound around his head. He looked down at the diadem resting beside him, its glow oddly subdued. He tried to touch it but found his hand gently nudged away. Impressed, he stared around at the circle of witches.

Raqat lay collapsed in a heap of hot woman-flesh on the cold ground. Panting too hard to say anything, she shoved the sodden oil-sticky strands of hair away from her eyes.

N'frat snatched up one of the rolled leathers and trotted to the exhausted dancer. “Put this around you, Qati,” she said. “You don't want to get sick.”

Raqat smiled tiredly at her. “Thanks, N'fri.”

Khateyat looked around at them all. “The thing is done,” she said hoarsely. “Lets to bed and get what sleep we can before morning.” She touched the thief with her foot. “You go back to your chon, you've work in the morning.”

The thief shrugged and stumbled to his feet, feeling strangely drained of strength. He glanced back at the diadem lying almost forgotten in the dimming moonlight. “Why?” he said.

She stared at him thoughtfully. “Better you don't know, slave. Accept it as for your protection. You're alive and will stay so. Don't press your luck.”

Part II

DRAGONSEED TRIES HER WINGS

1

Aleytys sighed and moved her aching shoulders. The slow shuffle of the hooves over the rutted track, the creak of leather, and the steady
whmph-whmph-whmph
of the horses' breathing beat a dull counterpoint to the unhappy circle her thoughts pursued as the cold air chilled her body and dropped her spirits even lower.

As the unaccustomed strain on her legs grew gradually unbearable, she wriggled and shifted position and rested her weight on one hip, then the other. She shifted forward and back uncomfortably until the ache spread over the whole of her lower body. Finally she freed her left foot from the stirrup and hooked it around the saddle horn, almost falling off the horse's back as she squirmed around.

“That feels a little better, Pari my pretty mare. If I don't fall off …” The mare stumbled and Aleytys grabbed hurriedly at her mane. “Ha! Mi-muklis, if we every part company …” She laughed and shook her head. “I'd never get back on again.”

As soon as she stabilized her balance she tilted her head back to stare at the moons. With Zeb a small bulge like a wart on her side, Aab was beginning the long slide down to the jagged mountain peaks. “About six hours to go before dawn. I wonder how far we've come.” She looked around. On her right, the side of the mountain climbed in a solid mass toward the sky, moonlight glinting off a pile of granite rock. On her left, the ground swept down so abruptly that the feathery crests of tall ironwood barely topped her head. “No way of telling. About five hours gone. Vajd said vadi Kard's two weeks' travel south.”

Somewhere down around her navel a cold hollow grew, an ache that was harder to bear than the physical ache of her tired muscles. “Ahai, Pari.…” She stroked the smooth neck of the dark mare. “I miss him dreadfully already and we just left the valley this night.” She closed her eyes, seeing him a dark quiet figure silhouetted against the shimmering rock. ‘“Vajd … she whispered. But the word was lost immediately in the gusts of wind snatching at the skirts of her abba. She shivered and pulled Vajd's heavy cloak closer about her, wishing vaguely for a pair of the caravaner's boots to fend off the currents of icy air that slipped under the skirts of the abba and fluttered around her legs.

With a shake to her shoulders, she slid her left leg down and cautiously slipped her right around the horn. “Aai, that smarts,” she breathed as her inner thigh touched the leather again. She thrust her left foot back in the stirrup and clucked to the mare. “Come on, Pari, little mayal, move your feet. Better find a place to get off the road. When they start looking for me, someone'll sure come this way.”

She shook her head at the precipitous slopes on both sides of the road. No way to leave the path there. She rode on. The slopes turned into high rocky tors rising in crumbling grandeur on either side of the road that wound between them, spending more distance going up and down and around than it covered in actual point-to-point extension. Aleytys had to creep along and hold the mare to a slow walk because the road was treacherous with small lumps of rock that could turn underfoot and cripple one of her horses. On and on and on and on … up … down … around … hour after hour … Aleytys clinging to the mare, the pack-loaded stallion pacing steadily behind. She rode until riding became a torment, until her thighs were raw, until she was trembling with weariness. The tors faded and she rode again between steep slopes, one rising above her, the other falling away below, and when the land flattened a little, the trees and bush grew so thick, the shadow was so black and daunting, she shuddered at the thought of pushing into it.

Aab was resting on the tip of a high peak whose name she didn't know when the inhospitable mountain relented and presented her with a pleasant grassy slope dotted with scattered circles of sinaubar. She shook herself to semi-alertness and pulled the mare to a halt, the stallion behind her nickering impatiently and pushing forward to bump his way past Aleytys rubbed her face and reached out with her tired mind. She soothed him and sent him back. “Sorry, mi-Mulak. I suppose the both of you are tired and hungry and thirsty.” She sighed. “Come on, azizhya-mi.”

The mare began to pick her way downhill, winding a more or less southeasterly course around the rocks and lance-straight ironwood trees scattered in isolated majesty on this sparsely turfed mountainside. The mare curved around one of the sinaubar circles and Aleytys swayed in the saddle. She caught at the saddle horn and kept herself erect by will alone as fatigue washed in huge waves over her aching head.

When Aab was a thin paring of milky light capping the mountain ridge, Pari pushed her head through sparse brush and came out on a wide apron of sand sloping down to a shallow stream. Aleytys started and stared blankly at the rushing water.
Drink,
she thought.

As though the word released some hidden inhibition, Mulak shouldered past her and sank his nose in the clear water. Pari trotted beside him and began to drink also.

As the horses stepped farther into the stream Aleytys sat clutching the saddle horn.
Tracking,
she thought,
herdsmen.
She closed her eyes, then forced them open again when a warm black blanket shut down over her mind. Tracking … the stream hissed past the horses' hooves, sending the sand whirling into a faint cloud clearly visible in the remaining moonlight.

Wash tracks away.…
The thought drifted soggily through her mind.
Wash
.… She turned her body to look downstream. At the sudden sharp pain shooting up from thighs moving across stiff cold saddle leather, she gasped and flinched.
Got to stop,
she thought; tears of pain blurring her vision. Here.… She blinked the tears away.
No, no shelter … it's too soon … too soon … if they catch me
… A cold shudder slowed over her body. She pulled the mare's head up out of the water and sent her sloshing down the creek bed. Mulak snorted his head out of the water and paced along behind.

Through the gathering clouds of weariness fuzzing her brain Aleytys felt a formless wonder at the automatic efficiency of the newly wakened faculties of her mind. Having watched men work with horses all her life she knew how recalcitrant the stallion should have been with that insulting burden on his back. Then her mind drifted off, thoughts and images appearing and altering in rhythmic spasms with no logic in their progression.

After a while the mountainside dropped more steeply so that the creek bottom changed from the sand and gravel of the more placid stretches to treacherous water-smoothed rocks, forcing the mare into a jolting gait that sent jarring pains up her spine. As the horse cautiously picked her way downstream, Aleytys's mind began to blink crazily on and off. More and more often, when the blackness clicked away, she found the mare's mane in her face. Time stretched out endlessly at one moment and at another snapped into short sharp segments. The night in its turn grew darker and darker as Aab dipped behind the mountains. At the same time, though, a fugitive line of red fought with the darkness at the eastern edge of the world.

Aleytys blinked hazy eyes and saw a wide apron of flattish stone lying like spilled fudge beside and beneath the creek. She pulled back on the reins and the mare stumbled to a stop. Aleytys gazed blankly down the stream, her mind momentarily empty of thought. Then she turned her head and stared at the stone.

Tracks,
she thought finally. Her mind worked in brief spasms, spaced by blanks where she thought nothing, felt nothing.
South … put my hand to the red … left hand
…
better leave the water here … getting too far east … if I get lost
… That last thought sent adrenaline spurting through her body, jolting her briefly awake. Pulling on the right rein, she turned the mare to the south and nudged her out of the water.

The two horses plodded over the wide stretch of rock and later across meadowlands where their hooves sank fetlock deep in sticky black mud and leaf-mold. While the eastern sky turned pink they threaded through a dense grove of iron-wood where it was still black night.

As they came out of the grove Horli was a red boil on the eastern plain, now visible as a vast blue plate. The fiery light struck the scattered clumps of trees and painted long shadows that crossed and recrossed the rolling hills, which dipped down in graceful swoops to the plain.

She straightened her back and stretched. The cold fresh morning air stirred along her sides, starting shivers that traveled up and down her tired body. She pulled the cloak back about her and looked around.

Sinaubar clustered over the slopes with the slender-boled circles breaking up the monotony of the ubiquitous carpet of tough purple webgrass. They were an odd growth and she blinked, seeing them in daylight for the first time. They always grew in circles since, like some mushrooms, they grew on a common root. They had no branches for the first two or three meters. Then downslanting limbs climbed in a wobbly spiral up and around the rough peeling bark until the tree looked like a cone-shaped scrub brush. Their dark leaves—blue-green threads waving in thick bunches around a central vein—starred out at nodal points along the branches. Aleytys swayed in the saddle and tried to focus on this serene landscape painted in strong colors—purple grass, blue-green leaves, red sky. It was like looking at a painting seen from a distance, lent a curious unreality by her fatigue.

She swallowed and realized abruptly that her mouth was dry, her lips sore and cracking. Leaning cautiously forward, she tried to unhook the waterskin but her numbed fingers bent at unpredictable angles or refused to bend at all. She opened and closed her hands several times, watching them turn pink as circulation renewed itself. Pulling the bone stopper loose, she lifted the skin and pressed a stream of water into her mouth and over her face until the icy sting started her mind moving. She shoved the stopper back, hung the skin on its hook, and sucked in a lungful of the crisp air, beginning to feel alive again. She clucked to the horses and started south once more.

As Horli's bottom cleared the horizon, the land began to change, growing steeper and rockier with ironwood taking the place of the sinaubar. Soon the mare pushed through a thin line of sweet raushani and stopped on a bank that dipped at a sharp angle down to a small stream. Aleytys examined the dancing water thoughtfully, noting the nearly straight downward plunge of the deepening ravine. She nudged the mare forward, grunting as the tilt of the animal's back put extra pressure on her torn thighs.

She stopped the two horses in the middle of the stream and peered down along the water. As far as she could tell, the stream cut downhill at a steep angle while the banks maintained their same level so that the sides of the ravine grew taller and taller. About half a kilometer ahead it appeared to open out into a meadow.