Diadem from the Stars (15 page)

The dreamer twisted and muttered in her sleep, feet moving in an unconscious parody of flight.

Azdar looked at the black sky, the huge wet drops splashing down on his face with convincing finality. He grimaced. “We aren't supplied for a long trek. Chalak, you go with him. Bring her back.”

“No.”

“What!” Azdar glared at his son.

“No. If he wants to waste his time following a drowned trail,” let him.” His head snapped back as Azdar swung viciously at his face. He wiped the trickle of blood from his mouth and turned his back on his father.

“Get a fire going,” he said flatly to one of the naukar. “In there.” He pointed at the nearest sinaubar circle. The man nodded and slipped away into the shadow under the trees. Turning to the rest of the men, he said quietly, “We go back to the valley in the morning. There's no chance of trailing her after this rain.” The men looked quietly at one another, then nodded curtly, making the respect shalikk before they followed the firemaker under the sinaubars.

Ignoring the silent, glowering figure of Azdar, Chalak lifted his face to the rain and smiled. The drops were coming down steadily now, merging into driving lines.

Aleytys groaned and opened sticky eyes. Her head ached from a too-heavy sleep and reeled under the impact of the vivid dreams. She licked crusty lips and peered through the gloom at the lowering darkness outside the hollow. Then she tried to sit up.

Pain flashed through her body like fire. She fell back with a hoarse gasp.

After a minute she tried again, and this time she managed it. She spread out her legs and prodded at the inside of her thighs. Scabs had formed and dried during her long sleep so that the abraded flesh pulled, burned, and, most of all, itched. She curled her fingers into fists to control the urge to scratch.

Grunting as she stretched more aching muscles, she caught up the bottle of ointment. Once more she spread the cool salve over her legs, working the herb-scented cream into her scrapes and scabs. It felt good. She smiled as she worked, even started whistling cheerfully. Pushing herself up onto her feet, she stepped carefully through the spiny debris to the front of the hollow and glanced at the suns. Both were very low in the western sky, hanging half behind the jagged edge of the mountains with broken clouds blowing wild across their faces. She frowned. “It was raining in the dream.…” She shook her head and waddled out to gather wood for her supper fire.

The horses were out in the center of the grass grazing contentedly on the thick succulent stalks. As she headed for the trees, the mare lifted her head, flicked her ears, gave a little jump, and began to prance around the meadow, kicking up her heels in sheer exuberance. Aleytys laughed and shook out her hair, feeling an echo of that joyousness in her being.

As Horli oozed behind the mountain ridge Aleytys ruefully examined the thin trail of smoke trickling from the tinderbox. “Another dud,” she moaned. She brushed straying strands of hair out of her face and glanced back over her shoulder at the bit of sky she could see from inside the hollow. It was purple with cloud. She turned back to the box that she could hardly see in the gathering gloom. “Come on, you devil, light!” Once again she fluffed up the tinder and snapped the trigger. Sparks flew and she blew gently on the smoldering crumbs.

For the hundredth time the tiny spark blackened and died. Sitting back on her heels, she glared at the frustrating box. “Once more, just once more …” she muttered. She cleared out the box, pouring into her cupped palm the pinch of crumbling deadwood she'd painstakingly scraped out of the old stump. With a disgusted sniff, she flung it away.

Rummaging in the saddlebag, she came up with the old book Vajd had given her. One of the flyleaves was blank so she tore a strip off it, crumpled it loosely, and tucked it into the gap at the end of the tinderbox. With a thin-bladed knife she whittled off a few more shavings from a resin-filled piece of raushani and crisscrossed the slivers into a little heap on the stone.

She snapped the trigger. This time the sparks caught hold and turned the paper into a lively little blaze. She tipped it out hastily onto the pile of shavings and added more until the wood caught fire. Whistling triumphantly through her teeth, she dropped small twigs across the little fire. Then she teetered back on her heels and grinned at the result of her ef forts. “My first fire,” she murmured complacently. She built the fire up until it was a crackling blaze, then set about preparing her supper.

After she had eaten and cleaned up, she strolled to the edge of the hollow and gazed out at the valley. The mountain peaks still visible between the clouds glowed like frozen fire, though Horli had vanished behind them. The freshening breeze that flipped the limber branches of the pricklebushes around, to the imminent peril of her abba, was heavy with the promise of rain. She lowered her head and looked around. The spiny leaves of the bushes snagged at the fluttering material of her abba so she had to untangle herself. While she was pulling loose, a few drops of rain splashed past the ironwood's leaves and fell onto her head.

Closing her eyes, she searched out the horses. “Come in, Pari,” she whispered into the darkness. “Come, Mulak.” With caressing mind touch she teased them out of the meadow and back into the hollow. The stallion pushed his face against her shoulder and she scratched him between his flicking ears. The mare danced up, demanding her share of attention.

Aleytys laughed and fended off the slobbering mouths. “Come over, here. I cut some grass for tonight and there's corn for you, mi-muklisha.” With her hand on the stallion's shoulder, she led them across to the heap of meadow grass piled along the side with handfuls of pale yellow-green corn poured on top. Mulak snorted and thrust his black nose into the sun-warmed mass and whuffed it around. In a minute he took a mouthful of grass and corn and began chewing placidly. Pari followed his example.

Aleytys patted them affectionately and went back to the fire. The pot of chahi nesting in the ashes sent up threads of herb-scented steam. She sniffed. Faintly acrid, faintly sweet, pungent and refreshing, the fragment steam curled around her face and she sighed with pleasure. Protecting her fingers with her sleeve, she lifted the pot and poured a cupful of the brown amber liquid.

She stood up and took the cup of chahi with her to the front of the hollow. The rain was coming down now in heavy stinging lines, which she watched with profound satisfaction. She thought of the tracker and grinned. “I hope you sleep cold and miserable, af'i,” she muttered. Behind her the fire radiated heat that the insweeping wind picked up and curled around her, while inside her body the hot drink was a spreading center of comfortable warmth. Feeling calm, strangely happy, at peace with herself and the world around her, she sipped at the chahi and listened to the beating rain, the scratching of the pricklebush thorns against the rock, the roar of the wind. In the Raqsidan the clans would be gathering for evensong. She could hear in her mind the simple beautiful chant that celebrated the gentlest aspect of the Madar. Almost without her willing it the words of the shabsurud floated up into her mind and she sang them softly into the wild and stormy night.

When she finished, she spilled a few drops of the chahi in Madar's honor and walked slowly back to the bed of glowing coals.

3

Aleytys rode downhill trying to angle toward the south. The leather began to rasp against her thighs, so she stood in the stirrups tottering unsteadily but managing to wrap the abba's flaring skirts about her legs. She settled back in the saddle and breathed a sigh of relief as the silky material soothed the rasp.

“Well, Pari.” She patted the mare's neck. “Looks different around here. A few more days, I suppose. Then turn back to the road.” She shifted uneasily and looked back over her shoulder. Somewhere behind her she felt a danger sniffing slowly but inexorably on her trail. She shook off the chill and glanced to the right, reassured by the dim blue line that marked the location of the mountain ridges. “At least I can't lose that.” She looked around. The mountain had gentled into rolling hills covered with a thick growth of some tall sun-bleached grass. There were a few stunted trees but not much else.

She squinted up at the suns. Horli was in the first quarter of arc with Hesh a bright boil on her left side, just touching the edge on his passage in front of the softer red sun. “Ahai, Pari, I took off the wrong time of the month. If I could have waited till Horli occluded Hesh …” She shook her head and pulled the hood farther over her face and settled more comfortably into the saddle.

With the horses nodding along at a quick walk she rode on and on … endlessly … up one rolling swell and down again. The horses paced steadily along, their swaying a hypnotic rhythm that rocked her brain into an idling half-daze that combined with the monotonous sameness of the landscape to send time passing almost unnoticed. The suns climbed higher and higher until they were beating down nearly overhead. The mare nickered uneasily and swung her head around.

Aleytys blinked and gasped as the heat bit into her. She tilted her head anxiously to see the suns. “Ahai, Pari. What a dumb thing to do, go to sleep in the saddle.” She rubbed her hand over her dust-covered face. Even through the thick material of the abba she could feel Hesh's burning claws. She glanced around. Ahead there was a scruffy group of trees barely taller than Mulak's head. The thin dusting of papery leaves provided little shelter from the suns, but there was nothing else around so she sighed and set Pari trotting over to them.

At the trees, whose shelter was flimsier than she expected, she twisted in the saddle and licked dry and cracking lips. “This's not shade enough to shelter a mikhmikh.” The square of tufan tied over the pack on the stallion's back caught her eye. “Ai, idea! Pari, this dried-up lady isn't licked yet.” She slid off the mare's back and tied the tufan so that it threw a pool of shade big enough for the three of them to crowd into.

She suffered the high heat through, head and eyes aching furiously. At the worst part she poured water onto her sleeve and bathed the horses' tender noses and poured some water in a shallow basin so they could drink. For herself she splashed it over her face and drank a few swallows. It took years for Hesh and Horli to move the few degrees of arc that put a thicker blanket of air between them and the crisping earth. She stirred finally and felt the waterskin. It was limp, nearly empty. She poured some water into the basin and let the horses drink again. Trickling a few more drops out onto her sleeve so she could bathe her face, she thought,
I'd better find water. Soon.

She looked up and saw a hawk sailing high overhead. Reaching out, she stroked his small fierce brain.
Water,
she thought at him,
water,
thrusting the idea deep into his dim awareness. He angled swiftly southward.

With the line between them a stretching thread of communication, Aleytys hurriedly untied the tufan, bundled it on top of the pack, and climbed back into the saddle. She kicked her heels into the mare's flanks and sent her loping after the fleeting speck. The black stallion trotted along behind, linked to her by the other invisible thread spun out from her mind.

As she rode, she nested further into the bird's mind, striving to maintain the link between them. Suddenly she felt a snap and a whirling dizziness. Then she was looking down at a rolling wrinkled surface pale gray and queerly distorted. Off in the distance bobbed the clumsy earthbound animals, a blackish blot on the unreeling map of the ground. Fleetingly she felt the oddness of a black and white vision of the earth, somehow even stranger than the unaccustomed aerial view.

A building compulsion jerked the bird's eyes away, Aleytys's awareness following, as to the south, far ahead, almost at the limit of vision, a wandering line of dark gray cut through the pale gray grass.
Trees,
she thought.
Some kind of stream. That's good. I wonder how far it is.

The hawk caught the wind in the hollow of his wings and banked over and down into a long slanting glide. The ground came close and the glide leveled out. She sensed the complex play of muscles, as ordinarily she was aware of the pressure of air sliding on her skin … a subtle tactile awareness with every inch of her body part of a vibrant sensing organ. With the hawk she soared. It was an exhilarating experience, joy riding on the wings of air.

A sudden jolt snapped her away from the hawk. She blinked. For a moment a vast resentment of her heavy clumsy human body quivered in her, then the last remnants of hawk evaporated and she was once more wholly herself, flat on her back in the hot and dusty grass.

Cautiously she straightened her arms and legs. Everything worked and everything hurt, but no sharp, shooting pains warned of serious injury. With a wry grin on her dirty face she struggled back onto her face and dusted herself off.

Somewhat abashed, she climbed back on the mare and tucked the abba around her legs. As she rode along, letting the mare choose her own pace, Aleytys tilted her head and looked into the sky with amusement and regret “Next time I go flying,” she murmured, laughter bubbling in her voice, “I'll keep my feet on the ground.” She stretched and groaned. “Just what I need, a new set of bruises.”

Hesh and Horli crept slowly down a sky that was vibrating with heat so that the air burned her lungs with each breath she took. Even the horses were panting and growing increasingly skittish. Every shadow sent their eyes rolling and their bodies dancing sideways. She looked anxiously around. The grass spread out on either side, broken here and there by low patches of brush. Even the scattered trees were behind her. Rolling gently in a series of small lumps, the earth heaved up and down, stretching endlessly to the horizon line all around.

Hot … it was hard to breathe … her mouth was dry, her nose stiff and hard … hot … She unhooked the waterskin and squeezed out a few drops onto the edge of her cowl. Her throat felt scraped raw, her mouth like badly cured leather. An ache climbed up the back of her neck and burned blue-white at the back of her head. She clutched at the saddle horn with one hand, the other held the damp material against her mouth and nose.
Where the hell is that stream?
she thought.