Diadem from the Stars (20 page)

On the fifth day, though, she could no longer ignore Daimon's uneasiness. With a wrench that left her torn inside she sent him back to his family. For a long while she kept touch with him as he trotted in fearless majesty through the trees. Then the touch faded and she was alone.

9

Aleytys watched dreamily as the edge of the sunlight ate into the shadow beside her big toe. She yawned and turned over on her stomach, moving her feet farther away from the sun. The tufan sheet wrinkled under her so she humped up and spread it out again, settling back with a sigh of contentment. Over her head the solitary horan thrust its shining head into the sky and threw its thick shade across her body. She reached out and ran her fingers affectionately over the rough silvery bark. The horan was in its brightest midday phase, glittering like a jewel in the middle of the browns and greens of the surrounding trees.

She coughed and spit out the phlegm blocking her throat, then rubbed her clogged nose, wincing as she touched the raw flesh. In the breaking cold her eyes felt stiff and sore, her bones ached, and her head felt as if it were stuffed with raw avrishum. “What a miserable time to have this happen,” she muttered. Dropping her clean damp head on her crossed arms, she stretched out and let tiredness flow over her. Gradually, as her top nostril drained so she could breathe, she drifted off to sleep, her head nestling in among the horan roots, more content today somehow, with the horrors of the past fading into washed-out images on the backdrop of her consciousness.

A burning pain snatched her awake some time later. She jerked her foot out of the searing light of Hesh. With a sigh, she sat up and looked to the west. Horli's edge was brushing the gray line of the mountaintop, but Hesh was still high. The afternoon was clear and pleasant, with a brisk breeze stirring the hot air.

Suddenly Aleytys shivered. She curled up against the horan for comfort and searched the small clearing with her eyes. There was a dead spot around her, a feeling of foreboding she couldn't explain, like black wings hovering in threat over her head. Absently running her hand over her sore foot, she scanned the empty sky, then traversed the clearing again. Even the horses were invisible, sheltering under the trees, though she could feel them off to one side—uneasy too, restless, not cropping grass, standing still, heads twisting about, ears flicking nervously back and forth. Aleytys probed further, feeling with her emphatic sense for sign of other life or other cause of the oppression in her soul. Nothing. Just the peculiar image in her head of horrible black wings beating nearer.

The man walked out from under the trees and stopped a few paces away, looking at her. Aleytys relaxed as she recognized him. “Tarnsian,” she exclaimed, relief making her voice a little more welcoming than it might have been. “Give me news about the vadis. I haven't even seen a person, let alone talked with one, for over two months. Caravaner, am I glad to see you!” She sat up and thrust her arms into the sleeves of the abba she had pulled over her. As she tied the ties she went on. “Do tell me what's happening in the valleys. Have you tried protecting yourself as I showed you? You look different.”

Her voice slowly died as he stood there in stolid silence, cold black eyes fixed on her. Smothering force flowed out from him, driving her back against the trunk of the horan. “What're you doing, caravaner?” she said hoarsely, rubbing the back of her hand over her forehead. “Leave off, will you?”

Blackness beat at her. She froze against the tree, her arms and legs congealing into helpless lumps. Belatedly she fought back, but it was like battering smoke. Blackness blanketed her, smothered her, she couldn't breathe, she couldn't move. Thought flowed slower in her mind, the words and images growing sticky so that they were increasingly harder to shift, to string together. Blackness swirled until she tumbled over, falling down into the swirling smoke.

An unknown span of time later she blinked her eyes open. Flat on her back in the grass, she could see Horli half gone behind the mountains with Hesh, a finger-width north of her, touching the horizon line.
I've been out a long time,
she thought.
What happened …?

Panic washed through her. She struggled to sit up and discovered that her hands were tied behind her, feet tied too. Hobbled like a calf for slaughter. Pale-faced and shaking, she tugged wildly at the ropes, but the caravaner knew his knots too well.

After tipping over twice, she rolled onto her knees and looked around. Her pack was roped on Mulak's back and he was tied beside Pari to a young bydarrakh. Several other horses stood dejectedly beside them. Tarnsian walked around the stallion, trying the ropes holding the pack to see if they were firmly in place.

Aleytys shook her head tentatively, trying to clear away the cottony feel that didn't come from her cold. She reached out for the animal minds and nearly plunged back into shuddering panic when she found herself locked inside her own skull, the shock sending her heart hammering against her ribs. With tears of frustration and fear flooding her eyes she panted, struggling with the ropes on her arms—pulling, tugging at them, scraping the skin from her wrists until the blood ran.

Her nose dripped, her upper lip was sore and crackling, her mouth dry and leathery from the leaching air passing through on its way to her laboring lungs. The dull misery of her head, oddly enough, cut through the panic, steadying her.

She made a great effort and wiped her nose on her shoulder, spit put some of the obstructing mucus, and tossed her hair out of her eyes, waiting in grim silence for Tarnsian to tell her what he wanted.

Arms swinging arrogantly, a satiated smile curling his lips, Tarnsian sauntered over to her. He bent down and checked the ropes on her wrists, pinching the raw flesh with a shrill giggle. The high-pitched sound woke a cold, hard terror in the pit of her stomach. She licked her lips and twisted her head around so she could see him. “Why, Tarnsian? I never hurt you. Why?”

Without answering her, he seized her around the waist and grunted her up onto his shoulder. Stumping heavily through the sun-bleached grass, he carted her to the mare and slid her over the animal's back until she lay atop her, legs on one side, head and arms dangling on the other.

She tried a few delicate probes at his mind, trying to worm her way through the flannel muffling her own. Again the image of black wings fluttered at the edge of her bound-in awareness. He laughed and slapped her buttocks. “No use, bitch. I know too much.”

Her nose began to clog up again. Opening her mouth, she gasped for air. In seconds her whole head was stuffed until it felt like solid bone. “Tars'hn,” she blurted. “C-can't brea—”

Startled and annoyed, he circled the mare and wrapped his hand in her hair, jerking her head up so he could see her flushed, congested face. At the sight of her distress he gave an irritated exclamation and eased her off onto the ground. Straightening, he stood back and glared at her. “What's wrong?”

“I've got a bad co'd. My 'ead's all stobbed ub.” She coughed and spit the mucus out on the ground at his feet. “I. 'ad to sleeb i the rain and I caught this co'd.”

“Silly bitch.”

She sniffed and spit again, her head beginning to clear a little while her mind worked better. “Dammit, man, I can't 'elp it.” She gulped in a few mouthfuls of air as she looked uneasily at him. “You taking me back to the Raqsidan?”

He smiled at her and let his eyes travel slowly up and down her body. “You refused me once.”

The fear lying cold in her stomach spread through the rest of her as the evil in his face intensified. “No, I won't take you back,” he whispered. “A lot of things be changed in the past weeks.”

“So I see.” She pasted a sweet, enticing smile on her face and wriggled her body suggestively. “Why keep me tied up? I can't hurt you.”

He snickered. “Silly bitch, I read your lie like that!” He snapped his fingers in front of her nose. “I keep you tied because that's the way I want it I keep you tied till you be tamed.”

Anger flashed the fear out of her. She tugged futilely at the ropes for a second, then fury turned into a cold rage that fueled the patience of a gurb at a mousehole. She watched him calmly.

He grinned at her. “So. No use wasting your strength, whore. A gryman knows his knots.” His grin turned into a giggle. “And the other thing—I tied you in your head. Other men's feelings don't bother me now. I find them very satisfying.”

She examined his face. Once, thin, almost haggard, now it was full and puffy. His nervous bony body was developing a pronounced pot around the middle so that he looked like a bloated spider. Sick inside, she refused to think about what was feeding him.

As she watched, he chirruped softly. A red lusuq crawled out of his sleeve to sit on his thumb, staring with opaque black eyes at Aleytys. The poisonous thing clung there and preened its wings. Tarnsian looked fondly at it. “My army. See, I learned what you started to teach me.”

“Why not let me loose?” she coaxed. “Don't you owe me?”

“Oh, no. You belong to me.” His fist closed slowly. “I keep what's mine.” He chirruped again and the lusuq crawled back inside his sleeve.

After saddling the mare, he walked back to Aleytys, two pieces of rope dangling from his soft hands. Kneeling beside her, he rested the knife point on the ropes that bound her feet and looked intently at her. “Try running, bitch, and when I catch you, I play with you with this.” He sliced open the top two fastenings of her abba, turning back the edge with the point of the knife so that he bared one breast. He wrote his initial on the soft flesh, a hairline of blood following the moving knife point. Then he touched the point to her nipple. “You understand?”

Aleytys nodded, not trusting her voice.

He sawed the knife through the ropes around her ankles and pulled her to her feet. Pointing at the mare, he said, “Get on.”

“How? I need my hands.”

He laid the knife against her cheek. “You run.…”

“Ahai! I know.” She held out her hands.

10

In the darkness of the caravan Aleytys tugged at the ropes that spread-eagled her across the cot “Ahai! Ai-Aschla.” She twisted her head and examined the house on wheels. “I'm in some kind of corner now.” She stretched her mind, glad to have that little bit of freedom again. Being locked inside her skull had given her a claustrophobic attack of the horrors.

The sour miasma of fear and hatred hanging like a cloud over the camp brought her flinching back to herself. She replayed in her mind the ride into camp, remembering the sullen eyes, haggard faces, even the children wearing frightened ugly masks. What happened here? she wondered. What happened to Tarnsian?

Footsteps thumped hollowly up the steps outside. The door opened and Tarnsian came in with a sleek, sated smile on his face, and Aleytys felt chilled once again as the power came rolling out of him in surging waves that suffocated her. She choked. Her nose was clogged again, dripping into her mouth, but that tiny irritation paradoxically proved to be her salvation, bringing her back up out of the suffocating blackness.

He looked her over silently. Then he took off his vest and hung it over a chair and followed that with the broad black belt. Aleytys turned her head away to stare at the wall.

He finished stripping and walked over to stand beside the bed. She felt him there but refused to look at him. With a nasty laugh, he tangled his fingers in her hair and forced her head around. “Don't turn away from me,” he said mildly. He hooked a low stool over to him, sat down, and began stroking her hair as it slid past her shoulder and off the edge of the bed. “I wanted you once. You refused me, remember?” He drew his fingers down her cheek and nipped a bit of flesh between his fingernails. “Remember?”

“Yes,” she said reluctantly, staring with blurred eyes at the sagging jowls of the face bending over her.

“Yes what?”

“I remember.” She shuddered. “I refused you.”

“Nobody refuses me anything now.” His fingers played in her hair and slipped caressingly along the bone of her chin and down the graceful curve of her neck. “Nobody laughs at me now.” His fingers moved to the hollow at the base of her throat and stroked softly up and down. “The morning after the fireball the shrengo Paullo …” His hand slid around her throat and tightened painfully. “The shrengo Paullo threatened to geld me if I even looked at one of the taivan women.” He laughed and released her so that she could breathe again. She swallowed and swallowed again. Ignoring her distress, he went on. “Paullo's dead. Lusuq bite, you see. And I've had every woman in camp. Even when he was still alive, his woman had my child in her.” He moved his hand down, caught her nipple between his thumb, and forefinger. With a soft giggle he squeezed so hard that he drew a grunt of pain from her spit out from between clenched teeth.

Calmly he started to fondle her breasts. To Aleytys's shame her body responded automatically to the friction of his moving hands. Furious with herself, she forced her awareness to a frozen place deep inside where feeling was a far-off thing. From that vast distance she felt his weight come on top of her, felt him in her, moving in her.

Then he was slapping and biting at her, beating at her numb body and face with his fists. “Gesaya-yag—whore, feel! Feel, bitch, feel.
Feel!
” His voice rose into a shrill hysterical scream. Numb and helpless, she felt her lip split and blood start trickling down her face. Then her nose smashed and the pain penetrated to her cloister so that she slid off into total unconsciousness.

Hate … fear … terror … lust … as she drifted into pain-seared awareness again, Aleytys cringed from the emotions that simmered thickly in the pungent air. She was thrown in the corner of the caravan, aching in a dozen places, fouled with Tarnsian's juices. In the moonlight streaming through the small window she saw the figures writhing on the cot. Turning away, turning over, trying to shut out the sight and the sounds—the sickening mélange of lust, hate, fear, pain swirling like foul smoke over the cot—she huddled in the corner with cramps twisting her stomach until she vomited again and again. Exhausted in body and spirit, she retreated into the warm blackness of unconsciousness.