Diadem from the Stars (7 page)

“When Shareem came to the river next day, I told her. She walked away from me and looked down at the clear green water. I felt extraordinarily helpless, just stood there with my hands hanging down and my tongue twice the size of my mouth. She turned and walked back to me. An affectionate smile on her face, she drew her hand gently down my cheek; I could scarcely breathe.

“‘Don't be afraid of me,' she said softly. ‘I need you, young friend, I'm so alone here.…' Her voice trailed off and her eyes grew sad.

“I swallowed, feeling a fool because the words stuck in my throat. With great clumsy hands I reached out to her. She touched me fleetingly, then walked away. I watched her until my stupid brain began to work again. I ran after her.

“Azdar found us in the patio of his house, sitting quietly on a bench under the housetree. That bench is gone now. Qumri burned it. He told her what he wanted. She sat silent with her hands clasped in her lap, her face a calm mask.

“She turned those greenstone eyes on Ikhtshar and he shivered, although the morning was already hot. Then it was Azdar's turn to blench. Her eyes fixed on him, cold as winter mornings, she asked very softly, ‘I've got nothing to say about this?'

“With a visible effort Azdar pulled free from the spell and nodded grimly. The doctor stared at his toes and said nothing.

“Shareem stood up. I can remember thinking how graceful she was in spite of the child's added weight. Her eyes were glittering again while power swirled around her so thick it was hard to breathe. ‘For your greed and for your fear,' she said to Ikhtshar, her mouth curling scornfully. ‘Greed that makes you deny your deepest beliefs.' The words vibrated in the air so that it was hard to hear them. ‘For your dereliction, I have this gift.'

“She lifted her hand and pointed her forefinger at the shivering and paralyzed doctor. A bright glow like golden honey gathered about that hand. With her mouth fixed in that curling, contemptuous smile, she flicked her fingers so that the glow flew in a glittering arc and splashed over his rigid face. As it struck, a thin keening burst from his throat. Before the sound died he crashed to the grass and shattered. Like brittle glass he broke into a hundred hard jagged pieces.

“I swallowed and turned my eyes away, unable to look at those horrible fragments.

“Shareem turned her green gaze on Azdar. ‘So,' she said, her voice chillingly soft. ‘You want to kill my baby to keep on using my body.' The smile vanished. ‘I didn't ask for this baby. But it's
mine;
nobody takes what's mine. I am Vryhh.'

“She lifted her head proudly. ‘Vryhh. I swear to you, if you so much as brush against my hand, you'll never be a man again for any woman.' She flung out an arm, pointing at the gory shreds by her feet. ‘I should put you with him. For our child's sake, you live. The child you want to kill. Bless her, Azdar, she has saved your life.' She cupped her hands so that they filled with that honey-amber light. It eddied out from her fingers, diffusing like smoke into the charged air.

“That terrible smile curled her lips again as she lifted her head. Her hair stirred with a life of its own, tendrils floating out from her face into air that twisted around her like heat waves at high noon. She lowered her hands slightly and bent her head over the pool of light. Her lips moved, dropping silent words into the slowly seething glow.

“As her eyes left him, Azdar tried to move. I watched him strain and saw the terror born in his face as he found he could not. I looked around, avoiding with my eyes the dead lumps of flesh a foot from my toes. Qumri stood just behind Azdar, her own face a mask of terror. Slowly, one by one, the asiri and the folk of Azdar stumbled out of the house onto the patio and stood like frozen statues in front of the bushes.

“Shareem kept staring down at the golden light cupped in her hands. I swallowed and shifted my cramped legs. Shareem turned her head toward me and for a second I thrilled with fear. Then she winked and her mouth curled one side up in a wry grin completely different from that terrifying smile she'd worn on her face seconds before. This took only a fraction of a second, but I relaxed and watched the rest of the show with intense interest, and, I must confess, more than a little smugness.

“‘Hear this,' she said in a voice throbbing with power. ‘I lay this curse on the house of Azdar and on the head of Azdar. Seed of mine will lay waste this house. Seed of Azdar will bring him down. As long as the child in my womb lives happy in the house of Azdar, so long shall that house prosper and be fruitful. So long shall the valley of the Raqsidan be blessed. But I hang this like a sword of power over your heads. Should my child meet pain or death, the hearts and minds of the house of Azdar will crumple like the stones of the house. The house will fall until not one stone remains on another. And this I hang like a sword of power over your heads. Should of my child will shatter this house.' She laughed, a high keening wail, cold as the wind in a winter storm. ‘Watch, you clods. Keep fearful watch for a red-haired man with angry green eyes. Shiver in your shoes, you world-bound dirt-eaters.'

“Even now I remember how I trembled at the sound of her voice and the terrible exaltation in her face. Shivered even when I knew she was putting it on, making fools out of them all for some purpose I couldn't understand.

“‘That you may know …' Shareem separated her hands, the golden light clinging around each of them. She pointed a finger and the inner wall of the patio crumpled with a roar, opening out the majlis like a stepped-on box.

“‘And that you may know I have the power to bless …' She flung that glow from her left hand at the tumbling stones and they lifted, sailing into place till the wall was intact again. Then she walked quietly away.

“After that she lived at the Mari'fat. The Raqsidan settled into an uneasy peace and she went into tanha. When her time came she gave birth to a daughter just as she had said. She called the child Aleytys, which meant
wanderer
she said. Her labor was long and hard, but her strength was too great to be drained. Azdar came in to see her, hoping that in her weakness he could conquer her once more. But she laughed at him, her face shining with the sweat of her travail. He swerved from her and bent over the child's cradle. When he reached down to touch the baby, Shareem laughed. A deadly weakness spread through his body, sending him crashing to his knees. He left hastily and didn't come near again.

“Summer yellowed into autumn and the harvest brought delight. On the rows of vrisha bushes the pods hung bursting with fiber, their weight so great the branches swept the ground. Most of the gav dropped twins. Zardal, hullyu, and allucheh sagged under the weight of their fruit while the nut trees dropped meter-high piles onto the raked earth. Even the breadgrass doubled the number of seed stalks. As food, meat, and fiber piled in the houses, a wild hilarity streamed through the valley. We labored in the fields by day and danced half the night, wrapping ourselves in straw and drinking rivers of hulluwine.

“As the months passed, the child Aleytys grew like a little weed. She had the red hair of her mother but her eyes were bluer than green, shining like jewels in her small round face. She was a laughing baby, blessed with charm to call the mice out of the walls. But even then there was a kind of bewilderment in her as all but a few backed away from her friendly advances.

“At the Mari'fat Shareem spent long hours with the books and records. Because I had to be there much of the time myself since I was learning the songs, we were together hour on hour. After a while we started talking again, but she never said what she was looking for and I never asked. The months slipped away in front of the library fire while the storm winds piled the snow deeper and deeper up the sides of the house, ten … twenty meters until the attic doors were opened and the mardha slid from house to house on the crust. Inside, though, it was warm and comfortable. Small Aleytys lay on her quilts and gurgled and played with her toes while we read and studied.

“Unfortunately the quiet winter months passed. In the turbulence of thaw when the roads were rivers of mud and the Raqsidan a battering ram of broken ice, Shareem found the thing she was looking for. As I fought the damp inside the walls with the other apprentices she came to me and showed me an old leather-bound book. Pages were falling out of it and a green mold was eating a malodorous hole in the first part. She opened it in front of my nose and I winced away from the smell. The ink of the handwritten text was so faded I had to strain to make out the words. Excitement glowed in her brilliant eyes as she shook this shabby remnant under my ignorant nose.

“‘Keep this, Vajd-mi,' she told me in a tense whisper, her eyes darting past me at the others ironing the walls dry. Even when it was a tiny thread of sound her marvelous voice thrilled through me. ‘Show this to Aleytys when you think the time is right. There's a letter inside for her.'

“‘But …'

“She put her hand across my mouth. “Hush,' she said urgently. ‘Promise me.'

“‘But how will I know …'

“‘Promise me.'

“‘I swear. I'll give the book to Aleytys when the time comes.' I took the book carefully, suppressing my distaste at the crumbling filthy thing. But …'

“‘Don't worry.' She smiled and patted my hand. ‘I trust your understanding. You'll know.'

“Reluctantly I tucked the book inside my abba, resolving to scrub both it and myself as soon as possible. I looked at her then, struggling to find the words to express the confusion and questions churning inside me. I looked at that gently sweating face, hair straggling in tiny wisps around it, and got a sense of barely controlled urgency. ‘Why …' I stumbled out.

“‘Why won't I be here?' She put her hand on my arm again. Her fingers were hot and trembling slightly. ‘I'll be back with my own.' She laughed nervously and wiped the strands of hair back from her damp face. ‘Or I'll be dead.'

“‘And Aleytys?'

“She shook her head. ‘Please understand, Vajd-mi, my friend. It's only half a chance I've got. I can't take a baby with me.'

“I looked past her at the black and empty fireplace where we'd spent those happy hours with the baby playing at our feet. A cold sorrow bloomed inside me then as a dream died for me.

“She felt my withdrawal and shook her head. ‘By tomorrow I'll be gone. Don't be too disappointed in me, young friend. I'm only doing what I have to do. I do love her, my baby. I do. I've done the best I could for her. I'm sure you didn't believe that nonsense I spouted in the patio, the curse and the blessing. I did it to protect her. I don't want her marrying one of these worms. Tell her to come to me. When she's old enough, tell her … no, if there's enough of me in her, she'll understand. I can't live here, Vajd. I'd die. I need the empty reaches of space to renew my spirit like a plant needs water to live.'

“And so she disappeared. Within a summer's passing, thanks to Qumri and the Sha'ir, thanks to fear and bigotry, the baby Aleytys lost her laughter. She grew up apart, bewildered by the difference she felt inside her.”

Vajd blinked and stared at his hands, opening and shutting them several times. He stretched and yawned. “Well, Leyta, that's it. Now you know why.”

She rolled over and stared at the wall, biting her lip so he couldn't hear the sob in her breathing.

“Leyta?” He leaned over and touched her shoulder.

She shrugged his hand off. Tears stung her eyes and a pain like a sore tooth gnawed around her heart, sending lump after lump traveling up her throat.

“Leyta?” He pulled her, around. Puzzled and a little angry, he scanned her sullen, miserable face. “What's wrong with you?”

“It's my mother you wanted all the time,” she spit at him, her anguish coming out as anger. “I'm what you get. It's my mother you wanted.” She shoved at him with all her strength, sending him crashing against the wall as the slippery straw acted like rollers under his body. Slipping and sliding, blinded by the tears streaming from her eyes, she clawed frantically across the treacherous straw toward the ladder.

With an angry exclamation Vajd sprang after her, his thin strong hand closing around her arms. For several minutes they struggled in tense panting silence over the unstable straw. She sank her teeth in his arm and he slapped her. All the time she fought she was crying steadily, the pain inside her almost too much to bear.

Finally Vajd pinned her down with the weight of his body and a forearm pressed across her throat so that the trickle of blood from the bite slid down her neck. Anger stiffened his face into a harsh mask.

Suddenly she was inside. “No, Vajd,” she whispered. “Let me go. Please let me go.” She closed her eyes and let her body go limp. After a minute she felt his taut muscles relax. The pressure of his arm went away and she felt his hand brushing gently across her face, pushing her hair back, touching her eyes, her lips. “You're wrong, Leyta.” His voice was tender and caressing. “No. I was a child dazzled. That's all.”

Once again she felt his fingertips walking spider tracks across her face, trailing warmth behind. “Not Shareem. You. Always.” His hands moved over her and her body's urgency drove everything else way out to the edges of her awareness.

They lay locked together for a long time. Aab dipped below the edge of the window.

The sudden darkening of the loft woke Aleytys from her dreamy languor. She turned her head to look at Vajd. His face was full of peace and he seemed years younger as he lay beside her, the dim light masking the laugh wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and mouth. His hair was full of straw with wispy curls plastered down over a forehead wet with sweat. Tenderness was a warm river inside her. “I wish …” she murmured. “I wish we could stay like this forever.” She looked at the dark window with its sprinkling of stars.
Almost moonset,
she thought.
I suppose I should get back.
As she moved restlessly, the straw crackled and squeaked under her. Vajd's eyes opened. He sighed and stretched. “Leyta?”