Moongather (11 page)

Her days passed quickly, were packed with activity. She studied her books, tended the plants that always died no matter how much care she lavished on them and were always replaced, played with her animals, fed them, talked to them, kept them healthy. She knew them all now, even the sicamar. In the evenings she'd let him out of his cage. He'd run wildly around the court, leaping and teasing invisible prey like a great savage kitten, he'd lick her with his rough tongue until he nearly rasped her skin off, he'd butt his head against her, he'd stretch out on his back, four huge feet waving in the air, and beg her to scratch his belly. Sometimes in the roughness of his play he'd knock her sprawling, sometimes he sat with his front end in her lap, purring frantically as she scratched behind his ears, her hands buried in his thick green ruff. Of all the animals, though, her favorites were the chinin. They had free run except when the sicamar was out of his cage, she took them up the stairs into her room while she studied, the three pups slept on her bed, curled up at her feet.

To her astonishment, she found that there were more languages than there were kinds of speakers. She could puzzle out five of them now, though she couldn't speak them. She spent long happy hours bent over the scrolls stored in her room, drinking in knowledge of strange things and strange places.

Evenings she joined the Noris to talk a little, get his answer to things that puzzled her, or simply sit in quiet companionship. He was her father, her family, her teacher. She trusted him, finally, as much as she ever would trust anyone. And she loved him in spite of the unexpected chill he could wake in her when he
went away
, retreated into that mind space where she couldn't follow.

She was rolling on the floor of her room, playing with the new batch of pups when the Noris opened the door and looked in. Serroi sat up, startled, then jumped to her feet. “Ser Noris?”

He looked around the littered room, lifted his brows, then beckoned to her, eyes twinkling. “I've brought you something else to play with, Serroi. Come see.”

The rock opened for them again, melting into a narrow spiraling staircase that circled high into the tower until they came to a bronze slab blocking off further rise. Serroi ran up the last stairs, then jerked to a stop. There was no hook. She looked over her shoulder at the Noris.

“You'll have to have my servants open this for you when you come here.” He leaned over her and touched the bronze. The door swung slowly open.

The room inside was much barer than hers. There were a bed and a chair, some pegs on the wall with small tunics hanging on them. The window was high on the wall and barred. There was nothing else visible until a small blond boy came around the end of the bed and stood staring at them, sucking on his thumb, his eyes wide and frightened.

Serroi hated him immediately. Pressing against the Noris's leg, she said, “I don't want him. Send him away.”

The Noris patted her curls and pushed her forward. “No, Serroi. We're done with animals for a time. I want you to learn to command him as you do your chinin.” He stood in the doorway watching her.

She glared at the boy. He was three or four, almost as tall as she; his eyes were a deep blue like distant seawater; his tunic was as blue as his eyes; his feet were bare; his skin shone a golden glowing brown like amber in sunlight. He was frightened of the Noris, even frightened of her. She socked her fists onto his hips and scowled at him. “Boy, come here.”

“Nescu-va?” The shrill voice trembled, tears filled his eyes.

“Ha!” She pounced on him, pinched his arm, then pulled him out into the middle of the room. “What's your name, boy?” She poked his finger at the middle of his chest. “Name.”

He stared silently at her; his thumb came up and he put it in his mouth; the tears crept down his dirty face, cutting runnels in the dust.

“Serroi.”

At the sound of her name she turned. The Noris was watching her, a lazy amusement in his eyes. “Use this.” A shiny black pebble was suddenly in the palm of his hand. She took the thing and scowled up at him.

“I don't like that boy,” she said.

“No matter. Learn to control him.” The Noris bent and brushed his fingers gently across her eye-spot. “When you want to leave, call the servants.”

Commanding humans was harder for her. They were slippery, with stubborn, strong egos. The boy resisted her. The more she slapped and pinched and yelled at him, the more he slipped away from her. Even with the black pebble to translate for her, she never got close to him. Her intense jealousy was one reason, the boy's own implacable hostility was another. She was jealous of him because he was male, able to be a Nor if her Noris so desired; she could never be.

She stood in her own small pentacle as he summoned a firedrake and used him to spin a strange and beautiful thing of gold and moonstones and crysoberyl. Part of it curved from view as if it dipped right out of this world; in the center of the tangle was an oval emptiness. Though she ached with curiosity, she knew enough to keep still until the Noris was finished and the firedrake returned to his subworld.

“What's that for?” She hugged her thin arms across her flat chest and stared with fascination at the construct in his hands.

“Be still!”

Serroi shrank back; his anger hurt her. She needed to please him. Her hand pressed against her mouth, she nodded, watched as he completed the thing he was making.

The anger faded from his eyes as he turned away. He held the construct in one hand, used the other to draw lines of blue fire in the oval vacancy, complex lines that might have been the symbolic representations of the great WORDS he used to command. The designs wove tighter, blurred into a shimmer then smoothed out into a blue-silver surface that filled the vacancy completely. A mirror. Serroi bit down hard on her lip to hold in an exclamation of delight. She watched as the Noris touched the immaterial shimmer, stroked it solid as if he froze light into metal fit to take the image of a face.

The hands carried the mirror away. Serroi watched it go, wistfully thinking that she'd never know now what it was for. She looked up to see the Noris smiling down at her. She started to go to him, stopped at his upthrust hand.

“Don't cross the lines of the pentacle, Serroi. Not yet.” He spoke a WORD and the lines drawn on the floor melted into mist. “Come now.”

In her room the mirror was sitting on a small table under the rack of scrolls. Serroi danced over to it, then looked back at the Noris. He smiled and waved her around. She knelt in front of the mirror and looked down at the image of her greening face.

“What would you like to see?”

Serroi frowned. “See? The vinat herd?”

“Touch the mirror.”

Serroi looked up at him, then touched the shining surface. It was cold and hard under her fingers. She trembled, bent closer. The blue-silver shimmer rippled, then cleared. She saw a vinat herd pouring across the tundra under the long sun. The grass was green and lush, the limul flowers thick, brilliant patches of red and yellow dotting the green, the sky clear, blue, cloudless. She could almost feel the whip of the brisk wind across her face as she watched small high-wheeled carts moving along beside the herd. She soared over them as if she were a hunting bird sailing through that crystalline blueness. Wondering if the people were her own or from another clan of windrunners, she bent over the mirror and peered at the miniature figures, trying to make out features. The mirror answered to her desire and the focus altered until she was hovering just above the carts. She saw her grandfather sitting on the lead cart, singing as he was wont to do. He looked content, well-satisfied with his life. Her brothers rode vinat beside the cart. Inside, her mothers and sisters were sitting as she'd sat so many times. She blinked. Seeing them made her feel uncomfortable.

The Noris dropped a scroll beside her. She picked it up and began unrolling it. Then she smiled. The scroll was a geography of the western continent. She looked at the paragraph by her thumb.
Sankoy. The rug weavers
. She touched the mirror again. When it cleared, she saw a long narrow room with a loom stretching from floor to ceiling. A dozen girls worked small fingers over the vertical threads, tying and tying and tying knots, never stopping, their fingers like machines, eyes large, glazed, in pinched and unhealthy faces. Serroi shuddered and touched the image away.

“Use the mirror to learn, Serroi.” The Nori sounded pleased.

She turned; he was in the doorway watching her. She rose from where she was kneeling and confronted him. “I want to, be a Noris.”

After a startled second, he brooded over what she'd said, obviously troubled because he didn't know what to say to her. Slowly, he shook his head. “That is not possible.”

“Why? I'm not stupid. I can learn. You've already taught me some spells. I can learn more. I can.”

“You're female.” He said it with a quiet finality as if that were the only explanation necessary.

She refused to accept it. “I can learn as fast as any stupid old boy. I've been here three years now. I've learned lots of things. I can learn to be a Noris.”

He moved a hand impatiently. “It has nothing to do with your intelligence, child. Or skill. Or any of your many talents. It is simply this, I fear. Nor are necessarily male. If a female took the Nor-route to power, she'd have to fight herself as much as she fought to learn and would burn herself out before she got to where she wanted to be.” When she opened her mouth to protest further, neither understanding nor accepting his slow, halting explanation, he gave a small exclamation of disgust and left.

Serroi glared at the blond boy. He scowled back at her. His fear seemed to leave with the Noris. She tightened her mouth, her jealousy like a fire in her stomach. The boy could take her place with her Noris if she didn't obey him. She fought against the pain in her heart and closed her fingers tight about the pebble. “What's your name, boy?”

He blinked solemnly at her. Slowly his hand came up to his mouth and he began sucking at his thumb. He said nothing.

Serroi pinched his arm. “Name!”

He pulled away from her, his thumb popping from his mouth. “Bad,” he shouted at her. “Ugly girl. Ugly frog-face. Ugly. Ugly. Ugly.” When she jerked her hand back to slap him, he stuck out his tongue at her and ran away to hide behind the bed.

All that spring she struggled to fight her antipathy to the boy, for that blocked her efforts to learn him, then control him. He hated her back with all the passion in his small body. He was a handsome child with a clear, soft skin and shining dark-gold hair. He'd been someone's darling, spoiled badly; he cried often, was malicious and sneaky, running to the Noris, showing the bruises on his arms where Serroi had pinched him. If there were no bruises, he'd pinch himself; she'd caught him at that. Though the Noris said nothing to her, simply watched the two of them with an enigmatic cool amusement that continued to keep her on edge. She grew thinner, tense and exhausted with her struggle. Her long, painful, fruitless struggle. For it was fruitless. That worried her most of all. She couldn't control him. Even after three months of intense effort, he fought her every step. She finally managed to impose her will on him for brief intervals, no more than two or three minutes in duration. Sweating, her face twisted into a straining mask, she could force him to walk about under her direction, could make him pick up or set down small articles, nothing more.

She came to dread those sessions. She couldn't bear to fail at anything the Noris asked of her. As the hot dusty summer settled over the tower, she fought to master the boy until she was close to destroying herself. Then the Noris brought the experiment to an abrupt, and to her eyes arbitrary, end. One morning she came wearily from her room to find the stairs leading up to the boy's room no longer there. The stone was solid. She hoped the boy was gone, but didn't dare ask for several days. She neglected her studies and spent the next days playing with her animals, trying to console herself for her failure. She'd tried her hardest, but she'd failed. Her blood kin had always punished her when she made mistakes, no matter how hard she'd tried. She waited and waited for the blow to fall, then nerved herself to speak to the Noris.
This evening
, she thought.
When I go to him
.

He turned his head as she walked in, turned it back to gaze dreamily into the leaping flames. She settled on her pillow. He was in one of his unapproachable moods, not unfriendly, just unwilling to talk. She fidgeted on her pillow, straightening her legs out in front of her, then curling them under her.

The Noris stirred, frowned.

Serroi closed her hands into fists. “I tried. I couldn't,” she whispered. “I'm sorry.”

“What?” His head swung around. “What are you talking about?”

“The boy.” She pulled her body into a small ball on the pillow, head down, knees tight against her chest.

“Oh that.” He flicked long white fingers, dismissing the boy into nothing.

“I tried.”

“Forget it, child.” The Noris spoke shortly, making the brushing-away gesture again, annoyed at her persistence. “It was only an experiment. It's over. I sent him away.”

She loosed her hands and lifted her head, brushed the curls out of her eyes. “Sent him away?”

The Noris's hand moved gently over her curls. “When you want to understand something, Serroi, you test it to its limits.” He pulled a curl between thumb and forefinger. “Do you miss him?”

She sighed and relaxed, leaning against the divan, her cheek on its velvet, watching the flames dance and the shadows play, the Noris's hand resting lightly on her head. “No,” she breathed. “I'm glad he's gone.”

THE WOMAN: V

Serroi sat beside the sleeping girl, drifting in a mindless ease until she found herself on the verge of falling asleep. Disturbed nights had left her with a weariness that was like an ocean pressing down on her. She sighed, got to her feet, walked with quick nervous steps to the rock pool. She stripped and plunged into the clear snowmelt, gasping with shock as her warm flesh dipped under the surface. She paddled about until the last wisps of sleep and nightmare dissolved and her blood was thrumming through her veins.