Moongather (3 page)

The bubble burst. Serroi came back to sanity, dizzy from wine fumes, nauseated, her head throbbing. Tayyan was stuffing gold and silver coins into her money sack and talking energetically to a smallish man with hair like straw and a brown, weathered face like a withered old root. Serroi hauled her away and the two meien edged out of the scattering mob, crunching over the gritty earth toward the Highroad and the city gate.

Tayyan was still excited, pouring the contents of her money sack into her hand, counting her winnings, crowing her triumph, ignoring Serroi's growing withdrawal. The eye-spot was throbbing, each small nip a warning shout.
Danger ahead. Watch out
. She said nothing—there was nothing to say, the warning was unlocalized in time or space and there was nothing around them but the moonlit plain and the plodding sportsmen returning to the city. Even these grew quieter as they approached the gates. More than one of them had passed wine and coin to the guards on duty there, bribing them to leave the gates open a crack. By good fortune none of the guards belonged to the Flame. Or perhaps fortune had nothing to do with that. Domnor Hern enjoyed a good race; only harsh and unyielding pressure from counselors, wives and the Sons of the Flame had brought him to banning races and condemning the wagering that went on at them.

The two women passed unnoticed through the gate, but once inside, Serroi walked faster, pulling Tayyan after her with some urgency. In the city there was a growing hostility to the meien, a hostility fostered by the Sons of the Flame. Domnor Hern still used them as harem guards but the other meien were gradually being dismissed by their employers. Outside Oras, in the small villages of the Mijloc, the priests of the Flame called them devil's whores and other names even less polite, led campaigns against those followers of the Maiden who still sent problem daughters to the Biserica valley for training as weaponwomen, healers or Servants of the Maiden. The custom—its origins lost in the mists of mythic time—of providing sanctuary at the Biserica for runaway girls and women had created a reservoir of resentment among the more conservative Mijlocim that was easy enough to stir into revulsion and fear.

Tayyan dumped half the coins back in her sack and stepped suddenly in front of Serroi, grinning broadly as she hugged her shieldmate, then caressed the eye-spot with the back of the fisted hand that held the rest of the money. “Little borrower of trouble,” she said affectionately, still rather drunk with wine and excitement. “Here. This is yours.” She stepped back, caught hold of Serroi's right hand and dropped a pile of coins into the palm. “I bet a couple of decsets on Curosh for you.”

“Tayyan, you know I don't play those games.” Serroi tried to give back the money.

“You'll spoil no sport tonight, love.” Tayyan laughed and danced away, lifting her hands to the gathering clouds, yawning and groaning with the pleasure of stretching her muscles. She stopped, hands on hips, grinned at Serroi. “I'm for bath and bed. Join me?”

Serroi nodded, unhappy because she couldn't match Tayyan's high spirits. She walked several minutes in silence, then she sighed and tucked the coins into her own money sack.

The boat heaved as the wind shifted. Serroi stirred, her tongue furry, her head throbbing. She pushed against the deck and lifted her upper body until she was sitting with her legs crossed before her, hands clutching at her temples. She swallowed, swallowed again.
People
, she thought.
I need people. And water. And food
. She focused her
desire
then followed the tugging of the eye-spot southeast toward the cliffs.

She beat her slow way against the wind to the distant shore but she was still some way out when the sun touched zenith and the wind dropped to an erratic series of puffs too weak to lift a feather. The sail flapped against the mast, then sagged, flapped, sagged. She shook the wineskin, unstoppered it and lifted it high, let the thick sour liquid trickle into her mouth. The sun steaming the moisture out of her until she felt her skin frying, she sucked at the wineskin, her eyes on the faint line of the horizon, the tantalizing dark line, so close and so impossibly out of reach. She dozed a little but sleep brought the nightmares back; finally she kept awake, trying to drift without thinking.

Late in the afternoon a cooler breeze tugged at her hair and teased the sail into slapping noisily at the mast. Sodden with wine and sweat, she staggered to her feet, collapsed onto her knees as the boat rocked under her. She shook her head, groaned, then looked over her shoulder at the sun hanging low in the west, almost touching the flat line of ocean, tipping the waves with crimson. Crawling because she couldn't stand, she got to the mast, pulled herself onto her feet, her head slowly beginning to clear. People, she thought,
desired
, then sent the boat where the eye-spot pulled her. The sail filled and the small boat danced lightly across the swells. She blessed the builder. A sweet ship, steady and responsive, built with love and maintained with love, skimming over the darkening water with a singing hiss.

As she drew near the white cliffs she saw another tappata with a pier angling past the outlet, small store-sheds, and a crude stone fort. Driven by wind and the incoming tide, the boat was a bird under her hands swooping down on the pier. The sheds and the fort were deserted, crumbling. She frowned with disappointment, but her eye-spot still tugged her strongly inland, so she settled back and let the wind blow her along the finger of water winding between perpendicular cliffs of chalk.

THE CHILD: 1

The small dirty child was playing with the chinin pups, tumbling recklessly about on the tundra, mashing down grass and flowers, ignoring the prodding of scattered fist-sized rocks. The chinin were play-growling, small sharp teeth worrying at her torn and mud-streaked clothes. Tugging at the ankles of her boots, stomping on her, rolling on her as they wrestled with each other. She was filthy and wet, bruised, scraped in a hundred places, and she loved it, she bathed in the trust and warmth the chinin gave her, felt herself one of them, a chini among chinin. And forgot completely, or refused to think about the scold she'd get later on from her weary mother, the strapping her father would give her, the tormenting she could expect from her normal brothers and sisters. In this play she lived utterly in the present and was supremely happy.

“Serroi!” She recognized the harsh voice of her grandfather and got reluctantly to her feet. She slid her eyes to his face, then stared down at the toe-peaks of her boots. He looked angry and embarrassed. She sneaked a second glance at the man beside him, puzzled by the stranger's presence. The green blotches on her skin and her smallness offended her grandfather's sense of self-worth; she was a symbol of his son's lack of control, conceived against custom at the radiant hot springs where the windrunners wintered, usually kept well out of sight when there were visitors to the camp. Yet now her grandfather was calling her to meet a tall man in a narrow black robe. She came scowling to her grandfather's side, furious with him for spoiling her joy and too familiar with his heavy hand to dare show her fury.

She stood away from her grandfather, knowing by instinct and experience that he didn't want her touching him, stood with her head bowed, her curls tumbling forward hiding her face, stood sneaking looks at the strange man because he was beautiful in her eyes and she was starved for beauty. He was tall. Grandfather who was a mighty man among the People came only to mid-chest on him. He was snow-pale with finely chiseled lips and a nose straight as a knife-slash. A small gold ring passed through the outside of his left nostril. A gleaming red stone hung from the ring and moved when he smiled at her. His hair was black smoke floating around his narrow high-cheeked face. His eyes were black too, the black of the polished jet ornaments her mother wore to the Iangi-vlan festival at summers-end. He seemed to her more a strange wild animal than a man and because she felt most at home with animals she dared smile back at him and lift her head, forgetting, for once, the green blotches that marked her as misborn.

“This is the child.” Her grandfather's lips were stretched in a wide humorless smile; he was almost fawning on the stranger.

“Her parents agree? She must be a free-will gift.” The man's face was low and musical. Shivering with pleasure at its beauty, Serroi paid little attention to what the two men were saying. Adults talked over her head all the time about things she found complicated and uninteresting. Instead, she concentrated on the singing joy his voice made of his words.

Grandfather shrugged. “Summers-end she goes to the priest anyway. My son consents.”

“The child's mother?” The ruby flashed sparks of crimson as he spoke.

Serroi sneaked a look at Grandfather at the stranger's question. His red-brown eyes opened wide with surprise that anyone would bother about what a woman thought. “The out-daughter will do what my sons says.”

“Then put your mark on this.” The beautiful stranger slipped fingers inside his sleeve and drew out a short roll of parchment which he handed to Grandfather. “It is a deed of gift.” He proffered a tiny pot of black grease and showed Grandfather how to set the mark of his thumb on the deed. When that was done, he took the parchment, rolled it again and tucked it back in his sleeve. Once again he smiled down at Serroi, held out his hand. “Come, child.”

Lost and bewildered, wanting to do what he said, afraid of what was happening, she looked from her scowling grandfather to the beautiful man, then walked hesitantly toward him. After a final glance at the chinin pups who stopped their playing and sat on their haunches watching her, she took the stranger's hand and trotted beside him, her short legs taking several steps to his one. After a few minutes she looked back. The pups still sat in a ragged half circle, their eyes mournful as they watched her leave. A chini pup howled suddenly and the others joined him. Disturbed by the sound, she bit down on her lip and walked faster beside the dark figure striding across the tundra toward one of the many outcroppings of rock rising like snaggle teeth from the rolling land.

Behind the rock a vinat was tethered to a heavy stone, grazing at the soft spring grass. He was hitched to a carved and painted cart like those the Iangi priests rode in when they traveled between the windrunner camps. Around the four sides, carved vinat with gilded horns leaped and ran on a yellow ground. Above and below them ran chains of red and yellow flowers, green leaves and twisting vines. Over the top of the car arched carved ribs with loops where a covering could be tied, though there was no cover on them now. Serroi watched as the stranger lowered the back gate of the cart and began untying thongs on a large leather bag.

With an odd quiver in her stomach, she moved away to the grazing vinat and stroked tentative fingers over the thick fleecy curls along the animal's front legs. The graceful narrow head lifted, the limber neck curved round and the vinat was nuzzling at her, its nostrils quivering, ears flicking with pleasure as she scratched along the jaw line just above the fibrous beard that could sting like fire when the vinat brushed it over an attacking predator. More stiff short fibers shone like gold wire on the palmate horns. With its throat protected, with its horns given an added sting, with its razor-sharp hooves, the vinat was a nasty fighter and hard to handle, even half-tame.

“Come here, child.” The musical voice had a touch of warmth that surprised her. Her heart beating erratically, hoping for she knew not what, she left the vinat and circled the cart. The man took her hand, smiled down at her from his great height. He looked gentler now, less like a long-tooth sicamar prowling a herd. “Sit here.” He pointed to a small rock sunk deep in sweetgrass and limul flowers. As she sat, he brought a basin filled with water and perfumed white foam. He knelt beside her, settling the basin in the grass by her boot toes. After turning back his sleeves, he dipped a rag in the water and gently cleaned her face. The cloth caressed her skin though the foam got in her eyes and stung them. The water was deliciously warm. She sat very still, vibrating with pleasure at the warmth, the gentleness which she took for tenderness, the first she'd experienced since her mother weaned her. When he finished with her face, he washed her hands thoroughly, even cleaning out the small arcs of dirt under her short bitten fingernails.

Finally he sat back on his heels, dropped the rag in the basin. “Clean the rest of your body, child, then put those on.” He pointed at the back of the cart; her best trousers, tunic, belt and cloak were there. “Your mother sent them.” He stood. “Don't dawdle. Join me when you finish.” He walked away and pulled himself onto the driver's seat of the cart, his back to her.

When she climbed up beside him, he flicked a whip at the vinat's haunches and they started off across the tundra.

THE WOMAN: II

The precipitous walls of chalk confined the tappata to a worm of salt water poking into the side of the Earth's Teeth, the chain of mountains hugging the shore from Oras south to the Aranji gulf where the great round bulge of Sankoy thrust out into the Ocean. The water was rising in the channel, going faster as the tide came roaring in. Winds fell over the top of the cliffs and mixed with the strong air currents following the water from the sea, tangling in a confused knot that twisted and turned unpredictably.

Serroi fought to hold the boat in the center of the tappata, blessing fervently the builder since all that kept her from crashing a dozen times was the stability and responsiveness of the small craft. She sailed through the deepening shadow under the cliffs, beginning to smell green from the mountains as the side drafts picked up the scent of growing things and mingled this with the tang of the salt air.

A mellow brazen note sounded above the noise of wind and water, then was repeated several times. Serroi blinked and leaned forward, listening intently as the boat swept around the first section of an elongated double curve.
A bell. And close
. When the boat nosed into the second half of the curve, the bell no longer sounded but fragments of shouts drifted to her. The tappata widened suddenly, the cliffs beginning to move back and fall away. She dropped the sail, riding the slowing surge of the tide, her eye-spot throbbing with its danger-warning.