Moonscatter (38 page)

Serroi moved her shoulders, rubbed at her neck. “Holiday's over once we're down there.”

Hern touched the ragged curls a handspan longer than she liked to keep them. He was silent a long time, then he moved away from her and turned to gaze, across the plateau. She looked around. From this edge as from the other it seemed an arid and uninteresting landscape, some brown and yellow clumps of limp grass, some patches of short scraggly brush liberally powdered with a grayish dust, scatters of rock and gravel. “Eerie,” he said. “I don't know what to think of that time.”

“Nor do I,” she said. She moved her shoulders again as if she were trying to free herself from the burden of those memories, pulled her boots from under her belt, sat down on the sandy stone. Hern walked past her to stand on the rim of the scarp looking out at the land below, frowning, a degree of tension hardening the muscles of neck and shoulder, at least what she could see of them as his heavy long hair blew about in the strengthening wind. She upended the boots one after the other, knocked on the soles to drive out the last grains of wild seed or any lingering purple berries. He was thinking about what lay ahead of them, she knew, and what lay behind. She set the boots beside her and pulled open the neck pouch. As she pushed out the silver box, she watched Hern watching the land.
What changes in me?
she thought.
What happens now?
She rolled her tattered trousers above her knees and pulled on her boots. He kicked a pile of broken rock over the edge and watched the stones bounding down, striking now and then with a flatter tone on the turnings of the trail. Serroi drew her thumb across the tarnished silver of the box, firmed her mouth and opened it. She took out the tajicho, held it in her hand until it warmed and began to glow. It had already saved life and sanity, it seemed to her, half a dozen times, yet she was slowly growing to be afraid of it, afraid of what it might be shaping her into. She could feel its radiance creeping into her bones, could feel an odd flutter in her head. Hern left the edge of the scarp and came back to her. “It's a long way down. We'd better get started.”

“In a minute.” She tucked the tajicho into her boot pocket, the spear under her arm, looked at the silver box, extended her hand to Hern so he could pull her up.

When he started down the crumbling path, digging at the stone ahead of him with the point of his spear, she looked again at the silver box, shrugged and flung it away from her to sail with vanishing sheen toward the rolling hills far below.

The descent was more tedious than difficult—hot, straining, and slow; it was late afternoon before they reached the bottom of the scarp. They started east through brush-covered swells that weren't quite large enough to be called hills, the land dipping with some haste toward the intensely cultivated fluvial plain.

They walked in silence separated by a small space, neither touching nor speaking. Hern was struggling to fit himself back into the man he'd known for thirty odd years, the self he was uncomfortable without, trying to tuck in his growing outreach like a woman pushing flyaway curls back under a cap.

By the end of the day they were well into the swells, hungry, thirsty, tired. While Serroi slipped off her boots and kicked about feeling for water, Hern went off with his spear, stalking lappets or wild oadats or whatever small game he could find. She had to reach very deep for the water and expend more energy than she liked to pull it to the surface. Kneeling beside the cold little spurts, she drank until she began to feel bloated, splashed the icy water on her face, pulled her boots back on and went poking desultorily about for edible roots, wondering as she did so if her vegetarian existence was finally over. Her mouth watered at the thought of a hot oozy chunk of roasted lappet.

After unearthing a few withered roots, she found an old oadat's nest, blown out of a clump of brush, no eggs, it was much too late in the year for that. As she touched it with her toe, she heard oadats scratching in the brush and gabbling at each other in their high nervous voices. She straightened, rubbed slowly at the small of her back.

The small flock ambled out of a clump of brush a short distance to her left, a dozen oadats, four smaller than the rest, all of them kicking the covering grass aside with one-two jerks of powerful hind legs, scratching busily with smaller forefeet through the debris of bark, dead leaves and small sticks, hunting for grubs, worms, seeds. She watched them work their way closer, watched them shy skittishly as they moved past her, though since she was standing very still, they didn't scatter in panic-flight. Several tilted onto stubby tails, skinny forearms tucked close to their sides, taloned feet pressed against bulging keelbones, heads, wobbly on scrawny naked necks, turning from side to side to look at her with one beady black eye then the other, leathery beaks opening and closing without sound. She stared at them and started sweating. She moved her leg in her boot until the calf muscle was pressing against the slim outline of the knife. She stared at the oadats, swallowed painfully, stood without moving, watching them scratching past her, her hand sweating, aching, curled tight about the spear shaft. Her hands wouldn't move. She couldn't move her arms. She could have killed one oadat, two, more, easily, but her arms wouldn't move. She watched the last swagger of the last stumpy, grey-furred tail as the last half-grown oadat disappeared around a scraggly grey-green bush. “No sense,” she whispered. “This is stupid.” She touched her forehead, drew her fingertips around her eyespot. Her fingers were shaking. She flattened her hand under the arch of her ribs, swallowed. “I'm going to eat meat, whatever Hern kills.” She said it tentatively, listening to her body, listening, as she had expected, to nothing, there was no reaction to her intent. “So I can't kill, but I can eat what someone else puts before me. No sense, no sense.” Her stomach knotted and unknotted. She sighed, a long shaky miserable sound that made her laugh at herself, then start poking about for some more roots.

Midmorning on their third day down from the plateau they reached the rutted road that led toward the river.

Hern stepped on a stone, winced. He crooked his leg, braced his ankle on his knee, glared at the sole of his boot. “Thin as paper.”

Serroi touched his arm, feeling a nip in her own flesh. “Want me to.…”

He let his foot drop, shrugged. “Stone bruise. It's nothing.”

“Don't be a hero, Dom.”

“Don't be a heroine, Domna.”

She took her hand away, smiling rather wryly. “Point taken.”

He dropped his hand on her shoulder, then stepped away. “We're a disreputable looking pair.”

She looked him over, then gazed down at herself, grimacing as she did so. His black trousers and tunic were not quite filthy; water cleaned out body smell but didn't do much for ground-in dirt and assorted stains. The rubbed spots over elbow and knee were almost transparent, as was the seat of his trousers, more like cheesecloth than the heavy wool they'd once been. Her own ragged trouser legs were tucked into her boots, that was one touch of neatness. There was a long tear beside her right knee, a smaller triangular tear by her left. The fine white cloth of her shirt was stained with blood and sweat and a dingy grey now, all over, holes over her elbows, cuffs frayed to threads. The seat and knees of her trousers were worn thin, thin enough for her to feel acutely the chill wind sweeping down against them, a north' wind that tried to push them off the road, that whipped her hair into eyes and mouth. “Just as well we're getting back to someplace we can get more clothes.”

He nodded. “Though how we're going to pay for them.…”

“Services, Dom. I'll heal and you heave.”

He raised his brows. “Heave?”

She laughed. “Use your muscle.”

“Hunh.”

They walked on, moving slowly and rather painfully along the road, worn, tired, and more than a little hungry. Walked side by side, not touching yet still companionable, friendly, feeling more comfortable with each other than they'd been for days.

Rounding a bend and a thick stand of cane they saw a man kneeling beside a rambut, holding its foreleg folded up, resting on one of his knees, prodding at the hoof with a long bony finger. He was a short wiry man with a fringe of coarse grey hair like steel wool running around the back of his head at ear level, the dome of his skull rising above it like a tight-grained shell of a wanja nut, shiny and dark brown. The rambut moaned and jerked its leg but couldn't pull free from the powerful grip of the old man's fingers.

Serroi walked away from Hern and stopped beside the old man. “Stone?”

He looked up. Grey fuzzy eyebrows flicked up then down as he held onto the beast's hoof with an absentminded strength, then scrunched together, his mouth pursing with them. He stared at Serroi, visibly disconcerted by the dusty green of her skin. His lively brows straightened with relief as he looked past her at Hern, reassuringly normal though a stranger here. His eyes flicked to Serroi again, then away until he was looking past her with the careful politeness of one not-staring at some blemish inflicted on another person. “Stone,” he said, his brows moving up and apart. He used them to punctuate his thoughts, his words, the way another man might use his hands.

She knelt beside him, reached out a hand. “May I?”

After his brows contorted themselves again, he nodded.

She took one of her lockpicks from her boot and with a quick twist of her wrist had the stone out. She stroked her fingers across the bruised frog and the rambut moaned. She closed her eyes, kept her fingers on the bruise, soothed the nervous beast with a touch of her outreach, called upon the healing force that flowed up through her knees from the Mother. It was easy, almost quick now. She had a feeling of unfolding, something growing in her, a sense of something huge and perilous just beyond the veils of her mind. She felt the warmth rising in her, passing from her into the rambut. She used no mystic passes or esoteric chant as did fenekeln witchers and felt the old fenekel's puzzlement because of it as she knelt quietly in the dust of the roadway, her small green hand resting gently on the rambut's foot, her eyes half-closed, a half-smile on her too thin face.

The old fenekel's eyebrows changed position a dozen times to express curiosity, impatience that only politeness kept silent, more curiosity as his black eyes shifted from Serroi to Hern who was leaning tiredly on his spear, watching without surprise or even much interest, darted back to Serroi, then to the rambut's frog—and finally the mobile brows went high and round with wonder as Serroi took her hands away, touched his hand so he would let the beast's leg go. While Serroi knelt weary and silent on the road, the rambut stamped his foot vigorously against the road's hard soil, whistled with pleasure at the absence of pain, then curled his head down to nuzzle at her tangled oily mop of dusty russet curls.

The old man turned to Hern, more comfortable dealing with him. “Tis a wonder,” he said gravely, but his black eyes twinkled and his brows wriggled energetically, telegraphing amusement and delight.

“My lady is a healer,” Hern said then stopped, rather surprised that he could understand and speak a tongue he'd never studied. He looked at Serroi, smiled at her smile as he realized where he'd gotten the language.

The old man's brows scrunched together. He whipped his head around to examine Serroi. “Lady?”

Serroi rose wearily, gave him a one-sided grin. “Though appearances be against me, that I am.” She moved to Hern's side, looked up at him. “Diplomacy's your forte, my friend.”

Hern laughed. “Eh-viper.” He turned to the old man. “A good day to you, fenekel-besri.”

“A better day than most, thanks be to the lady.” His eyes projected worth and self-respect. “There is a debt.”

“A very small debt. The lady heals without thought to payment, though.…” One hand swooped down to point out his rags, over to indicate Serroi's tattered state. “If your gratitude would run to helping us repair some of our deficiencies, our blessings on you.”

Brows butted together, exuding shrewdness, the old man smiled tightly. “We always got a need of this and that in the holds. The lady heals.” His voice still laid a slight question on the word
lady
. “And you?”

“I serve my lady. What I know is beast and weapon.” He kept his face straight when Serroi pinched him.

“Umphm.” The old man gazed past them at the distant line of plateau, his brows shot up, his broad forehead corrugated into deep wrinkles. He took in their tattered grimy appearance, glanced at the frisky rambut whose leadrope kept jerking in his hand. “Were it not wholly discourteous, I would be asking what your road is. There are no holds back along there.” He waved toward the west. “Only fields and pastures. Be that so, that it would be a sad reply to the courtesy of your acts, I will not ask.” He cocked his head, bright twinkling eyes traveling between them, eyebrows in high inquiring curves. “But 'tis plain to the eye that you've had no easy traveling.”

“It's possible we might do a bit of trading, besri, this and that for what we need and perhaps a tale or two to while away the hours after supper?”

The old man's eyes darted once again from one to the other, his brows contorted with lively curiosity. “A tale or two, that is a good thing. The evenings, they're long this piece of year.” He nodded at the rambut, short brisk jerks of his head. “Seeing your lady she healed the hurt, it being only right she ride.”

Hern bowed with a pared-down grace, the bending of his back a courteous recognition of courtesy. He gave his spear to the old man to hold for him, bent with ease to retrieve hers. She watched him go down and up and saw lines of force dance through his body. He reached out his hands to her. She looked at them. They were strong and beautiful. She touched them and they burned her. He lifted her with ease onto the rambut's back, swung her up as if she weighed less than nothing which was not far from truth. His hands spanned her waist and swept her up and deposited her on the rambut's back before she was ready. She had to scramble to crook her leg up, swing it to the far side of the beast. He took his hands away, she was sorry for that, she looked down at him, not smiling, and saw in narrowed gleaming eyes that what had been dead or difficult between them for so long had come powerfully to life. She smiled then, felt a rollicking inside her, remembering as suddenly her telling him so gravely once that passion was only decoration and not necessary and she saw that he was remembering that also and laughing a little at her, a little with her. “Bath and bed,” she murmured.