People of the Sky (30 page)

“From you?” Kesbe was puzzled.

The aronan’s scent-tone was almost smug. Even one such as the shaman can not hide herself from me.

“Baqui Iba, what do you mean?”

lomuqualt
, the one who struggles to bear…>

The sound of sandals crunching on gravel startled Kesbe. She lost the last of the aronan’s message as she whirled to see who was coming. They were still distant, hidden by a bend in the trail that ran between the pueblo buildings.

“Go!” Kesbe whispered to the flier, fearing that the shaman had detected her disobedience.

Both exchanged quick caresses before Baqui Iba turned and opened its wings for the short flutter up to the second level of Aronan House.

the aronan sent as it launched itself.

With a whir of wings it was gone. She heard it land on the threshold of the flight-door high on the walls of Aronan House. With a sigh, she turned away for her own walk back to her quarters.

Kesbe was never sure why Sahacat chose the next point in her training to bring in Nyentiwakay. She suspected that it was because the shaman somehow knew she had achieved full communication with Baqui Iba.

She, along with Sahacat and Baqui Iba, met Nyentiwakay in a small enclosed courtyard carved into the cave floor plaza of Tuwayhoima near Aronan Kiva. She was still heady with the previous days’ achievements and could scarcely pay attention to anyone except her aronan.

She saw a smile cross Nyentiwakay’s strong yet gentle face. The
lomuqualt
rose from a stone seat, placing one hand on each of the two partners, as if becoming a living representative of the bond between aronan and rider. Her belly pressed, full and solid, against her robe.

The
lomuqualt
turned quizzically to Kesbe, who felt self-conscious under the gaze of those joyful yet solemn eyes. “Sahacat brought me to answer your questions.”

Kesbe sent a baffled look toward Sahacat. She had not asked the shaman any questions she had not been able to answer, although there were a few she would not.

“Have you no questions, then?” Nyentiwakay asked. “You must. All who are entering this part of their life road have at least one. Have you not asked Sahacat the purpose of your training?”

Kesbe felt taken aback. That was one thing she had not asked the shaman. She had given up trying to demand information from Sahacat. She knew now by experience that when the shaman thought the time was proper to give such knowledge, she would impart it. The other reason was that she thought now that she knew the answer. Developing her sense of
tewalukwi
was one step toward strengthening and deepening the partnership with her aronan. The ultimate goal was the opening of full and free communication with a creature whose mind was very different from her own. When she explained this, she found the task of translating the ideas to the Pai tongue difficult, but at the end Nyentiwakay seemed to understand.

“So that is all?” the
lomuqualt
said, with eyes that seemed to twinkle with a strange suppressed mirth. “You truly think you have undergone such learning and changing in order to exchange mere
words
with your aronan beloved?”

Nyentiwakay chuckled. There was a resonance to the
lomuqualt’s
laugh that seemed odd for a woman. Kesbe at once felt out of her depth and a little bit foolish. “I have explained it poorly, Nyentiwakay,” she said, remembering what she and Baqui Iba had shared during that flight in darkness across the Mother Canyon.

The
lomuqualt
sent a reproving look toward Sahacat. “Shaman, you have not done justice to this initiate.”

“I do not deny her the knowledge,” said the shaman coolly. “I give it to her now, through you.”

Kesbe turned to Sahacat. She felt a warning prickles on the back of her neck. “What is this I haven’t been told?”

“Something you will need, now that you are well on the way to becoming
lomuqualt
,” the shaman answered. “You flew Baqui Iba last night, thinking I would not know. Again you disobeyed me. You are too advanced now in your training for me to stop you from progressing on. I will give you the answer you have been seeking. It is true. I have not told you the ultimate purpose of your training. Nyentiwakay will tell you now.” Sahacat stopped, flung her hair back over her shoulders. “Whether it is gift or punishment, you shall decide.”

“Why Nyentiwakay?” Kesbe looked from the shaman’s closed visage to the face of the
lomuqualt
. “What does she know?”

Nyentiwakay’s mouth thinned and a worry line appeared between the eyes. “This is wrong, Sahacat. Such teaching should be done with guidance and love.”

“My ways are my ways,” the shaman answered, her gaze as sharp as the edge of an obsidian blade. She turned and walked away.

Kesbe leaped to follow her. She felt fingers on her wrist drawing her back and struggled to free herself. Nyentiwakay’s grip was surprisingly strong. “Sit, warrior-woman. It is no good going after her. Sit here, beside me.”

An icy trickle of fear was starting down her back. Thoughts she had put aside began to reappear. Themes from the Pai stories and legends, hints from the Cloud Dance came back to her. The bond between aronan and human was an intimate one. How far that intimacy went was a question her mind had rejected, sealing it away until the flight with Baqui Iba. And now…

“Give me your hands,” Nyentiwakay said and, because she could do nothing else in her mixed fright and confusion, Kesbe held out both wrists. Nyentiwakay placed Kesbe’s palms firmly on the warm rounded mass of the
lomuqualt’s
belly. “This is the ultimate purpose of the partnership between human and flier. Feel it.”

Nyentiwakay held her hands in gentle entrapment. Something moved inside the
lomuqualt’s
stomach, Kesbe felt a slow rolling motion. She was bewildered. What did Nyentiwakay’s pregnant belly have to do with…

“A baby,” she tried.

“Do not pretend that you lack wit, Kesbe-Rohoni. It is a child of the Pai Yinaye, yes,” Nyentiwakay answered. “But not a human child.”

Again Kesbe’s mind screamed denial. She tried to jerk away, but Nyentiwakay still held her palms against that swollen belly and the thing it contained. The tiny smoldering ember of a truth she did not want to know burst into open flame before her face, searing her with its reality.

This gentle, laughing woman was carrying something inhuman—not a baby but the spawn of an arthropod. What must it look like curled up inside a human body? A huge larva?

“Why are you afraid, warrior-woman?” The low resonance of Nyentiwakay’s voice brought her attention back to the
lomuqualt’s
face. Kesbe’s jaw opened, but the reply she tried for would
not emerge.

“Are you afraid that what lies here is evil? That it is a worm that feasts on my flesh?”

Kesbe couldn’t answer, for she was shaking too hard and tears stung the corners of her eyes.

“When the nymph began, yes, it was a tiny grub. But so begins a human child,” said the
lomuqualt
softly. “The nymph does not feed on unwilling flesh, but takes only what my body provides.”

Now Kesbe felt not only shock and revulsion, but deep pity for Nyentiwakay. As the
lomuqualt’s
eyes met her own, she felt Nyentiwakay’s fingers releasing hers. She snatched her hands away, wiping her palms down the side of her leggings. “Who has done this to you? Why did you let them do it?”

Nyentiwakay extended open hands to her, but she could only back away. She tried to get control of her voice, to give comfort and reassurance to someone who must be in great mental and physical distress from the parasite within their body. “There are things that can be done, Nyentiwakay,” she babbled. “It isn’t too late Healers in my world can remove the grub from you. It isn’t too late if we can reach
Gooney Berg
…‘

Steeling herself to touch Nyentiwakay, she reached for the
lomuqualt’s
wrist Nyentiwakay put one hand up in a sharp, almost imperious gesture. “Warrior-woman, I do not understand your fear. It makes you speak nonsense. I would not be rid of the aronan-child I bear. Say no more of this.”

“But you don’t know what is happening…” Kesbe broke off. It was useless to argue. Obviously Nyentiwakay had been drugged or duped into becoming a human caterpillar in which an aronan had laid its egg. What would happen when the parasite matured and sought its way out of the
lomuqualt’s
body? Or would it consume its unknowing host from within?

Was that the fate Sahacat had planned for her?

Yet the memory of the flight on Baqui Iba still remained with her. Baqui Iba had said it loved her. The thought had lifted her with joy then, but now it drew cold streaks down her back. Love from an aronan—what did that really mean? Was it the affection of the wasp for the caterpillar that quivered beneath its sting? No! How could she doubt? The creature loved her far more deeply than anyone of her own kind had ever done.

She would seek out the truth from the one who knew it. Baqui Iba.

Kesbe’s resolution took her as far as the plaza before Aronan House, then she faltered, confused by doubt. She could not bear the thought that what Baqui Iba might tell her was the same thing Nyentiwakay had said, the idea that so frightened her.

As for entering Aronan House…She wished there was some way she could call Baqui Iba down without having to go among creatures that looked upon her as a walking receptacle for their larvae. She remembered how she had laid an odorous trail to lure Baqui Iba back to the mesa. She felt sweaty enough to do it now, but she wondered if the creature would read in her smell a message to come or a message to stay away.

The tread of sandals sounded on the path to Aronan House. Whoever it was, they were coming toward her. She shrank back against the wall of a corn silo, hoping that the fact she was downwind from whoever approached might conceal her.

She waited until she could see the figure hurrying up the path. Her eyes widened. It was not the shaman, as she had feared, or Nyentiwakay, but the woman Chamol. She carried her son Jolo bound across her back in a blanket, but from the fierceness of her steps, Kesbe guessed she was not bound on any maternal errand.

The set look on the Pai woman’s face warned her that Chamol wouldn’t tolerate interruption. Curious now, she leaned against the cool stone and watched from her place in the shadows. Chamol strode purposefully to the door-flap of Aronan House and Kesbe was too far away to hear all of the conversation between them, but as Chamol raised her voice, she caught more of the exchange.

“I have asked the kiva priests and they say my brother is no longer there. The shaman will tell me nothing. Have none of the child-warriors seen him?”

The young man mumbled something that Kesbe couldn’t hear, but she saw Chamois shoulders slump, as if the weight she bore had become too much for her.

“Could you not let me into the kiva to search for myself,” Kesbe heard her plead. “I will enter in reverence, I will not desecrate that which is holy.”

The young man shook his head. “Only the kiva chiefs may say who enters.”

“But I have asked and they all tell me the same thing. Go to the shaman. It is she who has forbidden me to see Imiya.”

“Then speak with her again or obey,” said the young man, trying to be kind. “We of Aronan House can do nothing for you.”

He stood with his hands open helplessly as Chamol turned away, the tears bright in her eyes. Kesbe stood still in the shadows, abruptly recalling what Baqui Iba had sent to her.
The pain of the one who struggles to bear
…What else had the aronan said? She put her hands to her temples as if she could press the information out of her unwilling brain. If only she hadn’t been interrupted…

Quietly she left her refuge and strode down the path after the Pai woman, timing it so that she caught up with her just as they passed the part of the pueblo containing Kesbe’s own quarters.

When she was just behind Chamol, she hissed the woman’s name. The other turned abruptly. She beckoned quickly in the direction of the doorflap that led to her own small chamber. Chamois eyes widened, but after a quick glance left and right, she followed.

Kesbe poured more oil into the guttering clay lamp. She offered Chamol a place on her rug. Jolo began to cry fretfully. Chamol unslung the child and quieted him, holding him against her
breast. Then she peered at Kesbe with frightened yet hopeful eyes.

“I heard you speaking with the door-warden at Aronan House,” Kesbe began without preamble. “How long has it been since you’ve seen Imiya?”

“Many
sukops
, warrior-woman. The last time he seemed to be almost healed from his injury, yet it was afterwards that the shaman forbade me to visit him.” She leaned forward, her face warming with excitement. “You, you have been trained in the kiva. Surely you must know if Imiya is there.”

“I haven’t seen him,” Kesbe answered slowly. “I haven’t been allowed beyond the area that Sahacat uses to instruct me. But,” she added, as Chamois eyes began to shimmer with grief once again, “I have…a reason…to think he is.”

Kesbe knew she and Chamol could not visit the kiva in daylight. Instead she waited for dark, hidden in the inner rooms of Chamois house. She sent word by a child-warrior that she was ill and could not come to her lesson with Sahacat that day. It was a poor excuse, but not to appear at all might alert the shaman’s suspicions.

When night came, the two women went to Aronan Kiva. Chamol had said they would find it unguarded, for who among the Pai would desecrate it or steal anything? Kesbe was surprised to find that this was indeed so. If the boy was here, he was not being kept by force. She climbed down the lash-pole ladder into the depths of the kiva, feeling ashamed at taking advantage of the trust the Pai people placed in each other by leaving a sacred place open to all who might enter.

Yet even though it was open, it might not be innocent. One would not need guards to hold one who was drugged or sick or broken of will. And a faint sourness tainted the earthy scent of the underground chamber that hinted of sickness and suffering. It was so faint, Kesbe knew that if her senses were not on edge as they were now, she would have failed to detect it.

Her nose led her downward, to a chamber below the main one where Sahacat had taught her. Traces of Baqui Iba’s scent still hung in the room. As she crossed the floor with Chamol, she tried to blot out the aronan-smell, not wanting to be distracted. She pushed through a hanging doorflap and snapped on her hand-light.

Kesbe swung her flashlight beam around the plastered stone interior of the small kiva. On a ledge at the far end lay a blanket-wrapped figure that moved listlessly. Her heightened olfactory sense caught a smell that reminded her of Imiya’s. A different odor was mixed with it, a spicy smell with overtones of sourness. When her light fell upon the bundled figure, her eyes were as equally confused, for the flushed sweating face was that of a young girl with Imiya’s features. Gone were the masculine planes of the face and the rough stubble of beard on the chin. The jaw had softened, rounded. The entire facial structure had changed proportions, making the eyes seem much larger as they opened and fixed upon her.

Kesbe had expected to find the youth weakened by sickness or perhaps in a trance induced by the shaman. She did not anticipate the startling change that now faced her. Her mind sought other explanations, a twin sister perhaps. No. The face had changed, but the eyes, although dulled with fever, were Imiya’s.

Chamol apparently had no such difficulty in recognizing her brother in this altered form. Before Kesbe could react, Chamol went to him, crouching beside the ledge where he lay, but no recognition entered the eyes. A spasm of pain convulsed the face, making the back arch, thrusting up the abdomen…

The figure writhed again. The cocoon of blankets fell away. The circle of her light fell on bare flesh, pulled to tightness by the full swelling inside.

But Imiya, if this indeed was Chamois brother, was male, wasn’t he? Bewildered, she approached, playing the light on the flat pectorals of the chest and the sinewy muscled arms. For an instant she had expected to see the rest of a woman’s body.

Something rippled beneath the taut skin. Something pushed out, forming a hard ridge. Imiya whimpered between his teeth, clutched at his swollen stomach, breathed hard and harshly. Repulsed, Kesbe backed away, fearing for one insane minute that whatever lay inside the boy’s body would burst from him.

Her breath rattled in her throat. She only half-heard Chamois voice saying in surprise, “I did not expect to find that he has already been made
lomuqualt
.” The Pai woman paused, sent Kesbe a sharp glance. “Rohoni, what is wrong?”

She couldn’t answer. She played the light over Imiya’s drained face, the glazed eyes, saw furrows about the mouth etched by pain. She felt the horror of it creep over her with freezing steps. This boy had an aronan larva inside him. This was not any gentle pseudo-pregnancy, as Nyentiwakay had tried to make her believe, but the presence of a malignant parasite that could infest the human male as well as the female.

The sight of Imiya clashed with her previous memories of Nyentiwakay. How, she asked herself, could both be
lomuqualt?
Which was the truth, Nyentiwakay’s joyful bearing or Imiya’s torture?

Was Baqui Iba also in the conspiracy to deceive her? It would have a good reason to do so—it needed someone to incubate its egg. Could it be she was being led down the fabled primrose path? At first such thoughts seemed unlikely, but the longer she looked at Imiya, the stronger the possibility became.

Damn you. Damn you all. You lied to me.

The aronan will use me like a wasp uses a caterpillar. She remembered the horror of her childhood that Sahacat had resurrected to warn her. The shaman had been right. Why hadn’t she listened?

“Rohoni?” Chamois voice cut in anxiously. “Do you not understand? I thought you were being prepared.”

“I was being prepared, but not for this.” She made a quick motion toward Imiya, whose teeth clenched and head strained back as the parasite jerked inside his belly. She wanted to press her hands against her own stomach, shielding it, pressing it inward against the pressure of whatever might want to grow there.

“Something is wrong,” Chamol said worriedly. “He is too swollen, there should not be pain and fever. Something has gone wrong, perhaps because the egg is from another aronan and not his own flier.”

His own flier. I have my own flier too, she thought, remembering the closeness she shared with Baqui Iba only a short time ago.

But she knew now. She knew the truth. She found herself shuddering at the thought of coming near an aronan. To think the partnership between her and Baqui Iba had been something she thought precious. The creature was hypnotizing her with its pheromones, seducing her into the role of passive host-mother. She could be the one lying there with a stomach inflated with parasite…

For an instant she wanted to run, to flee to her plane, fire up the engines and get the hell out. The selfish impulse ebbed. No, she could not leave the boy behind. She was partially responsible for what had happened to him. If she left him here in this rathole of a kiva with god-knows what eating his guts, he would die.

She strode to the ledge and began wrapping the boy in blankets, ostensibly for warmth, but really to hide the sight of his belly. “Help me carry him,” she said sharply to Chamol.

“Kesbe-Rohoni, I brought you here to find him, not to take him away,” Chamol began.

Kesbe slapped the first-aid kit on her belt, to which Chamol had pinned some hopes. “Nothing in this is going to do any good. I think this boy is dying and the only way to save him is to get him away and have the thing inside him taken out.”

“No.” Chamol blocked Kesbe’s hand. “It would be wrong.”

“Look at him,” Kesbe hissed. “How long do you think he is going to live like that?”

Chamol closed her eyes, then opened them, moist with grief. “It has gone badly I think you are right. If we leave him here, he will not survive, but where can we take him?”

“I know a place, and we can reach it in
Gooney Berg
. Help me with him. Hurry.”

Even as Kesbe and Chamol gathered the boy up, he began to thrash and kick. “Brother,” Chamol whispered to him. “We take you to save your life. Do not fight.”

Imiya’s head rolled. His eyes fluttered open and the torture of pain in them made Kesbe swallow hard. What kind of society did this to its children? One of his hands clutched at the ledge with surprising strength.

“Do not take me from the kiva,” he gasped. “I must stay
lomuclualt
even if bearing this one costs my life. It is my only chance, my only road back to my people, Sahacat has told me…”

“The shaman lies,” Kesbe said fiercely, trying to pry his hand from the ledge. “Chamol, he’s delirious. Ignore what he says.” Another convulsive spasm shook the boy, loosening his grip. Kesbe thought she felt something lunge angrily inside his belly.

“Let’s get him
out
of here!” She heaved him up, clamped him in her arms to still his struggling, then dragged him off the ledge, blankets and all. Staggering under the weight, she carried him into the next room of the kiva.

Chamol was ahead of her, motioning her through the secret ground-level entrance of the kiva. There was no way they were going to get up the trapdoor entrance ladder with Imiya. Together the women began to run, carrying the boy between them.

The narrow mesa trail forced Chamol and Kesbe to go one after the other, lugging the boy between them. Kesbe let the Pai woman have the lead, for Chamol could find her way through the dark over broken rock and keep them both away from the treacherous edges. Though Kesbe had a light, she avoided using it for fear of attracting attention. She could only struggle up the stony ground, her arms laden with Imiya’s weight and that of the parasite inside him.

Chamol stopped. Kesbe, carrying the boy’s shoulders, felt his feet sag. Chamol said nothing, but she sensed the Pai woman listening. Now she too heard it: the rush of wings against wind.

Had Sahacat discovered the abduction and sent mounted child-warriors after her? She prepared to let down her burden, to turn and fight.

“No,” Chamol whispered. “The aronan is alone. It has no rider.”

Kesbe listened to the wingbeats. Each flier had a slightly different wingbeat signature. She realized that she knew this one and wished at that moment she didn’t. Baqui Iba was flying this night. Flying alone, seeking her.

The sudden, almost instinctive surge of joy was severed by a knifeblade of fear. The aronan must be seeking her because it was ready. Ready to implant in her the same horror that moved in Imiya’s belly.

One word came out in a moan between her numbed lips. “Run!”

Chamol did not stop to question. They broke into a scrambling stagger along the trail, jolting
moans from Imiya.

Kesbe heard the wingbeats directly overhead. The breeze in her face carried a smell that told her she was beloved. It was the same aroma that had rushed over her during the last flight that now seemed so terribly long ago. Then it had been heartbreakingly beautiful and had touched her to the deepest part of her being.