Snare (70 page)

‘Uh, I don’t understand –’

‘The Chosen did something to my mind, I guess. When I tried to tell Jezro Khan about them, I went into convulsions.’

‘You what?’ She leaned forward.

‘Convulsions. First I heard a hissing sound, and then it got loud, like water boiling, and then I blacked out. I don’t remember what happened next.’ He held up his right hand, flecked with new scars. ‘I was holding a glass, and I crushed it.’

‘Your muscles must have gone completely rigid. It’s no wonder you don’t remember anything, after a fit like that.’

‘But what I don’t understand is, I could tell you about the Chosen.’

‘That’s true. So what do you want to do now? Try to tell me more and see how you react?’

‘Just that.’ Zayn took a deep breath. ‘All right?’

‘All right. Go ahead.’

‘It was an officer named Lev Rashad who figured out I had some of the demon talents. We ended up in the same regiment after we’d both been transferred off the border. He dropped a few hints, I made the right responses, and so he took me to meet a certain Colonel Shah, infantry, retired. That’s not his real name, you can bet on that. But in Bariza he was the chief recruiter for the Chosen.’ He paused, looking her way.

‘How do you feel now?’

‘Same as always. Let’s try some more details. I made up an excuse and applied for two weeks’ leave from my regiment. Then they took me up to Haz Kazrak where I was initiated. Well, actually, the headquarters of the Chosen are a couple of miles north of town, cut out of the side of a hill. The entrance is hidden in a stand of fern trees, about two miles from the main road. I realize now that it has to be an old supply depot or bunker or some such thing, dating from the colonist days, I mean, because it was made of flexstone. At the time, it looked pretty damn impressive. It had a light strip running around the base of the wall, so everything turned gold and glittered.’ Zayn smiled, his eyes wide, as relieved as a man who finds out that his battle wounds aren’t fatal after all. ‘I don’t hear the hiss. I don’t feel disorientated.’

‘Good. Do you have any idea of what they might have done to you?’

‘It must have happened in the initiation ceremony. They tie you to a pillar of blue quartz.’ Zayn reached into his shirt and pulled out the imp. ‘Just like this stuff. And then the officer in charge has a knife made out of some kind of clear crystal. Or I thought it was a knife at the time. It didn’t have a sharp edge.’ His eyes seemed to be tracking some moving object.

‘That’s really odd. Are you seeing this in your mind now?’

Zayn nodded. ‘They laid it on my throat, then across my eyes, as a death threat if I ever betrayed the guild.’ He cocked his head as if he were listening to distant voices. ‘It’s hard to make sense of the memory. They drug you before the ceremony starts.’

‘What with?’

‘I don’t know. Something that made me puke a couple of times,
and then everything got, well, strange. It was different from that pink drug you gave me in the Mistlands. That just made me feel more alive.’

‘It’s supposed to, yes. How did they give you the drug?’

‘In some sort of liquid, in a glass.’ He swallowed heavily. ‘It’s bitter, and they’re telling me that I should always remember the bitterness, because our lot in life’s so bitter, too.’ He paused, his eyes wide, his mouth slack, and at that point she realized that he’d slipped into a trance much like that of a spirit rider seeking a vision. ‘Walking into the room is like walking into a fire. The gold walls are moving. It’s like there isn’t any floor, just fire.’

‘Is the pillar made out of fire?’

‘No, it’s cold.’ He leaned his head back, and his arms twitched, as if someone were pulling his hands behind him. ‘So are the handcuffs.’

‘What are they saying to you?’ Ammadin deliberately softened her voice. ‘The knife touches your throat. What are they saying to you?’

Zayn spoke in Kazraki – several sentences as far as she could tell.

‘Remember that,’ she whispered. ‘Remember what you just said.’

He nodded so slowly that for a moment she thought he was about to faint, but he sat unmoving. She leaned close to him, paused, then, when he didn’t respond, laid her hand on the side of his face. In the heat of the day he felt cold, and she could feel his pulse beating fast in his throat. He’s not a spirit rider, she thought. This could be dangerous.

‘Zayn?’ She ran her hand through his hair. ‘Zayn, come back. You’ve gone off somewhere.’

He twisted away from her touch, then stared, dazed, at her face.

‘Zayn? It’s me, Ammi.’

Suddenly he shook his head like a fly-stung horse. She rose to a kneel and reached for him, but he smiled normally and turned to look at her.

‘What was all that?’ he said.

‘You were reliving something.’ Ammadin sat back down. ‘Do you remember what I asked you to remember?’

‘Yes, from the initiation ceremony. They laid the knife on my throat and told me, one word to any man about our secrets means your death.’ He frowned, thinking. ‘Your death lies within you –
that’s when they put it over my eyes – like a snake coiled within your soul. And then they put the knife on the back of my neck, and it hurt like hell, I could feel the pain all up and down my spine, but you know something? At the same time it felt like sex. It got me off, anyway.’

‘Oh, did it? I’d be willing to bet that’s when they put the snake in your soul, whatever they meant by that.’

‘Maybe so. There were lights in the blue quartz. For some reason that matters.’ Zayn began rubbing the back of his head as if it still ached. ‘I told Idres about them, too, the lights, but I don’t know why.’

‘Neither do I. Can I see that imp?’

‘Sure.’ He slipped it over his head and handed it to her.

When Ammadin held it up to the sunlight, it glowed like a feeding crystal. ‘Did the lights look like this?’

‘No. There were points of light moving inside the pillar, going up and down.’

‘How could you see them if you were tied with your back against it?’

Zayn stared at her so blankly that she feared he’d slipped back into trance. ‘I don’t know,’ he said at last. ‘I just did. I could see myself and the pillar, and the lights were moving inside it.’

‘You could see yourself? Did you feel like you were floating up by the ceiling?’

‘No, because I could see everything in front of me, too. The officers, I mean, and the room itself. I –’ He hesitated, eyes narrowed. ‘Shit! I don’t know. I just could.’

‘Huh.’ Ammadin handed the imp back. ‘I don’t understand this at all.’

She could smell his sudden fear. He took a deep breath and with it slapped his mask over his face.

‘You were hoping I’d understand it,’ Ammadin said.

‘Hell yes. I don’t know anyone else who would.’

‘Neither do I. Unless maybe Sibyl. To hear Water Woman talk, anyway, she knows everything worth knowing, more than any spirit rider ever did.’

‘Do you think she’ll let me talk to her?’

‘Maybe. You can ask Water Woman when she gets here.’

The mask turned rigid around his eyes.

‘Well, if you can,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry, Ammi. After this last go-round with the ChaMeech –’

‘Wounds on top of wounds?’

‘Yes, ’fraid so. I’m not proud of it, you know, panicking every time I get close to them.’ His voice ached with shame. ‘Do you think I like feeling like a goddamned coward?’

‘Oh shut up!’ She laid a hand on his arm. ‘You’re not a coward.’

‘Well, who else would be so frightened of something that happened eight years ago?’

‘Another Recaller. I’m beginning to get an idea of what it means, being one of the Inborn.’

‘Well, maybe that’s it, but –’

‘Do you think I’d sleep with a coward?’

At that he smiled and laid a hand on top of hers. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘You’re a comnee girl, and I know you wouldn’t.’

He leaned forward and kissed her. Reflexively she freed her hand and ran it through his hair, ran it down the back of his head – and pulled away from him.

‘What’s wrong?’ Zayn said.

‘Hold still.’ Ammadin rose to a kneel and ran her fingers along the back of his skull where it joined the spine. ‘Whatever they did to you left a scar.’

‘It did?’ He raised his own hand, let her fingers guide his to the ridged circular depression in his skin, then smiled. ‘Oh, that! I’ve always had that.’

‘Always?’

‘As long as I can remember, anyway. Since I was a baby.’ The mask cracked, and he looked on the edge of tears. ‘One of the healers my father took me to called it a demon mark. He thought that the demons claimed their own by biting them or something like that.’

‘Gods, they were so stupid! It’s not a demon mark or a gennie bite or anything else they might have called it.’

‘You’re sure?’ He managed a smile.

‘Very sure. I don’t know what it is, but demons don’t have real teeth.’

In between bouts of poking at the stew, such as it was, Loy spent the morning writing. She finished the first notebook and started a second, filling the pages with data on the tunnel system, Zayn and his Inborn talents, the wildlife, the Chof, the Settler artifacts. When she finished, each notebook went into a waterproof,
fireproof, double-sealed pouch. Already she had information worth the cost of her expedition, and she had no intention of losing a word of it.

Loy was just putting away the second notebook when she heard, or perhaps felt, the sound of Chof thrumming. She stood up, turning to the south to listen. The thrum came again, and this time, thanks to her own Inborn talent, she could pick up actual sound. A pack of Chof were calling back and forth to each other, off to the south but fairly close by.

‘Ammi!’ Loy yelled at the top of her lungs. ‘Do you think that’s Water Woman?’

‘I hope so,’ Ammadin called back. ‘But get out that gun. Zayn, bring in the horses!’

Zayn had just finished tethering the horses on short ropes between the fire and the stream when the wind brought a waft of Chof scent. Even Loy could smell it, and the horses turned nervous. Ammadin tipped her head back and sniffed the air like a shen.

‘Three females,’ she announced, ‘and maybe four males. It has to be Water Woman.’

Not long after, the Chof appeared, tramping through the high grass on the far side of the road. Their long necks swayed and their bulbous heads bobbed as they strode along, and Loy was struck once again by how inherently graceful they were, with their slender pseudo-arms neatly folded across their chests as they marched in step with one another. Water Woman, her skin oiled to a brilliant purple, her blue and white skirt hiked up and tied around her middle, led the way. Her smaller grey servants came directly after, loaded down with bundles and sacks. Behind them marched the four males, spears tucked under their pseudo-arms. They wore kilts of blue trade cloth and carried an assortment of strangely lumpy packs lashed to their backs. When they reached the road, Water Woman boomed once and waved both her pseudo-hands.

‘Ammadin, Loy!’ she called. ‘At last at last we meet-now.’

Loy collapsed the focus rod of the rifle and slipped off the heavy power pack. She happened to glance at Zayn and nearly dropped the gun in surprise. Under the heavy pigmentation of his skin his face had turned bloodless, and he was sweating far beyond the heat of the day. He’s afraid, Loy thought. My god, I never thought
anything would scare a man like him! When he realized that she was staring at him, he flinched, then strode back among the horses.

As Water Woman hurried across the field, her two female servants kept pace, but the males fanned out. They stopped some twenty yards from the camp and arranged themselves in a semi-circle, facing the road, and lifted their spears to the ready. Loy and Ammadin exchanged a troubled glance. Water Woman confirmed the trouble when she arrived.

‘Danger,’ Water Woman said in Hirl-Onglay. ‘Trouble among us Chof, and Yarl be somewhere. Everything be-now all wrong.’ She waved her pseudo-hands in vague circles. ‘I apologize-now to you, Ammadin Witchwoman and Loy Sorcerer. Our gods be-must dead I know-now. Everything fall apart, and our Chof ways fray-now like an old cloth.’

The two servants threw back their heads and moaned.

‘What’s happened?’ Ammadin said. ‘Who’s chasing you?’

‘I know-not. Maybe they chase or not chase.’ Water Woman bent her long neck to bring her head low. ‘I have-not the power to think-now clearly. Awful awful awful.’

‘It’s that other faction, isn’t it?’ Ammadin said. ‘The one who took Zayn’s friends hostage.’

‘Yes. Faction.’ Water Woman’s voice cracked, possibly from anger, more likely from the effort she was making to speak high enough for H’mai ears to hear. ‘You know-not, Loy, Ammadin, what this mean to us Chof. We agree-always not on the little questions, no, but on the big issues Chof agree-always. We argue, we scream, we raise our heads high, but agree-next-soon. Now no agree-not never. Awful awful awful!’

Water Woman abruptly haunched. One of the servants hurried forward to untie her mistress’s skirt and arrange it over her hindquarters.

‘Come have some food.’ Loy pointed to the stew pot. ‘Please share our food.’

‘Thank you, Loy Sorcerer.’ Water Woman bobbed her head. ‘You know something of our Chof ways, I see-now. Food, yes. We all share-next some food.’

With a meal to supervise Water Woman became much calmer. Loy herded Ammadin and Zayn away from the stew pot.

‘Let her do it her way,’ Loy whispered. ‘It would be rude not to. She’s the highest-ranked female here, in her eyes anyway.’

First Water Woman had her servants unpack their collection of sacks, most of which contained foodstuffs. When they’d unloaded each other’s burdens, the females trotted out and fetched those carried by the males. The males haunched, but they kept their spears raised and ready. With one thrust of their powerful hind legs, they would be up and facing any enemy who might appear.

Water Woman joined the H’mai and haunched with a long sigh. At this signal, Loy sat herself and gestured at Ammadin and Zayn to do the same. After rummaging through everything, the two servants brought out oily rounds of a rough-milled wheatian bread and big wooden bowls for the chunks of yap-packer; they served first Water Woman, then the two H’mai women. They stopped in front of Zayn, however, and stared in confusion.