The Shattered Chain (4 page)

Rohana had to turn away before she had more than a sight of his thin, hawk-keen face, sun-bleached under thick pale hair, fierce bristling mustachios; there were times when it seemed to her that so immense a force of hatred
must
somehow communicate itself to his object, that he could not fail to be aware of her thoughts. Rohana, a telepath since girlhood, lived with that as reality; but Jalak seemed impervious, riding amid his guards with a set, impassive face, looking neither to left nor right.

Near him rode—she supposed—a couple of his favorites, slaves or concubines; a slim girl with lint-white hair, chains jeweled, her body muffled in a scant fur smock, but her long legs bare to the fierce sun; she leaned toward Jalak and murmured and cooed to him as they passed. On Jalak’s other side a thin, elegant boy, a pretty minion: too curled, too jeweled and perfumed to be anything else.

Behind Jalak and his favorites rode an assembly of women, and among them, outstanding for her flame-red hair (now, streaked faintly with gray), rode Melora. Rohana felt faint. She had been prepared for this; Melora had come to her in thought. But seeing her like this, in the flesh, changed beyond recognition
(And yet, Cassilda pity us, I would have known her anywhere, anywhere
…), Rohana felt that her pain and pity would overwhelm her and she would sink down, fainting.

Kindra’s hand closed painfully on Rohana’s arm, the nails digging into the flesh; Rohana recalled herself. This was her part in the rescue, the thing only she could do. Deliberately, she reached out and made contact with her kinswoman’s mind.

—
Melora!

She felt the shock, the start and flutter. She was suddenly afraid less Melora should see her, make some sign of recognition.

—
Betray nothing; do not look for me or try to see me, darling, but I am near you, among the Free Amazons.

—
Rohana! Rohana, is it you?

But Rohana, from her place in the crowd, saw—and felt a sudden, fierce pride in her kinswoman—that Melora rode on without making any visible sign; her eyes fixed, apparently, on nothing; slightly slumped in her saddle; the taut, thin, careworn face beneath the graying red hair showing nothing but weariness and pain. Suddenly Rohana was struck with fear and compunction. She thought,
She is so heavy, so near her time, the child weighs on her so. How can we possibly get her away in safety?
She sent the concerned question.

—
Can you ride, Melora, can you travel, so far in pregnancy?

The answer was almost listless.—
It is easy to tell you do not know the Dry Towns; I would be expected to ride even closer to my time than this.
Then the answering thoughts were fierce with hate.—
I can do what I must! To be free I would ride through hell itself!

Painstakingly, then, bit-by-bit, Rohana relayed Kindra’s message; received Melora’s answer, even while the caravan passed on, passed by the marketplace. At the rear came a few more guards, who indifferently tossed small coins, copper rings, wrapped fruits and sweetmeats into the crowd, watching with dead eyes, as the beggars scrambled for them. Kindra and Rohana, not staying to watch the painful spectacle, turned back toward their booth. Once safely inside it, Rohana relayed the information she had received.

“Jalak sleeps in a room at the north side of the building, with his favorites of the moment, and Melora; not that he has any interest, at the moment, in sharing her bed, so she told me; but at the moment she is his most prized possession, bearing his son, and he will not let her out of his sight. There are no guards within the room, but there are two guards, and two
cralmacs
armed with knives, in the antechamber. Until this last pregnancy, Jaelle—that is her daughter—slept in her mother’s room; now she has been moved to a room in the suite set apart for the other royal daughters. She complained that the noise the little ones made kept her from sleeping; Jalak is indulgent with girl-children if they are pretty ones, and allotted her a room to her own use, with a nurse there. It is at the far end of the royal children’s suite, and looks out on an inner courtyard filled with blackfruit trees.”

She anticipated Kindra’s next question, saying, “I have the plan of the building so clear in my mind that I could draw it for you from memory.”

Kindra laughed and said, “Truly, Lady, you would make a Free Amazon someday! Perhaps it is our loss that you did not choose our way, after all.” She went to the women still in the booth, saying in an undertone, “Sell what you can; but what cannot be sold by nightfall, be prepared to abandon. Do not strike the booth; if we leave it standing they will expect us to be here come morning. Be sure the horses we used as pack animals are ready to be saddled for Melora and her daughter. … ”

That afternoon seemed endless to Rohana. The worst of it lay in that she must behave exactly as usual—or at least as near to usual as was possible for her, here in the Dry Towns, far from her accustomed ways of occupying herself. She tried not to fidget visibly, knowing it would only disturb the Amazons, who seemed quite calm, selling their wares, tending their animals, idling around the camp. And yet, as the afternoon wore on, it seemed to her that she could see small signs that they were not, after all, quite so indifferent as they seemed to the coming battle. Camilla sat cross-legged at the back of the booth, sharpening her great knife to a razor edge, whistling an odd, tuneless little melody that, after a time, began to set Rohana’s teeth on edge. Kindra sat drawing patterns again and again in the sand and quickly rubbing them out again with the toe of her boot. Rohana wondered how Melora was passing the time, but resisted the temptation to follow her in thought. If Melora could take some rest before sunset, let her do so, by all means!

How will she travel? She looks not more than three days from her time
—
if so much!

Slowly, slowly, the great red sun declined toward the hills. It seemed to Rohana that no day in her lifetime had worn away so wearily, with every hour stretching into lifetimes.
Not even the day my second son was born, when I seemed to lie for hours stretched on a rack of pain tearing me asunder … even then, something could be
done.
Now I can only wait, and wait … and wait. …

Kindra said quietly, as she passed, “This day must seem longer still for your kinswoman, Lady,” and Rohana tried to smile. That, at least, was true.

“Pray to your Goddess that the Lady Melora does not go into labor this day,” Kindra said. “That would be the end of hope. We might still rescue her daughter, but if the Great House was ablaze with lights, mid-wives running here and there to attend to her … even that would be made more difficult than we could manage.”

Rohana drew a deep breath of apprehension.
And she is so near to her time. …

She tried to form, in her heart, a prayer to the Blessed Cassilda, Mother of the Seven Domains; but her prayer seemed to hang on the dead air, waiting, like everything else. …

And yet, as all things mortal must, even the day wore to an end. The Dry-Town women, veiled and chained, came to buy water at the well, and again they lingered, fascinated even through their scorn, to watch the Amazons moving about, tending their horses, cooking their meal. Rohana offered what help she could; it was easier if her hands were busy. She watched the Dry-Town women come and go in the marketplace, thinking of Melora, her hands weighted by the jeweled chains, her body weighted with Jalak’s hated child.
She had been so light and quick, as a girl, so frolicsome and laughing …

They finished their meal, and Kindra signaled to Rafaella to take her harp, strike a few chords. She said in an undertone, “Come in close, and listen; act as if you were only listening to the music.”

Rohana asked in a low voice, “Can you play ‘The Ballad of Hastur and Cassilda’?”

“I think so, Lady.”

“I will sing it. It is very long, and my voice,” she added, with a self-deprecating smile, “is not so strong that anyone passing by would think it odd if you kept very quiet to listen to me—but not so soft that Kindra cannot talk more softly still, and be heard.”

Kindra nodded, pleased at Rohana’s quick comprehension of her plan. Rafaella played a short introduction, and Rohana began, hearing her own voice wavering:

“The stars were mirrored on the shore,

Dark was the dim enchanted moor;

Silent were field and tree and stone. … ”

The other women clustered in close, as if to listen to the ancient ballad; Rohana heard her own voice falter, fought to steady it. She must somehow collect herself to remember all the seemingly endless verses, string it out while Kindra gave soft, detailed instructions to every one of the Amazons.
Get hold of yourself,
she ordered and commanded herself:
This is something you can do, while they do the real work … the dangerous work, the fighting …

Yet they are women. I learned to think fighting was for men; I could never carry a knife, strike, see blood flow, perhaps suffer wounding, die…

Sing, damn you, Rohana! Stop thinking, sing…

“He lay thrown up along the shore,

The sands were jeweled evermore,

And to the shore Cassilda came

And called him by a mortal name …”

Struggling to remember the next lines, she heard Kindra, in a low, tense voice, detailing the information she had been given, pointing to the pattern she had scratched in the sand by firelight.

“Jalak sleeps here, with his favorites and Melora; there are no guards in the room, but just outside…”

“Cassilda wept and paled and fled,

Camilla knelt and raised his head,

He left his high immortal fire,

For mortal man’s entranced desire;

White bread and wine and cherries red…

“—No, damn it, I skipped a verse,” she said, breaking off in vexation, then realized it did not matter; no one was listening anyway.

“Brought by her doves through morning bright,

Camilla came, and bowed her head, He ate and drank by mortal light;

And as his brilliance paled away

Into a dimmer earthly day

Cassilda left her shining loom:

A starflower in his hand she laid;

Then on him fell a mortal doom. … ”

“Are the windows accessible by ladders?” asked Gwennis, and Kindra snapped, “They might be, if we
had
ladders. Next question, but no more stupid ones, please! We have time to kill, but not
that
much time!”

“Into the heart of Alar fell,

A splinter from the Darkest Hell,

And madness raging on him came,

He cried again on Zandru’s name,

And at the darkened forge he made

A darkly shining magic blade;

An evil spell upon it cast. … ”

“Devra and Rima, you will stay here, and the moment we come in sight, get moving! Be sure that the guards at the gate make no outcry—” Kindra looked meaningfully at Rima.

The fat woman laid a hand on her knife, with a grim nod. Kindra said, “Camilla, you ride lighter than any of us; you will carry the child on your saddle. Lady Rohana—
no, go on singing!
You must be ready to ride close to Melora, to be alert for anything she needs; we shall all be busy enough evading pursuit and dealing with anyone who might come after us.”

Rohana felt a shudder take her, seize her body and shake it like a rabbithorn in the grip of a wolf. Her voice faltered; she tried to cover it with a cough, and doggedly went on, knowing she was garbling the words horribly:

“He could not see the—something—plan

That gave a God to mortal wife,