The Novels of the Jaran

by Kate Elliott

  Was she being bold, or simply cowardly? Tears stung her eyes, and she wiped them away impatiently. A bubble lift gave access onto the control bulb, and through its open tube she heard the pilot conversing with some merchant about their cargo. Horses? The lift must be distorting his words. Ahead, an elaborate glyph marked a contained storage hold. She could either ride down in there or confront the pilot now. She had lifted up her hand before she even realized she’d made the decision. The wall seamed away from the entrance to the hold. She took one step in. Stopped, amazed, and then shook herself and slipped inside as the wall closed behind her.

  Horses!

  She had expected sundry bags of trading goods for the handful of Earth merchants and anthropologists who lived, disguised, among the native populations, or possibly even boxes within boxes of laboratory or communications equipment for the hidden rooms in the palace at Jeds. She had certainly not expected horses.

  The animals breathed and shifted around her. Their scent lay heavy and overwhelming in the confined space. A quivering hum stirred the shuttle. The horses moved restlessly, and Tess felt the floor shift, a nauseating distortion, and they were free of the Oshaki. She settled back into a shadowed corner to wait.

  The hold’s walls gave off enough light that she could extract the book of essays from the pouch and read aloud to herself, practicing the language which had gone on to give its name to the planet. It was the language spoken in Jeds, where Charles had established a native provenance for himself, and a role, as the prince of that city, through which he could keep track of his interdicted planet.

  A loud snort startled her from her book. High vibrations shook through the floor—the landing engines. She had thought the Oshaki to be above the northernmost reaches of the Jedan continent; it had been a remarkably fast trip. The shuttle jerked and shuddered, then stilled. They had landed.

  Silence, broken by the nervous shifting of the horses. With a sharp crack, the hull opened. Light poured in. Tess flung one hand up over her eyes to protect them. Didn’t the shuttles land on their off-shore island spaceport at night, to minimize the risk of being seen? Perhaps the routine had changed.

  From the outer stalls, horses were herded out. Someone counted down a list in Chapalii: thirty-two, forty-five, fifty-six. Hooves rang on the ramp. Two Chapalii discussed grass and manure in neutral, colorless voices. Finally, their boots sounded dully, fading, on the metal ramp as they left. In the distance, a horse neighed. Someone shouted in Chapalii. Saddles? The word was unfamiliar.

  Tess rose, put away the book, and walked to the ramp to look outside. She saw grass, sloping up to the ring of low hills that surrounded this tiny valley. About fifty yards away a clump of broken boulders littered the grass. Around the shuttle to her left she heard the horses, and other sounds—unloading on the primary ramp, the cargo master going over lists with the League agents who channeled the trade between the island and Jeds.

  She half slid down the ramp, hopping to the ground. Thick grass cushioned her landing. The air was sharper, fresher, colder than she remembered.

  With a burst of movement, horses emerged from behind the shuttle, herded by eleven riders dressed in native clothing. The riders looked strange; in fact, all of this looked a little strange. She did not recall the shuttle valley to be a land with so little variety: the sky such a monotone of deep blue, cloudless, the land a gentle incline to the heights, covered with an unbroken layer of grass and patches of unmelted snow. The riders paused at the crest. A few looked back before the entire group rode out of sight.

  The riders were Chapalii. And they were wearing native clothing. Charles would never countenance this. She ran out to see where they were going, to find whomever of Charles’s people was letting this violation of the interdiction take place.

  A high hum warned her. She threw herself down on the ground. A gust of heat roiled over her and faded. She rose to her knees, lifting her hand to alert them that she was here. But the shuttle had already taken off. She stared, astounded. The blast of a human ship would have killed her, this close. She watched the sleek smoothness of its upward path, hearing only the wind against her ears, like the faint echo of the lengthening of its arc. They had not had time to unload the entire cargo. There was a last wink of silver and then only the violet-blue of the sky. If she had not known what to look for, she would never have seen it.

  This was insane. She dusted herself off, flicked a stem of grass away from her mouth, and walked back to the charred site of the shuttle’s landing. Such a faint scar, to mark its having been here. The breeze cooled her cheeks as she strode along the trail of beaten-down grass left by the horses. Snow patched the shadows, but her clothes adjusted their temperature accordingly. She did not bother to pull on her gloves. After all, she would catch up with the Chapalii soon enough. The island on which Charles’s engineer had disguised his spaceport was tiny; every hill overlooked the sea. Off-world women and men in Charles’s employ lived in the island’s only village. There, Tess could find a galley sailing the rest of the way across the vast bay, to the harbor at Jeds. There was no other way off the island.

  By the sun, she guessed that her trail led east. Climbing, she felt invigorated, enjoying the sweet pungency of the air, the untainted crispness of the wind. She came to the crest of the nearest hill quickly, her cheeks warm with the effort.

  There was no ocean. There was nothing except grass and snow and broken forest straggling along the march of hills. As she stared out at the unvarying expanse, dwarfed by the huge bowl of the sky and the wide stretch of hills, she knew that she had never seen this place before. This was not an island.

  “Oh, my God.” Empty space swallowed her words. Her legs gave out, and she dropped to her knees. The air had a sweet, alien odor. A bug crawled up her thumb. She shook it off, cursing. No wonder the Chapalii had left so quickly. Trespassing—such a flagrant act of contempt for her brother’s authority that they must have some reason to risk a conviction of Imperial censure which would strip them of all rank. But there was nothing on Rhui worth that to a Chapalii.

  For a long moment she did not move. What if there was?

  Hills hid the Chapalii riders, but they had left a trail. She followed it. At the base of the hill it veered south. Wind brushed through the grass, lifting trampled stalks. Tess fished in her pouch, found the necklace and put it on, and pulled on her gloves. Then she walked.

  The trail proved inconstant, but even when it faded, she could always find it fifty meters on. At first she was optimistic.

  That evening it was the cold and her thirst that plagued her. But sheltering in a miserable patch of trees, with her cloak wrapped around her head and body, her clothing kept her just barely warm enough to doze. In the morning she melted snow in her bare hands and drank, and melted more, until her hands grew so stiff that she had to put her gloves back on. At least she would not die of thirst. But during the day the trail got worse.

  Half the time she walked by instinct, following the curve of the hills, the snow-laden shadows, as if this Chapaliian violation of her brother’s edict left an invisible line that she, the avenging representative, could stalk. They should not be here—had never been here. What if they knew that Charles was biding his time, consolidating his power until he could successfully free humanity from their grip? What if their purpose all along had been to put him in a position within their hierarchy from which they could easily ruin him? And now, stupidly, she had gotten herself lost. He could not adopt a new heir unless she was certified dead. He would not know where to look for her—somewhere near Jeds—of course, the Chapalii would cover up their unauthorized landing. And she was the only one who knew they were here.

  That night it was hunger more than the cold. Small plants grew under the grove of scrub trees she sheltered amidst, but she dared not try to eat them. In the darkness, as she stared up at the sky through a gap in the branches, none of the stars seemed familiar. She had known the night sky of Jeds well. It took her a long time to go to sleep.r />
  The third day. It was harder to keep a steady pace. A thin cut on her upper lip stung constantly. She believed she was still following a trail—she had to believe it. In the afternoon, when she stumbled across a small water hole bordered by a ring of trees, she broke the crust of ice with one boot and drank until she was bloated. Then she fell asleep, exhausted.

  Jacques was laughing at her. Her faithless lover was laughing. She had taken him once to her folk-dance club, where she went with her friends. He thought dancing silly. “Flying,” he said, “is a man’s sport.” So she said, “I’ll race you on the Everest Loop.” But she beat him, beat the president of the Sorbonne flying club. Bright, popular, magnetic, he was so much that she wasn’t. It had been a terrible mistake to beat him.

  Until she found herself in the same class, Diplomacy and Chapalii Culture, and he had honored her with his laughter again. “You speak Chapalii so well,” he said. Withdrawn, uncomfortable with most people, she was flattered when he asked her to be in his study group. Later, somehow, he discovered she was the heir to the admired Soerensen, freedom fighter, duke in the Empire, champion of Earth and the League. That summer he asked her to marry him.

  “No,” she said. She woke up, shivering.

  Night. Late. Without thinking, her eyes focused on a formation of stars. She recognized the constellation. In Jeds, the Horseman rose high in the sky, sword leading. Here he hugged the hills, and by the angle of his sword she knew she was very far north, a thousand times farther north than she could possibly walk. She knew the map of the Jedan continent. Its northern mass was taken up by vast plains, broad as Siberia. She might as well attempt to walk from Mongolia to Venice. And she did not know whether winter was ending or just coming on. Oh God, she thought, don’t let me be there: I can’t be there.

  When she slept again she dreamed that her bones lay, white, laced with the flowering vines of spring, on a golden, infinite hillside.

  The rising sun woke her. Her left hand ached, the cloth of her cloak clutched in its fist. Shaking with cold, she pried it open with her other hand, and rose and drank and looked around. There was no trail. No sign that anyone had passed here, nothing, no life at all, except her. But south was surely that way, south to Jeds. She had a duty to Charles. However she had failed him before, she could not fail him now.

  Strangely, the walking seemed easier, but she was very light-headed. Her eyesight grew unclear at intervals. When she picked up her feet, they seemed to fall from a great distance before they struck the ground. The sun rose high and cold above her.

  Rounding the steep end of a small rise, she saw before her trampled grass, scattered ashes, and one long thin strip of worn leather. She was in the middle of it before she realized it was an abandoned camp. Her knees collapsed under her and she sat. She covered her face with her hands, not knowing whether to laugh or to cry. It was recent, yes, alien and primitive, and there was a trail leading away, a trail she could follow.

  She set off immediately. Ran sometimes, thinking she had seen something, stumbling, falling once into a freezing hard layer of snow, walked again, catching her breath and rubbing her cold cheeks with her bare hands. But as midday passed into afternoon, the grass thickened and lengthened, the hills ended abruptly, and the trail disappeared.

  She stood silent on the edge of a vast plain. At first she merely stared. Nothing but grass, and grass and sky met in a thin line far in the distance, surrounding her, enclosing her in their vast monotony.

  The wind scoured patterns in the greening grass. A single patch of flowers mottled a blazing scarlet through the high stems. A body could lie a hundred years in such space and never be found. In a hundred years her brother would be dead.

  Her throat felt constricted. Tears rose, filling her eyes. But this was not the time to cry—think, think. She coughed several times, eyes shut. That, perhaps, was why she did not notice his approach.

  A stream of words, incomprehensible, delivered in a steady, commanding voice.

  She whirled. A man stood on the slope above her. He had dark hair, cut short, a trim dark beard, and the look of a man hardened by many years of difficult life, yet he had no coarseness. He waited patiently. His shirt was scarlet and full, his trousers black; his high boots were tanned leather and fit closely to his ankle and calf. A long, curving blade hung from his belt. He took one step toward her and asked another question in the same incomprehensible tongue.

  She held her ground and replied in Rhuian. “Who may you be, good man?” she asked, remembering formality somehow, perhaps only because it was all that was left her. Here, not even her brother’s name mattered, except as a courtesy. “I am Terese Soerensen. I have nothing in my possession that could harm either you or your people.”

  His unreadable expression did not change. He spoke a third time in his strange tongue, motioned to her, and turned to walk up the hill. She hesitated the barest second. Then she followed him.

  Chapter Two

  “Speech is the shadow of action.”

  —DEMOCRITUS OF ABDERA

  HE WAITED FOR HER just over the crest of the hill, one hand loosely grasping his horse’s reins. Compared to the horses she had traveled downside with, this was a stocky animal, with no beauty whatsoever; its legs were thick, its neck short and powerful. Its thin mane straggled over a dense coat, and its muzzle had a blunt shape that gave it the look of some prehistoric creature. Against its imperfections, the man standing at its head looked faultless: His red shirt was brilliant against the dull grass, his posture utterly assured, his eyes a deep, rich brown, his face—

  Too hard. There was too little kindness in his face. Wind stirred Tess’s hair and a bird called in the distance, a raucous cry. The man’s eyes as he examined her in his turn were intelligent. She recalled her conversation with the merchant: intelligent enough to suspect her off-world origins? How could he, when Jeds itself—thousands of miles away but at least still on his planet—was likely a meaningless word to him? When Rhui was interdicted, protected from the knowledge of the space-faring civilizations that surrounded it? Without realizing she was doing it, she shook her head. The movement made her dizzy. Her hunger and thirst flooded in on her, and she stumbled.

  She did not even see him move, but his hands were under her elbow, pulling her up. She jerked away from him.

  “Damn it,” she said, ashamed of her weakness. “I suppose it was too much to hope that you would speak Rhuian.” He stood very still, watching her. “God-damned native wildlife,” she added in Anglais, just to make herself feel better, but even her tone made no dent in his impassivity. He simply retreated to his horse, returning to her side a moment later with a hard, flat square of bread and a damp leather pouch filled with water.

  She ate the bread, but drank only enough water to slake her thirst, and offered the pouch back to him. After he had tied it to his saddle, he mounted and held out one hand for her to swing on behind him. The strength of his pull surprised her; she had to grab at his shoulder to keep from falling over the other side. What he said under his breath did not sound like commendation.

  Tess bit at her lip. She put one hand on each side of his waist, the cloth of his shirt fluid and smooth under her hands. Ahead, a wind moved in the grass. He glanced back at her, moved her arms so that they circled his waist entirely, and gave a terse command—even without knowing the language, she could translate the tone of voice. She took in a deep breath and held it, because her instinct was to tears. His legs moved against hers. The horse started forward.

  His entire back was in contact with her. She turned her face to one side. Her cheek pressed against the back of his neck. The ends of his dark hair tickled her eye. His back was warm, and under her hands, held open and flat on his middle, she could feel every movement of the hard muscles in his stomach, his slow, controlled breathing. She closed her hands into fists.

  They rode down onto the plain. Here, away from the hills, the sky seemed even larger, as if some giant hand had pushed the horizon down to rev
eal more blue. They seemed so small, the three of them alone in such an expanse, invisible, surely, to any eye looking down from above, yet his sense of purpose and direction gave them significance.

  She could not judge time, but soon her thighs began to ache. After an eternity she began to believe that there had indeed been some change in the sun’s position. The grass continued on around them without a break. Snow glittered in occasional patches. The man in front of her neither spoke nor moved appreciably, except for the finest shifts to adjust for the horse.

  A flash of brilliance sparked on a far rise, vanished, only to appear again closer: another rider in scarlet and black. This one had a second horse on a lead line, trailing behind him. Quickly, more quickly than Tess expected, the two riders met, slowed, and halted their horses.

  The newcomer was a young man with bright blond hair and a cheerful smile. The smile emerged as he met them, fading into astonishment as he looked at Tess. He spoke in a flood of words, to which the dark man replied curtly. Unabashed, the younger man swung down from his horse and came over to stand below Tess. He blushed a little—easy to see on his fair skin—and lifted his arms up to her.

  She flushed with embarrassed anger—he was helping her down as if she were a child. But her eyes met his, and there was something in his gaze, something utterly good-natured, that made her smile slightly, at which he blushed a deeper shade of pink and lowered his gaze. At least he was as embarrassed about this as she was. She let herself be helped down. He let go of her instantly, and for a moment she stood next to him under the censorious gaze of the dark man and felt allied with the young blond against a force impatient with both of them. Without a word, the dark man reined his horse around and left them standing there together while he rode back the way he and Tess had come.

  She gaped, she was so surprised at this desertion. Beside her, the young man laughed.

  “Not worry,” he said in perfectly horrible Rhuian. “Ilya is always angry.”