by Gayle Greeno
She heard the ghatta’s command, knew she came at a dead run. “Hold your breath! Don’t breathe!” The mindvoice resonated with desperate urgency, closer now, in the loft above her, she thought. “Go limp! Then spring!”
She obeyed, then twisted with catlike strength, swinging her good leg to the floor, dragging the other after it. No time to think about Bard now, though he would feel the abrupt fluctuation in their link. Her unexpected move made the hand holding the rag slide from her mouth, clout her behind the ear, and she drew a quick breath, then lost it as her bad leg hit the ground. The pain rolled through her in waves, grabbed at her stomach, and the combination of the sickly-sweet smell and the pain made her head swim. Hands grabbed back, pulled at her, taunting with their power, their easy manipulation of her as if she were a puppet. An internal voice threaded through her brain, ordered her to be still. Anger soared—no human, no one but Bard could, should, invade her mind like that!
P‘wa dove from the loft, slammed into the back of one of the shadow figures, and the chain reaction sent Byrta shuddering and jolting against the makeshift table. She forced her fingers to close on the crate, slam it against the other dark shadow dragging at her. Brittle crackling sounds, sharp snappings, but little damage, she judged. Still, it bought time. P’wa lashed with her claws, shrieking ghatti invectives at the top of her lungs. She felt a separate shock of pain, more indignity than pain, as P’wa’s tail was trod on, through pure chance, pinning her in place on the floor.
“Keep your foot there! Put the ghatta out first,” a voice commanded. Byrta feinted with the crate slat that remained to her, and feinted again, drawing the figure left, luring him away from P’wa, jabbing with all her strength at the midsection.
“Leave’m be, you bullies! Be off with ye afore my Da comes or you’ll be sorry!” With a groan, Byrta sent the stroke wide as the white, scowling face of little Lindy popped in front of the dark figure. The child was brandishing a—Byrta shook her head, tried to clear it—a bowl? But the dark figure laughed and tossed the child out of the way, sending her into a stumbling crash onto the ground, bowl breaking. Then the figure kicked once at Byrta’s splint-cased leg and the pain closed up and over her, and she plunged down a long well of darkness and pain.
Fat white candles cast flickering light from every wall sconce in the room; oil lamps balanced on shelves, the leathern record books eased aside to make room. Still, it seemed shadowy and sad to Sarrett, though she knew that the Hall of Records had seldom seen so much light. Usually it was occupied by day by the Master Scriber, a retired Seeker whose duty it was to transcribe from the travel notes all the cases a Seeker heard during a circuit. Then they were verified, signed by the Seeker and the Seeker General as to their authenticity, and finally filed. Three or four Novies, Seekers-in-training, assisted on a rotating basis; it served as good background for the cases they would ultimately hear. Sarrett had enjoyed her tour of duty here not so many years ago. Sometimes a scholar or Conciliator came, asked permission to do research or to examine records for precedents before passing a verdict, but all in all, it radiated a sense of tranquillity and peace, smelling of ink and parchment, dust, leather bindings, and now the sharp aroma of the scented oil and the smell of burning beeswax.
A flurry of sneezes threatened to gutter the candles on the table, and Parcellus sniffled a damp apology, hands fluttering in pocket after pocket to find his handkerchief. Perla minced across the table, tapped him on the nose with a soft paw, and then languidly subsided across an open Record Book.
Shaking her head, her pale, white-gold hair gilt-traced in the candlelight, Sarrett tossed her own handkerchief to Parcellus. He flashed a smile of thank you, eyes watering, and honked loudly, not the most pleasant of sounds.
“You aren’t allergic, are you?” She prayed for a negative answer. “The mold spores, the dust, they affect some people that way.” If so, she was in for it. How long could she listen to Parcellus sneeze? One day had been more than enough already. Oh, for a common cold, even if she caught it, too. T’ss curved his way around one of the stacks, gave her bleak look of sympathy—and sneezed as well, eyes wide in surprise. “Lady bless,” she said automatically; she’d given up saying it for Parse, one could utter the words just so many times and she couldn’t afford the distraction.
“Don’t know, could be. I’m allergic to lots of things—milk, strawberries, pollen. The medicaments the eumedicos give me help ... some.” He whoffled into the handkerchief again, then got back to business, dragging Per’la off the book he’d been perusing.
“Thank the Lady you’re not allergic to ghatti, think what a life that would be.”
He deposited the ghatta on the floor, gave her a gentle shove to join T‘ss. “I am allergic, always have been, though it’s gotten better as I’ve gotten older. Poor Per’la, to have to put up with me. I’ve nearly sneezed her off the bed many a night.” He raked flyaway red hair back from his face and looked serious, pale complexion even paler and more sickly in the flickering light.
“Now, explain it to me again. You’re right, we can’t just go searching at random through two hundred years of history. I’d be old and gray and you’d run out of handkerchiefs to give me. There has to be a more efficient way.”
“There is, staring us right in the face.” She tapped at the blue leather-bound book by her right hand. “It’s all here. You can’t just transcribe cases and file them on the shelves, someone has to know where to locate them. I don’t know why it took me so long to remember, just thinking that if we dove straight in we’d somehow find something faster. Anything to help Doyce find out what happened to Oriel.
“Anyway, there are chronological files and subject files; each one with a brief annotation of the incident or case and a Circuit Number to look up for further reference to the complete report. Each file has the same annotation, but sometimes seeing it in another grouping gives you different ideas. I can start with the chrono file, read it from now backward in time, and you can do the same with each of the subject files. If anything strikes either of us as significant, we can check the full reference for more details.”
“Sounds better than what we’ve been trying so far,” Parcellus agreed. “But how long do you think this will take us? I’m worried about Doyce, too. Anything we can find to show the Seeker General might help.”
Closing the heavy leather volume in front of Parcellus, Sarrett added a new one on top. “I know. I’m nearly as frightened for the Seeker General as I am for Doyce. There’s something Swan Maclough isn’t telling, and I think what Doyce is doing, or trying to do, is only the tip of it. Why she won’t tell, I don’t know. I’ve never seen her look so old and afraid.”
With a sigh Parcellus opened the volume at the back and began to skim the recent cases first. “Land disputes, boundary disputes, wouldn’t you know it? Not likely to be here, is it?”-
Picking up an equally heavy twin to Parcellus’s book, Sarrett opened the cover. At least she could read from front to back since each chrono book covered a year’s cases. “I don’t know,” she said resignedly. “It could be anywhere, encompass anything, some obscure connection. It may be more than one thing or incident that we’re looking for. Part of it does seem to revolve around injuries or illnesses to Seekers and Bondmates, perhaps people other than Seekers. Why not put that aside and try something more along those lines first?” She pulled a candle closer to her and shoved the oil lamp in Parse’s direction. At least he couldn’t blow that out as easily. It gave her minor hope.
Muffling a sneeze in the crook of his elbow, he drew the lamp closer. “I’ll stay with the boundaries for a little while. Who knows? It all has to be done sometime, so I might as well stick with it.” He rested his chin in his hand and read in silence for a long time, scribbled a note or two, and read more.
Sarrett hooked a foot around the leg of a neighboring chair and drew it over without looking up, propped her feet on it. Pages turned, the ghatti prowled, stalking shadows, gauging the erratic flight
of a moth trapped outside the windowpane, wanting to reach the lights. The candles burned shorter; the world outside grew still as night settled more deeply.
“But what are we looking for!” Parse muttered once, slapping his hand flat on the table. The sound made her jump.
“Whatever we can find that will help, my friend, so let’s keep at it.” She laughed, felt the rising nervousness of the sound. “After all, we’ve only two hundred years to search through, as you so well reminded me!”
Bard fisted a yawn, wondered if it were possible to swallow his own hand, and M‘wa yawned in sympathy. Actually, he had to admit, the ghatt wasn’t being sympathetic so much as he was miserably bone-tired as well. Still, it didn’t matter how exhausted they were, at last they rode in the direction they longed to go—toward Byrta and P’wa. The ghatt with the long white stocking on his left foreleg purred, and the humming happiness that coursed through Bard at the anticipated reunion was not dissimilar.
Pain still emanated from Byrta, dragged at his well-being as if they shared a common chord stretching across the leagues. But the pain was not as severe as before, when he had felt the crack and splinter of her leg when her horse had thrown her, a spurt of agony that had come close to making him black out, the empathy so great that he had grabbed at his own shin, convinced that bone stabbed through flesh. Strange to reach down and touch a leg perfectly whole. But the harshest pain of all had been her feverish insistence that he ride away from her, not back toward her as his heart pulled him to do.
Caught in the twisting throes of a drug-hazed slumber, Byrta’s unease communicated itself to Bard in the distance, made him push on a little faster though he knew it was foolishness. She was fine, he reassured himself, just disoriented. M’wa yawned his agreement. He sang under his breath, in their own private language, a tune to soothe, knew it wove through the night until she quieted, drowsily echoed a few bars of the refrain, flat on the eighth notes as usual, he noted.
M’wa’s head tilted, testing the air, then he gusted a satisfied sigh and settled back on his platform, “They’ve moved her to shelter.”
Wavering in the saddle. Bard chuckled. “I know. She told me ages ago. Didn’t you notice me wince when they moved her?”
“Well, P‘wa was busy supervising.” M’wa sounded miffed. “She’s never seen so many children in her life. Swears the farmer raises more of them than he does crops.”
“She’ll feel right at home, then,” Bard responded, remembering their years of growing up, the hoards of cousins, intermingled bloodlines. And the two of them, Bard and Byrta, always in their midst, yet always alone, set off by their tawny coloration, their twinship, the communion that no one else could sense or even seem to understand when they strove to explain it. Together even when they were apart, and yet sometimes wishing to be apart when they were together. Were they whole without each other or merely halves, he’d often wondered, and which was the stronger half?
“I know, I know,” the ghatt singsonged to himself as much as to his Bondmate. “A long, long, long, long day,” and with each repetition the ghatt stretched his spine. “Try it,” he cajoled.
Balancing against the canter, Bard raised himself in his stirrups, stretching to pluck a disciple moon, until he collapsed back into the saddle. “Lady bless,” he started to say aloud, and then realized that he was alone with Mr’wa, could say what he wished, what he felt, as he had been raised to pray by his grandfather, all wrinkled knobby knees and elbows, ribs like sprung barrel staves, dark skin etched with ashy dust from tracking the cattle, loincloth twisted and knotted like a clout, the earthen amulet swinging round his neck. “Divine Harharta, hear my plea, and I will honor it with fresh blood thricefold when I reach cattle worthy of sharing their vital fluids. Keep her safe, comfort her against the night, another night that we are apart.” He felt better after that, after the stretching and the true-hearted prayer.
They rode, ever closer to their hearts’ desires, comfortable, compatible in their shared bonds, both near and far, judging their progress by the rising moons. And then, a brief sensation of ... something .. tugged deep within Bard, insinuated itself through his veins with an eerie urgency. He started in the saddle, scanning to discover the source. But it had receded, evasive as a night-haunt from his grandfather’s tales, though it left Bard chilled with fear sweat.
The tip of M’wa’s tail lashed, metronomic twitching, but the rest of him was statue-still. “Did you ... ? What was ... ?” the ghatt asked, uncertain as if awaking from a dream.
Licking his lips, Bard strove to compose an answer, one that he could believe in as well. But what was there to explain? The sense of violation was gone. “Mayhap Byrta’s having a nightmare?” he suggested. The answer didn’t satisfy, but it was the best he had. Without noticing, he urged the tired horse faster still.
The second intrusion serpentined through them both, contorting muscles, swamping their senses, snaring with a sinister, compulsive seduction, as did the voice lashing through his brain. But the voice sounded nothing like his twin’s. “Byrta!” he shouted. “She’s in peril! I’m coming, Byrta!” There was no need to shout it to the skies, but he prayed that she heard above the strange dinning within his own skull.
Lips drawn back in a feral grin, Bard drove his horse on through the night. The mindvoice would not take her from him! That he would not allow, not if he had to follow to the lands of the dead and beyond to win her back. M‘wa screamed an unearthly yowl. “P’wa! Beware the cloth! Unclean! The bad smell! The smell that Saam .... Too late!” he spat, yowled in frustration.
Bard spared a thought in M’wa’s direction. “To the death?”
“Yes, but theirs first!” And Bard gave a wild, ululating laugh, head thrown back to the moons, throat straining with joy at the blood lust that honed his instincts to the pitch of his grandfather’s grandfather in the Sunderlies. This was blood he would drink before he offered the gods their sacred portion!
“Almost there! Knives flashing! Now!”
And Bard skidded his horse on its haunches, was off and running, naked sword in one hand, short knife in the other. He was dimly aware of bobbing lights in the house nearby, of frightened shouts, running feet, confusion, but concentrated only on the pounding berserker joy of blood lust flowing through him, his focus narrowed to the desperate calling of Byrta’s heart and soul. He never saw the child crouching in his path, somersaulting over her as she wailed in terror, hands scrabbling through the straw to gather and reunite the broken fragments of her bowl....
Bard elbowed himself up, subsided at the sight of two pitchforks aimed at his chest. M’wa shifted one way, then the other, trying to insinuate himself in front of the tines circling and jabbing at his Bond. “Stay still!” The muted sobs of a child made a monotonous background sound that ground at his nerves. “Everyone’s alive! But everyone’s upset!”
It held an uncanny reminiscence of the terror he had witnessed early that morning in the barn with Doyce, as if one evil for the day had not been enough, and he must see the twin of it.
The pitchfork hovered near his throat, and a burning brand seared his face and eyes, the hot brilliance making him squint in pain. “Lars! Watch that damn thing!” a voice snapped. “This here’s a barn, full of straw! You want to set it alight?”
“I’ll put it out soon as we’re sure, Da. Yeah, this one must be the brother, came from the same pod, all right.” The torch pulled away, and Bard dared finger the lump on his head. Knocked out cold. Byrta limped into the circle of light, mirroring his gesture as she pressed her own hand against her head. She had been out cold as well, whether in sympathy with his wound or whether he had lost consciousness because she had, he wasn’t sure. A scent of evil still prevailed around her, a miasma, malefic fingering, tainting everything within its reach, although it was dissipating rapidly.
“Byrta, we must warn Doyce ... ! It fingers at your mind ... starts to tear it free.” He struggled to sit up, gasping, head pounding. And then he felt his jumbl
ed thoughts stripped away, everything he had seen and done this night erased. He struggled to cling to his thoughts, but he couldn’t remember anymore, couldn’t remember what he wanted to tell Doyce, and from the blank expressions of bis twin and the two ghatti, knew that they did not remember either. Baffled, he hit the heel of his hand against his forehead, praying to jar it loose, but there was nothing there to free ... it was gone. He cradled his head in his hands and moaned.
Only delicate fingerings of mist remained when Doyce awoke, Khar curled warm against her belly and Saam aloof at the foot of the bedroll. The sight of him there, as if he existed on the bare sufferance of others, hurt. She boosted the complaining ghatta to her feet and disentangled her legs, pulling on her boots. Early morning birds whistled and sang, and a pheasant hen drank by stream’s edge, beady eyes flashing as it tilted its throat back to let the water roll down.
Saam stared at it and made guttural chickering sounds deep in his throat, his body quivering, and looked to her for permission. Every muscle trembled to attack and pounce.
“No, Saam. Leave it be. We’ll eat soon enough.” It struck her again how much wilder, more feral Saam seemed without his ability to mindwalk. Ghatti rarely hunted except to avoid starvation. The few ghatti who lived beyond the deaths of their Bondmates sometimes returned to the wild, and she wondered if—and when—it would happen to Saam. To lose him, too, would be unbearable, the severing of one more tie to another Doyce that she still remembered all too well, the Doyce who had loved Oriel.
Gathering enough windblown wood for a small fire, Doyce set about making breakfast, amused that Jenret still slept soundly although Rawn had sprung up when she had, stretching elaborately fore and aft and going off to attend to personal needs. Humming under her breath, she rubbed her hands in front of the fire, then set two custard apples near the coals to bake, waiting for their yellowish-tan tough skin to turn a deep golden brown, the interior baked to a honey sweet, creamy consistency. With cha brewing in her battered tin kettle, she edged slices of bread topped with cheese close to the fire to warm and melt. They’d run out of bread before it became stale, and wish for more, she knew. No oven and no time to bake. Besides, she had no talent for yeast breads, could barely manage an edible journey cake. The last slice almost flipped upside down when she felt the eyes on her.
