Mistress of Animals

by Myers, Karen

  The three Kurighdunaq young men led them all back outside, and they moved in a group as if still bound to each other, careful to keep the unresponsive Haraq with them. Penrys wanted to try again with him, after everyone’s emotions were more settled, but for now her hands were shaking and she clasped them together to hide it.

  Khizuwi was the first of them to speak, after everyone else was gone. “A story to tell the youngsters around the fire, eh?” He shook his head.

  Jiqlaraz came straight to the point, his mouth set grimly. “Yes, and what are we going to do about this?”

  CHAPTER 37

  Jiqlaraz began with a question that had been bothering Penrys. “How can this qahulajti impose a vision on these multitudes, day and night? I’m willing to grant the act itself, since our own chained bikrajti can clearly do it.” He waved a hand at Penrys. “But doesn’t she ever sleep?”

  “Maybe she only does it while she’s awake,” Penrys said. “Maybe the rest of the time it’s what they called ‘the darkness.’ Their grassland illusions lasted without her, so why not the darkness, too? They may have fought against that blindness to escape, but perhaps everyone just got used to sleeping when she did.

  “I noticed something else,” Khizuwi said. “Barshhubr’s complained about his head hurting before he fell. The qahulajti’s interest in Wishkazti… Several of Wishkazti’s relatives have been bikrajab. Some of Barshhubr’s, too.”

  Najud lifted his hands in a shrug.

  Khizuwi explained. “Umzakhilin carries the bikraj blood, you said. Well, whom did you fail to wake, bikrajti?” Haraq? Jirkat told me he is tamalba nazum, sister-son, to Umzakhilin’s mother. It’s in his bloodline. Of the others, who was the most difficult to break free?”

  “Bimal,” Penrys said. “by far, but Lurum had trouble, too. She’s Haraq’s sister.”

  “And are there bikrajab in Bimal’s family?” When no one answered he beckoned to the silent Munraz and told him, “Go and find out,” and Munraz went.

  “Ariqnas survived three months of her close attention. He seems to have been careful, for a young man, but what I think also saved him is that there’s not a drop of bikraj in his family.”

  “What are you saying, jarghal?” Najud asked. “That she finds those with bikrajab blood more interesting? That they’re more vulnerable to her?”

  Penrys answered him. “That she can take their power directly from them, weaken them, use it to force her control more deeply.”

  Jiqlaraz said, “You speak as if you are familiar with these things, lijti.”

  His tone raised her hackles, but she tried to reply evenly. “I am,” she said, omitting his title. “I’ve seen wizards do it before.”

  “Perhaps even you,” he said.

  That brought Najud to his feet beside her. Before he could retort angrily, Munraz returned with Bimal. Oblivious to his interruption, he told Khizuwi, “She wanted to come herself, to help.”

  Najud sat down again, muttering, while Khizuwi asked her, “Bimal, what do you know about bikrajab in your family?”

  She looked at the assembly of wizards in puzzlement. “Everyone knows Umzakhilin’s story, the choice he made.”

  Khizuwi nodded, and she continued. “Haraq’s his cousin, and his sister Lurum, but I’m his namalba, too, back in our grandmothers’ lines somewhere. I’ve never heard the voices.”

  “Did you know,” Khizuwi said, contemplatively, “that it’s often thought among the bikrajab that a bit of the bloodline makes for a good dirum?”

  Penrys shifted in surprise. The herd-mistresses have a little wizard in them? Makes them better with the animals, maybe.

  “No, bikraj, I’d never heard that,” Bimal said, thoughtfully.

  “Nor I,” Najud said. “One of my own sisters is a dirum-malb, an apprentice.”

  Jiqlaraz looked most surprised of all. Penrys couldn’t work out why, and then a thought occurred to her. Maybe he’s realized there’s another source of bikrajab blood suitable for marriage alliances.

  “Thank you, Bimal,” Khizuwi said, and waited until she left. “So, we have one theory—the stronger the trace of bikraj blood, the better this qahulajti can control them.”

  Penrys was distracted by the thought. She looked more carefully into Bimal’s mind as she walked through the snow, and thought she saw something like a wizard’s core of power, but small and faint. It was stronger in Haraq and Lurum.

  She returned her attention to discover Khizuwi regarding her with interest. “Yes, bikrajti?” he said.

  “You’re right,” she told him. “They do have a small version of what a bikraj has. I’ve never seen that before.”

  He smiled. “You’ve never known what to look for, before.”

  Munraz said, as if reluctant to state the obvious, “But doesn’t that mean all of us are just the sort of slaves this qahulajti finds easiest to manage?”

  “It sure does,” Penrys answered him. “Think what a dirum she would have made.”

  Following a knock on the doorframe, Dhalmudhr stuck his head in to see if he was interrupting, and then marched in to stand before Najud.

  Penrys thought he looked much better than before and wondered why—she decided it was the human animation in his face.

  “There are matters we should discuss,” he said, politely. “The storm is blowing over. The snow has stopped and I don’t expect it to return.”

  He spread his hand eloquently. “We could leave tomorrow, zarawinnaj, and begin heading west. After all, we’ve already broken that trail. Seven miles, Ilzay said—that’s a good start.

  “And that means we have to prepare clothing, and food. Jirkat tells us you planned for this, that there are hides and canvas and blankets. We could cut and sew gloves, make breeches—many things. We still have daylight for that, if we begin now.”

  Without waiting for a reply, he turned to Penrys. “Would you be willing, bikrajti, to try again with Haraq? His sister said it was hard for her, but she’s sure you can do it, break through to him.”

  “I’d be glad to,” Penrys said. “It’s what I planned on.”

  Dhalmudhr nodded to her, and looked around at the others. “I know you’ve been talking about what you should do next, as bikrajab. We, all of us… we wanted to tell you that we’re going back, as soon as we can. On foot all the way, if you won’t come and can’t lend us horses.”

  Najud listened to all of this calmly. “What is it that’s spurred all of this haste, when you can barely walk, any of you, and need more time to recover?”

  Dhalmudhr swallowed, but if anything his expression became more determined. “We’ve spent the last hour or so with Ilzay, zarawinnaj, going through the remembrances of the dead. We matched some of your unknowns to names, and mourned all the ones we knew. It’s hard to explain to someone like you, who wasn’t with us these long months…”

  Running a hand through his hair, he said, “We’re past grief, in a way—grief is for later, for after we’ve gotten all of the living back from her. We can’t leave anyone behind, trapped in that nightmare, not and live with ourselves afterward. We all agree. If you won’t come…”

  Najud interrupted him. “We haven’t said we wouldn’t come. And however you go, it will be with horses. But I will not sanction your starting tomorrow.”

  When Dhalmudhr opened his mouth to protest, Najud held up his hand. “You’ll slow us all down. If you can’t help yourselves, how can you help anyone else? And we need time to prepare. The earliest… the earliest, mind, would be the next morning, so that we have all day tomorrow to get ready.”

  Khizuwi spoke up. “We’re only perhaps fifty miles due south of clan Umbazul’s zudiqazd. I’ve traced three sides of a square, coming here. A journey of two or three days would see you all there, or at least the weakest of you.”

  “My clan’s zudiqazd isn’t much further,” Jiqlaraz offered. “A straight walk to the east, away from this qahulajti.”

  Dhalmudhr’s head was shaking as they spoke. “It doesn�
��t matter about us, that’s not what we want. I don’t know how many are left, but it must still be dozens.” He clenched his fist. “My blood boils just sitting here, doing nothing, don’t you understand? Bimal has already sworn to free enough of the horses the qahulajti took to mount everyone.”

  Regretfully, Penrys pointed out some uncomfortable facts. “As soon as you’re within range, this girl is just going to capture you again, and then what? Now I agree that maybe you can find some other people lingering at the back of her herds and out of her reach, if she hasn’t noticed. But maybe not, too.”

  She gestured at the other wizards. “What we were just talking about is that we might not be strong enough, even as a group, to stop her. And if we can’t, you’ve got no shield at all.”

  Jiqlaraz added, “And this bikrajti should know, for she is similar in nature.”

  Penrys inhaled in shock at this rough exposure, and Najud glared at Jiqlaraz.

  When Dhalmudhr turned to her in puzzlement, she reluctantly unwrapped the scarf around her throat and exposed the chain. “I’ve never met her, but she’s not the only one of her kind.”

  Dhalmudhr backed up several steps and his mouth worked for a moment. Then he paced forward again resolutely and spoke to her. “I remember hearing you talking, yesterday, for hours, and then today, in my mind, showing me what was real and what wasn’t. You are not the same—I do believe you.”

  A strange emotion convulsed her. What is this? Relief? Gratitude at his acceptance? Whatever it was, her mouth quirked.

  Najud broke the tension. “We brought four more large kazrab, without their furnishings, for special shelters. We’ll set one up now, as a place for all of you to work and sleep, unless the women want to be separate.”

  Dhalmudhr nodded his thanks. “I’ll ask them, zarawinnaj, but I think they will want to stay together. We’re a family, now, of sorts.”

  He examined Najud’s face, and conceded authority, at least provisionally. “We’ll abide by the one day delay, but we’ll have a decision by tomorrow, and with you or without you, we’re going back after that.”

  CHAPTER 38

  Penrys buried her chain again under her scarf, and then wrapped up in her sheepskin coat and followed Dhalmudhr out in search of Haraq and his sister. Najud came with her to get some help erecting one of the empty kazrab for the night.

  She found Lurum in her own kazr, with the rest of the women, and Haraq was with her. Their quiet conversation stopped when she opened her door, and Lurum looked up hopefully.

  At Penrys’s gesture, Lurum stood up and gently pulled her brother up, too. They wrapped themselves up and followed Penrys back outside.

  “We’re going to go out and see the world,” Penrys told her, “and try to convince your brother to give up these illusions.” Lurum’s grateful smile panicked her—what if it didn’t work? But confidence was half the game, and Penrys didn’t let her face change.

  Movement at the door of Jiqlaraz’s kazr caught her eye. Munraz stood there looking for someone and, when their eyes met, he set off determinedly in her direction.

  He eyed Lurum and Haraq, but spoke directly to Penrys. “I apologize, bikrajti, on my uncle’s behalf.” He bowed to her. “My grandfather would have beaten me for manners like that.”

  “He’s your uncle and your master,” she told him, hiding her bemusement. “You must be loyal to him.”

  “I am! But not to the point of blindness.”

  “Or bad manners.” This time she smiled. “Never mind, it had to happen sometime. I just wanted to wait until everyone was freed, first. It would interfere with their trust.”

  “Dhalmudhr wasn’t afraid,” Munraz said.

  “No, he wasn’t.”

  Penrys noticed the bewildered look on Lurum’s face at this conversation, and told her, “I’ll explain it all after we take care of your brother.”

  Her face brightened, but Munraz’s fell. “Want to come along and watch, nal-jarghal?”

  He glanced at the work already started, a few yards away, to erect the new kazr in the trampled space enclosed within the other three.

  “They have plenty of people to help,” she said. Was Najud ever this hesitant? Not likely.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s all go for a walk.”

  For a while they stood inside the yurt being raised, hoping the familiar activity would help, but it made no difference to Haraq, and Penrys led the other three back outside and they walked through the camp. Every time she showed Haraq the snowy scene in front of him, his vision of grasslands flickered back.

  Penrys stopped them by Jirkat’s kazr, out of the way of the activity.

  “Munraz, close your eyes and think of the steppe. What do you see? Describe it.”

  Obediently, he stood still and shut his eyes. “There’s a rising slope near the zudiqazd, at the edge of our northern winter grazing where you can see a long ways to the south. Inghiqa has started, the snow is mostly gone, and we’ll be leaving soon for the taridiqa. The new grass is green against the snow.”

  “When you turn your head,” Penrys asked, “do you see the same thing, or does your point of view shift?”

  He tried it, then opened his eyes and looked at her, puzzled. “It moves, of course.”

  “And you?” Penrys looked at Lurum.

  “Mine is on the trail home from the autumn camp to the zudiqazd. No matter where the camp was, there’s a place, a gap between the hills where we always pass through, on the way home. It’s as though we leave the wild khijr-Zannib and return to our settled zudiqazd.”

  “I know the place,” Penrys told her, and thought.

  “Haraq’s is different, too. Everyone has a different idea of what grasslands means to them. If we each dreamed of the steppe, all the places would be different, yes?”

  Munraz and Lurum nodded.

  “So the qahulajti can’t be sending them a vision, or they’d all be the same. She can’t tell them ‘see this,’ like I’ve been doing. Instead she must be sending them something more like a command in a dream, more like ‘dream of this.’ And so their minds provide whatever version of that dream makes sense to the dreamer. When their heads turn, the dream landscape turns with them.”

  She shuddered. “Was it like that, Lurum?”

  “More nightmare than dream, bikrajti, but it sounds right,” Lurum said.

  “So the visions I imposed on you were stronger than your dream, finally, but they weren’t the same thing.”

  “I… I couldn’t say, bikrajti. All I know is that when I started to pay attention to what you were showing me, the… dream released me.”

  “Hmm.” Penrys thought about the implications of that theory. Was it something as simple as “See the dark—dream of the dark,” really? All the herds the girl stole would tend to stay put at night, and the people could be made to stay, too. Only people who had given up using their eyes could break free of that one. They didn’t blindfold themselves not to see what was around them—they did it to ignore their eyes altogether. No trigger, no dream. Would that work? It worked for these survivors—they walked away at night.

  Add to that “See the day—dream of grassland in front of you, terror behind you.” You don’t talk to people, when you’re dreaming, though you might sleepwalk. But they managed to plan, a little. What would that do to someone, months of this? It’s a wonder they’re sane.

  Suddenly she smiled broadly. But they are sane, once they stop dreaming. The rest of them would probably recover, too, if they could be rescued.

  “What?” Munraz asked, when he saw her expression.

  “I think I know what to do,” Penrys told him.

  “Let’s go,” she said, pointing west to the woods just behind her own kazr. “We’re going to wake Haraq up and give him something else to pay attention to.”

  They stopped under a large mountain cedar. The camp was visible through the trees, but the snow was only a foot or so deep at the base of the tree, sheltered by its sloping snow-laden limbs tha
t shed the powder away from the trunk.

  Penrys caught her breath from breaking through the deeper snow to get to this spot and then pressed her face close to the bark and inhaled the familiar scent. “I learned something today, Lurum. The only Zan I knew was Najud, and he a bikraj. I haven’t met any others until recently. I thought you were either a bikraj, or you weren’t, but today I discovered that people who carry the blood may show it in small ways, other ways. Did you know that?”

  Lurum shook her head.

  Penrys said, “I learned that sometimes a dirum comes from bikraj bloodlines, for example. And for the first time, I looked for that.” She tapped her forehead to indicate her meaning.

  She turned to Munraz. “There’s a core of power inside every bikraj—have you seen that?”

  “No, lijti,” he said.

  “Let me show you, then. Come, watch.” She felt him tentatively join her. *See, here is Najud.*

  She showed him the core of Najud’s power, trying to keep it impersonal.

  *And here is how you look to me.* This time she gave him a glimpse of himself.

  *See how you are roughly the same? That’s what I meant when I told them you were all four about the same strength.*

  Munraz ventured a question. *And you, jarghalti?*

  *I can’t show you, because I can’t see that. You can try to look for yourself.*

  She felt him panic and flee out of her mind.

  “What, did you try it?” she asked him, aloud.

  “It was like staring at the sun—I couldn’t do it.”

  “Nonsense. Najud doesn’t have any difficulty. Ask him to show you.”

  But it made her wonder. Does he have a problem, and hasn’t told me?

  “Come on back, there’s more to the lesson,” she told Munraz.

  *Now, look at Lurum, the same way you looked at Najud.*

  She could feel his surprise. *She has power, too—a little. Haraq, too.*

  *And your friend, Winnajhubr?* She guided his search.