She sat down where anyone who wanted to come in or out would trip over her and composed herself to wait.
o0o
High sweet music, sweeter still than the tones of the reed pipes, swept across the night sky. She reached up and out to the stars, spreading herself across the heavens as if her body were no more than whisper, a mist . . .
Ythrae jerked awake. She was still sitting guard, her hands already reaching for the bow and arrow case that was not there, not outside the seer’s tent. The enaree stood over her. He stepped back, lifted the tent flap, and invited her to enter with a minute tilting of his head.
Soft carpets, layers of them, covered the packed-dirt floor and cushions lay piled for comfort. Though the night was not cold, a brazier carved with the Meklavaran Tree of Life gave off a curl of myrrh-thick smoke.
Ythrae followed the seer’s invitation to sit on the cushions, thinking that for all its privations, the life of an enaree was not without pleasures.
The enaree lowered himself slowly, as if his joints hurt. Ythrae’s mother, Kosimarra, had told stories of him, things that happened when she was a child, and still older stories told by her own mother, Shannivar.
After greeting the enaree respectfully, Ythrae broached the question of what had happened at the divination. Was there no false-oath in the gathering? Anyone could see that the ordinary signs of a guilty mind had failed to reveal him. She had felt the magic gathered by the salis wands and she knew that orienna smoke numbed the senses but sharpened the inner vision. And Tabilit’s Sacred Bones — how could any mortal man escape such power?
Or was her father’s sickness simply a thing, like death, that could not be cured?
“Your father will live or die as Tabilit wills.” The enaree’s eyes turned opaque, like riverstone. “You see much, Daughter of Kosimarra. You ask even more.”
How it happened, she could not tell, but Ythrae found herself talking about the singing of the stars, the things she felt in salis wand and linden bark.
“If you were a boy — but you are not. I cannot give you this thing you ask.”
Her father, Ishtotuch chieftain, had made clear his desire for her to prove herself in a battle, marry, and raise lots of grandchildren. These were good things, proper things. Things she should want. Most of the time, and especially when she galloped her pony through the tall plainsgrass with Tenoshinakh at her side, she did want them.
Most of the time. But sometimes, when the stars sang their wordless songs, she wanted more. She had even thought of pleading with the enaree to teach her, or of spying on him if he trained anyone else. But now, with the confusion of the night fresh in her mind, she was not sure the way of linden bark and orienna smoke, of reading the guilt of men and the entrails of animals, was what she wanted after all.
Gathering what was left of her dignity, Ythrae turned her back with deliberate rudeness and left the tent.
o0o
The next morning, Ythrae startled awake, momentarily confused. One of her nephews, her older sister’s child, tugged at her sleeve and whispered.
“What?” she said with some gentleness, for she genuinely liked the boy. He was barely six, and the light that shone in his black eyes always had the power to soften her.
“Gran’da wants you. Mum says he’s pish-ted.”
Mum would probably have a word or two about that expression.
Ythrae slept in shirt and riding breeches, although she permitted herself a pallet on the carpeted floor of her mother’s tent. She pulled on her boots and her long sleeveless vest, made of camels-hair felt and embroidered with a stylized black-winged hawk.
The door flap to her father’s tent was drawn half-open, not exactly an invitation. Within his tent, attended by his young men warriors, he lay in his low sling-frame bed, the wood black with age, its angles softened with furs. He saw her and struggled to rise, coughing. Tenoshinakh glared at her and bent over Ishtotuch, murmuring calming words.
There was only one reason Ishtotuch would summon her at this hour, in this manner.
That sexless, faithless enaree! He’d gone running to her father with a tale of how his only daughter wanted to become a eunuch!
Ythrae closed her eyes and prayed to Tabilit, and to the father-god, to the spirits of the Gelon and the demons of Meklavar, to any celestial power that would listen.
“I want grandchildren.” Ishtotuch’s words were hoarse with effort.
You already have them. You don’t need them from me. “Yes, father-chief.”
“It is time . . . you proved yourself in battle . . . so that you can marry.”
“Yes, father-chief.”
“Tenoshinakh . . . go with her. The clan of the wild boar . . . two tens of years ago . . . raided our herds — ”
“I know the story, father!” You have been waiting to use it as an excuse for another raid ever since I was born!
“Hush, all will be well,” Tenoshinakh murmured. “We will fight side by side, your warrior-daughter and I. Together we will drink the blood of the enemy at our wedding feast.”
Ythrae opened her mouth, but no words came. Tenoshinakh took her arm and guided her out of the tent, respectfully facing the chief.
The camp already bustled with the morning’s activity — heating water for barley porridge, milking the she-camels, making the day’s fresh cheese, covering the pits of night-soil and digging new ones for today. A pack of puppies and bare-bottomed toddlers raced shrieking through the camp.
Tenoshinakh said, “We’ll go together, just as we always said we would.”
o0o
Ythrae, Tenoshinakh and three of their companions, young hot-heads seized by glory-lust, headed toward to the country of the Boar clan. Gazelle bounded before them, and once they glimpsed a herd of snowbeasts moving ponderously across the rolling hills, their horns catching the sunlight. Dry winds brought the mixed aromas of late-blooming curlgrass, starflower, and shy convivial. Ahead, a stand of water-loving salis marked a spring. The ponies mouthed their bits, scenting water.
At the edge of the grove, prickles ran along Ythrae’s scalp. She hauled on the reins to draw the pony to a walk, searching with her eyes and ears. Tenoshinakh glanced at her, puzzled, and motioned the others to halt.
They approached the spring, a circle of sparkling water. The scent, sweet and moist, swept through Ythrae. A breeze gusted and she caught another odor, acrid.
“What is it?” Tenoshinakh asked her.
“Can you smell it?” she said, frowning. “Something . . . bad.”
He shrugged, and she saw that he could not sense as she did. All he knew was what his eyes and ears, his hunt-lore told him.
“Look!” One of the others pointed.
In the dappled shadows of the salis lay the half-mummified remains of two dogs and a pony.
Ythrae slipped from her pony’s back and handed the reins to Tenoshinakh. One of the men muttered a protection against evil and another glanced at Ythrae with wide eyes.
No bones appeared to be broken. The ligaments had shortened as they dried, distorting the position of the bodies. Someone had removed the pony’s gear, all except a noose of faded starflowers.
Someone else had died here, although he had been taken away, leaving no visible trace.
A child . . . a little boy . . .
In the darkness of her mind, Ythrae heard the wails of his parents and the bustle and clatter as they fled the grove.
It could so easily have been more dead, without the dog’s warning.
On impulse, she put one hand on the dog’s whitened pelvis. Tenoshinakh reached out to stop her, but too late. The moment she touched the bone with its scraps of leather-dry muscle, awareness jolted through her as blinding hard if she’d been struck by summer lightning.
“Poison?” Tenoshinakh asked. “Is the water poisoned?”
The acrid smell that was not a smell ran all through the spring. The body of the pony reeked with it. She’d heard of springs in the high alkali desert going bad
and of streams fouled by disease, but this was neither.
With senses newly open, she heard the salis branches creaking a dirge. She went to the spring and squatted at the edge of the water, hesitating to touch it. A small bird fluttered close, its wings sending ripples across the surface. One tiny foot dipped into the water before she shooed it off. The bird settled on a nearby salis branch, scolding her. She watched, breath half-held, long enough to decide that contact with the water was safe.
She shoved one sleeve of her loose shirt above her elbow and plunged her hand into the water. It felt like ordinary water, cool and fresh.
She closed her eyes, fingertips still trailing in the water. Yes, there was a wrongness, a twisting. The substance remained the same, only the spirit had changed. Like a quivering in the marrow of her bones, she felt the water crying out to be itself again.
Not poison, but magic . . .
The acrid smell, she realized, was the arcane residue of burnt orienna. Someone — some human — had done this. She felt no trace of personality, only of festering anger.
Come to me! Sing to me! she prayed to the bright unseen stars, to the goddess Tabilit. Show me what to do! The mournful song of the water ran all through her now, blending with the silent voices of the trees, the grasses, the birds overhead, the still bodies, the sorrow of the people who had owned them, the sharp grief of the parents of the child who had died, the restive thirst of the ponies.
As she closed her eyes, she felt herself drawn down into the spring, into something buoyant and misty. Her body swelled, her legs became a single powerful tail. Along her sides, gills sparkled like those of a magical fish. She opened her mouth and kept opening it, wide and wider. And as the mist-water flowed through her body, she felt its song shift, sadness bursting into joy. She had the strange sensation that she did nothing, that it was something beyond her, the stars or Tabilit or something beyond even them, working through her, gently guiding the water back into its true nature.
Guiding her to her true nature as well.
Something sang within her, a counterpart to the blended voices around her. She floated on the sound until it faded. Only then did she open her eyes.
She’d taken her hand from the water. She cupped a mouthful and sipped it. The water tasted delicious. She looked up, noted the men’s horrified expressions, and smiled. “It’s fine. The evil spell is no more.”
“You purified the water? But only an enaree can do that!”
“Ythrae,” said Tenoshinakh, fixing her with his level gaze, “is no ordinary woman.”
Not anymore. Perhaps never again.
o0o
All the last few days, they found traces of recent human activity, the passage of a hunt, a trail of threaded pony tracks, a grove of false-carob stripped of its fruit. They made camp and broke out the last of their k’th.
Ythrae stretched out on her blanket. This far from home, she kept her bow and arrow case close to hand. Her pony, still saddled, grazed on a long tether, rhythmically tearing up grass.
The stars still sang, but they no longer clawed at her heart. K’th, as much as she had drunk this night, brought mixed blessings. She didn’t know what she would do tomorrow night, when it was gone. If they fought hard enough tomorrow, she’d be too tired to care.
She made a sign against an evil omen, calling on Tabilit, goddess of fire and hearth, but also protector of new warriors. Tenoshinakh must have felt her stir, for he reached out and touched her hair. Her body relaxed and she drifted.
Not drifted, but walked. Not walked but floated, as if the ground had gone misty. Her own body seemed to be made of the same gauzy stuff, except for the amber-gold jewel pulsing in her chest. She could almost see through herself.
Ythrae found herself walking through a canyon, although she could make out the contours of other hills and other clefts. Gradually, she became aware that she was not the only one on this path. Behind her — no, in front of her —
She squinted, her shadow-eyes watering shadow-tears. The image steadied, not a nightmarish scorpion shape out of tales of Qr, but low and long, undulating with power, its coat faintly mottled.
A cloud-leopard.
It gave no outward sign, but she sensed its awareness of her. She walked behind it as naturally as if it had been a black-winged hawk, her own clan totem.
On and on, the cloud-leopard strode at the same even pace. On and on, she followed. The misty landscape rippled past, one range of hills giving way to another until she lost all sense of time or distance.
Ythrae’s foot caught on an unexpectedly solid ripple of cloud-stuff. Her feet dragged, gone suddenly heavy. She cried out as she fell to her hands and knees. Sensation, like the chill of a summer’s night, shocked through her. The cloud-leopard hesitated, one paw raised in mid-stride. Before she could scramble to her feet, the beast disappeared in the fading hills.
Ythrae herself crouched on solid earth, gritty and studded with rocks. Dark winds swirled around her and her body quivered as if newly struck. Moon-sickness, the old women called it, to wander from camp in her sleep. The dream beast must have had a purpose in leading her so far and alone.
Relieved that at least she’d had the sense to keep her bow and arrow case with her, she straightened up and oriented herself.
“Yi-yi-yi!” came a triumphant, ululating cry.
A pony neighed wildly. Battle-shouts echoed from the direction of the camp. Ythrae recognized Tenoshinakh’s voice, hoarse with sleep. Pausing only long enough to string her bow and notch an arrow, she sprinted toward them.
Loose dirt scattered beneath Ythrae’s boots. Air whipped her braided hair. Fire seared her lungs. She skidded into the darkened camp. Her eyes watered from the smoke of suddenly-doused embers. She searched for a target, an enemy.
Nothing.
Shadowy forms moved too quickly for her to make out, the rump of the last departing pony. Hoofbeats faded in the distance. A groan came from the camp. She knelt, found the man by moonlight. He was one of hers. Her fingertips came away sticky.
“Caught — in our own trap,” he whispered.
“How badly are you hurt?” She fumbled for her pack of supplies, then realized it was still strapped to her pony and her pony gone with the others.
“They left — us — for dead. All but — Teno —”
“Tenoshinakh! What have they done to him?”
“Taken.” Death rattled in his throat.
Ythrae realized she could do nothing more for him. She rocked back on her heels.
Taken could mean only one thing. She must act quickly.
o0o
Tracking the Boar clan’s raiding party was easy enough, even by moonlight. They rode brazenly, confident that they had left no one alive at their backs. The trampled tracks led Ythrae to a stream, its near bank churned with mud. She drank, whispering her thanks to the stars. They hung above her in their slow whirling dance, singing secrets she could not quite understand.
The sentries around the Boar encampment were few and distracted, their attention focused on the ritual clearly about to unfold. From the center of the camp came voices, slurred with drink, and the mingled smells of camel-meat and k’th. To Ythrae, creeping from one hiding place to the next, the scene bore an uncanny resemblance to the enaree’s judgment not so very long ago. As she watched, she realized that the young man now preparing for his initiation must be the son of the chief and that the man whose blood he intended to drink was Tenoshinakh.
Tenoshinakh sagged in his bonds, spread-eagled on a frame of green-cut salis. He lifted his head. Firelight glinted off his eyes. He snarled something, Ythrae could not catch what.
She lifted her eyes to the sky. It must be close now to the time when dawn and dusk lay equally far. Stars burned even more brightly now that the moon had set, swirling in their eternal dance.
Swirling . . .
A familiar, inarticulate longing rose within her, like a flame, like thirst. But she was no longer an untried child, dreaming of things she ha
d no names for. Purifying the spring had changed her, left her more than what she was and less than what she must become. She had touched the spirit of the waters, she had heard the bones lament, she had cried out to the very stars . . . and they had answered her.
O bright stars, sing to me now!
Swirling . . .
Ythrae blinked in surprise. Her heart stuttered as first one and then another star left their places. Downward they streaked. Their beauty, like the dancing of rainbows, like the drumbeat of mountains, drew her. She wanted to fling her arms wide, to let their music pierce her to the core.
“Look!” came from the encampment. “The stars are weeping!”
“An omen!”
Men scrambled to their feet to point upwards and exclaim. The chieftain’s son drew a long curved knife and poised it at the base of Tenoshinakh’s throat.
Acting on bold instinct, Ythrae jumped into the circle of firelight. Men cried out in surprise; a few, including some women, stumbled as they reached for their weapons. A dog yelped as someone tripped backwards over it. The chieftain shouted for the sentries.
Tabilit’s Holy Thumbs! What had she gotten herself into now? Ythrae touched her bow in its case slung over her back, then realized she had not time to draw it. Maybe a diversion . . .
Improvising wildly, praying that the Boar warriors were too drunk and too confused to realize she was but a single woman, Ythrae cavorted around the firepit.
“Ware!” she called in her deepest, most growly voice. “Ware the anger of the stars!”
Screams of terror answered her. Only the enaree moved to block her path. He lifted his staff, hung with the skulls of snakes and rodents, with cloud-leopard fangs and other jangling things.
So the eunuch thought to exorcise her, as if she were a bad dream or a swarm of locusts? For an instant, her eyes met his, glassy with k’th and orienna smoke, reflecting red.
“Ware! Ware!” Brazenly, she arched her back to accentuate the contours of her breasts. “Or this will happen to you!”
Azkhantian Tales Page 3
