The Sheri S. Tepper eBook Collection

by Sheri S. Tepper

  ‘Ah,’ said Makr Avehl. ‘So he has a reason. Now, what is her reason?’

  Ellat shushed him and gave Marianne something which sent her into sleep, all at once, like falling into velvet darkness. She was still fuzzy at the edges of her mind when they put her into Aghrehond’s care at dawn in the stable yard, among the horses clattering out of the place for exercise and the grooms chattering as they headed for the wooded roads.

  ‘Come, pretty lady,’ said Aghrehond. ‘We must be away from here.’

  ‘Won’t they think I’m terribly rude,’ she asked, ‘leaving the party unannounced this way?’

  He made a conspiratorial face with much scrunching of eyebrows and mouth. ‘Ellat will say you have gone for an early ride. This is strictly true. She will not say “horseback,” though they may think so. Others may also desire to ride. So, that is fine, and Makr Avehl will go with them. It is a large place, is it not? There are many miles of pleasant roads around it. Who is to wonder if you are not seen by anyone until noon? By then, you will be elsewhere. Tsk. Stop frowning. You make your face all frilled, like a cabbage leaf.’

  She stopped frilling her face and let the day happen. They stopped for breakfast in a small, seaside town. They shopped for antiques along the winding streets. They drove through a national monument. They returned to the small town a little after noon to find Makr Avehl waiting for them with Marianne’s bags in his car.

  ‘There is a buffet luncheon going on back at the house,’ he said to Aghrehond. ‘Some are eating now, others will have luncheon when they return from riding. Some friends of Ellat’s will come in to swell the numbers. We will not be missed for some time, which is fortunate.’ His face was set, grim, and he made a covert sign to Aghrehond which Marianne saw from the corner of one eye. ‘When someone asks – and not until then – you may say to Ellat in the hearing of the rest that I have driven Marianne back early in order to go on to Washington for an early meeting at the State Department.’

  ‘What happened?’ she demanded. ‘Something happened. What was it?’

  He barked a short expletive, chopped off, as a curse half spoken. ‘A pack of feral dogs,’ he said, ‘came out of nowhere, according to the grooms. Madame Andami was bitten on the leg. Superb rider, of course, and she stayed up. We’ve sent her to a physician up in Charlottesville. One of the horses is cut up a bit. The vet is there now. Someone riding alone – someone not as fine a rider as Madame Andami, someone out of practice, for example – might have been seriously injured.’ They stood for a moment considering this. ‘The head groom works for the people who own the place, of course, as do all the servants except for Ellat’s maids and my secretary. He says he has never known it to happen before. It’s horse country. A pack of feral dogs that would attack horses? It wouldn’t be tolerated for a day! They would have been hunted down.’

  Marianne did not ask the questions which tumbled into her mind. Did someone think the dogs were set upon the riders? Was it an accident? Makr Avehl’s face had the look of one who did not wish to talk, to guess, to theorize, the look of a man rigidly but barely under control. He waved Aghrehond back to the big car as he ushered her into the smaller one. Over her shoulder, she saw the large car turn back toward Wanderly and the house. She remained quiet, let time and miles pass, watched his face until it began to relax slightly, then asked, ‘You think they were after me?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Marianne. I do think so. Yes.’

  ‘You think that’s possible? To stir up dogs that way? Make them attack horses?’

  He made an odd, aborted stroking motion toward his chin. ‘I could do it. It wouldn’t even be difficult. I know that she can do it, because I can, and whatever I may think about Tabiti, she’s strong. Lord, she’s strong. And I am weakened by being angry at myself. No – don’t shush me. I am angry at myself. Before I invited you here, I never thought to ask about your true relationship with your brother. I knew you didn’t like him, I knew things were not good between you, but I never tried to get at the bottom of it. I should have considered it more fully. Instead I lulled you. I lulled myself.

  ‘Marianne, he means you ill. Not merely in the slightly jealous way one sibling may cordially detest another – which, Lord help me, was what I had considered. No, he means you real destruction as surely as this road leads to your home. He means you ill and he has made some kind of alliance with Madame to that end – if, indeed, she is not a primary mover in this matter. And I, who foolishly exposed you to this, must find a way to protect you.’

  Marianne laughed bitterly, and when he turned an astonished face on her, she laughed again. ‘Makr Avehl, you don’t know how relieved I was last night to hear you say that. For years, I’ve thought that Harvey hated me, or resented me. For years I’ve fought against his patronizing me, destroying me. Whenever I got my head up, he’d do his best to knock it down. The only things I could be sure of succeeding at were things he didn’t find out about. Always with that hating face, that superior smile. But nothing I could prove. Nothing anyone else could see. So I felt guilty, wicked. I felt I didn’t have the right to hate him. After all, Papa left him in charge, left him to take care of me. Now you say he’s trying to harm me – really. For money. For Papa Zahmani’s money. I suppose it’s true. Harvey likes money. He never has enough, though what he inherited should have been enough for anyone. But I get more, of course, when I’m thirty, because a lot of it was my mother’s. My mother’s, not Harvey’s mother’s. But Papa was old country, through and through. Couldn’t see leaving it to me until I was a matron. Girls had no real status with Papa. He loved me, but that was different.’

  ‘That may be true, but I think it more likely he saw you as a little girl and he saw Harvey as a grown man. Perhaps he only wanted to protect you. How old was Harvey?’

  ‘Oh, twenty-five or -six. That may have been it. I was only thirteen. I wish I could feel that was it.’

  ‘Your Papa had no reason to mistrust his son?’

  ‘No. Harvey was never … he was never strange until Mama died. When I was a little girl, I thought he was Prince Charming. Really. He was so handsome, so gallant. He brought little presents. He … he courted us, Mama and me. Then, when Mama died, he changed, all at once. He became something … something horrible.’

  ‘I think it possible that he did not understand the reality of the property division between your parents. I don’t think he realized quite what part of the family fortunes were yours, Marianne. Perhaps he began to be a bit strange when he visited Lubovosk. I’m sure that he was given weapons there he should not have had, and now I must defend you against them. You must be very brave, and very strong. There are certain things black shamans can do – and certain things people trained by them can do. You’ve seen a sample already…

  ‘There are worse things: transport into the false worlds, into the dream borders, binding forever in places which exist within the mind and have virtually no exits to the outside world…’

  ‘But to do any of these things, the shaman believes that his ritual demands consent. Listen to me, Marianne.’

  ‘I’m listening. You said the ritual demands consent.’

  ‘Remember it. The shamans believe the ritual is necessary to the effect, and they believe that consent is necessary to the ritual. The shaman says to his victim, “Will you have some tea?” And the victim says, “Yes, thank you.” That is consent. In my own library, your brother said to you, “Come, let me introduce you to…” and you nodded yes. That was consent. So she then struck at you.’

  ‘Did the people who went riding consent? If so, to what?’

  ‘More likely, Madame went down to the stables before going to bed last night, taking a few lumps of sugar with her. “Here, old boy, have a lump of sugar,” and the horse nods his head, taking the sugar. He has consented then, and they can use him. So also with dogs, with birds, with anything they can get to take food from their hands. The true victim was to be the horse, whatever horse you might be riding or anyone else might be r
iding. They are not over scrupulous.’

  ‘What are you trying to tell me?’

  ‘I am saying, for a time, do not consent to anything your brother proposes. If he says on the phone “isn’t it a nice day,” say “no, it is not.” If he says “wouldn’t you like to go to Mexico for your vacation,” say “no, I’d rather go somewhere else.” Be disagreeable. Better yet, do not talk to him at all.’

  ‘Forever? That may be difficult.’

  ‘Only for a few days, until I can get a few of the Kavi together to make a protection for you. Until we can teach you to protect yourself. I don’t even want to take you home, to leave you there alone, except that anything else would make them more determined, more dangerous. As it is, they may not know we suspect them.’

  ‘The thing Ellat taught me won’t work?’

  ‘You’re not schooled enough in its use. You haven’t the discipline. I hate to leave you, even for tonight.’

  ‘They can’t be in that much of a hurry,’ she said nervously, disturbed by his intensity. ‘I don’t inherit for another four years, for heaven’s sake. Harvey isn’t going to do anything precipitous.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right. Once one begins to feel this menace, this gathering force, it is like hearing a thunderstorm in one’s head. Space and time are lost in it. One is at the center of fury.’ He reached to take her hand in his, utterly unprepared for the reaction his words would bring. ‘Marianne, I could stay with you tonight.’

  Her hand whipped away from him, without volition. Her mouth bent into an oval of rejection, horror. ‘I’m not like that,’ she said, the words coming from deep within, words she did not usually say aloud but were now aloud, between them, harsh and ugly. ‘Not like that.’ She shuddered once, again, muttered words under her breath, like a litany, got control of herself, tried to make light of it, did not succeed. His face was white, blank.

  ‘I’ve offended you,’ he said at last. ‘I meant nothing dishonorable. Please. It was only to offer protection. You’re probably right. There is not that much hurry. They aren’t mind readers, after all. They cannot know how thoroughly I am alerted to the danger they pose. We will comfort ourselves with that thought. If your brother calls, you will be light, and cheerful, and contrary. Please remember to be contrary, Marianne.’

  She agreed to do so, not hearing him, too caught up in the internal maelstrom he had unleashed, wanting only to be out of the car and behind a door, her own door, shut against the world. ‘Not like that,’ the hissing demon voices inside kept saying. ‘Harvey was wrong. I’m not like that.’

  He left her at the door, seeing on her face that he should not offer to come in. She went in to disconnect the phone, to sit for an hour in her window while the sun went down and the stars began to peek over the roofs and chimneys. The buds of the oak outside her window had begun to unfurl into tiny, curled hands of innocent pink, and her mind squirmed in guilt and confusion at the fact that now, even now, she lusted after him, wanted him, and all the years of not wanting did not seem to have immunized her at all.

  At last she set to work building mental towers of adamant and walls of iron. She put herself to sleep with the litany Ellat had taught her. She awakened to her clock radio, news of combat and death, so ordinary and distant as to be undisturbing. She was almost ready for class when the doorbell rang, and she saw the delivery man’s hat through the peephole, knew that it must be some little gift from Makr Avehl, felt again that combined guilt, lust and self-loathing. She opened the door to receive the package, accept the proffered pencil.

  ‘You have to sign for it. Where the X is on the line.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Marianne, ‘I will.’ Only to see the glitter of eyes as the uniformed person’s head came up, dark, hawk-faced, mouth curved in a cry of victory. She had only time to think that she had given consent and to say, ‘Madame Delubovoska,’ before all went dark around her.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It was dark by the time Makr Avehl arrived in Washington after miles of driving through country he did not see, traffic he did not consider, in a state of mind best described, he told himself, as unnerved and astonished. While his mouth had been busy saying words which meant, in whatever language he was thinking, ‘Gods in heaven, what ails the wench!’ his center of being was saying in another tone, perhaps another language entirely, ‘Oh, my dear, my very dear.’ This colloquy was over in the moment which it occupied, leaving his political self shaken before the sweet longing of that inner voice: ‘Oh, my very dear.’ And that was when he knew, absolutely and without any remaining doubt. Not earlier, when he had seen her at dinner, a sparkling baton of willow flesh, bending but not breaking before her brother’s assault; not on horseback, face eager as a child’s, with tendrils of hair wet on her forehead from the sun; not as he had seen her in the car, first laughing then crying to know that all her world was arrayed against her but that she was not insane.

  So. So what was he to do now? She had rejected him and he had left her, left her there alone, and he could not go back to force himself upon her, for in such forcing might end all that he now in one instant hoped and longed for, without warning or premonition. Well, no matter the reason, if any. If she had rejected him, she had not rejected Ellat, and what Ellat could not find out was not worth the finding. So he drove like a maniac to reach his hotel and a phone so that Ellat might be enlisted in his sudden cause. He was convinced of danger, smelled it, felt it breathing hotly on his neck, a scent of blood and damnation. She must accept help from Ellat.

  Oncoming headlights speared toward his eyes, and he came to himself as a horn shrieked beside him, dopplering by and away into darkness with a howl of fury. This sobered him. He would call Ellat as soon as he arrived in Washington. Until then, he would try to behave more sensibly and think of other things.

  In which he was only partially successful. Ellat was eager enough to help Marianne. ‘Of course I’ll stay with her. We got along quite nicely. If you really feel…’ But her desire to help did not allay Makr Avehl’s concern.

  ‘I really feel,’ he said grimly, ‘that there’s something more than merely wicked going on here.’

  ‘I can’t figure what they’re playing at,’ fussed Ellat. ‘Madame using her cocktail party magic tricks here, in this house, against one of your people.’

  ‘I think Madame sees Marianne as one of her people, or one of Harvey’s people, which amounts to the same thing. Can you be here by lunch time tomorrow?’

  Lunch time, she said, yes. Yes, the guests had all departed. Yes, the horse which had been bitten seemed to be healing and a dog they had captured was being tested for rabies. Yes, he could turn in the little car to the rental agency, they would use the big one. Yes, the servants were packing so that they might leave. ‘I’m tired of all this, Makr Avehl. I want to go home.’

  ‘Just as soon as we do something about Marianne, Ellat. I promise.’

  Something in his voice said more than he had intended, for there was a waiting silence at the other end of the line, a silence which invited him to say more than he was ready to say. When he did not fill it, she said, ‘Take her with us. That’s the sensible thing to do.’

  ‘It’s called kidnaping, Ellat. The Americans don’t find it socially acceptable. They have laws against it.’

  Ellat only snorted. ‘Tomorrow. At lunch time.’

  On which note he found himself sitting on the side of his bed, holding the phone in one hand as it buzzed a long, agitated complaint. Should he call Marianne? What could he say? No. Better leave it. Drop in with Ellat tomorrow, about five in the afternoon, when Marianne got home from work. Gritting his teeth, he turned from the phone to his briefcase to spend two dull hours going over the material he would use in his meeting the following morning.

  And when that meeting was over, he felt it had all been an exercise in futility, a kind of diplomatic danse macabre in which he and Madame had shaken skeletons at one another like children at a Halloween party. And yet the woman had seemed strangely
satisfied, as though she had won whatever game she was playing.

  ‘The undersecretary of state assures me that we may depend upon the status quo,’ he said to Ellat over the lunch table.

  ‘Which means precisely what?’ asked Ellat, not interrupting her concentration on a plethora of oysters.

  ‘Which means exactly nothing,’ he admitted. ‘The US has spoken for us in the UN and that’s it. They don’t take the matter seriously, and I’m beginning to think they’re right. This has all been a charade. Madame is up to something else, and this has all been misdirection, probably for my benefit.’

  ‘Marianne said that.’

  ‘She said what?’

  ‘Marianne said that if the Lubovoskans really intended to take us over, they’d invade.’

  ‘Well, of course they have tried that,’ he said.

  ‘She would have no way of knowing that, Makr Avehl. I repeat what I said earlier. If you want to keep the child safe and away from that horrible brother of hers, take her with us.’

  He did not reply. The food did not tempt him, and he was waiting impatiently for Ellat’s affair with the oysters to run its course. He dared not agree with her, for she would take it as a promise, but emotionally he had begun to believe only the course she had suggested would satisfy him – to take Marianne with him when he left.

  ‘Eat your oysters, Ellat,’ he said. ‘It may be your last opportunity to do so. Aghrehond will be here with the car in twenty minutes.’

  They approached Marianne’s tall house just at sunset. The door into the front hall stood open and on the tiny turfed area between the steps and the iron fence, Mrs Winesap leaned on a lawn edger, intent upon the clean line separating daffodils from grass. She looked up in frank curiosity, staring at Makr Avehl and Ellat from her broad, open face, mouth a little open, rather gnome-like with her cut-off jeans and baggy shirt. ‘I don’t think Marianne’s here,’ she told them. ‘The door’s open, though, so she must have run out just for a minute.’