Severed Heads
Page 3
The image stared back, as silent as ever. She was tempted to rant. But Karkur gave short shift to ingrates. He was more a punitive than a helpful god. "But loyal to his people," she said. "Thank you, Karkur."
She hurried through the parting rituals and returned to camp. She fell asleep still astonished that Karkur had responded.
There were dreams. Vivid dreams. She rode into the Jebal, moving with an absolute certainty of her way. She knew exactly when to expect the first challenge.
The dream ended. The sun had wakened her. She felt fit and
rested. She recalled every detail of the dream. She looked down the wadi. A dumb stone god? She examined Al Jahez's stone. It looked no less ordinary this morning.
XII
The trails were faint, but she followed them confidently. Once she noted an overturned stone, darker on the exposed side. Someone had been this way recently. She shrugged. The amulet would warn her.
The mountains were silent. All the world was silent when you rode alone. The great erg had been filled with a stillness as vast as that of death. Here it seemed there should be some sound, if only the call of the red-tailed hawk on the wing. But the only sounds were those of a breeze in scrubby oaks, of water chuckling in one small stream.
She moved higher and higher. Sometimes she looked back across the hills where the wadi lay, to the plain beyond, a distance frosted with haze. The al Muburak might profit from such a view.
Night fell. She made a fireless camp. She drank water, ate smoked meat, turned in as the stars came out.
She wakened once, frightened, but her stone betrayed no danger. The mountains remained still, though the wind made an unfamiliar soughing through nearby pines. She counted more than a dozen meteors before drifting off.
Her dreams were vivid. In one her father told Al Jahez he was sure she had reached Wadi al Hamamah safely.
The mountains continued their rise. She rested more often. Come midday she entered terrain scoured by fire. That stark, black expanse was an alien landscape.
The trees changed. Oaks became scarcer, pines more numerous. The mountains became like nothing in her experience. Great looms of rock thrust out of their hips, the layering on end instead of horizontal. Even where soil and grass covered them she could discern the striations. Distant mountainsides looked zebra-striped in the right light.
Higher still. The oaks vanished. And then, in the bottom of one canyon, she encountered trees so huge a half dozen men could not have joined hands around their trunks. Narriman felt insignificant in their shadows.
She spent her fourth day riding up that canyon. Evening came early. She almost missed the landmarks warning her she was
approaching the first guardian. She considered the failing light. This was no time to hurry. She retreated and camped.
Something wakened her. She listened, sniffed, realized the alarming agent was no external. She had dreamed that she should circle the watchpost.
"Come, Faithful," she whispered. She wrapped the reins in her hand and led away.
She knew exactly where to go, and still it was bad. That mountainside was not meant for climbing. The brush was dense and the slope was steep. She advanced a few yards and listened.
The brush gave way to a barren area. The soil was loose and dry. She slipped several times. Then her mare went down, screaming and sliding. She held on stubbornly.
The slide ended. "Easy, girl. Easy. Stay still."
A glow appeared below. She was surprised. She had climbed higher than she had thought. The glow drifted along the canyon.
"I can't fail now. Not at the first hurdle."
Her heart hammered. She felt like screaming against clumsiness, stupidity, and the whim of fate.
The glow drifted down the canyon, climbed the far slope, came back. It crossed to Narriman's side and went down again. It repeated the patrol but never climbed far from the canyon floor. It never came close enough to make her amulet glow. It finally gave up. But Narriman did not trust it because it had disappeared. She waited fifteen minutes.
The sky was lightening before she felt comfortably past. She was exhausted. "Good girl, Faithful. Let's camp."
XIII
A horse's whinny wakened her. She darted to Faithful, clamped her hands over the mare's nostrils.
The sound of hooves on brookside stone came nearer. The amulet became a lump of ice. She saw flickers of black rider through the trees.
This one was stockier than her shaghun.
Her shaghun? Had he touched her that deeply? She looked inward, seeking the hatred of rider and love of son that had brought her to the Jebal. And it was there, the hatred untarnished by any positive feeling.
Then the rider was gone, headed down the canyon. Was he going to the guardian?
She had no dream memories of the canyon above the guardian. Why not? Couldn't Karkur reach into the realm of the Masters?
The uncertainty became too much. She dismounted and walked. No need to rush into trouble.
Minutes later she heard a rhythmic thumping ahead. Something rumbled and crashed and sent echoes tumbling down the canyon. She advanced more carefully, sliding from cover to cover.
She did not know where they came from. Suddenly, they were there, across the brook. They walked like men but were shaggy and dark and tall. There were four of them. The biggest growled.
"Damn!" She strung her bow as one giant bellowed and charged.
Her arrow split its breastbone. It halted, plucked at the dart. The others boomed and rushed. She sped two quick arrows, missed once, then drew her saber and scampered toward a boulder. If she got on top... .
Neither wounded monster went down. Both went for the mare. The others came for her.
Faithful tried to run, stumbled, screamed. The beasts piled on her.
Narriman drew her razor-edged blade across a wide belly. The brute stumbled a few steps, looked down at its wound, began tucking entrails back inside.
Narriman glanced at the mare as she dodged the other beast. The wounded creatures were pounding her with huge stones.
A fist slammed into Narriman's side. She staggered, gasped. Her attacker bellowed and closed in. She tried to raise her saber. It slipped from her hand. She hadn't the strength to grip it.
The thing shook her half senseless. Then it sniffed her and grunted.
It was something out of nightmare. The thing settled with Narriman in its lap, pawed between her thighs. She felt its sex swell against her back.
Was the whole Jebal rape-crazy? "Karkur!"
The thing ripped her clothing. Another grunted and tried to touch. The beast holding Narriman swung at it.
She was free for an instant. She scrambled away. The beast roared and dove after her.
She closed her hands on her amulet. "Karkur, give me the strength to survive this."
The beast snorted weirdly, uttered an odd shriek that tortured the canyon walls. It stumbled away, enveloped by an amber light laced with bloody threads.
Another beast came for her. Its cries joined those of the other.
Narriman scrambled after her saber. The last beast, with an
arrow in its chest, watched her with glazed eyes, backed away. She arranged her clothing, ran to Faithful.
"Poor Faithful." What would she do now? How would she escape the Jebal without a horse for Misr?
The beasts in amber kept screaming. The Great Death was a hard death. It twisted their muscles till bones broke.
The screaming finally stopped.
She heard distant voices.
Hurriedly, she made a pack of her possessions, then climbed the canyon wall. She found an outcrop from which she could watch the mess she had fled.
Those things! She recalled their size and smell and was sick.
The investigators were ordinary men armed with tools. They became excited and cautious when they found the beasts. Narriman heard the word shaghun several times. "Keep thinking that," she murmured. "Don't get the idea there's a stranger in the Jebal
."
Her shakes faded. She offered thanks to Karkur and started across the mountainside.
What were those beasts? Those men feared them. She moved with saber in hand.
The investigators had come from a lumbering camp. She watched men drag a log up a road, toward the head of the canyon. Why? She shrugged. The Masters must want it done.
She took to that road once she passed the camp.
That afternoon she heard hoofbeats. She slipped into the underbrush. "Oh, damn!" The horseman carried two of her arrows and Faithful's saddle. She strung her bow, jumped into the road, shouted, "Hey! Wait a minute!"
The rider reined in, looked back. She waved. He turned.
Her arrow flew true. He sagged backward. His horse surged forward. Narriman caught it as it passed. She dragged the body into the brush, mounted up wondering how soon he would be missed.
The canyon walls closed in. The brook faded away. She reached the summit. The road wound downhill, toward a far haze of smoke. There were a lot of hearthfires down there.
XIV
She traveled for two days. The only people she saw were men working logs down the road. She avoided them. She topped a piney ridge the second evening and saw a city.
Thoughts of Misr nagged her. Should she go down now? She was ahead of news from the logging camp. But he might not be there. And she was tired. She was incapable of acting efficiently in a desperate situation. Her judgment might be clouded, too.
She settled down off the road. She would have loved a fire. The mountain nights were chilly. Gnawing dried meat, she grumbled, "I'd sell my soul for a decent meal."
Sleep brought dreams. They showed her the town, including a place where children were kept. She also saw a place where shaghuns lived, and beyond the city a tower that was an emptiness fraught with dark promise.
She wakened knowing exactly what to do. Come nightfall she would slip into the city, break into the nursery, and take Misr. Then she would flee, set an ambush down the trail and hope her shaghun was the one who came.
Her plan died immediately. Her mount had broken its tether. Its trail led toward the city.
What would they think? Would they investigate? Of course. She'd best move elsewhere.
She trudged southward, circling the city. Time and again she went out of her way to avoid farmsteads. By nightfall she was exhausted again.
It had to be tonight, though. There was no more time.
What would she do for a mount? Her hope of escape hinged on her being able to lead the pursuit to ground of her own choosing.
She settled down near the city's edge. "Karkur, wake me when it's time."
It was a dark night. There was no moon. Clouds obscured half the stars. Narriman arose shaking. Her nerves got no better for a long time.
The streets were strange for a girl who'd never walked pavement. Her bootheels kept clicking. Echoes came back off the walls. "Too quiet," she muttered. "Where are the dogs?"
Not a howl went up. Not one dog came to investigate. Her nerves only tautened. She began to imagine something watching her, the town as a box trap waiting for her to trip its trigger. She dried her hands on her hips repeatedly. The moths in her stomach refused to lie still. She kept looking over her shoulder.
She gave the place of the shaghuns a wide berth, closed in on the nursery. Why were the youngsters segregated? Was it a place for children like Misr? The city made no sense. She didn't try to make it do so.
The only warning was a rustle of fabric. Narriman whirled,
saber spearing out. It was an automatic move, made without thought. She found herself face to face with a mortally wounded shaghun.
He raised a gloved hand as he sank toward the pavement. His fingers wobbled. Sorcery! She hacked the offending hand, came back with a neck stroke. She cut him again and again, venting nervous energy and fear.
"What do I do with him?" she wondered. She examined him. He was no older than she. She felt a touch of remorse.
She glanced around. The street remained quiet. A convenient alleyway lay just a few steps beyond the body.
She wondered what he had been doing. Her dreams had suggested that no one wandered the streets after dark, save a night watchman with a special dispensation.
Had the horse alerted them? Were there more shaghuns to be faced? Her stomach cramped.
Maybe her father and Al Jahez were right. Maybe a woman couldn't do this sort of thing. "And maybe men feel as ragged as I do," she muttered. She dropped the body into shadow. "Give me an hour, Karkur." She went on to the nursery.
Anticipation partially overcame her reaction to the killing. She tried a door. It was barred from within. A second door proved as impenetrable. There was a third on the far side, but she assumed it would be sealed too.
Above, barely visible, were second-story windows, some with open shutters. If she could... .
She spun into shadow and balled up, blade ready. A shape loomed out of the night, headed her way. Shaghun! Were they all on patrol?
He passed just ten feet away. Narriman held her breath. What were they doing? Looking for her? Or was her fear wholly egotistical?
There was a six-foot-wide breezeway between the nursery and building to its left. A stairway climbed the neighbor. A landing hung opposite a nursery window. Narriman secreted her possessions beneath the stair and crept upward. The stair creaked. She scarcely noticed. She could think of nothing but Misr.
The window was open. It was but a short step from the landing. She straddled the railing.
Someone opened the door to which the stair led. Light flooded the landing. A fat man asked, "Here, you. What's? ..."
Narriman slashed at him. He grabbed her blade. Off balance, she almost fell. She clung to the railing. It creaked. She jumped for the window.
The fat man staggered, reached for her, ploughed through the railing. Narriman clung to the window's frame and looked down. The man lay twitching below. "Karkur, don't let him raise the alarm."
The room before her was dark. A child mumbled something. Behind Narriman, a woman called a question. Narriman eased into the room.
The child was not Misr.
Someone shrieked. Narriman glanced outside. A woman stood on the landing, looking down.
Narriman slipped into a hallway running past other bedrooms. Which one? Might as well start with the nearest.
She found her son in the fifth she checked. He was sleeping peacefully. His face looked angelic. He seemed healthy. She threw herself on him, weeping, and remained lost within herself till she realized he was awake.
"Mama! What're you doing here?" Misr hugged her with painful ferocity. He cried too. She was glad. Her most secret fear had been that he would have forgotten her.
"I came to take you home."
"Where's Granpa?"
"Home. Waiting for us. Come on."
"The man, Mama. The dark man. He won't let us." He started shaking. His body was hale, but they had done something to his mind.
"He won't stop us, Misr. I won't let him. Get dressed. Hurry." People were talking in the hall.
Misr did as he was told. Slowly.
Someone shoved through the doorway. "What's going on? ..."
Narriman's saber pricked his throat. "Over there."
"A woman? Who are you?"
She pressed the sword's tip a quarter inch into his chest. "I'll ask. You answer." He shut up and moved. Small children watched from the doorway. "How many shaghuns in this town?"
He looked strange. He did not want to answer. Narriman pricked him. "Four! But one went to the lumber camp three weeks ago. He hasn't come back. You're the boy's sister?"
"Misr, will you hurry?" Four shaghuns. But one was out of town and another was dead. A third roamed the streets. Was hers the fourth?
"You can't take the boy out of here, woman."
She pricked him again. "You talk too much. Misr!"
"He belongs to the Old Ones."
Misr finished and looked at her expectantly.
She was amazed at how he had grown. He acted older, too. No time for that. "Come here." She tossed him across to the landing, jumped, hurried him downstairs. She recovered her belongings.
The fat man's woman howled all the while. "Shut up!" The woman retreated, whimpering.
Narriman looked into the street. People were gathering. "Misr. This way." She retreated into the breezeway. "A horse," she muttered. "Where do I find a horse?"
She was about to leave the breezeway when she heard someone running. "Get back, Misr. And be quiet." She crouched.
The runner turned into the breezeway. Shaghun! He tried to stop. Narriman drove her blade into his chest. He staggered back. She struck again. This was the shaghun who had missed her earlier.
She smiled grimly. Succeed or fail, they would remember her.
"Come on, Misr." People were shouting to her right. She headed left, though that was not the direction she preferred. Misr ran beside her. She searched her dream memories for a stable. She did not find one.
Hope of escape came out of a walking dream that hit like a fist, made her stumble.
Karkur wanted her to go eastward. There was a road through the mountains. They would not expect her to flee that way. If she reached the seacoast she could go north and recross the mountains at Sebil el Selib, where the Masters held no sway.
But this end of that road ran around the dread tower of her dreams. Who knew what the Masters would do? If their shaghuns were but shadows of themselves, how terrible might they be?
She was afraid but she did not stop moving. Karkur had not failed her yet.
And Karkur was right. It was the best way. She saw no one, and no one saw her. And the dark tower greeted her with an indifference she found almost disheartening. Was she that far beneath their notice? She had slain two of their shaghuns.
"Keep walking, Misr. We're going to get tired, but we have to keep walking. Otherwise the dark men will catch us."