"That's right, dear and just sister, feed him to the Call. A fair trial for his crimes is too good for him."
"Hurry now, we must stay with him," Theresla called as she gave her camel its head to go south again.
"I--what! What do you mean?" spluttered Ilyire, hauling his camel's head about so hard that it nearly stumbled.
"I have a use for him."
"Him? Gal-escen? Are you mad?"
"Yes."
"But he's big, bigger than even me! Once out of the Call we could have a fight on our hands." "But we shall not be leaving the Call for a long time, Ilyire. We are travelling within it for protection from freebooters, the Koorees, and our own people. In just the same way it will protect us from him. Gla-escen will be as docile as a lamb."
"Until we leave the Call. Then what?"
"Then, dear half-brother, he will depend upon us to survive."
"But why bring him at all? He's good for nothing but tupping. Even the camels wouldn't be safe!" "He will teach us to speak the Southerners' Austaric language fluently."
She had been urging her camel faster than its Call pace all through the argument, and now she seized the trailing tether from Glasken's camel.
"Don't reach for that arrow, Ilyire," she shouted without turning around as she tied the tether to her saddle frame.
"What? And waste a charge of black powder on him?"
"Kill him and I kill you, brother or not. Swear that you will not kill him." "But--" "Swear to it!" There was a lengthy silence. Theresla continued to observe Ilyire in a tiny mirror on her camel's harness, but he did not reach for his weapons again. She began to count the rhythmic sways of her camel, and had reached eighty-three before Ilyire replied.
"All right, then I swear--but only if you un tether his camel from yours." "Why is that? His camel must be kept with ours."
"The tether between your camels is--too much for me. It's a symbolic union of filth and purity, the sight makes me gag."
Theresla laughed. "You would have him tethered to your camel?"
"It's punishment for my sins," Ilyire muttered before lapsing into silence for the rest of the day. They journeyed on with the Call, down through the Cavanagh Outpost, past the turnoff to Fostoria, and on into the unexplored dry lands that Ilyire had traversed with Kharec's lancers nearly a year and a half earlier. Traces of an ancient bitumen road remained, threading through clumps of ruins thousands of years old. There were no inhabited towns here, so there was no more water and food for the taking. They began to snare and butcher animals caught in the Call to supplement their supplies, and their waterbags grew less taut.
The road veered due east, but they continued south into the desert, following the Call and covering their tracks to elude any pursuers following in the Call's wake. Theresla's compass showed that the Call was taking a slight westward bias, but Ilyire said that such variations were not unknown so far south. By his calculations they would join the route of Kharec's expedition just north of Maralinga Railside, but there was a long way to go as yet.
Now that they were off the road the camels began to show signs of strain as they struggled across the mulga- and mallee-bush-covered dunes of red sand. The fixed pace of the Call was too much for them, but Ilyire postponed dropping the sand anchors until the last possible moment. It was clear that nobody could be following them, and that the country was too parched to support more than a small scattering of Kooree nomads, yet it was only when their supplies of water had dropped to dangerously low levels that Ilyire reluctantly made the decision to drop the sand anchors and let the protective Call zone go on ahead of them.
Ilyire drew a flint wheel long-barrel from his saddle frame and jumped to the stony ground. He unbuckled Glasken, then stood clear and smiled as he clambered from the saddle, fell, and began to shamble south. "Catch him, tie him to a bush," ordered Theresla, still in her saddle.
With the sensation of a clammy fog dispersed by a warm breeze, the trailing edge of the Call passed over them. Glasken shook his head and tried to stretch. His hands were still tied in front of him.." he was standing on hot, red sand and rock, tethered to a mallee bush! Where was the caravan? The land was still dry, red and parched, but was a different kind of desert from where the caravan had been.
There were camels tethered nearby, yet only two Alspring camel drivers were with them. No, not drivers, more like the camel lancers of the Fostorian town guard. Their clean, well-cut robes and gear sacks their very self-confidence warned him that they might even be some type of elite warrior. They were clearly to be assessed with great care before.." suddenly it dawned on him! They had freed him from the caravan, so they had to be friendly! The bonds on his wrists were an understandable precaution.
"Ambicori, gratico. Johnny Glasken ibi," he said in the language that he had been learning in Fostoria. He forced a broad smile and bowed deeply.
"Macadalian dialect, I recognize it but barely speak it," said Ilyire at once. "No good to us, Frelle sister. Free him and let's be gone."
"Not so fast, Ilyire, I understand enough Macadalian to know that he speaks it awkwardly. His native tongue might be Austaric." She held a hand up in a slow, friendly gesture. "Gal-escen. Can speaking Austaric?"
"I--yes!" Glasken stammered in Austaric. "Quite well, my native tongue in fact, and I have letters from the University of Rochester, I am well educated--"
Ilyire spat a curse and Glasken was silent at once. "That's Austaric, Frelle, you were right," he sighed, "I recognize it, even if I don't know the words." He barked at Glasken in Macadalian to hold out his hands. The saberine hissed out in a flat arc, slicing the knot from the prisoner's wrists. Glasken gasped in fright, then began to rub his wrists very slowly, careful not to make a sudden move.
"We speaking little Macadalian. Ilyire, calling me. This Abbess Theresla. Sister mine. Touching her you, remove balls. Understanding?"
Glasken smiled and bowed, still rubbing his wrists and trying to stare at Theresla without seeming to stare.
"Gla-escen, ah, knowing Maralinga fort?" she asked.
Her voice was a low but powerful contralto, and full of authority. Glasken did not know Maralinga, but he thought quickly. They were in the desert, and if Maralinga was not too far away it was probably a fortified rallside guarding cisterns and stores. Only the Nullarbor par aline was serviced by fortified outposts as distant from civilization as this, and the Alliance did jointly control a few of the rail sides there with Woomera.
"Maralinga, I know it well. A fortress with deep cisterns, a fine place on the par aline that carries the wind trains west to the great underground cities at Kalgoorlie." '
His words were a jumble of Macadalian grammar and Austaric nouns and verbs, but again Ilyire had to grudgingly nod to Theresla.
"Soldier? You?" "Soldier, yes, I'm a soldier. I was stationed at, er, Maralinga, but I got lost in the desert while on patrol--with my companion Nikalan, that is."
"Good," she said, turning back to Glasken. "Reaching Maralinga five weeks. Maybe. You teaching Austaric us?" "Teach you to speak Austaric?" he exclaimed, relieved to learn the nature of his value to them. "Yes, yes, my pleasure. I'll teach you to speak as well as the Highliber herself."
"Highliber! Knowing Highliber?" demanded Theresla eagerly. "Frelle, I worked for the Highliber of Libris for seven months," Glasken replied. Mind you I'm not saying what the Highliber did to me for those seven months, he thought.
"Go Maralinga," said Ilyire. "Desert, salt lakes, Kooree warriors, snakes, scorpions, us to kill. You fighting? Knowing weapons?"
"Can I fight? Fras, Frelle, I've been in the army of Overhand Gratian of Inglewood."
Ilyire tossed him a sheathed saberine, a quiver of arrows, and a recurred bow.
"Reaching Maralinga, you free. Helping go Maralinga."
"Yes, yes, Maralinga. My people are there. I'll introduce you." Glasken bowed as he buckled on the saberine; then he slung the quiver over his back. He bent back the bow between his legs and st-rung it, then pulled t
he string. "Seventy pounds, very good," he said as he unstrung it again. Ilyire frowned, disappointed that he knew what he was doing with the weapon. At last my luck has changed, Glasken thought. He would be dropped on the Nullarbor par aline free to go on to the Western Castellanies, the very place that had been his destination when he had escaped the battle calculor. He suddenly remembered Nikalan.
"Where is Nikalan?" he said to Theresla. "The other prisoner."
"Thin man, sick?"
"Ni-kalan, we leave," Ilyire cut in. "Executing?"
"Ah, maybe."
"Friend? Yours?" asked Theresla. "Yes, a friend. We've been through a lot together." "Leaving Ni-kalan, very sorry," said Theresla, who was growing impatient with her lack of Austaric vocabulary.
Must not seem annoyed, Glasken thought to himself. "You must have done what you have thought was right," he finally said with a broad smile. He glanced at the sun, then turned to what he thought was north and waved. "Farewell, and good fortune, Nikalan," he called.
Ilyire untethered Glasken's camel from his with obvious relief.
"Riding, now!" he snapped. Glasken took the reins. "Kush! Kush!" he said confidently, and the camel knelt at once. He stepped into the saddle, buckled in, and checked the sand anchor and timer. "Shill, shill," he said, and the camel stood. Ilyire spat into the sand, then mounted his own camel. He was sullen as they rode along behind Glasken, and he muttered to Theresla constantly.
"He is lying to us. Probably a deserter from some army."
"Well then, he should be a good fighter," she replied with a smile. "He seems well educated and articulate." "Perhaps Ni-kalan was a senior officer. They could have deserted together, taken refuge in the Fostoria oasis, then been captured by the caravan's lancers. They were to be questioned about the military arts of the Austaric cities and empires--Yes! Surely that was it."
"Gla-ssken. A strong name."
"Perhaps he will be shot for desertion when we reach Maralinga," Ilyire said hopefully.
"Come now Ilyire, we must speak with him constantly and learn his language."
"I saw him glancing at you, ogling the curves beneath your robes. If he so much as gestures to you I'll cut his hands off." The journey was all heat, boredom, and red dust, punctuated by a few spasms of alarm when the Kooree nomads confronted them. Ilyire had by now refined a tactic of looking to be retreating while tacking along in their original direction. Thus the encounters seldom involved more than an exchange of shouts and brandishing of weapons. To the Koorees, the invaders were seen to be driven off, honor was satisfied, and nobody was hurt. It was so different from the bloody battles by which Kharec and his larger force had hacked their way south.
Ilyire knew how to survive in the desert now that they were not hastening along with the Call. He could read the subtle signs that showed where to dig soak holes for water, and he used a sheet of translucent membrane over a pit of leaves to collect very pure water when it was safe to stop for any length of time. Glasken was acutely aware that he was being watched for any signs of lechery toward the Abbess. Theresla was quite obviously the leader, but without Ilyire they would have been hard put to survive. Theresla was rather hard to work out: fit, supple, and potentially more of an asset in any fighting than Ilyire, yet sometimes Glasken noticed her staring at him out of the corner of an eye. She definitely gave him little smiles, but they were always fleeting.
The country varied little from day to day, so that even the crossing of a dry riverbed became a big event. The small, tenacious bushes and trees gradually thinned, but never completely gave way to the red sand and broken rock. Harsh country meant fewer Koorees, as Ilyire explained every time Glasken asked if he was sure he knew where he was going.
As the days became weeks Glasken worked at the Austaric lessons as if his life depended upon them. In a sense it did. They could get along without him, and Ilyire clearly would have preferred it that way. Glasken's dilemma was one of staying friends with the Abbess without seeming to be familiar and so arousing Ilyire's anger. The Glenellen fugitives quickly learned the words for flies, sand, heat, danger, and the most minute aspects of camel saddlery. Conversations involving mathematics, literature, and the technology of the Southeast Alliance inevitably swerved to fat lizards, dangerous snakes, and the estimated distance to Maralinga. At night Ilyire always took the watch, and during the day he spent a lot of his time in the saddle dozing while Glasken taught Theresla Austaric ballads-and sometimes love poetry--and explained the basic tenets of physistry and chemistfic as taught in the University of Rochester.
"Many ladies must have, ah, cried for your leaving," Theresla said one morning as they plodded across a dry lake bed encmsted with salt. It was the first time that the subject of dalliance at a personal level had been raised. Glasken had been patiently awaiting such an inquiry for weeks.
"I had many admirers, Frelle Abbess, I cannot deny that. As to my departure, it was probably a puzzle to them. One particular girl, a mean and poisonous wench, became obsessed with me and sought to make me all hers. She was from a very rich and powerful family, and it would have profited me greatly to marry her. Nevertheless, I refused to trade my freedom for anything other than true love. She flew into a rage and paid a shadow boy gang to abduct me. I laid out five of them with my swagger stick, but they finally beat me to the ground and bound me tightly. I was taken far away and sold as a slave, but eventually I escaped into the desert with my friend and fellow slave Nikalan. We suffered terribly before we stumbled into the oasis at Fostofia."
"So. You are not soldier?" Theresla asked, playfully rather than as an accusation.
Cursing himself for the slip, Glasken wove his words quickly to cover up the rent in his story.
"Frelle... how could I have explained such subtle affairs of the heart before, when we had practically no words in common?" This seemed to satisfy Theresla, and she rode on in silence for a time. After checking that Ilyire was a safe distance behind and still asleep she guided her camel beside Glasken's again.
"Why did caravan master.." taking you prisoner?" "Take me prisoner. We were merely strange fugitives from unknown lands. We were to be questioned by your elders in one of the Alspring cities. Perhaps they want to find new lands to trade with or invade."
By the time they emerged from the dunes onto a vast, treeless plain of bushes and tufty grass on pinkish limestone, Ilyire and Theresla were reasonably fluent in simple conversational Austaric. Ilyire smiled for the first time that Glasken had seen as he unrolled a map and indicated their location. Maralinga was close. They decided to make camp early, and the sun was still well above the horizon as they ate.
Theresla volunteered for the watch, and Ilyire reluctantly agreed. He seemed unusually fired to Glasken and was soon deep in sleep and snoring. Theresla stretched out on her sand mat with her head resting on a pack. The hem of her robe had ridden up a little, and both of her calves were exposed. Glasken glanced at her legs, then hurriedly stared hard at Ilyire.
"Crystal of oblivion, ah, put in drink," Theresla explained, gesturing to Ilyire.
Glasken's head snapped around. "He cannot wake?" he asked, his loins stirring even as his mind scrambled to interpret her words.
"Not for.." ah, many minutes." For once a seduction was moving too fast for Glasken. He looked into her smiling face, then back down to her legs. She stretched again, and slid forward. Her robe rode up above her knees.
The urge to reach down and fling her robe right back was so strong that Glasken could barely fight it back. He moved slowly forward and knelt beside her. She put a hand out and stroked his beard. "I thought she was afeard, Till she stroked my beard,
And we were both wondrous merry." "
"What is that?" she asked. "Austaric poem?"
"A few words of a student song. An old, naughty student song."
"Our students ... all from religious orders. They sing chants, only. Some times, ah, moral epics." Slowly, cautiously, Glasken reached out and stroked her hair, then ran his fingers al
ong her chin. She trailed her fingers down his chest, through the black hair there and along his ribs. His hand dropped cautiously to her side. Theresla smiled. His fingertips caressed the lower curve of her breast.." and her smile remained. The gates of paradise are wide open, his mind shouted. "How long will he be--" "As long as need." "You're sure?"
"No needing hurry."
The magnitude of the prize and the fear of who she was blunted Glasken's haste enough to prevent him bundling her out of her robes with no more ceremony whatever. He was still half-fearful as he fumbled with the knotted belt at her waist, but then she did likewise with his own knot. At the feel of a smooth leg against his own he suddenly threw caution to the desert winds and rolled on top of Theresla, but with a sinuous movement she was suddenly on top of him. Her breasts hung enticingly, slowly descended, then the nipples caressed his chest. "Not so much fast, Fras Glasken. Just little more longer."
"In Greatwinter's name, Frelle Abbess! Why hover above the altar of ecstasy when you could just--" A Call swept over them, blotting out Glasken's consciousness, yet.." he did not move. Theresla hovered above him on her hands and knees, exploring subtle feelings, tensions and energies.
"You are part of a great experiment, Fras Glasken, you should feel honored," she said softly in Alspring. Slowly she raised herself, so that her breasts barely touched Glasken's skin-and then rose clear. With no contact at all between them Glasken still did not wander away with the Call.
"Your lust defies the very Call itself," she said in genuine wonder. "In all the world, not another lust to match yours, I would wager.." but this is enough for now. I have much to think about."
Theresla suddenly rolled clear, and Glasken heaved himself up to walk south at once. She lashed out a foot and tripped him, then tied a tether to his waist. As she dressed Glasken struggled at the end of the tether, his face blank, his interest in her gone. It took her some time to get him dressed again, as he had no interest in anything except wandering south. Finally she parted Ilyire's lips and tipped a drop of liquid from a small phial between them. She counted fifty heartbeats with his pulse, then shook him roughly.
Souls in the Great Machine Page 28
