Moonscatter

by Jo Clayton

  “What was all that about?”

  “Giving that drunk some good advice. Hush, I want to hear … ah!” Behind them the gates swung shut. “Good man. You look after you and let the rest go hang.” She raised her arms over her head, twisted her body about, then slumped in the saddle. “Ay-mi, the tarr is beginning to wear off. Hern.”

  “Hummmh?”

  “I’m going to crash any minute.”

  He rode closer, looked back at the black bulk of the wall. “The minarka?”

  She rubbed at her eyes, yawned again. “Wall’s it. We’re in Sleykyn land now.” Sleep was clubbing at her; it was hard to talk, harder to think. She clutched at the saddle ledge feeling horribly insecure as if she were trying to walk underwater and making sorry work of it.

  Hern caught hold of her shoulder. “Dammit, Serroi, where do we go from here? Where!”

  The pain from his grip, the shouted word penetrated her haze. “East,” she thought she said, repeated it when he shook her and demanded an answer. “East,” she mumbled.

  Hern shook her awake about midmorning. She was roped to the saddle, stretched out along the macai’s neck, her arms dangling, every muscle in her body stiff and sore, her head throbbing as if borers were gnawing their way through her skull. He began working the knots loose and in a few minutes she was able to push herself up. She ran her tongue over dry and cracking lips. He was shrouded in dust. His grey-streaked black hair was pasted close to his head and powdered near white with the dust from the track. Weariness was an aura about him nearly as visible as the floating dust. When he put his hand on her knee, she felt it tremble. “Serroi.” His voice was harsh, cracking. “Can you find water?”

  Water. She touched her tongue to her lips again and tasted the bitter alkalinity of the dust. Water. His hand was warm on her knee. She sucked in a breath, winced as her throat hurt, squinted her eyes against the hammering of the light reflected from the white, white, terribly white soil and rock around her. Water. His hand was warm and alive, the fingers trembling with weariness. Water. Her eyespot throbbed, sought, tasted the air, reached out and out. She twisted her torso about until she faced the direction of the pull; she could almost smell the cool green liveliness of the water. Good water. Close. She lifted her arm, faltered as its weight seemed beyond her strength, lifted her arm and pointed. “There.” Like him, she croaked through the coating of dust that dried her mouth and thickened her tongue.

  His hand touched her arm. She looked down. He was giving her the reins. “Can you.…” He moistened his lips, worked his mouth. “Can you manage?”

  She flexed her fingers, closed them stiffly about the reins. After a moment, she nodded, touched the reins to the side of her mount’s neck, eased the macai off the track and down the rocky bank and started across the parched and cracking land toward the water that pulled at her.

  They came into a wide ravine, a great jagged wash slashing acrost the barrens. A dry streambed ran down the center of the wash, bits of desiccated brush and sun-bleached bones strewn about among its boulders. To the south the wash ran against a line of weathered stone as if a giant cleaver had sliced the land away and beaten the sliced-off part into rubble that lay in grey and white heaps along the base of the scarp. Directly ahead of them the rubble was swept away. Serroi could see sunlight glinting on small pools of water in the stream bed and beyond these an arching blackness that was the mouth of a cave.

  They dismounted and led the macain inside, released them to drink at a deep oval pool of ice-cold water. When Hern judged they’d had enough, he drove them out of the cave. Moaning and whoomping with displeasure, they ambled down the slippery streambed and started grazing on scattered clumps of coarse dry grass.

  Serroi sat where she’d dumped herself, all her small pains dissolved in the larger agony in her head. She pressed the heels of her hands hard against her eyes, trying to throw a line about her exploding head and tie the pieces together. After a minute she drew her legs up, rested her arms on them and let her hands dangle.

  Hern brought her a cup of water. He knelt beside her, took one of her hands and closed her fingers about the cup, then wrapped his fingers about hers. With his help she lifted the cup to her lips. When she was finished, he stood. “Better?”

  “A little. Thanks.”

  He turned away, pulling up his tunic as he turned, still holding the cup. Black cloth bunched over his ribs; he looked at it, laughed and tossed it to Serroi, then jerked the tunic over his head and dropped it to the damp stone. He sat down heavily beside the water, pulled off his boots, sat, still laughing, wiggling his toes, bending his knees and working his ankles. Serroi chuckled as she watched him though it hurt her head. He grinned at her over his shoulder, jumped to his feet, stripped off his trousers and launched himself into the water. With a great deal of splashing and swearing at the icy liquid, he managed to scoop up a handful of sand from the bottom and begin scrubbing away the crust of his long walk.

  Serroi watched drowsily, thinking it would feel good to be clean and cool; she ought to join him, but she was too tired to move. Her head dropped lower, her eyes wouldn’t stay open. Murmuring incoherently, she eased onto her side, curled up on the rock. The sounds in the cave took on eerie distant echoes, then she was asleep.

  When the dream began she was aware that time had passed and she knew that she was dreaming—

  She rose and looked around, naked now, with a tingling sense of freedom from the dragging weariness and fear of last night and the morning. Joy filled her. She spread out her arms like wings and soared on the wind, flying across the moons over a landscape of black embroidery on a textured white ground. She lay out on two winds, one cold, one warm, drifting idly on one or the other for a long time, rising on the warm wind, sinking on the cold, until she was suddenly aware that a line was curled about her ankle. She looked down. A string like a kite’s tether joined her to something on the ground. Curious, she spiralled down, swinging in slow circles about the fragile black thread. She saw herself curled on her side, Hern lying asleep beside her, holding her against him; his breath was warm across the matted hair of her distant body. She felt it and trembled, looked down wistfully, wishing that the tenderness she saw there was real. She saw her boots standing beside her discarded clothing. This bothered her but she couldn’t think why. With shocking unexpectedness the kitestring shortened and thickened, jerked powerfully at her leg. She faltered, thrashed about; the air wouldn’t hold her. Screaming in silent terror, she tumbled down and down.

  A hand caught hers and she was a feather wafting upward again. She looked for her rescuer but saw no one. She felt the fingers warm and reassuring about her wrist, she saw nothing, no one. The hand pulled her away from the sleeping figures, faster and faster. She began to be afraid, tried to free her wrist, turning and twisting it. The unseen fingers were strong but gentle; they held her loosely but she couldn’t pull away from them. The tie between her and her body stretched and stretched until it was an agony of fire about her ankle. She began to panic when she thought of the tie breaking. Something terrible would happen if the tie broke.

  The hand pulled harder, fighting the pull of the tie. At last it brought her lightly down on the top of a mountain, a barren black and white mountain, the stones and vegetation disciplined into abstract geometric forms. Her toes touched down in the center of a five-sided figure that looked familiar enough to chill her though once again she didn’t know why. She was alone on the mountain top, there seemed to be no point to bringing her there, but the hand held her when she tried to leave.

  There was a shimmer in the air. She watched with a feeling of inevitability as the shimmer solidified into the dark elegant form of Ser Noris.

  There were more lines in the beautiful arrogant face. He smiled at her and his ruby glimmered as it moved and caught the unnatural light. His hair was black smoke floating about his face. That and the ruby she remembered. The sadness and pain in his black eyes was more than she remembered except perhaps in the last dre
ams, the ones that drove her from the Valley. He came closer to her, reached out to touch her. She tried to back away but the hands held her still; his servants, she remembered that now, the hands that had washed her and tended her as a child. “Serroi,” he murmured, his voice dark music as it always was; she would have wept but there were no tears left in her. “Why fight me so?” He slid long elegant hands through her tumbled hair, each touch like fire against her skin, pulled one of her curls between thumb and forefinger. She gasped. Too many memories. She couldn’t bear it, any more than she could weep. She trembled and burned. “Come home, little one. I’ve missed you.” He touched her face tenderly. “More than I thought I could miss anyone or anything.”

  Again she tried to weep, again she could not. She looked down, saw that her hands were transparent. She looked at the Noris and he was transparent also, a wavering image that firmed, turned smoky, firmed again. “Serroi,” he called, his voice pleading, caressing, tearing at her. She looked down at herself. Her legs were rags, translucent blood ran down the insubstantial flesh. “Ser Noris,” she whimpered. She drifted closer to him, caught at his hand, held it against her face. “Why do you torment me so? Why do you want to destroy what I love?”

  “Serroi.” He sat, pulling her down with him, settling her head onto his thigh. He brushed the hair back from her face, smiling a little, a flush of life in the glassy pallor of his face. “You don’t understand, child. There’s so much waste in that life you love, things rot and die, they hurt you and betray you. I only want to bring order out of disorder.” He touched her nose with a fingertip, pointed at the moons. “Look. Like the circuits of our eleven moons. They make a thousand patterns, more, but move always in a neatly regulated manner; if you study them long enough you’ll always know what they’re going to do. More than a thousand patterns, my Serroi, all of them different. No sacrifice of variety, but a great gain in peace.”

  As he continued to stroke his fingers along her face, she felt that peace. She felt safe, enclosed in the surprising warmth of his love. There was no more loneliness, no more yearning for someone to receive and return the pent-up flood of affection that threatened to drown her some days. She looked up into the face of her beloved, saw that he was smiling, his black eyes filled with triumph. That jarred her out of her drift into contentment and acceptance. She tore herself loose from his hands. “No!” she cried. She flung herself into the air. “No,” she wailed as the ebon tie snapped her swiftly back to her body.

  She was thrashing about, legs caught in a blanket, back bruised by the stone. Strong square hands were hard on her shoulders, pinning her down. Warm hands, solid and alive. Still whimpering and whispering the no she’d screamed in her dream, she pried her eyes open and stared up into Hern’s anxious face. It was very dark in the cave but enough moonlight came in to show her the taut hardness in his face, the worry in his narrowed eyes. She sighed and stopped struggling. Cold bit into legs and arms where she had kicked free of the blankets. His thigh was warm against her. He was bent over her, his hands pressing down on her shoulders until she finally went quiet, then he moved them to the blanket on either side of her head. He continued to lean over her, shifted his weight onto one hand, touched her face with the other, tracing the wetness of tears, stroking very gently over her pulsing eyespot. “It’s only a dream,” he murmured. “Nothing so bad, only a dream.”

  She couldn’t explain. Tears flooded her eyes. She began crying desperately, her body shuddering, her head twisting back and forth as she tried to turn away from his probing gaze.

  With a soft curse, he pushed onto his knees. He picked Serroi up, pulled her onto his lap, then struggled with the blankets, wrapping them awkwardly around himself and the sobbing shivering woman. He held her against him, pressed her head into his shoulder, stroked a hand gently over her clotted hair and down her narrow back. Over and over he repeated the soothing sweep of his hand, saying nothing much, not knowing what to say, reduced in the end to simple crooning sounds. Slowly her sobbing grew easier, the shuddering body quieted, then she lay relaxed against his body. The layers of fat were soft and yielding though she could feel the hardness of the muscles underneath. He was warm, warming her aching chilled body, warming away her aching desolation until she was drowsily surprised to find herself happy, content, murmuring with pleasure as Hern shifted her around and drew his fingertips in a slow spiral about her nipple. He continued to caress her until she was responding eagerly.

  They made love on the hard cold stone floor and fell asleep curled up one against the other, the blankets tucked around them, Serroi exhausted and content, the terror of the dream wiped from mind and body.

  Serroi woke filled with energy and well-being. Outside the cave Hern was moving about, whistling. She rubbed at her eyes, stretched and yawned.

  Abruptly the two parts of the night came together for her. She shivered then smiled. Nothing could bother her this morning. She yawned again and sat up. The sun was streaming into the mouth of the cave. She jumped to her feet, stretched again and looked around. Her clothes were tossed carelessly aside, covered with dust, stiff with sweat. Hern wasn’t much good as a maidservant. She swallowed, grimaced. There was a monster of a foul taste in her mouth. Rising onto her toes, thrusting her hands toward the cave roof, she strained upward, twisted her spine, flopped down, straightened, danced across to the dark deep pool and plunged in.

  Laughing, sputtering, teeth chattering she bounced from the rim of the pool, stepped suddenly off a ledge and went under. With a strong kick she drove herself up again, broke surface with a whooping cry, paddled about the pool, her body growing accustomed to the icy cold. The whistling outside retreated, growing fainter and fainter. She started humming the tune, feeling as cheerful as Hern, feeling like laughing. She splashed carelessly about, diving under, kicking up again. Finally she scooped up some sand from the bottom and began scrubbing her body and her hair. Soap would have been better, but her weaponbelt with its bit of soap was in a crack somewhere and she didn’t feel like searching for it. When she was as clean as she could make herself, she ducked under a last time, then waded out of the waterhole and used one of the blankets to rub herself dry.

  She shoved at the borrowed clothing with her bare toes, kicked it into the water, wrapped a blanket about her body and went outside, lifting her feet hastily when she touched the hot stone. She found a bit of shade, pushed the wet hair off her face and looked around. The sun was about an hour from zenith, the macain were standing nearby, munching at the tips of the branches of a scraggly bush. Her brows rose when she saw that they were saddled already. Her saddlebags were tied in place, her weapon belt slung across the saddle. Hern was nowhere in sight. She felt for him, her eyespot throbbing, groping beyond the range of her eyes with the immaterial fingers of her outreach. When she touched him, he was some distance to the east; he seemed cheerful and busy about something. Shrugging off her curiosity, she picked her way across the stone and sand, wincing at the heat and the pricks of the sharp rock flakes. Scratching absently at her macai’s neck, she gazed up at the sun. Going to be hot. She closed her eyes. Hours. I’ll fry in my leathers. She shrugged. Not much choice. She started digging in her saddlebags.

  When she heard the whistling again, she was spreading Beyl’s borrowed clothing to dry on the rocks outside the cave. Minutes later Hern came half-running half-sliding down the north slope of the wash. He sauntered toward her, a grin on his face, a hint of swagger in the swing of his shoulders, three lappets dangling from his left hand, in his right hand a sling waggling with a jaunty beat. He held up the lappets. “Dinner.”

  Serroi straightened, eyed them, her hands on her hips, her head tilted (feeling a tickle of amusement and a maternal affection she refused to show—he looked in that moment so much like a small boy, the son she’d never have, she wanted to hug, pat and praise him, and she couldn’t do that either because he wasn’t a small boy). “So I see,” she said. “Very interesting. Just how do you plan to cook them?” She looked de
liberately around at the rock and withered grass, the tough and scanty brush.

  He chuckled, “Here. Start skinning.” He tossed her the string of lappets and strode off, leaving her torn between amusement and annoyance.

  She was down at the streambed burying the offal and bloody hides with the neatly trimmed bodies laid out above on the flat top of a rock when he came back carrying an armful of grey-white wood, wood so dry the surface powdered when she touched it. “The heart’s sound enough,” he said. “Tested it.”

  Serroi stamped sand down over the entrails and dusted off her hands. She lifted her head suddenly, closed her eyes and felt about for other lives, anything that might threaten them, but touched nothing except a few rodents and fliers, widely scattered, far more concerned with surviving in a harsh land than with any possible intruders. She touched the wood again, rubbed her thumb across her fingers. “Too dry to smoke. Still—we better build the fire in the cave.”

  He swung around, pale grey eyes suddenly alert. “You picked up something?”

  “No.” She shivered. “Just a chill. It’s gone now.”

  His eyes searched her face. She smiled. His face lightened; he smiled at her, reached out and took her hand. Shifting his load so he could balance it comfortably under one arm, he pulled her close and set his arm around her shoulders. As they moved up the streambed, he spoke casually about his hunting walk, pride in his success strong in his voice. She glanced at him. He was relaxed, contented, his face appreciably thinner. She let him hold her, even though it made walking more difficult for both of them, happy for the moment in his happiness, suppressing her own reservations.