Irsud

by Clayton, Jo;

  “I wore out half a dozen horses keeping ahead of them. The only place left for me was my mountains. Even Omkringska’d left them alone. It’d take more than an army to tame those crags and the human rocks that lived in them. The last horse died in a rainstorm that turned to snow toward a black and icy morning. All I had left was the sword I brought out from the mountains and I was damned if I’d let them have that. So I came back to the mountains exactly as I left them, on foot with just a sword to keep me company.

  “In the middle of the blizzard, to top everything, the earth started shaking. Behind me the mountain muttered and threw down enough rock to block the pass for which I gave thanks to the spirits of the earth. Then I was lost beyond finding, all the shapes so changed mountain and valley almost switched places in front of my straining eyes. But I didn’t have time to worry about that. My most pressing need was shelter. I stumbled into a steep-sided valley that cut most of the wind.

  “That I was a dead man anyone would have said, but I was too cross-grained to agree. Fortunately the snow let up before I froze my butt off though my toes should have been a dead loss. The valley was a little cup with walls like … well, walls. What I could see of it, with dawn a gray cold light in the lowering sky, sent a chill not born of cold to my belly. Everything dead. The stink of death about the whole place. Not that I could smell much with a nose half froze off my face.

  “When I started to get out of the demon-haunted place, a fork of lightning licked down out of the sky and hit a dead pine. It flared like it was all resin, fell against another tree, set it going. The warmth whispered to me and I swallowed my uneasiness. The fire warmed the chill out of me and warmed life back in. I found the remains of a wrecked spacer there too, next the fire. Didn’t know what it was those days, but it was shelter. I crawled inside after testing the walls to make sure they wouldn’t crumple on me and mashed old bones to dust before I noticed them in the dark dry interior.”

  Purple eyes opened suddenly. Aleytys caught the impression of an impish grin. “Me,” Shadith said. “The clumsy oaf put his boots right in the middle of my poor little bones.”

  Swardheld snorted. “You were done with them, weren’t you? She had the diadem round her skull. It suckered me like it did you. Without thinking I set it on my own head.” A mental shrug. “After a bit longer, well … here I am.”

  Yellow eyes opened. Impression of a vast age and wisdom, warm compassion for frail humanity. Aleytys felt a tinge of the glow she got when she dipped into the power river and an awe that had her in mental obeisance before this one.

  “Harskari.” Shadith sounded startled.

  “How did you … you … get caught in this?” Aleytys swallowed nervously as soon as the words rushed out of her mouth.

  Impression of a wry smile. “We all have our weak spots, Aleytys, cracks in the facade we present to the world. I loved a man, I thought we shared our delight and our dreams but I was more gifted and he was jealous. He knew me. Ah, he knew me. He fashioned the diadem for me with all the skill he had and all the fire of his envy-born hatred. Unfortunately I was so wrapped in my studies, so insensitive to him that he trapped me easily. However.…” The amber eyes flicked from the purple to the black. “If you want the story, I’ll tell it another time,” Harskari projected quiet amusement, the understanding and acceptance of foible glowing over them all. “Listen, young Aleytys. Gapp has gone to the kipu about what happened here. You’ll be summoned soon. You’ve about.…” The eyes closed briefly. “About two hours to get ready to counter.”

  Aleytys jumped up to stand trembling beside the bench, a sudden panic jarring through her. “What!” She wrung her hands. “What can I do? Tell me what to do.”

  “Use your head. It’s a good one, Aleytys. Don’t start depending on us to do your thinking—that’s foolish and futile. We can and will aid once you sketch out a course of action. I will say this. Don’t run in circles. Make the kipu work for you.”

  “How? Do you know.…”

  “Not enough. Do you forget we are as strange here as you? Talk to Burash.”

  “Burash?”

  “He waits.” The amber eyes looked quietly amused. “To scrub your back.”

  Aleytys tingled to the combined auras even after the yellow, black, and purple eyes were shut and the personalities faded. She staggered as she took a step, paused, disoriented, as she sought the outward world after the intense inward turning. She licked her lips and said the names like a litany. Swardheld. Shadith. Harskari. There wasn’t even an echo inside her head. She was alone.

  Circling around the bench she ran toward the mahazh.

  CHAPTER IX

  Burash looked up as she came in. “You all right?” His betraying antennas flickered erratically, the iridescent colors rippling. “Do you want me or should I go?”

  His anxiety hit her like a blow, sending blood in a crimson flush over her face. The phenomenon startled her into stopping to look at him, then, after a moment’s futile search to reduce the experience to something she could handle, she moved to the bed and knelt beside him. Still disturbed, she touched his cheek a second then settled herself beside him. “I’ve been thinking.…” She stirred and looked. “Where’s the hiiri?”

  He flicked a finger at the tapestry. “In there.”

  Her eyebrows went up.

  He nodded. “The old queen liked to keep hands and feet around her to run her errands and fuss when she felt like being fussed over, but she wouldn’t have them underfoot.”

  “The old queen.” She took his hand and cuddled it in her lap running a forefinger up and down the length of it while she thought. “You knew her well?” She watched intently as he answered.

  He drew his antennas together in a taut tense curve. “I was her migru for the past year.”

  She smiled and cupped his captive hand around the side of her face. “Poor love. Can the hiiri hear us?”

  “There’s only that between us.” He indicated the heavy tapestry. “Why?”

  She shook her head vigorously, a warning in her sudden frown. “Did you fix my bath?”

  “The water should still be hot.” His eyebrows arched gently while his antennas tilted into interrogating curves.

  She stretched and yawned. “Scrub my back?”

  In the bathroom she slipped off the crumpled chiffon, letting it fall into a rosy pool at her feet. As she sank down on the deep-piled rug, she murmured, “Tell me about her.” She curled her fingers around his calf, briefly pleased by the warm alive feel of his flesh. “If the kipu thought the old queen had waked in me, what would she do?”

  He stripped off his kilt and knelt beside her, touching his lips to her palm.

  Impatiently she freed her hand and put it over his mouth. “There’s no time.” Against her fingers she could feel his mouth curve into a brief smile.

  Pulling her hand down he said, “Gapp?”

  “She’s probably with the kipu now.”

  “That’s all you can think of to fight her?”

  “That’s all.”

  “You’ll never fool the kipu.”

  “Does it matter? If she sees the value for her in the illusion?”

  “Ah.” He radiated a shrewd appreciation with an underlying aroma of humor. After settling himself more comfortably, he pulled her against his shoulder and looked past her at the image of two of them in the full-length mirror. “Hm.” His antennas swayed gently. “When the old bitch was irritated, she’d rub her left thumb over the back of her right hand. Is that what you want?”

  Drowsily she nodded, her hair sliding over his chest. As he spoke, softly, slowly, thoughtfully, building a picture of an imperious complex devious old female, she recorded absently what he was saying but on another level of consciousness let her mind drift, staring into the mirror, examining him as he frowned at the slowly popping bubbles in the bathtub.

  Blocking her empathic outreach she ran her eyes over his image as dispassionately as she could. His body was human, more or less, enou
gh that there was no shock to her senses. But his face … huge black eyes, size of teacups, divided into hundreds of tiny octagonal facets, bulging from a narrow rather elegant face. A thin nose, sensitive and mobile mouth, pointed chin. Rising above all, the spectacular antennas, whose movements reflected his every mood. He was alien … she let the empathy flood back and the strangeness was gone, evanesced into the steamy air, the image was simply Burash, the total effect of line, shape, form, dear because it was Burash, coalescing into a tenderness that she hesitated to call love because she fled the responsibility. As his voice sounded quietly in her ear, though, she admitted deep inside herself that her feeling for him transcended form and species.

  Her body curved against his, a pale amber figure, slender, full-breasted, her long legs sprawled out over the brilliant colors of the lush rug, her red hair over her shoulders in un-disciplined tangles, her blue-green eyes disconcertingly strange in shape and size as she lay half entangled in Burash’s mind set. How strange, she thought, how alien I must have looked to him that day. Madar! only the day before yesterday. But he didn’t hesitate. He sensed my fear and my loneliness and responded instantly, warmly, without bounds. He crossed that species difference that shook me, still shakes me when I think about it, crossed it effortlessly, discovered somehow that likeness we share, part sexual response but going beyond the mere hunger of body for body to speak directly to … what should I call it, it sounds pretentious to say soul … to speak to that place where my essence abides.

  Burash cupped his hand under her chin and tilted her face so that she was looking at him. “Where are you, Leyta? Have you heard a word I said?”

  Aleytys blinked slowly. “I heard you. What drives the kipu?”

  “Drives?” He shifted slightly, easing his cramped legs. “Ambition. She needs the old one’s backing and she likes holding the whip over nayids who despise her. The other cities out there.…” He swung his hand in a half circle, calling to her memory the scattered buttes thrusting up out of the fertile plane, each one with a walled city at its base. “Every rab maku on the council of cityqueens has ambition as strong as hers. But they’re all terrified of the old one and too jealous of each other to pool their strengths. As long as the kipu holds the queen, the kipu rules the kibrata.”

  “Then I’m the visible symbol of her power.” She sat up and rubbed her hands together. “Good. That should give me the edge I need.”

  “More than that. She’s just as frightened of the old one as the rest of them.”

  “Huh? You mean she really believes all that nonsense?”

  “Nonsense?” He pressed his lips together and stared somberly down at his knees. “A thousand years prove otherwise, Leyta. A thousand heavy heavy years.”

  “So.” She spread out a hand and contemplated the fingers. “One. Scare hell out of everyone I can with the gestures and other things you coach me in.” She folded down her forefinger. “Two. Work on the kipu till she gets to wondering how her head is sitting on her shoulders.” She folded the second finger down. “Three. Figure out a way to publicly support the kipu so she’ll have a reason to bolster the illusion.” She pressed the third finger down. “Four. Demand as much freedom as I can get.” Smiling tautly at him she pressed down her last finger and closed her thumb over her head.

  Burash jumped to his feet and moved quickly to the dressing table. Over his shoulder he said, “You said two hours?”

  “Yes.” She looked at him curiously. “Why?”

  He came back, his hands full of bone hairpins. “There’s still time for bath and time for rehearsing.” He knelt beside her and twisted the long hair into a knot on top of her head, driving the pins in with swift efficient flicks of his fingers. “And I’ll have to find the right thing for you to wear.”

  An hour later Aleytys slipped her arms into the sleeves of a blue-green velvet robe heavily embroidered with knobby gold thread in the ubiquitous floral patterns. Burash smoothed the folds over her breasts, pulling them into rigid formal lines from shoulder to foot. “Remember, the old one was nonstop conscious of her clothes and her postures. She studied effect at all times, seldom moved spontaneously except under the influence of extreme irritation. Keep yourself in hand always, Leyta. You can’t afford a slip, especially since this is so alien to your temperament.” He stood up and touched her cheek very gently.

  She moved her head slightly and touched her lips to his palm, then backed off and danced lightly in a circle, laughing and swinging her arms around in wide circles, tangling her hair and destroying the neat formality of the folds.

  “Leyta!”

  “A last fling, Burash.” She quieted and smoothed out the tangles. As her hands caressed the sensuously soft material, she slanted a glance at Burash. “Where’d you get this gorgeous thing?”

  “Don’t ask, love.” “He grinned at her. “Watch the hem, Leyta. I had to cut off the bottom or you’d be drowning in the folds. Now. Don’t muss yourself again; Sukall should be here any minute. You remember the lift?”

  “I think you’re more nervous than I am. Of course I remember.” She laughed then sobered as the sound grew shriller than she liked. “Or maybe you’re not I wish the waiting were done.”

  “Stand a minute.” He dived into the tapestry and came out again carrying a chair, heavy, intricately carved, like a throne with arms. Grunting with the effort he placed it carefully in front of the footboard of the bed, centering it with micrometer fastidiousness. Then he fetched a matching footstool. “Now. Sit down and let me fix you.”

  Aleytys clambered into the chair, moving with some difficulty as it was sized for the two and half meters of nayid. Sitting with her shorter legs dangling she felt like a child and danced her fingers along the arms, in her nervous irritation unable to sit still.

  Burash pushed the footstool closer and smoothed the folds around her feet. Her toes protruded from beneath the hem of the garment. Giggling, she wiggled them, watching the pale gold digits move.

  He clucked with disapproval, clicking his tongue against his palate.

  Aleytys swallowed. Closing her eyes she breathed with deliberate slowness, striving to calm herself so that she could concentrate on the coming ordeal without distraction from her own body. After a minute she leaned back in the chair, resting her head against the carved wood. Opening her eyes she smiled reassuringly at the worried face hovering beside her. “Shouldn’t I have shoes on?”

  He frowned. “I didn’t think of that. Let me.…” He hurried away and came back with a small ceramic jar.

  “What’s that?”

  “Henna for your palms and the soles of your feet.” He pulled the top off and dipped a finger into the creamy red substance. “Hold out your hands.”

  After Burash finished his fussing over her and vanished tactfully into the hidden waiting room where the hiiri still crouched, the minutes crept by on leaden feet for Aleytys. She grew stiff and tired in her stately pose, but didn’t dare lean back and relax. Hands clasped loosely in her lap she closed her eyes and murmured, “Harskari. Harskari, talk to me.”

  The amber eves opened and once again Aleytys felt with awe and almost terror the aura of immense age and wisdom projected by the presence of the sorceress waking inside her. “Do you mind?” Her whisper was a stammered apology for disturbing Harskari. “I need reassurance like a baby needs patting.” she breathed.

  “You’ve chosen your course, Aleytys.” The words were calm and unhurried. “What more do you want? Approval?” Aleytys sensed a mental shrug. “I gave the only advice I could. Consult Burash. You did and made this plan. Very well. Will it succeed? If I could read the future would I be here? Have you considered the needs and skills of the persons involved? Yes. Can you control chance events? No. If you fail now. can you try again, something else better suited to the situation having learned from experience? Yes. You know all this, it’s simply your nerves chittering at the delay. Relax. Sukall comes. She’ll be here in a minute.” The amber eves suddenly crinkled into a faint
smile. “One thing you did forget, child. The kipu’s instruments will detect the absence of the damper. No. Don’t fly into a panic. I can handle that for you.”

  Aleytys clenched her fingers into fists and expelled a lungful of air in a short explosive burst. “What else have I forgotten?”

  The yellow eyes blinked thoughtfully then snapped wide. “Sit up straight. Get yourself in hand. Sukall comes.”

  The tapestry rattled its rings and a red-clad guard stepped briskly into the room. When she saw Aleytys sitting with regal calm waiting for her, her stubby antennas jerked in surprise.

  “Good.” Aleytys spoke crisply before the guard could say a word. “I have serious complaints to lay before the kipu.”

  The guard jerked her eyes from Aleytys’ hands where her left thumb was rubbing slowly back and forth over the back of her right hand. She swallowed then stiffened into military rigidity.

  Just as the guard began to speak, Aleytys moved her hand in a small imperious gesture. “Key the lift,” she said, her voice cool and soft.

  Sukall hesitated a second, then marched to the wall, swept the tapestry aside, and slapped her palm over the inset square of milky glass. As the carved panel slid silently into the stone, Aleytys slipped from the chair, smoothed the folds of her robe, and walked with ostentatious grace past the guard into the tall narrow lift. Turning to face the doorway she compressed her lips into an impatient line and once more caressed the back of her hand with her thumb.

  Sukall glanced warily at the moving hands. She stepped inside, tapped the two-square, then faced front as the door slid shut and the floor began to rise beneath their feet. Aleytys disciplined sternly the thrill of fear that clutched briefly at her viscera, remembering.…

  “The old one always used it,” Burash said. “When she wanted to talk to the kipu. Until she was room-bound.”

  “What’s a lift?” Meeting his stare of surprise, Aleytys spread out her hands. “In my homeland, the fanciest machine we had was a creaky old water mill we used to grind flour and run thread spinners. We lived by the skill of our hands, the strength of our animals.”