Irsud

by Clayton, Jo;

  Like lice on a hog’s back the round black discs sat on spidery legs in thick clusters of gleaming machines redolent of power. Aleytys counted them. Fifty. Fifty obstacles to a clear break from this stifling hulking prison. Or perhaps an easy escape.…

  “Shadith,” she whispered. “Look at them. Could you fly one?”

  “If I could see the controls.” The violet eyes blinked thoughtfully.

  Aleytys thrust her hands into her sleeves and ambled with careful grace about the rooftop then stepped nimbly up the ramp and into the pit of a skimmer.

  The kipu watched with a frisson of nervous excitement that rapidly turned to amusement as Aleytys sat calmly in pilot’s seat running her eyes over the complex instruments.

  “Shadith?”

  The purple eyes narrowed into an intensely concentrated frown. After a minute the silver voice rippled into laughter. “A piece of cake. Maybe a little rough at first till I get the feel, but no problem.”

  Aleytys pottered around the skimmer another moment then stepped calmly down and with guard in close pursuit moved to the roof edge and leaned over the parapet looking down into her garden then out over the city, the wind blowing her hair about and tugging at the heavy silken material of her robe.

  “The streets are empty.” She looked over her shoulder at the kipu.

  A tight mirthless smile on her hatchet face, the kipu murmured, “Have you forgotten, Damiktana? Strange. Umusiriu. The day of the serpent. The shops are closed and the people are in the temple burning incense to the spirit of.…” She chuckled, a dry rusty sound. “But you know that.”

  “Ah. With one thing and another I’ve lost track of dates.” She straightened and sighed. “I fear I’m tired, rab’ kipu. Is there a lift down?”

  “Not from the roof.” Again amusement rippled through the deep voice. “A matter of security.” She moved away from the parapet. “However there is a lift from the barracks level.”

  CHAPTER XV

  “Leyta!”

  “Aleytys!”

  “Freyka!”

  The three voices roared inside her head jerking her out of a heavy Unnatural sleep. Mouth opening and closing idiotically she stumbled to her feet, swaying dizzily. She caught hold of the curtain to steady herself, rubbing her free hand across sleep-shut eyes. “Wha …” she muttered.

  “Get the fog out, freyka.” Swardheld’s bass roar rattled the cobwebs loose. “Company coming.”

  Dazedly Aleytys shook her head. “Company?”

  “Raiders.” She could feel his impatience and struggled to collect herself.

  “What should I do?” The words came out blurred.

  “What do you think?” His black eyes sparked irritation. “Get help. Wake Burash. Get out of here. Shift your feet, freyka.”

  The clear glass door suddenly darkened. Aleytys froze. She heard the faint sibilance as the door slid upward then saw dim black blurs flicker past the opening, oddly hard to see, outlines indistinct.

  “Freyka!” Swardheld prodded at her again. “Get him out!”

  Aleytys felt a shock drive through her body. “Burash! Run!” She repeated the words over and over as she shook him. His sleep felt unnaturally heavy to her then she finally grasped a sickness, a slowness in her own reactions. “Drugged … the food … Burash!” She threw herself across the bed and shook him, forgetting her own danger in her urgency. “Burash!” She shook him hard. “Wake up. Wake up. Try to wake up.”

  Hands closed around her ankles, strong fine fingers like wire ropes, pulling her away from him. She cried out, kicked futilely, but slid like greased meat across the bed, hands closing over her mouth before she could make another sound.

  Hands. Around face and arms, shoulders pulling against them, futile struggles, strength making a mockery of her efforts. Hands. One flipped out imperiously and like an extension of it a dark blurred form flitted silently around the end of the bed radiating death, cold, freezing cold, burning cold, hand closed around a black fang that shed the light and turned the eyes away.

  “Burash.” Aleytys screamed his name again but the sound was blocked by the nayid’s sandpapery hand. She bucked and twisted and kicked only to have her struggles lost in futility, her strength nothing against the wiry muscles of the raiders holding her.

  “Swardheld,” she cried into her head. “She’s going to kill him. Do something.” She twisted against the hands, struggled to cry out, struggled to wake Burash from the drugged sleep, struggled to alarm the guard … why wasn’t the guard in here already, couldn’t she hear?… a black arm swung up, the blackened sooty blade blurring against the pale lacy curtains. “Swardheld!”

  The hands holding her turned stiff and cold as an amber glow lit in her mind. She could hear the swift descending chime of the diadem’s musical notes as they wound down into inaudible subsonic vibrations that shook the inside of her bones. Surrounded by the amber, the black eyes opened and Swardheld flowed into her body.

  He pulled tentatively against the frozen fingers clamped around her arms, her face, her body, but they held like manacles. Flexing Aleytys’ body so he could use the power of her legs, he wrenched free from hold after hold, using knowledge and leverage to replace the strength he didn’t have. But it took time. Even in this strange frozen state. She felt a growing anxiety, a growing strain. The amber glow flickered uneasily and she felt rather than heard a thready “hurry.…”

  At last Swardheld managed to work the body free. He twisted around and plunged across the bed to the frozen tableau where the black knife touched Burash’s throat as he lay, eyes wide, face frozen into a grimace of dazed horror.

  Aleytys’ hands reached out and struggled to pull the knife from the clutching fingers, but once again the strength in her slender arms was insufficient. Swardheld grunted with disgust. He twisted her body around until it was lying on its back, feet raised, legs pulled against her chest. He slammed her feet into the assassin’s throat and knocked her over, still locked into her lethal crouch.

  “Hurry.” The whisper sounded urgent; the amber aura flickered in warning.

  “Helvete!” Swardheld snarled the word, Aleytys’ voice sounding hoarse, abrupt. He slid off the bed and caught hold of Burash’s cold stiff body and worked carefully toward the foot of the bed. As he moved, the diadem’s chime became audible and rose faster and faster to the silvery tones of norm-time. Rough in his urgency, Swardheld sent Burash’s loosening form sprawling off the end of the bed then he dived after him.

  He pulled the nayid male onto his feet and shoved him toward the doorway. “Get the guard.” Harsh and distorted because Swardheld spoke through her body, the words penetrated Burash’s drug-dulled mind. He stumbled hazily toward the archway.

  The five raiders ran at Aleytys, sooty knives swishing out of belt sheaths. Swardheld balanced on his toes … Aleytys’ toes … wary, grim, determined but doubtful, aware too clearly of the odds against survival, five nayid warrior females each one much stronger than the body he manipulated.

  He met the first lunge with a swinging kick and in recovery took out a second with an elbow to the throat. A sudden stinging pain drew a grunt from him as a knife he had no time to avoid slashed a shallow cut across the ribs. When he threw himself back a second knife slid into his side. He went down, thrown by the slippery film of Aleytys’ blood, stumbling over a body crumpled in a heap behind him.

  Breath whistling harshly through a straining mouth he hooked a foot out and brought down a third attacker. He clutched her bony form against Aleytys’ breasts and swung her into the path of the other raider’s slashing knife. A deadly numbness nailed him to the floor, so he focused his remaining energy on his arms, pulled the knife from his side and hamstrung a fourth attacker, at the same time emptying his lungs in a roar for help.

  Light suddenly replaced the darkness but the dazzle nearly finished him when the nayid still on her feet dived over him, driving her knife at his exposed throat.

  The tardy guard flattened the raider with the stun r
od seconds before the knife hit. Methodically she moved around the room, stunning any raider whose twitching showed her still alive. Finally she pulled the nayid’s body off Aleytys, sucking in her breath at the gaping wounds in the frail body. Hastily she snatched the call box from her belt and buzzed the kipu.

  The angry voice whined out of the small speaker. “What is it?”

  “Raid,” the young guard shrilled. “Five.…” She looked quickly around. “No. Six. Nightcrawlers. The Damiktana is alive but has two serious wounds, should have a doctor fast. The Amel Migru looks dead.”

  “Guard the door,” the kipu snapped. “I’ll be down with the doctor in minutes, let no one else in. No one! You hear?”

  “Im, rab’ kipu.”

  The guard’s words slid into Aleytys’ dazed brain. Amel Migru dead dead dead.… “No!”

  She meant to shriek the denial but the word came out in a broken whisper. She tried to sit up but her body was clumsy, a disjointed puppet with broken strings. “Burash.…”

  In her head Harskari’s contralto whisper cut through the fog that was gathering about her senses. “Heal yourself, Aleytys, Heal yourself, then you can help him. Hurry.”

  Numbly she recognized the truth in this and fumbled out of her magic river, for the black waters that rushed power into her hands. It was hard, too hard, her feeble reach dissolved and she slid toward a warm black velvety darkness.

  “Leyta!”

  “Aleytys!”

  “Freyka!”

  Three voices far, far off, shrill as insects’ buzzing, stung her out of her peace. She tried to lift a hand to brush them away but her arm was heavy, heavy, glued to the floor by the inexorable pull of the earth, warm earth, good earth, blood and bones, but the earth rejected her, a babble of a thousand voices pushed at her and the three buzzings grew louder and louder, then they all thrust her up out of the comfortable blackness.

  “Reach, Leyta.” Shadith’s voice dug at her.

  “Wake up, child.” The soft amber glow hardened, chilled, prodded at her, struck at her, jabbed her out of the peaceful haze.

  “Freyka!” Swardheld’s authoritative roar blew her up out of the soft enfolding warmth.

  “Lean on us, Aleytys.” Harskari’s contralto softened, beckoning her farther.

  She felt them holding her, saw them then not just as the symbolic image of amber purple black eyes.…

  Harskari. Tall, slender, skin smooth, dark, eyes golden and gleaming, silver hair a glowing mass of silky threads blowing, snapping in a silent wind, purple and scarlet gossamer veils edged in silver blowing about her slight elegant elongated figure.

  Shadith. Huge purple eyes, generous mouth, pointed face, small dainty elfin, more richly curved than the sorceress, incongruous in the drab olive suitliner, hair red gold curling exuberantly, a halo about her head, a sambar … elegant stringed instrument something like a lyre … held lightly against her side, resting in the curve of her left arm.

  Swardheld. Black hair, black eyes, reddish tan face crossed and recrossed with old scars, craggy irregular features, a body built for both speed and strength, long-fingered delicate hands, ironic intelligence in smile and eyes, a coarsely woven tunic reaching halfway down his thighs, a black steel sword on a battered baldric.

  Aleytys warmed to them, slid toward them, lips open in a claiming greeting.

  “Not yet.” Harskari held up a hand, palm outward and shook her head, the wild white hair exaggerating the movement, underlining the denial.

  Shadith, purple eyes tragic, shook her head. “Not yet,” she said, her voice a singing whisper.

  “Not yet.” Swardheld’s rumble was less distinct than usual. He held the black sword flat between them, barring her from them.

  “The river, child. Heal yourself. Look.” Harskari knelt and pulled at Aleytys. “Reach out. Lean on us. We’ll help you.”

  Aleytys felt the warmth of their hands on her, hot strength flowing into her aching leaden body. Reluctantly she turned her mind outward, away from the three … away … away … the power river flowed, leaped, called to her, called.…

  The earth teased her back, the soft black warmth beckoning; she sobbed with the pain of that longing but leaped out, plunged into the river and screamed with pain as her wounds ate like acid into her body, but the river flowed into her, healed her … she remembered the thing she had forgotten in the fogging of her own agony. “Burash.…”

  She opened her eyes. The guard was walking hastily, to the garden door, her back to Aleytys, still walking, all that … seconds passed … time was leaping, crawling in strange whorls.… Aleytys flopped onto her face and raised her aching body onto hands and knees to look around.

  Burash lay a foot away from her, one antenna limp, broken, pitiful, clotted with blood, a knife surrounded by blood froth protruding from his chest, bubbling, foaming blood rising and falling with the scarcely perceptible rise and fall of his chest.

  “Ahai, Madar!” Aleytys scrambled to his side and pressed her hands around the dagger, terrified at the feebleness of the life spark she felt through her palms.

  She sent the black water roaring through her hands to strengthen his laboring heart and steady the beat of life that tick-tocked within his brain.

  “The knife.…” She looked around. “The knife.” Dimly through the corner of the hanging curtain she saw the shadow form of the guard. “Come here,” she called urgently. “I need you.”

  The guard’s voice came back after a moment’s strained silence. “Wait,” she said. “Wait for the kipu.”

  Aleytys sobbed with frustration but she didn’t waste her time calling again. Not daring to move her hands she glared at the knife, “Ai-Madar, move! You. Move.” She cried out with frustration. “Harskari, Shadith, Swardheld, you moved my body once, help me, help me …!” But the roar of the energy flowing through her body drowned out the call. For the first time in an eternity she was totally alone, totally dependent on her own resources … the voices in her head … how she’d hated them once … once … a lifetime ago … two worlds back … the life under her hands flickered erratically … the warmth, the security they gave her … inaccessible … and she ground her teeth in frustration and wept in her agony but the voices were gone, the power futile, with the knife destroying the healing in the wound as fast as it started. “Out!” she screamed.

  Maybe one hand … she tried to pull a hand free but it clung to the flesh, tied to the agony of the flesh … she couldn’t free a hand … not a single hand … an eternity crept past between inhalations … the beat of life in him was tock-tocking slower and slower.…

  “Out. Damn you. Out.” she shouted at the quivering knife. “Get out of him.”

  The knife slid from the wound in slow jerks then swung in a smooth swoop that hurled it against the nearest wall. With aching satisfaction she regarded it briefly, dully, then went back to the dim flame she nursed inside the broken form under her hands. With painful slowness the wound closed.

  Shaking with exhaustion, she let the power flow dry to a gentle trickle. Dimly around her, behind her she sensed voices. Hands plucked at her shoulders but she ignored them, freeing her own hands at last from their desperate pressure on the pale pink wound-scar. Her fingers stuck together, her skin was crusty with dried blood. Flexing her fingers she touched the wreck of Burash’s graceful antenna, smoothing the soft delicate fibers, the sensory hairs that absorbed heat radiation from the air, that let him see, rather sense, living things in darkness or light.… It must be agonizing, she thought, that complex web of nerves, the pain.… She straightened the antenna out, touching it as delicately as possible, intimidated a little by the fragility under her fingers, then she let the power surge again and when she took her hands away the frond was whole, still clotted with blood, but whole.… She trailed her fingers down the side of his face and smiled into the newly opened eyes that reflected her in the hundreds of facets, bright with steady life pulse, for that brief instant only he and she existing in a universe to t
hemselves, a closed round golden sphere of shared joy. A brief instant.

  Aleytys stood up, staggering with tired cramped legs. Face smoothed into boredom and insolence, she looked around the charnel house her bedroom had become, disgusted at the sickening sweet smell of the decaying blood. The nightcrawlers lay stacked in a heap next to the wall, two, perhaps three, radiating stifled life, the others stiff and cold in death. Red guards shifted nervously from foot to foot, their dismayed black glances avoiding her constantly as if they couldn’t bear to look at her. More were outside prowling in the garden.

  Aleytys walked slowly to the bed and sat down, her body protesting the savage usage of the past hour. She looked down at herself. Red marks slowly turning purple streaked across the soft pale skin. She explored her body with the tips of her fingers, wincing as she touched the bruises. Smeared blood, pulling the skin like an astringent mask, drying along her ribs and buttocks, hiding the fading pink scars from the wounds, trickled onto her legs, matting the densely curling red-gold triangle of her pubic hair. She ran her fingers through the tangled clotted mass of red gold on her head, wrinkling her nose with disgust. Pulling the crumpled robe around her she stood up, walked silently through the circle of guards and stepped into the garden.

  “Well?” She dropped the short syllable like a stone into the pool of silence.

  The kipu turned to face her. “They came over the wall,” she said quietly. “That will be patrolled after this.” She moved past Aleytys and reentered the bedroom, glancing curiously at Burash who was getting slowly to his feet, darting her eyes back to Aleytys, swinging them finally to the austere gray-haired figure wearing the white of medicine standing silent just inside the archway. “Need the doctor see you, Damiktana? Or him?”

  Aleytys looked with distaste at the surgeon who had planted the egg in her, the memory hot and strong of that flesh time bomb set to destruct in a year … less than that now. “I think not,” she said.

  “Not an hour ago the both of you tilted on the edge of dying. I’d be most interested in hearing your explanation of that miraculous recovery.”