Irsud

by Clayton, Jo;

  The peithwyr dropped like a bomb. Desperately, she drove her body away, still trying to get the gun free.

  The peithwyr dropped, talons glittering in the russet light.

  Pain. Not her throat. Her shoulder. Pain. It thrust her toward the comforting blackness pooling beneath the agony. Her shoulder was on fire. Fire spread outward from the white-hot center where a pumping artery spurted away her strength. Scarcely noticed, wings beat over her then veered off. As she faded, she heard a crunching of bones. The peithwyr crouched dark and ominous, tearing at the kaffa. Her sight blurred. Blackness was warm, the pain distant, a great grinding agony distant … her life spurted away through the torn artery.

  Something prodded at her.

  Amber eyes opened inside her head. “Aleytys!” The contralto voice was familiar … familiar … she didn’t want to know …

  Memory was a flood of agony She wanted to deny it but she had no strength. “Harskari.” Aleyty’s lips moved with the name. “Why?” A cone of red licking out. Killing. Killing my love. Why?

  Black eyes opened. “Freyka!”

  Go away. I don’t want you. I won’t let you … I won’t acknowledge you … I won’t …

  Delicate chimes whispered around her head, delightful butterfly notes singing around the sounds from the gorging peithwyr. The amber eyes altered. A thin, dark face framed in shimmering silver hair formed around them. “Aleytys! Heal yourself. Now, girl. You can rest later.”

  “No.” The word was harsh in her mind through her trembling lips moved with only a breath of sound. She tried to reject the presence, feeling a pain that went far deeper than the simple physical hurt from her mangled shoulder.

  Violet eyes snapped with annoyance as a pointed elfin face materialized around them. Shadith’s aureole of coppery curls quivered like tiny springs. “Move ass, Lee. You can wallow in self-pity when you’ve got the leisure for it. Come on, let us help you. Lean on us. Reach out for your river. Come on, dammit! Reach!”

  Cool, ironic black eyes slanting down at the outer corners set in a rugged, intensely male face, Swardheld grinned at her. “Glad to see you with us again, freyka. Now!” He narrowed his eyes, then bellowed, “Move it, woman!”

  Prodded by the phantom images in her head, Aleytys focused her mind on reaching for the black river that fed her talents. And as she reached, she felt phantom arms cradling her body, lending her the strength she lacked. She shuddered with that wrenching psychic pain inflicted by the memory of love and death. Weakly, she tried to push the memory away, shutting out the three in her head along with it. For a moment the hands supporting her faltered, seemed to retreat. No. The word roared at her. No. Don’t shut us out. Not again.

  The black water came pouring over her. She writhed and shrieked … pain … pain … tearing at her … and worse … tormenting itch as the torn flesh grew back. As blood cells doubled and redoubled. Then the thunder of the water died to a whisper.

  “Aleytys.” The quiet word vibrated through her head. “Remember Irsud. Remember that ill-fated world. Remember Burash, your lover. Face your anguish. Don’t run away from it again. You’re a woman, not a child.”

  “No …”

  The peithwyr beat its way into the sky, sending great gouts of wind to batter her. Then it dropped again, talons reaching for her, screaming, a battering of sound that shocked thought from her head.

  The diadem chimed, and the air turned stiff. Aleytys shuddered as dead men’s faces came tumbling back, triggered into consciousness by the sound. And Swardheld shoved her aside, knocking her loose from her body, shouting, “Verdamn, freyka, move over!”

  He flipped her body over the nearest boulder, diving with a smooth continuation of the movement to end on his feet behind the plummeting bird. The diadem chimed again.

  The peithwyr squalled with rage and muscled its great body around.

  Swardheld cursed and jerked the tunic up, snatching the energy gun from the waistband of her trousers. As the monster dived toward him, he cleared the sensor and sent the thin red beam searing first into the chest region, then, with his usual calm accuracy, he sent the ruddy beam into the mad eyes of the beast. Immediately, he leaped the body back, wheeled it, put six meters between body and dying bird, dropped body behind one of the piled boulders and waited.

  The peithwyr tumbled out of control, cracking the air with shrieks of pain and rage. Then it fell onto the rock and writhed, snapping haphazardly, tearing at its own flesh. Grinning his triumph, Swardheld let go his hold on her body.

  With the weakening cries behind her, Aleytys slid back into control and tried to get to her feet. Her legs were so weak she fell, bruising her knees. She felt sick.

  Shaking, she pulled herself onto the boulder, pushed her legs back against the stone and leaned forward, resting her head on her hands, elbows pressed against her knees, breathing in great shuddering gasps that wrenched her body. Gentle hands, immaterial hands, moved over her, comforting her.

  Harskari materialized in her head. “Aleytys, look to the boy. He might be still alive.”

  “Ahai Madar!” She pushed up on wobbly legs and stumbled across to the second kaffa.

  The cerdd was crouched behind his mount, blood seeping sluggishly from the shredded flesh of his back. He lay very still.

  Grimacing with distaste, Aleytys knelt beside the pool of blood and touched him. Life beat faintly under her fingers. Arching her body over the blood to keep the sticky mess off herself, she placed her hands on the cerdd’s back and let the healing power flow.

  After awhile, back aching from the unnatural position, she straightened. Gwynnor’s flesh was whole again, the only sign of the savage wounds a faint pink tracery crossing the thick, grayish fuzz growing on the pale skin of his body.

  He blinked and sat up, looking at her, eyes staring wildly, he quickly focused on the gelatinous blood pooled around him. He tugged at his tattered tunic and glanced briefly at the bloody rags that barely covered her torso.

  Uncomfortable in the silence, Aleytys said abruptly, “I heal.”

  “So I see.” He chuckled, a sudden flash of humor born from his near-brush with death. “The peithwyr?”

  Aleytys jumped up and looked back across the stone. “Still dying.”

  Holding onto her, Gwynnor pulled himself onto his feet and stared at the slowly writhing form of the killer bird. “How?”

  She touched her waist. “Energy gun.”

  “Come on.” He scrambled over the corpse of the kaffa and began tearing at the saddle bags.

  “What’s the hurry?”

  “Its mate. We might not be lucky a second time.” He pulled the knots loose and swung the waterskin over his shoulder, the bags over another. Aleytys hurried to follow his example.

  As they moved along a path, clinging to the side of a ravine that opened out a few meters from the battered corpses of the kaffan and the still struggling peithwyr, Aleytys glanced nervously at the sky. “You think the peithwyr won’t see us down here?”

  Gwynnor shrugged, then edged around a curve, pressing his body tight against the side wall. His voice came back to her. “Be careful. The stone is crumbling badly here.”

  After they negotiated the dangerous area, Gwynnor said suddenly, “Their wing spread’s too great. We should be safe as long as this keeps going in the right direction.” Then he added, “I think.”

  She looked back at the sun, still stubbornly high above the western horizon, fully visible even from the depths of the ravine. “How long till sunset?”

  “Four, five more hours. Why?”

  “I’m about out of push. My home world has a shorter day. And the standard one I’ve got used to since is shorter than that.”

  “Oh.”

  A shattering scream battered at them. The peithwyr’s mate, wings folded back, plunged at them in a steep suicidal dive.

  “Swardheld.” Aleytys surrendered her body, scarcely waiting to be sure he heard. Black eyes blazing, he took her body, snatched the gun from her trous
er belt. An eye shot. Then he scrambled back frantically to avoid the plummeting body.

  Breathing hard, Gwynnor and Aleytys stumbled around a bend in the ravine, the screams and papery rattle of the dying bird following them.

  Gwynnor eyed the blunt, ugly gun with a touch of envy. “If we had those instead of …” He flicked contemptuous fingers over the butt of the darter shoved behind his belt.

  Aleytys shuddered, still loathing the feel of the deadly thing. She thrust it away and pulled her tunic down. “The Captain couldn’t sell them to you,” she said quietly, absently. She breathed a swift flash of gratitude to Swardheld, felt his answering grin, then moved away from the wall and continued along the bottom of the ravine. “The Company men would hunt him down without mercy if he did that. You, too, and your companions. So be grateful the situation is as it is.”

  “Tchah!”

  Behind them, the peithwyr tore at the stone and groaned as it fought death fiercely. The sound lessened and died away as they turned more corners in the torturously winding ravine.

  “Will we reach the edge of the plateau anytime soon?”

  “No.” He stumbled, caught himself, then rearranged the straps of the waterskins and the saddlebags. “We have to change the plan. There’s not enough water to go the way you wanted. And we can’t move as fast as the kaffon. So we head due east. Should get to the edge in a couple of days. Can you climb?”

  Aleytys was silent a minute. She let Gwynnor draw ahead, then narrowed her eyes and unfocused them. “Harskari. Shadith. Swardheld.”

  Three faces blinked into being. Harskari looked a little impatient. “What is it?”

  “Any of you mountain climbers?”

  Swardheld grinned. “I was born in the mountains, Leyta. Remember? No damn rock I can’t climb. Once …”

  “Heaven forfend we hear another of your stories, old growler.” Shadith’s voice was gently mocking.

  Harskari turned cool, amber eyes on her companions and they quieted immediately. “Why, Aleytys?”

  “Though I was born a mountain girl, I never climbed anything. Raqsidani women weren’t allowed to. Now it looks like I’ll have to go down a cliffside.”

  As Gwynnor walked along waiting for his answer, he realized that the silence had gone on too long. He looked around. The star-woman was standing slumped against the side of the ravine, her eyes half shut, her mouth moving soundlessly. Talking? To someone? To something? He shivered in sudden, superstitious fear. Reluctantly, he edged closer.

  She opened her eyes and smiled at him. “Yes.” Her voice was a warm contralto that he found gentle on his music-starved ears. “I can climb.” She pushed away from the wall of rock. “I was born in the mountains.”

  She walked beside him, her stride long and free, one accustomed to walking, not like those feeble types from the city. More and more he felt confused by her. He couldn’t fit her anywhere among those in his experience, not as enemy and certainly not as friend. And how could anyone be neutral about her? The wind blew over her and brought him her complex scent, a tart-sweet smell that disturbed … excited … She was taller than he was, had a look of completeness about her, of knowing who she was and what she was, needing no one, nothing. He envied her and distrusted her. Wanted her. Despaired. She seemed to point up all the things he found wrong in himself. Sunk in the melancholy gloom that was the curse of his temperament, he plodded wordlessly beside her.

  “Any more of those devils about?”

  He looked at her, startled to hear her break the silence. She smiled and the knot began dissolving inside him. Tentatively, he smiled back. “They have a kind of nest-clan arrangement. Several pairs together. So we’d better keep watch. Holy Maeve be blessed, they don’t fly about after dark.”

  “That’s a relief.” She raised her hands high above her head, stretching and twisting to relieve muscles held too taut too long. “I wasn’t looking forward to shivering under my blankets waiting for old big mouth to descend on me.” A sudden thought sent her eyes to his. “Or do you have worse mouths that inhabit the night?”

  He grinned at her, obscurely pleased by this evidence of her mortality. “Only snakes. They like your body warmth and crawl under the blanket with you.”

  “My god.” Shaking her head, the starwoman shortened her stride to match his and paced down the winding and deepening ravine toward the haunt of the rising sun.

  Chapter III

  The meager fire glowed red and gold in the blackness. Aleytys felt its gentle heat bathing her face as she stared at the constantly altering patterns of dark and light.

  “There’s no need to keep watch.”

  She looked up. Gwynnor’s eyes shone phosphorescent green in the firelight. She smiled. “Your night’s too long for me. I need to do some thinking before I sleep.”

  He lay down and pulled the blanket over his head, his feet pointing toward the fire. Almost between breaths he was asleep.

  With a sigh, she tucked her blanket around her and hugged her knees, staring into the flames, hypnotized into mind blankness until she shrugged herself out of the haze. “Harskari,” she whispered.

  Amber eyes opened, blinked, then the thin, clever face smiled out of the darkness in her mind. “Aleytys.”

  “I’ve been remembering.”

  “I know.”

  “Why did you all stop talking to me?”

  The wind was strengthening, whispering across the coals and blowing alternate gusts of warm and cold air past her face. Small pieces of grit pattered against the blanket.

  Harskari shook her head, her white mane shifting like silk. “We didn’t. You were so hurt by the nayid male’s death that you couldn’t handle it. You transferred the guilt you felt to us and took the only revenge you could by totally denying our existence. You forgot us and sealed us off from contact at the same time. I don’t think you know your strength, Aleytys.”

  Aleytys dropped her head on her arms, burying her face in the folds of the blanket, grieving because she was not grieving. But too much time had passed. Once there had been first affection, then a deep love shared. Now there was only a faded memory as if all that had happened to someone else. Was this all love came to? She tried to find a trace of that tumultuous warmth in herself, but there was nothing. Too much time. She sighed, brushed a hand over her face, and stared back into the glowing coals. “So when I was close to dying, you could get through again.”

  “Yes. You needed us.”

  “I’ve just about got straight in my head what happened since I left Jaydugar. What about you?”

  “To see your world, we look through your eyes. But there are other worlds and other ways of looking.”

  “Oh.” Aleytys glanced briefly at Gwynnor’s sleeping form, then lifted her eyes to the brilliantly lit sky. A huge pale moon thrust up over the eastern horizon, filling half the sky with its milky glow. The air was cold, thin and sharp and invigorating, biting the fog out of her mind. “That doesn’t really answer my question.”

  Harskari chuckled. “Yes, young Aleytys, we know what you’ve been doing.”

  Abruptly, Aleytys felt very good, her body ticking like a fine watch. She laughed and patted her mouth as the laugh turned into a yawn. “Harskari?”

  “What is it?”

  “On Jaydugar, we made a mess of the nomad clan. On Lamarchos, I got involved with Loahn and the Horde, Kale and his complicated plots, until the whole damn world was crushed under dead bodies. On Irsud, I stuck my nose into the hiiri’s fight with the nayids, though the nayids asked for it. The outcome was that I destroyed a large part of the nayid population. So here we are on Maeve, in the company of a cerdd who is helping wage an undeclared war. Makes you think.”

  “It does, indeed,” Harskari chuckled, a gentle affectionate sound, “considering past performance.”

  “Damn.” Aleytys yawned again. “I’ll probably have nightmares.”

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jo Clayton (1939–1998) was the a
uthor of thirty-five published novels and numerous short stories in the fantasy and science fiction genres. She was best known for the Diadem Saga, in which an alien artifact becomes part of a person’s mind. She also wrote the Skeen Trilogy, the Duel of Sorcery series, and many more. Jo Clayton’s writing is marked by complex, beautifully realized societies set in exotic worlds and stories inhabited by compelling heroines. Her illness and death from multiple myeloma galvanized her local Oregon fan community and science fiction writers and readers nationwide to found the Clayton Memorial Medical Fund.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1978 by Jo Clayton

  Cover design by Andy Ross

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-3841-6

  This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

  180 Maiden Lane

  New York, NY 10038

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