Diadem from the Stars

by Clayton, Jo;

  Aleytys nodded, not trusting her voice.

  He sawed the knife through the ropes around her ankles and pulled her to her feet. Pointing at the mare, he said, “Get on.”

  “How? I need my hands.”

  He laid the knife against her cheek. “You run.…”

  “Ahai! I know.” She held out her hands.

  10

  In the darkness of the caravan Aleytys tugged at the ropes that spread-eagled her across the cot “Ahai! Ai-Aschla.” She twisted her head and examined the house on wheels. “I’m in some kind of corner now.” She stretched her mind, glad to have that little bit of freedom again. Being locked inside her skull had given her a claustrophobic attack of the horrors.

  The sour miasma of fear and hatred hanging like a cloud over the camp brought her flinching back to herself. She replayed in her mind the ride into camp, remembering the sullen eyes, haggard faces, even the children wearing frightened ugly masks. What happened here? she wondered. What happened to Tarnsian?

  Footsteps thumped hollowly up the steps outside. The door opened and Tarnsian came in with a sleek, sated smile on his face, and Aleytys felt chilled once again as the power came rolling out of him in surging waves that suffocated her. She choked. Her nose was clogged again, dripping into her mouth, but that tiny irritation paradoxically proved to be her salvation, bringing her back up out of the suffocating blackness.

  He looked her over silently. Then he took off his vest and hung it over a chair and followed that with the broad black belt. Aleytys turned her head away to stare at the wall.

  He finished stripping and walked over to stand beside the bed. She felt him there but refused to look at him. With a nasty laugh, he tangled his fingers in her hair and forced her head around. “Don’t turn away from me,” he said mildly. He hooked a low stool over to him, sat down, and began stroking her hair as it slid past her shoulder and off the edge of the bed. “I wanted you once. You refused me, remember?” He drew his fingers down her cheek and nipped a bit of flesh between his fingernails. “Remember?”

  “Yes,” she said reluctantly, staring with blurred eyes at the sagging jowls of the face bending over her.

  “Yes what?”

  “I remember.” She shuddered. “I refused you.”

  “Nobody refuses me anything now.” His fingers played in her hair and slipped caressingly along the bone of her chin and down the graceful curve of her neck. “Nobody laughs at me now.” His fingers moved to the hollow at the base of her throat and stroked softly up and down. “The morning after the fireball the shrengo Paullo …” His hand slid around her throat and tightened painfully. “The shrengo Paullo threatened to geld me if I even looked at one of the taivan women.” He laughed and released her so that she could breathe again. She swallowed and swallowed again. Ignoring her distress, he went on. “Paullo’s dead. Lusuq bite, you see. And I’ve had every woman in camp. Even when he was still alive, his woman had my child in her.” He moved his hand down, caught her nipple between his thumb, and forefinger. With a soft giggle he squeezed so hard that he drew a grunt of pain from her spit out from between clenched teeth.

  Calmly he started to fondle her breasts. To Aleytys’s shame her body responded automatically to the friction of his moving hands. Furious with herself, she forced her awareness to a frozen place deep inside where feeling was a far-off thing. From that vast distance she felt his weight come on top of her, felt him in her, moving in her.

  Then he was slapping and biting at her, beating at her numb body and face with his fists. “Gesaya-yag—whore, feel! Feel, bitch, feel. Feel!” His voice rose into a shrill hysterical scream. Numb and helpless, she felt her lip split and blood start trickling down her face. Then her nose smashed and the pain penetrated to her cloister so that she slid off into total unconsciousness.

  Hate … fear … terror … lust … as she drifted into pain-seared awareness again, Aleytys cringed from the emotions that simmered thickly in the pungent air. She was thrown in the corner of the caravan, aching in a dozen places, fouled with Tarnsian’s juices. In the moonlight streaming through the small window she saw the figures writhing on the cot. Turning away, turning over, trying to shut out the sight and the sounds—the sickening mélange of lust, hate, fear, pain swirling like foul smoke over the cot—she huddled in the corner with cramps twisting her stomach until she vomited again and again. Exhausted in body and spirit, she retreated into the warm blackness of unconsciousness.

  Feeling nothing, thinking nothing, hearing, seeing, touching nothing in the blackness of unknowing, a point source of light blinked on and rapidly spread into an image of a man walking pensively down a narrow roadway whose white sand glowed eerily in the moonlight Tarnsian. Wearing an abba and sandals instead of caravaner dress. Passively viewing the unreeling dream, Aleytys felt a tinge of wonder at that.

  He slapped his foot down flat on the sand, picked it up, looked at the print he’d made, laughed, walked on. The road wound through the cliffs, then continued along the river as the valley opened out. The tangled raushani thicket gave way to the horans. Tarnsian cursed as the unaccustomed skirts twisted around his ankles. Dejectedly he sank down on a horan root and dropped his head into his hands. He drew in a deep breath and eventually leaned back against the trunk, hands clasped loosely between his knees, his face haggard and unhappy. “I did something,” he said hoarsely. “I finally did something.”

  Restless black eyes roamed over the sleeping countryside, then he smiled. Sitting up straight, he summoned a late-moving lusuq so that it shot out of the night on whirring wings and settled on his outstretched forefinger. Moonlight shimmered on its glassy iridescent wings and glittered off the spiny carapace. He lifted his hand to eye-level and laughed triumphantly.

  “Small friend. Deadly small friend.” He lifted his hand out away from him, ready to hurl the insect to the ground and crush it with his heel. Then he hesitated.

  “It’s not your fault, small one. You only follow your nature.” Still holding the lusuq quiescent on his finger, he pushed himself back on his feet and strolled on down the road. “For the first time in my life, farenti lusuq, I was the doer not the pillow they beat. Ay-yag, lusuq, what’s it feel like, having the power to kill who you choose?”

  He halted, startled by the dark broth beginning to brew up in him. “So many years,” he mused, kicking on through the sand. “Sheman. Gryman. Siani, feed the horses. Siani, fix the yara. Despise me. Stay away from the women, slime. Don’t touch my food; go eat with the whores, Siani. Your ma was a whore, Siani. Do this, sheman. Do that. Even Marya, whining. ‘Love me, Siani, love me.’ Love!”

  He smiled suddenly, his eyes glittering in the double moons’ light like the chitinous armor of the bug on his finger. “Paullo. A few chigra in his bed.…” He giggled. Looking down at the lusuq, he whispered, “Farenti lusuq, how’d you like to stick your tail in Paullo’s face?” A stray cloud passed over Aab’s face so that the night darkened suddenly. He sighed. “Talle d’ purg, lusuq.” He lifted his hand to flick the insect away.

  A small stone came sailing out of the darkness and caromed off his shoulder. He wheeled.

  Charoh skipped out of the black shadow under the trees. He stood in the middle of the road and laughed at Tarnsian. “Sheman,” he chanted in a high shrill voice. “Sheman wearing skirts. Wait till I tell, wait till …”

  Panic spurted through the empath. He still wore the abba and sandals betraying his complicity in Zavar’s plot to free the dream-singer. Without stopping to think, he flipped his forefinger, casting the stickyfoot straight into Charoh’s face, and stood gasping, trembling, yelling with his mind, Killllll.…

  The lusuq sank the barbs on its six feet deep into the boy’s flesh, then drove the poison sting in its long flexible tail into his cheek again and again. Finally it jerked itself loose, whirred up into the air, and darted off.

  The boy screamed once as the sting sank in the first time, then collapsed in a writhing heap on the sand. Tarnsian stared down a
t him, shattered by the sickening mixture of hate, fear, triumph that stirred in him. At the same time, like the pleasant flow from rich red meat, the boy’s savage pain flooded him, woke in him a terrible joy and a salty taste at the back of his throat like the beginnings of thirst.

  With a last breathy cry, the boy straightened out rigid as a metal rod. He held this strained position for a moment, then his body collapsed in on itself. It lay on the ground like a doll with the stuffing fallen out. It. Not he. Not anymore. Tarnsian felt the strain dissipate inside his body. His shoulders lowered from their taut defensive lift, his spine curved, his face softened. It, he thought. It. A thing. He touched the thing with his toe and it resisted the pressure soggily.

  Licking dry lips, he knelt beside the body. Its face was beginning to swell. He touched its cold skin with revulsion. Put his hand on its shoulder; it was like touching wood. He shuddered and wiped his sweaty palm on the abba. “I’ve got to get him back. Can’t leave him here.” He ran the hand that hadn’t touched the body through his hair. “Can’t touch it … Paullo!” The name exploded out of him. “He’ll kill.…”

  Fear nauseated him. Hands pressed against his eyes, he struggled to control the bitter fluxing of his emotion. Breathing heavily, he lowered his hands onto his knees and licked dry lips. Eyes on the thing in front of him, he ran through his mind all the torment, all the mockery, all the petty cruelties he’d suffered from this boy. A cold hard satisfaction bloomed somewhere deep down inside him, deep where it was dark and powerful. Slowly he felt power beating inside him like dark moth wings.

  Tarnsian stood up and walked swiftly away, grains of sand pattering down on the road as his moving legs jarred them off the swinging abba.…

  The blackness closed in again, the passive consciousness of the viewer sinking gently into the comforting nothingness.…

  11

  The suns were high when she woke. Tarnsian came in with a bucket of water and some rags. He cut her free and shoved them into her hands. “Clean up this mess,” he grunted.

  Pausing in the doorway, he said, “We’re rolling in three minutes. Throw the water out the door when you finish.”

  She watched him stump out of the caravan, then used the water first to wash herself. “Ai-Aschla,” she gasped as she touched her mangled face. Hobbling painfully across the narrow space between the walls, she stooped and looked into the mirror.

  Her face was a grotesque lumpy mask with black eyes extending in purple glory over her cheekbones, nose a smashed, distorted purple lump, upper lip gashed deeply and swollen to three times its normal size. “Aschla’s claws! He sure made a mess of me.” She touched her nose and winced as pain stabbed into her brain, then looked back into the mirror. “Ahai! I’m ugly.” Shuddering, she dropped onto the cot and stared at the stinking smears of vomit, feeling black depression chilling in her stomach.

  The stench from the vomit finally made it impossible to sit any longer. Reluctantly she sloshed the rag in the water and mopped at the mess on the floor, almost vomiting again as the smell coiled in her throat. Once again the cold clogging her nose was a blessing, cutting down the stench to bearable strength. She scrubbed the floor clean and tossed the water out the door, sighing with relief as it splashed to one side of the trail taking the smell and to some extent the uncomfortable memories of the night with it. She stood in the door a while and watched the thickly growing trees slide past on both sides. For a minute she considered jumping, then the black wings fluttered and she gasped, catching desperate hold on to the doorjamb to keep from being thrown under the clawed feet of the following yara.

  Hastily she shut the door, her hands shaking and her stomach cramping again. She stumbled to the cot and collapsed on the soiled blankets, wincing as the pain in her face stabbed at her. She probed at the sore spots with the tips of her fingers. She thought of Daimon’s mate and wondered.

  Lying back on the couch, she turned her attention inward, sliding into the deep tranced outreach where heat flowed back and forth like tongues of flame over her aching flesh, then she was immersed within the cool soothing waters of a vast black river.…

  After a while the trance transmuted into sleep and she dozed during the morning leg of the journey.

  The caravan jolted to a stop. Aleytys woke and lay blinking, forgetting for the moment where she was, then the bitter taste of slavery poured back, bringing with it the image of her mutilated face. She prodded at her nose and grinned as she felt the familiar straight slim bone. Scrambling eagerly onto her feet, she hurried to the mirror.

  The purple bruises were gone. So were the lumps. Even the cut on her lips was healed without a trace. Once again she ran an exultant finger down the smooth straight line of her nose. She was herself again, the ugly monster of the morning only a bad dream.

  Tarnsian pushed the door open and walked in. Aleytys backed against the wall, watching him with sick apprehension. “On the bed,” he said tersely.

  When she hesitated, he punched her in the stomach, hard, so that waves of pain spread through her body. Trembling, she lay on the cot and waited for him. He unbuttoned and took her without preliminaries, but Aleytys retreated immediately into the warm blackness where he didn’t exist. She let him have her body, a flaccid doll body empty of spirit.

  He slapped her, yelling hoarsely. But the more he clawed at her with mind and hands, the farther she retreated. When he ended, she was gone fathoms deep hi the center of her being where nothing could reach her, nothing could touch her.

  That day passed. Then another. Until day faded into day into day and she sank into a daze. Whenever he came to her she let him take her without a struggle, and she retreated into that dark place until he was thrusting into a limp, unresponsive body about as exciting as a rag doll. Eventually he kicked her out of his caravan, but even then he wouldn’t let her go.

  Aleytys stole blankets and a square of tufan from one of the other caravans and waited till the family were gathered around the supper fire sullenly consuming the bowls of stew that the dispirited women prepared. From another she took a blouse and a pair of pants. From a third she took boots that would fit her. Then she went to the whores’ fire and shared their food. She spread the tufan under their caravan and slept there more happily than in Tarnsian’s bed.

  The banibaccivaso never looked at her even when she walked close; they wouldn’t talk to her or acknowledge her presence in any way. The slave women made the horns with their fingers to avert bad luck, but they were such beaten-down drudges they hadn’t spirit enough to rebel against her presence.

  “At first she sat on the steps of the slave caravan when the caravaners moved in their daily stages from camp to camp. Then she grew bolder, cut the black stallion Mulak out of the horse herd, and openly took a saddle and bridle for him. Each time she climbed into the saddle, though, she found that Tarnsian hadn’t forgotten her. The blackness clamped down on her mind and stayed there until she dismounted. He would not let her go.

  After several days in dry camps the taivan drew up in a large clearing beside the biggest, noisiest river she had ever seen.

  Aleytys took a towel and soap from one of the caravans and carried her gleanings down the river until she came to a deep pool screened from the camp by an upthrust of rock and a thick stand of young bydarrakhs. Stripping off the blouse and trousers, she plunged into the water and began scrubbing at her skin. Even though Tarnsian hadn’t touched her for some time she still felt unclean. With sand and soap she scrubbed herself until her skin glowed pink and tingled pleasantly. Then she lathered her hair and rinsed the soap away, splashing water over her head until she was laughing and gasping from the inundation.

  With a sigh of pleasure, she climbed out of the water and sat on the grass toweling her hair, getting the heavy mass as dry as possible. Her cold had healed itself with the bruises, but she didn’t want to take too many chances. She glanced at the rock that hid the camp and sighed. No escape. No place to go. Not here.

  She slipped back into the b
louse and trousers and spread the towel to dry beside her. Hands clasped around her legs, chin on knees, hair spread out over her shoulders to finish drying, she watched the water flow past her toes and considered the past days. “I seem to be a survivor type. Mother, wherever you are, at least you birthed me tough,” she murmured.

  The moving water soothed her so that her body rhythms slowed, her mind calmed, the thoughts gliding along one after another like beads on a worry string. Seven more days, she thought, seven more days to the Massarat. He has to make a mistake sometime. Madar, how strong he is. I can’t fight him. Ahi, ai-Aschla, may he grow careless one minute.… Just give me one minute’s edge.…

  She sat on the grass luxuriating in the warmth from the suns hanging low over the mountains, enjoying the good clean feeling on her skin and in her hair. She breathed in, out. The water coiled around her brain as she watched it slip past, hissing softly around the impeding rocks. The changing shapes, blue and green shadows, the shallow lines engraved on the surface, always the same, always different, captured her senses until deep inside the dark heart of her being she began to feel glad to be alive. She breathed in a deep lungful of the late afternoon air. Good to be alive.…

  Her mind skipped back to Vajd. Once again she saw him standing beside her, moonlight carving deep lines in his face, his hand trembling on her thigh. “Hate makes things ugly,” he said then. She could hear his deep gentle voice. Even when I forget his face, she thought, I’ll remember his voice, the touch of his hands. I was so innocent then, giggling through the halls with Vari. It was a good life, she thought, a few bad times, that’s all. They protected me, my friends … Ziraki and Suja and Zavar and even funny little Twanit, and dear, dear Chalak.… She remembered them all, cherishing the memory, chuckling warmly in appreciation.

  “So you can still laugh!” The shrill voice broke in on her thoughts and she sprang to her feet, wheeling to face the woman behind her, startled that one of the baccivaso would speak to her. Marya stood a few feet away, eyes huge and glittering in her thin strained face.