Diadem from the Stars

by Clayton, Jo;

  “Laugh at this,” she hissed. A knife glinted red in Horli’s light as she flung out a thin bare arm.

  Aleytys gasped. “Marya,” she stuttered. “Wh-what—” She backed to the water’s edge. “Why?”

  Marya pressed her lips together. She lowered her arm slightly while a muscle twitched at the corner of her mouth. Panting deep breaths stirred the soft folds of avrishum over her breasts, then she spoke softly, the words dropping like acid into the lovely late afternoon. “Why? My son is dead. My man is dead.”

  “Hai?” Aleytys stared at her, bewildered. “That’s got nothing to do with me.”

  “You! Because of you. Because of you!” Marya’s voice rose to shrillness again. She clamped her trembling lips together. Aleytys could see her neck muscles working as she swallowed. “Why’d you bring your curse on us? Tarns’n, he was a good man. A gentle man. You spoiled him.” Swaying a little, eyes closed, she sucked in a series of short ragged breaths.

  Aleytys took a step toward her, but Marya’s black eyes popped open.

  “No,” she shrilled. “Stay away. Don’t touch me.” She lifted the knife higher. “You touch him there in the Raqsidan and he change. I have his child here.” She splayed her free hand across her body. “Because of you … because of you I lay with the killer of my son.… Because of you I bear the child of the killer of my son … the killer of my man.” She shuddered and fixed her straining desperate eyes on Aleytys. “I can’t forget. When he love me. When I sleep. I can’t forget I dream and dream and wake and remember. Now I give you something to bless your nights. Something to remember all your life … all your stinking life.” Her voice got shriller and shriller, while she seemed to expand with the pain and hate and anger working inside her.

  Aleytys shrank back, keeping her eyes on the knife.

  Marya laughed. “Watch, witch woman. I know I can’t hurt you. Keep your evil eye on this. Dream of me!” Still laughing, she clasped both hands around the hilt of the dagger and plunged it into her stomach. As gouts of blood poured out, she slammed down on her knees with her mouth stretched in a wide mirthless smile. Then she raised the knife again and split her heart.

  Aleytys gasped in horror. Reluctantly, step by hesitant step, she walked to the huddled body. It had a curiously diminished look. She shivered. It didn’t look like anything that had ever been living. It looked dead. Flattened. As if made of something other than flesh. She knelt beside—She couldn’t think of this meat as Marya. The eyes were open with a dull glazed look. Already flies were crawling in and out of the gaping mouth.

  Dazedly Aleytys lifted her hand. The palm was smeared with blood. She whimpered and wiped it frantically on the grass. The drying blood smelled musty and a little sweet. Her stomach shifted queasily while her eyes seemed stuck on the dead face. She looked and looked and whimpered, shaking, wrapping her arms around her knees, and rocked herself back and forth, back and forth, tears slipping silently down, her contorted face. “One … two … three … four … one two … three four … one … two … three … four …” she whispered. “Vajd … Talek … Marya … him … cursed … cursed … cursed … Paullo … the Sha’ir … the tracker … the boy.… One … two … three … four … how many more.…”

  “Yaggrya!” She looked up as the hoarse exclamation broke momentarily through her anguish. Tarnsian wavered in front of her eyes, “One two three four, one two three four, one two three four,” she chanted.

  “What happened here?”

  “One two three four, one two three four … cursed …” she chanted, swaying back and forth on her buttocks.

  “Bitch, what happened!” He slapped her across the face until she collapsed in a sobbing heap. “Ayatt!” He kicked the body in the ribs, watching its white arms flop about. With a grunt, he bent and buried his hands in the long black hair. Pulling the body across the grass, he dumped it into the river. Then he stood impatiently and watched it glide away, turning over and over in the water, alternating the spread-out web of black hair with the set white face. After it vanished around a bend, he turned back to Aleytys.

  She looked up at him out of wide animal eyes.

  “Get up,” he snapped. When she sat without moving, he growled impatiently and wrapped his hand in her hair. He pulled her with a jerk onto her feet and slapped her into a stumbling walk back to the camp. As she walked he could hear a whispered “One two three four.…”

  12

  The line of caravans wound silently along the side of the mountain, lurching over the ruts and rumbling slowly along the rocky track. Dull-eyed and sunk in a bottomless lethargy, Aleytys rode behind Tarnsian’s caravan, slouched in the saddle and moving unconsciously in rhythm with Mulak’s restless stride. She wore stained and faded trousers, a ragged blouse that was no more ragged than the dirty, brittle lusterless hair tied in a straggling tail at the base of her neck with a worn leather thong. Her feet were bare and calloused, gray with ground-in dirt and sweat.

  Mulak tossed his head and pranced a little, bored with the plodding progress. Aleytys tightened her knees automatically and pulled him back to the stodgy pace of the clumsy wagons. She moved her shoulders absently, trying to ease the fall of the cloth over her aching back. Then she subsided into the mindless daze that was her only refuge from the pain and horror that filled her nights and much of her days.

  The mountains sloped down and opened out. The caravans turned a corner and began rumbling down toward a wide green valley. A big slow river bisected the valley. Twin rows of blocky white houses with steeply pitched rust-brown roofs marched in placid symmetry along both banks. Most of the houses had an extension built on pilings ending in a small pier thrusting out into the river. Two dusty streets curving along the housefronts were dotted with bustling pedestrians. There were none of the huge clan houses that characterized he Raqsidan, but the familiar horans glittered among the houses.

  Tarnsian’s caravan came to the T-crossing that led into the valley. Behind him the other caravans began slowing in preparation for the turn. He clucked to the yara and drove past. Following numbly behind, Aleytys thought nothing of this until a shout came from several of the caravaners behind her. She shook herself out of her lethargy and looked around.

  Four or five of the men were running their yara off the road. They swept past her, sending Mulak into a nervous dance, and paced beside the lead caravan. Tarnsian looked coldly at them and pulled his team to a stop.

  Aleytys sent Mulak sidling back away from the noisy scene.

  The baccivash Maleyan wound his reins around the chook and leaped down. Followed by the other men, he strode angrily and a little hesitantly to Tarnsian. He stopped by the driver’s seat and looked up at the frowning man. “This is the vadi Massarat, Z’rau.” His voice was hoarse with the effort to reconcile the conflicting emotions driving him.

  “Well?” Tarnsian’s question hit Maleyan in the face like a blow. His cold face gave not an inch of opening.

  “We turn here for the tangra Suzan and the tijarat.”

  “Well?”

  “You didn’t turn.”

  “So you did notice,” Tarnsian said acidly. “And what did that tell you?”

  Maleyan scuffed his feet in the coarse gravel and stared down at his clenched fists.

  “Well?”

  “We have to go to the tijarat. Or our children starve. We don’t have meat to last the winter.”

  “Get back in line.” Tarnsian turned away and lifted his reins.

  Maleyan didn’t move. He swallowed. “Please, Z’rau.” He lifted trembling hands. “Our children will starve.”

  Tarnsian eyed the shaking man with a cool sardonic twist to his mouth. “Want to see them dead now?” He chirruped softly and lifted his hand so Maleyan could see the lusuq perched on his thumb. He shuddered but stubbornly remained beside the caravan.

  Back on the trail, Aleytys lifted her head at the mention of the tijarat. Her sluggish brain began to quicken. As the confrontation intensified she lifted her hands to her
lips and stared. Rebellion flared hot inside her but she beat it down. Keep low, Leyta, she thought. Holding her emotions under a heavy damper, she turned the stallion and moved casually back along the line of caravans. The banibaccivaso moved past her, gathering in a thick crowd around Tarnsian’s caravan. While his attention is distracted, she thought Oh, Madar, keep him busy, keep him busy. Her mouth moved in a quick flicker of a smile.

  The noise of altercation behind her increased as more and more of the men joined the argument. Aleytys allowed Mulak to move a little faster. She slipped past the last caravan and walked the stallion down the road into the valley. Keeping her mind as blank as she could, heart beating slowly, breath coming in/out, in/out slowly, eyes slipping vaguely over the ground, seeing but not perceiving, all emotion choked to an even blandness, she allowed Mulak to move into a trot.

  As she passed the first houses, she pulled him down to a slow walk. If I ask for sanctuary … no, she thought, tensing up just a little. No, all he has to do is summon me.… He’s too powerful. I can’t … run? Run. The thought was irresistible. Run. Get away, leave the incubus behind. She strangled the rising excitement and muttered, “Ahai, don’t wake the monster.”

  She considered her resources. One horse. She stroked Mulak’s neck and smiled affectionately. One saddle with blanket. One bridle. Not much use, but there. A hunting knife under her knee. A scrap of cheese and a stale loaf of bread in the saddlebag. A waterskin under her other knee. The clothes she wore. Nothing else.

  The smell of fresh bread drifted to her nostrils and snapped her head up. Her eyes began to glow like a hunting tars. Turning in the saddle, she saw a man coming out of one of the small houses on the field side of the road. He was carrying a large flat box balanced on his head. She could just see the tops of the round golden loaves of bread. Her mouth watered. She turned Mulak … hesitated an instant … then reined him around and set him plunging into the baker, knocking the startled man over and scattering the bread across the road. In a flash she slipped out of the saddle and gathered up half a dozen loaves.

  The man roared and jumped at her. With a gasp Aleytys ran around the other side of Mulak while the black stallion squealed and bared his teeth. The baker backed rapidly away, giving Aleytys time to jam her loot into the saddlebags. She grabbed another two loaves and stuffed them down the neck of her blouse. Then she was in the saddle again.

  “You won’t—” The baker hurled himself at her, grabbing at her leg.

  She felt a questing touch flick across the surface of her awareness. Panic flooded through her and she kicked the baker in the face, then screamed Mulak into a run until she was galloping down the road as if demons were clawing at her heels.

  As she pounded past the last of the houses, she calmed enough to slow the stallion until he was moving in a ground-eating lope that he could sustain for a considerable time. With a quick glance over her shoulder, she saw that the road was still empty. Her pounding heart slowed, too, and she began to breathe more normally. She felt Tarnsian tugging at her but he was too far away to pull her back. Too far, she thought exultantly.

  The loaves of bread inside her blouse began to irritate her skin. She reached back and undid the flap on one of the saddlebags. Holding the horse’s barrel tight between her legs, she twisted around and stuffed the loaves inside the bag. She couldn’t close the flap again, but they seemed settled enough to stay. With a sigh of relief she pulled her blouse out of her trousers and let the itchy bread crumbs drop out. Reaching up underneath the flapping blouse tails, she brushed off her breasts and stomach. The breeze stirred up by their speed blew her hair out behind her and slipped with a feel of silk over her tired body.

  Mulak’s hooves pounded out a steady rhythm on the dirt of the road, and in her blood she felt an answering rhythm. Looking back at the rapidly retreating valley she laughed. She felt vibrantly alive again. As if she’d been dead and now was returned to life. Oddly, she grew aware that what she wanted more than anything else was a bath. Having let her physical person degenerate under the degrading mind slavery Tarnsian had kept her in, now that she was unfolding her wings, she felt an urgent need to wash the last remnants of that slavery off her body. She yearned for clean hair and a clean body. Still, colors were brighter, smells crisper, sounds danced in her ears. She felt Mulak’s muscles moving strongly under her and rejoiced at the clean, free flow of his driving body.

  Ahead, the road wound through patchwork fields where men working there stared at her but made no move to interfere. Tarnsian felt weaker and weaker in her head. The road climbed ahead of her, appearing and disappearing over and around the rolling foothills, finally dissolving into the blue distance high above the valley floor. Far above, little more than a dark blue etching in the blue of the sky, rose twin peaks dipping to a steep-walled notch. The tangra Suzan. She looked higher. Hesh was a bright blue boil bulging from the side of Horli. She smiled with satisfaction. In a couple days, she thought, I won’t have to worry about Hesh. She ran her hands over the top of her head. Easier to travel.

  She eased herself in the saddle. “Mulak, mi-muklis.” His ears flicked jauntily at the sound of her voice, making her bubble with delight. “If there’s a shady spot near, aziz-mi, I can have my bath.”

  The rah’ Massarat unreeled beneath Mulak’s flickering feet. He reached the hills and slowed slightly as the land sloped upward more steeply. Aleytys pulled him to a stop at the top of a rise and looked back. She could see all the way across the valley since the air was clear and crystalline quiet. In the fields the men were tiny figurines on a patterned quilt beside a river reduced to a winding ribbon shimmering bright blue alongside whitewashed children’s blocks. She sighed with pleasure.

  Then a cloud of dust spurted up from the white sand of the roadway down where it came into the valley. At the same time the touch in her mind grew stronger. Tarnsian, she thought, startled. She watched the dust creep along the road. “Just one rider. It’s not big enough … not even a caravan. He’s crazy!” She frowned and shook her head helplessly. Turning the stallion, she sent him up the road at a fast canter. “Leaving all that he had … just to chase me down.…” A vast puzzlement shrank her voice to a squeak.

  The suns beat down on her bare head, starting a dull ache that made Tarnsian’s probe even harder to bear. We can’t go much farther, she thought, not till the end of high heat. She scrubbed her free hand across her face and looked around. The road had curved back toward the river until it roared past a few meters away down a rocky bank. She turned the stallion off the road and picked her way down the slope until she was riding beside the water, protected from the suns’ searing heat by the trees that lined the river banks. As she let the stallion find his way through the rocks, she muttered vindictively, “Hope they don’t like him back there. Hope they hold him up good.”

  The heat got more and more oppressive. Although the trees cut the killing radiation from Hesh, all too soon the air was so hot and thick that it was hard to breathe. Mulak panted heavily. He stumbled every few steps, too tired to lift his feet over the scattered rocks.

  Aleytys pulled him to a stop and leaned on the saddle horn, looking around. Just ahead was a tree-lined circlet of grass. A huge ballut leaned precariously out over the river, throwing a dark patch of shade on the cool green water swirling in gentle whorls around a quiet pool close to the tree’s exposed roots. Aleytys slid off the stallion’s back, loosened the cinch, and worked the bridle off his sweating head so he could graze in comfort. She patted him and glanced speculatively at the saddle. Better not, she thought. With a smile, she slapped him on the flank, sending him off to eat and drink. Hurriedly she stripped off her clothes and hung them over a branch stub to let wind blow the staleness out of them. As she edged down to the rocky pool, the stones felt hot and good under her feet and she heard with quiet delight the shrill kree-kree of the noon-singers. At the water’s edge she pulled a handful of grass to scrub with, then walked into the water, yelping and shuddering as rock-warmed feet p
lunged into the snow-melt of the mountain river. The surface inch or so was sun-warmed but the water below was icy. The cold seared into the whip-marks crossing and recrossing her back. She wedged the wisps of grass in between two water-polished rocks and ducked her head beneath the water.

  13

  On the third day of the escape she sighed wearily and slid down from Mulak’s back. Her knees buckled and she grabbed hastily at a stirrup leather. “Ahai! Mulak, mi-muklis, this riding all night’s for pain-lovers only.”

  She clucked to the stallion, starting him up the roadway once again and stumbling uphill beside him. The road was tipping more and more steeply into the sky every day now, the downhill dips more shallow. She closed her eyes and felt with her mind. Tarnsian was still behind, clinging to the trail with an insane stubbornness. “Damn the man,” she muttered. “Why the hell does he do it?” She shook her head. “Mulak, my friend, you’ve got more sense in that horse head of yours than he does in his.”

  She shielded her eyes with her hand and looked up along the road. It disappeared around a curve and appeared again higher up. The line where it met the sky seemed closer. If I can make it over by high heat …

  She looked around at the coarse sunburned patches of soil and naked rock, then glanced back over her shoulder at the suns. Horli was just edging her top above the eastern horizon. One good thing, she thought. Horli occludes Hesh. It gives me an edge. She sighed, then smiled. The air up here was chill and quiet as the morning made its beginning.

  Breathing was harder this high and when the air heated up it would be harder still. She was breathing faster than usual and she could feel her heart pounding. Each breath burned her throat and dried out the inside of her nose. Half the time she was breathing through her mouth just to gulp in enough air to satisfy her straining lungs.