Diadem from the Stars

by Clayton, Jo;

  She smiled, then took in with quiet pleasure the noises, sights, and smells of the awakening camp: the groans of the sesmatwe as the camp boys ran the shell teeth of the currycombs through their coarse yellow-tan hair … the soft hissing of the yd’r-pat fires with their thick herb-scented smoke the strengthening scent of frying meat and hot daz as fire after fire flared up … the hoarse shouts of unseen men as they brought in strays … the joking calls between sept fire and sept fire as the women fixed breakfast and tended their infants and younger children. Those separate threads wove themselves into a vivid tapestry.

  Aleytys tied thick braids with leather thongs and shook them over her shoulders so they hung down her back, a style cooler by far than when it hung in a free-flowing mass. She sighed and looked over at the chon erected next to hers. Khateyat was bending over the fire, stirring the pot of daz that hung from the forked p’yed. When she lifted her head and saw Aleytys watching her, she waved her over.

  Aleytys tilted onto her knees and jumped to her feet. “Good morning, has’ hemet.”

  “Nathe hrey, young Aleytys.” Khateyat put the spoon down and turned the frying meat over in the pan. “Are you hungry?”

  “Starved.” Aleytys wrinkled her nose. “After that ride over the mountains I just can’t get enough to eat.” She flipped a hand at the ragged line of blue marking the eastern horizon.

  With a chuckle, khateyat nodded and thrust the tines of a long-handled fork into a piece of meat and lifted it into a shallow bowl. “Here, Leyta. The daz is ready too; dip yourself a cupful.” She piled the rest of the meat on another plate after serving herself.

  Aleytys took the dish and looked curiously around. “Where are the others?”

  “Lifting wards from the herd. The other clans are still too close. Raids. We leave the river tomorrow and can relax a little, thanks be.” She spread a cloth over the extra meat and picked up her own dish.

  Aleytys chewed the juicy mouthful, swallowed, and said earnestly, “I’ve been wondering about something. Why does Raqat hate me so? I haven’t done anything to her.”

  Khateyat compressed her lips. She poked at the meat in her plate. “I think this animal must have fought every inch of the way across the Wazael Wer.”

  Aleytys felt her distaste for the intrusion, saw her shut-in face. She sipped at the daz and let it trickle down her throat as her eyes wandered around the camp. “Tell me about him,” she said abruptly, waving her cup at the tall, thin man walking past them, chains clanking musically as he moved.

  “The slave?”

  “Um. I thought you killed all strangers.”

  With visible reluctance, Khateyat balanced her plate on her knee and turned to face Aleytys. “If I said forget it, hes Aleytys?”

  Aleytys’s right eyebrow flicked up and she grinned. “Well.”

  Khateyat sighed. “For a grown woman carrying a child …”

  Aleytys chuckled and cut another bite of meat. “Where’d you find him?”

  “He’s Raqat’s, Leyta. Forget him.”

  “But, Khateyat my friend, I’ve the worst itch in my curiosity.”

  The older woman sighed. “Very well, but let it drop after. Please. He came with the fireball. It landed in a lake toward the western side of the Wer. We caught him as he came out of the water.”

  Aleytys looked shrewdly at her. “That’s not all.”

  “He brought the diadem to this world.” Khateyat spoke softly, eyes flicking restlessly around. “He stole it. He’s a thief and a stranger, not to be trusted at all. For some reason the R’nenawatalawa forbade killing him. He’s not to be trusted.” She faced Aleytys and repeated emphatically, “Not to be trusted at all.”

  “I think …”

  “What, Leyta?”

  A flashing smile lit up Aleytys’s face. “I think I like the wild ones best; I’ve had too much trouble from the righteous.”

  “There’s wild and wild. Keep your head clear, young Leyta.”

  “Don’t worry about my head. It’s the other end that’s restless.” She chuckled, wriggling her behind on the leather.

  Stavver walked past the fire once again, slanting a pale gaze down at her. She watched him as he turned around the edge of the herret and disappeared toward the river.

  “Aleytys!” Khateyat’s voice was stern. “It will take over five months to cross the Wer. I know the dark ones laid on us the burden of carrying you with us to the mountains, but … Will you think? If you indulge yourself, the bargain could be dissolved in blood.”

  Aleytys sobered. “Yes, has’ hemet. I understand. I was only teasing.” Bending toward the older woman, she touched her arm. “If I act like a thoughtless child now, it’s only because this is the first chance I’ve had to play a little.” She straightened and patted her middle. “Give me another couple of months and the little one will put all that out of the question, anyway.” She drained the mug and sliced off another bite of yd’r meat.

  Khateyat jabbed unhappily at the chunks of meat on her dish. “Leyta, I’m sorry. I wish …” She sliced off a sliver of meat, chewed briefly, and washed the mouthful down with a swallow of daz. “Wish it or not, you’re going to be a wedge driving us apart.” She took another bite and chewed on the tough fragment for a while. Then she saw five small figures riding back toward the camp. Swallowing hastily, she stood up. “Leyta,” she said softly, then hesitated, glancing first at the girl, then at the approaching riders. “Will you … will you mind going somewhere else for a little while?” With a sigh, she held out her hands. “It’s better to go lightly if you can. When you can.”

  Standing up quietly, Aleytys touched Khateyat’s hand. “I know.” She set the mug in the middle of the dish and handed both of them to the older woman. Then she turned her back on the worried face and strolled away.

  On the far side of the herret, she looked toward the line of trees marking the location of the river. “Khatya’s kind,” she muttered, “but I’m an outsider. She’ll always put her own first.” She kicked up a clod of dirt that flew into the side of a tent, then rattled to the ground followed by the cry of a baby. Hastily she strode toward the river. “Get over the trouble lightly, Leyta. All things end, Leyta. Walk low and don’t stir the grass, Leyta. Khas!”

  She glanced back over her shoulder and saw the ragged white head of the slave hovering at a little distance. Whistling breathily between her teeth, she sauntered toward the trees with the white head drifting circuitously behind her. When she reached the bank, she scooped up a handful of gravel and sat down on a clump of grass. As she waited for the man to work his way inconspicuously to her she chucked the stones into the water one by one.

  “That seems a profitless occupation.”

  She looked around, moved her eyes deliberately up and down his wiry body. “The slave.”

  He grimaced. “Call me Stavver.” He lowered himself beside her and glanced swiftly over his shoulder.

  “They can’t see you from the camp. Besides, it’s time for breakfast. Have you eaten?”

  “Enough.” He ran his eyes over her, avid curiosity strong in his face.

  “You’re from offworld?”

  He raised his eyebrows, corrugating the reddened skin on his high forehead. “Right,” he said. He glanced up at the suns and shifted into the thickest shade next to the rough-skinned bydarrakh. “How do you know that?”

  “Khateyat.” She swung around and sat facing him, her legs crossed, her hands resting lightly on her knees.

  His skin, what there was visible around the patched leather coverings and shaggy beard, was red and peeling. Small translucent flakes floated from around his mouth and off his nose when he talked. Long and skinny … no, not really skinny but … ai-Aschla … he’d fit through a knothole. My head would barely reach his ribs. He must have been very fair before Hesh went to work on, him, like my mother. Excitement sparked in her. She leaned forward and stared at his eyes. Khas, she thought, disappointed, like watery milk … the Vrya have green eyes. She stifled a g
iggle. His moon-white hair stuck out in wisps and merged with a short scraggly beard.

  “Satisfied, young mystery?” His long teeth flashed briefly under the straggling moustache.

  “Why call me that?”

  “Mystery?” He shrugged. “Aren’t you? You’re not one of the medwey. With that hair? And you’re no slave. You pop up in the middle of nowhere sponsored by that bunch of witches. You’re crossing this hostile territory for some secret reason of your own that no one in the camp understands. And for some reason you’re under the protection of the local gods. So you tell me. Mystery?”

  “Come to that, what about you?” She tapped her fingertips on her knee, jittering a little in response to her nervousness. “Why’d you come here? Why would any starman come to Jaydugar?”

  He grimaced. “No choice. It was that or wait for some spiders who don’t like me at all.”

  “Spiders?”

  “RMoahl hounds sniffing on my trail. I had something they wanted.” He narrowed his eyes and smiled at her.

  “Khateyat says you’re a thief. And that I shouldn’t trust you at all.” She looked disparagingly at the unkempt figure in front of her.

  “Come here where I can talk to you.” He spread out his arms and smiled lazily at her. She unfolded her legs and wiggled over the grass until she was sitting beside him, his arm around her shoulders. “Isn’t that friendlier?”

  “Not very wise, though.”

  He chuckled. “Raqat catches you, you’ll get that fantastic skin clawed up some.”

  “So you’re such a prize.”

  “A rarity,” he said dryly, leaning back against the knobby trunk of the bydarrakh. “It’s her brainstorm, not mine.”

  “What’s it like, the world you came from?” She could feel her throat tightening as she came closer to the questions she was waiting to ask, but she tried to keep her voice casual.

  “That was a long time ago, lovely, a long, long time ago. It’d take a year to tell you about the worlds I’ve seen.”

  “I have to get offworld,” she said slowly. “You know about starships?”

  “How do you think I got here?” He caught her chin and tipped her face up. “Who are you?”

  “I was born in those mountains.” She jerked her head free and nodded toward the east. “I’ve spent my life up until the last few months in a mountain valley.”

  “Mountain girl.” He sat up and turned her around, his hands on her shoulders. “You’ve no business out there.” He flipped a hand at the brightening sky. “You’d be eaten up like a mosquito in a pond full of frogs. Why?”

  “Why?” She grinned at him. “My business.”

  Stavver stretched out and smiled lazily. His eyelids dropped over his eyes while his moustache hid his mouth. He looked as relaxed as a cat on a hot day, but that was a pose. Aleytys could feel the intense vibrations of curiosity and growing excitement underlined by desire that rippled out of him. “How do you plan to get offworld?”

  Aleytys hesitated, then shrugged. What the hell, she thought. “That takes a bit of leading up to. Umm. In your boasted wanderings, thief, have you ever heard of Vrithian?”

  His face turned bland as a cream-licking gurb’s. “I’ve heard the name.”

  “Tell me what you know.”

  “Mountain girl. How the hell’d you know about Vrithian?” He watched her, a glint of speculation in his pale eyes.

  Aleytys rubbed one hand up and down the soft leather of her trousers. The river whispered past with a gentle breeze wandering over its rushing water while she wrestled with her problem, remembering her mother’s warning: “Don’t tell anyone you’re part Vryhh.” And Khateyat said not to trust him at all. But … She turned to look at him, frowning intently as she struggled to estimate his potential danger to her. I can handle him, she thought finally. After Tarnsian … but go slow. “A man told me the name.”

  “What man?” His body was very still while his face kept the bland sleepy smile. “What did he look like?”

  She shrugged. “What difference does it make? You don’t know him, you never will.”

  He reached out and pulled her against him. His hand cupping her shoulder, he gently caressed the smooth dark amber skin. With a sigh, she tilted her head back against his sinewy shoulder and tried to read his face. “You think he was Vryhh?” She chuckled and relaxed against him. “No. He was the dream-singer of my valley. And my lover.” She sighed. “He was just a little taller than me, with dark hair, brown eyes. Brown eyes.…” She winced. “He’s blind now.…”

  His eyes narrowed in their webbing of sun-red wrinkles. “That why you left him?”

  She drove her elbow into his stomach and jerked away from him, savagely exulting in the grunt of pain she drew from him. “Damn you! Ahai, ai-Aschla! I’d be with him now if …” She closed her eyes and felt helpless tears drip down her face. Agony burned like poison inside her at the sudden vicious thrust of loss and guilt. After a minute, she felt his hand moving soothingly over her back as he pulled her gently into the curve of his arm. He said nothing, just held her until the pain passed off.

  She sighed and opened her eyes. “I left,” she said dully, “because they were going to kill me, tie me to a stake and set fire to me.”

  His eyebrows twitched up, then down, and the lines at the corners of his mouth—half hidden by that ragged moustache—cut deep into the tender skin. He slid his hand up and down her bare arm, pausing now and then to stroke the sensitive skin on the inside of her elbow. “I’ve been fascinated by you from the day the witches rode in with you.”

  She relaxed against him, trying to figure out just what she was feeling. As he cupped his hand over her breast she felt her breathing quicken, grow more ragged. The turmoil of emotions tearing through her sent her mind rocking. She didn’t, couldn’t, think. She was on fire … hating him … desiring. He moved his hands over her body and she let him. Like a shadow at the back of her mind floated the cold thought, He’s from offworld, and that’s where I need to go.

  She pulled back slightly. “Raqat,” she breathed.

  “The bushes … there’s an open space.…” His voice was hoarse, urgent. Pulling her to her feet, he stumbled deeper into the raushani with her, propelled by the chill urging of prudence.

  A while later he leaned on his elbow and watched her re-braid her hair. She brushed the dust and dead leaves off herself and slid the tunic over her head.

  “You’re quite a woman,” he said thoughtfully.

  She looked up at him, then lowered her eyes and picked up the lacing for her tunic. As she coaxed the thong through the small openings at her neck, she flicked a series of swift glances at him.

  He scratched his jaw through the wiry beard. “You pull a man like a magnet, witch. Maybe it’s that a man knows there’s something about you he can’t get his hands on.” He watched her slyly. “I’ve known prettier women.” He let that sink in, then went on. “Women more interesting.…” He shook his head, watching the flush of anger creeping over her cheeks. “Where did your dream-singer learn about the Vrya?”

  With a disgusted sniff, Aleytys stepped into her trousers and laced them up. “All those women. Ahai! Why don’t you crawl back to Raqat?” She jerked the laces tight and slapped them into a knot.

  He caught hold of her ankle.

  “Let go of me!” Breathing hard, she kicked out viciously at his face.

  Chuckling, he pulled and caught her as she tumbled over, sitting her upright on the trampled grass. “Where did your dream-singer learn about the Vrya?”

  “You’re a stubborn khinzerisar.”

  “What’s that?”

  She laughed and pulled at his beard, tweaking out a grunt of pain. He wrestled her over onto her back and glared at her.

  “I’ll make a deal,” she gasped out.

  “What is it?”

  “Tell me what you know about the Vrya and I’ll tell you how … maybe … we can get off Jaydugar.”

  He rolled off her and sat up.
“That seems to be the only way I can get an answer.”

  Aleytys pushed herself up onto her knees, brushed the debris off her clothes, and squinted at him past her swinging braids. “Put your clothes on, idiot. Don’t think you’re going to distract me with … mmm … your obvious physical attributes. If Raqat saw you …”

  With a grin, he pulled on his shirt and trousers. “I feel like my skin’s crawling every time. I put these on.” He sat down beside her, glancing up at the suns. “Time’s going.”

  “How long?”

  “Enough, if we hurry. I have to strike the tents soon.”

  “Well?”

  He rubbed his hands on the grass beside him, staring thoughtfully past his toes. “The Vrya, Aleytys, are holders of a secret I’d give you name it—up to and including the aforementioned physical attributes—to have.”

  “Ahai, mi-mashuq, and what is that?” She remembered her mother’s words.

  “The location of their homeworld, girl.” He sucked in a breath and stared avidly at nothing in particular. “It’s supposed to be the biggest, most fabulous treasure house in the whole damn galaxy.” He sighed and leaned against a ballut growing in the ring of raushani. “Word is they’re born wanderers, born collectors. Some call them misers; they never sell any of their treasures and no one else sees them.…” His tongue ran greedily over his cracking lips. He locked his hands behind his head and stared with hungry eyes at the fragments of pale lavender sky he could see through the leaves.

  “Here and there,” he said dreamily, “scattered across the stars and chasms of space, the Vrya go in their little ships, each one unique, each one designed, so they say, to fit the spirit of the master. I’ve seen them more than once.…” His voice trailed off, his face gone blank with the intensity of his greed.