A Bait of Dreams

by Clayton, Jo;

  He’d gone over the guardian walls like a stone skipping over water, smoothly and feeling—at the time—little of the effort it took to lift and let fall. The interrogation had gone as smoothly, plucking a guard from one of the inner walls, a small barely pubescent girl, not alert, more than half-asleep. A touch from a hypnotic and she was happily answering his questions, a touch from a compulsor and she forgot she’d said anything, forgot she’d seen him, forgot everything and went placidly into the deep sleep of the umworried young wearied by a long day’s work. He arranged her as comfortably as he could and stood for a moment gazing up the valley toward the Hold where there was a pale glow near the top of the highest tower, the Watch-tower, the little one had called it, not much imagination in that name. A welcome home to the Sayoneh packtrains coming back from the Summers-end Fairs in a dozen places, a welcome to him too, though they couldn’t know that, because that was where his answer waited. Juggler’s luck, he’d thought, smiling, and wondered what Gleia would say.

  He ran the tips of his fingers along the stone, craned his neck sharply so he could see the faint trace of light touching the curve of the tower. He sucked in a breath, held it as he steadied himself, then sought deliberately for the memory of his brother’s death, saw Dwall’s empty gray face, his delicate hands knotted about the glimmering stone, the Ranga Eye; rage burst through him; he stood aside and watched himself burn, then chanelled the energy so it powered his talent and sent him skimming upward, his fingertips slipping along stone that continued mirror smooth. Up and up until he was over the top and dropped behind the crenels that circled the flat roof. He crouched on heavy planks, drained again, eyes closed. After a moment he probed into the silence below, feeling for sayoneh close enough to be a danger to him, but there was only the one fire, a dim half-stifled glow that puzzled him since the characteristic flutter of sleep was not there, but neither was anything else to explain the oddities he sensed in it. He shrugged off his curiosity. Soon enough he’d see the body that housed the fire and that more than likely would explain any anomalies.

  He was kneeling on a trapdoor. There was a loop of braided leather close to his knee. He got to his feet, stepped onto stone and tugged at the loop. The trap opened easily. He probed again, but there were no life-forms immediately below, nothing dangerous at all. He laughed. On this world there was little reason to expect an attack from the sky. He stepped onto the ladder, went down a few rungs, pulled the trap closed and went down the rest of the ladder in a controlled fall. He landed on his toes, stood very still, listening with ears and other senses, but the quiet was unbroken; the lamed life-fire was there, stronger by a little; farther down, the Hold teemed with sleepers. He straightened, found a doorway and started down.

  When she saw him, her hand stabbed for the rope hanging beside the chair-cot on which she half sat, half lay, but he lunged and had it away before she could reach it. He cut it off above his head and let the end drop on the stone flags, went back to the door and looked out. The narrow curved walkway was empty and silent as before. He shut the door, dropped the bar in its slots, went quickly around her to stand by her feet looking down at her.

  She was old and might have been beautiful once, was beautiful now in a stainless steel way, an ice-sculpture way, her bones brought clear of the flesh by time, the skin draping softly over them. She had abundant white hair worked into a loose braid that draped forward over her shoulder, large luminous eyes of that frigid blue-green-gray at the heart of old ice. She didn’t scream. For that woman a shriek would be something to save for desperation and then only to warn others of danger, not to call others to rescue her. And she was far from desperate now.

  “Who are you?” Her voice was rough as if screams were trapped in her throat. He shivered when he heard it, not quite sure why.

  “A thief,” he said. He took off the mask that had kept his face from making a target of him, peeled off his gloves, rolled them up with the mask and slipped them into his bag. Never taking his eyes off her, he brought out the leather medkit and stood holding it.

  She made a quick sweeping gesture with the hand that had reached for the bell-pull. “There’s nothing here to steal.”

  He checked the dials of the drug disc, scowled. “You know, mitera-mi, it’s just as well my search is ending. Or I’d have to break it off and fetch more supplies.” Ignoring her snort of disgust, he thumbed through the hypnotics and compulsors, looking again and again at the old woman, trying to estimate her strength. The quilts she’d wound about her for her comfort in her vigil were acting as bindings now. She was moving her legs little by little, trying to shift the windings enough to let her get off the cot. At least she wasn’t crippled. He’d wondered about that. He vacillated between two hypnotics, frowned at her. Stubborn, but how strong was she?

  “What do you want?” There wasn’t a ghost of a tremor in that ugly voice.

  How strong was she? Better to get her talking, he thought. He had to be gone before dawn, she knew that as clearly as he did. She’d talk to him, try to hold him here as long as she could, and in the talking might tell more than she meant. It was fortunate he wasn’t given to torture and could rely on subtler means, drugs developed in government labs on worlds a great deal uglier and more devious than Jaydugar. He felt a sudden pang of regret at the unfairness of what he was going to do to her, it was an uncomfortable echo of the use he’d planned for Deel. The anger that had powered him up the face of the tower was gone now, replaced by a desolation that was gray ash and clinkers. There was a three-legged stool by the end of the cot. He hooked it to him with his foot, sat on it and gazed at her, frowning a little.

  “Do you know that children also die from what you peddle? My brother had the life sucked from him before he was old enough to know he was alive.”

  Her face didn’t change.

  “We were the same age, not twins, different mothers. Two-winter babies. A lot has happened since, then,” he said, the same casual, chatty tone. “Do you have the faintest idea what it is you’ve loosed on the world?”

  She sat with an altered stillness, a mask, not the substance it was before. He hadn’t surprised her, there must have been others before him come treasure hunting, but he’d startled her just a bit with his mildness, broken her monolithic resistance. “I know,” she said finally.

  “Knowing, how can you continue? You foul your own nest with such dealing.”

  Her mouth worked. It had been a generous mouth once, a singer’s mouth, even now it was more expressive and betraying than she knew. She fought the anger that impelled her to speak, her eyes staring through him as if she saw him as a smear over something else. Anger won. “Should I tell you how my father sold me to a beast he knew was a beast, a man four times a widower, three times my age? Oh he was fond of me, my father, petting me, giving me trinkets, favoring me above my sisters. And oh, thief, I did love him, I trusted him. And he sold me for three mares and a stallion.

  “Should I tell you, O thief, of my wedding night when that great gross beast raped me and raped me again?

  “Should I tell you, O thief, about my first baby? She was perfect, a perfect tiny girl, she was beautiful. And he exposed her for the anegin to eat, and beat me, saying he had more than enough daughters already, I was worthless if I couldn’t give him a son.

  “Should I tell you, O thief, about my second daughter? How he tore her from my breasts, how he drove me from his house, how his daughters and the steading women drove me out the gates, how his brothers and the men of the steading set the dogs on me, set whip and flail on me, and closed the gates on me and drove me into the hills and raped me, all the men, and left me, torn and bleeding, more than half dead.

  “Should I tell you, O thief, how the Sayoneh found me and cared for me and loved me and gave me a haven, a home, a reason for living?” The rasping voice stopped abruptly. She wasn’t seeing him or the tower room or the lamp that served as beacon, but people and events long in the past, then she refocused on him. “Do what you will, ma
n.” The last word was a curse filled with contempt and a hatred so intense it needed no shouting or emphasis, indeed, she spoke hardly above a whisper. “I am old and tired, my heart has twice struck me down almost to my death. The only thing that has meaning for me is the continuance of the Haven. Those fools who kill themselves for dreams, when each one dies, I rejoice. They are my father and my bridegroom and the men who let my babies be killed. That left me to bleed and die. What do I care about them? I rejoice in them for their folly keeps Sayoneh free. You might as well leave, thief, you’ll get nothing here.”

  Shounach nodded. “Thank you.” He thumbed a different combination of drugs in smaller doses, the tricky heart was a complication but not disastrous now that he knew about it. She watched him stand and come toward her, her face calm, the first smile he’d seen on it touching her lips. He bent, slapped the disc against her thin neck, plucked it off and stepped back. He waited.

  Her smile widened as she felt the drowsiness that washed over her; she went into darkness thinking he’d poisoned her to keep her from spoiling his retreat, went gladly to what she thought was death.

  He watched her body relax, listened to her breathing grow slower, quieter. After a moment he took the stringy wrist in his hand and touched his fingers to her pulse. Steady and strong. He set her arm gently back at her side, added a new component to the mix in her veins, a deeper relaxant that stripped away inhibitions, left the sleeper pliable as hot wax. He pulled up the stool, sat beside her, took her wrist again and kept a finger on her pulse.

  “Saone,” he said.

  “Mmmm,” she said. Her eyelids fluttered but didn’t open.

  “Saone, hear my voice, you know my voice, it is the voice you love and trust the most. I am sister-lover. Name me, my sister my love.”

  “Felise,” She spoke drowsily, her syllables mumbled, indistinct.

  “My sister, my love, see me, Felise, and name yourself. Tell me your name, my sister my love.”

  “But you know my name.…” The voice trailed off. Shounach said nothing, only waited. The mouth worked, shaped a name. “Vannar.”

  “Vannar, do you trust me? Trust me, my Vannar. Vannar, do you love me? Love me, my Vannar. Show me how you trust and love me.” His voice was a gentle croon showing nothing of the urgencies that were driving him.

  “Felise.…” There was languor in the ugly voice; the sculptured face had softened with smiles that came and went like the sun on a cloudy day. “My little one, I do love you, I do trust you. How can I show you?”

  “Vannar, lovely Vannar, your face is carved on my heart, your body is a dhina leaping, you are my delight and my despair, my springtime and my winter.” He murmured the words and felt her pulse leap between his fingers; she was ready, she’d tell him anything now. Again he felt a touch of dismay at what he was doing to her, told himself it wasn’t for his pleasure or profit but to rid this world of a pitiless scourge. Gleia, my Gleia, you’ve grafted your conscience into me and how in Aschla’s nine hells am I going to live with it. “You must be all to me,” he crooned, driving himself on. “I must be all to you. Show me your most secret thoughts, my sister my love. Tell me the secret you hold closest to your heart. Tell me where is the source of the Ranga Eyes.”

  Vannar stirred on the cot, her face twisting as something in her fought the dream, but the dream was more powerful than any vague intimations of danger and it won as he knew it would when he wove it with his drugs and coaxing words. Her face cleared. “Felise Felise Felise Felise …” she murmured with a sensuous undulation of that long worn body that for the moment cast off age and was young and supple again. Then she whispered the secret she would have died to protect.

  “Ride half a day along the south bank of the Shaalo, following it deeper into the mountains. There find an escarpment with peaks on it like teeth biting the sky. Ride east along the toothwall until you reach the final spire but one, the tallest of them all but with a broken tip. A stream joins the Shaalo there. Turn your back on Broken Tooth and follow the rill the whole day, even through high heat, riding no faster than a walk, and go on until you see Horli’s last light as a ruby in a slit between two great stones. Turn your right shoulder to the ruby and find on the far side of the stream a winding dry ravine. Follow that until it opens out on a flat where there are black stones like pillows tossed about or piled in great mounds. A stone mountain rises steeply behind these mounds. Find three pillow piles so close together their tops lean into each other. Wait there facing the mountain. When Aab passes behind you you will see a wonder shining on the side of the mountain, and oh, Felise, my sister my love, in that wonder lives the light that keeps us free.”

  When the whisper was finished Vannar began to tremble all over, her hands reaching clumsily, uncertainly for some reassurance, her head turning restlessly, blindly. Shounach soothed her, whispered love and memory to her, specifying nothing, giving her suggestions she fleshed out in her mind. Slowly he worked her deeper into a real sleep, slowly and carefully he withdrew from the dream, gentling her, placing commands on her to forget about him, working very carefully to leave no threads dangling that could unravel his weaving, nothing to worry or startle her when she woke in the morning. She’d sleep late, wake feeling sluggish, tired, with a vague memory of dreams pleasant and unpleasant, but nothing more. The dreams would fade as dreams do and when the Sayoneh learned they’d lost their shield, she’d still remember nothing.

  He left as he’d come, a shadow in shadows, skimming the guard walls, loping across the fields, fighting a lassitude that weighed on his limbs. At the base of the mountain he looked a last time at the light shining from the tower window, shook his head and started wearily up the slope.

  They circled wide about the haven and worked with difficulty down to the Shaalo. At hight heat they camped in a grove of blue conifers, the needles blowing in a strong wind with a hum that almost drowned the sound of the river. They ate and slept and waited, swam and fretted, then repacked the supplies, climbed into the saddle and rode on.

  They reached the escarpment a little before sundown, rode along it in the shifting red light until they came to Vannar’s stream. Deel sat without speaking, shoulders slumped, staring at nothing, lost in a haze of weariness and confusion while Gleia and Shounach argued. He wanted to go on, turned night into day, he wanted to keep driving toward the source, certain he could translate Vannar’s words into night equivalents and keep from losing the line. Gleia countered with scorn, waving her hands at the mountains west of them, the tangle of peaks fading into the crimson of the setting sun—go even a dozen meters too far or stop too soon and he’d get them lost for weeks; and there was Deel, worn to a thread; and there was herself, not leaping with energy either. And what about when they reached the source? If they ever did. If they took his way. Exhausted, all of them. The Mother Eye would gobble them down and hardly notice them. She slid from the saddle, swung to stand facing him, hands on hips. “Go on, be stubborn. I’ll be along to clean up your mess for you.” She turned her back on him and went to help Deel dismount.

  She woke late, long after moonset. For a moment she lay still, relishing the bite of frost on her face and the contrasting warmth beneath the blankets, then she shifted slightly to move off a stub and began wondering why she was awake. She turned on her side, pulled the blanket tighter about her, yawned and lay blinking into the darkness. Behind her she could hear steady small snores from Deel, the soft rasp of Shounach’s breathing. The wind had dropped to nothing, not a leaf rattled, even the sound of the river seemed subdued. She began to grow uneasy. As the minutes trickled past, the itch under her skin grew more and more unendurable. Yet nothing happened. Nothing changed. The hush went on and on. There was no possibility of sleep left in her. Lying stretched out as if she expected to sleep was becoming a torture.

  With a whispered curse, she unwound from the blanket and got shivering to her feet. Fine lines of frost were a lace web on earth and green everywhere and the air had an autumn bite in it. She pul
led on her boots, wrapped one of her blankets around her shoulders and began prowling about the campsite; she walked to the river and gazed down into the clear singing water, turned away after a minute and went to look at the horses. They stood sleeping placidly in their rope corral, twitching now and then to rid themselves of night biters. She snatched her cowling blanket loose from a scraggly bit of brush and wandered on. Restless, uneasy, she couldn’t stay still. When she sucked air in, it was curiously unsatisfying though the same air felt crisp and fresh against her skin. After a look at Shounach and Deel, she began following the stream back toward the toothed wall. She was unarmed, this was foolishness, but she couldn’t rest until she faced down the spooks haunting her and proved to herself that they were all in her head. She moved as quietly as she could, though the blanket kept catching on low limbs and brush and her feet kept snapping brittle twigs and kicking pebbles into clattering flight. She could go silent as any ghost through city streets and know everything happening about her, but here the shadows were opaque and she was repeatedly jolted by sudden scurryings and squeaks, bits of life flaring up in front of her or wriggling hastily away where she’d seen nothing but leaf and stone. By the time she’d gone a double-dozen meters along the river-bank, the flitter and flutter of things before her, the jerk and halt of her breath each time she was startled, the annoyance of the snags had combined to distract her and drive the unease from her mind and body. She stopped, shook her head, then started back the way she’d come.

  The dawn wind was beginning to stir, the hush was gone and with it a lot of the darkness; there was pink touching the top of the teeth, a rim of red by the time she was back at the camp. She wrinkled her nose at Deel and Shounach, both of them still soundly asleep. She thought of shaking Shounach awake, then shrugged and started gathering wood for the breakfast fire.