Lamarchos (24 page)

In the center of the mass they came to an impossibly wide wagon whose flat bed clung with equal impossibility to the contours of the land it crept across. The wood was jointed by dozens of flexible leather hinges, each small section mounted on individual wheels so that the whole moved over the land like a multi-legged creature on hundreds of wheels. Around the sides of this monstrous construction was a hedge of swords, edges glinting in the diffused light. Inside the hedge rose a rounded mound the size of a small hill whose outermost layer was pihayo hide tanned with the hair left on so that the mound fluttered with what looked like limp white grass.

As they rode nearer, the typical stench of the pihayo soured the air. Aleytys wondered how the horde master managed to stand the smell of his dwelling.

She stiffened as they passed one of the last wagons near the great one. The somber black caravan with its glinting gold and crimson scrollwork confirmed for the first time that Maissa had indeed been brought here. Whether she was alive … or Sharl.… She wrenched her thoughts away as her hands began to tremble and tears hung poised to fall behind her eyelids. Concentrate, she thought. You are gikena. You have power.

She straightened her back and looked boldly at the pair of guards barring the gate to the master's wagon. Make them respect you, she told herself … at least … she broke into the argument being conducted in the slurred nearly unintelligible dialect of the horde.

“I am gikena.” She projected the words with a potent overlay of anger, menace, and power that left both guards and her captor open-mouthed. She slid off the horse and stepped briskly up the crude ladder to confront the startled guards. “Take me to the master.”

Chapter V

The stench was incredible. Aleytys found it difficult to think, difficult to do anything but breath as shallowly as possible, blessing the tendency of the sense of smell to burn out fast. She gathered her strength, stilled the trembling of her knees, and snapped her head erect.

The master was a pallid mountain of flesh perched on miscellaneous hides spread over a spongy mass of some kind of vegetable fiber. Aleytys dragged her eyes back to the master, fighting a continual urge to look away from him.

He was naked. As grossly male as he was grossly huge. Aleytys suppressed an inclination to gape and contented herself with wondering what sort of woman could receive that bulk into herself.

Reluctantly she raised her eyes to his face. His head was outsize even for the mountainous bulk that supported it. If he stood his head must nearly brush the rounded top of the tent where the groaning ribs were tied together by a complex knotting of smoke-stained rope, though that point was nearly three meters from the spongy floor. He must never leave this place, she thought. Ahai, Madar! Never to leave this hole! She examined his face again, a tinge of pity overlaying the disgust he raised in her.

His mouth was firm and delicate, even beautiful, showing a strong tendency toward smiling. His nose was strong, a long straight blade of bone and flesh. His eyes, dark fringed and well-shaped, were milky white without iris or pupil, ostensibly blind, though he seemed to be aware of everything around him. This eyeless sight sent shudders running up her spine, the first intimation of the nature of the horde master. If this creature had power that could swallow hers … she remembered the diadem and quieted.

His hair was pure pale white, curling closely about his bulging skull. The skull … it swelled out from the gentle, even beautiful face.… like the bottom of a pear turned upside down.… the thick coiling hair masked some of the grotesqueness of its shape, but not enough. Not enough.

The silence stretched on and on. Aleytys refused to be intimidated, either by her own emotions or by the aura of the man.

A thin meager figure came creeping around from behind the master, swinging a censer with black, strong smelling smoke pouring from the holes pierced in the top. Muttering a guttural chant he circled her, throwing the smoke into her face, letting it roll over her skin. She stood, unmoving, a scornful smile mocking his efforts.

Then the drug began to blur her sight, distort her senses. She swayed. Fought her way upright. Then met the glittering eyes of the shaman, his ferret face wreathed in clouds of the drugs' smoke.

Closing her eyes, she fumbled for the black river, fighting back panic as her mind-reach dissolved again and again. Terror was cold … cold … cold … paralyzing. Then she managed to shape Vajd's mandala of peace, simple, pure, the circling triangles drawing her in and out of the center until terror retreated, faded, was gone. She gathered her forces and sank into the mandala, the stable three-pointed figures swimming past her, calm … smooth … untroubled.…

Relaxed, calm, quietly sure of her power, she reached again. The black water spilled over her. With an exclamation of triumph she lifted her arms above her head, glorying in the racing current of power caressing her skin, cleansing her body of the greasy smoke, flushing the drug from her system, leaving her mind clear and sharp. She tossed her hair back over her shoulder and laughed aloud. “I am gikena!”

As she faced the horde master with her new clarity of vision, she saw that his facade of power was hollow; it had a rotten dying smell, a taint of decay. Is this why the horde moves? she wondered. Because the master dies? She set the thought aside to pursue later. “I am gikena,” she repeated. She focused cool denying eyes on him. “Out there you have what belongs to me.”

“All here is mine.” The master spoke for the first time, his voice startling her with its flexible resonant beauty. When she closed her eyes she could see him tall, triumphant, even handsome. Grimly she faced him and rubbed aching overladen breasts to remind herself of her reason for being here.

“No,” she said firmly, countering his voice magic with her own. “My son is not yours. My servant is not yours. My caravan is not yours. Like all on Lamarchos, master, you dwell in the house of Lakoe-heai. In the name of them I say restore to me what is mine.”

The milky orbs slid over her, blind but preternaturally knowing. “Shaman.”

The evil little man sidled around Aleytys, eyes flickering venomously over her before he turned to face his master.

“What happened to the gahane leaf, shaman?” The marvelous voice lashed at the cringing little creature. Aleytys closed her eyes and indulged her imagination momentarily, smiling as the beauty of the master's voice charmed her. He spoke again, as sharply as before. “Is she what she claims to be?”

Aleytys heard the bedding weed rustle as the master shifted position. She opened her eyes. He was arched over the bent form of the shaman like a great wave threatening a shore.

“I can't say so soon,” the wretched creature whined. “She must be tested.”

“How?” Grunting with the effort he settled back on the leather and examined Aleytys' slender figure, a light beginning to glow behind the milky white.

The shaman glanced over his shoulder at Aleytys. There was no mistaking the light that shone in those pouchy eyes. He wanted her dead, preferably after suffering great pain. “Gikena be healer, master.”

“Could she heal one born deaf?” There was a shrill instability about the voice now that puzzled Aleytys, walking a chill up her spine.

“If this one be true gikena.”

“Can you make deaf hear?” Aleytys saw in the master's face a quiver of anxiety.

She shrugged. “I've never done so.”

“You failed?”

“No. I never had to try.”

“You'll try now. And succeed if you want to live.” He slapped huge hands on his meaty thighs. “Bring the boy Ramaikh.” As the shaman reached the small arch leading from the tent, he snapped, “Wait!”

The little man fidgeted impatiently in the arch, fingers fluttering the leather doorflaps.

“Send guards for the woman and the male child brought me this morning.”

“Master.” The shaman hesitated, frowning, smoldering eyes on Aleytys. “Is that wise?”

“What do you know of wisdom, viper?” Gargantuan laughter filled the tent, massive, overwhelming, yet with that taint of hysteria that continued to puzzle Aleytys. “Move!” he shouted, the blast literally blowing the little man out of the tent.

Aleytys seated herself on a pile of hides.

“Did I say you could sit, woman?”

“Do I wait for any man's pleasure to do what I want?” She laughed her scorn, tossing her head to underline her independence. “There. A question to answer a question.”

There was real interest in his face as he moved blind eyes over her. “You forget your place, woman.” He stressed the last word to remind her of her status in this man's world of Lamarchos.

“My place is whatever I have strength to take.”

“You talk strangely. Where did you find these unnatural thoughts?”

“I say what many women feel. Only, being what I am, I have the power to do rather than merely feel.”

“You get before yourself.”

“No. I don't need to prove to myself what I am. Only to you.”

He grunted then gazed down at his bulging stomach, seeming to turn inward to mull over the outrageous things Aleytys had said to him. The silence deepened in the malodorous tent, but the tension between them was held in abeyance. Aleytys studied him openly, unnoticed, wondering what had made him the monster he was, pitying him deeply, awash with curiosity. Born or made? Born? Made?

The shaman thrust a tall thin boy ahead of him through the door curtains. The boy straightened from his crouch and stood calmly facing the master. There was a strong resemblance between the two males, feature by feature the faces were the same. But the boy had a normal curve to his skull, a thin wiry athlete's body. He stepped away from the shaman and knelt before the master, his head dipping to touch the floor.

“This is my son Romaikh. I have protected him from the fate of the maimed till this time. Do you understand me, woman?”

“Yes.”

“You will heal him. This is your test, gikena.”

“Even if it wasn't,” she said proudly, “I would heal. It is my nature to heal.”

“What do we do?”

“Make him understand he is to lay his head here.” She smoothed her hand across her lap. “And to be still when I touch him.”

“Show the boy.”

Mouth pinched into a spiteful line, the shaman led the boy to Aleytys and settled him according to her instructions. When she touched the boy, he flinched, then lay quietly.

Aleytys touched her fingers to his temples, stroking them gently until he relaxed. Smiling warmly, feeling a surge of maternal tenderness, she cupped his head between her palms. She drew in the power making herself a conduit for its flow. It gushed through her and poured out around and around the narrow head. Not understanding in any real sense, she saw the bony growth that closed his ears, saw the dead shrivelled nerve ends not knowing what they were but recognizing their deadness. In the flood of black water the bony growth dissolved and the endings healed, grew, expanded like the desiccated roots of a drought-caught plant at the beginning of the rains. When the thing was done, she freed herself from the river and gently pulled her hands from the boy's head. She looked up and met the master's eyes.

“Well?” The word was a thundering demand.

The boy jumped up, clapping his hands to his ears, his face contorted with fear.

“As you see. He hears. I suggest you keep him apart from all but a few while he learns to cope with this new thing in his life. I suppose he'll have to learn to speak too.” She rubbed her forehead wearily. “You ordered the woman brought here. And the …” She swallowed. “The child.”

The master turned his heavy head to the Shaman. “Where?”

“Outside.”

“Bring them.” When Aleytys heard these words, her body slumped as she blurred out, nearly fainting. She laced her fingers together, straightened her back, stared intently at the archway.

Maissa came in at a stumbling run, shoved along by a brawny guard. She drew herself erect before the master, her eyes madder than ever, glittering with a hate beyond reason. She stood with a painful awkwardness unlike her usual catlike grace. Aleytys looked from her to the master then back again, suddenly understanding. Maissa was so tiny … she stared blankly, swallowing, swallowing … he had … ahai, he must nearly have split her in half.

Behind Maissa two guards ducked through the door. One held a bundled small shape that wriggled and wailed. “Sharl.” Aleytys leaped to her feet, her hands reaching for her son.

Maissa shrieked and threw herself in front of Aleytys, fingers curling into claws.

The second guard swung his boot brutally, kicking the squalling woman half across the tent. Then he jabbed an elbow into Aleytys' stomach, knocking her off her feet onto the pile of leathers where she had been sitting. She gasped, struggled to suck in the air that had been driven from her body.

The master frowned toward Maissa. “You. Black viper. Move from there and the guard will spit you on his spear.” He nodded to the grinning man who moved immediately to stand beside Maissa. She was beginning to hemorrhage, the splotch of blood on her batik spreading like a slow blooming flower. Aleytys staggered to her feet.

“Sit, gikena. Or the guard will pin you to the leather.”

Alestys looked with anguish at her baby, then at Maissa. “Let me heal her. The blood …”

“That one.” The master shrugged his massive shoulders, setting rolls of fat and rippling sagging skin into motion. “Has too much blood in her for her own good. Let the surplus leak out. You claim the child is yours?”

“Yes. My son.”

“How'd she get him?” He lifted a meaty hand and jabbed a thumb toward Maissa. “That one.”

“She was my servant. She stole the baby from me. While I slept.” She spread out her hands. “I must sleep.”

“Why would she take him?”