Lamarchos (3 page)

Aleytys shrugged. The elaborate, blue markings on her breasts drifted and jiggled with the movement. “I hear,” she said shortly. “You don't have to keep reminding me.”

He eyed her unhappily. “You've got a temper, Lee. I—oh hell.” He stalked out of the room without looking to see if she followed.

Aleytys sighed and smoothed the cloth over her hips.

“Take me with you.” At the sound of the speaker's voice, Aleytys started and turned around. The three-fingered, black paws were waving excitedly in the air. She picked him up, then checked to see if Sharl were still asleep. She touched her son's soft cheek with love flooding through her body, forgetting briefly the complicated and dangerous situation waiting for her.

Sighing, she shifted the speaker to her shoulder and reluctantly left the cabin. Out in the corridor she rubbed her fingers up and down his spine, laughing as his contented humming rumbled in her ears. “Do you have a name, little one?”

“Name?” His breath was warm against her ear.

“No name? Then I'll call you Olelo. You're Olelo. Do you understand?”

“Olelo.” The speaker tried the sound out, pleased with it. “Olelo. Me, Olelo. Olelo.” The syllables turned over in his mouth as if he found them tasty. “Speaker say thank you for the naming, Sister.”

Aleytys jumped slightly, almost dislodging the beast, startled by the sudden change of timbre in the small voice.

“Ahai! I suppose I'll get used to this. No thanks necessary, Lakoe-heai. It's only a matter of convenience. A very little thing.”

“Naming is no small thing, Sister. A name given sends ripples through time like a stone thrown into water. Never name lightly.” She heard a tiny chuckle from the speaker, echoed by the boom of thunder outside the ship. “But you have named well, nonetheless, and we thank you for the gift.”

The sense of presence receded until, once again, Aleytys heard the beast purring in her ear. She pulled her mind from this new puzzlement and marched resolutely down the corridor toward the lock.

Hand on the cold metal above the fingerplate, she paused. “Olelo?”

“One hears.”

“The rain. Can one do something about that? I ask because she who comes will be difficult enough without the added burden.”

A tiny chuckle rustled in her ear. “One can.”

Smiling in her amusement with the buoyant elementals inhabiting this world, Aleytys tapped the plate and stepped into the lock.

Chapter II

The horses stood head down, tails twitching desultorily over their wet sides. They had a hard-driven look that kindled anger deep inside her. She walked to Maissa's team and touched the long, rain-sleeked hair that steamed faintly in the humid heat of the sun which was sinking like a squashed orange behind the vermilion-touched haze at the western edge of the world. The animal jerked nervously away, then quieted under her hands.

Aleytys gentled the horses, crooned to them, anger bubbling hotter as her fingers moved over welts and ragged cuts, healing them, taking the hurt away. Lips pressed together, she watched the empty mouth of the lock with its pendant ladder waiting for Maissa to appear; thinking of what Stavver had told her. Sensing her disturbance, the horses pawed at the coarse soil and nickered uneasily. She turned abruptly to face Kale. “Why?”

He shrugged and stepped down from the driving bench on the other caravan, his blocky body moving with the taut control of a hunting cat. “The captain doesn't like the wet.”

“And you?”

He rested a broad, strong hand on the flank of the left-hand horse of his own team. “Would I lash my own feet?” Then he jerked rigidly upright, his eyes on a level with hers, flat, dark, suddenly angry. Everything about him looked time-polished, compacted by will and use into a gloss that shed punishment almost casually. The stylized pattern of hunting cats that climbed up arms and chest, the blue cat faces snarling on his broad, high cheek bones suited his feral aura even though they weren't his clan signs but skillful fakes like those she and the rest of the party wore. He stared at the side of her face, a rising anger struggling out from behind the mask. “Let it go,” he said.

Aleytys frowned. “What?”

A hiss exploded into a spitting sound. He took a step toward her, his body poised forward on his toes while his arm came up, a tautly trembling finger jabbing at the animal sitting on her shoulder. “The speaker. That.” The finger jabbed again. “I don't know how you caught it, woman, but only a gikena—a
real
gikena, woman—can keep it. Fool!” His hand jerked in a crooked circle compassing the ship, wagons, and the distant rim of the horizon. “Do you want to wreck everything?” His eyelids came down, hooding his eyes. “Let it go.”

“You call me fool?” Aleytys snorted. “Use your eyes, Kale. Why didn't you tell us about these animals and their connection with the gikena?”

He dropped his arm. “Why say anything when there's nothing we can do about it?” Thrusting his thumbs aggressively behind the wide belt resting on his hips, he watched her through slitted eyes.

The silence grew taut between them, a wordless confrontation that was a clash for dominance between the two. Like a stench in her nostrils, Aleytys sensed treachery in him. A closely guarded set of ends that he was using the rest of them as ladder rungs to reach. She felt distrust bloom cold in her and held her icy, blue-green eyes hard on him, thrusting at him her certainty and power. After a minute he cursed and looked away.

“No,” she said softly. “You didn't tell us. That was stupid, Kale. Maissa would have done something. What were you trying? Who would believe I was gikena without the speaker? Stupid!”

The long muscles in his neck swelled but he kept his eyes sullenly on the ground.

“Look at me!” she commanded. “You've got eyes in your head.” She nudged Olelo out away from her ear until he was clinging to the point of her shoulder, obviously unfettered.

Kale stared at the ground.

“Look!” she repeated, throwing her anger at him.

Reluctantly he lifted his eyes and fixed her with a bitter, hating stare. “I'm looking, woman.” He sneered the word, the scorn for females inherent in his culture boiling up through the crust of sophistication he had acquired rambling around a dozen worlds.

“But you don't see. Hunh! Look at the speaker, man. What holds the little one where he is?”

Kale shifted his gaze, saw the speaker sitting free on her shoulder. He gasped, his dark skin turning dull ash.

“Lakoe-heai,” she said softly.

He twitched like a nervous horse, flinching repeatedly as she went on. “Lakoe-heai sent the speaker to me. Olelo, tell him.”

The animal edged back to her head and straightened, keeping his balance by wrapping small hands in her hair. He focused brilliant black eyes on Kale. “The woman is gikena and more. Sister to us and under our protection. We lay this command on you, man. Until you have what you seek, you will aid, protect, and obey the woman.” Olelo broke off and cuddled against Aleytys.

Still grey in the face, Kale stumbled a few steps backward. “I hear,” he said hoarsely. “Aid. Protect. Obey.”

“Aleytys!”

She swung around to face the lock. Maissa leaned impatiently out. “Get your kid,” she snapped. “We're leaving.”

“Now?” Aleytys glanced at the vanishing sun.

“Now. Soon as Stavver has the Vryhh-box installed. The rain's quit so we need to put distance between us and the ship.” She looked nervously around. “Don't just stand there.”

Aleytys took a step toward the ship then glanced over her shoulder at a silent and thoughtful Kale. “If you can help it,” she said quietly, “don't let Maissa drive.”

He jerked his head up as if waking from a not too pleasant dream, stared blankly at her, then nodded his understanding, a fugitive flicker of awe struggling through the black chill of his eyes.

Chapter III

“What lies ahead?” Aleytys flipped her free hand at the rutted road unreeling beneath the horses' plodding hooves. Abruptly she yawned, eyes widening in surprise at the effect of the clear, cold morning air.

“This road goes along the edge of the lakelands,” Kale said gravely. After their confrontation the night before, he had thawed considerably, treating her now with a dignified courtesy that she found rather charming. He leaned against the slatted back of the driver's bench, relaxed and enjoying the fresh feel of the new day.

“The lakelands. Tell me about them. Did you live there?”

“No. My clan …” His mouth tightened. “We live close to the sea. On the far side of the mountains.”

“Oh.”

“The lakelands … mmmm … They raise our finest horses there.”

“Anything else?”

“Pihayo. A meat animal with long hair and a strong tink. Vegetables near the towns. On the lake islands, fruit trees. A rich land. Seas of grass. Much water. Streams. Hundreds of lakes. They have a good life, the lakelanders.”

Aleytys nodded. “I can imagine. My people lived in much the same style, though we have a harsher range, valleys high in the mountains with winters longer than your whole year. A good life, though.”

He slanted a glance at her, his unspoken questions loud in the silence. Why had she left? Why had she abandoned her people to chance her luck in this ill-matched crew? After a minute he turned his head so that his eyes followed the road as kilometer after identical kilometer slid toward them through the gently undulating hills. “Was it the thief?” he asked, a hint of sneer back in his voice.

Aleytys sighed in exasperation but knew enough to let it go. “They called me a witch. An aunt of mine was arranging to have me burned at the stake. So I left. Stavver came later.”

“Then we're both exiles.” His hand settled on her arm. She felt the heat in him.

Shaking the hand off, she said coolly, “It doesn't make us kin.”

“Woman, you have no courtesy.”

“Man, I walk my own road and you'd better learn that now.” Though the words were a challenge in their content, her voice was slow and thoughtful as if she were exploring something in herself rather than answering him.

“I don't understand you. You have the form of a woman, but …”

“Different people, different ways. You should know that by now.” She shook the hair out of her eyes. “After the Lakelands, what then?”

“The stonelands and the wind gods. Then the killing posts.”

“Killing posts?”

“Aye. Boundary posts of the Karkiskya holding. I saw a man burned to ash when he tried to cross between them outside truce time.”

“Truce time?” She shivered. “Is this truce time?”

“Yes. The time of fall fairing.” He grunted and hooked his thumbs behind his belt. “Karkiskya don't like prying eyes. They keep the road closed except at spring and fall fairing. Then the posts flanking the road have their kill-force turned aside.” He took the knife from the sheath slotted on the leather belt, pulling it free with quiet pride. “This is a Karkesh blade.” He turned the blued steel so it caught the golden light of the morning sun coming up behind them. “Not mine. I had mine at my blooding. It cost my father the poaku ikawakiho my mother brought as part of her dowry. And, in a way, it cost me an uncle” His voice slowed until the last words dragged out like stones.

Aleytys flicked a glance at his brooding face. “Poaku? That's another word for rock. You mean someone took a rock as payment for a knife?”

He shifted restlessly on the hard, wooden seat, fingers absently stroking the smooth metal of the knife blade. “Poaku ikawakiho. An Old Stone. Not one of the Very Old. Still, it had its power. Blue, this one, with cream-white veining. Carved with summer bloom.”

“Ah.” She sucked in a deep breath delighting in the silken feel of the air, refusing to let his absorption in some nameless tragedy from his past spoil her pleasure in the beautiful morning. “How many days to the city? Will we be meeting other travellers? Or stopping any place before then?”

He slid the knife gently back in the sheath. “Si'a gikena, given good faring, six days by this road will bring us to Karkys. We may indeed meet others. And certainly we will when we reach the city. As we get near the dust will reach the heavens; the roar of voices, the shriek of wheels, the thunder of hooves will drown out thought itself. As to stopping before then, that lies in her hands.” He jerked a thumb at the caravan behind them, brought thumb and forefinger together in a circle, and touched the circle to his lips. “And in their hands.”

“As you say.” A wail came from inside the caravan. “Kale?”

“Si'a gikena?”

“Take the reins a while, will you? There's a small, hungry person summoning me.”

The day rolled placidly on, the hours as alike as the curves of the road. Stop for nooning. Go on. The only difference visible in the world the changing angle the sun made with the earth. Inside the caravan Aleytys sank into a memory-haunted lethargy.

Qumri's hate-filled face swam out of the sinks of memory, shouting at her: “Bitch! Witch-woman's daughter, whoring after any man. You'll burn, I'll see you burning.…”

She fled the hate and the threat, surfacing at the gates of the Raqsidan, seated on the back of a russet mare, looking down into the moon-shadowed face of the dream-singer. “Vajd, I don't want to leave.”

His long, mobile mouth curved into a smile. “You do.”

She reached down and he wrapped his fingers around hers, the touch warm, comforting, full of tenderness. “You know me too well,” she said ruefully. “Come with me.”

“I can't.” The smile faded from his face, his dark eyes grew larger and larger until she swam in them in the agony of parting from him. “Go to your mother, Leyta, you'll be safe there.”

Once again she fled the pain, flipping through the pages of memory—lying in the light of the double sun on a wide, flat stone, the heat baking the tiredness out of her body. Lying beside the lazy, black form of the tars. “Daimon,” she murmured with pleasure. She buried her hands in the long, soft fur at his throat, scratching vigorously until his fang-lined mouth opened into a heart stopping yawn. She laughed softly, revelling in his pleasure. “Daimon …”