Lamarchos (7 page)

“My friend, we live together in an uneasy alliance, both aware of its impermanence. So anything that threatens it causes a disproportionate upheaval. I suppose I'd feel just as destructive if you went with another woman. I don't know. I really don't know.”

He stirred, hands moving in an abortive gesture as if he reached for her then denied the impulse. “Fine philosophy.”

“Ay-mi, Miks. You don't own me, but we are friends. I will not deny that or let you deny it. And I need you. The loyalty of need. Isn't that stronger than sex? I don't know your … your bottom line beliefs, the ones that go below conscious thought. You never let me know you that deeply, did you.” She slipped off the bunk and edged up to him reaching for his arm.

He jerked away and dropped down the steps.

With an impatient exclamation, Aleytys ran after him.

He swung around to face her. “Lee, leave me alone.” He ran nervous, jerking hands through his hair, frowning at the growing anger in her face. “Words!”

“More than words.” She flung her head back, the black mane rippling like a skein of silk.

“All right. Just let me alone. Give me time to think. Okay?” He wheeled and strode away, disappearing behind the other caravan.

She stood a while till her feet ached from the cold, damp grass. Sighing, she trudged up the steps and dropped on the bed. Resting one ankle on her knee, she wiped the cold, gritty mud off with a piece of rag. When she finished the second foot, she sat lumpishly on the bed, staring into the dark.

The baby stirred in his blankets and gave a tentative whimper.

“Sharli-mi, Baby-mi,” she crooned, bending over him. She lifted him to her breast and rocked him for a little while she scrubbed an edge of the blanket over her nipples. Then she let him suck.

“My son,” she murmured, suddenly filled with a blissful contentment. “My little one. You're getting so big. So big and strong. You'll be a fine man one day, Sharl-mi. Without the twist your mother suffers from. A fine, strong man. Like your father. Ah god, baby, be like your father.…” She sighed and settled back, the baby warm across her body.

The hours passed. Somehow. Sharl went back in his bed, sleeping the deep, placid sleep of contentment and a full belly. Aleytys pulled the quilt around her and huddled unhappily, waiting for Stavver to return. If he chose to return.

The caravan creaked and swayed as he came up the stairs. He pulled the curtain aside, hesitated, then stepped into the caravan. “Leyta?”

“Here, Miks.”

“Geod.” He dropped beside her shivering as much from over-stimulated nerves as from the night cold. “I'm a fool,” he muttered.

“I think so too.” She touched his cheek. “You're freezing. Come under the quilt with me.”

He hesitated, passed shaking hands over his face.

“Isn't it time to stop acting like a boy? You're a man.”

“What's a man?” With a deep groan, he stretched out beside her, letting the quilt fall over him. He pulled her into his arms. “I never thought maturity would be so complicated.” Relaxing against her soft warm body, he let the dregs of resentment wash out of him.

Chapter VII

Aleytys stroked her hand over Olelo's soft, russet fur as he cuddled against her, watching Stavver smother the fire with a shovel full of sandy dirt. Behind her the orange sun was a fat pimple on the horizon, throwing extravagantly elongated shadows that flickered in a stilting dance behind Loahn and Kale as they buckled harnesses on side-stepping, restless horses and backed them over the wagon tongues.

Maissa came walking with short tense steps over the top of a knoll. Halfway down, a dozen paces away from the campsite, she stopped abruptly, her face crumpled in a bad-tempered scowl.

Aleytys sighed. The omens pointed to a bloody-minded confrontation when she informed Maissa that their plans had to be changed. She hesitated, reluctant to precipitate the conflict, then took a deep breath and called, “Leyilli.”

Maissa whipped her head around, the scowl deepening as she focused on Aleytys. She jolted downhill, kicking viciously at the cold wet grass. When she reached the level ground of the campsite, she halted, shivering, arms crossed over her bare breasts. There was a drawn look to her face and her skin humped in blue-tinted gooseflesh. “What do you want?”

Aleytys glanced at Loahn then lowered her eyes, let her shoulders droop, minimizing her own personality to offer less abrasive challenge to Maissa's hypersensitivity. “The pariah boy,” she said softly. “We have to take him back to his people.”

Maissa hissed and took a short step backward, coming up on her toes like a snake poised to strike. “So?”

“He has to be put right with them.”

“We stick our fingers in the fire for that?” Trembling from anger and cold she jerked a thumb at the watching boy.

“If you want peace and quiet, we take the boy back. Unless he's put right with them, we're all in trouble.”

Maissa's nostrils flared. “Put a knife through his throat, put him under dirt, there's no more problem.” She rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “This damn lump of shit.” She was shivering more violently. “The sooner we get off …”

“You do it that way, you've got another problem.” Aleytys' voice was cool and crisp, pulling Maissa back around in a wary hunter's crouch. She straightened and glared at Aleytys.

Stroking a gentle hand over the speaker's fluff, Aleytys nodded toward the boy. “Me. You'll have to do me too. I will not stand aside and watch that boy killed. I will not.”

“You!” Lips curling in a contemptuous sneer that was part snarl, baring her small ivory teeth, she ran insolent eyes over Aleytys from head to feet then back up again. When she spoke, her voice was hoarse, the words came out in clear harsh syllables. “Filthy grubling. You will not? Phah!”

She wheeled and leaped at the boy who stood gaping at the fury plunging toward him. Face contorted with a hideous combination of rage and killer-lust, hands set for the killing blow, she was a screaming death missile. She bounced off Stavver as he leaped between her and her prey. Moving faster than Aleytys had ever seen him shift his long thin body, he whipped past her as she tottered off balance and wrapped wiry arms about her. “Leyta,” he grunted out. “Get that damn magic of yours working.”

The diadem sang, flowing in phantom splendor on the blue-black hair while in her head fragmented images of cool wary black eyes flickered hazily at the rim of mental vision, triggering confusion and a ravening curiosity in her. Her body moved, clumsily at first, then with a swift sureness that startled and delighted her. For the first time since the diadem had started taking her body she wasn't wholly pushed aside, a helpless prisoner in her own skull. She shared the grafted skill and the pleasure she found in it added to the confusion that wheeled in her head. Stavver's strained face, Maissa's hate-ugly one reflected the phantom sparks of flickering colors from the jeweled centers of the diadem flowers as they caught the light and reflected it back. “LET HER GO.” Her voice sounded strange to her as if it struggled toward a resonant baritone an octave below her normal tones.

Stavver nodded. He released Maissa, shoving her roughly forward while he leaped backwards several paces.

With a shriek Maissa whipped a hand in a three-finger strike at Aleytys' throat, not bothering to cover out of her contempt for what confronted her. Aleytys swept the hand aside and struck hard, whipping her fist around, so that two knuckles slammed into the juncture of jaw and neck, drawing a grunt of pain out of the smaller woman. Maissa fell back but hit the ground in a quick roll that brought her to her feet poised to attack.

As soon as the strike was completed Aleytys threw her suddenly skilled body back, ready to attack again if necessary.

Maissa circled warily probing for weaknesses in Aleytys' defense, eyes chilling into reluctant respect as she failed to find any opening. Finally, breathing a little too quickly, she moved out of reach and dropped her hands, staring fascinated at the glimmering diadem coiling regally above a stern, drawn face, set in strange lines, a shifting of features into a new conformation that altered Aleytys almost out of recognition. Made obscurely uneasy by this change, Maissa focused on the jeweled crown. Greed seeped in to replace the anger. “The diadem,” she breathed. “The Rmoahl diadem. Stavver said you had it.”

The black-eyed presence flowed imperceptibly from her nerve webbing as the chimes dimmed to taut silence. Aleytys shrugged. “As you see,” she said, her throat tight, her voice shrill in reaction to its plummet into the lower tones. Olelo came scampering to her, small black hands out, begging to be taken up. Absently she settled the speaker on her shoulder. “Will you listen now?”

Anger clamped Maissa's full lips into a tight line. She nodded, head dipping in a taut small arc, body rigidly erect, muscles contracted for the attack that her cooling brain refused to initiate.

“If the boy stays alive, for our sake as well as his, I have to take the curse off his head. It won't add that much time to the length of our stay here …” She kicked at the clodded sandy earth, toes sending up a spray of coarse soil. “Four days … five … not more. But we'll roll into Karkys sunk layer on layer deep in the life of this world. The boy is bound to me body and spirit until I release him. I guarantee he'll prove no danger to us.”

“Guarantee.” The word reeked scorn but Maissa had herself firmly in hand. She watched Aleytys from unblinking eyes, cold as death.

“Yes.” Aleytys tapped her temple so that the others staring fascinated at her heard the chimes.

Maissa turned her head without moving her body and glanced at Kale from the corner of her eye. “Kale.”

“Yes.”

“What she says.”

Kale jerked his gaze away from the impudent grin on Loahn's narrow face. Reluctantly he nodded. “If we plan to continue, gikena's got to lift the curse.”

Maissa's eyes flickered over Stavver, rested on him a minute while her fists closed and opened again, then faced Aleytys. Reluctantly she nodded. “We need you, woman. For the moment. Don't push your luck. And keep that brat out of my sight.” She whipped around and scowled at Kale and Stavver. “What are you standing around for, fools? Do you want to waste more time?” She strode to her caravan, pulled herself tiger-fast and smooth onto the driver's seat. Talking the whip from its loops she sat caressing the smooth braided coils. “Well?”

As Aleytys walked to her caravan, she felt a sickness of the soul turn her knees weak and set a darkness behind her eyes as images of the battered horses Maissa had driven the first day on this world burned behind her eyelids. She stopped by Kale and laid a hand on his arm. “Let her alone,” she murmured.

Kale looked startled.

“The horses won't suffer too long and she'll wear the rage out. It won't be pleasant, but.…” She shrugged. “When we stop for nooning, I'll heal them.”

His dark eyes met hers a minute. Then he nodded.

“Good. Let her lead off. Tell her to take the first turning to the north.… a minute. Loahn.”

He edged around the horse's head, curiosity vivid in his face.

“First turn to the north?”

He nodded. Clearing his throat, he said hesitantly. “Then just follow the main ruts. Lake Po's turn-off comes mid-morning the second day.”

“Good. You understand. Kale?”

Flicking a two-fingered salute to mark his understanding, Kale padded to Maissa, sliding over the ground like the hunting cat inked on his skin.

Maissa lashed the whip across the flanks of the off-side horse, startling a pain-filled scream from the gelding. Her caravan rumbled past, swaying and rocking precariously. With an angry nausea turning her mouth sour, Aleytys swung up on the seat. “Drive, will you, Keon? Loahn, you'll keep out of sight. Ride inside or sit in the back door. As you please.”

He grinned at her, some of his usual self-possession returning. Aleytys frowned awfully at him. “Move, imp. Even the dust cloud's disappearing.” Stavver chuckled and slapped the reins on the horses' backs, starting them forward at a brisk trot. With a shout of laughter that was an affirmation of the soaring spirits in all three, Loahn raced around the caravan as it began to pick up speed and swung himself up into the interior.

Aleytys leaned back, feeling a sudden lightness, her spirit floating like a bubble. “Miks, did you see her face. Ahhh.…” She giggled and stretched, wriggling on the hard plank of the seat.

He reached out and flipped a stray curl off her face. “She never thought a barbarian land-grubber could handle her like that.”

“Well, she was right, wasn't she.” She wrinkled her nose at her hands. “I wasn't the one working these.”

Miks sobered. “In a way it's too bad we couldn't keep that card stashed for the future. Maissa's a snake, Lee. She knows now she can't take you from the front. You watch your back.”

“I don't understand.” She scratched at her knee with a forefinger, worrying at a small flake of dead skin. “You keep telling me how evil and cruel she is. All right. So she mistreats animals. Loses her temper easy. Tried to kill Loahn. None of that's very sweet and gentle, but she hasn't really done anything to us.”

“She needs us now.”

Mid morning, they swung off the main track onto a narrower lane, as deeply rutted but not so bare. Spindly weeds, dry and dusty as little old men, hunched between the whitish wheel tracks. The wind had turned and came to them from the north instead of the west, lakeland's breath instead of the hot dry effluence from the stonelands. As they moved north the air grew progressively more humid, the tough, thin-bladed grass giving way to another species more succulent than herb, until the land was covered by a crunchy green carpet a double-handspan high. At intervals darker lines of green to the left or right marked one of the hundred lakes that gave this section of Lamarchos its name. Twice after they passed by branching tracks she caught glimpses of slender crimson towers swelling at the top to tulip shaped bells that looked open to the sky. She assumed that these marked towns or villages.