The Margarets (41 page)

Once we were in Ferni’s flier, I demanded to know what he meant when he said he was taking me somewhere safe.

“I overheard something,” he said. “Perhaps meaningless, perhaps not. It made me believe you might be in danger.”

“From whom?” I demanded.

He shrugged. “From someone who wants you dead, my love.”

I laughed. “That’s fairly indefinite.”

“M’urgi. Listen to me. I was in a crowded place, waiting to take a ship from one place to another. Somewhere close to me a deep voice says, ‘The word came down, all the way from the top. The orders are she’s got to be killed, soon.’ Second voice asks, ‘Why some smoke-flavored old hag from the steppes…’”

“Old hag!” I interrupted angrily. “I am not an old hag!”

He said harshly. “I’m not finished! The first voice says, ‘No hag, she’s young yet.’ Now, you tell me. Is there anyone else working here on B’yurngrad that answers that description? ‘Smoke-flavored, steppes, young yet,’ says you to me.”

I couldn’t answer. The words described me, and me only. “Who?” I said finally. “Who wants me dead?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t find the speakers. I stayed there listening for a long time, no luck. I have no idea who or what they were. What enemies have you made while here?”

“Enemies made as whom? As the night flier, the shaman’s girl? As the shaman herself after the old woman died? Since then, being a ghyrm-hunter? That last one we can answer. The ghyrm distributor probably wants all hunters off the job.”

“There are a dozen hunters, at least. You’re the only one fitting the description. Why only you?”

I shook my head at him. “I’m baffled, Ferni. If I’ve learned anything on this job, however, it’s that a workman never knows how the work looks to people who see it from the outside. We carry ghyrm. That makes us devils to some. You saw how that oasthall emptied out when I was there.”

“I imagined as much. That’s why I said I was taking you someplace safer. Everyone around here knows who you are, what you are. They’ll talk: ‘Yes, the woman was here, she went off in that direction.’ That’s why I’ve gone five directions since taking off. If anybody’s watching, we’ll hope we lost them.”

“And what is there, where we’re going?”

“A lake. A forest. A waterfall. A little inn, where the Siblinghood sends people who need a long rest. A view over the grasslands. Horses.”

“Horses?” I said doubtfully.

“Yes. The innkeeper keeps horses, for people to ride.”

“That’s new!”

“It is new, yes. Five or six years new. The Siblinghood brought in the original stock from Tercis, where they had too many. The grasslands are perfect for them. They actually eat plants the umoxen don’t like, so they fit.”

“Can I ride one?” I asked wonderingly.

“I should think so,” he said, grinning at me.

I turned from him to look out the window of the flier. Below, the grasslands extended beyond the range of vision, a wave-rippled ocean of green, blue, silver, and almost yellow, with here and there a patch of vivid red and once in a while a copse of towering trees. I felt tears in my eyes and wondered why. It came to me after a while. Death threats or no death threats, I couldn’t remember ever being this gloriously, miraculously happy.

Glory, Bamber Joy, Falija, and I spent the night in the hayloft of the barn, where sheets and blankets had been laid atop the hay, and we awoke early to hear Howkel whistling as he milked Earthian goats down below. Now, where had they come from?

While combing hay out of her hair, Glory remarked, “One of the things Falija’s folks said to me was that Falija would not be safe anywhere her people were known to be or known to visit. And Howkel says her people live here, so she’s not safe here!”

“You haven’t seen fit to mention this until now,” I growled.

“I didn’t remember it until now,” Gloriana cried. “It never made any difference until now.”

We told Howkel our dilemma at the breakfast table. He thought about it for some time before saying:

“There’s a shortcut to the Thairy way-gate without going through Gibbekot country. Suppose I send a couple of the youngsters with you as guides. Good at sneakiness, youngsters. Never known one that wasn’t.”

“Send Maniacal and Mirabel,” said the Dame. “They’re sneaky, that’s certain, and the longer the journey the better.”

“Them’s the oldest,” Howkel confided. “My Dame’s purely weary of wishin’ they’d move on and set up on their own.”

“Breakfast first,” said the Dame. “Haycakes and syrup.”

Midway through breakfast, Glory leaned toward me. “Did you know your face has turned a little green?”

“Did you know all your teeth were the color of grass?” I returned, without easing my pursuit of the last of the haycake around my plate. “Mighty peculiar-looking.”

“You two stop it,” muttered Bamber. “One of you’ll say something, and the other one will pounce on it, and then no matter how high our mission, it’ll all go to nonsense.”

“Quite right,” I agreed. “Your teeth are only slightly green, Gloriana.”

“And your face hardly shows it except around your ears,” Gloriana conceded.

Maniacal and Mirabel brought a wagon around to the front of the house, one seat in front and hay deeply piled in a short wagon bed behind. The three creatures pulling the wagon were leaner and taller than umoxen, with great, muscular hind legs.

“Gnar,” said Maniacal. “Not as strong as umoxen for the long haul, but very fast when they need to be.”

“You think they’ll need to be?” asked Bamber John.

“We won’t know ’til it happens, but if it does, you just burrow down in that hay and leave the rest to Mirabel and me.”

We took the precaution of burying our packs in the hay to start with. Falija had said nothing all morning, and I didn’t like the way she looked, her eyes unfocused and the fur on her face every which way.

“Did you have bad dreams, Falija?”

Falija nodded slowly. “I think I must have. I remember running as fast as we could away from something.”

“That’s a happy thought to start the day,” I remarked, punching the hay to make a larger pillow. “Maniacal, where is this way-gate to Thairy?”

“First there’s a long stretch of grass, then a bit of forest and a little climb. Pa Howkel told us how to find it. We won’t be going near the Ghoss and Gibbekots, but we’ll likely pass a few hayfolk farms. When we do, just hide ’til we get on by.”

So the morning passed, us mostly lying on the hay, occasionally napping, sometimes burrowing while trying not to scratch or sneeze.
Noon came and went, as did a good part of the food Dame Howkel had packed for us.

Late afternoon had come when Mirabel said urgently, “Get down into the hay. Somebody coming.”

We burrowed. Mirabel got into the wagon bed and carefully covered any parts we’d left showing. The wagon moved along, easily, not fast, then suddenly Maniacal let out a whoop and we began to clatter along the road at very high speed.

Mirabel leaned down and said, “Two humans in some kind of machine. Maniacal is heading for the woods.”

“I’ll bet it’s Ned and Walter,” mumbled Bamber Joy, around the wisps of hay that kept creeping into his mouth and nose. “Or somebody just like them. I need to see.”

He tunneled through the hay until he was under the wagon seat, then pushed his head up under it where he could look out through a crack. “Not the car from Tercis,” he cried. “Another one that smokes and snarls, but it’s not catching up yet.”

Time went by as we rushed and clattered.

“Now they’re catching up to us,” cried Mirabel.

“Look up there ahead,” growled Maniacal. “What do you see across the road?”

“Oooh,” she said. “Gizzardile. Oooh, Manny, that’s the biggest one I ever saw!”

“Hold on tight,” shouted Maniacal. “Go, gnar, go…”

Our speed increased, the rattling turned into a chattering hum, the vehicle behind us sped up as well as we flew down the ruts. I had tunneled up next to Bamber Joy, and we both saw the cylindrical something or other, like a mighty tree trunk, down across the road. No forest anywhere near, and the buggy was flying toward it, was going to hit it at full speed…

“Fly, gnar, fly,” yelled Maniacal, and the buggy flew, or at least it leapt, following the trajectory of the three animals that took off as one in a long arc across the gizzardile, landing beyond it with a great swaying and crashing as though the wagon were falling apart.

Bamber and I quickly looked behind us. The pursuing vehicle was closing on the gizzardile, which suddenly and quite quickly, considering its bulk, reared its forward end and turned it to face the
noisy machine. The fin that had lain along the creature’s back rose into a huge fan, numerous legs stretched out on either side, and before the vehicle could stop, turn, or maneuver in any way, the gizzardile chunked its huge, lumpy lower part directly into its path, and when the machine struck, collapsed its higher parts on top with a great shriek of rending metal.

“Whoa, gnar,” said Maniacal.

“They were after me,” Falija remarked. “That must be what I dreamed about, but they didn’t catch us after all!”

Maniacal was out of the wagon, unhitching the Gnar.

“Don’t we still need them?” Bamber asked.

“When good creatures do a great good thing,” said Maniacal, “we don’t ask them to spend their strength doin’ more when our own strength will suffice. So Pa Howkel has always told me. They jumped their weight, and ours, and the wagon’s over that critter. That’s a story for tellin’ at the Haymeet, many a year from now…”

“Nobody’ll believe it,” remarked Mirabel.

“Not if you tell it, but they know I’m no tale maker. See yonder? Just above those trees? That’s where we’re going, and these good creatures can find their way home by theirselves while that gizzardile is occupied. Since gizzardiles eat most everything including rocks, it’ll be a while.”

“We won’t make it before night,” I said.

“No,” said Mirabel, “but there’s a little cave up there, above the lake, where Pa’s camped out many a time. We can get there by full dark, and there’s both late and early moons.” He pointed high above us, where a half-moon was in bud, to the west, where a crescent sailed like a little boat toward the horizon, while far to the east an almost full moon blossomed over the hills.

“How’ll you get your wagon back?” I asked. I had been thinking to myself that for a wagon that looked as rattletrap as this one did, it had held up extremely well: more to it, perhaps, than met the eye—just as with Pa Howkel.

Mirabel said offhandedly, “Pa’ll bring an umox team to get the wagon when the gnar get home without it.”

And with that, we shouldered our packs and made for the line of forest, which was now no great distance ahead. Behind the forest lay
the mountains, slowly thrusting up to cover the last of the sunset yellow sky while rosy clouds gathered like bridesmaids, and a diamond star pulsed against the high blue, like a signal light someone had lit in a window.

“What star is that?” asked Bamber Joy.

Maniacal looked up at it, cocking his head. “That’s the summer star. That’s the star that shines on Thairy.”

The inn was very much as Ferni had described it. The rooms were very simple, paneled in smooth, aromatic wood. In our suite, I luxuriated in a hot, foamy bath that smelled of flowers and found myself becoming somewhat resentful toward the Siblinghood.

“They never mentioned this place. They never told me I was entitled to a vacation. They never suggested I might need a rest. I’m still digging soot out of the creases in my skin!”

“I can’t see any,” remarked Ferni from the other end of the tub. “Not anywhere. I’m looking very closely.”

I flushed and submerged. When I came up again, I grinned at him. “Behave yourself, or I’ll do a chant on you.”

“What is that?” he asked.

“What is what?”

“I’ve never understood that shaman business. The chants, what you did with the girl at the oasthall. What they call night flying. All that.”

I twisted my wet hair into a knot atop my head and let the water lap at my chin. “You really want to know?”

“I don’t suppose I can
know
, but I’d like to understand.”

I sat up a little. “All right. The first lesson the shaman taught me was belief. Before I could do anything I had to
believe that here, around us, is an insubstantial entity that senses everything. It wraps around stars, it surrounds worlds, moons, comets, all the trash and dust that’s out in space, encompasses all races of creatures no matter how small, is everywhere. It pushes things together to separate one thing from another; it forms boundaries. The shaman calls that entity Kuzh. We’d say ‘the Holder.’”

“The Keeper?” murmured Ferni in a strange voice.

“The Keeper? Yes, that would convey the same meaning. The shaman taught me to believe by showing me that the existence of the…‘Keeper’ was the only explanation for what she could do. Once I’d really perceived what she could do, once I’d tried to think of anything else that would explain it, I believed, I learned to touch it, go into it, move inside it, not with my body, just with my senses. Kuzh is insubstantial, so bodies can’t move in it, but senses can. Whatever senses you have, you can use them there to learn what’s going on. The shaman and I used ours to prevent as much slaughter as possible among the tribes. We nudged them gradually toward something less violent. The shamans call it night flying because it’s easiest to do when sensory stimulation is decreased, when it’s dark. The Kuzh, the Keeper around you is not only sensing, but also reflecting the patterns of what’s going on, sensing what each pattern will lead to and how long it will take. The closest times are the most accurate. That’s the way we foretold and prevented massacres.”

“How?” he asked.

“Sometimes just by whispering a word in someone’s ear. Sometimes by asking the nearest settlements to make a raid just before war was to break out. Different ways.”

“How long did it take you to learn to do that?”

I sighed. “It took me three years just to make the first contact. Another year to learn to lie on the night and go with it. Maybe two more years to pick up the sense of what was going on around me. The old woman said I was way too old to learn easily, a child of three or four is better at it. Still, she got four good years out of me. Enough for us to prove that some of the tribes were running ghyrm into the settlements.”

“Did you find the source of the ghyrm?”

“We came close. All we had was the pictures they had in their
minds. They went down into a darkness. Someone gave them the ghyrm, and they were paid in weapons. We tried again and again to follow them when they went wherever it was. We were never there at the right time.”

He laved his arms. “Do you miss it? That work?”

I felt my brow furrow. “Well, Ferni, I was generally very dirty, very stinky, no baths out on the steppes, our clothing was mostly uncured hides, we slept itchy, we had bugs and what not. Do I miss it? Not the doing of it, no. The feeling of it, yes. That weightlessness. That was a nice feeling. But, so is this.”

He grinned at me. “What do you want to do today?”

“Horses,” I cried. “You promised me horses.”

We rode, later on, down a forested valley where a bright, tumbling river spilled a lake into the grasslands at the foot of the hills. I experimented with my posture, the saddle, the animal, trying to figure out what was possible, what was comfortable, what was least painful. Ferni had picked up considerable skill, which he patiently passed on. By noon, we were well out into the grasses, the hills some way behind us. We stopped among a scattering of small trees by the river, tied the horses, and spread out our lunch.

“I’ll never get back on that animal,” I snarled. “You didn’t tell me it hurt.”

“Only the first few times. Walk around a bit. That’ll help. Have some wine. That’ll help even more!”

“Oh, I’m sure being sotted would enable me to ride like the wind, for all of two steps before I fell off!” He hadn’t brought enough wine to made me insensible, but he was right, it did dull the pain.

I lay back on the grasses, head propped on one hand, admiring the velvety turf and the herd of gnar some little distance away, peacefully grazing while their young leapt and pretended to fight with their front feet. We watched them for a long, contented time.

“Are they native here?” Ferni asked drowsily.

“Umm,” I replied, lying back on the blanket. “What? The gnar? Yes. They’re native here, but they’ve been transplanted to several other grassland planets. The closest one I know of is Fajnard. Only on the highlands, though. They won’t stay anywhere near the Frossians.”

“They’re kept for wool?”

“It’s more hair than wool. In the winter they grow an undercoat that’s warmer than any other natural fiber known. It’s not as fine as umox hair, but it’s hollow, and that makes it a marvelous, lightweight insulator. The herders pull it out in the spring with combs shaped like little rakes.”

“Can they be ridden?” he asked sleepily.

“No. They’re very good at pulling light wagons, but their body proportions are all wrong for carrying people as horses can, or as umoxen will, even though they’re very slow.”

The herd went leaping away, toward the hills, in great, ground-eating bounds, and I, half asleep, wondered what had spooked them. All was silent except for the horses’ teeth, chomping grass, the twitter of some small creatures in the reeds along the water, the deep breathing of us two drowsers.

The tribesmen came out of the grasses fast and low. Four of them leapt upon Ferni and held him down, tying his hands behind him, his feet together, blindfolding him. Four of them seized me up, gagged me, wrapped me in a net, and ran off into the grasses. The horses jerked wildly at their reins, whinnying and screaming.

From the net that held me I thrust my mind back to the place Ferni was. He was pushing his face against the ground, shoving the blindfold away to find himself alone. “Stupid idiot,” he raged at himself. “Promised her horses. Promised to keep her safe. Damn! Where did they come from? No tribesmen nearer than a three-day ride, they told me! No danger! Don’t worry!”

While he railed at himself, he was working his hands as far apart as possible so he could sit on them, work his way back, move the hands forward, damn, damn, nearly dislocated a shoulder there, never mind, go ahead, dislocate the damned thing, get the hands in front, in front, pull up the knees, get his feet through. He was thinking he had done this before, but it had been a long, long time. Now the thongs were at mouth level and he chewed them, slobbering as much as possible to get them wet, stretching the wet leather, more, more, one loop between his teeth, up and over, another loop, up and over, now loosen the whole thing. Off!

I watched him as in a dream. His hands were numb. He had to wave them, yell at them before they’d stop pricking and work. Now.
Leave the clutter by the river to mark the place. Get on the horse and follow…

I saw him searching, read his face: Where? No sign. No sign at all. Not a trail through the grasses. He couldn’t follow a trail if he wasn’t high enough to see a trail!

I sensed his frustration, fury, grief. He mounted one horse and grabbed the other’s reins to lead it as he raced back the way we had come to get help.