01. When the Changewinds Blow (17 page)

Zenchur chuckled. "That is Maksut, or so the Akhbreed call it. Those people produce among the finest furs of Akahlar. I know it well."

"Yeah, but where the hell did the
hills
go?" Sam wanted to know.

"They're still there. Both of the lands you saw are not mere slices of things but entire worlds of which only a small portion overlaps here at any time. If you wait-perhaps a few minutes, perhaps hours, or even days, it will be a portion of another land that you see. That is the ever-changing nature of Akahlar. They appear, and disappear, around the hubs-sometimes here, sometimes elsewhere, sometimes not at all. My trade is navigator. I know the ways to tell where I am physically in Akahlar at any given time-with some work, of course. I can plot a course between two definite points on the globe, short or long, and get you there. I do not, however, know what will occupy that point at any given time, or the points in between. Maksut, or Habanadur, or a hundred others. Only the Akhbreed with their Pilots can choose their path and their destination exactly, and the Pilots do not tell how they do it. I can get to the exact same spot-but I may be worlds away. That is why one cannot travel long out there without Pilots. They are Akhbreed who work with the locals, each Pilot guild assigned to a particular wedge. When I fled my homeland I was without a Pilot and without navigational skills and only sheer luck and the hand of the gods kept me from death."

That's why he's taken us out here,
Sam thought to herself.
He suspects we might not fully trust him and he wants to show us just how impossible it would be to even survive on our own. And he's making a good case for it, damn his soul!

"In the morning we shall go inland-that way," he told them, pointing to the forest behind them. "The hub is large, but it is not as primitive as it looks. There is a major road just beyond that hill, and in a hub all roads tend to lead either to the capital city or to the border. Come-we will be hot and wet enough tomorrow. Let us enjoy the coolness of the cave while we still can."

They went back down and inside, and Charley in particular felt frustrated that she and Sam couldn't immediately get together. That time would come much later.

It was quite late when that opportunity came with some certainty, and all of them were supposed to be asleep. Charley and Sam felt tired, too, but there was much to think over and, perhaps, to do.

"Okay, is he crooked or square with us?" Charley asked.

"Crooked," Sam responded flatly. "That little show today was to show us just how at his mercy we are. To tell you the truth, I'm not real sure just what to do now, damn him! If we take off in the woods in the middle of the night we'll probably break our fool necks, and if we go in towards the city we'll be pretty easy to track-and he'll have horses and lots of practice trackin', I bet. If we go out there we'll be in that creepy mist for miles and then wind up God knows where."

"You think those vampires he talked about are real?"

Sam shrugged. "Maybe not where he said, but all you got to do is look at Ladai to know they're probably around someplace, and maybe worse. One thing's sure-we go out there without somebody who knows what he's doin' and we ain't got much chance."

"Yeah, but if we stick with him he'll stab us in the back first chance he gets. You said it yourself. The only reason we're not already dead or worse is 'cause he's gotta make it look like it's an accident to keep Boolean from turning him into live sausage or something. I tell you, I don't see why he just don't hypnotize us with that jewel of his like he did last night and command us to betray ourselves. He flashes that thing and commands us to parade naked down the main street of that city saying 'Here we are-the ones the Horned One wants.
Please
take us to him!' And we'd hav'ta
do
it!"

"I dunno. He acts like he's scared of that thing himself. But if we got centaurs and magic jewels and storms that can change a boy into a monster then the jewel ain't the only possible thing he can use. There's all sorts of drugs-would
we
know a bad drug from one of Ladai's sweetrolls here?-and once he's in the city he'll have magic types he can probably pay off cheap. I figure he don't want to do it here 'cause there's just us and the two of them. Pretty easy to get a full treatment from Boolean, huh? Lots more chances to make a play in the big city, maybe even hope we get nailed by accident and he don't hav'ta lift a finger."

"The only thing we can do is figure our odds, then," Charley said thoughtfully. "If we run, there's no chance now and he's off the hook. If we stick with him, maybe we got a chance to at least duck. I mean, this country's this Akhbreed, right?"

"Yeah? So?"

"So they talk Akhbreed. Once we're off, no Ladai, there's only humans like us, right? He'll have to do all the talkin' for us to them in their language-and he still don't know
you
know it. At least we'll know what he's planning before he does it, right? That's a chance."

Sam nodded. "I never thought of that. Yeah, sure. Okay. So I guess we figure we're safe for now, huh? Might as well get some sleep. We got to be damned sharp tomorrow."

"Yeah. Sam-one other thing. You're gonna hav'ta clue me in on what's goin' on without him catching on that you know yourself. I wish you knew Spanish-he sure don't-but I been tryin' to think of some edge someplace that'll keep our talk as crazy to him as theirs is to me. It's pretty far out, but I don't think he learned English any more than you learned that other stuff. He thinks in this Akhbreed-that's why he spoke it when he got upset. I think he sorta
wills
it to be translated both ways, to and from Akhbreed."

"Yeah, so?"

"Well, I been thinking about how you said, like, it wasn't like any language you ever heard of. If that's what his brain's actually hearing, and not English, then there's no way in
hell
he'll ever handle pig latin."

Sam thought it over and gave a wry smile. "You know, it ightmay ustjay orkway," she muttered aloud.

The "wagon" was sure different. It resembled a Roman chariot, with two big side wheels and an oval-shaped center, but it had a third, smaller wheel in front of the carriage giving it some stability. Inside, the driver had to stand, although there was a kind of bar that allowed him to relax against it, then a bench seat more reminiscent of a rowboat, and some cargo area in back. It wasn't fancy or ornate; it was old, hadn't been painted in years, and had both dirt and splinters. But it held the two trunks and a sack resembling a duffel which was Zenchur's traveling things, and they climbed in and held on for dear life as the navigator climbed in, lowered and latched the wooden safety bar on the side, leaned against the back rest bar, and jerked the reins forward. Two horses, side by side, seemed to have little trouble in pulling it and them, but
man
was that ride
rough
on those wooden wheels! After a while both Charley and Sam's bottoms hurt so bad that they actually envied Zenchur's standing position.

The horses looked pretty much like horses. They seemed a little large, more like the kind of horses that pulled the beer wagon in all those ads, and they looked a lot hairier than the horses they were used to-you could have styled the hair between their ears, in fact-but they were still basically the same sort of animal.

The same went for the countryside. The trees were tall but basically trees, although some had odd colors to their bark, and the grass seemed more blue than green, and every once in a while they'd pass a patch of strange flowers like the bunch of pink ones that looked like roses but grew on separate stalks maybe six feet high and thicker than most people's legs with flowers the size of Zenchur's head, but it was no Alice in Wonderful world--just exotic, sort of like being in another country like Brazil or one of the African ones.

There were buds, many quite colorful, and one fairly large one that might have been some kind of falcon but who seemed to change color and become almost invisible in the trees until spooked by the passing of the wagons. Then you suddenly had what looked like giant leaves taking flight and eventually becoming nearly invisible again as they changed to the gray of clouds or the blue of open sky.

It was good to see the sun again, first in breaks in the clouds and then as time went on more regularly, although the sky was never completely clear. Still, it was damned hot and getting hotter the more sun they got. This was a climate for loin cloths or bikinis, not full dress. The Arabs got away with theirs because their land was so dry their clothes kept in the moisture and that made sense. It was far too humid for that here. The Akhbreed were not only arrogant, they were hung-up assholes, Charley decided.

The road Zenchur had told them about was there, wide and well maintained, but it didn't really help the comfort much. Packed dirt roads only added to the sensation of being on a rolling ship at sea and made the bumps ever harder. Still, the horses needed to rest once in a while and they had to eat and drink, and about a three hours' ride in from the cave they came to a small village that looked with its red slate roofs and white stucco and brick facade like it had been plucked out of some European movie. The thing seemed to be built around a broad, central square with a marketplace all around it. It was not crowded, however, clearly this was a sleepy weekday afternoon and not a main market day.

Zenchur made some preliminary warnings to them. "Remember-say as little as possible, only to each other, and whisper. I doubt if there would be anyone here who would even know about you but be on your guard anyway."

It looked different than the one in Sam's vision, but not any more different than she would have expected going between, say, France and maybe Germany. While there weren't many people about, those they could see seemed to mostly be women, all wearing long, loose, baggy dresses tied off at the waist, the dresses going down to their ankles and looking to be made of cotton or some similar material. All had matching scarves on their heads. The colors were mainly muted reds, browns, or blues, but here and there a woman wore white. What set the white-clad ones apart was that they alone wore not the scarves but rather light white headpieces which covered their entire head and formed almost a hood, and they looked for all the world to be wearing white masks over their faces with only the eyes cut out. They also did not use a tie at the waist, making the dresses so shapeless and sack-like it was impossible to tell anything about them.

"The ones in white are unmarried-virgins of age, or in some cases past it," Zenchur told them. "They are forbidden to show any more of themselves in public or to anyone outside their immediate household than you see after they undergo a rite of passage on their tenth birthday. They are also forbidden to speak to or even snow they hear the speech of any man save their father and brothers. They live like that until they are married and then, as you see, things loosen up a lot."

"I can't see how any of 'em would ever
get
married, considerin' them rules," Sam responded.

Zenchur laughed. "All marriages are arranged-by the mothers, by the way, talking to the groom's father or, if orphaned, the male guardian. Oh, there are stories of romantic trysts and separated lovers, of course, but almost nobody does it. Actually, the girl has some power the man does not, since she can see
him
without his ever really knowing it's her and can make a real case for certain boys and against others with her mother. All the boy gets is a sketch by an artisan known as a Wedding Broker, although in villages such as these he can usually get some information from relatives and friends of. relatives."

"The same old story. Women as cattle again, though," Charley noted sourly.

"No, no! The women have rights here. They are given what education they need or can handle, although separately from the boys of course, and they can inherit and have definite rights in courts of law. It is not as bad as it sounds. Most of these shops are run by women and some are even owned by women. This is because, in these conservative societies, the man is the boss but inheritance is through the female line, not the male. I am not saying it is perfect, only that it is not as bad as it looks."

"Still, neither one knows what they're gettin' until they're stuck with it," Sam noted.

"And is it any worse than other ways? Marrying for lust of the moment and then one day you discover you have nothing else in common, or marrying one for supposed wealth or position? I am not defending this system, I am only saying that I have not found the number of successful and happy marriages here any different than other societies' ways."

"Still, with the slim pickings in a village like this and kept apart, I can see why some of 'em would run for the city and sell their bodies rather than take it, particularly if the guy's awful and she can't talk her mom out of it," Charley commented.

Sam looked around. "Somehow, with all them worlds to steal from, I kinda thought this'd be a little more modern than the Dark Ages."

There was a service which unhitched and cared for the horses white you were in town, and they were more than grateful to be out of that box and on their feet again, although both were so sore they had some initial trouble walking. Sam was together enough in a minute or two, though, to note the various signs around the square that all seemed to be filled with little squares and circles and squiggles and realize that her knowledge of the language did not extend to literacy. The letters or symbols or whatever they were seemed to not even have a lot of organizational sense; they were scattered all over and didn't look very consistent at all in their shapes and forms. It reminded her of something that might come out of a kindergarten art class back home.

The one they went into turned out to be a tavern, and a somewhat peculiar one at that. It had the look on the inside you expected going in-round wooden tables, rough, well-worn wooden chairs, sawdust over the wooden, creaky floor, and a long bar with a big polished mirror behind it that just about reflected the whole place. But there were anachronisms as well, things that just didn't make sense.