A Bait of Dreams (29 page)

“Ranga Eye.” There was an odd note in Gleia's voice.

Deel swung around, startled. “What?”

“Nothing. Never mind.” Gleia stood. “I'm sorry.” She spread her hands helplessly, turned and walked toward the cabin.

Gleia knelt beside the bunk watching Shounach sleep.
Three of us. Spaceman, southron, and me. All of us brought here, three currents meeting, sucked in by that horror.
She drew her fingertips gently along his jawline.
Deel said she killed it. I never thought of them being alive. Leeches, that's what they are. Sucking at us. Shining egg-shaped stone, like solidified water, green-tinted mountain water, nestling into the curve of her palm. Weaving pictures of her heart's desire. She held it, seduced by its whispers and the images it wove from veils of colored light. Held it and forgot the world outside, forgot to eat, to wash, everything
—
until she recognized the trap and wrenched herself free
.…

And still felt the pain at that loss—even now, even after almost ten years-standard had passed. Remembering, she shuddered.
They weave wonders for us to hold us while they eat.
She took one of Shounach's hands. The bandages felt dry and brittle; the skin she could see looked pale and healthy. She began working at the knots.
While they eat,
she thought and felt sick.
Madar bless, we'll find their source and destroy it. Then maybe both of us can find some peace for a while.

Deel stirred from a dream-ridden doze as the sound of voices drifted to her from the cabin. She yawned, listened drowsily to the crackling tension in the broken tones.
Arguing about something,
she thought. She lay watching the clouds pile up overhead, darkening and dropping lower as the double sun started its long setting and the wind blew strongly along the boat, rippling the worn cloth of her old cafta against her body.
Storm tonight.
She yawned again and wondered idly what the Juggler had done to stir up Gleia's temper. When the cabin door crashed open, she sat up hastily, shaking down her sleeves and twitching the hem of her cafta over her knees. The Juggler was scowling over his shoulder at Gleia who stood with her back braced against the overhanging roof of the low cabin. “So you're finally awake,” Deel said.

“So it seems.” He crossed the space between them with two long strides, his face smoothing between one foot-fall and the next, and stood smiling down at her, eyes darkening to a cool gray-green and gleaming with appreciation as they moved over her. “I owe you, Dancer.”

Her pulse quickened and she felt a familiar ache in her groin. Surprised, she started to smile, then remembered where she was and who he was and looked away. “I'll settle for an explanation.”

“Of what?” He started to look at Gleia but checked the turn of his head. There was a sudden taut stillness about him that reminded her of a tars she'd seen once, motionless except for the tiny jerks of his tail—then he changed. His eyes warmed and he relaxed; in the next moment he was focused so intently on her that she had trouble breathing.

I don't need this,
she thought. “Where we're going and why. What's driving you.” She got to her feet and glared at him, using her surge of anger to fight off the effect he was having on her. “I'm tired of walking in a fog.” She folded her arms over her breasts and hugged them tight against her. When she felt resistance draining from her with her anger, when she found herself wanting to smile, to reach out and touch his face, she dropped her eyes and turned her shoulder to him.

Gleia stood where she'd been before, a faint line between her brows. She was tense, her temper roused by the exchange in the cabin and by what she saw happening in front of her. Deel felt a sudden kinship with her, an urge to join with her against the man. Whatever his reasons the Juggler was being deliberately provocative. To both of them. Deel took a step backward, felt the railing touch her legs. “Well?” she said sharply. “You going to give me an answer or not? That all your fine words are worth?”

He moved past her and stood in the bow, looking out over the River, one hand resting lightly on the horan's papery bark. “Let it lay, Dancer.” Light from the setting suns swept across his face. She noticed for the first time the network of very fine lines written across his face, noticed also that there was no sign remaining of the cuts, bruises and burns that had been there last night.

Deel stared.
How old? And healed already? What is he?
As if he read her thoughts, he glanced back at her and smiled. She shivered at the heat he could rouse in her.
No,
she thought,
not again. You don't distract me that way again.
“No,” she said. “I can't let it lie. Give me an answer.”

“Tell her.”

Deel swung around. Gleia's face was strained, the brands on her cheek harsh black lines on the matte brown skin as the slanting light deepened the shadows.

“You can't use her without her consent, I won't.…” Gleia pressed her lips together. When the Juggler continued to say nothing, she jerked her head up and back, her eyes glittering, her nostrils flaring.

Boom,
Deel thought.
Hit the bastard hard.
She suppressed a grin, then sobered, stood frowning.
Use me?

“The three of us,” Gleia said. Her voice was harsh, angry. “We've all been burned. Ranga Eyes—they're what drives him; he's tracing them to their source. They brought us to Istir, now they're taking us upriver. When we find that source, we're going to blow it to Aschla's dark. You lost a husband to an Eye. Shounach lost a brother. Me, I had a brush with one that almost.… well, never mind that. He thinks Hankir Kan holds the key to the next leg of our journey and he wants to dangle you in front of him as bait for a trap.” She glared defiantly past Deel at the Juggler. “I told you I was going to tell her. Live with it.”

The Juggler was furious. His eyes were narrowed to slits, muscles knotted at the corners of his wide mouth. Gleia stood stiff and silent now, scowling back at him, her hands closed hard over the edge of the cabin roof. Deel thrust her fingers through her hair. “Bait?” She looked from one to the other. “No! Kan? Let him … no!” She ran across the deck swung onto the arching limb, ran across it and up the bank.

The wind whipped clouds past overhead; moonlight flickered in nervous gleams as shadows flitted across the clearing. By mutual consent the three avoided the confines of the boat while they waited for the storm to break. The Juggler sat with his back against the old bydarrakh, watching the silver gleams of moonlight on the dark water. Deel and Gleia sat talking, short exchanges separated by long silences.

After one of these silences Deel jumped to her feet and began prowling through the trees around the clearing, the wind snatching at her cafta, snarling her hair, tossing long canes of pricklebushes at her, their red-tipped barbs threatening to snag and tear the cafta. On impulse, she began dancing with the canes, coming close, then swaying back, sometimes a step or two, sometimes a slow whirl, dancing with them like a lamia worshipping her serpents, moving through the trees and back into the clearing, flitting in and out of moonshadow.

Music behind her startled her into stumbling. She swung around. The Juggler sat as before by the bydarrakh, his legs crossed in front of him, his bright hair whipping in the wind, but now he was turned from the river and playing a shepherd's pipe, his long fingers dancing over the stops as he searched for the rhythm of the storm that wouldn't come down, teasing a music from the wind and from the River and the rustle of the leaves—and from her. She stood watching him, her feet hesitating with him, her body moving in slowly augmented oscillations until she matched herself to the pipe's song as it firmed into a melody. She flung her arms out. Forgetting her restlessness, her fears and her anxieties, she danced with the wild song of the pipe, glorying in the play of her muscles and the beat of her feet against the ground—until she collapsed beside him, laughing, panting, dabbing at the sweat on her face and arms.

He set the pipe aside, pulled her down until her head lay in his lap and began smoothing wisps of hair off her face, each touch a caress setting her on fire with need for him. With a sharp cry she rolled onto her side and pressed her face against the bare skin of his chest where his jacket fell apart, her arms closing about him, holding him. He smoothed his hand along the side of her head, then his fingers began playing in the tiny hairs at the base of her skull and sliding lightly along her neck and shoulder, back and forth, very softly until she shuddered under them.

Gleia stood watching Deel dance around the small clearing, catching the wind and turning in it, her cafta pasted one moment against her long body, then billowing away, concentration turning her face into a mask of strained serenity—around and around, playing with the wind, defying the wind, teasing it into partnering her, catching the thread of the pipe music and weaving it into the wind. Breath caught in her throat at the wonder she was watching, a dull pain under her heart at the absorption on Shounach's face as his eyes followed the Dancer, Gleia stood on the horan's arching limb and felt the crackle of the brittle papery bark, the brush of the five-fingered leaves, the heavy wood shifting under her feet, the wind-driven limb swaying against her hand, felt everything around her with an intensity indistinguishable from pain. She wanted to run along the limb and join them, she wanted to climb down onto the boat and shut herself in the cabin until she could face the two of them again. She didn't move. Stirred profoundly by the beauty of dance, dancer and music, she watched until Shounach put his hands on Deel's shoulders and pulled her down against him. Then she wrenched herself around and jumped onto the boat. Crouching at the rail, she stared past the suckerlings at the sliding dark water, refusing to think, driving away images that tried to surface until she felt like a spring wound so tight a touch would send her flying apart.

Lightning glared momentarily. As she pressed her hands over her eyes, thunder crashed so close overhead that she tottered, her heart racing, then tumbled back onto her buttocks. As she picked herself up and knelt beside the rail again, she heard a soft thud behind her. She twisted around. Deel stood by the horan, her face a blur with dark eye smudges. “I suppose you expect me to tell you I'm sorry,” she said.

Gleia made a shapeless, meaningless gesture with one hand, then turned back to the River. “I expect nothing.”

“I didn't mean that to happen.”

“I don't suppose you did.” Gleia winced as she heard the bitterness in her voice. She didn't feel especially bitter. More than anything else she was simply tired. Too tired to keep on being angry. Especially at someone who was as much a target of the Juggler's malice as she was. Besides, it was true enough. Deel had planned nothing. She knew her well enough by now to understand that. The Dancer was a leaf in the wind, reacting to what happened around her, following her impulses without much thought of the consequences of her actions. Gleia scraped the hair out of her eyes and turned to face Deel. “Where is he?”

“Back there somewhere. I don't know.” Deel moved quickly past her. A moment later Gleia heard the Dancer's voice, muffled by the cabin walls, singing a melancholy minor song in a language she didn't recognize. Not sure what she was going to do, not even sure what she was feeling, she left the boat and walked slowly up the bank to stand shivering in the center of the clearing with lightning jagging across the sky and thunder crashing around her. She looked up, sighed. The air was damp and heavy, but there was no indication that the storm was going to break any time soon.

The wind teased at her hair, blowing it into her eyes and mouth as she turned slowly. The clearing was empty. No Shounach. She felt cold and lonely and uncertain.
Cha. Something warm.
She built a small fire and sat watching the steam-patterns form and dissipate on the soot-blackened sides of the kettle. The warmth from the fire eased away some of the soreness and woke a restlessness in her that brought her back onto her feet. Stretching her arms out, she began moving in slow circles, her cafta belling out around her as she swung around. Humming a snatch of the song Deel had been singing, she danced a bit, beginning to feel more comfortable with herself until she opened her eyes and saw Shounach watching her.

She stopped, so angry she couldn't speak, stood staring at him, her hands curled into claws. If he'd started toward her, touched her, she'd have thrown herself at his throat in that all-out mindless attack she'd learned early on the streets of Carhenas, biting, kicking, clawing at his eyes. But he stood a shadow among shadows, his pale face catching stray gleams from the fire, floating like a mask in the darkness under the trees, his eyes unreadable smudges. She turned her back on him and stood gazing blindly at the River, still trembling, rage mixed with shame that he'd seen her awkward attempt to imitate Deel. She heard his feet brush through the dry grass and debris, tightened her fists until her fingers ached. She would not turn to face him.

“Vixen,” he said softly. She pressed her lips together, scowled at the ground by her feet. He walked around her. “Gleia, listen to me.” Cupping his hand under her chin, he forced her head up.

She jerked away. “Don't touch me.”

As they stood glaring at each other, the clouds over the clearing ripped apart and sudden strong moonlight flooded around them. Filled with wonder, Deel's voice came suddenly from the horan. “You could be twins. Did you know? Except for your coloring you could be twins.”

Gleia's shoulders slumped, her hands opened, anger subsiding. “What?”

Deel pushed away from the trunk, balanced along the limb and stepped onto the bank. “You and the Juggler. The set of your eyes, the slant of your bones, the way your lips curl, especially when you're mad, you're alike. I didn't see it before, not till the moonlight stripped your coloring away.” As she started up the bank toward them, the break in the clouds flowed shut and lightning cut through the resulting gloom, followed by a crack of thunder loud enough to shatter the sky. Deel looked up. “Dammit, why don't you rain?” With a disgusted snort she moved past them to the small fire; it was flickering erratically as water bubbled from the spout of the kettle. She snatched the kettle off the fire, dumped a handful of cha leaves into the boiling water, then sat back on her heels. “You know how far a fire can be spotted once it's dark? From a height like that watchtower ahead? This was dumb. Juggler, get me a bucket of water. The sooner this is out.” She tumbled the stack of pots over, upended the biggest over the fire.