A Bait of Dreams (41 page)

She looked at him a long moment, seeming slightly remote, then she nodded. “Give me a hand up.”

GLEIA

Just before high heat, Shounach wound a cloth about his head and went out on the grass. He tromped about, flattening grass and weeds in a square as wide as he was long, then he laid a groundsheet on it, dark side up. He reached into his bag, drew out a tangle of silver wire and crawled about on the groundsheet, flattening the tangle into a web of tiny coils and many connections, finishing by winding two straggling wires about two stumpy stubs poking out one side of a small black cube. He dipped into the bag again, brought out a shimmering roll of nothing, a film he spread out on top of the webs of wires.

Sitting at the edge of the tree-shadow, Gleia watched him work purposefully and skillfully at something that looked wholly absurd.

He fiddled with the film, touching it with some care, until he had it spread and tacked down the way he wanted, then came back to the shade and threw himself down beside her. He tore the cloth off his head and dabbed at the sweat on his face and neck.

“What was that about?”

“Solar collector,” he said. “Time I re-energized the laser.”

“Jabber, jabber,” she said. “Maybe it means something to you.”

“The rod. That will power it up so I can use it again. Might need it.”

“Oh.”

“Where's Deel?”

“Asleep. Back there.” She waggled her thumb over her shoulder.

He jumped to his feet and strode away into the trees. Before she finished her yawn, he was back. “There's some shade still over the river. Down a ways. Come swimming with me.”

She chuckled. “After famine comes surfeit.”

He bent, took the hands she reached up to him and pulled her to her feet. “Surfeit's a long way off.”

“Mmm. A bit hot for wrestling.”

“Water's cool.”

“Seaborn say love's better under water; me, I'm not so sure, never having tried it.”

He laughed, but walked faster, pulling her into a trot to keep up.

The fire flickered late into the night on the fifth day in the camp. Gleia lay watching Shounach pace in and out of the firelight, back and forth like lightening walking, Aab's halved-light mottling the skin on his upper body with leaf-shadow, touching to a shimmer the sweat glistening on hard muscles. The Sayoneh hadn't appeared. The Fair was over but they didn't appear. According to what Hankir Kan had said, the women were supposed to travel south along the Skull Crusher, but they hadn't come. And none of the sensors had lighted on the small box he'd showed her; its scatter of colored lights was dead. He was beginning to doubt himself and his interrogation of Hankir Kan. Had he asked the right questions the right way? That was what he'd been fretting about earlier, that was pricking at him now while Deel slept and she watched.

Deel had been sleeping a lot the last few days, seeking escape from things she didn't want to think about, especially the Sayoneh. If only they hadn't connected themselves to Ranga Eyes. Deel could neither tolerate nor forget that; though years had passed and the islands were stadia upon stadia distant, they were present in memory, hard troubled memory, present in nightmare now, if her moans and twitches were true indicators of what she dreamed. Deel was driving herself to finish what she should never have started.

“Shouna' firebrother.”

Gleia started, sat up. The husky growl of the catman was the first intimation of his presence. He limped into the firelight, bowed to her and spoke again. “Damaisheh, firebrother.”

Shounach strolled as casually as he could to Gleia's side. “Tss-sha shau, Ruhshiyd firebrother,” he said. “How may we serve the free-meh?”

Ruhshiyd limped closer to the fire. The leg irons had bitten almost to the bone in the struggle that freed him from them. His fur was tufted into peaks instead of lying smooth and silky on his skin; his eyes had a hard glitter that would have signaled fever in a human and probably meant the same in a catman. He hunkered by the fire as if its meager heat comforted him. “You sit this place a full hand of days. You hunt not, you plant not, you sleep much, walk about much. You wait. What wait you, firebrother?” Ruhshiyd blinked slowly, smoothed the fur on his cheek with the back of a trembling hand. “You tell Ruhshiyd and he give it you, Shouna' dreamsingerline. Ruhshiyd honor the Shouna' hold in debt, the balance is not, must be.”

Shounach spread both hands in a quick deprecating gesture. “A hair, a breath, no more. The Shounach has no secrets with his brother of the grass, but let me do a bargain. For my words, I ask a thing.”

Ruhshiyd held out his hands, palm up, claws retracted. “Be give, be take, speak.”

“It comes to me the Yrsh-edin and their healers hunt far from here, Ruhshiyd od Yrsh-edin. It comes to me the firebrother would be better able to favor me if the fever was out of him. Permit the Shounach to use a salve he knows of on the brother's wounds.” He didn't wait for Ruhshiyd's assent but went to the magicbag, brought out the leather case, came slowly back to the squatting catman. “By your favor, brother.” Kneeling beside him, he took out the blue wafers that Gleia remembered from Istir. He frowned at Ruhshiyd, tipped a wafer out, broke it in half, put half back into the vial and held out the other. “This will mute the pain, firebrother.”

The catman narrowed his eyes, then with that grimace so like and unlike a snarl that he used in the place of a smile, he took the half disc and put it in his mouth.

“Grass bless you, brother, for your trust.” For nearly a half hour Shounach labored over the catman who was drowsy and limp but marginally conscious. Gleia brought water, set it to boil, helped Shounach clean the dirty festering wounds on the tough wiry body, wounds from teeth, claws, whip and chains, the Forest thorns. He saw her hands trembling and began talking quietly, his words meant both to warn and soothe. “You want to go back and loose the rest of them. It's too late for that. The Fair is over. What slaves aren't already dead are in the holds of barges going on to the next entertainment. Istir, perhaps, or farther inland. And the arena will open next Fair with more slaves. They're a prime draw for a certain sort of man. And woman, Vixen. Ask your friend here about the women who come to the fights. And there's the Svingeh. He and his sons patronize and protect the pits. One of them is there most days, counting the house and smelling the blood. There's nothing anyone can do except the Chanohaya themselves and that's make the pits too expensive to run at a profit.” He shrugged, his hands momentarily still on the catman's leg. “Even then.” He finished winding strips of gauze about the worst of the abrasions, the bone-deep sores on wrists and ankles; the cuts and tears on his back and sides were too awkwardly placed for anything but cleaning and salving, the rest left to hope and to the vigor of the catman. He frowned, took up the black disc she'd seen twice before. “Running low on everything,” he muttered as he thumbed a new setting. He touched the disc briefly to the catman's neck, tucked it away again. He saw Gleia's frown and smiled at her. “Nothing bad this time, only something to deal with the infection within as the salve deals with infection without.”

“Oh.”

Deel slept deeply, the soft whuffling of her breath mostly lost in the murmur of the leaves, the lighter brighter whispers of the grass, a never-ending sound that the stillness of the night permitted to rise to the edge of perception. As the wind blew the trees about, uncovering patches of sky, the light of the westering Aab touched the Dancer's face, her arms, the long sweep of her blanket-wrapped body. The catman lay still, neither asleep nor awake, the wind ruffling his fur, but the debilitating fever had retreated until his involuntary shudders stopped completely. Shounach lay with his head in Gleia's lap, relaxed but awake. She leaned against the bole of a bydarrakh, far from sleeping herself. The heat and languor of the last days with Shounach's need for her and hers for him had left her drifting like a leaf in a slow eddy, round and round in lazy effortless circles. A real, not metaphorical, leaf came loose from a twig over her head and whirled down, scraped past her cheek and landed on the hand resting on her thigh. She watched as it shuddered there, then flipped away, chattering over and over until it hit the remnant of the fire and puffed into an instant's flame, then pale gray ash. First leaf of autumn, she thought and knew that probably wasn't so. The rise of the South Raven marked the beginning of autumn in these latitudes, and that was a month off at least. But it was a sign of sorts and she chose to read it as such, for her own pleasure as much as for any profound reason. Absently she stroked Shounach's hair. He caught her hand and pulled it down to rest on his shoulder where it met his neck. His skin was warm, smooth, slightly damp. She moved her thumb over the curve of the muscle, forgetting everything but the feel of him.

A cough from the far side of the fire broke her concentration. She looked around, startled. The catman was sitting up, his eyes glowing red in the meager light coming up from the dying coals. He touched the bandaged wrists, probed at the long cuts half-hidden by his fur. His tufted ears twitched forward, his rather inflexible face lifted to laughter as he took in his absence of fever and the much diminished pain.

Shounach pushed up, sat waiting.

Ruhshiyd looked from one to the other, but with the courtesy of his kind, he forbore to press his gratitude on them and repeated simply, “What wait you, firebrother?”

“The Sayoneh, firebrother.”

“Feh ni-meh.” Ruhshiyd swayed his upper body, moved his hands in a quick sweeping gesture to signify knowledge and assent. “They be gone South two days since. Crossing the grass thus.” Another gesture that went east then south, sweeping out away from the river in a great arc that ended in a complicated knotty twist of his hand. “To mountain hollow,” hands cupped together, “beyond the end-of-Grass.”

“Two days,” Shounach whispered. He sat very still, staring at nothing. Gleia felt the tension in him, the small quiver in the hand resting on her thigh. After a short struggle for calm, he said, “Ruhshiyd firebrother, you speak of a hollow. Do you know their homeplace?”

Ruhshiyd recognized the importance of this question; Gleia saw him stiffen as discreetly as Shounach had done, then settle himself more comfortably, his legs crossed loosely before him, his hands resting on his knees, his head up, his eyes gazing between her and Shounach into the darkness beyond. His mouth worked and his eyes glazed as he sought words in a language not his own to tell a story very much his own. To her the question seemed simple enough, requiring only an affirmation or a denial, but she was willing to concede Shounach had inadvertently touched a ritual of the chanohaya that demanded more than yes or no.

Ruhshiyd's stiff face lifted again in that grimace of pleasure that was more inwardness than outer expression. “Two winters since Ruhshiyd were kit going meh, time Chanohaya nom kaluur, time between kit and meh, time kit learn being meh, time of hunting, time of loneness, time of trying kit-meat, kit-fire. Kulazhan he come round gelap herd Yrsh-edin follow. Kaluur kits hunt. Kulazhan kill two, two blood meh-knife but kill not. Kulazhan hot in the belly now, kill gelap not to eat, just to make blood. Take kitlings three and feh also and meh also. Kaluur kits take torch and spear and drive kulazhan from gelap, cast bones, choose Ruhshiyd and Shedesh and Misch'ad and Ffdrass of Yrsh-edin to drive kulazhan from the Grass. We turn kulazhan, turn again, turn and turn and turn, blood and burn we drive kulazhan away-away. Moon Bigeye shrink and grow, moon Smalleye shrink and grow. Kits hunt in twos, sleep in twos, day and dark, dark and day. With torch and spear kits drive kulazhan, here, there, all ways, but mosttime south to Grassend. One dark, Ffdrass slip on grass and fall in kulazhan face. Claw finish Ffdrass, but he blood meh-knife first and Misch'ad drive off kulazhan, singe whiskers, send off howling. He come back, eat Ffdrass, can't help that, he got round us, he sly kulazhan, hard and hungry. One and one, in dark and dark, Shedesh and Misch'ad, they blood meh-knives in kulazhan, he blood claw in they, eat they, come after Ruhshiyd, Ruhshiyd stick spear in him, drive off. Grassend close, Earth-Mother rise under foot of Ruhshiyd under foot of kulazhan. Kulazhan stop not, rest not, eat not, lick dew from rock and leaf. Ruhshiyd stop not, eat not, lick dew from rock and leaf, stay not at Grassend but go on after kulazhan. Souls of Yrsh-edin caught in kulazhan belly, if kulazhan be cut, they go to Mother and sleep, wait time and time to be born as men, if kulazhan die and rot whole, they come as kulazhan kits not men. They fire-brothers, Ruhshiyd go after kulazhan.

“Out of grass into mountain. Kulazhan limp, drag, Ruhshiyd limp, drag, kulazhan and chanoyikit be bound, one flesh, one fire. Up and up, day and dark, dark and day. Moon Bigeye die and be born. Dark and day, day and dark. Time come, kulazhan stiff, burn with fever, stop. High-high, mountain side drop down and down to hollow long below. Ruhshiyd sit, watch kulazhan, wait. Watch hollow too. Feh work in field, fish in river. Feh and feh and feh, ni meh, never a meh. Dig and dig, tend herd, walk round, build house, wash clothes, make smells in big pot, busy more than Chanohaya feh, much more busy.

“Ruhshiyd wait. Kulazhan not die at daysend, die at dawnfire. Ruhshiyd let firebrothers free out of belly. Burn kulazhan. He strong, fight good, live long-long, don't quit. Burn kulazhan till he ash, take teeth and claws. Feh ni-meh come. Look. Try talk. Ruhshiyd say nothing, look not at feh. Feh leave. Day and dark, dark and day, Ruhshiyd come down mountain, take teeth and claws to Yrsh-edin. So it come, Shouna' firebrother, Ruhshiyd find homeplace feh ni-meh.” He repeated the assent gesture he'd made before, then he relaxed and looked from face to face.

Gleia laughed, patted the hand still on her thigh. “Juggler's luck.” Then she said, “All that wasted conniving,” feeling just a bit of malice as she spoke, then ducked away as he reached for her. Still laughing, as much with relief as with intent to tease, she said, “All you had to do was ask.”