A Bait of Dreams (42 page)

onward to the womb

They stood at the edge of the cliff looking into a broad fertile valley tucked away among the crags. The floor was a patchwork of small fields fitted into the odd-shaped spaces between the intersecting arcs of heavy stone walls crossing and recrossing the valley, built by many hands over many years as a series of obstacles to a march on the Hold, a massive stone structure as formidable as the Svingeh's Keep. There were smaller houses dotted about, most of them close to the banks of the river, more structures—barns or storage sheds or something similar—set up in the fields. The valley was a maze of sorts, filled now with busy figures hauling in the harvest, beginning to dismantle the wooden parts of many of the small houses and taking them into the Hold. The butchering ground and the smoking racks were busy and noisy and everywhere womens' voices were heard, laughing, exclaiming, singing, shouting, some complaining, some angry. Patches of red and purple, amber, orange and greens of all intensities and degrees, blues, a thousand shades, citrine, aquamarine, ruby, amethyst, emerald, olivine, turquoise and topaz, other jewel colors, ocher, vermillion, chartreuse, sepia, umber, viridian and other earth colors, robes blowing in the wind, sleeves rolled up, hair and skirt all shades possible except the green of the seaborn, alto, soprano mezzo, contralto, voices of all textures and degrees, brown fields, yellow fields, green fields, mottled fields, gavha and gelapi, horses, chickens, dogs, woollies, gruntles—a busy happy scene demanding a miniaturist's precision and primitive colors to paint its vigor and intricate brilliance.

Shounach stretched out on his stomach and spent the morning watching the flow of movement, still there long after Gleia and Deel retreated from the cliffedge to spread out blankets and sit in the shade of the stunted trees, not speaking, either of them. Deel turned her shoulder to Gleia and stared at the peaks that rose like gray teeth about the valley. Gleia thought of trying to distract her but made no move because in the end there was nothing she could say or do. She dug into her bag and pulled out a bit of needle lace she'd started on after she'd seen some for sale at the Fair. Judgement had been a lot easier in Jokinhiir when none of this was spread out before her eyes. A refuge for those who had no recourse. A safe and happy place. Yet they brought their haven with horror. She clucked her tongue, annoyed at herself. She'd been through all that too many times already; seeing the Haven changed nothing only made Deel miserable. She really shouldn't have come with us. Why did I unsettle her? It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Ashla's Hells. She shook her head and began counting knots to find where she was in the lace pattern.

Ruhshiyd squatted in shadow a little way apart, watching Shounach watch the valley. He was content, relaxed, his debt paid, his body well on the way to healing; he bore scars and bald patches where scar tissue blocked the regrowth of his fur, but already in several of the broader wounds a pale fuzz of new fur was visible against the gray-pink of the new skin. His eyes were half-shut, he'd sunk into the waking-sleep that seemed to restore him as much as her deep plunges did her.

Shounach crawled back to them, came onto his feet. He glanced at Deel, then at Gleia, raised a brow, turned to face the catman. “Ruhshiyd fire-brother, the debt that was no debt is paid and more than paid.”

The catman blinked. His broad nose twitched, his ears came round to a jaunty forward prick and he rose from his squat with his usual muscular grace, the pleasure grimace strong on his face. “Shouna' firebrother, know the Yrsh-edin of the chonohaya sing the fire of Shouna'-meh Gleia-feh Deela-feh into the firehold of Yrsh-edin.” His head jerked down, up, he turned without further words (Gleia smiling at the rightness of his instinct) and vanished like a shadow in the whispering shadows under the scrubby trees.

Gleia stretched, laced her fingers behind her head. “Well?”

Shounach spread his hands. “No way to tell anything from up here. Colors are all mixed up, all ages working together, small groups, no one in charge of them.”

“So. How do we find ourselves an elder?” She took up the needle lace again, sat half-smiling, a challenge in her eyes as she waited for his answer.

He stood hands on hips gazing down at her. “Vixen.” He shook his head. “Soon as it's dark, I'm going down to catch a saone I can question, find out where to look for their leaders. I suppose they'll be in the Hold.”

“And me?”

“Wait. If I'm not back by dawn, whatever you do is up to you!”

“Haven't we been through that before?”

“Gleia, listen. One can go quieter and faster than two. And have a better chance of getting in and out without raising the valley against us.” He spoke with a weary patience that made her want to kick him even though she knew he was right.

He slept the rest of the day. In red dusk, Gleia lay beside him, watching the valley close down for the night. The bright bits like painted ants began to stream inward, taking with them wains loaded with crocks of milk, piles of tubers, melons, vegetables of all sorts, sacks of grain and fiber, baskets of fruit, the wooden wheels squealing, more laughter, a blend of voices rising like the hum of insects, women in long lines, some carrying babies in body slings, walking heavily because the day had been long, the work hard, but also with the centered weight of satisfaction with themselves and what they had accomplished that day.

One by one the gates in the secondary walls slammed shut and a pair of guards climbed up, settled themselves, one on each side of a gate, then yodeled their assumption of ward, the sound moving in waves up the valley as night closed in, as the women and their loads crossed to the neat little houses along the riverbanks and nestling under the massive walls of the Hold.

Shounach's eyes swept the valley again and again, searching the shadows, watching the inflow of the women. Gleia gave it up after a while, threw herself down beside Deel (who was asleep again, twitching a little), pulled a blanket about her shoulders to keep off the chill, and sat waiting for Shounach to start on his way down into the valley. Nothing for her to do but wait. She didn't like the feeling that came strongly to her right then—that her life had passed out of her control. She chewed on her lip and scowled at the long dark figure who was pulling her strings. His gaudy clothes were folded and packed away. Now he wore faded trousers that looked as if they were black sail canvas, weatherbeaten to an unnatural softness, a clinging black shirt with a high ribbed neck and long sleeves, low-topped black boots more like gloves than shoes, scuffed and disreputable and more silent than a whisper even over stone. His gloves, a mask, and his magicbag lay by his feet. She closed her eyes a moment. When she opened them he was kneeling beside her.

He held out the laser rod. “Here,” he said. “You know how to use this.”

She shook her head, her mouth twisted into a tight humorless smile. “We sit and wait. The only danger we face is boring ourselves to death. That thing can't kill off boredom. Keep it.”

He took her hand and closed it around the rod. “If I worry about you, who's to blame me, Vixen? If I don't come back, you've got it. If I need it down there, things have gone so sour, it won't help.”

“How long's your prowl going to take?”

He rubbed at his chin. “Take me a half hour to get down to the floor; after that, depends on how many Sayoneh I have to question, on what I have to do once I'm in the Hold.” He swung around so he was sitting beside her, looking out over the shadowed valley. She stole brief glances at him. He was strung so tight she imagined she heard his teeth grinding.

“And we sit. And we wait. Like good little women.”

“All right, Gleia. Come along if you have to. It's stupid and you know it, but anything to stop you picking at me.”

Gleia heard more in his voice than she thought he wanted to show her, uncertainty and need. He turned to stare at her, focusing so intently on her she wanted to back off; he was too close, too demanding; she couldn't breathe. She started to shift away from him, changed her mind and edged closer. She put her hand on his thigh, rested her head against his shoulder. After a moment his hand came to touch her hair, play in the soft fine curls at the nape of her neck. “Vixen.” It was a breath, hardly louder than the rustle of the leaves. She felt some of the tension in him give way, the anxiety he'd been ashamed to show let loose and in the loosing banished as he continued to touch her shoulder and hip, to brush his fingers against her cheek, her breast.

When the clouds had thickened enough to cover the sliver of moon and make a confusion of shadows webbed between the guardian walls below, he got to his feet, caught up his magicbag, gloves, and mask and disappeared into the trees.

SHOUNACH

The Hold wall loomed over him, massive and shining, reflecting the meager light coming through the clouds as if it were mirror rather than stone. He ran his hands over the stone, feeling the slickness of it even through the fine tough leather of his gloves, as smooth as if it had been built that morning, its gloss either repaired after the ravages of winter or merely a veneer that was replaced when pitted or torn. Not that it made much difference. There was no way anyone could climb that wall. Fortunately he wasn't required to do any climbing. He crouched in the shadow of a shrub, gathering his strength, wearier than he'd expected to be.

He'd gone over the guardian walls like a stone skipping over water, smoothly and feeling—at the time—little of the effort it took to lift and let fall. The interrogation had gone as smoothly, plucking a guard from one of the inner walls, a small barely pubescent girl, not alert, more than half-asleep. A touch from a hypnotic and she was happily answering his questions, a touch from a compulsor and she forgot she'd said anything, forgot she'd seen him, forgot everything and went placidly into the deep sleep of the umworried young wearied by a long day's work. He arranged her as comfortably as he could and stood for a moment gazing up the valley toward the Hold where there was a pale glow near the top of the highest tower, the Watch-tower, the little one had called it, not much imagination in that name. A welcome home to the Sayoneh packtrains coming back from the Summers-end Fairs in a dozen places, a welcome to him too, though they couldn't know that, because that was where his answer waited. Juggler's luck, he'd thought, smiling, and wondered what Gleia would say.

He ran the tips of his fingers along the stone, craned his neck sharply so he could see the faint trace of light touching the curve of the tower. He sucked in a breath, held it as he steadied himself, then sought deliberately for the memory of his brother's death, saw Dwall's empty gray face, his delicate hands knotted about the glimmering stone, the Ranga Eye; rage burst through him; he stood aside and watched himself burn, then chanelled the energy so it powered his talent and sent him skimming upward, his fingertips slipping along stone that continued mirror smooth. Up and up until he was over the top and dropped behind the crenels that circled the flat roof. He crouched on heavy planks, drained again, eyes closed. After a moment he probed into the silence below, feeling for sayoneh close enough to be a danger to him, but there was only the one fire, a dim half-stifled glow that puzzled him since the characteristic flutter of sleep was not there, but neither was anything else to explain the oddities he sensed in it. He shrugged off his curiosity. Soon enough he'd see the body that housed the fire and that more than likely would explain any anomalies.

He was kneeling on a trapdoor. There was a loop of braided leather close to his knee. He got to his feet, stepped onto stone and tugged at the loop. The trap opened easily. He probed again, but there were no life-forms immediately below, nothing dangerous at all. He laughed. On this world there was little reason to expect an attack from the sky. He stepped onto the ladder, went down a few rungs, pulled the trap closed and went down the rest of the ladder in a controlled fall. He landed on his toes, stood very still, listening with ears and other senses, but the quiet was unbroken; the lamed life-fire was there, stronger by a little; farther down, the Hold teemed with sleepers. He straightened, found a doorway and started down.

When she saw him, her hand stabbed for the rope hanging beside the chair-cot on which she half sat, half lay, but he lunged and had it away before she could reach it. He cut it off above his head and let the end drop on the stone flags, went back to the door and looked out. The narrow curved walkway was empty and silent as before. He shut the door, dropped the bar in its slots, went quickly around her to stand by her feet looking down at her.

She was old and might have been beautiful once, was beautiful now in a stainless steel way, an ice-sculpture way, her bones brought clear of the flesh by time, the skin draping softly over them. She had abundant white hair worked into a loose braid that draped forward over her shoulder, large luminous eyes of that frigid blue-green-gray at the heart of old ice. She didn't scream. For that woman a shriek would be something to save for desperation and then only to warn others of danger, not to call others to rescue her. And she was far from desperate now.

“Who are you?” Her voice was rough as if screams were trapped in her throat. He shivered when he heard it, not quite sure why.

“A thief,” he said. He took off the mask that had kept his face from making a target of him, peeled off his gloves, rolled them up with the mask and slipped them into his bag. Never taking his eyes off her, he brought out the leather medkit and stood holding it.

She made a quick sweeping gesture with the hand that had reached for the bell-pull. “There's nothing here to steal.”

He checked the dials of the drug disc, scowled. “You know, mitera-mi, it's just as well my search is ending. Or I'd have to break it off and fetch more supplies.” Ignoring her snort of disgust, he thumbed through the hypnotics and compulsors, looking again and again at the old woman, trying to estimate her strength. The quilts she'd wound about her for her comfort in her vigil were acting as bindings now. She was moving her legs little by little, trying to shift the windings enough to let her get off the cot. At least she wasn't crippled. He'd wondered about that. He vacillated between two hypnotics, frowned at her. Stubborn, but how strong was she?