Diadem from the Stars (11 page)

He burst out laughing, startled out of his caution much as she had intended. “Have you ever thought, zaujeha, what it would be like to ride a horse through woodland in a flapping skirt?”

She considered this. “But the herdsfolk ride all the time.”

“On grassland, not through heavy woodland.”

As a picture of that formed in her mind, laughter bubbled up and spilled out. “Shredded!” Still chuckling, she tossed her hair back and grinned at him. “And probably scaring the poor beast out of what wits he has too.”

“I think you're right.” He touched his boots, his heavy trousers. “But this protects the rider too. Or he'd be shredded like skirts.”

“Ah.” She smoothed her hands over her thighs and looked curiously back at him, sensing the barrier rising between them. For several minutes she sat on the bench, her hands absently pleating and smoothing out the silky green and gold material of her abba. Slowly, so imperceptibly that at first she thought she was imagining the whole thing, something intruded into her mind. This wasn't like moments before, when she'd taken into herself the glow of the lives around her. This was a thrust as much sexual as it was mental.
I should get out of here,
she thought vaguely.

He leaned forward, his eyes unblinking on her face, large round eyes growing, growing … black pools, pools to drown in … drown … drown … pulling … promising.… She tilted gradually toward him until something small and tough inside her sent out a spreading wave of protest.… Like a black fist in her mind, it struck at the intruder … to be smothered in a cloud of sticky softness, and again she was drowning in warm fog … drowning.… With a remaining glimmer of awareness she felt her body responding to the subtle intrusion as she would to her lover's penetration. Her nipples hardened and there was a familiar burning itch in her loins.

A deep repugnance stirred her resistance again into a hot searing flame. With a sharp cry she jumped to her feet and backed away from him, filled with a horror verging on nausea. “No!” she gasped.
“No!”

The pressure abruptly ceased and the man cowered back against the horan, stretching out trembling hands to fend off … something, she didn't know what … as if her anger and rejection had a solid force that beat at him. He moaned softly.

Breathing hard, she brushed both hands through her hair and nervously smoothed her abba around her body. “Aschla's icy claws, what did you think you were doing?”

“Don't.” Tears welled from his pleading eyes.

“Huh?” She stared at the shivering miserable figure, surprise cooling her anger.

“Don't be angry. Please. I'm sorry. I was wrong. Sorry. Please. Don't hurt me. You hurt me.” His words came from quivering lips in a feeble whine that grated on her ears. She fell back on the bench too astonished to speak, still staring at that creature. He was sitting in the mottled shade from the horan's sparse thatch of tight-curled leaves, looking sad and ridiculous. She slipped suddenly back into the dim half-tranced outreach and saw him as a scruffy little mikhmikh filled with pain mostly self-inflicted. It confused her. She shook her head, trying to clear her whirling brain.

“What were you trying to do?” she asked more calmly.

He seemed to shrink inside his skin. His black eyes watched her sadly over the tops of his knees.

“Well?” She could just see the pink tip of his tongue flick over his lips, then he lowered his head as if trying to shelter himself behind his own knees.

“I …” he began. She saw the dark eyes squeeze shut. “It worked before. Last year. They let me.…” He peered at her through slitted eyes. She frowned and he looked hastily away. “I feel what others feel. Happy, sad, hurt, strong. All. What they feel, I can change. Animals … they be easy. I control them … heal them when they're hurt or sick. People be harder. They're more dangerous. Women in the valleys, not so dangerous. I thought you … you be like them.”

Aleytys rubbed her hands together absently as she considered the possibilities this new idea opened to her. Excitement grew in her as she remembered that glorious feeling of oneness.
I never thought of that,
she marveled.
I can do
it.… I'm sure I can do it.… She lifted her head and faced him, eyes glowing. “Teach me.”

“How?” He inched farther away from her, crowding into the tree. His black eyes glanced furtively away down the trail. She could see a muscle twitching in his cheek and she knew he was preparing to run.

“No!” She caught hold of his arm. He cringed, panting, his eyes screwed shut.

“Please,” he whined.

Aleytys shook his arm impatiently. “Don't be such a dishrag.”

“I can't keep you out of my head.” He slid around on the bench and let his feet chunk onto the sparse grass. “Can't keep no one out. All the time. Everything. You know what that means? All the time. Hour on hour. Day on day on day. Never be rid of other men's passions, even their smallest itches.” He rubbed his hands up and down his legs. “They mix in my head like knots of worms and I don't know … can't know what be mine and what be others.” His hands kept at the rubbing, up and down, up and down, up and down the coarse crimson cloth.

Aleytys shivered. Then she straightened her shoulders and said briskly, “Look, caravaner, pull yourself together. You said you can control animals. And women. Well, by Aschla's bloody claws, control your own mind.”

“I can't.”

“Nonsense. I bet you never tried.”

“Zaujeha …”

“By the Madar, caravaner, you nearly wiped me out a minute ago. And you try to tell me you can't protect yourself? Hihdag! Put a little stiffening in your spine.”

“Haaaah!” His face flushed red and his breath hissed between clenched teeth.

“Go on.” She snorted impatiently. “Go to work on yourself. When they flood you, find … ah … do what you do in your own head and turn them off. Try it!”

His mouth tightened. He looked at her, flat black eyes filled with dislike. Then he shrugged. “I try. Later.”

Aleytys sighed “It's up to you, caravaner. Nobody else can help you.” She eyed him coolly. “Now show me how you control animals.”

“How do I teach? I was born like this.”

“Show me.”

He shrugged again, his black eyes sliding away from her with deep-seated resentment hidden in them. He pointed. “There. That tree. There be mikhmikh halfway up.”

“Where?” She scanned the horan but could see nothing.

“Touch me. With your mind if you can. If you can't we have nowhere to go.”

She bit her lip. “Hmm … better let me.…” She slid off the bench and dropped onto the grass at the edge of the water, her back to the murmuring river. Leaning her chin on her hands, she let the sound of the water wash over her until her mind slid free. Once more the threads spun out from her. She touched the pale yellow flame and listened dreamily as he began to talk.

“Feel what I do.” He glanced skeptically at her and she responded with an abstracted smile. “I make a finger with my mind. You see?”

“Mmm.”

“I touch him. See. He looks like a tremble in the air this way. I touch him again and he be quiet. Like finger stroking his fur. There's a place inside where all the quivers circle around, that's the place you touch. Like this. And he does what you want.”

At first it was all very fuzzy and confusing. She watched and saw nothing and the rising frustration threatened to shatter the connection between them. Then something clicked in her head. It was as if the suns shone through a break in thick storm clouds. She listened in growing impatience as he kept talking and talking.

“Watch,” he crooned. “Watch the tree with your body eyes. See. There he comes. Down trunk. There, just under that patch of leaves. See?”

The small furry animal, its chameleon fur now the bright silver of the post-noon horan bark, backed down the trunk, small feet clutching busily at the bark, bright black eyes darting with perky alertness from side to side. With a fluffing of its fur it plopped onto the earth and trotted over to them, fur flowing from silver to green to sand and back to green.

Aleytys smiled tenderly as the tiny animal sat up on its hind feet, draping its delicate forefeet over its mottled green stomach fur.

The caravaner reached down and lifted the mikhmikh. It nestled in his hand like an animated ball of fur, changing color to the sunburned brown of his flesh. As it settled, its long fluffy tail curled neatly around his wrist. After a minute he set the mikhmikh back down on the ground and released it.

The timid animal scrambled to its feet and scrurried across the path.

Aleytys reached out and soothed the terrified mikhmikh. She coaxed it back to her hand. Nervous feet pricking across her palm delighted her and she stroked the trembling body with gentle fingertips. At first the tiny heart beat wildly, knocking against the palm of her hand. Then it gradually slowed and the mikhmikh closed its eyes, purring with pleasure, an almost inaudible minuscule sound that enchanted her, as she rubbed her fingers along the knobs of its arching spine. Moving very carefully, she set the mikhmikh on the ground and watched it scamper off. Then she stood up.

“You leaving?”

“I'd better.” She hesitated and scraped the toe of her sandal across the sand of the path. “I … I suppose I'd better warn you. Don't talk about me. Not if you want to stay out of trouble.”

“I thought …” A vague puzzlement sounded in his hoarse voice. “I don't understand. The last time I was here I lay with a valley woman. Other valleys the same. Your men don't care who your women play with.”

Aleytys laughed, a hard bitter sound. “You probably found Kahruba. She's a very pious blesser of the Madar. Never misses a chance. Me, I'm different.” The corners of her mouth dragged down in an unhappy grimace. “Damned different.” She examined him curiously. “I suppose your people are different even more so. We bless the Madar, but you don't really understand, do you? I suppose there're others like Kahruba, but most share joy only with those they have affection for. It's a part of our beliefs. The deeper the joy, the better our beasts thrive, our fields produce, the better the Madar is pleased with us.” She shrugged. “We bless the Madar, you slice the throats of women who wander. I think I prefer our way.”

“Your men, they have no pride to let another man take what's theirs?”

“Theirs?” She frowned. “Nobody owns another person.”

He lowered his eyes. She examined the stiffness of his muscles. “Nobody,” she repeated firmly. “You don't believe that?”

“What about those you call asiri?”

“We don't own them. They're part of the clan. Just like … I was going to say just like me. But that's wrong. More than me.”

He said nothing, but his disbelief was almost palpable.

She sniffed. “What's it matter, anyway? Like I said, don't tell …”

Before she could finish her sentence, a pebble came flying down the path and bounced off the caravaner's shoulder. He jumped to his feet.

A small boy—about Kur's size, Aleytys thought—popped out of the zardagul bush near the bend in the path and stood grinning at them. A catapult dangled from one hand and a small sack of stones from the other. Aleytys was startled and revolted by the malicious cruelty in the small face.

“Gryman's gotta gurrul, gryman's gotta gurrul.…” Over and over again, like a knife worried back and forth in a wound, he chanted those words, punctuating them with more catapulted stones.

Aleytys waited for the caravaner to do something, waited for him to grab the boy and teach him some manners.

The caravaner bent his head and seemed to shrivel as she watched.

“Ai-Aschla, caravaner!” She stared at him in disgust. “You going to let him get away with that?”

He looked silently at the ground. Another stone bounced off his cheek, leaving a pinkish stain in the pallor. Aleytys shook her head.

Then the boy missed his aim and one of the pebbles grazed her cheek. She leaped at him. Alarm chased the mockery from his face and he scrambled backward toward the bush, but Aleytys was too fast. Her hand closed on his thin shoulder and jerked him back into the middle of the path. He yelled angrily, struggling to pull free, wriggling, scratching, biting, cursing viciously. Aleytys dropped to one knee and upended him over the other. She heated up his behind with a series of good healthy smacks, ignoring both his wails and his curses. Then she set him on his feet again, keeping a firm hold on one wrist.

“You don't need these, little rat.” She flung the catapult and the bag of pebbles into the river.

The boy twisted his head and spit into her face. She slapped him hard. “Mind your manners, rat.” Using his shirt sleeve, she wiped her face clean.

“I tell me father and he'll kill you.”

“Are you finished?” she asked coolly.

He glowered at her.

“Then shut up.” She tightened her fingers on his wrist and kept her voice soft and deadly. “You've the manners of a half-witted maimun. Until you're old enough to defend your right to be obnoxious, learn to control your baser impulses. Tell your father what you damn well like.” She laughed, blue-green eyes glinting fiercely—or so she hoped. “But remember this.” She bent over him and breathed the words into his face. “I'm a witch and I'll put such a curse on you, you'll get a crooked neck looking over your shoulder for the rest of a miserable life.”

“Witch? I don't believe you.” He tried to speak defiantly, but his voice cracked and he was no longer pulling away from her. Wary respect began to replace the fury in his face.

Aleytys sensed a qush flying overhead and smiled again. She reached out and touched its tiny brain. To her delight the bird responded instantly. She flung up her free hand and snapped her fingers. As if in response to her summons the qush came slipping down in a long fierce glide. It landed beside her on the sand and fixed feral yellow eyes on the boy.