Diadem from the Stars (28 page)

“How do you think I got here?” He caught her chin and tipped her face up. “Who are you?”

“I was born in those mountains.” She jerked her head free and nodded toward the east. “I've spent my life up until the last few months in a mountain valley.”

“Mountain girl.” He sat up and turned her around, his hands on her shoulders. “You've no business out there.” He flipped a hand at the brightening sky. “You'd be eaten up like a mosquito in a pond full of frogs. Why?”

“Why?” She grinned at him. “My business.”

Stavver stretched out and smiled lazily. His eyelids dropped over his eyes while his moustache hid his mouth. He looked as relaxed as a cat on a hot day, but that was a pose. Aleytys could feel the intense vibrations of curiosity and growing excitement underlined by desire that rippled out of him. “How do you plan to get offworld?”

Aleytys hesitated, then shrugged.
What the hell,
she thought. “That takes a bit of leading up to. Umm. In your boasted wanderings, thief, have you ever heard of Vrithian?”

His face turned bland as a cream-licking gurb's. “I've heard the name.”

“Tell me what you know.”

“Mountain girl. How the hell'd you know about Vrithian?” He watched her, a glint of speculation in his pale eyes.

Aleytys rubbed one hand up and down the soft leather of her trousers. The river whispered past with a gentle breeze wandering over its rushing water while she wrestled with her problem, remembering her mother's warning: “Don't tell anyone you're part Vryhh.” And Khateyat said not to trust him at all. But … She turned to look at him, frowning intently as she struggled to estimate his potential danger to her.
I can handle him,
she thought finally.
After Tarnsian … but go slow.
“A man told me the name.”

“What man?” His body was very still while his face kept the bland sleepy smile. “What did he look like?”

She shrugged. “What difference does it make? You don't know him, you never will.”

He reached out and pulled her against him. His hand cupping her shoulder, he gently caressed the smooth dark amber skin. With a sigh, she tilted her head back against his sinewy shoulder and tried to read his face. “You think he was Vryhh?” She chuckled and relaxed against him. “No. He was the dream-singer of my valley. And my lover.” She sighed. “He was just a little taller than me, with dark hair, brown eyes. Brown eyes.…” She winced. “He's blind now.…”

His eyes narrowed in their webbing of sun-red wrinkles. “That why you left him?”

She drove her elbow into his stomach and jerked away from him, savagely exulting in the grunt of pain she drew from him. “Damn you! Ahai, ai-Aschla! I'd be with him now if …” She closed her eyes and felt helpless tears drip down her face. Agony burned like poison inside her at the sudden vicious thrust of loss and guilt. After a minute, she felt his hand moving soothingly over her back as he pulled her gently into the curve of his arm. He said nothing, just held her until the pain passed off.

She sighed and opened her eyes. “I left,” she said dully, “because they were going to kill me, tie me to a stake and set fire to me.”

His eyebrows twitched up, then down, and the lines at the corners of his mouth—half hidden by that ragged moustache—cut deep into the tender skin. He slid his hand up and down her bare arm, pausing now and then to stroke the sensitive skin on the inside of her elbow. “I've been fascinated by you from the day the witches rode in with you.”

She relaxed against him, trying to figure out just what she was feeling. As he cupped his hand over her breast she felt her breathing quicken, grow more ragged. The turmoil of emotions tearing through her sent her mind rocking. She didn't, couldn't, think. She was on fire … hating him … desiring. He moved his hands over her body and she let him. Like a shadow at the back of her mind floated the cold thought,
He's from offworld, and that's where I need to go.

She pulled back slightly. “Raqat,” she breathed.

“The bushes … there's an open space.…” His voice was hoarse, urgent. Pulling her to her feet, he stumbled deeper into the raushani with her, propelled by the chill urging of prudence.

A while later he leaned on his elbow and watched her re-braid her hair. She brushed the dust and dead leaves off herself and slid the tunic over her head.

“You're quite a woman,” he said thoughtfully.

She looked up at him, then lowered her eyes and picked up the lacing for her tunic. As she coaxed the thong through the small openings at her neck, she flicked a series of swift glances at him.

He scratched his jaw through the wiry beard. “You pull a man like a magnet, witch. Maybe it's that a man knows there's something about you he can't get his hands on.” He watched her slyly. “I've known prettier women.” He let that sink in, then went on. “Women more interesting.…” He shook his head, watching the flush of anger creeping over her cheeks. “Where did your dream-singer learn about the Vrya?”

With a disgusted sniff, Aleytys stepped into her trousers and laced them up. “All those women. Ahai! Why don't you crawl back to Raqat?” She jerked the laces tight and slapped them into a knot.

He caught hold of her ankle.

“Let go of me!” Breathing hard, she kicked out viciously at his face.

Chuckling, he pulled and caught her as she tumbled over, sitting her upright on the trampled grass. “Where did your dream-singer learn about the Vrya?”

“You're a stubborn khinzerisar.”

“What's that?”

She laughed and pulled at his beard, tweaking out a grunt of pain. He wrestled her over onto her back and glared at her.

“I'll make a deal,” she gasped out.

“What is it?”

“Tell me what you know about the Vrya and I'll tell you how … maybe … we can get off Jaydugar.”

He rolled off her and sat up. “That seems to be the only way I can get an answer.”

Aleytys pushed herself up onto her knees, brushed the debris off her clothes, and squinted at him past her swinging braids. “Put your clothes on, idiot. Don't think you're going to distract me with … mmm … your obvious physical attributes. If Raqat saw you …”

With a grin, he pulled on his shirt and trousers. “I feel like my skin's crawling every time. I put these on.” He sat down beside her, glancing up at the suns. “Time's going.”

“How long?”

“Enough, if we hurry. I have to strike the tents soon.”

“Well?”

He rubbed his hands on the grass beside him, staring thoughtfully past his toes. “The Vrya, Aleytys, are holders of a secret I'd give you name it—up to and including the aforementioned physical attributes—to have.”

“Ahai, mi-mashuq, and what is that?” She remembered her mother's words.

“The location of their homeworld, girl.” He sucked in a breath and stared avidly at nothing in particular. “It's supposed to be the biggest, most fabulous treasure house in the whole damn galaxy.” He sighed and leaned against a ballut growing in the ring of raushani. “Word is they're born wanderers, born collectors. Some call them misers; they never sell any of their treasures and no one else sees them.…” His tongue ran greedily over his cracking lips. He locked his hands behind his head and stared with hungry eyes at the fragments of pale lavender sky he could see through the leaves.

“Here and there,” he said dreamily, “scattered across the stars and chasms of space, the Vrya go in their little ships, each one unique, each one designed, so they say, to fit the spirit of the master. I've seen them more than once.…” His voice trailed off, his face gone blank with the intensity of his greed.

“How did you know they were Vrya ships?”

“Ha! No mistaking them … you wouldn't understand.” He pulled his hands from behind his head, staring into the palms. “God, I'd give my … never mind.” He grinned wryly. “Damn bastards go where they want, when they want, like they owned the whole damn galaxy. People say—”

“They say … they say … don't you know anything yourself?”

“Quiet, cat, you asked me.” He unfolded a long arm and cupped his hand beneath her chin. “So listen.”

She pulled his hand away. “All right. Go on. But hurry.”

“The Vrya are traders. They swoop down on a world and carry off whatever they want and they always want the beautiful and unique, creations born out of the sweat of genius.” His voice went soft again. “They come and take priceless things.…”

Aleytys touched him on the arm; he jumped and looked annoyed, as if she'd pulled him from a pleasant dream. “What do they trade?” she asked. “Or are they just bigger and better thieves than you?”

“Oh, they trade.” His gaze grew even more abstracted while his fingers closed into tight greedy fists. “Constructs. Machines to do anything you want. It's almost a sin to call them machines. If you want to—” He stopped and groped for words. “This damn impossible language! If you want … to change the face—yes, face—of a whole world and shape it closer to your desire, a Vryhh'll make a construct to do it—a thing small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, I've seen one—if you have something he wants. Want a construct to weave or build or make. Ask, and a Vryhh'll make it … if you have something he wants. And if you can find him.” He rubbed a long finger over his moustache. “A few fools tried to take the constructs apart to see how they worked.” He chuckled. “They stopped being fools and became corpses. I had something the Vrya might have wanted, but I lost it.” His hands closed again, squeezing until the knuckles went white with pressure, while his eyes closed to glittering slits as he frowned at her.

Aleytys watched the lurid sunlight pouring in red floods through the leaves. She turned her head slowly and examined his face. His nose jutted like the beak of a bird of prey.

“Vrya have been followed”—his voice was soft and he spoke each word slowly, rolling it over his tongue as if he liked the taste of it—“fooled, coerced, but they're a sneaky, devious unpredictable bunch of bastards. Men have bragged of finding Vrithian, but they're liars.”

“What do Vrya look like?” Once again her voice jerked him from his daydream and he grimaced. “You asked me about my love,” she said quietly. “So I thought you must have seen some of them.”

He scratched the loose skin off his nose as he examined her. “A little fairer and you could pass for one, though …” He peered into her face. “Your eyes are a shade too blue. I saw a Vryhh woman once—not too close, I was where I definitely shouldn't have been—in the course of professional activity. She had red hair, green eyes, and the most unbelievable skin. Like yours, but fairer, milk-white. They say they're all the same, red hair, green eyes, white skin. I heard an old man tell of seeing the same woman once when he was a boy just past puberty, and again some eighty years later. He was old but she hadn't changed at all. Who knows, he could have been senile.”

Aleytys rubbed her back against the tree trunk, broke off a raushani branch, and fanned it back and forth in front of her, stirring up the stifling air.

Stavver narrowed his eyes and stared at her, a speculative glint in his roving gaze.

Abruptly Aleytys curved her mouth into a mirthless smile. “Khateyat told me not to trust you.” She shrugged. “What the hell, what can you do? I'm half Vryhh. My mother, sweet lady, abandoned me before I could walk, but she had an attack of conscience and left me instructions on how I could come to her. So, you help me and I'll get you to Vrithian.”

He sat very still, eyes fixed on her. After a minute, he swallowed and sucked in a deep unsteady breath. “Why?”

“You've got friends … out there?” She jerked her head at the sky. “Who'd come here for you if you could call them?”

“Yeah, there are a few I could call.”

“Do you know about a Romanchi trader? Could you use its … its machinery to call someone to take you off this world?”

“A Romanchi!” He jerked up and leaned toward her. “You know where to find a Romanchi?”

“I think so. It brought my people here a long time ago. My mother said it should still be where it landed. She found the logbook in the library of the Mari'fat … that's a guildhouse in my valley where we keep records. I had it, but lost it getting here. But I remember what she said in her letter. If I take you there, will you take me with you when you leave?”

“Of course,” he said smoothly.

“You'd leave me in a minute, you don't fool me, thief.” She laughed. “But just remember this, let it sink in deep. I can get you to Vrithian. So keep hold of me, thief; take very good care of me.”

He scanned her face, his shrewd gray eyes narrow slits in his peeling face. “You've got the coordinates of Vrithian?”

“No, of course not. There's a way, but I'm the key.” She stood up. “You'd better get back to camp, slave. It's time to strike the chon and fill the water barrels.”

3

The huge wheeled wagons left the river where it curled toward the north. Followed by the grazing herd, the medwey clan struck out into the empty rolling prairieland through day after unchanging day while Aleytys merged herself quietly into the Shemqya household, carefully avoiding Stavver and keeping away from Raqat. As the days passed, placid on the surface with their lack of overt event, she began to comprehend some of the undercurrents, noting the rivalry between her patronesses, the witches, and the male aspect of medwey magic, Thasmyo, the Khem-sko. She settled down to the slow, uneventful progress across the undulating sea of grass, growing placid and contented as one of the yd'r cows, her baby rounding but her waistline more and more as the hot quiet days slid past.

4

The sesmat lay on the ground and whimpered. A swelling just above her left forefoot trailed a thin thread of sluggish blood. N'frat knelt at her mount's head, tears streaming down her face. Khateyat bent down and touched her shoulder. “N'fri, you know what has to be done. When sarket bites there's nothing we can do.”