Diadem from the Stars (32 page)

“Raqat?” Aleytys gasped and ran toward the girl, who sat on a rock in the full light of the rising sun, her body unnaturally still. Aleytys stumbled to a stop. “Raqat?'

There was no answer, so Aleytys scrambled cautiously over the pile of rocks working her way toward the seated girl, her thickening body making her a little clumsy. “Raqat,” she called urgently as she moved. “I don't hold grudge. It wasn't your fault, last night. I know that. Come back to the camp. There's no need for this.”

Raqat sat very still, hands on knees, feet planted flat on the ground. Aleytys edged nearer. “Raqat?”

There was still no response. Aleytys felt the morning's contentment draining away. Balancing her body over the rocks, she worked close enough to touch the silent figure. She reached out, then pulled her hand back.

She stood frozen beside Raqat, the murmuring river soothing her anguish with its liquid susurrus and the green-on-green-on-green shifting, twisting shadows. For an instant she was back in the Raqsidan, dreaming into the dancing water, then she blinked and smiled sadly. “How long ago that was.” She sighed. “I wish I had that innocence again.”

With a sigh, shuddering at the waxy texture of Raqat's flesh, she took the Shemqya's arm and pulled her to her feet.

All day the men cut wood and built it into a pyre, crossing and crisscrossing the logs until the pile was man-high. In the camp, the women worked in uneasy silence at their daily chores.

The Shemqyatwe washed Raqat's unresisting body and anointed it once more with her special oils. They unbound her hair and combed it carefully, spreading the curling strands neatly across her shoulders. They slipped a long embroidered dress over her head just as the rim of Horli slipped behind the horizon. The dress was sleeveless with panels of intricate embroidery, lines coiling into obscure diagrams and medallions. Around her head, they tied a band of heavy cloth covered with the same designs.

Khateyat stood up. “Keep watch,” she said quietly to the others. “I'll be back in a little.”

“No!” Shanat jumped up. “Let her pay.”

“Shanat!” N'frat caught her hand and tugged, her round face twisting into an angry frown. “It wasn't Leyta's doing. You know Raqat had stopped pushing her. And she was helping Raqat break loose from that sartwen. You leave her alone.”

“Both of you sit down.” Khateyat spoke softly, but they obeyed instantly. “This is very bad of both of you. Compose yourselves.” She frowned at the girls. “Take care of Raqat. I'll be back.”

She found Aleytys sitting on the river bank, staring somberly into the water. “Tell me, hes' Aleytys.”

With a sigh, Aleytys lay back on the grass and looked up into the night-shadowed face of the Shemqya. “Raqat came into my chon last night with a knife, intending to kill me.” She closed her eyes and plucked at the grass with nervous fingers. “I was dreaming. I saw the Khem-sko. His body was painted. He was bending over a … a fire. It was strange, green, he dropped powder on it and smoke crept out, coiled around him, snaked out and into Raqat's chon. It … it settled on her.”

“Mechenyat!” Khateyat dropped to her knees and stared unhappily at her hands.

“What?”

“Never mind. Go on.”

“Once, you said the diadem defended itself … it did. I couldn't move. She touched it; I felt the battle in her. Ahai, Khatya … I couldn't move, I couldn't make a sound. The dust was drawn out of her, driven out. Before I could even try to do anything, she ran but and I … I fainted. When I opened my eyes again, there was no sign of her anywhere.”

“You didn't call me. Why?”

“No.” Aleytys moved uneasily. “I was afraid. And exhausted.” She pushed herself upright and sat with legs splayed out to support her thick middle section. “I thought morning would be soon enough.” She twisted her head and looked wearily at Khateyat. “I was wrong. I seem to make a habit of being wrong.”

The older woman touched Aleytys's head with a gentle hand. “You're young,” she said quietly. “You're very young.”

Aleytys caught hold of the hand. “Will I …” She swallowed. “Will I get any older? What's going to happen to me?”

Khateyat tightened her fingers comfortingly and smiled. Moonlight glinted off her teeth. “You'll be safe until we reach the mountains. The R'nenawatalawa protect you.”

“But … Myawo?”

“Raqat was flawed. Warned now, we are no longer vulnerable.” She sighed. “Be careful, Leyta. Keep away from the people.” She pressed her full lips together. “Leyta.”

“Yes?”

“I'm fond of you, you know that.”

“I …”

“Yes, yes, there's no need to answer.” Her eyes focused on the distant mountains. “I have many responsibilities. My people come first, Leyta. They must. I can do little to help you.”

“I know.”

After a moment's painful silence, Khateyat spoke briskly. “Don't come to the Nesweym'wet tonight.”

Aleytys looked up sharply. “The death fire?”

“For Raqat.”

“But she's not dead.”

Khateyat looked across the river, her face quietly sad. “Her mind is gone. We shall give her me'twat to drink, and then, as she is Shemqya, we shall give her to the Nesweym'wet and return her body to the earth and the air and the R'nenawatalawa that her spirit might go free.” She bent down and stroked her fingers, along Aleytys's hair. “For the sake of my people, Aleytys, they mustn't see you tonight.” She got to her feet, moving heavily.

“Wait.”

“What is it, Leyta?” Impatience sharpened Khateyat's voice.

“Tie me.”

“What!”

“Tie me, please.” Aleytys pushed her unwieldy body up onto her feet. “If the diadem takes me again … do you see?”

Khateyat nodded briefly. “Wait here.” She climbed away up the bank, her shoulders hunched as if she were hoisting yoked water buckets. Aleytys turned back to the river, lowering herself carefully onto the grass. She stared at the water, waiting.

Khateyat came back, short lengths of rope dangling from her hands.

9

The pains were coming closer and closer together. Aleytys clung to Khateyat's hand while fear and pain jumbled in her. “Khatya,” she gasped. “Mother …”

“Hush, Leyta, everything's fine. Don't worry.” Khateyat's voice cut through the pain mist and spread over her spirit like a soothing oil. She squeezed Aleytys's hand and brushed the hair back from her sweating face.

Aleytys panted and trembled. The low curving roof of the chon seemed to push down on her so that her breath caught in her throat and her head throbbed. She wriggled and tried to sit up but firm, gentle hands pushed her down again.

“Khatya,” she gasped out. “Not in here. Please. Not in here.” She shoved the other hands away and rolled up onto her knees. “Help me.”

“There's no time.” Kheprat touched her shoulder with a warning hand.

“Help me,” Aleytys repeated urgently, then grunted as another pain rippled through her. “I want to be by the river. Please.” She twisted her head back and forth, sweat beading her forehead. “I
need
to go to the river.”

Khateyat examined her closely a minute, then she nodded. R'prat and N'frat took Aleytys's arms and helped her out of the tent. The other women rolled up the birth leathers and followed. Kheprat shook her head disapprovingly and held out her hand for Khateyat.

It was very early morning. Horli was thrusting her tip over the mountain like a ruby on the circle of the world. The narrow strip of trees on the river bank wrote with long shadows in red-tinged calligraphy across the sandy stone-pointed earth while the river danced down the slope, clear and cold, blue-green-blue, with a low musical roar that was like cream along her nerves.

They spread the leathers on a level grassy spot warm in the rich red light. The two young Shemqya helped her down. The pains were clutching at her almost constantly now. She stretched out, letting her spirit drift, to merge with the water and the air and the sky, then the pain became a force welling up from the blood and bones of Jaydugar herself.

A loud wail cut through the quiet murmurs of the morning. Aleytys felt limp and wrung out. Khateyat's face smiling, gentle, loomed over her. “You have a son, Aleytys.” Another angry, demanding cry clipped the end of her words. “A strong and hungry boy.”

10

The wagons moved clumsily up the slopes of the mountains and trundled along a rutted road into a wide, steep-walled valley. Sitting beside Khateyat, Aleytys pulled the neck thongs loose and bared a breast so Sharl could nurse. “This is where you winter?” She looked around at the barren steamy valley. “How do the yd'rwe eat?”

Khateyat didn't speak for a moment, concentrating on urging the team through a downslanting S-curve. Safely around, she relaxed. “We slaughter all but the breeding stock.” She pointed to the rocky ground below with its scattering of hot springs leaking steam into the air. “This is the killing ground. There …” She nodded at a monolithic cliff rising, to be lost in the ceiling of cloud. “Around there the grass is thick and lush, the floor protected from the worst of the winter winds. It is a good place. We've had to fight for it a number of times.”

“Fight?”

Khateyat shrugged. “Often another clan grows greedy or the winter is harder than usual, so that the less sheltered places are not good enough to sustain life, so they come with men and magic to challenge us.” She frowned. “If this winter is bad, we're weaker by one.”

“My fault.”

“No. Not you. The Khem-sko's greed.”

The silence between them lasted until the herret rocked onto the floor of the valley. Then Khateyat sighed. “When we camp, Leyta, I don't know what Myawo will try.”

“Well, my dear friend, I won't be troubling you over the winter. There's a place I have to reach as soon as possible. The Bawe Neswet.”

“Ah!” Khateyat glanced at her. “I know it.” She began threading through the scattered boulders toward the narrow neck beside the cliff. “It's an ill place, bad feeling there.”

“Hopefully I won't be there long.” Sharl stopped sucking and began kneading her soft flesh with his tiny hands, so she shifted him to the other breast. “Greedy little gurb,” she murmured happily. “No.” She turned back to Khateyat. “I'll be calling for help offworld. Could you make a map for me so I could find the place?”

“Yes.” Khateyat pursed her lips. “Take the slave with you.;”

“Hai?” Aleytys stared at her, startled.

“Before Myawo uses him again.” Khateyat grunted as she swung the herret into the inner valley. “He's stirring Shanat to rebellion, using her grief for Raqat. This is very bad.”

“You're stronger than he is. The other four of you. Why do you tolerate his mischief?”

“We need him in full strength. He is the male aspect of our skills. Male and female make a whole and if broken …” She shrugged.

Aleytys took the baby from her breast and pulled the neck of her tunic shut. She reached behind her, spread a cloth on her shoulder, and lay Sharl over it, patting his back briskly. “Can you get the chains off his legs?”

“Yes. That and food and mounts.” She laughed. “Keep out of sight, my dear, and let me arrange your escape.”

11

The baby gurgled and stretched his mouth into a wide toothless grin, reaching up with clumsy, groping hands for the braids swinging past his face. Aleytys laughed and turned her head back and forth, dancing the tickling ends across his nose. “Hee, baby,” she whispered. As she tickled his stomach, he kicked his feet energetically, laughing with every muscle in his small active body. “Ahi, baby, ahi, Sharl, my dream-singer boy, my Vajdson.”

Sharl lay against her legs, his diapered bottom resting on her stomach. She picked him up and rocked him back and forth, crooning softly.

In the steamy barren valley to her left far, far below, the drying racks were almost full. The bloody butchering ground was out of sight around a bend in the rocky walls, but even up here on the cliffside vagrant gusts of wind carried the stink of the blood that had run rivers into the collecting buckets as half the herd was slaughtered in preparation for wintering.

She glanced down at the valley and shuddered at the memory, glad for once to be an outsider, since she was not permitted to touch the meat. Women carried buckets in a steady steamy line to the vats for blood sausage. Men labored, bloody to the elbows, swimming in sticky, sweet red blood, slicing the meat from the bones in long, thin strips. The rest of the women pounded herbs into the strips and hung them on the smoking racks where the smoke and the sun turned them rock hard as the days passed.

Sitting above the low-hanging clouds of mingled smoke and steam from the hot springs, Aleytys sniffed the fresher air and leaned back against the granite wall that rose straight up over her head for at least thirty meters in a massive cliff sliced from the side of the mountain. She pulled the cords off her headcloth, flipping the ends back so that the wandering breeze could get to her face and neck. The baby was making a small but intense hot spot, so she lifted him and laid him down on his sleeping mat in a brush-shaded niche. He worked his mouth, sighed, and slid back into deep sleep. She touched him gently and relaxed against the rock.

She tilted her head against the stone and dreamily watched the suns slip down toward the mountains. Hesh was back on the south of Horli with the ragged ring of hydrogen rather thicker and brighter on this side of the world. “Almost night,” she murmured lazily. She touched the thin warm soil beside her. “In a way I hate to leave you, Mother Earth.” An answering warmth flowed up through her. Her eyes drooped shut and she drifted into a comfortable doze.

A chuckle cut into her dream. She opened her eyes and stretched. Rubbing her neck, she looked around to see Khateyat standing on the narrow track.