Diadem from the Stars (33 page)

“Tscha! A pair you are, sleeping peacefully away while the whole world works.” Khateyat sat down on a small boulder and smiled at her.

“You startled me.” Her eyes closed halfway, Aleytys grinned sleepily back. “I didn't expect anyone up here now.” With a grunt of effort, she stood up, shaking out her stiffened joints. She looked down at the distant drying racks and turned back, puzzled. “They're not working anymore.”

Khateyat was watching her, a grim look on her face. “The butchering's finished. Leyta, I'm sorry, I let too much time slip past. You've got to leave. Quickly. You should have gone before.”

Aleytys stood up. Glancing at the suns, she nodded. “As soon as it's dark.”

“Myawo's been busy but he hasn't forgotten you. I saddled sesmatwe for you and the slave, put food and things the baby needs in the saddlebags. And a map to the Bawe Neswet. Go now.” She glanced nervously down the trail. “Don't wait for dark.”

“Khatya.…”

“No, no.” She jumped up and paced feverishly back and forth on the narrow trail. “I'll distract him. Somehow. Take Sharl and go. Or you'll never get away.”

Aleytys bent down and picked up her sleeping son. “I have to thank you, Khatya.”

“No time for that, Leyta.” Khateyat pushed at her with shaking hands. “Go. Go.” Her words tumbled out nervously, short, sharp, clipped. “Hurry.” She pushed Aleytys onto the downtrail ahead of her. “I'm afraid … run … hurry.” Her hands fluttered against Aleytys's back in a series of short quick taps.

Out of the drifting veils of smoke and steam a soft, insistent drumbeat thrust like poking fingers up the side of the mountain. Khateyat stiffened. “Too late,” she said somberly. “Listen.”

“A drum. I've heard drums every day since we've been here.”

“It's the Nayal.” She was silent a minute, then burst out, “I didn't want your blood on my people's hands.”

“I'm not too fond of the idea myself,” Aleytys said dryly.

“The Nayal.…” Khateyat's face crumpled. “I came … you'll feel the summoning in a minute. I should have sent you away before. You couldn't know. I'm sorry, Leyta.” She turned away, letting her hands drop helplessly.

Aleytys grimaced. “You've got more to worry about than a little guilt, my mother.” She reached up and touched her temple with a long slender forefinger. A ghost tinkle floated for a second on top of the drumbeats. “The diadem protects itself. Remember? I don't think it'll let them kill me.”

Khateyat picked nervously at the wide bracelets on her wrists. “Ah, hem-has,” she moaned.

Aleytys drew her hand gently along the grieving face. “I'll fight it, my best mother. I don't want to hurt you and I don't want them to die. Even Myawo, since you need him.” She looked down at her baby sleeping peacefully through all the emotional storms. “But promise me …”

“What, daughter?”

“Take care of Sharl if I'm killed, please. Love him for me, please?” She held the baby against her breast and stroked her hands gently along his back. “He
has
to be loved,” she whispered intensely. “He must be loved.” She held Khateyat's gaze with hers. “You know how much this means to me. I told you about my life.”

Khateyat nodded quietly. “You needn't worry, daughter. He will be my son. If it is necessary.”

The slow drumming began to pulse in Aleytys's blood. She rocked restlesssly from foot to foot. With a little gasp of pain, she thrust the baby into Khateyat's reaching arms. Eyes shining fiercely, she ran downhill a meter or so, then fought her way back. “Khatya, the mounts … Stavver.… Have them all ready for me … in case. Please?”

Khateyat nodded, holding the baby against her breast. “I'll have two sesmatwe west of the camp,” she said hurriedly. “Stavver with them. Break free if you can. And, Leyta, fight. Let there be no blood.”

Aleytys gasped out her thanks and ran stumbling down the steep track, pulled faster and faster by the pulse of the drum.

As Aab and Zeb swept up toward apex, Aleytys stood restlessly kicking at the dirt inside a circle drawn on the ground. A sharp tap on a tenor drum shattered the tense silence. Aleytys started, then turned to face the boy drummer, poised warily on her toes. Myawo walked heavily, portentously, into the ring of firelight, startling a giggle out of her. He was naked except for a narrow loincloth, his body painted in snake patterns from head to foot with paint that glittered and glistened in the firelight.

She sobered immediately as a chill walked her spine, born of the aura of power pressing out from him so solidly that it was almost tangible. His little posings and pomposities melted away under the glow of that tremendous power battering at her. She faced him defiantly.

Myawo stopped just outside the line he'd drawn an hour ago in the gritty dirt. He smiled at her, triumph glittering in his round eyes, then began to walk slowly around the circle, slow heavy words falling like drops of blood from his lips, the sound weaving in and around the
tink-tink
of the small drum. The beat quickened. His footsteps quickened in turn, changing into a wild stamping dance as the Khem-sho summoned the last drop of power he controlled, summoned the dark boiling forces of Mechenyat. His voice shrilled into a compelling rhythmic chant. His hands reached out, catching handfuls of firelight and moonlight, which he wove into a silken gleaming rope. Almost forgetting her own peril, Aleytys watched, fascinated.

The rope trailed him as he stamped around the circle, hovering in long, slow undulations in midair, stretching out longer and longer … red and silver … fire and moon … silver and red … strands weaving in … over … around … around … and around the circle … weaving a fence around her.

Pain shot through her head as a familiar weight pressed down about her temples. She shuddered out of her half-dream. Her hands began to stiffen, fingers curving into claws. When she lifted heavy reluctant arms to touch her head, wooden fingers traced the graceful curves of the petals, warm-cool through the numbness. Her brain ached. She was being thrust aside again … like before.…

She fought. Myawo forgotten, she clung to her fingers, to her feet, to her body, to her tongue. She fought. It was like hitting a cloud of steam, painful and futile. Then agony shot through her nerve ends until her body was a sheet of pain as her fingers crossed the line.

She gasped as she felt the influence of the diadem peeling up and off like a worn-out snakeskin. Opening her eyes, she faced Myawo, who was standing in one spot, shifting on his feet in a broken rhythm like the fluttering leap of the flames in the fire. The tail of the light-rope dipped across her shoulders and left a line of fire that ate at her skin. She moaned and writhed in the agony of that touch.

Then the diadem spilled the power-pool over her again, so fast she had no time to struggle, leaving her backed into a corner of her mind, staring, out of the peepholes in her skull. Horrified, she watched her hands drop down, then stretch out, pointing directly at Myawo. Horrified, she sensed a sick, oily power flow down through her cringing body, to pool at last in her shaking hands. She darted around in her head like a mikhmikh in a cage, trying to force a way out of her body again. But there was no way.

The light-rope flicked across her shoulders again. In the pain of the touch, for a brief moment, she could force her arms down to her sides. Straining desperately, she gasped out, “Khem-sho, don't … keep … keep away from me.… I can't hold … if I touch … touch you …”

Chant broken off, he clutched at the disintegrating rope of light and stared at her.

She staggered around in the circle, her thin brown arms corded with the effort she was making to keep them down. She got close to the line and jerked herself away, almost toppling over with the violence of her struggle; got close again, jerked away.… Shuffle … shuffle … legs like sticks … board-stiff arms thrust out like spears … a puppet on strings pulled by an idiot puppeteer. Once again her outstretched fingers, splayed out, bending slightly backward, crossed the line.

Fire flowed like water over her whole body. Her mouth stretched open in a soundless scream. She twisted, twisted, struggled to break away … shuffle … shuffle … legs like sticks … forward … one step … jerk sideways … forward … inch by searing inch. She felt the tendons in her neck harden into ropes.

Myawo backed slowly away, inches from the thin fingers with their jagged nails and work-roughened skin, the killing rope spun from fire and moon dropping from flaccid hands, melting into the fleeting sparks.

She strained, pleaded with her eyes.
I can't help it,
she wailed inside her head,
I can't stop it.

He began to chant once more, moving his hands in slow circling mandalas written in lines of green and purple fire.

Wind swooped in like a blast from a deep winter storm and caught at her, spun her around and around until she felt invisible hands clutch at her waist, her arms, her legs. Dozens of hands. With needle-pointed claws that sank deep into her trembling flesh. Howling wordless syllables that crept slyly into her brain in the shape of obscene whispers, the winds slashed at her with those numbing claws, whirled her around and around. But the claws slipped out as easily as they went in, so that the buffeting hands got no grip on her, but they spun her until her mind reeled, until tears streamed from her aching eyes.

Through the howling of the demon winds and the harsh gutturals grunted out of Myawo's throat she could hear—growing louder and louder—the lovely ripple of notes singing out from the crown flowers. The blackness of the night took on a flickering amber glow.

There was a rising frustration in the wind's howls, then Myawo's chant grew louder. Aleytys shrank inside her skin from the sound. Horrible throat-tearing syllables not meant for human throats drowned out the chiming of the diadem. Weariness spread its own poison through her body but the winds would not let her rest, winging her through complicated pirouettes.

The chant seemed to harden. She felt icy bodiless hands cup around her arms and legs. This time they held, swooping her into a widening spiral that swung her higher and higher off the ground until the chant fires were red pinpoints on the black surface of the world. Higher and higher the icy hands carried her, until she spun through the edge of a cloud that flowed around her like cold and scentless smoke.

The hands dissolved and she fell, tumbling over and over through the air while wind whipped her hair back away from her face, a natural wind born out of her plunge downward toward the distant earth. She smiled, remembering nestling in the hawk's brain—a hundred years ago, it seemed—and then felt a little sad to be ending the tale of her adventure here.

Then the diadem chimed a single piercing note, drifting through the air like a floating spark. Her fall slowed. Her feet dipped until she was upright, drifting downward more and more slowly until she touched the ground as gently as a falling leaf.

A stone came flying out of the darkness and crashed into her shoulder. She gasped. A second stone flew past, just missing her head. A low animal growl rumbled from a dozen throats and filled the still night air with menace. More stones came and the growl grew louder as the medwey gathered courage. A rock hit her leg. Another struck her shoulder.

The driving urge to life that had impelled her through the traumatic occurrences of the past months flared once again and sent her fleeing blindly into the darkness. She stumbled and went down again and again as her feet hooked into unseen obstacles, scrambling up each time, her breathing sobbing in her ears as the howls of her tormenters jerked her onto her feet and away from the mob.

She heard a new sound ahead, the plaintive mewling of irritated sesmatwe. They loomed up like pale shadows as she rounded a boulder and moved from the shadow under the trees. Stavver caught her as she staggered to a stop.

“Leyta.” Khateyat patted her shoulder. “Here.” She held out a leather-wrapped bundle. “Good journey and may the rest of your life be blessed.” She touched Aleytys's cheek. “My daughter.”

Stavver pulled himself up on the riding pad. “Get mounted,” he said impatiently. “We've got to get out of here.”

Aleytys nodded and swung up on the sesmat, balancing carefully so that she wouldn't wake the baby.

“Here, Leyta, put this around your shoulder.” Khateyat handed her a folded piece of leather. “A babysling.”

“Thanks, Khatya.” She slipped the strap over one shoulder and settled the baby on the opposite hip. Khateyat put a hand on her knee. “I've told Stavver how to go.” A howl came from the trees and she went on hastily. “R'nenawatalawa bless you.”

Stavver gave an impatient exclamation and rode off. As Aleytys kneed her mount forward, she called, “I wish you really were my mother.” She kicked her heels into the sesmat's side and plunged into the darkness after Stavver.

12

Stavver jabbed at the fire. “Another day probably,” he grunted.

“Ahi, at last.” Aleytys stretched and yawned. “It's been a long journey for me. You think we'll have to wait long for your friends?”

“Depends on who answers.” He stared at her across the fire, frowning slightly as she bent over her sleeping baby. “Stop fussing with the kid and come here.”

She lifted her head and smiled sleepily at him. “No.”

Jumping up, he strode around the fire and pulled her to her feet. “You weren't so reluctant before.”

She eyed him calmly. “I was already pregnant then. I don't want to have your baby, Stavver.” She pulled back against his hold, quietly trying to free herself. “I'm tired, thief. We have to get up early.”

He caught her by the nape of her neck, his long wiry fingers closing around her heavy braids. With his free hand he caressed her face, then her breasts. Feeling her response, he bent his head and kissed her eyes lightly, then her mouth … until Aleytys broke free, breathing hard. “No,” she said. “I meant it, thief.” When he reached for her again, she slapped his hands away. “Don't be a fool. You know what happens to people around me.”