Irsud (24 page)

“Ha!” She closed her eyes again. “Harskari.”

“Yes, Aleytys.”

“Something I forgot to ask. I remember, I think, you took a horse along in the time spell, for a while anyway. You can take all of us under spell? When Stavver and I were in the hall on our way to steal the poaku on Lamarchos, Stavver … I had to push him along like a doll. What about now? Do I have to drag these behind me?”

There was silence in her head. “If it's absolutely necessary,” Harskari said after a while. “I can take the three over a very very short distance. It's very debilitating; it'll drain you of nearly every ounce of energy you have.”

“We'd better wait here, then, until the hall clears out.”

“I concur.”

Opening her eyes, Aleytys concentrated once again on the subtle negation she spread in waves around the cell.

The groups of nayids, moving swiftly past, twitching her nerves, clumped rapidly on their way, too involved with their own necessities to waste even a casual glance at the dark cells. As a last pair of stragglers hastened past, Aleytys felt giggles bubbling in her irresistibly.
Oh, damn it
, she thought She bit down on her lip and buried her head against Burash's arm. Her whole body quivered with those insane giggles.

“Leyta?” Burash's concerned whisper almost was the straw too much but she clung desperately to the flickering tail of her sanity. In another minute she sucked in a lungful of air and went limp in his arms. “I'm all right, love. For some dumb reason I nearly had a fit of giggles.”

“Giggles.” The disgust in his voice nearly sent her off again.

“Don't,” she gasped.

He got up and lifted her onto her feet. “Get busy.”

With a long quivering sigh she pulled her scattered mind together. “His cell is unlocked, he's alone. All we need is a little clear space. Burash?”

He moved to the grating beside Aamunkoitta, antennas quivering intently. “Miles of them,” he muttered. He moved away again and sat down on the bare wooden planks. Looking from one disappointed face to another, he said, “Groups of two or three. Both sides. Scattered just close enough to … too close.”

“Damn, we haven't got time.” She stared down at her hands. “And the kipu could get a bright idea any minute.” Abruptly she stood up. For the first time she spoke aloud to the dweller in her skull. “Harskari.” With Burash and Aamunkoitta watching, curious and more than a little awed, she went on, “Can you do it? What do I do?”

“Take a hand of each. Get the grating open first. You'd never shift it even half-phase.”

The amber eyes glowing behind her own, Aleytys turned to Burash. “Let me know when the corridor's going to be clear for at least half a minute.”

“But.…”

“Don't worry, I'm going to pull some of my magic. I think. You'll both be feeling damn uncomfortable but it won't last long. Trust me.”

He nodded. Hands on the bars he searched. “Space coming up,” he said tautly, restraining his excitement with difficulty.

A pair of shadows flickered past the grating. As soon as the sound of their feet faded, Aleytys used her own clairvoyance to double check the hall. It was clear, just as Burash had said, but only for a heartbeat or so. She shoved the grating open and seized the disparate hands of her companions.

The diadem flared and chimed, the air turned still and stiff. Ignoring the startled gasp of the hiiri she tugged at the hands, communicating the urgency and the need for haste through the tightness of her grip. Wading against the thrust of the air the three fought down the hall, taking an eternity, an eon, a dream-fantasy of futile running before they reached the fifth cell door. The chime swung uphill.

Hastily Aleytys tugged the grating open and slid through the opening as soon as it was wide enough, the other two tumbling in on her heels. Burash pulled the grating shut and stood beside it while Aamunkoitta ran to the crumpled body on the planks and crouched beside it staring wide-eyed at Aleytys who lay gasping in exhaustion on the grimy floor.

Weaker than she had ever been in her life, Aleytys sucked, in lungfuls of the filthy air, struggling to regain some of the strength drained out of her. In her head she heard a whisper almost beyond her ability to decipher … heal … heal … exhaustion … a kind … of … sickness … heal. She fumbled for the power, the effort almost beyond her. Then the water poured over her, restoring her strength. She sat up.

“Watch the door.”

Burash nodded and turned back, his body taut with concentration.

Aleytys put her hands on the unconscious hiiri and reached back for her river. Her arms still felt like clumsy lead weights, her head woolly, thoughts blundering and indistinct, but her talent flowed smoothly, the healing got done, the hiiri sat up and stared around from lively dark eyes.

“The traffic's thinning, Leyta.” Burash's quiet voice broke through her tiredness.

“Good. Because I think that sort of magic has worn thin for me.” She took hold of the edge of the bunk and sat up, staggering as her knees buckled briefly. “Madar! I'm weak as a two-day kitten.”

CHAPTER XXII

Nakivas slipped out of the chill soggy shadow and knocked at the patched rickety shutter of a crumbling house on the outermost rim of the city, a house that seemed to owe its continued existence to the massive wall it leaned against like a decaying wart. He rapped again, repeating the pattern twice this time.

The shutter cracked open and the hiiri slipped inside.

Aleytys shivered. “What time is it?” she whispered to Burash who crouched beside her in the tangled tree-brush mixture at the base of the wall.

“Three hours until dawn.” He was trembling with cold, his antennas bedraggled and drooping, the fine feathering beaded with drops of icy water. He glanced at her. “Do you know … has the kipu missed us yet?”

Aamunkoitta looked up alertly.

“No.” Aleytys pulled her robe tighter against her body, but the cold wet material wasn't much help in cutting the chill in her bones. “But Nakivas better hurry. Damn. I'll never be warm again.” She looked down at the tiny calm figure of the hiiri. “You don't seem to mind the cold, Kitten.”

The hiiri shrugged. “What is, is. Accept and be one. Kunniakas, the henkiolento-maan would speak to you if you listened. Let them. Be one with the earth, then the cold is one with you and will not harm you.”

Burash touched Aleytys on the shoulder. “Look.”

The door was open. Nakivas slid out. He darted to them, bent over, keeping to the darker shadows. “Come.” His voice was a whisper almost disappearing into the whispering rustling leaves of the trees around them. Aleytys first, then Burash, with Aamunkoitta as rear guard, they trailed him into the dilapidated house.

Aleytys started and grimaced wryly as a musty shrouded figure slid around her and swung the bar into its slots. She sniffed. The interior of the house smelt of rotting wood, rotting food, and human sweat and urine. The walls groaned, murmured, shifted continually, and the tiny ominous scrabbling of vermin feet combined with the stale thick blackness to work on her nerves until she jittered with the urge to get out of the noisome place. A hand touched hers, took it.

“Hold onto the others. Follow me.” Nakivas's voice came to her out of the fetid blackness. Aleytys swallowed and reached out.

“Burash, can you find my hand?”

He laughed. “You forget, Leyta.”

“Oh. Catch hold of Kitten, will you? I think we're supposed to make a chain.”

“I hear.”

Nakivas moved off with the others stumbling along behind him. Aleytys could have cleared out the blackness for herself by using her clairvoyance, but she didn't want to. The thought of penetrating that blackness to see what lived there brought a quaver to her stomach.

After an eternity Nakivas stopped. “One minute,” he said, freeing his hand. The blackness cracked apart just ahead of them. “Come,” Nakivas muttered.

Thankfully she stumbled out into the rain. She lifted her head and let the cold clean water wash over her face and hands, pour through her hair. She shook herself after a minute and turned to Nakivas. “Now what?”

“Come.”

Ahead of them, sheltering in a hollow where the butte met the level ground: five horses waited restlessly, tails brushing, feet scraping on the littered stone, four saddled, one loaded with a pack.

Silently, the four of them mounted, Nakivas and Aamunkoitta with a single smooth movement, Aleytys cautiously, Burash lengthily with eyes screwed shut, sweat streaming off his tense face. Eventually Nakivas gave him a hand up and helped him get settled into the saddle. “You all right?” He frowned. “Think you can keep up?”

Burash shifted in the saddle, eyes still closed. Speaking through clenched teeth, he muttered, “If it kills me.”

Nakivas gave a short sharp bark of laughter, then kneed his horse out of the hollow. Aleytys waited for Burash and together they followed. Again Aamunkoitta went last, her bright eyes darting about alertly.

With rain falling in dreary sheets they rode interminably into the featureless plain. A vague graying of the east proclaimed the coming of the sun but the rain kept coming down, the sky lost in leaden gray smoke. Aleytys glanced repeatedly at Burash. He was clutching painfully at the saddle horn, passing into that trance-like state that went beyond mere tiredness into total exhaustion. She remembered that first night when she fled her own home, remembered the ache, the bone-deep tiredness, the stubborn refusal to quit. Her body throbbed in sympathy with his. She rode ahead to Nakivas. “Could we stop?”

“The Seppanhei?”

“Yes. He won't quit, but he's tranced by exhaustion.” She frowned. “Give me a minute and I think I can fix that.”

“Even that, Kunniakas?”

“Why not.”

“The rain will be breaking soon and we'll need cover anyway.” He looked over his shoulder at the nayid. “Could he ride another half hour?”

“He'll ride till he drops.”

“That'll do then. And you, Kunniakas? How do you ride now?”

She laughed. “Stiffly, my friend. But the old skills come back and tomorrow will be better.”

The rain abated to a light drizzle and Aleytys could see what other senses had been telling her. They had left the plain and were in gently rolling wooded country. Nakivas threaded his way through the trees and finally dismounted in a small grassy clearing. “We rest here till the night,” he said crisply.

Aleytys slid down and hurried to Burash's side. “How are you?” Anxiety made her voice sharper than she intended.

Swaying precariously in the saddle, he forced his eyes open and tried to smile at her.

“Let me help.” She caught hold of his hand and set it on her shoulder. “Lean on me. Just let yourself fall off. Come on, the easiest thing in the world. And I'm here; you don't have anything to fear.”

He nodded and slid toward her, grunting as the saddle brushed past tender thighs. Aleytys caught hold of the clumsy burden, stumbling as his whole weight came on her. He couldn't stand, could only move feebly. She let herself fold downward until she knelt with him, then let him stretch out flat on the wet cold grass.

“Close your eyes a minute, naram.”

The thin delicate membranes slid over the faceted eyes. He was trembling with the cold, his whole body shivering with cold and exhaustion. Aleytys reached to her river and let the power flow through her hands into his body. As it had flushed the poison from her body, it washed away the fatigue from his and healed the scraped spots on his thighs.

Burash felt the strength flowing back into his body and opened his eyes, smiling up at her. “You never fail me,” he whispered.

“May I never,” she answered. She touched his face with her fingertips. “Think you can stand now?”

Not bothering with words he jumped to his feet and held out his hand for her.

She laughed and let him pull her up. Then she looked around. The sod had been opened up. An irregular circle of grass on a timber backing had been pulled aside revealing a dark hole. Aamunkoitta was leading the pack horse down, stroking and coaxing him into skittish submission.

“Surprise, surprise.” Aleytys went over and looked into the hole but could see little except the rear end of the descending animal. “What an organization.”

Aamunkoitta came back to the slope. “Come on down, Kunniakas, so we can close the top. The kipu will have skimmers out hunting us by now.”

“It's dark down there.”

Aamunkoitta laughed. “Not for long. Not once we get the top on. It's very comfortable. You'll see.”

Sniffing skeptically, Aleytys held firmly to Burash's hand and walked with exaggerated care down the incline. Nakivas brushed past her and joined Aamunkoitta. Together the hiiris pulled the lid back into place then groped their way through the thick blackness back to where Aleytys and Burash were standing.

“Take my hand.” Aamunkoitta's soft clear voice sounded oddly distorted by the darkness. Aleytys couldn't locate her at first. Then a small three-fingered hand touched her arm and slid down it to take her hand. “Come.”

“Burash?”

His answering laugh was warm and comforting. “You forget.”

She chuckled. “I always do, naram. Well, then come on. Lead off, Kitten.”

They wound a little deeper into the earth, then a light sprang out and Aamunkoitta clapped her hands, laughing delightedly at their gasps of astonishment. They were in a smallish domed chamber, soft furs on the floor and hanging from the walls, the ceiling set with tiles, with the flower patterns so familiar winding in crimson gold and green convolutions.

“Those.” Aleytys pointed, swept her hand in a small circle. “It was your people made them?”

“You don't think the hyonteinens could?” He made as if to spit.

She shrugged. The drag of her stained, soaked, muddy robe against her shoulders reminded her of another pressing need. “Is there a place where I can wash?” She plucked at the clinging material. “And some dry clothes for us.”