Irsud (33 page)
Authors: Jo; Clayton
“Any more of those devils about?”
He looked at her, startled to hear her break the silence. She smiled and the knot began dissolving inside him. Tentatively, he smiled back. “They have a kind of nest-clan arrangement. Several pairs together. So we'd better keep watch. Holy Maeve be blessed, they don't fly about after dark.”
“That's a relief.” She raised her hands high above her head, stretching and twisting to relieve muscles held too taut too long. “I wasn't looking forward to shivering under my blankets waiting for old big mouth to descend on me.” A sudden thought sent her eyes to his. “Or do you have worse mouths that inhabit the night?”
He grinned at her, obscurely pleased by this evidence of her mortality. “Only snakes. They like your body warmth and crawl under the blanket with you.”
“My god.” Shaking her head, the starwoman shortened her stride to match his and paced down the winding and deepening ravine toward the haunt of the rising sun.
Chapter III
The meager fire glowed red and gold in the blackness. Aleytys felt its gentle heat bathing her face as she stared at the constantly altering patterns of dark and light.
“There's no need to keep watch.”
She looked up. Gwynnor's eyes shone phosphorescent green in the firelight. She smiled. “Your night's too long for me. I need to do some thinking before I sleep.”
He lay down and pulled the blanket over his head, his feet pointing toward the fire. Almost between breaths he was asleep.
With a sigh, she tucked her blanket around her and hugged her knees, staring into the flames, hypnotized into mind blankness until she shrugged herself out of the haze. “Harskari,” she whispered.
Amber eyes opened, blinked, then the thin, clever face smiled out of the darkness in her mind. “Aleytys.”
“I've been remembering.”
“I know.”
“Why did you all stop talking to me?”
The wind was strengthening, whispering across the coals and blowing alternate gusts of warm and cold air past her face. Small pieces of grit pattered against the blanket.
Harskari shook her head, her white mane shifting like silk. “We didn't. You were so hurt by the nayid male's death that you couldn't handle it. You transferred the guilt you felt to us and took the only revenge you could by totally denying our existence. You forgot us and sealed us off from contact at the same time. I don't think you know your strength, Aleytys.”
Aleytys dropped her head on her arms, burying her face in the folds of the blanket, grieving because she was not grieving. But too much time had passed. Once there had been first affection, then a deep love shared. Now there was only a faded memory as if all that had happened to someone else. Was this all love came to? She tried to find a trace of that tumultuous warmth in herself, but there was nothing. Too much time. She sighed, brushed a hand over her face, and stared back into the glowing coals. “So when I was close to dying, you could get through again.”
“Yes. You needed us.”
“I've just about got straight in my head what happened since I left Jaydugar. What about you?”
“To see your world, we look through your eyes. But there are other worlds and other ways of looking.”
“Oh.” Aleytys glanced briefly at Gwynnor's sleeping form, then lifted her eyes to the brilliantly lit sky. A huge pale moon thrust up over the eastern horizon, filling half the sky with its milky glow. The air was cold, thin and sharp and invigorating, biting the fog out of her mind. “That doesn't really answer my question.”
Harskari chuckled. “Yes, young Aleytys, we know what you've been doing.”
Abruptly, Aleytys felt very good, her body ticking like a fine watch. She laughed and patted her mouth as the laugh turned into a yawn. “Harskari?”
“What is it?”
“On Jaydugar, we made a mess of the nomad clan. On Lamarchos, I got involved with Loahn and the Horde, Kale and his complicated plots, until the whole damn world was crushed under dead bodies. On Irsud, I stuck my nose into the hiiri's fight with the nayids, though the nayids asked for it. The outcome was that I destroyed a large part of the nayid population. So here we are on Maeve, in the company of a cerdd who is helping wage an undeclared war. Makes you think.”
“It does, indeed,” Harskari chuckled, a gentle affectionate sound, “considering past performance.”
“Damn.” Aleytys yawned again. “I'll probably have nightmares.”
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jo Clayton (1939â1998) was the author of thirty-five published novels and numerous short stories in the fantasy and science fiction genres. She was best known for the Diadem Saga, in which an alien artifact becomes part of a person's mind. She also wrote the Skeen Trilogy, the Duel of Sorcery series, and many more. Jo Clayton's writing is marked by complex, beautifully realized societies set in exotic worlds and stories inhabited by compelling heroines. Her illness and death from multiple myeloma galvanized her local Oregon fan community and science fiction writers and readers nationwide to found the Clayton Memorial Medical Fund.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1978 by Jo Clayton
Cover design by Andy Ross
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3841-6
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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