Lamarchos (19 page)

“My son. The Lakoe-heai punish me.”

“Lakoe-heai?”

“They who are the spirit and soul of Lamarchos.”

“Ah. Your gods.”

“No. Not gods.”

“I don't understand.”

“They ARE. That is their characteristic.”

The Karsk dropped the unprofitable exploration and took up the other arm of her statement. “They punish you?”

“Were you told of the dead beast?”

“What beast?” He tapped impatiently on the desk, turning his cowl to the psychologist.

“There was an animal body wrapped in flannel on the gikena's caravan steps.”

Aleytys nodded. “The one who died was a speaker, the beast Lakoe-heai use to communicate with gikena. The woman Leyilli killed it to warn me I must do what I was told to do.”

“And what is that?”

“I was to curse the city Karkys, curse it body and bones so that no man of Lamarchos would dare enter the gates again.”

“What!”

“The Karkiskya do no honor to Lakoe-heai and so they are angry. They are jealous of their honor.” She spread her fingers out, resting one hand on each leg, then stared down at them. “You are skeptical. Let me tell you this. If I put curse on Karkys, you would not see a Lamarchan within twenty kilometers of it. Never. To come onto this piece of earth would make any one of them pariah, stripped of home, hearth, and clan, cast out of the community of man. And this is the least of it. Lakoe-heai would send flies to torment his flesh, nightmares for his mind, until reality melted around the edges for him. You also would feel their hand. Even though you don't believe, my curse would open beneath the city, swallowing whole buildings, the flies would come and other predators until your lives became a misery to you. As long as I waited out there.” She flipped a hand to the south. “Out there beyond the gates, I would be the burning glass through which they funnelled their power.” She was silent a minute. “I tell you this knowing you could kill me here, seeking to avoid this doom. But I warn you, this would not serve.”

“You refused. Why?”

“Because we need you. Because I am healer, I am breaker of curses. What boy is ever a man without a Karkesh blade to drink the blood on the day of his blooding? I suspect you are equally satisfied with the stones you get in exchange.” She shrugged. “Never mind. I didn't refuse from any love of you.”

“Interesting.” The Karsk shifted impatiently, tapped the tips of his fingers on the desk top. He turned his head to the psychologist, switching languages in the sure knowledge that no native could understand him. “Doctor, what's she read? Do I have to sit through much more of this nonsense?”

“She believes every word she says.” He glanced down at the box resting on his lap, frowning. “Some odd anomalies, but nothing inconsistent with the truth. From the way the others spoke of her, I'd say she's right about the effect of her curse. So I'd be very, very polite and listen to her with respect.”

The cowl swung back to Aleytys. “You know what we are?”

“I know this. Your kind had its beginnings under another sun. I've seen sky ships flying over my homelands, I saw the star fliers behind the wall there.” She nodded to the north. “May I tell you a story I heard from my grandmother?”

The Karsk snorted impatiently but waved off a warning hand from the psychologist. “My time is limited, si'a gikena.”

She inclined her head. “I'll keep it short, sho Karsk. One day the frogs that inhabited a pond, a place of beauty where the blue waters shone like sapphire under the many colored sky, these frogs decided they wanted a king to make them feel important.” She smiled slightly as the Karsk radiated impatience. “They named a log to be their king as it was the largest and strongest thing in their region. But they grew dissatisfied when their king just lay around and did nothing. So they determined they would find another. A stork came by impressing them with his grace and beauty. This king was indeed more active. By the end of the week he had eaten them all, for frogs are a major item in the diet of storks.” She smiled again. “That is my story, sho Karsk. This is my reason for refusing to curse you off Lamarchos.”

“Hm.” He tented his narrow hands, placing fingertip precisely against fingertip. “Admirable logic, madam. If you can see so clearly, why are your patrons so obtuse? Can't they think of such things by themselves?”

“Who says they think?” She shrugged. “They ARE. They ACT. They SPEAK to me. Who knows how their thoughts walk, or even if they have thoughts?”

The Karsk shook his head impatiently. “And you refuse to do what they demand.”

“As I have said.” She shifted restlessly in the chair. “I must go after my son. Let me leave, please.”

“If your patrons are punishing you, you said it for yourself, how do you expect to get him back?”

“I serve them, but I'm no slave. I have power of my own. I WILL have my son back.”

The Karsk tapped fingertip against fingertip. Once again he turned to the psychologist, switching languages. “What do you think?”

“She believes everything she says.”

“That doesn't make it true.”

“I didn't mean that. However, if you really want my opinion, the faster you get her out of the city, the better.”

Aleytys leaned forward, catching the interrogator's attention. He faced her, fingers tapping impatiently on the polished surface of the desk. “What is it?”

“A suggestion. You need to make your peace with the Lakoe-heai. I shall be burying the body of the speaker beside the wall where the stream goes under. Build a small shrine over the spot and out of each year's take of poaku, give one in honor of the Lakoe-heai. By paying them honor you may appease their anger. I don't know. Get a builder of Lamarchos to plan the shrine.” She chuckled. “You Karkiskya build the ugliest structures I've ever seen.”

“We will consider it.”

“So. Let me go. And my servant with me.”

“Your servant?”

“Outside. Keon.”

“Take this.” He pulled a sheet of leathery paper from a niche by his knee and scrawled a series of ideographs over the face of it. “It's a permit to leave. The guards will let you through the lines if you show them this.”

She took the paper. “I'll mark the place where the speaker is buried. Let me give you one last bit of advice. Start construction of the shrine as soon as possible. It's a small enough price to pay for survival.”

PART III

Chapter I

Flies crawled over her breasts, swarmed around her head. Buzzing. A persistent irritating intrusion. She wanted to scream. She couldn't scream. The flies would crawl into her mouth and down her throat.

They bit. They crawled over breasts and her face and they bit.

She brushed and brushed at herself, skimming handfuls of crawling wriggling blackness, shuddering at the sticky prickly rustle of their legs, the unending unendurable tickle moving erratically over bare skin.

Stavver pulled on the reins, kicked the brake in, stopping the caravan. “Leyta. You can't—” Beating at her with a tattered rag, he drove the flies off for a moment then looked helplessly down at her blotched contorted face. “What's happening to you?”

She huddled on the seat, arms locked over her breasts while she stared blankly at the placid horses. Their tail-twitching, hip-shot lack of progress struck through the haze around her brain. She jerked her head up. “Why are we stopped?” She brushed at the flies. “Get going. Maissa. We've got to catch her.”

“Aleytys!” He shook her, flushing with anger, then let his hands fall helplessly, unable to talk past the half-mad glare in her bloodshot eyes. “At least you can be a little more protected,” he muttered. He moved around the end of the driver's bench and stepped over the threshold into the caravan. The drawer where Sharl had slept still hung open, piles of dust collecting among the folds of flannel. With a muttered oath, he slammed the drawer shut and picked up a quilt.

Avoiding the glare in her eyes, he dropped the quilt over her shoulders. “Wrap this around you. It might help a little.”

She nodded dully. “Miks—”

“Patience, shrew.” He slipped the latch on the friction brake and slapped the reins down on the horses' backs. Moving with clumsy slowness Aleytys huddled the quilt around her then sat wiping at the nonexistent flies as she stared with desperate anguish at the road ahead.

“Lee!” Stavver's demand brought her eyes slowly around to him. “I thought you could control this sort of thing.”

She turned away.

“Aleytys.” He glanced irritably at the plodding horses, then turned back to her. “You want your son back?”

She gasped and huddled smaller beneath the quilt.

“If you crack up, woman,” he went on, his voice edged with cruelty. “If you crack up, you'll never get him back. You think I'd waste my time chasing a kid that's not my own?” He tucked the reins under his leg and caught hold of her chin, forcing her head around. Speaking with exaggerated clarity, he said, “It's up to you, Aleytys. You.”

She sighed and seemed to collapse in on herself. “I.…” Blinking and shivering, head bowed, she sighed again. “Please, Miks, let me alone. I'm hanging … hanging on with my fingernails.”

He settled back on the seat, rescuing the reins from under his leg. “I never expected to see my witch as rattled as this.”

“Was I so arrogant?” She made a small unhappy sound in her throat. The wind blew through her hair and seemed to blow some of the fog out of her head. “I remember bragging about what marvels of endurance I've accomplished.” She leaned back, able to relax a little as the team moved steadily ahead, stride on stride putting the kilometers behind them. “Did I tell you? I was supposed to curse Karkys.”

“That you told me.” He grunted disgust.

“I told you … no, that Karsk.…” She shook her head. “Ahai, I'm falling apart like wet paper.”

“I still don't see why you're making so much out of a stupidity like that. Why don't you just curse the place. You don't really think that's anything but superstitious nonsense?” He fingered the reins idly, glanced up at the spectacular sky. “Even if it wasn't, these aren't your people.”

She wrenched her eyes from the road long enough to scan his cool cynical face, a needle pain pricking her heart. “They're people, Miks. People. I've made friends.”

“Worth this agony?”

She heard the harshness in his voice and shivered. It was a side of Stavver she preferred not to see. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I think it's worth this bad time.” With a shaking hand she rubbed at her face. “There don't seem to be so many flies around.”

“Maybe those fucking elementals got bored,” he burst out viciously, the emotion in his voice startling both of them.

She chuckled suddenly, a note of genuine mirth in the sound.

“What's so funny?”

“Your choice of words. I doubt if they have the equipment.”

“Hunh!” He smiled tightly, reluctantly. “Good!”

“Good?”

“Think about it.”

Aleytys laughed but let the sound trail away uncertainly. She looked around at the desolate stonelands where dust devils wheeled around wind-tortured stone carved into needle chimneys or chunkier buttes. “It took us half a day to cross this coming in.” A hoarse wail floated downwind, followed by another. She shivered. “Rock cat.”

“Some distance off yet. You think they're coming this way?” Stavver wound the reins around his hands, holding the nervously sidling horses on the rutted road.

“I don't know. Anywhere we can hear them is too close.” She shut her eyes and reached into the skittish horses, calming them so Stavver could straighten them out and keep them to a steady trot, quelling an urge to send them racing down trail and out of the stonelands as fast as possible. Killing them in the process.

One brow flicking up and down again in sardonic appreciation, Stavver relaxed enough to take his eyes off the team. “Back to normal?”

“No.” She closed her eyes, covered them with her hands, pressing the heels of her palms down until red light flickered across the inside of her eyelids.

The rock cat howled again. “Think you could handle a pack of them?”

“I don't know.” She pulled her hands down over her sore swollen face. “Thanks.”

“For what?” The horses were twitching, ears flickering in an uneasy rhythm, tails jerking, gait uneven, mouths pulling irregularly at the bits. “Settle them down again, will you?”

Aleytys nodded. When the team was once more moving easily, she said, “For breaking me out of the mind trap. They set it up and I tumbled right in.” She sighed, brushed a few wandering flies from her face and watched them zip off into the dust blowing up and around the creaking rumbling caravan. After a minute she went on. “I let them use my fears and physical misery to beat me flat Miks—”

His eyes were warily flickering over the convoluted rock which provided enough possibilities for ambush to keep him uneasily alert. He glanced briefly at her. “What is it?”

“You wondered if my involvement with these Lamarchans was worth this misery. What about you?” She let the quilt slide down and flattened her hands on her thighs. “If you kicked me off the wagon, you'd lose a lot of trouble.”

“Don't tempt me.” Then he laughed, an odd bitter sound that startled her into staring at him wide-eyed. “If it was that easy …” With quick nervous fingers he picked up the rag and wiped the dirt and sweat off his face, then tucked the rag back beneath his leg. “Aleytys.” His voice lingered over her name. “Aleytys. You wouldn't let me go.”

“Me?” She frowned. “You've muttered things like that at me before.”

“No doubt.”

“I'm so fascinating? Hah! I'm not stupid, Miks.”