Mindbond (16 page)

“She has been annoyed with me, because she had to wait a few years for my body to take its place in her assemblage here, and because I nearly spoiled Korridun for her by sending him to her maimed. She collects kings, that one. Handsome folk of all sorts, and many pretty children, but her favorites are men, kings and warriors. They, and the comeliest creatures of Sakeema.”

Silence. I sat down opposite him, in a rocky place. Over the endless years my rump would smooth and hollow it.… No. I would not think the thoughts of despair.

“She has been annoyed with Korridun, also, for she has wanted him badly, and he thwarted her again and again. He is a marvel, that one. She will make a worm of him, too. In a singular way.”

The act of love, used as a weapon to enthrall him. How had she come to know him so well, to take such sure aim at the place where he might soonest break and bleed? Or was she wont to enslave by such means, Mahela?

“Does she often take lovers?” I asked.

“Such as Korridun? No.” My father sat up with a small show of interest. “She dallies from time to time, as who would not? But this passion for Korridun, unabated over the years, this is ardor such as she shows for none other. And there are those who have been here far longer than I who recall nothing like it of her within their memories.”

I rose and went outside.

It was nighttime, as far as I could tell, though the sea was filled always with a faint gleam. The crags loomed stark, for all the folk and creatures had long since gone their ways. I could see only a hard and jagged blackness against fluid green, and atop the dark mountains the form of Mahela's strange dwelling, flat of platform and rounded of base, with the bare trees jutting out of it like narrow spires. Moon-shaped holes had been pierced along the length of it, to let in light, though now light issued out of them instead, as bright as any firelight, but chill, blue-white, like the ghost lights sometimes seen dancing over snow during a hard winter, when folk are starving.

Kor?
I mindspoke softly, wondering whether he could hear me from such a distance. I need not have doubted.

Dan!
Joy in his tone.
Are you all right?

Of course. I miss my supper.

My mind did, though my stomach did not. But I meant to amuse him, and I succeeded—I felt the warm mirth stir his mind.
Food, here, is a mark of honor
, he told me mischievously.
They are plying me with great lavishings of it.

You bastard.

Yes. And I intend to eat quantities of it. Many many fish. Then, surfeited, I shall become very sleepy and unable to perform.

I nearly laughed out loud, but I quickly sobered.
I hope you sleep well. Kor …?

What?

If you must
—
to save yourself—will you be able?

Yes.
He mindspoke me with a settled certainty, a stone-hard resolve, as when he had silently vowed to me that Mahela would not destroy him.
Fate be damned. Not it, nor any goddess will have the victory over me.

I felt my spine straighten, my chin lift.
Sakeema be with you
, I told him.

With us both, Dan.

Yes.
Fervor deserted me.
Kor …?

What?

All the many times I wished you would bed a woman
—
I never dreamed it could be to your peril.

Want to take my place?
He was trying to tease.

No. Thought I would if she would let me. Kor, it's no laughing matter.

He knew it.
How is your father?
he asked after a moment.

Ill
.

Chapter Eleven

Sleep was deep in that place Mahela called Tincherel, I found, but did no good. Such rest was not needful after a day spent with no purpose, not even the routine of foraging and eating. Sleep served only as a way to pass the dark hours. My father awoke from sleep feeling no abatement of his hopelessness—I could see as much by the clouded glance of his eyes. And I awoke to feel myself slipping into the same despair. We were not much accustomed to being trapped and helpless, we of the Red Hart. Though perhaps all of Mahela's captives greeted despair upon awakening.

We talked for a while of our people, our homeland, the wide sweep of the uplands, the names of the many mountains. I had hoped it would comfort him, having me there to talk to. But the pangs I myself felt told me otherwise. We were a torment to each other, Tyonoc and I. We fell silent.

Kor?

No answer. He was still asleep, I sensed. Startled by how surely I sensed it—startled, and somewhat afraid. Being dead was doing odd things to me. This place, uncanny. Mahela, unloved yet obeyed. If indeed we were dead, what punishment could she threaten that was worse, what could she do to Kor if he failed to satisfy her? Yet I sensed surely again, as I seemed to sense too many things now, that he would be in more than mortal peril.

Thinking of Kor made me wonder whether he had seen his mother, Kela. Perhaps I could find her. Glad of something to do, I got up and went out of the tent, walking at random around the crag. Though I had said nothing to him of coming with me, my father trailed along after me as if he were afraid I might somehow come to woe—or perhaps because there was nothing else for him to do. I hated to think of that. For one like him, idleness was worse than pitched battle.

He had neighbors closer than I had thought in the silence of the night. Everywhere, set amidst the black rocks or spreading at their base, were small dwellings, though none except his in the manner of my people. Some were built of stone, some of split wood, even a few of brushwood in the manner of the Herders, though as of yet I saw none built of spearpine poles like the lodges of Kor's people. All were large enough to sleep in, nothing more. People sat at the low doorways, most of them alone and silent. There were few families in this place. Even children sat alone and silent at the doorways of tiny shelters. They did not gather into groups or play with one another. Nor did their elders come together for talk, for there was nothing to be spoken of. No wonder the night had been quiet even amidst this multitude. As quiet as death.

The place was dismally clean. No cooking fires, no ashes or smoke, for no one ate or drank—the water we breathed sustained us. No need, then, for cuckpots. No stench. No pits for the emptying of cuckpots, no midden heaps, no offal. And no butchering, either, or skins being tanned or stitched, or fish being dried. No berry baskets, no planted fields, no making of spears or arrows. Nothing. The people I saw stood or sat like so many clay dolls around a shaman's hand.

I strode up to one of them, a robed and bearded man by a hut of stone. “Kela, daughter of Kebek,” I asked him, “she who was Seal king when she lived—where might I find her?”

He stared back at me without answering, almost as if he had not heard, except that his eyes grew hard. Then he turned away. My father came up beside me.

“Bowels of Sakeema, lad! Can you not see that these folk are not in fit humor to chat?”

Dan?

I smiled. My father was speaking, telling me the ways of the place, asking me why I had not taken my query to him. I scarcely knew. Nor did I much care, nor was I listening to him. I heard only my brother, I spoke only with him.

Kor! Were you sleeping?

Yes. I just awoke.
So I had been right.
Mahela is being patient with me, for the time.

May her patience last forever.

Not likely.
I heard fear, or despair. So he also was touched by it, even upon awakening.
Dan, you should see this place. It daunts me. The walls writhing with vines and flowers and many creatures, all made of sunstuff, like the throne
—

Throne?
I had always wondered, what was a throne. An old song I knew made mention of Sakeema's having no throne.

Mahela's seat of honor. And all staring with those eyes of cut stone. And a smooth substance amid all the sunstuff, to give back the glitter. I have seen myself in it as if in a bowl of still water, but far more clearly. Have you ever seen yourself so truly, Dan? It is fearsome.

Enough to frighten anyone
, I agreed.

Are you speaking for yourself?
Laughter in his tone of mind for a moment, and I was glad. But then a chill, a horror, came into him again—I heard it.
But the bed, Dan.

Silence. Sometime my father had stopped speaking and started walking, and I was following him somewhere down the crags. To see Kela, yes, he had said he would take me to her.

The bed. A huge clamshell, it nearly fills the chamber.

A clamshell?

Yes. Thick and fluted, chalk-white striped with Mahela's colors of choice. Pink. Watery purple. Pale blue. Polished stones like a scallop's eyes set around the ruffled edge of it. And within it a great sort of cushion, and mantles and coverings, all the dark pink color of raw flesh.

Lovely.

Yes. And all—perhaps it is the seawater. But there is no warmth to this bed. The coverings slither like snakes, and they are all chill and smooth as slime.

Slime of Mahela.
I echoed Istas's favorite curse.

Dan?
A small note of panic in his mind. He had not heard me.

Here!

He heard.
Are you walking farther away from me, is that it?

Yes!

Where are you going?
Fear in him, held under control.

Never mind! I'll talk with you later, Kor.

But there was no answer, and I was not sure whether he had heard me.

I walked on, following my father's strong back, shaking off the touch of Kor's fear. Though I did not wish to think of it, I knew that fear, I felt it too: if somehow the mindbond were taken away from us, we would each be truly helpless and utterly alone.

Ahead, on a knee of the crags, I saw a lodge like the lodges of the Seal Kindred, thatched with reeds as theirs were, but far too small. The pines that had been used to build it must have been but saplings. The roofpole rose no higher than my head. I saw no one near.

“Is that Kela's? She must be within.”

My father turned his head slightly to answer me. “She? No, she does not stay within. She will be on the far side, watching the course of the sun.”

Course of the sun? It was only a spot more shimmering green than the rest of the watery roof over us. Better not to think of the sun, in this place. I followed Tyonoc around the corner of the lodge, and there against the far wall sat a woman with eyes the dark color of waves under autumn clouds—yes, I saw Kor in her face, though she was thinner than he, too thin. Her sleek, dark hair was cut short in the manner of matrons of his people, and she wore a handsome woolen tunic such as they sometimes bartered from the Herders. It was shell brown, and her long skirt was seal brown, and in the fullness of it sat a baby. Other babies sat one to each side of her, the look of the Seal people about their features. I stared, for the little ones sat still and made no sound, no more than others of Mahela's treasures did.

“You.” Kela rose to her feet, setting down the child she had been holding. It sat lumpishly where she had put it. A tiny girl with sparse, fair hair. Winewa's baby, and mine—no, I fiercely denied it to myself, Mahela had hold of my mind. It is hard to tell one such mite from another. I had to be mistaken.

Staring at the baby, I had not noticed the hardness of Kela's face until she spoke.

“You witless oaf, you dare to face me! Why in all the names of evil did you bring my son here?”

I must indeed have seemed witless, for I did not answer her. Tyonoc spoke up stiffly in my behalf. “Is your son such a slackard, Kela, that he must be led wherever he goes? Have you not thought that he might be here of his own will?”

She glared at him and raged at me. “Ten years he defied her and all her powers,” she stormed, “and then you, cock-proud fool, dolt, ass, you needs must deliver him featly into her hands! Why not kill him more cleanly and have it done with? And you claim youself to be his friend! You—”

“The babies,” I interrupted, not hearing much of what she was saying.

“What?”

“The babies.”

“Ai, our mighty lady has taken to collecting the little ones now.” Kela's voice, though softer, was no more gentle. “These three being of the Seal blood, she was given them to me to care for. Though truly, to care for them is only to dress them grandly and carry them where she may see them, each day. They do not eat, they seldom cry, and they will never grow, any more than the other children here.”

“The curse of all honorable folk be on Mahela,” I muttered. Then I forced my stare away from the baby, straightened, and faced Kela. “We have come, Kor and I, to take you away from the Mountains of Doom,” I told her.

She looked as if she would spit at me. But much as Mahela had brought her low, Kela was still a ruler, with a ruler's dignity. She would not spit or dart her nails at me. “Fool!” she railed instead. “No one returns from here. Wanhope, wantwit fool!”

Accustomed though I was to being called as she had titled me, still it stung somewhat. “You yourself came here as a petitioner on your son's behalf,” I reminded her sharply.

“And learned from the mistake,” she retorted. Then her voice grew softer. “There is no parleying with Mahela.”

“Nor much use, either,” Tyonoc said to me aside, “standing here and talking with this one.”

The babies had not moved from their places or made a sound. Except that they waved their random hands about in a winsome way, they might as well have been toys, babies of cloth or clay.

Tyonoc nudged at my elbow. “Come. It will soon be time.”

I followed him numbly. Soon time for what?

Birds were flying overhead. Flying, not swimming, in the sea, flocking toward the throne place on the upmost crag. A ferret flashed past me, bound that way also. Bearded men in kingly raiment walked up the steep slopes, and women in splendid gowns with trailing overgowns that floated behind them. I began to understand.