Skeen's Leap (11 page)

“So picture the scene. Gray slime in all directions. Some sour murky water standing in hollows of the slime. Hummocks of decayed leaves and fern. Air thick enough to chew with swarms of gnats and sapsuckers who were turned on by blood. After a couple of hours with those bugs crawling over me and I couldn't scratch or slap, I was praying for Ol' Whistler to show. Dead would be a change for the better. Uhhh! Makes me itch just thinking about it. The only thing that took my mind off was planning what I was going to do to those … those … well, Telka didn't supply those kind of words, you supply your own … anyway, what I was going to do to them when I got my hands on them.

“It got to be noon, turned steamy hot, really unbearable. Us rejects stuck on Fart didn't much go outside during the midday heat. Ol' Whistler did. The sound came curling through the stink and the bugs, saying come come to me, come to me, come, come, come. Djabo bless, I would've done it if I wasn't tied to that fern tree. The Hulk and Yamchik, they heard it and they weren't tied. They came walking out of the bracken, left their guns behind. Yamchik's plan had this little flaw in it. I was going crazy trying to pull loose. When Yamchik walked past me he sort of absent-minded slashed at the ropes of my arms, dropped the knife by my feet. Don't know why he did that. Maybe Ol' Whistler didn't like part of his lunch being kept away from him, he was a twisty old lizard.

“I broke the last threads of the ropes around my arms and started cutting my feet loose. I was late for dinner where I was the dinner. Whistler went quiet a minute, Hulk, I suppose, going down hard. The bugs were swarming round me, making their own keening, and that broke the fading dream. Soon as I was loose, I went diving for the rifles. By that time Whistler had finished off the Snake and was wanting dessert which was me, so the whistling started again. But I'd got the idea from the humming bugs and I started whistling myself. Uh huh. We had quite a concert out there. Irritated him a lot when his meat talked back. He reared up out the mud. Yeee, that sucker was big. You see that tree over there, the top of it'd stand hip high on him. Puny pellet rifle looked like a mistake. Nothing I could do but try it. Yamchik had his weak points, but he wasn't always dumb. Somewhere he'd got hold of boomers. First shot hit that lizard in the eye and just about tore the top of his head off. Got him in the chest and belly and one more time in the head. He went down, and I almost drowned in the mud tide he sent up.

“No way I could cart him back to the post, so I settled for a couple of teeth, a finger, and a patch of skin. I collected the bonus and got off that world like my tail was on fire. For almost a year after, I was taking a couple of baths every day trying to wash away the memory of that stink.” Skeen rubbed at her eyes, straightened her back. She was starting to feel every muscle she had. She turned her head. “Hour yet?”

“A while to go.”

Skeen glanced at the ring chron, sighed. “The reason all that came to mind,” she said, “your Ever-Hunger is a bit like Ol' Whistler, uses a kind of sound to seduce. What sound makes, sound can break. You said plugging the ears didn't work. That figures. Vibrations act through headbones too, can't plug those. What you want to do is set up a counter vibration. I've got a thing.…” She shrugged out of her backpack and began fishing around in it. After a moment of muttering and scowling, she brought up a battered case, opened it and took out an equally battered silver shepherd's pipe with an odd-looking mouthpiece. “Hold this a moment, will you?” She handed the pipe to Timka, returned the case to the pack, buckled down the flap, and swung the pack into place.

She took the pipe back, shook it out, blew into it lightly to get rid of some bits of fluff. No sound. “I ran across this not long after I left Dragons Fart, collected it on my way through … well never mind that. I figured what happened once could happen again and I was going to be prepared.” She grinned. “When I'm right, hey, I'm right. Might take forty years.…” She blew into the mouthpiece again, slapped the pipe against her palm.

“Hour now,” Timka said.

“Nice timing. Hm. Say you're reasonably accurate, one of yours equals one of mine plus, mmm, a dozen minutes. What do you think about this? We've got about an hour—your hour—clear ahead of us before Telka wakes. Actually, it's nearer two hours but I don't want to take chances. We keep riding along like we are now, no strain, for that clear hour, you keeping watch for a Min overflying us though we'll hope that doesn't happen, ride Bona Fortuna just a little. Then we head for the Wall, moving well inside the danger area, me playing my pipe like a demented jongleur. If it stirs up the Ever-Hunger, all the better. Your sister's Minions,” she grinned at the feeble pun, “they'll keep well away.”

“I don't like it, but I suppose it's the best chance. Will you listen to me if I tell you the pipe isn't working?”

“Oh, definitely. I've no wish to decorate the inside of that one's belly.”

CONCERT FOR THE INSIDE OF THE HEAD.

or

SKEEN ACQUIRES A COUGH AND LARYNGITIS.

Skeen turned her mount away from the direct line south and started riding toward the wall, glancing continually at the ring chron to make sure she didn't get too close; the trees were thick and there was a lot of brush—she'd be on the thing before she saw it.

After about fifteen chron-minutes, she turned to Timka. “We should be in the danger zone.”

“You can't feel it?”

“Not a twitch.”

“It's there. Awake now. Trying for me.”

“Why didn't you say something?” Skeen knotted the reins, dropped them on her mount's neck, took out the pipe. “How are you doing?”

“Holding off. But it's getting louder.”

Skeen searched within, shook her head. “Not a tickle.” She scratched along her nose with the pipe's mouthpiece. “Maybe you and I vibrate so far apart, it can't do us both at the same time.” Thunder had been rolling about them for several minutes, now a large drop landed on Skeen's nose. She grimaced. “Wet, too. I'll be lucky I don't come down with pneumonia.”

Timka managed a weary smile. “I thought you wanted rain to wash away our trail.”

“Sure, but that doesn't mean I can't bitch about it, too.” She frowned at Timka. The little Min had a glazed inward look; she was struggling with a force Skeen couldn't even feel.

She tried turning her horse; it resisted her briefly, but she managed to pull its head around and shoulder Timka's mount about. Knee and heel keeping the gelding heading south, she began playing a nearly inaudible song on the pipe, feeling a tickle suddenly flourish in her own brain a breath or two after she started playing. A breath more and her mount shook his head, repeatedly, shuddering and snorting as if ants were crawling up his nostrils and into his ears.

She glanced at Timka. The strain was melting out of the little Min's face. She caught Skeen watching her and mimed flying with her hands, then pursed her lips and whistled a version of the tune Skeen was playing.

They rode south, the rain falling in earnest about them, Skeen lowering the pipe only to spit or snatch a drink from the waterskin Timka held for her. She found she had to change the tune every stad or so, the sly creature behind the Wall found a way to alter its siren song. As soon as her mount began heading toward the wall, Skeen switched songs. Hour after hour, stad after stad. The rain finally stopped. The sun rose. They rode on, the horses reduced to a slow walk. Hour after hour. Skeen no longer bothered being fussy about her playing, just kept pushing air through the pipe.

By mid afternoon, her lips felt swollen and her head was swimming so badly it was hard for her to keep her balance on the horse. Finally she turned her back on the sun and moved away from the wall, glancing often at the ring chron so she'd have a clue when she could stop the playing without being sucked in by the Hunger. She was so tired she wouldn't have will enough to blow out a match that was burning her.

Timka touched her arm. “You can stop,” she said.

Skeen lowered the pipe, drew the back of her hand across her mouth. “Ga' t' sleep.”

They were riding south in a long skinny valley between two sets of peaks with the Wall somewhere to their left and a small noisy stream on their right. The sun was tilted into the west, the shadows were growing toward night. Skeen's head throbbed from the concentration though her dizziness gradually diminished. She slipped the cork of her waterskin and drank for a long time, letting a trickle of water slide down her aching throat. Finally she lowered the skin, tapped in the cork. “Less stob.” Her mouth was so sore, she had trouble articulating the words, sounded mushier than Old Yoech the Soak.

Timka frowned at the sky intermittently visible through the thin screen of leaves. “I haven't seen any searchers, but we should stay in thicker cover than this.”

“Wha' 'bout unner those?” She lifted a two-ton arm and pointed at three ancients with high round crowns that spread out over a grassy space, mottled light and shadows shifting and shifting.

Timka sighed. “Why not.”

HERE IT IS AGAIN, THAT OLD QUEST STORY, HERO TREKKING ACROSS A GOOD PART OF THE WORLD CHASING DOWN A MAGIC OBJECT MEANT TO RESTORE HER TO HER SEAT OF POWER.

or

SKEEN WAKES UP.

A large brindled bird swooped under the trees, dropped the wet flopping fish on Skeen's head, went powering away with cackles like human laughter. Skeen laughed, shook the fish at the bird. “Crazy Min.” She crossed to a tree-shaded flat rock that pushed a little way into the stream, knelt, and began gutting the fish. Timka had got scathing about lighting fires to cook fish when likely every Min in the mountains was hunting them, but Skeen just grinned and told her to wait and see. She dug a firehole while Timka was out fishing, lining it with small stones she collected from the stream.

She took the gutted fish, dusted a few spices in the cavity, then plastered a thick layer of mud over the outside and set the fish aside as Timka-bird came back with a smaller fish. Skeen glared at her and the bird dropped it neatly by her knee. Another cackle and it was gone.

Skeen cleaned this fish, fixed it like the other, carried them to the hole. Using the small flamer from her toolkit, beam spread to a fan, she heated the rocks red-hot, dropped the two fish in, covered them with more stones, heated those, pushed dirt over them … then settled back to wait.

Timka-bird came back with a fish in each clawed foot. She dropped them onto a slab of stone, lit beside them, and proceeded to devour them with a neat efficiency that left little debris behind. Skeen found she preferred not to watch. When the bird was finished, her form smoked and changed into a naked Timka who had lost any trace of blood or muck in the shift. She moved to her clothes and began pulling them back on.

Skeen watched, fascinated. “Shouldn't you have waited until you digested that a little?”

Timka pulled the neckstring to the proper tightness, tied the ends. “Why?”

“I don't know. It just seems.…” Skeen dropped it, no point in fussing about something she wouldn't understand if Timka tried to explain. Besides, there was a question she found more interesting. “Hm. Things being the way they are, how do you know friend from food?”

“Tie these things for me, will you?” Timka extended her arms. As Skeen tied the drawstrings about the delicate wrists (looked like Skeen could break them with a snap of thumb and forefinger, but she had a strong suspicion that was illusion), Timka said softly, “Min knows Min, doesn't matter the shape. I've got seven basic shapes—bird, hunting cat, swimmer, deer for running, rock-leaper for climbing, and this one I've got now. But I couldn't hide from another Min in any of them.” She shook her sleeves until the folds pleased her, bent for her vest. “I found them because Telka did, she was always pushing ahead of me and Carema my mother's sister made me catch her, but I haven't practiced them much; except for the bird, I don't really know them.” She slipped her arms into the vest, began threading the thong through the grommets. “Most Min have two base forms, no more—this …” she waved a hand at herself, “and one other.” She tied off the thong, settled herself away from the rock she'd used for a table, on the grass where a bit of sun came through the leaves and painted warmth over her.

Seven skins, Skeen thought, what a world. She went to dig up her fish, mouth watering, anticipating the hot white flesh flaking in her hands.

They rode cautiously south, keeping to the mountains until they were several days beyond Mintown, resting in the daytime, sleeping, eating, letting the horses graze, riding at night, with Timka in her owl-form scouting ahead, making sure they didn't accidentally stumble over a Min holding or a hunter out about his or her business.

There were small holdings scattered through the mountains, three or four families that might or might not be related. Timka told her that most Min got nervous where there were numbers of Min around. The crowds at Mintown were there for a few days only, come to petition the Synarc for this and that. At times there were large gathers. Timka mentioned them in passing, almost by accident, but wouldn't say any more about what happened at them. Skeen had some pictures in her head of what a whirly chaos of form and shift those meetings must be. She was intensely curious about them and about the Min, tried to get Timka to talk about herself.

Timka seemed quite willing to talk and did a lot of chatting and it was several days before Skeen put things together and realized that beyond the few snippets of information she wrung out of her with questions about dangers they could face as they moved through the mountains, the little Min evaded any probing into her own childhood or into Min life with vague statements and a smooth transition into stories about her life with the Poet. Skeen found the Pallah boringly like a lot of other regressed societies she had dropped in on to track down rumors of ruins. By the time they reached the valley floor she was tired of prodding at a pillow; Timka could keep her hoarded secrets. She was free enough with information about the land ahead, that was all Skeen really needed.