Gene Wars - Hammerfall Part 38

She had asked for his attention. The Ila had stirred her up, and now she was back, a ceaseless din. He set Luz and her complaints to the back of his attention, and meant to have command of his own camp back.

"Awake and alive," Aigyan said, looking him over as he rode. "Bullets, then, have as little power over you as the Ila's orders."

"The mad heal well." The voices rose nearly to a point of distraction, irate, and he fought stubbornly for his purpose. "I came up here to pay my proper respects, omi. I've had your help, the help of the Haga, the Rhonandin, when I rode back to settle with my father. They sent out four men, too, and lost them to Tain; and I owe them for those lives as well as for my mother. That's four lives besides hers." With the tribes, the tally of favors and grievances mattered: he was aware of that priority from days long before his dealings with Hati. "The Rhonandin were with me when I recovered my wife Norit's daughter. Tarsa village had the child. The Rhonan helped me get her back, but I failed to find Tain. For my obligations here, I had every confidence in the an'i Keran, my wife. Nothing disappointed me, not her and not my in-laws. We're growing short of water, but we're not that far from Pori."

Aigyan shrugged, a mirror of Hati's gesture, an answer for a good many things:I accept what you say , whether happy or unhappy. "Give greetings to Menditak when you see him... if you haven't."

"I will." That was a question, as much as a request to know which he had answered first, whether kins.h.i.+p or official precedence; and his answer, indicating that he had not yet seen Menditak, seemed to please Aigyan. The reasons Aigyan and Menditak had for making water peace might be broader and deeper than either admitted. They used their kins.h.i.+ps. They moved in on them, and neither let the other have all the advantage. And they sat in power, now, both tribes. "Get us to Pori, omi. Beyond that, there's a trail over the rim. There's no mistaking our way. But water, first. The villages back there are stringing far back, and it'll only get worse. No matter what the Ila does, no matter what you hear from the priests or anyone else..." The din in his head already debated him. "We've got to get to water."

And Aigyan studied him, the madman, his relation-by-marriage. "Off the edge of the Lakht," Aigyan said. No ruling tribe had ever left the Lakht, the center of their range. "To this tower in the middle of the lowlands. So we find this paradise, do we? Wish that water thief your uncle the peace of the day."

"I will." He understood the uneasy agreement, one in which Aigyan had only moderate faith. Aigyan challenged him, since he had made the gesture to come up here and a.s.sert direction of the caravan. He had made himself Aigyan's equal, if he was not the Ila's, and he had not gotten full courtesy out of Aigyan... being an upstart, in Aigyan's eyes. The tribes were here for kins.h.i.+p's sake to the dead, and for rivalry to each other, but not to rescue him.Marak, Marak, Marak , his voices said, urging him to the east. And he defied those, too. "Pori," he said. "If we get there, those can stay that want to and those can part that want to." Those that stayed or parted from them would die, he was convinced of that. His responsibility was to the caravan, andeast , the voices urged him, no matter that east of here was a long, uncrossable ridge and a drop down a cliff.Pori , he insisted, and reined back, dropping back through the ranks. "I'll see you, father-by-marriage. I'll see you there."

He fell back, dizzied, beset by contrary voices, having lost all capacity to argue with Aigyan: but no matter the Ila's whims, no matter the priests, no matter Luz's will, he had delivered their chief guide his direction, and meant it. The au'it who had followed him up in the ranks followed his retreat, struggling to rein back her besha, which wanted to follow the others. But he simply rode slower and slower, let beshti pa.s.s him, one after another, until finally he found Norit and Hati.

By now Patya was riding beside them, doubtless wondering whether he had gone mad again.

"What did the Ila want?" Hati asked him. "And what did Aigyan just have to do with it?"

"A courtesy, in both cases. They wanted to know how great a fool I mean to be after this. But I can't offend Menditak, either. I'll be back." He threw a look at his sister Patya. "Stay with them. Keep where Hati and Norit can see you, at all times, hear me? If our father lays hands on you..."

"You're the crazy one!" Patya shot back. "Be careful!"

"You're right," he said, while the au'it wrote, mercilessly recording, making casual utterance into lasting record. "I won't do it again. And don't you be as crazy. Hear?" He remembered what Patya could not: his mother's worry when Patya was born a daughter; Tain sulking and drinking all night and breaking crockery because he had a daughter and not a second son.

He remembered things Patya might remember, too, Patya very early lamenting to him she was not born a boy. She was the one in the family without illusions. She was the sane one, and knew their father failed to love her. These things the au'it could not write. Not even Hati knew the pain that Tain had inflicted, long before he murdered Kaptai.

"There's four of us of the household, now," Marak said, lingering by Patya, deafening himself to the voices. "Tain's not our father anymore. Hati and Norit are your sisters. That baby's Lelie, and her father didn't want her. I'm not sure Norit does, when she's crazy. Help her."

Patya's eyes still carried shadows of Kaptai's death and Tain's hate. But there was courage in her.

There always had been, a finer, steadier courage than his. "I'm fine," Patya said, pressing her lips to a thin line. "I'll get myself a husband. If a rock from the sky doesn't fall on us. I'll marry you some help."

"Ihave help enough," he said. "Marry for love. Bring some peace to the house. That's what I want. And stay to the center of the camp. Don't go on the outside edge, and I promise you won't." They both had to fear every night and every day from now on that their own father might be aiming at her life or his, or at anyone Tain thought they cared for. He put it in words, and knew that somewhere the feud had to have a b.l.o.o.d.y ending.

But not today. Not this moment.Marak, Marak , his voices nagged him, andeast, east, east , when life and water lay south. Luz would make him crazier and crazier. She would drive Norit, and Hati, who must hear the same urge, and find it harder and harder to resist-off a cliff, no less. He wouldnot have Luz dictating Patya's life. Patya was always and forever the sane one.

"Stay with Hati," he said. "I'll be back before we camp. I'm not going anywhere near the edge. Hati?"

Hati paid sharp attention.

"Water," he said. "Water, at Pori, before everything."

"Something's going to happen," Hati said, and Norit, with no sanity at all in her eyes: "There's no time, Marak."

"The h.e.l.l." He reined Osan back a second time, with the au'it lagging back after him. He let them slip farther and farther back, past the Ila's pack train, and all the Ila's servants, city-bred men and women wrapped in white, under the fierce, bright sun.Marak , the voices said, and the rock hit the sphere, vividly, persistently. Luz was increasingly upset with him.

"I understand you," he said to Luz under his breath. "And you want the d.a.m.ned books, don't you?

Every village that dies, you're losing a book."

The vision came again, repeatedly, blinding him. He rubbed his eyes, coming among the Haga, among the most familiar of tribes.

He found Menditak, and Menditak went veiled in the aifad, withdrawn, in mourning or in anger: it was impossible to read. Dust was on Menditak's shoulders. That, too, was mourning, for Kaptai, for four good men-he had no clear idea who those men might be, whether uncles of his, or close to Menditak.

There was a debt here, and he had come riding in unveiled, mad, distracted by visions.

"Omi," he said to Menditak, raking his sanity into one coherent heap. "I had to come back. I risked the caravan to keep chasing him. But I haven't given up, either. I've carried my report to the Ila and to the Keran, forward: but you,omi, you are my father. I haven't any other."

"Tain Trin Tain will die," Menditak said, from behind the veil. "Word is out, against him."

"The Rhonan joined us," Marak said, thatus that meant the tribe. "Certain of the villages have helped me, against him. He's lost. He won't be welcome where we're going. We'll come to water at Pori, and we'll go on over the rim, and if he stays on the Lakht, he'll die. If he comes in reach of us, he'll die. He has no choice,omi . He won't get anything from me."

"He'll die," Menditak said again, and asked carefully what Aigyan had said, and about the Rhonan, and their lord, and all the while Menditak's son was nearby, listening to everything, as the au'it wrote, and for the same purpose.

"I don't know about your paradise," Menditak said. "That water thief Aigyan moved in when we did, and insists he's leading. It's no time for a fight. The wh.o.r.e in camp bathes in water while honest mothers run short of drink. But we wait, Marak an Haga. We wait. Tell that to the Ila. There will be this paradise of yours."

"Before that, there's Pori," Marak said, and the voices in his head put up an argument that made his temples ache. "You'll live, and Tain won't." He could not muster courtesies, could not track the convolutions of tribal custom. He simply rode ahead, suddenly, his hands doing one thing, his mind distracted in visions and a whispering in his head that would not be still.

He rode through the ranks. Norit met him, on her way back.

"It's coming," Norit said to him. "It's coming. There's no stopping it."

It was the sort of thing Norit raved about. "Where's the baby?" he asked harshly, trying to call her and him alike back to common sense. "Where's Lelie?"

He only confused her. Norit rode back through the line, shouting that the hammer of heaven was coming, terrifying the Ila's servants.

He rode forward, up to where Hati was, where Patya rode, carrying Lelie on her saddle. "Did Norit find you?" Hati asked, and looked back behind him, but Norit was not in sight.

The au'it wrote that, too, it might be.

"Shall I go after her?"

"I know where she is," he said. It was impossible for them to lose track of one another. The moment he wondered, he knew, and Hati seemed to, the same.

"So do I," Hati said. "She doesn't care about her daughter. Norit wants to, but Luz doesn't. Patya said she'd take care of her. Or Lensa will." That was Memnanan's mother, who rode with Memnanan's wife, Elagan: Laga, they called Elagan, a stronger woman than seemed likely, all belly, now, and very small limbs... endured the ride, simply endured, day after day, smiling sometimes, bravely-while Memnanan's allegiance had to be elsewhere given, and while she grew closer and closer to her time.Lensa will .

Lensa and the aunts, frail and one sickly, had enough on their hands, and he had brought Lelie back to be an inconvenience to everyone... to fight Luz for Norit's sanity, and now Norit went raving back along the line, wearing her besha's strength down, frightening anyone who would listen to her, among the Ila's servants and among the tribes, that being all she could reach.

Them and the priests, he thought.

That was where Norit had gone, to tell the priests, and the priests told everyone, simply, clearly, without distortion or reinterpretation. That was their value to the Ila, and that was their value to Luz.

As rapidly as word could pa.s.s, at their noon camp, as rapidly as single priests could walk to the first of the villages, and village priests, and that man to the next, and that next to the village following, word would spread.

"Tell them there's water at Pori," he muttered to Luz. "Have her do something useful. It's not d.a.m.ned useful to scare everyone."

East, the word came to him.East, east, east , and an overwhelming sense of urgency, but he denied it.

The needs of a whole caravan short of water denied it. Pori was the destination.

They camped. They had to, and he had reached the limit of his recovered strength. He sat down until the slaves had the tent ready, and he let Hati unsaddle Osan.

And curiously, without any threat in the heavens, every tent deployed side flaps on every side but that facing their line of march, an arrangement which both gave them deep shade and prevented the air moving as efficiently.

It cut off the view of anyone trying to find a target within the tents.

Norit came back to them, saner than she had left. She sat down under the tent, and Patya gave her Lelie, who was fretful and confused, as what child might not be?

But before their noon meal Norit had Lelie sleeping in her lap, and smoothed Lelie's fine hair...

unthought, repeated gesture.

"Come," he said to Norit, to Hati. "Lie down. The baby, too."

They did, their mats set together. Lelie squirmed and fretted, still fevered with her wound, and found a new soft place between Norit and him. Memnanan's mother and that household sat at one end of the tent, and Tofi and he and his at the other, but when they went out to get their bowls filled at the common pot, with the rest, and came back to sit and eat, they made one circle.

There Lelie, still fretful, injured, discovered willing sympathy in Memnanan's mother, and left off scratching her healing wound to sit and be coddled on the old lady's knees. The mother of the Ila's own exalted captain fed a village waif, and Memnanan's wife, uncomfortable at every angle, carrying a child of her own, smiled, a transformation of a plain, thin face into a remarkable woman.

Patya and Tofi sat and talked together. Marak lay down with Hati, alone with Hati, at peace for a little time. He wondered at himself at times, that he could go through such a day and suddenly think of making love to his wife. But thinking was as far as it got.

Come to bed, he wished Norit without saying so.

Babies grew and changed so quickly. Perhaps Norit could not figure where the missing weeks had gone.

Two months, and three, and the child was not the infant she remembered. None of them had recovered what they had lost. Everything fell through their grasp so quickly.

Fire blazed through his vision. Rings of fire spread outward.

Marak, his voices said, and something else. Lovemaking became impossible.

d.a.m.n the Ila, d.a.m.n Luz, d.a.m.n theondat . He saw the structures start to build in his eyes. He shut Luz out, remembering music, remembering voices, remembering the courtyard and the garden, and the old slaves gathering fruit. Go to h.e.l.l, he said to Luz. Lines became the base of the garden wall. Voices became the sound of water.

The earth trembled, reminding him it was the Lakht, after all, and that hours of sleep were hours of life irrevocably lost.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

The Anlakht is the land of death, but it is also the mother of wells and waters. Fortunate for the world that mountains rise beyond the Qarain and trap the water that rises in the wind. That gift, pa.s.sing through the hard rock of the Qarain, feeds the wells of the Lakht.

In the same way the Lakht sends water down to the lowlands, turning bitter water into sweet. The unkindest land feeds all the rest. On that one circ.u.mstance the whole world lives.

I am the Anlakht of my own creation.

-The Book of the Ila Stars fell, and multiplied streaks of light acrossthe night sky as they rode through the dunes that night.

Some stars vanished beyond the distant wall of the ridge, off the edge of the Lakht. Some sank themselves in cold waves of sand in front of them.

One exploded overhead and left a trail that twisted slowly in the sky.

Marak, Marak, Marak, the voices said constantly, allowing him no rest from warning. Norit rode with Lelie asleep across the saddlebow, and had her eyes shut, listening or seeing visions, but Hati seemed doggedly trying to sleep, head down and arms clenched as she rode.

Over hours, the ridge to the east played out. The sand stretched level as they traveled south. There was the way to the rim, that track they had taken before, avoiding Pori. The night went insane above them, one streak and the next.

East!

The voices suddenly redoubled their efforts, as if the tower had just wakened from sleep and found out where they were.

Marak! East! Now!

Marak bit his lip, and kept going as he had set their course, as he had told the lord of the Keran, who was deaf to voices and blind to visions.

Lelie began to cry, wordless, plagued, perhaps, by prophecy even in her young age.

Norit suddenly reined in her besha and diverted it from the line, obstructing the course of beshti behind them. Tofi and Patya scarcely avoided colliding with her.

Marak rode close and leaned from the saddle, evading the irate snap of the besha's jaws. He seized the rein and led Norit back, and Norit jerked at the rein and tried to seize control of the beast.

"East," Norit insisted. "The hammer of heaven. We have to go east."

"We know it," Hati said, entirely awake now, and in bad humor. "All of us know it's coming. But we're not going east. We haven't any water. Make Luz understand that. We can't kill all the villages."

Lelie kicked and squalled. Patya rode close, far more skilled a rider than Norit, and held out her arms.

So also Memnanan's relatives rode near to offer help, asking what was the matter, while the caravan moved around them, never pausing. Children grew fretful. Families held discussions. It was no one else's business.

"Give Patya the baby," Hati said harshly. "Give her to Patya! You'll drop her if you go on."

Norit would not. Norit held Lelie and hugged her close, hus.h.i.+ng the cries, and the look in her eyes, in the light of a star-streaked heaven, was a h.e.l.l of fear and desolation.

"It's not safe."

"Nothing's safe," Marak said. "We're not safe if half the villages die of thirst."

Rock hit sphere, over and over. He was blind for the moment, but he jerked the rein from Norit's hand and the besha, misused, squalled and backed and jerked its head, dragging painfully at his grip, compressing his fingers.

But he held. He kicked Osan and started forward, and the besha, glad, perhaps,to have a direction compatible with the herd, walked, Norit willing it or not, and Lelie still in her possession.

"We'll die!" Norit cried. "We have to go east, we have to go over the rim!"

"Shut up!" Hati said. "If you let that baby fall, I'll hit you!"

Marak paid no attention to the argument, or to Norit. He led, blind with visions that argued Norit's opinion, and knew when they pa.s.sed the track that had turned north of Pori the last time they had made this trek. They pa.s.sed it by.