Maeve (24 page)

His bleary eyes narrowed in anger. “I don't need you. Plenty of other places for you to stay.”

“I like it here.”

“Trouble, that's all you are.” But he didn't quite dare order her out of the house, not with Bran and Dryknolte sponsoring her. “You keep 'em out of here, you hear me.”

Aleytys shrugged. “I'm tired and I want my bath. You through?”

“Women. Always trouble.” The bent little figure shuffled off toward the stairs muttering complaints to himself.

With a tired laugh, Aleytys went on to the bathroom at the head of the stairs.

Chapter VII

The eastern horizon was showing streaks of red when Gwynnor brought the boat alongside the landing. Above them, the red sandstone sloped back steeply in a broken terraced surface. A wooden stair crawled in lazy zigzags up the slant. Sioned looked apprehensively at the sky. “Would the starmen follow us here?”

Gwynnor shook his head impatiently. “How could I know? Come on.”

They started up the stairway. The risers were attached in some way so that they made each footstep a booming rumble that echoed from the reflective surface of the stone. Sioned reached out and took Gwynnor's hand as the silence and the echoes played on her nerves, amplifying the exacerbation from the sleepless night, her quarrel with Gwynnor over Aleytys, and the residue of terror from the storm. Gwynnor pulled her close, glad to have her beside him, not taking her irritation seriously.

They were breathing hard by the time they reached the top. Wind-sculpted cedars clung precariously on the brink of the precipitous slope. Behind these, a box hedge loomed, wild and untamed on the outside but neatly clipped on the inner surface. The red stone had been crumbled and replaced by a layer of soil covered by lush green turfs until a velvet lawn stretched in a horseshoe ring about the front of the graceful stone structure ahead of them. A crushed red gravel walk, raked neat as a swept floor, edges razor clean, broke the horseshoe of green in a straight line to the portico of the temple.

Sioned halted, pulling Gwynnor to a stop beside her. “I don't think we're supposed to walk on that.”

“How else do we get to the temple? Come on. Don't be an idiot!”

Reluctantly, Sioned stepped onto the gravel, shivering at the crunch crunch of her feet. She looked behind and winced at the disturbance their feet had made. Gwynnor tugged at her and she walked faster, still uneasy in the rigidly disciplined landscape that seemed antithetical to human presence. “It doesn't like us,” she muttered.

Gwynnor shook his head, feeling none of her trepidation. “You're letting your imagination beat you, Sioned. You've lived hard the last couple of months and you're worn out.” He plunged ahead, pulling the reluctant girl along with him.

At the end of the path, two heavy posts supported a lintel from which hung a verdigris-stained copper gong wider than Gwynnor was tall. A log with a padded end hung in front of the gong, suspended from paired supports.

Gwynnor looked at Sioned, one hand resting on the log.

“All right, if you have to.” She backed away, raising her hands to cover her ears.

“We came to see Synwedda.” He threw his weight against the log, forcing it back, then using the stored momentum to crash the padded end against the gong, sending a deep vibrant note thrumming over the mountaintop.

As the great demanding note died to a humming silence, he stepped to Sioned's side and stood waiting in front of the dark, silent arch opening into the building.

An eerie figure in a hooded white garment with long hand-concealing sleeves came silently from the darkness to stand like a formidable human question mark in the archway.

Gwynnor lifted his head and stepped forward, confronting the acolyte. “The cerdd live in terror on the maes. Breudwyddas are dead. Maranhedd has been taken from us, every grain. Now young cerdd are being stolen. We come to see what the Synwedda proposes to do about it.”

After a moment's silence, a slim hand crept out of the sleeve and beckoned. Then the acolyte turned and paced swiftly, noiselessly, into the interior.

Sioned hung back. “I can wait out here.”

“No. Come in with me. I need you.”

She moved closer to him. “Thanks, Gwyn.”

They followed the silent, gliding figure into the heart of the temple, a strange room, like a polished cylinder drilled vertically through the stone, opening onto the sky. The floor was tiled around the outside, with a circle of immaculately raked earth occupying the center. A tree grew from the earth, branches spiraling up the trunk, their fluted tips brushing against the walls of the cylinder. Clusters of grey-green flowers, withering into fruit, dropped a heavy, over-sweet perfume on the continually circling currents of air, a fragrance like rotten apricots, dazing the brain, slowing the metabolism. Gwynnor and Sioned stood uncertainly for some time, caught by the drugged air and low, burring chimes.

Until Sioned grew angry. She straightened, her eyes burning fiercely, furious at this manipulation of her mind and body. The whole of her life had been spent rebelling against her culture's demand for female submissiveness and she resented this attempt to put her back on her knees. She slapped Gwynnor, first on one cheek then on the other, shocking him out of his stupor.

His eyes swung past her.

The Synwedda stood in the arch across the cylinder, a narrow white figure with a cloud of silver-white hair springing from her narrow head, framed under a drooping limb of the strange tree. As Gwynnor watched, the figure grew more sharp-edged, the clarity of her power blurring the reality of everything around her. The numinous power sent thrill on thrill through him. He would have fallen on his knees except that Sioned, still deeply resentful, stood rigidly erect beside him and he felt a commitment to support her.

“Chimes,” she hissed. “Silly perfumed drugs. Stupidity!” She planted herself in front of the Synwedda. “Is that what you do? Is that ALL you can do?”

The old woman looked startled, then her face flushed with anger and the numinous brightness about her diminished.

But Sioned didn't give her a chance to voice her disapproval. “Company men raided the pack trains and stole the maranhedd. What do you do to protect your gift? Nothing! They raided the villages. What do you do to protect your people? Nothing! The shrines in the villages are broken down. What do you do? Nothing! Breudwyddas, your sisters, are destroyed, ashed! What do you do? Explain it to me. How do you act? I see no flames on Caer Seramdun. I see no skimmers raining from the sky with lightning playing in their guts. I see no concentrations of storm over the starcity, emptying continuously on that sore on Maeve's breast until the pounding rain has washed the pestilence away. I see no earth opening beneath the city to swallow the evil. And now the skimmers come for the children of Maeve. My father is dead! My mother is dead! I am driven to living in the fields like a llydogen fawr or they'd have me in their kennels.” She waved a hand at Gwynnor. “His father is dead and the City men came hunting for him. How much more has to happen before you act. That's what we came to ask. What have you done? What will you do?”

The fierce anger drained from Sioned. She leaned back against Gwynnor but her clear leaf-green eyes never wavered from the Synwedda's face.

The Synwedda was silent. Eyes the color of aged amber moved slowly from Sioned to Gwynnor. Gwynnor held Sioned and refused to yield, refused to betray the integrity and outrage of his companion. As he watched, the edges of the figure in front of him once again took on that numinous clarity. Sioned made a small, distressed sound.

Then the supernal clarity of the figure evanesced, leaving behind only an old woman standing quietly before him. Still not speaking, she beckoned, then turned and disappeared down the corridor behind her. Gwynnor and Sioned looked at one another then followed, both too tired to protest further.

Chapter VIII

Aleytys stepped into the room and tossed the key onto the bed. She draped her damp towel over the inner doorknob as she pushed the door shut. “Grey?”

“Here.” He rose from behind the bed. “I wanted to be sure who it was.”

She moved to the window and swept the heavy curtain aside. A dozen meters away the wall rose in a dark curtain with stretches here and there of spattered red-orange where windows painted their shapes on the rough sandstone. The fragment of sky visible was velvet black with no stars visible. A storm was rising out in the bay. “It'll be raining soon.” She dropped the curtain and crossed her arms across her breasts. “You asked Tintin about me and sneaked up here.”

“Men must have followed you before.” He dropped onto the bed, feet stretched out in front of him, back resting against the wall.

“Huh. You think you flatter me, but you don't.” She moved to the dressing table and sat down to brush her hair. “I'm not stupid enough to fall for that.” When he didn't answer she sat silent a minute, pulling the brush through her hair. Under, down, over, down, until the red-gold strands fell into a smooth, tangle-free mass. She dropped the brush onto the table top and swung around, running her hands a last time over her head, pushing a few stray hairs back off her face. “Was it because of the songs?”

He flipped a metal disk into the air, caught it, flipped it in a high, spiraling arc, caught it again. “Catch!” He flicked it hard at her face.

Instinctively, she put up a hand and caught it, feeling a sharp twinge as it struck her palm. She opened her fingers and stared at the disk, watching it turn from a clear turquoise to a brilliant gold. “What …”

“A test. Come here.”

She jerked her hand back and started to tell him to … but the disk grew warm on her hand and she found herself walking to the bed. Furious, she wrenched her will free and cast the disk contemptuously away from her, not caring where it went. “I think you'd better get out of here.”

He stared at her, shaken by her successful escape. “Give me a chance to explain.”

Aleytys sat by his feet, watching him warily. “Well?”

His wide mouth curled into a rueful grin. “I don't know how much of this you'll believe.”

“Don't bother about that,” she said dryly. “You can't lie to me.”

“Empath. I remember. You said that before.”

“Yes.”

He rubbed his hand beside his mouth. “I told you about my sister.”

“So?”

“Back there where the stars begin to thin out, there's a world called University. Its business is knowledge. Anything and everything. My sister's a scholar there. She went with a search group to a system in the Veil. Some puzzling ruins had been discovered on a world that should have had a broad spectrum of life. Had had, I should have said. There were ruins. Some cities once intensely populated centers. Now, not even plant life. Looked as if a worldwide plague had struck, killing off all life more complex than an amoeba.”

“How do you know that?”

Grey grinned. “Don't ask me. I'm no dirt-sifting grave robber. I'm telling you what my sister told me. Naturally, the people from University proceeded very cautiously, but as soon as they knew it was safe they settled to a series of excavations at major city sites.” He pinched the tip of his nose. “Naturally University kept the location of the Veil world secret.”

“So?”

“Several things happened the second year they were there.” He yawned and stretched, watching her face as she seethed with impatience for him to get on with the story. She wrapped her fingers around his ankle and shook his foot. “Stop that,” he said.

Aleytys laughed and pulled his boots off. “You shouldn't put your shoes on the bed. Now …” She threw the boots on the floor. “Get on with it or I'll twist these off.” She tugged at a toe.

He jerked his foot away. “Right. In the second year they were on that world, a group of the diggers came across an encysted spore that showed faint traces of life. By the way, they found recordings of your songs in the same cache. And a ship from Wei-Chu-Hsien Company dropped in for a lookover.”

“Oh. I begin to see.”

“Right. When the ship departed, so did a good selection of saleable materials. The encysted spore disappeared at the same time, leading to an inevitable conclusion.”

Aleytys stirred restlessly. “I don't see what all this has to do with your being here.”

“I mentioned that the spore tested out dormant but alive.”

“I remember. So?”

“Not long after the Company ship left, my sister's group came up with a tentative translation of a plaque cast in non-corroding metal—a record of what had happened on that world. The more they checked it out, the more frightened they became. It seems the world was invaded by a parasitic form of life, a true parasite that eventually destroyed the life it inhabited. It reproduced by sporing in the presence of other potential hosts, the sporing process killing the host inhabited by the adult. And the spores seemed to be identical replicas of the first adult, so its knowledge and intent was passed on to its descendants. In a few years, the parasite had spread over the world. Somehow, a few men kept themselves free and developed a powerful plague. They turned it loose on the world, dying themselves in the process. When the plague died out, there was nothing more complex than a few fungi living on the world.”

Aleytys shivered. “Drastic.”

Grey said heavily, “It was necessary. Besides they weren't killing people, just animal hosts for a blob of goo that abhorred variety and difference so that it suppressed individuality to the limits of its considerable powers. That's what is waiting for this world.” There was no laughter in his face now. He flicked a hand at the ceiling. “There's a ship up there. From University. If I … we … can't find the parasite before it spores, that ship is going to burn the life off this world.”

“No.” Her fingers twitched. Twitched again. “No. I won't let you do it.”