Maeve (31 page)

Across the chamber, in a wall seat, a girl watched her from cool, assessing eyes. “Hunter Sybille,” she said languorously.

Beside her, a man nodded at Aleytys. “Hunter Taggert.” He still had a stubbly beard and bags under his eyes, a holdover from his role of decrepit bum. But his hands were clean and his slouching body had taken on a tigerish competence. “You ready, Grey?”

“In a minute.” Hunter Grey led Aleytys to an auxiliary seat and strapped her in. Then he took his own seat. “All set.”

Taggert grunted. “Boot us out of here.”

The pilot nodded briefly and began moving his hands over the console.

Chapter XIV

Aleytys shivered. The air was chill on this autumn evening. The suns hung low in the sky, part of red Horli already gone behind the jagged horizon while all of blue Hesh was still visible, sitting like a boil on Horli's side. Autumn was only beginning. The horans and the other trees beside the river Kard still had most of their foliage, though the leaves had turned a dozen shades of red and gold. As the corner of one of the houses jutted beyond a clump of bushes, she stopped and looked uneasily ahead, unconsciously running her hands repeatedly over her dull-colored tunic.

The road was empty. This was the time when the women were preparing the eveing meal and the men were putting the animals to bed or in the fields bringing in the last loads of the day. Aleytys frowned, annoyed at having forgotten how much labor it took, how much time, to do the tasks common to life in the vadis. On the breeze drifting down the river she could smell the acid-sweet scent of the nearly ripe hullu fruit. Her frown melted as she remembered hullu festival, when the first fruit was pressed and the juice set aside to ferment. All the old wine was finished off in a wild, joyous revelry. Soon, she thought. Then sighed. She wouldn't be there.

Unwilling to endure the excitement and demanding curiosity her arrival would provoke, she left the main road and moved through the trees to the path she expected to find running along the edge of the river. Zardagul bushes hid her from the upper road and made music for her with their huge, amber bell-pods that tinkled in the breeze, ringing much louder when her arm happened to brush one of the branches. She walked slowly, savoring the familiar sounds and smells until she was almost dizzy. She knelt beside the river.

Mountain River. Clear. Cold. Singing to her. Laughing and crying at once, she splashed the water onto her face, then bent lower and drank. Cold leafy taste. It cut through the memory haze so she became aware once again of why she was here. She jumped up and walked on.

The sound of the lyrelike barbat brought her to a stop, heart beating in her throat. She even remembered the tune. Oh god, she thought, how many times did I hear him play that? How many times …

Loneliness was an aching, pulsating pain that poured through her body. Her bones shook with it. Shook with a marrow-deep sense of loss. The loss of roots. The loss of home. Of family. Of culture. Of lover. Of child. She stood, her feet in alien boots, her body encased in too-tight alien clothes. She looked down at herself. Even her flesh seemed changed. She had come back knowing too much, having experienced too much. And the loss was … incalculable.

The barbat sang. The music changed to a gentle ripple, a sound almost melting into the song of the river. Aleytys straightened her back and started on. Regret was futile. She couldn't make the things she'd seen and done unhappen. She couldn't force herself back into the mold of the ignorant native girl who fled from a witchburning.

She followed the sound and saw Vajd sitting beside the river on a bench built in a circle around the trunk of an ancient horan. As she watched him walk his fingers across the strings, hunting a song, she felt a dizzying surge of desire that muted after a little while to a deep affection. He's older, she thought, then laughed inwardly at her foolishness. His image hadn't changed in her mind, and somehow she had expected to find him unchanged, also. There was a lot more white in his soft, unruly hair, and his face was savagely scarred around the eyes. She felt again a terrible guilt. Blinded. Because of her. She sucked in an unsteady breath.

He heard her. “Who is it?” The blind face swung about trying to locate the source of the sound.

“Me,” she said quietly. “How are you, Vajd?”

“Aleytys.”

“I wondered if you'd remember me.”

“I've been expecting you.”

She dropped on the bench beside him, struggling to regain control of her tumbling emotions. “I forgot about your dreaming.”

“You forgot a lot of things. I've been waiting for you the past three-year.”

Reaching down on either side of her knees, she closed her fingers hard around the edge of the bench. “Then Stavver brought him here.”

“My son.” A cold note in Vajd's voice jerked her head up and she stared into his face, feeling a suppressed anger in him and an implacable distaste. “You abandoned him.”

“You don't understand.” She scrubbed at her face, appalled. “Didn't Stavver tell you what happened?”

“He came late one night. I couldn't sleep; the stench of expectation kept me restless. He asked my name and when I told him, he put the boy down beside me and took my hand and put it on him. The boy flinched and started crying, not the full-throated roar of an angry boy but a flinching wail, like that of a hurt animal. He said, ‘This is your son.' He said that a damn witch woman called Aleytys had forced him to track down the boy and bring him to me. He said that he was done with you and with me and the whole damn clan. And then he left.” Vajd turned his scarred, accusing face on her. “He lied?”

“No. But there was … he left out everything. Vajd, I didn't abandon my baby. Madar! I couldn't do that. No. He was stolen from me by a crazy woman. And that woman sold me to slavers. I couldn't go after them, Vajd. There was no way I could go after them. So I set a geas on him and made him go. I … there … there was no telling where I'd end up. It depended on who bought me. So I told him to take Sharl to you. What else could I do?”

Vajd's hands moved restlessly over the wood of the barbat. When he spoke, the edge had gone off his voice. “He sounded tormented.”

Aleytys sighed and leaned her head back against the horan, relishing the scent, although only at the edge of her awareness since the emotion-fogged atmosphere commanded most of her attention. “Miks Stavver Was a thief, Vajd. A loner. A man used to moving at his own whims. Even when we were together, he was half-ready to dump me all the time. It must have been hell for him, being driven on a path with no turning. I suppose he fought the compulsion more than once.” She touched his hand. Quietly, he moved it away. “I've changed, haven't I?”

“The girl I remember couldn't have done what you did.”

“The girl you remember. I begin to suspect she never existed.” She felt a wrenching ache. Her feeling for him hadn't changed. She wanted to touch the softly flyaway curls fluttering about his tired, lined face. She wanted to feel his body against her, wanted to know again the warm exploding rapture of those nights in the vadi Raqsidan. In that moment, she knew that Vajd had been the reason for her return. Her desire for him drowned her desire to find her son. And at the same moment, she knew the futility of it. With her barenerved sensitivity to what he was feeling she knew inescapably that the passion he'd felt for her once had eroded into strong aversion. Not only had he stopped loving her, he didn't even like her. That thing in her which reached out and trapped men into her service had betrayed her again. Vajd had only been the first of her victims; the love she remembered was illusion. She almost couldn't deal with the pain of that sudden realization.

For several minutes she didn't speak, not trusting her voice, not wanting him to hear her anguish. All she had left was her pride and she knew she couldn't afford to lose that—pride to stiffen her back and steady her voice. “How is Zavar?”

“Well. She's in tanha. We're expecting a second child by the end of the month.”

“Oh.” She stood. “I want to see my son.”

“It's your right.” Sliding his arm through the barbat's leather strap, he reached for the staff leaning against the tree and stood stiffly. He tapped down the path to the back of the Kardi Mari'fat where he and Zavar lived. He held the door open for her then brushed past to tap-tap up the stairs to the second floor. Aleytys shivered. It was like stepping back into a former lifetime. The night candles cast demon shadows on the walls of the dim-lit hallway.

He pushed open a childroom door and stepped aside.

Aleytys moved past him, tiptoeing, trembling, tense. She saw two small forms in the beds but it was too dark to see more. On the ledge formed by the deep window embrasure she found a stub of a candle in a plain pewter candlestick. She brought it out and lit it at the night candle, then moved back inside.

The boy in the bed on the left had Vajd's tumbled dark curls and Zavar's dreamy, vulnerable look. He murmured as she touched his shoulder, but didn't wake.

She turned to the other bed. In the candlelight, the sleeping boy's hair glowed like fire. “My son,” she murmured. “Three standard years … A three-year since I saw you …” My god, she thought, I can't … if I saw him running around with a bunch of other boys I wouldn't even recognize him … except for the hair … She bent closer.

He was frowning, a small fist pressed tight against his mouth. He slept with dramatic intensity. She stretched out her hand but stopped it before she touched him. With a hair's width between her palm and his flesh she ran her hand caressingly over his small body. She began to tremble.

Close to a noisy loss of self-control she blew out the candle, fumbled it back onto the window ledge and ran from the room. Vajd pulled the door shut and waited for her to say something.

She leaned against the wall hugging her arms to her body, forcing her erratic breathing to steady, a discipline Vajd had taught her long before. Before … “We have to talk. Here or outside?” When he didn't answer, she pushed away from the wall and touched his arm. “Well?”

Quietly, he moved away from her. “The Records room. No one will be using that now.”

As they moved down the corridor toward the stairs at the front of the house, she heard the gong sound for the start of the evening meal. “Won't they miss you?”

“I seldom eat in company.” He sounded impatient.

“Oh.”

Alone and unnoticed as the latecomers straggled into the dining hall, they went down the stairs and crossed the front hall.

“In here. There's a fire to keep the books dry.”

On either side of the fireplace large high-backed seats of carved wood stood with massive dignity. Aleytys settled herself comfortably among the bright-colored cushions. Vajd sat down quietly on the one opposite. The heat from the fire and its soothing crackle damped down her agitation as the silence between them deepened.

“Why did you come back?” he said suddenly.

She turned her head to look at him, so tired suddenly it was difficult to keep her thoughts tracking. The harrowing of her emotions had tipped her into a lethargy more profound than any physical exhaustion. She blinked. “I came as soon as I could get transport. It's not easy.” Her voice was dull and slow, the usually crisp syllables of her native tongue blurring one into the other. “To get my son. Why else should I be here?”

“My son.”

She blinked. Her hands jerked repeatedly. “What?”

“Sharl is my son. I want him.” He leaned forward tensely, his scarred face grim in the flickering firelight. “I won't let you take him.”

“You can't stop me.”

“Maybe not. What will you do when he wakes screaming for his mother?”

“I'm his mother.”

“Zavar is his mother; Kadin is his brother. You're a terrifying stranger.”

“He'll remember me. If he doesn't, he'll get to know me. He's my baby, Vajd.”

“Your pet? Your small animal? That's what he was when that man brought him here, a beaten, broken animal. Someone had tortured him, Aleytys. Tortured a helpless baby.” At Aleytys' exclamation, he nodded. “It's taken Zavar a full three-year to stop his nightmares. He used to scream at night. Over and over until he was exhausted. You dragged my son into danger, then lost him. Don't tell me you didn't know what that woman was. Oh yes, I accept your sad tale. Fooled. Sold. Baby stolen. You had no business taking a baby into such danger.”

“I had no choice …” she began weakly.

He snorted. “There's always some kind of choice. Can you give him a better life than the one he has here?”

“I …” She licked her lips, then pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “I have a secure position now. I can support him, take care of him, give him a home.”

“For Sharl, Zavar is his mother. He loves her.”

“Ah!” Aleytys bent over under that blow, clutching at her middle. “That was low, Vajd,” she whispered.

“It's the truth. If you disrupt his life now, how long will it take you to stop the screams? I'm not objective about this, Aleytys. He's my son and I've had a three-year to understand just how badly he's been hurt.”

“You're asking me to abandon him.”

“No, Aleytys.”

“Calling it by another name wouldn't change it.”

His wide, mobile mouth curled into a sad smile. “Settle here in the Kard. People have forgotten. There'd be no trouble.” He shook his head. “You didn't even think of that.”

Aleytys sucked in a breath. He was right. She could come back. No! The negative was immediate and instinctive. “No,” she said. “I can't stay.”

“I didn't think so. You're too much like your mother.”

Aleytys shivered. She jumped to her feet and began pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace. “I can't abandon my baby. What kind of person would I be to do that? I love him. I want him. I don't want to fight you. My god, I don't want that.”