Jo Clayton - Moongather

And the nightmares came; over and over she replayed her flight. Over and over she saw Tayyan’s face, her pleading, accusing eyes. Over and over she heard, “Help me, Serroi, help me.” And saw herself running like an animal. And over and over she saw the Norid’s smiling face, the solid line of brow running handsomely over dark warm eyes, the triangular white face with its finely drawn lips, its beaked nose, delicate nostrils, pendant ruby-not the Norid in the street, not the worthless brass imitation, but the other one, the first one, Ser Noris, her Noris.

Serroi woke panting, her heart choking her, terror possessing her-until she saw the sail slapping idly against the mast. The boat rocked under her, blown about by the wind, tugged at by the receding tide. She sat up, groaning and sore, still part lost in nightmare.

The early morning sun was a squashed orange, bit off at the bottom by the mountains called the Earth’s Teeth. Last night’s stormclouds were crowding around it, sucking up red, gold and purple light. The wind brushed at her hair, plucking loose coils from the sorrel mass and tickling her face with them. She touched the green oval, closed her eyes, stretched out the invisible feelers she always felt went out from her in this kind of search and swept as far as she could reach. No thinking being within her range. She stroked the spot delicately, shivering with pleasure, remembering the caress of other fingers. Tayyan…

Help me, Tayyan called. Serroi looked down at her shield-mate sprawled in her own blood, then she looked past her at the Norid, the Black Man, the terror that ran in her blood. And she ran. Scurried like an animal over roof tiles and walls. Ran with Tayyan’s accusing eyes always behind her.

Serroi shuddered and rubbed at her eyes, leaned her head back against the seat by the tiller and watched the sun drift upward, beginning to realize just how hungry she was. She laid her hand flat on her stomach, marveling at the desire her body had for life. Blinking away tormenting memory, she got to her feet and started rummaging through the lockers. She found a wineskin and shook it, squeezed a few drops of the sour wine into her parched mouth, shuddered at the taste. She broke a fingernail working open a tin of biscuits, sat sucking at the finger as she poked through the pale brown rounds inside. Fishing one of them out, she continued her exploration of the boat, chewing on the hard biscuit and sipping at the sour wine.

The boat was clean and well-kept, obviously the darling of some poor fisherman’s heart. There was extra rope, pieces of canvas for patching the sail, cord for reweaving nets, neat coils of fish line, a small packet of needles and coarse thread-and much more. Halfway round, she kicked into her bow, lying where she’d dropped it, still strung. “Yael-mri would have my hide.” She knelt, slipped the loop, ran her hand along the carefully tended stave, pleased that the wood seemed strong still in spite of its repeated inundations. She hung the bow over a mast cleat to continue drying, stretched, patted a yawn.

Higher up the cliffs hanguli-passare nested in hollows in the chalk and were flying about, their long leathery wings and small furred bodies coping easily with the thermals along the cliff face. Their cries blended with the steady roar of the surf and the creaking of the boat as wind and tide shoved it about. She moved slowly along the rail, running her hand over the neatly patched and oiled wood, shamed by her carelessness with her bow, shamed by the theft of this boat. Even if she sent gold back to pay for it, this kind of loving care had no price. She stopped her wandering and stood, eyes closed, listening to the harsh wild cries of the circling passare, drawing comfort from them as she had before and would again from similar sounds and smells and touches. Animal and earth and green growing things-they were always the same, always what they were with no pretense, never soul-hurting as humankind could be, as humankind had been to her over and over again.

Standing by the mast, she faced toward Oras, wondering what was happening there, if Tayyan was still alive. I should go back. I have to go back. He’d take her to the Plaz, he’d want her alive so he could question her. Damn that fool Lybor, trying to use a brassy Norid in her plots. Question her! She threw her head back, flung her arms out. “Ahhhhhaaaaiiiiy, Tayyyyaaaannnn!” The cry was torn from her throat, an agonized recognition of the terror that ran in her blood. The Norid. She saw again the narrow black form, saw his stiff black hair, his gaunt red-brown face, Norid, Norid, cheap street Norid with his petty tricks. Then the image changed to the one that haunted her, the face she couldn’t forget, couldn’t ever forget-the elegant spare face, colorless as moonlight, with a black-bar of eyebrow, a mouth thinned to a blue-pink line, with a fine gold ring and a pendant ruby dangling from one nostril, moving with his upper lip as he spoke. The ruby grew and grew, flooded her in bloodlight, pulsed until she danced with the pulsation, small wild girl child marked as misborn, thrust apart as misborn, small girl dancing, unseen fire searing her, swallowing her…

When she was again aware of what she was doing, the boat was in open water, the cliffs a dark line on the horizon. She shuddered and swung the boat back to the shore. Her mouth was dry; she drank the sour wine, gulping it down until her head swam with the fumes. She slipped the tether over the tiller bar and curled up on the deck, dizzy with the boat’s movement and the wine in her belly, cuddling the sagging skin against her breasts. She shifted position and drank again. And again. Then she fumbled the stopper home and cradled her head on her arm, drunk and exhausted, already half asleep. Her money sack hit the planking and the coins inside clanked dully.

Tayyan wrinkled her long thin nose. Hitching her weapon-belt up over her narrow hips, she eyed her shieldmate. “Dammit, Serroi, we’re not on duty now. Who cares if a couple meie stray out of the harem? Who cares if Morescad put a curfew on us! Not me. What he doesn’t know damn well won’t hurt us. And he won’t know a thing if we go out over the wall. Look, little one, Lucyr set up this race. Only man I ever met that knew more about macain than my father. Five macain, none of them ever beaten, one of them bred in my family’s plexus.” Her dark blue eyes laughed as she ruffled Serroi’s mop of sorrel curls. “A mountain-bred macai from Frinnor’s Hold, love, out of Curosh’s stable. Cousin to my mother’s sister’s husband. You got any idea how long it’s been since I saw a good race, a really good race?” Her fingers tangled in the fleecy curls; she tugged gently at them. “Come with me, love?”

Serroi sighed and gave in despite painful twitches of warning passing across the eye-spot on her forehead. She pulled away from Tayyan’s fingers, caught her hand and brought it to her lips, kissed a finger lightly then bit down hard on a knuckle, laughed and danced away when Tayyan grabbed for her.

The race grounds: an hour’s brisk walk outside the city. A long rough oval scratched in the dull brown earth of the arid ground south of Oras. Torches. Wine-sellers scooping wine from purple-stained barrels into pressed clay bowls. Noise and laughter and wine and excitement whirled around Serroi until she felt as if she moved in an expanding bubble that refused to burst. In the center of the whirl, five macain plunged and snorted-racing stock, big bones, long ugly limbs, claws digging and tearing at the coarse earth, throwing up bursts of small rock that spattered the crowd and pinged down unheard among stamping boots. The roar rose to a shriek. Powerful hind legs launched the macain into a series of long jolting leaps.

Tayyan clutched Serroi’s shoulder, beat up and down, on it as the animals swung around the far curve and headed back to the finish. A lanky greenish-brown macai with a wiry hill-man perched high on its back was gradually opening distance between it and the other four.