Starfire Saga, page 9
The nomidar had two sets of strings, eight on the straight playing neck and eight on the hollow, curving, sympathetic neck that vibrated with the chords or the melody. The bowl fit into the hollow between my breasts and my lap when I was seated. The flower I’d twined on its head, where the necks met, stroked my cheek. I chose a song I loved. “I will interpret the second stanza of the poem ‘Evening,’ by Dreyghal Naraz,” I said. “‘Twilight comes in shades of red against the clearest blues of day, and brightness grows before the eye as darkness caps the fading sky.’”
The song was gentle and a little sad and bright and wistful all in turn, and sometimes at the same time. It wasn’t the most difficult piece I knew, nor the best piece of poetry. It was only a piece I cared about. I forgot who I was when I played the nomidar. I projected against the sympathetic strings and simply became the music.
When the song ended, Jasin Lebec sat very still, allowing the echoes to fade. Then he rose out of the chair, crossed the room, took my face in his hands and kissed my forehead. “Thank you for playing for me.”
“Did you like it?” I asked, needing him to answer.
“You might have been a master,” he said. “Don’t ever give it up. Ever. Promise me.”
“I promise,” I said, a little bewildered. He bade me farewell, for his time on Koldor had run out, and he left. I played for a while longer in the darkness, so as not to feel alone.
When I awoke from that first night of sleeping untouched at Jemeret’s side, it was with tears in my eyes, and instead of gathering to control them, I let myself weep. First, because I had no nomidar. And second, because something had happened to me, and I didn’t know what it was.
III. Among the Ilto
Though Jemeret was gone when I awoke, I heard him reenter the tent before I had finished crying, so I quickly closed off the tear ducts and wiped my lashes dry. A woman in a long robe brought in a tray behind him, and he thanked her as she set it on the table. He was dressed in a brown tunic, leggings, and scuffed brown boots, and once again he wore a dagger at his belt.
When the woman had gone out again, he asked, “Feel like eating something with me?”
I was hungry, and the smell of whatever had come in on the tray was instantly attractive. I sat up, holding the top rug across my breasts. “May I have my clothes?”
“They’re right over here on this chair,” he said, gesturing. He was preoccupied with something on the table near the tray and did not glance in my direction.
I took a very deep breath. This was the way it was going to be; and there was, after all, the question of trust. I could have tried to wrap myself in the rug, but it was huge, unwieldy, and heavy. I tried to keep my face expressionless as I got up, walked to the chair, and dressed in the shift and talma. I did not look at him, and I don’t know if he looked at me. My nerves were on edge, waiting to see if he would spring at me or say anything, but nothing happened. When I did look up, he’d rolled up the chart he’d been reading and taken a bowl, a spoon, and a mug from the tray. I took the others. The bowl contained a steaming grain porridge thick with what I suspected to be butter and honey, and the mug contained a rich, fresh milk.
The first mouthful of porridge was so good I wanted not to swallow it too quickly, and from that point on I might have gobbled. Jemeret seemed a bit amused by it. “Do you want some bread, too?” he asked.
I shook my head, but I didn’t stop eating. When I finally drank the milk, it was also good beyond my expectations. I hadn’t realized how completely hungry I was.
“We need to find a prafax for you,” he said. When I looked a bit confused, he explained. “A task—a preoccupation—something for you to do all day that will contribute to the tribe. We call it a prafax if you’re just trying it, and a fax when and if you become proficient at it and want to do it as a full contribution.”
I wiped the milk away from the corners of my mouth with my fingertips. “Variel told me there were woman warriors,” I said. “I’ve had some—” I didn’t know quite how to put it best. “—training in that area.”
He looked down at the chart he’d just rolled up and tapped it lightly on the edge of the table, leaning back in his chair. His eyes didn’t narrow, but I felt as if they had, as if he were somehow measuring me. When he spoke, it was as if he had never paused. “I’m sorry,” he said. “If we were at Stronghome, where the other woman warriors are, we could set some tests for you. Men and women both have to prove themselves by deeds to become warriors of the Boru.”
“Aren’t there some deeds I could do here?” I asked.
The corners of his mouth twitched. “There may be,” he conceded, “but you will have to make them for yourself. In the meantime, you still need a prafax. I’ve been checking what’s available.” He made a small gesture with the chart.
I pushed the mug away from me. “Well, then, tell me what my choices are.”
“I’ve eliminated certain of the choices myself,” he said. “The food wagons need a substitute tender, and we are short one seamstress. I guessed generally that you wouldn’t be interested in those.” I didn’t bother to tell him that he was right, and he wasn’t asking for confirmation. “As a matter of record,” he added dryly, “I fancied you would probably not be interested in any of the women’s prafaci, so I narrowed the list of men’s openings to two—wagon repair and tivong training.”
I knew which one I wanted the moment he said them, but I wanted to delay the choice a little. “Do I get to wear something other than this?” I indicated the talma.
“If I give you a man’s prafax, I will give you men’s clothes,” Jemeret said. “Come on, and I’ll take you to meet the wagonmaster and the tivong keeper.”
We left the tent, and two guardsmen fell into step several paces behind us. “Who are they?” I asked him.
“That’s Urichen and Wendagash,” he said, half turning toward the men as he spoke. “Friends, this is Ronica.”
I nodded and smiled toward them, and they greeted me amicably. Urichen was easily in his sixties, grizzled and hard as the rock of the cliffs. Wendagash was younger than Jemeret, but not as young as Gundever.
“They’re my personal guard,” Jemeret said. “I rarely leave them behind for long when I’m not in Stronghome.”
“Were they with you when you ran me down in the forest?” I asked him.
“For the first five or six steps,” he said with a laugh. “After that, you and I were on our own.”
The wagon maintenance area was at the far end of the tents, up against the cliffs. Three wagons were up on chocks, the wheels being rerimmed and the axles repacked.
The wagonmaster appeared to be older than Urichen, and he was bowed, white-bearded, and gnarled, but his smile when he saw us seemed to split his face in half. He had no front teeth on top, and talked with a strange whistling lisp. “My lord, I am very honored you chooshe to shend ush sho many good wishesh—and now a vishit.” He bowed his bent back even farther. Jemeret caught his shoulders to stop his downward progress, but held him gently, as if he were afraid to try to straighten him.
“Gannelel, my old friend,” Jemeret said softly, “I would like you to meet Ronica, my claim.”
The old man looked over at me, made a nod of respect with his head, and looked back at Jemeret. “She’sh a beauty, my lord,” he said in a whisper which reached all of us anyway. “Hash she Shantiah’s temper?”
“Worse, I think,” Jemeret said.
Gannelel shook his head, his lips pursing back into the gap left by his teeth. “My lord, you should sheek shem wish shweeter naturesh. My Lishanie—”
Jemeret overrode him smoothly. “We cannot all be as lucky in our claims as you and Lishanie. Listen, old teacher, my claim seeks a prafax, and you need a wagonhand. Do me the kindness to show us a little of what the tasks are.”
The old man was almost overwhelmed at the thought of my working for him, highly sensible of his honor. He described at shome lengsh the refurbishing operashions, and it was soon clear that the wagons were his pride, his obsession. He knew every one—the ones in for repair and the others the Boru had come to Convalee in—who owned each, what its history was, and how long before it would need what kind of maintenance. He had five assistants working with him, and as he showed us what jobs they were doing, he corrected them gently or gave them hints about shortcuts. He seemed infinitely capable and completely kind, so in many ways it saddened me a little to know I didn’t want to work with him. I wanted to work with the tivongs.
We said farewell to Gannelel when the tour was done, with a promise to let him know what I decided, and the old man drew me aside with a little gesture that would have qualified as a hand on my arm, except that he didn’t touch me. Jemeret looked at us curiously, but made no attempt to interfere.
Gannelel’s whisper was appreciably lower as he said to me, “If you pleash, Ronica, he ish a very good leader. He needs a neshting tent, not a shparring one.”
“Did Shantiah spar?” I asked. It was the first time I’d been at all curious about the claim who preceded me. He whistled and hissed and blushed, shook his head, nodded, and shifted from foot to foot as though afraid any answer would be painfully indiscreet. I wanted to laugh at his embarrassment, but gathered and controlled it back. He was the sort of person, good-natured and utterly harmless, to inspire affection in anyone.
Jemeret called me and we set off toward the tivong pens, with the guards several paces behind. “Did you like Gannelel?” he asked.
“He’s wonderful,” I said honestly, “and I’d wager he’d be a joy to work for.”
“He’s Gundever’s na-sire,” Jemeret said, and when I didn’t seem to comprehend, added, “His father’s father. That family had a lot to do with raising me. I hold them in high esteem.”
“So I can see,” I said. “What happened to your own family?”
He was silent for a time as we walked. “They were—lost to me. In my na-sire’s time, we were at war, before the peace of Jaglith was signed by the Ilto and the Vylk. Many people were lost, and my family suffered along with the rest.”
“But you are no longer at war,” I said, for Variel had told me that they were not.
“Not officially.” I seemed to sense a kind of sadness in him, which he did not control fast enough to shut away. “The Ilto and the Vylk follow tribal laws that are vastly different from those of the rest of us, and they are not to be trusted, except of course during Convalee. The rest of the time we avoid them when we can and deal with them when we must. But at least it’s not full-out warfare.”
The tivong herd stretched out before us, more tivongs than there were Boru at this encampment. The tivongs were large, impressive quadrupeds, with long, shaggy hair that wouldn’t burn because of its high content of alkalines. Its matting was so thick that it acted almost like a shell. The feet were cloven into five toes, each with a giant claw and two lesser ones, and it was maned behind its face and again across its shoulders. Its long, thick tail was doubled back on itself to form a club. Tivongs came in all shades of brown and green, and displayed a natural camouflage; many of the herd had begun yellowing slightly to match the fading grasses of the plains. For such ugly creatures, their faces were deeply, soulfully beautiful, the eyes huge, dark, and fringed with long lashes, the muzzles noble. Their heads resembled those of the Pelhamhorses Kray had raised; the rest of them resembled nothing I had seen before.
One of them, huge and darkly brown, detached itself from the herd and came to the fence as we reached it, making a low snuffling sound. Jemeret reached across the fence and stroked the nose it held down to him, murmuring softly to it.
“Is this one yours?” I asked him, knowing it was a ridiculous question, but he didn’t point that out to me.
“I fancy Vrand and I belong to each other,” he said. “Tivongs get extremely possessive if you ride one for a while.”
A tall, thin, and wiry man walked up from a creek bed where he’d been sitting under the trees. He wore a kind of leggings I hadn’t seen before, smooth and leathery on the inside, soft on the outer part of the leg. His face gave away nothing beneath a red-brown beard. It was deeply tanned, and deeply lined, but he was almost startlingly handsome, his eyes intense and pale blue, seeming to weigh me up without looking at me for more than a sliver of a second.
“You honor me with your presence,” he said to Jemeret. His voice was rough and grating, as if his vocal cords had been damaged somehow and never healed.
“Sejineth,” Jemeret said, “this is Ronica. Ronica, Sejineth, the tivong keeper.”
I nodded to him and he nodded back. His every movement was sharply, visibly controlled, and the impression it left was disturbing. I wondered if he were a great deal happier with tivongs than with people.
“Does the lady need a tivong?” Sejineth asked.
Jemeret’s voice went so hard and cold that it chilled me with its menace. “Ronica was not introduced to you as the lady, Sejineth. She is not a Boru, nor has she been gifted with a bracelet. I’ll have your apology.” His hand had moved to the hilt of his dagger, but I hadn’t seen the motion that took it there.
For a moment Sejineth neither moved nor reacted. Then his body bent smoothly forward into a low bow to the Lord of the Boru. “I beg your pardon, my lord. It was that she bears the face of the High Lady. I became—confused.”
Jemeret seemed to debate the intent behind the harsh tone, and while I had no idea what might happen, I was aware that both Urichen and Wendagash had reached for their shortswords. Wendagash actually had his halfway out of its scabbard.
“I hear and accept your apology,” Jemeret said quietly at last. His hand dropped away from the dagger, and I heard the click of hilt against scabbard lip as Wendagash slid the shortsword back.
Sejineth straightened. His face was unreadable under his control as he turned to me. “Do you need a tivong, Ronica?” he asked.
“I need a job,” I said flatly. “I understand you have one open.”
He shifted his gaze in a split second to Jemeret and back again to me. “You’re here about the tivong-training prafax?” The grating voice showed some real, if reluctant, surprise.
“I’d like to know what it involves,” I said.
The tivong next to Jemeret gave a sudden hissing call, and we all looked in the direction it had turned. A red-brown tivong had detached itself from the herd and was moving toward the fence, slowly, but with deliberation, its head raised high in what I would learn was a gesture of submission, exposing the throat.
Jemeret’s tivong slowly raised its own head, though not as high as the new beast, and took a step sideways, away from the fence. The new tivong came directly up to the fence then, made a snuffling sound, and lowered its head so that its muzzle reached out toward my shoulder. I put my hand up and scratched between its nostrils, where the skin was soft and velvety.
“I’ve never seen that before,” Urichen said wonderingly. “A stranger to them, and one chose her.”
“There seems no doubt about the prafax,” Jemeret said wryly. “When the herd expresses a preference—”
I turned toward him to ask a question, in spite of the fact that he’d abruptly broken off speaking, then realized that he and his guards were staring out across the pen. I gathered and looked in the same direction, forcing my focus farther out until I, too, spotted the scout riding a pale brown-green tivong at an astonishingly swift speed across the field toward the edge of the pen.
Sejineth clapped his hands twice and held them at shoulder height, palms outward. The two tivongs backed away from the fence, not with haste or reluctance, one step at a time. After they were about five meters from the fence, Sejineth clapped once and turned his hands palm downward. The tivongs stopped and stood side by side, waiting.
The scout rounded the corner of the pen, urging his tivong forward until he was within a few meters of where the five of us stood. Then he hauled the beast to a halt, bolted off its back, and fell to one knee as he hit the ground, rising quickly.
“My lord, the Ilto,” he said breathlessly.
“How far, and how fast?” Jemeret asked.
“Less than a day to the southeast, moving well.”
Urichen leaned toward Jemeret, his face grim. “They mean to camp against the cliffs.”
“It will be all right if they arrive next,” Jemeret said evenly. “But they’ll camp on the south side of the Modria if they want trouble. If they cross the plain, it’s peace.”
“I wouldn’t trust them anywhere near what you would.” Urichen’s voice was less than a growl. “By the murks, I wouldn’t trust their women to bleed.”
“Perhaps you are wiser than I, old friend,” Jemeret said, “but I say I won’t expect them to strike unless they fail to cross the Modria.” He turned back to the scout. “Get some rest, but make sure a replacement goes out before you do.”
The scout bowed shortly, tossed the reins of his tivong to Sejineth and sprinted for camp.
Wendagash stepped around in front of Jemeret, waiting for an order he obviously expected.
Jemeret nodded. “Double the patrol. Send Palenti’s unit. But tell them I want everyone back to the first ridge if Evesti crosses the Modria.”
Wendagash moved quickly away.
Sejineth had busied himself unbridling and unharnessing the tivong. Two young men and a tall girl came out of a nearby tent to take the gear and lead the beast away, but I barely noticed them. Now the tivong trainer turned to me. “Will you begin your prafax in the morning?”
I started to answer, then glanced at Jemeret, who nodded, barely perceptibly. “Yes,” I said to Sejineth.
“Then starting in the morning, you will call me Melster,” the grating voice said, “as do my other apprentices.” His eyes slid defiantly toward Jemeret, who neither moved nor responded.
My deference to Jemeret was one thing, a hesitant recognition of the greater strength he’d been certain to point out to me. I was totally unprepared to defer to anyone else. “All right,” I said to Sejineth, perhaps less mildly than I intended. “I agree to do that as long as you know more about what we’re doing than I do.”
