Shadow of the Warmaster

4

Churri rested his head in Xalloor’s lap, crossed his legs at the ankle. “Trouble, yah,” he said. “Won’t last. If you go, Council isn’t going to tell anyone what you did, it’d make them look bad. Incompetent. No polit’s going to let that idea get around if he can help it.”

Chilled by a touch of the ashgrays, Aslan watched the fire crawl over the coals and fought to keep her pride intact. Xalloor’s decision to stay behind with Churri left her feeling very alone and more than a little let down. After a minute she said, “Wouldn’t stop them dropping you and Xalloor down a hole and pushing a ton of rock on you.”

Xalloor tweaked Churri’s nose, laughed as he mumbled a lazy protest. “Skinhead sweetie, he get busy, make a pome, spin ’em dizzy. Dearie dai, oh yes, you the poet all right, not me, so stir it, luv, chant them a ditty to milk tears from a stone, Aslan’s Mum’s search for her daughter through a thousand dangers with Bolodo’s Hounds sniffing at her heels, make their hearts swell with pride at the vision of Elmas Ofka reuniting Aslan and Adelaar, make those words roll, make ’em roll, roll… ow!” She slapped at the hand that had pinched her buttock. “Do that again and I tickle you till your bones crawl out, eh!”

He chuckled. “Going local, eh? Eh!”

“’Twasn’t a local give me the habit. Lan, are you going?”

“I suppose I am.”

“Well, how?”

“I’ve been so busy making up my mind, I haven’t thought about that. Take a boat, I suppose.”

Churri sat up. “No. I’ve got a better idea. You don’t want Elmas or her shadows to spot the boat and put you down before you’ve said your piece. Some of the locals have been coming in on yizzies. The vips here stow them at the depot, in one of the little rooms. It’s locked, but blow on the lock and it’ll fall apart for you.”

“Not me. I haven’t had your education.”

“Hmm. It’s a sorry lack and one you should be curing. I’ll come along and tickle her open.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“And don’t be worrying about the yizzy. You can manage a miniskip, University wouldn’t let you leave home not knowing. A yizzy’s cruder and crankier and slower, same thing, though.”

“Same thing, hah!”

“Negative thinking, Lanny; didn’t your Mum teach you to view the bright side?”

“I repeat, hah! I notice you’re not volunteering to plant your rear on a shimmy stick for god knows how many hours.”

“Nuh, I’ve too much sense in here,” he tapped his temple, “to plant this,” he slapped at the side of his buttock, “in misery I can miss without the least little dent in my self-esteem.”

She left in a rosy sunset, clouds piled on clouds feinting at storm but not yet ready to follow through.

The twitchy wind was heavy with the smell of rain. Because she didn’t trust her touch with the controls and wanted to avoid being spotted by lookouts on the ground, she flew low, her feet occasionally whipping through the tops of trees as the yizzy went crank and dipped instead of rising. It was not difficult to fly, just rather unexpected at times, and not as uncomfortable as she’d feared; whoever had put together this one was good with his (or her) hands. There was a carved and padded saddle with stirrups on adjustable straps; there were handlebars of a sort with motor controls on the grips. It was nicely balanced; the yoss pods in the net over her head were attached fore-and-aft to the riding pole, their center movable to compensate for different rider weights. The motor was light and efficient and small even with the L-shaped fuel tank partly on top of it, partly before it, strapped to the pole; large rotors, hand-carved but very sophisticated; a tinkerer’s dream this gadget.

After half an hour of tree hopping she began coaxing the yizzy higher. The forest was a dark nubbly fleece collected over the lower slopes of precipitous mountains, the river a silver thread reduced to half its width by overhanging foliage. Somewhere under there at the Minetown (also invaded and obliterated by those trees), Elmas Ofka and her isyas would be getting ready to sail, though they wouldn’t be starting for at least two hours. Ahead she could see the small deep harbor, the chop evident even this far off, the surf edge a startling white against the dark wet sand.

The wind began to steady and strengthen, a scatter of heavy rain drops hit her and the pods. The yizzy shuddered and bucked under her; she swore and used her weight to steady it.

For the next three hours the yizzy was a torture machine, the wind and the pole beat at her, the rain blinded and half-drowned her. The yizzy wasn’t meant for weather like this; she knew when she started that she might be going into a storm, though she didn’t, couldn’t know just how terrifying the flight was going to be, but if she didn’t now, there was no point in leaving and she had no intention of waiting for Elmas Ofka or the Council to hand her over; she despised such passive dependency; even contemplating it hurt her in her pride; besides, she didn’t trust them a whole lot.

By the time she was near enough to see the chain of rocky islets, she was exhausted, but she’d also left the worst of the storm behind.

She edged closer to the water, swung cautiously wide of the largest of those islets, the barren jumble of rock called Gerbek. The yizzy was slower than the boats Elmas Ofka and the others were coming in; the battering of the storm had slowed it even more. Her hands were gloved, she couldn’t see her chron, she had no idea how much time she’d spent in the crossing. When she left the Mines, she was at least two hours ahead of the others; right now she hadn’t a guess now how much of that playway was left.

In the northeast where only the fringes of the prevailing winds brushed by, there was a shallow inlet like a bite taken out of a flatroll; it was the only anchorage the islet had and it was still empty, so she knew she’d got there first. At least, before Elmas Ofka. She wasn’t sure about the Outsiders, she hadn’t seen anyone, but the center of the islet was a jumble of rock and ravine, half an army could be hiding in the cracks. At one focus of Gerbek’s eccentric ellipse, there was a peak like a miniature mountain, at the other a flat space cleared of rubble and ringed by tall sarsens where Ishigi Pradites came to celebrate the equinoxes. She didn’t know much about the Ishigi, they were a heretical sect subject to some stringent penalties when discovered; the little she’d unearthed about them said they’d withered to nothing a century before, but she wondered now when she saw that cleared stone. No bird droppings inside the ring. She laughed at herself. Lan, were you tied to a spit over a roaring fire, you’d speculate about the mating habits of the gits about to eat you. In any case, it was the only area where a skip could land, so the Outsiders hadn’t arrived yet either. She didn’t know whether she was happy about that or not. If her mother wasn’t with them…

She brought the yizzy lower and moved over the island; as soon as the little mountain broke the push of the wind, she went lower still until the rotors were laboring to hold the pole a meter above the stone. She wobbled around the circumference of the flat, looking for a place to anchor, a place where she could hide until she was ready for the confrontation. Nothing, nothing, nothing… there were dozens of cracks big enough for her, nothing big enough and deep enough to hold the yizzy.

In the end she anchored it in a windcarved hollow low on the flank of the mini-mount and spent almost an hour getting back to the flat, crawling over rocks and scree, terrified of breaking something, a leg, an ankle, her head. She had to feel her way, there was almost no light; the clouds were thick and black, Gorruya was up alone for another hour and she was only a slightly obese crescent.

As she reached the waste rock near the sarsen ring, voices came to her, broken by the wind; she caught her lower lip between her teeth and crept on until she came to a place where several of the sarsens had been quarried; there were piles of debris around the hole and down in it three cracked stones leaning against its side, a litter of stone shards piled on the holefloor. She lowered herself carefully onto the knife-edged rubble, then crept into the velvet black shadow beneath the leaners and pulled her black cloak tight about her.

The voices were louder; she began picking up some words, enough to know Elmas Ofka was sending Harli Tanggаr out to a pile of stones where she could get a clear shot at the flat with her crossbow, placing others on guard beside the sarsens. The crossbow worried Aslan. If she knew it was me, Harli Tanggаr wouldn’t shoot, but the light’s so bad she’d have no idea who she was killing. Aslan bit her tongue to choke back a half-hysterical giggle. Poor baby, she thought, she’d be awfully sorry. Not half as sorry as me.

The islet settled back to silence except for the whistle and groan of the wind and occasional loud clacks as bits of stone lost balance and went bounding down slopes of scree. The damp cold crept through the layered wool she wore, struck to the bone. She shivered, locked her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. And began to wonder if she’d last until the Outsiders arrived.

She heard a buzzing like gnat noise. It was so faint that at first she thought it was something the wind was doing. Then it got louder. She eased her head out and looked up. A skip. Coming in from the west.

Holding her cloak close to her so there’d be no flicker of motion to catch Harli Tanggаr’s eye, she climbed from the hole and stretched out on the rubble so she could see what was happening.

The skip hovered a moment, then dropped. It landed at one side of the cleared circle, and a large form swung down, followed by a smaller. Once again Aslan closed her teeth on her abused lower lip, fighting back a surge of very mixed emotion. The second figure was a shadowy blob, undetailed, but she knew that way of moving, the high-headed arrogant strut. “Allo, Mama,” she whispered.

Voices. A man’s, deep and pleasant; it didn’t carry well and she couldn’t understand what he was saying. Her mother wasn’t saying anything yet. Elmas Ofka listened. “Do it,” she said.

The next minutes were busy ones. Half a dozen small squat remotes hummed from the skip. Three carried a bundle larger than all three of them, a bale of heavy cloth from which Gorruya teased occasional gleams like flows of liquid silver. The other three scurried about exploding pitons into the stone floor of the circle. Before Aslan sniffed three times, the bundle expanded into a large domed shelter anchored by the pitons. She watched with envy as Elmas Ofka waved her guarding isyas inside and shouted Harli Tanggаr down from her post. That solved that problem, she thought; she watched Harli disappear behind the dome. Let them get settled, she thought. She pulled the hood closer about her face, pinched it shut over her mouth and nose, started to straighten up.