Gama and Hest: An Ahsenthe Cycle companion novella (The Ahsenthe Cycle) (14 page)

OUTSIDE CHIMBALAY KLER

PRESENT TIME

“Shun the sweetly fragranced flower of desire, for the fruit is poisoned.”

—The Rules of a Good Life

Behind me the beasts whistle—three short, low-pitched notes—the pack members on the hunt, calling to each other. There are seven of them, each one-half again as tall as me. They run faster than I can, moving with a cruel grace on feathered, thickly muscled legs, a blur of red and white, like two-legged flames. If they’d seen me earlier, before I made it down the hills and this close to the gate, I’d be in their bellies.

I know the stench of the beasts’ foul breath. The calculating looks in their large black eyes. I’ve seen the damage their barbed teeth and pincher-clawed hands do to flesh. Beasts like these hunted me when I first came to the wilderness and thought it would be my sanctuary. I know better now.

My breath, harsh and ragged, makes white puffs in the air. Thin sheets of ice crackle beneath my feet. I spread my toes as wide as they will go, for balance. My cloak flares behind me as I run across the plain.

The city is tantalizingly near, agonizingly far. Chimbalay rises straight up from the plain, its black glass towers protected by a massive stone wall and a silver metal gate, ten levels high at least. The gate is closed. I have to get inside. For safety from the beasts. To find the orindles, who are my only hope.

The beasts whistle again, their call changed, a sound so low it’s almost a rumble. They’re spreading out. All twenty-four emotion spots on my neck tingle. I run, my heart knocking against my chest.

A noise like a great rising storm tears across the plain. I’m both afraid to look and afraid not to. I slow a little and glance toward the sound. Down the plain, something hard edged and solid is moving in my direction. I can’t tell its speed or what it might be. I focus on the gate, running faster, concentrating on my goal.

Beasts whistle to the right and left. Two run past me, to get in front and press me back to their companions.

The sound of the wind grows louder, the moving thing coming nearer. The whistles of the beasts change, rising in pitch and coming closer together. The calls come so quickly that they are almost a continuous sound—one voice springing from seven points, fighting to be heard over the wail of the raging wind in the still air.

I don’t want to slow again to look, but anxiety makes me. I must know what the beasts are doing. Glancing over my shoulder, I see one and then another beast stopped, staring at the thing coming down the plain. The thing hovers a handsbreadth above the land, streaming toward the open space between Chimbalay and me, the way vehicles move. But this is no vehicle. It’s close enough now that I can make out the protective outer mud wall and some of the buildings behind it.

A corenta.

My breath sticks in my throat. I’ve never seen one of the mobile trading villages on the move before. I’ve never been in an anchored one. Simanca made sure we were protected from that evil. I can’t worry about the corenta now. Reaching the gate is all that matters.

The gate is near enough that I can see the words “Chimbalay Kler—Region Seat, Gambly One Region” carved on it in letters nearly as tall as I am. The beast between the corenta and me suddenly stops, throws back its great shaggy-feathered head, and howls in fear.

I keep running.

The corenta keeps coming. The beasts wail and scatter. I would flee from the corenta too, if the safety of Chimbalay were not at hand. I pound against the closed gate, shouting, “Open up!”

The corenta, tiny compared to the massive ring of Chimbalay, settles itself on the plain, not far behind me. Not nearly far enough for comfort. They say not only the doumanas, but also the plants, beasts, and structures in a corenta are alive and conscious. They say the doumanas there have no faith in the creator. The skin on my neck burns as my emotion spots flare gray-green in revulsion. I bang my fist against the gate.

What will I say if someone opens the gate? Perhaps “My name is Khe. I’ve come from Lunge commune to see the orindles, in hope that they can cure me.” Which is the truth, though saying it will probably get me taken for a babbler and driven away. Who could believe that a country doumana who’d only been off her commune for mating and one other time could find her way to Chimbalay?

Snow begins to fall, swirling around my legs. I pull my cloak tight around me. The creator, in its wisdom, made us smooth, without hair, fur, or feathers to come between us and the touch of the world. The beasts and birds are luckier. They are warmer during Barren Season.

The corenta at my back makes me nervous. My emotion spots flare blue-red, showing how I feel to any who might see me, though no one does. The corenta gate begins to open. I bang my fist harder against Chimbalay’s massive gate, calling, “Let me in! Let me in!”

Metal hinges squeal gently as the two halves of the huge gate glide apart. I shove my body through the opening to get inside and am driven back by dozens of doumanas shoving their way out. They push against me, seeming more irritated than alarmed at the sight of a ragged female standing in the gateway.

My neck feels alternately hot and cold. My emotion spots flare gray-brown, showing my horror. The doumanas’ emotion spots can’t be seen at all. Each wears a stiff, high-necked collar that, except for a slim V in the front, completely conceals her throat. The collars hang down below the hollow at the base of their throats and extend at the sides out over their shoulders.

The creator gave us emotion spots so that all who see us would know the truth of our hearts. To cover your spots is anathema. What manner of place have I come to?

The place of the orindles, I remind myself. I fight my way against the flood of doumanas and into the kler.

Are any of these doumanas orindles? Does this one passing me now hold the knowledge for my salvation? Is that one pushing her way through the throng she who can return my life? Are the orindles the best among us, as Simanca said, or evil, as the babbler claimed?

Am I as mad as a babbler myself to have come to Chimbalay? A sharp loneliness stabs my chest. I miss Lunge commune, where my sisters still rise each morning and go to the fields. The place I ran from, and yearn for.

The place to which I can never return.

Ashes
and
Rain
Sample

One

A thick, gray silence smothered the world. Silence, and the smell of dirt — wet, sweet, and deep.

“Khe,” Pradat said.

Soil — rich and loamy — crumbling between my fingers.

“Are you all right, Khe?”

“Fine,” I said.

The chair beneath me was generously padded and probably comfortable, maybe even comforting, in a different situation. I sat with my back straight, knees together, feet dangling above the wood-planked floor. My nerves hummed and my skin itched from nervous sweat. I coughed into my fist.

“Do you need water?” Pradat adjusted her machines, small black orbs covered with spindly silver tubes that pinpointed colored lights on my body, and clearstone bowls of purple-red or clear liquids that pumped into my arms. She’d brought her tools with her from Chimbalay to Kelroosh, where I lived now with my new sisters, Azlii and Nez.

“No,” I said. Better to stifle the cough and finish the treatment sooner — and hear Pradat’s judgment on whether it was working or not.

It would have been easier for me to go to Pradat, but the doumanas — the females of our kind — of Chimbalay had no love for me. I didn’t blame them; I’d reduced much of their city to ashes when my sisters and I destroyed the lumani, who had been the secret rulers of our world.

I hadn’t set out to destroy them; I’d wanted only to escape Simanca and her relentless pressure to push the crops to greater yield, even when she knew it was killing me. I’d wanted to find the orindles who might heal me. I’d found Pradat, but the lumani had found me, and had changed me into an abomination.

Pradat adjusted another light. I flinched at the sudden sting.

I had other reasons to stay away from Chimbalay. There were those there who might think what Pradat and I were trying to do was wrong. Those who would say that I’d had my rightful time — ‘see, count the age dots on her wrist’ — and it was unnatural to try to stop the returning to the creator that all doumanas embraced during their thirty-fifth year. But it wasn’t yet my time. It was only thirteen years since I’d broken free of the egg and stood on the world, first as a downy hatchling, and then as an emerged, smooth-skinned doumana. I wanted those years back. It was the most natural want there could be.

The day was growing old and the room felt chill. Pradat peered at her palm, consulting the instrument she wore strapped around her hand.

I watched her neck, but with Pradat you rarely knew what she felt unless she told you. It wasn’t that she was unfeeling, not like Simanca or her cold-necked unitmates back at Lunge commune. Pradat had told me once that orindles spent years learning to keep emotions from showing on their necks. A patient could be frightened or get a wrong idea about her health because of an orindle’s fleeting worry or concern. Orindles stifled their emotion spots out of courtesy to their patients — a sacrifice they made for their sisters. No orindle could be certified until she’d proven her control. I’d asked once what the trials were, but she’d pulled her lips into a thin line and refused to speak. I’d not asked her about it again.

A light-blue circle of light that focused on a spot between my eyes darkened to nearly purple. Heat on the back of my neck and base of my spine told me Pradat had lights focused there, too. I coughed again, harder and longer this time. She came around and stood in front of me.

“I’m fine,” I said. The shame of that lie didn’t show on my emotion spots. The lumani had changed me so no one would ever see my emotions again.

Pradat ran her hand over her smooth scalp, turned, and dialed off the machinery.

I sighed, glad it was over.

“There’s a chance this worked,” she said as she gently pried the tubes from my arms. “The calculations predict a probability, but I can’t make promises.”

I rubbed the spots where the tubes had been inserted. My throat prickled again, started to burn. I brought my hand up to my mouth, but couldn’t stop coughing. It went on and on, a deep choking cough, my upper body pounding against the chair-back with each convulsion.

“Khe?” Pradat said.

Her voice sounded far away. My earholes felt on fire. A ringing in my head grew louder and louder. I couldn’t breathe.

No
!
Not
yet
.

Thirty-five dots showed on my wrist. I’d known this was coming — had chosen to wear the scarlet gown of a Returning doumana last Commemoration Day. I’d thought — I’d believed — I would shoulder right up to that day before I fell.

Pradat moved quickly, laying things on the back of my neck, trying to put something in my arm. I was coughing so hard and shook so violently she couldn’t set in the tube.

The room spun and grew dim, the walls and floors fading from my sight.

The smooth, gray silence settled over me again. The smell of loam, of Lunge commune. I welcomed it, and sank into the silence, breathing the word, “Nez.”