I had the flute to my lips though I still did not send forth its summons to the wandering spirit. This Hynkkel suffered some ill and my mistress was striving to turn it from him!
Ravinga coughed, her upper body arching a fraction as if that came as a painful stretching. Her hand groped outward as if she sought something she could not see. I caught up a goblet standing to one side, my quick motion disturbing its contents so that the liquid within swirled around and gave off a strong scent of herbs. This I pressed into my mistress’s hold and she, still unseeingly, raised it to her lips and drank. One long draught near emptied the goblet as she swallowed.
I knew that what she did was not for herself alone and that the medicine which that container held was meant to pass farther in the way of inner healing from her to Hynkkel.
There was no trace of blood on that thin green robe which was all she wore. Oftentimes a famed and blessed healer could project upon her own body any hurt or wound which marked the one seeking help. No blood—except—she had dropped her left hand once more to her knee and turned the wrist outward to show dark, puffed lines, a wound which might well have gone bad.
I did not need to be prompted now. This had I done twice before when I had learned how to sever the power of Ravinga. I took the goblet from her. There still remained a mouthful or so of the drug at the very bottom of its bowl.
My own work skipped unheeded aside, I snatched up a small bit of soft cloth and sopped up that remaining liquor in the cup and then, holding Ravinga’s hand with force against her own knee, as for a moment or so she tried to jerk away from me, I wiped the sodden rag back and forth across the lines of a wound another truly wore.
Twice Ravinga hissed and attempted to free herself with a jerk but I held on and she could not be free of me. The mark there had been a welt raised above the skin it disfigured. I was able to feel that upthrust of the very red flesh.
In my own throat rose the hum which was part of this treatment. My flute I could not use as long as I held the cloth to her arm.
I vacillated between two opposed beliefs. One that I wrought for good, the other that I sustained what was better left alone. Now the welts were subsiding, even as they paled in color, that dangerous darkness fading.
Out of nowhere came words I could not translate as I mouthed them. The strange wound on Ravinga’s wrist was being banished. Nor did I believe that it would again threaten my mistress.
Her skin bore only a scar. I put aside the cloth which I had used. The slender length of the pipe slipped easily through my fingers. I raised the flute to my lips and began to play.
Nor did I stretch or seek for any notes, rather such came to me, following fast one upon the other as if I unconsciously held to some pattern of music I had once known so well that I need not think on what I played.
As I played, so that pressure of which I had been so aware eased. Ravinga’s head fell forward on her breast as if she had worn herself out at a task which had been nearly beyond her.
The flute was quiet. I dropped it from my lips and sat with it between my fingers. Now there was no mark on Ravinga’s right wrist, but the wide bracelet she always wore as a cuff on the left had slipped and beneath it lay a scar—an old one not unlike the one I had seen. Her eyes were closed and she breathed evenly as might one in refreshing slumber.
I looked down at the cat head which I had been fashioning. The citrine eyes—almost I would swear those were alive! For me there was no explanation of what we two had done, save that Ravinga had carried to its end some ritual of great strength.
Heat and pain—save that the latter was now less, a lash which fell only lightly across my body to bring back the memory of what I was. I stared straight up. Over me was the night sky. There was the rasp of a great rough tongue across my cheek and I saw that on my right crouched the female sandcat. Only her eyes were clearly visible in the night’s dark, but those held me as I strove to lift a hand.
“Great One.” My voice was a harsh whisper.
“Friend—” My head ached as if I had spent time striving to make sense out of sounds alien to me. I gave a cry of wonder, for I was sure that this was no dream, that I had indeed sorted intelligible sounds from the noise issuing from that furred throat.
Only this was a time I could not rise to take in wonders. I was still prisoner to all which had overtaken me when the cat’s teeth had closed upon my wrist.
But I seemed also to hear a pattern of music I had known so long that it had been a part of me.
They rose, they fell, those notes, and it was almost as if I saw water falling in droplets as might a trickle poured from a jug into a basin.
There followed silence at last, and I slept.
Chapter 9
I LAY ON MY BACK, the folds of my cloak wrinkled about me. The pain had been leached from my wrist. I felt light, content to be where I was. Another dream? No, I was sure that was not so. Certainly I had heard and understood moments earlier the exchange between the sandcats when the female had gone off and left her mate to play sentry.
Klaverel-va-Hynkkel—I was him. My eyelids were heavy. It was hard to clear the haze which seemed to wall me in. There was a wind against my desert-dried skin. I blinked at puffs of sand carried by that breeze in arcs against the darker rock. It was a place of desolate loneliness, I thought—for a space—
“Myrourr— ‘ I twisted my speech as best I could to form that name.
A lazy, questioning sound answered. The great head lifted from its position on forepaws, and golden eyes surveyed me critically. This was as one might feel on the weapon practice ground of my home isle—just as that huge body of gold-grey fur could have matched the broad shoulders and well-trained body of my father’s marshal at arms.
I could talk, be understood, be answered. Sometimes it was as if I shared camp with one of my own blood. Death crawled below— there had certainly been no wiping out of all the rats. Still I pushed the thought of these from me for now.
“—Metkin of Rapper’s Way—” I caught those words clearly. The cat had been doing some inner shifting of my memories.
“That one was a hero of many battles. On the days of remembering he is called and from him came stories that his clan stood proud of reckoning.” The deep-throated rumble of speech was akin to a purr. “Before him Myart of blood of the Five who fought for the many.” The great cat drew his paw towards him leaving parallel scratches on the rock surface. “Behind that one Maslazar— and others—many others. Myroe—Meester— ” He yawned as if reciting these scraps of history brought a need for slumber.
“And did these heroes company with my kind?” I had to feel my way word by word, unsure as to whether my alien voice could shape these names which held a slurring difficult for me.
Myrourr’s head moved in the negative, his sleepy eyes half closed.
“Our clan far from roads of others. Myfford went to death where blow winds of great harshness. He spoke with one living apart, asking for knowledge. Only able to remember a small part of that told him. But as was the beginning, so the end.”
Now his slitted eyes closed. Mine followed, for what he had given me in fragments whirled in and out and made no strict sense. Nor had I any desire to probe the deeper.
My sleep was a drifting in strange places where there was always one beside me, striving to pressure me to do something, though I slipped aside and evaded easily the control which would have kept me at labor.
I was aroused at last by another sound, the grate of claws on rock. So I levered myself up on one elbow to see the better. Not too far away was the female cat. And she was not alone. Copying her solemn stance, watching me with the round eyes of inquiring childhood, was a half-grown sandcat. Its mouth hung a little open and it was panting.