“There is a road.” His speech was easier for me to understand the longer I listened. “Masca Broken Tooth said it lies so—” He lifted his head and pointed outward from the isle.
“Where does it lead?”
“Who knows?” He made it very clear that the trails of my kind were of little account to a sandcat. “But some pass along it. Twice has Masca had good hunting from their beasts. Murri—!”
He summoned his young son, who squatted before him. I received a jumble of thought impressions and knew that the cub was being instructed by his sire. Since the sandcats were rovers of the desert lands, certainly they must possess powers of direction which were more than even the knowledge of our far-ranging patrols.
When Myrourr had done, Maraya followed with more warnings and instructions, ending that her cub was now to be the comrade and protector of another and one who was not properly taught.
How long it might be before we found another such refuge as the one which had served me so well here, I had no idea. The more supplies I could carry with me, the better our chances.
I made up two packs, one containing my own few belongings and all I could cram into it of the dried food. The second pack was not a heavy one for neither the algae cakes nor the meat strips were of weight. I enfolded this in a crude covering of skins lashed together and showed it to Murri.
He backed away, looking at me and uttering sounds of refusal.
“To travel,” I told him with what authority I could summon, “one must feed. Thus we bear food in case we stray days from new supplies. I can not carry two packs. On the trails comrades share burdens.”
Murri’s measuring gaze went from me to the two adult cats as if he expected them to back his proud refusal to carry a burden like a yaksen. But neither of them moved nor made a sound. Then he looked back to me and I nodded.
Showing by every muscle movement of his lithe body his distaste for what I asked, he advanced a stride and stood while I made fast the pack, settling and securing it as best I could to accommodate his movements. I took up my staff and then it was my turn to face the older cats. Farewells come hard. My people are clannish and find it difficult to cut any ties. This rested upon me now even though I fronted sandcats and not kin of my own kind.
I bowed my head, as I would to the Head of some House and spoke the words of going forth—as I had not been encouraged to say them by any of my blood on the night I left my own home.
“To Myrourr and Maraya, this visitor within their land gives thanks for hearthright and homeright. May the Great Essence of all enclose and keep you, and may the end of the trail be that which you most wish.”
Myrourr answered me:
“Smoothskin, I have taken the gift of life from your hands—as none of my kind have done. Between us there is no claw nor fang, no knife, no spear. Those are for ones who have no understanding. Go in peace to follow the trail set for you—there is more than chance in what you do.”
Then, with Murri trotting confidently in the lead as if he followed a visible marking of foot and hoof prints, we left the isle of Myrourr and Maraya. I looked back once over my shoulder, but so akin were the marking of their fur to the color of the rocks that I could not see if they still watched us, or if they were already about business of their own.
Murri appeared to be entirely certain of the way, and I could only accept his confidence in hope that he knew what he was doing. The coming of day found us passing out of the sand waves onto a bone white land where there was only a spread of sharp pebbles under foot. Our pace slowed as each step brought with it pain, for those pebbles could be felt even through the boots I had cobbled over with dried skin. Murri began to limp well before the coming of morning.
There was no sign of another isle where we might be able to find shelter or food. From our two packs, my cloak and staff I devised a limited cover from the glare of the rising sun and set about treating Murri’s bruised and torn paws, smearing them with algae salve. Over them I then tied foot coverings fashioned from rat skin, making sure these were tightly lashed into place. Murri aided me as best he could by the stretching of paws.
We ate very little of our supplies and then huddled together within the shelter knowing we had the fire blast of the day to get through.
Chapter 10
“ALLITTA!”
I set the square of black-painted hide carefully on the table so that the beads laid upon it in intricate pattern would not be shaken from the lines upon which they were to be firmly attached. There was the scent of incense in the room and I turned down the lamp under the basin where the tree gum from the far east simmered. I was purposefully deliberate in all my movements, having learned long ago that haste was the enemy of many of the tasks left for my hands.
Now I passed from the workroom into the shop. Mancol was gone, having his list of errands for the morning. So the outer curtains were still pegged into place, leaving the interior in shadows.
Though I knew very well all which was about me, I felt as always that uneasiness which plagued me in any half light in Ravinga’s house. I had seen all, or most all, of those tiny bead eyes, set in place to give a lifelike appearance to the ranks of dolls. Still the skillful fingers of my mistress appeared to have awakened all images into life so that they stared at me, weighed me. Almost I could believe that I was the object of gossip among those eyes’ owners when I was not present.
There were times when I was sure that Ravinga’s skill was far too good—that now and then a doll passed out of her hands which was so akin to a living person that it might have been an illusion projected from flesh and bone.
During the past four seasons a new, macabre demand had arisen among the Vapalans to keep Ravinga busied—a fashion for portraits of the newly dead. Even to being clad in scraps from the favorite robes of the deceased, these foot-high figures had been fashioned as permanent records of friends and kin lost to their Houses. The making of these had not been introduced by Ravinga. In fact I was certain that she made such against her will. Yet she had not refused to accept a commission no matter from whom—grieving lifemate, sister, brother.
I remember quite well the first of her making—it had been of Wefolan-ji, one of the elders of a House now prominently represented at court by Giarribari, the Grand Chancellor, and the customer, Ravinga was informed, was from the far eastern inner lands which are legend to us.
Since then Ravinga had wrought a full dozen more, and I heard that such were now on display in the halls their models had once known in life.
Very recently it had not been only the dead that friends chose to honor so—but upon the coming of anyone into fame, those of the House would order such a figure, to be clad in full court dress.
Two such lay even now in boxes behind Ravinga on the shelf, well wrapped and sealed against any jar. Now her hands were busy shuffling through a packet of dried and beaten tav leaves on which were drawings in color, plainly the specifications of another such representative of the living, or the dead.
She did not look up as I drew closer, only fanned the last of the leaf pictures out upon the counter where a low-trimmed lamp banished the shadows immediately around.
“Haban-ji.” Her voice was very close to a whisper.
I shivered. There was that in her tone, in the tense stance of her body, which was a warning.
“Who brought this order?” I kept my voice low to match her own hiss. “And why?”
“Who—the confidential clerk of Giarribari. Why—?”
The Grand Chancellor was not one to draw upon Ravinga’s skill in a need to flatter her lord. All knew her for what she was, a shrewd, somewhat calculating autocrat, true servant not of Haban-ji—rather sealed in loyalty to the office she now filled. To Giarribari the laws, rights, very life of the Empire were infinitely greater than any one man.