Moonscatter by Jo Clayton

Author:Jo Clayton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2016-05-10T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER X:

THE QUEST

The well was a hole in the ground, a burrow gnawed from the chalk and sandstone. The water was twenty feet down, off center, a well within a well, hidden from the light by the overhang, protected from the blowing dust though not completely. A sweethorn tree grew some distance from the well itself, yet each year a squad of vassals had to cut away the web of hair-fine white roots that crept into the hole to steal the water. A few grey-green needles about an inch long clung to the first spans of the shiny black branches as they slanted precipitously upward. The rest of the needles lay scattered about the hard pale earth while the outer portions of the branches bore only hard black thorns longer than needles with upcurving points finer than the points of needles. Smaller doerwidds with foliage like scabby green-grey lichen clustered in a west-facing arc about the sweethorn.

Their Sleykyn captors had spread one of Serroi’s blankets in the shade of that arc beneath the sweethorn tree. They were kneeling in a ragged circle on the brown wool; now and then one or more of them looked at her, eyes animal-blank, inhuman because to them she was inhuman, more than that, less than beast. The interaction between meien and Sleykynin had a long, unhappy history. The Sleykyn order was implacably hostile to the Biserica as if the meien threatened them on such a deep level they had no need to think, only to react, were driven to humiliate, debase and destroy any meie so unfortunate as to fall unprotected into their hands.

A burst of raucous laughter came from the kneeling men as they tossed oblong ivory dice and watched them wobble and slide about on the dark brown wool. She knew only too well what that was about, she looked at them and forced herself to show none of her fear. A Sleykyn groaned and cursed, fell back off his knees until he was sitting with his feet stretched out before him, removed from the circle on the blanket. Bad luck, she thought. First out, last in. She almost laughed at that bitter joke, but turned instead to Hern.

The Sleykynin had dumped him on a dusty flat some yards from her, left him unprotected in the sun after kicking and beating him with casual brutality, something he owed to her, owed to the fact that he dared ride with her in Sleykyn lands. He was sitting hunched over, short sturdy legs stretched out before him, tied at the ankles with the quick but effective hitch herders used when they threw bull hauhaus. Sweat rolled down his grim, intent face. He wouldn’t meet her eyes even when she tried smiling at him. His broad thick shoulders moved slowly, the deliberation of power kept under stern control. She remembered suddenly how she’d seen him the night of the Moongather, tied naked to a chair, waiting to be demon-swallowed, working with iron patience to win at least one hand free.

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