Diadem from the Stars (Diadem 1) by Jo Clayton

Author:Jo Clayton
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, General, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780879979775
Publisher: DAW
Published: 1980-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

Monsters swam in the blackness of Aleytys’s mind, strange distorted reflections of old thoughts and old friends. She was falling down… down… down… into an endless abyss, falling past gibbering monstrosities that were sickeningly familiar. Distorted reflections of her own face were mocking her, calling words that clawed at her mind. Down and down… then the blackness exploded into a million tongues of fire screaming into lust, fear, hate… I… I… I… I WANT… I WANT… I… I… I FEAR… FEAR… I… I HATE… I… I… blackness… A gentler falling… the pain lessened… strength… peace from somewhere flowing in. She was a winter’s leaf on a gentle day drifting, drifting through images flickering like bright flowers.

A pulsing blob of bluish flesh threaded with purple veins sat in translucent placidity in the light of a small yellow sun—smaller, far smaller than Horli, but bigger than Hesh, and disturbingly strange after her lifetime with the red and blue suns. Below it, the hill sloped away on all sides, grassy turf sprinkled with small star-shaped flowers, cheerful in their dozen bright colors. A graveled path curved down the hillside with sparks of blue, green, yellow, and red glinting up from the scattered pebbles on the path. Aleytys’s disembodied consciousness found the colors odd in the unfamiliar yellow sunlight. The slight shifts in tone made her dizzy at first.

The view altered slightly. She was looking at the bottom of the hill where a procession garlanded with flowers paced in flowing grace along the path, chanting a nasal, high-pitched, monotonous song. The men were covered with a silky fur about two inches long, shimmering in assorted shades of brown ranging from a rich gold all the way to coffee-black. The women were paler, cream to amber. Both sexes had small round heads with mobile pointed ears. Each woman wore a drifting veil crossing from her right shoulder over her upper pair of breasts and passing under her left arm. The men wore nothing but that splendid fur.

Floating as a disembodied point about four man-heights above the slope of the hill, Aleytys watched the procession with intense interest. She counted seven males and three females. As they began climbing the hillside, though, a shivery foreboding chilled her enjoyment of the strange beings. She refocused on the obscene thing nestling on the top of the hill.How can they ? she thought. And felt an immaterial shudder.

The leading four men knelt. Another, holding a flower-twined staff, stood off to one side while the remaining two took hold of the first woman’s arms. Her eyes were glazed and dull; she seemed unaware of what was happening. He lifted her up. The blob formed a mouth, opening and closing now with great wet kissing noises. Aleytys tensed impotently as she watched in horror.

The men swung the woman back, then forward, flinging her into the gaping maw.

Aleytys screamed a long, endless soundless howl and went twisting and tumbling off into darkness.

A man sat in the light of the setting suns. Hesh

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