Dead Rivers - Freedom's Gate Part 9

When we were done, I stared at the sword; there was still a stain where the blood had splashed across it and dried. I shivered. His shade could come after me, I thought with uneasiness. He had done me no harm and I struck him down while he was helpless.

Tamar looked at the stain as well, then at me. "You saved my life," she said.

"You would have had the opportunity to run, sooner or later."

She shook her head and gently pressed my sword-hand to the ground. "No," she said. "I played for time and tried to distract them from looking for anyone else, but no. I would have died there. If you're thinking that you shouldn't have killed him the way you did-"

"I was thinking that he could come seeking just revenge," I said. "He hadn't hurt me and I didn't have to do it. I was striking-I struck at-" Sophos. Not the bandit leader.

Her hand closed over mine. " I had the right to kill him."

"But I held the sword."

"Become my blood sister. Then you'll have avenged the dishonor of your sister." I looked sharply at Tamar and she dropped her eyes. "If you want to," she said. "I mean, you don't have to. I just thoughtuwell, I'm sorry."

I considered the possibility for a long moment. I had no sisters. No brothers, either. Blood sisterhood was one of the rites recognized by all three religions of the Danibeki. The members of the Sisterhood of Weavers were rumored to take oaths using knives that still bore stains from the blood of Penelope; the followers of Prometheus and Arachne used their own knives or swords, but they swore blood sisterhood in much the same way. And of course the worshippers of the aerika took sibling oaths, sometimes-though it was rare among slaves. There were obligations that you had to blood kin, and it was bad enough that sometimes you couldn't keep those obligations to the blood kin you started out with.

Kyros wouldn't want me to do it...

But I wanted to.

And Kyros had called his aeriko away just as I'd needed it; I'd had to fight our way out. It's my right to do this if I want to. "We need to get all the blood off the sword first," I said. "I don't want any of his blood mingling with ours."

We had to use up a little of our water, wetting the edge of my tunic and cleaning off the sword. Then I cut the palm of my right hand and she cut hers, and we clasped hands, palm to palm. We actually both knew the words to the ritual, so we spoke together. "Water to water and blood to blood. Like rivers join, our blood is joined; sky to rain to river to sea, and you are my sister forevermore."

After sharing blood, we were supposed to give each other more mundane gifts, and we each rifled through our meager possessions, trying to come up with something. "I should've waited to give you the boots," I said. "Those would've made a great gift."

"They were a great gift."

I could have given her a waterskin but I didn't feel like they were mine to give or withhold anymore. So I plucked some of the star-shaped yellow flowers that had bloomed in the spring rains, threaded them together stem-through-stem, and made a flower necklace for Tamar, as I'd done for myself when I was a child. Tamar had never seen one of these before, but she brightened at the idea; she made a wreath of red-flowered vines for my hair. I breathed in the scent; it was light and dewey, nothing like the perfume I could still smell faintly when I thought about it.

Blood magic is real magic, as real as what the Sisterhood of Weavers does when they summon and bind aerika, or so I'd always been told. I'd expected something to happen: to see lights, or feel faint, at least, or maybe to have a sudden feeling of extra fondness for Tamar. But all that happened was my hand hurt, and I felt worried that the cut might fester. And I felt the same way toward Tamar that I had before: a little protective and a little irritated. At least now I struck out in defense of my sister. The bandit can't come drive me mad for killing him unjustly. That thought offered me some relief.

Even with the gifts, it was a short ritual. After everything that had happened that night, I felt like it must be nearly dawn, but a glance at the moon confirmed that it was still before midnight. "We should keep walking," I said. I tied the sword to the back of my pack, and we set out northeast again.

"So did you cut the horses loose as a distraction?" Tamar asked.

"That was the idea. How did you persuade them not to look for anyone else?"

"I don't think it ever occurred to them that I wasn't alone." She swallowed hard. "When I realized I'd been seen, I pretended I'd come to join them on purpose. I knew I'd have to spread for them, but I figured if I acted like I wanted it-you know, like Aislanuthey might be satisfied with that and not try to hurt me. I guess it sort of worked." I glanced at her and she shrugged, her eyes sliding down to the ground. "I think the bandit leader was one of the men that likes to hurt girls. He'd have been the same with Aislan." Tamar's face was white, but she wasn't crying. "It's odd," she said, after a little while. "When I pretended I liked the idea of spreading for the bandits, I figured it couldn't be any worse than being taken by Sophos. But then-well, I decided I was wrong."

I found myself thinking about that night with Sophos as we walked, turning it over and over in my mind as I might a coin. I hadn't had the chance to send word with the aeriko about what had happened, and that rankled; I wanted to be able to imagine Kyros confronting him, and instead I knew that right now Sophos was comfortably at home. Probably in the company of one of the women or boys from the harem, in fact.

At least he was probably disgruntled about the loss of Tamar. When dawn neared and we found a place to hide for the day, I felt sick and tired, and I slept fitfully, wrenching myself to half awareness each time my dreams threatened to tip me into Sophos's bed. When I woke, my hand was resting on the bandit's sword, still tied to my pack.

Six waterskins. Not enough, not enough, I thought, trudging through the dry gra.s.s, blinking in the sunlight. I had told Tamar to wait in the shade we'd found; I would check just the area nearest us to see if I could find some water. I hoped, of course, that with Tamar away, the aeriko would return. "Aeriko," I whispered. "If you're nearby, show yourself to me." I thought I saw a shimmer in the air, but I realized when I turned my gaze fully on it that I was just dazzled by the sunlight. A sudden rush of wind hissed over the gra.s.s, but there was no other answer.

Well.

I made a quick circuit around the area I'd told Tamar I'd search. Finding nothing, I returned to our little hollow, shaking my head. "We'd better drink less water," I said.

We slept through the day as much as we could; my stomach ached from hunger, but my throat was too raw from thirst to eat anything, even if we'd had enough food to fill our stomachs. We had a little cheese left, still, but I wouldn't be able to swallow it without water, and we hadn't the water to spare. If we find water, I thought, we can drink our fill, eat the rest of the cheese, and fill our waterskins. I tried to push the thought out of my mind, but water obsessed me: the cool embrace of water on my skin, the ripple of water in a fountain, the sound of water splashing against pavement, the roar of the Arys River at the height of the spring flood...

I slept, finally, and dreamed, of course, of water. The Jaxartes-the Syr Darya-had been unbound from its spell-chains, and came roaring down from the high valley. The wall of water traveled faster than a gra.s.s fire, crashing down like an avalanche of rock, sweeping away everything in its path. I could hear screams. I watched the water rushing down from some high place and looked down to find a broken spell-chain in my own hands. This must belong to Kyros, I thought, trying to understand what I was seeing. I must have been trying to return it to him. But the spell-chain was broken, and no use to anyone; I flung it out, to be carried away by the flood, and thought, The river returns. Tamar, at least, will be pleased.

I woke from my dream of the river, and for a moment, my thirst almost seemed lessened; then it returned with full force. Night was falling. I woke Tamar, who stared blearily up at me and muttered, "Are we near the river? I thought I heard water, for a moment." I shook my head; it wasn't worth the effort of speaking.

We had one full waterskin left. Tamar and I held up the others to our lips, draining out any drops we could find, then swallowed a little from the remaining waterskin-first Tamar, then me. "Let's go," I whispered, and we set out again.

We saw no birds that evening to lead us to water. No small animals, no snakes, not even crawling insects. We heard the hum of cicades a few times, rising out of the night like the sound of a dombra, but we saw nothing and found no water.

The morning dawned gray and with a hint of moisture in the air. "Do you think it might rain?" Tamar asked, her voice nearly a whisper. In hope, we spread out our clothing, ready to catch any drop, but the fog burned off without so much as dampening the cloth; we dressed ourselves again and curled up for our daily sleep.

We woke to the sound of thunder. "It is going to rain," Tamar hissed, and quickly, we stripped off our clothing. I set my boots upright; my shirt and pants I spread out on the ground. I tried to dig a depression to catch water in, but my fingernails scratched uselessly against the sun-baked earth. I wished I'd found myself a stout stick and dug that morning, but it was too late now. The sky darkened more, and then opened; rain poured down. We tried to catch water in our hands, and sucked the drops off our own skin; when my shirt seemed drenched, I wrung it out into one of the empty waterskins, then unfolded it again to catch more rain. But it was already stopping. We wrung out our clothes and emptied our boots.

I even sucked on my hair to get at the moisture there, though my hair tasted bitter, and still smelled faintly of Sophos's perfume. We managed to partly fill two of our waterskins.

"The water will run downhill, and might pool there," I said. "Come on." I pulled on my damp clothes, thinking bitterly of the moisture I hadn't been able to get out. Tamar dressed as well, and we put on our boots before we set out downhill.

The ground here was thirsty, and most of the rain had sunk in quickly. But there were boulders at the bottom of the hill and rain had pooled in every creva.s.se; we used the fabric of my shirt to harvest the water; it seemed less foul than the things we'd taken from the bandit camp. We hunted for more boulders, and found a single large puddle which we managed to drain into our waterskins. The sun was back out and drying the gra.s.s, but before all the water had been burned back into the air, we plucked handfuls of gra.s.s and squeezed the last precious drops into our waterskins.

We filled three, all told. It was still day, so we rewarded ourselves with a drink, and retired back to our hollow to wait until evening. At least the damp clothes kept me a little cooler in the heat of the day, though I still thought grudgingly of the lost moisture we couldn't wring out.

Night came, and we set out again. We have to be getting close, I told myself. How did any slaves ever make it this far? Had I really been a slave escaping, I would have only the waterskins I'd managed to steal, only the clothes and boots I'd been clothed in by my master. I might have run, like Alibek, with only one waterskin, barefoot in sheer linen. Maybe no slaves had ever actually made it to the Alashi. But no; Alibek said that his sister had run there, and that when Kyros took him as a harem slave, he sent an aeriko to his sister to tell him what he'd done. Though maybe he just told Alibek he'd done that... but if Alibek's sister was dead, it was hard to believe Kyros wouldn't have told him that, instead. I shook myself. I didn't need to be thinking about Alibek right now.

At dawn, I saw a plume of smoke rising in the sky. Tamar saw it, too, and turned to me with trepidation.

"It might be the Alashi this time," I said. "It might."

We approached cautiously, uncertain, but the first plume was joined by a second, and then a third; only the Alashi would have such a large encampment. "So what do we do now?" Tamar asked.

"I guess we just walk in."

"What do we say?"

"I don't know."

"What if they don't want us?"

I shook my head; I had no answer for her. I couldn't very well take her back with me to Kyros.

We were still a long way from the edge of the encampment when a slim woman with three silver hoops in one ear rose up suddenly from the gra.s.s, like a bird flushed from cover. "Stop!" she said. "Who are you?

What do you want here?"

Tamar fell back a step, so I cleared my throat and spoke. "We are escaped slaves, Danibeki. We've heard that you take in escaped slaves who reach you."

"And if it turns out that we don't?"

Tamar spoke up now. "Then I'll die in the desert, because I will never return to my master."

That garnered a smile of stiff approval. The woman was older than I'd initially thought-her face was lined and her hair was streaked with silver. "Welcome to the Alashi," the woman said. "What you've heard is right; we take in any with the wit and courage to free themselves. Follow me to the encampment; we'll have water and food for you there." She spun on her heel and we started toward the camp. I couldn't help but notice, though, that while there was a warm welcome in her words, there was no welcome in her eyes. We were intruders, not recruits.

Tamar saw that, too, and stiffened. She glanced at me, but I looked away, afraid that she'd sense what I was thinking: Oh well. As long as they don't throw us into a fire or let poisonous spiders feast on us, the only other thing that matters is that they don't suspect what I really am.

CHAPTER FOUR.

The Alashi were rising for the day as we entered the camp: men and women, soldiers and camel herders, children barely old enough to walk and women with long white hair that hung in slender braids to their waists. The tents were black and brown and dirty gray on the outside; each was round and solidly built.

They seemed to form a chaotic, featureless jumble, but our guide led us unhesitatingly through the encampment toward, I realized eventually, the center.

"It's so much... bigger... than I'd pictured," Tamar said faintly.

Our guide glanced over her shoulder. "The Alashi meet now for our spring gathering," she said. "The gathering ends tomorrow; we'll be splitting out into smaller groups for the summer." She looked me over, taking in the sword tied to my pack, then turned back to Tamar. "She'll probably be sent out with one of the fighting sisterhoods, but you might be placed with one of the subclans, since you're so young." Tamar bristled visibly at that; our guide shrugged and continued on.

Plumes of smoke rose from the center of a few of the tents; there seemed to be a hole at the top of each one, but most of the fires had been lit outside, probably to keep the interiors as cool as possible. The Alashi kept a wide variety of herd animals, including goats, sheep, chickens, horses, and camels. I had seen camels only rarely back in Elpisia, but the humps were unmistakable. A dog trotted past; the Alashi kept dogs to herd their animals. A woman came out of her tent as I pa.s.sed it, and before the door fell back, I caught a glimpse of a brick-red rug and a yellow-gold tapestry. The vivid colors of the inside room were completely hidden by the muddy exterior.

I recognized the dank scent of livestock manure, but other scents of the camp were foreign to me. I smelled earthy spices and greasy meat, sweet rice and burned porridge, the sharp smell of soap and the dusty one of straw. I had, to my relief, long since stopped noticing the stink of the perfume Tamar had doused me in before my encounter with Sophos, but I found myself wondering now if our guide could smell it. And if she could, what she thought of me.

Two children dodged between us, then ducked under a clothesline full of damp laundry that had. been hung between two of the circular tents. The older lady who'd hung the laundry shouted after them, then muttered something like "little savages" under her breath. I heard a shriek from one of the children and then they came pelting back the other way, scattering chickens as they ran. They looked to be about nine years old. The game came to an abrupt end when the mother of one of the children came out, grabbed her daughter by the scruff of the neck, and dragged her off. I stifled a smile, thinking of my own mother's attempts to force me to sit inside and learn embroidery and arithmetic instead of playing tag in the streets.

I smelled incense, and heard someone strumming a dombra; Tamar turned to look and pursed her lips when she realized it was a shrine to the Alashi G.o.ds, Prometheus and Arachne. The shrine was a stone altar and a lone tree by the narrow stream of water that ran through the camp. Fire burned in a small dip in the center of the altar; when I looked up, I could see a colony of large spiders busily weaving in the branches.

"Greek G.o.ds," Tamar muttered. If our guide heard her, she gave no sign.

A cairn of rocks stood by the doorway of one large tent. Behind it was a tall wooden post with a crossbar that stuck out like a bent arm; a strand of small bra.s.s bells hung from a ribbon tied to the bar.

Our guide cleared her throat and brushed the bells to announce her presence. "Come in," someone called from inside, and we did.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. There were no windows in the tent; some light came in from the doorway and the hole in the roof, and the rest came from an oil lamp. Despite my glimpse of the brick-red rug, I had expected the inside of the tents to be black and plain, like the outsideuor, perhaps, clean and stark, like the designs favored by Kyros and the other Greeks. Instead, the interior of the tent was lavishly decorated with a riot of color and patterns. Felt rugs of red, blue, and brilliant yellow carpeted the ground. The felt was locked into patterns: vines and swirls and the crisscross of a woven basket. The walls were hung with cloth of woven interlocking diamonds and triangles, with glittering bits of metal and gla.s.s sewn into the center of each shape. I had always pictured life among the Alashi as marginal at best. That even their leaders would be able to equip themselves with such rich decoration was a revelation to me. Perhaps they, alone among their people, live in luxury, I thought.

Sitting cross-legged on an embroidered cushion on a low platform against the opposite wall of the tent was a very old woman. Her back was perfectly straight, and I found myself straightening my own tired shoulders in nervous response. Her hair hung in long white braids, interwoven with strands of silk cord and colored stones; she wore a gold necklace looped three times around her neck, with a medallion at the end. "Janiya," she said to our guide. "Good morning."

"I'm sorry to disturb you so early, Eldress," Janiya said.

"You never disturb me for trivial reasons. What do you have for me?"

"These two." Janiya gestured, and Tamar and I edged forward. "I met them as they were trying to enter the camp. They say they were slaves of the Greeks and found their way to us across the desert."

The eldress raised her eyebrows and glanced at us. "Quite lucky, you finding your way here. We're all gathered in one spot right now; if you'd missed us, you could have walked a long way before any of us found you."

"We saw the smoke from your fires, Eldress," I said, as Tamar spoke at the same time: "We were lucky."

The eldress smiled, the lines in her face deepening with mild amus.e.m.e.nt. "You can get back to your sisters if you want, Janiya. I'll take care of the new arrivals."

"Thank you, Eldress." Janiya bowed to her and went out; her face showed clear relief to have us off her hands.

"Sit with me," the eldress said, gesturing to cushions at her feet. I pulled up a cushion and sat down; Tamar sat beside me. I eased my backpack off and set it on the ground beside me, hoping that I wasn't violating some odd piece of nomadic etiquette.

"What are your names?" Her voice was gentle. "Tell me how you came here."

"My name is Lauria," I said.

"Mine is Tamar."

We hesitated, and the old woman prompted, "And your story?"

Though I'd rehea.r.s.ed this mentally, I hesitated now, and Tamar spoke before I did. "We were the concubines of Sophos, commander of the h.e.l.ladia garrison. Sophos bought me when I was ten; Lauria he bought just a few weeks ago from a friend in Elpisia. Lauria was a stable hand before she came to Sophos's harem; I was a kitchen maid." She swallowed, considered what to say next, then went on.

"Lauria was very new, and she caught the eye of one of the guards. She was able to bribe him and he agreed to leave the gate unguarded for a night, and to leave a pack of food and supplies where she could find it. She checked to make sure that the way was clear, then woke me and asked if I'd like to come along. We couldn't all run-not if we were to have any hope of actually escaping-but Lauria knew how much I hated Sophos, how much I hated-everything. So she woke me, and I told her that I'd escape with her or die trying." Her voice shook a little. "We got out that night, hid in the desert, walked by night to avoid the heat, and drank water as we found it. We've been walking for about a week. I've lost track of the days." She lifted her chin. "Is that all you wanted to know?"

Tamar's version of events had startled me-but, I concluded after a moment's reflection, with her lie she protected both of us. The Alashi didn't have to know that I would have left Tamar behind if she hadn't woken up; they also didn't have to know that she was foolish enough to let herself be captured by bandits, or what she did to avoid being killed on the spot. Of course, there was the little matter of the sword strapped to my pack...

The eldress glanced from Tamar's face to mine with a faint look of amus.e.m.e.nt. "The younger speaks for the elder?"

I cleared my throat. "Tamar knows that I don't like talking about the harem."

Tamar nodded.

"Generous guard, to give you two pairs of boots. And a sword."

Tamar's lips twitched and she held out her battered feet in their too-large boots. "We stole all these."

"I see." The eldress looked from Tamar's face to mine; she still looked amused, not angry, though I was quite certain she knew that Tamar had lied-or at least left a great deal out. She clasped her hands in her lap. "So," she said. "You wish to become Alashi."

"Yes," I said, as Tamar said, "Of course."

" 'Of course,' you say. 'Why else would we have come here?' you think to yourselves. But perhaps we will not be quite what you expected. You were not raised among us; you don't know our ways. You have, in short, been taught to be slaves. It falls to us to teach you to be people." Tamar bristled slightly at that, and the eldress laughed at her, a little unkindly. "Oh yes, my dear. It may take some time. How old are you now?"

I suspected that Tamar was considering adding some years to her total, to make sure she wasn't sent to live with children, but after a moment she said, "Fourteen."

"Fourteen! That's not so bad. You've only had fourteen years to learn to obey, to be helpless, to be pa.s.sive."

"Would we be here if we were helpless?" Tamar said.

"Probably not." To the side of the platform where the eldress sat rested a small wooden box, carved with a constellation of stars and polished to a velvet sheen. The eldress leaned over to open it; from inside, she drew out two leather thongs and two beads of a deep, watery blue. She strung a bead on each thong and tied them off with her gnarled fingers.

"There will be lessons, my new soldier sisters. And then there will be tests. Some are merely physical: you will be taught to ride a horse, shoot a bow, pack and put up a yurt, survive on the steppe. Others are mental: you will have the opportunity to prove that you have unlearned how to be a slave. As you pa.s.s each test, you will be gifted with a blue bead. When you have pa.s.sed all the tests, you will be accepted as Alashi." She handed each of us a necklace. "Put them on."

"How many tests are there?" I asked, pulling my matted hair out of the way as I put the necklace on. The lone blue bead rested against my breastbone.