The fat diamond-backed reptile still twitched occasionally as it dangled from the spear. "Nasty poison, these puffies," said Marou conversationally. "Bite you on th' foot an' you'll lose it . . . if you don't lose th' leg . . . if you live. You swell up like a balloon an' then break out in great big sores that rot away. Them's good eating tho'." Later, once the sections of skinned snake were grilled, Keilin was obliged to admit that it was very tasty indeed.
The old man rubbed his greasy hands on his already greasy fringed trousers. "Now boy . . . that story o' yours."
The sun was high by the time Keilin finished. Marou Skyann pursed his lips as he sat silent, digesting the tale. His old eyes stared at the boy, narrowed, focused and concentrated. He seemed to almost be looking through Keilin. Finally he stood up, spat on his palm and stretched out his hand. Keilin looked at him, puzzled.
"Spit on your hand, boy, an' shake. If you want to become my partner that is. Sounds to me like you need a place to hide. And them mountains you're looking for . . . well they ain't what you think they are."
Thus it was that Keilin became an apprentice turquoise fossicker and trainee desert rat. He eventually learned to enjoy raw scorpions for breakfast. It was a period he was later to describe as one of the happiest of his life. He also changed from a city street-child to a lean, hard young man who could survive off country which, to the untrained eye, would not support a pygmy mouse. In Marou he found both a father figure and a peer, things he'd never had or missed. The only thing from his old life that still called to him were the books.
* * *
Shael was footsore, hungry and weary. She'd never realized just how much bigger the world got when it was crossed on foot. If it hadn't been for pure untrammelled luck she'd have starved to death, or been forced to go to one of the marauding bands she had seen and run from. Her future then might have been short indeed. On her second day she had found a farmhouse with its newly dead owners sprawled on the grass outside. But the attackers had fled before looting it. She resolutely turned aside from the dead woman and her spitted son to search hastily for food. She'd found their packs readied for flight. The boy's spare boots were an added blessing, although she thought them most unshapely.
She'd reached the western foothills when she encountered one of the toxins her poisons instructress had neglected to mention. Poison ivy wasn't going to kill her, but her eyes were swollen nearly shut, and her delicate fingers were fat clumsy sausages. She was crying and slightly fevered when the bee wife found her. Few refugees had come this far and the weeping weal-faced girl tore up the buried memories of her own dead daughter.
* * *
S'kith 235 was finding life singularly confusing. His basic premises were being overturned. Firstly, the power of this party was not vested in the female. Nor was all the intellect. And the female was not, it seemed, interested in sex, or at least not with him, and not right now.
They'd ridden on for hours, an unfamiliar experience which had increasingly become an agony to the Morkth-man. When they had finally stopped for the night, they had eaten a meal of cold spanish omelette, paper-thin jasper-red slices of ham studded with green peppercorns, and small pearl onions in sherry vinegar. The abrupt taste education had stunned S'kith's overtaxed taste buds. He had been sure that the fire of the things Beywulf termed "peppercorns" was poison. Indeed, he had almost welcomed the surcease this would have been from the experience flood he was struggling to master. The others had eaten the red salty stuff with the fire bits in it with every sign of enjoyment, however. Determinedly S'kith had forced it down. The only positive point seemed to be that at least this time the food was a natural temperature.
Then they'd settled down for sleep. As soon as his secretive nature allowed, S'kith had crept to the woman's bedding-down place. She wasn't there. On his way back to his own newly donated sleeping fur S'kith's keen ears had picked up strange sounds. He'd crept closer. What he saw there made it abundantly plain that he was going to have to adapt to not being the only male with testicles.
The next morning S'kith had to be physically prevented from doing his bioenhancement rituals on being told that he had to get into the saddle again. He was surprised to discover that, except for the places where he was rubbed raw, it wasn't, after the first few minutes, as bad as yesterday. But, in those first few minutes, he did wonder whether he had been rescued, or whether this was just a slower and more painful way of killing him.
Several nights later she had come to his bed. S'kith had then had to come to terms with the fact that he hadn't known much about sex either.
* * *
The house was purring like a contented cat. A shaft of dusty sunlight poured lazily through the high window to splash and puddle on the soft colors of the rag rug on the floor next to her. The bed was soft and full of sleepy warmth. For a while Shael just lay there, fearful that opening her half-lidded eyes might shatter the illusion of comfort and security in which her dream had surrounded her. Tendrils of a scent sweeter than all the rare perfumes of Ta'aa—the smell of frying bacon and mushrooms—called to her stomach. It growled at her; it wasn't worried about shattering illusions.