Skeen's Leap by Jo Clayton Read Free Book Online

didn’t attempt to explain any of that, she didn’t look back, just started on and left Skeen to follow if she wished.
    They rode along a dirt road through huge old trees, past glades where tree growth had been inhibited somehow. These garden plots were in various stages of growth, each glade planted with a single crop—pod plants, tuber vines, melons, a grain plant, leaf vegetables, fruiting bushes. No weeds, the sets planted semé, each plant the same distance from all those around it. Got the ground trained, looks like.
    The trees ended abruptly, without that trickle-off most forests seemed to have. Fenced pastures surrounded by a new kind of plant, one she hadn’t come across before, a mix between vine and bush twisted together to make open-work barriers. Large ruminants grazing in some of those fields, long, skinny, limber neck, twisted horns. Small ruminants in others, chunky, fine crimped hair shining softly in the moonlight. The fields grew progressively smaller, an arm of a long thin lake jutted dark and glittery past them. They rode straight ahead, passing thrice above lake water and narrow canals, the ironshod hooves ringing on the hard wood of the bridges. The road turned to follow the curve of the lake, heading toward a pair of giant conifers rising like watchtowers beside the open arch into a courtyard of a twisting humping structure that curved around the end of the lake, half a kilometer end to end. It was very late, long after midnight, but there were red-gold glows scattered the length of that dark mass. A number of cowled figures came through the arch and stood waiting, silent and hostile; Skeen wondered wearily just what she was getting herself into.
    Telka dismounted, tossed the reins to the shadow form that came to meet her. “Get rid of these, the Chalapeer will be hunting them.” She walked away, leaving Skeen to dismount and follow her as she chose.
    IMAGES : a roundish court (nothing was built on the square in this place and those rounds were irregular, knotty and more than vaguely organic) with half-roofs built out here and there from a noduled wall. Fire in the middle of the flagging, burning in an oval basin made of fieldstone, a huge inverted funnel of some pulpy material suspended over it to catch the smoke and guide it away. Faces, eyes following Skeen. Male and female, young and old. An animal touch to all of them. All shapes and shadings, even some parti-colored like the patches on a calico cat. Eyes shining red, reflecting the fire. The dark angry scowl of the Cat-man, Rijen. No one slept, not even the children. No one said anything, though she heard soft hisses and the scrape of claws on stone.
    Skeen followed Telka across the court, then through another court with the same central fire and funnel, the same mix of faces, the same silence and hostility. A dozen arches led off from this second court and through them she saw more Min, shadows in the glow from the open fires. This a house or a cattle run? and don’t they know about roofs? Must get cold as a Chanker Hell come winter. And what do they do when it rains? or snows? Well, easy enough to see the point of half-roofs and open air sleeping if they’re all shapechangers, werebeasts. Djabo’s ivory overbite, I have to be dead back in those ruins and dreaming, that’s more likely than this.
    Telka pushed back a heavy curtain and stepped into the corridor beyond. Skeen paused to inspect the curtain. Thin strips of leather woven in a herringbone pattern. Two layers of leather with a soft white substance like dandelion fluff sandwiched between them. Ties dangling along the edge, staples on the wall. For windy days, no doubt. With the lead weights crimped along the bottom it was heavy enough to hang in place without flapping as long as the air was fairly quiet. Deft fingers fashioned this. She patted the curtain with pleasure, then followed Telka into a hole that was as knobby and twisted as if it were