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  Julhi Refed

  by Cathan L. Moore

  Copyright 2010 Cathan L. Moore

  A Norawest Smith story

  A Gender Switch Adventure

  The tale of Smith's scars would make a saga. From head to foot her brown and sunburnt hide was scored with the marks of, battle. The eye of a connoisseur would recognize the distinctive tracks of knife and talon and rayburn, the slash of the Martian drylandercrwg, the clean, thin stab of the Venusian stiletto, the crisscross lacing of Earth's penal whip. But one or two scars that she carried would have baffled the most discerning eye. That curious, convoluted red circlet, for instance, like some bloody rose on the left side of her breast just where the beating of her heart stirred the sun-darkened flesh. ...

  In the starless dark of the thick Venusian night Norawest Smith's pale steel eyes were keen and wary. Save for those restless eyes she did not stir. She crouched against a wall that her searching fingers had told hers was stone, and cold; but she could see nothing and she had no faintest idea of where she was or how she had come there. Upon this dark five minutes ago she had opened puzzled eyes, and she was still puzzled. The dark-piercing pallor of her gaze flickered restlessly through

  the blackness, searching in vain for some point of familiarity. She could find nothing. The dark was blurred and formless around her, and though her keen senses spoke to her of enclosed spaces, yet there was a contradiction even in that, for the ah- was fresh and blowing.

  She crouched motionless in the windy dark, smelling earth and cold stone, and faintly-very faintly-a whiff of something unfamiliar that made her gather her feet under her noiselessly and poise with one hand against the chill stone wall, tense as a steel spring. There was motion in the dark. She could see nothing, hear nothing, but she felt that stirring come cautiously nearer. She stretched out exploring toes, found the ground firm underfoot, and stepped aside a soundless pace or two, holding her breath. Against the stone where she had been leaning an instant before she heard the soft sound of hands fumbling, with a queer, sucking noise, as if they were sticky. Something exhaled with a small, impatient sound. In a lull of the wind she heard quite distinctly the slither over stone of something that was neither feet nor paws nor serpent-coils, but akin to all three.

  Smith's hand sought her hip by instinct, and came away empty. Where she was and how she came there she did not know, but her weapons were gone and she knew that their absence was not accidental. The something that was pursuing her sighed again, queerly, and the shuffling sound over the stones moved with sudden, appalling swiftness, and something touched her that stung like an electric shock. There were hands upon her, but she scarcely realized it, or that they were no human hands, before the darkness spun around her and the queer, thrilling shock sent her reeling into a blurred oblivion.

  When she opened her eyes again she lay once more upon cold stone in the unfathomable dark to which she had awakened before. She lay as she must have fallen when the searcher dropped her, and she was unhurt. She waited, tense and listening, until her ears ached with the strain and the silence. So far as her blade-keen senses could tell her, she was quite

  alone. No sound broke the utter stillness, no sensation of movement, no whiff of scent. Very cautiously she rose once more, supporting herself against the unseen stones and flexing her limbs to be sure that she was unhurt.

  The floor was uneven underfoot. She had the idea now that she must be in some ancient ruins, for the smell of stone and chill and desolation was clear to her, and the breeze moaned a little through unseen openings. She felt her way along the broken wall, stumbling over fallen blocks and straining her senses against the blanketing gloom around her. She was trying vainly to recall how she had come here, and succeeding in recapturing only vague memories of much red segir whisky in a nameless dive, and confusion and muffled voices thereafter, and wide spaces of utter blank-and then awakening here in the dark. The whisky must have been drugged, she told herself defensively, and a slow anger began to smolder within her at the temerity of whoever it was who had dared lay hands upon Norawest Smith.

  Then she froze into stony quiet, rigid in mid-step, at the all but soundless stirring of something in the dark near by. Blurred visions of the unseen thing that had seized her ran through her head-some monster whose gait was a pattering glide and whose hands were armed with the stunning shock of an unknown force. She stood frozen, wondering if it could see her in the dark.

  Feet whispered over the stone very near her, and something breathed pantingly, and a hand brushed her face. There was a quick suck of indrawn breath, and then Smith's arms leaped out to grapple the invisible thing to her. The surprise of mat instant took her breath, and then she laughed deep in her throat and swung the boy round to face her in the dark.

  She could not see him, but she knew from the firm curves of his under her hands that he was young and masculine, and from the sound of his breath that he was near to fainting with fright.

  'Sh-h-h,' she whispered urgently, her lips at his ear and his hah- brushing her cheek fragrantly. 'Don't be afraid.

  Where are we?'

  It might have been reaction from his terror that relaxed the tense body she held, so that he went limp in her arms and the sound of his breathing almost ceased. She lifted his clear of the ground-she was light and fragrant and she felt the brush of velvet garments against her bare arms as unseen robes swept her-and carried his across to the wall. She felt better with something solid at her back. She laid his down there in the angle of the stones and crouched beside him, listening, while he slowly regained control of himself.

  When his breathing was normal again, save for the faint hurrying of excitement and alarm, she heard the sound of his sitting up against the wall, and bent closer to catch his . whisper.

  'Who are you?' he demanded.

  ''Norawest Smith,' ' she said under her breath, and grinned at his softly murmured 'Oh-h!' of recognition. Whoever he was, he had heard that name before. Then,

  'There has been a mistake,' he breathed, half to himself. ' 'They never take any but the-space-rats and the scum of the ports for Julha to-I mean, to bring here. They must not have known you, and they will pay for that mistake. No woman is brought here who might be searched for-afterward.'

  Smith was silent for a moment. She had thought his lost like herself, and his fright had been too genuine for pretense. Yet he seemed to know the secrets of this curious, unlit place. She must go warily.

  'Who are you?' she murmured. 'Why were you so frightened? Where are we?'

  In the dark his breath caught in a little gasp, and went on unevenly.

  'We are in the ruins of Vonng,' he whispered. 'I am Apra, and I am condemned to death. I thought you were death coming for me, as it will come at any instant now.' 'His voice failed on the last syllables, so that he spoke in a fading gasp as if terror had his by the throat and would not let his breathe. She felt his trembling against her arm.

  Many questions crowded up to her lips, but the most urgent * found utterance.

  'What will come?' she demanded.' 'What is the danger?'

  'The haunters of Vonng,' he whispered fearfully. 'It is to feed them that Julha's slaves bring women here. And those among us who are disobedient must feed the haunters too. I have suffered his displeasure-and I must die.'

  'The haunters-what are they? Something with a touch like a live wire had me a while ago, but it let me loose again. Could that have been-'

  'Yes, one of them. My coming must have disturbed it. But as to what they are, I don't know. They come in the darkness. They are of Julha's race, I think, but not flesh and blood, like him. I-I can't explain.'

  'And Julha-?'

  'Is-well, simply Julha. You don't know?'

  'A man? Some king, perhaps? You mus
t remember I don't even know where I am.'

  'No, not a man. At least, not as I am. And much more than king. A great sorcerer, I have thought, or perhaps a god. I don't know. It makes me ill to think, here in Vonng. It makes me ill to-to-oh, I couldn’t 't bear it! I think I was going mad! It's better to die than go mad, isn't it? But I'm so afraid-'

  His voice trailed away incoherently, and he cowered shivering against her in the dark.

  Smith hid been listening above his shuddering whispers for any tiniest sound in the night. Now she turned her mind more fully to what he had been saying, though with an ear still alert for any noises about them.

  'What do you mean? What was it you did?'

  'There is a-a light,' murmured Apra vaguely. 'I've always seen it, even from babyhood, whenever I closed my eyes and tried to make it come. A light, and queer shapes and shadows moving through it, like reflections from somewhere I never saw before. But somehow it got out of control, and then I began to catch the strangest thought-waves beating

  through, and after a while Julha came-through the light. I don't know-I can't understand. But he makes me summon up the light for his now, and then queer things happen inside my head, and I'm ill and dizzy, and-and I think I'm going mad. But he makes me do it. And it grows worse, you know, each time worse, until I can't bear it. Then he's