Read Online Motherstone by Maurice Gee - Free Book Online

like bush lawyer. Ferns grew in the under-storey, and tiny birds looped and darted, catching gnats. Somewhere high, another sang like a tui. Osro led them on for several hours, and Susan knew that if she got away she would have a chance here. There were even fruits she recognized from Wildwood. Steen picked one and gave it to her to eat.
    Towards dark they came to broken hills and criss-crossed gullies. Steam rose from hollows in the ground and once shot hissing from a mouth-shaped hole in the side of a hill. She had guessed they were coming to this, for the jungle had been wrapped in a rotten-egg smell for some time. They crossed a little creek where the water ran warm. She hoped that tonight she would be able to wash her face and hands in a hot pool.
    Osro stopped and the guards made camp. Slarda and Greely went off to hunt and came back with the carcase of an animal like a pig. They boiled pieces of it in a pool that bubbled in a cluster of stones. Osro had gone into his shelter. He ate alone. Steen brought Susan meat and fruit, and later let her wash with the women guards in a deep warm basin above the camp. She slept almost comfortably that night. No chance came for escape, but she consoled herself with the knowledge that Nick was alive and free.
    For two more days they travelled north. At times the steam was so dense the jungle seemed on fire. Mud lakes boiled like porridge pots. Cliffs steamed and geysers burst from mounds and roared in jets and sprays and feathers high into the air. Around them the bush was warped and mineral-crusted. The trunks of trees gleamed white and pink and blue.
    They cooked pig-meat and deer-meat, and caught crayfish in cold pools and boiled them in hot. Susan felt almost too well-fed. But she watched everything. She might have to survive alone in this place.
    On the third night Slarda said, ‘Master, tomorrow we will reach the sands again and we must cross.’
    ‘We have the girl. And we can cross at night if we need. There is no danger.’
    ‘Then,’ Slarda said, ‘let us rid ourselves of her. She slows our march.’
    ‘Keep her, keep her,’ Osro said. ‘You can have her soon.’
    He had eaten with them, not in his shelter. He was pleased with himself that night. ‘Earth-girl, you have travelled with the ruler of O. But you do not seem to know who I am.’
    ‘Oh, I know,’ Susan said. ‘We have your sort. You’re like Adolf Hitler or Al Capone. You’re a gangster.’
    ‘Who are these? Great men? What is a gangster?’
    ‘Why don’t you marry Slarda? She’d be a good queen.’
    ‘Master,’ Slarda cried, ‘let me silence her.’
    ‘No, no,’ Osro said. ‘She presumes. But she is harmless. She speaks so to keep her courage up. It interests me. I shall be king, Susan Ferris, not just because I have the Weapon and lead the tribes but because I know how people think – how their minds go, how they move, from here, to here, to here.’ He made little movements with his hands. ‘It is all so tiny and pathetic, and to one who sits above it all and sees, predictable. I can turn them, and place them, these small ones, so – and so. Therefore, I am king. I am greater.’
    ‘Perhaps,’ Susan said. She had the sick feeling it might be true. ‘But in the end you’ll die, like everyone else. And be forgotten.’
    Osro’s eyes flashed, and narrowed briefly. Then he laughed. ‘That is true. I don’t forget. But before that happens, how wide I shall spread myself, how great I shall grow. And the games I shall have with my little toys.’
    ‘People won’t let you. They won’t follow.’
    ‘Oh, but they will. Already they do. So eagerly. They cannot wait to give themselves away. They think they are part of me. Is it not so, Slarda?’
    ‘Yes, Master.’ She did not understand, but her eyes shone with devotion as she looked at him and her horsey teeth turned pink in the firelight.
    ‘You see, Susan? But first, of course, there is the war to fight. I shall bring fire to the