Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [0]
Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
Other Books by Anne McCaffrey
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Copyright
This book is merrily dedicated to
Maureen Beirne
Good Friend Staunch Ally
Cheerful Companion Experienced Tour Guide
for many kindnesses for many years
1
Yanaba Maddock and Sean Shongili held hands in a darkness illuminated only by the glowing eyes of hundreds of animals and the flames of hundreds of candles. The drumming had stopped now, replaced by the sweet slapping of sliding water, the beat of many hearts, and the breathing of many creatures. One pulse was louder than all the drums had been, one breath a wind that guttered and flared the candles with each respiration.
“So how do we do it here?” Yana whispered nervously to the father of her unborn child. “Does the planet give me away or what?”
Sean smiled and winked. “No one has that right but you, love. Let’s just say that the planet acts as witness and honorary best being.”
“. . . best being . . .” an echo sang from the cavern walls. “. . . best being . . .”
He stopped walking and she stopped beside him. All she knew was that they were getting married, Petaybean-style.
She’d been so busy with her new duties as Petaybee’s administrator over the last two months that she hadn’t had enough time to inquire as fully as she would have liked into the rituals or folkways of the Petaybean marriage ceremony before it was upon her. Sean’s niece, Bunny Rourke, one of her chief informants on matters Petaybean, had told her that it was a special sort of latchkay with a night chant at the hot springs. Yana had attended the breakup latchkay when she first arrived. This occasion differed in that the night chant was at the beginning of the latchkay instead of at the end. As at all latchkays, there would be much singing; however, there would probably be more at this particular one. Sean and Yana were each to prepare a song for the other. Songs were how Petaybeans celebrated or commemorated all their most noteworthy experiences. The mode was mostly either a rhyme scheme to some ancient Irish air, or a free-verse poem, chanted Inuit-style to the accompaniment of a drum. Yana, whose heart was full but whose mind was too crowded with administrative details while her body was having to make physical accommodations to her pregnancy, had finally created her song. Other than that, she simply hoped that things would go well and allowed herself to be led through the proceedings by the people she had trusted with her life more than once.
Two hours earlier, Kilcoole’s premier couturier, Aisling Senungatuk, had arrived with the gown she had created for Yana—rabbit hides crocheted together with woolen yarn in a long, paneled design with a flared skirt, scooped neck, and long sleeves. The crocheted lace inserts were heavily decorated with beads made from scavenged wire and the little pebbles found in certain Petaybean streams. Tumbled, polished, and drilled, the stones were lovely and translucent. The gown was yellow, the Petaybean wedding color, Aisling explained, “because most of the plants make yellow dye.” The rabbits were contributed from the collecting places of all of the hunters in the village. Sean’s vest was a darker shade of the yellow, trimmed with beaver fur and blue and white beads.
Now the light motes formed a circle around the two, and Clodagh Senungatuk, Aisling’s sister and the village’s healer, stepped into the center with Sean and Yana. Yana noted with some amusement that as many of Clodagh’s orange-striped cats as could crowd around her feet did so, their eyes eerie and iridescent in the candle glow.
“Sean Shongili and Yanaba Maddock, we’ve come here because we understand