Changer's Moon

by Clayton, Jo;

  Coperic was a small wiry man, shadow like smears of ink in the deep lines from his nose to the corners of a thin but shapely mouth, in the rayed lines about eyes narrowed to creases against the wisps of greasy smoke rising from the lamp. There was a tired cleverness in his face, a restrained vitality in his slight body. “How soon before you can leave?”

  Vann slid the tube back and forth between his thumb and forefinger. “Soon as the storm passes.” He was a lanky long man with gray-streaked brown hair and beard twisted into elaborate plaits, thin lips pressed into near invisibility when he wasn’t speaking. “This norit fights wide of storms and the blow out to sea, he’s a monster, too much for trash to handle. Norit likes him; a nice following wind and a flat sea and that’s what he give me when it’s him I’m taking south.” He moved his long legs, eased them out past Coperic’s feet. His mouth stretched into a tight smile. “He’s got a queasy belly.”

  “Your usual ferrying job, or is this one special?” Coperic leaned farther over the table, his smallish hands pressed flat on the boards, his eyes narrowed to slits.

  The Intii stroked his beard. “They don’t talk to me.” The oiled plaits slid silently under his gnarled hand. “Norit’s been buzzing back and forth between here and up there,” he nodded his head toward the walled city on the cliffs high above the wharves where his boat was moored, “grinding his teeth because the storm kept hanging on. I’d say this one was important. To him, anyway. What’s happening with the army?”

  “Gates been closed on us the past three days, traxim flying like they got foot-rot, there’s a smell of something about to happen round the Plaz and the Temple. I’d say they’re getting set to move. I wouldn’t wager a copper uncset against your norit taking word to Sankoy to get their men moved to the passes so they’ll be ready to join up with this bunch. You better walk careful, Vann. Shove that,” he flicked a finger at the paper tube, “down deep in the mossy cask the norit won’t want to drink from. If what we think’s right, he’ll be twitchy as a lappet in a kanka flock.”

  The Intii shifted his feet again, plucked at his eyebrow, his face drawn, the anger in him silent but all the more intense for that. “They think they got me netted.” He reached out to the paper tube, rolled it with delicate touches a few inches one way, then the other. “Kappra Shaman living in my house. Norit leaning on my son when he go out with the boats. Figure I got no way to move, so they forget about me, don’t even see me these days.”

  The fisher villages on the tappatas along the coast south of Oras had been built by families determined to live their lives their own way, calling no man master, sheltered from most attack by the mountains and the sea, sheltered behind their village walls from attack by the Kapperim tribes who came up from the Sankoy hills on stock and slave raids when the spring thaws opened the mountain passes. The fisher-folk made for themselves most of what they needed; anything else they traded for in Oras, the various families of each village taking turns carrying fish to Oras to sell for the coins the whole village shared. They worked hard, kept themselves to themselves, exchanged daughters between the villages, managed to survive relatively unchanged for several hundred years.

  Now there were Kapperim inside the walls, a Kappra Shaman watching everyone. The women and children and old folks were held at risk, guaranteeing the tempers of the men and older boys who were sent out day after day to bring back fish for the army. Norits rode the lead boats in each village fleet; a captive merman who wore charmed metal neck and wrist rings swam ahead of the boats locating the schools so the fishers wouldn’t come back scant. Day after day they went out, and most days nothing was sent to the villages. One boat in each fleet, one day in five, was permitted to take its catch to the women and children so the families wouldn’t starve. The fishers worked hard, not much choice about that, but they were sullen, their tempers smoldering, especially the younger men. The older men kept watch and stopped revolts before they started, but the norits wouldn’t have lasted a day in spite of their powers if it weren’t for the hostage families.

  The Intii Vann was looser than the others. He was used by the norits to ferry them up and down the coast; though a noris could pop across space by the potency of his WORDS and gathered power, the norits were limited to more ordinary means of travel. They had a choice between taking a boat or riding the Highroad where they’d have to face snow-blocked passes and attacks by outcasts. The boats were faster and more comfortable and a lot safer. To ensure their safety, the norits he ferried made the Intii handle his boat by himself, helping him (and themselves) by controlling the wind and water as much as they could.

  The Intii had a tenuous association with Coperic going back a number of years, doing a little smuggling for him, carrying the men and women of his web up and down the coast and occasionally across Sutireh Sea. When the trouble began at the Moongather and the Intii found himself chosen as ferryman by the norits, Coperic and he wasted little time working out their own methods for passing messages south and handling other small items. At Sankoy, Vann gave these messages to men or women he knew from times past, who relayed them on to the Biserica, a slow route but the only sure one. The norits suspected nothing of this; they didn’t understand people at all well, they’d had too much power too long, they were too insulated from the accommodations ordinary folk had to make to understand how they managed to slid around a lot of the pressures in their lives. In their eyes, a powerless man could never be a danger to them.

  Vann took up the roll. “If the army moves south, what do you do?”

  Coperic sat back, his face sinking into shadow. “I move with them, me and my companions. We hit them how and where we can, we stay alive long as we can.”

  Vann scratched at his beard. “I would come with you, my old friend, but I’ve got a wife and sons and a stinking Kappra Shaman with a knife at their throats.”

  “You better figure a way to change that. If the battle goes bad for Floarin, well, you’re dead, your folk are dead.”

  “I know.” Vann reached over, pinched out the wick. In the thick rich-smelling darkness, he said. “Take care going back. Norits see in the dark.”

  III

  THE SPIRAL DANCE—MOVING TOWARD THE MEETING

  KINGFISHER

  The light bounded along before them through the winding wormhole in the mountain, leading them once more to the Mirror. The way to the mirror-chamber changed each time they went there as if the room they slept in were a bubble drifting through the stone. Or perhaps it was the mirror chamber that moved about. Or did everything here move, bubbles blown before the Changer’s whims? However many times Serroi followed their will o’ the wisp guide to meals, to meet Coyote in one of his many guises, to walk beside the oval lake in the ancient volcano’s crater, she never managed to gain any sense of the ordering of Coyote-Changer’s home. If it had rules, they were written according to a logic too strange or complex for her to understand.

  After a dozen more twists and turns they stepped into the huge domed chamber that held the mirror.

  Coyote’s Mirror. An oval bubble like a gossamer egg balanced on its large end, large enough to hold a four-master under full sail. Color flickered through the glimmer, a web of light threading through its eerie nothingness. A long low divan was pulled up about three bodylengths from it, absurdly bright and jaunty with its black velvet cover embroidered with spangles and gold thread, its piles of silken pillows, the gaudiest of greens, reds, blues, yellows and purples. In that vast gloom with its naked stone, sweating damp, its shifting shadows and creeping drafts, the divan was a giggle that briefly lifted Serroi’s spirits each time she came into that chamber and warmed her briefly toward Coyote.

  He wasn’t there. That rather surprised her. She’d expected him to be titupping about, hair on end, his impatience red in his long narrow eyes, tossing an ultimatum at Hern. She began to relax.

  Hern looked about, shrugged and walked to the divan. He settled himself among the pillows, leaned forward, hands planted on his knees, w
aiting for the show to begin. Serroi hesitated, then perched beside him, her hands clasped loosely in her lap, her feet supported by an extravagantly purple pillow. The Mirror whispered at them, shapeless sounds to match the unsteady shapes flowing through it.

  “Begin.” It was a staccato bark, loud enough to reverberate through the great chamber. As it died in pieces about them, Serroi twisted around, trying to locate the speaker, but it was as if the rock itself had spoken, aping and magnifying Coyote’s squeak.

  When she turned back to the Mirror, there were excited voices coming from it, a great green dragon leaped at them, mouth wide, fire whooshing at them, then the dragon went round the curve of the Mirror and vanished—but not before she saw the dark-clad rider perched between the delicate powerful wings. More of the dragons whipped past, all of them ridden, all of them spouting gouts of fire at something Serroi couldn’t see. They were intensely serious about what they were doing, those riders and the beasts they rode, but Serroi couldn’t make out what it was they fought. She looked at Hern.

  He was frowning thoughtfully at the beasts, but when he felt her eyes on him, he smiled at her and shook his head. “No,” he told the Mirror. To Serroi he said, “Think about those infesting our skies. The sky is one place the mijlockers don’t need to watch for death. We’ve got nothing here that would keep beasts that size from breeding until they ate the world bare.”

  Serroi sighed. “But they were such marvelous creatures. I wish.…”

  “I know.”

  The gossamer egg turned to black glass with a sprinkle of glitterdust thrown in a shining trail through it. Silvery splinters darted about in eerie silence eerily quick, spitting fire at each other. They were odd and rather interesting, but so tiny she couldn’t see why the Mirror or Coyote had bothered with them—until the image changed and she saw a world turning under them, a moon swimming past, then one of the slivers, riding emptiness like a sailing ship rode ocean water, came toward them, came closer and closer until only a piece of it was visible in the oval and she knew that the thing was huge; through dozens of glassy blisters on the thing’s side she saw men and women sitting or moving about like parasites in its gut. As she watched, it sailed on, began spitting fire at the world below, charring whole cities, turning the oceans to steam. Power beyond any conception of power she’d had before. She looked at Hern.

  “No,” he said. “Ay-maiden, no.”

  The Mirror flickered, the black turned green and blue, a green velvet field, a blue and cloudless sky. Small pavilions in bright primary stripes, triangular pennants fluttering at each end of a long low barrier woven with silken streamers running parallel to the churned brown dirt. Beneath the pennants, gleaming metal figures mounted on noble beasts with long elegant heads, flaring nostrils, short alert ears with a single curve on the outside, a double curve on the inside, a twisty horn long as a man’s forearm between large liquid eyes, long slender legs that seemed too delicate to carry their weight and that on their backs. A horn blared a short tantara. The metal riders spurred their mounts into a ponderous gallop, lowering the unwieldy poles they’d been holding erect, and charged toward each other, each on his own side of the barrier. Loud thumps of the digging hooves, cries from unseen spectators, huffing from the beasts, creaks and rattles from the riders, a general background hum. They charged at each other, feather plumes on the headpieces fluttering, the long poles held with impossible dexterity, tips wavering in very small circles. Pole crashed against shield. One pole shattered. One pole slipped off the shield. One rider was swaying precariously though still in the saddle, the other had been pushed off his beast and lay invisible until the viewpoint changed and they saw him on his back, rocking and flinging arms and legs about as he struggled to get back on his feet.

  “No,” Hern said, though his gaze lingered on the riding beast fidgeting a short distance off, neck bent in a graceful arc, snorting and dancing from foot to foot with an impossible lightness as attendants dived for the dangling reins. “No,” he said and sighed.

  The Mirror flickered. A forest. Gigantic trees with skirts of fragile air-root lace arching out near the ground. A woman standing among and towering above brown glass figures that danced around her, crooning something exquisitely lovely and compelling; Serroi could feel the pull of it as she watched. A woman, bright hair hanging loose about a frowning face, a face alive with something better than beauty, a powerful leonine female, visibly dangerous. She lifted a hand. Fire gathered about the hand, a gout of gold flame that flowed like ropy syrup about it. She pointed. Fire leaped out in a long lance from her finger. She swept her arm in a short arc, the lance moving with it to slash deep into the side of a tree. The forest groaned. The hypnotic chant broke. One of the glass figures cried out, agony in the rising shriek, a deep burn slanting across its delicate torso. “I want my friend,” the woman cried. “Give me back my friend; bring her out from where you’ve hid her.” She cut at another tree. A spun gold crown appeared on her head, a band woven from gold wire, flowers like flattened lilies on the band, the petals made of multiple lines of wire until the petal space was filled in. The centers of the blooms were singing crystals whose pure sweet chimes sounded over the moaning and screaming from the little ones, the hooshing of the trees. “I want my friend or I’ll burn your forest about your ears.” She took a step forward, the fury in her face a terrible thing. Once again she slashed at a tree.

  “No,” Hern said. Hastily but definitely.

  “Why?” Serroi turned from the fading image to examine his face.

  “I’ve got enough trouble coping with the women in my life.” He chuckled. “You, Yael-mri, Floarin, even the Maiden. Fortune deliver me from another. Remember my number two, Lybor?” When she nodded, he jerked his thumb at the Mirror. “A Lybor with brains. Give that one a year and she’d own the world.”

  “If she wanted it.”

  He shrugged. “Why take the chance?”

  The Mirror flickered. The gloom about the trees changed, deepened. The giants shrank to trees that were still great, but great on a more human scale. The ground tilted to a steeper slope. The view shifted until it seemed they hovered over a red dirt trail. A line of men came trotting along it—no, not all men, about half were women. Serroi counted twenty, all of them lean and fit, moving steadily down the mountainside, making no sound but the soft beat of their feet and the softer slide of their clothing. Dark clothing. Trousers of some tough but finely woven cloth more like leather than the homespun cloth she knew. Some of them wore dark shirts that buttoned down the front, heavy blousy shirts with a number of buttoned-down pockets, others had short sleeved, round-necked tunics that clung like fine silk to torsos male and female. Some had wide belts looped across their bodies, others had pouches that bounced softly and heavily against their hips. They all carried complicated wood and metal objects, rather like crossbows without the bowstaves. Well-kept weapons, handled with the ease of long use. Down and down they went, moving in and out of moonlight that was beginning to dim as clouds blew across the sky. They reached a dirt road, only a little wider than the trail but with deeper ruts in it. Without hesitation they turned onto it and loped along it, still going down.

  A purring like that of a giant sicamar grew slowly louder, died. A blatting honk. The band split in half and vanished into the brush and trees on both sides of the road. The throaty purr began again, again grew louder. Again it stopped. Serroi heard a sharp whistle. Three bursts, then two. The purr again—coming on until Serroi at last saw the thing that made it. A large squarish van rather like the caravans of the players. This one had no team pulling it, yet it came steadily on, its fat, soft-looking wheels turning with a speed that started Hern tapping his fingers. The purring muted to a mutter as the van slowed and stopped; the man inside the glassed-in front leaned out an opening by his side and repeated the whistle signal. His face was strained, gaunt, shadow emphasizing the hollows around his eyes, the heavy lines slashing down his cheeks and disappearing under his chin.

&nbs
p; An answering whistle came from the trees on his left.

  He opened the side of the van, jumped down and trotted around to the back, put a key into a tiny keyhole, turned it, then pulled down the two handles and opened out the doors. The viewpoint shifted so she could see inside, but it was a disappointment; nothing there but thin quilted padding on the floor.

  The men and women came swiftly and silently from the trees and began climbing inside, fitting themselves with quick ease into the limited space. The driver and the leader of the band, a stocky blond man, stood talking by the front door.

  “Rumor says they’re close to finishing new spy satellites and shooting them up.” The driver’s voice was soft, unassertive, a hoarse but pleasant baritone that blended well with the soughing of the wind through the conifers, the brighter rustling of the other trees. “When they do, they’ll be going over the mountains inch by inch until they find you.” He passed a hand across his brow, stirring the lank thin hair hanging into his eyes. “Unless you can take them out again.”