A Gathering Of Stones dost-3

by Jo Clayton

  Hunger began to nag at him.

  By the second day on the Sharroud, thirst grew into a torment.

  He ignored hunger and thirst and continued to tease ravels out of his bonds, dissolving them as soon as he had them loose so they couldn’t wriggle away from him and rejoin the parent weave.

  He was beginning to burrow his way out. Soon, soon… By the beginning of the third day, thirst had him hallucinating.

  He saw lightlines turn to serpents of gold that writhed and knotted and coupled in a frenzy of lust and rage, he cringed away from them, thinking that Amortis was coming for him.

  Amortis was the patron of lust and frenzy.

  He saw polymorphous gold beetles shimmer into uncertain being and drop onto him.

  They crawled all over him.

  The tickling of their feet grew worse and worse until it was unendurable.

  There were other torments, all the worse for being self-inflicted.

  He rode out the first waves of that disorientation, husbanding what strength he had left until he saw a chance to seize control…

  He shaped a mind-drill and drove it through the decks into the river.

  He turned the drill to a drinking straw and sucked up water through it. It was unfiltered river water with all that meant, the suspended soil, the sublife swarming in each drop, but it flooded with grateful coolth into his arid mouth and slid down his aching throat more welcome than the finest wine.

  His stomach clenched, cramped and he almost vomited up what he’d swallowed, but he kept the water down and drew in more.

  The hallucinations went away.

  He returned to his raveling of the spellbonds.

  Time passed in its uncertain way.

  He looked around.

  His vision was no longer confined to what his eyes could see.

  He inspected the river banks, felt a flood of relief and pleasure.

  They were deep into the great arid plain called the Tark that made up most of Northern Phras.

  They were past the junction of the Kaddaroud and the Sharroud.

  It isn’t Amortis who has me.

  Tak WakKerrcarr in the Fringelands, we’ll be reaching him soon. If I can call him, if he’s in a mood to listen…

  If I can’t, it looks like Jorpashil’s the endpoint of this voyage.

  Interesting.

  Thinking about Dil Jorpashil reminded him of Brann; he smiled.

  Bramble, whoever’s got that devilkid of yours has put his hands on me, I’d bet my stash on that.

  He drank some more river and slept a while.

  The hot wind that blew incessantly across the Tark crept through the cracks in the crate, turning it into an oven.

  He had to reroute some of his meager resources into cooling himself.

  He had to find a way of ridding his bladder of urine without voiding it into the crate; the stench would bring attention he didn’t want.

  When the ship came to the first of the Locks, he had almost reached the key strand.

  One last sustained effort and he would make these bastards wish they’d never been whelped.

  Outside the crate, there was frantic activity as the sailors prepared for the entrance into the lock.

  The noise and shuddering of the ship faded from his senses as he narrowed and narrowed his focus.

  He drew power from the heat in the planks he lay on and prepared himself for the strike that would free him.

  He heard an immense rumbling roar and force smothered him.

  The Others were awake finally.

  He fought them, but he was still more than half bound by the old spinning so his reach was lamentably short, the power he could call on so small it was whiffed out immediately.

  He screamed hate and rage at them, but could not get his curses past his tongue, the ties on it were iron-heavy, iron-hard.

  He struggled to unlock his hands, but failed.

  They were knowing and swift with their binding, but this time he was awake when they handled him and he learned more than they realized. Or so he hoped.

  It was godFire they called on, no wage or sorceror, witch or warlock could wield that Fire without a god behind him. Or her.

  Not Amortis

  His mind slowed and stiffened.

  Not Amortis

  I know

  I am sure

  Who? Don’t Know

  Don’t… kno… o… ow…

  2

  When he slid out of the darkness, his mind and body were sl000w annnnd stiifff.

  More than they were when his captors first nailed him in the crate.

  He remembered.

  That was the first thing he managed.

  While he was remembering, the sunlines appeared and disappeared in one blink of his eye.

  Appeared and disappeared, appeared and disappeared. Sound came to him, slowed down and stretched until they were no more than hollow groans without meaning. He listened and looked.

  A concept at a time, a word or a phrase, he explained to himself where he was and what was happening to him. The ship shivered continually.

  That bothered him until he understood it.

  The ship was moving with her usual grace at her usual speed; it was the difference between his timerate and hers that made her seem so jerky.

  She kept moving, no halts, no major changes in her motion.

  They were through the locks.

  He was angry.

  They’d slid him past WakKerrcarr before he had a chance to call the Prime.

  He wondered about WakKerrcarr.

  Tak must have known something peculiar was happening, he must have ignored it. That was typical of the man and his whims.

  He thought about Brann.

  It was a better world she lived in.

  She wouldn’t have dozed as someone was carried past her trapped in a web of demonspin. She’d have been down there finding out what was happening.

  He thought about Cheonea and wondered how his experiment was progressing.

  He hoped he’d laid a strong enough foundation to carry it on without him.

  Brann wouldn’t let him go look. You go back, she said, you won’t keep your hands off, you’ll adjust this thing and lop off that and before you know it, you’ll be the old kings reincarnated. Do you realize, he told her, how irritating it is when someone’s always right? She laughed at him and patted his cheek and went away to work on a pot or a drawing or something like that.

  He missed her.

  She was dear. Mother and sister and child in one.

  He thought of her walking into a trap like the one that had closed on him and he lost control.

  His mind shut down before he could gather its ravels, the world turned black, a mix of fear and rage like pine tar painted on him waiting to be fired.

  He woke thinking of her.

  How odd it is, he thought. In Kukurul I knew that she wouldn’t come back to Jal Virri, that I wouldn’t see her again, perhaps for years. I could contemplate that absence with equanimity because I knew… he thought about that… yes, because I knew we’d come together again. How odd it is. I hadn’t the least idea how painful the separation would be. We argue and she runs her hands through her hair, certain we’ll never ever resolve our differences. Or I go stomping off, sure of the same thing. A few hours later she laughs, or I laugh, it’s all so stupid, not worth remembering. She is dear.

  He started working at his bonds again.

  Much to his satisfaction, the erosion went faster this time. He knew them now, he knew the twists they put on their spells.

  He knew their arrogance; he’d felt their surprise as he’d come so close to escaping them.

  He knew how much an accident it was that they discovered his work before it fruited.

  He didn’t waste time cursing that accident; what happens, happens.

  They watched him closer for a while. He felt their probes sweeping through the crate whenever they decided to check on him.

  They’d left h
im alone for days now, he wasn’t sure how many days.

  Slipping into their old ways. Careless and rather stupid. Bang not brain. Use it or lose it.

  He grinned into the darkness, imagining Brann’s acerbic, probably nonverbal response to that list of clichйs. He rested a while and considered his captors.

  His mind-was moving more fluidly these days and he was again feeling the first touch of thirst.

  They should have suspected that might happen.

  They should have watched him more closely.

  They weren’t bothering to watch him.

  He smiled, a feral baring of his teeth that might have warned them if they’d been watching him, but they weren’t. Bang bang. Power. They trusted their power.

  They didn’t seem to understand how tricky a man could get even though he couldn’t match their power. Maybe they thought it would take him another thirty days to do what he’d done before. Maybe they expected to reach their homebase before he could get loose again.

  Dil Jorpashil.

  Sarimbara the Horned Serpent was god in Jorpashil. He thought about trying to wake the god.

  Sarimbara wouldn’t be happy knowing other gods and their demons were meddling in his territory.

  Sarimbara was a lazy god and spent decades dozing, merged with the earth below Jorpashil, his serpentine length coiled in complex knots; the Jana Sarise had hundreds of lullaby rituals because he was also a god with an infantile sense of humor or it might be a sublimely satiric sensibility; one’s idea about which concept applied depended on who he was doing what to. He was touchy about his prerogatives. Those who got too arrogant or proud found their noses rubbed in the mud. The Grand Isu, first among the Isun, could wake and find he was a rag-and-bone dealer, while a beggar sat in his place, eating his food off his fine porcelain, wearing his embroidered robes, enjoying his concubines. It had happened more than once. ANYTHING could happen when Sarimbara woke.

  The ship began slowing, weaving from one side of the river to the other as the channel permitted.

  There was traffic on the water now, going and coming.

  At times the master had to shift his ship as far out of the main channel as he could without grounding her and wait for barge strings to trundle past.

  In those quiet times Maksim heard the blatting of the long-legged sheep that the grassclan Temuengs raised, the whooping of the drovers as they moved a portion of their herds to market in Jorpashil.

  Sometimes he heard the shouted boasts of young clansmen heading for one of the river villages to celebrate this or that, get drunk, spend what coin they had, get themselves in trouble with the sedentaries and more often than not end up imprisoned or dead.

  The noises from the Grass got louder and more confused, the traffic in the river denser and slower.

  They were closing on Lake Pikma ka Vyamm.

  His hands shook.

  He fought down the urgency that screamed through him and continued with his slow, steady attack on the ties that held him helpless.

  A ring of ghost fragments hung like a neck-high mist outside the walls of Dil Jorpashil. The ship slid through the part of the ring that drifted over the river, warning him he had almost no time left.

  The soul mist flowed silently through the cracks in the crate, eddied about him and slowly drained away; the dead were silenced here as they were in most large cities, so all he got from them was a vague sadness and scattered pricks of rage.

  He clenched his teeth and continued picking at the spells that held him.

  The river didn’t enter Jorpashil, it flowed around the city in two broad streams, a moat thick with carp and flowering floating jeppu plants that together almost managed to clean up the sewage that emptied every day into the sluggish flows. The island thus created was five miles wide and six miles long. It rose from the lakeshore to green and lovely hills like multiple breasts; the high lords, the Isun, and the lesser lords, the Dhaniks, planted their gardens and built their elaborate sars up there, above the dust and noise of the busy, hectic city. Just below them were the whitewashed doulahars of the richest merchants. For the rest, the poor lived where they could, the artisans and small merchants had their quarters, the sublegal professions had theirs, traders and other visitors had their small enclave. Inns and taverns, theaters and arenas, local markets and businesses were dotted about wherever there was space and the prospect of customers.

  With acres of intricately intersecting alleys, clusters of tubby stores, daggerflags fluttering before them announcing their wares, ragged lines of open face kiosks piled with meats and fruit and every sort of foodstuff, the Great Market was laid out across the Lakequarter. Stuffed with bales, barrels, jugs, and sacks filled with the rich flow of goods that came up the river from Bandrabahr and by land along the Silk Road and lesser trade routes, low thick walled godons were built between the citywall and the lakeshore. The moorings for the river traffic were on the Lakeshore also, long heavy piers jutting half a mile into the water. Sarimbara’s piers. They were built on piles made from the trunks of giant drakhabars brought up the river on huge barges, three trunks to a barge, barge after barge during the summer cutting-season, year after year for fifteen years. A dozen piers splayed out like the fingers on two six-digited hands.

  They were there because Sarimbara woke from a doze one day and was annoyed with the clutter of ships scraping their keels against his mud, churning his waters into stinking soup. He decided the Grand Isu was going to do something to stop that nonsense. He demanded coin or service as worshipduty from everyone who ate from the Lake or the river, directly or indirectly, everyone who lived from the fruit of the land, directly or indirectly; in other words, he demanded something from everyone who lived in and around the city. He did some fancy manipulations on the wealthy and powerful to convince reluctant merchants, furious Dhaniks and supercilious Isun to contribute their proper share of the effort. After several haughty matrons and their puissant lords had visions of themselves scrubbing floors, gutting fish or mucking out stables, their enthusiasm for the project was exemplary.

  Fighting the powerful sweep of wind that came ramming across the Grass and then across the Lake, sending whitefoarn flowing across knifeblue glitter, blowing east to west, eternally blowing, fighting that wind, tacking and tacking again, the ship crossed to the north shore and dropped anchor by cliffs of crystalline white marble, screened from the east wind by a tall vertical fold of that marble.

  3

  Maksim kept working.

  He was so close to breaking the ties. So close. The ship jerked erratically at its mooring cables.

  The minutes stretched and stretched.

  He was close. So close.

  The crate fell apart around him.

  He screamed with rage.

  The iron locked his tongue down, no sound came out of him. The demons hovered about him, spherical glows like Yaril and Jaril but considerably larger.

  They began to move, flowing round and round him, faster and faster until they were a ring of light.

  He threw off the clinging remnants of his bonds.

  With a shiver of triumph, he bounded to his feet and flung himself at the rail.

  He passed through the shimmering ring, screamed aloud, finally finally aloud, vaulted the rail and plunged toward the water.

  And landed on his feet in an immense cavern, a great shimmering gem of a cavern like the inside of a monstrous geode.

  The demons hovered about him, seven nodes of golden light, adding a rich amber cast to the glitter of the crystals embedded in the stone arching over him, dipping under him.

  He screamed again, a basso bellow that echoed and reechoed, reinforcing and canceling the original sound.

  The figure on the massive throne raised a hand and compelled a sudden silence.

  Maksim lifted his hands to fight, opened his mouth to pour forth the syllables he’d stored against this moment. Nothing happened.

  Nothing came to him.

  He was mute.

&nb
sp; He was erased.

  His hands shook.

  His arms went limp, falling to his sides.

  “Maks, Maksi, Maksim, is that the way to greet your Master?”

  He stared, swallowed. He didn’t believe what he saw. Musteba Xa. Line for line, gesture for gesture, it was Musteba Xa.

  It couldn’t be.

  “You’re dead,” he said, was momentarily pleased to hear his own voice, then was afraid and angry.

  “I killed you,” he said. “I flung you into a place where nothing was.”

  Did they get him from my mind? he thought.

  No, he thought.

  I would know.

  I would know if they plundered me like that.

  Trembling with an ancient rage, an even older fear, he glared at the ancient evil old man.

  “I will not believe it,” he said.

  “You are dead, you are ash and nothing,” he said.

  He gazed into the eyes of what had to be a simulacrum and saw himself.

  Whoever or whatever sat there, it knew him to the marrow of his bones.

  “You always were a stubborn git, li’l Maks.” Musteba Xa (no, it wasn’t him, no, it couldn’t be him) lifted a crudely polished gemstone, a star sapphire the size of a man’s fist.

  Maksim tried to snap elsewhere, but the stone anchored him and he could not move.

  He fought to break free, but could not.

  The stone was one of the Great Talismans, Massulit the Sink, Massulit the Harvester, Massulit awkward and impossible, taking more skill to wield than any of the other talismans. Massulit in the hands of Musteba Xa. No. In the hands of that THING who chose to take his Master’s form.

  The Thing on the Throne began to chant, drawing threads of soulstuff from Maksim’s helpless body, gathering the threads in the heart of the Stone,

  He tried to fight.

  He slammed into a wall.

  For an instant he lost control and beat helplessly, futilely at that wall.

  Then he gathered himself and waited for what would happen next.

  They want something.

  They need me to get it.

  They need me alive.