A Gathering Of Stones dost-3

by Jo Clayton

  Centered and ready, she sank into silence, letting the sounds of the waking forest flow through her. Hands on thighs, she sat not-thinking, not-waiting, open to whatever came to her.

  Presently she was swimming among the realities as she had on the third night of her Ordeal. At first she wandered without direction, then she felt a tug. She flashed faster and faster past the layered realities, the infinite, uncountable elsewheres, faster and faster until she burst into one of them, a universe of heat and light where salamandri swam in oceans of sunfire.

  She drifted, pushed here and there by the lightwinds. Salamandri swam to her, hovered about her.

  She contemplated them. Pulsing slippery shapes, constantly changing, growing extra limbs, absorbing them, growing denser, attenuating, shortening, lengthening, they were vaguely like the rock skinks she played with when she was a child. She caught one in a mindseine because once upon a time she’d caught a skink in a net she’d knotted for herself. It lay passive, eyespots fixed on her though she doubted it actually saw her. She caught another and another with no more reason than the first, went on catching them until their weight began to strain the meshes of her mind.

  She drifted with her captives. They glowed like coals at the heart of a fire, redgold-whitegold, flickers of blue. She was reluctant to release them though she had no thought of using them. It took no effort to hold them, they were not struggling, they seemed content to stay with her. They warmed her, pleased her eyes and oddly enough her palate.

  She felt a sudden twinge and started to move.

  She came to the membrane at the edge of the reality. The salamandri stirred, gracefully undulant.

  She thought about releasing them. She thought about taking them with her. Vaguely she understood the danger in that. She knew it in her mind but not in her bones. Yes, she thought. Yes. I can, I must, I will.

  Dragging the netted salamandri behind her, she broke through the membrane. Faster and faster she fled, running for her homeplace. Faster and faster until she was sitting within the pentacle, the salamandri swooping in swift orbits about its outer rim, turning the moonsilver red with their fires; around and around they raced, keening their anger and their triumph in a high, terrible whine.

  They fought her. They were wiry, wild, leaping against her hold, their bodies were hard and strong, bumping, bumping, bumping against her. They’d lain passive all this time to catch her napping; they knew what she was, they knew she’d come for them, knew it before she did; they knew there was a world they could plunder and burn. They fought her and nearly won free before she hardened her hold on them.

  She hadn’t actually handled demons before, that was meant to happen when she had a Master backing her, but she drew on analogs from her training and descriptions of the process from her teachers; she cast lines at them, sank hooks into them, seven lines for seven salamandri. They lunged at the cedars with their enticing explosive resins. She jerked them back. The tips of several fronds sizzled, filling the air with an acrid green fragrance. That was all they got, the trees stood intact, untouched.

  She laughed. “I’ve done it. I’ve really done it,” she shouted to the night. “I have summoned demons.” She was sweating though, and underneath the laughter she was shaking. She refused to acknowledge that and broke the demons to her hand. They swung round and round her, keening, sad. Round and round until she rode their senses and reined their bodies. Round and round until they answered her will as swiftly and surely as her own body did.

  She sent them arcing up over the trees, out along the river, racing faster than the wind, pulsing eerie unsteady fireforms flitting over the water.

  They came to the Lock House_ The windows were shuttered against them, the door was barred. They burned through a wall. The deadpriest tried to turn them. The lead salamander shot out a long red tongue and licked his face off the bone. The warleader slashed at one and saw his blade melt. The salamander wrapped itself about the man and a moment later dropped a chalky skeleton and swooped on.

  What Korimenei received through their senses was strange beyond anything she could have imagined, but she learned to read it and kept them from the House, its furniture, everything but the men. Only the men, she droned at them, over and over, only the men. She kept them from the captive girls, though a quick hot death might have been more merciful than life after what the raiders had done to them. She counted the kills and when the number was fifty-five, she jerked on the leashes and called the salamandri back to her.

  They didn’t want to come. They wanted to burn and burn until the world burned with them, hot and glorious and wholly theirs. They fought her; they turned and twisted and contorted themselves, trying to throw out the hooks. They flung all their weight and strength against the lines again and again and again, they never seemed to tire. Every inch she won from them was contested with a fury that seemed to increase as her own strength decreased.

  She faltered. A salamander leaped away; it almost broke free. The jerk tore something inside her. She struggled to enfold and smother the pain and at the same time keep her hold on the demons. If they got loose… She didn’t dare admit even the possibility of failure. She pulled the demons to her and they came, slowly, painfully, but surely, they came. They brushed against tree tops and the trees burned. They cawed their pleasure, jarring shrieks that started high and squeezed to a thready wail as the sound soared out of hearing; they swung at the ends of, the lines, back and forth, back and forth, working at her, changing the direction, the force, the intensity of the pull. She trembled. She was so weary. She couldn’t think. She /led on and held on. Inch by slow, torturous inch, she dragged them back to her. Strength oozed out of her. So tired. So tired. Her muscles were mush. Every nerve in her was vibrating raggedly. She was going to give way. There is a point beyond which will cannot drive body. She was reaching it, but she held on, she held…

  Coolness spread over her like a second skin, the waves of shivering slowed and smoothed out, a flow of energy came like water into her. She lifted her head and whipped the salamandri across the final stretch, brought them to her whimpering and cowed. She wasted no time with them, she squeezed them into a clot of fire and flung them back where she’d found them,,sealing the aperture behind them.

  Coolness peeled off her and pooled in her lap, weariness flooded back. The pool sublimed to mist, the mist swirled and billowed, took a familiar form. Ailiki.

  When Ailiki was solid again, her plush fur neatly in place, her catmouth open in her mocking catgrin, Korimenei lifted her, held her eye to eye. “Once upon a time I said watch my back, Aili my Liki. You make one fine bodyguard, Lili.” She settled the mahsar in her lap, smoothed her hand again and again down Ailiki’s spine. Breathed the syllables that banished the moonsilver, erased the pentacle. Earth was earth again, air was air. “Ahhhh, I’m tired, my Liki. Consequences, gods! I could have burned the world to ash. One salamander was enough to handle that pitiful bloody bunch. Shuh! More than enough. So I bring in seven? Pride, my Liki. Carelessness. Jah’takash must’ve been beating her pig bladder about my fool head, dubbing me idiot, fatuity supreme. I won’t try anything like that again soon. I won’t be awake enough, I’m going to sleep for a year.”

  A laugh. She looked up. A lantern swinging by his knee, Karoumang came from under the trees. “I’ve known women like that. I take it you managed to come up with something. What were those streaks?”

  “Salamandri. You don’t have to worry about the raiders any more.” She yawned, thought about rubbing gritty eyes, but her arms were too heavy, too mushy to lift that far, “You going to sit there the rest of the night?”

  “Probably. Unless someone feels like carrying me.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Tired, terrified, and frozen.”

  He lifted his lantern, turned the lightbeam on her face. “Preemalau’s fins! If you were dead, you’d look better.”

  “Thanks for telling me, huh.” She giggled, then sobered. “I came close, Karou. Came close to kil
ling you and everything. I nearly lost control of them.” She yawned again, slumped over Ailiki, her head swimming.

  He swore, took a step toward her stopped. “I’ll be back. One minute.”

  She was barely conscious when he returned with one of his sailors, a man name Prifuan. Karoumang scooped her up and started for the ship; Prifuan came along behind them with the lanterns and the rest of her gear.

  7

  Karoumang took the Miyachungay cautiously up the river, moored her between the bulwarks and sent Prifuan and four more ashore to work the gates. The girls from the village saw this and crept from the trees; they were bloody, bruised, dressed in clothing salvaged from the dead and deep in shock. Women among the deck passengers took charge of them, got them cleaned up, fed, wrapped them in blankets; they petted the story out of the girls, gasped and sympathized in the proper places, got the names of kin in the next Lock village and carried the information to Karoumang.

  Korimenei slept through all this. She slept through the stir at the next lock as the girls went ashore and Karoumang consulted with the village elders. She was deep, deep asleep as Prifuan and his four arrived; they’d been left behind to open the gates once the Miyachungay was far enough upriver. She slept for three more days, woke to find the Miyachungay past the locks and moving through a dun and dreary landscape.

  When she stepped onto the deck, wind beat at her, the dust it carried scoured every inch of bare flesh. She went back and dug out the despised veil, belted the hanging panels so they wouldn’t flap about too badly and tried the deck again. She picked her way through shrouded bales and climbed to Karoumang’s favorite perch. He was there now, wearing a Temueng headcloth, the ends wrapped about his face, leaving only his eyes free.

  “Well,” he said. “You found a use for it after all.” He rubbed his thumb over the veil where it snugged against her cheek. “How you doing otherwise?”

  “Well enough. One of these days I might even be hungry again.” She stood at the rail and looked around. “This is lovely stuff, Karon. Hunh. Where are we?”

  “Ambijan. Nine days to Kapi Yuntipek.” He turned his back to the wind, pulled her closer, sheltering her with his body.

  “All of them like this?” She leaned against him, smiling under her veil, drowsy and comfortable.

  “Long as we’re in Ambijan. Five days, six if there’s more cargo than I expect at Limni Sacca’l.”

  “I’m surprised you get anything. Who’d live here?”

  “Ambijaks. They’re all a little crazy.”

  She slapped at her breasts, raising a dust cloud of her own. “I believe it. Mind my asking, what DO you get here?”

  “Canvas. Jaxin do some of the tightest weaving you can find anywhere. Need to, I suppose. Keep the dust out. I use it whenever I need new sails. Jaks make colorfast dyes, there’s always a good market for those, especially new colors. Drugs. Opals. There are mines in the back country somewhere. I don’t ask.” She felt rather than heard his soft laugh. “Ambijaks spend words like blood. Their own blood, not yours, they’re generous with yours. Crazy. But they know me so they keep it down some.”

  “Mmm.” Despite the veil her eyes were watering and the skin of her face was starting to burn. She looked past his head, tried to see the sun. All she saw was a dull tan sky. “What time is it?”

  “Coming on third watch. Want lunch?”

  “Getting that way. I think I’ll go back down, this wind is peeling the skin off me flake by flake. Any chance of a bath?’

  “If you’ll work for it.”

  “Scrub your back, huh?”

  “You got it.”

  She rubbed her shoulder against him. “Anything, Captain Sad, I’ll do anything to get clean.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. We might even manage some hot water.”

  “Ah, bliss to be alive and in your presence.” She giggled, eased out of the circle of his arm and bent into the wind as she started down.

  8

  The Miyachungay traveled upstream day on dreary day. The Wansheeri was sluggish here, winding around broad bends and serried oxbows. It carried a load of silt and occasional animal carcasses, but few snags; in Ambijan trees were an exotic species, any floaters that got so far from the mountains were seized by the Jaks and hauled ashore as soon as they were spotted. The wind blew steadily out of the east, cold dry wind, engendering melancholy and distraction. The sound of it never stopped, it muted everything, reduced the comfortable small noises of the boat to whimpers; words were unintelligible a few paces away from the speaker; crew and passengers alike communicated with grunts or single shouted words, no more. The pressure of it never stopped; it drove west, west, west without letup. When the river turned east, they fought to shove the boat forward against the wind; when it turned west, if they lost their concentration a single moment and let the wind take her, it could jam her into the bank before they had a chance to recover; getting her around some of those bends took sweat and prayer and curses in nearly equal amounts. It was almost worse when she pointed straight north; then the wind threatened to blow her sideways. Karoumang got little sleep, a few hours of sweaty nightmare filled with snatches of horror. He was wild and rough when he took Korimenei those nights, using her to ease his wind-frayed nerves, the grinding tension built up during the day. He didn’t care who she was, only that she was there. She should have resented that; other times, other circumstances she would have been furious, she would have given him a scar or three to remember her by, but she wasn’t thinking these days, the wind was getting at her too; she was rough and wild as he was, she used him for needs that would have terrified and shamed her a month or two ago, and slept like she was slugged when it was over.

  When they slid through a tattered ghostring into the lee of Kapi Yuntipek, even the Miyachungay seemed to sigh with relief.

  9

  A pseudopod of the ghost stuff ringing Kapi Yuntipek stayed with Korimenei as she rode away from the city a week later, a clotted white finger set firmly on her, unable to touch her; she ignored it, kept her pony pacified and moving along at a steady walk. Behind her, Ailiki perched on the pack pony, calming the little gelding and holding him in place. Abruptly the pseudopod snapped back and they were moving through a bright chill day; the air was so clear the mountains seemed close enough to touch.

  The Silk Road was not much of a road despite its fame. It was a dusty path marked by stone cairns spread so that the pile ahead came into view as the pile behind sank below the horizon. At the moment it was winding in lazy curves through the thin rind of small farms north of the city, going across bridges like hiccups over narrow ditches, thumbnail scratches filled with water from the river. Temu serfs working in the fields straightened and watched her, their dark eyes wary and hostile. The land they stood on belonged to the Kangi Pohgin, the Headman of Kapi Yuntipek; they were worked until they dropped, two-thirds of every harvest was taken from them, they were exposed to depredations from stray raiders out of the Temueng grassclans and bandits sweeping down from the mountains; they expected nothing but harassment from everyone outside their own families. They reminded her of the lowlanders in Cheonea; they had the same hard, knotty look, the same secret stares, the same sense they were rooted to the landheart, mobile manshaped extensions of the soil they stood on. If she gave them any opening they would swarm over her and leave nothing but bones behind; that was in their eyes and the set of their bodies.

  When she came out of the farms she rode between walls of Temu grass that reached past her stirrups, swaying in the eternal east wind, the individual rustles of stalk rubbing against stalk sunk into a vast murmuring whole. It was a hypnotic sound. She swam in it, breathed it; after an hour or so she seemed to hear voices in it whispering secrets she couldn’t quite make out. North and east of the city the grass stretched out and out, to the horizon and past, an ocean of yellow and silver-dun, rippling, constantly changing color, subtle changes, barely distinguishable shades of the base colors. An ocean of grass wide as any wate
r ocean.

  The piercing, aching loneliness she’d felt in the city fell gradually away from her as she shed the sense of pressure, of neediness, the hurry-hurry, get-on-with-it that afflicted her within those walls; she settled into the long slow rhythms of the land, birth, growth, death, rebirth, inevitable, unchanging, eternal. She was an infinitesimal mote in that immense landscape, but she didn’t feel diminished, no, it was almost as if her skin had been peeled back so she was no longer closed within it but was intimately a part of that vast extravagant sky, that shimmering ocean of grass.