A Gathering Of Stones dost-3

by Jo Clayton

  She silvered and activated the pentacle, insinuated herself into the realities and drifted, waiting for the call. There was no urgency, only a quiet need; it took longer she couldn’t tell how long her time-sense was useless here it might have been seconds or parts of a single second but finally the pull came and she eased through into an immensity that would have frightened her if she stopped to think, but she went swimming so swiftly that the darkness and the cold was only a mountain pond, she swanned through the dark and floated over the face of a world turning and turning in the light of a yellow sun. Sand and more sand, sand and brush and sand-colored cats prowling after herds of sand-colored deer. She dipped lower. Mancats with snakes for hands and four legs padding pacing loping over the sand. Mancats with eyes that knew. She called one and he came to her, he came rushing at her, she hadn’t realized how big he was, how powerful. She smelled him. He reeked but it was an attractive stink, sensual, sexual. Hunt for me, she called to him. Hunt for yourself and hunt for me.

  He shook himself, considered her. She felt his consent given and threw a mindseine about him. In some way, he leaned into her, helping with the shift. He was amused at the whole thing, curious, intensely immensely curious. Pleased at having the chance to travel away from his sandhills. He landed on the ground outside the pentacle and settled on his haunches, his massive head turning and turning, his black nostrils flaring as he tasted the air. She thought a geyker at him. He rumbled his assent, went loping off into the grass.

  She flowed away again, floated aimlessly awhile, until a sweet-tart smell invaded her. She followed it into richness, a world lush with fruit, ripe fruit, oozing with juice. She drifted among the trees, choosing, dropping the fruit into a mindnet woven tighter than before. When she had as much as she could eat that night and the next day, she drifted back, carrying her gleanings with her. She juggled that fruit as the mindnet came apart when she touched down, dropped pieces that cracked open but were, otherwise still edible. She piled it all by her knee and looked around. The mancat was close, she could smell him on the wind.

  A moment later the grass parted and he came carrying a dead geyker. He laid it on the ground beside the pentacle and trotted off again. She looked at it. Lyre-shaped horns like polished jet. Black nose with blood coming from it like threads of ink. Rough, brindled coat in its winter growth, the guard hairs longer than her hand. Silken white ruff about the long neck, spattered and matted with more blood. Split hooves, black and sharp as knives. Tail like a flag, black above, white below. A good plump beast with its winter fat in place. She sighed and sang the old tributesong her people in the Vale sang over their butchered stock, giving its beastsoul rest and rebirth. Then she settled herself to wait until the mancat was finished with his own business and ready to go home with his prizes.

  16

  She progressed across the plain. There was no other word for it. She was a rolling storm of magic accompanied by demons, delivering fresh meat to the hostels, fruit and fish; she was a cornucopia of good things and generous with them, trading meat for stable space and sleeping room, leaving more always than she bargained with. One mancat after another came to her, hunted for her and himself, played with her, teased her, took pleasure in this other place, gave way to the next mancat and that one to the next, each one of them grinning that terrifying tender toothy grin, each one of them full of good humor and delight.

  Tre came. “What are you doing?” he shouted at her. “What are you doing? Stop it. You’re asking for trouble. You’re asking to be challenged. Stop it. What are you doing?”

  She waited until he ran down. “I’m saving coin and staying healthy. You want me to stop? Fund me, Tre. I’m spending my Passage gift for you, I’ve probably lost my chance to apprentice to Maksim. Either bring me some coin or leave me to do this my way.”

  The eidolon shivered, anger flared around her, brushing against her skin like nettle leaves, burning. Then with an almost tangible, almost audible pop, her brother’s eidolon vanished. She trembled. After a few moments of nausea that had nothing to do with morning sickness, she started crying. There was an aching emptiness inside where her love for her brother had been. She hadn’t stopped loving the boy she knew once, but he was gone. Whoever it was caught in crystal was not her brother. Not any more.

  17

  Dil Jorpashil.

  Korimenei stopped to buy tea and trailfood and look around the city, relishing the Market with its noise, its cacophany of color and smell; it reminded her of the Market at Silili and she was brushed with a pleasant melancholy at the thought. Already her days at school seemed as if they’d happened to someone else in another lifetime and they’d taken on the golden patina of nostalgia.

  The day she left, while she waited on a ferry landing for a riverboat to pass, heading south, she saw a woman standing at the rail looking back at the city, a widow in black robes with a small M’darjin page at her side. Drinker of Souls, Korimenei thought, startled. I wonder what she’s doing here? She didn’t know how she knew who the woman washer hair was black, her face was different-but she did. She watched the boat glide away and thought she’d know the feel of that woman anywhere, whatever face or shape she wore. Drinker of Souls. Hmm.

  The ferryman wound his cable from the water, rang his bell. Along with some noisy grassclanners from the south who were heading home after a hectic time in the city, she led her ponies onto the flat. She stood between the two beasts, trying to ignore the nomads; they were young and randy, on the loose and apt to see a stray female as fair game.

  When the ferry reached the far side, she let them ride off ahead of her. When she came off, they were waiting. She put on an ASPECT, was suddenly twelve feet tall with world-class warts and fangs that curved down past her chin. They took off, screaming. Amused and rather pleased with herself, she led the ponies past the stubby pillars that marked the resumption of the Silk Road, mounted and rode toward the Dhia Asatas, the daughters of the setting sun, invisible now behind a shroud of the thick gray clouds.

  IV: Danny Blue

  Having been trapped by a cabal of Dirge Arsuiders, injected with poison and ordered to bring back the Talisman Klukeshama in return for the antidote to the poison, Danny Blue and the back-up help (two thieves and a courtesan) provided by the Arsuid Ystaffel climbed aboard the riverboat Pisgaloy and started for Hennkensikee.

  1

  At sunrise on the fifth day after she left Dirge Arsuid, the riverboat Pisgaloy rounded a long low knoll that was thick with mighty millenarian oaks and pointed her nose at Hennkensikee on the island cluster half a mile out in Lake Patinkaya. The sun was gilding the pointed roofs and the walls dissolved in glitters reflecting off water hard and bright as knife blades. The Pisgaloy leaned into the uncertain wind and clawed her way up the last stretch of free water.

  Hennkensikee was tall and toothy, built of red brick fired from clay taken eons ago from the banks of the north rim of the lake. The ovens that fired the bricks were abandoned when the job was done; these days they were pits like pocks with snag-tooth beams poking through thistles and nettles and ragweed; the city witches went hunting herbs around there because they had ten times the potency of those picked elsewhere. In the days when the pits were roaring with the kiln fires, the god Coquoquin took the bricks and laid the walls of Hennkensikee, the towering curtain wall and the needle towers within, weaving the courses into complex, continually changing patterns, a subtle dance of design across all the surfaces, invisible at any great distance, meant to please eyes and fingertips simultaneously. She built and watched over a city of subtleties, of fountains playing in hidden, courtyards, glimpsed through a confusion of arches or heard but not seen, of faces behind screens of wood and ivory, of layered fragrances from incense burned at every door. A city of patterns but no color, the brick was dull, the wood stained dark; the figures moving unhurriedly though the narrow winding streets wore black wrappings, rectangles of cloth wound about and about their bodies, a second, shorter rectangle rope-anchored to the Lewinkob lo
ng heads, male and female alike, falling like shrouds about squat Lewinkob bodies.

  The Pisgaloy circled carefully wide about the island group and crept up to the end of a pier that extended like a finger into the Lake. A motley collection, all sizes, shapes and genders, the passengers went streaming off with their packs of tradegoods or sacks of coin. Danny Blue and his associates came ashore in the middle of the flood, joined the line formed up at the gate and waited for the Wokolinka’s inspectors to let them into the city.

  Trithil Esmoon was draped in the robes and embroidered veil of a Phrasi courtesan, not all that different from what she wore in Arsuid. Simms was nondescript in a new way, hair brushed back flat against his skull, his clothing a mix of dark grays and black; the colors suited him better than the reds and pinks he favored when not working, but nothing could make him handsome.

  Felsrawg was enjoying herself. She looked fierce enough to slaughter a regiment of rapists. Her black hair was pulled up tight to the top of her head except for three earlocks on each side of her face; it was twisted into a spiral knot that added several inches to her height. Twin gold skewers with animal heads for knobs were driven through that knot and rose like horns above it. She’d replaced her earstuds with long gold arrowpoints on gold rings; they danced with every move of her head. A black leather tunic was laced tight to her slim body over a white silk blouse with long loose sleeves that hid her knives; with this she wore a narrow black leather skirt slit to the hip on the left side and black leather boots with razor-edged spurs strapped to them.

  “Tirpa Lazul, Trader, out of Bandrabahr, come for the silk sale,” Danny told the beard behind the table. “My associates,” he waved a hand at the others. “The hanoum Hays, also Phrasi, companion. Hok Werpiaka, trader’s son, out of Silili, traveling to learn the markets.”

  “He’s not Hina.”

  “No. Croaldhese. His family moved to Silili for… hmm… political reasons some generations back. The other is Second Daughter Azgin kab’la Savash, Matamulli up from the Southland to earn her dowry.”

  “Looks like she’s wearing part of it.”

  “You got it.”

  “One taqin each, any silver coin will do, provided it weighs at least five tunts. Drop them in the pan. Good.” He emptied the coins from the balance pan into a leather box, pushed four wooden plaques across the table. “Keep these on you at all times. Be quick to show them if a S’sup asks to see them. Curb all uncouth behavior in the streets or elsewhere, except in the taverns. We are not barbarians, we realize our visitors need relaxation. However, this must be kept within limits and inside where it will not offend our eyes. Exceed those limits or provide reason for a complaint against you, and you will be warned first, then fined, then ejected. There is no appeal from a Tsi-tolok’s judgment. Have you questions? No? Good. You may pass.”

  2

  For two days and two nights they poked about in Hennkensikee, the walls constraining them, the only interiors open to them the great warehouses where dour old women spread silks on padded tables and squeezed the last tiny copper from the circling bidders. Trithil Esmoon reclaimed her hithery and the old women leaned toward her as if they smelled her sweetness, sniffed it in to compare with ancient memories the scent rewakened in them, tumbling over themselves to answer her questions.

  While Danny Blue and Trithil Esmoon played their cover games in the fragrant dimness of the warehouses, Felsrawg explored the city, insofar as she could, plotting thieftracks on its walls, climbing and entering in her mind the needle towers and tall square houses with their high-peaked roofs and ogeed windows. Shuttered windows, unglazed, outsider eyes blocked by wood-and-ivory screens carved in intricate serpentines pierced and repierced, the wood age-dark and tougher than iron, Fingers and mind both itched as she read the chances; she wanted to climb those walls and work her way past the screens, to puff in the sleep powders and prowl in darkness hunting for the treasures she knew lay inside. She watched the colored liquids of her skry ring shift and coil beneath the crystal as they registered and reacted to the wards and traps; a glance was all she needed to know how weak and careless the ward-setter had been. She could slide through slick as a serpent slipping down a mousehole. She kept moving, ignoring the Lewinkob who turned to look at her and follow her with their eyes. Twice she was stopped by one of the armored S’supal, the Wokolinka’s amazon guards. She played Second Daughter with zest, exulting as she fooled them; the cockiness might have sunk her, but they knew Matimulli and discounted it. By evening on the second day she’d got all she could and was beginning to repeat. She went to the meeting that night filled with impatience, irritation and anxiety. The sooner the job was done, the sooner she could claim the antidote.

  Simms drifted about, his hair damped and darkened, his gray and black clothing and his stocky shape much like the other Lewinkob men walking around him, though he lacked the billowing beards they favored. He went into pocket parks, havens of greenery open to the public, and made himself available to the ghosts who blew about the streets, courts and public spaces, looking wistfully after the locals who more or less ignored them. He let them tell their stories and listened to their complaints, slipping in a word now and then to nudge them in directions he wanted them to go. When he wasn’t talking to ghosts or doing his own thieftracks, he was leaning against walls, staring vacantly at the sky, listening to the ancient bricks tell their long creaky tales. By the evening of the second day, he too was beginning to hear things twice.

  3

  Danny Blue strolled around the room, checking the wards he’d woven about the windows and set into the threshold of the door; there was almost dust on them, they were so untouched. Carelessness on the guardians’ part, but he wasn’t about to fault them for it. He opened the door a crack and set the ward to admit three, then snap closed again. Witches made him nervous, he liked them best when they were tired or lazy. Against possible overlooking, which they could do through anything belonging to the city, he’d brought an old sheet from Arsuid. To keep it from being contaminated when he wasn’t using it, he left it rolled within a warded leather sack which he hung from a peg beside the wardrobe. He took the sheet from the sack, snapped it open and spread it on the floor. He stepped onto it and lowered himself until he was sitting cross-legged. The others were elsewhere at the moment, though they were due to join him soon. He was content to sit and wait, to enjoy these few blessed moments alone. Because she was supposed to be his concubine, Trithil Esmoon was sharing his room and his bed. She was always there, always… Last night she’d turned to him, all warm and enticing and he told her to shut it off; he didn’t trust her an inch and wasn’t about to give her that kind of hold on him.

  He thought about that, grimaced. It’d been a long dry spell. Last time he’d had a chance at sex, he’d been with Brann and got knocked cold because he was too rough with her; it was enough to put anyone off his stroke to get half the life sucked out of him in medias res as it were. He thought about that now, uneasy because he wasn’t reacting to Trithil as he’d expected to. Even when she turned on the hithery. He worried it around and around, then decided he could live with it. He decided he needed the sense that there was at least some reciprocity involved, more than mingled sweat, spittle and other fluids. She was a splendid fake, but fake she was, and he couldn’t forget that no matter how skillfully she counterfeited her responses. He couldn’t forget how cold and uninterested she was when she dropped the mask. He thought about Felsrawg and smiled as he pictured her. Her passions burned from the bone out; she prided herself on her gambler’s face, but a child could read what she was feeling. She’d make a scratchy armful, but she wouldn’t be boring. She was making signs like she’d be willing to try it out and see what happened. He rubbed at his chin, shook his head. Remember, old Dan, she might look frank and frisky and forthcoming, but she has orders to off you and take the talisman; if you doubt she’d do it, you’re playing head games with yourself.

  Felsrawg pushed the door open, stalked in with the
coiled energy of a hungry puma. She dropped onto the sheet and sat fidgeting with one of her knives. She kept glancing at the door, frowned impatiently when Simms came strolling in and settled beside her on the sheet. She turned the frown on Danny Blue. “Where’s the boor?”

  Danny shrugged.

  Felsrawg took a bit of soft leather from one of her pockets, began polishing the blade. “Leader, hunh! Old cow would do more.”

  “Take over, do it better.”

  “Don’t think I wouldn’t if I could handle wards and witches.”

  “Then shut up till you can.”

  “Hah.” She stopped her hands, stared pointedly at the mussed bed. “I can see where you’ve got your mind on other things, but couldn’t we get this klatch moving? If the hoor wants to know what’s happening, we can catch her up when she gets here.”

  “We wait. The ward is open till she crosses the threshold.” Felsrawg made a spitting sound, went back to polishing the blade.

  Twenty minutes later Trithil came undulating in. She stripped off her veil, tossed it on the bed and took her place on the sheet.

  Danny waited until he felt the ward click shut, then he flattened his hands on his thighs and looked at each of the others. “Any ideas about getting across those bridges to the Henanolee Heart?”

  Simms pursed his mouth, shook his, head. “I went an’ leaned ‘gainst one of the gate piers this end the firs’ bridge. Bridge be trapped. “‘Larums an’ sinks. Either the S’sulan drop on you, or y’ get dropped to the eels that live in the straits ‘tween the islands. What 1 know ‘bout the S’sulan, better the eels. Ghosts say this: the S’wai, that the witches, they lower’n the belly of a starvin’ snake. What they mean, the S’wai they tired. Burnt out. Been a long, hard season an’ it coming up on Closeout so they lutist’ down, doin’ the min, y’ know.”