A Gathering Of Stones dost-3

by Jo Clayton

  “Solid beyond?”

  “Yeh, for three-four feet. That’s far as I can reach.”

  “Got it. You know the drill, grab on.” Danny grunted as

  Felsrawg wrapped one arm about his biceps and shoved her other hand down behind his belt. Simms attached himself less impetuously but as firmly. Danny concentrated, tapped into the power stored in the flesh-accumulators, then snapped himself and the two thieves to the fifth lamp down. They landed heavily, Danny staggered, stood trembling as the other two unwrapped themselves and started on, both of them as matter-of-fact as if they did this kind of thing every day. It was a minute before he could follow them; he hadn’t been all that sure he could handle the weight and the complications of transporting them all together while he kept the shield intact. He’d half expected to fall short and end fried by that earthfire. He wiped the sweat off his face, caught up with that pair of idiots before they left the protection of the shield and hissed anathemas at them for their carelessness. Felsrawg laughed silently at him, patted his arm, then went back to work.

  They moved on in a flickering grayness, the nightlamps burning at intervals too wide to do more than dent the dark, down and down in a jagged spiral with witchtraps in every flat, some double, some triple, all lethal to any intruder without the resources of the team. Danny Blue was surprised at how well it was working. Felsrawg and Simms were like hostile cats circling each other and neither of them had much opinion of him and he was not all that fond of them, who could be? They were primed to kill him once things calmed down and the job was done, but now they clicked, they were amazing; every step he took, he felt better about this project. Down and down they went, down and down to the earth-chamber of the Henanolee Heart.

  Felsrawg was first again, senses taut, knives ready, dustpipe charged and clipped to her belt, her ring hand swaying in broad arcs before her. She was fierce, intent, silent. In an ordinary house she’d be unstoppable. Not here. Single traps she had no problems with, but her rings weren’t subtle enough to detect doubles and triples twisted inextricably together.

  Simms followed close behind her, fingers brushing the paneling, reading the flow as he moved, his tenor buzz going on and on, nonsense to amuse and distract any ghost that might take a notion to flash ahead and alert the watchwitches that intruders were wandering the hallways. Though Felsrawg’s rings were more sensitive than his natural talent, warning of traps and hidden alarums long before Simms was aware of them, once they reached whatever it was, he was able to read the nature and extent of the trap from the walls and floor; even the ambient air breathed information into him when he was working at peak. The bumbling idiocy he wore as an everyday mask had dropped away, the lazy amiability had vanished; he was a deadly and efficient predator.

  Danny Blue kept close behind, holding the shield tight about them, containing the psychic noise of their progress, lifting them again and again across the witchtraps he could not see. Again and again, sweating each time over his limitations. If he had all of Ahzurdan’s old skills he could jump straight to the Heart, bypassing all, the nasty surprises. He didn’t have them; what he had was a team of two thieves whose natural talents and hard-earned skill and, yes, some handy tools here and there, acted as a blind man’s white canes, showing him what he couldn’t see. What a team, he chanted to himself, what a team, too bad we can’t stand each other. What a team. What a team.

  Down and down they went, around the great spiral that screwed itself deep into the earthen center of the island, down and around until they stood at the end of the corridor looking into the Henanolee Heart.

  7

  The Heart was a six-sided brick-walled chamber with a domed roof. It was sunk in an opening carved into the living stone with the space between the chamber and the stone packed with tons of fine hard clay; in that clay, huge serpentine entities not-quite and not-quite-not elementals lay wrapped around the chamber, drowsing in a rest-state that was not-quite sleep. Each of the chamber walls had three arches in it, all but one with that off-white earth filling the bared space, openings where the serpents could emerge if they chose to, where they would emerge to crush any unwary intruder. The floor was white marble veined with gold, a Hexa of ruddy gold inlaid in it, a six-pointed star drawn around one circle and within another. In the inner circle was a low four-sided dais of white marble with three shallow steps on each side; on the dais was a black marble cube, its sides mirror smooth, reflecting the light from the gold-andcrystal lamps on each post of the brick arches. There was another lamp, larger; it hung in a webbing of gold chains from the apex of the dome, a crystal sphere with a sourceless gold flame burning in its heart.

  Klukesharna lay on the unadorned top of the cube, small, unobtrusive, an irregular strip of black iron no longer than a man’s hand.

  Felsrawg looked at her rings, shuddered. She held up her hand; the stones were on fire with warning.

  Simms touched his temple, squeezed his brows together; his eyes were filled with pain. Like Felsrawg, he said nothing. He’d stopped his song a few turns back, the ghosts had abandoned him, they didn’t like it down here.

  Danny nodded. He waved them back into the shadows of the HeartWay and stood in the arch looking across the chamber at the cube. The air was thick with wards; to his mindeye it was like reflections off seawater cast on a white wall, pulsing angular loops of light. He contemplated the chaos, trying to decide what to do. He could wipe them away, it wouldn’t be hard. Trouble was he had a notion that was all it’d take to wake the serpents. He didn’t want to do that.

  In the end it was simple. Tiring, yes, tedious, yes, but simple. The Ahzurdan phasma shivered with a mix of tension and fear; at first the Daniel phasma resisted everything he saw, then he got interested as he associated the wards with the control systems he knew better than the configuration of his own palms; he had an intuitive understanding of interactive systems, it was one of the talents that made him among the best of the stardrive engineers, and when he got bored with that, one of the best oam-offs around. Daniel Akamarino’s talent and training melded with Ahzurdan’s encyclopedic knowledge of wardfonns told Danny Blue in exhaustive detail exactly what he had to do. He picked up the wards one by one and eased them aside, clearing a path to the cube; he didn’t untie them or alter them in any essential way, he simply unhooked them from each other, rehooked them into another configuration. Like playing jakstraws with exploding straws. Simple. And oh so tedious.

  Heat built up under the shield; it was trapped there; he didn’t dare let it dissipate and wake the serpents. He might be able to handle them, but the battle to do it would most likely wake Coquoquin and a newly wakened god was bound to be cranky, a newly wakened god who found intruders messing around with one of her toys would escalate from crankiness to downright irritation. His voice went hoarse under the strain, his hands wanted to tremble, but that too he couldn’t afford, the gestures had to be smooth and con-

  trolled or he’d blow a ward which would be a lot worse than leaking a little heat. He ground his teeth together, blinked as perspiration dripped into his eyes. Felsrawg startled him dangerously when she swabbed at his forehead, but he managed to spare her a smile, then went back to work.

  An hour slid past. The clear passage drove deeper and deeper into the chamber. The serpents moved, he could feel them shifting, they were drifting up out of their vast placid slumber, drifting into dreamstate and uneasiness, crumbs of dirt broke from the earthfaces in the archways, there was a deep grumble in the earth around them, almost too low for his ears to hear it. Time and danger pressed down on him. Hurry, hurry, hurry…

  He resisted. The steady tedious untangling went on and on. Hurry hurry hurry… heads turned in the earth, blind eyes turned toward him, they weren’t awake yet, but they were beginning to dream of him. Hurry hurry hurry…

  The path was clear. Eyes fixed on Klukesharna, Danny thrust out his left hand. Simms put the false Klukesharna in it. Cold and heavy, black iron copy. Dead iron. He looked at Felsrawg, waited
while she wiped his face dry again. Arm held stiffly straight, he brought the false Klukesharna around in front of him. Lips drawn back in a feral grin, he bled the waste heat under the shield into the copy, giving it a false life. When the heat was sucked into the iron, he jerked his head toward the shadowy darkness up the HeartWay and waited until Simms and Felsrawg had retreated as far as they dared.

  He let energy build up in his hands, then let the chant roll through his mind, though he didn’t dare speak it aloud. The words poured silently out of him, wrote themselves in black and red in front of him. He opened his hand, holding the false Klukesharna in the crease between thumb and palm, the bitt hooked over his thumb. The words roared in his head, built to a mighty shout like a spill of black ink thrown across in front of him. The “key” jolted against his palm so hard he almost dropped it. He closed his fingers and felt Klukeshama recognize him, accept him. The exchange was made.

  He swung round, two pairs of eyes were watching him avidly. He put Klukesharna in a doubly shielded leather pouch, hung it around his neck and tucked it inside his vest. With an impatient gesture, he urged the two thieves up the Way. Behind him he heard creaks and groans as the ser-

  pents stirred again. Felsrawg shivered, glanced at her rings, wheeled and started up the ramp. Simms was slower to look away, but even more than Felsrawg he felt the building danger. He caught up with her, walked half a pace behind her, ready to read the traps again because there was a good chance they’d be asymmetric, entirely different when approached from the other side.

  Danny tightened down the shield until his own senses were tied in and he had to depend almost entirely on his companions.

  Asymmetry. They couldn’t trust anything they’d learned on the way down. Safe areas were no longer safe, the walls, the ceiling were set to erupt, they moved slower and slower until they were barely crawling. There was only one easing in the strain as they circled past the second coil of the HeartWay, the serpents were sinking back to sleep; that lessened the odds on Coquoquin waking and destroying whatever chance they had of getting away. Again and again and again Danny snapped himself and the others across the traps; again and again and again he Transformed air into a solid dome over them so they wouldn’t trigger the walls and the ceiling; again and again he poured energy out of his stores until they were empty and he was feeding on himself.

  Up and around they went until they reached the ground floor and moved through the hallways toward the door into the garden. Danny kept a wary eye on his companions; they weren’t going to do anything yet, not until they were out of this place, they weren’t fools, but afterward… he’d better not play the fool either. Gods, he was tired.

  A man came from one of the rooms, a servant of some kind, yawning, unhurried. His eyes opened wide as he saw them, his mouth opened to yell. A knife hilt bloomed in his throat. Felsrawg stooped as she came up with him, pulled the knife loose, avoiding the gush of blood with a minimum of effort. She wiped the blade on the dead man’s tunic, straightened and slid the knife into an arm sheath. She barely broke stride as she did all this.

  Danny Blue watched grimly; in less than twenty minutes he was going to be sitting on the liftsled with that at his back.

  They reached the door without further trouble. The man Felsrawg killed was the only person they saw during the whole time they were in the Henanolee. Once they were outside, Felsrawg collected her smothers, threw the clay out into the garden where the drizzle would melt it into the grass, then moved at a quick trot through the dark, heading for the hermitage. Simms loped after her, content to let her take the lead. Danny followed more slowly, loosening the shield a little to choke off some of the drain on his strength. He ached to stretch out and sleep for a year. In a while, he told himself, don’t let down yet, you’ve got what you wanted, now you have to keep it. He fashioned a cherry-sized will-o, dropped it down near his feet so he could see where he was walking; he was in no mood to flop on his face or stub his toes on roots or rocks. He trudged after them, muttering curses at the drizzle soaking into his clothes and trickling down his neck.

  At the entrance to the hermitage, Danny kicked the will-o up and into the darkness ahead, held his left hand canted before his face, palm out. “VRESH,” he shouted, the command shunting aside the spurt of dust aimed at his eyes; he continued the shunting gesture with an outsnap of his arm. “SOV,” he chanted, curling his fingers tight against his palm, all but one which he pointed at Felsrawg who was leaping at him, knives ready. She dropped, unconscious. He turned his glare on Simms who was leaning against the lathwork, arms crossed, no apparent interest in what was happening.

  Simms unfolded his arms, held his hands level with his shoulders, palm out. “Nothin’ to do with me.”

  “Keep it that way. Load her on the sled.”

  “Y’ got it.” He gathered up Felsrawg, laid her on the pallet, started to straighten.

  Danny curled his fingers again, snapped out the forefinger, pointing at the middle of Simms’ back. “Soy,” he murmured. He smiled as Simms collapsed across Felsrawg. “There it is,” he said aloud. “I should leave the pair of you right here. Let the Wokolinka play with you. Ah hell, I wouldn’t leave a rabid rat to face torture. Shut up, Sorceror,” he ,told the Ahzurdan phasma, who started protesting vehemently as Danny rearranged the unconscious pair so he’d have room to sit at the console. “I don’t give a handful of hot shit what you want.” The Daniel phasma watched with amiable satisfaction and more than a touch of self-congratulation at seeing his semi-son adopt his ethics over those of his rival and co-sire. Angry at both of them, Danny fed power into the lift field. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Danny Blue set the raft down on the balcony outside the door to his room. Before he could knock, it swung open and Trithil Esmoon came out. She raised her brows, mimed a question.

  “We got it,” he said. “Any trouble here?”

  “Not even an insomniac roach.” She looked past him at Felsrawg and Simms. “They dead?”

  “Them?” He shook his head. “Sleeping.” He glanced at his chron. “Be dawn in an hour or so, we won’t wait. I think I can nurse this thing as far as the horses. Once the Wokolinka wakes up to what happened, she’s going to shut this city down and shake it hard.”

  ##

  Working quickly, they loaded the gear onto the pallet, stowing it about the recumbent figures of the two thieves. Trithil Esmoon produced a reel of silk cord and helped Danny rope the pouches in place. She started to tie Felsrawg’s ankles, but Danny stopped her. “No need,” he said. “They’ll both be out till around mid-morning.”

  She straightened, gave him a small tight smile. “Me?”

  “Keep your hands to yourself.”

  She twiddled her fingers and laughed at him, her eyes flirted at him, very blue even in the dim fringes of the lamplight. “A promise; I swear it. Until you ask, Laz.”

  “Take off your rings.”

  “What?”

  “Take them off or join Felsrawg and Simms.”

  “I gave you my word.”

  “Fine. Now, put the rings away.”

  She looked at him a moment, looked away. “If I must.” She folded back her left sleeve, stripped the rings off her fingers and thumb, dropping them into the hem-pocket and turned the sleeve back to fall in graceful points about her knuckles. “Are you satisfied?”

  He grunted. “You’ll sit on my left, that arm away from me.”

  The door was still open, the pale yellow light streaming out to lose itself in the drizzle. She stood in the light, her body outlined by it, her fine hair shining like silver silk. The yellow light slid off her elegant cheek, put a liquid glimmer between her lashes, gilded her upper lip, her chin. She was unreal, beauty like that was unreal. He stared at her; he was tired, so tired he was looking at her through a haze. He had no desire for her, no need to touch to take her. He simply looked and kept on looking because he couldn’t turn away. Her hands were lifted, unmoving yet indescribably graceful in their stillness.
She dropped them to her sides and the spell was broken.

  “Climb on,” he said. “Be with you in a minute.” He turned his back on her and went to the end of the sled. As she settled herself in front of the pouches, he squatted beside the energy sinks. Despite having to wrestle stormwinds during the trips to and from the Henanolee Heart, the sled hadn’t used much power; the sinks were still two-thirds full. He was the empty one, exhausted in both senses of the word. He flattened his hands over the cells, drew power from them into his own accumulators; he’d bleed it off later, use it to wash out some of the fatigue poisons clogging his mind and body. He had to stay awake; he had to watch the trau Esmoon. He trusted Trithil Esmoon less than the thieves, though her weapons were easier to combat-as long as he kept away from those venomous rings. He broke the contact and stood.

  The rain had diminished in force until it was hardly more than a heavy mist. The towers rising around the Inn were dark; he couldn’t see the streets, but he knew from the silence that they too were dark and empty; the island was sunk in its end-of-season weariness. There were no lights anywhere-except in his bedroom. He scowled, snapped his fingers, muttered a word; the lamps went out, making the dark complete. He wiped fog off his face, walked briskly to the front of the sled and settled himself behind the console.

  9

  The sled broke through into a silver-gray world of moonlight and starlight and boiling cloud floor. It was cold up there above the rain. Danny shivered, sneezed, swore. He released energy into his body, flushing out some of his fatigue, reinforcing his immunities. It was no time to catch a cold, he had enough problems with that poison eating at him. And three efficiently murderous companions.