A Gathering Of Stones dost-3

by Jo Clayton

  “They were my backup getting Klukeshama.” He smiled lazily at Felsrawg. “And sent along to slide a knife between my ribs once we got her.”

  “Shuh! I don’t think much of your taste.”

  “Not mine.”

  “Minh.” She tapped the mancat on his shoulder. Lower your urn arms a little, my friend; I need to get at the woman’s neck. After he readjusted his tentacles, she put pressure on the carotid until Felsrawg was unconscious. Put her down, thanks. Anything I can do for you? No? Well, let’s send you home. She pulled her mindseine about him and snapped him back to his sandhills, promising in transit to visit him, them, again when things weren’t so hectic.

  When she looked around, Danny Blue was watching her, a hungry look on his face. She didn’t understand. He was a sorceror and a ripely Talented one if her nose wasn’t fooling her. Gods of Fate and Time as Maks would say-why am I thinking of Maksi-that’s his business not mine, Tungjii’s blessing on us both for that.

  He shook off whatever it was on his mind. “You going to wash the poison out of them, Kori? I wish you would. I don’t owe this pair anything, but poison!” He dredged up a wry grin. “Besides, the only way I know of to get rid of them is kill them or cure them.”

  “Right,” she said. “I’m just about to do that. Aili, where are you? Good. Watch my back. Danny, if you don’t mind, fetch my clothes, hmm? This is no season for parading about as Primavera.” Without waiting to see what he did, she dragged the chain over her head, dropped Frunzacoache on Felsrawg’s leather bosom and began the cleansing.

  9

  “Frunzacoache the Undying,” Danny said aloud, though he was speaking to himself, not Simms. “First Klukesharna, now Frunzacoache. Coincidence, maybe? Coincidence, hell.”

  Careful not to move too suddenly, Simms pulled himself onto the sill and sat with his legs dangling in the heated water. He watched Korimenei work, nodded. “I c’n feel it,” he said. “You wahn’t havin’ us on.”

  “What? Oh. Yeh.” Danny dragged himself away from the pulses of power throbbing out from the girl; the part of him born of Ahzurdan found the effect intoxicating. He ran a hand through his hair, frowned down at Simms. “You’re not stupid.”

  “C’n see where you might think I was. Young for ‘t, an’t she.”

  Danny yawned. As the tension drained out of him, his weariness came flooding back. “If she weren’t still tender, you’d be ash and gone. Give me your hand.” When Simms was on his feet, Danny tapped him on the shoulder, pointed toward the dressing room. “Come on; she wants her clothes and I’m tired of prancing around stark.”

  “What was that thing?”

  “Don’t ask me, it’s not one of mine.”

  ##

  Simms hauled off a boot, upended it and shook out the water. “Sling me one of those tow’ls, eh Laz?”

  “Make it Danny, Lazul was for the duration only.”

  “Sure. Why not.” He pulled off the other boot, dried his feet and legs, then the inside of the boots. “Us’ly I don’ bath with m’ clothes on.”

  “Better I dump you than I fry you. I could’ve, you know.”

  “I ‘spect you could. I ‘spect you din’t ‘cause you’d fry yourself with me.”

  “Maybe so.” Danny stomped his feet down in his boots, ran a towel over his hair, scooped up Korimenei’s clothing. “On your feet, Simmo. She should be ready for you by now.,,

  In the Bath Room he tossed the shirt and trousers to Kori. There was a pile of knives, poison rings and other weapons on the tiles. Felsrawg stood on the far side of the pool, glowering at nothing in particular, hands thrust in her trouser pockets. She turned that scowl on Danny a moment, then looked away.

  “Gracefully grateful, I see,” he said.

  Kori grinned at him. “Yes, oh man, you did it much better. You, Simms, if you roll up that towel, you can stick it under your head and be a bit more comfortable. Stretch out where she was and I’ll get to work on you.”

  Danny dropped to a squat, began examining the collection of weapons, trying the balance of the knives, testing the mechanisms in the rings. He felt eyes on him and lifted his head. Felsrawg was glaring at him, indignant at the insult he was offering her. He looked down at the ring he was fingering, then at her; he got the feeling he might as well have been fingering her naked body. He set the ring down and got to his feet, embarrassed at his boorishness, annoyed at the woman for challenging him. Muttering under his breath he moved to stand behind Kori; once again the waves of power she was outputting swept through him, pleasuring him. He drifted in that borrowed glow for a few moments, felt a wistful deprivation when the power abruptly cut off. Kori continued to kneel for a short time longer, head bent. Slowly, with visible reluctance, she reached for Frunzacoache and lifted it off Simms. The way she handled the talisman, it was far heavier than it looked. And hotter. She slid the chain over her head, slipped the pendant under her shirt.

  “Want a hand, Kori?”

  “I could use one.” She swiveled round on her knees, held up her arms and let him pull her onto her feet. “What are we going to do with this pair?”

  He swung her against him, her back to his chest, folded his arms under her breasts. “If they don’t behave,” he murmured into her ear, “you can send them to join your feline pet.”

  “Certainly not, he’s a friend, I wouldn’t do that to him.”

  Simms sat up, grimaced at his unexpected weakness. “A thought I wish you’d keep firmly in mind, Angyd Sorcelain. Why do I feel like the end of a long fast?”

  Danny felt her relax against him; her ribs moved as she took a deep breath, let it out. “The poison has been working in you,” she said. “I stripped fat and muscle from your bones to heal that damage. You’ll get it back with a few good meals and some sleep.”

  “Sleep, sounds good.” He got heavily to his feet. “You going to boot us out of here?”

  “And waste my work? No.”

  Felsrawg snorted and came strolling around the end of the pool; she was pale and drawn, there were dark smudges under her eyes, but she refused to give in to her weakness. “Laz, where do you go, come the morning?”

  “Where do I go, Kori?” He slid his hand down her side, rested it on her hip.

  “Where you want. Why ask me?”

  He chuckled. “I wouldn’t touch that if you paid me.” He eyed Felsrawg. “South,” he said. “We go south all the way to water. Why?”

  “We can’t go back to Arsuid, not for a while anyway.” She turned to Simms; he nodded. “This isn’t a good time for traveling, the wolves are out, four legs and two. I want to come with you. Simms? Yes. We’re not begging, Laz. We’ll pay our way.” She ran her eyes with slow insolence from Danny’s bare feet to his stubble-shadowed face. “You look a fool on that pony. We can mount you. Her too, if she wants.”

  “The horses we had?”

  “No, the ones from Soholkai-ots, the next stage on. You left us on foot, remember? We had to steal a fishboat to get to Soholkai. The Esmoon must have gone off with yours. Look,” she said, “we were a good team before, we could do it again and four will scare off trouble better than two. I’m not saying you couldn’t handle anything that came up, just that it’d be easier if it didn’t. Come up, I mean.”

  Kori pulled loose, started for the door. “See me in the morning. I’m too tired to think. Danny, where you want. Read me?” She didn’t wait for an answer.

  “Not too early in the morning,” Danny told Felsrawg and left.

  10

  Danny pushed the sweaty hair off Kori’s brow. “Why’d you change your mind?”

  “I don’t know.” She moved her head as he started nibbling on an ear. “All those bubbles, maybe.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “Stop that.” She wriggling away from him. “Gods, man, I thought you’d be used up after…”

  “All those bubbles.”

  “They should bottle them and sell them to tired old men.” She giggled, then sobered. “That pretty pair
. You didn’t tell me about them.”

  “Didn’t know they were anywhere around.”

  “Mmm-hmmm.”

  “Don’t believe me?”

  “I melted three reasons out of your body.”

  “Ah, well. I said, know.”

  “What do you think, do we let them come?”

  After tugging a fold of blanket from under him, he eased onto his back and pulled her against him, her head pillowed on his shoulder. When he was comfortable, he thought about the question. “It’s your call,” he said finally. “We could use the horses.”

  “Yeh, the poor ponies, they’ve walked a long way. Why does Felsrawg want to come? I don’t think Simms does, not really.”

  “Felsa looks round corners that aren’t there.”

  “Huh?” She tilted her head to look up at him.

  He brushed fine flyaway hair away from his mouth. “She’s decided to believe me about the Esmoon, but she doesn’t think I’d let Klukesharna get away. She intends to be there when I find it. It’s her key to Dirge Arsuid, if you’ll pardon the pun. She wants to go home.”

  “Don’t we all.”

  “Mmh.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “If I answered that I’d feel like a damn whore.”

  “Huh?”

  “Selling my services. Or should I say servicings?”

  “Do and you’ll lose your-asset.”

  “Challenging me, Angyd Sorcelain?”

  “Never, Addryd Sorcesieur. Offering my knee.”

  “And a dainty one it is, if somewhat angular.” He rolled over swiftly, pinning her to the rustling mattress, shutting off her protest with mouth and hands. After several minutes of this, he lifted his head. “May I move where I need to be, love, or should I fear that militant knee of yours? I’ll take care to avoid it if you’ll just tell me which it is.”

  “You talk too much.”

  “Never say it. Ah, I’m crushed.”

  “Hah! You stand tall for such a humble man.”

  “You can bring me low quickly enough.”

  “Talking again. It’s deeds I demand.”

  “Command me, Angyd Sorcelain.”

  “Hear me, Addryd Sorcesieur. Do again what you did before. If you can.”

  “Be ready, Angyd Sorcelain. Here I come.”

  “So soon? Ah! that tickles.”

  “Good. Come has another meaning, love, you have a one-rut mind.”

  “No, a rutting friend, pra… aise be t… to Tungjiiii!”

  11

  Korimenei left the ponies behind, paying a stablemaster for their care with money she borrowed from Danny, adding a gloss on the coins by summoning a salamander and holding him overhead to show the man what would happen to him if he mistreated or neglected them. They were affectionate, hardworking little beasts and they’d been part of her life so long it was like tearing an arm off to leave them behind, but they were exhausted by the rough going and would have a much easier winter in the Gsany village Fal Fenyott, dining on grain and rich mountain hay.

  Always a breath ahead of storms as if the northwinds and the snow were chasing them, the mismated quartet rode south on the wave of power pouring from the melded sorcerors, unwilled as breathing and copious as an artesian spring, sustaining humans and horses both, injecting into them the strength for enormous effort, letting them flee from dark into dark without stopping to rest or breaking down.

  Simms withdrew into himself as the days passed. With the poison out of him, he didn’t see any point in chasing the talisman; he had no real wish to return to Dirge Arsuid, in fact there were a lot of reasons he’d prefer not to, his lover had betrayed him to the Ystaffel when the guards came searching for him, his family had cast him out long before that, he was bored, he saw no challenges left in his profession or personal life. Lots of reasons. He watched Felsrawg nosing about Danny Blue and found the sight distasteful; the bond forged between the two thieves as they fought desperately to survive dissolved as soon as the danger was removed. On the tenth morning of that precipitous journey, he lost patience and left the group, riding east, bound for the river Sharroud and transport south to Bandrabahr. There he’d have a wide choice of destinations. Remembering what Danny had said about Croaldhu he had a vague notion of visiting that island, but mostly he wanted to escape the cold, the constant exhaustion and the disturbing urgency of that charge southward. He didn’t understand what was happening and he didn’t want to.

  Korimenei drove Danny and Felsrawg south and south and yet south; she was more and more aware of the child growing in her, of the need to find a place where she could rest and feel safe. She wanted this hideous journey over, she wanted to be done with her brother’s demands. The eidolon came every night to quiver over her after Danny had gone to sleep; Tre said nothing, but she felt him pushing at her to hurry, hurry, hurry. The passionate playful exchanges between her and Danny Blue, begun in Fal Fenyott and continued through the first few days of travel had turned brutish and wordless, greedy and needy, like the time in Ambijan. After Simms left she felt odd, lying with Danny while Felsrawg was rolled in her blankets outside the tent, listening… maybe not listening, but hearing it all; she was uncomfortable, it was too much like a public performance, but she couldn’t stop, or let him stop. It was as if something was generated between them that was necessary to the journey and until that journey was finished she could neither understand it or do without it.

  Danny Blue rode beside Korimenei, watching her, worrying about her. His half-sire Daniel grew up in a vast and fecund family, Family Azure on Rainbow’s End in another reality altogether, but a woman here was no different from a woman there so the Daniel phasma was soon aware of Kori’s pregnancy and passed the word to his semi-son. The Ahzurdan phasma hung about, gibbering his fear and distaste, his growing resentment of Kori, sneering at Danny for being so protective of another man’s child. The Daniel phasma snarled back, scornful of such intolerance. In Family Azure all children were treasured, all mothers were the responsibility of the Family, not merely the particular male who’d got the woman pregnant; the Daniel phasma’s protectiveness was automatic and all the more powerful because of that and it was transferred almost intact to Danny Blue.

  There was another reason for the sharpening conflict between the two phasmas and the headache they were giving Danny Blue. Korimenei could send him home-or rather into Daniel’s reality, a place Danny was more and more thinking of as home. He didn’t have to hunt up Settsimaksimin, he had his transport; after seeing how easily she handled the massive mancat, he was sure she could do it once she was free to put her mind to the problem. He was determined to stay with her and give her what protection he could until that moment came.

  Felsrawg’s hopes eroded as the days passed. By the time they reached the Gallindar Plains, she was forced to concede she’d make a mistake. Danny Blue wasn’t going after Klukesharna, he was tied to the heels of that woman. He trotted after her like a dog after a bitch in heat. It wasn’t an edifying sight, Felsrawg thought, and burned with a jealousy she wouldn’t admit even to herself. Especially to herself. She thought about leaving like Simms had, but she stayed. I’ve nowhere else to go and I want to see what happens when we reach the end of this journey, maybe I can wring some profit out of it, the woman’s got a reason for half killing us like this, I want to know what it is. She refused to countenance what she considered her silly yearning for the man, it was too demeaning. She wasn’t some sickly teener bitch, she’d survived a two decades against the odds, been wholly on her own for the second of those decades. But she couldn’t help going soft in the middle whenever she looked at him. And she couldn’t stop wanting to skin that sorcelain who had her claws in him.

  South and south and south they raced, outrunning hostile Gallinasi bands, flattening Gallinasi youths out to win their coup-studs with foreign ears and noses, south and south until they reached the shore of the Notoea Tha, and even there Korimenei wouldn’t stop, barely paused, terrifying a misfort
unate smuggler (who’d come slipping through the Shoals to trade Matamulli brandy for Gallindar pearls) into carrying them yet farther south, down the Fingercoast of Cheonea.

  On a cold blustery morning, gray with a storm not yet broken, the smuggler landed Korimenei, Danny Blue and Felsrawg Lawdrawn at the mouth of a smallish creek, then hoisted sail again and got out of there fast as the wind would take him.

  12

  Korimenei lifted the lantern; nothing much had changed in the Chain Room. Ten years. It might have been ten minutes. She looked at the platform, looked quickly away. The crystal was there with Tre curled up in it, but she found she was reluctant to go near the thing. All she had to do was put her hand on the crystal, then Tr6 would be free, she could give him Frunzacoache and that would be the end of it. Instead, she turned in a slow circle, the light from the lantern spreading and contracting with the irregular circumference of the cave chamber. Chains hung in graceful curves, one end bolted to a ceiling so high it was lost in the darkness beyond the reach of the lantern, the other end to the side-wall a man’s height off the floor. Chains crossed and recrossed the space above her head, chains of iron forged on a smithpriest’s anvil and hung in here so long ago all but the lowest links were coated with stone, chains of wood whittled by the woodworker priests knives, chains of crystal and saltmarble chiseled by the stonecutter priests, centuries of labor given to the cave, taken by the cave to itself, a layer of stone slowly slowly crawling over all of it. No, there was no change she could see; if the stone had crept a fingerwidth lower, it would take a better eye than hers to measure it. She finished the turn facing the Chained God’s altar, a square platform of polished wood sitting on stone blocks that lifted it a foot off the stone floor, above it, held up by carved wooden posts, a canopy of white jade, thin and translucent as the finest porcelain. In the center of the platform the crystal lay beside the kedron chest where Tr6 had found Harra’s Eye and given it to her so she could use it to locate the Drinker of Souls. “Be careful what you do,” she said aloud. “The more powerful the act, the more unpredictable the outcome.”