by Jo Clayton
Lio Laux pinched his nose, considered her. “Let’s hope.” He walked away, stopped to talk to the blond boy, the one-eyed Phrasi, the Cheonene, the members of his crew still on deck now that the sandbars were behind them, then he went below again.
“This boat’s too crowded,” Daniel murmured. “Unless the hold…”
Brann grimaced. “Wet. Smelly. Rats.”
“Offputting.”
“If you’re older than fourteen.”
“Me, even when I was fourteen, I didn’t turn on to rats.” He stopped talking, moved his mouth along her shoulder and neck; close to her ear, he murmured, “What about putting Danny One in with the rats?” He moved his hands over her breasts, his thumbs grazing her nipples.
She shivered. “No…”
“Be right at home. Rat to the rats.”
She pulled away from him, strode to the bow. After a minute she ran shaking hands through her hair, swung around. “I can dispense with you a lot easier than him, also with stupid comment.”
Daniel watched her stride across the deck and disappear below. He scratched his chin. “Didn’t handle that too well, did you.” He looked down at himself, thumbed the bulge. “Danny’s blue tonight, ran his mouth too long too wrong.”
The Wounded Moon shone palely on the long narrow Skia Hetaira as she sliced through the foamspitting water of the Notoea Tha, and touched with delicate strokes the naked land north of the boat, a black-violet blotch that gradually gained definition as the northwestering course of the smuggler took her closer and closer to the riddle rock at the tip of the first Vale Finger, rock pierced again and again by wind and water so that it sang day and night, slow sad terrible songs and was only quiet one hour every other month.
Brann sat on the deck, her back against the mast; the melancholy moans coming from the rock suited her mood. Ahzurdan said the air was clotted with ariels, a great gush of angry angel forms passing to and from Silagamatys, carrying news of them to Settsimaksimin, helping him plan… What? Ahzurdan was working with half the information he needed, he didn’t have the name of the talisman Maksim wore, he didn’t know how far Maksim could press Amortis. He had a strained weary look, but he wouldn’t let her feed him energy as she did the children, though she offered it (having energy to spare after prowling the foggy streets of the water quarter after the others went back to the Blue Seamaid); he was in a strange half-angry state she didn’t understand, though she couldn’t miss how deeply he was hurting. He was carrying the full load of defending them and neither the children nor Danny Two were helping the situation with their irrational hates-no not exactly hates, it was more a fundamental incompatiblity as if they and Ahzurclan were flint and steel bound to strike sparks whenever they met. She looked up. The children were flying overhead, elegant albatrosses riding the wind, circling out ahead of the ship, drifting in and out of knots of cloud, cutting through the streams of ariels they couldn’t see. She felt rather like a juggler who’d been foolish enough to accept the challenge of keeping in the air whatever her audience threw at her. Any minute now there might be one thing too many and the whole mess would drop on her head.
She listened to the moaning rock and found the sound so restful she drifted into a doze in spite of the damp chill and the drop and rise of the deck under her.
Some time later, she had no idea how long, Ahzurdan was shaking her, shouting at her. As soon as she was awake, he darted away from her to stand in the bow, gesturing in complex patterns, intoning a trenchant series of meaningless syllables interspersed with polysyllabic words that meant something to him but made no sense in the context
The children flew in circles over the mainmast, their raucous mewing cries alerting everyone not already aware of it that something perilous was about to happen.
In the northwest an opaline glow rose over the horizon and came rapidly toward the Skia Hetaira, resolving into the god Amortis striding to them across the dark seawater, blond hair streaming in snaky sunrays about a house-sized face, her foggy draperies shifting about her slim ripe body in a celestial peekaboo, shapely bare feet as large as the Skia Hetaira moving above the water or through it as it swelled, feet translucent as alabaster with light behind it, but solid enough to kick the waves into spreading foam. The hundred yards of female god stopped ten shiplengths away, raised a huge but delicate hand, threw a sheet of flame at the boat.
Hastily the two albatrosses powered up and away, their tailfeathers momentarily singed, drawing squawks of surprise from them, the flame splashing over them as it bounced off the shield Ahzurdan had thrown about the Skia Hetaira.
Amortis stamped her foot. The wave she created fled from her and threatened to engulf the boat. The deck tilted violently, first one way then another, leaped up, fell away. Ahzurdan crashed onto his knees, then onto his side and rolled about, slammed into the siderails (narrowly escaping being thrown overboard), slammed into the mast; he clutched at the ropes coiled there and finally stopped his wild careering. Gobbets of flame tore through his shielding, struck the sails and the deck, one caught the hem of his robe; they clung with oily determination and began eating into canvas, cloth and wood. Vast laughter beat like thunder over the Skia Hetaira and the folk on her. Amortis stamped again, flung more fire at the foundering boat.
As the first splash reached them, Brann dived for Ahzurdan, missed and had to scramble to save herself. She heard muted grunts and the splat of bare feet, managed a rapid glance behind her-Daniel Akamarino with only his trousers on and absurdly the magic wineskin bouncing against his back. When Ahzurdan grasped the mast ropes and stopped his careening about, Brann and Daniel caught hold of the straining sorceror, eased him onto his knees and supported him while he gestured and intoned, gradually rebuilding his shield.
Lio Laux and his two and a half crew struggled to keep the Skia from turning turtle and when they had a rare moment with a hand free, they tried to deal with the fires (fortunately smoldering rather than raging, subdued though not quenched by Ahzurdan’s aura). At some indeterminate moment in the tussle Tungjii arrived and stood on the deck looking about, watching with bright-eyed interest as Ahzurdan fought in his way and Lio in his. Heesh wriggled himmer’s furry brows. Small gray stormclouds gathered over each of the smoky guttering fires and released miniature rainstorms on them, putting them out.
Out on the water Amortis stopped laughing and took a step toward the Skia, meaning to trample what she couldn’t burn.
An immense translucent fishtail came rushing out of the waves, lifting gallons of water with it, water that splashed mightily over Amortis and sent her sprawling. Squawling with rage, she bounded onto her feet, bent and swung her arms wildly, grabbing for the Godalau’s coarse blue-green hair. The Godalau ducked under the waves, came up behind the god and set pearly curly shark’s teeth in the luscious alabaster calf of Amortis’ left leg; the Blue Seamaid did a bit of freeform tearing, then dived frantically away as Amortis took hold again, subdued her temper and used her fire to turn the water about her into superheated steam that even the Godalau could not endure.
A stormcloud much larger than those raining on the ship gathered over the wild blond hair and let its torrents fall. Clouds of gnats swarmed out of nowhere and blew into Amortis’ mouth, crawled up her nose and into her ears. Revolting slimy things came up out of the sea and trailed their stinking stinging ooze over her huge but dainty toes.
Amortis shrieked and spat fire in all directions, drawing on her substance with no discretion at all; more of the sea about the Skia grew too hot for the Godalau, driving her farther and farther away, until she could do nothing but swim frantically about beyond the perimeter of the heat, searching for some way, any way, she could attack again. Tungjii’s torments whiffed out fast as he could devise them, his rain melted into the steam that was a whitehot cloud about the whitehot fireform of the god; rage itself now, Amortis flared and lost her woman’s shape, sinking into the primal form from which she was created by the dreams of men, from which in a very real sense she created herself.
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On deck, battered and exhausted, Ahzurdan faltered. More fire ripped through the shield. A worried frown on hisser round face, Tungjii rained on the fires and flooded most of them to smudgy chars, but the water was so hot around the Skia that steam drifting over the decks threatened to burn out mortal lungs and roast the skin off mortal bodies. The busy little god sent eddy currents of cooler air to shield hisser mortals, but heesh was more pressed than heesh had ever been in all hisser lengthy existence. The sea itself was so hot that the timbers of the hull were beginning to steam and smolder. Laux’s seamanship and the desperate scurrying of his crew had managed so far to keep the Skia Hetaira upright and clawing in a broad arc about the center of the fury, far enough out so the heat was marginally endurable, but let Ahzurdan falter again and the Skia and everyone on it would go up in a great gush of flame.
Brann felt Ahzurdan weakening, felt it in her hands and in her bones. She pressed herself against him, whispered, “Let me feed you, Dan, I can help but only if you let me. I did it when I cleansed you before, let me help you now.”
He nodded, unable to stop his chant long enough to speak.
Brann let her senses flow into him; usually she had one of the children to help with this, but they were gone, out beyond the shield doing she didn’t know what. She fed a tentative thread of energy into him, working cautiously so she wouldn’t distract him, that would be almost as fatal as his collapse from exhaustion. As she got the feel of him, she fed him more and more, draining herself to support him.
Only peripherally aware of the struggle on the deck, Yaril and Jaril flew again and again at Amortis, their birdshapes abandoned. Fire of a sort themselves, her fire couldn’t hurt them, but they were too small, too alien to damage her in any satisfactory way, all they could do was dart at her eyes while she still had eyes and distract her a little; when she altered to her primal form there was nothing at all they could do with her except use their odd bodies as lenses and channel small streams of her fire away from the Skia, which they did for a while until the futility of their acts grew depressingly apparent. They flicked away from the stormcenter and merged in consultation.
*Brann,* Yaril pulsed, *she handled the Treeish, with a bit of help from us; do you think she might be able to drain that bitch?*
*I think we better try something, this can’t go on much longer. *
*Ideas?*
*Make a bridge between her and that thing. We can focus its energies, that’s what we’ve been doing, isn’t it?*
*And Brann handles the pull. Right. Let’s go talk to her.*
They flicked through the shield, bounced up and down in front of her until they had her attention, then merged with her and explained their plan.
Brann scowled at the deck. “We’ve got about all the fire we can handle now.” She spoke the words aloud, listened some more. “You’re sure it’s different? Yes, I
do remember the Treeish. They weren’t gods or anything close to it and it hurt like hell handling their forces.” A listening silence. “I see. Channeled force, a limited but steady drain. She laughed. “Nice touch, defeating Amortis with her own strength. I agree, there’s not much point in going on with what we’re doing, she certainly can outlast us no matter how much of that fire she throws at us. So. The sooner the better, don’t you think?”
The children emerged from Brann, darted back through Ahzurdan’s shield and hovered in the heart of the fire, glimmering gold spheres faintly visible against the crimson flame flooding out of Amortis_ They melded into one and shot out curving arms until they extended from Amortis to Bram in a great arc of golden light. As soon as both ends of the arc touched home, Brann PULLED. And screamed with the agony of the godlife flowing into her, alien, inimical, deadly fire that almost killed her before her body found for itself a way of converting that fire into energy she could use. She absorbed it, throttled down the flow until it was a source Ahzurdan could take in without dying, of it She fed him the godlife, filled him with the godlife, until he glowed translucent alabaster like the god and used the god’s own substance to make the shield so fine a filter that heat and steam and eating fire were left outside and the water that came through was the black cool seawater that belonged to the Notoea Tha in midautumn nights. And the air that came through was a brisk following breeze, cool almost chill. And the tumultuous seasurface subsided to the long swells that came after storms had passed. The Skia Hetaira settled to an easy slide through abruptly edenic waters and Lio gave the helm to his mate so he could begin an inspection of his ship; he strolled about assessing damages, adding trauma penalties to the repair costs he planned to lay on Brann’s surety pledge. He was a bit wary of pushing her too hard, but figured a little fiddling couldn’t hurt.
Beyond the semi-opaque shield sphere, Amortis slacked her raging, let her fires diminish as she began to be afraid; she shut off her outpouring of her substance and recovered her bipedal form so she could think about what was happening. The arc between her and Brann was draining off her energy at a phenomenal pace; if it went on much longer she would face a permanent loss of power and with that, a loss of status so great she’d be left as nothing more than a minor local fertility genius tied to some stupid grove or set of stones. A last shriek of rage heavily saturated with fear, a shouted promise of future vengeance, and she went away.
The golden arch collapsed into two globes that bobbled unsteadily, then dropped through the shield onto the deck and flickered into two weary children.
Tungjii strolled over to the entwined trio, tapped Daniel’s arm, pointed to the wineskin and vanished.
Brann stirred. She didn’t let loose of Ahzurdan, for the moment she couldn’t. She throbbed and glowed like an alabaster lamp, her bones were visible through her flesh. Ahzurdan was like her, glowing, his bones like hers, a dark calligraphy visible in hands and face.
He stirred. With a hoarse groan of utter weariness out of a throat gone rough from the long outpouring of the focusing chants, he dropped into silence and let his hands fall onto his thighs. The shield globe melted from around them and the Skia Hetaira glided unhindered on a heaving sea.
The Godalau swam before them once more, her translucent glassy form like the memory of a dream. The raging winds were gone, the steam was gone, the water was cold again about the ship, the only reminders left of that ferocious conflict were the blackened holes in the sails and the charred spots in the wood.
Daniel eased himself away from Ahzurdan and Brann, sucking at his teeth and shaking his head when he saw them still frozen, unaware of his departure. He looked down at his hands and was relieved to see them comfortably opaque, no mystical alabaster there, just the burnt brown skin and paler palms he was accustomed to seeing. His bones were aching and his body felt like it had the first time he went canoeing with the Shafarin on Harsain, the time he decided he wanted to find out what the life of a nomad hunter was like. That was one of his shorter intervals between ships, when was it? yes, the time he walked away from della Farangan after one loud slanging match too many. Afterwards he went to work for a shiny ship to get the grit out of his teeth and the grime out of his skin. And the taste of burnt gamy flesh out of his mouth. Stella Fulvina and the Prism Dancer; quite a woman in her metallic way, uncomplicated. You knew where you were with her and exactly what you’d get. Restful to the head though she worked your butt off. He unslung the wineskin and thumbed out the stopple. The wine burned away his weariness. He sighed with pleasure and after a moment’s thought, splashed a drop of it on a small burn, grinned as the blackened flesh fell away and the pain went with it. “Tungjii Luck, you’ve got great taste in wine, you do.” He grimaced at Brann and Ahzurdan, crawled to the pale limp changechildren lying on the deck a short distance off. “Here,” he said. “Have a drink. Give you the energy to keep breathing.” He looked at them and laughed. “Or whatever else it is you do.”
As the children drank and flushed with returning color, Brann and Ahzurdan finally eased apart. Brann lifted one hand, pointed at the sk
y. A great white beam of light streamed from her bunched fingertips and cut through the darkness before to melt finally among the clouds. She closed her hand and cut off the flow. Ahzurdan waited until she was cooled down, then bled off his own excess charge much the same way, though he used both hands.
Daniel grinned at Jarll, reached for the skin. “Much more and you’ll be crawling, Jay.”
The boy giggled. “Still get there.”
“Yup, give it here anyway.” He took the wineskin to Brann, she was still glowing palely as if her skin was pulled taut over moonlight, but she looked weary as death and worried. “Tungjii’s blessing,” he said. “Makes the world look brighter.”
She found a smile for him and took the skin. Tungjii’s gift worked its magic; she flushed, her eyes acquired a new warmth, her movements a new vigor. She touched Ahzurdan’s arm. “Tungjii’s blessing, Dan.”
His head turned stiffly, slowly, dull blank eyes blinked at her. The ravages of the godlife were visible in his face, even more than the utter weariness of body and spirit. He took the skin, stared at it for a long moment before he lifted it and squeezed a wobbly stream of wine at his mouth, missing more than he hit. Daniel started to help him steady himself, but Brann caught his reaching hand and held it away. “No,” she said. “Not you. Not me.”
Ahzurdan lowered the skin, fumbled at his mouth and neck, trying to wipe away the spilled wine. He was looking all too much like a punchdrunk fighter, his coordination and capacity for thinking beaten out of him. Brann took the skin from him and gave it to Daniel. “Go away a while, will you? I’ll take care of him.”
Daniel Akamarino shrugged and went to sit on the rail. He watched Brann get her shoulder under Ahzurdan’s arm and help him to his feet. Her arm around him, she helped him stumble across the deck and down the ladder to the cramped livingspace below. Before she quite vanished, she turned her head. “On your life, don’t wake us before noon.”
Daniel flicked the dangling stopple. “Women,” he said.
