by Jo Clayton
In the spring of her fourth year The Noris came and took her away—saved her life, she knew later. Come next Winterdeep she’d be marked and given to the fire, her mother driven away to survive how she could on her own. But the Noris came before that could happen, took her away and loved her a little maybe and used her to dig into places otherwise blocked off from him.
The road looped across gently rolling land, winding soon between the high thorn hedges marking tar boundaries, past groves of brellim, spikuls and moonglows, past rattling clumps of bastocane. Loud whooshing grunts from the tired macai, macai pads thudding softly on the dust, sleepy twitters drifting sometimes from tree or hedge, chini howling in the distance at the moon, a few barks and rustles from the grass and brush at the side of the road—all familiar, even comforting, night sounds, yet Serroi felt a spreading coldness within. The air seemed to hang poised around her, though a vigorous breeze danced leaves about over her head; she felt eyes on her though she knew this had to be her own foolishness because the tajicho protected her most effectively from all spirit eyes.
She followed Hern around a last grove of brellim and moonglows and saw Sadnaji loom before them, a dark bulk with no light showing except the caged torch sputtering toward exhaustion above the Inn’s door. It was still bright enough to show her the empty court beyond the broad low arch in the Inn’s wall. Hern swung around, grinned at her. The flash of his teeth said without words: I told you so. She gritted her own teeth, fighting down an urge to tear off his arm and beat him over the head with it.
The silence was thick between them as they covered the last few yards to the welcoming arch. She bit down hard on her lower lip to hold back a last and probably futile plea, sighed and followed Hern into the Inn court.
A bent and tattered figure shuffled from the stables backed up against the Northwall of the court. Serroi swallowed hard as she recognized him in spite of the fifteen years since they’d met, fifteen years that had added more layers of dirt and malice to his withered face. The old hostler stopped in front of Hern, lifted his wrinkled evil face, peered up at him from red-rimmed eyes, exuding a powerful aroma of ancient sweat, stale urine and bad wine. Serroi tugged nervously at her hood, then wished she hadn’t because the movement caught the hostler’s eye. He stared at her, blinked slowly, rubbed at his nose with the back of a filthy hand. “Yer out late, c’taj.” His whine was filled with senile insolence. “Shouldna be pissin’ round in d’ dark. I gotta go fer d’Agli ’nd tell.” He giggled then, breathy whistling hoots that propelled his foul breath into Hern’s face.
Serroi cursed under her breath as Hern went rigid. She edged her mount closer to his and dropped a hand on his arm, not daring to speak, hoping her interference wouldn’t provoke the explosion she was trying to avert. He glanced around at her and she was startled to see laughter instead of anger dancing in his pale eyes.
“Needs must,” he said with smiling geniality and flipped a silver coin at the hostler. “Stable these beasts and grain ’em, they worked hard today, there’s something considerable of me to haul about.” He slid off the macai, circled around the gaping old man, strolled unhurriedly toward the main door of the Inn. Serroi watched the hostler, his mouth still hanging open, look down at the coin in his hand. Shaking her head, she dismounted and walked quickly after Hern, feeling slightly disoriented, as if a cooing macai foal had suddenly sunk its teeth in her hand.
When she pushed through the door he was hauling on a bell-pull dangling beside the stairwell. She looked around the room surprised to find it so empty. Fear congealed in a cold lump under her ribs. This is wrong, all wrong. Where’s Braddon? She fidgeted with the hood of her cloak, uneasily remembering Hern’s orders to the hostler. If that old viper took the macain to the stable and stripped them of their gear, that cut off any quick retreat. Almost better to hope he left the macain standing and hurried off to fetch the Agli, as he’d threatened. A single lamp burned behind the bar, leaving most of the room in heavy shadow. Hern pulled the bellcord again, swearing under his breath with a growing impatience. They did it after all, she thought. They’ve taken away his trade in spite of his friends. She couldn’t remember a single night, no matter how bad the weather, when this room didn’t have a traveler or two, feet stretched to the fire, drinking and swapping lies long after midnight with local folk come to sup Braddon’s beer and crunch down the extras he offered free. She looked down at the table beside her, tapped fingers lightly on the wood. Dry and shining clean. Not a crumb or even a waterstain left. She frowned down at her fingers. We left the Valley on Vara thirty. This is Gorduu two, Maiden bless, this is the middle of Gorduufest. This place should be packed and wet to near flooding. Where are the pole lights in the square, the straw maids blessed by the shrine keeper? The green should be filled with dancers, ringed with roast-fires. She remembered the rigid patterns of the sprite dances and the sadness she felt watching them. This room, this whole Inn breathed a sadness that near choked her. She crossed to Hern, put her hand on his arm. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I begin to think you’re right,” he said softly. He passed a hand over his tousled grey-streaked hair, started for the door, then turned with Serroi to face the stairwell as they both heard shuffling, uncertain footsteps, saw Braddon coming painfully down the stairs, step by slow step, anxiety contorting his features. For a moment Serroi didn’t recognize him, then she scowled at him. The round ebullient man with his warm joy in good food and good neighbors, the exuberant friend of all who came through the door, this man no longer existed. His skin hung in folds over his bones, his hands shook, his bramble-bush hair was thinned and flattened and streaked with white. He stopped on the last step, glanced about the room. He winced at the shadows, swallowed as the door stayed shut. His tongue flicked across dry lips then he cleared his throat. “Cetaj?”
Serroi’s fingers tightened on Hern’s arm. Without speaking she raised her other hand and brushed back the hood, turned her face to the light.
Braddon gasped. He stumbled off the bottom step and stretched out his hand to touch her cheek. “Meie?” His eyes flew past her, came back to her. “Did he see you?”
“He was there. I don’t think he knew me—the hood was up, the cloak pulled around me. Seems to me the old buzzard’s eyes aren’t too sharp anymore.”
“Sharp enough.” Braddon straightened his shoulders. “Doesn’t matter. Orders are no one’s to be out after sundown without a pass.”
Hern started to speak but Serroi closed her fingers tighter, digging her nails into his flesh. “Whose orders?”
“Agli’s. Backed by a Decsel from Oras.” The words trailed into a hiss of fury. For a moment a shadow of his old self returned.
She touched his wrinkled cheek. “So much change in such a little time?”
“Yah, meie.” The flash was gone. He caught hold of her hand, his own trembling, held her fingers against his face. “Change, Yah. They had me in their House of Repentance a full month and when they let me out they set him watching me.” He nodded at the door. “Soäreh’s worm, he is.”
“Then we’d better be off.”
“He already saw you.” Each soft word fell heavily into the silence. “They said if I sinned, they’d burn me out. Sin!” He dropped her hand, stumbled to the bar and edged behind it. Fishing beneath it, he brought up a clean damp cloth and pushed it gently, lovingly across the ancient polished planks. “I don’t know why I keep on, meie; this isn’t living. It’s not that I have anyone now, Matti dying last spring, my grandson gone off. Never thought I’d say this, but I’m glad she’s not here no more and don’t have to see this.” His eyes slid around to Hern. “Think I know you, friend. Shouldna be here, it’s a bad place for you. Listen to an old man, both of you. Get from the mijloc and stay out. Nothing you can do alone. And folks here are too shook up to help.” He polished absently at the planks in front of him. “Call you perverts, meie, the Followers, they do. I’ve seen ’em chasing meien.” He stared somberly at the cloth. “Getting so a
man can’t spit without looking first at them damn rules they got hung up all over the place.” He flicked a finger at the door where she saw a pale square of white stuck to the middle panel. “Put me in that jail of theirs,” he went on. “Young Beyl he come to slip me out, all set for the mountains he was, wanted me to go with him. Good lad, dammit I do miss him. Be dead most like before Winterdeep. Froze or ate or skewered. Meie, you shouldna be wearing the leathers. Not here. Not anywhere. The Worm, he got to dig Agli out of bed and that fat bastard likes his sleep. You got a little time. At the head of the stairs, fourth floor, south side. Beyl’s room it was. Most of his clothes left, take what you need and shuck those leathers. Go quiet, we got a Norit sleeping up there, been here more’n a passage now, hanging around snooping into things.” He folded the cloth with neat small movements of his hands, stowed it away, straightened. “You, cetaj.” He jabbed a finger at Hern then tapped it against his head. “Give me a clout here. Mark me. Worm knows when you got here. I been wasting too much time talking.” He sighed. “Han’t been able to talk really seems like a year now. If they find me on floor with bloody head, maybe they won’t ask when that head got bloody.” He moved quickly away, stopped by the foot of the stairs. “They find me here, they think maybe you got me before I had a chance to yell.” He rounded his shoulders and bent his head.
Hern’s eyes widened, but he nodded and drew his dagger; his movements slow at first then very quick, he crossed the three-stride space between him and Braddon, the hard tap behind the ear done before Serroi let out the breath she was holding. Braddon folded slowly down. Serroi ran to him to break his fall, but Hern caught her arm and held her back. When Braddon was sprawled on the floor, he thrust her aside and knelt, his fingers searching out the pulse in the old man’s throat; with a quick, relieved smile he used the blade’s point to draw a long scratch across the rising bump, then jumped to his feet as blood began trickling through the coarse grey fleece on the old man’s head.
“You are sometimes clever, Dom,” Serroi murmured.
He bowed, mockery in the elaborate dip. “Nice of you to notice.” The bitterness in his voice startled her, but before she could respond, he caught her wrist and started for the door. “Let’s get out of here.”
She wrenched her arm free. “Not yet,” she said. “Not now.”
“What?”
“You go see about the macain. Bring them around to the south side, I should be coming out a window there and down the wall.”
“Forget it, you won’t be out of the hills long enough to need those things.”
Serroi strode back to the stairs, pulling the hood up as she went, tugging it so far forward it dangled in her eyes. Standing behind the crumpled body, she stared at him, angry words flooding her mind, choking in her throat. In the end, all she said was, “See we have mounts.”
She wheeled and ran up the stairs, up and around, anger driving her like fire under her feet, her toes whispering tsp-sp on the worn grass matting, pattering on the landings, around and around, up the squared spiral, first floor, second, doors all shut, whoever slept behind them ignorant of or ignoring the meie interdicta flitting up through flickering shadow, third floor—fourth.…
She stopped running, stood panting, bent over hands clasped tight about the worn sphere of the banister finial, gulping in the hot still air redolent of lamp oil and hot metal, blinking at shadows wavering like grandfather ghosts along the narrow hall ahead of her.
A door opened near the hall’s end and a man stepped out—a tall, thin man with black hair braided into a fantasy of coils. He dressed to meet me, she thought. He knew I was coming. The lamp by his door touched russet gleams in his molasses-on-coal skin, pricked azure flecks from his indigo eyes. As Serroi straightened, heart thudding with the violent fear of norim she’d never been able to eradicate, he brought up his hand, long thin fingers like reptile paws spread out behind a pinwheel of white fire. He flung it at her, plucked another out of nowhere, flung it, plucked and flung a third.
Fast as thought they swept toward her. Faster than thought. She had no time to duck or defend herself, no defense if there was time.
The heat touched her face, the glare blinded her.
The tajicho hummed and burned in her boot.
The firestars, one, two, three, swung around and sped back at the Norit. He worked his long fingers frantically to cancel the calling before he burned in his own fire.
Without waiting to see what happened, Serroi flung herself around the newel post and lunged for the door. At first her fingers fumbled uselessly with the latchstring, then she managed to fight down the terror enough to see what she was doing. Behind her she heard a howl of pain and rage. She jerked the door open, heard other doors down the hall open, heard sleepy voices—sounds cut off when she slammed the door behind her. She slapped the bar home and jerked in the latchstring. With the bar like a comforting arm pressing against her shoulders, she leaned on the door, scraping the sweat off her face, struggling to control the panic that the Norit stirred in her.
“Open.” The demand was a roar muffled by the wood behind her head. She felt a thump against her back as a fist pounded on door. Coldly furious, the Norit screamed again, “Open this door, meie, open and live. Defy me and die.” She sniffed with disgust and stepped away from the door. Absurd, absurd, she thought. No one talks like that, defy me and die. Words of a wooden tyrant in a puppet play. He couldn’t mean them, absurd even to say them. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes and struggled to put behind her the paralyzing fear her Noris had etched in her bones those days of pain, endless unrelieved pain, when he couldn’t believe she wasn’t defying and resisting him. She was tempted to yell back at the Norit, taunt him with his stupidity, but in the end reason prevailed; anything she said he could seize on and use against her. She listened to mutters that might have been curses and smiled.
She ignored the demanding voice and growing noise outside, ignored the cessation of sound that followed a snapped order from the Norit, ignored the droning chant that broke the silence. She dug through the boy’s chest, determined to give Braddon good measure for his generosity. Item by item, she pulled out what she thought she could use and rolled these things into a compact bundle, strapping it together with a wide black belt. The chant grew louder, more insistent. When she stood again, she saw the bar shuddering in its iron loops. As if impatient but inept hands tugged at it, the heavy hardwood bar moved a little, rattled in place, moved again.
The single window in the room was a small square by the head of the bed. She thrust the shutters open and tossed the bundle out, hoping Hern had sense enough to collect it and tie it to her saddle, hoping too that he hadn’t rebelled against being ordered about by a child-sized female and left her to get herself out of this mess. She glanced at the bar, frowned. It was moving more smoothly now. Grim-faced, she ran across the room, flattened her palms against the bar. “Tajicho,” she whispered, “if you ever twisted magic awry …” laughed when the chant broke off with a roar of pain. She shoved the bar home again and ran for the window.
She found the bundle in a forked branch of a desiccated bush, one of those she’d helped to plant in that season she spent as stableboy for Braddon, the last step on her trek to the Biserica. She found time to be sad as she tucked the bundle under her arm and reeled in her rope, laying it in coils as she pulled it down, found time to scold herself for slashing at Hern, to berate Hern for his blind refusal to listen to her. The rope whipped to her hands with a soft whisper of leather and a harsh rattle of the bushes, the rattle reminding her that this had once been a cheerful pleasure garden. She’d last seen it with the fountain playing in the middle, with small tables scattered about, a glass and copper lamp burning on each, brightly dyed paper lanterns strung overhead. The tables and the lanterns were gone, the flowers in the squat round tubs were gone, only weeds grew in the dry soil and even the weeds were dying. The stone flags were littered with bits of paper, dead leaves, passar droppings. As she clip
ped the rope back on her weaponbelt, she looked up. The small window above was still dark and empty. She smiled with satisfaction. “Bit on something that bit back,” she murmured. “Serves you right.”
No Hern yet. She shook her head and moved toward the front of the Inn, listening intently. The thick walls defeated her ears but through the outreach of her eyespot she sensed a growing turmoil inside.
Hern came around the corner, riding one macai and leading a second. Serroi felt rather ashamed of herself for suspecting him of desertion, especially when she saw that he’d taken the time to switch gear to fresh beasts. She shook her head, her rueful smile widening to a grin as she took note of the fineness of the beasts and realized that they probably belonged to the Norit. She swept him a deep bow, tucked the bundle more securely under her arm and swung up into the saddle. “There’s a gate in the back wall.”
