by Jo Clayton
Serroi looked up from peeling wax off the cheese. “Dry land. You know how good that sounds?”
He chuckled, wrung the cloth out and draped it over the rail to dry. “I’m growing webs between my fingers and toes.” On the mid-deck he opened the firebox, got the fire going and set the water on to boil. “Any idea where that damn river is now?”
“Not the faintest.” She set the cheese on the cutting board and began slicing it into thick chunks. “I did try searching for it. All this water, it messes up my outreach.” She pushed the hair off her face closed her fingers about the small leather pouch that held the tajicho, ran her eyes along the line of mountain, stopped as she saw something she’d seen a hundred times before but hadn’t taken in. “Hern, look.” She waved the knife at the mountains.
“At what?”
“Didn’t Yael-mri say we were to look for a dormant volcano?”
“Yael-mri, hunh!”
“Forget all that, isn’t that a volcanic cone right there?” She waggled the knife. “Look at it.”
A truncated triangle, it rose above the rest of the peaks, its elegant simplicity of form notably other than the jagged, irregular summits of the lower mountains. “Mount Santac,” she said. “Coyote’s Mirror.”
Hern looked down at his feet, flexed his toes. “Zhag,” he muttered.
Serroi laid the knife beside the cheese and began unwrapping the waybread. “I know. A long miserable walk and we can’t even be sure he … it … will be there.”
The next day was a repetition of that slow painful slogging through the marsh. And the next. Then they broke through a solid band of reeds into the river channel. With the help of the reeds they kept to the channel from then on, following the wide loops and twists of the river. The wind rose and died, rose again, blowing in the wrong direction. Foot by foot they fought the strengthening current until they left the reeds behind and with them the Dar.
Just before midday on the nineteenth day since they sighted the mountains they reached the first rapids. They beached the boat for the last time, assembled the things they would need for the trek to the mountain and set out walking along the riverbank.
By sundown they were some little way into the foothills, eating roasted fish and groundnuts beside a river now small and noisy. Serroi sipped at her herb tea as she watched the flames flicker above branches neatly layered within a ring of stones. She had a feeling of unfolding as if she’d been wrapped tight about herself for so long that she’d forgotten how to stretch out. The cool crispness in the air, the trees in spring bud here where the seasons mirrored those on the far side of the Sinadeen, the green smell of the spears of new grass pushing through the old, these things woke in her a lightness of the spirit and a feeling that the long troubling struggle was near its end. She smiled at the flames, the pungent tea warm inside her, looked up and met Hern’s questioning gaze. He was rubbing thoughtfully at his calves, flexing his feet, working his ankles.
“Two days. Three maybe,” she said. “If we hold out and the way doesn’t get too bad.”
He straightened, drew his thumb across his chin. “Coyote’s Mirror,” he murmured. “Hunh. Coyote’s Mirage.”
“Thought of what you might look for in that mirage if it’s not.”
He shrugged. “What are we fighting? Nearga-nor. Your Noris. Floarin and her army. Seems to me I’d better get something to fight the army and let you and your friends in the Biserica take care of the magic.” His eyes narrowed. He stared past her, reached for the Sleykyn sword.
Serroi swung around. A small grey beast with a bushy tail, big ears, a pointed nose, hovered on the edge of the circle of firelight, slanted eyes glinting red. It had a raffish, jaunty look, an un-beastlike intelligence in its red eyes. She thrust her hand palm out at Hern. “Wait.” Her eyes on the beast, she called, “Coyote?”
The beast canted his head to one side, ears pricking. He grinned at her, red tongue lolling, then swung around and trotted off, the last thing she saw the insolent waving of that scruffy tail.
For two days they followed the river, climbing laboriously up the steeply canted bank, the perfect cone of the volcano hovering always over them, the grey beast scampering effortlessly before them. And he haunted the campfires each night. Though Serroi grew more certain with each appearance that the beast was indeed Coyote or at least had something to do with him, Hern watched it with angry eyes, convinced that she was fooling herself, that the wit she claimed to see in the beast was as much a mirage as the whole quest.
On the evening of the fifth day of the climb they reached the timberline. The snowclad slope stretched another quarter mile above them, steep, radiantly pure line. The stream they followed came from a high thin cut in the rim of the cone, fell in a foaming rush half the distance, smoothed out for the rest, flowed past them in a black glass slide. There was no sign anything lived here but coneys and rockhoppers.
“Camp here?” Serroi slipped cold hands into her sleeves. Her breath was a white cloud in the crackling cold air.
“Why not? Nothing up there. I’ll get some wood.” Hern disappeared into the twisted and weathered trees growing low over equally scrubby brush. Serroi kicked a few runnels of snow off the limp yellow grass in a small round clearing in the brush and hunted out small stones. She built a fire circle, unrolled her blankets, doubled one and spread it on the ground, sat on one end, pulled the other blanket about her shoulders. She was beginning to feel as grim and angry as Hern.
Chasing a mirage, she thought. I think he’s right. Chasing a figment of Yael-mri’s imagination. Bait to pull my Noris off the Biserica, that’s all she wanted. She dragged the tajicho’s pouch over her head. Through the thin leather she could feel the crystal warm and alive.
While she was holding it and nerving herself to act, Hern came back with a meager armload of wood. Without saying a word, he built a fire then came to sit beside her on the blanket.
“Looks like Yael-mri played us both damn well.”
“Looks like.” Serroi pulled open the neck of the pouch and shook out the tajicho. “So this isn’t a total futility.” She drew back her arm, preparing to hurl the crystal down the mountain.
“Hey, hey, not away, let me see, let me, give it to me.” She swung around and saw a scrawny little man with wild grey hair and a long pointed nose hopping from foot to foot. His nose twitched, his pointed ears twitched, his greenish eyes glowed with excitement and greed. He quieted immediately and grinned at her, a sly look on his odd, ugly face. “You don’t want it, give it to me.”
“I can’t,” she said with more patience than she thought she could feel now. “It’s patterned to me and me alone.”
“Ah. Ah. Ah.” His nose twitched again. His grin widened until he seemed to have no chin. “Let me hold it, please-please?” He tilted his head and put a comically ingratiating look on his face. “I want to see it.”
Hern was scowling. He dropped a hand on Serroi’s shoulder. “Who are you?”
“Now, now, that’s mine to ask. Who’re you and what are you doing on my mountain?”
“Your mountain.” Serroi laid her free hand on Hern’s. She wouldn’t look at him, not yet. “Then you are Coyote.”
“Ah. Ah. Could be.” He sidled a little closer but was careful to stay out of reach. “Could be.”
She sucked in a breath, let it trickle out, trying to calm the turmoil inside her, felt Hern stiffen, both of them not quite daring to resurrect hope. “The prieti-meien Yael-mri asks that you take a moment to listen to us. She told us to say favor for favor, Coyote, bids you remember the debt you owe.”
“Yael-mri.” Coyote tittered, then guffawed, repeating the name over and over, clutching at his little pot belly. Finally he wiped streaming eyes. “Ah. Ah. Ah. A favor. A look in Coyote’s mirror.” He tilted his head, gazed from Serroi to Hern. “Maybe so.” His long impossibly thin arms shot out. A long impossibly thin finger jabbed at Serroi’s fisted hand. “Give it to me. I will see it, I will hold it. First or nothing.�
�
“It might be dangerous to you,” Serroi said slowly. “It kills all magic but mine.”
Coyote tittered. “Ah. Ah. Kind little green person, good sweet tasty little one. Thinking to warn poor Coyote. Ah. Ah.” He closed his fingers into a bony fist and beat against his bony chest. “Not magic, me, oh no. Not me. Give me.”
Serroi shrugged. “Catch then.” She tossed the tajicho to him. The glow of the crystal died as it left her hand. It was a dark pebble again when Coyote snatched it from the air. As it touched his chalky fingers it seemed to change, to grow translucent though the fire did not rewaken in its heart.
As soon as the tajicho left her hand, there was a shimmer in the air and Ser Noris was there, a short distance from her, his face paler and more worn than before. “Serroi, haven’t you struggled enough? Make an end of this foolishness.”
Hern’s fingers tightened on her shoulder, but she slipped from his grip and rose to her feet. “Ser Noris.”
Coyote laughed, a jarring sound like the bark of a hunting chini. “Favor. Yes. Come, I show you my house, get out of this cold. Come, I show you my Mirror. Ah!”
“No!” There was a driving urgency in Ser Noris’s dark rich voice. “Don’t trust that creature. You don’t know what it is. Serroi, he’s the Changer. Serroi, he’ll change everything; you’ll destroy everything you’re trying to save. Fight me if you must, but not with that.”
Serroi stared at him. He was frightened. She’d never thought to see that. She drew a dry tongue along dry lips. He stretched out his hands to her. “Come to me, come home.” His voice shook with tenderness and fear.
She stared and the compulsion to heal stirred in her. Hern caught at her arm as she took a step toward the Nor, jerked his hand away as if touching her burned him. There was a wrongness in Ser Noris, she felt it, a sickness that went to the heart of him, she had to touch him, heal him. She took another step. Fire burned in her hands. She looked down at them. They shone with a clear green light, the bones were shadows in green glass. She stretched out her glowing hands and took a third step toward him.
At her first step triumph lit his face, at the second, when the light began to shine about her, the triumph faltered, at the third step, he stared at her appalled. Her hand brushed his. He screamed and jerked away, his flesh changing, melting. She took another step and reached for him. With a soft anguished sob, he whipped into nothingness, retreating she knew without knowing how she knew to his sanctuary in his tower.
Serroi blinked, felt a sudden dizziness as if the world was shifting under her. Hern caught her before she could fall.
Her body was boneless, strengthless. She felt him scoop her off her feet. She was shivering, so cold she could not even feel his hands on her.
“Have to get her inside.” Hern was shouting at Coyote. He shouldn’t be doing that, she thought. “You said you have a house. Where?” A house and a fire, she thought waves of shivers passed over her, she could hear her teeth clicking together.
“Ah. Ah. Ah. You follow, yes? Follow.” The little man glided along the line of brush until he came to a sheer cliff poking through the snow. He knocked against the stone and it melted away from him. “Coyote’s home on the mountain, in the mountain.” He tittered and went trotting inside.
Hern hesitated, glanced at the sky. The sun was almost gone and the wind was blowing icy against them. “Coyote,” he muttered, shook his head and followed Coyote into the mountain, Serroi cradled in his arms.
Two days later the first snow flakes fell on Tuli and Rane as they came out of the mountains onto the southern edge of Cimpia Plain.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Duel of Sorcery Trilogy
I
THE JANJA’S PLAYERS MOVE
KINGFISHER
Hern woke disoriented, coming out of dreams not quite harrowing enough for nightmare. He reached out for Serroi, not wanting to wake her but needing to be sure she hadn’t evaporated as had his dream. His hand moved over cold sheets, a dented pillow. He jerked up, looked wildly around, the not-quite-fear of the not-quite-nightmare squeezing his gut.
She was curled up on the padded ledge of the window Coyote had melted through the stone for her comfort, moonlight and starlight soft on the russet hair that had a tarnished pewter sheen in the color-denying light. Relief washed over him, then anger at her for frightening him, then mockery at his dependence on her. He sat watching her, speculating about what it was that drove her night after night to stare out at stars that never saw the mijloc. What was she thinking of? He felt a second flash of anger because he thought he knew, then a painful helplessness because there was nothing he could do to spare her—or himself—that distress. Not so long ago he’d shared dreams with her and learned in deep nonverbal ways the painful convolutions of her relationship with Ser Noris. Love and hate, fear and pleasure—the Noris had branded himself deep in her soul. If he could have managed it, he’d have strangled the creature. Not a man, not in the many senses of that word. Creature.
He got out of the bed and went to her, touched her shoulder, drew his finger down along the side of her face. “Worried?”
She tilted her head back to look up at him. For a moment she said nothing and he thought she wasn’t going to answer him. Then she did, with brutal honesty. “No. Thinking, Dom. Thinking that this is the last time we’ll be together.”
He wrapped his arms about her. Her small hands came up and closed warm over his wrists. “You aren’t coming back with us?” He heard no sign in his voice of the effort he’d taken to speak so calmly.
“That’s not what I meant,” she said. “I meant whole to each other, one to one, with everything, everyone else left outside the circle.”
“I see. The last time until this is over.”
She said nothing. He felt her stiffen against him, then relax, knew she had no belief in any afterwards even if they both survived. And he knew with flat finality that there was no place for her in his life as long as he continued Domnor of Oras and Cimpia plain. And knew, too, that each passing day made going back to that pomp more distasteful to him—that shuttered, blinded life where no one and nothing was real, where the courtiers all wore masks, faces pasted on top of faces that were no more real than masks. Like peeling the layers off an onion: when you got down to the last, there was nothing there. He looked over her head at the scatter of moons. He had to see his folk and the mijloc clear of this, but that was all he owed them. I’m tired, he thought, they’ve got enough years out of me. He shifted so he could slide his hands along her shoulders, moving them up her neck to play with her earlobes, back down again, flesh moving on flesh with a burring whisper. “There will be an afterwards for us,” he murmured. “If you’ll come with me, vixen. The world has another half to it, one neither of us has seen. You heal, I’ll heave, and we’ll end up as wizened little wanderers telling stories to unbelieving folk of the marvels we have seen, the marvels we have done.”
She moved her head across his ribs, sighed. “That feels good.”
He dropped a hand to cup her breast, moved his thumb slowly across her nipple, felt it harden. “Can’t you see us, me a fat old man with a fringe of mouse-colored hair, feet up on a table—I’ve forgotten all my manners, you see, gone senile with too much wine, too many years. Where was I, oh yes, feet up on the table, boasting of my sword fights and magic wars fought so long ago that everyone’s forgotten them. And you, little dainty creature, bowed by years, smiling at that old man and refraining from reminding him how much more necessary to the winning of those wars you were.” He slid his arm under her knees, scooped her up and carried her back to the bed.
Serroi woke with Hern’s arm flung across her, his head heavy on her shoulder. The window was letting in rosy light, dawn well into its display. She lay a few minutes, not wanting to disturb him. He had enough to face this day. Coyote was growing increasingly impatient because Hern hadn’t yet selected any of the mirror’s offerings. Today would be the last—he hadn’t said so, but she wa
s sure of that. Today Hern had to find his weapon, the weapon that would someday turn in his hand and destroy him, if what Yael-mri hinted at was true. Or destroy what he was trying to protect. The Changer. Ser Noris feared for her, but she discounted that, not because she thought he’d lied but because his passion was for sameness not change; he wanted things about him clear-edged and immutable. At the peak of his power, any change could only mean loss. She sighed, eased away from Hern. His body was a furnace. Her leg started to itch. She ignored it awhile but the prickles grew rapidly more insistent. Carefully she lifted his arm and laid it along his side. For a moment her hands lingered on his arm, then she slid them up his broad back. She liked touching him, liked the feel or the muscles now lightly blanketed with fat, liked the feel of the bone coming through the muscles. She combed her fingers very gently through his hair, the gray streaks shining in the black. Long. Too long. You ought to let me cut it a little. Clean and soft, it curled over her wrist as if it were a hand holding her.
The itch escalated to unendurable. She sat up, eased the quilts off her and scratched her leg. She sighed with pleasure as the itch subsided, glanced anxiously at Hern, but he was breathing slowly, steadily, still deep asleep. She smiled at him, affection warm in her.
The light was brightening outside with a silence strange to her. All her life she’d seen the dawn come in with birdsong, animal barks and hoots, assorted scrapes and rustles, never with this morning’s silence as if what the window showed wasn’t really there. Magic mirror. She smiled, remembering the mirror Ser Noris made for her that brought images from everywhere into her tower room anywhere, anything she wanted to see it showed her, tiny images she never was sure were real, even later when she’d seen many of those places and peoples with her own eyes, heard them, smelled them, eaten their food, watched their lives. I wonder if that is how Ser Noris sees all of us, pieces in a game, sterile sanitary images that have shapes and textures, but no intruding inconvenient smells and noises. Not quite real. No one quite real. No, I’m wrong. I was real for him awhile. Cluttering, demanding, all edges some days, all curves another. Maybe that’s why be wants me back—to remind him that he’s real too. He wants the touch he remembers, the questions, the tugs that pulled us together, yet reminded each that the other was still other. He doesn’t want me as I am now, only the Serroi he lost. And he doesn’t even know that the Serroi be wants never quite existed, was a construct out of his clever head.
