Moongather

by Clayton, Jo;

  The Noris smiled at this touch of order. “Come, Serroi. I need you to help me with something.”

  Happiness warmed her. Almost dancing, she crossed the room to him and took his hand.

  The rock flowed before them, collapsing into stairs. The tower seemed to be solid except for those cells of emptiness located through the stone like bubbles in a brick of cheese. He took her higher than she’d been before and touched open a door leading into a room she’d never seen before.

  As she walked inside, a chini yearling trotted to her, sniffed at her, laid back his ears and crouched whining in front of the Noris. She’d noted that before. Wild or tame, creatures winced away from the Noris pantomiming their fear in postures of submission. Even the great sicamar crawled on his belly and yowled with fear. The Noris stepped past her and crossed to a chair. As he settled himself, she continued to stroke the chini’s head and looked around.

  The room was small and circular, a cylinder in stone rising high overhead, ending in a crisp blue circle of sky too far away to lessen the sense of oppression that weighed on her. Little by little her happiness slipped away. The air was too heavy in that roofless room. Her eye-spot throbbed. She turned to the Noris, a dozen unspoken questions in her eyes.

  He sat in a black stone chair raised on a dais with a permanent pentacle incised in the stone around it, the lines filled with silver that shimmered in the brilliant light pouring through the roof opening.

  The yearling pressed hard against her leg; she could feel him trembling. He was a tall gangling animal, his back about groin-high on her, not quite at home yet in an adult-sized body. She scratched behind his ears and smoothed her hand along his spine. Touching this strong life, she was aware again of the deadness of the tower. She was never sure that the Noris truly lived; he seemed a man like others, but sometimes she doubted it.

  “Serroi.”

  She stared at him, startled. There was a heavy solemnity to his voice unlike his usual cool detachment. She wondered what was coming, certainly something different. She moved to stand before him, straightening her back and shoulders.

  “You’ve been here four years.” His eyes moved from her face to gaze blankly over her shoulder at the glass-smooth stone of the wall. “You’ve proved to have an unusual aptitude for learning. I am pleased to find it so.”

  Serroi sucked in a breath, feeling more uneasy than ever. The things he was saying should have come from the warm, pleasant side, but they didn’t, they were like the false smile he wore sometimes, said without feeling, a sop to her feelings. She knew that he had a very limited understanding of those feelings. In the past four years, she’d learned to accommodate herself to these limitations, shutting down when she could some of her stronger reactions to his actions. A year ago jealousy had scorched her. He was startled at first, then amused. She’d been in agony and it had amused him.

  “You asked me once why I took you from your kin. Do you remember?”

  She nodded, her eyes fixed on his face.

  He held his hands out before him, palms up first, then the backs; after a minute he dropped them on the dark stone chair arms, draped them gracefully. “Hands,” he said. “My hands. They hold power; you know that.” He tapped fingers against the stone. “But there are limits. We can manipulate, transform the non-living; we’re sealed away from manipulating the living. I needed a gate in that wall. You.” He settled back in his chair, smiling a little, more remote than ever, an ivory and jet image of a man. “You are my gate, Serroi.”

  Apprehension and excitement swirled in Serroi until she was dizzy with them. She understood little of what the Noris was saying, but she grasped her importance in his eyes and glowed at the thought. Still, she was afraid, she didn’t know why.

  “Look at me, Serroi.”

  She stroked the chini again, then raised her eyes to meet his. The shining black rounds grew larger and larger until she saw nothing but that blackness. She was weeping, could feel the tears dripping from her eyes and trickling down her cheeks while a terrible coldness flowed into her from the Noris, stifling all that she’d been feeling, anger and joy, love and despair, chilling her until there was nothing warm left in her, until the tears dried, until her body was unfeeling stone.

  A thing crept into her body. She felt her fingers twitch, her arms move. Felt the eye-spot wake and send out its invisible fingers under pressure from the invader. Her body stirred. Sitting trapped in walls of ice, the seed of warmth that contained her essence saw and grieved as her body went awkwardly onto its knees beside the whining yearling. Her body leaned forward until her face was pressed against the chini, her brow touching the soft grey fur on the side of his head.

  The chini stiffened. She felt the thing in her creep out through the eye-spot and move inside him.

  The yearling moved jerkily away. She heard him whine, then growl, saw him leap high, crouch, crawl across the stone, scraping at the floor with spastic paws. He began to howl. She felt his agony. The frozen part of her watched critically while the tiny soft spot where she really lived could do nothing but mourn endlessly in darkness. Her body crouched in the middle of the room while the Noris working through her tore the chini to bits, driving him until he foamed at the mouth, dashed against the walls at full speed, bit at himself, tearing out gobbets of flesh and hair. Finally the chini yearling died under the torment, driven until his heart gave out from pain and exhaustion.

  The part of the Noris working through her withdrew. She felt the cold flow out of her and couldn’t move; her trust broken utterly, she felt like she was bleeding inside where no one could see it. Hardly aware of what she was doing, she lifted her arms, crossed them tight across her chest, her eyes fixed on his ivory face, begging him to reassure her, to let her love him again, to say something she could believe. He sat brooding, apparently unaware that she was in the room.

  She rose shakily to her feet and moved to the body of the chini. Kneeling beside him, she touched the mutilated flesh, ran trembling fingers over the pointed ears, looked down at the mouth that hung open, the lacerated tongue lapping out over the yellow teeth, touched threads of blood congealing in long lines from the jaw.

  She felt the Noris’s eyes on her and got heavily to her feet. He was frowning, puzzled by the strength of her emotion. When she came over to him, he leaned forward and pushed her down until she was kneeling at his feet inside the lines of the pentacle. A WORD made the silver in the lines glow palely. Another WORD, one more complex than she’d heard before, crashed against her, struck pain from her. She moaned and huddled closer against the Noris, sick and terrified.

  A grey fog gathered over the chini’s battered body. It hovered a moment then began shaping itself into a likeness of the beast. Red eyes like hot blood, red tongue lolling over yellow teeth, pricking ears, a great grey body, the demon was a travesty of the living breathing beast yet she sensed that it shared some of the chini’s nature, chini and demon melded into a horrible amalgam that made her stomach churn. It slunk from the diminished body and came to sniff at the silver lines of the pentagram.

  Serroi cringed away from it, cowered against the chair, pushing harder into the Noris’s legs while the thing paced back and forth in front of her, its stinking breath blowing into her face.

  The Noris stood. A chain of shimmering silver leaped into being in midair and slapped about the demon’s neck. It whined with pain and crouched submissively. With a WORD the Noris paled the pentacle’s silver then turned to scowl down at Serroi. “Go to your room, Serroi. Put yourself in order.” He seemed angry as if she had somehow hurt him by her pain. He stalked from the room, one end of the silver chain in his hand, the demon trotting beside him.

  Serroi looked sadly after him, then at the body of the pup. She couldn’t even bury it. There was no honest living soil on this barren crag. Catching hold of the chair’s arm, she pulled herself onto her feet. With a last glance at the dead beast she stumbled out of the room and trudged slowly down the stairs to her room, pulled the door sh
ut behind her, wincing at the dull clang of metal against stone.

  She stood a moment in the center of the small space looking vaguely about. Several plants were beginning to droop. She moved blindly to them, touched the wilting leaves and the splotches of brown. Abruptly she was crying. She threw herself onto her rumpled bed, her body shuddering with sobs wrenched from her.

  After the evening meal, a meal she couldn’t eat, she paced restlessly about the room, picking things up, setting them down again, trying desperately to forget what happened. She needed to believe that he was at least fond of her. Finally she sighed and went to see him.

  He looked up and smiled at her, then turned back to the fire. She settled silently beside him. After a minute she caught his hand and rested her cheek on his cool flesh. She had to believe that he valued her, that he had some affection for her even if he didn’t truly understand her. Several minutes passed like this then she looked up to find his eyes fixed on her, examining her with curiosity and some puzzlement. She held her breath, but he said nothing. She sighed and tried to forget the chini. It wouldn’t happen again. It couldn’t. Things would go on between them as before. She would forget and be happy again.

  A week later he called her back to the cylindrical room. She saw the small grey figure with its round wrinkled face like an ugly old man and great round nocturnal eyes; she cried out and took a step back. The Noris brought her in, almost shoving her as she begged him not to do it, her hands clinging to him, tears streaming from her eyes. He used her to drive the little beast to its death, coldly testing it beyond its strength. Once again the demon blended with the animal.

  After that he let her rest a week, then called her back to the chamber with another chini, using it to strengthen the first demon, welding the two natures more completely. Week after week the animals died and demons were born or made stronger. Slowly the cages in the court emptied and slowly her anguish grew. She begged the Noris to stop; he couldn’t understand. it was only a successful series of experiments, what did a few lives matter, there were always more animals, they were born and died every day.

  Serroi knelt beside the great chair, struggling to hold back her grief so she could speak calmly, persuasively. “Please, Ser Noris.” She sucked in a breath, fighting for that elusive calm. “Haven’t you got enough things to work with? Can’t you leave the rest of them, let them go, let me stop. Let me stop. Please. They’re my friends, Ser. Noris. Let me stop.” She sucked in another breath, waited tensely for his answer.

  “Look at me.” His voice was crisp and hard. When she looked up, she saw that he was coldly angry, so angry his hands were trembling. “You are the gate.” He leaned forward suddenly and caught her head between his hands. He held her gently enough but she couldn’t move. “They’re only animals, Serroi. I’m doing what I told you pushing back limits, learning things I never knew before. You have to understand that, child.” To her surprise he was almost pleading with her. “Remember the mirror, the books, the tests we did together? You like to learn, Serroi. We share the same need to learn. They’re just animals, most of them would be dead already by predator or disease. We give meaning to that death.”

  Her head locked in place by those steel and silk fingers, she was forced to look up at him. “They’re my friends,” she said. “And you’re making me hurt them.”

  He held her a moment longer, then pulled his hands away and leaned back in the chair, his eyes closed. After a moment he waved her away from him with a quick impatient gesture of a slim white hand. “Leave,” he said harshly. When she was at the door, he spoke again. “Be here tomorrow after the noon meal.”

  She began to fight him, trying to keep from looking into his eyes. She failed. She tried to wall him out of her body. She failed. She tried to push him out once he was in. She failed. She exhausted herself struggling against him and lost every time, but she never quit. She could no longer endure sharing in the destruction of the beasts and birds she loved. As she struggled, she felt herself growing stronger; he had to exert more of his power each time he called her to that room. Still she lost. One by one the cages were emptied.

  The courtyard grew silent. She couldn’t go near the animals anymore, those few that were left. They wouldn’t let her. She kept away from the court. She couldn’t bear to look at the empty cages—or at the occupied ones, knowing their dwellers would soon be tormented to death.

  She suffered. Having given the Noris her love fully and freely, she hurt when she had to defy him, hurt more when she sensed his own hurt, when she had to face his anger, his accusations of betrayal.

  Spring faded into summer. She ate and slept when she could, lay awake more hours trying to find a way out of her dilemma. One day she tried climbing the cages, but the highest were too far below the top of the court walls and set too solidly in place. She tried loosening one cage, but only bruised and tore her fingers. Without tools she could do nothing. She went through her books and searched the mirror to find out everything she could about the island chain of the Nearga-nor, but she found little that comforted her. The islands were miles out to sea. She knew nothing about boats, nothing about swimming either, and she could remember all too well the power the Noris had over wind and water. There was no way she could run from him.

  The sessions continued. She settled into a numb grief and let him use her as he wished. She withdrew from him, no longer sat with him in the evenings. Most of the time she lay in heavy nightmare-ridden sleep, retreating into sleep to avoid the pain her waking hours brought her—then the walls began closing in on her.

  She went finally from apathy to a shrieking rage, plunged from the room and refused to go back, prowled about the court like a tiny predator, ready to claw at anything that moved. The Noris found her there early in the morning, sitting huddled by the water pipe.

  “You spent the night there.”

  “Yes.” Shivering, miserable, she glared up at him.

  “Come inside, Serroi. Wash yourself. Eat something.”

  “No.”

  He bent to touch her head. She jerked back. “Serroi.…”

  “No.”

  His face a mask in ivory and ebony except for the glitter of the pendant ruby, he straightened quickly, almost as if she’d slapped him. For a moment he said nothing. When he spoke, his voice was harsh and cold. “That is your choice.” He turned away, turned back as abruptly, flung out an arm to point at a rough wooden door in the towerside. “Live there if you must.” Walking heavily, deliberately, without sign of hurry, he crossed the flags and disappeared inside.

  Summer passed and the rains began. Day after day the rain dripped down. When the rain stopped, the fog moved in and more moisture dripped endlessly from the cage roofs and the walls and settled on everything. The cages were all empty, their straw and other contents rattling forlornly in the winds that sometimes crept in to blow the veils of fog about. Serroi stayed in the cell-like room in the tower wall and the stone radiated a gentle warmth that kept her alive. The invisible hands brought her food and fresh clothing. Sometimes days went by before she saw the sun and even when it came out, she couldn’t endure going into the silent court to see the empty cages. She stayed in the small dark hole and brooded.

  THE WOMAN: VI

  Hands were pulling at her. Dinafar muttered and pushed at them, unwilling to wake. She was still tired, her body ached, even moving her hands quickened the soreness in her muscles. The pulling continued. She opened her eyes, blinked, then cried out as she looked up into a man’s grinning face. He twisted his hand in the front of her ragged blouse and ripped it away, baring her chest and the slight swell of her new breasts. She kicked at him, but her legs were trapped in the folds of her skirt. She tried to wriggle away, biting and scratching as his hands fumbled over her nipples. She rolled away from him, scrambled onto her knees. Cursing good-naturedly, he grabbed her wrist and jerked her back. A man she hadn’t seen before caught her other wrist. “Wild one,” he said. “Hurry up, Lere.” He wrapped his hand in her hai
r and jerked her head back.

  The pain brought tears to her eyes. She bucked her body about but the two men were far too strong. The first man, Lere, the other had called him, sat on her feet and began working the tumbled folds of her skirt up past her knees.

  A roar from behind her head brought a muffled curse from Lere. He sat back, his face blank. “Ay, Tercel,” he said with a forced respect.

  “Sten, Lere, off that tita. Tie her wrists. Got no time for that now.”

  “Ay, Tercel.” Lere glanced at the other two and muttered, “Ay, ay, ay, not a bit o’ stinkin’ fun. Hunh! Hang onto her, Sten. I’ll get a bit o’ stinkin’ rope.”

  Hands tied in front of her, Dinafar sat up in time to see the Tercel clamp one thick-fingered hand tight around the meie’s wrists, holding her out from him like a strangled bereg he’d taken from a poacher’s snare. Her face masklike, she hung limply as if his strength had drained all fight from her. Dinafar was puzzled. The meie had never just given up. Not like that. The Tercel was a giant of a man, dressed in a leather tunic and black wool trousers, his barrel chest covered by a black and green tabard with the sigil of Oras appliquéed on the center panel. All the clothing was worn and dusty. He had several days’ stubble on his face, a greasy shine to his skin, a gaunted look from days of hard riding and little sleep. When the erratic breeze blew her way, she could smell his stale sweat. Beyond him, she saw the meie’s mount and hers, saddled and ready, standing with three others. The Tercel started moving toward the beasts, the meie still dangling at arm’s length. His strength was phenomenal. His vanity too, Dinafar thought. He’s showing off for his men.