Drinker of Souls dost-1

by Jo Clayton

  “Just in case you couldn’t go back to Arth Slya. Just in case you needed to free your father and the others as well as the ones the soldiers had taken. Seemed obvious to Jaril and me that the Temuengs would round up the Fair people before coming after the villagers.”

  “You didn’t say anything about that.”

  “You had enough on your mind.”

  “You did this to me. Why?”

  “A child of eleven. A girl child,” Yaril said. “Think, Brann. Don’t just stand there glupping like a fish. Put that shirt on. Who’d let such a child travel unmolested? Chances are the first man or woman who needed a laborer would grab you and put you to work for your keep. Who’d bother listening to a child? And that’s far from the worst that could happen. So we used all that life you drank and grew you older. You haven’t lost anything, Bramble-all-thorns, we’ve stabilized you at this age. You won’t change again unless you wish it.”

  Her head feeling as hard as seasoned oak, Brann stared at her. “What…” She pulled the shirt on, began buttoning it, having to pull it tight across her newly acquired breasts. “Stabilized?”

  “You know what the word means, Put these on, they belonged to Mareddi who’s about your size so they should fit.”

  Brann stepped into the trousers, drew them up, began pulling the laces tight. “But I don’t know what it means when you use it about me.”

  “Means you’ll stay the age you are until you want to change it.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Well, we have, haven’t we? Like we told you before, Bramble, we’re a meld, the three of us. You’re stuck with more limits than we have, but we can shift your shape about some. Not a lot and it takes a lot of energy, but, well, you see. Here. Boots. Mareddi’s too. Might be a touch roomy.”

  “Weird.” She ran her hand over her head. “Am I going to stay egg-bald? I’d rather not.” She pulled on the boots, stomped her feet down in them.

  Yaril giggled. “I could say wait and see. Well, no, Bramble. New hair’s already starting to come in.”

  “I’m hungry.” She looked at the blanket she’d slept in, nudged it with her toe. “What a stink, I need a bath.” Shrugging, she started toward the smell of roasting coyno.

  ON HER SECOND day out of the mountains she came to a small village where Jaril bought her a long scarf to cover the stubble on her head, also more bread and cheese, some bacon and the handful of tea the woman could spare. Brann hadn’t thought about the need for money before and was startled when he came up with a handful of coppers and bronze bits, though she had wit enough to keep her mouth shut while there were strangers about to hear her. Later, when she was riding down a rutted road between two badly tended boundary hedges, she called the hound back and pulled Jaril up before her. “Where’d you get the coin?” She smiled ruefully, shook her head. “I forgot we couldn’t travel down here without it.”

  “Soldiers’ purses, pimush’s gear. They won’t be needing it anymore, and we will.” He leaned back against her, awakening a strong maternal urge in her, something that surprised her because she’d never before felt anything of the sort.

  “Another thing you didn’t bother telling me about.”

  “You were too busy glooming to listen.”

  “Hunh.”

  He tilted his head back, looked up at her with a smile too much like Marran’s for her comfort, then he slid away from her, hitting the ground on four hound’s feet, trotting ahead to rejoin Yaril,

  * * *

  AS THE DAYS passed, she rode through village after village clustered about manorhouses with their keeps tenanted by Temueng soldiers. The fear and anger was thick as the dust cast up by plows and plodding oxen, the villages quiet and hushed, the children invisible except for the ones working with their parents in the fields-a kind of desolation without destruction that reawakened anger in her, a fury against the Temuengs whose touch seemed as deadly as the change-serpents’ poison. She even found herself blaming the lack of rain on them, though the dry days and nights let her sleep outside, which was necessary because of the presence of the Temuengs in the villages and the sullen, mistrustful Plainfolk.

  Toward evening on the seventh day after she left the mountains, she reached the wide highroad from Grannsha to Tavisteen and turned south along it, dismounted and walked beside a horse stumbling with weariness, the hounds trotting in wide arcs before her, noses and ears searching for danger. Now and then one of them would run back to her and pace alongside her for a while, looking repeatedly up at her, remnants of the day’s light glinting in the crystal of their strange eyes. The sky was heavily overcast, thick boiling gray clouds threatening rain with every breath. The river swept away from the road and hack in broad tranquil meanders, the color sucked from the water by the lowering skies, the sound muted by the ponderous force and depth of the flow.

  She was about to resign herself to a wet cold night when she came on a large rambling structure built between the highroad and a returning sweep of the river, an Inn with a pair of torches out front, torches that had burnt low because it was long after sundown. The hounds came back, altering into Yaril and. Jaril by the time they reached her. “What do you think?” she said. “Should we stop there?” She drew the flat of her hand down her front, sighed. “I’d really like a hot bath.”

  Yaril scratched at her nose, considered the Inn. “Why not, Bramble. It looks like it gets a lot of traffic. The folk there won’t be surprised by strangers.”

  “You’re the moneykeeper, J’ri, can we afford their prices?”

  He looked thoughtful, then mischievous. “Why not. ‘S not our coin, we can always steal more.” He dug into the saddlebags, handed the purse to Yaril and took the reins from Brann. “You two go on inside, let Yaril do the talking and you stand about looking portentous, Bramble.” He giggled and dodged away from the sweep of her hand.

  get Coier bedded down, he won’t mind a dry stall and some corn for dinner, oh no he won’t.”

  The door opened at Brann’s touch and she went in, looking about as impassively as she could. Beside her, Yaril was gawking at the place with far less restraint, her child’s form licensing freer expression of her interest. A long narrow entranceway with open arches on each side led to a broad stairway at the far end, a horseshoe-shaped counter by the foot of the stairs. Yaril ran ahead of Brann to the counter, beat a few times on the small gong set by the wall, then engaged in an energetic sotto-voce debate with the sleepy but professionally genial man who emerged from the door behind the counter. Brann watched from the corner of her eye, trying to show she knew what she was about, ignoring the men who came to the arch-door of the taproom and stared at her with predatory speculation. She grew increasingly nervous as Yaril prolonged that debate. If she’d been here with her mother and father, as she could’ve been, she’d have been excited and absorbed by the newness of it all, protected by the arms of custom and love; now she was merely frightened, asea in a place whose rules of conduct she didn’t know. She reached up, touched the scarf still wound about her head. Already she had about an inch of new hair, silvery white and softly curling like downfeathers on a duck. It itched, needed washing as much as the rest of her. Seemed weeks since she’d had a bath. She gazed down at thin wrists that looked as if a breath would snap them, at long strong hands tanned dark that were dark also with the grime water alone wouldn’t get off. Soap and a hot bath. She sighed with anticipated pleasure.

  Yaril came trotting back. “I thought you’d like to eat first while he’s getting the water heated for your bath.” She led Brann into the taproom and settled her at a table in the far corner. Jaril came in, looked through the arch, began helping Yaril fetch food and eating things, acting as beginning apprentices were expected to act, serving their masters’ wants and needs. The clink of the coin the children had taken from the soldiers had bought her a measure of welcome, the children’s act brought her a grudging respect as one who might have a dangerous amount of power however odd she looked. Even that oddnes
s had its good points, setting her apart from the general run of women on their own.

  As soon as she was settled behind the table with the wall at her back, she felt better, as if she’d acquired a space all her own. And when the children brought cold roast chicken, heated rolls with cheese melted into them and a pitcher of hot spiced wine, she began to eat with the appetite engendered by her long ride. The children knelt beside her, hidden from the rest of the room. When most of the wine was a warm mass in her stomach and the first edge of her hunger had been blunted, she looked down at JariL “Coier all right?”

  He nodded. “Good stable. Clean, fresh straw in the stalls, no mold on the oats.”

  “Good.” She put down the wine bowl. “What about you two, do you need to eat?”

  He shook his head, the fine hair flying into a halo about his pointed face. “After that last meal? No. We shouldn’t need more until the Wounded Moon is full again.”

  “Oh.”

  She finished the rest of the food and sat holding the drinking bowl cradled in her hands. Her body ached. She still wasn’t quite used to the altered distribution of meat on her bones, though as time wore on new habits were beginning to form. That was a help, but she was more and more worried about her ability to make her way in this other world; she was woefully, dangerously ignorant about things these people didn’t waste two thoughts on. The money Jaril carried, for example. The only coin she’d ever held was the bronze bit Marran called his luck piece. The children seemed to know what they were doing, their experience at traveling seemed to be much greater than hers, but she felt uneasy about leaving everything to them. Arth Slya encouraged its young ones to develop self-reliance within the community. They had to know their capacities, their desires and gifts, in order to make a proper Choice, whether that choice be centered in the Valley or elsewhere; that knowledge and contentment therein was even more important to the well-being of the Valley than the proper choice of a lifemate. Even after Choice, if the passage of time found the young man or woman restless and unsatisfied, they were encouraged to seek what they needed elsewhere; apprenticeships were arranged in Grannsha, usually at Fairtime, in Tavisteen, or somewhere on the Plains, the young folk leaving to be dancers, players of all sorts, merchants, soldiers, sailors. She had cousins all over Croaldhu, probably scattered about the whole world, but they all had help getting to know how to act, they had people around them to encourage and support them. Such practices had kept Arth Slya thriving for more than a thousand years. A thousand years. Impossible that in so short a time as a day such a way of life had almost ceased to exist.

  She sipped at lukewarm wine and noticed fbr the first time the singular hush in the taproom. At first she thought she’d caused it, then she saw the three men at the bar, their backs against the slab, tankards still hill in their hands. They were Temuengs with pale northern skins the color of rich cream, straight black hair pulled back and tied at the napes of their necks, high prominent cheekbones, long narrow eyes as black as the shirts and trousers they wore. They had a hard, brushed neatness, no dust on them, no sweat, not a hair out of place, faces clean-shaven, nails burnished on hands that looked as if they’d never done anything Brann could think, of as work, a disturbing neatness that spoke of coldness and control, that frightened her as it was meant to do. Yaril sensed her unease, dissolved into the light shimmer, crept around the edges of the room, then darted through the men and away before they could do more than blink, flicked back along the wall and solidified into Yaril standing at her shoulder. “Watch out for them,” the girl whispered. “They have leave to do anything they want to anyone, they’re the enforcers of an imperial Censor.” Yaril patted her arm. “But you just remember who you are now, Drinker of Souls.”

  Brann shivered. “I don’t like…” she started in a fierce whisper. A pressure on her arm stopped her. She looked up. A fourth man had come from somewhere and was standing across the table from her. He pulled out a chair and sat down.

  “I don’t recall requesting company,” she said. Jaril was on his feet now, standing at her other shoulder; she lost much of her fear; with the children backing her, this Temueng was nothing. She leaned back in her chair and examined him with hatred and contempt.

  He ran his eyes over her. “What are you supposed to be?”

  “Drinker of Souls.” The phrase Yaril had used came out easily enough. She looked at his frozen face and laughed.

  “Who are you?” He spoke with a deadly patience.

  She giggled nervously, though he and his armsmen were not very funny. She giggled again and the Temueng grabbed her arm, his fingers digging into her flesh. He tried to twist the arm, to retaliate for her laughter-. somewhat to her own surprise-she resisted him with ease and sat smiling at him as he strained for breath, getting red in the face, his menacing calm shattered. But he wasn’t stupid and knew the rules of intimidation well enough. If a tactic fails, you quit it before that failure can make you ridiculous, and slide into something more effective. He’d made a mistake, challenging her with unfriendly witnesses present. He loosed her arm, sat back, turned his head partway around but didn’t bother looking at the men he spoke to. “Clear them out,” he said,

  She watched the enforcers clear the room and follow the Plainsfolk out, stationing themselves in the broad archway, their backs to the taproom. She frowned at the Temueng, knowing she would kill him if she had to. Her gentle rearing and Slya’s strictures of respect seemed a handicap down here, but she wouldn’t abandon either unless she was forced to. She had horror enough for nightmares the rest of her life.

  He jabbed a forefinger at the children. “You two,” he said. “Out.”

  “No,” Brann said.

  Yaril’s nostrils flared. “Huh,” she said.

  “Yours are they, ketcha?”

  “We are the Mountain’s children,” Yaril said, “born of fire and stone.”

  He looked from one to the other, turned his head again. “Temudung, come here.”

  One of the three standing in the doorway swung round and came across to the Censor. “Salim?”

  He pointed at Yaril. “The girl. Stretch her out on the bar. Then we’ll see if the mountain has answers.”

  “Censor,” Brann said softly, though with anger. “Take my warning. Don’t touch the children. They aren’t what they seem.”

  Yaril snorted. “Let the fool find out the hard way, mistress.”

  The enforcer ignored that exchange and came round the table, hand ready to close on Yaril’s arm and snatch her away from Brann’s side.

  Then it wasn’t a delicate small girl the Temueng was reaching for, but a weasel-like beast the size of a large dog that was leaping for his throat, tearing it and leaping away, powerful hind legs driving into his chest, missing much of the geyser of blood hissing out at him. Brann grimaced with distaste and dabbed at the bloodspots on her Ece and shirt with the napkin the host had provided with her meal.

  By the time the Temueng slumped to the floor, the weasel had shrunk smaller, a darkly compact threat crouched on the table in front of Brann, long red tongue licking at the bloodspots on its fur.

  “I think you’d better not move,” Brann said quietly.

  The Censor sat rigidly erect, a greenish tinge to his skin, staring not at Brann or the beast, but at the serpent swaying beside her. The two enforcers in the arch wheeled when they heard the abruptly silenced shriek from their companion, took a step into the room, stopped in their tracks when the serpent hissed, the weasel-beast gave a warning yowl.

  The taproom filled with those tiny sounds that make up a silence, the ones never heard in the middle of ordinary bustle and noise, the creak of wood, the hiss of the dying Lire, the hoarse breathing of the men, the grinding of the sensor’s teeth, the buzzing of a lissfly without sense enough to shun the place.

  “Censor,” she said. She’d done some rapid thinking, lipped into the fund of stories she’d heard from ancient Uncle Eornis, tales of heros, monsters and mischief-makers. “I am Drin
ker of Souls,” she said, infusing the words with all the heavy meaning she could. “Feel fortunate, O man, that I am not thirsty now. Feel fortunate, man, that the Mountain’s children are not hungry. Were it otherwise, you would die the death of deaths.” She felt a little silly, though he seemed to take her seriously enough. “All I desire is to pass in peace through this miserable land. Let me be, Temueng, and I’ll let you be. You and your kind.” She let the silence expand until even the slightest sound was painful. Then she said, “I have a weakness, Censor. Anger, Censor. You will be tempted to make the locals pay for your shame. But if you do that, I’ll be very very angry, Censor. I’ll find you, Censor, believe me, Censor.”

  She stopped talking and grinned at him, beginning to enjoy herself. But enough was enough so she stood, pushing her chair hack with her legs. “I’m going to my room now, Censor. I’m tired and I plan to sleep soundly and well, but the Mountain’s children never sleep, so you’d be well advised to let me be. Say what you want to the folk here, I won’t contradict you, you need lose no touch of honor, Censor.”

  She felt his eyes on her as she left the room. Yaril flitted up the steps before her and Jaril came behind-guarding her, though she was too self-absorbed to realize that until triumph burnt out and she was walking tiredly down the lamplit hall to the room she’d hired for the night.

  A cheerfully crackling fire on the hearth, a large tub of hot water set comtbrtably close to the heat, copper cans of extra hot water to add later. Soft flubbed towels on the rush seat of a high-backed straight chair, a bowl of perfumed soap beside them. She crossed the room letting the children shut the door, touched the thin-walled porcelain of the soap bowl, picked it up, ran her fingers over the bottom. Immer’s mark. It was born from her father’s kilns. The simple lovely bowl made her feel like weeping. Her father was a gentle man who disliked loud voices, would simply walk away if someone got too aggressive. He saved his anger for cheats and liars and slipshod work and for that last he was unforgiving. He would not live long as a slave, there wasn’t the right kind of bend in him. She sighed and stripped, putting aside that worry, there being little she could do about it right then.