by Jo Clayton
Jaril looked at Yaril, nodded. “Traffic’s been light the last few nights, and…” he hesitated, “we’ve used more energy than I expected. Yaril and me, we’re getting hungry.”
“Think I’d like being the hunter for a change. Instead of the hunted.” She gulped at the tea, holding it in her mouth, letting the hot liquid slide down her throat to warm her all over. “Coier’s sick or something, the water’s got him, or those bites. He needs graze and rest, more than anything, rest. Me too. Maybe we could find a place to lay up once we’re past this mess.” She looked over her shoulder at the hazy sun rising above the pines. “Could one of you do something about drying my clothes? I don’t feel right lying down with nothing on. Anything could happen to make us light out with no time to stop for dressing.”
“Right.” While Jaril doused the fire, Yaril changed, went shimmering through Brann’s wet clothing, drying a set of shirt and trousers for her. When she thought they were ready, she brought them to Brann. “Get some sleep,” she said. “We’ll watch.”
BRANN WOKE tangled in tough netting made from cords twisted out of reed fiber and impregnated with fish stink. She woke to the whisper of a drum, to the suddenly silenced scream from Coier as his throat was cut. She woke to see little gray men swarming over the island, little gray men with coarse yellow cloth wound in little shrouds about their groins, little gray men with rough dry skin, a dusty gray mottled in darker streaks and splotches like the skin of lizards she’d watched sunning on her sunning rock, little gray men butchering Coier, cutting his flesh from his big white hones. She wept from weakness and sorrow and fury, wept for the beast as she hadn’t wept for her murdered sister, her murdered people, wept and fir a while thought of nothing else. Then she remembered the children.
She could move her head a little, a very little. It was late, the shadows were long across the water. No sign of the children anywhere. Another gray man sat beside a small crackling fire, net cording woven about him and knotted in intricate patterns she guessed were intended to describe his power and importance; a fringe of knotted cords dangled from a thick rope looped loosely about a small hard potbelly. In an oddly beautiful, long-fingered reptilian hand he held a strange and frightening drum, a snake’s patterned skin stretched over the skull of a huge serpent with a high-domed braincase and eyeholes facing forward. Smiling, he drew from the taut skin a soft insistent rustle barely louder than the whisper of the wind through the reeds, a sound that jarred her when she thought about it but nonetheless crept inside her until it commanded the beat of her heart, the in-out of her breathing. She jerked her body loose from the-spell and shivered with fear. Magic. He looked at her and she shivered again. He sat before that tiny hot fire of twigs and grass, his eyes fixed on her with a hungry satisfaction that chilled her to the bone. She thought about the children and was furious at them for deserting her until the drummer reached out and ran a hand over two large stones beside his bony knee, gray-webbed crystals each large as a man’s head, crystals gathering the fire into them, little broken fires repeated endlessly within. His hand moving possessively over them, he grinned at her, baring the hard ridge of black gum that took the place of teeth in these folk, enjoying her helpless rage until a commotion at the other end of the island caught his gaze.
She strained to see, froze as a Temueng walked into her arc of vision, leading his mount and a pack pony with a large canvas-wrapped load. Gray men crowded around him, hissing or whistling, snapping fingers, stamping their broad clawed feet, jostling him, giving off clouds of a hate and fury barely held in check. His nostrils flaring with disgust, he looked over their heads and kept walking until he stood stiffly across the fire from the magic man, not-looking at Brann with such intensity she knew at once the Marishmen had sold her. She lay very still, grinding her teeth, with a rage greater than the gray men’s.
“You sent saying you had the witch.” The Temueng’s voice was deep and booming, deliberately so, Brann thought, meant to overpower the twitter and squeak of the gray men. “I brought the payment you required.”
The drummer convulsed with silent laughter, drew whispery laughs from his drum. “Yellow man, scourge a thee dryfoots.” He laughed some more. “Sit, scourge.”
Gray men trotted busily about building up the small fire into a snapping, crackly, pine-smelling blaze. The magic man played with his drum, its faint sounds merging with the noise of the fire. The Temueng sat in firmly dignified silence, waiting for all this mummery to be done, looking occasionally around to Brann. She glared hate at him, and lay simmering when he looked away, taking what satisfaction she could in his rapidly cracking patience.
The drum sound grew abruptly louder, added a clickclick-clack as the drummer tapped the nails of two fingers against the bone of the skull. “I, Ganumomo speak,” the drummer chanted, garbling the Plainspeak so badly she could barely understand what he was saying. “Hah! I, Ganumomo daah beah mos’ strong dreamer in ahhh Mawiwamo.” Continuing to scratch at the drumhead with two fingers of the hand that held the skull, he scooped up one of the crystals, held it at arm’s length above his head.
“Ganumomo naah fear fahfihmo, see see.” He set the crystal down, pursed his rubbery lips, added a whispery whistle to the whispery rattle of the drum, snapped off the whistle. “Cha-ba-ma-we naah sah strong. Magah da Chaba-ma-we naah hotha Ganumomo. Hah!” Dropping into a conversational tone, he said, “You, dryfoot, you bring aulmeamomo?”
With a grunt of assent, the Temueng got to his feet and went to the pack pony. He unroped the canvas, took a pouch from among the other items piled onto the packsaddle, brought it back to the fire. He dropped it beside the drummer, returned to his seat across the fire from the gray man. “Bringer of dreams,” he said. “More will be sent when we have the witch, like you say, what is it? the chabummy. I brought other things. Axe heads, spear points, fishhooks, knives. An earnest of final payment. Give me the witch.”
“Fish that swim too straight he go net. Otha thing in the trading. I Ganumomo daah beah wanting no dryfoots come in Mawiwamo. I Ganumomo daah beah wanting…”
Brann stopped listening as the bargaining went on, focusing all her attention and will on the children. It was no use, she got no response at all no matter how hard she concentrated. She moved about the little she could, but her arms were pinned tight against her sides, her legs were bound so tightly she couldn’t even bend her knees; the more she struggled, the more inextricably she was tangled in the cords. Anger rumbled in her like the fireheart of Tincreal, anger that was partly her own and partly that wildness that took hold of her and killed the Temueng pimush. She was terrified when that happened, somewhere deep within her there was terror now, but it was overlaid by that melded fury. She began to sing, very softly, tinder her breath, the possession song that Called the Sleeping Lady into the Yongala and readied her for the great Dances.
Dance, Slya Slya, dance
I am the Path, so walk me
Dance the sky the earth the all
Dance the round of being’s thrall
Dance, Slya Slya, dance
Emanation, puissance
I am the cauldron, empty me
Dance dissolution, turbulence
End of all tranquility
Dance, Slya Slya, dance
I am the Womb, come fill me
Germination, generation
Dance hard death’s fecundity
Dance the is and what will be
Dance the empty and the full
Dance the round of being’s thrall.
Though she sang so very softly and the magic man was deep in bargaining, he sensed immediately what was building in and around her; he broke off, came round the fire and kicked her in the ribs, the head. But he was too late. Slya took her as she groaned, Slya called the drummer’s fire to her and it burned the nets to ash and nothing and it leaped from her to the magic man and he was a torch and it leaped from her to the Temueng and he was a torch, and it leaped from gray man to gray man until the island was a planti
ng of torches, frozen gray men burning, Temueng burning, grass and trees burning, pouch of dream dust burning. In an absent, blocked-off way she saw the packs and gear burned off the horse and pony without singing a hair on them, though they ran in panic into the water and away.
Finally the fire dimmed in her, a last tongue licked out, caressed the crystals. Yaril and Jaril woke out of stone, sat up blinking.
Then Slya was gone, the island bare and barren, the trees reduced to blackened stakes, the ashes of the burned blowing into drifts, and she was burdened with a fatigue so great she sank naked on charred sand and slept.
THREE DAYS LATER she was Temueng in form and face, wearing stolen Temueng gear, riding on an elderly but shapely werehorse, one good enough for Temueng pride but not enough to tempt Temueng greed, her altered shape grace of the children’s manipulations and the lives of half a dozen Temueng harriers they ambushed along the causeway. The sun was setting in a shimmering clear sky and she was riding across the river on a stone bridge a quarter of a mile long, turning onto a road paved with massive blocks of the same stone, the city a dark mass against the flaming sky. Tavisteen. Gateway to the Narrow Sea.
3. Brann’s Quest-Across the Narrow Sea With Sammanq Schimti
BASTARD RUMORS SPREAD faster than trouble through Tavisteen; no one claimed them, everyone heard them. Agitation on the Plain…
Temuengs dead or vanished (silent celebrations in Tavisteener hearts). Temuengs thrashing uselessly about, interrupting spring planting, rousting honest (and otherwise) folk from their homes, stopping trader packtrains to question the men and rummage through their goods. Temuengs closing down the port more tightly than before (suppressed fury in every Tavisteener and an increase in smuggling, Tavisteeners being contrary folk, the moment the Ternueng Tekora governing the city promulgated a rule, there’d be cadres of Tavisteeners working to find ways to round it, but they were wily and practical enough to pretend docility); since the Temuengs moved in and took over, any trader caught in port went through long and subtle negotiations and paid large bribes if he wanted to sail out again (another cause for fury, it was ruining trade). And this aggravation doubled because they were chasing some crazy woman who kept slipping like mist between their fingers (in spite of the trouble she brought on them, Tavisteeners cheered her in the secret rooms of mind and heart-and hoped she’d go somewhere else).
Agitation in the Marish…
Marishmen went gliding like gray shadows from the fens to attack Temuengs and Plainsfolk alike, turning the causeway into a deathtrap for all but the largest parties, and these lost men continually to poison darts flying without warning from the Marish. No one dared go into the wetlands to drive off the ambushers; traffic along the road sank to a trickle then dried up completely.
Agitation in Tavisteen…
Bodies without wounds lying in the darkest parts of dark alleys, floating in the bay. Temuengs and Tavisteeners alike. The locals were small loss to the city since all of them without exception were cast-offs without family to acknowledge them, given to rape and general thuggery. The other Tavisteeners grumbled at the cost of exorcising all those stray ghosts, but didn’t bother themselves with listening to the complaints of the ghosts or hunting for the ghost-maker (for the most part, this was another case of silently applauding one they saw as something of a hero in spite of the trouble she was causing them).
The Temuengs were not nearly so philosophical about the mysterious force stalking and killing them. Temueng enforcers began snap searches, surrounding a section of the city or the wharves, turning everyone into the street, checking their credeens, searching houses and warehouses, ripping furniture,, boxes and bales apart, kicking walls in, even turning out ship holds, beating Tavisteeners and foreign sailors with angry impartiality, hauling chosen members of both sorts off to the muccaits for questioning. Sometimes they made several of these searches in a single day, sometimes they let several days pass with none, sometimes they struck in the middle of the night.
They found smugglers’ caches, forbidden drugs and weapons, illegal stills, prisoners escaped from any of a dozen muccaits, and other things of some interest to the Tekora. They did not find the woman.
* * *
SAMMANG SHIPMASTER sat hunched over a tankard of watery beer, scowling at the battered table top, his dark strong-featured face the image of his island’s war god; squat and powerful was that god, a figure carved from sorrel soapstone and polished to a satin shine, meant to inspire awe and terror in the beholder. The rest of the tavern’s patrons, not at all a gentle lot, sat at the far side of the room and left him to his brooding. Now and then he tugged at an elongated earlobe; the heavy gold pendant that usually hung there he’d sold that morning to pay docking fees; the little left had to keep him and his men for a while longer. Soon though, he’d have to break from the mooring and try to run past the ships and the guard tower at the narrow mouth of the harbor, not something he contemplated with any pleasure. Trebuchets hurling hundred-pound stones, springals with javelins that could pierce the thickest of ship timbers, fireboats anchored beyond to take care of what was left of any ship sneaking out, skryers to spot anyone trying to run under the cover of magic. Temuengs were thorough, Buatorrang curse their greedy bellies. He had a cargo of Arth Slya wares smuggled down from the Fair by an enterprising Tavisteener under the noses of the Tern uengs who’d grabbed everything they could, with some hides and fleeces from the Plains, nothing that would spoil or lose its worth-if he could get the Girl out of this wretched port. He growled deep in his throat, his broad square hand tightening on the tankard until the metal squealed protest.
“Sammang Schimli? The Shipmaster?”
He looked up, the lines deepening between his thick black brows, the corners of his mouth dipping deeper into the creases slanting from flared nostrils. He ran his eyes slowly over the woman standing on the far side of the table. “Shove off, whore, I’m not looking for company.” He shut his eyes and prepared to ignore her.
The woman pulled out a chair, sat across from him.
“Nor I, Shipmaster. Only passage out of Tavisteen to Utar-Selt. And I’m not a whore.”
Eyes still closed, thumbs moving up and down the sides of the tankard, he said, “I’m going nowhere soon, woman.”
“I know.” His eyes snapped open and he stared at her. “If you’ll tell me just what you need to shake yourself loose,” she went on, “and we can agree on terms, I’ll see what I can do about financing your clearance.”
He looked her over. No. Not a whore. Not reacting to him right for that. She was interested, but in an oddly childlike and at the same time cerebral way. None of the body signs of sexual awareness. Under the mask of calm, a nervous uncertainty. He clicked tongue against teeth, widened his eyes as he realized who she must be.
She had large green eyes in a face more interesting than pretty, rather gaunt right now as if she’d been hungry for a long time. A full mouth held tightly in check. Skin like alabaster in moonlight. The hands on the table were long, narrow, strong; hands not accustomed to idleness. Shoulder, length soft silver hair catching shimmers from the tavern’s lamps whenever she moved her head. Wholly out of place here. He had a sudden suspicion she’d look out of place anywhere he could think of. By Preemalau’s nimble tail, how she ran loose in this part of the city was a thing to intrigue a man. He drew his tongue along his bottom lip, tapped his thumbs on the table. Maybe she could break the Girl loose, maybe she’d put his head in a Temueng strangler’s noose. A gamble, but what wasn’t? “Why not,” he said.
“We can’t talk here.”
He thought about the rumors, the dead on the plain, the dead in the city, the dead floating in the bay, then he drained the tankard, set it down with a loud click that made her hands twitch. “I have a room upstairs.”
She smiled suddenly, a mischievous gamin’s grin that changed her face utterly. “Be careful, Shipmaster. You don’t want to make me angry.”
He stood. “Your choice.” Leaving her t
o follow if she would, not so sure anymore he didn’t want female company, he went up the several flights of stairs, hearing now and then her quiet steps behind him. He was rooming on the fifth floor, up under the roof, not so much for the cheaper price as for the breezes that swept through the unglazed windows. He unlocked his door, shoved it open, walked in and stopped.
Two children sat cross-legged on his bed, moonlight glimmering on pale hair, glowing in crystal eyes.
The woman brushed past him, settled herself in the rickety chair by one window. “My companions,” she said. “Close the door.” When he hesitated, she giggled. “Afraid of a woman and a pair of kids?”
He looked at the key in his hand, shrugged. “Might be the smartest thing I’ve done in months.” He pulled the door shut, latching its bar and went to perch on the sill of the nearest window.
“Yaril,” the woman said, “any snoops about?”
“No, Brann.” The fairest of the two children grinned at her. “But Jaril did drop a rock on Hermy the nose.”
“Nearby?”
The child with the shade darker hair waggled a hand. “So-so. Got him a couple streets back, fossicking about, trying to figure out what happened to you. No one else interested in you, well, except for the usual reasons.”
“Hah, brat, talk about what you know. Still, mmh, I think you better go prowl about outside, see we aren’t interfered with.” She turned to Sammang. “Let him out, will you please?”
“What could the kid do?”
“More than you want to know, Shipmaster.”
He shrugged. “Come on, kid.”
When the latch was again secure, he stumped to the window, hitched a hip on the sill, angled so he could look out over the roofs toward the estuary and at the same time see the woman and the remaining child. “Why me?” he said. “Why not a Temueng ship? They’re going in and out all the time. Cheaper too, because I’m going to cost you… Brann, is it? Right. I’m going to cost you a lot. Maybe more than I’m worth. You who I think you are, you’ve already fooled Temuengs high and wide, seems to me you could go on fooling them just as easy. Not that I’m usually this candid with paying customers, you understand, but I want to know just what I’m getting into.”
