by Jo Clayton
Brann and Taguiloa touch and retreat, swing away from each other, swing back. Loop out, converge, dance wheeling away.
The brownrobes shrink together, a mud-geyser surging and bubbling, heads bobbing up and down, throats throwing out a whining moan that is barely louder than the music. They struggle to escape, tugging and pulling at the forces binding them, but they cannot. Like flies in honey they cannot pull away.
The drums beat louder. Louder. LOUDER.
Negomas fierce and frightened, half lost in the music, his long black hands stroking and beating, working as if they belong to someone else.
The flute sings harsh, piercing dissonances that tug painfully at the rolling rumble, of the drums, denying its singing nature, screaming its pain. Linjijan sways, eyes closed, entirely bound into his music.
Han-a slaps chords and runs from the daroud, her eyes wild, white-ringed, her mouth pulled back and down.
The sound builds and builds, filling the hall, melding with the moans of the watchers, the rage-squeals and growls from the Emperor and those around him.
The walls sway and groan.
The floor slides back and forth.
Brann’s feet come down solid and steady. She circles Taguiloa. Sweat runs down his face. His eyes have a glazed sheen. He touches her hand. His flesh is cold and damp. He swings away.
Flute shrieks, drum goes toom-toom, daroud jangles. The music stops.
Sudden silence.
Slya streams forth from Brann, takes form in the center of the mat.
Gasps, sighs, a wind of sighs passing around the room.
The great red figure stood planted on the mat, wisps of smoke from the smoldering cloth rising about legs like mountain pines, coiling up around the lavish fiery female form. One pair of arms crossed beneath her high, round breasts, the second set curved out as if to gather in all those about the throne, her hot red eyes glared at the Emperor.
“MINE,” she roared and the building shook some more. “YOU DARE PUT YOUR STINKING HANDS ON MY PEOPLE. YOU MESS WITH SLYA FIREHEART. ME!” She reached out and out, fingers extending and extending, two arms reaching, four arms reaching, fingers long and longer, gathering in the brownrobes and the Temueng mixes, three to a handful, ignoring the banes they cast at her, plagues and poisons, cast-fire and demon familiars, all the Kadda power and Kadda skills their unnaturally extended parasitic lives had given them. “ME! ME! YOU ATTACK ME!” She squeezed. Stench of roasting flesh and burning cloth, shrieks, blood and other body fluids oozing between her fingers, raining onto the floor and those remaining. She flung the mess aside and started to reach again.
A round bald figure in dusty wrinkled black was suddenly there, pushing the long fingers aside. Tungjii patted the back of the huge red hand, grinned up at the ominous figure. “Not the boy, little darling, not the boy.”
Slya glared at him, hair stirring like serpents about her head. Then, (Brann astonished, Taguiloa wearily appreciative) the raking fingers shrank; red eyes rolling, red teeth showing in a broad grin, Slya patted the double god on hisser plump buttocks. In a voice like the groaning of a mountain, she said, “SINCE YOU ASK IT, TUTI.”
Huge face returning to a savage scowl, she turned her hot red gaze on Abanaskranjinga. “YOU!” Her voice the howling of a storm wind, the roar of a forest fire. “YOU FOOL, BELIEVING KADDA PROMISES.” One hand closed about him. She squeezed. His hoarse scream broke of abruptly though his arms and legs continued to writhe even after his body fluids began to drip on the marble steps. “HAH! LARDARSE, ATTACKING ME!”
Brann wrapped her arms about her legs, dropped her head on her knees, relieved in a way to have the waiting over, drowning in a vast lassitude; she wanted to stretch out on the mat and sleep and sleep and never wake.
Taguiloa sat on his heels breathing hard, watching the flame-red giant drop the squashed mass of the Emperor of Tigarezun, ruler of Temueng and Hina, a mess of charred meat, bone and slime. That’s it then. I gambled and lost. He managed a tired smile as he saw Linjijan gaping at the god: even Linji understood his life was being trampled under those large but shapely red feet.
Slya flung the body of the consort aside and ripped the screen from behind the throne. She winnowed through the women and children trapped there in the spell woven by the dance and the music, plucking out and crushing some, brushing others aside.
Tungjii caught up the weeping boy and carried him over to Taguiloa and Brann. Heesh lowered hisserself to the tattered mat and sat placidly watching the god hunting down her enemies, squashing and roasting them, his eyes filled with sardonic amusement, cheering her on with broken murmurs.
Slya raked immaterial fingers through the palace and extended them until they swept garden and stable, searching out and pulling to her all the Kadda folk.
Cuddling the Heir against hisser plump bosom with one hand, Tungjii reached out with the other and stroked it over Brann’s silky hair, the touch warm and comforting. “One of ‘em’s going to get away,” heesh murmured. “That tricky little nit that came nosing about you. You better watch out for her.” Heesh stroked some more, hisser hand feeling like her mother’s, steadying, calming, understanding. “You want to know why all this?”
Brann sighed, straightened her back and her cramping legs, looked round at himmer. “Yes.”
“Glemma, child. The Consort that was. She’s the reason. Ambitious. Got to be head oompah of the Kadda meld. Wanted more. Tried to tap the Fireheart ofCynatnacarnal. Ran into Slya who brushed her off like a pesky fly. Which embarrassed her and made her madder’n a cat in a sack. Made her think too. She teased old Krajink into marrying her and when she had him fast, she made him Kadda like her. Happy enough to do it, old fool, thought he was going to live forever and be young and handsome while he was doing it. Brought the meld here. They tried again, all of them. Stung Slya, woke her up some. And Cynamacamal rumbled and shook and spouted some hot rock. Scared them. They wanted hostages to make red Slya behave. So she whispered into Krajink’s ear and teased him into sending his armies to take Croaldhu and then round up the Arth Slyans and bring them here. She thought she could hide behind them when she tried again to drive Slya from Cynamacamal, then all the fire mountains. Thought she could make herself a god. Lot of lies told. People had to be convinced it was a good idea to bring the Slyans here. You heard most of those lies.”
“And me?” Brann looked at the worn smiling face of the little god. “And the children?” She touched Yaril’s pale blond head, then Jaril’s. “Look at Slya, they can’t do a thing against her, all the Kadda can do is die. Why all that happened?”
“The Kadda meld’s a lot stronger’n it looks, little Bramble. Falling apart now because red Slya sneaked up on it, trapped it before it could get going. Glemma and her crew threw up barriers that blocked our friend when she tried to get into the palace and stomp them. They were more than she could handle without getting a jump on them, though if you ask Slya Fireheart, she’d deny any limit to her powers, claim she didn’t act because she’d have to harm the silly little mortals clustered about the roots of Carnal.” Tungjii chuckled. “We all have our pride, Bramlet. Anyway, she used you and my gifted friend here,” he nodded at Taguiloa who listened angrily, but with interest, “to sneak her in past the barrier. Used you to spin the sticky web that caught the Kadda and kept them from uniting against her. Clever when she wants to be, our fiery dame.”
Slya straightened, wiped her four hands down her naked sides, burning the ooze off them. Four hot red fists on her smooth hips, she looked around, smiled, and started to fade.
“No!” Brann leaped to her feet, enraged. “Not yet you don’t.” She caught hold of the god’s leg, cried out as it seared her palm, but didn’t let go. “No,” she screamed. “You owe me. You can’t run out like that. You owe me.”
Slya looked down at her, made to brush her away. Again Tungjii caught Slya’s hand. Heesh patted it, an affectionate scolding look on hisser round face. “Listen to her, sweeting. She’s right, you know. You owe h
er a hearing.”
The fiery fearsome god bridled like a girl the first time she came into mixed company after her passage rite. It was such a startling sight Brann almost forgot what she wanted to say. Almost forgot.
“The children,” she cried as her anger came back. “Send them home. You’re done with them. Why leave them away from kin and kind? They don’t belong here. Send them home. And there’s Taga and his troupe. Why ruin them? Why leave them to face the mess you made? You owe your triumph to us, Slya Fireheart. You used us. Make things right for us, or the world will know you are worse than the worst of the Kadda.”
Slya spat a gout of fire that took out a section of wall. “WORLD? WHAT IS THE WORLD TO ME! NOTHING!”
“Am I nothing?”
Slya turned that fearsome red gaze on her, impersonal, indifferent, mildly angry. “YES.”
Brann shuddered, drew a breath, closed her eyes a moment, searching for argument without much hope. “Then I’m your nothing,” she shouted at the god. She waved a hand at the Temuengs beginning to stir about the fringes of the room. “Will you let them crush me? Will you let them laugh and say Slya lost half her chosen folk and let another dribble through her fingers?”
Slya looked thoughtful, then her red eyes brightened with a sly malice that turned Brann cold in spite of the heat radiating from the god. “TRUE.” Voice like lava bubbling. “MY NOTHING.” She looked around, her eyes lighting finally on Maratullik who was calmer than most, watching the destruction with an indifference equaling hers. A hot finger stabbed at him. “YOU! TOUCH MY NOTHING AND CAMAL WILL BURN YOU TO ASH, CAMAL WILL BURY YOU IN HOT STONE SO DEEP MAYFLY MORTALS WILL FORGET A CITY WAS EVER HERE.” She stamped her foot. The walls groaned and the floor juddered beneath them. “THERE,” she said complacently, and once again began to lose solidity.
“The children,” Brann shrieked at her, “and Taguiloa.”
Slya laughed, a high-pitched titter that cracked the walls. “I LIKE YOU LITTLE NOTHING. I MAKE YOU A BARGAIN. I OFFER YOU TWO CHOICES, YOU CHOOSE WHICH. EITHER I SEND THE CHILDREN HOME AND CHANGE YOU BACK AND FORGET ABOUT THE DANCER AND HIS FOLK, LET THEM STRUGGLE TO SURVIVE HOW THEY WILL, OR I PROTECT THE DANCER AND HIS FOLK FOR THE REST OF THEIR MAYFLY LIVES, TORCH ANYONE WHO TRIES TO HARM THEM AND I FORGET ABOUT YOU AND THE CHILDREN. CHOOSE, LITTLE NOTHING. WHICH WILL IT BE?”
Brann looked from Taga to Linji, Ilarra, Negomas, to Yaril and Jaril crouching at her feet. Looked deep in the crystal eyes, remembering Yaril hunched and sad over the fire in the burnt-out storehouse when they were running from the Temuengs on Croaldhu, remembering the closeness they’d shared, the times they’d rescued her, remembering also all the lives of men and beasts she’d taken to feed them, thinking of all the lives she’d have to take for them if they stayed. Looked again at Taga and the troupe, all of them in this mess because of her. Her responsibility. She lifted her eyes to the mighty figure rising high before her, writhing red hair brushing the ceiling lamps, a pleased smile showing the tips of square red teeth. She said she’d change me back. I could go home. The desire to be again what she had been at the start of summer, to be back among her folk, beginning her apprenticeship with her father, that desire raged in her, shouted at her. Back with her father, learning his craft, struggling to make a thing as fine as the das’n vuor pot and its hundred bowls. Her father. She could see his calm brown eyes gazing at her, affectionate, understanding, but implacable. She could hear him speaking to her, saying see your actions through, Bramble-all-thorns, what you have done you must answer for; I don’t want to see you if you abandon your friends. Sick and angry, she fisted her hands, forced her head up so she was staring into the shallow red gaze of the god. “Taguiloa,” she cried; she wanted to explain why, but she did not. “That’s my choice, let the children stay with me,” she finished and could say no more.
Slya laughed. Several lamps shattered and spilled their burning oil onto the sluggishly stirring meslars and their companions. “SO BE IT, LITTLE NOTHING. YOU OUT THERE HEAR ME, ANY OF YOU CONTEMPLATING HARM TO THESE FOLK OF MINE. I NAME THEM: TAGUILOA, HARRA HAZHANI, UNMAN, NEGOMAS. SEE THEM. HEAR THIS ALSO: CONTEMPLATE OR CAUSE HARM TO THEM AND YOU BURN. SO…
She ran her red gaze over the Temuengs, stared a long moment at the Hand, moved on to a magistrate trying to straighten his tangled robes. He had just time to look up, startled, then he was a torch hot enough to melt the stone beneath his feet, ash and cinders a second later in a puddle of congealing stone.
Slya laughed. More lamps broke and a pillar cracked. She stretched her four arms, yawned, melted into nothing.
Tungjii calmed the wailing child heesh held on hisser knee, set him down and beckoned to Maratullik. “Take your new emperor and serve him well, Hand. He’s your luck now, make the most of him. His fortunes and yours are paired.” Heesh grinned at the calm-faced Ternueng. “Enjoy yourself, web spinner.”
Maratullik permitted himself a small tight smile, took the boy’s hand and led him away.
Tungjii rolled onto hisser feet, patted Taguiloa’s head. “‘You too, Taga. Enjoy yourself.” Over hisser shoulder, he called to Maratullik, “Web spinner, you better believe Slya means what she says.” Heesh chuckled. “She likes to burn things, you know.” The chuckle lingering behind himmer, heesh faded into nothing.
Brann looked down at her charred palm already pink with new skin, then at the space where Tungjii had been. “That old fox.” She glared at Taguiloa. “I am so damn tired of jerking through the sneaky plots of every damn god around. I am so damn tired of being lied to and kicked around and having no idea what’s really going on. Haaah! Tungjii!”
Taguiloa nodded absently, his eyes following Maratullik. “I told you, Bramble, heesh is the family patron.”
Maratullik was busy talking in a low voice with several of his minions, sending them scurrying on errands, watching with cold amusement as the other meslars crept away from the hall, hurrying to get away from the destruction and begin their own machinations. As soon as a Hina nursemaid led the child-emperor off, he walked over to Taguiloa. “You’ve made things interesting, Hina.”
Taguiloa shrugged.
“You’ll keep a still tongue about it. You and your troupe.”
“Why not. If it’s to my profit.”
“Don’t count too much on your fire-breathing patron. If you prove too troubling a nuisance, someone will find a way to remove you.”
Taguiloa smiled at him. “Want to state that a bit more directly?” He laughed. “Don’t threaten me, Hand.” He moved his shoulders, straightened his back feeling as if he’d cast off a worn and cramping garment. “Hear me, Temueng. I don’t give shit about you or your games. I’m a player, not a courtier. What I want is to go back to Silili with the Emperor’s Sigil so I can do the kind of dances I want before the fools who think that Sigil means something.”
“You’re insolent, Hina.”
“Yes, saх jura Meslar.” Taguiloa drawled the honorifics until they turned into insult.
“You really don’t care, do you.”
“No.”
“You could use your protection to wield a lot of power, Hina.”
“I don’t want a thing you want, Temueng.”
Maratullik narrowed his eyes. “Oddly enough, I think I believe you. I don’t understand you, but I believe you.” He beckoned a guard to him. “Get some slaves and see they pack up the players’ things, then take an empushad and escort them to my house; see them settled in.” He cut off the guard’s response, turned back to Taguiloa. “Get out of here now. Get out of Durat by sundown tomorrow.”
“With pleasure. The sigil?”
“I’ll have the patent delivered to you before you leave, Anything else? Another way I can serve you?” There was a warning in the clipped words, the Hand had been pushed about as far as he was willing to go.
“What about a barge and an empushad of imperial guards to keep us safe going south?”
Maratullik ground his teeth together, his face got red, breath snorted
through his nose. He couldn’t speak, he opened his mouth, a grating sound came out.
Taguiloa laughed. “Never mind. Just wondering. We’ll take care of ourselves.” He turned and sauntered out, the others trailing silently, contentedly, behind him, the guard bringing up the rear of the procession. Harm had slipped on her finger bells and after a few steps started up a jaunty beat, whistling a tune to match it, turning their exit into a triumphal march.
6. Moving On
BRANN GAVE THE POT a final burnishing and set it in its velvet nest; she closed the lid and eased the flat little hook into its eye. Have to tell Chandro to drop this off at Perando for me. She smiled. Sailing man, like my Sammang, like another few I’ve known. I’ve definitely got a weakness for them, these sailing men. She looked up as she heard the squawk of an albatross dipping low over the ship. Yaril commenting on something, probably another ship. Hope it’s not trouble out of Silili. Couldn’t be, not yet, they won’t have sorted out the mess in the Tekora’s palace yet. She slid down in the chair until her neck rested on the top slat, swung her feet onto the table and crossed her ankles, lay stretched out contemplating the ceiling beams, dismissing the recent events in Silili, thinking about her quest and its end. A strange time that was. Gods and mortals jostling and elbowing each other, all wanting something different, getting in each other’s way, scattering lies like seeds at spring planting, nothing exactly what it seemed.
The ship heeled over suddenly, the chair tottered and fell, dumping her onto the floor. She scrambled to her feet and rushed to the table, caught the box before it tumbled off. “That was close. Sandbar, I suppose, they come and go round here. What Yaril was yammering about more than likely.” She stroked her hand across the smooth lacquer. “Into the chest with you.”
She tucked the box into the heavy seachest at the foot of the bed, got dressed, went out to hunt down the cook and get something to fill the hollow under her ribs.
A Last Note-The End Being Also A Beginning
