A Gathering Of Stones

6

They talked and sat in a shared silence and talked some more, drank tea when the water boiled, made peace with memory while they waited for the appointed hour.

When the time came, Maksim sent Todichi Yahzi home as gently as he could, then collapsed beside the remnants of the fire.

When he struggled back to awareness, at first he couldn’t remember where he was or what had happened to deplete him so thoroughly.

Memory crept back slowly, so slowly he was disturbed; his mind was not working right.

He tried to sit up.

He was tied.

His arms were tight against his body, his hands were pressed against his thighs; ropes passed round and round him; he couldn’t wiggle a finger; he could barely breathe.

He tried to speak.

His tongue was bound, not by ropes but by a force he couldn’t recognize.

He tried to mindcall a firesprite to work on the ropes, something he was able to do before he could read his name. His mind was bound.

He sweated in claustrophobic terror until he managed to override that bloodfear, then he gathered will in shoulder and neck and got his head up off the stone.

Fog.

Like white soup, ghosts bumping about in it, swirling about him and whoever had caught him.

He ignored the ghosts.

Jastouk, he thought. I talked in my sleep and he betrayed me. He wept and was furious at himself for weeping. Time passed.

He couldn’t feel his body or count the beats of his heart.

There was nothing he could use to tick off the minutes, nothing to tell him if a day had passed, a week, or only an hour.

He eased his head down.

He fought the helplessness that was worse than the claustrophobia. He called on two centuries of discipline, then waited with the patience of a cat at a mousehole. His captors had given him time to collect himself. Stupid of them. Or maybe they didn’t care. Overconfidence? He produced a wry smile. 1 hope it is overconfidence.

Time passed.

The ghosts backed off.

New shapes solidified in the fog.

He heard a foot scrape against stone and decided he was still on the islet.

Someone spoke.

He heard the voice but couldn’t make out the words. Answers came from several points.

He strained to make out what was being said, but it was as if his ears were stuffed with something that deafened him just enough to make sure he learned nothing from what he heard.

The exchanges continued.

It began to feel like ritual rather than speech.

He couldn’t tell if that was a trick of his fettered mind or something real. This irritated him, his incapacity was like nettles rubbed against his skin.

By the Gods of Fate and Time, I will make you suffer for this, he thought at them; he struggled to shout it; his jaw ached with the need to shout at them.

The binding held.

Not a sound came out, not a sound!

With such a cork shoved in his mouth, need was building up in him.

He was going to explode.

He visualized himself blowing apart, hot burning pieces of him rushing outward, colliding with the things out there prattling like fools, colliding with them and ashing them. I’m getting giddy.

Gods of Fate and Time! Keep hold of yourself.

Think of Vechakek and Jastouk.

I owe them.

I’ll pay them.

I pay my debts. Always.

Feeling trickled back into him.

The chill of the damp stone struck up through his body, sucking away what warmth he had left.

He pressed his fingers into the meat of his thigh and won a little space.

He worked his fingers, trying to gain enough movement for a simple gesture.

The stone softened under him, flowed up around him. Lumpy, faceless elementals like animate gray clay lifted him and carried him down a spiral ramp that created itself before them.

Complaining about the abrasions of the sand in subsonic groans like rock rubbing against rock, they lumbered across the beach and rolled him into his boat as if he were a dead fish.

He managed to keep his head from crashing into the deck but collected bruises over every part of his body.

Fog billowed about him.

Ghosts /loomed in the distance, frightened off by those other entities, whatever they were, who stood on air about the boat, thickenings in the fog, featureless, serpentine, bipedal.

He didn’t recognize them.

Smell, aura, everything about them was unfamiliar. He wasn’t surprised.

The layered realities were infinite in number and each sorceror had his own set of them in addition to those that they all shared.

His head wasn’t working right, but he settled grimly to learning what he could about them.

Two figures dropped onto the deck.

They dragged him into the hutch and laid him out on the sleeping pad.

They wore black leather top-to-toe like the Harpish and black leather cowls with only the eyes cut out.

They weren’t Harpish.

Forty Mortal Hells, who are you and who is running you? Amortis?

Gods of Fate and Time, I hope not.

She’d watch me burn and throw oil on the fire.

They tossed a blanket over him and went out.

He felt the boat float free.

She shuddered, yawed, rolled.

Those two didn’t know codswallop about sailing. They got the sails up finally and the boat underway. Maksim settled to working trying to free his hands a little. There were gestures so minimal they required almost no space but could focus sufficient energy to cut him free.

The way those numb-butts were handling the boat, there was a good chance he’d end up on the bottom of some

Tukery strait, food for prowling needlefish.

The rope was spelled to cling.

Every millimeter of freedom he won from them was gone as soon as the spell reacted.

He fought the ropes as long as he had strength, then he slept.

He nudged at the spells that bound him.

He tried to work out their structure.

He couldn’t counter them without word or gesture, but knowing that structure would let him act the first chance he got.

He probed and pried, sucked in his gut, drove his thumbs into his thigh muscles and got nowhere.

The bonds holding him responded automatically and effectively to every effort.

The boat went unhindered through the Tukery despite the clumsiness of the crew.

Not long after sundown he felt the lengthening swells as the boat broke into the Notoea Tha.

He heard the basso wail of a powerful following wind that drove them northwest, away from Kukurul.

He stopped being afraid of drowning or dying, but his determination to get out of this trap only grew stronger. Late at night, the boat hove to, the sails came crashing down.

The two pseudo Harpish dragged Maksim up on the deck and left him there.

Their companions swung in slow circles overhead, maintaining the same distance between them always, no matter how they moved.

The boat was bobbing beside a dark, rakish ship, a Phrasi Coaster, ocean-going and river-capable, a favorite of smugglers, pirates and those merchants who needed, speed and a shallow draft from their ships.

He could hear men talking; they spoke Phrasi.

A davit swung over the rail and a cargo net was winched down.

The net settled over him, dragging back and forth as the boat rocked with the heave of the sea.

The pseudo Harpish loaded him into the net.

He was hauled up, jerk by jerk, the winch squealing with every turn of the spindle.

As the sailors caught hold of the net to pull him inboard, a wisp of smoke floated by him.

Woodsmoke?

He muscled his head around and looked down.

His boat was burning.

He fumed.

Phrasi sailors hauled him over the rail and dumped him on the deck.

Wisps of smoke rose past the rail.

There were flickers of red on the white sails that rose as the ship prepared, to go away from there.

He cursed and struggled to break loose.

He was fond of that boat. There were good memories laid down in it, memories of Brann and the Tukery, Jai Virri and Kukurul, days full of brightness scudding before the wind with the sails bellied out, the sheets humming.

Seven pseudo Harpish came for him.

They rolled him out of the net and carried him to a crate near the foremast.

They dumped him in the crate and nailed it shut around him.

They chanted in their buzzing incomprehensible langue and tightened another layer of bonds about him.

He was smothered into unconsciousness.

III. Korimenei Piyolss

Silili on the double island UtarSelt

Korimenei at the end of her schooling, goes through a passing-out ordeal and starts on her journey to free her brother. also:

The Eidolon of her Sleeping Brother

The Old Man of the Mountain

The Gods Geidranay Groomer of Mountains Isayana Birthmistress Tungjii Luck and Assorted Others Spirit Guides.

Shahntien Shere, headmistress

Firtina Somak, Kori’s best friend at school