A Gathering Of Stones

1

“No! You can’t come back. Not yet.”

The eidolon of the sleeping boy was the size of a mouse; he lay curled in a crystal egg that floated in the darkness over Korimenei Piyolss. She saw him whether her eyes were open or shut, so she kept them open. She moved impatiently on her narrow bed. “Why?” She kept her voice low. The walls between this sleeping cell and the next were paper and lath; after ten years at the school she knew well enough how sound carried. “I thought you wanted out of there soonest possible.”

“And then what?” Her brother looked like the six-yearold boy the Sorceror Settsimaksimin had spelled to sleep; his body hadn’t changed a hair. His mind certainly had.

Those three words aren’t a boy’s complaint, she thought, he’s so bitter. “Dance to the Chained God’s contriving?” he spat at her. “No!”

“I don’t see how you can change that.”

“Why do you think I had you do all that work on the Great Talismans?”

“I didn’t want to ask. I didn’t know what might be listening.”

“So?” there was an acid bite in the single word, a touch of impatience.

“And what does that mean?”

“Use your head, Kori. If HE listened, the asking itself would tell HIM all HE wanted to know.”

“Then how can we do anything?”

“If, Kori. Did you hear me? IF. Listen. HE has BinYAHtii now, HE got it off Settsimaksimin after Brann and the Blues took him, but I don’t know how much good that’s doing HIM, that stone is hard to handle even if you keep it fed.” He stopped talking. His body never moved, nonetheless, Kori thought she felt a shudder pass through him. “HE has been keeping it fed. I don’t want to talk about that. HE’s a god. I don’t know all that means but for sure HE has limitations, otherwise HE could’ve squashed Settsimaksimin without bending an eyelash. Listen, listen, isn’t it true when old Maksim had BinYAHtii round his neck, didn’t he keep Amortis on the hop? I could feel how nervous Amortis made HIM. What I’ve been thinking: if I could get hold of the right Talisman, I could block HIM, keep HIM off me. Off you too.”

Korimenei closed her eyes, pressed her lips together. She couldn’t blame him, not really, and it was her fault he was stuck in that cave, but including her was so obviously an afterthought that it hurt. It hurt a lot. A belated tact disastrously untactful. Oh gods and gunk, I’m as bad a phrase-maker as Maks is, even if I can’t roar like him.

Her enforced sojourn at the school was almost over. Just that morning the runner Paji came to the exercise court to say Kori should come to the Shahntien’s office at the end of second watch tomorrow. He didn’t say what it was about. She didn’t need telling. It was her graduation exercise. She’d been strung out for days now, waiting for Shahntien Shere to decide what it would be and when it would happen. Tomorrow, the next day, maybe the next, then she’d be free to leave. She wanted to go to Trago as soon as the Shahntien cut her loose, she wanted to go as fast as she could for the cave where her brother slept in crystal waiting for her to touch him free, she wanted to go NOW, not after some indefinite period devoted to some sort of nonsense Trago had dreamed up. How sane could he be, after all, confined to that stupid crystal for so many years? Three, nearly four years blocked off from everything outside. Then he finally managed to free his mind enough to reach her. Six years since and all he could do was look over her shoulder. Does he visit other places too? Does he look through other eyes? She was appalled at herself when she felt a twinge of jealousy. “What do you want, Tre? Do you really want me to hunt up a talisman and fetch it to you?”

“Yes, Kori. Yes yes yes. Please. The one called Frunzacoache.”

“All right, if you say so. Why that one?”

He ignored the question and went on, “Frunzacoache disappeared years ago, but I found it. It’s in the torbaoz of a Rushgaramuv shaman. He doesn’t know what he’s got. There’s barely enough magic in him to light a match. He has a vague idea it’s a thing of power, so he hides it away down at the bottom of his essence pouch. If you pattern up a good copy and sink some energy into it, he’ll never know the real thing’s gone. Bring it to me, Kori. Pleeease?”

The eidolon winked out before Korimenei could say anything. She lay staring into the darkness where it’d hung. It was a long time before she went back to sleep.