A Gathering Of Stones

4

On the first day, one woman came timidly into the warm steamy kitchen and sat at the table. She had a badly infected hand that was turning gangrenous. Brann poured up a cup of bitter herb tea, made her drink it and sat holding her hand, eyes closed; Jaril came padding around the table and sank to his stomach beside the woman, his body pressing against her leg. A few minutes later the woman was looking at a hand with all the swelling gone, the redness gone. The splinter that had caused the trouble was out, the wound was closed over, not fully healed but well on its way. Ignoring the woman’s excited incoherent thanks, Brann took a dugna for her efforts and sent her off. Come the next morning, she had scarcely a minute to herself. Established healers made some trouble for her, but she was formidable in herself and handy with that hardwood staff and when a pushy Minder or one of the caudhar’s bullyboys got a good look at Jarilhound’s teeth, they turned polite very quickly. The caudhar tried to up his bribe, but she persuaded him that would be uncourteous and unwise.

Sambar Day came round again.

Brann closed down her clinic and went to sit in the shrine; she had a hard time staying awake, she was exhausted and depressed, but she did have a lot to think over. The hunger to Hunt was growing in her; the more she drained herself to help those miserable women, the more urgent that Hunger became. As if there were some sort of measure-stick inside her that tripped a valve when her energy dropped below a certain point. It was a frightening idea. She had to decide if she believed it and if she did believe it, what she was going to do about it. I’m tired of this nonsense, she thought, it’s too complicated to think about now. Jaril was restless; nothing he gleaned from the women gave him any new leads, so he wanted to go wandering the Market as he had when he was here before with Yaril, hanging himself out for bait, trusting Brann to make sure he wasn’t eaten. Slya Bless, I don’t want him to do that. Let’s hope he finds something today. Sarimbara, if you’re bothering to listen, give him a nudge. Sleepy Sarimbara, you’re a good match to my sleepy god. Slya Fireheart, what a sight she was, stomping through the Temueng Emperor’s Audience Hall like a big red housewife chasing down vermin. Sleep, Slya, sleep, we sang, because when you woke…

Slya wakes mountain quakes air thickens stone quickens ash breath bringing death

Slya sleep sleep Slya

Yongala dances dreams for you

Slya turns stone burns red rivers riot around us day drops dark upon us beasts fly men fear forests fry

Slya sleep sleep Slya

Yongala dances dreams for you

Look at me, idiot woman, singing Slya’s lullaby at Sarimbara’s shrine. Impolite, to say the least, impolitic for sure. Going home… got to go home for more than one reason now. I have to talk Slya into sending the changers home. Forty Mortal Hells, like Maksim says, what a bit of work that’ll be. Why forty I wonder? Maksi, oh Maks m’ luv, I’m missing you like hell.

Rocking on her buttocks, muttering to herself, her mind wheeling here and there and finding no ease anywhere,

Brann passed the daylight hours in the shrine. When the sun went down and the lamplighters were out, she went home to her hovel.

When Jaril came in from his search, the Wounded Moon was up and swimming through dry clouds; Brann had supper on the table and was just emptying the tea leaves out the back door. He shifted almost before his talons touched the grass mat, stumbled, caught himself and went running to the chest where she kept the wine jars.

She raised her brows, pulled the door shut. “Last is best, eh?” She poured herself a bowl of tea and stood sipping at it as he brought the jar and two glasses to the table. “Mind if I eat first? I’ve been stuck at the shrine all day. Which is enough in itself to make one dizzy without adding wine on an empty stomach.”

“Mind?” His grin split his face in half and he waved the jar perilously close to a lamp. “I’d even kiss old Maksi’s toes should he stand here now. Eat, Bramble. Eat the table if you want…” He splashed wine in one of the glasses, gulped it down, then filled both and handed one to her. “First, lift a glass to Tungjii Luck.”

“I take it you found her. Or him.”

“I found something. Drink, Bramble, drink!”

She laughed, raised her glass high. “Tungjii, love!” she cried and spilled a goodly dollop of wine, laughed again as the libation vanished before it hit the table. The little god wasn’t one known for wasting wine. She watched Jaril do the same, then she drank and slammed the glass to the table at the same time he did.

“Tell me.” She pulled up the box she was using as a chair, began spooning up the mutton stew she’d left simmering on the stove while she was gone, taking sips of tea between bites, as excited as he was, but a lot hungrier since she didn’t feed on sunlight.

“I told you about the stuvtiggor, remember?”

She nodded.

“Well, I started on the west, the side closest to the Market. You know how much I expected to find anything interesting. Well, I didn’t, but it was all I had left and I wasn’t really panting to lay myself out as bait. All morning there was nothing. About like I expected, there were some thieves and some others with hot talents I couldn’t pin, but nothing for me. A bit past noon, I moved into the highrent section, such as it is, fences, you know, slave dealers, courtesans, a couple assassins and so on. I started getting nervous. I didn’t know why, it was a weird shivery feeling. Thing was, it’s a long time since I sphined a stuv nest and I’m not aeta any more so my sphine has got the reach of a drunk’s breath. And it wasn’t really stuvtiggors, just something that has the same

.. uh… the same I suppose you could say smell. Anyway, I went on searching, trying to ignore the feeling. It got worse. After a while I knew where it was coming from. Right at the edge of the Kuna Com there’s this doulahar; it’s sitting on a bit of a hill, tall enough so folk on the top floor or the roof can look out over the Lake; it’s got gardens and stables and a pond deep enough to swim in. Fancier even than some of the Isun sars. I don’t know who owns it, some courtesan lives there, I saw her; she might even own it, though that’s hard to believe, given the laws here. She was out visiting the first time I flew over. I stayed long enough to see her come back with a string of carriages bouncing after her. The Grand Isu himself was in the first one. She’s got some client list, that whore. I wonder what they’d say if they knew she was a demon.”

“What!”

“Well, I’m one, aren’t I, by the way folks here think.”

“Don’t be silly.” She frowned. “That kind of demon?”

“Is there any other kind?”

“I’m not the one to ask. Go on.”

“Well, by the time she Showed up, I was pretty sure what was happening to me. I was putting a shape to things. Them down in the doulahar, they weren’t stuvtiggors, but they were at least first cousins. Hivesouls. Shoved together to look like people. And hungry. And dangerous. Stuvtiggors don’t have magic, they just jump you and eat you. This bunch was something else. Spooky, sheeh! I think even old Maks when he had BinYAHtii would’ve taken a look at them and backed off. I backed off fast. I didn’t try to get close. They didn’t know I was there, I’m fairly sure of that. But they would’ve if I’d got closer. What I think is, we’ve got stuvtiggors in our reality, they’ve got something like Surrahts in theirs, so that’s how they knew what we were when we were here. Five of them. Stuv clots, I mean. Six when the woman got back.” He wriggled in his chair. “Feels funny calling that thing a woman. Gods, she’s powerful. If she came after me, I’d go stone so fast… I’m scared, Bramble.”

“Hmp.” She took the glass he pushed across to her, sipped at the wine and frowned at the curtain stirring over the mended sheepskin in the window where the tape was peeling off. “What about Yaro? You think they’ve got her in that doulahar?”

“If she’s there, they’ve blocked me off. She IS alive, Bramble. The tie’s too tight between us for her to be dead and me not know. Anyway, where else would they put her?”

“Then we have to get inside somehow.” She dragged her hand across her mouth, sat scowling at the amber wine running down the sides of the bell as she tilted the glass back and forth. “Without them knowing.”

“Yeh. Otherwise they could eat her before we got close.”

“Predators.”

“I think.”

“I think… I think we’d better add Maks to this plot.” She set the glass down, pushed the box back and got to her feet. “Wait here, I’ll get the call-me’s.” A moment later she was back with a soft, leather pouch. She fished out one of the pebbles and set it on the table. It shimmered in the lamplight, a milky quartz stone water-polished smooth. “Crush it under the heel he said. You want to do the deed or shall I?”

“You’re the one with the mass, Bramble.”

“Never say that to a woman, urtch. Mmp. Better put this over there by the door. Maks does need considerable space.” She looked up, chewed her lip. “And he’s like to crash his head into the ceiling. Maybe I should take it outside.”

“And maybe you shouldn’t. We don’t want to tell the neighbors all our business.”

“Especially Jahira. I swear that woman knows every belch. Well, he’ll just have to duck.” She picked up the call-me and almost dropped it again. “Yukh, the thing feels alive.” Squatting, she set it on the floor near the threshold; when she was satisfied, she stood, brought her heel down on the pebble, crushing it to powder. As soon as she felt it go, she jumped back.

Nothing happened.

“Maks? SETTSIMAKSIMIN!”

Nothing.

She stirred the powder with the toe of her sandal. “I am going to have your black hide for this, Maksi.” She flung the door open, snatched up a broom and swept the glass bits into the yard muck. When every sliver was gone, she yanked the door shut, slamming it loudly enough to wake half the quarter, so hard that the latch didn’t catch. It bounced open again. She ignored that. “All right, Jay. We do this ourselves.”

Shudders passed along Jaril’s body, escalating to a sudden convulsion. He spewed out most of the wine he’d drunk and went suddenly stone.

Brann swore, snatched up a dishtowel; she mopped at her arms and face, flung the towel into the mess sprayed across the table. She straightened Jaril’s chair, picked up the warm pulsing crystal and opened her blouse. With Jaril stone cradled against her breasts, she felt with her foot for the chair, sat and waited.

Time passed. She understood then just how afraid Jaril was. And she saw what he meant when he said aulis take longer to recover than aetas. She began to be afraid; if he couldn’t come out of this by himself, she hadn’t a clue’ how to wake him up.

The crystal softened. It stirred against her; it felt like a baby wanting to suck. She bit her lip. There was no point in futile dreaming; she’d been effectively sterile since her eleventh birthday. Slowly, so slowly, the boy’s form unfolded until, finally, Jaril filled her lap, his head resting between her breasts. He opened his eyes, looked blankly up at her, then remembered.

Stiffly, he pushed away from her, slid off her lap and went to stand in the doorway, staring into the stinking darkness outside.

Brann frowned at him. After a minute, she said, “If you go stone every time I mention that place or you-know-who, we’re not going to get very far.”

He pressed his body against the doorjamb, stretched his arm up it as high as he could reach. He said nothing.

“Hmm. Tell me this, is everybody at the house a demon?”

He twisted his head around. “I saw some gardeners that weren’t. Some women went out to the Market, I suppose they were after supplies for the party the courtesan was throwing that night. They weren’t. I didn’t actually see more, but she’d need a lot of servants or slaves to run a house that size. I only counted five smiglar plus the courtesan.”

“Smiglar, Jay?”

Rubbing at his neck, he swung around, strolled to her box and sat down on it. “Have to call them something. I’m uncomfortable when I hear talk about demons. The way you folk define these things, I’m a demon. I don’t like the fringes that word has, you know what I mean. Stuvtiggor clots are smiglar, these hive types are like them, why not call them smiglar? Better than demon, isn’t it?”

“Smiglar’s fine. All right.” She pushed fluttering strands of hair out of her eyes, began rebuttoning her blouse. “First thing. We need to know how the inside of that house is laid out, xvho lives there. You’re sure they’d spot you?”

“Yeh.”

“That’s out then. Too bad. Trap… trap… urn, you think the courtesan is the whiphandler of that clutch?”

“Yeh.” He dipped a finger in a pool of wine, drew glyphs on the wood. Set. Tsi. Ma. Ksi. MM. “The uh fetor she gives off is ten times what I got from the others.” He drew a line through the glyphs, canceling them. “Like I said, even Malts would back off that bunch. Her most of all.” He frowned. “Maybe that’s it. Why he didn’t come.”

Brann brushed aside his dig at Maksim, it was nothing but an upsurge of Jaril’s old resentment. “And she’s flying among the Isu?”

“If her guest list for tonight’s party means anything.”

“Courtesan, hmm. Big house. Lots of dependents. Living high. All that in spite of the Temueng base for the culture and what that means about woman’s place, especially a woman without a family to back her. She has to be clever, Jay; power in itself wouldn’t get her those things. You said there were sorcerors in some of those Isu sars?”

“Yeh.” He drew two circles on the table, pulled a line from the left circle to the right. “One of them might have matched Ahzurdan when he wasn’t drugged to the eyebrows. While he was still himself, that is.”

“And they haven’t smelled out what she is. Interesting, isn’t it. And this. They’re predators, but Yaro’s still alive. They didn’t take her to eat her. She’s bait, Jay. For you, sure. For me, probably. Which means I’ve got to keep away from there too. Ahhl What a mess.”

“Mess.” He crumpled the stained towel between his hands, then began wiping up the wine. “You expected it to come out like that, didn’t you.”

“Why?”

“You asked about the servants. Only thing left is getting at one of them.” He tossed the towel at the tub where the stew pot was soaking. “So?”

“So we go looking for a servant or slave or someone from that house that we can get next to without letting the boss… um, what’s the singular form of smiglar, Jay?”

“Same. One smiglar, twenty smiglar. Hive things.”

“Right. Without letting the boss smiglar know what we’re doing. Get some rest, luv. We start tomorrow early.”