A Gathering Of Stones

9

A pseudopod of the ghost stuff ringing Kapi Yuntipek stayed with Korimenei as she rode away from the city a week later, a clotted white finger set firmly on her, unable to touch her; she ignored it, kept her pony pacified and moving along at a steady walk. Behind her, Ailiki perched on the pack pony, calming the little gelding and holding him in place. Abruptly the pseudopod snapped back and they were moving through a bright chill day; the air was so clear the mountains seemed close enough to touch.

The Silk Road was not much of a road despite its fame. It was a dusty path marked by stone cairns spread so that the pile ahead came into view as the pile behind sank below the horizon. At the moment it was winding in lazy curves through the thin rind of small farms north of the city, going across bridges like hiccups over narrow ditches, thumbnail scratches filled with water from the river. Temu serfs working in the fields straightened and watched her, their dark eyes wary and hostile. The land they stood on belonged to the Kangi Pohgin, the Headman of Kapi Yuntipek; they were worked until they dropped, two-thirds of every harvest was taken from them, they were exposed to depredations from stray raiders out of the Temueng grassclans and bandits sweeping down from the mountains; they expected nothing but harassment from everyone outside their own families. They reminded her of the lowlanders in Cheonea; they had the same hard, knotty look, the same secret stares, the same sense they were rooted to the landheart, mobile manshaped extensions of the soil they stood on. If she gave them any opening they would swarm over her and leave nothing but bones behind; that was in their eyes and the set of their bodies.

When she came out of the farms she rode between walls of Temu grass that reached past her stirrups, swaying in the eternal east wind, the individual rustles of stalk rubbing against stalk sunk into a vast murmuring whole. It was a hypnotic sound. She swam in it, breathed it; after an hour or so she seemed to hear voices in it whispering secrets she couldn’t quite make out. North and east of the city the grass stretched out and out, to the horizon and past, an ocean of yellow and silver-dun, rippling, constantly changing color, subtle changes, barely distinguishable shades of the base colors. An ocean of grass wide as any water ocean.

The piercing, aching loneliness she’d felt in the city fell gradually away from her as she shed the sense of pressure, of neediness, the hurry-hurry, get-on-with-it that afflicted her within those walls; she settled into the long slow rhythms of the land, birth, growth, death, rebirth, inevitable, unchanging, eternal. She was an infinitesimal mote in that immense landscape, but she didn’t feel diminished, no, it was almost as if her skin had been peeled back so she was no longer closed within it but was intimately a part of that vast extravagant sky, that shimmering ocean of grass.

After about three hours she stopped, watered the ponies at one of the Road Wells and let them graze. She leaned against a cairn, crossed her ankles. Ailiki jumped on her stomach; she laughed and began scratching the mahsar behind her twitching ears.

“What are you doing, Kori?” Tres eidolon hung above her, his voice cut through her drowse. “Why are you just sitting there? Get moving. You have to beat the snow.”

“So you’re back.” She continued to stroke the mahsar. “How nice.”

As he always did, he ignored questions expressed or implied. “You can’t waste a minute, you have to cross the Dautas as soon as possible.”

“Tre…” She sighed. “You know what riding stock is like, you push too hard and they quit on you, you can’t have forgot that, what’s wrong with you?”

“You know what’s wrong.” The crystal vibrated though the mouse-sized figure of the boy inside changed neither expression nor position. “I want out of this.”

“Why do you think I’m here?” She sighed. “If I push the ponies too hard, this jaunt stops before the day’s out. Quit niggling at me, Tit, I know what I’m doing.” She lifted Ailiki off her. “Go fetch them, Lili; they’ve had enough rest for now. Tit, what about the weather? From here, it looks clear enough, but that’s a lot of mountains.”

“No blizzards yet. There are some washouts from rain, a lot of rain has been falling, no snow, I’m not sure why. There’s black ice in the passes; it makes treacherous going. You should try to hit the steepest slopes in the afternoon, when the sun’s been at the ice long enough to clear some of it out. If there is any sun.”

“Lovely. Look, Tre, you seem to show up when you want to stick pins in me and ignore me otherwise. I’m trying to remember you’re my brother; don’t leave me hanging out to dry, help me. Talk to me even if there’s nothing else you can do.”

The eidolon flickered, faded, appeared again like a washed-out watercolor painted on the air, vanished completely.

Korimenei sighed, got to her feet. The ponies were standing on the Road, foam dripping from their mouths as they chewed at a last clump of grass. She smiled wryly as Ailiki ran up the packer’s side and perched on its withers. “Aili my Liki, I’m beginning to wonder what the hell’s going on here.”

The mahsar folded her arms across her narrow chest and took on the aspect of Sessa who looked after lost trinkets, one of the little gods who scampered like mice from person to person, coming unasked, leaving without warning, a capricious, treacherous, much courted clutch of godlings. She nodded gravely, but what she meant by it was impossible to guess.

“You’re a big help.” Korimenei shook her head, swung into the saddle and nudged the pony into a plodding walk.