A Gathering Of Stones

12

Korimenei looked at the tuber stew. The cook’s heavy hand with the spice jars couldn’t disguise the sweetish sick smell from the shreds of anonymous meat. I can’t eat this, she thought, there’s no way I can eat this.

She finished the dusty tea and the bread, got quietly to her feet and went outside. She leaned against the tie-rail and breathed in the clean cold air off the grass, thinking about the gaunt little girl who’d carried her gear to the sleeping loft with its scatter of husker mattresses and tattered privacy curtains. Ten years going on a hundred and running the Waystop alone; most likely her father was in the hedgetavern built onto the back of the hostel, playing host to the local drunks, a drunk himself if she read the signs right. From the smell that wafted up to the loft, he stilled his own sookpa. Must taste worse than that rancid meat. I’ve got to do something about food, she thought. She smiled into the darkness, patted her stomach, Well-fed cows make healthy calves. Old cow, I’d better see about keeping you properly fed.

She went exploring and found the girl in the kitchen, washing up. “Where’s your father, child?’

The girl’s eyes darted to the back door, flicked away. She shrugged, said nothing. She stood hunched over the washtub, her hands quiet in the greasy water, her body saying: go away and leave me alone.

“I see. Your mother?”

“She dead.”

“You do the cooking?”

“You din’ eat ye stew. We don’t give coin back f what ye don’ eat.”

“A starving sanga wouldn’t eat that stew. It’s not the cooking, child. It’s the meat. I take it you don’t raise your own?”

The girl shook her head, began scratching at a bit of crust in a loafpan.

“Your father doesn’t hunt?”

“An’t no game close enough. r Road scare ‘em.” Her voice was muffled, defensive; once again her dark eyes went to the door, turned away.

“Hmm. If I brought you meat, would you cook it forme? I’ll leave you what’s left over in payment.”

“What kinda meat?”

“Geyker.”

“Ah-yah. When?”

“Soon. An hour, perhaps a little more.”

“I wanna see t’ hide.” Her shoulders were hunched over, her hands shaking; she wouldn’t look at Korimenei. She was terrified, but determined.

Korimenei laughed. “Yes yes. You’re a good sonya. I wouldn’t give you forbidden fare. You’ll see hide, hooves, and all. Tell me something. Would Waystops down the Road take meat instead of coin?”

“I couldna say f’ sure. I think so. Dada woulda if ye’d asked.”

“Thank you. Good e’en, sonya.” Korimenei left the kitchen, paused in the middle of the common room to consider site options. There was the sleeping loft, but she didn’t like the feel or the smell of the place. The stable. No. The hostler was nested inside there like a rat in a wall and not even the sookpa stoups in the tavern were going to entice him out. She didn’t want anyone looking over her shoulder while she went dipping for a demon to hunt some meat for her. She pushed away the fears that kept recurring about attracting notice and even a challenge from a local sorceror. She had to do this, she had no choice. She moved to the door; it wasn’t barred yet; the sun was barely down; a few rosy streaks on the western horizon lingered from a pallid sunset. The Wounded Moon was breaking free of the horizon in the east; nearly full, the moonhare-crouching plainly writ in streaks of blue-gray on the yellowish ground. The night was clear and brilliant with almost no wind to blow the grass about or stir the naked branches of the three gnarly olive trees growing beside the well. The well… ah, the well. Wells are powerpoints and sanctuaries or so Master Kushundallian claimed. I’ll know the truth of that before the night’s much older.

She pulled the door shut behind her. “Lili, I need you,” she called. The mahsar was out hunting her dinner; she turned her nose up at anything cooked or dead before she made it so; in emergencies she’d share Korimenei’s meals, but not without expressing her opinion of such slop with some full-body grimaces. “Aili my Liki,” she called again, then went to sit on the well-coping and wait for her backup, smiling at herself, amused by her new-won prudence.

Ailiki materialized in Korimenei’s lap, sat washing her whiskers with tongue-damped forefeet. Korimenei laughed, scratched behind her tulip petal ears, then lifted her and carried her to the bare earth where horses, mules, four-footed beasts of all kinds had milled about waiting their turn to drink from the troughs, their hooves cutting up the grass, grinding it into the earth, beating the earth into a hard crusty floor. She set Ailiki down and began drawing a pentacle. “What I’m going to do, Lili. I need a hunter who will go and get me a geyker. Hmm. I need fruit too, maybe I can do something about that.” She inspected the pentacle. “That’s done. Come here, babe.”

She silvered and activated the pentacle, insinuated herself into the realities and drifted, waiting for the call. There was no urgency, only a quiet need; it took longer she couldn’t tell how long her time-sense was useless here it might have been seconds or parts of a single second but finally the pull came and she eased through into an immensity that would have frightened her if she stopped to think, but she went swimming so swiftly that the darkness and the cold was only a mountain pond, she swanned through the dark and floated over the face of a world turning and turning in the light of a yellow sun. Sand and more sand, sand and brush and sand-colored cats prowling after herds of sand-colored deer. She dipped lower. Mancats with snakes for hands and four legs padding pacing loping over the sand. Mancats with eyes that knew. She called one and he came to her, he came rushing at her, she hadn’t realized how big he was, how powerful. She smelled him. He reeked but it was an attractive stink, sensual, sexual. Hunt for me, she called to him. Hunt for yourself and hunt for me.

He shook himself, considered her. She felt his consent given and threw a mindseine about him. In some way, he leaned into her, helping with the shift. He was amused at the whole thing, curious, intensely immensely curious. Pleased at having the chance to travel away from his sandhills. He landed on the ground outside the pentacle and settled on his haunches, his massive head turning and turning, his black nostrils flaring as he tasted the air. She thought a geyker at him. He rumbled his assent, went loping off into the grass.

She flowed away again, floated aimlessly awhile, until a sweet-tart smell invaded her. She followed it into richness, a world lush with fruit, ripe fruit, oozing with juice. She drifted among the trees, choosing, dropping the fruit into a mindnet woven tighter than before. When she had as much as she could eat that night and the next day, she drifted back, carrying her gleanings with her. She juggled that fruit as the mindnet came apart when she touched down, dropped pieces that cracked open but were, otherwise still edible. She piled it all by her knee and looked around. The mancat was close, she could smell him on the wind.

A moment later the grass parted and he came carrying a dead geyker. He laid it on the ground beside the pentacle and trotted off again. She looked at it. Lyre-shaped horns like polished jet. Black nose with blood coming from it like threads of ink. Rough, brindled coat in its winter growth, the guard hairs longer than her hand. Silken white ruff about the long neck, spattered and matted with more blood. Split hooves, black and sharp as knives. Tail like a flag, black above, white below. A good plump beast with its winter fat in place. She sighed and sang the old tributesong her people in the Vale sang over their butchered stock, giving its beastsoul rest and rebirth. Then she settled herself to wait until the mancat was finished with his own business and ready to go home with his prizes.