A Gathering Of Stones

6

Night.

A gale wind blowing across the marshes, a dry chill wind that cut to the bone.

The Wounded Moon was down, a smear of high cloud dimmed the star-glitter and a thick fog boiled up from the marshwater.

Brann sat wrapped in blankets, staring at the faint red glow from the dying fire, waiting for Jaril to return. A great horned owl fought the wind, laboring in large sweeps toward the top of the Rock; he angled across the wind, was blown past his point of aim, clawed his way back, gained a few more feet, was blown back, dipped below the rim of the Rock into the ragged eddies around the friable sandstone, climbed again and finally found a perch on the lee side of the Sihbaraburj.

Jaril shifted to a small lemur form with dexterous hands and handfeet and a prehensile tail. Driven by all the needs that churned in him, he crawled into a weep-hole and went skittering through the maze of holes that drained the place, provided ventilation and housed the mirrors that lit the interior of the made-mountain. He shifted again to something like a plated centipede, and went scuttling at top speed through the wall tubes to the junkroom where he’d seen the little glass frog. He hadn’t been back since that first day, no point in alerting Amortis if she wasn’t aware of what she had. He tried not to wonder if the thing was still there, but his nerves were strung so taut he felt like exploding. On and on he trotted, his claws tick-ticking on the brick.

He thrust his head into the room. The gloom inside was thicker than the dust, he couldn’t see a thing. He closed his foreclaws on the edge of the hole, fought for control of the tides coursing through him. Preoccupied with his internal difficulties, for several minutes he didn’t notice an appreciable lightening in that gloom. When he looked round again, he saw a faint glow coming from the shelf where he’d seen Churrikyoo. He shifted hastily to his glowsphere form and drifted over to it.

Having rid itself of dust, the talisman was pulsing softly, as if it said: come to me, take me. Jaril hung in midair, all his senses alert. He felt for the presence of a god. Nothing. He drifted closer. Nothing. Closer. Warmth enfolded him. Welcome. The little glass frog seemed to be grinning at him. He extruded two pseudopods and lifted it from the shelf. It seemed to nestle against him as if it were coming home. He didn’t understand. He glanced at the shelf and nearly dropped the frog.

A patch of light was shifting and shaping itself into something… something… yes, a duplicate of the thing he held.

Jaril looked down. Churrikyoo nestled in the hollows of his pseudopods and he seemed to hear silent laughter from it that went vibrating through his body. He looked at the shelf. The object was dull and lifeless, covered with a coat of dust. He gave a mental shrug, slipped the frog into the pouch he’d built for it and flitted for the hole.

He shifted form and went skittering up the worm holes, a pregnant pseudocentipede. Now and then he stopped and scanned, every sense straining, searching for any sign of alarm. Nothing, except the frog chuckling inside him, nestling in a womblike warmth.

He wriggled out of a weep-hole and shifted again as he fell into the wind. Broad wings scooping, he fought the downdraft that flowed like water along the brick; there was a moment when he thought he was going to impale himself on the spearpoints of the walkway fence, but a sudden gust of wind caught him and sent him soaring upward, carrying him over the outer wall. He regained control and went slipping swiftly to the cell where Brann was waiting.