Blue Magic

1. The Kingdom Of Jade Torat. A Mountainside Near The Western Border.

Broad and yellow and heavy with the silt it carried, late summer low in its banks, the river Wansheeri slipped noiselessly past the scattered mountains of the Uplands, driving to the Plains and the vast city that guarded its mouth, Jade Halimm.

On one of those mountains, one close to the river and its deposits of clay, an old woman finished unloading her kiln onto a handcart and started downhill with the cart, old and broad and in her way as slow and heavy and powerful as the river. The sun was low in the west; the air moved slowly and smelled of dust, powdered bark, pungent sticky resins from the conifers, a burning gold haze filtered through lazily shifting needles; the shadows were dark and hot; sweat gathered on the old woman’s scalp beneath strong white hair twisted into a feathery knot to keep it off her neck and poured in wide streams past her ears. Ignoring sweat and heat, she plodded down a path her own feet had pounded into the mountainside during the past hundred years. She was alone and content to be alone, showed it in the swing of her heavy body and the work tune she was whistling. The pots rattled, the cart creaked, the old woman whistled, here and there in the distance a bird sang a song as lazy as the sluggish air.

She reached a round meadow bisected by a noisy creek and started pulling the cart over flat stones she had long ago muscled into place for the parts of the year that were wetter than this; the cart lurched, the pots thudded, the iron tires of the cartwheels rumbled over the stones. She stopped whistling and put more muscle into moving the cart, her face going intent as she focused mind and body on the pushpole. When she reached the bridge across the creek, she straightened her back and drew an arm across her face, wiping away some of the sweat. A breeze moved along the water, cool after the still heat under the trees. She unhooked the pushpole and shuffled to the siderail, lingering in that comparative coolness, leaning against the top bar, head bent so the breeze could run across her neck. Across the meadow her house and workshed waited, half hidden by ancienf knotty vines, their weathered wood fitting with grace into the stony tree-covered slope behind them. She was pleasantly tired and looking forward to fixing her supper, then consuming a large pot of tea while she re-read one of the books she’d brought up from Jade Halimm to pass the evenings with when the children were gone. Yaril and Jaril were due back soon; she smiled as she thought this. They’d have a thousand stories to tell about what they’d seen in their travels, but that wasn’t the only reason she was beginning to grudge the hours until they came; she was more attached to them than she liked to admit, even to herself, they were her children, her nurslings, though their human forms had grown older in the years (about two hundred of them now) since their paths collided with hers on the slopes of Tincreal. Recently she’d begun to wonder if they might be approaching something like puberty. Their outward forms, to some extent anyway, reflected their inward being, so if they seemed to be hovering on the verge of adolescence when they took on the appearance of human children, what was that supposed to tell her? What was adolescence like for a pair of golden shimmerglobes? How would she deal with it? They’d been restless the past several years, ranging over much of the world, coming back to her only when their need for food was so demanding they could no longer ignore it. She wrinkled her nose with distaste. She wanted them back, but it meant she’d have to go down to Jade Halimm and hunt for victims she could justify sucking dry of life. High or low, it didn’t matter to her, only the smell of their souls mattered. The folk of Jade Halimm who were ordinarily honest (which meant having only small sins and meannesses on their consciences but no major taint of corruption) were afraid at first when they knew the Drinker of Souls was prowling the night, but experience taught them that they had nothing to fear from her. She took the muggers, the despoilers of children, the secret murderers and such folk, leaving the rest alone. Many in Jade Halimm had reason to be grateful to her; the mysterious deaths of certain merchants and moneylenders made their heirs suddenly inclined to generosity and improved their patience wonderfully (for a while at least and never to the point of losing,a profit). She frowned at the stream. How long have I been here? She counted the year names to herself, counted the cycles. Tungjii’s tender tits, I’m letting myself go, time slips like water through my fingers, it seems like yesterday I came up the riverpath and argued old Dayan into taking me on as his apprentice.

The western sky was throwing up rags of color as the sun dropped stone quick behind the peaks; the old trout that lived under the bridge drifted out, a dark dangerous shade in the broken shadows of the water. She sighed and pushed back onto her feet. If she wanted to get the pots stowed before full dark there was no more time for dreaming. She set her hand on the pullpole, meaning to lock it back in front of her, turned instead and stood gazing toward the river as she heard the hurried uneven pound of hooves on the beaten earth of the riverpath. Whoever it is, he’s pushed that poor beast to the point of breakdown. Leaving the cart where it was, she walked off the bridge, up the paving stones to the road and stood waiting for the rider to show.

For a moment she thought of climbing to the house and barring the door, but she’d been settled in contentment too long and had lost the wariness endemic in the earlier part of her life. Who’d want to hurt her, the ancient potter of Shaynamoshu? Besides, it might be a desperate landsman running from the whipmasters on one of the cherns along the Wansheeri. She’d hid more than one such fugitive after Dayan died and left her the house.

The horse came out of the trees, a dapple gray blackened with sweat, a black-clad boy on his back. When he came even with her, the boy slid from the saddle, leaving the beast to stand behind him, head down and shivering, a thin wiry boy, fifteen, sixteen, something like that, dark circles of fatigue about his eyes, his face drawn and showing the bone, determination and terror haunting his eyes. “Brann born in Arth Slya, Drinker of Souls?”

She blinked at him, considering the question. After a moment she nodded. “Yes.”

He fumbled inside his shirt, jerked, breaking the thong she could see about his neck. A moment more of fumbling, him swaying on his feet, weary beyond weariness, then he brought out a small packet, parchment folded over and over about something heavy, smeared copiously with black wax. “We the blood of Harra Hazani say to you, remember what you swore.” He pushed the packet at her.

She took it, tucked it in her blouse and caught hold of him as he fell against her, fatigue clubbing him down once the support of his drive to reach her was gone. A flash of darkness caught the corner of her eye. A tiger-man popped from the air behind the boy. Before she could react, he slipped a knife up under the boy’s ribs and vanished as precipitously as he came with a pop like a cork coming from a bottle.

An icy wind touched her neck.

Something heavy, metallic slammed into her back. Cold fire flashed up through her.

Heavy breathing, broken in the middle. Faint popping sound.

Her knees folded under her, she saw herself toppling toward the boy’s body, saw the hilt of the knife in his back, saw an exploding flower of blood, saw nothing more.

2. Two Months Earlier And A Thousand Miles South And West Along The Coast From Jade Halimm.

In Owlyn Vale Of The Fifth Finger, Events Prepare For The Knife In Brann’s Back

SCENE: Late, the Wounded Moon in his crescent phase, just rising. One of the walled households in Owlyn vale. A small bedroom in the children’s wing. Three narrow beds in the room, one sleeper, a girl about thirteen or fourteen, the other beds empty. The door opens. A boy of seven slips through the gap, glides to the girl and takes her by the shoulder, shakes her awake.

“Kori. Wake up, Kori. I need you.”

The whisper and the shaking dragged Kori out of chaotic nightmare. “Wha… who…”

The shaking stopped. “It’s me, Kori. Trи.”

“Tre… “ She fumbled her hands against the sheets, pushed up and turned in one move, her limbs all angles, her body with limber grace, the topsheet and quilt winding around her until she shoved them away and dropped her legs over the edge of the bed. She swept the hair out of her eyes and sat scowling at her brother, a shivering dark shape in the starlit room. “Ahhh, Ire,”

she said, keeping her voice to a murmur so AuntNurse wouldn’t hear and come scold them, “shut the door, silly, then tell me what’s biting you.”

He hurried over, pulled the door shut with such care the latch went home without a sound, hurried back to his sister. She patted the bed beside her and he climbed up and sat where her hand had been, sighing and leaning his weight against her. “It’s me now,” he said. “Zilos came to me, his ghost I mean. He said I pass it to you, Trago; the Chained God says you’re the one. They’ll burn me too, Kori; when the Signs start, they’ll know I’m the priest now and HE’ll know and HE’ll order his soldiers to burn me like they did Zilos.”

Kori shivered. “You’re sure? Maybe it was a bad dream. Me, I’ve been having lots of those.”

Trago wriggled away from her. “I said he put his hand on me, Kori. He left the Mark.” He pulled his sleeping shift away from his shoulder and let her see a hollow starburst, dark red like a birthmark; he’d had no mark there before, he was born unflawed, she’d bathed him as a babe, part of girls’ work in the Household of the Piyoloss clan. And she’d seen that brand before, seen it on the strong sunbrown shoulder of Zilos the woodworker when he’d left his shirt off on a hot summer day, sitting on the bench before his small house carving a doll’s head for her. Zilos, Priest of the Chained God. Three weeks ago the soldiers of the Sorceror Settsimaksimin planted an oak post in the middle of the threshing floor, tied Zilos to it, piled resinous pinewood about him and burned him to ash, standing around him and jeering at the Chained God, calling him to rescue his Priest if he counted himself more than a useless ghost-thing. And they promised to burn all such priests wherever they found them, Settsimaksimin was more powerful than any pitiful little local god and that was his command and the command of Amortis his patron. Amortis is your god now, they announced to the stubborn refusing folk of Owlyn Vale, Amortis the bountiful, Amortis ripe and passionate, Amortis the bestower of endless pleasure. Rejoice that she consents to bless you with her presence, rejoice that she calls you to her service.

Warily, feeling nauseated, 1Kori touched the mark. It was bloodwarm and raised a hair above the paler skin of her brother’s shoulder. The first sign. He could hide that, but other signs would appear that he couldn’t hide. One day mules might bray and rebel and come running from fields, dragging plows and seeders and wagons behind them, mules might jump corral fences, break through stable doors, ignoring commands, whips, all obstacles, they might come and kneel before him. Some such things would happen. He couldn’t stop them. Another day he might be compelled to go to every adult woman in Owlyn Vale and touch her and heal all ills and announce the sex of each child in the wombs that were filled and bless each such unborn so it would come forth without flaw and more beautiful than the morning. A third time, it would be something else. The one certainty in the situation was that whatever signs were manifested would be public and spectacular. Kori sighed and held her brother in her arms as he sobbed out his fear and indignation that this should happen to him.

When his sobbing died down and he lay quiescent against her, she murmured, “Do you know when the signs will start? Tomorrow? Next week?”

Trago coughed, sniffed, pushed against her. She let him go and he wriggled away along the bed until he could turn and look at her. He fished up the edge of her sheet and blew his nose into it, ignoring the soft spitting of indignation this drew from her. “Zilos his Ghost said the Chained God gives me three months to get used to this. Then he lets everyone know.”

“Stupid!” She bit down on the word, not because she feared the God, but she didn’t want AuntNurse in there scolding her for staining her reputation by entertaining a male in her bedchamber, no matter that male was her seven-year-old brother, how you start is how you go on Auntee said. “Any hope the god will change his mind?”

“No.” Trago cleared his throat again, caught her glare and swallowed the phlegm instead of spitting it out.

She scowled at her hands, took hold of the long flexible fingers of her left hand and bent them back until the nails lay almost parallel to her arm. Among all the children and young folk belonging to the Piyoloss clan, Trago was the one closest to her, the only one who laughed when she did, the only one who could follow her flights of fancy, his dragonfly mind as swift as hers. If he burned, much of her would burn with him and she didn’t like to think of what her life would be like after that. She smoothed one hand over the other. “We’ve got to do something,” she murmured. She hugged her arms across her shallow just-budding breasts. “I think…” Her voice faded as she went still, her eyes opening wide, staring inward at a sudden memory. A moment later, she shook herself and turned to him. “I’ve got an idea… maybe… You go back to bed, Tre, I have to think about it. Without distraction. You hear?”

He wiggled back to her, caught hold of her hand and pressed it to the side of his face, then he bounced off the bed and trotted out of the room, leaving the door swinging open.

Kori sighed and went to shut it. She leaned against it a moment looking at the chest at the foot of the bed. She crossed to the chest, pulled up the lid and fished inside for a small box and carried that to the window. She rested her elbows on the sill, turned the box over and over in her fingers. It was old and worn from much ‘prior handling, fragrant kedron wood, warm brown with amber highlights. It was heavy and clunked as she turned it. Harra Hazani’s gift to her children and her children’s children, passed from daughter to daughter, moving from clan to clan as the daughters married into other families, each Harra’s Daughter holder of the promise choosing the next, one of her own daughters or a young cousin in another clan, she took great care to chose the proper one, it was a serious thing, passing the promise on and keeping it safe. And it had been safe and secret through all the two centuries since Harm lived here and bore her children. Kori set the box on the sill and folded her hands over it as she gazed through the small diamond-shaped panes of glass set in lead strips. She couldn’t see much, what she wanted was the feel of light on her face and a sense of space beyond the narrow confines of the room. There were times when she woke restless and slipped out to dance in the moonlight, but she didn’t want to chance getting caught. Not now. She opened the box, took out the heavy bronze medal with the inscrutable glyphs on front and back, ran her fingers over it, set it on the sill, took out the stick of black sealing wax and the tightly folded packet of parchment, ancient, yellowed, blank (she knew that because after Cousin Diyalla called her to her deathbed and gave her the box and a hoarsely whispered explanation, she took the box up onto the mountain behind Household Piyoloss, opened it and examined the three things it contained). Send the medal to one called Brann, self-named Drinker of Souls, Diyalla whispered to Kori. Say to her: we, the line of Harra Hazani, call on you to remember what you swore. This is what she swore, that if Harra called on her, she would come from anywhere in the world to give her gifts and her strength and her deadly touch to protect Harra or her children or her children’s children as long as the line and she existed. And this Harra said to her daughter, the Drinker of Souls will live long indeed. And this Harra said, trust her; she is generous beyond ordinary and will give without stint. All very well, Kori thought, but how do I know where to send the medal? She smoothed her thumb over the cool smooth bronze and gazed through the wavery glass as if somewhere in the distortions lay the answer to her question. The window looked east and presently she made out the shape of the broken crescent that was the Wounded Moon rising above the mountains that curved like protecting hands about the mouth of Owlyn Vale where the river ran out and curled across the luscious plain that knew three harvests a year and a harder poverty for most of its people than even the meanest would ever face in the sterner, more grudging mountains. Absently caressing the medal, warming it with her warmth, she stared a long time at the moon, her gaze as empty as her mind. There was a small round hole near one end of the rectangle, she played with that a while. Harra must have worn it about her neck, suspended on a chain or a thong. Kori set it on the sill, raised her shoulders as she took in a long breath, lowered them as she let it out. She went to the chest and took out a roll of leather thonging she’d used for something or other once and put away after she was finished with it in a rare burst of waste-not want-not. She cut a piece long enough to let the medal dangle between the tiny hillocks of her to-be breasts, slipping it beneath her sleeping shift. She went back to the window and stood a moment longer watching the moon. I have to go out, I can’t think in here. I have to plan how to work this. The other times she’d sneaked out, she’d pulled on a pair of old trousers she filched from the ragbag and a sleeveless tunic that was getting to be too small for her. Somehow, though, that didn’t feel appropriate this time. In spite of the danger and the beating she’d get if she were discovered, the disgrace she’d bring on kin and clan, she went like she was, her thin coltish body barely hidden by the fine white cloth she had woven herself on the family loom. She glided through the house silent as the earthsoul of a murdered child and out the postern gate, remembering the doubletwelve of soldiers quartered on the Vale folk only after she was irretrievably beyond the protection of the House walls. Like a startled, no a frightened, fawn she fled up the hillside to a small glade with a giant oak in the center of it, an oak that felt to her as always old as the stone bones of the mountain.

She drifted onto dew-soaked grass; her feet were aching with cold but she ignored that and danced slowly around the perimeter of the glade through the dappled moonlight, around and around, singing a wordless song that wavered through four notes no more, singing herself deeper into trance, around and around, gradually spiraling inward until she spread her arms and embraced the tree, circling it a last time,’ drinking in the dark dry smell of it, breasts, belly and thighs rubbing against its crumbly rough bark. When she finished the round, she folded liquidly down and curled her body between two great roots pushing-up through layers of dead and rotting leaves. With a small sigh, she closed her eyes and seemed to sleep.

As she seemed to sleep, a dark thin figure seemed to melt from the tree and crouch over her, long long gray-brown hair drifting like fog about a thin pointed face, androgynous, with an eerie beauty that would have been ugliness if the face were flesh. Long graceful fingers of brown glass seemed to brush across Kori’s face, she seemed to smile then sigh. Brown glass fingers seemed to touch the leather thong, seemed to slide quickly away quivering with distaste, seemed to draw the medal from under the shift, seemed to stroke it smiling, seemed to hold the medal in one hand and spread the other long long hand across Kori’s face.

How Harra Hazani Came To Owlyn Vale

Gibbous, waxing toward full, the Wounded Moon shone palely on a long narrow ship that sliced through the windwhipped, foamspitting water of the sea called Notoea Tha, and touched with delicate strokes the naked land north of the ship, a black-violet blotch that gradually gained definition as the northwestering course of the smuggler took her closer and closer to the riddle rock at the tip of that landfinger, rock pierced again and again and again by wind and water so that it sang day and night, slow sad terrible songs, and was only quiet one hour every other month.

On the deck by the foremast a woman slept, wrapped in blankets and self-tethered to the mast by a knot she could pull loose with a quick jerk of her hand. All that could be seen of her was the pale curve of a temple and long dark hair confined in half a dozen plaits that danced to the tug of the wind, their gold beetle clasps tunktonking against the wood, the small sounds lost in the creaks, snaps and groans of the flitting ship. A man sat beside her, his back against the mast, a naked sword across his thighs. Now and then he sucked at a wineskin, the pulls getting longer and more frequent as the night turned on its wheel. He was a big man and in the kind darkness had the athletic beauty that sculptors give to the statues of heroes; even in daylight he had the look of a hero if you didn’t look too closely for he was at that stage of ripeness that was also the first stage of decay.

The night went on with its placidities and tensions intact; the Wounded Moon crawled, up over the mast and began sliding toward the heaving black water with its tracery of foam; the groaning song of the riddle rock grew loud enough to ride over the noises of the sea, the wind and the straining ship and creep into the fuddled mind of the blond hero who stirred uneasily and reached for the empty skin. Remembering its emptiness before he completed the gesture, he settled back into the muddled not-sleep that was a world away from the vigilance he was being paid for. The woman stirred, muttered, moved uneasily, on the verge of waking.

Shadows began converging on the foremast, dark forms moving with barefoot silence and confident agility, Captain and crew acting according to their nature, a nature she’d read easily enough when she made arrangements to leave Bandrabahr on that stealthy ship, needing the stealthiest of departures to escape the too-pressing attentions of an ex-friend of her dead father, a man of power in those parts. Having no choice in transport and understanding what a swamp she was plunging into, she hired the hero as a bodyguard and he’d done the job well enough up to this moment but her luck and his were about to run out.

The hero’s throat was cut with a soft slide, the sound lost in the moan from the riddle rock now only a few shiplengths off, but since most of the crew were here, not tending the ship, she lurched in annoyance at being neglected and sent the hero’s sword clanging against the deck. Half awake already, the woman jerked the knot loose and was on her feet running, knives in both hands, slashing, dodging, darting, slipping grips, scrambling on her knees, rolling onto her feet, creating and reading confusion, playing her minor whistle magic to augment that confusion, winning the shiprail, plunging overside into the cold black water.

She swam toward the land, cursing under her breath because she was furious at having to abandon everything she wasn’t wearing. Especially furious at losing her daroud because her father had given it to her and she’d managed to keep it through a lot of foolishness and it was her means of earning her keep. She promised herself as soon as she reached the shore and could give her mind to it she’d lay such a curse on the Captain and crew, they’d moan louder and longer than that damn rock ahead of her.

Getting onshore without being battered and torn into ground meat and shattered bone proved more difficult than she expected; the smaller rocks jutting from the sea around the base of the riddle rock were home to barnacles with edges sharp enough to split a thought in half while water was sucked in and out of the washholes in the great rock, flowing in powerful surges that caught hold of her and dragged her a while, then shoved her a while, then dragged her-some more. Half drowned, bleeding from a hundred cuts, she caught a fingertip hold on a crack in a waterpolished ledge and used will and what was left of her strength to muscle herself high enough out of the water to roll onto the ledge where she lay on her side, gasping and spitting out as much of the sea inside her as she could. When she was as calm as she was going to get, she began the herka trypps that were meaningless in every way except that they helped her focus mind and energy and got her ready to use the more demanding levels of her magic. Blending modes she learned from her father with others she’d picked up here and there in her travels since he died, she began to draw heat from the air and glamour from the moonlight and twisted them into tools to seal the cuts where blood was leaking away and taking strength with it and when that was done, she pulled heat and glamour into herself and stored it, then used it to shape the curse and used her anger to power the curse and shot her curse after the ship like poison arrow, releasing it with a flare of satisfaction that turned to ash a moment later as a net of weariness settled around her and pinned her flat to the cold stone.

Cold. She wasn’t bleeding any longer, but the cold was drawing the life out of her. Get up, she told herself, get on your feet, you can’t stay here. Struggling against the weight of that bone deep fatigue, searching out holds on the face-of the riddle rock, she forced herself onto her knees and then onto her feet. For a minute or an hour, she never knew which, she stood shivering and mind-dulled, trying to get her thoughts ordered again, trying to focus her energy so she could understand where she was and what she had to do to get out of there. The riddle rock moaned about her, a thousand fog horns bellowing, the noise jarred her over and over from her fragile focus and left her swaying precariously on the point of tumbling back into the water. The tide began following the moon and backed away from her, its stinging spray no longer battered her legs. Once again she tried the herka trypps, closing her numb hands tighter in the cracks so the pain would break through the haze thickening in her head. Slowly, ah so slowly she regained her ability to focus, but the field was narrow, a pinhead wide, no more. She drew power into herself, plucking it from tide and moonlight, from the ancient roots of the rock she stood on, a hairfine trickle of strength that finally was enough and only just enough to let her see the way off the rock, then shift her clumsy aching body along that way until she was finally walking on thin soil where grasses grew gray and tough, where the brush was crooked and close to the ground. Half drowned still, blind with effort and fatigue, she walked on and on until she reached a place where there were trees and where the trees had dropped leaves that weren’t fully rotted yet, where she could dig herself a nest and cover herself over with the leaves and, at last, let herself sleep…

She woke late in the afternoon of the following day, stiff, sore, hungry, thirsty, sea salt and anger bitter in her mouth. The summer sun was hot and the air in the aspen grove heavy with that heat. Her aches and bruises said stay where you are, don’t move, but the clamor in her belly and the sweat that crawled stickily over her body spoke more strongly. Gathering will and the remnants of her strength she crawled from her nest among the leaves and used the smooth powdery trunk of the nearest aspen to pull herself onto her feet.

She leaned against the tree and drew a little on its strength though all her magics had their cost and her need would always outpace the gain; as soon as her will weakened she’d pay that cost and it would be a heavy one. Stupid and more than stupid wasting her strength heaving that curse after the Captain and his crew; what she’d thrown so thoughtlessly away last night might mean the difference between living and dying this day. She grimaced and gave regret a pass, few things more futile than going over and over past mistakes; learn from them if there was anything-to learn, then let them go and save your strength for today’s problems which are usually more than sufficient. Yesterday banished, she turned her mind to present needs.

Food, water, shelter, and where should she go from here? Food? It was summer, there should be mushrooms, berries, even acorns if those dark green crowns farther inland were oaks. She touched her arms, felt the knives snugged under her sleeves; she kept hold of them when she went override and didn’t start swimming until they were sheathed. There were plenty of saplings near to hand. She could make cords for snares from their fibrous inner bark, for a sling too, if she sacrificed a bit of her shirt for the pocket and found a few smooth stones. There were birds about, she could hear them, they’d feed her, their blood would help with her thirst, though finding fresh water was becoming more urgent as time slid past, not just for thirst, she needed to wash the dried salt off her skin. She pushed away from the aspen and turned back her cuffs. Where do I go from here? After working stiff fingers until she could hold a knife without fear of dropping it, she began slicing through the bark of a sapling as big around as her thumb. No point in calling water and using that as a guide, she was surrounded by water and she wasn’t enough of a diviner to tell fresh from salt. Ah well, this was one of Cheonea’s Finger Headlands, salt sea on one side, salt inlet on the other; if she paralleled the inlet shore she was bound to come on streams and eventually into a settlement. The folk in the Finger Vales were said to be fierce and clannish and quick to defend themselves from encroachment, but courteous enough to a stranger who showed them courtesy and generous to those in need who happened their way. She sliced the bark free in narrow strips, peeling them away from the wood and draping them over her knee, glancing at the sky now and then to measure how much light she had left. No point in making snares, she didn’t have time to hunt out game trails, she wanted to be on her way come the morning. She left the first sapling with half its bark, not wanting to kill it entirely, moved on to another. A sling, yes, I’m rusty, have to get close and hope for a bit of luck…

She finished the cords, made her sling, found some pebbles and some luck and dined on plump brispouls roasted over a fire it took her some muscle and blisters to make, a firebow had never been her favorite tool and she was even less fond of it now. The pouls had a strong taste and the only salt she had was crusted on her skin, but they were hot and tender and made a pleasant weight in her stomach; she finished the meal with a bark basket of mourrberries sweet and juicy (though she had to spend half an hour dislodging small flat seeds from between her teeth). By that time the sunset had faded and the stars were out thick as fleas on a piedog’s hide. Sighing, her discomforts reduced to a minimum, she got heavily to her feet, stripped off her trousers and shirt (leaving her boots on as she had the night before because she knew she’d never get her feet back in them), she wadded up her trousers and scrubbed hard at all the skin she could reach. The scum left behind when the sea water dried was already raising rashes and in the worst of those rashes her skin was starting to crack. When she’d done all she could, she dressed, dumped dirt on the remnants of the fire, smothering it carefully (she didn’t relish the thought of waking in the center of a forest fire). A short distance away, she made a new sleeping nest, lay down in it and pulled dry leaves over her. Very soon she sank into a sleep so deep she did not notice the short fierce rain an hour later.

She woke with the dawn, shivering and feeling the bite at the back of the eyes that meant a head cold fruiting in her. She rubbed the heel of her left hand over the medal hanging between her breasts. Ah Brann, oh Brann, why aren’t you here when I need you? With a coughing laugh, she stretched, strained the muscles in face and body, slapped at her soggy shirt and trousers, knocking away the damp leaves clinging to her. She shivered, feeling uncertain, there was something… She looked at the three saplings she’d stripped of half their bark, shivered again as an image popped into her head of babies crying in pain and shock. Following an impulse that was half delirium, she scored the palm of her left hand with one of her knives and smeared the blood from the wound along the wounded sides of the little trees. She felt easier at once and almost at once found a clean pool of water in the rotted crotch of a lightning blasted tree. She drank, washed her wounded hand, then set off along the mountainside, keeping the morning wind in her face since as far as she could tell, it was blowing out of the northeast and that was where she wanted to go.

She walked all morning in a haze of growing discomfort as the cold grew worse and her cut hand throbbed. Twice she stopped at berry thickets and ate as much as she could hold and took more of the fruit with her pouched in the tail of her shirt. A little after the sun reached zenith she came to a small stream; with the expenditure of will and much patience combined with quick hands, she scooped out two unwary trout, then stripped and used the sand collected around the stones in the streambed to scrub herself clean, she even let down her hair and used the sand on that though she wasn’t too sure of the result and never managed to get all the grit washed out of the tangled mass. After she pounded some of the dirt out of her clothing and spread it to dry over a small bushy conifer, she cooked the trout on a sliver of shale and finished off the berries. The sun was warm and soothing, the stream sang the knots out of her soul and even the cold seemed to loose its hold on head and chest. Her shirt and trousers were still wet when she finished eating, so she stretched out on her stomach on a long slant of granite that jutted into the stream and lay with her head on her crossed arms, her aching eyes shut.

The sun had vanished behind the trees when she woke. She yawned, went still. Something resilient and rather warm was pressed against her side. Warily she eased her head up until she could look over her shoulder. A large snake, she couldn’t read the kind in the inadequate view she had, lay in irregular loops on the warm stone, taking heat from it and her. Its head was lifting, she could feel it stirring as it sensed the change in her. She summoned concentration, licked her lips and began whistling a two-note sleepsong, the sound of it hardly louder than the less constant music of the stream, on and on, until the snake lowered its head and the loops of its body stretched and loosened. She threw herself away from it and curled onto her feet, her heart fluttering, her breath coming quick and shallow. The snake reared its black head, seemed to stare at her, split red tongue tasting the air. For a moment snake and woman held that tense pose, then the snake dropped its head and flowed from the stone into the water and went swimming off, a ripple of black, black head lifted. She dropped her shoulders and sighed, weariness and sickness flooding over her again. She pulled her trousers and shirt off the baby fir and shook them out more carefully than she would have before the snake: Shivering with a sudden chill she strapped on her knives, pulled on her shirt and trousers, swung the long double belt about her and buckled it tight. She checked about the rock, collected odds and ends she’d emptied from her pockets when she washed her clothes, went on her knees and drank sparingly from the stream, then started on. There was at least an hour left before sundown and she might as well use it.

For seven days she moved inland, gathering food as she went, enough to fend off hunger cramps and keep her feet moving up around down as she patiently negotiated ravines and circled impossible bramble patches or brush too thick to push through, up around down. It was summer so the rains when they came were quick to pass on and the nights were never freezing though the air could get nippy around dawn. By the end of those seven days she was on the lower slopes of mountains that, were beginning to shift away from the inlet, moving ever deeper into the great oak forest, walking through a brooding twilight with unseen eyes following her. The ground was clear and easy going except for an occasional tricky root that broke through the thick padding of old leaves. There were a few glades where one of the ancient oaks had blown over and left enough room for vines and brush to grow, but not many; getting food for herself was hard and getting wood to cook it would have been harder if she hadn’t decided to dispense with fire altogether. As soon as she stepped into that green gloom, she got the strong impression that the trees wouldn’t take to fire and (though she laughed at her fancies, as much as she could laugh with the persistent and disgusting cold draining her strength) would deal harshly with anyone burning wood of any kind here, even down deadwood. She spent an hour or so that night scooping wary trout from a stony stream, then gutted them and ate them raw. And was careful to dig a hole and bury the skins, bones and offal near the roots on one of the trees. The next morning she went half an hour upstream, got herself another fish and ate that raw too and buried what she didn’t eat. Urged on by the trees who weren’t hostile exactly, just unwelcoming, she hurried through that constant verdant twilight, walking as long as her legs held out before she stopped to eat and sleep.

Late afternoon on the seventh day she stopped walking and listened, finding it difficult to believe her ears. Threading through the soughing of the leaves and the guttural creaks from the huge limbs she heard a steady plink plink plink. It got gradually louder, turned into the familiar dance of a smith’s hammer. The ground underfoot got rockier, the trees were smaller, aspen and birch and myrtle mixed with the oak and the sunlight made lacy patterns on the earth and in the air around her. Even her cold seemed to relent.

She came out of the trees and stood looking down into a broad ravine with a small stream wandering along the bottom. It was an old cut, the sides had a gentle slope with thick short grass like green fur. The sound of the hammering came from farther uphill, around a slight bend and behind some young trees.

She walked around the trees, moving silently more from habit than because she felt it necessary. He had his back to her, working over something on an anvil set on an oak base. It was an openair forge, small and convenient in everything but location. Why was he out here alone? His folk might be around the next curve of the mountain, but she didn’t think so, there’d be some sign of them, dogs barking, cattle noises, she knew the Finger Vale folk had cattle, shouts of children, a thousand other sounds. None of that. He wore a brief leather loincloth, a thong about his head to keep thick, dark blond hair out of his eyes, and a heavy leather apron, nothing more. She watched the play of muscles in his back and buttocks, smiled ruefully and touched her hair. You must look like one of the Furies halfway long a vengeance trail. She touched her arms, the knives were in place, loose enough to come away quickly but not loose enough to fall out; she unbuttoned her cuffs and turned them back, a smith was generally an honest man not overly given to rape, but she’d lost her trusting nature a long way back and the circumstances were odd. A last breath, then she walked around where he could see her.

He let the hammer fall a last time on the object he was shaping (it seemed to be a large intricate link for the heavy chain that coiled at his feet) and stood staring at her, gray green eyes widening with surprise. “Tissu, anash? Opop’erkrisi? Ti’bouleshi?” He had a deep musical voice, even though she didn’t understand a word, the sound of it gave her a pleasurable shiver.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Do you speak the kevrynyel?”

“Ah.” He made a swift secret warding sign and brushed the link off the anvil to get it away from her prying eyes. “Trade gabble,” he said. “Some. I say this, who you, where you come from, what you wish?”

“A traveler,” she said. “Off a ship heading past your coast. Its captain saw a way of squeezing more coin out of me; after a bit of rape he was going to sell me the next port he hit. I had a guard, but the lout got drunk and let them cut his throat. Not being overenchanted by either of the captain’s intentions, I went overside and swam ashore. Aaahmmm, what I want… A meal of something more than raw fish, a hot bath, no, several baths, clean clothing, a bed to sleep in, alone if you don’t mind my saying it, and a chance to earn my keep a while. I do some small magics, my father was a scholar of the Rukha Nagg. Mostly I make music. I had a daroud, the captain has that now, but I can make do with most anything that has strings. I know the Rukha dance tunes and the songs of many peoples. If there’s the desire, I can teach these to your singers and music makers. I cannot sew or embroider, spin or weave, my mother died before she could teach me such things and my father forgot he should. And, to be honest, I never reminded him. There anything more you want to know?”

“Only your name, anash.”

“Ah, your forgiveness, I am Harra of the Hazani, daughter of the Magus Tahno Hazzain. I see you are a smith, I don’t know the customs here, would it be discourteous to ask a name of you, O Nev?”

“For a gift, a gift. Simor a Piyolss of Owlyn Vale. If you would wait a breath or two beyond the trees there, I’ll take you to my mother.”

And so Sirnor the Smith, priest of the Chained God, took the stranger woman to the house of Piyoloss and when the harvest was in and the first snow on the ground, he married her. At first the Vale folk were dismayed, but she sang for them and saved more than one of them from the King’s levy with her small magics which weren’t quite as small as she’d admitted to and after her first son was born most constraints vanished. She had seven sons and a single daughter. She taught them all that she had learned, but it was the daughter who learned the most from her. Her daughter married into the Faraziloss and her daughter’s daughters (she had three) into the Kalathim, the Xoshallar, the Bacharikoss. She heard the story of Brann and her search, she received the medal, the sealing wax and the parchment, she had the box made and passed it with the promise to the liveliest of her granddaughters, a Xoshallarin. As she passed something else. Shnor who could read the heart of mountains found a flawless crystal as big as his two fists and brought it to his cousin, a stoneworker, who cut a sphere from it and burnished it until it was clear as the, heart of water; he gave this to Harra as a gift on the birth of their daughter. She knew how to look into it, and see to the ends of the world and taught her daughter how to look. It is not difficult she said, merely find a stillness in yourself and out of the stillness take will. If the gift of seeing is yours, and since you have my blood in you, most likely it is, then you can call what you need to see.

To find the crystal, daughter of Harra, go to the secret cavern in the ravine where Simor first met Harm, the place where the things of the Chained God are kept safe. Find in yourself the stillness and out of the stillness take will, then you will see where you should send the medal.

In the morning Kori went before the Women of Piyoloss. “The Servant of Amortis has been watching me. I am afraid.”

The Women looked at each other, sighed. After a long moment, AuntNurse said, “We have seen it.” She eyed Kori with a skepticism born of long experience. “You have a suggestion?”

“My brother Trago goes soon to take his turn with the herds in the high meadows, let me go with him instead of Kassery. The Servant and his acolytes don’t go there, the soldiers don’t go there, if I could stay up there until the Lot time, I would be out of his way and once it was Lot time, I’d be going down with the rest to face the Lot and after that, if the Lot passed me, it wouldn’t be long before it was time for my betrothing and then even he wouldn’t dare put his hands on me. I tell you this, if he does put his hands on me, I will kill myself on his doorstep and my ghost will make his days a misery and his nights a horror. I swear it by the ghost of my mother and the Chains of the God.”

AuntNurse seached Kori’s face, then nodded. “You would do it. Hmm. There are things I wonder about you, young Kori.” She smiled. “I’m not accustomed to hearing something close to wisdom coming out your mouth. Yes. It might be your ancestor, you know which I mean, speaking to us, her cunning, her hot spirit. I wonder what you really want, but no, I won’t ask you, I’ll only say, take care what you do, you’ll answer for it be you ghost or flesh.” She turned to the Women. “I

say send Kori to the meadows with Trago, send them tomorrow, what say you?”

“So I told the Women that that snake Bak’hve had the hots for me, well it’s true, Tre, he’s been following me about with his tongue hanging down to his knees, and I told them I was scared of him, which I was maybe a little, yechh, he makes the hair stand up all over me and if he touched me, I’d throw up all over him. Anyway, they already knew it and I suppose they’d been thinking what to do. Unnh, I wasn’t fooling AuntNurse, not much, chain it. She just about told me she knew I was up to something. Doesn’t matter, they let me go, almost had to, what I said made sense and they knew it.” Kori flung her arms out and capered on the path, exulting in her temporary freedom from the constraints closing in on her since she’d started her menses.

Trago made a face at her, did some skipping himself as the packpony he was leading whuffled and lipped at the fine blond hair the dawnwind was blowing into a fluff about his face. “So,” he said, raising his voice to get her attention, “when are you going to tell me that great idea of yours?”

She sobered and came back to walk beside him. “I didn’t want to say anything down there, you never know who’s listening and has got to tell everything, what goes in the ear comes out their mouth with no stop between.”

“So?”

Speaking in a rapid murmur, so softly Trago had to lean close and listen hard, Kori told him about Harra’s Gift and the not-dream she had under the great oak. “Owlyn Vale can’t fight Settsimaksimin, we’ve got the dead to prove it. Chained God can’t fight him either, not straight out, or he’d ‘ve done it when they burned Zilos. Maybe he can sneak a little nip in, maybe that’s what he was doing when he picked you for his priest and made that oaksprite give me a dream. ’Cause I think he did, I think he wants the Drinker of Souls here. I think he thinks she can do something, I don’t know what, that will turn things around. So I had to get loose, otherwise how could I get to the cave without making such a noise everything would get messed up? And thought I’d better be with you, Tre, since if you don’t know where the cave is, Zilos will come and tell you about it like the oaksprite did me. She said it’s in the ravine where Simor met Harra, but who knows where that is? Only the priest and that’s Zilos. He’ll have to come to you again, like he did last night. Maybe tonight even. Drinker of Souls could be anywhere, the sooner we get the medal to her, the sooner she could start for here.”

Tre sniffed. “If she comes.”

“It’s better’n doing nothing.”

“Maybe.” After a moment he reached over and took her hand, something he usually wouldn’t do. “I’m scared, Kori.”

She squeezed his hand, sighed. “Me too, Tre^e.”

The packpony plodding along behind them, and then nosing into them as they slackened their pace, they climbed in silence, nothing to say, everything had been said and it hung like fog about them.

They reached Far Meadow a little after noon, a bright still day, bearable in shadow, but ovenhot in the sunlight. The leggy brown cows lay about the rim of the meadow wherever there was a hint of shade, tails switching idly, jaws moving like blunt soft silent metronomes, ears flicking now and then to drive off the black flies that summer produced out of nothing as if they were the offspring of sun and air. A stream cut across the meadow, glittering with heat until it slid into shadow beneath the trees and widened into a shady pool where Veraddin and Poti were splashing without much energy, like the cows passing the worst of the heat doing the least possible.

“L0000haaa, Vraaad.” Trago wrinkled up his face, squinted his eyes, shielding them from the sun with his free hand; when the two youths yelled and waved to him, he tossed the pony’s halter rope to Kori and went trotting across to them. Kori sighed and led the beast up the slope toward the cabin and cheesehouse tucked up under the trees, partially dug into the mountainside, a corral beside it, empty now, a three-sided milking barn, a flume from the stream that fed water into a cistern above the house then into a trough at the corral. When Trago’s yell announced their arrival, a large solid woman (the widow Chittar Piyolss y Bacharz, the Piyoloss Cheesemaker) came from inside the cheesehouse and stood on the steps, a white cloth crumpled in her left hand. She watched a moment as Kori climbed toward her, swabbed the cloth across her broad face, stumped down the steps and along to the corral, swinging the gate open as Kori reached her.

“You’re two days early.” Chittar had a rough whispery voice that sounded rusty from disuse. She followed Kori into the corral, tucked the cloth into the waistband of her skirt and helped unload the packs from the saddle and strip the gear off the placid pony; as soon as he was free, he ambled to the trough and plunged his nose into the water. “You take that into the house.” She waved a hand at the gear. “I’ll see this creature doesn’t founder himself. And if that clutch of boys isn’t up to help you in another minute, I’ll go after their miserable hides with a punkthorn switch.”

Kori grinned at her. “I hear, xera Chittar. Um, we are early and it’s me because AuntNurse thought I should get away from the Servant of Amortis who looked like he was entertaining some unfortunate ideas.”

“That’s the politest way I every heard that put. Panting was he, old goat, no-I insult a noble beast, by comparison anyway.” Chittar wrapped powerful fingers about the cheekstrap of the halter and pulled the pony away from the water. “I see the truants are coming this way; you get into the house right now, girl, those ijjits have about a clout and a half between them and that’s no sight for virgin eyes.”

The first night Kori slept on a pallet in Chittar’s room while Trago shared Poti’s bed (he was the smaller of the two boys). Whatever dreams either may have had, they remembered none. In the morning, as soon as the cows were milked and turned out to graze, Veraddin and Poti left, warned not to say anything to anyone about Kori until they talked with the Women of Piyoloss. Chittar went back to the cheesehouse, leaving Kori and Trago with a list of things to do about the house and instructions to choose separate rooms for their bedrooms, get them cleaned up and neat enough to pass inspection, to get everything done before noon and come join her so she could show them what they were going to do until they could get on with their proper chores. Since neither of them had the least idea how to do the milking, she was going to have to take that over until they learned, which meant they’d have to do some of her work, like churning butter and spading curd, the simpler things that needed muscle more than skill or intelligence. Ah no, she said to them, you thought you were going to laze about watching cows graze? not a hope, l’il Wits, I’m working your tails off like I do to all the dreamers coming up here.

By nightfall they knew the truth of that. Kori fell into bed, but had a hard time sleeping, her arms felt as if someone heavy was pulling, puffing, pulling without letup; they ached, not terribly sore, just terribly uncomfortable; she’d done most of the churning. Eventually she slept and again had no dreams she could remember. She woke, bone sore and close to tears from frustration. At breakfast she looked at Trago, ground her teeth when he shook his head.

A week passed. They were doing about half the milking now and had settled into routine so the housekeeping chores were quickly done and the work in the cheesehouse was considerably easier. Sore muscles had recovered, they’d found the proper rhythm to the tasks and Chittar was pleased with them.

On the seventh night, Zilos came to Trago, told him where to find the cave and what to do with the things he found there.

The hole they were crawling through widened suddenly into a room larger than Owlyn’s threshing floor. Kori lifted the lamp high and stared wide-eyed at the glimmering splendor. Chains hung in graceful curves, one end bolted to a ceiling so high it was lost in the darkness beyond the reach of the lamp, the other end to the wall. Chains crossing and recrossing the space, chains of iron forged on the smithpriest’s anvil and hung in here so long ago all but the lowest links were coated with stone, chains of wood fashioned by the woodworkerpriest’s knives, chains of crystal and saltmarble chiseled by the stonecutterpriest’s tools, centuries of labor given to the cave, taken by the cave to itself. The cold was piercing, the damp crept into her bones as she stared, but it was beautiful and it was awesome.

In the center of the chamber a square platform of polished wood sat on stone blocks a foot off the stone floor, above it, held up by intricately carved wooden posts, a canopy of white jade, thin and translucent as the finest porcelain, in the center of the platform a chest made from kedron wood without any carving on it, the elegant shape and the wonderful gloss of the wood all the ornament it needed. “I suppose that’s it,” she said. She shivered as her voice broke the silence; it was such a little sound, like a mosquito’s whine and made her feel small and fragile as a mosquito, as if a mighty hand might slap down any moment and wipe her away. She set the lamp on the floor and waited.

Trago glanced at her, but said nothing. After a moment’s hesitation he moved cautiously across the uneven floor, jumped up onto the platform. Uncertain of the properties involved, Kori didn’t follow him; she waited on the chamber floor, leaning against one of the corner posts, watching as he chewed on his lip and frowned at the polished platform with its intricate inlaid design. He looked over his shoulder. “You think I ought to take off my sandals?”

She spread her hands. “You know more than me about that.”

Nothing happened, so he walked cautiously to the chest. He turned the lid back, froze, seemed to stop breathing, still, statue still, inert as the stone around him. Kori gasped, started to go to him, but something slippery as oiled glass pushed her back, wouldn’t let her onto the platform. She clawed at the thing, screamed, “Tre, what is it, Tre, say something, Trл, let him go, you… you… you…”

Trago stirred, make a small catching sound as if his throat unlocked and he could breathe again. Kori shuddered, then leaned against the post and rubbed at her throat, reassured but still barred from the platform. He knelt before the chest and began taking things out of it, setting them beside his knees, things that blurred so she couldn’t tell what they were, though she knew the crystal when he held it up; he brought it over to her, reached through the barrier and gave it to her, solemn, silent, his face blurred too (the look of it frightened her). Seeming to understand her unease, he gave her a smoky smile, then he returned to the chest, seemed to put something around his neck, (for Kori, impression of a chain with a smoky oval hanging from it) and he seemed to put something in his pocket (a fleeting impression of a short needleblade and an ebony hilt with a red crystal set into it, an even more evanescent impression of something held behind it). He returned the other things to the chest and shut the lid.

Abruptly the barrier was gone. Kori stepped back, clutching the crystal against her stomach, holding it with both hands. Trago sat on the chest and kicked his heels against it. “Come on, Kori, it’s not so damp up here. Or cold. And bring the lamp.”

Kori looked down at the crystal, then over her shoulder at the lamp. She wasn’t happy about that chest, but this was Tre-s place now; she was an intruder, but he belonged here. Holding the sphere against her with one hand, she carried the lamp to the platform, hesitated a breath or two, long enough to make Tre frown at her, managed to step up on the platform without dropping either the lamp or the crystal sphere. “You sure this is all right, Tre’?”

He nodded, grinned at her. “It isn’t all bad, Kori, this being a priest I mean. Anything I want to do in here, I can. Um…” He lost his grin. “I hope it doesn’t take long, we got to get back before xera Chittar knows we left.”

“I know. Take this.” When he had the lamp, she settled to the platform, sitting cross-legged with her back to the chest. She rubbed the crystal sphere on her shirt, held it cupped into her hands. “Find the stillness,” she said aloud, “draw will out of stillness, then look.^-She closed her eyes and tried to chase everything from her mind; a few breaths later she knew that wasn’t going to work, but there was a thing AuntNurse taught her to do whenever her body and mind wouldn’t turn off and let her sleep; she was to find a Place and began building an image of it in her mind, detail by detail, texture, odor, color, movement. When she was about five, she found a safe hide and went there when she was escaping punishment or was angry at someone or hurt or feeling wretched, she went there when her mother died, she went there when one of her small cousins choked on a bone and died in her arms, she went there whenever she needed to think. It was halfway up the ancient oak in a crotch where three great limbs separated from the trunk. She lined the hollow there with dead leaves and thistle fluff, making a nest like a bird did. It was warm and hidden, nothing bad could ever happen to her there, she could feel the great limbs moving slowly, ponderously beneath and around her like arms rocking her, she could smell the pungent dark friendly odor of the leaves and the bark, the stiff dark green leaves still on their stems whispered around her until she felt she almost understood what the tree said. Now she built that Place around her, built it with all the intensity she was capable of, shutting out fear and uncertainty and need, until she rocked in the arms of the tree, sat in the arms of the tree cuddling a fragment of moonlight in her arms. She gazed into the sphere, into the silver heart of it and drew will out of stillness. “Drinker of Souls,” she whispered to the sphere, in her voice the murmur of oak leaves, “Show her to me. Where is she?”

An image bloomed in the silver heart. An old woman, white hair twisted into a heavy straggly knot on top her head. Her sleeves were rolled up, showing pale heavy forearms. She was chopping wood, with neat powerful swings of the ax, every stroke counting, every stroke going precisely where she wanted, long long years of working like that evident in the economy of her movements. She set the ax aside, gathered lengths of wood into a bundle and carried them to a mounded kiln. She pulled the stoking doors open, fed in the wood, brought more bundles of wood, working around the kiln until she had resupplied all the doors. Then she went back to chopping wood. A voice spoke in Kori’s head, a male voice, a light tenor with a hint of laughter in it that she didn’t understand; she didn’t know the voice but suspected it was the Chained God or one of his messengers. *Brann of Arth Slya,* it said, *Drinker of Souls and potter of note. Ask in Jade Halimm about the Potter of Shaynamoshu. Send her half the medal. Keep the other half yourself and match the two when you meet. Take care how you talk about the Drinker of Souls away from this place. One whose name I won’t mention stirs in his sleep and wakes, knowing something is happening here, that someone is working against him. Even now he casts his ariel surrogates this way. If you have occasion to say anything dangerous, stay close to an oak, the sprites will drive his ariels away. Fare well and wisely, young Kori; you work alone, there’s no one can help you but you. *

Kori stared into the crystal a few moments longer, vaguely disappointed in the look of the hero who was supposed to defeat the mighty Settsimaksimin when all the forces of the King could not, nor could the priests and fighters of the Vales. Brann was strong and vital, but she was old. A fat old woman who made pots. Kori sighed and rocked herself loose from Her Place. She looked up at Trago. “Did you get any of that?”

Trago leaned toward her, hands on knees. “I heard the words. What’s she like?”

“Not like I expected. She’s old and fat.”

He kicked his heels against the chest, clucked his tongue. “Doesn’t sound like much. What does it mean, Drinker of Souls?”

“I don’t know. Tre, you want to go on with this? You heard the Voice, HE’s sticking his fingers in, if HE catches us… well.”

Trago shrugged. His eyes were frightened and his hands tightened into fists, but he was pretending he didn’t care. “Do I don’t I, what’s it matter? You said it, Kori. Better’n nothing.”

“I hear you.” She moved her shoulders, straightened her legs out. “Oooh, I’m tired. Let’s finish this.” She pulled the medal from around her neck, dropped it on the platform.-Think you could cut this in half like the Voice said?”

“Uh huh. Who we going to give it to?”

“I thought about that before I went to see the Women of Piyoloss and wangled my way up here.” She rubbed at her stomach, ran her hand over the crystal. “Moon Meadow’s down a little and around the belly of the mountain. The Kalathi twins and Herve are summering there with a herd of silkgoats. And Toma.”

“Ha! I thought the soldiers got him.”

“Most everybody did. I did. ‘ Kori pulled her braids to the front and smoothed her hands along them, smoothed them again, then began playing with the tassels. ‘Women talk,” she said “It was my turn helping in the washhouse. They put me to boiling the sheets; I expect they forgot I was there, because they started talking about Ruba the whore, you know, the Phrasin who lives in that hutch up the mountain behind House Kalath that no one will talk about in front of the kids. Seems she was entertaining one of the soldiers, he was someone fairly important who knew what was going on and he let slip that they were going to burn the priest next morning and throw anyone who made a fuss into the fire with him. Well, she’s Vale folk now all the way, so she pushed him out after a while and went round to the Women of Kalathin and told them. What I heard was the Women tried to get Zilos away, but the soldiers had hauled him off already. Amely was having fits and the kids were yelling and Toma was trying to hold things together and planning on taking Zilos’ hunting bow and plinking every soldier he could get sight of. What they did was, they took Amely and the young ones away from the Priest-House and got Ontari out of the stable where he was sleeping and had him take them over to Semela Vale since he knows tracks no one else does. And they gave Toma sleeproot in a posset they heated for him and tied him over a pony and Pellix took him up to Moon Meadow and told the Twins to keep him away from the Floor. They said he’s supposed to’ve calmed down some, but he’s fidgety. He knows if he goes down he gets a lot of folk killed, so he stays there, hating a lot. What I figure is, if we tell him about this, it’s something he can do when it’s just him could get killed and if it works, he’s going to make you know who really unhappy. So. What do you think?”

Trago rubbed his eyes, his lids were starting to hang heavy. “Toma,” he muttered. “I don’t know. He…” His eyes glazed over, his head jerked. “Toma,” he said, “yes.” He blinked. “Aaah, Kori, let’s get this finished. I want to go to bed.”

“Me too.” She got stiffly to her feet, sleep washing in waves over her. “Put this away, will you.” She held out the crystal sphere. “Um… We’re going to need gold for Toma, is there any of that in there? And you have to cut the medal before we go. I don’t want to come here again, besides, we already lost a week.”

Trago slid off the chest and stood rubbing his eyes. He yawned and took the sphere. “All right.” He blinked at the medal lying by his foot. “You better go back where you were before. I think the god’s going to be doing this.”

“‘Lo, Herve.”

“‘Lo, Tre, what you doin’ here?”

“‘S my time at Far Meadow. Toma around?”

“Shearin’ shed, got dry rot in the floor, he was workin’ on that the last time I saw him.”

Trago nodded and went around the house, climbed the corral fence and walked the top rail; when he reached the shed, he jumped down and went inside. Part of the floor was torn up. Toma had a plank on a pair of sawhorses; he was laying a measuring line along it. Trago stood watching, hands clasped behind him, as his cousin positioned a t-square and drew an awl along the straight edge, cutting a line into the wood; when he finished that, he looked up. “Tre. What you doing here?”

“Come to see you. I’m over to Far Meadow, doing my month, ‘n I got something I need to say to you.”

“So?” Toma reached for the saw, set it to the mark, then waited for Trago to speak.

“It’s important, Toma.”

Muscles moved in the older boy’s face, his body tensed, then he got hold of himself and drove the saw down. He focused grimly on his hands and the wood for the next several minutes, sweat coursing down his face and arms, the rasping of the teeth against the wood drowning Trago’s first attempts to argue with him. The effort he put into the sawing drained down his anger, turning it from hot seethe to a low simmer. When the cut was nearly through and the unsupported end was about to splinter loose, peeling off the edge of the plank as it fell, he straightened, drew his arm across his face, waved Trago round to hold up the end as he finished sawing it off. “Put it over by the wall,” he told Trago. “I think it’ll come close to fitting that short bit.”

“Toma…” Trago saw his cousin’s face shut again, sighed and moved off with his awkward load. When he came back, he swung up onto the plank before his cousin could lift it. “Listen to me,” he said. “This isn’t one of my fancies. I don’t want to talk to you here. Please, stop for a little, you don’t have to finish this today. I NEED to talk to you.”

Toma opened his mouth, snapped it shut. He wheeled, walked over to stare down into the dark hole where he’d taken up the rotted boards. “If it’s about down there…” His voice dripped vitriol when he said the last words, “I don’t want to hear.”

Trago looked nervously around; he knew about ariels, knew he couldn’t see them unless they chanced to drift through a dusty sunbeam, but he couldn’t help trying. He didn’t want to say anything here, but if he kept fussing that would be almost as bad; AuntNurse always knew when he was making noise to hide something, he suspected the Sorceror was as knowing as her if not worse. He slid off the plank, trotted to Toma, took him by the hand and tugged him toward the door.

Toma pulled free, stood looking tired and unhappy, finally he nodded. “I’ll come, Tre. And I’ll listen. Five minutes. If you don’t convince me by then, you’re going to hurt for it.”

Trago managed a grin. “Come on then.”

He led his cousin away from the meadow into the heart of an oak grove.

Kori stepped from behind a tree. “‘Lo, Toma.”

“Kori?” Toma stepped back, scowled from one to the other. “What’s going on here?”

“Show him your shoulder, Tit”

Trago unlaced the neck opening of his shirt, pushed it back so Toma could see the hollow starburst.

Kori dropped onto a root as Toma bent, touched the mark. “Sit down, cousin. We’ve got a lot of talking to do.”

“… so, that’s what we want you to do.” She touched the packet resting on her thigh. “Take this to the Drinker of Souls and remind her of her promise. It’ll be dangerous. HE’ll be looking for anyone acting different. Voice told us HE’s got his ariels out, that’s why Tre didn’t want to say much in the shed, he wanted to be where oaksprites were because they don’t like ariels much and chase them whenever they come around. Um, Re got gold from the Chained God’s Place because we knew you’d need it. Um, We’d kinda like you to go as fast as you could, Tre’s got less’n three months before the Signs start popping up. Will you do it?”

Toma rubbed his face with both hands, his breathing hoarse and unsteady. Without speaking, he rested his forearms on his thighs and let his hands dangle as he stared at the ground. Kori watched him, worried. She’d written the message on the parchment, folded it around half the medal, used sewing thread to tie it shut and smeared slathers of sealing wax over it, then she’d knotted a bag about it and made a neck cord for it out of the same thread, and she had the gold in a pouch tied to her belt. Everything was ready, all they needed was Toma. She watched, trying to decide what he was thinking. If she’d been a few years older, if she’d been a boy, with all the things boys were taught that she’d never had a chance to learn, she wouldn’t be sitting here waiting for Toma to make up his mind. She moved her hands impatiently, but said nothing. Either he went or he didn’t and if he went, best it was his own doing so he’d put his heart in it.

A shudder shook him head to toe, he sighed, lifted his head. His eyes had a glassy animal sheen, he was still looking inward, seeing only the images in his head.

He blinked, began to cry, silently, without effort, the tears spilling down his face. “I…” he cleared his throat, “You don’t know… Yes, I’ll go. Yes.” He rolled a sleeve down, scrubbed it across his face, blew his nose into his fingers, wiped them on his pants. “Was Ontari down below? I’ll go for Forkker Vale first, see if I can get on with a smuggler. He knows them.” He tried a grin and when it worked, laughed with excitement and pleasure. “I don’t want to end up like Harra did.”

Kori looked at Trago. Trago nodded. “I was talking to him the day before we come up here. He was working on a saddle, he won’t be going anywhere ‘fore he finishes that.”

Toma nodded. “I’ll go down tonight. He still sleeping in Kalathin’s stable?”

“Uh huh. There’s usually a couple soldiers riding the House Round, but they aren’t too hard to avoid, more often than not they’re drunk, at least that’s what Ontari said.”

“Wouldn’t be you were flitting about when you shouldn’t?”

Trago giggled and didn’t bother denying it.

Kori got to her feet. “We have to be back in time to milk the cows or xera Chittar will skin us. Here.” She tossed the packet to Toma, began untying the gold pouch. “Be careful, cousin.” She held out the pouch. “Oaks are safe, I don’t know what else, maybe you can sneak out, I’m afraid…”

He laughed and hugged her hard, took the pouch, hugged Trago. “You get back to your cows, cousins. I’ll see you when.”

“… Crimpa, Sparrow, White Eye. Chain it, Pre, TWo Spot has run off again. You see any sign of her?”

Trago snorted, capered in a circle. “Un… huh! Un… huh! Slippy Two Spot. Lemme see…” He trotted off.

“Mmf.” Kori tapped Crimpa cow with her switch and started her moving toward the corral; the others fell in around her and plodded placidly across the grass as if they’d never ever had a contrary thought between their horns. A whoop behind her, an indignant mmmoooaaauhh. Two Spot came running from under the trees, head jerking, udder swinging; she slowed, trotted with stiff dignity over to the herd and pushed into the middle of it. Trago came up beside Kori, walked along with her. “She was just wandering around. I don’t know what she thought she was doing.” He yawned extravagantly, rubbed at his eyes, started whistling. He broke off when they reached the corral, slanted a glance up at her. “So we wait.”

“So we wait.”

3 Another Meadow, The Shaynamoshu Pottery On The River Wansheeri, At The Massacre.

SCENE: Late. The Wounded Moon a fat broken crescent rising in the east. A horse streaked with dried foam, trying to graze, having difficulty with the bit. A black-clad youth dead in a pool of blood. Another figure, a woman, crumpled across him. A pale translucent wraithlike figure lying upon her, a second squatting beside them.

An icy wind touched her neck.

Something heavy, metallic slammed into her back. Cold fire flashed up through her.

Heavy breathing, broken in the middle. Faint popping sound.

Her knees folded under her, she saw herself toppling toward the boy’s body, saw the hilt of the knife in his back, saw an exploding flower of blood, saw nothing more.

She was horribly weak, it frightened her how weak she was. The frail weight slid off and Yaril rolled over twice, lay face down on the grass beside the rutted dirt road, very pale, almost transparent. Jaril was colorless too, though he had more substance to him. Brann looked down at herself. She’d lost almost all her flesh, her skin was hanging on her bones. Her hands were shaking and she felt an all-over nausea; chills ran through her body. “What…”

Jaril clicked his tongue impatiently. “No time for that. There’s the horse, Brann, feed us before we go to stone, Yaril’s hanging on a thread. The horse. You can reach it, come on, stand up, I can’t carry you. Hurry, I don’t know how long…”

Trembling and uncertain, Brann hoisted herself onto her feet. Stiff with blood, feces and urine, too big for her now, her skirt fell off her, nearly tripped her; grunting with disgust she dragged her feet free, tottered down to the grazing horse. He started to shy away, but froze when her hand brushed against his flank. She edged closer, set her other hand on his back by the spine, hating what she was doing since she was fond of horses, but she was a lot fonder of the children so she drew the horse’s cool life into herself, easing down beside him as he collapsed, sucking out the last trickle of energy.

Jaril drifted over, dropped to his knees beside her. “We brought some rAhargoats,” he said. “They’re around somewhere, when we saw you down like that we forgot about them. I’ll chase them over in a while. Horse won’t be enough.” He leaned against her, fragile and weightless as a dessicated leaf.

Brann straightened, twisted around, touched the tips of her fingers to his face, let him draw energy from her. Color flowed across him, pastel pinks and ivories and golds, ash gray spread through his wispy shirt and trousers, from transparent he turned translucent. He made a faint humming sound filled with pleasure, grinned his delight. Brann smiled too, got to her feet. “Get your goats,” she said and started walking heavily up the grassy rise, heading for the road and Yaril. Jaril shifted to his mastiff form, went off to round up the goats.

Yaril lay on the grass, a frail girichild sculpted in glass, naked (she hadn’t bothered to form clothing out of her substance though she clung to the bipedal form and hadn’t retreated to the glimrnersphere that was her baseshape, Brann didn’t know why, the children didn’t talk all that much about themselves) and vulnerable, flickering and fading. Frowning, worried, Brann knelt beside her, stretched out hands that looked grossly vigorous in spite of the skin hanging in folds about the bone, and rested them gently on a body that was more smoke than flesh, letting the remnant of the horse’s energy trickle into it.

The changechild’s substance thickened and her color began returning, at first more guessed at than seen like inks thinned with much water, but gradually stronger as Brann continued to feed energy into her. When a dog barked and goats blatted, Yaril’s eyes opened. She blinked, slow deliberate movements of her eyelids, managed a faint smile.

Jaril-Mastiff herded the goats over to her. Brann fed their energy to him and Yaril until they lost their frailty, then used the last of it to readjust herself, rebuilding some of the muscle, tightening her skin, shedding the appearance of age until her body was much what it had been when she and Harra Hazani had played Slya’s games so long ago. The changechildren had grown her from eleven to her mid-twenties over a single night back then and all her hair fell out. Remembering that, she shook her head vigorously; most of her hair flew off; she wiped away the rest of it. Bald as an egg. She rubbed her hand over skin smooth as polished marble. Ah well, maybe it’ll grow back as fast this time as it did that. She looked down at the dead boy, stooped, grunting with the effort and took the knife from his body, straightened with another grunt, held it up. A strange knife, might have been made of ice from the look of it. As she turned it over, examining it in the dim light from the moon, it melted into air. She whistled with surprise.

Jaril nodded. “The one that was in you did the same thing.”

Braun laughed, wiped her hand on her blouse. “They weren’t souvenirs I wanted to keep.” She started for the house. “Shuh, I need a bath.” A sniff and a grimace. “Several baths. And I’m hollow enough to eat those goats raw what’s left of them.” Another laugh. “I didn’t know how hungry it makes you-dying, I mean. It’s not every day I die.”

“You weren’t actually dead,” Jaril said seriously. “If you were dead, we couldn’t bring you back.”

“Was a joke, Jay.”

He made a face. “Not much of a joke for us, Bramble. Starving to death is no fun.”

“You made me, you could find someone else and change them.”

“We made you with a lot of help from Slya, Brann, we didn’t do it on our own. I doubt she’d bother another time.”

“Mmm. Well, I’m not dead and you’re not going to starve. Uh…” She clutched at herself, started to turn back.

Yaril caught her arm, stopped her. “This what you want?” She held out a small bloodstained packet. “I found it lying beside me. You think it’s important?”

“Seems to me this is what got the boy killed and me…” she smiled at Jaril, “… nearly.” She closed her fingers about the packet. “It stinks of magic, kids. Makes me nervous. Somebody called up tigermen and whipped them here to make sure I didn’t open it. I don’t like mixing with sorcerors and such.”

“Who?”

Brann tossed the packet up, caught it, weighed it thoughtfully. “Heavy. Hmm. No doubt the answer’s in here. While I’m stoking up the fire under the bathtub and scrubbing off my stink, the two of you might take a look at this thing.’ She held out the packet and Yaril took it. “And I wouldn’t mind if you fixed me a bit of dinner.”

Jaril chuckled. “Return the favor, hmm?”

After scrubbing off the worst of her body’s reaction to its own violent death, cold water making her shiver, and adding more wood to the fire under the brick tub, Brann climbed to the attic and pulled the gummed paper off the chest that held her old clothes. When she stopped wandering nearly a century ago and moved into the shed behind the house, she had to bow to Dayan Acsic’s prejudices and pack her trousers away. She was a woman. Women in Jade Torat wore skirts. His one concession was this chest. When she came back with the proper clothing, he let her put her shirts and trousers and the rest of her gear in the chest, gave her aromatics to keep moths and other nuisances away and gummed paper to seal the cracks, then he shouldered the chest and carried it to the attic, tough old root of a man, and that was that.

She turned back the lid, wrinkled her nose at the smell; it was powerful and peculiar. She excavated a shirt and a pair of trousers, then some underclothing. The blouse was yellowed and weakened by age, the black of the trousers had the greenish patina of decades of mildew. “Ah well, they only need to cover me till I reach Jade Halirnm.” She hung the clothing in the window so it would air out and with a little luck lose some of the smell, retied the sash to her robe and climbed back down.

The water was hot. She raked out the firebox, tipped the coals, ash and unburned wood into an iron brazier and climbed into the water.

When she padded into the kitchen, sleepy, filled with well-being, the changechildren had salad and rice and goat stew ready for her and a pot of tea steaming on the stand. Jaril had dug out Brann’s bottle of plum brandy; he and Yaril were sitting on stools and sipping at the rich golden liquid. The parchment was unfolded, sitting crumpled on the table, held down with a triangular bit of bronze.

Brann raised a brow, sat and began eating. Time passed. Warm odorous time. Finally she sighed, wiped her mouth, poured a bowl of tea and slumped back in her chair. “So. What’s that about?” She smiled. “If you’re sober enough to see straight.”

Yaril patted a yawn with delicate grace; since she didn’t breathe, the gesture was a touch sarcastic. She set her glass down, licked sticky fingers, brushed aside the chunk of metal and lifted the parchment. “First thing, these are Cheonea glyphs.”

“Cheonea? Where’s that? Never heard of it.”

“A way west of here. A month by ship, if it’s moderately fast. On the far side of Phras.” Jaril sipped at the brandy. “Almost an island. Shaped like a hand with a thready wrist. We were there a year ago. Didn’t stay long, one city the usual sort of seaport, farms and mountains and a smuggler’s haven. Not very interesting. They kicked their king out a few decades back, from what I heard, he was no loss, but they got landed with a Sorceror who seems to think he’s got the answer to the riddle of life.” He reached for the bronze piece, tossed it to Brann. “Take a good look at that.”

She caught it with her free hand. “Why not just tell me…” She set the tea bowl down, began examining the triangle. Temueng script. On one side part of the Emperor’s sigil, on the other part of a name. “… ra Hazani. The boy said something, um, let me remember… Harra… no, we the blood of Harra Hazani say to you, remember what you swore. This is half of one of those credeens the Maratullik struck off for Taguiloa and the rest of us. You remember those?”

Jaril grimaced. “We should.”

Brann rubbed her thumb over the bronze. “I know.” She’d had a choice then, Slya’s sly malice set it for her, she could protect Taguiloa and the other players or send the changechildren home. She chose the players because they were the most vulnerable and accepted responsibility for keeping the children fed, though she hadn’t really realized what that meant. Her own bronze credeen was around somewhere, likely at the bottom of the chest with the rest of her old clothes. “What’s the letter say?”

Yaril lifted the parchment. “Took us a while to decipher it, we didn’t pay that much attention to the written language when we were there. So, a lot of this is guess and twist till it seems to fit. We think it’s a young girl writing, there are some squiggles after her name that might be determinatives expressing age and sex. She seems to be called Kori Piyolss of Owlyn Vale. She calls on the Drinker of Souls to remember her promise, that she’d come from the ends of the earth to help the Children of Harra. Harra married Kori’s great great etc. grandfather and passed the promise on. Kori says she wouldn’t use Harra’s gift on anything unimportant, that you, Brann, must believe that. Someone close and dear to her faces a horrible death, everyone in the Vale lives in fear of He who sits in the Citadel of Silagamatys. That’s the city Jaril was talking about, the only settlement in Cheonea big enough to call a city, a port on the south coast. She asks you to meet her there on the seventeenth day of Theriste. Mmm. That’s thirty-seven days from now, no from yesterday, it’s almost dawn, um, if I remember their dating system correctly. Meet her in a tavern called the Blue Seamaid. She’ll be along after dark and she’ll have the rest of the credeen. She can’t write more about her plans in case this letter falls into the hands of Him. Got a heavy slash of ink under that him. You made the promise, Brann.” She grinned. “And very drunk out it was. You remember, the party Taguiloa threw for the whole quarter when we got back from Andurya Durat.” She pushed ash blond hair off her face. “Going to keep it?”

“Doesn’t seem I have much choice. That sorceror, what’s his name?”

“Settsimaksimin.”

“Right now he probably thinks I’m dead. That won’t last long.” She sipped at her tea, sighed. “And there’s another thing. I’ve put off thinking about it, but those tigermen cut through more than my flesh. I’ve stayed here about as long as I can. Much more and folk are going to start asking awkward questions about just what I am.” She looked round the room, eyes lingering on surfaces and cooking things her hands had held, scrubbed, polished, shook, brushed against for the past hundred years; it was an extension of her body and leaving it behind would be like lopping off an arm.

Eyes laughing at her, Jaril said, “You could turn into a local haunt, remember the old man on the mountain across the bay from Silili?”

“Hunh. And what would you be, Jay, a haunt’s haunt?” She smiled, shook her head. “It might come to that, but I’m not ready for godhood yet, even demigodhood.”

“What about this place?”

“Have to leave it, I suppose. Put the things I want to keep in the secret cellar you and Yaril burnt out for me, leave the rest to the wind and thieves.” She yawned, finished her tea, rubbed her thumb against the bowl. It was part of the Das’n Vuor set that was one of the last things her father made before the Temuengs took him and the rest of Arth Slya to work in the pens of the Emperor. “Mmmm. Either of you see a riverboat heading west when you flew in?”

“There was one leaving Gofajiu, you know what that means, it’ll be here two or three days on. You really planning on flagging it?”

Brann’s mouth twitched to a half smile. “Yes no; Jay, I haven’t made up my mind yet.” She smoothed the teabowl along a wrist little more than bone and taut skin, half what it’d been a day ago. “I don’t look much like I did the past some years.” Chuckle. “Young. And bald. That’s not the Potter. Couldn’t be the Potter. On the other hand,” she grimaced, “that’s the Potter’s landing, what’s she doing there, that woman, who is she, where’s the Potter? Riverboat’s comfortable and safe as you can get on the river, the two of you aren’t up to much, me either.” She set the bowl on the table and slumped in the chair gazing into the mirrorblack of the pot, her image distorted by the accidents of texture that gave the surface half its beauty. “I don’t know… I know I’d rather take the riverboat but…” She sighed. “The river’s low, the summer’s been hot and dry, it’s still a monster, I’ve never sailed the skiff that far, but… Ah, Slya’s teeth, I keep thinking, the Potter’s dead, leave her dead, no loose ends like strange females hanging about. My father always said the hard way’s the best way, it means you’re thinking about what you’re doing not just drifting with no idea where you’re going.” A long tired sigh. “We’ll forget the riverboat and take the clay skiff and hope old Tungjii’s watching out for us.” She sat up. “I’m too tired to work and too itchy to sleep. Probably shouldn’t have drunk that tea. Ah well, we can’t leave tomorrow anyway, too much to do.” She yawned, then poured herself another bowl. “So. Tell me more about Cheonea. When you were there did you happen to visit Owlyn Vale?”

Brann slid into the harbor at Jade Halimm after sundown on the third day, threading through a torchlit maze of floating life-flowerboats with their reigning courtesans and less expensive dancers, horizontal and otherwise, gambling boats, hawkers of every luxury and perversion the foreign traders and seaman might desire, scaled to the size of their purses. The wealthier passengers were left untroubled; they’d find their pleasures in more elegant surroundings ashore. The Jade King’s mosquito boats buzzed about to make sure these last were not troubled by offers that might offend their sensibilities. Too shabby to attract the attention of the hawkers or the mosquito patrol, too busy managing the skiff to notice much of this, Brann got through the water throng without accident or incident and tied up at a singhouse pier, the small old skiff lost among the other boats. The tide was on the turn, beginning to come in, but it was still a long climb to the pier, half of it on a ladder slimy with seamoss and decaying weed and the exudates of the lingam slugs that fed on them and the weesha snails that lived in them. She wiped her hands on her trousers when she reached dry wood, not appreciably worsening the mess they were already.

She stood on the edge of the pier looking down at the boat, feeling gently melancholy. It was the last thing left of her life as the Potter of Shaynamoshu. She stood there, the harbor raucous about her, remembering… a slant of light through autumn leaves, the sharp smell of life ripened to the verge of decay, the last firing that year, what year was it, no she couldn’t place it now, it was just a year, nothing but a collection of images and smells and a deep abiding sense of joy that came she didn’t know why or from where, coming down the track with the handcart loaded, the children playing in otter-shape running and tumbling before her… another time, the firing Tungjii blessed, texture moving in sacred dance over the surface, color within color, like an opal but more restrained, subtle earth hues, and most of all the feel of it, the weight and balance of it in the hollow of her hand when she almost knew the triumph her father felt when he took the last of the Das’n Vuor drinking bowls from the kiln on Tincreal and knew that three of them were perfect… another time after a snowfall when the earth was white and the sky was white and the silence whiter than both.

The onshore wind tugged at her sleeves, sent the ends of her headscarf whipping beside her ear. She thrust a finger under the scarf, felt the quarter inch of stubble. Growing fast, Slya bless. She settled the scarf more firmly, clicked her tongue with impatience as a horned owl swooped low over her head and screeched at her. “I know,” she muttered, “I know. It’s time to get settled.”

She found a room in a run down tavern near the West-wall, a cubicle with a bed and not much else, blankets thin and greasy, bedbugs and fleas, a stink that was the work of decades, stain on stain on stain never insulted by the touch of soap; its only amenities were a stout bar on the door and a grill over the slit of a window, but these were worth the premium price she paid for sole occupancy. Her base established, she found a lateopen tailor and ordered new clothing, found one of her favorite cookshops and ate standing up, watching the life of the Harbor Quarter teem around her.

The next six days she prowled the night, in and out of houses, winding through back alleys, following the stench of corroded souls, killing until her own soul revolted, drinking the life of her victims, feeding the children, renewing her own vigor, drinking life until her flesh gave off a glow like moonlight. As the children edged in their slow way toward maturity, their capacity to store energy increased. Now they needed recharging only every second year, but it took many nights of hunting to fill their reserves. Back when Slya forced the choice on her she hadn’t realized the full implications of her decision. She was, despite her appearance and the compressed experience of the past months, only twelve years old when that decision was made; she hadn’t known how weary she could get of living (admittedly not every day, many of her days were contented, even joyful, but the dark times came more often as the decades passed), she hadn’t known how crushing the burden of feeding the children would become, she hadn’t known how much their appetite would increase, how many lives it would take to sate their hunger, how loathsome she would look to herself no matter how careful she was to choose badlives. Kings and mercenaries, counselors and generals, muggers, pimps and assassins, all such folk, they seemed able to live contentedly enough though they killed and maimed and tortured with exuberance and extravagance, but at the end of her bouts, of gorging, she was so prostrated and self-disgusted that she wondered how she could bring herself to do it again; yet when the children were hungry once more, she found the will to hunt; they began as innocent victims of a god-battle they hadn’t asked to join and finished as victims of her confusion and her preference for her own kind; to let them starve would be a greater wrong than all the killing lumped together.

On the seventh evening when her prowling was done for a while and her new clothes had been delivered, she moved from the tavern to a better room in, a better Inn in a better neighborhood, close to the wall that circled the highmerchant’s quarter, a four-story structure with a bathhouse and a pocket garden for eating in when the days were sunny and the evenings clear.

Brann gave a handful of coppers to the youth who carried her gear and showed her to the room she’d hired for the next three nights; she watched him out, then crossed to the single window and opened the shutters. “Hunh, not much of a view.”

Jaril ambled over and leaned heavily against her. “Nice wall.”

Yaril squeezed past them and put her head out as far as she could; she looked up and around, wriggled free and went to sit on the bed. “Should be bars on the windows. Bramble, our Host down there obviously didn’t think much of you, putting you in this room. Should we leave the shutters open to catch a bit of air, anyone could get in here. The top of that wall is just about even with the top of the window and it’s only six feet off, if that.”

Brann smiled. “Pity the poor thief who breaks in here.” She left the window, prodded at the bed. “Better than the rack in that other place. My bones ache thinking about it. Uuuh, I’m tired. Too tired to eat. I think I’ll skip supper and spend an hour or so in the bathhouse. Yaro, Jay, I’d appreciate it if one of you gave the mattress a runthrough before you bank your fires, make sure we’ve got no vermin sharing the room with us. I can’t answer for my temper if I wake itching.”

Unlike Hina Baths, the House was divided, one side for women, the other for men and the division was rigidly maintained. The attendant on the women’s side (a female wrestler who looked more than capable of thumping anyone, male or female, who tried to make trouble) didn’t quite know what to make of Brann; she wasn’t accustomed to persons claiming to be females who wore what she considered male attire. Half annoyed, half amused, too tired to argue, Brann snorted with disgust, stripped off her shirt and trousers. Demonstrably female, she strolled inside.

The water was steamy, herb scented, filled with small bubbles as it splashed into a sunken pool made of worn stones, gray with touches of amber and russet and chalky blue. Nubbly white towels were piled on a wicker table near the door into the chamber, there were hooks set into the wall for the patron’s clothing, a shallow saucer of soap and a dish of scented oil sat beside the pool beneath a rail of smooth white porcelain, scrubbing cloths were draped over the rail. Brann hung up her shirt and trousers, dropped her underclothing beside the towels, tugged, off her boots and put them on a boot-stand beside the table. Stretching, yawning, the heat seeping into muscle and bone, she ambled to the pool and slid into water hot enough to make her bite on her lip and shudder with pleasure when she was immersed. She clung to the rail for a moment, then began swimming about, brushing through the uncurling leaves of the dried herbs the attendant had dropped into the water as she opened the taps that let it flow from the hot cistern. She ducked her head under, shook it, feeling the half-inch of new hair move against her skull. Surfacing, she pulled herself onto the edge of the pool and began soaping her legs, taking pleasure in her body for the first time in years; she’d lived a deliberately muffled life up on her mountain, centering her pleasures in her work and the landscape around her; a longtime lover could have learned too much about her, there was no one she trusted that much, no one she wanted enough to chance his revulsion when he learned what she was; even a short-timer would have made too many complications. Now, she was a skinful of energy, tingling with want, and she didn’t quite know what to do about it. Cultures change in a hundred years; the changes might not be large but they were enough to tangle her feet if she didn’t move with care. Laughing uncertainly as her nipples tautened and a dagger of pleasurable need stabbed up from her groin, she pulled a scrub cloth across her breasts, watched the scented lather slide over them, then flung the cloth away and plunged into the pool, submerging, sputtering up out of the water splashing herself vigorously to rinse away the remnants of the soap. Later, as she stood rubbing herself dry, she began running through her plans for the next day. It was time she began looking about for a ship to take her south. Better not try for Cheonea from here, better to change ships… she knew little about the powers of the limits of sorcery, she hadn’t a guess about how Setsimaksimin had found her… she was reasonably sure he was her enemy, she’d made enough others in her lifetime, though most of them had to be dead by now, besides there was the boy and the packet with its plea for her help… so she didn’t know if he could locate her again, but breaking one’s backtrail was an elementary tactic when pursued by man or some less deadly predator. Hmm. She’d always had a thing for ship captains… she grinned, toweled her head… maybe she could find herself another like Sammang or Chandro…

The night was warm and pleasant, the garden between the bathhouse and the Inn was full of drifting perfume and small paper lanterns dangling on long strings; they swayed in the soft airs and made shadows dance everywhere. On the far side of the vinetrellice that protected the privacy of bathers moving to and from the Inn she could hear unobtrusive cittern music and voices from the late diners eating out under the sky, enjoying the pleasant weather and the fine food Kheren Zanc’s cook was famous for. She thought of going round and ordering a meal (more to enjoy the ambiance than because she was hungry) but did nothing about the thought, too tired to dredge up the energy needed to change direction. She drifted into the Inn, climbed two flights of stairs and tapped at the door to her room.

Not a sound. She waited. Nothing happened. She tried the latch, made a soft annoyed sound when the door opened.

The children were both in bed, sunk in their peculiar lethargy. As Brann stepped inside, one pale head lifted, dropped again. She relaxed. Trust Jaril to leave a fraction of himself alert so he wouldn’t have to crawl out of bed and let her in. She stopped by the bed and ruffled his hair, but he didn’t react, having sunk completely into stupor; she smiled. looked about for the key. It was on the bed table, gleaming darkly in the light coming through the unshuttered window. She locked the door, stripped and crawled into bed. A yawn, a wriggle, and she plunged fathoms deep in sleep.

A noise outside woke her from a restless, nightmare-ridden sleep. She pulled a quilt off the bed, wrapped it around her and got to the window in time to see a dark head and shoulders thrust out from the top of the wall, close enough she could almost touch them. Beyond the wall she heard shouts and dogs baying. Without stopping to think, she leaned out, caught the fugitive’s at-tendon with a sharp hiss.

The head jerked up.

“In here,” she whispered. She saw him hesitate, but he had little choice. The hounds were breathing down his neck. She moved away from the window, jumped back another step as he came plunging through and whipped onto his feet, knife in hand, eyes glittering through the slits in his knitted mask. “Don’t be silly,”

she said, no longer whispering. “Close the shutters or get away from the window and let me do it.”

He sidled along the wall, keeping as far from her as he could. After a quick glance out the window, she eased the shutters to, careful to make as little noise as she could, pulled the bar over and tucked it gently into its hooks. That done, she set her back against the shutters and stood watching him.

He was over by the door; he tried the latch. “The key.”

She hitched up the quilt which was trying to untuck itself and slide off her. “On the table.” A nod toward the bed. “Go if you want. You could probably break loose. Or you can stay here until the chase passes on. Your choice.”

“Why?” A thread of sound, angry and dangerous.

“Why not. Say I don’t like seeing things hunted.”

He lowered the knife, leaned against the door and thought about it, a small wiry figure, with black trousers and black sweater, black gloves, black busks on his feet and a knitted hood that covered his whole head except for the eyeslits. The dim light coming through diamond holes in the shutters touched his eyes as he moved away from the door, pale eyes, blue or hazel, unusual in Jade Halimm; he stared at her several seconds, glanced at the sleeping children. “Who are you?”

“Did I ask you that?’

“They aren’t breathing.” He waved the knife at the children.

“Nor did I make comments about your person.”

He hesitated a moment longer, then he dragged off the mask and stood grinning at her. “Drinker of Souls,” he said, satisfaction and certainty in his voice. “You knew my grandfather.” He was a handsome youth, sixteen seventeen twenty at most, straight thick hair, heavy brows, flattish nose and a wide thinlipped mouth that could move from a grin to a grimace at the flash of a thought. Mixed blood. Hina stature, Hina nose and tilted almond Hina eyes (though they should have been dark brown to be truly Hina), the dark blond hair that appeared sometimes when Hina mixed with Croaldhese, his mouth and chin were certainly Croaldhese. He had the accent of a born Halimmer, that quick slide of sound impossible to acquire unless you lisped your first words in Jalimmik.

He slipped the knife up his sleeve and went to sit on the bed. “My mother’s father was called Aituatea. You might remember him.” He waited a moment giving her a chance to comment; when she said nothing, he went on. “You’re a family legend. You and them.” A wave of his hand at the two blond heads.

“Hmm. This seems to be the month of old acquaintances.”

“What?”

“Wouldn’t mean anything to you. Yaril, Jaril, wake up.” The covers stirred, two sleepy children sat up blinking. “Forget it, kids, the lad knows all about you. ‘ She turned back to the young thief. “How serious were they, those folk chasing you?”

He scratched at his jaw. “I’m still here, not running for the nearest hole. Those Dreeps know all the holes I do, and they’ll be going down them hunting blood. Not just them.” He thought a moment, apparently decided there was no point being coy about his target. “High-merchant Jizo Gozit, it was his House I got into, he’s a vindictive man and he’s got more pull than a giant squid; by now the king’s Noses are in the hunt.”

“I see. They’ll be searching this place before long. We could shove you under the bed or hide you in it… no, I’ve got a better idea… maybe… you think they know it’s you they’re hunting?”

“Doubt it. I usually keep well away from that quarter. The hounds have my scent, though; if the Dreeps bring their dogs…”

‘Jun, let him take your place. Mastiff, I think, hmm? Any dogs stick their noses in the door, you take their minds off our friend here.”

Jaril patted a yawn, slid out of the bed, a slim naked youth. For a moment he stood looking at the thief out of bright crystal eyes, then he was a mastiff standing high as the boy’s waist, muscle rippling on muscle, droopy mouth stretched into a grin that exposed an intimidating set of teeth. He went trotting around the room, came back to the rug at the foot of the bed, scratched at it until he was satisfied, turned around once and settled onto it, head down, ready to sleep until he was needed.

“Get into the bed beside Yaril,” Brann said. “You’ll be Jaril. Kheren will tell them I came in with two children, a boy and a girl, you’re older and taller and not so fair, but that shouldn’t matter.”

The mastiff lifted his head, whined softly.

“Move it, friend.” Brann whipped the quilt off, swept it over the bed and dived under the covers beside him. She felt his tension as he lay sandwiched between her and Yaril. “Relax,” she muttered.

A long sigh, a wriggle that edged him away from her, then his breathing went slow and steady, craftily counterfeiting slumber. A handsome youth, but he didn’t arouse anything in her except impatience. Getting old, she thought, Slya Bless, a few hours ago I was hot to trot, as the saying goes, contemplating the seduction of some sea captain. She sighed. What do I do if the same nothing appears when I find someone more to my taste, ayy yaaah, dead from the neck down? May it never happen. I was something like half dead up there. Mmh. Would have been all dead, if the children had been an hour or so later. She scowled at the unseen ceiling. Didn’t even try to fight… The memory made her sick. Didn’t even try to get the knife out, heal the wound. They surprised me, but that’s no excuse. Hadn’t thought about it before but that must have been what I was doing the past fifty years, getting ready to die and when it happened… Shuh! I can’t die. Not with the kids depending on me. I’ve got to do something about that. I don’t know what. After this is over and there’s time… maybe if I went back to Tincreal and roused Slya…

She lay still and did a few mind tricks to keep her body relaxed, then tried to figure out why she’d taken on this young thief with no questions asked. It startled her now that she had time to take a look at what she’d done. She thought about what she’d told him, I don’t like to see things hunted. True enough, especially after the past six days (twinge in her stomach, quickly suppressed). I suppose he’s my redeeming act, my sop, my

… oh forget it, Brann, you’re maundering. Aituatea’s grandson, hmm, he’s got the proper heritage for his profession all right. What’s going on here? First Harm’s great grandsoevers, now Aituatea’s. Things come in threes, uh huh, and if there’s a third intrusion from my past…

She heard the voices in the hall and the tramp of booted feat near her door. She heard the clank of the key as it turned in the lock. She stifled an urge to turn and look at the boy, forced her breathing to slow, her body to relax again.

The door crashed open, banging against the wall. Light from the hallway and the lanterns the Dreeps carried glared into the room, slid off the leather and metal they wore. Jaril came onto his feet and stood ears back, head down, growling deep in his throat. As if startled from sleep but no less dangerous, Brann surged up, knife ready in one hand, snatching at the quilt with the other, holding it in front of her. “Shift ass out of here,” she spat at them, “or I turn him loose and carve into stew meat what he leaves.”

“Calm, calm, fenna meh.” Kheren Zanc pushed past the lead Dreep. “There’s no harm done. The guards are searching for a thief who got over the wall near your room. They need to be sure he’s not hiding in here. It’s for your safety, fenna meh.”

She looked them over with insolent thoroughness, then she wrapped the quilt around her and tucked in the end. “Let them look if they’re fools enough to think some idiot thief could get past Smiler there.” She dropped onto the bed, knife resting lightly on her quilt-covered thigh. “I’ll have the hide off anyone who wakes the children.” She patted the blanket beside her, whistled the mastiff onto the bed. Jaril, newly christened Smiler, leaped over the footboard and stretched out with his hindquarters draped over the young thief’s legs. Yaril and the erstaz Jaril slept heavily while three Dreeps prowled the room, looking under the bed and into the wardrobe. One of them prodded his pike through the blanket near the foot of the bed but retreated before a sizzling glare when he showed signs of wanting to jerk the covers off in case the thief was masquerading as a twig-sized wrinkle.

Kheren bowed with heavy dignity. “Your Graciousness.” He shooed the Dreeps out of the room and locked the door after them.

With a wavery sigh Braun set the knife back on the bedtable, ran shaking fingers through the duckfeather curls fluffing about her head. She grinned at Jaril as he shifted back to boy and sat cross-legged on the bed. “Give them a minute more, then see what they’re doing.”

Jaril nodded. He slid off the bed, blurred into a gold shimmersphere and oozed out through the door. The young thief sat up, raised his brows. “Nice trick, wish I could do it.”

“He’ll warn us if the Dreeps start this way. What got you in this mess?”

“Bad luck and stupidity.”

She laughed. “That’s a broad streak of honesty there, better watch it, um… I’ll call you Tua after your grandfather. Tua, my friend, it’ll be an hour or two before you can move on, pass a little of it telling me your troubles. I might be some help. I’m inclined to be, for your grandfather’s sake. Or out of boredom. Or from general dislike of Dreeps. ‘Fake your pick and tell your tale.”

He rubbed his hands together, slowly, his light eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“Why not.”

“Hmm. I expect there’s not much point in shamming it. Here’s how it was. About a week ago an hour or two before dawn, I was… mmm… drifting along Way-gang street, do you know Halinun, ah!-he slapped his cheek, clicked his tongue, “I forgot who you are, you’ve been walking the ways here since before my mother was even born, where was I, yes, Waygang Street on the Hill end where the highclass Assignation Houses are, I’d been tickling a maid in one of those Houses,” he shrugged, “you get the idea. I was seeing if I could fox the patrols and get inside without being nailed. I thought old Tungjii was perching on my shoulder when I made it as easy as breathing. Ten, eleven patrons were sleeping over, I went through their gear and teased open the locks on the abdits, you know, the lockholes in the walls where they generally put their purses and the best jewelry. What with one thing and another, it was a good haul for an hour’s work. What I didn’t know was one of those patrons was a sorceror. He had this bad dream-smoke habit, he’d stopped over in Jade Halimm to indulge it and was using the House as a safe bed for his binge. The room had that sour stink you don’t forget once you’ve smelled it so I knew the man wasn’t going to wake on me, the House could’ve burned down and he wouldn’t wake. I got his purse, shuh, it was heavy. I almost didn’t bother with the abdit, but I was stupid and I got greedy and I found this crystal egg in a jeweled case_, and I took it. Wasn’t anything else in the abdit. Another thing, that stinking smoke made my nose itch and clog up, so I blew it. I used my fingers and wiped them on one of the sheets. Baaad mistake. Well, I didn’t know it then. I finished up and slid out and it was easy as breathing again. I cached the gold, you don’t want to walk in on… um… I think I won’t say the name… someone with gold in your boot, he’d have it out before you opened your mouth to say what. I sold the rings and that egg to someone, got about what I expected, maybe a quarter what the stuff was worth. He passed the egg on less than three hours after he got it. I found that out later. Me, soon as I was rid of the dangerous stuff, I went… um… someplace and crawled into bed, I was tired. Everything was fine, far as I knew. Stayed fine all the time I was sleeping. I woke hungry and went to get something to eat. I was in the middle of a bowl of noodles when my insides started twitching. Didn’t hurt, not then, just felt peculiar. I stopped eating. The twitches stopped. It was that cookshop down by Sailor’s Gamehouse. I decided Shem who ran it got into some bad oil, so I went into Sailor’s figuring I could afford his cook for once. I got about halfway through some plum chicken when the twitches started again. This time I ignored them and finished the chicken, it cost too much to waste. The twitching went away. I though, Oh. I went out. It was getting dark. There was a girl I knew. She’s a dancer mostly, she has her courtesan’s license so she doesn’t have to go with anyone she doesn’t like. I thought about going to see her. I even started walking toward the piers, she worked on a boat, I got a couple steps on the way when the worst pain I ever felt hit me. It was like redhot pincers stabbing into my liver and twisting. And a word exploded in my head. It was a minute before I could sort myself out enough to know what the word was. Come. I heard it again. Come. I didn’t know what was happening to me. Come. Everyone thought I was having fits. Come. The pain went away a little. The voice got quieter. Come. I came. That’s when I found out the man I stole the egg from was a sorceror. He wanted the egg back. He wanted it back so bad, he told me what he did to me to get me there was a catlick to what would happen to me if I didn’t bring it to him. I told him I’d already got rid of it, sold it to a fence and I didn’t have any way of knowing what he did with it. He thought about that, then he asked me who the fence was. I didn’t want to tell him but a couple twinges later I decided that… um… someone wasn’t a man I felt like dying for. I told him who the fence was and where to find him. He made me come kneel at his feet, then he did something I don’t know what and there was this tiger-man in the middle of the room. He talked to the tiger-man, I don’t know what he said, it was some sort of magic gabble I suppose. The tigerman disappeared pop like he was a candleflame blown out. He came back the same way but this time he had the fence with him. The fence didn’t want to say what he did with the egg. The tigerman played with him a little. So he dug in his memory, didn’t have to dig far but he made a long dance out of it, and came up with the name of the highmerchant Jizo Gozit. The sorceror told him if he said a word about this to anyone he’d start rotting slowly, his parts would fall off and his fingers and his toes and his tongue would rot in his mouth and his eyes would rot in his head and to show he meant it he rotted off the fence’s little finger, we could see the flesh melt and fall away from the bones. Then the sorceror told him to go home and he went. The tigerman went away. There was just me left. I don’t know why he didn’t send the tigerman after the egg, I’ve got an idea, though, something I came up with later. Maybe it’s like this, he was going to start on his binge, but he didn’t want anyone getting at him when he wasn’t up to protecting himself so he put his two souls into that egg and locked it up and here I come along and go off with it. And he didn’t send the tiger-man for it or do any fishing about for it because he didn’t want to give away where his souls were and he for sure wasn’t about to let any demon get that close to them. He gave me five days to get it back, or I’d start hurting a lot. That was four days ago. So you know what I was doing. Those highmerchants, most thieves don’t even try their houses, I mean even the best we got in Jade Halimm don’t bother with that quarter. I was lucky to stay loose enough to reach the wall ahead of the Dreeps and their hounds.” He slid off the bed and went to the window, lifted the bar and eased the righthand shutter open about an inch so he could see the sky. “Looks to me like I’ve got a couple hours of dark left. Maybe if I went right back, they wouldn’t be expecting me and might’ve let down their guard some. My hood, it’s in the bed somewhere, ask the changer if she’ll fish it out, then I’m for the wall and Jizo’s House and you’re rid of me.”

“Mmm, give me a minute to think.” She passed her hand over her head, smoothing down the fine white halfcurls. “Sorceror… there are a lot of idiots who fool around with magic of one kind or another… uhhhm, how sure are you that man really is a sorceror?”

“Eh, it’s not everyone who snaps his fingers and makes a tigerman fetch for him.”

“I see. Yaril, what’s your brother doing?”

“Still watching the Dreeps. They’re up in the attics turning out the servants’ rooms.”

“Tell him to leave them to it and get back here.”

“He’s coming.”

There weren’t that many sorcerors around, at least not those who’d reached the level of competence in their arts that matched Taa’s description of the man he’d robbed. And, from what she’d observed in her travels when she was still wandering about the world, they all knew each other. So it was more than likely this one could give her some useful information about Settsimaksimin and less than likely he’d tell her anything unless she had a hold on him.

Jaril oozed through the door. “The search is about finished, but the Head Dreep, he’s not happy about it, he wants to get the hounds in and start over on the rooms, Kheren is having fits about that. I got the feeling the Dreep was walking careful around our Host, that he knew if Kheren complained about him, he’d be up to his nose in hot shit.”

“Hmm. Tua, I’ve got a deal for you. Listen, I’ll send the children for that egg if you’ll bring your sorceror here.”

“Why? Don’t get snarky if I don’t jump at the deal, but it’s my body and my life you’re playing with.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”

“He’s a sorceror.”

“And I’m Drinker of Souls and I’ll have his in my hands.”

“I don’t have a choice, do I?” ‘

“No. You might save us some time if you told Yaril and Jaril where to find Jizo’s House. Doesn’t matter all that much, the place is probably lit up and swarming with guards, the children could fly over the quarter and go right to it.”

“I talk too much.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. You’re getting what you want without risking your hide.” She chuckled. “Tua Tua, you’ve been working hard to worm this out of me, clever clever young thief playing pittypat games with the poor old demidemon, making her singe her aged paws plucking your nuts from the fire.”

He opened his eyes wide, angelically innocent, then he gave it up and grinned at her. “Was clever, wasn’t it.’

“Shuh. Be more clever. Tell the kids where to find the egg.”

He was a tall man with a handsome ruined face and eyes bluer than the sea on a sunny day. His fine black hair and the beard neatly groomed into corkscrew curls and the bold blade of his nose proclaimed him a son of Phras. He came in slowly, the thick, textured wool of his black robe brushing against boots whose black leather was soft and glowing and unobtrusively expensive. He wore a large ruby on the fourth finger of his left hand, his right hand was bare; they were fine hands, never-used hands, soft, pale with a delicate tracery of blue veins. He stood without speaking while Tua shut and locked the door and joined Brann who was sitting on the bed, Jaril-Mastiff crouched by her knee.

The silence thickened. Tua fidgeted, scratching at his knee, feeling the knife up his sleeve, rubbing the back of his neck, the small scrapes and rustles he made the only sounds in the room. Brann continued to sit, relaxed, smiling. She intended to force the man to speak first, she had to have that edge to counter the power and discipline she felt in him, to wrest from him the knowledge she needed. He’d spread a glamour about himself, he’d dressed in his best for this meeting, wearing pride along with wool and leather and power like a cloak, but he was dying, his body was beginning to crumble. He saw that she knew this and his eyes went bitter and his hands shook. His mouth pressed to a thin line, he folded his arms across his chest; the shaking stopped, but there was a film of sweat on his face and a crease of pain across his brow. He knew the egg was nowhere in the room. (It was with Yaril who was being a dayhawk sitting on the ridgepole of the Inn, the egg in a pouch tied to her leg; Brann had no way of knowing how close a sorceror had to be to retrieve his souls and was taking no chances.) “You called me here,” he said; his voice was deep and rich, an actor’s voice trained in declamation and caress. “You have something for me.”

“I have.” She put stress on the I.

“Give it to me.”

“Not yet.”

Dark power throbbed in the room, lapping at her with a thousand tongues. Brann kept her smile (though it went a little stiff), kept her hands relaxed on her thighs (though the thumbs twitched a few times); tentatively she tapped into the field and began reeling its energies into herself, scooping out a hollow he couldn’t penetrate. The young thief scrambled away from her, went to sit in the window, legs dangling, ready to jump if Brann faltered. The Jaril-Mastiff came onto his feet, muscle sliding powerfully against muscle, and padded noiselessly around the periphery of the zone of force protecting the man. He oscillated there for several breaths, looking from the sorceror to Brann (who was sitting unmoved, draining the attack before it could touch her) then he grew denser and more taut and when he was ready, he catapulted against the man’s legs, bursting unharmed through the zone and knocking him into a painful sprawl.

Jaril-Mastiff untangled himself and trotted over to Brann. She laughed, scratched between his ears and watched the sorceror collect himself and get shakily to his feet. “Are you ready to talk?”

He brushed at his sleeves, unhurried, discipline intact. “What do you want?”

“Information.” She smiled at him. “Come. Relax, I’m not asking that much. Sit and let’s talk.”

He shook his robe back into its stately folds, straightened the chair he’d knocked awry in his sprawling fall and settled himself in it. “Who are you?”

“Drinker of Souls.” Another smile. “What name do you answer to?”

Another thoughtful pause. “Ahzurdan.” His blue gaze slid over her, returned to her face, touched the short delicate curls clustered over her head, again returned to her face. “Drinker of Souls,” he said. “Brann,” he said.

She frowned. “You know me?”

He glanced at the boy in the window, said nothing. “Turn him loose,” she said. “That’s what he’s here for.”

Abruptly genial, he nodded. “Isoatua, the contract is complete.’ He raised a brow. “Go and don’t let me see you again.”

Tua scowled, turned his shoulder to him. “Fenna meh?”

“A minute. Jaril?”

The mastiff came onto his feet, yawned, was a glitnmersphere of pale light. It drifted upward, whipped through Ahzurdan before he had time to react, then returned to Brann and shifted to Jaril the boy. “He means it,” he said.

“You heard, ‘Ilia. Next time be a bit more careful what you lift.”

Tua started to say something, but changed his mind. Ignoring Ahzurdan he bowed to Brann, strolled to the door. With a graceful flick of his wrist, he unlocked it. When he was out, Jaril turned the key again, put his head through the wall. A moment later he ambled over to Brann. “He’s off.”

“Thanks. Ahzurdan.”

“Yes?”

“How do you know me?”

“My grandfather was a shipmaster named Chandro bal Abbayd. I believe you knew him.”

“Shuh. You hear that, Jaril? Three. That’s not coincidence, that’s plot. Miserable gods are dabbling their fingers in my life again. All right. All right. Nothing I can do about it. Look, Ahzurdan, there was an attack on me a few days ago, a tigerman slid a knife between my ribs. No, I don’t think you sent him. I’m reasonably sure someone called Settsimaksimin wants me dead. He came close, not close enough. I have no doubt he knows that by now. What I want from you is this, anything you can tell me about him.”

“Ah.” He slumped in the chair and let the glamour fade. There was a broad band of gray in his thinning hair, streaks of gray in his beard, the whites of his eyes were yellowed and bloodshot. He had high angular cheekbones in a face bonier than Chandro’s, at least as she remembered him, strongly defined indentations at the temples, deep creases running from his nostrils past the corners of his mouth. A face used by time and thought and suffering, a lot of the last self-inflicted. “What did you do?”

“I suspect it’s something I’m going to do.”

“I see.” He stroked his beard, no longer trying to hide the shake of his hands; red light shimmered in the heart of the ruby. “You’re prepared to trust what I say?”

She smiled. “Of course not. I trust my ability to interpret what you say. So you’ll do it?”

“Yes.”

“No reservations?”

“No.”

“Jaril, tell your sister to get down here. Ahzurdan, you look awful. Come over here, get rid of that robe. When Jaril gets back with Yaril, I’ll see what I can do about knitting you together again.”

Ahzurdan unknotted the thongs of the pouch; he paused a moment, his eyes looked inward, he thrust two long fingers inside and touched the crystal. His face wiped of expression, he stood rigidly erect for several minutes as the souls flowed back into his flesh. When it was done, he tossed the pouch onto the bed and dropped beside it. “I’m a fool,” he said. “Don’t trust me, I’ll let you down every time.”

“Sad, sad, how terribly sad.” Brann snorted. “Before a binge that might mean something, not after.”

“Ah yes.” He stroked a hand down his beard. “You see me not quite at my worst.” He sighed. “A man is destroyed most effectively when he does it himself. Have you tasted the dreams of ru’hrya? No? You’re wise not to bind yourself to that endless wheel.” When she reminded him she couldn’t work through thick wool, he managed a half smile and began unfastening his robe. “There’s some pleasure in the smoke, a deep stillness, a gentle drifting, you’re floating in a warm fog. But the thing that brings you back again and again to the smoke is the dream.” His hand stilled for a moment, he looked inward again, pain and longing in those blue blue eyes. “The dream. You’re a hero there. Colors, odors, textures, they’re so alive they’re close to pain but not pain. Everything you do there comes out right, you’re not clumsy there or a fool or a victim. You live your life over again there, but the way you wanted it to be, not the way it was or is.” He stood, pulled his arms free and let the robe fall about his feet. Under it he wore a black silk tunic that came to mid-thigh and black silk drawers that reached his knees. He was perhaps too thin, but was well-muscled and healthy despite a week-long binge on dreamsmoke; in an odd way his body seemed a decade younger than his face. “You can’t forget them, the dreams, your body screams at you for the smoke, but that’s not important, what you hunger for is the other thing. You despise yourself for your weakness, but after a while you can’t stand knowing how stupid and futile you are and you binge again. And as the years pass you binge more frequently until the day comes when you do nothing else and you die still dreaming. I know that. I’ve seen it. The knowledge sits in my mind like a corpse. I run deeper into the smoke to escape that corpse and by doing so I run toward it, toward my degradation and my death. I came to Jade Halimm to find you, Brann; I came to beg you to free me from this need. Use your healing hands on me, Brann, make me whole. I’ll tell you everything I know of Cheonea and Settsimaksimin, I’ll go with you to help you fight him and you will need me, even you. Cleanse my body and my mind, Brann, do it in memory of the joy you and my grandfather shared that he told me about more than once, do it because you need me even if you think you don’t, do it out of the generosity of your soul.”

“What makes you think I can do what you can’t?”

He smiled wearily. “Tungjii’s laughter in my head, Brann.”

“Slya’s crooked toes! If I could… if I could climb the air… aah!”

“What?”

“That miserable menagerie of misfits that makes toys of us and dances us about to amuse themselves. Listen. I spent the last hundred years as a potter, a damn good one, sometimes even great. I was content working my clay, chopping wood for the kiln, all that. Then there comes this messenger from out of the past, the children of Harra Hazani who was once a friend of mine are calling me to keep a promise I made her some two hundred years ago. And right away I’m lying on the grass with a knife in my back. And when I’m getting ready to go kick my enemy where it hurts, what happens? I’m sleeping peacefully in an expensive room in a highclass inn and I wake up to dogs howling and a young thief climbing the wall outside my window, and lo, he’s the grandson of another old acquaintance of mine, and lo, he’s in this mess because he just happened to steal the souls of a sorceror who just happens to be the grandson of another old friend and lover. I said it before, this isn’t coincidence, it’s a plot. Those damn gods are jerking me around again.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“Shuh, what I’d like to do is go back to my pots.-“But?”

“What choice do I have? There’s my sworn oath and there’s a man who wants to kill me. So. Now that that’s over with, stretch out. On your stomach first. Yaril, help me, make sure we’re not interrupted.”

Her hands were warm and surprisingly strong. He thought about her chopping wood and couldn’t visualize it. Soft hands. No calluses. Short nails, but cared for. She worked with her hands. A potter. He suppressed a shudder, but she felt it. “It’s nothing,” he said. “A troubling thought, no more.” Her fingers moved in small circles over his head then drew lines of heat along his spine. Energy flowed into him, for once he felt as vital as he did in the dreams, yet more relaxed. He grunted as she pinched a buttock. “Talk,” she said.

“Mmmm… loyalty… where does it end? That’s the question, isn’t it. He was my teacher… unh, don’t destroy the flesh, Brann, I do enough of it, I don’t need help… I suppose that is a fourth noncoincidence… I was twelve when he took me… there’s an intimacy between master and apprentice… thumps and caresses… leaves its mark on you… yesss, that feels good… he was an odd man… difficult… rumors… there were other apprentices… they talked… we all talked… about him… listened… one rumor I think might be true… that he was sired by a drunken M’darjin merchant on an overage Cheonene whore one night in Silagamatys, he had the look… he was clever… fiercely disciplined… he’d work like a slave day after day, no sleep, no meals, a sip of tea and a beancake, that was all, both of them usually cold by the time he remembered them… but when the thing was done, he’d drown in the wildest debauchery he could find or assemble… sometimes… depending on his mood and needs… he took one or more of us with him… he always had four or five apprentices… one year there were nine of us… he dribbled out his lessons to us… enough to keep us clinging to him… and he had favorites… boys he bound closer to him… he fed them more… fed them… us… something like love… like living in an insane cross between a zoo and a greenhouse… yes, that’s it, we clawed and rutted like beasts and put out exotic blooms to attract him…

He stopped talking as she stopped the probing and pummeling and began passing her hands over him. Warmth that was both pleasure and pain (the two twisting inextricably in the flow) passed into his feet and churned up through him until it flooded into his brain and turned into pure agony; he dissolved into white fire, then darkness.

He sat sipping at hot tea, dawn red in the window. Pale blond preteens in green-gray trousers and tunics, the changechildren were sitting on the floor, leaning against Brann’s knees, watching him. Brann held a bowl of tea cradled in her hands. “The physical part of it is gone,” she said. “That’s all. You could have done that yourself. No doubt you have.”

“After the third relapse, trying it again didn’t seem worth the cost.”

“I still don’t understand what more you think I can do.”

“Nor I.” He smiled wearily. “In the depths of self-disgust after one too many binges, I returned to the ways of my ancestors and cast the lots. And found you there as my answer. Being with you. Staying with you.” An aborted shapeless gesture with the hand holding the teabowl. “A parasite on your strength.”

“Hmm.” She finished the tea and set the bowl beside her on the bed. “I don’t know the Captains these days. Any ship in port going south that made good time and won’t sink at a sneeze, whose master is a bit more than a lamprey on the hunt?”

“Ju’t Chandro told me you had a fondness for sailing men. Was he casting a net for air?”

“Hmf. Do you love every son of Phras you meet? Come with me to the wharves and tell me who’s who.”

“I may travel with you?”

“For whatever good it does. Besides, all you’ve told me so far is that Maksim has apprentices around to do the scut work and a taste for the occasional orgy. Not much help there.”

“You’ll get everything I know, Brann.”

“Ah well.” A tight half smile. “When I’m not sleeping with the Captain, life on shipboard tends to get tedious.” She examined him, speculation in her eyes.

Ahzurdan felt a quiver in his loins and a shiver of fear along his spine, one of his grandfather’s more lurid tales flowing in full colors through his head. He gulped the rest of his tea; it was cold, but he didn’t notice. That white fluff, it looked like she’d shaved her hair off not too long ago, though why she’d, do that… She wasn’t beautiful, not in any ordinary sense, handsome perhaps, but there was something he couldn’t put into words, a vitality, a sense that she knew who and what she was and rather liked that person. A disturbing woman. A challenge to everything he’d been taught about women. His mother would have hated and feared her. There were knots in his gut as he snatched brief glances at her; what she seemed to be expecting from him was more often than not something he couldn’t provide, he didn’t want to think about that, she made him think, she made him want the smoke again, anything to fill the emptiness inside him. Discipline, don’t forget discipline, ignore what you don’t want to see, you’re a man with a skill that few have the gifts or intelligence or tenacity to acquire, that’s where your worth lies, you’re not a stud hired to service the woman. Ah gods, it’s a good thing you aren’t, you couldn’t earn your pay, no, don’t think about that. I owe you, Maksim, you played in my head and in my body and threw both away when you were tired of them. Maksim, Malcsimin, you don’t know what’s coming at you… He rose. “Time we were starting. I still have to ransom my gear from the House and the tide turns shortly after noon.”

4. ON THE MERCHANTER JIVA MAHRISH (captain and owner Hudah Iffat, quartermaster and steward, his wife Hamla), THREE HOURS OUT OF JADE HALIMM, COAST HOPPING SOUTH AND WEST TO KUKURAL, HER LAST PORT BEFORE SHE TURNED NORTH AGAIN.

SCENE: Brann below, settling into her cabin. Ahzurdan on deck driving off stray ariels, setting wards against another attack on her. Yaril and Jaril watching him, wondering what he’s up to.

Ignoring the noisy confusion at his back where the deck passengers were still getting settled into the eighteen square feet apiece they bought with their fares, Ahzur-dan stood at the stern watching the flags on the Rogan-zhu Fort flutter and sink toward the horizon, frowning at the ariels thick in the wind that agitated those flags and filled the sails. Born of wind, shaped from wind, elongated asexual angel shapes with huge glimmering eyes, the ariels whirled round the ship, dipping toward it, darting away when they came close enough to sense what he was. Tapping nervously at the rail, he consid-ered what to do; as long as Brann stayed below, the ariels were an irritation, no more. He swung around. The changechildren were squatting beside the rail, their strange soulless crystal eyes fixed on him. No matter what Brann said, they didn’t trust him. “One of you,” he said, “go below and tell her to stay where she is for a while.” Neither moved. He sighed. “There are spies in the wind.”

They exchanged a long glance, then the girl got to her feet and drifted away.

Ahzurdan turned to the sea again. For a moment he continued to watch the ariels swirl overhead, then he reached out, caught a handful of air and sunlight and twisted it into a ward that he locked to the ship’s side. He began moving along the rail; every seventh step he fashioned another knot and placed it. He reached the bow, started back along the port rail, careful to keep out of the way of the working sailors.

Halfway along, Jadl stepped in front of him. “What are you doing?”

“Warding.”

“Against what?”

“Against what happened before. This isn’t the place to talk about it. Let me finish.”

The boy stared at him for a long breath, then he stepped aside and let him pass.

Ahzurdan finished setting the wards, then stood leaning on the rail watching the sun glitter off the waves, thinking about the changechildren. He knew what they were and their connection to Brann. His grandfather had been fond of them, in a way, also a little frightened of them. That fear was easy to understand. Earlier, before coming on board he’d tried a minor spell on Jul! and nothing had happened. More disturbing than that, the boy in his mastiff form had whipped through his force shield without even a whimper to show he noticed it. The children must have been fetched from a reality so distant from this and so strange that the powers here (at least those below the level of the highgods) couldn’t touch them. Not directly. Very interesting. Very dangerous. He collected his wandering thoughts, twitched the wards to test them, then went below satisfied he’d done what he could to neutralize anything Settsimaksimin might try.

Port to port they went. Lindu Zohee. Merr Ono. Halonetts. Sunny days, warm nights. A chancy wind but one that kept the ship scudding along the coast. Brann stayed onboard in each of the ports, safe from attack behind the wards but restless. Ahzurdan watched her whenever he could, curious about her, perplexed by nearly everything she did. She liked sailors and made friends with the crew when she could have been talking to the cabin passengers. There was an envoy from the Jade King aboard; he was a fine amateur poet and musician and showed more than a little interest in her. There was a courtesan of the first rank and her retinue. There was a highmerchant who dealt in jades, calligraphy and elegant conversation. Brann produced an embroidered robe for the dinners in the captain’s cabin, a multitude of delicately scribed gold bracelets (Rukha Nagg he thought when she let him examine them, part of a daughter’s dowry), and a heavy gold ear ornament from the Panday Islands (he was intensely curious about where she got that, only a Panday with his own ship could wear such an ornament, there was a three day feast involved, a solemn rite of recognition and presentation; most Panday shipmasters were buried with theirs; a lover perhaps?). Her hair was growing with supernatural speed, but it was still a cloud of feathery white curls that made her eyes huge and intensely green. She looked vital, barbaric and fine; he had difficulty keeping his eyes off her. She played poetry with the Envoy, composing verse couplets in answer to his, she spoke of jade carvers with the merchant, though mostly about ancient Arth Slyan pieces and the techniques of those legendary artisans, she questioned the courtesan Huazo about the dance styles currently popular, brought up the name of a long dead Hina player named Taguiloa and grew excited when Huazo told some charming but obviously apocryphal tales about the man (another lover?) and went into what Ahzurdan considered tedious detail about his influence on her own dancing. The dinners were pleasant and Brann seemed to enjoy them, but she went running to the crew when she had a moment free. He didn’t understand what she saw in them, crude vulgar men with crude vulgar thoughts, and at the same time was jealous of their ease with her. The first few days he had fevered images of belowdecks orgies, but his training did not allow him to distort or reject what was there before his eyes no matter how powerfully theory and emotion acted on his head. Misperceptions weren’t problems of logic or aesthetics to a sorceror, they could kill him and anyone near him. She traded stories with the crew, showed off her skills with rope, needle and palm; her hands were quick and graceful, he watched their dance and deplored what she was doing with them. She was almost a demigod, not some miserable peasant or artisan grubbing for a living.

The day the ship sailed from Merr Ono, he was in her cabin telling her about his earliest days with Settsimaksimin but broke off and asked her why she avoided the cabin passengers when she was so much more suited to their society than those… ah… no doubt goodhearted men in the crew; he got a cool gaze that looked into his souls and stripped his pretension bare, or so he thought.

After several moments of silence, she sighed. “I don’t like him. No, that’s not right. He turns my stomach. I’ll be polite to him at supper, but I won’t stay around him any longer than I have to.”

“Why?” He’s a cultivated intelligent man. His poems are praised from Andurya Durat to Kukurul for their power and innovation.”

“Have you read any of them?”

“Yes!”

“We’ll have to agree to disagree. I’ll grant you a certain technical facility, but there’s nothing in them.”

“You can’t have read Winter Rising.”

“Ah! Dan, I’ve spent the better part of a hundred winters doing little else but reading.” She pushed her fingers through her duckfeather curls. “I read Winter Rising and came closer to burning a book than I thought I ever would. Especially the part when he mourns the death of a servant’s child. His family chern lies half a day’s journey downriver from the Pottery. I have swept up too many leavings from his justice,” the word ended in an angry hiss, “to swallow his mouthings about suffering he himself is responsible for. I don’t care how splendid the poem is,” she shook her head, put her hand on his arm, “I’ll admit the skill, but I can’t stand the man. And I can’t forget the man in the poet.” She moved away from him. “Play with him all you want, Dan, but keep a grip on your skin and don’t take any commissions from him. The Jade King doesn’t send openfisted fools to negotiate trade rights.” She dropped into a chair and sat with her hands clasped loosely in her lap. “If you’re going to keep traveling with me, you might as well understand something. I despise him and all his kind. If the world wagged another way and it would make any real difference to his landfolk, I’d be the first to boot him out of his silky nest and set him to digging potatoes, where he might be useful and certainly less destructive.”

“Brann, do you really think your cherished sailors would be any better, put in his place? It would be chaos, far worse than anything the Envoy had done. I’ve seen what happens when the beasts try to drive the cart. He has tradition and culture to restrain him, they’ve nothing but instinct.”

“Beasts, Dan?”

“By their acts shall you know them.”

“By their acts shall you know their masters.”

“Aren’t they to be held responsible for what they do?”

“Give them responsibility before you demand it from them. Ahhh, this is stupid, Dan. We’re arguing abstracts and that’s bound to be an exercise in futility.” She laughed. “No more, not now. I wish you could have seen my home. Arth Slya isn’t what it was, even so… I was born a free woman of free folk. We managed our own lives and bowed our heads to no man, not even the King of Croaldhu. If I had the power, I’d make the whole world live that way.”

“You sound like Maksim.”

“That’s interesting. Do you know what he’s doing in Cheonea? Tell me about it.”

He shrugged. “It’s foolishness. Rabble is rabble. Changing the name doesn’t change the smell.”

Brann snorted. “Shuh! Dan, I know you sons of Phras, you and your honor, it’s a fine honor that scorns to touch a loom or a chisel but makes an art of killing. I loved your grandfather, Ahzurdan; Chandro was a splendid man as long as he was away from Phras, one who knew how to laugh at the world and how to laugh at himself, but not in Bandrabahr. When he went home, he turned Phrasi from his toes to his buckteeth. You might think that’s a proper thing to do, but me…

hunh! I went with him once, the last trip we made together. I remember I said something about a pompous old fool strutting down the street, a joke, he’d laughed at things like that a hundred times before. He hit me. You know, it was funny. I just stood there gaping at him. He started calling me names. Vicious names. Then he tried to hit me again. That’s not a thing I tolerate, no indeed. Well, there was a bit of a brawl with Yaril and Jaril rallying round. Last I saw of him, Chandro was laid out yelling, some meat gone from one buttock and a thigh, a broken shoulder bone and a bruised belly where I missed my kick or he might have been your uncle not your grandfather. There was a ship lifting anchor right then, I made it onboard a jump and a half ahead of the kashiks. Never saw him again. Sad. After that I came back to Jade Halimm, apprenticed myself to a potter and settled into clay and contentment.”

By the time they sailed from Halonetts, beginning the last leg of the journey to Kukurul, Ahzurdan was sweating and nightmare-ridden, trying to fight his desire for dreamsmoke. He wallowed in despair; he’d thought having the demonic Brann around would somehow cure him of this need, but she grated on his nerves so much she was driving him to the dreams to escape her. In spite of this, he couldn’t stay away from her.

She listened with such totality it made a kind of magic. He was uneasy under this intense scrutiny, he rebelled against it now and then, but it was also extraordinarily seductive. He began to need her ear worse than his drug; they broke for meals and sleep, but he came drifting back as soon as he could, and, after a few hesitations, was lost once more in his memories. Bit by bit he began telling her things he’d made himself forget, things about growing up torn between a father who wanted him to join his older half brothers in the business and a mother whose scorn of business was profound, who’d been sold into marriage to pay the debts of her family (a minor branch of the ancient and noble Amara Sept). Tadar Chandro’s son bought her to gain greater prestige among the powers of Bandrabahr, got a son on her, then proceeded to ignore her. She hated him for taking her, she loathed his touch, she hated him almost as much for leaving her alone, for his insulting lack of interest in her person or her sex. But she knew better than to release any of her venom beyond the walls of her husband’s compound, he wouldn’t need much excuse to repudiate her, since he’d already got all the good out of her he was going to get, no, she saved her diatribes for her son’s ears.

“I was the sixth son,” Ahzurdan said, “ten years younger than Shuj who was youngest before me. He took pleasure in tormenting me, I don’t know why. On my twelfth birthday my father gave me a sailboat as he had all his other sons on their twelves. A few days later I was going to take it out on the river when I met Shuj coming from the boathouse. When I went inside. I saw he’d slashed my sail and beat a hole in the side of the boat. I went pelting after him, I don’t think I’d ever been so angry. I was going to, I don’t know what I was going to do, I was too hot to think. I caught up with him near the stables, I yelled at him I don’t know what and I called up fire and nearly incinerated him. What saved him was fear. Mine. There was this ball of flame licking around my hands; it didn’t hurt me, but it scared the fury out of me. I jerked my arms up and threw it into the clouds where it fried a few unfortunate birds before it faded away. After that Shuj and all the others stayed as far away from me as they could…”

Tadar was frightened and disgusted; a practical man, he wanted nothing to do with such things. For years he’d been crushed beneath the weight of a vital charismatic father who had a good-natured contempt for him, but after Chandro’s death, he set about consolidating the business, then he cautiously increased it; he hated the sea, was desperately seasick even on river packets, but was shrewd enough to pick capable shipmasters, pay them well and give them an interest in each cargo. As the years passed, he prospered enormously until he was close to being the richest Phras in Bandrabahr. He spent a month ignoring his youngest son’s pecularities and snarling at his other sons when they tried to complain (they had uneasy memories of tormenting a spoiled delicate boy and didn’t want Ahzurdan in the same room with them), but two things forced him to act. The servants were talking and his customers were nervous. And Zuhra Ahzurdan’s mother had sent to her family for advice (which infuriated Tadar, principally because they acted without consulting him and he saw that as another of the many snubs he’d endured from them); they located a master sorceror who was willing to take on another apprentice and informed Tadar they were sending him around three days hence, he should be prepared to receive him and pay the bonding fee.

For Ahzurdan, during those last months at home, it was as if he had a skin full of writhing, struggling eels that threatened to burst through, destroying him and everything around him. Before the day he nearly barbequed his brother, he’d had nightmares, day terrors and surges of heat through his body; he shifted unpredictably from gloom to elation, he fought to control a rage that could be triggered by a careless word, dust on his books, a dog nosing him, any small thing. After that day, his mood swings grew wilder and fire came to him without warning; he would be reaching for something and fingerlength flames would race up his arms. The night before the sorceror was due, his bed curtains caught fire while he was asleep, nearly burnt the house down; one of the dogs smelled smoke and howled the family awake; they put the fire out. It didn’t hurt him, but it terrified everyone else.

For Tadar, that was end; he formally renounced his son; Ahzurdan was, after all, only a sixth son and one who had proved himself worthless. His mother wept, but didn’t try to hold him. He was happy enough to get away from the bitterness and rage that flavored the air around her; she kept him tied to her, filled his ears with tales of her noble family and laments about how low she’d sunk marrying his father until he felt as if he were drowning in spite. He blamed her for the way his brothers treated him and the scorn his father felt for him, but didn’t realize how much like her he was, how much of her outlook he’d absorbed. Brann recognized Zuhra’s voice in the excessive respect he had for people like the Envoy and his dislike for what he called rabble.

Settsimaksimin came to Tadar’s House around midmorning. “He scared the stiffening out of my bones,” Ahzurdan said. “Six foot five and massive, not fat, his forearms where they came from the halfsleeves of his robe looked like they were carved from oak, his hands were twice the size of those of an ordinary man, shapely and strong, he wore an emerald on his right hand in a smooth ungraven band and a sapphire on his left; he had thick fine black hair that he wore in a braid down his back, no beard (he couldn’t grow a beard, I found that out later), a face that was handsome and stern, eyes like amber with fire behind it; his voice was deep and singing, when he spoke, it seemed to shake the house and yet caress each of us with the warmth, the gentleness of… well, you see the effect he had, on me. I was terrified and fascinated. He brought one of his older apprentices with him, a Temueng boy who walked in bold-eyed silence a step behind him, scorning us and everything about us. How I envied that boy.”

Tadar paid the bond and sent one of the houseboys with Ahzurdan to carry his clothing and books, everything he owned. That was the last time he saw his family. He never went back.

On the twelfth day out of Jade Halimm the merchanter Jiva Mahrish sailed into the harbor at Kukurul. A few days later, as they waited for a ship heading for Bandrabahr, Settsimaksimin tried again.

5. Silagamatys On The South Coast Of Cheonea, The Citadel Of Settsimaksimin.

SCENE: Settsimaksimin walking the ramparts, looking out over the city and talking at his secretary and prospective biographer, an improbable being called Todichi Yahzi, rambling on about whatever happened to come into his mind.

Soaring needle faced with white marble, swooping sides like the line from a dancer’s knee to her shoulders when she’s stretched on her toes, a merloned walk about the top. Settsimaksimin’s Citadel, built in a day and a night and, a day, an orgy of force that left Maksim limp and exhausted, his credit drawn down with thousands of earth elementals and demon stoneworkers, fifty acres of stone, steel and glass. Simplicity in immensity.

Late afternoon On a hot hazy day. Grown impatient with the tedium of administration and the heat within the walls, Settsimaksimin told Todichi Yahzi to bring his notebooks and swept them both to the high ramparts. Heat waves crawled from the earth-colored structures far below, a haze of dust and pollen gilded the Plain that stretched out green and lush to mountains whose peaks were a scrawl of pale blue against the paler sky, but up here a brisk wind rushed from the open sea and blew his sweat away. “Write,” Maksim said. “You can clean it up later.”

He wound his gray-streaked braid in a knot on his head, snapped a skewer to his hand and drove it through the mass to hold it in place. He opened his robe, spread it away from his neck, began stumping along the broad stone walkway, his hands clasped behind him, the light linen robe fluttering about his bare feet, throwing words over his shoulder at Todichi Yahzi who was a thin gangling creature (male), his skin covered with a soft fur like gray moss. His mouth was tiny and inflexible, he ate only liquids and semi-liquids; his speech was a humming approximation of Cheonase that few could understand. He had round mobile ears and his eyes were set deep in his head, showing flashes of color (violet, muddy brown, dark red) as he looked up from his pad, looked down again and continued his scribbling in spidery symbols that had no like in this world. Settsimaksimin fetched him from a distant reality so he’d have someone he could talk to, not a demon, not an ambitious Cheonene, but someone wholly dependent on him for life and sustenance and… perhaps… transport home. His major occupation was listening to Maksim ramble about his experiences, writing down what he said about them along with his pronouncements on life, love, politics and everything.

“The Parastes… the Parastes… parasite Parastes, little hopping fleas, they wanted to make me their dog, their wild dog eating the meat of the land and they eating off me.”

He charged along the rampart, breasting the wind like some great bull, bare feet splatting on the stone, voice booming out over the city, lyric basso singing in registers so low Todichi had to strain to hear the words.

“They wanted to go on living till the end of time as entitled do-nothings. Bastards of the legion of the Born. Lordlings of the earth. Charter members in the club of eugennistos. Owners of lands, lives and good red gold.”

Todichi Yahzi hoomed and cooed and was understood to say, “For the honesty of my records, sar Sassa’ma’sa, were there no patrikkos among them, no good men who cared for their folk? Among my own…

Settsimaksimin swung round, yellow eyes burning with feral good humor. “My mother was a whore and I’m a half-breed, don’t ask me for their virtues. Not me.” He threw back his head and let laughter rumble up from his toes. “I never saw any. HAH! Go talk to them and see how sweet they are.” He swept an arm around in a mighty half-circle. “Look out there, Todich. Black and bountiful, that old mother, she lays there giving it away to any may who knows how to tickle her right. Who does the tickling, who makes her breed and bear? Not our Parastes. Dirt suits the dirty, not them, not our elegant educated fleas. Pimping fleas, lending her to busy little serfs who fuck her over and get nothing for their labors, it’s the flea pimps who carry off the bounty she provides. They sit down there close enough to smell, Todich; they sit down there in their fancy houses behind their fancy walls with their fancy guards and fancy dogs keeping out the folk they fancy want to get at them; they sit down there and curse me. Let them curse. They go to sleep down there and dream me dead. Let them dream. Hah, who’s dying? Not me. NOT ME,” he shouted and the walls shook with the power of his voice. He wiped at his neck, started walking again, more slowly as if some of the energy had gone out of him with the shout. When he spoke, his voice was softer, more sedate. “I made laws, Todich, you’ve writ them down, good laws, fair to the poor, maybe not so fair to the rich, but they’ve had a thousand years going their way.” He chuckled. “Let them suffer a little, it’s good for the character. Good for the CHARACTER, HA HA,” he twisted his head around, “hear that, old mole? Ah the scorn I got, the righteous indignation. What am I doing? Clodhoppers and bumpkins? School? Land of their own? Whose land? WHOSE LAND! NEVER! Thief! Tyrant! Ignorant idiotic imbecile! You’ll ruin the country. You’ll destroy everything we’ve built. A voice in how they live? Perpetual servitude is the natural state of some men. Free them and you destroy them. Who is going to tell them what to do? They’re lazy and improvident. Haven’t you seen how they shirk their work? Look at how they live, how dirty they are. They drink and fornicate and beat their wives and starve their children. We hammer virtue into them, otherwise nothing would get done. They aren’t men, they’re beasts; if you treat them like men, you are a fool and you are harming them rather than helping. Ah ah ah, Todich, there you have your sweethearts. For those fleas, those bloodsucking fleas, for those swaggering club-wielders, the serfs were just one more tool for working the earth. Plowing procreating digging sticks. Animated hoes. Grubbing the fields of the fiefs, generation unto generation without a day of rest, without a home and fireside, without anything to save their worn-out nothingness until I took them into my hands.

“Two sorts of beings out there on the Plain, Todich. Nay-saying non-doing Parastes and everyone else. Field hands, farmers, ferrymen, watermen and woodmen, rowers and growers of greens, chandlers, craftsmen, drovers and sellsouls who were armed and charged with defending the fiefs of the Parastes against the claims of the slaves.” Laughter rolled out like thunder. He turned the corner and went charging along the west wall. “They didn’t expect their people to love them, no they did not. Just serve them, Hmm. I tried-and succeeded, Todich, you’ve writ how I succeeded-to bring more equality between the rich and the beggars. And spread confusion with both hands.” He held up huge shapely hands. “Bountiful confusion and I enjoyed it, every moment of it. Why bother my head with such chimeras? they asked me. You can’t do it. The poor don’t want it, they hate change, they want things to go on being the same. They won’t help you. We won’t help you, we’re not inclined to suicide. Your army won’t help you, they despise dirt grubbers more than we do. Be sensible. Power is power. The rule is yours. Enjoy it, don’t wear yourself down.” The massive shoulders went round, he clasped his hands once more behind him and slowed his pace and lowered his voice to a mutter. “There are times when I’m tempted to agree.” He stopped, put his hand on a merlon and stood squinting at the city below. “Then… then I remember begging in the streets. Look, Todich, down there, where the two lanes meet by the end of the market. A Parast had his harmosts beat me because I startled his horses. I left my blood on those paving stones, but you couldn’t find it now, there’s too much other blood over and under it. And there,” he flung his arm up, jabbing his hand at the city wall where it curved to meet the bay, “I can see a hut there still, on that hill just beyond the wall, my mother starved in one like it after she was too old to whore any longer. Do you know why the Citadel is here and nowhere else? When I was six, Todich, a merchant caught me stealing and brought me to the slave market, it was right here, under where we’re standing, and the pleasurehouses were just a step away, when we get round to the north side we’ll be over the House I was sold into. No one should be rich enough to buy another, Todich, and no one poor enough that he’s obliged to let himself be sold. Moderation, Todich, wealth in moderation, poverty in moderation. Pah!” He slapped the stone and stumped on.

“I took into my hands a country where the poor counted for nothing, where scoundrels were everything, so I had to be a greater scoundrel than them all, Todich. They were right, these fleas; no one wanted me to do what I did. I made my laws and sent out my judges with orders to be just and what happened? The poor ran to their masters for justice (ah, the silly men they were) and shunned mine. I had to do it all myself. I sold my soul, Todich. I sold it to the Stone and to Amortis. And I sold Cheonea to Amortis, when you take away one center you have to provide another, Todich; she’s no prize, our Amortis, but she’s less bloody than some; her sacrifices are those all men make without much prodding… hah! no, with a good lot of prodding, if you’ll forgive the pun. I’ve done worse things, Todich, for reasons not half so worthy. I shrank from no evil to ensure my laws were enforced, especially the land laws. Write this, be sure you write this. I distributed the land to the people who worked it, with this condition, they were to pay the former Parastes a small sum quarterly for thirty years, then the land would be paid off and they would have in their hands the deed for it. I did that because I wanted them to value it. I knew them far better than the fleas did, I was one of them, I knew they wouldn’t believe in anything that came to them too easily; I knew once they’d sweated and bled to earn the deed, they would own that land in their minds and in their blood and in their bone and they’d fight to keep it. The title papers have been going out for the past ten years. Lazy clodhoppers, eh Todich? Not anything like. Thrifty frugal suspicious lot, more than half of them paid out early, I think they weren’t all that sure I’d last, they wanted that paper and they got it. And the same day they got it, those deeds were registered at the village Yrons and the Citadel. Ah, how I love them, these bigoted, stubborn, enduring men. They know what I’ve done for them, they’re mine, they’d bleed for me or spy for me; they pray for me, did you know that? I’ve seen them do it when they didn’t know I was watching. It wasn’t for show, Todich, not for show.” A rumbling chuckle filled with humor and affection. “Though they get annoyed with me sometimes. They don’t like me interfering in their lives. They didn’t like it when I put Amortis in their villages; I didn’t like it either, but you have to break the old before you can bring the new, besides, I needed Amortis’ priestcorps to run the country for me until I could get the dicasts and village headmen trained, there’s only so much you can do with soldiers. They didn’t want the schools either, I had to scourge half a village sometimes before they’d let their children come to them those first years. What a change since. Now they’re proud of sons who can read, now they scold their grandsons when the lads want to skip school and forget learning to read, write and cipher, now they go to the passage ceremonies with wonderful pride in their own. Ah ah ah, and I am proud of them. They took the reins from me and built a strong new life on the changes I made. It’d be a foolish tyrant who tried to wrest land and learning from them now.

“There’s one thing I regret, Todich, that’s forcing Amortis on the Finger Vales. Burning their priests. I spit on these torchers, those stinking bloody brainless Servants with their Whore God. I spit on myself for letting it be done, Todich, done in my name. Amortis! Forty. Mortal Hells, I didn’t think even a god would be that stupid, but I NEED her, Todich. A hundred years, I thought I was buying a hundred years so I could set my changes so deeply no man could uproot them. Haaa yaa yaa, I need them but I won’t get them, that greedy bitch has ruined me. HAH! Ruined or not, I’m going to fight, let the Hellhag come, I’m a skin filled with rancor and I’m waiting.”

He stopped in the center of the south side and stood looking out across the Notoea Tha. Todichi Yahzi dropped into a squat behind a merlon and waited with stone patience for Maksim to start talking again.

The ariels came blowing out of the east, swirled in a confusing flutter about him, whispering their reports in their soughing voices, voices that were winds whistling in Todichi Yahzi’s ears, nothing more. “… the woman… alive… Jiva Marish… Ahzurdan… wards… Kukurul…”

Maksim cursed bitterly, using his lowest register, the words tearing from his throat. Leaving Todichi Yahzi to make his own way down, he snapped to his sanctuary deep within the earth, warm dark earth around him, elementals sleeping coiled about him, protecting him, ready to wake if he called them. Lights came on automatically as he materialized there and he strode toward the storage shelves, dragging the skewer from his braid, shaking it down, pulling his robe closed and doing up the fastenings. He thrust his arms into the loose over-robe he wore for working; sleeveless, heavy and soft, it hung about him like woven darkness as he carried the mirror case to his work table. He kneed the chair aside, set the case down and stood with his hands on the double hinged lid, thumbs tapping lightly at the wood as he calmed himself into a proper state to use the mirror. “Little Danny Blue,” he murmured, “Ahzurdan. I wonder how you got tangled in this mess.” His mouth curled into a tight smile. “Tangjii, old meddler, that you sticking your thumbs in?”

He maneuvered the chair back and dropped into it with an impatient grunt, opened the case, took out the black obsidian mirror and the piece of suede he used to polish it. “I know your little tricks, Blue Dan, I know you, Danny Boy.” He wiped gently at the face of the mirror, breathed on it, wiped again. “Did you think of this, Danny Blue? I don’t know her. I can’t reach her.

I found her through the boy the first time, now I’ve got you to guide my sight, is that a piece of luck, Baby Dan, or is that a piece of luck. Haaaa! I’ve GOT you, Blue, nowhere you can hide from me.” He set aside the leather and slid the mirror into its frame. “Ahzurdan in Kukurul,” he intoned and touched the stone oval with a long forefinger.

The stone surface shimmered, then he saw the side of a rambling inn and small sparkles of light writing patterns over a window on the third floor. “Sooo sooo, how much have you learned since you ran off, Ser Ahzurdan? Mmm, interesting, I wonder where you picked that up? Looks like something Proster Xan was playing with a few years back. That’s a clever twist, now how do I untie it? This… this… ah! cute, touch that one and I’m smoke. Sooo sooo, how do I get round that… here? No, I don’t think so, tempting but… let’s fiddle this loop out a little. Ah, ah ah, now this. Riiight. And now it comes neatly apart. Don’t try fooling your old teacher, boy. Let’s put this aside so we can tie it up again if we want and take a look at what’s happening in there. Mmmmh mmh. So that’s our Drinker of Souls.” He leaned closer, frowning. “That mushhead swore he put the pagamacher in your heart, I suppose he missed his hit. You’re hard to kill, lady. Mmm. No more tigermen… what have I got… mmmmm… what have I got…” The woman was sitting in a chair with her feet up on a hassock; her body was relaxed but her brilliant green eyes followed Ahzurdan with a concentrated intensity as he walked about the comfortable room, his hands moving restlessly, opening and closing, tapping on surfaces, fondling small objects, while he talked in spurts and silences. “Gabble gabble, Danny Blue, you haven’t changed a hair… hmm.” Two children were curled up on the bed, sleeping; he had a vague idea that they were attached to the woman and were a bit more than children. He watched them a moment, became convinced they weren’t breathing. “Dipped in the reality pond, did you, lady? And pulled you out a pair of… of what? Complications, mmm, if I wait until you’re, alone and see you out, saying I can do it this time, those children would be left and what would I have coming at me? I went too fast the first time and missed my hit and unless I mistake me badly. I’ve done myself a mischief by it. Sooo sooo, this time I’ll watch a while. A while? A day or two. Or three. Or more. Until I’m ready, lady.” With a rumbling chuckle, he shoved the chair back and started to stand, stopped in the middle of the move and flattened his hands on the table. “Oh Maksi old fool, senility is setting in, next thing you know, you’ll be drooling in your mush. Sooo sooo.” He reassembled the ward and set it in place outside the window. When he was done, he pushed onto his feet, leaving the mirror focused on the Inn. “Dream your little dreams, Danny Blue, I’ll be with you soon as I finish some cursed clamoring business…” He stretched, groaned as muscle pulled against muscle, pulled off the overrobe and tossed it onto the chair. “AAAH! WHY WHY WHY can’t they SEE? It’s so simple.” He twitched the linen robe straight and with a few quick flowing passes rid it of its wrinkles. “Dignity, give a man his dignity and you’ve increased his value and the land’s value with it.” He rubbed his feet on the pavingstones. “Be damned if I cramp my toes for that son of a diseased toad, that high-nosed high priest of my whore god, that posturing potentate of ignorance, HAH!” He glamoured sandals over his feet, grinned and added tiny grimacing caricatures of Vasshaka Bulan Servant of the Servants of Amortis to the seeming straps of white leather. A touch to the Stone snugged beneath his robe, a twisted tight smile as he felt a tingle in his fingertips, then he snapped to the reception chamber at the top of the west tower, a gilded ornate room that he detested. He knew the effect of his size and the chamber’s barbaric splendor (and the long laborious climb to reach it) and used them when he had to deal with folks like Vasshaka Bulan who needed a good deal of intimidation to keep their ambitions in hand. A desk the size of a small room and a massive carved chair sat on a shallow dais that raised both just enough to give visitors an ache in the neck and a general sense of their own unworthiness. He settled himself in the chair, gave a quick rub to the emerald on his right thumb. “Let the charade proceed,” he muttered. The only object in the vast plateau of polished kedron was a dainty bell of unadorned white porcelain. He rang it twice, replaced it and sat back in the chair, his arms along its arms, his hands curved loosely abOut their finials.

The double doors swung smoothly open and Vasshaka Bulan came stalking in, Todichi Yahzi gliding grayly behind him clutching a scarlet notebook. He touched Bulan’s arm (ignoring the man’s recoil and hiss of loathing), cooed him to the visitor’s chair, then went to the gray leather cushion waiting beside the desk, wriggled around until he was comfortable, settled the book in his lap and prepared to record everything said during the interview.

Maksim rumbled impatiently through the rituals of greeting, gave brusque permission for Vasshaka Bulan to say what was on his mind. “Brief and blunt,” he said, “unless you want to try my patience, Servant Bulan.”

“Phoros Pharmaga, I hear.” Bulan bowed his head. “I have a complaint about the Dicast Silthos a Melisto. He ordered a Servant taken from the Yron of Nopido, sat in judgment over him and ordered him stoned by the Nopidese. He had no right, Phoros. A Servant is judged by Amortis and the Kriorn of his Yron. None less can touch him. By your own word, this is Amortis’ land.”

“By my own word, Amortis judges her Servants in all except…” he leaned forward and slapped his hand on the desktop, making the wood boom, “EXCEPT for civil crimes. Rape is a civil crime. I have read the Di-cast’s report, Servant of Servants. This charming creature of yours raped an eight-year-old girl.”

Bulan lifted his hand. “A holy frenzy, Phoros, for which he is not responsible.”

Settsimaksimin forced himself to wait a moment before responding, hammering an iron calm over a fury that inclined him to send this snake back to Amortis as ash. He needed the wily old twister. especially now when he couldn’t afford a fuss that would divert his attention from the Drinker of Souls and what she could mean to him. He managed a cold smile. “Anarpa didn’t seem to share that notion. He murdered the girl and tried to conceal what he’d done.”

“A weak man is a weak man and a stupid one does not acquire wisdom at such a moment. It is for the Yron and the Kriorn to judge him.”

“By my word and by my law it is the people he injured who have that right. By my word and by my law and in the Covenant I made with Amortis. A covenant that you know word for word, Vasshaka Bulan, Servant of the Servants of Amortis.” He lifted his hand and laid it across his chest, the Stone warm and dangerous under his palm. “We have been patient with you, Faithful Servant, because we know you are devoted to She whom we both… serve. We will continue our patience and explain our decree. The Servant Anarpa took refuge within the Nopido Yron when his crime was reported which from our reading was almost immediately since there was a witness to the burial. The Dicast, as was most proper and courteous though not necessary under our law and covenant, sent to the Nopido Yron and asked that the Servant named Anarpa be given to the civil court for judgment. The Kriorn of the Yron refused to produce him.” Maksim felt his heart hurrying under the Stone and once again took time to calm himself. “That was neither proper nor courteous. Nor is it sanctioned by law or covenant. It is we, Vasshaka Bulan, who complain to you of such contumacious behavior. It is we, Vasshaka Bulan, who say to you, discipline your Servants or we will do it for you. And should you doubt our will or our ability to do so, we will ask Amortis to make it plain to you by punishing that Kriorn herself. We have explained to you what we intend to accomplish within the land; Amortis has given her sanction to these goals. Any Servant who cannot work with enthusiasm for our dream had best find another land to serve the Lady.” He watched Bulan’s face but not a muscle moved; the mild old eyes had no more feeling in them than a chunk of low grade coal.

“It is time, perhaps,” Bulan said slowly, as if he were considering with great care everything he said (though Maksim had no doubt the old twister had for-seen everything so far and plotted his speech accordingly, most of it anyway; with some pleasure Maksim remembered catching a slight tic in a cheek muscle when he, said Amortis would do the punishing of that idiot Kriorn, that knocked you off center, you old viper). “It is time, I say, that we who are not so wise as you, Phoros Pharmaga, should meet and draw up tables determining specifically who in what circumstances has responsibility for making and upholding what laws.”

Again Settsimaksimin examined the Servant’s face, there was no reading anything but mild earnestness in that disciplined mask he used to cover his bones. What are you up to? I wouldn’t trust you with the ink to write your initials. If you think you’re going to tighten your bony grip on My people… Hmm. Might not be a bad idea, though, keep him out of my hair when I haven’t got the time or energy to waste on him. “We will think on it,” he said gravely. “We are inclined to agree with you, Faithful Servant. Do this, draw up a list of scholars civil and servant whom you find capable of dealing with the complexities in such a plan and yourself, out of your vast wisdom, do you write for us the agenda you consider most suitable for such a group with such a purpose. Seven days for the list and agenda. Or do you need more?”

Vasshaka Bulan bowed his head in humble submission. “Seven days is sufficient, Phoros Pharmaga.”

After he was gone, Settsimaksimin shoved his chair back with such force the wood of the legs shrieked against the wood of the dais. He went charging about the room muttering to himself while Todichi Yahzi finished his notes. “Seven days. Sufficient. HAH! SEVEN MINUTES IS MORE LIKE. He’s been worming toward this for AHHH the gods know how long. I don’t see what he’s going to get out of it, Todich. He knows I’m going to read every miserable word of whatever comes out of that bunch of legal nitwits and anything I don’t understand or don’t like is DEAD, Todich. The names? How could I trust men he named for something like this? Even if I know they’re good men. He’s after something, Todich, WHY CAN’T I SEE IT?” He flung his arms ‘ out, dragged in a huge lungful of air.

“AAAHHhhhmm HAH! Hunh.” Abruptly brisk, he turned to Todichi Yahzi. “Write this: strataga Tapos a Parost and his prime captain; guildmaster Syloa h’Arpagy; kephadicast Oggisol a Surphax and the three judges he talked to me about, I’ve forgotten their names but he’ll remember; harbormaster Kathex h’Apydaro; peasant Voice, Hrous t’Thelo. Got those? Good. Write me out a note to the chief Herald Brux so I can sign it. Say send your best and fastest heralds, men you know can keep their mouths shut, to the folk on that list and tell them to meet with… hmm, better be formal about it, I suppose… the Phoros Pharmaga Settsimaksimin three days on, in the Citadel. This next is for you, Todich, put them in the Star Cabinet down on the first floor, it’s warded, I don’t want anyone snooping about what I’m going to be saying there. Finished? Give me the stylus a moment. There. No, don’t go yet. Listen, Todich, I’ll be spending a lot of time in my workroom and while I’m there those men are going to run Cheonea for me. Hah!” A rumbling chuckle as Todichi Yahzi cooed a flurry of objections. “I know, my friend. That’s why I want you to watch them waking and sleeping. You know, Todich, this isn’t such an unhappy turn of affairs after all; I’ve been thinking about setting up a council of governance like that for some years now, to see how it would work if I weren’t here, ah, where was I? Yes. I’ll give you command of some ariels and a clutch of stone sprites… no no, you’ll be able to see and hear them, I’m not an idiot, Todich. If I had the mirrors… tchah! I’ve been lazy and stupid, my friend. Mmm. You’ll know a palace coup if you see one hatching, yes, Todich, I really have been listening to you. If you see anything funny happening, give me a call, I’ll show you how to reach me tonight, when I get back. No, I won’t be angry if you’ve misread some twitch or tic for treason, this is a time when caution is far more important than certainty. If they’re honest and I show my face, it will encourage them; if they’re starting a fiddle, they’ll think again.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “Hot in here. Anything more you need to know? Good. Seven levels of mortal hell, Todich, I’ve got to wrestle that bitch Amortis into scourging the Nopidese kriorn. I’ll be on Deadfire Island for the rest of the day. If anything comes up,” he stretched, yawned, laughed, “turn it off till tomorrow. The world won’t fall apart in that short a time.”

Settsimaksimin sat in his sanctuary watching as Ahzurdan rambled through the streets of Kukurul with the woman or sometimes the children; there was a tooth-edged trace between those odd preteens and Ahzurdan that made him smile because it was so much like the hostility he’d faced now and again when he’d taken lovers from among the double-gaited, the hostility of children who refuse to share their parent; in a way it was puzzling, from what he knew of Baby Dan there wouldn’t be much between the woman and him, nothing to make the children so jealous, but jealous they were and suspicious of him. They watched him and they burned.

And they protected him, presumably because the woman told him to. On the fifth night in Kukurul, late, long after the woman had gone to sleep. Ahzurdan slipped out of the Inn and went foraging among the alleys of the waterfront. Watching him sidle through the darkness, Maksim nodded to himself. Hunting a trader in dreamdust, he thought. You don’t change, Danny Blue. Miserable little rat. He thrust his hand into his robe and under the Stone, massaged his chest. Still running away from anything that makes you look at yourself. Wonder where the children are? Did you finally manage to slip them? He continued to watch and after several more twists he noticed a gray mastiff following Ahzurdan, a purposeful shadow in shadows. Now what does that mean? He examined the beast. Ah! crystal eyes, no irids, only a swirl of half-guessed vapor. One of the children, the boy, yes, I’ve never seen demons or anything else with eyes like theirs. So. Shapeshifters. He looked around for the girl and found a nighthawk drifting above the street, swinging in slow loops that centered over Ahzurdan. A large nighthawk with glimmering crystal eyes. Clever children. Strong muscles and a good set of tearing teeth down there on the ground, a watcher overhead. You can talk to each other, can’t you. Interesting. Mmm. Ambush ahead. You up there, you have to see them. What are you going to do about it? Nothing? Ah. The mastiff edged closer until he was almost breathing on Ahzurdan’s heels and the hawk dropped lower. I see. Let Baby Dan handle it, but be ready to jump if he needs you.

The muggers attacked and were dispatched neatly by a jolt from Ahzurdan; he smoothed his tunic down and went on, ignoring the dead men. Unaware of his escort, he found a dealer, got the dust and went slipping back to the Inn. He sat holding the packet and staring unhappily at it. Then he laid it away among his robes, undressed and crawled into bed. Sooo sooo, baby Dan, I wouldn’t ‘ve believed it without seeing it. Mmrn. That worries me. I don’t want you cleaned out and feeling pert, Danny Boy, I want you coming at me scared. He rubbed long limber fingers together, yellow eyes fixed on the sleeping man. You were the best I had, little Blue, yes, and the most dangerous. I smelled it on you the minute I saw you, standing there no one daring to get close. Your face is twisting, little Blue, remembering me in your dreams? I swore I’d tame you or kill you. Came close to doing both, didn’t I. But you ran, Danny Blue. You ran so fast and so far it didn’t seem worth coming after you. Got your nerve back? Or is it the woman? Demidemon with finicky tastes, or so I hear. No respecter of man or god. Goes her own way and be damned to those who try and stop her. Amortis, Haa-Unh, she turned purple when I told her Drinker was heading this way. Drinker of Souls. God of gods, I like her, I do. You haven’t a ship yet, lady, but any day now, and I’m not much good round water, did he tell you that, the toad? Mmm. Shapeshifters. I can deal with that. The eyes are enough to pin them. Wonder what they are when they’re home? Hah hah hah, I don’t really want to know. Sooo, what have I got for you, lady… mmm, what have I got… come the dawn, what do I throw at you?

6. Waiting At Kukurul, The Inn Of Pearly Dawn.

SCENE: Early morning. That lull time, when the night life has diminished to a few weary thieves, whores and drunks wandering through dingy gray streets, when the day life that will turn those streets noisy and busy and fill them with color is confined still to bedrooms (or whatever shelters the sleepers managed to find) and kitchens and stables.

Kukurul. The world’s navel. The pivot of the four winds. The pearl of five seas. It is said that if you sit long enough at one of the outside tables of the Sidday Lir, you’ll see the whole world file past you going up the finnan Katt. Kukurul. Expensive, gaudy, secretive and corrupt. Along the Ihman Katt, brothels for every taste (in some of them children mimicking the seductive pos-tures of street whores hang from upper windows solic-iting custom); ranks of houses where assassin guilds advertise men of the knife, men of the garotte, women of the poison trade. If your tastes run to the macabre, halfway long there is a narrow black building where death rites are practiced and offered for the titillation of connoisseurs. At the end of the Ihman Katt is the heart of Kukurul, the Great Market. A paved square two miles on a side where everything is on sale but heat, sweat and stench. Where noise is so pervasive and so intense that signing is a high art. No greens or flesh or food fish, but anything else you might desire. Trained dog packs for nervous merchants or lordlings who don’t en_joy personal popularity with family or folk; rare ornamental beasts and birds; honeycomb tanks of bright colored fighting fish, other tanks of ancient carp, chameleon seahorses, snails of marvelous color and convolution. Fine cloth and rare leathers. Blown glass of every shape, color, and use, including the finest mirrors in the world (according to the claims of their vendors). Gold, silver, coppersmiths sitting among their wares. Cuttlers and swordsmiths. Jewelers with fantastic wealth displayed about them. Spice merchants. Sellers of rare orchids. Importers of just about everything the world offered. And winding through the cluttered ways, water sellers, pancake women, piemen, meatroll vendors, their shops on their backs or rolling before them. That is Kukurul on the island of Vara Smykkal.

Vara Smykkal. The outermost island of the Myk’tat Tukery. A large verdant island. Little is known of the land and people beyond the ring of mountains about the deep sheltered harbor and most visitors don’t bother asking; they spend their time in the Great Market or the cool dim trade rooms of the many Inns that sit on the hills around the Market Flat.

Myk’tat Tukery. Generally thought of as the Thousand Islands, though no one has ever counted them. The Ulterior islands are mysterious, shut away from just about everyone, rumored to be fabulously wealthy and filled with women of superlative beauty and passion, with magical creatures like unicorns and manticores and spiders with nacreous eyes weaving wedding, silks so fine they’d pass through a needle’s eye, with trees that grow rubies and emeralds and sapphires, with fountains of gold and silver and liquid diamond. But the narrow crooked waterways between the islands were infested with bandits and pirates; there were deceptive shoals and rocks that moved, there were shifting mists and freaky winds and lightning walked most nights and one green rocky island looked much like the next. Even the cleverest and greediest men seldom got far into the maze and few of these got out again. And the ones that made it back seldom had much to say about what they’d seen.

During her wandering years after the ravaging of Arth Slya, Brann took a sailing canoe deep into the Myk’tat Tukery and out again, emerging with mind and body intact and memories of some lovely places, especially an island called Jal Virri, but like the less fortunate she didn’t talk about the experience. She’d intended to go back one day; events intervened and she went in another direction. As she told Ahzurdan, she settled into clay and contentment at the Pottery beside the Wansheeri. Coming back to Kukurul roused those memories and she thought about retreating into the maze and letting the world rock on without her, but once again she was too tangled in that world to do more than daydream of peace.

Brann rose with the dawn and went to eat at the Sid-day Lir, escaping before Ahzurdan crawled out of bed and came to bend her ear again. After living, so long as a solitary, she found it difficult to control her growing irritation with the man; she was getting useful information about the training a sorceror required, his powers and their limitations, but she had to seine those items out of a flood of rambling discourse. A sleepy waiter brought her a pot of tea and a plate of mooncakes, went off to find some berries and cream.

Yaril came drifting along and settled beside her at the table. “He went out last night. Late. Bought two ounces dreamdust.”

“Smoke any?”

“No.”

Brann waited until the waiter set the bowl of berries and the cream pot before her and went away. “Hmp. Idiot man. Why now?” She poured a dollop of cream over the dark purple mound, lifted her spoon. “What do you think?”

“He’ll crumble at a look. Drop him, Bramble.”

“Hmm.” For several minutes she spooned up berries, savoring the dark sweet-tart taste and the cool fresh breeze blowing in off the water, then she wiped her mouth and frowned at Yaril. “I don’t think so. Not yet. Wait till we get to Bandrabahr, then we’ll see.”

Yaril shrugged. “You asked.”

“So I did. Yaro, ever think about Jal Virri?”

“Not much. Boring place.”

“But it was beautiful, Yaro.”

“So? Lots of places are pretty enough. I like places where things happen.”

Brann broke a mooncake in half. “Was your home like that, a place where things happen?”

“We’ve been away a long time, Bramble. Think about Arth Slya. What do you remember? The good times, eh? Same with us.”

“I see.” Like always, she thought, they won’t talk about their home world, slip slide away. Did they love it, did they hate it, what did they think? Though she thought she knew them almost as well as she knew herself, at times like this she was jarred into a feeling that they were essentially unknowable. Too many referents that just weren’t there. “Yaro…” she looked down over the warehouses and the wharves, out to the ships moored in the bay, “I’d like you and Jay to fly a sweep to the north and see if you can sight Zatikay’s ship. Ahzurdan swears he’ll be here any day now, but time’s getting short on us. Theriste first is day after tomorrow, I want to be out of here by then, we have to be in Silagamatys by the seventeenth, I want some room for maneuvering in case of snags. You know nothing ever goes exactly as it’s planned.”

“Ahzurdan’s a…”

“Don’t say it, Yaro, I’m tired of that onenote song.” She finished the berries, emptied the teabowl and tapped against it with her spoon. When the waiter came, she paid him, then began strolling up the still deserted Ihman Katt, passing the ancient streetsweepers as they brushed away the debris from last night’s business, stopping a moment to exchange a word with a M’darjin woman so old her skin had turned ashy and her hair white as crimped snow. “Ma amm, Zazi Koko, how many diamonds today?”

Zazi Koko leaned on her broom and grinned at Brann, showing teeth as strong as they’d been when she was running the grassy hills of her homeland, though a lot yellower. “More than you, Embamba zimb, more than you.”