Drinker of Souls

1. A Thief and His Sister

Aituatea shifted the bend in his legs to ease his aching hip, careful as he moved to keep the bales piled under him from squeaking, the bales of raw unwashed fleeces that were a stench in his nostrils but sheltered him from noses and teeth of the patrollers’ rathounds. He raised his head a little and stared at the curls of mist drifting across the calm black water of the bay. A wandering breeze licked at his face, tugged at his slicked-back hair, carried past his ears just enough sound to underline the silence and peace of the night. “This is a bust,” he whispered to the one who stood at his shoulder. “She won’t come.”

“The man on the mountain said…” His sister’s voice was the crackling of ice crystals shattering. “Look there.” She pointed past the huddling godons beyond the wharves, their rambling forms lit from behind by torches burning before the all-night winestalls, the joyhouses, the cookshops of the water quarter. The Wounded Moon was rising at last, a broken round of curdled milk behind the spiky roof of the Temple. She swung round an arm colorless and transparent as glass, outlined with shimmers like crystal against black velvet and pointed across the harbor. “And there,” she said. She was all over crystal, even the rags she wore. “Out beyond the Woda-an. A blind ship from Phras, dropping anchor.”

He looked instead at the Woda livingboats shrouded in the thickening mist, their humped roofs like beetle shells catching bits of moonlight. A blind ship. The Woda-an hated them, those blind ships. There were torches flaring up here and there among the boats as the Woda-an grew aware of the visitor, clanking raffles starting up, growing louder, fading, sounding and fading in another place and another as they invoked the protection of the Godalau and her companion gods against the evil breathed out by the black ship that had no eyes to let her see her way across the seas. He sneered at them with Hina scorn for the superstitions of other races. They’ll be thick as fishlice at the Temple tomorrow. Where’s that curst patrol? I want to get out of this. She won’t come, not this late. He propped his chin on his fists and watched the ship. He drowsed, the Wounded Moon creeping higher and higher behind him. The guard patrol was late. Hanging round the winestalls. Let them stay there. “Let’s get out of this,” he whispered. “That ship’s settled for the night. Won’t no one be coming ashore.” He twisted his head around so he could see his sister. She took her stubbornness into the water with her, he thought. She stood at his left shoulder as she’d stood since the night she came swimming through water and air and terror to find him while her body rocked at the bottom of the bay. The black glitters that were her eyes stayed fixed on the Phras ship as if she hadn’t heard him. “The man on the mountain said she’d come,” she said.

“Doubletongue old fox.”

She turned on him, stamping her crystal foot down beside his shoulder, her crystal hair flying out from her head. “Be quiet, fool. He could curse you out of your body and where’d I be then?”

Aituatea rubbed oily fleeces between his palms, shivered at the memories her words invoked. Old man kneeling in his garden on the mountain, digging in the dirt. Clean old man with a skimpy white beard and wisps of white hair over his ears, tending rows of beans and cabbages. Old man in a sacking robe and no shoes, not even straw sandals, and eyes that saw into the soul. Aituatea, jerked his shoulders, trying to shake off a growing fear, went quiet as he heard the faint grate of bale shifting against bale. He stared unhappily at the blind ship; whispering to himself, “It’ll be over soon, has to be over soon.” Trying to convince himself that was true, that he’d be through dealing with things that horrified him. The Kadda witch dead and Hotea at rest, which she would be now but for that bloodsucker, and me rid of her scolding and complaining and always being there, no way to get free of those curst eyes. He wanted to climb down from the bales and get off Selt for the next dozen years but he couldn’t do that. If he did that, he’d never get rid of Hotea, she’d be with him the rest of his life and after. He suppressed a groan.

Out on the water the torches scattered about the Woda-an watercity were burning low and the rattles had gone quiet. Behind him on Selt Island’s single mountain where the Temple was, rocket after rocket arced into the darkness, hissing and spitting and exploding to drive off the enemies of the Godalau and her companion gods.

Part of a counting rhyme for a fete’s fireworks:

Blue glow for the Godalau

Sea’s Lady, sky’s Queen

Red shine for the Gadajine

Storm dragons spitting fire

Yellow flash for Jah’takash

Lady ladling out surprise

Green sheen for Isayana

Birthing mistress, seed and child

Purple spray for Geidranay

Gentle giant grooming stone

Moonwhite light for Tungjii-Luck

Male and female in one form

Luck, he thought. My luck’s gone sour these past six months. Aituatea repeated to himself (with some pleasure) fool, fool, fool woman. She never thinks before she does something. Going to the Temple the day after year-turn when she knew Temueng pressgangs would be swarming over the place, sucking up Hina girls for the new year’s bondmaids. She should’ve thought first, she should’ve thought…

What happened, he said, where you been all this time?

Thanks a bunch for worrying about me, she said. He heard her as a cricket chirp in his head, an itch behind his ears. I was working the Temple court, she said, reproach in her glittering glass eyes. You were off somewhere, brother, Joyhouse or gambling with those worthless hangabouts you call your friends, and the money was gone when I looked in the housepot and there wasn’t a smell of food or tea in the place. What’d you want me to do, starve? It being the day after year-turn, I knew every Hina with spare coin and unwed daughters would be burning incense by the fistfuls. I spotted a wool merchant with a fat purse dangling from his belt and started edging up to him. I get so busy checking out running room and easing through his herd of daughters, I forget to look out for pressgangs. Hadn’t been for those giggling geese I might’ve heard them and took off. I don’t hear them and they get us all.

They take us, me and the wool merchant’s daughters, across the causeway, me hoping to be put in some little havalar’s House where I can get away easy and take a thing or two with me for my trouble, but I see we are heading all the way up the high hill to the Tekora’s Palace. I am cursing you, brother, and thinking when I get home, I am going to peel your skin off a strip at a time.

She was much calmer at this point in the story, drifting about the room, touching familiar things with urgent strokes of her immaterial fingers as if she sought reassurance from them. She hovered a moment over the teapot, smiling as she absorbed its fragrance.

I know I can get loose again easy enough, but the Tekora’s a mean bastard with girls that run away. You wouldn’t know that, would you, brother? Only women you bother about are those no-good whores in the joyhouses.

Aituatea scowled; dying hadn’t changed his sister’s habits in the least as far as he could see. Shut up about that, he said. Get on with what happened.

Branded on the face, brother, branded runaway and thief, who’d let me get close enough to lift a thing? So when the Temueng Housemaster puts me to work in the Tekora’s nursery, I am ready to act humble before those Temueng bitches when I’d rather slit their skinny throats! She grimaced in disgust. You know what they do to me? Hauling slops, picking up after those Temueng nits, not lifting a finger to help themselves, running my feet to the bone fetching things they could just as easily get for themselves.

Her chirp sounded bitter and full of rage; she was madder than he’d ever seen her, even when he turned fourteen and ran off with the housemoney to buy time with a joygirl, what was her name? He shook his head, couldn’t remember her name or what she looked like.

After a month of that, Hotea said, I am about ready to skip out even if it means I have to get off Utar-Selt, live low the rest of the year. You could take care of yourself, brother dear, though I did mean to warn you they might connect you with me if your luck went sour as mine. The nursery garden has a high wall, but there are plenty of trees backed up against that wall. On its other side is the guard walkway and a pretty steep cliff, but I am not fussing about that, I can climb as good as you, brother, and swim better, and the causeway’s near. I am thinking about going over the wall that night, or the one after, depending, when fat old Tungjii, heesh jabs me in the ass again. The Tekora’s youngest daughter disappears.

Hotea beat her fist several times on Aituatea’s shoulder, making him wince at the stinging touches. He jerked away, then clutched at his head as the sudden movement woke his hangover and started the demon in his skull pounding a maul against his temples.

Hotea laughed, the scorn in the soundless whisper raising the hairs along his spine. Fool, she said, you’ll kill yourself, you go on like this. You need a wife, that’s what, a good woman who’ll keep you in order better than I could, give you sons. You don’t want our line to die with you, do you, brother?

She shook herself, her form shivering into fragments and coming together again.

Listen, she said, you got to do something about that witch, as long as she lives I won’t rest.

She wrung her hands together, darted in agitation about the room, gradually grew calmer as the grandmother ghost patted her arm, ragged lips moving in words that were only bursts of unintelligible noise. She drifted back to hover in front of Aituatea.

The Tekora’s youngest daughter, she said, three years old and just walking, a noxious little nit who should’ve been drowned at birth. On the eve of the new moon they turn the place upside down, double the work on us. I don’t think much about it except that I’d strangle her myself if I come across her, she is wrecking my plans because she took off. Three days later they find her facedown in the nursery fountain, shriveled and bloodless like a bug sucked dry. Not drowned but dead for sure. ‘F I was scared of leaving before, well! Tekora would tear Silili brick from plank looking for me, or that’s what I’m thinking then. The other maids are as jittery as me. We are Hina in the house of the Temueng, that makes us guilty even if we do nothing, and the other bondmaids are too stupid and cowed to say boo to a butterfly. Housemaster beats us, but his heart isn’t much in it. And things go on much the same as before. On the eve of the next new moon another daughter goes and I am there to see it.

They order us bondmaids to sleep in the nursery to make sure the daughters don’t just wander off. This night is my turn. A bondmaid brings me a cup of tea. I sniff at it when she goes out. Herb tea. Anise and something else, can’t quite place it. I take the cup to the garden door and look at it but can’t see anything wrong. I sniff at it again and I start getting a touch dizzy. I throw the tea out the door and carry the cup back and put it by my pallet so it looks like I drank it. I stretch out. I’m scared to sleep but I do, up before dawn running like a slave for those bitches, I’m tired to the bone. Something wakes me. I don’t move but open my eyes a slit and keep breathing steady. A minute after that I see the Tekamin standing in the doorway, the Tekora’s new wife she is, he set her over the others and they are mad as fire about it, but what can they do? Hei-ya brother, I have to listen to a lot of bitching when I am fetching for the other wives, they don’t get a sniff of him after he brings that woman back with him from Andurya Durat. No one knows where she comes from, who her family is or her clan, even the wives are scared to ask. And there she is in that doorway, slim and dark and lovely and scaring the stiffening out of me.

She comes gliding in, touches the second youngest daughter on her face and the daughter climbs out of the bed and follows her and I know what she is then, she’s a Kadda witch, a bloodsucker.

I lay shivering on my pallet wishing I’d drunk the drugged tea, my head going round and round as I try to figure out what to do. I think of skipping out before morning and trusting I can keep hid. But I think too of the Kadda wife. I don’t want her sniffing after me; I have a feeling she can smell me out no matter where I hide. Well, brother, I raise a fuss in the morning, what else can I do? And you better believe I don’t say one thing about the Tekamin. The other daughters howl and scream and stamp their skinny feet and the old wives they go round pulling bondmaid’s hair and, throwing fits. When the Housemaster beats me again, it is just for the look of the thing, and for himself, I suppose. He is scared himself and happy to have my back to take it out on.

I keep my head down the next month, you can believe that. I try a couple times to sneak out of the handmaid’s dorm, but the damn girls aren’t sleeping sound enough and keep waking up when I move. Anyway I’m not trying too hard, not yet. The Kadda wife isn’t bothering me-except sometimes she looks at me^-like she is wondering if I was really asleep that other time. I’m thinking maybe I can last out the year and get away clean and all the fetching and carrying and cleaning up don’t bother me near so much. Then the Wounded Moon starts dribbling away faster and faster till it is the eve of the new moon again and curiosity is eating at me till I can’t stand it. You told me more than once, brother, my nose would be the death of me.

Hotea giggled and the other ghosts laughed with her, a silent cacophany of titters, giggles and guffaws. Aituatea sat slumped in his chair, waiting morosely for them to stop. He wasn’t amused by a situation that meant either he had to go after a bloodsucking witch or face having an overbearing older sister at his elbow for the rest of his life.

Another girl is sleeping in the nursery this night, the Gndalau be praised for that, but I decide to sneak in there and watch what happens. I tell myself the more I know, the easier I can get away without the witch catching me. Well, it’s an argument.

Like it happens sometimes when old Tungjii gets together with Jah’takash and they wait for you to put your foot in soft shit up to your ears, everything is easy for me that night. The other bondmaids go to sleep early. Snoring. I’ve half a mind to join them, but I don’t. I make myself get out of bed. Moving about helps some, clears the fog out of my head. I sneak down to the nursery, jumping at every shadow and there are lots of those, the wind has got in the halls and is bumping the lamps about, but that is just the sort of thing you expect in big houses at night, so instead of scaring me more, it almost makes me feel like I’m at home, prowling a house with Eldest Uncle.

In the nursery the nits are sleeping heavy. The bond-maid is stretched on a pallet, snoring. She doesn’t so much as twitch when I step over her and duck under the bed of one of the dead daughters. It is close to the door into the garden and I figure if anything goes wrong I can get out that way. The door is open a crack, wedged, to let the air in and clear out the strong smell of anise. I lie there chewing my lip, thinking things will happen soon.

Sounds of wind and fountain whoop through the room; I almost can’t hear the bondmaid snoring. There is a lot of dust under the bed; no one checks there and we don’t do more than we have to, but I am sorry about that now because some of that dust gets into my nose, makes it itch like I don’t know. After a while I start getting pains jumping from my neck to between my shoulders. I stand it some minutes more, then I have to stretch and wiggle if I want to be able to walk without falling on my face. I am just about ready to crawl back to my bed, muttering curses on Tungjii and Jah’takash, when I hear a kind of humming. I stop moving, hoping the wind noise had covered the sounds I was making. I can’t tell you what the humming was like, I’ve never heard anything like it. My eyelids keep flopping down; I am fighting suddenly to k6ep awake; then more dust gets in my nose; I almost sneeze, but don’t. One good thing, the itch releases me from the witch’s spell. I ease myself toward the end of the bed and crick my neck around so I can see the door. I am hidden by the knotted fringe on the edge of the coverlet and feel pretty safe. The Kadda wife is standing in the door.

The humming stops.

The Tekora moves out of the shadows to stand beside his wife. I stop breathing. He looks hungry. I feel like throwing up.

The Kadda wife looks around the room. I get the feeling she can see me. I close my eyes and pretend I’m a frog hopped in from the garden. Even with my eyes closed I can feel her looking at me; I’m sure she’s going to call me out from under the bed; I’m thinking it’s time to scoot out the door and over the wall. But nothing happens and I can’t resist sneaking another look.

The Kadda wife smiles up at the Tekora and takes her hand off his ann. It’s like she’s taken the bridle off him. He walks to his daughter’s bed. He looks down at the little girl, then over his shoulder at the witch. She nods. He bends over and whispers something I couldn’t make out that hurts my ears anyway. The girl gets up, follows him out of the room. His own daughter!

Hotea’s voice failed as indignation shook her. Her form wavered and threatened to tatter, but she steadied herself, closed her hand tight about her brother’s arm. He winced but didn’t pull away this time.

The witch looks around the room one more time then leaves too. I stay where I am, flat out under the bed. I am thinking hard, you better believe. No wonder the Tekora is neglecting his other wives. I see he is looking younger. His skin is softer and moister, he is plumper, moving more like a young man. I see that’s how she is buying him, then I think, he’s running out of daughters, he’s going to start on the bondmaids too soon for me. And I think, what odds the Kadda wife doesn’t make me the first one to go? None of us Hinas are going to finish out this bond year. I wait under the bed for a long time, afraid she’s going to come back and sniff me out, but nothing happens. I creep out from under the bed when I hear the first sleepy twitters of the warblers in the willows outside the door, a warning that dawn is close. If I have to spend the rest of my life exiled, I am going down that cliff. Now.

No more this and that and the other. Out. Away. Far away as I can get, fast as I can get there. The last daughter is still sleeping, so is the bondmaid, but she is going to wake soon and start screeching the minute she sees the third daughter is gone. I kick the wedge away and whip out the door into the garden.

The Kadda wife is waiting in the garden for me. I get maybe two steps before she grabs me. I try to jerk loose, but her cold hands are hard and strong as iron chains, and they drain my strength away somehow. It is as if she sucks it out of me. I am scared witless. I think she is going to drink me dry right there. She doesn’t, she pushes me back into the nursery and across it into the hallway. I go without making a sound, I can’t make a sound though I try screaming; something is pulling strings on my legs as if I were a puppet in a holy play. No, an unholy play.

She takes me high up in the palace to a small room under the roof, shoves me inside and a minute later there is this pain in the back of my head.

When I wake, it’s dark again-or still dark, I don’t know which. I am hanging on an iron frame like a bed stripped and set on end, my wrists and ankles are tied to the corner with ropes. There is a gag in my mouth, probably because of the open window high in the wall on my right, and a strong smell of anise, I am getting very tired of anise. The mix smells stale, as if it had been floating round the room a long time and that scares me all over again, more than if it’d been fresh. They hadn’t eaten the daughter yet; looks like I’m going to take her place this month. My wrists and ankles are burning, my mouth is like leather, my head feels like someone kicked it.

After a short panic, I start fiddling with the ropes and go a little crazy with relief when I find I know more about knots than whoever tied me. I get myself loose and start looking for some way out.

There is no latch on the inside of the door, just a hole for a latchstring or maybe a pin key. Nothing in the room I can use on it. I push the frame over to the window and climb up to look out, I climb carefully, the frame creaking as if it will collapse if I breathe too hard. I get halfway out the window and look down. There is nothing_, much between me and the water except a lot of straight up-and-down cliff and the surf is white wrinkles about black rocks. Way way down. The wind is blowing against my face, cold and damp, but it feels good.

Fingers touch my ankle. I know it’s her. I kick free before she can drain away my strength again. Somehow I keep myself from falling as I wiggle out the window, so scared all I know is that I have to get away fast. I hear cursing behind me and the squeal of metal as the frame collapses under her. I stand in the window and look down at the waves crashing against the rocks. No joy there. I look up. The endhorns of the eaves are close, but not close enough so I can reach them. Behind me I hear curses and other noises as she drags something to the window. She’s coming for me. I take a chance and jump. My hands slap around a horn and I am hanging free. I start pulling myself up. Fingers close about my ankles. I kick hard, harder, but can’t get loose. My hands slip.

So here I am. And here I stay till the Kadda witch is dead, down in the water with me, dead, you hear me, brother, you hear?

Aituatea winced as he felt a nip in his left shoulder.

“Look.” Her crystal arm sketched in touches of moonlight. Hotea jabbed her finger at the Phras ship.

The ship’s dark bulk was suddenly alive with lanthorns shining red and gold behind horn sides, dozens of them lighting up the deck and the swirl of dark forms moving over it. He could hear snatches of speech too broken for understanding, the blast of a horn as one of the figures leaned over the rail to call a water taxi from the Woda-an. The hornblower had to repeat the signal several times before the slide of a red lanthorn marked the passage of a taxi from the watercity to the blind ship.

A slim, energetic figure swung over the rail and went down the netting with skill and grace. Aituatea swallowed the sourness in his throat. A woman. By outline alone, even at this distance, a woman. The Drinker of Souls. He cursed under his breath. The weight of centuries of custom, of his sister’s shame and fury, of his own battered self-respect, all this pressed down on him, shoving him toward the thing that twisted his gut. He pressed his hand over his mouth, stifling an exclamation as two more forms balanced a moment on the rail then followed the woman down, small forms, children or dwarves or something. The old man on the mountain hadn’t said anything about companions. He glanced up at Hotea. She was staring hungrily at the woman, bent forward a little, her hands closed into fists, her form shivering with a terrible urgency. The strength of that need he hadn’t understood before, despite all those scolds, all those bitter accusations of cowardice and shame repeated so often he ceased to listen; he squirmed uncomfortably on the fleece.

The taxi came swiftly toward the wharf, the stern sweep worked by a young Woda girl, the lanthorn on the bow waking coppery highlights on sweaty skin the color of burnt honey. Her short black hair held off her face by a strip of red cloth knotted about her temples, she swayed back and forth in a kind of dance with the massive oar, her muscles flowing smoothly, her face blank and blandly animal, as if she lived for that moment wholly in the body. Aituatea stared at her, his tongue moving along dry lips, a tension in his groin reminding him how long it’d been since he’d had a woman. A stinking Woda bitch. He ground his teeth together and went on watching her. Frog ugly. In his Hina eyes she was a dirty beast, beastly with her strong coarse features, her broad shoulders, her short crooked legs-but she roused him until he was close to groaning. Six months since he’d been to a joyhouse, he’d tried it once after his sister fell in the bay but he couldn’t do anything there. Hotea’s ghost followed him everywhere as if a string tied her to his left shoulder; he tried to drive her off for a little bit, but she wouldn’t go; he thought maybe he could ignore her long enough to get his relief, but when he was with the girl he could feel Hotea’s eyes on him, those damn judging angry eyes, and he shriveled to nothing and had to pay the woman double so she wouldn’t spread talk about him.

The taxi bumped against the wharf. The strange woman laughed at something one of the children said, a rippling happy sound that jarred against his expectations. Drinker of Souls conjured dour and deflating images. The children’s giggles echoed hers, then she was up the ladder and swinging onto the wharf. The children followed. In the moonlight they looked like twins, pale little creatures dancing about the woman, flinging rapid bursts of their liquid speech at her, receiving her terse replies with more laughter. After a last exchange that left the woman grinning, the twins capered away, disappearing into the maze of boxes and bales piled temporarily on the wharf, waiting for the Godalau fete to pass before they were tucked away into the godons. Aituatea heard the children chattering together, then the high rapid voices faded off down a grimy alley. The woman turned to look across the water at the Phras ship where the lanthorns were going out as it settled back to sleep, then she gazed along the curve of Selt toward the many-terraced mountain of Utar. He saw her follow the line of torches burning along the causeway, the lampions that marked the course of the looping roadway, her head tilting slowly until she went quiet, stood with a finger stroking slowly and repeated alongside her mouth, contemplating the topmost torches, those that burned on the gate towers of the Tekora’s Palace.

She had long straight hair that gleamed in the strengthening moonlight like brushed pewter, the front parts trimmed to a point, the back clasped loosely at the nape of her neck. She was taller than most Hina, wider in the shoulders and hips though otherwise slim and supple. Her skin was very pale; in the moonlight it looked like porcelain. She wore loose trousers of some dark color stuffed into short black boots, a white, full-sleeved shirt with a wide collar that lay open about her neck. Over this was a sleeveless leather coat; when a gust of wind flipped it back for a moment, he raised his brows, seeing two throwing knives sheathed inside. She wasn’t Phras or any of the many other sorts of foreigners that passed through the port of Silili, but he wasn’t too surprised at that, seeing what she was.

Behind him he heard the stomp and clatter of the godon guards and the whining of their rathounds. He took a chance and watched the woman to see what she would do.

Poking long spears into crevices to drive out drunks or sleepers, sounding their clappers to scare away ghosts and demons, whooping to keep up their courage, the godon guards came winding along the wharves.

The woman stirred slightly. Touch-me-not spun out from her like strands of mist, real mist spun up out of the water until she was a vertical dimness in a cocoon of white. Aituatea watched, uneasily fascinated, until the guards got close, then dropped his face into the fleece and waited.

As soon as the patrol had clattered past, he looked up again.

The cocoon out by the water unraveled with a speed that startled Aituatea, then his stomach was knotting on itself as she came sauntering toward him, as unstoppable and self-contained as the wind. What’s she doing here? Why’d she come to Silili? He hadn’t thought about it before, but now he saw her… What’s waiting for her here? Old man, you didn’t tell us nothing except she was the one who could face the witch. What else didn’t you tell us? What else do you know? Crazy old fox, said nothing worth salt.

The old man settled onto his haunches, his dirt-crusted hands dropping onto his thighs. Eyes the color of rotted leaves touched on Aituatea, shifted to Hotea and ended looking past them both at the woolly clouds sliding across the early morning sky.

Hotea drove her elbow into Aituatea’s ribs. He lurched forward a step, bowed and held out the lacquer box filled with the rarest tea he could steal.

Ah, the old man said; he got stiffly to his feet, took the box from Aituatea. Come, he said. He led them into the single room of his small dwelling. It was painfully clean and quite bare except for a roll of rough bedding in one corner and a crude table with a chair facing the door and a bench cobbled from pine limbs opposite. He went to some shelves, mere boards resting on wooden pegs driven into the wall, set the box beside a jumble of scrolls and a brush pot, shuffled back to the chair. Sit, he said.

Aituatea glanced over his shoulder. Morning light cool as water, filled with dancing motes, poured through the door and flooded across the table, picking up every wrinkle, wart, and hair on the old man’s still face. Thought he was uneasy with emptiness at his back, Aituatea slid onto the bench and sat plucking nervously at the cloth folds over the knee of his short leg. He wanted to shut the door but he was afraid to touch anything in the but and afraid too of shutting himself in with the old man. He twitched but didn’t look around when he felt the cold bite of Hotea’s hand on his shoulder. His eyes flicked to the serene face across from him, flicked away, came slowly back. The old man looked harmless and not too bright but there were many stories about him and brash youths who thought they could force his secrets from him. Some said it was always the same old man, Temueng to the Temuengs and Hina to the Hinas, or whatever he chose to be.

The but was filled with a faded tang of cedar and herbs; the breeze wandering in from outside brought with it the sharp aromas of pine and mountain oak, the dark damp smells of the earth, the lighter brighter scents of stone dust and wild orchids. It was warm and peaceful there, the tranquility underlined by the whisper of the breeze, the intermittent humming of unseen insects. In spite of himself, Aituatea began to relax. Hotea pinched him. Stubbornly he said nothing. This visit was her idea, something she came up with when she couldn’t drive him into action with bitter words or shame. If she wanted help from the old man, let her do the talking.

The sunlight sparked off her outflung arm. I’m drowned by a Kadda witch, she burst out. Her voice made no impression on the drowsing sounds of the small room, but the old man looked at her, hearing her. I want her dead, she cried, in the water with me. Dead.

The old man blinked, pale brown eyes opening and closing with slow deliberation. With his shaggy brown robe, the tufts of white hair over his ears, his round face and slow-blinking eyes, he looked to Aituatea rather like a large horned owl. The tip of a pale pinkish-brown tongue brushed across his colorless lips. All things die in their time, he said.

Hotea made a small spitting sound. Aituatea looked at his hands, feeling a mean satisfaction. This wasn’t what she’d come to hear, platitudes she could read in any book of aphorisms. Not that woman, she said, her voice crackling with impatience. Not while there’s young blood to feed her.

Even her, he said.

I want her dead, old man, she said. I want to see her dead. Hotea’s hands fluttered with small, quickly aborted movements as if she sought to uncover with them some argument to persuade him to interfere against his inclination. Look, she said, Temueng children have died. Do you think Hina won’t pay for those deaths? Ten for one they will. We’re guilty, old man, whether we do anything or not. They can do no wrong, they’re the conquerors, aren’t they? Besides, leave the witch alone, how long before she eats everyone on Utar-Selt? Hotea went still a moment, then her voice was a thread of no-sound softer than usual in Aituatea’s head. Teach us, old man, she said, teach us how we can front and kill a Kadda witch.

The old man stared at her a dozen heartbeats, then turned those pitiless eyes on Aituatea. They swelled larger and larger until they were all he could see. He began to feel like weeping softly and sadly as they searched his soul, as they spaded up fear and waste and the little niggling meannesses he’d done to his friends and to his sister, and all the ugly things he’d buried deep and refused to remember. As he stared into the old man’s eyes, he was finally forced to see that he would never do anything about the Kadda witch without someone to take the brunt of the witch’s attack, that he would keep putting it off and putting it off, growing more wretched as the years passed, as Hotea grew more caustic.

The old man leaned back, his worn face filled with pain as if he had absorbed from Aituatea all that self-disgust and fear. He slumped, his body shrinking in on itself, his eyes glazing over. Kadda witch, he murmured, blood drinker, knows no will but her own, evil, recognizing no right beyond her own needs. I see… there’s a counter… I see… He flinched, drew further into himself. Powerful, he said, another power comes… an ancient enemy… His eyes moved in a slow sweeping arc, but he was seeing nothing in the hut. Aituatea felt his stomach knot.

One comes, the old man said, husky voice reduced to a whisper. A woman… something between her and the witch… like the witch… no, not the same… drinker of life, not blood… not evil, not good… Drinker of Souls, she comes the eve of the Godalau fete. Set her on the track, let her sniff out the witch, buy her with Das’n vuor, and point her at the witch. She comes with the rising of the Wounded Moon, will leave before the rising of the sun. The Drinker of Souls, come back to Silili after years and years… a hundred years… ah! her purposes mesh with yours, angry ghost. He muttered some more, but the words were unintelligible, intermixed with sudden chuckles. It was as if he had to wind back down into his customary taciturnity and something amusing he saw was retarding this return.

Aituatea sat frozen, sick. Three months’ respite, then he had to face the witch or face himself. He glared at the old man, silently cursing him for setting the limit so close.

The old man lifted his head, looked irritably at him. That’s it, he seemed to say, you got what you came for, now get out of here!

Shadow spread out from him, dark and terrible, killing the light, the warmth. Aituatea scrambled back, knocking over the bench; the smell of cedar choking him, he ran from the hut.

Another nip in his shoulder. Hotea getting impatient. “Go after her. Stop her,” she shrilled. “Don’t lose her, fool. You won’t find her again, you know it. And we’ve only got till sunup.”

Muttering under his breath Aituatea swung down from the bales and limped after the woman. His hip hurt but he was used to that and almost forgot the pain as he hurried past the godons and stepped into the Street of the Watermen. She was making no effort to hurry-it was almost as if she wanted to be followed, had set herself out as bait, trolling for anything stupid or hungry enough to bite. He kept back as far as he could without losing sight of her. The peculiar lurch of his walk was too eye-catching, even in the leaping uncertain light from the torches burning in front of businesses still open, casting shadows that lurched and twisted as awkwardly as he did. She circled without fuss about the knots of gambling watermen and porters crouched over piles of bronzes and coppers, tossing the bones into lines chalked on the flagging. She slowed now and then, head cocked to listen to flute and cittern music coming in melancholy brightness from the joyhouses, ignored insults flung down at her from idling women hanging out second-story windows, walked more briskly past shops shuttered for the night-a herbalist, a shaman’s den, a fishmonger, a geengrocer, a diviner, and others much like these. Some cookshops were closed for the night, others were still open with men standing about dipping noodles and pickled beans and pickled cabbage from clay bowls or crunching down fried pilchards. He watched her careless stroll and felt confirmed in his idea she was bait in her own trap. Maybe she’s hungry, he told himself and shivered at the thought. He dropped back farther, his feet dragging. For no reason he wondered suddenly where the children were. Now and then it seemed to him he heard them calling to each other or to the woman, but he was never sure and she never responded to the calls.

“Where’s she going?” he muttered and got Hotea’s elbow in his ribs for an answer. That she was heading the way he wanted her to go, uphill and vaguely north, made him nervous; it was just too convenient; as Hotea said, it happens sometimes that everything goes easy for a while but old Tungjii’s getting together with Jah’takash and they’re waiting for you to put your foot in it. But he kept limping after her, eaten by curiosity and buoyed up by nervous excitement.

She sauntered past a lighted cookshop. The owner-cook was leaning on the counter, pots steaming behind him, tossing the bones with a single customer. The two men stopped what they were doing to stare after her, then went back to their game, talking in low tones, discussing the woman probably. A shadow drifted from behind the cookshop a moment later. A clumsy shift and Aituatea saw a part of the shadow’s face, the hulk of his body, then the follower was in the dark again. Djarko. He snorted with disgust. Took the bait like a baby. He limped after them, careful not to be seen. Djarko’s equally cretinous cousin Djamboa had to be somewhere about, they hunted as a team. He spotted the second shadow and smiled grimly. Better them than me. The Godalau grant they satisfy her so she’ll be ready to listen before she jumps me.

The woman turned into one of the small side lanes that wound through close-packed tenements of the poorer players, artisans and laborers. Djarko and Djamboa turned after her, almost running in their eagerness. Aituatea followed more warily, trying to ignore the nips in his shoulder as Hotea urged him to catch up and defend the woman from those louts. Defend her? Godalau defend me. He slowed his uneven gait until he was slipping through shadow near as much a ghost as his sister was, avoiding the refuse piles and their uncertain footing, gliding over sleepers huddling against walls for the meager shelter they offered from the creeping fog. He edged up to blind turns, listening for several heartbeats before he moved around them. Apart from the sodden sleepers the lane stayed empty and quiet. Inside those tall narrow houses leaning against each other so they wouldn’t fall down, Hina had been asleep for hours. Most of those living here would have to rise with the sun to get in half a day’s work before they left for the feteday, the players and nightpeople were gone for now, though they’d be coming home at dawn to catch a few hours’ sleep before working the streets to ease coppers from the purses of the swarming revelers.

Hotea pinched his shoulder. “Look,” she said. “There.”

“Huh?”

“On the ground there.” Hotea pointed at a filthy alley between two of the tenements. Aituatea squinted but saw nothing; choking over the lump rising in his throat, he crept into the alley.

He kicked against something. A body. He dropped to one knee and twisted the head around so he could see the face. Djarko. He pressed his fingers against the meaty neck under the angle of the jaw. Very dead. A little farther up the alley he could see another long lump of refuse. He didn’t bother checking, only one thing it could be. Both dead. So fast. Not a squeak out of them. Big men. Stupid but strong. Dangerous. Not even a groan. He got creakily to his feet and shuffled back from the body, step by step, lurch and swing, soles grating against the hard-packed dirt. Hotea touched his arm. He exploded out a curse, swung round and would have fled but for the dark figure standing in his way.

“Why follow me?” She had a deep voice for a woman, danger in it he could hear as surely as he heard the pounding of his heart.

He swallowed. His mouth was too dry for speech. Hotea jigged at his shoulder, almost breaking up in her impatience. She dug her fingers into him, spat a gust of words at him so fast it hurt his head. He jerked away from her and flattened himself on the rutted dirt in front of the woman’s boots.

She made a soft irritated sound. “Stand up, Hina, I won’t talk to the back of your head.” The sharpness in her voice warned him her patience had narrow limits.

He scrambled to his feet. “Drinker of Souls,” he said. “Will you listen to me?”

She shook her hair out of her face, that silver-gray hair that caught the moonlight in slanting shimmers as she moved her head. “Brann,” she said. “Not that other. I don’t like it. It isn’t true anyway.”

Aituatea glanced over his shoulder at the blob of dead flesh, turned back to the woman, saying nothing, letting the act speak for him.

She shrugged. “I didn’t tell them to come after me.”

“Fish to bait,” he said and was surprised at his daring.

“I’m not responsible for all the stupidity in the world.” She rubbed a finger past the corner of her mouth, frowning a little as she looked from him to Hotea standing a step behind him. “You were on the wharf watching me.”

“You saw me?”

“Not me.” She snapped her fingers.

A soft whirr overhead, then two large horned owls swooped past him, low enough he could smell the fog-dampness on their feathers. They beat up again to perch on the eaves of a house across the street, blinking yellow eyes fixed on him. He knew, then, what had happened to the children. He straightened out of his defensive crouch, keeping his eyes on the woman’s face so he wouldn’t have to look at the owls. “The man on the mountain said you would come ashore tonight.”

“Ah. Then he’s still there?”

“Someone is.”

“You want something.”

“Yes. I want you to do something for Hotea and me. I’ve got something the old man says you want; I’ll give it to you if you’ll do a thing for us.”

“What thing?”

Aituatea fidgeted, slanting a quick glance at the owls. One of them hooted softly at him. “Not here. Not safe.” He dropped onto a knee, bowed his head. “Honor my home, saхri Brann. There will be tea once the water boils.”

“Tea?” A raised brow, a warm chuckle. “Well, if there’s tea. I’ve an hour or so to kill.” She smoothed her hand over her hair. “And who’s waiting for me in your home?”

“A few ghosts, that’s all. Do you mind?”

“Ghosts I don’t mind.”

He nodded and started back down the lane,, walking slowly and trying to minimize his lurch, the woman walking easily beside him. “They’re family in a way,” he said. She made him nervous and he spoke to fill the silence. The owls whirred past, gliding low then circling up until they were lost in the fog.

“Family?”

“All my blood kin except Hotea died in the plague. Ten years ago.” He turned into a side street heading more directly north. “They’re company, those ghosts, though they’re not actual kin. They go when their time’s up, but there are always more drowned and killed and suicided to take their places.”

“They won’t like me.” A corner of her mouth twisted up. “The dead never do.”

“They’re ready for you. I told them I was going to bring you if I could.”

“Old man been busy about my business?”

“Hotea and me, we went to see him about our problem.”

“This mysterious problem. Mmmh, I thought no one would be left to remember me.”

“We asked him for help.”

“And I’m it?”

“That’s what he said.”

They walked in silence past the crumbling houses, Hotea drifting beside him. The tenements degenerated into crowded hovels built of whatever debris their dwellers could find or steal. In the distance a baby wailed, two men were shouting, their words hushed and unintelligible, a woman shrieked once and no more, but the street they were on was sodden with silence. “There’s a story about where we’re going,” Aituatea said. “A score of years ago there was this silk merchant. Djallasoa. He built himself a godon up ahead not far from the Woda-an Well. He sold Eternity Robes. Know what those are? No? Well, you find yourself some young girls without a blemish on their bodies to weave the silk, then get enough strong and healthy pregnant women to embroider the robes so the force of the new life will be transferred to them. A thousand gold pieces is cheap for the simplest. Hundred-year robes, that’s what old Djasoa’s robes were called. Even the Temueng Emperor bought from him. Talk was you never even caught a cold wearing one of his robes.” The fog wrapped the three of them in a dreamlike world where the ragged huts on either side of the lane faded in and out with the shifting of the mist. “Djallasoa’s eldest son was a bit of a fool, so the story goes, kicked a Woda Shaman or something like that. Old Dja tried to smooth things over. Didn’t work. The Woda Shaman came ashore, built a fire in front of the godon and slit the throats of Dja’s wife and seven children, then his own. After that there were nine angry ghosts infesting the place. No Hina priest of any sort could drive them off, not even those belonging to the Judges of the dead. The gods refused to get involved…” The lane ended. He circled a thornbush and began picking his way through the scrub along an unmarked path so familiar he paid little attention to where he was putting his feet. “And the other Woda Shamans sat out there on the water enjoying the fuss and refusing to interfere. All the Eternity Robes Djallasoa had stowed in that godon, no one would chance buying them, not with a woda curse on them.”

The wasteland they were passing through was a mixture of thornbush, bamboo, scattered willow thickets and a few stunted oaks. With the fog obscuring detail an arm’s length away, the silence broken only by the drip of condensation from limbs and leaves, the crackling of dead branches and weeds underfoot, it was like walking through one of the Elder Laksodea’s spiky ink paintings come alive in a dream. Aituatea had a fondness for Laksodea and had several of his paintings, souvenirs of successful nights.

“Why are you telling me all this?”

He turned to stare at her, startled by the acerbity of her words.

“Have we much farther to go? I have better things to do with this night than spend it wandering through drip and scrub.”

He pointed at the thinning growth ahead. “To where this stops, then a bit farther.” He rubbed at the side of his neck. “Your pardon, saхr, and your patience, if you will, but no one knows where Hotea and I live. It’s safer that way. And I merely thought to help pass the time with the story. If you don’t want to hear more…”

“Oh, finish it and let’s get on.”

He bowed, started walking again. “Guards wouldn’t stay around the godon at night. The silks inside were safe enough, not even Eldest Uncle wanted to face those ghosts and he was the wildest thief in Silili. Finally old Djasoa and the rest of the clan fetched a gaggle of exorcists and deader priests waving incense sticks, hammering gongs, popping crackers, making so much noise and stink they drowned out the ghosts for long enough to haul out the silk. The Eternity Robes they burned in a great fire by the Woda Well, the rest they took away to sell to foreigners who’d haul them out of Tigarezun, the farther the better. And the godon was left to rot. Old Djasoa wanted to burn it, but the other merchants raised a howl, it was an extra dry summer and they were afraid the fire’d get away from him, so he didn’t burn it. So there it sat empty till the plague. You know about the plague?”

“You said ten years ago?” She shook her head, pushed aside a branch about to slap her in the face. “I was half a world away.”

He stepped onto the crescent of land picked clean of vegetation. “We turn east here. It was bad. The plague, I mean. The Temuengs ran like rats, but they made sure no Hina got off Utar-Selt. Ships out in the bay rammed anyone who tried to leave and they put up barricades on the causeway.” He pointed out a low broad mass, its details lost in the darkness and the fog. “The Woda Well. This is Woda land. No one else comes here now. When there was sickness in a house, the authorities burned it. Temuengs sent orders in and Hina ass-lickers did the work. So when our family started getting sick and oldest grandmother died and Hotea knew it wouldn’t be long before someone came with fire, she sneaked me out and brought me to that old godon, figuring the ghosts wouldn’t get sick, being already dead, and would keep snoops away. They were getting ragged, those Woda ghosts, already been around longer than most earth souls, it’d been what? ten years, more, but they made life hard for a few nights. We couldn’t sleep for the howling, the blasts of fear, the cold winds that blew out of nowhere, the stinks, the pinches and tickles, but nothing they could do was worse than what was happening outside. We’re almost there, you can just about see the godon now. Hotea had to go out and leave me alone a lot so she could scare up food and clothes for us. With nothing to do, shut up in that place, I started playing with the child ghosts even if they were Woda-an and after a while we made our peace with the adults, and by the time the Woda-an ghosts wore out, others moved in with us. No one likes ghosts hanging around, it’s a scandal and a disgrace. If they can affird it, they have the exorcists in to chase the ghost away, a loose ghost about the house makes gossip like you wouldn’t believe. So there are usually a lot of homeless ghosts drifting about. They hear about us and come to live in the godon.” He heard a scrabbling behind him, swung around. Two mastiffs came trotting from the fog and stopped in front of him, mouths open in twin fierce grins, eerie crystal eyes laughing at him. With a shudder he couldn’t quite suppress, he forced himself to turn his back on them and start walking toward the small door in the back wall, but he couldn’t forget they were there; he could hear the pad-scrape of their paws, imagined a rhythmic panting, convinced himself he could feel the heat of their breath on the backs of his legs.

He shoved the door open and went inside. There was a narrow space between the guardwall and the godon itself, space filled with clutter slowly rotting back into the earth, bits of bone, boxes, rope, paper, silk scraps, fish bones, scraps of canvas, old leaves. The godon itself was a hollow square with red brick walls and a roof of glazed black tiles shiny with wet. Drops of condensation dripped from fungus-blackened endhorns, plopped desultorily into the decay below. Aituatea dealt with the puzzle lock on a small side door, held it open for Brann and the mastiffs, followed them inside.

At the end of a cold musty passage, moonlight was a pearly flood lighting the open court beyond, playing on mist that had crept inside or been sucked in by the breathing of the old godon. Brann stood silhouetted against it a moment as Aituatea pulled the door shut and barred it, but was gone by the time he turned around. When he reached the end of the passage, he saw her standing in the center of the court looking up, the moonlight dropping like watered milk on her pale porcelain face. The ghosts were diving down at her, bits and fragments of mist themselves, flicking through her and dashing away. She stood quite still, letting this happen as if it were a ritual that bored her but one she was willing to endure for the calm she expected afterward. The mastiffs were chasing each other and any rats they could scare up in and out of the swirls of fog, in and out of the dank caverns of the ground floor bins. They came and sniffed at his knees, then flipped around and went to circle Brann.

“Second floor to your left,” Aituatea said and started for the stairs. The mastiffs trotted past him and went thumping up the stairs, dog mastiff, bitch mastiff paw matching paw on the soggy slippery wood.

Aituatea went a short way along the second floor gallery, unbarred a door and swung it open. The room inside was dark, warm, odorous-cedar and sandalwood, lacquer and spices, smoldering peat and hot metal from the covered brazier. He bowed, spread his arms. “Enter my miserable rooms, saхri Brann.” He swung around and went into the dark, turning back the shutters on the window opening on the court, lighting the lamps scattered about on wall and table. He dipped water from the covered crock, set the kettle on the coals, blew them alive, came back to his guest.

Brann was settled in a low armchair, one leg tucked up under her, the other stretched out before her, her hands resting on her thighs. Her hair was darker in the rosy lamplight, more gray than silver, her eyes were a clear light green like willow leaves in early spring. The mastiffs were children again, sitting crosslegged at her feet, staring with the owl-eyed directness of real children. They had ash-blond hair, one a shade darker than the other, bowl-bobbed, fine, very straight. As he’d thought before, they looked like twins, so asexual in these forms that it disturbed him to remember one of the mastiffs had definitely been a bitch.

“My companions,” she said. “Jaril.” She leaned forward and touched the head on her right. “Yaril.” She stroked her hand lightly over the paler head on her left. “This is a nice little nest. T’kk, friend Hina, it’s more than enough to hang you.” Her eyes moved over the scrolls on the walls, the jewel rugs on the floor, the other fine things visible in the lampglow.

“I’ll be dead anyway if the Temuengs get this far.”

She tapped fingers on her thigh. “It’s rather crowded in here.” He dropped into the chair by the brazier and sat watching her. She saw them all, that was obvious. Moonfisher drifting in rags near the ceiling, used to be a powerful fishcaller, brought in heavy boatloads until a storm caught him and drowned him in sight of land. Eldest Grandmother crouching by the door, a tattered patchy ghost, she’d fade out soon, poisoned by a daughter-in-law who was tired of being run off her feet. Elder brother sitting in front of the window, strangled by a Sister of the Cord when he blundered into a forbidden ritual. Little brother, drowned, hovering behind the chair, peeking out at the shape-changers. The headless woman no one knew about, the gambler, the dancers, the several whores, the little sister, even the crabby old Temueng who sat in gloomy silence in the corner. Though Eldest Grandmother started muttering angrily beside the door, glaring at Brann, who ignored her after a flicker of, a smile in her direction, the others came drifting around her, circling gradually nearer. One by one they darted to her, stroked her, tasting her through their fingers. As if the taste pleased them, they quieted, grew content, the frazzled edges smoothed away.

Aituatea checked the pot but the water wasn’t close to boiling, then he sat staring down at his hands, reluctant, now the time was on him, to speak the words that would commit him to the attack on the Kadda witch. The ghosts gathered around him, his family, patting him, murmuring to him, giving what strength and support they could. Why not get it over with. “I don’t know why you came to Sill.”

“No.” She smiled, drew her thumb along her lower lip. “You don’t.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter. There’s a Kadda witch in the Tekora’s Palace. His wife.”

“Then the man’s a fool.”

“I won’t argue with that. Anyway, she’s the one responsible for Hotea’s drowning. We want you to help us get rid of her.

“The Tekora’s Palace.” She laughed, a warm savoring sound. And he remembered the way she looked at the gate torches. He got to his feet and crossed to the back of the long room, going behind the screen that shut off the corner where his bed was. The dark red lacquer box sat where he’d left it among the hills and hollows of the crumpled quilts. He looked at the unmade bed and wondered if he’d ever get back, bit his lip, lifted the box and carried it to Brann. He set it on the low table by the arm of her chair, then backed away. He glanced at the brazier but saw no steam and resettled himself in his chair. “The old man said that would buy you.”

She lifted the box, set it on her legs. After eyeing it warily a moment, she lifted the lid. Her indrawn breath was a small whispery sound. “Das’n vuor.” She lifted the black pot from its nest of fine white silk and ran her fingers over it. A strange tense look on her face, she turned it over and passed her fingers across the bottom. “His mark,” she whispered. “The last firing.” She, set the pot back and lifted one of the cups, sat cradling it in both hands. “That you found this one… this one! I remember… Slya bless, oh I remember… I held this cup in my hand after my father took it from the kiln. I went up Tincreal with my father, we carried the last cups to their firing; we stayed there all day and all night and the next day till just after noonsong. The first three he took from the kiln he broke, they weren’t good enough, this was the fourth, he set it in my hand and I knew what perfection was, for the first time I knew what perfection was…” She shook her head as if to clear away fumes of memory.

“Old man said it would buy you.” He repeated those words, knowing he was being crude, perhaps angering her, but he was shocked at seeing her unravel. He wanted her to be powerful, unshaken by anything, as she was when he first saw her. Otherwise how could she stand against the witch?

“Old man, he’s right, damn his twisty soul.” She eased the cup into its nest and folded the lid shut. “You’ve bought me, Hina. I’ll fight the witch for the pot and for more reasons than you’ll ever know. Mmm, tell you one thing. Would have done it without the pot.” She grinned at him, her hand protectively on the lid. “Don’t try to take it hack, I’ll bite. Seriously, I’m a sentimental bitch when I let myself be, Hina, and I’ve been watching you and your sister. You could have worked yourself free of her easily enough, a little thought and gathering the coin for an exorcism, who would ever know? My companions tell me you didn’t even think of exorcism. I like that. Well, that’s enough, what are you planning?”

“Can you climb?” Hotea pinched him. “So we hear from you again,” he grumbled. With a spitting crackle of indignation she pointed at the steam shooting from under the kettle’s lid.

“I was born on the side of a mountain that makes the hills round here look like gnat bites,” Brann said and laughed.

“Good.” He chose a teapot he thought of as his garden pot, the one with bamboo and orchids delicately painted round the five flat sides. As he rinsed the pot, he glanced at her. Her head was against the back of the chair, her eyes half closed, her hands relaxed on the chair arms. He measured out two scoops of black tea, added hot water, took the pot to the narrow table by the screen, set out the shallow dishes for the ghosts.

“Why are you doing that?” Her voice came to him, lazy, relaxed. When he looked at her, she seemed half asleep.

“For the family,” he said. A wave of his hand took in the hovering ghosts clustering over the bowls lapping up the fragrance. He came back to the table, filled two cups, frowned at the children. “Do they want tea?”

She shook her head. “No.” She took the cup he handed her, sniffed at the coiling steam. “Mmmm.” Green eyes laughing at him, she said, “Steal only the best.”

“Right.” He dropped into his chair, gulped a mouthful of the tea. “Old man said you and the witch are ancient enemies.”

“Oh?” Her eyes narrowed. “Do you know her name?”

“No.”

“Yes.” Hotea darted forward. “Yes. The other wives, they cursed her by name and worse. It’s an odd name, can’t tell clan or family from it. Ludila Dondi.”

“Ah. The Dondi.”

“You do know her.”

“We met. Briefly. A long time ago. Not love at first sight.” She rolled the five-sided cup between her palms. “She was just a fingerling then, but nasty.” She emptied the cup, set it carefully on the table. “Talk, young Hina. I’m due back on the ship by dawn and I’ve other games to play.” She set the box on the table, leaned forward, her eyes bright with curiosity and anticipation. “I’m listening.”

The willows tilted out over the water, their withes dissolving into mist. The boat was a miniature of the flat-bottomed water taxis with barely room for two and a ghost but the children had shifted form again and gone whiffling away as owls. Brann seated herself in the bow, settled the box at her feet on dry floorboards. Aituatea fumbled at the sodden rope, finally working the knot loose; his hands were shaking, but excitement outweighed his fear. With Hotea floating at his side, he shoved the boat into deeper water and swung in. A few minutes later he was propelling them through mist with nothing visible around them but the grayed-down wavelets of dark water kissing the boat’s sides.

After half an hour’s hard rowing, he’d rounded Utar’s snout and was struggling south along the cliffs, the rougher chop on the weather side of the small island making the going hard. The fog was patchy, shredding in the night wind. Finally, Hotea pinched his arm and pointed. “There,” she said. “The nursery garden is up there.”

“’Bout time.” With Brann fending the bow off the rocks, he eased the boat through the tumbled black boulders to the beach.

While Brann held the boat, he tied the painter to a knob on one of the larger rocks, then pulled a heavy cover over it, canvas painted with rough splotches of gray and black that would mask the boat shape from anyone chancing to look down. As he waded beside Brann to the tiny beach, the owls swooped down, hooted, a note of urgency in their cries, and swept up again. A moment later, voices, the stomp of feet, the sounds of a body of armed men moving came dropping down the cliff. Brann dodged into a hollow that hid her from above. Aituatea joined her there, all too aware of the heat of her body through the thin silk of her shirt, the strong life in her more frightening than arousing.

“How long before they come round again?” she whispered.

“When Hotea was in the Palace, the round took about an hour, no reason to change that. Plenty of time to get up the cliff.”

The cliff was deeply weathered, but most of the hand and footholds were treacherous, the stone apt to crumble. In spite of that, Aituatea went up with reckless speed, showing off his skill. He wasn’t a cripple on a cliff. He reached the top ahead of Brann, stood wiping the muck off his hands and examining the garden wall as she pulled herself onto the guard track.

The wall was twice his height, the stones polished and set in what had once been a seamless whole, but a century of salt wind and salt damp had eaten away at the cracks, opening small crevices for the fingers and toes of a clever climber. He kicked off his sandals, shoved them in a pocket of his jacket, looked at Brann, then started up. As soon as he reached the broad top, he crawled along it until he was masked from the nursery door and windows by the bushy foliage.

Brann came up with more difficulty, needing a hand to help her over; again he felt the burning as his hand closed about hers. She smiled at his uneasiness, then sat on the wall and pulled on her boots.

The owls circled overhead, dipped into the garden, flowing into mastiff form as they touched ground. The dogs trotted briskly about nosing into shadow until they were satisfied the garden was empty, then they came silently back and waited for Brann to come down, which she did, slithering down the foliage with ease and grace. Aituatea climbed down as well, dropped the last bit to land harder than he’d expected, limped toward the doors, Hotea a wisp fluttering beside him. Though she was silent now, he could feel her agitation. This was where the witch had caught her. “Sister,” he whispered, “scout for us.”

Hotea slipped through the wall, emerged a few minutes later. “Empty,” she cried. “No children, no wives, no bondmaids. All gone. Not one left.” Her crystal form trembled. “The bottom of the bay must be solid with bones.”

“Just as well.” He took a long slim knife from a sheath inside his jacket, slid it through the space between the doors, wiggled it until he felt it slip the latch loose and the door swing inward. Brann touched his arm, a jolt like a shock-eel. Swallowing a yelp, he looked around.

“Let Yaril and Jaril run ahead.”

He nodded. The mastiffs brushed past him and trotted inside, their nails making busy clicks on the polished wood floor. Brann glanced about the garden, moved inside, silent as the ghost she followed. Aituatea pulled the door shut behind him and limped after them.

The air in the maze of corridors was stale and stinking, a soup of rottenness, thick with the anise Hotea had learned to hate mingled with other spices. Those corridors crawled with shadow and dust rolls that tumbled along the grass mats, driven by vagrant drafts that were the only things wandering the palace. Most of the rooms were empty; there were a few sleepers, some court parasites, men and women drugged by ambition and stronger opiates, refusing to know what was happening about them. Aituatea moved through this death-in-life, his fear and reluctance banished by the demands of the moment; there was no turning back and a kind of peace in that.

Up one flight of stairs to the public rooms. The eerie emptiness was the same, the same death smell, the same staleness in air that was paradoxically never still. They went swiftly through this silence to the stairs leading up to the rooms the Tekora kept for himself.

The mastiffs sat on their haunches beside Brann, stubby tails thumping against the mat. Hotea flitted back to them. “Guards, she said. “Standing on either side of the Tekora’s sleeproom door.”

Brann touched the corner of her mouth. “They alert?”

“Not very,” Hotea said, “but awake.”

“Mm. Means he’s inside. But is the witch with him?”

“I’ll see.” Before Brann or Aituatea could stop her, Hotea flitted back up the stairs.

“T’kk, young Hina. Pray the Dondi is sleeping or not there, otherwise your sister could bring the roof down on us.”

“She won’t think before she does.”

“And you think too much, eh?”

Aituatea ignored that as he gazed up the stairs, anxious about Hotea.

Seconds later she was back, a streak of subdued light plunging down the slant, a waterfall of woman ghost, halting before them in a swirl of crystal fragments that rapidly reassembled themselves into Hotea-shape. “They’re in bed, both of them. Asleep, I think, I only poked my head in for a second. They ate someone tonight, the smell of it is sickening thick in there.”

“Asleep. Good. Let them stay that way.” She led them around beneath the stairs so the sound of their whispers would not carry to the guards. She settled herself with her back to the wall, waited until Aituatea was down beside her, squatting, fingers rubbing at his sore hip, preferring the pain to the thoughts in his head; it was almost a sufficient distraction. “Bit of luck,” Brann murmured, “finding them asleep and sated.” A quick wry smile. “Not so good for whoever they ate, but we can’t change that. I am very glad indeed that the Dondi’s asleep. Even so, be warned, she limits me. I don’t want to stir up resonances that would wake her too soon.” When Aituatea indicated he didn’t understand, she sighed but didn’t try to explain. “First thing is taking out the guards.” She flipped back the edge of her leather vest, showed him the twin blades sheathed inside. “I can pick them off, but I can’t be sure of silencing them, takes time to bleed to death. Any ideas?”

Aituatea nodded, reached inside his jacket, felt a moment among the pockets sewn into the lining, took out a section of nested bamboo tubes. “Carry this for tight holes. Haven’t had to use the darts yet, but I can hit a hand at twenty paces. Sister, where are they? what armor?”

Hotea knelt beside him. “About a dozen paces from the landing, my paces, not yours,” She held out her arms, wrists pressed together, hands spread at an angle. “That’s the shooting angle you’ll have from the nearest shelter. They’re not looking toward the stairway, didn’t the whole time I was watching them, though that wasn’t very long.” She shifted restlessly. “It’s a tight shot, brother, even you’ll have trouble. They’re trussed in studded leather and iron straps and wearing helmets.” She framed her face with her hands, her brow and chin covered. “That’s all you got.”

“Hands?”

“I forgot. Gloves.”

“Tungjii’s tits, they don’t make it easy.” He pulled the tubes out until he had a pipe about a foot long. He looked over his shoulder at the dogs; they were on their feet, crystal eyes bright and interested, tongues lolling. He breathed a curse, brought out a small lacquer box, held it in the hand that held the pipe. “Them. If I miss, can they take out the guards?”

Without answering, Brann pushed onto her feet and went around to the foot of the stairs. The mastiffs sniffed at Aituatea’s legs as he stood beside her, then went padding up the stairs as quiet as cats slow and flowing so their nails wouldn’t click on the wood. Near the bend in the flight they misted out of shape and reformed into long brindle snakes that flowed silent and nearly invisible up to the landing.

Aituatea followed them up the steps, narrowing himself to the need of the moment. On the top step he knelt and eased around the corner, concealed in the shadow not lit by the lamp suspended above the sundoor, picking out gleams in the many layered black lacquer and the gilt sun-shape inlaid in both halves of the double door. He popped one of his poison thorns in the pipe, careful not to touch the gummy tip, got a second dart from the box and set it on the floor by his knee. Ache in his hip forgotten, chill in his belly forgotten, he focused on the expanse of cheek and sent the dart winging with a hard puff. As soon as it was on its way, he reloaded the pipe and sent the second at the other guard.

One then the other slapped at his face, eyes popping, gave a small strangled gasp and started to crumple. Aituatea was on his feet and running as soon as he saw the first man waver, knowing he wouldn’t get there in time to catch both.

The shape changers flowed up from the floor by the guards’ feet, children again, caught the collapsing men and eased them down quietly. Aituatea touched his brow and lips in a gesture of congratulation. They grinned and bobbed their pale shining heads.

He stepped over a recumbent guard and eyed the double door, brushed his hand along the center line, felt the door yield a little to the pressure. “Sister,” he breathed, “what sort of latch?”

Hotea oozed partway through the door, then pulled back out. “Turnbolt. You’ll have to cut the tongue.”

He scowled at the gilt sun. “And hope the noise doesn’t wake them. Some hope.”

Brann touched his shoulder. He jumped. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

She ignored that as foolishness. “Be ready,” she whispered. “Yaril will throw the bolt for us, but her presence in the room will wake the witch.”

The fairer child changed into mist and flowed under the door. A second later he heard a muted tunk as the bolt tongue withdrew, then a wild, piercing yell.

Brann leaped at the door, hit the crack with the heel of one hand, slamming the doors open. She charged in to stand in front of Yaril who crouched on the rug, eyes steady on the witch.

Ludila Dondi arose from the bed, her face ugly with rage, her naked body yellowed ivory in the dim light, like a tiger in her ferocity and the vigorous agility of her leap. When she saw Brann, she checked her lunge along the bed, so suddenly she was thrown off balance. “You.” She slid off the bed and came toward Brann, feral yellow eyes fixed on her, ignoring the others.

Jaril took Yaril’s hands. After a brief, silent consultation they rose as spheres of amber fire, lighting the room with a fierce gold glow.

The Tekora kicked loose from the quilts and rolled off the bed, standing naked as the witch but not so readily awake and alert. Aituatea watched him with a burning in his belly. No old man any longer, the Temueng was firm, fit, supple, a man in his prime, a vigor bought with the blood of his own children, a hideous vigor that had cost Hotea her life.

The Tekora eyed the two women, reached up and with a soft metallic sibilation drew from its sheath the long sword hanging above the head of the bed. He swung it twice about his head, limbering his arm. A glance at Aituatea, a head shake dismissing the Hina as negligible. He started for the woman.

The Dondi and Brann were moving in an irregular double spiral, gradually working closer to each other, each focused so intently on the other no one else existed for them.

Hotea fluttered about them, turning in wider loops, silent but radiating fury.

The fire spheres vibrated more rapidly, then one of them darted straight at the Tekora’s face. He lifted his free hand to brush it aside, yelled as his flesh began to blister, swung round and swiped at the sphere with the sword, slicing through it but doing no damage. It settled to the floor in front of him, a mastiff as soon as it touched down. The dog came at the man, growling deep in her throat. Bitch mastiff. Yaril. Aituatea snapped the knife from the sheath up his sleeve, sent it wheeling at the Tekora.

It sliced into the large artery in his neck. There should have been an explosion of blood and a dead man falling.

Should have been. The Tekora plucked the knife out easily and flung it away. The wound in his neck closed over. He lifted the sword and started for Aituatea.

Aituatea looked rapidly around, caught up a small stool and hurled it at the Temueng, it caught his elbow, his fingers opened involuntarily and the sword went flying to land in the tumbled covers on the bed. The Yaril mastiff went for his throat but he got his arm up in time and the curving yellow teeth closed on that instead of his neck; Yaril began gnawing at the arm, kicking at his gut with her powerful hind legs.

Aituatea backed off. Ludila Dondi was chanting as she circled, a drone of ancient words with a compelling complex rhythm. When the doors flew open and he saw her coming up out of the bed, he thought she was completely naked, but now he saw the mirrors on the silver chain about her neck, the tinier mirrors dangling from her earlobes, others set in wristlets on each arm. She moved her body, her arms, her head in counterpoint to the rhythm of the words, dancing the glitters in a web about herself, trying to weave a web about Brann.

Brann stalked her, avoiding the wild yellow eyes, avoiding the mirror lights, gradually tightening the spiral.

Firesphere Jaril darted at the Dondi, shattering the rhythm of her lights and each time he dived, Brann got a little closer.

The Tekora flung off the mastiff, his torn flesh closing. He threw himself at the bed, came curling up with the sword, rolled onto his feet again. With a grunting roar he charged at Brann.

The mastiff Yaril was suddenly a long snake that whipped itself up and around the Tekora’s legs, wrenching him off his feet, dissolving before he could cut at it with the sword he still held.

Firesphere Jaril came an instant too close to the witch, touching one of the mirrors; the sphere tumbled through the air, melting through a dozen shapes before it was a boy curled in fetal position on, the rug. His fall distracted the Dondi for a second only, but it was enough. Brann’s hands slapped about the Dondi’s ribs; she hugged the smaller woman tight against her, caught her mouth, held her mouth to mouth, muffling the witch’s shriek of rage and despair.

As Yaril melted, Aituatea was on the Tekora, the foot of his good leg jammed between arm and shoulder, hands in a nerve hold on the Temueng’s wrist. The Tekora writhed and struggled but couldn’t break the hold. Aituatea dug his knuckles in. The Tekora’s fingers opened. Aituatea caught the sword as it fell, leaped back, took the Temueng’s head off as he surged up, the sword answering his will like an extension of his arm. He swung it up, whirled it about, grinning, suppressing an urge to whoop; but all too fast his elation chilled. The Tekora’s headless body stirred, hands groping as it got clumsily to its knees. Something bumped against his foot. The Tekora’s head, mouth working, teeth gnashing as it tried to sink them in his flesh. He kicked the head away, wanting to vomit. A hand brushed against him, tried to grab hold of him. He sliced through the body’s knees, kicked the severed legs in separate directions. The body fell, lay still a moment, then the stumps began moving. They found no purchase on the silken rug until the torso raised itself onto its elbows and pulled itself toward him. He cut off the arms at the elbow, groaned as the hands started creeping toward him. He kicked them away but they started crawling for him again.

The kiss went on and on, the witch withering in Brann’s arms-but withering slowly, too slowly, there was too much life in her. Yaril landed beside Jaril, changed. She reached toward the boy, fire snapped between them, then Jaril was up looking around. A look, a nod, then they joined hands and two firespheres darted into the air. They threw themselves at the Soul-Drinker, merged with her until her flesh shimmered with golden fire and the three of them finished drawing the life out of the Dondi.

Brann dropped the woman’s husk, the fire flowed out of her and divided into two children, sated and a bit sleepy. She stared down at the thing crumpled at her feet and shuddered.

Aituatea kicked away a creeping hand, walked over and stared down at what was left of the Kadda witch. An ancient mummy, leathery skin tight over dry bones. “Never seen anyone deader.”

Hotea came from the shadows. “Put her in the water; she has to go in the water.” She rushed to the nearest window and tried to pull the drapes aside, but her hands passed through the soft dark velvet. She shrieked with frustration and darted back at them. “In the water,” she cried, enraged.

Brann nodded. “This one’s too strong to he careless of, let the water rot her and the tides carry her bones away. Open the window for me, or would you rather carry that?” She waved a hand at the husk.

“Gahh, no.” He stepped over a wriggling leg, a crawling hand, circled the silently mouthing head, pulled the drapes aside and opened the shutters.

Wind boomed into the room, cold and full of sea-tang, blowing out the lamp, stirring the silken quilts, almost snatching the shutters from him. It caught at the shorter hair by Brann’s ears, teased it out from her face, bits of blue-white fire crackling off the ends. She wrinkled her nose, brushed impatiently at her hair, her hand lost among the snapping lights. “Hold your head on,” she muttered at Hotea who was chattering again and jigging about her. She lifted the husk, grunting with the effort, carried it to the window and eased it through. Hotea at his shoulder, Aituatea stood beside her and watched the husk plummeting toward wind-whipped water as Hotea had half a year ago, watched it sink.

Hotea gave a little sigh of satisfaction, tapped her brother on the cheek. “A wife,” she said. “Mind me now, get you a wife, brother.” Another sigh and she was gone.

Aituatea rubbed at his shoulder. Rid of her. He stared out the window seeing nothing. He’d cursed her silently and aloud since she’d come back dead. And he’d cursed her alive and resented her. She’d taught him most of what he knew, stung him into forgetting his short leg, scolded him, comforted him, kept him going when times were bad. Always there. And now he was rid of her. Alone.

“Hina.” He heard the word but it didn’t seem important. “Hina!” Sharper voice, a demand for his attention.

“What?” He turned his head, searching vaguely for the speaker.

“That sword. The one you’ve got the death grip on. May I see it?”

He looked down. He was leaning on the long sword, the point sunk into the rug, into the floor beneath. He had to tug it free before he could lift it. He gazed at it, remembering the aliveness of it in his hands, shook his head, not understanding much of anything at that moment, and offered it to her.

She looked down at her hands. They glowed softly in the room’s shadowy twilight. “No. Better not. Lay it on the bed for me.” She hesitated a moment. “Hina, let me touch you.”

“Why?” Apprehensive, still holding the sword, he backed away from her.

“Slya’s breath, man, you think I want more of this in me? Got too much now. Listen, you’re tired, sore, we’ve still got to get out of this and down the cliff. I can give as well as take. You’ll feel like you’ve been chewing awsengatsa weed for a few hours, that’s all. All you have to do is take my hand.” She held out a hand, palm up, waited.

He looked at her; she seemed impatient. His hip was a gnawing pain, he’d used himself hard this night, his shoulders and arms ached, he had toothmarks on one foot and cold knots in his stomach. “The weed, huh?”

“With no hangover.”

“I could use a look at Jah’takash’s better side.” He tossed the sword on the bed, closed his hand about hers.

A feeling like warm water flowing into his body, gentle, soothing, heating away his aches and pains, washing away his weariness. Only a breath or two, then she was pulling free. He didn’t want to let go, but was afraid to cling to her. He opened his eyes. “I owe the Lady of Surprises a fistful of incense.” He looked from the sword-a long glimmer on the silk of the quilt-to the sheath on the wall above the bed. “That’s what you came to Silili for, isn’t it.” He climbed on the bed, pulled the sheath down and slid the sword into it, jumped back onto the floor.

“Right. The Serpent’s Tooth, Sulinjoa’s last sword, the one he forged for what’s-his-name, your last Hina king. It always cuts the hand that owns it, so the story goes. His wife, she was supposed to be a demon of some sort, she cursed the sword when he quenched it the last time in the blood of their youngest son.” She took the sword from him, no hesitation now, pulled it from the sheath, clucked at the bloodstains along the blade, used the edge of the drape to wipe it clean, moving the velvet cloth gently over it, then held the blade up to the moonlight, clucked again at the marks the blood had left. “Have to work on this once I’m back on the ship.” She slid the blade with slow care into the sheath. “Your king took off Sulinjoa’s head with it so he’d never make a finer sword for someone else. The Temueng who made himself emperor, he used it on the king and gave it away to a supporter he didn’t much like.” She chuckled. “That one didn’t last long either.”

“Who’d want it with that history?” Aituatea eyed the sword with revulsion, then remembered how it’d felt in his hand. He shook his head.

“The man who’s going to pay me five thousand gold for it.” She looked down, grimaced and kicked away the hand that had brushed against her foot. “No friend of mine which is just as well, looks like the curse is still going strong.”

Aituatea grunted and went hunting for his knife, unwilling to leave any piece of himself in this place. When bright light suddenly bloomed about him, he glanced up. A firesphere floated above him. “Thanks.” he muttered. He found the knife leaning against the side of a cabinet, wiped it on the rug and tucked it away. The light vanished.

Brann was leaning out the window when he straightened. She drew back inside. “Dawn’s close. We better get out of here.”

Giggles flitted by Aituatea. From a shimmering point above the bed, finger-long gold bars, silver bars, rings and bracelets cascaded in a heap on the silk.

“Yours,” Brann said. “Courtesy of Yaril and Jaril. They thought you ought to have some compensation for your latest loss.”

An owl was suddenly in the room, hovering over the bed, a plump leather sack clutched in its talons. Its hoots like eldrich laughter, it sailed through the window and disappeared into the night. A second owl with a second pouch appeared, flew after the first.

Aituatea passed a hand across his face, disconcerted. In the events of the past moments, he’d forgotten the sense of dislocation that had chilled him when Hotea vanished. Now he resented both things, being reminded of that loss and having his feelings read so easily. But this was no time for indulging in resentments or grief. He shucked a case off one of the pillows, raked the gold and gems into it, tied the ends in a loop he could thrust his arm through, leaving both hands free. “Back the way we came?”

“Unless you know how to get past the causeway guards.” she tucked the sword under her arm and started for the door. “You can take me out to the ship if you will. She’s due to lift anchor with the dawn.”

THE FOG WAS blowing out to sea, the wind changing from salt to green, the smell of day and land and coming storm on it. As Aituatea worked the boat toward the willow grove, he saw the sky flush faintly red behind the Temple roof. More than one kind of storm coming, he thought. When someone steels himself to look into that room and finds the Tekora in still wiggling pieces. Hei-yo, Godalau grant they blame the Kadda wife for it since she won’t be around. No way to tie me to it, not now, not with Hotea all the way gone. He tied the boat up, splashed through the shallow water to the shore. In the distance he could hear drums and rattles, the Woda-an celebrating the departure of the blind ship. Drinker of Souls, you’re not a bad sort, but I hope I never see you again. Tungjii bless you, though. Never thought I’d miss Hotea like this. Aching with loneliness, he pushed through the dangling withes and trudged up the slope toward the abandoned godon.

In the warm and scented room, he sat with the brazier providing the only light, a bowl of wine in one hand, a stone jar of wine on the table beside his feet. He’d put his dirty bare feet on the table deliberately, meaning to provoke Eldest Grandmother into scolding him. The sounds she made in his head were no longer words but they were comfortably familiar. He sipped at the wine, thinking about Brann, wondering who the fool was who sent her after that cursed sword. He thought about Hotea. She’s right, I should find me a wife. Someone who could stand to live here, definitely someone who knows how to keep her mouth shut. He stretched out in the chair until he was almost lying flat, crossed his ankles and balanced the wine bowl on his stomach. Not till the storm’s blown out. Both storms. He took a mouthful of wine, let it trickle its warmth down his throat, smiled sleepily at the ghosts that were gathering about him. He thought he could see some new faces among them but was too lazy to ask. It’s over, he thought. Really over. Me. Aituatea. I killed the Temueng Tekora. Sort of killed him. He grinned.

“Let me go off a little while and look what happens. Drunk. Disgustingly drunk.”

He jerked up, spilling the wine, looked wildly about. “Hotea?”

Her crystal form was hovering over the brazier, picking up red light from the coals. “You got another sister I don’t know about?”

“I thought you were gone to rest.”

“Not a chance, brother, not till I get you safely wed to the right woman.” She gathered in several female ghosts and led them to surround him. “Listen, Kellavoe’s youngest. Word is her hands are almost as good as mine, can strip the eyelashes off a dozing dragon. Living with her uncle these days since the Temuengs hanged her father and you know old Kezolavoe, meaner than a boar in rut, but she doesn’t complain. Good girl. Loyal to her kin. Be doing the child a favor, getting her away from him…”

“Ohh-eh, slow down, I’ll take a look at the girl, but after the storm, if you don’t mind, sister.” He got to his feet, went to set out the dishes for the ghosts. “Why don’t we all celebrate? Sniff some wine and help me tell the tale of the raid on the Tekora’s palace.” He began filling the dishes with wine, feeling his body and spirit relax into a familiar irritated contentment. Plenty of time, good friends and a growing family. He looked about, counted shapes and set out another of the shallow bowls. Definitely new faces in the mix, some Hina, some Temueng and a Woda-an. He stepped back, lifted his bowl. “To family ties,” he said. “Old and new.”

The ghosts sighed, bathed in the wine’s fragrance and exuded a contentment to match his own.

2. Brann’s Quest-The Flight from Arth Siva

BRANN SITS AWAKE. Bleeding into memory, all the sounds about her, water sounds, muted shouts from deck and masts, ship sounds, board and rope talking to the dawn, wind sounds, sighs and long wails. She sits at a small table, dawn’s light creeping in, painting images across her body. The mix of sound and smell reinforces the quiet melancholy that awakened her and drew her out of bed and to the chair, her hair falling about her face, the das’n vuor pot held between her hands. Black deeps on a base as thin and singing as fine porcelain, the true das’n vuor from the fireheart of Tincreal.

She breathed on the pot, rubbed at the surface with a soft rag. Whoever had you took good care of you. Well why not? You’re a treasure, my pot, ancient though you are. Almost as old as me. A hundred years, more. Doesn’t feel like it’s been that long. The years have flown, oh how they’ve disappeared. She put the rag down and held the pot tilted so she could look down into the black of it, seeing images, the faces of father, brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles, aunts, of her mother suckling long dead Ruan; saw herself, a thin energetic girl with mouse-colored braids leaking wisps of fine hair. A long time ago. So long she had trouble remembering that Brann. She drew a finger across the black mirror, leaving a faint film of oil behind. Is the road to Arth Slya open again? Are the Croaldhine holding the tri-year fair in Grannsha? I’d like to see it again. Jupelang-I think he’s the one-said you can’t step in the same river twice. Even so, I’d like to see the valley again no matter the changes or the hurt. No place for me there, but I’d like to walk the slopes of Tincreal again and remember that young Brann.

She smiled with quiet pleasure at Chandro shipmaster when he rolled over half-awake. More memory. Sammang, my old friend, you gave me a weakness for sailing men I’ve never regretted. Blinking, Chandro laced his fingers behind his head and grinned at her, his teeth gleaming through a tangle of black, the elaborate corkscrews he twisted into his beard at every portcall raveled into a wild bramble bush. He yawned, savoring these last few minutes in the warm sheets smelling of both of them, a musky heated odor that mixed with memory to make a powerful aphrodisiac. She started to put the pot down and go to him, but the mate chose that moment to thump on the door.

Chuckling, Chandro rolled out of bed, stood stretching and groaning with pleasure as he worked sleep out of his big supple body. He patted at his beard, looked at her with sly amusement. “Save it for later, Bramble love, won’t hurt for keeping.”

She snorted, picked up the rag to clean her fingerprints off the pot.

When he was dressed, his beard combed, he came over to her and looked down at the gathered blackness in her hands. “Das’n vuor. I could get you a thousand gold for that.” She snorted again and he laughed. “I know, you wouldn’t part with it for ten thousand.” He brushed her hair aside, kissed the nape of her neck and went out, whistling a saucy tune that brought a reluctant fond grin to her lips.

Quietly content, she burnished the pot.

In the black mirror her woman’s face framed in white silk hair blurs, elongates into a skinny coltish girl with untidy mouse-colored braids and grubby hands that look too big for her arms. She sits in a grassy glade among tall cedars, a sketch pad on her knee, jotting down impressions of a herd of small furry coynos playing in the grass…

ON THE DAY of Arth Slya’s destruction, Tincreal burped.

Brann leaned over and flattened both hands on the grass beside her, feeling the rhythmic jolts of the hard red dirt, relishing the wildness of the mountain. She tossed her drawing pad aside, gabbed for a low-hanging limbtip and pulled herself to her feet, her eyes opening wide as she felt the uneasy trembling of the tree. Around her the cedars were groaning and shuddering as the earth continued to shift beneath them, and birds spiraling into air stiller for once than the earth, a mounting, thickening cloud, red, black, blue, mottled browns, flashes of white, chevinks and dippers, moonfishers, redbirds and mojays, corvins, tarhees, streaks and sparrins, spiraling up and up, filling the air with their fear. She gripped the cedar twigs and needles, starting to be afraid herself as the groaning shift of the earth went on and on, shivering. After an eternity it seemed, the mountain grew quiet again, the rockfalls stopped, the shudderings calmed, and Slya went back to her restless sleep.

She opened her hand, looked at the sharp-smelling sticky resin smeared across her palm and fingers, grimaced, ran across the grass to the creekbank and her sunning rock, a flat boulder jutting into the water. She stood in the middle of it watching the otters peel out of their shaking pile and begin grooming their ruffled fur, watching the birds settle back into the treetops leaving the sky empty except for a few fleecy clouds about the broad snow-covered peak of Tincreal. This was the first time she’d been alone on the mountain during one of the quakes that were coming with increasing frequency these warm spring days. A warning of bother to come, the Yongala said, pack what you’ll need if we have to run from her wrath; and Eldest Uncle Eornis told stories of his great-grandfather’s time when Slya woke before. With an uneasy giggle, she clapped her hands, began the Yongala’s dance on the rock, singing the sleep song to the mountain and the mountain’s heart, Arth Slya, Slya’s Ground, to Slya who protected, who warmed the springs and kept the Valley comfortable in winter, to Slya who made fire for her father’s kilns, to Slya the Sleeping Lady, powerful protector and dangerous companion. “Slya wakes,” she sang…

Slya wakes

Mountain quakes

Air thickens

Stone quickens

Ash breath

Bringing death

Slya, sleep sleep, Slya

Yongala dances dreams for you Slya turns

Stone burns

Red rivers riot around us

Day drops dark around us Beasts fly

Men fear

Forests fry

Sleep, Slya Slya, sleep

Yongala dances dreams for you

At once exhilarated and afraid, singing to celebrate and to propitiate, Brann danced her own fears away, then went hunting soapweed to wash the blackened cedar resin off her hands.

Go back, start again at the day’s beginning, the last morning Arth Slya was whole.

On that last morning that seemed much like any other morning, Brann came into the kitchen after brealcfast and her morning chores were done. Gingy-next-to-baby stood on a stool by the washtub, soapweed lather bubbling up around his arms, scrubbing at pots and plates. He looked round, snapped a glob of lather at her. “You,” he said. “Hunk”

“It’s your turn, mouse, I did ‘em yestereve.” She wiped the lather off her arm, went over to ruffle his short brown curls, giggled as he shuddered all over and whinnyed like a little pony, then went to the food locker. “Shara.”

“Mmm?” Her younger sister sat at the breakfast table tending a smallish plant, nipping off bits of it, stirring the dirt about its roots. She was only nine but her Choice was clear to her and everyone else; she was already, though unof^ficially, apprenticed to Uncle Sabah the fanner and spent most of her days with him now, working in the fields, silent, sunburned and utterly content. She set the pot down, looked around, her green eyes half hidden by heavy lids that made her look sleepy when she was most alert. “What?”

“Did Mama order more, bread from Uncle Djimis? No?” She held up the hard end of an old loaf “Well, this is all we got left. And I’m taking it.” She put the bread in her satchel; it was stale but Uncle Djimis’s bread had a goodness that stayed with it to the last crumb. She added a chunk of cheese and two apples, slipped the satchel’s straps over her shoulder and danced out, her long braids bouncing on her shoulders. “Be good, younguns,” she warbled and kicked the door shut on their indignant replies, went running through the quiet house to the back porch where her mother sat in her webbing hammock swinging gently back and forth as she nursed baby Ruan, humming a tuneless, wordless song.

“I’m off,” Brann told her mother. “Anything special you want?”

Accyra reached out and closed a hand about Brann’s fingers, squeezed them gently. “Take care, Bramble-allthorns, the Mountain’s uncertain these days.” She closed her eyes, keeping hold of Brann’s hand, hummed some more, smiled and looked up. “Coynos, as many different views as you have time for, some of your other four-foots, I’m thinking of a tapestry celebrating the Mountain.” She lifted a brow. “And be back to help with supper.”

Brann nodded, then clicked her tongue. “I forgot. I was going to tell Shara to order some more bread, I’ve got the last in here.” She patted the satchel. “Shall I stop in at Uncle Djimis’s on my way out?”

Her mother lifted heavy eyelids and sighed. “Ill never remember it without Cairn here to remind me. What do we need?”

“Well, a couple loaves of regular bread. And some honey-nut rolls for breakfast tomorrow? Hmmmm? Please?”

Her mother chuckled. “All right, a dozen honey-nut rolls; tell Shara to fetch them before you leave.”

“Thanks, Mum.” She started toward the door.

“Be just a little careful, whirlwind, don’t let the Mountain fall on you.”

“Won’t.” She dashed back through the house, stuck her head into the kitchen, “Shara, Mama says you should fetch the bread and stuff,” went charging on through the house singing, “Won’t, won’t, won’t let the Mountain fall on me, won’t won’t won’t,” but went more sedately down the white sand road, waving to uncles and aunts and cousins by courtesy and blood who passed her walking along to the workshops that lined the river.

Uncle Migel was at his forge, a pile of work already finished; it was his day to turn out all the finicky little bits the Valley needed: nails and rivets, arrow points, fishhooks, scissor blades, screws and bolts and suchlike. His apprentices were scurrying about like ants out of a spilled nest, the two elder journeymen wreathed in clouds of steam. “Eh-Bramble,” he boomed, “bring your old uncle a drink.”

She tossed her braids impatiently at the delay, but Valley rules definitely dictated courtesy to adults. She lifted the lid off the coolcrock her father’s apprentice Immer had made and brought Migel a dripping dipperful.

He gulped down most of it and emptied the rest over his thinning black hair. “Made your Choice, yet, Bram? Time’s getting short”

She nodded.

He pulled a braid, grinned at her. “Not talking, eh?” He laughed when she looked stubborn, his breathy allover laughter, then sobered. “On the mountain, are you? Good. Venstrey there-” he jerked his head at one of the journeymen-The wants a sleeping otter for the hilt of a knife he’s working on, stretched out straight, mind you, one curled up nose to tail would make an odd sort of hilt.”

She nodded, hung the dipper he gave her by the thong in its tail and went on down the road.

AS SHE CAME ka-lumping down uncle Djimis’s steps, her mother’s apprentice Marran rounded a corner of the house with a pair of hot sweet rolls. “Eh-Bram, catch.” He looped one of them at her.

She stretched up to catch the roll-and nearly fell off the bottom step, keeping her face out of the dust with a flurry of arms and legs, a clownjig that didn’t improve her temper. “Marran, you idiot, you make me break my neck and I’ll haunt you the rest of your days.”

He gave her his slow, sweet smile, but said nothing. He seldom had much to say, but few Valley folk, male or female, young or old, could resist that smile. This was his third year in Arth Slya and he was settling in nicely; her mother said he was going to be the best weaver and tapestry maker Arth Slya had seen in an age of ages. If her mother did decide to make a Mountain tapestry using

Brann’s sketches, it’d be Marran who drew the cartoon and did much of the work. He’d turned fifteen only a month ago and was young for it, but her mother was planning to make him journeyman on the Centenary Celebration for Eldest Uncle Eornis. Brann’s Choice Day. Her eleventh birthday. Going to be a busy day.

She kicked some sand, sneaked a glance at Marran, who grinned when he caught her at it, then went stalking away down the road, stuffing the roll into her satchel, hmphing and grumping, half-annoyed and half-delighted at the attentions he kept pushing on her. Her mother and some of the aunts were beginning to plan things, she caught them time after time looking at her and Marran with heavy significance that made her want to bite.

She climbed to her father’s workshop and looked inside. Cousin Immer was in one of the rooms fussing over designs for a set of plates one of the uncles wanted for his daughter’s marriage chest. Problem was the uncle and the daughter had very different notions of what each wanted and Immer, who was inherently kind, was struggling to design something both would agree on. He was a fusser and sometimes snappish but Brann was very fond of him; even when he was impossibly busy he always found time and patience for a pesty little girl. She went to stand at his elbow, watching him patiently flowing color into outlines. He was putting the same design through various color combinations to show the embattled pair. She patted his arm. “Slya bless, maybe this will work.”

He sighed. “If it doesn’t, I surrender, Bramble. The Yongala can arbitrate for I don’t think either will settle for less.”

She patted his arm again and went to putter about the workshop, cleaning tools, straightening the storage niches, sweeping up the small accumulation of dust and the large accumulation of cobwebs, enjoying herself, no one to fuss at her for getting in the way, no impatient older brother chasing her out. As she maneuvered the pile of debris toward the door, the floor trembled and sent dust jigging-only a tiny twitch of the mountain, soon over. “Sleep, Slya, Slya sleep,” she sang as she pushed the pile of dust and scraps together again, swept it out the door.

Enjoying the bright crisp morning she stood in the doorway, looking up through the green lace of birch leaves to a sky clear as the water in the creek singing past the workshop. She breathed the cool air, shook the broom and leaned it against the wall, fetched her satchel and went climbing up the creek, hopping from rock to rock, heading for her favorite sunning place where the boulder pushed the creek aside. She could lie there, her head hanging over the edge, and watch the bright fish dart about. Or sit watching her four-foots coming down to drink. When she was sitting still as the stone beneath her even the fawns came down with their mothers and played on the grassy banks.

On the morning of Arth Slya’s destruction, she sat on the stone and watched bright blue moonfishers darting about in a screaming fight, two after the flapping fish in the talons of a third. It seemed to Brann they always found more delight in stealing from each other than in catching fish for themselves, though to have those thieving fights, some moonfisher had to abandon principle and snag his own fish.

When the fight was over and the triumphant moonfisher flew off with his prize, she dipped up water and splashed it over her face; the sun was starting to get a bit too hot. She moved into the glade where the shadows were cool and the air tangy with cedar, took out her sketch book and waited for the family of coynos that usually showed up about this time.

ON ARTH SLYA’S last day, the mountain twitched and growled and sent rocks sliding and Brann grew afraid, calming her fear with the ritual dance, the sleep song, then went to wash the blackened cedar resin off her hands.

Once her hands were clean, she wandered about the slopes of Tincreal, too restless to sketch. She missed her father. She loved her mother and knew she was loved in return, but her mother wasn’t company in the same way, she was mostly absorbed by her work and the new baby, Ruan firehair who slept in a basket beside the loom, listening to the hiss and thump as Brann had listened when she was a baskling, breathing in time to the sounds of the weaving, lulled to sleep by this constant comforting song. Brann was jealous of Ruan and hated the feeling, knew fairly well what the rest of her life was going to be and rebelled against accepting that, needed time for herself, knew the folk were letting her have it and was furious at their complacent understanding. In the Valley everyone knew everyone else’s business, knew what each would do in just about every circumstance before even he or she knew. Her eleventh birthday was a month and a half away, the Time of Choosing. It fell on the same day as Eldest. Uncle’s, his hundredth, and there was going to be a grand celebration and she would share it and at the end of it she would announce her choice for her lifework. And just about nobody would be surprised.

Life in Arai Slya was pleasant, even joyful when you felt like fitting in, but when you didn’t, it was like a pair of new boots, blistering you as it forced you into shape. Her father and her two older brothers had left with the packtrain going to Grannsha for the tri-year Fair. She’d wanted to go with them, but her mother was stuck here with a baby too young to travel and Brann couldn’t go if her mother didn’t. She thought it was stupid that she couldn’t go, but no one else saw things her way. Not that she made a great fuss about it, for this was the last summer she could spend free, the last summer before she was officially apprenticed with all the work that meant, the last summer she could ramble about the Mountain, watching animals and all the other life there, sketching in the book Uncle Gemar the papermaker had sewn together for her, with the ink and the brush Aunt Seansi, Arth Slya’s poet and journal keeper, had taught her how to use and make.

From her sketches her mother had woven for her a knee-length tunic with frogs and dragonflies in a lively frieze about the hem, dark greens, browns and reds on a pale gray-green ground. As time passed others found worth in her drawings. Sjiall the painter and screenmaker saw her plant and insect studies and went into the mountains himself searching for more such. Her father and Immer let her design some of their embellished ware. Uncle Migel seized on several drawings of otters and wolves and graved them into his swords and knives and sent her back to the slopes with specific commissions. Uncle Inar the glassmaker and Idadro the etcher and inlayer added her notes to their traditional forms. She could choose for any of them; they told her so. Thinking about their praise made her flutter with pleasure.

Though she was irritated and sometimes unhappy about the life laid out for her in the Valley, she found the outside world frightening. What little she knew about it, from candidates who made their way to the Valley, repelled her. Very few girls came, and those that did had stories to put a shudder in back and belly. She watched the boys shivering at a scold, or turning sullen with shaking but suppressed violence, watched the way they guarded their possessions and thoughts, their despair if they weren’t taken as apprentices. Even those candidates accepted took several years to open out and be more or less like everyone else. Another thing-since the last Fair the trickle of younglings into the mountains had dried up entirely. The Valley folk came back from that Fair with rumors of trouble and reports of a general uneasiness on the Plains. Legates from the mainland were in Grannsha making demands the Kumaliyn could not possibly satisfy, so the stories went. Still, no one expected trouble to come to Arth Slya, they were too isolated and hard to get to; there was no road most of the way, only a rugged winding track that no one in his right mind would try to march an army along.

She wandered back to her boulder, sat eating one of her apples and watching the antics of otters who’d made a mudslide for themselves and were racing about, sliding, splashing, uttering the stuttering barks of their secret laughter. Her hand dropped in her lap as the otters abruptly broke of their play and darted into the trees.

Two shines like smears of gold painted on the air flickered about the treetops, then came jagging down the stream, switching places over and over, dropping close to the water, darting up again. She stared at them, fascinated by their flitter and their glitter and their eerie song, a high swooping sound alternately fast and slow, sometimes unbearably sweet. She sat on her heels, smiling at them, bits of sun come to earth.

They jerked to a halt as if they’d somehow seen her, swooped at her, swinging closer and closer in tightening circles, then darted at her, plunged through her again and again. She gave a tiny startled cry, collapsed on the warm stone.

She woke as suddenly as she went down, a few heartbeats later.

Two children sat on the creekbank watching her from shimmering crystal eyes, pale little creatures with ash-blond hair, bowl-bobbed, silky, very straight, one head a shade darker than the other. They were so alike she didn’t know how she knew the darker one was a boy and the other a girl. They wore shirts and pants like hers and apart from those eerie inhuman eyes were much like any of the children running about the Valley below. The girl smiled gravely at her. “I’m Yaril. That’s Jaril. You’re Brann.”

Brann pushed up until she was sitting on her heels again. “I didn’t tell you my name.”

Yaril nodded, but didn’t answer the implied question. Jaril wasn’t listening. He was looking at everything with an intensity that made Brann think he’d never seen anything like blue sky and wind blowing cedars about and butterflies flitting over the stream and dragonflies zipping back and forth, otters crouching across the creek, black eyes bright and curious, fish coming up to feed, breaking the water in small plopping circles.

“Where’d you come from? Who’re your folks?”

Yaril glanced at Jaril, rubbed at her small straight nose. “We are the Mountain’s children.”

“Huh?”

“Born of fire and stone.” Yaril said, sounding awed, portentous.

Brann eyed her skeptically. “Don’t be silly.”

“It’s true. Sort of.” Yaril stared intently at Brann.

Little fingers began tickling the inside of Brann’s head; she scowled, brushed at her face. “Don’t DO that.” She pushed onto her feet, jumped onto the grass and began circling around them.

“Don’t be afraid, Brann.” Yaril got hastily to her feet, held out her small hands. “Please don’t be afiaid. We won’t hurt you. Jaril, tell her.”

Brann kept backing away until she reached the trees, then she wheeled and fled into shadow. Behind her she heard the high sweet singing of the sunglows, a moment later bits of yellow light were dancing through the trees ahead of her The patches of light touched down to the red soil, changed,-and Yaril stood with Jaril waiting for her. She turned aside and ran on, blind with terror. The shivering song came after her, the shimmers swept through her, caressing her, stroking her inside and out, gentling her, trying to drive the fright from her. She collapsed in the dirt, dirt in her mouth and nose and eyes, the last thing she remembered, the taste of the mountain in her mouth.

SHE WOKE with her head in Jaril’s lap, Yaril kneeling beside her, stroking her forehead. She tried to jerk away, but the boy’s arms were too strong even if she couldn’t quite believe in the reality of those arms. She lay stiff as a board waiting for them to do with her whatever they’d planned.

“Hush,” Yaril said. “Hush, Bramble-all-thorns, don’t be afraid of us. We need you, but we can’t help that. We won’t hurt you. Please believe me.”

Jaril patted her shoulder. “We need you, we won’t hurt you,” he said, his voice a twin of his sister’s, a shade deeper than hers as his hair was a shade darker. He grunted as the mountain rumbled and shifted beneath them, the third quake that day. “You ought to warn your folk, Bramble-all-thorns; this hill’s getting ready to blow… mmmmh, in your terms, Slya’s going to wake soon with a bellyache and spew her breakfast over everything around:”

Brann wiggled loose, got shakily to her feet. She looked for the sun, but it was too low in the west to show over the trees. “Sheee, it’s late. Mama will snatch me bald.” She started downhill. Over her shoulder, Valley courtesy demanding it, she said, “Come on. It’s almost supper. You can eat with us. Mama won’t mind.”

The children caught up with her as she reached the stream and started down along it. “About that supper,” Yaril said. “We don’t eat your kind of food. Maybe I should explain…” She broke off and looked at her brother. “Not time yet? I don’t agree. You know why. Oh all right, I suppose it is a big gulp to swallow all at once.” Yaril blinked as she met Brann’s eyes and realized she was listening with-considerable interest. “Pardon us,” she said, “we forget our manners, we’ll join you gladly, if not for supper. And warn your people about the mountain.”

“You keep fussing about that. Slya’s waked other times, we know her moods, we’ve lived with her a thousand years and more.” She began hurrying through the lengthening shadows, taking care where she put her feet, jumping from rock to rock, flitting across grassy flats, sliding on slippery brown needles, keeping her balance by clutching at trees she scooted past, landing with running steps on the path that led from the high kilns down to the workshop.

When she reached the workshop, she ran up the steps, pushed the door open. “Immer, suppertime.”

No answer. Puzzled, she went inside, ran through the rooms. No one there. That was funny. She clattered down to the children, beginning to worry. Immer always worked until the light quit. Always.

The way to the Valley was broad and beaten down from here on, passing out of the trees at Lookwide Point then through a double switchback to end at the landing on the River. A cold knot in her stomach, Brann hurried along the road, but slowed as she came out of the trees, walked to the edge and looked down into the Valley. She could see most of it spread out before her, the River running down the middle, the scattered houses and workshops, the fields with crops, cows, sheep or horses in them, even the broad patch of bluish stone that was the Dance Ground with the Galarad Oak growing on the western side, the one Brann thought must be the biggest and oldest tree in all the world. There should have been children, playing on the white sand road and in between the houses. There should have been workers coming in from the fields, others standing by the workshops. There should have been old folk sitting on benches by the river to catch the last of the day’s heat, the first of the evening’s cool, chatting and telling stories, hands busy at small tasks. But there was none of that.

Soldiers were herding her folk onto the Dance Ground, where the Valley daughters were due to meet with the Yongala to dance the Mountain back to sleep. Brann ground her teeth together to stop her jaw from trembling, but the shake had gone deep into the bone. She closed her eyes. She couldn’t bear to see more. That’s why Slya’s restless, there’s no one to dance her pains away, she thought and felt a kind of relief. Easier to think of Slya than… Dance her pains away and ease her back to sleep. Yes.

yes. That’s it. Slya dreamed this and sent her children. She turned her head, opening her eyes when she was looking away from the Valley, gazed at Yaril and jaril. They are the Mountain’s children. Slya sent them. She clenched her hands into fists, the shaking wouldn’t stop, jerked her head around to look into the Valley again. Can’t see… got to get closer. Away from the road. Harrag’s Leap. Yes. That’s it. Where the mountains squeezed the Valley wasp-waisted, not far from the Dance Ground, was a vertical wall of granite Arth Slya folk called Harrag’s Leap after the smith who went crazy one day a few hundred years ago, swore he could fly and jumped off the cliff to prove it, Brann plunged back into the trees, running as fast as she could without falling. It wouldn’t be so good to break a leg up here; who’d ever come looking for her? Finally, breathing in great sucking gasps, she flung herself down on the flat top of the cliff and looked over the rim.

She was close enough to make out the faces of those crowding onto the Dance Ground, close enough to hear what was being said, but outside of a few orders from the soldiers, no one was saying much. They looked as bewildered as she felt. Why was this happening? Who would gain anything from bothering Arth Slya? Her mother was there, holding Ruan, looking angry and afraid. “Mama,” Brann breathed. Suddenly she wanted to be with her mother, she couldn’t bear being up here watching, she wanted to be down there with her uncles and cousins and aunts, kin by kind if not blood. Sobbing, she started to get up, but two pairs of hands held her where she was.

“You can’t do her any good if you get caught.” One of the children was speaking, she couldn’t tell which. “Think, Bramble, your mother’s probably rejoicing because you’re out here on the mountain, at least she knows you’re safe. Look, Bramlet, look close. Where are the children? Do you see Gingy or Shara? Do you see anyone your age or younger except for little Ruan in your mother’s arms?”

She shuddered, went limp. They let her go and she scanned the crowd below. Gunna, Barr, Amyra, Caith, a dozen other younglings, but they were all fifteen or more, past their Choice. Nobody younger. Except Ruan. And even as she watched, one of the tall black-haired invaders shoved his way to her mother, took Ruan from her, kicked her feet from under her when she fought to get her baby back, elbowed and slammed his way out of the crowd, drawing blood with the clawed back of his gauntlet.

And as she watched, Yaril and Jaril crowding close to her, holding her, the soldier carried Ruan to the Galarad Oak and he took her by the heels, and dashed her against the broad trunk, held her up, shook her, slammed her once again against the tree, harder, then tossed her on a heap of something Brann had missed before, the bodies of the Valley’s children.

She trembled. She couldn’t make a sound, she couldn’t cry, couldn’t anything, couldn’t even feel anger. She was numb. She kept looking for faces she knew. The old were gone like the children. The young and strong, they were all there, some with bandages on arms and legs, men and women alike, one or two sitting, heads on knees. None of the old ones. Yongala Cerdan wasn’t there. Ancient Uncle Gemar who made her sketchbooks wasn’t there. Eornis who shared her birthday, he wasn’t going to see his hundred after all. Lathan, Sindary, Fearlian, Frin, Tislish, Millo and on and on, a long litany of grief, a naming of the dead. She didn’t understand_ Why? What could they gain? Why? She watched soldiers going in and out of the houses, driving out anyone trying to hide, plundering the houses and workshops, destroying far more than they carried away. Why? What kind of men were these who could do such things? She watched a knot of them kicking and beating Uncle Cynoc who was Speaker this year, yelling to him about gold, where was Arth Slya’s gold. He tried to tell them they had it all, the bits Inar and Idadro and Migel had for inlaywork and decoration. They didn’t listen. When they got tired of beating him, one of the soldiers stuck a sword in him and left him bleeding, dying. She watched another knot of soldiers pulling some of the women, her mother among them, from the Dance Ground. The children tried to get her away, but she clutched at the rock and wouldn’t move, watched the things the invaders were doing to her mother and the others. She whimpered but wouldn’t look away from the devastation below, watched the deaths and worse, some of the acts so arbitrary and meaningless that they seemed unreal, so unreal she almost expected the bodies to stir and walk away when the play was over as they did in the magic battles at the equinoxes, battles that ended with all-night dances and cauldrons of mulled cider and a feast the next day. But these dead stayed dead, bloody dolls with all the life pressed out of them.

Night settled over the valley, obscuring much of what was still happening down there, doing nothing to block the sounds that came up the cliff to Brann. She listened, shuddering, as she’d watched, shuddering. Again the children tried to get her away from the cliff edge, but she wouldn’t move, and they couldn’t move her. All night she lay there listening even when there was no more to listen to, only a heavy silence.

Under her numbness resolve grew in her. There had to be a reason for what was happening. In her memory, a gilded, winged helmet, a blood-red cloak, a glittering figure moving through the drabber browns and blacks of the rest. He it was who by a nod had given consent to the use of her mother and the other women, who had supervised the looting of the houses and shops, who had stood by while her folk were roped together in groups of eight, then herded into the meeting hall to spend the night how they could. He knows, she thought, I have to make him tell me, somehow I have to make him tell me.

As the night dragged on Yaril then Jaril went somewhere, came back after a short stretch of time. Brann was dully aware of those departures, but had no energy even to wonder where they went. She huddled where she was and waited-for what, she had no idea, she wasn’t thinking or feeling, just existing as a stone exists. She got very cold when the dew came down, but even that couldn’t penetrate the numbness that held her where she was.

The night grayed, reddened. Some of the soldiers went into the meeting hall, brought out two ropes of women, her mother among them. Brann strained to see through the dawn haze. Her mother’s shirt and trousers were torn, tied about her anyhow. She moved stiffly, there were bruises on her face and arms, her face was frozen, but Brann could see the rage in her. She’d only seen her mother angry once, when a new apprentice who hadn’t learned Valley ways yet jumped Brann’s oldest brother Cathor over some silly thing, but that was nothing to the fury in her now. Once they were cut loose the women were put to fixing food for the soldiers and later for the captives.

The morning brightened slowly. The smells of the food reached Brann and her stomach cramped. Yaril went off a few breaths and came back with food they’d stolen for her. For some minutes she stared at the bread and cheese, the jug of buttermilk. Hungry as she was, it felt horrible to be eating with the things that kept replaying in her head, things she knew she’d never forget no matter how long she lived.

Yaril patted her shoulder. “Eat,” she said. “You need your strength, little Bramlet. Wouldn’t you like to get your mother and the others free of those murderers? How can you do that if you’re fainting on your feet? You’re a practical person, Bramble-all-thorns. There’s nothing wrong with eating to keep up your strength.”

Brann looked from one pale pointed face to the other. You think I really could get them looser

Yaril nodded. She fidgeted a moment, seemed to blur around the edges, but her nod was brisk and positive. “With our help. Well show you how.”

Brann took a deep breath and picked up the jug. At first it was hard to swallow and her stomach threatened more than once to rebel, but the more she got down, the better she felt.

As she finished the hasty meal the movements below began to acquire shape and order, the soldiers lining up the roped-together villagers, getting pack mules and ponies loaded and roped together. Yaril whispered to Brann, “You want to make them pay. You can. Let them go ahead. It’s five days out of the mountains. We’ll help you get ready. Let them go thinking they won. Listen to us, we’ll tell you how you can make them pay for what they’ve done.” Soft nuzzling whispers as Brann watched the soldiers take brands from the fires and toss them into the houses along the white sand road, as she watched them march away, the roped slaves forced to march with them, the laden packers ambling along behind.

Brann huddled where she was, breathing hard, almost hyperventilating, while the leader mounted his horse and started off at an easy walk, and the soldier-pacemaker’s voice boomed through the crisp morning, all sounds magnified, the flames crackling, the scuffing thud of marching feet, the jangle clink of the soldier’s gear, the rattle of the small cadence drum that took over for the pacemaker’s voice. She wrapped her arms about her legs and sat listening until the sounds muted and were finally lost in the noises of river and wind. Then she lifted her head. “How?”

Yaril and Jaril gazed at each other for a long breath. Finally Yaril nodded and turned to Brann. “There’s a lot for you to forgive. We said we wouldn’t hurt you, Bramble, but… well, you’ll have to decide how much harm we did out of ignorance and need.” She coughed and her edges shimmered as they had before. Brann clenched her hands until her ragged nails bit into her palms, bit her lip to keep from crying out at this dallying, in no mood to sympathize with Yaril’s embarrassment. “We changed you,”

Yaril went on, keeping to her deliberate pace though she had to see Brands impatience. “We had to, we don’t say it was right or a good thing to do, but we thought it was the only thing to do. You were the first thinking being we saw in this reality. We didn’t mean to come here. We were borne into your reality-your world-by accident through fire. I know, I’m not making sense, just listen, there’s no hurry, we’ll catch up with them easily enough. Listen, Brann, you have to understand or you can’t… you can’t deal with what we made you. And we can’t change that now. We’re melded, Brann, a whole now, three making one. We came through the heart of fire changed, Brann. Among our own kind we’re children too, unfinished, malleable. Think how you’d feel, Brann, if you woke one morning without a mouth and could only suck up food and water through your nose, and your hands were gone. How would you feel with hunger cramping your stomach and food all around you that you couldn’t touch? How would you feel knowing you would fade and die because you couldn’t eat? And then if something inside you, something you knew to trust, said, ‘that person will feed you, but only if you change her in such and such a way,’ what would you do?” Yaril shimmered again, her crystal eyes glowing in the morning light, pleading for understanding.

Brann moved her lips. No sound came at first, finally she said, “You’re demons?”

“No. No. Just another kind of people. Think of us as what we said, the Mountain’s children. Truly we were born through her. Where we… oh, call it began, where we began we ate things like sunlight, umm, and the fires at the heart of things. We can’t do that anymore.”

Brann pressed her hand against her stomach, licked her lips, swallowed. “You… you’re going to eat me?”

“No, no! You didn’t listen. You have to know this. Maybe it’d be better to show you.” Once again she exchanged a long glance with her brother, once again she nodded, turned to Brann. “Wait here, Bramble. When we drive a beast from the trees, take it between your hands and drink.”

Brann shuddered. “Its blood?”

“No. Its life. Just will to take.” Yaril got to her feet. “You’ll know what I mean when you touch the beast, it’s coded into you now.” She flowed into the form of a large boarhound and trotted into the trees, Jaril shifting also and trotting after her.

Brann sat, feeling cold and horrified at the thought of what she was going to have to do. She heard the hounds haying somewhere in the distance, then coming closer and closer, then they were on the stone driving a large young coyno toward her. In a blind panic it ran at her and if she hadn’t caught it, would have run off the lip of the cliff Without thinking, acting from new instinct, she mcved faster than she thought she could, trapped the lean vigorous body between her hands and did what Yaril told her, willed to take.

A wire of warmth slid into her, heating her middle in a way she found deeply disturbing though she couldn’t have put into words why it was so. In seconds the coyno drooped empty between her hands. She looked at it, wanted to be sick, sent it wheeling over the edge of the cliff. Then she remembered the soldier tossing Ruan on the hill of dead children and was sorry. She put her hands over her face, but found no tears. The male boarhound picked his way over the rough stone and pushed his cold nose against her arm. By habit she stroked her hand along the brindle silk of his back, scratched absently behind his soft floppy ears. “That’s the way it’s giiing to be?” The hound whined. Brann scrubbed her fist across her eyes. “I’m all right, don’t worry. Worry? I s’pose you do or you wouldn’t explain, you’d just make me do things. What now? Was that enough or will you need more? Go ahead. I’m going to think about it like cleaning chickens for supper. Go chase some more beasts here, I’ll sing the Blessing while you’re gone.” She looked over her shoulder at the cliff edge and swallowed, tightened her hand into a fist again. “Slya says all life is sacred, all death must be celebrated and mourned.” She spoke gravely, feeling, the weight of custom falling on her thin shoulders. Jaril rubbed his head against her arm and trotted off after his sister.

A DAY AND A NIGHT and a day passed, Brann and the children learning the rules of their new unity. A day, a night and a day, gathering the lives of small beasts and large, joining hands to share that feeding. Brann shunting aside grief, rage, impatience, fear-except in dreamtime when memory turned to nightmare. The children scavenging for gear and food, tending the stock when Brann remembered the need. “The cows will dry up,” she said. “Can’t you do something?”

“Bramlet,” they said, “We’re only two. At least the beasts will be alive.” A day and a night and a day drifted past, and then another night. When the sun rose clear of the horizon, she started after her folk.

BRANN RODE a wild black werehorse down the mountain, black mane stinging her face, brother and sister melded into one, carrying her and the gear they’d salvaged from the gutted houses. Down the mountainside, going like the wind, Brann as wild and exhilarated as the great beast under her. Down the mountainside through the bright cool morning, lovely lustrous morning though Arth Slya was dead and lost. Day ought to weep, sun ought to lurk behind a thick weight of cloud, trees ought to droop and sigh, river to gloom and gray, but it was not so. And no more than day and mountain and sky could she mourn. She thrilled at the driving power of the great muscles between her legs, muscles fed as she was with the lives of wolves and coynos. She laughed aloud and laughed again when the werehorse bugled its delight.

Late that afternoon they came to the first of many cataracts. The werehorse stopped beside a storm-felled ash slowly rotting back into the earth, collapsed into brindle boarhounds after Brann swung groaning down, sore muscles protesting, chafed thighs burning. The hounds walked out of saddle and gear and trotted away. Brann stretched and groaned some more, then went through the gear, found the hatchet and went about collecting downwood for a fire, wobbling on legs that felt like wet noodles, splaying her knees to keep her thighs apart. When she had the fire going and the kettle dangling from an improvised tripod, she stripped off her clothing and found an eddy by the ash tree’s roots where she wouldn’t be swept away. She sat on a water-polished root, dabbling her feet in the river, watching the roughened redness inside her thighs fade to pink, the pink to the matte white of healthy skin. She’d burned her finger getting the kettle to hang properly from the tripod. The burn blister had dried and, as she watched, the dry skin cracked and peeled away leaving no sign at all of the burn. Some change, she thought. She slipped off the root, dunked herself all the way under, crawled out of the water, stretched her dripping body along the hard white wood of the ash tree’s trunk, the sun warm and welcome on her back and legs, dozing there until a hiss from the fire told her the tea water was boiling. She pulled her clothes back on, feeling a mild curiosity about when the children would return, a curiosity that faded as she made the tea.

She sat with the hot drinking bowl hugged between her hands, her face bent to the fragrant steam rising from the tea. Her father’s work, that bowl, with the goodness her father put in everything he made. She sipped at the tea, listening to the cries of the hunting hounds, wishing her father were there sitting beside her on the ash trunk. Sipped again, trying to wash away the lump in her throat, dismissing the horrors, thinking instead of the good times. When her father took his impling to his workshop with its smells of dry clay and wet clay, of powders and glaze mixes, cedar cabinets and oak tables, the whirring of wheels, thuds of the kicks that kept the wheels going, Immer’s humming, another apprentice’s sweet whistling, jokes tossed about, laughter, shouts-sounds and smells set as deeply into her as the thumps and clacking of her mother’s loom, her mother’s tuneless burring songs. Good times. When she shared her birthdays with ancient Uncle Eornis and he fed her cake and cider and told her the exciting scary stories she loved. Tough old man, should have lasted a dozen more years. Everyone in the Valley was making something special for him, she’d done an ink drawing of moonfishers in a scream fight. Her father spent two years on his gift. A das’n vuor pot and a hundred das’n vuor drinking bowls, one for each year of the old man’s life. He broke pot after pot until he was satisfied, broke bowl after bowl. Most of them looked fine to Brann, but he pointed out their imperfections, made her see them as he did, feel them, patient with her until she finally understood what he was talking about. And when he took the last bowls from the firing, he broke three, but wiped the fourth carefully and set it in her hands. She looked deep and deep into the black luster that seemed to drink the light, rejoicing in the shape that had the rightness of the Galarad Oak, or the Yongala dancing when Slya filled her, a rightness that whispered deep within. As if a light was kindled inside her, she knew why her father could judge so quickly and surely the worth of his work. Shine and whisper filling her, she felt as if she should hook her toes under something or she might just float away. Her Choice was made. More than anything in all the world, she wanted one day to make a thing as right as the bowl cradled in her hands. She gave it back to her father and sighed. He put it carefully into its nest of silk, then caught her up, lifted her high, swung round and round and round with her, laughing and proud, his spirits suddenly released as his labor was finished at last, astonished and enraptured by what his hands had made, rejoicing at her Choice. He might never do anything quite as splendid again and it was somehow fitting that his daughter marked it with the gift of her life, yet more fitting that his greatest work was born of love and celebration and not done for gold.

She refilled the bowl and gulped at the tea, burning her tongue with it, squeezing her eyes shut to hold back tears, “He can’t have it, I won’t let him, can’t have them,” remembering with helpless fury soldiers carrying things from her home, the chest with the das’n vuor pot, the chest with the hundred bowls, the Temueng pimush in the gilded helmet hovering over them with a hungry look, putting his hands on them, claiming them. “No!”

The hounds’ bellowing grew louder, closer. Brann put the bowl down, stood crouched, waiting.

A yowling, spitting black beast ran from the trees, swerved when he saw her, a malouch with claws that could strip the flesh from a tough old boar. He yowled again and switched ends, but the hound bitch was too fast for him, dodging the claw strike with a speed that blurred her shape into a brindle streak. She tore at his hind leg, sprang away again. As soon as Yaril distracted him, Brann leaped, slapped a hand against the side of his head. The malouch writhed around, his claws raking her arm, then he froze as she started the pull, a black statue of hate unable to move, unable to make a sound. Ignoring the blood and pain from her torn arm, Brann set her other hand on him. His life flooded into her, hot and raw, terrible and terrifying, waking in her that queasy pleasure that she hated but was starting to need. At last the malouch was a scrap of fur and flesh melting from between her hands.

Children again, Jaril and Yaril took Brann’s hands and the fire passed from her. She began to feel clean again though some of it remained with her; the malouch had clung to life with a fury that saddened and sickened her and she wanted to rid herself of everything she’d taken from him; she tried to hold onto the children, tried to force all of that stolen life out of her, but they melted and flowed through her fingers and flitted away to shimmer over the scatter of gear, then they merged and the werehorse was snorting and stamping impatiently, the children eager to be on their way.

She drew her fingers down the torn arm. The wounds were already closed, ragged pink furrows visible through the• rents in her sleeve. With the knife from her belt sheath she cut away the bloody rags. She tossed the sleeve into the fire, thought a minute, cut the other sleeve to match. She knelt beside the river and washed away the dried blood. By the time she was finished the furrows had filled in, even the pink flush was gone. She looked at the arm a moment, then bent again, scooped up water, splashed it over her face, drank a little. The children melted apart and moved beside her, throwing questions, demands, pleas at her, as she walked about the glade, kicking leaves over the body of the malouch, smoothing out the rips in the sod he made with his claws, repacking the saddlebags with slow meticulous care, dismantling the tripod, dousing the fire, burying the blackened bits of wood. She said nothing to them, refused stubbornly to acknowledge their presence, walked heavily to the riverbank and sang the mourning song for the malouch and for the wood she burned, sang the praises of the living river, the living forest. A week ago she would have done all this-restored the land, sung the praises-because she’d done similar things a hundred times before, because she rested comfortably in the support of ancient custom. This time it was a way to shout at the murdering invaders that nothing was changed, that Arth Slya still lived as long as one of Slya’s children lived and followed Slya’s way.

When she turned away from the river, the werehorse was waiting beside the fallen ashtree. She saddled him, tossed the bulging bags in place, tied on the spade and hatchet, then stepped onto the ash and pulled herself onto his back. He trotted to the track, did a few caracoles to loosen up then started racing down the mountain once again, crystal eyes having no trouble with the thickening shadow. Down and down…

Until she saw a body flung beside the track, a boy huddled round a gaping wound in his chest. She screamed the horse to a halt, flung herself down and ran back. Kneeling beside the boy, she pressed him over. “Marran,” she whispered. She brushed dirt and leaves from his face. His eyes were open, dull, shrunken. She tried to shut them, but her hands fumbled uselessly. Behind her the horse stomped impatiently, then whickered and nudged her with his nose. “Stop it,” she said. “Don’t bother me.”

She gave up trying to straighten Marran, sat on her heels and looked about, her tongue caught between her teeth.

Yaril came round her, squatted beside Man-an’s body. He put his hand on the boy’s face, drew it back. “Dead over a day, Brann. Nothing you can do.”

Brann blinked slowly, brushed a hand across her face. “It’s Marran,” she said. She got to her feet. “Help me fetch wood.” With clumsy hands she untied the hatchet from the fallen saddle and started away. “We’ve got to burn him free.” She cast about for dry downwood. Yaril and Janl ran beside her, trying to talk to her. “We’re getting close to the Temuengs; it’s dark, they’ll see any fire big enough to burn a body; he’s dead, how much can it matter when you put him on a pyre? Free your people and let them take care of him, Brann, Bramlet, Brambleall-thorns, it won’t take that long, if we go on now, you can have them free by dawn, back here before dusk, come on, Brann…”

Brann shook her head, her mouth set in a stubborn line. She wasn’t going to be stymied from doing what she clung to as right; if she let one thing go, the rest might slip away from her little by little. Bewildered and uncertain, alone with nothing but memory to guide her, all she could do was hold by what she did know. That this was Marran. That she owed him his fire. She trembled, her knees threatening to give way, caught hold of the branch waving in her face. Wood. Yes. She pulled the limb taut and lifted the hatchet.

One of the children made an irritated humming sound, then they were both in front of her, holding her by the arms, taking the hatchet from her. She tried to pull away but their hands were locked to her as if their flesh was melded to hers. Their fire came into her; it pinned her in place as if her feet had grown roots. She cried out, tried again to wrench free; they held her; the fire held her. Frightened and frantic, she writhed against that double grip until Yaril’s words finally seeped through her panic.

“Wait, wait, listen to us, Bramlet, listen, we can help you, listen, we’ll help, we understand, listen…”

She grew quiet, breathing heavily. The grip on her arms relaxed; movement restored to her, she licked dry lips. “Listen?”

“Let us make fire for you.”

“Wha…”

“Go back, sit by the boy and wait. We’ll make a hotter, cleaner fire for your friend, Bramble, he’ll burn in mountain heart. Wouldn’t you rather that, than green and smoky wood?”

She looked from one small pale face to the other; the drive went out of her, she turned and fumbled her way back to Marran’s body, stood looking down at him a moment. “Mama…” She backed away to give the fire room and sat in the middle of the trampled track, her arms crossed tight across her narrow chest.

Yaril and Jaril came from the shadows and took up places facing each other across the body, with formal movements like the paces of a dance, dissolved into light shimmers that bobbed up and down like bubbles on a string. Brann heard the swooping sweet song again, Jaril’s deeper notes dominating, looked at Marran half in shadow, half in moonlight, looked away pushing her grief back, shutting it away inside her as she’d done with the rest of her anger and pain, not noticing how frequently she was doing this or realizing how much trouble she was piling up for herself when the rush of events was over and there was nothing more to distract her from all that she had lost or from the cold shock of what her future held for her. The shimmers vibrated faster and faster, waves of color-blue and green and crimson-passing across them top to bottom, faster faster faster, the song rising to a high piercing scream. They darted away from each other, whipped around and came rushing back, slamming together into a blinding explosion. Blue fire roared up in a gather of crackling tongues. Hanging first in midair, the fire lowered until it touched, then ate down into Marran, racing up and down his contorted body, consuming flesh and bone until there was only ash.

The blue flame paled, broke in half, the halves tumbled apart, and the children lay on the leaves, pale and weary.

Yaril sat up. “We have to hunt before we can go on.” Jaril rolled up, nodded, flowed immediately into the hound form and trotted away, Yaril following after, most of the spring gone out of her legs. The burning had cost them.

Brann watched them go, sat where she was for a few breaths longer, then she got to her feet, stretched and began to sing the mourning song for Marran.

ABOUT AN HOUR before dawn, the werehorse slowed to a walk, hooves flowing into clawed pads as each one left the ground. It ghosted on, step by slow step, through the starlit quiet until the sound of a man’s voice raised in idle complaint came drifting up the track. Brann swung down, pulled the saddlebags off and carried them to a tangleroot, stowed them in the trunk hollow, struggling to make no sounds. She came back, eased the buckles loose and slid the saddle off, teeth tight together, moving as smoothly as she could so nothing would rattle or clink. By the time she reached the huge tree, Jaril was there to help her lower the saddle.

They crept around the perimeter of the camp clearing until they found a pepperbush growing crookedly out from the roots of a sweetsap where a thin screen of toothy leaves let them see without being seen.

The captives slept in the center of the cleared ground, the ropes knotted about their necks tied to stakes pounded into the hard soil. Perhaps on the first two nights some had lain awake, too stunned by grief and fear to sleep, but this night they all slept, heavily, noisily, with groans and farts and snores and sobs and the shapeless mutters that sleepers make when they’re speaking into dream.

Two men slouched heavily about the edge of the camp clearing, passing each other at roughly fifteen-minute intervals, occasionally moving among the ropes of captives, prodding those who groaned and snored too loudly. The rest of the soldiers were rolled in their blankets in two rows on the river side, the pimush slightly apart from his men.

Yaril eeled up to Brann’s shoulder, breathed, “Jaril’s started for the far side. I’ll tell you when he’s ready. All you have to do is get close to that sentry, touch him before he can yell. Then we can take the rest.”

Brann started sweating. Abruptly deserted by rage and grief, no longer comfortably numb, she had to face the reality of those men whose life forces she was going to suck away. For all her eleven years her parents had taught her reverence for life. Slya’s strictures demanded awareness of responsibility for all life stopped; she remembered how desperately the malouch had clung to life and how easily she’d stripped that life away and how nauseated she felt about it later. But there was no going back.

Yaril wriggled close, warm and alive in her eerie way. “Look at his face, that sentry coming toward you,” she breathed.

When the guard came out of shadow, she saw the face of the man who’d taken Ruan by her heels and swung her twice against the Oak, thrown her away like a weed onto a compost heap.

“Be ready,” Yaril said, her words a thread of sound by Brann’s ear. “When this one has his back turned Jaril will bite the other.”

The sentry walked past her. “Go.” Urged on by the whispered word, Brann raced after the sentry, slapped her hand against the bare flesh of his arm before he had a chance to cry out, landed her other hand, began drawing the life from him, the fire hammering into her differing in quality and force from that she’d taken from the smaller, less deadly beasts. This was a predator among predators, a killer horn as much as bred, only slightly tamed by the discipline of the Temueng army. She read that in the flash as his life-force roared into her. A second later he fell dead. Breathing hard, struggling to quell heinausea, Brann looked for the other sentry. He was down also, silently dead. In their serpent forms the children distilled from their substance a venom that killed between one breath and the next, a minuscule drop in poison sacs yet enough for the death of a dozen men.

“It’s time,” Yaril whispered. “Don’t think, Bramlet, just do. It’s the only way to keep your people safe. These murderers have earned death, more than you know.” She touched Brann’s arm, then ran ahead of her to the lines of sleeping soldiers. A shimmer of pale light and she was a serpent crawling in the dust, in the dim starlight, dust-colored and nearly invisible except when her viper’s head rose above a sleeping man and darted down.

Brann nerved herself and followed. Man to man she went, setting her hands on those the children had not touched, taking their life into her, a burning unending river flooding her. She drank and drank until there were no more lives to take, trying as she stooped and touched to ignore the pleasure currents curling turgidly through her. It didn’t seem right. Her vengeance should be pure, untainted by anything but righteous wrath.

The children rose from serpent form and came to her, their hands melting into hers as they took and took from her until she could think coherently again and move without feeling bloated and unwieldy. She turned to look at the dead. Two rows of them, fifty men falling to snake and whatever it was she was now, with hardly a sound and no struggle at all, they might have been sleeping still. Silent herself she went to stand beside the Temueng pimush, the leader of these invaders, the one who’d given the orders for all they’d done-calmly asleep, untroubled by dreams or remorse. You know why, she thought, but how do I ask you, what do I ask you? He made a small spluttering sound, moved his hands. She jumped back into shadow, but he didn’t wake. Jaril tugged at her arm. She leaned down. “What?” she whispered.

“Take from him but not all, enough only to sap his will so we can move him away from them.” He nodded at the sleeping captives.

Brann looked down and was surprised to see her hands glowing in the hushed darkness before the dawn, rather like the round porcelain lamps her father made for nightlights. She knelt beside the pimush and took his head between her hands. He started to wake but faded into a daze as she pressed the slow drain. “Enough,” Jaril said, touched her hand. She sighed and sat back on her heels. “What now?”

“Into the trees. He’ll walk if we prod him.”

With the children’s help she led the pimush a short distance from the camp clearing and propped him against the high roots of an old oak. “That’s done. Where from here?”

“Give him back.”

“Huh?”

“You want him able to talk, don’t you? Reverse the flow. All you have to do is touch and will, Bramble, it’s as easy as breathing.”

“Which I think you don’t do.”

Jaril grinned at her. “Not like you, anyway.”

She rubbed a grubby forefinger by the corner of her mouth. The Temueng was tall, head and shoulders higher than most Arth Slya men, the flesh hard and tight on his bones. She shivered. “He looks like he could snap me in two without half trying. Shouldn’t we tie him or something?”

“No.” Jaril changed, flowed upon the Temueng’s chest, coil by coil, his broad triangular viper’s head raised and swaying, poison fangs displayed and ready. Yaril moved around until she was kneeling by the Temueng’s right arm, drawing over her the feral look of a hungry weasel. It sat comfortably on her delicate child’s face, made her more terrifying than a raging male three times her size. Brann looked from child to serpent, wiped her hand across her face, scraping away a new film of sweat. “Why don’t I feel safer?” she whispered, then giggled nervously.

The dawn breeze was beginning to stir, rustling among the leaves, here and there a bird’s sleepy twitter broke the hush. Yaril clicked her teeth. “Brann, you waiting for it to rain or something?”

Kneeling beside the Temueng, Brann put her hand on his brow and found that Jaril was right, it was easy; the fire crackling under her skin went out through her fingertips into him. His pale face darkened, flushing with renewed vigor. She jumped hastily to her feet and moved back a few paces.

He opened his eyes. The flush receded leaving him pale as he saw the serpent head rising over his; he stiffened and stopped breathing.

“Man.” Yaril said.

“What?” His narrow dark eyes flicked about, going to the viper swaying gently but without that extra tension that meant readiness to strike, to the feral child showing her pointed teeth, to Brann filled with moonfire. He didn’t move; he was afraid, but mastering his fear, calculating, seeking a way to slide out of this peril.

“We are Drinker of Souls and the Mountain’s Children,” Yaril cooed at him. She caught hold of his hand, the strength in her dainty fingers as frightening as the rest of her. She folded the hand into a fist and wrapped her hands about it, gazing at him with an impersonal hungry interest. “You killed our mortal cousins and took others away. You bloodied and befouled our mother. Why?” Her high light voice was calm, conversational. “Answer me, man.” She tightened her hands about his fist, watched him struggle to keep still, sweat popping thick on his long narrow face. “Why?” She eased her grip. “Why?”

“It was something to do,” he said when he could speak again. “To pass the time.”

Yaril gestured at the viper and it changed to a giant worm with daintily feathered wings little larger than a man’s hand flirting on either side of an angular dragon’s head. Forked tongue flicking, a whiffing and fluttering of the opalescent feathers, the great worm grew heavier and heavier on the Temueng’s chest, the coils spilling off him onto the roots of the oak. As the pimush stared, mouth clamped shut but eyes wide with the fear he couldn’t deny, smoking oily liquid ran down one of the dragon’s dagger fangs, gathered at the tip, then dripped off onto his chest. The venom burned through his shirt and into his flesh. His body jerked and spasmed as much as it could, one hand held prisoned by Yaril in a grip he had no chance of breaking, legs and lower body pinned by the punishing weight of the worm.

Yaril passed her hand across the bubbling liquid, drew it into herself. The pain subsided, the man lay still again. “Why?” she said. “We sent the tribute to Grannsha every year without fail, the compact between Arth Slya and the Kumaliyn has never been broken though a thousand years have passed since it was made. Why did you come to Arth Slya?”

He licked his lips, gave a sudden wild shout.

“Your men are dead.” Yaril patted his hand. “Only their ghosts to answer you. Call again if you want. Call all you want. Only the captives can hear you and they’re staked to the ground. Why have you destroyed Arth Slya?” She tightened her grip on his fist again, watched him struggling to hold back groans and fight off the feeling of helplessness the worm’s weight and her unlikely strength were waking in him. She eased the pressure a little. “Speak true and you will die quickly and easily. Lie or refuse to speak, then my brother’s venom will consume you bit by bit and the Souldrinker will see you stay awake for all of it.”

His dark eyes darted about, he was fighting a last battle with himself, desiring defiance but too intelligent to waste his strength hiding things that had to be common knowledge in the villages below. With a visible effort he relaxed. “All dead?”

“All. Slya watches over her children.”

“Easy they said. Round up the young and strong, no kids or dodderers…” The breath hissed through his stiff lips. “Nothing about no arsehole god getting her eggs in a twist. Your Kumaliyn’s skipped. Abanaskranjinga Emperor of the Tern uengs rules here now.”

“So. Why come like wolves? There were no soldiers in Arth Slya.”

“Why ask me? I do what I’m ordered. Good boy, pat ‘im on his fuckin head.”

“Why come like wolves?”

He sneered. “Old Krajink’s not about to let a little bunch of mud dawbers nest free, thinkin they can make it without him. Maybe other folk they get the idea they got rights. Mudfeet, mudheads stompin up trouble, just get chopped, but Krajink he’s got to pay us to do the choppin and he parts with silver bits like grasslion from his meat. Cheaper to stomp first. Don’t mess up trade or plantin and harvestin. Cheap way to get valuable slaves. Trust of Krajink to see that. He figures your Arth Slya artisans might as well be making their junk for him where he can keep an eye on them. Figures maybe he can make Durat a rep as big as your dawbers got.”

Brann took a step toward him. “Slaves,” she spat. “Half my folk dead so that… that… he can prance around claiming their work!”

He raised his thin arched brows, the sound of his voice insensibly seducing him into speaking further, turning this interrogation into something like a conversation. “So what’s new about that, bint? In old lardarse’s head we’re all his slaves. We hop when he pulls our strings. Don’t hop, get the chop. Why not? Do the same, us, to folk beneath us.”

Brann stared at him, not comprehending much of what he was saying. It was a world totally other than the one she’d grown up in. All she got from the speech was the ultimate responsibility of the Temueng emperor for the destruction of Arth Slya. “The Fair,” she said. “What happened to the Arth Slya folk at the Fair?”

“On their way, hint. On ship to Andurya Durat.”

Brann put her hands behind her back, clenched them into her fists, struggled to keep her voice steady. “Were any of them killed?”

“And get chopped for wasting prime meat? Uh-uh.” Brann closed her eyes. Her father and her brothers were alive. Captives, but alive.

“Bramble!” Yaril’s voice.

Jolted out of her daze, Brann came round the Temueng’s feet and stopped beside her. “What?”

“That all you wanted to know?”

– Yes… urn… yes.”

“Well?” Yaril gestured impatiently.

Brann rubbed her hands down the sides of her bloodied shirt, blood from her wounded arm, long dried. It was different somehow, looking into his eyes, listening to him talk, seeing his fear, seeing him as a person, knowing him. With all the harm he’d done her, she shrank from taking him; the revulsion she felt was almost more than she could overcome. She reached heavily toward him, saw the leap of fear in his eyes, saw it dulling to resignation. Her hand fell. “I can’t,” she wailed. “I…” An immense hot fury took hold of her, drowned her will, worked her arms, set her hands on his brow and mouth and drew his life in a rushing roar out of him.

Then he was dead and that thing went wheeling away. It wasn’t the children; as wobbly as her thinking was, she was able to understand that. Cautiously Yaril came closer, reached out. A spark snapped between them, then the strong small hands were closed on her arm, and Yaril was pressing against her, warm and alive, murmuring comfort to her. Another spark snapping, and Jaril was smoothing his hands along her shoulders, gently massaging her neck and shoulder muscles. They worked the shock out of her, gave her the support she needed until she was able to stand.

Yaril stood beside her, holding her hand. “What was THAT?”

Brann moved her shoulders, flexed her fingers, the children’s hands comfortably human around them, even a little sweaty. “Don’t know. I think… I think it was Slya filling me.”

“Oh.” There was complete silence from both children for a few breaths, then calm and deliberately prosaic words from Yaril. “We better go turn your folks loose.”

As they walked through the trees, Jaril looked up at her. “What do we do after this, Bramble? Go back to the Valley with your folk?”

Brann stopped. “I thought… before I knew about Da… do you think we could get him loose too?” Jaril grinned. “Why not.”

Brann stopped in the shadows of some stunted alder bushes, an unseen hand restraining her, a wall of air keeping her back from her mother and the rest of Slya’s folk out in the clearing. No words, no warning, nothing tangible, but she was being told Arth Slya was no longer for her. She dropped to her knees, then swung her legs around so she was sitting with her hands clasped in her lap, looking into the camp clearing through a thin fan of finger-sized shoots and a lacy scatter of leaves. The children exchanged puzzled glances, squatted beside her without speaking.

UNCLE MIGEL was on his knees beside a stake, looking about. He scrubbed his hand across his mouth, fumbled on the ground by his knees, came up with a dirt clod, snapped it at a soldier lying rolled in his blanket. He grunted as the clod hit, splattering over the man and the ground around him. “Not sleeping,” he said. He put two fingers in his mouth, produced an ear-piercing whistle, waited. “Unh, looks to me like they’re all dead.”

“How?” Her mother’s voice.

“All?” Aunt Seansi kneeling beside her mother. “I’d say so, Mig, that whistle of yours is most likely waking folks in G rann sha. “

Wrapping thick-fingered hands about the stake, Migel rocked it back and forth, and with an exploding grunt, pulled it from the ground. He got to his feet, his ropemates coming up eagerly with him, all eight of them moving out and around the shakes to the line of bodies. Migel kicked a soldier out of his blanket, got his belt knife and cut himself loose. He sliced the loop of rope from his neck, then tossed the knife with casual skill so it stuck in the ground in front of Brann’s mother, who grabbed it with a heartfelt “Slya!” and began slicing her rope loose from the stake. When she was free, she passed the knife to Seansi and marched over to the pile of wood the soldiers had cut the night before, hauled sticks from it to an open space where she used the sparker she found on a soldier to get a fire started.

Brann watched the swirl of activity and noise in the clearing, warm with pride in the resilience of her people. Harrowed by the shock and violence of the invasion, bereft of hope, marched off to a fate not one of them could imagine, waking to find silent death come among them with no idea of how or when it struck, whether it would come on them later, not a one of them sat about glooming or complaining but each as soon as he or she was freed from the rope saw something to be done and did it. Time for fear and mourning later. Now was time for food in the belly and scalding hot tea to get the blood moving. Now was the time to get the mules and ponies out of their rope corral, now was the time for caching the loot from the Valley where they could find it later. In a hectic half hour the camp clearing was picked clean except for the bodies of the soldiers (the body of the pimush was added to the pile when they found it; they passed close by Brann and the children, but whatever kept her from entering the clearing kept them from-seeing her). Then they were mounting the mules and ponies and riding away, those that had no mounts trotting beside the others. After a short but heated argument, they left the pimush’s horse and gear behind. Her mother wouldn’t have the beast along, uncle Migel wanted to take it. Inar and Seansi and a dozen others talked him out of that, the beast was a high-bred racer too obviously not Valley-bred. Migel kept sputtering that anyone getting close enough to the Valley to spot the horse would be too damn close anyway. But the others countered that it only took one snooping outsider to get an eyeful of racer and report his presence to the Temuengs. If he wanted such a beast, then he should buy one the next Fair on. As they left the clearing, the Mountain chose to rumble a few breaths and go quiet, almost as if Slya were laughing-the soldiers dead, the people returning to rebuild their homes, and Brann aimed like an arrow at the Temueng Emperor.

As the morning brightened and grew-warmer with the rising of the sun, Brann sat staring at the empty clearing, not seeing it. She wasn’t tired, wasn’t sleepy, only empty.

“Bramble.” Yaril’s voice demanded her attention. She looked around, eyes unfocused. “Here.” Yaril put a hot mug in her hand. “Drink this.” When Brann sat without moving, staring at the mug, the changechild made a small spitting sound like an angry cat, wrapped her hands round Brann’s and lifted the cup to Brann’s lips.

The scalding liquid burned her mouth but Brann kept drinking. When the mug was empty, Yaril took it away and came back with more tea and a sandwich of stale bread and thick chunks of cheese, scolded her into eating them. Food in the belly woke her will, gave her the energy she’d not had; the emptiness she’d been suffering was of the body as well as of the spirit; she realized that when Jaril brought the pimush’s horse to her, the beast wearing her saddle and the pimush’s bridle, the rest of her gear in place with some additions. He was a fine lovely beast-no wonder Uncle Migel had coveted him-prancing, nostrils flaring but tamed by the touch of Jaril’s hand when Brann was ready to mount.

“Up you go,” Jaril said. He caught her about the legs and tossed her onto the snorting beast, his strength once again surprising her; having seen him as a frail child or an insubstantial shimmering hanging in midair, she could not help letting her eyes fool her into underestimating him. She settled into the saddle, began settling the horse, stroking him, comforting him, teaching him that she wasn’t about to allow any nonsense from him.

Then she was riding away down the mountain, holding the horse to a steady canter when he wanted to run. Brindle boarhounds trotted beside her, or disappeared into the trees on scouting runs. The track continued to follow the river, clinging to the sides of ravines where she drowned in the boom of cataracts, departing grudgingly from the cliffs where the river fell in rainbowed mists. Down and down without stopping, eating in the saddle, drinking from the pimush’s waterskin, ignoring the continued chafing of her thighs, the cramps in fingers, arms, legs, down and down until the pimush’s horse was leaden with fatigue, until they were out of the mountains and in gently rolling foothills.

When the Wounded Moon was an hour off the horizon, she curled up in a hollow padded with grass and went to sleep, leaving the horse and her safety to the children. She slept heavily and if she dreamed, she remembered nothing of it later.

SHE WOKE with the sun beating into her eyes, sweat greasing a body drastically changed, woke to the pinching irritation of clothing that was much too small for her.

She sat up, groaned. Hastily she ripped off what was left of her trousers, most of the seams having given way as she slept, breathed a sigh of relief, tore off the remains of her shirt, bundled the rags and wiped at sweat that was viscous and high-smelling. Her hair was stiff with dirt and dried sweat. When she tried combing her fingers through it, it came out in handfuls. She rubbed at her head with the wadded-up shirt; all the hair came out, mouse-brown tresses dead and dark, falling to the grass around her. She kept scrubbing until her head was bare, polished bare. Throwing the shirt aside, she ran her hands over the body the night had given her, the full soft breasts, the narrow waist, the broader hips, the pubic hair glinting like coiled silver wire in the sunlight. She wanted to cry, to howl, lost and confused.

A hand on her shoulder. She jerked convulsively, cried out in a voice she didn’t recognize, flung herself away-then saw it was Yaril. Yaril holding neatly folded clothing. “Jaril’s fixing breakfast next hollow over. You better get dressed. Here.”

Brann shook out the shirt, looked from it to Yaril. “Where…”

“Brought it with us. Just in case.”

Brann looked at the shirt she still held out and snorted. “Just in case I grew a couple feet taller and a dozen years older?” She bit on her lip, uncomfortable with the deeper richer voice that came out of her, a woman’s voice-not the one she knew as hers.

“Just in case you couldn’t go back to Arth Slya. Just in case you needed to free your father and the others as well as the ones the soldiers had taken. Seemed obvious to Jaril and me that the Temuengs would round up the Fair people before coming after the villagers.”

“You didn’t say anything about that.”

“You had enough on your mind.”

“You did this to me. Why?”

“A child of eleven. A girl child,” Yaril said. “Think, Brann. Don’t just stand there glupping like a fish. Put that shirt on. Who’d let such a child travel unmolested? Chances are the first man or woman who needed a laborer would grab you and put you to work for your keep. Who’d bother listening to a child? And that’s far from the worst that could happen. So we used all that life you drank and grew you older. You haven’t lost anything, Bramble-all-thorns, we’ve stabilized you at this age. You won’t change again unless you wish it.”

Her head feeling as hard as seasoned oak, Brann stared at her. “What…” She pulled the shirt on, began buttoning it, having to pull it tight across her newly acquired breasts. “Stabilized?”

“You know what the word means, Put these on, they belonged to Mareddi who’s about your size so they should fit.”

Brann stepped into the trousers, drew them up, began pulling the laces tight. “But I don’t know what it means when you use it about me.”

“Means you’ll stay the age you are until you want to change it.”

“You can do that?”

“Well, we have, haven’t we? Like we told you before, Bramble, we’re a meld, the three of us. You’re stuck with more limits than we have, but we can shift your shape about some. Not a lot and it takes a lot of energy, but, well, you see. Here. Boots. Mareddi’s too. Might be a touch roomy.”

“Weird.” She ran her hand over her head. “Am I going to stay egg-bald? I’d rather not.” She pulled on the boots, stomped her feet down in them.

Yaril giggled. “I could say wait and see. Well, no, Bramble. New hair’s already starting to come in.”

“I’m hungry.” She looked at the blanket she’d slept in, nudged it with her toe. “What a stink, I need a bath.” Shrugging, she started toward the smell of roasting coyno.

ON HER SECOND day out of the mountains she came to a small village where Jaril bought her a long scarf to cover the stubble on her head, also more bread and cheese, some bacon and the handful of tea the woman could spare. Brann hadn’t thought about the need for money before and was startled when he came up with a handful of coppers and bronze bits, though she had wit enough to keep her mouth shut while there were strangers about to hear her. Later, when she was riding down a rutted road between two badly tended boundary hedges, she called the hound back and pulled Jaril up before her. “Where’d you get the coin?” She smiled ruefully, shook her head. “I forgot we couldn’t travel down here without it.”

“Soldiers’ purses, pimush’s gear. They won’t be needing it anymore, and we will.” He leaned back against her, awakening a strong maternal urge in her, something that surprised her because she’d never before felt anything of the sort.

“Another thing you didn’t bother telling me about.”

“You were too busy glooming to listen.”

“Hunh.”

He tilted his head back, looked up at her with a smile too much like Marran’s for her comfort, then he slid away from her, hitting the ground on four hound’s feet, trotting ahead to rejoin Yaril,

AS THE DAYS passed, she rode through village after village clustered about manorhouses with their keeps tenanted by Temueng soldiers. The fear and anger was thick as the dust cast up by plows and plodding oxen, the villages quiet and hushed, the children invisible except for the ones working with their parents in the fields-a kind of desolation without destruction that reawakened anger in her, a fury against the Temuengs whose touch seemed as deadly as the change-serpents’ poison. She even found herself blaming the lack of rain on them, though the dry days and nights let her sleep outside, which was necessary because of the presence of the Temuengs in the villages and the sullen, mistrustful Plainfolk.

Toward evening on the seventh day after she left the mountains, she reached the wide highroad from Grannsha to Tavisteen and turned south along it, dismounted and walked beside a horse stumbling with weariness, the hounds trotting in wide arcs before her, noses and ears searching for danger. Now and then one of them would run back to her and pace alongside her for a while, looking repeatedly up at her, remnants of the day’s light glinting in the crystal of their strange eyes. The sky was heavily overcast, thick boiling gray clouds threatening rain with every breath. The river swept away from the road and hack in broad tranquil meanders, the color sucked from the water by the lowering skies, the sound muted by the ponderous force and depth of the flow.

She was about to resign herself to a wet cold night when she came on a large rambling structure built between the highroad and a returning sweep of the river, an Inn with a pair of torches out front, torches that had burnt low because it was long after sundown. The hounds came back, altering into Yaril and. Jaril by the time they reached her. “What do you think?” she said. “Should we stop there?” She drew the flat of her hand down her front, sighed. “I’d really like a hot bath.”

Yaril scratched at her nose, considered the Inn. “Why not, Bramble. It looks like it gets a lot of traffic. The folk there won’t be surprised by strangers.”

“You’re the moneykeeper, J’ri, can we afford their prices?”

He looked thoughtful, then mischievous. “Why not. ‘S not our coin, we can always steal more.” He dug into the saddlebags, handed the purse to Yaril and took the reins from Brann. “You two go on inside, let Yaril do the talking and you stand about looking portentous, Bramble.” He giggled and dodged away from the sweep of her hand.

get Coier bedded down, he won’t mind a dry stall and some corn for dinner, oh no he won’t.”

The door opened at Brann’s touch and she went in, looking about as impassively as she could. Beside her, Yaril was gawking at the place with far less restraint, her child’s form licensing freer expression of her interest. A long narrow entranceway with open arches on each side led to a broad stairway at the far end, a horseshoe-shaped counter by the foot of the stairs. Yaril ran ahead of Brann to the counter, beat a few times on the small gong set by the wall, then engaged in an energetic sotto-voce debate with the sleepy but professionally genial man who emerged from the door behind the counter. Brann watched from the corner of her eye, trying to show she knew what she was about, ignoring the men who came to the arch-door of the taproom and stared at her with predatory speculation. She grew increasingly nervous as Yaril prolonged that debate. If she’d been here with her mother and father, as she could’ve been, she’d have been excited and absorbed by the newness of it all, protected by the arms of custom and love; now she was merely frightened, asea in a place whose rules of conduct she didn’t know. She reached up, touched the scarf still wound about her head. Already she had about an inch of new hair, silvery white and softly curling like downfeathers on a duck. It itched, needed washing as much as the rest of her. Seemed weeks since she’d had a bath. She gazed down at thin wrists that looked as if a breath would snap them, at long strong hands tanned dark that were dark also with the grime water alone wouldn’t get off. Soap and a hot bath. She sighed with anticipated pleasure.

Yaril came trotting back. “I thought you’d like to eat first while he’s getting the water heated for your bath.” She led Brann into the taproom and settled her at a table in the far corner. Jaril came in, looked through the arch, began helping Yaril fetch food and eating things, acting as beginning apprentices were expected to act, serving their masters’ wants and needs. The clink of the coin the children had taken from the soldiers had bought her a measure of welcome, the children’s act brought her a grudging respect as one who might have a dangerous amount of power however odd she looked. Even that oddness had its good points, setting her apart from the general run of women on their own.

As soon as she was settled behind the table with the wall at her back, she felt better, as if she’d acquired a space all her own. And when the children brought cold roast chicken, heated rolls with cheese melted into them and a pitcher of hot spiced wine, she began to eat with the appetite engendered by her long ride. The children knelt beside her, hidden from the rest of the room. When most of the wine was a warm mass in her stomach and the first edge of her hunger had been blunted, she looked down at JariL “Coier all right?”

He nodded. “Good stable. Clean, fresh straw in the stalls, no mold on the oats.”

“Good.” She put down the wine bowl. “What about you two, do you need to eat?”

He shook his head, the fine hair flying into a halo about his pointed face. “After that last meal? No. We shouldn’t need more until the Wounded Moon is full again.”

“Oh.”

She finished the rest of the food and sat holding the drinking bowl cradled in her hands. Her body ached. She still wasn’t quite used to the altered distribution of meat on her bones, though as time wore on new habits were beginning to form. That was a help, but she was more and more worried about her ability to make her way in this other world; she was woefully, dangerously ignorant about things these people didn’t waste two thoughts on. The money Jaril carried, for example. The only coin she’d ever held was the bronze bit Marran called his luck piece. The children seemed to know what they were doing, their experience at traveling seemed to be much greater than hers, but she felt uneasy about leaving everything to them. Arth Slya encouraged its young ones to develop self-reliance within the community. They had to know their capacities, their desires and gifts, in order to make a proper Choice, whether that choice be centered in the Valley or elsewhere; that knowledge and contentment therein was even more important to the well-being of the Valley than the proper choice of a lifemate. Even after Choice, if the passage of time found the young man or woman restless and unsatisfied, they were encouraged to seek what they needed elsewhere; apprenticeships were arranged in Grannsha, usually at Fairtime, in Tavisteen, or somewhere on the Plains, the young folk leaving to be dancers, players of all sorts, merchants, soldiers, sailors. She had cousins all over Croaldhu, probably scattered about the whole world, but they all had help getting to know how to act, they had people around them to encourage and support them. Such practices had kept Arth Slya thriving for more than a thousand years. A thousand years. Impossible that in so short a time as a day such a way of life had almost ceased to exist.

She sipped at lukewarm wine and noticed fbr the first time the singular hush in the taproom. At first she thought she’d caused it, then she saw the three men at the bar, their backs against the slab, tankards still hill in their hands. They were Temuengs with pale northern skins the color of rich cream, straight black hair pulled back and tied at the napes of their necks, high prominent cheekbones, long narrow eyes as black as the shirts and trousers they wore. They had a hard, brushed neatness, no dust on them, no sweat, not a hair out of place, faces clean-shaven, nails burnished on hands that looked as if they’d never done anything Brann could think, of as work, a disturbing neatness that spoke of coldness and control, that frightened her as it was meant to do. Yaril sensed her unease, dissolved into the light shimmer, crept around the edges of the room, then darted through the men and away before they could do more than blink, flicked back along the wall and solidified into Yaril standing at her shoulder. “Watch out for them,” the girl whispered. “They have leave to do anything they want to anyone, they’re the enforcers of an imperial Censor.” Yaril patted her arm. “But you just remember who you are now, Drinker of Souls.”

Brann shivered. “I don’t like…” she started in a fierce whisper. A pressure on her arm stopped her. She looked up. A fourth man had come from somewhere and was standing across the table from her. He pulled out a chair and sat down.

“I don’t recall requesting company,” she said. Jaril was on his feet now, standing at her other shoulder; she lost much of her fear; with the children backing her, this Temueng was nothing. She leaned back in her chair and examined him with hatred and contempt.

He ran his eyes over her. “What are you supposed to be?”

“Drinker of Souls.” The phrase Yaril had used came out easily enough. She looked at his frozen face and laughed.

“Who are you?” He spoke with a deadly patience.

She giggled nervously, though he and his armsmen were not very funny. She giggled again and the Temueng grabbed her arm, his fingers digging into her flesh. He tried to twist the arm, to retaliate for her laughter-^. somewhat to her own surprise-she resisted him with ease and sat smiling at him as he strained for breath, getting red in the face, his menacing calm shattered. But he wasn’t stupid and knew the rules of intimidation well enough. If a tactic fails, you quit it before that failure can make you ridiculous, and slide into something more effective. He’d made a mistake, challenging her with unfriendly witnesses present. He loosed her arm, sat back, turned his head partway around but didn’t bother looking at the men he spoke to. “Clear them out,” he said,

She watched the enforcers clear the room and follow the Plainsfolk out, stationing themselves in the broad archway, their backs to the taproom. She frowned at the Temueng, knowing she would kill him if she had to. Her gentle rearing and Slya’s strictures of respect seemed a handicap down here, but she wouldn’t abandon either unless she was forced to. She had horror enough for nightmares the rest of her life.

He jabbed a forefinger at the children. “You two,” he said. “Out.”

“No,” Brann said.

Yaril’s nostrils flared. “Huh,” she said.

“Yours are they, ketcha?”

“We are the Mountain’s children,” Yaril said, “born of fire and stone.”

He looked from one to the other, turned his head again. “Temudung, come here.”

One of the three standing in the doorway swung round and came across to the Censor. “Salim?”

He pointed at Yaril. “The girl. Stretch her out on the bar. Then we’ll see if the mountain has answers.”

“Censor,” Brann said softly, though with anger. “Take my warning. Don’t touch the children. They aren’t what they seem.”

Yaril snorted. “Let the fool find out the hard way, mistress.”

The enforcer ignored that exchange and came round the table, hand ready to close on Yaril’s arm and snatch her away from Brann’s side.

Then it wasn’t a delicate small girl the Temueng was reaching for, but a weasel-like beast the size of a large dog that was leaping for his throat, tearing it and leaping away, powerful hind legs driving into his chest, missing much of the geyser of blood hissing out at him. Brann grimaced with distaste and dabbed at the bloodspots on her Ece and shirt with the napkin the host had provided with her meal.

By the time the Temueng slumped to the floor, the weasel had shrunk smaller, a darkly compact threat crouched on the table in front of Brann, long red tongue licking at the bloodspots on its fur.

“I think you’d better not move,” Brann said quietly.

The Censor sat rigidly erect, a greenish tinge to his skin, staring not at Brann or the beast, but at the serpent swaying beside her. The two enforcers in the arch wheeled when they heard the abruptly silenced shriek from their companion, took a step into the room, stopped in their tracks when the serpent hissed, the weasel-beast gave a warning yowl.

The taproom filled with those tiny sounds that make up a silence, the ones never heard in the middle of ordinary bustle and noise, the creak of wood, the hiss of the dying ^Lire, the hoarse breathing of the men, the grinding of the sensor’s teeth, the buzzing of a lissfly without sense enough to shun the place.

“Censor,” she said. She’d done some rapid thinking, lipped into the fund of stories she’d heard from ancient Uncle Eornis, tales of heros, monsters and mischief-makers. “I am Drinker of Souls,” she said, infusing the words with all the heavy meaning she could. “Feel fortunate, O man, that I am not thirsty now. Feel fortunate, man, that the Mountain’s children are not hungry. Were it otherwise, you would die the death of deaths.” She felt a little silly, though he seemed to take her seriously enough. “All I desire is to pass in peace through this miserable land. Let me be, Temueng, and I’ll let you be. You and your kind.” She let the silence expand until even the slightest sound was painful. Then she said, “I have a weakness, Censor. Anger, Censor. You will be tempted to make the locals pay for your shame. But if you do that, I’ll be very very angry, Censor. I’ll find you, Censor, believe me, Censor.”

She stopped talking and grinned at him, beginning to enjoy herself. But enough was enough so she stood, pushing her chair hack with her legs. “I’m going to my room now, Censor. I’m tired and I plan to sleep soundly and well, but the Mountain’s children never sleep, so you’d be well advised to let me be. Say what you want to the folk here, I won’t contradict you, you need lose no touch of honor, Censor.”

She felt his eyes on her as she left the room. Yaril flitted up the steps before her and Jaril came behind-guarding her, though she was too self-absorbed to realize that until triumph burnt out and she was walking tiredly down the lamplit hall to the room she’d hired for the night.

A cheerfully crackling fire on the hearth, a large tub of hot water set comtbrtably close to the heat, copper cans of extra hot water to add later. Soft flubbed towels on the rush seat of a high-backed straight chair, a bowl of perfumed soap beside them. She crossed the room letting the children shut the door, touched the thin-walled porcelain of the soap bowl, picked it up, ran her fingers over the bottom. Immer’s mark. It was born from her father’s kilns. The simple lovely bowl made her feel like weeping. Her father was a gentle man who disliked loud voices, would simply walk away if someone got too aggressive. He saved his anger for cheats and liars and slipshod work and for that last he was unforgiving. He would not live long as a slave, there wasn’t the right kind of bend in him. She sighed and stripped, putting aside that worry, there being little she could do about it right then.

With a breath of pleasure she eased into the hot water and began to wash away the grime of her long hard ride, the pleasure of the bath making up for those many hardships she’d had to endure, even for the contretemps in the taproom and whatever came of it. She wrinkled her nose at the filthy shirt and trousers thrown in a pile beside the chair, disgusted by the thought she’d have to get back in them come the morning. No mother or cousin or anyone to do for her. When she was done she stood up, dripping, the scent from the soap around her like a cloud. She snapped open one of the towels-it was almost big as a blanket-and began rubbing herself dry, a little timid about touching herself, embarrassed by the soft full breasts, the bush of pubic hair. She put a foot on the side of the tub, dried it, stepped onto the hearth tiles, dried her other foot, dropped the damp towel beside her discarded clothes and wrapped the dry one about her.

Yaril and Jaril were sitting on the bed watching her, but in the days since the Valley she’d gotten used to their being always around. She rubbed at her head with a corner of the towel, combed her hand through short damp hair, sighed with relief as it curled about her fingers. Being bald was almost as embarrassing as the jiggle of her breasts.

She looked at the bed, but she wasn’t sleepy. Tired, yes. Exhausted, uncertain, weepy, yes; but the bed meant nightmares when her mind was so roiled up. She walked to the window. It was still not raining and very dark, the Wounded Moon not up yet and anyway it was shrunk to a broken crescent. She leaned on the broad sill, gazing to the west where the mountains were; wondering, what her folk were doing now, how they were faring, if they’d gone back and collected the loot yet. She continued to gaze into the cloudy darkness, willing herself to see her mountain, her Tincreal.

And-for a moment-believed it was her will that touched the peaks with light. Then the sill rocked under her elbows, the floor rocked under her feet and the faint red glow illuminating the peaks rose to a reddish boil bursting into the sky. Some minutes later a blast came like a blow against her ears; it settled into a low grinding grumble that finally died into a tension-filled silence. The red glare subsided to a low-lying seethe sandwiched between clouds and earth. Standing with her face pressed against the iron lace, her mouth gaping open in a scream that wouldn’t come, she was a hollovircast figurine, empty, no anger, not even any surprise. As if she’d expected it. And of course she had, they all had, the signs had been amply there, the children had warned the blow was coming soon. “No,” she said, saying no to the sudden thought that the Mountain had destroyed the little the Temuengs had left of Arth Slya. Guilt seized her. If she’d left the soldiers alone, alive, if she’d let them take her folk away, her mother’d be alive now, they all would.

A tugging at her arm. She looked down. Jaril. “They could be safe, Bramble. If the Mountain blew away from the Valley. And it isn’t your fault. Like you told me once, your folk know the moods of the Mountain. I could fly there and see, be back by morning. If you want. Do you?”

Brann barely whispered, “Yes. Please.” She turned back to the window, her eyes fixed on the soft red glow, a bit of hope mixing with her despair. Behind her she heard the door open, click shut. Then small hands caught hold of her arm. Yaril led her to the bed, tucked her in. Lying on her stomach, her face to the wall, she let herself relax as Yaril murmured soft cooing sounds at her and smoothed those small strong hands across her shoulders, down along her arms, over and over. Her shaking stopped. All at once she was desperately tired. She slept.

A WEIGHT WAS on her, she couldn’t breathe, a hand was clamped over her mouth, a knee butting between her legs. Fear and horror and revulsion welled up in her; she began to struggle, not knowing what was happening, trying to free her mouth, trying to buck the weight off her, but he was strong and heavy and he’d got himself set before she was awake enough to fight him. He was hard and thick, pushing into her, he was grunting like an animal, hurting her, it was a dry burning as if he invaded her with a reamer, rasping at her, all she could think of was getting it out.

Seconds passed, a few heartbeats, and she came out of her panic, lay still for one breath, another, then she moved her head so suddenly and so strongly he wasn’t ready for it. She didn’t quite free her mouth but she got flesh between her teeth and bit hard. He cursed and slapped her, then fumbled for her mouth again. She wriggled desperately under him, got her hands free, slapped them against the sides of his head, shoved it up off her, started the draw. He had a moment before the paralysis took hold but he couldn’t dislodge her.