Fire in the Sky

4

The road was double in a way Shadith hadn’t seen before. The part for wagons was paved with flat stone rectangles set in a tarry substance. The caцpas took the other part, a dirt lane planted with short tough grass that grew in fist-sized clumps, easier on the feet, no doubt. It ran parallel to the first with a shallow ditch between them.

On both sides of them, fields stretched to the horizon, a patchwork of plant rows and plowed ground divided by narrow canals. Ordumel. The lands of Dumel Alsekum. Keteng worked in some of them, Fior in others, Fior children and Keteng Meloach ran along the ditch banks, opening and closing valves to feed the water where it was needed. Adults and children alike stopped what they were doing to wave to the travelers, then went back to work.

Danor rode first, his body hunched in the saddle, his misery like a hump on his shoulders. He never looked round at them or at anything except the back of his caцpa’s head.

Shadith rode beside Maorgan, the spare caцpas and the packers trailing along behind them. She was having more difficulty than she’d expected adjusting herself to this little beast-not so little, actually, when it came to getting one’s legs around him. Wide as a house. Her hipjoints creaked and she was going to know about it by day’s end. Just as well it was going to be a halfday this time. Another plus for the Bйluchar habit of starting at noon.

Brйou. No stinks yet. Probably when we stop to rest and feed the string.

Katinka tinka walk. Find the rhythm? Wish someone would tell me how. Like trying to fly a hiccupping flikit. If this is what his walk’s like, I don’t want to think about his trot. Chop-chop. Chop-chop. Clippety-clippety-clippety. Head up in the air, short legs pumping. Gods! My butt and my thighs are going to howl tonight.

The two Eolt drifted along overhead, now and then improvising wordless music just to amuse themselves, ripples of sound that dropped around the riders like songs from enchanted flutes. Or perhaps they were talking in a language so complex and abstract that the translator in Shadith’s head threw up its figurative hands and went back to sleep.

“Are they talking up there?” she said. “Or just making pretty sounds.”

Maorgan looked up at the Eolt, smiled. “Both,” he said. “Are your ears burning? They’re talking about you. I can’t tell you what exactly they’re saying. When they go on like that, I can pick up about one idea in ten. You don’t read them? I thought…”

“No. I can pick up feelings and peripherals, but too many things are happening at once when they’re talking to each other. My mind has too few… Inn… channels, I suppose.” She thought a moment. “My sisters might have, but they’re long dead and I… that’s an even longer story and unimportant besides. Tell me about the Meruu.”

“It’s a story I’d like to hear.”

The road ahead was empty as far as Shadith could see which was about a half a mile on at which point it curved around a thickly planted orchard. “I’ll trade,” she said. “My story for the truth about things, or at least the truth you know.” She frowned. “Though I’d prefer you didn’t make song of it and spread it on the wind.”

“If I do, I’ll change the name and the face. You’ve made songs. You know how it goes. It’s sound that rules what you say, far more than sense. And even a good story needs a bit of tweaking here and there.”

“Tweak it hard, Ard Maorgan. I don’t want to recognize myself. Ah well, this is how it goes: Once upon a time, a long long time ago…”

“And how long is long?”

“Call it twenty thousand years, give or take a millennia or three. In that once-upon-a-time there was a world called Shayalin and on that world the Shallana lived and among the Shallana were certain families called the Weavers of Shayalin who could dance dreams into being.”

“Dance dreams? Interesting. How?”

“We just did it. Like you and the Eolt. It’s something Weavers were born with, that’s all I know. I

wear a different body now with different senses and different gifts, so I can’t even show you what I mean.”

“Now that’s a trifle hard to believe. That bit about the body, I mean.”

“Odd, eerie, maybe a little strange.” She grinned at him. “Maybe very strange. The universe is full of weird things. Your Eolt, for one. Or could you explain how that flikit flies?” She waved her hand at the black dot intermittently visible through high, thin clouds.

“Hm. Think of a crystal that has the power to trap souls. Think of a soul that lived twenty times a thousand years inside that crystal. Think of a girl newly dead and a woman with healing hands who decanted the soul into the girl’s abandoned body. Think that I’m a singer making a story just to pass the time. All or none or some of the above is true. Shall I go on?”

“Please.”

“This is how the generations went among the Weavers. First there is the One. She is fertile and female, a singer who could not dance dreams nor bring them alive for others to see. She mates with an ordinary Shallana male and hatches the Six Daughters who were true Dancers,, the Weavers. When they are grown and dancing, she mates a second time and produces a fertile daughter, a singer like herself. And so it goes, six, and one and six again.

“I should say, so it went, generation upon generation until a free trader happened upon Shayalin and had Dreams danced for him by the Weavers of Shayalin. He stole a family of Weavers and ran with them. He was only the first of the raiders. In a hundred years there very few Weavers left.” She went silent a moment. “When the Eolt sang of the burning, I remembered…” She sighed and went on.

“And then there was another raid, more vicious than most, the raiders stupid and arrogant and above all ignorant. They killed Shallana a hundred at a time until a Weaver family was brought to them. Then they left. They shot the Mother/Singer and tossed her out an air lock because she was old and ugly. When they reached the Market world, they sold the Daughter/ Singer for a pittance because she could not dance and was young and ugly and then they tried to sell the Weaver/Sisters and found no takers because the Weavers needed the Singer for the Dream. They tried to find the Daughter, but she was gone with her owner no one knew where, so they shot the sisters, too, and went back to Shayalin for another set.

“The Daughter wandered far, moving from master to master, acquiring a name that non-Shallana could pronounce. Shadith was the name she took. It meant Singer in the language she took it from.

“Her last Master/Teacher died and left her free to move on and she did. In the course of her travels she found work with an expedition of scholars digging in the ruins on a world older than most of the suns around it. She found a thing there, an exquisite thing, a shimmering lacy diadem with crystal jewels spaced round it. Because it was so beautiful, she set it on her head, and it sank into her and vanished.

“Time passed and the time came when her ship crashed. She died in that crash and as she went, one of the crystals in the diadem seized hold of her soul and it stayed there as the millennia passed.

“The diadem moved. And moved again. Shadith’s soul moved with it and left it as I said before. That’s my story. And that’s why I said my sisters might have understood the Eolts’ songs.”

“Hm.” The sound was skeptical, but that was Maorgan’s only comment on what he’d heard. “And that bird etched into your face?”

“Think I’ll save that one for another day. Tell me about the Meruu.”

The trees in the orchard they were riding past had clusters of green spheres on long stems, the fruits about the size of her thumbnail. A scattering had a blush of pink mixed in the green. A few trees still had blossoms on them, odd looking things, a corona of round white petals circling a greenish yellow pod with cracks in it that showed off a crimson interior. Like the moss ponies, the trees looked an odd mix of Cousin and local that was more likely than not a result of the ur-Fior tampering with generative tissue. Shape Wars. Hm. Must have killed off the techs and wiped out a lot of material or they’d be farther along than this. Sounds like the same old thing. Time to get Maorgan talking. Need to know what this place is really like. Chorek, that’s something else. How they organize things. Weaknesses they’ve got to provide for. And what to do about the Chave. Gods, I wish Lee was here. Could use that ship of hers. No. Can’t depend on her the rest of my life. It’s MY life. Look at the man, off in a dream somewhere. Do I give him a jab to get him started, or let him surface on his own?

As the road finished curving round the orchard and headed west again, a Fior driving a team of six heavy homed beasts came into view. They were red and white with heavy dewlaps, moving at a steady clip, a little faster than a man could walk. The wagon they pulled had composition tires and a padded seat. The sides were thin strips of wood that had been steamed supple and woven into high and relatively light walls. Canvas was pulled over the load and tied tight.

The Fior was a stub of a man as wide as he was tall, with a shaved head and bristly red mustache and beard. One ear was pierced, a wooden luck charm hung from a silver stud. He looked curiously at Danor, raised thorny red brows at Shadith, grinned at Maorgan, and waved the goad at him. “Ard Ma’gin.”

Maorgan rode closer to the ditch, stopped his caцpa. “Barriall. Where you coming from?”

“Ord’m’l D’bak’mel. Watch y’ back, Ard. Chorek round like lice.”

I “Hear you, Barriall. Chel D6 keep.”

When the wagon had rumbled round the orchard, Maorgan clucked his caцpa into clip-clopping along beside Shadith and answered the question she thought he’d forgotten. “Matha matha, the Meruus. Meruu of the Air. A clutch of the eldest of the unsiolled Eolt. They hang together to chitter and chatter, sing a tune or two and report on the doings of their descendants, a litany of deploring and complaint. Meruu of the Earth. Much the same thing, Elders gumming out their last days pretending to run the place. Hold on a minute.” He urged the caцpa into a trot that looked as uncomfortable as Shadith had expected, caught up with Danor, spoke with him, and pointed ahead.

When he was back beside Shadith, he said, “There’s a lay-by with a well about an hour on. We’ll stop and rest the caцpas a while, let them drink and nibble on some grain. Well, what I said was a bit of an exaggeration. We Ards are none of us all that fond of authority. The Meruus abide in Chuta Meredel in the Vale of Medon. Which is where we’re going, by the way. The Circles of the Ordumels send representatives there to make laws for Banikoth. There’s a repository of memory and records, a place where teachers go to learn the history of the world. And a court where budlines go to lay quarrels and Fior to work out matters of property, where Ordumels go to settle boundary disputes, that sort of thing. But only if the problem’s really serious. Bother them with something they think is frivolous and the fines they lay on you will take your last drop of sweat.” He nodded at the smaller, paler Eolt drifting overhead. “Lebesair is what we call a Mer-Eolt,” he said. “One of those that carries word from the Meruus to the Ordumels.”

“Seems peaceful, all things considered. What was that wagon driver talking about. Chorek? What are chorek and why should we worry about them?”

“Chorek.” Maorgan wrinkled his nose, shook his head. “Trouble, Shadowsong. Thieves, some of them killers. The milder sort attack travelers, strip them to the skin, carry off everything they own. Others…” He shuddered. “They want to refight the Shape Wars. They steal to support themselves and kill to support their goals. Bad bunch. Ordinary chorek don’t usually attack when there are Eolt on watch, but the ones at war with the world hate Ards and the sioll bond. Even if they couldn’t steal, they’d kill us.”

“Shee! Between them and the Chave, I’m going to be sleeping light for sure.”

“They don’t come this far from the mountains much. Sometimes we get bands raiding out of the Marishes. Like the Sea Marish down by the mesuch’s enclosure. A lot of vermin in that place. Did us a favor when they sat down there, the mesuchs did. By the time we reach the edge of Dumel Alsekum’s Land Right, we’ll be close to the Kutelinga Marish. Then we will have to start sharing watch; it would be useful if you have offworld weapons.” He fell silent a moment, brooding.

Shadith didn’t answer the implied question; she wasn’t ready quite yet to trust him all that much, didn’t know how the Meruus would react to her coming to them armed. She sighed.