Wild Magic

CHU MA VAY YAL CHU MA VAY YAL

Doom doom da doom-weighted sticks wheeling, the drummers marched across the Bridge.

Tinka tink-hammer against anvil, the kassos picked up the beat again and crossed into the Low City.

Ma’teesee wrenched loose from the disintegrating Dance and ran to Faan who lay in a limp heap, Sequba roots like arms curled around her. “Dossy, amp;mere, help me.” She knelt beside Faan, straightening her out, then slapping lightly at her face. “Come on, Fa, wake up, everything’s crashing. We NEED you.” She pressed her fingers under Faan’s jaw, sighed with relief as she felt the steady thump-thump of the pulse, looked up as Dossan stumbled over to her. “We gotta get her to Tai. Help me make a chair.”

Dossan gazed vaguely at her, fumbled with her hands, let them fall.

“Bouzh it, Dossy. We don’t move, we gonna get killed.”

Panting and half dead, Riverman stumbled into the shade of the Sibyl’s Cave; it wasn’t much cooler there, but at least there was no sun. He moved his tongue over dry and cracking lips, limped deeper into the dark.

There was a small round hole gouged in the stone in front of the Sibyl’s Chair. Cool clear water lapped at the edges. With a fizz-pop of intense pleasure, he plunged into the pool, sinking deep, deep into the coolness and wet that was life itself, healing the ravages of the long climb.

When he surfaced finally, he looked up to see the Sibyl sitting in the Chair. “Why?” he said. “What have I done to you?”

“Nothing, godlet. I need you, that’s all.”

“Need!” He pulled himself up and sat on the edge of the tiny pool, his aching feet dangling in the water. “Got more need put on me than I got skin.” He scratched at a pointed ear, then dug for water mites in the rough brown weed growing about his loins.

The Sibyl tapped a long forefinger on the stone arm of her chair, then spoke a WORD that shook the air but made no sound.

A shimmer drifted to hang in front of Riverman, a streak of silver light the length of his arm. There was a loud PING; the shimmer solidified into a miniature saber, then splashed down in the pool just missing his webbed toes.

“You’ll need that, Riverman. It’ll cut through anything you want severed.” The Sibyl laughed at the face he made. “Don’t worry, godlet, it won’t cut you. Now, here’s what I want you to do…”

Abeyhamal whirls, her fimbo held horizontally and waist high; gold fire flows from the tip, fighting and dissolving the red fire. She roars her rage and leaps across the Anvil, the butt of her Fimbo striking the Brazier and knocking it over, the coals skipping out across the Forge Floor, the red life in them slowly fading to gray.

The kassos and the primes marched off the Iron Bridge chanting CHU MA VAY YAL CHU MA VAY YAL, ghost drums beating, hammers and anvils tinka tinking, tramping on the ash of the folk and buildings burned by the Fire.

Then the stones came.

From every side, the stones came.

An arrow pierced the throat of the Anacho Prime, a half dozen skewered the Anaxoa Prime.

The kassos scurried for the shelter of the Iron Bridge, falling to stones, falling to arrows, dead and wounded abandoned where they fell.

Champion Ommad yelled for his warhorse, cursing as his twelve-year-old page fought toward him through the stream of riders plunging into the South Eka Kummata. He swung into the saddle, roared at the mob, “Get back, you jeggin’ meat, FORM UP! I’ll have your guts for gitter strings. FORMATION, YOU SUCKING TSOUS!”

A few heard him and slowed their charge, came back to form up behind him, their faces carefully blank. Only a few.

Confident in their training and their weapons, filled with contempt for these squatters, these peasants, furious at the taunting they’d endured, Lancers and hostas alike charged into the city. They’d been blooded in slave raids and bandit chases, had never faced a hostile city roused to resist them. They expected to ride over the feebs and slaughter as they chose.

The wynds were narrow and crooked, and the squatters had built their barricades around curves; the warhorses crashed into these before their riders saw them, or they stumbled over ropes strung low between the houses; the higher ropes caught the riders in their throats, knocked them onto the rutted earth where they were trampled by the horses behind them and the hostas running along beside them.

On the flat roofs of the one-story buildings the women howled, an ululating eerie sound, then they tipped the cauldrons over the low parapets and sent the boiling fluids cascading onto the attackers.

Children ran from houses into side wynds, threw stones at the intruders, scampered back inside, giggling and triumphant. More stones rained frum the roofs from the slings of the shepherds and the others.

Squatters with hammers and kitchen knives darted out of houses and side-wynds, swanned over men thrown down, cut throats and hammered heads. Some were killed, but most got away with scratches and bruises.

The blundering attack degenerated into a rout. Leaving their wounded to the knives of the squatters, the Lancers and the hostas staggered from the city.

The Naostam Runner came panting into the Kummhouse Reception Room, so excited she could barely speak. “They’re buzzitin’, Zazi. We did it! We did it!”

Penhari lifted a hand. “Calmly, Runner. It’ll be harder when they come again. Much harder.” She smiled at the girl. “But we did beat them this time.”

One by one the other Runners came in with reports from their Kummatas, reports of rout and people dancing in the wynds and on the rooftops, dancing in the Groves, of Cheoshim and hostas running with their tails between their legs, of kassos fleeing like frightened rats.

“Vema vema,” Penhari said. “All this is grand, but it’s not time for celebrating yet. They’ll come again and this time they’ll come as warriors, not as a mob. They’ll come by inches and slaughter as they move.” She smiled grimly into the suddenly sobered young faces. “I depend upon you, Runners. If you get yourselves killed, you blind me. After this, go in pairs; if one’s cut down, the other can carry the word. Run the rooftops, not the wynds; it’s slower, I know, but safer.” She paused. “Until they decide to clear the roofs. Watch out for that.” She scooped up a pile of sealed packets from her desk. “Don’t let anyone see this but your Kumms. Get it to them safe and fast as you can. Bring me back any questions or objections. Do you understand? Good.”

She handed out the packets with the plans she’d labored over for hours, consulting Panote, the Kassian

Tai and Desantro, pulling together the reports from the Kummate about the people and resources of their Kummatas, adding in all she remembered of the ramblings of the General about the Cheoshim and their training, all she’d learned from Faharmoy.

Runners stuffed the packets in their pouches and went trotting out.

Sting! To be so young and so eager. I never was. She shivered, swallowed the bile of ancient anger that rose in her throat. I never had a chance to be.

Faan woke in the Kummhouse Infirmary, blinked up into the Kassian Tai’s worried face.

“Fa.” Tai’s voice cracked on the word. She cleared her throat. “How’re you feeling?”

Faan pushed up without answering. She could hear sounds coming through the window-pans banging; the small drums that everyone seemed to have over here toom-tooming away; shouts and laughter. “I couldn’t hold, Zazi.”

“Don’t worry, honey. We drove them back, tails tucked.”

Faan shivered. “What…?”

“Listen to me, Fa. It doesn’t matter. They’re gone. Even the kassos. They’re back across the Iron Bridge. Chewed up enough to respect our teeth.”

“Juvalgrim?”

“Not there this time. I expect our High Kasso has lost his footing at last.”

“Mamay!” Faan swung her legs over the edge of the cot, looked frantically about. “If they got him, they got Reyna, I know it. Where’re my clothes, Tai. I have

“Hush hush, honey.” Tai reached out to touch Faan’s cheek, but Faan jerked away. “I don’t know what’s going on over there, child. No one can cross the River now.”

“No one? I can.” Faan got to her feet, swung her arms out for balance as her head swam. She stiffened her back, drew in a long breath, exploded it out. “I can,” she repeated grimly. She looked down at the skimpy shift which was all she had on. “My clothes. Where are my clothes?”

“Abeyhamal…”

“Abeyhamal can go jegg herself. The deal was SHE kept Rey out of trouble; well, that’s off and so’s the rest. I mean it, Tai, if I have to go like this, I will:”

Tai looked suddenly older. “Vema, Fa. What you were wearing… well, we’ll have to burn it. I had Dossan fetch some clean things.” She gestured toward a small chest beside the door, then turned to leave. In the doorway, she paused, looked over her shoulder. “I do want to remind you, honey, Abeyhamal has a lot more than you to worry about.” She closed the door gently behind her.

Faan grimaced. “Vema, she muttered, then began the loosening exercises Panote had taught her, working the dizziness from her head, the knots from her muscles. “You and I never did count, Zazi; you don’t want to know it, but it’s the truth.”

When she was feeling steady again, she dressed and left the room, scowling, wondering where Ailiki had gotten to.

Riverman jogged down the path trying to get used to the soft shoes the Sibyl had spelled about his feet so he could run the black iron tiles without cooking himself. He slowed as he came to the charred stump of the old olive tree. A small limber shoot with shiny green leaves had grown up from the roots; he hadn’t noticed it when he passed on the way to the Cave, but this time the wind shook it and it seemed to wave to him. He laughed his fizzy laugh, returned the wave, and started down the Jiko Sagrada.

He crept along the deserted kariam clinging to the ashy shadow of the dead kichidawa hedges, cautious despite the empty silence of the towers. He wrinkled his. short broad nose, shifted his grip on the horn hilt of the saber, annoyed at the Sibyl for not providing a sheath for it.

He reached the Circle, ducked under the raised boardwalk in front of the shops and began circling behind the kassos and the STRIKERS, any sounds he made lost in the ragged chanting of the Manassos, the reedy voice of the Prime going on about something. He didn’t bother puzzling out the. Prime’s words. It was all human nonsense anyway, this breast beating and reading profundities into the accidents of appetite. A god was a force you dealt with, like a blizzard or a tornado; when they were around, you kept your head down; when they weren’t, you did your best not to arouse them.

He wouldn’t be here now if the Sibyl hadn’t laid this geas on him. Fond as he was of the Honeychild, it wasn’t him she was going to lead to freedom, and as for the River-let Abeyhamal finish this thing, the rains would be back and the water clear again. Ah well, ah well, would-be was as useless as regret. Best to just get on with it.

Juvalgrim and Reyna were atop the pyre in the center of the Circle; he eyed them, sniffed with exasperation. Into the mouth of the Beast. He squatted under the boards, scratched his drooping weedfur and tried to figure out how he was supposed to cross that empty space without some fidgeting wander-eye spotting him and raising a shout. Eyes everywhere. I can’t do this. Sibyl, O Sibyl, I’m just a little Riverman. They’ll throw me on the fire and burn me to ash.

Sounds from across the River drifted to him on the freshening wind, sliding through the pauses between syllables-shouts, women’s howling, screams, crashings; the second attack was beginning. That must be why the towers were so empty-most of the Cheoshim had crossed the River now that the Bridges were open. Too bad. There was going to be a lot of hurt and death this day. Humans. Ephemerals, Sibyl called them. Minh! Pain was pain if you lived one year or a thousand.

“Let evil be driven from our midst,” Fuaz Yoyote intoned. “All praise to all powerful all knowing Iron Father…”

“CHU MA VAY YAL CHU MA VAY YAL,” chanted the Manasso kassos.

The torch bearers ducked the oil-soaked batting corded about the ends of the long poles into the Sacred Brazier, marched with Cheoshim STRIKERS as escorts to the pyres at the edge of the Circle; four went to the center. Two torches each for Juvalgrim and Reyna. Sweet man, that Prime.

The kassos jabbed the butts of the poles against their feet, held the smoking torches at an angle and waited for the sign to fire up the wood.

The Prophet knelt, arms stretched out, mouthing the words of the Praises, the sound of his voice lost in the louder noise of the ritual.

Chumavayal dips into the dying coals of the Fire, scoops up huge handfuls and flings them at the Bee Mother, flings them to the right of HER, the left of HER and before HER and pulls flames from them, driving the fire tongues at HER

Wind howled through the empty wynds and lcarinms of the High City; threads of black cloud swirled overhead, black and heavy with wet; a spray of rain spattered on the dust and grit of the pavement.

“… let the evil be routed, the souls of the sinners fly to the Father. NOW!” Fuaz Yoyote sputtered as a spate of raindrops hit him in the face. He wiped the water away, smiled as he saw the torch bearers whiri and thrust their fire into those piles of tinder wood.

Riverman crouched under the boardwalk, gnawing his lip. The dry wood was going with a roar. “Oh my fur oh my feet,” he wailed, ducked under the support timber and scuttled for Juvalgrim’s pyre.

Abeyhamal roars, sweeps her massive fimbo in a circle that scatters the coals, jabs the point high. Wet black clouds swirl from it. Lightning jags from it. Wind howls round and round the floor. In the Land, wind snatches Faan off her feet, whirls her across the River.

Thunder boomed, lightning danced in jags among the pyres, the wind rose abruptly to hurricane force, sweeping around and around the Sok Circle.

The wind pushed at Reyna, battered at him, but the ropes held, though they cut into his wrists and twisted his left arm until a long bone broke. The wind flopped him again and agdm against the pole, bone grating against bone, breaking through the skin, blood dripping down, mixing with the rain.

Juvalgrim heard him.scream, felt him sag against the ropes. He wrenched at the straps, but he couldn’t move. Smoke from the pyres was curling round him.

He tried to speak, he fought to form the WORDs of power in his head and force them to work.

Nothing.

The kassians and the Cheoshim were blown out of the Circle, slammed into the shuttered and boarded up shops.

The wind swirled around the kneeling muttering Prophet; it didn’t shift so much as a hair of his beard.

The smoke was thick and low; raindrops the size of olives drove through it and beat at Riverman, knocking him flat several times. Each time he scrambled to his feet and scurried on.

He reached the pyre, sprang and caught a protruding branch, pulled himself onto it, peered through the smoke for another hold. The saber was a nuisance, slowing him down, but he couldn’t leave it behind, he had to have some way of cutting the ropes and straps. Flames tickling at his feet, he fought his way up the pile.

Faan dropped to the paving in front of the Prophet, an amber fimbo glowing in her right hand. For a long moment they stared at each other, then Faharmoy got to his feet.

Faan turned her back on him. “NO!” she cried. “STOP THIS. STOP IT. THE FIRES! NO NO NO. I WILL NOT!”

Abeyhamal drives the point of her fimbo at the Iron Father’s chest. He lifts his Hammer to smash it, but she laughs, a mocking humming laugh, shifts direction and drives the point into the clouds above them. Rain falls in silver sheets. The last coals die.

Rain fell in battering floods, drowning the fires.

Riverman wrapped his alms around Reyna’s ankle, grabbed at his trousers, and hung on. as the wind and water threatened to wash him off the pyre.

Faharmoy’s hands closed about Faan’s throat.

She shouted a WORD. Wind roared round them, swept them off their feet, flung them against the paving stones. Faharmoy hit first, he was stunned and his hands were jarred loose. By the time he was thinking again, Faan was a body-length away.

The Dance began.

Feet stamping to the beat of Earth Heart, they circled, danced breast to chest, broke apart, oscillated through arcs, shuffle to the right, shuffle to the left, back and forth, back and forth as if a resilient sphere rolled between them, blocking each from the other.

Lightning walked around them, the rain had diminished to a drizzle, the droplets settling on every fold of their clothing, on their hair and arms.

Riverman swore under his breath and began struggling up the pole, using the ropes and straps to help him climb.

“Hold still,” he whispered in Juvalgrim’s ear. “I’m going to cut you loose. Sibyl sent me and I’m a friend of your friend’s daughter. You hear?”

Juvalgrim stiffened, then produced a low gurgle deep in his throat that Riverman took to mean assent. He inspected the hinges and straps, then began cutting cautiously, cheered to find the Sibyl was right, the saber cut steel like cheese and left living flesh alone.

He finished with the cage and the neck strap. Juvalgrim started to shake; he was trying to hold still, but he couldn’t. The cage fell off, hit the top of the pyre, rolled off and clattered on the paving stones. Swearing under his breath, Riverman lowered himself to the chest rope that bound Reyna and Juvalgrim together, slashed through it, scrambled between them to the iron gloves that immobilized Juvalgrim’s hands. The wind whipped grit past him; the drizzle made the pole desperately slippery, though the wet did increase his strength. He used the saber to hack toe holds in the wood, worked his way round until he could cut the straps that bound the right glove together.

It fell with a satisfactory thump. He glanced at the dancers, snorted, then wriggled around to deal with the other hand. Getting nowhere, round and round, idiot gods, there’s not going to be anything left if they don’t… He dealt with the left hand and scrambled back to cut through the ropes that tied Reyna’s arms to the post, saw the jut of bone, the wash of blood, and hissed with annoyance. “Sibyl, you want this one alive, you better do something.” He crawled along the arm until he reached the break. “Well?”

A snatch of breeze stirred his brown, sagging weed fur. Hold tight and lay the sword alongside the bone came whispering in his pointed ear. Tongue between his teeth, he wrapped his hand in the rags of Reyna’s blouse, slapped the sword down flat on Reyna’s arm.

The arm bucked and twitched, the sword sank into the dark copper skin, the wound closed over.

Riverman pulled himself back down the arm, clutched Reyna’s trembling wrist. “Tsah tsah,” he muttered, “now how am I supposed to…”

No answer.

He wrinkled his nose, then started chewing at the rope.

The fimbo slipped in Faan’s sweaty hand. She shifted her grip, wiped her palm on her shirt. The cloth was soaked, so that didn’t help much. She switched hands again and tried to relax into the dance Abeyhamal was jerking her through. She didn’t understand the point of this posturing and she was sick with anger because she couldn’t escape the grip of the god. POWER POWER she danced. POWER. POWER-. POWER. I WILL NOT, she screamed inside. I WILL NOT… I WILL NOT… LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN. I WILL NOT… I WILL NOT… Get it done, she told herself, get this over with.

Faharmoy slapped his hands together. Tbngues of fire licked at Faan.

She snorted with disgust, brought fire leaping along her arms, blue flamelets that wriggled and chattered their hunger at her. She loosed a pair of them and they engulfed the red fire, ate it, and plunged toward Faharmoy.

Chumavayal roared his anger, REACHED down and swatted the fire elementals into another universe, then slapped out, intending to crush Faan.

Abeyhamal kicked the Brazier over, scattering the coals; as a part of the same movement she brought the point of the fimbo hard against the Old God’s chest, striking him over the heart.

The coals died.

Chumavayal shriveled until he was a tiny black baby lying on the Forge Floor.

As the tenuous black hand swept at her, Faan dropped to her stomach.

It passed over her and was gone. She leapt to her feet, ran at Faharmoy; the tip of the fimbo touched him over the heart, went driving through empty space.

She scrambled frantically to keep from stepping on the baby wailing in the rags of his brown robe; when she was steady on her feet again, she looked around. The people in the Circle were indistinct shadows fading silently away into rapidly thickening fog, moving toward the River. Juvalgrim was helping Reyna down from the pyre; they started off together.

“Mamay!” She ran after him, caught at his arm-gasped as he looked down at her from eyes empty of all mind or understanding. She dropped her hand.

He turned and walked after Juvalgrim with a grim, mechanical deliberation.

A small hand slapped her leg. “Honey, give us a lift, mmmh?”

She looked down. Riverman. “What…”

“It’s over, Fa. The Change is starting.”

She pulled her hand across her face. “He didn’t know me. He looked at me and he didn’t know me.”

“It’s the Change, honey. He’s forgetting. That’s the way it works. If you keep after him any longer, you’ll forget, too. You want that?”

“No… •

“Then you need to get to the Sibyl’s Cave.”

She bent, cupped her hand. He stepped into it and held onto her sleeve as she lifted him waist high. “Mild?”

“I don’t know, Fa.” He settled into the crook of her arm. “Quick, there isn’t much time left.”

She looked around a last time. There was no one left in the circle, even the baby Faharmoy had vanished. “This is what it’s all about, all the starving, all the fighting, all the dying? A touch on the chest?”

“Timing’s all, Faan. You and HER, touching together.”

“Waste!” She blinked, shook her head, then started trotting for the nearest kariam. She was too tired and too numb to feel anything yet, grief or triumph.

The Forge Floor melted into the air leaving a circle of crisp green grass with a conical Hive in the center. A garden filled with the sound of water and with flowers whose perfumes drifted aimlessly on wandering breezes; gossamer bees like bits of sunlight hummed from bloom to bloom and back to the Hive. A grand Sequba grew beside a stream, its moththeries flittering about, changing color in a visual song of pleasure in their new freedom. Abeyhamal laid the baby on the grass, leaving him for the sun to feed him, the rain to quench his^-thirst; his excretions were perfumed and ephemeral, sublimating into the Garden air like dew evaporating in the morning.

She settled herself on a Sequba root and contemplated with intense satisfaction the realm that was now hers alone.

The Low City was silent, the wynds and ways filled with yellow-white mist. The dead lay where they fell, but the wounded rose and stood staring at nothing, their bones and muscle healing as the mist eddied about them.

Penhari sat in the Heart Garden of the Kummhouse, staring vacantly at the mist.

There was a weight in her lap. She looked down. A baby.

The baby wailed. Without thinking, she unbuttoned her blouse and put him to her breast which was suddenly heavy with milk.

At the first swallow, the baby stiffened. His body convulsed, began to change. In minutes what had been a boy child was a girl; a hungry vigorous little girl. Penhari laughed and shook her head.

And forgot.

Ailiki came lollopping from the Sibyl’s Cave, circled round Faan, reared on her hind legs, and clapped her forepaws together.

Faan smiled; the lump in her throat eased a little. She set Riverman down, straightened her shoulders and walked into the shadow.

Her gear and Faan’s were in two leather bags by her feet, Desantro was squatting beside the Sibyl’s Chair, looking angry and confused. She stood when she saw Faan. “Maybe you can tell me. What’n jann’s going on here? The beast of yours went crazy, it kept biting me like I was a sheep it was herding. The Kassian said to pack up and follow it.”

“Sibyl?”

The old woman looked tired. “It was necessary. You’ll need a Companion, Faan, someone to teach you how to survive once you leave the Land.”

“Leave.”

“You have no place here, Honeychild, not any longer. No home. No family. Nothing.”

Faan clenched her teeth; her eyes prickled with tears she was too angry and too stubborn to shed.

Desantro slapped at her thigh. “Gaangah! Don’t I get any say what I do or don’t?”

The Sibyl turned her head, looked down. “No.”

Desantro snorted, got to her feet. “One jeggin’ thing atop ‘nother. Well, least I get outta here.”

Faan swung round, walked to the front of the Cave and looked out across the Land. All she could see below the black points that were the peaks of the Jinocabur Mountains was a billowing yellow-white fog. Her breathing was ragged, she scrubbed the heel of her hand across her eyes. The rage that filled her was trapped inside her; there was no one to vent it on. And it frightened her. I can’t deal with this. I can’t…

Ailiki brushed against her legs, wove around her, warm and soft.

Faan gasped, shuddered; when Ailiki reared on her hind legs, she caught her up, held her against her face. The mahsar’s purring vibrated through her, eased the tightness a little and reminded her that there wasmaybe-something left. The thing she’d wanted to know and couldn’t find out-who she was, where she came from. Maybe now…

She turned and came slowly back to the Sibyl. “My mother. Can you tell me now? Give me a hint or something?”

The Sibyl tented her fingers, looked over them at Faan; her bright black eyes were twinkling. “More than a hint, Honeychild. Your mother is a sorceror called Kori Piyolss; you’ll find her in the Myk’tat Tukery on an island called Jal Vith.”

“I see. And how do I get there?”

“When the fog clears, you’ll find a ship tied up at the Camuctarr Gat, Vroliko Ryo’s Rostokul. The crew’s sleeping through the Change, but they’ll wake for you.” She smiled. “Don’t forget your studies, little Soreerie. “

Faan shivered, went back to the Cave mouth, and stood watching the Fog boil.

Goddance. The Beginning

Riverman on her shoulder, the Sibyl stood at the mouth of the Cave and watched Faan run down the path, Desantro close behind her. The Change was complete, the Fog had cleared away. The morning was crisp and cold, the sky gray with clouds; underfoot Fogomalin was rumbling.

Riverman tugged at her ear. “What’s bothering you, mmh?”

“Faan. What a mess these gods make. And they never clean up after themselves.”

“Abeyhamal, godlet. She set a shell over Jul Virri I doubt even a sorceror could break through. Now that the Change is done, she has no doubt forgot all that and even if she hasn’t…” The Sibyl shrugged. “By tomorrow, godlet, your River will be flashing itself clean. Stay with me a while. Then we both can rest.”

“Until it starts again.”

“It already has.”