Fire in the Sky tst-1

by Jo Clayton

  A Keteng with a lichen web so overgrown and complex that xe seemed to be peering out of a thicket stood by a string of twelve ponies, arguing with the Metau over the fee for their use, xe’s voice getting louder and shriller with every word; xe’d been paid, but xe wanted an additional surety against return because xe said xe’d had reports that choreks were thick as black biters on a dry day. “… killing ponies or going off with them and everything else they can haul away. My eldest is in xe’s third budding and the youngest is in slough, xe needs oluid to help with the Change. How you expect me to get xe through it if my stock ends up in some chorek stewpot?” Xe wind-milled xe’s arms. “What if the mesuch don’t bring ‘em back? Ard? What do Ard care about Denchok and their worries? Nothing. Living off the land’s fat. HUNH!”

  Ignoring xe, two Fior and three much younger Ketengs were cinching packsaddles on six of the ponies, roping supplies in place. Of the remaining six, three were saddled, three had lead ropes clipped to their halters.

  Shadith raised her brows. Choreks? Three ponies? I wonder who the other one’s for. She yawned, moved her shoulders and left the shadows of the arcade.

  “G’ morning, Maorgan. When we leaving?”

  Maorgan glanced at the sun, looking up through the golden shimmers of the drifting Eolt at the sun. “Won’t be long now. Custom, Shadowsong, we start important journeys at the tick of noon, when Greiдsil shines on our heads.”

  “Why? Wouldn’t it be better to get started early when the sun isn’t so hot?”

  “Ah, Shadowsong, that’s the mesuch speaking.” He drew the back of his forefinger along the neck of the nearest pony. “The caцpas browse on sunlight like the Eolt. They can go longer if we set out later. Besides, a journey’s start ought to have a set point so you know where you are.”

  Shadith blinked. “You’re right. My mind’s in the wrong pattern. Which caцpa’s mine?”

  He pointed, what looked like mischief twinkling in his pale blue eyes. “Him.”

  The moss pony’s eyes had long curling lashes and were a brown so dark it was almost black. Mixed in with his hair were a tracery of lichens that gave it a curious crinkly texture and a greenish sheen. Horses of any sort were generally associated with the multiform descendants of the Cousin Races, not with species native to the worlds where they settled, so the distant ancestor of this little beast would have come here with the first Fior as a fertilized ovum. Hm. Both it and the plant that grew on it must have mutated since-or were tampered with by the old Fior. She made a mental note to ask Maorgan when the first moss ponies showed up. Ca/Vas, he called them, but she found that hard to remember when she was looking them.

  She scratched her caцpa’s poll, cooing to him as he leaned into her, his eyes closing, his head resting heavy on her shoulder.

  A boy’s voice sounded behind her. “His name’s Brйou.”

  She looked round. “Bea, Glois. Why Brйou? He doesn’t stink.”

  “He makes stinks. You wait. You’ll see.”

  Utelel giggled, stiffened xe’s lips, and blew a loud BRRRUPPP!

  “Ah. Now I understand why Ard Maorgan looked like that.”

  Glois scowled suddenly, moved closer to Utelel, took xe’s hand. “We sh’d be going with you. We old enough.” His scowl deepened. “Almost. What diffrence a year gonna make?”

  “You might grow a little sense in a year, dilt.” Maorgan stopped beside Shadith. “You and your accomplice in iniquity scoot over where you belong and stop bothering the Harper with your nonsense.”

  Glois wrinkled his face into a clown grimace, then he and Utelel went sauntering off.

  “Shadowsong.”

  Shadith turned, leaned against the caцpa’s side, her fingers idly scratching through the wiry hairs of its mane. He’d taken to calling her that when she explained why Aslan called her Shadow instead of Shadith. Apparently he liked the image of a singer in shadow and the way the syllables slipped off his tongue when translated into Bйlucharis. Chuulcheleet. She rather liked it herself. “Hm?” she said.

  “We’ll be three riders, not two. Ard Danor from Melitoлh comes with us. That’s him over there a little behind Metau Chachil.”

  Danor was an ancient Fior standing apart from the noise and revel, his body pulled so tightly in on itself she could almost see the gap left in the air around him. Inside that wrinkled hide was a horrifying mixture of hate, fury, and grief. It rasped along her nerves as if she were being stroked by nettles. The thought of spending days in his neighborhood was not a happy one.

  “Your friend is a skin around rage.”

  “He’s a dead man walking.” His eyes went somber. He shuddered as he looked up at Eolt Melech drifting delicately golden over his head. “You heard Eolt Lebesair’s song. The mesuch on Melitah hunt Eolt to watch them burn. His sioll is ash on the wind.” He looked past Melech at the Yaraka flikit circling overhead and moved his shoulders with distaste. “I almost think we were blessed that it was them who came to us.”

  She nodded. “If you have to entertain thieves, a subtle one is a better guest.”

  A Denchok with a mid-size lichen web sat on a stool, playing a large harp, a small herd of Meloach and Fior boys squatting beside him, joined with pipes and drums. Glois was there, playing a set of panpipes almost as long as his arm in his left hand. Utelel crouched beside him, stroking and tapping a doubled drum he held between his knees.

  Off to one side Metau Chachil and Teseach Ruaim stood fingering the medals that marked their office. The rest of the Alsekumers were milling about, chattering in groups, laughing, asking questions, stopping to stare at the pony train, at Shadith and the others. Meloach and Fior children were running about, making noise, some in a chaotic tag game that involved tossing around a leather ball about the size of a boy’s head.

  When the sun was directly overhead, a chord of surpassing beauty came dropping down from the two Eolt. The folk of Alsekum hushed, the Dumel musicians let their hands go still.

  Rising and falling as if they rode the waves of an invisible ocean, the Eolt made a symphony of image and sound and on the ground Ard Maorgan and Ard

  Maorgan’s harp sang with them, harmonies that dipped in and out of the organ symphony completing and complementing the Eolts in ways impossible to describe or even understand.

  Shadith heard the song and knew there were words in it, celebrating the sun, the day, and the journey, though there was no way the brain she had now could fully translate it. Or appreciate the grief that screamed from Danor as he stood, head down, listening to what he could no longer share. She began to understand just what the sioll-bond meant, what an Ard was, and why they were so important to the joined peoples of Bйluchad.

  2

  Frowning a little, As/an watched the pony train vanish round a clump of trees. She had wider latitude than usual on this collecting run; University was tacitly willing to see her do a lot more than record, but would take a very dim view of her if she got carried away, so involved with the locals that she embarrassed the Regents. She sighed. Shadith knew that, but she wasn’t a Scholar and would never be one, her blood ran too hot. As mine does, they keep telling me. Phra, I don’t like being a Company snoop which is what I am if you tear off the pretty wrapping. To work, Scholar, get to work, no telling how long this window will last before the Chave decide it’s time to purge us.

  3

  “My name is Budechil. It’s a word from the old tongue, out of the time before the Fior came. It means Harmony. That thing will remember what I’m saying? Show me.”

  Aslan shifted the Ridaar, clicked on the replay. An image of Budechil crafted of colored light sat opposite the original, spoke the recorded words.

  “Ihoi!” Budechil came heavily to xe’s feet, stumped across to the image, passed xe’s hand through it, then looked at the hand for a long moment before xe went back to xe’s chair. “And who will see this?”

  “One copy will be registered in University Archives for Scholars to study, a second will be left here wit
h a reader so that your budlines a thousand and a thousand years on will see you and hear your stories.”

  “Meringeh! So what should I say?”

  “Let’s start with you, who you are, what you do. You’ve already given your name, we can go on from there.”

  Budechil tapped xe’s tongue against xe’s chewing ridge. “Glaaaa gla, talking is such a natural thing, why do I suddenly find words skittering away from me?” Xe closed xe’s eyes, rubbed the fingers of xe’s left hand along the arm of the backless chair.

  For several moments xe sat there silent, then xe opened xe’s eyes and started speaking again, slowly at first and then more easily. “I am Budechil the caцpa coper. Budline Chil-choдdd. I am the Line Elder for the moment and direct the Chil-choдdd lands of Ordumel Alsekum. I say for the moment because I feel the Heaviness of the Change coming on. Next spring when the melodach ripens, I will begin the eating and by summer’s end will take my place on the Sleeping Ground. When I am Eolt, I will not have the sioll bond, I do not have enough music in my soul and I have not got close to a Fior. I think we will have a bond in Alsekum. Young Glois and Utelel of the Bud-line Lel-beriod seem to be building a music that has promise of being glorious. That is a good thing. It has been too long since Alsekum gave an Ard and a singing Eolt to Bйluchad.

  “I have budded five times. One died of the Withers before drop-off, one was chopped and eaten by the chorek. The year those two dropped was Chel Dй cursed for sure. They were same-summer buds; it was as if the dead one called the living. Two of the living are Denchok, one is in bud, a single bud which is more fortunate and easier to live with. The youngest was a late corner, on the dying edge of my bud-time. Xe has been sickly and has stayed close to home and close to my reng. Ah, that too is an old-time word. It means the organ that feels tenderness and love; it is the same as crof which is what the Fior use as well. The Fior are Bйluchar now as much as the Keteng and they do things we can’t, our life is richer because of them, but I still like to remember the time before, when Bйlucharis had no words for man and woman, for birth and copulation and so many other things that I have seen and known but do not understand.

  “I’ve had to learn something about this business, dealing with caцpas as I do, breeding them and raising them, learning their seasons, when to separate them and when to keep them together. It’s hard, though, to contemplate thinking people doing such things. I an filled with delight when I think that Keteng need not go through such contortions to continue the species.”

  Aslan leaned forward, lifted a hand to catch xe’s attention. “Would you care to talk about that? A Keteng would not need the explanation, but the Scholars would like to hear your voice on this. If it is a private thing and you’d rather not…”

  Breath catching in the odd hiccupping sound of Keteng laughter, xe rocked forward and back on the cloth seat of xe’s chair. Xe caught xe’s breath, patted at the mat of lichen on xe’s chest. “Pardon me, Scholar. I’ve always found Fior fussiness silly, and it amuses me that you would think there is anything private about a dusting of spores.” Xe dropped xe’s hands onto xe’s thighs, the thin long fingers tapping lightly at the heavy dark blue canvas of xe’s trousers.

  “It is like this. In the month Kirrayl when the sun comes back overhead and the year begins, an Ordumel Circle gathers at one of the Dumels and holds a Kirrataneh. All day there is feasting and music and talk talk talk; there are people you haven’t seen since the last Kirrataneh and won’t see till the next. It has to be a night when the wind is soft and there is no rain or that year’s spores are wasted. When the sun goes down, the Denchok gather on the dance floor, the Eolt are overhead to sing, the drummers are there to beat the heart faster and faster. You dance from the sun going down till the sun coming up. The fires that light the floor are perfumed with a thousand and a thousand essences. You dance till your spore sacs pop and dance some more while your kesamad open out and expose their sticky linings to catch the tiyid raining down on them and dance yet more in the joy of the getting time. There is always a first to pop, and you pray Chel Dй will not choose to make you that one, because you will be teased without mercy for the whole rest of the year. Once the first has sprayed xe’s spores, all the spores are released. The pip-pop-pop grows louder than the drum beats. You dance in the rain of the tiyid and the pleasure of it is beyond words, something only an Ard and Eolt can express.” Xe sighed and was silent for several minutes, then xe said, “I don’t feel like talking anymore. Another day, perhaps.”

  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.