by Jo Clayton
He moved a hand impatiently. “It has nothing to do with your intelligence, child. Or skill. Or any of your many talents. It is simply this, I fear. Nor are necessarily male. If a female took the Nor-route to power, she’d have to fight herself as much as she fought to learn and would burn herself out before she got to where she wanted to be.” When she opened her mouth to protest further, neither understanding nor accepting his slow, halting explanation, he gave a small exclamation of disgust and left.
Serroi glared at the blond boy. He scowled back at her. His fear seemed to leave with the Noris. She tightened her mouth, her jealousy like a fire in her stomach. The boy could take her place with her Noris if she didn’t obey him. She fought against the pain in her heart and closed her fingers tight about the pebble. “What’s your name, boy?”
He blinked solemnly at her. Slowly his hand came up to his mouth and he began sucking at his thumb. He said nothing.
Serroi pinched his arm. “Name!”
He pulled away from her, his thumb popping from his mouth. “Bad,” he shouted at her. “Ugly girl. Ugly frog-face. Ugly. Ugly. Ugly.” When she jerked her hand back to slap him, he stuck out his tongue at her and ran away to hide behind the bed.
All that spring she struggled to fight her antipathy to the boy, for that blocked her efforts to learn him, then control him. He hated her back with all the passion in his small body. He was a handsome child with a clear, soft skin and shining dark-gold hair. He’d been someone’s darling, spoiled badly; he cried often, was malicious and sneaky, running to the Noris, showing the bruises on his arms where Serroi had pinched him. If there were no bruises, he’d pinch himself; she’d caught him at that. Though the Noris said nothing to her, simply watched the two of them with an enigmatic cool amusement that continued to keep her on edge. She grew thinner, tense and exhausted with her struggle. Her long, painful, fruitless struggle. For it was fruitless. That worried her most of all. She couldn’t control him. Even after three months of intense effort, he fought her every step. She finally managed to impose her will on him for brief intervals, no more than two or three minutes in duration. Sweating, her face twisted into a straining mask, she could force him to walk about under her direction, could make him pick up or set down small articles, nothing more.
She came to dread those sessions. She couldn’t bear to fail at anything the Noris asked of her. As the hot dusty summer settled over the tower, she fought to master the boy until she was close to destroying herself. Then the Noris brought the experiment to an abrupt, and to her eyes arbitrary, end. One morning she came wearily from her room to find the stairs leading up to the boy’s room no longer there. The stone was solid. She hoped the boy was gone, but didn’t dare ask for several days. She neglected her studies and spent the next days playing with her animals, trying to console herself for her failure. She’d tried her hardest, but she’d failed. Her blood kin had always punished her when she made mistakes, no matter how hard she’d tried. She waited and waited for the blow to fall, then nerved herself to speak to the Noris. This evening, she thought. When I go to him.
He turned his head as she walked in, turned it back to gaze dreamily into the leaping flames. She settled on her pillow. He was in one of his unapproachable moods, not unfriendly, just unwilling to talk. She fidgeted on her pillow, straightening her legs out in front of her, then curling them under her.
The Noris stirred, frowned.
Serroi closed her hands into fists. “I tried. I couldn’t,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“What?” His head swung around. “What are you talking about?”
“The boy.” She pulled her body into a small ball on the pillow, head down, knees tight against her chest.
“Oh that.” He flicked long white fingers, dismissing the boy into nothing.
“I tried.”
“Forget it, child.” The Noris spoke shortly, making the brushing-away gesture again, annoyed at her persistence. “It was only an experiment. It’s over. I sent him away.”
She loosed her hands and lifted her head, brushed the curls out of her eyes. “Sent him away?’
The Noris’s hand moved gently over her curls. “When you want to understand something, Serroi, you test it to its limits.” He pulled a curl between thumb and forefinger. “Do you miss him?”
She sighed and relaxed, leaning against the divan, her cheek on its velvet, watching the flames dance and the shadows play, the Noris’s hand resting lightly on her head. “No,” she breathed. “I’m glad he’s gone.”
The Woman: V
Serroi sat beside the sleeping girl, drifting in a mindless ease until she found herself on the verge of falling asleep. Disturbed nights had left her with a weariness that was like an ocean pressing down on her. She sighed, got to her feet, walked with quick nervous steps to the rock pool. She stripped and, plunged into the clear snowmelt, gasping with shock as her warm flesh dipped under the surface. She paddled about until the last wisps of sleep and nightmare dissolved and her blood was thrumming through her veins.
Turning onto her back, she floated, gazing up at a sun that was low in the west, bisected by the top of the cliff. The cup was filling with shadow; night was close enough to call the shuri. She flipped over and paddled to the cliff wall with the carving of the Maiden. With water sluicing from her body, she climbed the crude ladder of foot and hand holds hollowed into the rock, though the holds were small and made for hands and feet differently shaped. She placed her hand over the Maiden’s stone fingers where the stone was worn smooth by many other touches, smiled as warmth tingled into her fingers and flowed along her arms to fill her shivering body.
“Creasta-shuri.” She sang the words in her husky contralto, paused to listen to the echoes playing with the sound. “Meie of the Biserica I am.” She sang slowly, twisting her tongue around the gutturals painstakingly learned many years before. “Guidance through the mountains I ask. By the pact between us I ask.” She waited again until the echoes died and the warmth faded from the stone fingers, then dropped back into the pool.
She paddled across it and pulled herself out, shivering and muttering as the cooling air touched her. Hastily she snapped her blanket roll open and dropped to the grass, rubbing briskly at herself with one of the blankets until her body glowed. When she was dry, she pulled on her tunic and skirt, then sat down beside the gently snoring Dinafar to wait for the shuri.
Though the vale swam in dark blue shadow, the top third of the eastern cliff shone gold long after the sun disappeared. One star, then another appeared, pin-pricks of silver in the darkening blue. As the gold finally melted away, the sky grew thick with furry silver points. She began to wonder if the shuri would come at all. Nothing is holding. She shook her head. I can’t waste another day here. When she closed her eyes she could see Tayyan sprawled in her blood. She wrenched her mind away from that and began thinking about Domnor Hern. She remembered him as she saw him one day walking toward the women’s quarters, laughing up at the much taller Morescad arrogant and stone-faced beside him. The Domnor was a pudgy man with constant laughter in his grey-green eyes as if he found the world more than slightly absurd. He ate too much, played with his women too much, enjoyed himself too much in too many ways. Lybor called him a pleasure-sated fool. Serroi shook her head. I don’t know. The Mijloc goes along well enough under his hand. Better him than Lybor and Morescad. Will he believe me when I tell him what Tayyan and I heard? It’s crazy, the fools, thinking they can use a Nor, even a cheap street Norid. Calling up a demon to take over Hern’s body: Do they think no one will notice? Maiden bless, Floarin will tie the pair of them in knots if they try to get rid of her. And Tayyan’s hurt, maybe dead because of that numb-brained nonsense. With considerable effort she subdued her anger and bent over Dinafar.
The girl was scowling in her sleep, her snores little more than soft whistles, her hands closed into fists. Dinafar, Serroi thought. Outsider. She looked down at her own hands, at the matte olive of her skin, sighed. Outsider. When
she touched one of the fisted hands, Dinafar moaned in her sleep and pulled the hand away. Serroi rubbed at her eyes. At least my mother loved me and saw I had food and clean clothes. To teach a child she’s lower than dirt! She thought of Dinafar crouching over the pile of supplies, at once defiant and hopeless, struggling to find a way out of the trap she was in. I didn’t want you with me, she thought. I still don’t. What am I going to do with you? Take you with me to Oras and get you killed too? Maiden bless, I’ll find a way to send you south. You’ll find friends there, loyal friends, not oath-breakers. Oh damn damn damn. She felt a pricking behind her eyes, forced the tears back. I’ll weep for you later, Tayyan. If I have to.
The blue shadows deepened to indigo as clouds gathered overhead, rolling across the, star field until only a few sparks were left. A shadow in shadows came whispering across the grass and stopped in front of her, the whites of its eyes glistening unsteadily as they shifted from her to the girl sleeping beside her.
“Haes angeleh, Shuri,” she murmured, then sat without moving, waiting for the shuri to speak.
“Hasna angelta, Meie.” The voice from the shadow was low and burred, the tone questioning. “Why you shurin call?”
She considered the quality of the voice, decided to use the male affix. “Shurid, out of my need I call.” She spoke slowly, gravely. It was important to take care. Shurin were a proud and touchy people-and formidable enemies when they chose to be. Nervously she passed her hand back over her hair, pushing wind-tousled strands off her face. “We two-this child and I-the Kapperim seek.” She dropped her hand onto Dinafar’s shoulder, felt it move away from her touch. “A double hand of deaths do I owe them. This of shurid I ask, a safe and quick journey through Earth’s Teeth.”
The shuri was silent. He stood very still, his only movement the shifting of those large round eyes, Serroi to Dinafar and back, until Serroi began to worry about her assumptions-was the shuri in female phase after all? She let herself relax when the shuri bowed its furry head. “The pact between shurin and meien sworn is, Meie. Value for value, in the, pact it is.”
Puzzled and wary, Serroi echoed the shuri. “Value for value. Has Biserica ever denied its debts?”
“Moongather a nyok’chui has called from Earth. A den has it made at Kabeel water. The glishnacht without water wither. The season-mother among the first he took. The kittmahan no water to the glishnacht bring. Wam’toten, our children of this year, in fear and hunger, in thirst to me do cry. Season-father I be. The season-mother he knife take; he trap set; he eaten is.” The husky voice trailed off, grown even thicker with the intense grief that shook his small form. Urgent as her own need was, she could not deny the shuri’s need. In the pact it was. She looked down at the girl stirring in her sleep, smiled ruefully. Another problem, another snag. She shook Dinafar awake.
When they rode out of the cup, winding through the treacherous slit with its tumbled rocks and precarious walls, the storm clouds were massing overhead, coming between moongather and earth. The wind pressed her clothes into her skin, tried to lift her off the saddle. She glanced back, wondering how Dinafar was making out. The girl was bent low over the macai’s neck, sensibly presenting little surface for the wind to catch hold of. Serroi laughed to herself. She does learn fast, little mongrel.
She felt an easing of the sorrow that oppressed her. The simple fact that she was moving forward, on her way back to the city, was sufficient to quiet her pain for a while. As always, the storm outside stirred her blood and helped to ease the storm inside. She moved easily in the saddle, settling into the macai’s dip and lurch, feeling as if she rode the dipping and swaying wind, not touching the earth at all. Lightning flickered, turning the world into patterns of black and white. Flat blacks, flat whites, hard and bold, like the designs her mother used to weave into belts and decorative strips.
As she followed the dark shadow scrambling along a crude trail, she laughed aloud, seeing again the plains where she was born, plains far to the north of here where some nights were passages long in summer-deep. She could feel in her bones the creaking rocking cart that was her cradle and her home for the first years of her life. She remembered running like this with her chinin, running through wild thunderstorms beside the slow flood of the herd and, remembering, felt a sudden rapture, wanted to lift her head and howl like a chini at the wind and the rolling clouds.
The shuri leaped onto a boulder higher than his head, perched there while Serroi hauled the macai to a stop beside him, euphoria blown out of her like weeds before the wind. Coldly alert, she waited for Dinafar to come up beside her. The girl was beginning to manage the macai with some skill, but Serroi saw her shifting cautiously in her saddle. It would take more time before she was completely at ease on macaiback.
“Meie.” Answering to the shuri’s call, she turned back. He raised a hand, pointing ahead toward the swelling breast of a mountain. “Nyok’chui down and around me, Meie. Best the macai left here be. Or he come and eat.”
“Shurid, I hear.” She slid off her mount and beckoned to the girl. Switching back to the mijloc tongue, shouting to be heard over the wind, she cried, “Dinafar, stay here with the macai. Please?”
Dinafar nodded. She slid stiffly from the saddle, almost falling as her knees buckled under her. Serroi caught her and steadied her until she could stand. “You all right, Dina?”
“Oh yes, just stiff.” She stumbled to a rock and sat down. “Wait here?” She pushed her dark hair back. The next flash of lightning showed her as an old woman with heavy, weary lines in her face. “Alone?”
Behind her Serroi heard the rasp of the shuri’s claws as he fidgeted on the rock. She pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Not long. And I won’t be far. You’ll be safer here.”
Grains of grit danced over the rock and pinged into them; the wind was heavy and damp, driving unsteadily against them. Serroi touched the girl’s cheek, then followed the shuri.
Around the curve of the mountain the wind was softer. She knelt on the mountainside, leaning forward tensely, searching the flickering darkness below. In the narrow flat where one downslope ended and an upslope began a small round pool caught the last glimmers of light from the sky on its dancing surface and scattered it in sparkles of silver that raced across the stone and lit a round patch of blackness in the hillside. The Den.
The shuri touched her arm and pointed. “Nyok’chui.”
Serroi sucked in a breath and let it trickle out. “I see.” She straightened, pulling three arrows from her case as she came erect. Eyes closed, she slid her fingers along the shafts, remembering with her body the characteristics of each, weight and balance and soul.
When she opened her eyes again, the air was thick and black around her and the pool below had lost its glimmers. The wind tugged at her hair, plucked at her body in erratic gusts. She sat and pulled off her boots, stood again, working her feet into the coarse soil until she felt the earth below a part of her blood and bone. She stripped off her tunic.
His fur fluffed about by the wind, the shuri watched her with grave curiosity but he said nothing more, simply waited for her to do what she’d been trained to do.
Serroi dropped the tunic and raised her arms over her head, twisting and turning, letting the wind coil around her, taking the rhythm of its rise and fall into her body. When she knew it like her own breath, she smiled down at the shuri. “Air and earth,” she murmured. “Earth my body lifts and air my shafts.” She looked past him at the faint splotch of darkness on the far slope. “Come soon?” She touched-very lightly-her eye-spot, felt the tremble in it, then focused mind and body downhill, sensing a stirring in the blackness of the hole.
“He out come when he hunger feel. He shurin at water take or at homeplace.” The shuri was a small sad lump of fur. “Soon come. Three days he not eat. Hungry.” A shrill chittering sound was his version of ironic laughter. “Want a shuri snack,” he said.
Serroi chuckled, surprised by the black humor of his words. Still chuckling, she stru
ng her bow and tested the pull, lifting it, then letting it fall. She nocked one of the three arrows and thrust the other two delicately into the soil beside her right leg. As the Nyok’chui began dragging its bulk from the hole in the slope, she straightened again to stand, knees slightly flexed, her bared skin drinking in the wind, tasting its patterns. She held the bow loosely, watching the great Worm ooze slowly from the earth.
The Nyok’chui’s head was a snarling mask with a coarse mane standing out around his hairless face, each hair like a wire, sparks leaping from one to another like small bolts of lightning until his head was ringed with blue-white light, pulsing, and eerily hypnotic. The first section of its body was a broad barrel-shaped torso, supported by six double-jointed legs that ended in massive talons like those of some great bird of prey. As the Worm inched farther and farther out of the hole, the segments became more and more rudimentary until, near the end of the scaled body, the legs were little more than stiff stubs. When completely out, the Nyok coiled the tail in wide, sloopy loops and raised up his foreparts. The front pair of talons, flexible as human fingers, batted the air in slow curves; the lightning halo about its head lit up the adamantine claws at the tips of each of these powerful pseudo-fingers until they were a glittering jeweled threat with even a kind of beauty to them. Between talons and tail, it was as if the beast held several natures at reluctant truce under its various skins. Eyes glowing red, it swiveled to stare up the hill at her. Once again it pawed the air, opened its cavernous mouth, roared a challenge at her.
Serroi strained to see. Conditions for shooting could hardly be poorer with the uncertain light and the erratic wind. She shut her eyes, willed the unfamiliar change and opened them again in the uneasy night-vision she seldom used; she saw them in stark outlines, greenish black and green-tinted whites with little fine detail but a massive sense of solidity.