A Gathering Of Stones dost-3

by Jo Clayton

  5

  Maksim raised sail an hour before dawn on the chosen day; Todichi Yahzi sat in the bow of the boat, looking out across the black water, his back to his one time master. He hadn’t said a word to anyone since he left the Pens, his anger was too deep. As Maksim sent the small boat scooting south into the Tukery, he glared at the kwitur and choked on his guilt and smoldered with an anger of his own-and sometimes was sad at losing an almost-friend.

  By the time the sun rose they were deep into the narrow crooked waterways. Already he had crept through the patches of dense fog that swung in complex orbits around and about the Tukery, fog inhabited by howling souls cast out from Kukurul, souls spilling over with fury and despair, doing their futile best to drive him onto razor-edged rocks or into quicksands that could swallow a boat between one breath and the next. Twice he’d driven off ambushing bands, throwing fire and dissolution at them, pulling their sailing canoes apart under them and dropping them into schools of hungry needlefish. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, he just sailed on and on, waiting for his Talent to seize onto a place.

  Through all this Todichi Yahzi sat silent and brooding in the bow, ignoring Maksim, staring at things only he could see.

  When the sun was directly overhead, Maksim saw a rocky islet with vents in its precipitous sides voiding steam into the cold dank air; it was a truncated cone rising about a hundred yards above the water. Here and there swatches of orange and faded-olive lichens interrupted the drab dun stone; near the vents ferns were lush lacy patches of a green so vibrant it hurt the eyes. There was a small halfinoon of sandy beach on the north side, the side he came on first; he circled the islet and came back to the beach, drove the nose of the boat up onto the sand and tossed the anchor overside. He slipped his arms through the straps of his rucksack and got cautiously to his feet. “Todich, you think you can make it to the top?”

  The kwitur dragged himself up, moving with painful slowness. Maksim watched, frowning, angry at first, then amused. “Ooohhh, tragedy, the very image of it.” He laughed for the first time in days, the sound booming back at him from the hollows of the cliff. He held to the mast, his weight keeping the boat steady as Todich clambered out.

  The kwitur sank ankle-deep into the damp sand. He hummed his distaste for the clinging stuff and continued cursing in his insect voice as he trudged to the rock and began picking his way carefully upward, climbing with the steady sureness of his kind.

  Maksim contemplated the slope and considered snapping himself to the top; his mass and relatively high center of gravity made him less than sure-footed on rock faces and he was beginning to feel the weight of his years despite his skill at using earthfire to boil off the poisons of aging. He dropped overside into the shallow water, pulled the boat higher on the sand and moored her to a handy rock; he wasn’t about to thrust an anchor here in the Tukery.

  He got to the top, weary, shaking, scraped about like a stew carrot. Todich was crouching in a pitiful knot, looking more miserable and mistreated than ever. Maksim snorted. Todich was overdoing the victim to the point of absurdity. He began building a small fire with the coal and tinder he’d hauled up in his backpack. In the middle of this business, he looked up to see Todich watching him. He’d never been sure he read the kwitur’s minimal expressions with anything like accuracy, but he thought he saw a flash of amusement, even affection there. That startled him so much he forgot about fanning the tiny fire and it went out on him. Exaggeration? Resentment caricatured beyond absurdity? Beyond? Absurdity? THAT LITTLE GIT WAS PAYING HIM BACK FOR THOSE TEN YEARS AND HAVING SOME FUN AT THE SAME TIME!!! “You! YOU! You perfidious inglorious diabolic old fraud.”

  “Slow,” Todichi hoomed. “Got old, han’t you.”

  “Yeh, you right. Looks like any brains I had ‘ye turned to suet.” He dug into the backpack, tossed a blanket to the kwitur. “You’re shivering. You’d better wrap this round you till I can get this damn fire lit.”

  The reluctant coals finally caught. Maksim set a pan of water on a tripod, watched it a moment to see that the tripod was stable and the fire was going to keep burning, then he sat on his heels and contemplated Todichi Yahzi. “Tell me about it,” he said and settled himself to listen.

  6

  They talked and sat in a shared silence and talked some more, drank tea when the water boiled, made peace with memory while they waited for the appointed hour.

  When the time came, Maksim sent Todichi Yahzi home as gently as he could, then collapsed beside the remnants of the fire.

  7

  When he struggled back to awareness, at first he couldn’t remember where he was or what had happened to deplete him so thoroughly.

  Memory crept back slowly, so slowly he was disturbed; his mind was not working right.

  He tried to sit up.

  He was tied.

  His arms were tight against his body, his hands were pressed against his thighs; ropes passed round and round him; he couldn’t wiggle a finger; he could barely breathe.

  He tried to speak.

  His tongue was bound, not by ropes but by a force he couldn’t recognize.

  He tried to mindcall a firesprite to work on the ropes, something he was able to do before he could read his name. His mind was bound.

  He sweated in claustrophobic terror until he managed to override that bloodfear, then he gathered will in shoulder and neck and got his head up off the stone.

  Fog.

  Like white soup, ghosts bumping about in it, swirling about him and whoever had caught him.

  He ignored the ghosts.

  Jastouk, he thought. I talked in my sleep and he betrayed me. He wept and was furious at himself for weeping. Time passed.

  He couldn’t feel his body or count the beats of his heart.

  There was nothing he could use to tick off the minutes, nothing to tell him if a day had passed, a week, or only an hour.

  He eased his head down.

  He fought the helplessness that was worse than the claustrophobia. He called on two centuries of discipline, then waited with the patience of a cat at a mousehole. His captors had given him time to collect himself. Stupid of them. Or maybe they didn’t care. Overconfidence? He produced a wry smile. 1 hope it is overconfidence.

  Time passed.

  The ghosts backed off.

  New shapes solidified in the fog.

  He heard a foot scrape against stone and decided he was still on the islet.

  Someone spoke.

  He heard the voice but couldn’t make out the words. Answers came from several points.

  He strained to make out what was being said, but it was as if his ears were stuffed with something that deafened him just enough to make sure he learned nothing from what he heard.

  The exchanges continued.

  It began to feel like ritual rather than speech.

  He couldn’t tell if that was a trick of his fettered mind or something real. This irritated him, his incapacity was like nettles rubbed against his skin.

  By the Gods of Fate and Time, I will make you suffer for this, he thought at them; he struggled to shout it; his jaw ached with the need to shout at them.

  The binding held.

  Not a sound came out, not a sound!

  With such a cork shoved in his mouth, need was building up in him.

  He was going to explode.

  He visualized himself blowing apart, hot burning pieces of him rushing outward, colliding with the things out there prattling like fools, colliding with them and ashing them. I’m getting giddy.

  Gods of Fate and Time! Keep hold of yourself.

  Think of Vechakek and Jastouk.

  I owe them.

  I’ll pay them.

  I pay my debts. Always.

  Feeling trickled back into him.

  The chill of the damp stone struck up through his body, sucking away what warmth he had left.

  He pressed his fingers into the meat of his thigh and won a little space.

  He wo
rked his fingers, trying to gain enough movement for a simple gesture.

  The stone softened under him, flowed up around him. Lumpy, faceless elementals like animate gray clay lifted him and carried him down a spiral ramp that created itself before them.

  Complaining about the abrasions of the sand in subsonic groans like rock rubbing against rock, they lumbered across the beach and rolled him into his boat as if he were a dead fish.

  He managed to keep his head from crashing into the deck but collected bruises over every part of his body.

  Fog billowed about him.

  Ghosts /loomed in the distance, frightened off by those other entities, whatever they were, who stood on air about the boat, thickenings in the fog, featureless, serpentine, bipedal.

  He didn’t recognize them.

  Smell, aura, everything about them was unfamiliar. He wasn’t surprised.

  The layered realities were infinite in number and each sorceror had his own set of them in addition to those that they all shared.

  His head wasn’t working right, but he settled grimly to learning what he could about them.

  Two figures dropped onto the deck.

  They dragged him into the hutch and laid him out on the sleeping pad.

  They wore black leather top-to-toe like the Harpish and black leather cowls with only the eyes cut out.

  They weren’t Harpish.

  Forty Mortal Hells, who are you and who is running you? Amortis?

  Gods of Fate and Time, I hope not.

  She’d watch me burn and throw oil on the fire.

  They tossed a blanket over him and went out.

  He felt the boat float free.

  She shuddered, yawed, rolled.

  Those two didn’t know codswallop about sailing. They got the sails up finally and the boat underway. Maksim settled to working trying to free his hands a little. There were gestures so minimal they required almost no space but could focus sufficient energy to cut him free.

  The way those numb-butts were handling the boat, there was a good chance he’d end up on the bottom of some

  Tukery strait, food for prowling needlefish.

  The rope was spelled to cling.

  Every millimeter of freedom he won from them was gone as soon as the spell reacted.

  He fought the ropes as long as he had strength, then he slept.

  He nudged at the spells that bound him.

  He tried to work out their structure.

  He couldn’t counter them without word or gesture, but knowing that structure would let him act the first chance he got.

  He probed and pried, sucked in his gut, drove his thumbs into his thigh muscles and got nowhere.

  The bonds holding him responded automatically and effectively to every effort.

  The boat went unhindered through the Tukery despite the clumsiness of the crew.

  Not long after sundown he felt the lengthening swells as the boat broke into the Notoea Tha.

  He heard the basso wail of a powerful following wind that drove them northwest, away from Kukurul.

  He stopped being afraid of drowning or dying, but his determination to get out of this trap only grew stronger. Late at night, the boat hove to, the sails came crashing down.

  The two pseudo Harpish dragged Maksim up on the deck and left him there.

  Their companions swung in slow circles overhead, maintaining the same distance between them always, no matter how they moved.

  The boat was bobbing beside a dark, rakish ship, a Phrasi Coaster, ocean-going and river-capable, a favorite of smugglers, pirates and those merchants who needed, speed and a shallow draft from their ships.

  He could hear men talking; they spoke Phrasi.

  A davit swung over the rail and a cargo net was winched down.

  The net settled over him, dragging back and forth as the boat rocked with the heave of the sea.

  The pseudo Harpish loaded him into the net.

  He was hauled up, jerk by jerk, the winch squealing with every turn of the spindle.

  As the sailors caught hold of the net to pull him inboard, a wisp of smoke floated by him.

  Woodsmoke?

  He muscled his head around and looked down.

  His boat was burning.

  He fumed.

  Phrasi sailors hauled him over the rail and dumped him on the deck.

  Wisps of smoke rose past the rail.

  There were flickers of red on the white sails that rose as the ship prepared, to go away from there.

  He cursed and struggled to break loose.

  He was fond of that boat. There were good memories laid down in it, memories of Brann and the Tukery, Jai Virri and Kukurul, days full of brightness scudding before the wind with the sails bellied out, the sheets humming.

  Seven pseudo Harpish came for him.

  They rolled him out of the net and carried him to a crate near the foremast.

  They dumped him in the crate and nailed it shut around him.

  They chanted in their buzzing incomprehensible langue and tightened another layer of bonds about him.

  He was smothered into unconsciousness.

  III. Korimenei Piyolss

  Silili on the double island UtarSelt

  Korimenei at the end of her schooling, goes through a passing-out ordeal and starts on her journey to free her brother. also:

  The Eidolon of her Sleeping Brother

  The Old Man of the Mountain

  The Gods Geidranay Groomer of Mountains Isayana Birthmistress Tungjii Luck and Assorted Others Spirit Guides.

  Shahntien Shere, headmistress

  Firtina Somak, Kori’s best friend at school

  1

  “No! You can’t come back. Not yet.”

  The eidolon of the sleeping boy was the size of a mouse; he lay curled in a crystal egg that floated in the darkness over Korimenei Piyolss. She saw him whether her eyes were open or shut, so she kept them open. She moved impatiently on her narrow bed. “Why?” She kept her voice low. The walls between this sleeping cell and the next were paper and lath; after ten years at the school she knew well enough how sound carried. “I thought you wanted out of there soonest possible.”

  “And then what?” Her brother looked like the six-yearold boy the Sorceror Settsimaksimin had spelled to sleep; his body hadn’t changed a hair. His mind certainly had.

  Those three words aren’t a boy’s complaint, she thought, he’s so bitter. “Dance to the Chained God’s contriving?” he spat at her. “No!”

  “I don’t see how you can change that.”

  “Why do you think I had you do all that work on the Great Talismans?”

  “I didn’t want to ask. I didn’t know what might be listening.”

  “So?” there was an acid bite in the single word, a touch of impatience.

  “And what does that mean?”

  “Use your head, Kori. If HE listened, the asking itself would tell HIM all HE wanted to know.”

  “Then how can we do anything?”

  “If, Kori. Did you hear me? IF. Listen. HE has BinYAHtii now, HE got it off Settsimaksimin after Brann and the Blues took him, but I don’t know how much good that’s doing HIM, that stone is hard to handle even if you keep it fed.” He stopped talking. His body never moved, nonetheless, Kori thought she felt a shudder pass through him. “HE has been keeping it fed. I don’t want to talk about that. HE’s a god. I don’t know all that means but for sure HE has limitations, otherwise HE could’ve squashed Settsimaksimin without bending an eyelash. Listen, listen, isn’t it true when old Maksim had BinYAHtii round his neck, didn’t he keep Amortis on the hop? I could feel how nervous Amortis made HIM. What I’ve been thinking: if I could get hold of the right Talisman, I could block HIM, keep HIM off me. Off you too.”

  Korimenei closed her eyes, pressed her lips together. She couldn’t blame him, not really, and it was her fault he was stuck in that cave, but including her was so obviously an afterthought that it hurt. It hurt a lot. A belated tact disastrously
untactful. Oh gods and gunk, I’m as bad a phrase-maker as Maks is, even if I can’t roar like him.

  Her enforced sojourn at the school was almost over. Just that morning the runner Paji came to the exercise court to say Kori should come to the Shahntien’s office at the end of second watch tomorrow. He didn’t say what it was about. She didn’t need telling. It was her graduation exercise. She’d been strung out for days now, waiting for Shahntien Shere to decide what it would be and when it would happen. Tomorrow, the next day, maybe the next, then she’d be free to leave. She wanted to go to Trago as soon as the Shahntien cut her loose, she wanted to go as fast as she could for the cave where her brother slept in crystal waiting for her to touch him free, she wanted to go NOW, not after some indefinite period devoted to some sort of nonsense Trago had dreamed up. How sane could he be, after all, confined to that stupid crystal for so many years? Three, nearly four years blocked off from everything outside. Then he finally managed to free his mind enough to reach her. Six years since and all he could do was look over her shoulder. Does he visit other places too? Does he look through other eyes? She was appalled at herself when she felt a twinge of jealousy. “What do you want, Tre? Do you really want me to hunt up a talisman and fetch it to you?”

  “Yes, Kori. Yes yes yes. Please. The one called Frunzacoache.”

  “All right, if you say so. Why that one?”

  He ignored the question and went on, “Frunzacoache disappeared years ago, but I found it. It’s in the torbaoz of a Rushgaramuv shaman. He doesn’t know what he’s got. There’s barely enough magic in him to light a match. He has a vague idea it’s a thing of power, so he hides it away down at the bottom of his essence pouch. If you pattern up a good copy and sink some energy into it, he’ll never know the real thing’s gone. Bring it to me, Kori. Pleeease?”

  The eidolon winked out before Korimenei could say anything. She lay staring into the darkness where it’d hung. It was a long time before she went back to sleep.

  2

  Korimenei pulled the half-hitch tight, glanced across the bay at the paired islands Utar-Selt, then left the stubby pier and started up the mountainside.