by Jo Clayton
Brann kicked the door open and plunged inside, running at the women who sat near a bank of windows, her hands folded over a black velvet cushion on her lap. The Chuttar Palami Kumindri, smiling and unconcerned. The other smiglar in the room, a big man with black mustaches hanging from the ends of his mouth, stood beside her. Cammam Callam, the Housemaster. He smoothed his mustaches, stepped in front of the chair and raised his hands, palm out. Brann slammed into something as resilient as a sponge, strong as oiled silk. Jul’ changed and a blazing lightsphere hit the resilience beside her, rebounded, came at it again and yet again; each time he was flung back, each time he punched a deeper hollow in it. Brann flattened her hands against the shield and drew; somewhat to her surprise, she began pulling in a trickle of power. She laughed and pulled harder; she’d never managed to tap into a magic shield before; apparently this one was so much a part of that smiglar, was maintained so intimately out of his inner strength, she could attack it as if it were his flesh. Callam staggered, paled. He shrunk, grew denser, braced himself and shoved out the sags in the shield.
The Chuttar Palami Kumindri watched calmly for several minutes, then she began unfolding the black velvet. It wasn’t a cushion. The milky, flawed moonstone that was Yaril sat on the velvet, pulling in light from all around her. Palami Kumindri lifted an elegant pale hand and splayed it out an inch or so above the Yaril stone. “Be still,” she said. Her voice was low and lovely and full of the consciousness of her power. “Stop what you’re doing or watch me eat her.”
Jaril settled to the floor. He changed and stood radiating fear and rage, his eyes fixed on the Yaril stone.
Brann dropped her hands. “If that viper beside you attacks, I will defend myself,” she said, “I will not stand still and allow myself to be destroyed, even for her.”
“I have no intention of destroying you, Drinker of Souls. You are going to be much too useful.”
“Not if I can help it.”
“That’s the question, isn’t it.” PaIarni Kumindri cupped her hands about the gleaming stone, still not quite touching it. “There’s something I want. You can use that to ransom your friend.” She took her hands away, rested them on the chairarms. “I will see.that she is bathed in sunlight so she will keep as well as possible in this state. I will not harm her in any way, but I cannot prevent her from harming herself. I see you understand.”
“What do you want?”
“In the Temple of Amortis, in the holy city Havi Kudush, there sits one of the Great Talismans. Churrikyoo. A small glass frog rather battered and chipped and filled with thready cracks. Bring it to me and I will give you your friend.”
“There’s a problem. Amortis. She doesn’t love me and she knows me far too well. If I go near her, she’ll eat me alive.”
“You are a clever woman, Drinker of Souls, you will find a way.”
“There are other talismans, send me after one of those.”
“Churrikyoo is the only ransom I will accept, Drinker of Souls. Bring it here and claim your friend.”
“Why should I trust you to keep. your word?”
“I repeat, you are a clever woman, work that out. In any case, you have no choice.”
Brann clasped her hands behind her, let her shoulders go round. She took time for a leisurely examination of the Chuttar, then the Housemaster. *Jay.
*What?* His mindvoice was sullen, unfriendly.
*Can they hear this?*
*No.*
*You sound very positive.*
*I am.*
*You know any way out of this?*
*No.*
*Terse.*
*What’s to say?*
*We snapped up the bait, didn’t we.*
*Yeh. Trolled us right in.*
*Trust me?*
*You know it.*
*Stay quiet, then, I’m going to do some pushing.* She finished her look round the room, faced the Chuttar. “I have no choice if I let you dictate terms, if I value my friend’s life above everything else. Listen and weep, whore. I do value her, but not beyond a certain point. Beyond that I WILL NOT BE PUSHED! Believe it. I will go after Churrikyoo. I will trade it for my friend. But not here. The exchange will be on my terms, not yours. I won’t come back to this house. I won’t come near this city.”
“Where?”
“Let me consult with my friend.” She turned to face Jaril. *Any ideas, Jay?*
*Yeh. A Waystop in the Fringelands. Yaro and me, we’ve been past there more than once. It’s just north of the Locks. The place is called Waragapur.*
*Tell me more about it. Why there?*
*It’s a truceground, which should mean something, but probably won’t and there’s an old fossil of a sorceror there, one of the Primes. Tak WakKerrcarr. If that bitch smiglar starts playing games with us, she’ll have him on her neck. He’s the one laid down the guarantee and it’s one of the few things he gets stirred up about.*
*Good. Maybe we can use him to kick something loose.* *Anything’s better than here.*
*Agreed. She faced the Chuttar, straightened her shoulders and put her hands on her hips. “These are my terms, I will get Churrikyoo and bring it to Waragapur on the edge of the Fringelands. As soon as I get there, I’ll send a message north by one of the riverboats. Come there. Bring her with you and we will make the exchange.”
“Why should I?”
“You get nothing if you don’t. If you refuse, we fight. You can destroy our friend, but we’ll, get you. One way or another you die. If not now, later. I have friends I can call on and I will, if you force it, and if you think you can stop me getting out of here, dream on.”
“Calmly, calmly, Drinker of Souls. I too must consult. Step outside, please. I will call you when I am ready to answer you.”
Brann bowed her head, strolled out.
Jaril hesitated, then followed her. *Bramble…* *What could I do?*
*Nothing, I suppose. *
*Be patient, Jay. Our time is coming, has to.*
*Yaro’s in there.*
*1 know. Does she have any idea we’re here?*
*It’s that shield, Bramble. The same as the one in the cave. I can’t feel anything through it, so Yaro can’t feel me.*
*Damn, I was hoping we’d get at least that much out of this.*
*We could still try breaking through. I think I was close.*
*So do I. But we’d have to start over again and we couldn’t break it fast enough to save Yaro. Well, we might have to try it. I meant what I said, Jay. If she gets us back here, none of us will get out.*
*I know.*
*One thing, we’ll have the talisman.*
*You can’t use it.*
*No, but WakKercarr can and from what Maksi said, he might not be a friend, but he’s no enemy.*
I didn’t think of that. After all these years you can still surprise me, Bramble-all-Thorns.*
*Let’s hope I can surprise them.*
*Yeh.*
“Drinker of Souls.” It was a surly growl. Cammam Callam held the door open for them, then went back to stand beside Palami Kumindri, glowering like a chastised boy, obviously hammered into an agreement he wasn’t strong enough to refuse.
Brann went back into the room. She waited, saying nothing.
The Chuttar sat with her hands cupped about the Yaril stone as if she were warming them at the changer’s glow. “We have considered your terms, Drinker of Souls. We find them acceptable. We will meet you at Waragapur and make the exchange there.”
Brann nodded, swung round and stalked from the room. Jaril backed up after her, not taking his eyes off the pair.
They went down the stairs in silence and left the doulahar without breaking that silence.
14
For the next several nights Drinker of Souls hunted through the streets of Dil Jorpashil, soaking up energy so she could assume a new shape. During the days she was the Jantria
Bar Ma and kept up her healing, Jaril taking the form of a small M’darjin boy and acting as her attenda
nt. A few of the local women asked about Carup; they were pleased, angry, happy for her and jealous, when Brann said she’d sent the girl home with a dowry.
Those same nights Jaril flew in and out of Isu sars and the Merchant doulahars, collecting clothing, jewelry and gold for the trip south. He was profoundly disturbed at the thought of leaving Yaril, churned to the point of instability because the days were passing and there was nothing he could do to shorten the time ahead and each day Yaril died a little.
15
One week after the abortive attack of the doulahar, an hour after dawn, when the new-risen sun was a muted blur in the clouds, providing little light and less heat, and the incessant east wind was whipping whitecaps off leaden water, a wealthy Jana Sariser widow attended by a M’darjin page dismounted from a hired palanquin and went aboard the riverboat Dhah Dhibanh.
About mid-afternoon the Dhah Dhibanh cast off her lines and started south, widow and page standing at the rail watching the city recede behind them.
II SETTSIMAKSIMIN
Sending Todichi Yahzi home drained Maksim so completely he was easy prey to a party of demons (geniod) sent to capture him. He woke unable to speak or move; it was hard to think, impossible to act. The demons put him into his boat and took him out of the Myk’-tat Tukery into the sea called the Notoea Tha where they transferred him into a small sleek Coaster and nailed him into a large crate.
1
When Settsimaksimin surfaced enough for self-awareness, he was still in the crate and from the dip and sway of it, still aboard the Coaster. His thoughts oozed across a heavy, dull mind with the ponderous loiter of a sleep-drugged snail.
How long?
No thirst, no hunger.
Not much of anything.
I see.
Preservation spell.
He tongued at it sluggishly, smelled at it.
The stripes of light that came through the cracks between the boards of the crate crept across him, marking the passage of a day. Dark came before he finished the plodding exploration. He drifted into sleep, more from habit than need, almost despite the spell.
In the morning he thought:
No water.
No food.
How long?
Why do I think? Feel? See? Hear?
It was an extraordinarily subtle spell in that it left him aware of what was happening around him while keeping him in stasis until he was handed over to whoever or whatever had orchestrated all this.
Why?
Yes. I see.
They want something.
They want me to do something.
They want me to do something I probably won’t want to do.
They’re softening me up.
The stripes climbed over him, moving across his motionless body while he produced these long slow thoughts. Slowly so slowly like a sloworm crawling from one hole to the next, he considered the spell. Night came and his sluggard metabolism reacted again, dropping him into sleep.
Yellow light running across his eyes woke him.
He considered the spell.
It was a strange one, he couldn’t place the personality of the sorceror or other who cast it, but he had nothing to distract him and the effort it took to think acted as a focusing lens. When the swift twilight of the tropical seas dropped over him once more, he almost had it. There was a sense of something distantly familiar, the cousin of a cousin of a cousin of a memory from the part of the past he’d suppressed as soon as he escaped from it, his apprenticeship. He slept.
He woke with the same taste on his tongue.
He burrowed through memory to the time when he was sold into a pleasure House in Silagamatys, six years old, a street rat, father unknown, mother rotting to death from diseases she’d picked up when she worked the wharves as a stand-up whore. He remembered Musteba Xa.
He was bought out of the House by that anciently evil man, a dried-up old bag of perversions who had forgotten how to feel so long ago that even the loss was a dim memory, the most powerful sorceror in the world. He kept that claim real by sucking up life and Talent from his apprentices. Coveting Maksim’s Talent, he began to train the boy… no, he didn’t even see the boy, all he saw was the Talent. He cultivated that Talent like a gardener cultivating a rare plant; he put his hands on it and shaped it the way he wanted it to go. He made only one mistake-he taught Maksim too well, a mistake born out of his inattention to the whole boy and too much confidence in his ability to jerk him about like a puppet. With his icy precision and unmatched learning, his cutting tongue and hypertrophied intelligence, his ability to read muscle twitches and fleeting shifts of expression so that he knew every thought or intent that crossed Maksim’s mind even before Maksim knew it was there, he’d forced the angry passionate boy to learn an equally icy control. When he decided to harvest what he’d nourished, he summoned entities that were…
Were like these.
Yes.
Like these pseudo Harpish who controlled him.
Maksim’s mind shut down on him, the sudden burst of excitement drowning the delicate control he’d achieved over his spelled and dreaming body.
Later. Sun stripes hot on him.
He recovered enough to lay phrase against phrase and began teasing at that memory, pulling out strands of it and setting them beside his impressions of his captors.
The demons Musteba Xa summoned were similar to the ones who were holding him now.
But not identical.
The web those earlier demons threw about him was similar to the cocoon that prisoned him now, but weaker.
Back then, he’d reacted from instinct and training; he broke the bonds and provided Musteba Xa with the first surprise he’d had in centuries. He killed his master and flung his body into an empty reality as far off as he could reach.
Similar, yes.
Now that he had some idea what to taste for, he used his fingertips like a tongue to taste the bonds that held him. Time passed.
Sometimes he was aware of the thin lines of light running round him.
When he looked again, more often than not the lines were gone, the day gone with them.
Sometimes he overworked himself and his mind shut down again.
Sometimes he was focusing so intently, so narrowly, he wouldn’t have noticed if the ship were on fire.
Interminable and immeasurable, the hours crawled past, turned into days, the days into weeks and so on.
He reached a point where he needed to know more about where he was going.
He rested from his labors and watched the sunlines move. From the way the sunlight shifted about the crate, he decided the ship was heading west.
West of Kukurul the first port of any size was Bandrabahr. On an average, in the autumn of the year, it was thirty days from Kukurul to Bandrabahr.
He tried to count the days he’d been in the crate, but he could not.
There was a brisk following wind.
A wizard’s wind.
He could smell the power in it.
Great galloping gobs of power.
Whoever wanted him was spending it like water. Bandrabahr. Phras.
He considered the implications of that and wanted to scream his outrage at this, using the sound of his voice to hide his fear.
Amortis.
Phras was her ground, the source of her godpower. Her Temple was there.
Her priests were trained there.
Gods of Fate and Time, not Amortis!
The surge of emotion shut him off again.
When he came out of the dark, he felt a change in the ship’s motion.
He heard port sounds, shouted orders, men calling to each other or to boat whores, the women answering, bargaining, exchanging insults, laughing. Water taxis scooting about, their sweeps shrieking like the ghosts of murdered children.
The language was Phrasi.
The smells were as familiar as his own armpits. Bandrabahr.
He waited for the shipmaster to heave to and drop anchor. The ship kept
moving.
Slowly, carefully, it wound through the heavy traffic of the busy port.
He listened.
He heard the sounds of cranes and winches, but not the ones on this ship.
He heard the grunts of the rowers on the towships, the drums that set time for them.
He felt the ship yaw slightly.
For a minute he didn’t understand this, then he knew the ship had entered the outflow from the river that ran through Bandrabahr, the Sharroud.
Forty Mortal Hells, am I being hauled off to Havi Kudush? He struggled to control his body’s reactions.
He couldn’t afford to go black now, he had to get loose. HAD TO GET LOOSE.
He almost lost it at that moment, but suppressed his sense of helplessness and went back to his investigations. The preservation spell was wearing thin.
His body was speeding up.
His senses were freer.
He could almost shake his mindreach loose.
He was distantly aware of the smells and sounds of the water quarter as the ship clawed upriver through the city.
He was aware of time passing, the minutes ticking faster and faster, moving from l0000ng l000ng pulses to the heart count of real time.
The sounds and smells of the city faded and finally disappeared.
He smelled gardens and plowed fields.
He heard birdsong, sheep bleating, the squeal of an angry horse.
They were in the Barabar Burmin, the Land of Hidden Delights, the rich, fertile hinterland of Phras.
He knew this county, he’d spent a century here, a lusty wasteful wonderful century.
Three days upriver was the junction of the Kaddaroud and the Sharroud.
He’d have his answer then.
If the ship turned up the Kaddaroud, Amortis was waiting for him in the Temple at Havi Kudush where she’d fry him alive and eat him for breakfast.
Crossgrained, intemperate bitch god.
She had reason to be annoyed, she’d lost a hefty portion of her substance running his errands, going after Brann for him when he was still trying to kill the Drinker of Souls before she got him.