A Gathering Of Stones dost-3

by Jo Clayton

  Danny touched her shoulder. “You feel like telling us why we’re here?”

  “Take this, will you?” She handed him the lantern. “You see that thing?”

  “Hard to miss.”

  “That’s my brother in there. You said you remembered him.”

  “AIL Who…”

  “Settsimaksimin. He wanted to make sure I stayed in school.”

  “You’re out now.”

  Felsrawg shivered. “It’s colder’n a fetch’s finger in here. Whatever you got to do, do it.”

  “Stay out of this, Felsa,” Danny said, “you’re along for the ride, she doesn’t need your ignorance yapping at her.”

  “T’ss! Don’t need yours either, seems to me. All she needs from you is your…”

  “Shut up, both of you.” Korimenei striped her gloves off, shoved them into a coat pocket, lifted Aihki from her shoulder and gave her to Danny. “Stay there, Aili my Liki. Wait.” She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Scratchy little thief was right, what you got to do, do it. Don’t stand around dithering. She walked to the altar, took hold of a post and pulled herself onto the platform. She took another breath, reached out and flattened her hand on the warm silky crystal.

  It quivered like something alive, then she was touching nothing, She could still see it, but she was touching nothing. Like water emptying down a drain, it flowed away from Trago, lowering him gently to the polished planks.

  When it was all gone, her brother straightened his arms and legs, yawned and opened his eyes. He was on his side, his back to Korimenei. He didn’t look round, he just got to his feet and went to the chest, opened it and took the crystal out, Harra’s Eye. He turned finally and saw her. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Kori, Tre.”

  “You can’t be Kori, you’re old.”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “I remember… I remember being at the Lot. Kori got the blue, I got nothing. They took her away. I went back to the Hostel with the others. AuntNurse gave me a drink to make me sleep. That was yesterday… He frowned as he saw Danny and Felsrawg standing silent under the chains. “You shouldn’t have brought strangers in here.” When he realized what he’d said, he looked frightened. “What am I doing here? How’d I get here?”

  “That wasn’t yesterday, Tr amp; You’ve been spelled, brother, you’ve slept ten years away without knowing it. I thought

  ... I thought you did know it, I thought you found a way to talk to me.” She saw the confusion in his eyes and knew finally how completely she’d been fooled. “It wasn’t you, was it?” At first she was relieved, the eidolon she’d grown to resent so bitterly wasn’t her brother; then she was angry and afraid. She reached out to touch him; he shied away, frightened of her, then at last he seemed to accept her. He didn’t say anything, but he let her pull him close and put her arm about his shoulder. “I am Kori, Tre, I am your sister. Really. I came to wake you and give you…” she touched the face of the talisman, slid her fingers over it and over it, drawing a measure of calm from the way it nestled against her. “Let me take you home, Trd. I want to go home too. I’ve been away at a school. A long, long way from here.”

  “Kori?”

  “Come on, I’ll tell you all about it. You going to keep the Eye with you?”

  He looked down; he was clutching the crystal sphere against him, holding it in both hands. “I NEED to,” he said.

  “All right,” She lifted him down. “Danny, Felsa, let’s…

  Darkness swallowed them.

  She heard Danny curse, she heard Felsrawg scream with rage, Ailiki leapt at her, she felt the mahsar’s claws dig through her coat into her flesh.

  The darkness swallowed them all.

  III: Settsimaksimin

  Driving south to steal Shaddalakh from the Grand Magus of Tok Kinsa in order to redeem his souls from the geniod who’d trapped him, Maksim was caught in a blizzard and blown across the path of Simms the thief who had taken shelter from that storm in an abandoned farmstead.

  1

  On his third day out of the mountains, Simms ran into the front end of a Plains blizzard. A few snowflakes blew past, at the moment more of a promise than a threat; wet winds brittle with cold snatched at him and whipped up the mane and tail of his horse; the beast sidled uneasily, fought the bit, snorted and tried to run from the storm. “Hey Neddio, ho Neddio, slow, babe, go slow,” he sang to the horse, “soft, Neddio, steady, Neddio, it’s a long way we got to go, Neddio.”

  Calling on his Talent, reading earth and air, Simms sniffed out a vague promise of shelter and rode toward it, angling across the wind. “Here we go, Neddio, just a lit-t-t-tle way, Neddio, you’ll be warm, Neddio, out of the wind, out of the storm, Neddio.” He loosened his hold on the reins, letting the horse stretch to a long easy lope.

  Around noon, though it might as well have been midnight, the gloom had thickened until it was nearly impenetrable, he saw a scatter of dark shapes that turned into trees and blocky buildings as he got closer. A shoulder-high wall loomed ahead of him. Neddio the horse squealed and shied; when Simms had him steady again, he followed the wall to a gap. There should have been a gate, but he didn’t see any. He turned through the gap and felt a lessening of the wind’s pressure as the wall broke its sweep. He couldn’t see much, so he let the horse find the driveway and move along it toward what had to be the house.

  No lights. Nothing.

  “Hall000,” he yelled, raising his voice so he could be heard above the wind. “Hey the house! You got a visitor. Mind if I come in?”

  Nothing.

  “Well, Neddio, seems to me silence is good as a formal invite.” He slid from the saddle, hunted about for the tie-rail; he found it by backing into it and nearly impaling himself on the end. He secured the reins around it in a quick half-hitch and went groping for the door, expecting to find it closed and barred.

  It was open a crack, but resisted when he pushed against it. He pushed harder. The leather hinges tore across and the door crashed down. He heard some quick scuttlings in the darkness as vermin fled from the noise. Nothing else. The stead was deserted; from the dilapidation he could feel and smell it’d been that way for a long time. He leaned against the wall and listened to the slow, rumbling complaints of the rammed dirt, ancient memories of blood and screaming, present groans about the years and years since the wall had a coat of sealer brushed over it. Even the dirt knew it was decaying. He didn’t listen long, it didn’t matter that much why the folk had left, all that mattered was getting shelter before the storm hit.

  He left Neddio at the tie-rail and groped his way around to the barn. It was in much worse shape than the house, two of the walls had melted away, the roof was lying in pieces about stalls and bins also broken and half burnt. Its house for old Neddio, he thought, and I best get as much wood in today as I can. When that blow hits full force, we’re not going anywhere. Wonder if there’s something about I can use as a drag so I won’t have to make so many trips? Mellth’g bod, can’t see a thing. Raaht, Simmo, one step at a time. Fire first, then see what I can locate. He gathered an armload of the wood scraps and felt his way back to the front door.

  ##

  The house proved to be in better condition than he’d expected. There were two stories, the roof was reasonably intact and whatever leaked through the shakes was generally soaked up by the cross laid double floor of the second story. He decided to camp in the kitchen; there was a fireplace, a brick oven, several benches and a table that must have been built where it stood since it was far too big to fit through any of the doors. There was a washstand at the far end, close to the fireplace; that part of the kitchen was built over an artesian spring that was still gurgling forth a copious flow of cold pure water, the overflow caught and carried away by a tiled waste channel that split in two parts as it dipped under the back wall. One part flowed under the room next door and emptied into what had once been a large and flourishing vegetable garden-Simms found some tubers and herbs there that made a
welcome addition to the stores he was carrying; the other part went to the barn; he found that ditch by falling into it when he poked about in the store sheds and corrals behind the house. In one of those sheds, a low, thickwalled, sod-roofed cube, he found a dozen ceramic jars almost as tall as he was, the tops sealed with a mixture of clay and wax. He put a hand on each of them, red beans, peas, lentils, flour, barley and wheat, old but untouched by rot or mildew. He tried shifting one of the jars; if he put his shoulder to it, he could tilt it and rock it across the floor, but getting it all the way to the house was something else. He’d have to use Neddio to haul them, something the horse wasn’t going to like much. Wood first, though. He stepped outside, got a flurry of snow in the face; in the gusts and between them, the snow was coming down harder. He didn’t have all that much time left before nightfall when even the dim gray twilight would vanish.

  He cobbled together harness and collar with bits of rope and the saddle blanket, tied the ends of the harness rope to the front corners of a piece of canvas he’d found rolled up in a closet in the kitchen and began hauling wood back to the house, everything he could scavenge. He worked steadily for the next several hours, back and forth, rails, posts, bits of barn roof, rafters, stall timbers, anything he could chop loose and pile on the canvas, back and forth, the wind battering them, the snow coming down harder and harder, smothering them. Until, at last, there was no wood left worth the effort of hauling it.

  He cut the canvas loose and left it in the small foyer, took Neddio around to the shed and hitched him to one of the jars. Hauling proved slow, awkward work; Neddio balked again and again, he detested those ropes cutting into him, that weight dragging back on him. Simms patted him, coaxed him, sang him into one more effort and then one more and again one more.

  Heading out of the house for the last of the jars, he heard a mule bray and a moment later, a second one.

  “Visitors? Yah yah, Neddio, you can stand down a while till I see what’s what.” He stripped off his heavy outer gloves, tossed them inside, slapped the horse on the shoulder and waited until the beast had retreated into the semi-warmth of the parlor, then he followed the sound of the braying. He groped his way to the wall, found the gap. He could see about a foot from his nose, after that nothing but the flickering white haze so he was very wary of leaving the shelter of the wall, it would be all too easy to get so turned around and confused he couldn’t find his way back to the house. He stood in the gap, leaning into the wind and listening. The mules were off to his left, not far from the wall though he couldn’t see them. He whistled, whistled again. The sound died before it reached them, sucked into the keening of the wind. That was no good. He began to sing, a calling song he’d learned from his outlander grandmer when he was a child. She died when he was six, but he still remembered her songs and the things she’d taught him. He sang across the wind, willed the mules to hear him and come. He sang until he was hoarse-until two dark shapes came out of the snow and stopped before him.

  They were hitched to, a light two-wheel dulic, the reins loose, dragging on the ground. The driver was a large lump mounded along the driver’s bench, unconscious or dead. Didn’t matter, the mules were alive, he had to get them into shelter.

  Still singing, he teased them closer and closer until he could take hold of a halter and retrieve the reins. He led them along the driveway and took them into the parlor, stripped off their harness and chased them into the corner where he’d spread some straw he’d retrieved from under a section of barnroof and piled up for bedding. After a minute’s thought, he pulled the improvised harness off Neddio and sent him after them; the last jar could stay in the shed until they needed it. If they did.

  Now for the driver, he thought. Dead or alive? Well, we’ll see.

  He shivered as he plunged into the wind and snow, groped over to the dulic and climbed into it. He burrowed through layers of scarves and cloaks until he could get his fingers on the man’s neck, poked about until he discovered the artery and rested his fingertips on it. The man’s heart was beating strongly, but he was very very cold. Something not wholly natural about the chilly flesh, he didn’t know what it was, but it bothered him. Still, he couldn’t leave him out here to freeze. Offing someone when the blood was hot, well, that was a thing could happen to anyone, cold blood was different, and by damn his blood and everything else was cold. He pried up the massive torso, gritted his teeth under the weight and length of the man, got as much of him as he could wrapped around his shoulders and began the laborious process of getting back to the ground without injuring his load or doing serious damage to himself.

  Ten sweaty staggering minutes later, he laid the stranger out on the tiles in front of the kitchen fire. He left him there and went to fetch in the gear and other supplies from the dulic, piled the pouches and blanket roll on the table and went back for a second load. There was more baggage than he’d expected, this was no wandering beggar, whatever else he was.

  When the last load was in and piled on the table, he went to look at his patient. The man hadn’t changed position and wasn’t showing any signs of waking. Simms touched his brow. No fever. He was still cold but not quite so deathly chill. You’ll do for a while. I sh’d get those wet clothes off, but that can wait. Dulic first, then I deal with the door an’ take care of the stock, then it’s your turn, friend. Plenty of time for you. I be glad, though, when you wake and tell me what in u’ffren you’re doin’ out here. Wonderin’ makes me itch.

  After he pulled the dulic back of the house and rolled it into a shed, he inspected the door he’d knocked down; he and Neddio had tramped back and forth across it dozens of times but even Neddio’s iron shoes had done little to mark the massive planks of mountain oak, glued together and further reinforced by horizontal and diagonal two-by-fours of the same oak nailed onto the planks with hand-forged iron nails. He muscled the door into the opening, propped it against the jamb, walked one of the jars against it to keep the wind from blowing it down again.

  The two mules were tail switching and fratchetty, they kicked at Neddio if he went too close to them, nipped at Simms when he shifted some of the straw into another corner for his horse, even followed him, long yellow teeth reaching for arms and legs or a handy buttock, when he went to lay a fire in the parlor fireplace, though they didn’t like the fire much and retreated to their corner when it started crackling briskly. Keeping a wary eye on them, he dragged one of the parlor benches to the hearth and spread corn along it from a corn jar in the foyer. He rolled an ancient crock from the kitchen, filled it with water, took a look round and was satisfied he’d done what he could to make the beasts comfortable.

  In the kitchen, he filled the tin tank in the brick stove and kindled a fire under it so he’d have hot water to bathe his patient; he laid another fire in the stoke hole, filled one of the stranger’s pots from the spring, dropped in dried meat from his own stores and lentils and barley from jars in the parlor, along with some of the tubers and herbs from the garden and set it simmering on the grate. He put teawater to heating beside the stew and went to inspect the stranger.

  He was a long man, six foot five, six, maybe even seven with shoulders of a size to match his length. He had been a heavy man, big muscles with a layer of fat; he’d lost the fat and some of the muscle, his skin hung loose around him. He w’d make a han’some skel’ton. Simms smiled at the thought and drew his fingers over the prominent bones of the man’s face. Beautiful man. Thick coarse gray hair in a braid that vanished down the cloak. Brows dark, with only a hair or two gone gray. Eyelashes long and sooty, resting in a graceful arc on the dark poreless skin stretched over his cheekbones. Big, powerful man, but Simms got a feeling of fragility from him, as if the size and strength were illusions painted over emptiness. Beautiful shell, but only a shell.

  He turned the stranger onto his stomach, eased his head around so his damp hair was turned to the fire and began stripping the sodden clothing off him, boots first, boot liners, knitted stockings, two pairs, wool
and silk with the silk next to the silk. Gloves, fur lined. Silk glove liners. Fur-lined cloak. Silk-lined woolen undercloak. Wool robe, heavily embroidered over the chest, around the hem and sleeve cuffs. Silk under-robe. Wool trousers. Silk underwear. Whoever he was, he was a man of wealth and importance. What he was doing crossing the Grass in winter, alone… itch itch, wake up an’ talk t’ me, man, ‘fore my head explode.

  He fetched the water from the tank and began bathing the stranger, concentrating at first on his hands and feet, check-

  ing carefully for any signs of frostbite, pleased to see there were none. He didn’t understand why the man didn’t wake up, worried about it and was frustrated by his own ignorance. If his family hadn’t been so opposed to anything that smelled of witchery, if he’d had the drive and intelligence to go out and get training, beyond the little he picked up from his grandmer, if and if and if… Beautiful beautiful man, if he die, it’s my fault, my ignorance that kill ‘im. He dried the man, rubbing and rubbing with the soft nubby towel he’d found in one of the pouches, and still he didn’t wake, he yielded to Simms’ manipulations like a big cat to a stroking hand, it was almost as if his body recognized Simms and cooperated as much as an unminded body could.

  He folded the towel, put it under the man’s head. I need clothes for you. I hope you don’ mind, I been goin’ through your stuff. He touched the man’s face, drew his forefinger along the elegant lips. Wake up, wake up, wake… He sighed and got to his feet.

  The table was spread with the pouches and things he’d already pulled from them. He unbuckled the pouch that held the man’s spare clothing. Robes, rolled in neat, tight cylinders. He shook them out, chose one and set it aside. The blankets, I’d better have them. Another pouch. Meat, apples, trailbars wrapped in oiled silk-he set those aside as he came on them. A large leather wallet with papers inside. He tossed that down without exploring it, none of his business, at the moment anyway. A plump, clunk-clanking purse. He opened it. Jaraufs and takks, Jorpashil coin. Another towel, in an oiled silk sac along with bars of soap and a squeeze tube with an herb-scented lotion inside.