by Jo Clayton
Late afternoon on the seventh day she stopped walking and listened, finding it difficult to believe her ears. Threading through the soughing of the leaves and the guttural creaks from the huge limbs she heard a steady plink plink plink. It got gradually louder, turned into the familiar dance of a smith’s hammer. The ground underfoot got rockier, the trees were smaller, aspen and birch and myrtle mixed with the oak and the sunlight made lacy patterns on the earth and in the air around her. Even her cold seemed to relent.
She came out of the trees and stood looking down into a broad ravine with a small stream wandering along the bottom. It was an old cut, the sides had a gentle slope with thick short grass like green fur. The sound of the hammering came from farther uphill, around a slight bend and behind some young trees.
She walked around the trees, moving silently more from habit than because she felt it necessary. He had his back to her, working over something on an anvil set on an oak base. It was an openair forge, small and convenient in everything but location. Why was he out here alone? His folk might be around the next curve of the mountain, but she didn’t think so, there’d be some sign of them, dogs barking, cattle noises, she knew the Finger Vale folk had cattle, shouts of children, a thousand other sounds. None of that. He wore a brief leather loincloth, a thong about his head to keep thick, dark blond hair out of his eyes, and a heavy leather apron, nothing more. She watched the play of muscles in his back and buttocks, smiled ruefully and touched her hair. You must look like one of the Furies halfway long a vengeance trail. She touched her arms, the knives were in place, loose enough to come away quickly but not loose enough to fall out; she unbuttoned her cuffs and turned them back, a smith was generally an honest man not overly given to rape, but she’d lost her trusting nature a long way back and the circumstances were odd. A last breath, then she walked around where he could see her.
He let the hammer fall a last time on the object he was shaping (it seemed to be a large intricate link for the heavy chain that coiled at his feet) and stood staring at her, gray green eyes widening with surprise. “Tissu, anash? Opop’erkrisi? Ti’bouleshi?” He had a deep musical voice, even though she didn’t understand a word, the sound of it gave her a pleasurable shiver.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Do you speak the kevrynyel?”
“Ah.” He made a swift secret warding sign and brushed the link off the anvil to get it away from her prying eyes. “Trade gabble,” he said. “Some. I say this, who you, where you come from, what you wish?”
“A traveler,” she said. “Off a ship heading past your coast. Its captain saw a way of squeezing more coin out of me; after a bit of rape he was going to sell me the next port he hit. I had a guard, but the lout got drunk and let them cut his throat. Not being overenchanted by either of the captain’s intentions, I went overside and swam ashore. Aaahmmm, what I want… A meal of something more than raw fish, a hot bath, no, several baths, clean clothing, a bed to sleep in, alone if you don’t mind my saying it, and a chance to earn my keep a while. I do some small magics, my father was a scholar of the Rukha Nagg. Mostly I make music. I had a daroud, the captain has that now, but I can make do with most anything that has strings. I know the Rukha dance tunes and the songs of many peoples. If there’s the desire, I can teach these to your singers and music makers. I cannot sew or embroider, spin or weave, my mother died before she could teach me such things and my father forgot he should. And, to be honest, I never reminded him. There anything more you want to know?”
“Only your name, anash.”
“Ah, your forgiveness, I am Harra of the Hazani, daughter of the Magus Tahno Hazzain. I see you are a smith, I don’t know the customs here, would it be discourteous to ask a name of you, O Nev?”
“For a gift, a gift. Simor a Piyolss of Owlyn Vale. If you would wait a breath or two beyond the trees there, I’ll take you to my mother.”
And so Sirnor the Smith, priest of the Chained God, took the stranger woman to the house of Piyoloss and when the harvest was in and the first snow on the ground, he married her. At first the Vale folk were dismayed, but she sang for them and saved more than one of them from the King’s levy with her small magics which weren’t quite as small as she’d admitted to and after her first son was born most constraints vanished. She had seven sons and a single daughter. She taught them all that she had learned, but it was the daughter who learned the most from her. Her daughter married into the Faraziloss and her daughter’s daughters (she had three) into the Kalathim, the Xoshallar, the Bacharikoss. She heard the story of Brann and her search, she received the medal, the sealing wax and the parchment, she had the box made and passed it with the promise to the liveliest of her granddaughters, a Xoshallarin. As she passed something else. Shnor who could read the heart of mountains found a flawless crystal as big as his two fists and brought it to his cousin, a stoneworker, who cut a sphere from it and burnished it until it was clear as the, heart of water; he gave this to Harra as a gift on the birth of their daughter. She knew how to look into it, and see to the ends of the world and taught her daughter how to look. It is not difficult she said, merely find a stillness in yourself and out of the stillness take will. If the gift of seeing is yours, and since you have my blood in you, most likely it is, then you can call what you need to see.
To find the crystal, daughter of Harra, go to the secret cavern in the ravine where Simor first met Harm, the place where the things of the Chained God are kept safe. Find in yourself the stillness and out of the stillness take will, then you will see where you should send the medal.
In the morning Kori went before the Women of Piyoloss. “The Servant of Amortis has been watching me. I am afraid.”
The Women looked at each other, sighed. After a long moment, AuntNurse said, “We have seen it.” She eyed Kori with a skepticism born of long experience. “You have a suggestion?”
“My brother Trago goes soon to take his turn with the herds in the high meadows, let me go with him instead of Kassery. The Servant and his acolytes don’t go there, the soldiers don’t go there, if I could stay up there until the Lot time, I would be out of his way and once it was Lot time, I’d be going down with the rest to face the Lot and after that, if the Lot passed me, it wouldn’t be long before it was time for my betrothing and then even he wouldn’t dare put his hands on me. I tell you this, if he does put his hands on me, I will kill myself on his doorstep and my ghost will make his days a misery and his nights a horror. I swear it by the ghost of my mother and the Chains of the God.”
AuntNurse seached Kori’s face, then nodded. “You would do it. Hmm. There are things I wonder about you, young Kori.” She smiled. “I’m not accustomed to hearing something close to wisdom coming out your mouth. Yes. It might be your ancestor, you know which I mean, speaking to us, her cunning, her hot spirit. I wonder what you really want, but no, I won’t ask you, I’ll only say, take care what you do, you’ll answer for it be you ghost or flesh.” She turned to the Women. “I
say send Kori to the meadows with Trago, send them tomorrow, what say you?”
“So I told the Women that that snake Bak’hve had the hots for me, well it’s true, Tre, he’s been following me about with his tongue hanging down to his knees, and I told them I was scared of him, which I was maybe a little, yechh, he makes the hair stand up all over me and if he touched me, I’d throw up all over him. Anyway, they already knew it and I suppose they’d been thinking what to do. Unnh, I wasn’t fooling AuntNurse, not much, chain it. She just about told me she knew I was up to something. Doesn’t matter, they let me go, almost had to, what I said made sense and they knew it.” Kori flung her arms out and capered on the path, exulting in her temporary freedom from the constraints closing in on her since she’d started her menses.
Trago made a face at her, did some skipping himself as the packpony he was leading whuffled and lipped at the fine blond hair the dawnwind was blowing into a fluff about his face. “So,” he said, raising his voice to get her attention, “w
hen are you going to tell me that great idea of yours?”
She sobered and came back to walk beside him. “I didn’t want to say anything down there, you never know who’s listening and has got to tell everything, what goes in the ear comes out their mouth with no stop between.”
“So?”
Speaking in a rapid murmur, so softly Trago had to lean close and listen hard, Kori told him about Harra’s Gift and the not-dream she had under the great oak. “Owlyn Vale can’t fight Settsimaksimin, we’ve got the dead to prove it. Chained God can’t fight him either, not straight out, or he’d ‘ve done it when they burned Zilos. Maybe he can sneak a little nip in, maybe that’s what he was doing when he picked you for his priest and made that oaksprite give me a dream. ’Cause I think he did, I think he wants the Drinker of Souls here. I think he thinks she can do something, I don’t know what, that will turn things around. So I had to get loose, otherwise how could I get to the cave without making such a noise everything would get messed up? And thought I’d better be with you, Tre, since if you don’t know where the cave is, Zilos will come and tell you about it like the oaksprite did me. She said it’s in the ravine where Simor met Harra, but who knows where that is? Only the priest and that’s Zilos. He’ll have to come to you again, like he did last night. Maybe tonight even. Drinker of Souls could be anywhere, the sooner we get the medal to her, the sooner she could start for here.”
Tre sniffed. “If she comes.”
“It’s better’n doing nothing.”
“Maybe.” After a moment he reached over and took her hand, something he usually wouldn’t do. “I’m scared, Kori.”
She squeezed his hand, sighed. “Me too, Tree.”
The packpony plodding along behind them, and then nosing into them as they slackened their pace, they climbed in silence, nothing to say, everything had been said and it hung like fog about them.
They reached Far Meadow a little after noon, a bright still day, bearable in shadow, but ovenhot in the sunlight. The leggy brown cows lay about the rim of the meadow wherever there was a hint of shade, tails switching idly, jaws moving like blunt soft silent metronomes, ears flicking now and then to drive off the black flies that summer produced out of nothing as if they were the offspring of sun and air. A stream cut across the meadow, glittering with heat until it slid into shadow beneath the trees and widened into a shady pool where Veraddin and Poti were splashing without much energy, like the cows passing the worst of the heat doing the least possible.
“L0000haaa, Vraaad.” Trago wrinkled up his face, squinted his eyes, shielding them from the sun with his free hand; when the two youths yelled and waved to him, he tossed the pony’s halter rope to Kori and went trotting across to them. Kori sighed and led the beast up the slope toward the cabin and cheesehouse tucked up under the trees, partially dug into the mountainside, a corral beside it, empty now, a three-sided milking barn, a flume from the stream that fed water into a cistern above the house then into a trough at the corral. When Trago’s yell announced their arrival, a large solid woman (the widow Chittar Piyolss y Bacharz, the Piyoloss Cheesemaker) came from inside the cheesehouse and stood on the steps, a white cloth crumpled in her left hand. She watched a moment as Kori climbed toward her, swabbed the cloth across her broad face, stumped down the steps and along to the corral, swinging the gate open as Kori reached her.
“You’re two days early.” Chittar had a rough whispery voice that sounded rusty from disuse. She followed Kori into the corral, tucked the cloth into the waistband of her skirt and helped unload the packs from the saddle and strip the gear off the placid pony; as soon as he was free, he ambled to the trough and plunged his nose into the water. “You take that into the house.” She waved a hand at the gear. “I’ll see this creature doesn’t founder himself. And if that clutch of boys isn’t up to help you in another minute, I’ll go after their miserable hides with a punkthorn switch.”
Kori grinned at her. “I hear, xera Chittar. Um, we are early and it’s me because AuntNurse thought I should get away from the Servant of Amortis who looked like he was entertaining some unfortunate ideas.”
“That’s the politest way I every heard that put. Panting was he, old goat, no-I insult a noble beast, by comparison anyway.” Chittar wrapped powerful fingers about the cheekstrap of the halter and pulled the pony away from the water. “I see the truants are coming this way; you get into the house right now, girl, those ijjits have about a clout and a half between them and that’s no sight for virgin eyes.”
The first night Kori slept on a pallet in Chittar’s room while Trago shared Poti’s bed (he was the smaller of the two boys). Whatever dreams either may have had, they remembered none. In the morning, as soon as the cows were milked and turned out to graze, Veraddin and Poti left, warned not to say anything to anyone about Kori until they talked with the Women of Piyoloss. Chittar went back to the cheesehouse, leaving Kori and Trago with a list of things to do about the house and instructions to choose separate rooms for their bedrooms, get them cleaned up and neat enough to pass inspection, to get everything done before noon and come join her so she could show them what they were going to do until they could get on with their proper chores. Since neither of them had the least idea how to do the milking, she was going to have to take that over until they learned, which meant they’d have to do some of her work, like churning butter and spading curd, the simpler things that needed muscle more than skill or intelligence. Ah no, she said to them, you thought you were going to laze about watching cows graze? not a hope, l’il Wits, I’m working your tails off like I do to all the dreamers coming up here.
By nightfall they knew the truth of that. Kori fell into bed, but had a hard time sleeping, her arms felt as if someone heavy was pulling, puffing, pulling without letup; they ached, not terribly sore, just terribly uncomfortable; she’d done most of the churning. Eventually she slept and again had no dreams she could remember. She woke, bone sore and close to tears from frustration. At breakfast she looked at Trago, ground her teeth when he shook his head.
A week passed. They were doing about half the milking now and had settled into routine so the housekeeping chores were quickly done and the work in the cheesehouse was considerably easier. Sore muscles had recovered, they’d found the proper rhythm to the tasks and Chittar was pleased with them.
On the seventh night, Zilos came to Trago, told him where to find the cave and what to do with the things he found there.
The hole they were crawling through widened suddenly into a room larger than Owlyn’s threshing floor. Kori lifted the lamp high and stared wide-eyed at the glimmering splendor. Chains hung in graceful curves, one end bolted to a ceiling so high it was lost in the darkness beyond the reach of the lamp, the other end to the wall. Chains crossing and recrossing the space, chains of iron forged on the smithpriest’s anvil and hung in here so long ago all but the lowest links were coated with stone, chains of wood fashioned by the woodworkerpriest’s knives, chains of crystal and saltmarble chiseled by the stonecutterpriest’s tools, centuries of labor given to the cave, taken by the cave to itself. The cold was piercing, the damp crept into her bones as she stared, but it was beautiful and it was awesome.
In the center of the chamber a square platform of polished wood sat on stone blocks a foot off the stone floor, above it, held up by intricately carved wooden posts, a canopy of white jade, thin and translucent as the finest porcelain, in the center of the platform a chest made from kedron wood without any carving on it, the elegant shape and the wonderful gloss of the wood all the ornament it needed. “I suppose that’s it,” she said. She shivered as her voice broke the silence; it was such a little sound, like a mosquito’s whine and made her feel small and fragile as a mosquito, as if a mighty hand might slap down any moment and wipe her away. She set the lamp on the floor and waited.
Trago glanced at her, but said nothing. After a moment’s hesitation he moved cautiously across the uneven floor, jumped up onto the platform. Uncertain of the pr
operties involved, Kori didn’t follow him; she waited on the chamber floor, leaning against one of the corner posts, watching as he chewed on his lip and frowned at the polished platform with its intricate inlaid design. He looked over his shoulder. “You think I ought to take off my sandals?”
She spread her hands. “You know more than me about that.”
Nothing happened, so he walked cautiously to the chest. He turned the lid back, froze, seemed to stop breathing, still, statue still, inert as the stone around him. Kori gasped, started to go to him, but something slippery as oiled glass pushed her back, wouldn’t let her onto the platform. She clawed at the thing, screamed, “Tre, what is it, Tre, say something, Trл, let him go, you… you… you…”
Trago stirred, make a small catching sound as if his throat unlocked and he could breathe again. Kori shuddered, then leaned against the post and rubbed at her throat, reassured but still barred from the platform. He knelt before the chest and began taking things out of it, setting them beside his knees, things that blurred so she couldn’t tell what they were, though she knew the crystal when he held it up; he brought it over to her, reached through the barrier and gave it to her, solemn, silent, his face blurred too (the look of it frightened her). Seeming to understand her unease, he gave her a smoky smile, then he returned to the chest, seemed to put something around his neck, (for Kori, impression of a chain with a smoky oval hanging from it) and he seemed to put something in his pocket (a fleeting impression of a short needleblade and an ebony hilt with a red crystal set into it, an even more evanescent impression of something held behind it). He returned the other things to the chest and shut the lid.
Abruptly the barrier was gone. Kori stepped back, clutching the crystal against her stomach, holding it with both hands. Trago sat on the chest and kicked his heels against it. “Come on, Kori, it’s not so damp up here. Or cold. And bring the lamp.”