Blue Magic dost-2

by Jo Clayton

  “I hear. Go ahead and show us the trail, will you?”

  Jaril nodded, pulled ahead of them. He increased his mule’s pace to an easy trot as he followed the inconspicuous blazes cut at intervals into tree trunks as big around as the bodies of the mules. They’d long since passed the areas where the battles with Settsimaksimin and his surrogate elementals had torn up the ground, the mountainside was springy with old dried needles, little brush grew between giant conifers that rose a good twenty feet above their heads before spreading out great fans of branch and pungent needle bunches, there was room for the mules to stretch their legs without worrying about what they’d step into.

  They rode undisturbed that day, stopping briefly to grain and water the mules and snatch a bite for themselves, starting on again with less than an hour lost. They reached Yaril’s spring about an hour after sundown. She had a small sly fire going and was prowling about in catshape, driving off anything on four legs or two that might want to investigate the camp too closely. No one said much, aloud at least; what the changers were saying to each other, they kept to themselves and did not break the silence about the fire. Brann rolled into her blankets after she ate and helped clean up the camp; as far as Danny Blue could tell she didn’t move until she woke with the dawn. He had more difficulty getting to sleep, his muscles were sore and complaining, his mental and physical turmoil kept his mind turning over long after he was bored with every thought that climbed about his head, but he had two disciplines to call on and eventually bludgeoned his mind into stillness and his body into sleep.

  The days passed because they had to pass, but there was little to mark one from another; they rode uphill and downhill and across the smuggler bridges with never a smell of Settsimaksimin. Even the weather was fine, nights cool, days warm with just enough of a breeze to take the curse off the heat and not a sign of rain. Now and then they saw a stag or a herd of does with their springborn fawns; now and then, on the edges of night and morning brown bears prowled about them but never came close enough to threaten them. Blue gessiks hopped about among the roots and shriveled weeds, broad beaks poking through the mat of dead needles for pinenuts and borer worms; their raucous cried echoed from hillside to hillside as they whirled into noisy bluff battles over indistinguishable patches of earth. Gray gwichies chattered at each other or shook gwichie babies out of pouches close to being too small for them and sent them running along whippy tarplum branches for late hatching nestlets or lingering fruit.

  On the fifth day or it might have been the sixth, shortly after dawn when shadows were long and thin and glittered with dew, they dropped through an oak forest to the grassy foothills along the side of Forkker Vale.

  Jaril and Yaril rode first, Jaril in the saddle, Yaril behind him, clinging to him. Their new dependence on the sun for sustenance had wrought several changes in how they ran their lives. In a way, they were like large lizards, they got a few degrees more sluggish when the sun went down unless they took steps, to avoid it. They were still adjusting to the change in their circumstances; staying with Braun on this trek, with its demands on them and the dangers that lay ahead of them wasn’t helping them all that much.

  Down on the floor of the Vale a line of men walked steadily across the first of the grainfields, scythes swinging in smooth arcs, laying stalkfans flat beside them, a line of women followed, tieing the stalks into sheaves, herds of children followed the women, some gathering sheaves into piles, others loading those piles onto mulecarts and taking them down along the Vale to the storesheds and drying racks at the threshing floor. The men were singing to themselves, a deep thoated hooming that rose out of the rhythm of the sweep, hypnotic powerful magical sound. The women had their own songs with a quicker sharper rhythm, a greater commensality. The children laughed and sang and played a dozen different games as they worked, counting games and last one out and dollymaker as they gathered and piled the sheaves, jump the moon and one foot over and catch as they swung the sheaves around, tossed them to each other then onto the stakecarts, running tag and sprints beside the mules. It was early morning, cool and pleasant, boys and girls alike were brimming with energy. It was the last golden burst of exuberance before winter shut down on them. Or it was before the strangers appeared.

  As Brann, the changers and Danny Blue rode past them on the rutted track, the Forkker folk looked round at them but no one spoke to them, no one asked what they were doing there or where they were going. And the children were careful to avoid them.

  Ahzurdan’s memories prodded Danny Blue until he heeled his mule to a quicker trot and caught up with Brann. “Trouble?”

  “Maybe.” She scratched at her chin. “It could be local courtesy not to notice folk coming from the direction of Haven. I don’t believe a word of that. Jay.” He looked over his shoulder, dusty and rather tired, the sun hadn’t been up long enough to kick him into full alertness. “Could you or Yaro put on wings and take a look at what’s ahead of us?”

  “Shift here?”

  “Why not. A little healthy fear might prove useful.”

  Yaril stretched, patted a yawn, yawned again and slid off the mule; she ran delicate hands through her ash blond hair, shivered like a nervous pony, then she was an eagle powering into a rising spiral.

  They started on, moving at a slow walk. A mulecart rattled past them, the children silent, subdued, wide frightened eyes sliding around to the strangers, flicking swiftly away.

  Danny Blue watched the cart jolt away from them, the mule urged to a reluctant canter, the sheaves jiggling and shivering. Several fell off. ‘Ay° boys ran back, scooped them up and tossed them onto the cart. A swift sly ferret’s look at the strangers, then they scooted ahead until they were trotting beside the mule, switching his flanks to keep him at the faster pace. “They’ve been warned about us,” he said.

  “Looks like it. Jay?”

  “Yaro is looking over the village. It’s pretty well empty. Those houses are built like forts, an army could be hiding inside them. Each house has several courtyards, they’re as empty as the streets, Yaro says that about confirms trouble ahead, at this hour there should be people everywhere, not just in the fields. She thinks maybe we should circle round the village, she says she saw shadows behind several of the windows, the streets, well, they aren’t really streets, just openspaces between housewalls, they’re narrow and crooked with a lot of blind ends, it’s a maze there, if we got into it, who knows what’d happen. There’s problems with circling too, orchards and vineyards and a lot of clutter before we’d get to the trees, makes her nervous, she says. Ah. Soldiers in the trees, left side… um… right side. Not many. She says she counts four on the left, six on the right, Kori said there were a doubletwelve in Owlyn Vale, there won’t be fewer here, that leaves what? about fourteen, fifteen in the village. She says it won’t be that difficult for her and me to take all of them out if we could use Dan’s stunner. Question is will the Forkker folk mix in this business? If they do, things could get sticky, there are too many of them, they can swamp us given we have a modicum of bad luck. What do you think?” Jaril opened his eyes, looked from Brann to Danny Blue, raised his brows.

  Danny Blue thumbed the zipper back, squeezed out the stunner; he checked the charge, nodded with satisfaction, tossed the heavy black handful to Jaril. “Chained God topped off the batteries, but don’t waste the juice, Jay, I’d like to have some punch left when we get to where we’re going.”

  Jaril,caught the stunner. “Gotcha. Braun?”

  “Yarn read Kori back when… Jay, was that her or you asking about the Forkkers? You? What does she think?”

  “Um… she thinks they’re in a bind. They don’t like Maksim or his soldiers, but they don’t want him landing on their backs either, especially not over a bunch of foreigners. She says if we go through fast and they don’t see much happening, they’ll keep quiet. She says she’s changed her mind about going round the village now that she thinks about it. She says thinking about it, we’ve got to put all the
soldiers out, we don’t want them stirring up the Forkkers and setting them after us. She says Brann, she can read a couple Forkkers to make sure, if you want. And Dan, she says, whatever, it’s up to you. The stunner’s yours.”

  Danny Blue ran his tongue around his teeth, scratched thoughtfully at his thigh. “Can you singleshot the soldiers? It’d cut down the bleed if you don’t have to spray a broad area.”

  “She says the ones in the trees will be easy, she’ll mark them for me, so I can do them while she’s hunting out the ones ambushed in the village. She says what she’ll do is globe up and pale out, go zip zap through all the houses, be done with that before they know what’s happening. Once she’s got the village ones spotted, unless there’s too many of them or they’re in places I can’t get the stunner into, I should be able to plink them before they get too agitated.” A quick grin. “Too bad the stunner won’t go through walls.”

  “Too bad.” Danny glanced over his shoulder at the workers in the waist high grain. They weren’t working anymore, they were gathered in clumps, stiff and ominously silent, watching Jaril, Brann and him as they rode at a slow walk along the dusty track. “You might as well get at it. All I say is remember we’ve got a long way to go yet.”

  Danny Blue tied the leadrope of the third mule to the ring, watched the man-handed eagle fly off toward the trees. Brann was looking sleepy, unconcerned. The wind was blowing her hair about her face. You can almost see it grow, he thought, I wonder why she cut it so short. Her body moved easily with the motion of the mule, she was relaxed as a cat. A wave of uneasiness shivered through him (the shefalos hook operating in him), cat, oh yes, and he didn’t know how she’d jump.

  He fragmented suddenly, Ahzurdan and Daniel Akamarino resurrected by their powerful reactions to. Brann, a gate he’d opened for them. They were still one-dimensional, his progenitors, reduced to a few dominant emotions closely related and thoroughly mixed whose only stab at complication was a vague fringe of contradictions that trailed away to nothing. Ahzurdan glowered at Brann, a glaresheet of nauseous yellow, hate, resentment, frustration. Daniel pulled himself into a globe, iceblue, dull, rejection irritation numblust. Danny Blue was nowhere, shards scattered haphazard around and between the fragments of his sires.

  Cool/warm touch on his arm. “Dan?” Warm sweet sound dancing across his nerve ends, echo re-echo chit-ter chatter flutter alter alto counterplay countertenor contralto confusion diffusion refusion dan dan dan dan…

  A surge of heat. The bits of Danny Blue wheeled whirled jabbed into the glaresheet (broke it into sickly yellow puzzle pieces) jabbed into the globe (shattered it to mirrored shards, slung them at the yellow scraps) the bits of Danny Blue wheeled whirled, gathered yellow gathered blue, heat pressure need glue bits shards scraps, moulage collage-Danny Blue is whole again, a little strange the seams are showing, but it’s him, yes it’s him, singly him. He blinked at Brann, at her hand on his arm. He wrapped fingers (warm again his again) about hers, lifted her hand, moved his lips slowly softly across the smooth firm palm. He cupped her hand against his cheek. “Thanks.”

  Buffered by a taut silence that the thud of mule hooves on the muffling dust only intensified, they rode at a fast trot through the village following a large bitch mastiff while the man-handed eagle flew sentry overhead. The soldiers slept and the Forkker folk did nothing, the riders and the changers fled unhindered down along the Vale, past other grainfields waiting for the reapers, past fields of flax and fiberpods, past rows of hops clattering like castanets in the breeze, past tuber vines already dug, waiting, drying in the hot postsummer sun. The hills closed in, the road moved onto the left bank of Forkker Creekr. At the mouth of the Vale where the stone bridge crossed that creek, a small stone fort sat high on a steep hillside, overlooking the bridge and the road. The mastiff trotted past it without stopping, the eagle circled undisturbed overhead. Brann and Danny Blue crossed the bridge without being challenged and left the Vale.

  15. Settsimaksimin Sitting In His Tower, Watching What Hurries Toward Him As He Hurries To Shape What’s To Be Out Of What Is Now, Working More From Hope Than Expectation, Shaping Cheonea.

  SCENE: Settsimaksimin in the Star Chamber, the council he’d constituted some weeks before breaking up after a long meeting, the members stretching (inconspicuously or not, according to their natures), several chatting together, the end-of-the-teeth inconsequentialities power players use to pass dangerously unstructured moments that push up like weeds even in the most controlled of lives. Stretching or chatting they stroll toward the door.

  “T’Thelo, stay a moment.”

  The Peasant Voice looked over his shoulder, came back to the table. “Phoros Pharmaga.”

  Settsimaksimin waved a hand at a chair, turned his most stately glare on the rest of the council as they bunched in the doorway, reluctant to leave one of their number alone with him. Todichi Yahzi set his book aside and shambled across the room. He herded the councilmen out and shut the door, returned to his plump red pillow, picked up the red book and got ready to record.

  T’Thelo was a small brown tuber, at once hard and plump with coarse yellow-white hairs like roots thin on his lumpy head. His hands were never still, he carried worry beads to meetings and when he felt like it would whittle at a hardwood chunk, peeling off paper thin curls of the pale white wood. He seldom said much, was much better at saying no than yes, looked stubborn and was a lot more stubborn than he looked.

  Maksim let himself slump in his chair and turned off the battering ram he used as personality in these council meetings. He reached under his robe and under BinYAHtii, rubbed at his chest. “You know my mind,” he said.

  T’Thelo grunted, pulled out his worry beads and began passing them between thumb and forefinger.

  Maksim laughed. At first the sound filled the room, then it faded to a sigh. “They’re going to want to know what I told you,” he said. “I’d advise silence, but I won’t command it. I’ve a battle coming at me, T’Thelo. A man, a woman and two demons riding at me from the Forkker, despite all I’ve done to stop them. A battle

  … a battle… I mean to win it, T’Thelo, but there’s a chance I won’t and I want you ready for it. You and the other landsmen, you’ll have to fight to keep what you’ve got if I go down. The army will be a problem, keep a close watch on the Strataga and his staff; they’re accustomed to power and are salivating for more, they resent me for shunting them from the main lines of rule, hmm, perhaps half the younger officers would support you in a pinch, don’t trust the Valesons, matter of fact you’d do well to send them home, but most of the foot-soldiers come from landfolk on the Plain, be careful with them, the army’s had the training of them since they were boys, it means as much or more to them as their blood kin, and they’ve had obedience drilled into them, they’ll obey if they’re ordered to walk over you even if their mothers and sisters are in the front line. The Guildmaster and his artisans will back you if given a choice, they remember too well how things were when the Parastes held the reins. So will the Dicastes, they lose if you lose. There are a lot of folk with grudges about, especially the parasite Parastes still alive and their hopeful heirs. Be careful with Vasshaka Bulan, I know the landsmen don’t like the Yrons or the Servants or Amortis all that much, but it’s better to have them with you than against. I can’t tell you how that tricky son will jump, but I know what he wants, T’Thelo. More. That’s what he wants. More and more and more. Not for himself, I’ll give him that, for Amortis, he calls himself Her Servant and, Forty Mortal Hells, he means it. So that’s a thing to watch. Keep your local Kriorns and their Servants friendly, T’Thelo, they’re not puppets, they’re men like you, I’ve seen to that. The Yron has schooled them, but I’ve schooled them too. Keep that in mind.” He fell silent, gazed past the Voice at the far wall though he wasn’t seeing wall or anything else. “We’re not friends, T’Thelo, you’d see me burned at the stake and smile, and as for me, you annoy me and you bore me, but for all that, T’Thelo, we share a dream. W
e share a dream.” His voice was soft and pensive, a deep burrumm like a cello singing on its lowest notes. “Five days, T’Thelo, it takes five days to ride from Forkker Vale to Silagamatys. It isn’t time enough for much, but do what you can. I expect to win this battle, T’Thelo, they’re coming to ME, they will be fighting on MY ground. But there’s a battle coming that I won’t win. It’s one you’ll fight soon enough, my unfriend, you know which one I mean. When I commenced the shaping here, I thought I’d have a hundred years to get it done, aah hey, not so. Three, five, seven, that’s it, that’s all. I release you from any duties you have to me, Voice, make your plans, weave your web, woo your Luck. And be VERY careful who you talk to about this.”

  T’Thelo sat a moment staring at the string of wooden beads passing between his callused work-stiffened fingers; he’d had them from his father who’d had them from his, they were dark with ancient sweat, ancient aches and agonies, ancient furies that had no other place to go. He rubbed his thumb across the headbead larger than the rest, darker, looked up. “Give me a way to get word to the Plain.”

  Maksim snapped his fingers, plucked a small obsidian egg from the air. He set it on the table, gave it a push that took it across to T’Thelo. “The word is PE-TOM’, it calls a ge’mel to you.” He smiled at the distaste visible in T’Thelo’s lined face. “A ge’mel is a friendly little demon about the size of a pigeon, it looks like a mix between a bat and a bunch of celery and it’s a chatty beast. Worst trouble you’ll have with it is getting it to shut up and listen to instructions. It can go anywhere between one breath and the next, all you have to do is name the man you’re sending it to and think about him when you name him. When you’ve finished with the ge’mel, say PI’YEN NA; that’ll send it home. Any questions?”

  T’Thelo looked at the egg. After a long silence, he put his worry beads away, reached out and touched the stone with the tip of his left forefinger. When it didn’t bite him, he picked it up, looked at his distorted reflection in the polished black glass. “Petom’,” he said. His voice was nearly as deep as Maksim’s but harsher; though it could bum with hard passion, that voice, it could never sing, an orator’s voice, an old man’s voice beginning to hollow with age.