by Jo Clayton
Yaril filament had no difficulty penetrating the shield; she continued to transmit moonlight and starlight into Brann who kept one hand lightly on Danny’s spine, maintaining the feed as he dropped to his knees on the underside of the tabletop. He brushed his fingertips across the wood, sketched the outline of a sensor panel, but left it as faint marks on the surface. Hands moving slowly, surely, the chant pouring out of him with a rightness that was another thing he hadn’t expected (as if the magic and his Daniel memories had conspired to teach him in that instant what it’d taken Ahzurdan years to learn, as if the rightness and elegance of the design dictated the chant and all the rest), he Reshaped the wood into metal and ceramic and the esoteric crystals that were the heart and brain of the field, layer on layer of them embedded in the wood, shielded from it by intricate polymers, his body the conduit by which the device flowed out of memory into reality, his will and intellect disregarded. When the circuits were at last completed, he sculpted twin energy sinks near the tail (full, they’d power the sled twice about the world) and finished his work with a canted sensor plate that would let him control start-up, velocity, direction and altitude. After a moment’s thought, he keyed the plate to his hand and Brann’s; whatever happened, Maksim wasn’t going to be playing with this toy, it was his, Danny Blue the New, no one else’s. He added Brann, (reluctantly, forcing himself to be practical when the thought of sharing his creation made him irrationally angry), because there was too good a chance he’d be injured and incapable and he trusted her to get away from Maksim if she could possibly do it so he didn’t want to limit her options. He sat on his heels, gave Brann a broad but weary grin. “Finished.”
She inspected the underside of the table; except for the collection of milkglass squares on the tilted board near one end she couldn’t see much change in the wood. “If you say so. Shall I call the changers in?”
He tested the shielding and his own reserves. “Why not. But you’d better tell them I’m going to need them in the morning when there’s sunlight, we have to charge the power cells before we go anywhere.”
She nudged the tabletop with her toe. “I’ve heard of flying carpets, but flying kitchen tables, hunh!”
He jumped up, laughed, “Bramble all thorns, no you won’t spank me for that.” He caught her by the waist,, swung her into an exuberant dance about the kitchen whistling the cheeriest tune he knew; he was flying higher than Jaril had, the pleasure of using both strands of his technical knowledge to produce a thing of beauty was better than any other pleasure in both his lives, better than sex, better than smokedreams; he sang that in her ear, felt her respond, stopped the dance and stood holding her. “Brann…
Mmmtn?”
“Still hating me?”
She leaned against his arms, pushing him back so she could see his face, her own face grave at first, then warming with laughter. She made a fist, pounded it lightly against his chest. “If you mess me up again, I swear, Dan, I’ll… I don’t know what I’ll do, but I guarantee it’ll be so awful you’ll never ever recover from it.”
He stroked her hands down her back, closed them over her buttocks, pulled her against him. “Feel me shaking?”
“Like a leaf in a high wind.”
He tugged her toward the alcove, but she broke away. “I’m not going to bruise my behind or my knees,” she said. “Privacy yes,” she said, “but give me some comfort too. Pillows,” she said. “And quilts. Fire’s down, it’s getting chilly in here.”
The children were curled up on the couch in the living room, sunk in the dormancy that was their form of sleep. Brann touched them lightly, affectionately as she moved past them, then ran laughing up the stairs to the sleeping floor. She started throwing the pillows out the doors leaving them in the hall for Dan to collect and carry downstairs, came after him with a billowing slippery armload of feather comforters.
Brann blinked, yawned, scrubbed her hands across her face. She felt extraordinarily good though her mouth tasted like something had died there, she was disagreeably sticky in spots and when she stretched, the comforter brushing like silk across her body, she winced at a number of small sharp twinges from pulled muscles and a bite or two, which only emphasized how very very good she was feeling. She lay still a moment, enjoying a long leisurely yawn, taking pleasure in the solid feel of Dan’s body as her hip moved against his. But she’d never been able to stay abed once she was awake, so she kicked free of the quilts and sat up.
Dan was still deeply asleep, fine black hair twisting about his head, a heavy stubble bluing his chin and cheeks, long silky eyelashes fanned across blue veined skin whose delicacy she hadn’t noticed before. She bent over him, lifted a stray strand of hair away from his mouth, traced the crisp outlines of that mouth with moth-touches of her forefinger. The mouth opened abruptly, teeth closed on her finger. Growling deep in his throat, Dan caught her around the waist, whirled her onto her back and began gnawing at her shoulder, working his way along it to her neck.
Brann dunked a corner of the towel in the basin of cold water, shivered luxuriously as she scrubbed at herself. “The changers are still dormant. I suppose I should wake them.”
“They worked hard and there’s more to do, leave them alone a while yet… mmm… scrub my back?”
“Do mine first. I’d love to wash my hair, but I’m too lazy to heat the water. Dan…?”
“Dan Dan the handyman. How’s that feel?” He rubbed the wet soapy towel vigorously across her back and down her spine, lifted her hair and worked more gently on her neck. When he was finished, he dropped a quick kiss on the curve of her shoulder, traded towels with her and began wiping away the soap.
“Handyman has splendid hands,” she murmured. “Give me a minute more and I’ll do you.”
“Trade you, Bramble, you cook breakfast for us and I’ll haul hot water for your hair.”
“Cozy.” A deep rumbling voice filled with laughter.
Brann whipped round, hands out, reaching toward the huge dark man in a white linen robe who stood a short distance from them.
Dan moved hastily away from her “No use, Brann, it’s only an eidolon.”
“What?” As soon as she said it, she no longer needed an answer, the eidolon had moved a step away and she could see the kitchen fire glow through it.
“Projected image. He’s nowhere near here.” Dan’s voice came from a slight distance, when she looked round, he was coming from the alcove with his trousers and her shirt.
“He can see and hear us?” She took the shirt, pulled it around her and buttoned up the front.
“Out here. If we went into the alcove, no.” He tied off his trouser laces and came to lean against the pump sink beside and a little behind her.
“So,” Brann said, “it’s your move, image. What does he want with us?”
The eidolon lifted a large shapely hand, pointed its forefinger at the alcove.
“NO!” Dan got out half a word and the beginning of a gesture, then sank back, simmering, as the eidolon dropped its arm and laughed.
“Busy busy, baby Dan?” The eidolon folded its arms across its massive chest. “I presume you have cobbled together some means of coping with the landfolk. A small warning to the two of you which you can pass on to your versatile young friends. Don’t touch my folk. I don’t expect an answer to that. What I’ve sent the eidolon for is this, a small bargain. I will refrain from any more attacks against you, I’ll even call off Amortis; you will come direct to me on Deadfire Island.” The eidolon turned its head, yellow eyes shifting from Brann to Danny Blue. Its mouth stretched into a mocking smile. “A bargain that needs no chaffering because you have no choice, the two of you. Come to me because you must and let us finish this thing.” Giving them no time to respond, it vanished.
The table hovered waist high above the flags of the paved yard. Still inverted, its front four legs supported a stiff windbreak made of something that looked rather like waxy glass, another of Danny Blue’s transformations. He sat in the middl
e of the sled grinning at her; liftsled, that’s what he’d called it and when she told him no sled she’d ever seen looked like that he took it as a compliment. Yaril and Jaril were sitting on the rim of a stone bowl planted with broadleaved shrubs that were looking wrinkled and shopworn (end of the year symptoms or they needed watering); the changers were enjoying, the performance (hers and Dan’s as well as the table’s).
Brann shivered. The wind was more than chill this morning, it was cold. If those clouds ever let down their load, it would fall as sleet rather than rain, a few degrees more and the Plain might have this year’s first snow. “Yaro, collect us two or three of those quilts, please? And here,” she tossed two golds to Yaril, ‘leave these somewhere the farmwife will find them but a thief would miss. I know we’re gifting the farmer with three fine mules, but he didn’t sew the quilts and he doesn’t use the table we’re walking off with. I know, I know, not walking, flying. You happy now, Dan? Shuh! save your ah hmm wit until we’re somewhere you can back it up. If you need something to occupy you, figure for me how long our flying table will need to get us to Deadfire.”
Danny Blue danced his fingers over the sensors; the table lowered itself smoothly to the flagging. He got to his feet, stretched, stood fingering a small cut the sorcerously sharpened knife had inflicted on him when he used it to shave away his stubble. Ahzurdan jogged my hand, he told Brann, he keeps growling at me that adult males need beards to proclaim their manhood, it’s the one advantage he had over Maksim, he could grow a healthy beard and his teacher couldn’t, the m’darjin blood in him prevented, but I can’t stand fur on my face so all old Ahzurdan can do is twitch a little. He fingered the cut and scowled past Brann at the wooden fence around the kitchen garden.-It’s hard to say, Bramble. Last night, who was it, Yaril, she said we’d reach the mountains late afternoon today, say we were riding, that’s… hmm… what? Sixty, seventy miles? Jay, from this side the hills, how far would you say it is to Deadfire Island?”
Jaril kicked his heels against the pot. “Clouds,” he said. “We couldn’t get high enough to look over the hills.” He closed his eyes. ‘Before we left on the Skia Hetaira,” he said, his voice slow and remembering, “we wanted to get a look down into Maksim’s Citadel, we weren’t paying much attention to the hills… Yaro?” Yaril dumped quilts and pillows onto the table, walked over to him. She settled beside him, her hand light on his shoulder. They sat there quietly a moment communing in their own way, pooling their memories.
Jaril straightened, opened his eyes. “Far as we can remember, those hills ahead are right on the coast. You just have to get through them, then you’re more or less at Silagmatys. About the same distance, I’d say, from here to the hills, from the hills to Deadfire. Maybe a hundred miles altogether, give or take a handful.”
Dan nodded. “I see. Well…” He clasped his hands behind him and considered the table. “If the sled goes like it’s supposed to, flying time’s somewhere between hour and a half, two hours.”
“Instead of two days,” Brann said slowly. She looked up. The heavy clouds hid the sun, there wasn’t even a watery glow to mark its position, the grayed-down light was so diffuse there were no shadows. She moved her shoulders impatiently. “Jay, can you tell what time it is?”
Jaril squinted at the clouds, turned his head slowly until he located the sun. “Half hour before noon.”
Brann thrust her hands through her hair. Her stomach was knotting, there was a metallic taste in her mouth. Instead of two days, two hours. Two hours! Things rushing at her. Danny was cool as a newt, the kids were cooler, but her head was in a whirl. She felt like kicking them. They were waiting for her to give the word. She looked at the table, smiled because she couldn’t help it, charging through the sky on a kitchen table was pleasantly absurd though what was going to happen at the end of that flight was enough to chase away her brief flash of amusement. She wiped her hands down her sides. “Ahh!” she said. “Let’s go.”
16. The Beginning Of The End.
SCENE: Deadfire island. Taking color from the clouds, the bay’s water is leaden and dull; it licks at a nailparing of a beach with sand like powdered charcoal; horizontal ripples of stone rise from the sand at a steep slant in a truncated pyramid with a rectangular base. About halfway up, the walls rise sheer in a squared-off oval to a level top whose long axis is a little over half a mile, the short axis about five hundred yards, with elaborate structures carved into the living stone (the dominant one being an immense temple with fat-waisted columns thirty feet high and a central dome of demon-blown glass, black about the base, clear on top, the clear part acting as a concentrating lens when the sun’s in the proper place which happens only at the two equinoxes). On the side facing Silagamatys a stubby landing juts into the bay; a road runs from the landing through a gate flanked with huge beast paws carved from black basalt, larger than a two-story house, three-toed with short powerful claws; it continues between tapering brick walls that ripple like ribbons in a breeze, then climbs in an oscillating sprawl to the heights.
Settsimaksimin stands in the temple garden, leaning on a hoe as he watches a narrow stream of water trickle around the roots of bell bushes and trumpet vines. Most of the flowering plants have been shifted from the flowerbeds into winter storage, but there are enough bushes with brilliantly colored frost-touched leaves to leaven the dullness of the surroundings. Behind him Amortis in assorted forms is flickering restlessly about the temple, her fire alternately caged and released by the temple pillars; she is working herself into a fury so she can forget her fear.
Maksim scratched at his chest, then scratched some dirt into the channel to redirect the water. When he was satisfied, he swung the hoe handle onto his shoulder and strolled to the waist-high wall about the garden. Sliding between Deadfire and Silagamatys, glittering ferociously, shooting those glitters at him, the Godalau swam like a limber gem, through the gray matrix of the sea. was nowhere in view, no doubt heesh was around, watching for a crack where hisser’s thumbs could go. Past noon. Divination said they’d be here in an hour or so, riding Danny’s little toy. He had a last look around, took the hoe to the silent brown man squatting in a corner sipping at a straw colored tea and went back across the grass to the minor stairs that led to a side door into the temple.
The Dome Chamber was an immense hexagonal room at the heart of the temple, it was also an immense hexagonal trap set to catch Brann, Danny Blue and the changers. A complicated trap with overlapping, reinforcing dangers. In each of the six walls, two arched alcoves bound by quickrelease pentacles, twelve cells holding different numbers of different sorts of demons, fly-in-amber-waiting. A blackstone thronechair on a dais two thirds the length of the room from the entrance, massive, carved with simple blocky fireforms, unobtrusive lowrelief carvings that decorated every inch of the chair’s surface, caught the constantly shifting light and changed the look of the chair_from moment to moment until the surface seemed to flow like water, a power-sink, a defensive pole, not dangerous in itself, only in its occupant. Pentacles everywhere, etched into the basalt floor like silverwire snowflakes widecast about the dais, some dull, some glowing with life, some punctuated with black candles awaiting an igniting gesture, some left bare (though scarcely less dangerous), some drawn black on black so only sorceror’s sight could see them. Between the pentacles, sink traps scattered hapazardly (the unpattern carefully plotted in Maksim’s head so he wouldn’t trap himself), waiting for an unwary foot, a toe touch sufficient to send the toe’s owner into a pocket universe like the one that held the Chained God only not nearly so large. Other traps written into the air itself, drifting on the eddying currents in that air. Amortis, shape abandoned, a seething fireball, floating up under the dome filling the space there with herself, keeping herself clear of the traps, waiting for her chance to attack and destroy the midges who’d dared to threaten her, waiting her chance also to sneak a killing hit at Maksim, waiting for him to forget her long enough to let her strike, not knowing he’d made her bait
in another trap; if the changers tried to tap her godfire, they tipped themselves into a far reality, removing themselves permanently from the battle.
As Maksim moved through the forest of columns, he tugged the clasp from his braid, pulled the plait apart until his hair lay in crinkles about his shoulders, unlaced the ties at the neck of his torn wrinkled workrobe. He turned aside before he reached the Dome Chamber, entering a small room he’d set up as a vestry. Humming in a rumbling burr, he stripped off the robe, dropped onto a low stool and planted one foot in a basin filled with hot soapy water. With a small, stiff-bristled brush he scrubbed at the foot, examined his toenails intently then with satisfaction, wiped that foot and began on the other. When he had washed away the dirt of his play at gardening, he buffed his fingernails and toenails until he was satisfied with their matte sheen, then he started brushing his hair, clicking his tongue at the amount of gray that had crept into the black while he was busy with Brann and the Council. He brushed and brushed, humming, his tuneless song, vaguely regretting Todichi Yahzi wasn’t here to do the brushing for him (it was one of his more innocent pleasures, sitting before the fire on a winter evening while little Todich tended his hair, brushing it a thousand strokes, combing it into order, until every hair end was tucked neatly away, braiding it, smoothing the braid with his clever nervous hands). Maksim clicked his tongue again, shook his head. No time for dreaming. He plaited his hair into a soft loose braid, pressed the clasp about the end, pulled on an immaculate white robe, touched it here and there to smooth away the last vestige of a wrinkle. Standing before a full length mirror, he drew the wide starched collar back from his neck, brought BinYAHtii out and set the dull red stone on the white linen. He weighed the effect, nodded, reached for his sleeveless outer robe. It was heavily embroidered velvet, a brownish red so dark it was almost black. He eased into it, careful not to crush the points of his collar, settled the folds of the crusted velvet into stately verticals, slid heavy rings onto the fingers of both hands, six rings, ornamental and useful, invested with small but deadly spells shaped to slip through defenses busy with more massive attacks. Holding his hands so the rings showed,, he closed his fingers on the front panels of the over-robe and studied the image in the mirror. He smiled with satisfaction then with amusement at the vanity he’d cultivated like a gardener experimenting with one of the weeds that came up among his blooms. He licked his thumb and smoothed an eyebrow, licked it a second time and smoothed the other, winked at his image in the mirror and left the room.