“Comes the midnight,” Eino said, turning with his arms still spread. “Comes the moondown. ’Tis the Nightlord’s time, all deepfine and cool and scary. ’Tis the time when boys—men—come out to play.”
Laughter rippled through the boys, and someone whooped on the other side of the circle; there were other shouts, stamping feet, raised fists trailing colored robe-sleeves. Eino laughed, too, throwing his head back so that the cords of his long neck stood out. I had never realized mortals could be like this. I had no idea why he was talking so funny, either, but it was perfect for the moment, for the moonlight, for the boys’ excitement. When he hissed and ran forward and leapt into the middle of the circle, landing in a crouch, everyone hissed, too, some of them crouching, too, moving to Eino’s rhythm the same way they’d moved to the drums before. “Time for the midnight dance!” cried one, and others took up the cry, punching the air and swirling and swaying even without music. When Eino drew himself up, though, straight and taut with one hand held out in invitation, everyone got quiet again.
“Go on,” whispered one boy nearby to another. But that one shook his head.
“It’s Eino!” That was another boy. I think it was supposed to make everyone excited, and it did. “Eino!”
“I don’t know.” “You can!” “You can do it!” “Look at how strong he is.” “He’s one of us.” “Do it and see!” So much wanting, from all the boys around me. So many whispers, so many hopes, so much fear. That was when I finally understood: everybody was excited because Eino was offering to dance with one of them. He just wanted a volunteer!
Well, that was easy.
“I’ll do it!” I jumped up and down, waving my hand. Everybody got quiet, then moved aside so there was nothing between me and Eino.
Eino tilted his head and lowered his hand. He was so still, all shining skin and muscle in the firelight. His eyes were very black, too. “Haven’t seen you before. Or have I?” His eyes narrowed, and even though I was wearing a different body, I got nervous. Maybe he could see my soul? Mortals weren’t supposed to be able to do that. He shook his head, finally, and I relaxed. “Shed those window-drapes the women have put on you, baby boy. Here in our place we dance like Nahadoth, shadows and chaos, feeling the dark with our skin.”
Eagerly I threw off the robes, which I didn’t like anyway, until I had on nothing but pants and slippers like him. He grinned when I tried to stand like him, mostly failing because he was much bigger and prettier, almost a man. I was shaped like a boy, but still just a little one. “Nice. You’re feeling it.” He jerked his head toward my head, though, and I remembered the long hair. Hastily I tied it in a big knot at the back of my head, and he nodded approval. “Let’s dance, then.”
He came at me, no pause and no preparation—not straight on, though. It was the circling of before, the swirling dance, in and out and revolving. Since he wasn’t wearing robes or hair I could see it better now. I stood for a minute, getting the feel of it, then clumsily tried to move like he did; everyone laughed, at first.
But then—oh. Ohhhh. The chanting started again. The foot-stomping shook the fires, making the light jump, sound and sight in rhythm, cacophony given meaning, and that made it just the tiniest bit like the gods’ realm. Then it became easy to mimic the way Eino sort of jog-jumped into the circle and back, and to use the momentum the way he did, turning and turning, arms out, legs flying. At once I could feel the way moving in circles made the center of me almost unshakable. I could dart in unpredictable directions even while seeming to follow a pattern! Eino was circling on his side of the circle, waiting for me to get the hang of it, but that was no fun! I darted toward him and back. Come at me! Eino puffed out an approving sort of laugh, and then the dance really got started.
Oh, it was perfect. No drums this time, but none were needed; the boys’ voices were heavy and deep, their movements in unison like a guide. I went to the ground when Eino did, planting my hands in the dust and kicking out with my legs, laughing and breathless when he dodged me effortlessly with a backflip, delighted even when he leapt back and slammed me to the ground. It hurt, but what was pain? The dance became everything. The dance was worship, and strength, and better magic than anything I’d ever known in my short life. “I am!” I cried, and maybe it was boy-language and maybe it was god-language but it did not matter because it had the same meaning either way! Eino felt it, too, and he answered me in kind with sweat and ferocity and magic. Now when he threw a fist at me the movement said FORCE and it hit me really hard! If I had been mortal I would’ve gone flying; several of the boys in the ring behind me cried out and fell. But I laughed and said back WIND, silly! And I spun the force away in a gust that made everybody’s pretty long hair whip around. Then Eino stomped the ground and I felt the verb of his muscles shout SHATTER, and the ground cracked in a line of rubble from his feet toward mine. (His eyes got really big, but the dance had him; he had no time to react, beyond this.) So I jumped up high, like ten feet into the air, and I said WHEE without words and he stopped staring at the ground and stared at me instead. The dance! He started to grin. Then he jumped, too, not as high but just right, and we both landed in a spin. We spun and spun, our circle getting wider as the other boys backed away, the earth shaking harder, the chanting growing louder and harsher and faster until—
Everything stopped.
I was mid-leap when the world suddenly narrowed to a fine point, and my whole self shifted and flexed and rang like a bell.
I understood. I understood something new!
“Power,” I said softly. I uncurled myself from the leap and stuck to the air in surprise. “That must be part of it!”
“Yes,” said Nahadoth, who curled out of the shadows of the crowd.
I turned happily. “Naha!” She materialized in grace and silence and movement, the swirls of her substance licking and flickering round every boy nearby. Their abandon fed her and she fed them in turn, for this was her time and they had invoked her spirit. The fire went out as she passed, the logs pop-hissing as they frosted over—but the moonlight above, and that from her face, was more than enough to see by.
“Look how you’ve grown,” she said. “Multiple shapes, new perspectives, new languages… Shill.”
I beamed, putting my hands on my hips. “Yes, Naha! Hello, hello! I made that name up myself. Do you like it?”
“It is beautiful.” I could not be sure if she was talking about me, though, because she had stopped to stare at Eino, frozen as he was in mid-lunge. For a moment a look that was avid, almost greedy, came over Nahadoth’s face, and I started to get worried. Eino had spoken Naha’s name in the dark. Even I knew that was never safe.
Maybe I could make her think about something else. “Naha, I think I found a little bit of my nature! It’s power!”
“Yes.” She was reaching out to touch Eino’s face. I got really nervous, because I liked Eino—but she just drew a finger over his lips, so I relaxed. “Not your power, though.”
“I—” Oh. “Huh?”
“Can you not see?” Naha was behind Eino now, staring intently at his back like she wanted to hollow him out and live in his skin. “Look, Shill. We made your eyes from the stuff of the Maelstrom Itself. See everything.”
So I looked again, really hard, and then I looked some more, and then I got bored and started thinking about whether power had anything to do with being a trickster like I wanted, I mean what if I ended up being something weird like the godling of lizards or something, I didn’t want to be weird, and then all of a sudden I saw all the realms and all the paths and all the lines of meaning that mortals could not.
“Oh!” I dropped to the ground and trotted over to one of the boys standing frozen around us. There it was: a little bloorp of intention, of devotion, running from him to Eino. “And oh!” I ran over to another boy; another bloorp, like a thread made of bubbles, or maybe heat haze. A tie. A web. They were all of them, every boy at that camp, fixed on Eino. Every one of them had given him something o
f themselves, making him stronger; every one of them would die for him. Because of the dance? I did not know. But even I had a little, thin link to him. Mine, however, glowed gold-white, and it ran in both directions. I was making him stronger, but he was making me stronger at the same time. I didn’t know what that meant.
“We make them in our image,” Nahadoth breathed, “and they replicate us endlessly in their own.”
I didn’t understand at all, but that was pretty normal when talking to Naha. I just shrugged.
When Naha stepped out from behind Eino, I finally noticed how the little city Yukur was shivering, the very bricks of it radiating awe and fear at her presence. It did not protest her being there, though the shape she wore was female now, because she was even less a she than I was the he I seemed to be. It would not have mattered much if Yukur had protested, though; Nahadoth was Nahadoth. Rules meant nothing to the god of chaos and change.
I trotted over to stand before her; at once the tendrils of her swept round me, possessive. “I know you didn’t want me to come here, Naha,” I said, earnestly. “I… I hope you’re not mad.”
She looked amused, cupping my face in her hands. “I have no interest in obedient children.” Then the light of her face dimmed, and for some reason she looked away, southward. There was nothing south except that other continent of the planet; what was she thinking about, looking that way? “But beware, Shill. Never underestimate mortals—especially not where power is involved. Not even when they have power of their own already.” She looked at Eino again, and this time the look was cold. “They always crave more.”
I nodded solemnly, even though I did not understand this, either. I was more now, smarter maybe, but some things were not about smarts.
Naha left off glaring at Eino to look up at the moon, which echoed her face, quick-switch as always. “ ‘Comes the moondown,’ ” she said, thoughtful. It could have meant lots of things. “You should warn them, by the way.”
And then, because that was how Naha said good-bye, she faded away.
A moment later time snapped back into place. The chanting boys resumed and then faltered, startled; the leaping blur that was Eino landed and stumbled; the boys nearest the fire gasped and jerked in surprise when they found it suddenly extinguished and icy-cold.
And suddenly Eino stared at me, recognizing me at last through the boy-flesh and the dance-haze. “You.”
Whoops. “Oh. Um. Hello.” Everyone stared at me; for the first time, this was really uncomfortable. To distract them, I added, “I’m, um, supposed to warn you about something.”
Everything was quiet for long enough to make me squirm. Then Eino suddenly flinched and inhaled and looked away, toward the entrance to Yukur. His eyes widened. “Oh, slippy-dicked hells.”
Everyone looked where he was looking. There was nothing to see—but I didn’t need eyes to see, and clearly Eino didn’t, either. Along the half-hidden road that led to Yukur came a bunch of women, all skintight and teeth-bared and cruel-cold. I could not hear their thoughts because they weren’t thinking very loud, but I could taste their intent anyway, because that was not a thought but a feeling: anticipation. Hunting-lust, and maybe other kinds, too. For… for… I inhaled. They were coming for all the boys here!
Right in that moment, one of the boys near the edge of the terrace saw the women’s torches through the trees. We all heard his broken-voiced shout, though I couldn’t make out the words, and suddenly boys in that direction cried out and began to scatter—some down another set of steps toward the trees on Yukur’s other side, some toward us and away from the women, some down the main terrace steps and right toward them.
“No!” Eino’s voice had the deepness of a near man; most of them heard him. “No, don’t run! We have to stand together—face them—demonshit!”
No one was listening. I had no idea what was happening, but I thought maybe people should listen to Eino. HEY! I said with god-talk into all the boy-heads around. Not all of them heard me even then; some of them were too afraid. But most of the boys stopped or stumbled, and turned back to stare at Eino as if he’d been the one to yell at them.
Eino threw me a quick glance; I didn’t know if he was mad or what. But he waved his arms at the boys. “Here! To me!” He turned to the boys nearby, herding them toward the rear of the dance-terrace where the firelight did not reach and the shadows of the surrounding forest were flickery and subtle. Oh! I saw what he meant to do! I grinned and trotted along with him, as more of the boys who had heard me ran to join him, huddling together and whispering in harsh, fearful voices.
“Hush!” Eino’s hiss stilled them. He stepped in front of them, facing the stairs and spreading his arms as if to cloak the boys behind him, though there were at least twenty of them and he did not have hair that moved like Naha’s. And yet—hee! After a moment the shadows around us stretched, weaving together and becoming less dappled, more solid, more obscure… until when the first woman came up the steps, dragging a panting boy with her, she saw nothing. We were invisible to mortal eyes.
More women came up, some of them also hauling boys who struggled or stumbled along with heads bowed or faces tear-streaked. But as the first woman looked around and didn’t see us even though we were standing right there, her brows drew together in a scowl. “This is it?”
Another woman crouched by the boys’ fire, which had thawed out and looked as though it hadn’t been lit in ages. Clever Naha! “Looks like. Unless the others fled into the forest?”
“Bunch of untrimmed boys in the forest, at night, in a tither? We’ll never see them again,” muttered another woman.
“Demonshit. I don’t want to hear it in Council if one of them gets eaten by a jaguar. Spread out beyond the city, try to pick up trails.” The first woman glared at the cold fire. Then she yanked around the boy she held, to face her. “I heard more voices than just you few. Where’d the rest go?”
“I… I do not know, medre.”
She did something to his arm that I couldn’t see because of all his robes. He made a sound that was tight and terrible. She was hurting him! I almost gasped, but that would have given away Eino’s group—and already Eino was dripping sweat, his face tight with concentration and his arms trembling with effort. I did not know why. It was not a hard thing he was doing.
“I don’t know!” The boy did not show his pain much, but even the little that tightened his jaw and thinned his lips was terrible. “I didn’t see!”
“Stop that,” said the woman by the fire, glowering. “You want to explain away bruises to his mother or sisters?”
The first woman rolled her eyes, but stopped doing whatever she was doing; I relaxed as the boy did. Then she grinned. “Well, there’s other ways to find out what you’ve been up to. Right, pretty?” She stepped closer and put a hand down between them, feeling for something amid his robes; he gasped and jerked away, but she pulled him back. “No telling what you boys do when you’re alone, trying to play woman for each other. Maybe I should check to see if you’re still intact? Maybe I should make you less intact, take you to my house instead of yours.” She fumbled with his robes, trying to pull them up. He went rigid, his eyes full of tears. I did not like it at all and I wanted to do bad things to her! But if I did, it would give away Eino’s group.
“Brightness and shadows, Veiba.” The woman by the fire, who felt like a leader, came over and dragged the boy away from her; Veiba laughed, as the boy turned his face away and trembled. “We don’t have time for that sort of foolishness.”
With that, the leader turned and whistled in two tones. From steps and terraces and the nearby woods around Yukur—Yukur was really mad! All those womenfeet on its stones!—other whistles answered her in different tones, different tunes. The woman sighed. “No trails out of the site but those of the few we’ve caught. We lost them.”
“These few are enough,” said Veiba. “It’s proof they’ve been sneaking out, coming here.”
The other women murmured agreement; fi
nally the leader sighed. Raising her voice, she called, “Hear the decree of the Warriors’ Council! By their word is this place of traitors forbidden now and henceforth. Come again and we will catch you, and name you traitors, too. Come forth now for amnesty; we will see you escorted home.” She glanced at Veiba in plain warning. “Safely.”
She paused for a moment, listening. That’s when I heard Eino panting really hard! He was going to give us away! I didn’t understand why, but he was almost out of magic. That was weird, so I touched his back and gave him some more. He jumped and looked at me in a surprised way, but it was enough. He stopped panting, and when the moment of silence passed, the leader shook her head and held up her fist in a signal. All the women turned and started heading back down the steps, bringing the boys they’d caught with them. But those were only a few of the boys who’d been in the dance-circle! We were the best at hide-and-seek.
When the strange women were finally gone, Eino let the magic go and sagged to the ground on his hands and knees. The other boys hugged each other and some of them cried a little and the rest went down next to Eino, praying or rubbing his back or whispering quiet, Thank the gods. (I poked my lip out at this. They should be thanking the godling! Stupid mortals.)
“Hey,” I said, hunkering down next to Eino to peer at him once some of the other boys had withdrawn. “You want some more magic? I have lots.”
He looked up at me with the strangest look on his face. “Wh-why?”
“Huh?”
“Why? Why are you here? Why did you help us?”
I blinked, but I didn’t know how to answer the questions, so I just kind of shrugged. “I’m really sorry,” I said, partly also to Yukur. Yukur just sent a wave of snittiness back; it would be mad for a century about this. I sighed. “I didn’t mean to interrupt the thing you and the others were doing.”
Eino’s jaw tightened. He sat back on his knees abruptly. “You at least joined in and didn’t break the spirit of it. That lot, though”—he nodded after the strange women—“were probably retaliation for that little trick I pulled on the Council this afternoon. We’ve danced out here before, many times, and no one ever troubled us.” He shook his head, sobering. “Gods. An actual raid. I must have really pissed them off.”
The Inheritance Trilogy Page 117