"They aren't unarmed, either."
"They aren't warriors."
Thud! Thump! They were using larger stones, now.
"Your life is worth more than my honor," Casilda said.
"Not to me."
"Well, mine is!"
Young people! Casilda thought.
She placed her sword on the ground and concentrated. The blade dulled with frost. A web of crystals seemed to explode along the ground. Before the villagers could cry out or step backwards, the web had caught them, running up legs and along fingers, slowing their hearts and locking their muscles. The rime on the sword hissed away, and the blade shimmered. The sandy dust around it melted to pebbled glass. Sand fused in a line from the point of the blade, moving slowly, then faster and faster, in a wandering path between the huts, straight to one hut, no different from the others, unless the carvings of the eave work held some meanings of authority to the villagers. She grinned as she heard the whump! of sudden conflagration.
Casilda stood with some effort and sheathed her sword. She held out a hand to Izella, who frowned.
The warrior flapped her fingers in an irritable demand that her hand be taken. "I didn't raise my sword to them," she said. "Did you see me raise my sword?"
The girl, with a slow smile, shook her head and took the offered hand.
The warrior pulled her up. "They'll recover, as soon as we're out of sight. Your friend is waiting. So, unless you have anything to keep you here...."
In the forest, the girl and the younger boy embraced, and the girl shed the first tears Casilda had seen from her. They moved quickly, Casilda carrying Cecilio, until they were beyond the village territory and a little way past that.
A high vantage point with a stream bubbling through it seemed a good spot to stop and eat the food Izella had helped prepare.
While the warrior and the warrior's daughter washed away the blood and dirt, Izella told the boy what had happened.
"And now," the girl said, "we're going home."
Casilda stopped, her face half-done. "Home?"
Izella pulled a handful of leaves from a nearby bush and rubbed a patch of mud from Casilda's discarded armor. "Your home. Every warrior has a village or an estate. Which do you have?"
"I have an estate. A small one. Not far from the foot of this range, as it happens. No more than a week's walk. But why would I take you there?"
The girl looked smug, as if she had been asked a trick question she could see through. "You won't want to drag us with you, young as we are. I know that. We'll need training."
"Training for what? What 'we'?"
"We." Izella tossed away the leaves and put an arm around the boy's shoulders. "Izella and Cecilio, apprentice and squire of the Warrior Casilda. That's who we are, isn't it?"
Absently, Casilda finished cleaning her face.
"Yes," she said, after a moment. "Yes, I suppose that's who you are."
Skin and Bones
by Heather Rose Jones
When Heather Rose Jones wrote a bio for SWORD & SORCERESS 21, she had just turned in her PhD thesis and was temping for Bayer as a technical editor. She now works there permanently as a discrepancy investigator. (She says she's essentially an industrial detective. Something happens that shouldn't have and she has to find out what, why, how, who, and all the rest, then figure out how to prevent it in the future and determine whether it affected product quality. And as dessert, she gets to write thick, juicy reports.) She's had her first book published, BABY NAMES FOR DUMMIES (under the pen name Margaret Rose) and has joined the 21st century with her own web site at heatherrosejones.com.
This story evolved out of a plot-brainstorming session with her friend Sharon, where a question about the "rules" of the skin magic led to a cascade of "what ifs." Given that she's been writing Skins stories since SWORD & SORCERESS 12, it is probably time to work out the rules for the magic involved.
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When the Marchalt of Wilentelu summoned me, I came—not for fear, but because I had bound myself to his service for a time. And when the Marchalt asked a question, he was used to being answered quickly. But I hesitated when he asked if I knew anything of a village of skin-changers five days' ride east through the hills.
"You know I mean no harm to your people," he said sharply when the pause had grown too long.
I answered as carefully as I ever did. "Harm or not, if they don't care to be found by outsiders, it isn't my secret to share. But truth to tell, I don't know. There have been a few Kaltaoven from time to time in the marketplace, but it isn't polite to ask of their homes if they don't offer. Even we can only find each other by rumor sometimes."
He gave a bark of laughter. "Come. Walk with me away from all... these." He waved his hand to take in the guards and servants, clerks and waiting officers who always buzzed around him in the Shalen—his hall of office—like bees in a hive. Then he led me out into a private garden where the only buzzing bees were in the flowers.
It was a hot day so I slipped the cloak of wildcat fur off my shoulders and draped it across my arm.
"Are you never without that?" the Marchalt asked—but teasingly. It had become a joke between us.
"But I never know when you may need my services," I joked back. And then more seriously, "It reminds them—" I nodded back toward the hall, "— who I am, that I am your skin-singer, your Kaltaoven witch."
He grunted in acknowledgement then went straight to his business. "When I was new to the king's service—twenty years back or more, long before I was made Marchalt—I was given the task to survey the extent of the king's lands in Anwella. My quarter was the uplands from where the hills overlook the river back as far into the unknown lands as the king's hand might reach. And on that survey I came across a village of skin-changers, of Keltowin." He never had learned to say it correctly. "They laughed at the thought that the king in Mergenel might have a say over their lives; and I may have been a green puppy, but I had the sense to laugh with them. But that was when I first had the idea...." He gestured at me—or more accurately, at my skin-cloak. "There was an old man, Emeen his name was—the one who put the magic in their skin-cloaks. He asked for stories of the wider world and gathered the children around to hear them. Now, it wasn't as if I'd traveled the world myself, but I could tell stories. And I thought, if I could have two of these people in every company of soldiers, I could.... Well, best not to speak too loudly. But I asked if any wanted to follow me into the king's service and see more than their little sweep of hills. There were one or two interested I think, but nothing came of it at the time. We had stayed too long already. But when we left, the old man whispered to me that if he were thirty years younger and free to choose... but he was their only skin-singer, and his duty bound him."
The Marchalt stared at nothing for a moment then shook his head. "I always hoped I'd planted a seed there, but who was I? Not even a captain of my own troop yet and no one to be listened to. When the king put the keeping of Wilentelu into my hands, I tried to find them again, but the village was deserted, and we didn't have the luck of stumbling across them again. But you, perhaps, will make better luck."
"What message would you have me take?" I asked hesitantly.
"Ashóli, this is nothing against your services. I have no complaints. But I've grown too used to having skin-changers around. Some day the road will call you back—you and your companion—and it will be easier for me to let you go if there are others to take your place."
I couldn't help but be reminded of the bargain I'd had to strike to convince him to let my predecessors leave. And it hadn't escaped my notice that somehow it was never convenient for my Eysla and me to leave the city at the same time.
"You know my needs well enough," he continued. "You know what I expect and what I offer. Find them. Tell them, and see if any are interested." He didn't need to add that if I were persuasive enough my own interests would be served as well.
* * * *
"How long will you be gone this time?"
Eysla asked me sleepily after the candles had been blown out that night.
"Not long. Two, three weeks. I suppose it depends on whether they are hidden or have just drifted elsewhere. And on how they listen to the Marchalt's offer. I don't think he expects anyone to return with us at once, just to listen and consider."
"Us?"
I sighed. "That is what will slow me down. He's sending two of his men with me—not guards, I think, just other eyes and ears. But that means we'll travel at a horse's pace."
Eysla snorted in mock insult and I had to laugh. "Your brother may breed fast horses, but wings are faster across hilly land. So until he breeds horses with wings, I'll call them slow."
She was silent for a moment, but I knew better than to think she was angry. "Ashóli," she asked. "How many are there? How many Kaltaoven?"
I propped myself up on one elbow to look at her in the faint moonlight. "Why?"
"I know your clan. And Laaki, your teacher, and her adopted sons. But their families are dead or lost. And the family whose place we took here. And this village of the Marchalt's. But that isn't very many. So many places we've been where they'd never heard of skin-changers. What if...?"
A shiver ran through me as I counted along with her list, but it passed. "You forget my mother's kin—she was a stranger to my clan. I've never met them, but they're out there somewhere. And here in Wilentelu there have been a few Kaltaoven travelers. More than the Marchalt's men know about. With our skin-cloaks packed away we look enough like everyone else. And what's more—" I stroked her nose in the way I always did when teasing "— if there weren't enough interesting strangers showing up from time to time, why, we'd all have to fall in love with sálen, with ordinary humans, as I did."
But Eysla's words rode with me in the days that followed as we made our way over hillside tracks and stony fords, following the Marchalt's careful map. Back at home, secrecy had been an unquestioned habit, but since I'd left on my wanderings I'd grown less cautious and had taken little hurt from it. And yet it was different for Eysla and me. We could slip away and run if we needed. Laaki told darker stories of jealousy, greed, and fear, and what could happen when you'd put your heart into a house of stone and your children were hostages to the turning of fate. Today I had the Marchalt's protection, and if there were people in Wilentelu who feared me enough to harm me, they feared him more. But what of tomorrow? I'd seen enough of the king's court in Mergenel to know that not every talodesh had a Marchalt of similar quality.
When we found the overgrown foundations of the village's clan-hall and traced the ghosts of old fields in the pattern of the meadows I put away my favorite cat-skin cloak and took out a cloak of falcon's feathers. Halkun and Kers had hobbled the horses to graze and begun to make camp, but they stopped to watch me change. A skilled skin-singer can put on any skin without needing to know its song, but I chanted one anyway. It made for a better show.
"Kael-keol i'éle i'óe,
"Yetaovog v'tev."
* * * *
In the end, it took four days to find the new village: one for each point of the compass, with no luck until the last. But I saw no signs that they had tried to hide it. Indeed, the northern edge of their planted lands lay along a travelers' track continuing further up into the hills and beyond. Clearly they had no objection to surprise visitors, so I returned to collect Halkun and Kers before making myself known to them.
It was a larger village than the one I had grown up in. I counted maybe forty buildings besides the large clan-hall. And an even more welcome difference from my childhood home was the crowd of children who swarmed out to meet us. Each one of a proper age wore a well-crafted skin-cloak. New. None of the fading and roughness that spoke of hoarded family heirlooms. I remembered too well the meanness that was bred by the lack of a byal-dónen's skills.
The children were followed at a dignified distance by a group of five men and women, and it was to them that I made my courtesy. "My name is Ashóli of a clan near Ganasset, but I come as the messenger of the Marchalt of Wilentelu, as do these men." I introduced my companions who were bearing patiently with not understanding a single word.
One of the older men stepped forward—he wore a cloak of cinnamon-colored bear skin and he introduced himself as Laeno. "I wondered if we would see you here some day."
When he spoke, I recognized him. He was one of those who had entered the city gates with his cloak hidden in his baggage. For that reason, I hadn't claimed an acquaintance at the time, although our eyes had met and recognized our kinship. "An invitation would have brought me sooner," I said, trying to convey respect for their privacy rather than reproach. "The Marchalt remembers this clan with friendship from when he was a young man. And he honors the memory of the byal-dónen you had at that time—he gave the name as Emeen, but I fear his tongue isn't skilled with our language and he may have meant Amyen." I hesitated in confusion as sharp glances darted between them. One man turned so pale I thought he might be sick. Clearly I had trodden on a sore toe, but how I couldn't guess. I pressed on with what seemed a safe compliment, nodding towards the children. "My compliments to your current skin-singer, I can see the signs of great skill. I hope that I will be allowed to pay my respects while I am here."
"That may not be possible," Laeno said in a closed voice. "But we can offer you food and warm beds, and we will listen to the words of your Marchalt."
* * * *
That first evening, as their custom dictated, we were fed and entertained but business was set aside. The next day word went out to those working further afield, and there was more of a true feast in the clan-hall for all who gathered. The words the Marchalt had sent were fairly few—I was the message he wanted them to hear. So I told stories of the errands and tasks I was sent on, of the types of work that made a Kaltaoven valuable to a man with power.
"And what is he like, this Marchalt?" they asked. "Does he deal fairly?"
I'd been expecting the question, but was still groping for an answer. I couldn't say that I trusted him, other than to be what he was. We had come to be on easy terms, but I knew their limits. But there was one thing my people understood. "He will drive the hardest bargain that he can," I said at last. "But he will not break it once it is made." I could hear sounds of approval and see a few nods.
It seemed, in the end, that the Marchalt's errand might come to bear fruit. But on one point I was still waiting. The byal-dónen had not come to this gathering with the others. I'd looked closely around the hall and seen no one that they gave that deference to. In telling my tales they had learned that I shared the skill to sing power into skins. If I held to the oldest customs, it would be an insult for me to be refused a meeting. Yet it was curiosity, not pride, that made me ask again, only to be met by the same prickly pushing aside of the matter.
The next day we settled down to more ordinary business. The Marchalt's men had brought gifts, politely disguised as goods to trade, and I left them playing bargaining games with a few of the Kaltaoven who shared enough of their speech to play. For my part, I put on feathers and was shown more of the lands they had made their own in this wilderness. Then there was time to speak more closely with a few of the younger men and women who thought it might be worth some years of exile to see more of the world before settling down. And more than one questioned me about other clans, other wanderers—and there was more than one soft glance thrown in my direction. It was not only adventure that might lure them into strange lands.
I asked again that evening if I might pay my respects to their skin-singer. We would be leaving in the morning and my curiosity was now an itch. Again I received an answer that was not an answer and I lay awake that night chewing on my mystery. At length I gave up on sleeping and put on my cat-skin against the cold and padded out along the moonlit path, enjoying the scents and sounds my human senses could not catch.
The sounds of an argument caught my ear, and I would have gone another way, but someone was speaking of their byal-dónen and I paused, cupping m
y ears forward to catch more of it.
"She must meet him." And then something indistinct. A younger voice saying, "You promised me it was the last time." Something about no one else being ready. The younger voice was louder, but it sounded more like fear than anger. "One last time. And in return you let me go with them in the morning—to this place called Wilentelu." There was a long silence then and I nearly turned away to my bed, but then the voice came again, slowly as if nearly asleep. Brief and with an old, formal feel to it, but unmistakably a song of power.
"Ada-gaom ebe-gyam; ebe-kael-gyam adye. I am thy bones; be thou my skin."
Another voice then, saying, "Go fetch her."
I scampered back to the place they expected me to be, drew off the cat-skin, and did my best to pretend to be drowsing. Shortly, a voice called from the doorway, "Ashóli. Ashóli, wake up. The byal-dónen would speak with you."
I rose and followed, with my guide explaining, "He is old and has been ill. Do not spend his strength in mere pleasantries."
It was like a strange dream. They brought me into a small house, lit only by a pile of coals on the hearth. The old man sat wrapped in a heavy cloak patched together of all manner of skins, nodding as if in sleep. My guide touched his shoulder saying, "Ashóli is here to see you."
He stared at me without focusing; his hands clutched and stroked at the cloak he wore, as if he were working his craft. "Ashóli," he repeated and the word was slurred as if by drink. I was suddenly embarrassed, knowing they had wanted to hide this from me.
"Byal-dónen," I said, not having been given his name, "I wished to do my courtesy to you. I have seen your cloaks throughout the village and have rarely seen such fine work."
"Ashóli," he repeated again. "I thank you." And then, as if a curtain were drawn aside, his eyes focused and he truly saw me. Something flashed across that gaze briefly—hope? Purpose? And then his eyes closed again and he shuddered.
Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress XXII Page 21