by Jo Clayton
Drinker of Souls
( Drinker of Souls Trilogy - 1 )
Jo Clayton
Jo Clayton
Drinker of Souls
1. A Thief and His Sister
Aituatea shifted the bend in his legs to ease his aching hip, careful as he moved to keep the bales piled under him from squeaking, the bales of raw unwashed fleeces that were a stench in his nostrils but sheltered him from noses and teeth of the patrollers’ rathounds. He raised his head a little and stared at the curls of mist drifting across the calm black water of the bay. A wandering breeze licked at his face, tugged at his slicked-back hair, carried past his ears just enough sound to underline the silence and peace of the night. “This is a bust,” he whispered to the one who stood at his shoulder. “She won’t come.”
“The man on the mountain said…” His sister’s voice was the crackling of ice crystals shattering. “Look there.” She pointed past the huddling godons beyond the wharves, their rambling forms lit from behind by torches burning before the all-night winestalls, the joyhouses, the cookshops of the water quarter. The Wounded Moon was rising at last, a broken round of curdled milk behind the spiky roof of the Temple. She swung round an arm colorless and transparent as glass, outlined with shimmers like crystal against black velvet and pointed across the harbor. “And there,” she said. She was all over crystal, even the rags she wore. “Out beyond the Woda-an. A blind ship from Phras, dropping anchor.”
He looked instead at the Woda livingboats shrouded in the thickening mist, their humped roofs like beetle shells catching bits of moonlight. A blind ship. The Woda-an hated them, those blind ships. There were torches flaring up here and there among the boats as the Woda-an grew aware of the visitor, clanking raffles starting up, growing louder, fading, sounding and fading in another place and another as they invoked the protection of the Godalau and her companion gods against the evil breathed out by the black ship that had no eyes to let her see her way across the seas. He sneered at them with Hina scorn for the superstitions of other races. They’ll be thick as fishlice at the Temple tomorrow. Where’s that curst patrol? I want to get out of this. She won’t come, not this late. He propped his chin on his fists and watched the ship. He drowsed, the Wounded Moon creeping higher and higher behind him. The guard patrol was late. Hanging round the winestalls. Let them stay there. “Let’s get out of this,” he whispered. “That ship’s settled for the night. Won’t no one be coming ashore.” He twisted his head around so he could see his sister. She took her stubbornness into the water with her, he thought. She stood at his left shoulder as she’d stood since the night she came swimming through water and air and terror to find him while her body rocked at the bottom of the bay. The black glitters that were her eyes stayed fixed on the Phras ship as if she hadn’t heard him. “The man on the mountain said she’d come,” she said.
“Doubletongue old fox.”
She turned on him, stamping her crystal foot down beside his shoulder, her crystal hair flying out from her head. “Be quiet, fool. He could curse you out of your body and where’d I be then?”
Aituatea rubbed oily fleeces between his palms, shivered at the memories her words invoked. Old man kneeling in his garden on the mountain, digging in the dirt. Clean old man with a skimpy white beard and wisps of white hair over his ears, tending rows of beans and cabbages. Old man in a sacking robe and no shoes, not even straw sandals, and eyes that saw into the soul. Aituatea, jerked his shoulders, trying to shake off a growing fear, went quiet as he heard the faint grate of bale shifting against bale. He stared unhappily at the blind ship; whispering to himself, “It’ll be over soon, has to be over soon.” Trying to convince himself that was true, that he’d be through dealing with things that horrified him. The Kadda witch dead and Hotea at rest, which she would be now but for that bloodsucker, and me rid of her scolding and complaining and always being there, no way to get free of those curst eyes. He wanted to climb down from the bales and get off Selt for the next dozen years but he couldn’t do that. If he did that, he’d never get rid of Hotea, she’d be with him the rest of his life and after. He suppressed a groan.
Out on the water the torches scattered about the Woda-an watercity were burning low and the rattles had gone quiet. Behind him on Selt Island’s single mountain where the Temple was, rocket after rocket arced into the darkness, hissing and spitting and exploding to drive off the enemies of the Godalau and her companion gods.
Part of a counting rhyme for a fete’s fireworks:
Blue glow for the Godalau
Sea’s Lady, sky’s Queen
Red shine for the Gadajine
Storm dragons spitting fire
Yellow flash for Jah’takash
Lady ladling out surprise
Green sheen for Isayana
Birthing mistress, seed and child
Purple spray for Geidranay
Gentle giant grooming stone
Moonwhite light for Tungjii-Luck
Male and female in one form
Luck, he thought. My luck’s gone sour these past six months. Aituatea repeated to himself (with some pleasure) fool, fool, fool woman. She never thinks before she does something. Going to the Temple the day after year-turn when she knew Temueng pressgangs would be swarming over the place, sucking up Hina girls for the new year’s bondmaids. She should’ve thought first, she should’ve thought…
What happened, he said, where you been all this time?
Thanks a bunch for worrying about me, she said. He heard her as a cricket chirp in his head, an itch behind his ears. I was working the Temple court, she said, reproach in her glittering glass eyes. You were off somewhere, brother, Joyhouse or gambling with those worthless hangabouts you call your friends, and the money was gone when I looked in the housepot and there wasn’t a smell of food or tea in the place. What’d you want me to do, starve? It being the day after year-turn, I knew every Hina with spare coin and unwed daughters would be burning incense by the fistfuls. I spotted a wool merchant with a fat purse dangling from his belt and started edging up to him. I get so busy checking out running room and easing through his herd of daughters, I forget to look out for pressgangs. Hadn’t been for those giggling geese I might’ve heard them and took off. I don’t hear them and they get us all.
They take us, me and the wool merchant’s daughters, across the causeway, me hoping to be put in some little havalar’s House where I can get away easy and take a thing or two with me for my trouble, but I see we are heading all the way up the high hill to the Tekora’s Palace. I am cursing you, brother, and thinking when I get home, I am going to peel your skin off a strip at a time.
She was much calmer at this point in the story, drifting about the room, touching familiar things with urgent strokes of her immaterial fingers as if she sought reassurance from them. She hovered a moment over the teapot, smiling as she absorbed its fragrance.
I know I can get loose again easy enough, but the Tekora’s a mean bastard with girls that run away. You wouldn’t know that, would you, brother? Only women you bother about are those no-good whores in the joyhouses.
Aituatea scowled; dying hadn’t changed his sister’s habits in the least as far as he could see. Shut up about that, he said. Get on with what happened.
Branded on the face, brother, branded runaway and thief, who’d let me get close enough to lift a thing? So when the Temueng Housemaster puts me to work in the Tekora’s nursery, I am ready to act humble before those Temueng bitches when I’d rather slit their skinny throats! She grimaced in disgust. You know what they do to me? Hauling slops, picking up after those Temueng nits, not lifting a finger to help themselves, running my feet to the bone fetching things they could just as easily get for themselves.
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br /> Her chirp sounded bitter and full of rage; she was madder than he’d ever seen her, even when he turned fourteen and ran off with the housemoney to buy time with a joygirl, what was her name? He shook his head, couldn’t remember her name or what she looked like.
After a month of that, Hotea said, I am about ready to skip out even if it means I have to get off Utar-Selt, live low the rest of the year. You could take care of yourself, brother dear, though I did mean to warn you they might connect you with me if your luck went sour as mine. The nursery garden has a high wall, but there are plenty of trees backed up against that wall. On its other side is the guard walkway and a pretty steep cliff, but I am not fussing about that, I can climb as good as you, brother, and swim better, and the causeway’s near. I am thinking about going over the wall that night, or the one after, depending, when fat old Tungjii, heesh jabs me in the ass again. The Tekora’s youngest daughter disappears.
Hotea beat her fist several times on Aituatea’s shoulder, making him wince at the stinging touches. He jerked away, then clutched at his head as the sudden movement woke his hangover and started the demon in his skull pounding a maul against his temples.
Hotea laughed, the scorn in the soundless whisper raising the hairs along his spine. Fool, she said, you’ll kill yourself, you go on like this. You need a wife, that’s what, a good woman who’ll keep you in order better than I could, give you sons. You don’t want our line to die with you, do you, brother?
She shook herself, her form shivering into fragments and coming together again.
Listen, she said, you got to do something about that witch, as long as she lives I won’t rest.
She wrung her hands together, darted in agitation about the room, gradually grew calmer as the grandmother ghost patted her arm, ragged lips moving in words that were only bursts of unintelligible noise. She drifted back to hover in front of Aituatea.
The Tekora’s youngest daughter, she said, three years old and just walking, a noxious little nit who should’ve been drowned at birth. On the eve of the new moon they turn the place upside down, double the work on us. I don’t think much about it except that I’d strangle her myself if I come across her, she is wrecking my plans because she took off. Three days later they find her facedown in the nursery fountain, shriveled and bloodless like a bug sucked dry. Not drowned but dead for sure. ‘F I was scared of leaving before, well! Tekora would tear Silili brick from plank looking for me, or that’s what I’m thinking then. The other maids are as jittery as me. We are Hina in the house of the Temueng, that makes us guilty even if we do nothing, and the other bondmaids are too stupid and cowed to say boo to a butterfly. Housemaster beats us, but his heart isn’t much in it. And things go on much the same as before. On the eve of the next new moon another daughter goes and I am there to see it.
They order us bondmaids to sleep in the nursery to make sure the daughters don’t just wander off. This night is my turn. A bondmaid brings me a cup of tea. I sniff at it when she goes out. Herb tea. Anise and something else, can’t quite place it. I take the cup to the garden door and look at it but can’t see anything wrong. I sniff at it again and I start getting a touch dizzy. I throw the tea out the door and carry the cup back and put it by my pallet so it looks like I drank it. I stretch out. I’m scared to sleep but I do, up before dawn running like a slave for those bitches, I’m tired to the bone. Something wakes me. I don’t move but open my eyes a slit and keep breathing steady. A minute after that I see the Tekamin standing in the doorway, the Tekora’s new wife she is, he set her over the others and they are mad as fire about it, but what can they do? Hei-ya brother, I have to listen to a lot of bitching when I am fetching for the other wives, they don’t get a sniff of him after he brings that woman back with him from Andurya Durat. No one knows where she comes from, who her family is or her clan, even the wives are scared to ask. And there she is in that doorway, slim and dark and lovely and scaring the stiffening out of me.
She comes gliding in, touches the second youngest daughter on her face and the daughter climbs out of the bed and follows her and I know what she is then, she’s a Kadda witch, a bloodsucker.
I lay shivering on my pallet wishing I’d drunk the drugged tea, my head going round and round as I try to figure out what to do. I think of skipping out before morning and trusting I can keep hid. But I think too of the Kadda wife. I don’t want her sniffing after me; I have a feeling she can smell me out no matter where I hide. Well, brother, I raise a fuss in the morning, what else can I do? And you better believe I don’t say one thing about the Tekamin. The other daughters howl and scream and stamp their skinny feet and the old wives they go round pulling bondmaid’s hair and, throwing fits. When the Housemaster beats me again, it is just for the look of the thing, and for himself, I suppose. He is scared himself and happy to have my back to take it out on.
I keep my head down the next month, you can believe that. I try a couple times to sneak out of the handmaid’s dorm, but the damn girls aren’t sleeping sound enough and keep waking up when I move. Anyway I’m not trying too hard, not yet. The Kadda wife isn’t bothering me-except sometimes she looks at me-like she is wondering if I was really asleep that other time. I’m thinking maybe I can last out the year and get away clean and all the fetching and carrying and cleaning up don’t bother me near so much. Then the Wounded Moon starts dribbling away faster and faster till it is the eve of the new moon again and curiosity is eating at me till I can’t stand it. You told me more than once, brother, my nose would be the death of me.
Hotea giggled and the other ghosts laughed with her, a silent cacophany of titters, giggles and guffaws. Aituatea sat slumped in his chair, waiting morosely for them to stop. He wasn’t amused by a situation that meant either he had to go after a bloodsucking witch or face having an overbearing older sister at his elbow for the rest of his life.
Another girl is sleeping in the nursery this night, the Gndalau be praised for that, but I decide to sneak in there and watch what happens. I tell myself the more I know, the easier I can get away without the witch catching me. Well, it’s an argument.
Like it happens sometimes when old Tungjii gets together with Jah’takash and they wait for you to put your foot in soft shit up to your ears, everything is easy for me that night. The other bondmaids go to sleep early. Snoring. I’ve half a mind to join them, but I don’t. I make myself get out of bed. Moving about helps some, clears the fog out of my head. I sneak down to the nursery, jumping at every shadow and there are lots of those, the wind has got in the halls and is bumping the lamps about, but that is just the sort of thing you expect in big houses at night, so instead of scaring me more, it almost makes me feel like I’m at home, prowling a house with Eldest Uncle.
In the nursery the nits are sleeping heavy. The bond-maid is stretched on a pallet, snoring. She doesn’t so much as twitch when I step over her and duck under the bed of one of the dead daughters. It is close to the door into the garden and I figure if anything goes wrong I can get out that way. The door is open a crack, wedged, to let the air in and clear out the strong smell of anise. I lie there chewing my lip, thinking things will happen soon.
Sounds of wind and fountain whoop through the room; I almost can’t hear the bondmaid snoring. There is a lot of dust under the bed; no one checks there and we don’t do more than we have to, but I am sorry about that now because some of that dust gets into my nose, makes it itch like I don’t know. After a while I start getting pains jumping from my neck to between my shoulders. I stand it some minutes more, then I have to stretch and wiggle if I want to be able to walk without falling on my face. I am just about ready to crawl back to my bed, muttering curses on Tungjii and Jah’takash, when I hear a kind of humming. I stop moving, hoping the wind noise had covered the sounds I was making. I can’t tell you what the humming was like, I’ve never heard anything like it. My eyelids keep flopping down; I am fighting suddenly to k6ep awake; then more dust gets in my nose; I almost sneeze, but don’t. One good thin
g, the itch releases me from the witch’s spell. I ease myself toward the end of the bed and crick my neck around so I can see the door. I am hidden by the knotted fringe on the edge of the coverlet and feel pretty safe. The Kadda wife is standing in the door.
The humming stops.
The Tekora moves out of the shadows to stand beside his wife. I stop breathing. He looks hungry. I feel like throwing up.
The Kadda wife looks around the room. I get the feeling she can see me. I close my eyes and pretend I’m a frog hopped in from the garden. Even with my eyes closed I can feel her looking at me; I’m sure she’s going to call me out from under the bed; I’m thinking it’s time to scoot out the door and over the wall. But nothing happens and I can’t resist sneaking another look.
The Kadda wife smiles up at the Tekora and takes her hand off his ann. It’s like she’s taken the bridle off him. He walks to his daughter’s bed. He looks down at the little girl, then over his shoulder at the witch. She nods. He bends over and whispers something I couldn’t make out that hurts my ears anyway. The girl gets up, follows him out of the room. His own daughter!
Hotea’s voice failed as indignation shook her. Her form wavered and threatened to tatter, but she steadied herself, closed her hand tight about her brother’s arm. He winced but didn’t pull away this time.
The witch looks around the room one more time then leaves too. I stay where I am, flat out under the bed. I am thinking hard, you better believe. No wonder the Tekora is neglecting his other wives. I see he is looking younger. His skin is softer and moister, he is plumper, moving more like a young man. I see that’s how she is buying him, then I think, he’s running out of daughters, he’s going to start on the bondmaids too soon for me. And I think, what odds the Kadda wife doesn’t make me the first one to go? None of us Hinas are going to finish out this bond year. I wait under the bed for a long time, afraid she’s going to come back and sniff me out, but nothing happens. I creep out from under the bed when I hear the first sleepy twitters of the warblers in the willows outside the door, a warning that dawn is close. If I have to spend the rest of my life exiled, I am going down that cliff. Now.