Drinker of Souls dost-1

by Jo Clayton

The children rose from serpent form and came to her, their hands melting into hers as they took and took from her until she could think coherently again and move without feeling bloated and unwieldy. She turned to look at the dead. Two rows of them, fifty men falling to snake and whatever it was she was now, with hardly a sound and no struggle at all, they might have been sleeping still. Silent herself she went to stand beside the Temueng pimush, the leader of these invaders, the one who’d given the orders for all they’d done-calmly asleep, untroubled by dreams or remorse. You know why, she thought, but how do I ask you, what do I ask you? He made a small spluttering sound, moved his hands. She jumped back into shadow, but he didn’t wake. Jaril tugged at her arm. She leaned down. “What?” she whispered.

  “Take from him but not all, enough only to sap his will so we can move him away from them.” He nodded at the sleeping captives.

  Brann looked down and was surprised to see her hands glowing in the hushed darkness before the dawn, rather like the round porcelain lamps her father made for nightlights. She knelt beside the pimush and took his head between her hands. He started to wake but faded into a daze as she pressed the slow drain. “Enough,” Jaril said, touched her hand. She sighed and sat back on her heels. “What now?”

  “Into the trees. He’ll walk if we prod him.”

  With the children’s help she led the pimush a short distance from the camp clearing and propped him against the high roots of an old oak. “That’s done. Where from here?”

  “Give him back.”

  “Huh?”

  “You want him able to talk, don’t you? Reverse the flow. All you have to do is touch and will, Bramble, it’s as easy as breathing.”

  “Which I think you don’t do.”

  Jaril grinned at her. “Not like you, anyway.”

  She rubbed a grubby forefinger by the corner of her mouth. The Temueng was tall, head and shoulders higher than most Arth Slya men, the flesh hard and tight on his bones. She shivered. “He looks like he could snap me in two without half trying. Shouldn’t we tie him or something?”

  “No.” Jaril changed, flowed upon the Temueng’s chest, coil by coil, his broad triangular viper’s head raised and swaying, poison fangs displayed and ready. Yaril moved around until she was kneeling by the Temueng’s right arm, drawing over her the feral look of a hungry weasel. It sat comfortably on her delicate child’s face, made her more terrifying than a raging male three times her size. Brann looked from child to serpent, wiped her hand across her face, scraping away a new film of sweat. “Why don’t I feel safer?” she whispered, then giggled nervously.

  The dawn breeze was beginning to stir, rustling among the leaves, here and there a bird’s sleepy twitter broke the hush. Yaril clicked her teeth. “Brann, you waiting for it to rain or something?”

  Kneeling beside the Temueng, Brann put her hand on his brow and found that Jaril was right, it was easy; the fire crackling under her skin went out through her fingertips into him. His pale face darkened, flushing with renewed vigor. She jumped hastily to her feet and moved back a few paces.

  He opened his eyes. The flush receded leaving him pale as he saw the serpent head rising over his; he stiffened and stopped breathing.

  “Man.” Yaril said.

  “What?” His narrow dark eyes flicked about, going to the viper swaying gently but without that extra tension that meant readiness to strike, to the feral child showing her pointed teeth, to Brann filled with moonfire. He didn’t move; he was afraid, but mastering his fear, calculating, seeking a way to slide out of this peril.

  “We are Drinker of Souls and the Mountain’s Children,” Yaril cooed at him. She caught hold of his hand, the strength in her dainty fingers as frightening as the rest of her. She folded the hand into a fist and wrapped her hands about it, gazing at him with an impersonal hungry interest. “You killed our mortal cousins and took others away. You bloodied and befouled our mother. Why?” Her high light voice was calm, conversational. “Answer me, man.” She tightened her hands about his fist, watched him struggle to keep still, sweat popping thick on his long narrow face. “Why?” She eased her grip. “Why?”

  “It was something to do,” he said when he could speak again. “To pass the time.”

  Yaril gestured at the viper and it changed to a giant worm with daintily feathered wings little larger than a man’s hand flirting on either side of an angular dragon’s head. Forked tongue flicking, a whiffing and fluttering of the opalescent feathers, the great worm grew heavier and heavier on the Temueng’s chest, the coils spilling off him onto the roots of the oak. As the pimush stared, mouth clamped shut but eyes wide with the fear he couldn’t deny, smoking oily liquid ran down one of the dragon’s dagger fangs, gathered at the tip, then dripped off onto his chest. The venom burned through his shirt and into his flesh. His body jerked and spasmed as much as it could, one hand held prisoned by Yaril in a grip he had no chance of breaking, legs and lower body pinned by the punishing weight of the worm.

  Yaril passed her hand across the bubbling liquid, drew it into herself. The pain subsided, the man lay still again. “Why?” she said. “We sent the tribute to Grannsha every year without fail, the compact between Arth Slya and the Kumaliyn has never been broken though a thousand years have passed since it was made. Why did you come to Arth Slya?”

  He licked his lips, gave a sudden wild shout.

  “Your men are dead.” Yaril patted his hand. “Only their ghosts to answer you. Call again if you want. Call all you want. Only the captives can hear you and they’re staked to the ground. Why have you destroyed Arth Slya?” She tightened her grip on his fist again, watched him struggling to hold back groans and fight off the feeling of helplessness the worm’s weight and her unlikely strength were waking in him. She eased the pressure a little. “Speak true and you will die quickly and easily. Lie or refuse to speak, then my brother’s venom will consume you bit by bit and the Souldrinker will see you stay awake for all of it.”

  His dark eyes darted about, he was fighting a last battle with himself, desiring defiance but too intelligent to waste his strength hiding things that had to be common knowledge in the villages below. With a visible effort he relaxed. “All dead?”

  “All. Slya watches over her children.”

  “Easy they said. Round up the young and strong, no kids or dodderers…” The breath hissed through his stiff lips. “Nothing about no arsehole god getting her eggs in a twist. Your Kumaliyn’s skipped. Abanaskranjinga Emperor of the Tern uengs rules here now.”

  “So. Why come like wolves? There were no soldiers in Arth Slya.”

  “Why ask me? I do what I’m ordered. Good boy, pat ‘im on his fuckin head.”

  “Why come like wolves?”

  He sneered. “Old Krajink’s not about to let a little bunch of mud dawbers nest free, thinkin they can make it without him. Maybe other folk they get the idea they got rights. Mudfeet, mudheads stompin up trouble, just get chopped, but Krajink he’s got to pay us to do the choppin and he parts with silver bits like grasslion from his meat. Cheaper to stomp first. Don’t mess up trade or plantin and harvestin. Cheap way to get valuable slaves. Trust of Krajink to see that. He figures your Arth Slya artisans might as well be making their junk for him where he can keep an eye on them. Figures maybe he can make Durat a rep as big as your dawbers got.”

  Brann took a step toward him. “Slaves,” she spat. “Half my folk dead so that… that… he can prance around claiming their work!”

  He raised his thin arched brows, the sound of his voice insensibly seducing him into speaking further, turning this interrogation into something like a conversation. “So what’s new about that, bint? In old lardarse’s head we’re all his slaves. We hop when he pulls our strings. Don’t hop, get the chop. Why not? Do the same, us, to folk beneath us.”

  Brann stared at him, not comprehending much of what he was saying. It was a world totally other than the one she’d grown up in. All she got from the speech was the ultimate responsibility of
the Temueng emperor for the destruction of Arth Slya. “The Fair,” she said. “What happened to the Arth Slya folk at the Fair?”

  “On their way, hint. On ship to Andurya Durat.”

  Brann put her hands behind her back, clenched them into her fists, struggled to keep her voice steady. “Were any of them killed?”

  “And get chopped for wasting prime meat? Uh-uh.” Brann closed her eyes. Her father and her brothers were alive. Captives, but alive.

  “Bramble!” Yaril’s voice.

  Jolted out of her daze, Brann came round the Temueng’s feet and stopped beside her. “What?”

  “That all you wanted to know?”

  – Yes… urn… yes.”

  “Well?” Yaril gestured impatiently.

  Brann rubbed her hands down the sides of her bloodied shirt, blood from her wounded arm, long dried. It was different somehow, looking into his eyes, listening to him talk, seeing his fear, seeing him as a person, knowing him. With all the harm he’d done her, she shrank from taking him; the revulsion she felt was almost more than she could overcome. She reached heavily toward him, saw the leap of fear in his eyes, saw it dulling to resignation. Her hand fell. “I can’t,” she wailed. “I…” An immense hot fury took hold of her, drowned her will, worked her arms, set her hands on his brow and mouth and drew his life in a rushing roar out of him.

  Then he was dead and that thing went wheeling away. It wasn’t the children; as wobbly as her thinking was, she was able to understand that. Cautiously Yaril came closer, reached out. A spark snapped between them, then the strong small hands were closed on her arm, and Yaril was pressing against her, warm and alive, murmuring comfort to her. Another spark snapping, and Jaril was smoothing his hands along her shoulders, gently massaging her neck and shoulder muscles. They worked the shock out of her, gave her the support she needed until she was able to stand.

  Yaril stood beside her, holding her hand. “What was THAT?”

  Brann moved her shoulders, flexed her fingers, the children’s hands comfortably human around them, even a little sweaty. “Don’t know. I think… I think it was Slya filling me.”

  “Oh.” There was complete silence from both children for a few breaths, then calm and deliberately prosaic words from Yaril. “We better go turn your folks loose.”

  As they walked through the trees, Jaril looked up at her. “What do we do after this, Bramble? Go back to the Valley with your folk?”

  Brann stopped. “I thought… before I knew about Da… do you think we could get him loose too?” Jaril grinned. “Why not.”

  Brann stopped in the shadows of some stunted alder bushes, an unseen hand restraining her, a wall of air keeping her back from her mother and the rest of Slya’s folk out in the clearing. No words, no warning, nothing tangible, but she was being told Arth Slya was no longer for her. She dropped to her knees, then swung her legs around so she was sitting with her hands clasped in her lap, looking into the camp clearing through a thin fan of finger-sized shoots and a lacy scatter of leaves. The children exchanged puzzled glances, squatted beside her without speaking.

  UNCLE MIGEL was on his knees beside a stake, looking about. He scrubbed his hand across his mouth, fumbled on the ground by his knees, came up with a dirt clod, snapped it at a soldier lying rolled in his blanket. He grunted as the clod hit, splattering over the man and the ground around him. “Not sleeping,” he said. He put two fingers in his mouth, produced an ear-piercing whistle, waited. “Unh, looks to me like they’re all dead.”

  “How?” Her mother’s voice.

  “All?” Aunt Seansi kneeling beside her mother. “I’d say so, Mig, that whistle of yours is most likely waking folks in G rann sha. “

  Wrapping thick-fingered hands about the stake, Migel rocked it back and forth, and with an exploding grunt, pulled it from the ground. He got to his feet, his ropemates coming up eagerly with him, all eight of them moving out and around the shakes to the line of bodies. Migel kicked a soldier out of his blanket, got his belt knife and cut himself loose. He sliced the loop of rope from his neck, then tossed the knife with casual skill so it stuck in the ground in front of Brann’s mother, who grabbed it with a heartfelt “Slya!” and began slicing her rope loose from the stake. When she was free, she passed the knife to Seansi and marched over to the pile of wood the soldiers had cut the night before, hauled sticks from it to an open space where she used the sparker she found on a soldier to get a fire started.

  Brann watched the swirl of activity and noise in the clearing, warm with pride in the resilience of her people. Harrowed by the shock and violence of the invasion, bereft of hope, marched off to a fate not one of them could imagine, waking to find silent death come among them with no idea of how or when it struck, whether it would come on them later, not a one of them sat about glooming or complaining but each as soon as he or she was freed from the rope saw something to be done and did it. Time for fear and mourning later. Now was time for food in the belly and scalding hot tea to get the blood moving. Now was the time to get the mules and ponies out of their rope corral, now was the time for caching the loot from the Valley where they could find it later. In a hectic half hour the camp clearing was picked clean except for the bodies of the soldiers (the body of the pimush was added to the pile when they found it; they passed close by Brann and the children, but whatever kept her from entering the clearing kept them from-seeing her). Then they were mounting the mules and ponies and riding away, those that had no mounts trotting beside the others. After a short but heated argument, they left the pimush’s horse and gear behind. Her mother wouldn’t have the beast along, uncle Migel wanted to take it. Inar and Seansi and a dozen others talked him out of that, the beast was a high-bred racer too obviously not Valley-bred. Migel kept sputtering that anyone getting close enough to the Valley to spot the horse would be too damn close anyway. But the others countered that it only took one snooping outsider to get an eyeful of racer and report his presence to the Temuengs. If he wanted such a beast, then he should buy one the next Fair on. As they left the clearing, the Mountain chose to rumble a few breaths and go quiet, almost as if Slya were laughing-the soldiers dead, the people returning to rebuild their homes, and Brann aimed like an arrow at the Temueng Emperor.

  As the morning brightened and grew-warmer with the rising of the sun, Brann sat staring at the empty clearing, not seeing it. She wasn’t tired, wasn’t sleepy, only empty.

  “Bramble.” Yaril’s voice demanded her attention. She looked around, eyes unfocused. “Here.” Yaril put a hot mug in her hand. “Drink this.” When Brann sat without moving, staring at the mug, the changechild made a small spitting sound like an angry cat, wrapped her hands round Brann’s and lifted the cup to Brann’s lips.

  The scalding liquid burned her mouth but Brann kept drinking. When the mug was empty, Yaril took it away and came back with more tea and a sandwich of stale bread and thick chunks of cheese, scolded her into eating them. Food in the belly woke her will, gave her the energy she’d not had; the emptiness she’d been suffering was of the body as well as of the spirit; she realized that when Jaril brought the pimush’s horse to her, the beast wearing her saddle and the pimush’s bridle, the rest of her gear in place with some additions. He was a fine lovely beast-no wonder Uncle Migel had coveted him-prancing, nostrils flaring but tamed by the touch of Jaril’s hand when Brann was ready to mount.

  “Up you go,” Jaril said. He caught her about the legs and tossed her onto the snorting beast, his strength once again surprising her; having seen him as a frail child or an insubstantial shimmering hanging in midair, she could not help letting her eyes fool her into underestimating him. She settled into the saddle, began settling the horse, stroking him, comforting him, teaching him that she wasn’t about to allow any nonsense from him.

  Then she was riding away down the mountain, holding the horse to a steady canter when he wanted to run. Brindle boarhounds trotted beside her, or disappeared into the trees on scouting runs. The track continued to f
ollow the river, clinging to the sides of ravines where she drowned in the boom of cataracts, departing grudgingly from the cliffs where the river fell in rainbowed mists. Down and down without stopping, eating in the saddle, drinking from the pimush’s waterskin, ignoring the continued chafing of her thighs, the cramps in fingers, arms, legs, down and down until the pimush’s horse was leaden with fatigue, until they were out of the mountains and in gently rolling foothills.

  When the Wounded Moon was an hour off the horizon, she curled up in a hollow padded with grass and went to sleep, leaving the horse and her safety to the children. She slept heavily and if she dreamed, she remembered nothing of it later.

  SHE WOKE with the sun beating into her eyes, sweat greasing a body drastically changed, woke to the pinching irritation of clothing that was much too small for her.

  She sat up, groaned. Hastily she ripped off what was left of her trousers, most of the seams having given way as she slept, breathed a sigh of relief, tore off the remains of her shirt, bundled the rags and wiped at sweat that was viscous and high-smelling. Her hair was stiff with dirt and dried sweat. When she tried combing her fingers through it, it came out in handfuls. She rubbed at her head with the wadded-up shirt; all the hair came out, mouse-brown tresses dead and dark, falling to the grass around her. She kept scrubbing until her head was bare, polished bare. Throwing the shirt aside, she ran her hands over the body the night had given her, the full soft breasts, the narrow waist, the broader hips, the pubic hair glinting like coiled silver wire in the sunlight. She wanted to cry, to howl, lost and confused.

  A hand on her shoulder. She jerked convulsively, cried out in a voice she didn’t recognize, flung herself away-then saw it was Yaril. Yaril holding neatly folded clothing. “Jaril’s fixing breakfast next hollow over. You better get dressed. Here.”

  Brann shook out the shirt, looked from it to Yaril. “Where…”

  “Brought it with us. Just in case.”

  Brann looked at the shirt she still held out and snorted. “Just in case I grew a couple feet taller and a dozen years older?” She bit on her lip, uncomfortable with the deeper richer voice that came out of her, a woman’s voice-not the one she knew as hers.