by Jo Clayton
At the widow’s farm where they’d pastured the horses, they transferred the gear and supplies from the cart to the gaudy box-wagon Taguiloa had purchased from a disbanding troupe whose internal dissensions had reached the point of explosion in spite of their success on tour. They left the tilt cart in the care of the widow and after a hasty meal, started on the two-day journey through the coastal marshes. Taguiloa drove, Linjijan sat beside him coaxing songs out of his practice flute. Negomas rode on the roof with his smallest drum; he liked it up there with the erratic wind pushing into his stiff springy hair and blowing debris away from him. He played with the drum, fitting his beat to Linjijan’s wanderings or playing his own folk music, singing in the clicking sonorous tongue of his fathers. Brann and Harra rode ahead of the wagon, Harra on the gray gelding, Brann on the dun colt forcegrown by the children, a well-mannered beast as long as she or one of the children were around and an ill-tempered demon when they weren’t. Brann was working on that, but it would take time.
They rolled along the stone road raised on arches above the mud and water through the misty gloom of the wetlands into heavy stifling air that blew sluggishly off the water and along the raised road, carrying with it clouds of biters. The dun’s temper deteriorated until even Brann had trouble controlling him; even the placid cob grew restless and broke his steady plod as he twitched and snorted and shook his head.
“Vataraparastullakosakavilajusakh!” Harra slapped at her neck, wiggled her arms, began whistling a high screeching monotonous air that seemed to gather the biters in a thick black cloud and blow them off into the gloom under the trees. She kept it up for about twenty minutes, then broke off, coughed, spat and took a long long drink from her waterskin.
Negomas giggled and began beating a rapid ripple on his drum, chanting up a wind that came from behind and blew steadily past them, keeping them relatively clear of biters until they came up to the campsite the Emperor kept cleared and maintained for travelers, a large shed with wattle walls and a tile roof, a stone floor tilted so rain-would run out, and a stack of reasonably dry wood in a bin at one side. It was very early in the trading season so everything was clean and all the supplies were topped off, the steeping well was cleaned out, with a new base of sand and charcoal, the water in it fairly clean and clear. There was a second shed for the wagon and stock, this one with high stone walls and a heavy gate with loopholes in it where a spearman or bowman could hold off a crowd. With Yaril and Jaril to stand guard it would take a wolf hardier than any of the loners living in the swamps to make off with their goods.
THE NEXT DAY they showed their credeens at the gates of Hamardan, the first of the river cities clear of the marshes, and rode through the streets, Negomas playing a calling song on his drums, Linjijan making witcheries on his flute,
Harra riding the gray with her knees and plucking cascades of cheerful noise from her daroud. It wasn’t market day but the bright noise of the music was pulling folk, Hina and Temueng alike, out of their houses and shops, and drawing boisterous children after them.
They made a wide circle about the city and then in the center of the flurry they’d created they rolled, trolled, caracoled to the largest Inn in Hamardan. It was a hollow square with few windows in the thick outside wall and a red-tile roof with demon-averts scattered along the eaves, a place where the richest merchant would feel safe with his goods locked in the Inn’s fortress godons, and he himself locked into the comfort and security of the Inn proper. This was early in the season, few merchants traveling yet. End of summer, not yet harvest time, no festivals coming up, none in the recent past. Folk were ripe for anything that promised entertainment. Though they were players and low on anyone’s scale of respectability, though half the troupe was foreign and worth even less than players, still Taguiloa knew the value of what he was bringing to the Inn and made a point of assuming his welcome. He drove the wagon into the central court and leaped down from the driver’s seat with an easy flip, landed lightly on the pavingstones to the applause of the swarming children, bowed, laughing to them, then went to negotiate for rooms and the use of the court for a perfbrmance on the next night after the market shut down and the crowds it brought were still in town.
BRANN SET UP a small bright tent in the market and put Negomas beating drums outside it, Jaril doing some tumbling and calling out to the passersby to come and hear past and future from a seer come from the ends of the earth to tell it. Though she carefully used nothing painful from the bits Yaril gave to her, she gave the maidens and matrons a good show and it was not long before word flew along the wind that the foreign woman was a wonder who could look into the heart and tell you your deepest secrets.
Twice male seekers thought to take more than she wanted to give-a woman alone, a foreigner, was fair game for the predatory-but a low growl from a very large brindle hound that came from the shadows behind the table was enough to discourage the most amorous. And she got twice her fee from these men, smiling fiercely at them and mentioning things they didn’t want exposed, and a calm threat to show to the world their poverty or stinginess, whichever it might be. They left, growling of cheat and fake and fraud, but no one bothered to listen.
That night the Inn was jammed with people, anyone who could come up with the price of entry-city folk and those from the farms and fisheries around, the jamar and his household. The poorest sat in thick clumps on the paving stones of the court, the shopkeepers and their families packed the third-floor balcony, the jamar and his family had the choice seats on the end section of the second-floor balcony, the side sections of that balcony given over to town officials and the jamarak Temuengs. The wagon was pushed against the inside end of the court, its sides let down on sturdy props to make a flat stage triple the wagon’s width. The bed and sides were covered by layers of cork, the cork by a down quilt carefully tied so it wouldn’t shift about. The first balcony above the wagonstage was blocked off for the use of the players; a ladder went from this to the wagon bed, giving them two levels for performing.
It was a good crowd and a good-natured one. Brann and Harm took coin at the archway entrance to the court, the Inn servants escorted the balcony folk to the stairs and glared down street urchins who tried to sneak in for free. The Host stood on the second balcony watching all this with suppressed glee, since he got a percentage of the take for allowing Taguiloa to use his court. There were very few clients in the Inn and fewer expected for the rest of the month, so it was no hardship to accommodate the players, something Taguiloa had counted on for he’d made enough tours with Gerontai to know the value of an innkeeper’s favor.
The noise in the court rose to a peak then hushed as the drums began to sound, wild exotic music most of these folk had never heard before, a little disturbing, but it crawled into the blood until they were breathing with it. On the second-floor balcony Taguiloa looked at Brann. “Ready?” he mouthed to her. She nodded. He put his hand on Negomas’s shoulder. The boy looked up, smiled then changed the beat of his music, lending to the throb of the drums a singing sonorous quality; Linjijan came in with his flute, giving the music a more traditional feel, blending M’darjin and Hina in a way that was more comfortable for the listeners. Then the daroud added its metallic cadences and the crowd hushed, sensing something about to happen. Taguiloa leaped onto the balcony rail and stood balanced there, arms folded across his chest, the soft glow of the lampions picking out the rich gold and silver couching of his embroidered robe.
“People of Hamardan.”
The drum quieted to a soft mutter behind him; flute and daroud went silent.
“In the western lands beyond the edge of the world, maidens dance with fire to please their king and calm their strange and hungry gods. At great expense and effort I bring you FIRE…” As he gestured, blue, crimson and gold flames danced above the quilting (Yaril and jail spreading themselves thin) “… and the MAIDEN.”
A loose white silk gown fluttering about her, Brann swung over the rail and went down the ladder in a co
ntrolled fall, using hands and feet to check her plunge. Then she was in among the flames, standing with hands raised above her head while she swayed and the flames swayed about her. The drum went on alone for a while until the beat was so strong they who watched were trapped
2.38 Jo Clayton in it, then the flute came in and finally the daroud, playing music from Arth Slya, the betrothal dance when a maid announced to the world that she and her life’s companion had found each other, a sinuous wheeling dance that showed off the suppleness of the body and the sensuality of the dancer. In Arth Slya there were no flames, the girl would dance with her lover. Brann danced it that night with what pleasure she could and more sadness than she’d expected to feel, danced it in memory of Sammang Schimli who had salvaged her pleasure in her body,
The flames vanished, the music stopped, the dance stopped. Brann stood very still in the center of the wagonstage, breathing rapidly, then flung out her arms and bowed to the audience. She ran up the ladder and vanished into the shadows to a burst of whistles and applause.
The drum began again, a quick insistent beat. Taguiloa leaped onto the railing. “People of Hamardan, see my dance.” He flung the broidered robe away with a gesture as impressive as it seemed careless for he capered high above the wagon and the court’s rough stone on a rail the width of a small man’s hand. He wore a knitted bodysuit of white silk flexible as chainmail, fitting like a second skin; a wide crimson sash was tied about his waist, its dangling ends swinging and flaring with the shifts of his body in that impossible dance. Behind him, flute and drums blended in familiar music, Hina tunes though the drum sound was more sonorous and melodic than the flat tinny sound of tradition. At first the flute sang in a traditional mode then changed as the dance changed, beginning to tease and pull at the tunes. Harra tossed Taguiloa’s shimmer spheres to him, one by one. They caught the light of the lampions and multiplied so it was as if a dozen tiny lamps were trapped in each crystal sphere, shimmering crimson, gold and silver as he put one, two, three and finally four into the air and kept them circling as he did a shuffle dance on that rail moving on the knife edge of disaster until he built an almost unbearable tension in the workers, who gave a soft whisper of a sigh as he capered then tossed the spheres one by one into the darkness behind him.
The drum hushed, the flute took up a two-faced tune; it had two sets of words, one set a child’s counting rhyme, the other a comically obscene version the rivermen used for rowing. With that as background he did a fast, sliding, stumbling comic dance on that railing, swaying precariously and constantly seeming about to fall from his perch. Each time he recovered with some extravagant bit of business that drew gasps of laughter from the crowd. He ended that bit as secure, it seemed, on his narrow railing as his audience were on their paving stones. With the flute laughing behind him, he flung out his arms and bent his body in an extravagant bow. The flute soared to a shriek. He overbalanced to a concerted gasp from the watchers that changed to stomping, shouting applause as he landed lightly on his feet and flipped immediately into a tumbling run. Above, the flute, drums, daroud began to weave together a music that was part familiar and part a borrowing from three other cultures, music that captured the senses and was all the stranger for the touch of familiarity in it. Taguiloa flung his body about in a dance that melded tumbling, movement from a dozen cultures and his own fertile imagination. The music and the man’s twisting, wheeling body wove a thing under the starshimmer and lampion glow that earth and sky had never seen before. And when the movement ended, when the music died and Taguiloa stood panting, there was for one moment a profound silence in the court, then that was broken with whistles, shouts, stomping feet, hands beating on sides, thighs, the backs of others. And it went on and on, a celebration of this new thing without a name that had taken them and shaken them out of themselves.
WHEN THEY COULD get away from the exulting Host and the mostly silent but leechlike attentions of the jamar and his jamika, they met in the inn’s bathhouse.
Steam rose and swirled about lamps burning perfumed oil, casting ghost shadows on the wet tiles; the condensation on the walls was bright and dark in random patterns like the beaded pattern on a snakeskin. Brann swam slowly through the hot water, her changed black hair streaming in a fan about her shoulders. Yaril and Jaril swam energetically about like pale fish, half the time under the water, bumping into the others, sharing their soaring spirits. Negomas paddled after them, almost, as much at home in the water as they were, his only handicap his need to breathe. Taguiloa lolled in the warm water, his head in a resthollow, his eyes half shut,a dreamy smile twitching at his lips. Now and then he straightened his face, but his enforced gravity always dissolved into a smile of sleepy satisfaction. Harm kicked lazily about, her long dark brown hair kinking into tight curls about her pointed face.
The first time the troupe had gone from a long hard rehearsal into Blackthorn’s bathhouse, Harra had been startled, even shocked, as the others stripped down to the skin and plunged with groans of pleasure into the water and let its heat leach away soreness from weary muscles. Communal bathing was an ancient Hina custom, one whose origins were somewhere in the mythtime before men learned to write. A bathhouse was rigidly unstratified, the one place where Hina of all castes mingled freely, the one place where the strictures of ordinary manners could be dropped and men and women could relax. After the Temueng conquest, the bathhouses were suppressed for a few years, Temuengs seeing them as places of rampant immorality, unable to believe that sexual contact between all those naked people was something that simply did not happen, that anyone who broke the houses’ only rule would be thrown out immediately and ostracized as barbarian. Harm’s wagon-dwelling people lived much like those early Ternuengs, with little physical privacy and many rules to determine the behavior of both sexes, rules born out of necessity and cramped quarters, though her life had been different from that of the ordinary girlchild of the Rukka-nag. She had no older brothers or sisters. Her mother died in childbirth when she was four, and the infant girl died with her. After that her mage father spent little time with his people, traveling for months, years, apart from the clan, taking Harra with him. Absorbed in his studies, absently assuming she’d somehow learn the female strictures her mother would have taught her, he treated her as much like a son as a daughter, especially when she grew old enough for him to notice her quick intelligence, though he did engage a maid to help her keep herself tidy and sew new clothing for her when she needed or wanted it. He began teaching her his craft when she was eight, training her in music and shaping, the two things being close to the same thing for him and her; they were much alike in their interests and very close; he talked to her more often than not as if she were another magus of his own age and learning. But there were times when he was shut up with his researches or visiting other mages in the many many cities they visited or stopping at one of the rude hermitages where nothing female was permitted; then he settled her into one of the local homes. She learned how to adapt herself quickly to local custom, how to become immediately aware of the dangers to a young girl and how to protect herself from those while making such friends as she could to lessen her loneliness a bit. Sometimes-though this was rare-her father stayed as long as two years in one place, other times she’d begin to take in the flavor of a city, to learn its smells and sounds and other delights, then he’d be going again. It was a strange, sometimes troubling, usually uncertain existence, and the burden of maintaining their various households fell mainly on her slender shoulders once she reached her twelfth birthday, but it was excellent preparation for survival when her father died between one breath and the next from an aneurism neither of them knew he had. And it let her assess at a glance the proper manners in a bathhouse and overcome her early training. Unable to control her embarrassment, she contrived to hide it, stripped with the rest and got very quickly into water she found a lot too clear for her comfort. She paddled about with her back turned to the others hoping the heat of the water would explain t
he redness in her face, but ended relaxed and sighing with pleasure as the heat soothed her soreness.
Now she was as much at ease as the others, as she watched Taguiloa’s smiles and savored her own delight. Rehearsals were one thing but putting on a finished performance with that storm of audience approval-well, it was no wonder he was still a little drunk with the pleasure of it She felt decidedly giddy and giggly herself.
“It could get addicting,” she said aloud.
Taguiloa opened one eye, grinned at her.
The door to the bathhouse opened and several serving maids came in. They set up a long table in one corner and covered it with trays of fingerfood, several large stoneware teapots, more wine jugs, drinking bowls, hot napkins. The roundfaced old woman who supervised this bowed to Taguiloa. “With the jamar’s compliments, sai5m-y-saiir.”
Taguiloa lifted a heavy arm from the water. “The Godalau bless his generosity.”
The old woman bowed again. “Saiim, the Host does not wish to intrude on your rest, but he desires you to know that the jamar has requested you perform at his house the coming night.”
Taguiloa lay silent for a breath or two, then finally said, “Inform the host that we will be pleased to perform for the jamar provided we can arrange a suitable fee and proper quarters for ourselves and our horses.”
The woman bowed a third time and left, shooing the curious and excited maidservants before her.
Taguiloa batted at the water and said nothing for a few moments, then he sighed and rose to sit crosslegged on the tiles. “A fee is probably a lost cause, I’m afraid. We’ll be lucky if we get a meal and shelter. I’d hoped to get farther along betbre I ran into this sort of complication. Still, it could be worth the irritation. These Temueng jamars keep in close touch by pigeon mail and courier, so word of us will be passed on and reach Andurya Durat before we do.” He studied Brann a long minute. “You will be careful?”