Drinker of Souls dost-1

by Jo Clayton

  “I’ll try, Taga. Slya knows, I’ll try.”

  Harra got out of the water, wrapped a toweling robe about her and went to inspect the food, suddenly very hungry. She poured some tea and began trying the different things set out on the trays. “Come on, all of you. Leave the heavy worrying for some other times, this is heaven. If you’re as hungry as me.”

  THE JAMAR WAS a big man. Even as tall as, she was, Brann’s head came only to his middle ribs. His shoulders were broad enough to make three Hina, his belly big and hard as a beer tun, his legs tree trunks, arms, feet and hands built on a similar heroic scale. He should have been ugly, but wasn’t. He should have seemed fierce and intimidating as an angry storm dragon, but didn’t. He gave them a mild, beaming welcome. “Hamardan House is honored by your presence,” he boomed.

  Taguiloa bowed. “We are the honored ones,” he murmured, feeling a bit battered.

  Jamar Hamardan escorted the troupe to the rooms within the House he had set aside for them, something Taguiloa hadn’t expected, nor had he expected the luxury of those rooms. He didn’t quite know how to deal with all this effusiveness. It made him uneasy. Temuengs simply did not treat Hina and foreigners like this.

  The jamar hovered about them as they tried to settle themselves, silent and diffident but impossible to ignore.

  His bulging eyes slipped again and again to Brann, Harra and the others; again and again he licked his lips, opened his mouth to speak, shut it without saying anything. Taguiloa tried to edge him out the door and away from the troupe so he would say what was on his mind, but he seemed impervious to hints and unlikely to respond well to being hustled out in spite of his apparent amiability. Taguiloa knew enough to be extremely wary at this moment, though the tension of keeping up the required courtesies wracked his nerves. He caught Harra’s eye. Tungjii bless her quick wits, she gathered the rest of the troupe and hustled them out of the room. The Yaril hound settled in the corner of the room, her crystal eyes half-closed but fixed on the Temueng, a powerful defender if there was trouble.

  Jamar Hamardan waited while the room emptied out completely, listening absently as Taguiloa continued his inane chatter. Abruptly the huge Temueng cleared his throat, shutting off Taguiloa in mid-sentence. “How many days can you stay here…?” He fumbled for some way to address the player. He wouldn’t use the Hina saх though he obviously wished to be polite, and he wouldn’t give the player any Temueng honorific-no Temueng could do that and keep his self-respect. He avoided the difficulty by falling silent and waiting with twitchy impatience for Taguiloa’s answer.

  “Ah…” Taguiloa scrambled for some way to escape what he saw coming. “Ahh… jamar Hamardan, saх jura, we have to be in Durat before the storms,blow down from the high plains.” He was deferential but determined, used his most careful formal speech and hoped for the best. If this Temueng decided he wanted his own troupe of entertainers, there was almost nothing they could do. Running meant giving up everything and he wouldn’t do that as long as there was the smallest chance he could work himself free. “Stay here,” the jamar said. “You won’t lose by it.”

  “A generous offer, jamar Hamardan saх jura.” Taguiloa spoke slowly, still hunting for a way out. “If I may, we need more than a place to keep the rain off and food in our bellies…” He risked the touch of commonspeech after a sidelong glance at the Temueng. “We are at our best this year, saх jura. If I may, we have dreams… but that is nothing to you, saх jura. I waste your time with my babbling, your pardon, saх jura.” He lowered his eyes, bowed his head and waited.

  The Temueng cleared his throat. “No, no,” he said. “No bother.” Silence.

  Taguiloa glanced quickly at the Temueng. The big man looked troubled. He turned his head suddenly, caught Taguiloa watching him. “One week,” he said. “My jamika grieves.” He half-swallowed the words. “Our eldest son is with the forces in Croaldhu, our youngest was called to Andurya Durat.” He looked past Taguiloa as if he no longer was aware of him. “He is her heart, the breath in her throat. A good lad for all that, rides like he’s part of his horse, open-handed with his friends, spirited and impatient. Maybe a little heedless, but he’s young.” He cleared his throat again. “You…” Again he searched for a word but settled for the slightly derogatory term used by temuengs for Hina females. “Your ketchin, they should keep the jam ika distracted. She was pleased by you last night. She smiled when you did that thing on the rail and the rest of it… well, she slept without…” He broke off, frowned. “Give her some time away from grieving, showman, and you can ask what you will.”

  Taguiloa looked away from the huge man stumbling over his love for his cow of a wife and for that calf who sounded like most young male Temuengs, arrogant, thoughtless and as unpleasant to his own kind as he was to those who had the misfortune to be in his power. Never mind that, he told himself, a week’s better than I hoped. He swept into a low bow. “Of your kindness; saх jura, certainly a week.”

  The jamar Hamardan turned to leave, turned back. “One of the ketchin, she’s a seer?”

  “One can sometimes see past a day, past a night, saх jura.”

  “My jamika will ask the ketcha to read for her. I do not inquire how the ketcha reads or if she knows more than how to judge a face, whether she lies or speaks what truth she sees. I do not care, showman. Tell your seer to make my jamika contented. Do you hear me?”

  “I hear you, saх jura.”

  The jamar hesitated another minute in the doorway, then stumped out.

  Taguiloa stood rubbing at the back of his neck with fingers that trembled. Relief, apprehension, anger churned in him. A week. And who said it would end then? One week, then another, then another. It had to end there. Had to. He touched the shoulder where he’d felt his double-natured patron riding and wondered if this was one of Tungjii’s dubious gifts. He scanned his immediate past to see where he’d forgot and invoked his god. Nothing but ordinary chaos and the usual curses quickly forgotten. He forced himself to relax and went searching for the others to tell them what had happened.

  TAGUILOA PULLED on a knitted black silk body suit like the white one he used in his act, then he slipped from his room and began his nightly prowl about the jarnar’s House, listening for whatever he could pick up, driven as much by survival needs as by curiosity. The week was winding to a finish, the testing of jamar Hamardan’s good will was closer. He might let them go, or he could insist they stay yet another short while and then another, nibbling their time away, never letting them go.

  He moved through the maze of halls in the wing where the troupe was housed, heading to the storage alcove he’d found the first night he’d prowled the House. A pair of late rambling servants forced him to duck into the shadowy doorless recess, only to discover they were bound for that same alcove. He cursed the libidinous pair and searched for some place to hide. They probably wouldn’t raise a row if they saw him, just take off to find another place to scratch their itch, but there’d be gossip later that would work around to someone in authority and make trouble for the troupe. There were narrow shelves set from the bottom of one wall. He went up them and tried to fold himself into invisibility. The shelves were far too narrow for that, but over him he saw a recessed square in the ceiling of the closet. He pushed against one side of the square and it tipped silently upward, He was through the opening and easing the trap into place as the pair came in whispering, laughing. Afraid to move, he listened to the sounds coming from below, but after a few moments of creeping boredom and stiffening limbs, he eased into a squat and looked about him; enough of the Wounded Moon’s light came through airholes in the eaves to show him a maze of beams with ceiling boards between them. The roof was high over the place where he crouched, slanting steeply to the eaves. It was just like a Temueng to waste such a vast cavernous space on dust and squirrels, spiders and mice. The place was filled with noises once he let himself listen, gnawing, the patter of clawed feet, chittering from squirrels, shrieks from mice as housecats stalked
and killed them, yowls as the cats fought and mated. His fears of being heard faded, he got to his feet, oriented himself and began prowling along the beams listening for voices in the rooms below.

  In the days since that first prowl, he’d picked up enough to make him increasingly uneasy. Now he went swiftly along the ceiling beams, heading for the jamar’s quarters without stopping at his other posts.

  The office. Silent now. He spent a moment standing over the crack that funnelled sound up from below. Last night Hamardan was there talking with his overseer, one of his uncles, a shrewd old man who’d lost all but the youngest of his grandsons to the army. They were discussing the increase in the Emperor’s portion of the harvest, speculating cautiously about what it meant, both men not-saying far more than they put in words, their silences saying much more than those words about their curiosity and unease about what was going on in Andurya Durat. The old man had a letter from one of his grandsons anouncing the death of another of them; the others were well enough, but not especially pleased with their lot. The letter included news about the jamar’s eldest son; he was alive, unhurt but bored with life, despising the Croaldhese, loathing the food, the smells, the women, everything about that cursed island, including (very much between the lines) his fellow officers and the men he commanded.

  Neither the jamar nor his uncle had any idea why the Emperor had suddenly decided to start sending his armies out to conquer the world; for two hundred years the Temueng Emperors had been content with the rich land of Tigarezun. They didn’t like it. Tigarezun was important to them; they didn’t consider the Hina had any connection with it, it was theirs; their ancestors’ bones were buried in that soil (Hina burned their dead, the heedless creatures, how could they have any right to land if they didn’t claim and consecrate it with ancestral flesh and bone?) but this coveting of foreign lands was foolishness, especially an island over a week’s sail away. Especially any island. Temuengs did not like sea travel and felt uneasy on a bit of land that you could ride, side to side, in a day or two. And this warring was taking and wasting their sons. The two men spent an hour yesternight grousing and speculating about the Emperor’s mental state; he’d just taken a new young wife, maybe he was a crazy old man trying to feel young again.

  Taguiloa padded along the beams checking out the rooms in the private quarter of the big House, day room, bathroom, conservatory and so on, only silence-until he reached the jamar’s bedroom.

  Wife weeping, husband trying to comfort her. Sobs diminishing after a while. Silence for a few breaths. Heavy steps, quicker lighter ones, noise of complaining chair, the continued patter of the woman’s feet as she paced restlessly about. Taguiloa stretched out on the beam and prepared to wait.

  “She says Empi’s enjoying himself in Durat; he’s got a new horse and hasn’t lost too much money at gaming and has a chance to catch the eye of someone important at court.” The woman stopped walking, sighed.

  “It’s what he wanted, Tjena.”

  “I know. But I miss him so, Ingklio.” Steps, couch creaking. “Why don’t we go to the capital for the winter?”

  “Too much to do. And the Ular-drah have been raiding close by. You know what happened last month to the Tjatajan jamarak. House burned, granaries looted, what the drah couldn’t carry off they fouled.”

  “Uncle Perkerdj could see our land safe.”

  Hamardan grunted. “Not this year,” he said with a heavy finality that silenced the jamika.

  More creaking as she got back on her feet and started dragging about again, making querulous comments about her maidservants and their defects, the insults from some of the cousins and kin-wives, the disrespect of one of the male servants. The jamar said nothing, perhaps he didn’t bother listening to her, being so familiar with her diatribes they were like the winds blowing past, a part of the sounds of the day no one notices. Taguiloa lay on his beam, half-asleep, telling himself he might as well leave them to their well-worn grooves, because the last four nights this by-play had ended in their going to bed. He yawned and grinned into the darkness. Had to be one monster of a bed and a sturdy one at that. The jamika was built to match the jamar, massive arms and thighs, breasts like muskmelons, only a head shorter than him. Maybe that’s why he never took a second wife, she’s the only woman in the world big enough he wouldn’t crush her with that weight or look absurd standing beside her, an oliphaunt mated with a gazelle. The thought wiped away his amusement. If that was true, the jamar would do just about anything to keep his wife content. He certainly had no concubines, and was awkward around Brann and Harra, seeming almost frightened of normal sized women. Taguiloa nearly forgot himself and swore at old Tungjii. He held back. Bad enough to be in this bind without irritating the unpredictable Tungjii. Hisser favors were bad enough, but hisser’s curses were hell on dragonback. He bruised his nose against the splintery beam and promised Tungjii a dozen incense sticks when he got back to Silili.

  “What about the players?” Hamardan said suddenly. “Shall I let them go or would you like to keep them?” Taguiloa bit down hard on his lip, sucked in a long breath. “Oh Ingklio, would you keep them? That one comforts me so, she’s a true seer, I know it, she’s told me things no one else… well, things, and if she’s here, she can keep telling me what Empi’s doing. He never writes.” Heavy creaking again as she flung herself down beside Harardan. “Just think. Our own players. Can we afford it?”

  “Hina and foreigners, how much can they cost?”

  Fuming, Taguiloa listened as the discussion below him altered to an oliphauntine cooing. Enough of this; listen to them much longer, and I’ll be sick. He got to his feet and ran the beams to the distant trap, let himself down and loped along the dark quiet hall to his bedroom. He stripped off the black bodysuit, sponged away sweat and dust, wrapped a soft old robe about himself and went down the hall to rap at Brann’s door.

  She let him in after a brief wait. The lamps were still lit, Jaril and Yaril sat cross-legged on the bed, their small faces serious, their crystal eyes reflecting light from the lamps.

  “Jaril thought you’d be along soon,” Brann said. She sat on the bed beside Yard. “Bad news.” It wasn’t a question.

  “We’re a little gift he’s wrapping up for his wife.” Taguiloa said. “You’ve been a bit too convincing. That great cow wants daily news of her wretched calf.”

  She said a few words in a language he did not know, but they needed no translation as they crackled through the air.

  “And she’s charmed with the idea of having her own company of players. Something to raise her status with the neighbors; she was a little worried about the cost but he wasn’t, we’re only Hina and a few foreigners, how much could scum like that cost? Throw a little food at us, a jar or two of wine and we’re bought.”

  “Mmm. Yaril, fetch Harra. We’ve got to talk. Don’t frighten her but let her know its urgent.” She looked thoughtfully at Taguiloa. “We won’t bother waking Linji and Negomas.” She looked at the door. “Harra knows a lot more about things like this than I do.” She blinked uncertainly. “There’s so much…”

  A tap on the door. Taguiloa got up, let Harra in, resumed his seat on the bench. “We’re about to be offered a permanent home,” he said. “Right here.”

  Harra wrinkled her nose at Brann. “I told you to tone those sessions down.”

  “Easy for you to say, not so easy for me to do. You didn’t have that cow hanging over you sucking every word you said.” She sighed. “I know. I got a little carried away, but I have to tell you, my behavior doesn’t make much difference. The jamika wants to believe in me and she twists everything I say into something she wants to hear. Even if I don’t say a word, she interprets the way I breathe.” She moved impatiently, the bed squeaking tinder her. “Anything helpful in what your father taught you?”

  “Well, he wasn’t very organized about anything besides his own studies, just taught me whatever interested him at the time. Mmmm.” Harm frowned at the wall, sorting through the insi
de of her head. Suddenly she grinned. “I

  have it. There’s an herb and a spell that will set a geas on that man. Thing is, one can’t work without the other. I’ve got a pinch or two of lixsil in my father’s herb bag, but it doesn’t need much. The maid that brings my meals chatters a lot, she tells me Hamardan eats his breakfast alone in his private garden when the weather’s good. She says he’s a sore-foot bear mornings and no one stays around him if they can help it. The weather’s going to be dry and sunny the next three days, Negomas swears he knows and I think I believe him. So. You see where I’m heading. One of the changechildren drops the lixsil in his tea, I don’t have to be that close, I can lay the spell on him when we’re with the jamika. Brann, you handled those guards on the causeway, can you do the same with her? She’s bound to kick up the kind of fuss we don’t want when we roll out.”

  “Mmm. Brann looked wistful. “I wish I had magic. What I do best is kill people and awful as she is, Tjena doesn’t deserve killing.” Her eyes shifted from Taguiloa to Harra and back, then she moved her shoulders and visibly pulled herself together. “I can drain her so she’s tottery and suggestible, then tell her that what she does the next few days will affect her son… I’ll have to think about it some more.” She smiled and relaxed, yawned. “Anybody got anything to add? Well, lets get some sleep.”

  HINA SERVANTS set out the table and covered it with a huge stoneware teapot and a drinking bowl, a mountain of sweetrolls, a bowl of pickled vegetables, a platter of sausages and deep-fried chicken bits, a bowl of sweetened fruit slices, citrons and peaches, apricots and berries, a platter of fried rice with eggs mixed in. As soon as the meal was set out the servants left, moving with an alacrity that underlined Harra’s maid’s report of Hamardan’s morning moods. When the garden was empty, a small gray-plush monkey dropped from one of the trees and scurried to the table. He leaped up on it and picked through the dishes, lifted the lid of the teapot and shook a bit of paper over the tea. He peered into the pot and watched the gray bits of herb circling on the steaming water. The bits turned translucent and sank. He put the lid back on and scampered away, diving into the bushes just as Hamardan stomped out, glared at the sky, then stumped to the table, pushed back the sleeves of his robe, splashed out a bowlful of tea and gulped it down. The small gray monkey showed his teeth in a predator’s grin, then blurred into a long serpent and began slithering through a hole in the wall.