Queeneyes smoothed sweaty palms down her thin white linen robe and thought she understood how it would be. But she was wrong.
He was perfumed and elegant and knew what he was about; an elemental contract, loveless as a pawnshop. But he was not angry with her, and gave her instructions it was impossible to mistake. And in the ludicrous heave and clutch of embrangled bodies, she felt the Sight forsake her in an uprush of flight—all bright possibility battered to earth and remade in clay; the might-have-been savaged from her waking mind, leaving behind them only the knowledge of what she had lost.
And what she had gained.
The Choosers came to the city of Choirdip on a bright spring day when the sun shone white and rain had washed the air to gleaming purity. They came in pomp and panoply, a feast for all the senses, and established themselves in the Market Square where any child who dared might come, to them, to gaze into their bowl of cloudy crystal and be Chosen.
Many came, to dare and risk and hope, but the child Avarach was not among them. The hero Queeneyes was in a back room at Mother Dace’s, saving the world.
About Jo Clayton and “Arakney’s Web”
Jo Clayton lives among the gentle hills of Portland, doing her writing as she listens to Oregon’s rain pattering on the geraniums and the blue rose in red clay pots on her balcony, while her cats chase each other over, around, and through a dozen bookcases. Perhaps they’re chasing Arakney, Jo’s wandering sorceress.…
Arakney’s Web
Jo Clayton
“Whoa, Dapple, easy now.”
The van slowed to a stop in the shadow of a cluster of trees with slender white trunks and sticky, saw-edged leaves, bright green and newly unfolded from the bud. The horse sagged into his harness, shaking his big head, foam spattering the clumps of grass growing around his knees.
Arakney Ko’eem dropped the reins over the curving mudshield, shifted on the lumpy cushion. “I think we’ve lost them.” She started to comb her fingers through the tangled mass of coarse grey hair that fell about her shoulders, but the windknots blocked her. “F’lich!” She turned her head, addressed the canvas curtains that shut off the front of the van. “Piri, find my brush, will you? That’s the last time I try a new do in a place I don’t know. Hairpins are expensive and I’ve lost every c’fillacher one.”
The Osuni pushed his head through the curtains. “ ’Kney, you shock me.” He grinned at her. “My ears, my poor little ears.” He wiggled them and had a lot to wiggle; they were large for his size, with no lobes and pointed tips. “What’d you expect, that last story you told? Lady Fox and the Pig, t’ t’. Headman saw he better have a care for his cracklin’ before his wives got the idea.”
“Pah! He annoyed me.” She took the brush from him and attacked the knots.
Piri crawled through and sat beside her. He looked a lot like the peachpit monkeys fathers carve for their children—a peachpit monkey with a strip of tightly curled maroon fleece that went from ear to ear.
He scratched at the inside of his elbow as he watched her divide her hair and begin braiding it. “Marewole Moor. Hunh. Headman’s youngest, Michi, what a pest, eh? He and his pack of wigglets, they cornered me night b’fore last and pitched tales at me about the moor. Yankin’ my leg, some of it, but some of it, they scared themselves, see it in the gooseflesh, hear it in the whispers.”
“So?” Her fingers wove briskly through the thick grey hair. “Can you reach back, get me something to tie this off?”
“Here. I come prepared.” He held out his hand, two thin leather thongs dangling over the fingers. “What I think, the Yasroub didn’t so much lose us, they turned round and went home, telling each other they’d let the moor take care of us.”
Arakney took the thongs, secured her braids, and flipped them over her shoulders. “You pick up anything about people living in here? I don’t like the look of that storm.”
Clouds were piling up in the west and sweeping toward them; the wind was heavy with rain and the strong acrid smell of the heather.
“Witches and werefolk according to the wigglets.”
“Whatever they are, they need a roof like anyone else on a rainy day. Get your flute, Piri, see what you can call to us.” She stood. “While you’re doing that, I’ll tend poor Dap, he’s had a hard run and earned his grain.”
Piri sat cross-legged on the roof of the van, eyes closed, breath coming slow and steady as he prepared himself, then he lifted the heavy silver flute to his lips and began to play, an eerie, scarcely audible melody that flowed out to fill the skybowl and tickle the ears of everything under that bowl.
The girl came trotting around the trees, fought her body to a stop when she saw Arakney standing with her hand on Dapple’s neck. Her eyes were the same color as her short rough hair, the brownish red of a fox’s coat; her skin was olive, her body supple with youth and something else.
Dapple snorted and shifted uneasily, his head jerking up and down. Arakney soothed him with one hand while she watched the girl. “We mean no harm to you,” she said. “We’re lost and need shelter from that.” She nodded at the clouds boiling toward them. “Tell us where we can find it, then we’ll let you go.”
Curiosity sparked in the foxy eyes, but the girl shook her head. “This is Marewole Moor, you’ll find no shelter here.”
“Now, m’dear, it’s not nice to lie to your elders.”
“I don’t lie.” Her eyes darting about, her bare feet shifting on the hard earth, the girl was testing out the flute’s spell, hunting weak spots and pushing against them.
“By implication, you do. And most cleverly, too. Use that cleverness, child, think on what brought you here. Pin has other tunes he can play.”
The girl sniffed, wiggled her nose; she’d managed to gain some play in the mesh that held her and was unobtrusively working herself into the shadow under the trees. “If that’s what your word’s worth, why should I lead you anywhere?”
Arakney scratched Dapple gently between the eyes; he snorted and nuzzled at her. “I’m a story spinner,” she said impatiently, “not a brigand. Look at me, what could I do to harm anyone?”
The girl went still, red-brown eyes opening wide. “Chala, you a Spinner, where’s your Gourd?” She folded her arms across her narrow chest. “And would you know The Witch of Hesley Dell? I’ve never heard the whole of it and I’d like to.”
Arakney laughed. “I’ve heard a dozen versions, you’ll have to sing me yours sometime.” She stepped away from Dapple, took her Gourd from its pouch, and chanted as she shook it, the soft shssh-shssh almost lost in the bluster of the wind. “Red was her hair and green her eyes and her soul was black as a grandmama’s pot. She loved with a love as true as fire, as strong and as steady as a summer wind.” She dropped the Gourd back into its pouch. “And that’s all you get without a taste from the pot or the clink of silver.”
The girl stopped fighting the spellbond, fears eased by the Gourd’s soft shssh and the Spinner’s Chantvoice. “How’d you get all the way to here? And why?”
“A slight miscalculation on my part.”
“Wrong story?” A nimble brow arching high, a tilt of her head—she was fire and flash now that her wariness had dropped away.
Arakney blinked. “Something like that.”
The girl scratched behind an ear. “Him up there, he can rest his lip.”
A chatter of her bare feet on the grass, then she darted to the van, flowing up onto the seat with the sure fluidity of youth at its peak, her words streaming back over her shoulder as she moved. “Take too long to try telling you, I’ll ride with you, show you the way. Cha-la, shift it, Spinner, the dark’s coming fast.” Before the last word was out, she was sitting on the worn cushions frowning impatiently at Arakney.
Dapple ambled through heather shadows and the slanting sun rays that escaped the thickening clouds, the van rattling behind him, lurching across the uneven earth as he followed the elk trace their guide pointed out.
Arakney clucked encou
ragement to Dapple, then turned to the girl. “Arakney Ko’eem. You?”
“Yohn. The chook where I live is called Raevlis.” She spoke in quick broken phrases, fitting them between the jolts. “It’s where I’m taking you. Turn now, this way.” She pointed, then shifted the direction of her finger. “You see that nice flat green spot up there? Pretty, isn’t it? Drive on that and you won’t stop sinking till you bounce off Fadda Ameeser’s head. Go straight till the siltong grove, there, that dark green lump, you can just see it in the light that’s left. You’ll go north from there till you reach a tor, it’s a short fat one, doesn’t show from here, that’s where Raevlis is, tucked into a bend of the Tal-pikang.”
“A river? Ah, that’s good, it’ll give us a way to go when it’s time to go. You’re young to be out alone.”
Yohn flounced indignantly on the lumpy cushion. “I made marriageable my last birthday.”
“So?”
She giggled, an infectious gurgling sound that tickled Arakney’s ears. “Visitations. The Holy Places.”
“Oh?”
“Don’t girls do that where you come from? Where are you from anyway, Arakney Ko’eem? If it’s not rude to ask.”
“Not rude, but it’s a question that’s a bit difficult to answer. Tell me about this Visitation thing. This is a new piece of the world to me, I’ll need new stories to fit it.”
Yohn grinned. “Make one of me, eh? Cha-la, I run the heather, dance in the moonlight, sleep a while and travel on, tokens in my pouch, one two three. See this?” She brought out a small glass vial with a wax stopper; it waved with the lurching of the van and glittered in the distant lightning.
“Ah.”
“It’s for water from Kinayom’s Well.” She tucked the vial away again, missing the pouch the first time as a wheel dropped into a hole and wobbled out again. “That’s the spring atop Gratcher Tor where Kinayom flew the first time. They say when you sleep there, if you get the charm right, you’ll dream your lover’s face. Or at least a sign that’ll show you who he is when he comes.”
Arakney nodded. “Adrina’s Dream is a tale like that. Have you heard that one?”
“Nay. You’ll sing it for us, huh?”
“We’ll see, we’ll see.”
Yohn squeezed her mobile face into a comic grimace, then sat with her hands dangling between her knees, her body swaying with the shift of the seat. “The second place is the Granddaddy Ayyanga on Poryo Tor, you ever seen an ayyanga tree?”
“Nay. Not by that name, at least.”
“Cha-la, you’d know it if you had. It’s bigger than some chooks, with trunks all round like sentinels, each year a new ring of them. There’s this bug that lives in its top branches and galls grow round it that have the most wonderful smell. You’re supposed to cut one of them loose and wrap it tight so the scent stays in. That’s for putting in with clothes and keeping your homefast strong.”
The wind was getting louder and stronger; Arakney raised her voice so she could be heard above it. “That one I must admit is new. There’s a story for each of these places?”
“Yah sure.”
“I’d like to hear them before I move on, unless it’s something you don’t tell outsiders.”
“Oh, nay. The last’s the Bower. On Journister Tor. Sarang the Bearman planted alda vines there and tended them seven years to ’tice his love to him and teach her the heart of life. You chew one of the leaves and sit in vigil and sometime during the night, a thing comes to you and it’s your secret thing. You don’t ever tell that, not even to your dearest love. But Sarang’s story’s no secret, everyone knows it.”
“I see.”
“When a girl can show water, gall, and leaf, then the old ones know she’s fit for wiving. ’S what I meant to do, but I can start again another day.…” She grinned. “When I can sleep dry not soggy nor snuffling.”
Half an hour later darkness plunged down on them as if the blustery storm winds had blown out the sun. Yohn ran ahead of Dapple, foxfire glimmering about her head and shoulders as she led them through the dangers of the night.
Piri clung to the back of the driver’s seat and watched the girl’s long easy stride as she loped into the whirling darkness. “Were,” he yelled in Arakney’s ear. “You sure you want to do this?”
“If that youngster’s a sample,” she yelled back, wind whipping the words from her mouth almost before they formed, “her folk like stories. I can work with that.”
Two small dark forms came swooping from the darkness; they slowed, blurred into small boys who trotted beside Yohn, talking to her in low rapid voices.
A moment later she ran back to the van, swung up, and plopped onto the cushion beside Arakney. “You better stop,” she said.
“Trouble? Whoa, Dapple, whoa boy.”
“Oggeri in the chook.” A jag of lightning showed Yohn with her fingers laced together, squeezed them until the bones showed white; her ears were laid back and her hair stood out in a stiff halo. “Swal said it was a whole swarm of ’em. Him and Hersty they’re cousins of mine so when they saw me, they came out the heather to give me word.” Her eyes darted about, whites gleaming. “I don’t know what to do.…”
Arakney took Yohn’s straining hands, eased them apart, held them between her own. “Quiet now, you’re a clever one, so use it.” She smiled as more lightning showed the rigidity melting from the girl. “First, who or what are Oggeri?”
Yohn blinked. “They mostly live in the desert on t’other side the moor, but every now and then a bunch take a notion and swarm the moor, eating their way ’cross.”
“Eating?” She moved her head close to Yohn’s so she could hear and see a little of the girl’s face.
“Uh-huh.” Yohn’s face was pinched, her eyes ringed with white. “Swal says they sneaked up when it started getting dark and…” She broke off, eyes squinting; mouth twisted as she fought back tears.
“Swarm. How many would that be?”
Yohn took a deep breath, pulled her hands loose. “Swat says more of them than us, he din’t stay to count.”
“So?”
“I dunno. Maybe five hands of them.”
“How did they manage to sneak up on a were-settlement?”
“I don’t understand.…”
“Don’t be silly, child. You needn’t try to deny the obvious.” She brushed at wisps of hair that escaped the braids and blew about her face, irritating her. “If I’m going to help you…”
Yohn’s tongue flicked across her lips. “Are you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I can.” Because, silly child, I’d rather have friends at my back than foes or indifference. “So, how did they manage to surprise your folk?”
Yohn turned her head. “Swal, come here a minute. ’S all right. Come on.”
The clot of darkness that was Swal muttered to his cousin, then came sidling closer, hugging the clumps of heather until he was beside the van, looking up at Yohn. The flickering lightning showed Arakney a dark boy with huge brown eyes and rough brown hair clipped close to his head, curly brown fur on the backs of his hands. “What?”
“Wasn’t it Chrang’s watch? How’d they get past without him blowing the horn?”
Swal shrugged. “Dunno, ’twas no different than always getting on for supper, you know, then there was Oggeri everywhere, two three of ’em for each chup, they jump up so fast seems like no one could turn, you know, ’cept Komchin, he shook ’em off an’ went bear an’ bust the Suryo loose long enough to reach horn, like I said, and then tads and we was running off so fast I din’t see what else happened.” He started as the other boy sidled up and brushed against him. “Hersty?”
Hersty was wee and sleek as a silver cat with eyes that glittered like polished pewter in the unsteady flashes. He pointed at Arakney. “Who she?”
Arakney leaned around Yohn. “I spin a tale or two and sing a song if folk sit still to listen. What do they look like, these Oggeri?”
; “Din’t see them up close,” Swal said.
Hersty shook his head, his long white hair flying out above his limber, pointed ears.
“Flappy things,” Swal said. “Taller’n Komchin by more’n a head.”
“And they stink. Oooo phah!” Hersty pinched his nose.
“It was like they was lying on the ground and come flying up in your face,” Swal said. “You know, like leaves.”
“An’ their hands’re bones,” Hersty said. “An’ they rattle when they walk.”
Arakney felt Piri’s hand tighten on her shoulder; she didn’t look at him. Ancient enemies, from another place, another time. I thought we’d seen the last of them. Her stomach knotted as she remembered her arrogant words. Because I can. Cha-la, as the child said, that’s true enough. Because I will, that’s truer yet. None of their business, though. Let’s get on with it. “Yohn, that tor you were talking about, can you climb up the back side of it, I mean without being seen from your chook?”
“Cha-la, a baby could do it.” Yohn twisted round. “Swal, you and Hersty go in front and lead us, huh?” As the boys went trotting away, she leaned back, sighed. “Tads like them run the heather a lot, practicing their turns, you know. They’ll remember it better than me.”
“Whoa, Dap, whoa boy.” Arakney wiped the spatter of raindrops from her face and scowled up at the huge rustling blotch atop the tor. “Can we get through that?”
Yohn’s full lips twitched into a brief smile but there was none in her eyes. “It’s only a baby ayyanga. It’ll be easy enough to get to the other side, nothing grows under an ayyanga.”
“Only a baby, hm?”Arakney shook her head. She swung down from the seat and began unclipping the harness from the van. While she worked, she talked. “Yohn, tell your cousins to take Dapple into the heather and stay with him till this is over. There’s a possibility that things will go wrong for us and I don’t want him hurt. I’m fond of him. He’s a good horse, old Dap.” She patted his flank as she moved along him, stripping the harness off him. More raindrops slanted into her, intermittent and separate still, the outriders on the storm.
Best of Marion Zimmer Bradley Fantasy Magazine, Volume 2 Page 18