Jo Clayton - Drinkers 2 - Blue Magic
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Blue Magic
Drinker of Souls Trilogy, Book 2
Jo Clayton
1988
DEMON FIRE, DEMON DOOM!
Tall, thin, brown and ivory, like a lightning-blasted tree, an eerie, ugly creature solidified in front of
Brann and reached for her.
Brann dropped to a squat, then sprang to one side, slapping against the floor and rolling onto her
feet. The thing looked stiff and clumsy, but it wasn’t, it was fast and flexible and frighteningly strong.
When Brann kicked out, rough, knotty fingers got half a grip on her leg but slipped off as she twisted
away. She bounced onto her feet, then gasped with sudden fear as a second set of hard, woody arms
closed about her and started to squeeze.
Even as Brann struggled to free herself, another Treeish solidified from air and stench. And another.
Desperately, Brann slapped her hands against her captor and began drawing its life into her—and as that
corrosive firestuff poured into a body not meant to contain demon energies, Brann screamed in
unbearable agony ....
Hilde saved me from a major error
so this book is dedicated to her and her sharp wits
1. The Kingdom Of Jade Torat. A Mountainside Near The Western Border.
Broad and yellow and heavy with the silt it carried, late summer low in its banks, the river Wansheeri
slipped noiselessly past the scattered mountains of the Uplands, driving to the Plains and the vast city that
guarded its mouth, Jade Halimm.
On one of those mountains, one close to the river and its deposits of clay, an old woman finished
unloading her kiln onto a handcart and started downhill with the cart, old and broad and in her way as
slow and heavy and powerful as the river. The sun was low in the west; the air moved slowly and smelled
of dust, powdered bark, pungent sticky resins from the conifers, a burning gold haze filtered through lazily
shifting needles; the shadows were dark and hot; sweat gathered on the old woman’s scalp beneath
strong white hair twisted into a feathery knot to keep it off her neck and poured in wide streams past her
ears. Ignoring sweat and heat, she plodded down a path her own feet had pounded into the mountainside
during the past hundred years. She was alone and content to be alone, showed it in the swing of her
heavy body and the work tune she was whistling. The pots rattled, the cart creaked, the old woman
whis-tled, here and there in the distance a bird sang a song as lazy as the sluggish air.
She reached a round meadow bisected by a noisy creek and started pulling the cart over flat stones
she had long ago muscled into place for the parts of the year that were wetter than this; the cart lurched,
the pots thudded, the iron tires of the cartwheels rumbled over the stones. She stopped whistling and put
more muscle into moving the cart, her face going intent as she fo-cused mind and body on the pushpole.
When she reached the bridge across the creek, she straightened her back and drew an arm across her
face, wiping away some of the sweat. A breeze moved along the water, cool after the still heat under the
trees. She unhooked the pushpole and shuffled to the siderail, lingering in that comparative coolness,
leaning against the top bar, head bent so the breeze could run across her neck. Across the meadow her
house and workshed waited, half hidden by ancienf knotty vines, their weathered wood fitting with grace
into the stony tree-covered slope behind them. She was pleasantly tired and looking for-ward to fixing
her supper, then consuming a large pot of tea while she re-read one of the books she’d brought up from
Jade Halimm to pass the evenings with when the children were gone. Yaril and Jaril were due back soon;
she smiled as she thought this. They’d have a thousand stories to tell about what they’d seen in their
travels, but that wasn’t the only reason she was begin-ning to grudge the hours until they came; she was
more attached to them than she liked to admit, even to her-self, they were her children, her nurslings,
though their human forms had grown older in the years (about two hundred of them now) since their
paths collided with hers on the slopes of Tincreal. Recently she’d begun to wonder if they might be
approaching something like pu-berty. Their outward forms, to some extent anyway, re-flected their
inward being, so if they seemed to be hovering on the verge of adolescence when they took on the
appearance of human children, what was that sup-posed to tell her? What was adolescence like for a
pair of golden shimmerglobes? How would she deal with it? They’d been restless the past several years,
ranging over much of the world, coming back to her only when their need for food was so demanding
they could no longer ignore it. She wrinkled her nose with distaste. She wanted them back, but it meant
she’d have to go down to Jade Halimm and hunt for victims she could justify sucking dry of life. High or
low, it didn’t matter to her, only the smell of their souls mattered. The folk of Jade Halimm who were
ordinarily honest (which meant hav-ing only small sins and meannesses on their consciences but no major
taint of corruption) were afraid at first when they knew the Drinker of Souls was prowling the night, but
experience taught them that they had nothing to fear from her. She took the muggers, the despoilers of
children, the secret murderers and such folk, leaving the rest alone. Many in Jade Halimm had reason to
be grateful to her; the mysterious deaths of certain mer-chants and moneylenders made their heirs
suddenly in-clined to generosity and improved their patience wonderfully (for a while at least and never to
the point of losing ,a profit). She frowned at the stream. How long have I been here? She counted the
year names to her-self, counted the cycles. Tungjii’s tender tits, I’m letting myself go, time slips like water
through my fingers, it seems like yesterday I came up the riverpath and argued old Dayan into taking me
on as his apprentice.
The western sky was throwing up rags of color as the sun dropped stone quick behind the peaks; the
old trout that lived under the bridge drifted out, a dark dangerous shade in the broken shadows of the
water. She sighed and pushed back onto her feet. If she wanted to get the pots stowed before full dark
there was no more time for dreaming. She set her hand on the pullpole, meaning to lock it back in front of
her, turned instead and stood gazing toward the river as she heard the hurried uneven pound of hooves
on the beaten earth of the riverpath. Whoever it is, he’s pushed that poor beast to the point of
breakdown. Leaving the cart where it was, she walked off the bridge, up the paving stones to the road
and stood waiting for the rider to show.
For a moment she thought of climbing to the house and barring the door, but she’d been settled in
content-ment too long and had lost the wariness endemic in the earlier part of her life. Who’d want to
hurt her, the an-cient potter of Shaynamoshu? Besides, it might be a desperate landsman running from the
whipmasters on one of the cherns along the Wansheeri. She’d hid more than one such fugitive after
Dayan died and left her the house.
The horse came out of the trees, a dapple gray black-ened with sweat, a black-clad boy on his back.
When he came even with her, the boy slid from the saddle, leaving the beast to stand behind him, head
down and shivering, a thin wiry boy, fifteen, sixteen, something like that, dark circles of fatigue about his
eyes, his face drawn and showing the bone, determination and terror haunting his eyes. “Brann born in
Arth Slya, Drinker of Souls?”
She blinked at him, considering the question. After a moment she nodded. “Yes.”
He fumbled inside his shirt, jerked, breaking the thong she could see about his neck. A moment more
of fumbling, him swaying on his feet, weary beyond wear-iness, then he brought out a small packet,
parchment folded over and over about something heavy, smeared copiously with black wax. “We the
blood of Harra Ha-zani say to you, remember what you swore.” He pushed the packet at her.
She took it, tucked it in her blouse and caught hold of him as he fell against her, fatigue clubbing him
down once the support of his drive to reach her was gone. A flash of darkness caught the corner of her
eye. A tiger-man popped from the air behind the boy. Before she could react, he slipped a knife up
under the boy’s ribs and vanished as precipitously as he came with a pop like a cork coming from a
bottle.
An icy wind touched her neck.
Something heavy, metallic slammed into her back. Cold fire flashed up through her.
Heavy breathing, broken in the middle. Faint popping sound.
Her knees folded under her, she saw herself toppling toward the boy’s body, saw the hilt of the knife
in his back, saw an exploding flower of blood, saw nothing more.
2. Two Months Earlier And A Thousand Miles South And West Along The
Coast From Jade Halimm.
In Owlyn Vale Of The Fifth Finger, Events Prepare For The Knife In Brann’s Back
SCENE: Late, the Wounded Moon in his crescent phase, just rising. One of the walled house-holds in
Owlyn vale. A small bedroom in the children’s wing. Three narrow beds in the room, one
sleeper, a girl about thirteen or fourteen, the other beds empty. The door opens. A boy of seven
slips through the gap, glides to the girl and takes her by the shoul-der, shakes her awake.
“Kori. Wake up, Kori. I need you.”
The whisper and the shaking dragged Kori out of cha-otic nightmare. “Wha ... who ...”
The shaking stopped. “It’s me, Kori. Trè.”
“Tre .. “ She fumbled her hands against the sheets, pushed up and turned in one move, her limbs all
angles, her body with limber grace, the topsheet and quilt winding around her until she shoved them away
and dropped her legs over the edge of the bed. She swept the hair out of her eyes and sat scowling at
her brother, a shivering dark shape in the starlit room. “Ahhh, Ire,”
she said, keeping her voice to a murmur so AuntNurse wouldn’t hear and come scold them, “shut the
door, silly, then tell me what’s biting you.”
He hurried over, pulled the door shut with such care the latch went home without a sound, hurried
back to his sister. She patted the bed beside her and he climbed up and sat where her hand had been,
sighing and lean-ing his weight against her. “It’s me now,” he said. “Zilos came to me, his ghost I mean.
He said I pass it to you, Trago; the Chained God says you’re the one. They’ll burn me too, Kori; when
the Signs start, they’ll know I’m the priest now and HE’ll know and HE’ll order his soldiers to burn me
like they did Zilos.”
Kori shivered. “You’re sure? Maybe it was a bad dream. Me, I’ve been having lots of those.”
Trago wriggled away from her. “I said he put his hand on me, Kori. He left the Mark.” He pulled his
sleeping shift away from his shoulder and let her see a hollow starburst, dark red like a birthmark; he’d
had no mark there before, he was born unflawed, she’d bathed him as a babe, part of girls’ work in the
Household of the Piyoloss clan. And she’d seen that brand before, seen it on the strong sunbrown
shoulder of Zilos the woodworker when he’d left his shirt off on a hot summer day, sitting on the bench
before his small house carving a doll’s head for her. Zilos, Priest of the Chained God. Three weeks ago
the soldiers of the Sorceror Settsimak-simin planted an oak post in the middle of the threshing floor, tied
Zilos to it, piled resinous pinewood about him and burned him to ash, standing around him and jeering at
the Chained God, calling him to rescue his Priest if he counted himself more than a useless ghost-thing.
And they promised to burn all such priests wher-ever they found them, Settsimaksimin was more
powerful than any pitiful little local god and that was his command and the command of Amortis his
patron. Amortis is your god now, they announced to the stub-born refusing folk of Owlyn Vale, Amortis
the bounti-ful, Amortis ripe and passionate, Amortis the bestower of endless pleasure. Rejoice that she
consents to bless you with her presence, rejoice that she calls you to her service.
Warily, feeling nauseated, 1Kori touched the mark. It was bloodwarm and raised a hair above the
paler skin of her brother’s shoulder. The first sign. He could hide that, but other signs would appear that
he couldn’t hide. One day mules might bray and rebel and come running from fields, dragging plows and
seeders and wagons behind them, mules might jump corral fences, break through stable doors, ignoring
commands, whips, all obstacles, they might come and kneel before him. Some such things would happen.
He couldn’t stop them. An-other day he might be compelled to go to every adult woman in Owlyn Vale
and touch her and heal all ills and announce the sex of each child in the wombs that were filled and bless
each such unborn so it would come forth without flaw and more beautiful than the morning. A third time,
it would be something else. The one cer-tainty in the situation was that whatever signs were manifested
would be public and spectacular. Kori sighed and held her brother in her arms as he sobbed out his fear
and indignation that this should happen to him.
When his sobbing died down and he lay quiescent against her, she murmured, “Do you know when
the signs will start? Tomorrow? Next week?”
Trago coughed, sniffed, pushed against her. She let him go and he wriggled away along the bed until
he could turn and look at her. He fished up the edge of her sheet and blew his nose into it, ignoring the
soft spitting of indignation this drew from her. “Zilos his Ghost said the Chained God gives me three
months to get used to this. Then he lets everyone know.”
“Stupid!” She bit down on the word, not because she feared the God, but she didn’t want
AuntNurse in there scolding her for staining her reputation by enter-taining a male in her bedchamber, no
matter that male was her seven-year-old brother, how you start is how you go on Auntee said. “Any
hope the god will change his mind?”
“No.” Trago cleared his throat again, caught her glare and swallowed the phlegm instead of spitting it
out.She scowled at her hands, took hold of the long flex-ible fingers of her left hand and bent them back
until the nails lay almost parallel to her arm. Among all the children and young folk belonging to the
Piyoloss clan, Trago was the one closest to her, the only one who laughed when she did, the only one
who could follow her flights of fancy, his dragonfly mind as swift as hers. If he burned, much of her would
burn with him and she didn’t like to think of what her life would be like after that. She smoothed one
hand over the other. “We’ve got to do something,” she murmured. She hugged her arms across her
shallow just-budding breasts. “I think ...” Her voice faded as she went still, her eyes opening wide,
staring inward at a sudden memory. A moment later, she shook herself and turned to him. “I’ve got an
idea ... maybe ... You go back to bed, Tre, I have to think about it. Without distraction. You hear?”
He wiggled back to her, caught hold of her hand and pressed it to the side of his face, then he
bounced off the bed and trotted out of the room, leaving the door swinging open.
Kori sighed and went to shut it. She leaned against it a moment looking at the chest at the foot of the
bed. She crossed to the chest, pulled up the lid and fished inside for a small box and carried that to the
window. She rested her elbows on the sill, turned the box over and over in her fingers. It was old and
worn from much ‘prior handling, fragrant kedron wood, warm brown with amber highlights. It was heavy
and clunked as she turned it. Harra Hazani’s gift to her children and her children’s children, passed from
daughter to daughter, moving from clan to clan as the daughters married into other families, each Harra’s
Daughter holder of the promise choosing the next, one of her own daughters or a young cousin in another
clan, she took great care to chose the proper one, it was a serious thing, passing the promise on and
keeping it safe. And it had been safe and secret through all the two centuries since Harm lived here and
bore her children. Kori set the box on the sill and folded her hands over it as she gazed through the small
diamond-shaped panes of glass set in lead strips. She couldn’t see much, what she wanted was the feel
of light on her face and a sense of space beyond the narrow confines of the room. There were times
when she woke restless and slipped out to dance in the moon-light, but she didn’t want to chance getting
caught. Not now. She opened the box, took out the heavy bronze medal with the inscrutable glyphs on
front and back, ran her fingers over it, set it on the sill, took out the stick of black sealing wax and the
tightly folded packet of parchment, ancient, yellowed, blank (she knew that because after Cousin Diyalla
called her to her deathbed and gave her the box and a hoarsely whispered expla-nation, she took the box
up onto the mountain behind Household Piyoloss, opened it and examined the three things it contained).
Send the medal to one called Brann, self-named Drinker of Souls, Diyalla whispered to Kori. Say to
her: we, the line of Harra Hazani, call on you to remember what you swore. This is what she
swore, that if Harra called on her, she would come from anywhere in the world to give her gifts
and her strength and her deadly touch to protect Harra or her children or her children’s children
as long as the line and she existed. And this Harra said to her daughter, the Drinker of Souls will
live long indeed. And this Harra said, trust her; she is generous beyond ordinary and will give
without stint. All very well, Kori thought, but how do I know where to send the medal? She smoothed
her thumb over the cool smooth bronze and gazed through the wavery glass as if somewhere in the
distortions lay the answer to her question. The window looked east and presently she made out the shape
of the broken crescent that was the Wounded Moon rising above the mountains that curved like
protecting hands about the mouth of Owlyn Vale where the river ran out and curled across the luscious
plain that knew three harvests a year and a harder poverty for most of its people than even the meanest
would ever face in the sterner, more grudging mountains. Absently caressing the medal, warming it with
her warmth, she stared a long time at the moon, her gaze as empty as her mind. There was a small round
hole near one end of the rectangle, she played with that a while. Harra must have worn it about her neck,
sus-pended on a chain or a thong. Kori set it on the sill, raised her shoulders as she took in a long breath,
low-ered them as she let it out. She went to the chest and took out a roll of leather thonging she’d used
for some-thing or other once and put away after she was finished with it in a rare burst of waste-not
want-not. She cut a piece long enough to let the medal dangle between the tiny hillocks of her to-be
breasts, slipping it beneath her sleeping shift. She went back to the window and stood a moment longer
watching the moon. I have to go out, I can’t think in here. I have to plan how to work this. The other
times she’d sneaked out, she’d pulled on a pair of old trousers she filched from the ragbag and a
sleeveless tunic that was getting to be too small for her. Somehow, though, that didn’t feel appropriate
this time. In spite of the danger and the beating she’d get if she were discovered, the disgrace she’d bring
on kin and clan, she went like she was, her thin coltish body barely hidden by the fine white cloth she had
woven herself on the family loom. She glided through the house silent as the earthsoul of a murdered child
and out the postern gate, remembering the doubletwelve of soldiers quar-tered on the Vale folk only after
she was irretrievably beyond the protection of the House walls. Like a star-tled, no a frightened, fawn
she fled up the hillside to a small glade with a giant oak in the center of it, an oak that felt to her as always
old as the stone bones of the mountain.
She drifted onto dew-soaked grass; her feet were ach-ing with cold but she ignored that and danced
slowly around the perimeter of the glade through the dappled moonlight, around and around, singing a
wordless song that wavered through four notes no more, singing her-self deeper into trance, around and
around, gradually spiraling inward until she spread her arms and em-braced the tree, circling it a last
time,’ drinking in the dark dry smell of it, breasts, belly and thighs rubbing against its crumbly rough bark.
When she finished the round, she folded liquidly down and curled her body between two great roots
pushing—up through layers of dead and rotting leaves. With a small sigh, she closed her eyes and
seemed to sleep.
As she seemed to sleep, a dark thin figure seemed to melt from the tree and crouch over her, long
long gray-brown hair drifting like fog about a thin pointed face, androgynous, with an eerie beauty that
would have been ugliness if the face were flesh. Long graceful fingers of brown glass seemed to brush
across Kori’s face, she seemed to smile then sigh. Brown glass fingers seemed to touch the leather thong,
seemed to slide quickly away quivering with distaste, seemed to draw the medal from under the shift,
seemed to stroke it smiling, seemed to hold the medal in one hand and spread the other long long hand
across Kori’s face.
How Harra Hazani Came To Owlyn Vale
Gibbous, waxing toward full, the Wounded Moon shone palely on a long narrow ship that sliced
through the windwhipped, foamspitting water of the sea called Notoea Tha, and touched with delicate
strokes the na-ked land north of the ship, a black-violet blotch that gradually gained definition as the
northwestering course of the smuggler took her closer and closer to the riddle rock at the tip of that
landfinger, rock pierced again and again and again by wind and water so that it sang day and night, slow
sad terrible songs, and was only quiet one hour every other month.
On the deck by the foremast a woman slept, wrapped in blankets and self-tethered to the mast by a
knot she could pull loose with a quick jerk of her hand. All that could be seen of her was the pale curve
of a temple and long dark hair confined in half a dozen plaits that danced to the tug of the wind, their gold
beetle clasps tunk-tonking against the wood, the small sounds lost in the creaks, snaps and groans of the
flitting ship. A man sat beside her, his back against the mast, a naked sword across his thighs. Now and
then he sucked at a wine-skin, the pulls getting longer and more frequent as the night turned on its wheel.
He was a big man and in the kind darkness had the athletic beauty that sculptors give to the statues of
heroes; even in daylight he had the look of a hero if you didn’t look too closely for he was at that stage of
ripeness that was also the first stage of decay.
The night went on with its placidities and tensions intact; the Wounded Moon crawled, up over the
mast and began sliding toward the heaving black water with its tracery of foam; the groaning song of the
riddle rock grew loud enough to ride over the noises of the sea, the wind and the straining ship and creep
into the fuddled mind of the blond hero who stirred uneasily and reached for the empty skin.
Remembering its emptiness before he completed the gesture, he settled back into the muddled not-sleep
that was a world away from the vigi-lance he was being paid for. The woman stirred, mut-tered, moved
uneasily, on the verge of waking.
Shadows began converging on the foremast, dark forms moving with barefoot silence and confident
agil-ity, Captain and crew acting according to their nature, a nature she’d read easily enough when she
made ar-rangements to leave Bandrabahr on that stealthy ship, needing the stealthiest of departures to
escape the too-pressing attentions of an ex-friend of her dead father, a man of power in those parts.
Having no choice in trans-port and understanding what a swamp she was plunging into, she hired the
hero as a bodyguard and he’d done the job well enough up to this moment but her luck and his were
about to run out.
The hero’s throat was cut with a soft slide, the sound lost in the moan from the riddle rock now only
a few shiplengths off, but since most of the crew were here, not tending the ship, she lurched in
annoyance at being neglected and sent the hero’s sword clanging against the deck. Half awake already,
the woman jerked the knot loose and was on her feet running, knives in both hands, slashing, dodging,
darting, slipping grips, scrambling on her knees, rolling onto her feet, creating and reading confusion,
playing her minor whistle magic to augment that confusion, winning the shiprail, plunging overside into the
cold black water.
She swam toward the land, cursing under her breath because she was furious at having to abandon
every-thing she wasn’t wearing. Especially furious at losing her daroud because her father had given it to
her and she’d managed to keep it through a lot of foolishness and it was her means of earning her keep.
She promised herself as soon as she reached the shore and could give her mind to it she’d lay such a
curse on the Captain and crew, they’d moan louder and longer than that damn rock ahead of her.
Getting onshore without being battered and torn into ground meat and shattered bone proved more
difficult than she expected; the smaller rocks jutting from the sea around the base of the riddle rock were
home to barnacles with edges sharp enough to split a thought in half while water was sucked in and out of
the washholes in the great rock, flowing in powerful surges that caught hold of her and dragged her a
while, then shoved her a while, then dragged her—some more. Half drowned, bleeding from a hundred
cuts, she caught a fingertip hold on a crack in a waterpolished ledge and used will and what was left of
her strength to muscle herself high enough out of the water to roll onto the ledge where she lay on her
side, gasping and spitting out as much of the sea inside her as she could. When she was as calm as she
was going to get, she began the herka trypps that were meaningless in every way except that they helped
her focus mind and energy and got her ready to use the more demanding levels of her magic. Blending
modes she learned from her father with others she’d picked up here and there in her travels since he
died, she began to draw heat from the air and glamour from the moon-light and twisted them into tools to
seal the cuts where blood was leaking away and taking strength with it and when that was done, she
pulled heat and glamour into herself and stored it, then used it to shape the curse and used her anger to
power the curse and shot her curse after the ship like poison arrow, releasing it with a flare of satisfaction
that turned to ash a moment later as a net of weariness settled around her and pinned her flat to the cold
stone.
Cold. She wasn’t bleeding any longer, but the cold was drawing the life out of her. Get up, she told
herself, get on your feet, you can’t stay here. Struggling against the weight of that bone deep fatigue,
searching out holds on the face—of the riddle rock, she forced herself onto her knees and then onto her
feet. For a minute or an hour, she never knew which, she stood shivering and mind-dulled, trying to get
her thoughts ordered again, trying to focus her energy so she could understand where she was and what
she had to do to get out of there. The riddle rock moaned about her, a thousand fog horns bellowing, the
noise jarred her over and over from her fragile focus and left her swaying precariously on the point of
tumbling back into the water. The tide began following the moon and backed away from her, its stinging
spray no longer battered her legs. Once again she tried the herka trypps, closing her numb hands tighter
in the cracks so the pain would break through the haze thickening in her head. Slowly, ah so slowly she
regained her ability to focus, but the field was nar-row, a pinhead wide, no more. She drew power into
herself, plucking it from tide and moonlight, from the ancient roots of the rock she stood on, a hairfine
trickle of strength that finally was enough and only just enough to let her see the way off the rock, then
shift her clumsy aching body along that way until she was finally walk-ing on thin soil where grasses grew
gray and tough, where the brush was crooked and close to the ground. Half drowned still, blind with
effort and fatigue, she walked on and on until she reached a place where there were trees and where the
trees had dropped leaves that weren’t fully rotted yet, where she could dig herself a nest and cover
herself over with the leaves and, at last, let herself sleep ....
She woke late in the afternoon of the following day, stiff, sore, hungry, thirsty, sea salt and anger
bitter in her mouth. The summer sun was hot and the air in the aspen grove heavy with that heat. Her
aches and bruises said stay where you are, don’t move, but the clamor in her belly and the sweat that
crawled stickily over her body spoke more strongly. Gathering will and the rem-nants of her strength she
crawled from her nest among the leaves and used the smooth powdery trunk of the nearest aspen to pull
herself onto her feet.
She leaned against the tree and drew a little on its strength though all her magics had their cost and
her need would always outpace the gain; as soon as her will weakened she’d pay that cost and it would
be a heavy one. Stupid and more than stupid wasting her strength heaving that curse after the Captain
and his crew; what she’d thrown so thoughtlessly away last night might mean the difference between
living and dying this day. She grimaced and gave regret a pass, few things more futile than going over and
over past mistakes; learn from them if there was anything—to learn, then let them go and save your
strength for today’s problems which are usually more than sufficient. Yesterday banished, she turned her
mind to present needs.
Food, water, shelter, and where should she go from here? Food? It was summer, there should be
mush-rooms, berries, even acorns if those dark green crowns farther inland were oaks. She touched her
arms, felt the knives snugged under her sleeves; she kept hold of them when she went override and didn’t
start swimming until they were sheathed. There were plenty of saplings near to hand. She could make
cords for snares from their fibrous inner bark, for a sling too, if she sacrificed a bit of her shirt for the
pocket and found a few smooth stones. There were birds about, she could hear them, they’d feed her,
their blood would help with her thirst, though finding fresh water was becoming more urgent as time slid
past, not just for thirst, she needed to wash the dried salt off her skin. She pushed away from the aspen
and turned back her cuffs. Where do I go from here? After working stiff fingers until she could hold a
knife without fear of dropping it, she began slicing through the bark of a sapling as big around as her
thumb. No point in calling water and using that as a guide, she was surrounded by water and she wasn’t
enough of a diviner to tell fresh from salt. Ah well, this was one of Cheonea’s Finger Headlands, salt sea
on one side, salt inlet on the other; if she paralleled the inlet shore she was bound to come on streams and
eventually into a settlement. The folk in the Finger Vales were said to be fierce and clannish and quick to
defend themselves from encroachment, but courteous enough to a stranger who showed them courtesy
and generous to those in need who happened their way. She sliced the bark free in narrow strips, peeling
them away from the wood and draping them over her knee, glancing at the sky now and then to measure
how much light she had left. No point in making snares, she didn’t have time to hunt out game trails, she
wanted to be on her way come the morning. She left the first sapling with half its bark, not wanting to kill
it entirely, moved on to another. A sling, yes, I’m rusty, have to get close and hope for a bit of luck ....
She finished the cords, made her sling, found some pebbles and some luck and dined on plump
brispouls roasted over a fire it took her some muscle and blisters to make, a firebow had never been her
favorite tool and she was even less fond of it now. The pouls had a strong taste and the only salt she had
was crusted on her skin, but they were hot and tender and made a pleasant weight in her stomach; she
finished the meal with a bark basket of mourrberries sweet and juicy (though she had to spend half an
hour dislodging small flat seeds from be-tween her teeth). By that time the sunset had faded and the stars
were out thick as fleas on a piedog’s hide. Sighing, her discomforts reduced to a minimum, she got
heavily to her feet, stripped off her trousers and shirt (leaving her boots on as she had the night before
because she knew she’d never get her feet back in them), she wadded up her trousers and scrubbed
hard at all the skin she could reach. The scum left behind when the sea water dried was already raising
rashes and in the worst of those rashes her skin was starting to crack. When she’d done all she could,
she dressed, dumped dirt on the remnants of the fire, smothering it carefully (she didn’t relish the thought
of waking in the center of a forest fire). A short distance away, she made a new sleeping nest, lay down
in it and pulled dry leaves over her. Very soon she sank into a sleep so deep she did not notice the short
fierce rain an hour later.
She woke with the dawn, shivering and feeling the bite at the back of the eyes that meant a head cold
fruit-ing in her. She rubbed the heel of her left hand over the medal hanging between her breasts. Ah
Brann, oh Brann, why aren’t you here when I need you? With a coughing laugh, she stretched, strained
the muscles in face and body, slapped at her soggy shirt and trousers, knocking away the damp leaves
clinging to her. She shivered, feeling uncertain, there was something .... She looked at the three saplings
she’d stripped of half their bark, shivered again as an image popped into her head of babies crying in pain
and shock. Following an impulse that was half delirium, she scored the palm of her left hand with one of
her knives and smeared the blood from the wound along the wounded sides of the little trees. She felt
easier at once and almost at once found a clean pool of water in the rotted crotch of a lightning blasted
tree. She drank, washed her wounded hand, then set off along the mountainside, keeping the morning
wind in her face since as far as she could tell, it was blowing out of the northeast and that was where she
wanted to go.
She walked all morning in a haze of growing discom-fort as the cold grew worse and her cut hand
throbbed. Twice she stopped at berry thickets and ate as much as she could hold and took more of the
fruit with her pouched in the tail of her shirt. A little after the sun reached zenith she came to a small
stream; with the expenditure of will and much patience combined with quick hands, she scooped out two
unwary trout, then stripped and used the sand collected around the stones in the streambed to scrub
herself clean, she even let down her hair and used the sand on that though she wasn’t too sure of the
result and never managed to get all the grit washed out of the tangled mass. After she pounded some of
the dirt out of her clothing and spread it to dry over a small bushy conifer, she cooked the trout on a
sliver of shale and finished off the berries. The sun was warm and soothing, the stream sang the knots out
of her soul and even the cold seemed to loose its hold on head and chest. Her shirt and trousers were still
wet when she finished eating, so she stretched out on her stomach on a long slant of granite that jutted
into the stream and lay with her head on her crossed arms, her aching eyes shut.
The sun had vanished behind the trees when she woke. She yawned, went still. Something resilient
and rather warm was pressed against her side. Warily she eased her head up until she could look over
her shoul-der. A large snake, she couldn’t read the kind in the inadequate view she had, lay in irregular
loops on the warm stone, taking heat from it and her. Its head was lifting, she could feel it stirring as it
sensed the change in her. She summoned concentration, licked her lips and began whistling a two-note
sleepsong, the sound of it hardly louder than the less constant music of the stream, on and on, until the
snake lowered its head and the loops of its body stretched and loosened. She threw herself away from it
and curled onto her feet, her heart fluttering, her breath coming quick and shallow. The snake reared its
black head, seemed to stare at her, split red tongue tasting the air. For a moment snake and woman held
that tense pose, then the snake dropped its head and flowed from the stone into the water and went
swimming off, a ripple of black, black head lifted. She dropped her shoulders and sighed, weariness and
sick-ness flooding over her again. She pulled her trousers and shirt off the baby fir and shook them out
more care-fully than she would have before the snake: Shivering with a sudden chill she strapped on her
knives, pulled on her shirt and trousers, swung the long double belt about her and buckled it tight. She
checked about the rock, collected odds and ends she’d emptied from her pockets when she washed her
clothes, went on her knees and drank sparingly from the stream, then started on. There was at least an
hour left before sundown and she might as well use it.
For seven days she moved inland, gathering food as she went, enough to fend off hunger cramps and
keep her feet moving up around down as she patiently ne-gotiated ravines and circled impossible
bramble patches or brush too thick to push through, up around down. It was summer so the rains when
they came were quick to pass on and the nights were never freezing though the air could get nippy
around dawn. By the end of those seven days she was on the lower slopes of mountains that, were
beginning to shift away from the inlet, moving ever deeper into the great oak forest, walking through a
brooding twilight with unseen eyes following her. The ground was clear and easy going except for an
occa-sional tricky root that broke through the thick padding of old leaves. There were a few glades
where one of the ancient oaks had blown over and left enough room for vines and brush to grow, but not
many; getting food for herself was hard and getting wood to cook it would have been harder if she hadn’t
decided to dispense with fire altogether. As soon as she stepped into that green gloom, she got the strong
impression that the trees wouldn’t take to fire and (though she laughed at her fancies, as much as she
could laugh with the persistent and disgusting cold draining her strength) would deal harshly with anyone
burning wood of any kind here, even down deadwood. She spent an hour or so that night scooping wary
trout from a stony stream, then gutted them and ate them raw. And was careful to dig a hole and bury the
skins, bones and offal near the roots on one of the trees. The next morning she went half an hour
upstream, got herself another fish and ate that raw too and buried what she didn’t eat. Urged on by the
trees who weren’t hostile exactly, just unwelcoming, she hurried through that constant verdant twilight,
walking as long as her legs held out before she stopped to eat and sleep.
Late afternoon on the seventh day she stopped walk-ing and listened, finding it difficult to believe her
ears. Threading through the soughing of the leaves and the guttural creaks from the huge limbs she heard
a steady plink plink plink. It got gradually louder, turned into the familiar dance of a smith’s hammer. The
ground underfoot got rockier, the trees were smaller, aspen and birch and myrtle mixed with the oak and
the sunlight made lacy patterns on the earth and in the air around her. Even her cold seemed to relent.
She came out of the trees and stood looking down into a broad ravine with a small stream wandering
along the bottom. It was an old cut, the sides had a gentle slope with thick short grass like green fur. The
sound of the hammering came from farther uphill, around a slight bend and behind some young trees.
She walked around the trees, moving silently more from habit than because she felt it necessary. He
had his back to her, working over something on an anvil set on an oak base. It was an openair forge,
small and con-venient in everything but location. Why was he out here alone? His folk might be around
the next curve of the mountain, but she didn’t think so, there’d be some sign of them, dogs barking, cattle
noises, she knew the Fin-ger Vale folk had cattle, shouts of children, a thousand other sounds. None of
that. He wore a brief leather loin-cloth, a thong about his head to keep thick, dark blond hair out of his
eyes, and a heavy leather apron, nothing more. She watched the play of muscles in his back and
buttocks, smiled ruefully and touched her hair. You must look like one of the Furies halfway long a
ven-geance trail. She touched her arms, the knives were in place, loose enough to come away quickly
but not loose enough to fall out; she unbuttoned her cuffs and turned them back, a smith was generally an
honest man not overly given to rape, but she’d lost her trusting nature a long way back and the
circumstances were odd. A last breath, then she walked around where he could see her.
He let the hammer fall a last time on the object he was shaping (it seemed to be a large intricate link
for the heavy chain that coiled at his feet) and stood staring at her, gray green eyes widening with
surprise. “Tissu, anash? Opop’erkrisi? Ti’bouleshi?” He had a deep mu-sical voice, even though she
didn’t understand a word, the sound of it gave her a pleasurable shiver.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Do you speak the kevrynyel?”
“Ah.” He made a swift secret warding sign and brushed the link off the anvil to get it away from her
prying eyes. “Trade gabble,” he said. “Some. I say this, who you, where you come from, what you
wish?”
“A traveler,” she said. “Off a ship heading past your coast. Its captain saw a way of squeezing more
coin out of me; after a bit of rape he was going to sell me the next port he hit. I had a guard, but the lout
got drunk and let them cut his throat. Not being overenchanted by either of the captain’s intentions, I
went overside and swam ashore. Aaahmmm, what I want ... A meal of something more than raw fish, a
hot bath, no, several baths, clean clothing, a bed to sleep in, alone if you don’t mind my saying it, and a
chance to earn my keep a while. I do some small magics, my father was a scholar of the Rukha Nagg.
Mostly I make music. I had a daroud, the captain has that now, but I can make do with most anything
that has strings. I know the Rukha dance tunes and the songs of many peoples. If there’s the desire, I can
teach these to your singers and music makers. I cannot sew or embroider, spin or weave, my mother
died before she could teach me such things and my father forgot he should. And, to be honest, I never
reminded him. There anything more you want to know?”
“Only your name, anash.”
“Ah, your forgiveness, I am Harra of the Hazani, daughter of the Magus Tahno Hazzain. I see you
are a smith, I don’t know the customs here, would it be dis-courteous to ask a name of you, O Nev?”
“For a gift, a gift. Simor a Piyolss of Owlyn Vale. If you would wait a breath or two beyond the trees
there, I’ll take you to my mother.”
And so Sirnor the Smith, priest of the Chained God, took the stranger woman to the house of
Piyoloss and when the harvest was in and the first snow on the ground, he married her. At first the Vale
folk were dis-mayed, but she sang for them and saved more than one of them from the King’s levy with
her small magics which weren’t quite as small as she’d admitted to and after her first son was born most
constraints vanished. She had seven sons and a single daughter. She taught them all that she had learned,
but it was the daughter who learned the most from her. Her daughter married into the Faraziloss and her
daughter’s daughters (she had three) into the Kalathim, the Xoshallar, the Bach-arikoss. She heard the
story of Brann and her search, she received the medal, the sealing wax and the parch-ment, she had the
box made and passed it with the promise to the liveliest of her granddaughters, a Xosh-allarin. As she
passed something else. Shnor who could read the heart of mountains found a flawless crystal as big as his
two fists and brought it to his cousin, a stone-worker, who cut a sphere from it and burnished it until it
was clear as the, heart of water; he gave this to Harra as a gift on the birth of their daughter. She knew
how to look into it, and see to the ends of the world and taught her daughter how to look. It is not
difficult she said, merely find a stillness in yourself and out of the stillness take will. If the gift of seeing is
yours, and since you have my blood in you, most likely it is, then you can call what you need to see.
To find the crystal, daughter of Harra, go to the secret cavern in the ravine where Simor first met
Harm, the place where the things of the Chained God are kept safe. Find in yourself the stillness and out
of the still-ness take will, then you will see where you should send the medal.
In the morning Kori went before the Women of Pi-yoloss. “The Servant of Amortis has been
watching me. I am afraid.”
The Women looked at each other, sighed. After a long moment, AuntNurse said, “We have seen it.”
She eyed Kori with a skepticism born of long experience. “You have a suggestion?”
“My brother Trago goes soon to take his turn with the herds in the high meadows, let me go with him
instead of Kassery. The Servant and his acolytes don’t go there, the soldiers don’t go there, if I could
stay up there until the Lot time, I would be out of his way and once it was Lot time, I’d be going down
with the rest to face the Lot and after that, if the Lot passed me, it wouldn’t be long before it was time for
my betrothing and then even he wouldn’t dare put his hands on me. I tell you this, if he does put his hands
on me, I will kill myself on his doorstep and my ghost will make his days a misery and his nights a horror.
I swear it by the ghost of my mother and the Chains of the God.”
AuntNurse seached Kori’s face, then nodded. “You would do it. Hmm. There are things I wonder
about you, young Kori.” She smiled. “I’m not accustomed to hearing something close to wisdom coming
out your mouth. Yes. It might be your ancestor, you know which I mean, speaking to us, her cunning, her
hot spirit. I wonder what you really want, but no, I won’t ask you, I’ll only say, take care what you do,
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BlueMagicDrinkerofSoulsTrilogy,Book2JoClayton1988 DEMONFIRE,DEMONDOOM!Tall,thin,brownandivory,likealightning-blastedtree,aneerie,uglycreaturesolidifiedinfrontofBrannandreachedforher.Branndroppedtoasquat,thensprangtooneside,slappingagainstthefloorandrollingontoherfeet.Thethinglookedstiffandclumsy,but...
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