Jo Clayton - Drinkers 1 - Drinker Of Souls

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Drinker of Souls

Drinker of Souls Trilogy, Book 1

Jo Clayton

1986

“I am the Drinker of Souls ...

and these are the mountain’s children, born of fire and stone.

“Feel fortunate, O man, that I am not thirsty now. Feel fortunate, my enemy, that the mountain’s

children are not hungry. Were it otherwise, you would die the death of deaths.

“All I desire is to pass in peace through this miser-able land. Let me be, warrior, and I’ll let you be.

You and your kind. Anger me, and you will never see another day ...

Jo Clayton has written:

The Diadem Series

Diadem From The Stars

Lamarchos

Irsud

Maeve

Star Hunters

The Nowhere Hunt

Ghosthunt

The Snares Of Ibex

Quester’s Endgame

Duel Of Sorcery

Moongather

Moonscatter

Changer’s Moon

and

A Bait Of Dreams

Drinker Of Souls

1. A Thief and His Sister

AITUATEA SHIFTED the bend in his legs to ease his aching hip, careful as he moved to keep the bales

piled under him from squeaking, the bales of raw unwashed fleeces that were a stench in his nostrils but

sheltered him from noses and teeth of the patrollers’ rathounds. He raised his head a little and stared at

the curls of mist drifting across the calm black water of the bay. A wandering breeze licked at his face,

tugged at his slicked-back hair, carried past his ears just enough sound to underline the silence and peace

of the night. “This is a bust,” he whispered to the one who stood at his shoulder. “She won’t come.”

“The man on the mountain said ...” His sister’s voice was the crackling of ice crystals shattering.

“Look there.” She pointed past the huddling godons beyond the wharves, their rambling forms lit from

behind by torches burning before the all-night winestalls, the joyhouses, the cookshops of the water

quarter. The Wounded Moon was rising at last, a broken round of curdled milk behind the spiky roof of

the Temple. She swung round an arm colorless and transparent as glass, outlined with shimmers like

crystal against black velvet and pointed across the harbor. “And there,” she said. She was all over

crystal, even the rags she wore. “Out beyond the Woda-an. A blind ship from Phras, dropping anchor.”

He looked instead at the Woda livingboats shrouded in the thickening mist, their humped roofs like

beetle shells catching bits of moonlight. A blind ship. The Woda-an hated them, those blind ships. There

were torches flaring up here and there among the boats as the Woda-an grew aware of the visitor,

clanking raffles starting up, growing louder, fading, sounding and fading in another place and another as

they invoked the protection of the Godalau and her companion gods against the evil breathed out by the

black ship that had no eyes to let her see her way across the seas. He sneered at them with Hina scorn

for the superstitions of other races. They’ll be thick as fishlice at the Temple tomorrow. Where’s that

curst patrol? I want to get out of this. She won’t come, not this late. He propped his chin on his fists

and watched the ship. He drowsed, the Wounded Moon creeping higher and higher behind him. The

guard patrol was late. Hanging round the winestalls. Let them stay there. “Let’s get out of this,” he

whispered. “That ship’s settled for the night. Won’t no one be coming ashore.” He twisted his head

around so he could see his sister. She took her stubbornness into the water with her, he thought. She

stood at his left shoulder as she’d stood since the night she came swimming through water and air and

terror to find him while her body rocked at the bottom of the bay. The black glitters that were her eyes

stayed fixed on the Phras ship as if she hadn’t heard him. “The man on the mountain said she’d come,”

she said.

“Doubletongue old fox.”

She turned on him, stamping her crystal foot down beside his shoulder, her crystal hair flying out from

her head. “Be quiet, fool. He could curse you out of your body and where’d I be then?”

Aituatea rubbed oily fleeces between his palms, shiv-ered at the memories her words invoked. Old

man kneel-ing in his garden on the mountain, digging in the dirt. Clean old man with a skimpy white beard

and wisps of white hair over his ears, tending rows of beans and cab-bages. Old man in a sacking robe

and no shoes, not even straw sandals, and eyes that saw into the soul. Aituatea, jerked his shoulders,

trying to shake off a growing fear, went quiet as he heard the faint grate of bale shifting against bale. He

stared unhappily at the blind ship; whis-pering to himself, “It’ll be over soon, has to be over soon.” Trying

to convince himself that was true, that he’d be through dealing with things that horrified him. The Kadda

witch dead and Hotea at rest, which she would be now but for that bloodsucker, and me rid of her

scolding and complaining and always being there, no way to get free of those curst eyes. He wanted to

climb down from the bales and get off Selt for the next dozen years but he couldn’t do that. If he did that,

he’d never get rid of Hotea, she’d be with him the rest of his life and after. He suppressed a groan.

Out on the water the torches scattered about the Woda-an watercity were burning low and the

rattles had gone quiet. Behind him on Selt Island’s single mountain where the Temple was, rocket after

rocket arced into the darkness, hissing and spitting and exploding to drive off the enemies of the Godalau

and her companion gods.

Part of a counting rhyme for a fete’s fireworks:

Blue glow for the Godalau

Sea’s Lady, sky’s Queen

Red shine for the Gadajine

Storm dragons spitting fire

Yellow flash for Jah’takash

Lady ladling out surprise

Green sheen for Isayana

Birthing mistress, seed and child

Purple spray for Geidranay

Gentle giant grooming stone

Moonwhite light for Tungjii-Luck

Male and female in one form

Luck, he thought. My luck’s gone sour these past six months. Aituatea repeated to himself (with

some pleasure) fool, fool, fool woman. She never thinks before she does something. Going to the

Temple the day after year-turn when she knew Temueng pressgangs would be swarming over the

place, sucking up Hina girls for the new year’s bondmaids. She should’ve thought first, she

should’ve thought ....

WHAT HAPPENED, he said, where you been all this time?

Thanks a bunch for worrying about me, she said. He heard her as a cricket chirp in his head, an itch

behind his ears. I was working the Temple court, she said, reproach in her glittering glass eyes. You were

off somewhere, brother, Joyhouse or gambling with those worthless hangabouts you call your friends,

and the money was gone when I looked in the housepot and there wasn’t a smell of food or tea in the

place. What’d you want me to do, starve? It being the day after year-turn, I knew every Hina with spare

coin and unwed daughters would be burning incense by the fistfuls. I spotted a wool merchant with a fat

purse dangling from his belt and started edging up to him. I get so busy checking out running room and

easing through his herd of daughters, I forget to look out for pressgangs. Hadn’t been for those giggling

geese I might’ve heard them and took off. I don’t hear them and they get us all.

They take us, me and the wool merchant’s daughters, across the causeway, me hoping to be put in

some little havalar’s House where I can get away easy and take a thing or two with me for my trouble,

but I see we are heading all the way up the high hill to the Tekora’s Palace. I am cursing you, brother,

and thinking when I get home, I am going to peel your skin off a strip at a time.

She was much calmer at this point in the story, drifting about the room, touching familiar things with

urgent strokes of her immaterial fingers as if she sought reassurance from them. She hovered a moment

over the teapot, smiling as she absorbed its fragrance.

I know I can get loose again easy enough, but the Tekora’s a mean bastard with girls that run away.

You wouldn’t know that, would you, brother? Only women you bother about are those no-good whores

in the joyhouses.

Aituatea scowled; dying hadn’t changed his sister’s hab-its in the least as far as he could see. Shut up

about that, he said. Get on with what happened.

Branded on the face, brother, branded runaway and thief, who’d let me get close enough to lift a

thing? So when the Temueng Housemaster puts me to work in the Tekora’s nursery, I am ready to act

humble before those Temueng bitches when I’d rather slit their skinny throats! She grimaced in disgust.

You know what they do to me? Hauling slops, picking up after those Temueng nits, not lifting a finger to

help themselves, running my feet to the bone fetching things they could just as easily get for themselves.

Her chirp sounded bitter and full of rage; she was madder than he’d ever seen her, even when he

turned fourteen and ran off with the housemoney to buy time with a joygirl, what was her name? He

shook his head, couldn’t remember her name or what she looked like.

After a month of that, Hotea said, I am about ready to skip out even if it means I have to get off

Utar-Selt, live low the rest of the year. You could take care of yourself, brother dear, though I did mean

to warn you they might connect you with me if your luck went sour as mine. The nursery garden has a

high wall, but there are plenty of trees backed up against that wall. On its other side is the guard walkway

and a pretty steep cliff, but I am not fussing about that, I can climb as good as you, brother, and swim

better, and the causeway’s near. I am thinking about going over the wall that night, or the one after,

depending, when fat old Tungjii, heesh jabs me in the ass again. The Tekora’s youngest daughter

disappears.

Hotea beat her fist several times on Aituatea’s shoulder, making him wince at the stinging touches. He

jerked away, then clutched at his head as the sudden movement woke his hangover and started the

demon in his skull pounding a maul against his temples.

Hotea laughed, the scorn in the soundless whisper rais-ing the hairs along his spine. Fool, she said,

you’ll kill yourself, you go on like this. You need a wife, that’s what, a good woman who’ll keep you in

order better than I could, give you sons. You don’t want our line to die with you, do you, brother?

She shook herself, her form shivering into fragments and coming together again.

Listen, she said, you got to do something about that witch, as long as she lives I won’t rest.

She wrung her hands together, darted in agitation about the room, gradually grew calmer as the

grandmother ghost patted her arm, ragged lips moving in words that were only bursts of unintelligible

noise. She drifted back to hover in front of Aituatea.

The Tekora’s youngest daughter, she said, three years old and just walking, a noxious little nit who

should’ve been drowned at birth. On the eve of the new moon they turn the place upside down, double

the work on us. I don’t think much about it except that I’d strangle her myself if I come across her, she is

wrecking my plans because she took off. Three days later they find her face-down in the nursery

fountain, shriveled and bloodless like a bug sucked dry. Not drowned but dead for sure. ‘F I was scared

of leaving before, well! Tekora would tear Silili brick from plank looking for me, or that’s what I’m

think-ing then. The other maids are as jittery as me. We are Hina in the house of the Temueng, that

makes us guilty even if we do nothing, and the other bondmaids are too stupid and cowed to say boo to

a butterfly. Housemaster beats us, but his heart isn’t much in it. And things go on much the same as

before. On the eve of the next new moon another daughter goes and I am there to see it.

They order us bondmaids to sleep in the nursery to make sure the daughters don’t just wander off.

This night is my turn. A bondmaid brings me a cup of tea. I sniff at it when she goes out. Herb tea. Anise

and something else, can’t quite place it. I take the cup to the garden door and look at it but can’t see

anything wrong. I sniff at it again and I start getting a touch dizzy. I throw the tea out the door and carry

the cup back and put it by my pallet so it looks like I drank it. I stretch out. I’m scared to sleep but I do,

up before dawn running like a slave for those bitches, I’m tired to the bone. Something wakes me. I

don’t move but open my eyes a slit and keep breathing steady. A minute after that I see the Tekamin

standing in the door-way, the Tekora’s new wife she is, he set her over the others and they are mad as

fire about it, but what can they do? Hei-ya brother, I have to listen to a lot of bitching when I am fetching

for the other wives, they don’t get a sniff of him after he brings that woman back with him from Andurya

Durat. No one knows where she comes from, who her family is or her clan, even the wives are scared to

ask. And there she is in that doorway, slim and dark and lovely and scaring the stiffening out of me.

She comes gliding in, touches the second youngest daugh-ter on her face and the daughter climbs out

of the bed and follows her and I know what she is then, she’s a Kadda witch, a bloodsucker.

I lay shivering on my pallet wishing I’d drunk the drugged tea, my head going round and round as I

try to figure out what to do. I think of skipping out before morning and trusting I can keep hid. But I think

too of the Kadda wife. I don’t want her sniffing after me; I have a feeling she can smell me out no matter

where I hide. Well, brother, I raise a fuss in the morning, what else can I do? And you better believe I

don’t say one thing about the Tekamin. The other daughters howl and scream and stamp their skinny feet

and the old wives they go round pulling bondmaid’s hair and, throwing fits. When the Housemaster beats

me again, it is just for the look of the thing, and for himself, I suppose. He is scared himself and happy to

have my back to take it out on.

I keep my head down the next month, you can believe that. I try a couple times to sneak out of the

handmaid’s dorm, but the damn girls aren’t sleeping sound enough and keep waking up when I move.

Anyway I’m not trying too hard, not yet. The Kadda wife isn’t bothering me—except sometimes she

looks at me—like she is wondering if I was really asleep that other time. I’m thinking maybe I can last out

the year and get away clean and all the fetching and carrying and cleaning up don’t bother me near so

much. Then the Wounded Moon starts dribbling away faster and faster till it is the eve of the new moon

again and curiosity is eating at me till I can’t stand it. You told me more than once, brother, my nose

would be the death of me.

Hotea giggled and the other ghosts laughed with her, a silent cacophany of titters, giggles and

guffaws. Aituatea sat slumped in his chair, waiting morosely for them to stop. He wasn’t amused by a

situation that meant either he had to go after a bloodsucking witch or face having an overbearing older

sister at his elbow for the rest of his life.

Another girl is sleeping in the nursery this night, the Gndalau be praised for that, but I decide to sneak

in there and watch what happens. I tell myself the more I know, the easier I can get away without the

witch catching me. Well, it’s an argument.

Like it happens sometimes when old Tungjii gets to-gether with Jah’takash and they wait for you to

put your foot in soft shit up to your ears, everything is easy for me that night. The other bondmaids go to

sleep early. Snor-ing. I’ve half a mind to join them, but I don’t. I make myself get out of bed. Moving

about helps some, clears the fog out of my head. I sneak down to the nursery, jumping at every shadow

and there are lots of those, the wind has got in the halls and is bumping the lamps about, but that is just

the sort of thing you expect in big houses at night, so instead of scaring me more, it almost makes me feel

like I’m at home, prowling a house with Eldest Uncle.

In the nursery the nits are sleeping heavy. The bond-maid is stretched on a pallet, snoring. She

doesn’t so much as twitch when I step over her and duck under the bed of one of the dead daughters. It

is close to the door into the garden and I figure if anything goes wrong I can get out that way. The door is

open a crack, wedged, to let the air in and clear out the strong smell of anise. I lie there chewing my lip,

thinking things will happen soon.

Sounds of wind and fountain whoop through the room; I almost can’t hear the bondmaid snoring.

There is a lot of dust under the bed; no one checks there and we don’t do more than we have to, but I

am sorry about that now because some of that dust gets into my nose, makes it itch like I don’t know.

After a while I start getting pains jumping from my neck to between my shoulders. I stand it some minutes

more, then I have to stretch and wiggle if I want to be able to walk without falling on my face. I am just

about ready to crawl back to my bed, muttering curses on Tungjii and Jah’takash, when I hear a kind of

humming. I stop moving, hoping the wind noise had covered the sounds I was making. I can’t tell you

what the humming was like, I’ve never heard anything like it. My eyelids keep flopping down; I am

fighting suddenly to k6ep awake; then more dust gets in my nose; I almost sneeze, but don’t. One good

thing, the itch releases me from the witch’s spell. I ease myself toward the end of the bed and crick my

neck around so I can see the door. I am hidden by the knotted fringe on the edge of the coverlet and feel

pretty safe. The Kadda wife is standing in the door.

The humming stops.

The Tekora moves out of the shadows to stand beside his wife. I stop breathing. He looks hungry. I

feel like throwing up.

The Kadda wife looks around the room. I get the feeling she can see me. I close my eyes and

pretend I’m a frog hopped in from the garden. Even with my eyes closed I can feel her looking at me;

I’m sure she’s going to call me out from under the bed; I’m thinking it’s time to scoot out the door and

over the wall. But nothing happens and I can’t resist sneaking another look.

The Kadda wife smiles up at the Tekora and takes her hand off his ann. It’s like she’s taken the

bridle off him. He walks to his daughter’s bed. He looks down at the little girl, then over his shoulder at

the witch. She nods. He bends over and whispers something I couldn’t make out that hurts my ears

anyway. The girl gets up, follows him out of the room. His own daughter!

Hotea’s voice failed as indignation shook her. Her form wavered and threatened to tatter, but she

steadied her-self, closed her hand tight about her brother’s arm. He winced but didn’t pull away this time.

The witch looks around the room one more time then leaves too. I stay where I am, flat out under the

bed. I am thinking hard, you better believe. No wonder the Tekora is neglecting his other wives. I see he

is looking younger. His skin is softer and moister, he is plumper, moving more like a young man. I see

that’s how she is buying him, then I think, he’s running out of daughters, he’s going to start on the

bondmaids too soon for me. And I think, what odds the Kadda wife doesn’t make me the first one to

go? None of us Hinas are going to finish out this bond year. I wait under the bed for a long time, afraid

she’s going to come back and sniff me out, but nothing happens. I creep out from under the bed when I

hear the first sleepy twitters of the warblers in the willows outside the door, a warning that dawn is close.

If I have to spend the rest of my life exiled, I am going down that cliff. Now.

No more this and that and the other. Out. Away. Far away as I can get, fast as I can get there. The

last daughter is still sleeping, so is the bondmaid, but she is going to wake soon and start screeching the

minute she sees the third daughter is gone. I kick the wedge away and whip out the door into the garden.

The Kadda wife is waiting in the garden for me. I get maybe two steps before she grabs me. I try to

jerk loose, but her cold hands are hard and strong as iron chains, and they drain my strength away

somehow. It is as if she sucks it out of me. I am scared witless. I think she is going to drink me dry right

there. She doesn’t, she pushes me back into the nursery and across it into the hallway. I go without

making a sound, I can’t make a sound though I try screaming; something is pulling strings on my legs as if

I were a puppet in a holy play. No, an unholy play.

She takes me high up in the palace to a small room under the roof, shoves me inside and a minute

later there is this pain in the back of my head.

When I wake, it’s dark again—or still dark, I don’t know which. I am hanging on an iron frame like a

bed stripped and set on end, my wrists and ankles are tied to the corner with ropes. There is a gag in my

mouth, probably because of the open window high in the wall on my right, and a strong smell of anise, I

am getting very tired of anise. The mix smells stale, as if it had been floating round the room a long time

and that scares me all over again, more than if it’d been fresh. They hadn’t eaten the daughter yet; looks

like I’m going to take her place this month. My wrists and ankles are burning, my mouth is like leather,

my head feels like someone kicked it.

After a short panic, I start fiddling with the ropes and go a little crazy with relief when I find I know

more about knots than whoever tied me. I get myself loose and start looking for some way out.

There is no latch on the inside of the door, just a hole for a latchstring or maybe a pin key. Nothing in

the room I can use on it. I push the frame over to the window and climb up to look out, I climb carefully,

the frame creaking as if it will collapse if I breathe too hard. I get halfway out the window and look

down. There is nothing, much be-tween me and the water except a lot of straight up-and-down cliff and

the surf is white wrinkles about black rocks. Way way down. The wind is blowing against my face, cold

and damp, but it feels good.

Fingers touch my ankle. I know it’s her. I kick free before she can drain away my strength again.

Somehow I keep myself from falling as I wiggle out the window, so scared all I know is that I have to get

away fast. I hear cursing behind me and the squeal of metal as the frame collapses under her. I stand in

the window and look down at the waves crashing against the rocks. No joy there. I look up. The

endhorns of the eaves are close, but not close enough so I can reach them. Behind me I hear curses and

other noises as she drags something to the window. She’s coming for me. I take a chance and jump. My

hands slap around a horn and I am hanging free. I start pulling myself up. Fingers close about my ankles.

I kick hard, harder, but can’t get loose. My hands slip.

So here I am. And here I stay till the Kadda witch is dead, down in the water with me, dead, you

hear me, brother, you hear?

AITUATEA WINCED as he felt a nip in his left shoulder.

“Look.” Her crystal arm sketched in touches of moon-light. Hotea jabbed her finger at the Phras

ship.

The ship’s dark bulk was suddenly alive with lanthorns shining red and gold behind horn sides,

dozens of them lighting up the deck and the swirl of dark forms moving over it. He could hear snatches of

speech too broken for understanding, the blast of a horn as one of the figures leaned over the rail to call a

water taxi from the Woda-an. The hornblower had to repeat the signal several times before the slide of a

red lanthorn marked the passage of a taxi from the watercity to the blind ship.

A slim, energetic figure swung over the rail and went down the netting with skill and grace. Aituatea

swallowed the sourness in his throat. A woman. By outline alone, even at this distance, a woman. The

Drinker of Souls. He cursed under his breath. The weight of centuries of cus-tom, of his sister’s shame

and fury, of his own battered self-respect, all this pressed down on him, shoving him toward the thing that

twisted his gut. He pressed his hand over his mouth, stifling an exclamation as two more forms balanced a

moment on the rail then followed the woman down, small forms, children or dwarves or something. The

old man on the mountain hadn’t said anything about com-panions. He glanced up at Hotea. She was

staring hun-grily at the woman, bent forward a little, her hands closed into fists, her form shivering with a

terrible urgency. The strength of that need he hadn’t understood before, despite all those scolds, all those

bitter accusations of cowardice and shame repeated so often he ceased to listen; he squirmed

uncomfortably on the fleece.

The taxi came swiftly toward the wharf, the stern sweep worked by a young Woda girl, the lanthorn

on the bow waking coppery highlights on sweaty skin the color of burnt honey. Her short black hair held

off her face by a strip of red cloth knotted about her temples, she swayed back and forth in a kind of

dance with the massive oar, her muscles flowing smoothly, her face blank and blandly ani-mal, as if she

lived for that moment wholly in the body. Aituatea stared at her, his tongue moving along dry lips, a

tension in his groin reminding him how long it’d been since he’d had a woman. A stinking Woda bitch.

He ground his teeth together and went on watching her. Frog ugly. In his Hina eyes she was a dirty beast,

beastly with her strong coarse features, her broad shoulders, her short crooked legs—but she roused him

until he was close to groaning. Six months since he’d been to a joyhouse, he’d tried it once after his sister

fell in the bay but he couldn’t do anything there. Hotea’s ghost followed him everywhere as if a string tied

her to his left shoulder; he tried to drive her off for a little bit, but she wouldn’t go; he thought maybe he

could ignore her long enough to get his relief, but when he was with the girl he could feel Hotea’s eyes on

him, those damn judging angry eyes, and he shriveled to nothing and had to pay the woman double so

she wouldn’t spread talk about him.

The taxi bumped against the wharf. The strange woman laughed at something one of the children

said, a rippling happy sound that jarred against his expectations. Drinker of Souls conjured dour and

deflating images. The chil-dren’s giggles echoed hers, then she was up the ladder and swinging onto the

wharf. The children followed. In the moonlight they looked like twins, pale little creatures dancing about

the woman, flinging rapid bursts of their liquid speech at her, receiving her terse replies with more

laughter. After a last exchange that left the woman grin-ning, the twins capered away, disappearing into

the maze of boxes and bales piled temporarily on the wharf, waiting for the Godalau fete to pass before

they were tucked away into the godons. Aituatea heard the children chattering together, then the high

rapid voices faded off down a grimy alley. The woman turned to look across the water at the Phras ship

where the lanthorns were going out as it settled back to sleep, then she gazed along the curve of Selt

toward the many-terraced mountain of Utar. He saw her follow the line of torches burning along the

causeway, the lampions that marked the course of the looping road-way, her head tilting slowly until she

went quiet, stood with a finger stroking slowly and repeated alongside her mouth, contemplating the

topmost torches, those that burned on the gate towers of the Tekora’s Palace.

She had long straight hair that gleamed in the strength-ening moonlight like brushed pewter, the front

parts trimmed to a point, the back clasped loosely at the nape of her neck. She was taller than most

Hina, wider in the shoulders and hips though otherwise slim and supple. Her skin was very pale; in the

moonlight it looked like porce-lain. She wore loose trousers of some dark color stuffed into short black

boots, a white, full-sleeved shirt with a wide collar that lay open about her neck. Over this was a

sleeveless leather coat; when a gust of wind flipped it back for a moment, he raised his brows, seeing two

throwing knives sheathed inside. She wasn’t Phras or any of the many other sorts of foreigners that

passed through the port of Silili, but he wasn’t too surprised at that, seeing what she was.

Behind him he heard the stomp and clatter of the godon guards and the whining of their rathounds.

He took a chance and watched the woman to see what she would do.

Poking long spears into crevices to drive out drunks or sleepers, sounding their clappers to scare

away ghosts and demons, whooping to keep up their courage, the godon guards came winding along the

wharves.

The woman stirred slightly. Touch-me-not spun out from her like strands of mist, real mist spun up

out of the water until she was a vertical dimness in a cocoon of white. Aituatea watched, uneasily

fascinated, until the guards got close, then dropped his face into the fleece and waited.

As soon as the patrol had clattered past, he looked up again.

The cocoon out by the water unraveled with a speed that startled Aituatea, then his stomach was

knotting on itself as she came sauntering toward him, as unstoppable and self-contained as the wind.

What’s she doing here? Why’d she come to Silili? He hadn’t thought about it before, but now he saw her

.... What’s waiting for her here? Old man, you didn’t tell us nothing except she was the one who could

face the witch. What else didn’t you tell us? What else do you know? Crazy old fox, said noth-ing worth

salt.

* * *

THE OLD MAN settled onto his haunches, his dirt-crusted hands dropping onto his thighs. Eyes the

color of rotted leaves touched on Aituatea, shifted to Hotea and ended looking past them both at the

woolly clouds sliding across the early morning sky.

Hotea drove her elbow into Aituatea’s ribs. He lurched forward a step, bowed and held out the

lacquer box filled with the rarest tea he could steal.

Ah, the old man said; he got stiffly to his feet, took the box from Aituatea. Come, he said. He led

them into the single room of his small dwelling. It was painfully clean and quite bare except for a roll of

rough bedding in one corner and a crude table with a chair facing the door and a bench cobbled from

pine limbs opposite. He went to some shelves, mere boards resting on wooden pegs driven into the wall,

set the box beside a jumble of scrolls and a brush pot, shuffled back to the chair. Sit, he said.

Aituatea glanced over his shoulder. Morning light cool as water, filled with dancing motes, poured

through the door and flooded across the table, picking up every wrin-kle, wart, and hair on the old man’s

still face. Thought he was uneasy with emptiness at his back, Aituatea slid onto the bench and sat

plucking nervously at the cloth folds over the knee of his short leg. He wanted to shut the door but he

was afraid to touch anything in the but and afraid too of shutting himself in with the old man. He twitched

but didn’t look around when he felt the cold bite of Hotea’s hand on his shoulder. His eyes flicked to the

serene face across from him, flicked away, came slowly back. The old man looked harmless and not too

bright but there were many stories about him and brash youths who thought they could force his secrets

from him. Some said it was always the same old man, Temueng to the Temuengs and Hina to the Hinas,

or whatever he chose to be.

The but was filled with a faded tang of cedar and herbs; the breeze wandering in from outside

brought with it the sharp aromas of pine and mountain oak, the dark damp smells of the earth, the lighter

brighter scents of stone dust and wild orchids. It was warm and peaceful there, the tranquility underlined

by the whisper of the breeze, the intermittent humming of unseen insects. In spite of himself, Aituatea

began to relax. Hotea pinched him. Stub-bornly he said nothing. This visit was her idea, some-thing she

came up with when she couldn’t drive him into action with bitter words or shame. If she wanted help

from the old man, let her do the talking.

The sunlight sparked off her outflung arm. I’m drowned by a Kadda witch, she burst out. Her voice

made no impression on the drowsing sounds of the small room, but the old man looked at her, hearing

her. I want her dead, she cried, in the water with me. Dead.

The old man blinked, pale brown eyes opening and closing with slow deliberation. With his shaggy

brown robe, the tufts of white hair over his ears, his round face and slow-blinking eyes, he looked to

Aituatea rather like a large horned owl. The tip of a pale pinkish-brown tongue brushed across his

colorless lips. All things die in their time, he said.

Hotea made a small spitting sound. Aituatea looked at his hands, feeling a mean satisfaction. This

wasn’t what she’d come to hear, platitudes she could read in any book of aphorisms. Not that woman,

she said, her voice crack-ling with impatience. Not while there’s young blood to feed her.

Even her, he said.

I want her dead, old man, she said. I want to see her dead. Hotea’s hands fluttered with small,

quickly aborted movements as if she sought to uncover with them some argument to persuade him to

interfere against his inclina-tion. Look, she said, Temueng children have died. Do you think Hina won’t

pay for those deaths? Ten for one they will. We’re guilty, old man, whether we do anything or not. They

can do no wrong, they’re the conquerors, aren’t they? Besides, leave the witch alone, how long before

she eats everyone on Utar-Selt? Hotea went still a moment, then her voice was a thread of no-sound

softer than usual in Aituatea’s head. Teach us, old man, she said, teach us how we can front and kill a

Kadda witch.

The old man stared at her a dozen heartbeats, then turned those pitiless eyes on Aituatea. They

swelled larger and larger until they were all he could see. He began to feel like weeping softly and sadly

as they searched his soul, as they spaded up fear and waste and the little niggling meannesses he’d done

to his friends and to his sister, and all the ugly things he’d buried deep and refused to remember. As he

stared into the old man’s eyes, he was finally forced to see that he would never do anything about the

Kadda witch without someone to take the brunt of the witch’s attack, that he would keep put-ting it off

and putting it off, growing more wretched as the years passed, as Hotea grew more caustic.

The old man leaned back, his worn face filled with pain as if he had absorbed from Aituatea all that

self-disgust and fear. He slumped, his body shrinking in on itself, his eyes glazing over. Kadda witch, he

murmured, blood drinker, knows no will but her own, evil, recognizing no right beyond her own needs. I

see ... there’s a counter ... I see ... He flinched, drew further into himself. Powerful, he said, another

power comes ... an ancient enemy .... His eyes moved in a slow sweeping arc, but he was seeing nothing

in the hut. Aituatea felt his stom-ach knot.

One comes, the old man said, husky voice reduced to a whisper. A woman ... something between

her and the witch ... like the witch ... no, not the same ... drinker of life, not blood ... not evil, not good

.... Drinker of Souls, she comes the eve of the Godalau fete. Set her on the track, let her sniff out the

witch, buy her with Das’n vuor, and point her at the witch. She comes with the rising of the Wounded

Moon, will leave before the rising of the sun. The Drinker of Souls, come back to Silili after years and

years ... a hundred years ... ah! her pur-poses mesh with yours, angry ghost. He muttered some more,

but the words were unintelligible, intermixed with sudden chuckles. It was as if he had to wind back

down into his customary taciturnity and something amusing he saw was retarding this return.

Aituatea sat frozen, sick. Three months’ respite, then he had to face the witch or face himself. He

glared at the old man, silently cursing him for setting the limit so close.

The old man lifted his head, looked irritably at him. That’s it, he seemed to say, you got what you

came for, now get out of here!

Shadow spread out from him, dark and terrible, killing the light, the warmth. Aituatea scrambled

back, knocking over the bench; the smell of cedar choking him, he ran from the hut.

ANOTHER NIP in his shoulder. Hotea getting impatient. “Go after her. Stop her,” she shrilled. “Don’t

lose her, fool. You won’t find her again, you know it. And we’ve only got till sunup.”

Muttering under his breath Aituatea swung down from the bales and limped after the woman. His hip

hurt but he was used to that and almost forgot the pain as he hurried past the godons and stepped into

the Street of the Watermen. She was making no effort to hurry—it was almost as if she wanted to be

followed, had set herself out as bait, trolling for anything stupid or hungry enough to bite. He kept back

as far as he could without losing sight of her. The peculiar lurch of his walk was too eye-catching, even in

the leaping uncertain light from the torches burn-ing in front of businesses still open, casting shadows that

lurched and twisted as awkwardly as he did. She circled without fuss about the knots of gambling

watermen and porters crouched over piles of bronzes and coppers, toss-ing the bones into lines chalked

on the flagging. She slowed now and then, head cocked to listen to flute and cittern music coming in

melancholy brightness from the joyhouses, ignored insults flung down at her from idling women hanging

out second-story windows, walked more briskly past shops shuttered for the night—a herbalist, a

shaman’s den, a fishmonger, a geengrocer, a diviner, and others much like these. Some cookshops were

closed for the night, others were still open with men standing about dipping noodles and pickled beans

and pickled cabbage from clay bowls or crunching down fried pilchards. He watched her careless stroll

and felt confirmed in his idea she was bait in her own trap. Maybe she’s hungry, he told himself and

shivered at the thought. He dropped back farther, his feet dragging. For no reason he wondered

suddenly where the children were. Now and then it seemed to him he heard them calling to each other or

to the woman, but he was never sure and she never responded to the calls.

“Where’s she going?” he muttered and got Hotea’s el-bow in his ribs for an answer. That she was

heading the way he wanted her to go, uphill and vaguely north, made him nervous; it was just too

convenient; as Hotea said, it happens sometimes that everything goes easy for a while but old Tungjii’s

getting together with Jah’takash and they’re waiting for you to put your foot in it. But he kept limping

after her, eaten by curiosity and buoyed up by nervous excitement.

She sauntered past a lighted cookshop. The owner-cook was leaning on the counter, pots steaming

behind him, tossing the bones with a single customer. The two men stopped what they were doing to

stare after her, then went back to their game, talking in low tones, discussing the woman probably. A

shadow drifted from behind the cookshop a moment later. A clumsy shift and Aituatea saw a part of the

shadow’s face, the hulk of his body, then the follower was in the dark again. Djarko. He snorted with

disgust. Took the bait like a baby. He limped after them, careful not to be seen. Djarko’s equally

cretinous cousin Djamboa had to be somewhere about, they hunted as a team. He spotted the second

shadow and smiled grimly. Better them than me. The Godalau grant they satisfy her so she’ll be ready to

listen before she jumps me.

The woman turned into one of the small side lanes that wound through close-packed tenements of the

poorer players, artisans and laborers. Djarko and Djamboa turned after her, almost running in their

eagerness. Aituatea fol-lowed more warily, trying to ignore the nips in his shoul-der as Hotea urged him

to catch up and defend the woman from those louts. Defend her? Godalau defend me. He slowed his

uneven gait until he was slipping through shadow near as much a ghost as his sister was, avoiding the

refuse piles and their uncertain footing, glid-ing over sleepers huddling against walls for the meager shelter

they offered from the creeping fog. He edged up to blind turns, listening for several heartbeats before he

moved around them. Apart from the sodden sleepers the lane stayed empty and quiet. Inside those tall

narrow houses leaning against each other so they wouldn’t fall down, Hina had been asleep for hours.

Most of those living here would have to rise with the sun to get in half a day’s work before they left for

the feteday, the players and nightpeople were gone for now, though they’d be coming home at dawn to

catch a few hours’ sleep before working the streets to ease coppers from the purses of the swarm-ing

revelers.

Hotea pinched his shoulder. “Look,” she said. “There.”

“Huh?”

“On the ground there.” Hotea pointed at a filthy alley between two of the tenements. Aituatea

squinted but saw nothing; choking over the lump rising in his throat, he crept into the alley.

He kicked against something. A body. He dropped to one knee and twisted the head around so he

could see the face. Djarko. He pressed his fingers against the meaty neck under the angle of the jaw.

Very dead. A little farther up the alley he could see another long lump of refuse. He didn’t bother

checking, only one thing it could be. Both dead. So fast. Not a squeak out of them. Big men. Stupid but

strong. Dangerous. Not even a groan. He got creakily to his feet and shuffled back from the body, step

by step, lurch and swing, soles grating against the hard-packed dirt. Hotea touched his arm. He exploded

out a curse, swung round and would have fled but for the dark figure standing in his way.

“Why follow me?” She had a deep voice for a woman, danger in it he could hear as surely as he

heard the pounding of his heart.

He swallowed. His mouth was too dry for speech. Hotea jigged at his shoulder, almost breaking up

in her impa-tience. She dug her fingers into him, spat a gust of words at him so fast it hurt his head. He

jerked away from her and flattened himself on the rutted dirt in front of the woman’s boots.

She made a soft irritated sound. “Stand up, Hina, I won’t talk to the back of your head.” The

sharpness in her voice warned him her patience had narrow limits.

He scrambled to his feet. “Drinker of Souls,” he said. “Will you listen to me?”

She shook her hair out of her face, that silver-gray hair that caught the moonlight in slanting shimmers

as she moved her head. “Brann,” she said. “Not that other. I don’t like it. It isn’t true anyway.”

Aituatea glanced over his shoulder at the blob of dead flesh, turned back to the woman, saying

nothing, letting the act speak for him.

She shrugged. “I didn’t tell them to come after me.”

“Fish to bait,” he said and was surprised at his daring.

“I’m not responsible for all the stupidity in the world.” She rubbed a finger past the corner of her

mouth, frown-ing a little as she looked from him to Hotea standing a step behind him. “You were on the

wharf watching me.”

“You saw me?”

“Not me.” She snapped her fingers.

A soft whirr overhead, then two large horned owls swooped past him, low enough he could smell the

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DrinkerofSoulsDrinkerofSoulsTrilogy,Book1JoClayton1986 “IamtheDrinkerofSouls...andthesearethemountain’schildren,bornoffireandstone.“Feelfortunate,Oman,thatIamnotthirstynow.Feelfortunate,myenemy,thatthemountain’schildrenarenothungry.Wereitotherwise,youwoulddiethedeathofdeaths.“AllIdesireistopassinpea...

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