Jo Clayton - Dancers1 - Dancer's Rise

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Dancer’s Rise
The Dancer Trilogy, Book 1
Jo Clayton
1993
Put in spacing. Spell-checked. Read 1.
CHANGECHILD
ONCE UPON A TIME a changechild was born to the Windrunners, a nomad people roaming the
northern Grass. When her skin began to go green, they sold her to the most powerful sorcerer alive, Ser
Noris, who had secured for himself a kind of immortality—a cessation of the processes of growth and
decay within his body.
ONCE UPON A TIME the most powerful sorcerer alive soured on life and challenged it to a duel.
Ser-roi was one of the tools he used in his challenge, but she turned in his hand and he threw her
away—then discovered that he needed her in ways he hadn’t dreamed and tried to lure her back.
ONCE UPON A TIME there was a great war be-tween CHANGE and STASIS. Change won, but
not before much suffering and death, not before magic was driven from the world. Serroi and Ser Noris
faced each other in a deadly dance and when it ended, were both transformed; Serroi to a graceful
lacewood, Ser Norris to a brooding conifer.
ONCE UPON A TIME two trees dreamed upon a cliff ...
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
The Wild Magic Series
Wild Magic
Wildfire
The Magic Wars
The Soul Drinker Trilogy
Drinker Of Souls
Blue Magic
A Gathering Of Stones
and
A Bait Of Dreams
Prologue. The Awakening
Warmth.
That’s what she felt first. A warmth spreading from an irregular blotch to fill her.
More sensations.
Pain. Stretching. Twisting.
Change. Wrench, immediate, all-encompassing. Then there was cold stone under her hands. Hands?
She lifted her head. Head? Eyes? Knees cold with the chill of the stone? How long since she’d had
any of those?
How long?
It came back as if it had never left, how to move legs, how to stand. How to speak.
She tugged her tunic down, feeling the worn black cloth with a muted wonder, turned on booted feet
to face the woman whose touch had wakened her.
The stranger was tall and thin with slanted red eyes and soft pale skin delicately scaled. An Incomer
she must be, but one with magic in her touch. “I thank you,” Serroi told her. “A tree’s a splendid form to
rest in, but two centuries’ sleep is long enough.”
“What?”
“No matter. My name is Serroi. Who are you and how came you here?”
“I am Kitya of the Moug’aikkin.” The woman stood rubbing her wrists, the right, then the left. The
lines in her face were sagging despite the firmness of her flesh; her world must be lighter than this. “I have
no idea where here is.”
“Incomer. I thought so.” Serroi turned around, stood looking down at the confusion below, her hands
clasped behind her. “Damn. Coyote’s Incomers have really been busy while I was dreaming up here.”
Among the old stone buildings a forest of tall, an-gular, weblike structures hummed in the wind, their
stay cables singing. There were odd constructions on the roofs, plates slanted to the south, covered in
shin-ing black squares that seemed to swallow the sunlight. Among the buildings, on patches of green
lawn, there were groups of young people sitting, talking, eating, pairs intent on each other, individuals
reading, sleep-ing, stretched out and staring into the sky, young peo-ple everywhere. No children, very
few adults visible. In the valley beyond, a yellow dust haze hung over a checkerboard of fields. On roads
between the fields enclosed carts like black water beetles darted about, more of the light collectors
pasted over their bodies. Carts of a different shape moved methodically through the fields, the men in
them plowing and otherwise working the crops.
Beside her the Incomer Kitya glanced at the sun, glanced again, surprise on her narrow face, then
res-ignation. “How can we get down from here? I don’t fancy spending the night curled up by that tree.”
She flicked a finger up, then curled it back, indicating the rugged conifer growing at the edge of the cliff.
“Be-sides, I’m getting hungry.”
Serroi scratched beside the oval green spot between her brows. “There used to be a path of sorts.
Over here,” she nodded to the left, started picking her way across the cracks in the stone and the weeds
growing in them.
Kitya followed her a few steps, then swung round as the conifer began to creak and shudder as if it
were trying to come after them; she took a step toward the tree, her arm lifting ....
Serroi leaped at her, slapped her hand around the Incomer’s wrist. “Nay!” She moved until she was
standing between the Incomer and the tree. “Kitya of the Moug’aikkin, don’t listen to that one; stop your
ears and mind your soul. He’ll swallow you in a gulp if you let him and you’ll loose a great evil on this
world.”
“What?”
“Come, better to leave quickly. He’ll creep through the tiniest crack given time enough.” As Kitya
moved her wrist, seeking to free herself, Serroi stopped her. “Nay, let me hold you as long as I can. It’s
safer, I promise you.”
The path was in adequate shape, weeded sometime in the fairly recent past and edged with small bits
of stone; it wavered back and forth across the weathered cliff, made descending more tedious than risky,
but by the time they reached the valley floor, Serroi was stiff and tired. What should you expect,
woman, you haven’t walked for two hundred years.
She stood with her hands clasped behind her, star-ing at the wall that marched across the valley. The
merlons were crumbling like a mouthful of rotted teeth, there were cracks in the massive stones of the
facade, moss and weeds eroding holes deeper with every season, trees and brush growing up close, their
roots attacking the base. Generations of peace, that’s what that means. Worth a few years
vegetating, I sup-pose. “We’d better get started, it’ll take a while to reach the gate.”
* * *
Ten days later Serroi stood on the cliff again, the conifer bending and groaning behind her as the
woman who’d waked her from her long sleep went whirling off into nowhere, arms clasped about a
dark-haired, gaunt-faced man.
When the clifftop was quiet again, she turned and stood with hands on hips, scowling at the ancient
con-ifer. “This time, this moment, we won.”
The tree’s branches stirred, the needles rustled briefly, fell silent.
“I know. There’ll be another time.” She turned away, walked to the path down the cliff and into her
second life.
1. On the Sinadeen (Two years after the Awakening)
M O TH TH THERRR— — — —
A figure emerged from the fog. Bones with shreds of flesh and sinew still clinging to them, a
rotted cotton shift hanging from denuded clavicles. Its eyes were oozing holes, decay dripping like
tears, light shining phosphor green from deep within the skull.
The head turned, seemed to stare at her. The lipless mouth opened.
MOTHERRRRR ....
The change in motion brought Serroi out of her night-mare even before the ship’s boy began banging
on the door, shouting for them to wake and come on deck. The boy moved on to Adlayr’s cabin, beat
on that, then ran up the ladder, the sounds of his feet vanishing in the shipnoises.
Zasya Myers swung her feet from the lower bunk fitted like Serroi’s against the hull, stowage shelves
for human cargo, and stood in grim silence buckling on her weaponbelt. A moment later she was gone,
the gyes from the next cabin rushing past after her.
Serroi kicked off the blanket and slid to the floor; she’d slept in her clothes, only taking off her boots.
She didn’t bother pulling them on, just whipped her cloak from its peg, turned it white side out, and left
the cabin.
She climbed to the quarterdeck and settled out of the way beside the stern rail, watching with bleak
in-terest as Zasya and Adlayr took in the situation, watch-ing the Fenek Shipmaster standing at the
quarterdeck’s forerail, his eyes darting over his crew as they moved about below, getting ready with
somber determination to fight to the death. Nijilic TheDom was low in the west, as gibbous as Camnor
Heslin’s belly, his light coming uncertainly through puffy cloud drifts, rim-ming their round edges with
silver.
Zasya Myers left her companion and leaned on the rail beside Master Am’litho. “Swampkrys?”
“As you see, meie.” He rolled a broad hand at the sea around them, the waves lifting and falling with
an unnatural heaviness while the Wanda Kojamy wal-lowed in a trough, sails slatting uselessly against the
masts. “With a windsnuffer in one of those phingin’ garbage scows or they’d be watching Wanda’s
backside dip o’er the horizon.”
“You’re calm enough.”
“Nowhere to go, meie. We just wait for them to get close, then do our best.” As two men came from
be-low, carrying crossbows and bolt sacs, he immediately contradicted himself by shouting at them,
“Sakh! Jy, hustle, man! Into the shrouds, you and Herks. A silver huz for every rat you skewer.”
A short distance off half a hundred low black out-riggers ringed the merchantman, torches uncovered
in their bows showing black shadows doing a precarious dance in those tottery shells. Fifty boats with at
least ten Kry in each.
“Skaiy, not there! Haul those umdums to bow catter.” Am’litho swore under his breath, then turned
to Adlayr Ryan-Turriy who was a pale shine in the dark-ness, naked except for his weaponbelt and a
skimpy loincloth. “You better get some clothes on, gyes, those phingin’ warts have barbs on their spears
and smear them with sleepooze.”
Adlayr raised shaggy black brows. “Not poison?”
“Don’t want to miss their fun.”
“I fight like this, Master. You’ll see.” Adlayr grinned at him. He had a pleasantly ugly face and a smile
of surpassing charm.
“You know your business.”
The drums began to beat faster, the swampmen added growling voices to the sound, a basso chant
from five hundred throats that clubbed the ears and tried to numb the mind.
Master Am’litho turned back to Zasya. “Anything you can do ’bout that windsnuffer, meie?”
“Afraid not. No mages here, unless you count the Healer.”
Am’litho blinked heavy lids over eyes that were al-most yellow, blazing in his dark face. “Glad I’ll be
to have her later on, but a magicker of any other kind would be of more worth this moment. Haya, I’ve
passed out edges and shooters, we’ll take as many as we can. You know about the swampers?”
The chant and the drums continued, but the dancing stopped, the rowers dropped to their benches
and the outriggers began gliding in a slowly narrowing spiral about the becalmed Wanda Kojamy,
confidence and blood-thirst hooming in guttural pulses from the Kry-men’s throats.
“We’ve heard.”
“Take what you’ve heard and fold it twice and twice again. If you’re alive to the last, cut your own
throat before you let them get you. I’ve seen what’s left of a sailor they set adrift, they sliced the lids off
his eyes and broke his arms and legs and put fayar in cages on his chest and left them to eat themselves
free. Cut your own throat, meie, you’ll do a kinder job.”
“Asha. Where do you want us?” A grin thrown at the gyes. “I can shoot the left eyebrow off a flea at
forty paces and Adlayr’d be as good if he practiced a little.”
Adlayr snorted. “In your dreams, Zas.”
Am’litho’s nostrils flared, his eyes narrowed in their nests of laugh-wrinkles, then he was serious
again. “I’ll not be ordering about meien nor gyes, you know the work better’n me nor my men.”
Round and round the outriggers went, round and round, as the windsnuffer’s charm forced the air
into smaller and smaller compass until breathing was as much labor as walking.
Serroi got to her feet. She licked her lips, tried to speak and could not, tried again, her practical side
in conflict with the imperatives of the Healer. “Zas, if I spotted the windsnuffer for you, could you take
him out from here?”
The meie considered the distance between the Wanda Kojamy and the outriggers, turned and held
out her hands to her companion. Handfasted they stood for a moment, then Zasya smiled, “Think so,
once they’re a little closer.”
The drums throbbed louder and louder, the beat quickened as the outriggers circled nearer, though
not nearly in spear distance as yet. The chant was louder and more ragged as the swampmen grew drunk
on anticipated pleasure. The triumph in those Kry voices rasped across the nerves as the Wanda’s crew
worked to get ready or waited the order to fire catters and crossbows.
Am’litho grunted, smoothed a hand over his bald head, then tugged at his short beard. “Gi’ a
moment ’fore you do’t. Let me get placed. There’ll still be attack, y’ know. Wanda is a steady girl, she
don’t jump ’bout like a phingin’ lappet.” He leaned over the rail, yelled to his first mate who was getting
the fore-catapult locked in place. “Bullah, get up here, leave that to Tagg’.”
A moment later he swore with fervor and fluency as a bulky shape came from below, swerved aside
with surprising grace as the Bull came lumbering past, then followed the mate up the ladder to the
quarterdeck. “If this an’t trouble ....”
As he stepped onto the quarterdeck, Camnor Heslin was furious but not showing it except in the
stiffness of his bow. “I thank you, good Master, for not dis-turbing my sleep.”
Serroi suppressed a smile. He was a foot taller and fatter than Hern had ever been, even at his
plumpest, but he reminded her forcibly of his ancestor; it might have been the Domnor speaking right
then, with that acerbic bite in words polite on the surface.
Am’litho grunted. “Any good with those?” He nodded at the sword the Vorbescar had strapped on,
the handgun holstered beside it.
“When I wear decorations, Master, they’re ribbons, not steel.”
“Then you’d best get down on deck and get ready to use ’em.” He grabbed the Bull’s arm, pulled
him close, and began talking to him in a rumbling under-tone, his words coming so fast they blurred into
each other.
Camnor Heslin snorted and stalked down the ladder. Adlayr followed with a grin, mocking the
Vorbescar’s walk with a cheerful insouciance that brought a chuckle from Zasya as she drifted across to
join Serroi at the rail.
Serroi wrapped her hands around the smooth polished wood, steadying herself as she concentrated
on the outriggers, trying to pin the, center of that vortex of magepower that was circling the ship.
Serroi sighed and opened her eyes. “That one.” She pointed, shifting her finger as the outrigger
passed along an arc of its tight spiral. “You see the lump crouched over that firebowl? He’s the
windsnuffer.”
Zasya smoothed her hand along the stock of the longgun in an absentminded caress. “Find a place to
hang on, Healer.”
Serroi nodded and moved away.
The quarterdeck had cleared while she was in search, the crewmen following Heslin, Adlayr, and the
mate to the main deck. Only Am’litho was left; he stood, fists on hips, watching her.
“Ready,” she said.
“As are we. Meie,” he called, his voice low and tense. “Do it!”
Zasya Meyers settled herself, her booted feet a short distance apart, her narrow body responsive as
spring steel, finding the heart of the ship’s sluggish wallow. Her hand tightened in slow, controlled
increments.
A hard spitting sound, muffled by the tortured air.
In the outrigger the hunched figure was flung back and a howl of consternation and rage went up
from the Krymen rowing him, then from the Krymen in the other boats.
The suddenly released wind shrieked in a whirl about them all, tossing the outriggers like dead leaves,
heeling the Wanda over one side, then the other, send-ing her bow down, stern down, sending Serroi
rolling from rail to rail like an off-center skittle until she fi-nally managed to wrap her arms about a
stanchion and hold on through the worst of the bucking.
And all the while Zasya rode the bounding deck as if she grew there, wholly intent on what she was
do-ing, squeezing off one shot after another, emptying one outrigger, turning on the next, shot after shot,
each timed to the sway of the deck and the targets of opportunity, shifting clips so smoothly there was no
gap in the steady crack-crack.
Despite the tossing of the sea, the outriggers came slicing at them, the arms of the rowers moving like
parts of a machine, taking great bites of the water, a Kryman standing at each mast, waiting, a pod of
spears by his hand.
The Wanda’s bow catter clunked, thrummed, dropped a missile to one side of the high carved bow
of a canoe; when it hit the water, it burst and burned with an evil greenish fire. More of the missiles flew
from the other catters, getting the range better, though they were slow and clumsy at best. Two outriggers
fell to the umdums, two more were grazed and left with fires clinging to the wood, eating at it, fires that
the rowers didn’t attempt to put out.
In the shrouds Jy and Herks were loosing bolt after bolt, getting some hits despite the wild swaying of
the masts, shouting the count so Am’litho would hear and pay their bonus.
The spearmen snatched spears from the pods and hurled them at the crew and the quarterdeck.
Herks shrieked and fell, hitting the deck near Zasya, who took notice of him but went on shooting
since there was nothing she could do. She concentrated on the spearmen, leaving Adlayr and the crew to
take out the rowers.
Serroi let go of the stanchion, crawled on hands and knees to the man’s side. When she touched his
neck, she felt a pulse under her fingers. “Zas,” she yelled, “leave that a moment, help me.”
The meie grunted, turned, sliding her arm through the longgun’s sling. “What you need?”
“I’ll lift him. Push the spear through so I can break off the point.”
Zasya raised thin blonde brows. “Hurry,” she said, “another breath or two and they’re on us.”
Serroi ignored that, rolled the man on his side, and held him while the meie gripped the spear. Zasya
took a deep breath, pressed the shaft down so the point would be more likely to miss vital organs and
shoved.
“That’s enough.”
Zasya grimaced. “More than enough,” she said. “Yeuch!” She rubbed her hands on her sides, then
swung back to the rail, unslinging the longgun and slapping a new clip home.
Serroi concentrated, drew strength from sea and wind into her hands, broke the jagged point loose
and let Herks fall back. She pulled the shaft free, pressed her hands over the spurting blood and time
stopped for her.
Blood welled out, covering hands and wrists with red, then it stopped, then warmth flowed
out of her hands into the body; they sank into the flesh, her body sucked strength from the sea,
used it to make new flesh, new blood. As the wound repaired itself, layer by layer, her hands
emerged, glowing, translucent green glass with no blood on them.
When the glow faded, she looked up into confusion.
Krymen were swarming over the rail, their painted faces contorted with hate for those who’d killed
or maimed so many of them. One of them drew back his spear to skewer her—then fell, his head
exploding as Zasya saw what was happening and put a bullet in it.
An immense black sicamar roared, leapt among the Krymen slashing with claws and teeth, his
pantherish body avoiding knives and spears as if the attackers waded through quicksand.
Camnor Heslin thrust his sword into a Kryman’s throat, slapped aside a spear, kicked another
Kryman in the groin as he wrenched his sword free. He slashed the edge across the downed Kry’s throat
and went after the next.
Clip empty, no time for reloading, Zasya had her sword out; she knocked a spear aside, turned the
sword in its arc, and severed the hand from its arm.
Am’litho and the Bull fought together, roaring Fe-nekel curses, lashing out with cutlasses, fists, heads,
feet.
Serroi slapped Herk’s face, got him onto his feet and hauled him toward the quarterdeck’s ladder;
she got him down to the deck, stuffed him under the ladder, out of the way of the fighting; she squatted
beside him, shuddering with the pain/rage/fear that swirled around her.
Shouts from the shrouds brought her head up.
A swarm of Silkars came suddenly over the rail, their bronze knives slicing Kry flesh as if it were
but-ter.
In minutes the last of the Krymen was dumped over the side, dead from a dozen cuts.
The Silkars followed except for one, the tallest and brightest of them all, scaled like a viper and green
as the new leaves of spring. He wore a linked belt of beaten bronze with a bronze knife clipped to it, a
short leather kilt, and a heavy bronze medallion on a chain about his neck. He stared a long moment at
Serroi, his glowing golden eyes moving from her face to her hands and back, then he took the knife from
his belt, the blade clotted with Kry blood, turned the hilt and thrust it at her.
Serroi hesitated.
He waited with the sea’s patience.
She sighed and touched the hilt.
He smiled, clipped the knife back, and went over the side.
Serroi combed her fingers through her hair. “Saaa, silkars live long.”
Am’litho roared, his laughter filling the hollow of the sky. “Old friend?” he said when he’d sobered
enough to speak.
“I think so.”
“I thought I knew you, Healer, now I’m sure of it. The father of my father’s father was one Olambaro
whom you may remember.” He grinned at her, his eyes squeezed to slits above chunky cheekbones. “A
grand teller of tales.”
“So it seems.”
“Pho! I’ll say nothing till I, too, have grandchil-dren, if so you wish, Healer.”
“Maiden bless, it would be more comfortable for me.” She lowered herself onto a step of the ladder.
“You’ve a slash on your arm, Master. Give it here, then send the rest of the wounded to me.”
>> > << <
When Serroi settled to sleep, her body aching, her mind troubled, the fetch walked in her dreams
again. Calling her.
She knew it.
Somehow that thing owed its life to her.
The thought horrified her.
Her mouth moved in a silent scream.
Go away.
Leave me alone.
Go away.
She could feel those bony fingers scrabbling at her. She tried to thrust the thing away, but it wouldn’t
go, it slobbered at her, cried to her.
MOTHTHERRR—DON’T DENY ME—DON’T PUSH ME AWAY—DON’T LEAVE
ME—MOTHTH-ERRRRRRR ....
2. Assassin
Treshteny Falladin walked in her garden, circled a fire built on that spot a thousand thousand years
ago, be-fore Dander was even a dream; the shadowy figures that bent over it looked up, eyes wide as if
they saw her. She lifted a hand, gave them her blessing, then chirruped to a crimson jesser chick who
spread his newly furred wings and opened wide his leathery beak, awking for food; he wouldn’t be
hatched for years yet and the tree he sat in was a seedling by her foot, barely a hand’s width high. She
saw them both, or rather she saw a palimpsest of trees, translucent at the edges, blowing variously in
winds that were and would be. She blessed the jesser and passed on.
Like the tree, her nurse, the nurse Peylar who walked beside her, was a multilayered vision, fetus,
toddler, teen and woman, crone and corpse, some-times simply that, sometimes exploding in an infinite
variety of might-have-been, could-still-be.
When the would-be ghosts crowded too thickly about her, Treshteny rounded her shoulders, folded
her arms tight about herself, and whimpered; this day the throng went quickly away each time it appeared
and she strolled on, blessing things that were and were-not.
She stopped suddenly, her body jolting as waves of premonition hammered at her.
The nurse caught her by the shoulders, pushed down until she was kneeling, then held her hands and
called for help, her voice multiplied to a clashing carillon of sound.
The Marn’s own Healer Bozhka Sekan came at a heavy trot, knelt beside her. “Say,” she said, her
voice low and firm.
The word came whole into Treshteny’s ears; it was a pole she clung to. “Boom,” she whispered.
“Fire and force. Boom. Old woman flies in pieces, Mask wheels away. Young woman ... hair ... crinkled
fire ... flies ... she flies ... she flies ... she fallllls ... she breathes ... she dies ... she dies not ... she breathes
... she dies .... she breathes ... woman ... meie ... not-meie ... healer ... touches her ... hands on her ...
green hands shining ... she lives ... she lies ... she dies ... alone ... moans ... blood .. boom ....”
Hands under her, carrying her ....
What she called premoaning dried up the ghosts but left her so depleted that she couldn’t take any
pleasure in living a single line for the brief time allowed her.
The nurse bathed her hands and face with damp cloths, then undressed her and laid her on the
daybed, drew a knitted coverlet over her, and tucked it in.
A man’s voice: Anything new?
Bozhka Sekan’s voice: The same vision with this difference, the Marn dies without any alternative,
but the Dedach lives if the meie healer is there.
Man: Any better idea of where or when?
Bozhka Sekan: Nik for where. When: Possibly after the healer gets here. Might be two different
times. The Dedach dies if it’s before she comes, lives if it’s after she’s here.
Man: Will you tell the Marn?
Bozhka Sekan: Yes. She’s faced death and accepted it from the thing that’s eating her; she won’t be
broken by a. sooner, quicker end.
Ansila Vos the Marn went walking in her favorite garden on a golden afternoon when the bees were
humming, from flower to flower and moth-sprite child-ings swung on gossamer webstrands among the
crooked branches of the broshka trees.
She walked without obvious, pain or stiffness, but with a slow care that was a more subtle testament
to her age and infirmity. And she wore the Mask of Marn, the ancient ivory shell carved and painted to
imitate life with a certain stylized perfection, born at Cadan-der’s birth, Cadander’s Soul. And she wore
a wig of braided gold wire, very fine wire, almost as fine as real hair. When she was young and filled with
potency and stamina, the despair of her counselors and the wall against which the greedier of her
merchants beat, she ran about like a wild thing and left the Mask and the wig for ceremony, but those
days were long past and now she found the Mask a convenience that minded her face for her and left her
free to think and act.
She walked alone through the garden, having com-manded that it seem so. Her maids and her guards
waited behind the carved wooden screens set up at in-tervals to maintain the illusion of her solitude. They
had scented cloths and ivory fans, wine chilling in a sunken basin fed with water from an artesian well
cold enough to bring on chilblains, hot cha, kava, hot chocolate, and piles of little cakes. And they had
shawls, mirrors, clothbrushes, perfumes, needles and thread. Every-thing was there to maintain the
perfect surface. And everything hidden.
The Marnhidda Vos walked a while among the foun-tains and the sweet-smelling flowers, watching
the butterflies flutter from bloom to bloom, listening to the hum of the bees and the varied songs of the
ska-rivas, the modaries, the v’lashers that spent their sum-mers here, nesting in the fruit trees and the
conifers, walked until she grew tired.
Over her shoulder, she said, “Tingajil, sing for me. Sluzha, bring me my chair and my chocolatier.”
She stood very straight though her knees were shak-ing and behind the Mask her face was drained
of color; she’d pushed herself too far, she knew it, but she didn’t really regret it. It was one of the few
games she had left, this flirting with discovery. She was dying, but only she and her healer knew and
Bozhka Sekan swal-lowed secrets like a well.
The Marti Maid Sluzha bustled her forces forward with the chair, the elbow table of carved cherdva
wood, the chocolate urn, and the two-handed goblet with the glass tube that would pass between the
parted lips of the Mask. They placed the chair where she pointed, waited for her to settle herself, then
brought the table and put it where she could reach it easily. Sluzha shooed the other maids away, poured
chocolate into a small silver cup and drank it down, then stood with her hands folded on her solid round
belly for the pre-scribed fifty heartbeats. Then she filled the goblet, bowed and backed away, vanishing
behind a screen.
Tingajil came with her lute and dropped gracefully on the prickly brown mat of old needles spread
be-neath a sosbra tree, her black singer’s robe stark against a broad patch of zhulas, their flowers yellow
as the springtime sun, yellow as her own bright hair.
As the singer plucked the strings to tune the lute, her head bent down, her face rapt, Marnhidda Vos
sipped at her chocolate and smiled behind the Mask in gentle appreciation of the total artifice of the
per-formance, the scene planned to the last fold of heavy black silk draped over a fine white arm.
Another singer might ask Marnhidda Vos what she wished to hear, but Tingajil was where she was
be-cause she was adept at reading moods. Sometimes Marnhidda Vos wondered if this were intelligence
or merely magic, but she liked the result; the song the singer gave her always matched her humor and
never probed so deeply as to be embarrassing or painful.
This time it was a slow and melancholy tune and the words were sweetly sad. “Memory’s wings,”
Tin-gajil sang, her rich bright voice filling the garden ....
Memory’s wings beat in my head
Sorrow sorrow whispering
Love’s glory’s sweet but soon it’s fled
Morrow’s dulcet lute unstring.
See me clad in winter white—
My harp is mute, my heart’s took flight
My love his trust has broken quite
He lay him down at a jiny’s side.
In a jiny’s bed he’s gone to bide.
Memory’s wings beat in my head
Sorrow sorrow whispering
Love’s glory’s sweet but soon it’s fled:
Morrow’s dulcet lute unstring.
I shall nest with the skarva’s child
Drest in rags, my hair gone wild ....
Surrounded by commotion and protest as she almost always was, K’vestmilly Vos came striding
around a clump of cherry flowers as violently red as the energy she exuded and the explosion of copper
hair that sprang from the pale freckled face with its hawk’s nose and hatchet contours. Marnhidda Vos’
daughter had never been pretty, not even as a child, but she had much of her mother’s force and all her
mother’s charm when she chose to exert it.
Some years ago, when she still cared passionately about Family Vos and Cadander, there were times
when Marnhidda Vos despaired because the girl seemed to have no common sense at all. She was bright
enough, but forever tumbling into muddles and aggra-vations that a moment’s thought would have
prevented.
Bozhka Sekan was the only one she spoke to of her worries and the old woman had hugged her
knees, rocked back and forth, and nearly swallowed her tongue she was laughing so hard. I see you’ve
forgot, she said. Forgot what, Marnhidda Vos asked. Bozhka Sekan ig-nored the annoyance prickling in
her ruler’s voice. She coughed to clear her throat, shook her head. How did you learn your own wisdom,
dama? You were, perhaps, not quite, so silly as K’vestmilly, but I would not swear to it. Do you
remember during the Slan Houba in your nineteenth Spring when you flew so high on techka mushrooms
that you .... And Marnhidda Vos held up her hands to stop the tale. For years after that whenever she
saw a techka she was hard put not to blush. You score that point, she said. But at least I never made the
same mistake twice. K’milly .... Bozhka Sekan laughed again. Would you rather leave your people a
delicate blossom wrapped in cotton wool who has no notion of how life can bite one’s backside? Zdra
zdra, Marnhidda Vos said then, but when will she learn the limitations of power and the games she’ll have
to play to maintain it? Again Bozhka. Sekan shook her graying head. She’ll learn fast as you learned,
Sila, or she won’t and Marn and Mask will move to another line.
Now with death so close, Marnhidda Vos watched with detachment as her daughter erupted into the
peaceful garden, shattering that peace without a second thought.
K’vestmilly stopped in front of her, scowling at the Mask she made no secret of hating. “I went to the
mews and my jessers are gone. All of them! The Keep-er said you did it. Why?”
“Because you are my Heir, my only child, and I don’t want to lose you.” lb stop the words she saw
trem-bling on her daughter’s lips, she lifted a fine white hand, still lovely in its shape despite the erosion of
the flesh beneath the skin. “It isn’t your fault or mine, K’milly, that belongs to the times we live in. I’m a
target of these shadows, so are you. Would you swear to leave your birds bemewed? Nik, and if you
did, I wouldn’t believe you.” Her hand turned, expressing what her hidden face could not. “The birds are
being cared for. When this is over, they’ll be brought back.” Some of her weari-ness seeped into her
words and K’vestmilly heard it.
There was a roughness in her voice when she spoke, an anger that was no longer focused on her
mother. “Put a boot in Jestranos’ backside, Marn. If he can’t find the plotters, get someone who can.”
The silence that followed while Marnhidda Vos dealt with her impatience and weariness was broken
by faint rustles and a busy snip-snip as a small gray man moved around the end zhula bush, clipping off
dead leaves and withered flowers, so intent on his business he didn’t seem to realize where he was.
“It is a more difficult situation than you realize, K’milly. I’d be a fool to cast aside years of experience
and loyalty ....” A flash of gray caught her eye. “Who is that? Why is he here?”
The gardener straightened, stared at her, bewil-dered, his mouth dropping open, the color draining
from his face as he began to realize what he’d done. Then his eyes lost all expression, his face sagged on
the bones. He dropped the secateurs, reached into his shirt, and brought out a shortgun.
Shrieking outrage, K’vestmilly leapt at him, putting her body between him and her mother, her hands
crooked into claws. He managed to get off two wild shots before she wrenched the shortgun from him;
then, his eyes turning back in his head until only the white showed, he went limp and collapsed at her feet.
Her face ashen with rage, a line of blood slanting across her temple, K’vestmilly was about to put a
bul-let through his brain when Marnhidda Vos called out, “Wait. Don’t be a fool, we need to question
him.”
“Saaa ....” It was a long hiss of disappointment, but K’vestmilly stepped back, handing the shortgun
to one of the guards who had come rushing from behind the screens when they heard the shots. Lips
pressed into a thin line, she stalked to her mother and stood scowling down at her. “Lot of use those
guards were.” She blinked as a drop of blood trickled into her eye, drew her fingertips along the scratch
and stared at the red stain on them.
“Here, Dedach, it is brandy, sit you down and drink it.” The singer Tingajil held out a glass half-filled
with a dark amber liquid; when K’vestmilly glared at her from narrowed eyes, she smiled, poured a little
of the brandy into the hollow of her palm and tilted it into her mouth, proffered the glass again whey the
fifty heartbeats were done.
Fighting a weariness that seemed to melt her bones, Marnhidda Vos locked her fingers together,
drew a deep breath. “That was well done, Tingajil.”
The garden dissolved into chaos around them, more guards rushing in, beating the bushes to see if
they could flush another assassin. Treddek Prime Tecozar Nov came striding in with his clutch of aides;
their notebooks out and stylos busy, they trotted after him as he circled first round Marnhidda Vos, held
摘要：

Dancer’sRiseTheDancerTrilogy,Book1JoClayton1993 Putinspacing.Spell-checked.Read1. CHANGECHILDONCEUPONATIMEachangechildwasborntotheWindrunners,anomadpeopleroamingthenorthernGrass.Whenherskinbegantogogreen,theysoldhertothemostpowerfulsorcereralive,SerNoris,whohadsecuredforhimselfakindofimmortality—ace...

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