Sheri S. Tepper - Jinian Footseer

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This is a work of fiction. AH the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and

any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

FOREWORD

JINIAN FOOTSEER

A CORGI BOOK 0 552 13189 X

First publication in Great Britain

PRINTING HISTORY

Corgi edition published 1988

Corgi Books are published by Transworld Publishers Ltd., 61-63 Uxbridge Road, Eaiing, London W5

5SA, in Australia by Transworid Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd., 15-23 Helles Avenue, Moorebank,

NSW 2170, and in New Zealand by Transworld Publishers (N.Z.) Ltd., Cnr. Moselle and Waipareira

Avenues, Henderson, Auckland.

Reproduced, printed and bound in Great Britain by

Hazell Watson & Vmey Limited

Member of BPCC plc

Aylesbury Bucks

FOREWORD

I began to write this account upon the Wastes of Bleer, by firelight as others slept, sure I would

die upon the morning. I was there because of love, and my own youthful foolhardiness. Even now,

thinking back on it, I would not have wanted to be anywhere else.

I had come to that place with Peter - and with Silkhands and King Kelver of the Dragon's Fire

Demesne, with Chance and Vitior Vulpas Queynt. Six of us. Upon that barren height Peter had raised

up the Gamesmen of Barish - he had carried them in his pocket for several years - embodying them

once more in their own flesh. Eleven of them, plus Barish himself. We were eighteen.

And against us was coming a horde, a multitude, a vast army of living and dead, live flesh and

dead bone, which none among us thought we could withstand. Seeing our fear, Queen Trandilar had

beguiled us with tales of glory so that our apprehension was allayed. All had fallen asleep except

me.

It wasn't my battle. I had not sought it except that I had sought Peter, determined to be with him

no matter what should come. It would be fair to say I didn't care much about the battle. Huld, the

monster, WHS nothing to me. I had not been harassed and tortured by him as Peter had. Hell's Maw

was nothing In me. I had not seen it. I was sixteen and in love and ibout to die. The one I loved

was asleep, snoring gently, his face like a child's in the dim light of the fire. So - I Took pen

and paper and began to write, thinking perhaps that someone might find the pages, long Afterward,

and remember me for a moment. A tenuous

kind of immortality, but the best I could hope for then.

No.

That is not entirely true.

There was more to it than that. I know the story of my life up until then was no stirring account

of battles and quests as Peter's was. I had not sought adventure; I had merely fallen into

adventure of a dirty, laborious kind with little glory in it. Still, when my labor was done and my

taskmistresses satisfied with the result, I had more than calluses on my hands to show for it. I

had a great, world-terrifying mystery by the tail, a mystery I thought not many others had any

inkling of. It was more important than I was. Someone had to know. I knew Peter's family would

come after the battle and search for our remains. His mother was Mavin Manyshaped. She would come.

Or the Wizard Himaggery, his father. And my account would be there for them to find. One of them,

I thought, would go on where I had left off. They were that kind of people.

So, I wrote, almost until dawn. And later, when we did not die in that battle (as you know, if you

have read Peter's account of it), I went on writing, adding to the account as time went by.

I am called Jinian Footseer by some. By some, Jinian Star-eye. And by some, the Wizard Jinian. One

or two call me Dervish daughter. But I think of myself most often still as merely Jinian, an

unloved daughter of Stoneflight Demesne, who found love later in a strange way. It is that Jinian

I wrote of first, there in that horrid night, and that Jinian I must write of at last.

-1-

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When I was quite young, not more than five or six, my older brother Mendost used to amuse himself

by making me wet my pants. He had come into his Talent of Levitation - Flying, as we say - some

years before, and he thought it fun to pick me up by whatever appendage offered itself and haul me

a few manheights into the air before threatening to drop me. He was, I suppose, twenty or so at

the time: a big, brutishly handsome man with red, wet lips. His -our- father, Garz, sometimes

observed these occasions with bel-lowed laughter and loud advice as to which cobble-stones Mendost

might best drop me on. Garz and Mendost were not unlike in nature.

One afternoon - I will never forget it, not the smell of the air or the way the wind curled down

the low hills to rise about us or the crazy spinning of the courtyard below where the cobbles

waited to splatter me - as 1 was about to faint from combined fear and fury, something snapped.

Something cold and old sat up inside my head and remarked, It may be better to die than to live

like this. I went limp, then. No more screaming, struggling , grabbing at him. I simply went limp

with my eyes wide open as I waited to die. My treacherous sphincters stayed shut. Mendost jounced

and hollered as he always did, but I simply hung there, waiting for the end. After a time he tired

of it and put me down. There were only a few attempts after that, each ending in sulky yelling on

his part, 'Dead body Jinian, dead ass, dead ass.' Soon he gave it up and let me alone.

All Demesnes have some pensioned-off oldsters

about, Gamesmen or pawns useful for running errands or watching babies. There was one old woman -

Murzemire Hornloss, her name was - who had come to Stoneflight Demesne from someplace to the north

when I was a babe. She pulled me over to her after Mendost put me down that first time, wiping my

hot face with a bit of rag and patting my hand. 'Th'art a Wize-ard, chile' she said. It was the

first time I had heard the word, the first time anyone had said anything to me indicating I was

more than an unnecessary impediment to the business of the Demesne. I never forgot it.

Mendost was the oldest of us children, all of the same mother but with varying inheritance from

male progenitors. Mother, Eller of Stoneflight, was scarce more than a child, fifteen or so when

she bore him. One father begat Mendost and me - first and last, as Mother used to say (and I had

my doubts about it, even then) - but Garz had been absent for many years in between and at least

two other men begat my three brothers, Jeruval, Poremy, and Flot. I don't believe we ever knew

which man begat which brother, and since both Gamesmen had gone elsewhere in the lands of the True

Game, it didn't much matter. Mendost's father, who was also supposed to be mine, was an Armiger, a

Flyer, as Mendost was. The other two had been an Afrit and a Pursuivant. Mother, though of

Gamesman caste, seemed to have no Talent of any kind. She was so beautiful she did not need to be

anything else. I hid sometimes behind hangings or in the orchard when she was sunning there, just

to look at her. I thought I would look like that when I grew up, and did not much consider that

she had no Talent else. I fully expected to become an Armiger in my time, like Garz. It seemed a

logical expectation. Though I was the only girl in the family, it never occurred to me that the

matter of sex would make any difference, and I made no separate prognostication on that account.

There were many other children in the Demesne. Bram Ironneck, Mother's oldest brother, and her

other brothers had fathered a number of them. Their mothers occupied various apartments in and

around the place, and I had plenty of opportunity to observe them and the children. I formed the

conclusion that while most mothers behaved with remarkable similarity toward I heir offspring,

that is, with a certain baffled forebearance masking a persistent affection, this rule simply did

not apply to my own mother.

Mother had very limited forebearance and seemed to have no affection for me at all, though her

attitude loward Mendost bordered upon idolatry. As younger siblings sometimes do, I attributed

this to the fact he was oldest. Oldest, and a son, and Garz's child to boot. Though I was supposed

to be Garz's child as well, and that fact earned me no rides on the Festival Horse, Even Garz

seemed unaware of it, never calling me 'chile' or' Jinian'. I was always 'her' or 'thingy' to him.

'Send thingy down to the stables with a message for Flitch.' 'Tell her to get out of here with

that mess.' On the few occasions he addressed me directly, it was likely to be with a kick and a

pointed finger. 'Out.'

As a result of this treatment, I learned early to escape the Demesne whenever things looked to get

stormy among the inhabitants. I had a pony, Misquick, so called for her habit of stumbling when

she tried to hurry, and a long-legged, neutered fustigar named Grompozzle, Grommy for short. Both

of these creatures were mine by virtue of the fact that no one else wanted them, and looking back

upon their propensities, I can quite see why. It was our habit when the day's schooling was done -

Bram insisted we know written language and calculating in addition to cartography and the Index,

one of the few sensible things he insisted upon - and when not otherwise occupied or forced into

uncongenial labors by older relatives, to take ourselves as far from Mendost and Jeruval as

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possible.

Poremy and Flot were never as pernicious as the older boys, but at that time I never sought their

company, though much later we were to become fairly good friends. If departure seemed prudent and

there wasn't time to ride away into the hills, there were other places where one could hide

successfully.

If I wasn't going off somewhere by myself, someone else might take me. It was almost a season

after Mendost stopped tormenting me that the same old woman, Murzemire, came to me one evening as

I was hiding in a rainhat bush along the stream, listening to the water and throwing windfall

berries to hear them splash. She asked if I would come with her on an errand to the village. I

recall going along happily enough. There was a sweet-shop in the village, and also the house of a

wood carver who made toys for children. Even if it were not a Festival day, one could watch him

carving the toys and think about receiving one, perhaps, when a Festival day came along, though

that had never happened to me in the past.

The village was part of the family Demesne, of course, but quite outside the walls of the family

place. It was not a fortress. It was a strong Demesne, since mother's three brothers were all in

residence and Garz lived there as well. Bram Ironneck, an Elator, had recruited still others to

our banner, making the place secure and well founded. We had plenty of pawns on the land and in

the village and had never felt the need for walls. Anyway, old Murzy took me along with her into

the village, and we went a twisty way. I don't remember ever seeing before the house we came to.

It was a simple cottage, with a paling fence in front and a garden full of herbs. The door was

painted blue, as many doors are in our part of the world. It is supposed to be a color favored by

the old gods and much avoided by ghost pieces.

Inside the house were three or four old women not unlike Murzy herself. They gave me cookies, and

honey-sweetened tea, and talked to me about many things. They asked me odd questions, too, which

were exciting to think about, and I was sorry when Murzy told me we must go back to the family

place. As we loft, one old dam, Tess Tinder-my-hand, handed me a silvery trinket on a bit of thong

and told me to keep it by me. I have it still. It is a pendant in the shape of a star with an eye

in its middle, the pupil and cornea of the eye set in black and green stones, the whole polished

flat. I heard the old woman telling Murzy to keep an eye on me (at the time I supposed the eye

that was to be kept on me was the one they had given me) and bring me back from time to time to

see whether the wize-art would come to me. I overheard this and asked Murzy about it, 'Will it

come to me, will it?' not knowing what it was that was to come.

She told me to be patient, that it was a slow gift, long in the coming. I escaped to that cottage

hundreds of times over the succeeding years, but after the first few times tried to put the whole

business of the gift out of mind, resolved not to ask again whether it would come for fear the

asking might queer the gift, slow or not.

-2-

Once I had decided I would rather die than care what Mendost did to me any longer, it was not long

before he stopped bothering me much. It was no fun for him if I did not scream or beg. Thus, once

I had stopped fighting him, he soon stopped lofting me high above our Demesne, and it was only two

or three times more I got to see the world from above. I suppose Armigers get used to it and no

longer see the wonder

of flight. I know that the day I realized I would not be an Armiger was bitterly sad for me, for I

had hoped to see the world often as a bird sees it.

That isn't the thing I meant to speak of, however. On one of those last times Mendost had me

dangling by one foot high above the Demesne, with me simply hanging, refusing to be frightened, I

looked away northeast and saw a city there, upside down, hanging against the ceiling of the world

like candle drippings. When I had been put down again and had time to do so, I went to old Murzy

and asked her what I had seen.

'A city, chile?' she asked. 'Not off there. Nothing there but roones.'

It was a short forever before I learned what 'roones' were. That happened thiswise.

One of my favorite rides was to go down through the sammit fields to the much eroded badlands at

the northwestern edge of the Demesne where the flood-chucks were at work. Long in the past,

according to Murzy, there had been no flood-chucks at all, but there had been two totally

different creatures, one a dam builder and the other a dry-land digger. The great ancestors had

somehow bred them together - don't ask me how. What the great ancestors had the power to do is

quite beyond my power to explain - to come up with flood-chucks, great fluffy brown beasts who

love to cut trees and brush and build dams across gullies where water might one day run

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destructively. I liked to watch them work. If one bowed to them, they would line up to return the

bow, the head-chuck first in line, each one in the line bending a bit more deeply than the one

before. Very ceremonious beasties they were, and they liked me, which won me to them completely.

They liked me and horses liked me. Sometimes the stablemen would ask me about the horses. 'What

ails the mare, Jinian? D'ya think she had a gutache, or what?' And I would say, 'She's been into

the startle-flower, Roggle. Give her some charcoal and

she'll be fine.' Like as not, she would turn out to be just that. Horses were funny. No other

animal we used had so many little sicknesses, almost as though they found the world not totally to

their liking.

Anyway, on this particular afternoon, after a day particularly filled with Garz's bluster and

Mother's screaming - Mother was a screamer; Garz would lease her about it sometimes, calling her

Eller the Yeller - Misquick, Grommy, and I set off down along I lie flood-chuck works, pausing

there only long enough for a long, mutually satisfying bowing session, then turned away into the

hills north of the Demesne. I had taken my camp kit and the usual provisions, enough tor half a

day's wandering, and had not figured on being late to return.

However, a storm came up; Misquick, frightened by the thunder, tried to gallop back to her

comfortable stable and ended sliding down a muddy slope into knee-deep water and thence into a

kind of twisty canyon which no one of us could find our way out of again. Grommy at once went

foraging, the one thing he was good at, and brought us three fresh bunwits. I lound table roots

growing along the stream, and Mis-quick made up for losing us by locating a sizable patch of giant

wheat. A little bashing with a stone, a little chopping with a knife, and we had a stew to share

between Grommy and me and plenty of grain for Misquick. Night came on, and we sheltered in a half-

cave, feeding the fire through the night and setting out at first light to find our way home.

We followed the twisty canyon so far as it would lake us, then climbed up a crumbly path to a low

saddle of the mountain which I thought might give us some sense of direction. If nothing else, we

could wait there until dark and get some sense from the stars. As it was, however, we had no

sooner come upon the saddle than we were set upon by a tribe of half-naked, leather-lean creatures

I did not at first take for human,

so hairy they were, and so given to showing their teeth. They took us off, Grommy by a rope,

Misquick by her bridle, and me over the shoulder of one of them to the very city I had seen from

the air. There were crumbling walls and domes with great holes fallen through, a line of street

half-obscured beneath fallen stone, and other buildings reduced to fang-sharp protrusions of

metal. The doors that went through the ancient walls were a strange shape, narrow at the bottom

and wide at the top, and the walls themselves were great, thick things. Inside a few of the most

ancient buildings were statues; idols, I suppose could be said, though it was hard to tell what

the stones might have been carved to represent, so worn with weather they were and polished by the

hands of the hairy people. There was one all lumpy that looked rather like a mole, and one with

wings, and one that looked like a tangled pile of rope. A d'bor, probably. Several were star-

shaped, like my star-eye, and I made the star sign reverently. One never knew what might be

looking.

I guessed they might have something to do with the old gods. In our part of the world, Murzy said,

the evidence of them was often found, here and there, though mostly among ruins. Then I realized

that 'roones' were 'ruins', and that this was the ancient city I had often heard of but never seen

before, Old South Road City.

If this were Old South Road City, then the people in it were the blind runners, and this brought a

new kind of fear. The blind runners were said to eat children. That virtue was claimed for them by

every nursemaid who ever was, and every harassed mother as well. 'Be still, now, or I'll have the

blind runners come eat you up!' I'd heard it over and over until I was old enough to leave the

nursery. I think children hear it still, all over the world, whether their minders have ever seen

a blind runner or not. As I was only about

nine years old, it occurred to me that I might still be of an appetizing age.

They did not immediately offer to eat me, however, mid by the time I thought of it again, it was

obvious

they ate mostly fungus and roots and giant wheat. They did not even gesture a sharp stone toward

Mis-q u ick, and she was fat and juicy as any animal ever was.

They sat me down among them, Misquick beside me and Grommy at my feet, while they garbled and

howled as though they had been wranglebats. It was some time before I perceived the howling to be

melodic and the garbling intelligible, but once it came to me

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that they were singing, I recognized the intent well enough. They were singing 'On the Road, The

Old Road,' which is a children's jumprope song, or a song to go with playing jax, or even a much-

tag song. One of the younger ones fingered the amulet I had been given by Murzy's oldsters, crying

out some 'looky here' or other, and then they were all staring at my front, where the little star

hung, its green-and-black eye peering back at them.

'Footseer?' one asked of another, and the next thing I knew they were blindfolding me and taking

off my shoes. Then I was whirled and whirled, as in a game of blind man's grab, and set down in a

sudden silence. I felt a tingle in one toe and reached tentatively toward it, setting my foot down

on something hard that tingled more - not in pain, you understand, but a tickly, pleasurable

feeling.

I went toward it, until both feet were on it, and found that by continuing to move, the tingling

would go on, though if I simply stood still, it stopped after a moment. So I wandered myself,

quite happily, humming as I went, until a great cry went up from the assembled crowd, 'Footseer!'

and they took the blind-told away. I had been following a line of half-buried slones, part of an

ancient roadway, and had done it without seeing it at all.

After that we had some food and drink with much garbling and good cheer, and one of them took me

back to a road I knew. I went to find Murzy to ask her about them, and she said they were the

blind runners - blindfolded runners - indeed, those who looped through all the lands of the True

Game on the Old Road. Old South Road City was the place they began from, and while not all the

runners lived there year round, it was there they gathered to begin the journey. 'Chile,' she said

in the comfortable nursery dialect she always used with me then, 'it's as well tha came on them

when tha did, for they are more or less sane this time of year. When the time of storms comes,

then looky out. They begin to foam and fulminate on the road, blind as gobblemoles, stopping for

no man nor his master.'

'Why do they do that, Murzy?' I asked her. The ones I had seen had been sane enough, certainly,

and not bad hosts, either. They had a kind of seed cake made with honey that was as good as

anything from our kitchens.

'Story is, chile, they'll run the road until they find the tower. Tower, if tha sees it, sucks tha

up by the eyes. Tower, if tha sees it, eats tha up. So, they go running, running, thinking they'll

run into it full tilt, blind and safe, and rescue the bell from the shadows.' 'What bell is that,

Murzy?'

'The only bell, chile. D'tha grow big and get the wize-art and tha'll maybe find what bell. 'Tis

the one bell, the two bell, that cannot ring alone. The old gods' bell.' And that was all she

would say, no matter how I begged. 'Why did they look at my star and call me a footseer?' I asked,

dangling it before her on its string. 'It's a seer dangle, sure enough, and no secret about that,

with the eye on it plain as plain. But don't flourish it out for the world to see.' So I tucked it

into the neck of my shirt, abashed, not knowing why. She had not understood my question.

Alter that, I would often go off into the woodland to the line of stones that marked the Old Road,

shut my eyes, and walk along the roadway, feeling it in my toes. After a time, I was able to run

full tilt along the way, never losing it for a moment, rejoicing in the thrumming tingle, a kind

of wild, exhilarating feeling which grew wilder and better the faster I ran. When the Season of

Storms approached, however, Murzy told me to stay away from the road. 'They care not who they

trample, chile, or what. Tha or tha pets or tha kin Mendost would all be the same to them.' So I

took to hiding in the trees and watching. Sure enough, they began to come running by, bunches and

hundreds of them, all running with their hooded heads up, as though in answer to a summons no one

but they could hear. If one crept close to the Old South Road City, one could hear them howling -

singing, as it were - through the dark. 'On the road, the Old Road, a tower made of stone. In the

tower hangs a bell which cannot ring alone.' When we jumped rope to that, two would come in at the

'cannot ring alone' and jump, counting together, hands on waists. 'Shadow bell rings in the dark,

Daylight Bell the dawn. In the tower hung the bells, now the tower's gone.' At 'gone' one would

run out of the rope, leaving it slapping behind, and then to and fro through it, on the swing, as

many counts as one could do. That's only one rope tune, of course. There's one about the first

Eleven, and one about Larby Lanooly and a dozen more. Now that I am grown, wherever I go in the

world, I hear children winging jax tunes or bounce-ball tunes or jumprope tunes, and they are the

same in a dozen different tongues, the same all over the world.

Stories, too. They used to tell me stories, the old dams. Especially Murzy. The one about Little

Star and the Daylight Bell. She learned it when she was a girl from an old dam in Betand, but that

story is told everywhere. How Little Star went wandering? You

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remember? And he came to the gobblermole, draggling in the earth. And he asks the gobblemole what

he's druggling for, and the mole says, 'I'm druggling for the Daylight Bell.' Then when Little

Star starts to druggle, too, Mole catches him and binds him up. And Little Star tricks him into

getting loose, and binds him up, and demands a boon to let him go again. Remember the story? After

the mole, he meets a d'bor wife grodgeling the water, and then a flitchhawk grimbling and

grambling the air, and each of them is tricked into a boon. I loved that story. All children do.

It was soon after the visit to the blind runners that I got sick. Cat Candleshy, one of the dams,

said later it was probably some disease the runners had among them that our people had no

resistance to. After a day or two of it, with me no better, and the fever burning hotter with each

passing hour, old Murzy demanded a Healer be sent for. Through the haze of fever and pain, I

remember Mother standing at the foot of my cot, her hair wild and lovely in the light from the

window, saying impatiently, 'There's no need, Murzemire. She'll get better or she won't, and

that's all anyone can expect.' When they had shut the door behind her, Murzy cuddled me tight and

said to hold on, she herself was going to Mip for the Healer. It seems she did, going completely

on her own and sneaking the Healer back with her. She, the Healer, said she'd been fetched just in

time. My lungs wheezed and sucked, and I couldn't get air into them. She put her hands on me and

reached down inside - I could feel it - to twist something or untwist it, whichever. It hurt. I

remember yelling, partly from the pain, partly from the relief at being able to breathe again.

She had to do it again, the day after, and it hurt again, but then I began to improve and the

Healer merely sat by my bed, telling me stories about bodies. She told me of bones, and how the

heart pumps the blood 'round, and of the network of nerves from

toetop to headtop, with tiny Elators flicking on the network to deliver messages. 'Electrical,'

she said, shaking her head in wonder at it all, 'and chemical. Like lightning.'

I remember sleepily asking her what they were calle'd, the little Elators. She shook her head,

laughing.

'I call them nerve transmitters,' she said. 'You might call them nerve Elators, if you like.'

After that, I often thouht of the little Elators in me, swift as storm, carrying their messages

between my head and my fingers or toes.

During my slow recovery, I remembered what

Mother had said to Murzy. 'She'll get better or she

won't, and that's all anyone can expect.' There was

nothing unusual in her attitude or tone, neither more

nor less interest about me than might have been there

at any time previously. It was just then, every sense

sharpened by the fever and the pain, that I understood

the meaning of it. The meaning was, 'Jinian will die or she won't, and who cares?'

I think I cried over this. There's a vague memory of Murzy holding me on her lap in the rocking

chair - me, a big girl of nine or ten - as though I were an infant. Later it didn't seem so

important. It was just the way things were, as thunder is loud or lightning unselective. No point

arguing with the thunder or threatening the lightning. Just seek cover and wait. that's probably

how many young ones survive childhood. Seek cover and wait.

The next thing I remember especially is when Murzy look me on an expedition. All the old dams were

going out to pick herbs and fungi, bitty here, bitty there, to last us the cold season when

nothing would be growing. Our teacher was off on a trip to visit his relatives up near Harbin. The

boys were off into the hills, and when Murzy suggested to Mother I be let go with them, she said,

'Oh, take her, Dam Murzy. Take her lor heaven's sake. Now if Garz and Bram would get

themselves off, we'd have some peace around here.' Considering Mother was the one who usually

disturbed whatever peace anyone else might have, I thought this was a bit overstated and started

to say so. I hadn't been disrupting anything and was in a mood for considerable self-justification

toward this woman who had not even cared whether I died. Murzy, however, caught me by the back of

my jerkin and bore me out of the room on a flood of 'Thank you, ma'am's. Next thing I knew I was

in the wagon with six dams and the horses clattering us off down the road to the forest.

It's a bit difficult to tell just what happened next, because it was and it wasn't much. We went

on for a bit on the road, with the old ones singing the funny song about two lovers in a briar

patch and all the odd rhymes to the last line, 'And he scratched it!' Then we turned into the

forest road and they fell quiet. Three of them got down from the wagon. We came to the forest

bridge.

Forest bridge is a small high wooden one, curving up from one rocky mossy wall to another rocky

mossy wall over the tinkly torrents of Stonybrook. There are ferns in the walls, and a cool, wet

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smell even on hot afternoons. So ...

One old woman, I think it was Tess Tinder-my-hand, whispered something into the air, then set foot

on the bridge, stamping her foot", so, just a little. Bridge drummed, bowom. Second old woman

whispered, set her foot, bom bom bowom. Third old woman set foot on the bridge, bom bom bowom

wommmmm. And then quiet. Horses quiet. Wagon quiet. All the old women quiet, waiting. I crept down

from the wagon, bunwit still, sneaky, crept out onto that bridge. Old women set their feet, bom

bom bowom wommmm, and just when the echo was starting to come up from below I set my foot down

quick, and the echo came wom wom bawom bom bom with a sound of laughter in it. I kept right still

then, listening while the laughter

went on. There was something living down there, under the bridge. Then the old women began singing

about Larby Lanooly, and old Murzy shook up the horses to come over the bridge, in a rum-a-rum-a-

rum of hooves, and we got back in the wagon and that was that.

When we came to the groves, though, old Murzy look me by the hand to each of the old women,

putting my hand in each one's old hand, saying, 'Welcome our sister, our child, for today she

begins upon the Way.' When I'd done it with all six of them, she took me aside, speaking to me for

the first time without the baby-talk 'tha's, as she would to a grown-up person. 'Jinian, girl,'

she said, 'you've the wize-art. In part, at least, and none know whether the whole will come until

it comes. Now you must promise me something or the sisters and I'll be gone come night and come

not nigh you again.'

'Where will you go?' I remember I asked this, more curious about that than about what she might

say next.

'Away,' she said flatly, and I believed her. 'Now listen. What we tell you is secret. What we

teach you is secret. What you learn from us is secret. You do not talk about it. Not to your

mother, not to any in the Demesne. Not to your lover, come that time, or your husband or child,

come that time as well. To one of us, yes, if you see the star-eye and hear the proper words.

Otherwise, never.'

Well, I had no lover, that was sure. And I wasn't inclined to tell anyone at the Demesne anything

important, nor Mother anything at all, important or not. So I gave her my hand and promised, she

putting the little star into it as I did so.

'Always keep this safe, Jinian. It is a sign to tell any Wize-ard anywhere that you are one of us,

a sister in the Way, but most times you don't go dangling it out where the world can see it and

ask questions. Long

time ago it was called the Eesty sign, and some still call it that. So, if one of us asks are you

Wize-ard, or are you star-eye, or do you carry the Eesty sign, it all means the same thing. Do you

hear me, Jinian?'

I said I did. It made Tess's gift more precious than ever, and I took to polishing it every night

on my nightgown when I went to bed. However, just then I wanted to know about what had just

happened.

'What was it, there at the bridge?' I asked.

'Bridge magic, child. Calling up the deep dwellers. One of the ten thousand magics, and not the

simplest. We learn a simpler one today, herbary, and see you pay attention.'

I did my best. I certainly never forgot what they taught me that afternoon. Rainhat root, pounded

with the seeds of shivery-green, when the seeds are still in the pod and the root taken on the

same day, will bring a sleep no power is proof against - no, not even Healing. 'A day, a drop,'

said old Tinder-my-hand. 'Two days, two drops. Drink a flagon of it, and a man will sleep a year

and starve while asleep, for in this sleep he will not swallow nor shit nor pee nor aught but

barely breathe, girl.'

'It sounds ... dangerous,' I said.

'It sounds useful,' she corrected me. 'May come a time you'd like Mendost to be asleep for a few

days? Well? But never for anything small, girl. We don't use the wize-art for small things.'

So I learned the formula for sleep, and another very complicated one for making people or

creatures fall in love - that one had sixteen ingredients that had to be mixed in the right order

and the right quantities - and yet another for reducing temper. Murzy caught my eye and reminded

me, 'Not for anything small, Jinian. Put that thought right out of your head,' so I stopped

thinking of putting it in Mother's tea. Still, it would have been an improvement.

Herbary isn't really secret. There are books, often

not even hidden away, where you can find out about it. So it doesn't matter if I say some things

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about it. You'll notice I don't tell what the sixteen ingredients are. Murzy says it wouldn't be

wize at all. But I can tell the story without telling the truly secret things. Besides, some of

them aren't truly secret anymore since the changes.

After that, I spent a great deal of time with the sisters. Murzy. Tess Tinder-my-hand. Margaret

Fox-mitten. Bets Battereye. Cat Candleshy. And Sarah Shadowsox. And Jinian Footseer. Seven of us,

which is the usual number. I have talked of them as though they were all equally old, but Tinder-

my-hand was oldest, white-haired and frail, forgetful a bit at times and at others so quick it

surprised you. Murzy and Bets were next oldest, alike enough to be sisters, both full of bustle

and no-nonsense. Cat was dignified and knife sharp, dark hair drawn up in a braid crown. Sarah had

wild red-brown hair and eyes like a mountain zeller, all soft caution. They were about middle-

aged, I suppose, thirty or so. Margaret Foxmitten was tall and thin as a whip and not much older

than Mendost, and she could be more beautiful than Eller when she chose, but there was something

forbiddingly elderly about her, for all her soft skin and shining hair. When she sat in the dust

of the courtyard, husking fruit or chopping grain, no one would have looked at her twice. It was a

kind of disappearing, of invisibility, and Murzy suggested I would do well to learn it. I seemed

to be disturbingly visible whenever I was present, and I decided I was just too young to bring it

off.

Time went on. Jeruval got his Talent - I 've honestly forgotten what it was. Pursuivant, I think.

He went off, then, to Game with some Demesne or other until he got tired of it or got killed.

Poremy still had a year or so to go before he could expect to get his Talent, if any, and Flot

perhaps two years. It comes, usually,

around the fifteenth or sixteenth year, though I've been told Witchery comes earlier than that and

Sorcery much later. I was about thirteen years old, just getting my breasts and woman-times.

That's when Murzy told me to get myself ready for a trip.

I heard her talking to Mother.

Overheard.

Well, listened. It was on a teetery branch of a tall tree outside the tower window, so I guess you

couldn't say 'overheard'. I just happened to be there. Looking for birds' eggs.

Murzy was saying, 'My oldest sister, ma'am. Not much longer in this life, I shouldn't think, and

it would be nice to spend Festival together. So, a couple of the dams and I decided - with your

permission, of course, ma'am - we'd go on up to Schooltown and spend a few days with her. I'd be

happy to take young Jinian with us, too. Get her off your hands. The girl's got a good heart, but

heaven save us, she's always into mischief ...'

Mischief! I was into no such thing, and started to say so, but the branch cracked under me and I

decided to be still.

Mother fingered the crystal she had on a chain around her neck. Mendost had given it to her, and

she always wore it. 'Children are a trial,' she said. That was nothing new. She often said it,

especially to me.

'They are that, ma'am.' That was new. Murzy always said to me that children are one of life's

great joys, so I knew she was up to something. 'I think any conscientious mother needs a rest from

time to time.'

'You're right.' Mother sighed. You would have thought from that sigh she didn't have two hundred

pawns around to do whatever they were told, plus all the kinfolk, plus Garz and Bram. From that

sigh, you'd have thought the whole weight of the Demesne was on her head. 'They wanted me to make

a Dervish of her, you know, Dam Murzy. I wouldn't do it to a child

of mine, but I've wondered since if it wouldn't have been best for her. With her nature and all.'

'A Dervish? My, my. What a thing that would have been to be sure.' Murzy's voice was all choked.

She shook her head, and I tried to think what Mother could possibly have meant by that. 'Well,

taking the child away may relieve your burdens just a little

And, of course, Mother said yes. I so admired the way old Murzy did it, I didn't even fuss at her

about saying I got up to mischief. I hardly ever did. Mischief, 1 mean. I didn't remember to ask

about the Dervish business, either.

'So why are we really going?' I asked her. 'Not just to visit your old sister, I'll warrant.'

'I'm very fond of Kate,' she said, somewhat stiffly. 'And we will visit her, you may be sure.'

'But,' I begged her. 'But?'

'But we're going, at least partly, to continue tha education. And to amuse ourselves. Now, don't

ask any more questions. Trust old Murzemire. She hasn't done you wrong yet, has she?'

She hadn't. Not once. Besides, I wasn't sure I wanted to know why we were going anywhere. Some of

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the things I already knew were very heavy in my mind from time to time. Having something else in

there even heavier didn't attract me. Learning more was merely ordinary to me, but traveling -

that was a wonderful treat.

At least so I thought until we had done some of it. Then it turned out that traveling was doing

everything one had to do at home with none of the conveniences for doing it. I was kept very busy

gathering wood for the cookfire, and checking the horses' hooves for stones, and rubbing them down

and watering them, and arranging the wagon, and washing our clothes in the streams. It is a long

way from our Demesne to Schooltown, a long slow way when one travels so as to avoid getting

involved in Game on the way. There was

nothing interesting on the way but scenery, and by the time we arrived I was heartily surfeited

with scenery and very glad to see walls once more. We stayed at an inn, thank the Hundred Devils,

one owned by sister Kate. She looked nowhere near to dying to me, and she had her own servants to

fetch wood and water. As a child of Gamecaste, I thought I would not have to do anything at all.

In which I was mistaken. The day after we arrived, all seven of us were back in the wagon going

off through Schooltown and into the countryside to an old, tumbly building with moss all over its

rocks and its walls gaping up at the sky like teeth. There was a broken tower and steps that wound

up and around onto old roofs and down and around into old dungeons. I looked about me doubtfully

while the others unloaded their picnic lunch and their work-baskets and then traipsed up the

stairs to a comfortable ropm in the tower. It had a fire, cushions to sit on, translucent shutters

over the windows, and the six of them sat down there like brood hens, Murzy waving me off.

'Explore, Jinian. The whole place. Come back when tha feels hungry.'

So I did. Up to the roofs and down to the cellars, then below the cellars to the dungeons, old and

slimy and full of things that squeaked. It wasn't fearsome, that place, just old. So I wandered it

and wandered it, and got tired and went back for a bite of lunch, then wandered it again. Come

dark we got in the wagon and went back to the inn. Next day, back to the place again. Murzy and

the dams had been teaching me to use my senses, and I used them as best I knew how, but about the

third day, I began to be bored with it. 'All right,' I said to them all, hands on my hips. 'What's

it all about?'

Murzy put down her needle and pointed to the window in the tower. 'There's bridge magic, Jinian.

And window magic'

I couldn't think what she was talking about. I stood there, staring at the window. Then I walked

out into the corridor and stared at another window. Then back into the tower room, where the six

of them chatted and clucked like hens. And then, quite suddenly, I began to get a glimmer.

A stone wall: which implied a builder, which implied a closed space, which implied protection from

an outer world, or retreat from that world, or hiding from that world. And a window cut through:

wide, with a welcoming sill, on which one might curl up on pillows to dream away a morning or long

evening, looking out at the light making patterns beneath the trees. A window was a kind of

joining, then. A kind of linkage between worlds. And a wind would come in, and light could come

in, with tough, translucent shutters standing wide but ready to shut against bitter blast or hard

rain. Gray of stone, blue of sky, with the bright green of new leaf blowing against it. Hardness

of stone, softness of air. Shadows moving across the window. A memory of firelight, with soft

breezes moving from the window to the fire. And in this room, welcome. Murzy nodded to me, picking

up her needle again.

Breathless with what I thought I knew, I left the room and ran away down the stone corridor,

finding the hidden entrance to the stair that twisted down inside the tower. At the third curve

was a window, a narrow slit cut through the wall to peer down at the castle gate from an

unsuspected angle, high and secret, hidden in the shadow of the tower. Suspicion. Fear. Stone

within and without, the broken gravel of the hard road making on obdurate angle at the edge of the

wall, edged with more stone, the spears of the raised portcullis making fangs at the top of the

gate. Not joining, but separation.

I nodded to myself, fleeing downward once more, through the hidden door at the bottom and then

down ancient ways to the empty dungeons at the bottom of

the keep. There was one where a slit window at the ceiling fed a narrow beam of pale light

reflected from a slimy pond outside. The wall sweated moisture, a dank smell of deep earth and old

mold lay in the place, and a green ooze covered the wall. Here the light lay upon the ceiling,

reflected upward, wavering, a ghost light, gray and uncertain, lighting only the stone in a

ceaseless, agitated motion, without peace.

I looked at that watery light for a long time before climbing back up to the room where they

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waited. Murzy nodded to me once more, not failing to notice the stains of slime on my hands,

falling into the common folk nursery talk they often used when it suited them.

'Tha's been adown the deeps? Nasty down there.'

'I've been discovering window magics, Murzy. It came to me all at once.'

'Well, if it comes at all, it comes all at once.'

I sat down at Murzy's feet, suddenly adrift from the possession of knowing, the certainty of

action. I knew, yes, but what was it I knew? 'Different,' I said to her, feeling my way.

'Different windows. Magic, because they have an out and an in, because they are linkages of

different kinds. Because they are built. Because they are dreamed through and looked through. But -

something more, I guess ...'

'Well, there's actually going through a window, isn't there? Or calling someone through a window.

Or summoning.'

'Summoning?' I thought about that. Summoning. Through windows. Of course. 'If one summoned through

a window - if one did - what answered the summons would be different, depending on the window,

wouldn't it?' I wasn't sure about this, and yet it made a certain kind of sense. I might have

summoned something into the dungeon very different from a thing I could summon into this room now.

'Think of calling to a lover,' said Margaret Foxmitten

dreamily, her needle flashing in the sun. 'Calling from this room. Think of calling something from

the dungeon. Think of summoning a presence. Into this room. Into the dungeon.'

'Ah,' I said, getting some misty idea of what they were getting at. 'If I ... if I wanted to

summon something frightening or horrid, I'd call something out of the dungeon through that high,

watery window. And I would lead it in again through the open portcullis.'

'You could do that,' said Bets. 'Or you could find the tiny, square window which looks out through

an iron grille over the pit where ancient bones were dropped. You might call something in through

that window more dreadful still.'

'But,' said Murzy, 'suppose you wanted to summon Where Old Gods Are?' Where Old Gods Are was the

name of a very powerful spell they had taught me.

'I would summon through this window, here,' I said, opening the shutters and looking out on the

peaceful pastures and the blowing green of leaves.

'Good,' said Murzy, packing up her work. 'Think about that.'

I thought about it for some time, putting bits and pieces of it in place in my head. Not all of it

connected to other things I knew, but some of it did. By that time it was dark, so we returned to

Schooltown and the Festival.

So, came Festival morning and they decked me out like the Festival Horse, all ribbons. Murzy had

given me a new blue tunic with a cape to match, and Bets Battereye spent most of the previous

evening braiding my hair wet so it would wave. 'We want you to be a credit to us,' she said,

yanking bits of hair into place. I thought it unlikely I'd be much credit to them bald, which is

what it felt like, but I'd learned that uncom-plaining silence was best in dealing with the dams.

Come morning, the hair was brushed out into a wavy

cloud, then they dressed me up and told me to stay in the room and stay clean until they came for

me. So I pulled a chair over to the sill, and opened the case ments wide. I could see people going

by, and it put me in a fever of anticipation, but nothing would hurry them so I spent the time

practicing summons and distraints.

It was a good window for summoning, broad and low, with a wide sill overhanging a fountain-

splashed courtyard. Smell of water on the stones - that's important for some summons. You know the

smell? That first smell of water on dry earth or dry stone? That's the grow smell. Water, earth,

and grow smell make one of the major triads of the Primary Extension of the Arcanum. That's not

secret. Everyone knows that. Gardeners use it all the time. Beneath the window was a herb garden

with the shatter-grass, bergamot, lady's bell triad. There were five other triads within sight or

smell, too, including two other majors, making seven all together. Not bad for a mere learner, and

more than enough to call up something fairly powerful if I'd liked.

Sarah brought me a hot nutpie. 'I know you're starving, but patience a bit longer, chile. We've

called the Healer for Tess. Poor thing, she's no younger than she was yesterday, and it tells upon

her. Still, give us a bit and we'll be ready to go festivate with the rest of the town.'

At which I fidgeted, sighed, cut a slice of my pie, and laid out the summoning tools once more.

Murzy said there was no such thing as practicing too much.

What would I practice this time? Lovers Come Cal-ling, that's what. The window was perfect for

Lovers Come Calling, so I would have window magic and the summons reinforcing one another. First

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file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Sheri%20S.%20Tepper%20-%20Jinian%20Footseer.txtThisisaworkoffiction.AHthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictional,andanyresemblancetorealpeopleorincidentsispurelycoincidental.FOREWORDJINIANFOOTSEERACORGIBOOK055213189XFirstpublicationinGreatBritai...

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