Jo Clayton: The Burning Ground

Nyen, Patal, all the ferns except the missing Luca and old Yaposh went with varying degrees of reluctance into the tents with the mals of the Phela. The anyas huddled together around the children, holding them silent and still, silent themselves as always, shuddering under the waves of emotion amplified for them by the thinta that was their blessing and curse. Oldmal Yancik stared at the ground, and Blind Bukh waited with stolid patience for the Praise to go on.

Wintshikan closed her eyes a moment, tried to gather serenity around her like the Shawl, but she could not. For the children, she thought. We have to finish for the children’s sake. She cleared her throat, managed a smile as Zell’s fingers closed briefly round hers. “So sayeth the Prophet…” she sang.

When the phela had gone, Zell pushed the flap aside and ducked into the tent. Xe signed, +They are gone,+ then knelt beside Wintshikan and leaned on her thigh, looking down at the cards spread on the silk scarf, two in the top row, three in the middle, one on the bottom. +Change?+

Wintshikan sighed. “So it seems. I haven’t tried the reading yet. Hold my hand and look with me.”

She touched the bottom card with a fingertip, murmured, “From the Egg all things arise.” The card was a stiff leather rectangle painted white with an oval drawn by one sweep of a brush, set inside a thin blackline box with the number glyph for one at the top, a saying from the Prophet printed at the bottom, the whole varnished with a clear shiny substance. “A new thing arises and only God can judge whether it is for good or ill.”

She touched the first card in the second row. “Here are the determinants that mark the days ahead.” Inside the blackline box was a thick jagged line with arrow points on both ends and the glyph for nine.

“Lightning is God’s Fire, both joining and sundering, illuminating and destroying.”

She touched the second card, an inverted U drawn with one quick sweep of the brush by the long dead painter who’d made the cards; at the top was the glyph for six. “Mountain and fern, nurture and life, stability and the handing on of the Right Way.” The third card in this middle row showed an oval like the first, but this was one filled with black. Glyph twenty-four. “Death. The end and the beginning.”

She contemplated the row for a moment, then she shook her head. “Each sign is a contradiction of the others. I see only confusion not direction.”

Zell patted her thigh.

“Yes. Finish the first scan, then try to sort.” She moved her finger to the lefthand card in the top row. “These are guides to direct us to the Right Path.” Three vertical lines, the sign of the tribond, mal-fem-anya. Glyph three. “As God is All and In all things, so should the Three be one, cherishing difference and celebrating oneness. I feel this as a rebuke. I have left the Right Path and must return. I am Heka and have led my own astray.”

Zell pinched her, shook xe’s head, pointed at the last card.

Wintshikan moved her fmger, touched the card. Two vertical strokes with a third across the top, joining them. Posts and lintel. The Gateway. Glyph twelve. “The sign in the middle that looks two ways.”

She contemplated the layout for several more minutes, finally shaking her own head. “All I can take from this is that we are on the edge of something, walking the balance between good and evil. And we must be wise in our choices.” She gathered the cards and folded the scarf around them, replacing them in the bone box the Painter had made for them,

+You think of going hohekil?+

“I helped stone Raxal when he went hohekil, I called him a deserter and abandoned of God. I’ve cursed hohekil at the Meeting Ground. I’ve roared with the others to drown out their words. I never listened to them when they tried to tell us all that we’d chosen the wrong road, that this is not God’s war, but ours.” She rubbed her hands across her face. “Why isn’t anything clear and simple any more? Yes. I’m very close to standing before the ixis, taking off the Heka’s Shawl and saying to them ‘stone me if you must, but I turn my back on the war and walk away.’”

+I am glad. My heart for this war died with our son.+ “You never said.”

+What use are words? I could not leave you and I didn’t wish to add to your grief, Wintashi.+

A scream broke into the silence of the camp. Zell paused to gather up the card box and slip it into xe’s pouch, then ducked past the tent flap.

Luca stood by the embers of the fire, wild-eyed and panting. “Get away,” she shrieked, “They’re coming, Impix are coming, I saw them, they’re following that phe…” There was a shot out of the dark behind her, a sudden leak of blood darkening her sleeve. She dived away, scrambled on hands and knees into the shadow under the trees.

Then there were Impixa everywhere, yelling and shooting…

The thief stared at the smuggler she’d tried to kill.

Yseyl was small and slight, little larger than an anya and almost as dark. Her face was thin and the color of late year leaves, a mix of green and brown, her fine long hair also greenish brown; ordinarily it was braided tightly, but the smuggler had pulled it loose when he searched her for weapons.

She’d slipped all his traps but the last, was caught in a sticky web she couldn’t see or fight; it moved with her when she moved, held her with an unrelenting gentleness that she found more frightening than threats or pain.

She watched the smuggler as he finished unloading his shipment of ammo for the mountain guns above Khokuhl, black thoughts surging through her head, despair chilling her. How many more dead, how much more destruction? She was Pixa, but it’d stopped mattering a long time ago which side killed the other. She no longer believed in God nor cared what the Prophet said. And she knew she was not exactly sane these days. That didn’t matter. She’d stalked and killed nine smugglers before this one, and if she could figure a way to get at him, she’d add him to her list.

He was an odd creature, like nothing she’d seen before, not much taller than she was, with fur like sooty plush covering all visible parts of his body including his face, mobile round ears set high on his head, eyes like pools of melted silver with pointed pupils. His ship was like him, sleek and black, with something about the paint that made it hard to see even on such a bright day as this was turning out to be.

She tried again to gain some ease in the invisible web, looked up, and met that enigmatic silver gaze. Why was he keeping her alive? That niggled at her, disturbed her concentration. Anyone with a grain of sense and the firepower he controlled would have ashed her the minute she tripped the trap.

He set the flare to let the Pixa gunners know where to find the load, swung the crane around and dropped a net beside her. When he got close enough, she could hear him singing something that-ached her ears with its scratchy falsetto. He lifted what looked like a small rock from a cairn beside three bushes, tossed it in the air, caught it, then tucked it in a pocket of the broad belt he wore about his narrow middle. He spread the net out, tipped her into it, pulled it tight around her.

A moment later the crane lifted her into the hold of the ship.

Alone in that dark place, drowning in a sea of sour smells, she felt a shudder, a slight pressure, then nothing-or rather, nothing but a Sound that vibrated in the center of her bones.

That stone. Whatever. That was the control. He set it in a niche by the door. Door. Sphincter. Shat him out of here. God curse… focus, Yseyl. feel it… feel… “Ali!”

The stone was a hot little bit of business, but she’d handled worse getting to the other smugglers. The only reason she’d fallen this time was the cleverness of the furman. He’d set out more obvious traps to herd her to this one and left it quiescent until it was triggered by the shutting down of the rest. It had her before she could identify the source. If I manage to get out of this, I’ll have to sniff around more…