Jo Clayton - Shadowkill

It took time to build the Tie, time to understand the beast, to relate what was sensed to realtime acts and reactions. Time… lots of time… he’d had Sassa from the egg, carried that egg against his body, warming it, becoming slowly aware of the creature inside. He’d relinquished the egg just before it hatched to allow the hatchling to imprint properly on his own kind, took him back as eyas, kept him always near, sleeping in the same room, trained him, was trained by him, an intensifying give and take until the Tie was complete. Months and months, more than a year.

It was much the same with the mutated panthers Magimeez and Nagifog; he didn’t want to think of them, their death still screamed in his head, their terror and rage and pain.

He thought instead of the not-lizard.

A name. What should I call you, little liz? Miji. Yes. Nimble Fingers, abbreviated because the whole would be too long. Miji. I can’t take a year to get to know you, Miji, all I’ve got is an hour or so, but maybe we can hurry it up some. The sun is warm today. Very bright. Just a few clouds. A shadow of a cloud is passing over you, Miji, do you feel the difference in the warmth? Aaah. Yes. Astonishing. It seems rubbing against Shadow opened some doors in my head. Opened them a crack, anyway. Shadow…

no, Rohant, get your mind on what you’re doing. Do you have any curiosity in you, Miji? You’re not wholly a reptile, are you? Native to this world? Life in the process of evolving? The change altered or cut short by us intruders? Do you feel me… aaah…

Miji the not-lizard lifted his frilly head, stared at Rohant. His eyes were large for his head, black as jet beads, lively eyes, bright with the curiosity Rohant wanted to find in him.

Miji, Miji, come and see. He formed the words in his mind and tried to project the welcoming warmth generated around them.

Miji shivered, ran a few steps toward him, retreated. Time passed unnoticed.

Slowly, warily, Miji got closer and closer, finally close enough to sniff at Rohant’s fingers.

Rohant didn’t move.

Miji panicked, skittered back about a meter, sat on his haunches, and contemplated the Dyslaeror.

Rohant’s ears quivered. He heard the sound of footsteps in the tunnel; the walkers were several minutes off still, but he knew them. His warders come to take him back to his cell. For the first time he looked directly at the not-lizard. “Go,” he said aloud. He slapped his hand several times against the concrete, hoping Miji would understand the warning. It was a common one among the reptiloids of Dysstrael his homeworld.

Miji chirked (the first sound he’d made), slapped the spatulate tip of his tail against the concrete, then went scooting away, darting down the outflow pipe at the bottom of the sump basin.

A moment later the grill clanged open and the five masked wards assigned to him came stomping out.

Savant 4 (speaking to notepad):

A rather amusing incident. The Capture Specialist playing his tricks on a common sakali. Appears the subject is suffering from boredom.

QUESTION: Except for samples of body fluids and brain tissue and drugs to suppress the fugue state, the Ciocan has been left undisturbed by orders of the Council. The failure of all attempts to control adult Dyslaerors cannot, of course, be counted a waste of time; negative results are often as valuable as positives. However, work with the remnant of the sample has reached the point where further experiments will not be worth the expense. The council must agree that it is time to start collecting infants and gravid females and dispose of this lot.

SUGGESTION: Ransom one or more of them to Voallts Korlatch, alive but Wiped. If ransom is refused, then dispatch them to Black House so we can recoup some of our expenses. They are too dangerous to keep.

Shadith (Kizra) In The Halflight 2

She sang.

Wordless sounds filled with joy, pain, desire, fear… In a half dream, deeply relaxed, she sang to her sisters, her six dead sisters, the Weavers of Shayalin…

They rose from the mirror tiles, slender and angular, black and silver similitudes of Naya, Zayalla, Annethi, Itsaya, Tallitt and Sullan, spinning threads from themselves to shape the images of Goyo dreams…

She sang the ancient croon that mated with that dance and filled the spaces this alien voice she’d claimed could not reach with the pure flowing tones of the harp…

Her sisters danced HER joy, celebrating her love with her, commiserating with her on its ephemeral nature, helping her to rejoice in what it was and refrain from unreal expectations…

She sang laughter as she saw Itsaya wink at her, saw Naya smile and clap her slender hands, saw Zaya shake her hips and grin over her shoulder, as she saw each of her dead sisters show their pleasure… She rode that surging wild wave, a hair away from disaster always, out of control… rode it with a mastery she’d never reached before and might not again…

Shadith prowled about her room, going round the bed and back again in the narrow floorspace left for her to move in, window to door, door to left wall, back again.

Memory. Funny thing. Still can’t remember how I did it… or why… set up this forgetting…

She shuddered as another image intruded…

Cut his throat?

Skinned him?

Hung herself on the rope she braided from his skin?

Gaaah! Don’t think about that.

Memory. Lizard. I set up the trigger to trip the next time I saw Kikun and got it tripped by a six-inch garden lizard. That’s a giggle. My mind’s more creative than I thought. Just as well, Kikun’s a long way off, dead maybe. No… Li’l Liz is too slippery for that… I hope.

All right, all right, now’s not the time, but I’ve got to get out of here. Stop leaning. Drifting. I know a lot now, my name, friends’ names. If I can get a call out, someone will come. Call…

That means getting to that city, what was it? Nirtajai. That’s not so easy.

Won’t get easier if I sit around and do nothing. Drifting. Can’t do that any more.

I’m safe here and comfortable.

Comfort’s an illusion and nobody’s safe.

Do it now. Now. Start working at it, anyway. There’s lots I can do to get ready…

She paced, the movement cooling her rage and impatience, planning how to get back to the port city and win access to a skipcom so she could call someone to come get her. In essence it was the same problem she’d had on Kiskai, but there she’d had Rohant and Kikun to help. And Asteplikota. And mobility. She wasn’t stuck off to hell and gone with the only transport available walking around on four legs.

She stopped at the window and scowled down at what she could see of the main court and the skimmer that mostly filled it. It was a gray and gloomy day with scattered spatters of raindrops pattering against the walls and the skimmer’s dome.

Stow away? No.

He’d have thought of that, the Artwa would.

This kind of society, no way the Irrkuyon would trust their precious persons to unsecured transport.

Kitchi-kooing round the Artwa? Since he had a thing for dark girls? No.

Kikun caught up a tree branch, knocked out the last fragments of glass in one of the windows, climbed through it. Shadith climbed through after him. The wind snatched at her skirts, threatened to whip her off the narrow, heavily-carved ledge. The stone around her had an eerie luminosity, faint but enough to give her the outlines of the building, the walls and towers…