Jo Clayton: Shadowkill

He called them and they came, but they were not the powerful mythic figures he saw most times, only cartoons, animation cells, translucent, flat, no force to them. They came and stared at him and were silent. One by one they retreated until only ’Gemla Mask was left, hanging before him, a silent summons to return home. Not now, he told Mask, speaking in the mind. Not yet. You see. You see I need her. You see.

Mask hung there, smoke wreathing about it, mingling with the white lines chalked across the black ground. It was silent, enigmatic, then it was gone. Recognizing the need.

Gaagi was there, suddenly returned, fluttering black wings, a male dinhast painted black, his head half-bird, half-dinhast, the webs between arms and legs glittering with black scales on the inside, black feathers on the outside. Transparent and cartoonish, but there.

Gaagi turned to show his backside and Kikun saw the threads spinning from him, delicate white threads, thin as Rose’s head hairs, knotted and twisted, bunched into torturous tangles, going back and back until they touched a sphere floating in darkness. DunyaDzi. Immensely far away. Gaagi showing him that they’d come so far he was almost unraveled, reminding Kikun as Mask had reminded him that if he went much farther, stayed much longer away, he would rip himself loose from what nurtured him.

Gaagi turned again and pointed.

Kikun followed the finger and saw a patch of darkness, a pattern of stars spread across it, one of them redlighted the target star. He stared until the pattern was burned into memory, along with whatever characteristics he could pick out of the image of each star and the sense he had of distances and directions. When he looked round again, the fires were down to red flickers over black coals and Gaagi was gone.

He had three griefs. Now one was gone from his heart. He had his gods again.

The second grief was lessened; he wasn’t helpless any longer and Shadow was no longer wholly lost. In a little while Rose would have the ship ready and they’d go after her.

The third grief remained and there was no curing it. Lissorn was dead and gone. But there were services he could do for his friend, things he had to do.

Lissorn’s tocebai-he’d left it to wander without direction. That was bad. The better and stronger the living, the more dangerous his ghost, the more harm it could do to the living. Lissorn’s tocebai, his heartsoul, had to be summoned, prepared and guided to Hoz’zha-dayaka, the Garden of the Blessed. It was time. Now was the Proper Time.

Kikun rebuilt the fires, then settled himself on the sacred mat and remembered Lissorn:

the sun shining through a slit in heavy clouds turning Lissorn’s short silky fur to molten gold…

Lissorn’s laughter as his tiny golden daughter came running to him, still uncertain on her stubby feet… as he tossed her into the air, caught her and ticked her under her chin… as he brought her to Kikun, saying this is, my friend, he’s funny…

Lissorn roaring into the circle of chanting daiviga Dawadai, alone, acting against training that said don’t get involved with locals, armed only with a stunner and a knife… That knife, ah that knife, it was a young sword that looked small in Lissorn’s big hand, its blade red with firelight but not yet with blood…

Lissorn scattering the little daiviga males, tipping them onto their tailfeathers, destroying the Dawadai Circle… Lissorn kicking the fogga bundles from under Kikun’s feet, sparks flying like shooting stars. Roaring again as the daiva’vig gathered themselves against him, warbling their kill-chants, laying the daiva’vig out one by one until they broke and ran into the scrub…

Lissorn slashing Kikun loose and tossing him over his shoulder when he saw Kikun’s swollen, broken feet, Lissorn running with him, irresistible and powerful…

Kikun went again to the lake’s edge. This world’s water would not speak to him, but it would clean him; that was water’s nature. He knelt in the water and yielded once more to the flow of memory.

Lissorn facing off that mob with a red-lining stunner, the charge in it exhausted by the last daivig he’d flattened, the rest of them running from him just in time, all he had left was the knife…

Lissorn’s body shaking as he laughed while he ran, taking a huge pleasure in what he’d done…

Lissorn in his father’s arms; sobbing, his baby daughter dead, killed by Ginny’s surrogates, torn apart by the bomb in the Korlach courtyard…

Lissorn running at Ginny, silent this time, caution forgotten in his rage…

Lissorn caught by four cutter beams, gone to ash in an instant…

Kikun knelt and gazed with glazed eyes out across the lake until Lissorn stood solid and shining in his mind’s eye, then he stripped naked, waded out farther, knelt and began scrubbing himself with handfuls of sand and singing the ritual chant. Except for the lightness of the lesser gravity-which contributed strongly to the sense that he was inside a dream-he might have been on the shore of Plibajatsi Toh, the sacred lake in the middle of his home-grass.

“Ah de an po to ah,” he chanted, ritual words, words so ancient their meaning was a blur in the mind. “Hu ha apho hae la ceh. E’mo boya can: O to encee eh.”

He shifted to a song celebrating his friend:

“There came a man pace by pace across the grass

He wore a lion face and lion eyes

The sun caressed him

As she watched him pass

Lissorn

The shining man.”

Kikun slid beneath the surface; his body was dense, heavy, even here. The water would not hold him up unless he swam hard and steadily. He undulated himself, washing off the last grains of sand, then got to his feet and walked out of the lake, singing as he walked.

“There came a man bold and hot into the shadowsea

He wore a lion face and lion eyes

The shadows could not touch him

He put out his lion hand and lifted me

Lissorn

The shining man.”

The wind was sharp as knives, cutting to the bone. He ignored it. “Ah de an po ta ah,” he chanted. “Hu ha a ho hae la ceh. E mo boya can: O to encee eh.”

He set out the food from the ship, fine small things the ottochef had made for him, fruits and meats and pastry, miniatures in small paper dishes. When he was finished, he ate a morsel from each dish, then folded them up and brought them to the west fire. He set them in the flames, sang as the white paper turned black and the pale blue-gray smoke also blackened with the burning food. He took two straight hard pieces of wood and sat again on the mat.

He struck them together, got a satisfyingly solid and musical tunk from them, then beat a rhythm from the wood. “Em canta na. He goh na ma khol,” he chanted. “Ma gya a bat ta.”

We drink from different rivers now

O friend

Your heartsoul dances on a dry plateau

I am wet with life

There is nothing I can share with you

My friend

Your heartsoul is a lion

Dancing while it waits

Loudly your voice calls me to come

To show the way

You leap past the moon

You run among the stars

You rush to me crying out:

My feet will not cease running

Bring me rest

I hear you

My friend

I draw the labyrinth in the sand

The spiral of your life

My friend

Run the spiral, find rest in the center