Jo Clayton - Shadowkill

As she bent over Kikun’s trapped arm and began working the web free, she couldn’t see THEM anymore, but she knew THEY were still there, she could feel them, feel the pressure of their demands, their fears.

There was no sound in the cabin and the musky aroma had vanished with the deer form. With that gone, she could smell the acrid stench of burning insulation and the more elusive odor of hot metal.

The web came loose finally, slid home. She examined Kikun’s arm, wrinkling her nose as she felt bones grating under her fingers.

The crone came back, tiny hands, long for their size, curling round Rose’s wrists, pulling at them. Rose yielded to the pull that wasn’t there and let Grandmother Ghost guide her as she straightened Kikun and eased him as much as she could without injuring him more than he was already.

Freed by his coma, Kikun’s gods swirled round her, at times merging into an amorphous shimmer, at times hardening briefly into Raven, Otter, Bear, Antelope-deer. Grandmother Ghost stayed beside her, seen sometimes, sometimes unseen, as Rose plundered the emergency medkit, gave Kikun painkillers, splinted his arm, stabilized his chest so the broken ribs wouldn’t do more damage to his lungs.

Time passed.

She finished all she could do down here, locked the crash-web properly in place over him so it would support him, keep him motionless. Everything was set for liftoff…

The pressure faded; Kikun’s gods folded back down into him.

Autumn Rose straightened her aching back, wiped at the sweat, pushed the hair off her face and spent a moment staring blankly at her hands, not at all sure what had just happened.

“All right,” she said aloud. “So. You want me to get him back to the ship and the ottodoc? Well, then, show me where they are, Rohant and the Singer. I can’t leave till I have them.” She felt like a fool talking to herself or worse, to figments of hysteric imagination.

The screen turned itself on. In the darkness outside, glinting in the uncertain glow from the beams that still walked round the Compound, a large black bird flew in tight circles, squawking.

“Well.” Rose limped back to the pilot’s chair, lifted off a few meters, then followed Raven through the clearing storm until he began flying in circles again, this time over a line of thickly set trees growing along the creek that ran past the Compound.

Grandmother Ghost pinched her.

Gaagi faded.

Feeling a fool again, Autumn Rose settled the skimmer onto a patch of grass and gravel, activated the external speakers:

After a tense eternity when all she could see were trees and all she could hear was silence, two small figures broke from the shadows and ran for the skimmer.

Autumn Rose/Rohant/Shadith

“Get me through to Miralys. Fast. Then get the hell out of here.”

Autumn Rose raised her brows. “Well, hello, the two of you,”

Rohant growled.

Subdued, weary, Shadith ignored both of them and went to inspect Kikun in his support cocoon of foam and bandage.

“All right, all right, keep your hair on.” Autumn Rose got through to the Cillasheg. “Anyagyn, Rose here. Give me Miralys. Quick, huh? Got something to show her.”

Miralys bloomed in the mid-cell of the screen; when she saw Rohant, her ears snapped up, her eyes shone, she sang without being aware of it a wordless croon of joy and yearning.

Rohant leaned toward the image, his ache matching hers; he reached toward her-then he shook himself all over, wrenched himself back to more pressing needs. “Toerfeles, get ours out of there. That thing’s going to blow any minute and it’ll take them with it.”

Light shimmers fled about the cabin, power thrummed through it, a deep subsonic CH’M that poured into Shadith.

“Go, go, go,” she cried, her singer’s voice driven by the immediacy of the threat, filling the space. “Go.”

Autumn Rose felt the gods come back, Grandmother Ghost was pinching her and pinching her and the antelope/ deer was belling terror in her ear. She booted the skimmer up and went racing along the mountainside, rising at a steep angle, going for distance rather than altitude; she crossed the mountains, dropped again, putting those tons of stone and earth between her and the Compound, then she fled out out over the sea…

Miralys/Cillasheg

“Get out now, get out, get out, going to blow, get out,” Anyagyn sang into the speaker, her voice rising and falling in Dyslaer Warn.

Miralys watched the skimmer dart away, her Ciocan inside; as it vanished below the mountaintops, she brushed the back of her hand across her mouth, turned her attention to the Compound.

It rested on the ground like a gray clenched fist.

The fist cracked-leaked a blinding blue-white light-opened wide-spilled light like molten milkglass-filled the bay and flats-rolled up the mountainsides-boiled up and up into the clouds…

Specks of light lost in the great glow, the ganders fled from the expanding explosion.

“How many?”

Anyagyn smiled wearily. “Hannys got her tail singed, that’s all. Everyone’s tucked in and hitting the freshers.” She scratched at the fur between her ears. “Autumn Rose is on her way back, passengers intact, except Kikun who needs the ottodoc rather badly, she says. Once she’s docked, any reason we should hang around here?”

“No. Let’s go home. We’ve a business to whip into shape.”

Digby wore a white linen suit imported out of the mists of memory and sat in an elaborate wicker chair with a soft white hat on his knee and the shimmer-glimmer of his bubble around him.

Rohant and Miralys came in; she was quieter than usual and dressed in mourning white, a long robe, cream colored velvet that complimented the fading bronze of her fur and moved elegantly with the vigorous shifts of her lean body. She looked around. Her ears twitched. “This is… different.”

He’d changed the decor of his meeting room to a deliberately exotic simplicity, recreating a room in a house where a family had lived for generations, perhaps a farm house, comfortable, but far from rich. The furniture had the feel of age and hard use, the fabrics were faded and frayed, the colors muted. There was a fireplace with logs burning in it and oil lamps spread their flickering amber glow in patches that left the corners dim where paintings and shelves of trinkets sprang into jewel clarity one moment and sank into shadows the next.

Digby smiled. “Nostalgia lives,” he said. “Hello, Rohant. It’s been a long time.”

“Digby.” Rohant bowed his head, then settled himself in a chair close to the fire and sat gazing into the flames. His robe was crisp and starched, snow white, cold white. He was withdrawn, physically present, mentally absent. The Dyslaer way of grieving was to sink into the minutia of mundane life as Miralys had, to grow excessively busy, exhausting themselves with work and planning. The Dyslaeror way was to create stillness within and without, to withdraw from the world and contemplate meanings-the meaning of particular deaths and generic DEATH, of particular lives and generic LIFE. Voallts Korlach had an estate in the Sarinim, a patch of gentle wilderness they kept to soothe their spirits when urban life became unbearably abrasive; Rohant was leaving tomorrow to spend his Mourning Year in a shrine Miralys had built there. His mind was already in retreat.

Miralys wandered restlessly about the room Digby had created for her, lifting objects, setting them down again. Over her shoulder, she said, “Who all’s coming?”