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Harry Turtledove: Clan of the Claw

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Harry Turtledove Clan of the Claw

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None of the two dozen other priestesses said no. Enni Chennitats would have been astonished if any of them had. If they weren’t prepared for what lay ahead, they would not have come to the Dancing grounds. Still, the question had to be asked. Ritual demanded it, and ritual helped forge in the Dancers the strength the Liskash had straight from Aedonniss.

Demm Etter dipped her head. The priestesses Danced in a circle around Grumm, first sunwise and then, at a signal from Demm Etter, deasil instead. They began slowly; they did not want to-did not dare to-spill out their power before it was fully formed. Grumm watched them circle. His jaws worked as he went on chewing.

At first, Enni Chennitats was aware only of the ground under the pads of her feet, of her rhythmic breathing, of her need to hold her place and to keep in time. This was not magic; this was only motion. But out of motion sprang magic. Sometimes. When magic felt like springing. When the Scaly Ones’ hot, nasty sorcery wasn’t too strong. You could only try. Trying was a magic of its own-so priestesses often said.

Sunwise. Deasil. Faster. Sunwise. Deasil. Faster yet. The world around Enni Chennitats began to blur into unreality. The Dance was the only thing that mattered. Out beyond the edge of the Dancing ground, warriors would be watching, though none would presume to set even a clawtip on the hallowed earth till the Dance was over. Enni Chennitats knew they were there. They faded from her consciousness, too. She knew how much Rantan Taggah had riding on the Dance, and how much she had herself. She knew, but she stopped caring. The Dance was what it was. It would do what it did. And then the clan would decide where to go from there, or whether to go.

At the center of the circle remained Grumm, like a mountain shrouded in fog. Excitement trickled through some small portion of Enni Chennitats that the dominant Dancing part barely noticed. That was the kind of image priestesses needed to form their spells. Now-was it hers alone, or did her fellows feel it with her?

Sunwise again. That was good. That was as it should have been. The sun burned fog away. “Let us see clearly!” Demm Etter said. “Clearly!” Enni Chennitats’s excitement grew. The old priestess sensed what she sensed, too, and pointed the other Dancers towards it.

And it was noon, or near enough. The sun stood high in the southern sky. What better placement for it to burn away fog?

The Dance quickened yet again. “Clearly!” Demm Etter called once more. As she Danced, she focused her gaze on poor Grumm in the same way that a cleverly ground piece of rock crystal brought the sun’s rays to a bright, hot point. The other Dancers, Enni Chennitats among them, followed her lead. Again, she might have been a talonmaster and they the band behind her.

Like a band following its talonmaster, they met resistance. No natural fog could have lingered round a mountain with such fierce sunlight turned on it. And no natural fog was this. It was thick and cold and clinging. Noxious vapors floating above a swamp might have had something of the same feel to them, but in lesser degree. This was fog fueled by malice and and hate: fueled by a Liskash noble, in other words. As Enni Chennitats fought to break through it and see what it concealed, she felt as if she were squelching through slime.

What would happen if she and the rest of the Dancers could not pierce the foul fog? Would they enslave themselves, as Grumm had been enslaved? Better to die quickly; that, at least, was clean. And better by far not to think of such things. Better to believe Demm Etter would lead them all through to victory.

“Clearly!” the senior priestess cried, her voice rising urgently. The fog writhed and seemed to spring forward to choke her. “Clearly! Clearly!”

How strong was this Sassin? Enni Chennitats knew he was dangerous, as any Liskash noble was dangerous. But could a single Scaly One beat back the combined wills of two dozen and one Dancers? She never would have thought so, never till now. But her confidence trembled.

“Once more, friends!” Demm Etter called. “We can do it!” What spurred Enni Chennitats like a pair of krelprep yoked to a chariot was that magical word, friends, and the we that followed it. She could conceive of an immensely powerful, immensely wily Liskash noble. For the life of her, though, she could not imagine such a noble with friends.

The sorcerous fog surrounding Grumm faltered all at once. It was as if the stuff were faced not with Demm Etter and her two dozen retainers and subordinates, but with twenty-five priestesses all alike, all potent. The fog could not attack every one of them at the same time, and did not know against which of them to concentrate. And so, instead, they attacked it.

Enni Chennitats yowled in triumph as it broke before their onslaught. Now she saw what Sassin had wanted Grumm to perceive, and how much of it was real, was true. Some, yes. She had hoped none would be, but that was a faint hope, and she knew as much. Sassin was a Liskash noble, and had no small store of strength in his domain. As much as he pretended? As much as he wanted the Clan of the Claw to believe? No.

Little by little, guided by Demm Etter, the Dance slowed. Enni Chennitats realized she was panting as hard as she could. Sweat dampened her nose, the palms of her hands, and the soles of her feet. Part of her wished she could sweat all over her body, though wet fur would have left her chilled more often than not.

As things chanced, she came to a stop facing Grumm. The escaped slave gravely nodded to her. “He lied to me,” he said. He sounded more…certain than he had before the Dance. He was still broken-he would always be broken-but perhaps not so badly now.

“He did,” Enni Chennitats agreed gravely.

“I will take vengeance,” Grumm declared. “I know not how, but I will.”

“May it be so,” the priestess replied. Maybe the male without a surname was bragging a little, as if to deny as much as he could of what Sassin had done to him. Maybe, though, the Dance had also given him a moment of the extraordinary clarity the two dozen and one used to pierce the mists darkening his spirit. Enni Chennitats did not know which. The power of the Dance no longer held her. She knew only what she hoped.


***

Sassin stopped awkwardly, in the middle of a stride. Lorssett almost ran into him from behind, which would have been a fatal breach of etiquette: literally, odds were. But the lesser Liskash was able-just barely-to check himself without touching his god and master.

“What is it?” he asked, doing his best not to sound surprised. He had to assume Sassin had some good reason for stopping. He assumed the noble had some good reason for everything he did. The alternative to assuming that was turning Mrem. Lorssett might not have been the tallest hill in the range, but he was no abomination, either.

As for Sassin, he knew exactly why he’d halted. A sudden pain transfixed him, as if someone had driven a spear through his head. He knew what that meant: knew what it had to mean. One of his spells had just spectacularly fallen into ruin.

His first thought was to wonder which of his enemies-which is to say, his neighbors-had dared to thwart his will. He wouldn’t have believe Fykahtin had the nerve. And Pergossett was hardly stronger than Sassin’s own aide: so it seemed from the Liskash noble’s jaundiced point of view, anyhow.

But the way his magic had failed didn’t feel as it should have if another of his own kind had suppressed it. Which left…For a moment, the pounding ache behind his eyes made him doubt it left anything. But if the Liskash hadn’t defeated a sorcery of his, only the Mrem could have.

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