Jo Clayton: A Gathering Of Stones

Tak WakKerrcarr came running and tried to hold her but she broke away, Maksim swore and plunged at her. He ignored her struggles, wrapped his arms about her and held her tight against his massive chest. She kicked and hit at him, clawed at him, she was blind with rage and grief and an overmastering terror, she didn’t know him, she no longer knew where she was. He kept her pinned with one huge arm, caught her hands in his and pressed them against his ribs, all the time talking to her, his bass voice flowing over her, calm, quiet, caressing, until she stopped fighting him and lay against him, shaking and sobbing.

A vast red figure came down the Mountain, shrinking as she came until she was a mere fifty yards of four-armed, crimson female god. Slya Firehcart tapped Maksim on the shoulder, wrapped her upper right hand around Brann when he released her. She got to her feet, lifted Brann till they were more or less eye to eye. “T’SSSH, T’SSSH, LITTLE NOTHING. WHAT’S ALL THIS?” A huge fingernail moved along Brann’s face, scraping away tearstreaks.

Brann blinked, tried to gather her shattered wits. “What happened to them? My babies…”

“THOSE FUZZBALLS? EHHH, UTILE NOTHING, THEY WENT HOME, THAT’S ALL. YOU WANTED THEM TO GO HOME, DIDN’T YOU. YOU HAD POOR OLD MAN OVER THERE SPRINKLING ITCH POWDER ON ME, SAYING SEND THEM HOME SEND THEM HOME.”

“Home…” Brann tugged a hand free, scrubbed at her eyes. “Yes... but I… not so soon, not without saying… not so suddenly…”

Slya set her down on the sand. Like a huge and clumsy child playing with a doll, she brushed at Brann with her upper right hand, plucked at her clothing with her upper left hand, smoothed her hair with one huge forefinger. Though the god was being kind and affectionate and meant no harm, Brann was exhausted and more than a little battered when Slya left off her efforts. Brann edged cautiously away, backing into Tak. She tilted her head to look up at him, smiled at him, then held her hand out to Maksim. She started to speak, closed her mouth, startled by a loud shout from the boy.

Trago was on his feet, pointing at Isspyrivo’s peak. “Look,” he cried again. “Chained God. God-not-Chained.”

A golden metal man a hundred meters tall stood upon Isspyrivo’s glaciers, posing like a dancer. The setting sun glinted on hundreds of angular facets, the light off them so brilliant it was blinding. He moved. He was slow and clumsy at first, lurching, teetering on the verge of falling over, but he kept coming. Like Slya Fireheart he came striding down the Mountain toward them and with each step the awkward stiffness diminished until the metal moved with the elasticity of flesh and the God-Not-Chained gleamed and shimmered liquidly instead of glittering. -

Paying no more attention to them than to the seagulls gliding around him, he walked out across the water and stopped in the middle of the bay. Slya Fireheart whistled, stomped her feet and shouted her approval of this new male god in the pantheon. He looked over his shoulder at her, crooked a finger. She whooped and went running to him across the water, each fleeting touch of her huge red feet sending up spurts of steam.

There was a shine not the sun on the northern horizon. Amortis came undulating across the water, her hair flowing in her personal wind, her gauzy draperies molding her lush body, her large blue eyes flirting with the God-Not-Chained.

Slya glared at her, Amortis glared back.

The god watched, preening like a cock two hens were fighting over. A thought flowed sluggishly across his perfect face. He left his companions, came striding back to the beach. He scooped up Trago, set the boy on his shoulder and went off with him.

Korimenei cried out, then fell silent as her beast came running across the sand and jumped into her arms.

Slya and Amortis trotted after the god, Slya slid her top right arm about his shoulders, her lower right arm about his waist, bumped her solid hip against his. Amortis took his other arm, brushed sensuously sinuously against him murmuring at him all the time, her voice like leaves rustling in a lazy summer breeze.

There was silence on the beach until the unlikely quartet vanished over the horizon.

Brann sighed. “So that was why,” she said. “That was what all this was about. All the terror and the dying and the pain. To build a body to house that… that Monster.”

“So it seems,” Tak WakKerrcarr murmured in her ear. “Do you mind?”

“Yes,” she said fiercely, then she shook her head. “It’s futile, but I mind. Look what we’ve loosed on this miserable world. I’d like to…”

‘It’s god-business, Thornlet. We’re out of it now and lucky to be alive. Let’s stay that way. You coming back with me?”

She leaned against him and looked at Maksim. He was over with Korimenei and a stocky red-haired man she didn’t know; she saw him touch the man’s face with the affection and tenderness he’d saved for her till now. I’ve lost him too, she thought, but I never had him, did I. He looks well. And happy. What kind of jealous bitch am I that I resent it? She smiled. Just your average sort of jealous bitch, I suppose. Nothing special. “Maksi,” she called.

He looked round. “Bramble?”

“Going back to Jal Virri?”

“Yes, I’ve got an apprentice to teach.” He threaded his big hand through Korimenei’s flyaway hair, shook her gently. “Work her little tail off. You?”

“I’m for Mun Gapur. See you round. Tak?”

“Give the girl a rest, Maks, come see us some time. Bring your friend if you want. Ta.”

The next morning, a bright clear cool morning with air that bubbled in the blood like wine, Brann stood beside one of the few coldsprings in Tak WakKerrcarr’s watergarden at Mun Gapur. She held Massulit out away from her. “I don’t want it, Tik-tok. I don’t want it anywhere round me. It makes me nervous. It reminds me… She swallowed, the pain suddenly back, the loss raw in her.

“It goes where it will, Thomlet and that’s not me. You want to lay a curse on me even I couldn’t handle, try giving it to me.” His mouth twitched in a smile part rueful, part calculating. “You might give it to Amortis.”

Brann snorted, then she smiled too, a small reluctant lift of her mouth corners. “I will never ever forget that scene. I hope Slya sets her hair on fire.” The smile went away. “And melts him into slag.”

“Ah, m’ dear.”‘

“Hunh!” She contemplated Massulit a moment longer then tossed it into the spring and watched it sink through the clear cold water. It shone briefly but intensely blue, then settled dark and anonymous among the stones at the bottom of the pool. “There. I give it to nobody.” She turned away, brushing her hands as if she brushed away the whole of the painful time just past. “This is a fire mountain,” she said.

“True. Why?”

“Build me a kiln, Tik-tok.”

“You need to rest a while, Thornlet, Relax.”

She moved her shoulders, ran a hand through her long white hair. “I can’t, luv. Not for a while yet. Do you understand? I need to be busy. I need to do something with my body, my hands, my mind. Something with meaning to me. When I was last in Kukurul I saw newware from Arth Slya. It gave me ,idea I want to try. Any clay deposits round here?”

“I don’t know. I’ll see what I can find out. You’re sure?”

“They were my children, Tik-tok. I have to grieve for them a while. But only a while. We have time, luv. If nothing else, we do have time.