Jo Clayton - A Gathering Of Stones

Davindo’s eyes shifted from the door to the window. His pale pink tongue flicked over his lips. “What do you want me to say?”

“I know what you think you want, but I’m not going to cut you loose; I’ve got enough guilt spotting my souls, I don’t need more. Do you have a talent or an inclination that you’d like to pursue?”

Davindo looked sly. “You teach me.”

“Do you know what I am?”

“The beast told me. Sorceror.”

“Yes. You have no Talent.”

“How do you know? You haven’t even looked at me.”

“Talent shouts. You don’t have to look for it. I can hear it across a city, young Davindo. There’s nothing I can teach you. Don’t take that as an insult; you wouldn’t blame a singing coach for not training you if you couldn’t hold a tune. Do I send you home?”

“No.” Davindo swallowed, kicking at the rug. After a minute he squared his narrow shoulders, stared defiantly at Maksim. “As long as I’m here, I might as well take a look round the place.”

“Wise of you. Who would neglect the opportunities that come his way is a clothhead not worth the name of man. Can you read?”

“Of course I can, I had teachers since I could walk. Um, but not this jabber they speak up here.’

“Right.” Maksim swallowed a smile, his need to deflate the boy’s air castles dissipated by his appreciation of Davo’s deft footwork. “The more languages you can read and write, the more control you have over your circumstances.” He moved his feet, freeing a part of the hassock. “Sit down. School or tutor?”

Davindo hesitated, then dropped warily beside Maksi’s ankles. “Tutor.”

“I hear. You didn’t answer me. Do you have a talent or an inclination you’d like to pursue?”

“I will be Warleader in my time.”

“So you said. I take it that means you have no scholarly interests?”

Davindo twisted his face into a scornful grimace, but said nothing.

“So. Apprenticeship not scholarship. I’d best find you a place in one of the guilds. Merchant, military, seaman, priest, artisan, player, singer, musician, thief, beggar, which? There are others, but those are the chief.”

“Thieves have a guild?”

“They don’t put it about, but they do take apprentices and they have teaching masters who’ll work your tail off. That amuses you. Hmm. I suppose it is funny to see the darkside aping the bright, but it’s useful. If you go that route, you’ll learn something and they’ll house and feed you, which is more than you can expect outside. And there’s this, if you don’t have Family here to back you, you’d better have a Guild or you’re fair game for the Pressgangs supplying meat to the pleasure Houses and the Whips who run the childgangs and anyone else with a taste for boys and the power to gratify his whims. And there’s BlackHouse. Let me warn you, keep clear of BlackHouse,

Davindo shivered. “They told me at the Pens.”

“Yes.” Maksim closed his eyes. He was tired, but taking care of the boy-finding a tutor, arranging the apprenticeship, setting up a trust account to support Davo while he was being taught, all that meant it would be hours before he could rest. He knew why he was doing it; he was using Davindo to cancel a portion of his guilt for abandoning Todich, using the boy as a parlor wipe to polish up his amour-propre. “Choose,” he said, impatience sharpening his voice.

“Thief.” Davindo looked defiant, as if he expected Maksim to try talking him into something more respectable. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“So be it.” Maksim got wearily to his feet, crossed to the door. “You should be set by tomorrow evening. I’ll pass over your papers and after that you’re on your own.”

Davindo bit at his lip. “Why?” he burst out. “Why are you doing this?”

Maksim pulled the door open, looked over his shoulder at Davindo. There was no way he could answer that question, the boy was too young, too limited to understand the things that drove a man. “Call it a whim,” he said and left.

Late that night Maksim went up the path behind the Inn to the flat where he’d sent Brann and Jaril on their way. Using a broom he’d borrowed from a tweeny at the Inn, he swept the stone as clean as he could, then he drew a circle with a length of soft chalk. Working quickly, he finished the sketchy pentacle; precision wasn’t important for what he planned, there was little danger in casting mantaliths. What he wanted, what he needed was privacy.

The chalk had a tar base so the damp from the fog didn’t wash it away; he stripped off the cotton gloves he’d used to keep it from clinging to his hands and knelt at the heart of the pentacle. He drew out a soft leather pouch and twitched the knot loose that held the drawstrings tight. Muttering the manta chanta under his breath, he poured the rhombstones into the palm of his left hand. He closed his eyes, visualized the reality he needed to reach, then spoke the word: WHEN? And spoke other words: WHAT DAY? With a snap of thumb against finger on his free hand, he shouted the Trigger, his deep voice booming through the fog, echoing back at him, the overtones lovely in their murmurs and their silences. When the echoes died, he threw the mantaliths and read their answer.

Two days hence. Third hour past noon.

At that time Todichi Yahzi’s home reality would in some inexplicable way be closer to this one, easier to reach, the membranes between the two softer, thinner, the number of realities between them lessened somehow. He passed his hands over the stones, murmured the releasing manta chanta, the blessing on the mantaliths, the delivery of his gratitude for the answer he’d received.

He gathered up the stones and the broom and went away, leaving the rain to wash away his traces.

Maksim raised sail an hour before dawn on the chosen day; Todichi Yahzi sat in the bow of the boat, looking out across the black water, his back to his one time master. He hadn’t said a word to anyone since he left the Pens, his anger was too deep. As Maksim sent the small boat scooting south into the Tukery, he glared at the kwitur and choked on his guilt and smoldered with an anger of his own-and sometimes was sad at losing an almost-friend.

By the time the sun rose they were deep into the narrow crooked waterways. Already he had crept through the patches of dense fog that swung in complex orbits around and about the Tukery, fog inhabited by howling souls cast out from Kukurul, souls spilling over with fury and despair, doing their futile best to drive him onto razor-edged rocks or into quicksands that could swallow a boat between one breath and the next. Twice he’d driven off ambushing bands, throwing fire and dissolution at them, pulling their sailing canoes apart under them and dropping them into schools of hungry needlefish. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, he just sailed on and on, waiting for his Talent to seize onto a place.

Through all this Todichi Yahzi sat silent and brooding in the bow, ignoring Maksim, staring at things only he could see.

When the sun was directly overhead, Maksim saw a rocky islet with vents in its precipitous sides voiding steam into the cold dank air; it was a truncated cone rising about a hundred yards above the water. Here and there swatches of orange and faded-olive lichens interrupted the drab dun stone; near the vents ferns were lush lacy patches of a green so vibrant it hurt the eyes. There was a small halfinoon of sandy beach on the north side, the side he came on first; he circled the islet and came back to the beach, drove the nose of the boat up onto the sand and tossed the anchor overside. He slipped his arms through the straps of his rucksack and got cautiously to his feet. “Todich, you think you can make it to the top?”