Jo Clayton - A Gathering Of Stones

Shahntien Shere sat behind her desk and frowned at Korimenei. She was a tall woman, thin, her abundant gray hair dressed in a soft knot at the nape of a long neck. She wore a simple white dress with close fitting sleeves and a high soft collar, over that an unadorned sleeveless robe of heavy black silk. It was her customary dress, effectively elegant, underlining her authority without making too oppressive a point of it. Abruptly, unexpectedly, she smiled, her dark eyes narrowing into inverted echoes of her mouth. “The ten years are up,” she said. “Of course you know that. You’ve done well, better than I expected. Maksim is most pleased with you, though he seems rather shy about telling you himself” She paused, rubbed the tips of her fingers together. “I don’t know what his plans are, Kori; I expect he’ll show up when he’s ready. I’ve taught you all I can,” the ends of her thin mouth tucked deeper into their brackets, turned into a mirror image of her earlier smile, “All anyone can, I think. The rest is up to you.”

Korimenei laced her fingers together and stared down at them. She couldn’t think of anything to say, so she said nothing.

“Yes,” the Shahntien said, “and that is essentially what this is about.” She sighed. “To it, then. I have consulted yarrow and water and tortoiseshell and considered your family lines. Your people are… urn… remarkably untouched by Talent, always excepting that imposed by the Chained God on his priests; however, that has nothing to do with you since the priests are always male and as far as I can determine chosen by the God himself without much concern about any inborn Gifts. Your Talent has come to you from your Ancestress Harra Hazhani, the Rukka Nagh; there were, no doubt, other women before you with much the same abilities, but things being the way they are among your people, the Gifts were denied and they withered without being used.” She tapped her nails on the desk top, a tiny clatter like a flurry of wheatsized hail against a window. “An obscenity…” She spread her hands flat on the desk, frowned at them… “Which is a digression… I’m explaining too much. It’s not needed. More than that, it’s probably counterproductive. You are to go to the Old Man’s Mountain across the bay. You are to find a sufficiently quiet and secluded place. You are to fast and meditate for three days. Do nothing. Accept what comes to you. Forget nothing. You won’t understand most of it now, you don’t know enough about the world or yourself. Accept for the moment what I tell you, it comes from my own experience, Kori Heart-in-Waiting; you will return again and again to this time, finding new richness, new meaning in it.” She straightened her back, looking past Korimenei. “Again I explain too much. You seem to have that effect on me, young Kori. Go and do.”

Korimenei settled into her fast-vigil. She sought to re-find that sense of connectedness with air and earth, with plant and beast that she’d gotten as a gift for those few moments when she sat on the trunk and dabbled her feet in the dust.

The sun rose higher, dust motes danced in the rays that slid through openings in the needle canopy above and behind her. She was all sensory data, perception without self-awareness. Then lost it. Then had it again. Then lost it. And lost it. And sank into self-doubt and sourness. Shadow shrank about her, hot yellow sunlight crept toward the blanket, came over it, touched her knees, her fingers. She rubbed at her eyes, looked up. The sun was almost directly overhead. “Three days,” she said aloud. “Three days.”

She rocked on her buttocks, straightened her legs, flexed and loosened the muscles in them until the stiffness was gone. She stood, stretched, shivered all over. Two hours only and already the exercise seemed futile, a fanatic’s flagellation of body and spirit. She let her arms drop. There you go again, you silly maid, aping Settsimaksimin, roaring phrases in your alleged mind. Her fast had begun this morning with a breakfast of juice and a hardroll. She was hungry, her stomach was grumbling and she had that all-over sense of debilitation she got when she went too long without eating. Three days, she thought again and just managed to stifle an obscenity, one of the many she’d picked up when she was a rebel child wandering Silagamatys’ waterfront when she was supposed to be in bed.

She fished a tin cup from the rucksack, filled it at the stream and sat on a flat rock with her feet in the water. The stream went down a long shallow slide here, with a steady brushing hum punctuated occasionally by the pop of bubbles or a troutling breaking surface. She sipped from her cup and watched the clear cold stream smooth as glass slip over her bare toes. The sun was hot on her head and shoulders; behind her she could hear the buzz and mumble of insects. Her stomach cramped. She closed her eyes and willed the nausea to go away. It was mostly imagination, she knew that well enough, but knowing didn’t seem to help. Three days. I’ll be a rag. Why am I doing this?

She rinsed the cup, filled it again and took it back to the blanket. She lowered herself onto the dreampattem, set the cup beside her and folded her long legs into the proper configuration. Ten years she’d spent learning control of her Talent. That’s all it is, this school, Maksimtold her once, control. And maybe expanded possibility. Maybe. She could testify to the truth of that now. Control and the limits of control. She told herself she knew her limits, she told herself she had earned a degree of confidence in her skill and in her strength. She’d survived each trial so far, but every new step was a new threat. She didn’t believe there could be more for her to learn; the last two years she’d spent consolidating what she’d dredged up out of herself during the first eight years of her schooling. She didn’t want to believe there was more power out there waiting for her to tap into it; she was afraid of touching any hotter, wilder sources. There were times during the past ten years when she was working hot that the power she was shaping threatened to consume her. She managed to hang on, but each time was worse than the last, each time she came closer to losing it, a lesson she took to heart. She had an edgy uncertainty working in her now, a fear that the next time she touched heat, she wouldn’t be strong enough, that she’d die, or worse than death, find herself controlled.

“Trago.” she said aloud. “Come talk to me.” She waited, hands on her thighs, opening; closing, short ragged nails scratching erratically at the canvas of her trousers. He didn’t come. She never knew if he heard her when she called him; sometimes he showed up, sometimes he didn’t. This looked like one of the latter. “Damn.” If it weren’t for Trago locked dreaming in crystal, she’d run and trust her reflexes to keep her loose. But he was the hook that bound her to the Shahntien’s whim and she had to play out this farce.

I put him, Maksim said, where his god can’t reach him. If I kill him, child, there’ll only be another taking his place, another and another, no end to it. He’ll sleep and sleep and sleep… Maksim turned his head and smiled at her… until you and only you, young Kori, until you come and touch him awake. He is in the Cave of Chains. If you can get yourself there, Kori, all you have to do is touch the crystal enclosing him. It will melt and the boy will wake. No one else can do this. No one, god or man. Only you.

She scratched at her nose. All over the place, she thought. I did better concentration my first year. “Tit,” she said, “give us a look, will you?”

Nothing. Obviously he was busy with other things, things more important than a long gone sister. She moved her body impatiently. He’d been looking over her shoulder for years, studying what she studied, maybe even nudging her when he wanted something she wasn’t dealing with at the moment. She’d been driven, those first years. She’d thought it was because she wanted to get away as soon as she could and free her brother. She had to learn, to grow accustomed to working hot and fast, she had to find a way to outwit the Shahntien so she could escape her claws. To outwit Maksim who made a habit of sending his eidolon to chat with her. Maybe it was more than that, maybe it was Trago pushing her. One thing she did know, he was watching and studying a long time before he started talking to her. She worked her mouth. It hurt, thinking that way, but the most important thing she’d learned (besides control, of course) was never lie to yourself. No matter what extravagances you practice on other people, it’s fatal to lie to yourself. She had the Shahntien to show her the truth of that, she had Maksim. Odd, the way he treated her. She could swear he never lied to her, never even shaded the truth. It was hard to take at times, but in the end she was grateful to his habit, in the end she saw this as the starkest compliment he ever paid her. In the end it was why Shahntien Shere stopped hating her. And life at the school got to be a lot easier.