Jo Clayton - A Gathering Of Stones

“Ah.” Lio Laux collected his bottles, slid off his stool and ambled toward the door. Over his shoulder he said, “Bring the lantern, Laz.”

Danny grinned. Getting his money’s worth, old thief. Well, I’m riding for free. So what’s a dime’s worth of flunkying.

Danny Blue, Laz to his companions, emerged into the abrasive cold, shivered as he wandered over to stand beside Lio Laux who was leaning on the port rail, watching the play of light across the walls and towers of the city on the horizon. The pointed roofs of Dirge Arsuid glittered blackly in the dawnlight; it rose in white and crimson and raven black over the dark drooda trees and the broad reedfields of the mouth-marshes of the Peroraglassi.

Danny/Laz folded his arms across his chest. “What’s the problem? Why aren’t we moving?” The Skia Hetaira was hove-to a half mile out to sea, riding the heave of the incoming tide, lines and spars humming, clattering in the brisk wind.

“No problem, Laz. We just waiting till it’s full light before we go closer.”

Danny inspected the water and what he could see of the city. “No rocks.”

“Nah. Arsuid’s built on mud.”

“How come it don’t sink?”

“It’s Arfon’s toy. You didn’t know that?”

“Never been out this way. Arfon?” In the back of his head, the shade of Ahzurdan sneered. *You know,* the phasma said in a thin scratchy mindvoice, *if you condescend to remember. Fool. All right, go ahead, show your ignorance. Who cares if he despises you for it.* Danny Blue ignored his fratchetty half-sire and waited for Laux to answer him.

“River god. Dwolluparfon, which is too much of a mouthful so Arsuiders just say Arfon. Never, huh?”

“No. I come from way out where the sun pops up. I’m a rambling man, Laux; can’t stand sitting around watching the same scenery all the time. If it’s not silt or rocks, why are we sitting out here? We waiting for high tide?”

“Nah. Lemme tell you something, Laz. Darktime in Arsuid is a thing a smart man keeps shut of. Unless he’s an Arsuider and even then,, hmm. We’re not going to move for another couple hours, so I might as well spend it telling the tale of Dirge Arsuid.” The plaques of his ear dangle clattered softly as he tilted his head to look up at Danny/Laz; the silver shimmered, the moss agate insets seemed to alter as if spiders crawled about under glass; there was a quizzical amusement in his old dark eyes. “You may have noticed I like to talk.” He twisted his head around further, beckoned to the ship’s boy who happened to be passing. “Pweez, tell Kupish to burn some duff for us, eh?” To Danny, he said, “You turning blue. Han’t you got a coat or something? It’s getting on for winter, jink. “

“I didn’t expect it to get this cold this south.”

“Winter’s winter. Let’s go below. I’ll spin you the tale over hot grog an’ one o Kupish’s fancier fries. Taksoh caught a gravid kuvur last night, we’ll have roe an’ cheese to start.”

“In the time before time when the Wounded Moon was whole…” Lio Laux sucked up a mouthful of thick hot grog, let it trickle down his throat. “And the gods were sorting themselves out and sharing up the world, Dwalluparfon found he’d got hisself a river, a swamp and a handful of vipers. The story goes like this; he took a while to root round and get to know his mud, then he stuck his head up and looked round at his neighbors. And lo, they had lots of things he didn’t. They had cities and farms, most of all they had people. He had fish and snakes. He didn’t like that no way, wahn’t fair. So he caught him a mess o snakes and made hisself some people.” Laux’s eyes slid round to Danny, the wrinkles round them crinkling with his sly-fox grin. “Not a tale Arsuider mams tell their lovin’ infants. Lessee. He

‘16 to Clayton

, watched the snake people slither round in the mud and that was amusing for a while. But it was kind of drab, so he decided they were going to build him a city. He thought about it a long while, being slow that way; like his river he takes a long while to get anywhere, lots of detours, but he finally reached a conclusion. He wanted a shining city like the other gods had. He built up a mound of mud at the river mouth and cooked it until it was hard, then he drove a grid of canals through it and fixed the canals so the water was always moving in and out of them in good strong currents to keep them scoured clean. He went snooping around to the cities people built in other godplaces and picked out the things he liked about them and made hisself a city pattern. When he got back home, he scooped up a clutch of his snake people, rinsed them off and set them to work with ovens he made for them, turning out tiles, red, white and black. He spread his plan out for them so they’d know what he wanted, then he drove them generation after generation till he had his city built. Then he said, go live there and follow my rules and do me honor. And there you have it, Dirge Arsuid.”

“Snake people, hmm 9”

“To know ‘em is…” Laux sucked up more grog, twinkled at Danny “… to know ‘em.”

“So, tell me more. If I’m going to be knocking about there, I better know what to look out for.” In the back of his head, the Ahzurdan phasma snorted but said nothing. Danny ignored him. For a lot of reasons, he wasn’t willing to trust the information in the memories his half-sire made available to him.

Laux ran his tongue over his teeth, stared past Danny at the cold white light coming through the porthole. “Been thinking ‘bout that. I’ll tell you a thing or two first, then… well, that can wait. Arfon say you get a trial if you accused of something. He say you got to be guilty ‘fore they can send you to the strangler. Guilty o something, if not the thing they say you did. That’s the law an’ Arsuiders, they hold very strict to it. Arsuid honor. Hmh!” He shook the grog jar, emptied the last drops into his mug. “Trouble is, most folks have a thing or three staining their souls, an’ if they don’t, well a smart ysran, what they call their judges, he can f’nagle it someway to shift someone else’s guilt onto that poor jink’s head. Arfon don’t care, long as the look o the thing’s right. Mostly he don’t notice what’s happening; like I said, he’s not too swift. Keeping all that in mind, it’s a pretty loose guarantee ‘less old Arfon, he sticks his head up and takes your side. It do happen. Can’t count on it, but it do happen. I know. I run into something first time I showed up wanting to trade. Nearly got my neck in the strangler’s noose too. But Arfon took a notion, don’t ask me why, he stick his weedy head through the floor an’ tell the ysran let me go. Ysran don’t like it, but he do it. I don’t have a smell o trouble the rest of the time I was there, I got some mighty profit out of it too. Why I bother to come back an’ why I don’t go in while there’s dark on the canals. Trading here’s worth walking the edge awhile. That f’ sure. Long’s you do it in daylight and watch the ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ in your bargaining, they good folk to do business with. Arrogant bastards, make you want to skin ‘em the way they act, but they keep their word. An’ if they tell you something ‘bout what they’re selling, it’s true. An’ they got a lot to sell. Hennkensikee silks, for one thing. Better price than you can get just ‘bout anywhere. Lessee, what else… ah! Stay inside once the sun’s down. All bets ‘re off after dark. Strangers on the walkways or riding the canals, they dead. Don’t think you could argue your way loose or fight ‘em off, you won’t. You dead. Floating out to sea. Sacrifice to Arfon. Arsuiders, they know what their god likes.” He wrinkled his nose, sat back in the chair, dark fingers laced over his small hard pot. “Lots o pretty red blood and fancy screaming. Long’s it’s foreigners making the noise and doin’ the bleedin’. Way I see it, old Arfon, he never did get over other gods gettin’ the jump on him with their cities an’ their temples an’ their busy-busy little folk, and he kinds likes seeing outsiders wiggle for it.”