Jo Clayton - A Gathering Of Stones

Danny touched her shoulder. “You feel like telling us why we’re here?”

“Take this, will you?” She handed him the lantern. “You see that thing?”

“Hard to miss.”

“That’s my brother in there. You said you remembered him.”

“AIL Who…”

“Settsimaksimin. He wanted to make sure I stayed in school.”

“You’re out now.”

Felsrawg shivered. “It’s colder’n a fetch’s finger in here. Whatever you got to do, do it.”

“Stay out of this, Felsa,” Danny said, “you’re along for the ride, she doesn’t need your ignorance yapping at her.”

“T’ss! Don’t need yours either, seems to me. All she needs from you is your…”

“Shut up, both of you.” Korimenei striped her gloves off, shoved them into a coat pocket, lifted Aihki from her shoulder and gave her to Danny. “Stay there, Aili my Liki. Wait.” She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Scratchy little thief was right, what you got to do, do it. Don’t stand around dithering. She walked to the altar, took hold of a post and pulled herself onto the platform. She took another breath, reached out and flattened her hand on the warm silky crystal.

It quivered like something alive, then she was touching nothing, She could still see it, but she was touching nothing. Like water emptying down a drain, it flowed away from Trago, lowering him gently to the polished planks.

When it was all gone, her brother straightened his arms and legs, yawned and opened his eyes. He was on his side, his back to Korimenei. He didn’t look round, he just got to his feet and went to the chest, opened it and took the crystal out, Harra’s Eye. He turned finally and saw her. “Who are you?”

“I’m Kori, Tre.”

“You can’t be Kori, you’re old.”

“You don’t remember?”

“I remember… I remember being at the Lot. Kori got the blue, I got nothing. They took her away. I went back to the Hostel with the others. AuntNurse gave me a drink to make me sleep. That was yesterday… He frowned as he saw Danny and Felsrawg standing silent under the chains. “You shouldn’t have brought strangers in here.” When he realized what he’d said, he looked frightened. “What am I doing here? How’d I get here?”

“That wasn’t yesterday, Tr amp; You’ve been spelled, brother, you’ve slept ten years away without knowing it. I thought

. .. I thought you did know it, I thought you found a way to talk to me.” She saw the confusion in his eyes and knew finally how completely she’d been fooled. “It wasn’t you, was it?” At first she was relieved, the eidolon she’d grown to resent so bitterly wasn’t her brother; then she was angry and afraid. She reached out to touch him; he shied away, frightened of her, then at last he seemed to accept her. He didn’t say anything, but he let her pull him close and put her arm about his shoulder. “I am Kori, Tre, I am your sister. Really. I came to wake you and give you…” she touched the face of the talisman, slid her fingers over it and over it, drawing a measure of calm from the way it nestled against her. “Let me take you home, Trd. I want to go home too. I’ve been away at a school. A long, long way from here.”

“Kori?”

“Come on, I’ll tell you all about it. You going to keep the Eye with you?”

He looked down; he was clutching the crystal sphere against him, holding it in both hands. “I NEED to,” he said.

“All right,” She lifted him down. “Danny, Felsa, let’s…

Darkness swallowed them.

She heard Danny curse, she heard Felsrawg scream with rage, Ailiki leapt at her, she felt the mahsar’s claws dig through her coat into her flesh.

The darkness swallowed them all.

III: Settsimaksimin

Driving south to steal Shaddalakh from the Grand Magus of Tok Kinsa in order to redeem his souls from the geniod who’d trapped him, Maksim was caught in a blizzard and blown across the path of Simms the thief who had taken shelter from that storm in an abandoned farmstead.

On his third day out of the mountains, Simms ran into the front end of a Plains blizzard. A few snowflakes blew past, at the moment more of a promise than a threat; wet winds brittle with cold snatched at him and whipped up the mane and tail of his horse; the beast sidled uneasily, fought the bit, snorted and tried to run from the storm. “Hey Neddio, ho Neddio, slow, babe, go slow,” he sang to the horse, “soft, Neddio, steady, Neddio, it’s a long way we got to go, Neddio.”

Calling on his Talent, reading earth and air, Simms sniffed out a vague promise of shelter and rode toward it, angling across the wind. “Here we go, Neddio, just a lit-t-t-tle way, Neddio, you’ll be warm, Neddio, out of the wind, out of the storm, Neddio.” He loosened his hold on the reins, letting the horse stretch to a long easy lope.

Around noon, though it might as well have been midnight, the gloom had thickened until it was nearly impenetrable, he saw a scatter of dark shapes that turned into trees and blocky buildings as he got closer. A shoulder-high wall loomed ahead of him. Neddio the horse squealed and shied; when Simms had him steady again, he followed the wall to a gap. There should have been a gate, but he didn’t see any. He turned through the gap and felt a lessening of the wind’s pressure as the wall broke its sweep. He couldn’t see much, so he let the horse find the driveway and move along ittoward what had to be the house.

No lights. Nothing.

“Hall000,” he yelled, raising his voice so he could beheard above the wind. “Hey the house! You got a visitor. Mind if I come in?”

Nothing.

“Well, Neddio, seems to me silence is good as a formal invite.” He slid from the saddle, hunted about for the tie-rail; he found it by backing into it and nearly impaling himself on the end. He secured the reins around it in a quick half-hitch and went groping for the door, expecting to find it closed and barred.

It was open a crack, but resisted when he pushed against it. He pushed harder. The leather hinges tore across and the door crashed down. He heard some quick scuttlings in the darkness as vermin fled from the noise. Nothing else. The stead was deserted; from the dilapidation he could feel and smell it’d been that way for a long time. He leaned against the wall and listened to the slow, rumbling complaints of the rammed dirt, ancient memories of blood and screaming, present groans about the years and years since the wall had a coat of sealer brushed over it. Even the dirt knew it was decaying. He didn’t listen long, it didn’t matter that much why the folk had left, all that mattered was getting shelter before the storm hit.

He left Neddio at the tie-rail and groped his way around to the barn. It was in much worse shape than the house, two of the walls had melted away, the roof was lying in pieces about stalls and bins also broken and half burnt. Its house for old Neddio, he thought, and I best get as much wood in today as I can. When that blow hits full force, we’re not going anywhere. Wonder if there’s something about I can use as a drag so I won’t have to make so many trips? Mellth’g bod, can’t see a thing. Raaht, Simmo, one step at a time. Fire first, then see what I can locate. He gathered an armload of the wood scraps and felt his way back to the front door.

The house proved to be in better condition than he’d expected. There were two stories, the roof was reasonably intact and whatever leaked through the shakes was generally soaked up by the cross laid double floor of the second story. He decided to camp in the kitchen; there was a fireplace, a brick oven, several benches and a table that must have been built where it stood since it was far too big to fit through any of the doors. There was a washstand at the far end, close to the fireplace; that part of the kitchen was built over an artesian spring that was still gurgling forth a copious flow of cold pure water, the overflow caught and carried away by a tiled waste channel that split in two parts as it dipped under the back wall. One part flowed under the room next door and emptied into what had once been a large and flourishing vegetable garden-Simms found some tubers and herbs there that made a welcome addition to the stores he was carrying; the other part went to the barn; he found that ditch by falling into it when he poked about in the store sheds and corrals behind the house. In one of those sheds, a low, thickwalled, sod-roofed cube, he found a dozen ceramic jars almost as tall as he was, the tops sealed with a mixture of clay and wax. He put a hand on each of them, red beans, peas, lentils, flour, barley and wheat, old but untouched by rot or mildew. He tried shifting one of the jars; if he put his shoulder to it, he could tilt it and rock it across the floor, but getting it all the way to the house was something else. He’d have to use Neddio to haul them, something the horse wasn’t going to like much. Wood first, though. He stepped outside, got a flurry of snow in the face; in the gusts and between them, the snow was coming down harder. He didn’t have all that much time left before nightfall when even the dim gray twilight would vanish.