Jo Clayton: A Gathering Of Stones

The glowsphere came speeding recklessly back. Jaril shifted to his bipedal form, flung himself at Brann, sobbing and trembling, cold for his kind and deep in shock. “She’s gone, Bramble, she’s not there any longer, she’s gone, she’s gone…”

II. Settsimaksimin

Kukurul, the World’s navel Settsimaksimin, alone and restless also: Jastouk, male courtesan

Vechakek, his minder

Todichi Yahzi, Maksim’s ex-secretary, now a mistreated slave.

Davindolillah, a boy who reminds Maksim of himself, of no other importance.

Assorted others.

Settsimaksimin yawned. He felt drained. It was brushing against the trap in the cave that did it, he thought. The block. Fool woman, lack-brained looby, ahhh, Thornlet, that thing is dangerous. He stomped about the rubble-strewn flat, uncertain what to do next; the fog was thickening to a slow dull rain and the night was colder; it was time to get out of this, but he was reluctant to leave. Fool man, me, he thought. He wrung some of the water from his braid, shaped a will-o and sent it bobbing along ahead of him to light the path so he wouldn’t break his neck as he went downhill to the Inn.

Jastouk would be at the Ardent Argent unless he’d got tired of waiting and gone trawling for a new companion. Gods, I’m tired. I don’t want to sleep. Sleep, hah! Bramble, you’re damn inconvenient, you and those devilkids of yours,.. fires die if you aren’t there to fan them…

He changed his clothes and took a chair up the Katt. He found Jastouk sitting sulkily alone, watching some uninspired dancers posturing with the flaccid conjurings produced by an equally uninspired firewitch. He coaxed the hetairo into better humor and carried him off to a semiprivate party at one of the casinos.

Company in his bed didn’t chase the dreams this time. Maksim woke sweating, his insides churning. He swore, dragging himself out of bed and doused his head with cold water.

Heavy-eyed and languorous, Jastouk stretched, laced his hands behind his head. “Bad night?” he murmured.

Maksim snapped the clasp off the end of his braid, tossed one of his brushes on the bed. “Brush my hair for me,” he said. He dropped into a chair, sighed with pleasure as the youth’s slim fingers worked the braid loose and began draw-mg the brush over the coarse gray strands. “You have good hands, Jasti.”

“Yours are more beautiful,” Jastouk said. His voice was a soft, drowsy burr, caressing the ear. “They hold power with grace.’

“Don’t do that.” The anger and worry lingering from the night made Maksi’s voice harsher than he’d meant it to be. “I don’t need flattery, Jasti. I don’t like it.”

Jastouk laughed, a husky musical sound, his only answer to Maksim’s acerbities. He began humming one of the songs currently popular in Kurkurul as he drew the brush through and through the sheaf of hair. He was thin, with the peculiar beauty of the wasted; his bones had an elegance denied most flesh. He was neither learned nor especially clever, but had a sweetness of disposition that made such graces quite superfluous. Pliant and receptive, he responded to the needs and moods of his clients before they were even aware they were in a mood and he had a way of listening with eyes and body as well as ears that seduced them into thinking they meant more to him than they did. They were disturbed, even angry, when they chanced across him in company with a successor and found that he had trouble placing them. He was wildly expensive, though he never bothered about money, leaving that to his Minder, a Henerman named Vechakek, who set his fees and collected them with minimal courtesy. Jastouk had a very few favored lovers that he never forgot; despite Vechakek’s scolding he’d cut short whatever relationship he was in at the time and go with them, whether they could afford his fees or not. Maksim was one of these. Jastouk adored the huge man, he was awed by the thought of being lover to a Sorceror Prime; there were only four of them in all the world. But even Maksim had to court him and give him the attention he craved; there were too many others clamoring for his favors and he had too strong “a need for continual reassuring to linger long where he was ignored. ne-glected and gnored. He was indolent but had almost no patience with his lovers, even the most passionate; when Brann’s demands on Maksim’s time and energies interfered with his courting, Jastouk was exasperated to the point of withdrawing, but when the interference was done, he was content to let Maksim’s ardor warm him into an ardor of his own; this morning he was pleased with himself, settling happily into the old relationship. He brushed Maksim’s long hair, every touch of his hands a caress; he sang his lazy songs and used his own tranquillity to smooth away the aches and itches in Maksim’s souls.

When they left the Inn, the sun was high, shining with a watery autumnal warmth. Content with each other’s company, they moved along the winding lane, dead leaves dropping about them, blowing about their feet, lending a gently melancholy air to the day. Maksim had the sense of something winding down, a time of transition between what was and what will be. It was a pleasant feeling for the most part, with scratchy places to remind him that nothing is permanent, that contentment has to be cherished, but abandoned before it, got overripe. He plucked a lingering plum from a cluster of browning leaves, tossed it to a jikjik nosing among the roots. There were no real seasons this far south, but fruit trees and flowering trees went into a partial dormancy and shed part of their leaves in the fall, the beginning of the dry season, and stretched bare limbs among the sparse holdouts left on whippy green twigs until the rains came again.

“When you were busy with your friend,” brown eyes soft as melted chocolate slid lazily toward Maksim, moved away again, the chocolate cream voice was slow and uninflected, making no overt comment on Maksim’s neglect of him, though that did lie quite visible beneath the calm, “I was rather moped, missing you, Maksi, so I went to see the Pem Kundae perform. Do you know them?”

“No.” Maksim yawned. “Sorry, I’m not too bright today. Who are they and what do they do?” He wasn’t much interested in Jastouk’s chatter, but he was willing to listen.

The hetairo noted his mental absence; it made him unhappy. He stopped talking.

Maksim pulled himself together; he needed company; he needed sex and more sex to drown out and drive away things clamoring at him. Drugs were impossible; a sorceror of his rank would have to be suicidal to strip away his defenses so thoroughly. He needed Brann. He was furious at the changers for calling her away like that. He missed her already; time and time again when he saw some absurdity, he turned to share it with her, but she wasn’t there. Instead of Braun, he had Jastouk, pliant and loving, but oh so blank above the neck. I’m not going to have him, if I keep letting my mind wander. He set himself to listen with more attention. “Are they some kind of players?”

Jastouk smiled, slid his fingers along Maksim’s arm, took his hand. “Oh yes. Quite marvelous, Maksi. They do a bit of everything, dance, sing, mime, juggle, but that’s only gilding. What they mainly do is improvise little poems. You shout out some topic or other and two or three of them will make up rhyming couplets until there’s a whole poem finished for you. And the most amazing thing is, they do it in at least half a dozen languages. Delicious wordplay, I swear it, Maksi. Multilingual puns. You’d like them, I’m sure; it’s the kind of thing you enjoy.” He hesitated, not quite certain how his next comment would be taken. “I’ve heard you and your friend play the same kind of game.’