Jo Clayton: Blue Magic

For seven days she moved inland, gathering food as she went, enough to fend off hunger cramps and keep her feet moving up around down as she patiently negotiated ravines and circled impossible bramble patches or brush too thick to push through, up around down. It was summer so the rains when they came were quick to pass on and the nights were never freezing though the air could get nippy around dawn. By the end of those seven days she was on the lower slopes of mountains that, were beginning to shift away from the inlet, moving ever deeper into the great oak forest, walking through a brooding twilight with unseen eyes following her. The ground was clear and easy going except for an occasional tricky root that broke through the thick padding of old leaves. There were a few glades where one of the ancient oaks had blown over and left enough room for vines and brush to grow, but not many; getting food for herself was hard and getting wood to cook it would have been harder if she hadn’t decided to dispense with fire altogether. As soon as she stepped into that green gloom, she got the strong impression that the trees wouldn’t take to fire and (though she laughed at her fancies, as much as she could laugh with the persistent and disgusting cold draining her strength) would deal harshly with anyone burning wood of any kind here, even down deadwood. She spent an hour or so that night scooping wary trout from a stony stream, then gutted them and ate them raw. And was careful to dig a hole and bury the skins, bones and offal near the roots on one of the trees. The next morning she went half an hour upstream, got herself another fish and ate that raw too and buried what she didn’t eat. Urged on by the trees who weren’t hostile exactly, just unwelcoming, she hurried through that constant verdant twilight, walking as long as her legs held out before she stopped to eat and sleep.

Late afternoon on the seventh day she stopped walking and listened, finding it difficult to believe her ears. Threading through the soughing of the leaves and the guttural creaks from the huge limbs she heard a steady plink plink plink. It got gradually louder, turned into the familiar dance of a smith’s hammer. The ground underfoot got rockier, the trees were smaller, aspen and birch and myrtle mixed with the oak and the sunlight made lacy patterns on the earth and in the air around her. Even her cold seemed to relent.

She came out of the trees and stood looking down into a broad ravine with a small stream wandering along the bottom. It was an old cut, the sides had a gentle slope with thick short grass like green fur. The sound of the hammering came from farther uphill, around a slight bend and behind some young trees.

She walked around the trees, moving silently more from habit than because she felt it necessary. He had his back to her, working over something on an anvil set on an oak base. It was an openair forge, small and convenient in everything but location. Why was he out here alone? His folk might be around the next curve of the mountain, but she didn’t think so, there’d be some sign of them, dogs barking, cattle noises, she knew the Finger Vale folk had cattle, shouts of children, a thousand other sounds. None of that. He wore a brief leather loincloth, a thong about his head to keep thick, dark blond hair out of his eyes, and a heavy leather apron, nothing more. She watched the play of muscles in his back and buttocks, smiled ruefully and touched her hair. You must look like one of the Furies halfway long a vengeance trail. She touched her arms, the knives were in place, loose enough to come away quickly but not loose enough to fall out; she unbuttoned her cuffs and turned them back, a smith was generally an honest man not overly given to rape, but she’d lost her trusting nature a long way back and the circumstances were odd. A last breath, then she walked around where he could see her.

He let the hammer fall a last time on the object he was shaping (it seemed to be a large intricate link for the heavy chain that coiled at his feet) and stood staring at her, gray green eyes widening with surprise. “Tissu, anash? Opop’erkrisi? Ti’bouleshi?” He had a deep musical voice, even though she didn’t understand a word, the sound of it gave her a pleasurable shiver.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Do you speak the kevrynyel?”

“Ah.” He made a swift secret warding sign and brushed the link off the anvil to get it away from her prying eyes. “Trade gabble,” he said. “Some. I say this, who you, where you come from, what you wish?”

“A traveler,” she said. “Off a ship heading past your coast. Its captain saw a way of squeezing more coin out of me; after a bit of rape he was going to sell me the next port he hit. I had a guard, but the lout got drunk and let them cut his throat. Not being overenchanted by either of the captain’s intentions, I went overside and swam ashore. Aaahmmm, what I want… A meal of something more than raw fish, a hot bath, no, several baths, clean clothing, a bed to sleep in, alone if you don’t mind my saying it, and a chance to earn my keep a while. I do some small magics, my father was a scholar of the Rukha Nagg. Mostly I make music. I had a daroud, the captain has that now, but I can make do with most anything that has strings. I know the Rukha dance tunes and the songs of many peoples. If there’s the desire, I can teach these to your singers and music makers. I cannot sew or embroider, spin or weave, my mother died before she could teach me such things and my father forgot he should. And, to be honest, I never reminded him. There anything more you want to know?”

“Only your name, anash.”

“Ah, your forgiveness, I am Harra of the Hazani, daughter of the Magus Tahno Hazzain. I see you are a smith, I don’t know the customs here, would it be discourteous to ask a name of you, O Nev?”

“For a gift, a gift. Simor a Piyolss of Owlyn Vale. If you would wait a breath or two beyond the trees there, I’ll take you to my mother.”

And so Sirnor the Smith, priest of the Chained God, took the stranger woman to the house of Piyoloss and when the harvest was in and the first snow on the ground, he married her. At first the Vale folk were dismayed, but she sang for them and saved more than one of them from the King’s levy with her small magics which weren’t quite as small as she’d admitted to and after her first son was born most constraints vanished. She had seven sons and a single daughter. She taught them all that she had learned, but it was the daughter who learned the most from her. Her daughter married into the Faraziloss and her daughter’s daughters (she had three) into the Kalathim, the Xoshallar, the Bacharikoss. She heard the story of Brann and her search, she received the medal, the sealing wax and the parchment, she had the box made and passed it with the promise to the liveliest of her granddaughters, a Xoshallarin. As she passed something else. Shnor who could read the heart of mountains found a flawless crystal as big as his two fists and brought it to his cousin, a stoneworker, who cut a sphere from it and burnished it until it was clear as the, heart of water; he gave this to Harra as a gift on the birth of their daughter. She knew how to look into it, and see to the ends of the world and taught her daughter how to look. It is not difficult she said, merely find a stillness in yourself and out of the stillness take will. If the gift of seeing is yours, and since you have my blood in you, most likely it is, then you can call what you need to see.

To find the crystal, daughter of Harra, go to the secret cavern in the ravine where Simor first met Harm, the place where the things of the Chained God are kept safe. Find in yourself the stillness and out of the stillness take will, then you will see where you should send the medal.