Jo Clayton - Blue Magic

In the morning Kori went before the Women of Piyoloss. “The Servant of Amortis has been watching me. I am afraid.”

The Women looked at each other, sighed. After a long moment, AuntNurse said, “We have seen it.” She eyed Kori with a skepticism born of long experience. “You have a suggestion?”

“My brother Trago goes soon to take his turn with the herds in the high meadows, let me go with him instead of Kassery. The Servant and his acolytes don’t go there, the soldiers don’t go there, if I could stay up there until the Lot time, I would be out of his way and once it was Lot time, I’d be going down with the rest to face the Lot and after that, if the Lot passed me, it wouldn’t be long before it was time for my betrothing and then even he wouldn’t dare put his hands on me. I tell you this, if he does put his hands on me, I will kill myself on his doorstep and my ghost will make his days a misery and his nights a horror. I swear it by the ghost of my mother and the Chains of the God.”

AuntNurse seached Kori’s face, then nodded. “You would do it. Hmm. There are things I wonder about you, young Kori.” She smiled. “I’m not accustomed to hearing something close to wisdom coming out your mouth. Yes. It might be your ancestor, you know which I mean, speaking to us, her cunning, her hot spirit. I wonder what you really want, but no, I won’t ask you, I’ll only say, take care what you do, you’ll answer for it be you ghost or flesh.” She turned to the Women. “I

say send Kori to the meadows with Trago, send them tomorrow, what say you?”

“So I told the Women that that snake Bak’hve had the hots for me, well it’s true, Tre, he’s been following me about with his tongue hanging down to his knees, and I told them I was scared of him, which I was maybe a little, yechh, he makes the hair stand up all over me and if he touched me, I’d throw up all over him. Anyway, they already knew it and I suppose they’d been thinking what to do. Unnh, I wasn’t fooling AuntNurse, not much, chain it. She just about told me she knew I was up to something. Doesn’t matter, they let me go, almost had to, what I said made sense and they knew it.” Kori flung her arms out and capered on the path, exulting in her temporary freedom from the constraints closing in on her since she’d started her menses.

Trago made a face at her, did some skipping himself as the packpony he was leading whuffled and lipped at the fine blond hair the dawnwind was blowing into a fluff about his face. “So,” he said, raising his voice to get her attention, “when are you going to tell me that great idea of yours?”

She sobered and came back to walk beside him. “I didn’t want to say anything down there, you never know who’s listening and has got to tell everything, what goes in the ear comes out their mouth with no stop between.”

“So?”

Speaking in a rapid murmur, so softly Trago had to lean close and listen hard, Kori told him about Harra’s Gift and the not-dream she had under the great oak. “Owlyn Vale can’t fight Settsimaksimin, we’ve got the dead to prove it. Chained God can’t fight him either, not straight out, or he’d ‘ve done it when they burned Zilos. Maybe he can sneak a little nip in, maybe that’s what he was doing when he picked you for his priest and made that oaksprite give me a dream. ’Cause I think he did, I think he wants the Drinker of Souls here. I think he thinks she can do something, I don’t know what, that will turn things around. So I had to get loose, otherwise how could I get to the cave without making such a noise everything would get messed up? And thought I’d better be with you, Tre, since if you don’t know where the cave is, Zilos will come and tell you about it like the oaksprite did me. She said it’s in the ravine where Simor met Harra, but who knows where that is? Only the priest and that’s Zilos. He’ll have to come to you again, like he did last night. Maybe tonight even. Drinker of Souls could be anywhere, the sooner we get the medal to her, the sooner she could start for here.”

Tre sniffed. “If she comes.”

“It’s better’n doing nothing.”

“Maybe.” After a moment he reached over and took her hand, something he usually wouldn’t do. “I’m scared, Kori.”

She squeezed his hand, sighed. “Me too, Tre e.”

The packpony plodding along behind them, and then nosing into them as they slackened their pace, they climbed in silence, nothing to say, everything had been said and it hung like fog about them.

They reached Far Meadow a little after noon, a bright still day, bearable in shadow, but ovenhot in the sunlight. The leggy brown cows lay about the rim of the meadow wherever there was a hint of shade, tails switching idly, jaws moving like blunt soft silent metronomes, ears flicking now and then to drive off the black flies that summer produced out of nothing as if they were the offspring of sun and air. A stream cut across the meadow, glittering with heat until it slid into shadow beneath the trees and widened into a shady pool where Veraddin and Poti were splashing without much energy, like the cows passing the worst of the heat doing the least possible.

“L0000haaa, Vraaad.” Trago wrinkled up his face, squinted his eyes, shielding them from the sun with his free hand; when the two youths yelled and waved to him, he tossed the pony’s halter rope to Kori and went trotting across to them. Kori sighed and led the beast up the slope toward the cabin and cheesehouse tucked up under the trees, partially dug into the mountainside, a corral beside it, empty now, a three-sided milking barn, a flume from the stream that fed water into a cistern above the house then into a trough at the corral. When Trago’s yell announced their arrival, a large solid woman (the widow Chittar Piyolss y Bacharz, the Piyoloss Cheesemaker) came from inside the cheesehouse and stood on the steps, a white cloth crumpled in her left hand. She watched a moment as Kori climbed toward her, swabbed the cloth across her broad face, stumped down the steps and along to the corral, swinging the gate open as Kori reached her.

“You’re two days early.” Chittar had a rough whispery voice that sounded rusty from disuse. She followed Kori into the corral, tucked the cloth into the waistband of her skirt and helped unload the packs from the saddle and strip the gear off the placid pony; as soon as he was free, he ambled to the trough and plunged his nose into the water. “You take that into the house.” She waved a hand at the gear. “I’ll see this creature doesn’t founder himself. And if that clutch of boys isn’t up to help you in another minute, I’ll go after their miserable hides with a punkthorn switch.”

Kori grinned at her. “I hear, xera Chittar. Um, we are early and it’s me because AuntNurse thought I should get away from the Servant of Amortis who looked like he was entertaining some unfortunate ideas.”

“That’s the politest way I every heard that put. Panting was he, old goat, no-I insult a noble beast, by comparison anyway.” Chittar wrapped powerful fingers about the cheekstrap of the halter and pulled the pony away from the water. “I see the truants are coming this way; you get into the house right now, girl, those ijjits have about a clout and a half between them and that’s no sight for virgin eyes.”

The first night Kori slept on a pallet in Chittar’s room while Trago shared Poti’s bed (he was the smaller of the two boys). Whatever dreams either may have had, they remembered none. In the morning, as soon as the cows were milked and turned out to graze, Veraddin and Poti left, warned not to say anything to anyone about Kori until they talked with the Women of Piyoloss. Chittar went back to the cheesehouse, leaving Kori and Trago with a list of things to do about the house and instructions to choose separate rooms for their bedrooms, get them cleaned up and neat enough to pass inspection, to get everything done before noon and come join her so she could show them what they were going to do until they could get on with their proper chores. Since neither of them had the least idea how to do the milking, she was going to have to take that over until they learned, which meant they’d have to do some of her work, like churning butter and spading curd, the simpler things that needed muscle more than skill or intelligence. Ah no, she said to them, you thought you were going to laze about watching cows graze? not a hope, l’il Wits, I’m working your tails off like I do to all the dreamers coming up here.