Jo Clayton: Changer’s Moon

“No,” he said. His throat tensed; she was going back to Ser Noris. “No.” He wanted to say more but he couldn’t-no words, no voice, no way to fight against the necessity that gripped both of them. He held her until her shuddering eased.

Serroi sighed. “The waste won’t stop until he’s stopped.”

“How?” It was a challenge, a demand that she justify throwing her life away, He was angry and afraid and wanted her to know it.

“I don’t know,” she said, shaking the hair off her brow. “I only know I have to face him and let what comes come.”

“Serroi, I need you.”

“I know. I wish…” She didn’t finish.

He could feel her withdrawing from him though she didn’t move away. “Serroi…”

“You didn’t have to come back here, Dom.”

He started to say it wasn’t the same, but in the end only shook his head, then held her without words until the noises from outside grew so intrusive they could no longer ignore them. He let her go and hitched the blanket up, tied the rope about his middle. Serroi patted the charred rags of her robe into a semblance of order, held out her hand. “Well, come on.”

They saw the glass dragons as soon as they stepped from the emptied tower. Hern put his arm about her and together they watched the dragonsong, working as one mind for a short time as they had on the plateau, sharing that remembered beauty, that remembered closeness.

Then one of the dragons separated from the others, flushed with waves of green and gold, and came curling down to land near the tower, huge and wonderful and more than a little frightening. Hern felt shock ripple through Serroi, echoing his shock of recognition and denial. She pulled away from him and began walking toward the dragon.

No , he thought, not so soon. How can you go so easily, how can you go without a word.

As if she'd heard that, she turned. He waited.

She looked at him a moment but said nothing, then walked on. When she reached the dragon, she put her hand on the cool flesh, flinched as it collapsed into something like steps, turned once more to face him. “You’d hate idleness, Dom,” she said, her voice not quite steady. “Keep busy and live long.”

He wanted to say something, but the only words that came to him were the empty banalities of idle chat. She smiled, that sudden joyous urchin’s grin that had enchanted him from the moment he first saw it, though she wasn’t smiling for him then. She climbed up to settle herself in the saddle the dragon shaped for her. Waves of iridescence shimmered along the serpentine body then the dragon drifted upward and began undulating toward the stone face rising a thousand feet above the wall.

Ser Noris waited.

Reiki janja looked down at large hands closed into fists about the pieces she planned to set on the board. “Play,” he said gruffly.

She opened her right hand. A small greenish figure dressed in charred white rags lay on her palm.

“No,” he said. He reached to take the figure from her, drew back when a flash of pain shot through his withered hand.

Reiki smiled. “You said once I’ll teach the child; after that, try and take the woman .” There was a patina of sweat on her lined face, but her eyes were calm. She was solid janja except for hints in those dark-water eyes. “Do you have her, my Noris?”

He made an impatient dismissing gesture. “Play.”

She set the green figure on the board, straightened and opened her other hand. A dark-robed figure with chiseled pale features lay on her palm.

Ser Noris sucked in a breath, slapped at the hand but before he touched her was stopped by an intangible barrier. While he struggled to maintain his control, she set his simulacrum on the board beside the other figure. “This decides it all.”

“The army…”

“How long will the Ogogehians stay, with the paymaster gone?”

Again he brushed the question away and sat staring at the black-robed figure. He knew his power and did not doubt he would prevail; what chilled him were the implications woven about that figure. Until this moment he’d been games-master, not a pawn in the game. He lifted his head. “What am I?”

“In what game?”

He hesitated, looked at the finger-high black figure. “I am not less than you.” He pronounced each word with great care, flatly.

“Which I?”

A brush of his hand, a hiss of disgust. “Don’t play with me, janja.”

“You withdraw?”

“No. You know what I’m saying.”

“Say it.”

“No.”

Reiki smiled.

He looked down at the greenglass figure glowing on the board. “I shaped her.” The janja made a sound. Without taking his eyes from the figure, he said, “We shaped her.” He reached out, didn’t quite touch the sculpted red curls. “We shaped her…” His voice trailed into memory.

He reclined on black velvet before a crackling fire, lifted onto his elbow as Serroi hesitated in the doorway. Aware of her loneliness and uncertainty, he wanted to reassure her, but he was uneasy with her, he didn’t know how to talk to her. After a few breaths he called to her, “Come here, Semi.” That was easy enough. She grinned suddenly and came rushing in, her confidence growing with each step she took. They talked quietly for a while, she full of eager questions, he responding to her warmth as he would to a fire on a cold day. After a while his hand dropped beside her head. He stroked her hair, began pulling soft curls through his fingers. The fire was no warmer than the quiet happiness between them.

“And she shaped me,” he murmured, then was furious that he’d exposed a part of himself. He got to his feet and walked to the edge of the cliff where he stood looking down at the wall.

The war subsided for the moment. Nekaz Kole was waiting for the vuurvis to burn through the gates; there was a skeleton force of defenders keeping watch at the embrasures but most of them seemed to be gathered about long tables heavy with hot food and drink. Farther down the valley, Sleykynin were spread in a wide arc, creeping secretly toward the Shawar. Small bands of hunters hunted them and were hunted in their turn, a game of blindfold chess where the pieces were pointed weapons.

And over it all the enigmatic dragons wove their color songs.

One of the dragons sank gracefully to the earth inside the wall. Serroi came from the blackened tower with the man she’d fought him to save. Hern. He glared at the pudgy gray figure. If he’d had enough power after his attack on the Shawar, he would have expended it all on the obliteration of that man. He watched and suffered as he felt the intensity of shared emotion radiated from the pair. And cursed himself for thinking so long that the little man could be safely ignored. A year ago he could have squashed Hern easily. Even on the Changer’s mountain he could have erased him from existence. But he didn’t know then how deeply Hern had insinuated himself into Serroi’s life, usurping what Ser Noris considered his. Rutting beast, he howled inside his head, his mouth clamped shut to keep that beastcry from the janja. Debauching her… He choked off that interior rant, frightened by his loss of control. His withered hand twitched, the chalky fingers scraping across the fine black cloth of his robe, a loathsome reminder of the last time he’d let emotion rule him, that aborted confrontation with Serroi on the Changer’s mountain.

The dragon came drifting up, moving toward him with undulant languorous grace, the tiny figure on its back almost as translucent as it was.

Serroi stepped from the dragon’s side onto the granite. Lines were worn smooth where Ser Noris had paced the years away gazing down on what he could not possess, only destroy. She saw the janja sitting with massive silence beside a gameboard that was a sudden eruption of color in all the muted grays and browns of the mountainside. Acknowledging the old woman with a small, sketchy gesture, she turned to face Ser Noris.