Jo Clayton - Drinker of Souls

She drew her fingers down the torn arm. The wounds were already closed, ragged pink furrows visible through the• rents in her sleeve. With the knife from her belt sheath she cut away the bloody rags. She tossed the sleeve into the fire, thought a minute, cut the other sleeve to match. She knelt beside the river and washed away the dried blood. By the time she was finished the furrows had filled in, even the pink flush was gone. She looked at the arm a moment, then bent again, scooped up water, splashed it over her face, drank a little. The children melted apart and moved beside her, throwing questions, demands, pleas at her, as she walked about the glade, kicking leaves over the body of the malouch, smoothing out the rips in the sod he made with his claws, repacking the saddlebags with slow meticulous care, dismantling the tripod, dousing the fire, burying the blackened bits of wood. She said nothing to them, refused stubbornly to acknowledge their presence, walked heavily to the riverbank and sang the mourning song for the malouch and for the wood she burned, sang the praises of the living river, the living forest. A week ago she would have done all this-restored the land, sung the praises-because she’d done similar things a hundred times before, because she rested comfortably in the support of ancient custom. This time it was a way to shout at the murdering invaders that nothing was changed, that Arth Slya still lived as long as one of Slya’s children lived and followed Slya’s way.

When she turned away from the river, the werehorse was waiting beside the fallen ashtree. She saddled him, tossed the bulging bags in place, tied on the spade and hatchet, then stepped onto the ash and pulled herself onto his back. He trotted to the track, did a few caracoles to loosen up then started racing down the mountain once again, crystal eyes having no trouble with the thickening shadow. Down and down…

Until she saw a body flung beside the track, a boy huddled round a gaping wound in his chest. She screamed the horse to a halt, flung herself down and ran back. Kneeling beside the boy, she pressed him over. “Marran,” she whispered. She brushed dirt and leaves from his face. His eyes were open, dull, shrunken. She tried to shut them, but her hands fumbled uselessly. Behind her the horse stomped impatiently, then whickered and nudged her with his nose. “Stop it,” she said. “Don’t bother me.”

She gave up trying to straighten Marran, sat on her heels and looked about, her tongue caught between her teeth.

Yaril came round her, squatted beside Man-an’s body. He put his hand on the boy’s face, drew it back. “Dead over a day, Brann. Nothing you can do.”

Brann blinked slowly, brushed a hand across her face. “It’s Marran,” she said. She got to her feet. “Help me fetch wood.” With clumsy hands she untied the hatchet from the fallen saddle and started away. “We’ve got to burn him free.” She cast about for dry downwood. Yaril and Janl ran beside her, trying to talk to her. “We’re getting close to the Temuengs; it’s dark, they’ll see any fire big enough to burn a body; he’s dead, how much can it matter when you put him on a pyre? Free your people and let them take care of him, Brann, Bramlet, Brambleall-thorns, it won’t take that long, if we go on now, you can have them free by dawn, back here before dusk, come on, Brann…”

Brann shook her head, her mouth set in a stubborn line. She wasn’t going to be stymied from doing what she clung to as right; if she let one thing go, the rest might slip away from her little by little. Bewildered and uncertain, alone with nothing but memory to guide her, all she could do was hold by what she did know. That this was Marran. That she owed him his fire. She trembled, her knees threatening to give way, caught hold of the branch waving in her face. Wood. Yes. She pulled the limb taut and lifted the hatchet.

One of the children made an irritated humming sound, then they were both in front of her, holding her by the arms, taking the hatchet from her. She tried to pull away but their hands were locked to her as if their flesh was melded to hers. Their fire came into her; it pinned her in place as if her feet had grown roots. She cried out, tried again to wrench free; they held her; the fire held her. Frightened and frantic, she writhed against that double grip until Yaril’s words finally seeped through her panic.

“Wait, wait, listen to us, Bramlet, listen, we can help you, listen, we’ll help, we understand, listen…”

She grew quiet, breathing heavily. The grip on her arms relaxed; movement restored to her, she licked dry lips. “Listen?”

“Let us make fire for you.”

“Wha…”

“Go back, sit by the boy and wait. We’ll make a hotter, cleaner fire for your friend, Bramble, he’ll burn in mountain heart. Wouldn’t you rather that, than green and smoky wood?”

She looked from one small pale face to the other; the drive went out of her, she turned and fumbled her way back to Marran’s body, stood looking down at him a moment. “Mama…” She backed away to give the fire room and sat in the middle of the trampled track, her arms crossed tight across her narrow chest.

Yaril and Jaril came from the shadows and took up places facing each other across the body, with formal movements like the paces of a dance, dissolved into light shimmers that bobbed up and down like bubbles on a string. Brann heard the swooping sweet song again, Jaril’s deeper notes dominating, looked at Marran half in shadow, half in moonlight, looked away pushing her grief back, shutting it away inside her as she’d done with the rest of her anger and pain, not noticing how frequently she was doing this or realizing how much trouble she was piling up for herself when the rush of events was over and there was nothing more to distract her from all that she had lost or from the cold shock of what her future held for her. The shimmers vibrated faster and faster, waves of color-blue and green and crimson-passing across them top to bottom, faster faster faster, the song rising to a high piercing scream. They darted away from each other, whipped around and came rushing back, slamming together into a blinding explosion. Blue fire roared up in a gather of crackling tongues. Hanging first in midair, the fire lowered until it touched, then ate down into Marran, racing up and down his contorted body, consuming flesh and bone until there was only ash.

The blue flame paled, broke in half, the halves tumbled apart, and the children lay on the leaves, pale and weary.

Yaril sat up. “We have to hunt before we can go on.” Jaril rolled up, nodded, flowed immediately into the hound form and trotted away, Yaril following after, most of the spring gone out of her legs. The burning had cost them.

Brann watched them go, sat where she was for a few breaths longer, then she got to her feet, stretched and began to sing the mourning song for Marran.

ABOUT AN HOUR before dawn, the werehorse slowed to a walk, hooves flowing into clawed pads as each one left the ground. It ghosted on, step by slow step, through the starlit quiet until the sound of a man’s voice raised in idle complaint came drifting up the track. Brann swung down, pulled the saddlebags off and carried them to a tangleroot, stowed them in the trunk hollow, struggling to make no sounds. She came back, eased the buckles loose and slid the saddle off, teeth tight together, moving as smoothly as she could so nothing would rattle or clink. By the time she reached the huge tree, Jaril was there to help her lower the saddle.

They crept around the perimeter of the camp clearing until they found a pepperbush growing crookedly out from the roots of a sweetsap where a thin screen of toothy leaves let them see without being seen.

The captives slept in the center of the cleared ground, the ropes knotted about their necks tied to stakes pounded into the hard soil. Perhaps on the first two nights some had lain awake, too stunned by grief and fear to sleep, but this night they all slept, heavily, noisily, with groans and farts and snores and sobs and the shapeless mutters that sleepers make when they’re speaking into dream.