Jo Clayton - Drinker of Souls

Toward evening on the seventh day after she left the mountains, she reached the wide highroad from Grannsha to Tavisteen and turned south along it, dismounted and walked beside a horse stumbling with weariness, the hounds trotting in wide arcs before her, noses and ears searching for danger. Now and then one of them would run back to her and pace alongside her for a while, looking repeatedly up at her, remnants of the day’s light glinting in the crystal of their strange eyes. The sky was heavily overcast, thick boiling gray clouds threatening rain with every breath. The river swept away from the road and hack in broad tranquil meanders, the color sucked from the water by the lowering skies, the sound muted by the ponderous force and depth of the flow.

She was about to resign herself to a wet cold night when she came on a large rambling structure built between the highroad and a returning sweep of the river, an Inn with a pair of torches out front, torches that had burnt low because it was long after sundown. The hounds came back, altering into Yaril and. Jaril by the time they reached her. “What do you think?” she said. “Should we stop there?” She drew the flat of her hand down her front, sighed. “I’d really like a hot bath.”

Yaril scratched at her nose, considered the Inn. “Why not, Bramble. It looks like it gets a lot of traffic. The folk there won’t be surprised by strangers.”

“You’re the moneykeeper, J’ri, can we afford their prices?”

He looked thoughtful, then mischievous. “Why not. ‘S not our coin, we can always steal more.” He dug into the saddlebags, handed the purse to Yaril and took the reins from Brann. “You two go on inside, let Yaril do the talking and you stand about looking portentous, Bramble.” He giggled and dodged away from the sweep of her hand.

get Coier bedded down, he won’t mind a dry stall and some corn for dinner, oh no he won’t.”

The door opened at Brann’s touch and she went in, looking about as impassively as she could. Beside her, Yaril was gawking at the place with far less restraint, her child’s form licensing freer expression of her interest. A long narrow entranceway with open arches on each side led to a broad stairway at the far end, a horseshoe-shaped counter by the foot of the stairs. Yaril ran ahead of Brann to the counter, beat a few times on the small gong set by the wall, then engaged in an energetic sotto-voce debate with the sleepy but professionally genial man who emerged from the door behind the counter. Brann watched from the corner of her eye, trying to show she knew what she was about, ignoring the men who came to the arch-door of the taproom and stared at her with predatory speculation. She grew increasingly nervous as Yaril prolonged that debate. If she’d been here with her mother and father, as she could’ve been, she’d have been excited and absorbed by the newness of it all, protected by the arms of custom and love; now she was merely frightened, asea in a place whose rules of conduct she didn’t know. She reached up, touched the scarf still wound about her head. Already she had about an inch of new hair, silvery white and softly curling like downfeathers on a duck. It itched, needed washing as much as the rest of her. Seemed weeks since she’d had a bath. She gazed down at thin wrists that looked as if a breath would snap them, at long strong hands tanned dark that were dark also with the grime water alone wouldn’t get off. Soap and a hot bath. She sighed with anticipated pleasure.

Yaril came trotting back. “I thought you’d like to eat first while he’s getting the water heated for your bath.” She led Brann into the taproom and settled her at a table in the far corner. Jaril came in, looked through the arch, began helping Yaril fetch food and eating things, acting as beginning apprentices were expected to act, serving their masters’ wants and needs. The clink of the coin the children had taken from the soldiers had bought her a measure of welcome, the children’s act brought her a grudging respect as one who might have a dangerous amount of power however odd she looked. Even that oddness had its good points, setting her apart from the general run of women on their own.

As soon as she was settled behind the table with the wall at her back, she felt better, as if she’d acquired a space all her own. And when the children brought cold roast chicken, heated rolls with cheese melted into them and a pitcher of hot spiced wine, she began to eat with the appetite engendered by her long ride. The children knelt beside her, hidden from the rest of the room. When most of the wine was a warm mass in her stomach and the first edge of her hunger had been blunted, she looked down at JariL “Coier all right?”

He nodded. “Good stable. Clean, fresh straw in the stalls, no mold on the oats.”

“Good.” She put down the wine bowl. “What about you two, do you need to eat?”

He shook his head, the fine hair flying into a halo about his pointed face. “After that last meal? No. We shouldn’t need more until the Wounded Moon is full again.”

“Oh.”

She finished the rest of the food and sat holding the drinking bowl cradled in her hands. Her body ached. She still wasn’t quite used to the altered distribution of meat on her bones, though as time wore on new habits were beginning to form. That was a help, but she was more and more worried about her ability to make her way in this other world; she was woefully, dangerously ignorant about things these people didn’t waste two thoughts on. The money Jaril carried, for example. The only coin she’d ever held was the bronze bit Marran called his luck piece. The children seemed to know what they were doing, their experience at traveling seemed to be much greater than hers, but she felt uneasy about leaving everything to them. Arth Slya encouraged its young ones to develop self-reliance within the community. They had to know their capacities, their desires and gifts, in order to make a proper Choice, whether that choice be centered in the Valley or elsewhere; that knowledge and contentment therein was even more important to the well-being of the Valley than the proper choice of a lifemate. Even after Choice, if the passage of time found the young man or woman restless and unsatisfied, they were encouraged to seek what they needed elsewhere; apprenticeships were arranged in Grannsha, usually at Fairtime, in Tavisteen, or somewhere on the Plains, the young folk leaving to be dancers, players of all sorts, merchants, soldiers, sailors. She had cousins all over Croaldhu, probably scattered about the whole world, but they all had help getting to know how to act, they had people around them to encourage and support them. Such practices had kept Arth Slya thriving for more than a thousand years. A thousand years. Impossible that in so short a time as a day such a way of life had almost ceased to exist.

She sipped at lukewarm wine and noticed fbr the first time the singular hush in the taproom. At first she thought she’d caused it, then she saw the three men at the bar, their backs against the slab, tankards still hill in their hands. They were Temuengs with pale northern skins the color of rich cream, straight black hair pulled back and tied at the napes of their necks, high prominent cheekbones, long narrow eyes as black as the shirts and trousers they wore. They had a hard, brushed neatness, no dust on them, no sweat, not a hair out of place, faces clean-shaven, nails burnished on hands that looked as if they’d never done anything Brann could think, of as work, a disturbing neatness that spoke of coldness and control, that frightened her as it was meant to do. Yaril sensed her unease, dissolved into the light shimmer, crept around the edges of the room, then darted through the men and away before they could do more than blink, flicked back along the wall and solidified into Yaril standing at her shoulder. “Watch out for them,” the girl whispered. “They have leave to do anything they want to anyone, they’re the enforcers of an imperial Censor.” Yaril patted her arm. “But you just remember who you are now, Drinker of Souls.”