Jo Clayton: Drinker of Souls

The sunlight sparked off her outflung arm. I’m drowned by a Kadda witch, she burst out. Her voice made no impression on the drowsing sounds of the small room, but the old man looked at her, hearing her. I want her dead, she cried, in the water with me. Dead.

The old man blinked, pale brown eyes opening and closing with slow deliberation. With his shaggy brown robe, the tufts of white hair over his ears, his round face and slow-blinking eyes, he looked to Aituatea rather like a large horned owl. The tip of a pale pinkish-brown tongue brushed across his colorless lips. All things die in their time, he said.

Hotea made a small spitting sound. Aituatea looked at his hands, feeling a mean satisfaction. This wasn’t what she’d come to hear, platitudes she could read in any book of aphorisms. Not that woman, she said, her voice crackling with impatience. Not while there’s young blood to feed her.

Even her, he said.

I want her dead, old man, she said. I want to see her dead. Hotea’s hands fluttered with small, quickly aborted movements as if she sought to uncover with them some argument to persuade him to interfere against his inclination. Look, she said, Temueng children have died. Do you think Hina won’t pay for those deaths? Ten for one they will. We’re guilty, old man, whether we do anything or not. They can do no wrong, they’re the conquerors, aren’t they? Besides, leave the witch alone, how long before she eats everyone on Utar-Selt? Hotea went still a moment, then her voice was a thread of no-sound softer than usual in Aituatea’s head. Teach us, old man, she said, teach us how we can front and kill a Kadda witch.

The old man stared at her a dozen heartbeats, then turned those pitiless eyes on Aituatea. They swelled larger and larger until they were all he could see. He began to feel like weeping softly and sadly as they searched his soul, as they spaded up fear and waste and the little niggling meannesses he’d done to his friends and to his sister, and all the ugly things he’d buried deep and refused to remember. As he stared into the old man’s eyes, he was finally forced to see that he would never do anything about the Kadda witch without someone to take the brunt of the witch’s attack, that he would keep putting it off and putting it off, growing more wretched as the years passed, as Hotea grew more caustic.

The old man leaned back, his worn face filled with pain as if he had absorbed from Aituatea all that self-disgust and fear. He slumped, his body shrinking in on itself, his eyes glazing over. Kadda witch, he murmured, blood drinker, knows no will but her own, evil, recognizing no right beyond her own needs. I see… there’s a counter… I see… He flinched, drew further into himself. Powerful, he said, another power comes… an ancient enemy… His eyes moved in a slow sweeping arc, but he was seeing nothing in the hut. Aituatea felt his stomach knot.

One comes, the old man said, husky voice reduced to a whisper. A woman… something between her and the witch… like the witch… no, not the same… drinker of life, not blood… not evil, not good… Drinker of Souls, she comes the eve of the Godalau fete. Set her on the track, let her sniff out the witch, buy her with Das’n vuor, and point her at the witch. She comes with the rising of the Wounded Moon, will leave before the rising of the sun. The Drinker of Souls, come back to Silili after years and years… a hundred years… ah! her purposes mesh with yours, angry ghost. He muttered some more, but the words were unintelligible, intermixed with sudden chuckles. It was as if he had to wind back down into his customary taciturnity and something amusing he saw was retarding this return.

Aituatea sat frozen, sick. Three months’ respite, then he had to face the witch or face himself. He glared at the old man, silently cursing him for setting the limit so close.

The old man lifted his head, looked irritably at him. That’s it, he seemed to say, you got what you came for, now get out of here!

Shadow spread out from him, dark and terrible, killing the light, the warmth. Aituatea scrambled back, knocking over the bench; the smell of cedar choking him, he ran from the hut.

Another nip in his shoulder. Hotea getting impatient. “Go after her. Stop her,” she shrilled. “Don’t lose her, fool. You won’t find her again, you know it. And we’ve only got till sunup.”

Muttering under his breath Aituatea swung down from the bales and limped after the woman. His hip hurt but he was used to that and almost forgot the pain as he hurried past the godons and stepped into the Street of the Watermen. She was making no effort to hurry-it was almost as if she wanted to be followed, had set herself out as bait, trolling for anything stupid or hungry enough to bite. He kept back as far as he could without losing sight of her. The peculiar lurch of his walk was too eye-catching, even in the leaping uncertain light from the torches burning in front of businesses still open, casting shadows that lurched and twisted as awkwardly as he did. She circled without fuss about the knots of gambling watermen and porters crouched over piles of bronzes and coppers, tossing the bones into lines chalked on the flagging. She slowed now and then, head cocked to listen to flute and cittern music coming in melancholy brightness from the joyhouses, ignored insults flung down at her from idling women hanging out second-story windows, walked more briskly past shops shuttered for the night-a herbalist, a shaman’s den, a fishmonger, a geengrocer, a diviner, and others much like these. Some cookshops were closed for the night, others were still open with men standing about dipping noodles and pickled beans and pickled cabbage from clay bowls or crunching down fried pilchards. He watched her careless stroll and felt confirmed in his idea she was bait in her own trap. Maybe she’s hungry, he told himself and shivered at the thought. He dropped back farther, his feet dragging. For no reason he wondered suddenly where the children were. Now and then it seemed to him he heard them calling to each other or to the woman, but he was never sure and she never responded to the calls.

“Where’s she going?” he muttered and got Hotea’s elbow in his ribs for an answer. That she was heading the way he wanted her to go, uphill and vaguely north, made him nervous; it was just too convenient; as Hotea said, it happens sometimes that everything goes easy for a while but old Tungjii’s getting together with Jah’takash and they’re waiting for you to put your foot in it. But he kept limping after her, eaten by curiosity and buoyed up by nervous excitement.

She sauntered past a lighted cookshop. The owner-cook was leaning on the counter, pots steaming behind him, tossing the bones with a single customer. The two men stopped what they were doing to stare after her, then went back to their game, talking in low tones, discussing the woman probably. A shadow drifted from behind the cookshop a moment later. A clumsy shift and Aituatea saw a part of the shadow’s face, the hulk of his body, then the follower was in the dark again. Djarko. He snorted with disgust. Took the bait like a baby. He limped after them, careful not to be seen. Djarko’s equally cretinous cousin Djamboa had to be somewhere about, they hunted as a team. He spotted the second shadow and smiled grimly. Better them than me. The Godalau grant they satisfy her so she’ll be ready to listen before she jumps me.

The woman turned into one of the small side lanes that wound through close-packed tenements of the poorer players, artisans and laborers. Djarko and Djamboa turned after her, almost running in their eagerness. Aituatea followed more warily, trying to ignore the nips in his shoulder as Hotea urged him to catch up and defend the woman from those louts. Defend her? Godalau defend me. He slowed his uneven gait until he was slipping through shadow near as much a ghost as his sister was, avoiding the refuse piles and their uncertain footing, gliding over sleepers huddling against walls for the meager shelter they offered from the creeping fog. He edged up to blind turns, listening for several heartbeats before he moved around them. Apart from the sodden sleepers the lane stayed empty and quiet. Inside those tall narrow houses leaning against each other so they wouldn’t fall down, Hina had been asleep for hours. Most of those living here would have to rise with the sun to get in half a day’s work before they left for the feteday, the players and nightpeople were gone for now, though they’d be coming home at dawn to catch a few hours’ sleep before working the streets to ease coppers from the purses of the swarming revelers.