Jo Clayton - Drinker of Souls

Yarm in a half crouch, fists clenched, his face twisted with helpless rage, his shirt and trousers slashed with thin charred lines and speckled with black spots still red-edged and smoking.

Fist on his knees howling with pain, the side of his face burned, his left shoulder and arm bubbling raw meat.

Two other men on their faces in the gravel of the path, twitching a little, speechless with terror.

Yaril dragon and Jaril dragon drifted down and hovered by Taguiloa, one on the left, the other on his right, both a little behind him like proper bodyguards.

“Greet you, Yarm,” Taguiloa said. “Come for your things? I see you met my friends.” He grimaced at the howling Fist, turned to Jaril. “Could you do something about that noise?”

Golden eye winked at him, dragon dissolved. In his light ray form Jaril zipped through Fist, wheeled about him, went through him again, then returned to dragon shape and took his place at Taguiloa’s shoulder. The howling stopped. Not a full cure, the man’s flesh was still ragged and raw, but at least it wasn’t oozing anymore. Fist got to his feet. He opened and shut his left hand. The muscles in his arm shifted stiffly, but the pain was no longer unbearable.

“They’ve promised to keep an eye on me and mine.” Taguiloa said. “They must have thought you had hostile intentions, waiting here in the dark like this. You don’t have hostile intentions, do you Fist?”

The big man was staring fascinated at the serpentine shapes, turning his head from one side to the other until Taguiloa began to get dizzy watching. Eyes glazed, fear-sweat dripping down his face, Fist coughed, said, “Uh no, sure not.” He turned away from Yaril and Jaril, reached over to touch his burned side. “Like you said, we come to get Yarm’s stuff. Meant nothing by it.” He kicked the nearest of his men in the ribs. “Isn’t that so, Fidge? On your feet, goat turd.”

Silent laughter from the dragons. Taguiloa glanced at Yaril, blinked as she began smoking about the nostrils and produced a small gout of bright blue fire. Fidge started shivering and had difficulty getting to his feet. Fist went so pale he looked leprous in that brief blue glow.

“Then Yarn might as well collect his belongings. Everything he owns is in those packs by the door. He’ll need some help hauling it, but then you’re here, aren’t you, so generous with your time and muscle.” He turned his head to Jaril dragon. “Light their way, my friend. If you feel like it, of course.”

More silent laughter then Jaril dragon went coiling after Fist and Yarm, prodding them to move faster.

When they were back Taguiloa said, “Good. There’s no reason for any of you to return, is there? My friends here might be a bit nastier if they saw you again. They were mild tonight, but their tempers get a bit tetchy when they’re hungry. I wouldn’t show my face inside these walls again if I were you.”

Silently, heavily the four intruders trudged through the gate and into the lane. Taguiloa pushed the two sections of gate shut and dropped the bar home with intense satisfaction. He strolled toward the house, laughter bubbling up in him, his own and that from the dragonets.

Yaril and Jaril dissolved and retbrmed into ehildshapes, giggling helplessly, leaning against the housewall beside the door holding their middles. “You should… you shoulda…” Yaril gasped. “You should’ve seen Jaril chasing them through the hushes. You should’ve seen us herding them off the grass, giving them hotfoots until they were hopping like… oh oh oooh, I think I’m gonna bust.”

Jaril calmed a little, asked hopefully, “You think they’ll come back?”

“Not this summer.” He looked around at the garden but couldn’t see much. The crescent moon was low in the west and the starlight dimmed by fog rolling in. He couldn’t see any smoldering glows, turned to the children. “Fire?”

“All out. We made sure.”

“If you’re wrong and I burn to death, I’ll come back and haunt you.”

“We know,” they said in chorus. “We know.”

EARLY IN THAT long summer in Silili, Jaril went with Taguiloa to the Shaggil horsefair on the Mainland.

Loud, hot, dusty, filled with the shrill challenges of resty stallions, the higher bleating whinnies of colts and fillies, the snap of auctioneer’s chant, the wham-tap of closing rods, the smell of urine, sweat, hay dust, clay dust, horse and man, cheap wine and hot sauce, boiling noodles and vinegar, cinnamon, musk, frangipani, sandalwood, cumin, hot iron, leather, oils. Islands of decorum about Jamar Lords. Islands of chaos about wrestlers, tumblers, jugglers of the more common sort, sword swallowers, fire-eaters, sleight-of-hand men doing tricks to fool children, shell and pea men fooling adults, gamblers of all degree. Hina farmers there with their whole families, the infants riding mother and father in back-cradles, the older children clinging close, somewhat intimidated by the crowd. Foreigners there for the famous Shaggil mares whose speed and stamina passed into any strain they were bred to. Speculators there on the hope they alone could dig out the merits in colts neglected enough to keep their price low. Courtesans there for good-looking easy mounts to show themselves off in wider realms than the streets of Silili. Temung horse-beliks there to buy war mounts and Takhill Drays to pull supply wagons and siege engines.

Taguiloa strolled through the heat, noise and dust, enjoying it all, enjoying most of all the knowledge he could buy any handful of those about them with the gold in his moneybelt. He stopped a moment by a clutch of tumblers, watching them with a master’s eye, sighing at the lack of imagination in the rigidly traditional runs and flips. They performed the patterns with ease and even grace, and they gathered applause and coin for their efforts, but he’d done that well when he was twelve.

Jaril wouldn’t let him linger but tugged on his sleeve and led him from one shed to another, pointing out a bay cob they should get to pull the travel wagon, a lanky gray gelding that would do for Harra who admitted she was out of practice but had once been rather a good rider. The changechild wouldn’t let Taga stop to haggle for the beasts, but urged him on until they were out at the fringes where weanlings and yearlings were offered for sale. He stopped outside a small enclosure with a single colt inside.

Taguiloa looked at the wild-eyed demon tethered to a post, looked down at Jaril. “Even I know you don’t ride a horse less than two. Especially that one.”

“Yaril and me, we’ll fix that later, the age, I mean.”

“Oh.”

“Wait here and don’t look much interested in any of these.” He waved at the enclosures around them. “I’m not and suck your own eggs, imp.”

Trailing laughter, Jaril shimmered into a pale amorphous glow, tenuous in that dusty air as a fragment of dream. It drifted in a slow circle above the corrals, flashing through the colts and fillies in them, finishing the survey with the beast in the nearest enclosure. It melted through his yellow-mud coat and seemed to nestle down inside the colt. That made Taga itchy, reminding him of antfeet walking across his brain, skittering about under his skin. He reached inside his shirt and scratched at his ribs, looked about for anything that might offer relief from the beating of the sun. He was sweating rivers, his heavy black shirt was streaky with sweat mud, powdered with pale dust, the moneybelt a furnace against his belly. Nothing close, not a shed about. These were the scrubs of the Fair, interesting only to the marginal speculators and a few farmers ,without the money to buy a mature beast, but with land and fodder enough to justify raising a weanling. He pulled his sleeve across his face, grimaced at the slimy feel, the heavy silk being no use as a swab. When he let his arm fall, Jaril was standing beside him.