Jo Clayton - Drinker of Souls

“Hina and foreigners, how much can they cost?”

Fuming, Taguiloa listened as the discussion below him altered to an oliphauntine cooing. Enough of this; listen to them much longer, and I’ll be sick. He got to his feet and ran the beams to the distant trap, let himself down and loped along the dark quiet hall to his bedroom. He stripped off the black bodysuit, sponged away sweat and dust, wrapped a soft old robe about himself and went down the hall to rap at Brann’s door.

She let him in after a brief wait. The lamps were still lit, Jaril and Yaril sat cross-legged on the bed, their small faces serious, their crystal eyes reflecting light from the lamps.

“Jaril thought you’d be along soon,” Brann said. She sat on the bed beside Yard. “Bad news.” It wasn’t a question.

“We’re a little gift he’s wrapping up for his wife.” Taguiloa said. “You’ve been a bit too convincing. That great cow wants daily news of her wretched calf.”

She said a few words in a language he did not know, but they needed no translation as they crackled through the air.

“And she’s charmed with the idea of having her own company of players. Something to raise her status with the neighbors; she was a little worried about the cost but he wasn’t, we’re only Hina and a few foreigners, how much could scum like that cost? Throw a little food at us, a jar or two of wine and we’re bought.”

“Mmm. Yaril, fetch Harra. We’ve got to talk. Don’t frighten her but let her know its urgent.” She looked thoughtfully at Taguiloa. “We won’t bother waking Linji and Negomas.” She looked at the door. “Harra knows a lot more about things like this than I do.” She blinked uncertainly. “There’s so much…”

A tap on the door. Taguiloa got up, let Harra in, resumed his seat on the bench. “We’re about to be offered a permanent home,” he said. “Right here.”

Harra wrinkled her nose at Brann. “I told you to tone those sessions down.”

“Easy for you to say, not so easy for me to do. You didn’t have that cow hanging over you sucking every word you said.” She sighed. “I know. I got a little carried away, but I have to tell you, my behavior doesn’t make much difference. The jamika wants to believe in me and she twists everything I say into something she wants to hear. Even if I don’t say a word, she interprets the way I breathe.” She moved impatiently, the bed squeaking tinder her. “Anything helpful in what your father taught you?”

“Well, he wasn’t very organized about anything besides his own studies, just taught me whatever interested him at the time. Mmmm.” Harm frowned at the wall, sorting through the inside of her head. Suddenly she grinned. “I

have it. There’s an herb and a spell that will set a geas on that man. Thing is, one can’t work without the other. I’ve got a pinch or two of lixsil in my father’s herb bag, but it doesn’t need much. The maid that brings my meals chatters a lot, she tells me Hamardan eats his breakfast alone in his private garden when the weather’s good. She says he’s a sore-foot bear mornings and no one stays around him if they can help it. The weather’s going to be dry and sunny the next three days, Negomas swears he knows and I think I believe him. So. You see where I’m heading. One of the changechildren drops the lixsil in his tea, I don’t have to be that close, I can lay the spell on him when we’re with the jamika. Brann, you handled those guards on the causeway, can you do the same with her? She’s bound to kick up the kind of fuss we don’t want when we roll out.”

“Mmm. Brann looked wistful. “I wish I had magic. What I do best is kill people and awful as she is, Tjena doesn’t deserve killing.” Her eyes shifted from Taguiloa to Harra and back, then she moved her shoulders and visibly pulled herself together. “I can drain her so she’s tottery and suggestible, then tell her that what she does the next few days will affect her son… I’ll have to think about it some more.” She smiled and relaxed, yawned. “Anybody got anything to add? Well, lets get some sleep.”

HINA SERVANTS set out the table and covered it with a huge stoneware teapot and a drinking bowl, a mountain of sweetrolls, a bowl of pickled vegetables, a platter of sausages and deep-fried chicken bits, a bowl of sweetened fruit slices, citrons and peaches, apricots and berries, a platter of fried rice with eggs mixed in. As soon as the meal was set out the servants left, moving with an alacrity that underlined Harra’s maid’s report of Hamardan’s morning moods. When the garden was empty, a small gray-plush monkey dropped from one of the trees and scurried to the table. He leaped up on it and picked through the dishes, lifted the lid of the teapot and shook a bit of paper over the tea. He peered into the pot and watched the gray bits of herb circling on the steaming water. The bits turned translucent and sank. He put the lid back on and scampered away, diving into the bushes just as Hamardan stomped out, glared at the sky, then stumped to the table, pushed back the sleeves of his robe, splashed out a bowlful of tea and gulped it down. The small gray monkey showed his teeth in a predator’s grin, then blurred into a long serpent and began slithering through a hole in the wall.

JARIL SLIPPED INTO the room where Harra was playing a muted accompaniment as Brann chatted with the jamika about her children, listening more than she spoke. He squatted beside Harm. “He’s guzzling it down,” he whispered.

Harra nodded. She began simplifying the music until her fingers wandered idly over the daroud’s strings; she closed her eyes and began a soft whistling that twisted round and round and incorporated the play of her fingers. An intense look of concentration on her face, she wove the spell, the magic in it itching at Jaril, it made his outlines shiver and blur and started eddies, in his substance that acted on him like a powerful euphoric. Her cold nose nudged at his hand. Yaril as hound bitch had crawled over to him and was pressing against him, quivering a little, her outlines shimmering, the same eddies in her substance. She was as uncertain as he about this feeling as a longterm experience, but she was enjoying the sensation, being a measure more hedonistic than her brother, willing to live in the pleasures of the moment, while he tended to fuss more about abstracts and what-will-be than what-was in the point present.

Harra stopped whistling. “It’s done,” she murmured. “Go back to him and whisper what you want in his ear.” Jaril jumped to his feet and went out.

Brann turned to watch him go, missing something the jamika was saying. When the querulous voice snapped a reprimand at her, she swung back slowly and sat staring at the Temueng woman, her back very straight, waiting in silence until Tjena ran down. “If you’re finished?” she said with an icy hauteur that quelled the woman, then she looked down at her own palms. “We are at a change time,” she said, bringing each word out slowly, heavily as if she dropped over-ripe plums on the table and watched them mash. When she heard herself, she lightened up a bit, reminding herself that the woman might be thick but she wasn’t totally stupid. “Forces converge,” she said, “weaving strange patterns. It is a time to walk warily, every act will resonate far beyond the point of action. It is time that those tied to you experience a like courtesy. Give me your hands.”

She held the jamika’s larger hands between her own, tilted her head back, closed her eyes. “The change is begun,” she said. “The threads are spun out and out, fine threads wound about one, about and about, the links are made, son to mother, mother to son. What the mother does to those about her will be done unto the son.” As she chanted the nonsense in a soft compelling voice, she tapped into the Temueng woman’s life force, draining her slowly, carefully, until the woman was in a deeply suggestible daze. Softly, softly, Brann whispered, “Anything you do to us will be done to you, prison us here and your son will be a prisoner, send bad report about us to the other jamars and jamikas and your son will suffer slander, hurt us in any way and you hurt your son, hear me Tjena Hamardan jamika, you will not remember my words, but you will feel them in your soul. Any harm you do to us, that same harm will come to your son. Hear my blessing, Tjena Hamardan jamika, the benign side of the change coin. What good you do to man and maid in your power, Hina, Temueng or other, that good will bless you and your son, praise will perfume his days and nights. Good will come to you in proportion to the good you give, a quiet soul, a contented life, sweet sleep at night and harmony by day. Hear me, Tjena Hamardan jamika, forget my words but feel them in your soul, forget my words, but find contentment in your life, forget my words.” She set the jamika’s hands on the table and heard a soft unassertive whistle die behind her and knew Han-a had reinforced her words with one of her whistle spells. “Sleep now, Tjena Hamardan jamika. Sleep now and wake to goodness at your high noon tea. Lie back on your couch and sleep. Wake with the nooning, knowing what you must do. Sleep, sleep, sleep…”