Jo Clayton - Drinker of Souls

With Harra’s help she straightened out the huge woman on the daycouch, smoothing out her robes and crossing her large but shapely hands below her breasts, smoothing her hair, fixing her so she would wake with as few as possible of those debilitating irritations that came from sleeping in day clothing. Brann frowned at her a moment, then trickled some of the life back in her, doing it carefully enough she didn’t disturb her sleep; she moved away from the couch, going to the door of the sitting room. Several maids were in the smaller room beyond, talking in whispers, working on embroideries and repairs while they waited to be summoned. She beckoned to the senior maidservant, showed her the sleeping form of the jamika. “Your mistress will sleep until time for tea; her night was disturbed and she was fretful.”

An older Hina woman with a weary meekness from years of hectoring, the maid’s mouth pinched into a thin line; she knew all too well what, fretfulness in the jamika meant for her and the other maids.

Brann smiled at her. “If she finishes her sleep without being disturbed, the jamika will wake in a sweeter temper and make your life easier for a while, at least until the moon turn’s again.”

The maid nodded, understanding what was not said. “Godalau’s blessing on you if it be so, Sator,” she murmired, then went quickly away from Brann, appreciative but uneasy with the stranger’s powers.

Brann, Harra and the Yaril-hound went back to their rooms to pack, having done everything they could to ensure good report and an uneventful departure on the morrow.

THEY RUMBLED FROM the House early the next morning, leaving behind much good feeling among the Hina servants and a pair of contented but rather confused Temuengs. Linjijan, who’d grown restless and unhappy closed within those walls, was delighted to stretch his spirit and body-long thin legs propped up on the splash-board, neck propped on his blanket roll, he played his flute, the music ebullient and joy-filled, waking little devils in the horses who’d also grown bored in their sumptuous stables and were inclined to work off their excess energy in bursts of mischievous behavior. Brann’s dun shied at his own shadow, kicked up his heels, tried to rear, and gave his rider some energetic moments until she managed to settle him down a little. When they passed from sight of the House, she let him run a short while but pulled him back to an easy canter before he could blow himself and tire her more.

Harra laughed and let her gray dance a bit, then quieted him and added the plink of her daroud to the wanderings of the flute and the dark music Negomas was stroking from his smallest drum.

At midday they reached Hamardan again and stopped at the inn for a hearty lunch with hot tea and pleas from the Host to play again that night. Anxious to make up time Taguiloa shook his head to that but promised to stop there when the troupe returned to Silili.

CERTAINLY TUNJII rode Taguiloa’s shoulder those next four weeks as they followed the river road north. The weather was perfect for traveling and for outdoor performances. In villages without an inn, they played to cheering crowds in the market square and more than once spent several nights in a jamar’s House, though there was no more trouble about leaving when they pleased. Word flew ahead of them; it seemed that every village and inland city was waiting and ready for them, folk swarming about the show wagon, following in shouting cheerful crowds as they drove through city streets or village lanes. The hiding places in the cart’s bottom grew heavy with coin and the mood of Temueng and Hina alike was as genially golden as the weather. Whether it was his timing, the long summer having worked up a mighty thirst in them for diversion, whether it was the strong leavening of Ternuengs in each audience, for whatever reason, the troupe met little of the resistance Taguiloa had expected to the strange and sometimes difficult music and the improvisational and wholly non-traditional dance and tumbling he was introducing. He began to worry. They were a tempting target for the Ular-drah, the hillwolves through whose territory they would have to pass, a small party of players coming of a phenomenally successful tour fat with gold, on their own, no soldiers, two of them women, two of them children, only the dog to worry about and they wouldn’t worry that much about her. He could hope Tungjii would stick around, but he knew only too well the fickleness of his patron and the quicksilver quality of such fortune as that they bathed in these golden glowing days, these warm dry silver nights.

They left the city Kamanarcha early in a bright cool morning. There was a touch of frost on the earth, glittering in the long slant of the morning light. The guard at the city gate was yawning and stiff, more than half asleep as he operated the windlass that opened the gate. Taguiloa tossed him a small silver and got a shouted blessing from him along with a hearty request to come back soon. As an afterthought, the guard added, “Watch out for the drah, showman, word is they’re prowling.”

On top of the wagon’s roof Negomas grinned and rattled his drum defiantly. Linjijan was stretched out more than half asleep, lost in the dreams he never spoke aloud. Of them all he’d changed the least during the tour, no closer now to the others than he’d been before, an amiable companion who did everything he was asked to do without skimping or complaint and nothing at all he was not asked to do. He was no burden and no help, irritating each of the others in turn until they learned to accept him as he was for he certainly wasn’t going to change. His flute was a blessing and a joy; that had to be enough.

Negomas and Harra were much together, studying each other’s bits of magic. As Taguiloa had taken dance and tumbling and juggling and melded them into an exciting whole, had brought Harra and Negomas and Linjijan together and almost coerced them into producing the musical equivalent of his dance, so these orphan children of different traditions were blending their knowledge to make an odd, effective magic that belonged only to them and magnified their own power, the whole they made being greatly more than either apart.

Brann was as isolated from the others as Linjijan though more aware of it; she was simply too different now from human folk and her purposes were too much apart from theirs. She was fascinated by the illusions Harra and Negomas created for their own entertainment and by the intimate connection magic had with music as if the patterning of sounds by drum, daroud, and Harra’s whistling somehow patterned the invisible in ways that allowed the boy and the young woman to control and manipulate it. After leaving Hamardan, Brann had tried to learn from Harra, but she could not. It was as if she were tone-deaf and trying to learn to sing. There was something in her or about her that would not tolerate magic. Han-a found this fascinating and tried a number of experiments and found that any spells or even unshaped power that she aimed at Brann was simply shunted aside. Magic would not touch her, refused to abide near her. Harra and Negomas both could do whatever they wanted in her presence as long as whatever they did wasn’t aimed at her. She wasn’t a quencher, therefore, not a sink where magic entered and was lost; she simply wasn’t present to it. At least, not any longer. She told Harra about the Marish shaman who’d netted her and the changechildren so neatly. Harra decided eventually that this had somehow immunized her and the children against any further vulnerability. Brann listened, sighed, nodded. “Slya’s work,” she said. “She doesn’t want me controlled by anyone but her.”

The countryside was brown and turning stubbly, the harvest coming in. The pastures were taking on a yellow look with sparse patches where little grass grew and fewer weeds. They were coming to the barrens where the soil was hard and cracked, laced with salt and alkali so that only the hardiest plants grew there and those only sparsely. Even along the river where there was plenty of water there was little vegetation and the trees had a stunted look.