Jo Clayton: Drinker of Souls

He scrambled to his feet. “Drinker of Souls,” he said. “Will you listen to me?”

She shook her hair out of her face, that silver-gray hair that caught the moonlight in slanting shimmers as she moved her head. “Brann,” she said. “Not that other. I don’t like it. It isn’t true anyway.”

Aituatea glanced over his shoulder at the blob of dead flesh, turned back to the woman, saying nothing, letting the act speak for him.

She shrugged. “I didn’t tell them to come after me.”

“Fish to bait,” he said and was surprised at his daring.

“I’m not responsible for all the stupidity in the world.” She rubbed a finger past the corner of her mouth, frowning a little as she looked from him to Hotea standing a step behind him. “You were on the wharf watching me.”

“You saw me?”

“Not me.” She snapped her fingers.

A soft whirr overhead, then two large horned owls swooped past him, low enough he could smell the fog-dampness on their feathers. They beat up again to perch on the eaves of a house across the street, blinking yellow eyes fixed on him. He knew, then, what had happened to the children. He straightened out of his defensive crouch, keeping his eyes on the woman’s face so he wouldn’t have to look at the owls. “The man on the mountain said you would come ashore tonight.”

“Ah. Then he’s still there?”

“Someone is.”

“You want something.”

“Yes. I want you to do something for Hotea and me. I’ve got something the old man says you want; I’ll give it to you if you’ll do a thing for us.”

“What thing?”

Aituatea fidgeted, slanting a quick glance at the owls. One of them hooted softly at him. “Not here. Not safe.” He dropped onto a knee, bowed his head. “Honor my home, saхri Brann. There will be tea once the water boils.”

“Tea?” A raised brow, a warm chuckle. “Well, if there’s tea. I’ve an hour or so to kill.” She smoothed her hand over her hair. “And who’s waiting for me in your home?”

“A few ghosts, that’s all. Do you mind?”

“Ghosts I don’t mind.”

He nodded and started back down the lane,, walking slowly and trying to minimize his lurch, the woman walking easily beside him. “They’re family in a way,” he said. She made him nervous and he spoke to fill the silence. The owls whirred past, gliding low then circling up until they were lost in the fog.

“Family?”

“All my blood kin except Hotea died in the plague. Ten years ago.” He turned into a side street heading more directly north. “They’re company, those ghosts, though they’re not actual kin. They go when their time’s up, but there are always more drowned and killed and suicided to take their places.”

“They won’t like me.” A corner of her mouth twisted up. “The dead never do.”

“They’re ready for you. I told them I was going to bring you if I could.”

“Old man been busy about my business?”

“Hotea and me, we went to see him about our problem.”

“This mysterious problem. Mmmh, I thought no one would be left to remember me.”

“We asked him for help.”

“And I’m it?”

“That’s what he said.”

They walked in silence past the crumbling houses, Hotea drifting beside him. The tenements degenerated into crowded hovels built of whatever debris their dwellers could find or steal. In the distance a baby wailed, two men were shouting, their words hushed and unintelligible, a woman shrieked once and no more, but the street they were on was sodden with silence. “There’s a story about where we’re going,” Aituatea said. “A score of years ago there was this silk merchant. Djallasoa. He built himself a godon up ahead not far from the Woda-an Well. He sold Eternity Robes. Know what those are? No? Well, you find yourself some young girls without a blemish on their bodies to weave the silk, then get enough strong and healthy pregnant women to embroider the robes so the force of the new life will be transferred to them. A thousand gold pieces is cheap for the simplest. Hundred-year robes, that’s what old Djasoa’s robes were called. Even the Temueng Emperor bought from him. Talk was you never even caught a cold wearing one of his robes.” The fog wrapped the three of them in a dreamlike world where the ragged huts on either side of the lane faded in and out with the shifting of the mist. “Djallasoa’s eldest son was a bit of a fool, so the story goes, kicked a Woda Shaman or something like that. Old Dja tried to smooth things over. Didn’t work. The Woda Shaman came ashore, built a fire in front of the godon and slit the throats of Dja’s wife and seven children, then his own. After that there were nine angry ghosts infesting the place. No Hina priest of any sort could drive them off, not even those belonging to the Judges of the dead. The gods refused to get involved…” The lane ended. He circled a thornbush and began picking his way through the scrub along an unmarked path so familiar he paid little attention to where he was putting his feet. “And the other Woda Shamans sat out there on the water enjoying the fuss and refusing to interfere. All the Eternity Robes Djallasoa had stowed in that godon, no one would chance buying them, not with a woda curse on them.”

The wasteland they were passing through was a mixture of thornbush, bamboo, scattered willow thickets and a few stunted oaks. With the fog obscuring detail an arm’s length away, the silence broken only by the drip of condensation from limbs and leaves, the crackling of dead branches and weeds underfoot, it was like walking through one of the Elder Laksodea’s spiky ink paintings come alive in a dream. Aituatea had a fondness for Laksodea and had several of his paintings, souvenirs of successful nights.

“Why are you telling me all this?”

He turned to stare at her, startled by the acerbity of her words.

“Have we much farther to go? I have better things to do with this night than spend it wandering through drip and scrub.”

He pointed at the thinning growth ahead. “To where this stops, then a bit farther.” He rubbed at the side of his neck. “Your pardon, saхr, and your patience, if you will, but no one knows where Hotea and I live. It’s safer that way. And I merely thought to help pass the time with the story. If you don’t want to hear more…”

“Oh, finish it and let’s get on.”

He bowed, started walking again. “Guards wouldn’t stay around the godon at night. The silks inside were safe enough, not even Eldest Uncle wanted to face those ghosts and he was the wildest thief in Silili. Finally old Djasoa and the rest of the clan fetched a gaggle of exorcists and deader priests waving incense sticks, hammering gongs, popping crackers, making so much noise and stink they drowned out the ghosts for long enough to haul out the silk. The Eternity Robes they burned in a great fire by the Woda Well, the rest they took away to sell to foreigners who’d haul them out of Tigarezun, the farther the better. And the godon was left to rot. Old Djasoa wanted to burn it, but the other merchants raised a howl, it was an extra dry summer and they were afraid the fire’d get away from him, so he didn’t burn it. So there it sat empty till the plague. You know about the plague?”

“You said ten years ago?” She shook her head, pushed aside a branch about to slap her in the face. “I was half a world away.”

He stepped onto the crescent of land picked clean of vegetation. “We turn east here. It was bad. The plague, I mean. The Temuengs ran like rats, but they made sure no Hina got off Utar-Selt. Ships out in the bay rammed anyone who tried to leave and they put up barricades on the causeway.” He pointed out a low broad mass, its details lost in the darkness and the fog. “The Woda Well. This is Woda land. No one else comes here now. When there was sickness in a house, the authorities burned it. Temuengs sent orders in and Hina ass-lickers did the work. So when our family started getting sick and oldest grandmother died and Hotea knew it wouldn’t be long before someone came with fire, she sneaked me out and brought me to that old godon, figuring the ghosts wouldn’t get sick, being already dead, and would keep snoops away. They were getting ragged, those Woda ghosts, already been around longer than most earth souls, it’d been what? ten years, more, but they made life hard for a few nights. We couldn’t sleep for the howling, the blasts of fear, the cold winds that blew out of nowhere, the stinks, the pinches and tickles, but nothing they could do was worse than what was happening outside. We’re almost there, you can just about see the godon now. Hotea had to go out and leave me alone a lot so she could scare up food and clothes for us. With nothing to do, shut up in that place, I started playing with the child ghosts even if they were Woda-an and after a while we made our peace with the adults, and by the time the Woda-an ghosts wore out, others moved in with us. No one likes ghosts hanging around, it’s a scandal and a disgrace. If they can affird it, they have the exorcists in to chase the ghost away, a loose ghost about the house makes gossip like you wouldn’t believe. So there are usually a lot of homeless ghosts drifting about. They hear about us and come to live in the godon.” He heard a scrabbling behind him, swung around. Two mastiffs came trotting from the fog and stopped in front of him, mouths open in twin fierce grins, eerie crystal eyes laughing at him. With a shudder he couldn’t quite suppress, he forced himself to turn his back on them and start walking toward the small door in the back wall, but he couldn’t forget they were there; he could hear the pad-scrape of their paws, imagined a rhythmic panting, convinced himself he could feel the heat of their breath on the backs of his legs.