Jo Clayton - Drinker of Souls

For some hours they passed long straight lines of panja brush, low-growing bushes with smooth hard purplish bark, crooked branches and little round leaves hard as boiled leather. These lines were windbreaks against the winter storms that swept down off the northern plains, those flat gray grasslands that spawned the Temuengs. They left the last of the windbreaks behind a little after noon and were out of the Kamanarcha jamarak and into the barrens.

The road began to rise and the trees thinned and fell away. There was a little yellowish grass on the slopes but it didn’t look healthy. The river sank farther below them into the great gorge that cut through the Matigunns; the road followed the lip of the gorge and the towpath continued far below them, the stone pilings that marked the edge of the canal jutting like gray fingers from cold pure water glinting bluer than blue in the late summer sun. The canal was part of the river here, the stone of the mountain heart too stubbornly resistant for anything else; the towpath was a massive project in itself, old tales said it was burned out of the stone by dragons breath in the mythtime before Popokanjo shot the moon. There were no barges on the river yet, floating down or being towed up. In a few weeks, when the harvest up and down the river was complete, the trading season would begin and the huge imperial dapplegrays that towed the barges from Hamardan to Lake Biraryry would be plodding northward in teams of eight or ten, escorted by the Emperor’s Horse Guards. The dapples were bred and reared only in imperial stables; anyone else found with one would be fed to them piece by piece because the dapples ate flesh as well as corn, human flesh by choice, though they’d make do with dog or cow or the flesh of other horses if there was no one in the Emperor’s prisons healthy enough to be fed to them. The tow master for each team was raised with them from their foaling; he slept with them, ate with them, arranged their matings, tended them in every way, shod them, plaited mane and tail, washed and combed the feathering at their hocks, polished their hooves, repaired their harness, kept it oiled and shining. He did all that from pride and affection for his charges and also because they’d kill and eat anyone else who tried to come near theth-. Even the fiercest of the Ular-drah bands left them alone. Barge travel was safe-but very expensive.

High overhead a mountain eagle soared in wide graceful loops, Yaril keeping watch over the road and the surrounding hills. She’d spot any ambushes long before they ripened into danger. Hana and Taguiloa were joking together, both of them relaxed and unworried for the moment; Yaril’s presence was a guarantee that there was no present danger to the troupe. Brann rode ahead of the wagon, brooding over a problem that was becoming increasingly urgent. The children were hungry. The performing used up their strength far faster than she’d expected. She’d walked the alleys of Silili for a fortnight, taking the life force of every man who came after her intending to steal or rape or both, feeding the children until they were so sated they couldn’t take another draft of that energy they needed for their strange life, storing more of the stolen life in her own body until her flesh glowed with it. Since then she’d fed them from herself and from what animal life she could trap, dogs and cats that roamed the streets of the cities and villages they played in, careful to take no human life. She didn’t want anyone connecting mysterious deaths with the troupe. She cursed the Hamardan jamar, he was the source of the trouble now; if it hadn’t been for him, they’d have reached Andurya Durat already, the drain from the dregs of the city. A day or two more and she’d have to go hunting, anything she could find in these barren mountains, wolves two-legged or otherwise, deer, wildcats, anything the children could run to her. The children were patient, but need would begin to drive them and they would drive her.

By nightfall they were deep in the barrens. Yaril had found one of the corrals the dapples used when they walked the road to Hamardan, returning to pick up another barge. It was a stone circle with a heavy plank gate and three-sided stalls, locked grain bins and a stone watering trough. At the roadside there was a tripod of huge beams that jutted out over the river, a bucket and a coil of rope; there’d be no problem about bringing water up for them and for the horses. They set up their night camp inside the circle, filled the trough with water, emptied half a sack of grain in the manger (they didn’t touch the grain bins, though the children could have opened them; that was dapple food and they’d be stealing directly from the Emperor. Not a good idea). The night promised to be cold and drear though Tungjii was still hanging about since the sky was clear and no rain threatened. The children went prowling about the hills and came back with lumps of coal for a fire, reporting a surface seam about a mile back from the road. Leaving Brann and the children to watch over the camp, Taguiloa, Linjijan and Harra took empty feed sacks and fetched back as much as they could carry, more of Tungjii’s blessing, Taguiloa thought, for there was no wood to make a fine and wouldn’t be as long as they were in the barrens. And the nights were not going to get warmer.

Leaving Han-a and Taguiloa making a stew from the store of dried meat and vegetables, arguing cheerfully over proportions and how much rice to put in the other pot, Negomas and Linjijan rubbing down the horses and going over them with stiff brushes, combing out manes and tails, cleaning their hooves, Brann went with the children to stand beside the tripod where they couldn’t be seen from those inside the corral. She held out her hands and the children pulled life from her she could feel them struggling to control the need that grew each night and she suffered with them. When they broke from her, she sighed. “You want to go hunting tonight?”

Yaril kicked a pebble over the edge and watched it leap down the nearly vertical cliff and plop into the water. “Might not have to.”

“Ular-drah?”

“Uh-huh. A man’s been watching us since late afternoon.”

“Where’s he now?”

“Gone. He left before we found the coal. Left as soon as it was obvious we were settling for the night.”

“Ah. You could be right.”

Yaril nodded, her silver-gilt hair shining in the light of the Wounded Moon. She giggled. “Our meat coming to us.

“How soon, do you think?”

“Not before they think everyone’s asleep. They think we’ll be trapped inside that.” She nodded her head at the corral. “I say we turn the trap on them.” She looked at Jaril. He nodded. “Me out at long-scout, night-owling it. Jaro staying with you to carry reports. What about numbers? I think four or five of them is all right, we’re sure hungry enough to handle them. Ten or more we’d, better scare off, we could cut some out, two or three maybe, hamstring them so they can’t run, what do you think, Bramble?”

Brann felt a twinge of distaste, but that didn’t last long. The Ular-drah were a particularly unpleasant bunch with no pretensions to virtue of any sort, the best of them with the gentle charm of cannibal sharks. She nodded at the corral. “Tell them?”

“I vote no,” Yaril said.

Jaril nodded. “Let ‘em sleep. They’ll just get in the way.

Brann sighed, then she smiled. “Just us again.” Her smile broadened into a grin. “Look out, you wolves.”

JARIL LOOKED UP. “Six of ‘em. On their way.” He blurred into a wolf form and went trotting into the dark.

Brann pulled her fingers through her hair, the black stripping away ,until it was white again, blowing wildly in the strong cold wind. She pulled off her tunic, tossed it to the ground beside the stone wall, stepped out of her trousers, kicked them onto the tunic. The air was very cold against her skin but she’d learned enough from the children to suck a surprising amount of warmth from the stone under her feet and bring it flowing up through her body. Comfortable again, she still hesitated, then she heard the yipping of the wolf and set off in that dii action running easily through the darkness, her eyes adapting to the dark as her body had adapted to the cold. She reached a small, steep, walled bowl with the meander of a dry stream through the middle of it, a few tufts of withered grass and a number of large boulders rolled from the slopes above the bowl. A horned owl came fluttering down, transforming as it touched the earth into Yaril. “You might as well wait here. They’re a couple breaths behind me.” Then she was a large gray wolf vanishing among the boulders.