Jo Clayton: Drinker of Souls

Brann brought him a cup of tea and a towel. “It’s going well,” she whispered.

Han-a came behind the screen for her hoops and fingerbells. “It’s going well,” she whispered, then looked from one to the other as they broke into hastily stifled Ogees. “Fools,” she said amiably, and turned to wait for her cue, clinking the small gong to let Linjijan and Negomas know she was ready.

Taguiloa sipped at his tea and gazed at Brann. She was wound so tight that another turn would shatter her. He kicked a pillow across to her, sat beside her. After a moment he closed his hand over hers. It was damp and cold and oak-hard. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. I don’t. It’s like the air is pressing in on me. Not jitters exactly, I don’t know.” Silence awhile. They sat quietly listening to the music, the scrape of Harra’s feet, the clink of her bells. “Who are those brownrobes?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m frightened, Taga.”

He patted her hand but said nothing. Reassuring lies wouldn’t do here, he was too disturbed himself. He’d awakened the Emperor from his torpor and wrung laughter from him; he had a sense of approval flowing from the audience, but all the reponses out there were just a hair off, nothing he could put his hand on, nothing he could ignore either. He was elated with his success and furious he couldn’t enjoy it without this other thing niggling at him.

The music stopped. A ripple of applause. Harra came stalking behind the screen, moving with frustrated ferocity, stripping the bells from her fingers, the hoops from her arms. “They’re half dead out there. I’d rather yestereve’s louts.” Setting the bells and hoops on a table with angry precision, she went scowling to the tea-table. She poured herself a bowl, gulped it down, poured another. “That was not an experience I want to repeat.” She sighed and sipped, then lifted the bowl in a mock toast. “Luck to your feet, Taga. You’ll need it.” She shivered, set the bowl down. “Time to get back out there.”

He felt the growing deadness of the audience when he wheeled out. It dragged at him, drained his energy. As if the black Temueng eyes and the yellow eyes of the mixes were mouths pressed against his flesh, consuming him as he danced for them. He forced himself to go on though his limbs felt leaden and his edge was gone. He pulled in, took fewer chances, and even then felt he danced on the rim of a precipice.

The music changes.

Taguiloa falters. Covers. Tries to go on.

A hot force takes his body, moves his feet in a complex pattern across the dance mat.

A rumbling in the ground below the palace.

The lamps sway and flicker.

The shadows dance in broken webs across the floor and the faces of the silent watchers.

Brann comes from behind the screen, dances toward him, her feet moving as his feet move. Her hair is white and shifting about her head as if windblown, though the air is heavy, thick, still.

Her face is strained and pale. She moves with a stiff resistance that matches his own, moves into the dance with him, weaving a pattern about and through the pattern he is weaving.

Moving gets easier for both of them. The-music grows wilder and wilder. The walls groan.

The Temuengs sit frozen.

Abanaskranjinga shifts about on his throne, tries to stand, beats his meaty fists on the throne arms.

The dance goes on, inexorable as the passage of seconds into minutes, minutes into hours.

The Consort struggles to leave her chair, panting and squealing as her body fails-to answer her will.

Brann and Taguiloa touch and retreat, swing away from each other, swing back. Loop out, converge, dance wheeling away.

The brownrobes shrink together, a mud-geyser surging and bubbling, heads bobbing up and down, throats throwing out a whining moan that is barely louder than the music. They struggle to escape, tugging and pulling at the forces binding them, but they cannot. Like flies in honey they cannot pull away.

The drums beat louder. Louder. LOUDER.

Negomas fierce and frightened, half lost in the music, his long black hands stroking and beating, working as if they belong to someone else.

The flute sings harsh, piercing dissonances that tug painfully at the rolling rumble, of the drums, denying its singing nature, screaming its pain. Linjijan sways, eyes closed, entirely bound into his music.

Han-a slaps chords and runs from the daroud, her eyes wild, white-ringed, her mouth pulled back and down.

The sound builds and builds, filling the hall, melding with the moans of the watchers, the rage-squeals and growls from the Emperor and those around him.

The walls sway and groan.

The floor slides back and forth.

Brann’s feet come down solid and steady. She circles Taguiloa. Sweat runs down his face. His eyes have a glazed sheen. He touches her hand. His flesh is cold and damp. He swings away.

Flute shrieks, drum goes toom-toom, daroud jangles. The music stops.

Sudden silence.

Slya streams forth from Brann, takes form in the center of the mat.

Gasps, sighs, a wind of sighs passing around the room.

The great red figure stood planted on the mat, wisps of smoke from the smoldering cloth rising about legs like mountain pines, coiling up around the lavish fiery female form. One pair of arms crossed beneath her high, round breasts, the second set curved out as if to gather in all those about the throne, her hot red eyes glared at the Emperor.

“MINE,” she roared and the building shook some more. “YOU DARE PUT YOUR STINKING HANDS ON MY PEOPLE. YOU MESS WITH SLYA FIREHEART. ME!” She reached out and out, fingers extending and extending, two arms reaching, four arms reaching, fingers long and longer, gathering in the brownrobes and the Temueng mixes, three to a handful, ignoring the banes they cast at her, plagues and poisons, cast-fire and demon familiars, all the Kadda power and Kadda skills their unnaturally extended parasitic lives had given them. “ME! ME! YOU ATTACK ME!” She squeezed. Stench of roasting flesh and burning cloth, shrieks, blood and other body fluids oozing between her fingers, raining onto the floor and those remaining. She flung the mess aside and started to reach again.

A round bald figure in dusty wrinkled black was suddenly there, pushing the long fingers aside. Tungjii patted the back of the huge red hand, grinned up at the ominous figure. “Not the boy, little darling, not the boy.”

Slya glared at him, hair stirring like serpents about her head. Then, (Brann astonished, Taguiloa wearily appreciative) the raking fingers shrank; red eyes rolling, red teeth showing in a broad grin, Slya patted the double god on hisser plump buttocks. In a voice like the groaning of a mountain, she said, “SINCE YOU ASK IT, TUTI.”

Huge face returning to a savage scowl, she turned her hot red gaze on Abanaskranjinga. “YOU!” Her voice the howling of a storm wind, the roar of a forest fire. “YOU FOOL, BELIEVING KADDA PROMISES.” One hand closed about him. She squeezed. His hoarse scream broke of abruptly though his arms and legs continued to writhe even after his body fluids began to drip on the marble steps. “HAH! LARDARSE, ATTACKING ME!”

Brann wrapped her arms about her legs, dropped her head on her knees, relieved in a way to have the waiting over, drowning in a vast lassitude; she wanted to stretch out on the mat and sleep and sleep and never wake.

Taguiloa sat on his heels breathing hard, watching the flame-red giant drop the squashed mass of the Emperor of Tigarezun, ruler of Temueng and Hina, a mess of charred meat, bone and slime. That’s it then. I gambled and lost. He managed a tired smile as he saw Linjijan gaping at the god: even Linji understood his life was being trampled under those large but shapely red feet.