Jo Clayton: Moongather

“If you’re going to the Biserica, take me with you.” She clutched at her blanket roll, waited anxiously for their answer.

The freckled meie shook her head. “I’m sorry, boy. We only take girls there, and even they have to be twelve or older. If you want arms training, well, the army might take you when you’re a bit bigger.” She turned the macai’s head and started away.

Serroi caught at her ankle. “I’m not a boy and I’m a lot older than I look, near fourteen. Please, meie.”

The golden meie gave an exclamation and rode back to them. After swinging her macai’s head around, she bent down and looked intently at Serroi. “It might be,” she said slowly. “You’re a windrunner, aren’t you?’

“A misborn,” Serroi said bitterly, scrubbing at her face to let the green show through the dirt. “You guessed right, meie. I’m tundra born.”

“I see.” The freckled meie smiled down at her, her face lit by amusement. “Well, little one, get you up behind me. I want to hear your story. I suspect it’s wild enough to keep the two of us entertained for days.” She chuckled, the sound warm with acceptance and interest, reached down toward Serroi

The hostler staggered out of the stable, stood gazing blearily at the small group. “The boy botherin’ you, meien?” he growled. He stumbled forward a few steps. “I’ll have the skin off his back for that.” His eyes were bloodshot and glazed with the pain in his head; he was unshaven and his clothing bore last night’s wine stains and a dusting of chaff from the straw.

The two meien’s eyes met; the freckled one raised an eyebrow; the golden one nodded. Together they kneed their macain between Serroi and the hostler. The golden meie spoke sharply, “Go back to your stable, man. This is none of your business.” While she spoke, the freckled meie caught Serroi’s reaching hand and lifted her up behind. With a shared laugh both meien sent their mounts trotting out of the stable yard.

Serroi looked back at the gaping hostler, then forgot him. She thrust her arm through the strap of her blanket roll and settled it comfortably across her back, jerked off the boy’s cap and enjoyed the free play of the breeze through her curls. She held tight to the high back of the saddle and let a bubbling joy expand through her body. In a few days-days!-no longer passages to wait through and work through-in a few days she’d be in her golden Valley, free at last from fear, free of the Norid. She laughed her excitement, her delight, heard the meie’s answering chuckle float back to her, then settled down to ride, a little tired but deeply content.

The Woman: XIV

The rats pressed against Serroi. The roaches left the wall in brief flights; whirring in a rusty cloud about her head. In the bedchamber the silence was tense, the air stiff as glass, as the Norid’s laboring voice rose and fell, forcing the demon to take shape within the pentacle. The solidifying figure writhed and moaned, fighting the call. The Norid sweated, his face twisted, his voice flat and hoarse.

Serroi pulled her head back and looked down at the writhing mass of rats pressing harder and harder against her legs and against the exit’s planks. She sucked in a deep breath, felt a flicker of amusement through the shreds of her terror. My army, she thought. Reaching out with her animal touch, she meshed with the life swarming around her and pulled the Sleykyn poison knife from its sheath. Whoever called you to me thought I’d know how to use you. I hope I’m right. Maiden bless, I’m right. Knife in her left hand, she slid back the bolts with the right until the exit from the passage was free of restraint. Again she hesitated, swallowing and swallowing, trying to overcome the fear that still plagued her. She straightened her back, seeing Tayyan’s eyes again, staring at her, accusing her. She slammed her palm against the panel and leaped into the room as the exit exploded open.

Stirred to a frenzy by her prodding, the vermin army swept past her, the rats and the roaches pattering and whirring across the room, swarming over the two in the pentacle, knocking over the smoking white candles. They attacked Lybor and Morescad, the rats biting and clawing, the roaches diving at their eyes. Lybor shrieked and tried to scrape roaches from hair and face, frantic with horror and disgust, kicked out at rats who sunk curved yellow teeth into her flesh. She dropped the sjeme, writhed out of the pentacle’s useless protection, kicking, screaming, a mass of hairy flesh, brown whirring wings. Cursing and beating at the roaches and the rats who found his boots and leather trousers more of a barrier, who nonetheless found vulnerable spots and sank their teeth into his flesh, Morescad stumbled about, his sword cutting futilely at the air as often as it bit into rodent flesh.

While this happened behind her, Serroi slowed and circled cautiously around behind the black figure of the Norid. He was so lost in his laboring conjuration that he noticed none of the uproar around him. She caught the Domnor’s attention. His cool grey eyes flickered, then went flat and expressionless again as he began rocking his chair back and forth, working it toward the edge of the pentacle. Crouching painfully over him, the demon was nearly solid and beginning to turn its head about, the crimson eyes aware and angry. The thickening arms moved a few inches either way, testing solidifying muscle.

Shaking so badly she could hardly keep her fingers closed around the hilt, Serroi lifted the poison knife and stared at the narrow black back, its straining muscles clearly visible beneath the cloth. With a gasp and a breaking cry of rage and pain, she plunged the knife into the Norid’s back, slamming it under his ribs. Leaving it there with blood bubbling and boiling around the hilt, she reached across the pentacle lines, broke into sweat, moaning softly as her skin burned, dragged the Domnor out, tumbling him and his chair onto the floor. She knelt and began tugging frantically at the knots of the rope that bound his hands.

Screaming with pain, the poison working in him, wrenched disastrously from his spell casting, the Norid stumbled forward. Every muscle jerking, he took one step after another toward the pentacle. Hands flung out, eyes staring, mouth foaming, uttering gobbling, incoherent sounds, he began crumpling; dead on his feet, he fell across the pentacle’s line, slamming into the demon.

The crimson eyes swiveled down, the great fanged mouth opened, roared a hollow booming challenge that shook the room. It wrapped its arms about the Norid. There was a sudden intensifying of the stench, a confused mingling of Norid and thinning demon. A last scream. A gobbling mutter. With a loud pop, demon and Norid vanished.

With the disappearance of the Norid, the intensity of the vermin’s attack began to diminish. They started scuttling off, melting away into the passage. Lybor crouched and whined, bleeding from hundreds of ragged cuts, then went down again as the rats swarmed over her. Morescad kicked across the heap of rat bodies and ran at Serroi, his sword drawn back for the deadly lunge, his eyes streaming, his face contorted with rage.

Serroi twisted away from the Domnor, tumbling into a controlled roll, then exploded up again, kicking at the General’s wrist, connecting painfully before he could swing the sword down on her. In his anger and his contempt for a woman’s ability to fight, he’d been careless. His fingers snapped open helplessly as her foot slammed home, his sword clattering onto the floor beside the Domnor. Serroi fell back, coiled again, slammed her heel out into the General’s knee; He stumbled backward, arms flailing. As he fought for balance, she was on her feet, snatching up the sword, slashing at the Domnor’s bonds.