A Gathering Of Stones

9

Three days later.

Morning, about two hours before dawn.

Raining outside, little wind, water coming down in near vertical lines, the sort of rain that seems like it will never

100 JO t-layllfil end, as if the rest of life will be gray and chill and damp, the sort of rain that makes a pleasure palace of the most wretched of shelters as long as there’s a bit of fire to chase away the damp.

Brann pushed aside the curtain that closed off her bedroom doorway, edged around it into the cramped livingroom where Camp was sleeping. Her hair hung loose, a waving mass of white, fine as spidersilk; she wore her own face, young, unlined, her eyes green as new leaves, her mouth a delicate curve, soft and vulnerable. She wore a black velvet robe embroidered with gold and silver and rubies. Jaril stole it for her from the wardrobe of an Isu whose taste in decoration was so bad it was almost a Talent. He grinned as he held it up for Brann to inspect; when she said finally, I suppose bad taste is better than no taste, he had a fit of giggles that she shushed quickly, afraid he’d wake Carup. In her left hand she held a heavy wooden candlepole taller than she was and covered with tarnished silver-gilt that she’d been afraid to clean because the gilding was so thin it came off if you looked at it hard. There was a fat white candle impaled on the spike, but she hadn’t lit it yet. The only light in the livingroom came from the fireplace where faint red glows from last night’s fire seeped through the smother of gray ash.

Jaril brushed past her, black panther with crystal eyes, moving with an eerie silence. He padded across to Camp, sniffed at her, came padding back. *She’s ripe, Bramble. Her eyes are moving, she’s starting to dream.

She nodded, brought the candle pole down until the wick was beside his head. “Light me, Jay,” she whispered.

He spat a spark at the wick, smirked as she swung the pole hastily upright when the twist began burning. *Handy to have round, am’t I, huh?*

“Sometimes, but don’t let it go to your head.” She inspected him. “Maybe you should turn yourself white. You disappear into the murk like that.”

His mouth dropping into a feral cat grin, he purred at her. His eyes began to glow silver-white, the tips of his coathairs went translucent and shone with a clear white light. He was still a black cat, but one outlined in moonfire.

“Impressive,” she murmured and grinned back at him. “All right, let’s do it.”

The candle made an aura round her shining hair, dropped dramatic shadows into the hollows of her face and touched with fire the rings on the hand that held the pole. “Carup,” she called. “Carup Kalan. Wake up. Camp. Carup Kalan.”

The girl woke, startled, then afraid, scrambling back under the covers until she was pressed against the wall; she pulled her knees up, threw her arms across her face and whimpered.

“Have no fear,” Brann said. Her voice was deep and caressing, the words had a smile in them. “I am she who was the Jantria, Carup Kalan. Look at me, child. I mean you no harm.”

Still trembling, Carup pulled her arms down, lay peeping at Brann over the delicate halo of hair on her forearm.

Brann lifted a hand in blessing. At first Carup cringed away, that was what her life had trained her to do, that was the only way she’d found to turn aside or lessen the pain about to be inflicted on her. Then she saw Brann’s smile, only a little smile, a quirking upward of the ends of her mouth, but it was approval, fondness even, and Camp began to unfold like a flower opening in the sun.

“You have served me faithfully and well.” The words were solemn but the tone was gentle, friendly, and Camp relaxed yet more. “You have given more than service, child. You have shown generosity of spirit, expecting only a little kindness, a trifle of shelter from the world and those who would do you ill. Carup Kalan, I am a servant of One I may not name. I am at times given word to do this, or do that, to go here, to go there. Word has come to me that I am required elsewhere soon.” Brann kept her face a smiling mask as she spun her web of lies, but again she wasn’t liking herself much, especially when she saw the look on Camp’s face.

The girl’s lips trembled, but she didn’t dare protest. Fear was flooding back into her, more than fear, a flat despair. Once again Fate was tearing her from her happiness, casting her aside like garbage.

“I would take you with me, if that were permitted. It is not. But there is a thing I can do for you, a gift I can give you, Camp Kalan. I can send you home to your own people with the dowry of a queen.”

Camp’s right thumb moved over and over the marks on the back of her left hand. She didn’t say anything for several breaths, then she bowed her head. “I thank you, Jantria.” Her voice was dull, lifeless.

“Stand before me, Carup Kalan.”

Carup glanced at the shining panther, then shrugged; there were far more terrible things waiting for her than that eldrich beast. She hitched herself to the edge of the cot and stood. She slept in a sleeveless shift of unbleached muslin. it had a meagerly embroidered neck with a faded ribbon threaded through the eyelets and tied in a limp bow at the front.

“Remove your shift.”

Moving like an automaton, Carup pulled the bow loose, spread the neck of the shift and let it fall about her feet. She didn’t try to cover herself, she was too deep in despair for shame to touch her. The spongy red-purple flesh ran the length of her body, more of it than Brann had expected to see. There were spatters on her right side, drops like spilled blood on her breast. A wide river of the wine flesh ran down her left side, slashed across her navel and flowed down her right thigh.

“Straighten the blankets on the bed, then lie down on them.”

Obedient as always, refusing to acknowledge anger or pain, Camp worked with the skilled neatness with which she did everything, even turning square corners as she made the bed.

“Lie on your back,” Brann said when Camp was finished.

All this while Jaril panther had been pacing around Brann, his crystal eyes reflecting the candle flame. Now he melted into a mist and the mist settled over Carup, seeping into her.

Carup lay rigid, eyes squeezed shut.

Brann leaned the candlepole against the chimney, went to kneel beside the bed. With Jaril guiding her, she began restructuring the blemishes, wiping away all trace of them. All that the night prowls of the Drinker of Souls had brought her, she poured into the girl. And more. When she was finished, Carup Kalan was a lamb without blemish, an unpierced pearl whose price was the price of queens.

Shaky with exhaustion, perspiration dripping down her face and body, Brann got to her feet and went to the candlepole, removed the candle and set it on the box that served as a bedtable; the candle was thick enough to stand by itself. She looked down at the rigid, unhappy girl, shook her head and crossed to the bedroom. Jaril emerged as mist, solidified to black nonluminous panther and padded into the kitchen; a moment later he was a mistcrane powering into the_, rain, heading for the doulahar and his obsession, cursing the damp, the cold and his unruly needs.

Brann came back with the hand mirror she’d bought as a gift for Carup once the metamorphosis was complete. “Open your eyes, Carup Kalan, and behold my second gift.”

For an instant the girl resisted, then she sighed and did as she was told. Brann bit at her lip. Where is your spirit, girl? You aren’t grass for everyone to step on. She said nothing. It wouldn’t help. Camp was what her culture made her.

“Sit up,” Brann said. “Look at your hands, child.”

Camp pushed up until she was sitting with her legs over the edge of the bed. She looked at her hands, gasped. She felt at her thigh, at her breasts, she touched her face.

“Take your last gift, this mirror, and behold yourself, Camp Kalan.”

Brann left the girl staring into the mirror and feeling at her face as if she were unable to believe what her eyes saw and needed the confirmation of her fingers. In her bedroom, Brann stripped off the robe and with some difficulty took on once more the aspect of the Jantria Bar Ana. She put on her ordinary clothes and sat on the bed for a while, gathering her strength.

“Jantria?” The voice that came from the other room was hesitant, shaky from excitement and a lingering fear.

“One moment, Camp.” Brann got to her feet, felt at her braid to make sure it was properly clasped so it wouldn’t unravel at the first movement of her head. I feel like I’m going to unravel, she thought. Hoo! If I can get that girl to sleep, there’s some dark left, maybe I can go find me a juicy murderer or two. No. A slave dealer. More appropriate, I’d say. Almost a pun. Spend on a slave, recoup on a slaver. Hah!

She moved to the crate she used as a linen chest and dressing table, grunted as she lifted a small iron-bound box. Shoulders bent, she elbowed past the curtain.

Carup was sitting on the bed. She’d put the shift on again, and pulled a quilt around her shoulders, but she blushed when Brann came in, then looked uncertain as she saw the old woman who’d bought her free. She stole a look in the mirror-it was on the box beside the candle; she’d put her sandal behind it to tilt it up so she could see herself when she glanced that way. She blushed again, stared down at her hands as they rested in her lap, fingers twined tightly together.

Brann nodded at the candle and the mirror. “Push those aside, will you, Carup? So I can set this down. It’s heavy.”

Hastily the girl tossed the mirror onto the bed, brushed the sandal off the box and pushed the candle back. “Is that enough?”

“It should be.” The flimsy box creaked under the weight of the small chest. “This isn’t locked now, though you should keep it so later. Open it.”

“Me?”

“It’s your dowry, young Carup. Now, do what I tell you. Open the chest.”

“Oh.” Carup turned back the lid. Inside, there were two doeskin bags and a small belt-purse. She loosened the drawstring on the larger bag, reached in and took out a handful of coins. Gold coins, thick, heavy, with a cold greasy feel to them. “Jorpashil jaraufs,” she whispered. “Sahanai the Siradar’s daughter wore hers at her wedding, threaded round her neck.”

“One hundred,” Brann said. “I promised you a queen’s price, child.”

“She only had ten.” Carup turned the broad coins over and over, rubbing her fingers across them, then she put them back in the bag and pulled the drawstrings until the opening was gone; neat-fingered as always, she wrapped the thongs into a smooth coil and tucked it between the side of the box and the bag. She opened the second bag. Silver this time. Takks.

“Fifty,” Brann said. “Those are for you alone. A woman should always have her own money, Carup. It means she has a way out if she needs it. Pass what you don’t use to your daughters; tell them what I’ve just told you. It is a trust, Carup Kalan.”

“I hear and I obey, Jantria Bar Ana.” She put the takks away and opened the purse. There was a pile of worn dugnas inside it.

“One hundred dugnas, Carup, to buy clothing, hire a bodyguard and transport to get you home.”

“I don’t want to go home.” The words came out in a rush. “My father will just take the dowry and give it to my brothers. He did that all the time with the money my mother brought in.”

“Gods! Does nothing go right? I can’t leave you here.

The vultures would be down on you before I was gone an hour.”

“Take me with you, Jantria. I’ll serve you. You said I was good at serving you. The One Without a Name, I’ll serve that One too.”

Brann sank onto the hearth, her back against the rough bricks of the fireplace; their heat seeped through her shirt and into her bones. Sleep flooded through her, waves and waves of sleep. Thinking was like shoveling mud. “Carup,, I can’t.” The lies were catching up with her, twisting around her like a fowler’s net. That last bit was true enough, though. She couldn’t keep the girl with her. A deeper truth was, she didn’t want to. Carup was reading that, though she wasn’t fully aware of it, and trying to fight against it, flailing out helplessly, futilely. Brann drew her fist across her mouth, let her eyes droop closed for a minute. Fine time for the girl to dredge up some independence. “Where I go, no one can come.” Make it convincing, Brann; she’s going to be stubborn. “Even if you tell him the dowry is the gift of a god?”

“He wouldn’t listen to me. Even if he listened, he wouldn’t believe me.” Camp wrapped the quilt tighter about her body, pulled her legs up and tucked them under her. She was fighting now, at last she was fighting for what she wanted. “If I go home and he takes me back as his daughter, I belong to him. Listen,” she said. Her voice broke in the middle of the word. “This is how it went in my home, Jantria. My mother made shirts and sold them in the Pattan Haria Market; she had made herself a name for her broideries. Sometimes she got more from her shirts than he did off the land.” She cleared her throat; her hand crept from beneath the quilt and stroked the side of her face where the mark had been. When she spoke again, it was in a hoarse whisper; she was talking about family things, breaking one of the most rigid taboos of her culture. “He took her money whenever the tribes came to Lake Tabaga and my brothers wanted to go into Pattan Haria and get drunk with them. My mother spent her eyes and her fingers on those shirts, she took from sleep time to make them and he took her money for my brothers to waste. Didn’t matter what she said, what she wanted to do with the money; he owned her so he owned what she earned. If I go back, he’ll do the same to me.”

Brann rubbed at her eyes as her plans fell in rubble about her. She’d been so sure she could send the girl home and let her family have the care of her. Double damn, Tungjii help! What do I do now? She sneezed. What I do now is sleep. She sighed and got to her feet. “I’m too tired to think, Carup. It’s late. Get some sleep. If you’re up before I am and you find people waiting for me, send them away, will you? Tell them I’m meditating; it will be the truth, child. Get some sleep yourself, you should be tired too.” She didn’t wait for a response but pushed past the curtain and fell on the bed, asleep as soon as her body was horizontal.