A Gathering Of Stones

5

Something hard and cold slapped against Korimenei’s buttock, then was gone; small hands and feet with sharp nails ran along her back. Something cold and hard slid along her shoulder and stopped against her neck. Long whiskers tickled her face. She muttered something, even she didn’t know what, opened her eyes. There was just enough light from the nightglim over the door to show her she was nose to nose with Ailiki. “Wha…”

Ailiki backed off. When she reached Karoumang’s pillow, she sat up, her handfeet pressed into the soft white ruff that flowed from neck to navel.

“Something wrong? Karou…” Korimenei shivered; the nights this time of the year were chill and damp, each one colder than the last, and someone-probably Ailiki-had pulled the quilts and blankets off her. Twisting around, she reached for the covers. Something rolled off her shoulder and thumped down on the sheet. She blinked. The Old Man’s bowl? Wha…

Ailiki darted at her, picked up the bowl and scampered back to the pillow. Sitting on her haunches, holding the battered pewter object against her stomach, she stared fixedly at Korimenei. Her ears were pressed flat against her head. The guard hairs on her shoulders were erect and quivering. Her lips were drawn back, exposing her small sharp fangs.

Korimenei rubbed at her eyes, tried to get her brain in order. “Lili? What’s happening? What are you… Karoumang?” She touched the sheet where he’d been. It was cold. Is it… Gods. His being gone hadn’t bothered her before; he always got up some time during the night and took a walk around the boat, checking things out, making sure his Second was doing a proper job and his night crew wasn’t sacked out on some of the softer bales. She slid out of bed, began groping for her clothes.

Ailiki beat on the bowl with her fingernails, a tiny, scratchy, tinging sound. Korimenei straightened, stared at her. Somehow, without crossing the intervening space, the mahsar had got over by the porthole and was squatting on the table where Karoumang worked on his books. She took the bowl’s rim in her little black hands and hammered at the table, producing a series of resonant clangs. Then she sat on her tail and fixed her round golden eyes on Korimenei.

“Not Karoumang?”

Ailiki shook her head and patted the bowl.

Puzzled, Korimenei tossed aside the trousers she was holding and pulled on her dressing gown. “I wish you could talk, Lili. It’d make things so much easier on both of us.”

Ailiki hissed at her; in spite of her relatively immobile features, she managed to look disgusted. She waited until Korimenei reached for the bowl, then she went elsewhere. She returned a moment later with a two-handled crystal cup filled with very clear water. She set it in front of Korimenei and stood back, expectation quivering in every line.

“Ah.” Korimenei kicked the chair away from the table, sat and poured the water into her bowl. “Farlooking?”

Ailiki wiggled her whiskers.

“Danger ahead?”

Ailiki scratched at the table.

“For me?”

Two scratches.

“For me and Karoumang?”

Three scratches.

“For everyone on the boat?”

Ailiki’s ears came up and her whiskers relaxed. She stretched out on her stomach, her chin resting on her folded forearms.

Karoumang came in. When he saw Korimenei at the table, his brows lifted. “What’s doing?”

“You see anything to worry about?”

He crossed to stand behind her, slid his hand into her robe and stroked her neck. “No, should I have?”

She leaned into his arm as his hand worked down to play with her breast. “No…” Ailiki lifted her head and scratched at the table again, her nails digging minute furrows in the wood. Korimenei sighed. She put her hand over Karoumang’s, stilling it. “Go to bed, Karou. You distract me.”

“From what?” His voice was sharper than usual; he wasn’t used to being told to go away. He freed his hand, cupped it under her chin and lifted it so he could see her face. “What are you doing?”

She caught hold of his wrist, pulled his hand away. “I don’t like that, Karoumang. I won’t be handled like that.”

He walked to the end of the table, faced her. “And I won’t be sent to bed like a naughty boy. What are you doing?” It was the Captain speaking, wanting to know everything about what went on aboard his boat. She wasn’t lover anymore, she was an unhandy combination of crew and passenger.

Korimenei relaxed. “Pastipasti, Captain SaO. Remember my profession.” She flattened her hands on the table, the bowl between them. “I had a warning. I was about to take a look and see what it meant. Now, will you please go sit on the bed and let me get on with it?”

He frowned, fisted a hand and rubbed the other over and around it. She could see that he’d forgot what she was since he’d taken her to bed; anyway, he never thought of women as having professions apart from their families; he wasn’t hostile to the idea, it simply wasn’t real to him. “Do it with me here,” he said. “I want to see it.”

“Hoik over that hassock and sit down then, you make me nervous, looming over me like that.”

She waited until he was settled, then she leaned over the bowl and began to establish her focus. She banished Karoumang, banished Ailiki, banished the boat, the noises around her, everything but her breathing and the soft brilliance of the water. She began a murmured chant, using archaic words from her birthtongue, words she’d learned from the rhymes her cousins and AuntNurse had sung to her when she was a baby. “Yso.yso.ypo.poh,” she softsang. “Ai.gley.idou.pan.tou.toh. Pro.ten.ou.kin.tor.or.thoh, nun. yda.ydou.ydoh.”

She blew across the water, creating a web of ripples that rebounded from the sides of the bowl, canceling and reinforcing each other until they faded and the water was smooth as glass. An image appeared, a narrow valley, heavily wooded, shadowed by the peaks that loomed over it. A cluster of houses inside a weathered palisade. A two-story building with a four-story tower beside the river, fortified, the second floor extending beyond the first. A lock gate with heavy tackle bolted to massive stone bulwarks and huge, heavy planks.

Karoumang whispered, “The locks at Kol Sutong.”

The scene fluttered and nearly vanished. She hissed through her er teeth at him and he subsided. With some difficulty she retrieved her concentration and brought stability to the image.

The point of view had changed when the picture cleated. She was looking inside the Lock House. There were bodies scattered about,, some sprawling like discarded rag dolls, some bound and gagged. All dead. Small dark men dressed in leather and rags and heavily armed were sitting at a table playing a game of stone-and-bone on a grid one of them had scratched in the wood. The view shifted again, showed the inside of the watchtower. One of the raiders was standing at the south window, looking down along the river. The sun was just coming up, staining the water red; the fog lingering under the trees was pink with dawnlight. A boat appeared, the Miyachungay.

Karoumang growled, lurched onto his feet.

“Sit down!” Korimenei pushed him away, keeping her eyes fixed on the image, willing it to hold as it wavered and threatened to break up.

The image boat slowed, moved past the gates and hove to. Some of the men in the Lock House ran to the tackle and began winching the gates closed. As soon as the bars clunked home, other men came trotting from behind the House, carrying canoes; they dealt competently with the eddies and the undertows and went racing for the boat. In minutes they were swarming over the rail, hacking and clubbing the crew, killing everyone they came across; Karoumang and the crew fought back, but there were too many attackers. When the killing was done, the raiders tore into the bales and barrels, spoiling what they didn’t want. When they were finished, they set fire to the boat. They opened the lock before they left, sat on their shaggy ponies cheering and waving bits of cargo as the charred timbers and the dead went floating away.

The image vanished.

Korimenei watched her fingers twitch, then flattened her hands on the table. “Well,” she said. “You know the river. When will we get to… what was it… Kol Sutong?

Karoumang was frowning at the water; when she spoke, he turned the frown on her. “It didn’t show you. Why?”

“It never does. The seeker is always outside the scene. Um.” She ran her finger around the rim of the bowl; unlike glass, the pewter was silent. “You needn’t take these things as chipped in stone, Karou.”

His fingers drum-rolling on the table, he examined her face. “I’ve been to seers before, Kori Heart-in-Waiting. I’ve seen the water pictures summoned before. Always the seers tell me, that IS what will be.”

“They lie, Karou. Well, maybe not lie, just make things simple for a simple man.”

“Tchaht I’ll give you simple, ibli ketji.” He wrapped a hand around her wrist. “Stop being perverse and explain.”

“If I’m a devil, why should I?”

“Come to bed and let me show you.”

“Shame-shame. Bribery. I accept. Seriously, Karou, what you’ve seen here is something that’s set up to happen, that will happen unless we act to stop it.” She tapped the back of his hand and he opened his fingers, freeing her wrist. “So, tell me. How soon?”

“It was almost moonset when I came down, dawn’s about three hours off. We should be seeing the tower roof a little after first light.” He stared past her, unseeing eyes fixed on the porthole. “Unless I go back and pass a few more days at Maul Pak.”

“Any point in that? Would the local chernlord send troops to rout out those raiders?”

“The Pak Slij huim Pak?” He made a spitting sound without actually spitting, it being his boat and his table. “I don’t have the gold it’d take to stir that tub of lard into action. The Jade King himself doesn’t have that much gold.”

“Mmf. What if you did tie up for two, three days? The hillmen wouldn’t stay put that long, would they?”

“Turn tail like a pariah dog. Turn once, I have to keep turning. No.” He frowned at her. “With a sorceror on board? No.”

“Fledgling sorceror, Karou; I left school less than a month ago. I have no staff, I haven’t pledged to a Master, I haven’t… oh, so many things, it’d take too long to list them. I don’t know what I can do… should do,” she rushed the last words, “I have to think.” Her hands were shaking again and she pressed them hard against the wood, finding a kind of comfort in the resistance of the seasoned oak. “Is there a place along here where you could tie up for an hour or so? I’d better not try anything difficult on water, I’m not good with water, I need to have earth under me.”

“That’s water.” He waggled a thumb at the bowl. “That’s different. What you need, it costs more; it takes… well, if I manage anything, it’ll take a solider base.”

“It’s your business, ketji. I suppose you know what you’re doing.” He got to his feet. “I’ll give you two hours; if you can’t come up with a plan by then, I’ll take the crew and burn the bastards out.”