by
~~Part Two~~
A week or so later, as I approached the cave that had been my home since moving to Borderville, I was surprised to zlin Tayv waiting for me near the entrance. It was the first time he'd ever seen fit to pay me a visit. Shayla was not with him, and his nager was grim. I was glad to see him, despite knowing that this probably meant trouble. I just couldn't help it.
As I drew near, he rose from the place where he'd been sitting. "Tayv, welcome, please come inside. Have a glass of berry-beer, it's a fresh batch and turned out very well."
I was a bit nervous. He followed me inside without speaking, and accepted the beer I poured for him, but the tone of his nager didn't lighten. I had an impulse to delay him from bringing up whatever unpleasant matter he'd come here to discuss.
"Please, have a seat. I hope you're not one of those who doesn't care for caves. I have never zlinned any sign of the Daimon here."
"I have no fear of the Daimon-folk." Nor anything else, as far as I had ever observed. He sipped his beer, and added, "Our visitors have made their first kill."
I knew he wasn't talking about some Gen purchased from Dee. I decided to sit down myself.
"Te Adreus, who runs the mochetta house down below the trail, found his son Te Candus dead in his goat-shack when he went to let the animals out to graze this morning. Do you know the place I'm talking about?"
"The mochetta house, yes, of course." It was down near the pen, and close to the place where I'd heard the Wilders—if that's what they are—had been camping.
The aroma of the mochetta flower produced a kind of dreamy rapture when inhaled, but it was not a portable drug. This state of bliss could not be obtained by smoking or sniffing any dried or concentrated product of the plant. The only way to enjoy the effect was to spend some time in a room filled with the living flowers—a mochetta house.
Te Adreus and his son had never mixed in much with the townspeople, and his customers were almost exclusively transients. The local farmers preferred my product, which did not sap their will to work. I had seen Te Adreus in town a few times directing his scowl at his fellow-townspeople in an evenhanded manner. He tried to intimidate Simes with his nager, without much success, though he managed to make himself annoying enough that people tended to avoid him. I had heard he was equally surly toward his customers, who developed the desire to roll around in the flowers after breathing their scent for awhile. This had the unfortunate effect of crushing the delicate blossoms. By the time they reached that state, though, they would have little concern about whether they had earned their host's wrath, or about much of anything else for that matter.
"I went down and examined the body. Unquestionably a Sime kill, I'm afraid. And Te Adreus tells me that he ran one of the Wilders off his property two days earlier by threatening him with a hoe. He thinks this is retaliation. He came up here to ask my assistance, and I think it's time something was done. Before they kill again."
He looked at me expectantly. I passed my beer-glass from fingers to tentacles and back again, trying to think of how I was going to get out of this. Something should be done, yes, but not by me. Why not round up a bunch of the local farmers to see to the matter? It was my understanding that was how such problems were dealt with, here.
Seeing my hesitation, he said, "I can't do this alone, Meechi. Te Adreus has gotten together a few other villagers who think they have some idea how to fight, but not one of them can control energy-fluxes in a crowd like you and I can do. That's why I need your help."
His use of the word need, combined with the way he was looking at me, seemed like some sort of cruel mockery. I struggled to hold onto my temper. "Why? You're some kind of Rho-Gen, aren't you? You have all those knives to use on the Gens, and that nager of yours… would leave any Sime helpless." That wasn't quite what I'd meant to say. My thoughts seemed to keep circling back to the same place. It flitted through my mind that I could set a certain price for my assistance, if he valued my participation as much as he was implying. On reflection, though, I decided that might not be a very good idea.
His lips curved in a faint smile. "There is no such thing as a Rho-Gen. Moreover, it's not a term you should throw around, because an actual Rho-Gen might take offense and kill you just for saying it." Mountain Gens are notorious for coming up with contradictory statements like that, which seems to be some kind of high art where they come from. I looked away, and could feel him reading my field in his Gen way. "You want to know the truth of it, Meechi?"
Keeping my expression blank, I assented nagerically, curious to see if he'd be able to pick it up.
"This not usually discussed with lowlanders. But I will tell you. As a child, I was given all the training that would lead to becoming one of the Daimon-touched—what you call a Rho-Gen. I was seen as a promising student, and when I came into my adult power, I went to offer myself according to custom. I sat in a cave much like this one without eating or sleeping, drinking only the water that flowed from the ground, for many days. Finally I could stay awake no longer, and when I woke I knew I had failed the test. That's why I have no fear of coming into your home. If the Daimon were going to take me, they had their chance."
I could tell this was not something he spoke of lightly, or often. It seemed a bizarre story to me, but nothing in his nager suggested he was joking.
He drained the last of his beer, and stood up. "Do I have to face eleven of them with nothing but a few undisciplined farmers for assistance? Or are you coming with me?"
~~~~
It turned out to be more than a few farmers; the tavern was packed. The body of the young Gen had been laid on a table, and I had to concur with Tayv's opinion as to how he'd died, not that there'd been much doubt in my mind. Mor Quath, a local Sime known for his hot temper and for his unusual physical strength and size, was addressing the crowd from a low stage sometimes used by musicians. He broke off when Tayv and I walked in. No animosity was directed at either one of us, though the Simes in Tayv's path drew away to give him plenty of room.
"Have you come to join us?" Mor had one hand on the shoulder of Te Adreus. Omrey stood on the other side of the big Sime, and it was clear that she stood with him in the figurative sense as well.
Tayv answered for both of us. "We have."
"I see that like many of these good folks, the channel with you has brought no weapon. This will not be some shoving-match between children. If he truly means to join us, he should arm himself—as should the rest of you."
"He has the same weapon as I do for dealing with fractious Simes—his nager. Do you require a demonstration of how that can be used?"
Most Simes would have turned pale at the threat, but Mor grinned at Tayv companionably. "All right. But for the rest of you, those who mean to come with us should return to their homes and get something sharp." He pulled an axe from his belt. "Some tool that can cut, and that feels right in your hands and tentacles."
A Gen woman on the sidelines, whose name I could not recall, spoke up. "You mean to simply go to their camp, and begin killing them? We have no proof that they are what you say. Even if one of them has done this—"
"My son is dead!" Brandishing a hoe, Te Adreus tried to step closer to her. Mor's hand on his shoulder held him back. "We have brought the body for those who do not believe! See for yourself!"
The woman tried to answer, but a dozen separate debates erupted at the same time, making it impossible to hear what she said.
"Quiet!" Mor's voice boomed over the crowd, and Tayv helped restore order with a nageric pulse that got the attention of all the Simes in the room, which was about three-quarters of those assembled.
"This is nothing but a killing-mob," the woman's loud, clear voice rang out in the sudden silence. "I will have no part of it." She walked out the door, and so did a half-dozen others.
"We will harm no-one until we know the truth of the matter," Tayv said firmly. "They will be given a chance to speak. You Simes will know if they are lying."
Mor nodded. "But we will go prepared. Here is what I say. All of you should go home and get some weapon, if you didn't bring one. And fetch your neighbors, any who have not heard the word. When you return, I say all the Simes should go to the camp of the Wilders, and the Gens should stay here and bar the door. This is no business for Gens. With the exception of our mountain Gen, of course." He winked at Tayv.
Omrey stepped away from him and raised the length of wood in her hand. "I'm surprised I haven't shown you my bi-larity mayhem stick, Mor. One end is for hitting Simes over the head; the other is for doing the same to Gens. I sometimes get confused as to which end is which, but it seems to work all the same." Appreciative laughter ran through the crowd, though most of them had heard her make this speech before.
She wasn't laughing. She zlinned to me as if she'd like to use the stick on Mor right then, and merely because he'd made a remark she didn't agree with. The killer urge lies in each of us, I think, and under certain circumstances it is not very deeply buried. This is often said of Simes, but I believe it is just as true of Gens.
Mor shrugged. "As you will. I expect to see all you Simes, at least, back here within the hour. Bring a stick if you like, though I prefer something sharp. But bring something."
The room began to empty. Those that remained fell into conversation, while Te Adreus stood without speaking over the body of his son. I noticed that Dee was there, and she walked up to say a few words to him, which I did not overhear. These two were not ordinarily the best of neighbors, but it seemed this situation had suspended the normal hostilities.
I also saw a victim of one of Dee's attempts at channeling, wandering around in a state of dazed numbness, as if he was not quite sure if he were awake or if all this was some incomprehensible dream. I had real doubts as to whether he had any business going into a potentially dangerous situation. As Dee walked away from the table where the dead boy was on display, I caught her eye and let my opinion show clearly in my nager. She responded with a defensive mixture of embarrassment and aggression, and walked over to speak with me, which came as a surprise.
"I know," she said quietly. "I'm no good at it. I've zlinned what you're able to do for Lurah. It shouldn't be possible, even with the drugs. How much would you charge to teach me to do that?" I could zlin that she expected me to refuse.
I'd never thought she had the slightest interest in learning. Her transfers were so bad I'd entertained the suspicion that she was doing that to them on purpose. While she, apparently, had been assuming that I would not reveal my trade secrets for any price. There's no excuse for Simes to have a misunderstanding of those proportions, and I was suddenly ashamed. She was junct, and I had not looked any farther than that, never approached her to share tidbits of professional lore as I would normally have done.
"I'm happy to teach you. And I can't charge for that. I paid nothing when I was trained. Knowledge should be free."
Suspicion colored her nager. She was not used to being offered something for nothing, and was not prepared to believe that I meant it.
"My aunt taught me most of what I know. I was expected to do some work for her, of course, while I was her apprentice. But I have no clients to share with you, I'm afraid. I'll tell you what, if the skills I teach you increase your business, you can give me a share of the proceeds."
"Fair enough." I could tell she was already figuring out how she could avoid giving me any money, but I didn't care much about that. Let her feel that she was cheating me out of something. I'd be lucky if she didn't send me a bill for some imagined decline in her profits, but if she felt she was swindling me out of something valuable, it might make her pay more attention to my instruction.
I was not sure how much I would be able to teach her. She was well past first year, and she might not have any real talent for the art—if she did, she might have figured out more of it on her own. Not everyone who happens to have two selyn systems was born to give secondary transfers. But surely, some improvement in her skills would be possible. I found I was looking forward to the challenge. I'd exchanged little tricks with other channels, of course, but had never really had a student.
"Here, bartender! While we are waiting for the others, I will buy a round for all of you who had the sense come prepared." Mor had unfastened his money-pouch from his belt, and tossed it onto the bar, bringing a cheer from those who remained in the room.
"No. There will be no drinking." Omrey had started to walk toward the bar. When Tayv spoke up she paused, radiating astonishment and a dawning indignation, which was shared by others in the room.
"Mor, you said yourself that this is a serious business. I will not have you all going there drunk. No drinking until we return. If you are still in a mood to celebrate after this is done, buy the round for those who return."
I don't believe anyone else could have gotten away with it, but most of those in the room were Sime, and not about to get into an argument with a Gen like Tayv. "When we return, then."
A Sime couple walked in, carrying pruning hooks. Behind them was Shayla, with her metal file in her hand, but she'd tucked the stone she'd just started carving away in a pocket of her pants. Tayv walked over to her and took the file from her hand.
"I don't know what you think you're doing here. I thought you were going to stay and keep an eye on the other Simes."
I'd gone over to greet her along with Tayv, and she ducked behind me to shield herself from the glare in his nager. "They can screw underneath the drying shed just as well without me there to watch them," she said sullenly, looking at him over my shoulder. Tayv turned a little red in the face, and his nager smoothed as he controlled his emotions.
"Very well, you are here, but you will not mix into any fighting that takes place. Do you understand me? I do not allow my Simes to kill, not in any sense of the word. You may guard my herb bag, and give first aid to any of our villagers that are wounded. I think there will be cutting this day, and I think I am the only one here who understands what that means. If you bind a wound until Meechi or I can get there to heal it, you may save a life." As he spoke, he'd walked around me until I was no longer between him and Shayla. She gave a short nod of acquiescence.
"Good. You may carry this smaller bag, which also contains some bandages. Meechi will have the larger one. I've already shown him what to do with that."
He'd been just as firm about defining my role in any physical conflict as he had with Shayla. Since coming here was not my idea to begin with, I had not objected, especially since his ideas seemed sound. The larger herb bag was a backpack, reinforced by a stiff board, and he'd shown me how it could be used as a shield when it was held in front of the body instead of worn on the back. It worked so well for this that I suspected the design was no accident. After ascertaining that I had no training at all in fighting, Tayv had declared that I would carry no weapon but this, which could be used to guard my arms against the knives that the Wilders carried.
I still had some small hope that all this could be resolved without bloodshed. If the Wilders would turn over the Sime who had killed Te Candus, surely the rest of them could be allowed to move on, and a trial could be held. I'd said as much to Tayv, whose response had been nageric, and difficult for me to interpret. If he would repeat my ideas to this crowd, it might have some effect, but I did not think they would listen to me.
When the hour Mor had allowed them for fetching their weapons came to an end, a total of eighteen armed citizens stood in the tavern, along with myself and Shayla. There was a certain amount of indignant muttering about those who had not come back, because the room was only about half as full as it had been earlier.
"Daquen told me that he could not risk leaving his children without a father, with their mother already dead," one man reported. "He will not be joining us."
"Lurah and I have children," Hran responded. "If the worst happens, they will be raised by their brother, knowing that their parents were not afraid to defend their home." I was not surprised to see him, for he is not one to shirk an unpleasant task. He stood with one arm around his wife, and I did wonder that he had brought her, because she was just past turnover and did not look at all well. I believed that she would probably have stayed behind if he'd asked it, because I'd observed that she followed his wishes in most things, not including the matter of the Gen now known as Rikka. Perhaps she hoped to avoid a slow death, and perhaps buy safety for others with the expenditure of what remained of her own life.
"Let us go," Mor said. "Any who wished to join us have had ample time to return."
Tayv held up one hand. "When we reach their camp, do not attack without allowing them to speak, first. They have a right to be heard."
"All of them must die," Te Adreus declared. His rage filled the air, and began to incite the Simes around him until I wove in and neutralized the effect.
Tayv met my eyes briefly, and raised his voice to address everyone. "If we go charging in there to kill everyone in sight, then who are the Wilders?"
Mor began walking toward the door, and the rest of them followed. Tayv strode to the head of the mob, and I trailed behind them with Shayla. This positioning allowed Tayv and I to work together very effectively to keep things calm. The mood of the group was determined, but not hysterical. I was starting to think this could all be resolved in a reasonable manner.
By the time we reached their camp, all of the strangers we'd begun to think of as Wilders were on their feet, with knives in belt sheathes or in their hands, though some were making a show of working at some task that required such a tool. Their leader, who I'd learned was named Velte, came forward to speak with us.
"You are here about the Gen who died this morning." She addressed us all, but Te Adreus stepped forward to answer her.
"My son. I will have the laterals of the Sime who did that to him!"
"Will you. Jemado, come here, please."
The Sime who stepped forward was quite young, and very post. But his post-syndrome had taken an ugly turn, manifesting as a deep and ugly depression.
"Jemado, do you have anything to say to this man, and to these other people?"
"It was an accident." Standing behind the others, I could barely hear him. "I didn't mean to hurt him. He was going to be my Gen. He was going to come away with us, and be one of us. I didn't think that he would die!" His voice grew louder as he spoke, ending almost in a shriek, and no Sime who heard him doubted that every word was true. But Te Adreus did not believe it, particularly the part about how his son had planned to join Velte's band.
"So he agreed to give you transfer." Velte stood facing the other Sime, interrogating him as if they stood in a court of law instead of a rocky campground. Jemado nodded, looking at the ground. "Speak up, please, so this Gen and these others can hear you."
"Yes, he did."
"Did you have any intention of harming him."
"No. No! What do all of you think I am?" He turned and looked belligerently at the crowd of villagers.
A junct Sime with very poor judgement. That would have been my answer. But not a remorseless killer, as many of us had assumed. Indeed, his remorse laid a pall of gloom over the ambient which I did nothing to alleviate. Let them zlin how he felt, and perhaps they could feel at least a scrap of pity.
"He must die for what he has done," Te Adreus declared. He stepped forward with his hoe, and addressed Jemado. "Accept our judgement, and spare the lives of your friends. Your life must pay for the life of my son, Te Candus."
Jemado looked at him warily. His grief and guilt were real, but not quite profound enough to make him offer Te Adreus his laterals.
"His death would gain you nothing," Velte told him. "A Gen who agrees to transfer accepts a certain risk, but it is fair that his family should receive some compensation. Jemado has very little, but the rest of us have loaned him what we can, to offer you a fair death-price. It is almost all the money we possess, and will take him many years to repay us. It is all I can do for you." She held up a heavy bag of mixed currencies.
With an incoherent sound of rage, Te Adreus raised his hoe and charged forward—not at Jemado, but at Velte. She sidestepped neatly and rapped him on the back of the head with the hilt of the knife that had suddenly appeared in her hand. He fell unconscious to the ground, not badly injured, and slept through the brief and brutal conflict that ensued.
Velte bent and tucked the money down the back of his shirt. "I hope one of you will haul this Gen away from here. Had he trained his son properly, I doubt any of this would have—"
As she straightened, Mor flew at her, swinging his axe at her head. She stepped to the side once again and held her knife so that it cut the side of Mor's forearm almost to the bone as he went by. As he stood gaping at the wound, she laid open the side of his neck, releasing a pulsing fountain of blood. He made no effort to evade this second cut. Even if he had been able to do so, he'd have had nothing to gain by it at that point.
Velte held up the bloody knife, nager filled with a mad and savage glee. "If that's what you've all come here for, we have plenty to go around!"
The two groups came together, and it began. I saw Tayv work his way around until he could place his hand on the back of a Sime's neck. The Sime collapsed, insensible but not dead. Tayv watched for an opening, then did it to another one.
I decided that was a fine idea, with real potential to minimize the bloodshed. And things had passed the point where I could exercise any real control over the ambient. Cloaking my nager, I stepped forward into the fray, holding my backpack shield at the ready. I was ignored by the Simes, to the extent that one of them backed into me while evading a thrust. I grabbed the back of her neck and made brief lateral contact with the base of her skull, knocking her out.
I had to do it quickly, and it felt like a terrible abuse of my system and hers. While I was recovering, a Gen stepped forward and tried to stab me, an effort that was accompanied by a tightly focused nageric attack. I used the shield once to deflect the knife, and again to strike him hard on the top of his head, and he staggered away.
I looked around and saw Tayv cutting another Gen's throat from behind, expression serene as if he were performing some solemn religious rite. I could not pick up the flavor of his nager, because the ambient had turned to a tangled mess.
I could still zlin on the physical level, of course, and I was horrified to observe that one of the farmers behind me had murdered the Sime I'd knocked out by driving a planting-spike through her eye and deep into her brain. I looked around, stunned by how quickly everything was happening. Only about half the people I saw were still standing. It was impossible to say that either side had the upper hand.
I could not bring myself to knock anyone else unconscious, and was about to go back to the place where I'd been standing with Shayla, when I saw that Hran had taken hold of the Gen I'd hit with my shield. He struck the Gen in the face several times in rapid succession, hard enough to confuse him but not quite cause him to loose consciousness. A glance at Hran's eyes told me that unlike many of these Simes, he was not hyperconscious. He was acting with cold deliberation, using a Wilder trick for taking a trained Gen in the kill—a quick and dirty alternative to the drugs sometimes used for that purpose.
I started toward him reflexively, not willing to stand by while a nonjunct Sime did such a thing in the heat of battle. What he was doing was very risky, because if he gave the Gen even a moment to collect his wits, it would be suicide to make lateral contact. But it was the fear that he might succeed that drove me to interfere.
I dropped the shield Tayv had given me as I augmented toward Hran. I kept my nager masked, but being duoconscious, he saw me coming and gave me a defiant look. Then he shoved the dazed Gen into the arms of his hyperconscious wife, who by some miracle was one of those still standing.
I might have been able to stop what happened next. But I didn't try. I did step close enough to Lurah to keep this encounter from adding to the chaos in the ambient. It hardly seemed possible for things to get worse in that regard. But although I was numb from the haze of pain and the repeated death-shocks, I did not believe there had been any actual kills. If that was about to change, I meant to keep anyone but myself from zlinning it.
And if Hran had just murdered his wife, I could prevent him from experiencing her death. I used my own nager to partition the three of us away from what was happening all around. It was somewhat of a relief. I could no longer guard my back, so I had to hope Hran would do that for me.
When Lurah's tentacles closed around his arms, the Gen made a frantic effort to pull together his disordered nager. His head ached, and felt as if someone were still pounding on his skull, but he was starting to recover a little bit. His strong fingers clawed at the air, but by luck or design, Lurah had taken a grip too high on his arms for him to hurt her that way. As she tried to put her mouth against his, he whipped his head away and brought his knee up hard between her legs. This lifted her off the ground, but inconvenienced her very little aside from that, and she pressed her lips to the side of his neck instead.
He made some effort at a field slam, but his nager still lacked the coherence to do it properly, and his weak effort merely filled her junct pathways with a blissful flood of life. Muscles frozen now that the circuit was completed, he made one last effort to fight her, putting everything he had into an effort to shen out of the transfer. Had he not done that, he might have lived; by yielding his selyn, he could have cheated her of the kill, and survived. But that would have meant surrender. He was far too angry for that, too determined to be the victor of this encounter .
When he tried to slam his barriers closed, his control was still unsteady. The barriers rose part way, his rage battling hers, and he lost. He succeeded in burning her a little through the wild see-sawing of the flow, but he took a much worse burn. The pain echoing through their linked nervous systems made Lurah's draw, already junct-fast, speed up to a rate I had not believed possible for a normal-capacity renSime.
I've been taught that more often than not, a Gen killed for selyn dies before the Sime's capacity is reached, leaving them to harvest the rest from a corpse. In this case, I thought for a moment that the Gen would still be alive at the end of it, though he probably would not have survived for long. But Lurah's draw began to slow, I felt his death-shock reverberate through both their systems. Glowing with rapacious satisfaction, she drained a few final dynopters before allowing the body to fall from her arms.
For the first time since I'd known her, Lurah zlinned truly post. I was almost sorry to see the humanity creep back into her eyes, accompanied by intense guilt and shame as she realized what she had done. She gave me a look of utter hatred before hiding her face against Hran's chest. Still standing over the body of the Gen she had killed, she began sobbing, oblivious to what was happening all around us.
My attention was caught by a murderous fury so strong it cut through all the nageric chaos, perhaps because it was focused in our direction. Velte was augmenting straight for Lurah. From what little I'd seen of the band's interactions when they were in town, it was my guess that Lurah had just killed Velte's personal Gen. Hran was too wrapped up in his wife's misery to notice the attack.
I had dropped Tayv's shield, and barely had time to find and scoop up the nearest weapon, which was the hoe Te Adreus had dropped. Standing in Velte's path, I got the sharp end of the hoe between her and myself just before she reached me, bracing myself against the impact I expected to feel when she ran into the makeshift weapon. Instead, she got around it somehow, teeth bared in a lunatic grin. She was too close for me to swing the hoe at her, and she slashed at my arm. I let go in an effort to evade her knife, but still felt the sharp blade bite into my forearm, and at the same time she twisted the hoe out of my grip and cast it to one side.
Hran released Lurah to bend and retrieve the short spear that his son, Tetham, used to hunt khilgaree for his stewpot. Defenseless, I took a step back, having to leap awkwardly over the body of Lurah's kill in order to retreat.
Before Hran could come to my aid, Shayla was there, slashing at Velte's back with a knife she'd picked up from somewhere. The cut she inflicted was superficial, but Velte turned to deal with the threat behind her.
I grabbed her knife-hand, trying immobilize it by wrapping it in a tight cocoon of fingers and handling tentacles. I found that my dorsal tentacles on that side, the side she'd cut, did not quite work properly. With my other hand I took hold of her throat and drove my thumb into her windpipe.
She tried to claw at my arm with her free hand, but I had blocked off her air and it was a weak gesture. I was able to fend off her fingers with my handling tentacles. Hran drove his spear into her back so hard that it made the front of her clothing twitch, but I think it was my hand at her throat that actually killed her.
~~~~