Snare. Katharine Kerr
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normally she only used four of them – Sentry, Spirit Eyes, Rain Child, and Earth Prince. The fifth, Death Chanter, she brought out only when a person had been gravely injured or lay ill with extreme old age. If Death Chanter glowed when she laid him on the victim’s chest, the sufferer would most likely recover. If he remained dull, it was time for her to start instructing the victim about the road to the Deathworld.
The last three crystals she had found in the trading precinct over in the Cantons, one at a time and at intervals of years. Where the merchants had got them, they refused to say, but they had known their value and bargained hard over them. These three still glowed with life every time Ammadin took them into the sunlight, but since she didn’t know their command words, the spirits had stubbornly stayed asleep.
The work she’d mentioned to Apanador involved the three crystals and Water Woman, the spirit who had called to her some days past. Perhaps here, near another river, Water Woman would do so again, and perhaps one of the sleeping crystals might let her answer.
‘Spirit Rider?’ Zayn lifted the tent flap and stuck his head in. ‘Do you want me to bring you some light?’
‘Please, yes.’
In a few minutes Zayn returned, carrying a stone oil lamp that he’d lit at someone’s fire. He set it down on the hearth stones. By the flickering golden light she began wrapping the crystals and stowing them in their usual saddlebag. He sat down opposite her and watched.
‘Are you hungry?’ Zayn said. ‘We’ve got some jerky left, but Dallador’s down at the river, catching fish.’
‘I’ll wait, then,’ Ammadin said. ‘He’s really good at finding food, Dallador.’
Zayn nodded, smiling a little as he watched her wrap her crystals. He was sitting cross-legged, his hands resting on his thighs, broad hands but somehow fine, with long fingers that might have belonged to a craftsman or even a scholar back in the khanate. Soon enough they would become scarred, calloused, and blunted, she supposed, as the hands of all the comnee men did, sooner or later. For the first time, though, she noticed his wrists. At first she thought them tattooed, then realized that a thick line of pale scar tissue circled each, as if his hands had been bound together by something that had rubbed him raw.
‘We haven’t had much chance to talk, this last few days,’ Ammadin said. ‘Have you been thinking about your vision quest?’
‘Every day. A lot.’
‘Good.’
Ammadin put the last crystal into the saddlebags, then set the bags down at the head of her bed.
‘Tell me something,’ she went on. ‘Your father, did he threaten to kill you?’
‘Often.’ Zayn looked down at the floor cloth as if he found it suddenly fascinating. ‘Whenever I slipped. That is, whenever I did something that showed I had the talents.’
‘But you Kazraks have laws against murder. Or didn’t you realize that as a child?’
‘Of course I did. But they wouldn’t have applied to me. I wasn’t human. I was demon spawn, and killing me would have been like killing an animal.’
‘How horrible! Is that why you didn’t go asking him awkward questions about demons and the like?’
‘Yes. I don’t suppose you blame me for keeping my mouth shut.’
‘No, I don’t. Zayn, it’s hard to blame you for anything after the things you’ve told me.’
His reaction took her utterly off-guard. He sat stone-still, and the scent of fear wreathed around him.
‘What’s wrong?’ Ammadin said.
‘Nothing.’ Zayn scrambled to his feet. ‘I just remembered that I promised Dallador I’d help him net those fish.’
In two strides he reached the tent flap and ducked out without looking back. Now what had brought that on? She considered asking him outright – no one in the Tribes would have dared refuse to answer such questions from a spirit rider – but she had seen real pain in his eyes. She would wait and watch, she decided, rather than press on some old wound. Still, she got up and left the tent.
Outside the sunset still glimmered in the sky, and the air was turning cool. Since there was no Bane against a woman watching men fish, she walked down to the river, flecked with light like gold coins, and saw Zayn and Dallador working side by side in the waist-deep shallows among dark red water reeds. Their clothes lay on the bank. As she watched they began hauling in the net, heavy with fish to judge by the silver roil in the water. With each pull they took a step back, dragging the fish to their doom in the open air. Water streamed down their shoulders and backs and highlighted the criss-cross of whip scars on Zayn’s dark skin. Dallador’s pale hair gleamed, fiery in the sunset light.
From behind her she heard someone walking up and turned to see Maradin, bringing a stack of big baskets to carry the fish to camp.
‘Oh, it’s you, Ammi!’ Maradin smiled in obvious relief. She set the baskets down and laid a hand on her shirt, over the charm that protected her from jealousy. ‘I didn’t know who was down here.’
‘And you thought she was watching your husband?’ Ammadin smiled at her.
‘Well, yes, I know I’m awful. The charm has really helped, though.’ Maradin gave her a sly smile. ‘I’ll bet you came down to watch Zayn.’
‘No, I came down because I’m worried about Zayn. A broken spirit quest is a really dangerous thing.’
‘I just bet.’
‘Maddi!’
‘Oh all right, I’ll stop, I’ll stop.’ Maradin turned her attention to the river. ‘You know, I think we’d better go back to the tents. Zayn’s not going to want to come out of the water while we’re here. He’s a Kazrak, after all.’
‘You’re right. Let’s go.’
In the morning Ammadin left the camp and rode a couple of miles upstream to look for spirit pearls. Where purple rushes grew high in the water, she dismounted and began searching, but although she walked a good distance along the bank, she saw none. Normally, this early in the summer, she should have found several clutches or at the least the occasional lone specimen. She unsaddled her horse and let him roll, then slacked the bit to let him drink. She set him to graze, then sat on the bank beside her saddle and saddlebags and considered the swift-flowing water, murmuring as it trembled the thick stands of reeds. Occasionally she saw a flash of silver or brown as a fish darted among them.
Without spirit pearls nearby, would Water Woman try to reach her? Would she even be listening if Ammadin called out to her? There was of course only one way to find out. Ammadin took the three sleeping crystals out of her saddlebag, unwrapped them, laid the wrappings on the ground, and set the crystals carefully upon those, not the ground itself. Sunlight fell across them and flashed like lightning as the spirits began to wake. Within each crystal she could now see the spirit as a fine silver line spinning around the device’s centre. While they fed, she considered how to phrase her command. To make a spirit serve her, the shaman had to chant the exact right words in the spirits’ ancient language in a particular way, sounding each syllable in a deep, vibrating voice.
Ammadin could remember how Water Woman had addressed her and decided to try turning her words into the command formula. She rose to her knees, took a deep breath, and began to intone.
‘Spirit, awake! Open hear me. Open hear me.’
Nothing. All three spirits merely spun, feeding on the sunlight. What exactly am I trying to do? Ammadin asked herself. She tried again.
‘Spirit, awake! Open call out. Open call out.’
In one crystal the spirit swelled into a silver spiral, but it chirped rather than singing a note. A start, at any rate – Ammadin wrapped the other two crystals up, slipped them into their pouches, and put them safely away into her saddlebags. By the time she