The Farris Channel (22 page)

Meanwhile, people came and went, nobody staying longer than to warm up and grab a bite to eat. With the full moon two days ago had come a shift in the weather pattern that had held since the first storm. Their experts predicted more storms, and the race was on to get shelters built. The Tanhara and Hope stonemasons worked non-stop, making foundations, hearths and chimneys using unskilled laborers.

Logging crews were ranging far, and even saddle horses were being used to drag logs back for buildings. The draft animals returning with Lexy would be a big help.

Most of the logistics of deploying this labor force was being done by Benart and the few assistants he’d trained working with Val, Dakin and Rimon, to keep the renSimes from using too much selyn at heavy labor. Nobody consulted the argumentative new Council over any decision.

Surrounded by warm, welcoming commiseration, celebration, cheer and the aromas of home, his daughter didn’t yet know about the new Council or the strife it had continued to create, nor did he want her to know tonight. Rimon couldn’t recall a single constructive accomplishment of the duly elected group. Strife seemed to be their primary product, and that would not do Lexy any good tonight.

Eventually, Benart turned up and circled the room hugging and congratulating, thanking those who had worked so hard to get the new wall up only hours after the old one had come down. Then Jhiti blew in on a gust of icy wind, followed by two women and a man who had to wrestle the outer door shut against rising wind. The man’s riding boot was missing a heel. The four of them came in searching for Rimon. That caught Lexy’s attention.

A child came out of the kitchen carrying a jug of tea, stopped at the stage to pour for the performers and spoke to Sian. Sian handed his precious shiltpron to one of the Fort Hope channels and headed for Benart.

Jhiti, Benart and Val converged on Rimon. Before they made it across the crowded dining hall, Bruce came in via the kitchen door followed by Kahleen and BanSha. From the front door came Zedros dressed in the coveralls he wore when working in the laundry and still limping from his injury, followed by Tuzhel.

Noting this parade, Dakin the Tanhara scheduler, and then Maigrey excused themselves from their conversations around the room and drifted toward Rimon while all the newcomers sped through their greetings, grabbed some food and made for Rimon’s position. Xanon was conspicuously absent from Maigrey’s side.

Lexy detached herself from her well wishers and wound through the crowd, working the fields with Rimon in the long practiced manner. Aipensha’s absence hung in the pattern they wove. Then from the kitchen door came Solamar, sliding neatly into the third position Aipensha had usually occupied as if he’d trained with them all his life.

The room flowed with warm, ever brightening glee as Solamar felt Lexy working the fields with him.

Everything in Rimon wanted to flee out the front door and climb to the new catwalk.
This will spoil her homecoming. I don’t want her stressed like this.

He shifted a few steps to his right, wrapped his grip around Bruce’s fields and took charge of Lexy and Solamar’s fields as Rushi, the Tanhara Companion trainee, mounted the stage beside the Fort Hope channel who had the shiltpron. The channel struck up a strange tune but Rushi seemed to know it and began to sing. Within the first three bars of the tune, half the room was up and dancing.

The shiltpron, when played by any Sime created music that could be both heard and felt nagerically. When played by a channel, working with a Companion, the instrument was a powerful nageric amplifier that could damp the Sime’s awareness of Need, or sharpen it to an irresistible pitch. In a large group like this it was potentially either therapeutic enjoyment or a major disaster.

This Fort Hope channel had musical skill, and worked smoothly with Rimon and the two other dominant channels in the room to raise the mood.
Maybe that’s what Fort Hope is about,
thought Rimon,
hope.

Jhiti reached Rimon first and stood tapping his toe in time with the dance music, enjoying the ambient. “I called a meeting, Rimon. We all have to talk.” The guards who had followed Jhiti in converged through the crowd.

“Lexy hasn’t had a minute to rest since she rode in.”

“She’d be more upset if she didn’t hear this first hand. And I don’t think any of those new Councilors will be here. We have to craft a decision.”

Now Rimon understood the channel taking the shiltpron, using the artistic field work of the instrument and the mass of dancers to obscure any nageric hint of the secret meeting taking place in the middle of the party.

“New Councilors?” asked Lexy, and by turn as they arrived everyone else filled her in on the growing factionalism threatening to paralyze the Fort building efforts before shelters were completed for the winter.

Tuzhel, joining them last, finished the story with, “And just this morning, Alind told Val not to let me have transfer from Rimon because it would be a waste of Rimon’s channeling talent.”

“Alind said that?” asked Rimon astonished.
Val won’t pay any attention.
He locked eyes with Val and shook his head. She grinned back.

Lexy drew Tuzhel close to her side with one arm, reaching across him to embrace BanSha too while Garen put his arm around her shoulders from the other. She zlinned BanSha no doubt looking for any trace of changeover as she said, “Alind thinks that’s what he was elected to do?”

“Lexy,” interrupted Rimon. “We’ll talk about this Council problem another time. Tuzhel, don’t you worry about your transfers. Lexy, Solamar and I will take care of you. You are not a waste of our resources.” Privately, Rimon was worried about Tuzhel. If he was skittish about his next transfer now, only four days after his second disjunction transfer, he was headed for trouble.

Jhiti said, “It’s this whole Fort’s wellbeing that I wanted to talk to you all about.” He looked around at the senior management of Fort Rimon, the group of people from which the Council was usually drawn. “I’ve been talking to Oberin all day, getting updates on what the scouts have been seeing over at Shifron. Then tonight, came this report.” He flicked a tentacle at his scouts. “Go on, Kreg, tell them.”

Rimon recognized Kreg as one of the first three Fort Hope scouts to arrive, a frostbite case. Now he was walking around in a boot without a heel.

“Tuib Farris,” said Kreg, “the Freebanders are raiding out-Territory, have been we think since they took Shifron. As you predicted, they’re stockpiling Gens for the winter. We followed a group of them, all in Need, to the border, and waited. They returned not in Need, hauling unconscious Gens slung over horses, with a dozen more Gens walking behind a wagon loaded with grain. Some of the bags leaked leaving a trail we followed. In the bushes near a latrine pit, we found this.” He pointed to a folded paper Jhiti held.

Jhiti handed it to Rimon. “Looks like Genlan to me.”

“It is,” said Rimon, whose training had included the Gen language, but he couldn’t decipher the handwriting that appeared to have been written clumsily in blood not ink.
Probably pricked a finger to get the blood, and if so the author is long dead. The selyn disturbance, even from a tiny prick, could trigger Killmode in a Raider.
Rimon handed it to Tuzhel. “Can you read that?”

Tuzhel took the paper and held it up to the light shed by the overhead chandelier. It held smoky tallow candles among the usual beeswax ones. They could be short of candles before spring, too.

A drop of wax fell on the paper like a tear. Tuzhel stepped back from Lexy’s shadow. Reading, the young renSime paled, his nager spiraling in on itself. “They’re taking us to a town called Thiprin, it says. It’s got to mean Shifron. It says their leader is named, I don’t know. It’s spelled out like it sounds. I think it’s the Simelan word Stonedragon like in the working song the stonemasons sing.”

That puzzled everyone. Tuzhel continued reading, “Something blurry, and then it says they seem to worship her. Don’t try to save us. Burn the woods on the sides of this valley and in spring the floods will drive them out. Be sure to get their outpost too. It’s on a hill with a wall, so it could survive a flood.” He looked up. “It’s signed by my best friend’s mother. She was a kind woman who made the best roast goose ever. Was. She’s dead, isn’t she?”

For several seconds, Solamar, Lexy and Rimon were very busy containing the nageric pulse that statement produced in all of them. The shiltpron and whirling dancers masked it from everyone else in the room.

Rimon agreed, “I’m very sorry, Tuzhel. I wish there were something we could do to save them all.”

“I know. Everyone’s told me all the stories of what happens to Forts that interfere with the juncts. I guess I know why they hate you so much, don’t I?”

“I’d guess you do,” agreed Lexy gathering him up against her again. “But if we can survive, one day there won’t be any more Kill. No Gen will ever even think to fear a Sime. No Sime will ever crave Gen pain.”

Her words echoed the vision Rimon had almost forgotten, of standing in an amphitheater and reading to more people than anyone could ever imagine gathering all in one place. It was a vision that would one day come true.

Unconsciously, he put one hand on his belt buckle, took a deep breath and focused again on the matter at hand. “But who’s this Stonedragon?”

“I don’t know,” said Tuzhel. “There’s always new people, and they give everyone a new name when they join.” He looked shyly up at Rimon. “Tuzhel isn’t my name, you know, it’s just what they called me.”

Rimon was mortified. “I’m so sorry I never thought to ask your real name.” Tuzhel simply meant Shorty.

“I’ve kind of gotten used to being just Tuzhel.”

Emotional adjustments to the unthinkable were nearly instantaneous during the first few weeks after changeover. “You may choose any name you wish here. You don’t have to accept what the Raiders decreed.”

“Let’s just keep it Tuzhel, unless I get taller. When I rode with them, I never heard of anyone called Stonedragon, and I wouldn’t expect anyone to just show up and suddenly become leader of the band. They had a sort of order among them and fought to be leader.”

Rimon noted how Tuzhel thought of the Raiders as “them.” Psychologically, he was disjuncting already, though his body might be giving him a fight.

BanSha said, “I know who Stonedragon is!”

They had all forgotten the child among them. A child’s nager was so faint, even Rimon couldn’t clearly zlin him in this ambient. “Who could it possibly be?”

“Clire of course,” answered BanSha. “Remember she always wore that little stone dragon around her neck? She always ended up bossing everyone.” He amended with swift embarrassment, “Except you, Lexy and Aipensha.”

It was pure supposition, but it fit. Rimon nodded and then said, “Kreg, you intercepted this message, and that may buy us some time before someone in that Gen village decides to wipe us out. Were there any Gens following the Raiders back in-Territory?”

“Not that we could zlin,” answered Kaires, a renSime Rimon knew as Tanhara’s best tracker who often partnered with Kreg on scouting missions. “I climbed a tall tree and zlinned their backtrail, but there was nobody as far as I could make out.” She ran tentacles through her short graying hair. “If you’d like, I can run their backtrail and zlin what the Gens are up to.”

“No,” said Rimon and Tuzhel together. “Don’t worry, Tuzhel,” said Rimon. “Kaires is not junct. She wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

“I’m sorry,” said Tuzhel.

BanSha moved a little closer to Tuzhel.

Rimon looked around at the people who had grown into their positions in Fort Rimon, and noted how the Fort Hope and Fort Tanhara people blended smoothly into them. He zlinned the room and noted the absence of Fort Butte.

Rimon gave his decision. “The only thing we should be doing right now is racing to get shelter built before the really bad storms. That, and stockpiling firewood and storing the food dry and safe from vermin. Jhiti, you and Oberin should bring in your scouts to help with the building, as Benart recommends. I want to spread the augmentation work evenly among our renSimes and give the Gens as much physical labor as they can manage side by side with the Simes to stimulate their selyn production. If Clire survives the winter among the raiders, we’ll deal with her then.”

He didn’t think she would survive. If she lost the baby, she’d probably die of complications. If she kept Killing often enough to survive the baby’s prenatal selyn drain, she’d probably die of complications. If she gave birth prematurely, she’d no doubt die of complications. Meanwhile, she was using that supremely well educated brain of hers to engineer raids on Gen Territory, Raids more successful than any Freebanders had managed before.

The Gens would retaliate because the out-Territory Gens didn’t differentiate between Freebanders, Licensed Raiders, town juncts, and Fort holders.

The small meeting broke up before any of the new Council’s followers came in to warm up, and they went their separate ways to carry out Rimon’s decision.

After the party, he had a long talk with Lexy and Garen in one of the infirmary rooms while Solamar worked an extended shift in the Dispensary. Bruce fell asleep the moment he sat down, though every once in a while would wake up to interject, “He’s right you know, Lexy.”