Trickster's Touch Page 3

  Rimble yawned and sat up. "I'm listening."

  Kindra hesitated. "You have a great fear, yes? Fear for the future?"

  "Yeah," said Trickster. "Great Being says 'change or be changed.' And that means everyone, see. Even the Greatkin. You know how Mattermat is about change. It's not his nature. It's mine."

  "And if Mattermat doesn't surrender, all of creation will suffer?"

  "That's about the size of it," agreed Rimble with a despondent sigh.

  Kindra grinned, exposing long teeth, yellowed with age. "How about a jolt of the fantastic. Get Jinndaven to help you—"

  "Easier said than done. I've pissed him off recently."

  "Nonsense. Jinndaven loves you. What's more he needs you. You're the only Greatkin who'll listen to his wild ideas. The tame ones are fine for everyone else. But he's got nowhere to go with his wild ones—except to you, Father." Kindra purred briefly. "Anyway, we'll do this thing backward."

  "Sounds promising," said Trickster. He loved doing things backward.

  "We thought you'd like it." Kindra chuckled. "We'll also do the unexpected.

  We'll go through the mortals. We'll make the change in them first. When they change, it will affect the Greatkin at Eranossa and Neath. Myth does that. It reaches out in all directions. Has its impact on Greatkin and mortal alike."

  Rimble pursed his lips. Then he said, "Mattie won't expect this. In fact, I don't even think he believes the mortals have any effect on Eranossa at all.

  Divine Will only goes one way."

  "That is his great error," said Kindra, her expression sage.

  Trickster started to pace. "And of course the unknown universes interpenetrate the known universes. I likes it, I does. I likes it a lot."

  Trickster looked wistfully at Kindra. "They do nothing but criticize me in Eranossa. I'd dearly love to put them in their highfaluted places. Neath style."

  Kindra nodded. "Myths aren't short on blood and horror. We'll tell the tale here. You give us the main players, and we'll embellish. As it's told in Soaringsea, the tale will gather momentum. The people involved will feel the pull of the myth and begin to act on it. Myth and mortal will mold each other. One request, though."

  "Anything."

  "We want a part."

  "You have a part," said Trickster. "You're talking right now—"

  "Yes, but this is a bit part," countered Kindra and several of the other Mythrrim. "We want to make an appearance in mortal time and space.

  We've grown curious during our years of retreat. We want to see the progress of the two-leggeds on the mainland. After all, we were their teachers."

  "Progress?" said Trickster dubiously. "That's a kind word for it."

  "Nevertheless, we want to visit the mainland, Father."

  Trickster considered this possibility. "Well, this is a tricksterish tale. The unexpected is the norm. Why not? The more havoc the better. You can visit Speakinghast, the bastion of tidiness, logic, and realism. Ugh," added Rimble, rolling his eyes with distaste.

  Kindra flapped her wings with annoyance. "We don't wish to create havoc, Father. We're creatures of peace—"

  "Hey, now, wait a minute. Peace isn't my thing at all. There's a Greatkin for that and it ain't me. If it's peace you want, go see—"

  Kindra interrupted Trickster crisply. "The end of a quantum leap is a new stability, Father. That's a kind of peace. We want a share in it."

  Rimble grumbled and swore under his breath.

  Kindra began to laugh. "Change or be changed, Father."

  Trickster stiffened.

  The Mythrrim roared—literally—with guffaws and giggles. The island shook with the sound of their voices. Trickster put his hands over his ears and wondered if he should dematerialize until the Mythrrim subsided. Finally Kindra stopped rolling about on the ground.

  Still chuckling, Kindra sat up and said, "Rimble-Rimble on you, Father."

  The laughter started all over again.

  2

  By her own admission, Elder Hennin of Suxonli Village was a world-class villain, and she liked herself this way. Tammirring-born, she had inherited all of the psychic gifts of her native landdraw: prophecy, telepathy, and visualization. The good she could have made of these gifts was inestimable. For her own reasons, however, Hennin had distorted these gifts and bent them to her personal will. A renegade Mayanabi Nomad of considerable rank, Hennin possessed the training to twist anything to her advantage. Interested in enhancing her own spiritual power base in Suxonli, Hennin had done the unthinkable. She had revised the original Mythrrim tales about Trickster told by the Mythrrim Beasts themselves in centuries gone by. The villagers were an uneducated group for the most part, and Hennin had dazzled them with her brilliance and persuasive logic. In time, she had set herself up as an expert on the rituals of Greatkin Rimble, drawing others like Cobeth into her webs of intrigue and deceit. Cobeth was dead now due to an unfortunate accident at a Trickster's Hallows held last year in Speakinghast. Hennin missed his company, not because she had liked him, but because he had done her bidding with eagerness. Cobeth had been her long arm, her menace at a distance. Now she had no one to carry out her schemes—until tonight.

  Tonight, she had practiced the art of visualization with such mastery that she had not only bent the landdraw of Suxonli to her will, but she had created a physical form for the draw to use. It was tall, gray, shuffling, and intelligent. She could never have brought the draw under her control if Greatkin Zendrak had not cursed it sixteen years ago. Fortunately for Hennin's purposes, Zendrak's curse had packed tremendous power—after all, he was a Greatkin.

  Cursed, the landdraw had responded to Zendrak's rage like plants exposed to the conflagration of napalm. The draw had screamed, withered, and become hideous. No children born after this time had survived. As it stood now, Suxonli Village had no future. Hennin decided to change this—not out of the goodness of her heart, of course. She had no compassion for the barren women of the village or the mutant things that were born and died within minutes of taking their first breaths. All Hennin wanted was power.

  Personal power. Control of the landdraw assured her an unlimited amount.

  But what was landdraw?

  Landdraw was intelligent. In any birth, three factors determined the genetic and psychological inheritance of the child: mother, father, and draw. Once a child was conceived, the pregnant mother could not cross from one country or draw into another. To do so would abort the child. Each landdraw left a specific psychic imprint of talents on the newborn as well as any number of physical and emotional characteristics that faithfully reflected the region in which the child had been conceived. Earthquake-prone Jinnjirri gave birth to a race of people who enjoyed "breaking new ground." Most of them grew up to be artists, iconoclasts, and political dissidents. The hair and gender of this passionate people shifted with their moods like storms and sunshine playing hide-and-seek across the Jinnjirri Central Plains.

  In contrast to the freewheeling Jinnjirri, the Saambolin-born were as emotionally contained as the lakes that dotted Saambolin's tidy landscape.

  Speakinghast, the capital of Saambolin, was clean, orderly, and organized.

  This city boasted most of Mnemlith's lawmakers, administrators, and educators among its number.

  Predictably Sathmadd, the Greatkin of Mathematics, Organization, and Red Tape, was the patron of this fair city.

  In the southwest the desert country of Asilliwir produced a people of nomadic temperament. Composed mostly of rolling sand and treeless islands, the draw of Asilliwir fashioned a people who lusted for all the things this arid land could not sustain. Over the centuries, the Asilliwir had become the natural traders of Mnemlith, their prices high and their goods exotic. Although this race engaged prima-rily in commerce and business, its exchange included not only money but news. The Asilliwir caravan wagons covered thousands of miles every year; in short, the Asilliwir kept all of Mnemlith informed about the issues (and gossip) of the day.

  T
o the west lay Piedmerri. This land race echoed the fertile, protected valleys found in this country. Here was a people who were round-faced and blessed with an abundant ability to conceive and foster children everywhere, their schools famous for putting the needs of the children first.

  Generally cheerful and large-of-lap, the Pieds were a gentle people.

  In the southwest stood the sea-loving Dunnsung-born. This race was a close cousin to the artistic Jinnjirri. The Dunnsung were gifted with beautiful voices that slid up and down the scale with ease and power.

  Theirs was a musical talent that could make even the most callous weep.

  Dunnsung mothers often gave birth in the shallow waters of the sea which surrounded the Dunnsung peninsula, the rhythm of the waves imprinted on the psyches of this fair-haired people from the first moment of life.

  And finally to the far north lay Tammirring. Cold, remote, and mountainous, the Tammirring draw impressed its people with a love of secrets. A race of extreme psychic sensitivity, the Tammirring-born usually wore veils to protect themselves. This draw produced seers and mystics, and Elder Hennin was no exception. Native ability paired with an accelerated Mayanabi training from her youth now made Elder Hennin a formidable adversary.

  Currently, like Rimble, Elder Hennin was conducting an experiment; she was meddling with nature; specifically, the venom of the holovespa wasp.

  Unlike Rimble, however, Elder Hennin didn't care one whit if this experiment was remotely in line with the wishes of the Presence. And this was the great difference between Hennin and Trickster. Unfortunately, Hennin's understanding and interpretation of Rimble's activities among the Greatkin sadly missed the bigger picture. For Hennin, Rimble was an excuse to do whatever she pleased to whomever she pleased without guilt or conscience.

  Since Hennin had been raised in Suxonli Village, the place most sacred to Trickster in all Mnemlith, Hennin felt she had an inside and therefore more correct view of Trickster's real nature. After all, the Mythrrim had given Suxonli the honor of enacting Trickster's ritual of remembrance each fall: Rimble's Revel. Secure in her "knowledge," Elder Hennin believed herself to be a kind of mediumistic mouthpiece for Rimble. No one had challenged this until Trickster's daughter came along and spoiled the charade. Before Kelandris could really speak, however, Hennin silenced her. And for the last sixteen years Kelandris had remained silent—lost in the miasma of her own craziness. With the help of Trickster's son and an argumentative group of seven other Contraries, Kelandris had regained her sanity in the last year.

  Hennin had recently discovered this and intended to destroy Kelandris for once and for all. A toxic dose of drugs and a severe beating had not killed the woman sixteen years ago. But Akindo would. Hennin smiled. Yes, Akindo most certainly would. Akindo would be her long arm of menace now.

  It would do her bidding; it would carry a hive of deadly poison on its back to Kelandris. And that was all to the good, she thought as she fed a poisonous pollen to a hive of agitated holovespa wasps. As far as Hennin was concerned, there could be only one wasp queen from Suxonli Village.

  Hennin.

  And while she was at it, she thought to herself with pleasure, she might as well kill off the idiots who lived at that house in Speakinghast. As she saw it, three months ago the Kaleidicopians had indirectly caused the death of her favorite student: Cobeth of Jaiz. So she had a score to settle with them, and with their ring leader, Zendrak. He had once been her Mayanabi teacher. When Hennin refused to wash his dishes one day—informing him that she was beyond "all that"—he kicked her out of his house and told her to return when she had lost some of her arrogance. Hennin liked her arrogance and so had never lost it. Nor did she ever return to Zendrak's tutelage. All in all, Hennin felt terribly justified in harming these people.

  And now she finally had the perfect means. Akindo. Akindo was the name she had given to the ambulatory draw of Suxonli, the thing that shuffled, the thing she now controlled. No one but Hennin herself was immune to Akindo. Hennin smiled, imagining herself to be acting on behalf of Greatkin Rimble himself.

  Funny thing about it—she was.

  3

  It was winter in Mnemlith. A small inn near the border of Jinnjirri and Saambolin stood banked in two-foot snow drifts, icicles from last week's momentary thaw hanging off the roof like crystal spikes, the setting sun shining golden through them as it disappeared over the distant mountains.

  A Jinnjirri-born woman trudged through the freshly fallen snow, her destination the small woodshed behind the inn. Her name was Aunt.

  A friend of the innkeeper's, Aunt had just offered to bring in a new load of dry wood for the fireplace in the eating hall. She was bundled from top to bottom in brightly dyed wools and fuzzy boots. Her Jinnjirri hair escaped the confines of her stocking cap, turning a cheery shade of yellow as she whistled a happy tune. Her yellow hair telegraphed her good mood to two stableboys who were busily grooming a couple of horses belonging to guests of the inn. They were Jinnjirri-born like herself, and grinned as she passed them. It would be good, thought Aunt to herself, to be in Jinnjirri shortly. She had spent the last three months in the bustling but stuffy Saambolin city named Speakinghast. She longed for her Jinnjirri home in the northwest. Nothing moved in Saambolin—not the ground or the opinions of its people.

  Aunt sighed opening the door to the woodshed. As she did so a cold blast of air, seemingly from the inside of the squat building, dislodged her hat and spun it against the nearby wall of the stable. Frowning, Aunt went to pick up her hat. The horses she had just passed shied and threw their heads nervously. The Jinnjirri stableboys tried to calm them. They met with remarkably little success. With each passing moment, the agitation of the horses increased. Hearing the frantic whinnies of the horses and the surprised shouts of the boys, Aunt ran back to the stable. When she arrived there, one of the horses threw himself against the rope shank that held him, and broke it. Suddenly free, the bay horse bolted. His stablemate screamed after him, plaintively. Aunt reached up to calm the mare. Snorting the mare reared in fear against her. Shocked, Aunt jumped out of the way.

  Never in her life had she had an animal respond with fear toward her.

  Before Aunt could think about this further, the mare also ripped free from the shank that bound her. Like the bay gelding she ducked out of the stable and galloped away across the adjacent snow-covered pasture. None of the three Jinnjirri said anything. They were all speechless. After a while, Aunt grunted and returned to the woodshed.

  As she slipped through the half-open door, she was stung instantly on the exposed part of her neck by one of Elder Hennin's holovespa wasps. Aunt flicked it away angrily, saying, "Never heard of such a thing this time of year. Wasps die in fall," she added, rubbing the place where the wasp had deposited her venom. The reaction to the poison would take a few minutes to set in. Unaware that she had less than a quarter hour left to live, Aunt gathered wood for the inn.

  As she piled logs in her strong arms, she puzzled over the strange behavior of the horses. "Like they were terribly afraid of something. Me possibly,"

  she noted. Aunt sighed. Nothing in nature had acted as it should for the past year. Autumn had been unseasonably warm and winter had been unusually heavy with snowfall. The way things were going, Aunt wondered if monsoons would replace thunderstorms come summer. But, she reminded herself, this was Jinnaeon, when nothing would behave predictably. This was Trickster's glory, the transition between two ages when the foundations of civilization would shake and perhaps tumble to the ground.

  All that was false would be exposed and all that was true would remain standing. Such was the action of Greatkin Rimble. He was the tester of the Real, and this was his time. Touching the sting on her neck again, Aunt smiled ruefully, thinking about how the constellation known as the Wasp was ascendant in the northern sky now. Had been since fall. Aunt shrugged, picking up some stray kindling. So why should she be the least surprised that a holovespa had managed to survive winter? The Wasp was one of
Rimble's other names. Old Yellow Jacket, they called him in Suxonli. Aunt winced. Suxonli. What a disaster.

  Aunt was a master herbalist and healer. She was also a member of the spiritual confraternity known as the Order of the Mayanabi Nomads. Her membership in this somewhat secret society gave her access to a world view uniquely different from that held by most of the landdraws of Mnemlith. Whereas the villagers of Suxonli blamed Kelandris, Trickster's daughter, for the tragedy of that night, Aunt blamed the ignorance of the villagers themselves.

  Aware that two-legged belief and interest in the Greatkin was on the wane, sixteen years ago Trickster devised the means to shock the very geological foundation of Mnemlith into wakefulness and remembrance. This infusion of the New had been a prophesied event. His own daughter, Kelandris, was to have acted as a kind of two-legged ground wire for the geo-electric current that would pour through her body during the turning dance celebrated in Rimble's honor at Trickster's Hallows in Suxonli every autumn. But raised in ignorance like the members of her adopted village, neither Kelandris nor the villagers had known she was Rimble's daughter.

  That fateful night power had risen in her. Power had poured through her.

  Power had struck the draw and spun out of control. Power had then killed the eight people who had joined her in the turning ceremony. Including Kelandris, this small group was Rimble's original ennead, his Nine. Eight died that night. Only Kelandris survived the turn.

  Everyone wanted to know how she had raised such power in the first place.

  In all the years of dancing for Rimble, nothing like this had ever happened.

  Then the village discovered Kelandris was menstruating for the first time that night. This was a village taboo. Although no one (except Hennin) knew why, no Wasp Queen was allowed to dance on the eve of her first blood.

  Perceiving that sixteen-year-old Kelandris had willfully broken this law, the villagers were outraged. Elder Hennin, who had never liked Kelandris since the moment the child had been brought into the community as a homeless infant, decided the girl must be made into an example. The village indulged in a mock trial—or so it seemed to Kelandris—and pronounced her without kin: akindo. She must be punished severely, said all of the elders. She must face the Ritual of Akindo. So Kelandris was beaten and force-fed a toxic dose of holovespa venom. Either of these two tortures would have killed a normal person. However, Kelandris was not a normal person. She was a Greatkin. Furthermore, she was the daughter of the Patron of the Impossible, the Unexpected, and the Deviant. So she did not die. Carried by Zendrak her lover-brother, out of Tammjrring into nearby Piedmerri, Kelandris of Suxonli was nursed back to physical health by none other than Aunt herself—at Zendrak's request. The emotional healing of Kelandris was still continuing, however. no one knew how long that would take, thought Aunt, again touching the slightly swollen sting on her neck.