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. She swallowed and frowned. The part Aunt hated most about the whole Suxonli thing was the fact that Suxonli refused to this day to be held

accountable for their part in the tragedy. Kelandris had been prophesied, for Presence sake. The village elders should have trained her as a mystic. But did they? No. Why? Because the only person in the village with knowledge of this kind had perceived Kelandris as her spiritual rival. Aunt chuckled sourly. Hennin's assessment was truly laughable. Kelandris was so far out

of and above Hennin's spiritual station, it made one giddy to think about it. Kelandris wasn't a Mayanabi; she was an incarnate Greatkin like her brother, Zendrak. The world had not seen such ones as these for centuries. No, there was no comparison. None. Aunt swallowed again, noticing that she was having a little trouble doing so. Well, she had been stung on the neck; some swelling was to be expected. Aunt carried the wood out of the shed and started back toward

the inn. Aunt continued to reflect on Kelandris. Despite Kel's best efforts to make Aunt hate her during the time that Kelandris healed in Piedmerri, Aunt had grown to love the troubled woman and even now wished her well. Aunt weighed what had happened in Suxonli from yet another perspective, and considered the following carefully: Being a Greatkin, even untrained and ignorant as she had been, Kelandris would naturally have attempted to make the two-leggeds of Mnemlith become aware of their distant but very real relationship to the Greatkin. Greatkin were great kin—not gods and goddesses. And from the Greatkin point of view, two-leggeds were Greatkin in training. In time, the Greatkin expected the entire race of two-leggeds to take their place on the evolutionary line along with their «older» brothers and sisters. So even at sixteen Kelandris would have felt the impulse to help the people of Suxonli remember their divine inheritance. Aunt pursed her lips, the logs in her arms feeling heavier. What if the tragedy in Suxonli had been something more than simply a situation that pitted village law against cosmic law? What if Kelandris had unwittingly but very naturally taken on the ignorance and cruelty of the villagers—brought it out into the open by her heinous actions—and tried to absorb it, thus making the emotional burden of this

twisted village lighter? It was a possibility that no one had ever looked at, thought Aunt. If this were true, no wonder it was taking Kelandris so long to heal. Thanks to Hennin's influence, for years now Suxonli had been a hotbed of decadence and amorality. Aunt winced. Trickster often duped those he loved best. Was it possible that Kelandris had been his dupe and Greatkin self-sacrifice? Was this why he had not told Zendrak of the trial and Ritual of Akindo until it was too late? Because Rimble had wanted Kelandris to help Suxonli? Possible, concluded Aunt. And not very nice if you view it from the two-legged perspective. Aunt stumbled in the snow. Falling to her knees, Aunt suddenly realized she was feeling very light-headed. Her pulse was also racing and her throat felt thick. Her healer's senses alert now, she dropped the logs where she sat and staggered through the drifts toward the inn. Pushing open the back door that led into the kitchen, she knocked a serving lad out of the way as she

ran into the pantry. Pulling jars of herbs off of the shelf, she ordered the head cook to make her a tea comprised of two parts stingtrap and one part five-alive. The first was an antidote to severely allergic wasp and bee reactions and the second was a heart stimulant. Water already boiled on the wood stove, so Aunt felt confident she would be able to stop the wasp poison from doing her lethal harm. She put the herb mixture to her lips and

drank it. Minutes later, she realized her body was going into shock. Opening her trained Mayanabi senses, she slumped against the wall. Then Aunt sent her closest friend a last message. Protect Kelandris. Protect the Nine. Protect Yafatah. Outside in the snow near the barn, something dressed in gray shuffled and drooled. A mouth opened on its smooth face, yellow teeth glistening. It smiled. The experiment had been successful. The victim was dead, it said telepathically to Elder Hennin. What draw? Jinnjirri. Selection was random. Fine. Go on to Speakinghast. Tell me when you have killed Rimble's Nine. As you wish, replied Akindo. *4*

Fasilla received Aunt's dying message while bartering for a bolt of blue silk at a Jinnjirri shop near the southwest corner of Jinnjirri. The shop stood less than fifty miles from where Aunt lay dead in the kitchen at the Saambolin inn. Fasilla, who was Asilliwir-born and a natural haggler, stopped bartering midsentence, her thirty-six- year-old face paling. She was not used to hearing voices inside her head; she was not a Tammirring or a Mayanabi Nomad. Licking her lips nervously, Fasilla bought the silk for its

original price and hurriedly left the Jinnjirri shop, the bolt under her arm. Fasilla was on a buying trip for several members of the Kaleidicopia Boarding House in Speakinghast. She had accompanied Aunt as far as the Saambolin border and left the Jinnjirri Mayanabi there to spend time with Aunt's other Mayanabi cronies. Fasilla, who had a healthy dislike of

religious types, had declined Aunt's invitation to stay the night at the inn. Fasilla could tolerate Aunt's involvement in the Order of the Mayanabi Nomads, but only because they went back a long way. Aunt and Fasilla had attended herbalist school in Piedmerri some twenty years ago and remained fast friends ever since. Fasilla had a daughter—her only child—whose name was Yafatah. She had left the girl in Speakinghast under the care of Barlimo, the Jinnjirri architect that ran the Kaleidicopia Boarding House. Dropping the bolt of blue material into the back of her wagon, Fasilla reached in her pocket and pulled out her daughter's last letter to her. Her hands shook as she unfolded the letter. Had she missed something? What kind of danger were Yafatah and the others in? Swallowing, Fasilla read: Dearest Ma, Tis still snowing here in the city. Has been off and on ever since you left two

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