Free Banner of souls by Liz Williams

revive ancient forms of being, converse with their unaltered consciounesses, uncover all the secrets that they hold. And you can raise an army, not just spectral fancies."
    "And the price," the Matriarch said, bitter as frostbite. It was not a question.
    The gaezelles were wheeling away to the north. Yskatarina watched them through the binoculars, the powerful red legs stirring up the dust, the long hair that streamed down their backs, their small curled hands. She sighed to see such grace.
    "Ah, the price." Yskatarina drew the Matriarch aside. "Elaki wants information. All the genetic data that you un-earth must go to her. She is true to the original aims of Nightshade: the ultimate perfection of the sentient form."
    "She would appear to be some distance away from that," the Matriarch said, with a dubious glance at Yskatarina.
    "She wants your help, too, in another, related, matter," Yskatarina said, forcing herself to ignore the slight. "But there is something else that I want." The thought of be-traying Elaki tore at her heart with implanted passion, ar-tificial regret. If it had not been for that small, pure undercurrent of hate, Yskatarina would not have been able to continue. She added, in a gasping whisper, "Something you must do for me."

CHAPTER 7
    Earth
    Lunae stepped through the door into the shadows of the Grandmothers' chamber. The air was musty with the smell of old lamp oil, pungent with narcotic snuff and a salt-weed odor that reminded Lunae of her single clois-tered visit to the shores of Fragrant Harbor. The walls were made of driftwood, a palace of drowned trees, the beams and rafters black and twisted, as though burned. Yet there was soft fur beneath her feet: a striped dark-and-gold skin, bright as a flame and perhaps fifteen feet in length. She thought of Kamchatka, where the kappa had come from, of the Fire Islands. She studied the knots and the warp of the ancient wood, the striped pelt beneath her feet, not wanting to look toward the bed where her Grandmothers lay.
    "Come closer," two voices said, speaking as one. Lu-nae forced herself to glance up. The lamp that hung above the bed had not been lit, so that the voices came from the hidden midst of the drapes. Lunae walked to the foot of the bed and halted. "Stay there, child," the voices said sharply, "where we can see you." Then the lamp flared up and the Grandmothers' faces peered out from between the curtains: one old, one young. Lunae often thought that it was as though Right-Hand, with her sweet voice and ca-ressing manner, was slowly but surely draining the life from her companion until there would be nothing left of old Left-Hand but a husk. She remembered the chrysalis, turning to moth and back again, and shivered.
    "Where is she?" Left-Hand asked querulously, though Right-Hand's lips also moved in silent accompaniment, and when Right-Hand answered, "Why, she is standing before you, blind old thing, do you not see her?" Lunae heard a whispered echo of the words from the other side of the bed. She concentrated on their faces, not wanting to glance down and catch a glimpse of the joined flesh. She had seen it once, when the robes that the Grandmothers wore had slipped aside to reveal a mass of scar tissue, al-most as knotted as the wood of their chamber, revealing lumps and bulges.
    "Why would anyone want to be linked in such a way?" she had asked Dreams-of-War the next day, fighting back revulsion, and the Martian woman, evidently just as bemused, had replied, "I cannot say.
    For me, to touch an-other person is difficult enough."
    So Lunae had once asked the kappa why they had been joined, and the kappa had told her that she did not know, but in her opinion, it was more likely that they had not so chosen, but had come connected from the growing-bag and were incapable of separation.
    "Such things are not uncommon. Sometimes the chil-dren are returned to the mulch, sometimes not. It depends on the family's wishes, and there are many views on these