Brothers of Earth

by C. J. Cherryh

  "Gods!" Val murmured incredulously. "My lord Kta, they are going to ram!"

  "Abandon ship!" Kta shouted. "Val, go-go, man! And you, Kurt-"

  There was no time left. The dark bow of the Indras trireme rushed at Tavi's side, the water foaming white around the gleaming bronze of the vessel's double ram. With a grinding shock of wood Tavi's s rail and deck splintered and the very ship rose and slid sideways in the water, lifted and pushed into ruin by the towering prow of the trireme.

  Kurt flung an arm around the far rail and clung to it, shaken off his feet by the tilting of the deck. With a second tilting toward normal and a grating sound, the trireme began to back water and disengage herself as Tavi's wreckage fell away. Dead were Uttered across the deck. Men screamed. Blood and water washed over the splintered planking.

  "Kurt," Kta screamed at him, "jump!"

  Kurt turned and stared helplessly at the nemet, fearing the sea as much as enemy weapons. Behind him the second of the triremes was coming up on the undamaged side of the listing ship, her oars churning up the bloodied waters. Some of the survivors in the water were struck by the blades, trying desperately to cling to them. The gliding hull rode them under.

  Kta seized him by the arm and pushed him over the rail. Kurt twisted desperately in midair, hit the water hard and choked, fighting his way to the surface with the desperation of instinct.

  His head broke surface and he gasped in air, sinking again as he swallowed water in the chop, his hand groping for anything that might float. A heavy body exploded into the dark water beside him and he managed to get his head above Water again as Kta surfaced beside him.

  "Go limp," Kta gasped. "I can hold you if you do not struggle."

  Kurt obeyed as Kta's arm encircled his neck, went under, and then felt the nemet's hand under his chin lift his face to air again. He breathed, a great gulp of air, lost the surface again. Kta's strong, sure strokes carried them both, but the rough water washed over them. Of a sudden he thought that Kta had lost him-and panicked as Kta let him go-but the nemet shifted his grip and dragged him against a floating section of timber.

  Kurt threw both arms over it, coughing and choking for air.

  "Hold on!" Kta ^napped at him, and Kurt obediently tightened his chilled arms, looking at the nemet across the narrow bit of debris. Wind hit them, the first droplets of rain. Lightning flashed in the murky sky.

  Behind them the galley was coming about. Someone on deck was pointing at them.

  "Behind you," Kurt said to Kta. "They have us in sight- for something."

  Kurt lifted himself from his face on the deck of the trireme, rose to his knees and knelt beside Kta's sodden body. The nemet was still breathing, blood from a head wound washing as a crimson film across the rain-spattered deck. In another moment he began to try to rise, still fighting.

  Kurt took him by the arm, cast a look at the Indras officer who stood among the surrounding crew. Receiving no word from him, he lifted Kta so that he could rise to his knees, and Kta wiped the blood from his eyes and leaned over on his hands, coughing.

  "On your feet," said the Indras captain.

  Kta would not be helped. He shook off Kurt's hand and completed the effort himself, braced his feet and straightened.

  "Your name," said the officer.

  "Kta t'Elas u Nym."

  "T'Elas," the man echoed with a nod of satisfaction. "Aye, I was sure we had a prize. Put them both in irons. Then put about for Indresul."

  Kta gave Kurt a spiritless look, and in truth there was nothing to do but submit. They were taken together into the hold-the trireme having far more room belowdecks than little Tavi-and in that darkness and cold they were put into chains and left on the bare planking without so much as a blanket for comfort.

  "What now?" Kurt asked, clenching his teeth against the spasms of chill.

  "I do not know," said Kta. "But it would surely have been better for us if we had drowned with the rest."'

  XVIII

  Indresul the shining was set deep within a bay, a great and ancient city. Her white triangle-arched buildings spread well beyond her high walls, permanent and secure. Warships and merchantmen were moored at her docks. The harbor and the broad streets that fanned up into the city itself were busy with traffic. In the high center of the city, at the crest of the hill around which it was built, rose a second great ring-wall, encircling large buildings of gleaming white stone, an enormous fortress-temple complex, the Indume, heart and center of Indresul. There would be the temple, the shrine that all Indras-descended revered as the very hearthfire of the universe.

  "The home of my people," said Kta as they stood on the deck waiting for their guards to take them off. "Our land, which we call on in all our prayers. I am glad that I have seen it, but I do not think we will have a long view of it, my friend."

  . Kurt did not answer him. No word could improve matters. In the three days they had been chained in the hold, he had had time to speak with Kta, to talk as they once had talked in Elas, long, inconsequential talks, sometimes even laughing, though the laughter had the taste of ashes. But the one thing Kta had never said was what was likely to happen to Kurt, only that he himself would be taken in charge by the house of Elas-in-Indresul. Kta undoubtedly did suspect and would not say. Perhaps too he knew what would likely become of a human among these most orthodox of Indras. Kurt did not want to foreknow it.

  The mournful echo of sealing doors rolled through the vaulted hall, and through the haze of lamps and incense in the triangular hall burned the brighter glare of the holy

  fire, the rhmei and the phusmeha of the Indume fortress. Kurt paused involuntarily as Kta did, confused by the light and the profusion of faces.

  From some doorway hidden by the haze and the light from the hearthfire there appeared a woman, a shadow hi brocade flanked by the more massive figures of armed men.

  The guards who had brought them from the trireme moved them forward with the urging of their spear shafts. The woman did not move. Her face was clearer as they drew near her; she was goddess-like, tall, willowy. The shining darkness of her hair was crowned with a headdress that fitted beside her face like the plates of a helm, and shimmered when she moved with the swaying of fine gold chains from the wide wings of it. She was nemet, and of incredible beauty: Ylith t'Erinas ev Tehal, Methi of Indresul.

  Her dark eyes turned full on them, and Kta fell on his face before her, full length on the polished stone of the floor. Her gaze did not so much as flicker; this was the obeisance due her. Kurt fell to his knees also, and on his face, and did not look up.

  "Nemet," she said, "look at me." Kta stirred then and sat up, but did not stand. "Your name," she asked him. Her voice had a peculiar stillness, clear and delicate. "Methi, I am Kta t'Elas u Nym."

  "Elas. Elas of Nephane. How fares your house there, t'Elas?"

  "The Methi may have heard. I am the last" "What, Elas fallen?"

  "So Fate and the Methi of Nephane willed it." "Indeed. And how is this, that a man of Indras descent is companioned by a human?" "He is of my house, Methi, and he is my friend." "You are an offense, t'Elas, an affront to my eyes and to the pure light of heaven. Let t'Elas be given to the examination of the house he has defiled, and let their recommendation be made known to me."

  She clapped her hands. The guards moved in a clash of metal and hauled Kta up. Kurt injudiciously flung himself to his knees, halted suddenly with the point of a spear in his side. Kta looked down at him with the face of a man who knew his fate was sealed, and then yielded and went with them. Kurt flashed a glance at Ylith, anger swelling in his throat

  The staff of the spear across his neck brought him half stunned to the marble floor, and he expected it to be through his back in the next instant, but the blow did not come.

  "Human." There was no love in that word. "Sit up."

  Kurt moved his arms and found purchase against the floor. He did not move quickly, and one of his guards jerked him up by the arm and let him go again.

 
; "Do you have a name, human?"

  "My name," he answered with deliberate insolence, "is Kurt Liam t'Morgan u Patrick Edward."

  Ylith's eyes traveled over him and fixed last on his face. "Morgan. This would be your own alien house."

  He made no response. Her tone invited none.

  "Never have I looked upon a living human," Ylith said softly. "Indeed, this seems more intelligent than the Tamurlin, is it not so, Lhe?"

  "I do not believe," said the slender man at her left, "that he is Tamurlin, Methi."

  "He is still of their blood." A frown darkened her eyes. "It is an outrage against nature. One would take him for nemet but for that unwholesome coloration and until one saw his face. Have him stand. I would take a closer look at him."

  Kurt had both his arms seized, and he was pulled roughly and abruptly to his feet, his face hot with shame and anger. But if there was one act that would seal the doom of all Nephane, friends and enemies alike, it was for the friend of Elas-in-Nephane to attack this woman. He stubbornly turned his face away, until the flat of a spear blade against his cheek turned his head back and he met her eyes.

  "Like one of the inim-born," the Methi observed. "So one would imagine them, the children of the upper air, somewhat birdlike, the madness of eye, the sharpness of features. But there is some intelligence there too. Lhe, I would save this human a little time and study him."

  "As the Methi wills it."

  "Put him under restraint, and when I find the time I will deal with the matter." Ylith started to turn away, but paused instead for another look, as if the very reality of Kurt was incredible to her. "Keep him in reasonable comfort. He is able to understand, so let him know that he may expect less comfort if he proves troublesome."

  Reasonable comfort, as Lhe interpreted it, was austere indeed. Kurt sat against the wall on a straw-filled pallet that was the only thing between him and the bare stones of the floor, and shivered in the draft under the door. There was a rounded circlet of iron around his ankle, secured by a chain to a ringbolt in the stones of the wall, and it was beyond his strength to tear free. There was nowhere to go if he could.

  He straightened his leg, dragging the chain along the floor with him, and stretched out facedown on the pallet, doubling his chilled arms under him for warmth.

  Nothing the Tamurlin had done to him could equal the humiliation of this; the worst beating he had ever taken was no shame at all compared to the look with which Ylith t'Erinas had touched him. They had insisted on washing him, which he would gladly have done, for he was filthy from his confinement in the hold, but they leveled spears at him, forced him to stand against a wall and remove what little clothing he still wore, then scrub himself repeatedly with strong soap. Then they hit him with a bucketful of cold water, and gave him nothing with which to dry his skin. There was a linen breechclout, not even the decency of a ctan. That and an iron ring and a cup of water from which to drink, that was the consideration Lhe afforded him.

  Hours passed, and the oil lamp on the ledge burned out, leaving only the light that came through the small barred window from the outer hall. He managed to sleep a little, turning from side to side, warming first his arms and then his back against the mattress.

  Then, without warning or explanation, men invaded his cell and forced him from the room under heavy guard, hastening him along the dim halls, the ring on his ankle band a constant, metallic sound at every other step.

  Upstairs was their destination, a small room somewhere in the main building, warmed by an ordinary fire in a common hearth. A single pillar supported its level ceiling.

  To this they chained his hands, passing the chain behind Mm around the pillar, then they left him, and he was alone for a great time. It was no hardship; it was warm in this room. He absorbed the heat gratefully and sank down at the base of this pillar, leaning against it and bowing his head, willing even to sleep.

  "Human."

  He brought his head up, blinking in the dim light. Ylith had come into the room. She sat down on the ledge beneath the slit of a window and regarded him curiously. She was without the crown now, and her massive braids coiled on either side of her head gave her a strangely fragile grace.

  "You are one of the human woman's companions," she said, "that she missed killing."

  "No," he said, "I came independently."

  "You are an educated human, as she is."

  "As educated as you are, Methi."

  Ylith's eyes registered offense, and, it was possible, amusement. "You are not a civilized human, however, and you are therefore demonstrating your lack of manners."

  "My civilization," he said, "is some twelve thousand years old. And I am still looking for evidence of yours in this city."

  The Methi laughed outright. "I have never met such answers. You hope to die, I take it. Well, human, look at me. Look up."

  He did so.

  "It is difficult to accustom myself to your face," she said. "But you do reason. I perceive that. What is the origin of humans, do you know?"

  It was, religiously, a dangerous question. "We are," he said, "children of one of the brothers of the earth, at least as old as the nemet."

  "But not light-born," said Ylith, which was to say, unholy and lawless. "Tell me this, wise human: does Phan light your land too?"

  "No. One of Phan's brothers lights our world."

  Her brows lifted. "Indeed. Another sun?"

  He saw the snare suddenly, realized that the Indras of the shining city were not as liberal and cosmic in their concept of the universe as human-dominated Nephane.

  "Phan," she said, "has no equals."

  He did not attempt to answer her. She did not rage at him, only kept staring, her face deeply troubled. Not naive, was Ylith of Indresul; she seemed to think deeply, and seemed to find no answer that pleased her. "You seem to me," she said, "precisely what I would expect from Nephane. The Sufaki think such things."

  "The yhia," he said, venturing dangerously, "is beyond man's grasp, is that not so, Methi? And when man seeks to understand, being man and not god, he seeks within mortal limits, and understands his truth in simple terms and under the guise of familiar words that do not expand his mortal senses beyond his capacity to understand. This is what I have heard. We all-being mortal-deal in models of reality, in oversimplifications."

  It was such a thesis as Nym had posed him once over tea, in the peace of the rhmei of Elas, when conversation came to serious things, to religion, to humanity. They had argued and disagreed, and they had been able then to smile and reconcile themselves in reason. The nemet loved debating. Each evening at teatime there was a question posed if there was no business at hand, and they would talk the topic to exhaustion.

  "You interest me," said Ylith. "I think I shall hand you over to the priests and let them hear this wonder, a human that reasons."

  "We are," he said, "reasoning beings."

  "Are you of the same source as Djan-methi?"

  "Of the same kind, not the same politics or beliefs."

  "Indeed."

  "We have disagreed."

  Ylith considered him in some interest. "Tell me, is the color of her hair truly like that of metal?"

  "Like copper."

  "You were her lover."

  Heat flashed to his face. He looked suddenly and resentfully into her eyes. "You are well-informed. Where do you plant your spies?"

  "Does the question offend you? Do humans truly possess a sense of modesty?"

  "And any other feeling known to the nemet," he returned. "I had loved your people. Is this what your philosophy comes to, hating me because I disturb your ideas, because you cannot account for me?"

  He would never have said such a thing outside Elas. The nemet themselves were too self-contained, although he could have said it to Kta. He was exhausted; the hour was late. He came close to tears, and felt shamed at his own outburst.

  But Ylith tilted her head to one side, a little frown creasing her wide-set brows. "You are certainly unlike the
truth I have heard of humans." And after a moment she rose and opened the door, where an elderly man waited, a white-haired man whose hair flowed to his shoulders, and whose ctan and pel were gold-bordered white.

  The old man made a profound obeisance to Ylith, but he did not kneel. By this it was evident that she knew of his presence there, that they had agreed beforehand.

  "Priest," she said, "look on this creature and tell me what you see."

  The priest straightened" and turned his watery eyes on Kurt. "Stand," he urged gently. Kurt gathered his almost paralyzed limbs beneath him and struggled awkwardly to his feet. Suddenly he hoped; he did not know why this alien priest should inspire that in him, but the voice was soft and the dark eyes like a benediction.