Reap the Whirlwind

by C. J. Cherryh

  Kasha and Teo . . . gods. She watched out her window at the bloody sunrise, not really seeing it. Boitan had kept pouring drugs into them until he'd knocked them out. They'd been out of their young minds with grief. Kasha had gone catatonic, and Teo had begun tearing out his own hair in clumps.

  She wasn't sure which had been worse; Kasha's dead eyes, or Teo's near-madness.

  Boitan said it was hysteria; that they'd be mourning more normally when they woke up. She damned well hoped so; she'd only lost one damned fine lad and her successor and . . . someone who had begun to be a treasured friend. They'd lost a third of themselves.

  She remembered only too well how that felt.

  She'd dreaded telling Yuchai, but Jegrai had broken the news to the boy—with a gentle lie. So far as Yuchai was concerned, Zorsha had been working on something for Felaras, not the Sabirn-fire. The child had enough to bear without that on his conscience.

  The candle gave a last flare, and went out.

  She wasn't sure what had happened to Halun; things had been very confused after Boitan had peeled her off the body.

  The thought could have been a summons; someone tapped briefly at her door, and then opened it and slipped inside like a ghost.

  Halun. He looked like a ghost.

  "I thought you'd still be awake," he croaked, voice ruined from weeping. He'd cleaned himself up, but there were black circles all around his bloodshot eyes, and he was as pale as bleached parchment. "Felaras, I have to talk to you."

  She pulled herself up into a sitting position and waved at the bedside chair, wearily. "So talk."

  He did not take the offered seat, although he moved closer to the bed. "It was my fault—" he began.

  She cut him off, angrily. "Dammit, Halun, do I have to hear that from you, too? I've heard it from everybody else—"

  He interrupted. "Felaras, you don't understand!" he cried tightly, his face twisted with grief. "I caused what happened! I was the one ill-wishing you."

  Not what she had expected to hear. She froze, her backbone turned to a column of ice. It took her a moment to recover enough to gasp out an answer. "You? But . . . why?"

  "Ambition," he said, angrily, brokenly. "Stupid, selfish ambition. You had the chair. I wanted it. I convinced myself I only wanted it for the good of the Order, but I lied to myself, I wanted it because I wanted the power. I corrupted myself and persuaded myself I was doing the right thing—I was trying to undermine you at first, and then you and Jegrai. I was trying to get you to make the mistakes that would let us depose you both." He paused for breath, and twisted his hands together so hard the knuckles cracked. "You were protected; so I trained some with the power, and went after you tonight in concert with them. Only I added a little codicil. You probably don't understand—"

  "Only too well, you bastard," she snarled. "I was the one protecting myself."

  He goggled at her a moment. "I—I—" He got control of himself just enough to take up where he'd left off. "I set the wish so that if you were shielded and it bounced off you, it wouldn't go -randomly—I set it to strike whoever was the one nearest you—"

  "You damned fool!" She surged up out of bed and seized him by the throat. Her abused knee shot fire up her leg, pain that she ignored. "You gods-bedamned fool! What have you been doing down there? Sleeping? I just made Zorsha my official successor! Who in the hell else would it take?"

  Halun paled down to near-transparent and shut his eyes, not struggling in her hands at all. "I didn't know . . ." he whispered. "I've been so busy with all those stupid little plots that I didn't know . . . I thought it would get Kasha, Teo—"

  "I ought to break your damned neck with my own two hands!"

  He opened his eyes again and looked directly into hers. His eyes were full of such pain that they nearly burned her soul. There was hell in those eyes, and self-condemnation that was worse than anything she could do to him. "I wish you would," he whispered miserably. "He was—my son in everything but the flesh."

  She looked at her hands, clenched white-knuckled in the fabric of his robe, and back up into his face. It hadn't changed.

  She shoved him away with such force that he staggered and came close to falling over backward. "What the hell am I going to do with you?" she asked, sagging back onto her bed, sick to the bones, and weary past all belief.

  "I don't know," he replied, in profound desolation. "Just . . . I gave him my word to help you. Tell me how, and I will."

  She considered him for a moment, as he stood there, waiting.

  For what? Gods. Help me, he says. How in—

  Then she knew, and rang the bell beside her bed for a novice. "Is there anyone else in the Order working with you?" she asked harshly, as she waited for the youngster to put in an appearance.

  He shook his head. "No. Not even Zetren. All my co-conspirators are down in the valley."

  The novice arrived, slipping in the still-open door; a thin, dark girl-child of about fourteen. Memory put name to her; Daisa, another of Ardun's endless brood of daughters, and older than she looked, about to get full Sword status. Another Kasha-in-the-making, for which she was grateful. It'll be a long time before I can see a blond lad without crying. . . .

  "Get me Thaydore and Kitri," she said, "And Boitan, if he's still awake."

  The child vanished. "Get me pen and paper out of that drawer over there," she said, pointing to the little writing-desk in the corner of her room.

  Halun did so, as docile to her orders as the novice. She pulled the lap desk out from under the bed and set it up.

  Then she glared at him; still in a rage, but no longer a white-hot one—and a rage that was fast being cooled by his very real guilt and sorrow.

  "Sit down," she ordered. "You're going to be here a while."

  He took the chair, obediently.

  "Now," she said, pen poised. "Let's have all this from the beginning."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Halun lit his lamp and hung it from the centerpole of his tent, and wished with all his heart that this farce was over.

  The Khene's brother had come to Halun's tent as soon as he had returned from the Fortress; more than a week after he'd gone pounding wildly back up the road. Iridai brought word that the meeting they'd scheduled before all this happened was assembled and waiting for him.

  Gods be thanked, this will be the last.

  Behind him, Iridai put one hand lightly on Halun's shoulder. "I . . . my condolences, wise one," he said, awkward now that the message had been delivered. "I understand that the young man was once your pupil."

  Halun shuddered, but did not remove the man's hand. I have to act the same; thank the gods they all think it's just that I'm mourning Zorsha. "Thank you," he said, stumbling over the simple words. These men are acting out of belief that Jegrai is wrong. I acted out of lust for power. They aren't barbarians. I'm the savage. "Yes, he was—something more than just a pupil, in fact, he was an orphan when he came to us. I was something of a father to him. . . ."

  He let his voice trail off, and felt the muscles of his throat tensing with the effort of holding back tears.

  Not that tears would matter to these people—they would -understand and give him room to weep. Except for Gortan, who was like a block of stone, they were mostly as open about expressing sorrow as they were about expressing joy. Oh, Zorsha, I needed to be brought to my senses—but I would that I could have paid a less dear coin than your life.

  He still looked like something dragged through hell, and he knew it; too many sleepless nights, no few of them spent contemplating the amazing number of poisons in his workroom. But suicide would not have served to fulfill his promise to Zorsha. And he had a great deal to make up for.

  Felaras had been amazingly decent about the whole thing; she could, so easily, have made every word, every hour painful for him, and yet she had done no such thing.

  Not that she hadn't been tempted; she'd told him that herself, with that disconcerting frankness of hers, the day they'd buried the boy.
But she'd also told him, "There's been too damned much pain already and damned if I'm going to add to it!"

  A remarkable woman. And he'd been blinded to how remarkable she was by his own ambition. Now it was too late; too late for anything except a tentative alliance. Never a friendship. And never anything deeper.

  What a fool I've been.

  If it hadn't been for the boy . . .

  For he'd finally met young Yuchai, who until then had been nothing more than a name and a huddled form under a blanket.

  He'd been waiting outside Felaras's door for her summons, when he'd heard a strangled sob from the Master's Folly. Thinking it might be Kasha or Teo, he'd looked in, figuring on finding out which it was and fetching the other. Mourning alone was a lot harder than mourning with someone—as he now knew only too well. And he couldn't think who else would have been quartered next to Felaras besides those two.

  But it hadn't been either of them; it had been a young boy, crying painfully into the fur of a pale-gold dog—

  A golden gaze-hound like the one Zorsha had owned as a novice . . .

  Perhaps it was the sight of the dog that drew him, but without knowing why, he found himself standing by the boy's side. The boy had raised his tear-streaked face, and he'd seen the shape, the bone structure of it, so like Jegrai's; and knew then who it was, and why he wept. So he'd held out his hand. "I'm Halun," he'd said, swallowing down a lump in his throat. "I was his friend too—"

  And before he could blink, he had his arms full of crying child, and then Halun found himself weeping with him, and somehow when they both got under control again, they were friends.

  He'd picked up Yuchai's education where Zorsha had left off, more out of a sense of duty than any real expectations. That was when he had discovered how absolutely brilliant the boy was, and duty became pleasure—the lone pleasure in all those bleak days.

  Gods willing, by tonight this whole messy business will be dealt with, and I can go back to that pleasure. Zorsha, I pledge you, that boy will have everything you'd have given him!

  He looked at Iridai out of the corner of his eye, and wondered how that stolid warrior was going to take the shattering of his plans and his own disgrace before the entire Clan.

  No bloodshed, Jegrai had said. There's been enough bloodshed already. Felaras had agreed with him. Halun hoped this would work as well as they thought it would. . . .

  "Where are we meeting?" Halun asked dully, half-turning, and watching the lamp flame over Iridai's shoulder instead of the mans face.

  "Gortan's tent. It seems safe enough. If friends do not gather from time to time at the tents, it begins to look odd. And besides, Jegrai is up at the Wizard's Place."

  Halun reached for the lamp again; he should have been feeling anticipation, but he felt nothing but weariness. "Now?"

  Iridai nodded, and Halun put out the lamp, then ducked out the tent entrance, following him into the night. He glanced up at the sky; it was not overcast, but it was moonless.

  It was going to be a perfect evening for Felaras's plan.

  He followed along behind Iridai, stumbling now and again over a rock in the path. Soon. It will all be over soon.

  His soundless litany might have been a conjuration: no sooner had they cleared all but the last circle of tents, where Gortan's tent had been pitched, than the sky above them opened up with an incredible display of—

  Fireworks. Festival fireworks. But to the Vredai, it surely seemed like a visitation from the gods.

  Every color possible bloomed up there, it seemed, accompanied by thunderous explosions that were close enough to hurt the ears. Not surprisingly, every person in the camp was out of his tent and gaping up at the sky within heartbeats—some with stark fear on their faces, some with less readable emotions, and the children with mingled surprise and innocent delight.

  The guards at the entrance to the valley ran back to the tents, weapons at the ready, although from the despair on their faces Halun reckoned they'd already counted on those weapons as being impotent.

  The stage was set.

  The last of the fireworks bloomed and died, a spectacular burst of clusters of red that told Halun to ready himself.

  There was a heartbeat of silence, then—

  Horns blared from somewhere above them; horns like nothing the Vredai had ever heard, deep and menacing and incredibly loud. Not surprising; these were horns that had been sent to the Order by a wandering Seeker long ago, sent from some mountainous region to the north. They were as tall as a man, and used to warn of (or perhaps trigger, he'd said) avalanches of snow. Two of the most agile Watchers in the Fortress had scaled with ropes and crampons down the mountainside just after dusk with these things strapped to their backs, to set themselves up on the supposedly unclimbable cliffs above the valley.

  There was a flash of fire and sulfurous smoke at the valley entrance—and a glowing figure rode through the smoke cloud, seeming to come out of the smoke cloud.

  It was Felaras, but a transformed Felaras. The Vredai for the most part had never seen Felaras; those who had had certainly never seen her like this, with her hair streaming free beneath an ancient, dragon-crested Ancas helm, and her body encased from head to toe in burnished chain and plate. What was more, she burned with a bluish light of her own, as did the pale horse she rode—and the horse's hooves made no noise at all on the hard ground. It seemed to flow toward them, a ghost-horse ridden by a stern and angry spirit.

  The Vredai behind Halun moaned with fear; Halun heard one or two mutters of "Wind-rider!" and "Lord's Messenger!"—and Iridai sank to his knees.

  "Vredai, who were betrayed, you harbor traitors among you," Felaras boomed, using the voice that could be heard from one end of a noisy practice ground to another. And she wasn't speaking Trade-tongue, either; this speech had been carefully written out for her by Teo, transcribing Northwind's words into Ancas phonemes. "Treason is a disease; the Talchai touched you, and you are infected, you are sick with it. The Wind Lords brought you here to safe haven, but you brought a blight with you, in your hearts."

  The Vredai muttered, the groaning of branches in the wind. Halun stifled a cough as a gust of wind carried spent smoke into his face. It burned on his tongue for a moment.

  "And your sickness has its counterpart on the Wizards' Mountain," she continued, face as masklike as marble. "Vredai, will you hear the names of your traitors and deal with them?"

  Far sooner than Halun would have expected, he heard a woman behind him shout "Aye!" Then there was a chorus of shouts of affirmation until Felaras raised her hand, and a heavy, anticipatory silence fell.

  "Clan singer Gortan," she began, each word having a sound of doom about it. "Iridai kan Luchen . . ."

  She told off the entire roll of the conspirators, from the greatest to least, all names Halun had given them. Beside him, Iridai trembled and moaned. At the end of the list the hidden horns brayed again.

  Felaras waited a moment while the list of names sunk in. "These would have betrayed your Khene, who brought you to this place under the guidance of the Wind Lords," she said, "even as he and you were betrayed by the Talchai. Now I ask you, in the name of the compassionate Wind Lords: what will you do with them, these traitors to Jegrai and to your safety?"

  From the angry shouts behind them, executing the traitors seemed to be one of the more popular notions. Once again, Felaras raised her hand to gain utter silence.

  "Has there not been enough Vredai blood shed?" she asked, in a much quieter voice. "Treason is a sickness; it can be cured. Treason is a rot; rot can be mended. Take these men to you, people of Vredai. Watch them, but forgive them. To deal them death earns you nothing but more pain. Shed no blood of the Clans that you cannot avoid, people of Vredai. Rather, turn the fires of your anger upon the authors of the root treason. The spreaders of the sickness. The Suno. Consider how you should deal with them—and know that they merit none of your compassion."

  Iridai was huddled in a knot on the ground, sobbing.

>   Felaras's voice strengthened again. "And there is another among you who is not of your blood, who merits none of your compassion, who fostered treason as a way to his own power and not because he felt that the Khene was faulty in judgment. Halun, Hand of the Seekers, of the chapter of the Tower, stand forth!"

  Halun stepped forward until he was just within twenty paces of Felaras. He heard a slight rustle of the grass to his left as he took up his appointed position—and that was the only sign he noticed of Kasha getting into place and Mai passing him to plant her next surprise.

  "See, people of Vredai—learn the reward given to those who betray for their own gain!"

  Behind him, a flash of heat and light reflected off the metal surfaces of Felaras's armor and shining weirdly red off her eyes and the eyes of her horse told him that another flash-pot had been set off—and Kasha, so hellishly made up and garbed he would not have recognized her, leapt up out of the grass that concealed her and seized him with a howl of wild laughter. There were strange, moaning sounds coming from above, now; sounds he knew were being made by the toys they called "bull-roarers" being whirled around and around the heads of the concealed horn-blowers.

  He put up a convincing show of struggle, as a third flash-pot went up at the entrance to the valley, and another glowing horse and rider—this time shining an evil green—galloped through it. They swooped down on Kasha and her "victim" and scooped both of them up.

  Actually, Kasha leapt up behind Jegrai—who was about the only rider capable of pulling off this trick—while he hauled Halun up before him.

  Jegrai's horse wheeled and headed back the way they had come, and Halun closed his eyes. Facedown across a saddle-bow was uncomfortable. Watching the grass whirl by while breathing powder smoke was making him ill.

  "Remember, Vredai!" Felaras called. "Remember!"

  She made her horse rear and pivot on its hind legs, before following Jegrai and his poor overburdened mount back through the valley mouth as a fourth flash-pot went up behind them.

  Once on the other side, all four of them dismounted as invisible hands took the reins of the horses. Invisible, because the owners were garbed head to foot in black, and their faces were smeared with soot. The glowing horses were swathed in blankets and the glowing riders in cloaks. And the entire contingent—except for Mai, who would be quietly collecting the spent flash-pots she'd set off—mounted up again and headed for the nearest farm with a well to wash off the phosphor.