High Couch of Silistra

by Janet Morris

  I was even able to sort the sounds of Dellin and Celendra and the Day-Keeper from the noise around us. The subject of the conversation was the legend of the seed-sowers. Dellin recalled similar M’ksakkan legends. Celendra was intrigued. I thought that the Day-Keeper must be very sure to sow his own seed so early.

  Sereth leaned close to me, as if to pick at the remains on my plate.

  “What did you tell him, that he put responsibility for your state on me? I have my differences with the Day-Keepers. I do not need you to make it worse.”

  “I told him nothing except that I had been with you, and you had told me of the artifact at the Falls of Santha.” I apologized sincerely. “I think he simply assumed it, because of the seating and your reaction to his token. That man, the one who would have couched me—I could not read him. Nothing. That has never happened to me before.”

  “I would have you make the matter of who did how much to whom clear with the high one before we go to Santha. I can do without another call to stand judgment before that pack of old ladies. I know nothing of this reading, except it is said that the fore-readers and the girls of Astria do it. Can you tell me what I am thinking?”

  “Not exactly. Not conscious words you are framing for communication. Deep-seated emotion, underlying motivation, primal drives I can read with clarity when I am myself. At this moment I doubt if I could read you the alphabet.”

  “What, then, is the import of your inability to read the trader?”

  “Perhaps you are right, perhaps it is just that I am so very tired.”

  “Let me take you upstairs. You have done your duty to the Well.”

  “You are my will,” I sighed, an old phrase for acquiescence I had not used since my training years. “But allow me just to watch Genisha dance first.”

  So we sat in the common room while the Feast of Conception roared around us, and on that most joyous occasion I struggled to keep my eyelids from closing of their own accord. By the time the six courses had been served and cleared and the great dessert tray was making its way up and down the aisles between the trestle tables, I was sleeping for seconds, catching myself and starting back to consciousness, then fading again. Thus I missed Genisha’s dance to Jerin, that which is the most beautiful of Silistran dances, where the elements of submission and free will, sex and love, swirl around the dancers like sheer silks. I dozed on Sereth’s shoulder and did not awaken until I found myself in his arms at the door to my keep.

  Once within, in the soft-lit blue-and-gold chamber, he stripped from me the silvery silk Dellin had given me and laid me on the couch, pulling the covers up around me almost tenderly. Some while later I was again awakened, to take the bath he had drawn for me. He bathed with me, but not with the intent other than helpful. So I did let Sereth of Arlet, of the Slayers’ Seven, wash and bathe me like a child and dry me in the soft toweling and put me again in my couch.

  I told him drowsily to go back downstairs and enjoy the feast, but he would not.

  “I,” he said, “am also tired from my set’s activities. I will, if you permit, rest here with you. Trouble seeks you, lady, like the ebvrasea the mountain taslings, and I think it better that you not be alone, lest it strike when we least expect it.”

  “Lest the days all slip away.” I smiled at him, quoting from the beautiful old song about two lovers who pegged every moment of their time, so that they might spend eternity together. Sereth pegged this time that I might survive it.

  “Doubtless,” he said, pulling the cover up around him and settling on his side, “the days will all slip away regardless. But I have gotten into a habit, and it is a hard one to break.” He leaned over and kissed me on the lips, so lightly, and the hair of his thick-matted chest tickled me.

  I wonder whether he meant the habit of me, or the habit of pegging time, but I was too sleepy to ask.

  We were awakened by the four bells of Arlet, tolling stridently together. Each bell, on a normal day, has seven enths to toll, but when all bells ring together, twelve soundings, it is said they weep for a soul. Someone was dead in Arlet. It is not often that such sounds are heard, for death is long coming to take us on Silistra. But come it does. I shivered and pressed closer to Sereth.

  He was frowning. As the only member of the Slayers’ Seven in Arlet, if the passing was other than natural, it was his duty to make an inquiry. If natural, he must still take a hand. The bearers would have to be chosen from the ranks of the Slayers. The family, if they were not aware, informed, the deceased one’s goods apportioned fairly. The ceremony and the writing of the name in the Day-Keeper’s roll were the responsibility of the ranking Day-Keeper. All else was the chaldra of the Slayers’ Seven.

  Sereth slid out from between the couch covers and began to dress.

  “May I join you?” I asked.

  “Do as you will, Estri, but this is nothing I expected, and it may not be pleasant.”

  Then the death was no timely one of old age and infirmity.

  I threw back the silken couch spread and the web-cloth undercover and went to retrieve the breech and band Celendra had given me from the smaller thala chest.

  “How do you feel?” asked Sereth, watching me, bent over from the waist, untangle my hair with rapid strokes of the bone comb. Its ends touched my toes.

  “Fine.” I straightened up, throwing back my head, feeling the strands around me crackle with static. “I needed the rest badly, I guess. I am not one to pamper myself, however, and I feel a trifle foolish.”

  He shrugged and guided me out the door.

  “I must change into more suitable clothing. Will you eat with me in my hostel?”

  I agreed. I was curious to see how the Slayers lived in Arlet, and what Sereth of the Slayers’ Seven chose to keep around him.

  We were halfway across the Inner Well when Celendra caught up with us. I thought that it was the first time I had seen that woman hurry.

  She gasped for breath.

  “Do you need me for the inquiry?” she panted, her hand on the Slayer’s arm.

  “I do not know if there will be one.”

  “There will doubtless be one.”

  “Then you know more than I.”

  “I know that Fressa had nothing to do with it.”

  “With what, woman?” demanded the Slayer. “If you have something to say, tell me. I must get to the hostel and sort this thing out.” He held her by the shoulders, his hands digging into her flesh, so that her feet barely touched the ground.

  “Put me down and I will walk you there.”

  As we walked across the Inner Well, me in my band and breech, studded with silver, Celendra clothed in her dusky skin, and Sereth in his worn slate Slayer’s garb, she told us.

  “Remember that trader that wanted you last night, Estri? He was found this morning, after leaving Fressa’s couch before sun’s rising, wandering mindless in the Inner Well. He died within a bell of being discovered. He could neither see nor hear, nor did he respond to touch. The physicians say his mind was totally isolated, cut off from all sensory input. He died horribly, degenerating before the healers’ eyes.

  There is no known poison that could do such a thing. No traces of foreign chemicals in the blood. But every sensory path to the brain was destroyed.”

  “If there is no poison, and no marks of violence on the body, why are you worried about your girl? Why would we blame her, or anyone, for the inexplicable?” We stood before the Slayers’ hostel, an imposing structure of silvery gol, with thala door and lintel. The hostel had no windows, but narrow open slits through which a man could aim a weapon. It had been long since those slits had been needed in Arlet, but the Slayers stand ever ready to defend her.

  Celendra hesitated before the door.

  “I must get back to the Well. I just wanted you to know what I knew, lest the physicians, having no answer to your questions, use Fressa to take the blame. They seldom admit to ignorance.”

  “I appreciate it. Tasa,” said Sereth.

 
; We passed many men in the winding passages of the hostel, hurrying through the corridors, metal clanking, gathered in small knots of subdued conversation. In the kitchen, where the serving alcove was filled with them, in their slate and silver and black leathers, the talk was louder, a maddening rumble. There was little laughter.

  A table of light needle-wood was clear in a corner of the high-ceilinged gray alcove. Swords and shields were racked upon the walls, many ancient beyond description, jewel-hilted, and with precious-metal inlay. Other than weapons, the severity of the man-height gray gol-blocks was unbroken. The floor was planked thala, the southern variety, with brown over grain.

  Sereth steered me toward the empty table. Men got up from their grilled parr and eggs to query him.

  “What rises, Seven?” asked a large man, blocking our path.

  “What indeed? I like it not when the enemy is not clear. Give me something I can fight,” put in another.

  “Think you that this be some new disease?” said one with an accent I did not recognize. Disease had long ago been conquered on Silistra. The men were much shaken by the thought of a microscopic enemy, against whom there was no defense.

  “I think nothing yet. I have to find out. Would you have me tell you a guess, perhaps a wrong one, just to tell you something? Are you a clutch of old ladies, that I must comfort you in your fears? Leave me be. When I have something to say, I will say it.” Angry, the Seven pushed his way through the men that had circled around us.

  One, more persistent than the others, followed us to the table.

  “Tyith, do not hover over me. If you would be of help, then bring us a meal. And lots of rana. I need a clear head.”

  The younger, red-haired Slayer, whose skin was darker than tan, hurried to obey. He wore the red knotted cord of apprentice at his waist.

  When he disappeared around the corner to the kitchen proper, Sereth of Arlet put his head in his hands, rubbing his eyes.

  “I have never seen such a time,” he said. “It whirls and blows around us, and that which rides it is strange indeed. It has been one irregularity after another. The death of the old Liaison, you, Dellin, Vedrev, so many new variables. Now, this. Those old women must be gnashing their teeth and pulling their hair out by handfuls over this one.” The thought seemed to cheer him, that the Day-Keepers would be adversely affected.

  He pulled a knife from its sheath, a small dagger, and began cleaning his nails.

  “There is no use discussing the undiscussable, speculating with no information,” he said to me when the food came, filling a bowl with rana and handing it to me. “Tell me what you read from Dellin, our new Second, with your Astrian skills.”

  I had wondered when it would come up.

  “He is a brilliant, devious man. I am not objective. I thought for a while that I cared for him, but I think now that I do not.” Sereth leaned back in his chair, his long legs crossed. He looked up at me intently from beneath his dark hair. “He is much taken with Silistra. He would make himself as Silistran as he can. That can serve you to your advantage if you play him right. He is, however,” I cautioned, “a M’ksakkan, and profit and quota are to them as chaldra is to us. He will have difficulty, living as he wishes, with a foot in both worlds. Eventually, there will come a situation in which the needs of Arlet and those of the M’sakkan Bipedal Federate are in conflict. I would not trust him until that time has come and gone. But he thinks himself sincere, and thusly may be used, perhaps, to advantage by one subtle enough in his approach. Remember, a Liaison with Slayer’s chaldra is a bridge between worlds, a bridge that has never been trod.”

  “And a bridge provides access from both sides of the abyss it spans, eh?”

  “Such is the nature of a bridge,” I affirmed.

  “Could you read this Fressa for me, and tell me if she is innocent of whatever Celendra tried to cover?”

  “I do not know. I will try.” I closed my eyes and got her easily.

  “She did not service him. He acted very strangely with her, and spilled his seed on her breasts and spoke to her in an unknown tongue. She should have reported it right away. It bothers her, or I would not be getting such detail.”

  “But she did nothing to him?”

  “Her guilt is of not calling a physician as soon as he left her, for he seemed to her deranged. It is no greater than that.”

  Sereth stabbed a parr strip, still bubbly with juice, with the dagger. Such niceties as cutlery were not favored by the Slayers. The apprentice had brought us no utensils with our meal. I picked up a strip in my fingers. Sereth, grinning, reached back, and, the chair tilted back on two legs, took a gold-hilted knife from its sheath on the wall and handed it to me.

  “How will this affect our journey to the Falls of Santha?” I asked him, spearing a strip of parr.

  “I have to see. Since the physicians have already given their opinion, then the papers are most likely done. Today is Detarsa second first, and the rest of the Seven will not be in Arlet until second seventh. If the arrangements for funeral and disposition can be made within that time, I will have to be here. If they take longer, then I may be able to leave by the fifth. I will have to check with the writer before I go to the Day-Keepers; then I will know better. I must see how many blanks are filled, and how many are still open. A man cannot go to rest in Arlet with unfilled blanks on his papers.” Sereth seemed unfond of this part of his job.

  “I am ready to leave when you are,” I said, draining my rana bowl. It had gone from steaming to tepid while we talked. I stared into the dark, bitter sediment.

  As he refilled my bowl from the metal pot, Vedrev and another Day-Keeper, whose head was shaved in lateral strips in the manner of the Darsti builders, swept toward us through the thinning crowd of Slayers. Vedrev made a striking figure in his Stothric priest’s robe and plumes, and he knew it.

  With a dramatic flourish he slammed three sheets of parchment, and one of orange fax, down hard on the table.

  Sereth of Arlet looked up at him with narrowed eyes. He did not rise.

  “Sit down, Day-Keepers. I would have been with you presently, after I had finished here. Thank you for saving me the walk.”

  “How are you, Estri?” said Vedrev to me, patting my hand, his brown even darker against my copper skin.

  “Much rested, thank you. Tell us about the trader’s death. It is the subject of the moment.” I smiled at him.

  “It is all here,” said Sereth, scanning the papers. With a marker the other Day-Keeper produced, Sereth signed the three white sheets, then pressed his index finger to the fax.

  “What will you call cause of death?”

  “Natural causes. It is no disease, and that anything living could have done that to another being is beyond my comprehension. How should I write it? Mind-burn? Should I give them my suppositions? If it happens again, however, we are in for trouble. I sent a messenger to Baniev to inform his family. There is little enough wealth to distribute. I think the Day-Keepers might gift the widow, since there is no one to take up her couch-mate’s chaldra.” If the man had been killed by another, the killer would have had either to take the man’s chaldra, his responsibilities, or gift his house so that it might survive. In a case like this, where there was no one responsible, the Day-Keepers did as they saw fit.

  “Baniev,” I said softly. “Vedrev, I thought he was from Morrlta?”

  “No, although that was the natural assumption, for he wore Morrltan clothes. So I, unwittingly, kept you from a man of Baniev. Another coincidence, Estri? And that that man died in such an unusual fashion? This, too, a coincidence?”

  “What are you two talking about?” Sereth interrupted.

  “I could not read him. I told Sereth at the time. Nothing. I would have told you, but I had no chance. Sereth, tell him I told you.”

  “Someone tell me what is going on! Yes, you told me. But you were so tired, you could not keep your eyes open. What does it matter?”

  “I could get nothing from him either,
Estri,” said Vedrev to me, as if the Slayer were not present. “I thought it some trick of paranoia in my own mind. I had such a strong feeling of impending disaster, I was seeing potential culprits all around me. I am glad I picked the right one.” He looked meaningfully at Sereth.

  The Slayer, however, did not realize that in his own way Vedrev was apologizing. He had his arms folded and was slid deep in the chair, his most hostile position.

  “Day-Keeper, inform a poor ignorant Slayer. What should I do, high one? Shall I take this lady to Santha, or tend to the funerary rites? What does Baniev mean to both of you that it does not to me? I have need of enlightenment.”

  The Day-Keeper, in a low, clipped voice, told Sereth of my great-grandmother’s letter.

  “Is there anything else I must keep her away from? Harths, perhaps, or taslings?”

  “This is a serious matter, Slayer. If you have not the wish to do it, I can surely find another to follow the directions you would give me. Pick the bearers and set the thing in motion, and leave, if you must, once that is done.”

  “I will perform my duties. I do not ask you to excuse me,” said Sereth.

  “Seven, I do not excuse you because you Wish it. I would have this woman home in Astria. It would bring much ill will between Ristran and myself if harm were to come to her while she was under my care.”

  “So now you come to charge me to take her to Santha. I have an arrangement with the Liaison Second to do the same. His was a prior commitment.”

  Vedrev stood abruptly. The bench upon which he sat tumbled to the floor, clattering. The other Day-Keeper gathered up the papers hastily and trotted after his master, who strode out the door, robes swirling.

  “He was trying to be nice to you, Sereth. You took no notice. He would have relieved you from your burdens, but you made it impossible. Why did you bait him so? Now we will have to wait until the fifth, at least.”

  “The rest will do you good. It is a long and difficult trail,” said the Slayer coldly, rising.

  He led me through the winding dark halls of the hostel, to his chamber, small and severe, with that smell a place has when seldom used. I sat on the narrow, pelt-covered gol slab as he discarded his worn vest of circlets, tunic, and breech.