The Carnelian Throne

by Janet Morris

  So I withdrew from the quiet, disturbed that Wehrdom had so easily come upon a countermeasure.

  “Estri,” rasped Sereth, reclaiming the torch, “you are going to have to kill swiftly. There is no subtlety in war. There is sometimes quarter, but not this day.”

  “Have we declared war?” I panted, taking his hand and by it gaining my feet.

  “We are considering it.” He grinned, a grim and momentary flashing of teeth.

  It was then, while still the edges of my mind brushed Wehrdom, that I heard the other sound, the trumpeting that echoed through Wehrdom’s ranks, but I knew not what to make of it, and had many other more pressing concerns.

  When we had gained the entrance to Dey-Ceilneeth proper, eleven ossasim and fifteen of their wingless kin lay dead in the lower dark.

  “This way,” grunted Sereth, and I recalled that while I lay with Eviduey he had walked Dey-Ceilneeth.

  We did not speak upon the way to Chayin, did not exchange even conjectures as to where he might be found. That was as clear to Sereth as to myself. Owkahen offered up that information with a glib smile and unmistakable anticipation.

  Upon the way to Mahrlys’ chamber we killed a black ossasim, but it was not Eviduey. That was all, though Wehrdom growled so deep and loud I felt it through all my shields, as one might feel a motor humming beneath one’s feet.

  What we did see, however, was two groups of ossasim fighting among themselves.

  “What think you?” I hissed the query.

  “Quiet!” said Sereth, flattened against the wall where the corridor branched. Then: “Now.” And we slid past the corridor’s entrance unseen.

  “I would give this whole continent for a sharp blade,” he grated, glowering back the way he had come, at the corridor down whose length lay those quarters we had been assigned.

  I wondered what the chances were of our belongings remaining in that chamber, then dismissed it, thinking that I could soon attempt to shape him a blade—manifest one from its molecular constituents. But in my heart I knew I would not, that this was no battle to be won by steel or stra, the green metal from which Se’keroth had been forged. And suddenly I saw the blade, and its bearer, and the blade exploded into light, and fell spinning down a sheer cliff face. Then a whelt’s visage peered at me, silver beak aclack, and I snapped my mind shut and faced what lay before us: the rushed door leading to the keep of Mahrlys-iis-Vahais. We had been immured long enough for it to be replaced.

  I touched his arm, cautioning. Under his shadowed cheekbones, a muscle twitched. The sound of his teeth grinding whispered in the corridor.

  With his hand upon the wood frame of the door, he hesitated, and drew back, and stood very still, his eyes upon his feet. Then he ran his hand over his brow, and tossed his hair back from it, and turned upon me a look of such self-consuming agony that tears filled my eyes and my vision swam.

  “Ci’ves, you are free with advice. Give me some now.”

  I thought of what lay before him. I searched for encouragement, but my mind was as empty as a tidal pool when its sea has become only a memory scoured on the rocks.

  They had been of one flesh for years. Between them lay such blood debts as could hardly be counted. I said only: “I, too, love Chayin.”

  And he nodded and tried the door, which gave to his touch.

  The cahndor lay with a red robe draped over his shoulders, and Mahrlys-iis-Vahais hunkered down between his legs, her head on his thigh. About lay the remains of a feast, the silver dishes glowing soft in the oil lamp’s light.

  As we slid within and closed the door behind us, he looked up, his hand on Mahrlys’ black-haired head.

  Sereth slammed the wooden bar into place. Mahrlys-iis-Vahais sobbed, raised her head, bared her teeth, and growled, her eyes rolling.

  My flesh-lock froze her. I could not take a chance that through her linkage Wehrdom might converge upon us before we were ready. In her terror at finding herself imprisoned in her own body, unable even to blink her eyes, was a warning for Wehrdom which I wished them to receive. I gambled that her plight would stay them. But I wondered, as Chayin unsteadily rose and faced Sereth, who leaned, arms folded, against the door, whether danger to any individual might constrain such a whole as Wehrdom showed itself to be. Up from the floors below, and through the windows and riding the air and by way of my sensing, I chronicled the wehr-rage. From all about I sensed things dying: within the forests and in the maze and in the sky and all through Dey-Ceilneeth the ineluctable massacre we had triggered by slaying the guard wehrs waxed, screeching. Once started, the wehr-rage would continue until the wehrs lay exhausted. This I knew. Chayin had eloquently warned us previously. But we had not heeded him. Behind my eyes hung a film of blood lust that threatened, even though I was its quarry, to enlist me. I looked at the cahndor through that red haze, and all traces of compassion, of love, were burned from my heart.

  I only noted his uncertain steps and his faraway, inward sight as he struggled to make sense of what he saw in the face of the wehr-wind.

  The membranes cloaked his eye, unmoving, protective. He looked at us, at our bruises, our lacerations. Weaponless, naked, befouled, we faced him, and he blinked, and rubbed his right shoulder, and croaked:

  “Sereth. I thought ... She said ...” Then he ceased, and his fingers found his chald belt and toyed there, and he seemed to shrink smaller.

  The silence made my ears ache. They measured each other.

  “Release her,” growled the cahndor at last, of Mahrlys.

  “Chayin,” Sereth murmured. “Tell me what you thought. Say something, anything, that will absolve you of blame.” He was calm, laconic. I found need to sit, and sank to the floor. My legs would not hold me.

  “Release her. She is mine.” Chayin glowered.

  “Chayin, I would hear what owkahen has been whispering in your ear, and what you make of it.”

  “Then release her. I have taken her in couchbond. You have Estri ....” And he blinked, and looked away, and it seemed that he shuddered.

  “Estri, do it,” said Sereth to me, pushing away from the door to ease his way warily toward Chayin.

  I did, but only after I crawled over to her and made it very clear in a whisper what I would do to her if she so much as coughed.

  “Where were you?” Chayin roared suddenly. “Why do you not bear Se’keroth if you went to reclaim it?”

  “I come to you dressed only in my own filth, bearing heavy wounds, and you talk to me of fantasy. How is it that your sensing has so utterly failed you? Or is it that you would prefer not to believe that your couch-mate has deceived you?” Sereth spat that term, which is one not bandied lightly about on our western shore. “Your couch-mate,” he continued, while, amazingly, from Mahrlys’ huge green eyes silent tears ran in a steady stream, “drugged us, immured us in those dungeons beneath, and worked this art upon us.”

  And very slowly, arms held away from his body, Sereth turned full around. When he again faced Chayin, he added: “Is Wehrdom’s wine so heady, are her thighs so soft, that you and I will enter the circle over it?”

  It is a rhetorical circle, that of which he spoke, and its meaning is a fight to the death.

  “Say something, wehr,” I hissed. But she only sat with those silent tears.

  Chayin wheeled on his heels and strode to the wall and slammed his fist into the ruby hangings there. From without came a howl, and then another, and the sounds of flight and pursuit.

  “Do you not realize what you obstruct?” came Chayin’s tortured query. The bunched muscles slid on his back, his hands crumpled the hanging, and with a vicious yank and he wrenched it from its hooks, unveiling a window that overlooked Dey-Ceilneeth’s maze.

  “No, I do not,” said Sereth and I together.

  Mahrlys then attempted to rise. I cautioned her as to the inadvisiability of such a move, and she sank back.

  But Chayin had seen, and he strode to stand between us.

  “No, you do not,” he mimicked sav
agely. “What powers here contest, what might be gained, does not at all concern you. The wehrs offend you. That is enough for you both. I can smell the death on you. You have judged and now would mete out their fate. Little is it to you that this culture, as old as that we call Silistran, fights its own battle to survive.

  “We came here, we upset a balance, we must restore it.”

  “Are you telling me,” said Sereth, “that you can excuse what your creature has done to us with her own hands? On what scales are you weighing us, that after all we have shared, Estri and I sum less than this saiisa whose legs you will split a few times and then discard her as you have all others?”

  “No, by Uritheria, under whose wing I yet stand, no! Sereth”—and he stepped close, and I saw tears of frustration there—“I tried to tell you. Sereth, there is a thing here that must be done, and that thing has determinedly sought me. There is a schism in Wehrdom. Curse your unwillingness to hear what does not suit you: there is a struggle here, and it is one best viewed from the distance of evolution, and you will not hear that! Wehrdom seeks renewal before the doors of Othdaliee close for a thousand years. It was that reason that Wehrdom courted me—”

  “You are right, I will not hear that,” said Sereth. “Not because I do not believe it, because it does not matter.”

  “But it is all that does matter,” decried Chayin.

  “I was approached, and I accepted. And certain things I will do for them, as will we all—”

  Sereth spat a word I have never heard him use. His hands were on his hips, and though his fists were clenched, they shook.

  It was then that Mahrlys spoke, when I thought they would summarily destroy each other while Wehrdom howled about us:

  “No, Chayin, you will do no more. Or you will do little else than what you have done.” With a fluid grace she rose. I allowed it. She sought the cahndor’s side, and he took her in under his arm.

  “You did not abrade me for deceiving you, and I thank you,” she said to him, and then to us: “Chayin knew nothing of what I did. And I do not regret it. I sought to kill you in such a way as he might never know. I failed in that, and then was wooed by what you might be able to tell me .... and I lost. But only partly. I needed time, and time I gained.” She bit her lip, and took a deep breath. I knew she held back still additional tears. “All gamble; sometimes, the best of us lose.”

  Chayin growled.

  “No, beloved, I have lost. You can hear them: Wehrdom fights Wehrdom, and it will not cease until one faction or the other no longer exists. Our only hope now, is what might occur at Othdaliee.”

  “I could—” started the cahndor hesitantly, but she cut him off.

  “No, brave one, the time is both too late and too early for that.” Sereth looked at me, but I only shrugged. I could make no more than he from that exchange. “I have lost, and I must flee Dey-Ceilneeth. I am unfit to guide her; what you will see when the run rises will attest to that. Nor would I be allowed. Death is my society’s answer for what misjudgments I have made, and death is the only flight at whose end I might find amnesty. I ...”

  Chayin whispered in her ear, and she sagged against him and began weeping in earnest.

  He looked at Sereth with such an abject plea for understanding that I rose and sought the dharen and ran my hand along his back. His thought touched mine, and it was a thought of what could be lost here and what might be saved.

  Sereth said: “Keep your life, woman. Give us our clothes and our weapons and we will go our way. Chayin, you can come or stay, as you please.”

  The cahndor’s brow furrowed. “It is to Othdaliee we must go.”

  “No!”

  “For Se’keroth, Sereth. And for Deilcrit, and for an easy night’s sleep at the Lake of Horns. Owkahen shows it clearly. You do not have to believe me. Look yourself.”

  And Sereth squeezed his eyes shut and expelled a deep breath and said: “Estri?”

  “Your will, as ever,” I replied.

  “Chayin, if I must, I will accompany you to death’s door in search of an explanation for what you are doing.” The flat, cold words hit the cahndor like a backhanded slap. “But I will have one. And I will have it before either of us sleeps again. I have had about all the temporization and forereader’s gibberish that I am willing to take. Now, get us our belongings, and out of here.”

  Chayin, in a thick voice, mumbled to Mahrlys to return us our things if she had them. Which she did, in that very chamber. And that led me to ponder how Chayin could have been so completely fooled by her, and even if he was fooled. And consideration of foolishness led me to mark the abrupt change in Mahrlys-iis-Vahais since last she and I had talked, when she had so demeaned such men as Chayin and everything for which they stood.

  We used her bath and excused ourselves from her ministrations. I would rather bear my scars than chance some new acquaintance with the drugs of Benegua.

  During that time Chayin announced that Mahrlys must accompany us. Sereth objected, and I thought they would, after all, end their lives trying each other’s strength when the black-haired girl herself entered the conversation.

  “I cannot go through the forest. The whelts are supreme there right now, and may hold it indefinitely. My enemies—Kirelli—would spend a thousand lives to make me spend mine. I cannot, should not leave Dey-Ceilneeth. My death awaits me here.”

  So I glimpsed what forces Mahrlys found herself ranged against, or thought I did, as she pulled a white robe about her and girded it with a child’s dagger and slipped her feet into rope sandals.

  “You must go through there,” she said, and pointed to a hanging that could have concealed a doorway. “It is the quickest way to Othdaliee. Indeed, the only way you might survive the journey. And thence, there is no returning.” And she took a slow and wistful tour of her chamber, stroking the bosom of the whelt-headed deity on whose tray I had once sat.

  “You must go,” repeated Chayin. Mahrlys made a motion of denial.

  “My very thought,” agreed Sereth. “If nothing else, she will make a good hostage.”

  At this Mahrlys, whose circuit of the chambers had drawn her near the outer door, dashed for it. Sereth, who was closer, dived after her, and I heard a muffled scream and in a moment she was stumbling toward the cahndor, lips drawn back from clenched teeth.

  “You want her. She is your problem,” said Sereth, giving Mahrlys a final push that sent her sprawling against Chayin’s chest.

  We withdrew then, to arm ourselves in what we had reclaimed and leave them to their muttered argument.

  I was much strengthened by the simple act of pulling on my boots, in whose tops eight razor-moons nestled, and my belt, which held, beside the empty scabbard, a knife in sheath. Sereth had the twin of it. We have had them a very long time. They are talismans, the manifestation of our bond, and though occasionally we have lost them, each time they have been returned to us. Stroking the single red jewel set in the knife’s hilt, I was greatly eased.

  There are many truths that elude me, but the truths of that day, life or death, are those with which I am most comfortable. It is the decision to do battle which is hard. The battle, seemingly, would come to us, which suited me. I readied myself and took stock of my internal strengths as the drug residue faded away.

  I was not wrong. Neither was I so innocent as to imagine that Sereth did not know what approached while we lingered there, dressing at our ease, and Mahrlys engaged Chayin in an interminable altercation. If Sereth had wanted to avoid what then occurred, we would have forced an earlier exit. As it was, he leaned against the jamb of the arch that divided Mahrlys’ inner, less formal chamber from the outer, statued room of ruby and purple while Mahrlys detained Chayin most artfully. He even went so far as to whisper me to silence when I proposed to him that we hurry them. It is possible that he wanted Mahrlys to reveal herself, or that he sought to determine how deeply enwrapped in Wehrdom’s mists Chayin really was, or even only whether Chayin was a party to this delaying action. Seret
h keeps his own counsel, still, upon those affairs.

  Then, he only stiffened slightly against the jamb as the wehr-howl rose and the door, battered, reverberated and burst inward, sending debris flying, and Mahrlys in a wondrous imitation of surprise froze as Chayin dived for his sivord.

  Inward burst the slavering throng, and Sereth grunted and the oncoming wave of fang and claw and six-fingered hand flowed around the edges of the hemispherical barrier that they could not see, but against which they bludgeoned and clawed and bit and butted in vain.

  I heard a moan within Sereth’s periphery’s silent center, and I saw Mahrlys: no longer did she dissemble calm. She took upon her knees. Her nails clawed the carpet. Her eyes rolled.

  She spat and hissed in some sibilant tongue and threw her head savagely. I almost softened to her then, as she fought so valiantly to shake off the wehr-rage all around. Louder and louder ululated the shrieks of the wehr-wind. She held her ears. Sereth dragged her rudely to her feet and slapped her thrice, and shoved her stumbling before him toward the hanging-obscured wall she had earlier indicated. The noise of the frustrated wehrs was deafening, half a thousand throats crying. And suddenly I was alone, facing a crowd of creatures who climbed the invisible barrier, their bodies describing its dimensions. Mouths pressed against it, distorted as if by glass. I turned once, full circle, and then fled to Chayin; who was himself swaying, transfixed, near the inner door.

  I pulled him by the arm, and he snarled. I dropped my grip and stepped back.

  “Chayin?”

  Slowly, from a long distance, his taut stance loosened and he unclenched his fists. Behind his back a red-eyed ossasim leered at me

  And fell inward, along with a score of others, as Sereth’s barrier flickered. And died in that instant, severed exactly in half, as Sereth regained his hold upon the molecular construct that served him.

  Chayin and I stumbled through a rain of appendages and body fluids, and then we saw why Sereth’s field had flickered:

  The hanging at the chamber’s back wall concealed a featureless door of black metal, which even as we spied it drew up into itself.