The Faded Sun Trilogy Omnibus

by C. J. Cherryh

  He gave a formal courtesy to the others and withdrew, and was glad to be out of that grim hall, heavy as the air was with the angers of frustrated men, and of the dusei, whose rage was slower but more violent. He was relieved, nonetheless, that they had listened to all that he had said. There would be no violence, no irrational action, which was the worst thing that needed be feared from the Kel. They were old. The old might reason together in groups, might consult together. The kel’en was, in youth, a solitary warrior and reckless, and without perspective.

  He thought of going after Niun, and did not know what to say to him if he should find him. His duty was to report elsewhere.

  * * *

  And when the door closed, aged Pasev, kel’e’en, veteran of Nisren and Elag’s first taking, pulled the as’ei from the shattered plaster and merely shrugged off the sen’anth. She had seen more years and more of war than any living warrior but Eddan himself. She played the Game all the same, as did they all, including Eddan. It was a death as honorable as one in war.

  “Let us play it out,” she said.

  “No,” said Eddan firmly. “No. Not yet.”

  He caught her eyes as he spoke. She looked at him plainly, aged lover, aged rival, aged friend. Her slim fingers brushed the fine edge of the steel, but she understood the order.

  “Aye,” she said, and the as’ei spun past Eddan’s shoulder to bury themselves in the painted map of Kesrith that decorated the east wall.

  * * *

  “The Kel bore the news,” said sen Sathell, “with more restraint than I expected of them. But it was not welcome, all the same. They feel cheated. They conceive it as an affront against their honor. And Niun left. He would not even hear it out. I do not know where he went. I am concerned.”

  She’pan Intel, the Lady Mother of the House and of the People, leaned back on her many cushions, ignoring a twinge of pain. The pain was an old companion. She had had it forty-three years, since she lost her strength and her beauty at once in the fires of burning Nisren. Even then she had not been young. Even then she had been she’pan of homeworld, ruler over all three castes of the People. She was of the first rank of the Sen, passing Sathell himself; she was above other she’panei as well, the few that still lived. She knew the Mysteries that were closed to others; she knew the name and nature of the Holy, and of the Gods; and the Pana, the Revered Objects, were in her keeping. She knew her nation to its depth and its width, its birth and its destiny.

  She was she’pan of a dying House, eldest Mother of a dying species. The Kath, the caste of child-bearers and children, was dead, its tower dark and closed twelve years ago: the last of the kath’ein was long buried in the cliffs of Sil’athen, and the last children, motherless save for herself, had gone to their destinies outside. Her Kel had declined to ten, and the Sen—

  The Sen was before her: Sathell, the eldest, the sen’anth, whose weak heart poised him constantly a beat removed from the Dark; and the girl who sat presently at her feet. They were the gold-robes, the light-bearers, high-caste. Her own robes were white, untainted by the edgings of black and blue and gold worn by the she’panei of lesser degree. Their knowledge was almost complete, but her own was entire. If her own heart should stop beating this moment, so much, so incalculably much could be lost to the People. It was a fearful thing, to consider how much rested on her each pulse and breath amid such pain.

  That the House and the People not die.

  The girl Melein looked up at her—last of all the children, Melein s’Intel Zain-Abrin, who had once been kel’e’en. At times the kel-fierceness was still in Melein, although she had assumed outwardly the robes and the chaste serenity of the scholarly Sen—although the years had given her different skills, and her mind had advanced far beyond the simplicity of a kel’e’en. Intel brushed at Melein’s shoulder, a caress. “Patience,” she advised, seeing Melein’s anxiety; and she knew that the advice would be discarded in all respects.

  “Let me go find Niun and talk to him,” she asked.

  Brother and sister, Niun and Melein—and close, despite that they had been separated by law and she’pan’s decree and caste and custom. Kel’en and sen’e’en, dark and bright, Hand and Mind; but the heart in them was the same and the blood was the same. She remembered the pair that had given them life, her youngest and most beloved Husband and a kel’e’en of Guragen, both lost now. His face, his eyes, that had made her regret a she’pan’s chastity, gazed back at her through Melein’s and Niun’s; and she remembered that he also had been strong-willed and hot-tempered and clever. Perhaps Melein hated her; she had not willingly received the command to leave the Kel and enter the Sen. But there was no defiance there now, though the she’pan searched for it. There was only anxiety, only a natural grief for her brother’s pain.

  “No,” said Intel sharply. “I tell you to let him alone.”

  “He may harm himself, she’pan.”

  “He will not. You underestimate him. He does not need you now. You are no longer of the Kel, and I doubt that he wants to be faced by one of the Sen at this moment. What could you tell him? What could you answer if he asked you questions? Could you be silent?”

  This struck home. “He wanted to leave Kesrith six years ago,” said Melein, her eyes bright with unshed tears; and possibly it was not only her brother’s case she pleaded now, but her own. “You would not let him go. Now it is too late, she’pan. It is forever too late for him, and what can he imagine for himself? What is there for him?”

  “Meditate upon these things,” said Intel, “and tell me your conclusions, sen Melein s’Intel, after you have thought a day and a night on this matter. But do not intrude your advice into the private affairs of a kel’en. And do not regard him as your brother. A sen’e’en has no kin but the whole House, and the People.”

  Melein rose, and stared down at her, breast heaving with her straggle for breath. Beautiful, this daughter of hers: Intel saw her in this instant and was amazed how much Melein, who was not of her blood, had become the things her own youth had once promised—saw mirrored her own self, before Nisren’s fall, before the ruin of the House and of her own hopes. The sight wounded her. In this moment she saw clearly, and knew the sen’e’en as she was, and feared her and love her at once.

  Melein who would hardly mourn her passing.

  So she had created her, deliberately, event by event, choice by choice, her daughter-not-of-the-flesh, her child, her Chosen, formed in Kath and Kel and Sen, partaker of the Mysteries of all castes of the People.

  Hating her.

  “Learn restraint,” she earnestly wished Melein, in a still, soft voice that thrust with difficulty into Melein’s anger. “Learn to be sen’e’en, Melein, above all else that you desire to have.”

  The young sen’e’en let go a shuddering breath, and the tears in her eyes spilled over. Thwarted for now, the sen’e’en for a moment being child again: but this child was dangerous.

  Intel shivered, foreknowing that Melein would outlive her and impose her own imprint on the world.

  Chapter Two

  There was a division in the world, marked by a causeway of white rock. On the one side, and at the lower end, lay the regul of Kesrith—city-folk, slow-moving, long-remembering. The lowland city was entirely theirs: flat, sprawling buildings, a port, commerce with the stars, mining that scarred the earth, a plant that extracted water from the Alkaline Sea. The land had been called the Dus plain before there were regul on Kesrith: the mri remembered. For this reason the mri had avoided the plain, in respect of the dusei; but the regul had insisted on setting their city there, and the dusei left it.

  Uplands, in the rugged hills at the other end of the causeway, was the tower of the mri. It appeared as four truncated cones arising from the corners of a trapezoidal ground floor—slanted walls made of the pale earth of the lowlands, treated and hardened. This was the Edun Kesrithun, the House of Kesrith, the home of the mri of Kesrith, and, because of Intel, the home of all mri in the wide universe.

/>   One could see most of Kesrithi civilization from the vantage point Niun occupied in his solitary anger. He came here often, to this highest part of the causeway, to this stubborn outcrop of rock that had defeated the regul road and made the regul think otherwise about their plans to extend it into the high hills, invading the sanctity of Sil’athen. He liked it for what it was as well as for the view. Below him lay the regul city and the mri edun, two very small scars on the body of the white earth. Above him, in the hills, and beyond and beyond, there were only regul automatons, that drew minerals from the earth and provided regul Kesrith its reason for existence; and wild things that had owned the world before the coming of regul or of mri; and the slow-moving dusei that had once been Kesrith’s highest form of life.

  Niun sat, brooding, on the rock that overlooked the world, hating tsi’mri with more than the ordinary hatred of mri for aliens, which was considerable. He was twenty-six years old as the People reckoned years, which was not by Kesrith’s orbit around Arain, nor by the standard of Nisren, nor by that of either of the two other worlds the People had designated homeworld in the span of time remembered by Kel songs.

  He was tall, even of his kind. His high cheekbones bore the seta’al, the triple scars of his caste, blue-stained and indelible; this meant that he was a full-fledged member of the Kel, the hand of the People. Being of the Kel, he went robed from collar to boot-tops in unrelieved black; and black veil and tasseled headcloth, mez and zaidhe, concealed all but his brow and his eyes from the gaze of outsiders when he chose to meet them; and the zaidhe further had a dark transparent visor that could meet the veil when dust blew or red Arain reached its unpleasant zenith. He was a man: his face, like his thoughts, was considered a private identity, one indecent to reveal to strangers. The veils enveloped him as did the robes, a distinguishing mark of the only caste of the People that might deal with outsiders. The black robes, the siga, were held about the waist and chest with belts that bore his weapons, which were several; and also they should have held j’tai, medallions, honors won for his services to the People: they held none, and this lack of status would have been obvious to any mri that beheld him.

  Being of the Kel, he could neither read nor write, save that he could use a numbered keyboard and knew mathematics, both regul and mri. He knew by heart the complicated genealogies of his House, which had been that of Nisren. The name-chants filled him with melancholy when he sang them: it was difficult to do so and then to look about the cracking walls of Edun Kesrithun and behold only so few people as now lived, and not realize that decline was taking place, that it was real and threatening. He knew all the songs. He could foresee begetting no child of his own who would sing them, not on Kesrith. He learned the songs; he learned languages, which were part of the Kel-lore. He spoke four languages fluently, two of which were his own, one of which was the regul’s, and the fourth of which was the enemy’s. He was expert in weapons, both the yin’ein and the zahen’ein; he was taught of nine masters-of-arms; he knew that his skill was great in all these things.

  And wasted, all wasted.

  Regul.

  Tsi’mri.

  Niun flung a rock downslope, which splashed into a hot pool and disturbed the vapors.

  Peace.

  Peace on human terms, it would be. Regul had disregarded mri strategists at every crucial moment of the war. Regul would spend mri lives without stinting and they would pay the bloodprice to edunei that lost sons and daughters of the Kel, all because some regul colonial official panicked and ordered suicidal attack by the handful of mri serving him personally to cover his retreat and that of his younglings; but far less willingly would that same regul risk regul lives or properties. To lose regul lives would mean loss of status; it would have brought that regul instant censure by regul authorities, recall to homeworld, sifting of his knowledge, death of himself and his young in all probability.

  It was inevitable that humans should have realized this essential weakness of the regul-mri partnership, that humans should have learned that inflicting casualties on regul would have far more effect than inflicting those same casualties on mri.

  It was predictable then that the regul should have panicked under that pressure, that they would have reacted by retreat, precipitous, against all mri counsel to the contrary, exposing world after world to attack in their haste to withdraw to absolute security. Consequently that absolute security could not exist.

  And that regul would afterwards compound their stupidity by dealing directly with the humans—this too was credible, in the regul, to buy and sell war, and to sell out quickly when threatened rather than to risk losing overmuch of their necessary possessions.

  The regul language contained no word for courage.

  Neither had it one for imagination.

  The war was ending and Niun remained worldbound, never having put to use the things that he had learned. The gods knew what manner of trading the merchants were doing, what disposition was being made of his life. He foresaw that things might revert to what they had been before the war, that mri might again serve individual regul—that mri would fight mri again, in combat where experience mattered.

  And gods knew how long it would be possible to find a regul to serve, when the war was ending and things were entering a period of flux. Gods knew how likely a regul was to take on an inexperienced kel’en to guard his ship, when others, war-wise, were available.

  He had trained all his life to fight humans, and the policies of three species conspired to keep him from it.

  He rose up of a sudden, mind set on an idea that had been seething there for more than this day alone, and he leaped to the ground and started walking down the road. He did not look back when he had passed the edun, unchallenged, unnoticed. He owned nothing. He needed nothing. What he wore and what he carried as his weapons were his to take; he had this by law and custom, and he could ask nothing more of his edun even were he leaving with their blessing and help, which he was not.

  In the edun, Melein would surely grieve at such a silent desertion, but she had been kel’e’en herself long enough to be glad for his sake too, that he went to a service, A kel’en in an edun was as impermanent as the wind itself, and ought to own no close ties past childhood, save to the she’pan and to the People and to him or her that hired him.

  He did feel a certain guilt toward the she’pan too, to her who had mothered him with a closeness much beyond what a she’pan owed a son of her Husbands. He knew that she had particularly favored Zain his father, and still mourned his death; and she would neither approve nor allow the journey he made now.

  It was, in fact, Intel’s stubborn, possessive will that had held him this long on Kesrith, kept him at her side long past the years that he decently should have left her authority and that of his teachers. He had once loved Intel, deeply, reverently. Even that love, in the slow years since he should have followed the other kel’ein of the edun and left her, had begun to turn to bitterness.

  Thanks to her, his skills were untried, his life unused and now perhaps altogether useless. Nine years had passed since the seta’al of the Kel had been cut and stained into his face, nine years that he had sat in heart-pounding longing whenever a regul master would come up the road to the edun and seek a kel’en to guard a ship, be it for the war or even for commerce. Fewer and fewer of these requests came in the passing years, and now there came no more requests to the edun at all. He was the last of all his brothers and sisters of the Kel, last of all the children of the edun save Melein. The others had all found their service, and most were dead; but Niun s’Intel, nine years a kel’en, had yet to leave the she’pan’s protective embrace.

  Mother, let me go! he had begged of her six years ago, when his cousin Medai’s ship had left—the ultimate, the crushing shame, that Medai, swaggering, boastful Medai, should be chosen for the greatest honor of all, and he be left behind in disgrace.

  No, the she’pan had said in the absolute, invoking her authority, and to his repeated pleading f
or her understanding, for his freedom: No. You are the last of all my sons, the last, the last I shall ever have. Zain’s child. And if I will you to stay with me, that is my right, and that is my final decision. No. No.

  He had fled to the high hills that day, watching and not wishing to watch, as the ship of the regul high command, Hazan, that ruled the zone in which Kesrith lay, bore Medai s’Intel Sov-Nelan into manhood, into service, into the highest honor that had yet befallen a kel’en of Edun Kesrithun.

  That day Niun had wept, though kel’ein could not weep. And then in shame at this weakness, he had scoured his face with the harsh powdery sand and stayed fasting in the hills another day and two nights, until he had to come down and face the other kel’ein and the Mother’s anxious and possessive love.

  Old, all of them. There was not a kel’en left now save himself that could even take a service if it were offered. They were all greatly skilled. He suspected that they were the greatest masters of the yin’ein in all the People, although they did not boast anything but considerable competency; but the years had done their subtle robbery and left them no strength to use their arts in war. It was a Kel of eight men and one woman past their reason for living, without strength to fight or—after him—children to teach: old ones whose dreams must now be all backward.

  Nine years they had stolen from him, entombing him with them, living their vicarious lives through his youth.

  He walked the road down to the lowlands, letting the causeway take him to regul, since regul would not come to the edun in these days. It was not the most direct route, but it was the easiest, and he walked it insolently secure, since the old ones of the Kel could not possibly overtake him on so long a walk. He did not mean to go to the port, which was directly crosslands, but to what lay at the causeway’s end, the very center of regal authority, the Nom, that two-storied building that was the highest structure in Kesrith’s only city.