A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire

by Michael Bishop

  “I suffered through the same thing this morning,” Abel said in Langlish. “Off with your breechclout, too. She wishes to take your measure.”

  But Clefrabbes Douin took Seth’s wrist and led him toward the nook opposite Lady Turshebsel’s. “Perhaps he’d be more comfortable, Lady, if only those immediately concerned with this matter take part in our talks.”

  Lady Turshebsel looked to right and to left, nodding each time, and, in a moment, there remained in the laulset only Seth, Abel, Douin, the silver-eyed patriot-priest, and a tall, ugly Kieri dressed in blue pants and a long, rope-hooked coat.

  This man Seth knew as Porchaddos Pors, Point Marcher of Feln. It was his function to formulate and implement local policy. Although one of the highest-ranking courtiers in the Liege Mistress’s service, Pors was hierarchically subordinate to the Point Marcher of Sket, who, possessing his title through a more ancient lineage, exercised a greater authority nationwide. Pors was of the Kieri nobility, whereas Douin was a career civil servant who had won his position and his house through the sometimes uncertain preferment of scholarship and ability.

  Seth did not like Porchaddos Pors because of his aggressive temperament and the animalish cast of his features. Although grateful to Douin and Lady Turshebsel for emptying the hall of extraneous onlookers, he still did not like to remove his breechclout before this man. The stare of the aisautseb, enveloped in his stiff, white robes, was also disconcerting. Why must he disrobe in front of strangers?

  Abel and Douin flanked him, and Abel, nudging him in the side, muttered in faint Langlish, “Remove it and get in. The priests believe that a naked jauddeb speaks the truth; naked humans, too, apparently.”

  Bathing with the Clefrabbes geffide had seemed a natural thing, a strengthening of the bond between host and guest—but this, despite the kindness in Lady Turshebsel’s eyes, seemed designed either to humble or to test; both, maybe. And because Abel had earlier said that getting back to Earth depended on how he conducted himself here, Seth tasted fear. What was he being tested on? What did they want of him?

  He unknotted the breechclout and dropped it to the floor. His scrotum contracted, and his legs threatened to give way. But he kept his teeth clenched and entered the warm water, settling into the immersion nook and relaxing a little the moment his body was covered.

  Water moved around him, and Porchaddos Pors came to the pool’s edge to stand behind the Liege Mistress. Half visible in the glare of light behind and to the left of Pors, the unblinking priest kept watch.

  “Your isohet says you wish to return to Earth, Master Seth,” Lady Turshebsel began. “In the Dharmakaya.”

  “Yes, Lady.”

  “The ship you came in, formerly the property of the Ommundi Company, now belongs to us. The aisautseb, however, agree that you may regain it if you, your isohet, and the pilot who now lies aboard it in cold sleep agree to undertake a mission on behalf of the Kieri state. Master Abel has already agreed. The pilot, he tells us, will obey him, for Master Abel is now the Ommundi representative on Gla Taus with legal authority. But because you’re your isohet’s equal in all but age, Master Seth, we wish to acquire your consent, too.”

  “I agree to whatever Abel has agreed,” Seth said, still not understanding what they wanted. He had the uneasy apprehension that he was being played like a fish with a hook in its gill, and yet . . . and yet Lady Turshebsel’s voice and manner were kindly. Her pale round face, framed with blue-black ringlets, bobbed lightly above the waters flowing between them, and he found no deception in her.

  Accompanied by the sucking of his thongs, Pors neared Seth by stalking around the pool. “Have you no questions about what we require? No curiosity about the task? No doubt that you may be able to accomplish what we wish you to accomplish?” He halted halfway around and stared at Seth impatiently, meanwhile towering against the backdrop of a farther portal.

  “If Abel believes we can do what you want—”

  “Not Master Abel and you together,” Douin broke in, “but you alone, with Lord Pors and me as minor accomplices.”

  “You’re at the very center of our plan,” said Pors.

  “But why?”

  “Because of your innocence,” Lady Turshebsel said. “A quality that everyone else in this laulset long ago forfeited. Your innocence, Master Seth, is your principal asset and an essential factor in our calculations. Let me be frank: We wish to use you. You lack many of the preconceptions and biases that could thwart Lord Pors, Master Douin, and your own capable isohet. You are clean and unspoiled.”

  Seth was not flattered. We wish to use you. Along with Günter Latimer, dating from his sixteenth year, he had visited four solar systems, mastering Scansh and Kieri (in addition to Vox, Langlish, and two other human tongues), and he had heard of or actually witnessed cruelties that many persons far older than he would never have credited. His brief experience of the universe had early on apprised him, in fact, of the ubiquity and multiformity of Evil. To be termed an innocent, he felt, was to contradict the whole thrust of this experience. We wish to use you. He could still see his isosire’s body hanging like a butchered carcass from the Kieri Obelisk. . . .

  “You don’t care for my candor?” Lady Turshebsel asked.

  Seth had no answer.

  “All right. You’ve lived among us better than a year. Do you regard the people of Gla Taus, us jauddeb, as”—the Liege Mistress shaped the alien word with humorous distaste—“what your isohet sometimes disdainfully calls, well, quaz?”

  “Oh, no,” Seth blurted, reddening. At his back, he heard Abel shifting from one foot to another in acute embarrassment.

  “This word implies a lower order of development and intelligence, does it not?” said the Lady, pressing her advantage. But Seth’s reply was apparent in his flustered silence, and she continued: “We too have ugly epithets for foreigners and offworlders, Master Seth. But I believe you when you say that you don’t regard us as . . . quaz. Your isohet’s opinion I cannot discern, however, for the word first fell from his lips.”

  “Lady Turshebsel—” Abel began.

  “Quiet!” Porchaddos Pors snapped.

  “My question now,” the Liege Mistress resumed, “is if your openness to the humanity of other intelligent alien species is broad enough to include the inhabitants of Trope?”

  “Trope, Lady?”

  “The world that circles Anja, seven lights from our star, Gla Taunt. Do you know that world, Master Seth?”

  “It’s a technologically advanced planet that holds itself aloof from Interstel, I believe. It has light-trippers and communicates with passing vessels by using Vox, but it refuses either consular contact or trade. Interstel is biding its time, as it did with Gla Taus until granting Ommundi permission to attempt a mercantile alliance.”

  Pors said defensively, “We wished to develop certain aspects of our technology without aping the methods and paraphernalia of Interstel. Now we have orbiters of our own, if not light-trippers, and we did it by techniques and designs of Kieri origin.”

  Lady Turshebsel ignored the Point Marcher’s chauvinistic outburst. “But what do you know about the gosfi themselves, the people of Trope?” she asked Seth.

  “Their eyes—”

  “Yes?”

  “Their eyes are strange. But they are shaped in their bodies just as you and I are shaped.”

  “That’s what we suppose,” Lady Turshebsel conceded. “But Master Günter told me that Interstel recently induced the greatest Tropish nation to become a provisional signatory of its charter. By your own official classification system, then, the Tropiards are jauddebseb.”

  By this word, Seth realized, Turshebsel meant “humanlike” or “humanoid”—but the silver-eyed priest made disapproving wheezing noises at her mentions of both Latimer and the Tropiards, and it was clear that in his view only Kieri were without question jauddebseb.

  Lady Turshebsel continued her argument: “Knowing these things to be true, and knowing that we on Gla Taus have b
een in contact for some months with the Magistrate of Trope by means of the communication system aboard the Dharmakaya, would you regard the Tropiards as quaz if you had to deal with them?”

  “No, Lady.”

  “You’d deal with them”—the Liege Mistress surprised Seth by saying her next three words in Langlish—“human to human?”

  “Yes, Lady,” he said, disguising his astonishment. Latimer must have taught her a great deal before his murder.

  “Good. Because at this moment, Master Seth, I appoint you my personal envoy to the Magistrate of Trope. His name is Ulgraji Vrai, and his nation is called by the name of his world.”

  “But what am I to do?” Seth craned his neck to look at Abel. There arose within him a panic occasioned by his own inadequacy.

  “As you’re told,” Abel said curtly.

  “Lord Pors,” said Lady Turshebsel, “while Master Seth soaks in the waters, please detail his mission to Trope. Leave out nothing, but be succinct.”

  Pors stalked about the laulset’s pool, his thongs crepitating rudely, and in fifteen minutes he outlined the economic basis of the Kieri plan and the nature of the protracted cultural conflict on Trope that seemed to make his strategy feasible: nothing but benefits for all concerned. But as Pors spoke, Seth glanced often into the ceramic glare nimbusing the white-robed priest.

  Clearly, Lady Turshebsel’s plan had grown out of priestly resistance to her trade agreement with Ommundi Company. The aisautseb wanted no one to exploit the very real resources of the Evashsteddan, but to acquire the basics of an interstellar technology Kieri scientists and industrialists were even now venturing into the Obsidian Wastes from Old Ilvaudset, the first such explorers in several centuries. They were looking for rare ores, insulating materials, natural conductors, and any other serendipitous loot the Wastes might contain. The aisautseb did not object to this expansion because it was northward, but because the Wastes could support neither crops nor livestock, the Liege Mistress was counting on Ommundi Company to establish food-producing strongholds in the islands of the Evashsteddan and a reliable supply line to Kier and the pioneers pushing poleward in the Ilvaudsettan. That hope had died with Günter Latimer. This stratagem involving

  Trope—which Pors was now explaining—was a contingency plan, and its chief virtue seemed to be that it was acceptable, if only barely, to the aisautseb.

  “What do you think?” Lady Turshebsel asked when Pors had finished.

  “I don’t like it much, Lady,” Seth replied.

  “Why?”

  “It works hardships on us all, even if Gla Taus and Trope do ultimately stand to benefit.”

  “The Latimer isohets also benefit,” Lady Turshebsel said. “If you succeed, Master Seth, you return to your home world. If you decline my appointment, the Dharmakaya stays in orbit and you and Master Abel remain our guests. Narthaimnar Chappouib and his fellow priests have approved this mission as well as the reward attendant upon your coming home to Gla Taus.” She nodded to suggest that Narthaimnar Chappouib was her silver-eyed advisor, confirming Seth’s suspicions about the man’s influence.

  “Gla Taus isn’t our home,” he said, “and the Dharmakaya is already ours.”

  “He agrees,” Abel interjected. “He accepts your appointment as envoy to the nation-cum-world called Trope.”

  “He accepted before he’d heard the whole proposal,” Lady Turshebsel rejoined. “I’d like to hear his opinion now.”

  Lacking certainty that he could do what they wished, Seth hesitated.

  “Tell her!” Abel whispered.

  “I accept your appointment,” Seth heard himself say.

  “Then go to Aisaut Chappouib for a blessing. You’ll depart Gla Taus tomorrow—whereas I will remove to Sket until your return.” She lifted her arms and clapped her hands. A woman entered the laulset, helped Lady Turshebsel from the water, and draped her cloak over her shoulders. Wet, the fine black hair covering the Liege Mistress’s body lay along her limbs and flanks like a delicate fur.

  When the two women were gone, Clefrabbes Douin assisted Seth from the pool and pointed him toward the unblinking priest.

  “My garments?”

  “Not yet,” Douin said. “Go to the aisautseb.”

  Seth walked naked past Lord Pors and halted before the priest’s tiled throne.

  “Kneel,” said Narthaimnar Chappouib.

  Seth lowered himself to the cold tiles, knees aching with the hardness under them, his flesh crawling with a variety of unnamable chills. He was kneeling, naked, before one of those who had helped slay his isosire. As Latimer had gone naked up the side of the tower in Mirrimsagset Square. . . .

  “You will carry a gift to the ruler to whom Lady Turshebsel sends you as envoy,” the priest said. “This will be my blessing, for you have no belief in aisautseb prayers. In any case, your nature is such that they would have no meaning.” Chappouib looked about for someone to command. “Master Douin, would you assist me?”

  Douin came forward and freed from the inside of the aisautseb’s collar a chain on which was strung a dairauddes, a tube of black ceramic as long as Seth’s hand from wrist to middle fingertip.

  “Give it to me,” Chappouib said.

  Douin held the dairauddes out to the priest; and Seth was taken aback because when Chappouib reached to take it, lifting his great sleeves so that they fell to his elbows, he accepted the dairauddes with a pair of raw-looking stumps. This aisautseb, like the mythical namesake of all Kieri priests, had no hands.

  The dairauddes dangled between his stumps, threatening to slip away and shatter on the floor. Even so, Chappouib wished to put it around Seth’s neck, and Seth, despite not wanting the thing to touch him, inclined his head to make the transfer easier. He felt instinctively that the ritual had sexual overtones, and these confused and frightened him. Was he being honored by the priest’s gift, or was the transfer a contemptuous mockery of his manhood?

  At last Clefrabbes Douin took the dairauddes from Chappouib and bestowed it on Seth. Now he was wearing a “demon killer,” and to many Kieri—this thought chilled—Seth himself qualified as a demon.

  “Your dairauddes,” Chappouib said, shaking down his sleeves and covering his stumps again, “once belonged to Lady Turshebsel. She forfeited it when she drove the aisautseb from her service. I brought it back. Now she bids me give it to you to bestow on Magistrate Vrai of Trope.”

  Seth waited, bemused.

  “You may depart his presence,” Douin told Seth.

  Seth hurried to do so, retreating toward a young Kieri attendant who had come back into the laulset with his clothes. Dressing, he watched as Abel, Douin, and Pors went forward to receive Chappouib’s blessing—even Abel, who supposedly could not benefit from the recitation of an aisautseb prayer. Afterward, the silver-eyed priest spoke softly to Pors and Douin, excluding Abel and punctuating his advice with vigorous nods and shakings of the head. At last, quite audibly, he cried, “You are my hawks, the hawks of Aisaut. Go forth with truth and courage.

  “Aye, my hawks, go forth!”

  “He had no hands,” Seth said as Douin led Abel and him back down the steps of the palace toward the teeming square. Sunfall was imminent, and Gla Taunt—perversely, it still seemed to Seth—oozed down the eastern sky like an egg yolk sliding through its white.

  “A traditional aisautseb practice,” Douin said. “The holy one who keeps a place at Kieri court sacrifices his hands for the honor. He becomes the conscience of the nation. His handlessness signifies that he neither gives nor takes, for his domain is spiritual rather than worldly.”

  “He gave me the dairauddes.”

  “A spiritual gift, Master Seth, itself to be passed on to another.”

  “When did Chappouib lose his hands?” Abel asked.

  “The day Lady Turshebsel officially restored the aisautseb advisorship abolished thirty-seven years ago. Chappouib was chosen by his fellows, and gladly relinquished his hands to the sword.”

  “Barbaric,” Ab
el said. “Barbaric superstition.”

  Douin halted at the entrance to the square, his dark eyes flashing. “I agree.” His tone suggested that some doubt still plagued him. “It’s the sort of thing Lady Turshebsel fought successfully until the arrival of Interstel, Ommundi, and your isosire.”

  This veiled accusation was as close to rudeness as Clefrabbes Douin had ever come in his dealings with the Latimer isohets, but Seth sympathized with their host’s point of view. Their presence on the planet had been an irritant and a provocation, and now they were preparing to travel somewhere else, on a mission for which Seth could summon little enthusiasm.

  “Barbaric,” Abel repeated.

  Now Douin held his tongue.

  And Seth, looking toward their host’s stately geffide, saw a marketplace filled with bobbing tinfoil balloons. Even in the gathering twilight, the lofty dagger shaft on which Latimer had died, the Kieri Obelisk, pierced him to the heart. As for the dairauddes about his neck, it mocked him: Seth was sure of it.

  THREE

  The cabin’s blackness was riven by a scream. Although Seth had been having a nightmare (a succession of blurred images underlain by an impalpable distress), the cry was not his.

  “Dear God!” Abel was pleading. “Dear God, don’t let them put their hands on me!” The plea soared into a bloodcurdling falsetto that seemed incisive enough to split the hull of their light-tripper and let the void spill in.

  Seth pressed a button. Their cabin was filled with a soft, Earthlike twilight. His isohet, clad only in a pair of nylon sleep trousers, had scooted across his bunk so that his naked back met the bulkhead and pressed insistently against it. His pupils were fat, black suns.

  “I’m here,” Seth said, lowering himself onto the foot of Abel’s bunk. “I’m here. We’re aboard the Dharmakaya, five days out from Gla Taus on our way to the Anja system.”

  Abel’s pupils collapsed spectacularly, drinking in the reality of the cabin. Seth reached out and gripped his isohet’s ankle. He saw that Abel was finally focusing on him—but his flaccid torso ran with sweat, and his hair was plastered to his face as if he had just returned from a shower.