by Janet Morris
I turned from the view, went and got Khys’s texts from the couch, and settled with them among the cushions. Long did I struggle with his discourses upon hesting, though I could make no attempt to put his instruction to work. Khys defined hesting as the introduction into experiential time of probability not inherent in the sort. But I had little understanding of sorting, the forereader’s skill. Stochastic restructuring, or hesting, demanded apprehension of what was natural to the time. I could not sort. One must see the sort, the spread of probability, before one can alter it. I touched the band upon my throat, ran my hand beneath the creamy Gateshir robe, over my left breast.
With the subject of helsars, I was at an even greater disadvantage. I had never seen one. I knew they were material things, small crystals that were a kind of teaching aid to the skills of mind. I knew how they had come to be upon this plane, having read the Keepress’ papers. But I scanned the material stubbornly—the many adjurations and warnings and fail-safes Khys recommended—should one be about that questing. For so it appeared to be—a journey, an exploration of a different reality. When I sighed and rubbed my eyes, stretching, I realized the ache in them was caused by the fading light and the failure of the entrapped stars to recognize my presence and increase their glow.
I put down the treatise upon helsars and glared up at them, hovering, dim.
“Be bright, curse you,” I muttered at them, arrogant reminders of my mental insufficiency. I was sorry that I had pressed Carth, and thus lost his company.
I lay back upon the cushions, staring up at the bronze scales upon the ceiling. I had no interest, I told myself, in such a dangerous trek as Khys’s guidelines revealed helsar teachings to be. I thought of Khys, and wished he would come use me, release me from my frustrations. Upon the arrar Sereth my mind dwelt also, he who rode hulions. Possibly he would be among the arrars at Khys’s gathering. The thought cheered me. I stretched again, arranged my hair upon the cushions, closed my eyes. It might, I thought, be a lengthy evening.
Sleep was not tardy attending me. But it was a sleep restless and draining, during which it seemed that I was called into a presence which named itself my father. I replied I did not know him. You may be he, I allowed, looking calmly upon a man form, bare outline, from which star-stuff spurted and flared. I was not afraid; rather was I filled with longing, and an overwhelming sense of belonging. Let me stay, I petitioned that darkness, which of a sudden had great glowing eyes. In each could be seen a universe, spawning. Have I not done enough, been enough, suffered enough, to suit you? No. Bring me my fruits; he spoke without words, the sound of it great bell peals in my brain. Take it, and the father also, I spat. I would be free. And he laughed, and the gale of it picked me up like paper and whirled me back into the bondage of flesh. I had one last glimpse of that place, over which a great winged slitsa with fire-clawed appendages hovered, its tail wound in the ascending lines of force that skewered the world in its care. I heard its thrumming, sensed the harmonic it provided as it pulsed the gravitic song that binds the substructure of space to the weathers of time. And then the song was gone, and the pulse also, and I sat up in the dimmed keep to see the stars and the new moon rising, and the dharen, silent, leaning over the gol table in the near-dark. I rose up. He noted it and lit the keep, rubbing his eyes. He had sat straining, rather than wake me.
“Khys, you should not have let me sleep,” I said, conscious of his hunched preoccupation as I crossed the mat to stand beside the table, where he had spread what seemed to be a list of names, with a number of columns after each, in some of which were noted numbers and cryptic symbols. He shrugged, straightened up.
“They did artful work upon you,” he said. “Turn.”
I did so.
“Carth tells me you had a number of questions which he could not answer.”
“I would not bother you with them,” I excused myself, stepping back from his molten, half-lidded gaze. “It was only ...”
“I know.” He smiled warmly, as he seldom did, showing those white and perfect teeth. “If, by the pass’s end, you still have them, I will speak with you. For now, set your thoughts upon the moments upcoming. Do your best for me this night.”
“My best at what?” I queried him, noting his humor, still lingering as he gathered up the papers, sheafing them on the gol. Khys did not deign to answer, but busied himself secreting the lists in his bookwall.
“The cahndor of Nemar,” he said, donning his plainest and most elegant formal robe, “has brought his couch-mate here, and his heir also.” His face swathed itself in shadow as he made fast the chald at his hips. “Both the woman and the child will reside at the lake for a time. She will be, understandably, nervous and ill-at-ease. If you can do anything to comfort her, I would appreciate it.” All the while he talked, I could feel his cold probe, intruding. “Mind-seek,” so the Strothric teachings label it; invasion, it seems, to one who has no comparable skills, and hence no choice.
“I will do what I can,” I said quietly, fleeing to couchside on pretext of retrieving that miasmic wrap which I would wear, and also of his choosing, and not my own. “But that is not what you want.”
“No,” he agreed, reclining, his humor evaporating like water in full sun. “You are right. The pretense must serve us both, for the moment. Know you how to peg the time?”
I nodded. Carth had seen to it that I was not wholly ignorant of the Stoth traditions that Khys so highly prized. I slipped the wrap over my head. It closed about the right shoulder, falling open down the whole right side. The seamed side lay low against my left breast. My mark, in this fashion, was well displayed. I smoothed that fabric, as light to the skin as an evening breeze, over my hips. Khys reached out and put his large hand flat on my belly, his stroke following the cloth down.
I stepped back from him. He made no move, but stood silent, brooding. A muscle twitched repeatedly at his jaw. Disconcerted, I knelt before him, my palms flat upon my thighs.
“Dharen,” I whispered, “you make me uneasy. Surely, if you would speak in more detail, I could better serve you.” I wanted to touch him, to taste him, to bridge the gulf between us with my body. I bent my head to his feet, and my braids, heavy with the gems wound through them, flogged my shoulders as they fell to the mat.
“I will, this night, lend you to the cahndor of Nemar,” said Khys quietly. I sat up. Accusingly I stared at him, bit my trembling lips.
“It is not discipline. I am not displeased with you.” He pushed himself upright and touched his palm to my cheek. I took his hand in both of mine, held it there, kissing his open palm. I saw tiny beads of perspiration in the creases. I ran my tongue in the folds, tasted his salt.
“What, then, is it?” I dared, in my softest voice, staring up at him, his palm pressed against my cheek once more.
“An old obligation, a part of some larger hest of mine.” His brows arched, but he did not rebuke me. “It is necessary that you perform creditably. If you can do only as well as you did with the arrar Sereth, I will be satisfied.” His tone had turned dry and pointed. I dropped his hand, sat back upon my heels, raising my head high.
“I will try,” I said, barely audible. I knew now why he had been preparing me. My heart seemed frost-burned. I blinked away my tears fiercely, lest they mar the gilding upon which the forereaders had spent so long. I reminded myself that if I were a wellwoman, I would have served a different man nightly, without such qualms. But I was not a wellwoman. I watched him, moving about the keep, his dark-robed figure stiff and tense, his movements belying his calm. Perhaps it was an obligation, but surely it was not his pleasure, this that he proposed. I wondered what would constrain such a man, what would make him act against his own will.
He whirled about, eyes blazing, leaning back against the gol slab. I could see his hands whiten as he gripped the table’s edge.
“Be still, or I will have him put a child upon you, and be freed from your self-conscious mental babble permanently.” I lowered my head miserably, that I
might somehow silence my thoughts.
“Get up.” I did so, pulling the open side of my wrap together as best I could.
“Pull it through your chald.” And as I hesitated, he bore down on me. Reaching out, he raised the wrap and slipped it under the chald I wore, jerking the material tight. The soft, glimmering wrap was now chaldbelted, turning the slitted right side from blatant openness into restrained invitation. I smiled up at him, uncertain. Simple things, I did not know, such as how to wear a chald to advantage. Khys’s intrusive gaze turned gentle as my mind bewailed my inadequacies.
“I do not want to couch another,” I said needlessly. “It is only your touch my body seeks.”
“But you will do as I instruct you,” he said. I could only nod.
He spoke then, as we descended the back stairs and crossed the walkway to the common holding, of what had been achieved in his meetings. He had never before done so. Most of it was beyond my understanding. I learned that some helsar chaldric strands had already been bestowed, and that the strand given was of luricrium, a rare and costly metal which has to it a tinge like storm clouds forming. I learned that the odds against completing helsar work unscathed were twenty to one, that prerequisite to such an attempt was the successful obviation of space. I did not learn what happened if one failed. Nor did he make clear what might be gained, that such a risk was worth the taking.
I endeavored to think as little as possible, and not at all about the exchange Khys proposed. But I could not silence my heart’s wailing. Generously, the dharen said nothing, but instead encircled my shoulders with his arm, against the evening’s bite. The wind, gusting, seemed to snigger at me, that I so venerated this man, who doubtless only used me, as the arrar Sereth had said, to serve his hests. Whatever they were.
Between ornately trapped sentries we passed, through the brass-inlaid doors that proclaimed this tower the residence of women. In the entrance hall we passed small knots of robed and wrapped lake-born, and the smells of flesh and flower mingled with the acrid tang of narcotic danne and set my head spinning. Clutching Khys’s robed arm, I pressed close against him as we passed into the common holding, and I saw just how many attended this gathering. Crowds, their buzz and roar, their close-packed smell, their threatening diversity, were something with which I had no experience. My eyes searched the strangers, seeking a familiar face. I saw neither Carth nor any other I knew at the drink stand, nor before the musicians who rolled out a pulse-matching Dydian chromatic piece in seven-four time. Near the easterly bank of sheer-draperied windows, yellow smoke hung heavy in the air, dancing phantasmic as it rose toward the star-glowed ceiling of greened brass. The round, hollow table was set with all manner of gracious utensils. Whole carcasses, fruited skins gleaming, lay upon huge serving trays encircled with pastried tuns, their crisped outer crusts dusted with salt. The enclosed floor was so thick with celebrants that it could not be seen. A plethora of forereaders circulated among the guests, all bare-breasted, their hips diversely wrapped, their soft flesh shining. Here were representatives of every bloodline, surely, that thrived upon Silistra. From palest white to starless evening sky did their coloring range, and those forms were dressed all differently, from bare nakedness to one dark-skinned, tiny women of whom all that could be seen were her eyes and a tiny patch of forehead. She was elsewhere swathed in layer upon layer of green translucence, the edges of which were fringed with little golden beads that tinkled as she moved. Toward her Khys headed me, to where she stood with a formidable-appearing man who wore upon him a magnificent cape of black feathers, like ebvrasea’s wings, sprouting from his broad shoulders. To another he was speaking animatedly, a man near his own build, whose back, dark-robed, was turned to us, and about whose waist snuggled the arrar’s chald.
The woman saw us first. Her velvet eyes widened. She touched her companion’s arm, and that rana-skinned man turned his own black eyes upon us. His dark lips drew back, those white teeth, startling, augmenting his fearsome aspect. I thought he might roar, rather than speak, as he slid gracefully toward us, the crowd parting for him as if in long-rehearsed formation.
Down upon us he swept, that carnivore’s smile flashing, and when he reached us, his great arms went about me. A hand cupping each of my buttocks, my body pressed to his leathers with their metal fittings, he lifted me off the ground and whirled me around. I shook with fear, my head against the tight-curled hairs of his leather-strapped chest, biting my lips.
“Estri,” he said in my ear, his lips nibbling down into the hollow of my neck.
“Please, put me down,” I begged timorously. Laughing the roar I had expected from this hulion of a man, he did so, his fingers uncupping my hips regretfully. I stepped back and found myself against Khys, who put his own hand to the nape of my neck. The dark man’s eyes seemed to cloud, as if a curtain blew over them. His mouth tightened; his hand found the point of his shoulder, rubbed there.
“I thought,” he said to Khys after a long time examining me, “Sereth spoke allegory, part-truths, born of his distress. I see now that such was not the case.” He kneaded that place upon his shoulder, looked about his feet, eyes darting. Then he raised them.
“I am appalled,” he said, not softly, to the dharen, his censure snapping like a whip, making a circle of silence and attention around us. I shivered, my skin crawling under the many-eyed stare of the curious crowd. I sighted the tiny woman, her breasts and hands pressed against the arm of the arrar whose back was toward us, her body straining. She was shaking her veiled head to and fro. I tossed my confined hair forward, over my left shoulder, that it might obscure from the dark man’s eyes my mark. Khys’s fingers tightened upon my neck, reminding me of the band that pulsed there.
I quivered under the dark one’s stare, from those oddly filmed eyes.
“Appalled, are you?” said Khys softly to him. “Or perhaps it is another emotion you feel, birthed out of your own inadequacies? Could you, Cahndor, have done such a thing? Is it not your fear that appalls you, your own vulnerability that causes you such unease?”
The cahndor of Nemar shifted upon his feet, his fists wrapped in his many-stranded chald. “Doubtless,” he growled, “that is the case. At least, partly.”
Khys brushed my hair off my shoulder. His device twinkled at the cahndor, who could not take his gaze from it.
“I would not have Liuma so degraded,” the cahndor said in a lowered tone, running his dark talons through tight-curled hair. Upon his arm, so displayed, was a winged slitsa, wound around a recurved blade, drawn upon the skin in umbers and ochers. It slithered and writhed with the movements of his bicep.
“She is yours. We will do with her only what you wish. If you want her not at all improved, do not leave her with us. It matters not to me. It is the child who should concern both of us.” And he let go of my neck, pushing me gently from him. “As with her, it was the child that gave her value.” I stood frozen between them, like a hapless moon eclipsed, wishing I might at that moment cease to live within flesh.
The cahndor of Nemar extended his hand. Hesitantly I surrendered my own, watched as his grasp engulfed it. By that grip, inexorable as gravity, he drew me nearer. I saw, briefly, the woman, still held by the arrar. Her huge eyes were luminous, fearful. My own, I was sure, showed no more composure. The darkling prince enfolded my trembling frame, and I understood the filming of his eyes: nictitating membranes, snapping forth and retreating, cloud-glitter on an obsidian void.
“Speak my name,” growled this savage to whom Khys was obligated.
“I will, Cahndor, if you would but inform me of it,” I breathed, compliant as any obligation about to be discharged, beseeching his patience. His grip tightened. He spoke a number of sentences in some unfamiliar tongue. Then he turned his head and barked an order in that same guttural speech. He intoned his full name gently. I repeated it, fascinated by that gaze that immobilized me as surely as Khys’s flesh lock.
“She knows nothing?” he demanded of Khys, loosing his grasp.
>
“She knows a great deal. She remembers nothing of her life before she came to the lake. We have deemed it safer not to remind her of what she herself will not recall.”
“As you predicted,” said Chayin rendi Inekte harshly.
“As I contrived it,” amended Khys, his well-modulated voice silky, in contrast to the desert monarch’s imperious growls. My knees grew infirm. Both of them, then, knew my history. Khys had never before admitted it. And the other thing he had said ... I faced him, not wanting to believe what his veiled threat to the cahndor implied.
His lucent gaze stayed me, my questions, my hurt. My tears dried in my eyes unshed before the cold breath of his hauteur. I turned once more to the cahndor.
The diminutive dark woman, upon the arm of the arrar Sereth, had come up beside her couch-mate. She eyed me with terror unrestrained. Her lips were dried with it; her tiny limbs trembled like a sapling in the path of a northern gale. She leaned heavily upon Sereth’s robed arm, her finger clawlike. I had no doubt that she was in need of his support. And that one regarded me impassively from under his thick brown mane, as if we had never couched.
“Sereth,” I whispered. He did not answer, but only regarded me, his attention upon my left breast. Stung that he would not even acknowledge me, I turned my head away, staring at the floor, for I knew not where else to look. My fingers found Khys’s strand of couchbond at my waist and tangled themselves in it. I could feel my palms weeping, the moistness they imparted to the web-cloth upon my belly.
Khys introduced me to the cahndor’s couch-mate by her first name only, an insult that was not lost upon her, she who was Nemarchan, forereader and highest among the tiasks of that desert land, Nemar.
He took her resentment from her mind, surely, for he told her courteously that while at the Lake of Horns she might not use titles, for here no such accounting of rank was kept; even her hide name, and her mother’s and father’s, mattered not at this place, only what she was and what she might come to be. I watched Khys weave his spell upon that tiny woman in a matter of moments.
