Kirith Kirin (The City Behind the Stars)

by Jim Grimsley

  A servant wearing the gems of his house brought me a worked wooden chest bearing a jeweled dagger resting on a bolt of cloak fabric, under cover of a polite note informing me of my loveliness and charm. I was taken aback by the richness of the gifts and the forwardness of the note. Here was writing in his own hand, and signed “Cothryn son of Duris.” Here were luxuries, preening themselves over their costliness.

  I knew what offering the gift implied, having heard my share of barracks talk even in my state of relative isolation. When an older man or woman wants to take a young lover, courtship begins with a gift. But this custom is for men and women who are old enough to wear cloaks. I sent the gifts back by the householder who brought them to me, being certain it would please nobody to see me courted by this man.

  Next day a servant returned with another pair of gifts, a porcelain jar of perfumed oil and another bolt of fine cloth. The note was polite and even more presumptuous. He took my first refusal, he said, as a sign of my enduring virtue, proof that my beauty was not wasted on a soul of chattel. I thought this “soul of chattel” to be a particularly vile phrase, and so I kept the note this time, though I sent the gifts back.

  At Velunen he was waiting near the shrine and would have spoken to me but I hurried to mount Nixva. He stood in the clearing watching me ride away. Some other soldiers who had come to ceremony took note of this.

  Following Vithilunen he lingered in the clearing again, and that time I was starving and could not think of enough tasks to outlast him. When I headed for lower camp he followed me, speaking charmingly of the weather and other trivialities. He had heard rumors about Nemort’s march and related them to me; his news at least three weeks old, though I could not tell him so. A time of silence, after which Cothryn wondered aloud, in well-modulated tones, why I had returned his gifts when they might have pleased me had I only kept them.

  I answered that I had not yet reached my cloaking-day and that I would dishonor my uncle if I began accepting gifts before I was of age. He answered (he actually said it) that my beauty was beyond my years and that convention was not for me, or something on that level. Luckily we reached the eating tent soon and I, seeing Mordwen, excused myself from Cothryn at once.

  A Nivra who is taken with a common boy doesn’t often have the best intentions. I was astonished he would speak to me in public after I twice refused his gifts. When Mordwen asked me what Cothryn wanted I answered vaguely and turned him to another subject, asking about a letter I had been copying.

  That evening, in my room behind the shrine, no gift awaited me. I relaxed.

  My vacation from his passion was brief. A few days later another gift arrived, this one placed in my room when I was not there to refuse it. The accompanying note again flattered me and begged my company. I had only to wear the embroidered sash and silver bracelet and he would fathom my wishes, he would have me brought secretly to his tent.

  This was odious enough. But he had drenched the letter in scent, false sweetnesses like rotted elgerath blossoms. I had just come back from Illyn Water where fresh flowers were in bloom.

  It was obvious he meant to persist. For a day or so, between other tasks, I wondered what to do, and considered asking the lake women for their advice. Finally I rejected that as silly. Even Words of Power would have been of no use to me unless I wanted to make something dreadful happen to him. I would be breaking my promise if I did that.

  Worse than the gifts was his sending someone into my room to leave them. The next day a note arrived in the same manner. He was encouraged that I had not returned his gifts outright. (Was I supposed to carry them back to his tent myself?) Perhaps he had reason for hope?

  I closed my mouth on my anger and recorded suuren in the suuren book, reporting afterward to Mordwen’s work tent.

  Cothryn was there. I would not meet his eye, though I lingered to make sure he saw I wore neither sash nor bracelet. I set about my duties and felt better, performing the now-familiar copying, the charge of business in the air, the hushed voices, the careful dusting, drying, and proofreading of letters cachet, writs notable and seals delivered.

  Cothryn came to the shrine tent for Evening Song, and when I lit the lamp he moved nearly beside me. I fled at the earliest moment, out the back tent flap and into the forest. Mordwen found me shaking in the trees. I had been afraid Cothryn would send his householder to my room while I was there, or worse, come himself. Mordwen asked me what was wrong. I swallowed my pride, showed him the gifts and let him read the note.

  Mordwen’s voice grew crisp. “He’s sent you gifts before?”

  “Yes. Twice. I refused them both times.”

  “He had these things placed in your room?”

  “Yes. He knew I’d send them back if I were there. He sent them during the morning ride when I was away.”

  We had returned to his tent, awaiting supper. He paced back and forth in the clearing, more agitated than I had yet seen him. Finally he said, “I ought to send for him and deal with him myself. Never mind your age, you’re also kyyvi in Kirith Kirin’s shrine. I suppose he didn’t think of that. Well, Kirith Kirin will be here any day. Let’s see how he likes this news.”

  “Kirith Kirin will be here?”

  He raised a shaggy eyebrow. “Yes he will. No one else knows. Say nothing.”

  “Do you have to tell him about Cothryn?”

  Mordwen’s eyes actually gleamed. “Of course I have to. He’d be furious if I tried to keep such a thing from him.”

  When I told about Cothryn’s attentions to Commyna, her reaction was briefer and even more to the point. “Do not let that man speak to you again, in the shrine or anywhere else. Gross creature. Cordyssans are prone to that sort of tawdriness.”

  But when I returned to my tent another gift awaited me, with a note of the usual sort. “At last you are tempted and keep my small tributes. Maybe these additional treasures will convince you of my devotion.”

  The bundle contained silver earrings and a jeweled buckle, costly and well-made. I wrapped the jewelry carefully in the viis cloth and sat trembling. If I could have flayed him and rolled him in salt his suffering would not have satisfied me.

  Naturally he was in the work tent again that afternoon, and naturally he reappeared at evening ceremony. I dreaded going to the shrine tent, since I figured he would approach me directly again. As it turned out, however, he never got the chance. When the sun vanished and I lit the lamp, Kirith Kirin came riding up the hillside.

  3

  I sang the evening song as best I could, though as soon as the soldiers realized the Prince was in the clearing they began to shout. Kirith Kirin simply sat there. When the cheering died down he raised a silver-braceleted arm toward the evening stars. “It’s good to see you all here in one place again. This camp is home, I’m glad to be in it. Prince Imral and I have come to see Mordwen and some of the officers; I won’t be staying long. While I’m here, continue in your usual routine, but at the same time prepare yourselves. General Nemort and an army of four thousand have entered Angoroe at the southern end. Within a few days we’ll be preparing to face them.”

  He spoke with a calm that lent his words force. He looked at everyone for a moment. “Jessex, lead us in singing Kimri.”

  I fixed on red Aryaemen flaming in the black sky, a familiar star that appeared as if in omen. I lifted my voice into the night and voices joined me singing, including Kirith Kirin. I could not help but watch him after a while, relief at his presence, a heavy hand lifting from my heart. On the last bars of the song he dismounted and embraced Mordwen Illythin, as did Imral. I went behind the shrine, finding my coat and pulling it over my bare arms. I watched Kirith Kirin standing calm at the center of every gaze.

  Almost every gaze, that is.

  Soon after my retreat Cothryn sidled near me. At the same moment Imral broke away from the crowd around Kirith Kirin to greet me. Cothryn, naturally, paid his respects to the Drii Prince, so cordial in manner it was impossible to be offended. He asked af
ter Imral’s journey and Imral gave him some bland pleasantry. I was at the point of taking my leave when Cothryn said, blithely, “You must tell me the secret of making friends with our kyyvi, Imral Ynuuvil. Our Jessex is not friendly to me as he is to you.”

  Prince Imral laughed mildly, taken aback. “You must simply become more interesting, Cothryn. Perhaps you can learn how.” Imral steered me away, saying quietly, “What a vulgar man.”

  I bit my tongue. The moment passed and Imral merely thought it curious. But the incident had not been lost on Mordwen. He called me to his side and asked me what Cothryn had said. He conferred momentarily with Imral and sent both of us to supper while he went to Kirith Kirin alone. Imral said nothing to me directly but his manner had become very grave, he took pains to speak to me kindly. I felt as if I had suddenly come up lame. He ordered me a glass of Drii brandy, the nose so strong I was uncertain whether to sip it. A steward brought supper but no sooner served it than a messenger arrived with a note for Imral and one for me. Mine sealed with the red seal I had seen before, the paper fine and smooth. “Come to my tent at once,” the note said. “Imral Ynuuvil will accompany you. Bring with you any gifts given you by Cothryn son of Duris.”

  When I folded the note, Imral was calling for his cloak and my coat. I took a whole swallow of brandy in spite of the vein of fire in my throat. Imral watched me but said nothing.

  We fetched the parcels from the shrine tent and descended to the glen where Kirith Kirin had set his field tent. We passed the outermost watch-fire and I could hardly draw a calm breath.

  In the tent sat Mordwen Illythin wrapped in a violet cloak. Kirith Kirin was pacing back and forth, too angry to sit, bracelets flashing. When Imral and I entered, both Mordwen and Kirith Kirin nodded greeting, Mordwen frowning at me slightly as a kind of warning. I stood respectfully beside the lit brazier while Imral took a seat. Kirith Kirin asked me crisply to tell him what had happened between Cothryn and me. As I spoke he watched the fire in the brazier. I told him everything about the gifts. Once he interrupted to ask, sharply, “Why didn’t you send back the sash and the bracelet?”

  “What was I supposed to do, sir, take them to his tent myself?” My heart pounding. “He had the gifts sent to my room when I was riding. I couldn’t refuse them when I wasn’t there.”

  Apparently this fact had not penetrated. His voice gentled. Lifting the earrings to the light. “He sent you these today? In the same way, leaving them in your room?”

  “Yes.”

  He watched me for a long time. There was something of his former tenderness in his gaze, it took me back to the quay in the River City, and I felt like a lonely child being welcomed home. “It isn’t fit I should say what I think of this, nor do I wish you to hear our discussion. But Cothryn won’t bother you any more, I promise you.”

  He let me stay long enough to drink the cup of politeness, though the time passed mostly in silence. Anger had etched onto his face. When the wine was finished, a guard walked me to the shrine tent, and the tent was placed under guard as it had been before our numbers got stretched thin.

  I fed Axfel and ran with him on the moonlit slopes, my legs feeling tireless and strong from the uncountable hours I had spent riding Nixva or dancing along the Illyn shore. Later I cleaned the lamps, oiling the wooden cases, refilling the oil flagons from jars that I had buried in the rocks for safety. Feeling uneasy.

  In the morning I sang Velunen and put away the lamp, leaving immediately on the morning ride. Both Kirith Kirin and Cothryn were among the celebrants in the clearing that morning, the former looking grim, the latter unsuspecting, still trying to catch my eye when I sang.

  I spent the morning as had become customary for me, riding on Nixva to the shore of the azure lake, meditating in fifth level trance to understand the intricacies of a step in pattern-dancing. That day, for the first time since we moved camp from shadow country, the lake women retained me for a considerable period out of real time, and I traveled with Commyna to the High Place over Cunuduerum.

  While I had done detailed work in the basic principles of Tower magic, I had never been inside a High Place and had not actually expected to visit one. The lake women were wary of the Towers and had told me so many times. One does not climb to the High Place unless one is prepared to fight.

  We traveled to Seumren in the manner of the lake women, crossing space by a magic of which I would learn nothing from them. We did not ascend the Tower Stair to the summit since that would have awakened the Tower; we emerged from Commyna’s mist into the pirunaen, the magician’s work room.

  Commyna had chosen Seumren rather than the High Place over Inniscaudra because of the dense magics that veil the River City; our presence in Inniscaudra would have been more difficult to hide. The work room was a sparsely furnished affair. A huge worktable and lines of chests and cabinets. The center of the room clear, though in other Towers that space would have been occupied by the silver-worked frame for the fire pot and the underpinnings of the Eyestone.

  Once Commyna had shown me what there was to see of the room-under, we climbed the narrow stair to the top. Seumren is the eldest of High Places and there has never been an Eyestone on the summit. The ruling magic of Seumren comes from inlaid runes like those in the circles on Sister Mountain, the device Falamar was copying. Jurel Durassa was the first pirunuu to imbed a stone in a Tower.

  The summit of Seumren was a hundred staves across, paved with smooth stone on which runes were inscribed in silver. So long as we trod on the marble strip around the stair mouth, we would not activate the magic in the runes. On other shenesoeniisae, the circular summit was bordered by a stone colonnade, and some towers, like Ellebren, were three-horned, but Seumren was open, flat and wide. The tower soared over the city, whose buildings spread out like stone miniatures along the mist-shrouded riverbank. “I feel at peace here. I want to dance on the runes.”

  Commyna laughed. “Well, don’t do that this trip. In fact, you should think twice before wakening the elder devices like Seumren or Aediamysaar. Their powers are not to be entirely understood from the levels to which you can attain. This was part of what defeated Falamar: He built Seumren to mimic what we had made at Aediamysaar, but in the end he could not master our runes. The yystones are much more suited to the powers of this world.”

  “Then you could stand as mistress of this place?”

  “Possibly. But in doing so I’d call down endless curses on myself. The shenesoeniis of this world is forbidden me, if I want to remain a power in the One rather than the Other.”

  “Why? You were born in Arthen.”

  Commyna shook her head. “I don’t think I could tell you all the story. Every creature made by YY has made a terrible mistake at some time or other. Mine was as bad as any, and my sisters were caught up in it. Because of it, my sisters and I are forbidden to influence events in this world, on this side of the Barrier Mountains. The world we live in is beyond them.”

  “In Saenal? That’s the name for the whole world, Mordwen says.”

  “Only in one direction. You’ll find in time that there are eleven directions, including tomorrow. In another direction, along another path, lies my world. You’ll see it some day, a very long time from now.”

  She seemed troubled, and I wondered what she was not saying.

  “You’re not telling me everything that’s on your mind, are you?”

  Commyna wandered down the marble strip to the end of the stair mouth. “Nemort will arrive at the north end of Angoroe in a few days. He’s marching in battle order, having been alerted to the possibility of ambush by the patrols Kirith Kirin drove south.

  “Whatever keeps Drudaen at Montajhena is still holding him there. But if Kirith Kirin’s soldiers defeat Nemort, as I believe they will, Drudaen will send someone to help him, to hold Gnemorra and drive our soldiers back into Arthen. He’ll send Julassa Kyminax, I believe. When that time comes —”

  Her voice drifted to silence. I said, finally, “There won’t be muc
h warning, will there?”

  Commyna shook her head. “Hardly any. And worse, these present soldiers have not faced magic. Only the Jhinuuserret have ever fought against one skilled in our arts.”

  “Can’t we do anything?”

  “We can wait for Yron.”

  “Do you have any sign he’s close?”

  Commyna lifted her face to the wind pouring over the tower. “I wish I knew. We’re finishing the cloak we made for him. We’re hoping.”

  When the lesson was over we returned to Illyn Water, and I meditated at fifth level for some time before returning to camp. Vella and Vissyn were sitting beneath the duraelaryn, stitching Yron’s cloak while clouds blew over Illyn, a storm of no one’s creation. The lake women watched the clouds mildly, wind lifting strands of their hair. Vissyn asked me what I thought of Seumren and I said I had found the shenesoeniis to be wonderfully exhilarating, the air tasted sharp and fresh, I wanted to go onto the stones and would have except Commyna said no. The rapture of my description must have taken the women aback. “He isn’t exaggerating,” Commyna said. “I watched him. I believe he could do well even on such a place.”