by Kate Elliott
Tess suddenly felt very tired.
“Done,” said Sonia from the table. “You have me surrounded. I concede the game, and admire your prowess yet again.” She rose. “I thank you, holy one. Perhaps we may play again another time.”
The ke nodded but did not rise.
“Now I ask that you excuse me. I have duties to attend to.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Tess, wanting to get away.
“I’ll stay,” said Cara, and by that Tess knew that Cara wanted to go into the back rooms, where the console lay hidden, and conduct business of her own.
The ke rose and escorted Cara into the back. Tess left with Sonia. Outside, the rain had turned to mist, giving the world a hazy shimmer.
“When did you start playing khot with the priestess?” Tess asked.
“Some months ago. At first, you know, when you brought her here, she stayed completely to herself, sequestered in her private rooms, but recently I’ve noticed her venturing out more. She must be becoming accustomed to our ways.”
“What do you think of her?”
“She smells funny.” Sonia chuckled. “What do you mean, what do I think of her? She speaks only a few words with which I can talk to her. She is made invisible because of her veils. I know nothing about her or the people she comes from. I think she is a mystery, Tess. But she plays khot very well. I wonder if she knows any such games she could teach me.”
“I’ll ask her.”
“You could teach me her language, you know. Or do you wish to keep that to yourself?”
“Hah! That’s unfair!”
“Is it? But I am interested, if you’re willing. You should take Kirill as a lover. I don’t know why you haven’t already.”
“Sonia!”
“I must say I find him more attractive now than when he was younger. If you don’t, I’m going to.”
Tess stopped by the fountain, its base now half inlaid with stone. Water trickled down into the hole, washing the dirt at the bottom into slimy mud. The workmen had fled to the shelter of one of the makeshift open warehouses on the other side of the plaza where the quarried stone was stored. Tess saw them sitting among the stone, chattering amongst themselves and smoking long pipes.
“Sonia, hasn’t it made any impression on you, the news Kirill brought? That Ilya and the others may be riding into some kind of ambush? I’m hardly likely to enjoy myself with a lover here while my husband is in danger.”
“Denying your own feelings is hardly likely to keep your husband alive, if he is truly in grave danger.”
“That’s not the point! Anyway, Kirill just lost his own wife. It’s…unseemly!”
“Some men mourn the loss of a wife quietly, by withdrawing for a time from the life of the tribe. Others need the comfort of another woman. Kirill is of the latter kind, as I’m sure you are aware. In any cases, Tess, he still loves you.”
“I know,” said Tess bitterly.
“And you still love him.”
“Which would make it all the more indescribably foolish. Don’t you see?”
“Well. No. I don’t.” Sonia offered Tess an infuriating smile. “I’m going to get out of this rain, and I promised Josef I would teach the younger children more letters today. Are you coming with me, or do you want to get wet?” Sonia said it provocatively.
“I want to get wet, of course.” Tess walked on beside her. “Sonia.” She hesitated. “If you could be immortal, would you?”
Sonia chuckled. “That’s the kind of question Ilya would ask.”
“How would you answer?” Tess suddenly desperately wanted to know what Sonia would say.
“Should the moon always be full? It waxes and it wanes and it vanishes from our sight, only to be born again. That is the natural order. Would you, khaja that you are?”
“I don’t know,” said Tess, and could think of nothing more to say.
The ke regards the carbon board and the lines etched into its surface. Unlike living lines, these are dead. They do not shift in the flux, the ever-moving shape of the greater universe where all threads tangle and untangle, forming the web of existence. But the game is clever. The ke wonders at a stray thought: If only, this thought whispers. What does “if only” mean?
The ke recognizes a strange impulse, the wish to show this game, the laying of the stones along the lines that represent the threads that bind together the universe, to the other nameless ones, the ones left behind beyond the veil of interdiction. Like ke, the stones remain nameless. Like ke, the stones rest each on an intersection of lines, caught in the web, forming a pattern above it.
The ke has existed in this place for two orbits of the sun. A plague of restlessness has infested the alien air which the ke breathes. In the environs beyond, the daiga go about that endless cycle of agitation, of movement, like the ceaseless trembling of atoms, that confers the mark of existence on daiga life, fleeting though it may be.
More often now, the ke ventures out, careful to keep skin and face covered according to the laws of interdiction passed down from the Tai-en Charles Soerensen out of whose authority the rite of extinction did not claim the ke. Though there is, truly, no creature here with right of authority over a nameless one, still, out of respect for the Tai-en’s gesture, the ke holds to the laws of the outer world.
This other one, this curious one, this daiga with the living light of flowers gracing the pattern that entwines its body, has ventured in to greet the ke with the game, which is named, in the daiga way of naming all things, khot. The game, as played with board and stones, has no life except in the playing. That is what makes it interesting.
The door opens and the daiga of flowers comes in, together with a gust of damp wind and the swirling currents of the outside air, the weather front that moves across the daiga city.
“Smell the rain,” says the daiga, by way of greeting, as the ke has learned the daiga do: Stating observations as if the observation marks a new presence.
Daiga words are difficult because primitive. The ke transfers the utterance to the shallow brain and processes the words. Rain is precipitation, water droplets or ice condensed from atmospheric water vapor in such quantities that it falls to the surface of the world. Smell is…this word takes longer to process, to identify a meaning for. A way to perceive the world by the use of nerve fibers that conduct chemical indications of smell.
Distracted, the ke reflects on the primitive discriminatory faculties of the daiga, who must use names to define names, and often the same name to define its own self. Each name becomes a self, as each daiga regards its own body and mind and soul as a self. That is, the ke is learning, the essential nature of daiga-ness. While ke are the unnamed stones that surround and integrate the web of the universe, while the shifting threads of that net embrace and create all that is living, the daiga like all primitive creatures seem to see the web only as discrete parts.
The daiga of flowers sits down on the carbon stool opposite the ke at the table and separates the stones into two sets by some classification that does not register to the ke’s sight. Half are pushed across the table to the ke. The touch of the daiga’s hands lingers on these stones the ke now handles, dissipating into the air. As has become customary, the ke places the first stone.
After that, the game develops its own rhythm. Each game, while alike, is paced differently. This also, interests the ke. Like the daiga, who are all the same and yet vibrate to a slightly different tone. By such means has the ke learned to begin to distinguish between the daiga, those who come here often enough, those whom the ke sees in the outside precincts several times. Daiga seem to put great store in being recognized in this way, by the understanding of their pattern. Recognition pleases them. Daiga do not understand that strength lies in the condition of being free of names.
The door opens to admit the daiga called Tess.
“At it again?” Tess asks, naming the other daiga Sonia. Tess greets the ke with a phrase learned from the deeper tongue and settles down next to t
he daiga Sonia to watch.
The ke grows distracted from the flow of the game by the flow of communication that goes on between these two daiga. Coils of energy mingle and intertwine and separate between the two females (for the ke has identified the daiga Sonia as a female; several of the flowering daiga known as children grew out of her body). The pattern, the interplay is like that the ke observed once between Tess and the daiga who brought Tess into namelessness, the one called Ilya, but it is different as well: Just as complex in structure and movement, it does not spark such extremes. It is more temperate.
The ke wonders how to interpret the ebb and flow of these fields as they interlace.
“Sonia wishes to learn Chapalii,” says Tess. “I will begin by teaching her a few words of formal Chapalii, but you understand, of course, that you can tell her nothing of the world outside Rhui.”
“It is understood,” says the ke, bowing to the necessity of the interdiction. A strange flutter throbs along the ke’s skin. Waiting for the first words of speech that will allow rudimentary communication of a higher sort with the daiga Sonia, the ke forgets to place the next stone.
“I greet you with good favor.”
“This game is named khot in the daiga tongue.”
“I am named Sonia Orzhekov.”
The daiga Sonia tries to ask a question, which the ke perceives is a request for the name by which the ke is named. A long conversation ensues between the two females, and the patterns surrounding them become heated, bright, and excited. The ke watches their flow with interest.
At last, Tess returns to the lesson, and now the two females revert to the shallowest form of speech: objects are named, labeled, and set away as separate units. True language does not work in this wise.
The ke returns attention to the game. Swiftly the stones engulf the board. Again, the daiga Sonia concedes the victory, but the pattern that marks this daiga is not noticeably altered by the outcome. The parting courtesies in the formal style are uttered and repeated, and after a brief mingling of patterns, the daiga Sonia leaves by the door.
“Is Dr. Hierakis here?” Tess asks.
“No, Dr. Hierakis has gone elsewhere.”
The daiga wanders off, as daiga are wont to do, being unable to maintain stillness for very long.
The door opens. A daiga enters. The ke reads the pattern and sees that this is a male. The ke deduces that the rain sensed—smelled—before has now begun to fall: The clothes worn by the daiga are damp from this rain; coolness steams off them in pale swirls.
This one has been here before, recently, but is otherwise new. Hesitating, the daiga speaks and then skirts the ke at a respectful distance. The pattern that coils around this one is bright, like that of the daiga Sonia, but not otherwise distinguished.
Curious—it is the failing which brought the ke to notice within the Keinaba house and thus led to the expedition to the Mushai’s ancient home—the ke followed this daiga, who is not like the other daiga, what Tess calls the khaja, but one of the jaran. These classifications the ke has learned out of necessity.
Riddled with alcoves and shadowed colonnades and side passages constructed deliberately for this purpose, the ke easily moves through the library after the daiga without being seen. The laws of interdiction layer one atop the others: The private rooms are beyond reach of all daiga except Tess and those who come from the outer world; a second suite of rooms, curtained off, are reserved for the use of those daiga labeled as jaran; all other chambers of the library may be used by any daiga who receives permission.
The daiga male goes to the map alcove and draws the curtain shut. Thus concealed, the daiga paces round the big map, tracing lines as if tracing a thread that runs across the rough, frozen symbols by which these daiga represent the living world. The daiga speaks in a low voice, as if vocal sounds can convince the map to reveal its secrets, to reveal whatever answer the daiga seeks from the map. Concealed in a narrow gallery screened off by a cunningly wrought lattice, the ke watches. What makes this daiga interesting? There is no obvious answer.
But the answer comes, nevertheless.
The curtain ripples and, as an aftereffect of that ripple, the daiga Tess enters the alcove. Stops. Time draws out.
The two daiga stand there for a long time, seeming to communicate without using vocal boxes, the male by the great map, the female by the door. What they see, what they sense, the ke cannot interpret, except that their patterns are in wild flux.
Tess walks closer. The patterns which bind and define them expand, touching, and shrink back, and expand and shrink, and again, although the bodies holding those fields do not touch. They talk together, in their daiga way, and with each word a foot shifts closer, an arm leans on the table and somehow inches nearer the other, the pattern of one laps over and intertwines with the second and by degrees of greater flooding and lesser ebbing they meet.
Like the waters of two rivers flowing into the same channel, their patterns meld. Can two selves join to become one self?
The ke straggles to understand the patterns that flow and ebb around the daiga. Each daiga is separate, yet each daiga is capable of connecting with another daiga to a greater or lesser degree. Each connection builds a unique reticulation, and this reticulation has its own self, its own existence, even perhaps its own name, that is living in the bond between them.
So the daiga Tess and the female Sonia: temperate and stable and deeply bound. So the daiga Tess and the male Ilya: intricately interwoven, brilliant, and, like a tempest, in constant often joyous tumult. So the daiga Tess and this male: different again, harder to interpret.
The ke retreats, aware that to stay longer would be to violate a certain sanctity.
At first, out of habit, the ke takes that path that leads by hidden corridors and shadowed curves to the interdicted rooms, but instead the path shifts, taking the ke to the reading room. The silence inside the great domed chamber moves like breath along the walls. Going to the doors by which the daiga enter and leave the reading room, the ke opens them.
Outside, it is raining, and the rain blurs the daiga world to the ke’s sight. It drums down in a steady faintly chaotic pattern of sound. No person walks outside. Inside, the ke feels lonely.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Widow’s Tower
WHEN THE TOWN AND the bluff the castle stood on came into sight, Jaelle knew at once that Prince Janos was a man to be reckoned with, if she had ever for a moment thought otherwise. The town was not overly large—Jaelle had seen larger on the caravan routes, cities fattened by trade—but a stone wall ringed it, gapping only where cliffs plunged down to a river.
A stone castle, whitewashed so that it stood out like a beacon against the green-brown hills of autumn, thrust castellated towers skyward: White Tower. The army followed the road down to the town gates and they passed in procession through the town and on up a slight rise to the castle itself. It had no gatehouse, but the forecourt was defended by two of the great towers and Jaelle saw no other entrance except through the walled town.
The army dispersed in a welter of comings and goings. A grand lady came out into the forecourt to greet Prince Janos.
“My son,” she said, lifting him up from where he had knelt before her. Her voice was rich and deep and she looked truly pleased to see him. A fine linen scarf covered her hair, but the bird’s feet at her eyes and the lines creasing her forehead betrayed her age well enough. Her hands were white and uncallused. Coolly, she surveyed Princess Rusudani and the prisoners. Her gaze even caught for an instant on Jaelle, measuring her, and Jaelle tried as best as she could to make herself unobtrusive. Smoke rose from the kitchens. The doors to the great hall were thrown open as a line of servants carried rushes inside. Jaelle noticed at once the stink of an enclosed place, cows and horses in their bier, a mews off to the left, a kennel of hounds yipping in chorus.
“My lady,” said Janos obediently. “I have brought home my wife, Princess Rusudani, daughter of Prince Zakaria of Tarsina-Kars.”
Rusudani inclined her head as one equal greets another. “Your majesty.”
The lady lifted one eyebrow but did not otherwise admit surprise. Jaelle was beginning to see where Janos got his temperament from. “Let us be frank, Princess Rusudani. You may address me as Lady Jadranka. I am mistress of my son’s castle but queen no longer. With the coming of the jaran, King Zgoros found it possible with his new alliance to put me aside in favor of a new bride. But you will find our quarters princely enough, I believe, and I have in my household several young women of good birth who will make fine attendants for you.”
Rusudani went white at the mouth, but she did not reply. Perhaps she felt further betrayed.
“Who are these others?” asked Lady Jadranka, nodding to the jaran captives, Vasil’ii Kireyevsky and the princess, who stood in the midst of guards, still in chains.
Janos gave a short bark of laughter. “The Bakhtiian is dead, my lady. That is his bastard son, and the other—You will recall that my father petitioned the jaran for a royal bride.”
“I recall it with pleasure. The Sakhalin prince refused his request with great contempt.”
“Bring her forward,” ordered Janos.
Jaelle admired Princess Katerina for the dignity with which she walked forward in such hostile surroundings.
“This woman is Katherine Orzhekov, cousin to the Bakhtiian and a princess of the jaran tribes.”
The two women measured each other, Lady Jadranka with frank interest and Katerina with the proud arrogance that all her people wore, even in such circumstances as these. But Jaelle found her attention drawn to the other participants: Vasil’ii Kireyevsky did not watch the interaction at all, because he was too busy examining the walls and the court and the layout of the buildings; Janos stared at Katerina with a hungry expression on his face, and Rusudani watched her husband, her face as blank as a sweep of new-fallen snow.
“My lady,” said Katerina finally in Taor, “I throw myself on your mercy and beg that I will be treated as befits the honor and respect due me as a woman.”