Amberlight

by Sylvia Kelso

  Their faces look back at her. Driven, exhausted, blank. In the end, she is the House-head. Only one place remains to ask.

  Do I, she demands, go out?

  And the qherrique, inarguable, lunatic, answers, Yes.

  Tellurith lifts both shoulders in a shrug. Says, “In the Work-mother’s hand.” And to the understanding in Iatha’s face, “Open the door.”

  Small point, now, in precautions and guards. Tellurith takes her tattered straw hat. Makes a futile brush at her filthy trousers, three days worn. Nods to Zuri. Who lets back the great door, on its double chain. And she is on the porch.

  Three wide granite steps rise from the street to the vine-draped porch of the central facade in Telluir House. She is vaguely aware of massed and blazing armor beyond, highlit against the wrong, raw blast of vacant smoke that used to be Khuss House. Of broken trees and mangled vinery, the outer decorations of a great Uphill demesne. Mostly, then wholly, of the knot of men waiting by the steps.

  Guards. Scriber. Assandar.

  The helmet is off. The sooty, grimy, haggard face looks worse than any behind her. A man ridden by nightmare. A man—bizarrely her mind reverses it—not dealing, but under sentence of death.

  “Tellurith?”

  The whisper is hoarse. The eyes speak far louder. Despair, torment. A last, fading sight of a promised land.

  She takes a step closer. And suddenly he moves out from among the guards, the gesture almost hurling them back, his head offered, bare, unwarded, to the honor of their truce and the decency of Telluir House.

  “Tel, will you stop now—please?”

  Even the night she condemned him to the tower, he did not sound like that.

  “The whole city’s smashed. Vannish is gone. The fools are gone. So are your friends. We’ve had to clear them out up there, room by room. Women, Tel, for the gods’ love. Not soldiers. Not even men. For god’s sake, isn’t it enough?”

  Not Assandar and the Voice of Amberlight, she thinks with some disconnected still-analyzing part. This is human to human. Creature to creature. Tellurith. Alkhes.

  “I’ll hold by all the terms. Safe conduct. Return of the Kora. Sovereignty. Restoration of the Houses, if you want.”

  So long as you stop, the eyes say. So long as you stop.

  When she does not answer, he lifts a hand, as if he would, still, reach out to her. And then, too slowly, lets it fall.

  His voice is silent. But the eyes speak, as they spoke once over a gag in the Telluir infirmary. Don’t do this, they say. Don’t do this to me, Tel. Please.

  She draws in her breath. Mother, she prays, give me strength. To say, No, not only for my folk, and my city, and myself.

  But for him as well.

  “Telluir House . . .”

  It speaks to her, in one long lightning flash. The names, the faces. Zuri. Azo. Verrith. Hanni. Caitha. Shia. Ahio. Charras.

  Herar.

  Sarth.

  The breath goes down and catches. The street swims, the armor swims. All that is clear is a pair of black, hopeless eyes.

  And the qherrique.

  Saying, Yes.

  Tellurith finishes the breath. It comes out husky, from somewhere beyond herself.

  “Telluir House . . . do we have safe conduct, if they lay down their arms?”

  CHAPTER IX

  Full moon over Amberlight, consummated, perfect, a remote orb of qherrique riding the deferential sky. Shaping the ruins, tracing that blasted skyline as indifferently as if Amberlight were still entire. Watching it from her blanket, Tellurith wonders, Do I dream?

  Did I dream that surrender? The shattered looks, the numb faces, defenders filing out, so locked in the trance of death that they were beyond reaction. Not relief, not chagrin, not humiliation or reproach. Not even fear.

  Certainly it was a dream, that petty chaos of weapon-search, confiscation, gathering of personal “prisoners’ needs.” Of course, something registered, by now they are used to this. Swirling us down to Hill-foot, over the dyke. A dozen pontoon bridges, troops and materiel surging to and fro. What part of her remembered that?

  * * * *

  No doubt which part remembers the prison pen. It is burnt deep into heart and mind. Gatehouse, palisade. And within, one of the enormous siege-wall excavations, an ant-heap of uprooted humanity amid a grassless, treeless mass of makeshift shelters and ramshackle kitchen-hearths, a mosaic of temporary authori­ties cluttered round House and Craft. Which greets Telluir House with all the disbelief, frantic joy, chagrin, abuse and heart-stab­bing reproach a surrendered Head could ask.

  Clan-folk of Vannish who scream, “Traitor! Murderer!” and strike Tellurith in the face with clods of earth. Lightly injured Keranshah gun-crews who shriek, “Betrayer! We died—our Head died for you!” Witch keenings from remnants of Diaman and Hezamin. Screams of joy beyond ecstasy, embraces and sobbing delight from Telluir clan-folk finding House-crew, past hope, alive.

  Sour, sour silence from the folk of Jerish, filing in behind.

  More chaos as the prison officers try to explain rations, latrine sites, issue of spoilt or unused army tents. So many tents, she remembers ironically, that only the hardiest need sleep under the sky.

  Fogged over then, by shock. Discarded now, like a loathed suit of clothes, compulsorily worn a handful of times.

  Compulsory as that meeting when she left the gate. Going to confront her new, mad world, some part of her mind still wanting to wonder, Where is he? Suppressing grimly the more frantic questions, Did he send me here, has he abandoned me, was it all, all of it, after all, only a show, made for the one ultimate prize? Retorting with grim fury, Shut up, you’re with your people, did you want silk cushions in the general’s tent?

  Forgotten as from the crowd before her steps Damas of Jerish.

  And Eutharie of Prathax, and Ciruil of Terraqa.

  And Damas says, with deep-burnt, resentment’s courtesy, “Do you have an explanation for this?”

  Some sense must have remained to her, she thinks, shifting on the blanket, its heavy mottled-russet wool so incongruous on naked dirt. It belongs in the spacious bedroom of a Head in Telluir House. But like it, her transplanted wits worked. Well enough to retort, “Do you want an answer here?”

  Removal from enemy earshot, ludicrous dispute over a new site, does give her time to marshal sense. So when Eutharie rounds on her, squatted on the blankets of her wall-less shelter floor, squawking, “You’d better have an explanation! Telluir House surrender, after everyone else fights to the death!” She can rap back, “At least Telluir House surrendered after they fought!”

  Which gags Eutharie in a crimson twitching heap.

  Ciruil’s look, the hurt, the bewilderment, stabs her to the heart. Deeper than Damas’ somber, “I followed your lead, Telluir. But I do want an answer. Now.”

  No chance to fall down here and let the woman weep, tear her hair, beat her breast for lost House, lost Houses, lost pride, lost city, lost life. Probably, irrevocably, trust and lover lost.

  “Jerish—Damas—we couldn’t win. What was the use?”

  What was the use for Hafas, and Vannish, and Keranshah? And they died for it. The answer is in the thrust of Damas’ lip.

  “You didn’t have to follow me. If it mattered that much—you could have fought!”

  The lip retracts.

  “It was your choice!”

  No eye-contact now, shoulders hunched.

  “So why did you give in?”

  And when she waits, when they all wait, skeleton Crafts and troublecrew gathered in a pale echo of council, Damas twists again. And mutters it, into the mud-tracked wool at her knees.

  “I didn’t—I had to . . .” Then, jerking her head up, red in the face. “Mother blast you, Telluir, it was the House!”

  Their eyes hold. Saying, reading, the same thing.
When it came to the pinch, who could force their folk into death?

  Very quietly Tellurith says, “It was the same for me.”

  And Ciruil cries, “If the Houses came first now—why couldn’t they come first then? Why did we have to fight at all?”

  The hurt, the grief, the bewilderment are too much. Tellurith is on her feet, lashing out at them. At everything.

  “Because we were trying to save our city and our lives! Because we had no choice! Because our folk backed us—and mine still don’t know why I didn’t let them die!”

  “Then why,” Damas slashes, “didn’t you?”

  “Because I’m House-head—and the qherrique told me, No!”

  Then she sits down, breathing heavily, feeling the hysterics build like the pressure of a storm, feeling an utter fool, feeling the battery of their stares.

  “Well, don’t you feel it? You were both cutters—you have the ear! Don’t you feel it, when you make decisions? Isn’t it more than you—more than the House? Don’t you know?”

  And from their pole-axed looks, understands they do—but that they have never dreamt another shared it, or where it must have come from, until now.

  It is Ciruil, all but in tears, who asks the ultimate question. “But if it told you to fight—and then told you to give in—why?”

  * * * *

  Why, why, why? Let it go, she tells herself, gritting teeth yet again over the endlessly, futilely debated question. Insane, unfathomable. And finally, disastrous. The impossible, inscrutable will of Amberlight. Of the Mother? Of the qherrique.

  Far less of a dream that third morning, when trumpets ring beyond the palisade, and the more agile prisoners, squinting from a foothold against the stakes, cry with outrage of a triumphal procession. Of trumpets, and notables, and a blaze of military grandeur from an honor guard for the tyrant of Cataract.

  “The whores! The cow-shickers!” An hour later, Iatha is still beside herself. “Not enough to smash our House and tear our city apart, they have to bring that turd-eater to crap on the wreck!”

  * * * *

  The harshest moment, perhaps, in the enemy repair of Amberlight’s ruin. Worse than word of Kora refugees dispatched to their farms. “We’ll let you know, they said,” foams one climber who managed to bespeak a passing family, “who you’re working for now!”

  Easier to watch the Verrain cameleers and cavalry strike camp, not long after Dinda arrives. Easier still, in vindictive vengefulness, to tally Dinda’s shrunken forces, evidently not to be swollen by fresh levies. “The whoreson dangle rushed here just for the thrill!” Ahio snarls. Anything but easy to watch Dhasdein troops move across the bridges, shifting quarters into Amberlight.

  “May they find pleasure,” Damas spits, “in my House!”

  Trying to control the light. And the heat. And the cooking ranges, and everything else reliant on qherrique, hence deaf to the pleas of men. It is some solace, Tellurith thinks, watching the stolid, armored ranks tramp past, that we have left so many gaps. Almost as much as to imagine their difficulties in the maze of an intact House.

  It is next day the summons comes for her.

  * * * *

  Two young aides, respectful, immaculate, unmistakably gen­eral’s staff. Requesting, with impregnable courtesy, that they be accompanied by the Head of Telluir House. And no, her House-steward, and her troublecrew, even her secretary will not be re­quired.

  Tellurith gathers up an outer robe as ravaged now as Amberlight. With a spurt of defiant memory, dons her current and most raffish Korite hat.

  Back over the bridge, their own stone bridge, this time. Along Hill-foot, clear again, full of military traffic. Past Canal Spur, under the wreckage of Keranshah. Up to the Citadel?

  No. Tellurith’s heart sinks, as they trek under Vannish’s charred ruin. Oh, no.

  All too surely, yes, past High Spur’s marred skyline, gun-site remains, windmills dangling broken vanes. Past Hafas’ wreck. To the agonizingly intact, familiar shape of Telluir House.

  Military bustle in the hall, the great doors standing wide. No, she thinks, while alternating rage and panic sear her. He would not—he could not make it in my own rooms?

  Staircase, ushering hands. A dormer window, open on the empty tower.

  A desk, scribers, military command paraphernalia, cumbrous as rule of a House. The room is dim, fusty, daylight boosted by oil lamps. Subordinates and scribers scurry. The door shuts.

  He comes to her across the Verrain rug where she once wriggled her stockinged toes. Quick, unaltered troublecrew stride. Military splendor shed. The washed-grey under-tunic, the Cataract boots, could almost be pure Alkhes. The earthquake within her, blind need to bawl and curse and tear his eyes out, frantic urge to snatch and squeeze his breath out, is almost beyond control.

  He stops in arms’ reach. Perhaps those black eyes read hers. Certainly, there is tumult in that long-drawn breath.

  And the sense, even now—or the sensitivity—not to touch.

  “I—thought you’d want to be with your folk.”

  Oblique explanation? Apology for his absence, for the prison pen? Foresight of how the prisoners would have read her absence?

  Or omission of deeper, more heartfelt words, the only mercy a wounded conqueror can offer in such a defeat?

  If he’d said, Thank god you’re all right, she realizes, or, horror of horrors, tried to touch me, I would have spat in his face.

  “What are your plans,” amazing, her voice’s quiet, “for us?”

  “Uh.” Less a pause than a grunt. Shoving a hand, a gesture purely Assandar, up through that wing of hair. A grin whose pain is pain to her.

  “How did I know you’d pick the one—I have no plans. They depend on you.”

  In the maelstrom of her emotions, the madness to strike, the frenzy to embrace, it is a rock of refuge to be crossing wits.

  “On me, Amberlight? Or me, Telluir? Or me, Tellurith?”

  “Probably all three.”

  “All—” blessed refuge, exertion of the mind.

  “You want me to do something. As Telluir House-head. That will hold for Amberlight.”

  When his wits out-paced me, she wonders, did I look like that?

  “You—I—yes.”

  Tellurith waits.

  His hands move. Jerk. Converting a wide gesture out of something that too nearly became an embrace. “Damn it, you can have clean clothes at least—a bath—something to eat . . .”

  Pain for the memory of an immaculate House-head, for the offer of her own amenities, turning charity to coals of fire. A courtesy too exquisite to resist.

  “Am I,” she asks with interest, “to owe the clothes on my back?”

  The flush burns clear to his hair. What cuts her is the wince.

  “That was unnecessary.” She looks round, a House-head retrieving the meeting along with herself. In place of Iatha’s lounging cushion, takes a scriber’s stool. “Perhaps you should just tell me what you want.”

  Is it Alkhes’ or Assandar’s magnanimity that concedes the initiative without affront? He follows her to the desk. Paces up the rug. In the roughened stride she reads distress as well as unease.

  “I told you I wanted to stop the trade in qherrique.”

  Tellurith lets her silence say, And you have.

  “Even when I was making terms about its change.”

  Silently, she says, Go on.

  He swings about at the rug’s heart.

  “But I’m only the Coalition’s general. Not the government. Even of Dhasdein.”

  It is all very clear. A simplicity. Destiny itself.

  “They want,” she says, “to take over the qherrique.”

  Those eyes answer, Yes.

  In the garden a pair of saeveryrs flit, flirting scraps of black and white. Outside, everything looks exactly
the same.

  “Then what, precisely, do you want from me?”

  He rubs two fingers between his brows.

  “I can’t stop this. No one can.” Her bitter silence retorts, You did not have to start it, and he glares.

  “You couldn’t stop it either—not against the Thirteen!”

  “At least we still had Amberlight!”

  It comes more savagely than she meant. Worse than her penitence is the way he does not fight back.

  “What is it,” she says more gently, “you want me to do?”

  He lifts his head, his eyes, his shoulders. Settles himself, as if to defend the indefensible.

  “If I can’t stop it, I can try to control it. So . . . we mine qherrique. A guild, a council, some authority. Including those who did it before.”

  Now those eyes meet hers, solid black.

  “Not Houses, Tel. Not that sort of monopoly, ever again. Not that sort of—warping—people. I’ll give you Amberlight, I’ll give you control of the—council or whatever it is—but not that.”

  Tellurith waits. That there is more, she already knows.

  “And . . . no monopoly, on working the qherrique.”

  This time there is no pain. Only an assent, a resignation to the weight of destiny, that settles over Tellurith’s mind.

  Quietly she says, “No.”

  The eyes flare. Blacker than coal, deeper than living night.

  “You may do what your masters want, or not. You may choose to mine the qherrique as you like. But I will see my House, and the folk of the other Houses, and all of us prisoners dead, before we agree to this.”

  “Tel, for the gods’ sake—”

  “No.”

  “You can keep Amberlight. You can keep the qherrique—”

  “Not like that.”

  Silence. Deeper distress. Annealing over, into wounded quiet. That will not accept defeat.

  “All right. The terms stand. Safe conduct, wherever you choose. Even to stay in Amberlight. For all the prisoners. If I get what I want, there’ll be a break-up of Kora holdings, but only the timber-fief goes back to Cataract. Anyone who wants can draw lots for land from the rest. Personal gear goes with you. As soon as the government negotiations are done.”