by Janet Morris
As I reached out to pull the ring that would inform those within that someone desired entrance, the door swung back. The man who stepped blinking into the sun to greet me with outstretched hand could only have been my Day-Keeper. He wore a plumed headdress and brocaded robe, heavy with gems and metallic thread. His hair was drawn back into a club and sheened with oil. He carried the curved sword of the ancient Stoth priests, with gem-encrusted hilt. On his feet were bejeweled sandals. I breathed a sigh of relief. Stothric is one of my better ancient dialects. I would not have to shame myself by conversing with this high one in modern Silistran.
“Presti m’it ci Vedrev bast Iradea,” he said.
“Prest m’it, may the sun shine in your soul, Day-Keeper Vedrev,” I replied. “Ci Estri Hadrath diet Estrazi.”
V. The Feast of Conception
When his hand touched mine, a great peace came over me. I was at one with time, sure of my position in the process we know as reality. I jerked my hand away. I had seen as the forereaders see. This was indeed an accomplished Day-Keeper! I had never met a Day-Keeper who could not influence one’s thinking, but I did not remember one so forceful as this man Vedrev bast Iradea.
“Would you shield?” I asked him as he motioned me into the dark passageway and the closing door cut out the afternoon light.
The emotions in my mind became once more my own, as the robed Day-Keeper guided me into a thala-paneled room filled with scrolls, fax, and sheaves of bookworks, in their tas envelopes. The desk was littered with rolls and spools and loose sheets. He motioned me into a high-backed stuffed chair and took one identical to it behind the desk. The room was lit with ancient fish-oil lamps. I wrinkled my nose at the smell. Through the floors I could feel the heart of the hide, beating. The old machines that had kept us alive a thousand years beneath the earth still survived, preserving the hides and the treasures of antiquity they contained, should we ever again need them. I saw this as necessary and natural, and dissimilar from the useless star-machines. When my forebears returned to the surface they had been determined to live no longer dependent on technology, their only method of survival for so long. They also determined that the machines that had so well serviced them should continue to exist. After all, they were Silistran machines, they had served us faithfully, and a wise man never cuts off his only avenue of retreat. Deep within the hides were even preserved the terrible instruments of destruction that had almost annihilated us. But the Day-Keepers alone knew where.
“And how fared you on the road to Arlet?” Vedrev bast Iradea asked me softly, over steepled fingers. His eyes were the palest of blues, ringed with black. His hair was white as ice at the temples, graying black where it was clubbed at the base of his neck. He was an imposing, large-headed man in his middle years. He had a stare like the great beaked ebvrasea, those giant cousins of the harth who soar high in the Sabembe.
“Not as I would have wished. I did, however, do the Liaison Second of Arlet some good in his relationships with the Slayers. He would take the Slayers’ chaldra, and has Sereth of Arlet for sponsor. What think you?”
Never before had a Liaison for the Bipedal Federate Trade Union been willing to test for any chain, let alone the Slayers. They were merely the B.F. representatives on Silistra, interested in their quotas and profits.
“I think the time is right.” He nodded. “Do not be so foolish as to ignore the pull to crux, for it affects us all. I think it no disconnected event. The time pulls us toward a mighty change, so great that I have not been able to find a single forereader who is unaffected by it, and therefore can read the flow.” He shook his head. “I left early from conclave. They get nowhere. All are blinded by the mists of the crux. The abyss may call us all if this change cannot be charted, and we are all blind. I tell you this for a reason.” His hands went to the pile of information beside him. They sought and found. He held a thick bound sheaf. “I have your records. Your forebears all were fore-readers with an index of nine or better. You could, in your testing, equal them in objective tests but were totally unable to function in life situations involving animate objects. Thus your rating is only a four. Have you ever given this any thought?”
I wanted to find my father, not discuss my mental deficiencies.
“Very little. My own life is, to me, and to any I have yet encountered, unreadable. Celendra had little but awareness of what had happened to me. She had no specific information about what would happen. When forereaders cannot see, they predict all manner of catastrophe, on the assumption that if they cannot see it, it must be high crux. No one’s whole life can be draw for crux; therefore, they are wrong. I do not know what to think. I would fulfill this chaldra and get me back to Astria while I still have my sanity.” I walked the drug tightrope between despair and exhilaration.
“I think you should reexamine your data.” The Day-Keeper sighed. “I do not want to frighten you. I think you are deeply involved in the change we sense. Be careful. When you are more ready to think in nonpersonal terms, we will discuss this matter further. Now, let me see what you have for me.” His rebuke stung.
“I have this,” I said, disengaging my father’s ring from my chald and handing it to him. His hands were brown and sinewy. “Sereth of Arlet says that he has seen a similar sign behind the Falls of Santha.”
“And that you should have that information, from the only man who has seen what lies behind the falls, and from his own mouth—that, also, you would count as coincidence?” He sucked his teeth, holding the ring close. He got a glass from his desk and fitted it to his eye. He peered long at the ring. Then he shuffled through his mounds of paper and fax. A scroll dropped to the floor, clattering loudly on the black sheet gol. I retrieved it. He had not heard.
At length he raised his head, and his face was suffused with joy.
“It is certainly genuine. And it bears both the sign and script attributed to the seed-sowers. That script, first ever written, is unmistakable. I would say it is an artifact of the seed-sowers, and yet it is not more than a few hundred years old. If this truly matches with what the Seven found at Santha, which we only recently had reported to us, then it would be safe to say that both are of seed-sowers.”
“There is no such thing as seed-sowers,” I protested, growing uneasy. “It is an old legend, a fright-restraint invented by primitive priests to keep the populace under control!”
“And the same legend was invented by every Silistran early culture, even those so isolated that they could have had no contact with each other, and by more than half of the other planets of the B.F., also isolated from each other.” He bared his teeth. “Come, now, Estri, open your mind.”
“All primitives need a spiritual figure outside themselves, until they can deal with the spirit within,” I said from rote. I once calculated that I had, at the time of my graduation from Day-Keeper’s school, spent forty-five years in academic situations. I had risen to my feet.
“I do not want to be part of some higher-plan function, some whirlpool in temporal events! I am not interested in ancient legends. I need to know where to look for my father. Ristran sent me to you for help. Should I, or should I not, go to the Falls of Santha? Will you come into Arlet and examine the artifacts I have with me? It is Feast of Conception, but I have a token for you. I would leave this place.” The smell of the oil lamps and the vibration of the floor and the drug and the lack of sleep were conspiring against me. I badly needed fresh air.
He looked at me queerly, then rose and put his arm around my shoulder. When we stood in the open air, he returned to me my father’s ring.
“I will go with you, Estri, to the feast. It is very important that you remain strong. If you fail, none of us can help you, and it might affect the crux adversely. Consider, however, that if I am right, you will need a man of your father’s race to get you with child, and all that is done other than that coupling is simply going through the motions.”
We walked together through the gathering shadows, across the court where the sh
opkeepers were locking their stalls for the night, and into the common room of Well Arlet, where the servers removed the seating and replaced it with long planked tables of half wisper logs and benches, that all might be seated together for the feast.
In my keep I retrieved from the thala chest the silvery material Dellin had given me, in which I had wrapped the viewer and fax letter. The Day-Keeper sat cross-legged before the window, amid the blue cushions, and viewed the oblong. When he was finished, he replaced it carefully in the tas pouch. He looked at me, where I lay propped on one elbow staring at the crags below.
“I could not be more sure,” he said softly. Then he read the letter. He scowled and ground his teeth and must have read it more than once, for it was a long time before he put it away. The moon was above the crags when he next spoke to me.
“Have you heeded these warnings?”
“To the best of my ability. Secrecy was impossible. It is common knowledge that I am in Arlet.”
“And Baniev?”
“I have managed to avoid it.”
“Perhaps there is something that may be searched from this. If Astria had access to information, I might match her channels and pick up what she learned.” I knew what he meant. Time search. To connect with Astria, at the moment she received the pertinent information, and experience it with her. It is a scarce skill, the ability to send the mind to where time has no density and directly experience the long-dead past.
So I dozed in my keep while the Day-Keeper tranced, and at eighth bell Celendra herself came to escort us to the Feast of Conception. I had no time to ask him what he had accomplished, only time to give him his token, that he might use the woman of his choice at the feast, and make my body ready. Since it was handy, I wore the silvery draped sheath that Dellin had bought me, and fastened it again with the silver clips set with white stones, then followed Celendra and Vedrev to the common room.
I thought of what the Day-Keeper had said. Going through the motions indeed! If Vedrev was right, and I could bear child only by one of my father’s race, where did that leave me? Celendra was doing her act for the Day-Keeper, as we all tend to do with such a man. She seated me on her left and Vedrev on her right, herself between us at the head of the central table. On my other side was Sereth, and Dellin opposite him. Then Genisha and Jerin, the guests of honor. The small shaved-headed girl who had been the first I had met in Arlet seemed quite pleased with her body’s choice of Jerin, the Arletian Slayer who had called my bout with Celendra. But then, girls, at times have been known to stretch the rules. Perhaps Jerin could not be proved the sperm-father of the child. He was, however, the announced father, which would suffice, since there were no challengers.
The musicians were gone in a pulsing dance rhythm, and the cleared center of the common room was filled with writhing figures. Feast of Conception has its own style, its own formula, its own music and dance. It is the oldest performed ceremony on Silistra. Perhaps the most important one. There had not been such a feast in Astria for over two years.
I watched the dancers in silence, refusing both Dellin and Sereth with a shake of my head. I was flashing and dizzy; sound and sight receded and sharpened around me. My hands shook and my legs also, and I clasped my fingers together in my lap and concentrated upon maintaining consciousness. I saw the man of Hertekiea, whom I had mistaken the night before for Celendra, whirl by me with a blond well woman in his arms. Also I recognized that Koster whose drink I had spilled in my first meeting with Sereth, and the Iartex Ganrom had so rudely unseated. The air was already thick with danne and distrit.
Sereth of Arlet touched my arm and peered into my face. He held a pipe for me, but I refused it. I was descending fast from the stimulant. Another would but make it worse.
Having been effectively separated from the Day-Keeper by Celendra, when I began weaving in my chair I could not turn elsewhere but to Sereth.
“You are not doing too well. Here, try this.” Solicitous, he handed me a goblet of kifra. I used both hands to take it from him, but it fell from my grasp.
“I am so tired,” I whispered, leaning against him, trembling, as the servers cleaned the mess from the table and our laps. I wanted Santh. I had not seen my black friend for a set’s time. I tried to call him, but all I got was hazy hulion close-ups, in which Santh nuzzled a sandy female. I did, however, see great falls at their backs. Perhaps spring and its call had drawn Santh home. Dimly I realized that I would see him soon, if such was the case.
Sereth of Arlet was speaking to me, but I could hear only the growl of his voice, not the words. When I looked him in the face, it was as if he were at one end of a long black tunnel, and I at the other.
“I cannot hear you,” I said. I hoped he could hear me. I had no way of judging the loudness of my voice, or even whether I had really spoken or only thought I had. Something touched my lips, and I swallowed, choking and spitting. Slowly, as the bitter drink entered my mouth unbidden, I realized that the cerise-clad physician with his five-strand chald was standing over me. I could see the chald very clearly. Arletian. Others, too, leaned over me. If I could have moved my body I would have pushed away from the crowd. It was hard to breathe.
Slowly, under the physician’s ministrations, the room focused and my body returned to my control. I could hear and had an awareness of the placement of my extremities.
“I am almost fine,” I said to him, and waved more bitter drink away. I had had enough drugs. Sereth’s hand was on my shoulder; his arm held me upright. Dellin looked strained and white under his dark skin. The Day-Keeper was gesturing to him and leaning confidentially close. I wondered if Dellin would learn tonight what chaldra entailed.
“Should I take you upstairs?” Sereth offered. I declined. “Food it is, then,” he said cheerfully, slipping from his seat beside me to hunt up a server, that I might have some solid nourishment in my stomach, and rana, as I had asked him, to wash it down. I leaned my head in my hands, my elbows steadied on the trestle table. The meal would not be served for another bell.
I tried to listen attentively to Dellin and Vedrev. I no longer cared whether Dellin acquired chaldra or not, I told myself. What mattered his problems, when I had so many of my own? How could I feel so strongly about a man who had so viciously used me? Sereth had such in his nature, and he did what he did without thought. Dellin, on the other hand, seemed to do everything with ulterior motives. An opportunist and plotter, he now used his moments with the Day-Keeper, as he had used me to his advantage with Ganrom and Sereth, to further his position in Arlet.
A shadow fell across me, and I looked up to see a trader in pelts and leather towering over me. Brown eyes under prominent brows, a flattish nose, and petulant lower lip were all that were visible of his features, save for a mass of unkempt dark beard that rested on his chest. He had his well token in his hand, and I was about to explain my indisposition when I realized I could not read him. I could get nothing from his mind! The burly man stood staring down at me. I raised my hand and pulled hair from my face.
As I opened my mouth to speak, a well token landed with a crack in my empty plate, where it rolled on its edge in ever smaller circles until, finally, it fell quivering to its side and lay still.
It was not the trader’s token, for he still held his in his hand. I looked around. The Day-Keeper’s eyes smiled at me, and he turned back to Dellin. Celendra, quick on her feet, was up and had her arms around the trader’s massive neck, soothing.
“We will find you another girl,” she said, leading the red-flushed, grumbling man toward the second table. “One with more strength and stamina. That one will be of little use to any man tonight. She is worn and weak. We will find you a nice fresh girl who can do justice to a Morrltan’s needs.”
I saw Sereth making his way cautiously through the crowd with a tray on which were covered dishes and a steaming pot. He placed the tray between his place and mine and reached for my plate.
“Whose?” he asked me, referring to the well token. He sl
id it off the plate onto the wisper-log table.
I gestured to the Day-Keeper. He had presented me with an easy out from the hoary trader, and I had thought no more about it.
“What do you want with her?” said Sereth Crill Tyris in his deadly quiet voice. “She is in no shape for anything but sleep.” Perhaps I had waxed hysterical, but I had to jam my hand into my mouth to keep from laughing. Sereth of the Slayers’ Seven was going to protect me from Vedrev, the Day-Keeper.
“Precisely. While you were gone to the kitchen, a trader came to take her. I have no need of a well woman, especially one who has been so badly mistreated.” Vedrev looked with hard eyes at Sereth. His mouth was an angry white line.
Sereth’s hand went to his hilt, and then to the table. He gripped the thick edge hard with pale knuckles, looking at his hands.
Then he took a deep breath and handed the well token that had been on my plate to Vedrev, who raised an eyebrow and laid it down. He held the Slayer’s gaze until that one looked away.
“I will see that she sleeps,” said Sereth, “and is not disturbed.” He seemed to want to say more. He shook his head and took his seat abruptly.
I was then served my early dinner by Sereth of Arlet, who said not a word to anyone until I was finished, but sat with his arms folded across his chest, slid down on his spine. His face was tightly drawn. One could not gainsay a high Day-Keeper. They are categorically above reproach.
The food stopped my head from spinning and brought strength back into my limbs.