The Carnelian Throne

by Janet Morris

  “Anyhow, I’m not the one to turn down an unexpected gift, so I wrapped him for you ....” And they turned a bend in the corridor.

  There lay Eviduey, trussed with strips of Quendros’ tunic, propped against the glassy black wall. Kirelli humped his wings and uttered a soft cry.

  The red-in-red eyes stared defiantly at them.

  Quendros halted. Deilcrit did not, but strode to stand over the huge ossasim, whose muscles swelled in vain against the stout bindings.

  “You said once that you would support anything that bettered Wehrdom. I have bettered Wehrdom,” said Deilcrit very quietly, as he had heard Aat-Sereth do. “And you said that you might support a creature such as Kirelli and some others thought me to be I have proved myself that thing. I claim the function that was Imca-Sorr-Aat’s. I am Aat-Deilcrit and I will rule from Othdaliee. And I will do it with Mahrlys at my side. Will you support me?” Quendros, behind him, growled.

  The ossasim hissed and took a deep breath and closed its eyes. He knew what considerations went through Eviduey’s mind by way of wehr-thought, but he did not probe there.

  After a time the ossasim opened its eye and said: “Aat-Deilcrit, you leave me little choice. Kirelli, prince of wehrs, you have acknowledgment from me. But let me leave Aehre-Kanoss, and roam where I will. I cannot in any conscience serve you. There are too many conflicts in my heart.”

  “As you will, Eviduey. Under those terms, keep your life. Enter my domain thereafter, however, and you will lose it.”

  And he motioned to Quendros to unbind the ossasim and made hurriedly from the scene, before the Laonan could protest.

  As he wandered among the whelt-headed women and the newly opened corridors, he reflected that he had broken one promise to Quendros, and would possibly break a second—he had no intention of lending out Mahrlys. But the other, that of aid to the Laonans—that, he would keep.

  He felt his ordeal. It weighed down the aching muscles of his arms and shoulders; cuts and bruises stiffened his walk. But he hummed to himself, stroking Kirelli’s crest, and did not hurry back to the carnelian throne. It would await him as long as he pleased. He peered into a chamber that was unmistakably one for sleeping, and reflected that he would have to recruit real attendants, the kind who could not be seen through. Those ossasim who served that function had gone into the memories of Imca-Sorr-Aat, with their master’s flesh. And he smiled to himslef, leaning against the doorjamb, looking at the richly adorned pallet with its legs of wrought gold, and thought what a pleasure it would be to have Mahrlys tend his wounds. “What, what, what?” he sang to himself, but he knew the answer. Parpis would have been proud to see how far the guerm-tender had come, Mahrlys had been wrong—there had been a place for him in the world, after all.

  Thereupon the master of Othdaliee put aside his weariness, and passed with new surety through his halls, stopping only briefly to query his wheltheaded women of light as to how he might best make welcome the first guests of his reign.

  This he did by means of his voice, not Wehrdom’s network, which to his mind’s eye lay greatly changed. He did not fear the whelt-headed ones: their nature lay clear among the mountain of knowledge he had received from Imca-Sorr-Aat. Nor did the splendors so long locked away in a quiescent Othdaliee amaze him. They had waited, with all else, for one to come and call them up to life by vanquishing the monitoring system called Imca-Sorr-Aat. So had the creators of Othdaliee designed it, and so had it come to pass. Othdaliee was open to him, all her power and her beauty. The black glass walls had forsaken the shadows of sleep. Othdaliee was alive with color and masterworks of forgotten art.

  Before one he paused, and stared into golden eyes so real-seeming that he shivered. Kirelli touched him through the altered wehr-thought, no longer wraithlike, but a multitude of varicolored points of light, each marking an intelligence active in the circuit.

  “Deilcrit,” said Kirelli’s thought, “do not fear.”

  But he did fear. Warped or no, Imca-Sorr-Aat had guided Wehrdom for thousands of years. “Who am I to aspire to such a role?” he answered the whelt.

  “Who are we? We are the best that could be had. We are sufficient by our success. Mnemaat’s chosen acknowledge us. We will do better for Wehrdom than even they might, for we are of it.”

  “Kirelli, I am so tired ....”

  And the wehr-thought showed him Mahrlys and the spirit powers who awaited by the carnelian throne. He grunted, and they made their way into his throne room.

  All eyes followed him across that threshold. Their touch made walking a treacherous undertaking.

  The whelt-headed light-forms hovered unobtrusively in the octagonal hall’s angles. Three angles were no longer black, but clear, open to the ridge side. One looked over its spine, westward toward the sea.

  As he sought the nature of his domain’s view, Kirelli forsook him for the throne.

  He joined Aat-Estri there, though Mahrlys still knelt in a puddle before the carnelian dais, Sereth and Chayin on either side. He took the spirit power’s copper hands in his own and kissed them, and said: “Most High, allow me to serve you.”

  Her hair glistened like melted bronze. She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him, and laughing, replied: “Lift from me the curse of Imca-Sorr-Aat.”

  He felt Mahrlys’ eyes boring into his back, and Sereth’s also. He released her, taking his hands from the cascade of silken hair, on her hips. The pressure of her breasts was gone from against him, and he could only look, and remember that time she had touched him in the forest, and grin.

  When Aat-Sereth joined them, Deilcrit offered the hospitality of Othdaliee to Mnemaat’s successor, who accepted without a smile, on the condition that Deilcrit view the rising moon with him, and then said:

  “Chayin feels I have taken too much on myself in what I have done here. He says that we have interfered, and that you have lost more than you have gained. Do you feel this?”

  “Oh, no,” he said, and whirled to where Chayin sat lowering upon one of his throne’s steps. And then he understood how such a one might think that, if looking through Mahrlys’ eyes. Her Wehrdom was largely decimated. She found no friends among the remaining wehrs. Kirelli, with a derisive caw, took flight and soared in circles near the chamber’s roof.

  “It was my solution, one I could not implement, that Sereth aided me with. You saw—you held me—you heard Imca-Sorr-Aat speak through my mouth. Seek Wehrdom’s flow, it is different, weakened, but it is not decimated. And if I am not much, Kirelli is more, and together I am sure we will manage.”

  Aat-Chayin’s face showed him that what he had guessed concerning the spirit power’s feelings was not far from the truth. And he added, very low: “I had some doubts myself. But I have put them away. If, as you said before, I have aided you, do me the honor of the benefit of your doubt.”

  And the spirit power muttered someting, and looked away, and allowed that he would give any man that.

  It was then Quendros returned from setting Eviduey upon his freedom, while still Deilcrit pondered a way to delicately extricate himself and Mahrlys from their guests. He had things to say to her that could not be said in others’ presence.

  So he called to Quendros, intending to assign him the task of seeing to the spirit powers, and began to introduce each power by name.

  But Quendros interrupted, saying: “I am Laonan,” and holding out his hand to Aat-Estri.

  “Indeed?” murmured she. “Laore’s child?”

  “Once and always,” stammered Quendros, making a sign with his outstretched hand, which she echoed. Sereth leaned back against the wall, arms folded over his chest. Chayin strode toward Quendros and clapped him upon the back.

  “It is good to know that something of civilized man remains here,” the spirit power boomed.

  “Truth.” Estri smiled warmly. “Priest, were we not needed here? Did we merely snatch from you the moment of your triumph?”

  “No, no.” The Laonan Quendros scowled. “I was, I am afraid, insu
fficient to the task. But as Minister of Histories and Third Hand of Othdaliee”—and here he moved awayfrom her to Deilcrit, and clasped the youth warmly about the shoulders—“I am sure I can put my small familiarity with all that has gone before to good use.”

  There was something Deilcrit did not like in the relief he saw upon all their faces, something that chiseled away at the foundations of his triumph. But he said only what he had intended, asking Quendros to take charge of his guests and see what could be found among the ossasim’s stores to eat. Kirelli swooped low, showing the way out. And then, magically, they were alone.

  He stared out through the wall that had once been blackened glass, but now showed him the cruel, icy ridge slope and the sun blazing low over the western sea.

  He did not move, but bespoke the doors. He heard the hiss as they closed, and knew satisfaction: he could command what he willed in Othdaliee.

  He said, still watching the sun drip flame upon the ocean, “I would have preferred that you come to me willingly, but we all take what we can get. I spared Eviduey, if it is any comfort to you, though he tried determinedly to slay me.”

  “Thank you,” she said evenly.

  “I will try my best to make you content,” he said, while before his eyes a tiny bird chased a whelt who soared on the air currents, caught it, and rode its back.

  “I would not bother, were I you,” she replied.

  His hands played with the thong that bound the empty scabbard he had made so long ago from Aat-Estri’s discarded tunic, that she had used to clean the mucus from the newborn ptaissling. He would see about the ptaissling, perhaps invite it to Othdaliee. And he would see about carting up some small trees that thrived in shade. It was not only Kirelli who would be uncomfortable living in this bare and unyielding forest of glass and stone, which smelled of metal. And the whelt had few places to perch in the throne room, and none at all in the empty corridors. He looked up at the domed ceiling, measuring it with his eye. A sizable memnis could be moved in, were its pot ample enough.

  “This place will be better with some green around. You will come to like it. It is not dead like Dey-Ceilneeth. The very walls will do your bidding.” Then he heard her sob, and he did turn around.

  She huddled before his throne in her ragged robe, once white, elegant, but now ripped away at mid-thigh and begrimed. Her face was buried in her hands. Her shoulders shook. He longed to go to her. He said, Instead:

  “You always cry. You cried when I claimed you in Dey-Ceilneeth. I command you to cease.”

  And when she did not, he did go to her and take her by the shoulders and shake her, very gently, while the thrill of touching her once more threatened to consume his sense. Not yet, he told himself fiercely.

  “Why did you cry then, Mahrlys? Why do you cry now?”

  “Mine have died by the thousands, and you ask me why I cry,” she said, her green eyes swimming in tears. “I cried in Dey-Ceilneeth when I realized what you were, and saw all tumbling about me in ruins. And now it has tumbled. Let me go and join my dead, where I belong.”

  “No,” he said, and then it was time. He set about convincing her, there on the steps of the carnelian throne, that she might find life under his rule preferable to death.

  At length he lay exhausted and unsure that he had done so, but when he pushed up and regarded her, and saw the sweat beading her upper lip and the smile that tugged at it, he was greatly eased. She ran a finger down his cheek and touched his lips with it, and said: “Man-wehr, if you can keep that whelt of yours from clawing out my eyes, I might bear you an heir.”

  And he wondered, then, if the spawn of their union would be winged, with red-in-red eyes, but did not have the heart to ask her. He said, instead: “Not yet, woman. Do what you must, but see to it.”

  And she lowered her eyes and said, “Yes, my lord,” and pressed her forehead against his shoulder, and he had not the heart to tell her of Heicrey, either.

  He sat full upright and peered at the sky, dull green and darkening, and pulled her onto his lap. She did not resist. He looked at the softness that resided in her face, a softness he had never before seen, and regretted that his next words would drive it from her green eyes like night drove color from the sea.

  “We must go attend our guests, and see why it is Aat-Sereth required our presence at the rising of the moon.”

  “Deilcrit, I have a confession to make,” she breathed, pulling the torn robe so pitifully around her that he cast about his new memories frantically for something in which to clothe her.

  “So?” he prompted, and lifted her to her feet.

  “I saw you kill the henchman of Mnemaat when we took the children’s trial in Nehedra.”

  He had never dreamed she even recollected him. He blinked, and mumbled a wordless sound, and bade the doors make way for them.

  The spirit powers were housed in the chamber Mnemaat had used when he rested in Othdaliee, the one whose pallet stood on golden legs and whose hangings were all shades of gray, like polished slate.

  Quendros’ raid on the kitchens of Othdaliee had yielded up a sideboard full of carnivore’s delights.

  Deilcrit squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them, reminding himself of the grisly feast he and Kirelli had shared on the shale of Mt. Imnetosh’s slopes. As he had then, the great whelt flew from his perch on a haunch of meat toward Deilcrit, a bloody strip in his beak.

  Mahrlys hid her head in his armpit and pressed her body to his.

  “Kirelli,” said Deilcrit aloud, “tell Mahrlys you mean her no ill.”

  But Kirelli only squawked, dropping the meat by Deilcrit’s foot, and raced about the plushly appointed chamber.

  He urged Mahrlys forward, finally realizing the tension that held the spirit powers all wordless.

  Aat-Estri lay upon the silken coverlet, her boots kicked off, toying with her hair, her eyes on the pattern worked into the spread.

  The dark power leaned against a chest bespangled with inlays of bone. Beside him lounged Quendros, his ragged tunic discarded, wet hair dripping.

  Sereth sat half upon the massive table that centered the room, cleaning his nails with a knife. He, too, was stripped down to breech, his hair and skin gleaming wetly. As Deilcrit and Mahrlys entered he put the weapon by Se’keroth, amid his gear which strewed the tabletop, and came to meet him.

  “You should not have waited for us to eat,” Deilcrit said mechanically, trying to pinpoint what was wrong in the room.

  “We find ourselves concerned with things other than our bellies,” said Sereth. As Mahrlys quavered Chayin’s name, stiffened in Deilcrit’s graps, he looked more closely and saw the dark power’s foreboding demeanor. Then he looked back at Aat-Sereth and said that he did not understand.

  “It is customary here, as we learned in Dey-Ceilneeth,” said Sereth easily, disarmingly, with a comradely smile, “to exchange ipherim. So we thought, Estri and I, how fitting it would be to celebrate your accession in that manner.”

  Mahrlys whole form quaked, and she moaned. Deilcrit looked from her to the spirit power Estri, and then at Aat-Sereth. He dropped his arms from Marlys’ shoulders.

  “So be it,” said Deilcrit, watching Mahrlys closely.

  She stood like a statue.

  But the cahndor pushed himself away from the inlaid chest and struck an eloquently threatening pose.

  “As you can see,” continued Sereth blithely. “Chayin has some small objection to this, which if we ignore I am sure—”

  “Sereth,” growled Chayin.

  “Yes, cahndor?” Sereth grinned, sliding off the table.

  “There can be only one ending to this.”

  “So I, myself, have surmised. Let us commence. The food grows cold.”

  “You need not worry. You are not going to be eating it, but will be instead cold as any carcass on that sideboard.”

  Deilcrit flicked a glance at Quendros, whose hand scratched his new beard and whose eyes were hooded.

  Then Sereth asked for Deil
crit’s help with the table, and they moved it to the side of the room.

  Exposed thus was a circular rug the color of mist.

  Estri had taken leave of the couch. She sauntered leisurely to the center of the gray circle and said, “Well, is this not apt? I see only one problem.”

  “What is that?” asked Deilcrit, when no one else did, as he instructed the doors to close and took Mahrlys under his arm.

  Quendros, upon Chayin’s request, unstrapped the white-bladed sword and handed it to him.

  “The problem is,” said Estri quite calmly, running her toe through the fleece of the rug and watching the track it made, “that there are not two chalded witnesses. Not even the Laonan priest would be acceptable to our authorities as witness in a death match when both men’s holdings comprise a continent.” And she wet her lips, and expelled a shuddering breath, and continued less calmly: “So, since we cannot have a death within the circle, even though we have a circle, both of you put those weapons down! I will not stand for it! As the only ranking neutral party, I demand hands only, full conventions, permanent injury penalized.”

  Eyes flashing, she tossed her head. “Deilcrit!”

  “Most High?”

  “You are going to see something few have witnessed: the dharen of Silistra and the cahndor of Nemar scuffling on the mat like apprentice Slayers! So goes it with these highly skilled, intelligent scions of the most evolved race yet produced among all the worlds of creations. So goes it with a Mi’ysten child whose father was a god before whom Mnemaat quailed; and with Hase-Enor, our long-awaited pinnacle of genetics, he who is kin to all men. I tell you, Deilcrit,” she continued in a slightly lowered tone, “my father would not—”

  “That is enough, Estri,” snapped Sereth. “You are right about convention, but I need no lectures from you. Get out of the way and keep quiet.”