by Janet Morris
She did that, and Deilcrit was glad that Mahrlys watched.
“Chayin, what would you fight for?”
“For the love of seeing you at my feet.”
“Estri, do we have your august permission to fight with no prize?”
“No,” said Estri, “Use Se’keroth, and all that accompanies it. I have had, as you say, about all of this I am willing to take.”
And Deilcrit was then not glad at all that Mahrlys’ head swayed from side to side as she followed the discussion. He pulled her nails from between her teeth, and wondered as he held her wrist what lay between her and the cahndor.
The two spirit powers stepped onto the gray, fluffy mat and Estri came around it to stand by Deilcrit’s side. Her arms were crossed over her breasts. He could see her pulse jump in her throat.
“The cahndor,” said Estri quietly, “will take the offensive, try to get Sereth in close, if ....” And then she fell silent as the dark power, crouched over, suddenly unwound and his long arms lashed out.
Sereth ducked under them, his hands moving in toward the darker man’s throat, and at the last moment dropping down.
Chayin straightened suddenly, throwing his torso back, and Sereth, from out of Chayin’s reach, stepped one step in and his hands left his hips to deliver two simultaneous blows to Chayin’s neck with the inner sides of his hands. Struck a nerve-debilitating blow by the short bones below Sereth’s thumbs, Chayin dropped to the rug without even a groan.
Estri expelled a breath, muttered a curse, and took a step forward.
“That is a four on the pain chart. You could have killed him,” she said very softly.
Sereth stirred Chayin’s crumpled form with his toe. “You underestimate me, Estri. Chayin did the same. You see the results. Now, call it!”
“You have it: Se’keroth and a new enemy, and twice the trouble you had before.”
“Thank you, neutral witness.”
Flushed, Estri bit her lip. He heard her mutter something about knowing better. Then she went up to Sereth and said soft things and he took her in his arms and Deilcrit was reminded that he, too, held such a woman, and pulled close Mahrlys.
After a time he heard a raucous squawking, the thunder of wings above his head, but he did not look up.
When later he walked them to the ridgetop, alone, he marveled at the clearness of the night air, at the tiny crescent of a moon, and at the dimmed amber dome that had once housed the memories of Imca-Sorr-Aat.
The cahndor, as the spirit powers called him, had taken his defeat better than Deilcrit could imagine he might have done, were the positions reversed.
Doubtless Chayin would have acquitted himself better with Aat-Estri if he had been included in the spirit powers’ version of the exchanging of ipherim. Which he was not. He was in another chamber, under Quendros’ care.
This had been of great concern to Deilcrit, for he knew himself no match for even the loser of the contest he had beheld.
So he had bid Quendros minister to the dark power, while he himself was taken deeper into Estri and Sereth’s company than he had ever expected to be.
And it had greatly constrained him, to use a woman with another man.
He felt like a thief, a masquerader, an impersonator about to be unmasked. He still felt so, carrying visions in his head which shattered the Beneguan law into fragments too tiny ever to be reclaimed. He recollected the softenss of Estri, and stole a sidelong glance in the moonlight.
As if hearing his thoughts, she turned to him and said that if ever he found the sheath of Se’keroth, which Sereth had cast into the bay, he should return it to her.
He promised that he would look for it.
Long after they had disappeared, leaving behind little wisps of flame that danced in the air, he sat on the ridgetop and stared down at Othdaliee, at the browned globe on the little island in the stream, at the twelve black towers waiting for him to explore. Mahrlys was down there. He conjured sight of her ivory throat, arched back in passion. Quendros awaited him with all the education and guidance he could desire. Kirelli swooped along the corridors, gloating, his “Kreesh, breet, kreesh” echoing in the halls of their freedom.
Why was it, then, that he felt so lonely?
He rested his elbow on his knee and his chin in his palm, and thought that he would look very hard for the green sword’s sheath.
Estri’s Epilogue
Chayin left us; courteously and with a small show of affection, at the Lake of Horns. It had been Sereth’s obviation. He had asked me the date on which I would like to return, and I had told him what my own estimate of the actual date was, and he had brought us all into the seven-cornered hall without even a shiver of cold touching my sensing.
Which startled our faithful Carth, who was holding a meeting there.
Of Carth we asked the date and found it to be Cal first first, which pleased Sereth, so that, the corner of his mouth, where the scar runs by it, pulled inward.
The cahndor went to Carth, and pulled him away abruptly; and Sereth sought a tatooed Menetpher, gathered him up.
While I played hostess to the high dhareners of Silistra, smelly and ragged in Chayin’s undertunic and hardwom leathers, Sereth and Chayin bespoke their unification agreement to Carth and to the ranking dharener of the Parset Lands, who was also there, he whose cheeks bear green bolts of lightning, three on a side.
So, it was done. I watched them together and breathed a sigh that caused one of the lakeborn dhareners to raise a golden eyebrow. I ignored him, staring above me at the ceiling with its ruddy gold scales, then down at my feet where the Shapers’ Seal, sign of my father’s people, glows eternally up from the floor. It is that of a universal order not completed, but one in which each of us have a part.
We have come a long way since joining forces. They will mend their differences. Or they will not. What matters is that for a time they shared love, and during that time they created out of their love a lasting monument to those times. My whole world will benefit from what union the cahndor and dharen have bestowed on Silistra: a change in the viewpoint of a few individuals that indeed affects the fortunes of all the individuals who consider themselves, part of the whole called Silistra; a succinct summation of catalysis genetics; a monument to Khys, Sereth’s predecessor, that he built in spite of his own intent, by acting according to his sense of fitness.
I remember the thrill that went through me as I watched Carth and the Menetpher witness Sereth and Chayin’s pact. And all that had almost been lost on the shores of Aehre-Kanoss paraded by my sensing, and I wondered why Chayin had risked it.
I thought of how early he had been intent on his course, recalling that it was he who was first through the gate, and he who bound us to Deilcrit by his word. And when it was done and Chayin came toward me, I knew that he would leave.
He hugged me, and kissed my neck, and told me to come with Sereth in summer to Nemar North and look over the yearling threx, and I found myself near tears, though I saw his father’s stamp on him, and it chilled me.
As I told him how much I regretted what had come to pass, my voice betrayed me, and he and I stood awhile unheedful of all else. When he released me and wished me tasa and strode away through the dhareners into the outer hall, Sereth was nowhere in sight.
So I bade Carth have a meal placed in the dharen’s keep, and sought my couch-mate in the baths.
Glossary
(B) = Beneguan
(P) = Parset
(S) = Silistran
(St) = Stothric
(M) = Mi’ysten
Aat: (B) To come into being.
Aehre: (B) The eastermost country that comprises half of the continental aggregate termed AehreKanoss; the city-state Aehre, on the inland Imaen Sea. Continental Aehre contains Benegua, Nehedra, Bachryse, Fhrelatiadek, Aehre proper, and Othdaliee. It is bordered on the north by the Rosharlcand Mountains and Fai Teraer-Moyhe; on the east by the Valsima River, Piyah-Ptesh, and the Imaen Sea; on the south by Kanoss and
the Embrodming Sea; on the west by the tip of the Rosharkands and the Embrodming.
Aehre-Kanoss: (B) Designation for the inhabited areas of the continent that dominates Silistra’s eastern hemisphere, including the islands east of Kanoss, whose shores none were empowered to speak of the lands ruled over by Wehrdorn.
Bachryse: (B) A Laonan town on the Isanisa River in the Rosharkand Valley; one of the six remaining strongholds of man in continental Aehre-Kanoss, Bachryse is administrated by an elected male Byek.
Benegua: (B) Those lands within the Wall of. Mnemaat; the stronghold of the Vahais of Mnemaat, Aehre-Kanoss’ ruling body; the spiritual, sanctuary of Wehrdom.
berceide: (B) Jorge, constrictor-type serpent.
Byek: (B) Any of the local administrators of Aehre-Kanoss; a Byek may be male or female, man or wehr, though this is regulated by the traditions of each city-state. All Byeks are subject to the Vahais of Mnemaat, but to no secular authority. They rule supreme and unmolested in their various preserves, subject only to the Beneguan mandate, the whims of Wehrdom, and the aggressions of their fellow Byeks.
cahndor: (P) “Will of the sand”; warlord of a Parset tribe; in usage, one who commands the speaker’s allegiance and respect.
campt: (B) A long-bodied, tusked carnivore whose average length and weight are thrice a large man’s; the campt has four legs, a tail one thrid its own length, a hairless hide usually russet in color.
catalysis genetics: (St) The catalysis cycle (see the writings of the dharen Khys, Silistra, hide-years sixty-three through sixty-five); the reference formulae upon which the science of societal engineering was based. In outline: a proposed genetic cycle based in sociogenetics stating that atavism resurges at intervals made opportune by the manifestation of psychosocial triggers provided by inbreeding individuals with strong predispositions for agricultural gregariousness, creating a technological burst which undermines any existing feudal power structure and allows for the reassertion of individual aggressiveness.
This balance, sought repeatedly in rising civilizations, must be exact, or collapse of civilization follows. Hence the cycle: gregarious strategies create agricultural societies at the beginning of technological surges, curve produces progressively more altruistic, then atavistic individuals at moments of technological, ascendancy; culling between groups commences; precipitates a fall back to basic agricultural grouping; cycle proceeds in increasingly pronounced curves until unstable level of advanced technology triggers manipulations of societal stable strategies in an attempt to preserve the race as atavism physically assaults existing morality and survival rate lowers. Prevalent correlates on Aehre-Kanoss show an attempt to hold to a pretechnological culture by culling both the most and the least survival-suited individuals, in an obvious ploy to show the progress of the genetic curve and hold it at agri-man, against evolution’s ever-more energetic efforts to inject atavistic catalysts into a gene pool so stagnant that it, of itself, demands and produces them.
ci’ves: (S) A small, furred predator common in the Sihaen-Istet hills.
couch-mate: (S) Persons bound together by love and/or issue; in usage, those in extended couch-bond, those who consider their relationship more binding than simple couchbond.
couchbond: (S) A companionship agreement between two consenting adults.
Dey-Ceilneeth: (B) The Brinjiiri Laonan Museum, once a part of the Laonan cult’s capital city, around which was built the Wall of Mnemaat, later appropriated by Wehrdom.
dharen: (St) The spiritual and secular ruler of civilized Silistra; the supreme authority of the Day-Keeper hierarchy; planetary potentate.
dharertess: (St) A word coined for Estri Hadrath diet Estrazi when she became couch-mate of the dharen Khys; this position has no formal duties or dignities attached to it as yet.
Fai Teraer-Moyhe: (St) The derivation of “Fai Teraer-Mohye” is Strothric; this brings us to the problem of crediting words as “Beneguan” or “Darsti,” when both languages devolved from Stothric. In Strothric the term means “Cove of Resurrection.” In modern Beneguan its has come to mean the “Dark Land.” Fai Teraer-Moyhe is the fabled spot upon which the adept Laore was disembowled after being convicted of netaomancy, heresy, and sedition; and from which he rose whole of form seven days later to begin the dialogues with his waiting adherents which were to form the bases of Stothric thought in the ages to come. (See Laonan.) In present Beneguan society it is a land of banishment, of death, from which no living being returns.
fahrass: (B) A highly poisonous silver-berried plant; the berries are called stepsisters by Beneguans. The ingestion of one fingernail-sized berry may cause death by oversexlation of the autonomic nervous system.
fhrefrasil: (B) A large, carnivorous primate with opposing thumbs, generally manlike, but possesed of a prehensile tail and long, silky sorrel fur.
guerm: (B) An amphibious mammal found along the shores of Aehre-Kanoss. There seem to be a number of varieties of guerm, and as all else in this glossary, any definition .I might give is limited to what I learned in our short reconnaissance and what matches I can make with knowledge I already possess. In this case I have very little, and leave the detailing of the spawning, feeding, and mating habits of guerm to those who will give Benegua the detailed biological study it deserves.
hase-enor: (St) Of all flesh; the purported goal of Silistra’s long-standing policy of genetic mixing; one whose genealogy includes all bloodlines; a thoroughly admixed individual.
hest: (S) To bend or twist natural law to serve the will; to command by mind; to cause a probability not inherent in the time to manifest.
high-couch: (S) A Well-Keepress; any woman able to demand over thirty gold pieces per couching; formally: the hereditary head of Silistra’s Well System.
hulion: (S) A large, ptaisslike, highly intelligent winged carnivore prevalent on continental Silistra.
iis: (B) Priestess; literally: “austere.” In use with another title, as iis-Vahais, it denotes ascendancy: high priestess of the Vahais.
Imca-Sorr-Aat: (B) “One who came into being out of many”; Wehrdom’s organic memory storage; the corporeal interface which implements the cogitations of that memory.
Imnetosh: (B) The mountain upon whose slope lies Othdaliee.
ipheri: (B) Literally: “resplendent in the sun’s rays”; an honorific address.
ipherim: (B) Attendant of ipheri; a consort or couchmate.
Isanisa: (B) The Isanisa River, whose sources are both the subterranean river that winds through Othdaliee and down Imnetosh’s slope, and the Bachryse Falls in the Rosharkand Valley.
iyl: (B) Literally: “eyes.” A male honorific restricted to those employed by the Vahais of Mnemaat.
jicekak: (B) A thorned, lanceolate bush ubiquitous in the Beneguan valley’s rain forests; the itching, weeping syndrome resulting from jicekak scratches in allergic individuals ranges widely in severity, though some irritant effect is visible on any skin scratched by jicekak thorns.
Khys: (St) The dharen Khys, now deceased. Let me refer you to Wind from The Abyss, wherein Khys is well-delineated, both by myself and by Carth; or, better, to his own writings: Ors YrisTera; Se’keroth, the Motif of Catalysis; Nesting, the Primal Prerogative; to name but a few. Khys Enmies, molecular biologist, genetic and societal engineer, Stoth adept, Laonan priest, Shaper’s son, dharen of Silistra, can hardly be reduced to a dozen lines, in anyone’s glossary. What might be most pertinent to say about him here is that, in good Darsti fashion, having experimented extensively with western Silistra, he let the east go its own way. The lands of AehrelCanoss were those shores of which none were empowered to speak by his command. However, the longevity of humans and wehrs seems to indicate either the introduction of Silistran serums into the gene pool of evolution’s commensurate action: although those of Aehre-Kanoss are not long-lived by Silistran standards, we saw no evidence of later-life lethals such as debilitating diseases in the mature, and this has led me to conjecture that though Khys’ hand is not in evidenc
e, it nevertheless has touched AehreKanoss.
Laonan: (St) The Laonan faith; proselytizers of Laore’s life and work; precursor to the Stothric church; the mystical society founded by Laore and based upon his life’s teachings, most notably the two-volume Forewarnings and Se’keroth, Sword of Severence, a four-volume prophetic allegory; anyone practicing Laore’s disciplines.
Laore: (St) The founder of the Laonan faith, from which sprang the Stoth disciplines and later the Day-Keepers’ hierarchy that yet holds sway over civilized Silistra.
Lake of Horns: (S) The Day-Keepers’ city, capital of the dharen Sereth, located at the Lake of Horns, from which it takes it name.
memnis: (B) A large, white-barked tree that prefers a riparian environment, the memnis has long frondlike leaves that may depend to touch the ground, of a yellow or yellow-greenish color; its inner bark is ascribed great medicinal power and is the main ingredient of most Beneguan poultices.
Menetph: (P) The southermmost of the Parset Lands; a desert principality recently come under the co-regency of Jaheil of Dordassa and Chayin of Nemar; one of the Taken Lands, Menetph has the best seaport and shipwrights of any state in the new Parset conglomerate and is also the site of the co-cahndors’ winter capital.
Mi’ysten: (M) The world Mi’ysten; the race of the same name; experimental sphere of the Shapers.
Mnemaat: (St) The corruption of Laore’s postulated “Differentiating Unfixed”; the personalization of the Unseen into which the Laonans fell in the Late Mechanist Age. Some factions believe that the creation of the Wall of Mnemaat around the Laonan Museum was a contributing factor to the schism that split the Loanan faith in twain and spawned the Stoths as we now conceive them. That Khys encouraged the use of that nomer for himself in the minds of Wehrdom must, I feel, be an expression of his humor:, and not, as Sereth has postulated, an indicator by which we may judge the depth and strength of his hatred for his ancient enemy, Aehre-Kanoss, and the Laonans who once ruled supreme there.