by Tanith Lee
The two women were tired of supporting Vitra. Through fright, she had grown to be a dead weight in their arms. They gave her to her robots, or the robots of Klarn which now were hers. The arena whispered as friend elaborated to friend, princely house to house, on how Vyen Klovez and Shedri Klur had come to blows and now to a duel. The robots had taken their vow and willingness both to fight to the death. It was a legal formality, obviating blame. But neither would actually slay the other. Such a thing had not occurred for centuries. Young men yawned to detract from their avid eyes. Young women stared, eyes like jewels, fingernails like enameled claws. Vitra knew their beastliness. She had invented them. This was a Fabulism.
The fighters came out and were cheered, more loudly than at a practice bout.
They wore the thin protective and nonflammable garments of the combat, traditionally one black, one gray, which covered even hands and face. Contestants might be singed but not set on fire. Not, at least, from a superficial blow.
A weapon of vengeance.
A fire-sword.
The blade was two feet in length, about one inch in width, tapering to half an inch at the point, and was forged of calvium steel, absorbent of, but resistant to, heat. There was no cross-grip, the hilt was part welded into the gauntlet, both also of calvium seel. From hilt to point on each broadside of the blade ran a quarter of an inch channel, partially closed by narrow rings, fine as wires, and treated to extreme hardness. Small chips of fosscoal had been forced into these tubes, and trapped there by the rings. The sword had then only to be plunged in a scoop of burning oil to set it alight.
Once lit, the flames wreathed the entire weapon to the hilt. They were in shade a vaporous blue, with flushed tongues which would darken slowly into red the longer a fight continued. The calvium glove, padded on the inside with cooling, heat-impervious layers of phosphor and plastics, protected the swordsman from his own blade.
The fiery aspect of the sword was mostly for spectacle, yet coupled to the instinctive human fear of damaging fire, which even when restricted to a singeing was unpleasant, the weapon called up unique impulses of defense and attack in the combatants.
Complementary to the fire-sword was a plaque of fresh-cut ice clenched in a light steel vise and carried in the other hand. At the battle’s commencement, when the ice was immature, it could be employed effectively to block an opponent’s weapon. The oil on each blade prevented the flames from relapsing, but meetings of ice and fire were marked by explosions of steam. As the ice decayed, the more rapidly the more often it met the fire, its use as a ward became less. In the more stretched bouts of such fencing, ice gone, the steel vice was thrown aside.
Casrus Klarn, it was well known, had practiced the art with robots, who could be set at phenomenal speed and reflexive ability, and could fence indefinitely. Most princes preferred to pit their talents against other men, fallible as they themselves. But then, they fought to win, even at exercise. Casrus had fought to tone his muscles and to quiet his mind.
Neither Shedri in gray, nor black Vyen, though concealed from head to foot, evoked Casrus. They were altogether too light, too fragile. The arena sizzled with their combined ethos of apparent hate and frenzied indecision.
Shedri’s voice cracked as he instructed a Klur robot to signal the start of the bout on a count of fifteen. The robot’s voice came shrill and flawless after it.
The two princes seemed posed like runners, leaning on the atmosphere itself, dipping their swords at nente, the tenth numeral, the blades hissing, throwing out large petals of flame, the ice handed to them by their machines through the smolder.
The fifteenth numeral was achieved.
“Begin,” said the robot of Klur, and wheeled rapidly to the arena’s edge.
* * *
• • •
Vyen’s suicidal impulse had already dissipated. To be replaced by an immediate assurance that he would still die. Shedri the better fighter, would kill him. And ironically, through Vyen’s spasms of dread and bewilderment, came the conclusion that even the threat of the Subterine Hejri or Hezeddi, or whatever foul name it was, might have been dealt with, fobbed off. For what had seemed, in that distraught second, an insurmountable destruction, had now shrunk to its proper size—too late.
Shedri’s eyes were enclosed behind the tinted fireproofed lenses of his nonflammable mask. Shedri had disappeared altogether. He had put on the clothing of the killer, and become a killer. And yet (even in utmost fear, Vyen could see it) Shedri was such a clot, could he truly mean to kill? Had he the metal for it? As if along an echoing tunnel, Vyen heard in memory Shedri’s stammer.
Shedri’s blade, smoking, flaring, leapt across Vyen’s breast. Vyen thrust the plaque of ice tardily between. White steam roared, and under its cover both combatants danced back. Vyen had been stung, a slight hurt, but a presage. His limbs turned to fluid and he almost fell. But how ineptly Shedri had moved—
Vyen had not fought with a fire-sword for six or seven years. Even in play, it had been literally that, a vessel for jokes, which his opponents had allowed him, amused by his antics, or wary of his more agile tongue. Suddenly, a compulsion overcame Vyen, caught between premonitions of death and contempt for Shedri Klur, to attempt a joke, a pitfall for all clots.
Klur was advancing once more. The flaming blade wove stripes of light and after-image on the air. Vyen sidled away, halted, wriggling his fingers loose in his gauntlet. He hefted the blade, freed his hand, and threw the whole assemblage at Shedri.
As the sword left him, Vyen cursed himself for an idiot. If Shedri intended business, Vyen had insured his own mortality. But Shedri’s reply was exactly the reply of Shedri and his fellows six or seven years ago. Accompanied by gasps and cries from the princes at the low rail, Shedri ducked and gargantuanly sprang aside, lost his footing, stumbled, righted himself, ungainly, on one wobbling knee and hand. Vyen’s sword, which had been given neither the force nor the direction to do more than touch smoke from Klur’s protective garments in passing had he remained stationary, now plonked noisily on the arena, as if to underline the buffoonery.
The watchers were laughing now. Vyen failed to realize it was the laughter of disappointment. They had wanted, though not quite believed in, a kill. Elation washed through him, despite the quavering of his pulses. He strolled diagonally, well clear of Shedri, kneeled, slid his hand back in the gauntlet and stood up. Then beheld his irretrievable error.
Shedri had reckoned himself clottish enough. Now, writhing with humiliation, restraint and timidity had abandoned him, or he them.
He charged at Vyen, and his sword was a volcano spewing fire from his hand. Vyen’s answering terror robbed him instantly of all equilibrium and all coherent thought. A few ill-recalled lessons slunk in to supply reflexes instead.
The volcanic blade smashed forward, and Vyen’s ice-ward clipped up to stay it. Boiling steam jetted over them, but Shedri did not withdraw. He lashed out with his ice itself, catching Vyen across the neck, following through to clap him across thigh and ribs with flame. This time the singeing blow was excruciating. Nerves raw from trepidation, Vyen called out.
Shedri’s sword cut for his head, and Vyen jerked away and ran two or three paces, his own blade flailing like a useless third member.
“Shedri,” Vyen panted through the mask. “Shedri, you’re being too serious. It was—a jest between us—wasn’t it?”
“No jest,” said Shedri. His tone was blurred, swallowed, as if he were drunk.
“Come, Shedri,” said Vyen. He strangled on his own spit, coughed, and crowed: “I will apologize to you—whatever you like.”
“I like this.”
Vyen did not see the sword move. Pain came like a shriek inside his arm. He looked, and beheld the torn smoking fabric, the blue-crimson ignition of his own blood.
Vyen screamed, clapping the ice (another old lesson, instantly regained) to the wound, the r
unning flame. One pain went out, a worse replaced it. The arena swung, and Vyen’s senses began to go from him.
The laughter had long since perished on the crowd’s princely lips, letting in again the feral savagery of the death-wish. Every figure strained across the rail—no higher than mid-calf to the women—the rail which fenced them from yet barely kept them out of the arena. They knew that minute how it must be. The duel was absolute, and real. They saw Shedri’s passion, his clumsy deadly smitings. They saw Vyen drooping, about to go down. The melting ice of his ward slopped on the ground. The tip of his sword was down already and drinking at it thirstily. Shedri’s blade swirled. It seemed to take a very long time. Perhaps etiquette was reasserting itself, sobering Shedri, hanging on his arm to prevent him.
And the crowd broke into uproar, thinking they bellowed at him to stop, in fact, wordlessly bellowing for a crescendo, for slaughter.
Vitra had perceived the sequence, too. She beheld the absurd joke and Shedri’s rage at it, she beheld Vyen’s punishment, Casrus’ vengeance claiming him. But she did not see with clarity. It seemed a Fabulism, acts controlled by external projection. And then clarity stabbed through her anesthesia.
Clarity told her that Vyen was within an inch of death, but that death hesitated. Shedri’s sword seemed to float, a rift of soft red flame, gentle, checkable.
She had been a mistress of events, a maker of stories, she knew what she must do, and how she must do it.
She moved from the support of her robot attendants, stepped easily across the rail. Then she sped toward the fighters, and as she did so, she cried Vyen’s name once or twice.
At her cry, everything was altered. Like a wondrous catalyst, she acted upon it all, without herself swerving one iota from her goal.
She was two yards from them, when Shedri, surfacing from his excitement to see himself blatantly culpable, turned his head, lowered his sword as if it were too heavy. His eyes, focusing on Vitra, pale and frantic and running to beg his mercy, sent the signal to his intellect: If I spare him, she will have to thank me for it the rest of her life.
As she reached him, he dropped the sword, and let her white hands extend to fasten on him and her white face offer itself to him in supplication. And as this happened, Vyen, hardly conscious, hearing his sister’s crying of his name, was yet galvanized by it, and accordingly, in sightless delirium, tore up and forward with his burning blade, delivering a towering blow against Shedri. Or intended against Shedri. Something had come between, an obstacle; an obstacle which gave a high pure singing note, and blazed up, a slender torch of vari-colored flame. Vitra.
Vyen’s sword had entered her side, almost ripping her in two from the determination of the stroke. It ended her life before she really felt the fires which scaled her flimsy garments, her skin, her hair, imparting an agony of cold rather than heat.
Her scream was not rational, it owed nothing to her reason. She had the space only for a fraction of horror, amazement, despair, beyond all horrors, amazements, despairs. And then the world poured from her, poured away as if into a bottomless urn. And the pale mouth of nothing at all closed upon her.
The silence roused Vyen. He wondered what he had done, or what Shedri had done, to cause such soundlessness.
He stared some while until his faintness drew away, and his eyes, his nostrils and his spirit informed him.
* * *
• • •
Hejerdi, his stomach gnawing on its hunger, his back braced against the ice-thick wall of Center Kaa, rubbed his forehead in hurtful monotony against his cloth-wrapped, frost-darkened knuckles. He did not know what to do. In a few more Jates, lack of work and therefore of food and shelter would have decided for him.
He had come to Kaa Center, then his nerve had absconded. He had sat down to wait.
It was two Jates, and a Maram between, since he had sent his message to Vitra Klovez. That she had not responded alarmed him. Could she be brave enough, silly enough, to risk his revelation of her calumny to the computers of the Subterior? Or did she imagine he would not be credited if she spoke in denial? Was she correct?
Now another enforced J’ara was beginning for Hejerdi. He had chipped icicles earlier and sucked them for moisture. Over by the lop-sided tavern that perched above Kaa Slink, a ghastly thing had happened. Hejerdi had managed to steal a chunk of concentrated food from a sleeping man. Out of sight of the Stare-Eyes of the Law, such an event was sometimes possible. But having stolen, having chewed off a corner of the edible, Hejerdi had withered in sudden conjunction. As once before, with Casrus, he found himself putting back in the owner’s pocket what he had taken. This awful failure of the survival trait in himself disgusted and frightened Hejerdi. He returned to Kaa and desperately resumed his vigil. Which was not, however, nor showed evidence of, being rewarded.
Presently the mid-Maram bell clanked Hejerdi from a nauseous doze.
Something made him get up and blunder into the building, toward the ghostly prospect of his last hope. Although, once again confronting the faceless machine, Hejerdi peered at the floor.
“Did the princess Vitra Klovez reply to my message?”
A hesitation of mechanisms.
“There was an accident in the Residencia, at Nle Stadium. Vitra Klovez is dead.”
Hejerdi’s life-systems seemed to fragment, and he tottered. As if he had loved her. He had: she had been his road to security. At least, perhaps, a road away from his own annihilation.
“How,” he said brokenly, “did she die?”
“This does not seem,” said the machine, “to concern you.”
Hejerdi laughed and wept.
“Not concern me? Not concern me?” A sick anger roiled in him. He found himself imploring, not comprehending yet why he did: “Was my message delivered to her before she died—was killed?”
“Yes.”
“Her brother,” said Hejerdi. That was all. The logic had revealed itself.
Her brother, the brother she had betrayed to Casrus, the brother she had called—what was it? Ven? Vyer?—her brother had learned she was discovered, that therefore both were implicated, she, and he himself. And he, this Vyre, had somehow arranged a most fortuitous accident—before she could betray him further.
“Her brother killed Vitra,” said Hejerdi.
“That is so,” said the machine. “An accident during a practice bout with fire-swords. A duel.”
To kill his own sister. . . . To a Subterine, normally denied, by the planning of the matrixes, any known kin, mother, father, brother or sister, the Residencia’s family status had a certain luminous quality. Now defiled.
And if Ven-Vyer-Vyre had slain his own known flesh and blood, he would not avoid slaying Hejerdi. It was, in fact, a miracle Hejerdi had escaped till now.
Till now, when his only recourse was to tell everything, all he had overheard, all he suspected, the Klovez plot, Casrus’ murder by order, Vitra’s murder by hand. That Hejerdi himself had tried to profit by the knowledge, might cause him to be chastised, but that was better than death.
And while he was assisting the Law of the Klave, the Law would feed him, would it not?
His anger and frustration crunched together hotly in him, like settling coals.
“I have something to confess,” he said.
* * *
• • •
Vyen Klovez sat in his black chair, shivering, always shivering, his eyes enslaved by the pointless motions of the ice-green robot dancer on its pedestal. The blue-green light had also been innovated at Klarn, and the bird-shaped window gouged in the wall. But the newest innovation of all was that Vyen was, involuntarily, alone.
Olvia Klastu had been with him constantly, not that he had wanted her. Nor Shedri’s cousin, nor the women of Klinn or Klef.
He was afraid. So afraid. He could not explain to himself his fear, or dispel it, or conceal himself from i
t. The ministering of his admirers had seemed to make it worse, but now they had gone away he knew it had not, for isolation was the worst of all.
He was alone because the computers of the Law had summoned him. Because they had sent machines to him which postulated how his sister Vitra had boasted a stratagem of false witness to Casrus Klarn in the Subterior, and been overheard. The whole plot had been put together. The motive had been assessed (correctly). Lastly, the murder of Casrus was hinted at, and then they had suggested that Vyen had killed his sister, judging her emotions, her movements, scheming her destruction as he had schemed the rest.
He had sat in his chair, shiver-shivering, the fiddle-toys whirling or snapping or flopping from his fingers. They had asked what he would say. He said:
“You t-t-take the word of a Sub-ter-ter-erine ag-against m-my own-own?”
“Are you guilty?” the machines had asked.
“N-no. I-I am n-not.”
“The Fabulism, to which the man Hejerdi directed us, has been observed. There are criminal similarities, beyond doubt. Do you still maintain you are guiltless in your dealings with Prince Klarn?”
“I-I d-do. I am-I term am not guilty—”
“And your sister?”
“An acci-accident.”
But he was the machine, not they, spouting mechanical sentences. They had reevaluated. They had delved and probed and collated. They knew. They knew it all. They had established truths that were not even true. The immaculacy of the Law had been caught out. The computers would not forgive him that.
And he. He sensed some part of him was wrenched away. The sword wound was healed, another, more obscure, gaped wider. He said things without conviction because that missing portion was not there to add its feather weight, its brilliance like a diamond or a star. It was all Vitra’s fault. Her stupidity, that which he had mocked, had wrecked them. Poor Vitra, in her lonely silver urn. She should have paid for this, not he. Not Vyen, poor Vyen.