by Janet Morris
“She is a ‘ten’ you say? Pity,” he said to the jiasks. “Hold out your hands, Go on! You have come this far. Now is no time to be difficult!”
And I did, and he fitted my bonds to his satisfaction. His short, stubby fingers were gentle and efficient, his dark eyes not unkind as he met my gaze. He then led me, with the others following, as Hael had instructed them, into what I would come to think of as the crellpits. The large chamber was empty, the crells being at their daily labor. It was low-ceilinged and almost featureless. At certain places upon the floor were grates that opened onto some lower level. At other places, large rings that accommodated a number of chains were set into the stone.
I wondered what it meant, to be a “ten,” as the crellkeep chose a spot seeingly like any other upon one chain and fastened me to it by means of heavy metal anklets that were spaced along its length.
“I put you next to Aje. You will sleep through the nights,” he informed me, as if I should be grateful for some thoughtful service. Seeing me safely bound, the two jiasks turned and left the chamber.
“What is your name?” the crellkeep asked.
I almost told him, and caught myself. It took me a moment to remember the crell name Chayin had given me.
“Miheja,” I said finally.
“Mi-he-ya,” the crellkeep corrected me gently. “The East-most Star’s Daughter. Suits you. So you have the dharener entranced, do you? A ten, indeed. Crell life is no burden to one so highly numbered.” He stood up, rubbing, his back, “I go to get Aje. You will like him. They all do,” he said, and patted my naked shoulder. Moments later I was alone in the deserted, ever dusk of the crellpits. A single torch burned in the chamber’s entry, throwing life into the featureless rock walls.
I crawled the length of my tether, and by lying stretched out could just get my fingers upon the central ring. I tested its strength; as had countless crells before me. There was no weakness in it. I had expected none. I then examined each link of my chains with my fingers, to see if perhaps somewhere there was one unsoldered among them. There was no error among the 387 links that bound me firmly to the central ring. Its twin was sunk where the cold stone floor met the wall behind me. Perhaps there was a weakness in that area, but I had not enough tether to explore it. I lay down upon my left side and curled my knees against my chest. I could not think. I merely lay there.
After a time I heard shuffling feet, and I was glad there was life in the world. The crellkeep entered, and I sat up, to see beside him a naked blond man who wore upon his wrists crell chains. He was taller than the crellkeep, and his body had the angular bulk and stoop of long, arduous labor.
Grunting as he bent down, the crellkeep snapped the metal anklet nearest mine around the blond man’s left ankle.
“This is Aje. Meheja. Aje is a neighbor on your chain. You will breed. Then I will feed you.” He turned to walk away.
“No,” I said.
The crellkeep turned in mid-stride. The man beside me raised an eyebrow.
“You must be bred,” explained the crellkeep, standing over me. “We cannot have you later claiming pregnancy by the dharener.”
“Hael never touched me.”
“Oh. Someone must have. You are crell. You must be bred after any contact with your masters.” He was getting an edge upon his patient tone. “You will breed, and then I will feed you.” And he went to stand in the corridor, that we might have privacy. As if that made any difference.
The man called Aje put his hand on my arm. His pale eyes were friendly; his pale hair fell over them, shadowing.
“Come, now, let us get this behind us,” he said in a low voice. “Things get no better for a crell. It need not be unpleasant. I have some little skill.” But even in that dim light I could see that his body had no great interest in mine.
I drew my legs up around me, clasping my arms over my knees, shaking off his touch. I said nothing.
“I am Lalen gaesh Satemit, musician of Stra,” he offered. I did not answer. The crellkeep coughed in the passageway. Aje sighed and drew his own knees to his chest, regarding me over crossed arms. His chains rattled. I thought I would start screaming and never stop.
“That is all we have to give each other,” he said finally, in an intimate voice. “Our real selves, which the Nemarsi deny us. Who are you, Miheja the crell?”
If I had told him he would have understood. His eyes searched my face, and for a moment I thought he knew me. The moment passed. He sighed and reached out toward me again.
“Before he comes in here and stands over us, lie down!” he said urgently. He pushed me backward, and I let myself fall, and lay there until I had been officially bred. I heard the crellkeep grunt to himself with satisfaction and lumber away.
When he returned with two hot bowls of binnirin gruel, Aje still held me. He stroked my hair and pressed my head against his chest, and little by little the tension drained out of me. It was a great kindness.
The crellkeep put the bowls upon the floor and departed. It was another little while before the light-haired crell bestirred himself, kissing me upon the crown of my head and raising me up with him.
He made the polite compliments that might be between two free people at such a time. It was strange to hear them. I put my hands around my bowl. I wondered if the place were truly cold, or if it was an inner chill I felt. I pressed closer against him, for warmth.
“The crellkeep will be bringing the others in soon. How is it that you are the dharener’s ten and have not lain with him?”
“I do not know what a ten is. I was with Chayin, before he gave me to Hael. It is very complicated.”
“Good. We will have lots of time. Besha will not want me tonight. She has problems with the cahndor. I am also a ten. Tens spend most nights with their owners. I do little stonework anymore.”
I wondered that he knew so quickly of Besha’s encounter with Chayin.
“I will tell you about my capture only if you will tell me those things which I desire to know.” I could hardly have cared less at the time.
“Anything, if I know it.”
“First, about the tens, and second about what occurred in Arlet two years, three pasks back. More specifically, what transpired there between a Day-Keeper and a Slayer. I have been told this is common knowledge, but it is knowledge I do not have.” And at that moment there was a stabbing brightness behind my eyes. For a second I could not see, only afterglow. It was Hael, with the helsar.
“Are you unwell?” His voice was solicitous. I told him I would survive. I hoped I would.
“I know only hearsay, but Khemi, who is upon my left on the chain, was, I think, in Arlet at that time. I was crell even that long ago.” His soft voice was wistful.
“And about the tens?”
“The tens eat better. Their work, whatever it is in nature, is reduced in hours. It is a number of favor. The jiasks and the tiasks and the crellkeeps will treat a ten better. Prize your status. You can go no higher. You have a work number. What is it?”
“Seven,” I answered.
“With the threx,” he informed me. “It could be much worse.” He rubbed his hands together. Those hands when upon me had little of a musician’s touch to them. They were scarred and twisted and rough. The room again exploded. I saw a thousand lights.
“Do you think the dharener will call you this night?” he asked. I almost laughed. I pulled away from Aje, running my hands through my tangled hair. My upper lip was beaded with sweat, though I had been so recently cold. I could see an overlay of another room, faint but real as I looked around me. Hael had unwrapped the helsar and sat before it.
“I said, do you think the dharener will call you?” repeated Aje.
“No,” I said. “I do not think he will.”
“Tell me about what occurred on the desert,” Aje suggested.
I did so, and while I was in the telling, the crellkeep brought groups of crells in and fastened each in place, until there were fifty-three of us in all. Then foo
d brought, by two crells on a rolling board was passed around. Our old bowls were collected, and Aje and I were fed again, on the heels of a meal.
I moved to send my bowl back ..
“Keep it,” Aje hissed. “There are some who do not get enough.”
I kept the bowl, continuing my story. I did not tell him how I came to the desert.
On my one side was Aje, upon my other only empty chain. Beyond him sat dark-eyed, dark-haired Khemi, and behind and beside us the rest of the fifty-three. They talked and joked among themselves. They shared their food, and some even laughed aloud. I could not see that they had anything to laugh about. The cool stone under me was becoming clammy; the press of flesh warmed the air. Aje took my untouched bowl from me and sent it down the line.
With the helsar, Hael got nowhere. I sensed his agitation, and a cessation and darkness as he covered the thing once again.
I breathed an inward sigh of relief.
“That is all, save we came straight here and the dharener assigned two men to deliver me.” I was finished with my account. I had paid little attention to telling.
“Did you see a woman upon the court?” Khemi asked.
I said that I did, and described her.
“And was the Nemarchan affectionate to the cahndor, father of her child?” There was petulance in her tone.
“More likely to the dharener,” Aje put in.
“I only saw her speak at all to Had,” I clarified. There was much interest in the affairs of their owners here among the crells.
“Aje, will you fulfill your part of the bargain now?” I asked him, lest the moment be lost. He turned to Khemi, who lounged upon her side, her bracekted leg crooked.
“Tell Miheja what you know of Arlet, when Sereth became past-Seven and Vedrev gave himself up to the chaldra of the soil,” he bade her.
And Khemi looked at me curiously, but started the tale.
“I know not all of this story, but I shall tell you what I saw and what was told to me,” said Khemi in a musical voice. “On Macara first fifth of that year, when I had been wellwoman precisely one year in Arlet, it came to pass that I put down my duties to go into the hide bast beneath the Well, and study there the forereaders’ way. If I seem bitter in this telling, it is that I too lost something in the common hall upon the first sixth of Jicar, when the floor ran slick with Arletian blood.” Khemi sighed.
“Hence I was below ground the whole time that Estri, Well-Keepress-of Astria, was in Arlet. I never saw her, but rumors of her doings reached us even so far beneath the Well. It was said, to me by my sponsor, who was close to Vedrev bast Iradea, that some great crux wind blew around her affairs, great enough to involve the learned northern dharener himself.
“At that time there was in Arlet a new Liaison, Khaf-Re Dellin by name. In fact, he and the Mtrian Keepress arrived together, and it was said that Dellin had more interest in his traveling companion than in Celendra, who was Keepress in Arlet then, Dellin was a strange Liaison, with stranger ways than the old. It was said he was close to Sereth, Seven of Arlet, and closer with Ganrom, who might sponsor him for the Slayer’s chain.
“This is only rumor,” she continued, “but it is said that the Keepress of Astria bested Celendra at gol-knife upon their first meeting. It is also rumored that some little interest sprang up between Estri and Sereth crill Tyris, former couch-mate of Celendra and father of her only son, Tyith. And it has been postulated that this, coupled with the indignity Celendra suffered at Estri’s hand in the circle, and Dellin’s relative indifference, greatly angered Celendra bast Aknet.” Most of the crells had grown quiet, listening.
“Whatever the truth of it, it came about that Sereth crill Tyris was tithed by the Liaisons and commanded by Vedrev to get this Astrian Keepress to the Falls of Santha, that she might look upon an artifact there and discharge some chaldra.
“Now, Sereth, Seven of Arlet, was a man who heard his own voice only, and one not easily ordered about. He and Vedrev had in the past found numerous occasions for altercation between them. And the Liaison Dellin, by trying so desperately to please everyone at once, soon found himself in the middle between them, and between Estri and Celendra also.” Khemi shook her head, remembering.
Mid-Macara there was Feast of Conception for Genisha and Jerin of the Slayers. A man of Baniev, wearing the clothes of a Morrltan, died a mysterious death during the night. Its cause was never determined. The tension was thus heightened all around, for we waited to see if such awful death would come again upon the land.
“Perhaps because of that, the Seven decided to take his one son, Tyith, apprenticed for the Slayer’s chain, with him upon the trail to Santha.
“When Celendra heard this, she locked herself in her keep and commenced a fasting and a keening that lasted a full set’s time When she once again opened her door, she went straight to Vedrev and demanded an inquiry into what had occurred upon the trail. Vedrev answered her that it was doubtful they even reached the falls by that day. Celendra then informed Vedrev that her son was dead, that she had seen Sereth, in a vision, bind the boy up in a brist pelt and throw him into a great crevice. And that he had failed to protect Estri of Astria, who was lost now forever to the spirits beyond, and that Sereth had killed four chalded men and left them, their chalds upon them, for the hulions and the harths. I know this, because it was to my lecture hall she came, and demanded Vedrev at once attend her will.
“This the Day-Keeper did, leaving us thirty would-be forereaders in the learning hall, waiting. Celendra’s unquiet voice rang through the hide corridors, and in our ears, as she charged Sereth with all the un-Sevenly acts I have mentioned, and more besides.
“Vedrev tried to calm her, but the seeds of doubt were planted in his mind, and he went himself upon the trail to the Falls of Santha, taking with him Ganrom, Celendra, and at Celendra’s bidding, the Liaison, for it had passed between Dellin and Celendra that they would take the one-year couch-bond traditional between Keepress and Liaison.
“One who should have known once said to me that but for this pledge to Celendra, Dellin would have stood for Sereth in his need, and had that been true, things might have taken a different turn. But he did not.
“Let me point out that at the time Celendra first approached Vedrev, it was with forereader’s knowledge. It was her forereading Vedrev trusted, and as it proved true in some things, it seemed true in all. It was her forereading that destroyed Sereth.” Her voice was wistful, and I knew she saw him before her eyes, even as I did.
“Just upon the plateau of Santha,” Khemi continued, “Vedrev’s party found some badly savaged bodies.
“Embedded in the chest of one of them was a knife with the Seven’s device engraved upon the hilt. There was the Slayer convicted before trial, for he had not collected the chalds of his dead.
“The body of Tyith was not among them. Celendra demanded that they press on, and the dharener’s party continued, until they found their way was blocked by a great crevice in the earth, Deeming it impossible to pass over the chasm’s width or around its length, they turned themselves around and headed back to Arlet. The fact that the crevice was as Celendra had described it was enough for Vedrev.
“By this time I had finished my seminars and was released to my wellwork for a pass, to put what I had learned in the hide into practice upon the customers.
“It was market day in the Inner Well, first first of Jicar. Vedrev and his party were still in the Sabembes. Sereth crill Tyris came riding through the gates with a coin girl at his side, and she upon one of his finest threx. Tyith was not with him, nor was the Keepress of Astria.
“I was standing with a chalder near the outer gate. I had long coveted the Seven’s attentions, and always greeted him when the opportunity arose. He had in the past often stopped to speak with me. This day he did not stop, and his face was awful to look upon. He rode straight to the hostel and disappeared within, taking the coin girl with him. He did not even see to his threx himself, but handed them w
ithout ceremony to the slayer at watch. What more eloquent statement of something sore amiss than Sereth crill Tyris, not caring for his prized racing stock?
“There was a great buzzing in the Inner Well that day. Sereth had brought a coin girl into Arlet. None dared to question him, but behind his back the people wondered aloud at his brashness.”
“And where was Tyith? And the Well-Keepress of Astria?”
“It is said that Sereth called then upon Vedrev, and finding him gone from Arlet, and Dellin and Celendra and Ganrom also, was apprised of what had occurred by some Slayers whose loyalty he still retained.” Khemi coughed, shifting in place.
“By Vedrev’s order, the Seven was confined within the halls of Arlet until the Day-Keeper’s return. There were few among the slayers who would have moved to restrain him, should he have chosen to flee to the south or west. But Sereth was a proud and arrogant man, and he told his fantastic story before his men, and a great many of them believed him. He did not flee, but settled himself and his coin girl into the Slayer’s hostel to await Vedrev’s return.
“On Jicar first second did Vedrev, Dellin, Celendra, and Ganrom return out of the Sabembes, to find Sereth, Seven of Arlet, there awaiting them.
“An open hearing was set for the first sixth, four days hence, within the common room of Well Arlet, that all concerned might attend. The hall was so crowded with the Slayers of Arlet that I could only find standing room in the back.
“I saw Ganrom and two other Slayers of rank lead the Seven in. They passed so close to me, I saw the tears in Ganrom ‘s eyes. Nor was he the only one among the Slayers so moved. Sereth walked between the two, Ganrom just ahead, making way through the crowd to the makeshift dais. He wore his formal leathers and the Seven’s sword, and his chald lay shining around his waist, that it might be easier for Vedrev to strip him of them.
“Open hearing or not, the outcome of it was long decided, and all knew it.
“The Slayers of Arlet were by this time polarized into two groups: those who believed their Seven and those who were for some reason or another glad to see one so mighty brought low. There were weapons aplenty in the common room of Well Arlet that day.