by Janet Morris
“I see,” I said. I knew that look upon him. I waited.
“When I met you, my life was settled. I had, in my own eyes, success. I had women, children, land, threx. Position and power—all a man wants. I had the Seven’s sword.
“I misjudged some few actions, and I lost it. When I drew upon Vedrev, I had no clear thought. And when I found myself with so many swords in my service, it was too late. I did not want this.” He waved his, hand. “Alone I might have gone to Dritira, or Galesh, and made some new life. I cannot leave these men, who left so much for me.”
He took a deep breath and blew it sibilantly between his teeth.
“I speak to you of this with some difficulty,” he said finally. “I have always kept my own counsel. This is a precipitous life, with no clear purpose, or any proper ending. We are marginally safe in the Parset Lands. Elsewhere ...” His voice trailed off.
“When I conceived plucking Celendra out of Astria, it was a simple undertaking. Something to fill the time, I thought it, and another small strike against the Day-Keepers who continually harass me. I wanted Chayin‘s Parsets to hide among, and we would have walked in there and taken her out from under their very noses.” He smiled wanly. “However, things are greatly changed. All has become very serious, and the dangers are no longer slight.” And his voice turned even softer, and I leaned forward to catch his words.
“You must decide what you would do if I do not survive this. And consider, that if I do, there is always the next time. Chayin and I will doubtless come to contest over you eventually. Men can share anything but love of a woman. Should, for one reason or another, you pass again into his hands, I would, were I you, rest there content. In many ways, you two are a more likely match. And one could do worse than Nemar.”
I found my vision badly blurred, and I pulled up my knees and rested my head upon them.
“I am not doing this right,” he muttered, suddenly standing. He put his hand upon my head, and I leaned against him, my face pressed to his leg. “I am no provider,” he said in a whisper. “Behind me I left four women, three children, and a grandchild whose sex I do not even know. Before me is only conflict. And someday, death at a stronger hand. And I was content with that, until you came here. I am no longer content.” I watched my tears run down his thigh, over a bare area worn free of hair.
He pulled my arms from about his leg and knelt down to take my shaking shoulders in his hands.
“You must understand. It—is not a good thing, when a man who wields death comes to hold his life dear. It weakens. In my weakness, I fear for you.” He sought to quiet me, but I would not be quieted for a long while. When my convulsions ceased, he still held me, whispering things he had only before said to me in the heat of passion.
And then he asked me about the cloak. I told him all that he wanted to know about it, and about Estrazi and Raet, though it discomfited me to do so.
At the end of it, I begged him excuse me, that I might walk awhile alone in the corridors, until I found myself eased.
He went to the door and slid aside the panel and played with it. The door, so instructed, opened. He kissed me lightly upon the forehead. I walked past him, wordless.
After a time, wandering aimlessly, I came upon Chayin, who was alone. His expression told me how I must look—red-eyed and swollen-faced and bedraggled. He leaned his arm upon the wall, between two of the torches that lit the passage.
“Do you have your pouch?” I asked him, after enduring his wordless scrutiny. I could not have passed by him; he commanded the corridor.
“He does not want you to have it.” His face seemed dark after Sereth’s, in the flamelight. But he got it out and tossed it to me.
I tasted uris, the first time since I had awakened. It was an intensely pleasurable experience. My nerves steadied, my anguish receded. I did not toss it to him, but brought it, and handed it back. He looked down into my face; his fingers traced the tracks of my tears down my cheek.
“He is not as you expected him to be, is he?” he said, gentle.
I shook my head against the tears that again threatened my sight.
Chayin drew me to him and held me. I sensed him exploring my memories, but did not move to stop him. “It is almost over,” he said to me. “You can be strong this little while longer. Soon, all will be very simple. The new time brings with it a different balance. I have thrown the yris-tera again. Everything, it seems, has a solution.” He put me back from him. How quickly he had grown strong, freed of his affliction.
“It does not seem that way to me.” I sighed.
“Only because you are so busy appearing less than you are.” His eyes held dark concern for me. “The ending of that, too, comes fast upon us.”
“I must get back,” I said, to extricate myself.
“Go, then.” He flashed his bright smile. “Do not worry,” he called after me. “When you need me, you will not have to call.”
VII. The Liaison First
It was shadowed and musty in the undertunnels, with only a scant bowl of light here and there above the central channel, which ran unending to the limits of sight. Off it branched other tunnels, strings of light, six of them. A gray place it was, and full of ghosts. This was Day-Keepers’ domain, or should have been. The glassy gray floor was slippery under my booted feet. I turned to watch Sereth, in an alcove set into the tunnel wall. Chayin, garbed as I in the weapon-concealing brown leathers we had worn from Frullo jer, peered over Sereth’s shoulder. I moved my left leg, heard a click, and bent down to set the razor-moons better in their sheaths. Lalen, leaning, insolent but alert, against the smooth glassy wall, watched me. He, as Sereth, wore circlet armor, and each of us bore weapons enough for three. I hoped we would not need them all.
“But where are we going?” I had asked him, for I had been excluded from all their final planning.
“To pay Dellin a visit,” Sereth had answered. It was Amarsa second second. Wiraal could not possibly reach Astria by threx before second sixth.
I shook my head in wonder at the Ebvrasea’s inscrutability. A sort of grating sound bounced around the undertunnel, and a section of the channel flooring withdrew into itself, revealing another level beneath. Up from those depths came a silver oblong shape, most reminiscent of a M’ksakkan hover. When three-quarters of its rounded, windowless bulk was above the surface upon which we stood, it ceased rising. I heard the metal screech again, as the channel floor closed itself up.
Sereth laughed softly, and I glanced over my shoulder to see him darken the alcove. As he stepped from it, it closed behind him, leaving no sign that anything other than featureless gray wall had ever been there. He touched a small box in his hand, and there was a humming sound.
Lalen, with a soft exclamation, pushed himself away from the wall. Chayin, at Sereth’s right, came and turned me by the shoulders. I knew what I would see. Almost, I resisted. Then I let him turn me. The oblong metal sphere lay open to us, inviting. It looked, from where I stood upon the platform, much like the keeps above our heads.
Lalen came up behind me, peering over our shoulders. He, too, felt uneasy here.
“Come, you two,” said Sereth indulgently. “It is perfectly safe. Certainly safer than any threx.”
So I let him coax me to jump across that yawning gap, a full two hands’ widths, and onto the resilient loam-colored flooring of the oblong’s interior.
When we were, all three, within, Sereth followed and touched again the lighted box he held in his palm. A tremor came up through my boots. We were moving. I was glad that I could not see the tunnel, around me, speed by. Sereth put the tiny box in his pocket-belt. Then he motioned Chayin to him. I eyed the seats circling the wall.
“I want you to know how to guide it, in case,” I heard him say, as Chayin bent his head over a panel Sereth’s knowing fingers exposed to view.
I went and watched also, that I might keep my mind off the tons of mountain over us. When I knew I could, if need be, make the craft obey me, I went and t
ried a seat. I found, as had Lalen, who lounged stretched out upon the floor, that those seats were made for smaller, shorter frames than even my own. Formed, as they were, for diminutive rears and child-length legs, I could not find comfort in their support. I, also, sat upon the floor, taking from my belt the slitsa-covered ors Chayin had given me. I saw that he had folded back the tips of certain pages. By the time I had read each indicated page and smoothed back all the markers, we were there.
“Here we are,” said Sereth, the first words he had spoken in enths. Somehow none of us found it easy to speak, encased in our ancestors’ legacy.
“Where is here?” I asked, slipping the book in my pouch. I wonder what they would think, those forgotten ones, of the use to which we turned their handiwork.
In answer, Sereth, disdaining his tiny box, played upon the craft’s panel. The wall upon my left slid aside, although I was sure we had entered from the right. Thusly exposed was a tunnel the double of the one we had left neras behind; gray and glassy and featureless.
“Hurry!” Sereth ordered.
Chayin went first, and turned when he stood upon the platform. The space between platform and craft was a good stride across. Sereth pushed me gently toward Chayin, who extended his arm to me, and I jumped it. Then Lalen crossed over, giving the chasm no notice.
Sereth leaped through as the wall of the craft started closing. Even as his feet hit the platform, the craft began to sink beneath the channel, and when it was gone, the channel flooring, soundless here, slipped into place leaving no visible seam.
We stood there, in that pressing silence, regarding each other. Our breathing seemed very loud in that emptiness.
“Where,” I asked, “are we?”
“Let us go see. I put us within a nera or two of the Liaison First’s, but we may be farther.” Sereth put his hand upon the wall, carefully judging the level, and walked toward his right. Chayin mimed him. I stood watching until Lalen’s hand urged me to follow. I turned and glared at him, but I went, after I shook his grip from my arm.
“Here,” said Sereth when we had walked perhaps a half-nera along that gray same-seeming platform, and a portion of the wall fell back, revealing recurved stairs of well-worn archite. A paucity of ceiling globes gave the stairwell shadowy menace.
When we were all through the hidden door and stood upon the stairs, Sereth turned to Chayin.
“Close it,” he suggested. Chayin felt along the right-hand side of the door. It slid shut with not even a scrape, and semidarkness closed upon us. My ears felt as if I had changed altitude too rapidly. I swallowed, and waited for my eyes to adjust.
“Move,” hissed Lalen, ever behind me. I sighed and followed Chayin and Sereth, taking those shallow stairs two at a time.
It was a very long and winding stairwell. I climbed behind them so long there was nothing in the universe but stairs, and the effort of raising one’s aching thighs to take them. So hypnotized did I become that I crashed into Chayin and Sereth where they had stopped at the stair’s head, as I stumbled for a stair that did not exist.
“Quiet!” Sereth hissed. Chayin’s arm steadied me where I straddled two steps, for there was no room upon the top one.
Sereth caused that wall, also, to move aside. The light of sun’s setting upon the Astrian plain flushed redly over us, spilling down the stairs behind. The sight of it caused me to gasp. We were, truly, upon those plains where I was raised.
I pushed forward between them.
“Look you, Sereth, Chayin.” And I pointed southeast, where Astria sparked and gleamed upon the horizon, her towers arcing prisms into the blazing sky. I stepped out upon the ledge, which had kept its secret so well from me. I had played upon this hill, among these boulders, as a child. I had roamed here, often, with Santh.
“No wonder one never sees a Day-Keeper upon his way anywhere,” I breathed.
Chayin laughed. “Except Hael,” he amended. “Will they not know we have used their ferry?” I asked Sereth.
“I doubt it. They do not count that craft among theirs. Nor, to my knowledge, have they used those tunnels I took.” He looked around. “Move,” he said to Lalen.
Lalen moved, and Sereth showed us all how to control the stone door—by a sensor under a stone panel that slid to a special touch only. He bade us each try until we had made the door obey us. By then the light was almost gone from the sky.
“Is that the Liaison First’s?” he asked me, pointing to the, distant squat structure just taking light for the evening. It hulked there, all star-steel ugliness.
“Yes,” I said, remembering how miserable I had been within it, at M’lennin’s hands. “Are we going to walk right in?” I queried him.
“Right in,” he affirmed.
Chayin stretched. The uritheria medallion glinted balefully at me from his chest. He had his cloak thrown back, rubbing that old shoulder wound that often pained him. “Let us start, then. I would walk out this stiffness.”
We started. I judged it to be seven neras, over easy ground. The moon, third quarter and failing, was not yet risen when we stopped, so close we could see the outer court gate and the red-glowing palm-lock within. We shared a bladder of water, ate some pounded denter. The men played with their gear.
“Just walk right in?” I asked.
“Get us through the gates, yes.”
“There is manual override,” I said thoughtfully.
“Why would he override a welcome visitor?” Sereth.said.
That was true; the keep would announce me as one in its data bank. No alert. Dellin might not even bother to monitor the door at all. M’lennin had often not bothered.
Sereth, Chayin, and Lalen donned the soft-capped Parset masks they had brought.
“Just let him see you,” said Sereth. “Once he sees you, he will have no thought of us. Remember, you are surprising him. It is likely he does not know you are on the planet.”
I smiled, and as we had agreed, I unsheathed the knife Sereth had given me and took first blood with it upon my own arm. I winced at my hand’s work. The scratch, long and just deep enough, bled copiously. I shook some of the blood upon my clothing as it ran down my arm onto my hand.
“Let us go. I could bleed to death.” And I walked beside them until we were close to sensor range, at which time Sereth and Chayin made as if to support me, and we lurched hurriedly along, Lalen guarding the rear with nervous strokes.
“If this does not work,” I whispered, “what will we do? What if he has guests? What if he is not here?”
“Be silent. Look hurt. Stagger,” ordered Sereth.
Then the sensors had us, and we were all silent. The lights in the outer court rose brighter. We had been announced. I slapped with palm-lock, and the door slid aside. We clattered up the three steps, and as the door slid soundless closed behind us, I heard a commotion. Chayin drew his blade. I reached into my boot as Dellin careened around the corner, two men behind him. I threw the two razor-moons, one to Dellin’s right and one to his left. He was half-dressed, unarmed. One man screamed. Someone grabbed my shoulder, and I was upon the floor, behind Chayin and Sereth, with Lalen straddling me, blade ready.
“Estri! What?” I saw him understand, stop dead, raise his hands and clasp them above his head. One of the two Slayers was doubled over, the razor-moon deep in his gut. I wondered how I could have missed the second man, who held his sword wavering, crouched upon the landing leading back into the reception hall.
“Put it down,” I heard Sereth say. The man looked around, turned, sprinted up the steps, down the corridor. Chayin leaped after him, scooping the razor-moon from where it lay in the passage. Moments later, I heard a scream.
Through Sereth’s legs I saw Dellin eye the wounded, groaning Slayer’s sword.
“Let me go,” I begged Lalen, who still stood over me. He wrapped his free hand in my hair. “Pick it up, Dellin,” invited Sereth.
“You will kill me.”
“Not immediately. Pick it up, Slayer.” And Dellin did
. Chayin appeared at the top of the stairs, his arms crossed over his chest, and squatted down to watch.
Dellin hefted the blade, slick with its owner’s blood, and took a step toward Sereth. Sereth’s blade flashed an instant after Dellin’s attacking stroke. The sword fell from Dellin’s grasp and skittered across the star-steel floor. Dellin clutched his hand against him, staring at the offending weapon, unbelieving.
“Try again,” Sereth suggested diffidently. “We all have our off days.”
I leaned forward, but Lalen pulled me back by the hair.
This time Dellin grabbed up the blade and lunged with it in both hands at Sereth, holding the sword as a spear. Sereth simply was not there, but beside him. The Ebvrasea’s sword whickered through the air, and Dellin’s blade skittered almost into my hands. Dellin went to his knees, and Sereth neatly knocked him senseless with his weapon’s hilt.
He stood over the Liaison a moment, then reached in his pocket-belt and manacled Dellin’s large wrists behind him with heavy Nemarsi wristlets. That three-linked style is unmistakable to any who has ever worn those obdurate steel bands.
I found myself rubbing the small bones of my own wrists, remembering the sores steel chafes upon them. Dellin’s black-haired head lay still. I recollected another time I had seen Sereth knock a man’s blade from his hand upon the first stroke. I started to get to my feet but Lalen wound his grip tighter in my hair.
Sereth was bending over the wounded man, his booted feet in a pool of blood. He pulled the razor-moon from the Slayer’s middle and turned away. He shook his head.
“Your turn,” he said to Lalen, indicating the badly wounded man. “I will watch her.”
I went to Sereth and hid my head against his chest while Lalen dispatched the man I had mortally wounded. I had to step over Dellin’s unconscious body to do so.
“Next time,” said Sereth, “you will dispatch your own wounded.” He pushed, me away from him and bent to Dellin, the gory razor-moon still in his hand, wiping it clean upon the unconscious Liaison’s clothing.