by Janet Morris
A time later, when the pain lessened, I sensed my body, upon something soft. I heard voices then, but no words. With my mind, I tried to get a sense of my surroundings, and shrank back, a scream in my throat. If one had raised up a molten sword hilt, dropped it, and tried to use the same hand again to grasp the red-hot hilt, the anguish might have been similar. A cold began to grow within me as I knew the silence for what it was. I began to assess my damages, needlessly. I felt hands upon me. Nothing else. No glimmer of to whom or what those hands might belong. Deaf, dumb, and blind I was. Those eyes, ears, and tongue that are mind’s had been burned badly. Perhaps even burned away.
The knowledge still remained. One cannot see without eyes, though one knows how to see. One must have data to interpret. My shoulder did not hurt at all.
Once before, I whispered to myself, I had been without my skills. Upon Mi’ysten, in the cubes, I had been so stricken. It had passed. I tried to speak aloud, and found I could not. Then I began to remember how I came to such a pass, and shrank back into unconsciousness.
And came up screaming Sereth’s name. A hand pressed, muffling, over my mouth. I could not see: a cloth was bound around my head. It came to me that I was supported, upright.
“Will you be still?” I heard. I nodded. The hand was removed.
“Walk, if you can,” the voice said. Upon either side of me were hands, bodies, men surely.
Staggering, I tried. The supporting arms kept me upright. There was no pain whatsoever in my shoulder. I could get no sense of where I was, or how long it had taken to arrive here. I saw no sort I could not choose. I merely grabbed tight to consciousness and struggled with my weakened body. Twice my companions changed direction. In those moments, my ears, straining, detected more than three pairs of feet. My need sent to me to try my skills once more—I sought Sereth. The pain was excruciating. I sagged between those who held me. They did not slacken their pace, but dragged me with them.
There was a scuffling behind us.
“Hold still, savage!” I heard. Then a grunt, then only footfalls, and the whisper of bodies moving. My heart lightened. Both voices I knew. The Ebvrasea lived. This place was the Lake of Horns, doubtless. The voice that had spoken was that of Carth. His peculiar lilt was unmistakable. Carth, arrar to the dharen of Silistra, would surely take my part, if he could.
And I understood my blinders. Mere Silistrans do not walk in the dharener’s city. The high ones lived here. Those who never go about in the land, those shadowy, almost mythical figures who rule those who rule Day-Keepers, reigned here. And Carth had said to me seek him when I came to this place. I had thought it some special invitation, in thanks for his freedom.
We stopped. There was motion before me, a moving about. A gentle hint of air crossed my cheek. Then my guards, for that they were, moved forward.
Five hundred and three steps before they stopped once again. Their hands were no longer upon me. I stood alone. I reached up to free my eyes, and none obstructed me.
My first sight was blurry, from lids pressed tight too long. The room was seven-cornered, of blue-black northern thala. Light came from tiny fireballs like miniature suns that floated near the vaulted ceiling. That ceiling was of hammered gold, soft and ruddy, gleaming.
I squinted at the figure before me, and slowly it took focus. I rubbed my unmarked shoulder.
“I am Khys,” said the first male of my own race I had ever seen. His red-gold skin shone softly; his eyes had the fathers’ fire in them. His hair was copper, thick-waved strands that just brushed his wide, black-robed shoulders. He wore no ornament but a weighty chald, within which was woven every strand attainable upon Silistra.
No I said shaking my head. I could not move. With the barest narrowing of his eyes, he held me still. If I could have moved, I would have bitten his throat out. I hated him upon first sight, that intolerably perfect mate for whom Estrazi intended me.
“Yes,” he corrected, looking clown through eyes as old as Silistra. He had Estrazi’s size and build, but with some subtle difference. Never would I let such a one touch me. I would die, first.
“You do not have that choice. Be silent.” I had not spoken aloud. I tried to quiet my thoughts. A shield was beyond me. I could not move, but he had left me able to speak. “Little savage, I need not restrain you, if you will restrain yourself.”
He looked at me, dropped his hold. Then, only, could I peer around me and see where I stood. In the center of that strange room, upon the glyph of the Shapers, was I. I saw Chayin, with Carth. And Sereth, between two massive guards. His hands were bound behind. Thee wound that should have killed him was dressed with clean bandages. Other than that, he wore only breech. He leaned heavily upon his guards, but he lived. I went to him. Carth, who held Chayin, caught my arm and returned me to the glyph’s center, facing Khys, dharen of Silistra.
“Be careful,” Carth whispered as he caught me.
“Once more,” said the dharen when I again stood before him, “and you will have no choice.” In pain that sank me to my knees, I struck out at him with my hate. He laughed. Only a muscle near his right eye twitched. A tiny sun appeared between us and floated to the ceiling.
“A threx, when she sees a potential mate, tries to outrun him. You have been outrun. Failing that, she might try to outwit him. You have been outwitted. Escape denied her, she must try his strength. But lightly, for he might be strong enough to destroy her.” I had gotten, shaking, to my feet. He knelt me. I did not kneel. He knelt me.
“At the last, if she would live to bear the young that is her purpose, she becomes docile. Consider it. Stay there!” And he surveyed Chayin and Sereth.
“So I have you at last,” he said, deep and soft. “The barbarians and the bait.” He motioned his men back from us, a movement bespeaking unlimited command, from one long-accustomed.
He turned his fiery gaze upon Chayin.
“What have you to say for yourself, Cahndor? You range far afield with your slaughter. You have looted my best Well. You have killed a dharener.” Khys waited, hands at the chald slung about his robed hips. Directly behind him was a dark-curtained window.
Chayin regarded him a moment in silence.
“I did what the time demanded of me. I will do more, for you will not obstruct me.” He held his head high. “These people are under my protection!” Khys chuckled, mirthless.
“Do not be naive, Cahndor. With Raet no longer in the south, I have no need to tread softly there. Within a pass, there will be no southern dhareners, no temples to Tar-Kesa. There will be Wells, and uniform chaldra. I will have access to those genetic strengths Raet has so long withheld from me. If you rule again, you will do it as my agent. And you will leave here as such, or not at all.
“All of you”—he lashed those eyes across us—“have done more than you know. That you have survived shows you possibly worth saving. You are mine to dispose of as I like.
“Dumb animals, savages, you are. You do not even now know what you have accomplished. You but did my will. I am the hest and the sort. You stand before me with your petty guilts in vainglorious delusion!
“Estri Hadrath diet Estrazi, daughter of the Shaper!” He snapped my breath from me. “You were born where we could not, dared not touch you. Such blood as yours is not wasted upon barbarians! All that has happened to you, your great-grandmother foretold. Even that gave you no insight.”
I just looked at him dumbly.
“Perhaps you will never understand,” he said pityingly. “Maturing you as he did, demented, depraved, was part of what had to be done. A trap, you were, one Estrazi set to catch gods!”
I could only look at him.
“He set you where we could not touch you. After he had not spread his seed upon Silistra in two thousand years, he came and left one child. He knew it would concern us, and what we would do, up to a point. But I did not, as he hoped, contest with Raet for you. When first I approached you, Raet obstructed me. He had been obstructing me since hide days. It was he wh
o drove us to the hides in the first place!” His triumph was obvious. His eyes sparked as he talked.
“How carefully Estrazi set his construction. Only such as you could have served. It was his ambivalence that destroyed Raet.”
“I do not understand you,” I said.
“Not only were you bait for Raet’s downfall, you were marked for mine! Should I have taken you, as you were, with those great unbridled strengths of yours, I would surely have fallen to whatever he has in mind for me.”
“My father is not as you say.”
“We war for the space worlds, little savage. The experiment has proved too successful, not insufficient. We are strong, effective, and different. Our conception reaches out among the planes. Time and space are no longer easily controllable from without. The fathers will not destroy us directly. The moment when we could be unmade has passed.”
“He used me to show us worthy.”
“He used you to take Raet’s interest, to draw him to you. You were his test, and he failed it. Mine too, you are, it seems. But Estrazi will not draw me into his hest.”
“You fool yourself,” I said softly.
“You speak to me of fools? Do you know even the triumph due you? That Astria abounds with helsars, and hundreds, eventually thousands, will take those teachings—do you know that?”
I bowed my head, staring at the glyphed floor.
“Do you know that you have neatly terminated at the sprouting all our troubles with M’ksakka? They sit and quake, wondering how we destroyed those ships. They will send their apologies. When we allowed them access to Silistra, it was with full knowledge that in your struggle with Raet you would teach them their place.” I remembered the two great flashes of light, in deep space near the north star Clous. I shivered, clutched myself, thinking how long ago it was that M’ksakkans had first set foot upon Silistra.
“You will be lauded, as Astria predicted. They will pilgrimage to the helsars in your name. And more. Yet you are nothing, only a tool, almost useless now. Nothing that you have done was other than we planned for you. Both your paltry hest, and your father’s, we turned to our purpose.”
I looked up at him, tears in my eyes.
“We will see what might be done with you, if something may be salvaged. It is not my custom to waste such blood as you carry in your veins.” A chill amusement touched his face, disappeared, leaving only the hauteur.
“Not while I live,” I said softly to him.
“You will think differently soon enough, when your mind is cleared of the rot within it.” And he turned his eyes upon Sereth.
“Outlaw, you are my greatest problem. I cannot exonerate you of your crimes, much as I respect your abilities. The splitting of those troops, their deployment, the archers at just the right moment, when you reformed behind and out of range—you are perhaps the most valuable of all. But I valued Vedrev, whom you killed.”
Sereth raised his head. He was pale beneath his tan, his hair still matted with dried blood.
“If, as you say”—he spoke in barely a whisper—“we did only your will, and served you so valuably, I have certain observations I might make.”
“Make them,” said the dharen.
“If you sent a hundred Slayers onto the plain of Astria, knowing all would die, if you let Estri stand alone before that power without moving to aid her, if you let Celendra rule in Astria and Vedrev falsely accuse me, then it is not she, but you, who are demented. What you do with me now should be an easy decision. What is one life, to one who spends life like copper dippars?” And he met the dharen’s gaze, unwavering.
“You,” said Khys at last, “of all of them, most perplex me. In Estri there is a Shaper heritage, Chayin bears the blood of Raet—both of them strong infusions. In you there is only a mixing of low concentration. And yet you stand with them, on firm footing. I might offer your arrogande up as reason for your death. But I will not. I will offer you the arrar’s chald, in trade for your name. And justice will be served.” Sereth shifted his weight. The chains upon his wrists rustled.
“I do not understand,” said Sereth. The arrar, chald of the messenger, is given to so few that until Carth I had never met a man who bore one.
“I cannot pardon Sereth Grill Tyris, the Ebvrasea. I might give a man, Sereth, a chance to come into my service. None who bear the arrar may retain ties to their past. They bear every chald given upon Silistra. They must be free of factionalism. Such a man bears only his given name.” Tight lines shadowed Khys’s jaws as he spoke.
“I could even part with that,” said Sereth. cautiously. “I cannot say yet. I need time to think.”
“You shall have it.” He smiled graciously, copper-gold, glorious. I detested him.
“What of my woman?” Sereth asked.
Wrinkles came upon Khys’s wide forehead. His arched brows drew together.
“Surely, after all you have heard here, you cannot still delude yourself that you might be allowed to breed such a female?” Even as Sereth’s body stiffened, I could feel Khys’s restraint flash out.
“Take him,” said the dharen abruptly, “where he may rethink his position. You!” He whirled upon me. “Stay there!”
I stayed, upon the glyph of Khys’s defiance, on my knees, while they dragged Sereth out. He did not truly struggle, but he did not move with them.
And there were just Chayin and I, and Carth. And the dharen.
“Unbind him,” Khys ordered. Carth freed Chayin’s wrists. He rubbed them. His rana-colored skin was covered with half-healed wounds. I could see the membranes snapping agitatedly back and forth. I still knelt upon the Shaper’s glyph. My limbs trembled uncontrollably, kneeling there in the great empty seven-cornered hall.
“I would ask a thing, dharen,” Chayin said.
“Ask it.”
“You called me Raet’s son? Is that true? And Hael—what of him?”
“He was not, though he would have given all to be. The hate he had for you stemmed from that. He was priest of your father. You had the blood, the skills, not he. Raet realized, when he chose as he did, what tensions could be catalyzed. Hael served him well. I would have a hundred such.” The dharen rubbed his long-fingered hands together.
“That is why, then.” And I knew he meant the curse his gifts had been upon him.
“When I have a male child from her, you may put spawn upon her also I would be interested in the get of such a union.”
Chayin rubbed his neck. His eyes flickered. He walked the three steps to me and touched my head. I looked up at him. His face was pained. He squatted down upon his heels and put his hands upon my arms, kneading.
“You know there is nothing I can do to aid you, Estri,” he said, very low.
I looked at him, at his darkness, at his distress. And yet, between them they discussed me like some threx in heat. I had no doubt Khys could put an unwanted child upon me. Once I might have obstructed him. No longer.
“Cahndor,” I said, toneless, “do what you will. I would as soon your get as any other I am likely to bear. They breed crells in Nemar.”
“Estri, please.” He pulled me to him, pressed his face close.
“Chayin, if one has no control of one’s life, there is left only the way we choose to meet what comes. Put a child upon me, if you will. I will be whatever he has made me, by then. It will not matter. Perhaps I will recollect myself, at your hands.” And I did not understand what I said then. Khys did, and he looked at me sharply, his handsome face drawn tight and hard.
The cahndor released me, slowly getting to his feet.
“I would be honored,” he said. “Doubtless it would be easier for her than with a stranger.”
But Khys was not listening. From his robe he pulled a glowing circlet. Holding it between his fingertips, he came toward me.
“Please,” I begged him, kneeling frozen, at his pleasure. He caused my hand to raise the hair from my neck, that he might have ease putting the band upon me. My mind screamed and struggled, but my b
ody obeyed him perfectly, without question.
“Please,” I said again. He knelt and closed the band upon my neck. It was tight. He touched it, and it became tighter. Such a band I had worn upon Mi’ysten, that I might not be pulled from one sequential time to another. There, it had been done for my safety. I had thought myself bereft of talent. In the greater silence precursed by the tingling of the band tight upon my neck, I knew I had not been.
“I cannot have you setting such hests. You will set no more.” And his fine-chiseled features were devoid of emotion.
“My hand still holds my hair,” I reminded him as he rose from me. He let me lower it. I thought I would surely go mad.
Khys smiled. “You will find the band easier. And though I could hold you indefinitely by will, I need not now waste my attention. Your experience upon Mi’ysten had not prepared you for our bands of stabilization. Great power demands powerful restraint.”
I touched my fingers to it, and felt the raised pattern upon the warm, vibrating metal. Through that barrier, a circuit breaker, if you will, nothing would pass from me. I could not, as I might have if my strengths returned to me, remove myself from the Lake of Horns. Nor even find some alternate I might bring into the time, where Khys would be less dominant. I might have been tempted to try even that. But now I could nod—That tiny hest I had set was my only hope. I clung to it.
“I will not obstruct you,” I pleaded, my hands still at my throat. I could not get my fingers beneath the obdurate metal.
“I hear you,” he reminded me. “And when I hear what pleases me, I will remove it.”
And my hate flared again. Khys laughed. Miserable, I realized, even as I tried to quench it, what hearing he meant.
“Cahndor,” said Khys, “my man will show you to the quarters I have had prepared for you. You will find your helsar there. Only acquaint yourself with it. We will take a meal later.”
“Am I a prisoner?” Chayin asked him, Carth’s hand upon his arm.
“Thal is up to you. Prisoner or honored guest—your choice. When your time is upon you, we might aid you with the helsar. There is much you could learn here.”