Red Country

by Kelso, Sylvia

  When we rounded the last bastion into the grass bay, a little dulled by summer, by the seeds’ fall, but green enough to retain its magical effect in that waterless waste, I found I had let out a mighty sigh of silent relief. Then I realized that all the way I had been half afraid the entire thing was some aedric illusion, that I would return to find nothing but naked sand.

  Yet something had changed. As we drew closer a horse whinnied, clear and sharp. Then with a low thud of hooves not one but a dozen gray horses came cantering from a grass fold, all but one of them sleek and glossy as pieces of moonlight come to life.

  Catching his breath, Karyx murmured, “Just like the song.” The others glanced nervily upward. Someone said, “Fengthira,” under his breath. Moonlight. I thought he meant the horses, till it dawned on me that they too were familiar with the songs of Harran. More familiar than I. They would not have to be told whose place this had been.

  I said, “She’s gone now. I’ve seen her grave.” I said it absently, intent on the gray mare whose ribs stared, whose hide was still rough with a journey’s accumulated sweat and dust. “Do you see that horse? It’s been ridden hard just lately. Zam must already be here.”

  They were not much relieved. It was in a mood of nervous respect that we pitched camp out at the very valley mouth, and when I suggested we take the horses up to the spring they baulked outright. “If it’s all the same to you,” Yngis, the senior trooper, said firmly, “we’ll wait to report in.”

  Karyx went to the nub of it. “You know him. We don’t.”

  So I climbed the cleft alone. When I had ranged the whole pocket, drunk at the spring, inspected the cave, paid my respects, feeling both awkward and intrusive, at the grave, I still could not accept that no other living person was there. Then I thought of the gray mare again, and understood. She was Zem’s, not Zam’s. She had come home, but she had come alone.

  Feeling thoroughly forlorn I went back down to the camp.

  * * * * * *

  By the third night we had mostly adjusted, and even felt brave enough to light a tiny fire, down at the very margin of the grass. “Seeing we’re here,” as Karyx put it, “we may as well knock.”

  There might still have been no warning, if we had set a guard. As it was we heard nothing. Not a whinny, a hoofbeat, a swish of grass, the merest flicker of motion to catch a night-honed eye. Just a gray horse towering over us in the fire-wash and a voice like a sliver of ice demanding, “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  The men all went to jump up, and froze. When Karyx managed only a sort of deprecatory noise in his throat, I pushed my turban back, feeling my hands shake, my breath short, and got up on legs that felt shaky too.

  “It’s me,” I said. I had expected to be embarrassed at this meeting, but not physically afraid. “Sellithar.”

  There was a silence that made the fire’s noise crack like a whip. Then he slid down from the gray, hauling saddlebags and waterskin after him, and came, with the gait of one stiff and spent from long furious riding, up to the fire.

  This time the men did rise, an instinctive gesture of respect, one or two even began a salute. He let the gear fall, not bothering where, and automatically pulled his turban down about his neck. His face was bristly, haggard, the eyes sunk deep with strain and fatigue and, I thought at first, with grief.

  Then I looked again and changed my mind. The grief was in the eyes themselves. They had a peculiar fixity that went down to the very irises. The aedric motion was gone. They were bleak, and cold, and still as polar ice.

  He scanned our circle, face after face, and I thought he must be reading their minds. But when his eyes reached me I realized it was the blank stare of sheer, congealed weariness.

  “Sit down,” I said, the rest forgotten. “There’s tea still hot. Have you eaten today?”

  “I don’t want to eat.” Though flat, it was not impassive. This was the cold of latent hostility. “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you.”

  I paused for him to divine the rest. But he said in the same flat tone, “Why?”

  When I stared, he repeated even more icily, “Why?”

  I should have explained about Kastir, the others’ refusal to leave me, my strategy, my guess on where he would be. I found myself saying in a very small voice, “There was nowhere else.”

  He frowned, a just perceptible twitch of the brows, as if even that were an extravagant waste of strength. When he did not speak, I did my best for the others. “They helped me bury Zem.”

  At my side, Karyx cleared his throat. “If you’ll have us, we can help you fight Estar—sir.”

  The gray eyes shifted to him, but did not change. After a moment, Karyx blurted, “We’ve gone light on your grass.”

  “Grass? Estar?” He sounded flatter than ever. “You talk in riddles.” His eyes returned to me. Something showed then, a painful awakening.

  “So it was you. The dark . . . even with Phathire, I couldn’t see. Next day—I didn’t know what they’d done with him.”

  It broke on me in a dazzling flare. Farsight had shown him Zem lying on the midden, he had set out to ride clean across Hethria, not for revenge or even battle, simply to give his brother fitting burial. And when he looked next day, Zem had been gone. Who knew what he had imagined, how he had tortured himself? He was not just fatigued stupid, he was bemused with grief.

  “It was us, yes.” I said it almost tenderly. “We buried him in Hethria. I . . . thought that was what he would want.”

  Karyx added with well-meant if tactless haste, “We can show you the place.”

  He drew a long breath, and then his muscles seemed to slacken from head to toe. He rubbed a hand over his face. “No.” It was just audible. “Not important. Not now.”

  The hand dropped. He looked dazedly at us, his gear, the fire. Slurring the words, he said, “Can sleep now.” He brought his eyes back to us. “You . . . tomorrow.”

  Karyx started forward, beginning, “Sir, if it’s sleep you want, we can watch—” and was cut short by one almost-savage stare.

  “Not here.” It came quite clearly, and as clearly, with hostility. “Up there. By myself.”

  * * * * * *

  We had finished breakfast and spent a long uncomfortable wait by the dead fire next morning, before we saw his figure emerge from the cleft and start slowly down the grass. When the gray horses converged on him he paused a moment, then came on with the horses at his heels, and guessing the others’ intent I said grimly, “Oh no, you don’t. You all wanted to come. Now you can explain why.”

  First he went to one of his saddlebags, lying where they had been dropped, and unearthed a little bag of salt, from which all the horses had a lick. Then he said, “Off,” and they meekly dispersed. Only then did he look at us.

  He studied each face in turn, a long, silent, expressionless stare. If anything, he looked worse than the night before, but this time I knew better than to offer help. At last he said, “Sit down. Now explain properly. What are you doing here?”

  Craven as all their sex, the men promptly looked at me.

  I met those gray eyes, chill, hard, immobile, and thought in exasperation, Why ask me to put it in words, when you know it’s too painful, too complex, when you’ve already understood? And knew he was at least reading my mind again when he answered,

  “After they helped me bury Zem,” I said, “there was no way they could go back to Everran. They were determined to see I came to no harm. And we all want to help fight Estar. To stop this—horrible thing.”

  He studied the men again, while they did their best to sustain that probing, impassive stare. Then he said, “I am not fighting Estar. I am not fighting anyone—or anything.”

  “You mean you’ll let Kastir get away with murder? Foul, cold-blooded murder—your own brother’s murder!” I could not help it, I had to erupt. “He deserves to be—”

  His eyes were colder than a wall of ice. “Do y
ou imagine I would sink to that? Pollute my brother’s—my brother’s!—grave with revenge? Pah!”

  “What do you mean, sink?” Three years might never have been, we had barely exchanged ten words and already he had me fit to fly at his throat. “Any honest man—any woman!—would have the honor to avenge that! If I’d known you’d refuse I’d have done it myself! And you’re an aedr! What are your powers for? Or don’t you dare tackle that—that—”

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about, so have the sense to be quiet.” Three years ago he would not have lashed back at me, certainly not with that glare. “It’s clear you know nothing of aedryx. And your own morals are unfit to mention. Revenge! I’d as soon wallow with a carrion pig!”

  “Oh, I’m sure Zem would love to hear that—if he could hear!”

  His eyes grew so fearful that inwardly I quailed.

  “My brother Zem,” he cut out each word and spat it at me, “told me with his last thought, Whatever you do, don’t let this drive you to Ammath. You wouldn’t know what that means. I do. It means evil. Hatred. Revenge. If you imagine your ravings could make me flout my brother’s last wish, reduce us both to such vileness, think again.” His eyes seared. “If you can think at all.”

  “So you’ll let this go on? Put your fine moral nose in the air and sit on your rump while Kastir ruins Hethria? Destroys it forever? Your land, I thought it was! And for the sake of a few stupid—stupid—scruples! you’ll let it be wrecked before your eyes? Oh, by the Sky-lords’ faces, aedr or no aedr, I thought you were more of a man!”

  Through a haze of tears I saw his eyes narrow, shimmering, perfectly white. His voice was a slap.

  “I shall save Hethria. I am the only one who can save it. And I won’t do it by fighting, and I don’t need help.”

  Karyx and the rest, who had been looking mortally embarrassed and not a little pugnacious, collapsed into bitter disappointment. I was so furious I could feel nothing else.

  “No doubt you’ll do it by reason, or changing Kastir’s mind? Well, that won’t save anything! Kastir isn’t even a figurehead, he’s just a mask, and what’s behind him is Estar, and if you think you’ll change all those minds you’ve lost your own because by the time it’s done there’ll be nothing left of Hethria to save!”

  He glared. I was too furious to stop.

  “As for not fighting, just how will you manage that? Hethria’s border is wide open, it hasn’t a defense to its name except the Gebros and that’ll be gone unless you do some stopping right now, it doesn’t have an army, and if you think you can stand in the gates at Penhazad and Gebasterne and frighten back Estar’s whole army, not to mention their migrants, their engineers and their money-makers, you’d better think again. Don’t you know anything about Estar? And when these men have sacrificed their careers, their families, their country, risked their lives to come and offer you their help, you want to just turn them away! It’s because they were brave and decent enough to throw all that away that your brother was buried at all!”

  When I began his eyes grew cold enough to freeze my marrow. Before I was halfway through they had that molten, shivering glare I had seen by Tirien Neth. But at my last words he went white as a sheet and leapt to his feet, I heard his breath hiss in for more than a verbal explosion—and catch.

  He fought himself then, physically, with a violence that scared me most of all, face red as it had been white, chest heaving with huge stertorous breaths. It took all my resolution not to cringe away like Karyx and the rest.

  The crisis passed. He stood shaking, eyes inward bent and blind. Then he said between his teeth, “Don’t ever—ever—tell me that again.”

  My anger had already vanished; I knew what a nerve I must have jabbed and was piercingly sorry for it. But there was no chance to apologize.

  Still breathing hard, he turned to the others and said in a strangled voice, “I am grateful. I owe you more than anyone could repay. I know it sounded like—like—” I had never before heard him grow incoherent. “It’s not. You’ve misread the situation. You are soldiers. This won’t be a war.”

  Managing to sound both determined and pacific, Karyx straightened up. “Whatever you say, sir. But if it comes to being grateful, we only helped the princess Sellithar. And if it’s not a war, could you explain just what it will be? Maybe we can still help. Somehow.”

  Zam drew one last huge breath, and with it recovered his composure. Slowly, shakily, he sat down again, on the farther side of the fire.

  After a moment he said, “We’ve begun at the wrong end. I’ll go back to the beginning. When we—I—became an aedr, I was taught to follow Math. Aedryx have no gods, like yours, but they do have a code. Morals, if you like. It demands that we respect reality. That-which-is. Trees, rocks, sand, birds, beasts, men. That we are careful how we alter it. We are more firmly bound to that respect than any other creatures, because we have minds, like men, but we have more power, for good or evil, than any of humankind. That obligation is our bedrock. Not to be betrayed.”

  He drew a little breath. “But Math also demands that we deny evil in ourselves. It’s not enough to refrain from wantonly injuring reality. We must fight off hate and bloodlust and vengefulness, because to let the thoughts of Ammath into your mind is to corrupt your own reality. And then you betray Math as surely as if you stabbed a man in his bed.”

  He looked about our faces. I was ignobly grateful that he included me.

  “I could kill Kastir. I could kill him here and now, without lifting a finger. But if I do that, I am a murderer twice over. I’m worse than Kastir. I have succumbed to Ammath.”

  We sat silent. He went on with less strain, but with enormous weariness.

  “It was a great temptation. But you see why I refuse. For the same reason, I will not make this a war. I will not shed blood with my mind, or by the hand of anyone else. There are other ways to do the thing.” His jaw set, so for a moment he looked a much older man, a stranger, with a will of granite and that will bent immovably upon its goal.

  After seeming quite over-awed, Karyx at last ventured to speak. “Yessir. But how?”

  After a pause, Zam said, “The Gebros will be quite simple. I’ll raise a sandstorm and keep it up for as long as it takes them to realize they can’t pull the thing down.” Karyx’s mouth fell open with the rest. “Oh yes, I can do that. It twists reality rather far to use the weather-words for such a purpose, but this is a Must. Better to tamper with sand than kill or coerce men.”

  Karyx suddenly slapped his thigh and burst out in dazzled delight, “And by the Four, you couldn’t have a better field for it! You’ll make the blighted desert fight for you—Four above, sir, no wonder you don’t need us with tricks like that!”

  Zem would have laughed with him and added something witty. Zam shrugged and said, “It’s a double-edged sword. Too much will damage Hethria. But I can’t do it yet. First the hostages have to be brought out.”

  Yngis said blankly, “Hostages?”

  “Your families. All your families.” His eyes chilled with a sudden, appalling memory. “I’ll have no reprisals this time. Once was enough.”

  None of us dared ask, When? Karyx ventured, “Ah—how?”

  “I can summon them. With a Command. Sellithar’s people will be most at risk. It’s a long way from Saphar, and I’ll have to watch them every step. So it will be a while before I can start on the Gebros.” He shrugged again. “Once with the Sathellin they’ll be safe. Then I can draw all the Sathellin out of Everran, stop the caravans, and wipe away the roads. They can live at the dassyx. It might be the best place for you as well. . . .” He broke off. “I’m—not ungrateful. But as you see, there’s not much anyone can do to help.”

  My voice sounded small and solitary. “At the first dassyk, I told the master to stop any more westbound caravans. And to pass the word on the other roads. Kastir said he had Sathellin spies.”

  Those gray eyes were colder than ever. He said curtly, “I’ll hold a caravan at
Penhazad and one at Gebasterne. The rest can stand. I’ll find the spies.” His eye turned on Karyx. “Quite easy. Read their minds.”

  Karyx gaped, gasped, shivered. Zam looked nearly sardonic. “Yes, I can read yours too. Sure you want to help?”

  Karyx’s recovery took him several strides ahead. With satisfaction he said, “Then we won’t need our own spies. We’ll know their plans in the egg.” He paused, grown dubious.

  Zam said stiffly, “What if it does take time?”

  Karyx was apologetic. “Just that you’ve a pack-load to do, sir. A week’s travel from Saphar to the Gebros to oversee, for a start. A lot of Sathellin—minds—to comb. It might hold up the sandstorm a fortnight or more. There’s four demolition crews working now, shift for shift. In a fortnight—they could move a lot of stone.”

  “Beryx,” I said on impulse. “Moriana. Surely they’d help this time?”

  Zam replied curtly, “There’s a murrain on Assharral. It started in Gjerven—the north—and it’s spread like a torjer fire. Sheep take fever or just die, cattle die of the bloody scours, horses get colic and then die—and humans do as well. We don’t know how it spreads among the beasts. We do know it’s infectious or contagious or both, and there is no known cure. I was in Axaira to seal the border. Nothing goes in or out of Assharral while the murrain lasts.”

  “But,” I protested, “thoughts—”

  “Beryx hasn’t a breath to spare. Half Gjerven ran south into Frimmor and Frimmor is firing them back or killing them or running too. The other half have caused an international incident by jumping the border into Phaxia. Tasmar started a witch hunt to kill their white minority—say they poisoned the wells. Thangar’s in trouble with looters. Rumors are flying everywhere. Beryx told me he’d keep them out of Hethria. It’s all he can do.”

  “And Moriana?” I could not help this spiteful reminder that women counted too.

  With a scathing look he retorted, “Do you think she’d desert him now?”