The tea warmed his muscles, so when I asked “Can you stand up?” he managed with only one pull on his wrists. “Set,” he said vaguely, examining his arms and shoulders. “Like iron.” I got my own shoulder in his armpit and we tottered over to the fire.
When I glanced up from the flourcakes he was studying the kettle, with solemn wonder, with a fearful, tender reverence. Then he looked slowly round him, and what showed on his face made me avert my eyes.
The sun’s arc had just tipped the horizon, whitening the dawn tints into day, but the sky was full of thunderpacks that kept their colors, masses of radiant coral, apricot, tangerine, cyclamen, edged in a dazzle of gold, picked out by shadows of darker flame. The towers of Eskan Helken echoed them with dusky crimsons and sheets of golden cornelian intensified by the pocket’s freshened grass. And out beyond lay Hethria, cleansed of dust by the storm, its mottle of rust-red and jade-green sharply contrasted in the foreground, softening and merging into the distance, widening open and endless to the washed blue of the horizon sky.
Stealing a look at Zam, I saw with shock that his cheeks were wet with tears.
I had hardly taken it in when without the slightest embarrassment he turned to me and said, “I gave it up, you see.”
Then I understood. The commonest kettle becomes precious when it is part of a reality your mind has surrendered, preparing itself for a sure, contracted death. How much more precious would Hethria have been to him?
“Eat this,” I said somewhat gruffly, “before it’s cold.”
The jaws’ exercise must improve mental circulation, for he finished looking tired and slow but no longer numb, and almost at once asked, “You made them give me back? How? What did you mean?”
“Threw a tantrum,” I said gaily, “and bullied them into it.”
He puzzled over this. Then a deep cleft formed between his brows and his face firmed to a familiar cast, hard as granite, more inflexible than iron.
“That,” he said, “was wrong.”
My mouth flew open and I snapped it shut. I had boiled over far too often. Mildly, I asked, “Why?”
“It was a bargain. A just bargain. It would be better if I’d stayed dead. I used a Black Art. I’ve become Ammath.”
This time I merely left my mouth open while disbelief bludgeoned me speechless, then shut it to lock in the greatest fit of sheer screaming infuriation he had ever provoked. Such blind, willful stubbornness, such asinine deafness to reason, such utter disregard for reality, such stupendous, stupefying ingratitude, such pigheaded adherence to a pointless scruple never blotted the history of minds. With a heroic effort I mastered the urge to scream all that at him in one rabid shriek. And then I understood Fengthira’s message, and why she had given it to me.
“Fengthira,” I said, “told me to tell you. What you did was a Must.”
His head whipped round. He positively goggled. “Fengthira? Fengthira said it was a—she—how—what—”
Dolt, I berated myself. Will you never grasp what Aedr implies? “Use Phathire,” I suggested. “See for yourself.”
He stared. Then his irises swirled and his physical vision blanked out.
The saeveryrs chattered, the fire clucked. With chasteningly total inattention I thought, I must do something with those morrethans . . . and pulled my mind guiltily back to Zam.
He was looking stunned, amazed, but I saw with intense thankfulness that the granite expression had gone. He turned to me almost with wondering respect.
“How did you dare?” he said.
To be honest I should have answered, Because it was for you. But I crushed that thought at its very inception and answered cheerfully, “I was so furious I didn’t have time to be scared.”
He said something under his breath. “And Th’Iahn. Imsar Math . . . I’d have curled up like a play-dead spider, just looking at him.” He eyed me with a suggestion of awe. “Furious isn’t the word.”
“Oh,” I said with the blitheness of distance and ignorance, “he wasn’t so bad. Just a bit testy. Who was he, anyway?”
Zam opened and shut his mouth a couple of times. Then he said “Th’Iahn. Founder of the Flametree. The Heagians. He dreamed of Math in Los Velandryxe Thira. The aedric heirloom. The Well of Wisdom’s Light. Then he tried to make Math real. Then he tried to destroy it when his daughter ran away with his arch-enemy’s son. He tried to take her head off with a battle-axe first. Then he started a feud that killed half the aedryx of Rihannar, including both his sons. The story is that he throttled Vorn—his enemy—as well. You saw Vorn. The black-haired one with the twisted neck.” He had more than returned to normal, he had achieved an abnormal loquacity. “When I was a prentice, my worst temptation was to use Ruagesthyn and see if there really were fingermarks on Vorn’s neck.” He gazed reflectively into the fire. “And when the chance came, I never thought to look.”
I tried not to shiver. “If Th’Iahn got at him, there probably were.”
“Mm,” said Zam. “But you see, when Vorn died, Th’Iahn had been buried three whole years.”
In my silence he went on, rather wryly, “Not—exactly—the one among the Asthyn I would choose to try conclusions with.”
“Then it’s as well I didn’t know,” I retorted briskly, braving it out, “or I would have curled up too.” Then a giggle surprised me. No wonder he had called me a hussy. Dead or alive, such insolence could rarely have come his way.
Zam was looking offended. “And it’s just as well,” he said stiffly, “that he dreamt of Math, or neither of us would be here.”
“No,” I agreed rather hollowly, “we would not.”
When I looked up his frown was back. “But to take Kastir. . . .”
Oh, no, I thought. No. Please, don’t let him judge this Ammath. Not now. . . .
“It doesn’t seem just.” The argument was internal. “It must have been. . . .” He shivered and did not go on.
In a hurried attempt to tip the scales, I said, “This life and that, Fengthira said. I think she meant it was for—Zem. As well as you.”
“Mm.” He did not sound wholly convinced.
“And Th’Iahn . . . Th’Iahn agreed.”
“Mm.” It still sounded dubious. I bit my tongue rather than blurt out, He invented it, if it wasn’t Math, surely he would know!
“And—and Fengthira said, ‘Is not justice the keystone of Math?’”
“Hmm.” That sounded more than dubious. But then he paused again, and finally, shrugged. “Well, ’Thira always was a law unto herself. Even as flesh and blood.”
He did not mean to jib, after all. I hid my relief.
“I suppose. . . .” He sighed. Climbed effortfully to his feet. And paused, an odd expression on his face. “Sellithar?”
“Yes?” There was some sort of blockage in my lungs.
“I—I’m—not much good with words. And this is—not something for thanks, it—I don’t know how to say it, words just aren’t—”
He had grown positively harassed. There was an awful pause, from which I took refuge for us both by jumping up and saying, “Then forget them, I know what you mean. Just be glad I’m a shrewish bitch, and help me fix Fengthira’s morrethans.”
Thankfully he abandoned expressions of gratitude along with qualms about his ransom, and said, almost his old self, “Yes, we’ll do them now.”
* * * * * *
That was not the end of it, of course. He woke that night in a terror that left him utterly speechless, making such noises I thought he was in convulsions and in desperation banged his head on the cave wall to bring him round, after which we had three brews of tea, and neither of us slept till dawn.
Next night he moved under the finlythes, but that was no better, and we fell into the habit of sleeping in our places by the fire, so I could wake him when the first symptoms showed. After a night or two I developed quite maternal reflexes, and would come wide-awake at a single choke. It was in one of these night watches that he told me what had happened to him, and,
by implication, to Kastir.
“It’s an art called Yazthir. It’s outlawed too. Mind stealing. It begins like Letharthir, the beguiling, except you don’t see anything. It’s like falling asleep. But,” he swallowed, “it isn’t peaceful and you don’t assent. It was probably better for me, I wasn’t trying to fight—at least, I was trying not to fight. You seem to sink. In black water. Your senses go. You can’t think in words. But you’re still—aware. That was when the Asthyn came. I could feel them.” He was shuddering all over. “Fastened on to me like—like ticks. And I was trying to keep still. . . . Oh, poor fool, he wouldn’t have known what was happening, let alone tried not to fight, he would have gone crazy—I think I hope he did.”
I opened my mouth to snap, He wouldn’t have pitied you, and shut it hard. Even now, I could not truly pity Kastir himself. He had wreaked too much damage, too much hurt, on too much I cared about. My sense of justice kept insisting, he deserved it, as implacably as the verdict of the Dead. But I could keep such Ammath from burdening Zam.
“After that I don’t know what happens,” he went on at last. “A living aedr brings you back, some times. The Asthyn. . . .” He shrugged.
I said in a small voice, “You never come back.”
“Perhaps.” He shivered again. “Unless someone wakes you—” He broke off, then added violently, “Imsar Math, I hope no one ever wakens me.”
* * * * * *
But next day he strode up from the finlythes with a shimmer in his eyes more brilliant than laughter, the picture of a mischievous small boy, biting his lips to subdue a grin.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Guess,” he returned smugly.
“I’ll use Scarthe,” I threatened.
“It’s too complicated, you’d never get it. No, I have to tell you. An Estarian Assembly meeting. Estar was misled by a vile unscrupulous capitalist who distorted the facts to enrich himself. In view of the unjustifiable loss of life and extravagant, irretrievable expenditure, for a palpable current loss and dubious future gain, ‘Project Hethria’ can no longer be considered tenable.”
I goggled up at him. Then I threw six yams in the air and jumped up to fling my arms after them. “It’s really over. You’ve won!”
He nodded, lips compressed, but the laughter effervesced in his eyes. Of a sudden their fluid gray changed; imps danced there as they once had in Zem’s. Next moment my hair, done in plaits out of the heat and flour dust, stood straight up like two rods beside my head.
“Zam!” I shrieked. “You wretch! Let them down! I must look like a—a—stop it, you rat!”
He was shaking with silent mirth. “Let them down!” he mimicked. “Now do you say aedryx can’t do anything?”
“Fiend! Wizard! Monster! I’ll prod you to death with the cake-stick—”
“And look like a Hazghend helmet for the rest of your life?”
“I’ll throttle you, I’ll—I’ll—”
“I’ve wanted to do that for months,” he said smugly. “It seemed a suitable time.”
I shook my fist. The scintillation brightened, turning those gray irises diamond white. Then my hair collapsed against my cheeks.
“And some other news. The Hazghend tyrant . . . Lyve, is it? Mm. Is billing and cooing with Quarred. Love at fifteenth sight.”
“So that’s why Estar dropped Hethria! If you’d told me the right way round instead of beating your chest and playing heroes—” I eyed him suspiciously. “You still look like a lydyr in a lettuce-bed. What’s the rest?”
“Rest?”
“Zam, imitate a balloon any longer and I’ll puncture you with the cake-stick. Tell me the rest.”
“Oh,” he said airily, “the Assembly also discussed Everran. It seems a dependency costs an unconscionable amount of money, especially when the ulfann are howling at the other door. It’s felt that with Estar’s guidance, Everran should now be able to govern itself. They will be granted ‘independence’ next month.”
There was a moment of utter stasis in which the spring did not run, the grass did not rustle, the wind did not blow, my breath did not come, my very heartbeat stopped. Zam, eyeing me with his turn for suspicion, said, “Are you going to faint?”
“I—no.” I found I had sat down with a thump, a hand to my head. “I—It—it’s just—”
He said, very quietly, “I know.”
When I did not reply he went on, still more quietly, “And from what I hear in Everran, as soon as they’re ‘independent,’ Karyx’s people will offer you the throne.”
I shook my head. Eskan Helken described a graceful wobble in midair. The throne. Everything I ever wanted, had ever fought for. Dropped into my hands, freely, with no obligation to anyone. So why, why, why, I demanded of myself in some alarm, am I not turning cartwheels, going delirious, throwing yams in the air?
Close beside me, Zam said, elaborately casual, “As soon as I can get a road open, I’ll take you back.”
My head was in such a whirl that I simply said, baldly, “Th-thank you,” got up, and walked away.
* * * * * *
We were both very quiet that night. Perhaps, I thought, this is the effect of heart’s desire attained, this calm above the transports of joy? Yet I had not felt so when I sat by Zam on that moonlit grave.
Then I found myself hoarding each day’s moments, savoring their present and storing their memory as farmers store seed-corn in the first stages of a drought year, giving things the poignant attention that, I remembered now, Zam had given them in the time before the Dead came to exact their price. These few days had become a tiny enchanted island between the waters of past and present that were converging to bear me back to Everran, and sweep Eskan Helken away.
For me, I thought, it has been an illusion. Only for Zam is this unbroken reality. I belong in Everran—I said it as easily now as he had once said, “I belong to Hethria”—and he belongs in Hethria. This struggle which has knit us like all battle comrades is just an interlude, before we go our separate ways. There is no place in Hethria for me.
Then it dawned on me, simply but devastatingly, that I did not want to go.
I fled that thought as I had never fled the Confederacy, Kastir’s atrocities, the very Dead. It could not, it must not be true. I watched Zam at work with the calm joy of those at their inborn trade, as he gathered up Sathellin, used Axynbrarve to mend dams and cisterns, bent storms this way and that across Hethria to heal fires or supply water for dassyx and travelers, shifted sand back into place. Even, with immense patience and more immense exertion, labored to restore the minds of Estarian survivors who were still insane.
“I believe you’d do it for Kastir,” I challenged him, “if he wasn’t dead.”
And having pondered it, he answered gravely, “I probably would. After all, he would be part of reality too.”
I told myself that the unhappiness with which I watched him was a symptom of impatience to be back at my own trade. I knew it was a lie. I had no desire to restore Everran. The very idea filled me with a monumental boredom, which I escaped by an orgy of domestic drudgery. I foraged and garnered and ground grass-seed flour, I washed and even mended clothes with a needle and thread, supplied by Zam with many jibes at my improvidence, and when that failed, I took Fenglis into the desert to chase flowers just coming into bud from the earliest storms.
I had given her the usual lick of salt after one such ride, and was hauling home a bag of assorted booty, when I heard Zam yell, louder than ever before,
I went up the cleft like a frightened lydyr, shot past the well ready to charge Th’Iahn and his assembled cohorts, and met Zam springing down the path with consternation in his face.
“’Thar, ’Thar, where have you been, confound you? They’re coming, they’ll be here tomorrow, I missed them on that cursed southern road, I thought it was still out—”
“Who?” I out-yelled him. “In the Four’s name, who?”
“Sathellin, a horde of them. Karyx’s crew. And y
our mother as well.”
“My mother!”
“Yes, your mother. Imsar Math, what am I going to do?”
“What are you going to do, what am I going to do, nothing but grubs and flour to feed them, not a skerrick of honey for the tea—”
“To the pits with the tea! They’ll be all over Eskan Helken like a flea plague, they’ll come and look at me and talk at me and want to have councils and make speeches, and, and, and, where are they going to camp?”
We gaped at each other. Then I felt my lungs cramp to an imminent spasm of mirth.
“You c-could,” I gasped, “p-put Mama in the cave—”
“And if she’s like you she’ll tidy me out of existence. . . .”
He stopped. Stared. Then broke down too, the first time I had ever heard him laugh aloud.
“We’re a couple of ninnies,” I gulped at last. “They’ve been living in the desert in the thick of a rout. They probably ate worse than grubs and slept on gibbers if they slept at all. They can stay down below. In any case, you’re an aedr. And a warden of Hethria. Look down your nose as usual and they’ll all curl up and crawl away.”
His laughter died. He stared at me. Then he demanded, incredulous, “Do I look down my nose?”
“Of course you do. High-and-mighty is your middle name. Never mind, it’ll come in handy. In twenty-three years I’ve never managed to crush Mama. Now I shall have my revenge.”
Suddenly the flippancy rang false, I knew what both of us were thinking and how each was skirting it. The closest I could come was to ask, “Zam? Is the road west. . . .”
He was not smiling either. “It could be used.”
“Oh.”
More silence. Then I said, “Well, wherever they camp, I hope they bring some salt.” He said, “Give me that horrible bundle, we’ll need a wagon-load of flour,” and we began clambering hurriedly toward the cave.
* * * * * *
In the event, the crushing did not go to plan. After the first wild excitement, when riders flooded into the grass bay, the grays cantered up, I saw Karyx’s characteristic jerk of the head as he signaled, Halt, then with a pang of unexpectedly tearful joy recognized my mother on a shaggy Sathel pack-beast and found myself flying out into the midst of them with inane squeaks of, “Mama! You’re all right!” After we had kissed and hugged and cried on each other, when Sazan and Haskar had sidled up, uncommonly brown, uncommonly shy, but inordinately proud, because, as Haskar disclosed, “I killed four Estarians, Saz got six!” and I hoped furiously that they would not blurt it out in an attempt to impress Zam—after Karyx had appeared, a grin all over his face, to salute and then wring my hands and kiss me and ask, “Coming home, Sellithar?” and the men began to pitch camp, I walked my mother, arms about each other, to the cleft. She said, glancing around her, “So this is your Red Castle. And where’s your That?”
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