by Janet Morris
Chilled cold, I replaced the sword in its housing, and stepped back. I did not touch the gol-knife there, or the strange sharp-edged circles of steel piled beside it. “Se’keroth, Sword of Severance,” rang in my head.
Wordless, he had left me, in an unlocked room filled with weapons. I ran my palms along the inner thighs, still damp without moisture. I paced the chamber’s confines, trailing my hand along the smooth northern thala that paneled the walls, my bare feet soundless upon the Galeshir mat. I could kill myself, if I chose. I could arm myself and run. I did neither.
My hand found a panel, forward of the others. I slid it back. Bound books and scrolls lay there, orderly, behind a second wall of glass. Among them I saw his own works, numerous volumes, including Ors Yris-Tera, “Book of the Weathers of Life.” And what must have been the game itself, yris-tera, the three-level board and leather shaker. Inside that shaker, I knew, were sixty bone pieces. Another creation of Khys’s, Ors Chaldra, lay near it. Divination and morality had been Khys’s concerns, in hide-days, when he and some few others attempted to put Silistra back together again, after the fall. Disquieted, I slid the panel back in place. How could I aspire to him? Upon the gol table, among his other gear, had been Khys’s own chald. He did not, as do most Silistrans, wear his chald soldered about him. The great chald of Silistra, in which every strand given upon the planet was woven, lay like some sleeping slitsa among his leathers.
If I had had a chald, a testament to my skills and accomplishments, a prideful statement of my chan-tera, the will of the life, I would not have left it casually upon some table. But I bore no chaldra. If I had ever, it was lost, along with my past. It is a shameful thing, to be chaldless. I had been told that someday I might bear the arrar’s chald, the highest attainable. But that was before my madness, before the child.
I found I had come again to the beckoning doors. I turned and surveyed Khys’s keep once more; the rust-silked couch, the gol table, the windowed alcove floored with cushions. Above my head, the tiny suns flickered, dimmed again. I went and collected the three bowls near the couch and placed them on the stand that held their brothers, and the golden kifra pitcher. I smoothed the silks over the dharen’s sumptuous couch.
Once more the door drew me. Doubtless, he would tire of me. I, barely literate, unskilled, was no fit companion for such a man. He had gone, leaving me unrestrained. I might not see him for another two years. I remembered what he had said, that there were better than two thousand women at the Lake of Horns. And what he only implied, that any of them would be honored to stand in my place. He had gotten already that which he had desired from me.
I put my hand upon the door’s bronze handle, pushed it back. Standing in the doorway, I regarded the tapestried hallway, the vaulted ceiling with its myriad tiny stars for illumination. The floor was of stones, squares of blue ornithalum and green-veined archite. I put one bare foot upon that smooth coldness.
And then I heard him, his voice edged with anger. From the left, around a sharp turning by a tapestry depicting battling hulions, he strode into my sight, another beside him.
I stood frozen, caught with one foot upon the hall stones. Not even did I move to shake my hair over my nakedness before a stranger. Khys’s companion looked enough like him that they might have been brothers, except for his hair, shades darker than mine. He wore a full loose robe of blue-black, with a glittering spiral at his left shoulder. About his waist was a chald nearly as grand as the dharen’s, wide and thick, imposing in its magnitude.
“... as I please!” said Khys to his companion. They had not yet noticed me. I stood witless, unmoving.
“It seems to me,” said the other, not intimidated, “that your passion clouds your judgment in this matter.” I clutched the door’s edge, leaned upon it.
“You will come to think differently,” said Khys, his mouth an angry white line. “I can ... Estri! Come here.” They both stopped there before the hulion tapestry.
Trembling, I hastened to obey him. His companion’s eyes assessed me coldly. I knelt to him, as he had taught me, my hair falling over his feet, my knees upon the cold floor. It was not easy, before another. I felt my skin flush.
“Doubtless you can make her obedient. That is not a factor,” said the other.
“On the contrary, it is the factor. But one must define obedience. I feel,” said Khys, “that even though you have prejudged matters, what I have done may still enlighten you. This is no time to discuss it.”
And he bent and touched me. I rose, my hair over my breasts, shining in the soft light. Khys’s eyes seemed concerned. The other’s glance was openly hostile.
“Walk with us,” he said, and they moved apart, that I might be between them.
“This is Vedrast, Estri.”
“Presti m’it, Keepress,” intoned Vedrast, his full mouth feigning a smile.
“You mistake me, arrar.” He took my arm, as if to guide me back into Khys’s keep. I felt a slight shock, at his pressure, then a sense of presence. I grabbed Khys’s wrist, fearful. He shook his head imperceptibly. I dropped my hands to my sides.
“My apologies, lady,” said Vedrast, enigmatic. His eyes were decidedly amber.
Khys turned to close the double doors, and the light in the keep brightened.
The arrar Vedrast crossed the room and poured himself a bowl of kifra, taking it to the alcove, where he lounged back upon the cushions there. The spiral glittered upon his robe. I turned from him, to Khys, behind me.
My couch-mate stood with his hands upon his hips, his face abstracted. He seemed elsewhere. I waited, wanting to run to him, seek shelter from this other, who glowered, intimidating, from amid the cushions.
He motioned me to him, took me in under his arm. He was scowling, but not at me.
“You had best lighten your touch, Vedrast,” he said to his guest. “It is the entire monitoring system that stands to judgment here.”
“I do not take your meaning,” said Vedrast slowly, his jaw a grim line. Whorls of sparks danced in the air between them. Khys stiffened.
“This that you do here is at best, a formality. I will do, as I have always done, my own will. Properly handled, the monitoring you want as its own authority will uphold me. If it does not, then it has been improperly done.”
The arrar blanched visibly, put down his bowl, and got purposefully to his feet. Khys pushed me gently to one side. They considered one another.
“Will you gainsay rules of your own creation?”
“I made guidelines that, properly adhered to, would serve as safety factors in complicated hests of long duration. If the sorting of the monitor is not free from preconceptions, the work is valueless.”
“I would take these points up with all us present,” rasped Vedrast, flicking those intrusive eyes my way. I was shocked that he would speak so to the dharen.
“Do your business here, now!” Khys commanded. “And I warn you, see to your skills while you are about it.”
The arrar Vedrast closed his eyes for a moment, searching composure. He found it, and walked purposefully toward me. I retreated from him.
“Stand still, Estri,” Khys commanded.
“Come sit with me,” said the other, extending his hand. I looked at it. He did not withdraw. Timidly I extended my hand to his. This time there was no shock, but I felt again, unmistakably, a cold touch within. I twisted my head to the dharen.
“Please, Khys,” I petitioned him, as Vedrast led me firmly toward the alcove. He only looked away, his face gone cold.
“Sit there. Good. Khys, if you will ...” And he motioned to a place on his left.
“Thank you,” Vedrast said when the dharen had seated himself, his back against the draped windows.
“Now, Estri, I am going to sedate you. It will not be painful, and the effects will last only a short time.” And he reached over and put both his hands around my neck, fingers meeting where spine joins skull. I felt only a drowsiness, an urge to sleep, and a receding of sensation. I co
ncentrated upon staying upright. My body was weighty, recalcitrant.
Vaguely, I knew the man’s hands had left me, and that Khys’s had replaced them with his own. And I saw, blurred, that when his hands came away, they bore with them my band of restraint. But I had only enough strength to keep myself erect.
The arrar’s hands were again upon me, and he peered at my throat for a time. I wanted desperately to lie down and sleep.
Then they asked me of hulions. And I heard myself answer, speak of what had, this very morning, occurred. I was asked to remember in detail, and I did.
Then did Vedrast ask what the paper I had read had brought to mind. And of the arrar Sereth, did he question me. I answered him as best I could, that I had only once met him, and that I had, upon occasion, dreamed of him, as I had much of my namesake’s life.
“Why do you think,” said Vedrast, “you have those dreams? Do they trouble you?”
I shook my head to clear it. Something within screamed that my answers were important, even crucial, but all I wanted was to lay my head in the dharen’s lap.
“No, they do not trouble me.” I struggled the words out upon an unwieldy tongue. “I have no past of my own. Hers was of great interest to me. I chose her name, also. I would be as she, but I know what was in that book was hers, and not mine.”
“I see,” said Vedrast. I squinted, that I might see Khys’s face, but I could make nothing of it.
“Tell me, now, about the child you bore.”
I did so, seeing the hateful beast, remembering my swollen belly.
“And about Khys,” he pressed me,
I tried to rise. I could not. I could feel him, strolling through my memories, kicking what did not interest him from his path. My mind was filled with tangled thoughts, impressions, a patterning I could see extending out into the unborn time.
“Tell me,” said Vedrast, his amber eyes, close to mine, prying.
“I serve him,” I whispered. “I want what time he will give me, nothing else,” I said. Then I felt Vedrast at our couching. Enraged, I met him there boldly, with a skill I had not known I had. And I drove him back. The arrar, shaken, retreated.
Khys replaced the band upon my neck gently. I felt his second touch, tightening it. And his third, upon my forehead, and my lethargy was gone, lifting like some oppressive gravity just repealed.
Vedrast, shaking his head back and forth, rose and pulled back the draperies, staring out into the waning day.
“Perhaps you can hold her,” he said grudgingly.
“Doubtless I can hold her,” Khys said, stroking my hair. I had been without the band, and I had felt the difference. I turned to him.
“I would do anything to have that freedom, to see, and hear, and feel as you do,” I breathed, fighting tears.
“And I would love to have you whole,” Khys said. “When the time comes, rest assured, it will be done.”
“Did I pass?” I asked him fearfully. “Will I be eliminated?”
Khys laughed. Vedrast turned from the window, solemn-faced.
“Answer her, then, O dour one,” directed the dharen.
“One does not usually give the subject the results,” he temporized.
“Make an exception.” And the dharen’s tone had lost its humor.
“It is not up to us, in truth. You have heard that. If it were, I might be tempted to precipitate some crisis and see how you handled it.” Vedrast turned to Khys. “There is no use in this, I will send you a written report.”
“You will make one before you leave here. And bring it before me, that I may see what it contains, and I may sign it. I may not. At any rate, I would hear what will be in it.” His hand, upon my back, stopped moving.
“This is a farce!” the arrar exploded.
“Indeed, as is all of civilization. But it is workable. As one farcical primate with delusions of spirituality to another, let me adjure you to walk with greater care in my presence. I might be tempted to break you in half and feed the remains to the hulions. Now, in ten words or less, how do you find her?” the dharen said, rising.
“Neutralized. Reasonably adjusted. Potentially dangerous. May I go?” His words hissed from fat, full lips upon a fine spray.
“Go, then, and make your report. I will expect you to attend me at moon’s meal.”
“I have business elsewhere,” said Vedrast, stepping carefully over my outstretched legs.
“Cancel it. We have more pressing business here.”
The arrar wheeled and made exaggerated obeisance, strode angrily from the keep, slamming the thala doors behind him.
Khys went and secured the locks, and when he turned, he was grinning widely.
He came and stood over me, fists upon his hips.
“Still dreaming of Sereth, are you? Perhaps I will give you to him for a night. Would you like that?”
I shuddered and crept through the cushions, back against the window. I shook my head repeatedly. I wondered what was going to happen to me. Had I been assessed? Would the recommendation upon my papers be the same as the arrar Sereth’s? I had no hope but Khys’s protection. I thought of Vedrast, trembling.
“Speak to me,” he ordered, squatting down, his bulk closing the alcove into a cube.
“No, dharen,” I whispered, cowering amid the rust and evening cushions.
“What?”
“No. I would not like it. Yes, I will serve you however you wish.” I would not cry or scream. I dug my nails into my palms and took deep breaths. I thought what it had been like without the band, then I tried not to think.
“Your life,” he said, stretching out among the cushions, “rests in my hands alone. Such decisions have always rested with me. They might recommend. But they, in their turn, are also assessed. The council had no power but what I have given it. Over you, I have given it none.”
And I looked at him, turned sideways, and knew that he was a man who gave away nothing. He had ruled Silistra so long, so well, so silked was the hand of steel, that few upon the outside conceived him to be a living being. They quoted him, venerated chaldra, threw yris-tera to guide them in their lives. They thought him more a force than a man, some long-dead priest of justice and truth.
And that priest of justice and truth cornered me against the window, that I might testify to his manhood and be blessed by his use.
When it was over, he slept, and I lay beside him, rubbing my hipbones. I thought long of fear and love, and wondered how I would have felt about him had things been otherwise. But they were as they were, and I found no solace in such speculation. I turned and laid my head against his shoulder. He growled in his sleep, and my heart scrabbled for escape. Partly wakened, he put an arm across my chest, pulled me to him. Half-thrilled, half-terrified, I lay hardly breathing. Alone so long, I had dreamed of just this. Yet, he had structured my experiences to suit him. Doubtless, how I felt now was more his choice than mine. I fell asleep finally, upon the uneasy conclusion that love, no matter what its roots, feels real when it is upon one. There seemed to be, then, no way to test it, for I loved my life the most. If Khys had taught me not all of love, he had taught me what he desired, and that would keep me alive. If he kept me alive, he could have my body, my mind, my love. I would deal, somehow, with my fear. Perhaps, I thought, drowsing, I might even wake up free of it. And I dreamed I saw with the Keepress, she all I had ever envisioned her—magnificent, haughty, her skin and eyes aglow with the father’s fire. Upon a barren crag, she sat with me. Khys, she said, deserved better. I, she judges, shortchanged us both, with my conception. I argued that it was not my conception, but that put upon me by others, those around me. And she stood and stalked about that peak, vital, uninhibited. She demanded to know the identity of her who inhabited my body. I was a woman, born to flesh, she stormed. Female by birthright, she called me, and deaf to the law within. I am no animal, I raged. Then you are not of the living, she said, and knelt down, her wide-set molten eyes glowing, her tiny winged brows knit with concern. The wind wh
ipped around her, keening. It reminded me of my place, and before whom I sat.
So did the Keepress come to me, and adjure me not gainsay myself. Live your heritage, she demanded fiercely. Do not make judgment, only listen, and live. Make no less of yourself than you are, and she turned me within, to see the fullness there.
And when Khys woke me, entering me from behind, I found a different way to move against him. As the Keepress, I leaned into his cupping hands, clutched him, let my body couch him, unconstrained. I was not disappointing, to him or my brazen self.
“Perhaps one should not query such a gift,” he said, wiping sweat from his upper lip, “but one may surely remark upon its quality.” His eyes narrowed to slits.
“Did I not please you?”
He laughed. “Is that what you call it?”
“I love you,” I reminded him, running my hands over my taut belly.
“You assured me of that before we slept.” His finger touched my lips. I nipped it.
“I had a dream,” I said, remembering.
He cocked his head. “May you have them more often,” he said, after a pause. But he stared at me, disquieted. He reached out a hand, caressing, and my body leaped, joyous to his touch. He took his hand away and rose up on his knees.
“Sit up,” he said.
I curled my legs around me, leaned upon one straight arm. It was not my way of sitting, nor a way Khys had taught me. My breasts and belly, and the curves of my hips and waist, were well displayed. I threw my hair over my right breast, and it fell between my slightly parted thighs.
He surveyed me minutely. I found it exciting, that he looked at me so.
“I have meetings,” he said finally. “They will take the rest of the day and most of the evening.” His voice was level, only.
“Take me with you, please,” I begged, wide-eyed, leaning forward. “I would not be here alone. I will do nothing to displease you.”
He rose up without answer. I waited, following him with my eyes, my breath held. Near the hidden bookshelf, he pushed back a thala panel. From within it, he took a night-blue robe, and dark breech, and sandals. I wondered how many of the common-held forereaders he had couched. Doubtless, many. I found a joy in his movements, that of a woman’s eyes upon a fine male.