Wind From the Abyss

by Janet Morris

  I studied him, his clenched jaws, his tight-drawn face, all line and bone and scar. And I peered close, at those eyes searching mine. He was an arrar, I reminded myself. No doubt my thoughts were open to him. “You are my punishment,” I offered timidly. “I will get worse, should I refuse to serve you.” My words came out barely louder than his. This man, whose touch I had craved in dreams, scared me witless. He retrieved his hand, examined it as if it held the answer he sought.

  “Estri,” he said hoarsely, “do you not at all recall me?” He touched his fingers to my chin, ran them up my bruised cheek. His eyes narrowed as I flinched.

  “I recall you,” I whispered. “You once took me to my chamber. You would not stay with me. You asked that I leave you be.”

  He stood, crossed to the kifra pitcher, scooping up my discarded bowl along the way in an easy, fluid motion. He moved like a wild thing, not like Khys, whose dignity ever weighted his flesh. He returned with two filled bowls and offered one out, hesitantly, as if afraid I would refuse him. I reached up and accepted it, trying to smile.

  Those eyes took stock of me as if I were some carnivore’s long-trailed dinner. Hungry was that gaze, with a hunger I had never seen in a man.

  He sat beside me, cross-legged, and sipped his bowl, holding it in both hands. His eyes never left mine.

  “How is it with him?” he asked finally.

  “As he wishes it,” I said, looking into my kifra, swirling it around.

  “Does he often beat you?”

  “He seldom does anything to me. This is the first I have seen him since before I birthed his son.”

  He was silent, then. When he emptied his bowl, he took it and refilled it. I pondered, watching, what he would do if I refused him.

  “I wonder”—he sighed as he sat once more—“if he wants me to move against him. You would not know, would you?” His eyes were very bright. When he had drained the bowl, he threw it against the far wall so hard it rebounded to the middle of the room.

  “Arrar,” I murmured, “it would be a kindness if you would do what you came here to do. I would not face his wrath.”

  “I doubt if I can,” he said dryly, and laughed, a sighing laugh like the winter wind rattling my tower window.

  “I am sorry,” I said. “I am afraid it is my fault.” And I got up on my knees and stripped off my single garment. Before my nudity, he sat hard-eyed. It occurred to me that this man, who had once refused me, doubtless had had better.

  “Sereth,” I whispered, “I will try very hard to please you.”

  He ran his hand across his brow. Then he unbelted his robe, shrugged it off his shoulders. Seeing him in his maleness, I shrank back.

  “Come here, little one,” he said, and took me into his arms. “So long,” he groaned, his head buried in my breasts. He called me by name, repeatedly. After he had spent himself within me, he raised his head, and his eyes were red and swollen. I had never seen a man cry in orgasm. Khys certainly did not. And he had groaned strange sounds while about his stroke.

  He lay half upon me a long time, his face buried in my hair, unspeaking. My fingers traced his chald, soldered around his hips, touched the carapace of muscle there. Wandering, they found themselves upon a wide scar running along his right side. He took my wrist, pulling my hand away.

  “You got that upon the plain of Astria, did you not?” I asked softly.

  “Estri?” he queried, suddenly leaning over me, his knees at either side of my hips.

  “You are very famous, you know. And very different from Khys.”

  He sighed and kissed my forehead lightly. “It is good to be with you,” he said, rising. “I only wish I understood his intent.” And he went to the window, sat with one leg thrown up on the sill.

  Upon impulse, I joined him there, my fingers finding work upon the knotted muscles of his shoulders. Leaning into it, he laughed softly. “We have come to a strange pass, you and I,” he remarked.

  “Arrar, do you not read thoughts?”

  “Not when I can help it. And not those of a woman.”

  “I read Carth’s report to Khys concerning you,” I offered.

  “Did you?” He slid out from under my hands. “What did it say?”

  “That Khys should either eliminate you or seek to pacify you in some way.”

  “This situation could be part of either,” he said after a time, in a voice like steel scraping ice. “You have risked his anger for me. Why?”

  I regarded my ankles, sunk amid the cushions. My fingers attacked each other. I had doubtless done so.

  “I do not know,” I murmured. I sat beside him upon the sill, our thighs touching. “They say I am mad. Sometimes I am. I often do and think things that make no sense.” Though I tried to hide my disquiet, my voice was husked and shaking. He put an arm around me, and I laid my head upon his shoulder.

  “You are not mad,” he whispered, almost angrily. “It is only what has befallen you, and the way he uses you, that makes you think so.”

  “In his way, he cares for me,” I excused him.

  He spat a word I did not know.

  “What does that mean?” I asked him.

  “It means that Khys cares for nothing but his hests—Nothing.”

  “Do you think,” I ventured, suddenly near tears, “that he will let you come to me again?” The room flickered. I fought it and the aching sadness that came upon me. For a moment I saw him differently in my mind—at another time, another place.

  “I do not know,” he said, distant. “I will if I can.”

  But I cared no more for the answer. I slid from the sill and curled myself among the cushions, sobbing. I heard my voice, begging his aid. And he gathered me up in his arms and rocked me like a child, speaking to me in a language I did not know. When I was drained of tears, he again couched me, savagely.

  “Clothe yourself,” he said, slapping me upon the rump. “I have done all I can do for you.” He fished up his breech, his robe, his sandals.

  “Where are you going?” I asked, tying my s’kim about me.

  “I am going to take you, as I have been instructed, to the dharen,” he said, his brown eyes intent upon my face.

  And though I tried to hide my fear, I know he saw it. I pulled my fingers from where they clawed at the band upon my neck, smoothing the s’kim over my hips with them.

  His brows knit, he pushed me lightly toward the door.

  “I should not,” he said, locking it again behind us, “speak to you of these things, but I will. Do not let him terrorize you so. All masters pass. And you have, as a woman, certain constraints you might use upon him. If I were you, I would do so.”

  I looked up at him, uncomprehending.

  “I have loved you,” he added, low, “since I first saw you. We both live. For now, that must be enough. If ever I can aid you, know that I will surely do so.”

  And I walked upon awkward legs beside him, each footfall a surprise as my weight thudded down. I wondered what to do. Khys, who had fathered my child, had given me to this man, who would destroy him.

  “Khys is my couch-mate,” I reminded him, this stranger, before whom I had exposed my madness, weeping and begging for aid. His hand kneaded the back of my neck as we passed through the hall by the hulion tapestry. And the touch reminded me of his way with my body, so different, so much more, than the dharen’s.

  I thought again of Khys, and by the time Sereth pushed open the doors to the dharen’s study, I was trembling. Within that room, mural-ceilinged, of thala and silver, he sat at table with Vedrast. I knew the room. My child had been conceived here—not upon one of the six narrow couches, but upon the silvery mat, beneath the dark-draperied windows. Tapers were lit upon the round table, as they had been that night, though clusters of entrapped stars hovered high in the keep’s four corners.

  Khys and Vedrast rose, bringing their bowls with them, and seated themselves upon the thala-toned couches. Sereth propelled me gently forward.

  I went to the dharen,
brushed my lips against his sandal, sat back upon my heels facing him.

  “Sit down, Sereth,” ordered Khys, indicating a place at his right. Sereth slid down upon his spine, crossing his arms over his chest, his head low.

  Khys’s glance met Vedrast’s, who now lounged supine on the couch to the dharen’s left.

  I shifted, and he took note, scowling, as he turned to Sereth.

  “How did you find her, arrar?” asked Khys solicitously.

  “Much diminished,” he said, almost inaudibly, meeting Khys’s gaze, unflinching.

  “But not so much so that you would not again couch her,” Khys predicted, over steepled fingers.

  “No, not that much,” Sereth agreed. His face was pale with concentration.

  “You did well for me, in Dritira. And in hide diet, that which you did outshone my brightest hopes. From what you did upon M’ksakka, there have been repercussions, but through no fault of yours. We were hoping that this”—and he indicated me—“might please you. We are not ungracious.” His eyes barely open, Khys dug at Sereth. And that one’s scar grew livid, and his body stiffened. Sweat glistened upon his face. But he did not take his eyes from Khys’s. Between them, the air grew wavery, sparking sporadically.

  Vedrast stood abruptly, his shoulders hunched, his face distraught.

  And then, amazingly, Khys laughed out loud, and extended his hand to Sereth.

  The arrar wiped his sweat-slicked face before he grasped it.

  “When would you like this thing done?” he asked.

  “Now!”

  And even as Sereth sprang from his place, Vedrast seemed to shake off his paralysis, whirling. They grappled briefly, Sereth’s arm at the man’s throat from behind. His other hand, I saw as he kicked Vedrast’s legs out from under him and dropped him to his knees, held an open metal circlet.

  Khys leaned forward with a sigh as Sereth stepped back from Vedrast, whom he had put in a band of restraint. That one, upon his knees, clawed at his throat, groaning his negation. I sympathized with him.

  “And what you just did for me,” approved the dharen quietly. “I have been trying to get done for a number of years.”

  Sereth grinned at him, his fists upon his hips. But his eyes, upon the piteously moaning arrar, were bleak.

  “Take him, now, and dispose of him,” Khys ordered.

  Sereth, no longer smiling, bent to the restrained arrar, speaking softly. He tossed his head and raised the man up by force. Those eyes in that slack-jawed face were vacant. Vedrast, upon Sereth’s arm, stumbled from the room, mewling.

  I retrieved my fingers from my own throat, from my own tight band. Khys secured the doors Sereth had left ajar. Upon his way back to me he reclaimed a bowl, its contents spilled upon the mat, upset by the arrar’s struggle. His movements were very different from Sereth’s.

  The whole time, I had not moved. I am well-trained, I thought to myself wryly as Khys again seated himself. I felt very small and helpless before him.

  “And what do you think of all that has occurred, my little saiisa?”

  “The man went mad when the band was put upon him.” I quivered, upon my knees.

  “Shock, only. If he were allowed to live, he would accustom to the silence. He had a great talent, and the use of it for more than a thousand years.”

  “And you needed Sereth to do it?”

  Khys laughed. “I am still attempting to test that man’s limitations. Only such as Sereth, with his oddly developed skills, could have restrained Vedrast. He has had that band, keyed to his touch, ready, since he returned from M’ksakka. But he did not know for whom it was intended.” He chuckled, stretching. “I have long desired to see him work his craft.”

  “You value him highly,” I commented.

  “I have appraised him fairly. One must see what is, no matter how markedly it differs from one’s expectations.”

  And then it was that he turned his attention upon me, blatantly invading my mind. Cruelly he visited himself upon my memories, upon my couching of the arrar. His probe I could not stop, as I had Vedrast’s. When I tried to run, I found myself flesh-locked. Then I stood aside, within my own mind, and docilely watched him take what he wanted from my experiences. And of all Sereth had said to me, Khys apprised himself. And of how it was for me at the arrar’s hands, did he take note.

  When he released me, I let myself fall forward, lying passive until the tremors attendant upon flesh lock had passed. An informer upon the arrar Sereth, he had made me, and even upon myself. How, I demanded of myself desperately, can one live this way? And my thought reverberated in the hollow, ringing emptiness within me, coming back unchanged, unanswered.

  He called me. I rolled upon my side and looked up at him, miserably. I had not the strength to do more. Or the inclination. I waited, passive, for him to make known his will. There was no more rage or horror or hatred or fear in me. I was only tired. One can fight just so long a battle that cannot be won.

  “Good,” mused Khys, as if to himself. “Soon you will be ready.”

  II: The Wages of Forgetfulness

  I knelt upon the bursting spiral, in that seven-cornered room, before Khys’s council. Or upon seven spirals, in seven such rooms, spaced the length and breadth of Silistra. One corner was empty. In one stood Khys—his flesh-and-blood presence. In the remaining five, the flame-licked figures flickered, behind each a window looking out upon the part of Silistra in his care. They were each in their places, and here also: the seven alcoves, identical; the seven spirals, overlayed; the five of Khys’s council, bicorporate. And I—was I seven also, where I crouched upon the symbol that focused these widespread keeps into one?

  There was a feeling to inhabiting that highly charged space, one of being enwrapped, encased, embalmed in crackling force. I wore no band of restraint. I had been sedated, but such was no longer necessary. I seemed, to myself in my own vision, neck-deep in the congruent spirals, the arms twisted around me like some great slitsa. I could see my breasts, my knees, the true spiral upon the true floor, only through the others, semi-present, atop it. I averted my eyes. The sensation brought upheaval to my stomach and water to my mouth.

  The keep wrenched sideways, churned, and it was no longer Khys that was flesh, but another. My knees were invisible, imprisoned, swallowed by the gol floor. Cold shriveled the edges of every cell of my body. The golden one smiled at me. Make heat, or die. Simple. I made it, using the pain I felt to kindle the conflagration. The crown of my head was that fire’s fuel, and around the flames my interrogator paced, appraising. Damage he found there, and damage he did. Cringing, I received it, for I knew not how to resist.

  “Speak to me of the sevenfold spirit!” my tormentor demanded of me.

  I could not. There was, within me, only a yawning chasm where he sought. But he brought to be in that place a blue-glowing spark, and by the light of it, to him certain things were revealed. And I watched, without understanding, as he took what pleased him of those truths, for they were in a language I did not know. Written upon the walls of soul, sequencers for the electrochemical devices of power lay open to him. Within me, they had long lain. Great shocks of force ripped at those walls—blinding heat; and what remained was melted, charred. The wreckage dripped, steaming, as I was passed to another hand.

  The second’s touch was as smooth as gol, and he bade me fear him not, but make for him certain statements of mind that he called shaping. At his bidding I saw a scarred place with those skills encysted beneath, but I could not do more than gape. Once, I might have shaped. My ears heard a wailing, and knew it mine. Kindly, gently, he passed me to the third.

  And I was more deeply imprisoned within the spiral at that one’s hands, my substance again screaming as it was dragged into another realm, where the physical third held court. It was his pleasure to dismantle, within me, a certain projection of my being, like tenuous water-cast gold extending out into the unborn time. As he was about it, a wind came up, roaring. Extrusions of gale whipped around him, b
ound him there. The fourth hastened to aid him, weighted down by the others, whose hands were all joined across the abyss wherein the wind held one of their number captive. Straining, they extricated him, a molecule at a time, from chaos.

  Then did Khys reclaim my flesh into his realm. I heard the fifth, who had gainsaid any further exploration of me, tirading unintelligibly. Though I had no understanding of their words, I knew with a certainty more chilling than the void-touch between their keeps that they debated my right to live. And Khys stood for me, against them, while I knelt, dizzied, weakened, within the spirals’ whirl.

  One by one, he reviled them. Layer by layer, the spirals thinned, vanished, each with the window alcove and its occupant, until there was only one window in the seven-cornered keep, only one man regarding me, and only one spiral, that upon which I knelt.

  I took deep gulps of air, fighting nausea, as the room rotated slowly left to right. It did not cease until Khys stood before me. As he approached, he seemed to float leftward, disappear, be again, closer. I laid my head upon my knees and moaned, for I knew that he would put the band of restraint again upon me. I did not move to stop him as he brushed hair from my exposed neck and slipped it around my throat. Almost, I craved the silence, the isolation, the peace of the band. I pressed my forehead against my knees, my pulse thunderous in my ears.

  They had shown me what I had been. And what remained of those strengths I had once been pleased to employ, they had checked. I had let them, in fear of his displeasure, in weakness, born of what I had become. No dreams did I harbor now about what I might be, should Khys take the band of restraint from me. Whoever I had been, that one had had great talent. But I had been made safe during my assessment.

  Khys, who had taken a clean slate and written upon it what he chose, who had rescued a wounded animal, maimed and broken, and domesticated what was left of it, had saved his creation from extinction. So thoroughly had he conditioned me to him, so completely was I his, I had not been able to conceive resistance to his will. Not even in the face of extinction had I done so. I wondered why I did not bleed. Surely, blood should flow from my nose and ears, well up in mouth, and spill out onto the spiral from my ruins. Why could not the charred remains of my skills be smelled upon the air?