by Janet Morris
“Let me see her,” Khys ordered of Chayin. She made no objection when her couch-mate stripped off her veils, and, spinning her, unwrapped her miniature beauty that Khys might assess it. In the puddle of her diaphanous, gold-beaded greenery she poised, her proud carriage not diminished. Around us, the crowd had cleared back, many pointedly turning away. We were alone amidst the well over two hundred that feted in Khys’s common room. He studied her a time, indolent, and I knew from his face that his intrusive thoroughness had laid bare her mind as easily as the cahndor’s hand had stripped her body. I closed my eyes to her distress, feeling it my own. When I opened them, I saw the arrar Sereth’s face, unguarded for a moment, and the pity upon it was mine, not the Nemarchan’s. Unthinking, I moved toward him, those few steps.
He regarded me, silent, his dark eyes indrawn.
“How are you?” he asked in his most inaudible voice, a mere rustle of breath.
“Frightened,” I whispered back, leaning toward him. He reached out his hand, stopped it, between us.
“Touch it, if you would,” I invited him. He ran his rough palm over my left breast, over the softly glowing spiral there. He tossed his head. I could hear his teeth, grinding upon each other. He shot his gaze across Chayin and Khys, speaking together intently, and over Liuma, who at Khys’s bidding was redressing.
“Estri,” said Sereth, leaning close, “you have no need to fear Chayin. He would never do you harm. There might yet be something salvaged, with his help.” And he took his hand from my breast. “Did it hurt?” he inquired, about the mark.
“Not unduly,” I replied, holding my head high. Helpless as I was he before Khys’s will. I resented what he had said to me, about the cahndor. “It is easy for you to tell me not to fear,” I snapped. “If you find the cahndor so lovable, you couch him.” At my rebuke, he half-smiled. I wondered what comfort I had found in him previously. “I suppose,” I hissed archly, “that one could expect no different from you. You are, after all, no more than his servant.” And I turned my back upon him, my fists clenched before me. His hand came down hard upon my shoulder, whirling me once more to face him. He held me a moment, his grip crushing my shoulder. Then he let me go, turned, and strode through the crowd, bumping several innocents from his path.
Khys, breaking off his conversation, stared after him, then at me, questioningly. A moment, he closed his eyes. Comprehension lit his face. He laughed softly, and drew me near. Somehow, I had pleased him. I did not even bother to wonder why, only, congratulated myself, basking in his oft-withheld approval. In the shelter of his arm I stood, with the Parset lord of Nemar’s alien eyes upon me.
They discussed, then, the disposition of Liuma’s child, while she listened, distraught. I did not understand her agitation. The heir of Nemar would be raised and educated at the Lake of Horns, privy to the Greater Truths that are not taught elsewhere upon Silistra. No woman at the lake retains a child after its second year. The child, born Brinar second fourth, 25,695, was two years, one day this sun’s rising, that of second fifth. Perhaps, I postulated, children are not put into common care in the Parset Desert. I shrugged, causing Khys to pull me closer. It was no concern of mine, her distress. And if she would couch the dharen this night, it was to my advantage that she be out of sorts, preoccupied, as she so obviously was. I felt deeply the sharp pain of my jealousy. I wondered how he would ever fit in her, she being so small. And then I regarded Chayin, her couchmate, and knew that she could not be a problem, if she had been used by the cahndor, had borne him a son. I felt Khys’s silent chuckle, and knew he had eavesdropped upon my thought.
“Assuredly,” he whispered in my ear, “none of her ilk will ever replace you.” I pressed, in answer, my buttocks against him, and was rewarded by his stirring beneath his robe. “Hold them both for a time, Chayin, while I go and soothe the Ebvrasea’s ruffled feathers.” And Khys departed, threading his way through the crowd to Sereth, whose dark head was just visible to me, wound around with danne smoke, near the banked windows.
When Khys had reached his arrar, and not before, did Chayin speak,
“What,” the cahndor demanded, “did you say to Sereth?” And, not knowing whether or not he read thoughts, I answered him truthfully. Chayin blew his breath hissing through his teeth.
“Of all men, he should be free from your censure!” he snapped. I only stared at him. Liuma, his couch-mate, tittered, a tinkling sound.
He whirled upon her like an enraged hulion, snarling. “Think you I would not wipe this floor with your carcass, should it come to me to do so?” And though she fell silent, her eyes still danced with humor. Assuredly, Liuma had no love for the arrar Sereth.
“Of all men,” I said softly to Chayin when he turned his dark glare back upon me, “only Khys has that freedom with me. It is he to whom I am couch-bound.” And I met his fury without comment, as he cursed in that barbaric tongue of his. When he ran dry of words, he spat at my feet. I looked from that small wetness, up at him, his taut form, and knew I had said too much. I found myself retreating into the crowd. Two steps, he took, and retrieved me.
“By the wing of uritheria, Estri, this cannot go on! Do you not have any understanding of your situation, or of the shadows it throws over us all?” I saw Liuma’s hostile gaze, watching, her ears fairly pricked.
“No, I do not. Perhaps you will enlighten me,” I petitioned him, as he led me back to her.
“It is my fervent hope,” he said wryly, “that I will be able to do so.” Roughly he placed me upon the right of his Nemarchan, Liuma. Then he looked about him, hailed an arrar with Khys’s spiral upon the left breast of his robe. That one, blond and golden-eyed, was quick to attend him.
“Do not allow them conversation,” he instructed the arrar. “Let neither one out of your sight. I will return for them presently.”
The arrar nodded, standing opposite us, legs spread, arms crossed over his chest, as Chayin made his own way through the crowd to join the dharen.
Liuma caught my gaze, eyed the arrar significantly. I nodded to her. We had, neither one of us, been ordered to stay with him, directly. I set myself leftward, toward the banked windows, as Liuma hurriedly put bodies between her and the startled arrar, heading toward the right. He hesitated, undecided as to which one of us to pursue. I increased my pace, looking backward, sliding between a marked wellwoman and one who was not her couch-mate. The arrar closed upon me, frowning.
I stumbled right into him. Hands, fiery gold, took my upper arms as I staggered. Murmuring an apology, I raised my eyes to him whom I had jostled. And stared, witless, at the first of Khys’s council, he who had so harmed me during my assessment. He was plain-robed in black. His hair and eyes were black also, and yet the fathers’ fire shone hot from him. I made to kneel. He held my arms, shaking his head, saying that the time had not yet come for such obeisance. And: “Where do you go in this unseemly haste?” Strong fingers dug troughs in my arms. But his eyes looked elsewhere. I twisted in his grasp. The blond arrar had stopped.
The man who held me had the blond’s attention. He jabbed a finger in the direction Liuma had taken. The blond nodded, set off that way.
“I will deliver you myself to Khys,” he mused, smiling coldly. “How goeth the dissolution of the dharen?” he asked at length, his piercing eyes exploring the depths of mine.
“Please let me go,” I begged. He did not, but ran his long-nailed hand over the dharen’s device on my breast. He laughed softly.
“There is an irony,” he remarked as we negotiated a trail through the crowd, “in his marking you thus. I would be there to see his face the day he realizes it.”
“I do not take your meaning, arrar,” I said.
“I am Gherein,” he replied. “And you will, soon enough. Remember me to your father, when next you see him, and convey to him my awe, that he could put into the time such a force.”
I wondered if he were mad. Again he laughed, a sound starting low but ending in a high, squeaking yip. As he hustled me down th
e path ever opening before us, I recalled him; and those unmeet actions, that destruction he had wrought within my helpless mind, he who had first explored me during my assessment.
Before Khys, he ungently clapped the dharen on the shoulder. That one turned from his conversation, and the shadow of his annoyance grew darker.
“I have something of yours,” said Gherein.
“Indeed,” answered Khys. “And how did you come by it?”
“What is loosely held is often misplaced.” The arrar Gherein, first of Khys’s council, shrugged. “She escaped, you might say. I returned her to you.” He stepped backward.
“You have my thanks,” said Khys dryly.
“As ever”—Gherein smiled, bowing low—“I am but the instrument of thy will.”
Khys, his glare upon me, snapped his fingers. I knelt at his side. He turned from his council member, and that one melted into the crowd like some malevolent spirit.
“Escaped, did you?” said Khys, staring down at me, his tone severe. I shifted upon my knees, touched his thigh, pressed my cheek to it. I said nothing. Those with whom he had been speaking, Carth and some dharener I did not know, passed a pipe between them. To my left, against the window ledge, leaned Sereth, with Chayin’s arm thrown companionably about him. They, also, smoked danne, the yellow psychotropic herb.
Khys called Sereth to him. The arrar was languorously obedient, his eyes off in the crowd. Chayin received Liuma from the blond arrar and set her upon the window ledge.
“I think,” said Khys to Sereth, who studiously avoided looking at me, “that I have a new commission for you.”
The arrar Sereth grinned. “You will lose me yet, with these easy dispatchings.” He tossed his head. “He is not Vedrast.”
“Do you not feel up to it?” Khys inquired of him, matching his soft tone.
Sereth raised his head, stared long into Khys’s eyes. After a time, he raked his hand through his hair, pushing it impatiently off his forehead. “It might work,” he allowed. “Doubtless”—and his voice was very soft—“you will be well rid of one of us.”
Carth, long silent, reached out and touched Khys’s arm. The dharen stepped close to him, away from me, motioning me up, almost as afterthought.
Sereth’s hand closed about my wrist. His eyes caught mine. I bent my head, that I might avoid them. My fingers, trapped in his, could find no escape.
“Come with me,” he whispered. I shook my head. But he pulled me along after him to the window. My eyes, entreating Khys’s intervention, did not obtain it.
He took from Chayin the pipe upon which the cahndor puffed, and held it out to me, his straight brows knit. I hesitated. I had never smoked it.
“Try it,” he insisted, winsome dark humor that crinkled his eyes and colored the scar upon his cheek. Liuma, I could see, had partaken. She leaned back against the draped windows, her shoulders slumped, her posture far from that of a woman before men. The cahndor touched Sereth’s arm, began a circular rubbing upon the arrar’s back. Sereth grinned at him obliquely.
He retracted the pipe, puffed upon it until smoke billowed from the bowl. Then again he offered it to me. I received it from him.
My lips on the narrow stem, I pulled in deeply and was rewarded by a paroxysm of coughing. Through blurred eyes, shaking my head, I handed it back.
“Not so much,” he instructed me, demonstrating. But I would taste no more of it. Loosening was danne. It made tenuous the bond between body and mind. I had fought that sensation often. I needed no drug to bring it upon me. I said so, tossing back my hair, forgetful of the dharen’s mark it obscured.
“Does he never feed you?” criticized Chayin, of my thinness, reaching out to touch my left hipbone where it flared below my waist. His fingers, upward-moving, counted my ribs. I shrugged.
“Answer me when I speak to you!” growled the cahndor of Nemar. Liuma tittered upon the window ledge. Sereth hoisted himself up beside her, his eyes never leaving me, that voracious gaze raising the small hairs of my skin.
“He feeds me. I often do not eat. If I had choice, it has occurred to me I might never eat.”
“You could use more flesh than you carry. You will eat this evening, while I have you.”
“As you wish it, Cahndor. But one meal will make little difference in my figure. I know for certain that Khys has a number of voluptuous and highly skilled forereaders. I am sure he will allow you the use of any other you choose in my stead.” And I excused myself, intending to inform Khys of Chayin’s disgruntlement and perhaps save myself from his hands.
He snarled my name. I turned back to him, quailing before this more-than-appropriate anger. I ran my palms over my cheeks. My eyes itched from the particles of gilding that had made their way into them. I rubbed them gently.
At that moment the chimes called our seating.
Khys himself came to collect us, and with him Carth, leading a bronzed girl who had about her the look of one not lake-born. Sereth slid off his sill seat, his thumbs hooked through his chald, his whole bearing one of marked displeasure. Chayin looked at the woman, at Sereth, then went to the arrar’s side. There they had what seemed a heated discussion, in the cahndor’s tongue, very low.
The woman leaned upon Carth’s arm, her eyes on the arrar Sereth. Carth spoke to her, patting her reassuringly.
Khys summoned me, drew me to table with him. Liuma and Chayin followed, the cahndor’s expression ominous. Beside Khys, upon his left, was Liuma seated, while Chayin took the place upon my right. Carth, when he came finally to table, had with him the long-limbed female, whose tanned skin had not the fiery touch of the fathers’ blood. Sereth, when I turned to seek him, was nowhere to be seen. After seating the woman, Carth came to Khys and leaned between us, whispering in the dharen’s ear.
Khys listened, nodded, waved a hand impatiently.
“You have done,” he told Carth, “enough, more than might have been expected of you. Let it rest. Take her yourself, if you like.” Carth grinned at him, straightened up, and returned to his seat between Liuma and the unidentified woman.
“Who is she?” I whispered to Khys, my hand upon his arm, as the dhrouma drums began a polyrhythmic thrumming, and the dancers filed through the four openings in the table, to take their place in the enclosure.
“A well-woman, new to the Lake of Horns. Carth thought she might be of interest to Sereth. Evidently he was wrong.” He grimaced. The dancers waited. Khys raised his hands, smacked them resoundingly together. The entire orchestra took up the tune. The women, in slitsa skins and feathers, began their undulations. I took no notice.
“Really?” I breathed, leaning forward to peer around Khys, past Liuma and Carth, at the well-woman. I had not, to my knowledge, ever seen one. Beside her was an empty place. She seemed subdued, her long-lashed eyes lowered, her chin almost resting on her chest. I had thought such a woman might sit differently, carry herself some other way, have about her some air to set her apart from all lesser creatures. I saw it not. She was indistinguishable, to my eyes, from any fore-reader. I sat back, disappointed, to see that my plate had been filled to overflowing.
Khys eyed it, amused. I turned to Chayin, who evidently thought I could eat as much as three grown men. He pointed firmly to my plate with his knife, tapped the stra blade resoundingly against the plate’s silver edge.
I ate as much as I could—some of the tiny meat pastries, filled with ground denter, herbs, and cheese, the crust off a mountain of creamed tuns, the fruited skin of a harth breast. I contrived to hide the kelt eggs under a tas chop from which I had carved one bite. Khys served that night a blood-red kirra, of eloquent vintage, bursting with life, and I drained my silver goblet. The attentive forereader who served us hastened to refill it. I placed my hand over the goblet’s mouth. The lake-born stepped again to our rear, to join her sisters, of whom Khys had provided one for every four feasters. In the enclosure, the dancers whirled and spun, now together, now separate, their skins shining with sweat. The slitsa-women, slithe
ring, gave stylized chase to those leaping feathered ones, caught them, struggled, and even seemed, with the magic of their art, to consume the bird-plumed, whole. Litir players screeled their cries for them, dhroumaists conjured whining desert wind.
Three goblets of kifra did the cahndor consume, and two full plates of food, before he pushed back his chair and sighed, his attention upon the dancing. When those girls fell to the floor, panting, when the muscians took the moment between dance troupes to retune, Chayin rose up, stretched, and harshly commanded me attend him. Khys, who had been with consummate politeness hearkening to Liuma, touched my thighs beneath the table, slid his hands between them.
“I would hear a good report of you,” he said softly, withdrawing his hand and his attention, turning back to the Nemarchan.
I sighed, rising, and went to the cahndor, who firmly guided me out the rear of the common room. Along the taernite passage he led me surely. The cahndor had been in these halls before, where the forereaders couch those who choose them. My mouth grew dry, my heart double-paced, as I followed him. The darkness made him loom larger in those soft-lit halls. The whites of his eyes glittered cruelly. He spoke no word to his evening’s entertainment.
My breathing grew so loud in the silence that I could stand it no longer. I swallowed hard, and the sound was as a tree kepher propositioning her mate in a Galeshin swamp. I ran my palm over my forehead, felt the moisture there.
“Who was that woman?” I asked him, to crack the unease between us.
He laughed, flashing his large strong teeth. “An appeasement they had meant for Sereth, who, perhaps unwisely, will have no such.” He licked his full lips, eased us down a side turning, stopped before a door there. “There was a time,” he said accusingly, his black eyes boring deep, “when he would have had more sense than to refuse her. She bears his child.” He pushed open the simple ragony door and shoved me gently within. Until he entered, the keep stayed dark. Evidently the entrapped stars recognized the cahndor of Nemar as worthy of their light. They brightened, then became dimmer, as he adjusted them to his liking.