Wind From the Abyss

by Janet Morris

  “Can you not feel the ship yaw, tacking?” I said, as the slab dived under me like a hulion descending. I envisioned those great diaphanous sails, golden, astretch far into the star-pored blackness. Drug-calm, I found no terror in the vision, nor the moan of the solar wind in my ears. Again the slab dropped, rose. M’tras, crouched on his hands and knees, sank down beside me. He rolled onto his side, eyes closed, his fingers awork. A screel shot my ears to fragments, was gone by the time my sheltering palms reached them. Lights flickered, died. Only M’tras’ belt gleamed redly. I heard a moaning, steady, far off. I clutched myself. M’tras offed his belt, brought it up to our heads. It lit him from below, redly, and my hand upon his shoulder, digging there. He cursed unintelligibly. I liked not the sound of it, so soft.

  “What?” I moaned, pressing my head against his arm. I ground my teeth to keep them from clacking together, breathing deep, as if I could store the air away for future need. The sound was raspy in the dark.

  “We hit something,” he said quietly, disbelieving. “You don’t hit things ... I mean, it just doesn’t happen when you .. . But we didn’t. We’re on gravitic. What’s left of the sails are in. But one, which is frozen. And it’s dragging against the edge of whatever we hit that isn’t there. We can’t go any farther in the direction we were headed.” Out of the red-dark hissed his voice. He seemed some hoary spirit, underlit. “It happened within seconds of the moment we dropped out and extended them.”

  “How far are we from Silistra?” I asked.

  “Not far,” he said, as the lights came on, and we were both bleached pallid, blinking. My heart acquiesced; it would remain resident in my chest. I rolled on my back. “We don’t use the normal congruences. We punch a tight hole, so to speak. It’s self-sealing.”

  “You could take a helsar, then,” I remarked, dream-high with relief.

  “What?”

  “Breaking through a plane where there is no natural entry. It is a plane, through which you obviate space, is it not?”

  “I suppose,” he said, “in the broadest sense.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “Sniff along the edges of this thing, if it has any. Best guess now is that it’s a circle the diameter of which is twice that of Silistra’s solar system, and centered around same.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  He rose upon his knees and called out once more the viewing screen. It showed only whirling color. The slab beneath me shivered. M’tras, arisen, slid back a panel beneath the viewer, consulted his belt. Still, no face or form came upon the screen. It occurred to me then that none had sought his advice or consulted him for orders, he who held singular control over this metal world in which we rode. It would not have been so among the Slayers, nor the jiasks, nor the dhareners at the Lake of Horns. With a steady stream of discordant adjurations he demanded performance of the screen. He did not receive it. He grunted, a mix of pain and surprise, and jerked his hand out of the thing’s innards, shaking it as if burned. Furiously he slammed shut the panel, dimissed the screen, and sought his ijiyr.

  I thought it strange that he would seek it. He took it to the table, sat. But he made with it no music, holding it in his lap. I saw that the palm-lock, which he had turned amber, had returned to its red color. Only did he hold the ijiyr a time, caressing the strings. Then, carefully, wiping the strings beforehand, he closed its case around it, placed it upon the table.

  It must be, I reasoned, that men do not attend the ship’s flight, but machines. Men would surely have called to discuss this disaster with him who led them. Men are not, like machines, inured to crisis.

  M’tras took council with his belt. Beyond him, at the door, the palm-lock died, its red eye going dead and gray. Wondering where he had hidden my clothing, I rose, went to stand before the real-seeming Western Forest. His eyes followed me, but he made no objection.

  “What will you do without the sails?” I queried him, low. I wished I had water, recollecting the Stoth position in the debate we had so recently held (and which I had not put forth), that a skill making use of machines other than that of flesh is too conditioned by artifice; that it is flesh that must learn to fly, or fall like a stone from the back of mechanical perversity it rides.

  “I’m not sure yet. Don’t worry about it. Things will just take a little longer. Whatever it was we hit is gone now. We can ride ...” He stopped, his mouth hanging open. I recalled the death cube, resting beneath the table.

  I need not have considered it. M’tras, aural symbolist, stochastic improviser, M’kaskkan mechanic, could not even close his mouth. His eyes, terrified, followed me as I crossed the metal floor and knelt before him who stood there, pressing my lips long to his sandaled instep.

  Khys did not raise me, but leaned down, brushing my hair off my neck. I felt his fingers move there, upon the band I had so long worn. When he took his hand away, releasing me with a touch, the band went with it. I did not move, but knelt still, my lips against my couch-mate’s foot, within the curtain of my hair. Joy raced my blood like uris. My neck tingled. Tears flooded me, wet the dharen’s sandal.

  “Crying, little saiisa?” he said to me in that sonorous voice. “Let me see you.”

  I straightened my back, brushing my hair over my shoulders. My mind cowered. So long it had been entrapped, I had truly forgotten the life-songs. I raised my tearstained face to the dharen. Freed, I still feared him. Inscrutable, indomitable was Khys. What had he in his heart, in his mind? Weakly I sought the sort.

  He scrutinized me, those flame-licked eyes warming my flesh, adjudging my condition, the extent to which M’tras had abused me. “Stand,” he allowed, a half-smile on his face. I stood before him, naked, he in his blue-black leathers and cloak, his waist weapons-belted. I threw a glance over my shoulder, at the M’ksakkan, still in flesh lock. Khys’s copper-lashed eyes closed a moment. I felt his presence, considering my emotions, my reactions. He nodded. I trembled, fearful, though there was nothing within me that would displease the dharen, only gratitude, relief. And the knowledge that the leavings of my skills were as nothing before his. He had left me little.

  He raised a hand to my cheek, took a tear rolling there, tasted it. I stood still, my gaze resting easy in his, waiting for him to speak. In this alien keep, surrounded by the artifacts of our enemies, he had removed my band of restraint. Doubtless he felt I could better serve him without it. I hoped I would live to do so.

  “I do not doubt it,” he said; brushing a stray hair from his mark upon my breast. “I have long sought this moment. I regret only that it was birthed in such an unseemly womb.”

  “Was there another way?” I asked, for it would be long before I had steady stance in the time.

  “Evidently not,” he said slowly. I sensed the self-reproach in him. It edged his voice, tightened his belly, made him still before me. “No one,” he added, “is omniscient.”

  “Estrazi himself has said that to me,” I told him gently. I wished he would hold me. He did so, taking me abruptly against him, his touch smoothing the quailing of confusion from my muscles. I did not deem it unfitting that he had used me in his hesting. I whispered it to him, my lips against his leathers. His grip upon me tightened. Even in the strength of it, I sensed the tremors. “I am unhurt,” I murmured. I pushed back slightly, that I might raise my gaze to his. “I killed one of them,” I said.

  “I know it. I am proud of you.” He tucked in his chin, his eyes heavy-lidded. His lips brushed my forehead, my eyelids, then pressed savagely upon mine, his teeth bringing blood to my mouth.

  “Liuma?” I asked, hesitant, when I could.

  “Dead.” He spat the word as he released me. “That part, I had not foreseen. And from it, other unforeseens came to be. I am late here. I would not have left you so long, helpless before them. I had a different thing in mind.” He shrugged, as if it were nothing, but his rage roared over me like the Embrodming breaking on the eastern cliffs, and I knew his hest had been altered by another hand.
“I would not see you again at the mercy of such as he.” He said it even-voiced, deathly low, inclining his head, to the flesh-locked M’tras, motionless in the gray chair. Within Khys, I sensed his reticence, his unwillingness to believe what he saw within me, in the face of what was, to him, his own glaring error. I reached out tentatively to soothe his self-condemnation. His lashes met momentarily. His shield, impregnable, snapped tight. I stepped back.

  “Can there be any doubts of my feelings?” I wondered aloud, amazed, hurt. “You have, how often, taken the truth from my mind? Take it now, Khys.”

  I saw him, with an effort, compose himself. “I have released you, have I not, from your restraint? I have done so not to commune with your mind, which in any case is open to me, nor to see you as equal, which you will never be, but that your welfare be less a burden upon me. I can use your strengths in what lies before us. I do not need them, but I can use them.”

  “You have them. As always have you had that which you desired from me.”

  His nostrils flared. He inclined his head, his majesty a wrap pulled close. “Keep in mind,” he advised, “that this freedom I give you is highly conditional. If you prove unready, I will return you to your former state.” He brushed by me toward M’tras, unmoving at the table. Upon the dharen’s cloak, emblazoned on its back, glittered the Shaper’s seal. His copper hands found the ijiyr. M’tras, unable to do more, closed his eyes. Khys turned the case, opened it. His countenance was severe as he lifted the instrument from its bed. And he played upon it, calling forth from the strings such sounds of wrath and magnificence that my blood halted, ice-bound, in my veins. I heard the scrabble of M’tras’s mind, near madness, as Khys replaced the ijiyr in its case. I had not realized that the instrument meant so much to him. Slowly I made my way to join the dharen, feet slippery on the metal plating, struggling with my own emotions. Did he, I wondered, know of the threat to the hides? And I answered myself that he must. Nor was I wrong to keep silent, lest I belittle myself with the inadequacy of my conception.

  Khys spoke a musical sounding. I guessed it some greeting in M’tras tongue. The tone of his skin near-matched the burnished metal. Easy, relaxed, was Khys in his dark leathers before the M’ksakkan, as if we hurtled not in some wounded thing’s stomach through the void. And while I thought it, the dharen leaned upon the table, both hands clenching its edge. Not understanding, I went to him, touched his arm, my mind sending support to the best of my weakened ability. But it was no indisposition upon Khys then, no sudden-revealed infirmity. Seeking, I saw a shore, cold and forbidding, and a strangely formed rock, through which the wind keened. And then a sun spewing gold-red tongues blinded me. Singed and blinking, I retreated, retrieving my hand from Khys’s arm. That one looked at me. His eyes had carried away the solar flame. It burned in him for a moment, undamped. Then he pushed himself back from the table’s edge.

  “I am going to free your tongue, Trasyi Quenni-saleslor Stryl Yri Yrlvahl. You will speak only at my bidding.” I saw his lids’ barely perceptible flicker, as he altered his flesh-lock upon the mechanic. M’tras kept silent. His skin was very gray as he sat there, unmoving, his hands in his lap, his mouth at last his to close.

  “I have cause to do what I will with you. Your intentions, and those of your superiors, distress me. I will not, of course, allow any such to manifest in the time. I granted you an opportunity to reconsider. You did not choose to seize it. Did you think that by drugging the girl you could shut my eyes to your machinations?” He smiled grimly. “There is the sort, and the hest. And there is the assessing of minds, in the now. All are particulars of sensing. One does not consider depth perception apart from seeing. You know, you are thinking, nothing of sorting and hesting. I shall begin to teach you. Silence,” Khys snapped as M’tras twitched his lips. He could not, I was sure, even turn his head. I threw my leg upon the table. The metal was cool to my bare flesh. As best I could, I hardened my heart to M’tras plight. I had craved this moment, that of the dharen’s retribution. Upon me, I found it less than savory, as grating upon my spirit as Khys’s M’ksakkan to the ears.

  “Let me divine for you the sort,” offered the dharen, his eyes flashing. I quaked, though I was not the subject of his displeasure. “You have passed out of the draw time, when you might have avoided this which here begins. In crux, there comes an ending, from it new beginnings. That which will occur is, by my will, fixed. In a situation where outward influence is denied you, you will learn a thing: when one finds one’s position untenable by reason of preconception and context, all that remains is to alter one’s perspective, that comfort sufficient to secure survival may be maintained. That choice, survival, is open to you. Choose well.” He indicated that M’tras might speak.

  “The time”—M’tras stumbled—“is not up. You had promised another day. I would have returned her.”

  Khys shook his head. “You do not yet believe me, do you? I have complete access to your thoughts, for what they are worth. I am aware of your decision to use the return of Estri as sham behind which to conceal your true intention—that of destruction of the hides. I saw you reach it. I waited, set that time limit, that I might flush from hiding him who conceived this thing, him whose skills were sufficient to have kept him obscure. But all is now accomplished. I have what I needed from this farce. Thought you, really, I would spend life so extravagantly as to destroy a sphere of human habitation? Or was it perhaps a machine’s conception, that would credit such dementia to a man?” The dharen’s voice, so calm, so saddened, diminished M’tras as no harangue would have. “Speak, you who should have known better.”

  M’tras’ face and hands were agleam with sweat. He seemed to have trouble finding words. “I am of some little value,” he said, his voice trembling, “both to M’ksakka and my home world. Return me to them.”

  “It is not in the sort,” said Khys.

  V: Draw to Crux

  I stood beside the Keening Rock of Fai-Teraer Moyhe. The wind, cold and wailing, blew inland off the gray Embrodming Sea. It flogged me with salt spray. I had confined my hair in a thick braid, safed the braid under the cloak Khys had lent me. Beneath it I wore only the rumpled silk. My feet were bare, upon the sea-slicked sand. At my left was the Keening Rock, ten times the height of a man; a pierced monolith. Seven holes are there in that spire, each singular. The northern winds long ago conceived it their instrument. And over that instrument have they gained mastery, I thought, standing there in the sullen midday, with the Embrodming pulsing bass to the wailing of the gale. Loud it was, and eerie, with high-octave tones that demanded and received sympathetic resonance from my very bones. Behind me, inland, amid the ragged coastal rocks, began the eastern wilderness of which none are empowered to speak. And yet, I stood here. Khys had bade me await him by the Keening Rock while he meted out judgment to those who incurred his wrath.

  It had been, of course, Khys’s barrier against which the Oniar-M had crashed. I squinted into the gray-green boiling sky, as if from here I could see it, where it encircled Silistra’s solar system; a sphere of restraint through which no mechanical craft could hope to pass, but by Khys’s expressed will. He had, when it pleased him, allowed the M-class Aggressive entry into the space he had taken out of common holding. There would be no more such ships. I turned and looked at it, canted slightly upon the beach, sunk a third of its length in the sand. It was a sinuous craft, like a friysou’s wing. A damaged wing it was, all its golden plumage ripped away but pinfeathers, and they sticking out from gray pimpled skin at unlikely angles. I had seen such a ship with her great sails wrapped tight about her like a Parsent forereader, the gold glinting in the desert sun. At Frullo jer, I had seen such a craft, when I had been tiaskchan of Nemar. Long ago.

  I sighed. There would be no more ships. Khys had told me. Those now upon Silistra he would give a set’s grace, that they might take live cargo. He wanted no more off-worlders upon the land. The Oniar-M, before me, would not be leaving. It could no longer perform its functions. All of
its machines were dead within it. The dharen had, perhaps at the very moment my mind touched his as he leaned upon M’tras’ table, transported us here. It was an awesome demonstration of his power, that I had not even felt it occur. I should have known, when he took the band from my throat, but I had not. He had hested the ship, contents included, to the eastern wilderness of which none are empowered to speak.

  I was glad to be again upon the land. I sank down in the wet sand, overcome with emotion. It was for me enough to sit there, a time. His bidding, that I await him, seemed far away.

  It had occurred to me that I might run. Down the beach, amid the rocks. And I laughed aloud, in the silence. There were none else upon the beach. I had seen none of the Oniar-M’s crew. The dharen had told me, while he had knelt M’tras before him, that they were all flesh-locked, and what he intended to do with them. And he had told me that even then was the M’ksakkan warship only a brainless hulk, upon the eastern shore of the Embrodming.

  He would, he had said, turn them all loose deep in the interior. They might, he had conceded, survive both the wild beasts and the cahndor of Nemar, who would doubtless come to hunt them. All but Dellin and M’tras did Khys so judge.

  They, I thought, blinking wind-whipped sand from my eyes, might lie within the ship, still flesh-locked. Or they might already be incarcerated at the Lake of Horns.

  There would be no more ships: the lesson their cargo provided had been either learned or mis-learned by the denizens of Silistra; the new teachings, helsars, had arrived. The old was now discarded. So Khys had informed me. The mechanical aid has place and purpose in the perfection of this human machine with which we are, by our choice, either blessed or cursed. And that purpose, brought to its apex in the teaching aid called helsar, is to facilitate the mastery of this threefold mechanism we inhabit while enfleshed; that machine which in potential may perform every task conceivable to its taskmaster, the ascending spirit. So the dharen had spoken, though I had not asked him to justify himself to me. I shivered, rubbed my arms with sandy palms.