Wind From the Abyss

by Janet Morris

  Then I noted the difference in this door from its brothers. It had a number upon it: thirty-four. As Carth took from his robe a key and unlocked it, a mist came around me. I saw threxmen, mounted, and they were uncountable. Yes, I thought, Chayin at least would surely be avenged.

  Then I stepped into darker dim of the cell; I heard a rustle, and something furry scaled my bare foot. Then it was gone. So there were yits beneath the dharen’s tower. I found it somehow fitting that such would be the case. There was precious little light coming in through the hand-width slit near the cell’s ceiling. My feet trod the lake rushes scattered upon the stone floor. He was slumped against the wall atop a pile of them. He had not enough chain slack to lie down. The manacles upon him would have restrained a hulion. He was not conscious. I knelt beside him, peering. In his hair was a mat of blood. Elsewhere upon him, also, was the work of Carth and his chosen. As I strenghtened him, I wondered at the fitness of my actions. It might, I thought, have been kinder to leave him free from his body, until the moment Khys called his mind back to attend his death. But I could not. And he was in great need. My hands did for him what they could. I spent much strength in that healing, before his spirit consented to return to his flesh. I saw its presage in his pulse and his breathing. His eyes roved beneath his lids.

  I did not sit back, but knelt over him, my face close to his. His dark eyes saw me, a time, without recognition. Then he closed them.

  “Sereth ...” I choked upon it, dug my fingers into my palms. “Please, look at me. Forgive me for what has come to be. And for what I did.”

  And he opened his eyes. His hand, forgetful of his bonds, sought me. The chain links rattled. His lips quirked. “It is good to look upon you, little one,” he said slowly. “I had concern for you.”

  “What can I do?” I whispered.

  “Nothing. All is done,” he said. “We seem to have exchanged positions.”

  He was, indeed, banded. “Sereth, submit to Khys. Beg his mercy.”

  His grin was a shadow of itself. “It is not in the sort,” he whispered, straightening. I laid my head against his shoulder. He winced. “It is not,” he consoled me, “as bad as you make it. I have been this close, before, to death.” His tone was stern.

  I sat back, pretending before him, that I not strip him of his own pretense.

  “Why?” I asked him. “Why did this happen?” My tone betrayed me. I sniffled, put my finger between my teeth, and bit it.

  “My sense of fitness got the better of me,” he said. “Estri, let it be. Seek the sort for consolation. Or Chayin. I can give you none.” And I saw then that he did remember those things I had said to him when I did not know him.

  “Sereth,” I pleaded, “I love you.” I said it to him, as he had said it to me, when I recollected him not. We each had chosen strange moments for those words, so common and easy to speak with any by but one truly loved.

  He laughed a harsh sound dry of humor. His eyes rested for a moment upon Khys’s sign, the only glimmer in this semidark. “That is reassuring,” he said. “You had best keep such knowledge from the dharen,” he added, and coughed. My heart constricted, remembering my plan to disenchant him with me for his life’s sake. I had thought, in my arrogance, that I might do so. For his sake. And I would have lived a lie with Khys, to keep him safe. It never occurred to me that time might divest Sereth of what he felt for me. His shield was tight. As I rose from him, I wondered what kind of skills he possessed, that he could hold a shield while in a band of restraint.

  “We will, yet,” I promised him, “stand unscathed upon the plain of Astria.”

  Shifting of chain I heard, and his soft dry laughter. “Perchance. Owkahen has lately not favored me,” he said as I turned away. “I would not count upon it.”

  Blinded with tears I would not show to him, I stumbled out the door into the lesser dim. Carth pushed himself away from the wall, secured the lock. He reached out to comfort me. I spat upon his hand. It has been said of me that my eyes, upon occasion, bear knives within them. I wished fervently that such was the truth, that I might pluck one out and use it upon Carth.

  And he, hurt rather than angry, wiped his hand upon his robe. “Would you see the cahndor?” he offered, holding out my cloak.

  “Yes,” I hissed, “I will see the cahndor.” I latched the throat chain.

  I do not remember gaining the fourth-floor landing, nor walking that corridor that for so long had been all I was allowed to see of the Lake of Horns. Khys had not seen fit to incarcerate the cahndor of Nemar in his yit-infested prison. Once he had spoken to me of his dank dungeon, and I had thought it allegory, or some obscure humor. Carth, telepath, partook of my thoughts upon those stairs, unspeaking.

  “What is the date Khys set for Sereth’s ending?” I asked as Carth stopped before the door to the holding keep. A shiver washed me, for the prison they had chosen for Chayin was the one I had first inhabited. Here I had languished while they stripped from me my past and my self. And here did the cahndor of Nemar await his death.

  Carth, as he worked the combination lock upon the door, informed me that it was a set’s time less one day until Sereth’s execution. Six days. I nodded. Much could happen in six days. If I had not by that time freed him, it would be only because I, in trying, had ceased to inhabit flesh.

  Carth held the door open. It closed with a muffled thump. Long had this place contained me. The cahndor lay upon the low bare couch, his face turned to the wall. Upon his belly he lay. His hands were braceleted behind. He was naked, and his rana skin shone with sweat in the light from the late-day sky. I went to that window, enclosed with a golden light that played ever across it and across the pale green walls, also. From this place, I knew, there was no escape. I tried the window. Even now, with no band of restraint at my throat, I could not force my hand through that pulsing barrier to touch the pane. I sighed and turned away from that too-familiar view.

  “Chayin,” I whispered as I knelt by his head, “Chayin,” and I stopped. The cahndor did not need to be wakened. I sat back and waited, my eyes trapped by the glow of the band of restraint around his massive neck.

  He rolled, when it pleased him, to his side. The membranes were full across his dark eyes. They did not snap or quiver. Greatly agitated was the cahndor, entrapped.

  “Is this a visit,” he growled, “or have you fallen from grace?”

  “A visit.” My hands sought my throat, met his eyes there. He bared his teeth, struggled to a sitting position. And he did not refuse my aid, achieving it. They had not been as hard upon him as upon Sereth, but they had not been easy. I sat back.

  “I have seen Sereth.”

  I wondered what Chayin found to grin about as his kill smile once again gleamed briefly. It seemed the brighter for the darkening of the bruises on the left side of his face.

  “Tell me,” he demanded, “exactly what Sereth said.”

  I did so.

  “Wear white that day. And even to attend Sereth’s death, put no other color upon you.”

  I knew that tone. “Yes, Chayin,” I said softly, and sought his mind for my answers.

  “No,” he snapped. I obeyed, though he could not have stopped me. “I told you once never to seek me that way,” And I reached over and put my finger across his swollen lips to signify that I understood. He kissed it.

  “The dharen remarked to me,” I recalled, retrieving my hand, “just this midday, that you might in the nature do some hunting upon the shores of which none are empowered to speak. To fulfill his prophecy, you must live that long.”

  “I have no doubt,” said the cahndor, “that I will live that long.” So did he reassure me, though it was he whose hands were braceleted behind him, he who languished, banded, in the dharen’s most impregnable prison.

  I put my lips to his ear, kissed a spot upon his neck that had been much between us. “Is there anything I can do?” I whispered. “None can hear us, except perhaps Khys himself.” And at those words, I formed it, a shield mean
t for Carth, who doubtless listened beyond the gold-flickered walls.

  “No,” the cahndor said slowly, his nose in my hair. “It is ours to do, and ours alone.”

  “I, too have grievances.”

  “Be easy,” he advised severely. “Seek owkahen and make yourself ready. Though I cannot see, I have seen.” His eyes gleamed, and the membranes snapped sharply back and forth across them. As of old, when none stood above him, spoke the chosen son of Tar-Kesa. And I knew then that he yet stalked.

  “I might be of some little use,” I pressed him. “A timely visit, surely, would not prove unwelcome.” I had, already, a suitable plan. My hands went to the chain that safed the borrowed cloak at my throat, that I might implement it.

  “That,” warned Chayin, his lips nibbling my ear, “most of all, you must not do.”

  I had thought to discard my cloak. Upon pretext returning to claim it, I would have acquired the rest of the lock’s combination from Carth’s mind. I had half already.

  “You must go with Khys, Estri. Accompany him from the Lake of Horns. Trust us. Do as I say.” His lips hardly moved. His whisper was dialectic Parset. And thought I had boasted that my shield could protect us, I wondered.

  “As you wish it, Cahndor.” I agreed, rising. Khys had informed me that our travels were not yet done. Chayin directed me now to accompany the dharen elsewhere. The sort, so clear to them, sat easy with the hest shown to me on the sands by the Keening Rock.

  I stared down at Chayin, the bound dorkat. And I was greatly saddened. Such a wild thing should never know collar and cage. And yet, he knew them not, in his conception. I shook my head in answer to his carnivorous grin, trying to retain my solemnity. But his called its mate onto my face. We had no need of sensing skills, Chayin and I. We had well known each other when neither would employ them. We had been, then, naive. But we had found, in those times, means of communication other than words. I had seen the cahndor, before, upon the kill.

  “I must go, Chayin, before I become certain enough to be a danger,” I said, turning from him. I felt his eyes upon me as I crossed to the padded, featureless door and pounded upon it.

  “Tasa, Estri,” growled Chayin. “Keep safe. We are short of crells in Nemar.”

  I flushed, my back to him. My hand, of its own volition, sought Khys’s device upon my breast. The door opened before me. As I stepped through, I spoke over my shoulder once more. “I will try to get you uris, lest you sweat to death,” I promised, stepping into the hall.

  When Carth’s eyes rose from securing the lock, mine met them, accusing.

  “You cannot withold uris from him. You might as well savage him as you did Sereth, and put him in yit-infested cell thirty-five, if you do that.”

  Carth looked away. “Speak to me,” I jeered, “arrar, council member, vessel of justice and truth, explain to me this which you have shown me today. You and ten others you say, all highly skilled, did this?” I spat, “You must be deaf to your own teachings, to do such a thing.” My fists wrapped in my chald. I waited. It took a time before Carth found words.

  “You asked me also what kept Khys so long at the lakeside,” he reminded me finally. “I will tell you that, if you will walk with me.” His voice was very grave. “But ask me no questions of fitness. I have as yet come to no conclusions. I have my doubts, but I am undecided. When I have taken stance upon this matter, you will be the first to know.” He met my gaze, unshrinking.

  I let him take my arm, and we walked the hallway toward the stairs that led down to Khys’s chambers.

  “Khys,” said Carth in the tone of a man who hopes to make sense of a thing for himself by attempting to explain it to another, “has long had problems with Gherein. And even longer has he been aware that someday it would come to this. But he was loath to do what needed done. He and others have suffered many indignities because of Gherein. Vedrast, whom Gherein swayed to his thinking, was not the only one. Such diversity to opinion within a group that links minds cannot long be sustained.” He cast his eyes about the passage, his mouth a crooked line drawn dark across his face ..

  “Khys had come to this decision previous to your abduction. I believe, at this moment, that he even knew of it. But he waited, that he might have proof. In such affairs, it is well to obtain incontrovertible evidence.”

  “He did not need it, seemingly, with Vedrast,” I interrupted.

  “You do not understand. Gherein is the dharen’s most vehement detractor. He leads some few others. He is volatile, unstable, contumacious, amoral, and exceptionally talented. He is sterile. He is Khys’s son.”

  We were passing a benched alcove. I sought it. “And what I wrote, what Khys’s Estri wrote ...” Nor was that all that had been revealed to me by Carth’s words.

  He smiled grimly. “We are dealing with it now. We have been coming aware. But until Khys replaced lake-born with a mixed-bred upon his council, none dared speak of it. Between father and son, that was the final insult. Gherein was more than ready, with his M’ksakkan pawns. His stance in the time is never faulty, only his use of it. When Khys put a child upon you, and that child matched his expectations, Gherein had to act. He felt his ascendancy in danger. And well it might be!” With those words he confirmed what I had seen. Over me, and the spawn of my womb, had Khys and his favored son come to contest.

  “Khys loves him?” I ventured.

  “Doubtless. He has resisted any number of attacks personal and public, by Gherein. Rumor has it that thrice he has allowed the son to engage him in combat. And that thrice he has gifted him again with life.”

  “But not this time.” I murmured. I recollected Gherein’s attempt to destroy me, while about my assessment. And those things he had said to me when I had been Khys’s Estri, all uncomprehending. At the feast had he spoken to me. And also there came into my mind what Khys had said to Sereth that evening. I had been there when Khys had made the decision to set Sereth upon Gherein. Even did I recall Gherein’s words and manner to his father from a new perspective. “Sereth once said to me, when I criticized his treatment of his son Tyith, that although someday the boy might be able to knock the sword from his grasp upon the second stroke, until then it was necessary for both of them to know that he could not.”

  “With lake-born, things are not so simple. Time is the weapon; will, the sharpness of its edge.”

  “And yet the weapon is no more than the wielder.” I quoted again the Ebvrasea. “And owkahen the circle into which we all daily step,” I added, of myself.

  Carth picked a thread from his robe. “Khys has not yet apprehended Gherein, though some feel it was the first councilman he sought while he was elsewhere, these last days. When he viewed Sereth and Chayin, and spoke to them, he was more wrathful than I have ever seen him. He reiterated that he would treat them exactly as he would treat Gherein. It was the sentence he had threatened them with that afternoon they sat by the body of Liuma. Witnesses had heard it. He could not do otherwise. He will not,” he cautioned me.

  “Must you monitor me so conscientiously?”

  “Yes, I must. I serve him still.”

  “And I serve him also. I go now to do so.” I rose from him in speedy leave-taking. “If ever you free yourself of his yoke,” I called back, “and take up your life into your own hands, seek me. Until then, keep an enth between us.”

  And I ran down the hall, away from him. Keep an enth between us. It is an old, old saying, derived from an older proverb that states the value of maintaining an enth’s lead upon the now. If one can but be appraised one enth into the furture, all worth knowing will come to be possessed aforetime. And one might then comport oneself with fitness, in accordance to the exigencies of the sort. The worthy man, fleeing his pursuers, seeketh only that.

  I grinned upon the stairs. It had been the proper insult at the most efficacious moment. We would see what effect my work had had upon Carth’s shaken sense of fitness, what further erosion might be wrought upon his surety. When a man feels the meetness of his actio
ns, none can sway him. When he does not, he drifts from one master’s hand to another, seeking outside himself for what he cannot find within. The need for lightness in the self cannot forever be denied, I thought, in a man like Carth. It had been all I could do to so convincingly deride him. But it had been necessary, lest he catch the complicity within me. I had turned him inward, which always serves. One cannot focus one’s attention in two places at once.

  Upon the stair’s landing I halted, smoothed back my hair. Closing my eyes, I took a number of measured breaths. Before Khys, I must mobilize all that remained of my abilities. When I felt confident of my composure, when I had surveyed as best I could owkahen, I assayed the walk down that passage of ornithalum and archite squares. Past the hulion tapestry to the double thala doors I moved at measured pace, awaiting the moment.

  The doors were ajar. Within, I heard sounds of converse. I smiled, a mere baring of teeth. Alone in the corridor, there were none to see it. Within, the voices grew low, sporadic.

  It was not yet time. I separated my hair, brought half over my left shoulder. One must come down the passage first. Once more, I closed my eyes and awaited him.

  The voices in the keep were silent when the blond arrar that had bound me and left me leashed to couch in the forereader’s keep approached. It was as I had envisioned it. I motioned him closer. Three strides distant he was when I slipped between the doors into the dharen’s keep.

  It was shadowy in the keep. But for them. The entrapped stars were dead or spent for weapons. They opposed each other, glowing. Fire whirled in the air between them. Agonized was Gherein’s countenance as he faced his father across that whirling conflagration. Khys’s back was to us. Every muscle upon it stood high and ridged, and great shivers of flame coursed over his flesh.