Unto Zeor, Forever

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  Roshi took their approval between his hands and proclaimed, “The only ones fit to pledge Rior are the ones who survive transfer without a channel’s intervention. The unfit Gens must die. Ilyana, have you forgotten that the Tecton saves the unfit to breed? The human race is still in the process of mutating. Save enough of the unfit, and the whole race will be unfit.”

  Ilyana turned on him. “Unfit? Roshi, you are unfit. I am unfit. There is no strain among us that is less fit to survive than the Farris strain.”

  “But I am alive, and so are you.”

  “Only because I brought Digen Farris—a surgeon and a channel—to Rior. You and everyone else here would be dead of your own stupid scheme to kill them with disease if it weren’t for Digen—and Joel. And Im’ran. Think about that. The Tecton reached out and saved you from the fate you stupidly planned for them.” Her anger was growing beyond her control.

  “Not so stupid,” said Roshi. “It would have killed only those who couldn’t divorce themselves from dependency on the channels the very thing about the Tecton that Rior stands against. Rior itself would have been immune because we keep our contacts within our own families. But you had to parade your tame channel in that—that—cloak you made for him, on the only day when such—behavior is sanctioned—and you did that against the expressed order of the Regent in Rior!”

  “And I’m glad that I did—even though it killed most of my friends—because if I’d known what you were doing, Roshi, on our father’s grave, I swear, I would have killed you with my own hands!”

  The power of her underdrawn nager went into that oath and every Sime in the room became drenched in cold sweat, knowing that she would have done it and what it would have done to her.

  She turned to the audience. “Since the Battle of Leander Field—since Muryin Farris came to us—it has not been Rior’s way to attack and destroy. It is enough that we stand proudly as an example of the best life man can live. That is what you pledged to me when you pledged Unto Rior. And that is what my life stands for, as Sosectu in Rior. I stand before you now, well and in my strength, and ask—no, I demand--that you set aside the Regency and place Rior back in my hands. By our charter, no Sime can be Head of Householding Rior.”

  Roshi strode to the edge of the stage. “A vote, then, sister? Very well, all in favor of being ruled by a Gen, say so.”

  There was absolute dead silence save for a timorous noise or two from the few Gens scattered among the majority of Simes.

  Roshi said to Ilyana, “Our great-grandmother was a fool. And to the audience, “Those in favor of the Regency?”

  A roar went up, and when it was over Roshi said, “Then things shall remain as they have been this past year.”

  Ilyana, the anger compressed now to a dull burning coal, said, “If you reject Muryin, then you also reject Hugh Valleroy and all he stood for, because Muryin returned us to his original principles. And if you reject those, then you also reject Rior itself and stand foresworn.”

  There was an uncomfortable rustling in the room, but no movement to change the vote. Ilyana was flying in the face of the deepest Sime instincts. Roshi, whatever else he might be, had led these Simes in a raid and had blooded them. He had shared their need and the fulfillment of it. There were few bonds stronger than that.

  Over her head, Roshi spotted Digen standing in shadow by the doors, perceiving even at that distance Digen’s need matching Ilyana’s replete nager. “She’s off her head again, Digen, come and take her. You both need it.”

  Ilyana twisted around, aware of Digen for the first time. Even across the sea of Gens and Simes, their nageric linkage operated to phase them perfectly. The strain of the distance between them made every Sime squirm with sympathetic need.

  A pathway opened before Digen, leading to the stage, but before he could step out, Ilyana said, her anger shrinking to a focused point within her, leashed and controlled now as Digen had never seen it before, “Then let the House of Rior be razed to the ground and its remains cursed for a hundred years!”

  With a patronizing exasperation, Roshi muttered, “Underdraw…,” and made as if to help his raving sister off the stage. But she wrenched her elbow away and jumped down, striding away without a backward glance. It was the first time since Digen had known her that she had made an exit in anger in which she didn’t leave every Sime literally stunned senseless.

  As she stalked past blindly, Digen caught her up in his arms, motioning Im’ran over between them and the crowd. On the stage, Roshi had the shiltpron player stroking up a soothing rhythm. Digen, already melting into the edges of trautholo, found all his prepared words evaporating from his lips, unspoken. She needed him now, not just in transfer but for all the strength his own ordeal had given him. He wanted to pour his strength into her as he drank of her nager.

  But she allowed them only a moment’s joining, and then, with that sure, instinctive control, she broke the trautholo with an utterly painless flick of her nager.

  Dizzy with it, Digen fought to gather himself together and asked, “Why…?”

  “I know, I know, Digen, but I have something I must do downstairs.” She deftly extricated herself from Digen’s grip, her surface a wispy gentleness, her core a banked furnace of undischarged anger. She couldn’t serve transfer in that condition. Reluctantly Digen let her go.

  She gave Im’ran’s wrist a little squeeze. “Take him home for me, Im’, and keep care of him.”

  Digen came out of his daze to find Im’ran stationing himself at his left, staring after her. “What’s downstairs, Digen?”

  “I don’t know. Storerooms, the armory, some offices—oh, their memorial. She could use an hour or so there right now. She’s just buried her house.” On their flight from Westfield they had stopped at a public memorial, where Digen had laid to rest his own house. “She’ll come when she’s able. This is something she has to do alone.”

  Digen looked to the shiltpron player, who had raised the tempo back to the raucous, provocative level. “Let’s get out of here, Im’. That’s vile.”

  On the paths under the trees, it was so dark that Digen had to guide Im’ran by the elbow. The fanir’s nager was grave, brooding. Digen said, “Talk to me. Keep my mind off—things.” He guided Im’ran’s fingers along the soft, swollen ronaplin glands. “I’ve never been so high intil in my life, and I’m not used to denial anymore. I’ve fallen out of discipline. That’s some admission from the Sectuib in Zeor, huh?”

  “The Sectuib in Zeor? Digen, Ilyana will pledge to you now—she’ll come back with us, and everything will be all right.” As he spoke, Im’ran leashed Digen’s need and brought it under firm control.

  Digen paused at a bend in the path, shaking his head. “She’s got a long way to go before she can pledge the opposite of Rior. Believe me, I know that path backwards and forwards now. It may require more strength than she has in her, after all she’s been through.”

  “You made it. She will—somehow.”

  “I wish I could believe that, because—she’s all I have left of value in my life. Except you—and the Tecton will take you away the minute we get back.”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  Down in the valley, houses were still burning brightly. One collapsed in a shower of sparks, some catching in the stubble of harvested wheat.

  “You realize,” said Digen, “we’ll have to prevent them from raiding again.”

  “Yes,” said Im’ran, “of course. We’ll think of something.”

  At that moment the main hall blew up.

  Gouts of fire burst upward, bulging the walls outward, sending roof and walls flying like stick kindling. The flash and roar reached Digen and Im’ran a split instant before the furnace heat washed over them and a rain of burning sticks came down out of the sky to set trees, underbrush, and houses afire. A second explosion and then a third rent the air, a veritable geyser of fire leaping upward and outward from the hall.

  Digen screamed.

  The moment of Ilyana’s d
eath ripped through him as if his nerves had all been torn out by the roots. He screamed and screamed, as if his own body were a burning torch. And he never felt himself hit the gravel.

  Ilyana’s arms under his laterals, her lips against his nageric linkage more firm than ever in life. “I’m sorry, Digen, I’m sorry to leave you like this. But Zeor is still pledged to you. You must go back, bring Rior’s ideals to Zeor—to the Tecton—finish the job, Digen—finish it for both of us. We must not fail.”

  She thrust him inexorably away from her and flashed past him, her voice fading—“Unto Zeor, and Rior—Forever!”

  Digen felt himself falling, falling, falling into a black pit of death and torment. Falling and falling, screaming out, “Ilyana, don’t leave me! Ilyana!”

  Falling and falling, his screams inarticulate, his panic boundless, Digen raked out to every side to save himself. Something…pushed back. Something bounded him, limited him, caught and held him steady.

  With a shock, he was in his body, numb and bewildered, his heart pounding with fear, but he held firm. The fanir’s nager linked hard and deep into him as never before. Digen’s throat, raw with spent screams, rattled once more, and then, Im’ran made full lip contact, all barriers flat open to Digen’s draw, all Digen’s laterals secure to Im’ran’s fields.

  Selyn began to flow, without Digen’s active will. The sensation was instant balm to each cell it touched, and it awakened a blaze of selyn hunger in every cell of his body. He drew then, full out on pure instinct. A moment, and then the flows unbalanced and Digen shook all over with incipient shen, but before the tension had fully gathered, the flow righted under Im’ran’s will, fed across Digen’s scarred lateral with perfect synchrony. Digen drowned again in the glory—He can see!

  And this time Digen didn’t stop short of his full capacity draw. Im’ran supplied every dynopter Digen could take with a comfortable margin left over. But, strain as he might, Digen could not get the flow to divert into the junct pathways, burning and aching though they were.

  Im’ran gave him an orhuen consummation transfer in the strictest Tecton style, and held firm against all Digen could do.

  He came out of it with his handling tentacles digging crushingly into Im’ran’s arms, shaking the Gen so hard that their lip contact broke off. There was blood against the Gen’s teeth from Digen’s ferocious straining for that one last bit, the junct touch.

  Im’ran waited patiently for Digen to pry his own tentacles away from the contacts. Digen, stiff with strain and gasping audibly, dismantled his grip while all about them trees had begun to blaze. The very air reverberated to death cries, a nageric pall rising from the towering flames at the center of the conflagration. Ash sifted down all around them.

  Digen caught his breath, choking, and touched the Gen’s bruised forearm. I did that. “I’m sorry.” He gave me his all, and it’s not—quite—enough.

  A burning branch fell behind them and Im’ran flinched, saying, “Let’s get out of here.”

  Digen shook his head. “You go. I can’t move.”

  Im’ran got his shaking legs under him and struggled to stand. He reached down and took Digen’s hand, to pull him to his feet. The moment their flesh met, the nageric static of orhuen post-reaction snapped like static electricity discharging. Swearing, Im’ran pulled at Digen’s coat until he had the channel on his feet.

  Tilting Digen’s limp body into a fireman’s carry, he heaved him up to his shoulders and made for the outskirts of the settlement. Somewhere down that long tunnel of fire and ashes, out of the valley, down the cliffside path, through drenching waterfall and across the open forest Digen lost consciousness. The oblivion was the greatest blessing ever bestowed, for it wiped away the insistent liturgy in his head: Why didn’t he just let me die?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THE WAY HOME

  Digen woke to the sun on his face and the quiet chatter of a mountain stream nearby. He lay wrapped in blankets on the gravel of the stream bank. A little fire burned inside a ring of rocks, water boiling in a small camp pot. He was alone.

  Ilyana. No, she’s dead. She’s dead. She’s dead.

  Inside himself, he felt the raw ends of the uprooted lortuen—but somehow they’d been sealed—“cauterized” was the English descriptive that came to mind. After a while he recognized it as a Zeor technique he had so long ago taught Im’ran. She’s really gone—dead.

  Im’ran? He felt a shiver of fear at being alone in this condition.

  There was still the afterimage of Im’ran’s nager. Looking about, Digen picked up the Gen’s distinctive pattern coming toward him along the stream bed. In moments, he was in sight and then kneeling beside Digen.

  “Can you move, Digen?”

  Digen drew the cold air deep into the bottom of his lungs and forced his gluey eyes open. He flexed his arms and legs, finding the weakness and near paralysis of the postlortuen break almost gone. He sat up, kneading the back of his neck. “Apparently I can.”

  “Good,” said Im’ran, looking at the high mountains all around them. “Because this is where they caught us before. We can’t stay here. But—we had to get our camp gear, as much as they left intact.”

  Digen too scanned the mountainsides. “There’s nobody up there in the guard stations now.”

  Im’ran shrugged. “There must be some survivors. Not everybody was in the main hall. They’ll be in a vengeful mood. But—maybe we’ll have time for some breakfast.” He held up what he’d been carrying. A naked rabbit carcass. “I’m going to roast it. You’d better move upwind if the smell’s going to get to you.”

  Digen swallowed his gorge. He had lived many years among the carnivorous Gens out-Territory. Meat was a natural food to them. It surprised him how quickly he’d lost his conditioning. And then it surprised him that Im’ran had managed to overcome an in-Territory upbringing to such a degree.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Digen. I wouldn’t be here at all if—Joel—hadn’t taught me this.”

  “We owe him a lot,” said Digen.

  “Yes,” said Im’ran, then shook himself. “It’s over.”

  Im’ran busied himself spitting the carcass. Digen noted the sooty smoke still pouring from the valley hidden away above them. “You carried me all that way?”

  “Believe it or not, you walked part of the way, but I don’t think you were really conscious.”

  “I don’t remember—except flashes. A weird bush. Didn’t we fall down a shale hill?”

  “Nothing broken, though. Before we leave, I want to bathe your legs again in the stream. We’ve both got a lot of scrapes and bruises under the film of soot.”

  Digen pushed himself to his feet, feeling the shredded cloth of his trousers scrape over raw skin. He ambled upwind as the rabbit fat dripped, smoking, into the fire. He felt so weak that he had to sit down on a log, wrapped around and shivering in the blankets. After a bit, Im’ran handed him a steaming tin cup.

  “Tea?” asked Digen, smelling it.

  “Sort of. It’s a little raw. We found a trin bush after our supplies were washed away in a flash flood, the one that killed our third pack horse. I kind of improvised. Joel never cared much for trin.”

  Digen sipped. It wasn’t bad. “It’s an acquired taste.”

  There was a long silence while Im’ran ate his roasted rabbit, feeding Digen bits of dried fruit and a handful of nuts. Then, as Im’ran began striking camp, kicking the fire out, making backpacks of the sparse equipment, Digen felt strangely as if he had come from the moment on the front porch when he’d fallen ill with the shaking plague directly to this moment, and all that had gone between had been only nightmare. “Did it really happen, Im’ran—all of it—all of them, dead?”

  Im’ran stopped what he was doing and went to Digen. He knew that the channel had been in shock, and the death of a lortuen mate could easily throw him into a mental breakdown from which he’d never recover. “Yes, Digen. It all happened. It was real.”

  “The Distec
t is dead, then. Zeor has to live. It has to, Im’.”

  Im’ran went down on one knee at Digen’s feet. “Zeor has never been in danger. It has a life of its own, apart from the existence of you or me. But we can’t exist apart from Zeor, Digen, neither of us.”

  Digen frowned, puzzled by Im’ran’s choice of phrase. “Neither of us?”

  “I’ve left Imil, Digen. I retrieved my pledge from Asquith before we left on this search, though it cost me everything I owned. Maybe I shouldn’t have let you introduce me as Companion in Imil up there. Because I’m not anymore. I’m houseless.”

  Digen understood then. Im’ran hadn’t wanted anything personal between them to affect Digen’s decision to go back. Imrahan—pure Tecton, through and through, and satisfied to be so.

  “Bett was ready to accept my pledge, provisionary, as Acting Head of Householding—but I wouldn’t. Digen, you are my Sectuib—if you’ll have me, stained by killing a channel, lying to you by omission, losing the Gen I was assigned to protect.”

  “Im’ran—” Helpless, Digen just shook his head. “Aren’t we all stained by misdeeds, aren’t we all imperfect, crippled? Is that an excuse not to swear ambrov to Zeor?”

  “Zeor stands against all these things.”

  “Zeor is not the pledge to be perfect—it’s the pledge to never cease struggling toward perfection.”

  Im’ran, reaching for a deeper nageric link, touched Digen’s hand. A small discharge of static flung their touch apart. Fretfully, Im’ran said, “What is that!”

  Digen looked at the finger Im’ran had touched.

  “Im’ran—Im’—you mean you didn’t know what you were doing? Oh, Im’ran, how could any Sectuib refuse the house pledge of his own orhuen partner? How?”

  “Orhuen?” said Im’ran blankly. “Oh. Oh! I didn’t mean—”

  Digen said, “It’s the only reason I’m still alive, so don’t apologize.” Digen looked at his hands, making a sour face. “Well,” said Digen, “if you can stand it long enough to pledge—I’m game.” He grinned, a fierce challenge to the universe, and seized Im’ran’s hands for the pledge.