Bright of the Sky (19 page)

He looked at the palm of his hand, silver in the gloaming light of the sky’s embers.

Oh yes, Sydney, he thought. We’re going home. And when we do, we’ll have a safe haven where no one will ever own us again.

CHAPTER TEN

To keep the harmony of the Entire, the gracious lords set forth the
Radiant Path. By keeping to the Radiant Path, all beings may
rise to a station of happiness.

    
The path is comprised of the vows, the bonds, and the clari-ties.
Each child must learn the Three Vows and the Thousand
Bonds. The legates keep the great pandect of the laws at the
bright city, within the Magisterium.

    
This is the Radiant Path. When all walk together, no sentient
being is without hope. All may become masters, magistrates,
prefects, soldiers of the Long War, legates, consuls, factors, and
stewards, according to ability. No master may deny the least sentient
his hope to do and be as he wishes, within the Path. No sentient,
crossing from one sway to another, becomes a servant by
reason of being a stranger. There are no strangers on the Radiant
Path, not even the Inyx, who cannot speak.

    
All may be legates and scholars, according to their gifts.
This is decreed by the gracious lords, that no sway bring violence
to another sway. Thus is the Peace of the Entire assured.

—from
The Book of the Thousand Gifts

D
UST BOILING, HOOVES CRASHING
, the two of them sped over the flat land, exulting in the noise and speed.

Sydney rode the thundering beast, whipping his sides with her crop, because he enjoyed the blows and liked his rider to like it. She’d pay for the pain she’d inflicted when they got back to the encampment. This was their twisted relationship, but it, or something like it, was all a prisoner of the Inyx could hope for. They wanted no equals. The Inyx wanted to run, and be ridden. Sydney was a good match for them in one crucial way: She loved to ride.

Glovid’s hooves spit stones as he galloped, his ears flattened against the wind, his eyes mere slits against the glint of the bright. They had been running a long while, and still the hard-packed dunes were as distant as ever, so Glovid’s eyes told his rider.

Blind since childhood, Sydney saw through the beast’s eyes a flickering version of the world—fragmentary, yet vivid. Assimilating those volatile projections was a skill all riders learned from necessity. By this means she saw the far-flung steppe, roamlands of the Inyx. No one came to this sway unless they were bonded to an Inyx, and all came blind, because the stinking beasts wanted their riders dependent on them.

She held tight to the rear horn on Glovid’s spine. It had been whittled down, or her hands would be red meat by now. His row of forward-curving horns would serve Glovid well when he fought for a mate. Next time perhaps a female Inyx would cull him permanently from the herd with her even longer horns.

Her knees tucked into the creature’s sides as they entered a pockmarked terrain where, if she fell, she could break her head open on the rocks. A saddle would have helped stability, but Glovid disliked the feel of them.

“Haagh!” she cried, lashing the beast’s flank, and he galloped mightily, excited by her excitement, pleased by her lust for speed.

She felt his exultation. She would have denied him the pleasure of knowing her mind. But there was no way to hide her thoughts from Glovid, or any other Inyx who cared to take a peek. Though, in truth, the beasts didn’t pay much attention to the thoughts of their riders, any more than, once, Sydney had cared what her pet hamster was thinking . . . in that other life, lived far away.

Glovid stumbled. In the next second she was flying over Glovid’s head, crashing to the ground. She landed hard, but rolled out of it, stunned. The wind flattened her hair, blowing grit into her eyes.

Her mount trumpeted in pain. Following this sound, she found him collapsed, with one leg shattered at the fetlock. Bone protruded, Glovid’s terrified vision told her. So. He would never join the herd again. His burial mound would be here.

Kneeling next to him, she imagined his horsey face, the liquid green eyes, his long neck with its curving horns, a being once powerful, now cringing. A dozen taunts came to mind, but they lost their flavor as Glovid grew nauseated with pain. She felt some of it as her own, bringing her the sudden insight that the herd’s solidarity sprang from shared pain as well as shared thoughts.

Kill me
, Glovid said.

She’d known he would ask that, but she hesitated. He could possibly be mended. The sway would have to send for a Tarig physician, because this break was beyond the surgeons in the roamlands. The camp’s healer, Aarika, would never try to set an Inyx compound fracture.

At the thought of a Tarig doctor, Glovid sent,
Kill me, I said.

No one would blame her. They knew Glovid commanded it. Stepping forward, she unsheathed the knife at her belt. “Lay your head on the ground.” She would have to press down with both hands to sever the thick tendons in his neck.

Glovid obeyed.
Many days to you, small rose
, he thought to her.

He knew she hated that nickname. Small rose. Somehow, in his twisted mind, he thought she was proud of her sway. He was wrong. But now her mind was on the thing she had to do.

“Good-bye, Glovid,” she said. “That last ride was very good.”

Placing her hands first on his neck to feel the throb of the large artery, she carefully lifted the knife straight up and then she plunged it down, ripping through his hide. Twisting the blade, she sawed at the throat until the blade hit the artery.

He bled swiftly, losing consciousness. In a few moments he was beyond his days.

She wiped the blade and her reeking hands on Glovid’s hide. Kneeling on the hard pan, she gathered her thoughts. Soon another mount would lay claim to her. He might be better or worse than Glovid, but what did that matter? Nothing was truly bad, except the lords of this world. She had hated them from her first glimpse of their stretched bodies, their skin like polished copper, and faces as cruel as their hands. Their hands. One hand could hold a small child immobile, while the other hand was free to be cruel . . . with great precision, taking her sight, cradling her in an elbow joint like a vise.

No, the Inyx were nothing compared to the mantis lords.

After the day of her blinding, she had longed to die. Her parents were dead, she thought, leaving her alone in a hated world. She hadn’t seen them since the Tarig captured them in the underground place where they were hiding and where they had pierced the Entire. A good way to die would be to throw herself from the outer deck of the Ascendancy.

The old woman had been summoned the day that Sydney stood on the edge of the balcony, having crossed the barrier, and held on fiercely as the winds yanked at her. The woman spoke a halting English, and promised her that no Tarig would approach her. She said that if Sydney came away from the rim, she could have a pet to keep; and then, if she still wished to jump, she could do so tomorrow. So Sydney went with her and learned that the woman, who was barely taller than herself, was named Cixi, and that she was important. It was Cixi who taught her of her father’s betrayal, and her mother’s, when it came, and that they weren’t worth dying for. She also taught her never to call the bright lords bad names, although when Sydney was sent to the Inyx, Cixi broke down and called them
fiends
.

Now, sitting next to Glovid’s body, she tilted her head to the sky, to judge the time of day by the heat of the bright. It was Heart of Day, she guessed. The system of time was based on eighths. Eight phases of the bright, each with a name:
Early
,
Prime
,
Heart
, and
Last
. And then of ebb-time,
Twilight
,
Shadow
,
Deep
, and
Between
. And each of the phases was four hours long. All sentients could judge the time of day, and the time of ebb, by internal design. All except Sydney.

Now, deep onto the steppe-lands, she was riderless and in jeopardy. She hefted her water bag to calculate her water supply. Not enough. She could wait until Twilight to walk back, to conserve water loss. But which direction? Flickers of the herd came to her, without directionality. They sent their thoughts to her, and also lapped at her mind. She was passive in these interactions. She knew that the stronger her feelings, the more likely they were to listen to her thoughts. So she could attract their attention, but not truly send.

One thing was clear. They knew that Glovid had fallen.

She began walking, perhaps even in the right direction, by the wind, by the strength of the herd’s sendings. She doubted the herd would come for her.

The mounts had once thought her worth the trouble. But that was long ago, before they grew weary of her. Priov, chief of the Inyx, kept her to avoid offending the Tarig. But few wanted her. Glovid was the latest to give her a try. Seeing how he ended up, perhaps he would be the last.

The wind was shifting around to blow from heartward, the center of the Entire, which was a radial universe. The topography of the world was burned into her mind. Someday she would need a good map, and her mind was constructing it, piece by piece.

The geometries of the Entire were simple. The main forms were the five
primacies
. This primacy was called the Long Gaze of Fire, enormous beyond comprehending, beyond traveling, beyond hope. Here she was as far from the Tarig in their city as Earth was from the pole star. The primacies radiated outward from a central core. She thought that such a land as this must somehow exist within the Rose universe, side by side with it, or tunneling through it. But some of her fellow riders claimed that the Entire could not extend
through
something, since it was All that existed. They scoffed at the idea of the other universe, although they held in their midst one who was born there. Truly, her fellow stablemates were dumb as dreds in the Rose.

Branching from the primacies were the small
minorals
. Narrow and deserted, the minorals were occupied only sporadically, and only at the tips, the reaches, where scholars worked.

Smaller still than a minoral were the
nascences
, growing out of the minorals like root hairs. Highly unstable, they could close up quickly, or lie crackling with energy for thousands of days. If you wished to kill yourself, that was a good place to go. But in the Entire, death was easier to come by than that.

Each primacy had a great river along one wall. In all primacies, it was called the River Nigh, the mysterious flow that, together with the bright, was the Tarig’s invention, to allow normal life and travel, in this land as vast as a universe. Such things had seemed a story when she was nine, and newly born into the immortal realm. By now, it was the map of her world, the only world worth knowing about. So, by her internal map, she was heading away from the River Nigh, and down-primacy. By these crude calculations she could walk for a thousand days and not see another soul.

But
a thousand days
was just a turn of phrase. In reality, one could never walk the length of a primacy. A primacy had no absolute length. Around the campfire, in the ebb, the riders talked of regions of twisted space-land—the Empty Lands—where geography was distorted into ever-changing patterns. You might cross a plain in ten days or in ten thousand. But you would never arrive on the other side, so it might as well be an eternity. Only the Nigh could bring you to the ends of the Entire. But of the lands where one
could
walk, even these were endless, and mostly empty, although countless billions of sentients called the Entire home.

Already her feet hurt. She wasn’t used to walking.
Yes, my feet hurt, you
stinking, stupid beasts.
She couldn’t send her thoughts to them, but it was her habit to try.

The plains hummed. In the soles of her feet she felt a gentle throb. Gradually, it became more insistent. So they were coming for her, after all. That would save a very long walk. Despite herself, she was glad—even counting all the injuries from them that she had recorded in her book.

At length she could hear them, the drumming of their hooves on the hard pan. Finally, she smelled the dust rise up, and then the sweat of their bodies around her.

It was a small pack of them, perhaps forty mounts. Some of them bore riders, the scum of the sways—a filthy and course mixture of species. Emotions, thoughts, and images assaulted her from all sides. The Inyx peppered her with thoughts, and relayed their riders’ thoughts, and it came into Sydney’s mind as noise, with a few spikes of clarity.

The mounts with riders sped past her, heading for Glovid’s body, but a few solo Inyx stayed. She heard them snort to catch their breaths. One of them sent,
You are unbonded now.

“Yes.” She wouldn’t beg. Some of the riders who’d lost mounts were content to stay in the stables and eke out an existence. But Sydney wanted to ride. Some of the mounts knew this.

A hoof struck the ground. One Inyx had already decided to bid for her. A powerful surge of emotion came to her. Riod, the creature’s name was. Not a good prospect. He was a renegade who often was crossways with Priov, sniffing at the edges of Priov’s band of mares. No, Riod was crazy. Young, brash, and hated by Priov and others who thought he didn’t know his place.

Again, the hoof struck the ground.

She waited. Other Inyx stood there with him. Four others, she guessed. Why had they come, unless they were interested in competing for her? But there was no jostling and mock fighting. Only Riod signaled his intention.

As Sydney stood before the giant mounts, her legs stiffened and grew tired. She tasted the wind, and the scents of the Inyx. She must respond to this offer from Riod. If one of them wanted you, and you weren’t bonded already, then it was in your best interests to ride that mount. You would learn to care for it. Most of the riders preferred male mounts, because they could offer more protection, being stronger and not subject to the bearing of foal, as infrequent as that was.