The Golden Sword (20 page)

The Nemarchan wept copiously, her face pressed to Chayin’s chest. He stroked her multiplaited black hair, from which the emerald cloth had fallen. His eyes met mine, and he rolled his upward. I was not amused. I sat back among the mats in the apprei’s darkest corner before Liuma regained her self-control and raised her perfect face, somehow unmarked by tears, from his shoulder. I had to admit she was beautiful, with her delicate, almost miniature features and those huge evening eyes set aslant in her head.

She sank down before Chayin and put her head to his feet.

“Please, Chay, please do not send me away,” came her muffled voice, soft but distinct from beneath the hundred plaits of her hair. “Whatever you feel for me, you would not slay your son.” By this time Chayin was on his knees beside her, his arms about her shoulders, trying to raise her up. This the Nemarchan allowed, and now her face shone wet with tears. “He is your son! No matter what you think! If you were not so ill”—she smiled bravely, reached out her hand to touch his mouth with a trembling finger—“you would know it. The child is yours. I am yours. Do not send us away.” And she again collapsed against him where he knelt beside her.

“I thought it what you wanted, Liuma,” he said, stroking her head helplessly. “It matters not to me whose the child is. It is enough that Nemar has an official heir. And Menetph, too.” His voice was all confusion. “This is no banishment, but a chance for you to rule your own life and do that which you choose.” He grasped her by the shoulders and held her at arm’s length, and I turned my head to the apprei wall and wished desperately that I were elsewhere.

“It has been long since there was more than politeness between us, Liuma. I am overwhelmed by this sudden show of devotion.” His words were strong, but his voice betrayed him. He coughed. “I cannot change this arrangement. I have given my word. Surely Hael did not send you here to refuse it.”

“No. He cannot see what lies before his face. I know what you are doing!” Furiously she wrenched her shoulders from his grasp. “I saw. You and the northern woman! I will not die the death you have in mind for me! I will not!” And she got to her feet, and her midnight eyes flashed. “The uritheria and the hulion, upon the plain before a place of rainbow towers! And the opening sky, and you and Hael! I saw it all! Even the vengeance He will wreak upon us all for your defiance! By all you hold sacred, Chayin, keep me and our child at your side. It is our only hope!”

Chayin rubbed his shoulder with his hand and got slowly to his feet. He stared down at her, and finally he shook his head slowly from side to side.

“You did see, Liuma. I had not thought you possessed that much skill.” And the confusion was gone from out of him. “But you only saw the beginning, or you would not ask me to do that which cannot be done. You must be in Menetph. I must be where I must be. The child will survive.”

“And Hael? And I? Even yourself, do you know that? Oh, please, forgive me!”

“Only that the child will live. That is the only assurance I have to give.” He spread his hands and dropped them at his side. “You were as much a part of the forming of this future as I. There is only that which will come to pass. There is no forgiveness or blame, no amnesty or safety, except what one’s own self can provide. Go now! This quaking before owkahen does not become you!”

And I saw the stunned disbelief in her face as he escorted her to the apprei’s entrance and beyond into the small knot of crells and guards that still waited there in the abrasive whining wind. It snapped the open flaps with a sound like the strike of a huija, and sand devils danced upon the mats and dust darkened the air. I paid it no mind, but lay watching as Chayin stood with Liuma leaning against him in the haze, and the crells who had been awaiting this moment entered the apprei to clean away the remains of our meal. In the process, one of them, a female, tripped in the flickering dust-hazed lamplight and sprawled among the cushions, showering me with crumbs and bones and dregs of kifra. I cursed her and leaped to my feet and kicked out at her as she knelt among the garbage, sending her sprawling, prostrate in the mess she had made.

By the time I had collected my temper, the crell had still not moved, but cowered, head pressed to the mat, buttocks in the air before me. Shame coursed hot through me, and I bade her clean up and get herself from my sight. I turned away and went to stand in the apprei’s doorway. Chayin still attended the Nemarchan, oblivious to the wind. The crells sidled by me with whispered excuses on their lips, eyes downcast. Chayin turned from Liuma, and two of the guards escorted her into the yellow ambience. The last crell, the clumsy one, had just finished her reparations, when Chayin crossed the apprei’s threshold. She went down upon her knees to him. He waved her up impatiently.

“Get you up and out of here, crell,” he dismissed her, holding the flap, which writhed and snapped with a life of its own. “It is thick as sucksand out there,” he said to me. But I had seen Khemi’s face as she rose and hurried out, and Chayin struggled with the flaps against the insistent wind.

I watched with folded arms as he jerked tight the knot and stalked around the apprei. He was as light as a M’ksakkan, all covered with the yellow dust. He threw himself down upon the mats and stared at the apprei’s undulating walls. Liuma had done her work well, and the veil was heavy upon him. After a time, I went to him, but he did not see me. I raised his head and slid my legs under. I ventured into his pain that I might lead him out of it, and there I met that probability of which Liuma had spoken, and it was nothing spawned of mortal conception. Uritheria blazed and writhed its anger against some great midnight beast for which a hulion might have been microscopic model, and that thing answered with breath of ice, and their roaring ripped apart the firmament, exposing the grids of nonspace apulse. There I found Chayin, he frozen with horror at what he would do, and it was all I could do to bring him back with me, against the current, as time-space poured through that hole the beasts had made in their death struggle, and plain and towers crumbled around us as we fled.

He reached up and put his hand on my neck, and I bent and kissed him. His face shone with sweat.

“How does one know,” he asked me softly, “which among them all is the right way? Who should die, and who should live? So many ways, and no criteria with which to choose between them.” He turned his head against my belly.

“I do not know,” I replied. “But I too seek that answer. If there ever was, some future in which all received benefit and none became sacrifice, it is no longer. With power, comes powerful burden.”

“And yet, one cannot refuse to choose, else we be but pawn in some other’s choosing.”

“Which might be worse than our own. I know too well.” I laughed bitterly. “It is a road upon which there is no turning back, for it forms before us as it dissolves behind. Layer upon layer of relevance, floating on a sea of chance, which recognizes only change. My father once told me that there is no value but the value one chooses, that which we manifest through our conception.”

“It was my conception that Liuma would take joy in that which I did.” He raised himself up upon one elbow, looking into my face. “Have I unknowing consigned her to her death?”

“Did you see it so?”

“Not hers. Hael’s or my own, but not hers. Was I blinded by what I would not accept?”

“Chayin, she plays with you. She saw what you saw and made a guess at what guilts could be pulled therefrom. Even if a woman no longer loves a man, she wants no other to have him. She thought to turn your illness against you, and with wily skill, for she is an accomplished forereader. If there is one thing I know, it is such manipulation. She would not stay her hand from Menetph. She merely wants you as well as Hael under her spell, that she might rule through you both.”

“How could it be my child in her?”

“You will have to ask her that,” I said.

“I did so. She says it is my son she bears, and even Tar-Kesa will confirm her. But I have hardly touched her this last year.”

“God or man, it is still sperm and egg. What did you expect her to say? That it is the dharener’s child she carries, and thus lose herself all she will gain by being mother to the heir of Menetph and Nemar? In the north we have ways of determining these things. Send her north and find out, if you will.”

“She would not do that,” he said positively.

“Exactly. She would not loose her hold upon you. Nor would she endanger her life by holding strong to thoughts of death. She has no forereader’s disease.”

He reached up and pulled me down beside him. “Jealous she-apth!” he accused.

“Doubtless,” I admitted. “But remember: for what is between us, there is no solution.” And I twisted in his grasp so that my back was to him.

“One can do no better than one expects. When I said that, the veil was heavy upon me.” His body was of a sudden like stone against mine.

And I was sorry that I had said it, and tried to turn back to face him, but his arms held me like a vise and I could not.

“Lie still,” he ordered, “or sleep by yourself.” And I did as he bade me, and sleep took us our separate ways.

He woke me a time later for a savage and wordless couching, and when I sank back into dreams, they were so troubled I could not bear them. I lay long enths staring wide-eyed at the apprei walls. Long I thought upon the dreams’ meanings, and of what I had seen in Chayin’s mind, and since such things could not come to pass, I called them allegory and mind mischief to case myself. I could not believe it, even then.

When we awoke, the wind had stopped, but only when he shook my shoulder did I realize it, for the helsar, growing ever stronger, had lured me from my stance between sleep and waking with its whispered songs. I sat up cold and trembling, and he mistook my confusion for displeasure, apologizing for what had passed between us. I leaned against him and said nothing.

One of the oil lamps had gone out while we rested. He filled and lit it, and opened the flaps. Two guards stood revealed at their watch against a still and starry night. Dust lay like golden snow upon the appreis and the aisles between them under the full but waning moon. We had slept the day away.

The two guards were quick to attend him. He motioned one in, and the man stood nervous between the flaps, his eyes flitting everywhere that they might not rest upon me. I stretched luxuriously and busied myself with my sleep-tangled hair.

“Speak, man. What holds your tongue?” demanded Chayin.

The guards sighed and shuffled his dusty feet. “Cahndor, Wiraal has arrived from Nemar North and begs audience.”

“How long ago?”

“At first dark, when the wind had just stopped.” The guard wet his lips. “The dharener has been here and left word that he has seen to the threx, and the cahndor should not trouble himself. Jaheil of Dordassa has been here thrice and left invitation for you both to join him in his apprei at your convenience.” He cleared his throat. “And the dharener and high chalder of Menetph have come twice here. And”—he seemed to search for a word—“your couch-mate also left her greeting.”

“No doubt. Is that all?”

“No, Cahndor,” he said hesitantly. “All nine of the tiaskchans came here together, and they would see you with certain complaints they aired to me but which it would not be my place to repeat. And the threx masters sent a message that at sun’s rising all who ride must be weighed and weighted, and the threx master of Menetph begs consultation before that time.”

“And is there any more?”

“No, Cahndor.”

“Send a man to fetch us food, and rana if any can be found.” The guard nodded and turned to go.

“I am not yet finished.” Chayin’s voice snapped him around. “I will see Wiraal as soon as you can get him here. Have the chalder and dharener of Menetph, and Hael also, meet me at the threx masters’ pavilion an enth before sun’s rising. The Menetpher threx master wants to know who shall ride in Aknet’s place. Tell him the choice be his. And repeat this to him exactly. I want no call of unfair play. If he can beat Nemar, let him do so. It is not men but threx we race here on the morrow. And one more message, to the tiaskchans, that their complaints have been noted, and only I am qualified to adjudge the solution.”

“But you do not—”

“Know what their complaints are? Your cahndor is a god, man! The tiaskchan Estri’s conduct at my service is no business of theirs.”

“You want me to tell them that, Cahndor?” The man was horrified.

“Send someone against whom you have a grudge to do it,” Chayin advised. “Now, begone before my hunger makes me irritable.”

The guard backed out of the apprei, and then began much shouting and pounding of feet as he delegated the tasks that Chayin had set him.

“What about Jaheil?” I asked as we dressed.

“I think we will accept his invitation.” He peered through the open flaps at the stars, he dug out his uris pouch and handed it to me. I wondered, as the taste of it sent a thrill through my body, how I ever did without it, Thus emboldened, I bested my hair clean and tangleless, not caring that Chayin saw me or that the helsar shifted where it lay.

Chayin raised an eyebrow. I grinned at him. “I have no comb here,” I explained.

“I will buy you one, lest you usurp my godhead from me with such tricks.”

“That is all it is,” I assured him, “simply a trick of polarity.”

“You had best save some for Sereth the Ebvrasea. I had a dream of dire portents.” And he finished pulling on his boot and leaned close, taking me in his arms.

“I have no fear with you to protect me,” I told him.

“I have told you that I am bound by his will in this matter, and before his wrath I cannot stand for you. Before Hael I can protect you, or Liuma, or even all the tiaskchans of Nemar, but not to Sereth will I raise my hand. It is not that I would not, but that I cannot.” He grasped me by the shoulders and held me at arm’s length, as I had seen him hold Liuma.

“I understand,” I said, though I did not, and a great commotion presaged the entrance in quick succession of Wiraal and our meal, and as we ate, the jiaskcahn gave his report. Nothing had been overlooked. He had even brought the crell Aje, as I had instructed him to do if his wounds were healed. They filled three places fallen empty in the cahndor’s personal yra of twenty-one jiasks that would follow Chayin to Mount Opir, and the three of us searched for a way to circumvent with a likely story the tiaskchans’ displeasure at being excluded.