The Faded Sun Trilogy (10 page)

It took him a moment to be sure of his voice. “I do not believe it,” he said after a moment, “that she will not loose me even for this. What did she say? Did she give no reason?”

“She wishes you to come, now.”

He was stunned by such an attitude. There had been no love between himself and Medai: the she’pan knew that well enough; but there was no decency in what she asked him to do, publicly. “No,” he said. “No, I will not go to her.”

The fingers dug into his shoulder. He expected rebuke when he looked up. But the old man unveiled to him, showing his naked face, and there was no anger there. “I thought you would say so,” Eddan said, which was incredible, for he had not known himself: it was impulse. But the old man knew him that well. “Do as you think right,” Eddan said further. “Stay. I will not forbid you.”

And the old man rose and ordered the others, who moved about their separate tasks. One brought the vessels of ritual, given by the Sen, that were for burying, and set them at Medai’s feet; Pasev brought water; and Dahacha,
cloths for washing; and Palazi filled the lamps for the long vigil; and Debas whistled softly to the dusei and took them from the outer hall, herding them away into the tower of the Kel so that they should not disturb the solemnities. In the midst of the activity Niun sat, conscious finally that he had torn his robe in his haste for descending from the hills, and that he was dusty and his hands were foul with dirt. Feet pattered about him. Sirain came, half-blind Sirain, and gave him a damp cloth, and Niun unveiled and washed his face and veiled again, grateful for his thoughtfulness. Liran brought a robe for him, and he changed his
siga
in the very Shrine, for it was not respect to sit the watch in disorder. He sat down again, and began to be calmer at their quiet, efficient ministering.

Then at Eddan’s whispered word, they began to take the ugly white shroud from Medai, and patiently, patiently the fingers of one and the other of them tore the webbing that was as close-spun as a cocoon and well-nigh impenetrable—like
cho
-silk it was, having to be unraveled with the fingers. But Pasev knew to touch the regul fiber with a burning wick, and so to part the strange web. The material burned sullenly, but it gave way, shedding its chemical smell into sickening union with the incense that lowered overhead.

It was something on which they all silently agreed, that they would not give to burial a kel’en in a regul shroud, whatever the inconvenience; and gradually they recovered Medai from the web, a face that they remembered, a countenance, still and pale. The body was small and thin in death, pitifully so; it weighed very little, and Medai had been a strong man. The honors that they found laced to his belts were many, and the
seta’al
were weathered to pale blue on his face. He had been a handsome youth, had Medai s’Intel, full of the life and the hope of the edun in brighter days. Even now he was very fine to see. The only marring of him was the blood that stained the fiber under his central ribs, where he had dealt himself his death wound.

Suicide.

Niun worked, not looking at Medai’s face, trying not to think what his hands did, lest they tremble and betray him. He was trying to remember better days, could not. He knew Medai too well. His cousin was in his dying as he had been in life: selfish, arrogant to match regul arrogance, and stubborn with it all. It was wrong to hold anger with the dead, impious. But in the end Medai had been as useless to his kinfolk as he had always been. Medai had
lived for himself and died for his own reasons, nothing regarding what others might need of him; and there was precious little honor for a cold corpse, whatever the high traditions of the Kel.

They had parted in anger. He remembered, each day of his life for six years he had remembered, and he knew why the she’pan had wanted him upstairs, and what was surely in the minds of his brother kel’ein who sat with him. There had been a quarrel, the
av’ein-kel,
the long blades drawn; it had been his own fault, drawing first, in the Shrine hall, outside. It was the day that Medai had laid hand on Melein.

And Melein had not objected.

The she’pan herself had put an end to that quarrel—abler in those days six years gone—had descended the tower stairs and intervened. Had called him
eshai’i,
lack-honor, and
tsi’daith’,
un-son, and because then he had loved her, it had crushed him.

But not a word, never a word of rebuke to Medai.

And for Medai within a hand of days came the honor of service to the bai of the regul, an honor that might have gone to one of the Husbands; and for Melein came the chastity of the Sen.

And for Niun s’Intel came nothing, only a return to study, a long, long waiting, crushed to the Mother’s side and held from any hope of leaving Kesrith.

There had never been a way to undo that one evil day. Intel would not let him go. He had hoped for peace with Medai, for a change in the affairs of the People.

But Medai had robbed him of that too. It was on nun alone, the service of homeworld, and there had never been any justice in it.

When you have made up your mind what it is the People owe you,
Eddan had said,
come and tell me.
He would have settled for half of what Medai had had.

But then, beginning with Eddan, the Kel spoke of Medai, each praising him: ritual, the
lij’alia,
beginning the Watch of the Dead; and the voices of the old kel’ein shook in the telling of it.

“It is hardest,” said Liran, “that the old bury the young.”

And last of all but himself, Pasev: “It is certain,” she said, touching the medallions, the
j’tai
that glittered in
the lamps’ golden light, the honors that Medai had won in his services, “that though he was young, he has travelled very far and seen a great deal of war. I see here the service of Shoa, of Elag, of Soghrune, of Gezen and Segur and Hadriu; and it is certain that he has served the People. Surely, surely he has done enough, this brother of ours, this child of our house; I think that surely he was very tired. I think he must have been very weary of service to the regul, and he would have come home as best he could, with what of his strength he had left. I understand this. I am also very tired of the service of regul; and if I knew my service was at an end, I would go the road he took.”

And then it should have been Niun’s time to speak, praising Medai, his cousin. He had gathered angry words, but he could not, after that, speak them or contradict the feelings of Pasev, whom he loved with a deep love. He sank down and lowered his head into his crossed arms, shaking with reaction.

And the Kel allowed him this, which they seemed to take for a kinsman’s grief. But theirs was a true, unselfish sorrow for a child they had loved. His was for himself.

In this he found the measure of himself, that he was capable of meanness and great selfishness, and that he was not, even now, the equal of Medai.

The others talked around him, whispering, after such a time as it became clear that he would not choose to speak in the ritual. They began finally to speak of the high hills, the burial that they must accomplish, and woven into their speech and their plans was a quiet desperation, a shame, for they were old and the hills were very far and the trail very steep. They wondered unhappily among themselves whether the regul might not, at their request, give them motorized transport; but they felt at heart that they dishonored Medai by asking such help of the regul. They would not, therefore, ask. They began to consider how they might contrive to carry him.

“Do not worry,” said Niun, breaking his long silence. “I can manage it myself.”

And he saw in their faces doubt, and when he thought of the steep trails and the high desert he himself doubted it.

“The she’pan will not allow it,” said Eddan. “Niun, we might bury him close at hand.”

“No,” said Niun, and again, thinking of the she’pan, “no.” And after that there were no more suggestions to him. Eddan quietly signed at the others to let be.

And they left him, when he asked of them quietly and with propriety to be left alone. They filed out with robes rustling and the measured ring of honors on their garments. The tiny high sound of it drew at Niun’s heart. He considered his own selfishness, lately measured, and the courage of his elders, who had done so much in their lives, and was mortally ashamed.

But he began to think, in the long beginning of his nightlong watch, in the silences of the edun, where elsewhere others were in private mourning—and knew that he was not willing to die, whatever the traditions of his caste, that he did not want to die as Medai had died, above all else; and this ate at him, for it was contrary to all that he was supposed to be.

Medai had been able to accept such things, and the she’pan had accepted Medai. And this was what it had won him.

It was blasphemy to entertain such thoughts before the Shrine, in the presence of the gods and of the dead. For himself he was ashamed, and he longed to run away, as he had done when he was a child, going into the hills to think alone, to try himself against the elements until he could forget again the pettinesses of men, and of himself.

But he was reckoned a man now, and it had been long since he had had that freedom. Dangerous times were on the edun, hard times, and it was not an hour that Niun s’Intel could afford to play the child.

There was a matter of duty, of decencies. Medai had lived and died by that law. He could not manage the inner part of him, but he could at the least see to it that the outer man did what was dutiful to those who had to depend on him.

Even if it were totally a lie.

“Niun.”

The stir, the whisper from beyond the screen he had taken for the wind that blew constantly through the shrine. He looked up now and saw a hazed golden figure through the intricate design, and knew his sister’s voice. She crossed the floor as far as the screen that divided them, religiously, though they could meet face-to-face elsewhere in the edun and outside its limits.

“Go back,” he wished Melein, for she violated the law of her caste by being in the presence of the dead, even
a dead kinsman. Her caste had no debts of kinship; they renounced them, and all such obligations. But she did not leave. He rose up, stiff from kneeling on the cold floor, and came to the grillwork. He could not see her distinctly. He saw only the shadow of her hand on the lacery of the screen and matched it with his own larger one in sympathy, unable to touch her. He was unclean and in the presence of the dead, and would remain unapproachable until he had buried his kinsman.

“I am permitted to come,” she said. “The she’pan gave me leave.”

“We have done everything,” he assured her, struck to the heart remembering that there had been affection between Melein and Medai, cousinwise, and at the last, perhaps more than cousinly. “We are going to take him to Sil’athen—everything that we can do we will do.”

“I had not thought you would watch here,” she said. And then, with an edge of utter bitterness. “Or is it only because you were directly ordered not to?”

Her attack confused him. He took a moment to answer, not knowing clearly against what manner of assumption he was answering. “He is kin to me,” he said. “Whatever else—is no matter now.”

“You would have killed him yourself once.”

It was the truth. He tried to see Melein’s face through the screen; he could only see the outline, golden shadow behind gold metal. He did not know how to answer her. “That was long ago,” he said. “And I would have made my peace with him if he were alive. I had wanted that. I had wanted that very much.”

“I believe you,” she said finally.

She left silence then. He felt it on him, an awkward weight. “It was jealousy,” he admitted to her. The thing that he had pondered took shape and had birth, painfully, but it was not as painful as he had thought it would be, brought to light. Melein was his other self. He had been as close as thought to her once, could still imagine that closeness between them. “Melein, when there are only two young men within a Kel, it is impossible that they not compare themselves and be compared by others. He had first all the things I wanted to excel in. And I was jealous and resentful. I interfered between you. It was the most petty thing I have ever done. I have paid for it, for six years.”

She did not speak for a moment. He became sure that she had loved Medai; only daughter of an edun otherwise fading into old age, it was inevitable that she and Medai should once have seemed a natural pairing, kel’en and kel’e’en, in those days when she had also been of the Kel.

Perhaps—it was a thought that had long tormented him—she would have been happier had she remained in the Kel.

“The she’pan sent me,” she said finally, without answering his offering to her. “She has heard of the intention of the Kel. She does not want you to go. There is disturbance in the city. There is uncertainty. This is her firmest wish, Niun: stay. Others will see to Medai.”

‘“No.”

“I cannot give her that answer.”

“Tell her that I did not listen. Tell her that she owes Medai better than a hole in the sand and that these old men cannot get him to Sil’athen without killing themselves in the effort.”

“I cannot say that to her!” Melein hissed back, fear in her voice, and that fear made him certain in his intentions.

It made no more rational sense than the other desires of Intel, this she’pan that could gamble with the lives of the People, that could bend and break the lives of her children in such utter disregard of their desires and hopes.
She has given me her virtues,
he thought, with a sudden and bitter insight:
jealousy, selfishness, possessiveness, . . . ah, possessive, of myself, of Melein, the children of Zain. She sent Melein to the Sen and Medai to the regul when she saw how things were drifting with them. She has ruined us. A great she’pan, a great one, but flawed, and she is strangling us, clenching us against her until she breaks our bones and melts our flesh and breathes her breath into us.

Until there is nothing left of us.