The Faded Sun Trilogy (15 page)

It was likely that many regul had perished in the conflagration. Such satisfaction was a thing that once no mri would have thought or felt. But that was before the death of a kel’en unaccounted for on a regul ship, and before it was clear that humans would possess the world.

Now the stars of evening began to show in a clear sky, and there was no wind to stir the sand and make the
mez
advisable. Such crystal evenings were frequent after the greatest storms, as if the very world lay exhausted after the recent violence.

He dropped his own veil and, looped it under his chin, refastening it. There was no likelihood of tsi’mri here, and he did not need it.

“Shall we walk?” Melein suggested.

He had no such thing in mind; but rarely did Melein ask anything of him any longer. He arose and offered her
his hand to help her up. Thereafter they walked, side by side in the direction Melein chose, on the small trail that led from the corner of the edun to the rocks at the top of the causeway. He found himself remembering the times that they had run that distance, they three, agile as the dusty lizards, children without the veil, small slim-limbed boys and smaller girl, racing illicitly for the vantage point from which they could see the ships at the port come and go.

They had been ships with magical names then, mri ships, regul ships:
Mlereinei, Kamrive, Horagh-no,
that came from distant stars and the glory of battles. As children they had played at war and duel, and imagined themselves great kel’ein, glittering with honors like the far-travelled kel’ein that visited from the ships and departed their own ways again—like their truemother and their father that left separately with the ships and never visited homeworld again.

Tonight they walked, he of the Kel, she of the Sen, weighted with their robes of caste and their separate laws. When they reached the rock that overlooked the valley, he leaped up first and pulled her up after with a single tug—there was still the girl Melein within the golden robes, agile and quick as a kel’e’en, unbecoming the gravity of her caste.

They sat together while the red sun vanished, and watched the whole of the Valley, and the glow of lights where the port was, and the wound the storm had made there, a darkness amid the lights near
Hazan.

“Why did you ask me here?” he asked of her at last.

“To talk with you.”

He did not like this manner in her. The last light touched her face. It was that of a stranger for a moment, someone he should remember, and did not, quite. It was not Melein as he knew her, but a sen’e’en that contained quiet, secret thoughts. He suddenly wished she would not pursue the opening he had given her. He foreknew that she might rob him of his peace; and he could not stop her from doing it.

“You do not smile anymore,” she said. “You do not even look up when you are named.”

“I am not a child.”

“You do not love the she’pan.”

“I come. I sit. I wait. This seems to be all she wants of me. It is her right.”

“You do not much go out of the edun.”

“I have given up, Melein. That is all.”

She looked up, where the stars glittered. Her arm resting on her raised knee pointed toward Elag’s star, that shone and danced above the hills. “There are humans now,” she said. “But this is different, here—Kesrith. This is homeworld. Sanctuary for the people. The Holy.”

He looked at her, sullen, frightened. “Remember that I am kel’en.”

“The Kel must remain unlearned because the Kel ventures where our enemies are, and where knowledge that cannot serve the Kel cannot be permitted. For all traditions, however minor, there are reasons. You are a kel’en of homeworld, and you will hear what it would not be good for a kel’en elsewhere to hear.”

He rose and set his back against the rock, leaning there with his arms folded and the rising breeze touching him with more chill than was comfortable. It was night now, the last of the sun slipped from view. He did not know why she had wished to come out here. The hills were full of menace. The ha-dusei, wild relatives of the tame companions of the kel’ein, were not to be trusted. There were windflowers and burrowers, and serpents that hid in the rocks. He owed a sen’e’en his protection; and it was arrant stupidity to be out here with Melein in his charge after dark. Her value to the edun was incalculably above his.

“We can talk elsewhere, later,” he said. “I do not think we should have come here at this hour.”

“Listen to me!”

Her voice was edged, cruel, a blow that stunned. Melein was his little sister. She had never used that tone with him.

“Today,” she said, “the she’pan called me in private. Today she gave me rank with Sathell. And you understand this.”

She’pan’s successor, her Chosen.

In the nethermost parts of his mind he had known it would come, this the only reasonable purpose behind Intel’s snatching Melein out of Kel and into Sen.

Not to bear children, but to learn the Pana, the Mysteries; not to continue the People, but to rule them.

And Intel had taken him likewise, to defend challenge herself, to guard her—to kill, if need be, any overanxious successor, and the kel’en that supported her challenger’s cause.

He gave a single bitter curse; understanding; and saw the hurt leap into Melein’s eyes.

“I am sorry that you take it so,” she said.

“Why must she have kept me by her and not Medai?”

“She trusted you, and never Medai.”

He considered that, and its reasons; “She trusted you,” he said softly, “while I guard her sleep. While she could set me against you.”

The hurt became shock. The thought seemed to startle her. “No,” she said. “I am not apt to challenge her.”

“Not so long as you have regard for me,” he answered. “She feels her; mortality on her or she, would not have named you yet. And some kel’en will guard her tomb.”

“She would not take you, Eddan—Sirain—they would seek the honor. But not you.”

“Maybe with the humans at hand the question is pointless. I am thinking ahead of the hour, and that is beyond my caste. You will have to think that through, truesister. I am far from knowing the future. I can only speak for what is true now.”

“She is not preparing to cede homeworld quietly. Niun, I am young, I am nothing compared to Intel’s experience. Other she’panei would hesitate to challenge her: she knows too much. Killing her would rob the People of so much, you do not know how much. It would be an act of—I do not know, Niun, I do not know. If I should succeed her as she’pan of homeworld, here am I—young, inexperienced. I know that some older she’pan will come then and challenge, and it will be my place to die. I want her to live, I desperately want her to live, and she is dying, Niun.”

He found himself trembling, hurting to reassure her; and there was no comfort. She spoke of things beyond his caste; and yet he thought that she had laid put all the truth for him, and stole what remained of his peace and hope. He had always thought that she would survive him.

“We were unlucky,” she said, “in being last-born of the People: not alone of Kesrith, Niun, but of all the People. We were without choice because we were simply the last. I wish it were different.”

What she said struck at other confidences. He looked at her with the wind whipping at them and chilling to the skin and ceased even to shiver. “Of all the People?”

“Edunei have fallen,” she said, “and children have died; and kel’e’ein are occupied with war, and nothing else. I should not have answered,” she added. “But of our generation, there is little left. Those older—they will get other children. It is not too late.”

She tried to comfort him. He reassured himself that she had faith in their future, and this was enough. “But then,” he said, catching up a thought, “then Intel will not plan to lose you. You might be after all the ablest after her; and if she bequeaths my service to you—if you should challenge or return challenge, Melein, I can defend you. I am not unable to defend you. I am skilled in the yin’ein. Nine years they have kept me in training. I must be capable of something.”

She was silent a long time. Finally she arose. “Come,” she said. “Let us return to the edun. I am cold.”

And she was silent as they climbed down to the trail and walked back; she wept. He saw if in the starlight, and took off his own veil and offered it to her, a gesture of profound tenderness.

“No,” she said fiercely. He nodded, and flung the
mez
over his shoulder, walking beside her. “You are right,” she said finally. “I will not surrender the office and die without challenge if it comes to me. I will kill to hold it.”

“It is a great honor for you,” he said, because he thought that he should have said something of the kind when she first told him.

She let go her breath, a slow hiss. “What honor—to go into some strange edun, and into a strange Kel, and kill some woman who never did me hurt? I do not want that honor.”

“But Intel will arm you for this,” he said. “She will make you able. She has surely planned for this for many years.”

She looked up at him, her shadowed face set and calm. “I think you are not far wrong,” she said, “that she wanted you by her because she knows I could make trouble in the House. She trusts you. She does not trust me.”

He shivered, hearing in her voice the bitterness he had always suspected was there, and shadows tore away between himself and the Sen-tower and the she’pan. He remembered Melein preparing the cup each evening, the cup that helped she’pan sleep; and each evening, the she’pan drinking, nothing questioning. He suspected what ungentle things might run in Intel’s drug-hazed mind—a she’pan foreseeing her own death and mistrusting her successor with good reason.

Intel had wanted Melein disarmed: had sent Medai into service, had kept her brother close by. Some kel’en would guard Intel’s tomb: normally it would be one of her Husbands, not a son. But there might be one instruction if she passed of age, and another if by Melein’s hand.

And Melein would have to challenge against him to challenge Intel: he would die before Intel would; but Melein would have to find a kel’en to champion her—and there was none who would agree to that.

Intel had done well to banish Medai.

But Melein was not capable of the things of which Intel suspected her; he insisted on believing that she was not. Caste and teaching and the bitterness of her imprisonment could not have changed his truesister to that extent. He would not believe that Intel’s fears were justified.

I want her to live, I desperately want her to live,
Melein had said.

“How much,” he asked finally, “did she bid you tell me?”

“Less,” she said, “than I told you.”

“Yes,” he said, “I had thought so.”

They came back to the edun, she drawing ahead of him as they entered. He looked aside at the dus that turned its head from him. When he looked up, she had gone on into the shadows, toward the stairs of her own tower.

She did not look back.

He went toward the she’pan’s tower, to take up his duty, where he belonged.

There was quiet over Kesrith. After so many hazards, after two days stalled with the port in chaos from the storm, that last shuttle had lifted with its cargo of refugees, to the station where the freighter
Restrivi
was forming the last regular civilian list that would leave the world. Hereafter there was time, necessary tune, for setting final matters in order. Against the ruddy sun of Kesrith there was only
Hazan
remaining—armed and, when her minor repairs were completed, star-capable; she waited with her crew constantly within her. She carried in her tapes the way to Nurag, to regul homeworld, to safety and civilization for the few hundred left on Kesrith.

A ten of times each passing day bai Hulagh Alagn-ni, working in his heated offices in the Nom complex, looked up at the windows and concerned himself with the condition of
Hazan.
The dual-capable ship, strong enough behind her screens for combat, was yet a perilously fragile structure when grounded. He had hesitated to take her down in the first place; he had suffered agonies of mind in the hours of the storm’s approach, had decided against lofting her to stationside.

And then—then, to have a witless aircraft pilot attempt to outran the storm and risk the crosswinds, a known peril at Kesrith’s field—on such an occurrence the whole mission was almost lost. Hulagh cursed each time he thought of it, the youngling pilot and passengers, of course, beyond retribution. He was relieved that, at the least, damage had been confined to the tower and loading facilities, and that to
Hazan
’s structure was minimal. Luck had been with him.
Hazan
was in his trust over the objections of powerful influences back on homeworld. He had risked everything in securing for himself and his interests this post, replacing old Gruran and Solgah Holn-ni—an assignment for which his personal age and erudition had qualified him, and thereby won doch Alagn the status it was long overdue.

But as with landing the ship, as in other decisions he had made along the way, it was necessary to risk in order to gain. It was necessary to demonstrate to homeworld his claimed ability and that of doch Alagn in order to obtain the influence permanently.

He could do so by salvaging the most possible benefit of Kesrith, after its loss by Gruran Holn-ni and his get; and Solgah Holn-ni—he thought with disgust and contempt of the prolific female who had ruled Holn’s establishment of Kesrith, and lorded it so thoroughly over the zone and over the war that was her creation—Solgah was on her way to homeworld in utter confusion, stripped of her command, most of her younglings left behind, their ranks decimated by Hulagh’s own orders, survivors parcelled out to many different colonies, the doch in complete disorganization. She would be lucky if her influence on homeworld enabled her to escape sifting and the execution of her younglings. At the least, Holn was due for some years of obscurity.

The memory still pleased him, how Solgah had received the shock of
Hazan
’s unscheduled and unauthorized landing: how she had fluttered and blustered with prohibitions and objections, until he had made known to her his homeworld-granted authority to assume control.