The Faded Sun Trilogy (2 page)

But for the last forty years, mri had served all regul combined against all humans, a bitter and ugly conflict, lacking honor and lacking any satisfactions from the enemy. The mri elders were old enough to remember the life before, and knew therefore what changes had been wrought by the war; and they were not pleased with them. Humans were mass-fighters, animals of the herd, and simply understood no other way of war. Mri, who fought singly, had early suspected this, tested it with their lives, found it bitterly true. Humans rejected
a’ani,
honorable combat, would not respect challenge, understood nothing but their own way, which was widespread destruction.

Mri had bent themselves to learn humanity, the way of the enemy, and had begun to adjust their operations and their manner of service to the regul accordingly. Mri were professionals when it came to combat. Innovation in the yin’ein, the ancient weapons that were used in
a’ani,
was dishonorable and unthinkable; but innovation in the zahen’ein, in modern arms, was a simple matter of retooling and adjusting methods, a matter of competency in the profession they followed for a livelihood.

Regul, unfortunately, were not as capable of adapting to new tactics. Regul had vast and accurate memories. They could not forget what had always occurred, but conversely they could hardly conceive at all of what had not yet happened, and did not make plans against it happening. Hitherto the regul had depended on mri entirely in the matter of their personal safety, and mri foresight—for mri could imagine—had shielded them and compensated for that regul blindness to the unexpected; but in latter days, when the war began to take regul lives and threaten regul properties, regul took matters into their own unskilled hands. Regul issued orders, prudent in their own estimation, for actions which were militarily impossible.

The mri had attempted to obey, for honor’s sake.

Mri had died in their thousands, for honor’s sake.

In the House, on this world, there lived only thirteen mri. Two were young. The rest were the makers of policy, a council of the old, the veteran. Long centuries ago the House had numbered more than two thousand in the Kel alone. In this present age all but these few had gone their way to the war, to die.

And their war had been lost, by regul, who asked the humans for peace.

Sathell looked about him and considered these old ones, kel’ein who had lived beyond their own years of service, whose memories gave them in some matters the perspective of sen’ein. They were Husbands to the she’pan, masters-of-arms while there had been Kath children to teach; and there was Pasev, the only surviving kel’e’en of the House, she most skilled in the yin’ein next Eddan himself. There were Dahacha and Sirain of Nisren; Palazi and Quaras and Lieth of Guragen, itself a dead House, taking refuge with the Mother of this one and adopted by her as Husbands. And from yet another dead House were Liran and Debas, truebrothers. These
were part of an age that had already vanished, a time the People would not see again. Sathell felt their sadness, sensed it reflected in the beasts that huddled together in the shadows. Eddan’s dus, whose species was reputedly never friendly with any caste but the warrior Kel, sniffed critically at the scholar’s gold robes and suffered himself to be touched, then heaved his great bulk a little closer, wrinkled rolls of down-furred flesh, shamelessly accepting affection where it was offered.

“Eddan,” said Sathell, stroking the beast’s warm shoulder, “I must tell you also: it is very likely that the masters will cede this world if the humans should demand it as part of the peace.”

“That would be,” said Eddan, “a very large settlement.”

“Not according to what we have just heard. It is rumored that the humans have secured the whole front, that the regul lords are in complete withdrawal, that the humans are in such a position now that they can touch all the contested areas. They have taken Elag.”

There was silence. Elsewhere in the tower a door closed. At last Eddan shrugged, a move of his slender fingers. “Then the humans will surely demand this world. There is very little that they will miss in their desire for revenge. And the regul have left us open to it.”

“It is incredible,” said Pasev. “Gods! there was no need, no need at all for the regul to have abandoned Elag. The People could have held there—could have turned the humans, if they had been given the equipment.”

Sathell made a helpless gesture. “Perhaps. But held for whom? The regul withdrew, took everything that was needed there for the defense, pulled ships from under their control. Now we—Kesrith—have become the border. You are right. It is very likely that the regul will not resist here either; in fact, it is not reasonable for them to do so. So we have done all that we could do. We have advised, we have warned—and if our employers refused to take that advice, then there is little we can do but cover their retreat, since we cannot restrain them from it. They took the war into their own management against our advice. Now they have lost their war; we have not. The war ceased to be ours some years ago. Now you are guiltless, kel’ein. You may justly reckon so. There is simply nothing further that can be done.”

“There was something once that might have been done,” Pasev insisted.

“The Sen attempted many times to reason with the masters. We offered our services and our advice according to the ancient treaty. We could not—” Sathell heard the footsteps of the youth downstairs as he spoke, and the disturbance disrupted his train of thought. He glanced hallward involuntarily as the door downstairs slammed with great violence. The sound echoed throughout all the House. He cast the Kel a look of distress. “Should not one of you at least go speak with him?”

Eddan shrugged, embarrassed in his authority. Sathell knew it. He presumed on kinship and friendship and stepped far out of bounds with Eddan when he made that protest. He loved Niun; they all did. But the autonomy of the Kel, even misguided, was sacred regarding the discipline of its members. Only the Mother could interfere within Eddan’s province.

“Niun has some small cause, do you not think?” asked Eddan quietly. “He has trained all his life toward this war. He is not a child of the old way, as we are; and now he cannot enter into the new either. You have taken something from him. What do you expect him to do, sen Sathell?”

Sathell bowed his head, unable to dispute with Eddan in the matter, recognizing the truth in it, trying to see things as a young kel’en might see them. One could not explain to the Kel, could not refute them in debate nor expect foresight of them: children of a day, the kel’ein, brief and passionate, without yesterday and without tomorrow. Their ignorance was the price they paid for their freedom to leave the House and go among tsi’mri; and they knew their place. If a sen’en challenged them to reason, they must simply bow the head in their turn and retreat into silence: they had nothing with which to answer. And to destroy their peace of mind was unconscionable; knowledge without power was the most bitter condition of all.

“I think I have told you,” said Sathell at last, “all that I know to tell you at the moment. I will advise you immediately if there is any further news.” He arose in that silence and smoothed his robes into order, gingerly avoiding the reflexive grasp of the dus. The beast reached at his ankle, harmless in intent, but not in potential. The dusei were not to be treated with familiarity by any but a kel’en. He stopped and looked at Eddan, who with a touch rebuked the beast and freed him.

He edged round the massive paw, cast a final look at Eddan; but Eddan looked away, affecting not to be
interested any further in his departure. Sathell was not willing to press the matter publicly. He knew his half-brother, and knew that the hurt was precisely because there was affection between them. There was a careful line drawn between them in public. When caste divided kinsmen, there had to be that, to save the pride of the lesser.

He gave a formal courtesy to the others and withdrew, and was glad to be out of that grim hall, heavy as the air was with the angers of frustrated men, and of the dusei, whose rage was slower but more violent. He was relieved, nonetheless, that they had listened to all that he had said. There would be no violence, no irrational action, which was the worst thing that needed be feared from the Kel. They were old. The old might reason together in groups, might consult together. The kel’en was, in youth, a solitary warrior and reckless, and without perspective.

He thought of going after Niun, and did not know what to say to him if he should find him. His duty was to report elsewhere.

*   *   *

And when the door closed, aged Pasev, kel’e’en, veteran of Nisren and Elag’s first taking, pulled the
as’ei
from the shattered plaster and merely shrugged off the sen’anth. She had seen more years and more of war than any living warrior but Eddan himself. She played the Game all the same, as did they all, including Eddan. It was a death as honorable as one in war.

“Let us play it out,” she said.

“No,” said Eddan firmly. “No. Not yet.”

He caught her eyes as he spoke. She looked at him plainly, aged lover, aged rival, aged friend. Her slim fingers brushed the fine edge of the steel, but she understood the order.

“Aye,” she said, and the
as’ei
spun past Eddan’s shoulder to bury themselves in the painted map of Kesrith that decorated the east wall.

*   *   *

“The Kel bore the news,” said sen Sathell, “with more restraint than I expected of them. But it was not welcome,
all the same. They feel cheated. They conceive it as an affront against their honor. And Niun left. He would not even hear it out. I do not know where he went. I am concerned.”

She’pan Intel, the Lady Mother of the House and of the People, leaned back on her many cushions, ignoring a twinge of pain. The pain was an old companion. She had had it forty-three years, since she lost her strength and her beauty at once in the fires of burning Nisren. Even then she had not been young. Even then she had been she’pan of homeworld, ruler over all three castes of the People. She was of the first rank of the Sen, passing Sathell himself; she was above other she’panei as well, the few that still lived. She knew the Mysteries that were closed to others; she knew the name and nature of the Holy, and of the Gods; and the Pana, the Revered Objects, were in her keeping. She knew her nation to its depth and its width, its birth and its destiny.

She was she’pan of a dying House, eldest Mother of a dying species. The Kath, the caste of child-bearers and children, was dead, its tower dark and closed twelve years ago: the last of the kath’ein was long buried in the cliffs of Sil’athen, and the last children, motherless save for herself, had gone to their destinies outside. Her Kel had declined to ten, and the Sen—

The Sen was before her: Sathell, the eldest, the sen’anth, whose weak heart poised him constantly a beat removed from the Dark; and the girl who sat presently at her feet. They were the gold-robes, the light-bearers, high-caste. Her own robes were white, untainted by the edgings of black and blue and gold worn by the she’panei of lesser degree. Their knowledge was almost complete, but her own was entire. If her own heart should stop beating this moment, so much, so incalculably much could be lost to the People. It was a fearful thing, to consider how much rested on her each pulse and breath amid such pain.

That the House and the People not die.

The girl Melein looked up at her—last of all the children, Melein s’Intel Zain-Abrin, who had once been kel’e’en. At times the kel-fierceness was still in Melein, although she had assumed outwardly the robes and the chaste serenity of the scholarly Sen—although the years had given her different skills, and her mind had advanced far beyond the simplicity of a kel’e’en. Intel brushed at Melein’s shoulder, a caress. “Patience,” she advised, seeing Melein’s anxiety; and she knew that the advice would be discarded in all respects.

“Let me go find Niun and talk to him,” she asked.

Brother and sister, Niun and Melein—and close, despite that they had been separated by law and she’pan’s decree and caste and custom. Kel’en and sen’e’en, dark and bright, Hand and Mind; but the heart in them was the same and the blood was the same. She remembered the pair that had given them life, her youngest and most beloved Husband and a kel’e’en of Guragen, both lost now.
His
face, his eyes, that had made her regret a she’pan’s chastity, gazed back at her through Melein’s and Niun’s; and she remembered that he also had been strong-willed and hot-tempered and clever. Perhaps Melein hated her; she had not willingly received the command to leave the Kel and enter the Sen. But there was no defiance there now, though the she’pan searched for it. There was only anxiety, only a natural grief for her brother’s pain.

“No,” said Intel sharply. “I tell you to let him alone.”

“He may harm himself, she’pan.”

“He will not. You underestimate him. He does not need you now. You are no longer of the Kel, and I doubt that he wants to be faced by one of the Sen at this moment. What could you tell him? What could you answer if he asked you questions? Could you be silent?”

This struck home. “He wanted to leave Kesrith six years ago,” said Melein, her eyes bright with unshed tears; and possibly it was not only her brother’s case she pleaded now, but her own. “You would not let him go. Now it is too late, she’pan. It is forever too late for him, and what can he imagine for himself? What is there for him?”

“Meditate upon these things,” said Intel, “and tell me your conclusions, sen Melein s’Intel, after you have thought a day and a night on this matter. But do not intrude your advice into the private affairs of a kel’en. And do not regard him as your brother. A sen’e’en has no kin but the whole House, and the People.”

Melein rose, and stared down at her, breast heaving with her straggle for breath. Beautiful, this daughter of hers: Intel saw her in this instant and was amazed how much Melein, who was not of her blood, had become the things her own youth had once promised—saw mirrored her own self, before Nisren’s fall, before the ruin of the House and of her own hopes. The sight wounded her. In this moment she saw clearly, and knew the sen’e’en as she was, and feared her and love her at once.