The Golden Sword (42 page)

“I would not live so long,” I said, chilled.

“It has its compensations. One hears the breathing of the changing climes.”

“What will you do with me?” I could smell him, and it was a strange smell, from his flesh, but oddly familiar. My knees ached. I sought to move them from under me.

“Stay! Whatever I please, Shaper’s daughter, I will do.’’

“And with Sereth?”

“I have given him a choice.” The dharen shrugged. “I have his helsar. I have him. Eventually, he will serve me.”

“And if he does not?”

“I can, if I must, instill in him such loyalty as I might choose. Eventually, he will serve me.” His molten eyes narrowed, those long, thick lashes almost obscuring them.

“If you were to show him mercy,” I whispered, “it could be a bridge over what lies between us.”

“I need not bargain with you, little savage. You have not even the most meager understanding of your position. Stand up.”

And I was quick to obey him, lest he stand me. My nails bit into my palms. I kept my clenched fists at my sides. My skin crawled at his touch. I stood very still, but my mind’s despair and loathing I could not quell.

“Soon enough, you will not even recall such emotions,” he said, encircling me with one arm. He guided me thusly to that curtained window and drew those dark hangings back.

Into the audience chamber poured the warm summer sun, glistening upon the clear green waters of the Lake of Horns. And upon those graceful, sinuous buildings that make up the dharener’s city, all white and gleaming, did the sun shine. Wide walks threaded around the lake, and upon them I saw men and women strolling. And hulions. Hulions pad the streets of the dharener’s city. They do the bidding of those who rule it. How greatly I had shortchanged those winged beasts, in my conception.

The city sits in a great forested valley, curled around the lake like a necklace of helsars. At the tip of the most easterly horn lies the dharen’s keep, wherein I am kept. From my chamber, I see that same view, albeit from a slightly higher elevation.

Khys spoke long to me that day of what concerned him. He spoke of the fathers, and their history. Why he did so, I do not know. I will have lost it all, soon enough. I found, when I awoke this morning, that I did not know where I was. I shook upon my padded couch, sifting through what was left of my memories. My first two hundred years have slipped almost totally beyond my recall. I wonder if I will lose even the ability to read and write. I sorted through my pages, when I found them, as if they were the work of a stranger. And they reminded me. There is no one truth. Khys lies!

I had begged him, after he talked the sun to its rest that day, to let me write, in my confinement.

“Estrazi allowed that I might send him a message,” I said softly to him, as we watched the sun set over the lush forests. “If I must sit so long in one place, it would give me something to do.”

The thought amused him. He stroked his jaw reflectively.

“That would be the final touch!” he said at last. “But I doubt that you will have long enough to put down any extended missive. The damage you did yourself with all that uris is only beginning to affect you.Burned synapses, I am afraid, are beyond my powers. New paths will replace the old. It will not be painful,” he added as I looked at him in horror, though I had glimpsed it when I spoke with Chayin. “What you have been will fade from you.”

And I retreated from him until the window pressed against my back. Crying, I pleaded with him. He stopped me. When I at length regained control of my emotions, he gave back to me my body’s command.

“Let me see Sereth,” I asked him, over that elegant table upon which a most delectable meal had been set.

“You have hardly touched your food,” the dharen said. Chayin, beside me, only played with the sauced, spiced denter before him. We had exchanged no word, the cahndor and I, since the meal began.

I turned myself to my plate, lest he force the food upon me. Never in my life had I feared anything as I feared his command of my limbs.

When I had cleaned it, he motioned Carth, who had stood the whole time behind him.

I went with him, docile, unspeaking, out those double doors and up two flights of some unfamiliar stone.

The chamber in which the dharen keeps me is soft and resilient. I cannot hurt myself. The couch is a barely raised dais, with no hard edges. A play of golden light is ever across these pale green walls, even at night. My couch has no covers, with which I could strangle myself. I have a window, which does not open, barred by golden light, beyond which my hand cannot pass, lest I find some way to shatter it.

The door, also, is thickly upholstered. Upon the inside of it is no handle or knob.

Carth has my care. He feeds me, and takes me out of the room twice daily to bathe and attend my needs. Those trips are my only exercise. I never see the dharen.

But I believe he sees me, he and his six brethren. In my dreams I have met them.

At first, I thought it could not come. I lay long enths thinking of Sereth, of what had been between us. Surely, I thought, my memories of him will not pass from me. The scars, I thought, are too deep. What could have been ours, had we what others take so lightly—time and each other, and some shadow of a life together? Upon any scales of judgment, we deserved at least that.

Last night I lay, touching myself, as has become my habit, that I might imagine us once again together. And I got hardly a sense of him.

Carth told me yesterday that he would come for this account today, that I was to finish it. I read what I have written, and it recalled to me certain things: the way his hair falls over his eyes, the way he tosses his head like some defiant threx, one glimpse of his dark-tanned hand upon my breast. I will hold to those memories. I will not lose myself. I will not forget Sereth, whom I love.

Khys, in his arrogance, will surely pass this to you, my father. If, in your wisdom, you choose to withhold me your aid, then perhaps I will come to understand, in the fullness of time. Now I do not understand. I have seen brother turned against brother and the very fabric of time and space rent asunder. I have seen such carnage as I never dreamed could come to be. And if I have gainsaid your will, it was not by empty defiance, but out of need.

I have remembered that which you said to me, upon the red sea’s floor. In it, I have found some small comfort.

Khys will fall afoul of his pretensions, as we all do.

And I? No matter what he tries to make me, I am still my father’s daughter.

Today is Detarsa first first, 25,696. Last evening, I met the dharen, at a celebration in my honor, that of my birthday. Of course, it is an arbitrary date Carth set, for my true date of birth is unknown.

At Carth’s bidding, I write this:

“Set down,” he said to me yesterday, mid-meal, “a short piece about yourself: who you are, what you are, what today will bring you.” Carth is my teacher. He was, until last evening, the only man I had ever seen close at hand.

When I was found wandering the forests, I was chaldless, naked, bereft of memory. I could not speak a sentence in one language. My speech was a jumble of a hundred tongues, and quite unintelligible.

I do not remember, of course. Carth told me. My first memory is of him standing over me in this very room. And I was crouched in the corner, speaking as he described, terrified. We have come a long way, Carth and I.

We could not, alas, piece together the fragments of my past. Who and what I was remains a mystery. Carth has warned me of prying too deeply, lest whatever I will not remember rise up again and wipe out all I have learned.

And I have learned much, these last months: history, philosophy, politics, chaldra, languages. Carth says someday I will be very powerful. I will be trained as a forereader. I might even bear the arrar’s chald.

Upon my neck I wear a band that keeps those powers in check, until I am skilled enough to use them. Without it, Carth has assured me, I would die.

It is not unattractive. In the mirror upon my chamber wall, it glows soft with light, setting off my copper skin with its gleaming. Last evening I wore a soft drape of gold metallic, to meet the dharen. It was an elegant garment, much different from the sleeveless thigh-length s’kim I usually wear.

I was excited, dressing. My fingers shook as I fastened the clips at my shoulders. I wondered what he would be like, if he would find me attractive. I have read extensively his writings. Much of what he has written is still beyond me. I sighed a trembling breath, arranging my copper-bronze hair in the mirror. I would meet the man who wrote
Ors Yris-teral.
I hoped he would find me pleasing.

I have read books, some true, some fictions, that Carth has chosen for me, books that made me anxious for the touch of a man. But Carth would not satisfy my curiosity.

I asked him several times, and he said only that I was not for him.

Then he brought me the gossamer cloth, and told me I would sup with the dharen.

I hoped he would find me pleasing, standing before the mirror. I had no way to adjudge myself. From a great distance, only, have I seen other women.

Carth came to fetch me, dark face smiling kindly, and we walked through the halls and down two flights of steps. I had never been farther than the end of my chamber’s corridor. My stomach twisted and turned, my pulse thumped against my eardrums.

Imposing is the dharen’s keep, I think. It is a high-ceilinged, thala-paneled place. I had read about thala. I ran my hand over the blue-black smoothness. Looking into its grain made me dizzy. It went down forever. I felt very small, and frightened, in the greatness of that room. All was blue, black and shades of silver. A silvery carpet covered the floor, thick and soft, with subtle, eye-catching designs. The lights seemed to hover in the air, dancing just below the muraled ceiling. All manner of animal life ranged there, in a lush jungle. I could not even guess at their names. Carth has barely started me upon flora and fauna. But it was very beautiful.

In the room were desks and tables, and numerous couches, arranged in groups, longer and thinner than my sleeping couch. Upon one table, tapers burned in silver holders, the flames flickering over covered dishes, surely silver. The table was round.

I perched myself upon the edge of the thick-napped, upholstered couch nearest the table to await him. I played with the hair resting on my silk-draped thigh. I wondered how a wellwoman might await a client; how she would sit, how she would hold her breasts out, her tummy in, leaning forward, perhaps, with lips slightly parted. I laughed, pretending.

One of the double doors opened at that moment, and the dharen entered.

Golden-copper he is, lighter than I. And tall, with long legs and broad shoulders. He came toward me, his dark robe swirling around him, the great chald of Silistra glinting at his hips. A smile touched his lips. He reached out his hands to me. I gave him mine, and he clasped them warmly.

“What amuses you?” he asked me in a melodious voice.

“I am only pleased to be here,” I said softly.

“You are very beautiful,” he said, stepping back a pace. I wondered how many women those glowing eyes had scrutinized.

“Doubtless,” he said at last. “You are, perhaps, more beautiful. You have read of her, of course.”

I nodded, wetting my lips. “I have just finished it. Carth thought I should read it. She died from a similar affliction to mine. Could you not have saved her?”

“She was not sane. She lost more than memory. She had no will to live. It was a kinder thing we did. She craved death.” He extended his hand to me, led me to table.

“You are far from the monster she painted you,” I said to him as he seated me, then himself at my left hand. He smiled and brushed my cheek with his lips. I quaked within.

“Do you have any other observations upon her writings?” he asked as he served me cheesed tuns. His upper arms are very wide around, perhaps as wide as my thighs.

“Only that reading her made me anxious to know my womanhood.” I stared brazenly into his, eyes. “I had a dream about her lover, that I was with him,” I whispered.

“Which one?” he said dryly.

“There was only one,” I said, prodding my food with the two-pronged silver fork. “I would feel what she felt. I have been too long by myself.” My eyes sought his, caught them.

He put down his fork and twisted in his chair. “Are you asking me?” he said levelly.

“Oh, no,” I wailed, “I would not dare. It is only ...” I hugged myself, flushed and miserable.

“It is only what?” he demanded, but softly.

“That I need some man’s touch, that I may know maleness, and femaleness in that reflection. One can only get so much from books.” I implored his understanding. “I was not being forward. Carth says you are my guardian. Forgive me.”

He put his hand upon my arm. “Look at me,” said Khys.

I looked at him. Never had I imagined such a man.

“Would you?” I whispered, leaning forward.

“I have had that intention,” he said, “since I first saw you.” And he got up from the table, food untouched. He walked to the dark-hung window and turned to face me.

“First,” he said “we must give you a name. Have you thought upon it?”

“No,” I said, flustered. “I thought you would choose.”

“Your first birthday, so to speak, cannot pass and leave you nameless. Pick a name, it does not matter what.”

I whispered my choice to him, and he laughed, a gentle laugh. His fingers played in his chald.

“So be it. May you have better luck with it,” he said.

And he called me to him by it, where he was at the plush-hung window. He was gentle with me, patient at my clumsiness. He seemed to take joy in my discoveries, though I knew nothing of how to please a man but what I had read. And it is very different from reading. His clear voice grew husky, his instructions terse. Afterward, kindly, he praised me, though I had trembled when I first saw him in his nakedness.

Hungry, he disdained the cold food upon the table and stepped out the door, fastening his robe around him. I lay where he had left me, too drowsy to move, content for the first time in passes. I had a birthday. I had a name. I had even had a man. I wriggled, upon the silvery carpet.