The Golden Sword (6 page)

Chayin came and squatted before me, the thick braided-leather strap in his hands.

“Are you satisfied, crell?” He jerked my head up. “What your mind expected, your body demanded, I have given you.”

I shook my head, wordless, but my flesh knew what my heart denied. My eyes misted and cleared. I felt a hand on my shoulder, and knew it to be Hael.

Chayin looked past me, at his brother the dharener.

“She is yours, Hael. I give her to you. In that way, perhaps things will set themselves aright. We will throw again and see.”

He turned his gaze back to me. His voice was low, his grip upon my head gentle. He laid down the braided lash. I could see my flesh upon it. He traced the side of my face with his fingers.

“It would have been amusing,” he said to me, “but I have not the time for you. You tempt me, with your flesh and spirit, your wellwoman’s skills. I cannot afford you.” His voice was a whisper. “I am not Sereth of Arlet! Into your circle, I must not step, lest I lost all I have gained.”

His eyes searched mine, his tone a strange mixture of sadness, longing, and determination. Around his mouth were lines of strain.

My back counted my pulse for me. “You fear yourself, cahndor, for you certainly cannot fear a crell.” I thought he would strike me when he heard my words. I did not care. He did not strike, but smiled.

“You understand too well. I will let you pass. Let Hael try you. With his Day-Keeper skills, he is more your match.” He leaned forward and pulled my face against his, kissed me. It was not the kiss of a cahndor to a crell. And I returned it. When he took his lips from mine reluctantly, I did not meet his gaze. Confusion had my mind like the slitsa the furry yit; and it attempted to swallow me whole.

Uris. Uris. I had not realized. It is a drug to take with utmost care. It looses that part of us which must tear and rend and kill. It frees of inhibition, retards moral judgment, masks fatigue and pain with its own strength. I had never submitted myself to it in the past. The word pulsed great red letters before my eyes, and I could see little else. I could not see Chayin, kneeling again with the shaker in hand, nor Hael. I could not feel my bonds, the strain of my weight upon my arms, still lashed to the stanchion.

After a time another thought came to me, and the red mist faded, to be replaced by a blackness through which I wandered without form. I heard Chayin’s words again, echo chain: What your mind expected, your body demanded, I have given you. And I answered it “no” until from sheer exhaustion I stopped, cold, alone, mid-place between nowhere and nothing, and knew what I had done. And the dark became lighter. I had form once more. I walked the halls of Mi’ysten once again. My feet trod the saw-toothed Mi’ysten grass. This time I needed no guidance, no collar of stabilization around my neck.

I found Estrazi behind the first door I chose to open of that endless hallway of same-seeming doors. I felt no surprise that he should be so easily found, he who is seldom enfleshed. He sat upon the ground, and I joined him, sitting close beside, content to watch the flameglow dance upon his skin for a longer time than I have yet lived.

And he spoke to me; a smooth strong breeze in my mind, for my ears did not hear him. Finally he folded his arms over his chest, and those eyes that touch what they see burned within me. He said to me that I must do as he bid.

I replied that I could not do so, that I would do what mortal flesh could do, but no more.

My father pointed out to me that if I did not use my skills, others would use me through them. That I myself would be my greatest enemy.

And I replied that it was he who had made it thus, and he must unmake it, for I would not and could not be what he would have me be.

And Estrazi laughed that gentle laugh that is like the first spring water bubbling, white at his right hand, Raet, Shaper son of Kystrai, appeared out of sparkling air.

I would have risen, but I could not. Raet sat, completing our triangle.

He hested a blue-white ball of jagged-edge crystal through the air toward me. I raised my hands before me, but it was what I found behind my eyes that stopped it, whirling, midway between, us.

“Take it,” Raet said, pushing it hard toward me, while his fingers played upon the knee of his crossed legs. The ball was suddenly closer, a small distance. I evened it.

“I will not.” And my words were for Estrazi, as I tried to send the fiery ball toward the greatest among the Shapers.

“You will, in the fullness of time,” said Estrazi kindly. The blazing blue-white form regained the middle between us. “Look what you do, with so much ease before us. Remember. When you are ready, it is yours.”

I shook my head. I would not.

“So that I can be a better plaything for Raet, a more efficient instrument of your designs?” I took my eyes from the ball for just a moment, to look in my father’s eyes.

“Surely,” he said, and the jagged crystal ball, unimpeded, hit me in the head and exploded within my brain. It illuminated within me every crevice and dark place of hiding. I shrank from the blinding light, but not even my spirit cast a shadow in that cruel glow. I writhed and rolled to be free of it, and heard my own voice, screaming.

And I opened my eyes, to see Hael peering down, the mid-pole of the apprei rotating with his head as its center. The distance between us became less and less, and the rotation of the world slowed and ceased.

Hael only knelt above me, his face but scant inches from mine. I could see grains of sand entrapped in his wiry black beard, cracks where the desert wind had scoured his full lips dark and deep.

“I had thought you entrusted with the chaldra of the soil,” he said softly, wiping my forehead with a cool cloth. So close I could see the pink tongue dart in his mouth, he peered into my eyes.

“I was with my father,” I said, unthinking. My mouth would not form a clear word. The lamplight flickered over the apprei walls, which sighed and groaned in the dim.

“You were, in truth, elsewhere. We will be within the appreida by sun’s rise. Three days you have been unconscious, with precious little breath moving in you. And yet I found this, here by your side, when none have been within but I. I have not left this apprei between the time I last examined you, when there was no such thing here, and just now, when you with your screaming roused me to look again.” Hael held in his hand a blue-white pulsing, jagged-edged. It nestled innocent in his palm, glowing. I could not see the black filaments within it from this distance, but I knew they were there, floating, waiting. I shuddered. I would have run, had I had the strength to move.

“You do not know it! Do not hold it so, against your naked flesh. Wrap it in something, tas-, parr-, apth-hide. Put it away! Wrap it and put it in the deepest pocket of the roomiest saddlepack among the Nemarsi, and make sure that it lies not near the flesh of man or beast!” My words came out of me a hissing croak.

Hael dropped the crystal. It bounced, upon the Parset rugging and rolled toward me. I stopped it, unmoving.

“Get the skin!” I demanded, not taking my eyes from the blue-white helsar. Already it brightened, close to me. That it was mine, I had no doubt, nor did it. That I had somehow brought it with me, against my will, was impossible. It was here because somewhere inside me I wanted it.

The dharenex of the Nemarsi, rushing to do my bidding, dropped a thick apth wrap over the glowing helsar and made it fast. He then picked the thing gingerly up by the thongs and packed it carefully in his own saddlepack with great attention to its position. Only when it had been finally seated among the bladders and Eiraziers, pincers and pillows, rolls and wraps of his store, and the lace lashed tightly shut, did he turn to me.

Sitting cross-legged by my head, he offered me water, lifting my head that I might drink.

“Why? What is it?” he finally asked me. We were both suddenly aware that it was not as a dharener he had done my will, nor as a crell had I ordered him.

“Call it a toy, if you will,” I answered him. “A toy of a race such as is your Tar-Kesa, and nothing to be held in the human grasp. Give it to him, upon his altar, if you will. I amsure the receipt of it would bring him pleasure.” And I was sure. I met Hael’s eyes steadily, demanding his recognition.

“You do not believe in Tar-Kesa?” he said to me, in question form.

“On the contrary.” I steadied my voice, that it might somehow match my gaze, rather than my quaking heart. “I know he exists. I respect and revere him. I do my best to keep his laws, and out of his way.” I tested my arms’ strength, gauged it sufficient, and sat up, drawing my knees around me. The creamy Parset web-cloth slid down to bunch across my thighs. I was not cold.

“What harm could it do, this god’s toy?” the dharener pressed me.

“It could engage you in its teaching, forever and ever. It could drive you mad. It could suck all the life from you without your notice, pleasantly, so that you went more and more to its use and your death. Is that sufficient?” All truth and no lies had I told him. But the helsar was so much more; a primal catalyst, the seed of a universe yet unborn. I rubbed my hands on my arms, loving the feel of flesh against itself. I have a horror of being without this tactile sense of being, and I had been three days removed from my body and its needs.

Hael shook his head from side to side, hand wandering in his beard.

“How do you know all this? Do you know the thing’s use and purpose, and what is to be gained from it?” His black eyes were keen, the nictitating membranes flickering back and forth in his excitement.

“Ask Tar-Kesa,” I suggested. “What I know of it, I have told you. It could do you great harm.” I did not tell him that another’s attempt to use the helsar could put me in very real danger. Doubtless the link was already made between us. I could feel it, warm, waiting at the edge of my perceptions, I had no choice now; I must use what I could of my Mi’ysten skills. Perhaps I had been fooling myself, since my return, that I could do without them. If one is the first of a group of children to learn to walk upright, one does not return to crawling for the sake of the group. One walks upright, and is sooner apprised of danger and better able to meet it.

The dharener stood abruptly. I could hear the whispered voices of the jiasks as they began dismantling the apprei around us. We faced each other in awkward silence. I could feel his mind gently probing. I snapped up my best Mi’ysten shield, smooth and shining. There it had been child-weak, useless. Here it was more than sufficient. Hael pursed his lips. I reached out through the shield and met his, in my own turn testing. Day-Keeper he was, and adequate. I saw there a great agitation and
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intricately wrought defenses, about what seemed to be, in part, concerned with me. To read what is consciously hidden, one must get the thought to the surface.

“If you try the helsar, dharener, see that your sorting is strong and free from fear,” I advised him softly. And there it was. What I had sought, he considered in his excitement. Monitoring my mind while I lay unconscious, Hael had seen more than he would have chosen.

“The key, then, is in the sort?”

“You must have the sort to get there,” I conceded. “Sort” is a forereader’s term for the stochastic process, for isolating the probabilities available from a specific moment in time.

The jiasks had one of the apprei walls rolled and were starting upon another. The night showed clear and star-flecked, the moon nearly full and low over the Sabembes. Hael snatched up his saddle and hefted it upon his shoulder. The fully distended packs almost dragged the ground.

“Walk before me,” he ordered. I did this, through the jiasks kneeling about the stra framework of the apprei, toward the large darker shadows that must be the hobbled threx. There was hard, stony ground under my bare feet, and mountains towered both to my right and my left. Hudged us to be well north of the dead sea, where the tail of the great Yaica range parallels the Sabembes.

There was a great thudding and snorting and clinking. Chayin, phantom upon his dark-dappled Saer, circled the plunging beast around us. Moonlight sparked off my father’s cloak in the darkness. Foam from the animal’s tossing head sprayed my arms and face; small stones from his hooves pelted my naked legs as he danced in place.

“Bestir yourself, brother, or we shall miss our only opportunity for bloodletting this night!” And he laughed down at us while Saer walked a dozen steps upon his hind legs, wheeled him toward the north star Clous, and was gone.

“What mean you, Chayin?” Hael called to the empty air. “Fool,” he groaned softly, his free hand on my back, guiding me among the threx. As he threw the saddle over Quiris’ back and cinched it, I asked what was in my mind.

“Did the sword really break upon the square?”

Hael grunted and thrust his knee against Quiris’ black belly as he tightened the straps around the threx’s distended middle. The animal let out its breath in a whoof, and Hael got the girth a hand’s length tighter.

“It did,” he said his back to me. It shattered into splinters. But for that, the throw was the same. Small chance, that such could be the case. Even another woman was forthcoming to replace the one we moved to the ebvrasea’s square. The time is deathly tight.” He moved around the threx to fasten the breastband to the cinch rings.

“And were you so sure it would break, to take such a chance?”

“Am I so sure of you, that I do not bind you?” he retorted. It was true. He had not restrained me. My hands were free.

The dharener’s head appeared above Quiris’ back, and he regarded me sharply.

“I had to judge the truth of the board. How else but to test it?”

“And if you were wrong, if the yris-tera was wrong, what then? Do you love the truth so much, or your brother so little?”

“It might have been better, had I been wrong,” Hael replied in a strange tone, and came around to Quiris’ head, with the double-bitted head gear in hand. “You have seen how he is, how the jiasks are around, him. And he is in one of his better times. A man should not live with such pain, His agony touches us all. Our destiny lies in his hands, and those hands support him forever dangling from the edge of the abyss. One day, soon his grip will weaken, and he will fall. It is my charge to see he does not take the whole of the Nemarsi with him!”