The Marann (7 page)

“Who is Christmas?”

Now she laughed. “It’s a what, not a
who. A big celebration near the beginning of winter. People spend
time with their families, exchange gifts, eat and drink together.
It’s Christmas time now on Earth.”

“I see,” he said, nodding. “Then
perhaps you will enjoy our seasonal celebrations—they may be
similar. We have music and dancing, and friends share meals and
drink together.”

“Drink? What do you drink?”

“Spirits. To relax the body and
lighten the heart. They are made from grains and mixed with
fruit.”

Alcohol. It had to be alcohol, or
something like it. The Tolari drank? That was nowhere in Central
Command’s information about them. “When is the next
celebration?”

“High summer.”

She did a quick mental calculation.
That was four months off. “I look forward to it.”

<<>>

Marianne settled into a routine.
Nurses brought Kyza to her many times a day. She read to her,
talked to her, sang to her. She began to grow comfortable carrying
around a powerful ruler’s child and presumed heir. Attentive nurses
whisked Kyza away before Marianne was even aware the infant had
begun to grow restive or hungry, to bring her back when she was
quiet and receptive.

She wondered who, and where, Kyza’s
mother was, but it didn’t seem appropriate to ask.

In her free time, she studied the
language, roamed the stronghold and its grounds—which together
covered an area the size of a small town—or read books. Central
Command had packed her tablet with not only the collections of the
Casey Public Library, but also a complete and up-to-date archive of
comparative linguistics, one of her favorite hobbies.

As days and then weeks passed, she
grew accustomed to conversing on familiar terms with the Sural. She
had imagined she would seldom see Tolar’s sovereign ruler. Nothing
could have been further from the reality of the quiet, even gentle,
leader in embroidered robes of soft, pale blue. His patient
kindness toward her was puzzling, as he showed her his world from
the boundaries of the stronghold plateau, taught her his language,
observed without expression everything she did in his presence and
seemed to derive satisfaction from her delighted reactions to new
things. Days passed in which she caught no more than glimpses of
him between meals, and then it would seem he spent all her waking
moments with her, asking questions about her impressions and what
she had learned about Tolar and his people.

Reports had to go to the ship on a
regular basis. A comms unit occupied the desk in her sitting room,
but the Sural had indicated from the beginning he took a dim view
of using it without restraint as humans tended to do. She couldn’t
imagine how it affected him, at the Tolari’s pre-industrial level
of technology, but she left it unused in consideration for his
preference. Instead, she wrote out reports on her library tablet
and transmitted them to the ship in the early morning before she
went to take her morning meal with the Sural. He seemed to know of
her transmissions, asking an occasional question, with a crooked
smile, as to what she had reported to ‘her’ Admiral, but he didn’t
object.

The reports themselves varied, from
detailed analyses of Tolari social structure and its caste system,
to speculative reports on Tolari child development based on her
observations of Kyza, to reports on the flora and fauna she
discovered in the gardens. She described the Tolari diet, noting
she had never observed them eating animal-derived foods, seeming to
subsist on fruits, grains, nuts, greens, and vegetables. They drank
teas, fruit juices, and flavored waters.

As her command of the Sural’s dialect
solidified, she began to have animated discussions with him about
Tolari political and social structure, trying to pin him down on
what his exact role as planetary ruler entailed. In the end, she
decided she didn’t have the background or education to understand.
He ruled his province, and he ruled his planet, but he had little
say in the rule of other provinces. They were autonomous, though
their leaders held lower rank in the ruling caste than he did, and
there seemed to be limits to what he could order them to do, though
within those limits they were bound by honor to obey him. Their
alliances shifted. The Sural’s allies were often enough his
enemies’ allies, and the enemies of his enemies were not always his
friends. There had to be a piece missing. She couldn’t figure it
out.

“I am
Suralia
,” he answered her
one morning after she asked him, yet one more time, how he could
rule the planet but not its provinces.

“Eh?” she said.

“I
am Suralia.”

“You are Suralia.” Repeating the words
didn’t give them any more meaning than when he said
them.

“Yes.”

She shook her head. “I don’t
understand. How can you
be
your province?”

He put a hand, fingers spread, on his
chest. “I am Suralia, and not any other.” His expression was
amused, and his smile tilted. “The province is my life, and my life
is the province. We are one, I and my people. Their lives belong to
me, and my life belongs to them. I cannot
be
another
province if I am Suralia.”

“If the province is your life, what
would happen if Suralia were destroyed by some kind of
disaster?”

“I would walk into the
dark.”

She blinked. “What is
the
dark
?”

“You call it death.”

“You would commit suicide?” she
gasped.

“I would stop my heart and neural
activity, yes.”

“You can do that?” She
gaped.

He nodded.

Marianne slumped against the chair
back. “Then what happens when
you
die?”

“My daughter rules Suralia after me,
if she passes the trials.”

“So your people won’t commit suicide
when you die, but you’d commit suicide if they did?”

“They would walk into the dark if I
died in dishonor,” he corrected.

“What, all of them?”

“Provincial rulers carry a heavy
responsibility.”

“To put it mildly!” she exclaimed.
“How many people live in Suralia?”

“At present, the population is
approximately four hundred twenty-five thousand men, women, and
children, most of them in the city below.”

“Oof,” she said, letting her breath
out in a gust. “I begin to see why your honor is so important to
you.” She paused, afraid to know, and then asked, “Has that ever
happened? A whole province going into the dark?”

The Sural nodded. “Twice in our
history. The more recent instance occurred over a thousand years
ago.”

Her mind balked at mass suicide on
that scale. “More than two thousand standard years,” she murmured.
“What about the children?”

“They follow their parents into the
dark. Even infants can follow a parent into the dark—it is an
innate ability. We develop the capacity to control it sometime in
our fourth year.”

Seven or eight years old, in Earth
terms, she thought. She shook her head and sipped some tea,
thinking. “On my world, suicide is a crime.”

The Sural choked on his tea. He
controlled the reaction, but for a brief moment, she had never seen
him so surprised. Then he stared at her, every bit of expression
gone from his face.

She gave him a rueful grin and
shrugged. “It’s true. It’s legal in a couple of the colonies,
though—New China World and Far India.”

The Sural ate the rest of his meal in
silence, continuing to stare at her. “Summer is a busy season for
the Sural,” he said when he finished. “I have much work to
do.”

Something brushed against her as he
left, though the table lay between them. She frowned at his
retreating back, and then shook it off.

Chapter Four

On a day in mid-summer, Marianne woke to find the
stronghold almost empty.

“They have gone to the summer
festival,” a servant said when she asked where everyone had gone.
“The Sural left orders for you to be escorted to the city should
you wish to participate.”

As if I’d miss this
. Marianne
rushed to change into comfortable shoes for the trek down the
cliffs.

The city center’s main avenue was full
of—May poles.
May poles
, with Tolari dancing around them in
patterns.

Apothecaries in yellow holding black
ribbons attached to the top of a pole danced and wove with
indigo-robed scholars holding yellow ones. The pattern taking shape
on the thick pole, about twice a man’s height, looked like nothing
so much as a vertical bumblebee. Farther down the avenue, at the
next pole, dancers in pale blue, dark green, purple and black wove
ribbons of pale green, dark purple, gold, and silver.

Tolari milled about between the many
poles lining the avenue. Some strolled with children clinging to
them, some arm in arm, some in groups. Blue, yellow, green, purple,
mauve, black, and more; an explosion of color filled the streets.
Most of the dancers and passersby, male and female alike, wore
flowers in their long hair.

Even the clothing on display had more
variety than the robes the stronghold’s somber workers wore.
Although the same castes wore the same colors, some individuals
wore robes so short as to be better described as long shirts. It
made sense to Marianne, since the long robes everyone wore on the
plateau couldn’t be practical for many activities, but... she
wasn’t sure what she had expected.

People
smiled.
Looked happy.
Had animated conversations with each other. It was so unlike the
somber atmosphere on the plateau. She glanced up at the edifice,
looming above the city, wondering what could have happened to
create the gloom up there, wondering whether the Sural would tell
her, if she asked.

She toyed with the idea as she
strolled along, admiring the beribboned poles, then shook her head
and snorted to herself. The Sural had been more forthcoming about
Tolari culture than she had expected, but asking after his somber
demeanor was more than a little personal.
Tell me, high one,
what happened to make you such a cold fish?
She shook her head
again, a smile elbowing its way onto her face. No, she’d leave that
one for a few
years
down the road.

Movement caught her eye. People
skipped in circle dances to lively music emanating from a sunken
theater at the square’s center. She headed toward it. A woman in
the mauve of the musician caste played an instrument looking and
sounding much like a Celtic harp. Fingers dancing on the strings,
she smiled as she played—a Tolari smiling easily!—while the crowd
in the theater reacted to cues Marianne couldn’t see or
hear.

Puzzled, she stood listening and
watching. What
was
it they reacted to?

“Do you enjoy yourself?” The Sural’s
voice came from behind her.

She spun to find her nose almost
touching the tall Tolari leader, who carried his infant daughter
across his chest in a sling. A nurse stood nearby.

“Yes, very much,” she answered,
backing up a step. She could swear he enjoyed disconcerting her
just then, though his face was, as usual, impassive.

Then his lips twitched.

Marianne cleared her throat. “Your
daughter is sleeping through her first summer festival.”

He turned a warm smile on Kyza.
Marianne shook her head. The Sural, smiling in public! Almost, she
asked him why he was so subdued in the stronghold. Then prudence
came to the fore and stopped her tongue.

He caught her eye. “Walk with me.” He
swept one arm toward a street lined with booths. A light breeze
from that direction brought mouthwatering aromas. “Have you any
questions?”

“That music,” she said. “There was
something... different about it.”

He chuckled. “Of course. It is
Tolari.”

“That’s not what I—”

“High one?” A small girl in a brown
robe bowed to the Sural. Marianne thought she might be five or six,
in Earth years. She held up a circlet of yellow and orange flowers
toward the Sural. “I made a flower circle for you, high
one.”

He stooped on one knee before the
child, a gentle smile playing around his mouth. “You honor me,
child,” he said, as the little girl stood on her toes to place the
circlet on his head like a crown. “What is your name?”

The little girl seemed to have run out
of courage, but a man in brown answered for her. “She is Yreth,
high one. She has eleven seasons.”

Five and a half
, Marianne
thought.

“And this is Kyza,” the Sural said to
Yreth, loosening the sling so the girl could see. “I hope she will
be the next Suralia. See? She is only in her first
season.”

Yreth’s face took on a serious
expression. “She should wake up or she will miss the
festival.”

“You may be correct.” The Sural gave
the girl’s nose a gentle tap. “But now you should return to your
father, or you also will miss the festival.”