I. Chaldra of the Mother

I am Estri Hadrath diet Estrazi, former Well-Keepress of Astria on the planet Silistra. I have begun three times to tell this story, and three times I have been interrupted. This, then, the fourth attempt, will surely prove successful.

Perhaps you have heard of Silistra, the planet that was catalyst to the sexual revolution in the year twenty-two thousand, seven hundred and four Bipedal Federate Standard Time, or of the Silistran serums that lengthen life and restore vitality in virtually any bipedal life form, or perhaps you have at some time contracted the services of a Silistran telepath, or a precognitive, or a deep reader. It is possible that you have in your own home the scintillating, indestructible web-cloth woven by our domestic arachnids, or have seen holograms of our golachits, those intelligent builder-beetles who exude from their mouths a translucent, superhard substance called gol and create from this gol, under the guidance of the chit-guards, the formidable and resplendent structures in which we live and work.

And perhaps you have seen no web-cloth, no gol, never been ill, and are not interested in sex. If so, you may never have heard of Silistra.

I carry Silistra in my mind’s eye, here under this alien sun. In my mind alone can I look out the east window of my beloved exercise hall in Well Astria and see the sun’s rising burst upon the jewel-like towers and keeps of the Inner Well and a thousand rainbows arc and dance in the greening sky.

I was Well-Keepress. Seven thousand people thrived under the aegis of my Well. I was sought and celebrated for my beauty and lineage, for I was great-granddaughter to Astria Barina diet Hadrath, the Well-Keepress who seduced M’Glarenn, Liaison First for the Bipedal Federation, and who changed the sexual habits of bipeds on one hundred and forty-eight worlds. I was high-couch in the greatest house of pleasure in the civilized stars. I commanded a great price.

Any being who was capable of desiring me, I could fulfill. I was fluent in the language and customs of fifty worlds. I had more than a passing acquaintance with the other ninety-eight. I was reasonably happy, happier than I knew.

I must speak briefly of chaldra and chaldric chains, for it is chaldra that brought me here, to this strange and frightening world, so far from all that I hold dear.

It is a Silistran saying that we are all bound, the least of us no more than the greatest, and a Silistran would have it no other way. The bonds of which the saying speaks are bonds of the spirit, of responsibility and duty and custom, and these are called chaldra. Upon the body of each Silistran, proudly displayed in twisted belts called chalds, are worn thin, supple, many-colored chaldric chains of precious metals. A Silistran without chaldra is a person bereft of purpose and self-respect, a pariah in our society. Indeed, all too often such unfortunate individuals, when unable to acquire ennobling chaldra, choose to take on the chaldra of the soil — by their death gaining that which was denied them in life.

There is high-chaldra and low-chaldra. One example of high-chaldra is the chaldra of reproduction, of begetting one child (no easy task among Silistrans), which is symbolized by the bronze chain before the chaldra is met, and the golden chain after the child has been produced. Another is the chaldra of the mother and father, the task set by the parent of the same sex, symbolized by the red chain before completion and the blue when the task is done. The chaldra to the Stand of Well is high also, and the chain is always silver. Low-chaldra may be bonds of choice, such as the chaldra of couch-bond between a man and a woman, recognized by the pinkish titrium chain; or of skill, such as the black-iron Slayer’s chain; or of vocation or avocation, as the Day-Keeper’s slate-colored chain or the golachit breeder’s brown. There are over two hundred chaldric chains, if one counts both high and low.

I still wear my chald of eighteen intertwined chains. Once it lay snugly across my navel, but I have lost much weight in this dreadful place, and now it slaps annoyingly about my lower abdomen as I labor at the senseless tasks set me by my inscrutable masters.

I was marked from birth for this end, and all saw it, but none understood. I was born out of couch-bond to Well-Keepress Hadrath Banin diet Inderi by an out-worlder known only as Estrazi. My mother carried me thrice the normal term and died bearing me on the twenty-five thousandth anniversary of Well Astria.

How much my mother knew of my fate is still open to conjecture, but until I received her legacy, and another, on my three hundredth birthday, I thought myself little different, if more favored, than my couch-sisters. The other bequest came in the form of a letter from my great-grandmother Astria, to be opened upon the three hundredth anniversary of my birth.

My great-grandmother’s letter, which I received in the office of Rathad, my dead mother’s half-brother and adviser to my Well, had my full name upon it and the date, Macara fourth seventh, 25,693, and was written eight hundred and forty years before I was born.

The letter lay between us on the table of thala-wood that I had shipped down from the northern forests as a gift to my mother’s brother almost a full year ago. A silver cube, bright and shiny, lay beside the envelope, yellow with age, upon the night sky of the thala. The reflection deep within the wood seemed to go on forever.

Musicians tuning, laughing, limbering through their scales mixed with kitchen clank and the gol-master’s hoarse calls as, outside the window, he set the golachits to their building. I did not rise from my seat to watch them at work in the Inner Well amid the bustle of the Well as it is rising, as I might have on another day. Nor did the smells of the morning meal, of baking bread and roasting meat, entice me. My appetite had disappeared with Rathad’s summons. My recalcitrant precognitive gift had given me no warning, nor any information as to why, on this, the one day of the year on which I habitually secluded myself, seeing and speaking to no one, he had sent for me, although my dreams were then and still are troubled, full of stars small enough to hold in one hand and seven men in a seven-cornered room who glow as no men should. The one who brought me here says that someday I’ll understand my dreams, and I believe him. But then, as now, I had only troubled nights.

On that day, long ago, Rathad had sent a messenger to summon me from my solitude. I had run the entire distance to Rathad’s keep, filled with foreboding, leaving the messenger in the exercise hall staring, undismissed, openmouthed at my undignified haste.

When I’d reached the mirrored doors and burst through them, I was badly winded. Rathad did not so much as raise his grizzled head to me in greeting, but waved me to the dark carved chair, silent, staring fixedly at the two objects on the table between us.

My breathing was no longer labored when Rathad, his fingers upon the silver cube, raised his eyes to mine.

“Daughter of my sister,” he said, “have you, perhaps, some foreknowledge of these things before me, that you have arrived here so swiftly?”

I shook my head no, and his jibe passed unanswered, though at any other time I would have berated him for disturbing me at my exercises and for teasing me about my psychic retardation — one of my breeding and my standing should have been a foreseer of note by now.

He sighed. “One can only hope that the foreseeing abilities of your mother, and, it seems, your great-grandmother” — his hand was on the envelope — “may someday manifest in you. You have no idea, then, why I sent for you today, or even why you showed such uncharacteristic haste in presenting yourself to me?”

“None at all.” I did not care for the amused condescension in his voice. I am, as you may have guessed, a very weak foreseer; then, as now, this was irksome: “Did you call me to discuss my psychic debilities? If so,” I said, rising, “I will return to my day’s undertakings.”

“Will you indeed? I doubt it. Now, sit back down. Good. It would be a sad thing, Estri, if you let our personal differences prevent you from receiving this message from your mother, and this . . . ah, shall we say, unusual communication from the Foundress of the Well herself.” He was leaning back in his chair, fondling his chald, a smile playing around his lips.

“What do you mean, Rathad? Do not toy with me.” Rathad, and men like Rathad, were a blight upon my happiness, always trying to mold me, to guide me, to shape me to their vision of what a Silistran Well-Keepress should be.

“I mean but what I say, Well-Keepress. This,” he said, picking up the silver cube, each side of which was the length of my middle finger, “is a recording device, popular in the days of my youth. When your mother knew herself pregnant with you, she came to me with it and asked that I deliver it to you at this time. She knew she would not survive your birth.”

I heard the bitterness in his voice. It was common knowledge that Rathad considered his sister’s self-sacrifice ill-conceived, and had urged her to abort me. Because it was his chaldra to do so, he had brought me up. I am sure he would rather have drowned me upon the day of my birth, so great was his love for my mother, Hadrath. Should I return to the Well of my birth and tell him what I now know or show him what I have become, he might try it yet.

“And this,” he continued, fingering the yellowed envelope, “this comes to us through the kindness of Day-Keeper Ristran, who attests to its authenticity, and bids me to tell you it has lain in the Hall of Records these eight hundred and forty years, awaiting your maturity.

“I have not opened either of them, nor do I have any information as to their contents. I have my suppositions, of course, the validity of which we will ascertain here together.” Again that deeply seasoned face smiled at me. Rathad’s smile has always made me nervous. It is the smile of the predator upon a new kill. If he had been a woman, he would have been dangerous to me, probably attempted to usurp my position. Since he was not, we had a wary understanding: he attempted to turn me to his purpose, and I to stymie him. It was a game which I thought then was very serious. Since then, I have learned what is serious and what is merely annoying. I will have much to say to Rathad, should I have the opportunity.

That day, however, I had no benefit of hindsight. I was full of the insolence of a young high-couch, the budding of my maturity. I made a face at my uncle, who ignored the impropriety.

His hand closed about the silver cube, and he shook it. A dull rattle came from it. “As is often the case with such containers, there is something within.” He placed the cube carefully beside the envelope and folded his hands on the desk as if meditating on the two objects before him.

I knew he expected me to burble questions, to thank him, or perhaps to reach eagerly for the envelope or the cube. Suspecting a trap, I did none of those. I sat as quietly as he.

Finally he said, “Which one, which will you explore first, Estri?” and reached out to fondle the cube.

Having won the waiting game, I grabbed for the silver shape so fast I brushed his retreating hand. He had not made clear to me the significance of the letter, except that it was old and that it had been in the possession of the Day-Keepers, those among us who study the past and keep its legacy. In any case, I, who had never seen my mother’s face or heard her voice, had in my hands that which she had meant for her daughter to hold. Emotion roared through me like the Falls of Santha. My hands shook and my tongue attached itself to the roof of my dry mouth.

I held it, turning the metal cube in my fingers. My mother’s name rang in my head. I searched for my voice but, as my wits occasionally do, it had deserted me.

Bereft of words, I examined the silver cube. On it were two small circular insets, and above them a larger triangular one, all on one side of the object. The other sides were, as far as I could determine, featureless. I was afraid, suddenly, that I might somehow damage it before its long-held secrets could be revealed. And this fear brought back to me the gift of speech: “How does it work?”

“Hold the cube with the circles uppermost.”

I did so.

“Farther away from you. Now, press once firmly upon the triangle.”

I did this also, and a rectangular section halfway down the cube’s surface slid back, and then from the opening extruded a dished bar, metal on all sides but the one facing me, which was composed of two lenses recessed in a metal frame.

“Put the eyepiece against your eyes so that the metal bar between is in contact with the bone at the bridge of your nose. Now, press the left-hand circle, once only.”

I held the expanded cube before my eyes. It was contoured so that it rested against the bones of my face snugly, letting in no light.

“Carefully!” I heard Rathad say, though all I could see before me was a dark milky distance, an artificial distance. And I was discomfited: this object that I held in my hand was an article of off-world manufacture, a creation of the off-worlders, a machine-thing. Though I had made “friends” among the off-worlders and learned to use their toys, I prided myself on being a scandalous young rebel. My mother, I had always been told, had had a better sense of propriety. That she would send me an off-worlders’ toy as her gift across the years was an act of questionable fitness. It occurred to me that this point had not been lost on her brother, my uncle, Rathad, and I smiled.

Then I pressed the left-hand circle.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then I saw her.

My mother was standing before a window set into umber gol, the same shade as Rathad’s keep. Her dress was the simple wide-sleeved white and silver of the Keepress, chald-belted, and flowing translucent to the floor. Her belly seemed a trifle rounded, but her breasts were high and firm, the nipples standing well up. I thought her much more beautiful than I. Her skin was the rare Silistran white, transparent and delicate. Her eyes were the gray-green of the predawn sky. Her hair was the color of the finest northern thala — black, blue, and glistening silver. She was smaller than I, wider-boned. Otherwise we were much alike. Her nose was as mine, deliciously straight, chiseled, and haughty. I could see her nostrils flaring as she breathed. Her mouth, also, was like mine, full, sensuous, with a touch of cruelty at each indented corner. Her cheekbones were high and wide, her chin tiny yet firm, with the subtlest hint of a cleft in its middle. But for the size and coloring, her stamp was heavy upon me.

The woman in the little box — that is, the image of my mother preserved therein — stepped forward. She raised a fine-boned hand to her forehead.

And then, for the first time in my life, I heard my mother’s voice.

It was musical and breathy: “Little one, spark of life that kicks and twists inside me, now that the moment is here, I do not know how to say what I must. Since you have received this, my life has been well-bartered.” My mother cleared her throat, rubbing her belly absently with her hands.

“I have some fear that Rathad and others may press guilt upon you. Let me assure you, by my own mouth, that you were conceived in love, with full understanding of the consequences, and, values weighed, that my life for yours is little to give.

“Oh, Estri — for that is the name you will bear — at this time in my life, when I most wish to be warm and loving, to give you all of motherhood and sustaining purpose in a few short moments, I find myself cold with fear and stiff with self-consciousness. How will you see me, daughter? I did not desert you willingly. The arrangements for your upbringing have been well attended to, your social and economic position secured. But what is it to be without the touch of a mother’s hand, the comforting circle of her arms, in those difficult times of youth?” My mother’s face seemed suddenly to twist; she half-turned as if someone else had entered the room or spoken, and I saw a temper such as I’d often been told by Rathad that only I, of my entire line, had ever dared display.

Then she turned back and her face was composed and elegant once again: “No recording can give you that which has been denied by fate and need. If you can bear me no ill will for the frailty of my flesh, I will know it, for I have demanded of my eternal spirit that it watch over you all your days. I have no doubt that this will be so.” She stopped, swallowed hard, blinking.

“That is the worst of it, I think,” continued my mother.

“Now that there is understanding between us, child unborn, I would speak to you of your father, and what was between us, your parents. Though we were couch-met, it was as if I had known him for a thousand forevers. Our races are only semi-compatible, hence the long term which I will carry you, and my projected death at your birth. The benefits to the issue of such a union far outweigh the debits. You will live twice, perhaps three times the normal Silistran span. Were you slow maturing, little one? You now know the reason. Within you lie dormant abilities far beyond the ken of those around you, and in time you will come to know them.

“We are as children to your father’s people, and he did me great honor in choosing me to bear his get. . . .” Again she paused as if searching for composure.

I remember thinking that this was exactly the sort of mother I’d longed to have, the perfect mother, full of grace, and I remember blinking, with my eyes pressed to the little device so tightly that my lashes brushed the lenses recessed there.

Then my mother continued: “All of which brings me to the chaldra I would put upon you: it is my wish, and that of your sire also, that you seek him and meet with him, be it here on Silistra or upon the planet of his origin. Little help can I give you in your task, for there is a testing in its accomplishment, but be sure that there is reason greater than any you could dream in our request. The time is short, and I must hurry.” She looked down for a moment at something off the screen.

“You will soon see the evening of your conception. What prompted me to record our coupling, I do not know, unless it was the meeting that preceded our union. But it is the only . . . likeness of your father . . . available. And it is . . . something more. You will understand, when you view it, why you have not received this until, in your own blossoming maturity, you have become wise in the ways of men.

“When the record is ended, put your hand beneath the cube, and receive the ring of your father. The ring is the key. Keep it on your person, even in sleep, until you rest within your father’s house. It will identify you and keep you safe among his people, should your search take you so far.”

She smiled, a smile I will never forget.

“It is, child of my heart, a great sadness to me that our meeting and parting be so close together. Remember, Estri, I love you and am with you ever. Tasa, Estri Hadrath diet Estrazi.”

The grayed screen flickered, became what could only have been the magnificent bedchamber of my mother, the Keepress.

And then I saw her there, upon the silver covers of the couch, her skin glistening with sweat. Her breasts rose and fell with her impassioned breathing, nipples flushed and erect. She leaned back on stiff arms, naked, her marvelous long legs outstretched, slightly spread, her feet beneath the iridescent coverlet.

The room was candlelit, and the light flickered and glowed about her.

“Come, then, barbarian god,” she taunted, teeth flashing, “come and take me, if you can. Put that deathly seed of yours where it will do the most good.” She laughed low, and tossed her head. Her hair fell curling across her left breast.

“You must petition me more prettily than that, well woman, before I fill your belly.” The second voice was deep, undeniably commanding, full of strange sibilances. “Surely you cannot expect to do so little, and receive so much. Show me the skills that have made you high-couch here. Or, perhaps, you do not truly possess them?”

With a leap from the darkness, he was on her, one knee beside each of her breasts, his hand still upon her throat. He turned his head to her left shoulder, and his face, eyes heavy-lidded in his heat, was clearly defined.

He was indeed and truly my father. His eyes and hair were the color of molten bronze, his skin but scant tones lighter. His body was light-boned for his mass, and the muscles on his frame rippled in long flat slabs as he crouched above her.

That was the first time I ever saw one of the glowing ones in the flesh. Even then, filled with conflicting emotions over what I saw before me and the impropriety of being a voyeur at one’s own conception, it wasn’t lost on me that his skin and his person resembled the glowing seven in my dreams. But I also knew, even then, that this man was none of those, that this was a purer being than any my dreams had shown me.

I watched my father take my mother, and I have never seen a woman so diabolically aroused, so freed from the bonds of mind. He brought her, leaping to his hand, to the edge of climax three times before he allowed her to attempt to please him. Finally, acquiescing to her desperate pleas, he lay back and allowed her to work her skills on him. Their multilingual love-abuse encompassed all that I knew and went beyond.

Once he pulled her head from his lap, and holding her arched back by the hair, said in archaic Silistran, “You are truly worthy to be high-couch,” and thrust her head back down.

When he was ready, he lifted her into the air and set her down upon him as one might lift a young child of no significant weight. If she had been beneath him, the violence of that final coupling surely would have crushed the life from her there and then.

The last thing I saw was my mother nestled in the crook of his arm, her tears rolling down his shoulder, to settle in the hollow in his throat.

The screen went blank and something inside me wilted: I knew what I had been looking for, among the men I had encountered, and even why I had turned on occasion to off-worlders in hopes of finding it. No such man existed among Silistrans as this one who was my father; no such man existed among the off-worlders I had met. A Silistran woman has a duty to find her soul’s mate, and mine had long seemed impossible to discharge: even without knowing it, I had judged every man I met against the standard my flesh knew — the standard of my father — and all men had failed that test. It was possible, I thought then, that I would never find him, never find one like him, never discharge the chaldra of the mother, never beget one child as was my responsibility. But I should have trusted my mother better.

Nonplussed, feeling ultimately lonely and completely deserted by a mother I’d never had, I started to lift the cube from my face, only at the last moment remembering my mother’s instructions.

Just in time, my hand shot out to catch the ring as it fell from the opening bottom of the cube.

I did not look at it, but pushed the cube across the table to Rathad, who’d been quiet this long while and was waiting, watching me, with an odd look on his face.

My uncle asked for my permission to view the cube and with a nod, I gave it. I could not speak. The room swam before my eyes. I leaned back in the carven thala chair, the ring clutched unex-amined in my fist, to let my tears flow while my mother’s brother viewed the cube.

I had not cried for some years, and as the moisture of my grief and joy poured out of me and filled my lap, my confusion was washed away with those unaccustomed tears.

For the first time in my life I was sure in my purpose: I knew what I must do. I raised my head to tell Rathad, but he was still sunk deep within Hadrath’s record.

Dispassionately I deep-read him, knowing that he could not feel the touch of my mind while so engrossed in my mother’s story. If foreseeing is my weakest skill, deep-reading is my strongest. I can, in moments, and without trancing, acquire from any sentient being an accurate estimate of his basic nature, motivation, and any deep-seated emotion he is feeling. I did so. I was pleased with what I saw. Rathad would be less troublesome to me in the near future. He was deeply moved and full of remorse. Whether or not he had treated me fairly, he now felt that he had not, and that was sufficient.

If he had caught me shamelessly deep-reading him, however, I would have lost all that, through my mother, I had gained. I withdrew almost immediately.

My father’s ring was still clenched in my right fist. So much was happening, my head was so full of plans, I had not even looked at it.

I brought my fist to eye level and slowly opened my stiff fingers. I had been clutching it so tightly that the blood had been forced from my hand.

My father’s ring lay face up on my cold, wet palm. The metal was a pale yellow in color, perhaps gold. It was very large and heavy. I could have fit two fingers within its circle. I remembered the hand that had worn the ring, and I shivered. Within the bezel was set a glowing black stone, as large as a titrium half-well coin, and in the black stone itself were a thousand white points of light, scattered in a seemingly random pattern. As I looked closer, I determined that these were not characteristic markings of the black stone, but tiny inset gems, some as small as a pore on the skin, some slightly larger. One of the bigger stones was not white, but a brooding blood color. This was set in the upper-right corner. If this random patterning could be said to resemble a spiral, then the red stone was far out on the most northeastern arm. I had never seen such a ring. The craftsmanship was exquisite. I turned it. The sides were covered with raised script, but it was no language with which I was familiar.

I slipped my first and middle fingers within the band and closed my hand into a fist once more. I wished there was a way to make it smaller, but I knew I would not so deface it. I put my right hand within my left, and both in my lap. I would have to find another way to wear my father’s ring. I considered the possibilities until I heard Rathad place the cube back upon the table.

His face was ashen white and his eyes bleary. He leaned his elbows upon the table and supported his chin with one hand. In the other he held the letter. He extended it to me. I shook my head and made no move to take it.

“Not yet,” I said. “That which has waited so long can wait a while longer. Summon a runner. I will leave with Santh tomorrow morning. There is much to do before the next sun’s rise. If Ristran is still here, I will meet with him in my keep, and we will take our mid-meal there together.” Ristran was a high Day-Keeper, one of the few who held the administrative rank of dharener, and a hide council member — he could make my departure much easier than it might otherwise be. He could also, if he chose, make my quest a short and easy one: the high officials were the keepers of a body of secret knowledge that not even I, a Well-Keepress, had access to; they had their own leader, the dharen, a mythical personage who may or may not, as they claim, be the same dharen who led Silistra out of darkness after the war so long ago. Whatever the truth of the dharen’s age, he is Silistra’s spiritual leader and his servants, the dhareners and the lesser Day-Keepers, are a law higher than the Well Laws, the supreme authority among us.

“If not,” I continued in my most authoritative tone, “then I will do the same with the highest-ranking Day-Keeper you can produce by that time. I will also need the toilet women to help me prepare. Send a chalder also to Jana’s room, for she will be high-couch while I am gone.” Jana and I thought alike on most social and political issues; she had met her chaldra of reproduction, and I liked and respected her. She would enjoy being high-couch, but not so much that she would be unwilling to relinquish the position when the time came.

“Impossible,” Rathad snapped. His face had regained its normal color.

“Which?” I asked.

“All of it, Estri. You cannot leave the Well until the chaldric priorities have been determined, if at all. How many chains do you wear? Are all of them meaningless when compared to this adventure? Such tasks are usually carried out before major responsibilities are assumed. The Day-Keepers must decide. I have never heard of a three-hundred-year-old woman, of responsibility and position, romping off to do the chaldra of the mother. Perhaps they will allow it, but not until the papers have been filed, the purifications done, the ceremonies complete. It will take time.” His voice was very loud, his face red.

“It will not,” I said calmly, “take longer than a day. It will probably take less. All these objections you make are the prattle of an old man. I have the chaldra of the mother to perform. It takes precedence over all mundane matters. As for the Day-Keepers ‘allowing’ it, how not?” I said blithely. “The dhareners are always complaining that we don’t ‘rise to our full potential.’ That’s why I want Ristran, so that none of you old men can bind me up with your paperwork and your time until I, too, am old and frightened of my shadow as it falls on the Inner Well.”

“And your chald,” Rathad continued as if I had not spoken. “You cannot go without another strand being added. We cannot allow the Well-Keepress to go jaunting off to an undisclosed destination with her chald in need of an additional strand. It must be made, wound, prayed over. The chalder will never be able to produce one for you in a matter of hours, should he wish to, which he will not. You cannot possibly leave before Detarsa fourth seventh. It will take the full pass to arrange things. I do not agree with you about Jana. There are those more deserving of such an honor.” He rubbed his hand across his face. “But if you insist upon her, she must be readied to take on your duties. All these things take time. It is now the last of Macara. Give me these twenty-eight days, and when the pass is done, I will not obstruct you. Truly, I do not obstruct you now, but simply remind you of the forms to which you must attend. Perhaps the Day-Keepers will uphold you. The circumstances here are very unusual. But whatever comes to be, you must meet your fate with an eye to the traditions of this Well, and with dignity and grace.”

“I know you mean well, Rathad, and that you would not obstruct me,” I said, though I was not as sure as I pretended — Rathad was like a collar around my neck. But he was also my mother’s brother, and he too had looked into the silver cube and seen her there. So I pressed the advantage I knew I had, then and there: “I ask you again to attend to these things for me. Only summon for me Ristran, the dharener, or some other high Day-Keeper, the chalder, and the others that I need. I feel certain that this matter can be arranged in a way acceptable to all concerned. If I am wrong, then I have but taken mid-meal with the Day-Keeper, and discussed certain matters with the high-chalder. I will take Santh to the Liaison First’s tomorrow, whatever the outcome, so I will need the fitter and the toilet women. I will let the subject of Jana rest for the present, but the rest must be done.” I smiled my most winning smile.

“Estri,” Rathad rubbed his cheeks with his palms in exasperation, “you are not listening to me — oh, the words, perhaps, but not the sense of what I am saying. This is dangerous. Your . . . father . . . what kind of creature might he be? What kind of peril are you hastening toward? You are Well-Keepress  —”

“That is who I am,” I agreed with equanimity. “And the Well-Keepress is ready for a meal: parr and eggs, fresh fruit, cheese, and wine. Perhaps enough for three, for the high-chalder might also be hungry. Do hurry, for midday is close upon us.”

Shaking his head, a smile playing across his lips, Rathad strode to the mirrored doors with a swirl of his iridescent web-cloth robe. I heard his muffled voice giving instructions to the runner just outside. I sighed with relief. I had been unsure I could persuade him.

When he reentered, he did not sit again behind the table, but came to lean against it by my side, so close that I could see every white curling hair that poked its way through the straps of his thonged sandal.

“There remains this second . . . bequest, if that is the proper word, from your great-grandmother, Estri.” He handed me the old yellowed envelope once again, and this time I took it.

I broke the seal and withdrew the sheet within. The hand was sure and strong. There was no greeting.

It said: “The woman I seek, whose name the envelope bears, is all of a color, the color of the spring sun rising, with hair of molten bronze that brushes the ground. In my vision it seemed that this woman and I were of a kind. I will never know. To her I say: ‘Guard Astria, for you may lose it, and more. Beware one who is not as he seems. Stray not into the port city of Baniev. And lastly, look well about you, for your father’s daughter’s brother seeks you.

“If you succeed, you will be lauded, even as I am lauded, for you will accomplish more than you attempt. Be strong, for the father will surely help his daughter.”

It was signed “Astria Barina diet Hadrath.”

I read it twice. A woman from the distant past had looked forward to this day and seen me: for I have a glowing tinge to my skin, not so bright as my father’s, perhaps, but there — and bronze hair that in those days brushed the ground. She’d parted the veil of years to speak to me. And what had she said? Lose Astria? Never. The Well named after my great-grandmother was my heritage.

I read the letter again, and the riddle there became no clearer. It seemed that every hair on my body stood away from my flesh. Silistrans say that obscurity is the cloak of the forereader. My great-grandmother had drawn that cloak close about her on the writing of this message. That it was meant for me, and no other, was beyond doubt. But no one is as he seems; I had no intention of visiting Baniev, far up the coast; and I had no brother. Her encouragement made even less sense. My search was of personal import only, and my mother had said it was a testing, so no help from my father would be forthcoming.

I had no fear for Astria, I told myself. The Well was in the same hands that had guided it these three hundred years. But I would take care.

I shook my head and handed the perplexing oracle to Rathad.

I felt most discomforted, yet I was glad my great-grandmother’s message had reached me. It would be a stout lever with which to pry the Day-Keepers from their conventions.

“What sense do you make of it, Estri?” said Rathad, frowning at the letter in his hands.

“Very little,” I replied, “but I will look more sharply about me, and you must see to the affairs of the Well with great care.”

“Doubtless there is a hidden meaning,” he mused.

“Doubtless,” I agreed. “But perhaps it is too well-hidden.”

“I would take all pains to avoid Baniev, were I you,” he continued.

“I will avoid,” I announced, “not only Baniev, but Baniese also, and products bearing that city’s stamp.”

“Has it occurred to you,” my mother’s brother asked, “that much time has passed since Hadrath’s death, and the father you seek may be no longer among the living?”

“Such occurred to me,” I admitted. “But the message of my mother said he awaits me, and it was she who chose the point in time at which I would assume the chaldra. If he is dead, it is by accident and not by age or infirmity. I must seek him. Who knows how long the bronze people live? Not I.”

Rathad grunted and sucked his teeth. “I yield.” He sighed. “If it was known that you would take this chaldra and make this journey eight hundred and forty years ago, then, by the Day-Keepers’ Clock, you must make it, and I must give you whatever help I can.”

He reached behind him for the silver cube, and handed it and the letter, which he placed carefully within the envelope, from his pale hands into my copper ones.

“Run, child,” said he, bending to kiss my cheek, “or you will keep the Day-Keeper waiting.”