Author’s Note

Since, at the beginning of this tale, I did not recollect myself nor retain even the slightest glimmer of such understanding as would have led me to an awareness of the significance of the various occurrences that transpired at the Lake of Horns then, I am adding this preface, though it was no part of my initial conception, that the meaningfulness of the events described by “Khys’ Estri” (as I have come to think of the shadow-self I was while the dharen held my skills and memory in abeyance) not be withheld from you as they were from me.

I knew myself not: I was Estri because the girl Carth supposedly found wandering in the forest stripped of comprehension and identity chose that name. There, perhaps, lies the greatest irony of all, that I named myself anew after Estri Hadrath diet Estrazi, who in reality I had once been. And perhaps it is not irony at all, but an expression of Khys’ humor, an implicit dissertation by him who structured my experiences, my very thoughts, for nearly two years, until his audacity drove him to bring together once more Sereth crill Tyris, past-Slayer, then the outlawed Ebvrasea, then arrar to the dharen himself; Chayin rendi Inekte, cahndor of Nemar, co-cahndor of the Taken Lands, chosen so of Tar-Kesa, and at that time Khys’ puppet-vassal; and myself, former Well-Keepress, tiask of Nemar, and lastly becoming the chaldless outlaw who had come to judgment and endured ongoing retribution at the dharen’s hands. To test his hesting, his power over owkahen, the time-coming-to-be, did Khys put us together, all three, in his Day-Keeper’s city — and from that moment onward, the Weathers of Life became fixed: siphoned into a singular future; sealed tight as a dead god in his mausoleum, whose every move brought him closer to the sum total, obliteration. So did the dharen Khys bespeak it, himself . . .

I. In Mourning for the Unrecollected

The hulion hovered, wings aflap, at the win­dow, butting its black wedge of a head against the pane. Its yellow eyes glowed cruelly, slit-pupiled. Its white fangs, gleam­ing, were each as long as my forearm.
I screamed.
Its tufted ears, flat against its head, twitched. Again and again, toothed mouth open wide, it battered at the window, roaring.
Once more I screamed and ran stumbling to the far wall of my prison. I pounded upon the locked doors with my fists, pressing myself against the wood. Sobbing, I turned to face it.
The beast’s ears flickered at the sound. Those jaws, which could have snapped me in half, closed. It cocked its head.
I trembled, caught in its gaze. I could retreat no farther. I sank to my knees, moaning, against the door frame.
The beast gave one final snort. Those wings, with a spread thrice the length of a tall man, flapped decisively, and it was gone.
When the hulion was no more than a speck in the greening sky, I rose clumsily, shaking, to collect the papers I had strewn across the mat in my terror. They were the arrar Carth’s papers, those he had forgotten in his haste to answer his returning master’s summons.
I knelt upon my hands and knees on the silvery pile, that I might gather the pages and replace them in the tas-sueded folder before Carth returned.
Foolish, I thought to myself, that I had so feared the hulion. It could not have gotten in. I could not get out: It could not get in. Once I had thrown a chair at that impervious clarity. The chair had splintered. With one stout thala leg, as thick as my arm, had I battered upon that window. All I had accomplished was the transformation of chair into kindling. The hulion, I chided myself, could have fared no better.
Hulions, upon occasion, have been known to eat man-flesh. Hulions, furred and winged, fanged and clawed, are the servants of the dharen who rules Silistra. I had had no need to fear. Yet, I thought as I gathered the arrar Carth’s scattered papers, hulions are fearsome. Perhaps if I had been able, as others are, to hear its mind’s intent, I would have felt differently. My fingers, numb and trembling, fumbled for the delicate sheets.
One in particular caught my eye. It was in Carth’s precise hand and headed: “Preassessment Monitoring of the Arrar Sereth. Enar Fourth Second, 25,697.”
I had met, once, the arrar Sereth. Upon my birthday, Macara fourth seventh, in the year ’696 had I met him, that night my child had been conceived. I had read of his exploits. He frightened me, killer of killers, enforcer for the dharen, he who wore the arrar: chald of the messenger. Sereth, scarred and lean and taut like some carnivore, who had loved the Keepress Estri, my namesake, and with her brought great change to Silistra in the pass Amarsa, 25,695 — yes, I had met him.
I sat myself down cross-legged on the Galeshir carpet, papers still strewn about, forgotten, and began to read:
The time is approximately three enths after sun’s rising, the weather clouded and cool, our position just south of the juncture of the Karir and Thoss rivers. I highly recommend that you look in upon the moment.
The arrar Sereth, on the brindle hulion Leir, touched his gol-knife. It was the first unnecessary movement he had made in over an enth. My presence, alongside upon a black hulion, disquieted him. The brindle, gliding at the apex of its bound, snorted. He touched its shoulder, and the beast, obedient, angled its wings and began its descent.
When its feet touched the grass, he set it at a grounded lope. 1 followed suit, bringing my black up to pace him.
Sereth regarded me obliquely. I, as he, served the dharen, he thought, and touched his hulion to a stop.
We had been riding all the night, up from Galesh, where I had met him with the two beasts. He had served the dharen, most lately, in Dritira. And before that, in the hide diet, and before that upon the star world M’ksakka had he dealt death and retribution at Khys’ whim. And dealt them successfully, though those tasks had been fraught with deadlier risk than a man might be expected to survive. His thought was wry, recollecting.
“How did you find M’ksakka?” I asked, to key him, to bring something else above the impenetrable shield he has constructed. My hulion rumbled at the brindle he rode, and that one answered.
“I will make a full report to Khys,” he said, slipping off the hulion’s back. “Let us rest them.”
I joined him where he lay upon the grass, staring at the sky.
“I missed this land,” he said. “The sky there is dark and ominous, always cloudy. M’ksakkan air stings eyes and lungs. Everything is covered with a fine black dust. I would not go again off the planet.”
“Perhaps he will not send you,” I conjectured.
He saw M’ksakka, and that seeing was colored by his distaste, both for the world and the work he had done there. The methods he had employed displeased his sense of fitness. The value of the M’ksakkan’s death was to him obscure. I saw the moment: the adjuster’s surprised eyes, wide and staring as Sereth’s fingers closed on his throat, around his windpipe,·the M’ksakkan’s clawing hand upon his wrist as he ripped out the man’s larynx, vocal folds dangling; then the blood, spurting, and the sound of the adjuster’s choking death. And I saw others he had killed, those who were anxious to try their skills against a real live Silistran. He had been hesitant to do so, but more hesitant to face an endless line of their ilk, so he had killed the first three. Again, his thoughts sank below readable level. The hulions lay quiet, lashing their tails. The clouds scudded heavy over the sun. A soft, drizzling rain commenced.
“The dharen is pleased with you,” I said.
He sat up, his mind absolutely inviolate. “What do you want, Carth?” He stared down at me. I lay perfectly still. He made no attempt to read me for his answer. He merely waited.
“A first impression. You are coming up for assessment.” I rose up. “We want to get some sense of you. Your mental health is now our concern.” He ducked his head, ripping grass from the sward. “You brought child upon that well woman in Dritira,” I prodded.
He saw her. In many ways she had reminded him of the Keepress. It had been passes since he had taken a woman. On M’ksakka there were females, but nothing he understood to be a woman. He had not couched many of them. And in hide diet, there were only forereaders. In Dritira, with that woman who reminded him of the Keepress, he had spent his long-pent seed. Four times he had used her, before she was more than a receptacle in his sight. And he had abused her, more than was his custom.
“Get me the forms. I will collect my birth-price,” he answered. He did not want the woman.
“You should take her. We have been considering her. She might yet make a forereader.”
“Then it is a pity she caught. From inferior blood can come only inferior stock.”
“Khys has asked me,” I told him, “to bid you welcome to any of the forereaders we hold in common at the Lake. Spawn from such a union surely would be possessed of talent. The bitterness you hold is out of proportion to the reality. We all, at one time or another, find there is something we want that we may not have.”
He did not answer me, but rose and went to his hulion. He thought of the Keepress Estri as one thinks of the dead, with acceptance; and then thought of his own life, and what compromises he has made to keep it. What he let me know, I have no doubt, will please you. What he did not — that is what concerns me. He allowed me nothing else for the duration of our return.
His shield, as you will find, is set lower and much farther into his deeper conscious than any I have encountered. Most of his processing must take place behind it. Deep-reading him is out of the question. He visualizes barely enough to verbalize his will. That he is functioning superbly is attested by his works. That he feels it to his advantage to serve us at present is a certainty. I worry over what might occur should he choose, eventually, not to serve us.
My formal recommendation is for a complete and detailed assessment. Also, I feel some attempt might be made to pacify him, in light of what he is fast becoming. Or perhaps even to eliminate him, lest he become, like Se’keroth, the weapon turned upon the wielder.
And it was signed Carth.
“Carth!” I gasped, as a dark hand snatched the sheet from my grasp. Still upon my knees, I twisted to see him. His dark eyes gleamed. He ran his hand through his black curls.
“Did you find this informative, Estri?” he asked, towering over me, the paper crumpled in his fist. Carth was furious.
I dared not answer. I started to my feet.
“Pick these up!” he commanded, pointing.
I scurried to obey him, scrambling for the leaves strewn upon the web-work carpet, my stomach a knot. Once before, I had seen Carth this agitated, when I had written for him a certain paper. And he had called it audacious, and destroyed it. I finished, and rose to my full height, handing the tas envelope to him. My head came to his shoulder. He looked down at me, stern-faced.
“You were ill-advised to do this,” he said. “The dharen is not pleased with you. This” — he threw the crumpled sheet across the room — “will only aggravate matters. You had best make some effort to placate him.”
“What do you mean?” I demanded. “Has he taken some sudden interest in me?” I had seen the dharen precisely three times since I had come to reside at the Lake of Horns: the night he had gotten me with child, the day following, and once while I lay near death when the unborn had driven me to seek it. He had not been at the Lake of Horns when I bore his he-beast into the world. I had cried out for him during that premature and extended labor. He had been unavailable. Now, nearly eight passes later, he had returned.
“Do not be insolent!” Carth’s voice rasped as his palm cuffed my face to one side. Tears in my eyes, I put my hand to my cheek. It was what I had thought, not what I had said, that had brought me chastisement. Shaking my head, I backed away from him. Though I had known Carth a telepath, a surface-reader, rarest of Silistran talents, never had he shown his skills before me, one who neither spoke nor heard the tongues of mind.
“Estri, come here.”
I went to him, my hand trailing from my cheek to the warm, pulsing band locked about my throat.
When I stood before him, he lifted my face, his hand under my chin, so I must look into his eyes.
“He is very angry, child. You must realize that what you think is as audible to him as what you say. I know it was not malicious, that you read what you found. Forget it, if you can. Concentrate on what lies before you.” He patted my back, all the anger gone out of him.
“I do not want to see him,” I said, toying with the ends of my copper hair, grown now well below mid thigh.
Carth pursed his lips. “You have no choice. He will see you in a third-enth. Make ready.” And he turned and strode through the double doors that adjoined my prison to Khys’ quarters. Khys, my couch-mate, was again in residence. The dharen of all Silistra, back from none knew where, would again rule from the Lake of Horns.
Make ready, indeed, I thought, combing my hair. I had only the white, sleeveless s’kim I wore; thigh-length, of simple web-cloth. My jewelry was the band of restraint at my throat. I retied the garment upon my hips. Throwing my hair back, I regarded myself in my prison’s mirrored wall. My body, copper-skinned, lithe, only shades lighter than my thick mane, postured at me, arrogant. I had thought, for a time, that the he-beast had destroyed it, but such had not been the case. Exercise had given its grace and firmness back to me. My legs are very long, my waist tiny, hips slim. Pregnancy had altered me little. My breasts were still high and firm, my belly flat and tight. Good enough for him, surely. I widened my eyes suggestively, then stuck my tongue out at her. She made a face back. I grinned and wondered why I had done so, turning from the wall that ever showed me the boundaries of my world.
At the window, I waited, looking out upon the eastern horn of the lake. The fall flames of Brinar, harvest pass, fired the forest. The grass was losing its battle, browning. Hulions and forereaders and Day-Keepers strolled between the tusk-white buildings that circle the Lake of Horns like some well woman’s necklace. The green lake was calm and still, wearing the sky’s clouds for masquerade.
Angry, was he? I did not care. I cared no more for him than that he-beast he had put into me. I would not care.
I had cared very much, once. He had been kind to me that first night. I had no recollection of other men before him, though surely there had been some. In my lost past lay all that had occurred before I came to the Lake of Horns in Cetet of ’695, two years, two passes back. And I had cared for him who first touched me, Khys.
He had told me he would do many things. He had done some. He had put on me a son. He had seen to it that I was reeducated. I had been looked after, but not by him. He had also said that someday the band of restraint I wore would be removed from me, so I might explore my talents. That he had not done. During the pregnancy, when I lay near miscarriage by my own hand, had he promised. But no release had been given me after I birthed him his precious child.
I touched the warm, vibrating band at my throat. I hardly minded its tightness. I could often forget that it was there. But its true significance I could not forget. Khys had explained to me that I wore the band for my own protection, lest the mindlessness reach up again and take me. I had learned otherwise.
Early in my pregnancy, when they still humored me, I had begged to be allowed to stay with the forereaders in the common holding, so I might have the company of womankind. Reluctantly, Carth had agreed.
I had sent for him to take me back, weeping, upon the third day. Among the forereaders, I was an outcast. Those born at the Lake of Horns feel themselves better than all others. My skin tone resembles theirs. Those who come from the outside, or “Barbaria,” as the Lake-born call it, are an even tighter group. I fit neither. And I was the dharen’s alone. They were jealous, common held. Or so I thought, until I saw an angry dharener stride into the women’s keep and collar a moaning, pleading forereader. So do they punish wrongdoers at the Lake of Horns. As long as she wore the band of restraint, the forereader could not practice her craft. She was isolate. She was blind, deaf, and dumb to mind skills. She could not sort. Neither could she hest. She was helpless. She was shamed. She was marked, disgraced. As was I.
When Carth retrieved me, I had demanded to know, sobbing uncontrollably, what it was I had done.
He had for me no answer, but that I wore the band for my own protection.
After that, I began to wonder. I wondered until the child made itself known within me, until I could think of nothing else. Ravening, it tried to destroy me. In time, I tried to destroy myself first, that perhaps I would not spawn such evil upon the world. But it would not let me die. It enjoyed too much the torture to which it could subject me from within.
When it was born, finally, after thirteen enths of labor, I refused to look at it. I would not feed it. They forced me twice, but the he-beast was so agitated, red-­faced and howling, and its teeth so savage upon me, that they desisted. I had never heard of a child born with teeth, but I had known it would have them. I felt their bite a full pass before the thing demanded exit. I was glad to be rid of it, a pass before it was due.
Khys could not blame me, surely, if he had seen it. If his mind had touched it, he would not be angry. I leaned back against the window, waiting.
It was more than twice the third-enth Carth had predicted before those doors opened and he motioned me to him, his concerned eyes admonishing as I passed by him into Khys’ personal quarters.
The dharen stood by a gol table, stripping off trail gear as blue-black as the thala walls. His copper hair glinted golden from the tiny suns, Day-Keeper-made, that hovered near the hammered bronze ceiling.
The arrar Carth crossed the thick rust rug, soundless, to speak with him. Then only did Khys look at me. I pressed back against the doors, shivering. His face, in that moment, had been terrible with his wrath.
Carth made obeisance to him and left by the outer doors.
The dharen paid me no mind, but stripped himself of his leathers and weapons. I watched him, the only man who had ever touched me. I had forgotten him, his long-legged grace, his considerable mass so lightly carried, his ruddy glowing skin.
Wearing only breech, he poured himself some drink and took it to his rust-silked couch. Upon it he sat open-legged, sipping slowly, his eyes regarding me over the bowl’s golden rim. The crease between his arched brows deepened. He threw the emptied bowl to the mat, where it rolled silently upon the thick pile.
My throat ached, looking at him.
Then I recalled to myself what he had done to me, and what he had not done. I tossed back my hair and pushed away from the door.
“I was told you wished to see me,” I said, low, my fists clenched at my sides.
He stared at me a time in silence through molten, disquieting eyes. I felt my palms slick under his arrogant, possessive scrutiny.
“Take that off,” he ordered. “I would see how child­bearing left you.”
I flushed, but I untied my s’kim and dropped it.
“Turn,” he said. Filled with rage, I did so, kicking my abandoned garment from my path. When I came again to face him, I put my hands on my hips.
“Well?” I demanded, shaking my hair over one breast.
“Do not stand like that!” He frowned. My hands went to my sides. “Come here.”
“Khys!” I objected, unmoving. My head exploded with pain. I sank to my knees, my hands clapped over my ears. But they could not keep out that roaring. Then another pain, as he twisted my head back by the hair. By it, he pulled me up against him.
“How dare you withhold sustenance from my son?” he demanded. I thought my neck would snap. His other hand held my wrists against the small of my back. “How dare you come to me in such arrogance?” He shook my head savagely, his words hissing a fine spray onto my cheek. “You have disobeyed my express wishes. You will not do so again. When I am finished with you, you will be less presumptuous.” He pushed me away from him, toward, the wall behind the couch. I stumbled. Fell. My back and shoulder struck the wall with such force that breath fled my lungs.
He loomed over me. I did not move. I lay very still, as I had fallen, so as not to further enrage him. My mouth went dry from fear. My mind cried and whimpered. I raised my face to him, pleading. His thick-lashed eyes, half-closed, were unreadable.
“Khys, please,” I begged him, hoarse. “I could do no different. It is a monster, a beast. Please, I tried. It drove me mad. It tried to kill me. Punish it, not me.”
His nostrils flared. He shook his head, his mouth twisted in disgust. “Sit on your heels.”
I did so, my whole body slick with sweat, my knees pressing into the couch silks. My arms clasped about me, I shivered in spasms. I hardly knew him, the dharen. Never before had he raised a hand to me.
“You had not given me cause,” he responded to my unspoken thoughts. Still did he breathe heavily, his body taut with rage.
I ran my hands through my hair, tearing it back from my eyes, trying desperately to stop thinking. But I could not. I was hypnotized by him as he poised, menacing, above me. I felt as I had with the hulion — trapped, defenseless, vulnerable.
“I am frightened,” I whispered, my eyes downcast.
“That shows you not totally mad.”
Hearing the amusement in his voice, I raised my head. I recalled his face as it had been when I had lain near death with his child in my belly, his concern, his compassion. I saw, now, no trace of such emotions.
He stripped off his breech. I sat very still, silent, watching the play of muscles across his back.
“Once,” he said softly, straightening up, “you asked me to teach you your femaleness. I thought you too weak, then. I did what needed to be done and nothing more. Doubtless your failure to function as a woman lies partly upon me. I shall attempt to remedy the situation before it kills you.”
But when he came toward me, I could not sit still and let him vent his anger upon me. I fled, as far as he allowed. When he chose, I found myself imprisoned within my own body, and it, of its own accord, returning to him. Standing calmly by the couch, he took my flesh from my control. I could not speak. I found myself at his feet, my head pressed to the mat.
He let me try those bonds awhile, let me dance upon the brink of madness. When he took his will from my limbs, I did not move.
He flipped me casually onto my back, crouched beside me. His large head came close to mine. “Lie still and do as you are told. Only that, no more.”
And I did so, until I forgot, in my need, his instruction. The taste of blood in my mouth, the flat of his hand against my searching lips, reminded me. I laid my head back against his thigh as my body leaped to him, pleading. I heard my voice repeating things he had bid me say, without understanding. And later, when his teeth and tongue were on me, I begged for his use. And I did for him what I had not known a man would ask of a woman, whimpering. And he, raised on stiff arms above me, laughed. I sobbed his name, my desire, my love for him. And then his weight came down and I could but cling to him as he rocked me. When I thought my bones would shatter, he grunted, shivered, and lay still.
He stayed with me, holding his weight up on one arm, stroking my hair back from my forehead.
“I needed you so much when I had the child within,” I whispered.
“I know. I have a world to rule.” His eyes probed mine. I felt him, I thought, in my mind.
“Do you know how lonely it is for me, locked away, imprisoned?”
“I can do nothing else with you.” He shifted onto his side. “But I will be here for the nonce. My works are progressing nicely. I need not be elsewhere.
“I must make you to understand something,” he continued, taking me into his arms. “I have what I wanted from you.” His voice gentled. His hands wandered my hips. “I must see a radical change in your behavior to justify the trouble of you. Carth tells me you are unlikely to survive another pregnancy.”
“I do not take your meaning.” Shocked, I felt numb.
“We have more than two thousand forereaders at the Lake of Horns, many extremely attractive, all skilled and cooperative. I cannot, for reasons I will not explain, put you in common holding.”
I rolled away from him.
“Did the child please you?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“But I do not.” My voice shook. I had been breeding stock to him. I was no longer useful as such.
“No,” he said. “You do not.”
“I did the best I could,” I flared. “I am ignorant of couch skills.”
He laughed, touching my lips with his finger.
“Today we make a start,” he admitted. “If you live, you might learn to serve a man properly. You misunderstand me, or I give you more understanding of life here than you have.” He sat up and pulled me by the hair into his lap.
“I had not intended to breed you again. If I do decide to do so, you may not survive it. I have no need of a contentious, undisciplined female. Either you will become otherwise, or I must breed you to justify your existence.”
“Must?” My terror of pregnancy and death balanced, even.
“You are coming up for assessment. I must follow my own rules, since I expect others to obey them.”
I shivered, buried my head in his lap. I thought of what I had read; I could not help it. I waited for the pain of his displeasure. It did not come. His hand went round my throat, lifted my head. He bent and pressed his lips to mine. I felt him move against my thigh. My hand sought him, and he allowed it. He bent his bite to my nipples, erect and waiting.
Something deep inside me turned and rustled in that couching, and when I choked and gagged, it woke itself to my aid. I arched my neck and my discomfort disappeared. Easily, sure, I worked upon the dharen, my lips around him, my nose in his golden hairs. When he shuddered and his hands grasped the back of my neck, I got a taste of him. When he convulsed, moaned and twisted, his hands pushed hard upon me, then fell away.
When he cursed, softly, laughing, I sat up to see him. My strangeness still upon me, I noted his fine chiseled lips, swollen with passion. Then I bent again, licking, nipping, and took from him a last aftertaste.
By criteria I had not known before, I read his body’s response, my cheek against his hard belly, that I might feel his excitement, judge it by the wane.
“Tell me again, dharen, what you might do to me, if I cannot sufficiently please you.” And I heard my voice, deeper and breathy; and it seemed to me a stranger’s voice, with an accent I could not place.
He grunted, sat slowly. He cuffed me lightly, pushing my head from his lap, getting his legs under him. I regarded him discerningly, and found him not wanting.
“Insolent saiisa.” He showed his teeth.
And I knew the word’s meaning, though it is man’s slang, and Carth never spoke crudely. The word means coin girl, of the cheapest variety and questionable skill. “I wish I were even that, rather than living my life in one chamber,” I said, the mood gone, and with it my odd confidence and comfort.
“You may have both chambers, yours and mine, awhile.” His eyes glittered. “Is that one of those things a woman instinctively knows?” he asked, and I knew what he meant, but I had no answer. I smoothed the rumpled couch silks.
“Perhaps I read it,” I said. I wanted to crawl into his lap again, curl into a ball, and sleep. More even than I had wanted the child out of me, I wanted his approval. I recalled those nights, alone, when I had wept myself to sleep over him.
He stared at me, his head slightly cocked.
I remembered my humiliation, that he would not even deign to use me, that he cared not even enough to check on the growth of his child in my belly.
I put my hand on his forearm, feeling the silky copper hairs there. His skin, a reddish gold, was shades lighter than mine, and its glow more pronounced.
“Khys,” I whispered, “keep me with you, please. I will be whatever you want. Just give me time.” I did not look at him. Tears I had thought long spent came to drown me. “I love you,” I blurted, miserable, bereft of understanding.
Then did Silistra’s dharan pull me up beside him, and in those arms I poured out my pain to him, my confusion, my doubts. I begged him to explain why I wore the band upon my neck. I pleaded for my past, or some way he might know to make me whole without it. And I asked him of the child, and why it had been such a curse while residing in my womb.
He said nothing until I had finished, dry of words and tears both.
“I will discuss it with you,” he allowed, still holding me. “I am not prone to patience. I will speak of these things once only. You will never ask me again.”
I nodded, my head pressed against his chest, where the hair grew thick.
“First, the band. When and if you show signs of emotional stability, we will consider removing it. When you were progressing so well, those first passes, I had thought we might have done so by now.”
“It was the child, and the pain from its growth,” I whispered.
“And it was you who chose to experience your pregnancy as you did. Another woman would have enjoyed the pregnancy, perhaps loved the child and mourned when he was taken from her. Still another might have filled her time with study or some creative work. Females have been bearing young for thousands upon thousands of years.”
I pulled away from him.
He looked at me through eyes half lidded. “I am not insulting you. I am explaining something to you. You were, so to speak, born anew two years ago. You are like a child, still gathering experiential perspectives most acquire as babes. You have no memory of lying hungry, denied mother’s milk, or of learning to walk. You have yet to master the skills upon which adult behavior must be based. Wait!” he warned as I sought to interrupt him.
I sat back upon my heels.
“You wear the band. It is my will that you continue to wear it. If it pleases you to feel that you are unjustly marked by it, then feel so. The forereaders in common holding did not ostracize you because of the band. Where there are women, there are great stores of information. I am sure they know all about you. You are not common-held. You come from the outside, but are complexioned as a blood princess among them. And those women from outside, perhaps rightly, hate the superior Lake-breds. When I allowed it, I was sure you would not stay. I wanted you to realize the value of your isolation. You did not.
“No one has barred you from any studies you might have wished to pursue. Tutors of all sorts might attend you. One makes what one wants of the opportunities life presents.”
“But I may not walk the lakeside. I may not even walk the dharen’s tower.”
“You attempted suicide. We found it necessary to restrain you.”
“Before that?” I tossed my hair forward. It fell shining, past my knees, copper strands on rust silks.
“It was too early. You were not ready. You still are not ready. If your memory does return to you, and you have not become ready, it will destroy you. There is nothing I can do to hasten its return, nor would I choose to do so.” His voice held a tinge of impatience. He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath.
“And my child?” I asked him.
“Your child is no monster, only the first of his kind.”
“How can that be?” I shifted, knees aching.
He rose, filled two bowls from that golden pitcher, and brought me one. I tasted it, found it fine kifra, dry and live. I sipped, then touched the cool metal to my thighs.
“Look at yourself,” he commanded. A muscle ticked along his jawline.
I did, and back at him, one hand upon the bowl to balance it.
“Once the fathers spread their seed widely upon the land. We have long been gathering up those offspring. You are one we missed. Surely you knew it when you saw your resemblance to the Lake-born.”
I had considered that, but felt it some pretentious fantasy.
“But there are other children.”
“Other attempts. This is the first that has matched my vision.”
“I still do not understand.”
“I did not expect you would. But I have told you, so you at least have some truths with which to build your particular reality. Build it well, for you must live within that construct.” His voice had an edge, and he drained the bowl he held and set it down. My stomach lurched, tightened, as he approached.
“What is assessment?” I asked.
“You will find out, soon enough,” he said, taking the bowl from my lap. His long fingers fondled my breast. I twisted, that I might free myself.
“Do not flinch from me,” he ordered, but low. “I will give you a few more truths for your reality. You are mine. I will do with you what pleases me. Lie back.”
I lay back, stretching my aching legs out straight.
“I do not wish to be touched, not now,” I objected, but I did not move away from his hand.
“Then do not wish it. Your wish has very little bearing upon what will occur at this moment, or any other. But you will wish it shortly. I promise you.”
I was his. He did what he pleased with me, and within an enth, all I wished was his couching.
I found myself alone in his chambers. The doors were unlocked. He had looked back at me, almost smiling, and left one door ajar.
And I had risen to my feet and gone to stand before them, my arms clutched about me, quaking. Ambush, not freedom, surely lay in wait beyond those tall thala doors. He would see me disobey him. Or perhaps he would see that I could not.
For I could not. I stared at the open door, sank to my knees. If I ran, he would find me and bring me back. I remembered his wrath. I recollected his strength. And I found that not only did I dare not run, but that I dared not displease him. I wondered how I could sit calmly with an open door beckoning, and not try.
I sat cross-legged, a luxury he would not have allowed me. Above my head, the tiny suns had dimmed, as ever when no Day-Keeper is within their range. To the miniature stars, each within its prison, I did not exist. I wondered if they were sad and restless, as was I in this place. And if there were any of them, for the bronze ceiling hosted twelve, that felt love.
I lay upon my stomach, on the rusty Galeshir carpet, humming softly under my breath. My acknowledged couch-mate, the dharen, whom I had so fully served, was possessed totally of me. A responsive female, he had made me. I giggled to myself. I was other than I had been, a few enths ago. And doubtless he would teach me to become still a different creature. I shivered. I wondered if the fear of him would pass.
Sighing, I rose and wandered the dharen’s lair, that I might know what such a man chose to keep about him. Without a word, he had left me. I found myself at the gol table, a featureless translucent slab, upon which he had piled his trail gear. A straight-blade lay there, half the length of my arm, in a chased scabbard of green stra metal. Its hilt was inlaid with titrium wire, the butt of it a single fire gem.
I pulled the blade from its scabbard, my hand upon its hilt. A strange thrill went through me, holding the weapon, as if I had held such before. Upon its stra blade was engraved a legend in some unfamiliar script. And a symbol, one I had seen repeated upon the scabbard and hilt, a bursting spiral. And then I recollected the tune I hummed: Se’keroth.
Chilled, I replaced the sword in its housing, and stepped back. I did not touch the gol-knife there, or the strange sharp-edged circles of stra-steel piled beside it. “Se’keroth, Sword of Severance,” rang in my head.
Wordless, he had left me, in an unlocked room filled with weapons. I ran my palms along my inner thighs. I paced the chamber’s confines, trailing my hand along the smooth northern thala that paneled the walls, my bare feet soundless upon the Galeshir mat. With the weapons he left here, I could kill myself, if I chose. I could arm myself and flee. I did neither.
My hand found a panel, forward of the others. I slid it aside. Bound books and scrolls lay there, orderly, behind a second wall of glass. Among them I saw his own works, numerous volumes, including Ors Yris-tera, “Book of the Weathers of Life.” And what must have been the game itself, yris-tera, with its three-level board and leather shaker. Inside that shaker, I knew, were sixty bone pieces. Another creation of Khys’, Ors Chaldra, lay nearby. Divination and morality had been Khys’ concerns during hide-days, when he and some few others attempted to put Silistra back together again, after the fall. Disquieted, I slid the panel back in place. How could I aspire to him?
Upon the gol table, among his other gear, rested Khys’ own chald. He did not, as do most Silistrans, wear his chald soldered about him. The great chald of Silistra, in which every strand given upon the planet was woven, lay like some sleeping slitsa among his leathers.
If I had had a chald, a testament to my skills and accomplishments, a proud statement of my chan-tera, the will of the life, I would not have left it casually upon some table. But I bore no chald. If I had ever, it was lost, along with my past. It is a shameful thing, to be chaldless. I had been told that someday I might bear the arrar’s chald, the highest attainable. But that was before my madness, before the child.
I found I had come again to the beckoning doors. I turned and surveyed Khys’ keep once more; the rust silked couch, the gol table, the windowed alcove floored with cushions. Above my head, the tiny suns flickered, dimmed still more. I collected the three bowls near the couch and placed them on the stand holding their brothers and the golden kifra pitcher. Again I smoothed the silks over the dharen’s sumptuous couch.
Once more the open door drew me. Doubtless, he would tire of me. I, barely literate, unskilled, was no fit companion for such a man. He had gone, leaving me unconstrained. I might not see him for another two years. I remembered what he had said, that there were better than two thousand women at the Lake of Horns. And what he implied, that any of them would be honored to stand in my place. He had gotten already that which he had desired from me.
I put my hand upon the door’s bronze handle, pushed it back. Standing in the doorway, I regarded the tapestried hallway, the vaulted ceiling with its myriad tiny stars for illumination. The floor tiles were stone, squares of blue ornithalum and green-veined archite. I put one bare foot upon their smooth coldness.
And then I heard Khys, his voice edged with anger. From the left, around a sharp turning by a tapestry depicting battling hulions, he strode into view, another beside him.
I stood frozen, caught with one foot upon the hall stones. Not even did I move to shake my hair over my nakedness before a stranger. Khys’ companion looked enough like him that they might have been brothers, except for his hair, shades darker than mine. He wore a full loose robe of blue-black, with a glittering spiral at his left shoulder. About his waist was a chald nearly as grand as the dharen’s, wide and thick, imposing in its magnitude.
“. . . as I please!” said Khys to his companion. They had not yet noticed me. I stood witless, unmoving.
“It seems to me,” said the other, not intimidated, “that your passion clouds your judgment in this matter.” I clutched the door’s edge, leaned upon it.
“You will come to think differently,” said Khys, his mouth an angry white line. “I can . . . Estri! Come here.” They both stopped there, before the hulion tapestry.
Trembling, I hastened to obey him. His companion’s eyes assessed me. I knelt to him, as he had taught me, my hair falling over his feet, my knees upon the cold floor. It was not easy, before another. I felt my skin flush.
“Doubtless you can make her obedient. That is not a factor,” said the other.
“On the contrary, it is the factor. But one must define obedience. I feel,” said Khys, “that although you have prejudged matters, what I have done may still enlighten you. This is no time to discuss it.”
And he bent and touched me. I rose, my hair over my breasts, shining in the soft light. Khys’ eyes seemed concerned. The other’s glance was openly hostile.
“Walk with us,” Khys said, and they moved apart, that I might be between them. “This is Vedrast, Estri.”
“Presti m’it, Keepress,” intoned Vedrast, his full mouth feigning a smile.
“You mistake me, Arrar.”
Vedrast took my arm, as if to guide me back into Khys’ keep. I felt a slight shock at his touch, then a sense of presence. I grabbed Khys’ wrist, fearful. The dharen shook his head nearly imperceptibly. I dropped my hands to my sides.
“My apologies, young lady,” said Vedrast, enigmatic, eyes shining decidedly amber.
Khys turned to close the double doors, and the light in the keep brightened.
The arrar Vedrast crossed the room and poured himself a bowl of kifra, taking it to the alcove, where he lounged back among the cushions there. The spiral glittered upon his robe. I turned from him to Khys, behind me.
The dharen stood with arms akimbo, face abstracted. He seemed elsewhere. I waited, unmoving but wanting to run to him, seek shelter from this other, who glowered, intimidating, from amid the cushions.
Khys motioned me to him, took me in under his arm. He was scowling, but not at me. “You had best lighten your touch, Vedrast,” he said to his guest. “It is the entire monitoring system that stands to judgment here.”
“I miss your meaning,” said Vedrast slowly, his mouth a grim line.
Whorls of sparks danced in the air between them.
Khys stiffened. “What you do here is at best, a formality. I will do, as I have always done, my own will. Properly handled, the monitoring you vaunt as its own authority will uphold me. If it does not, then it has been improperly done.”
The arrar blanched, put down his bowl, and got purposefully to his feet. Khys pushed me gently to one side. They considered one another.
“Will you gainsay rules of your own creation?”
“I made guidelines that, properly adhered to, would serve as safety factors in complicated hests of long duration. If the sorting of the monitor is not free from preconceptions, the work is valueless.”
“I would take these points up with all us present,” rasped Vedrast, flicking those intrusive eyes my way. I was shocked that he would speak so to the dharen.
“Do your business here, now, Vedrast. And I warn you, see to your own skills while you are about it.”
The arrar Vedrast closed his eyes for a moment, searching composure. He found it, and walked purposefully toward me.
I retreated from him.
“Stand still, Estri,” Khys commanded.
“Come sit with me,” said the other, extending his hand. I looked at it. He did not withdraw it. Timidly I extended my hand to his. This time there was no shock. but I felt again, unmistakably, a cold touch within. I twisted my head toward the dharen.
“Please, Khys,” I petitioned him, as Vedrast led me firmly toward the alcove.
The dharen merely looked away, his face gone cold.
“Sit there, Estri. Good. Khys, if you will . . .” And he motioned to a place on his left. “Thank you,” Vedrast said when the dharen seated himself, his back against the draped windows.
“Now, Estri, I am going to sedate you. It will not be painful, and the effects will last only a short time.” And he reached over and put both his hands around my neck, fingers meeting where spine joins skull. I felt only a drowsiness, an urge to sleep, and a receding of sensation. I concentrated upon staying upright. My body was weighty, recalcitrant.
Vaguely, I knew Vedrast’s hands had left me, and that Khys’ had replaced them with his own. And I saw, blurred, that when Khys’ hands came away, they bore with them my band of restraint. But I had only enough strength to keep myself erect.
The arrar’s hands were again upon me, and he examined my throat for a time. I wanted desperately to lie down and sleep.
Then they asked me of hulions. And I heard myself answer, speak of what had, this very morning, occurred. I was asked to remember in detail, and I did.
Next did Vedrast ask what the paper I had read had brought to mind. And of the arrar Sereth, did he question me. I answered him as best I could: that I had only once met him, and that I had, upon occasion, dreamed of him, as I had much of my namesake’s life.
“Why do you think,” said Vedrast, “you have those dreams? Do they trouble you?”
I shook my head to clear it. Something within screamed that my answers were important, even crucial, but all I wanted was to lay my head in the dharen’s lap.
“No, the dreams do not trouble me.” I struggled to form the words with my unwieldy tongue. “I have no past of my own. Hers was of great interest to me. I chose her name, also. I would be as she, but I know what was in that book was hers, and not mine.”
“I see,” said Vedrast.
I squinted, that I might see Khys’ face, but I could make nothing of it.
“Tell me, now, about the child you bore.”
I did so, seeing the hateful beast, remembering my swollen belly.
“And about Khys,” he pressed me.
I tried to rise. I could not. I could feel Vedrast, strolling through my memories, kicking what did not interest him from his path. My mind filled with tangled thoughts, impressions, a patterning I could see extending out into the unborn time.
“Tell me,” said Vedrast, his amber eyes close to mine, prying.
“I serve the dharen,” I whispered. “I want what time he will give me, nothing else,” I said. Then I felt Vedrast at our couching. Enraged, I met him there boldly, with a skill I had not known I had. And I drove him back.
The arrar, shaken, visibly retreated.
Khys replaced the band upon my neck. I felt his second touch, tightening it. And his third, upon my forehead, and my lethargy was gone, lifting like some oppressive gravity just repealed.
Vedrast, shaking his head back and forth, rose and pulled back the draperies, staring out into the waning day.
“Perhaps you can hold her,” he said grudgingly.
“Doubtless I can hold her,” Khys said, stroking my hair.
I had been without the band, and I had felt the difference. I turned to him. “I would do anything to have that freedom, to see, and hear, and feel as you do,” I breathed, fighting tears.
“And I would love to have you whole,” Khys said. “When the time comes, rest assured, it will be done.”
“Did I pass?” I asked him fearfully. “Will I be eliminated?”
Khys chuckled. Vedrast turned from the window, solemn-faced. “Answer her, then, O dour one,” he said to the arrar.
“One does not usually give the subject the results,” Vedrast temporized.
“Make an exception.” The dharen’s tone rang like a slap.
“It is not up to us, in truth, Estri. You have heard that. If it were, I might be tempted to precipitate some crisis and see how you handled it.” Vedrast turned upon Khys. “There is no use in this, I will send you a written report.”
“You will make one before you leave here. And bring it before me, so I may see what it contains, and I may sign it. I may not. At any rate, I would hear what will be in it.” His hand, upon my hair, stopped moving.
“This is a farce!” the arrar exploded.
“Indeed, as is all of civilization. But it is workable. As one farcical primate with delusions of spirituality to another, let me adjure you to walk with greater care in my presence. I might be tempted to break you in half and feed the remains to the hulions. Now, in ten words or less, how do you find her?” the dharen said, rising.
“Neutralized. Reasonably adjusted. Potentially dangerous. May I go?” His words hissed from fat, full lips upon a fine spray.
“Go, then, and make your report. I will expect you to attend me at moon’s meal.”
“I have business elsewhere,” said Vedrast, stepping carefully over my outstretched legs.
“Cancel it. We have more pressing business here.”
The arrar wheeled and made exaggerated obeisance, strode angrily from the keep, slamming the thala doors behind him.
Khys followed to secure the locks, and when he returned to me, he was grinning widely.
He stood over me, fists on hips. “Still dreaming of Sereth, are you? Perhaps I will give you to him for a night. Would you like that?”
I shuddered and crept among the cushions, to the window. I shook my head repeatedly. I wondered what might happen to me. Had I been assessed? Would the recommendation upon my papers be the same as the arrar Sereth’s? I had no hope but Khys’ protection. Trembling, I thought of Vedrast.
“Speak to me,” he ordered, squatting down, his bulk closing the alcove into a cube.
“No, Dharen,” I whispered, cowering amid the rust and evening cushions.
“What?”
“No. I would not like it. Yes, I will serve you however you wish.” I would not cry or scream. I dug my nails into my palms and took deep breaths. I thought of what it had been like without the band; then I tried not to think.
“Your life,” he said, stretching out among the cushions, “rests in my hands alone. Such decisions have always rested with me. They might recommend; but they, in their turn, are also assessed. The council has no power but what I give it. Over you, I have given it none.”
And I looked at him sidelong, and knew that he was a man who gave away nothing. He had ruled Silistra so long, so well, so silked was the hand of steel, that few upon the outside conceived him to be a living being. They quoted him, venerated chaldra, threw yris-tera to guide them in their lives. They thought him more a force than a man, some long-dead prophet of justice and truth.
And that prophet of justice and truth cornered me against the window, that I might testify once more to his manhood and be blessed by his use.
When it was over, he slept, and I lay beside him, rubbing my hipbones. I thought long of fear and love, and wondered how I would have felt about him had things been otherwise. But things were as they were, and I found no solace in such speculation. I rested my head against his shoulder. He muttered in his sleep, and my heart scrabbled for escape. Partly wakened, he put an arm across my chest, pulled me to him. Half thrilled, half terrified, I lay hardly breathing. Alone so long, I had dreamed of just this. Yet, he had structured my experiences to suit him. Doubtless, how I felt now was more his choice than mine. I fell asleep finally, upon the uneasy conclusion that love, no matter what its roots, feels real when it is upon one. There seemed to be, then, no way to test it, for I loved my life the most. If Khys had taught me not all of love, he had taught me what he desired, and that would keep me alive. If he kept me alive, he could have my body, my mind, my love. I would deal, somehow, with my fear. Perhaps, I thought, drowsing, I might even wake up free of it. And I dreamed I sat with the Keepress, she all I had ever envisioned her — magnificent, haughty, her skin and eyes aglow with the fathers’ fire. Upon a barren crag, she sat with me. Khys, she said, deserved better. I, she judged, shortchanged us both with my conception. I argued that it was not my conception, but one put upon me by others, those around me. And she stood and stalked about that peak, vital, uninhibited. She demanded to know the identity of her who inhabited my body. I was a woman, born to flesh, she stormed. Female by birthright, she called me, and deaf to the law within. I am no animal, I raged. Then you are not of the living, she said, and knelt down, her wide-set eyes glowing, her tiny winged brows knit with concern. The wind whipped around her, keening. It reminded me of my place, and before whom I sat.
So did the Keepress come to me, and charge me not to gainsay myself. Live your heritage, she demanded fiercely. Do not make judgment, only listen, and live. Make no less of yourself than you are. And she turned me within, to see the fullness there.
When Khys woke me, entering me from behind, I found a different way to move against him. As the Keepress, I leaned into his cupping hands, clutched him, let my body couch him, unconstrained. I was not disappointing — not to him or to my brazen self.
“Perhaps one should not query such a gift,” he said, wiping sweat from his upper lip, “but one may surely remark upon its quality.” His eyes were mere slits.
“Did I not please you?”
He scoffed. “Is that what you call it?”
“I love you,” I reminded him, running my hands over my taut belly.
“You assured me of that before we slept.” His finger touched my lips. I nipped it.
“I had a dream,” I said, remembering.
He cocked his head. “May you have them more often,” he said after a pause. But he stared at me, disquieted. He reached out a hand, caressing, and my body leaped, joyous to his touch. He took his hand away and rose up on his knees.
“Sit up,” he said.
I curled my legs around me, leaned upon one arm. It was not my way of sitting, nor a way Khys had taught me. My breasts and belly, and the curves of my hips and waist, were well displayed. I threw my hair over my right breast, and it fell between my slightly parted thighs.
He surveyed me minutely. I found it exciting, that he looked at me so.
“I have meetings,” he said finally. “They will take the rest of the day and most of the evening.” His voice was level.
“Take me with you, please,” I begged, wide-eyed, leaning forward. “I would not be here alone. I will do nothing to displease you.”
He rose up without answer. I waited, following him with my eyes, my breath held. Near the hidden bookshelf, he pushed back a thala panel. From within it, he took a night-blue robe and dark breech and sandals. I wondered how many of the common-held forereaders he had couched. Surely many. I found a joy in his movements, that of a woman’s eyes upon a fine male.
Belting on his chald, he came around to face me, his arched brows slightly raised.
“Upon further thought, I will allow you to accompany me. What rises within you has taken my interest. Clothe yourself.”
I bowed my head, smiling, and went searching my one garment. When I had tied it at the neck and hips, he beckoned me close.
Amusement lit his eyes. He looked me up and down and bade me turn.
Then he untied the s’kim’s strap, knotted behind my neck, and retied it loosely. He pulled the second tie tighter across my hips.
“It will have to do,” he said. “I must get you some other garment if you are going to sit to council.” His manner drove me deep into my meager store of Stothric teachings, where I sought the ice of distance to soothe my indignation. He did not fail to mark it.
“Be silent,” he admonished. “Be obedient. If you do not perform creditably, I assure you, you shall regret it.” His hand went around my throat. By it, he pulled me roughly against him, into those arms that could have crushed me lifeless.
“Yes, Dharen,” I breathed when he released me.
Beside him, I walked with attention, proudly. Unaccountably, I laughed at my fears. He might kill me; rightfully, I feared him. All women fear such men, who know them. Such men, who do not fear themselves, must always be feared. But that, also, is the attraction of them, the fearsome ones, who take from us what is only such men’s to take, and not a woman’s to give. A woman may give her body, but a man must demand the rest, that which is his alone. A woman, Khys once said, is like owkahen — the time coming to be — which is either what a strong man may make of it or what a weak one will be made by it.
“Heed yourself, Estri,” he advised, cryptic, as he stopped before a door and reached across me to push it open. His robed arm brushed my breasts, and they tingled. I had been considering myself — walking the most privileged keep at the Lake of Horns, beside the dharen of all Silistra. At the will of such a man, my best would never be too much. Even Estri the Keepress, my namesake, who had found herself often overqualified in her dealings with men, had, before this man, fallen. She would, I was sure, have approved of me, in my new perspective. My freshly wakened body preened itself, much aroused.
The room behind those thala doors had seven corners. One great window, dark-hung, looked out upon the Lake of Horns. The ceiling high above our heads was hammered from gold, ruddy and gleaming, and lit by clusters of entrapped stars.
I found myself trembling, chilled, as if the cool gol under my feet was instead colored ice. Upon that strange symbol of a bursting spiral I turned, slowly, full around. Khys, by the window, watched me intently. Again I surveyed that empty hall of gold and thala. At either side of the double doors stood high-chalded arrars, Lake-born by their fire-licked skin, still as statues, in the blue-black of Khys’ service.
The dharen called me to him. My limbs, as I obeyed him, seemed numb.
“I have been here before,” I murmured to him, and the room took my voice and returned it to me, louder, echo-edged.
“In your dreams, doubtless.” The dharen indicated that I should kneel before the window.
As he had taught me, I sat there, upon my heels, my head bent, my mind whirling. After a time, I was conscious of his eyes no longer upon me, that he went and spoke with his attendants.
And then began the audiences. As each man was announced and presented to him, the suppliant knelt before the dharen and put his lips to the master’s instep, as I had been taught to do.
The first of them, a Day-Keeper, was named Ristran, dharener of hide diet. Attired as a Darsti builder, with his red-haired head shaved in the lateral stripes of the period of history in which he specialized, he made obeisance to Khys, who did not see fit to allow him to rise, but kept him on his knees the whole time.
Of Astria, the high Day-Keeper spoke to the lord of his kind, and of those problems he faced with some who had taken helsars there.
And Khys was displeased. He commanded the dharener to send him no more excuses, no matter how inventive, as to why he could not deal with the helsar situation himself. And of his misdeeds was Khys aware. Cruelly, as Ristran attempted to explain himself, did Khys restrain him. Remembering the horrors of the dharen’s flesh trap, I felt compassion rise up in me for the Astrian dharener. Helsars, Khys instructed him, were gifts from the fathers, not to be apportioned. Those that lay still upon the plain of Astria awaited certain individuals, for whom they had been intended.
And the dharener Ristran, head bowed, listened as Khys instructed him to open his school to those who had taken helsar teachings, or were about to take them. The dharener objected. He wanted no servers, no coin girls, no weapons masters or threxmen in his care.
“What am I supposed to do with them?” he inquired, his voice atremble with frustration and rage, still upon his knees.
“Train them, form them into a group, use them. At least that,” Khys said, observing that though some who had taken helsars could barely read or write, they would soon be possessed of great skills. Further, he demanded an accounting of all those involved in helsar studies. He would have it, he instructed Ristran, within a pass. And then, in his most formidable voice, he informed the dharener that he knew of attempts by those of hide diet to claim certain helsars, without regard to their rightful partners. If, said Khys, he heard again of such misdeeds, he personally would put Ristran in a band of restraint.
The dharener stared up at him in disbelief. And at me, with an expression I could not name. I saw him suddenly twitch, as Khys returned his limbs to his control. Stiffly Ristran rose to his feet and backed all the long way to the thala doors, eyes lowered, deferential.
The second petitioner on that day, Brinar first fourth, was admitted even as Ristran made his exit. To him, a man called Brenath who was adviser to Well Astria and to Port Astrin, the Well’s dependent city, Khys allowed, as he begged, certain aid in the rebuilding with which he was concerned. I learned, shifting there upon my aching knees, much of the state of Well Astria. I learned that in the holocaust of Amarsa, ’695, the coastline of Astria had been markedly altered. The Liaison’s Port, where off-world ships are accommodated, was only now ready to be reopened in its new location. Also I heard tell of the new Well-Keepress, a forereader, hide-born, who had been installed there. And my discomfort, unaccountable, was such that Khys turned from the suppliant, his half-lidded eyes an eloquent warning. I twisted my fingers together and sought to calm myself. The woman, named Yrisia Ateje diet Vedrast, was surely no concern of mine. Yet mention of her, and her installation as high couch, discomfited me. Once more Khys turned. I saw him through tears, come upon me unbidden. That he might not chastise me, I put my face to the gol. He turned away once more. I found, when my resentments had cooled, that I had drawn blood, digging my nails into my palms.
The next to seek him was a man high among Slayers, Rin diet Tron, of the Slayers’ Seven of Astria, a much-scarred, grizzled veteran near the end of his prime whose distaste for the bending of knee and kissing of foot Khys required was ill concealed. The Slayer’s eyes kept returning to me, and they were blue and troubled when I met them.
The Slayer spoke also of helsars, at Khys’ prompting, abstractedly, as if he had forgotten why it was he had come here, and wished he had not done so. He explained, with the air of a man unused to problems beyond his power to solve, the perplexity of his men:
“Helsar talents,” said Rin diet Tron, in a voice raspy and solemn, “seem more a hindrance than help to those Slayers who have acquired them. And when one needs them, in dealing with renegades also possessed of such skills, the carnage accompanying their use waxes out of proportion to all sense of fitness. I have seen men hurl chunks of mountain at each other. I have seen altercations between two take thirty to their deaths. The sort around Astria is so complexly muddled from all who wander about owkahen, none can get any use of it. My men whet their blades and long for the days when they could use them with impunity. Only a few find their new weapons welcome, and study their use. Most, myself among them, feel this whole situation unseemly. I would be rid of these gifts but if somehow freed of them, I would be at the mercy of those who wield them with no conscience!” He stopped, spread his hands wide, dropped them. He obviously felt that even Khys had, for him, no solution.
Khys instructed him to send, in groups of twenty, his troubled Slayers to the Lake of Horns, to stay a pass, each group, and take instruction.
Dismissed, the Slayer got stiffly to his feet, withdrew wordlessly from Khys’ sight.
The fourth suppliant was an off-worlder. I looked at him with interest, having never seen a M’ksakkan. He had no horns or tendrils, no tufted ears. His skin, except for its olive cast, resembled Silistran skin. He was not small, as I had conceived M’ksakkans, and his hair was harth-black. Ponderous he was, and overly muscled for my taste, with eyes like dirty water. He wore a tight-fitting, strangely cut breech, black trimmed with gold, and a white tunic under his Silistran cloak. As he walked toward Khys, I saw that he limped pronouncedly, favoring his left side.
When he raised his eyes from Khys’ feet, he stared at me openly from under bushy brows. I straightened my back, meeting his gaze. My legs ached so from sitting upon them, I could think of little else.
His name was Khaf-Re Dellin, and he was Liaison First to Silistra. I had heard of him. He came before Khys with a formal request for inquiry into the complicity of a certain Slayer who had visited this Dellin’s home planet, M’ksakka, at the time of a M’ksakkan adjusters’ death. His fear of Khys, I decided, must be second only to my own.
The dharen strode around the M’ksakkan kneeling upon the spiral set into the gol floor. He suggested to Dellin that he look among his own for his culprit. He had, he said, been informed of the manner of the M’ksakkan’s death, and found it not Silistran.
Dellin, diffident in the extreme, pleaded for a statement to send to his superiors.
That statement Khys gave him, an observation upon the harmonic workings of the Weathers of Life, caused him to cringe upon his knees. Thrice I caught his eyes upon me, and it seemed that he found me offensive in his sight.
Khys also noticed and bade the off-worlder explain his fascination, at which time the Liaison begged to be excused. The dharen allowed it.
“Hold the rest,” he instructed those who attended his doors, and strode across the chamber to where I knelt battling a strangeness that threatened to engulf my sanity. I sensed him only when he put the flat of his hand on my head.
I quailed beneath his touch, fearing flesh-lock, discipline . . . I knew not what. My mind, despite my best efforts, was filled to overflowing with resentment and hatred.
Instead, he bade me rise. And I felt calmed, my hostility fading as circulation returned to my numbed legs. I rubbed my knees.
“What think you of our Liaison?” queried Khys.
And I felt invaded, and did not answer him aloud. He had his answer, I knew, from my mind.
His aristocratic face expressionless, Khys toyed with his chald. “You asked to come here,” he pointed out. “Shall I return you?”
“To my confinement? No. I would rather even this.”
And he indicated that I take my place before the window, which now showed the sun’s set. Again sitting on my heels, under his scrutiny I flushed hot with shame. A decoration for his audience room, I had become. And I felt much-fallen, though from what, I did not know.
He strode, his dark robe swirling around him, to the arrars at the doors. One, nodding, left the audience chamber. The other moved to block both doors.
Six more men kissed the dharen’s feet that evening, seeking his favor, his counsel. The night stars glittered in a moonless sky before he was through with them. My stomach rumbled and twisted upon itself. It occurred to me that the dharen might not feel hunger, that such a man perhaps did not need food. But I knew different, from a night I had supped with him. And then I was not sure at all that that night had ever occurred. Looking at his back, I seemed to see the bursting spiral there, scintillant. And he became another, so great that Khys was only a poor copy. Around me, I saw not thala but thick-leaved greenery, and above me was not gold, but the glory of the universe, no longer paltry as time lets us see it, but brilliant and much multiplied, its beginning and ending and all motion between chronicled there.
Presently I found that my hands squeezed my head, spread-fingered, and that I rocked back and forth, moaning softly, with Khys’ concerned face close to mine. The tenth suppliant was no longer in the chamber, and two arrars now stood just behind their master, eyes distant.
At first I could not look at the dharen, though he demanded it. When I did, his features danced and changed in a sudden mist. I heard my own voice, begging aid. I am not here, I thought desperately. The dharen’s flat palm cranked my head to one side, then the other. I barely felt it; rather was I conscious of the different sights before me.
Then I saw the golden ceiling, and the entrapped stars upon it, and knew that Khys carried me, for they were where the floor should be. Then I was not there, but elsewhere, and I bore that beast again, saw the cord between us cut, heard it scream.
It yowled and screeched. I felt something pressed over my mouth, and the screaming, mercifully, stopped. I heard my name and forced my lids apart. And closed them tight against what I saw. But Khys would not let me be. I could feel him within my mind, working. I fought him. Better to drift, forever. He would not allow it. His strength far greater than mine, he pulled me back to him and his world. I felt the couch silks under me once again, and knew my chance of escape to be lost.
“Estri,” said Khys, “look at me.”
I did so. His face did not dance. No longer did mist obscure him, or the expanse of his keep, or Carth, whose worried face peeped over his shoulder.
“No.” I denied it all: the madness; the hatred; the other, greater manifestation I had seen. “Help. Please help me,” I pleaded, in the face of what I feared most of all.
“Estri,” said Khys. I met his eyes, unresisting, that he might heal my accursed madness. And it was as if one stood over a clear, bottomless well in which the sense of one’s life floated, waiting to be dipped and drunk. I felt my heart rate slow, my blood chemistries come into balance. His fingers came together at the base of my neck; I partook of his strength. His face, as he worked, was transfigured, compassionate.
He straightened up, again the regal dharen of Silistra.
“Rise,” he directed. I did, and dizziness assailed me. But the keep did not dissolve, and Khys’ grasp on my arm felt very real.
“Thank you, Carth,” said Khys over his shoulder. “Send Vedrast apologies for my tardiness. I will not be delayed here much longer.” And Carth, his brow furrowed, left by the outer doors.
“Now,” Khys said gravely, “let us discuss what has just occurred.”
“I could not help it.” I whimpered. “I am trying. Surely you know that. I cannot help it.”
“There is no way out. There is no way but mine. There has never been.” He spoke to that within me which still defied him. “I will not allow another of these fits. You will, should you repeat this performance, find yourself once more stripped and uncomprehending, and I will start anew.” And though I did not know then what he meant, the fine hairs on my body raised themselves. I clenched my teeth to stop their chatter.
He smiled grimly. “Your sensing is truly superb. The worst is yet to come.” He patted me delicately upon the head and walked away.
He looked back at me. “Have a pleasant evening,” he said. “Tasa.” And I heard the tumblers click as he locked the doors behind him. The stars dimmed.
I sat there, stunned, for a time. Then I went and tried the doors, both those to the hall and those to my chamber. All were secure. His trail gear and weapons were no longer upon the milky gol table. That panel I had seen him push inward did not respond to my touch.
I poured myself a bowl of kifra, to stay my shaking limbs and drive the chill from me. Sorely had I displeased him. I wondered what the night enths held in store.
“It is not fair,” I said aloud, tossing the empty bowl to the rust-toned mat. It was not right for him to punish me. Surely the madness was punishment enough. I went to the windowed alcove, stared out at the night. The city was reflected in the lake. Another time, I would have been taken by the view’s beauty. A wind blew, bobbling and rippling the water’s surface and the lights upon it. How long I sat with one hip resting on the sill, I do not know. At one point, petulant, I stripped off my s’kim and threw it among the cushions. At another, I thought I heard footsteps and hurriedly reclaimed it, tying it as Khys preferred, tight over the hips, loose at the breasts. The knots of queasiness in my stomach I attributed to so long without food. I was half asleep, my shoulder pressed against the cool pane, when the doors opened. I did not turn. The ceiling stars acknowledged him, brightening. I continued to stare into the night.
He came up behind me, in the alcove amid the cushions. Taking a deep breath, my sweaty palms clenched, I turned to face his anger.
And pressed back against the window: Khys had made good his word.
Before me stood not Khys, but the arrar Sereth. He wore a night-dark robe, loosely belted. Shadows hovered in his hollow cheeks, danced in the scar that traced its way from right temple to jaw. Khys’ height, but spare, was the dharen’s most deadly weapon.
I went down on the cushions to him, my lips to his instep, as Khys required. Abruptly, he jerked his foot away. Confused, my knees resting on my own hair, I stared up at him. He squatted down by my side.
“Do not fear me,” he said, tossing his head. His hand touched my swollen cheek. His fingers trembled. “He asked me to come here, to use you.” His voice, through unmoving lips, was quiet as the night. “I will not, if you do not wish it.” So spoke this man who ripped out throats with his bare hands, who got well women with child and refused them. A deep V formed above his high-bridged nose.
I studied him, his clenched jaws, his tight-drawn face, all line and bone and scar. And I delved deep into those eyes searching mine. He was an arrar, I reminded myself. No doubt my thoughts were open to him. “You are my punishment,” I offered timidly. “I will get worse, should I refuse to serve you.” My words came out barely louder than his. This man, whose touch I had craved in dreams, scared me witless. He retrieved his hand, examined it as if it held the answer he sought.
“Estri,” he said hoarsely, “do you not at all recall me?” He touched his fingers to my chin, ran them along my bruised cheek again. His eyes narrowed as I flinched.
“I recall you,” I whispered. “You once took me to my chamber. You would not stay with me. You asked that I leave you be.”
He stood then, strode to the kifra pitcher, scooping up my discarded bowl along the way in an easy, fluid motion. He moved like a wild thing, not like Khys, whose dignity ever weighted his flesh. He returned with two filled bowls and offered one out, hesitantly, as if afraid I would refuse him. I reached up and accepted it, trying to smile.
Those eyes appraised me as if I were some predator’s long-tracked dinner. Ravenous was that gaze, with a hunger I had never seen in a man.
He sat beside me cross-legged and sipped his bowl, holding it in both hands. His eyes never left mine.
“How is it with him?” he asked finally.
“As he wishes it,” I said, looking into my kifra, swirling it around.
“Does he often beat you?”
“He seldom does anything to me. This is the first I have seen him since before I birthed his son.”
He fell silent until he had emptied his bowl, then rose and refilled it. I pondered, watching, what he would do if I dared refuse him.
“I wonder” — he sighed as he sat beside me once more —“if he wants me to move against him. You would not know, would you?” His eyes were very bright. This time when he had drained his bowl, he threw it against the far wall so hard it rebounded to the middle of the room.
“Arrar,” I murmured, “it would be a kindness if you would do what you came here to do. I would not face his wrath.”
“I doubt if I can,” he said, and sighed like the winter wind rattling my tower window.
“I am sorry,” I said. “I am afraid it is my fault.” I got up on my knees and stripped off my single garment. Before my nudity, he sat unmoved. It occurred to me that this man, who had once refused me, doubtless had had better.
“Sereth,” I whispered, “I will try very hard to please you.”
He ran his hand across his brow. Then he unbelted his robe, shrugged it off his shoulders. Seeing him in his maleness, I shrank back.
“Come here, ci’ves,” he said and took me into his arms. Ci’vesi are small furred mountain predators, considered talismanic when they choose life among men. “So long,” he groaned, his head against my breast. Then he called me by name, repeatedly. After he had spent himself within me, he raised his head, and his eyes were red and swollen. I had never seen a man weep in passion. Khys certainly did not. And he had groaned strange sounds while about his stroke.
He lay half atop me a long time, his face in my hair, unspeaking. My fingers traced his chald, soldered around his hips, touched the carapace of muscle there. Wandering, they found themselves upon a wide scar running along his right side. He took my wrist, pulling my hand away.
“You got that upon the plain of Astria, did you not?” I asked.
“Estri?” he queried, suddenly leaning over me, his knees at either side of my hips.
“You are very famous, you know. And very different from Khys.”
He kissed my forehead lightly. “It is good to be with you,” he said, rising. “I only wish I understood his intent.” And he went to the window, leaned against its sill.
Upon impulse, I joined him there, my fingers finding work on the knotted muscles of his neck.
“We have come to a strange pass, you and I,” he remarked.
“Arrar, do you not read thoughts?”
“Not when I can help it. And not those of a woman.”
“I read Carth’s report to Khys concerning you,” I offered.
“Did you?” He slid out from under my hands. “What did it say?”
“That Khys should either eliminate you or seek to pacify you in some way.”
“This situation could be part of either,” he said after a moment, his voice like iron scraping ice. “You have risked his anger for me. Why?”
I regarded my ankles, sunk amid the cushions. My fingers attacked each other. I had doubtless done so.
“I do not know,” I admitted. I sat beside him upon the sill, our thighs touching. “They say I am mad. Sometimes I am. I often do and think things that make no sense.” Though I tried to hide my disquiet, my voice was husky, shaking. He put an arm around me, and I leaned my head upon his shoulder.
“You are not mad,” he whispered, almost angrily. “It is only what has befallen you, and the way he uses you, that makes you think so.”
“In his way, Khys cares for me,”
Sereth spat a word I did not know.
“What does that mean?” I asked him.
“It means that Khys cares for nothing but his hests. Nothing.”
“Do you think,” I ventured, suddenly near tears, “that he will let you come to me again?” The room flickered. I fought the shimmer and the aching sadness come upon me. For a moment I saw him differently in my mind — at another time, another place.
“I do not know,” he said, distant. “I will if I can.”
But I no longer cared about his answer. I slid from the sill and curled myself among the cushions, sobbing. I heard my voice, entreating his aid. And he gathered me up in his arms and rocked me like a child, speaking to me in a language I did not know. When I was drained of tears, he again couched me, savagely.
“Clothe yourself,” he said, slapping me upon the rump. “I have done all I can do for you.” He fished up his breech, his robe, his sandals.
“Where are you going?” I asked, tying my s’kim about me.
“I am going to take you, as I have been instructed, to the dharen,” he said, his brown eyes intent upon my face.
And though I tried to hide my fear, I know he saw it. I pulled my fingers from where they clawed at the band upon my neck, smoothing the s’kim over my hips with them.
His brows knitted, he pushed me lightly toward the door.
“I should not,” he said, locking it again behind us, “speak to you of these things, but I will. Do not let him terrorize you so. All masters pass. And you have, as a woman, certain constraints you might use on him. If I were you, I would do so.”
I looked up at him, uncomprehending.
“I have loved you,” he added, low, “since I first saw you. We both live. For now, that must be enough. If ever I can aid you, know that I will surely do so.”
And I walked upon awkward legs beside him, each footfall a surprise as my weight thudded down. I wondered what to do. Khys, who had fathered my child, had given me to this man, who would destroy him.
“Khys is my couch-mate,” I reminded him, this stranger before whom I had exposed my madness, weeping and begging for aid. His hand kneaded the back of my neck as we passed through the hall by the hulion tapestry. And the touch reminded me of his way with my body, so different, so much more, than the dharen’s.
I thought again of Khys, and by the time Sereth pushed open the doors to the dharen’s study, I was trembling. Within that room, mural-ceilinged, of thala and silver, Khys sat at table with the arrar Vedrast. I knew the room. My child had been conceived here — not upon one of the six narrow couches, but upon the silvery mat, beneath the dark-draperied windows. Tapers were lit on the round table, as they had been that night, though clusters of entrapped stars hovered high in the keep’s four corners, shining.
Khys and Vedrast rose, bringing their bowls with them, and seated themselves upon the thala-toned couches. Sereth propelled me gently forward.
I went to the dharen, brushed my lips against his sandal and sat back upon my heels, facing him.
“Sit down, Sereth,” ordered Khys, indicating a place on his right. Sereth sat and slid down upon his spine, crossing his arms over his chest, his head low.
Khys glanced at Vedrast, who now lounged supine on the couch to the dharen’s left.
I shifted, and Khys took note, scowling, as he turned to Sereth.
“How did you find her, arrar?” asked Khys solicitously.
“Much diminished,” Sereth said, almost inaudibly, meeting Khys’ gaze, unflinching.
“But not so much so that you would not again couch her,” Khys predicted, over steepled fingers.
“No, not that much,” Sereth agreed. His face was pale with concentration.
“You did well for me in Dritira. And in hide diet, that which you did outshone my brightest hopes. From what you did upon M’ksakka, there have been repercussions, but through no fault of yours. We were hoping that this” — and he indicated me — “might please you. We are not ungracious.” His eyes barely open, Khys dug at Sereth. And that one’s scar grew livid; his body stiffened. Sweat glistened upon his face. But he did not take his eyes from Khys’. Between them, the air grew wavery, sparking sporadically.
Vedrast stood abruptly, his shoulders hunched, his face distraught, then froze.
And then, amazingly, Khys laughed aloud and extended his hand to Sereth.
Sereth wiped his sweat-slicked face before he grasped it. “When would you like this thing done?” he asked.
“Now!”
And even as Sereth sprang from his place, Vedrast seemed to shake off his paralysis, whirling. They grappled briefly, Sereth’s arm encircling Vedrast’s throat from behind. His other hand, I saw as he kicked Vedrast’s legs out from under him and dropped him to his knees, held an open metal circlet.
Khys leaned forward with a sigh as Sereth stepped back from Vedrast, whom he had put in a band of restraint. That one, upon his knees, clawed at his throat, groaning his negation. I sympathized with him.
“And what you just did for me,” approved the dharen quietly, “I have been trying to get done for a number of years.”
Sereth grinned at him, fists on hips. But his eyes, upon the piteously moaning arrar, were bleak.
“Take him, now, and dispose of him,” Khys ordered.
Sereth bent to the restrained arrar, speaking quietly. He shook his head and raised the man up by force. Those eyes in that slack-jawed face were vacant. Vedrast, upon Sereth’s arm, stumbled from the room, mewling.
I retrieved my fingers from my own throat, from my own tight band. Khys secured the doors Sereth had left ajar. Upon his way back to me the dharen reclaimed a bowl, its contents spilled upon the mat, upset by the arrars’ struggle. His movements were very different from Sereth’s.
That whole time, I had not moved. I am well trained, I thought to myself wryly as Khys again seated himself. I felt very small and helpless before him.
“And what do you think of all that has occurred, my little saiisa?”
“The arrar Vedrast went mad when the band was put upon him.” I quivered, upon my knees.
“Shock, only. If he were allowed to live, he would accustom to the silence. He had a great talent, and the use of it for more than a thousand years.”
“And you needed Sereth to do it?”
Khys scoffed. “I am still attempting to test that man’s limitations. Only such as Sereth, with his oddly developed skills, could have restrained Vedrast. He has had that band, keyed to his touch, ready, since he returned from M’ksakka. But he did not know for whom it was intended.” He chuckled, stretching. “I have long desired to see him work his craft.”
“You value him highly,” I commented.
“I have assessed him fairly. One must see what is, no matter how markedly it differs from one’s expectations.”
And then it was that he turned his attention upon me, blatantly invading my mind. Coldly he visited himself upon my memories, upon my couching of the arrar Sereth. Khys’ probe I could not stop, as I had Vedrast’s. When I tried to run, I found myself flesh-locked. Then I stood aside, within my own mind, and docilely watched him take what he wanted from my experiences. And of all Sereth had said to me, Khys apprised himself. And of how it was for me at the arrar’s hands, did he take note.
When the dharen released me, I let myself fall forward, lying passive until the tremors attendant upon flesh-lock had passed. An informer upon the arrar Sereth, he had made me, and even upon myself. How, I demanded of myself desperately, can one live this way? And my thought reverberated in the hollow, ringing emptiness within me, coming back unchanged, unanswered.
The dharen called me. I rolled upon my side and looked up at him, miserable. I had not the strength to do more. Or the inclination. I waited, passive, for him to make known his will. No more rage or horror or hatred or fear animated me. I was simply tired. One can fight only so long a battle that cannot be won.
“Good,” mused Khys, as if to himself. “Soon you will be ready.”