Kirith Kirin (The City Behind the Stars) (52 page)

“No. He was right. But I was tired of waiting.”

Kirith Kirin bounded out of bed. He crossed the sunlit room naked and dazzling. When I got back my breath I followed.

We dressed one another. Kirith Kirin turned his nose up at my plain tunic and swore he would see me better dressed in days to come. “You’re in my court after all, you might as well look like a courtier.”

“People will think I’m putting on airs.”

“People will think you’re putting on airs no matter what you do. But people with discernment will know you’re dressing to suit your rank. No argument. Good clothes are just the beginning.”

“Oh?”

“Certainly. You must have lands, houses, jewels, silver, cattle, horses, soldiers, householders.” He walked up and down the room declaiming with a boot in his hand. “And titles of course, you’ll need a list of titles as long as your arm. You’re nobody without a lot of hereditary theses and thats to string out after your name.”

“This will naturally endear me to the other nobles no end.”

“Naturally. The more rich noble folk there are the better everybody likes it.” He had amused himself so thoroughly he sat laughing on the bed. I knelt to help him with the boot as an excuse to be near him, lacing leather thongs up his shapely calf. He ran fingers through my hair. “You know I’m not joking entirely, don’t you?”

“Yes. I’m not joking either. There’s no need for you to go out of your way to offend people on my behalf.”

“No one will be offended. I’ll be doing a lot of reordering. Karsten must get her estates back, and Pelathayn, and Mordwen. Athryn has confiscated land from all the minor houses and most of the great ones. I can’t do anything about the southern lands but the northern ones I can.”

“Even so, you shouldn’t give me gifts I don’t need.”

“Not gifts. You have claim to most of Kentha’s lands by birthright.”

“Sivisal has the same claims. Give the stuff to him.”

He stood, lifting me with him. He looked me in the eye, his expression both amused and stern. “You’ve said that sort of thing too many times to make me comfortable. You’re Thaanarc; Sivisal isn’t. I’ll see that he’s provided for but you are my main concern. I know you mean to be modest but it won’t help. You’re not a farm boy now. You’re my sworn companion. I would have had to do most of this even before we knew about the necklace. Now that we know about your lineage the job is both easier and harder. You are a descendant of two great houses, your kin include Cunavastar, Falamar, Edenna Morthul, Kentha, even Commyna herself —”

“Commyna!”

“She never told you that tale? Few folks know it. Falamar Inuygen was her son. Cunavastar was the father.” He smiled. “You’ve inherited the family looks, I think.”

I had thought the revelations of the night before would put an end to surprises. Now this. I sat on the bed and blinked.

“Come on,” he said, “it isn’t so bad having famous relatives.”

“No,” I answered, “but it looks like mine tend to hang around longer than most.”

“Long lives run in the family.” Kirith Kirin picked me up as if I weighed nothing and held me over his head. “I for one am glad of that.”

From happiness we emerged into sallow daylight over an empty terrace. Chill wind swept down from the mountains. The sky was so pale it was almost white. Kirith Kirin walked ahead of me to the fire pit where an oet awaited us full of jaka; he passed beyond it and walked in a circle round the fire. “I don’t like the way that sky looks.”

“Neither do I.” I poured jaka for us. He took the cup without a word. I sat with the heavy mug in my hands, watching curls of steam; I turned my eye inward and used the jaka as a fixing-point. Chanting softly, I relaxed into the dual state.

I saw two things. At the center of a body of water, vaster than many Lake Illyn, an island rose as sheer as a High Place. On the rock-island sat a fair palace of dark stone. The surrounding land lay shrouded in darkness but the palace was bright. Within the palace, seated in an open window, an old woman sat with her hands folded in her lap. Three blue gems rested in the folds of her skirt. The gems glowed with weak light and the hands that occasionally stroked them were gnarled with age. The woman moved with difficulty and had a look of indescribable pain on her face. She was polishing the gems when the pain in her hands permitted the work. Through the window were ships approaching, flying blue banners.

That vision faded and another took its place. At the spur of dark mountains a Tower rose above a fortress of Tervan-worked stone. The brightness of the tower was not comforting but forbidding, pale as death and white like a field of ice. Within were rooms whose contents I could not see except one small chamber at its middle height. On a flat stone table draped with cloth lay my mother’s corpse. I watched her with the dispassion one feels when one is kei; knowing she was my mother I still felt no grief. I could not tell if she were truly dead or if she were simply imprisoned within some enchantment the nature of which I could not discern. The vision was fleeting. Shadow fell again, and I returned to the terrace where the cup of jaka was still sending up its trails of steam.

Kirith Kirin knelt beside me, hand on my shoulder. No more than a moment had passed. He knew what I had been doing and simply waited for me to understand. It was a wonder to me; I had never expected tolerance from him after the storm on Sister Mountain. I told him what I had seen. He was thoughtful and sat back on his heels, sipping jaka.

“Was the first woman Queen Athryn?”

He nodded. “In the palace Dernhang on Kmur Island. Shadow would not trouble her while she has the gems with her. You say they were dim?”

“Yes. Like candles when they’re dying. What are they?”

He lay his hand in my hair. When he looked at me he tried to push the worry aside. “A secret known only to a few. Protection for us, from magicians.” He touched my hair tenderly to show he meant no malice. “The gems are called Karnost, and they’re the source of law. YY gave them to us both, Athryn and me, when she set down the cycle that the Queen would rule Aeryn, then the King would rule after. We take the gems to Aerfax when the time comes for the Succession, since they’re tied the Rock. But part of their strength depends on returning to Arthen, like nearly everything that comes from here. Like you and me.”

I asked what he meant but he shook his head. “Not today. You’ve had enough strangeness. Today I want you to be as happy as you can be.”

“But I never understood the Jhinuuserret could age. Athryn is old.”

“We age for a time,” he said. “Then we come to Arthen, to this house, to be made young again. Then a time comes, as for Mordwen, when YY no longer allows the life to be extended.”

“Mordwen will die?”

“He’ll cross the gates. When he’s ready.”

We were quiet again for a while. I thought of my mother lying on the cold stone. “The Tower was Yruminast,” I said.

His face grew somber and he drew me against him. “Drudaen is apparently holding your mother there.”

“Is she dead, do you think?” My voice trembled in spite of my attempts at self control.

“Jessex,” he began, and stopped. I could feel the blood pounding in his veins. He drew a long, heavy breath. “If she isn’t dead, by now it would be better if she were. I’m sorry. I wish I could tell you some easy lie but you wouldn’t believe it and I don’t want lies between us. Your mother hasn’t your training. Without it her time with Drudaen has been torment. Be glad she’s sleeping, if she is.”

I heard Commyna’s voice from long ago, It would be better if she were dead. The pain I had been unable to feel in kei flooded me. I couldn’t remember when I had last cried for my mother and my family. Maybe I had been afraid. This time Kirith Kirin was there and I felt safe to let myself go. He set aside the jaka I had not drunk and rocked me in the breeze.

Later we talked quietly. He questioned me about other parts of the vision. His astuteness made it plain he understood my work on the High Place, and when I remarked on that he simply said, “I’m trained to be King over magicians as well as other folks.” We finished the jaka and I wondered aloud, idly, where the others had gone. He smiled, lifting a note he’d found beneath the oet. “Imral says they’ve ridden to Immorthraegul to see the shrine. They’re leaving us alone for the day.” He was beaming and flushed. “So I can show you the House myself, without any distractions. Do you have to go up to the High Place?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“You’ll know if that changes?”

“Yes.”

He let himself smile, as if he could only now believe nothing would come between us and these hours of privacy. What kind of life did he have that a day’s quiet could seem like such bounty? Watching his face full of boyish happiness, I understood how scantly I knew him. I took his face in my hands. “Let’s get away from here before they change their minds and come back.”

He looked surprised as if he had thought me too shy to touch him on my own. So I kissed him, laying my hands along the smooth, full curve between his shoulders and neck. He sighed and took my hands in his. “When I met you by the river I knew you were for me. I knew you were too young but I thought I could wait patiently, I thought it would be enough to have you near, to look at you and know you had been sent for me. I cared for you even though you were mortal, which is hard for us. Now I wonder how I ever lived.”

I looked into his eyes. “When you saw me with the Sisters and became so cold, I thought I would die of sadness.”

“I was afraid. I thought you or they had worked an enchantment on me. To make me care for you.”

“Commyna told me that was how you felt.”

It pleased him that I had talked to Commyna about him. “She thought I was foolish I guess.”

“No. The Sisters love you very much, Kirith Kirin. Commyna said it was not for me to judge you, that I should simply go on caring for you and show you that I would never attempt to — to get you to care for me that way.”

“Commyna was right. When the news from Cordyssa called me away from camp, I learned I wasn’t as cold to you as I thought. And when I found out Cothryn sent you gifts —” His face flushed dark with blood. “I wanted to call him out or whip him bloody. One can’t do that, of course, not to a person over whom one has power. I had to settle for banishing him to Maugritaxa, though Imral even tried to talk me out of that.”

This raised a question I needed to ask, after the discussion of the night before. “Does Imral wish you’d have nothing to do with me?”

“Lord no! Imral cares for you very much; we all do. He’s been trying to protect us both.”

“Are people really likely to make so much fuss?”

“You’ll see. It won’t be pleasant. There are some folks, particularly southerners, who don’t think men should lie down with men, or women with women. But we’re not going to think about any of that right now. I’m going to show you Inniscaudra.” A new thought brought a look of surprise to his face. “I can’t remember the last time I was alone with anyone here. In fact I can’t remember the last time anyone was alone in YYmoc.”

“YYmoc?”

“An old name for the house. It mean ’YY-written-in-stone.’ The Evaenym believed YY-Mother wrote the whole history of created places, all that was or is to be, in the foundations of Inniscaudra.”

By the end of the day I could believe it. Ancient the Jisraegen may be; the halls of Inniscaudra, built to no human scale, make the Forty Thousand Mothers and Fathers seem young.

We began in the Hall of Many Partings, which is also called the Hall of the Eldest, Jiivarduril, and the Hall of Last Days, Talhoneshduril. YY-Mother built this hall with help from the craftsmen from Smith country where the Tervan dwell in their city-in-the-mountain, Jhunombrae. The Tervan are not one of the created peoples but are much older, akin to the Orloc and the Untherverthen, having been born out of the roots of the Encircling Mountains when the living world was made. At the end of the war between YY and the Other, the Tervan came south from the mountains, leaving their city Jhunombrae empty for many ages, to live in Illaeryn and help heal the hurts of Arthen. They built the oldest parts of the House of Winter as a gift for YY. The high walls of Halobar Hall are built of many colors of stone. Immense tapestries hang between the tall, narrow windows. The hall was cold that morning; I wrapped myself in the Cloak and wished for a fire in the huge fireplaces that flanked the throne-dais and broke the long walls. These were so large that a company of soldiers could have stood inside each one. The mantles were decorated with stone carvings depicting the Tervan, Orloc, Untherverthen and Giants who were the Woodland’s first inhabitants. The stone was smooth and cool to the touch.