Red Country (29 page)

There was a moment of utter stasis in which the spring did not run, the grass did not rustle, the wind did not blow, my breath did not come, my very heartbeat stopped. Zam, eyeing me with his turn for suspicion, said, “Are you going to faint?”

“I—no.” I found I had sat down with a thump, a hand to my head. “I—It—it's just—”

He said, very quietly, “I know.”

When I did not reply he went on, still more quietly, “And from what I hear in Everran, as soon as they're ‘independent,' Karyx's people will offer you the throne.”

I shook my head. Eskan Helken described a graceful wobble in midair. The throne. Everything I ever wanted, had ever fought for. Dropped into my hands, freely, with no obligation to anyone. So why, why, why, I demanded of myself in some alarm, am I not turning cartwheels, going delirious, throwing yams in the air?

Close beside me, Zam said, elaborately casual, “As soon as I can get a road open, I'll take you back.”

My head was in such a whirl that I simply said, baldly, “Th-thank you,” got up, and walked away.

* * * * * *

We were both very quiet that night. Perhaps, I thought, this is the effect of heart's desire attained, this calm above the transports of joy? Yet I had not felt so when I sat by Zam on that moonlit grave.

Then I found myself hoarding each day's moments, savoring their present and storing their memory as farmers store seed-corn in the first stages of a drought year, giving things the poignant attention that, I remembered now, Zam had given them in the time before the Dead came to exact their price. These few days had become a tiny enchanted island between the waters of past and present that were converging to bear me back to Everran, and sweep Eskan Helken away.

For me, I thought, it has been an illusion. Only for Zam is this unbroken reality. I belong in Everran
—
I said it as easily now as he had once said, “I belong to Hethria”—and he belongs in Hethria. This struggle which has knit us like all battle comrades is just an interlude, before we go our separate ways. There is no place in Hethria for me.

Then it dawned on me, simply but devastatingly, that I did not want to go.

I fled that thought as I had never fled the Confederacy, Kastir's atrocities, the very Dead. It could not, it must not be true. I watched Zam at work with the calm joy of those at their inborn trade, as he gathered up Sathellin, used Axynbrarve to mend dams and cisterns, bent storms this way and that across Hethria to heal fires or supply water for dassyx and travelers, shifted sand back into place. Even, with immense patience and more immense exertion, labored to restore the minds of Estarian survivors who were still insane.

“I believe you'd do it for Kastir,” I challenged him, “if he wasn't dead.”

And having pondered it, he answered gravely, “I probably would. After all, he would be part of reality too.”

I told myself that the unhappiness with which I watched him was a symptom of impatience to be back at my own trade. I knew it was a lie. I had no desire to restore Everran. The very idea filled me with a monumental boredom, which I escaped by an orgy of domestic drudgery. I foraged and garnered and ground grass-seed flour, I washed and even mended clothes with a needle and thread, supplied by Zam with many jibes at my improvidence, and when that failed, I took Fenglis into the desert to chase flowers just coming into bud from the earliest storms.

I had given her the usual lick of salt after one such ride, and was hauling home a bag of assorted booty, when I heard Zam yell, louder than ever before,

I went up the cleft like a frightened lydyr, shot past the well ready to charge Th'Iahn and his assembled cohorts, and met Zam springing down the path with consternation in his face.

“'Thar, 'Thar, where have you been, confound you? They're coming, they'll be here tomorrow, I missed them on that cursed southern road, I thought it was still out—”

“Who?” I out-yelled him. “In the Four's name, who?”

“Sathellin, a horde of them. Karyx's crew. And your mother as well.”

“My mother!”

“Yes, your mother. Imsar Math, what am I going to do?”

“What are you going to do, what am
I
going to do, nothing but grubs and flour to feed them, not a skerrick of honey for the tea—”

“To the pits with the tea! They'll be all over Eskan Helken like a flea plague, they'll come and look at me and talk at me and want to have councils and make speeches, and, and, and, where are they going to camp?”

We gaped at each other. Then I felt my lungs cramp to an imminent spasm of mirth.

“You c-could,” I gasped, “p-put Mama in the cave—”

“And if she's like you she'll tidy me out of existence. . . .”

He stopped. Stared. Then broke down too, the first time I had ever heard him laugh aloud.

“We're a couple of ninnies,” I gulped at last. “They've been living in the desert in the thick of a rout. They probably ate worse than grubs and slept on gibbers if they slept at all. They can stay down below. In any case, you're an aedr. And a warden of Hethria. Look down your nose as usual and they'll all curl up and crawl away.”

His laughter died. He stared at me. Then he demanded, incredulous, “Do I look down my nose?”

“Of course you do. High-and-mighty is your middle name. Never mind, it'll come in handy. In twenty-three years I've never managed to crush Mama. Now I shall have my revenge.”

Suddenly the flippancy rang false, I knew what both of us were thinking and how each was skirting it. The closest I could come was to ask, “Zam? Is the road west. . . .”

He was not smiling either. “It could be used.”

“Oh.”

More silence. Then I said, “Well, wherever they camp, I hope they bring some salt.” He said, “Give me that horrible bundle, we'll need a wagon-load of flour,” and we began clambering hurriedly toward the cave.

* * * * * *

In the event, the crushing did not go to plan. After the first wild excitement, when riders flooded into the grass bay, the grays cantered up, I saw Karyx's characteristic jerk of the head as he signaled, Halt, then with a pang of unexpectedly tearful joy recognized my mother on a shaggy Sathel pack-beast and found myself flying out into the midst of them with inane squeaks of, “Mama! You're all right!” After we had kissed and hugged and cried on each other, when Sazan and Haskar had sidled up, uncommonly brown, uncommonly shy, but inordinately proud, because, as Haskar disclosed, “I killed four Estarians, Saz got six!” and I hoped furiously that they would not blurt it out in an attempt to impress Zam—after Karyx had appeared, a grin all over his face, to salute and then wring my hands and kiss me and ask, “Coming home, Sellithar?” and the men began to pitch camp, I walked my mother, arms about each other, to the cleft. She said, glancing around her, “So this is your Red Castle. And where's your That?”

At which, right on cue, Zam appeared at the cleft foot, cast one unnecessary glance about, nodded to Karyx, and stood waiting for us, looking quite unapproachable, and I knew, in a perfect agony of self-consciousness.

The Sathellin paused a moment in their work. Karyx's men watched. My mother, staring avidly, said, “So that's him.”

I said, “Mama, this is Zam. Zam, this is my mother,” and stood back.

She said with relish, “I've heard so much about you,” and stared harder. At which, to my disgust, Zam turned peony-red, muttered something about “welcome” and incontinently fled.

“The poor thing's shy!” she exclaimed, staring after him, at which my own manners went by the board.

“Shy? Poor? He's as poor as a thillian-mine lord and as shy as a brass door-plate, and what's more, he's an absolute toad!”

“You mouse!” I shouted when I ran him to ground at the very top of the northern pocket wall. “Why did you do that?”

“You didn't hear what she was thinking!” He was in total rout. “She reckons I'm a well set-up young man and just about the right height for you, she doesn't see what all the fuss is about, I look quite normal and she thought at the least I'd have fangs or a sinister laugh, she can't understand what we'll live on except grubs and lizards but she supposes you'll manage and she hopes I've learnt to handle your temper, but what a good thing that Kastir was disposed of, she really doesn't think she could have coped with bigamy—”

“Oh, Four above!” I felt myself crimson from brow to nape. “I'll kill her—I'll murder her—” and I in turn incontinently fled.

She was quite unrepentant. She was, indeed, amused. “How was I to know he could read thoughts, dear? Quite a good idea, really, I won't have to talk. When is he coming down again? I really should like to see a little more of him, you know.”

“He's not coming down and you won't go up and you won't see any more of him because if you do I'll never be able to look him in the face again! And I know very well why you want to see a little more of him, and let me tell you, it is not going to happen—I've just got shut of one husband and I wouldn't saddle myself with another if it was Beryx himself with Assharral thrown in !”

It all led to my spending most of my time in the camp, even sleeping there, since Zam's sense of propriety and my awareness that it would seem a setback to my mother's nefarious schemes led to my removal that same night. “I can cook,” he silenced my objections. “And I won't have debauchery added to my list of crimes. And”—he shuddered—“if you don't go down there, your mother will come up.”

Even to myself I would not admit how I missed that little pocket of grass among the towers, Hethria spread below me, the small comforts of what had grown to feel like home, everything to hand, in its proper place. I told myself he was probably glad to be rid of me, that I was glad to be with my family, that I belonged down here. Then Karyx came to visit me, not to yarn round the fire and fill in everyone else's side of the campaign, but as an envoy, calling on solemn matters of state.

“Princess Sellithar,” he said, squatted on his heels, most oddly for a soldier, in the desert way, “we've a mind to break camp tomorrow. Can't eat up all the grass, and the road's open to the west. And in a week or so Everran'll be safe for us. The—er—he says we'll have plenty of backing there. So I've come to ask, will you come with us?” He paused, and took a breath. “To Everran? And to take the throne?”

It had come. I had foreseen it, and tried not to see. I should have been proud, glad, joyfully triumphant. But I was not.

“Karyx,” I heard myself say, very far away, “I must think about it. Will tomorrow morning be soon enough to let you know?”

He nodded. Then with a quick bright glance from the corners of his hazel eyes he added softly, “That's all right, Sellithar. Take all the time you want.”

* * * * * *

I took Fenglis, and went out into the desert, ostensibly to hunt. I farewelled her, for the last time, with a last lick of salt. Then I looked over my own horse and checked the gear so long neglected, thinking how odd it would be to ride with stirrups again. Then I watched a storm trundle by to the north. Then I said, “Oh, fire and water!” and started up the cleft.

By the well I stopped, suddenly feeling an interloper as I had not since the very first time. Then, uncertainly, I called,
Zam?

The reply came instantly.

I caught a glimpse of blue robe against the mint. Starting to climb, I thought miserably, It was my fireplace once.

Zam was perched on his heels, watching the kettle come to the steam. He glanced up, and after three days' absence I thought in shock, His eyes really are beautiful. How will I live without seeing someone whose eyes move like that?

I sat down in my old place. He went on watching the kettle with all his former impassivity.

Rather desperately, I remarked, “The morrethans didn't flower again.”

“They're annuals. They only do it once a year.”

“Oh.”

The kettle steamed. He made the tea, his hands quick and deft as they had once been among the morrethans. He doesn't need me, I thought in unbearable sadness, for anything at all.

“I miss you swearing at me,” he said, eyes on the cups.

“Oh.”

Silence. Driven to it, I blurted, “You know why I came?”

He did not look up. “Karyx wants to break camp.”

“And you know the rest?”

Now he was absolutely expressionless. “Yes.”

I took a sip of tea. “What should I do, do you think?”

At that he looked up, and I could find nothing in his eyes but the aedric motion, still less in his face. It was an illusion. All we had done together might never have been.

“It's Everran,” he said, “isn't it? You said once,
It belongs to me.
And you always wanted it back.”

My lips said, “Yes.” My heart said, No.

He considered his cup. “It's your home. And your family will be there. And Everran will be—counting on you.”

You're supposed to say, They can do without you! yelled my heart.

“I'm glad,” he said, “that this at least came out of ‘Project Hethria.' It's some sort of recompense for—what you did.” He glanced up fleetingly. “If you did do most of it yourself.”

I opened my mouth and shut it again and then I tried to stop my thoughts as the truth burst out in them at last. How do I say, Everran now means nothing to me?

And my heart answered, inexorably, finally. It's Hethria I belong to. It's in Hethria I want to stay.

But how could I tell Zam that?

I twitched my eyes away and tried to empty my mind as well. In the tail of an eye I caught his even-briefer upward glance.

“No one's likely to beat my head in now. I'll even have time to cook.”

A cold hand gripped my heart. Whatever I felt, he did not merely think I ought to go. He did not want me to stay.