Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (338 page)

She flushed, and that was triumph enough. I held back the triumph, however, wary of overconfidence. The gaffer laughed the high cackle of age, and Kyral broke in with a sharp, angry monosyllable by which I knew that my remark had indeed been repeated, and had lost nothing in the telling. But only the line of his jaw betrayed the anger as he said calmly, “Be quiet, Dallisa. Where did you pick this up?”

I said boldly, “The Great House has changed rulers since last I smelled the salt cliffs. Newcomers do not know my name and theirs is unknown to me.”

The old gaffer said thinly to Kyral, “Our name has lost
kihar
. One daughter is lured away by the Toymaker and another babbles with strangers in the square, and a homeless no-good of the streets does not know our name.”

My eyes, growing accustomed to the dark blaze of the brazier, saw that Kyral was biting his lip and scowling. Then he gestured to a table where an array of glassware was set, and at the gesture, the white
chak
came on noiseless feet and poured wine.

“If you have no blood-feud with my family, will you drink with me?”

“I will,” I said, relaxing. Even if he had associated the trader with the scarred Earthman of the spaceport, he seemed to have decided to drop the matter. He seemed startled, but he waited until I had lifted the glass and taken a sip. Then, with a movement like lightning, he leaped from the dais and struck the glass from my lips.

I staggered back, wiping my cut mouth, in a split-second juggling possibilities. The insult was terrible and deadly. I could do nothing now but fight. Men had been murdered in Shainsa for far less. I had come to settle one feud, not involve myself in another, but even while these lightning thoughts flickered in my mind, I had whipped out my skean and I was surprised at the shrillness of my own voice.

“You contrive offense beneath your own roof—”

“Spy and renegade!” Kyral thundered. He did not touch his skean. From the table he caught a long four-thonged whip, making it whistle through the air. The long-legged child scuttled backward. I stepped back one pace, trying to conceal my desperate puzzlement. I could not guess what had prompted Kyral’s attack, but whatever it was, I must have made some bad mistake and could count myself lucky to get out of there alive.

Kyral’s voice perceptibly trembled with rage. “You dare to come into my own home after I have tracked you to the Kharsa and back, blind fool that I was! But now you shall pay.”

The whip sang through the air, hissing past my shoulders. I dodged to one side, retreating step by step as Kyral swung the powerful thongs. It cracked again, and a pain like the burning of red-hot irons seared my upper arm. My skean rattled down from numb fingers.

The whip whacked the floor.

“Pick up your skean,” said Kyral. “Pick it up if you dare.” He poised the lash again.

The fat woman screamed.

I stood rigid, gauging my chances of disarming him with a sudden leap. Suddenly the girl Dallisa leaped from her seat with a harsh musical chiming of chains.

“Kyral, no! No, Kyral!”

He moved slightly, but did not take his eyes from me. “Get back, Dallisa.”

“No! Wait!” She ran to him and caught his whip-arm, dragging it down, and spoke to him hurriedly and urgently. Kyral’s face changed as she spoke; he drew a long breath and threw the whip down beside my skean on the floor.

“Answer straight, on your life. What are you doing in Shainsa?”

I could hardly take it in that for the moment I was reprieved from sudden death, from being beaten into bloody death there at Kyral’s feet. The girl went back to her thronelike chair. Now I must either tell the truth or a convincing lie, and I was lost in a game where I didn’t know the rules. The explanation I thought might get me out alive might be the very one which would bring down instant and painful death. Suddenly, with a poignancy that was almost pain, I wished Rakhal were standing here at my side.

But I had to bluff it out alone.

If they had recognized me for Race Cargill, the Terran spy who had often been in Shainsa, they might release me—it was possible, I supposed, that they were Terran sympathizers. On the other hand, Kyral’s shouts of “Spy, renegade!” seemed to suggest the opposite.

I stood trying to ignore the searing pain in my lashed arm, but I knew that blood was running hot down my shoulder. Finally I said, “I came to settle blood-feud.”

Kyral’s lips thinned in what might have been meant for a smile. “You shall, assuredly. But with whom, remains to be seen.”

Knowing I had nothing more to lose, I said, “With a renegade called Rakhal Sensar.”

Only the old man echoed my words dully, “Rakhal Sensar?”

I felt heartened, seeing I wasn’t dead yet.

“I have sworn to kill him.”

Kyral suddenly clapped his hands and shouted to the white
chak
to clean up the broken glass on the floor. He said huskily, “You are not yourself Rakhal Sensar?”

“I
told
you he wasn’t,” said Dallisa, high and hysterically. “I
told
you he wasn’t.”

“A scarred man, tall—what was I to think?” Kyral sounded and looked badly shaken. He filled a glass himself and handed it to me, saying hoarsely, “I did not believe even the renegade Rakhal would break the code so far as to drink with me.”

“He would not.” I could be positive about this. The codes of Terra had made some superficial impress on Rakhal, but down deep his own world held sway. If these men were at blood-feud with Rakhal and he stood here where I stood, he would have let himself be beaten into bloody rags before tasting their wine.

I took the glass, raised it and drained it. Then, holding it out before me, I said, “Rakhal’s life is mine. But I swear by the red star and by the unmoving mountains, by the black snow and by the Ghost Wind, I have no quarrel with any beneath this roof.” I cast the glass to the floor, where it shattered on the stones.

Kyral hesitated, but under the blazing eyes of the girl he quickly poured himself a glass of the wine and drank a few sips, then flung down the glass. He stepped forward and laid his hands on my shoulders. I winced as he touched the welt of the lash and could not raise my own arm to complete the ceremonial toast.

Kyral stepped away and shrugged. “Shall I have one of the women see to your hurt?” He looked at Dallisa, but she twisted her mouth. “Do it yourself!”

“It is nothing,” I said, not truthfully. “But I demand in requital that since we are bound by spilled blood under your roof, that you give me what news you have of Rakhal, the spy and renegade.”

Kyral said fiercely, “If I knew, would I be under my own roof?”

The old gaffer on the dais broke into shrill whining laughter. “You have drunk wi’ him, Kyral, now he’s bound you not to do him harm! I know the story of Rakhal! He was spy for Terra twelve years. Twelve years, and then he fought and flung their filthy money in their faces and left ‘em. But his partner was some Dry-town halfbreed or Terran spy and they fought wi’ clawed gloves, and near killed one another except the Terrans, who have no honor, stopped ‘em. See the marks of the kifirgh on his face!”

“By Sharra the golden-chained,” said Kyral, gazing at me with something like a grin. “You are, if nothing else, a very clever man. What are you, spy, or half-caste of some Ardcarran slut?”

“What I am doesn’t matter to you,” I said. “You have blood-feud with Rakhal, but mine is older than yours and his life is mine. As you are bound in honor to kill”—the formal phrases came easily now to my tongue; the Earthman had slipped away—”so you are bound in honor to help me kill. If anyone beneath your roof knows anything of Rakhal—”

Kyral’s smile bared his teeth.

“Rakhal works against the Son of the Ape,” he said, using the insulting Wolf term for the Terrans. “If we help you to kill him, we remove a goad from their flanks. I prefer to let the filthy Terranan spend their strength trying to remove it themselves. Moreover, I believe you are yourself an Earthman.

“You have no right to the courtesy I extend to we, the People of the Sky. Yet you have drunk wine with me and I have no quarrel with you.” He raised his hand in dismissal, outfencing me. “Leave my roof in safety and my city with honor.”

I could not protest or plead. A man’s
kihar
, his personal dignity, is a precious thing in Shainsa, and he had placed me so I could not compromise mine further in words. Yet I lost
kihar
equally if I left at his bidding, like an inferior dismissed.

One desperate gamble remained.

“A word,” I said, raising my hand, and while he half turned, startled, believing I was indeed about to compromise my dignity by a further plea, I flung it at him:

“I will bet
shegri
with you.”

His iron composure looked shaken. I had delivered a blow to his belief that I was an Earthman, for it is doubtful if there are six Earthmen on Wolf who know about
shegri
, the dangerous game of the Dry-towns.

It is no ordinary gamble, for what the better stakes is his life, possibly his reason. Rarely indeed will a man beg
shegri
unless he has nothing further to lose.

It is a cruel, possibly decadent game, which has no parallel anywhere in the known universe.

But I had no choice. I had struck a cold trail in Shainsa. Rakhal might be anywhere on the planet and half of Magnusson’s month was already up. Unless I could force Kyral to tell what he knew, I might as well quit.

So I repeated: “I will bet
shegri
with you.”

And Kyral stood unmoving.

For what the
shegrin
wagers is his courage and endurance in the face of torture and an unknown fate. On his side, the stakes are clearly determined beforehand. But if he loses, his punishment or penalty is at the whim of the one who has accepted him, and he may be put to whatever doom the winner determines.

And this is the contest:

The
shegrin
permits himself to be tortured from sunrise to sunset. If he endures he wins. It is as simple as that. He can stop the torture at any moment by a word, but to do so is a concession of defeat.

This is not as dangerous as it might, at first, seem. The other party to the bet is bound by the ironclad codes of Wolf to inflict no permanent physical damage (no injury that will not heal with three suncourses). But from sunrise to sunset, any torment or painful ingenuity which the half-human mentality of Wolf can devise must be endured.

The man who can outthink the torture of the moment, the man who can hold in his mind the single thought of his goal—that man can claim the stakes he has set, as well as other concessions made traditional.

The silence grew in the hall. Dallisa had straightened and was watching me intently, her lips parted and the tip of a little red tongue visible between her teeth. The only sound was the tiny crunching as the fat woman nibbled at nuts and cast their shells into the brazier. Even the child on the steps had abandoned her game with the crystal dice, and sat looking up at me with her mouth open. Finally Kyral demanded, “Your stakes?”

“Tell me all you know of Rakhal Sensar and keep silence about me in Shainsa.”

“By the red shadow,” Kyral burst out, “you have courage, Rascar!”

“Say only yes or no!” I retorted.

Rebuked, he fell silent. Dallisa leaned forward and again, for some unknown reason, I thought of a girl with hair like spun black glass.

Kyral raised his hand. “I say no. I have blood-feud with Rakhal and I will not sell his death to another. Further, I believe you are Terran and I will not deal with you. And finally, you have twice saved my life and I would find small pleasure in torturing you. I say no. Drink again with me and we part without a quarrel.”

Beaten, I turned to go.

“Wait,” said Dallisa.

She stood up and came down from the dais, slowly this time, walking with dignity to the rhythm of her musically clashing chains. “I have a quarrel with this man.”

I started to say that I did not quarrel with women, and stopped myself. The Terran concept of chivalry has no equivalent on Wolf.

She looked at me with her dark poison-berry eyes, icy and level and amused, and said, “I will bet shegri with you, unless you fear me, Rascar.”

And I knew suddenly that if I lost, I might better have trusted myself to Kyral and his whip, or to the wild beast-things of the mountains.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I slept little that night.

There is a tale told in Daillon of a
shegri
where the challenger was left in a room alone, where he was blindfolded and told to await the beginning of the torment.

Somewhere in those dark hours of waiting, between the unknown and the unexpected, the hours of telling over to himself the horrors of past shegri, the torture of anticipation alone became the unbearable. A little past noon he collapsed in screams of horror and died raving, unmarred, untouched.