The Golden Sword (13 page)

My gaze met the dharener’s, but he gave no answer to my questions, only walked beside me on my left. The jiasks melted from our path and fell in behind us.

Down numerous corridors and up three flights of stairs we went, and upon each level the corridors became more opulent, the hangings more beautiful. Torches here were frequent, and cushions appeared in windowed alcoves curtained with vibrant web-weave, draperies rippling in the predawn breeze.

We came to a pair of carved thala doors, and the dharener disappeared within, leaving us with the six jiasks, who watched us warily, silent.

After a time, Hael returned and ushered us into the cahndor’s presence.

The cerulean room had carved pillars, and layer upon layer of blood-tone rugs, and eight paneless windows that kept a hundred gossamer web-cloth panels constantly in motion. There were many cushions, and some low tables upon which were heaped uncountable items of valued Parset clutter.

Amid pillows, two women slept, naked, and their skin shone with oils. Scents I had not smelled since Arlet were soft on the air, and I was minded of Celendra’s keep, so long ago.

Chayin wore a sunset robe loose about him. He had lit an oil lamp and set it upon a low stand amid the cushions.

“Join me, tiask,” he said softly, indicating a place by his right. My companion had to push me forward. I was speechless. I collapsed before Chayin, thinking of my filthy state. The wound upon my side still bled fitfully. I felt rather than saw the dharener and my companion seat themselves.

“You have done us a great service, though no greater perhaps than that done you by this crell whom you so recently aquired.” The cahndor turned his unblinking stare upon my companion. “I am sure that I speak for your mistress when I offer you whatever you desire that is within our power.” Chayin looked at the nameless one inquiringly.

My companion regarded his hands for a time. Then he raised his head and spoke.

“That message which I came here bearing so long ago has been by other means delivered. He looked at Chayin, and his manner was not that of a crell’s.

“That which has been lost,” he continued, “cannot in this world be regained.” He turned to Hael, and his voice held censure long restrained. “I wore when I came here the arrar, chald of the messenger. Anywhere else upon Silistra one who bears upon his very skin the glyph of service would have protected and succored me. You cannot serve two masters, dharener. What has gone before will be noted by him who sent me here.” And he turned back to Chayin, giving Hael no chance to answer.

“I want only my chald and a mount, and sufficient weapons and provisions. I return to the northwest.”

“It is done,” Chayin agreed. “I will even send two jiasks with you to the borders of the Skirr.”

“It is not necessary,” the curly-haired man demurred. I had lost all thread of understanding.

“Hael, see to these things,” Chayin ordered. The dharener and my companion stood.

The curly-haired man put his hand gently upon my head. “Blessings, small one, and success in all you do.” He bent and kissed my forehead. “When you come to the Lake of Horns, seek me there,” he said softly.

“And after whom shall I inquire?” I asked.

“I am Carth, only, in service to the dharen.” This last was a whisper. “Not even tiask Besha dared give me name other than that.” And he straightened up and was gone out the doors with Hael.

Chayin stretched and rubbed his neck. A smile played about his lips. He extended his hand to me. In the corner, one of the women moaned in her sleep.

“Explain to me,” I pleaded softly, my hand in his.

“Surely.” He chuckled. “Besha is dead. She has been killed either by a northern forereader whom she was willing to engage in single combat, or by a crell in ignominious and unseemly death. If it were admitted that a jiask and tiask had been bested by two mere crells, we would invite trouble.” He ticked his points off on his fingers. “Also consider that in unseemly or mysterious death, all possessions are given up to the desert. That would include the threx Guanden, and our hopes for the race at Frullo jer. So either you accept Besha’s chald and be tiask in her place and ride the race at Frullo jer, or we will kill you, quietly and with all formality, so that in single combat the threx Guanden will pass into some jiask’s or tiask’s hands.”

“So I do not win my freedom, as Carth did,” I said bitterly. I understood only that. “The tiasks will never accept me.”

“Besha was high among them. You outrank all but nine others if you take up her chald. She was a woman with many enemies, but by your works they will accept you. Frullo jer looms ever closer.”

I thought that over. A strong sweet breeze ruffled the hundred hangings.

“You could never be sure of me,” I said.

“Nor you of me. But nothing is sure in Nemar. And there are times when even the self cannot be trusted. I give you life and a kind of freedom.” He leaned closer to me.

“Win for me the golden sword at Frullo jer!” His black eyes gleamed. “Make true my vision, and I will serve you in kind. We both twist the time around us. Let us combine our strengths, upon one common objective after another!”

“I do not twist the time, forereader. I but move within it.”

Chayin laughed.

The woman moaned again, and I heard the rustle of her body turning in its sleep. I thought of Khemi, once a wellwoman, and Aje, who lay bleeding from Besha’s abuse. If I took up Besha’s chald, all that was hers was mine, Aje included.

“Hael says it will go this way. I see it. Why not accept this life for a time? And more that I could offer you!”

“If I do this, will you help me find Sereth crill Tyris?” I bargained.

“I would rather do any other thing.” He leaned back in the cushions, stroking his chin with his hand.

Hael came through the double doors and closed them behind him.

I looked at Chayin questioningly, awaiting his word.

“Win for me the golden sword, and I will put you before him within a pass,” Chayin promised in a strange voice. “I would have, at any rate,” he added.

“Do you two still delay the inevitable?” Hael interrupted.

“No.” In that moment I decided. I stood in accord with my sorting. This was the way. “Send someone to my crell Aje. I want him whole and well, and no crell labors upon him. I will be your tiask and uphold whatever chaldra is involved,” I committed myself.

“After you are officially chald-bound as tiask,” the dharener temporized.

“This moment,” I insisted.

The spear and shield together upon the red, what is needed, on the board of catalysts.[
1
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The armed man, by his own design, serves the will of the Third Weather.

He sees around him decay, and hastens to make reparation.

The shield keeps his council, and the spear is indefatigable in his service.

At such times it is unseemly for a man to do other than what he chooses.

He need not question the fitness of his actions, for his left arm bears the shield of righteousness and his right the spear that clears the way.

His actions are precipitous without folly.

All that he touches turns to his purpose, for he is in harmony with the time.

Under the influence of Clearing the Way, a man not only serves himself, but his brothers also.

There is no adjuration.

The spear and the shield together are the manifestation of the Third Weather in the material world. The man bearing them turns his strength to the cause of a maligned leader to whom his heart holds allegiance. There is no error in this, not even in laying his weapons at the leader’s feet.

The time of Clearing the Way obviates all previous assignations. When the spear and shield are offered willingly into the service of one who is capable of bringing order out of chaos, they will certainly triumph.

Even should he offer up his own volition into the bargain, the commitment would not be too great.

—Khys, the Second Appendix, hide-year sixty-three

1. When multiple pieces inhabit one square upon the board of catalysts, the diviner is enjoined to read also the oracle for each alone upon the square in question, and to take note of any pieces inhabiting congruent squares upon the boards of manifestation and outcome.
   

I lay in the warm scented bath, and neither the healing water nor the skillful ministrations of the two crells Chayin had roused from their sleep to attend me could ease my mind. I stared upward at the mural ceiling, into the tropical fantasy foliage that had never grown in Nemar. The morning’s breeze blew through gold-green web-cloth panels, and one of the sleek-skinned girls added another steaming kettle of the herbal brew to my sea-green archite tub.

I rose dripping, and went to lie upon my stomach on a padded bench, that the crells might knead my aching muscles, dress my wounds, and anoint my skin with the precious oils of the south. I would take up the chald of Besha when the sun stood high. So it had been decided by the dharener, before he went upon my bidding to see to Aje.

When I had, in Chayin’s presence, demanded return of the helsar, the dharener refused me. He would go this very day to the hide aniet, directly after my enchalding, and he would take the helsar there with him. I objected. His retort was that I might ask him again after Frullo jer. Then he turned to Chayin and informed the cahndor that he would take the Nernarchan, Liuma, with him. Chayin opposed this for the safety of his child-to-be that Liuma carried. Hael replied that because they took the undertunnels, there was no danger. I thought it less odd at that moment that the dharener would command the cahndor as to the disposition of the cahndor’s couch-mate, than that Hael would speak of the undertunnels, secret ways through which the carriages of the Day-Keepers move at dizzying speeds from one hide to the other.

But Chayin, for his own reasons, was then agreeable to what Hael proposed. When the dharener was gone from us, he bid me make ready for the ceremony, after which, he promised me, we would take a meal and he would answer what questions he could of mine. We would have time for this, since by custom a new tiask spends her first night with her cahndor, that her loyalty might be adjudged by him and a firm basis for cooperation established between them.

The girls’ hands were efficient and gentle, but the muscles in my shoulders and back were beyond their power to soothe. I sighed and sat up.

They dressed me in makeshift fashion, for I am smaller in frame than Nemarsi women, though as tall as many. They combed and bound my thigh-length hair, and put over my head one of the feathered masks of which tiasks are so fond. Around my shoulders I wore a cloak of slitsa strips worked also with plumes and beads, and under it a simple wrap of white silk, for there had not been time to have proper tiask’s garments made for me. So I stood when Chayin came to collect me; my copper skin and hair gleaming, all masked and robed in whites and desert colors, but with the dark fires of unease shining out of me.

Through the day-bright corridors we hastened, Chayin keeping the silence with which I had greeted him. He was resplendent in his robes of state, but I thought he must be as warm as I beneath them. His cloak was thrown back over his shoulders, and the uritheria upon his arm glared balefully at me, intruder into its domain, usurper and unbeliever among the faithful.

Around and around we went in the maze of the palace of Nemar North, until we stood finally in the dharener’s offices in the southernmost tower, where the hierarchy of the Nemarsi awaited us. The Nemarchan was there, impossibly delicate amid these robust people, her ripe, belly wound about with strings of fire gems. Behind her stood her forereaders, ten of them, and ten from Hael’s Day-Keepers, each accoutered differently after the leanings of his heart. And ten jiasks stood to their right, and nine tiasks to complete the circle around Hael, upon whom every feather glowed black as deepest night. Before the dharener burned the chalder’s fire in a great bronze caldron, over which the chalder had arranged the tools of his craft. Above Hael’s head hung a great tapestry in night shades, upon which uritheria was depicted with his tail wrapped around the world, which spun upon the palm of Tar-Kesa, whose eyes were two huge red gol-drops set into the weave. And that form of Tar-Kesa had a familiar glow to it, and a certain familiar countenance that set my heart to scrabbling about my ribs in search of escape, for I knew then that I stood in the presence of my enemy Raet, with his servants ranged about him.

And I hardly heard Hael rendi Inekte’s voice as he intoned the ceremonial words and named off to me that chaldra to which I was henceforth bound, though I could not yet read the Nemarsi chald.

“And do you take up also the web-weavers’ chald as patron, and swear your sword to their perpetuity and your efforts to their betterment?’ Hael continued.

“I do so swear,” I answered for the sixth time the same, and the chalder then picked up a strand of blued iron bound around with web-thread and wound it among the others in the chald he was building for me.