The Golden Sword (23 page)

I was glad to get upon Guanden’s back and away from the strained silence. I tried to call it the pre-race tension, but I knew better. Thus we rode out onto the track without any well-wishing between us, and Guanden caught my mood and turned it into a blessing. He did not trumpet, neither did he leap about, but only snorted softly, facing front with ears atwitch, waiting in the blazing midday heat.

The crowd was deathly still, watching. The fourteenth threx, a Coseve gray, finally stood upon four feet. I took two loops of Guanden’s rein. Tycet of Menetph, in first position, screamed his challenge. Guanden shivered and made reply to him. The huija cracked out, the crowd roared like an enraged hulion, and Guanden’s first leap brought him upon the rump of the fourth-position black, who had broken diagonally from the start. The black went to his knees, and Guanden leaped over him. I saw the Itophe rider’s anguished face pass under my stirruped foot. Before us the packed field was only a cloud of yellow dust. I gave Guanden all the rein I had, and two smart slaps upon his rump. We caught the field just beyond the tyla-break, spread even across the track. There was no way through them, no hole big enough for Guanden between those straining haunches, and we trailed them close into the half and over the ditch.

Guanden saw the opening before I did, and he was through it, so close that my knee brushed that of a Coseve rider. Guanden snapped out at the gray and got his teeth in the other’s bristled crest. The gray squealed and lunged, and his rider’s angry cries faded behind us. Into the chutes we thundered, only five before us, and the pace the leaders set took its toll there. A Dordassar beast lay lifeless in the chutes just before the sharp right turning, his, head twisted at an unlikely angle, his unconscious rider pinned beneath. I barely saw this new obstruction before we were upon it, and Guanden twisted in midair like a slitsa, that he might avoid the chute wall and the corpse and make the turn.

But make it he did, and the last right twisting also, and we had four in front and a straight track before us. Guanden’s froth and sweat spattered my face, his neck snaking even lower, while the wind whipped streaming tears from my eyes. We closed steadily upon the leaders. The moment stretched out distorted, each bound taking enths to complete, as if time itself thickened to obstruct us.

A gray Coseve threx carne up upon my right, slowly, so slowly, though the track beneath us was blurred by our speed. Guanden shivered and snorted his anger. He leaped away from the straining beast in a snap of effort that shattered the dream sense of the time and brought the crowd’s roaring loud to my ears as we gained the ta-nera pole. At the tyla-break we caught Saer and passed him in four strides, and there remained only three before us. Over the ditch we encountered Jaheil and his frothing red beast; then they were gone in Guanden’s dusty wake.

I tried to rein him up for the chutes; the dead threx still lay there, and I adjudged the leaders too far ahead for us to catch, but as I did so, Tycet’s victory squeal came back to us on the wind. Guanden bellowed his rage and twisted through the gut-wrenching turns so hard I hugged his neck for my life’s sake. On that last short straightaway he flattened himself to the ground, and his hooves barely touched it. In my sight was only yellow dust and his straining strike-foot. Then I saw another hoof, upon a golden leg. Guanden came up on Tycet of Menetph. And as he passed his rival, he took time to close his teeth upon that golden neck. I slapped his head away, while a scant two lengths from the ta-nera pole the Menetpher’s enraged beast broke stride and pawed the air.

We were gone past the finish, and this time Guanden was easy to stop and turn, his intent being to kill the golden threx who had twice affronted him. The Menetpher beast was not averse to such an encounter, nor could his rider do more to dissuade his mount than I could mine. The field of racing threx scattered to avoid us as Guanden and Tycet engaged each other. I battered helplessly at Guanden’s head, dodging Tycet’s snapping teeth and metal-shod hooves as the two kill-trained threx stalked each other upon their hind feet. Men broke from the crowd and raced across the track toward us. I saw Chayin, regardless of Saer’s safety, leave him riderless and jump for Guanden’s head. He hung there, his hands twisted in the headstall. Guanden shook him like a rag. Then another man, and another, and finally the sheer weight of them brought the two threx squealing and snorting to the ground.

Hands reached up to help me down. I could not move; my grip was frozen upon the reins. I heard my name, and it was Chayin’s voice. I let myself down into his arms and endured his examinations of my limbs. I saw the threxman whose charge Guanden was, shoving and pushing his way through the crowd around us, and the Menetpher rider, he being helped, limping, from the track by two of his brothers. Their snarling demands for clearance rang in my ears. I twisted in Chayin’s grasp to go to Guanden, but he would not allow it, and the ground wriggled in and out of focus as he led me off the track and into the threx masters’ body-packed pavilion.

We stood in the small cleared area with the threxmen and the Menetpher rider, who still leaned upon another for support. His thigh bore teethmarks where Guanden had torn his high boot away. There also was the green-trapped Coseve rider, who received from the threx master the fifth prize. Then Chayin left me to receive the fourth. As Jaheil stepped up for his third, the Menetpher leaned toward me, a strained grin upon his dark face. I asked after his wound, whereupon, free then to speak, he proposed that we meet later. I agreed, and we went to receive the lesser sword that was second prize. As he did so, a great howl rose up from those gathered around us, only rivaled by the deafening shouts that greeted me when I in my turn went to accept the Golden Sword from the five Parset dhareners who had the care of it.

As I took it from Hael’s hands, I felt, finally, a great elation and a warmth within me, and I took a moment to give thanks that the time had so matched my hest and need.

Then did I kiss the sword’s golden-chased hilt and do what was expected of me there; I went down upon my knees before the cahndor of Nemar, who took in his own hands the sword. After putting his lips to it, he handed it over to Nemar’s new dharener, in whose safekeeping it would lie until next Amarsa first first, when again the five tribes would contest for its custodianship.

From beyond the tent came a great pounding of dhrouma and kapura, and a chiming of gongs together, announcing the beginning of two days’ feasting, of which the winner of the sword is traditional host. As the crowd dispersed to avail itself of Nemar’s generosity at the food and drink vendors, Jaheil proclaimed his own apprei host to all the threx riders. I saw among those who still lingered Nineth and Pijaes, and also Liuma, making her way toward Chayin and Hael, who stood together apart from the rest.

This angered me. I went to Jaheil, where he stood talking with his own dharener. I informed him within Chayin’s hearing that I was off to meet with the Menetpher who had been second. His lips curled in disapproval, but I cared not, for I saw over his shoulder Chayin’s face, and it gave me great satisfaction.

“Before I go,” I said to Jaheil, “I would introduce you to a tiask who has long admired you from a distance, but would rather suffer on an empty mat than importune.”

“Where is this virtuous tiask?” Jaheil demanded, and I ponted out Nineth, who had bedecked herself all in red for the approaching festivities.

Jaheil hitched up his sword belt and licked his lips and put his arm around my shoulders in a companionable fashion.

“Let us go and meet her, then. I am sure that she will find my attentions well worth the waiting.”

“Do not tell her I told you,” I cautioned, “any more than she desired to meet you.” Jaheil agreed that he would never do such a boorish thing, and I introduced them, and the great tiaskchan seemed almost delicate next to Jaheil’s formidable bulk. As I left them together and slipped out into the crowds, I caught a glimpse of Chayin, between Hael and Liuma, with a trapped expression upon his face.

When I was almost among the food vendors, I heard a disturbance behind me. A hand came down hard and spun me around. Chayin stood there, breathing heavily, his fingers digging into my shoulder. Upon his other arm he had draped my cloak.

“I told you to attend me after the race,” he snapped. His fingers dug harder. Hot trills of pain ran down my arm. I regarded him levelly.

“You were busy. I would have seen you when your duties were less pressing.”

“So you fill your time with whoever is handy? Once a saiisa, always one.” The word is a demeaning term for coin girl. “Crying over a crell upon Jaheil’s shoulder is not even enough for you, is it?”

“Let me go.” People stared at us, some openly. “Give me my cloak.” He did, his anger falling in upon itself when it found no mate in me.

‘Walk with me, if you have the time,” I suggested further, my mouth dry. “We will drink together with the Menetpher.” I busied my trembling hands upon my cloak.

“I find myself with an early finish to my business,” he conceded. And we walked side by side, without touching, through the milling crowd, searching the wounded Menetpher.

“Hael says that though triumph has attended us, its equal loss is upon the way.”

“It is his hest, and not the sort of which he speaks. He tries to bring his will into the time. I felt it on the track. He learned much from the helsar. He has Tar-Kesa behind him, and the loss he seeks is of your life and mine.”

“You give him more than he has.”

“Or you give him less, Chayin. I hope you are right. I wish we could leave now.” I looked up at the midday sky. “I have fulfilled my part of the bargain. The rest is up to you.” And I spied the Menetpher and put my hand upon the uritheria that curled around Chayin’s arm.

“There!”

He nodded, and displeasure lurked at the corners of his mouth. “No more than an enth,” he cautioned me.

I bowed to his will in that, and started a rather awkward conversation with the Menetpher, during which Chayin sat silent between us, arms folded.

The mask upon my face was stiff and hot, and where it lay upon my cheeks the skin burried. I clenched my fists, that I might not tear it from me and scrape away the abrasive grit beneath. But I did not, because of Chayin.

We exchanged neutral small talk in the dust-heavy heat of the midday among the throng. One skin of kifra was sufficient to wash away the jiask’s discomfort before his new cahndor. Even Chayin’s contentiousness was soothed, and he unbent his hauteur enough to recall certain anecdotes which he shared with the jiask, who, if he had expected a more intimate encounter with me, hid his disappointment.

Well within the enth, Chayin deftly extricated us from the Menetpher’s company; thus I had no chance to impart any subtle warnings or delicate forecasts to the jiask, nor could I use my presence to protect him from the retribution I knew awaited.

Nor did I have the opportunity to further nurture what might grow between Jaheil and Nineth, for Chayin confined me to his apprei. “For my own protection,” he incarcerated me there, with a score of guards set to my safekeeping, directly after we had taken leave of the Menetpher. There did I eat and drink and while away the time combing my hair, with the apth-tusk comb he gave me.

I might have taken the turning that would have healed the growing rift between us then, but my emotions entrapped my tongue, and I could not. I merely took his gift from him and went to sit wordless under the oil lamp.

He came and squatted down before me. “What are you trying to do?”

“Behave like a respectable tiask, as you have ordered me,” I said. He got to his feet. The hurt I had caused him washed over me, reflected through the helsar and my own reading, along with his desire and confusion. But I did not confide in him, and he used his anger against me, another brick in the wall built between us.

When he left me there and went to his evening’s duties, the veil fluttered around him. Even then I did not, as I might have, pluck it from about him with the dozen words of truth I held within me.

Once I went and unlaced the flaps to see if he had truly set a guard upon me to keep me there. Two jiasks politely refused me exit, their countenances cold as the winds of Santha.

Somewhat later I heard low angry voices, and I peered through the laces, to see Hael arguing with my keepers. Whatever the subject of debate, he did not prevail, but stalked off into the first-dark gloom. I went then and lay by the stanchion where Chayin had secreted the helsar. I curled my body around it and rolled into the open arms of sleep, to be dragged roughly from their comfort near to sun’s rising by Chayin’s half-drunken ravings. It seemed that what I had feared had occurred, and a number of vengeful Nemarsi had descended upon the Menetpher who had struck Guanden with the whip, and given unto him some few strokes of a similar lash. Seeing this, others entered into the brawl, and still more joined in to restrain them. Three lay dead and forty injured when the fighting was done.

Chayin’s wrath knew no bounds. He shook as he told me in language I had never heard him use what had occurred. He cursed Menetph and Hael and the badly injured Menetpher, and even those who had so inconveniently died were not safe from his foul imprecations. As he denounced each faction in turn, he kicked and threw whatever came hapless into his sight. Thrice I tried to calm him, only to land upon my belly amid the cushions where he threw me. On the fourth attempt, I convinced him to sit, and then at long last to lie upon his stomach, while I rubbed the knots of anger from his back until his breathing eased, until the muscles no longer twisted under my hands, until he slept at last.

The ebvrasea, alone, posited upon the green square of overriding purpose on the board of manifestation.

His wings beat upon the wind from the abyss. His sharp eyes discern his prey, and they are not clouded by doubt or self-division.

The ebvrasea fills his belly without compunction. He knows not morality, for he is its embodiment.