The Marann (16 page)

He nodded, enjoying the empathic flare
of her astonishment. “Highest rank and highest status. She guides
the ruling caste, and can raise, lower, or change the rank or
status of anyone at her whim, but she seldom interferes in our
affairs. To be summoned into her presence is a high honor. Any of
us can request to see her.”

“So she’s like a kind of
pope.”

The Sural cocked his head, gazing past
her as he thought about it. “That would be a—loose—way to describe
her role in our culture,” he answered.

“Why does Storaas need to see
her?”

He paused again. “She can heal what
distresses him.”

Marianne stopped. “I shouldn’t ask,
should I?”

“No, you should not,” the Sural
answered, smoothing his face into a gentle expression. “I would not
answer if you did. He would know.”

“High one—” she started.

“Yes, proctor?”

“You’ve become very candid with me of
late.”

He raised an eyebrow at her, letting
one side of his mouth curve up. “Having an alien in my stronghold
has advantages.”

“Ah, I see,” she said. “
Uneasy lies
the head that wears a crown.
You can say things to me you can’t
tell anyone else.”

“Indeed.”

She fell silent for a time, listening
to the music, allowing it to soothe away the last of the agitation
she had radiated in the arena. The Sural extended his senses toward
her, keeping a light contact, pleased she had relaxed in his
presence. As her calm deepened, curiosity sparked through
her.

“High one?” she asked.

“Yes, proctor?”

“Don’t you have a name?”

He started and stared at her, pulling
his senses back. Instinct howled at him to thrust her away. He
gritted his teeth. He refused—
refused
—to be a slave to his
instincts. Marianne began to shift in her chair and radiate
feelings of awkwardness.

When he could trust himself to speak,
he met her eyes, smiled, and explained. “When most Tolari rulers
take power,” he said, “the Jorann takes their names from them and
bonds them to their people. From that day onward, we identify them
as their provinces. I am the Sural of Suralia. I have pledged my
honor and my life to every man, woman and child of my province. I
cannot be identified apart from my people again, and to lose them
would kill me.”

“That’s why you would walk into the
dark if your province were destroyed?”

“I would die if I lost my people,
whether I walked into the dark or not.”

The Sural stared out the icy windows
at the distorted view of the glaciers. He closed his eyes, seeing
his people glowing like stars around him, then opened them and
tapped his tablet. The music changed, the soft sound of a stringed
instrument filling the room.

Marianne took a deep breath and
sighed, closing her eyes as she listened, a gentle smile curving
her lips. “Mm, that’s nice,” she murmured.

The Sural gazed at her, stomach
clenched in longing, yearning for her to turn such a smile on him.
He tore his eyes away from her face and pulled a book from the
stack he had brought, sadness descending over him as he studied its
cover.

Marianne seemed to sense his mood and
opened her eyes. “Is that special?” she asked, pointing at the book
with her chin.

He nodded. “My father’s
poetry.”

“I didn’t know your father was a
poet,” she said, straightening, an eager note entering her voice.
“I’d love to hear something he wrote.”

“You may find it
disturbing.”

“It’s that dark?”

“No,” he answered. “Not
dark.”

“Then I can’t see the problem,” she
said.

The Sural raised an eyebrow and eyed
her.
Perhaps.
He debated with himself. She seemed more
receptive than usual. Storaas would advise him against doing
anything to stir her. Still, the Sural had not ruled as long as he
had without taking an occasional risk—and she
had
asked.
“Lean back,” he told her. “Close your eyes.”

She did as he asked, settling herself
back. He opened the book. By chance, it fell open to the last poem
his father had ever written, a ballad poured out to the woman he
loved, composed mere hours before he died. It was a raw first
draft, intense and passionate—as all his father’s poetry was
intense and passionate. The wisdom of reading any poem his father
wrote to Marianne seemed doubtful, much less that one. He pushed
the misgivings aside and began to read aloud, finding a strange
relief in the opportunity to give voice to his own feelings without
the complication of Marianne discovering how he felt.

Marianne drew in a breath and blushed
as the Sural began to read a deep and passionate poem about his
father’s love for a beautiful woman. With her eyes closed, she
could almost imagine the Sural spoke the words to her, something so
tender and so—so personal—haunted his voice. She let out the breath
with a sigh and wondered if the Sural had inherited his father’s
passion. Could such an impassive man be so tender, such a powerful
man be so gentle? Gentle... not like... she pushed away unbidden
memories and concentrated on the idea of tender and gentle. She
might be able to cope with that. Maybe.

The Sural sensed her emotions change
with a rising heart. Marianne had allowed the poem to affect her.
He sensed a stab of yearning pierce her—and then watched in
helpless frustration as a powerful wave of panic swept away the
yearning. He stopped speaking as Marianne bolted out from her seat
and strode to the windows, pacing back and forth in
agitation.

Of all the days he had to choose to
read something like
that
to her, it had to be a day when she
already struggled. Her hands fisted even while her insides
quivered. She didn’t need this, on top of that look at him in the
arena—dear God, he was attractive. He was just a friend. She gave
herself a fierce mental kick.
Just
a friend.

The Sural blinked and took the
empathic blow in silence, his heart sinking. With slow and careful
movements, he rose and moved not toward her, but to one side. Her
emotions roiled, and he could not know what she might do if he came
too near. The anger triggered by her panic had eclipsed her normal
gentleness. What did she fear?

What Storaas had said came to mind.
Did she fear he might hurt her? Despite his many assurances? He
made a subtle hand gesture, a casual signal to the guards to remain
camouflaged and silent. She seemed, for the moment, to have
forgotten them. He leaned against the window, arms crossed over his
chest, face schooled into warm gentleness.

“Who hurt you?” he asked.

She stopped pacing. “No one,” she
lied, her sharp look daring him to contradict her. She resumed the
restless pacing. “You were right,” she snapped before he could
point out the lie. “I did find your father’s poetry disturbing.
Your
father
wrote that. How can you read it? It’s like—it’s
like—gah!” She shuddered.

“Forgive me,” he murmured, bending
into a profound bow.

Marianne stopped pacing again,
surprised at both the apology and the bow, and turned her back on
him, not wanting him to see her face. She wanted to throw herself
into his arms. She fought it down, surprised, telling herself how
inappropriate that would be.
Get a grip, girl!
she told
herself with another furious mental blow. Deep winter gripped the
province, leaving the Sural with little to do. He was bored. He
couldn’t realize how a human would react to such a poem. How
she
would.

That had to be it—he just didn’t
realize. She tried to imagine the look on his face if she had acted
on the urge to throw herself at him. Surprise, of course.
Discomfort, very likely. Scorn? She didn’t think she could face the
possibility.

She tightened her arms around her
ribcage and took a shaky breath. Then she let her arms fall to her
sides and turned to face him.

He was gone.

<<>>

The Sural cursed, long and eloquently,
as he shattered a training pell. The arena fell silent, the guards
eyeing him as they moved away, their motions slow and deliberate.
He expelled a breath and forced his muscles to relax. Alarming the
guards solved nothing. Destroying their training equipment solved
even less.

He could not have stopped Marianne’s
self-destructive spiral. He moved to an undamaged pell and landed a
hard but controlled blow. If he had revealed how much of her pain
and conflict he could sense, would she have turned to
him?

He vaulted up and over and used his
momentum to kick the top of the pell as if he were crushing the
skull of the man—it had to have been a man—who had hurt her.
No.
Such a revelation would have humiliated her. He could
not risk that. So instead, he had stood in silence while she
rejected him.

Not a rejection.
The pell
shuddered at a spinning kick delivered with more force than he
intended. How could she reject him when she saw only his
friendship? He knew she valued that.

Storaas came into range. The Sural
shut him out and continued pummeling the pell with hands and peds.
Someone had informed the old man of his mood, or perhaps he had
come upon Marianne, who must still be in turmoil, and deduced that
his ruler had made a mistake. Whatever the case, he had no desire
to discuss the matter.

Not receiving permission to speak,
Storaas moved into his line of sight. The Sural ceased his attack
on the pell and stared. The old proctor cradled a large bottle of
spirits in one arm.

The Sural nodded. “My
quarters.”

<<>>

The winter felt long to Marianne,
fraught as it was. She greeted spring and the chance to get outside
with gratitude. The temperatures were still winter cold by her
standards, but it had warmed enough to venture out to a gazebo to
take some fresh air in the garden, where laborers had dug paths
through the snow. She supposed some hidden technology maintained
the strange warmth in the graceful pavilions.

Even she could see, unperceptive
though she sometimes was, that the Sural had withdrawn from her
after the incident with the poetry. He’d avoided her for several
days, then resumed spending his free time with her, but for much of
the winter, it just wasn’t the same. Adeline had teased her without
mercy, forwarding the ridiculous notion that he had acted like a
spurned lover, not the hurt friend Marianne assumed. Marianne
herself wasn’t sure what had possessed her to turn on him. He had
only read to her, even if the subject matter was rather—intimate.
She missed the easy friendship which had seemed to blossom between
them during the first part of winter.

The ease and friendship had begun to
return during the last few tens of days—it amused her to find
herself counting time in Tolari terms. The Sural started sharing
manuscripts of short stories from a celebrated author of several
hundred years earlier. The stories consisted of succinct and
gripping accounts of everything from spiritual epiphanies to
psychological studies. The insights she gained into Tolari thinking
fascinated her, but the Sural often had to explain motivations the
author assumed the reader would know. The only story the Sural
himself found fault with was one in which the protagonist walked
into the dark.

“His description is not accurate,” the
Sural told her. They sat across from each other at a table in the
family wing library. “It is a common belief, but it is not
accurate.”

“And you know this—how, exactly?” she
asked.

“I have experienced it.”

Marianne lifted her face from the
manuscript to gape at him. “What?”

“I have walked into the
dark.”

“But—but—”

“I am not dead?”

She nodded.

He smiled at her. “We call it the
great trial. Suralia’s heirs must choose to walk into the dark to
save their honor and their province, before they are considered
worthy to rule. Only Suralia knows how to bring someone back from
it. Other provinces—their people cannot have quite the same faith
in their rulers the children of Suralia can have, because other
rulers are not tested to the death as we are. My people
know
I will walk into the dark for them, because I have already done
so.”

She couldn’t think of a single thing
to say and just stared at him.
He’s been dead?

He chuckled. “When our heirs reach a
certain point in their training, they must be subjected to the
great trial,” he continued. “They are never told they are being
given the great trial until they have passed it. If they pass
it.”

“If
they pass it?” Prickles
went up her spine. “What happens if they fail?”

“They die.”

Her eyes popped, and his lips twitched
before he assumed a more serious expression.

“They can also fail if they are strong
enough to return from the dark but not strong enough to recover
from the shock without permanent damage to their empathic
abilities. The shock is painful.” He stared past her, his eyes
growing distant. “Extremely painful.”