The Carnelian Throne Read online

  But then, dry wood should have been hard to find.

  Chayin unburdened his arms and arranged brush and branch to his satisfaction. He lit it with a flint device, and not his mind, bending low to the piled tinder. Though Sereth was not here to see, Chayin honored his will. I might not have been so patient. It was the third try with the sparking wheel that caught. He blew into cupped hands, cajoling the spark.

  By the time I knelt at his side, the spark, judiciously nursed, had become a flame. Chayin sat back, staring into the fire.

  “I am very sure that we are being watched, and not by any artifact. Sit still! You might sense it.” Casually, he met my eyes.

  “He asked me to forgo such things,” I reminded him, unable to resist. “And you also.”

  “So scrupulous? This is no time for it. He asked, yes. Whenever possible, and if we met no men, and not to any extent that might endanger our lives. We are about to meet men.” Out of his loam-dark face the fire shone back at me, red-gold, from enlarged pupils.

  It was then that Sereth, with no more sound than a gust of wind between the trees, emerged from the swamp. Over his shoulder were two red-furred, motionless animals, lied together by the tails at his shoulder. Their black muzzles dangled around his knees. Their staring eyes, even in death, were gentle.

  “Local meal,” he announced, dropping the two warm carcasses in my lap. “Your arrows are improving.”

  I stroked the soft fur of my dinner-to-be. Then I thanked it for its flesh and took my knife to it. “What did you see?” Chayin demanded.

  “Plants and animals with which I am not familiar. No men. But man-sign,” added Sereth, taking one of the carcasses into his own lap.

  “It has come to me that we are being observed. What think you?” growled Chayin, scratching beneath his tunic.

  “I am sure of it,” said Sereth quietly, and nothing more until the little animal lay gutted and skinned before him. Then: “There is a path, very straight, wide, well-tended. It runs northwest from the wall, just.beyond those trees.” He rose, scrutinized my novice’s butchering, and went to cut a spit pole.

  By the time the meat spattered above Chayin’s fire, the constellations were beginning to poke their way through the haze. Sereth had helped me with my preparation of the meat; patient, soft-voiced as always when concerned with what he termed “life-skills.” The more deeply I had involved myself, during that long sea voyage, with affairs of mind, the more insistent he had become that I take instruction from him in weaponry, in survival on land and sea, in hunters’ lore. I knew, by then, more than I wished of butchering and the catching of fish; and less than I had hoped of what lay in his heart. Of his turmoil, I had been instructed only by omission: he never spoke of it.

  “Why do you think it is that none of these plants and animals are known to you?” I asked him.

  “Because I have never been here before,” he answered, hacking off our dinner’s left hind leg. “Chayin, take what you will.” He who hunts eats first of the kill. They observed the old rules ever more closely, with fervor. Perhaps with desperation: that which is invulnerable is unnatural, and though they were not truly immortal, nor as yet all-powerful, they were no longer, even in their own eyes, “normal” men. This deeply troubled them, those reluctant gods. As it had troubled me when I first discovered what latitude I might exercise in this that we call life. So I said not a word while the cahndor and Sereth ripped bites from a steaming joint of the nameless meat, but waited until they were satisfied that no immediate symptoms of illness developed. For only a quick poison, one that could strike in an instant, and catch the victim unawares, could incapacitate such strengths as we now possessed. Between thoughts, must a crippling blow be landed on an intelligence so highly skilled. I waited, hardly tense, sure in my capacity to intervene should the beast-flesh prove deadly. But it did not, and soon I was crunching happily the crisped outer flesh of Sereth’s kill. The meat did hold one surprise, however: it was neither gamy nor tough, but sweet and rich. Even as I thought it, Sereth spoke:

  “We may well be expected to pay for this meal when we come upon the owner of this preserve.”

  “Why wait?” mumbled Chayin around a mouthful. He gestured with a greasy forefinger. “Our observer still lurks. Let us go greet him. Perhaps we could take a live pair home, and breed up a herd ourselves.”

  About us, the insect shrills grew strident and rhythmic. I put down the meat and lay back, stretching full-length on the alien grass. My mind, denied the search of the woods for which it clamored, peopled the forest’s orchestra, gave the nascent choir a sinister aspect as it wailed low, ululent homage to the darkness. From all around us, even echoing back from the river’s far bank, waxed that numinous evening chant. I liked the sound of it not at all.

  Further disquieted, I twisted around to face the gate. Thereupon danced a soft nimbus, surely marsh gas rising. Over the stakes it flowed, maggot-white, sentient. I pulled at the clammy straps of my stiffening leathers, shivering, and shifted my gaze back to the fire.

  But the foreboding, the ineffable hostility I sensed from the encroaching wilderness, would not be dispersed by that reassuring crackle. Its heat did not warm me, its light could not chase from my flesh the touch of a hundred hidden eyes. Sereth’s fingers enclosed mine where I fumbled with my tunic’s closures. He shook his head, let my hand fall away, and shrugged. Chayin leaned forward, stirred the branches. A knot popped, showering sparks. Somewhere inland, a beast roared. It was a roar of rage and vengeance, hovering long in the air before it tapered to a growl indistinguishable from the forest’s deep-throated mutter.

  “Sereth, free me from my vow—let me seek the sense of this place.” My voice, calm, unwavering, did not betray me. The principle on which he had based his decision of noninterference was right. The decision, I had long felt, was wrong.

  “Not yet. I would explore Khys’s—this land for what it is, not what I might assume it is, or want it to be.” I did not miss the stumble of his tongue over his predecessor’s name. It was Khys’s work here that he would explore. And alter, if he could. Khys, the last dharen, or ruler, of Silistra, had spent long periods absent from his capital., None knew where, in those days. He had made quite certain that his successor would undertake this journey to the east, to this shore so long isolate from our own culture. And, despite himself, the inheritor had come to take stock of what had been left to him.

  “Chayin, let us toss for watch,” suggested Sereth, his head slightly cocked, closing indisputably the subject I had broached. A second roar, fainter than the first, echoed to us from the far bank.

  “I will take it. Sleep is not within my reach,” offered Chayin. Sereth grinned, shrugged, sought my side. Before he lay down to sleep, he spent a while staring around him, though it was mind and not eye that could penetrate the mist and darkness and denude them of their menace. But he would not do that. Finally he blew a sharp breath through his teeth and stretched out on the damp ground. I fit myself to him, my head resting on his arm.

  “If those roars get close, wake me,” he rumbled. Chayin chuckled. Sereth’s sleep is light as an insert’s wing. The familiar smell of his leathers, as I pressed my face to them, almost masked the rank, salt-laden river odor. Almost, I could mistake the river sound for his pulse. Almost, I could quiet the whispers my mind spoke, the oddly framed thoughts that touched mine, timid, and withdrew.

  I twitched and tossed beside him, sleepless, until he growled and pushed up on one elbow. Chayin, ministering to his fire, hummed softly under his breath.

  “What troubles you, ci’ves?” Sereth whispered, using the lover’s name he had given me, that of a pet kept as talisman in the hills where he was born. In his tone was no annoyance that my restlessness chased sleep from him.

  I thought about it, seeking proper words. I did not find them. At the river, he had sought Chayin’s counsel without words. When he sought me that way, I would give him what he asked. Now, he was not ready to hear me. So I said instead: “Hard gro
und, a number of itching bites, and the scratch on my thigh.”

  I put my arms around his neck and pulled him down beside me, willing my body still. It would not be I who mouthed portents. They were surely as clear to Sereth as to Chayin ior myself. It would not be I who broke my word, and searched owkahen, the time-coming-to-be, accepting and rejecting and thereby conditioning what might, in these lands, occur.

  Sereth sought respite from just such manipulations of time by mind, at least long enough to determine what forces were at work here. And why, by his predecessor’s will, enforced for countless generations, this land had been a shore of which nothing was known, of which none were empowered to speak. By my side lay he who might, if he wished, call himself dharen. The dharen before him had forbidden all commerce between this land and the one from which we had come. The impression had been fostered in the minds of the people of Silistra that nothing had survived the holocaust, on this farther shore. Even in the “autonomous” southlands ruled over by cahndors such as Chayin, none had disobeyed that injunction; or if any had, in silent defiance of the law, made the journey, they had not returned to speak the tale; or had, returning, kept silent.

  As I have said, Sereth might have called himself dharen of Silistra. At that time he was not yet willing to do so: he did not wish to bear that burden.

  I was—a number of things. Once, keepress of the premier Well on Silistra, with seven thousand people under my care. Later, with Chayin, I held a high commission and for a time served as regent in his southern principality. At still a later time, I was dhareness to Silistra’s ruler, when Khys held the title. With all else, I passed into Sereth’s hands at his predecessor’s demise—a place I had long coveted. I might have called myself dhareness yet or chosen among certain other dignities which were mine by right. My left breast hosts a spiral symbol that twinkles as if bejeweled. It eloquently bespeaks my Shaper heritage; would that it did not. I could rid myself of it, but that I will not do.

  Chayin, least changed of us up until that time, sought not forgetfulness, nor was his name abrasive to his own ears. Raised from childhood to believe in his personal divinity, he alone was not compromised in spirit by the affairs of the preceding years. And yet, he had turned away from those lands over which he ruled rightfully by blood and birth and effort. He, as Sereth, for the moment sought no reign over men. He, as I, had looked upon the burdens of his heritage and shuddered. With Sereth, he shared in love as fully as I; and between Chayin and myself, first cousins, there existed a long-standing intimacy. Let no one tell you that such a relationship is easy; and likewise, let none demean it. For the three of us, upon any one commission, are as close to a surety as exists in this ever-changing universe. And that—the realization of the possibilities in our merged skills—more than even the multifaceted affection we shared, entitled us in our own sight to this reconnaissance of an unknown land. We had come, two men and a woman, each divested by their own will of all but each other and those skills we had given so much to acquire, to explore the potentials inherent in our triune nature. Or so I saw it.

  But Sereth, giving scant explanation, would not allow us their use. I sighed, and burrowed closer. I would try. I understood his thought. But even Chayin chafed under Sereth’s constraint.

  It was not far to my father’s house, I thought in the dream, just as the trees bowed down to make of my path a darkened tunnel, and from the tunnel’s end came light and a great roaring. I turned and ran, but my feet, after the second step, would not be raised up from the soil. Struggling, I fell to the ground. Up through wave after wave of dizziness rose my body. Sitting upright, hand to my forehead, roars louder in my ears, I made at first no sense of it.

  Then the shadows that danced in the low-burning firelight took form. My ears sorted sounds. The sounds became voices: Sereth’s, Chayin’s. The flamelight flickered off their blades, and out from the eyes of the thing that roared.

  Its pale paw flashed out, claws extended. “Estri, stay back!”

  I stopped, not recollecting how I had come there, past the fire, to where they held the wounded thing at bay.

  Its huge jaws gnawed its own chest, where a dark wound gleamed wetly. It half-lay, haunches bunched, yet unable to spring. Again it struck; a sideswipe at Chayin; near-miss with that massive paw. He vaulted backward in clumsy retreat. Sereth, at the beast’s far side, darted in to divert it. His blade raised over his head, he brought the full force of that honed edge down upon the creature’s extended neck. Still reaching for Chayin was that immense, clawed forepaw as the roaring head struck the turf. The beast convulsed, rolling over, legs thrashing the air. Its final shudder, explosive, rent the air. Then, limp, it rolled to one side and came to rest, right-side-up, its dead eyes reflecting in the firelight. The fanged jaws were closed. Its tongue, half-severed, flapped weakly, then lay quiet between knife-long, gory teeth.

  I backed away, staring at that head; at the great, furred body, no longer even twitching, pale like some mist-spawned apparition in the firelight.

  Sereth’s hand touched my arm. “Estri, look at me.”

  I tore my attention from the wedge-shaped head, from the dark-tufted ears. Our eyes met. The thing on the grass closely resembled our western hulions, but one somehow wingless and stunted. Hulions have great intelligence. I would rather kill a man than one of those beasts. Sereth knew ...

  “It is dead,” I said dumbly.

  “It came at us as a predator,” he said, staring into me intently, his grip tightening. When my tremors ceased, he released me, crouching to wipe his blade clean in the grass.

  Chayin, limping slightly, slowly circled the corpse. When he reached us, he said: “Had Sereth not awakened when he did, it would likely be me lying there.”

  “And it might have been my sudden movement that precipitated its attack.” Sereth, in his turn, examined the pale, furred form. When he had finished, he gave equal scrutiny to the stars before he spoke.

  “Let us build up the fire. It may be a long night. Estri, stay in the light.”

  Chayin set about his search for more fuel. I, equally obedient, walked over to the fire’s edge, my fingers worrying the thick braid of my hair, wondering if the furred beast was the largest predator in this land’s chain; and, if not, what might prey upon it.

  When the flames burned high, Chayin sought the dead beast. By its tail, he dragged it into the firelight.

  “What are you doing?” Sereth demanded, judiciously poking at the smoking branches.

  “I thought I might skin it. Such a beast has never been seen in Nemar.”

  “Think about it later,” Sereth said sharply. His countenance, grotesqued by the flame’s dance, was severe. The light poured molten down the scar that furrowed the left side of his face from cheekbone to jaw. Later I asked him, but he would admit to no foreknowledge come upon him then, though his eyes met mine and held them a long time.

  II. Deilcrit

  He crouched amid the sedges, in the tufted reeds that banked the salt river. He wept, leaning against the root of one of the great trees where it reared up, entwining its brothers before diving deep. His clenched fist pummeled the fahrass bush which concealed him. The silvered balls of its fruit plummeted downward, plunking in rapid succession upon the pool’s surface around his calves, pelting his arms and shoulders. Stepsisters, most called them. He paid them no mind; it was not their touch, but their taste that killed. He brushed them from his hair, then again buried his head in his arms that he might not see the corpse of the sacred ptaiss glowing whitely in the firelight.

  Within the comfort of his arms’ shelter, he prayed. He did not know what to do. First, seeing them, he had been consumed with fear for his mind. Then for his life. And then, when they had not detected him, he had waited. A man does not hurry to his death. He had been content to sit, then to crouch, finally to stand erect in the shore pool, watching. His spear lay close at hand, propped against the menmis tree’s white bark, forgotten. Or rather: useless. His hand, feeling for it, graspe
d the familiar polished wood. Without raising his head, he curled his fingers around the shaft. His terror, by this means, was somewhat eased. The spear was a trusted tool, a remnant of his well-ordered world. He blanked his mind.

  “What, what, what?” he sang to himself under his breath. He had been sent to clear the Spirit Gate of the hated guerm; the lightning had done it for him.

  He had been late. He had not hurried. It is a risky business, keeping guerm from surmounting the gate and infesting the Isanisa River. He had not been afraid, then. Slow, tears welled up in his eyes. He shook them fiercely away, averting his head from the fire, and those who fed it, and the slain ptaiss, Aama. Though he looked into darkness, he saw, with the clarity of long familiarity, all that grew on the Isanisa’s shores. As a man facing conscription might walk one last time around his holdings in silent farewell, so did the young man, in his memory, walk the twists and turns of Benegua. Benegua, Land of the Spirit Gate; of the Wall of Mnemaat, the unseen; of the sacred ptaiss; she was all the young man had ever known.

  In the dark, by his leg, something glided along the pool’s still surface, the barely perceptible ripples of its passing lapping against his flesh. He waited, unmoving, for the swampsnake to pass on. Red-headed, perhaps, and deadly; or green-andblack-patterned, and holding within its fangs the most beneficent of drugs. With the back of his mind, he followed the snake’s progress, his trained ears noting the reeds’ rustle as it slithered away.

  Wide-eyed, staring at nothing, housed in the emptiness that attends the shedding of tears, he waited. What would they want him to do?