High Couch of Silistra Read online

  Once he pulled her head from his lap, and holding her arched back by the hair, said in archaic Silistran, “You are truly worthy to be high-couch,” and thrust her head back down.

  When he was ready, he lifted her into the air and set her down upon him as one might lift a young child of no significant weight. If she had been beneath him, the violence of that final coupling surely would have crushed the life from her there and then.

  The last thing I saw was my mother nestled in the crook of his arm, her tears rolling down his shoulder, to settle in the hollow in his throat.

  The screen went blank. I started to lift the cube from my face, only at the last moment remembering my mother’s instructions. My hand shot out to catch the ring as it fell from the opening bottom of the cube.

  I did not look at it, but pushed the cube across the table to Rathad, this long while waiting.

  He looked at me, for my permission to view it. I could not speak. The room swam before my eyes. I nodded my assent and leaned back in the carven thala chair, the ring clutched unexamined in my fist, to let my tears flow while my mother’s brother viewed the cube.

  I had not cried for some years, and as the moisture of my grief and joy poured out of me and filled my lap, my confusion went with them. I knew what I must do. I raised my head to tell Rathad, but he was still sunk deep within Hadrath’s record.

  Dispassionately I deep-read him, knowing that he could not feel the touch of my mind while so engrossed in my mother’s story. If foreseeing is my weakest skill, deep-reading is my strongest. I can, in moments, and without trancing, acquire from any sentient being an accurate estimate of his basic nature, motivation, and any deep-seated emotion he is feeling. I did so. I was pleased with what I saw. Rathad would be less troublesome to me in the near future. He was deeply moved and full of remorse. Whether or not he had treated me fairly, he now felt that he had not, and that was sufficient. If he had caught me at it, however, I would have lost that which through my mother I had gained. I withdrew almost immediately.

  My father’s ring was still clenched in my right fist. So much was happening, my head was so full of plans, I had not even looked upon it.

  I brought my fist to eye level and slowly opened my stiff fingers. I had clutched it so hard that the blood had been forced from my hand. It lay facing me, on my wet palm. The metal was a pale yellow in color, perhaps gold. It was very large and heavy. I could have fit two fingers within its circle. I remembered the hand that had worn the ring, and I shivered. Within the bezel was set a glowing black stone, as large as titrium half-well coin, and in the black stone itself were a thousand white points of light, scattered in a seemingly random pattern. As I looked closer, I determined that these were not characteristic markings of the black stone, but tiny inset gems, some as small as a pore on the skin, some slightly larger. One of the bigger stones was not white, but a brooding blood color. This was set in the upper-right corner. If this random patterning could be said to resemble a spiral, then the red stone was far out on the north-eastmost arm. I had never seen such a ring. The craftsmanship was exquisite. I turned it. The sides were covered with raised script, but it was no language with which I was familiar.

  I slipped my first and middle fingers within the band and closed my hand into a fist once more. I wished there was a way to make it smaller, but I knew I would not so deface it. I put my right hand within my left, and both in my lap. I would have to find another way to wear my father’s ring. I considered the possibilities until I heard Rathad place the cube back upon the table.

  His face was ashen white and his eyes bleary. He leaned his elbows upon the table and supported his chin with one hand. In the other he held the letter. He extended it to me. I shook my head and made no move to take it.

  “Not yet,” I said. “That which has waited so long can wait a while longer. Summon a runner. I will leave with Santh tomorrow morning. There is much to do before the next sun’s rise. If Ristran is still here, I will meet with him in my keep, and we will take our mid-meal there together. If not, then I will do the same with the highest-ranking Day-Keeper you can produce by that time. I will also need the toilet women to help me prepare. Send a chalder also to Jana’s room, for she will be high-couch while I am gone.” Jana and I thought alike on most social and political issues; she had met her chaldra of reproduction, and I liked and respected her. She would enjoy being high-couch, but not so much that she would be unwilling to relinquish the position when the time came.

  “Impossible,” Rathad snapped. His face had regained its normal color.

  “Which?” I asked.

  “All of it. You cannot leave the Well until the chaldric priorities have been determined, if at all. How many chains do you wear? Are all of them meaningless when compared to this adventure? Such tasks are usually carried out before major responsibilities are assumed. The Day-Keepers must decide. I have never heard of a three-hundred-year-old woman, of responsibility and position, romping off to do the chaldra of the mother. Perhaps they will allow it, but not until the papers have been filed, the purifications done, the ceremonies complete. It will take time.” His voice was very loud, his face red. “And your chald. You cannot go without another. It must be made, wound, prayed upon. The chalder will never be able to produce one for you in a matter of hours, should he wish to, which he will not. You cannot possibly leave before Detarsa fourth seventh. It will take the full pass to arrange things. I do not agree with you about Jana. There are those more deserving of such an honor.” He rubbed his hand across his face? “But if you insist upon her, she must be readied to take on your duties. All these things take time. It is now the last of Macara. Give me these twenty-eight days, and when the pass is done, I will not obstruct you. Truly, I do not obstruct you now, but simply remind you of the forms to which you must attend. Perhaps the Day-Keepers will uphold you. The circumstances here are very unusual. But whatever comes to be, you must meet your fate with an eye to the traditions of this Well, and with dignity and grace.”

  “I know you mean well, Rathad, and that you would not obstruct me. I ask you again to attend to these things for me. Only summon for me the Day-Keeper and the chalder, and the others that I need. I feel certain that this matter can be arranged in a way acceptable to all concerned. If I am wrong, then I have but taken mid-meal with the Day-Keeper, and discussed certain matters with the high-chalder. I will take Santh to the Liaison First’s tomorrow, whatever the outcome, so I will need the fitter and the toilet women. I will let the subject of Jana rest for the present, but the rest must be done.” I smiled my most winning smile.

  “I think I should like parr and eggs, fresh fruit, cheese, and wine. Perhaps enough for three, for the high-chalder might also be hungry. Do hurry, for midday is close upon us.”

  Shaking his head, a smile playing across his lips, Rathad strode to the mirrored doors with a swirl of his iridescent web-cloth robe. I heard his muffled voice giving instructions to the runner just outside. I sighed with relief. I had been unsure I could persuade him.

  When he reentered, he did not sit again behind the table, but came to lean against it by my side, so close that I could see every white curling hair that poked its way through the straps of his thonged sandal. He handed me the old yellowed envelope once again, and this time I took it.

  I broke the seal and withdrew the sheet within. The hand was sure and strong. There was no greeting.

  “The woman I seek, whose name the envelope bears, is all of a color, the color of the spring sun rising, with hair of molten bronze that brushes the ground. In my vision it seemed that this woman and I were of a kind. I will never know. To her I say: ‘Guard Astria, for you may lose it, and more. Beware one who is not as he seems. Stray not into the port city of Baniev. And lastly, look well about you, for your father’s daughter’s brother seeks you.’

  “If you succeed, you will be lauded, even as I am lauded, for you will accomplish more than you attempt. Be strong, for the father will surely help his daughter.”
>
  It was signed “Astria Barina diet Hadrath.” I read it twice. It seemed that every hair on my body stood away from my flesh. It is said that obscurity is the cloak of the forereader. My great-grandmother had drawn that cloak close about her in the writing of this message. That it was meant for me, and no other, was beyond doubt. But no one is as he seems; I had no intention of visiting Baniev, far up the coast; and I had no brother. Her encouragement made even less sense. My search was of personal import only, and my mother had said it was a testing, so no help from my father would be forthcoming.

  I had no fear for Astria. The Well was in the same hands that had guided it these three hundred years. But I would take care.

  I shook my head and handed the perplexing oracle to Rathad.

  I felt most discomfited, yet I was glad my great-grandmother’s message had reached me. It would be a great lever with which to pry the Day-Keepers from their conventions.

  “What sense do you make of it, Estri?” said Rathad, frowning at the letter in his hands.

  “Very little,” I replied, “but I will look more sharply about me, and you must see the affairs of the Well with great care.”

  “Doubtless there is a hidden meaning,” he mused.

  “Doubtless,” I agreed. “But perhaps it is too well-hidden.”

  “I would take all pains to avoid Baniev, were I you,” he continued.

  “I will avoid,” I announced, “not only Baniev, but Baniese also, and products bearing that city’s stamp.”

  “Has it occurred to you,” my mother’s brother asked, “that much time has passed since Hadrath’s death, and the father you seek may be no longer among the living?”

  “It occurred to me,” I admitted. “But the message of my mother said he awaits me, and it was she who chose the point in time at which I would assume the chaldra. If he is dead, it is by accident and not by age or infirmity. I must seek him. Who knows how long the bronze people live? Not I.”

  Rathad grunted and sucked his teeth. “I yield.” He sighed. “If it was known that you would take this chaldra and make this journey eight hundred and forty years ago, then, by the Day-Keepers’ Clock, you must make it, and I must give you whatever help I can.”

  He reached behind him for the silver cube, and handed it and the letter, which he placed carefully within the envelope, from his pale hands into my copper ones.

  “Run, child,” said he, bending to kiss my cheek, “or you will keep the Day-Keeper waiting.”

  II. The Liaisons, First and Second

  When I could restrain Santh’s need to hunt no longer, I found a resting place in the shade of two large boulders, removed the surcingle from about his black-furred girth, and let him loose. With a great leap and a snap of his mighty wings, he was off, bounding and gliding, silent, deadly. Four bounds took him from my view. There is nothing on Silistra to compare with the speed of a hulion at the hunt.

  While I waited for him to return, cool and comfortable in the late-morning shadows, my back against the larger boulder, I reviewed the events that had brought me here to the trail that would lead, by nightfall, to the house of the Liaison First, M’lennin, my former couchmate.

  My mid-meal with Ristran had produced some surprises, and a satisfactory outcome. The Day-Keepers are a mysterious, solitary lot, and rarely frequent the Wells. I had supposed, somewhat naively, that his interest would be only for the objects of antiquity I possessed. I read his desire when we touched hands in greeting, and the fantasy deep within his mind was an easy one for me to fulfill. I pleasured him while he lay back on the amber cushions, matching my actions to the picture I had pulled from his subconscious. Thus I delivered him his dream, and the taste of him was thick and overly sweet, the taste of a man long denied.

  It had been so quickly done that the food upon the low thala table was still warm when we seated ourselves to eat.

  We struck a bargain that benefited us both. I would leave the cube and letter with the Liaison, who would deliver the originals into Ristran’s hands. I would take with me copies which I knew M’lennin’s star technology could provide. In exchange for these priceless artifacts, Ristran waived all formalities and ceremonies usually associated with the assumption of chaldra, including the need for a new, virgin chald, and upheld me in the face of the chalder’s wrath. After a perfunctory blessing, my old chald was cut from me by the chalder’s hand, the red chain woven into the already existing belt, and certain alterations made in the chald’s construction. These were the addition of a hidden lock, and a tiny key which slipped into a compartment in the lock itself when not in use. Thus I could remove the chald at will, rather than wearing it soldered about my waist. Before I snapped the lock shut, I had drawn the width of the chald through the band of my father’s ring, so securing the ring to my body.

  The other considerations I had from Ristran were equally valuable. He had been unable to decipher the script on the ring, or name the race of people to which my father belonged, so he suggested that I travel to Arlet. There he would provide me with an expert in off-world culture and language, in such a way that secrecy might be maintained. I accepted, only afterward realizing that Arlet lies uncomfortably close to Baniev, that port city which I had intended to avoid. But by the time I had recollected my geography, Ristran was long gone, and I was already making my way across the plain that separated the Liaison’s keep from Well Astria.

  With the help of the two toilet women, I had made what I considered the supreme sacrifice. I had cut my ankle-length bronze mane. It had been my trademark. I could do little about my skin tone, but it had become fashion in Well Astria, and to a lesser extent in Port Astrin, our dependent city, for the women to spend long hours beneath the sun, gilding themselves with oils and ointments, that their skin might glow golden in the manner of Well-Keepress Estri. With my hair now so shorn that it barely covered my buttocks, I could be any Astrian well woman of high position. My chald was thicker than most, but whatever degree of anonymity I could foster would serve me.

  I wore a soft tas-skin jerkin, cream-colored and sueded, and matching knee boots to protect my legs on the trail. Above my chald was another belt, of thick parr-hide, from which hung a full coin pouch and double-bladed hunting knife. My hair was confined in a thick braid down my back.

  I felt fierce and strong, and very free. I had not realized how heavy the cares of the Well had been until I laid them aside.

  I took the surcingle I had removed from Santh and wedged it between the boulders. In its laced pockets were the cube and letter, dried meat and fruits, and a waterskin.

  The shadows were rapidly disappearing as the sun reached its zenith, and I was thirsty and anxious to be on my way. I called Santh silently, with all the mind-force I had. The answering picture was clear and sharp, of that black wedge-shaped head, tufted ears laid back, yellow eyes slitted from the sun, mighty fangs bared in a silent roar. He had heard me and was on his way.

  M’lennin had found Santh and his sister abandoned by the Falls of Santha. What had happened to their mother was never determined. He had been small enough to cuddle in my arms when the Liaison gave him to me as a couch gift. His shoulders now were the height of my own, though I stand upon two legs and he upon four. The intelligence of the hulion has never been studied, for they are rare and seldom thrive outside their native mountainous home, but I guess it to be as great as our own. However, they are not toolmakers. Somewhere back in time Santh’s ancestors had chosen not to compete with the hairless bipeds of the plains and valleys. They live their own way, isolated, primal, high in the crags of the Sabembe range.

  In some ways the hulion and Silistran are much alike. M’lennin calls us of Silistra anachronistic, haughty primitives. We, like the hulion, insist upon our freedom and individuality. Silistra once trod the path of technological culture. In our prehistory lies a long and bloody story of wars, of great and powerful governments, of taxation and oppression, of madness and suicide. At length the people rose up and dismantled the machines that h
ad come to rule them, and the parasitic bureaucracy that served those machines.

  It is a Silistran saying that the law lies within the man, and that no amount of coercion from without can alter that law. The hulions, also, obey the law within. Santh is no more mine than I am his. It may be, in his mind, that I am his charge, and in his care. We serve each other, with respect and admiration, and more than a little love.

  I saw a spot in the azure sky, far to the west. I stood and shielded my eyes and watched him come. The spot became a speck, rising high into the air, gliding, falling from sight, then rising again. Soon I could see his wings, snapping out straight at the height of his arc, beating the air to ease his descent, then the coiled crouch and spring as his powerful hindquarters thrust him almost instantaneously back into the air, with those mighty wings pulled close to his sleek black back.

  A bound away, I saw that he carried something in his jaws. When he furled his pinions and padded to my side, he dropped the mangled carcass at my feet and lay proudly beside it, growling softly in his throat. I could not tell what animal that bloodied corpse had been. Only a few tatters of red-brown fur remained, and the head had been bitten cleanly off the shoulder. Its hooves were cloven and black, its four legs long and spindly. I thought it some subspecies of bondrex, the nimble plains grazers—but which, I could not tell.

  I stepped over it, to scratch Santh behind his ears. He stretched his neck appreciatively and began licking the blood from his outstretched paws with his coarse tongue.

  “Thank you,” I said, and bent to cut a strip of the still-warm flesh from a half-gnawed haunch. It would have been an insult not to eat of his kill, though I had neglected to bring a fire-maker, and I am not fond of raw meat.

  Santh rolled onto his side and watched me eat, through slitted, yellow eyes. I cut another piece and chewed it noisily, exclaiming my praise through a half-filled mouth. The blood ran down my arms and stained my tas-skin jerkin. I made great show and ate little. The meat was tough, stringy, and tasteless.