not said a word. I have not thought a word. I have sat on the roadside. Or at the bridge-ends. Or with the children. Or wherever Sarth went. And I don’t know how my teeth aren’t ground to stumps.
The village is well enough. I remember it now, laid across the hill along a single street. Under the crest, facing north, to dodge wind and snow. Houses above the road, stock-barns, transient-quarters below. Timber and shingles, two-storey houses with high-canted, gargoyle-pointed roofs, weathered blue or scarlet paint. At one end, the curl around the ridge of this carthorse track. At the other, the gnawed prow of rock that marks the quarry gate.
I remember that too. Silvery grass, pale clouds, silver-gray mountain helliens. Bark of gray and steel. Silver and blue-shadowed snow. Silver, cream, mottled and veined and buried amid cross-cuts and dirtheaps, the jagged stairsteps of the quarry face, the marble itself.
I don’t remember the—Ruand. Village-head. Almost, I thought, Ruler. I could have made it, Queen.
She met us at the street-head. Most of the village with her, I should think. A shield-wall of women, dour sun-dark mountain faces, tricked out in their best. Silver-thread leggings, embroidered coats. Picks, surveyor’s levels, ox-goads, skis, hafts beribboned, edges polished like swords. Men somewhere behind them. And Darthis, the—Ruand—in the midst.
She looks big. I keep thinking, massive, and then, seeing her, am shocked. Old, yes. Old enough for jowls and grayed hair, and a sag under her heavy upper arms. It must be inside. The stillness, the weight, the sheer—resistance—of compacted stone. A boulder. A great, sentient rock.
She spoke a ritual welcome, ushered the Telluir entourage down the street. To the safe-come sacrifice. Being only a man, I missed that. Incense, Sarth says, burnt on the village altar, lit by Tellurith’s own cutter. The qherrique’s, the Goddess’s holy fire.
The altar is—alarming. I don’t recall that, either. A bulge in the street, the market-place, I do recall, and the tavern either side. The spring at the hill-face falls into a culvert, we had to help clear it once.
Good stone work around the head, where the village men bring their jars. And out in the middle, this other great—rock. Smooth as silk, though unshaped. Probably, Dhasdein’s earth-scholars would say, a glacier boulder. Fawnish cream, but not sandstone. With a dark, stained, polished hollow at its heart.
They burn the incense there. And pour wine, no doubt. And it has gone on for centuries. I never felt this place’s age before. Or that disturbing kinship. The Ruand and her altar. Both of them ancient. Immoveable. Heavy—and menacing—as stones.
Stupid thing for a soldier to think. Silly, superstitious, womanish thing, they would say, in Cataract. In Dhasdein. Not in Amberlight. There it would have been a message, from the city’s, the House’s core. Given to the Head, as answer, direction, warning. By the qherrique.
Ineffable, unanswerable surety. Not to judge, to guess, to wonder. To ask, and to know.
As I—I myself felt it. Once. Just once.
* * *
Not a stupid thing to be still boiling over, gods help and succor me, about this!
* * *
Arrival. Week 3.
Tellurith’s Diary
I should have known better. After asking Alkhes to deny his nature these interminable ten days, while the House’s struggle to re-assemble itself has maddened me as well; then, with broken bones still paining him, to dress in Azo’s good trousers and Zuri’s best black coat, with the emerald ear-stud Iatha found in the Cataract mercenary’s kist . . . Then put him with Sarth, looking like the Mother’s choice in a Dhasdein officer’s mulberry velvet overtunic, and take them both, with my steward and shop-Heads and their own husbands, may She pardon my imbecility, to supper. With Darthis.
Not an official banquet; Iskarda is too small. A good householder’s courtesy, to save us the meal’s work. In her own house, all dark panels, old, heavy furniture, polished, fragrant with years of beeswax and unrelenting use. Decorous as only a provincial upland house can be. Supper laid in the dining chamber, by men who were back on the men’s side, invisible, before we approached the house.
So we pulled the heavy bronze chime at the defense gate, and trooped up the step, and Darthis’ own daughter opened to us, acme of courtesy. And I led the men inside.
A Head’s daughter, dark, stocky Eria is prenticed in protocol. But I should have known from the way she stuttered, before she got us into the dining chamber, and passed the introductions to Darthis.
Who had waited at the table’s top, beside the big carven family-head’s seat. Already I could understand Eria’s consternation, and foresee an almighty counterclash.
Because there were eight guests, already. And the table was set for seven.
Thank the Mother, Eria remembered the women’s names. When she stumbled, I beckoned the others forward, and said, “May I present Roskeran, Iatha’s mate. And Huis, Hayras’ mate. And these are my husbands. Sarth. Alkhes.”
Tall, stooping, gentle Roskeran, self-effacing Huis had no idea where to look. Alkhes produced an officer’s salute. Making himself troublecrew, on duty for the night. Sarth is acquiring my brazenness; he tendered a tower courtesy: to an unrelated woman entering. Eria . . .
Darthis, at least, did not swell. She simply seemed to solidify, without moving a muscle. Turning that lined, jowled, old-bronze face to adamant, thrusting at us the full force of a House-head’s puissance. Overpowering refusal. Solid obloquy. Silent disgust.
“We have opened the tower,” I said.
Had Zhee ever given me such a look, in the days when she mentored an un-mothered twenty-four year old, just catapulted into Head-ship, I would have died.
“It was a bad, cruel, unnatural way to live. It has cost too much hurt. Too many innocent . . . children’s lives.”
Her eyes went past me. Up and down. Sarth is tower-trained, I only felt him catch his breath. Alkhes . . .
Alkhes bristled like a Heartland tigercat, head back, jaw outthrust. “Some problem, madam?”
Bad enough he looked her in the eye, let be with such insolence. To address her outright, making the title an obscenity, in that voice . . .
Mother bless, how that woman snubbed me! In retrospect, it was magnificent. She never bothered to retort. Just turned to Eria, and commanded, curt, majestic, “Call more plates.”
To her bones she is traditionalist. Iskarda is a Telluir client village, she is my vassal. She kept her oath immaculate. She fed me at her table. She conversed. She never said a word against my policy, my unutterable perversion. And she kept her other trust. She ignored the men utterly. With armor-clad, earth-moving willpower, she made them not be there.
* * *
By kicking him under the table, I managed to gag Alkhes while we ate. A pincer grip above his good elbow smothered the after-blast, but on our own threshold it burst.
“Gods damn it, Tel!”
A passage splits Iskan houses into men’s and women’s sides; we were hard by the main dining chamber, filled by Zuri, Azo, Verrith, my personal troublecrew and their kin. Shia, her sister, Hanni and two nieces were next down, Iatha’s family among the looms in the men’s work-room opposite. I hissed at him like a viper.
“Shut up!”
I knew it was wrong before it came out. The silence hit like a slap in the face. His face.
“Caissyl . . .”
He tore his hand away.
“Oh, how dare I talk? A bird-brain man. What would I know? Of all the fool stupid thoughtless—Tel, you idiot!”
“Then what would you have done? Backed off before we began?” I was too furious for explanation, let alone control. “Do you want to be back in the men’s rooms, hauling