At The Edge Of Space (Hanan Rebellion) (9 page)

“The Methi’s orders,” said the eldest of the four. “We came to fetch the human. This betrothal is not permitted.”

“Then you are too late,” said Nym. “If the Methi wished to intervene, it was her right, but now the betrothal is sealed.”

That set them aback. “Still,” said their leader, “we must bring him back to the Afen.”

“Elas will permit him to go back,” said Nym, “if he chooses.”

“He will go with us,” said the man.

Han t’Osanef stepped up beside Nym and bent a terrible frown on the Methi’s guardsmen. “T’Senife, I ask you come tonight to the house of Osanef. I would ask it, t’Senife—and the rest of you young men. Bring your fathers. We will talk.”

The men had a different manner for t’Osanef: resentful, but paying respect.

“We have duties,” said the man called t’Senife, “which keep us at the Afen. We have no time for that. But we will say to our fathers that t’Osanef spoke with us at the house of Elas.”

“Then go back to the Afen,” said t’Osanef. “
I
ask it. You offend Elas.”

“We have our duty,” said t’Senife, “and we must have the human.”

“I will go,” said Kurt, coming forward. He had the feeling that there was much more than himself at issue, he intruded fearfully into the hate that prickled in the air. Kta put out a hand, forbidding him.

“The guest of Elas,” said Nym in a terrible voice, “will walk from the door of Elas if he chooses, and the Methi herself has no power to cause this hall to be invaded. Wait at our doorstep.—And you, friend Kurt, do not go against your will. The law forbids.”

“We will wait outside,” said t’Senife, at t’Osanef’s hard look. But they did not bow as they left.

“My friend,” Han t’Osanef exclaimed to Nym, “I blush for these young men.”

“They are,” said Nym in a shaking voice, “
young
men. Elas also will speak with their Fathers. Do not go, Kurt t’Morgan. You are not compelled to go.”

“I think,” said Kurt, “that eventually I would have no choice. I would do better to go speak with Djan-methi, if it is possible.” But it was in his mind that reason with her was not likely. He looked at Mim, who stood frightened and silent by the side of Ptas. He could not touch her. Even at such a time he knew they would not understand. “I will be back as soon as I can,” he said to her.

But to Kta, at the door of Elas before he went out to put himself into the hands of the Methi’s guards:

“Take care of Mim. And I do not want her or your father or any of Elas to come to the Afen. I do not want her involved and I am afraid for you all.”

“You do not have to go,” Kta insisted.

“Eventually,” Kurt repeated, “I would have to. You have taught me there is grace in recognizing necessity. Take care of her.” And with Kta, that he knew so well, he put out his hand instinctively to touch, and refrained.

It was Kta who gripped his hand, an uncertain, awkward gesture, not at all nemet. “You have friends and kinsmen now. Remember it.”

6

“There is no need of that,” Kurt cried, shaking off the guards’ hands as they persisted in hurrying him through the gates of the Afen. No matter how quickly he walked, they had to push him or lay hands on him, so that people in the streets stopped and stared, most unnemetlike, most embarrassing for Elas. It was to spite Nym that they did it, he was sure, and rather than make a public scene worse, he had taken the abuse until they entered the Afen court, beyond witnesses.

There was a long walk between the iron outer gate and the wooden main door of the Afen, for that space Kurt argued with them, then found them fanning out to prevent him from the very door toward which they were tending.

He knew the game. They wanted him to resist. He had done so. Now they had the excuse they wanted, and they began to close up on him.

He ran the only way still open, to the end of the courtyard, where it came up against the high peak of the lock on which the Afen sat, a facing wall of gray basalt. It was beyond the witness of anyone on the walk between the wall-gate and the door.

They herded him. He knew it and was willing to go as long as there was room to retreat, intending to pay double at least on one of them when they finally closed in on him. T’Senife, who had insulted Nym, that was the one he favored killing, a slit-eyed fellow with a look of inborn arrogance.

But to kill him would endanger Elas; he dared not, and knew how it must end. He risked other’s lives, even fighting them.

A small gate was set in the wall near the rock. He bolted for it, surprising them, desperately flinging back the iron bar.

A vast courtyard lay beyond it, a courtyard paved in polished marble, with a single building closing it off, high-columned, a white cube with three triangular pylons arching over its long steps.

He ran, saw the safety of the familiar wall-street to his left, leading to the main street of Nephane, back to the witness of passersby.

But for the sake of Elas he dared not take the matter into public. He knew Nym and Kta, knew they would involve themselves, to their hurt and without the power to help him.

He ran instead across the white court, his sandaled feet and those of his pursuers echoing loudly on the deserted stones. The wall-street was the only way in. The precinct was a cul-de-sac, backed by the temple, flanked on one side by a high wall and on the other by the living rock.

His pursuers put on a sudden burst of speed. He did likewise, thinking suddenly that they did not want him to reach this place, a religious place, a sanctuary.

He sprang for the polished steps, raced up them, slipping and stumbling in his haste and exhaustion.

Fire roared inside, an enormous bowl of flame leaping within, a heat that filled the room and flooded even the outer air, a
phusmeha
so large the blaze made the room glow gold, whose sound was like a furnace.

He stopped without any thought in his mind but terror, blasted by the heat on his face and drowned in the sound of it. It was a
rhmei,
and he knew its sanctity.

His pursuers had stopped, a scant few strides behind him on the steps. He looked back. T’ Senife beckoned him.

“Come down,” said t’Senife. “We were told to bring you to the Methi. If you will not come down, it will be the worse for you. Come down.”

Kurt believed him. It was a place of powers to which human touch was defilement,—no sanctuary, none for a human,—no kindly Ptas to open the
rhmei
to him and make him welcome.

He came down to them, and they took him by the arms and led him down and across the courtyard to the open gate of the Afen compound, barring it again behind them.

Then they forced him up against the wall and had their revenge, expertly, without leaving a visible mark on him.

It was not likely that he would complain, both for the personal shame of it and because he and his friends were always in their reach: especially Kta,—who would count it a matter of honor to avenge his friend, even on the Methi’s guard.

Kurt straightened himself as much as he could at the moment and t’Senife straightened his
ctan,
which had come awry, and took his arm again.

They brought him up a side entrance of the Afen, by stairs he had not used before. Then they passed into familiar halls near the center of the building.

Another of their kind met them, a stripe-robed and braided young man, handsome as Bel, but with sullen, hateful eyes. To him these men showed great deference. Shan t’Tefur, they called him.

They discussed the betrothal, and how they had been too late.

“Then the Methi should have that news,” concluded t’Tefur, and his narrow eyes shifted toward a room with a solid door. “It is empty. Hold him there until I have carried her that news.”

They did so. Kurt sat on a hard chair by the barred slit of a window and so avoided the looks that pierced his back, giving them no excuse to repeat their treatment of him.

At last t’Tefur came back to say that the Methi would see him.

She would see him alone. T’Tefur protested with a violently angry look, but Djan stared back at him in such a way that t’Tefur bowed finally and left the room.

Then she turned that same angry look on Kurt.

“Entering the temple precincts was a mistake,” she said. “If you had entered the temple itself I don’t know if I could have saved you.”

“I had that idea,” he said.

“Who told you that you had the freedom to make contracts in Nephane—marrying that nemet?”

“I wasn’t told I didn’t. Nor was Elas told, or they wouldn’t have allowed it. They are loyal to you. And they were not treated well, Djan.”

“Not the least among the problems you’ve created for me, this disrespect of Elas.” She walked over to the far side of the room, put back a panel that revealed a terrace walled with glass. It was night. They had a view of all the sea. She gazed out, leaving him watching her back, and she stayed that way for a long time. He thought he was the subject of her thoughts, he and Elas.

At last she turned and faced him. “Well,” she said, “for Elas’ inconvenience, I’m sorry. I shall send them word that you’re safe. You haven’t had dinner yet, have you?”

Appetite was the furthest thing from his mind. His stomach was both empty and racked with pain, and with an outright fear that her sudden shift in manner did nothing to ease. “You,” he said, “frightened the wits out of my fiancée, made me a spectacle in the streets of Nephane, and all I particularly care about is—”

“I think,” said Djan in a tone of finality, “that we had better save the talk.
I
am going to have dinner. If you want to argue the point, Shan can find you some secure room where you can think matters over. But you will leave the Afen—
if
you leave the Afen—when I please to send you out.”

And she called a girl named Pai, who recieved her orders with a deep bow.

“She,” said Djan when the girl had gone, “is
chan
to the Afen. I inherited her, it seems. She is very loyal and very silent, both virtues. Her family served the last Methi, a hundred years ago. Before that, Pai’s family was still
chan
to methis, even before the human occupation and during it. There is nothing in Nephane that does not have roots, except the two of us. Forget your temper, my friend. I lost mine. I rarely do that. I am sorry.”

“Then we will have out whatever you want to say and I will go back to Elas.”

“I would think so,” she agreed quietly, ignoring his anger. “Come out here. Sit down. I am too tired to stand up to argue with you.”

He came, shrugging off his apprehensions. The terrace was dark. She left it so, and sat on the window ledge, watching the sea far below. It was indeed a spectacular view of Nephane, its lights winding down the crag below, the high dark rock a shadow against the moon. The moonlit surface of the sea was cut by the wake of a single ship heading out.

“If I were sensible,” said Djan as he joined her and sat down on the ledge facing her, “if I were at all sensible I’d have you taken out and dropped about halfway. Unfortunately I decided against it. I wonder still what you would do in my place.”

He had wondered that himself. “I would think of the same things that have occurred to you,” he said.

“And reach the same answer?”

“I think so,” he admitted. “I don’t blame you.”

She smiled, ironic amusement. “Then maybe we will have a brighter future than other humans who have held Nephane. —They built this section of the Afen, you know. That’s why there is no
rhmei,
no heart to the place. It’s unique in that respect—the fortress without a heart, the building without a soul. Did Kta tell you what became of them?”

“Nemet drove them out, I know that.”

“Humans ruled Nephane about twenty years. But they involved themselves with the nemet. The mistress of the base commander was of the great Indras family—of Irain. Humans were very cruel to the nemet, and they enjoyed humiliating the Great Families by that. But one night she let her brothers in and the whole of Nephane rose in rebellion against the humans on the night of a great celebration, when most of the humans were drunk on
telise.
So they lost their machines and fled south and became the Tamurlin in a generation or so—like animals. Only Pai’s ancestor On t’Erefe defended the humans in the Afen, being
chan
and obliged to defend his human lord. The human Methi and On died together, out there in the hall. The other humans who died were killed in the courtyard, and those who were caught were brought back there and killed.

“Myself, I have read the records that went before their fall. The supply ship failed them, never came back—probably after reporting to Aeolus; it was destroyed on its return trip, another war casualty, unnoticed. The years passed, and they had made the nemet here hate them. They had threatened them with the imminent return of the ship for twenty years and the threat was wearing thin. So they fell. But when we arrived, the nemet thought the threat had come true and that they were all to die. For all my crewmates cared, we might have destroyed Nephane to secure the base. I would not permit it. And when I had freed the nemet from the immediate threat of my companions, they made me Methi. Some say I am sent by Fate; they think the same of you. For an Indras, nothing ever happens without logical purpose. Their universe is entirely rational. I admire that in them. There is a great deal in these people that was worth the cost. And I think you agree with me. You’re evidently settled very comfortably into Elas.”

“They are my friends,” he said.

Djan leaned back, leaned on the sill and looked out over her shoulder. The ship was nearly to the breakwater. “This is a world of little haste and much deliberation. Can you imagine two ships like that headed for each other in battle? Our ships come in faster than the mind can think, from zero vision to alongside, attack and vanish. But those vessels with their sails and oars—by the time they came within range of each other—there would be abundant time for thought. There is a dreadful deliberateness about the nemet. They maneuver so slowly, but they do hold a course once they’ve taken it.”