Servants of the Sands, page 58
“What is it?” Idisio said, staring at the necklaces with a deepening frown.
“You’re familiar with aenstone, yes? This is the teyanain-crafted version. Bluestone. Keeps you safe from the twisted ones.” He shook the beads, held them out again. “Believe me, please, it’s much safer for you to wear these. Tuck them under your shirt, so that they are protected from the sun.”
“Are you wearing this?” Idisio asked.
Grey pushed his thick brown hair clear of one ear, then the other, to reveal a line of five bluestone studs along the curve of each ear. “All members of my faction wear these,” Grey said. “It is how you tell us apart from the others.”
“What are the twisted ones? And how many teyanain factions are there?” Alyea demanded. Grey smiled, placed both hands palm-flat over his chest, and said nothing.
Fimre, jaw set, looped the beads over his head without a word. Alyea reluctantly followed suit. Idisio took his beads in hand and stared at them for a few breaths, before shrugging and draping the necklace into place.
“Thank you,” Grey said. “That makes things much safer for everyone. Now, if you will follow me, I will take you to where you should be at this point in time.”
Alyea stayed still, feet planted ostentatiously firm. “Are we prisoners, Grey?”
Grey pursed his lips as though considering, then shook his head. “That would not be the correct term to use,” he said. “We have a word: hunimmae. It means guests who have arrived without invitation nor warning. You are such guests. You have—” He paused to think, then went on. “You have not guest rights, but guest obligations. You inconvenienced us with your arrival. Your due courtesy is to break bread, as you would say, and rest under our shelter, and give us some compensation for your lack of manners.”
“That doesn’t make the least amount of sense,” Idisio said. “We dropped in without warning, so we owe you the chance to serve us dinner?” His eyes had turned a muddy shade, and he radiated irritated bewilderment.
“More or less, that is correct,” Grey said, then grimaced, sketching apology with one hand. “We will not actually be feeding you. Teyanain language is difficult to translate at times, and our culture is rather more complex than perhaps you are accustomed to, ha’ra’ha.”
The ha’ra’ha scowled, folding and unfolding his arms as though trying to decide whether to be aggressive or neutral. “My name is Idisio.”
“We are aware of your name,” Grey said placidly. He turned his head, watching a small red bird hopping through the twisted branches of a nearby devil-tree with intent interest. It chirruped, pecked at something, then lofted off into the sky, swirling with the wind. Grey nodded, as though that had been a message of some sort, and went on, “Would you please come with me? The air is chill, even for me, and I can see the southern lord shivering.”
Fimre glanced at Alyea. “We may as well,” she told him, very aware of Grey’s widening smile at the exchange and Idisio’s deepening frown.
“I’m not keen on being a guest of the teyanain again,” Idisio said, crossing his arms. His eyes had turned a disturbingly dark shade now, and had begun to lose the whites. “My last experience was unpleasant.”
“Ah, but that was with the traditional faction, ha’ra’ha,” Grey said. “We handle such matters very differently. We will treat you as you treat us, ha’ra’ha.”
“Why won’t you use my name?” Idisio demanded, clearly frustrated.
“We have our reasons.” Grey glanced to the sky. A dark, ragged line of clouds had begun to gather to the west. “This unpleasant chill will soon turn for the worse. Please follow me.” He turned and began picking his way across the broken slope toward the path.
An odd, distant expression crossed Idisio’s face. His eyes faded to a grey so pale it was nearly translucent. He said, without looking at Alyea or Fimre, “Do it. This is the best road to take. Trust me.” He went after Grey, not waiting for his companions to agree or even respond.
Alyea shrugged helplessly at Fimre’s dubious expression and followed Idisio, hoping she wasn’t making her worst mistake yet. Fimre stayed at her heels, occasionally grumbling about insanity and idiocy.
Chapter 69
Idisio’s intuition had changed since his mother’s death. It felt deeper, and wider, and blacker, arriving with a hard push where once it had been a strong suggestion. More often than not, it flatly contradicted his sense of self-preservation.
Logic said that he ought to grab Alyea and Fimre and leave—drawing from Alyea, from Fimre, from anything living within reach to fuel the leap elsewhere. Failing that, common sense told him he should simply abandon them and get the hells out of there himself.
Intuition insisted: Follow the teyanin, this is important. You’re in no danger.
What about Alyea and Fimre? he asked that urging. Are they in danger?
No answer. “No surprise there,” he muttered.
He could feel Alyea’s stare boring into his back. “What was that?” she asked, deep suspicion coloring the words.
He shook his head. There was no way to answer without destroying her trust further, let alone giving far too much information to the listening teyanin.
Idisio put his attention on scrambling up the steep, narrow trail with a modicum of dignity. Ahead, Grey stepped with serene confidence from rock to rock, not even looking down to check his footing, or looking back to check that his unwilling guests were following. Then again, with the way Alyea and Fimre were stumbling and cursing over the uneven terrain, it didn’t take ha’ra’hain senses to figure that part out.
You said you needed my help, Alyea’s voice said in his mind unexpectedly. He staggered a bit, caught his footing. What’s going on?
Idisio focused on keeping his “voice” quiet and targeted to Alyea alone. I have to go to Scratha Fortress. I need you to come with me. It was more challenging than he’d expected to walk over the broken ground and communicate this way.
Why? she insisted. He could hear an echo to her speech. She wasn’t being nearly quiet enough. If Grey were trained as a spirit-walker, or if an athain were watching, they’d hear her side of the conversation, at the very least.
Idisio shook his head and pointed at their guide’s back. “Not now,” he said over his shoulder. Alyea snorted irritably, but let it drop.
Around the bend in the rock where the trail had disappeared from their initial view, a plateau opened out, the ground clearing into neatly raked gravel paths and sun-drenched garden beds. Sprawling rosemary bushes, very nearly hedges in height, lined the cliff edge like a fragrant living fence. Lush, feathery fennel taller than Idisio stood sentry at the corner posts of a stone pergola. Yellow and red flowering plants bent under the attention of industrious insects. There were no other teyanain in sight.
It reminded Idisio of his initial walk through the gardens of the Bright Bay palace with Lord Scratha—which, in turn, reminded him of the call that had taken him back onto this road.
He touched the bluestone necklace lightly, wondering if, like the aenstone, it was blocking the pull of that summoning—and if so, what price would be waiting for him when he removed it.
The chill air softened under the onslaught of sunlight. Idisio half-shut his eyes, tilting his face up to meet the warmth. Sunlight, said his mother’s voice, faint and thready and whining. Idisio shook his head sharply, scowling, and focused on his surroundings again.
Grey watched him with that uncanny, piercing stare that saw far more than it ought. Fimre was gaping at the precisely arranged grounds and gardens, while Alyea’s gaze had fixed on the pergola.
“Peh-tenez,” Alyea said, pronouncing the word with strained caution, as though she’d been warned it was an easy one to misspeak into an insulting term.
Grey smiled benignly, tilting his head in apparent approval of her care. He swept his hand out to indicate that they should approach the pergola as he said, “No. That is a tradition we do not follow.”
Alyea shot him an unreadable glance, then walked forward, her back straight. Idisio followed, realizing that her steps were nearly silent despite the gravel underfoot—as were his own. Fimre, by contrast, sounded like a horse stomping across broken pottery. Even the Sessin lord’s breathing seemed loud and harsh.
Each of the stone pillars proved to be intricately carved with winding designs, echoing the climbing spirals of the plant that used the pillars as access to the wooden slats overhead. Idisio wasn’t familiar enough with southern plants to name this one, but it reminded him of wisteria, with long, trailing, feathery branches and grapelike clusters of yellow-white flowers. The overhanging tendrils formed a colorful, insect-noisy screen on two sides, latticing the sunlight within into swaying, chaotic patterns.
The floor of the pergola was a considerably finer, paler version of the crushed gravel they’d walked across to reach it. A stone table, blunt and plain compared to the ornate pillars, sat low to the ground on stubby legs. Brightly colored cushions surrounded it in precisely spaced intervals. A woman sat on one of the cushions, facing them.
Idisio halted, blinking hard. How had he not seen her while approaching the pergola? Alyea and Fimre seemed to be similarly startled.
“I did not wish you to see me,” the woman said. “Please be seated.”
She was bone-thin and not particularly attractive. Her brown tunic left her arms bare to the shoulder, revealing lines of ink that swirled in ornate designs all the way to her fingertips. The tattoos, set against the woman’s dozens of waist-length, dark braids, made Idisio think of a chaos of hissing snakes, eager to rise up and attack.
Her meditative posture was an ostentatious lie to Idisio’s senses. Deadly power shimmered beneath her calm. As with Alyea, back in the king’s prison, he felt aggression rising along his spine. She wasn’t properly ha’ra’hain, or properly human; but was most definitely a threat. A peculiar burnt smell traced against the inside of his nostrils for a heartbeat, then faded to an icy sensation, taking aggression with it. The snake-nest image came to mind again, but quiescent now, many tiny black emotionless eyes watching Idisio, tongues flicking gently to test the air.
The woman smiled, revealing small, yellow-brown teeth, three of which were missing. “You do have an imagination, ha’ra’ha,” she said. Her voice held an angular accent, as though kaenic was a language she had to consciously focus on, but she still spoke it with precision. “I like that. The other two are only thinking about whether I am athain. The southern lord is wondering why I do not have beads in my hair. The northern lord is noticing that there is no tea on the table, and wondering what that means. You are much more interesting, ha’ra’ha. I thank you for that.”
Idisio dipped his chin to his chest, staring at the woman with as much ferocious chill as he could summon; feeling, obscurely, that she’d just insulted him.
“Please sit,” the woman said, motioning to the cushions. “There is no tea because there are no facilities here for such niceties. Water is difficult to get here, and we prefer to use it for our gardens and our own people. It is not an insult, merely a practicality.”
She waited, watching, as they one by one settled down around the table. Then she gathered up a fistful of braids and said, “As for the beads, that is a status marker among the traditionalists, and I have chosen to abandon that symbolism.”
She loosed her grip, sliding her hand sensuously down to the end of the braids, and smiled wickedly at Fimre. The Sessin lord’s eyes took on the same gleam Idisio had seen in women and men alike when Deiq smiled too brightly; then Fimre cleared his throat, looking away in clear discomfort.
The woman turned her head just enough to meet Idisio’s eyes, sly expression unchanged. Idisio returned her gaze with a flat, nearly hostile indifference. She lifted one shoulder in a faint shrug, her smile dimming to a more neutral cast, and said, “We have created our own symbols, southern lord, and our own traditions. We do not use names, here, until invited to do so. It is a moment of trust, to give and to receive a name. The traditionalists use that trust to build their power. We choose otherwise.”
“But Grey—” Idisio began, turning to look at their guide. He was nowhere in sight.
“That is not his true name. It is merely a word, and so holds no power to bind him.”
Idisio, Alyea, and Fimre stared at the woman in mutually bewildered silence.
“What are we doing here?” Alyea blurted. Color washed into her face immediately, and she put her hand over her mouth, ducking her chin to her chest. Idisio grinned, obscurely relieved by the break in Alyea’s ominous desert lord persona. Fimre’s eyes brightened as though he were trying to restrain his own amusement.
The woman’s gaze tracked their reactions with intent interest. “You are our guests,” she said, her cadence slowing, her words becoming more precise. “You are under the protection of guest-right. I wish to speak to you, to tell you truths you would not learn from any other source.”
“Out of an abundance of generosity, I’m sure,” Alyea said with dry skepticism.
“Of course not. You are not so foolish as to expect me to explain how this benefits me, desert lord.” The woman paused, her dark gaze tracking across each of them, then added, “But if you are willing to listen, you may be able to keep the world from being destroyed by those you so foolishly trust.”
Chapter 70
Keep the world from being destroyed.
Alyea took a slow look around at her companions, deliberately not reacting to the dire pronouncement. Idisio gaped like a landed fish, staring at the teyanin woman. Fimre sat still, face as blank as smooth water, apparently watching a nearby insect bumbling about on a fennel leaf.
The dire statement felt entirely too similar in its direction to the discussion with Lord Evkit’s daimaina: This one First Born, this most restrained and sane of all the First Born, who now walks among us in the guise of a rich, self-indulgent merchant, could cause all of humanity to be wiped from the earth with a slight effort on his part and a few words to the Jungles. Do not forget this....
The woman’s smile faded, her gaze focusing on Alyea. She said, “The elder race is indeed among those I speak of. Please, use great caution in your thoughts and your words. As a matter of habit, I always assume someone of power is eavesdropping. Even with the protections we have given you, this is not a safe place in which to be careless, desert lord.”
Alyea drew into herself, ferociously tightening her shields, until the woman smiled briefly, nodding.
“As proper names are not to be used,” the woman said then, “you may call me Tallisil.”
Idisio choked audibly. “What?”
The woman shrugged. “It serves as a name,” she said, “and as a warning, if you need one, not to underestimate me.” She cast a sultry smile at Fimre again; this time, the Sessin lord regarded her with blank disinterest.
Alyea hesitated, then said, “I’m not familiar with that word.”
“It’s a street term,” Idisio said in a muted voice. A wave of color rose to his face, then faded. His eyes turned a very dark grey, and his distress scratched through the air, harshly uncomfortable. “It means—it’s someone who—” He shook his head and fell silent, one hand over his mouth as though even saying that much made made him nauseous.
“It refers, in northern street parlance, to a woman who tears off a man’s testicles with her bare hands,” the teyanin woman said, moving her hands through the air in a graceful twisting and pulling gesture. “Beautiful brutality contained in a rather pleasant-sounding word, I’ve always thought.” Her eyes gleamed with amusement, bringing a sly animation to her features. Alyea had a flickering sense of looking into a mirror: a sense of darkness and power, a depthless drive to fight for life and an immense need/pleasure of granting death resonated between them. Then Tallisil blinked, her expression closing off once more, and the cloudy air cleared to neutrality.
Idisio shuddered, closing his eyes. Fimre’s expression hovered somewhere between horrified and amused. He looked everywhere and anywhere except at the two women.
Tallisil watched Idisio for a few moments, her head tilted to one side. “You’ve seen some dreadful things, young ha’ra’ha, haven’t you?” she said, only the faintest trace of sympathy in her voice. “I suggest you compose yourself and move your thoughts away from the various antics of human whores, thieves, and beggars.”
“Tallisil,” Alyea said deliberately, ignoring Idisio’s flinch. “While I understand that teyanain enjoy being dramatic, I’ll suggest in turn that you stop baiting us and get to the point.”
Tallisil nodded, apparently pleased, and said, “You are as direct as I’ve been told, desert lord. This is good. Southern formality is far too weighty and ponderous to suit me at the best of times.” The skin around her eyes creased thoughtfully.
Fimre sat motionless, his eyes half-shut, his breathing almost imperceptible. Idisio fidgeted in his seat, avoiding Tallisil’s gaze, and cast frequent glances into the distance, as though thinking of running away.
The gleam returned to Tallisil’s eyes. She said, “Ha’ra’ha. Have you fathered offspring yet?”
Idisio eyes widened, fading to a translucent paleness. “No. Not as far as I know.”
“You are sufficiently adult by the standards of your kind to discharge that duty, ha’ra’ha,” Tallisil said. “I call on you, here and now, to do so. We will provide a suitable vessel.”
Alyea began to shake her head. Before she could voice her protest, Idisio said, vehemently, “No. I’m not answering to you on that! Besides...” His tone wavered. “I might not even be able to—to have children.”
“This is an old law, and I do have the authority to enforce it, ha’ra’ha,” Tallisil said. “You must attempt to pass on your heritage. You will not be permitted to leave until you do so.”
Idisio rose to his feet, his eyes black now. “And you’re going to stop me how?” he demanded, his hands balling into fists.
