The Carnelian Throne Read Free Page B

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 ground, 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.