The Faded Sun Trilogy Read Free

name and nature of the Holy, and of the Gods; and the Pana, the Revered Objects, were in her keeping. She knew her nation to its depth and its width, its birth and its destiny.
    She was she’pan of a dying House, eldest Mother of a dying species. The Kath, the caste of child-bearers and children, was dead, its tower dark and closed twelve years ago: the last of the kath’ein was long buried in the cliffs of Sil’athen, and the last children, motherless save for herself, had gone to their destinies outside. Her Kel had declined to ten, and the Sen—
    The Sen was before her: Sathell, the eldest, the sen’anth, whose weak heart poised him constantly a beat removed from the Dark; and the girl who sat presently at her feet. They were the gold-robes, the light-bearers, high-caste. Her own robes were white, untainted by the edgings of black and blue and gold worn by the she’panei of lesser degree. Their knowledge was almost complete, but her own was entire. If her own heart should stop beating this moment, so much, so incalculably much could be lost to the People. It was a fearful thing, to consider how much rested on her each pulse and breath amid such pain.
    That the House and the People not die.
    The girl Melein looked up at her—last of all the children, Melein s’Intel Zain-Abrin, who had once been kel’e’en. At times the kel-fierceness was still in Melein, although she had assumed outwardly the robes and the chaste serenity of the scholarly Sen—although the years had given her different skills, and her mind had advanced far beyond the simplicity of a kel’e’en. Intel brushed at Melein’s shoulder, a caress. “Patience,” she advised, seeing Melein’s anxiety; and she knew that the advice would be discarded in all respects.
    “Let me go find Niun and talk to him,” she asked.
    Brother and sister, Niun and Melein—and close, despite that they had been separated by law and she’pan’s decree and caste and custom. Kel’en and sen’e’en, dark and bright, Hand and Mind; but the heart in them was the same and the blood was the same. She remembered the pair that had given them life, her youngest and most beloved Husband and a kel’e’en of Guragen, both lost now.
His
face, his eyes, that had made her regret a she’pan’s chastity, gazed back at her through Melein’s and Niun’s; and she remembered that he also had been strong-willed and hot-tempered and clever. Perhaps Melein hated her; she had not willingly received the command to leave the Kel and enter the Sen. But there was no defiance there now, though the she’pan searched for it. There was only anxiety, only a natural grief for her brother’s pain.
    “No,” said Intel sharply. “I tell you to let him alone.”
    “He may harm himself, she’pan.”
    “He will not. You underestimate him. He does not need you now. You are no longer of the Kel, and I doubt that he wants to be faced by one of the Sen at this moment. What could you tell him? What could you answer if he asked you questions? Could you be silent?”
    This struck home. “He wanted to leave Kesrith six years ago,” said Melein, her eyes bright with unshed tears; and possibly it was not only her brother’s case she pleaded now, but her own. “You would not let him go. Now it is too late, she’pan. It is forever too late for him, and what can he imagine for himself? What is there for him?”
    “Meditate upon these things,” said Intel, “and tell me your conclusions, sen Melein s’Intel, after you have thought a day and a night on this matter. But do not intrude your advice into the private affairs of a kel’en. And do not regard him as your brother. A sen’e’en has no kin but the whole House, and the People.”
    Melein rose, and stared down at her, breast heaving with her straggle for breath. Beautiful, this daughter of hers: Intel saw her in this instant and was amazed how much Melein, who was not of her blood, had become the things her own youth had once