Kate Elliott - Jaran

Tess examined Vladimir. His vanity was the vanity of the insecure. He had taken great pains with his appearance, had trimmed his hair, and shaved his face so no trace of beard or mustache showed. Jewelry weighed him down: rings, bracelets, necklaces-were all of them from lovers? He had a deft hand for embroidery but no taste at all, so that the design adorning his sleeves and collar was merely garish. The ornately-hilted saber that Ilya had gifted him, the legacy of the arenabekh, simply capped the whole absurd ensemble.

"So I am, Vladimir," she agreed amiably, "which is why I sent Kirill after him."

He blinked. "But-" He shrugged suddenly, a movement copied from Bakhtiian, and sat down carefully on the grass. "Why did you come here, then?"

"I'm traveling to Jeds. I thought you knew that."

"I know what you say. Josef told Niko that you can read the writing here. But no one can read that, not even Mother Avdotya."

"How do you know?"

"I was born here," he replied without visible emotion. "Or at least they say that I was."

"You must know Yeliana. You must have grown up with her."

"She was very young when I left." Behind him, through a ragged line of bushes, she saw the slender lines of a statue, something human, its features worn away so that there were only depressions for the eyes and a slight rise to mark the lips. "She is as much of a sister as I have ever had. But I did not want to become a priest."

"So what did you do?"

He shrugged again, that childlike copy of Bakhtiian. "I rode to join Kerchaniia Bakhalo's jahar-ledest. Ilya found me there." So, thought Tess, your life began when Ilya found you. "I'm very good with saber," he offered by way of explanation for this inexplicable action on the part of the great Bakhtiian. "And Ilya had lost his family."

Had lost a nephew, Tess reflected, who might well have been around Vladimir's age now. Perhaps this was one way of atoning.

"You knew about the shrine," said Vladimir abruptly. "You came here, planning all along to trick him down the Avenue.''

The accusation was so preposterous that Tess laughed. "You think I sailed across wide seas from a far distant land, risked my life, all for the express purpose of marrying Bakhtiian? Whom I had, incidentally, never heard of."

"Everyone has heard of him," said Vladimir stiffly.

"But Vladimir," she said, deciding that the only fair throw here would be one equally wild, "why should I want to marry Bakhtiian? I am a great heir in my own right, and anyway, everyone knows that Bakhtiian has never loved anyone since-"

"It's not true," he cried, jumping to his feet. "You'll never make me believe that of him." He stalked away.

Since she had been about to say, "since his family died," she wondered what Vladimir had thought she was about to say. By God, he was afraid that once Bakhtiian had a legitimate family, he, Vladi, would be cast off again. Poor child, to have to live so dependent on one person's whim.

A flight of birds caught her eye as they wheeled and dove about some far corner of the park. She heard their faint calls, laughable things, like the protests of the vacillating. A rustling sounded from a bush, and a small, rust-colored animal, long-eared and short-legged, nosed past a crinkled yellow leaf and scrambled out to the center of the sward, huffing like a minute locomotive. It froze. The tufts of hair in the inside of its ears were white, but its eyes were as black as the void.

She felt inexplicably cheered. However hard it had been-and still was-it had been right to tell Kirill that he could not come with her. It had been honest, and it had been true. She shifted on the bench. The little animal shrieked, a tiny hiccup, and it fled back into the bush, precipitating a flood of rustling around her and then silence. She smiled.

On Earth she had learned to walk without hearing, to look without seeing. She had surrounded herself with a wall. Here she listened: to the wind, to the horses, to the voices of the jaran as they spoke, wanting to be heard, to hear. On Earth she had taught herself to deal with people as if they weren't there; only to protect herself, of course. Yet how many times had she spoken to people, only to realize later that she had never once looked them in the eye? In this land, one saw, one looked, and the lowering of eyes was as eloquent as their meeting.

She ran one hand over the case that protected her mirror, over the enameled clasps. In this land, the austerity of the life demanded that every human exchange, however ambiguous, be thorough and complete. There was nothing to hide behind. In this land, a mother's first gift to her daughter was a mirror in which the daughter could see her own self. Of course, they didn't have showers. This was a considable drawback. Or any kind of decent information network. That she missed. She had borrowed Sister Casiara's gal tract from Niko, and read it through twice now, and second time it had bored her almost to tears. But there ere other things and other ways to learn. Tasha was the most accurate meteorologist she had ever come across. Josef could analyze his surroundings with a precision and an accuracy that would make a physical scientist blush with envy, and he could follow a cold trail with astonishing skill. Yuri understood more about the subtle shadings of the human than he probably knew he did. And if she had felt more pain here, then she had also felt more joy, more simple happiness. It was a trade worth making. Here, in the open lands, where the spirit wandered as freely as the wind, it was hard to be miserable.

That night after supper, Tess went back to her room and waited. When the moon had set, she strapped on her saber and both her knives and slipped out into the corridor, closing the door carefully behind her. The latch clicked softly into place.

She stood for a moment, one hand resting against the cool stone of the wall, until her eyes adjusted to the new blend of shadows. Then she set off.

In the eating hall, Garii waited for her in the shadows. A soft, dreaming silence lay over the shrine, lulled by the distant swell and ebb of a melodic chant sung over and over by a wakeful priest. Garii turned and, even in the darkness, he bowed, knowing it was she. He crossed the hall to her, bowed again, and led her into the maze of the palace.

Tess was soon lost. Had he abandoned her, she could not have retraced her path. For all she knew, he was leading her in circles. Then they passed through the entry hall, walked down a broad flight of steps, rounded a corner, and she found herself in a room she knew she had not seen before. A pale light washed it, the barest gleam. About the same size as the eating hall, the room had ebony floors and was ringed with two rectangular countertops, one inside the other, freestanding within the room. By this door and next to the door at the far end stood two tall megalithic structures that reminded her abruptly of the transmitter out on the plains.

Garii walked across the hall to the far door. She followed him, and he slid the panel aside and waited for her to pass through first. She hesitated. Should she trust him? But what choice had she now?

She found herself in a blank, white-walled room that was unfurnished, empty. The walls were as smooth as glass, and it was bitterly cold. She rubbed her arms and turned, only to see Garii removing his knife from his belt. She grabbed for hers-but he pointed the knife at the far wall. A sigh shuddered through the air, and the far wall fell away before them.

A dark gap lay beyond. He gestured. She passed through into the tunnel, and he followed her. The gap shut seamlessly behind them.

The darkness hummed. Putting out her hands, one to each side, she felt walls on either side. Light winked on ahead. A brief chime startled her. She took ten steps forward, and the dark passage opened out into a room. Amazement stopped her in her tracks.