The Novels of the Jaran (147 page)

“The arenabekh. They were outlaws, weren’t they?”

“Men who had left their tribes for one reason or another—for some crime, because they loved men more than women, because they no longer wanted to live with the tribes.”

“Did you like it there?”

“Not at all. How can any person love a tribe where there are no children?”

“Wouldn’t someone like that boy who was exiled—with the actor—wouldn’t he seek out the arenabekh?”

“He would, if he could find them. Keregin, their last dyan, led the arenabekh into a hopeless battle in order to save Bakhtiian’s life. But Tess would know about that. She was there.”

“Was she, now? I haven’t heard this story yet.”

“Well, but with the arenabekh gone, Yevgeni Usova has nowhere to go, if he’s even still alive.”

“So there you were with the arenabekh.”

“I stayed with them for almost two years, because there was nowhere else to go. Keregin was hard but fair, and he never treated me any differently from the others because I was an orphan—or a horse stealer. Then I heard about these training schools, where young men might go to train for jahar, and I thought I’d go and see if Kerchaniia Bakhalo, the man who ran one, would accept orphans. He did. When he discovered that Vyacheslav Mirsky himself had trained me—well—he never said as much, but I knew I was his favorite pupil. But then, I was a better fighter than the rest. It was the frog, you know. And after that, Bakhalo brought us to the great camp that was growing up around Bakhtiian.”

“Where you met Tess.”

At the mention of Tess’s name, he could not help but smile. “Yes. She trained with us. Although she was Bakhtiian’s wife, she never treated those of us who were orphans any different from the rest. Of course, she is khaja, which accounts for it.”

“How did she come to adopt you as her brother?”

“Every woman needs a brother, and hers had died—that was Yuri Orzhekov, Sonia’s younger brother. She and I always got along well, and we liked each other right away. We felt—” He thought about it, two outsiders working and training together, both with quick minds and ready laughter, detached and yet involved in the jaran camp. “—linked, somehow. But then the Mirskys rode into camp. They were well within their rights to kill me, of course. In fact, they were in the process of doing just that—”

“How, in the Lady’s Name, were they doing that?”

“Well, there were five of them, and they caught me in the dark coming out of a woman’s tent, and then they beat me with sticks. But Tess happened to walk by and she stopped them.”

“You’re casual about it.”

Aleksi laughed, recalling what Bakhtiian had said to his niece. “The gods never give out unmixed blessings. So who am I to complain about bruises and a broken arm and collarbone when it brought me Tess as a sister?”

One of the things Aleksi liked about Dr. Hierakis was that she could laugh compassionately. “Who, indeed?”

“You see, they demanded to know what right she had to stop them meting out the justice I did, after all, deserve, for stealing one of their horses, and she said, ‘the right of a sister.’ And so she adopted me.”

“Did she consult Bakhtiian?”

“Why would she consult Bakhtiian? She brought me back to her tent and nursed me back to health and I became her brother and have been ever since, and always will be. Bakhtiian did take me into his jahar, then, but he might well have done so anyway—although, if Tess hadn’t adopted me the Mirskys would have killed me sooner or later, so I suppose I’ll never know if Bakhtiian took me into his jahar to give me his protection or because he admired my fighting.”

“Perhaps both.”

“Perhaps.”

“Well, you’ve led a harrowing life, Aleksi.”

He sipped at his tea. “I’m content.” And he was.

“End recording,”
said the doctor to the air. “Will you come with me?” she asked. She passed through into the inner chamber. Respectfully, he followed after her.

In this miraculous den, many strange and wondrous machines cluttered the long narrow table and crowded into each other on the carpets. An image shimmered in the air. Aleksi recognized it immediately: the shrine of Morava, with its great shining dome and its twin towers framing the curved expanse of roof.

“That’s where the prince is,” he said in surprise.

Cara glanced at the shrine. The image was so lifelike that Aleksi could not believe that he himself was not standing some distance from the actual shrine, seeing it with his own eyes. Had she witched it and brought it here, making it small enough to fit in her tent? But no, Tess said that the machines called modelers made images of things, not the things themselves.

“Lie down there.” The doctor patted a low couch with one hand. On this couch, Bakhtiian had slept through his
coma.
“I’m going to scan you. You saw when I did the same thing to Tess. Take off your saber first, and any gold or metal—yes, your belt buckle.”

Aleksi did as he was told and gingerly lay down on the pallet. Tess had lain here without the slightest sign of nervousness. Now, the doctor spoke a few Anglais words he did not recognize and he felt the air hum around him. Then she took a little box, lit with jewels of light, into her right hand and, starting at his head, passed it down over his body. The humming air moved as well, like an invisible ring of pressure, down along his torso and his hips, down his legs, dissipating at last by his feet. It took a long time. Torn between awe and fear and curiosity, he watched his spirit drawn into the air at the foot of the couch. His spirit shone as brightly as Bakhtiian’s and Tess’s did, which surprised him a little, and yet, hadn’t the gods gifted him with many blessings?

“Lady in Heaven. This is astonishing. You’re a perfect specimen, Aleksi. No wonder you survived your hell of a childhood. I think you may well be one of the keys I need to crack the code. I think whatever tinkering those damned chameleons did to the humans they transplanted here bred true in you. Have you ever been sick, a day in your life?

Aleksi thought about this, since it was the only thing in her entire speech that he understood. “No, not that I remember.”

“And your reflexes—I must find a way to test them. I’ll just bet that they’re part of the package. Aleksi, have you ever thought about having children?”

There were definitely times when Aleksi thought the doctor was a little mad. “Every man thinks of it at some time. But if I marry, I’ll have to leave Tess, and I don’t want to do that.”

“Of course. The jaran are matrifocal. Still, I’d love to try a little selective breeding—” She broke off and coughed into one hand. “In any case, this is a needle. I’m going to take blood. You saw me do that to Tess as well.”

“Yes.” He watched with interest as she pricked his skin with the tiny blade. The viscous scarlet of his blood filled a tiny chamber of glass, a red as rich as the red of his silk shirt. She removed the needle and gave him a piece of fluff to press onto his skin, though the point of entry scarcely qualified as an injury. At the long table, she busied herself with some of the machines, but he could not see what she was doing because her back covered his view of the table. Instead, he regarded his spirit, turning in the air before him.

“Oh, you can sit up now,” she said over her shoulder.

He sat up. His spirit still turned. He rose and walked closer to examine it. It seemed to emanate from the very base of the couch, like a rainbow emerging from the ground and arching up into the heavens to scatter its color across the rain-drenched sky. But it was him, clearly so. He reached to touch it, but just as his fingers met its surface, it sparked and vanished into a thousand flickering lights and then to nothing. He jumped back. The image appeared again: there, his narrow chin and thin face, in gold and white and blue; the curve of his throat a glittering, soft green; the relaxed slope of his shoulders in green and blue, with a hint of violet; his chest and hips, his legs, his feet fading into a cloud of deepest violet at their base, the exact curve of his kneecap, the knob in his left little finger, gold with a tracery of red, where it had never healed straight when it was broken many many years ago. He was crowned by a bright silver formless light, just as Bakhtiian’s spirit had been, just as Tess’s had been.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” asked the doctor from her table. He felt her move, without seeing her. He caught a movement in his peripheral vision; an instant later he shot his left hand up and caught a little ball she’d thrown at him. “Good reflexes,” she said. “Squeeze that as hard as you can.” He complied, then transferred it to his other hand and squeezed it again. The ball was made of some strange substance he did not recognize: not wood or metal, not ceramic or cloth. Little bumps nobbled its surface, and when he squeezed hard enough it gave slightly beneath his hand, and he felt warmth from inside of it.

The doctor came over to him and squinted at his eyes. She held up a black stick with a light nestled in its tip. “Look at me. Straight at me. Don’t mind this. They say the actor Gwyn Jones is a martial artist.”

“What is that?
Martial artist?”

“Someone who has studied the art of fighting, not just the craft of it. I’d like to see the two of you spar together. He won a number of tournaments, of—well—contests, say when you race a horse. Surely you fence together and see who comes out the winner?”

“I always did,” Aleksi admitted humbly. “Come out the winner. That’s what Vyacheslav often said to me, that most men are blind to the saber, that they only use it to cut with and kill with, but that the saber is like a Singer’s lute, that it could itself sing. He said I was a Singer, that I had made a long journey, but that my instrument wasn’t tales and song but the saber itself, just as the saber had been his instrument in his time. So he taught me.”

“You are a Singer? A shaman?”

He shrugged. “I never went to the gods’ lands, if that is what you mean. But I learned from him as much as there was time to learn, about the—
art
—of saber.” He grinned. “I like this word,
martial artist.
You khaja are always surprising me. I thought you weren’t civilized.”

Dr. Hierakis laughed and withdrew her light from his face. “That’s all. What news from the council?”

Aleksi also liked her brusqueness and the way she came straight to the point and never hemmed and hawed about the least detail. “The main army, with Bakhtiian, rides to Karkand. Sakhalin rides south. Grekov and Vershinin ride west past Karkand. Nadine will ride north to escort the prince back here.”

“Oh,” said the doctor.

“Will he know this before she arrives?” Aleksi asked.

Dr. Hierakis laughed. “Yes. We have a way of talking that can send a message faster than the fastest horseman can ride. You see the image of Morava, there?” He nodded. “That isn’t an image modeled out of the memory, but a real image, sent to us by Marco Burckhardt from half a kilometer away from the palace. He sent it this morning.”

Aleksi regarded the image of Morava. The view looked down the long avenue that led to the front of the shrine. He could just make out the sweep of white stairs framed by thin black pillars that led to the huge doors embroidered with tracery and fine patterns. “But, Doctor,” he said, “if you can send messages so quickly, why not show Bakhtiian how to do this thing as well? If his generals could speak together like this, then imagine what they could do.”

“Oh, I can imagine it,” said the doctor. “But we’ve done too much already. Casualties are high, of course, but deaths are low. We’re saving and healing a much higher percentage of the wounded than would have survived without my training. And yet, and yet, I can’t just stand by and watch them die, knowing that with a little knowledge they could be saved. What of the khaja living in the army’s path? But I can’t reach them. I can’t reach everyone. Not yet.”

The doctor often talked to herself like this, to him and yet to herself and to some unnamed audience which Aleksi supposed was both her conscience and the absent prince, with whom she shared more than simple friendship and loyalty. He knew some vital issue troubled her, but he had not yet puzzled out what it was. And if she and the prince did not want to share this swift messenger they hoarded between them, after all, why should they? They owed Bakhtiian nothing. Aleksi did not think they were Bakhtiian’s enemies, but neither did he think they were Bakhtiian’s friends. Allies, perhaps, because of Tess, but it was an uneasy truce. They were only here because Tess was here. Even Bakhtiian knew that. They needed no alliance with Bakhtiian, and certainly with such machines, they had nothing to fear from him, however powerful and vast his army might be. Jeds was a long ride away, according to both Tess and Nadine, according to Bakhtiian himself.

But if Tess left, if the prince and Dr. Hierakis convinced her to go, Aleksi had long since promised himself that by one means or another, whatever he must do, he would go with her.

CHAPTER SIX

A
T FIRST THE COLOR
gray, like a fog, sank in around them. Fog lifted to become mist, and through the mist towers appeared, rising up toward the sky in such profusion that they might have been the uplifted lances of the jaran army, one hundred thousand strong.

But to call them towers did them no justice. Not one tower looked like any other tower. Each possessed such striking individuality that even from this distance—from this relative distance, seated on the floor and staring into the three-dimensional field of Hon Echido’s
ke’s
representation of the palace of the Chapalii Emperor—David could distinguish some characteristic in each tower his eye had time to light on that set it apart from the others. Why had they chosen to do that? So many and yet each unique? David thought of the Chapalii as so bound by the hierarchy of their social order that he would never have guessed that they valued diversity.

“The Yaochalii reigns forever.”

Was that Echido talking, or a voice encoded through the image building in front of them? David couldn’t tell. The image itself wore such depth and reality that he could easily imagine himself actually transported there, staring at the city from high above. He recalled the emperor’s visit to Charles and Tai Naroshi—or their visit to the emperor. Maybe he
was
there. The thought made him giddy.