Shadow's End (9 page)

“My dear, it wasn't a little tourister girl. I remember now. It was someone famous on the frontier! He was only a boy, she was twice his age, and that's what the talk was about!”

Ostil-ohn murmured, “Whoever. I'll modify my statement. When four generations of Fambers stick around only long enough to father one
acknowledged son
and then take off never to be seen again, one may be forgiven for assuming it's genetic.”

Britta said, “Limia would argue with you. She doesn't acknowledge the boy Leelson fathered. He had it out of that translator woman he took up with. You know. We met her once. Lutha something. Tallstaff. Basically ear-thian stock.”

“Did I meet her?”

“But of course you did,” Britta insisted. “Leelson brought her here. Then Limia went to see her!”

“Oh, yes. To warn her off, don't you suppose? Limia was furious! And what is it about the child? Something not right?”

Lutha's face flushed. Damn them. What right had they to discuss Leely!

Britta went on. “It isn't Fastigat. It's not even normal earthian. I haven't seen it, though some of the men have.
Oh, look, there's someone who'd know. Trompe Paggas. Trompe knows everything!”

Lutha looked up, saw Trompe moving toward her, gave up any attempt at concealment, and rose to her full height. She turned to the matrons she'd been eavesdropping upon with a pleasant smile and a nod.

Both had the grace to flush, though only Ostil-ohn was capable of speech. She murmured politely as Lutha moved to join Trompe, and then the two women put their heads together once more, to share the full delicious horror of what they'd just done.

L
eelson Famber's mother was in no mood to talk with Lutha Tallstaff. When Trompe insisted, she made them wait a discourteous amount of time before inviting them to her private quarters. During that time she dressed herself with some care and prepared herself mentally for what she supposed would be a request on the Tallstaff woman's part for additional help with her idiot child.

It turned out, however, that Lutha Tallstaff had something else in mind.

“I've been asked by the Alliance to go to Dinadh,” Lutha announced. “With my son.”

Limia sat back, surprised both at the announcement and at the propriety of Lutha's language. “My son,” she'd said. Many women might have said “Leelson's son.” Or “our son.” “Leelson's and my son.” Or even, courtesy forbid, “your grandson.”

Limia sat back in her chair, feeling an unintended frown creeping onto her forehead. “Yes,” she said, smoothing both her face and her voice. “What has that to do with me?”

“I don't want to go,” said Lutha. “I've agreed to do so only if no other way can be found.”

“Other way?”

“The Dinadhi will allow entry to you. The Procurator says you've refused to go.”

“Yes.”

“I thought perhaps you didn't understand how important the matter is and how very difficult the trip will be for me.”

“I am an old woman. You are a young one.” Among Fastigats, with their reverence for age, this was all that needed saying. Seemingly, it was not enough for the Tall-staff woman.

Lutha explained, “In order to be allowed to investigate Bernesohn Famber's life there, I have to be connected with his lineage. This means I have to take my son with me.”

Limia's gorge rose at the word
lineage
, but she kept her voice calm. “Surely that is not onerous.”

Lutha threw a glance in Trompe's direction.

Smoothly he said, “Lutha Tallstaff correctly assesses that the visit to Dinadh will be more than merely onerous, mistress. It will be extremely difficult.”

Limia rose and stalked across the floor, her long skirts foaming around her ankles. With her back to the younger woman, she allowed herself a bitter smile. “Leave us, Trompe.”

“Mistress…”

“Leave us!”

She waited until she heard the sound of the door sliding shut behind him. “I came to call upon you,” she said, turning to Lutha. “At your office. Remember.”

“Of course.”

“When I first heard you were pregnant. I believe I told you then something of the family history.”

“I respect the meaning lineage has for you, madam, but as I said at the time, family histories are most interesting to members of the family in question. You'd made it clear you would never consider me as any part of your family.”

“I told you of the saying among Fastigats? Do you remember?”

“I remember it, madam. ‘Mankind, first among creatures.
Fastigats, first among mankind. Fambers, first among Fastigats.'”

Lutha thought it unbearably arrogant, then and now. “I thought it hyperbole, madam. Fastigats are not known as Firsters.”

“Ninety-nine percent of all Firsters are vulgar, but even they may occasionally assert a truth. It is a truth that the universe was made for man, not as Firsters exemplify man but as Fastigats exemplify man. Evolution moves in our direction. It is our pride and our duty. You would have been wise to respect our history and traditions, though you were outside them. I mentioned to you that Leelson's line is composed of only sons.”

A fact that seemed to be generally known, considering what Lutha had overheard downstairs.

“I thought that interesting, but not compelling, madam. At best it is a statistical anomaly.”

“I asked you—no, I begged you not to go on with your pregnancy.”

“As I told you at the time, it was not something I had planned.” She hadn't, and she had no explanation for not having done so. None at all. Against every tenet of her rearing, against every shred of her own resolution, it had simply happened.

Limia went on implacably: “You chose to ignore what I had to say. I explained that Leelson's child would have a better chance of being valued by his father and by me if born to a Fastiga woman and, if a son, with the Fastigat skills. I spoke from conviction, from concern. As you now admit, you felt my reasoning was not meaningful, not compelling. Why, now, should your conviction be compelling to me? Why, now, should your difficulties or problems be my concern?”

Lutha stared out the window behind the woman, not wanting to look her in the face. Everything she said was true. The only omission from Limia's account was Leelson's reaction when Lutha had told him of his mother's
visit. He had been angered, infuriated. Let Limia keep her opinions to herself. If he wanted to father a child on Lutha, that was his business! At that moment Lutha had loved him most, for he had not spoken like a Fastigat but like a lover.

One could not say to Limia Famber, however, that the child had been Leelson's choice. Limia Famber wasn't interested in what her son had wanted.
Had
wanted. Then.

Very well. There was still one final question she needed to ask. Lutha breathed deeply, counting the breaths, holding her voice quiet as she said, “There is an additional possibility. Leelson himself could make this trip far easier than I, and he would have no reason to refuse. Do you have any idea where he might be?”

Limia laughed harshly. “Don't be a fool, woman! Do you think I would be so grievously upset if I knew where Leelson was? If I knew he was anywhere, alive? If I knew that, I could assume he has time yet to beget another child. If I knew he was still among the living, I would not despair of his posterity.”

The sneering tone made Lutha tremble, only partly with anger. She could actually fear this woman!

“It is early to despair of his posterity,” she said at last. “Leely is only five.”

The older woman regarded her almost with pity. “Leely! Your misbegot provides no posterity, not for our line, not even for yours, if you cared about such things. My kinsmen have seen your
Leely
, at my request. Believe me, it is because of your Leely that I despair!”

S
ome weeks after I returned from the House Without a Name, a veiled woman stopped me in the corridor, asking that I meet her behind the hive that evening. I knew her voice. From her veil, I knew she was one like me.

I did as she asked, leaving the hidden quarters in the bowels of the hive and encountering her near the back
wall of the cave, whence she guided me through a hidden cleft and along a narrow trail that led downward to a turning behind a rock where there was a dark crevice.

“Puo-toh,” came the whisper from the crevice.
Who goes?

“Pua-a-mai etah,” my guide replied.
Goes a newly wounded one.

“Enter,” said the whisperer, lifting a foliage curtain from within the crevice. “Follow.”

My guide held the foliage while I went beneath. It fell into place behind me as I went down a path that twisted among great stones. This was a water path, smoothed by the rains of a thousand years, dimly lit by occasional candles on metal spikes driven into the stone. I wondered if the lights were there for my benefit, for my guide did not seem to need them. She moved as easily in darkness as she did in the infrequent puddles of light.

We came to a blanket door, the two blankets slightly overlapping.

“Remove your veil and come in,” she said.

She raised both hands to the flap of her veil, loosing it and thrusting it aside as she went through the blanket and around the draft wall that stops the outside air from blowing in. Behind it was the cave itself. It was dim inside, lit only by the small fire burning upon the central hearth under a metal hood. It was also warm, which meant it was well plastered, with all its holes and crevices stuffed with stone and covered with a layer of mud. As I looked around I realized the walls had been not only sealed, but smoothed. Walls and benches had been painted with white clay to reflect the light, and there were designs drawn there, ones I had never seen before. The mortar chimney that led the smoke away went beneath the lie-down bench, curved with it, and came up against the far wall, where a little door gave access to the shelf where the start-fire is built, to get the warm air rising. Once air is going up the straight chimney, one shuts the start-fire
door, and the heated hearth air is pulled under the bench, warming the place we sit or sleep.

It was a warm cave, carefully planned, carefully built, as carefully as any hive cell I had ever seen. The air was fragrant, scented by spices stewing over the fire. I knew there would be breathing holes somewhere, a few at the bottom of the cave, beside the fire, to suck new air in as the warm air rose. We do the same in the hive.

On the curving bench sat a score of women, all with their hoods pushed back, their veils down. Only once had I seen my face in a mirror since my day at the House Without a Name. Once had been enough. Now I stared as though into fifty mirrors, seeing my face again and again, with variations. Here was a missing eyelid, there a ragged lip, there nostrils chewed at the edges. There were ears missing, cheeks pocked and scarred and riven. Foreheads and scalps and jaws with only skin across the bone.

When I had wakened in the hive, the bandages had already been in place. Veiled women had told me what had happened. No one knew why. It happened sometimes. It was no fault of Masanees or any of the other attendant women. Every detail of the ritual had been reviewed, again and again. Did you do this? Did you do that? Did you lie with your face firmly in the basket ring? Was there plenty of food and drink? Yes and yes, everything had been done as it was supposed to be done, as it had been done over and over for generations of years.

“Welcome,” said an old woman. “To our sisterhood.”

The others bowed and murmured. Welcome. Welcome.

“Are you still with child?” asked the eldest.

I nodded. So far as I knew, I was. I was no longer about to be married; I was no longer considered marriageable; but I was still with child.

“When your birthing time comes, you will come here,” said the woman.

This was a surprise! I looked around the circle, seeking
some reason. Those who could, smiled comfortingly at me.

“We have all had the experience,” one of the women said. “Most of us are from Cochim-Mahn, but some are from Dzibano'as and Hamam'n and Damanbi. When the moons are full, we delegates come to offer comfort to our new sister, walking in the day from hive to hive, staying overnight with our sisters who then join our travels the following day. Tonight we have with us women even from Chacosri, around the canyon corner. We all know what you are suffering. Many of us have had children. When your time comes, come here.”

“We are a sisterhood,” said another to me, kindly. “We are a sisterhood of wounds. We must care for ourselves, for the others are afraid of us.”

“Afraid!” I cried. I knew it was so. Walking veiled in the corridors of the hive, I had seen it on their faces, even on Father's face, Grandfather's face. I had seen it on Shalumn's face, though her fear was outweighed by pity. I did not want to believe it. “Why afraid?”

“Because we do not fit the promise made by the Gracious One,” whispered another. “Because we seem to cast doubt upon the choice. Because they are afraid we will bring the abandoned gods among them again.”

And then they put their arms around me, and I wept, and they said soft words and let me weep, and the singing began and went around and around the fire, old songs to fit the designs upon the walls, songs so old the ordinary people of the hives had forgotten them, songs of our former father, our former mother, songs of the time when the shadows had welcomed us and we did not go in fear or hope of the Kachis or the ghosts.

I
t is time to introduce new color into the robe we are weaving. I have woven Lutha and Leelson and Leely, Saluez and Snark. Now I will fill a new shuttle with heavier threads than ours. I will weave the King of Kamir.

I had never met a king before, and when eventually I did, at first I thought he did not look like much. Still, his pattern would be rich and vivid, a storm design set against our simple stripes of joy and pain. While Lutha Tallstaff was traveling toward our meeting, while I sang in the cave of the sisterhood, he, the King of Kamir, thought mighty thoughts and made the fabric tremble!