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see his face.
"What is the significance of this chald, that upon which the high chalder
remarked? I still do not see."
"If you did not see, you would not have asked," he remarked. "But I will give
you the acknowledgment you seek. I would not want you to lose sleep over it.
As you surmised, I had not such a strand to give." He pushed away from the
book wall and came to the couchside. "Silistra has never Ift fore had a
dhareness."
I stretched under the couch silks.
"Do not make more of the fact than it is," he advised sternly. "It is your
bloodright, procured for you by your father's grace, by your genetic strengths
and the potential inherent in the son you produced for me. It is him I honor,
not you." The sun invaded the keep, fanning the fathers' fire upon his skin.
I laughed softly at him. Honor his son, would he? I saw no honor in the band
of restraint I wore, but I saw a look upon his face I had seen often before
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Janet E. Morris upon other men's. Fleeing, it hovered there, before he chased
it from his countenance.
He stared a moment longer at me, in the rising light, then turned and strode
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from the keep.
When I judged him gone down the stairs, 1 threw off the couch silks and went
into my old prison. In the mirror there, I regarded myself. I spent a time
coming to terms with that image, with his works upon me. I saw the painful
thinness of my frame. I saw a tone to my muscles that did not please me. I
would, I vowed, get Khys's permission to work my body into some kind of
fitness. My inner thighs did not suit me. My skin did not have the healthy
tone it normally carried. But those things I could remedy. His device upon my
flesh, I could not. I tried one final time to loose Khys's band of restraint.
An enth, I sought the power to interrupt the flow of energy that held it
there. I failed totally.
I wondered what I might wrest from this situation, what might be gained. One
must know where one stands, and what one wants, to even peg the time. So I
was, nominally, dhareness. The title did not assuage my exacerbation. Estrazi,
how could you allow this? My father did not answer me. Was Khys, truly, enough
to stand against the fathers? "Have you joined with those who oppose me?" my
father once asked me. And I had threatened that I would do so. He had told me
then, truly, of all that would occur even of my subjugation, my loss of
memory, at Khys's hand. And he had come to me, in a dream, even before I had
recalled myself. I turned from the mirror and hastened out from the prison
that had so long contained me.
I had, at least, the run of the dharen's keep. I took up his book upon
helsars, and that of hesting, and sat with them in the alcove. I could not
read. Sereth, and the cruelty Khys had shown him, obsessed me. I could see no
reason in Khys's actions. If, as Carth had said, Sereth was resigned to my
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119
loss, why had Khys given me to him, and brought more pain upon him? You are,
after all, only his servant, I had said to Sereth, and Khys had laughed and
hugged me close. I sighed, rolled upon the cushions. Was this how M'ksakkans
felt among Silistrans? Short so many senses, I found myself unable to use my
reason effectively. It will come, I told myself, in time. One can adjust to
anything. But my spirit shriveled at the things I had done and said in my
ignorance, and my reason had no salve for the pain in my heart. Somewhere in
that sea of tears, I drowned, and slept.
I would, I knew upon awakening, contrive to speak again with Chayin. He, I was
sure, knew more than he would say. Before, he had withheld from me that which
he had adjudged me too weak to know. I rose, rubbed my eyes. Squinting out the
window, my hand crushing the thick-napped drapery, I guessed it an enth before
mid-meal. In the sky, full greened, I saw tiny specks rise and fall, chasing
each other upon the wind. Hulions romped above the Lake of Horns. What part
did they see for themselves in Khys's hest? Why would they aid the dharen? One
cannot constrain a hulion. They are the freest of creatures, primal proponents
of the law within. If they lent their strength and their wisdom to Khys, his
works must be potent indeed, in their sight. I longed for the sort, the spread
of probability, to make itself known to me. I quivered, standing there,
remembering the strength of the hesting skills I had once had. I, Estri
Hadrath diet Estrazi, who had once made a world, who had once claimed the
heritage of the sevenfold spirit, had by my own will come to this moment;
undone. I had set my will against my father's, and he had sent me to another
who did likewise. But I had not known. The failing, as Estrazi had once warned
me, was not in the power, but in the conception. My incredible foolishness had
come to tithe its
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Janet E. Morris due. I had spent my power unwisely. You will not interfere
with Sereth's destiny, Estrazi had decreed. No, I would not. I could not
interfere with a wirragaet's destiny, now.
I threw myself upon the cushions, curling into a ball. Khys's books jabbed at
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