Dawn was near. I could make out the shape of the Sallan side of the river. We pulled up at a dock that jutted out of a grassy bank, plainly some nobleman’s private landing. Now I felt my first alarm. In a moment I would step ashore in Salla. Where would I find myself? How would I reach some settled region? I was no boy, to beg rides from passing trucks. But all this had been settled for me hours before. As the boat bumped the shoulder of the pier, a figure emerged in the dimness and extended a hand: Noim. He drew me forth and clasped me in a tight hug. “I know what has happened,” he said. “You will stay with me.” In his emotion he abandoned polite usage with me for the first time since our boyhood.

60

At midday, from Noim’s estate in southwestern Salla, I phoned the Duke of Sumar to confirm my safe arrival—it was he, of course, who had arranged for my bondbrother to meet me at the border—and then I put through a call to Halum. Segvord had told her just a few hours earlier of the reasons for my disappearance. “How strange this news is,” she said. “You never spoke of the drug. Yet it was so important to you, for you risked everything to use it. How could it have had such a role in your life, and yet be kept a secret from your bondsister?” I answered that I had not dared to let her know of my preoccupation with it, for fear I might be tempted to offer it to her. She said, “Is opening yourself then to your bondsister so terrible a sin?”

61

Noim treated me with every courtesy, indicating that I could stay with him as long as I wished—weeks, months, even years. Presumably my friends in Manneran would succeed eventually in freeing some of my assets, and I would buy land in Salla and take up the life of a country baron; or perhaps Segvord and the Duke of Sumar and other men of influence would have my indictment quashed, so that I could return to the southern province. Until then, Noim told me, his home was mine. But I detected a subtle coolness in his dealings with me, as if this hospitality was offered only out of respect for our bonding. Only after some days did the source of his remoteness reach the surface. Sitting late past dinner in his great whitewashed feasting-hall, we were talking of childhood days—our main theme of conversation, far safer than any talk of recent events—when Noim suddenly said, “Is that drug of yours known to give people nightmares?”

“One has heard of no such cases, Noim.”

“Here’s a case, then. One who woke up drenched with chilly sweat night after night, for weeks after we shared the drug in Manneran. One thought one would lose one’s mind.”

“What kind of dreams?” I asked.

“Ugly things. Monsters. Teeth. Claws. A sense of not knowing who one is. Pieces of other minds floating through one’s own.” He gulped at his wine. “You take the drug for pleasure, Kinnall?”

“For knowledge.”

“Knowledge of what?”

“Knowledge of self, and knowledge of others.”

“One prefers ignorance, then.” He shivered. “You know, Kinnall, one was never a particularly reverent person. One blasphemed, one stuck his tongue out at drainers, one laughed at the god-tales they told, yes? You’ve nearly converted one into a man of faith with that stuff. The terror of opening one’s mind—of knowing that one has no defenses, that you can slide right into one’s soul, and are doing it—it’s impossible to take.”

“Impossible for you,” I said. “Others cherish it.”

“One leans toward the Covenant,” said Noim. “Privacy is sacred. One’s soul is one’s own. There’s a dirty pleasure in baring it.”

“Not baring. Sharing.”

“Does it sound prettier that way? Very well: there’s a dirty pleasure in sharing it, Kinnall. Even though we are bondbrothers. One came away from you last time feeling soiled. Sand and grit in the soul. Is this what you want for everyone? To make us all feel filthy with guilt?”

“There need be no guilt, Noim. One gives, one receives, one comes forth better than one was—”

“Dirtier.”

“Enlarged. Enhanced. More compassionate. Speak to others who have tried it,” I said.

“Of course. As they come streaming out of Manneran, landless refugees, one will question them about the beauty and wonder of selfbaring. Excuse me: self-sharing.”

I saw the torment in his eyes. He wanted still to love me, but the Sumaran drug had shown him things—about himself, perhaps about me—that made him hate the one who had given the drug to him. He was one for whom walls are necessary; I had not realized that. What had I done, to turn my bondbrother into my enemy? Perhaps if we could take the drug a second time, I might make things more clear to him—but no, no hope of that. Noim was frightened by inwardness. I had transformed my blaspheming bondbrother into a man of the Covenant. There was nothing I could say to him now.

After some silence he said, “One must make a request of you, Kinnall.”

“Anything.”

“One hesitates to place boundaries on a guest. But if you have brought any of this drug with you from Manneran, Kinnall, if you hide it somewhere in your rooms—get rid of it, is that understood? There must be none of it in this house. Get rid of it, Kinnall.”

Never in my life had I lied to my bondbrother. Never. With the jeweled case the Duke of Sumar had given me blazing against my breastbone, I said solemnly to Noim, “You have nothing to fear on that account.”

62

Not many days later the news of my disgrace became public in Manneran, and swiftly reached Salla. Noim showed me the accounts. I was described as the chief adviser to the High Justice of the Port, and openly labeled a man of the greatest authority in Manneran, who, moreover, had blood ties to the prime septarchs of Salla and Glin—and yet, despite these attainments and preferments, I had fallen away from the Covenant to take up unlawful selfbaring. I had violated not merely propriety and etiquette, but also the laws of Manneran, through my use of a certain proscribed drug from Sumara Borthan that dissolves the god-given barriers between soul and soul. Through abuse of my high office, it was said, I had engineered a secret voyage to the southern continent (poor Captain Khrisch! Had he been arrested too?) and had returned with a large quantity of the drug, which I had devilishly forced on a lowborn woman whom I was keeping; I had also circulated the foul stuff among certain prominent members of the nobility, whose names were being withheld because of their thorough repentance. On the eve of my arrest I had escaped to Salla, and good riddance to me: if I attempted to return to Manneran, I would immediately be apprehended. Meanwhile I would be tried in absentia, and, according to the Grand Justiciar, there could be little doubt of the verdict. By way of restitution to the state for the great injury I had done the fabric of social stability, I would be required to forfeit all my lands and property, except only a portion to be set aside for the maintenance of my innocent wife and children. (Segvord Helalam, then, had at least accomplished that!) To prevent my highborn friends from transferring my assets to me in Salla before the trial, all that I possessed was already sequestered in anticipation of the Grand Justiciar’s decree of guilt. Thus spake the law. Let others who would make selfbaring monsters of themselves beware!