She nodded, as if to say, Don’t speak, your clumsy words break the spell. As if to say, Yes, there is in one such love for you also, Kinnall. As if to say, I love you, Kinnall. Lightly she got to her feet, and went to the window: cold summer moonlight on the formal garden of the great house, the bushes and trees white and still. I came up behind her and touched her at the shoulders, very gently. She wriggled and made a little purring sound. I thought all was well with her. I was certain all was well with her.

We held no post-mortems on what had taken place between us this evening. That, too, seemed to threaten a puncturing of the mood. We could discuss our trance tomorrow, and all the tomorrows beyond that. I went with her back to her room, not far down the hallway from my own, and kissed her timidly on the cheek, and had a sisterly kiss from her; she smiled again, and closed the door behind her. In my own room I sat awhile awake, reliving everything. The missionary fervor was kindled anew in me. I would become an active messiah again, I vowed, going up and down this land of Salla spreading the creed of love; no more would I hide here at my bondbrother’s place, broken and adrift, a hopeless exile in my own nation. Stirron’s warning meant nothing to me. How could he drive me from Salla? I would make a hundred converts in a week. A thousand, ten thousand. I would give the drug to Stirron himself, and let the septarch proclaim the new dispensation from his own throne! Halum had inspired me. In the morning I would set out, seeking disciples.

There was a sound in the courtyard. I looked out and saw a groundcar: Noim had returned from his business trip. He entered the house; I heard him in the hallway, passing my room; then there came the sound of knocking. I peered into the corridor. He stood by Halum’s door, talking to her. I could not see her. What was this, that he would go to Halum, who was nothing but a friend to him, and fail to greet his own bondbrother? Unworthy suspicions woke in me—unreal accusations. I forced them away. The conversation ended; Halum’s door closed; Noim, without noticing me, continued toward his own bedroom.

Sleep was impossible for me. I wrote a few pages, but they were worthless, and at dawn I went out to stroll in the gray mists. It seemed to me that I heard a distant cry. Some animal seeking its mate, I thought. Some lost beast wandering at daybreak.

66

I was alone at breakfast. That was unusual but not surprising: Noim, coming home in the middle of the night after a long drive, would have wanted to sleep late, and doubtless the drug had left Halum exhausted. My appetite was powerful, and I ate for the three of us, all the while planning my schemes for dissolving the Covenant. As I sipped my tea one of Noim’s grooms burst wildly into the dining-hall. His cheeks were blazing and his nostrils were flared, as if he had run a long way and was close to collapse. “Come,” he cried, gasping. “The stormshields—” He tugged at my arm, half dragging me from my seat. I rushed out after him. He was already far down the unpaved road that led to the stormshield pens. I followed, wondering if the beasts had escaped in the night, wondering if I must spend the day chasing monsters again. As I neared the pens I saw no signs of a breakout, no clawed tracks, no torn fences. The groom clung to the bars of the biggest pen, which held nine or ten stormshields. I looked in. The animals were clustered, bloody-jawed, bloody-furred, around some ragged meaty haunch. They were snarling and quarreling over the feast scattered across the ground. Had some unfortunate farm beast strayed among these killers by darkness? How could such a thing have happened? And why would the groom see fit to haul me from my breakfast to show it to me? I caught his arm and asked him what was so strange about the sight of stormshields devouring their kill. He turned a terrible face to me and blurted in a strangled voice, “The lady—the lady—”

67

Noim was brutal with me. “You lied,” he said. “You denied you were carrying the drug, but you lied. And you gave it to her last night. Yes? Yes? Yes? Don’t hide anything now, Kinnall. You gave it to her!”

“You spoke with her,” I said. I could barely manage words. “What did she tell you?”

“One stopped by her door, because one thought one heard the sound of sobbing,” Noim answered. “One inquired if she was well. She came out: her face was strange, it was full of dreams, her eyes were as blank as pieces of polished metal, and yes, yes, she had been weeping. And one asked what was wrong, whether there had been any trouble here. No, she said, all was well. She said you and she had talked all evening. Why was she weeping, then? She shrugged and smiled again and closed the door. But that look in her eyes—it was the drug, Kinnall! Against all your vows, you gave it to her! And now—and now—”

“Please,” I said softly. But he went on shouting, loading me with accusations, and I could not reply.

The grooms had reconstructed everything. They had found the path of Halum’s feet in the dew-moist sandy road. They had found the door ajar of the house that gives access to the stormshield pens. They had found marks of forcing on the inner door that leads to the feeding-gate itself. She had gone through; she had carefully opened the feeding-gate, and just as carefully closed it behind her, to loose no killers on the sleeping estate; then she had offered herself to the waiting claws. All this between darkness and dawn, perhaps even while I strolled in a different part. That cry out of the mists—Why? Why? Why? Why?

68

By early afternoon such few possessions as I had were packed. I asked Noim for the loan of a groundcar, and he granted it with a brusque wave of his fingers. There was no question of remaining here any longer. Not only were there echoes of Halum resonating everywhere about, but also I had to go apart, into some place where I could think undisturbed, and examine all that I had done and that I hoped to do. Nor did I wish to be here when the district police carried out their inquest into Halum’s death.

Had she been unable to face me again, the morning after having given her soul away? She had gone gladly enough into the sharing of selves. But afterward, in that rush of guilty reappraisal that often follows the first opening, she may have felt another way: old habits of reticence reasserting themselves, a sudden cascading sense of horror at what she had revealed. And the quick irreversible decision, the frozen-faced trek to the stormshield pens, the ill-considered passing of the final gate, the moment of regret-within-regret as the animals pounced and she realized she had carried her atonement too far. Was that it? I could think of no other explanation for that plunge from serenity to despair, except that it was a second thought, a reflex of shock that swept her to doom. And I was without a bondsister, and had lost bondbrother too, for Noim’s eyes were merciless when he looked at me. Was this what I had intended, when I dreamed of opening souls?

“Where will you go?” Noim asked. “They’ll jail you in Manneran. Take one step into Glin with your drug and you’ll be flayed. Stirron will hound you out of Salla. Where, then, Kinnall? Threish? Velis? Or maybe Umbis, eh? Dabis? No! By the gods, it will be Sumara Borthan, won’t it? Yes. Among your savages, and you’ll have all the selfbaring you’ll need there, yes? Yes?”

Quietly I said, “You forget the Burnt Lowlands, Noim. A cabin in the desert—a place to think, a place of peace—there is so much one must try to understand, now—”

“The Burnt Lowlands? Yes, that’s good, Kinnall. The Burnt Lowlands in high summer. A fiery purge for your soul. Go there, yes. Go.”