71

Five days have passed since the last entry, and I am still here. The groundcar was Noim’s. He came not to arrest me but to rescue me. Cautiously, as if expecting me to open fire on him, he crept about my cabin, calling, “Kinnall? Kinnall?” I went outside. He tried to smile, but he was too tense to manage it. He said, “One thought you would be somewhere near this place, The place of the hornfowl—it still haunts you, eh?”

“What do you want?”

“Stirron’s patrols are searching for you, Kinnall. Your path was traced as far as Salla’s Gate. They know you’re in the Burnt Lowlands. If Stirron knew you as well as your bondbrother does, he’d come straight here with his troops. Instead they’re searching to the south, on the theory that you mean to go into the Wet Lowlands to the Gulf of Sumar, and get a ship to Sumara Borthan. But they’re bound to start hunting for you in this region once they discover you haven’t been down there.”

“And then?”

“You’ll be arrested. Tried. Convicted. Jailed or executed. Stirron thinks you’re the most dangerous man on Velada Borthan.”

“I am,” I said.

Noim gestured toward the car. “Get in. We’ll slip through the blockade. Into West Salla, somehow, and down to the Woyn. The Duke of Sumar will meet you and put you aboard some vessel heading out. You can be in Sumara Borthan by next moonrise.”

“Why are you helping me, Noim? Why should you bother? I saw the hate in your eyes when I left you.”

“Hate? Hate? No, Kinnall, no hate, only sorrow. One is still your—” He paused. With an effort, he said, “I’m still your bondbrother. I’m pledged to your welfare. How can I let Stirron hunt you like a beast? Come. Come. I’ll get you safely out of here.”

“No.”

“No?”

“We’re certain to be caught. Stirron will have you, too, for aiding a fugitive. He’ll seize your lands. He’ll break your rank. Don’t make a useless sacrifice for me, Noim.”

“I came all the way into the Burnt Lowlands to fetch you. If you think I’ll go back without—”

“Let’s not quarrel over it,” I said. “Even if I escape, what is there for me? To spend the rest of my life hiding in the jungles of Sumara Borthan, among people whose language I can’t speak and whose ways are alien to me? No. No. I’m tired of exile. Let Stirron take me.”

Persuading Noim to leave me here was no little task. We stood in the midday fire for eternal minutes, arguing vehemently. He was determined to effect this heroic rescue, despite the almost certain probability that we would both be captured. This he was doing out of a sense of duty, not out of love, for I could see that he still held Halum’s death to my account. I would not have his disgrace scored against me as well, and told him so: he had done nobly to make this journey, but I could not go with him. Finally he began to yield, but only when I swore I would at least make some effort to save myself. I promised that I would set out for the western mountains, instead of sitting here where Stirron would surely find me. If I reached Velis or Threish safely, I said, I would notify Noim in some way, so that he would cease to fear my fate. And then I said, “There is one thing you can do for me.” I brought my manuscript out of the cabin—a great heap of paper, red scribbling on grayish rough sheets. In this, I said, he would find the whole story: my entire self encapsulated, and all the events that had brought me to the Burnt Lowlands. I asked him to read it, and to pass no judgment on me until he had. “You will find things in here that will horrify and disgust you,” I warned him. “But I think you’ll also find much that will open your eyes and your soul. Read it, Noim. Read it with care. Think about my words.” And I asked one last vow of him, by our oath of bonding: that he keep my book safely preserved, even if the temptation came over him to burn it. “These pages hold my soul,” I told him. “Destroy the paper and you destroy me. If you loathe what you read, hide the book away, but do no harm to it. What shocks you now may not shock you a few years from now. And someday you may want to show my book to others, so that you can explain what manner of man your bondsbrother was, and why he did what he did.” And so that you may change them as I hope my book will change you, I said silently. Noim vowed this vow. He took my sheaf of pages and stored them in the hold of his groundcar. We embraced; he asked me again if I would not ride away with him; again I refused; I made him say once more that he would read my book and preserve it; once more he swore he would; then he entered the groundcar and drove slowly toward the east. I entered the cabin. The place where I had kept my manuscript was empty, and I felt a sudden hollowness, I suppose much like that of a woman who has carried a child for the full seven moontimes and now finds her belly flat again. I had poured all of myself into those pages. Now I Was nothing, and the book was all. Would Noim read it? I thought so. And would he preserve it? Very likely he would, though he might hide it in the darkest corner of his house. And would he someday show it to others? This I do not know. But if you have read what I have written, it is through the kindness of Noim Condorit; and if he has let it be read, then I have prevailed over his soul after all, as I hope to prevail over yours.

72

I had said to Noim that I would remain in the cabin no longer, but would set out for the west in an attempt to save myself. Yet I found myself unwilling to leave. The sweltering shack had become my home. I stayed a day, and another day, and a third, doing nothing, wandering the blazing solitude of the Burnt Lowlands, watching the hornfowl circle. On the fifth day, as you perhaps are able to see, I fell into the habit of autobiography again, and sat down at the place where I had lately spent so many hours sitting, and wrote a few new pages to describe my visit from Noim. Then I let three days more go by, telling myself that on the fourth I would dig my groundcar out of the red sand and head westward. But on the morning of that fourth day Stirron and his men found my hiding place, and now it is the evening of that day, and I have an hour or two more to write, by the grace of the Lord Stirron. And when I have done with this, I will write no more.

73

They came in six well-armed groundcars, and surrounded my cabin, and called on me through loudspeakers to surrender. I had no hope of resisting them, nor any desire to try. Calmly—for what use was fear?—I showed myself, hands upraised, at the cabin door. They got out of their cars, and I was amazed to find Stirron himself among them, drawn out of his palace into the Lowlands for an out-of-season hunting party with his brother as quarry. He wore all his finery of office. Slowly he walked toward me. I had not seen him in some years, and I was appalled by the signs of age on him: shoulders rounded, head thrust forward, hair thinning, face deeply lined, eyes yellowed and dim. The profits of half a lifetime of supreme power. We regarded one another in silence, like two strangers seeking a point of contact. I tried to find in him that boy, my playmate, my elder brother, whom I had loved and lost so long ago, and I saw only a grim old man with trembling lips. A septarch is trained to mask his inner feelings, yet Stirron was able to hold nothing secret from me, nor could he keep one consistent expression: I saw his face, one look tumbling across the other, tokens of imperial rage, bewilderment, sorrow, contempt, and something that I took to be a sort of suppressed love. At length I spoke first, inviting him into my cabin for a conference. He hesitated, perhaps thinking I had assassination in mind, but after a moment he accepted in right kingly manner, waving to his bodyguard to wait outside. When we were alone within, there was another silent spell, which this time he broke, saying, “One has never felt such pain, Kinnall. One scarcely believes what one has heard about you. That you should stain our father’s memory—”