Brothers of Earth

XII

The fog did not go out. It still held the city the next morning, the faint sound of warning bells drifting up from the harbor. Kurt opened his eyes on the grayness outside the window, then looked toward the foot of the bed where Mim sat combing her long hair, black and silken and falling to her waist when unbound. She looked back at him and smiled, her alien and wonderfully lovely eyes soft with warmth.

“Good morning, my lord.”

“Good morning,” he murmured.

“The mist is still with us,” she said. “Hear the harbor bells?”

“How long can this last?”

“Sometimes many days when the seasons are turning, especially in the spring.” She flicked several strands of hair apart and began with quick fingers to plait them into a thin braid. Then she would sweep most of her hair up to the crown of her head, fasten it with pins and combs, an intricate and fascinating ritual daily performed and nightly undone. He liked watching her. In a matter of moments she began the next braid.

“We say,” Mim commented, “that the mist is the cloak of the imiine, the sky-sprite Nue, when she comes to visit earth and walk among men. She searches for her beloved, lost long ago in the days when god-kings ruled. He was a mortal man who offended one of the god-kings, a son of Yr whose name was Knyha; poor man, he was slain by Knyha, and his body scattered over all the shore of Nephane so that Nue would not know what had become of him. She still searches and walks the land and the sea and haunts the rivers, especially in the springtime.”

“Do you truly think that?” Kurt asked, not sarcastically- one could not be that with Mim. He was prepared to mark it down to be remembered with all his heart if she wished him to.

Mim smiled. “I do not, not truly. But it is a beautiful story, is it not, my lord? There are truths and there are truths, my lord Kta would say, and there is Truth itself, the yhia. Since mortals cannot always reason all the way to Truth, we find little truths that are right enough on our own level. But you are very wise about things. I think you really might know what makes the mist come. Is it a cloud that sits down upon the sea, or is it born in some other way?”

“I think,” said Kurt, “that I like Nue best. It sounds better than water vapor.”

“You think I am silly and you cannot make me understand.”

“Would it make you wiser if you knew where fog comes from?”

“I wish that I could talk to you about all the things that matter to you.”

He frowned, realizing that she was in earnest. “You matter. This place, this world matters to me, Mim.”

“I know so very little.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

“Well, you owe me breakfast first.”

Mim flashed a smile, put in the last combs and finished her hair with a pat. She slipped on the chatem, the overdress with the four-paneled split skirt which fitted over the gossamer drapery of the pelan, the underdress. The chatem high-collared and long-sleeved, tight and restraining in the bodice, rose and beige brocade, over a rose pelan. There were many buttons up either wrist and up the bodice to the collar. She patiently began the series of buttons.

“I will have tea ready by the time you can be downstairs,” she said. “I think Aimu will have been-“

There was a deep hollow boom over the city, and Kurt glanced toward the window with an involuntary oath. It was the sighing note of a distant gong.

“Ai,” said Mim. “Intaem-lnta. That is the great temple. It is the beginning of Cadmisan.”

The gong moaned forth again through the fog-stilled air, measured, four times more. Then it was done, the last echoes dying.

“It is the fourth of Nermotai,” said Mim, “the first of the Sufak holy days. The temple will sound the Inta every morning and every evening for the next seven days, and the Sufaki will make prayers and invoke the Intain, the spirits of their gods.”

“What is done there?” Kurt asked.

“It is the old religion which was here before the Families. I am not really sure what is done, and I do not care to know. I have heard that they even invoke the names of god-kings in Phan’s own temple, but we do not go there, ever. There were old gods in Chteftikan, old and evil gods from the First Days, and once a year the Sufaki call their names and pay them honor, to appease their anger at losing this land to Phan. These are beings we Indras do not name.”

“Bel said,” Kurt recalled, “that there could be trouble during the holy days.”

Mim frowned. “Kurt, I would that you take special care for your safety, and do not come and go at night during this time.”

It hit hard. Mim surely spoke without reference to the Methi, at least without bitterness; if Mim accused, he knew well that Mim would say so plainly. “I do not plan to come and go at night,” he said. “Last night-“

“It is always dangerous,” she said with perfect dignity, before he could finish, “to walk abroad at night during Cadmisan. The Sufak gods are earth-spirits, Yr-bred and monstrous. There is wild behavior and much drunkenness.”

“I will take your advice,” he said.

She came and touched her fingers to his lips and to his brow, but she took her hand from him when he reached for it, smiling. It was a game they played.

“I must be downstairs attending my duties,” she said. “Dear my husband, you will make me a reputation for a licentious woman in the household if you keep making us late for breakfast. No! Dear my lord, I shall see you downstairs at morning tea.”

“Where do you think you are going?”

Mim paused in the dimly lit entry hall, her hands for a moment suspending the veil over her head as she turned. Then she settled it carefully over her hair and tossed the end over her shoulder.

“To market, my husband.”

“Alone?”

She smiled and shrugged. “Unless you wish to fast this evening. I am buying a few things for dinner. Look you, the fog has cleared, the sun is bright, and those men who were hanging about across the street have been gone since yesterday.”

“You are not going alone.”

“Kurt, Kurt, for Bel’s doom-saying? Dear light of heaven, there are children playing outside, do you not hear? And should I fear to walk my own street in bright afternoon? After dark is one thing, but I think you take our warnings much too seriously.”

“I have my reasons, Mim.”

She looked up at him in most labored patience. “And shall we starve? Or will you and my lord Kta march me to market with drawn weapons?”

“No, but I will walk you there and back again.” He opened the door for her, and Mim went out and waited for him, her basket on her arm, most obviously embarrassed.

Kurt nervously scanned the street, the recesses where at nights t’Tefur’s men were wont to linger. They were indeed gone. Indras children played at tag. There was no threat, no presence of the Methi’s guards either, but Djan never did move obviously. He had had no difficulty returning to Elas late, probably, he thought with relief, she had taken measures.

“Are you sure,” he asked Mim, “that the market will be open on a holiday?”

She looked up at him curiously as they started off together. “Of course, and busy. I put off going, you see, these several days with the fog and the trouble on the streets, and I am sorry to cause you this trouble, Kurt, but we really are running out of things and there could be the fog again tomorrow, so it is really better to go today. I do have some sense, after all.”

“You know I could quite easily walk down there and buy what you need for supper, and you would not need to go at all.”

“Ai, but Cadmisan is such a grand time in the market, with all the country people coming in and the artists and the musicians. Besides,” she added, when his face remained unhappy, “dear husband, you would not know what you were buying or what to pay. I do not think you have ever handled our coin. And the other women would laugh at me and wonder what kind of wife I am to make my husband do my work, or else they would think I am such a loose woman that my bus-ban would not trust me out of the house.”

“They can mind their own business,” he said, disregarding her attempt at levity; and her small face took on a determined look.

“If you go alone,” she said, “the fact is that folk will guess Elas is afraid, and this will lend courage to the enemies of Elas.”

He understood her reasoning, though it comforted him not at all. He watched carefully as their downhill walk began to take them out of the small section of aristocratic houses surrounding the Afen and the temple complex. But here in the Sufaki section of town, people were going about business as usual. There were some men in the Robes of Color, but they walked together in casual fashion and gave them not a passing glance.

“You see,” said Mim, “I would have been quite safe.”

“I wish I was that confident.”

“Look you, Kurt, I know these people. There is lady Yafes, and that little boy is Edu t’Rachik u Gyon-the Rachik house is very large. They have so many children it is a joke in Nephane. The old man on the curb is t’Pamchen. He fancies himself a scholar. He says he is reviving the old Sufak writing and that he can read the ancient stones. His brother is a priest, but he does not approve of the old man. There is no harm in these people. They are my neighbors. You let t’Tefur’s little band of pirates trouble you too much. T’Tefur would be delighted to know he upset you. That is the only victory he dares seek as long as you give him no opportunity to challenge you.”

“I suppose,” Kurt said, unconvinced.

The street approached the lower town by a series of low steps down a winding course to the defense wall and the gate. Thereafter the road went among the poorer houses, the markets, the harborside. Several ships were in port, two broad-beamed merchant vessels and three sleek galleys, warships with oars run in or stripped from their locks, yards without sails, the sounds of carpentry coming loudly from their decks, one showing bright new wood on her hull.

Ships were being prepared against the eventuality of war. Tavi, Kta’s ship, had been there; she had had her refitting and had been withdrawn to the outer harbor, a little bay on the other side of Haichema-tleke. That reminder of international unease, the steady hammering and sawing, underlay all the gaiety of the crowds that thronged the market.

“That is a ship of Ilev, is it not?” Kurt asked, pointing to the merchantman nearest, for he saw what appeared to be the white bird that was emblematic of that house as the figurehead.

“Yes,” said Mim. “But the one beside it I do not recognize. Some houses exist only in the Isles. Lord Kta knows them all, even the houses of Indresul’s many colonies. A captain must know these things. But of course they do not come to Nephane. This one must be a trader that rarely comes, perhaps from the north, near the Yvorst Ome, where the seas are ice.”

The crowd was elbow-to-elbow among the booths. They lost sight of the harbor, and nearly of each other. Kurt seized Mim’s arm, which she protested with a shocked look: even husband and wife did not touch publicly.

“Stay with me,” he said, but he let her go. “Do not leave my sight.”

Mim walked the maze of aisles a little in front of him, occasionally pausing to admire some gimcrack display of the tinsmiths, intrigued by the little fish of jointed scales that wiggled when the wind hit their fins.

“We did not come for this,” Kurt said irritably. “Come, what would you do with such a thing?”

Mim sighed, a little piqued, and led him to that quarter of the market where the farmers were, countrymen with produce and cheeses and birds to sell, fishermen with the take from their nets, butchers with their booths decorated with whole carcasses hanging from hooks.

Mim deplored the poor quality of the fish that day, disappointed in her plans, but selected from a vegetable seller some curious yellow corkscrews called lat, and some speckled orange ones called gillybai. She knew the vegetable seller’s wife, who congratulated her on her recent marriage, marveled embarrassingly over Kurt-she seemed to shudder slightly, but showed brave politeness-then became involved in a long story about some mutual acquaintance’s daughter’s child.

It was woman’s talk. Kurt stood to one side, forgotten, and then, sure that Mim was safe among people she knew and not willing to seem utterly the tyrant, withdrew a little. He looked at some of the other tables in the next booth, somewhat interested in the alien variety of the fish and the produce, some of which, he reflected with unease, he had undoubtedly eaten without knowing its uncooked appearance. Much of the seafood was not in the least appealing to Terran senses.

From the harbor there came the steady sound of hammering, reechoing off the walls in insane counterpoint to the noise of the many colored crowds.

Someone jostled him. He looked up into the unsmiling face of a Sufaki in Robes of Color. The man said nothing. Kurt made a slight bow of apology, unanswered, and turned about to go after Mim.

Another man blocked his way. Kurt tried t6 step around him. The Sufaki moved in front of him with sullen threat in his narrow eyes. Another appeared to his left, crowding him back to the right.

He moved suddenly, trying to slip past them. They cut him off from Mim. He could not see her any longer. The noisy crowds surged between. He dared not start something with Mim near, where she could be hurt.

They forced him continually in one direction, toward a gap between the booths where they jammed up against a warehouse. He saw the alley and broke for it.

Others met him at the turning ahead, pursuit hot behind. He had expected it and hit the opposition without hesitation. He avoided a knife and kicked its owner, who screamed in agony, struck another in the face and a third in the groin before those behind overtook him.

A blow landed between his shoulders and against his head, half blinding him. He fell under a weight of struggling bodies, pinned while more than one of them wrenched his arms back and tied his wrists.

He had broken one man’s arm. He saw that with satisfaction as they hauled him to his feet and tried to aid their own injured.

Then they seized him by either arm and hurried him deeper into the alley.

The backways of Nephane were a maze of alien geometry, odd-shaped buildings jammed incredibly into the S-curve of the main street, fronting outward in decent order while their rear portions formed a labyrinthine tangle of narrow alleyways and contiguous walls. Kurt quickly lost track of the way they had come.

They reached the back door of a warehouse, thrust Kurt inside and -entered the dark with him, closing the door so that all the light was from the little door aperture.

Kurt scrambled to escape into the shadows, sure now that he would be found some time later with his throat cut and no proof who his murderers had been.

They seized him before he could run more than a few steps, hurled him to the dusty floor and slipped a cord about his ankle. Finally, despite his kicking and heaving, they succeeded in lashing both his ankles together. Then they forced his jaws apart and thrust a choking wad of cloth into his mouth, tying it in place with a violence that cut his face.

“Get a light,” one said.

The door opened before that was done. Their comrades had joined them, bringing the man with the broken arm. When the light was lit they attended to the setting of the arm, with screams they tried to muffle.

Kurt wriggled over against some bales of canvas, nerves raw to every outcry from the injured man. They would repay him for that, he was sure, before they disposed of him.

It was the human thing to do. In this respect he hoped they were different.

Hours passed. The injured man slept, after a drink they had given him. Kurt occupied himself with trying to work the knots loose. They were not fully within his reach. He tried instead to stretch the cords. His fingers swelled and passed the point of pain. The ache spread up his arms. His feet were numb. Breathing was an effort.

At least they did not touch him. They played at bho, a game of lots, and sat in the light, an unreal tableau suspended in the growing blackness. The light picked out only the edges of bales and crates.

From the distance of the hill came the deep tones of the Intaem-Inta. The gamers stopped, reverent of it, continued.

Outside Kurt heard the faint scuff of sandalled feet on stone. His hopes rose. He thought of Kta, searching for him.

Instead there came a bold rap on the door. The men admitted the newcomers, one in Indras dress, the others in Robes of Color; they wore daggers in their belts.

One was a man who had watched outside Elas.

“We will see to him now,” the Indras-dressed one said, a small man with eyes so narrow he could only be Sufaki. “Put him on his feet.”

Two men hauled Kurt up, cut the cords that bound his ankles. He could not stand without them holding him. They shook him and struck him to make him try, but when it was evident that he truly could not stand, they took him each by an arm and pulled him along with them in great haste, out into the mist and the dark, along the confusing turns of the alleys.

They tended constantly downhill, and Kurt was increasingly sure of their destination: the bay’s dark waters would conceal his body with no evidence to accuse the Sufaki of his murder, no one to swear how he had vanished.

No one but Mim, who might well be able to identify them.

That was the thought which most tormented him. Elas should have been turning Nephane upside down by now, if only Mim had reached them. But there was no indication of a search.

They turned a corner, cutting off the light from the lantern-carrier in front of them, which moved like a witchlight in the mist. The other two men were half carrying him. Though he had feeling in his feet again, he made it no easier for them.

They made haste to overtake the man with the lantern, and cursed him for his haste. At the same time they jerked cruelly on Kurt’s arms, trying to force him to carry his own weight.

And suddenly he shouldered left, where steps led down into a doorway, toppling one of his guards with a startled cry. With the other one he pivoted, unable to free himself, held by the front of his robe and one arm.

Kurt jerked. Cloth tore. He hurled all his weight into a kick at the lantern-bearer.

The man sprawled, oil spilling, live flame springing up. The burned man screamed, snatching at his clothing, trying to strip it off. His friend’s grip loosened, knife flashing in the glare. He rammed it for Kurt’s belly.

Kurt spun, received the edge across his ribs instead, tore free, kneed the man as the burning man’s flames reached something else flammable in the debris of the alley.

He was free. He pivoted and ran, in the mist and the dark that now was scented with the stench of burned flesh and fiber.

It was several turns of the alleys later when he first dared stop, and leaned against the wall close to fainting for want of air, for the gag obstructed his breathing.

At last, as quietly as possible, he knelt against the back steps of a warehouse, contorted his body so that he could use his fingers to search the debris in the corner. There was broken pottery in the heap. He found a shard keen-edged enough, leaned against the step with his heart pounding from exertion and his ears straining to hear despite the blood that roared in his head.

It took a long time to make any cut in the tight cords. At last a strand parted, and another, and he was able to unwind the rest. With deadened hands he rubbed the binding from the gag and spit the choking cloth from his mouth, able to breathe a welcome gasp of the chill foggy air.

Now he could move, and hi the concealment of the night and the fog he had a chance. His way lay uphill-he had no choice in that. The gate would be the logical place for his enemies to lay their ambush. It was the only way through the defense wall that ringed the upper town.

When he reached the wall, he was greatly relieved. It was not difficult to find a place where illicit debris had piled up against the ancient fortification. Sheds and buildings proliferated here, crowding into the narrow gap between the permitted buildings and the former defense of the high town. He scrambled by the roofs of three of them up to the crest and found the situation unhappily tidier on the other side. He walked the wall, dreading the jump. He found a place where the erosion of centuries had lessened the height perhaps five feet, and he lowered himself over the edge and dropped a dizzying distance to the ground on the high town side.

The jolt did not knock him entirely unconscious, but it dazed him and left him scarcely able to crawl the little distance into the shadows. It was a while before he had recovered sufficiently to try to walk again, at times losing clear realization of how he had reached a particular place.

He reached the main street. It was deserted. Kurt took to it only as often as he must, finally broke into a run as he saw the door of Osanef. He darted into the friendly shadow of its porch.

No one answered. Light came through the fog indistinctly on the upper hill, a suffused glow from the temple or the Afen. He remembered the festival, and decided even Indras-influenced Osanef might be at the temple.

He took to the street running now, two blocks from Elas and trusting to speed, not daring even the other Indras houses. They had no love of humans; Kta had warned him so.

He was hi the final sprint for Elas’ door before he realized Elas might be watched, would logically be watched unless the Methi’s guards were about. It was too late to stop. He reached its triangular arch and pounded furiously on the door, not even daring to look over his shoulder.

“Who is there?” Hef’s voice asked faintly.

“Kurt. Let me in. Let me in, Hef.”

.The bolt shot back, the door opened, and Kurt slipped inside and leaned against the closed door, gasping for breath in the sudden warmth and light of Elas.

“Mini,” said Hef. “Lord Kurt, what has happened? Where is Mim?”

“Not-not here?”

“No. We thought at least-whatever had happened-you were together.”

Kurt caught his breath with a choking swallow of air and pushed himself square on his feet. “Call Kta.”

“He is out with Ian t’Ilev and Val t’Ran, searching for you both. Ai, my lord, what can we do? I will call Nym-“ . “Tell Nym-tell Nym I have gone to get the Methi’s help. Give me a weapon, anything-“

“I cannot, my lord, I cannot. My orders forbid-“

Kurt swore and jerked the door open again, ran for the street and the Afen gate.

When he reached the Afen wall, the great gates were closed and the wall-street that led to the temple compound was crowded with Sufaki, drunken, most of them. Kurt leaned on the bars and shouted for the guards to hear him and open them, but his voice was lost in the noise of the crowds, with all Sufak Nephane gathered into that square down the street and spilling over into the wall-street. Some, drunker than the rest, began also to shake at the bars of the gates to try to raise the guards. If there were any on duty to hear, they ignored the uproar.

Kurt caught his breath, exhausted, far from help of Kta or Djan. Then he remembered the other gate, the sally port in the far end of the wall where it touched Haichema-tleke and opened onto the temple square. That would be the one for them to guard, that nearest the temple. They might hear him there, and open.

He raced along the wall, jostling Sufaki in his exhausted weaving and stumbling. A few drunk ones laughed and caught at his clothing. Others cursed him, trying to bar his way.

A cry began to go up, resentment for his presence. Jafikn-wearing Sufaki barred his path, turned him. Someone struck him from the side, nearly throwing him to the pavement.

He ran, but they would not let him escape the square, blocking his way out, t’Tefur’s men, armed with blades.

Authority, he thought, sensible authority would not let this happen. He broke to one side, racing for the temple steps, sending shrieking women and cursing men crowding out of his way.

Hands reached to stop him. He tore past them almost all the way to the very top of the long temple steps before enough of them seized him to hold him.

“Bias* doing!” a hysterical voice shrieked from below. “Kill the human!”

Kurt struggled around to see who had shouted, looked down on a sea of alien faces in the torchlight and the haze of thin mist. “Where is Shan t’Tefur?” Kurt screamed back at them. “Where has he taken my wife?”

The babble of voices almost hushed for a moment: the nemet held their women in great esteem. Kurt drew a great gasp of air and shouted across the gathering. “Shan t’Tefur! If you are here, come out and face me. Where is my wife? What have you done with her?”

There was a moment of shocked silence and then a rising murmur like thunder as an aged priest came from the upper steps through the men gathered there. He cleared the way with the emblem of his office, a vine-wreathed staff. The staff extended till it was almost touching Kurt, and the priest spit some unintelligible words at him.

There was utter silence now, drunken laughter coming distantly from the wall-street. In this gathering no one so much as stirred. Even Kurt was struck to silence. The staff extended a degree further and with unreasoning loathing he shrank from it, not wanting to be touched by this mouthing priest with his drunken gods of earth. They held him, and the rough wood of the staff’s tip trembled against his cheek.

“Blasphemer,” said the priest, “sent by Elas to profane the rites. Liar.Cursed from the earth you will be, by the old gods, the ancient gods, the life-giving sons of Thael. Son of Yr to Phan united, Aem-descended, to the gods of ancient Chteftik, cursed!”

“A curse on the lot of you,” Kurt shouted in his face, “if you have any part in t’Tefur’s plot! My wife Mim never harmed any of you, never harmed anyone. Where is she? You people-you! who were in the market today-who walked away-are you all in this? What did they do with her? Where did they take her? Is she alive? By your own gods you can tell me that at least. Is she alive?”

.”No one knows anything of the woman, human,” said the aged priest. “And you were ill-advised to come here with your drunken ravings. Who would harm Mim h’Elas, a daughter of Sufak herself? You come here and profane the mysteries, taught no reverence in Elas, it is clear. Cursed be you, human, and if you do not leave now, we will wash the pollution of your feet from these stones with your blood. Let him go, let go the human, and give him the chance to leave.”

They released him, and Kurt swayed on the steps above the crowd, scanning the faces for one that was familiar. Of Osanef, of any friend, there was no sign. He looked back at the priest.

“She is lost in the city, hurt or dead,” Kurt pleaded. “You are a religious man. Do something!”

For a moment pity or conscience almost touched the stern old face. The cracked lips quavered on some answer. There was a hush over the crowd.

“It is Indras’ doing!” a male voice shouted. “Elas is looking for some offense against the Sufaki, and now they try to create one! The human is Elas’ creature!”

Kurt whirled about, saw a familiar face for the first time.

“He is one of them!” Kurt shouted. “That is one of the men who was in the market when my wife was taken. They tried to kill me and they have my wife-“

“Liar,” shouted another man. “Ver has been at the temple since the ringing of the Into. I saw him myself. The human is trying to accuse an innocent man.”

“Kill him!” someone else shouted, and others throughout the crowd took up the cry, surging forward. Young men, wearing the Robes of Color. T’Tefur’s men.

“No,” cried the old priest, pounding his staff for attention. “No, take him out of here, take him far from the temple precincts.”

Kurt backed away as men swarmed about him, nearly crushed in the press, jerked bodily off his feet, limbs strained as they passed him off the steps and down into the crowd.

He fought, gasping for breath and trying to free hands or even a foot to defend himself as he was borne across the courtyard toward the wall-street.

And the gate was open, and five men of the Methi’s guard were there, dimly outlined in the mist and the flaring torches, but about them was the flash of metal, and bronze helmets glittered under the murky firelight, ominous and warlike.

“Give him to us,” said their leader.

“Traitors,” cried one of the young men.

“Give him to us,” the officer repeated. It was t’Senife.

In anger they flung Kurt at the guardsman, threw him sprawling on the stones. The guards in their haste were no more gentle, snatching him up again, half dragging him through the sally port into the Afen grounds.

Hysterical outcries came from the crowd as they closed the door, barring the multitude outside. Something heavy struck the door, a barrage of missiles like the patter of hail for a moment. The shrieking rose and died away.

The Methi’s guard gathered him up, hauling his bruised arms, pulling him along with them until they were sure that he would walk as rapidly as they.

They took him by the back stairs and up.