Kabardan Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

Long after midnight, in a damp misty darkness, Domojon trudged back past late-night revellers and sages muttering to themselves to the Court of the Humanqueen.  The long, drowsy Dance of the Evening Star was over, and most of the Human lay sleeping beneath a huge woolen blanket like digworms snug beneath the bark of a tree.  A few were playing a wallscreen-game: one would display a distant skyline, and the other would try to guess which city.  Ushalo. . .Muranlor. . .Utëd Markum. . .Paris.  Two other Human were sitting close together beside a dim glowlight, perhaps or perhaps not considering the Dance of Love's Solitude.  So that sounds of worship might emit from the Court of the Humanqueen throughout the night, a single Human stood by the door frame, reciting with languid gestures the Chant of All Evenings (appropriated from a Kabard sacred text, Domojon thought ruefully: did the Human create nothing of their own?):

Ten thousand thousand generations have passed, Prophet
Since white-robed minstrels sang of Humanan,
Of the soaring of many gulls on the shore of the Sea Fadrodran.
Sing then, Prophet, of house-roofs gleaming on the hills
And smooth stones dug from the slopes of the Ark'hau Mountains.
This was Humanan of the many dancers, Humanan of the crimson mantle,
Now a scandal among the nations, for who has not heard the saying, "As desolate as Humanan?"


On cue, he covered his eyes with his hands and began to weep the thick, heavy tears of the Human.
And on a pillow on a white dais sat Charalth Aigght, the Queen, and not only queen but goddess/mother/lover of them all.  He was very old, with trembling limbs and a low rasping voice; soon he would sleep with his ancestors in a pit dug deep in the earth.  He wore a yellow mane-wig and a colindon of silver, and a silver robe that captured and reflected the ruddy rays of the glowlight.  He was bent over a silvery notescreen, inscribing something with a stylus.
"Hnhnn!" Domojon said, to get his attention.  Before they crawled from their mountain-caves and learned the ways of the Kabards and the Humans, Human communicated through touch of hand and mouth, with perhaps a few wordless moans to signal "Danger!" or "Please pay attention to me!"  Now the old touch-language was mostly forgotten: even among themselves, Human spoke a dialect of Elusan mixed with words from Tilach and Pelún and Old Human.  They called it Humanish, though it had as little to do with Human as red manes and cloud-houses.
"I want to apologize for tarrying so long among the Kabards," Domojon said when the Charalth looked up, startled, with pale disapproving eyes.
"My child, no apologies are necessary," he said, but his mindcall was tight and angry. "Many Human would behave thus, traveling in airships across half the world, returning to the sweet open palms of their clan for the briefest of moment, and then rushing off to braid the mane of a Kabard.  I am astonihed only that you did not stay with your gold-maned friend until sunrise."
He obviously thought that Domojon was having sexual relations with Akrava, and he was responding with both the half-denied jealousy of a worldwise lover and the overprotectiveness of a parent.  Domojon had not, of course.  For one thing, he was twice as tall as he -- and since Kabards of high rank ordinarily wore no clothing, he was quite aware that the Dance of Love's Solitude would be uncomfortable for them both.
"I do enjoy sleeping in the night with Akrava," Domojon said, defending herself only very gently, as was wise when dealing with a Human who could kill with a glance.  "But I cherish my clan as well.  I would have returned much sooner, but a crisis arose."
"Surely you did not forget your Evening Prayers?"  Charalth asked.  "Not that I mean to admonish you -- duty to the Goddess counts little to Human of our sophistication and worldliness, does it?"
Domojon made a shrugging, hopeless gesture with his hands.  "There was a woman, Charalth," he said in slow, careful tones, "A Kabard woman in the Court of the Five Billion Gods. . .he was so intent on praying, he had exhausted herself.  Then he ignored a thunderstorm, and he was sick. . .sick, and so very old, and so afraid. . .if he were Human, he would have entered the Caverns of Eternity many years past."
"This is one of the main troubles with Kabards -- they have no instinct, no idea of the proper time to do anything, not even to die,"  Charalth said with a sneer.  "But I do not mean to be unkind.  What became of this poor Kabard soul?"
"He collapsed,"  Domojon said.  "Akrava and I carried his to the Court of Munificent Healing, but he was already dead.  I had never seen death before, except when Human enter the Caverns of Eternity, and in healing courts when I was studying my craft
. . .in cadavers.  This was different."  He turned away, trembling.  "So very different."
"Oh, child, I didn't realize," said Charalth, softening, beckoning to his with a flutter of his hands.  "Come, let me comfort you."
Domojon fell against the Queen's smooth warm chest, received his hugs and the pressure of his hands against the small of his back.  He closed his eyes, waiting for tears to come, but after a few moments he felt better, and there were no tears.
"Child, you misunderstand me,"  Charalth murmured.  "I do not disapprove of your friendship with Kabards.  Your talent is very important to our clan, to Human in every Kabard nation, for you present us as wise and good and kind to a world that has so often thirsted for our blood.  But as every flame must be tempered or it will soon burn out, I ask that you reserve a modicum of your passion for your clan, for the Human."
"I do feel passion for the clan, Charalth.  I have tried to explain. . . ."
"You may wear a wig that emulates the Kabard mane," Charalth said.  "You may speak the gutteral Tilach as well as your own smooth and resonant Humanish.  You may touch noses with the Godking even.  But remember always that you are not a Kabard.  You are Human."
"I do not forget my heritage, Charalth."  Domojon was surprised -- did the Queen really expect his to forsake the clinging minds of the Human and live a solitary, loveless life among the Kabards, to become erëktilit?
The Queen laughed, a dry laugh without humor.  "Not your heritage, Domojon -- your power."  Do you see my colindon?"  He touched the small copper box on his forehead, now gleaming with a fine greengold patina.  "This, not Kabard sun-gods or machines of soft Terran metal, is what controls the world.  Do you know why we are forbidden to ever remove them from our brows, or open them?"
"It is shameful. . . ." Domojon began.
"No.  Because they contain the Power.  The colindon binds our souls together: while we both wear them, I may ask anything of you, even to take your own life, and you must do it."
"This is the law, Charalth."
"Not law -- nature.  All Human -- millions of Human, scattered in cities and caverns across Tulë -- will obey the voice of their Queens.  And someday in Humanan, in the city we call Morningstar, one will arise who will command Queens as easily as we command individual Human.  Then, who will be able to stand against us?  The Kabards?  The Humans?  The Terrans?"  Crinkling his eyes into a grin, he raised a finger to the ceiling.  It was curved and hollow like the roof of a cave.  "This is why you should revere your people.  Not out of some misty-eyed nostalgia, but because our Goddess Aramkai sits enthroned in the Womb of the Earth."
"Aramkai!" Domojon thought fiercely.  For all of Charalth's insistence that the Human follow only Human ways, he worshipped a Human goddess!  Aramkai was a name for Eluse, the Lady of the Pale Stars, in his aspect of sorceress and crone.  Had the Human invented nothing for themselves?
Charalth chuckled.  "You are confused, I perceive. Come, walk with me in the Court of Divine Wind; the storm has passed, the night is clear, and we would profit greatly from the fresh air."
This was another of the Queen's eccentricities.  Kabards had the balance of mountain-camels, and they enjoyed walking on parapets of heer rock fifty or a hundred feet from the ground, with no railing, no barrier between them and the dark air; what railings they had were installed for children and invalids, those too feeble to meet the Five Billion Gods face to face.  But Human lived in caves, or underground, or at the very least on the ground floors of cloud-houses; many felt vertigo in elevators, refused to fly in airships, and suffered screaming fits in Human skyscrapers.  Not Charalth, though; for all his disdain of Kabard culture, he loved prancing about on perilous ledges hundreds of feet above the Courts.  It cleared his head, he claimed, and made his think like a Kabard, which was required for living among them as a distinct, often hated minority.  Tonight they walked in silence behind two Kabard lovers enjoying the lights of the city and a Kabard sage, naked and glistening from sacred oil, who chanted an endless litany of the names of the Five Billion Gods.
"Do you know my full name, Domojon?" Charalth asked, evidently reminded by the litany.
"No,"  said Domojon.  Human names had no magical or totemic significance, as they had in some cultures; life in the clan simply precluded the necessity of knowing another individual Human's name.
"Charalth a Bulthon Ezamona Uru-Aramkana a ruës-ethándela," he said.  "A bouquet of deadly night-blooming ezamon flowers enclosed in ruës-stone.  Human are the ezamon: as deadly as the spider's bite, but safely enclosed in Human and Kabard cities, just as the Humans' goddess Eluse is enclosed in his southern prison, just as the power of all my children is enclosed in this box that lays upon my forehead.  This is the essence of Human, Domojon: deadly, but controled.  Remember that, when you become Queen after me."
Domojon flahed a gesture of surprise, but Charalth pressed a soft hand to his cheek.  "Do not pretend that you have not thought of it.  You are comfortable in the world of Kabards, the world in which we must live.  You are well-respected by the Kabards, even by the Godking.  You could be a worthy advocate for our people."  He hesitated. "But think of this. . .because I am Queen, I cannot ever leave our clan.  I cannot make the jaunts across the world you make, or ever dream of seeing Terra.  In this, too, I am enclosed in ruës."
"I have no designs upon your position, Charalth," Domojon said, somewhat surprised.  "I have no administrative ability
. . .I rarely have anything to say during the Dance of Many Voices.  I have only a single talent."
"Yes, a talent that has been well exploited by the Kabards.  Nevertheless, you could use it to change the fate of the world.  And that is why you will make a good Queen someday."  his grip on Domojon's arm tightened; the wind blew briskly about his formless silver garment.
Perhaps Charalth had made an announcement of his upcoming suicide while Domojon was in Moreveq.  "Are you planning to enter the Caverns of Eternity, Charalth?"
The Queen smiled, as if that thought pleased him.  "Not yet; I do not intend to die for about ten years.  But one must plan ahead, child.  One must seek out potential successors, and test them.  The best Human might not make the best Queen, just as the best soldiers do not make the best generals.  Many cannot bear the hard, bright darkness of the Court of Divine Wind.  Look down, now!"
Domojon obediently looked down, and saw starlight glinting off rooftops and the grey shining pavements below, off streetlamps with twin glistening limbs and the glittering beauty-dust on Kabard manes.
"Look down, now, and wonder," Charalth said, and his eyes were strange, the blue almost black in the darkness.  "Look down, now, and rule."