to save her if you can. If she can be saved. And she trusts you.
Standing with her is the only thing you could do and still he a decent man."
Cehmai glared at the wide face, the slow, calm eyes, searching for a
shred of sarcasm. 'T'here was none.
"Why are you trying to confuse me?" he asked.
The andat turned to look out the window and stood as still as a statue.
Cehmai waited, but it didn't shift, even to look at him. The rooms
darkened and Cehmai lit lemon candles to keep the insects away. His mind
was divided into a hundred different thoughts, each of them powerful and
convincing and no two fitting together.
When at last he went up to his bed, he couldn't sleep. The blankets
still smelled of her, of the two of them. Of love and sleep. Cehmai
wrapped the sheets around himself and willed his mind to quiet, but the
whirl of thoughts didn't allow rest. Idaan loved him. She had had her
own father killed. Maati had been right, all this time. It was his duty
to tell what he knew, but he couldn't. It was possible-she might have
tricked him all along. He felt as cracked as river ice when a stone had
been dropped through it, jagged fissures cut through him in all
directions. "Where was no center of peace within him.
And yet he must have drifted off, because the storm pulled him awake.
Cehmai stumbled out of bed, pulling down half his netting with a soft
ripping sound. He crawled to the corridor almost before he understood
that the pitching and moaning, the shrieking and the nausea were all in
the private space behind his eyes. It had never been so powerful.
He fell as he went to the front of the house, harking his knee against
the wall. The thick carpets were sickening to touch, the fibers seeming
to writhe tinder his fingers like dry worms. Stone-Made-Soft sat at the
gaming table. The white marble, the black basalt. A single white stone
was shifted out of its beginning line.
"Not now," Cehmai croaked.
"Now," the andat said, its voice loud and low and undeniable.
The room pitched and spun. Cehmai dragged himself to the table and tried
to focus on the pieces. The game was simple enough. He'd played it a
thousand times. He shifted a black stone forward. He felt he was still
half dreaming. The stone he'd moved was Idaan. Stone-MadeSoft's reply
moved a token that was both its fourth column and also Otah Machi.
Groggy with sleep and distress and annoyance and the an gry pressure of
the andat struggling against him, he didn't understand how far things
had gone until twelve moves later when he shifted a black stone one
place to the left, and Stone-Made-Soft smiled.
"Maybe she'll still love you afterwards," the andat said. "Do you think
she'll care as much about your love when you're just a man in a brown robe?"
Cehmai looked at the stones, the shifting line of them, flowing and
sinuous as a river, and he saw his mistake. Stone-Made-Soft pushed a
white stone forward and the storm in Cehmai's mind redoubled. He could
hear his own breath rattling. He was sticky with the rancid sweat of
effort and fear. He was losing. He couldn't make himself think,
controlling his own mind was like wrestling a beast-something large and
angry and stronger than he was. In his confusion, Idaan and Adrah and
the death of the Khai all seemed connected to the tokens glowing on the
board. Each was enmeshed with the others, and all of them were lost. He
could feel the andat pressing toward freedom and oblivion. All the
generations of carrying it, gone because of him.
"It's your move," the andat said.
"I can't," Cehmai said. His own voice sounded distant.
"I can wait as long as you care to," it said. "Just tell me when you
think it'll get easier."
"You knew this would happen," Cehmai said. "You knew."
"Chaos has a smell to it," the andat agreed. "Move."
Cchmai tried to study the board, but every line he could see led to
failure. He closed his eyes and rubbed them until ghosts bloomed in the
darkness, but when he reopened them, it was no better. The sickness grew
in his belly. He felt he was falling. The knock on the door behind him
was something of a different world, a memory from some other life, until
the voice came.
"I know you're in there! You won't believe what's happened. Half the
utkhaiem are spotty with welts. Open the door!"
"Baarath!"
Cehmai didn't know how loud he'd called-it might have been a whisper or
a scream. But it was enough. The librarian appeared beside him. The
stout man's eyes were wide, his lips thin.
"What's wrong?" Baarath asked. "Are you sick? Gods, Cehmai.... Stay
here. Don't move. I'll have a physician-"
"Paper. Bring me paper. And ink."
"It's your move!" the andat shouted, and Baarath seemed about to bolt.
"Hurry," Cehmai said.
It was a week, a month, a year of struggle before the paper and ink
brick appeared at his side. He could no longer tell whether the andat
was shouting to him in the real world or only within their shared mind.
The game pulled at him, sucking like a whirlpool. The stones shifted
with significance beyond their own, and confusion built on confusion in
waves so that Cehmai grasped his one thought until it was a certainty.
There was too much. There was more than he could survive. The only
choice was to simplify the panoply of conflicts warring within him;
there wasn't room for them all. He had to fix things, and if he couldn't
make them right, he could at least make them end.
He didn't let himself feel the sorrow or the horror or the guilt as he
scratched out a note-brief and clear as he could manage. The letters
were shaky, the grammar poor. Idaan and the Vaunyogi and the Galts.
Everything he knew written in short, unadorned phrases. He dropped the
pen to the floor and pressed the paper into Baarath's hand.
"Maati," Cehmai said. "'lake it to Maati. Now."
Baarath read the letter, and whatever blood had remained in his face
drained from it now.
"This ... this isn't ..."
"Run!" Cehmai screamed, and Baarath was off, faster than Cehmai could
have gone if he'd tried, Idaan's doom in his hands. Cehmai closed his
eyes. That was over, then. That was decided, and for good or ill, he was
committed. The stones now could he only stones.
He pulled himself back to the game board. Stone-Made-Soft had gone
silent again. The storm was as fierce as it had ever been, but Cehmai
found he also had some greater degree of strength against it. He forced