They herded him. He knew it and was willing to go as long as there was room to retreat, intending to pay double at least on one of them when they finally closed in on him. T’Senife, who had insulted Nym, that was the one he favored killing, a slit-eyed fellow with a look of inborn arrogance.
But to kill him would endanger Elas; he dared not, and knew how it must end. He risked other’s lives, even fighting them.
A small gate was set in the wall near the rock. He bolted for it, surprising them, desperately flinging back the iron bar.
A vast courtyard lay beyond it, a courtyard paved in polished marble, with a single building closing it off, high-columned, a white cube with three triangular pylons arching over its long steps.
He ran, saw the safety of the familiar wall-street to his left, leading to the main street of Nephane, back to the witness of passersby.
But for the sake of Elas he dared not take the matter into public. He knew Nym and Kta, knew they would involve themselves, to their hurt and without the power to help him.
He ran instead across the white court, his sandaled feet and those of his pursuers echoing loudly on the deserted stones. The wall-street was the only way in. The precinct was a cul-de-sac, backed by the temple, flanked on one side by a high wall and on the other by the living rock.
His pursuers put on a sudden burst of speed. He did likewise, thinking suddenly that they did not want him to reach this place, a religious place, a sanctuary.
He sprang for the polished steps, raced up them, slipping and stumbling in his haste and exhaustion.
Fire roared inside, an enormous bowl of flame leaping within, a heat that filled the room and flooded even the outer air, a phusmehaso large the blaze made the room glow gold, whose sound was like a furnace.
He stopped without any thought in his mind but terror, blasted by the heat on his face and drowned in the sound of it. It was a rhmei,and he knew its sanctity.
His pursuers had stopped, a scant few strides behind him on the steps. He looked back. T’ Senife beckoned him.
“Come down,” said t’Senife. “We were told to bring you to the Methi. If you will not come down, it will be the worse for you. Come down.”
Kurt believed him. It was a place of powers to which human touch was defilement,—no sanctuary, none for a human,—no kindly Ptas to open the rhmeito him and make him welcome.
He came down to them, and they took him by the arms and led him down and across the courtyard to the open gate of the Afen compound, barring it again behind them.
Then they forced him up against the wall and had their revenge, expertly, without leaving a visible mark on him.
It was not likely that he would complain, both for the personal shame of it and because he and his friends were always in their reach: especially Kta,—who would count it a matter of honor to avenge his friend, even on the Methi’s guard.
Kurt straightened himself as much as he could at the moment and t’Senife straightened his ctan,which had come awry, and took his arm again.
They brought him up a side entrance of the Afen, by stairs he had not used before. Then they passed into familiar halls near the center of the building.
Another of their kind met them, a stripe-robed and braided young man, handsome as Bel, but with sullen, hateful eyes. To him these men showed great deference. Shan t’Tefur, they called him.
They discussed the betrothal, and how they had been too late.
“Then the Methi should have that news,” concluded t’Tefur, and his narrow eyes shifted toward a room with a solid door. “It is empty. Hold him there until I have carried her that news.”
They did so. Kurt sat on a hard chair by the barred slit of a window and so avoided the looks that pierced his back, giving them no excuse to repeat their treatment of him.
At last t’Tefur came back to say that the Methi would see him.
She would see him alone. T’Tefur protested with a violently angry look, but Djan stared back at him in such a way that t’Tefur bowed finally and left the room.
Then she turned that same angry look on Kurt.
“Entering the temple precincts was a mistake,” she said. “If you had entered the temple itself I don’t know if I could have saved you.”
“I had that idea,” he said.
“Who told you that you had the freedom to make contracts in Nephane—marrying that nemet?”
“I wasn’t told I didn’t. Nor was Elas told, or they wouldn’t have allowed it. They are loyal to you. And they were not treated well, Djan.”
“Not the least among the problems you’ve created for me, this disrespect of Elas.” She walked over to the far side of the room, put back a panel that revealed a terrace walled with glass. It was night. They had a view of all the sea. She gazed out, leaving him watching her back, and she stayed that way for a long time. He thought he was the subject of her thoughts, he and Elas.
At last she turned and faced him. “Well,” she said, “for Elas’ inconvenience, I’m sorry. I shall send them word that you’re safe. You haven’t had dinner yet, have you?”
Appetite was the furthest thing from his mind. His stomach was both empty and racked with pain, and with an outright fear that her sudden shift in manner did nothing to ease. “You,” he said, “frightened the wits out of my fiancée, made me a spectacle in the streets of Nephane, and all I particularly care about is—”
“I think,” said Djan in a tone of finality, “that we had better save the talk. Iam going to have dinner. If you want to argue the point, Shan can find you some secure room where you can think matters over. But you will leave the Afen— ifyou leave the Afen—when I please to send you out.”
And she called a girl named Pai, who recieved her orders with a deep bow.
“She,” said Djan when the girl had gone, “is chanto the Afen. I inherited her, it seems. She is very loyal and very silent, both virtues. Her family served the last Methi, a hundred years ago. Before that, Pai’s family was still chanto methis, even before the human occupation and during it. There is nothing in Nephane that does not have roots, except the two of us. Forget your temper, my friend. I lost mine. I rarely do that. I am sorry.”
“Then we will have out whatever you want to say and I will go back to Elas.”
“I would think so,” she agreed quietly, ignoring his anger. “Come out here. Sit down. I am too tired to stand up to argue with you.”
He came, shrugging off his apprehensions. The terrace was dark. She left it so, and sat on the window ledge, watching the sea far below. It was indeed a spectacular view of Nephane, its lights winding down the crag below, the high dark rock a shadow against the moon. The moonlit surface of the sea was cut by the wake of a single ship heading out.
“If I were sensible,” said Djan as he joined her and sat down on the ledge facing her, “if I were at all sensible I’d have you taken out and dropped about halfway. Unfortunately I decided against it. I wonder still what you would do in my place.”
He had wondered that himself. “I would think of the same things that have occurred to you,” he said.
“And reach the same answer?”
“I think so,” he admitted. “I don’t blame you.”
She smiled, ironic amusement. “Then maybe we will have a brighter future than other humans who have held Nephane. —They built this section of the Afen, you know. That’s why there is no rhmei,no heart to the place. It’s unique in that respect—the fortress without a heart, the building without a soul. Did Kta tell you what became of them?”
“Nemet drove them out, I know that.”
“Humans ruled Nephane about twenty years. But they involved themselves with the nemet. The mistress of the base commander was of the great Indras family—of Irain. Humans were very cruel to the nemet, and they enjoyed humiliating the Great Families by that. But one night she let her brothers in and the whole of Nephane rose in rebellion against the humans on the night of a great celebration, when most of the humans were drunk on telise.So they lost their machines and fled south and became the Tamurlin in a generation or so—like animals. Only Pai’s ancestor On t’Erefe defended the humans in the Afen, being chanand obliged to defend his human lord. The human Methi and On died together, out there in the hall. The other humans who died were killed in the courtyard, and those who were caught were brought back there and killed.