was that hope and the clarity of the path that lay before him that made
his steps lighter and kept his blood warm.
He wondered if this strange elation was something like what ()tali had
felt, all those years he had lived under his false name. Perhaps holding
himself at a distance from the world was how Otah had learned his
confidence.
But no. That thought was an illusion. I lowever much this felt like joy,
Nlaati's rational mind knew it was only fear in brighter robes.
'['he door of the poet's house stood open. The candlelight from within
glowed gold. Maati hauled himself up the stairs and through the doorway
without scratching or calling out to announce his presence. The air
within smelled of distilled wine and a deep earthy incense of the sort
priests burned in the temples. He found Cehmai at the back of the house,
eyes bloodshot and wine bowl cupped in his hands. He sat cross-legged on
the floor contemplating a linked sigil of order and
chaos-mother-of-pearl inlay in a panel of dark-stained rosewood. He
glanced up at Maati and made an awkward attempt at some pose Maati could
only guess at.
"You've found religion?" Maati asked.
"Chaos comes out of order," Cehmai said. "I can't think of a better time
to contemplate the fact. And gods are all we have left now, aren't they?"
Nlaati reached out, brushing the panel with his fingers before tipping
it backward. It slapped the floor with a sound like a book dropped from
a table. Cehmai blinked, half shocked, half amused. Before he could
speak, Maati fished in his sleeve, brought out the small brown volume,
its leather covers worn soft as cloth by the years, and dropped it into
Cchmai's lap. He didn't wait for ("ehmai to pick it up before he strode
back into the front room, closed the door, and dropped two fresh lumps
of coal onto the fire in the grate. He found a pan, a flask of fresh
water, and a brick of pressed tea leaves. That was good. They'd want
that before the night was out. He also found the spent incense-ashes
lighter than fresh snow on a black stone burner. He dumped them outside.
A high slate table held their notes. Thoughts and diagrams charting the
new and doomed binding of Stone-Made-Soft. Maati scooped up the pages of
cramped writing and put them outside as well, with the ashes. "l'hen he
carefully smoothed the writing from the wax tablets until they were
smooth again, pristine. He took up the bronze-tipped stylus and scored
two long vertical lines in the wax, dividing it into three equal
columns. Cehmai walked into the room, his head bent over the open hook.
He was already more than halfway through it.
"You aren't the only one who was ever chosen to bind one of the andat,"
Maati said. "I even began the binding once, a long time ago. Liatcha
talked me out of trying. She was right. It would have killed me."
"You mean this?" Cehmai said. "You're going to bind Seedless?"
"It was what the I)ai-kvo chose me for. Heshai wrote his binding, and
his analysis of its flaws. It's too close to the original. I know that.
But with the changes we'll need to make in order to include my scheme
for avoiding the price of a failed binding and your fresh perspective,
we can find another way."
In the first column of the wax tablet, Maati wrote Seedless.
"Forgive me, Maati-kvo, but will this really help? Stone-Made-Soft could
have dropped their army half into the ground. Water-Moving- I)own might
have flooded them. But Seedless? Removing-the-PartThat-Continues doesn't
have much power to stop an army."
"I can offer to kill all their crops," Maati said, writing Heshai-ko at
the top of the second column. "I can threaten to make every cow and pig
and lamb barren. I can make every Galtic woman who's bearing a child
lose it. Faced with that, they'll turn hack."
His stylus paused over the head of the third column, and then he wrote
his own name. He and Cehmai could outline the major points here; they
could add and remove aspects of Heshai's first vision, interpret the
corrections the old poet would have made, had he been given the chance.
They could remake the binding, because the binding was already
half-remade. If there was time. If they could find a way. If they were
clever enough to save the world from the armies of Galt.
"And if they don't turn hack?" Cehmai said.
"Then we'll all die. Their cities and ours. Check to see if that tea's
ready to brew up, will you? I need your help with this, and it will go
better if you're sober."
THE SCULPTURE GARDEN OF CETANI WAS THE WONDER OF THE CITY. TWO bronze
men in the dress of the Emperor's guard stood at the entrances at its
Northwest end, staring to the south and east, as if still looking to the
Empire they had failed to protect. In their great, inhuman shadows, the
finest work of the cities of the Khaiem had been gathered over the span
of generations. There were hundreds of them, each astounding in its own
fashion, under the wide branches of ash and oak with leaves the color of
gold. The dragons of Chaos writhed along one long wall, their scales
shining with red lacquer and worked silver, chips of lapis and enamel
white as milk. In a shadowed niche, Shian Sho, last of the E111- perors,
sat worked in white marble on a high dais, his head stink despairingly
in his hands. It was a piece done after the Empire's fall. If the
Emperor had seen himself shown with such little dignity, the sculptor
would have been lucky to have a fast death. But the drape of the final
Emperor's robes made the stone seem supple as linen, and the despair and
thoughtfulness of the dead man's expression spoke of a time nine
generations past when the world had torn itself apart. The sculptor who
had found Shian Sho in this stone had lived through that time and had
put the burden of his heart into this monument; this empty sepulcher for
his age. Otah suspected that no man since then had looked upon it and
understood. Not until now.
The Khai Cetani stood at the foot of a life-size bronze of a robed woman
with eagle's wings rising wide-spread from her shoulders. He was younger
than Otah by perhaps five years, gray only beginning to appear in his
night-black hair. His gaze flickered over Otah, giving no sign of the
thoughts behind his eyes. Otah felt a moment's selfconsciousness at his
travel-worn robes and incipient, moth-eaten beard. He took a pose of
greeting appropriate for two people of equal status and saw the Khai
Cetani hesitate for a moment before returning it. It was likely it was
the first time in years anyone had approached him with so little reverence.
"My counselors have told me of your suggestion, my good friend Nlachi,"
the Khai Cetani said. "I must say I was ... surprised. You can't truly