Without a sound she was gone. He knew better than to look back.
It was not until he was alone in the room that he opened his hand to see. And there was the ring she had worn.
It was amber, clear as Lowland wine, smooth as cream, and yet warm in his warmth from her. There was another characteristic. A sort of peculiar inner vibration. It seemed alive. In a second he had cast the ring down on the floor as if he had touched instead one of her snakes.
A little later he assembled the truth. The Lady Safca had propositioned him. The ring, put on her servant for the theater, had become a Zastis token.
He wished she had had the sense to avoid that pitfall. He could hardly himself send it back and humiliate her further. It would be best to leave the ring lying, perhaps in the courtyard. Valuable, the palace servant who found it would hardly dare not return the jewel.
That it had tingled was simple magnetism, for such amber was magnetic. Or else the Star had loaned it intensity.
He took off his clothes and lay down on the bed.
There was a hollowness in his skull. Safca. . . .
Some knowledge concerning her, or to do with her, was there to hand, but occluded, by light rather than shadow.
Rem dreamed white wolves were running over a landscape shaped from amber. Behind, rode a man in a chariot. He wore black. He held the reins in his right hand, in his left a gold-handled whip that gradually altered to a serpent.
“Where have you been?” said the guardian’s younger daughter as the Lowland girl came into her chamber.
The girl looked at her, shaking her head gently. This, in the language of signs which was accumulating, seemed to mean the question was in no need of an answer.
“I wish you hadn’t been shown in the hall,” said Safca.
One of her brothers was responsible. He had come into Safca’s apartment unlooked for, and seen the girl at once.
He had fancied her in his bed, so much was apparent. Yalef liked his women young. His two wives were only thirteen. And this child was so graceful, already she moved and walked like a court woman. More elegantly than Safca, or her sister, or Yalef’s two wives.
Safca did not know the girl’s age, but was positive that she was not yet nubile. When argument failed, she tried to put Yalef off by the reminder that pale skin and eyes meant frigid Amanackire blood. She also informed him that the girl was dumb, retarded, and had a habit of coaxing snakes into her bed. Yalef was duly discouraged.
When the word came of Yannul’s son, however, and the entertainment was planned, Yalef came back and demanded the girl for snake-sporting purposes.
Safca could hardly refuse.
At least the blonde hair had been dyed wood-color again. That had been at the girl’s own request. She had written it, so there could be no doubt. The art of writing was something she had to thank Safca for. Perhaps. The woman who taught the girl remarked that she was abnormally quick to learn her letters. Safca, observing the second of the two lessons, which were all that had been required, was filled by awe. It was as if the Lowlander had always known, merely needing to be reminded. . . .
Now the girl came to her and began to comb her hair.
At once, Safca was soothed, her taut muscles relaxing. She half-closed her eyes, watching the flowing movements of hands and hair in the mirror.
Relaxation did not prevail. Abruptly Safca noticed the amber ring had vanished from the Lowlander’s thumb. The ring had been Safca’s gift, her own possession, yet she so unfitted to wear delicate jewelry. Now it had been lost or snatched—Safca opened her mouth to demand where it had gone—or given in turn to another. Safca closed her lips in a tight thin line.
Had she saved the child from Yalef only to have her make other arrangements for herself?
Jealous and put out of patience by her jealousy, she grew rigid under the soothing caress of the comb.
Next morning, the youthful but august visitor departed, leaving the guardian’s elder daughter sleekly lying late a-bed. Maybe a child would result, to be the boast of Olm.
Safca, who had always had a temper if nothing else, threw a piece of pottery across the room, listened to it smash, then shouted for her litter.
The other man, the friend to Yannul’s son, had been as uninterested in Safca as she would have predicted. Something in her seethed and bubbled. She forgot the night the snake had coiled all about her. She remembered instead her mother’s deathbed, the lack of attendants, the lack of words. The few words which were said. Safca clutched the bracelet on her wrist, and ordered the litter-bearers to a trot, and ran them like kalinxes.
When she returned, Yalef met her in a corner of the outer court. With him was a tall blond man. Filled with dread, Safca did not know him for a moment. Then she did. Her heart quaked.
“The Am Vardath gentleman said you had a girl he’d like to buy.”
“No,” she said.
“Alas,” said Yalef. “I already had her brought and given to him. His servant took her off. She’s gone. She was no use to you, Safca. No real use to anyone.”
The Vardian grinned.
“Your brother’s received what you paid, Vis lady. Twenty parings of patriotic Olmish silver.”
She had no say, no power. What was she? An illegal daughter. Maybe not even the guardian’s work. And if the Am Vardath knew that story from the deathbed—he would spit on her literally, instead of merely by inference.
She tried not to cry. She could not even think why she should be crying. Was it her jealous rage which had lost her something she had not properly acknowledged, could only acknowledge now that she would lose it? But what, after all, was the child? A magician who could call serpents—
“Why,” she whispered, shamed by the Vardian’s sneer, “do you want her?”
“I saw last time her Vis-tan was a fraud, cover for a slave auction. Her skin’s white and her eyes yellow. She’s got a lot of pure Lowland blood. Bleach her hair and she’ll pass as immaculate. There are rewards in the Plains for rescuing their children from wicked Vis slavers, evil Vis owners. The Lowlanders, after all, are the elite race. Like my people, the Chosen of the goddess.”
Yalef, between nervousness, and pleasure in Safca’s discomfort, only beamed.
Safca bowed her head.
I shall never see her again.
There was nothing much at Hliha, save the shipping in the bay which ran in and out, organized from Xarabiss or Lanelyr or Lan. The only built thing, on the upland above the scatter of huts and tents, was a slim dark stone tower, one of the multitude Elyr had raised to gaze upon the heavens. Astrology, magic, mysticism, non-involvement, that was Elyr. She had no Kings. She produced enamels, that was her trade. Her fealty, if she knew the word, was given to Lan. One ascertained her temples, rare as the astrology towers were not, were very old. And black. Lowland style.
The ship put out from Hliha before sunrise, and carved over the sea toward Xarabiss.
Rem was on deck, watching their flight from an ascending sun, when he found the amber ring.
There was a reason. He recalled throwing his clothes on the floor that night at Olm. In the morning he had looked for the ring, also on the floor, and failed to find it. Reason assured him the ring had been caught up in a fold of cloth, dropped into the thief’s habitual knife-pocket of a sleeve—whence now it rolled back into his palm. Thief’s pocket and still a thief, it seemed.
He looked at the ring. There was no sensitization anymore. Just a circle of amber.
He could no longer very well return it to Olm. He would give it to Raldnor to give some girl.