The Glass Mountains (18 page)

“You talk about my sector as if it were an object instead of a living thing.”
 

“Many times in our history foreigners have betrayed us.”
 

The dogs chewed on sticks a short distance away. I remembered that I hadn’t played the rhythms since the day I first spotted the wall. When I’d traveled with the queen, I tried to practice the rhythms almost every night. The sound of something so familiar gave me comfort on those still nights when there was no noise at all except for the breathing of the dogs, my own breath, and the rustle of my hair against my ears. The rhythms are the first thing a newborn baby hears, and the last thing a Bakshami soul hears before relinquishing the body at the death ritual.
 

In the forest Moor and I practiced throwing our knives a few times. He said my grandfather had given me a fine knife, with admirable carvings and some valuable jewels in the handle. “It’s weighted nicely, too,” he said. He took the knife from me and threw it at a tree I could barely see. I heard the thunk as it landed solidly in the wood. I practiced at a much closer tree. He also showed me how to change from holding the knife to throw at something far away and holding it to stab something closer by. He said that the knife should seem to have a life of its own as it changed positions in your hand. Indeed, he could change grips from handle to blade with such speed there seemed to be no movement in between—one moment he held the blade, the next the handle.
 

As we walked back to Moor’s house, I practiced manipulating the knife, but a couple of times I dropped it. I didn’t think it was the Bakshami way to hold knives and have wars, whereas the Soom Kali were born with war in their blood.
 

It was very late, and only one person walked across town. Moor told me not to stop, and we hurried our steps slightly to reach his house.
 

“Don’t you have any easier weapons to protect yourself with?” I asked in the main room of his house.
 

“I have a whole room in this house devoted to such weapons.”
 

“And yet you use a knife.”
 

“The only thing winning a battle with a weapon proves is who has purchased the finest weapon. A knife, unlike those other weapons, is a part of the person and proves who is the best warrior. We use the other weapons in wars, for convenience.”
 

With his rangy appeal, and his face full of insolence and pain, he looked like a young warrior who already had fought in many wars. And he said he’d already fought in a few battles with the Artrorans.
 

Like the Soom Kali I’d seen at the border he possessed a power that I couldn’t help but admire. I decided I should try to breed with him before I left. He wasn’t an Artroran strongman, but I doubted those Artrorans could be any more powerful than Moor. Perhaps they could lift more at one time, but they couldn’t possibly boast the same combination of strength and agility that the Soom Kali seemed to possess. I felt quite intoxicated.
 

“Maybe we should breed together,” I blurted out.
 

He smiled insolently. “In time,” he said. “I’m tired now. I haven’t slept at all for a day and a half.” He turned around and walked toward my room.
 

When we arrived at my room he studied me seriously. “But I’ll sleep in your bed with you,” he said. I felt my face grow hot but agreed. So Moor and I undressed and got in the huge stone bed together. After feeling all that heat coming from him, I expected his body to be warm, but it was surprisingly cool. I can’t say that it was unusually cool, however, because I’d never held a naked body next to mine before. I put my arms around him and held him firmly and rubbed my skin on his and rubbed my hands on his skin. My feelings of discovery and need and bliss coalesced into something physical rather than emotional, so that the more I had these feelings, the more I rubbed my skin against his. I felt every part of his body I could from top to bottom, and when my feelings of discovery and need abated I settled into bliss. When he fell asleep and I felt how hard the muscles in his arms stayed even while he dreamed, I experienced the illogical feeling that more than all the things I wanted at that moment I wanted to protect him always. At that moment, I would rather have protected him than go to Artroro or see my brother or even, I’m ashamed to say, than save my parents. The feeling was completely illogical and completely overwhelming. So I slept all night with my arms around him, and when I woke up he had left.
 

I luxuriated in the bath and then wandered into the kitchen, where breakfast awaited. Moor had laid out breads and fresh meats and left some sort of note that I couldn’t read—I could speak Artroran fairly well, but could barely read it. With nothing else to do, I wandered through the dozen or so rooms of the house. One large room was for metal and stone work. On a huge slab against the wall someone had carved a beast, and on a table sat several gorgeous metal vases almost as tall as I was. Everything seemed oversized except a series of delicate bracelets with the same lacy quality as objects in the main room.
 

Moor and his father had stored their weapons in the next room. What can I say about this room except that there were a hundred ways to kill an enemy in there? As I came out I heard grunting, apparently as Moor’s father got out of bed. He seemed to fall to the ground with a thump and I hurried to him.
 

In the light he was even frailer than his shadow; at least a shadow in the dark appears to imply substance and a type of incorporeal potency. But this man seemed to have so little potency and substance that I couldn’t speak for a moment, only stare. He was as tall as his son but weighed perhaps half. He stared back at me acidly.
 

“If you’ve come to help, then help. If you’ve come to stare, then leave.”
 

I grabbed hold of his arm—he was nothing to lift—and helped him back into bed.
 

“I heard you moving around and was going to check on you,” he said weakly. He closed his eyes and rubbed one of them with a clawlike finger. “If you’ve stolen anything I’ll have my son kill you. He likes you, but I’m his father.”
 

“I’m sorry. I was curious.”
 

He regarded me acidly again. “You don’t seem so brave to me. My son has got it into his head that you’re courageous.”
 

“I left Bakshami with just a friend.”
 

“Bakshami, don’t tell me about Bakshami. Even without your wretched country, the planet has all the sand it needs. Your country is just overkill.” His mood suddenly changed, and he looked at me with light in his eyes. “Tell me, did my son leave you some meat in the kitchen?”
 

“I’ve eaten it. Can I look for more for you?”
 

The light in his eyes dulled. “No, damn him, he’s hidden it. The doctors say I can’t digest meat, and he gives me the same revolting roots every day. That’s what’s killing me, I tell you. You must promise to sneak me some meat, young lady, do I have your word?”
 

“I don’t think I should. I can ask Moor—”
 

“Don’t ask him, curse you. I thought you were brave! You must sneak me some meat! So what if I die? What’s a life without meat anyway?” His eyes grew desperate. “If you lived as I do, you, too, would beg.”
 

“I’m sure Moor doesn’t want you to suffer. I’ll speak to him if you think that would help.”
 

“I stay alive only because I want to see my son again each day, not because he follows doctors’ orders and denies me meat. I love my son and couldn’t bear him going away, but frankly neither can I bear him staying to take care of me. Every time he’s gone I think of meat. Despite my weakness I search the house for where he might have hidden meat. I told my son to kill you and use the dogs for meat,” he mumbled. He closed his eyes and began to breathe laboriously.
 

I sat in the only chair in the room, the chair in which Moor probably sat as he spoke with his father. He told me he stayed up all night with his father occasionally. Hard and straight-backed, the chair was probably disagreeable to sit in for even an hour, let alone a night. Still, as time passed I could see how the chair supported my back without making me sleepy.
 

The air passing in and out of the lungs of Moor’s father seemed to hit all manner of phlegm and disease. I got up to open a window and while I struggled with it I saw outside how simple the village was despite the ornamentation of the doors. Even without benefit of the sparkling lamps to entrance me, the houses appeared inviting. The lamps swung in the breeze, knocking with pings against the stone doors. This simple village beneath the striking blue sky possessed a storyteller’s quality. It reminded me of my old town, a place vivid in my memory but long since destroyed.
 

3

The breeze from outside was a delight, touched with a sweet coolness I’d rarely felt in daytime air. Moor’s father groaned in his sleep. I thought of Maruk and Sian going through integration and couldn’t imagine how they could integrate without losing their minds from the tension that must press forever against their temples. To act like someone you were not might be an adventure for a while, but after time when you started really to become who you were not, what then? From then on, your life would be nothing but suffering.
 

The cool fresh breeze cleansed the air in the room. It started to make the room seem like someplace one might come to live rather than a place one came only to die. Moor’s father didn’t seem to notice. His face as he lay there was swathed in a bitter sleep, and because his mouth fell open bits of white-flecked drool fell down his cheek to the pillow. Now and then he made a sound like a dog growling, and I would not have been surprised to hear him bark. Here was a man, I believed, who had spent his life hating others, and I wondered why Moor loved him so. But as the afternoon passed and I watched that angry face that knew no peace, I came to see that there was little in the world more heartbreaking than the deathbed of one who has never been happy, or who has become bitter, or who has hated more than he has loved. So perhaps Moor’s heart was breaking for that reason. I also knew that between a parent and a child explanations existed for things that outsiders found inexplicable. There were no murders in Bakshami, but I knew that within families even in my sector there were reasons for love, and sometimes reasons for murder. Not excuses, just reasons. So Moor’s heart was breaking for some of those unfathomable reasons that exist between parent and child.
 

For now, the only way I could think to protect a strong young man who scarcely realized he needed protecting was to sit in his place at his sick father’s bedside. My back grew sore and the difficult breathing of Moor’s father started to oppress me. And in this way I learned something of what Moor’s life had been like for the past three years.
 

“What are you doing in here?” I hadn’t heard Moor enter. His voice sounded poised between surprise and annoyance.
 

“I heard your father fall and came to see him. Then I just sat here.”
 

He went to close the window. “It’s freezing in here.”
 

“So it is. My arms are full of bumps.”
 

His annoyance began to fade. Now he was just confused. “But why did you sit here in the cold like this?”
 

“I don’t know. It did occur to me once or twice that it was cold, but for some reason I couldn’t get up. I wanted to sit here as you did.”
 

Moor’s eyes softened now. “Let’s talk elsewhere,” he said gently.
 

He took my hand and led me to his room, a large, almost majestic chamber with walls, floors, a table, and a bureau of sparkling, polished rock. He smiled at me.
 

“I know it’s grand, but my parents made it for me when I was born, so I’ve always stayed here,” he said. “But how was my father?”
 

“He slept most of the time.”
 

“I mean how was he to you?”
 

“He told me he’d advised you to kill me and eat my dogs.”
 

“I don’t like dog meat.”
 

“How lucky for me.”
 

“You
are
lucky. But sit down. I want to talk.”
 

I sat on a couch embroidered with shiny metallic thread. The fabric felt as smooth and soft as glass, and the cushion as soft as fur but with a springy quality about it I’d never encountered.
 

“The soldiers are moving out now,” he said. “You can’t stay or some stickler for the rules may want to dispose of you. The army pays the guards bonuses for any foreigners caught here without going through integration. Once foreigners are caught, the soldiers are free to dispose of them in whatever way they choose. I myself have witnessed twenty-six such disposals in my lifetime.”
 

He seemed so professional now, as if helping me were somehow his job.
 

“Can’t I stay for just one more night? It’s so comfortable here.”