The Glass Mountains (19 page)

“The integration laws are the strictest laws in the sector.”
 

“I haven’t told you something. My brother and his wife came to Soom Kali. He may be trying to integrate. I would like to see him.”
 

“If you see him, he will surely fail his integration.”
 

“Then he will be forced to accompany me to Forma.”
 

“Should not your brother make his own decisions? If you love him, you must let him integrate without your interference. It is a harrowing process.”
 

“I don’t mean to interfere.” I fell suddenly to my knees in tears. Moor did not move. “I’m scared,” I said. “I cannot go on alone.”
 

Moor lifted me gently to my feet. “You will not be alone.”
 

I stared at him. “You?”
 

“Yes. Otherwise you travel alone. Your friend Tarkahna is being romanced by Panyor.”
 

“The dog-faced man!”
 

“He’s a good man.”
 

“He has been fair,” I agreed.
 

“Tarkahna will start the integration tomorrow.”
 

“What? At every step she has abandoned me whenever she could.”
 

“You could integrate, too, although I don’t think I would like you as much if you did.”
 

“I’ll never integrate.”
 

He nodded with approval. “Just as I thought.”
 

“I’ve never been alone, but it can’t be worse than everything else I’ve seen.”
 

“There is nothing worse than loneliness. I have heard it said many times.”
 

“What is your price to accompany me?”
 

“I haven’t decided. For now you must leave some of your jewels with my father.”
 

“And you will leave your father?”
 

“It was his idea. He’ll probably buy meat with the jewels you leave behind. But that must be his decision.”
 

“But he said you should kill me.”
 

Moor laughed. “Yes, that would be his first choice. But I think you remind him of my mother.”
 

“Did he love your mother?”
 

“In his way. He became twice as embittered when she died. That was a type of love, I suppose.”
 

“But you? Why will you do this for me?”
 

His eyes flared. “For the adventure first. And for you second. Maybe someday, you’ll be more important to me than the adventure. But the yearning for adventure has been with me since I was a boy, and the yearning for you has been with me for just over a day.”
 

“I see the Soom Kali make love differently from Bakshami. Here you believe in frankness, while in my sector the time of romance is the time of lies. It’s an extension of our tradition of storytelling. You tell your partner ever bigger and bigger lies, like a kind of ritual. But eventually the lies become truth.”
 

“Don’t expect me to act like a Bakshami. I offer what I offer.”
 

“Of course. I only say that it’s better to start out with lies that become truths than truths that become lies.”
 

“That’s nothing but a Bakshami tongue-twister.”
 

“And what is it that you offer?”
 

“To risk my life for yours. Isn’t that better than a ritual of lies?”
 

He seemed hurt, and my hand, moving of its own volition, stroked his cheek, feeling that surprisingly cool skin capable of emitting a type of heat I’d never felt. “I would not want you to risk your life. And I do prefer the truth. The reasons for the romance ritual have always been a mystery to me.” That wasn’t entirely true. In fact, it was the sort of lie that was a part of the romance ritual, a ritual that didn’t have to make sense.
 

Moor and I didn’t have much time and went to get his bags, which he had already prepared. When we were ready we went in to talk to Moor’s father together. His father lay awake in bed, propped up against cushions. The opulent cushions made him look even more insubstantial than he was. There was only the one chair, but Moor sat at the foot of the bed. Seeing them together for the first time and observing their ease with each other, I felt like a trespasser in their world. I knew that Moor’s father was probably feeling the same way about his son and me. But I also knew he was wrong. I knew he could control his son’s destiny with one word: Stay.
 

But he didn’t speak that word. He asked rambling questions about my life in Bakshami, and about my family, and made rambling remarks about his wife’s uniqueness and courage. When his father got tired, Moor signaled me to leave.
 

“Wait,” said Moor’s father. “Son, did you tell her that there was a time when I was the strongest man not just in this tiny village, but in half the land? My military career was the pride of my family, and all the generals begged me to join their personal troops and enticed me with promises of homes and money. A man as strong as I brought prestige to a troop. I wouldn’t want her to think I was always like this.”
 

Moor’s father began coughing uncontrollably while Moor held his hand.
 

“Can I help?” I said.
 

Moor shook his head. “The doctors say there’s nothing to it but to wait until the coughing passes.” Moor’s face was a mask now. I knew he’d endured many such fits.
 

I winced at the worst coughs and hummed to myself to cover the sounds of a man dying.
 

In a few minutes, Moor’s father continued as if nothing had interrupted.
 

“My wife hated the army. I couldn’t admit that I’d started to hate the army as well. My son will have a different life with you. So Mariska, I give you permission to take my son. I might not see him again.”
 

“Father, if I thought I’d never see you again I wouldn’t leave.”
 

“You can believe whatever you want. I’ll die when I want to.” He spoke with pride. “I’m sick of doctors telling me when I will or won’t die, and, frankly, I’ll be glad when you leave and I get some meat in my stomach.” He spoke as if he meant what he said, his eyes blazing with the strength of his appetite for meat.
 

“Moor, can we not leave him with meat?” But there were things between them I did not understand, and Moor refused. With bowed head he knelt at his father’s bed, just as I had knelt at my grandfather’s tomb. His father seemed barely conscious as we left.
 

“Moor, you don’t have to come. I’ll be fine, I can feel it.” Another lie, since I believed as he did that I would probably die without his help.
 

“I don’t want to join the army and spend my life currying favor with the generals and killing foreigners.”
 

“Maybe you could be a general yourself.”
 

He savored the thought, but then he shrugged. “Then others would try to curry favor with me and I would order
them
to kill the foreigners.” He reached out suddenly and touched my face, and ran his hand down my neck and over my breast where my heart lay. “You’re so small, little doll. But your heart is strong. I can feel its beat.”
 

“I’m strong,” I said.
 

He laughed but didn’t reply. Then he pointed to his pack. “Can you lift this, little doll?” The pack was as heavy as a hundred big rocks. I couldn’t budge it. “I know women your age who could pick that pack up with one hand,” he said. “I speak seriously. Don’t overestimate yourself, or underestimate yourself either. You’ve been lucky so far, but if I’m going to travel with you, you must see things for what they are. Otherwise it will all become a nuisance to me.”
 

“Ah, the frankness again. I guess that’s supposed to mean you love me.”
 

He laughed again. “As I said, don’t overestimate yourself.”
 

“I might say the same to you.”
 

He studied me for a moment before taking my face in his firm hands and kissing me: my closed eyes, my cheeks, my temples, and my lips. His strong hands held a gentleness that even my parents had never shown me. And with those strong hands and gentle kisses I knew he now controlled me more than my parents and all the rituals of Bakshami ever had. When he finished kissing me I took a stunned step back and fell over my pack to the floor. He pulled me up and shook his head. “How do you expect to breed with anyone if you act like that?”
 

I shot him a look that returned his arrogance. “Naturally, my mother has told me how to breed. Do you think I’m a child?”
 

He laughed. “Everybody breeds, even the fools,” he said. “But I can assure you, their mothers aren’t there at the time.”
 

“Than how do they know what to do?”
 

He laughed again. “At least I won’t be wanting for amusement on this trip.”
 

We loaded up the dogs, and he went into his weapons room to decide what to take. When he came out his jacket bulged slightly and his face was hard with the decisions he had made in his roomful of weapons.
 

I felt scared. “Who are you expecting to meet? You said you preferred a knife.”
 

“I do prefer knives, but others may not.”
 

Somehow, as we passed through the door, I felt certain that his father lay awake in his room, knowing for only the second time in his life what it meant when a hard heart broke. That was something my mother once had told me about. “Keep your heart soft,” she said. “It will break more often than a hard one, but each break will mend after a fashion. Once broken, a hard heart never mends.” Because she was a practical woman, she’d spoken not philosophically but with mild sternness and the air of one teaching a simple fact of life. And then I realized that I had not thought of my parents all day, the longest that I hadn’t thought of them since we parted at the lake.
 

The lamps pinged against the doorways, seeming to announce that all was well inside, and visitors welcome. I was not a visitor, I was a foreigner. But the village was lovely!
 

“Let’s stay just one more day,” I said. In his wavering eyes I saw that I held power over him, too, just as he held power over me. I leaned toward him. “One more day, please! I’ve traveled so long.”
 

“It isn’t possible.”
 

“Make it possible.”
 

“I cannot change the laws.”
 

“Tell your friends to let you. Would they do that for you?”
 

“No doubt.”
 

He relented as easily as that, and when the others left we were not with them.
 

The day passed quickly, as Moor showed me more about knives and we cooked ever more delicious meals. I enjoyed sitting with his sick father, as I had not had a father myself in so long. As soon as night fell, Moor said we must leave, and this time he didn’t listen to my entreaties to stay. He’d decided we must now leave at night, since we had broken the integration laws and mustn’t be caught.
 

So we moved with stealth through the forest that half a day earlier we could have passed through openly. I don’t know how much time passed as we hurried through the forest. Because of our urgency, time passed differently among those trees. I could see, hear, smell, and think twice as much now as I ever could in the same amount of time. After a while I also felt I could sense Moor’s soul so well that I was no longer following nor he leading. Instead we moved like two arrows shot from the same bow.
 

The cool air on my face exhilarated me, and the sense of shared perception with Moor, the sense of moving with such skill toward the same target, thrilled me. As soon as I had these thoughts, I regretted them and promptly tripped on a stone. Moor seemed to be turning to pick me up almost before I’d begun my fall. He righted me, whispered “Watch out” so that his warm breath comforted my cheek, and resumed his course all in one smooth flow, like the movements of a dance ritual.
 

After that my skill returned but seemed to require greater concentration than before so that my mind grew more tired than my body. Moor pushed on. He saw my fatigue, however, and sat with me on a fallen log. Feeling his arm around me, and feeling just as clearly his protective alertness, I felt both comforted and as if I were failing him—after all, I’d vowed to myself that it was I who needed to protect him.
 

At one point he paused, and though I could hardly see his form in the dark forest, I thought he held up his hand to silence me. I could feel him listening, feel him gazing into the distance with his sharp eyes. “They’ll have guards patrolling the forest tonight as no one is scheduled to be leaving. A friend of mine is stationed here. He got promoted recently,” he added proudly. He paused. “That would have been my life eventually.”