The three green-liveried rhu xian made themselves comfortable in the sitting room, taking a tea table by the massive glass window overlooking the city and the valley. I made myself comfortable on a cushion in the corner, out of everyone’s way but where I could look out the window.
I had been a child the first time that I had come to Ghol Vidar. It had been impressive enough, then, with no memory of anything but the cold of winter wilderness and the warmth of the hierapolis to which my adoptive mother had brought me and thus no frame of reference. It was, after all, a three-thousand-year-old city carved into and out from the face of a mountain. Coming as an adult, with some notion of what was required to make or maintain such a thing, it was mind-boggling. The meticulous planning, the material and magical effort, the thousands of sorcerers and the uncountable laborers, applied over centuries upon centuries. And, yes, the blood and the suffering. The laborers had been slaves, then. Had there been elves and dwarves alongside the Jor? I knew when and how they had left the Holy Empire, but not when or how they had come.
My vantage also gave me a view of the room, and the door through which our host would come. Elana and Rennin took seats at a game table on the wood-paneled wall. Khanaarre took a cushion not far from them, but opposite where I sat. The distance from me might have been deliberate, or it might just have been the best of the remaining seats in the room.
Tea was served, and an assortment of small pastries, brought by a pair of cyclops in the same blue and white livery as the freemen had worn. Unlike most of the sien xian who served in rhu xian houses, these neither shaved their heads nor wore their hair in braids down their backs; instead, they wore it loose and long. Our escorts made polite conversation about the tea, pointedly in the language of the Compact, which it appeared that they all spoke with different levels of magically augmented fluency. I joined the tea-talk reflexively – our months in my homeland awakening instincts that I had forgotten that I had ever possessed.
Our host made their appearance a moment after the tea service was cleared. They were of middling height, for a rhu xian – a finger’s breadth taller than Khanaarre, not so tall as I. Their skin was the color of aged bronze, and their three eyes dark verdigris. They were dressed in sorcerer’s coat and pants, all in white, with blue floral and geometric designs embroidered about their chest. Limping into the room with the aid of an elaborately carved cane, they paused to look us all over.
“Good afternoon,” they said in the giants’ tongue. I rose from my seat and continued the charade that I needed to translate for them. I knew that some we had dealt with had suspected the ruse, but – as far as I had ever been able to determine – only Darjaran had ever actually known. “I am exile Vol Mak Khan, and it is my pleasure to open my home to the archons’ guests for the duration of your stay in Ghol Vidar.”
My companions all stood, as well – polite, but not strictly necessary. Our green-draped escort stood, as well.
“Your honors,” our host went on, bowing their head low. “I am flattered beyond words to have you in my home.”
“The archons are grateful to you for offering your house as embassy,” the leader – whose name I had never gotten – said. “This woman is Her Grace Elana Traiana, prince of the djuunan nation Vencar, her consort Rennin Ösh, and their companions, the sorcerer Khanaarre and the priestess Yma Rinlo of the Stars.”
The titles attributed to Elana were a mish-mash of approximations, none quite right in either tongue, but close enough to convey her dignity. ‘Sorcerer’ was inaccurate, but there was no word in the giant’s tongue for ‘wizard’. Nor for ‘sorceress’, for that matter. I translated. We each bowed as we were introduced. Vol Mak Khan bowed back when we were done.’
“I apologize for leaving you sitting for so long,” Vol Mak Khan said. “I was tending to a patient who required more care than anticipated.”
“Are you a healer,” Elana asked when I finished translating.
“Yes,” they said. “And a doctor.”
They closed their eyes briefly, and seemed to lean heavily on their cane for a moment.
“I am certain that you are tired and hungry, and would like to wash the dirt of the road from your faces. My freemen have taken your things to your rooms, where you will find a light repast and a bath waiting. My seneschal, Shaelodor, will show you the way. Dinner will be in three hours, if you would care to join me. We would all be honored, your honors, if you were inclined to join us, as well.”
“We would be honored and delighted,” I translated for Elana.
“We are inclined,” our escort said. “But sadly have other obligations.”
Vol Mak Khan bowed in response. The three liveried priestesses were clearly higher ranked than I had initially guessed.
“Your grace prince Elana,” said the leader, retreating to the giants’ tongue. “I repeat the archons’ welcome of you and your companions to Ghol Vidar and to the Holy Empire. The archons know that fear of winter has forced you to travel with unseemly and uncomfortable haste. Take time to rest, and to enjoy the considerable hospitality of the exile Vol Mak Khan. We will call upon you in the coming days, and the archons will welcome you more formally then.”
“Thank you, your honors,” I said, then translated for Elana, who thanked them as well. We all bowed to each other, and then the seneschal appeared and led us to our rooms, leaving our host and our escort in the sitting room.
The third floor was devoted entirely to hospitality: five well-appointed guest rooms and a private bath arranged auspiciously around a luxurious common area. Rooms had been chosen for us, based either on conversations had with Elana on the way up the mountain or, more likely, on reports from the other cities we had visited: Elana and Rennin together in one room, Khanaarre and I each lodged in a room to either side.
Elana and Rennin took the first bath. I deferred to Khanaarre for the second.
While I waited for my turn, my mind ran in the same circles that had occupied it since we had left Horran City three days ago. Our journey so far had been a race against the depths of winter, with the archons of the cities we passed through showing us, on the one hand, as much hospitality as our rushed itinerary permitted, and, on the other, as little as they thought they could in case the prince at Ghol Vidar denied us or named us anathema. Now that we were here, we would enjoy the hospitality of the city’s archons even as we petitioned the Prince of the White Steppes for permission to descend the Great Ice Wall and return to the lands of the Compact.
I ran my hand over the stubble where my hair should be. I wished that it were expedient to regrow it. I wished that I were at a place with Khanaarre where I could ask her aid in shaving it. I could ask Rennin, of course – such social grooming was a foundation-stone of Vencari society – but I didn’t want to.
I wished even more desperately that I had taken a greater interest in the politics of the greater empire all those decades ago. I had lived in the Western Reaches, and I knew nothing of the houses that governed the White Steppes. I knew only what I recalled from my distant childhood, and what I had managed to glean from discreet inquiry while we traveled: that the archons of Ghol Vidar ruled the city from the third-highest palace in the city, below the Court of the Prince, who ruled the province, and that below the Acropolis of the Flame. Was emerald green the livery of the archons? Of the prince? Of a local temple? Or the colors of the house that had won the honor of collecting us? I didn’t know. And under the name Yma Rinlo, priestess of the Stars, I could not ask without embarrassing myself and risking my companions.
I didn’t rush my bath, when my turn came, but I did put off properly luxuriating in it until after we had met our host. I shaved my head and face. I oiled my skin and said my prayers. Finally, I donned one of the informal robes that I had been gifted by the archons of Khrigo City and joined my companions in our common room.
“Derrek,” said Elana. They had, apparently, been waiting for me. “Please, tell me again what it means that our host is an exile.”
I nodded. It was an alien concept to the Compact. I knew how poorly it translated, and could guess how critical it might seem that we had been given into the charge of an exile as we begged favors of the prince and archons. I found the teapot and the water urn before I began.
“The rhu xian are near immortals,” I began, making tea for us as I talked. “Like prophets or dragons or demigods. They do not just do magic, they are magic, and that magic takes a toll upon the body. A rhu xian might bear six or eight children in his or her or their lifetime, but those children will be separated by decades, sometimes centuries. In the most mechanical sense, they do so like you or I would, but it is also an act of intense and unreliable magic, and each pregnant rhu xian must make a pilgrimage to the nearest oracle for a prophesy – ideally as soon as the pregnancy known. In many ways, apart from the timing, this is similar to an elf or a Naalar mother consulting an astrologer to interpret the stars at the moment of her child’s birth, or a Handari or Namoran family hiring an auger to predict the sex and health and prospects of their child.”
I poured tea for each of us, sipping to wet my throat before I continued.
“The oracle’s vision tells the mother if the pregnancy is viable, and if child will be a sorcerer or priestess or … something else.” I paused, trying to decide how I could make this more clear than before. “What that something else is may not be clear at the moment of the prophesy, but what is always clear is whether or not that child will be a threat to the Empire. Depending on the threat, an abortion may be called for, or the child may be banished until certain conditions in the prophesy are met. It is in solidarity with those who are exiled and return that all something-else-children are known as exiles.”
I watched my companions’ faces, trying to ascertain if they were following me or not.
“Linguistically, grammatically, the distinction between priestess, sorcerer, and exile parallels the distinctions in the human and elven languages between feminine, masculine, and animate-neuter.” I paused, deciding how complete and indelicate I should be. “It is worth noting that the parallel ends at linguistics. If you for some reason want to know if a particular rhu xian is going to bear children or sire them … well, sometimes you can tell by looking. And, if you can’t, then you’re going to have to either look to very subtle social cues, or to very crassly ask them to fuck you.”
That last won a laugh from everyone.
“How’s that last worked out for you so far?” Elena joked.
“Never had an opportunity,” I admitted on a whim. “I left the Holy Empire before I was of an age that any rhu xian would consider me a consenting adult, regardless of the reality of my human body. And, again, the rhu xian are not particularly sexual creatures, though many sorcerers are intensely sensory-seeking. If you’re looking for a foreign affair in the Holy Empire, your best odds are with a cyclops.”
“Speaking from experience?” Rennin asked, to my surprise. “Or warning us about your plans for the winter?”
I should have anticipated that question. So I laughed, and I confessed to this, as well.
“My first love was a hand named Chi Inaa,” I said. “She served the priestesses of the temple where I was raised, and was training to be xian g`ul. She is the only person who has ever made me feel so small and so safe at the same time.”
My companions laughed again, and I took a moment to remember her. She would have been sworn and bound to a priestess by now. I wondered if she ever thought of me, and if she had ever been able to fulfil her own dreams of travel and adventure.
“What are the xian g`ul,” Elana asked. “When I first heard the word, I thought it was something like seneschal, but the translation spell slides around it, and not every household we have met has had one.”
I was honestly surprised that no one had asked before.
“The xian g`ul are cyclops mystics and warriors,” I said, “who dedicate their lives to serving and protecting a single priestess instead of a temple or house or city as a whole.”
That was less than a quarter of it. It was a soul-bond between mortal and near-immortal, who everafter shared their thoughts and feelings almost as a single being, making the mortal partner nigh indestructible and granting the immortal access to the senses of the mortal. In theory any rhu xian could form the bond with any kind of mortal creature – albeit one, and only one, in a lifetime – and had done so in the ancient days. Cyclops and Jor, elves and dwarves, even barely sentient drakes and gryphons. Now it was a privilege reserved by custom to the highest-ranking priestesses of any house or temple, and reserved by law for the cyclopean sien xian. Before I could decide how much of that to share with my companions, a liveried cyclops appeared in the stairs to inform us that dinner was served.
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