A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire by Michael Bishop Read Free Book Online

decline my appointment, the Dharmakaya stays in orbit and you and Master Abel remain our guests. Narthaimnar Chappouib and his fellow priests have approved this mission as well as the reward attendant upon your coming home to Gla Taus.” She nodded to suggest that Narthaimnar Chappouib was her silver-eyed advisor, confirming Seth’s suspicions about the man’s influence.
    “Gla Taus isn’t our home,” he said, “and the Dharmakaya is already ours.”
    “He agrees,” Abel interjected. “He accepts your appointment as envoy to the nation-cum-world called Trope.”
    “He accepted before he’d heard the whole proposal,” Lady Turshebsel rejoined. “I’d like to hear his opinion now.”
    Lacking certainty that he could do what they wished, Seth hesitated.
    “Tell her!” Abel whispered.
    “I accept your appointment,” Seth heard himself say.
    “Then go to Aisaut Chappouib for a blessing. You’ll depart Gla Taus tomorrow—whereas I will remove to Sket until your return.” She lifted her arms and clapped her hands. A woman entered the laulset, helped Lady Turshebsel from the water, and draped her cloak over her shoulders. Wet, the fine black hair covering the Liege Mistress’s body lay along her limbs and flanks like a delicate fur.
    When the two women were gone, Clefrabbes Douin assisted Seth from the pool and pointed him toward the unblinking priest.
    “My garments?”
    “Not yet,” Douin said. “Go to the aisautseb.”
    Seth walked naked past Lord Pors and halted before the priest’s tiled throne.
    “Kneel,” said Narthaimnar Chappouib.
    Seth lowered himself to the cold tiles, knees aching with the hardness under them, his flesh crawling with a variety of unnamable chills. He was kneeling, naked, before one of those who had helped slay his isosire. As Latimer had gone naked up the side of the tower in Mirrimsagset Square. . . .
    “You will carry a gift to the ruler to whom Lady Turshebsel sends you as envoy,” the priest said. “This will be my blessing, for you have no belief in aisautseb prayers. In any case, your nature is such that they would have no meaning.” Chappouib looked about for someone to command. “Master Douin, would you assist me?”
    Douin came forward and freed from the inside of the aisautseb’s collar a chain on which was strung a dairauddes, a tube of black ceramic as long as Seth’s hand from wrist to middle fingertip.
    “Give it to me,” Chappouib said.
    Douin held the dairauddes out to the priest; and Seth was taken aback because when Chappouib reached to take it, lifting his great sleeves so that they fell to his elbows, he accepted the dairauddes with a pair of raw-looking stumps. This aisautseb, like the mythical namesake of all Kieri priests, had no hands.
    The dairauddes dangled between his stumps, threatening to slip away and shatter on the floor. Even so, Chappouib wished to put it around Seth’s neck, and Seth, despite not wanting the thing to touch him, inclined his head to make the transfer easier. He felt instinctively that the ritual had sexual overtones, and these confused and frightened him. Was he being honored by the priest’s gift, or was the transfer a contemptuous mockery of his manhood?
    At last Clefrabbes Douin took the dairauddes from Chappouib and bestowed it on Seth. Now he was wearing a “demon killer,” and to many Kieri—this thought chilled—Seth himself qualified as a demon.
    “Your dairauddes,” Chappouib said, shaking down his sleeves and covering his stumps again, “once belonged to Lady Turshebsel. She forfeited it when she drove the aisautseb from her service. I brought it back. Now she bids me give it to you to bestow on Magistrate Vrai of Trope.”
    Seth waited, bemused.
    “You may depart his presence,” Douin told Seth.
    Seth hurried to do so, retreating toward a young Kieri attendant who had come back into the laulset with his clothes. Dressing, he watched as Abel, Douin, and Pors went forward to receive Chappouib’s