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

blessing—even Abel, who supposedly could not benefit from the recitation of an aisautseb prayer. Afterward, the silver-eyed priest spoke softly to Pors and Douin, excluding Abel and punctuating his advice with vigorous nods and shakings of the head. At last, quite audibly, he cried, “You are my hawks, the hawks of Aisaut. Go forth with truth and courage.
    “Aye, my hawks, go forth!”

    “He had no hands,” Seth said as Douin led Abel and him back down the steps of the palace toward the teeming square. Sunfall was imminent, and Gla Taunt—perversely, it still seemed to Seth—oozed down the eastern sky like an egg yolk sliding through its white.
    “A traditional aisautseb practice,” Douin said. “The holy one who keeps a place at Kieri court sacrifices his hands for the honor. He becomes the conscience of the nation. His handlessness signifies that he neither gives nor takes, for his domain is spiritual rather than worldly.”
    “He gave me the dairauddes.”
    “A spiritual gift, Master Seth, itself to be passed on to another.”
    “When did Chappouib lose his hands?” Abel asked.
    “The day Lady Turshebsel officially restored the aisautseb advisorship abolished thirty-seven years ago. Chappouib was chosen by his fellows, and gladly relinquished his hands to the sword.”
    “Barbaric,” Abel said. “Barbaric superstition.”
    Douin halted at the entrance to the square, his dark eyes flashing. “I agree.” His tone suggested that some doubt still plagued him. “It’s the sort of thing Lady Turshebsel fought successfully until the arrival of Interstel, Ommundi, and your isosire.”
    This veiled accusation was as close to rudeness as Clefrabbes Douin had ever come in his dealings with the Latimer isohets, but Seth sympathized with their host’s point of view. Their presence on the planet had been an irritant and a provocation, and now they were preparing to travel somewhere else, on a mission for which Seth could summon little enthusiasm.
    “Barbaric,” Abel repeated.
    Now Douin held his tongue.
    And Seth, looking toward their host’s stately geffide, saw a marketplace filled with bobbing tinfoil balloons. Even in the gathering twilight, the lofty dagger shaft on which Latimer had died, the Kieri Obelisk, pierced him to the heart. As for the dairauddes about his neck, it mocked him: Seth was sure of it.

THREE
    The cabin’s blackness was riven by a scream . Although Seth had been having a nightmare (a succession of blurred images underlain by an impalpable distress), the cry was not his.
    “Dear God!” Abel was pleading. “Dear God, don’t let them put their hands on me! ”The plea soared into a bloodcurdling falsetto that seemed incisive enough to split the hull of their light-tripper and let the void spill in.
    Seth pressed a button. Their cabin was filled with a soft, Earthlike twilight. His isohet, clad only in a pair of nylon sleep trousers, had scooted across his bunk so that his naked back met the bulkhead and pressed insistently against it. His pupils were fat, black suns.
    “I’m here,” Seth said, lowering himself onto the foot of Abel’s bunk. “I’m here. We’re aboard the Dharmakaya, five days out from Gla Taus on our way to the Anja system.”
    Abel’s pupils collapsed spectacularly, drinking in the reality of the cabin. Seth reached out and gripped his isohet’s ankle. He saw that Abel was finally focusing on him—but his flaccid torso ran with sweat, and his hair was plastered to his face as if he had just returned from a shower.
    “Again?” Seth asked.
    “They were preparing me for the obelisk,” Abel responded. “A rope hung down from its highest grate, and the aisautseb were moving in, moving in to . . . to disrobe me.”
    “They didn’t get you tonight, then?”
    Abel fixed Seth with an outraged, uncomprehending stare. “He was our isosire, Seth, and I’m your brother. How do you remain immune to what happened to him, immune to my suffering of what he