BROTHERS OF EARTH. C. J. Cherryh

She was not like Djan, familiar and human and wielding

power like a general. Ylith was a methi as the office must have been: a goddess-on-earth, doing things for a goddess’ reasons and with amoral morality, creating truth.

Rewriting things as they should be.

He felt an awe of her that he had felt of nothing mortal, believed indeed that she could erase the both of them as if they had never been. He had been within the Rhmei of Man, had been beside the fire-the skin on his arms was still painful. When Ylith spoke to him he felt the roaring silence of that fire drowning him.

He was fevered. He was fatigued. He saw the signs in himself, and feared instead his own weakness.

“Kta would be valuable to you,” he said, “even unwilling.” He felt guilty, knowing Kta’s stubborn pride. “Elas was the victim of one methi; it would impress Nephane’s families if another methi showed him mercy.”

“You have a certain logic on your side. And what of you? What shall I do with you?”

“I am willing to live,” he said.

She smiled that goddess-smile at him, her eyes alone alive. “You existence is a trouble, but if I am rid of you, it will not solve matters. You would still have existed. What should I write at your death? That this day we destroyed a creature which could not possibly exist, and so restored order to the universe?”

“Some,” he said, “are urging you to do that.”

She leaned back, curling her bejeweled fingers about the carved fishes of the chair arms. “If, on the other hand, we admit you exist, then where do you exist? We have always despised the Sufaki for accepting humans and nemet as one state; herein began the heresies with which they pervert pure religion, heresies which we will not tolerate.”

“Will you kill them? That will not change them.”

“Heresy may not live. If we believed otherwise, we should deny our own religion.”

“They have not crossed the sea to trouble you.”

Ylith’s hand came down sharply on the chair arm. “You are treading near the brink, human.”

Kurt bowed his head.

“You are ignorant,” she said. “This is understandable. I know of report that Djan-methi is… highly approachable. I have warned you before. I am not as she is.”

“I ask you… to listen. Just for a moment, to listen.”

“First convince me that you are wise in nemet affairs.”

He bowed his head once more, unwilling to dispute with her to no advantage.

“What,” she said after a moment, “would you have to say that is worth my time? You have my attention, briefly. Speak.”

“Methi,” he said quietly, “what I would have said, were

answers to questions your priests did not know how to ask

me. My people are very old now, thousands and thousands

of years of mistakes behind us that you do not have to

make. But maybe I am wrong, maybe it is what you call

yhia, that I have intruded where I have no business to be

and you will not listen because you cannot listen. But I

could tell you more than you want to hear; I could tell you

the future, where your precious little war with Nephane

could lead you. I could tell you that my native world does

not exist any longer, that Djan’s does not, all for a war

grown so large and so long that it ruins whole worlds as

yours sinks ships.” /

“You blaspheme!”

He had begun; she wished him silent. He poured out what he had to say in a rush, though guards ran for him.

“If you kill every last Sufaki you will still find differences to fight over. You will run out of people on this earth before you run out of differences. Methi, listen to me! You know-if you have any sense you know what I am telling you. You can listen to me or you can do the whole thing over again, and your descendants will be sitting where I am.”

Lhe had him, dragged him backward, trying to force him to stand. Ylith was on her feet, beside her chair.

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