A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire Read Online Free PDF

surprise him. But as Douin led them through the gate, Seth could still see—in his mind’s eye—the central plume dancing eighteen or twenty meters in the air.
    It was a long way—over the wet mosaics surrounding the pool, then across an apron of enormous flagstones—to the palace entrance, and only when they were well beyond the hearing of the guards did Douin speak:
    “Master Seth, did you see Aisaut in the geyser?”
    “Aisaut?”
    “A man of conscience should see the image of Aisaut projected against the palace through the geyser’s dancing. I was wondering if you saw such a thing. I know better than to ask your isohet.”
    “I saw only water,” Seth said. He looked at Abel. The expression on Abel’s face was quick with apprehension and disgust. It seemed to say, Haven’t you the sense to give your host the answer he wants to hear?
    “Nothing else?”
    “No, sir. Only water and sunlight and tiles.”
    Douin’s eyes were cryptically merry. “That’s all I ever see,” he said. “In twenty-three years, that’s all I’ve ever seen.” He led the isohets up a final set of steps and into the Winter Palace.
    Despite its ancient façade—the building supposedly dated to the early days of the legendary Inhodlef Era—the palace was luxuriously appointed within and almost shamefully comfortable. As in Master Douin’s geffide, the interior flagstone flooring was carpeted with a synthetic fabric both durable and eye-pleasing. Here, however, the carpet’s nap was iridescent, dyed cobalt and crimson in an immense cartographic pattern representing the world.
    Seth, who had stood in this anteroom once before, waiting for Latimer to return from an audience with the Liege Mistress, distinctly remembered that on that occasion the pattern in the carpet had depicted stylized figures thieving and juggling—a portrait of people rather than a graph of the globe.
    “Lady Turshebsel has changed the decor,” Seth whispered. For Douin’s benefit, he nodded meaningfully at the carpet.
    Douin was briefly puzzled, then finally comprehending. “Oh, no,” he said. “It’s the same carpet, Master Seth, but a different alignment of its nap. It has four separate designs, this carpet, depending on the direction in which its fibers are brushed. Master Günter was very interested in the process.”
    Abel said, “I prefer walking across it to talking about it.”
    “Very good,” Douin replied. He indicated a tilework archway farther on and led them toward it. There was a sound of gently lapping water from the higher chamber just ahead.
    Seth had never set eyes on Lady Turshebsel, Liege Mistress of Kier. He knew that her people considered her the rightful inheritor of the geffide that was their nation, even though she had won her place not through descent from any previous ruler but instead from the happenstance of a lottery conducted by the aisautseb on the death of her predecessor. She was Liege Mistress, then, not through primogeniture but rather through the influence of patriotic prayer. Only young jauddeb females who obtained menarche on the death day of the last Liege Mistress, and who were residents of the city in which she had died, were eligible for selection. To ensure that no geffide sought to feign a daughter’s eligibility by misrepresenting the advent of her womanhood, the Kieri had long since evolved joyous first-blood festivities encouraging the geffide to proclaim a daughter’s time and to celebrate it before the world. Kieri girls, therefore, were quick to tell their parents of their arrival at menarche so that the news could be spread. A tardy report was almost unheard of, for girls were considerably more likely to err on the impulsive side. Further, to prevent the adults of a geffide from conspiring to place one of their daughters on the Kieri throne, tradition demanded that the family of the new Liege Mistress suffer the confiscation of all its goods and exile to a remote and overwarm area of the