Earthborn by Card Orson Scott

Author:Card, Orson Scott [Card, Orson Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Khideo greeted Ilihiak with an embrace. No, not Ilihiak. Ilihi. A man who was once a king, now insisting that there was nothing extraordinary about him, that he had not been touched by the hand of the Keeper. It seemed so odd, so much like a kind of failure. But not Ilihi's failure, really. More as if the universe itself had failed.

"And how is the-how is your wife?" asked Khideo.

The normal meaningless greetings took only a few moments; they were made all the more brief because Khideo's wife had died many years before, in trying to give birth to their first child. It would have been a boy. The midwife said that the child was so big, like his father, that the head tore her apart passing through the channel of life. Khideo knew then that he had killed his wife, because any child of his would be too large for a woman to bear. The Keeper meant him to be childless; but at least Khideo didn't have to kill any more women trying to defy the Keeper's will. So Ilihi, who knew all this, made no inquiries about family.

"The weight of government rests lightly on you, Khideo."

Khideo laughed. Or meant to laugh. It came out as a dry sound in his throat. He coughed. "I feel my muscles slackening. The soldier I once was is becoming soft and old. I'm drying out from the inside. At least I won't be one of those fat old men. Instead I'll be frail."

"I won't live to see it!"

"I'm older than you, Ilihi; you'll see me dead, I can assure you. A wind will come from the east, a terrible hurricane, and it will blow me up over the mountains and out into the ocean but I'll be so dry that I'll just float there on the surface like a leaf until the sun dries me to powder and I finally dissolve."

Ilihi looked at him with such a strange expression that Khideo had to shove him gently in the shoulder, the way he had done when Ilihi was Nuak's third and least favored son and Khideo took pity on him and taught him what it meant to be a man and a soldier. They had been together the day that Khideo finally had enough. The day he took his vow to kill the king. He had shoved him gently, just like this, and had seen tears come to Ilihi's eyes. Khideo asked him then what was wrong, and Ilihi broke down and wept and told him what Pabulog had been doing to him since he was a little child. "It's been years since he did it last," said Ilihi. "I'm married now. I have a daughter. I thought it was over. But he took me out of my father's presence at breakfast and did it to me again. Two of his guards held me while he did it." Khideo went numb when he heard this. "Your father doesn't know what use Pabulog made of you, does he?" And Ilihi told him, "Of course he knows.

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