Dragons on the Sea of Night by Eric Van Lustbader Page B

indeed, are the eldest son of the Annai-Nin then you have a legitimate right to know.’
    â€˜Shall I take you through the villa?’ Moichi asked. ‘Shall I show you where my brother Jesah and I hid when we were eight and our father was blind with rage at what we had done? Shall I show you where I found my sister Sanda sitting and crying over a bone she broke in her left wrist? Shall I show you the spot where my mother is buried? And my father?’
    The tall officer nodded. ‘All this and more you shall show me. As much as I ask of you.’
    â€˜Let us go, then, so we may walk unbound through the villa of my family.’
    After a moment, the officer nodded. ‘This much I can do. But my men will accompany us with weapons drawn.’
    â€˜It is a sacrilege to draw weapons on chaat.’
    The officer shrugged, held out a hand to indicate that Moichi should lead the way.
    They went slowly through the villa of the Annai-Nin, and at every turn shadows and ghosts assailed Moichi. Memories, long buried beneath carefully woven cobwebs, reappeared, thrusting their snouts rudely into his consciousness. He saw himself again as a child, the dour, lanky Jesah, the beautiful blue-eyed Sanda, and everywhere the world of the Annai-Nin as it had been – his father’s world, full of prestige and accolades, riches beyond a child’s limited scope of understanding. The parade of dinner guests from the worlds of politics, philosophy and religion had been endless, then, with lavish, glittering parties each week welcoming the most famous into the sumptuous villa of the Annai-Nin. It was a world against which Jesah had chosen to rebel. The great successes of their father in business meant nothing to him, the contacts Jud’ae had managed to forge, the respect he had labored to build with the peoples of the continent of man across the sea, had no meaning for him. He had early come under the spell of the fanatic Fe’edjinn, finding in their strict interpretation of the Tablets of the Iskamen, their obsession to avenge themselves on the Adenese, a lightning rod for his own inner rage.
    Had he and Moichi ever found reason to offer one another a kind word or even the most rudimentary sign of affection? Hadn’t they hidden together in this spot behind the larder that Moichi was now showing to the Fe’edjinn officer? And hadn’t they fought each other bloody in the blackness of the hidey-hole?
    Better by far to recall Sanda and how she’d cling to his waist, how he protected her from the bullies at school, how he taught her the fundamentals of religion – how to interpret the sacred scriptures writ on the Tablets that had been brought down from the summit of that holiest place of the Iskamen, the Mountain Sin’hai.
    But it was impossible to get away from Jesah’s treachery for long. Dark, snakelike memories continued to intrude into his consciousness. Hadn’t it been Jesah who had abandoned the family, leaving for the Fe’edjinn boot camps in the wilds of the sere Mu’ad wastes? Yes, but it had been Moichi who had been berated by Jud’ae and Sanda for taking to the seas, for forsaking not only the Annai-Nin but all of Iskael.
    â€˜For my part, I can never forgive you,’ Jud’ae had said only months before his death. ‘As eldest, you have a sacred responsibility to me and to the family. Who will run the business after I am gone? Jesah? He has only blood-lust in his eyes. Sanda? She is a woman. Soon she will marry, yes, but I will not take a stranger into my confidence. Blood is blood, Moichi. You of all people must know this and abide by the covenants.’
    What Sanda thought of all this Moichi did not know. She had been witness to his humiliation, but her silence had been absolute.
    It had been dark two hours by the time Moichi completed his tour to the satisfaction of the Fe’edjinn officer. At that point, the officer dismissed his men to other