_________________________the xiand: introduction - by adire___

They called him Xiand.

It was a filthy term, really. A Wraeththu insult reserved for a beast, a madman, a killer of hara. It was a term originally coined for the Varr, though now it was widely used for anyone that killed his own kind. It was one of the lowest insults one could recieve.

With him, it meant something different.

No one knew his real name. No one knew his tribe. No one knew anything about him, which was, in itself, perplexing. He eluded the Hegemony's most powerful searching magic, though how, they did not know. He could not be that powerful - no single Wraeththu, especially not made instead of born Wraeththu, for none of the surviving first-generation births - save for Swift - were old enough for this yet, could be more powerful than the entire Hegemony's council. No....it was surmised that he was crafty, instead. Alert. He knew how to slip beneath the weaving veils of aruna-enchantment, how to avoid the deft lines and hooks sent out to catch him. He knew how to make himself invisible, only to surface again to leave another body or another slew of bodies behind before vanishing into the ether once more.

What no one could understand was why. Even Thiede, when reached for comment, would only steeple his fingers and look solemn and troubled, until he was left alone. I think he knew more than he let on, but did not see the need to intervene in this matter.

The Xiand did not kill indiscriminately. His were hunted targets, that much was clear, but not the usual type marked for assassination in the lower orders, in the black world spawned by places like the eastern lands. A house-hara one day, nameless, forgotten as soon as he vanished - the next an entire contingent of Varr on their way to slaughter another tribe of "weaker" hara - and the very next, a princeling of a settlement of our Gelaming. Perhaps he would have been ignored, left to help thin out the more barbaric tribes that would have to be dealt with soon anyway, if not for the numbers of the latter. It was decided among the Hegemony that something must be done about him, and soon, before he became a serious threat.

And so they assigned me to search for him.

Myself? My name is Velaxis. Gelaming. Beautiful, of course. Stately. And in bitter truth, little more than a whore. Ah, excuse me - concubine. A gift to the Hegemony. They try to soften it by giving me some of the more important secretarial duties, making me indispensable. But I know what I am. Somehow I keep my pride nonetheless.

Perhaps pride is the only reason that I agreed to this. Perhaps if I succeeded in finding this Xiand, I would be elevated beyond the station of secretary and concubine. Perhaps I would be free to choose my own lovers. Oh, do not think that the Hegemony keep me enslaved; I am free to take aruna with whom I wish, and I am not in truth a slave, but I still answer to their whims. It is not too terrible. Ashmael is quite the skilled lover, if a tad distanced and impersonal, and Chrysm takes delight in being one of the few that can make me laugh. It was he who first told me, as we lay in our own cooling sweat, of the Xiand. But it was Thiede himself who pressed this duty upon my shoulders.

He came to my chamber in Imbrilim like a ghost, wrapped in the gauzes of the diaphanous tent-walls. I do not think anyone else even knew of his arrival, but his presence woke me like a sharp jolt of golden lightning. "Velaxis, " he said as he sat upon the edge of my bed, and smiled like a kindly father. I never had let that smile deceive me. Thiede only appeared when he wanted something, and I knew it could not be what most other hara came to me in the middle of the night for. He was too busy ordering the world to make random visits to random hara for casual aruna.

"You are right, " he said, reading my mind but patting my hand in that paternal way nonetheless. "I have a job for you, Velaxis." The words filled me at once with a sense of honored elation and dread, but I did not speak; few spoke in Thiede's presence, because it was rarely necessary. "You know that there are many that we must watch, both to guide them in the path that will bring them to Immanion and their place in the future of Wraeththu, and to prevent them from taking adverse action." Oh, I knew. I remembered when Terzian first came under scrutiny, and even now catch snatches of conversations discussing Calanthe and Swift's immersion in Forever, and the plans to guide them to Imbrilim. The Gelaming had a destiny for everyone, and so Gelaming eyes were everywhere. Your privacy was not guaranteed until you were safely one of us, and even then it was not a sure thing. I know Thiede still spies on Pellaz. I think it grants him secret amusement.

Either that or our great Aghama is a terrible voyeur.

Are my thoughts too irreverent? It matters not; there is nothing secret from Thiede anyway. And I could see the amusement in his eyes as he regarded me, pausing for a moment before continuing to explain. "You have heard of the Xiand by know, I am sure." The name made a shiver race down my spine, and I clutched my coverlet closer on the balmy night. Deranged killer of Wraeththu. "He is not deranged at all. He knows quite well what he is doing, and why. The task I have for you is to discover that exact same thing."

Now I spoke, sitting up slightly straighter, regarding him in confusion. "But why me? Chrysm has said that the entirety of the Hegemony could not pin him down. Surely I cannot."

"The entirety of the Hegemony does not have the time to spend remaining ever-vigilant for him. You have been relieved of your other duties to give you that time." He saw both of my brows rise, and smiled almost secretively. "Yes. All of your other duties, though I would not advise neglecting your other task entirely, for you will need the power that aruna provides to find him. It will not be an easy task, nor will it be a swift one. But it is yours, and I believe that you can do it." Of course he did. He was Thiede, and he knew the outcome of all things, usually because he planned them. He played us all like pieces on a chessboard. I was merely a bishop, cornering another pawn.

"Not quite the pawn you might think. He is dangerous; he would not be the Xiand if he was not." Another tolerant smile. "Treat him more as a knight or a rook, and be careful that he does not detect you." A flick of Thiede's fingers, and a small mirror appeared in his palm, round and encircled in an ornate framing of scrollworked silver; parlor tricks, but somehow they were still impressive when he performed them. Such was the advantage of power and reputation.

He tilted the mirror towards me, and then I saw it for what it was: a scrying glass. Within was captured a stilled portrait - of a single hara, standing next to a tall, slender black horse and surrounded vaguely by red and yellow, sandrock-strewn landscape that brought to mind the southern areas of Megalithica. He was dressed like a Varr - in sleek black leather, garbing him from neck to toe and strewn with various straps holding various weapons. His arms were bare save for black leather bracers and half-gloves, but what I could see of them matched the entirety of his body - long, smooth, powerful and graceful and wiry, clothed in tawny skin the color of burnished honey and caramel, edged in gold. It was a feline's body, a serpent's body - so many things, so that as I looked at him I saw Varr, Uigenna, Kakkahar, Kalamah, even a touch of Gelaming.

But then my gaze found his eyes, above a mask of black cloth that concealed the lower half of his face, shadowed by a wild shock of night-black hair that, were it not flung and tangled and spiked all over the place, might hang down his back to his hips. His eyes....deep, cutting blue, lit by a strange and cold fire from within; they looked somewhere distant, perhaps surveying the horizon that he had dismounted from his horse to assay. But I felt that they were looking at me nonetheless, and judging me.

And I knew that he was none of those things, and shivered.

"Yes, there is something about him, isn't there." Thiede spoke softly, easing his voice gently into my trance. "This is the only time that we have been able to capture him before he eluded us yet again. No name. No tribe. Nothing. He is only the Xiand, Velaxis. We need to know more."

"I...I will try, " I stammered, forcing myself to wrench my eyes from the image and to Thiede's face; I saw my own reflection in his gaze, saw how pale I was, how drawn. A mere image should not be able to affect me so.

"You will succeed, " he responded, unsmiling this time. I did not know if it was an assurance or a threat. Perhaps it was both. He held my eyes for a few moments that felt like a few minutes, and then stood, looked away. "There is another thing. One other is soon to join him, become his companion. Perhaps he will be the chink in the Xiand's armor that will allow you to find him."

"Thiede...wait." He had been about to leave, and I reached out a pleading hand to him. "What do I do when I find him?'

He smiled, then, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. "What we do with everyone, " he replied. "Bring him here."

He left me there, huddled in my bedding and shivering, with that single photographic image resting at my side, heavy on my bed. I glanced down at it, found those eyes again.

And suddenly, I was jealous of his approaching companion.

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