by Tanith Lee
Raldnor said nothing. As once before, a terror of betrayal came on him. Then it had been the woman in the market at Abissa, but fear had found him more expectedly, and so less painfully, at that time—the physical change he had wrought on himself being still new. He saw now that in the three months of the snow he had come to think of himself as a Xarabian, and as a Vis, despite the subterfuge of the dye. True, he had nursed the old hatred for Amrek, but that had become an almost abstract thing, an emotion sufficient unto itself, a reason no longer essential. Even when she came to him in dreams, and he woke sweating on the couches of the whores, thinking himself once again in the Pleasure City, the agony of despair beginning in his skull, the focus of Anici’s death was dissociated from race. Could not a Xarabian love a Lowland girl and lose her to a monstrous perverted King? It had bitterly pleased him to study the ways of the Am Dorthar, to read their legends, and somewhere in this morass of beliefs, he had mislaid the pure monotheism of the Plains. It had been easy, in the end, to swear by gods and not by Her, the Lady of Snakes, who asked for nothing, being all.
And now this girl in her rags, a figment of his lost unhappy past, conjured to torment him with remembrance.
She returned and set cups and a stone jug on the table, and then took their payment in her chapped hands. Raldnor turned away, but even when she had gone the room seemed full of her.
Yannul gave him a brimming cup, and they gulped the raw strong drink. He noticed the Lan’s eyes on him.
“Finish your wine. This is a gloomy place, and there’s a love house five doors up,” Yannul said.
There was a sudden noise outside which did not somehow belong in these streets. The door burst open and the fire leapt.
Six men entered. They wore the black tunics and black hooded cloaks that were the casual wear of the Storm Lord’s Dragon Guard, and worked in silver upon breast and back was Amrek’s lightning blazon. They cast half looks at the house’s earlier customers, discounting them as of no importance. Kathaos’s badge was ignored. One of them spoke in a low voice. They laughed.
“A strange haunt for Amrek’s Chosen,” Yannul said softly. “Why here?”
The dragons had sat down at a trestle and, disdaining the bell, began to beat with their mailed fists on the table top.
“Let’s go,” Yannul said.
But Raldnor found he could not move. He sat like stone, staring at the inner doorway, and a moment later the Lowland girl came. She walked quietly toward the noisy table, as though unaware of any enmity in the world.
Silence fell at once. The Dragon Guard sat, their eyes riveted on her. One of them, the tallest, eased back his hood.
“Wine, little girl. And make sure you bring it yourself.”
Expressionless, the girl turned and went away. A dragon laughed.
“Spawn of the snake goddess. So the rumor was correct.”
Raldnor felt Yannul grip his shoulder.
“Let’s be on our way.”
“Wait,” Raldnor said and set down his cup; the blood thudded in his temples, and a taste of dry bone was in his mouth.
The girl came back shortly, a jug in the crook of her arm, cups caught by their stems between her fingers. She poured their wine, then stood waiting for payment.
After a while a dragon looked round at her.
“What do you want, girl?”
One of his companions leaned forward.
“She’s demanding money.”
“Money for what? For the wine?” He drained his cup and held it out to her, empty. “See, you didn’t give me any.”
A slow cold laughter circled the table.
The girl turned, presumably to go in search of the proprietor. The dragon swiftly caught her, swung her about and pushed her against the trestle.
“If you want money, little girl, you’ll have to earn it. Yes, struggle all you want. You won’t get away. Besides, you struggle very nicely.” Holding her easily with one arm, he pealed open the bodice of her dress, revealing the beautiful yet immature breasts of barely quickened puberty. “I’ve heard all you Lowland bitches are virgin. I’ve never had a virgin. How do you think that’ll compensate for the wine you never poured me, you slut?”
But something like a vise caught his shoulder and dragged him round from the girl with a force that utterly surprised him. Next came a blow of darkness in his throat and for a time the world stopped spinning. He fell across the table and was still.
The other five stared at this tall, light-eyed house guard of Kathaos Am Alisaar, who could not be anything but insane.
“Foolish,” one said, but he was smiling.
They began circling, two to get behind him, three content to wait on his capture. Raldnor understood very well that he had given them the right to kill him, but he was indeed mad, in a way. Like them, he felt a strange joy at the prospect of violence, and the big men were dwarfed by his mood—a pack he could toss off his back like beans. Then there was a yell from behind him. Yannul, it seemed, had joined the fight.
Raldnor snatched the wine jug from the table and flung the liquor in the nearest dragon’s face, leaving the two behind him for the Lan. As the man cursed and clawed his eyes, Raldnor sprang, knocking his legs from under him and sending him crashing into his neighbor. Rolling clear of the struggling heap, he brought his fist into cracking connection with a gaping jaw and kicked the other deftly with a light yet almost deadly accuracy over the heart. In the background he heard the blows of the Lan’s own iron juggler’s knuckles, and to this continuing music the third Guard slung himself against Raldnor, a short knife blazing in his hand. But he met Raldnor’s foot before his body, and next got a concussion in his guts that sent him retching and reeling to the ground. The handy stone wine jug added the finishing touch, and his knife fell harmlessly on the flags.
Raldnor turned with an irrepressible brutal laughter.
“Ryhgon taught us our trade immaculately,” he called to Yannul. “A harsh but an excellent master.”
Then he looked fully at the second Guard the Lan had felled and saw from the angle of him that his neck was broken.
Yannul stood staring at the body, his face pale.
“He’s dead, Raldnor. I wasn’t as elegant as you.”
“The blame’s mine,” Raldnor said sharply. “My fight. You came to help me.” Yet a dark and dismal quiet had settled in that place. Who knew better than he that death was promised to any who killed one of the Storm Lord’s Chosen? It had been Dortharian law for a thousand years or more. But he took Yannul’s arm. “Out of here. Who saw?”
“She did.”
Raldnor turned and noted the Lowland girl standing motionless at the grate.
“She won’t tell any tales.” Harshly he shouted out to her: “Go back to the Plains before they eat you alive in this stinking city.”
But her golden eyes stared blind as stones into his, though he felt a curious fluttering like a bird in his brain. He turned, put his arm over Yannul’s shoulders and drew him out into the cold and empty streets.
• • •
“Well Ryhgon, what is this so urgent news?”
“Your pardon, my lord. There’s been a brawl in Lin Abissa. The Storm Lord’s Guard. And two of my men. One of the dragons is dead.”
Kathaos’s face was blank.
“You have this on good authority?”
“Would I accept it otherwise? The owner of the wine shop reported the incident. A sniveling sot, frightened of what would be done to him, spying behind a curtain. He described your guard—the Lannic acrobat was one. The other—a pale-eyed man, missing a left finger.”
“The . . . Sarite. Is he the killer?”
“I don’t know as yet, my lord.”
“Discover. What began the trouble?”
“The Xarab fool who runs the shop keeps a Lowland mare as a slave. The dragons were unlacing.
The Lan and the Sarite were pleased to take exception to rape.”
“Something you find hard to believe,” Kathaos remarked.
Ryhgon said: “You know my views on women, my lord.”
“Her race is at present more interesting than her sex. How many Vis defend Lowlanders with Amrek here?”
“Xarabs and Lans have soft ways for the Plains.”
“Yet our hunter may not be Xarabian, as we discussed before. Where have you put the two?”
“A cellar room below the palace.”
“Let them sample a night there. Bring me the hunter here at noon tomorrow. Find out what you can between now and then, but restrain your arm. Is there any word from Amrek?”
“None.”
“As well. But not illogical. No doubt he would dislike the incident widely broadcast. The Guard of Kings, after all, is supposed to be invincible, and myth should never be reduced to a mere technicality.”
• • •
After the darkness of the cellarways, the midday light in the upper rooms of the mansion hurt his eyes. His guards had left him in a small bright chamber, unbound, and presently Kathaos entered.
It was the first time Raldnor had come close to him, this man who had owned him through these three months of hard-bought living. Ryhgon had been the harsh symbol; here stood the actuality. A well-controlled face, blood lines too mixed to give him any hint of his royalty beyond the finecast good looks.
He seated himself and observed Raldnor with an unfathomable expression that might have been the mask for anything and was almost unarguably the mask for something.
“Well, Sarite, what have you got to say to me?”
“Whatever you want me to say, my lord, to amend my fault.”
“An elegant speech won’t mend anything, Sarite, I assure you. Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve offended the King. Of all men, the Storm Lord’s Dragon Guard can do as they please; their rights are second only to his. And you, hunter, have hung them up by the heels. Not a good thing to do.”
“Your lordship is, I believe, aware of my reasons.”
“Some wine girl . . .”
“Little more than a child, my lord. They’d have killed her.”
“She was a Lowlander. The King tells us Lowlanders are of no importance.”
“A child—” Raldnor broke out.
“Instruct me,” Kathaos said, and his voice had grown harder, “which of you broke the dragon’s neck?”
“It was my pleasure.”
“Your pleasure. Why kill this one man and leave the rest alive?”
“He was their leader.”
“He was not.” Kathaos paused deliberately. “The shopkeeper saw the Lan catch the guard’s neck in his hands and break it like a fowl’s.”
Raldnor did not speak. At last Kathaos said: “You extend your altruism too far, and anything stretched too far loses its edge. Nevertheless, I am not going to make you the meat for Amrek’s anger. Yannul the Lan will do well enough for that. Ryhgon will see that he’s punished for his offense. You will shortly receive a pardon.”
Raldnor stared at him.
“Punish me too. The fight was mine.”
Kathaos lifted and rang the small bell at his elbow. Doors opened and guards reentered.
An empty disdain shook the last dregs of hope out of Raldnor. Buried in his own guilt for Yannul, he ignored what Kathaos offered him, finding it valueless.
“I thank your lordship,” he said quietly, “for this impartial justice.”
It was enough to hang him, but did not. The guards merely marched him back to his dungeon, from which Yannul was gone.
Yet Kathaos sat on in the upper room for some while. The whole episode had seemed curious; who knew what lay behind it? From the first he had considered it best not to thrust the man in the path of royal fury. That would be to force Amrek’s hand, and if the Sarite were a spy, then he would only, at some future time, be replaced by another, less detectable one. As things stood, he had become a sort of game piece between the King and his Councilor, and there might be uses for him later.
“And I was not mistaken,” Kathaos now thought. “This naïve fighting cock is one of the princes of Koramvis.”
It was the sudden icy gust of imperial arrogance that had convinced him. A fool might be stupid enough to spit in his lord’s eye, as Raldnor had done, yet not with that aura of incredible assurance and contempt. Kathaos knew that look very well. He had endured it from his earliest conscious hours. That look had, in part, been the foundation of his lifestyle, and now, coming unexpectedly as it did from the eyes of a man who should by rights have been pleading for his life, it had breached all defenses. And Kathaos Am Alisaar had inwardly cringed, a fact that interested rather than distressed him.
• • •
The night passed in a black fever as Raldnor paced his prison, half mad with anger. More guilt. Had there not been enough guilt for him to bear? The rat thoughts scuttled and gnawed.
In the morning he woke out of a stupefied sleep and saw the iron door left open for him.
He climbed the stairways up into the light. He passed guards and servants with blank faces. In an upper corridor he saw one of the barrack whores, a pretty sloven, who normally liked him well enough. But when he caught her arm and asked her: “Do you know where Yannul is?” she shook her head and hurried off.
In the dormitory he and Yannul used he found a man untidily penning a letter, who looked up immediately and said: “You’ve heard how Yannul was punished?”
“No. You’d better tell me.”
“He was a fool to set on the Chosen. So were you to follow him. You can take friendship too far.”
So that was the story Kathaos had put about. Raldnor let the man’s meddling, worthless advice go by like so much chaff on the wind.
“Yannul’s punishment,” he reminded harshly.
The man shook his head.
“That bastard Ryhgon had him dragged into the hall and had them hold his right hand up against the chimney column. Then he took a cibba staff and smashed it across the back. Must’ve broken every bone. That’s Zakorian justice for you.”
“Ryhgon,” Raldnor said very softly. That was all. Then: “Where’s Yannul now?”
“The gods know. Not here, that’s for sure. What will you do?” the soldier added curiously. Raldnor knew him well enough for a gossip.
“I? What can I do?”
• • •
All that day the anger mangled him. The pivot of the anger—Yannul—became a secondary thing. Though he did not analyze this, part of him knew why he no longer sought the Lan or asked questions as to his whereabouts. Yet he had no thoughts beyond his anger. He was quite absorbed in it.
Evening came, and the evening meal at the long tables.
“Look out for yourself, Raldnor,” a Xarabian muttered to him. “My gods tell me Ryhgon hasn’t quite finished with you.”
“My gods tell me things too,” Raldnor said.
Another man glanced his way and said: “I see no justice in breaking a man’s right hand so he can do nothing to make himself a living. A juggler, wasn’t he? He’ll juggle nothing now.”
A sudden thick quiet fell. Ryhgon, a latecomer, had just entered the hall, his officers about him. He did not sit at once, but struck the bell by his place, and the last vestiges of chat and stirring died out in the room.
“I’ve something to say to you. I don’t doubt you know two men here saw fit to cross Amrek’s Dragon Guard. That they live is due to the mercy of the Lord Kathaos and the present good humor of the King. The Lan was punished. The Sarite, as you see, received his pardon. My lord the prince chooses to be lenient with fools, but you’ve all had fair warning before of my dislike of foolishness. You can thank your gods, Raldnor of Sar, that I too am in a pleasant humor. And in future, Sarite, you’
ll work twice as hard and watch your manners twice as carefully as any other man here. Am I understood?”
The hush of the room was intolerable. A sense of impending drama had come on it at the last instant, and the eyes of every soldier present were fixed on Raldnor as he sat at the end of the bench. Not turning yet, he got to his feet. His face was quite unreadable, but he reached and picked up the great meat knife off the board, and a hiss went up from the hall as if from icy water thrown on burning tiles.
He turned then and walked up the room toward Ryhgon’s table.
“Put that back, Sarite,” Ryhgon said.
“Give me back my knife then, Zakorian.”
“You’ll get your knife when the prince Kathaos thinks fit.”
“Then I’ll make do with this. Or would you feel safer if you used a staff on my hand first?”
Ryhgon gave an ugly grin.
“You seem over-touchy at the punishment I gave the Lan. I wonder if there was more between you than friendship?” The Guard Lord turned, silently ordering laughter from the crowded benches. Few men laughed, and the mirth that came was false, dry and isolated.
“Words, Zakorian,” Raldnor said and, halting a yard or so away, he addressed the jagged point of the meat knife to Ryhgon’s breast. “Are you only going to offer me words? You once promised to accommodate quarrels. I’ve a quarrel, Guard Lord. Accommodate me.”
Ryhgon’s huge perversion of a right arm moved slowly until the great hand found the sword hilt. The action should have been enough.
“I’ll accommodate you, Sarite. Throw down your toy and I’ll give you a taste of thong. I think you’ll like it better than what I have here.”
He saw the movement in the air and swung to avoid it, but he had expected nothing and so was sluggish. The edge of Raldnor’s butcher’s blade caught the Zakorian’s unscarred cheek, and blood ran bright.
In that instant Raldnor knew death was as near as Ryhgon himself, but such was the madness on him that he welcomed it, for he could outwit death as skillfully as he had outwitted the Vis.