by Tanith Lee
He went in, past the drawn curtain, and held up the lamp to see.
An indescribable thing hung, half-in, half-out of Zarok’s oven, smoking still. Nearer, crouched by the table, was Medaci, the kitchen girl. Her hands were clutched at her stomach, and her eyes were shut until the new light struck them. She stared at him, then jumped to her feet and ran at the doorway, trying to escape by him into the foyer beyond. When he caught her shoulders, she screamed out, although he had been careful not to hurt her. After a second her eyes cleared. She seemed to recall who he was. She flung herself against him and buried her head in his chest, yet she was so thin he hardly felt the impact of her flesh.
“Why was I made to kill him? Why did Raldnor make me kill him? He came into my mind, and I beat and beat with the stone shovel—”
Yannul stroked her hair, and she wept like a child after a bad dream, longing only to be comforted.
“It had to be done,” he said. The words came without thought, answering his own question as well as hers. “It’s over now, and you’re safe.”
“Don’t leave me,” she said into his chest.
Did she remember, as he had, the color of his skin and eyes? Or had these things become irrelevant for her in the aftermath?
When he felt the tension slackening in her body, he led her out into the street and lifted her onto one of Dakan’s zeebas and took her to Orhvan’s house.
• • •
The one dragon soldier left living in the city strained his eyes toward the dawn. He had spent the night trussed to a pillar in the vault under the garrison, where a crack of a window looked out of the earth bank into a paved court. In the night the window had not proved friendly. The wind had haunted him through it, and bloody arms and hands had snatched at him, whether in hallucination or reality he was not sure. He had seen his comrades die in the hall, and in his drunken terror had run out into the stone corridors, hearing the ghastly din behind him. He had hidden himself under the cot of a sick soldier, whose throat, he had time to notice, had been sliced from ear to ear. Here he vomited up Riyul’s wine and lay in the stink of his own sickness, afraid to move or search for weapons.
About an hour later, two Lowland men had come into the room and pulled him out, gibbering with shock. It was as though they had known of his presence there for some time.
He thought they would run a blade into him and be done with it, but instead they dragged him down into the black cellars of the palace and bound him to a pillar. There was a dead Lowlander lying by another.
When the dawn filtered in to him, he heard them at the door. The dim light fired their pale hair; their eyes were like splinters of flame. He could not read their faces, but he knew that they were no longer slaves.
One of them loosed his bonds.
“A pleasant day for a hanging,” he remarked, swallowing nausea.
“You’re not to die,” said the Lowlander. “The Storm Lord has asked for you.”
“Amrek?” Incredulous, the soldier felt he had, after all, lost his wits in the night.
“Raldnor,” the Lowlander said, “Rehdon’s son.”
They took him by alleys to a dark house and left him in the circular hall. He thought of chancing an escape, but could think of no refuge in this hostile city. He had seen them dragging the bloody corpses into an open place, and burning them. The Lowlanders always burned their dead.
When the man came, the soldier was astounded. A Vis, he thought at first, until he saw the hair. Then something struck him—a name, and a face. He started violently at the crippled hand.
“Dragon Lord!” he exclaimed.
“You know me.”
“You’re Raldnor of Sar, Amrek’s—” The soldier fell silent in horror. Here stood the dead, for Amrek had had this man killed, had he not—the seducer of Astaris Am Karmiss.
“You will do me a service,” the undead said to him.
The soldier trembled and mouthed words which never came.
“You will carry a message to my brother Amrek.” The eyes leveled on the soldier, held him trapped and unpleasantly aware, burning the words into his skull. Irrationally, intolerably, yet without a doubt, the soldier knew that whatever mission this man gave him must be accomplished. It was inescapable as a geas. “Tell Amrek that his father Rehdon is my father also, that my mother was Ashne’e the Lowland woman. Remind him of the laws of Dorthar, that I was sown two months later than his sowing in Val Mala’s womb, that therefore I am the Storm Lord. Tell him that I freely lend him the months of the second snow in which to put his affairs in order and to relinquish his throne. When the snow is ended, if his place is not mine, I will drown Koramvis in the blood of his people.”
The soldier shuddered and half began to weep. This man was no ghost who could make these demands of the living.
“If I speak to him as you say—he’ll kill me—”
“Dragon,” the man said to him, “it will not trouble me if you die.”
The soldier cringed and covered his face against the phenomenal eyes. Here was no hatred, and no mercy either—nothing. Nothing in this man sought vengeance. Similarly he contained no mechanism for pity.
• • •
Men and women crowded to look down from the snow-rimmed towers of Sar.
The winds had abated, yet there was little enough to amuse them with half the theaters respectfully closed, and the wine shops full of Amrek’s Guard. Now there was a rumor, a wild story—they watched the solitary Dragon ride into the square before the Guardian’s palace, a train of about twenty camp whores trailing behind him. Abruptly Amrek appeared at the head of the outer stairway, a startling black figure against the vivid snow.
“What’s your news, dragon?”
The soldier fell to his knees.
“Storm Lord—the Lowland garrison has been destroyed, every man in it killed except for myself.”
“What?” The dry voice rang with an unstable, hollow derision. “A whole garrison gone and only one worm left to crawl out of it? Who did this miraculous thing? Banaliks?”
“My Lord, I swear—it was the Lowlanders. They struck all together in a space of minutes—How could we know, my Lord, that they’d find a leader?”
“A leader.” Amrek’s hands twitched at his sides; his mouth curled. He came slowly down the stairway into the square.
“They let me live—to bring his message to you,” the man cried. Amrek stopped still. There was no sound. “They took me to this man. He said—he said his father was also yours—Rehdon, the High King. His mother, the Lowland witch-woman. He says—says he was conceived after your lordship—that by the old laws this—makes him the Storm Lord—he demands the throne of Dorthar, or else . . .” The man faltered on the rash, impossible threat which, in that round dark hall, had seemed so immutable, so certain. “My Lord, he swears he will drown Koramvis in the blood of her people if he isn’t acknowledged by the snow’s end.”
Amrek laughed. It was a melodramatic, insane noise to fill the dead silence.
“This man—this King,” Amrek said harshly, grinning, “who is he, this lord of scum?”
It was a rhetorical question. Yet it had, so curiously, an answer.
“Raldnor of Sar,” the soldier choked out, unable to help himself. “Raldnor of Sar, your Dragon Lord—”
Amrek’s blow split his lip; he tasted blood in his mouth.
Amrek screamed at him: “You’re lying to me! Who paid you, you filth, to lie to me?”
The soldier lay on his face. Amrek turned, and turned again, screaming at the high walls: “All liars! Damn you! Damn your lies!”
He circled the court, yelling at them, beating the air with his hands. Suddenly his eyes rolled back. He fell and twitched on the ground, writhing and sprawling in the middle of the empty space. No one approached him. They were too afraid to help him. He seemed possessed by an ultimate and inescap
able demon.
Then, abruptly, the fit was finished. He lay quite still.
To those watching from the towers, he was a black cross against the snow.
21.
THE HIGH COUNCIL HAD been formed in haste in the palace on the Avenue of Rarnammon. Many were absent, keeping to their beds on this chill and inauspicious day and sending word their physicians would not let them rise. Mathon, the Warden of the Council, rubbed nervously at his cold hands. He was an old man who had been elected for his safe vacillating and his well-known lack of ambition—and this situation was quite beyond his ability.
Sharp-faced and sick-eyed, Amrek sat in the dragon-legged chair. He had recovered from the terrible spasm at Sar, only to ride to Dorthar with all the frenzy of a madman. The treacherous thaw had ended, and the snow was falling heavily by the time he reached Migsha. It did not dissuade him. He tore across the caravan tracks of the Plain lands and the hills, camping at night in a sodden tent and traveling through blizzards that sent him blind for two days in the Ommos town of Goparr, his chariot clogged to the wheels in snow. His Guard fell behind. He lost them and left them to the wolves and the deadly cold, and to struggle after as best they could. He crossed the Dortharian border with ten men at his back. He rode unknown through Koramvis and came immediately to the Council Hall. The mud-stained cloak he had worn lay on the floor behind the chair.
“Well, we are agreed then,” Amrek said. “No army of Dorthar can march until the snow is done. Word must go to Xarabiss. She’s a lazy land, but has enough troops to quell a Plains rabble.”
“My gracious lord,” Mathon said, “I fear Xarabiss will evade such work.”
“She’s a vassal,” Amrek said, “and will obey. Send a messenger to that effect.”
The Council was silent. They had heard rumors out of the Lowlands, even ahead of Amrek’s crazy race. They did not care to exacerbate him further.
From the edge of the room came a man’s voice, a voice made unmistakable by its Zakorian slur, that gift of his dam.
“There is one small matter which disturbs me.” An uneasy movement ran over the chamber. It was like Kathaos Am Alisaar to touch baldly upon a point which, until now, they had so scrupulously avoided.
“Your Lordship’s soldier claimed that the Lowlanders’ ‘king’ was Raldnor the Sarite.”
Amrek’s black eyes glared unseeingly.
“The fool was mistaken.”
“A mistake of unusual magnitude, my lord.” Kathaos paused, allowing the Council to see, by inference, how Amrek permitted his judgment to be clouded by his jealousy and shame. “My lord, surely it should be considered that if the Sarite lives, suspicion falls on a Commander of these same armies we all trust to defend this city. You’ll recollect that Kren, Dragon Lord of the River Garrison, informed us, without a doubt, that Raldnor was dead.”
“I recollect.”
“Then surely, my lord—”
Amrek was on his feet.
“We’ll have Kren here to answer your charges.”
The Council sat frozen.
“Damn you, Mathon, move yourself! Send a Council guard to escort Kren here.”
“Storm Lord, you’ve not yet rested—”
“Rest be damned. Do as I tell you.”
“And if he declines to come?” Kathaos murmured.
“Then I shall make him come.”
Nevertheless, this Amrek could not do. Garrison it was, and fortress too, built, long before the wharfs and hovels had grown up about it, as a defense of the river. Battlements surrounded the buildings inside; the place was stocked with food and drink and a community of men and women entirely loyal to Kren. It could withstand a year of siege, but the streets and houses around it could not.
To Amrek’s demand, Kren returned the courteous message that he was sick and could not leave his bed, but that he would welcome the Storm Lord’s person at any time he cared to approach the gates.
Mathon paled on hearing this, fearing some endless strife was about to tear the city in half.
“We must send a party of Councilors to the Dragon Lord. We must try to persuade him to reason.”
Amrek thrust past them and, with his improvised escort, rode to the Garrison gate.
He stood in the chariot like a supplicant, his face yellow with fatigue. The red-cloaked sentry saluted him and presently led him in.
Kren was waiting for him on his feet, and without a trace of subterfuge.
“You seem in excellent health to me, Dragon Lord,” Amrek remarked.
Kren smiled.
“Shall we say, my lord, the sight of such an illustrious visitor has done me good.”
“Kathaos suggests that your reluctance to present yourself before the Council proves your guilt conclusively.”
“All suggestions, perhaps, should be considered carefully, my lord. Do you believe the Sarite lives?”
Amrek’s glance faltered like a candle.
“You must tell me that, Kren.”
“There is a grave within these walls, my lord.”
“Yes. I believe my mother sent her guard to make sure of that. She was very anxious for my honor at that time. Is it the Sarite’s grave?”
Kren’s steady eyes met his own.
“Indeed, my lord, it is. Is there some proof I can offer you?”
“Your word will do, so I’ve heard.”
“That, my lord, without hesitation, you have.”
And yes, he had buried the Sarite there, the invention that had been the mask of a man he had enlightened and made whole, and broken at the same instant.
When his royal guest was gone, Kren stood some time alone in the shadowy room.
• • •
The early dusk was numbing the bitter whiteness of the palace courts. The mountains loomed on the distant sky like threatening clouds.
The cold dazzled Amrek’s eyes. Coming from the chariot, he stumbled and seemed to hang above a gaping vault of blackness before one of the Guard caught his arm.
Crossing a room where the lamps were already lit, a woman came rustling toward him in glimmering brocades. He looked up from his stupor and saw his mother, Val Mala.
He pushed away the supporting arm and glared into her white painted face. How beautiful she was still, this mother. Would her arms have been a comfort to him if they had ever spared him a moment’s solace when Kathaos and Orhn and the others had done with them?
“Well, madam. You’ve heard.”
“Yes, I’ve heard everything. I’ve heard that the Lowlanders sent you packing from their dunghill. I’ve heard that you rode like a peasant across three lands, and after that went begging to Kren. What a son I’ve made. The midwives must have turned me in my labor so that I lay on your brain and crushed it.”
He watched the diamonds glittering in her hair and ears. Their refractions made him dizzy and sick.
“You tell me you hear all these things, madam, yet you’ve never heard what happens to a woman with a Lowlander’s face. You’ll use another unguent, madam, before I see you next.”
“What faith you have in my obedience, Amrek. I am your mother,” she said with spiteful sweetness.
“And I, madam, am your King, distress you as it may. If I chose, I could send you to the fire for your whoring.”
For a second he saw how afraid of him she was; a bitter triumph surged through his veins, like a poisonous yet refreshing drug.
But she said: “No, Amrek. This is your sickness. You confuse me with another.”
• • •
In the black ruin on the Plains, anvils rang, and the makeshift forges turned the night clouds red. Into the melting pots went iron caldrons, brazen bowls, the accumulated metal of the villages, the bolts from city doors; in went the armor taken from the bodies of dead dragons, those eight hundred men who had perished in a single hour. N
ew swords lay stacked in empty houses—also shields and metal plates to guard the chest, back and limbs.
All the while, like an ally, the three-month snow fell into the cup of the Plains.
In those first white days, six men left the city. Three rode northeast, to Lan.
• • •
They were many days on the Plains. It was hard going in the snow, yet not impossible. The two Lowlanders bore all difficulties stoically. Yannul the Lan, exasperated by their silence, cursed and sang in his saddle. On the whole he did not feel too bad, yet nervous as a boy going to his first woman, riding back home on this ironic errand.
When they crossed into the little land of Elyr, the snow was falling fast. In a matter of miles, they passed five or six dark towers—astrologers’ roosts, each with a single dim light burning high up.
It was not a long passage through Elyr. Near dawn, on the border of Lan, Yannul saw two wolves, their smoking jaws clamped in some edible death. They stared with red eyes and red drooling mouths, and their spit steamed in the snow. Yannul thought unpleasantly of omens.
• • •
The King was young, only a child. He held a kalinx kitten on his knee as he listened gravely to what Yannul said, and, at his side, his sister-wife listened also. Yet it was to the King’s advisors that Yannul spoke in actuality as they stood behind the bone chair, toying with pieces of quartz.
When he was done, however, they waited on the boy to speak first.
“You are a Lan,” the King said, in his high boy’s voice, “yet you’ll fight for the Lowlanders. Why is this?”
“The man who sent me, my King, has inspired me to fight for him.”
“How? By promise of reward?”
Yannul smiled wryly, seeing the child was wise beyond his years.
“No, my King. His cause is just, as I’ve explained to you. Also he was a friend.”
“Was?”
“Now he’s a king, as you are. It makes it harder to be close to those around you.”
The boy nodded. Clearly, this much he had already learned. Then, in a controlled but eager tone, he asked: “And this other land—tell us, Yannul, about that place.”