Anackire

by Tanith Lee

  Praise for the Wars Of Vis series by Tanith Lee:

  “The drive and inventiveness which made Lee’s Birthgrave remarkable are in evidence in [The Storm Lord]. . . . The unnamed world in which the story is set is as richly varied as Middle Earth.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Fans will savor her original, and sometimes frightening, characterizations and careful world building.”

  —Booklist

  “The language is very rich, evoking a world of almost Byzantine splendor and complications. . . . Lee is always a persuasive writer, and her imagination is compelling.”

  —Locus

  “An epic fantasy of immense proportions. . . . Suffice it to say that The Storm Lord is a book I would recommend most highly, and Tanith Lee is definitely a writer who knows her craft.”

  —Tangent Magazine

  “Truly a feast for the senses. The lush sensuality of her prose envelops the reader in a magical ambience.”

  —Rave Reviews

  “First-rate fantasy adventure. . . . A complex plot . . . peopled with Lee’s unique creations and superior storytelling ability.”

  —S. F. Chronicle

  “In terms of what it takes to make a great fantasy novel, The Storm Lord has it all. I recommend it highly.”

  —The Diversifier

  DAW Books presents classic works of imaginative fiction by multiple award-winning author TANITH LEE

  THE BIRTHGRAVE TRILOGY

  THE BIRTHGRAVE

  SHADOWFIRE

  (originally published as Vazkor, Son of Vazkor)

  HUNTING THE WHITE WITCH

  (originally published as Quest for the White Witch)

  TALES FROM THE FLAT EARTH

  NIGHT’S MASTER

  DEATH’S MASTER

  DELUSION’S MASTER

  DELIRIUM’S MISTRESS

  NIGHT’S SORCERIES

  THE WARS OF VIS

  THE STORM LORD

  ANACKIRE

  THE WHITE SERPENT

  AND MORE:

  COMPANIONS ON THE ROAD

  VOLKHAVAAR

  ELECTRIC FOREST

  SABELLA

  KILL THE DEAD

  DAY BY NIGHT

  LYCANTHIA

  DARK CASTLE, WHITE HORSE

  CYRION

  SUNG IN SHADOW

  TAMASTARA

  THE GORGON AND OTHER BEASTLY TALES

  DAYS OF GRASS

  A HEROINE OF THE WORLD

  REDDER THAN BLOOD

  DAW is proud to be reissuing these classic books in new editions beginning in 2015.

  Copyright © 1983 by Tanith Lee.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover art by Bastien Lecouffe Deharme.

  Cover design by G-Force Design.

  DAW Book Collectors No. 548.

  Published by DAW Books, Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

  If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Ebook ISBN: 9780698404595

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  BOOK ONE The Salamander

  BOOK TWO The Dawn Child

  BOOK THREE Cities Of Rust And Fire

  BOOK FOUR The Black Leopard

  BOOK FIVE Morning Star

  DEDICATION

  To Oliver Cotton

  FOREWORD

  FROM THE BEGINNING, as the beginning was remembered, the dark races had mastered the major continent of the planet and given it their name: Vis.

  North, west and east, the Vis lands ran, ruled by men with copper skins and black skins, lands cruel and often glamorous, and a people glamorous and often cruel, possessed of many and various gods. A people who responded to the curious erotic stimulus of the red star, Zastis, which appeared for several months of each year in their night-time skies. A people proudly at peace after a long history of war, and mythologically united under an ultimate titular king—the Storm Lord, ruler of Dorthar and the dragon city of Koramvis, whose very name (Heart of Vis) demonstrated its eminence. Koramvis indeed, of all the spectacular cities of Vis, was reckoned generally the most powerful, and the most beautiful. High-towered white wonderful Koramvis, the heart-brain of Dorthar, beneath a dragon-comb of mountains. In less than half an hour Koramvis fell and was shaken to pieces, left thereafter in wreckage, like a broken glass.

  Ultimately south of the continent there spread a region of land, mostly infertile, Plains called Shadowless for their overall sparsity of vegetation, which ended in a brief maze of jungle against the World’s Edge. There the water opened that was called the Sea of Aarl—the sea of hell. Between the World’s Edge and the kingdoms of the Vis, in the barren flat country of these Plains, lay the places of the Lowlanders. Once, the Lowlanders had had some greatness. There was evidence of that at least in one dark, ancient ruined city, far to the south. But the Lowlanders had come to be very little in the regard of the Vis. A white-skinned blond race, and yellow-eyed, they were xenophobically disliked, occasionally feared for their rumored telepathy, despised always for their lack of temporal strength. They had no kings, no leaders. They lived in scattered villages, or in the sprawling ruin. They were immune to the Red Star, sexually reticent, passive, inimical, alien. Monotheistic, they worshipped only one deity, the snake goddess Anackire, eight-armed and serpent-tailed—nor did they worship her in any recognizable Vis manner, offering her no sacrifices of blood, not even the burning of incense. Their proverb explained: “Anackire asks nothing because She needs nothing, being everything.” To such values the Vis paid no heed. Gods are like their people. The gods of Vis were demanding.

  For several centuries the contemptuous antipathy of the Vis for the Lowlands had obtained, at a level, neither lessening nor growing worse. Then there came to be a Storm Lord, Amrek son of Rehdon, who supposed himself under the special bane of Anackire the goddess of the Plains, for from his birth, his left hand was scaled to the wrist—a serpent curse. This High King took it on himself to gouge the last trace of the pale people from his world.*

  By then, however, there had come to be at last a king among the Lowlanders. He too was the son of the former Storm Lord, Rehdon of Dorthar. For his mother he had had a priestess of a Lowland temple, Ashne’e, a woman whose face resembled the face of Anackire. This man, Raldnor, whose destiny had at one time led him even to live disguised among the Vis themselves, a commander of Amrek’s own armies, flying Amrek’s enmity, had taken ship for Zakoris. And so placed himself in the hand of a fate which thrust the vessel from her course, through storm and fire, into the unknown surrounding ocean reckoned to be the sea of hell. And here he had found the second, lesser continent of the planet, the lands of a race physically kindred to the Lowlands, but temperamentally dissimilar—passionate and warlike. They were soon eager to follo
w the magnetic Raldnor to the rescue of his people, for justice and, let it be said, for spoil.

  So war engulfed Vis after the long peace. Raldnor, as it seemed, touched by Anackire Herself, woke the Plains from their apathy. While his army marched toward Dorthar, the ships of the Sister Continent fell upon the adjacent lands. Swords rang, catapults discharged fire. Zakoris and Alisaar were besieged, starved, burned. Karmiss was taken, and Ommos, ringed by enemies, gave in. Lands friendly to the Lowlands were spared—Xarabiss, Lan and Elyr. They were infiltrated only in the way of the alliance, occupied only in the way of commerce, but that thoroughly. Wild barbarous Thaddra beyond her mountains missed the war entirely, save for an influx of refugees, and a later military strike from defeated Zakoris.

  The last battle of the Lowland War was fought on the plain beneath the hills of Koramvis. The Lowland army, betrayed and cut off finally from the aid of the men of the Sister Continent, outnumbered by the legions of Dorthar, seemed set for destruction. But Raldnor had unleashed in his kind the terrifying mental powers known in their legend as the Sleeping Serpent. By will alone, or so the stories ever after claimed, the Lowlanders caused the colossal earthquake which shook down and destroyed Koramvis the Beautiful, before the horrified eyes of her soldiers and lords. While from the mountains’ feet above the toppling city, Anackire Herself rose like a golden moon in the black sky.

  Koramvis fell, and the might of Dorthar fell, and the mastership of Vis was altered.

  Having won the last battle then, Raldnor, son of a Storm Lord and a priestess, chosen Elect of the goddess, went away. A woman he had loved, and believed dead, had cried out to him with her mind—or rather with the mind-spark of their unborn child, still living in physical stasis in her womb. He abandoned kingship, power, his people and his god, and went to find them, his lover and his child, and the world lost him. Nor was he ever seen again—save in legend, or vision. He became one of that small host of heroes, like the Vis King of old, Rarnammon, who would appear like a bright ghost in the center of conflict, rallying warriors to victory. He remained, too, in the many who were called for him, the myriad “Raldnors” born at that season, and for seasons after.

  Twenty Vis years passed, marred by a minor skirmish here or there, mostly years of surface quietude.

  On the plain below the wreck of Koramvis, the new city had been built, shining white as Koramvis, perhaps more lovely even than Koramvis, though Koramvis now, of course, having become a myth, was nonpareil. Anackyra, the city’s name. It boasted ten temples to Anackire, chief god of the Vis pantheon. They had made her their own. White bulls died on Her altars. The sexual temple lore of the Lowlands had been augmented and molded to Vis forms. The Daughters of Anackire would lie with any man whose financial gift was offered to the goddess; such acts were holy.

  In Anackyra too, the young King had been crowned, and the old titles retained. For the first occasion in known history, Dorthar’s sanctified Storm Lord was pale-haired—hair white as salt. Raldanash, Raldnor’s son by his marriage to the white-haired Sulvian of Vathcri, kingdom of the Sister Continent. Yet, blond heads beneath the diadems of the Vis were common now.

  In Karmiss, the golden hair under the helm-crown was that of a Shansarian reaver-prince. He had taken a Karmian name with the Karmian crown, that of one of the island-kingdom’s long-ago valorous lords—Suthamun. It was Ashara-Ashkar, the Shansarian (or Vardian) Anackire they worshipped currently, in the capital of Istris.

  But between the coasts of Dorthar and Karmiss the small anchored boat of land known formerly as Obek, was now Ankabek. Ironically, it had become the site of the most orthodox Anackism in Visian Vis. The tiny island was dedicated solely to Her temple, a building of black stone, as in the Lowlands. While all about stood groves of the warped little red trees of the Shadowless Plains, which now grew to great heights and lushness in the rich soil of the north.

  Book One

  The Salamander

  1.

  DAWN CAME TO ISTRIS over a silver sea. The slim-towered capital, which was also the mistress-port of Karmiss, released a shower of birds on the sky, a shoal of slender fishing skimmers on the water. The dawn bell rang from a cupola high on the Ashara Temple—a custom of Shansar-over-the-ocean.

  Kesarh Am Xai, standing at his casement, looked into the sunrise and cursed it.

  Hearing him speak, the girl still lying in the great bed murmured, “My lord?”

  Kesarh did not glance at her.

  “Get up. Get out.”

  He stood where he was, naked, his back to her as she obeyed him.

  The mixture of his blood showed clearly, the tawny lightness of his skin, the black hair, dark eyes. His looks were arresting, the young face vivid with intelligence and power. Tall, sparely and strongly built, his body also was possessed of a natural and powerful physical grace, elegant even unclothed. In the flesh, his lineage had served him well. In all other ways it had failed him. He was, among the minor princes of Karmiss, one of the least. A stray Shansarian had got him, the more forward of twins, on a lesser princess of the old Karmian royal house, in the frenetic year following the Lowland War. The other twin was a girl. They were not alike, Kesarh and his sister, though they had shared the womb in closest company. Val Nardia was an exquisite white-skinned doll, with light eyes almost the shade of honey. And her hair, as sometimes happened with mixed blood, was the same fabulous scarlet the rising sun now dashed on the bay of Istris.

  So, he cursed the dawn, and his sister.

  The slut he had taken to bed the previous night was gone. Kesarh turned and began to dress himself, drinking the last cupful of wine from the jug as he did so.

  Going outside, he paused, looking at the guard on duty there. Since adolescence Kesarh had thought it wise to have his apartments guarded. This man, however, was leaning on the wall, asleep—even despite the fluttering past of the girl. Kesarh drew his dagger. Catching him suddenly about the throat, the Prince pressed the honed blade into the sentry’s skin. Blood welled and the man came to himself with a startled oath.

  “So the assassin would have caught you, and thereafter caught myself.”

  “My lord—I’d have woken—”

  “Yes. Like this. But the blade through your windpipe.”

  Kesarh let him go, and watched the fellow straighten in his unblazoned mail, a hand to his bleeding neck.

  “You can choose, soldier,” Kesarh said. “Seek my sergeant and ask him for ten lashes. When you have recovered from them, return to my service. Or else surrender your issue-weapons and the clothes I put on your back and lose yourself in the alleys, or whatever other hole you were dug up from.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  The soldier, mouth twisted, bowed. He was Karmian, dark hair and copper skin. There was a lightness to his eyes, but that might be only a Vis heritage. He would choose the lashes, probably.

  Kesarh walked on along the corridor, his black mood enhanced yet ornamented by the soldier’s respectful hate striking between his shoulderblades.

  • • •

  His sister’s modest apartments were already busy and vocal. In the antechamber the chests stood piled and ready. The female fussings irritated him and he walked straight through the scurrying and swirling of skirts, the stares of big painted eyes, into her bedchamber.

  Val Nardis was standing, as he had stood, before a long window, but facing into the room. The moment she saw him, she froze all over her stillness. He too had stopped dead. From childhood he had been used to seeing her in such silks and velvets as their station allowed, her hair plaited with jewelry, and at her throat invariably their dead mother’s golden torc with its three black Karmian pearls. Now she was dressed for the coming heat of the day in a gown of unbleached linen. Her skin was without cosmetics or gems, and her hair hung loose about her, one long combed flame.

  Something checked him, he was not sure what it was.

  He indi
cated, not looking at them, the two women who were in the bedchamber.

  “Send them away.”

  Val Nardia drew in one deep breath. But she did not have to say anything to the women, they were already in retreat. The door curtain rustled and the door was closed. Beyond, the ante-chamber had turned very quiet.

  “Have you come to bid me farewell?” Val Nardia said. Her eyes had fallen and she was pale, a pallor easily discernible through such fair skin. She looked even younger than her youth.

  “If you like. Farewell, dearest sister.”

  “Don’t,” she said. She swallowed; he saw the movement of her throat. “Don’t upbraid me, Kesarh. This should be a happy day for me, and you should be happy for me.”

  “Happy to see you go, to waste your life. Be happy then, you witless mare.”

  The lash of anger seemed to release them both. She looked up at him in fear as he came toward her. He stood less than a foot from her, and reached out and grasped her suddenly by the arms. Her eyes filled at once with moisture, perhaps not tears. She looked at him, shaking her head.

  “All this for Ashara-Anackire. All this to be buried in Ankabek.”

  “I shall be a priestess of the goddess,” she cried out. “Is there something better for me here?”

  “I am here.”

  “You—” she whispered. Tears or not, the drops ran out of her eyes.

  “And it’s because of me that you’re leaving the court.”

  “No, Kesarh.”

  “Yes, Kesarh. You’re afraid to the roots of your spirit of me, and of yourself when with me. Aren’t you, my little sister?”

  They regarded each other. “Let me go,” she said eventually.

  “Why? In Lan it’s thought quite proper.”

  “Kesarh—”

  “Father and daughter, brother and sister. To lie together, to wed, even.” He grinned at her. She watched him it seemed in a horrible fascination. “Let’s fly to Lan and be married, and live in the hills and spill a horde of brats.”