Anackire

by Tanith Lee

  “White skin—yellow hair—Oh, lady, a Lowlander for sure—”

  “And she’s dumb, lady” the other added. “Can’t speak a word.”

  Safca went to see.

  The maiden child sat where she had been left in the water, appearing quite composed. She was definitely a Lowlander, not even second continent blood could account for quite such crystalline pallor. It was dreadful, Safca knew. The penalty for sale of a Lowlander was fining and flogging, and for buying one it was any and every penalty the prosecutor thought suitable. What must she do?

  “Little girl,” said Safca, “can you hear me?”

  The child, whose face was most unusual and entirely grave, looked at her, then nodded.

  “You were taken in error,” said Safca, firmly. “I’ll manumit you as soon as the clerk comes and I can bribe him. Do you have somewhere you want to go back to? The Plains?” Safca said, wildly now, “Must I send you there? The expense—I’m not able to!”

  The child shook her head.

  It was odd, since she had not spoken aloud, that Safca knew the shaking of the head did not mean exactly “No.” Merely Not yet.

  • • •

  Zastis bloodied the night sky.

  Safca took as her lover one of her litter-bearers. No better prospect offered, and the arrangement was at least discreet, the man flattered, hale, and willing. Yet Safca resented her submission to the Red Moon, she who was not beautiful. While she made do, and, sated, must put the man from her bed, her brothers lay all night with their wives and concubines, her prettier, more important sister with a chosen noble. Since Safca could not choose the manner of her pleasure, it seemed to her she would more gladly have done without it. And so, for a night, she admitted no one to her bed, and burned in it.

  At midnight, sleepless and in a rage, she stole down through the house to walk in the cool courtyard of the fountain. In the brief colonnade, she halted.

  The brass of the fountain was ruddy, the water playing like strings of glass beads, and everything else dark. Almost everything else. For the white Lowland child was standing by the basin, and something was with her—

  Safca’s heart turned over. At first she did not believe. Wrapped about and about the child’s slight body was a huge snake, the very kind with which the Zorish girl had danced in the marketplace. Which was well for a girl of the Zor, birth-trained to mastery of such a reptile. Though not venomous, the great snakes could crush small animals, even the chest of a man should they desire it enough to obtain sufficient grip on him. A slender child would be nothing.

  How the creature had got in, slinking through some kitchen hole and pouring over the wall, was now unimportant. Safca’s hand was already at her throat where a tiny dagger hung sheathed in Elyrian enamelwork. Such a minor blade—she must aim for one of the eyes, hoping the reflexive mindless tightening of the coils would not persist too long, after death.

  If only the Lowlander had not been dumb, she might have shrieked for aid.

  Why then did Safca not cry out herself?

  At the instant this thought occurred to her, Safca became conscious of a sound, a low, musical murmur, which was emanating from the dumb child. In that instant, too, the child lifted her head and looked into Safca’s eyes.

  They gazed at each other, and the guardian’s daughter slowly raised her dagger and dropped it back in its sheath.

  Safca’s waiting women had mentioned to her how the child seemed able to call birds from the air, and how the two shy pet monkeys from Corhl would play with her. But this—

  The power the Zorish girl exercised over her snake was nothing to this. The child had no need to fear. She was in command, or rather in communication with the great serpent. Its coils were loose, separating the starlight like the fountain. Its flat head moved in her hair.

  Nor was the child dumb. The sound she made over the snake, a hypnotic speechlessness of vibration, was yet articulate. Equipped with vocal apparatus and a thorough knowledge of the Vis tongue, the child did not employ them only because, in some uncontemptuous way, she found language superfluous. All this Safca grasped at once, and accepted at once. She made no objection, only stood blinking before the eyes of her Lowland servant. They had never named the child. They had called her for her supposed birthplace, and that charily. She was not displayed. The guardian had never glimpsed her.

  And now the Lowlander moved a fraction, the snake slipping forward, resting its head across her palms. Both their eyes, the eyes of the child and of the serpent, were a pale clear gold, and both sets of eyes seemed glowing.

  Safca realized the Lowlander was offering her the snake, offering it like a garland, all the winding terrible power of it. There was a certain lightness in that, maybe. Safca touched her lucky bracelet, and stepped back, and the spray of the fountain kissed her shoulder.

  “There is no harm,” said the child.

  Safca opened her mouth to scream and did not scream. Her pulses thundering, she reached out and let the snake spill from the child’s arms to her own.

  It was heavy, both liquid and dry, an extraordinary sensation. Every hair of her body seemed upraised, no longer with fear, with some more primeval reaction. She shivered continuously, yet a strange elation possessed her. The snake entwined her bones. For she felt the glory of its strength, that did not hurt her, clear through to her skeleton, in the protective ambiance of the child.

  How can I fear this thing? she thought. Something so beautiful.

  It lasted only moments. Then the snake flowed away, rope on rope of sensation gliding off, leaving Safca trembling and then stilled. It vanished before she looked to see it go.

  She wanted to speak to the child, to ask her many things, but the child would be silent now, silent in all ways. How old was she? Older than the eleven years she looked. Younger, also.

  Where do you come from? Safca asked the child, over and over, in her brain, aware the child could hear if she wished, aware the child would know she did not mean a land or a people, but some other thing, less actual, more decided.

  But the child, as Safca had guessed, did not answer.

  8.

  THE AMBUSH ON THE AMLAN ROAD was not altogether a surprise. There had been a purchased warning at the inn the night before, somewhat unspecific, but enough. The spot itself, though he had never had trouble there before, was also a likely one, the hills leaning to the road and thick with coarse high grass. Men burst out like demons, whooping to inspire alarm and to get rid of their own tension, as they plummeted down on the riders and the five rumbling wagons.

  But the wagons were full of eager unsheathed swords. Blood sprang and anointed the wine casks and the bales of silk he had had the forethought to roll in protective owar-hide.

  Rem extricated his sword from a tangle of guts and kicked the corpse away in time to throw another bandit forward, off his back and over his head, and under the prancing hoofs of the zeeba in front, which finished him.

  The rest of the fight was already over. Dead brigands lay strewn along the road, and a couple hung undecoratively from the wagons. Three or four more had made off alive, scrambling through the thick fur of the summer hills, the last of them dragging some of the worthy merchant’s goods along with him.

  “That one,” Rem called. “Bring him down.”

  The man with the best eye for it flung a spear, and the bandit fell dead in the grass. His associates did not bother to look back, and were soon from sight.

  In the old days, even two years ago, this road was clear enough of such adventures. But since piratical Free Zakoris had come to crowd the sea-lanes between Dorthar, Ommos and Lan, few ships risked the harbor of Amlan, preferring land-trips to and from the ports of Elyr in the south. Thus, the trade road to the capital had ceased to be the well-patrolled and lawful stretch it had been. Every rare cargo that ran the Zakorian gauntlet, stood a fair risk from the hungry robbers of Lan.<
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  Having himself been a bandit, once, Rem was not ill-educated in their ways and means. Hiring out as an escort for such dainties as now remained safe and unspoiled in the wagons, he had built some sort of financial security for himself. Twenty men were in his pay, courageous and intelligent. He could have taken on more if he had needed them. Not so many, maybe, as the fifty who would have followed him in Karmiss, under the Lord Kesarh’s banner of the Salamander. But, as things had stood, it would have been stupid to go back. Kesarh had had no need of him, in any case. Six years ago there had been a breath of plague in Istris, and the Prince-King Emel, though mightily protected, had evinced plague symptoms and shortly died. Less than three months later Kesarh Am Xai was crowned as King. He took two queens with him to the throne, one a Shansarian princess of Suthamun’s house, and one a Vis woman.

  But all that was another world. The news came late here, and the emotions the news engendered were low-voiced as distant harps.

  Eight years in all had gone by, eight years, and these months of the heat and of Zastis. The child, if she lived, would be less than nine years old. But he had no reason to suppose she lived. Although he had hunted her, and the girl, Berinda, intermittently up and down this land, for all the eight years and the months after, from the north to Lanelyr and back, he had found no trace.

  And even though he continued at the savage trade he had chosen in the beginning just because it would take him all over Lan and so enable him to hunt for them, now he no longer understood why he did so. Habit only, probably. For she was dead, of course. Somewhere the winds swilled through her little baby’s bones, and her supernatural adult soul was exiled, riding them.

  There had been none of the mind-visions, either, during these eight years. One blessing.

  Sometimes he wondered about Lyki, and if she lived on with the rope merchant, or had taken up with some other. Even Doriyos sometimes moved across Rem’s thoughts like a blown leaf.

  He did not let himself think very often of Kesarh.

  “Rem, this pig has gold buckles. Do you want them?”

  “No. Split anything like that between yourselves.”

  They did so, rifling the cadavers before heaping them at the roadside. You left such markers in Lan. Someone went and got the haul the running bandit had taken, or tried to take, up the hill.

  Then they rattled off along the road again, adhering to discipline and saving their boasting and drinking until they reached the city.

  • • •

  The King and Queen lived in Amlan, in a painted palace of five tiered towers. Every few months they would come out on the steps, each carried in an ivory chair as if incapable of walking, and under parasols, in a welter of guards and nobles, to dispense justice to any who asked for it. This custom, which was also prevalent it seemed in Vathcri, Vardath and Tarabann, amused Rem. While liking it, his soldier’s intellect saw all the dangers inherent. One could foresee a murder on that stair, below those red and blue pillars. And it would be a pity for them to be cut down. Brother and sister, in the tradition of Lan, they were young and handsome, both of them, to a fault.

  The inn was a good one, just two streets away from the Palace Square. When he walked in there were yellow lights whirling through the air, a troupe of jugglers spinning flames and bells, and somersaulting between.

  Rem settled in the dark corner the inn had left for him, drinking Lannic wine, and waiting for his meal to come. The merchant’s agent was to meet him here. The wagons had been sent to the warehouses, and already the tale would be abroad in the dusk, the ambush and the wily bravery of Rem of Karmiss. There should be a bonus in all that. He was glad enough for the men to share it. For himself—he looked into the somber wine and pondered, as he only occasionally allowed himself to ponder, why he built as he did, why he wasted as he did, the worthlessness, and the lack of roads to any other thing. But there was nothing in him, he knew, to merit special attention either from the nonexistent gods, or from himself.

  When he looked up, two men were coming in at the door. They paused to admire the jugglers, and suddenly a kind of rippling went over the inn’s inhabitants, the sort that denoted someone of importance.

  Mildly curious. Rem looked more intently. He did not know the older man. He was Lannic Vis, and well into his middle years, but strong, a fighter at one time it would appear, and exceptionally well-coordinated, something that could show even standing still. He was, too, smartly if not at all extravagantly dressed, yet, unlike most of Amlan’s male population, he wore his hair very long, in the old way. Rem had been in and out of Amlan many times, and had come to recognize most of the court by sight. They were frequently about, and the city was not over-large. This man, however, struck no memory, filled no niche.

  One of the jugglers at that moment cartwheeled out of the melee and landed in a sweeping bow before the newcomer. Who laughed, and brushed him aside with a generous coin. The man began to walk into the room, glancing round. Here and there a cup was raised, and he acknowledged it quietly. The other walked with him, grinning, proud and poised and self-conscious.

  This one was only a boy, not yet nineteen, if so close. Rem started to look at him and did not look away. He was mixed-blood, his skin tanned but not Vis, his hair crow-black. The eyes were light, bronze going toward topaz. Beautiful, like the rest.

  All at once the two of them were at Rem’s table. The older man spoke.

  “Good evening. Should we disturb your dinner if we sat down?”

  Rem in the shadow, the light behind him beyond his pillar, stared hard. He was about to say some noncommittal thing when the inn tore down the middle like a fruit peel.

  There was the man, still, but almost thirty years younger. The boy was gone. All around was dust and broiling daylight.

  “I beg your pardon,” Rem said stiffly, “you seem to know me, but I—”

  “Yannul the Lan. We served together, you and I.”

  The inn was there again. Rem swallowed. It had been fast.

  “What’s the matter?” the man said to him. He looked slightly concerned, as with a stranger.

  “Your name is—” Rem cleared his throat, “Yannul.”

  “I’d like to deny it, but I see you know me.”

  “Yannul of Lan, one of the hero Raldnor’s captains.”

  Yannul, taking this as an invitation, sat. The boy sat, too.

  “Once,” said Yannul.

  “You’re said to be in Dorthar.”

  “Also, once. Now I’m here. This is my son, born here. And you’re Rem Am Karmiss, escort maker for caravans, and yourself once a soldier in the employ of King Kesarh.”

  “And how did you hear that?”

  “I asked someone. The way you fight your bandits is evidence enough of the skills of an academy of arms somewhere. And this afternoon you left a few more, I gather, for the goddesses to make bone hairpins.”

  The server came.

  “A jug of your best. I’m paying,” said Yannul the Lan.

  “Sir—the inn will pay, if you’ll do us the honor—”

  “If I’d done you the honor every time you offered it, you’d be on the street by now. Take this. For the gentleman’s meal as well.”

  The server went off.

  “What do you want?” said Rem.

  “My son,” said Yannul.

  Rem looked at Yannul’s son, who smiled. Rem looked back at Yannul.

  “Well?”

  “You know the way it is with Free Zakoris,” said Yannul. “In a year or so there’ll be bloody war. There has to be.”

  “If you say so. You should know.”

  “Yes. I should. Lur Raldnor here has a wish to go to the High King’s court at Anackyra, and take arms with him at the proper time against his enemies.”

  “The Storm Lord will doubtless be happy to have his support.”

  It was Yannul now
who looked narrowly. His eyes scanned over Rem, as if searching something out, and suddenly the boy said, in a golden voice, “My father thinks I should arrive with at least a modicum of martial training. It’s sensible. He’s taught me a lot, but I need more. We were about to ask if you—”

  “Would leave a profitable business to tutor you in the latest techniques for slaughtering men.”

  The boy—called for the hero-comrade, of course—Lur Raldnor, met Rem’s eyes.

  “I’m aware killing isn’t a game. My father taught me that, as well. But Yl Am Zakoris has his new kingdom in Thaddra as a base, and the world knows—”

  “No,” said Rem. “I’m sorry. No.”

  The wine came then. When the server left, Yannul lifted the jug and Rem put his hand over his cup.

  “Drink it,” said Yannul. “We’re still talking.”

  Rem let the wine pour in his cup.

  “I thought we’d finished. You can soon buy another arms-master for your son.”

  “Here? There isn’t even an army here.”

  “Shansarians.”

  “They’re berserkers in battle. That kind of fighting—unless you’re born to the way of it, you get killed.”

  “He doesn’t want me to go,” said Lur Raldnor. “I’ve only just persuaded him. If you refuse, I’m done for.”

  “Lan’s a pleasant enough place,” said Rem.

  “Not if Free Zakoris comes and takes it in the night.”

  Yannul swore.

  Rem perceived the father saw himself in the son, the same spirit which had followed Raldnor Am Anackire against all the hating might of Vis. Something strange stirred in Rem. He would never have a son, he would never know this feeling, for good or ill. And for the first time in fifteen years, he wished he had known his father, or at least his father’s name.

  Across the room. Rem abruptly beheld the merchant’s agent, standing with his mouth open at Yannul.