Anackire

by Tanith Lee

Yannul intercepted the look. He rose, and the young man rose, no longer protesting, only very still.

  “If you change your mind, the innkeeper here knows my farm, and how to get there. Four miles from Amlan, and the grapes are potent. Think about it.”

  • • •

  The wolves were busy on the slope above the ice, tearing something in shreds between them. Rem knew what it was. The child.

  Kesarh stood at his elbow, watching the wolves.

  “It’s nothing to me,” Kesarh said.

  • • •

  The wolves lay down, growling, chewing. Blood made smoking ribbons along the ice.

  Kesarh had gone. Yannul’s son stood where Kesarh had been, and he said softly, “It’s all right. It’s just a dream.”

  Rem woke, sea-salt-wet as from the ocean off Lan, and almost as cold in the hot close night.

  He had not had that dream for years. It had happened a great deal in the beginning. Ever since that morning, new in Lan, he had woken to find the girl and the child were gone, and, stumbling across the hills he met the men from that little village, out on their wolf-hunt. They had taken him in, cared for him. But they had seen no woman, no baby. The wolves had preyed on them terribly through the snow. The deduction was blatantly there for him to make, if never spoken.

  Eaten alive, that fully cognizant, fully helpless being. . . .

  Rem got up. He went to the window and looked out on Amlan, the late-burning lamps, the five tops of the palace.

  Yannul’s son arriving in the dream, that at least was different.

  Yannul’s son.

  At the boy’s age, Rem had been breaking necks to steal purses. Lur Raldnor wanted to break necks to save the world.

  The vision madness coming back tonight, when he thought himself free of it forever, had shaken Rem. Odd that, at last, the picture had brought with it some information. Who had he been at that moment in the boiling square, black jungle behind him, the man who had served with Yannul, somewhere? The obvious idea was bizarrely ridiculous. The obvious idea was that he had been Raldnor son of Rehdon and Ashne’e, Raldnor Am Anackire, the Lowland messiah.

  • • •

  Days went by, and no work offered itself. No merchandise was going to the port of Amlan, and the only caravans faring south had their escorts fixed. Five of Rem’s men asked leave and went off in the same direction, having families in Lanelyr. On the other business, the continuous, pointless search, a man came to the inn and stood in the courtyard with Rem.

  “I heard you were trying to trace a woman and a child, sir.”

  “That’s so.”

  “I’ve come out of my way here.”

  “I’m sure you have.”

  After an unfruitful silence, disgruntled, the man said, “There’s a woman in the far north, a Karmian.”

  “Yes?”

  “She’s got the child, about seven years old, a mix child, very fair.”

  Rem never moved. He had been brought similar facts, or lies, before. Sometimes he followed them up, and never found what he looked for.

  “And the child’s male,” he said.

  “No, a girl.”

  “Did you speak to the woman?”

  “Yes. But I didn’t tell her you were looking.”

  “How did she seem to you?”

  “A bit simple,” the man said. “Slow. But good-natured enough. And the child was bright.”

  Rem felt his belly tighten.

  “And the limp,” he said.

  The man frowned.

  “The child?”

  “Or,” said Rem, “the woman.”

  The man licked his lips, decided.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Rem laughed. He did not realize the devastating darkness in his face, something he had learned, perhaps, from Kesarh. The man, who had found out some of what Rem wanted but not quite enough, blustered, scowled, and soon hurried away, without reimbursement.

  Rem walked the streets, through the market. He looked at the palace, like a sightseer. Yannul, Raldnor’s captain, had once ridden all the way through the long snow to persuade his King and Queen, then children, to ally Lan with the Plains.

  Yannul had married a Lowland woman, they said. And between them they had formed the glorious son who wanted to go to Dorthar.

  Dorthar. Dragon land. Land of the goddess, now.

  A man passed on the street. He was like Yannul’s son, but only for an instant. Lur Raldnor, do what Rem would, was very much in Rem’s mind. And no other thing, even by night, had come to divert the image. Rem was wary. The boy was young enough still to be at an age when sexuality was fluid, therefore corruptible, therefore to be avoided. In all his life, despite several contrary opportunities, Rem had never sought the company of any save those he could take for pay. But then he had also, in that way, grown accustomed to proximity without culmination.

  Nevertheless, it was another midnight, another day, before he got his directions to the farm and rode out of Amlan toward it.

  • • •

  It was hardly just a farm, more a villa, built, he supposed, on Dortharian lines. The blue hills held it, as they seemed to hold everything of note in Lan, and mountains gleamed far behind in the ultimate hour of the sun. Orchards and vineyards clustered near the house. An orynx herd trundled grunting and splashing in a valley with a stream, zeebas peered from pens, and gray bis fled squawking and flapping across the outer yard, long ringed necks outstretched.

  “Splendid,” said Yannul when they met in the coolness of the house. “We eat early here. You’re just in time.”

  They settled the questions of routine and pay over the dinner table. Yannul’s Lowland wife, soft-spoken but shining in a dress the color of her hair, helped the two servants serve the meal, then sat down with the family. Lur Raldnor was away, on a hunt, after the wildcat that had been raiding the orynx herds of the area. A much younger son, all gold for his mother’s side save for his black eyes, listened and took part in the conversation without precocity. He had the exact sound blend of couthness and dash apparent in the older boy.

  Yannul and Rem ended playing a Lannic board game on the terrace in the afterglow. When the light was almost all gone, Yannul joined his servants haphazardly in kindling the lamps. Up in the sky, the Red Star was also kindled.

  As Rem won the first leg of the game, Yannul said, “And I take it your mother often struck you.”

  Rem started.

  “Excuse me,” said Yannul, “if that’s too raw. But I noticed you flinch when Medaci tapped the boy’s hand on its fourth trip to the fruit bowl. A joke, a love-blow, no more.”

  Rem was discouraged at himself to have let slip so much. He said nothing now, and Yannul went on, “it’s a cruel time for her. She loves them both, but Raldnor’s her first-born. We never thought she’d bear, after the life she had in the old city, the Lowland ruin. For a long while she didn’t. And she and he, they’re like lovers, the pair of them. Not in the Lannic way, just love, you understand. If he goes to Anackyra, she’ll pine. Yet at the same moment, she wants him to go, to fight, to stop the creeping dark. And she’s afraid, too. We remember, you see, what it was like before.”

  “And what was it like?”

  “Oh, you want all the military history in a nutshell, do you?”

  “You must be used to that.”

  “Why else,” said Yannul, “am I hiding here? I had a year of war, and then a handful of years playing politician in Dorthar. That was enough for me. To return and be Lan’s heroic monument wasn’t my design, either.” A moth had come to die in their lamp and with great gentleness and the excellent coordination of the acrobat and juggler he had been, Yannul caught it and threw it lightly free, unscathed by flesh or fire, back into the night. “Raldnor had the best idea. He disappeared.”

  “Why?”

  “Wh
y not? He’d done all that was asked. Lost his humanity for it. He was a god. Gods either transcend or decay. Or vanish. And he’d left a son behind him. Raldanash of Vathcri, now Storm Lord. There was another boy, too; the Dortharians played a trick with that one, or tried to. The mother was a fool and a bitch. It’s in my mind the baby died.”

  Something cold passed through Rem. He pictured the wolves, tearing—

  “And the last battle under Koramvis,” he said. “Witchcraft, earthquake, the goddess manifesting. Is any of that true?”

  “Truth and untruth, woven as one. I’ll tell you something, about the Lowlanders. One can believe they’re not creatures of this earth. Not all come in that mold. Medaci doesn’t, and when we took the ruin back from Amrek’s dragon soldiery, I think she was all that stood between me and a kind of madness. I’d gone there out of pity, hope of justice, quite capable of killing in hot blood, and well-trained to do it. Then I found out the core of the Lowlanders.” Yannul’s eyes were sightless now, looking only back. “I remember passing them on the streets in the snow, after the massacre of Amrek’s garrison, these men, those women I’d come to save from tyranny. They were like silent wolves, eyes gleaming like ice—they looked unhuman. And I was sick to my soul. I’d never seen that in them before, but I saw it after. The second continent men, they’re not in that mold either. They’re blond Vis. But the Amanackire are only themselves. They’re in Xarabiss, Dorthar. You can see some of them, now, physically almost all whiteness—skin, hair, even the yellow eyes get pale—ice in fire and the fire going out.” Yannul smiled. “That last battle, under Koramvis. Through Raldnor, they’d come to know themselves, the Woken Serpent. And at Koramvis, Vis came to know them too. They caused the earthquake by power of will. Or maybe that’s false. It didn’t seem so then. They had to win, and the odds had become impossible. That army out of Koramvis—we should have been obliterated. So, if the victory must come and it couldn’t come from strength of arms or numbers, it had to be strength of another kind. They willed to live. We all did. It was like a prayer, the air so still for miles you could sense it thrumming like a dumb string plucked over and over. The only chance was a miracle. And the miracle happened. Koramvis fell. As for the goddess—yes, that happened, too, but there was a sane explanation for that.”

  Along the ridge of the nearest hill there came a drifting whoop and sudden splinters of torchlight.

  The hunters were coming home.

  “Please finish,” said Rem.

  “A statue,” Yannul said, “a colossus from a hidden temple in the uplands above Koramvis. The quake threw her in the air and she was big enough and bright enough to see even from that distance, through the smoke and murk. She sank into a lake below. Another deity wisely gone to ground.”

  Half an hour later, Lur Raldnor came out on to the terrace with two wildcat tails, the frisks of the murderers who had been viciously killing but not eating the herds.

  Standing with the lamp full on him he looked at Rem with unfeigned pleasure, and said, “I never thought you would agree.”

  So glad to get this chance at Dorthar, Rem thought. But he returned the grin.

  • • •

  The fighter’s training was one of the easiest parts of it all. Rem had so trained most of the escort-riders in his employ, and himself kept up the exercise a soldier stuck to, if he was thorough, working out with his men where he could, or alone. And Lur Raldnor, hardy and strong, used to hunting and riding, and taught by Yannul from his childhood any number of acrobatic tricks, took to the work with ability, interest and sense. It was true, Yannul had been trained in Xarabiss, whose Academy of Arms, along with those of Alisaar and Karmiss and Dorthar, was universally respected. His tutor, moreover, had been a Zakorian sadist whose relentless lessons were of the best, when viewed in the long-term. Yannul modestly reckoned himself now past the best age for imparting acumen. But his son came to Rem far from a novice, needing burnish rather than welding.

  The rest was easy enough. Too easy. The household accepted Rem like a limpid pool, closing over his head with scarcely a ring formed to mark his entry.

  He found himself continuously at home in Yannul’s house, and strove to keep some part of himself aloof from home comforts and home intimacies. But he even liked Medaci. She was demure and unassuming, with a sweet smile. Coming out once on to the terrace, he found her with Yannul, the two of them standing hand in hand, his head bowed so their foreheads touched, like adolescent lovers. Nor, seeing him, did they break away ashamed, but separated gently, amused and friendly toward themselves, the discovered, toward Rem, the discoverer.

  For Zastis, there were countless graceful means. The short ride into Amlan was no bother, and her Pleasure City was lively if the Ommos Quarter was slight. It had been simple courteously to put aside Yannul’s offer of the three young servant girls at the villa, all of whom were willing and had eyed Rem since his arrival, with the tidings he had a particular liaison in the city.

  Despite that, Rem suspected Yannul knew the pivot of his guest’s subterfuge. That the man did him the extreme politeness of reckoning Rem’s desires aside from Rem’s relations with Yannul’s son was impressive, and, of course, honorably obligatory. But he had promised himself to carefulness in any case.

  Lur Raldnor had a girl from the next farm-villa. Her parents probably hoped for marriage with the son of the hero’s captain. The girl and the boy cared only for their nights on the Zastis tinder of the hill.

  Now and then, riding back in the dawn from Amlan, Rem would meet him walking back from the hill. Raldnor seemed to consider this a conspiracy of sorts. Those were maybe the easiest times of all, and therefore the most difficult.

  The practice bouts, the wrestling, the slamming together of blunted iron or wooden blades—or skin—in the yard, that type of innocent physical provocation Rem was used to. The labor, if it was fierce and difficult enough, brought its own relief. Nor, with the bevy of respectable women about, did they strip to fight. In real combat, as a rule, you had mail on your back and leg and arms; to learn to battle weightless in just a loin-guard could prove a disadvantage later on.

  With the end of the Zastis months, Raldnor would be going. It was a long road to Dorthar, traveling via the Elyrian port of Hliha. Things were already half arranged. Letters had gone ahead, straight to the person of the Storm Lord, naturally.

  Medaci gazed at her elder son, her citrus eyes more still than frozen tears.

  • • •

  One morning there were wolf tracks round the drying mud of the bis pond. None of the birds was missing. The animals of the farm had set up no warning noise during the night. Nevertheless it was thought advisable to pursue the invader. The wolves of Lan became greedy so close to the city, insolent thieves. One canny enough to avoid audible detection could prove a nuisance.

  Yannul, who had been out chopping wood with his servants, now sent two of them to get ready for the hunt. The men were experienced in such affairs, grim but not displeased. Raldnor, seeing them start to saddle up, decided he was hunting that day rather than swinging a practice-sword. “Come with me,” he said to Rem. “You hunted wolves in Karmiss, didn’t you?”

  Rem had, one whole long winter in the Istrian hills, hunted and eaten them, too. But for eight years wolves had come to mean something else to him, no longer adversary but terror, nightmare. And he had had the dream again, once or twice, at the villa, or on the pallets of Amlan’s Pleasure City.

  Nevertheless, they got their zeebas, weapons, food from the kitchen, and set off, catching up to Yannul’s men on the hills.

  The dog had the wolf-scent all the way, but it was a prolonged trial. By midday they were miles up and over the hills, with only one abandoned cave to show, and that quickly abandoned also by the wolf-dog.

  The heat smote down. They entered a wood and stopped to eat in its shade. The two servants diced sleepily. Even the dog rested, its nostrils alert, but i
ts eyes and tongue lax. It was useless to move on until the sun moved sideways off their craniums.

  Where the wood ran down the hill was a wide brilliant pool. Before he quite knew it. Rem found himself swimming across it with the boy. The light meal was no trouble, but after a while each of them turned on his back, floating on the buoyancy, staring up through the leaves to the day and, blinded, shut his eyes.

  “That wolf,” said Raldnor, “he must be somewhere near. We’ll come on him before sunset.” But then, “I never yet killed anything and liked it. The chase, yes. And it has to be done. But not to be liked. I’d suppose it’s that way, killing men.”

  “Men are easier to kill,” Rem said.

  “More stupid than a beast, do you mean?”

  “No. But easier.”

  After a long while the boy said, “To you, perhaps.”

  Then nothing.

  It would almost be possible to sleep in this water.

  Presently Lur Raldnor, less life-weary, swam for the bank. Rem watched him, the tanned body like a stripe of gold against the darker stripes of the trees.

  The responses of his own flesh set Rem swimming again, up and down, efficient clockwork. He had no intention of coming out of the pool, watched in turn, and the evidence of Zastis on him like a blazon. One could blame changes of temperature and element only for so much.

  When he did wade out, Raldnor was lying on his belly, head on his folded arms, eyes shut again. Then, as Rem walked to his clothes, there came an oath worthy of the mess hall at Istris.

  “—Anack! Who did that to you?”

  “What?”

  “There are whip lines across your back. A whip with teeth.”

  Rem had forgotten. It was a long while since someone had thought to comment or inquire. Not since Doriyos. . . .

  “Asleep on duty eight years ago, in the service of my King,” he said, startled by his own paraphrasing bitterness.

  Without prelude, for he had not heard Raldnor stir, he felt the boy’s hand gracious yet firm against his spine. It was not an invitation, one sensed that. It was the magnetism of compassion. Before he could control the reflex. Rem shrugged him away. “No.”