by Tanith Lee
“I would take it as a victory if you’d stay.”
“Why, in the name of the gods?”
“Something. You remind me of someone. My youth, maybe. The best and worst of it.”
Rem got to the door, blindly.
“No,” he said, “no, I won’t take this. I’ve taken all the rest. Not this.” He wanted to end it, but words kept trying to come. He remembered the lashing at Istris, and Lyki’s house, and vomiting from pain in front of her before he could prevent it. This was the same. And beyond this, anyway, there was nothing. The baggage trains and killing starving thieves, the Zastis nights in brothels. Not even the dawn star of the child to guide him, however hopelessly, pathetically, toward nothing that did not know it was nothing.
“Rem,” said Yannul.
“I’ve taken my beating,” Rem said, “like all the beatings. Kesarh’s. Her protectors with their fat hands. Lyki’s bloody sticks and pails of scalding water.”
“What did you say?” said Yannul.
Rem thrust himself to silence. At last he said, swathing himself in the doorway’s glare: “Nothing.”
“I caught a name. Lyki.”
Why not answer? He never spoke of her, but he had already said too much for more to matter.
“The woman who was my mother. When I was a child, and she wasn’t mooning over her days at the Koramvin court, mistress to some Dragon Lord, she used to knock me about. Or her gentlemen friends would do it, to save her delicate wrists.” There was another silence. “My father apparently deserted her,” said Rem. “I can quite see why. I never knew him. A shame.”
He swung round and was in the courtyard when he heard Yannul shout.
“For the sake of Aarl! Wait!”
For some reason, Rem looked back around the door.
Yannul was gray in the face even through the darkness of his skin. Rem checked. Was the man ill? More quietly than he had intended, Rem said, “Truce, sir. There’s nothing you can say to make me remain here now.”
“Isn’t there?” said Yannul. “What if I were to say you’re the son of Raldnor Am Anackire, god and hero, and former Storm Lord of Vis?” Yannul grinned even through his grayness. “Would you stay for that?”
• • •
There were fireflies stringing necklaces from the shrubbery to the terrace. And there was also Rem, who was Rarmon son of Raldnor son of Rehdon, standing looking at them.
There had been talking all day. He was numb from talking as from yet another lashing. That numbness before the agony came.
They had told him all they could. Too much. He was brimmed over by knowledge. To have nothing. Then to be given this.
The gods must be extant somewhere, after all, playing their board games with men, as the fables said.
Lyki. How often she had muttered of her passionate love-affair with royalty. The hero Raldnor’s mistress, of whom he tired. He had preferred the betrothed bride of the King. A year later, Lyki had been part of an abortive plot against his life—how she had hated Raldnor Am Anackire, the father of her son.
Why had she never told him, that bitch? Viciousness—or was her hurt, also, too great? It must have hurt her, a woman like his mother, to fare as she had. To be reduced as she had been reduced.
And after all was said and done, Raldnor had willingly let this son be taken from him. Sown without wish, cast off with the woman. Maybe, as Yannul said, his goddess had possessed Raldnor, blotting out humanity that he might do Her will. Even so, he had planted Raldanash in Vathcri with intent and purpose. Lyki’s bastard had been nothing to him.
There was a step on the flags. Rem knew it. His whole body tensed, then relinquished tension. He had ceased fighting, for a little while.
“In one second I can be off the terrace,” said Lur Raldnor.
“Never mind.”
“If you wanted to be alone.”
“Each of us is always alone.”
Lur Raldnor (my father’s namesake) laughed his golden laugh.
“Still Rem, despite everything.” He moved forward, standing parallel with Rem, but some way off. “Do I call you ‘my lord’?” Rem did not answer this sally. Lur Raldnor said, “What will you do?”
“Nothing. Very little has changed.”
“Everything has changed, and you know it.”
“But only I, and your family, do know.”
“I think he almost knew from the beginning, my father,” said Lur Raldnor. “The first evening, riding back here, he said to me, ‘That man’s like Raldnor. The way he was before Anack laid hold of him.’ I think he was waiting for you to give him the key to it, even if he didn’t realize there was one.”
Rem observed the fireflies. He felt young and afraid. Fifteen years old. And it was too late for that. He should have had this from the commencement, or not at all.
“By rights,” said Lur Raldnor, “you’d go to Dorthar, with me. Present yourself to the Storm Lord on my father’s authority, with myself as your witness. Raldanash is your half-brother. Do you even see?”
“Perhaps not,” said Rem.
He moved away along the terrace, and Yannul’s son followed him.
“Come to Anackyra, Rem,” said Lur Raldnor. “It isn’t just the war. It’s everything else. That place is—like no other place on earth, because of what it was, what’s happened there. You have to see it. Walk over it. You were the first-born: by Dorthar’s laws you don’t threaten Raldanash. It wasn’t even legal—forgive me. But you’re part of the legend, still here in the world, as he is.”
Rem damned the legend, garishly.
“In any case,” said Lur Raldnor, “I never did get that knife-to-sword pass as it should be.”
“The passage to Hliha could take a quarter of a month. The crossing to Xarabiss is six days. The land journey to Dorthar is a deal longer than either.” Rem looked round and confronted him. “In all that time, just suppose I can’t keep my hands off you? We may end the most perfect of enemies.”
Lur Raldnor looked quizzical.
“I thought the premise was I didn’t know.”
“If your father knew, he’d make sure you did. So you could be ready, how did he put it? To say ‘No’ loudly enough.”
“I love my father,” said Raldnor, “and I revere him. A lot of the time, he can speak for me. Not all the time.”
“You’re saying you’d lie on your face like my whore?”
“No. I’m not saying that.”
Humiliated by his own responses. Rem looked away. The boy said:
“When my mother was younger than I am now, she killed a man. He—your father—made her do it. By telepathy, willpower. It was when they broke Amrek’s occupation of the ruined city in the Plains. She’s never forgotten.”
“That has something to do with this.”
“This much. None of us know what there is in our blood, or souls, or minds. But what we are, what we can—or cannot—do, these things make themselves known. We don’t need to struggle always toward them. Or away. It’s like breathing. Rem. If we need it, it happens, without thought. Better, without thought.”
The fireflies hung in the bushes, flaming.
Far off, the boy said to him, “Come to Anackyra, Rem.”
• • •
The wolf, which had left its prints around the bis pond, and so drawn them to the hills that day, never returned. It was never mentioned. In after years, if they spoke of it, they would recall it as intrinsic to the will of Anackire, Her messenger. Only Rem would never, he knew, speak of it in that way.
In the end, it was still Zastis when the small party for Dorthar left the villa-farm near Amlan.
A scene had ensued on the hill between Lur Raldnor and his recriminatory Lannic girl. The usual sentences were said. They parted, their irritation unassuaged by love-making. Medaci was gentler. She did not weep, t
hough her eyes were fashioned out of tears. It was Yannul whose eyes were wet.
Rem did not overlook any of these things. He had waited for his fellow travelers in the city. Distance both geographical and psychological.
10.
AMLAN WAS BUZZING WITH NEWS before they rode out of it. It seemed to be the one sort of news that did travel fast, since it came straight in off the sea-lanes with such marine traffic as still risked the port. The Black Leopard of Zakoris-In-Thaddra had been prowling the shores of Karmiss and Ommos. Kesarh Am Karmiss had gathered his fleet at Istris, and was preparing to meet the swarm of Free Zakorians. Now thick on the water as a fleet themselves, the pirate vessels were reckoned to be nearly fifty strong, though such assessments were certainly exaggerated. They lay off Karmiss’ southwestern coast, basking in the sack of Ommish Karith, which once Vathcri had tried for and not taken.
Kesarh’s navy, built on past Vis tradition and sound Shansarian knowledge of sea and ships, had also grown in stature and magnitude. It seemed, for the past seven years he had been preparing for such a day, while Dorthar, the hub of Lowland-won Vis, had lain dreaming.
Generally, in the manner of men, these reports were taken as alien to the life of Lan, or else dressed with forebodings. A sea battle of the size now in the wind seemed close to war. Close in other ways. There were dire predictions of the sequel. Karmiss, Ommos, even eastern Dorthar would take the brunt of this, but might not Zakorian strays fare over the water to Lan? Her seas had been unsafe for a long while. Buoyed up with victory or primed to vengeance by defeat, the port of Amlan could prove a tempting titbit with, which the pirates might follow the feast. It was a fact, a convoy of King’s guard had marched out of the city at dawn, making for the port, watchmen rather than defenders. The harbor and the port road had been shut at noon.
Rem got most of this thesis at the inn before he left. He did not discuss it beyond a sentence or so with Raldnor when they met. The boy appeared informed, and so far only mildly troubled to be leaving in the storm-light of such events. He, and even the servant riding with them, claimed to share Rem’s opinion that the battle fleet of Istris would complete its task very ably, and that the routed Free Zakorians were more likely to hit out at the eastern tip of Dorthar in their long flight home, if still capable of hitting out anywhere.
Rem’s conviction, succinctly conveyed, was that Kesarh Am Karmiss would not take on such business unless he was sure of success.
Hearsay had it the King would command his fleet himself.
He had some qualifications for the work.
• • •
The storm shadows of war seemed lifetimes away on the incandescent days, high-ceilinged nights of the journey south. As they progressed, the shadows paled altogether. When they entered Lanelyr, the tidings of imminent battle evolved only with the caravan they themselves had joined, more garbled and fantastic than ever by then, and so infinitely less believable.
• • •
An unforeseen fresh nuisance fell on them when they broke the journey at Olm.
Rem’s duties as outrider had brought him into the small town on a couple of past occasions. Five years ago he had spent some days riding about the mountain foothills. There had been one of the false Berindas reportedly living in the area. When he found her she was a mix, and her child too. A brooding sense of the Zor had disturbed him in those hills, that old lost kingdom with its black-haired Vis version of Ashara-Anackire.
Olm he had barely noticed. Nor would have done so now, save that Olm had mysteriously been given word that the son of Yannul had ridden in at her gates. No sooner were they settled at the inn than a messenger arrived, and everything must be moved over to the more than modest palace of the guardian.
It was a thundery velvet-textured night, stars like sparks, the Zastis moon a blown rose.
They ate in the palace hall, vanes in the roof hauled back to show the night, and invite nonexistent air.
Rem realized with slight astonishment that his true identity was making itself known to him, for it struck him as funny to be placed far lower down the long table than Lur Raldnor. The female they had partnered with Rem was the guardian’s younger, somewhat illegitimate daughter. She was a strange creature, stiff-backed and fluidly opaque by turns, as if in the process of some curious aesthetic change. Someone had whispered she had aristocratic Dortharian blood, but her mother had been lowly, some Lanelyrian freedwoman. Her thoughts seemed happier elsewhere, and Rem was happy to indulge them.
While comprehending what had been said to him on Yannul’s fire-fly burning terrace, and lured by it to an attempt at self-collection, he was made uneasy trying to be easy. He had been told what the name of the country was not. He had been told, as yet, it had no name, but that a name might arrive for it, perhaps unexpected. He had been told he was valued as a man and a friend.
The goal of Dorthar was also in front of him, filling the empty horizon where had been the oblique dawn promise of his quest for Kesarh’s child. Dorthar disconcerted him, but it promised something, too, if only the recompense of anger.
He paced out all his ground carefully. The dull dinner and the unsociable Lady Safca were actually a relief.
Before they were shown to guest chambers, there was an entertainment.
It was an embarrassing flung-together allegorical re-enactment of Raldnor Am Anackire’s victory over the Storm Lord Amrek, full of gods and fates who did not know their lines.
The son of Yannul had been seated with the guardian’s attractive legal daughter. They were intent on each other, to everyone’s gratification, and paid little heed to the awful proceedings. The Lady Safca, rather to Rem’s surprise, did pay heed.
Presently it came to him that all her attention was centered on one person, a mix girl about twelve years of age.
It was thought blasphemous to impersonate Anackire Herself, and so the girl represented the Idea symbolically, sitting all this while on a little gilded throne borne about by porters. She was dressed as a Lannic priestess, veiled all over in milky cloth, only a high forehead showing, and eyes described by paint. He was too far from her to see if they were light or somber eyes, but the hair escaping under her head-veil was dark. The interesting thing was the fact of the snakes—two of them, wound one each about her bare white arms; live snakes, twisting and coiling, neither they nor the girl demonstrating any wish to escape. The Vis, even mix Vis, even goddess-worshipping Vis, were usually allergic to the touch of serpents. It was obvious why she had been chosen.
Maybe Safca was concerned for this reason. The girl must be a favorite, whatever that might mean. He had noticed, too, a ring gleaming on the snake-girl’s thumb, gold or amber.
At length the theater ended. Soon after, they were allowed to go to bed.
Rem bade his female uncompanion good night. He was not, hopefully, significant enough to be saddled with a bed-girl.
However, on the way to his allotted chamber, the servant going ahead up the lightless corridor with a torch, Rem was given cause for doubt.
Suddenly from a by-way another lesser light appeared. It was a hand-held bronze lamp, and the glow of it lit up the underplains of a slender white face, its eyes downcast but still smudged with paint. She had no snakes about her, though her arms and feet remained bare, and now her head and face were also uncovered.
She was a servant on somebody’s errand, he thought, and gave her no further glance. Then, as they passed each other, he felt her fingers brush across his palm. His hand closed involuntarily on some small object.
Without a sound she was gone. He knew better than to look back.
It was not until he was alone in the room that he opened his hand to see. And there was the ring she had worn.
It was amber, clear as Lowland wine, smooth as cream, and yet warm in his warmth from her. There was another characteristic. A sort of peculiar inner vibration. It seemed alive. In a second he had c
ast the ring down on the floor as if he had touched instead one of her snakes.
A little later he assembled the truth. The Lady Safca had propositioned him. The ring, put on her servant for the theater, had become a Zastis token.
He wished she had had the sense to avoid that pitfall. He could hardly himself send it back and humiliate her further. It would be best to leave the ring lying, perhaps in the courtyard. Valuable, the palace servant who found it would hardly dare not return the jewel.
That it had tingled was simple magnetism, for such amber was magnetic. Or else the Star had loaned it intensity.
He took off his clothes and lay down on the bed.
There was a hollowness in his skull. Safca. . . .
Some knowledge concerning her, or to do with her, was there to hand, but occluded, by light rather than shadow.
Rem dreamed white wolves were running over a landscape shaped from amber. Behind, rode a man in a chariot. He wore black. He held the reins in his right hand, in his left a gold-handled whip that gradually altered to a serpent.
• • •
“Where have you been?” said the guardian’s younger daughter as the Lowland girl came into her chamber.
The girl looked at her, shaking her head gently. This, in the language of signs which was accumulating, seemed to mean the question was in no need of an answer.
“I wish you hadn’t been shown in the hall,” said Safca.
One of her brothers was responsible. He had come into Safca’s apartment unlooked for, and seen the girl at once.
He had fancied her in his bed, so much was apparent. Yalef liked his women young. His two wives were only thirteen. And this child was so graceful, already she moved and walked like a court woman. More elegantly than Safca, or her sister, or Yalef’s two wives.
Safca did not know the girl’s age, but was positive that she was not yet nubile. When argument failed, she tried to put Yalef off by the reminder that pale skin and eyes meant frigid Amanackire blood. She also informed him that the girl was dumb, retarded, and had a habit of coaxing snakes into her bed. Yalef was duly discouraged.