by Tanith Lee
• • •
In the darkness, the eyes of the Rarnammon statue glowed upward from the plain, looking brighter than all the other lights of the city.
“But,” Vencrek asked, “how do we know the Lord Yannul was not mistaken? Or misled?” He looked across at Yannul’s son and smiled. “Hmm?”
“You know, sir,” said Lur Raldnor quietly, “because he tells you through me that he was not.”
“Your loyalties are commendably to your father. But after so many years—”
“My father, sir, is not senile. He spent some time at the side of Raldnor Am Anackire, and knew him well. He saw Raldnor again in this man who is his son. As Yannul’s letter explains, the Lord Rarmon was unaware of his own lineage. The woman had never told him.”
“Yes, the woman. Surely the name ‘Lyki’ is not so uncommon in Visian Karmiss. There might be more than one Lyki with a—forgive me—bastard son.”
“She had waited on Astaris at the Koramvin court.”
“So she said. Or so the—the Lord Rarmon seems to have said that she said.”
Rem, who was now Rarmon, turned from the eyes of his namesake below. He put his hand briefly on Lur Raldnor’s shoulder and said to Vencrek, “Might this discussion be somewhat premature, since the King is not yet here? Unless, of course, the Storm Lord’s belief in me is less important than your own.”
Vencrek let his smile freeze, then dismissed it. As the Warden of Anackyra, his good opinion was to be won or forced, or maybe bought. He was a perfect example, one saw, of what Yannul had called the ‘blond Vis’ of the second continent. A butter-haired Vathcrian; Rem who was Rarmon had seen his kind often enough, fair or dark, at Istris.
The rest of the men in the small attractive chamber were of the council. Tradition had kept it mixed. Two Dortharians, someone from Tarabann, a Shansarian, another Vathcrian. It seemed the Lans and Xarabs who had held honorable places here in Yannul’s time had probably all gone home. There were no Lowlanders in the room.
Except, Rem-Rarmon ironically supposed, for Yannul’s son and himself.
There was the old familiar sound of spear-butts going down on marble. The doors opened, and the King walked through, two guards at his back. He had retained the custom of the Storm Lord’s Chosen, an elite bodyguard. They wore the historic scale plate, too, but it was washed gold and marked with Raldanash’s device, the inexorable snake gripping the storm-cloud.
Raldanash looked immediately at him while the others bowed. Rarmon offered no more than an extremely courteous nod.
The Storm Lord sat down. All around, the council representatives seated themselves. Before Vencrek could resume the floor, Raldanash lifted his hand.
“Son of Yannul.” He spoke Vis, as he had on the square. It must be the fashion here, if not at Karmiss. Even Vencrek used it.
Lur Raldnor went forward, bowed again and was acknowledged. The boy was impressed, but then his King was impressive. His appearance alone was overwhelming, straight out of the myth. He had presence, too. Even doing nothing, something came across. And he did very little, his gestures few and spare, his face almost expressionless, the beauty and the trace of power speaking always for him. He was a year Rarmon’s junior, which gave him anyway inalienable rights in Dorthar.
Rem who was Rarmon was not immune to the incongruousness of it all. He seemed almost obliged to suspend skepticism since the earthquake.
Apparently the damage was slight from that. Six persons had died. In Koramvis it had been thousands. Hordes of people all day pouring to and from the Anackire temples, to offer in thanks or supplication against further activity, were by sunfall the only proof that anything had happened.
But there had had to be some sort of personal proof. Bathed, and clad for form’s sake in mild finery, Rem had taken out the ring of Lowland amber. It would go no farther than the middle joint of the smallest finger on the left hand. The finger which, in his father, had been missing from that same joint since infancy.
He had no sane reason for putting on the ring. A silly woman’s Zastis token, which had turned out to have psychic properties. It had assumed the temperature of his skin, he could not even feel it now.
“I shall inform Yannul,” said the King to Lur Raldnor, “of my pleasure in your arrival here. Tomorrow there will be space to speak with you in privacy. For now, be free in my court and my city. Only one thing I will ask from you.” Diverted from his thoughts, Rarmon looked at the two of them. He guessed—or mentally overheard—what was coming, and braced himself for it. “Yannul the Lan,” said Raldanash, “in all well-meaning, named you for his lord. The name of ‘Raldnor’ is frequent everywhere. But I don’t recognize it, other than as the name of my father. In this place, therefore, and in any place where you serve me, you will relinquish it.” Lur Raldnor’s mouth opened. He stared at the King, then decided to keep silent. “You may use instead the name of your father, which is illustrious and well-remembered. Hereafter, you are Lur Yannul.”
The boy realized that was all. He bowed a third time and stepped away. Under his Lowland tan he had gone white.
Vencrek stirred. Raldanash looked directly at him, to Rarmon.
“And you,” he said.
Rarmon waited, meeting the eyes again. It was too easy to meet them. They were like wells of light, a depthless deep that cast away even as it submerged. Magician’s eyes.
“You said,” Raldanash told him, without inflexion, “and before many witnesses, that by his Karmian mistress, you are my father’s son.”
“His bastard,” Rarmon said plainly.
“Yes. You’re not claiming Dorthar, then?”
“I’m claiming nothing, my lord. Except the truth of who and what I am.”
Raldanash came to his feet.
“You’ll follow me,” he said to Rarmon.
As they moved, the King with his guards, back toward the doors, Vencrek started forward and the others hurried from their seats. Raldanash gazed at them. “Warden Vencrek. Gentlemen. I thank you for your attendance. This matter I shall deal with in my own way. Good night.”
They went through the doors, which the guards outside closed on a stationary staring of faces.
• • •
The council chambers lay against the side of the Imperial Hill. A covered bridge, magnificent with carving, ran over a small chasm into the palace courts.
So far, Rarmon had only seen the guest palace. The architecture of the royal domicile was massive and complex, grouped in towers and tiers about endless courtyards. It was modeled, they said, on the previous structure gone to dust and rust in the hills above.
Presently they walked into a long hall. The flaming cressets on the columns lit up the sight he had all this while been waiting for.
There were seven of them, and they looked like incandescence, the pale hair and skin, the white clothing—he realized now to wear white was an affectation with them. Not all were as blanched as the woman in the Xarabian market. And indeed, seated to one side, there was a swarthy Vis, a squat man in the yellow robe of the Dortharian Anackire. He looked as impassive as the rest. He would have some need to be.
The guards withdrew.
Raldanash walked down the hall, Rarmon at his back, among the standing candles of the Lowlanders.
None of them bowed, curtseyed or knelt, as the Vis custom was. Each touched a hand to the brow and then to the breast. It was a noble enough gesture of honor. It had the feel of something ancient, too, which was strange, for it was also the gesture of a proud people, and he knew their story. Shunned, spat on, persecuted, due to be annihilated and unwilling to resist—until Raldnor told them differently. Now—this.
Three were women.
All seven looked at the King, and then beyond the King to Rarmon.
He felt something, heard something, but without hearing. They were speaking with their brains, and presumab
ly the King with them. One trick of the hero-god’s genes that had passed Rarmon by. The eyes never shifted from him. Eyes toning through citrine to ice: the eyes of snakes.
The King spoke to him.
“These are your judges.”
“What’s my crime?” Rarmon said.
“If you gave the truth to me, there is no crime.”
Rarmon dissuaded his skin from crawling. A quarter of my blood is like theirs. It’s the same with him—only a quarter.
“My mind is open to them,” he said.
“You have much Vis blood,” one of them said to him. “You are not to be read.”
The words were so near yet so opposed to his thoughts, he sensed there had actually been some inadvertent communication.
“Your adepts can read the minds of the Vis,” Rarmon said.
The comment was ignored. In a body with Raldanash, they turned and went on through the hall. Rarmon was left to follow, a meaningless demonstration of free-will. The Vis priest did not come after them, but only fell respectfully on his face as they passed. Which was a politeness of Thaddra.
Beyond the doors of the hall, a sloping garden-court stretched gently toward the sky. A building blotted the stars, and as they approached it, the smell of the trees was familiar. A black stone temple, in a sacred grove.
It was no bigger than the shrine of some Plains village. When they entered, a lamp hung alight up in the air. There was no statue, no ornament—nothing but the stone, sweating chill even after the heat of the day.
The door shut.
Raldanash walked to the center of the tomblike place.
“Stand here with me.”
Rarmon obeyed. He felt a peculiar misgiving. All religions had mysteries and deceptions. What was to be done here? The seven Lowlanders stood about the walls, snow figures on black.
There was a sound. A soundless sound, reminiscent of the undercurrent in the air before the tremor struck. But it was nothing so simple as precognition.
Raldanash stood facing him. Rarmon was aware they had adopted, he doubted spontaneously, the selfsame position, feet apart, left arm loosely at the side, right arm slightly advanced. Almost a fighter’s stance. The amber ring commenced softly to burn. There was Power here, then. Matter-of-factly, he accepted that the burning was not uncomfortable, ready to remove the ring if it threatened to grow red-hot, as on the ship from Hliha.
Then a new light seemed to come up from the stone under their feet, a curl of sourceless, colorless energy. It enveloped them slowly, rising like water. Witchcraft.
Through the light he saw Raldanash’s face, partly translucent, but no hint of the skull beneath. Instead, a kind of ghostliness, other faces, all his facets—indecipherable. So, too, Raldanash would see him. The facets that were Lyki, the facets that must be Raldnor’s; the inheritance beyond that, a line of kings and priestesses. And his own many lives in this one, the thief and cutthroat, the captain of Kesarh’s men, the lover of boys.
The ring scalded. It was like molten metal. It should have hurt him and he should have wrenched it off, but somehow the heat brought no pain, fire to a salamander. . . .
Then the light went out. The ring was only the temperature of his skin.
Raldanash stepped away from him.
One of them said, behind him, “You are no liar. You have the atoms of the messiah Raldnor, and through him of Ashne’e. There is more. The goddess has left her mark on your soul.”
Rarmon had no reaction to the words, or very little. He looked at the King.
The Amanackire began to leave. As the cool night air stole in, he knew the chill temple had become very close and warm.
“What now?” he said to Raldanash.
“You are what you said,” Raldanash replied. Nothing else.
They approached the door as if nothing had happened.
“Which brings me what, my lord?”
“Whatever you wish, under my authority.”
Outside, scale plate flashed. Guards with torches were standing on the lawn after all.
“Perhaps,” Rarmon said, “a small gift to start with.” Raldanash paused. Rarmon wondered what Ulis Anet had thought when first she laid eyes on this impossible husband. “Yannul’s son,” said Rarmon. “To some men, my lord, their name means very much. It’s a magic thing, the key to the ego. His father and yours were friends. Why not let the boy keep his given name?”
“He is,” said Raldanash, “no longer in Lan.”
“He found that out. You shamed him. Your implication, sir, is that no man’s fit to bear your father’s name.”
Raldanash, looking almost utterly like a Lowlander, seemed to show his Vis blood then. He glanced toward the soldiers. He said: “You say to me ‘Your father,’ yet you harangue me like a brother.”
“I’m asking a favor. And they told you, those you trust, that I am your brother.”
There was a long, still interval. A drift of scented air brought with it faint singing from the public temple in the forest above, some hymn with cymbals and cries. Truly, Dorthar had made Her theirs.
Raldanash said, “He can’t carry the name of Raldnor in my service.”
“Suppose,” said Rarmon, “I’d claimed it for myself.”
“Do you?” said Raldanash.
“If I did?”
They stared at each other, as in the black stone room. Time passed again. Rarmon came to see the King did not intend to answer him, and what this must mean. A challenge could not, beyond a certain point, be offered or accepted, for they were not equals. And yet, with an inferior, one need only command.
“Yes,” Raldanash said suddenly to him, “I was spoken to in the temple, as you were not, mind to mind. My soul isn’t marked by the goddess. I’m only the King.”
“My lord, I don’t understand.”
“I’m not afraid of you, Rarmon. I have powers in me you lack. I have rights you lack. And I was shown, besides, you were a thief who now steals nothing. But one other thing they showed me. You will be more than I can be.”
Rarmon nodded. “I still fail to understand you, sir. But am I to take it you want me to leave Anackyra?”
Yet Raldanash only walked away. His Chosen Guard, among whom the dark race was represented, went shining after him.
Rarmon was still standing there when a chamberlain came out and found him. The man was eager to discuss the apartments to be opened for Rarmon in the palace, and other such matters.
Over it all, the wind still brought the singing down the hill. He did not know the music was because of him.
• • •
“More wine?”
The Thaddrian refused, with great politeness. Intoxication would feel uneasy tonight, even on the juices of the High Priest’s cellar.
Beyond the luxurious chamber—the High Priest’s “cell”—the songs and shouts had finally died away in the body of the forest temple. It was almost midnight. The High Priest, who had sent the servant out long ago, refilled his own cup.
“But,” he said abruptly, “You’re sure?”
The Thaddrian gathered himself. This was the fifth time the Blessed One had asked him. The last occasion had been two hours ago. At least the intervals were extending.
“Virtuous Father, you sent me as your witness and I waited in the hall. The cressets were bright. They entered. I had less than a minute before the King and the Amanackire took him from the room to the Storm Lord’s private temple. Nor did I see him closer than that lamp-stand there, at any time.”
“However,” the High Priest prompted fiercely. He was himself, naturally, a Dortharian. Once, they had been the master race. Filaments yet lingered.
“However, I was myself convinced, as I told you, and as you informed the worshippers, that this man called Rarmon is truly one of Raldnor’s sons.”
“And yet you say he�
�s unlike him.”
“As Raldnor was when I beheld him—few men could compare with that. As few women could have compared with Her. And yet, the likeness was evident. This Rarmon is a handsome man in his way. The features, from certain angles, are similar to those of the Rarnammon statues. Raldnor himself was said to look like these.”
The High Priest assented, and quaffed his wine.
The Thaddrian had at no time repeated his own inner thought on seeing the King enter the hall, the much darker man at his back. A sudden thought, sheer and quite explicit. It was divided between the two of them, then. The white-haired Vathcrian has the beauty. But the reservoir of strength—the other has that.
He had been a child when he saw Raldnor Am Anackire. Sunrise in a rioting Thaddrian town, flames and smoke and sunshine jostling for the sky. And out of the chaos emerged something so simple and ordinary, a peasant’s wagon making for the jungle forest. And in the wagon two creatures not ordinary in the least. A god and a goddess. Only years after did he learn who they must have been, Raldnor son of Rehdon, and Astaris, the woman he had loved. The clean banality of their exit from the town and the majesty of their supernatural looks combined, essentially, to make a priest of the Thaddrian. To make him argumentative also. Certain aspects of the worship of his goddess bothered him. Mythology should only so far rule the lives of men. The afterlife should be left to itself. Religion would do better to aid mortals in the mortal state, not drug them with hopes of the transcending future. Were they to live only dreaming of death?
“In any event,” said the Blessed One, suppressing a small belch, “the Amanackire will have tested him.”
“No doubt, Virtuous Father.”
“And you were sure?”
Merciful Anack. The intervals were growing less again.
“Most Virtuous, as far as I could tell—”
“Yes, yes.” The High Priest gave signs of impatience with both his Thaddrian and himself. The earthquake escapees would have filled the temple coffers. Maybe he wished to go count the loot. The best donation of all had been from a young Xarabian, the commander of the Princess-bride’s personal guard. He had been stunned by a bolting chariot in the quake, but recovered sufficiently to come up here this evening. The Thaddrian doubted the lord Iros had been thanking Anackire for sparing his life. He had seemed in a rage, but also wept. There were already rumors he was in love with the Princess. That had an inauspicious quality to it. Raldnor Am Anackire had been the lover of his Storm Lord’s betrothed.