by Tanith Lee
The Karmian captain was pleased with the guardian. The Karmian captain now shared the bed of the guardian’s legal and prettier daughter. The man made frequent proud allusions to his rise to power from lowly and insalubrious beginnings on wharfs of Istris. But the guardian’s legal daughter offered no objection, even seemed inclined to show off her lover.
Yalef, the guardian’s eldest son, had run to Elyr with a pack of gambling friends and some acrobat girls.
Safca, catching the blaze of the Salamander lifted above the palace gate, remembered her old anger at the men of Shansar and Vardath, her inchoate wishes for Vis valor to return. Here it was. She writhed with shame and disgust.
There was another reason. Discreetly offered, by her third brother, her own person for the duration, one of the Karmian sergeants had said, “The bitch is all shanks and no breasts, and where’ve I seen that face? On a jug without handles.”
She daydreamed of killing the man throughout the evening. Then, asleep, she dreamed of the Lowlander, the mountains, the lights, and Anackire.
In the morning, anticipated nowhere and with nothing to do, she considered the dream.
There had been, along with the chatter of the Karmian invasion, more frivolous tales of Lowland magic on the Plains, flower-garlanded crowds emanating from the black ruined city, lights and manifestations. One story, brought by a trader, had held Olm’s marketplace agog. Wolves loped with these mystic bands, it seemed, harmless and amiable. And there were snakes, naturally, wound round them with the flowers. Safca, recalling the great snake the Lowland girl had given to her, that she herself might be wound in it, had trembled. Was it that the girl had reached the Shadowless Plains and there led these occult revels? Was it that the girl, telepathic and powerful, had sent a vision to Safca?
Why? It was madness.
At length, Safca summoned the dream-diviner, a toothless crone who dwelled in a hut near the town gates that no one had held against Karmiss. Years before, the crone had interpreted a dream to Safca. Safca had never been sure she accepted the verdict. The woman heard all kinds of gossip, and was clever at guessing. Now it seemed she had guessed some other thing, and fled; she was not to be discovered.
It had been quite apparent where the lights of the dream had been going, even if the Lowland girl had not told Safca. At the heart of those mountains lay the ancient kingdom of Zor, rarely visited, difficult to come at over reeling passes, which in the cold months were inaccessible.
An almost faultless refuge.
Something bizarre began to happen to Safca. It was like a low sonorous vibration in her blood. She did not know what it was. She realized she had felt something of it in the vicinity of the Lowlander.
Now, Safca listened to the thrumming of her soul behind her bones.
All at once, the room where she was seated began to go. She was frightened, and called it back. But the voiceless harp string thrummed on and on.
Outside, the Olmish conscripts were being drilled in the square. A Karmian officer with a stick lashed them when they faltered, like slaves. Some days ago, one had been brutally whipped.
Down below, her sister chirruped, plying the Karmian captain with candied fruit. The two Corhlish monkeys, who were afraid of him, whimpered in a corner.
Safca became aware she was seeing and hearing things that were not to be seen and heard, physically, in this room.
“Ashni,” she whispered. That was the name of the Lowland girl. It had been left with her, and this had been left with her, though she had not known.
The room wavered again.
With a pang of terrified elation, this time, Safca let it go.
• • •
The veiled woman at the door of the makeshift barracks was carefully examined for any weapon. The two guards who examined her were very thorough and joked, enjoying it, telling her to enjoy it too. If it had been Zastis, she would have had more from them. They did not bother with her covered face, but probably would not have recognized it. Her bribe they accepted graciously. She had not been foolish enough to wear any jewelry, save the plain little necessary luck bracelet on her left wrist. To go in and entertain her man for the night seemed quite a sensible request. Such things had happened before.
The low stone hall into which the woman picked her way, the door of which was bolted behind her, contained two thirds of the recruited Lannic army of Olm, about two hundred men.
Many were elderly and should not have been involved, sport for sadistic Karmian leaders. Some were very young, children. Some were merely soft, unhappy, and a few of these lay weeping. They were all the fodder of war. But there was a core of men, itinerant hunters, wagoneers, builders of houses, even Olm’s own guards, strong men lying awake in anger.
Safca took out the stub of candle the guards had permitted and kindled it. Then taking up one of the empty lamps, she lit it in turn.
Men roused all about.
Even as the race of excitement, uninformed and random, spread over them, a Karmian came from behind a pillar, one last enemy she had not reckoned on. There was of course mixed blood in Kesarh’s army, though not many blond men at Olm. This one was, which made things seem worse.
“What’re you doing?” He caught her arm.
Safca, half blind with fear, raised her veil and smiled. She put her free hand to her hair, loosening it from its pins.
“The lordly captain sent me to spice your night.”
Her voice shook so it was a wonder he heard it. She shrank, even in this extremity, lest he should think her too unappetizing to be of use, but he grunted and began to pull her back behind the pillar.
“All right. But why light the lamp, brainless mare?”
He was already busy pawing her groin when she brought herself to do what she had known she must, and ran her hairpin in through his ear. The noises he made were muffled but hideous. They did not continue long. It was a fighter’s gambit she had heard Yalef mention, years ago.
Once the man fell, Safca fell beside him and vomited, trying to expel the heart from her body.
When she came to herself, one of the Lannic recruits was holding her head. She struggled away, and he said, “Lady, we saw. Did the guardian send you to such debasement, to play whore to our jail? Don’t fret. One of us’ll say we did it to him.” And there came a dull mutter of agreement. She looked up, her veil clutched to her mouth, and saw thirty or so men grouped around. “They’re only sending us to feed Free Zakoris,” said the Lan. “Better to die here.” Across his shoulders she saw the tail ends of whip marks and realized why he was too feverish to sleep, and too resentful to want life.
Safca got to her feet with help from the pillar. When they handed her water, she drank it.
“There’s no need,” she said, “to die.” They stared at her warily, knowing before she could tell them, the way the desperate sometimes will, that she was a messenger of reprieve. “If you’ve the courage, you can take the Karmians unaware and slaughter them.”
“But, lady, rid ourselves of these, and others will come. We’d be hounded, taken. And our families killed without mercy.”
“There’s one place they can’t hound us to,” she said. They waited. “The Zor.”
There was a great stillness.
A merchant’s son said to her, “The trek up there is hard. Impossible. How many would survive the journey? And what’s at the end? Ruins. The cold months are coming. We’d perish. We’d lose everything.”
“You’ve already lost everything,” she said, startling herself with her own crispness. “Kesarh Am Karmiss took it. Let’s attempt freedom. Or would you rather end in battle—battle with Leopard Zakoris, or with Dorthar, or any other land black Kesarh thinks he can engage?”
The growling noise came again, stronger.
The man drunk with fever said, “She’s risked her life to tell us this.”
Safca said, sl
owly, her voice gone deeper, thrilling herself, and them: “I had a vision. The goddess Anack instructed me to do this.”
In that moment she had them. She saw herself surrounded by men, some of whom were young and noble, and their faces were full of light that had come from her. She had never before caused any man to look at her in this way.
The jailer was already dead and someone took his sword. Minutes after, Safca’s frenzied screams brought the guards from above to unbolt the door, and she had the dubious joy of seeing them cut down.
Untrammeled, Lans swarmed through the stone house. There were sword racks farther up. They slew every Karmian they found, and later, spilling in the street, slew others. In the house across the way the Karmian soldiery had got wind of violence and put up barricades. Even as external Lans were beating these flat, the Lans inside, catching also the scent of what was happening, perhaps even by some sort of telepathy, took the invaders from the rear.
So it must have been in the Lowlands, Safca thought, the night about her full of running flames, cries and shouts. But before even the curiosity of this idea, which compared Lans to the Amanackire, could unnerve her, she was picked up bodily and carried by blood-stained men into the marketplace amid the torches. Someone was ringing the curfew bell. All about, Olm was gushing forth into the night.
When the Karmian command came from the palace they were murdered to a man.
High on an upturned cart, then, Safca must address the horde of people, their frightened faces, or the victorious faces of those who had already torn free.
What must I say?
But she already knew. She held out her hands to them and was unbearably moved by the night, the fires, the depth of what had sprung from her.
“Anackire,” she said, and there rose a peculiar sighing sob from the heart of the crowd. “Anackire has come to us, as she came long ago, and to all those who are oppressed. Anackire is in the mountains, the black-haired serpent goddess of Lan.”
• • •
Within five days they were ready, and traveling. Provisions and persons had come from some of Olm’s villages around about, villages that had seemed deserted and bare since the advent of Karmiss. Most of Olm moved toward the mountains. They even had a Zorish girl, a snake dancer, to act as their guide.
Those who would not go with them they left behind with token injuries, so the Karmians who came later might hold them blameless. The guardian was one of these. Even as the riot of townspeople evacuated Olm, he was scribbling dispatches, left-handed, for Kesarh’s High Command at Amlan, the other arm in a sling. He had begged the Lan with the sword to slice deep. Now the wound was festering nicely. No one would be able to blame the guardian.
The roads that led into the foothills were gentle. The rain held off at first. The Free Lans came on late flowers and wove garlands, and sometimes sang as they moved toward the Zor.
• • •
The rain, that was not necessarily Lannic gratitude, was coming down again when the Vardish caravan made camp in the hills. A cold wind was blowing, too; summer ending, with the world.
There had been trouble at Olm, they had been informed of it earlier. Just before sunset, a detachment of Karmian soldiery went clattering by, riding in that direction. The caravan took heed and crossed Olm from its inventory of stops.
It was a wretched night.
Huddled in one quarter of a wagon with their curtailed belongings, Yannul sat watching Medaci make beautiful beadwork with a slender bone needle. Their younger son was down at the fires under the awning, dicing with a Vardian boy.
Suddenly there was fresh clatter and noise. Three riders erupted into the wagon camp, dramatically fire-lit through the lines of rain.
Yannul thought for a moment they were Karmian pursuers, and his hand went to his knife. Then a man’s voice roared out:
“We mean no harm. I bring word to any Lan who may be here.”
There were no Lans that he could see, but undeterred, the spokesman shouted again: “The word is this—one part of Lan stays free. Any who would join Free Lan, come a mile east, to the rock with four trees. We’ll wait there one hour. A caution. Those who seek us seek in friendship. This”—and the man whipped out a sword, cleaving water—“waits for the tirr of Karmiss, or for any traitor.”
Then the zeebas wheeled. The men were gone, leaving the Vardians to yell.
Yannul’s younger son was running toward the wagon from the fire.
Yannul said, “That was a Karmian sword. Karmian mail he had on, too.”
“What is it?” Medaci said.
“I don’t know. A small uprising. Olm, maybe.”
She looked at him, her lovely eyes all flames and rain.
“Go then,” she said. “See.”
Their telepathy was erratic and always surprised him. He kissed her, left her to explain to their son, and went to get a mount.
He followed the three Lans so close they paused for him a quarter mile from the camp, swords out, frowning.
Riding up to them, he thought, with a kind of dull laughter, This is Raldnor’s time all over again.
“Halt. Who are you?”
“My name’s Yannul. I’m a Lan, like you.”
“Yannul.”
They looked at each other. One said, “He would be the right age. His hair’s long. They say he wears it that way. But he’s in Dorthar.”
Another said, “Don’t be a fool. Of course it’s him. I saw his son at Zastis, in Olm. Talked to him. This is Yannul.”
They got around to asking Yannul, then.
“Yes,” he said, “I fought with Raldnor son of Rehdon.” They sat tense as drums and stared at him through the river-running night. “Now,” Yannul said, “what’s your story?”
After a while, they crowded under an overhang. He heard it better there, what had happened at Olm, and about the princess who was a priestess, to whom Anackire had sent a dream. They were going to the Zor. The main party were up in the foothills. But Olmish riders were still going about the villages, stirring others to follow.
Something of their vehemence struck tinder in Yannul; then it died. They were already entreating him to add the weight of his figurehead to their enterprise when he felt himself step inwardly away. I’m past all this. Heroes and miracles. I want the south, and security for her and the boy, and quiet.
“And your woman,” one said, “your wife—she’s Amanackire.”
He said something, afterward he could not remember what, but it sobered them down. He explained he wished them well. He said he was going to the Middle Lands.
One of them muttered, “Raldanash’ll need him. The Black Leopard of Free Zakoris one side, the bloody Salamander the other.”
There were some soaked awkward courtesies.
Not long after, he rode away, back to the Vardian wagons.
Medaci was seated under the awning now, by the fire, with their younger son, whose dark eyes shone. Yannul shook his head at them. Sitting down, he told softly what he had learned, what he thought of it. No Vardians came up to pry. Traders, they were inquisitive but also uneager to know too much of anything. Vardath’s main force was elsewhere too, after all.
“There are scarcely a thousand of them, mostly women and children, I’d surmise. If the snows come early, and they do up there in the mountains, they’ll die. More dignified than death for Karmiss, perhaps. Still death.”
“But Yannul,” Medaci said. “Yannul, Yannul.”
“What?”
“Your country,” she said.
“My country’s all this, not a sad little rebellion herding up a rock.”
“Your country,” she said again. “It’s everything you are. It’s almost your soul, Yannul.”
“Oh, yes. That’s why I left it. That’s why I fought with Raldnor for your people, when mine wouldn’t raise a sword.”
“And like your soul,” she said, “it was a part of you, wherever you went, or fought.”
“Then it’ll be with me in the Plains. Or Xarabiss. Or wherever.”
“No,” she said. “The day the curfew sounded at Amlan, you held me. You said, Lan is Lan no more.”
Yannul looked away. His eyes were full of tears and he chided himself.
“But the heart of Lan stays free,” she said. Something in her way of speaking made him gaze back at her. “We have no country,” she said. “The Amanackire, the Lowlanders, we are a race, but the land is Vis—we have no growing root, no physical soul but the vagrant spirit of our people and the star of the goddess.” He waited almost breathless. She had never spoken like this before in all the years he had been with her, lain with her, seen her carry and bear his sons, loved her. “But you made my people your people, Yannul. You made me your sister and your wife. And your land became my land. Yannul,” she said, it was only a whisper now, “the Zor, Free Lan, the mountains. Let’s go with them.”
She looked a girl again, no older than that day he first saw her in Dakan’s house. He was still gazing at her dumbfounded when their son said, “If Anackire called them. She won’t let them die. Can’t you see that, father?”
“Yes,” Yannul said vaguely, “I suppose I can.”
• • •
They traveled through the ashes of the night and all the next day. Yannul mastered the tracks and by-ways up into the higher foothills, which would take zeebas, and which must be taken on foot and the zeebas led. He had never come this way himself, but, a wanderer in his youth, he had been educated and not forgotten.
They had kept from their baggage only what was highly valuable or incorrigibly sentimental, paring down from the other paring down at the villa. The rest they sold for non-perishable foodstuffs. A group of the Vardians began to evince signs of wanting to accompany them, but had been dissuaded by their fellows. Farewells were coupled with good wishes. Ashkar go with you! some had called. Having acquired the tongue of the other continent while he was there, Yannul had spoken all along to the caravan in its own language, for which they respected him.