by Tanith Lee
In the shadowy group up by the stair, the unlike shadow laughed.
“Yes,” Yl said. “Come here, Kathus. Come and see, too. You knew the Lowland Accursed. Is this his work?”
The man came down. He, like the King, was in late middle age, but slender, quietly dressed, and couth. His complexion was far lighter. Most of all, his movements, his very walk, were different from those of any other of Yl’s coterie. He glanced at Rarmon. The glance itself spoke only of un-Zakorian things. But he said, “It might well be. Certainly, Dorthar has accepted him as such.”
The voice of Kathus was a surprise. It had a little of the slurred accent. Some touch of Zakoris after all, then.
The two Karmians had grown bored with homage and stood up, trying to offer letters to Yl. Caal remained as he was.
The Zakorian guards, at Yl’s order, took Rarmon away.
• • •
“Drink, Kathus. Drink deep.”
“Thank you, my lord.”
Yl, but not Kathus, drank deep.
“Thinking of Dorthar, Kathus? Her blood and entrails and ashes?”
“Vengeance,” paraphrased Kathus, imperturbably. His face was scarcely lined, for he had trained it from his early years to eschew expression. “And, of course, your promise I should rule Dorthar in your name. What there will be left of her.”
“And now you think Kesr of the Karmians will have Dorthar from me, when he and I have mown the white-hair half-breed into the muck?”
“I think Kesarh’s too useful, not to agree with all he may wish.”
“And then kill him and give it you?”
“My lord,” said Kathus, “I can be patient. Both of us know that skill, by now. Kesarh’s young and runs swiftly. And may stumble.”
Yl liked Kathus Am Alisaar, who had once been a prince and intriguer in Dorthar. It was in the way he liked a new weapon, or woman, or an animal that could do clever tricks. Kathus was wise. He had been helpful, making sense of the written aspects of a diplomacy Yl required but had no forbearance with. Kathus had fashioned an intricate network of spies. Yl’s blunt Zakorian counselors had not survived the flight to Thaddra. Kathus was the most sophisticated thing in his kingdom.
“Then counsel me,” said Yl.
“You return Kesarh’s envoys. You repeat the false vow that you’ll rebuild Ankabek—he doesn’t give a damn for Ankabek or Anack, we all know that, but he forgives your men the island’s spoiling, so you must play, too, and regret the offense. He’s shown you the other side when he destroyed your fleet off Karmiss, recall. You thank him also for your present, Raldnor’s bastard son. That’s the letter. The military dispatch goes separately and we’ve already discussed that. What, by the way, will you do with Rarmon, son of Raldnor?”
“He would have made a burnt sacrifice to Zarduk,” said Yl. “But Kesr mentions Raurm has lain with men. I can’t offer the god such filth.”
“How irritating.”
Yl grunted.
They had come into the King’s chamber off the Throne Hall. Yl’s eyes strayed across the room to the niche where there reposed a gigantic topaz. It had been a goddess’ eye, at Ankabek.
“The bitch watches,” he remarked. “Zarduk,” he said to the eye, “wears your gold. No use to look for it.” He stared back at the topaz, and seemed to forget the talk in hand.
Kathus reminded him.
“My lord, if I might suggest. Rarmon. Since you can’t burn him alive, he may be useful elsewhere. Further inspiration for your soldiery, a warning to your slaves and those by whom we are scrutinized. It should be told publicly who he is. He should be publicly abused. Keep him, as a figure of obloquy. There’s also the information he can impart.”
“It’s useless. The White-hair will alter his plans.”
“My lord,” said Kathus, “he will naturally do that. But to learn the original formula will suggest what the alternatives may be.”
“Ah. Sharp, sharp. Raurm shall be questioned tonight.”
“Give me charge of it.”
“You judge my captains too rough?” Yl was amused.
“I can’t be sure he has loyalties to anyone, even Raldanash. But he refused to assist Kesarh—Kesarh would otherwise have retained him. This needs inducement. He isn’t to be wasted.”
“What means?” Yl had become brutally curious. While not titillated by cruelty, it sometimes made him think.
“He’s been whipped in the past, knocked about all the way here. It asks something different now. We must remember, too, Kesarh didn’t bother to try persuasion. Kesarh seems to have assumed him unbreakable.”
• • •
Kathus, the regicide, walked quietly downward through the sloping corridors burrowing under Yl’s palace. It was interesting to him that the King of Free Zakoris had made his house less penetrable than his city with its high ungated wall, while under it he utilized the natural cave-system of the rock, reminiscent of Hanassor. The ships which had lain in caverns under Hanassor, had also been better protected. Though it seemed unlikely much harm would come to Yl’s present duet of fleets, two hundred and thirty vessels of which were in harbor, before summer opened the war. That was how close war was.
Long ago, Kathus had journeyed through the world, seeing how it changed after the Lowland War. In so doing, he used up the widespread caches of wealth he had formerly set by for himself against catastrophe. He returned to Alisaar where Shansar held sway, and turned from it. For a while, he manipulated affairs in Iscah and Corhl, and earned some prestige in the tiny city of Ottamet. These were all very minor exercises. He had Zakorian blood. At length, he went to Thaddra and to Zakoris-In-Thaddra. He did not tell Yl too much about himself, only enough to make himself precious. He never mentioned that he had murdered, albeit on a battlefield, the Storm Lord, Amrek. The deed, actually in retrospect, struck Kathus as a flight of fancy, almost poetic. It had served no purpose for himself. He had been younger and maybe, despite his own training for himself, had wished, in that wild aftermath of quake and defeat, the trumpets of history loud across the darkling plain, to sear his own mark forever on the scroll of events. But Kathus was not a poet. Yl’s taunting assumption that Kathus wanted revenge on Dorthar was itself poetic, and therefore wrong. Kathus merely wanted ownership. He had always wanted that.
He had by now entered the series of caves that were partitioned for dungeons.
He spoke to the guard. When the guard had removed a sliding stone, Kathus was able to peer into a narrow chimney. About seven feet down were the head and shoulders of a man, the one they called Raurm. The chimney was not wide enough for a prisoner to sit; even to brace himself by knees and back, and so lift the weight of the body from the legs, was out of the question for a grown man, though a child or a small woman might have done it.
The Alisaarian prince now known as Kathus stepped aside, and the stone was slipped back in place. The only light below came in via the grill when the stone was off. The chimney would now be in darkness again. The prisoner had been lowered into it by hooks passed through the ropes that bound his body, for the grill, like the stone, was removable. Food and water could be lowered in the same manner. So far, they had been omitted.
Raurm had dwelled in the chimney one night, a day, a portion of a second night. It would seem to him much longer, although not yet like eternity.
Kathus was fascinated. At this stage, when the stone was withdrawn, they usually shrieked and begged, staring and straining toward the hopeless hope of light and space. But Raurm had not even glanced up.
“At noon tomorrow,” Kathus said to the guard. “As you were instructed. It’s clear?”
“Yes, Counselor.”
Musing, Kathus went away, to drink unpleasing Thaddrian wine. And wait.
• • •
After the darkness of the cellarways, the midday light in the upper rooms hurt his eyes. His guard
s had left him in a small bright chamber, unbound, and presently Kathus entered.
Rarmon was aware this was not a reprieve. In the dark undercaves he had been allowed use of a primitive bath, and fresh clothes were thrown in on the floor for him. To relax to the relief of these things, because he knew they would not last, was an act he resisted.
In the chimney, it was harder to resist. Physical endurance he possessed. The discomforts that swelled, minute by minute, hour by hour, into atrocious pain, these he made room for. But in such confinement a man became his own tormentor. Thoughts, memories—mind-devils. They danced about him in a space where he could barely shift from one foot to the other. Rarmon did not know how long he could master these other aspects of himself. How long it would be, therefore, until he went mad.
Kathus had seated himself and now observed Rarmon with an unfathomable expression. The he waved him to a chair.
“Thank you, no.”
Kathus nodded.
“Because your legs will strengthen the longer they’re forced to support you, the less respite they’re given. I see you think you’ll be sent back.”
Rarmon did not speak.
Kathus pointed to a dish of fruit, a pitcher of wine.
“To eat will also strengthen you.” Rarmon did not move. “You decline?”
“It seems rather futile.”
“You could have found means to kill yourself on the way here, but refrained.”
“An oversight.”
Kathus smiled.
“Once I had your father brought before me in a comparative position, my prisoner. You may be amused to hear, I found him less adroit than I find you. But then, he was younger, too.”
Kathus clapped his hands. Zakorians did not employ effete summoning bells.
A man entered, set down writing materials, and went out.
“You will,” said Kathus, “outline the Storm Lord’s proposed campaign for us. A general plan should do. Specific questions can be settled later.”
Rarmon crossed to the table. He dipped the pen and wrote one brief line.
Kathus rose and took the paper.
Rarmon had written, At this time, anything I tell you will be disbelieved.
“You’re accustomed,” said Kathus, “to being ill-treated. It began with your mother, no doubt. I knew your mother. I’ve seen you in your cradle, when the women called you Rarnammon. Actually, you were born, with a great deal of clamor, under my roof. Guard.”
They entered the open door and took Rarmon back to the chimney.
A little later, the fruit and wine were lowered to him, and contrived to be left hanging.
The temptation was too great—not so much the temptation of eating as of having something to do. As he gave in, he felt a terrible despair, unknown to him until now. But after he had eaten he slept, and though there were dreams they were no more than dreams, and constantly half-waking, he escaped them.
• • •
When his legs had grown numb again and the spike that filled his spine had again reached up and pierced his skull, he was taken out once more. Once more there was the bath, and the fresh clothing. It occurred to him Radius, whose apartment had had certain un-Zakorian refinements, only wanted him dusted off, as it were, so as not to soil the furnishings.
Rarmon limped up the stairways. When Kathus arrived the exchange was brief and the paper and ink already waiting. To sit down was now more agony than to stand, but Rarmon had to take the chair or he would have fallen, bending to the paper.
He had prepared a reasonable theory of Dortharian deployments, a fake. It might not be believed, and he must remember it, since probably he would be invited to repeat the format on many occasions. He had never intended to give them Dorthar’s true war-plans for, having those, the alternatives could be more easily mooted. Rarmon had no loyalty to Dorthar, she had not seemed to touch him. Nor was there a sense of kinship with the man who was his brother. Nevertheless, Free Zakoris was a midden. Even through a haze of exhaustion and blood, he had seen the skeletons of a score of exposed babies lying just off the road, a little heap like discarded rubbish. The concept of Free Zakoris astride Vis offended him. It went deeper and less deep than that. At this stage it was native of him to resist everything. Rather than grow confused, his allergy had become obsessive.
Lowered back into the chimney, he caught himself trying to impede the passage by twisting his body, trying to stop the inevitable descent. He forced his bootless intuition into abeyance and let himself drop the rest of the way.
Later, or perhaps in not so much more than a few minutes, the wine and fruit came down, and a meat gravy. He accepted it all, tilting the bowls into his mouth by angling them with his face.
Soon after, he threw up. Even as he puked—desperately, painfully, the upright position hampered it—he realized some emetic drug had been mixed with the wine or broth. When the spasms ended he stood in his own vomit, as in the rest of the bodily filth, and he began to want death. It was a passionate want.
For some time it filled his mind vividly, sending away even the haunts and horrors of his own inner brain.
Then this flame also died, overwhelmed by another less intellectual passion, equally intense. Thirst.
He fought off the thirst as he had not fought off the wish for death. He scrambled to recapture the ghastly memories that had ridden him earlier. He marshaled them against the torture of the thirst. But the thirst won.
It began to seem to him that if he called to the guards above the grill, they might let him have water without medicine in it. He knew this was not so. But his voice started to make hoarse croakings on its own, meaning to disobey him.
Then the thirst went away very suddenly.
He was not thirsty.
They were hauling him up again. When they stood him on the stone floor above the chimney he keeled over, stiff as a tree. They dragged him. There was no bath, now: he was not going up to Kathus. A man stood against torch-light and told Rarmon the tissue’ of lies he had written was seen through, but the Lord Kathus permitted him a further chance of redemption. Here was pen and paper. Now it must be the truth.
Rarmon wrote. You had the truth before. It stays the truth. His hand, writing, seemed miles from his eyes which saw it.
“No,” said the man. “This won’t do.”
Rarmon was offered wine. He took no notice of it.
They returned him to the chimney and let him down. It was always done quite gently, smoothly. As his feet went into the stinking slime of human excrement that lined the pit, Rarmon thought: I’ve only to continue to insist, remember the deployments as I set them down. They seem very clear. I could have done it, then. Eventually, they will accept my statement. Or, he thought, I could write a different thing each time. Valueless. They might kill me then.
But the dream-desire of death did not return.
Presently, a bowl of milk was lowered. He had the resource to butt it with his head, causing the bowl to shatter on the wall of the chimney, and the milk to be lost before he could gulp it. It might have been wholesome, of course. Maybe it had been. Maybe—
The thirst returned, redoubled. He almost screamed with it. He rolled on the chimney. He beat his head against the stone, meaning to crack his skull like a bowl.
But it was the stone which gave way. He paused in surprise.
Beyond, there was darkness. And in the darkness, far off, a miniature fleck of light.
Rarmon slumped back. He stared into the fissure beyond the stone, at the infinitesimal light. It was hallucination. The thirst was real.
Yet the light was approaching very swiftly. He could not look away. The dark caught no shine from it, no illumination came into the chimney. Then he saw why. It was not light but whiteness. And then it had form. And then it was a girl.
She walked quickly toward him out of the stone where she could not
be, all the time getting larger. Her pale hair fluttered as she walked, and the edge of her dress at her ankles.
All at once, she was only a few feet from him, and she held out to him a dish which was filled with water.
She was not tall, a young girl, sixteen, seventeen years old. Her face was grave. Her eyes were suns. She—but she shook her head at him, and lifted the bowl higher.
He was aware of the dirt and fetor, as if she were really there to brave it. He smiled at her, shaking his head in turn. It would be useless to drink the sweet water which was a mirage. But she would not go, and she went on holding up the dish to him. Her arms must ache. Reluctantly, he lowered his head toward the dish; there was room to do this since the wall had given way. Then the water was against his mouth, cool, tangy, tasting as it did from the little falls in the hills above Istris. Chiding himself, he drank. He felt it go down, pure and bright, cleansing him. The dish was empty. He was no longer thirsty, but that had happened before. . . .
“Rarnammon,” said Kesarh’s daughter, Ankabek’s looked-for child.
“I know,” he said, “but you’re only nine years old.”
“No,” she said. “Remember how long I lay in Astari’s womb, and then how long I waited, of the world, but not in the world, to come to term in the womb of Val Nardia. I’m older than you, Rarnammon.”
“Nine,” he said, “and not even here.”
“Here, I am the symbol of your will. You have the power in you to survive all this, but you’ve given the power my shape. As others give the power within them the form of Anackire. But it might be another god. Any that they credit—if the Power is there to raise that god.”
“You’re saying gods are the creatures of men?”
“No. That men themselves are gods. But, fearing their own greatness, they send it from them to a distance, and must give it other names.”
He stood in a chimney of torture in Free Zakoris, waiting to die, and spoke philosophy with a sprite he had imagined, nor did they speak in words. But her eyes—flame and sea and light and shadow, and all things, and Nothing.