Anackire

by Tanith Lee

  “Ashni,” he said.

  “I am here.”

  He did not argue any more.

  “What now?”

  “Let go,” she said. “Trust yourself.”

  “Yes,” he said. He shut his eyes to rest them, and continued to see her, as he had known he must, behind the lids. “But then.”

  “Then. You will bring yourself to yourself again, at the proper hour.”

  “Is there any more water?” he asked, not because he needed it. But she was gone.

  He opened his eyes. The walls of the chimney were sheer and closed. The stench of waste and illness and fear were thick. But he had no thirst. He was calm. He considered.

  Raldnor and Astaris. They had passed from the world into a psychic inferno, blazing, going out. The child in the womb had not been part of that, or it had not wished to be.

  Anackire.

  Anackire. The island of Ankabek had known. Looking, not for another child in the required image—for the same child.

  What was that phrase Berinda had used, in her cot on the hill? “When,” had said her daughter, “did you find me again?” “When my womb swelled.” “But where had I been till then?” “Riding the air,” Berinda said. Riding the air. The third child of Raldnor Am Anackire had not been born from Astaris’ womb. It had been—freed. And then, the spirit of the child had lingered, riding the air, in some dimension of the earth and not of the earth. Until there came about a correct conjunction of race and flesh and of the physical soul—two who were also one.

  He could see this, since the restraints of normalcy were gone.

  And, what now? he had asked. She had answered explicitly.

  He was not thinking of her as a woman, for he would not have trusted a woman. He did not even think that she was, peculiarly, his sister.

  The water of illusion or magic had gifted his throat sufficient moisture that it could cry out. At first it was hard to give himself up. The roarings were acted. But even as he heard the guards above begin to stir and shout back at him, he found the courage to let the rational man leave him and the madness which was the god come in.

  And light filled his head like a sun.

  • • •

  “Your Alisaarian potions, perhaps, were too rough,” said Yl.

  “A purge. Nothing else.” Kathus did not show his exasperation. But Yl, like a beast, could nose such things. “However, lord King, he’ll still do for the display I recommended.”

  “Led about Ylmeshd, to be pelted by stones.” Yl picked his jeweled teeth. “You hate him.”

  “Not at all. I’m sorry his sanity snapped. I’d never have suspected—but it’s no sham. He’s been thoroughly tested, and the madness is a fact. I begin to suppose Kesarh understood the breaking-point rather than the lack of one.”

  “Ah.” The hand that had picked the teeth settled on a bare-breasted concubine kneeling by Yl’s couch. “But he does not die here?”

  “The longer he lives in wretchedness, the better an example he provides.”

  Yl, his hand between the girl’s legs, said slyly, “And you don’t hate him? Or do you only hate the father, as Free Zakoris does?”

  Kathus bowed and took his leave.

  At the back of the palace, in an open yard, he could distinguish the awful sounds of the madman. The madness was proven. Weighted chains were needed now. Yl had postulated a scheme. Raurm could be sent to Yl’s pet Southern Road, the interminable track being burned and hacked through to Vardian Zakoris and Dorthar. Fettered in some cart, Raldnor’s son could howl above the slaves, frightening them to nicer efforts. As Yl suggested all this, he watched his Counselor’s face with lazy eagerness: You do not hate him? How much do you not hate him?

  Kathus hesitated, listening to the sounds of the madman. Amrek had been unrewarding. Raldnor had cheated Kathus over and over. Now Rarmon cheated him. Only Raldanash was left.

  Hate? He did not deign to hate his fellow men. His tastes were refined. But as he had grown older it had set into his bones, partly ignored and always unacknowledged, a sure hatred of this endlessly unfinished game.

  18.

  IN THE COLD MONTHS, dawn could walk to Istris over ice in her bay. But under the white mask, the city’s pulse beat loudly; she was not asleep. The snow, in Kesarh’s era, was always a time of refurbishing and preparation. There was nervousness this year, too.

  The rabble could be turned like a weather-cock, by gossip, by oratory, or by a sudden dispensation of largesse. The merchant classes could be bribed. The upper echelons could be bribed. But there were the fools, the overly avaricious, and the honorable men who foresaw, in this obscure tack of the Lily toward Zakoris, something to make them shudder. It was only a rumor beyond the palace, for genuine rumor did circulate in the capital along with the paid sort. But even ignorance knew that, ally or enemy, when this spring unlocked the eastern seas, the whole body and ego of the Black Leopard would ride them.

  The dispatches from Lan, expectedly, were late. Probably nothing would now get through till the thaw, for Raldnor Am Ioli was proving a lax, ill-organized governor.

  To make Raldnor the figurehead of the annexing of Lan and Elyr had served a dual purpose. The eastern lands were to be shown the whip, first. Raldnor at least would do that. Indeed, his dealings had been as harsh, unjust and haphazard as predicted. Presently, a more lenient guardian could be introduced. The conquered would respond, appeased—and lulled—by soothing ointment on the wounds.

  Meanwhile, the gambit got Raldnor out of Karmiss, where he had been building far too high on his good luck. Appointing a temporary Warden in Raldnor’s stead was sensible tradition, no more. Such an authority must at all times be resident in Istris. To investigate Raldnor’s affairs in his absence was also a tradition Raldnor himself might have anticipated. Kesarh had found everything scrupulous, and this was strange. One knew what men like Raldnor were liable to do with power. To uncover no tiniest indiscretion gave one to suspect the whole garden had been tidily raked over, to hide some larger blemish.

  The reprimand was decided, and lay to hand. With certain tools, one was aware, from the moment of taking them up, that they must eventually be discarded.

  Raldnor, like many others, was induced by the snow to hibernate. And the sea was between them. He would reckon on nothing.

  Kesarh spent an hour with his council, during which he established Raldnor’s removal from office in Lan. There was no adverse debate. Nor had any of them met a Lannic-looking adventurer on the back stairs leading from the royal apartments. Kesarh had never forgotten the use of such stairways.

  Altogether, he forgot little. He had preserved the face of the Outlander far better, for example, than Suthamun had preserved the face of Vis participation. But the Shansarians, Vardians, Vathcrians who occupied key positions in Kesarh’s army, council and court, had been carefully purchased. Bought to a man, they were always ready to recall the King, too, was half their blood.

  Even the goddess, despite what Free Zakoris was encouraged to suppose, had not been cast down. In the days of his regency Kesarh had restored Her and that house which She Herself had struck in her wrath against the line of Suthamun. The second statue resembled almost exactly that which the Shansarians had set up. She was just a touch smaller, more eloquently female. Being a woman god, it was not, surely, so curious she had become more of a deity for women. Her naked breasts, hinting at carnal pleasures, had finally reconciled Her with Yasmais, whose temple She had so long inhabited; this was not strange. By the third year of Kesarh’s reign, the lower city had got to calling her Ashyasmai. Emboldened, other gods had reclaimed their dwellings in Istris. Kesarh, who believed in none of them, gave them all gifts. To Ashara-Ashkar-Anackire-Ashyasmai, he gave black pearls. Woven so thickly in her gold hair, it seemed from below she had become a brunette.

  Though Lan was sluggish, by midday dispatches had come from those wh
o scanned the west. They had less to say of Yl, the Leopard’s guts, than of its Alisaarian brain. It had only been viable to treat with Free Zakoris since the advent of Kathus.

  From Dorthar there was nothing of note. The ships which had sailed from Thos for the Sister Continent, might get home before the snow’s end, for the southern seas were milder. Then, there could be news. Kesarh had sent his own envoy that way, having maintained spurious brotherhood with Shansar for years.

  Under the dispatches lay a closed letter without a seal.

  She had written to him before, half a month ago. Her writing had not been like his sister’s, but upright and bold, growing wilder at the finish. She had asked him again to return her to Raldanash. As if Raldanash would accept her, now.

  Kesarh took up the letter. He was older, and had learned. At no point had he sent word to her.

  At no point had he taxed himself with why he must have her. She belonged to him and so she was here. The rest was only interim.

  He slit the wax and read.

  He seemed for an instant, then, almost to be searching within himself, as if trying to locate some distant memory, something he had felt, or thought to feel. But either it eluded him, or it had never existed. This much, since he was alone, might be told from his face.

  • • •

  It needed two-thirds of a winter’s day to reach the village, an hour more to gain the house. It was a villa, high-walled and well-appointed, with a garden courtyard. It had been one of Prince Jornil’s many country nests.

  They had cleared the road, but the snow was falling again, and the wind had risen. When he left the zeebas and his men and went into the upper house, he did after all think of Ankabek, the lamp trembling in the wind above the door, the black passageways beyond. And suddenly of the dying flower he had given her, on her pillow, scented with her fragrance not its own.

  He waited in the salon while the servant ran to fetch her.

  In less than three minutes, she came down.

  He recollected the previous occasion, the ruined dress and unpainted face. Now, all had been arranged, even to the colored lacquers on her nails and the diamond stars in her hair.

  They were nearly identical—but not the same. The more like Val Nardia, the less she was Val Nardia. The flower from Ankabek crumbled.

  The wine came in before she had greeted him. She did not greet him at all, but said, “Is the room warm enough for you, my lord?”

  He replied, “We’ll be in your bed.”

  She looked at him for the first time, in terror, and said, “Wait. Please, wait.”

  “I’ve waited. You informed me the wait was over.” He picked up the wine flagon, and walked across the floor. She was between him and the stair. He took her elbow almost in passing, bearing her with him. She did not resist, but she caught his arm with her other hand.

  “Give me time.”

  He stopped, one foot on the bottom stair, which was of elaborately veined marble. He had never seen the house before. He turned from it to her, that he had seen almost all his life, one way or another.

  “What did your message say to me?”

  “That—I was alone here.”

  “A single sentence, like a pining trull.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I am ashamed of it.”

  “But it was set down with ink.”

  “I’m afraid,” she said. She looked away, beyond him. “Let me explain myself,” she said. “Let me talk to you.”

  “No.”

  He went up the stair, and she went with him. No servants showed themselves. She walked before him into the elegant room, hearing the firm shutting of the door behind them.

  He had chosen the house for her, no doubt randomly, yet it was so apposite—secluded, charming—that she had been soothed. She persevered, in the beginning, constructing letters to him asking to be let go, refusing the glory of being jointress to his empire, which she was certain, she said, he had mentioned merely to pacify and entertain her, not to be believed. Only one of these letters had she sent. And then regretted it. Raldanash would never claim her again. Nor could she escape to Xarabiss. Her father, whom she hardly knew, would not receive her.

  During this time, however, she regained her self-esteem. She might hold her abductor off until he grew bored, and forgot her.

  But she sensed this would not happen, that therefore she was safe to consider it.

  She saw that she must not, herself, give in. And so, sequentially, she did give in.

  There came an evening when the snow seemed to have lasted a year. She had drunk an extra goblet of the white spirit they fermented on the estate, and she had written a different letter—I am here alone—and they had carried it to him. Why should she fear him? She desired him, fiercely. It might as well be Zastis. What did she fear? That his dead would come back and haunt her? But she was not wary of ghosts.

  When it was too late, the letter in Istris, she was appalled, as she had foreseen—mocking herself, then. She thought he might not leave the capital. But each day she prepared herself for his advent. When he did not come she watched herself languish. He was here, and she shook with horror.

  There was one defense left to her, had always been, and she assumed it. Unfastening the clothes that had been put on her not two hours before, she let them drop to the floor, and breaking the ribbons of her sandals, stepped out of them. Clad solely in jewels, she went to the bed and lay down on it. She looked at the ceiling all her sleepless nights had made familiar. She said, “Then I’m to be quiet and have only one function; I’m your doxy, my lord, as you said. Your harlot. The price you paid is on my wrists and knotted in my hair. Commerce. Do what you want.”

  But as she said this, even tensed with self-revulsion, there came the heavy, languid stirring in her loins. She closed her eyes and did not open them until she felt the heat of him beside her.

  He was naked, now, as she was, the tawny nakedness flared with jet-black hair, that came from the mixture of race. The excellent body had few scars. It had fought too well and been too cunning to get many. She had seen men who wanted her, before, but from his readiness her gaze removed itself. She stared up and saw instead his face was only intent, in control of all of him, even the blaze of sex.

  Abruptly, what had gone before was meaningless. She could ignore it as he did, leave it lying on the floor with her clothing and his.

  She did not ask him if her nudity also was like Val Nardia’s. It was.

  The slim figurine of this girl, lightest gold as Val Nardia’s skin had never been, the eyes darker, the hair darker if as rich, was Val Nardia seen through a lens of pale amber.

  Her arms were around him, caressing, gathering, pleading.

  He found her mouth, and the hollows of ears and throat and hands. The beautiful breasts were young and flawless, as he remembered, their tips eager and hard now as pearls.

  There had been many women of many types. But the scent of this girl was her scent. The glide of fingers, plains of flesh, hers. The strong hidden mouth, taking, filled. Hers.

  Raising himself, he saw the long primal spasms beginning like waves under the surface of her, how her eyes emptied and were shut, the winged lids drawn tight (Val Nardia’s), and the throat arched—as her throat was arched. He felt again the frantic drowning grip of limbs and hands, the drumbeats of her groin. The agonized cries were known.

  When she was still, he stilled himself, looking down at her. But when he began to lift her again she was lazy, almost unwilling, as Val Nardia had been. And then quickening into tumult more avid even than before, and the summit was there, the ascent which was the fall.

  Of Kesarh’s hungers, sex was probably the least. Possession he valued. This night was necessary to him, and there would be other necessary times of lust, and of sure comparison. To give this girl the High Queen’s portion of the empire he meant to make himself, that wou
ld establish her, the jewel in the jewel. He would look at them, his lover’s double, the world he owned, and perceive he had not been cheated.

  But of Ulis Anet he took no concern. Her words, her thoughts, her life, could not interest him.

  • • •

  At daybreak, he left her.

  Ulis Anet, cold without his heat, stood in a window glaze by ice, and watched men and zeebas turned black on snow and sunrise.

  She understood now why she had been afraid. She had had demonstrated the narrow scope of his need for her, even as she helped him to enslave her flesh. These things might not have mattered if he had been some other man. But he had turned his devastating personal armament against her, as against any he wished to use.

  She did not even see the rising sun. His darkness blotted out her sky.

  She despised her sentiments hopelessly. It was like some tavern song.

  They had been singing Karmian songs in Amlan, raucous from the Salamander barracks, which now took up one side of the Palace Square. You kept clear of that by day. At night, the curfew left the roads empty, but for patrols.

  The traveler, who had just successfully dodged one of these, scratched at the door of an inn.

  A shutter in the door went back.

  “No trade. Go home before the Am Aarl catch you.”

  “Basjar.”

  “Yes, he’s here. Who wants him?”

  “Raldnor, son of Yannul.”

  “All of the goddesses! Wait. We’ll open up.”

  Hauled into the inn and inspected by the proprietor who had known him, Lur Raldnor, deaf to questions about Dorthar, was next taken to a private room. A few men were drinking under the candle-wheel of thirty spikes that only wore four candles since the Karmians had rationed them. The biggest man was Basjar, the Xarabian.

  They drew aside into an alcove.

  “You found my message under the hearth stone.”

  “Yes. Where Medaci used to put them. In Anack’s name—”

  Lur Raldnor had gone the Lowland kind of pale, that was like bloodloss. He looked only fifteen again and peculiarly old.