by Tanith Lee
Ulis Anet walked inside the moving entity the multiple evacuation had become. She did not know where she went. Was Ioli secure? Never. Where then? West, and off the island. To Dorthar, where the Storm Lord could protect them. Rot Kesarh. May the crows tear his liver! An old woman, of good family and well-dressed, dropped in the way of a wagon, which was halted with cursing and complaints. Ulis Anet lifted the old woman up, vaguely reminded of a grandmother in Xarar, where the hot spring heated the palace even during the snow. The old woman clung to her. Ulis Anet, having rescued her, could not make her let go. Ulis Anet said, “Kesarh. He was my lover.” The woman spat on her. Catching sunlight, the spittle shone. A pebble struck her arm. Fickle—they had loved him, only three days before, when she had not.
Outside Ioli, she joined a makeshift camp, shared its fire, and back darkness came and stars.
They made about the fire ghastly buffoonery of how death loomed and they would all die. “And a Free Zakorian’s standing there, with a bloody great sword. He says to me. Where shall I put this? And I just pray my mate here’s got his bloody great mouth open.” Or they sang songs: “No morning star to bring us from the night.”
A man tried to lie over her.
“Kesarh,” she said. “He—”
The man beat her, but not much.
She was a pariah. He would not soil himself.
• • •
There were ships standing off at such and such a location, bound for Dorthar. Somehow she was with a family who had given her food and were now taking her to the ships.
She imagined entering Dorthar and throwing herself, a suppliant, at the wheels of Raldanash’s chariot as he rode by on the way to war.
“Why are you laughing?” the children asked her.
“Stop that. She’s daft, poor bitch.”
When they arrived at the shore, there were no ships. The family made off westward and deserted the lunatic, who was an ill omen.
She wandered awhile with the wandering light, then sat down on a stone.
The waves blew against the beach. But there was no peace. In the silence, she saw Kesarh and what the Free Zakorians would do to him. She had heard of the exploits of his valor, Tjis, the sea-fight off Karmiss a year ago. She was afraid she would see it in truth, the mental barrier giving way, letting his mind pour into hers, his torture and death, and she could do nothing.
She did not properly understand any of what had taken place, only its outcome. And sometimes she did not believe that either, though she knew it was so.
He had not died. Not yet. She would be aware of his death. Perhaps.
Not much before sunset, a storm cloud began to cross the water, miles off to the northeast. Ulis Anet left the stone and wandered into the surf, and stared at the blackness of the cloud until it melted away against the land. An hour after, another storm cloud, this one red, crept to the sky. At first she took it only as a vestige of sunfall. But it was the nightmare, black cloud, red—Zakorian ships, and fire.
She ran, inanely, the way the family had gone, westward, from the night.
In the blackness, she started back initially, thinking she had reached more arson. But then she perceived it was a group of torches. There was a shallow cove, with boats, rough-made, leaky things, groaning on to the waves one after another.
She came among the people there. They were few. Their lights caught her and someone said, “Look—ulis-hair. A good omen.”
She had been an ill omen before.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“The island.”
She gazed at them. Karmiss was an island.
“The holy shrine,” said another.
“The Leopard took it already. He won’t bother to come back. It’ll be safe there.”
They were going over to Ankabek, in the shadow of the moonless night.
They let her go with them, for her lucky hair.
• • •
Vodon’s men had cast Her into the sea from the rocks, Ashara-Anackire, the goddess of Ankabek. Down there She lay, dreaming, as she dreamed in Ibron above Koramvis. It was said She had once dreamed the world.
A sable shell on the sable sky, aureoled with stars, the island rose from the sea.
Have I come this way before, quick, and dead? the Xarabian thought. Val Nardia had done so.
Beyond the landing, the island went up, but the village had been gouged by the Leopard. They said not one living creature had survived. Only ghosts dwelled here now, a slain priestess and her folk, but who had ventured to see?
They entered the village and did what they could with it. Bits of walls provided wind-breaks. They stretched hide across and tented them in, and lit fires. A lizard was spotted, a gray jewel on a rock, life after all. Supper was cooked. Their normalcy was genuine and glad, but here, in the haven, there was to be always the scent of things omitted, the condition of the earth beyond; they did not mention Vis.
She could not eat, thinking of Kesarh. A woman patted her hand. “Ah, you’ve lost someone, I expect.”
Ulis Anet looked beyond the earth, up into the stars, and then the stars drew her away, on to a stony path and through an uncanny wood. It was blackened, but here and there some branch or bough had survived, and put out resinous buds, sweetening the sweet air. It was an hour’s walk.
The temple stood at the island’s summit. The upright slot of the entrance was very high, the doors broken in and their machinery uprooted. There were old black markings on the walls. But, although the way had been breached below, up here the clue to ingress had not been come on. The circle of the inner Sanctuary was still shut.
Ulis Anet went to the stone and laid her forehead and the palms of her hands upon its coolness.
Val Nardia had hanged herself. Is it for some such finality I too was brought to Ankabek?
A night bird fluted in the cremated groves outside. Life in death.
But Kesarh, Kesarh—
Ulis Anet sank to her knees. She pressed her lips to the unpenetrated wall. A prayer of the Amanackire came to her, from somewhere in childhood, and she said the words aloud, not knowing why, or their significance, her tears warmer than the burned stone.
“Not what I lack, nor what I desire, but give me only what I am.”
After a moment, the stone moved. Part of the wall fell slowly back before her. The wall was like a pipe, and the pressure points that sprung the slabs were set low down and could only be come at by kneeling. They responded to breaths of differing shapes, such as were formed phonetically. There were more than a hundred keys, all prayers, of which Ulis Anet’s was merely one.
Beyond, the Sanctum was despoiled, as the pirates had left it, and without light. But she stepped into it. She was afraid, understanding the wall would close. Incarcerated, she could only then seek a way out through one of the inner doors Vodon’s men had forced, and so through the labyrinth of under-passages—
She stood in the blackness now, smashed pottery or human bones under her feet, without even the statue of the goddess to comfort her.
And yet, the goddess might be conjured. She was there for all who cried out to Her—Not what I lack or desire. What I am.
No, it was not Val Nardia’s phantom which hovered here.
It was the woman they had whispered of on the boat, Eraz, the priestess.
“Help me,” Ulis Anet said to her, in the dark.
The help is in you. You must help yourself.
“Yes,” said Ulis Anet. “The help is in me. I must help myself.”
• • •
The message of Free Zakoris to Karmiss had been terse. We have your King. Will you ransom him? The Warden of Istris sent to learn the substance of this ransom. The ransom was Karmiss. It was a witticism. Kesarh had awarded the Leopard Prince Rarmon, the Storm Lord’s brother. But the Leopard wanted Kesarh himself and now had him
. Karmiss the Leopard would also have, given or taken. Already there were paw marks on the beaches.
As heat began to come into the days, the black thunder clouds poured down the seas of Vis.
In Dorthar’s north, the ballistas started their dialogue with a hostile ocean. It was not much more than an exercise, there, something to divert that eye of Raldanash’s kingdom and a portion of men and armaments. One night, a company of Dortharians swam out and fired four Zakorian ships. As the upper decks exploded, the Dortharians went on to hole the undersides and, breaking their chains, liberated most of the slaves. Gallant heroics these, worth a song. But forgotten when fifty Free Zakorian galleys sailed into the major estuary of the Okris river. For a fleet of any size, this was the road to Dorthar’s hub, and the delta garrison was seven thousand strong. It held the river mouth against the onslaught, which now gave no sign of decreasing. As further black ships drifted to join their fellows, further battalions, mostly Xarabians and Dortharian-Vathcrians, were force-marched or skulled east to shore up the blockade.
Ommos. Ships clustered black against her coast. She had been breached at Karith, that enduringly weak spot, but the Dortharian troops stationed inland against this contingency had ambushed and beaten Yl’s forces off and back into the sea.
Xarabiss reported skirmishes at Ilah’s port. Her watchtowers farther north sent up crimson dragon-breath.
Eastward, Lan, trampled in the mud of passage, kept still, kept silent. None came to take, as yet, but the empty villages were portent enough. The smoke had settled, flowers opened on the hills, but men might have gone away to the moon.
Westward, all Vardian Zakoris was mobilized, and the little ally kingdoms, Iscah, Corhl, and Ott. Alisaar’s fleets, approximating one hundred and twenty-two ships, continued up and down her jagged edges. The Shansar fleet had sailed from Moiyah, thirty carved swans, snake-headed, going west.
It now seemed plain, Yl would bring the bulk of his navy west to south against Alisaar and Old Zakoris, then through the Inner Sea between Alisaar and Xarabiss to Ommos, already sorely harried, and so upward to the womb of Vis, Dorthar.
The Leopard did not conceal its plans. Now it would strike here, now there. It was everywhere at once. For more than twenty years it had been building ships and men to feed this summer.
A forest fire tore the jungles northwest of Vardish Zakoris. Three thousand men, with chariots, catapults and siege engines hauled by monsters of the swamps, palutorvuses—which some, never having seen them, feared—burst against Sorm’s outposts under the dividing mountains. Free Zakoris stared at conquered Zakoris. Zakorian defenders defied their Vardian officers, slew them, and defected. Tattered, Sorm’s force withdrew, leaving the borders in Yl’s hands, fabricating a new border, afraid the Leopard would steal by them elsewhere.
The Leopard had entered northeastern Thaddra too, via her rivers. There were Free Zakorians in strategic Tumesh, now, under the tall peaks, the dragon’s crest of Dorthar. On the pass above, the Dortharians readied themselves.
Once, the oceans beyond all land southwest and south had been mythologically discounted as the Sea of Aarl. As Raldnor Am Anackire had learned, there were marine volcanoes west and south of Alisaar, the seed of the myth. Other, less lethal, passages to the second continent had since become well known to traders.
The withering of the Aarl-bane had additionally opened sea roads around Alisaar into the Inner Sea; formerly, no ship would risk going farther south than Saardos.
It had also, of course, laid wide the way for Free Zakoris.
Coming south, hugging the western shores of Vis as it must, the great fleet would be more than a month in voyaging. There was no land-route possible. Thaddra melted there into a nameless morass of diseased swamp and jungle ancient as the world, unclaimed by any, offering nothing. Where this slab of hateful earth jutted down toward Alisaar, a high beacon had been inaugurated on a rocky promontory. Small unsigiled vessels paddled about the area, keeping the watches of half the countries adjacent.
The great fleet was already moving. The most current sighting estimated a hundred and sixty-five ships, packed with men as Free Zakoris was proficient at packing—maybe eighteen thousand fighting men.
Their slaves rowed not only chained, but blindfold, in case by some accident they might catch a glimpse of those they met, their own countrymen, and be seized with patriotism, or some fantasy of being saved. A handful of slaves had already mutinied. They were tortured on the decks, as the others, blindfold but not deaf, rowed on. Only when these warning voices could no longer scream, did corpses go into the sea. Huge lizard-creatures slid from the jungle coasts and hastened out to feast.
One sunrise, the foremost galleys sighted a tower of glass flying over the water, an iceberg, driven by eccentric currents and winds to slow dissolving under the dry western sun.
The Free Zakorians did not care for it, this cold clear thing. They said it had the torso and breasts of a woman.
• • •
The Dortharian fleet was anchored off Thos.
The Middle Lands had seldom fought by sea. Dorthar’s strength had been chariots and men and mighty walls, since the time of Rarnammon. Even in the Lowland War she had thrust away the ships of the Sister Continent, and engaged in combat on land, until the land moved like the sea and ended the battle.
The shipwrights were Vathcrians, and the ships were Vathcrian in style, high-beaked and beautiful. Their white sails glistened, blazed with the rust and black Oragon of Dorthar, gold and black with the Serpent and Cloud, the white on amber on white of the goddess banners of the Dortharian Anackire. The Vathcrian flotilla had in turn put out the blue regalia of Ashkar, brave as if for celebration. The Tarabine flotilla, already colored for blood, reflected the sea into wine. But the fleet numbered less than a hundred vessels. No reinforcements had come from the homelands, no message. Though the Karmians’ vaunting seemed done, it was too late. Alliances were blowing chaff. The Middle Lands stood alone as, since the snow, they had reckoned to stand.
When Raldanash rode into the port near sundown, Thos turned out to wave and exalt. Enough flowers were blooming that they could fling them to him and his men, the glitter of mail in dying sunlight. Next year there might be, after all, no more flowers, no more sun, for any of them.
In the garrison overlooking the harbor, the guardian, too aged to fight but with two sons down on the ships, bowed and stammered and went away, leaving the King and his commanders to their talk.
After dinner, that too dwindled. Most of them set off to bed with willing febrile Thosian women. Everywhere there was a glut of virgins to be had, girls anxious to lose their maidenheads to a hero or a friend. If Free Zakoris had them, they knew how it would be.
When the moon rose, Raldanash was alone, seated unsleeping in the guardian’s bedroom which, hung with the gaudiest silks, was his for the night.
“My lord,” Vencrek had said at Anackyra, “your place is here, in your capital. Not jaunting to meet Free Zakoris at the mouth of the Inner Sea—”
“Farther west,” Raldanash had corrected absently.
“Wherever. Do you think Yl doesn’t daydream of that? You there, and the Leopard breaking in here from Okris, or out of Ommos. Raldanash, we’re holding Ommos by an inch of skin—it could happen any day.”
“You will defend Dorthar,” said Raldanash, “with distinction and common sense.”
Vencrek used an explicit Vathcrian oath. “Dorthar without a heart. Kingless.”
“The people of Dorthar expect me to go where I am going, to intercept the Leopard in its might, the greater force, at sea. Not idly to wait for them to reach us, a hundred and sixty ships.”
“My lord, I’ve never known you to act in such a precipitate—”
“If Rarmon had been here—”
“If Rarmon had been here he would have snatched the crown and brought Yl galloping in to share it.”
“No,” said Raldanash, “you really shouldn’t listen to Free Zakorian propaganda.”
Vencrek said, moving into the tongue of Vathcri, “Why are you doing this?”
Raldanash, too, changed to the language of home. “I’ve told you.”
“No, my lord, you haven’t told me.”
Raldanash had looked at him then, and Vencrek had suddenly pushed all the military paraphernalia aside, walked across the chamber and flung his arms round him, as if they had been boys again, in the valleys.
To be embraced with such frantic affection, love and anger, shook Raldanash, but he suffered it, was even momentarily comforted. When Vencrek let him go, Raldanash began quietly, “If it were not for your support and kindness—”
But Vencrek, striding back to the papers, said, “There will be twenty Amanackire priests on the King’s galley, I hear.” Raldanash said nothing. Vencrek said: “I wonder why?”
“To invoke Ashkar-Anackire.”
Vencrek said, “My lord, I know some of the legends, too. The lines of energy that supposedly cross Vis. The line shot from the goddess temple above Koramvis—to Vathcri. I hazard you mean to meet the Leopard’s ships on that line of Power, as near as your theologians and cartographers can judge it.”
“Then, that’s your hazard.”
Vencrek turned, posed, had his suavity again. He said in Visian: “I see. Well, I’m probably all error. I know you leaned to the life of a sacerdote when a child, my lord, and still do. But you’ve never been sufficient idiot to throw Dorthar away for it.”
They spoke of military deployments.
Only at the door did Vencrek say, very lightly, “Of course, you’ve left no heir. What’s to become of us all if you go down?”
“Amrek left no heir,” said Raldanash. “The goddess provided one.”
Now, in Thos in the moon brightness, one recollected a workshop in the hills and the making of a crescent bow, and a ten-year-old Vencrek running through the waist-high grasses, yelling, waving the bow. And the terraces up to the temple, the cool enamel of live snakeskin, the shadows, and: “When you’re King of all Vis, what’ll I be?” “My Counselor.” And Vencrek frowning, “But I want to fight, lead your armies.” “The wars are over,” Raldanash had said. They had agreed, that being the case, Counselor was best.